John Carr - The Reader Is Warned

There was a silence. Masters started to get up, and started to speak; but he checked himself in both motions. His eyes grew fixed.

'Am I making myself clear?' inquired Sanders. 'The point is that there is nothing whatever to show how he died. It is possible that he might have died from a blow to the body or head, which in itself might have been caused by an accidental fall when he was alone. In either case, you have no grounds for saying that he did die like that. It might just as well have been a pure accident of nervous shock, again when he was alone. There is no realm more mysterious, more incalculable, or less understood than that same nervous shock you were making such fun of a minute ago. People have died from seeing a railway accident. From listening to a radio broadcast. From games and initiations. Even from thinking they were attacked when there wasn't a soul near. But, since we haven't the remotest notion of how Sam Constable did die, you will never be able to prove anything. - Masters, if this is murder, the murderer is perfectly safe from the law.'

Again there was a silence.

'But it's not reasonable!' protested Masters querulously.

'No. The only trouble is that it sometimes happens.'

'Well, sir, we'll have to see what we can do about it,' said Masters, with an attempt at cheerfulness. 'All the same, I'm bound to admit I don't like that lack-of-proof thing -'

'Oh, that's the least of your worries.'

Again the chief inspector started to speak; then he regarded his companion with some suspicion. 'Just a minute, Doctor. If I didn't know you so well, blow me if I wouldn't think there was something queer in all this! Are you sure you're not on a wild-goose chase? Murder? By everything you've told me, the whole thing could have been accidental death. Eh? Just so. Then why have you been stirring everybody up with the idea that Mr Constable didn't die naturally?'

'Because a mind-reader named Herman Pennik said he would die round about eight o'clock on Friday night,' answered Sanders. 'And I don't believe in mind-readers.'

Along the main road outside, where the sun was strengthening towards midday, a bus lumbered past at its Sunday gait. The bus stopped with a squealing of brakes, and Sanders glanced at his watch. Meantime, Chief Inspector Masters had been looking at him fixedly. After drawing a deep breath, the chief inspector got up and walked out of the room. Dr Sanders heard him speaking in the dulcet tones of one who wishes to cajole an idiot.

'Miss,' he was saying, 'is the bar open here on Sundays?'

An indignant female voice replied that it was.

'Ah!' said Masters. 'Two pints of bitter in here, miss, if you please.'

Mr Herman Pennik was at this moment getting down from the bus outside. Dr Sanders could not have said why he seemed so incongruous in that homely road on Sunday. Yet Sanders was oppressed by the same feeling that had troubled him ever since the death of Sam Constable: a feeling that with every hour Pennik's character was growing ‘ and emerging like a mango-tree under a cloth, stirring the dull cloth, sending out tentacles.

Chief Inspector Masters returned carrying two tankards of bitter. His air was one of elaborate off-handedness.

'Now, Doctor!' he said. 'By the way, seen anything of the old man recently? Sir Henry, I mean?' . 'He's coming down here this afternoon.'

'Is he, now? Does he know what you've just told me?'

'Not yet.'

'Ah!' said Masters, with a sudden unholy relish which could not altogether have applied to the beer. 'Knows nothing about it, then? Bit of a surprise for him, eh? Well, well, well! Well, here's all the best.'

'All the best. - And in the meantime there's someone else I'd like you to meet. He's here now. (Hoy! Mr Pennik! This way!) This,' Sanders went on, 'is Mr Masters, who is a chief inspector from Scotiand Yard. Masters, this is Mr Pennik, the thought-reading phenomenon I was telling you about. I sent for him to come here too.'

Masters's musing satisfaction had been short-lived. Putting down his tankard hastily, he gave Sanders a brief reproachful glare before he turned with his usual blandness to Pennik.

'Yes, sir? I didn't quite catch -?'

'I am what Dr Sanders calls the thought-reader,' said Pennik, his eyes never leaving the other's face. 'Dr Sanders told me you would be put in charge of the case.'

Masters shook his head.

'I'm afraid I'm not as yet, sir. So there's not much I could know about it, is there? However' - he became confidential - 'if you wouldn't mind giving me your own views, strictly sub-ju-de-cay and among ourselves, of course, I don't say it wouldn't help me a lot. Take this chair, sir. What'll you have to drink?'

(Watch out for him when he's in this mood.)

"Thank you,' said Pennik. 'I never drink. It is not that I have any objection to it; but it always upsets my stomach.'

'Ah! Lot of people'd be better off without it, I daresay,' declared Masters, surveying his tankard wisely. 'However! The trouble is, you see, that some people would say we haven't a case anyway. Be a bit awkward, wouldn't it, if we cut up a row and then found Mr Constable had died a natural death?'

Pennik frowned slightly, turning a pleasant but puzzled look towards Sanders. Yet again there was that suggestion of the mango-tree stirring under the dull cloth; and it was not pleasant.

'Dr Sanders cannot have told you much about the case,' he said. 'Of course it was not a natural death.' 'You believe that, too?' 'Naturally. I know it.' Masters chuckled.

'You know it, sir?' he inquired. 'Then perhaps you can even tell us who killed him?'

'Of course,' answered Pennik, lifting one hand to touch himself lightly on the chest, 'I killed him.'

CHAPTER VII

It was the lifting of the hand that did it. Why, it might be wondered, was there a faint hint of the florid about Pennik this morning? His country tweeds were as solid and unobtrusive as Sam Constable's. His soft hat and crooked stick lay across the table. His manner (perhaps fiercely) was so repressed as to seem wooden. But on the little finger of his left hand was a ring set with a bloodstone.

Nothing could have exceeded the grotesque contrast between that ring and his surroundings: the country pub, the Sunday countryside with fowls in it, the sunlight through fresh curtains on Pennik's bullet head. The ring changed him; it lit him up.

Sanders saw it to such an extent that he missed the expression on Masters's face.

But he heard the tone of the chief inspector's voice.

'What's that you said?'

'I said / killed him. Didn't Dr Sanders tell you?'

'No, sir, he did nott So that's why you're here, is it?' Masters drew himself up. 'Herman Pennik: do you wish to make a statement about the death of Mr Constable?'

'If you like.'

'One moment! I must warn you that you are not obliged to make any statement; but that, if you do, anything -'

'That'll be quite all right, Inspector,' Pennik assured him; and Sanders saw peering out from behind those quiet features a huge amusement. But there was annoyance in it as well. 'I cannot understand, though, why Dr Sanders failed to tell you. Nor do I understand the cause of all the uproar. Dr Sanders will bear me out when I say that I carefully warned Mr Constable, in the presence of all the others, that I was going to try to kill him. I did not say it was certain, mind you, because I was not sure I could manage it. I only intimated that I meant to try. How there could have been any misunderstanding it is difficult to imagine. I certainly don't lay claim to supernatural powers; and nobody, so far as I know, has ever been able to read the future. I intimated that I would kill him, and I did kill him. Hence why all the fuss about it?'

'Goddalmighty,' said Masters, getting his breath. 'Let me get a word in edgeways, sir! I must warn you that you are not obliged to make any statement; but that, if you do -'

'And I repeat that it will be quite all right, Mr Masters. I am told that I can make whatever statement I like without danger to myself.'

'Who told you that?'

'My lawyer.'

'Your-'

'Or, rather,' Pennik corrected himself, 'he was my lawyer. (I mean Mr Chase.) He has since recoiled from me and said he thought I was joking. But I was not joking.'

'No, sir?'

'No. Before killing Mr Constable, I asked Mr Chase whether I could be charged with murder if I killed him under the conditions I described. Mr Chase said I could not. Otherwise I should not have done it. I have a horror of being shut up - it unnerves me; and the experiment was not worth while if I ran the risk of being tried for it.'

'I daresay not, sir. How do you feel about hanging, though?'

'Are you also under the impression that I am joking, Mr Masters?'

Masters cleared his throat powerfully. 'Now, now, sir! We've got to take it easy, you see. ... Excuse me, Doctor, but is this gentleman crazy?'

'Unfortunately, no,' said Sanders, briefly.

'Thank you, Doctor,' said Pennik, with great gravity; but behind that broad nose Sanders thought he detected a flash of malice, which was spreading to the whole face with the effect of flattening it.

'Well, why didn't you go to the local police with your story?'

'I did,' said Pennik.

'When?’

'As soon as they were called in. I wished to make sure that nothing could be done to me, you see.'

'And how did they.feel about it?'

'They agreed that nothing could be done.... As regards how they felt about it, that is a different matter. Colonel Willow, I believe, kept a straight bat and a stiff upper lip; but Superintendent Belcher is made of less stern stuff, and I understand that only the thought of a wife and four children prevented him from putting his head into the gas-oven.'

Masters turned round with dangerous calm.

'Is this true, Doctor?'

'Quite true.'

Then why the blazes didn't you tell me?'

'That's what I'm doing,' Sanders answered, patiently. "That's why you're here. Like Mr Pennik, I warned you. It didn't seem wise to - er - give you the works all at once.'

'But, blast it all, the police can't be crazy tool'

"They are not,' Pennik assured him. "Though at first they seemed to share your original view about me. However, I agree with you that Dr Sanders should have told you. I told Dr Sanders, and the other guests at Fourways, just as soon as the thing happened. For some curious reason they seem all except the doctor here - to regard me with a kind of superstitious terror. They even refused to eat a meal which I was at some trouble to prepare. I tried to explain, but they would not listen. Of course I was proud to have succeeded' -again there was a curious flash across his face - 'but I am a human being; I lay no claim to supernatural powers. Such ideas are nonsense.'

Masters corked himself down. For a moment he breathed slowly and steadily, as though counting. Then he raised his head.

'If you don't mind, sir,' he went on, with a kind of bursting suavity, 'we'll just take this thing from the beginning. Eh? Do you mean to sit there and tell me you killed Mr Constable?'

'I am afraid we can never get any further, Inspector, unless you at least try to consider that'as a possibility and stop asking the same question. .Yes. I killed him.'

'Right you are! Right you are! How did you kill him?'

'Ah, that is my secret.' Pennik grew thoughtful. 'I am suddenly beginning to realize what an important secret it might be in this world. You cannot expect me to betray that.'

'Can't I, by George! - No, wait, steady 1 Easy does it. Now. Why did you kill him?'

"There you are more easily answered. I regarded him as an ill-mannered imbecile, brutal to his wife, insulting to his guests, an obstruction to all mental or moral progress. Judged as a person, he had challenged me beyond all human patience. Judged as the subject of an experiment, he was a man whose loss would hardly be felt in the scheme of things. Even though Dr Sanders disagrees with me in everything else, he will agree with me in that. And so I made him the subject of an experiment.'

'An experiment!' repeated Masters. 'Come now, sir! About how you did it,' he spoke with broad persuasiveness, 'just what means did you use? Have you developed a new blow to the abdomen, now? One that always works? Or a new way of coshing, maybe? Or frightening the poor bloke?'

'So you have been hearing about the scientific possibilities,' observed Pennik, turning his light eyes towards Sanders.

'Well, which one of those ways did you use?'

'That is what you will have to find out for yourself,' smiled Pennik.

'Oh, ah ? So you admit you used one of those ways?'

'On the contrary. I used none of them, except in a certain sense.'

'Except in a certain sense? What do you mean by that?'

"That I certainly used a weapon which can strike and, if properly applied, kill. If you want a name for it, call it Teleforce - the power of drawing out or, conversely, crushing, from afar. I did not know’ - again the white look came round his eyes and gills - 'that it could be made quite so strong. Inspector, I am very tired. Do not try me too far now. But it is an extension of the same process which enables me to tell what you are thinking about at the moment.''

'So you know what I'm dunking about, do you?' inquired Masters, putting his head on one side.

Pennik smiled vaguely.

'Well, of my untimely demise, of course. That will be evident to anybody who looks at you. I was referring to your hidden thoughts, the thought you have been trying to banish out of your mind. You have been putting on an air of false and forced geniality to-day because you are hideously worried. You have a child (a daughter, I think) who goes into a nursing home to-morrow for an operation for appendicitis. She is not a strong child; and you did not sleep all last night for worrying.'

Masters went red, and then rather pale. His friend had never seen such an expression on his face.

'Did you tell him that?' the chief inspector demanded, whirling round.

'I didn't know it,' said Sanders. 'I'm sorry.'

'But it is true?' asked Pennik. 'Be persuaded, my friend. You will have to acknowledge it sooner or later.'

'We'll just leave my affairs out of it, sir, if you please,' said Masters. 'Hurrum! Now I don't suppose you could prove what you were doing when Mr Constable was killed?' 'I have been wondering when you would ask that question,' replied Pennik, showing his teeth. 'Let us clear it up once and for all. Dr Sanders (and Miss Keen as well) will testify that Mr Constable was alive and in very good health at a quarter to eight on Friday night. I believe he had gone to investigate some curious occurrences in Dr Sanders's room.' Here a flash of malice passed towards Sanders; you could almost feel it like a vibration. 'At this time I was downstairs. At about a quarter to eight the doorbell rang -the back doorbell, that is. I answered it. A certain Mrs Chichester had promised to come and get the household a meal, since all the servants were away. It was Mrs Chichester, accompanied by her son Lewis; evidently as a chaperon. I was going to get the meal, but I told them they might help me if they liked. For some reason they seemed nervous -'