"Pretty bad."
"Oh, ahl But I mean . .. ?"
"About one chance in ten. Gently, boys!"
I can't, Holden was thinking to himself, I can't stand that sobbing much longer. Thorley might know nothing; might feel nothing; he wandered mindless in some dim hinterland. Yet even in unconsciousness there is no sobbing without rooted cause.
Celia, her hands again pressed over her eyes, turned her back as that cortege went downstairs. Nobody spoke. Up the stairs after it had passed, moving softly, but gazing down at Thorley, came Sir Danvers Locke.
Locke, fastidious in an admirably cut blue suit, carrying a gray Homburg hat, gray gloves, and a walking stick, stood in the doorway in silence. The flesh was strained tight over his cheek bones; his mouth looked uncertain.
"If they'd only told me!" cried Celia. "If they'd only told me!"
Dr. Fell, so vast that he had to maneuver sideways through the door of the rear room and duck his head under it, now towered among them. His face was fiery.
"My friend," he said to Holden, "this has gone far enough. We are going to end it That contraption!" He pointed to the telephone with his cane.
'Yes?’'
"It is (harrumph) erratic and unreliable. It never gets me the number I dial. Will you be good enough to outwit the blighter," intoned Dr. Fell, running his hand through his hair, "and get me the number I want?"
"Certainly. What number?"
"Whitehall 1212."
A stir, as of a very slight shock of electricity tingling the muscles, ran through the group at mention of that famous phone number. Seven times the dial whirred and clicked back. Then Holden handed the phone to Dr. Fell.
"Metropolitan police?" roared Dr. Fell, his several chins thrown back and his eyes villainously squinted at a comer of the ceiling. "I want to speak to Superintendent Hadley. My name is ... oh, you recognize my voice? Yes; I’ll hold on."
As though she could endure the atmosphere of this room no longer, Celia raised the window by which she was stand' ing. A gust of cooler air, grateful and cleansing, swept out the brocade curtains.
"Hadley?" said Dr. Fell, holding up the phone as though it were a jug from which he was about to drink. "I say. About this Caswall business."
The telephone spoke rapidly from the other end,
"Sol" intoned Dr. Fell. "You got the order through and the post-mortem done in one day? What was it? Was it morphine and belladonna? Oh, ah. Good!"
Dr. Eric Shepton, staring at the floor, shook his head violently as though denying this. But Sir Danvers Locke was a picture of understanding.
"Well, look here," said Dr. Fell. "I'm now at 56b New Bond Street, top floor. Can you come over here straightaway?"
The telephone made angry protests, concluding with a single-word query.
"If you do," replied Dr. Fell, "I will present you with the murderer of Mrs. Marsh and the attempted murderer of Thorley Marsh."
Celia opened the other window, which ran up with a screech. Nobody else moved or spoke.
"No, of course I'm not jokingl" roared Dr. Fell. His eye wandered round. "I have with me a group of (harrumph) friends now. Perhaps others will join us. I propose to begin now, and tell them the whole story.—When may we expect you? Right!"
He set back the phone with a clatter on its cradle, and swung round.
"One Hadley," he said, "one arrest."
Sir Danvers Locke, uttering a small cough to attract attention, moved forward. Of all the persons here, Holden wished most he could read the thoughts in Locke's head. When he thought of Locke sitting before a mirror, in the sympathetic presence of Mademoiselle Frey, and talking in a wild way about the "callousness and ruthlessness" of his own daughter (why Doris?), Holden could fit together no decipherable pattern.
"Dr. Fell!" said Locke. He paused for a moment. "Do you indeed propose to tell—the whole story?"
Nerve tension, under this studious politeness, was steadily going up.
"Yes,' returned Dr. Fell.
"Do you mind, then, if I join you?"
"On the contrary, sir." Dr. Fell fumbled at his eyeglasses. "Your presence is almost a necessity." He paused. "I do not ask the obvious question."
"And yet," said Locke, "I will answer it"
Locke glanced sideways, through the doorway on his left into the black-draped room where the crystal glimmered on the desk.
"I did not know," he spoke with painful enunciation, "that these rooms were here. Perhaps I suspected they might be somewhere . . ."
"Somewhere?"
"In London. We overhear our children speaking, just as they overhear us. But that they were here," the ferrule of his walking stick thudded softly on the carpet "just over a place where I go two or three times a year to buy masks: this, on my oath, I did not know."
"Come into the next room," Dr. Fell said curtly. "Bring chairs."
As the group moved in, slowly and somberly, Celia hurried to Holden's side. She spoke in a whisper. "Don. What's going to happen?" "I wish I knew."
Celia reached out for his hands; and then drew back, her face whitening, as he flinched. She looked more closely. "Don! What have you done to your hand?"
"It’s only a burn. It isn't anything. Listen, Celia: I quite honestly and sincerely mean it isn't anything; and I'm ordering you not to make a fuss. Because this is no round-table discussion. Something's going to burst with a hell of a bang."
This appeared to be the opinion of Locke and Dr. Shepton, each of whom had carried a gray damask waiting room chair into the shrine.
They were watching Dr. Fell.
Dr. Fell, as though silently urging them to note everything he did, made another inspection of the black-covered room. He motioned Holden toward the secret drawer, which contained Margofs letters, at the bottom of the Florentine cabinet
Rightly interpreting this gesture, Holden took out the whole drawer, lifted it up, and put it on the side of the desk near the lamp. Into it Celia flung the letter she had been reading.
Dr. Fell picked up the letter, smoothed it out and read it
He glanced very rapidly through other sheets of blue note paper in the secret drawer. Then, after peering up at the covered skylight, and down at the carpet.as though seeking something, he lowered himself into the tall Jacobean chair behind the desk.
"Those letters—" Locke began.
Dr. Fell did not reply.
In front of him gleamed the big crystal, against the coffin pall, with the small green-jade ibis head on one side, and the little plaque of the sleeping sphinx on the other. He reached out and picked up the plaque.
" She also symbolizes,'" he read aloud, after a long pause, "'the two selves. The outer self which all the world may see—'" Dr. Fell stopped, and put down the plaque. "Yes, by thunder! That is the true application."
Slowly, while the others sat down, he fished out of his pockets an obese tobacco pouch and a curved meerschaum pipe. He filled the pipe, struck a match, and lit the tobacco with lingering care. The desk light, glimmering past the crystal, shone on his face.
"And now," said Dr. Fell, "hear the secret."
CHAPTER XIX
T ou mean," Locke asked quickly, "the murderer?
"Oh, no," said Dr. Fell and shook his head.
"But you have just been telling us ... !"
"That," continued Dr. Fell, blowing out more smoke, "can come later. I mean, at the moment, the carefully cherished secret which has sent so many persons wrong in this case."
Holden never afterward forgot their positions then.
He and Celia were sitting side by side on the huge velvet-covered divan, so sybaritic in that secret room. They saw Dr. Fell in profile, past smoke. Locke and Dr. Shepton were in chairs facing him, the former bending forward with his fingertips on the edge of the desk.