# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 44/Number 4/Diamond Cut Diamond

from The Red Book Magazine magazine, Feb 1925, pp. 80–84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted. A Quentin Quayne story.
RECENTLY this magazine has sent on to Mr. Britten Austin three letters addressed to Quentin Quayne. Strange as it may seem, the assumption that a character of fiction is a flesh-and-blood person is not rare in any editorial experience. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle possesses a bushel of letters addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes in which the writers do not indicate in the least degree that to them Holmes was anything but a real person.
Diamond Cut Diamond
By F. Britten Austin
Illustrated by F. r. Greuger
HE was a stranger to me, but he shook hands with Quentin Quayne like an old acquaintance—a big, heavily built man, with a powerful beak of a nose, and a manner that was massively deliberate. The word or two over the office phone which had preceded his entrance had given me his name—Sir Humphrey Maule. I had a vague notion that I had read it in a newspaper, somewhere, sometime, but the circumstance eluded me.
He sat down in the chair by Quayne's desk, and the latter pushed across to him the cigarette-casket and the cigar-box he kept for hospitality to his visitors. This visitor selected a cigar—selected it with the judicial deliberation of a connoisseur—sniffed at it, crackled it between his fingers, punctured it meticulously with a gold cigar-piercer.
“This will be the last cigar I shall smoke as a free man, Quayne,” he said quietly, as he reached for the matches.
Q. Q. raised his eyebrows.
“Going back into harness? I thought the Indian Government would be after you again. Moscow is getting far too much of a run for its money south of the Himalayas.”
The circumstance flashed back into my mind. Sir Humphrey Maule had retired a few months back after a career in India that had remained unknown to the general public until the chorus of press encomiums at its conclusion made one aware that yet another great public servant had finished his day's work. Head of a special branch of the Political Department, I remembered.
He sat now, big and impressive, in the chair by Q. Q.'s desk, lighting his cigar. He lit it very carefully and deliberately, assured himself that it was burning evenly, blew out the match and deposited it neatly in the ash-tray before he answered.
“No,” he said, curtly sententious. “I'm on my way to give myself up to the police.”
Q. Q.'s quick glance challenged his seriousness.
“Income-tax—and a tender conscience?” He smiled quizzically.
Sir Humphrey finished his long puff of cigar-smoke.
“Murder.” He sat back in his chair, grimly stolid.
I have rarely seen Q. Q. startled—but he was startled then, startled and instantaneously incredulous.
“My dear chap! Murder?” Q. Q. puzzled at him.
Sir Humphrey nodded. “Murder.”
“But whom? Some would-be assassin?”
“Jimmy Loftus.”
“Good heavens!”
Sir Humphrey removed his cigar from his mouth, looked at it, pressed his lips together.
“Yes—my best pal.” He spoke through his teeth. I had a hint of an emotion that could not trust itself to words, crushed back behind an iron self-control.
Q. Q. stared at him, frankly shocked and bewildered.
“Jimmy Loftus! But—in the name of everything—why?”
“I wish I knew.”
“How—then?”
Sir Humphrey looked at him, spoke slowly and deliberately,
“I know—and yet I don't know.”
The Chief's hand tapped in exasperation on his desk.
“You are talking in riddles, Maule.”
“It is a riddle to me—the whole business.” Once more he leaned back in his chair, glanced again at the cigar between his fingers, held it for a long pull at it, a thoughtful slow outblowing of gray smoke. “That's why I've come to you, Quayne. I did it—I must have done it—I somehow know I did it, can give you a story of the occurrence, although another part of me is, so to speak, loud in indignant denial—and the circumstantial evidence is beyond doubt. I don't envy my counsel his job of defending me. He hasn't a shred of a case. As an honest man, I should have to say I was guilty if I were asked. It's hanging for me, all right. But—although I shouldn't dream for a moment of putting in the plea—I'd rather have a quick finish than a living death,—I'd just like to know for my own personal satisfaction whether it oughtn't to be 'life.' He spoke with a grim succinctness, knocked off a little ash from his cigar, and looked straight at Q. Q. '“You've solved some pretty queer mysteries, Quayne—we've solved some of them together; as a personal favor, the last probably I shall ask of you, I want you to solve this one for me. When the drop is pulled from under me, I want to go into the next world knowing why I did it.”
Illustration: Sir Humphrey groaned in anguish. “And they must have hypnotized me also! Made me kill poor Jimmy! That proves it!”
Q. Q. looked at him in a silence broken only by the tapping of his finger-tips on the desk. Sir Humphrey met his penetrating glance and answered it with the ghost of a tight-lipped smile.
“That's precisely the question I am asking you—am I sane?”
Q. Q. grunted. “H'm! When and where do you say this occurrence happened?”
“In my rooms—last night.”
“And where is”—Q. Q. hesitated, delicately—“Loftus—now?”
“In my sitting-room. Behind a locked door. I sent my man off for the day. He doesn't sleep on the premises, you know.”
“H'm! No immediate hurry for the police, then.” Q. Q., I could see, was seriously perturbed, but he spoke with an unemotional self-controlled calm that matched that of his visitor. “You ask me if you are sane. You appear sane enough to me. But any of us, given the circumstances—and I know nothing of your mental states, the stresses you have perhaps put on yourself, during the past year or two—may develop hallucinations that have all the force of reality. You may be under a hallucination now. On what evidence do you think you killed Jimmy Loftus?”
Sir Humphrey smiled again, grimly.
“On the evidence of all my senses, Quayne. There is no hallucination about this. I woke up at seven o'clock this morning to find myself in my own sitting-room, still in my dress-clothes, and to see Jimmy Loftus, also in his evening kit, sitting crumpled in a chair with a bullet-wound in his head. My own revolver was lying on the floor, one chamber recently discharged. I had a smear of burnt powder on the fingers of my right hand. More than that, I had suddenly an overpowering conviction—I had a queer vivid mental picture of the act—that I had myself shot him.”
“Without a motive?” Q. Q. interjected the question.
“Without the slightest motive. Jimmy and I were the closest pals—the nearest thing I ever had to a brother. You can guess my horror at what I saw.” Sir Humphrey's grim mouth clenched tight again for a moment.
“H'm! You remember doing it, you say?”
“Yes—in a queer sort of way. Half of me protests violently that I did not, could not do it. Yet if I were challenged, I could not help but say, with full conviction, automatically—ghastly and motiveless as the thing is: 'Yes, I did it.' In fact there's an immense and curious impulse in me—the usual murderer's impulse, I suppose—to rush out and proclaim the fact.”
“That was why you were going to the police-station?”
Sir Humphrey shrugged his shoulders.
“You can't expect a man of my stamp to give himself the ignominy of dodging the police. There's the fact. I must take the consequences. I prefer to meet them halfway. It leaves me some personal dignity, at any rate.”
“H'm!” Q. Q. grunted, sat for a moment in thought, his eyes still probing the big man who sat in that chair savoring his cigar. “Why was Jimmy Loftus in your rooms last night?”
“We'd had a little dinner-party.”
“A party? There were others, then?”
“Two. But they left soon after eleven.”
“Who were they?”
“A Russian-refugee aristocrat—Count Murovieff—and his daughter, Countess Stravinsky.”
Q. Q. leaned back in his chair, tapped his finger-tips together. “Let's have the whole yarn, Maule. Why did you have those three people to dinner last night? It must have been something important to have brought Loftus out. I know for a fact he's been working late hours on some Bolshevik conspiracy to sabotage the coal-mines. He hasn't left his department any night before nine o'clock for a week.”
Sir Humphrey nodded.
“Quite right. He hasn't. I can't think those two people could possibly have had anything to do with it—as I told you, they went about eleven, left Jimmy and me alone together—but I'll give you the whole story from A to Z.” He paused to revive the glow of his cigar, to collect his thoughts for a commencement. “There's something in your guess about the Indian Government, Quayne. I have been approached—I'd more than half promised to go out again, in fact. Naturally, I began to sit up and take a little notice of things Indian again, to look around for scraps of useful information. About ten days ago I met a couple of very interesting people—met them at my sister's house—this Count Murovieff and his daughter, regular ancien régime, red-hot anti-Bolsheviks. It was the, lady I got into conversation with first, a fascinating creature, beautiful,—thirty years ago. one glance of those eyes of hers would have set me gaping round after her like an imbecile—and she did me the honor of knowing my name. A compliment rare enough to be appreciated.”
He smiled grimly. “She asked me if I were going back to India. I gave a noncommittal sort of answer—as you know, I'm not the sort that unbosoms himself to casual ladies. And then I had a shock. 'Because if you are, Sir Humphrey,' she said, 'I can give you some information that will be of the greatest use to you. Would you like to put your finger on Tretiakeff?' You can guess I sat up pretty sharply and took quite a lot of notice, at that. Only the very inner circles know even the name of Tretiakeff—a most elusive bird, and the hidden manipulator of all the Soviet intrigues in India. At that moment, her father came up—a white-haired, intellectual-looking little dwarf of a man, more like a professor than an aristocrat. She introduced us—and then my sister swooped down on us—mustn't have any interesting conversation in her drawing-room, you know—against the usages of polite society; one has to 'mix,'—that's her word,—talk meaningless ape-chatter with the entire cageful.” He paused for another pull at his cigar. Q. Q. made no comment. He was listening, all his faculties concentrated. Sir Humphrey resumed.
“Anyway, they managed to give me an invitation to visit them at their flat in Mount Street. I went—the next day. And I got quite a lot of information—highly secret information which—as it happened to be already in our possession—I could check. They hated the Bolshy régime thoroughly, father and daughter alike and no wonder, if their story was even half true. A story of torture, robbery and murder of pretty near their entire family that would have been a gold-nugget to a Riga special-correspondent. I went several times, and each time I got something more—with a hint of something really big if—and they made this proviso—I were really going out to India again. Finally, I put my cards on the table, told them I was. And then the rabbit came out of the hat.
“It seems the lady has a cousin—real name Baron Raschevsky, but known to the Communists as Stapouloff. To save his skin, he took service under the Soviet government, won their confidence, and is now second-in-command under Tretiakeff in India, at the very center of all their underground intrigues. If they are to be believed, Mr. Stapouloff is consumed by an undying secret hatred of his employers and is only waiting for a chance to play them a thoroughly dirty trick—to blow the entire Soviet organization in India sky-high, in fact. The long and the short of it was that they promised to put me into touch with this very interesting gentleman.
Once more Sir Humphrey paused for a puff or two at his cigar. “Of course, that isn't the kind of information that can be ignored,” he went on. “I thought the best thing to do was to go and tell Loftus about it—it's down his street, as you know. I did so—and he was quite considerably interested. Naturally, he was very curious to meet my Russian friends. He asked me to invite them to dinner—and not to mention that he would be present. I don't know, unfortunately, what reasons he had for that. He didn't tell me at the time, and now—” Sir Humphrey broke off with a jerk.
“And last night was the dinner?” said Q. Q.
“Yes. We had a very pleasant evening. Of course, I had said nothing about Loftus coming along. He turned up about five minutes after they did, and he was the best of company—really brilliant—you know what he could be when he was in the mood. They all got on splendidly together.”
“No sign of recognition on either side?”
SIR HUMPHREY shook his head.
“No. Not the least. Of course, I didn't get a chance to talk to Loftus.”
“And then what happened?”
“At a little after eleven, the Russians went away. I accompanied them downstairs, saw them into a taxi. I went up again to my rooms, where Loftus was sitting waiting for me—and then—that's the confoundedly queer part about it, Quayne—I can't really remember quite what happened.”
“Tell me what the part of yourself that remembers or seems to remember most has to say.”
“I've got a sort of knowledge—a conviction, rather than a memory—of having gone straight to the drawer of my desk where I keep a revolver, taken out the weapon, and deliberately shot Loftus—without any reason whatever—as he sat there in the chair. And then I can't remember anything at all, until I woke up this morning, found myself lying on the carpet, and saw Jimmy sitting there dead in the chair, with the revolver on the floor between us.”
“And the other part of you—what does that remember?”
“Nothing at all. It's a blank from the time I saw those people disappearing down the street in their taxi—until the moment I woke up this morning.”
“H'm!” Q. Q. sat with closely pressed lips. “What are your domestic arrangements, Maule?”
“It's a service flat. The management sent up the dinner from the restaurant, and did the waiting. Cleared up after we had finished, while we were in the sitting-room. They do all the work of the place, you know—except my sitting-room. I don't like unknown people messing about with my papers. My man does that.”
“He doesn't sleep on the premises, you said. Was he there last night?”
“I let him off before ten o'clock—when he had brought in the whisky decanter and a couple of siphons. As I told you, I sent him off for the day directly he arrived at seven-thirty this morning. My sitting-room is just as it was last night, with poor Jimmy sitting in that chair—behind a locked door.”
QUAYNE leaned back and pondered for a moment.
“You say you saw your guests depart in their taxi. How did you get back into your rooms? Did you let yourself in with a key—or did you leave the door open?”
Sir Humphrey stared at him for a moment.
“I went up in the lift—by Jove, yes, it comes back to me now—I found my door shut, and when I felt for my bunch of keys I found I must have left them inside—I had to ring the the bell.”
“Who opened the door?”
“Jimmy, of course—yes, I remember that—besides, there was no one else in the flat.”
“Was he quite normal?”
“Well, we'd had a good dinner—and one or two whiskies and sodas afterward—and, yes, I was a bit cheerful, I suppose. I remember now, thinking that Jimmy was rather unsteady on his pins—absurd, of course, last fellow in the world to take too much—shows I must have been rather merrier than I thought drunken man always thinks everyone else is squiffy.”
“And now can you remember anything else at all after Loftus let you into your rooms—apart from your conviction that then or subsequently you shot him?”
Sir Humphrey puckered his brows in a concentration of memory, shook his head.
“Nothing at all—other than that, it is a blank..... But, I say, Quayne!” A sudden excitement came into his voice. “Its a funny thing about those keys! I could swear I hadn't got them in my pocket when I rang at that door—I remember ringing and ringing—Jimmy was slow in tumbling to what had happened yet I certainly had them in my trouser-pocket when I woke up this morning. I remember turning them out quite normally with all my other things when I changed out of my dress kit. Here they are.” He fished out a bunch of keys from his pocket, held them up. “It's an action so automatic to shift them from one kit to another that I hadn't given them a thought. But I certainly didn't have them last night—unless I was far more drunk than I thought.”
“That, of course, is a possibility,” said Q. Q. quietly. “I'd like to know a little more about these guests of yours. Can you describe the lady?”
“Tall, slim, raven-black hair, wonderful large gray eyes—beautiful as a goddess—gives you a thrill to look at her.”
“H'm!” commented Q. Q. grimly. “Enthusiasm is not description. You were more definitely helpful about her father. Wait a moment.” He got up, went across to a large cabinet index-file on the farther wall of the room, returned with a couple of large envelopes. He sat down again, opened the dossiers, took out three or four photographs from each, spread them on his desk. “Are these your friends, Maule?”
Sir Humphrey leaned forward, looked at the photographs, uttered a sharp exclamation.
“By Jove, yes! Both of them!”
Q. Q. smiled in quiet satisfaction.
“I thought I was right,” he said. “But I am surprised that Loftus didn't tell you anything about those people when you rejoined him. He had quite a special interest in them both—and he certainly recognized them. The father's real name—he has of course many aliases—is Dr. Hugo Weidmann. He was at one time a well-known psycho-analyst in Vienna. Then he got into an unpleasant scandal, cleared out of Austria, and went into the German secret service, a line of business in which his professional! experience was extremely useful. Over here, during the war, he posed as a Russian reformer who had fled from the Czarist police prior to 1914—and he brought off one or two really big coups before our people got on his track and he vanished into thin air.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Sir Humphrey. “You're making me feel an awful fool, Quayne!”
“The daughter's name,” continued Q. Q. imperturbably, “is Clara Weidmann—originally, that is to say; the names she has since given herself would fill a page of 'Who's Who.' She was certainly one of the most efficient spies we ever had to deal with And she got clear away—but not before she had murdered, in very mysterious circumstances, one of Loftus' best men. Jimmy swore he would get her sooner or later—that was why, evidently half-recognizing both from your description, he asked you to arrange a little diner intime so that he could put the matter beyond doubt. You, of course, serving in India all your life, would know nothing of either of them.” He leaned back in his chair, finger-tips together. “I'm beginning to see a little daylight in this, Maule.”
“I'm damned if I am,” replied Sir Humphrey. “With all that! Who are these people working for now?”
“For the Soviet government, evidently. They knew or guessed that you might be going back to India. You're a formidable adversary, Maule—on your own ground. They did the clever thing—nobbled you from the start. If you had taken all their information seriously,—naturally they saw to it that all you could check should be genuine,—and had put yourself in the hands of Mr. Stapouloff, you'd have got yourself into a pretty mess.”
“Well, that's out of the question now, anyway. I don't go to India—I go to a nasty little ceremony in a prison-yard early some morning. For there's no doubt about it—mad or not—I shot poor Loftus.”
Q. Q. looked at him.
“Doesn't it occur to you, Maule, how extremely convenient it is to these two people that Loftus—they certainly recognized him as he recognized them—should be dead, and you completely out of the way?”
“Yes—but—” Sir Humphrey frowned in a desperation of thought. “It can't be more than a coincidence. I saw them go—I'm certain of that. How could they have got back, killed Loftus—and—this is the vital point—given me the conviction that I had done it myself? How could they?”
“That, Maule,” said Q. Q., caressing his chin, “we're going to try and find out.”
Sir Humphrey leaned forward in a sudden hypothesis.
“They couldn't have drugged me—made me murder Jimmy, could they?” he asked desperately. “It wouldn't go down with a jury, I know, but it means a lot to me. It isn't possible—just widely possible—is it? Queer things happen in India, you know.”
Q. Q. shrugged his shoulders.
“They are very clever people,” he said, as he took a sheet of notepaper and commenced to write. He wrote only a few quick words, folded the paper, reached for an envelope, put in the note, stuck it down and addressed it. “What number in Mount Street?” Sir Humphrey told him. He added it, looked across to me. “A little job for you, Mr. Creighton. Take this note to the Countess Stravinsky and give it to her personally.” He glanced at his watch. “It is now just eleven o'clock. You will probably find her at home. She may have something to say to you. Stay and listen to it—stay just as long as she likes to keep you—make the lady's acquaintance, in fact.” He smiled at me. “But when you do leave, rejoin us at Sir Humphrey's rooms. —Give him the address, Maule.”
SIR HUMPHREY gave me his card, and a few minutes later, with Q. Q.'s letter in my pocket, I was in a taxi speeding toward Mount Street.
I will confess that a twinge of trepidation mingled with my instinctive little thrill of suppressed excitement as I pressed the doorbell at Count Murovieff's flat. Into what hornet's nest was I blindly venturing? On the face of it, a more dangerous couple did not perhaps exist in London than the people behind this still closed door. How would I be received? What was in that note I was to deliver—Q. Q. had reiterated his orders, been emphatic—only into the Countess Stravinsky's own hand? I had not the least idea, and at that moment I would have given all my month's salary for a glimpse at its contents. I remembered suddenly, with more than annoyance, that I had left my automatic in my desk. I was defenseless ii— The door opened.
A prim, foreign-looking maid stood in the entrance. I stated my business, declined—in obedience to Q. Q.'s instructions—to name the person from whom I came, insisted merely that I had an important note to deliver to the Countess Stravinsky herself. The maid was evidently used to mysterious emissaries. She gave me a searching glance, which summed me up from the soles of my feet to the hat on my head, and threw the door wide open.
“Come zis vay,” she said.
She led me into a large drawing-room, furnished with an exotic and bizarre luxury, a room of rich Chinese blues touched with vivid greens, where gilt Buddhas and grotesque Hindu gods niched themselves against a simplicity of wall.
“Vait 'ere,' said the maid. “I vill tell ze Countess.”
I stood there, feeling my heart thump, and waited. And I craved for my automatic, so thoughtlessly left behind. The atmosphere of that room seemed pregnant with something mysteriously sinister. What drama was going to be precipitated by that sealed thin note I fingered? I visualized myself trapped, murderously assailed. They would stick at nothing, these people. I found myself looking at a memory of the Chief's confident, quiet smile, listening to an inward echo of his parting words: 'Don't hurry away, Mr. Creighton. Stay as long as the lady wishes to keep you.' There was a subtle significance in those words I could not fathom. It exasperated me. What was expected of me? What did he want me to do? I racked my brains for divination of it—mentally cursed him for not being more explicit. "
I turned from an absent-minded stare at a squat white-jade Chinese idol poised upon an ultramodern cabinet in polished vivid green wood, to see the Countess standing in the room, the door-curtain just falling behind her.
And I turned with a jerk—a stammering confusion. My wits deserted me. I think I gasped. For the woman who stood there—tall, slim, garbed in an exquisitely simple gown of black, a drooping necklace of large pearls for her only adornment—was in bewildering contradiction to my apprehensive imagination of imminent and savage violence. She was beautiful—beautiful, I can only reiterate the word—with such a purity of beauty, such a grave perfection of Madonnalike loveliness, that her presence set me quivering in a surge of awe that overwhelmed the cynicism of reason. Her large clear gray eyes—wonderful under the raven-black hair smoothed with the slightest ripple back from her brows—rested upon me in mute inquiry. I managed to get my tongue to speak, to achieve coherence.
“The Countess Stravinsky?” I said.
She made the faintest affirmative movement of her head.
“Yes.” Her voice, in the utterance of that one syllable, was surprisingly musical on a rich, deep, vibrant note.
I held out the envelope.
She took it, tore it open, read the missive. I saw a sudden hardness come into her beautiful face. Once more, the wonderful gray eyes were resting on me.
“You know what is in this note?”
“No, madame.”
The hardness vanished from her face—vanished so that a moment later one could not recall what it had been. She smiled—a sudden opening of dazzling fascination.
“You are an,”—she hesitated,—“an employee—of Mr. Quentin Quayne?”
I had no cue for my answer. I risked the truth.
“Yes, madame.”
Her eyes ranged over me, summed me up.
“You seem to be a gentleman,” she said.
I bowed.
“Were you told to bring back an answer to this?” She indicated the sheet of paper in her hand.
“I was told merely to hand it to you personally, madame.” Confound Q. Q.! Why the devil hadn't he told me what was in that letter? I should have had at least some idea of what to do or say.
The large gray eyes rested on me again. She pondered something I could not guess at. Then again she smiled.
“Will you not sit down, Mr—Mr—” She finished on a note of interrogation
“Creighton,” I said.
I TOOK a seat on the divan to which she gestured. She sat down also, and the thick cushions sank into a nest under the pressure of her slim tall form in its clinging black gown. Our eyes met. A part of me reminded me insistently that she was a spy, a murderess. Another part of me, deep down, elemental, blindly instinctive, rose in revolt against an accusation that seemed patently absurd. The incongruity was too gross. Could so exquisite a beauty of face and figure harbor the soul whose indictment was contained in Q. Q.'s dossier? Awed in the spell of that beauty, awed by something subtly, indefinably yet more potent in that silence, I contemplated those Madonnalike features, felt again the heart thumping in my breast. Q. Q—Sir Humphrey—both might have been mistaken. Photographs are the most deceptive of evidence. These thoughts flashed through me in a matter of seconds. She was pondering again—pondering perhaps what was required of her. What was required of her? What the devil was in that note?
Suddenly she smiled once more, stretched out her slim white arm to a cigarette-box on a little table, held it out to me.
“Will you smoke, Mr. Creighton?” she asked in that rich, deep, indefinably thrilling voice.
I accepted. She took one herself, reached for the matches, struck a light, held it to my cigarette—her large gray eyes close to mine evoked a peculiar intimate start deep down in me, a sudden surge and tumult of blood, over which I set my teeth—lit her own. She dropped the still lighted match into an antique bronze tripod brazier—Chinese and grotesque—which stood close to my right hand.
“You are going straight back to Mr. Quayne when you leave here?”
“Yes, madame.” It was impossible for me not to answer her in tones of instinctive respect.
She was silent again, contemplative of her cigarette, and then of me. What could Q. Q. have asked of her?
“You are not in a hurry?”
“No, madame.”
A quick look came from those clear gray eyes, large under the raven-black hair, a look that shot through me like a searchlight. It was instantly veiled, replaced by a smile that was languorously serene. She smiled, it seemed, at pleasant thoughts of her own.
I sat, my heart thumping, waiting for her next words. I heard the faint ticking of a clock across the room. And as I waited, I became gradually conscious of a subtle incenselike perfume filling the atmosphere, a diffusion of cloying aromatic sweetness semi-pungent to my nostrils, that made me automatically take a deep breath. It filled my lungs, seemed to mount to my head. I pulled myself out of a momentary dizziness, glanced round at the brazier into which she had thrown her match. A slender stem of gray smoke ascended from the bowl, coiled into a lazy spiral at its summit. Was this some sinister trick? No—impossible—fantastic! My suspicions were running away with me. At the same time, I disliked that slowly curling incense—disliked it with a tingling as of little alarm-bells all over me, with an almost overmastering impulse to spring up, escape from its cloying suffocation. Yet I dared not—dumb in the awe she inspired in me—break her silence. She remained immobile, lost in thoughts, her face a miracle of calm beauty.
I resigned myself. That slender stem of gray smoke continued to ascend, to flatten at its summit into long, lazily spreading wreaths. I breathed deeply in the thickened atmosphere of the room, deeply and yet more deeply. My environment seemed to have gone vaguely misty. And with that subtly pervasive aromatic odor I inhaled at every breath, a numbness in myself—imperceptible at first—crept over me. My brain dulled. I relaxed, luxuriously, languorously, carelessly scornful of the vigilant alertness to which a moment before I had endeavored to hold fast. I lost the clear sense of my identity, forgot why I was sitting in that chair, staring at that beautiful woman, silent and now half-recumbent, upon the settee. And in place of my normal self, obscure primitive impulses stirred in me, suddenly released from origins I had never suspected in myself, disturbing me with their unfamiliar force, with their urge to a fantastic recklessness. They frightened me. It was like a demoniac possession where I was losing control. I found myself yearning for a mad kiss from that exquisite mouth. My arms ached to enfold that lithe, slender figure, to crush it frenziedly in an embrace that would enforce reciprocation. My brain whirled at the thought of it—it seemed that the next moment I should spring forward, hot-breathed upon her—flung from my seat by an impulse beyond civilized volition.
Yet I did not move. I felt something hurt the fingers of my right hand on my knee. It was my cigarette, forgotten, which had burned down to them. With an immense muscular effort, I tossed the stump into the brazier whence the gray smoke ascended. In that last flicker of normal consciousness, I glanced at the watch upon my wrist. To my surprise, it marked only half-past eleven.
THE silence had lasted a time beyond my computation. She turned her large clear eyes upon me, smiled. I perceived her with a vision that was blurred, heard her— deep-toned, thrillingly sonorous—with a dizzy brain.
“You are thinking things about me—unpleasant things?”
“Madame—I—I—” My own voice sounded strange to me.
She leaned forward, exquisitely seductive. Again I felt that primitive reckless urge, almost irresistible, electric, spontaneous, in every fiber of me, repressed it with a last spasm of will.
“I want you to look in my eyes—and see if you can believe them.”
The eyes came close, wide open, eyes of a strange clear gray, the pupils peculiarly fascinating, seeking mine.
“Madame—I—I—” That direct gaze was insupportable. I dropped my own—gasped in a suffocation, my brain in a dizzy whirl.
“Look! Keep on looking!”
I obeyed—obeyed because I had no will left, because obedience was the easiest, the only possible thing—authority emanated from her, mysteriously potent, not to be challenged. I looked into those eyes that focused themselves on mine—looked—kept on looking—saw nothing but those eyes—looked into them for an endless time where I lost perception of all else but those two clear gray eyes holding mine until I could no longer turn away my gaze. My arm jerked of itself—went stiff. An immense fatigue weighed heavy on my shoulders.
“Lean back!”
A last flicker of resistance leaped up in me. “No—no! I mustn't—”
“Lean back!” I ceded, relaxed, felt suddenly comfortable.
It might have been æons afterward that I saw, mistily, as through my eyelashes, the Countess standing tall above me. She smiled and nodded. But she smiled to a sharp-faced, white-haired, intellectual-looking little man, eagerly anxious by her side.
“Yes—I think so.” Her voice came through—through cotton-wool—to my dulled senses. I could not move—had no will to move. I leaned back locked in a complete passivity I accepted with a last tiny fragment of my consciousness.
“Answer me, Mr. Creighton.”
“Yes.” I heard myself answer—a voice that was far away from me—a voice that spoke with surprising (only I had lost the capacity for surprise) promptness of obedience.
And then—and then—I remember nothing more, until—I cannot say to this day, how—I found myself in a taxi, speeding through the London traffic, and knowing quite clearly that I was on my way to Q. Q. at Sir Humphrey Maule's rooms. What had happened in that flat? How did I get into that taxi? I could not remember. I could only remember, very clearly, that I was on my way to Q. Q—that I must get to Q. Q. —for a reason still obscure to me—with the minimum of delay. I felt like a man just awakened from intoxication. What I had done or said was lost to me. I glanced at my watch. It marked just twelve o'clock. What had happened to me in that last half-hour? It was an absolute blank. And then another alarm shot into my mind. Was I really going to Sir Humphrey's flat—or was the taxi-driver taking me, under sinister orders, to some other destination? I had not the least recollection of giving him the address..... I had scarce grappled with this sudden panic when the cab stopped, in the quiet street off St. James' where Sir Humphrey lived, at the number given on the card I took, for verification, from my pocket. I got out.
“Who gave you this address?” I asked, as I paid my fare.
The taxi-driver stared at me.
“You did, sir,” he said.
I HURRIED into the building, cursing at the exhibition I had made of myself. The lift shot me up to the floor occupied by Sir Humphrey. I rang. Sir Humphrey himself opened the door.
I followed him along a short passage, into an unfamiliar sitting-room adorned with Indian trophies. A white sheet was thrown over something shapeless in a chair near the table. In another chair, near a writing-desk, Q. Q. was sitting. He smiled at me.
I stopped. What was it I had to do when I saw Q. Q.? What was the obscure impulse which surged up in me, which made my fingers work nervously of themselves? A cloud was over my brain. I felt my muscles go spontaneously rigid. Q. Q. still smiled.
“A knife, Mr. Creighton?” he said blandly—held out an ivory paper-knife.
I took it automatically, felt my fingers clench tightly over it without my volition—and then, as though a trigger were pulled inside me that discharged a sudden nervous force, with no clear consciousness of what I was doing, but under an impulse that filled me suddenly to the exclusion of all else, I sprang at him, stabbed straight at his chest with the paper-knife. And even as I delivered the blow, I had an obscure half-knowledge that it was all right, that it was only harmless make-believe—a complaisance that reconciled conflicting compulsions.
Sir Humphrey leaped forward with a startled cry, clutched my wrist.
Q. Q. smiled. He had sat motionless, without a tremor.
“Let him go. The wrong knife, Mr. Creighton. Give him that Indian dagger, Maule.”
Sir Humphrey hesitated.
“Give it to him.”
HE obeyed the authoritative command in that quiet voice. With obvious reluctance he handed me an Indian dagger in place of the paper-knife he had wrenched from my grasp. I stood quivering, in a peculiar suspension of thought, of all volition. It was as though I was under a spell. I accepted the dagger, felt my fingers close over its hilt.
“Obey the command given you, Mr Creighton,” said Q. Q. quietly.
At the words, once more I sprang—and as I did so, I realized with an overwhelming shock what it was I had in my hand. what it was I had been commanded to do—murder—murder Q. Q.!” That realization checked me like a bullet striking me in mid-course. In an immense revulsion of all myself, a violent spontaneous shattering recoil from the atrocity I was about to commit, I stopped dead, flung the dagger from me. My brain suddenly cleared. I stood trembling, dazed, bewildered, ready to drop with humiliation. I could have burst into hysterical tears.
“My God, sir!” I stammered. “What—what's the matter with me? Am I mad? Or—or—” I had no explanation to offer, even to myself. The lack of it terrified me I looked at that dagger lying on the floor, and felt suddenly physically sick. I swayed on my feet.
Q. Q. rose quietly from his chair, put his hand on my shoulder.
“All right, Mr. Creighton.” His eyes looked into mine, sent reassurance into me, braced me to command of myself. “You've been making yourself useful for once—that's all.” He smiled. “Sit down in that chair—and pull yourself together.” Once more his eyes looked straight, compellingly, into mine. “You are quite normal again—quite—you understand that?”
“Yes sir,” I gasped, and subsided weakly into the chair.
He turned to Sir Humphrey.
“Well, Maule, do you see the point of that little experiment?”
“I'm damned if I do!” Sir Humphrey was emphatic.
“Then I'll tell you. I sent Mr. Creighton round to your lady-friend of last night—she's the more dangerous of the pair—with a note he was instructed to deliver only into the Countess Stravinsky's own hand. I've no doubt he did so. That note was as follows.” Q. Q. smiled grimly as he paused. “'On behalf of Mr. James Loftus, Mr Quentin Quayne presents his compliments to Fräulein Clara Weidmann.' Rather a shock to the lady, I'm afraid.” He smiled again. “Now do you begin to see?”
“Not in the least.”
Q. Q. turned to me.
“What happened in the flat at Mount Street, Mr. Creighton?”
I tried with all my might to remember—found myself baffled with an absolute blankness. It exasperated me, humiliated me anew.
“I—I'm sorry, sir,” I stammered. “I don't know what's the matter with me—I can't remember anything about it.”
QUAYNE nodded. His voice was kindly as he spoke.
“Never mind. I can guess.” He turned again to Sir Humphrey. “Put yourself in the lady's place. Last night she meets Jimmy Loftus, realizes that she is recognized and eliminates him very cleverly. This morning she learns not only that Quentin Quayne is aware of her identity, but that Quentin Quayne holds her responsible for Loftus' death. Obviously, Quentin Quayne also must be eliminated at once. How is she to do it? One method, at least, particularly after last night, would instantly suggest itself to her—a temptation I dangled in front of her, in fact. You will remember that I carefully told Mr. Creighton not to hurry away. I put an opportunity into her hands.”
“Opportunity?” queried Sir Humphrey, still puzzled.
“Hypnosis,” said Q. Q. succinctly. “You forget her father was professor of psychiatry in Vienna—and she was an apt pupil. She undoubtedly hypnotized Creighton, and gave him the post-hypnotic suggestion, with the safeguard that his memory should be an absolute blank on the matter, that he should stab me directly he saw me. I noticed his fingers working the moment he came into the room. You saw for yourself what happened.”
“Good God!” groaned Sir Humphrey in a sudden anguish. “And they must have hypnotized me also! Made me kill poor Jimmy! I really did it, then! That proves it!”
“It proves nothing of the sort: It proves just the opposite. One of my reasons for making this somewhat dangerous experiment was to establish beyond doubt whether it is or is not possible to hypnotize a subject into committing a genuine murder. It is easy enough to make him act a dummy one—but it is a hotly disputed point whether he will or will not obey a suggestion to do the real thing. Your lady-friend was doubtless quite aware of this—but the case was urgent with her; she had to take a long chance if she was to do anything at all.
“She took it—after all, the possibility has never been definitely disproved. And I took a chance that, being quite ready for him, I might be quicker than Mr. Creighton if he meant business with a real knife in his hand. You saw the difference in his behavior when he had the paper-knife and when he had the real thing. No, Maule,” he concluded decisively, “my experiment proved beyond doubt that whatever hypnotic suggestion was given you last night,—your drinks were drugged, of course,—you did not murder Jimmy Loftus. If the thing can be done at all, it could be done with Creighton. She tried. It can not be done.”
Sir Humphrey mopped his brow.
“You're sure?”
“Quite sure!”
The big man stared at him.
“Thank God!” he ejaculated. “But how do you account for my instinctive conviction that I did do it?”
Q. Q. smiled.
“It is quite easy under hypnosis to make a man wake up with the belief that he has committed a murder—especially if you arrange the circumstantial evidence convincingly.... May I use your telephone?”
“Yes—yes—of course.” Sir Humphrey was still bewildered. “What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to get your friends round here. Very clever people!” Q. Q. smiled again as he picked up the telephone. “But I think they'll find this is a case of diamond cut diamond.” He gave a number, waited. “Hallo!.... Is that Sebright?.... Oh, Sebright, a murder was committed last night at Sir Humphrey Maule's flat—yes, St. James! I'll give you the details presently..... Yes—I want you to come round—but on your way, I want you to call at 504 Mount Street and bring along a couple of Russian people, Count Murovieff and his daughter the Countess Stravinsky. Listen—and I'll explain. These two people were guests of Sir Humphrey Maule last night. They left soon after eleven. The murder was committed after that hour..... Precisely.... They have an alibi. Now, I want you to explain to them that their presence is necessary to verify whether the room is or is not as they left it at eleven. You can tell them, if you like, that the murderer is known. I think you'll have no difficulty in persuading them to come along; they cannot refuse their assistance in elucidating the circumstances of the crime. But it is most important that they should accompany you—and by the way, don't mention my name..... Good! You'll find me in Sir Humphrey's flat expecting you.”
He hung up the receiver, turned to us with a smile. “Now, we'll soon clear up all this little business.”
SIR HUMPHREY had been pacing up and down the room. He swung round to Q. Q.
“I'm still bewildered, Quayne. What really happened in this room last night?”
Q. Q. smiled at him.
“You've heard of dhatura, Maule?”
“Of course I have. Favorite drug of the Indian criminal. Seeds rather like capsicum. Usually administered chopped up. Leaves no trace in the human body. Sends the victim into insensibility, and if he doesn't die, he wakes up minus his memory—can't remember a thing about it.”
“Precisely. Your two Russian friends are, however, a little more refined in their methods than the ordinary Indian criminal. They didn't want the police to find you and Loftus lying dead here, and they themselves naturally under suspicion. They wanted Loftus dead and you self-accused of the murder. So they put into your whiskies and sodas a little—not crude dhatura, but a preparation of the drug which is considerably more subtle in its effect; it leaves the victim extremely susceptible to hypnotic influence at the same time that it embroils his memory and paralyzes him into a semi-insensible immobility. A drop or two would suffice, and it would take about ten minutes to have its effect. They did this just before they left. You accompanied them downstairs. On the way, they picked your pocket of your keys. You came back, found the door shut, and—you remember—it was some little time before you could get Loftus to open it. The drug was already working in him, of course. You thought that both he and you had had a little too much to drink. You both went back into the sitting-room—not very steadily, I expect—and sat down. You were both sitting there, quite helpless, when at a time convenient to your departed friends—perhaps two hours later, when everybody in the place had gone to bed—they returned, let themselves in at the outer door and then this door with your keys, and found you nicely ready for them.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Sir Humphrey. “And then—”
“And then they hunted for your revolver, found it, shot Loftus as he sat paralyzed in his chair, put the revolver on the floor after smearing your finger with the burnt powder which had escaped from its not very closely fitting barrel, put the keys back in your pocket, and gave you a detailed hypnotic suggestion that you had done the whole business yourself, that you would sleep till the morning, and wake up with such a full conviction of your guilt that you would surrender yourself to the police. Very neat, I think.”
“Phew!” Sir Humphrey whistled. He was still only half-convinced, however, and showed it. “All this is damned difficult to prove in a court of law, Quayne. What do you propose to do when you get those people here?”
Q. Q. smiled again.
“I told you this was a case of diamond cut diamond. You'll see. They should be here in a minute or two now.”
WE sat and waited, we three—and that sheeted something in the armchair, which, in my state of broken nerve, I was grateful not to see uncovered. The minutes dragged. The ringing of the doorbell—when it came—was almost a relief.
“You go, Maule,” said Q. Q.
Sir Humphrey went to open to the new arrivals. Q. Q. turned to the chair by the table, carefully withdrew that shapelessly humped covering, revealed a once good-looking man crumpled in the seat, his head forward upon his chest, dried blood plastered on his face from a wound in the temple. I gripped myself in a sudden sickening, sat short-breathed in suspense.
The next moment Sir Humphrey was again at the door, speaking to those who followed him.
“In here,” he said. He made way politely for the lady.
She entered. I can't describe what sprang up in me at the sight once more of that quiet Madonnalike beauty. It was a wild, craven panic of all my deepest being. I gasped lest those great eyes, pregnant still with mysterious potency under the little cloche hat she wore, should turn my way. Behind her was the little intellectual-faced man. And behind him was Sebright.
She took a step or two into the room, saw the corpse in the chair, and then her eyes switched to Q. Q. standing impassively close to it—from Q. Q. to me, fascinated where I sat. She must have recognized him, as she recognized me—recognized also, in a flash, that her plan had failed. Q. Q. was still alive—grimly smiling.
She swayed, went deathly pale.
The little old man sprang forward, caught her in his arms.
“Poor lady! Too much of a shock to her seeing that in the chair, Quayne,” said Sebright with reproof in his voice.
But Q. Q. ignored him. He also had sprung forward, caught at the lady, seemed to be mixed up in almost a struggle with the little man as he took her into his own stronger arms.
“All right,” he said. “Let me have her. Shell be all right in a minute. Brandy, Maule.”
He deposited her carefully in an armchair, turned to take the brandy-decanter Sir Humphrey held out to him.
“A glass?” Q. Q.'s eyes ranged round the room. “Ah, there's one!” He went across to a side-table, poured out a stiff peg of brandy, took it back to the woman. She waved it away. “I insist!” he said, firmly but not unkindly, held it to her mouth, poured some, whether she willed or no, down her throat. She gasped and choked with it.
Sir Humphrey was explaining to Sebright what he knew of the crime.
“I woke up at seven o'clock this morning in this room to—to see that!” he said, gesturing to the corpse in the chair.
“Loftus!” exclaimed Sebright. “But who could have done it?”
“I did!”
I jumped with the surprise of it. It was Sir Humphrey who had spoken—automatically—with full conviction.
Sebright also had jumped.
“You?” he cried. “You, Sir Humphrey?”
Sir Humphrey stood confused.
“I—I really don't know why I said that!” he stammered. “It—it was like something saying it for me.”
Sebright gave him a glance of deep suspicion. Q. Q. interposed.
“All right, Sebright. He didn't mean it. He didn't do it. You'll understand presently.”
Sebright looked altogether unconvinced. He turned to the little white-haired man.
“You left Sir Humphrey alone with Mr. Loftus last night, I understand, Count?” he said, professionally sharp-voiced.
“Yes. At five minutes past eleven. Sir Humphrey accompanied us to the street, put us into a taxi. Is not that so, Sir Humphrey?” The little old man was suave, pleasantly soft in his tones, a little nervous, however, for he took a white silk handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his mouth in a finically dandified gesture.
“Yes,” said Sir Humphrey. I saw the sweat pearling on his forehead. “Yes—that's quite right.”
“No one else was in the flat apparently,” continued Sebright, severely. “Your position requires a considerable amount of explanation, Sir Humphrey.”
Sir Humphrey stammered.
“I—I—” He looked helplessly toward Q. Q.
At that moment I uttered a startled cry. A peculiar expression had come over the face of the beautiful woman in the chair. The vivid personality had gone out of it. She leaned back limply, stared in front of her with eyes that one guessed saw nothing—seemed as if in a trance.
THE little white-haired old man jumped forward again. Q. Q. restrained him.
“All right, Count. Please do not interfere. This is a most fortunate little accident, I think.” He smiled pleasantly as he quietly pushed the little old man back. “I had an intuition from the moment I saw your daughter that she was clairvoyant. As you see, she has gone into a trance—quite harmless—overcome perhaps by the sinister influences with which this room must still be soaked. Let us avail ourselves of it—in the interests of justice.” He smiled again. “Your daughter will perhaps be able to show us precisely what happened in this room last night.”
A frightened look had come into the little old man's eyes.
“I—I protest!” he said sharply, making an effort to assert a personal dignity. “I protest against your trying possibly dangerous and certainly quite illegal experiments with my daughter!”
Q. Q. smiled at him.
“I am afraid, with all due apology, that I must ignore your protests, Count. A murder was committed in this room last night by very clever and quite unscrupulous people. We cannot afford a too scrupulous legality in dealing with them. A case of diamond cut diamond, in fact.” He smiled again, turned to Sebright. His manner suddenly changed. “Will you please see that this man does not interfere, Sebright? I give him formally into your charge as Dr. Hugo Weidmann, against whom there is a warrant as accessory to the murder of Henry Paulin, Mr. Loftus' chief assistant, in January 1917.”
“It's false!” screamed the little man.
“It is true,” replied Q. Q. imperturbably. “Quick, Sebright! Hold him—before he tries any tricks! And gag him if he begins to utter a word!”
Sebright, after one quick stare of amazement, leaped to the emergency. In a moment he was by the side of the man, held him fast.
“And now,” continued Q. Q., with a grimly bland smile, “we will proceed with the experiment.” He turned to Sir Humphrey. “Pull up the chair from which you found this morning you had fallen, Maule, into precisely the position of last night. Sit down in it and do not move. You were drugged, remember. Behave as if you were still drugged.”
SIR HUMPHREY obeyed, pulling up the chair, sat down in it, facing that dead body gruesomely motionless at the end of the table. His blanched countenance looked almost drugged, in fact, in the tension of the moment.
Q. Q. reverted to the lady. He lifted her hand. It lay limp in his.
“Fräulein Clara Weidmann!” he said, in a voice of quiet authority. “You will respond to my commands, and to my commands only! Look into my eyes!”
The woman sighed. She moved her head slightly, stared into Q. Q.'s eyes.
Q. Q. went on.
“You will hear my voice when I speak to you, and only when I speak to you. You will hear no one else. You will see no one in this room except Sir Humphrey Maule and Mr. Loftus. Any other individuals will make no impression whatever on your consciousness. It will seem to you that they are not present. Last night, you and your father left these rooms soon after eleven o'clock. It will seem to you that you are back at that hour, that you are living over again whatever happened after it.” He turned to Sebright. “You will note, Sebright, that I am giving the lady no specific suggestions of what did happen.”
The little old man wriggled half out of Sebright's grasp
“Clara!” he cried gaspingly. “Clara! Listen to my voice! Clara! You will obey me—me only!”
“Gag him, Sebright!” said Q. Q. Sebright clapped a big hand over the man's mouth.
The woman in the chair, however, seemed not to have heard his voice. She remained immobile.
“Now then, Fräulein Weidmann—stand up!” Q. Q. spoke quietly, but authoritatively.
She stood up.
“You have said good-night to Sir Humphrey and Mr. Loftus. Where are you?”
“In the taxi.” She spoke in a far-away voice. “I cannot stand in it.”
“Sit down, then.” She sat on the arm of the chair. “Talk as you talked then.”
“Du hast die Schlüssel?” The words came automatically, spontaneously, a look of eager cunning suddenly vivid in her beautiful face. “Famos!” She gabbled quick German I could not catch. “Ja—ja. Zwei Stunden—ja—sicher!”
“Two hours,” said Q. Q. “Those two hours have now passed. It is a quarter past one. Where are you now?”
“Here.” She stood like one in a trance.
“How did you get here?”
“We let ourselves in with the keys we took from Sir Humphrey's pocket.” She spoke like one who answers questions in her sleep.
Focused on her though I was, I saw, from the corner of my eye, the little old man wriggling impotently in Sebright's strong grasp.
“You are living through that experience again. It is, to your consciousness, a quarter past one. Where did you stand when the clock marked that hour?”
“We were just coming in the door.”
Q. Q. led her—almost pathetically somnambulistic—across to the door, released her.
“Behave just as you did then. It is real to you—the experience all over again.”
ONCE more she came suddenly to an uncannily vivid life. She crept forward stealthily from the door, turned to glance over her shoulder as at some one following her, made a beckoning gesture. She whispered swift foreign words. I caught the German for: “Yes—yes. Helpless—both of them. Quick!”
Q. Q. and I stood back with Sebright and his still silently struggling. prisoner, left the center of the room clear save for the two figures of Loftus and Sir Humphrey sitting motionless in their chairs. We watched her come across the room, as though watching a drama on the stage.
She went to the writing-desk, pulled open first one drawer and then another in a hurried search for something, uttered a little low cry of satisfaction, turned from it. In her hand was a revolver, Sir Humphrey's own revolver. (Q. Q., I remembered, had carefully inquired after its normal resting-place, put it back during the time we waited.) She held it out to some one invisible.
“Here it is!” she said, in rapid, low-voiced German, her whole being keyed to a breathless tension. “Quick! You do it!”
She released her hold upon the weapon, and it dropped upon the floor. But to her it must have seemed that the invisible person had taken it. She gave a little involuntary jump—uncannily dramatic in that silence—as though at a detonation.
“Gott!” she whispered in German. “What a noise!” Then she sprang toward that collapsed figure of Loftus in his chair, peered at it closely, nodded her head quickly in reassurance. “Tot!”
She looked round, looked at Sir Humphrey, his eyes staring and breathing deeply as he sat in his chair. She went across to him, took up his hand, spoke in English.
“You hear me?” she said sharply.
“Yes.” Sir Humphrey gasped as he looked at her
“Look into my eyes!”
He looked, kept staring at them for a minute or two of silence in which she fixed her gaze on his.
“When you wake up, you will know that you killed your friend Loftus. I tell you how it happened. After putting us in the taxi, you came back here, went straight to your desk, took out your revolver and shot him where he sat. You will not wake until seven o'clock. You will remember nothing about us except seeing our taxi go away down the street. But you will be so sure that you shot Loftus that you will give yourself up to the police tomorrow morning, and whenever the crime is mentioned you will accuse yourself. You understand?”
“Yes.” Sir Humphrey's voice came from far away.
“Good God!” exclaimed Sebright.
Fascinated by the drama he was watching, he must for the moment have relaxed his grasp upon his prisoner. I saw the little man wriggle—and the next moment there was a deafening detonation, a faint film of smoke. The woman staggered, went head-long to the floor.
Q. Q. jumped to her, twisted her over, shook his head.
“Through the heart,” he said.
I turned, with him, to look at the little old man from whom, at that moment, Sebright was wrenching a small automatic pistol. Dr. Hugo Weidmann snarled at us.
“Better for her than your English law,” he said. He relapsed suddenly into cool cynicism. “All right, Mr. Quayne. You've won. We did it. But before I go with this gentleman,”—he jerked his head toward Sebright—“I'd like to know—professionally—what spell you put on my daughter?”
Q. Q. smiled at him.
“Simple, my dear sir. When we were both assisting her in her sudden and not unnatural faintness, I picked your pocket of the little vial I guessed you carried there for emergencies,”—he held it up,—“the stuff with which you drugged Loftus and Maule last night. And I gave her a good stiff dose of it in her brandy. As I have already remarked—diamond cut diamond, eh?” He ignored the little old man's savage curse, turned to Sir Humphrey, sitting there strangely stiff in his chair, shook him by the shoulder. “Wake up, Maule!” he said jocularly. “Seven o'clock!”
SIR HUMPHREY stirred, looked about him, jumped up with a sudden horror on his features. His eyes met Sebright's. “All right, Sir Humphrey,” said Sebright. “We know now who killed poor Mr. Loftus.”
Sir Humphrey stood like one dazed.
“Yes,” he said. “God forgive me—I did—I know I did! Though I don't know why! Take me in charge!”
We all stared.
“Good Lord!” said Q. Q. “I believe she's hypnotized him again!”
Sebright looked not only bewildered but bad-tempered.
“All this,” he grumbled, “is going to sound fantastic in a court of law, Quayne.”
“Never mind, Inspector,” said a gasping, croaking voice. “It wont come to a court of law.” It was the little old man who spoke His face was livid, dreadful, with foam at the corners of his mouth. “When I first came in—saw Quayne—I—I guessed—it was—hands up. Took—precautions.” He grinned, horribly. “Little glass capsule—held in mouth—too—too clever for you—” He wilted suddenly in Sebright's strong grasp—went down, lifeless, upon the floor when that grasp was released.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1941, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 82 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse