position with a drop or two of liquid rubber. Remove the pipe’s mouthpiece. Pour in atropine to fill the stem and the part of the bowl under the watch-glass. Keeping the pipe bowl-downwards, replace the mouthpiece and fill the bowl, above the watch-glass, with partly-burned tobacco for camouflage. Carry the pipe bowl-downwards in a waistcoat pocket. When you’ve used it, in the completely natural-seeming way I’ve described, to poison the beer (and if you can’t contrive, as a teetotaller ripe for conversion, to get Uncle to offer you a taste of his beer, you’re hopeless), poke about in the bowl with one of those metal things pipe-smokers use, thereby smashing the thin glass inside. Knock out glass and tobacco into the fireplace, refill the pipe and smoke it, wait confidently for the police. You will not, of course, have on your person anything that could possibly hold liquid atropine (being a lab-boy with a scientific bent, you’re aware that analysis can and will distinguish between the liquid and powdered forms), and if either Gillian or Laurie is carrying such a container, so much the worse for them.”
“Odious young devil.” Humbleby stood up. “You’re obviously right, but to clinch it, I’ll go back now and let our laboratory have that pipe. If it’s been used to hold atropine, there’ll still be traces left.”
Fen nodded. “Ring me up here, will you?” he said, “and let me know.”
It was little more than three-quarters of an hour later when the call came through. “Quite right,” said Humbleby from New Scotland Yard. “No doubt about it at all. He’s under arrest already.”
“How old is he, by the way?”
“Unfortunately only seventeen.”
“You mean they won’t hang him. A pity. By the time he’s forty, he’ll be let out and able to do it again. Such are the victories of enlightenment. But don’t, for heaven’s sake, tell him it was I who suggested the method to you. Twenty years hence he’ll be so altered I shan’t be able to recognise him—and even in my dotage I hope still to be drinking beer.”
The Little Room
“And that door there,” said Fen: “where does that lead to?”
They had toured the whole house from cellar to attic and were now back in the large, draughty entrance-hall. Startled, Mrs. Danvers peered about her. “Which, the which,” she said incoherently.
“That one.” Fen pointed. “Of course, if it’s private—”
“Not at all.” Mrs. Danvers rallied and became brisk again. “I quite imagined I’d shown it you already. But really, there are so many rooms…” Changing course abruptly, like a small yacht in a high wind, she marched back in the direction indicated. “So very many,” she added on a note of artificial complacency, “that I feel sure that your—your—”
“My boys,” Fen prompted her, following.
“That your boys would fit in excellently.” And Mrs. Danvers gave a little nod, for emphasis, as she unbolted the door in question and threw it open. “Yes,” she said brightly, in the tone of one who has as yet no notion what words are to follow. “Yes… Well, here it is, then. You could use it for—for—well, for a store-room, perhaps.”
“Ah,” said Fen, But he could distinguish very little, he found, of what was being shown him. “Is there a light, by any chance?”
“Of course.” She switched it on, revealing a musty square box of an apartment with a boarded floor and all the windows bricked up; there was no furniture in it of any kind. “By fixing shelves,” said Mrs. Danvers, “it would be possible—”
“Just so.” Fen was already backing away. “Very nice indeed.”
“Or you might even turn it into a little museum.” A Black Museum, Fen supposed: he sat on the Committee of a Society for the regeneration of delinquent youth, and it was their search for a new Probationary Home which had brought him to this ill-planned mansion. “Ah,” he said again, unimaginatively; but Mrs. Danvers, who
“Odious young devil.” Humbleby stood up. “You’re obviously right, but to clinch it, I’ll go back now and let our laboratory have that pipe. If it’s been used to hold atropine, there’ll still be traces left.”
Fen nodded. “Ring me up here, will you?” he said, “and let me know.”
It was little more than three-quarters of an hour later when the call came through. “Quite right,” said Humbleby from New Scotland Yard. “No doubt about it at all. He’s under arrest already.”
“How old is he, by the way?”
“Unfortunately only seventeen.”
“You mean they won’t hang him. A pity. By the time he’s forty, he’ll be let out and able to do it again. Such are the victories of enlightenment. But don’t, for heaven’s sake, tell him it was I who suggested the method to you. Twenty years hence he’ll be so altered I shan’t be able to recognise him—and even in my dotage I hope still to be drinking beer.”
The Little Room
“And that door there,” said Fen: “where does that lead to?”
They had toured the whole house from cellar to attic and were now back in the large, draughty entrance-hall. Startled, Mrs. Danvers peered about her. “Which, the which,” she said incoherently.
“That one.” Fen pointed. “Of course, if it’s private—”
“Not at all.” Mrs. Danvers rallied and became brisk again. “I quite imagined I’d shown it you already. But really, there are so many rooms…” Changing course abruptly, like a small yacht in a high wind, she marched back in the direction indicated. “So very many,” she added on a note of artificial complacency, “that I feel sure that your—your—”
“My boys,” Fen prompted her, following.
“That your boys would fit in excellently.” And Mrs. Danvers gave a little nod, for emphasis, as she unbolted the door in question and threw it open. “Yes,” she said brightly, in the tone of one who has as yet no notion what words are to follow. “Yes… Well, here it is, then. You could use it for—for—well, for a store-room, perhaps.”
“Ah,” said Fen, But he could distinguish very little, he found, of what was being shown him. “Is there a light, by any chance?”
“Of course.” She switched it on, revealing a musty square box of an apartment with a boarded floor and all the windows bricked up; there was no furniture in it of any kind. “By fixing shelves,” said Mrs. Danvers, “it would be possible—”
“Just so.” Fen was already backing away. “Very nice indeed.”
“Or you might even turn it into a little museum.” A Black Museum, Fen supposed: he sat on the Committee of a Society for the regeneration of delinquent youth, and it was their search for a new Probationary Home which had brought him to this ill-planned mansion. “Ah,” he said again, unimaginatively; but Mrs. Danvers, who
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