"Jenny…" he began.
Ruth laughed. "Jenny thinks I've been your mistress for years and years. Isn't it exquisitely silly?" '
"Not if she thinks so. Look here: if you knew who 'Jenny’ was for all this time, why didn't you tell me?"
"Perhaps I had my reasons." A pause. "Perhaps I still have them." Another pause. "Perhaps I’ll tell you tonight"
"Oh, no, you won't I—"
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Ruth asked sharply. "Forgetting what?"
That I was the one who arranged for us to stay here? That I was the one who deliberately arranged to throw you and Jenny together?"
This, it occurred to him, was true. It checked him in mid-flight while Ruth smiled.
"Oh, Martin!" Her tone softened. "We've been such good —’’ the trailing of the voice implied 'friends.' She put out her hand, and he took it "Now let's go in and see John Stannasd!"
"Where is he?"
Ruth nodded to wards the second two of the four windows to the left of the front door.
"In the library. Cicely, I'm sorry to say, hasn’t been very well You may not meet her yet",
"Tell me, Ruth. Do you know anything about what happened here nearly twenty years ago?"
"Yes. Almost everything."
With a common impulse they glanced over their shoulders. In the middle of the gravel path, down towards the gate, stood Sir Henry Merrivale. But he did not see them. H.M.'s fists were on his hips, his big bald head raised; and he was glaring with malignancy at something which appeared to be just over their heads.
Martin, looking up, could see mi thing except the white-painted iron frame, crossing near the tops of the Corinthian columns, and folding flat a large old-fashioned awning, coloured orange. It could be let down to shade a long space before the front door. Then Ruth hurried him into the cool, sot to say chilly, front hall. But her hand suddenly fell on his arm, warning him to say nothing as they saw what was ahead.
Fleet House had been built in the very early nineteenth century, in that pseudo-Greek classicism which began with the French Revolution and was continued by Bonaparte. The wide, dim hall had at its far end an arched window. A staircase had been built against that wall, sideways as Martin and Ruth faced it
A little way up the stairs, outlined against the tall arched window, stood Aunt Cicely. Just below her was Ricky, asking questions. They were oblivious to any newcomers.
"Really, Ricky. It is nothing at all I only wish to lie down." The voice floated, with whispering-gallery effect through the cool dim hall.
"But they said—"
" They said.' They always say." Seen closer at hand, in Aunt Cicely's faded prettiness there was some quality which was eerily familiar to Martin. Was it a faint resemblance to Jenny? Jenny thirty years older? "But there is something," she continued, "that you have got to learn. Very soon, I'm afraid. I have telephoned to Lady Brayle. Now don't detain me, please."
In her filmy Edwardian-looking dress, against the pallor of the arched window, she hurried upstairs. Ricky hesitated, irresolute, and then followed her. Ruth Callice almost impelled Martin to the left
They went through a high, square, green-painted room, on whose walls hung a collection of ancient fire-arms ranging from the match-lock to the Brown Bess. They emerged into a well-appointed library, of the same size and shape, with gilt cornice mouldings.
"Ah, my dear fellow!" said a familiar husky, powerful voice.
Stannard, in somewhat ungainly plus-fours, stood with his back to a white marble mantelpiece. On a round Regency table in front of him lay a large crackling document, once folded into many squares, now pressed open.
"Our hunt for man-eating tigers, in the psychical sense," he went on, "is almost ready. I have here—" he tapped the document with a pencil—"a plan of Pentecost Prison.. I’ve investigated it this afternoon. Come here, my dear fellow! Let me show you the condemned cell and the execution shed."
Martin braced himself. "Mr. Stannard, I can't go with you."
"Can't go with me!”
"No."
For some seconds Stannard did not reply. Lowering his dark head, he put the pencil with great care in the middle of the plan. Martin sensed the hidden quirk at the corner of his mouth. Vividly he remembered Stannard at Ruth's flat on Thursday night: the chuckle, the too-fixed smile, the glitter of the black eyes, Stannard's too frequent glances at Ruth. Will you forgive me, Mr. Stannard, for saying that you are a little pompous?’ Martin remembered that too.
Then Stannard straightened up. 'To tell you the truth, young man, I am not altogether surprised."
"Look here! Will you just let me explain?"
"Of course." Stannard inclined his head courteously.
"On Thursday night I didn't know something I know now. There was a certain girl—" here he saw Stannard's eyes narrow—"I'd lost for three years. On Friday I found her. There's what you might call family opposition, and everything is upset. I promised to take her driving tonight"
And now Martin recognized the other's posture. In imagination he saw Stannard, in wig and gown, standing behind a desk on counsel's bench: his head a little inclined to one side, listening in cross-examination with that air of polite incredulity and amusement which is all the more effective because it keeps a perfectly straight face.
"Indeed," Stannard observed. "You promised to take her driving." The inflection he put into the words was masterly.
"Yes!"
"When was this appointment made?" "This afternoon."
"I see. You consider it sufficient excuse for breaking a previous engagement which has entailed some time and trouble, and which you suggested yourself?"
Fleet House, the chilly and wicked Grecian house which to Martin was beginning to seem like a prison, might have laughed.
"The circumstances are unusual," retorted Martin. He was conscious, under the black glitter of the eyes, how flat these words would have sounded in court. I hoped you would release me."
Stannard slowly shook his head. He sent a surreptitious glance towards — Ruth, who was sitting on a sofa turning over the pages of an illustrated paper as if she had heard nothing.
"I can't force you," smiled Stannard, "But 'release' you: no, I will not The fact is, young man, you've lost your nerve."
"That doesn't happen to be true."
Truth has many guises," said Stannard, dryly scoring a point while appearing to concede one. "It's unfortunate, too. I had devised a special test for your nerve."
"Nerve?"
"And for mine too, of course. Now it will apply only to me. Still," he chuckled, "I hope to survive." "What’s the test?"
"Does it matter? Since you are not interested..
Martin took a step forward. "What is the test?"
Stannard's movements were deliberate. From a tapestry wing-chair beside the mantlepiece he took up a thick blue-bound book with faded gilt lettering on the back.
"I have been looking through Atcheson's History of the Penal System," he continued. The round face, roughened as though by a nutmeg-grater, looked pleased. This was written in 1912, and there's, a chapter on Pentecost. I hadn’t realized what a fine lot of man-eating tigers were executed there. Old Mrs. Gill, for instance. And Bourke-Smith. And Hessler, who mutilated the bodies of women; Hessler actually tried to escape from the condemned cell.
"About ghosts," Stannard went on, "let me repeat my dictum. I don't say yes; I don't say no. What I can credit are the influences, released emotions. Haven't we all had the same experience, in a small way? We go into a house, usually an empty house. And for no reason at all someone says, I can't stand this place; let's get out'"
Martin was about to say, "Like this." He also noticed Ruth looking furtively around, and wondered if it touched her too. Yet the library was a web-lighted room, two windows east and