“Why are you asking me these strange questions, Miss Featherstone?”
“I’m asking them,” Miss Featherstone said harshly, “because my niece has been murdered.”
Sir Gilbert’s eyebrows shot up again. “Murdered!”
“Yes, murdered,” Miss Featherstone replied. “My niece died three weeks ago. There was no reason why she should have died. She had always been unusually strong and healthy. But she died because she couldn’t get any sleep.”
“Is that what the doctors said, Miss Featherstone?”
“No, it isn’t!” Miss Featherstone snorted again. “They just certified she was dead.”
“Was there no trace of disease?”
“No, nothing. She just suddenly stopped sleeping and in three weeks she was dead.”
“You say it happened suddenly, this sleeplessness?”
Miss Featherstone gave a snap of the fingers. “Just like that!”
“And there was no suggestion of drugs?”
“None, she was terrified of them.”
“But in those circumstances, surely there must have been an inquest?”
“Of course there was. But what was the good? She was dead by then. And any fool could have said it was from natural causes.”
Sir Gilbert gazed thoughtfully at her. “Why do you say your niece was murdered, Miss Featherstone?”
“Because it wasn’t natural,” Miss Featherstone spoke firmly. “I brought Sybil up and I ought to know. No one was ever more abounding in animal health; she hadn’t a nerve in her whole body or a doubt in her mind. Sybil was a beautiful girl, Sir Gilbert, and a bad one. She ran away from me when she was eighteen and started to live the life in London. She was going to have a baby when she died. A bad girl, but that’s no reason why anyone should be allowed to murder her!”
“Quite so,” Sir Gilbert agreed. “But isn’t it a big jump to say she was murdered?”
“No, it isn’t. You’ve told me yourself that no one has ever died of sleeplessness naturally.”
“But you can’t definitely say that she did die of sleeplessness,” Sir Gilbert protested.
“Yes, I can. Anyone who saw her at the end couldn’t help knowing what killed her. The engine in her ran on and on until it just couldn’t run any longer. It was horrible to see.”
“Very well.” Sir Gilbert tried to humor her. “Let’s admit she died of sleeplessness. What then?”
“Just this. Somebody has learned more about sleep than you have. Someone’s discovered how to destroy it.”
“Miss Featherstone, really, there are no grounds at all for a supposition like that!”
“Sybil’s dead, isn’t she? That ought to be grounds enough for anyone. Are you prepared to say categorically that if you injured this hypothalamus thing it wouldn’t destroy the power to sleep forever?”
“Yes, I am prepared to say it — quite categorically. If that were possible, it would have the opposite effect. It would probably induce a state of coma.”
Miss Featherstone was not defeated. “Well, then,” she went on, “if you succeeded in stimulating it instead of destroying it, what effect would you expect?”
Sir Gilbert made a grimace. “That might produce sleeplessness,” he admitted. “But such a thing has never been done.”
“Are you prepared to say definitely it can’t be done?”
Sir Gilbert gazed at her helplessly. “No, I’m not prepared to say it.”
Miss Featherstone fumbled with her bag, then stood up. “That’s all I want to know.”
Sir Gilbert conducted her to the door. He still felt uneasy; she was a determined woman who might do something foolish. “If you’ll take my advice, Miss Featherstone—” he began.
“I never take advice,” she told him. “And I’m going to find out who murdered Sybil. I really came to you as a kind of insurance.”
“Insurance?”
“Yes. If I get into any trouble I’m going to tell them that I’m a patient of yours, and you’ll have to come and say I’m not quite right in the head. I expect you’ll do that gladly. Well, goodbye, Sir Gilbert. I’ll see you at Grindelwald — if not sooner.”
Sir Gilbert thought of this interview on several occasions during the next few days. It troubled him to think there might be anything wrong with Miss Featherstone’s mind, yet this certainty that her niece had been murdered was very like one of those fixed ideas that crop up in so many different kinds of mania.
But all the same, her theory was interesting. There was a lot of research going on about sleep. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that in trying to create sleep someone might have discovered how to destroy it. And what a power that would be in the hands of an unscrupulous person! The undetectable poison at last!
The whole idea was so arresting that Sir Gilbert decided he must discuss it with his friend, the Assistant Commissioner, and see what the police had to say about such a possibility. If he had done this, he would have learned that the police had far more to say about it than he had ever dreamed. But it was one of those meetings that should have taken place but never did.
In the course of official inquiries into drug deaths the police had come across two cases in the past three years which still worried them. Both cases involved young girls who had suddenly been struck with acute insomnia. The Assistant Commissioner kept the reports before him for a whole month.
Sybil’s case had not been known to the police. Unlike Sybil, the other girls hadn’t held out; each had taken an overdose of drugs — drugs legitimately prescribed by their doctors.
But there were two disturbing factors: in both cases there had been no previous history of insomnia and both girls had been friends of a certain doctor Arthur Hussman, a radiologist with a good practice. He treated rheumatism and sinusitis with some kind of newfangled ray. The Assistant Commissioner had gone to his office in Harley Street and had some ray treatments for fibrositis. But everything seemed to be correct and aboveboard.
Yet Dr. Hussman was a sinister person, and he had a bad reputation with regard to his love affairs. The Assistant Commissioner was pretty well satisfied the doctor was the kind who would gladly wipe his girl friends off the face of the earth when he was tired of them; and the A.C. was by no means convinced that in all that medley of apparatus the doctor did not have some secret means of doing just that.
But believing is not proof. All the police had to go on was that one girl had been to Dr. Hussman for treatment and that the other girl had spent a weekend with him just before her deadly insomnia began. That was something, but not nearly enough. The Assistant Commissioner finally put the papers away.
He had just sat down at his desk when the telephone rang. It was a Detective Inspector from Marlborough Street, and he said they had a woman there charged with assault. “She’s a patient of Sir Gilbert Chamberlain’s,” the voice went on. “A bit barmy, I should say.”
“Then get in touch with Sir Gilbert and don’t bother me.”
“Very good, sir. Just thought you’d like to know the party she assaulted is our friend Hussman.”
The Assistant Commissioner jumped up at once and took his hat from the peg.
Miss Featherstone was not the kind of woman who worried about such trifles as the rules of evidence. She had no idea of the existence of Dr. Hussman at the time she interviewed Sir Gilbert. Sybil had been as hard as nails, and even when dying she hadn’t told her aunt anything of her life or the various men in it. That was entirely Miss Featherstone’s idea. Miss Featherstone had been a nurse in France during the war. She had seen men mortally hit, had seen the startled incredulous look in their eyes. That same look had been in Sybil’s eyes for three weeks.