Rich, as though enlightened, uttered an exclamation. He hurried over and closed the door firmly.
"She heard you!" said Sharpless in a whisper. "She couldn't have helped hearing you!"
Rich smiled.
"I sincerely hope she did," he answered with composure. "If she didn't, there is no point in this experiment."
"What?"
Rich tossed the pistol across to Sharpless, who automatically caught it.
"Examine that revolver," Rich suggested. "Or, more properly, examine the bullets."
The bullets were dummies.
Each empty brass cartridge-case had been fitted with a little rounded cylinder of wood, painted gray to represent a bullet. Sharpless took out each one in turn, and examined it carefully before he fitted it back again.
"I think I begin to see," he muttered, "what sort of dirty trick you've got in mind. This gun isn't dangerous at all. But—"
"Exactly," agreed Rich. "It is no more a deadly weapon than the dagger. But Mrs. Fane thinks it is."
Uncle Hubert Fane, whose apprehension at first sight of the revolver had now merged into relief, was taking such fast, furious puffs at his cigar that his head appeared to be enveloped in smoke.
"You follow me?" inquired Rich. "Here are two articles. One of them, the dagger, Mrs. Fane's inner mind knows to be harmless. The other, that revolver, she believes to be real. Very well. I shall put Mrs. Fane into a state of hypnosis. Then I shall order her to.. "
"To kill somebody," breathed Ann Browning.
"Exactly," said Rich.
It was now altogether dark, except for the white light of the parchment-shaded bridge lamp beside the sofa. A faint cooler breeze stirred the curtains at the windows.
"Mind!" added Rich, rubbing a hand vigorously across his bald skull, "I don't say I shall be able to manage this. I may not be able to establish the proper degree of influence. But if I do—"
"If you do?" prompted Ann.
"If I do," smiled Rich, "then I can tell you exactly what will happen. Under hypnosis, you understand, the patient has no mind or will of her own. She is a machine. A zombie. A walking corpse, under my direction. But—"
"Yes?"
"When she is ordered to pick up that revolver and shoot someone she loves, then she will balk. Even in anguish she won't be able to do it. Powerful as my influence is, it can't get past the barrier in her subconscious mind. But when I order her to take the dagger and stab someone, she will strike without the least hesitation. Because her subconscious mind knows that it's all a game."
Again there was a silence.
"Well, Captain Sharpless?" said Rich. "If I succeed in doing that, will you own yourself convinced?"
"I don't like it!" said that young man abruptly, and jumped to his feet.
"You don't like it, Captain Sharpless? But you were the one who suggested it."
"Yes, but I didn't know what you were going to do. I didn't know you were going to do this.”
"I think it's the most thrilling thing I've ever heard of," declared Ann Browning.
"Who," asked Sharpless, "who are you going to order her to kill?"
Rich looked surprised.
"Her husband, of course. Who else?"
Frank Sharpless craned his neck round. But if he expected any support from Fane, he did not get it.
From whatever cause, Arthur appeared to have changed his mind. He sat very still in an easy chair, his middle-sized, thick-set figure balanced on die edge of it, staring down at his well-polished shoes. The dead cigar was between his fingers. He moved his heels outwards, a queer gesture, and brought them together again with a click. He glanced up, his dark face impassive.
"I don't hold with this. Still… it won't hurt my wife in any way?"
"Oh, no. She may feel tired afterwards. But, if Mrs. Fane is the healthy, uncomplex person I am sure she is, it won't affect her at all."
"Will she know what's happening at the time?" "No."
"Or remember it afterwards?" "No."
'Is that so, now?" mused Arthur. He scratched the side of his nose with a fingernail of the game hand that held his cigar. He studied Rich. Again the rare.smile gleamed. "Suppose (just suppose, now!) that my wife did have it in her inmost mind to — hurt me?"
Rich was taken aback.
"My dear sir," he began, with the color rising in his face, "I never thought… that is, it seemed so obvious!.. Mr. Hubert Fane assured me…"
"Oh, we're only supposing!" Arthur reassured him. He was really smiling now. The thick complacency of his tone would have been felt anywhere, even at his club. "I'm not one to talk about my marriage, as you'll agree. But I don't mind saying that to find a happier couple than Victoria and I you'd have to go far. Very far indeed."
He paused.
"Some people," he added, "might call my life humdrum—"
"Dear boy," interposed Uncle Hubert, with his eye on a corner of the lamp-shade, "I feel sure they would do you no such injustice, if they knew you as I do."
"But I don't call it humdrum," concluded Arthur, after giving him a brief look. "Carry on with the experiment."
Frank Sharpless took a few steps up and down the bare hardwood floor, with its few bright rugs. His black mess jacket with scarlet lapels, and close-fitting black trousers with scarlet stripe down the side, gave him a lean and Mephistophelian appearance which was contradicted by the naive youthfulness of the face. His booted footsteps rattled on the floor. Though he made a gesture of protest, he did not speak again.
"Then we are all agreed?" inquired Rich. "Good!"
He put the lid on the cardboard box containing the revolver and the rubber dagger. This box he handed to Arthur.
"Keep our two exhibits, Mr. Fane, until I tell you what to do with them." Then Rich went over and opened the door. "Come in, Mrs. Fane," he invited.
Four
Vicky hesitated in the doorway.
It was as though this were only some guessing-game in which she hesitated about what question to ask first. Her manner indicated this. Yet her tanned, clean-skinned face, the blue eyes more vivid against it, was softened by another underlying emotion. It was fear, and Sharpless knew it.
"Yes?" she said doubtfully.
Rich took her hand. "Come over here, Mrs. Fane, and sit down on the sofa. Make yourself comfortable."
Vicky stopped short.
"I'd rather not sit on the sofa," she said.
Again a brief, vague touch of uneasiness brushed the room.
"Very well, then," agreed Rich, after a slight pause. "We'll try to make you comfortable somewhere else."
He surveyed the room. He walked towards the windows, but there the sharp-squeaking wood of the floor appeared to irritate him. After treading on it experimentally, he turned round and looked at the extreme opposite end of the room. There Arthur Fane was sitting, with the cardboard box on his knees.
"May we have your chair, Mr. Fane?"
Arthur got up.
The bridge lamp had a very long cord. Rich picked it up from beside the sofa, which was pushed back against the long wall opposite the fireplace. He carried the lamp across to the white easy chair where Arthur had been sitting, and tilted its shade to shine down on the chair. He pushed the chair back flat against the
"Will this suit you, Mrs. Fane?"
"Yes, that's all right," said Vicky. She followed him over and sat down.
"That's it. Just relax. The others of you I should like to sit fairly close, but not too close. Draw up your chairs sideways to her, where she can't see you. That's it."
The center of the room was now a cleared space, with Vicky sitting with her back to one wall and facing the windows from some twenty-five feet away. Rich drew the curtains on these windows. In one corner he found a telephone table, round and of polished mahogany. Removing from it the telephone, an address pad, and a cigarette box, he carried this table to the middle of the room, where he set it down.