“I beg you pardon? What's that?”
“At Beltring's,” answered Barbara without looking at him, “you said a historian's work was to take distant people, dead and gone people, and bring them to life by thinking of them as real people. When you first heard Fay's story, you said she was no more real than Agnes Sorel or Pamela Hoyt.”
In an inconsequential way, still plucking at the edges of the char-arm, Barbara added:
“Agnes Sorel I'd heard of, of course. But I never heard of Pamela Hoyt. I—I looked her up in the encyclopaedia, but sh wasn't there.”
“Pamela Hoyt was a Regency beauty suspected of evil courses. A captivating character, too; I read quite a lot about her at one time. By the way: in Latin, what does panes mean beside the plural of bread? It couldn't have meant bread, from the context.”
It was Barbara's turn to blink at him in surprise.
“I'm afraid I'm not enough of a Latinist to know. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I had a dream.”
“A dream?”
“Yes.” Miles pondered this in the heavy, dully insistent way with which the mind will seize on trifles at a time of emotional disturbance. “It was a passage in mediaeval Latin; you know the sort of thing: peculiar verb-endings and u's instead of v's.” He shook his head. “All about something and panes; but all I can remember now is the ut- clause at the end, that it would be most foolish to deny something.”
“I still don't understand.”
(Why wouldn't that infernally sickish feeling leave his chest?)
“Well, I dreamed I went into the library looking for a Latin dictionary. Pamela Hoyt and Fay Seton were both there, sitting on dusty mounds of books and assuring me my uncle hadn't got a Latin dictionary.” Miles started to laugh. “Funny thing, too; just remembered it. I don't know what Dr. Freud would have made of that one.”
“I do,” said Barbara.
“Something sinister, I imagine. It would appear to be something sinister no matter what you dream.”
“No,” said Barbara slowly. “Nothing like that.”
For some time she had been regarding Miles in the same hesitant, baffled, helpless way, the luminous whites of her eyes shining in sympathy. Then Barbara sprang to her feet. Both windows had been opened to the drizzling afternoon, admitting clean damp air. At least, Miles reflected, they had shut off the advertising lights and that dental horror across the street. Barbara turned at the window.
“Poor woman!” Barbara sad, and he knew she was not referring to a dead Pamela Hoyt. “Poor, silly, romantic . . .!”
“Why do you call Fay silly and romantic?”
“She knew those anonymous letters, and all the rumours about her, were the work of Harry Brooke. But she never said so to anybody. I suppose,” Barbara shook her head slowly, “she may still have been in love with him.”
“After that?”
“Of course.”
“I don't believe it!”
“It might have been that. We all—we all are capable of awfully funny things. Or,” Barbara shivered, “there may have been some other reason for keeping silent, even after she knew Harry was dead. I don't know. The point it . . .”
“The point is,” said Miles, “why is Hadley keeping us here? And what's going on?” He considered. “Is it very far to this What's-its-name Hospital where they've taken her?”
“A goodish distance, yes. Were you thinking of going there?”
“Well, Hadley can't keep us here indefinitely for no apparent reason at all. We've got to get SOME kind of news.”
They received some kind of news. Professor Georges Antoine Rigaud—they heard his distinctive step long before they saw him— came slowly up the stairs, along the passage, and in at the open door.
Professor Rigaud seemed an older and even more troubled man than when he had voiced his theory about a vampire. Only a few drops of rain fell now, so that he was comparatively dry. His soft dark hat was jammed down all round his head. His patch of moustache worked with the movement of his mouth. He leaned heavily on the yellow sword-cane which acquired such evil colour in this dingy room.
“Mees Morell,” he said. His voice was husky. “Mr. Hammond. Now I will tell you something.”
He moved forward from the door.
“My friends, you are no doubt familiar with the great Musketeer romances of the elder Dumas. You will recall how the Musketeers went to England. You will recall that the only two words of English known to D'Artagnan were 'Come' and 'God damn.'” He shook a thick arm in the air. “Would that my knowledge of the English language were confined to the same harmless and uncomplicated terms!”
Miles sprang from the edge of the bed.
“Never mind D'Artagnan, Professor Rigaud. How did you get here?”
“Dr. Fell and I,” said the other, “have arrived back by car from the New Forest. We have telephoned his friend the police superintendent. Dr. Fell goes to the hospital, and I come here.”
“You've just come from the New Forest. How's Marion?”
“In health,” returned Professor Rigaud, “she is excellent. She is sitting up and eating food and talking what you call twenty to the dozen.”
“Then in that case,” cried Barbara, and swallowed before she went on, “you know what frightened her?”
“Yes, mademoiselle. We have heard what frightened her?”
And Professor Rigaud's face slowly grew pale, paler than it had been when he talked of vampires.
“My friend,” he pounced out at Miles, as though he guessed the direction of the latter's thoughts, “I gave you theories about a certain supernatural agency. Well! It would appear that in this case I was misled by facts intended to mislead. But I do not put myself in ashes and sackcloth for that. No! For I would say to you that one case of an agency proved spurious no more disproves the existence of such supernatural agencies than a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England. Do you concede this?”
“Yes, I concede it. But . . .”
“No!” reiterated Professor Rigaud, wagging his head portentously and rapping the ferrule of the cane against the floor. “I do not put myself in ashes and sackcloth for that. I put myself in ashes and sackcloth because—in fine, because this is worse.”
He held up the sword-cane.
“May I make to you, my friend, a small present? May I give you this treasured relic.? Don not, now, find as much satisfaction in it as others find in the headstone of Dougal or a pen-wiper made of human flesh. I am human. My gorge can rise. May I give it to you?”
“No, I don't want the infernal thing! Put it away! What we're trying to ask you . . .”
“Justement!” said Professor Rigaud, and flung the sword-cane on the bed.
“Marion is all right?” miles insisted. “There can't be any relapse of any kind?”
“There cannot.”
“Then this thing that frightened her.” Miles braced himself. “What did she see?”
“She saw,” replied the other concisely, “nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Exactly.”
“Yet she was frightened as much as that without being harmed in any way?”
“Exactly,” assented Professor Rigaud, and made angry little frightened noises in his throat. “She was frightened by something she heard and something she felt. Notably by the whispering.”
“The whispering . . .
If Miles Hammond had hoped to get away from the realm of monsters and nightmares, he found that he had not been permitted to over very far. He glanced at Barbara, who only shook her head helplessly. Professor Rigaud was still making the little seething noises in his throat, like a kettle boiling; but the noises were not funny. His eyes had a strangled, congested look.