The Judas Window

'Sorry, but the message is for Miss Hume.'

He looked at me curiously, and then laughed. 'By gad, you lawyers are a suspicious lot! Look here, I really will give her the message, you know. This isn't an ogre's den or a -' He stopped.

'Still, I think it would be best to see her.'

At the rear of the hallway there was a sound of footsteps descending the stairs quickly. Mary Hume did not look ill. On the contrary, she looked strung up under a sort of hard docility which you could swear was assumed. The newspaper photograph had been surprisingly accurate. She had wide-spaced blue eyes, a short nose, and a plump chin: which features should not make for beauty, but in her they did. Her blonde hair was parted in the middle and drawn to a knot at the nape of the neck, but without an effect of curtness. She wore half-mourning, and displayed an engagement-ring.

'Did I hear you say you had a message from H.M.?' she asked without inflection.

'Miss Hume. Yes.'

Reginald Answell had begun to rummage in a hat-rack. His face appeared round the ring of hats with a smile of broad charm.

'Well, I'll be pushing off, Mary.'

'Thanks for everything,' she said.

'Oh, that's all right. Fair exchange,' he told her with jocularity. 'It's all agreed, though?'

'You know me, Reg.'

During this cryptic little exchange she had spoken in the same tone of affectionate docility. When he had nodded and gone out, closing the front door with considerable care, she took me to the room at the left. It was a quiet drawing-room, with a telephone on a table between the two windows, and a bright fire burning under the marble mantelpiece. She took the envelope, and went close to the fire to break the seal. When she had read the brief message inside, she dropped it carefully into the fire, turning her head from side to side to watch until each corner had burned. Then she looked back at me, and her eyes were shining.

'Just tell him yes,' she said. 'Yes, yes, yes! - No, please; just a moment; don't go. Were you in court this morning?'

'Yes.'

'Please sit down for a moment. Have a cigarette. In the box there.' She sat down on the broad low seat round the fender, and tucked one leg up under her. The firelight made her hair look more fluffy. 'Tell me, was it - pretty awful? How was he?'

And this time she did not refer to H.M. I said he was behaving very well.

'I knew he would. Are you on his side? Do have a cigarette, please do. There,' she urged. I offered her the box, and lit one for her. She had very delicate hands; they were trembling a little on the cigarette, which she held with both hands, and she looked up briefly over the match-flame. 'Did they prove very much? How would you have felt if you had been on the jury?'

'Not very much. Besides the opening speech, there were only two witnesses, because the examinations were fairly long. Miss Jordan and Dyer -'

'Oh, that's all right. Amelia,' said Mary Hume with practicality, 'doesn't really dislike Jimmy, because she's too obsessed with love's young dream; and she'd like him even better if she hadn't liked my father so much.'

She hesitated.

‘I - I've never been at the Old Bailey. Tell me, how do they act to the people who go as witnesses? I mean, do they go and yell in their ears, and storm and rave the way they do in the films?'

'They certainly do not. Miss Hume. Get that idea out of your head!'

'Not that it matters, really.' She looked sideways at the fire, and grew more calm. But a long puff of cigarette-smoke blew out against the flames, billowing back again, and she turned round once more. 'Look here, tell me the truth before God: he'll be all right, won't he?*

'Miss Hume, you can trust H.M. to take care of him.'

'I know. I do. You see, I was the one who went to H.M. in the first place. That was a month ago, when Jimmy's solicitor refused to have anything more to do with the case because he believed Jimmy was lying. I - I hadn't been keeping anything back deliberately,' she explained incomprehensibly, but evidently thinking I knew. 'It was only that I didn't know or guess. At first H.M. said he couldn't help me, and raved and thundered; and I'm afraid I wept a bit; and then he roared some more and said he'd do it. The trouble is, my evidence may help Jimmy a little; but it won't get him out of that awful business. And even now I haven't the remotest idea how H.M. intends to do it.' She paused. 'Have you?'

'Nobody ever does know,' I admitted. 'Honestly, the very fact that he's so quiet about it means that he's got something up his sleeve.'

She gestured. 'Oh, I suppose so. But I can't feel easy about something I don't know. What good is it just to say everything will be all right?'

She spoke with great intensity. Getting up from the fireside seat, she walked round the room with her shoulders hunched and her hands clasped together as though she were cold.

'When I told him as much as I knew,' she went on, 'the only two things that seemed to interest him at all were things that simply made no sense. One was something about a "Judas Window"' - she sat down again -'and the other was about Uncle Spencer's best golf-suit.'

'Your uncle's golf-suit? What about it?'

'It's gone,' said Mary Hume.

I blinked. She made the statement as though it ought to convey something. My instructions were to discuss the case if she offered to do so, but here there was nothing to do but apply the spur of silence.

'It ought to have been hanging up in the cupboard, and it wasn't: though,' said the girl, 'I can not see what the ink-pad can have had to do with it, can you?'

I could quite agree with that If H.M.'s defence in some fashion depended on a Judas Window, a golf-suit, and an ink-pad, it must be a very curious defence indeed.

'That is, the ink-pad in the pocket of the suit, that Mr Fleming was so keen to get. I -I hoped you'd know something. But the fact is that both the suit and the ink-pad have gone. Oh, my God, I didn't know there was anyone in the house I'

The last words were spoken so low that I barely heard them. She got up, throwing her cigarette into the fire; and an instant later she was a composed, docile hostess turning on her guest a face as blank as a dumpling. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw Dr Spencer Hume had come in.

His tread was brisk but subdued, as though it became the situation. Dr Hume's round face, with its well-brushed hair having a parting that must have been a quarter of an inch wide, showed domestic worry as well as sympathy. His rather protuberant eyes - like those in the pictures of his dead brother - passed incuriously over me, and seemed to study the room.

'Hello, my dear,' he said lightly. 'Have you seen my eye-glasses anywhere?'

'No, uncle. I'm sure they're not here.'

Dr Hume pinched his chin. He went over and looked at the table, and then on the mantelpiece; finally he stood at a loss, and his glance towards me was more interrogative.

'This is a friend of mine, Uncle Spencer.’ ‘Mr Blake,' I said.

'How do you do?' said Dr Hume without inflection. 'I seem to recognize your face, Mr Blake. Haven't we met somewhere before?'

'Yes, your face is familiar, too, doctor.'

'Perhaps at the trial this morning,' he suggested. He shook his head, and glanced meaningly at the girl; you would never have recognized in her the vital personality of a few minutes ago. 'A bad business, Mr Blake. Don't keep Mary too long, will you?'

She spoke quickly. 'How is the trial going, Uncle Spencer?'

'As well as can be expected, my dear. Unfortunately' -I was to learn that he had a trick of beginning speeches with a hopeful assertion, and then saying 'Unfortunately' with knitted brows - 'unfortunately, I'm afraid there can be only one verdict. Of course, if Merrivale knows his job properly, he'll have medical evidence there to prove insanity beyond any doubt. Unfortunately - by Jove, yes! I remember where I've seen you now, Mr Blake I I think I noticed you talking to Sir Henry's secretary in the hall of the Old Bailey?'