Read Online He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr - Free Book Online

‘but I can find out. Er – have I given you enough money?’
    â€˜More than enough money , sir. At the same time …’
    â€˜Sorry. My fault. Good night!’
    He dared not run too hard, since his old illness was apt to claw at him and make his head swim. But his pace was tolerably fast all the same. As he got downstairs and outside, he could just see the glimmer of Barbara’s white dress, under the short fur wrap, moving in the direction of Frith Street. Then he really did run.
    A taxi rolled down Frith Street in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, its motor whirring with great distinctness in the hollow-punctuated silence of London at night. Miles shouted at it without much hope, but to his surprise it hesitatingly swerved in towards the kerb. With his left hand Miles caught at Barbara Morell’s arm; with his right he twisted open the handle of the cab door before someone else should appear, ghostly out of the rain-pattering gloom, to lay claim to it.
    â€˜Honestly,’ he said to Barbara, with such a warmth of sincerity that her arm relaxed, ‘there was no reason to run away like that. You can at least let me drop you off at home. Where do you live?’
    â€˜St John’s Wood. But …’
    â€˜Can’t do it, governor,’ said the taxi-driver in a fierce voice of defiance mingled with martyrdom. ‘I’m going Victoria way, and I’ve only just got enough petrol to get home.’
    â€˜All right. Drop us at Piccadilly Circus tube-station.’
    The car door slammed. There was a slur of tyres on wet asphalt. Barbara, in the far corner of the seat, spoke in a small voice.
    â€˜You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you?’ she asked.
    â€˜For the last time, my dear girl: no! On the contrary. Life has been made so uncomfortable for us that every little bit helps.’
    â€˜What on earth do you mean?’
    â€˜A high-court judge, a barrister-politician, and a number of other important people have been carefully flummoxed at something they’d arranged. Wouldn’t it delight your heart if you heard – as you never will – of an Important Person who couldn’t make a reservation or got thrown back to the tail-end of a queue?’
    The girl looked at him.
    â€˜You are nice,’ she said seriously.
    This threw Miles a little off balance.
    â€˜It isn’t a question of what you call niceness,’ he retorted with some violence. ‘It’s a question of the Old Adam.’
    â€˜But poor Professor Rigaud –! ’
    â€˜Yes, it’s a bit rough on Rigaud. We must find a way to make amends. All the same! – I don’t know why you did it, Miss Morell, but I’m very glad you did it. Except for two reasons.’
    â€˜What reasons?’
    â€˜In the first place, I think you should have confided in Dr Fell. He’s a grand old boy; he’d have sympathized with anything you told him. And how he would have enjoyed that case of the man murdered while alone on a tower! That is,’ Miles added, with the perplexity and strangeness of the night wrapping him round, ‘if it was a real case and not a dream or a leg-pull. If you’d told Dr Fell …’
    â€˜But I don’t even know Dr Fell! I lied about that too.’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter!’
    â€˜It does matter,’ said Barbara, and pressed her hands hard over her eyes. ‘I’d never met any of the members. But I was in a position, you see, to learn all their names and addresses, and that Professor Rigaud was speaking on the Brooke case. I phoned everybody except Dr Fell as Dr Fell’s private secretary, and said the dinner had been postponed. Then I got in touch with Dr Fell as representing the President. And hoped to heaven those two would be away from home to-night if someone did ring up for confirmation.’
    She paused, staring straight ahead at the glass partition behind the driver’s seat, and