“Yes, my dolly? Go on!”
“I sleep badly,” said Jenny. “Always I have. No matter how late I go to bed, I always wake up at 5 or 5:30 in the morning. There was a custom I had in France, first when I lived with my parents and afterwards at the house of Général de Senneville. A maid brought me a cup of chocolate at 6 in the morning.
“When Aunt Hester asked if she could do anything more, I asked if I might have the chocolate, or else tea, at that time. I had been there several days, but it was the first time I venture to ask. Aunt Hester lifts her eyebrows and says, ‘Do you think, Jennifer my dear, that is quite fair to the servants?’
“I said no, no, please to forget it. But Margot, who has green eyes and is nice, she is always up before six, she says, and will be glad to bring me a cup of tea then. Very well! I go to my room. I turn on the light. I fasten the bolts both at the top and bottom of the door. Then I turn round. And one of the windows, which I have left locked, is wide open.”
Jenny paused.
H.M., wrapped in his cloud of nauseous smoke, was as expressionless as an idol.
“I rush across,” continued Jenny, her voice rising. “I close and lock the window again. Then I think, ‘Suppose someone is hiding in the room?’ But I must not be stupid and rouse the whole house. And so — well! I search the room myself. Nobody is hiding there. I think perhaps some servant has opened the window to air the room, and I feel better.
“It is a warm night — very warm, they tell me, for an English spring. So I do not need to turn on the gas heater in the fireplace when I undress. I close the window curtains almost shut. But I smoke a cigarette or two, you can bet, before I have the nerve to turn out the light. But I do turn out the light, finally. And soon I am asleep. Then—”
“Hold on!” interposed H.M. softly, and took the pipe out of his mouth.
“Y-yes?”
“What time did you turn in? Do you remember?”
“Yes. I see my wrist watch. It is ten minutes past twelve.”
“Did any of this family know beforehand about your habit of takin’ chocolate at six in the morning?”
“N-no, I do not think so. How could they? I—”
Again Jenny was trembling; and, worst sign of all, she was again glancing over her shoulder. Tom got up and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Hadn’t we better stop this, H.M.?” he demanded.
“We can’t stop it, son, and you know we can’t. That gal really was in a locked room. It’s practically impossible to tamper with bolts when they’re at the top and bottom of the door. Those Georgian window-locks are dead sure for safety. Unless I can get a hint about this, the old man’s dished.”
“I am very well, thank you,” said Jenny. “I can go on, if you wish.”
“Well?” said H.M., putting the pipe back in his mouth.
“First there was a dream. It was horrible, but I don’t remember it now. Then I knew I was awake, and being strangled so I could not breathe. This part is hard to describe. But — when you are dying, or even losing consciousness, you can still hear sounds clearly even though you can barely see?”
“Yes, my dolly. That’s right.”
“I could tell it was just growing daylight, no more. But somebody was pounding on the outside of the door. And I hear Margot’s voice crying my name. I tried to scream back, but there is no breath, and already — this is not pretty — I had been sick.
“Next, which is all confused, I heard a man’s voice outside with Margot. It was an American voice I have never heard before. It said, ‘What’s wrong, kid? Isn’t she okay?’ Margot screams that the room is full of gas, and can’t he smell it from under the door? He says, ‘You won’t break down that door. Where’s the window?’
“Still I am just conscious. I can hear everything, though it must be like being hanged. I hear them run away, and someone else join them. Then I see — all blurry, because my eyes have nearly gone — I see someone’s fist, wrapped in a coat, punch through the glass of the far window.
“This is my Uncle Fred, who has been roused too. He unlocks the window and pushes it all the way up. Someone runs to turn off the gas-tap at the heater. I think this is the American. I cannot see, but I hear him say a wicked word, and say, ‘So-and-so, but it’s turned full on!’ He turns it off. Margot rushes towards me, spilling a tea tray on the carpet. That is all I remember, until the doctor is there.”
Jenny lifted her hands, and let them fall on the handbag in her lap. As the oily smoke from H.M.’s pipe reached her at last, she began to cough.
H.M. put down the pipe and knocked it out.
“The doctor, hey?” he repeated. “And what did the doctor say?”
“It was not the doctor who spoke to me. It was Aunt Hester. She said, ‘This is not very considerate of you, Jennifer. To try to kill yourself because you are not happy about your future husband.’ ”
Tom Lockwood’s grip tightened on her shoulders. “Your Aunt Hester said that?”
“Yes! And it is not true! But they ask how anyone could have tried to kill me, when the room is all locked up inside?”
“Anything else, Jenny?”
“I say, ‘Where is the American?’ They say, ‘What American?’ and claim he is a delusion of mine. They stand round my bed, all big-eyed — Aunt Hester and Cousin Margot and even poor old Uncle Fred — and look down at me. They say it is a mercy the doctor is their family doctor, and will not report this to the police. Dear God, do you wonder I am afraid of them?”
“H.M.!” Tom said sharply, after a pause.
“Well?”
“You may have been wondering about this mysterious American...”
“Frankly, son, I have. I don’t see where he fits in.”
“He isn’t an American,” said Tom, “but he isn’t a delusion either. That gang made a bad slip when they claimed he was. I’ll tell you all about him at the proper time. Meanwhile, do you see any clue at all?”
H.M., who had been sitting with his eyes closed and a very mulish look on his face, now opened his eyes slowly and inspected Jenny.
“My dolly,” he said, “I’ve got only one more question to ask now. But I want you to be awful careful how you answer it. You could hear all these voices clearly when you were nearly unconscious. You could hear the pounding on the door, the footsteps running away, and the rest of it. Did you hear any other sound besides that?”
“What — what kind of sound?”
“Any kind!”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You’re sure of that, now?”
“Yes, positive!”
“Oh, Lord love a duck,” observed Sir Henry Merrivale, with his mouth falling open. “So that’s how the locked room was worked!”
“How?” shouted Tom.
“I’m the old man,” said H.M., tapping himself impressively on the chest. “You let me deal with this in my own way. I’m goin’ into action at once.”
H.M. reached for the telephone at his elbow. He dialed for an outside exchange, and then dialed the number. During a long pause, while they could hear the ringing tone go on interminably, Tom Lockwood listened to an air-vent which hummed and hummed in the ceiling, and at intervals he studied H.M.’s face, now as malignant as the Evil One’s.
The ringing tone broke off. There ensued, from H.M.’s side, the following weird and wonderful conversation.
“Looky here, my wench. I want to speak to Sam... Oh, yes, I can! This is the old man. You just tell him I squared it when he was givin’ a beautiful party for sixteen beautiful gals without any clothes on, and the silly-ass coppers broke in. Yes, the old man!...”
A gratified note crept into H.M.’s big voice.