John Carr - The Reader Is Warned

It was a small landing, heavily carpeted and badly lighted, with a grandfather clock. Two bedrooms occupied each of three sides of a square, with the staircase-wall forming the fourth side. Sanders was given the room next to Hilary Keen. Sam and Mina Constable occupied the two rooms facing the staircase-wall. Chase and Pennik, he supposed, would be in the remaining two on the third side.

At the moment, what Sanders wanted was time to think. His bedroom fulfilled all predictions. The windows were heavily curtained in many overlays like old-fashioned petticoats; there was a big brass bed; and on a table by one window stood an (unused) china lamp. But, though not centrally heated, Fourways was well supplied with bathrooms, and Sanders had a private one.

To get this stifling atmosphere out of his brain, he turned off the heater and opened both windows. There seemed no way of fastening the curtains back, and-he left them. Outside one window was one of those tiny and useless window-balconies cramped against the high pitch of the wall. After breathing deeply, he took a quick cold bath and dressed in some haste. Ready except for his coat and waistcoat, he lighted a cigarette and gave himself time to think.

Now, in spite of that demonstration of thought-reading, was Herman Pennik really-?

Wait!

He could have sworn he heard a faint cry. He could also have sworn it came from the next room, though the walls were thick and it was difficult to trace the source of sounds. He waited, trying to follow what sounded like a mumbling or a creaking of windows. Then several things happened at once.

The heavy rep curtains belled out on the farther of the open windows. Someone seemed to be fighting them. The tiny table tilted up beside them; bumping, the china lamp slid on that smooth surface, whirled, and went to the floor with a crash that must have been audible downstairs. From under the curtains appeared first a black satin slipper; then flesh-coloured stockings; then an arm and a dark blue gown; and then Hilary Keen, breathing hard, tumbled into the room. She was so frightened that the colour seemed to have been drained from her eyes, and she was as near a faint as she had ever been in her life.

But even now she tried not to admit it.

'I'm s-sorry to break in like this,' she said. 'But I couldn't help it. There's somebody in my room.'

'Somebody in your room? Who?'

'I came by the window,' she explained, with the painstaking carefulness of the distraught. "There's a balcony. Please let me sit down for a minute; I don't want to disgrace . myself.'

For some time he had been trying to think of the quality which most distinguished her. And he saw it now, when she was upset. It was the quality of fastidiousness. About her smooth shoulders and arms, about her eyes and forehead, there was an almost shrinking fastidiousness which went with the cool look of her skin. One of the shoulder-straps of her dress had fallen down or come loose, and she pulled it up quickly. There was grime on her hands and arms from having come by way of the balcony,’ and, when she saw it, he thought her nerves were going to break down in tears. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

'Now, steady!' he insisted. 'What is it? Just tell me what's wrong.'

There was no time for a reply, for somebody knocked thunderously at Sanders's door. Hilary sprang up.

'Don't open it!' she said. 'Let it alone 1 Whatever you do, don't open - But she broke off, with a breath of relief, when the door was opened without anybody's permission; and they saw that it was only Sam Constable, wearing slippers and with a dressing-gown hastily pulled round him.

'What's the row?' he demanded. 'Sounded like the house falling. Can't a fellow finish dressing in peace?'

'Sorry,' said Sanders. 'It's all right; the lamp fell over.'

But their host was not concerned with the lamp. He had got a good look at them; his eyes opened; and he drew his own conclusions.

'Look here -' he began, raising his eyebrows.

Hilary was frozen into composure.

'No, Mr Constable. Don't jump to conclusions. It really isn't what you're thinking.'

'And may I ask, Miss Keen,' said the other, becoming a complete stuffed-shirt again, 'what conclusions I am presumed to be drawing? Have I asked for any explanation?' He was quivering with outraged dignity; he lifted a hand and ran it through his heavy, silky grey hair. 'I come to investigate a noise. I find a valuable heirloom smashed (look at it) and two of my guests in a position which in my day would have been called sufficiently curious. But have I asked any questions?'

'Miss Keen has been telling me -' Sanders began.

She cut him off.

'There was something in my room, and it frightened me. I ran in here by way of the balcony. Take a look at my hands, if you don't believe it. I'm awfully sorry about the lamp; I knocked it over when I climbed through the window.'

'It is of no consequence,' said Sam Constable, looking sly. 'Only I regret that something in your room frightened you. Mice, perhaps?'

'I -I don't know.'

'Not mice. If you remember, please tell me and I will have it seen to. Excuse me, then: I shall not intrude on you any longer.'

Sanders, realizing that if he joined in the explanations it would only give their host the opportunity to look more sly, did not comment. Constable was evidently beginning to realize the possibilities of triumph in the situation.

'By the way, Mr Constable,' he said, 'nobody has tried to murder you so far, I imagine?'

'Not as yet, Doctor. Not as yet, I am glad to say. The scrap-book remains on its shelf. Until dinner, then!'

Sanders stared at the closing door.

'Now just what did he mean by that?'

'By what?'

"The scrap-book remains on its shelf." '

'I haven't the remotest idea,' said Hilary. 'And at the moment I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It does seem as though the whole affair, so far, has been to put you into one embarrassing position after another.'

'Oh, that's all right - but the point is, what particular embarrassing position were you in a little while ago?'

She was quiet again, though the shock had left its aftermath and Sanders did not like the look of her. At times she would tremble, for no apparent reason.

'It's nothing. May I use your bathroom to wash in? I don't want to go back to my own room for a while.'

He gestured towards it, picking up the cigarette he had put down at her entrance. That sudden entrance, the look of her, had disturbed him in more ways than one. She was gone only a moment; and when she returned he noticed the strength of resolution about her chin. 'I really wanted time to think,' she explained. 'And I'm sorry, Dr Sanders, but I can't tell you anything about it. Believe me, things are heading for a smash here; and I'm not going to add my unimportant mite to the total. It was nothing -'

'It was definitely something. In plain' language, did somebody go for you?' 'I don't understand.' 'Don't you?'

'Well, not in the way you mean. It was something else.' She shivered. 'I suppose, as they say, that I simply can't take it. Looks shouldn't break any bones, should they? May I have a cigarette ?' She sat down in a padded chair; he gave her a cigarette and lighted it for her. For a time she blew smoke-rings. 'Shall I tell you what's wrong with all of us here, and why it's going to end in a way we won't like?'

'Well?'

'When I was a little girl, I had a book of stories I was very fond of; though some of them were rather frightening. They showed you a world where you could have everything you wanted, provided only some witch or wizard took a fancy to you. One of them was about a magic carpet, the usual kind of magic carpet. The sorcerer said to the boy who had it that it would carry him anywhere - with one proviso. While he was travelling on the carpet, he must never think of a cow. If he thought of a cow, the carpet would go to earth again.

'Now, there was no earthly reason why he should think of a cow. But, once he had been told he mustn't, all he could think about was that cow. Once he got it into his head, it never left him when he saw the carpet. No, I haven't taken leave of my senses. I didn't understand the psychology of that story then; I disliked the story, rather. But it's true. Because somebody says, "Here is a person who can read your thoughts," all you can think about is what you don't want anybody to know. We're all concentrating on what we don't want known; it won't leave our minds however we try.'

'But what of that?'

'Oh, don't be so - so virtuous!' Sanders considered this.

'I'm not trying to be virtuous, Lord knows,' he said. 'And I still don't understand. Aren't you making too much of this? I'm inclined to agree with Larry Chase: it would be damned uncomfortable to have all our thoughts known, but, after all, we're not a bunch of criminals.' ,

'Aren't we? Potentially ? I have a stepmother. I hate her. I wish she'd die. What do you say to that?'

'Only that it's not a very terrible secret.'

‘I want her money,' said Hilary relentlessly. 'Or, rather, my father's money that she has a life interest in. It's a real life interest in it; she married him when he was about Mr Constable's age. She isn't much older than I am, and hard as scrap-iron. I'm learning how to be hard too... Tell me: what do you think of our mind-reader, Mr Pennik?'

'I think he's a fake,' answered Sanders. Hilary, who had been staring hard at the cigarette, glanced up with surprise and something like alarm. There was relief in it, too, and a jumble of emotions he could not read. Yet he knew that in some superstitious corner of her soul she was being impelled into belief in the powers of Herman Pennik.

'Why do you say that? He read your thoughts.'

'Apparently. I've been thinking about that. I haven't worked it out, but it's just possible that a good part of the answer may lie with Larry Chase.'

'With Larry Chase ?' cried Hilary. 'How ?'

‘You know how he talks. He's interested in people. He will give you somebody's life history and afterwards tell you and quite sincerely believe himself that he hasn't said a word. I remember, now I come to think of it, that he knew or suspected something about - well, Marcia Blystone and things I'd rather not discuss. He mentioned it in a letter he wrote to me. If Pennik is an expert in pumping people and later making them forget they've been pumped ..

'But that wouldn't explain how Pennik would know when you might be thinking about something.'

'I'm not so sure. We'll grant that he is an expert psychologist. All successful fortune-tellers have to be.'

'What about that statue of Lister, or whoever it was? And -' Hilary hesitated. She did not look up. 'Excuse me for mentioning this, but what about the other thing he said? The last thing?'

'Lister I admit I don't understand. What you call the last thing may be merely because I haven't got as good a poker-face as I should like to have.'

Literally for minutes Hilary did not speak. Throwing her cigarette into the empty fireplace, she got up and measured out steps on the carpet.

'There's his prophecy about Mr Constable.'

'Mr Constable,' said Sanders politely, 'is not dead yet, you know. And even if Pennik can read minds, I'm hanged if I'll believe he can read the future.'

'But if the whole thing is a huge fraud -'

'I don't say it is. A certain degree of telepathic power may be quite possible. Pennik may merely be bolstering it up, as certain honest men have done in other things, by a little conscious fraud and a remarkable deductive ability.'

'Then you don't believe in thought as a physical weapon ?'

'I will go to my grave denying it.'