‘Most decent of you,’ said Probert. ‘As that’s settled, shall we resume the experiment? Ah, William,’ he said, seeing Nye reappear panting from his visit to the cellar, ‘we’re about to re-commence. Trot downstairs and switch it on again, will you? There’s a good fellow. Perhaps you’ll be so decent as to stand by the galvanometer and give us a reading, Jowett. We shall want to make sure we have a contact.’
It was the work of a few minutes to re-establish the experiment as it had been before the interruption and close the curtain. The sitters reassembled by firelight in the library, Strathmore kneeling at Jowett’s side, pencil poised over pocket-book; Miss Crush with hands on the table and eyes rotated upwards to the ceiling; Probert leaning back in his chair with arms folded, watching the curtain; Nye, still recovering his breath, ogling Alice, who sat reflectively twisting her engagement ring.
‘Twenty minutes to eleven,’ said Strathmore.
‘A reading of 202,’ responded Jowett.
Somewhere outside, and from a level well below them, a ship’s horn sounded a dismal note across the Thames.
‘Fog, would you say?’ said Nye.
Nobody seemed interested.
The fire had subsided in the grate and glowed evenly, with the occasional flare from a tiny pocket of gas that had somehow remained latent in the wood until now, and sprouted flames incredibly pure and brilliant in colour.
Miss Crush was not the first this time to detect a presence.
‘Something is there,’ whispered Alice Probert. ‘Listen.’
‘201,’ said Jowett, thinking of Scotland Yard.
‘Hush!’
A floorboard crunched.
‘The door!’ said Nye, saucer-eyed. ‘The handle is turning.’
Everyone looked at the library door. He was not mistaken. The handle was turning, evenly and with a calculated pressure that made Jowett’s blood run cold. When it reached the limit of its rotation the door itself swung slowly inwards. A figure took a single step into the room, and stopped. It was tall, lean in stature and sharp of feature. It was wearing a bowler hat.
‘Sergeant Cribb! How the devil do you account for this?’ ejaculated Jowett.
Before Cribb could respond, Strathmore barked at Jowett, ‘Look to the galvanometer! The current is broken.’
‘Small wonder, in this blasted bear-garden!’ said Probert. ‘When I asked you here, Jowett, I didn’t expect you to bring the rest of Scotland Yard with you. Kindly light a candle, William, and bring it to the curtain. I think we can safely assume Mr Brand won’t have anything more to do with our researches after this!’
The assumption was accurate. Horrifyingly so.
When Probert tugged aside the curtain the candlelight revealed the medium supported by the chair but no longer seated in it. He was propped like a piece of timber against the angle of the left arm and back, his legs jutting stiffly to the right. His trunk was rigid, his face twisted sideways, the features contorted, with teeth bared and clenched.
‘His hair!’ cried Alice Probert. ‘It is standing on end!’
‘Keep back!’ her father warned. ‘Don’t touch him! Downstairs, William, and switch off the current. Hurry, man, for God’s sake! Strathmore, bring another candle, will you?’
‘What has happened?’ gasped Miss Crush.
‘Electric shock, ma’am. Get back to the other room. You can’t help. This is a doctor’s work.’
‘I must!’ Miss Crush screamed hysterically, starting towards the chair.
‘Hold her back!’ ordered Probert.
Cribb, being nearest, reacted with commendable sharpness considering the bewildering sequence of events since he had opened the door of the room. He caught Miss Crush round the waist and tugged her towards him. She fainted in his arms.
‘Typical of the woman,’ said Probert. ‘Take charge of her, Alice.’
Captain Nye’s voice penetrated faintly from the basement. ‘Electricity off, Dr Probert.’
The cutting of the current produced no appreciable change in the appearance of Brand. Dr Probert felt his pulse and put his ear to his heart. ‘Gentlemen, I must try resuscitation. See if you can lift the patient on to the table in the other room, will you? Can you manage it? Where’s the other man, the police sergeant?’
Nobody answered, because nobody had noticed Cribb’s quick exit to the corridor, after consigning Miss Crush to an armchair and Alice Probert’s smelling-salts. The sergeant’s sleuthing instinct could not be deflected. He had entered the house in pursuit of a quarry, and when a loose floorboard creaked overhead, he heard it, for all the commotion over Brand.
He mounted the stairs lightly, but two at a time, and reached the first floor landing, where five closed doors confronted him. Giving chase in a large house such as this was the very devil; he would rather track a man through the streets any day. These would be bedrooms, each with several possible hiding-places-bed, wardrobe, closet and possibly balcony. If he committed himself to a thorough search of one, he was giving his man the chance to slip out of another, down the stairs and away into the night. Lying in wait at the head of the staircase was just as futile. Any housebreaker worthy of his jemmy would resort to the drainpipes in an emergency.
Was this man a professional, though? Cribb doubted it. All the evidence so far pointed to a novice, and an incompetent one at that. In the circumstances it was not too much to hope that he might be susceptible to panic.
With one hand on the nearest door-knob, Cribb turned and unselfconsciously addressed the empty landing. ‘Very well, you men. I want a thorough search made of every room. Sergeant, take two men and start with that one. I shall be looking in here. Brown, go down for reinforcements, will you? We need half a dozen able-bodied men. At the double. Avoid violence if possible, everyone. The suspect may be ready to give himself up.’ Putting his hand over his mouth, he added in two well-disguised and distinctively different voices, ‘Very good, sir.’ ‘Right, sir’. He opened the door and slammed it shut immediately. Then he crossed the landing, treading heavily, opened the nearest door and stepped inside, leaving it ajar, to wait developments.
It was unfortunate after a dramatic cameo of such quality and ingenuity that he chose the room he did, for immediately on entering it he was felled by a crack on the head that would probably have brained him but for his bowler. He hit the floor in company with the shattered fragments of a water-jug and lay momentarily unable to move as his assailant stumbled over him and across the landing to the second-floor stairs.
By a stupendous effort of will Cribb engineered himself from the horizontal to the vertical and lurched outside, in time to meet Inspector Jowett, attracted upstairs by the voices.
‘Good God, Cribb! What are you doing now? ’
‘Pur-pursuing a suspect, sir.’
‘Which way did he go?’
‘Upstairs, sir,’ gasped Cribb.
Jowett put up his right arm, as if directing traffic. ‘Get after him, then. No time to lose.’
‘I might need help, sir.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that, Sergeant. I won’t be far behind you, depend upon it.’
It occurred to Cribb as he hobbled upstairs, supporting himself on the banister, that his impersonation of an inspector deploying personnel had lacked the spark of realism. Jowett did it much more convincingly.
He was halfway upstairs when he remembered Mrs Probert. It was all very well running your quarry to earth at the top of a house, but what if he chose to make his final stand in a room already occupied by a woman in fear of her life?
She would scream.
She did. It was powerful enough to rattle the stair-rods. She was still screaming when Cribb reached her. Insensible at her feet lay Professor Eustace Quayle. Beside him was the volume of Notable British Sermons Mrs Probert had hurled at his head.
CHAPTER 7