John Carr - The Reader Is Warned
His age might have been the middle forties. He had a hard-looking head with homely-looking sandy hair; a broad, homely face with leathery wrinkles round the jaw, darkish from hot suns; a broad nose, and light eyes under sandy brows. You saw no sign of strong intellect in that face. There was even a touch of heaviness or coarseness round the mouth. But Herman Pennik had a habit of being incon-spicuous in many things.
He spoke apologetically, with a slight ducking motion of the shoulders.
'How do you do, sir? I am sorry. I could not help overhearing what was said.'
Sanders returned his formal courtesy.
'I hope I was not too frank, Mr Pennik. You don't mind?'
'Not at all. You understand, I hardly know why I am here myself, not being much endowed with the social graces. But Mrs Constable wished me to come, and here I am.'
He smiled; and Sanders felt the pull of a curious psychological reaction. In spite of righting against it, the very reputation Pennik had created for himself made Sanders uneasy. It surrounded Pennik like an aura; it had to be shaken off; it was formidable and disturbing. It prompted the insidious thought: What if this fellow can read my mind ? For there was certainly a change in the atmosphere,
'Shall we sit down ?' Pennik suggested suddenly. 'Couldn't I get you a chair, Miss Keen? Wouldn't you be more comfortable than sitting on the rim of that fountain?'
'I'm quite comfortable, thanks.'
·You're - er - quite sure ?'
'Quite sure, thank you.' t
Though she smiled, Sanders felt that she also sensed another quality about Mr Herman Pennik. His manner underwent a change when he spoke to her; his words were clumsy; he had the air of an embarrassed small boy; and afterwards he sat down hastily in a wicker chair.
Immediately he was easy again, though Sanders noticed that he took a deep breath.
'We were just telling the doctor,' began Lawrence Chase, tall and lean and now revealed as going a trifle bald, 'about some of the things you've done.'
Pennik made a deprecating gesture.
'Thank you, Mr Chase. And did he seem - responsive?'
'To tell you the truth, I think he was a little shocked.' ' Indeed? May I ask, sir, why you should be shocked?'
Sanders had begun to feel dogged; it was as though he and not Pennik were on the defensive. At the same time, he wished the fellow would keep those damned eyes away from him. And curse all these undercurrents. All the time this was going on, Sanders found himself catching Hilary Keen's eye, being annoyed with himself, and looking away again.
'I should hardly call it shocked,' he said dryly. 'Startled, if you like. Any person who deals with realities like anatomy -'
'Tut, tut,' said Chase. 'Keep it clean.'
'Any scientist, then, is opposed to a claim which -' He paused. What he wanted to say was, 'a claim which upsets the uniformity of Nature,' but he realized that this would sound pompous and priggish enough to raise a grin. 'To a claim like that.'
'I see,' said Pennik. 'And therefore science refuses to investigate it because the results might prove inconvenient?'
'Not at all.'
Pennik's homely brow was ruffled; but bis eye had a twinkle.
'Yet you yourself acknowledge, sir, that successful experiments in telepathy have been carried out in the past?'
'To a certain extent. But to nowhere near the extent you claim to have carried them.'
'You object to my making progress?-Surely, sir, that is as unreasonable as saying that because the first experiments in wireless telegraphy were incomplete though successful the matter had better be dropped?'
(Be careful. He can give you points and a beating if you let him go on like that. The argument by false analogy is an old one.)
'That's what I was coming to, Mr Pennik. Wireless telegraphy is based on principles which can be explained. Can you explain yours ?'
'To the proper listener.'
‘Not to me?'
'Sir,' answered Pennik, with a heavy, honest, disturbed look, 'try to understand me. You think I am arguing falsely because I argue by comparisons. But when a thing is entirely new, How else can I argue except by comparisons ? How else can I make my meaning clear? Suppose I tried to explain the principles of wireless telegraphy to a - a savage from Central Asia. I beg your pardon. Comparisons are invidious. Suppose I tried to explain the principles of wireless to a highly cultured Roman of the first century a.d. To him the principles would sound as mysterious as the result; the principles would even sound as incredible as the result. That is my unfortunate position when people demand blueprints.
'Given time, I can explain it to you. The basis is, roughly, that thought, or what we call thought-waves, have a physical force not disimilar to sound. But if it would take five weeks for an educated Roman to begin to understand wireless telegraphy, do not be surprised if you fail to understand wireless telepathy in five minutes.'
Sanders disregarded this.
'You maintain,' he insisted, 'that thought-waves have a physical force like sound?' 'I do.'
'But even sound, scientifically, can be measured and weighed.'
- 'Of course. Notes in sound can shatter glass or even kill a man. The same, naturally, applies to thought.'
He spoke with a kind of toiling lucidity. Sanders's first notion - that the man was mad - he knew in his heart to be wrong.
'For the moment, Mr Pennik,' he said, 'we will pass over the question of whether you might be able to kill a man by thinking about him, like a Bantu witch-doctor. Instead let's get down to plain words that even a person of my limited intelligence can understand. What exactly do you do?’
'I will give you an illustration,' replied Pennik simply. 'If you will concentrate your thoughts on something - anything at all, but particularly a person or idea that bulks large in .your life - I will tell you what you are thinking about.'
This was something like a challenge.
'You claim to be able to do that with everyone?'
‘With nearly everyone. Of course, if you do not assist me,
and try to hide what you are really thinking about, it is much more difficult. But it can be managed.'
It was the complete simplicity of the man which shook Sanders's nerve. He found his own thoughts scattering wildly, bolting into corners, in case they should be seen.
'And you want me to test you?'
'If you will.'
'All right; begin,' said Sanders, and braced himself. 'Then since you have ... no, no, no!' Pennik said rather pettishly. 'That will not do.’ 'What will not do?'
'You were trying hard to sweep your mind clear of all genuine or important thoughts; mentally, you were rushing about to bolt and bar every door.' Don't be afraid of me. I will not hurt you. - For instance, you had decided to concentrate on the marble bust of some scientist (Lister, I believe) which stands on a mantelpiece in someone's library.'
It was absolutely true.
There are some emotions whose effect is difficult to gauge because they are drawn from no source that we could ever have expected. To be 'caught’ in a thought is bad enough; to be caught by some friend who knows you and suddenly penetrates the defence with a guess rouses resentment and a certain helplessness. But to be instantly pinned to the wall, the moment your mind has lighted on the smallest triviality, by a complete stranger who looks at you like a dog who has just retrieved a stick -
'No, no,' urged Pennik, lifting his forefinger and waggling it earnestly. 'May I ask you to give me a broader opportunity than that? The bust of Lister means nothing to you. It might have been the Achilles Statue or the kitchen boiler. Will you try again ?'
‘Wait,' interposed Hilary from her seat by the fountain. Her small hands were closed tightly round a handkerchief. ‘Was he right?'
'He was.'
'Blimey,' muttered Lawrence Chase. 'Women and children will now leave the court-room. As I told you in my letter, Sanders, I didn't see how it could be a trick. It isn't as though be asked you to write on little bits of paper or anything like that.'
'A trick. A trick, a trick,' said Herman Pennik, only half humorously. For Sanders felt that under this dignified lightness Pennik was trying very hard; that deep inside him had been touched some huge inner spring of conceit. In short, he was showing off. And he might continue to show off. 'A trick, a trick, a trick! That is all you — we English seem to think about. Well, Doctor, will you try again?'
‘Yes. All right. Go on.'
‘Then I will try to . .. ah, that is better,' said Pennik. He had been shading his eyes with his hand, and now he peered through the fingers. 'You have played fair and concentrated on an emotion.'
Almost without hesitation, he proceeded to tell about Marcia Blystone on the round-the-world cruise with Kessler.
It was a curious sensation, Sanders felt; as though he were being physically pressed upon, as though facts were being pulled out of him like teeth.
‘I - er - hope you don't mind this,' Pennik broke off. 'As a rule I should not have been so frank. My motto has always been that of Queen Elizabeth: video et taceo'. I see and am silent. But you asked me to tell you what you were concentrating on. We could carry it further if we cared. There were, too, things you were trying very hard to conceal from me .. : He hesitated. 'Shall I go on?'
'Go on,' said Sanders through his teeth.
'I should prefer -'
'Go on.'
'It is more recent,' Pennik told him, with an abrupt and surprising satyr-like look. 'Since you arrived at this house you have been violently attracted to Miss Keen there, perhaps on an emotional reaction. This attraction is the cause of your mood. You have been wondering whether Miss Keen may not be more suited to you than the other young lady.'
‘'I knew it!' said Lawrence Chase, jumping to his feet.
Hilary did not speak; it was as though she had not heard. She continued to look incuriously over her shoulder at the glimmering spray of water in the fountain. The light shone on her rich dark-brown hair and the line of her neck as she turned her head. But her obvious start of astonishment was caused Jess by the words than the tone in which Pennik spoke them.
'Am I correct, Doctor?' Pennik asked, colourless again. Sanders did not reply.
'So you admit it,' said Chase. 'All right, Mr Pennik: what am I thinking about?' 'I'd rather not say.'
'Oh? Now will someone just tell me why I am always accused of having a low mind? Why I am always supposed to be thinking -'
'Nobody said you were,' Sanders pointed out mildly. "That would appear to be the trouble with this game. Our consciences are all over us.'
'Well, then, what is Hilary thinking about?' Chase challenged. 'What is the guilty secret she's been hiding all these weeks I've known her?'
Fortunately, they were interrupted. From the dark interior of the house, past a glass door flanked by velvet curtains, they heard hurrying footsteps and the sound of a rather breathless voice calling to them. The curtains were opened by a little, smiling, hurrying woman with her hat on crooked. This could be nobody but their hostess; and Sanders welcomed her presence with a surge of relief. He was beginning to realize that this game of thought-reading could not be carried too far, or it would end in a smash; yet, with ordinary human perversity, everybody insisted on carrying it too far. That was the trouble. And it occurred to him to wonder: Look here, just what is going to happen before this week-end is over?
CHAPTER III
'I'm so sorry to have left you alone,' said Mina Constable. 'And I'm afraid things are so disorganized I don't know which way to turn.'
Sanders liked the look of her: she restored sane values. Mina Constable had a friendliness and sincerity which seemed quite genuine. She was small and quick-moving, with a wiry strength insensible to fatigue. She had large imaginative eyes, dark-brown in colour; a dark complexion; and black hair cut close to her head. Sanders judged her to be very fashionably dressed, though her hat was put on anyhow. Speak to her, and she radiated charm. Yet he saw that traces of a bad attack of malaria were still present: in the pupils of the eye, and in the difficulty she had in holding to her handbag.
Mina Constable glanced quickly over her shoulder.
'I - er - rushed on ahead to tell you,' she went on in the same rather breathless voice. 'I want to warn you, you mustn't mind Sam. That is, if he seems in a mood. He's had a filthy day, poor old boy; what with that smash and now not being able to get anybody to do for us over the weekend. No, the servants are all right, thank goodness; chipper as you please, and it is rotten for them. You do understand, don't you? Oh!'
Catching sight of Sanders, she broke off. It was Chase who performed the introductions. And Chase, perhaps because he was off guard, showed an unusual lack of tact.
'You needn't flatter yourself, Mina,' he said heartily, putting his arm round her shoulders. 'Here's a fellow who never even heard of you. You're not as widely known as you think.'
'I never supposed I was,' said Mina composedly, and smiled at Sanders.
'He never heard,' pursued Chase with relish, 'of My Lady Ishtar or Satan in the Suburbs or even - by the way, our Mina even tried her hand at a detective story. But I still insist it wasn't very successful. I absolutely refuse to believe in that bloke who carted a corpse all over London and then convinced 'em it really died in Hyde Park. I also think the heroine was a chump, losing her head all the time. Still, if the heroine usually wasn't a chump I suppose there wouldn't be any story; so that's all right.'
This touched Sanders where he lived.
'I beg your pardon: you wrote The Double Alibi? I certainly do know you. And I don't agree with Chase at all. You've probably been asked this till you're sick of it, but where did you get the idea for the poison you used there? It's new, and it's scientifically sound.'
'Oh, I don't know,' Mina said vaguely. 'You pick people up. They tell you things.' She seemed anxious to change the subject. 'It's jo nice of you to come down, but I'm afraid we've let you in for a most awful week-end. How do you like Fourways? It's a lovely old house, isn't it?' she asked, with the candour of pure pride. 'Ever since I was a child I've wanted a place like this. Oh, I know people are supposed to groan when you show it to them; but it suits me. I like the atmosphere. So does Sam; he's so understanding about things like that. Larry, do go and get us some drinks, that's a good fellow. I'm dying for a cocktail, and I know Sam will want a Gin-and-It. Er - won't you, my dear?'
She turned round cheerfully, and Sam Constable followed her into the conservatory.
Mr Samuel Hobart Constable was about to speak, but checked himself abruptly when he saw a stranger. He also was breathing hard. Even the way he checked himself from speaking was ostentatious, as though he could speak but pointedly wouldn't out of good manners. He had been pictured as something of an ogre, but Sanders saw him as only fussy and touchy in the late fifties: over-fed, over-pampered, over-opinionated. Though not tall, he was still strikingly handsome in a grey-and-pink-and-white manner. And even in country tweeds he was so carefully dressed that the disarrangement of a crease would have been painful. After the
