two south, though green-shaded by the trees.
The vibrations in that death-house," added Stannard, "must be like lying under a tolling bell."
"Never mind the vibrations. What's this test?"
"Ah!" murmured Stannard. He threw the book back into the chair and took up the pencil. "Observe this architect's plan of the prison!"
"Well? What about it?"
"You notice that the wings are like spokes in a wheel, with the outer wall as its rim. These shaded spaces between the spokes—" the yellow pencil moved briefly—"are exercise grounds, gardens, and so on: open to the sky. Our concern is Wing B—" again the pencil moved'—"which is here. Wing B, on the ground floor, contained mainly offices for clerical work. But at the far end of it, here, is a self-contained unit Behind an iron door it housed the condemned cell and the execution shed."
Ruth Callice had abandoned the paper and joined them by the table, where Stannard leaned on the crackling plan.
Ruth, Martin was thinking, couldn't have been brushed by any emanation from Fleet House. She had been here too many times before; she was a friend of Aunt Cicely; she would have remarked on it. Yes; but had Ruth ever said anything at all about Fleet House?
Stannard's yellow pencil was moving again.
"Pentecost, please remember, was not abandoned until 1938. It had the most up-to-date of neck-cracking methods."
"Stan," Ruth began in an uncertain voice, "do you think it's necessary to dwell so.."
But Stannard was looking at Martin.
"There was none of that hideous walk across a yard, into a shed, and up thirteen steps. The condemned cell at Pentecost is here. Opposite it, directly opposite across a passage eight feet wide, is the execution shed. The condemned man never knows it is there. He can be trussed up, marched across the passage, placed on a drop worked by a lever—"
Here Stannard made a chopping motion with his hand.
"— and plunge on a rope into a brick-lined pit. All in a merciful matter of seconds.
"My point," he added, after a slight pause, "is that these two rooms and the passage form a separate unit a kind of self-contained flat, shut off by the iron door of the passage. Here is the key to that passage."
And he held it up. It was a large key, though it fitted easily into the pocket of his brown tweed plus-four suit
"All the inside doors of the prison, of course, were unlockedat the time the government took it over for the infernal storage purposes.'" Stannard's face mocked diem behind the big key. "However, I got this one. Shall I tell you how my test would have worked if you (most unfortunately!) had not decided to go driving?"
Martin, himself white as a ghost with wrath, merely nodded. "The vigil," mused Stannard, "would have begun at midnight, outside the iron door to the self-contained flat." Another nod.
"You and I," pursued Stannard, "would then have drawn lots. Whoever lost would have gone to the execution shed and closed the door behind him. The other would have locked the iron door, so that the loser would be shut into the flat.
"The winner," Stannard's mouth quirked, "would sit down outside the iron door, and wait The locked-up man, of course, could move from the execution shed across to the condemned cell But I cannot think that any swirling and pressing influences would hammer his brain less hard in the condemned cell than in the execution shed. He would be a rat in a spiritual trap. If be cried out for help, the man outside must unlock the iron door and let him out
"The man outside, it is true, even the so-called winner, would have no easy time. If any spiritual evil raged there, he would be very close to it. You and I — one inside, one out— would remain there alone from twelve o'clock to four o'clock in the morning, when it begins to grow daylight 'Spend the night' was I think the term you used?"
"Something like that yes’"
Stannard threw the key up and caught it
"There it was," he concluded, with a husky sigh of regret "What a pity you can't accept"
"Pardon me," Martin told him. "After you said you insisted on holding to it, I never said I wouldn't accept"
Stannard caught the key with a flat smack against his palm, and looked up.
"Meaning what?"
"That I do accept with great pleasure."
There was a silence. If a short time before Fleet House might have laughed, now- it seemed to be listening. Ruth, her white teeth fastened in her under-lip, hesitated.
"You mean that?" Stannard demanded.
"Naturally I mean it" Martin reflected. "We do all this, of course, in the dark?"
Stannard was slightly taken aback.
"No," be answered, after a slight hesitation. "Even in the best ghost-hunting tradition, that's not necessary. I have brought several portable electric lamps, with plenty of spare batteries. Each of us may have a lamp. If only," he added, "to read and pass the time."
"You know, Martin,'' Ruth said dreamily, "this means you won't see Jenny tonight"
Jenny! How to explain that he couldn't back out, literally and physically couldn't, if Stannard insisted? You touched a switch, you touched an emotion; you set forces moving, and you must go with them. Jenny would understand it Surely Jenny would understand it! He could telephone her, and then go out to Brayle Manor.
"All the same," Ruth was saying in a troubled voice, "I almost wish I hadn't encouraged this. Or — arranged it"
"Arranged it?" said Stannard, and looked at her with genuine astonishment "My dear girl, Mr. Drake suggested it I arranged it" The blood came into his already reddish face. "I wanted to show you, my dear, that these young men, with their war-records and their infantile prancings, are not the only ones to be depended on."
Abruptly he pulled himself together, as though he had said too much.
"But — Stan." There was an affectionate note in Ruth's voice. "You didn't tell me these 'conditions.'" "A little surprise."
"You see," Ruth braced herself, "I'm going to the prison. And other people are wild to go too. Ricky Fleet and even Dr. Laurier. When they were having that argument at the Dragon's Rest, Dr. Laurier said he'd consider himself insulted if he didn't get an invitation."
Stannard lifted his thick shoulders.
"I see no reason why a dozen shouldn't go," he said. "If they all consent to leave the prison at midnight when the test begins. You agree, my dear fellow?"
"I do."
"This affair is between the two of us?"
"By God, it is!" said Martin. "And, as Ruth says, you imposed the conditions. Now I impose one."
"Ah!" murmured Stannard, casting up his eyes in sardonic melancholy. "I fear, I very much fear, someone may be backing down again. However, what is the condition?"
"That both of you tell me," Martin replied unexpectedly, "what you know about the death of Sir George Fleet some twenty years ago."
Again there was a silence. Ruth, her dark-brown eyes wide with wonder, merely seemed puzzled. Stannard, his eyes quizzical, seemed to hold behind locked teeth some chuckle which shook his stocky body. It was at this point that Ricky Fleet, his hair troubled by ruffling fingers, came into the library.
"I second that motion," Ricky declared. He went to stand by Martin.
"Ricky, darling!" cried Ruth. He kissed her perfunctorily on the cheek, and pressed her shoulder. All this time his eyes were fixed in a puzzled, troubled way on Stannard.
"But you haven't met Mr. Stannard!" Ruth added, and performed introductions. "How is your mother?"
"Pretty well, thanks. She's taken a sedative. But it hasn't had much effect, and she'll probably be down to dinner. You know—" Ricky tugged his necktie still further in the direction of his ear—"a lot of talk about my governor's death always upsets her. But she never minds a reference or a comment, and we cured her long ago of any dislike about going up to the roof."