His right hand, which he had burned in raking out that fireplace, throbbed and flamed as he dialed another number. The buzz of the ringing tone seemed to go on interminably.
"War Office?" His voice sounded loud in that grotesque waiting room. "Extension 841, please."
Another pause, while a vibration of traffic shook against the windows.
"Extension 841? I want to speak to Colonel Warrender."
"Sorry, sir. Colonel Warrender is out."
"He's not out, damn you!" Holden could feel the startled A.T.S. girl shy away from the phone. "I can hear him rattling tea cups on his desk. Tell him Major Holden wants to speak to him on a matter of vital importance.—Hello! Frank?"
"Yes?"
In the adjoining room, Thorley Marsh began to laugh. It was a thin, vacant sound which crawled along the nerves; it was the laugh of delirium; it might be the laugh of the dying.
"Frank, I haven't got time to explain. But can you pull strings to get me, immediately, an ambulance from a discreet private nursing home to deal with somebody who's been badly hurt: probably concussion? Can you?"
"That’s absolutely impos—" Warrender began automatically. Then he stopped. "Look here. Does this concern the girl you were in such a flap about?"
"In a way, yes."
"Cripes! Have you been chucking her downstairs already?" "Frank, I'm not jokingl"
Warrendef s voice changed. "There's nothing phony about this? You give me your word nobody’ll get into trouble?" "I give you my word."
"Right!" said Warrender. "What’s the address?" Holden gave it "Your ambulance will be there in ten minutes, and no questions asked. Tell me about it later."
And he rang off.
Holden sat back in the chair by the little table. His hand throbbed like fire. The sick taste of failure was in his mouth, of being too late and missing the murderer. What murderer? Never mind. He had been told to search; and, by the six horns of Satan, he would search.
He went back to the black-draped room whose small glimmer of desk light only weighted the shadows. There was nothing he could do for Thorley, who lay in a stupor, breathing stertorously. Beyond the desk loomed the scarlet damask of the tall chair. He inspected the desk.
Its disarranged black covering, he now saw with repulsion, was antique funeral pall. It breathed of more than mere hocus-pocus; it hinted at the abnormal. Crumpled back as though in a struggle, it was stained with one or two spots of drying blood.
Aside from the crystal holder, it bore only two other objects. One was an ibis head of green jade, rolled almost to the edge of the desk. The other was a flat bronze plaque, engraved with a design and a few lines of. . .
Familiar?
Yes! The design on that plaque was the same as the design on the lower part of the gold ring with which Dr. Fell had sealed the tomb. Holden bent closer to read what was underneath.
Here is a sleeping sphinx. She is dreaming of the Parabrahm, of the universe and the destiny of man. She is part human, as representing the higher principle, and part beast, as representing the lower. She also symbolizes the two selves: the outer self which all the world may see, and the inner self which may be known to few.
Disregarding this mysticism, Holden went swiftly through the drawers of the desk. All were unlocked and empty. Nothing: not so much as a coin or a discarded newspaper. He measured for secret compartments, but there were none.
The carved cabinet, then? The cabinet, with the key in its lock, against the wall opposite the fireplace?
Thorley moaned, and cried out in stupor, as Holden opened the cabinet Inside he discovered a small but very modern steel filing cabinet, whose drawers rolled smoothly open. There were only blank index cards, but many gaps, and traces of cardboard adhering to the central rod where other index cards had been torn out. Those cardboard traces felt dry and harsh to the touch; they had not, he thought, been torn out today or even recently.
Gone were the names of Madame Vanya's fortune-telling clients; destroyed some time ago. Nothing here either. And yet...
He studied the outer wooden cabinet.
It was authentic Florentine Renaissance, scrolled with arms and saints. It might have come from Caswall. Whistling softly, he snapped on the flame of his pocket lighter and examined the lower part. To blot out from his own ears the noise of Thorley's breathing, now grown harsh and rattling like a man gasping for life, Holden spoke aloud.
"Now when an Italian craftsman of the great age makes his baseboard half an inch too high for proportion, it's interesting. When he decorates it with rosettes, and one of them has a center slightly larger than the others . . . Thorley, for God's sake be quiet!"
The unconscious man laughed.
"Be quiet, Thorley! I can't help you! The ambulance wfll be here in a minute!"
Holden had forgotten his burned hand now. The blood beat in his ears. He knelt down by the lower edge of that carved cabinet, and prodded at the rosette whose center was larger than the others.
There was a faint click. Feeling for the undermost edge, he drew out a very shallow drawer nearly filled with large sheets of gray note paper in Margot Devereux's rapid, clear, unmistakable handwriting.
Love letters written by Margot the topmost one dated, Afternoon, December 22nd. He hadn't failed, after all.
Holden blew out the lighter flame, which was sizzling and scorching the wick. He knelt there in semidarkness, partly lifting the topmost letter, yet feeling an intense reluctance now to read it Dead Margot with her brown eyes and her dimples, seemed to walk in the room.
He got up, and dropped the lighter back in his pocket. He went back to the desk, where he spread out that letter on the funeral pall beside the dim lamp. The words lived again, the personality lived again, in what Margot had written:
Mv dearest:
I'm not going to post this to you, or even give it to you, any more than any of the other letters. Is that silly? And yet it's the only way I have of being with you when you're not here, not here, not here. This time tomorrow, or two days from now, it will all be settled. Whether we many, or whether we die. But—
Holden's eyes stopped. Here, in part at least was ringing confirmation of a certain theory. The next part of the letter he dodged over. It was composed of intimacies explicitly described and set down. And then:
Sometimes I think you don't love me at all. Sometimes I think you almost hate me. But that couldn't be, could it? If you're willing for what we plan? Forgive me for thinking that! Sometimes I get pleasure just from repeating your name, over and over. I say to myself—
Holden raised his head quickly.
The outer door of this flat the solid Yale-locked door giving on the passage outside, was in the front room. But the sound penetrated very distinctly. Someone was softly rapping on that door.
CHAPTER XVIII
It might be the ambulance men, of courae. He didn't associate that soft hesitant almost furtive rapping with any such errand. All the same, it might be the ambulance men.
Hurrying round the desk, Holden saw against the carpet the blood-smeared crystal with which, presumably, Thorley Marsh had been struck down. The people from the nursing home mustn't see it or hear about it—yet.
Regardless of fingerprints he picked it up, cradling it in Margof s letter, and carried it to the desk. When you straightened the pall cover, setting the crystal back in its holder and turning it round, the few blood smears were scarcely visible.
At the outer door, that soft rapping began again.
Holden set the desk lamp a Utile farther away on the table cover. Then, straightening his shoulders, he went into the front room. Drawing a deep breath, he twisted the knob of the Yale lock and opened the door.
Outside, with frightened faces, stood Celia Devereux and Dr. Gideon Fell.