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

Seton. But he had also said – though in queer, elusive terms – that he did not believe she was guilty. Every statement concerning the murder, through all that tortuous story, rang the clear indication that there had been no solution.
    Therefore all this manuscript could tell him … Miles glanced at it in the semi-darkness … would be the routine facts of the police investigation. It might tell him some sordid facts about the character of a pleasant-faced woman with red hair and blue eyes. But no more.
    In an utter revulsion of feeling Miles hated the whole thing. He wanted peace and quiet. He wanted to be free from these clinging strands. With a sudden impulse, before he should think better of it, he leaned forward and tapped the glass panel.
    â€˜Driver! Have you got enough petrol to take me back to Beltring’s Restaurant, and then on to the Berkeley? – Double fare if you do!’
    The silhouette of the driver’s back contorted with angry indecision; but the cab slowed down, slurred, and circled Eros’s island back into Shaftesbury Avenue.
    Miles was inspired by his new resolution. After all, he had been gone from Beltring’s only a comparatively few minutes. What he proposed doing now was the only sensible thing to do. His resolution blazed brightly inside him when he jumped out of the taxi in Romilly Street, hurried round the corner to the side entrance, and up the stairs.
    In the upstairs hall he found a dispirited-looking waiter occupied with the business of closing up.
    â€˜Is Professor Rigaud still here? A short stoutish French gentleman with a patch of moustache something like Hitler’s carrying a yellow cane?’
    The waiter looked at him curiously.
    â€˜He is downstairs in the bar, monsieur. He …’
    â€˜Give him this, will you?’ requested Miles, and put the still-folded manuscript into the waiter’s hand. ‘Tell him it was taken by mistake. Thank you.’
    And he strode out again.
    On the way home, lighting his pipe and inhaling the soothing smoke, Miles was conscious of a sensation of exhilaration and buoyancy. To-morrow afternoon, when he had attended to the real business which brought him to London, he would meet Marion and Steve at the station. He would return to the country, to the secluded house in the New Forest where they had been established for only a fortnight, as a man plunges into cool water on a hot day.
    That was disposed of, cut off at the root, before it could really trouble his mind. Whatever secret appertained to a phantom image called Fay Seton, it was no concern of his.
    To claim his attention there would be his uncle’s library, that alluring place hardly as yet explored during the confusion of moving in and settling down. By this time to-morrow night he would be at Greywood, among the ancient oaks and beeches of the New Forest, beside the little stream where rainbow trout rose at dusk when you flicked bits of bread on the water. Miles felt, in some extraordinary way, that he had got out of a snare.
    His taxi dropped him at the Piccadilly entrance to the Berkeley: he paid the driver in an expansive mood. Seeing that the lounge inside was still pretty well filled at its little round tables, Miles, with his passionate hatred of crowds, deliberately walked round to the Berkeley Street entrance so that he might breathe solitude a little longer. The rain was clearing away. A freshness tinged the air. Miles pushed through the revolving doors into the little foyer, with the reception desk on his right.
    He got his key at the desk, and stood debating the advisability of a final pipe and whisky-and-soda before turning in, when the night reception clerk hurried out of the cubicle with a slip of paper in his hand.
    â€˜Mr Hammond!’
    â€˜Yes?’
    The clerk scrutinized the slip of paper, trying to read his own handwriting.
    â€˜There’s a message for you, sir. I think you applied to the – to this