Dr. Hyssop, the Master of All Saints College, was as warm and human as Dr. Warren was austere and formal. We could hear his benevolent voice booming out goodnights to his guests as we stood on the porch waiting to be admitted. The door opened at length and we saw the fine leonine head (he justifiably prided himself on his resemblance to his old friend, George Meredith), the snow-white beard and kindly, tranquil eyes. Dr. Warren and I stood aside for his guests to pass, and I scrutinized the ladies carefully in the wild hope that the Profile might be among them or that I should see some young woman whom I might have mistaken for her on the staircase that night. No, they were all middle-aged or elderly and there was not a soul there, man or woman, that I did not know by sight; each of the ladies was as far beyond my suspicions as Caesar’s wife herself or the Master’s only surviving granddaughter, who was acting as hostess.

  After the party had dispersed, Dr. Hyssop turned to give me one of his famous electric handshakes.

  “Well, Hilary, my boy,” he said warmly. “This is indeed a pleasure. And how is my old friend, Aloysius Fenton? Is he still championing the cause of the desolate and the oppressed on the bench of the Supreme Court?”

  I told him hastily that my father was well. As I smiled into that kindly face I felt instinctively that I wanted to put off the bad news about Baumann as long as possible. Dr. Warren had no such scruples, however, and as soon as we had seated ourselves in the Master’s comfortable study, he launched forth into an account of the South African’s death.

  While he was talking I forgot for a moment the enigma of Baumann. My eyes wandered round the fascinating room. It was warm and personal as the character of its owner. Its untidiness and haphazard arrangement gave it a charm of its own; periods and personalities were inextricably blended in a glorious hodgepodge. There was a signed portrait of Lord Tennyson (next to one of Bernard Shaw), another of Thomas Hardy, affectionately inscribed “To Mart from Tom.” A very recent Matisse hung on a William Morris wallpaper; a bust of Meredith adorned one corner of the room; in the other was Rodin’s famous head of Dr. Hyssop himself. The mantelpiece was full of photographs. These I examined with interest; and I caught the face of my father, looking absurdly youthful and unimportant despite his court robes.

  The sight of him brought me back with a start to the unfortunate present. Dr. Warren had finished his tale, and the Master was making clucking noises like a distressed hen. It hurt me to see the pain which we had involuntarily inflicted on this benevolent old gentleman.

  “Poor boy!” he murmured, “how sad, how very sad, how very sad! I don’t recall ever meeting him. What year did you say he was in, Warren?”

  “He’s a second year man, Master. Plays cricket for the University and looks—or rather, looked—certain to get his blue this year. He was a good classical scholar, too. Came to us from the University of Grahamstown on a sixty pound open scholarship—a South African of Dutch extraction. Well-to-do people, I imagine. By nature he was morose and anti-social. Disliked college activities and had few friends. A most unpopular fellow with the other undergraduates.”

  I was amazed to learn that, despite all appearances to the contrary, each hair of our heads is numbered by the authorities.

  “Dear, dear,” sighed the Master. “It will mean an investigation, I suppose. The police, the coroner—all that kind of thing. I shall leave it to you, Warren. I just can’t wrestle with it.” The faded eyes lost their light for a moment and looked infinitely weary. “It will do the college no good, I’m afraid. But we shall survive it, just as we survived that sad affair of William North. Dear me, dear me!” The Master passed a hand over his face as if to wipe out a painful memory.

  And indeed the story of William North, though it had sounded humorous enough when referred to by Somerville that morning, was one of the most tragic incidents in the history of the college. William North had been one of the most brilliant French students of his day; his book Rabelais et Son Siècle was (and for all I know, still is) the last word on an intricate and hitherto little appreciated period in French literature. The young author had once had the academic world at his feet. It was even predicted that he would one day have his picture hung in the College Hall along with the other immortals. Today it was blazoned on the front page of every newspaper in England.

  As an undergraduate, and before all his troubles started, North had made an unfortunate marriage with a local barmaid. The marriage was doubtless perpetrated in a moment of Rabelaisian impetuosity. It had not, however, hindered him from getting his fellowship at All Saints and his lectures were reputed to have been among the most brilliant ever given at Cambridge.

  He lived with his wife and two children, happily enough, at Madingley. Every vacation he would rush off to France, where he explored the Rabelais country around Chinon, always seeking for fresh material to put in his ever growing volume. He was a terrific worker and a prodigious scholar.

  And then, almost immediately following the publication of his book, the crash came. For some time he had been nervous and irritable; overwork during a neglected attack of influenza had induced a mild form of brain fever. He attended his classes as usual. One day the most horrible screams were heard issuing from his rooms on “A” staircase (those now occupied by the staid Dr. Long).

  The oak was sported; the screams died to a hideous, strangled gurgling. When finally the door was opened, a madman was discovered gloating in sixteenth century French over the dead body of one of his most brilliant woman students. The corpse was hideously mutilated. There was talk of an outrage of an even more terrible nature.

  William North was tried and condemned to death. The case completely eclipsed for a time the notorius Crippen trial, with which it was almost contemporaneous. A clever counsel got the case appealed on a legal technicality. Then followed the second trial of William North, which was so interesting in the legal points involved that my father included an account of it in his Famous Second Trials. My father happened to be present at both the trials of North and saw his sentence commuted from death on the gallows to confinement for life in the Cambridgeshire asylum for the criminally insane.

  That this confinement had now come to an abrupt termination was the theme of Inspector Horrocks, who had joined us in the courtyard after we had said goodnight to the Master.

  “It’s a strange thing, Colonel,” he said, biting the ends of his enormous moustache, “that the two things should have happened almost in one day as you might say, sir, and both of them involving this college of yours. I’ve been working all day on the North case and a rare job I’m having of it, trying to trace his footsteps, though every police station in the country has been wired a description of him. I was thinking sir,” here his voice dropped to a confidential whisper, “that if Mr. Baumann’s death wasn’t accidental—well, there was murder on ‘A’ staircase once before, and they say that murderers always return to the scene of their crime.”

  Dr. Warren gave a little start, and his eyeglass fell from his eye. His face was pale in the moonlight.

  “Nonsense, Horrocks,” he exclaimed. “Your imagination is running away with you. North was a scholar and a gentleman. His—er—unfortunate lapse occurred twenty years ago whilst he was very ill and his mind temporarily deranged. You know as well as I do that fundamentally he was not a criminal—and incidentally he was one of my greatest friends.”

  The inspector mumbled an apology. “Well, I must say, sir, he’s been quiet enough and docile like in the ‘home’ there. Was allowed to do almost anything he liked, as you might say, sir. Given the run of the establishment almost. No one dreamed as how he was lying in wait for his opportunity to get away. All the staff was surprised and hurt, sir—surprised and hurt. The superintendent felt it was casting reflections on his treatment as you might say.”

  We had now reached “A” staircase. I was thinking how little inclination I felt to go up to my own room, past Baumann’s door.

  “Have you finished in there?” asked the tutor, with an upward jerk of his head.

  “Yes, sir,” replied Horrocks. “The body has been removed. Dr. Beaverly agreed with you as to the time of death, sir, and we have found nothing else of a suspicious nature. It will be ‘Death by Misadventure’ all right, Colonel.”

  “So much the better,” said Dr. Warren. “Good night, Horrocks.”

  “Good night, Colonel, sir. Good night, Mr. Fenton. I shall have to trouble you again tomorrow, I’m afraid. I hope the coroner can arrange to sit on the case by Wednesday or Thursday. Good night.”

  Dr. Warren and I parted at the door of his rooms. As I paused a moment I heard again the soft notes of his piano. A look of annoyance passed over his face and he wished me an abrupt good night.

  Someone was in Dr. Warren’s rooms—someone who did not know or did not care that musical instruments are forbidden after 11 P.M. And whoever was there played Chopin much better than Dr. Warren did—and very differently. There was a certain abandon, a divine delirium never achieved by our tutor in his sporadic tinklings.

  But I was too tired to worry my head about these further complications, so I ran upstairs as quickly as I could and went straight to bed. When sleep finally came, I dreamed a dream strangely similar to that of Somerville’s unfortunate Marlborough friend. I was in bed in a strange room which suddenly seemed to become more and more familiar.

  Eventually I realized that it was Baumann’s, but instead of being a sitting-room it was now a dormitory full of beds, all empty except the one I was in, and one other. Outside, it seemed, a thunderstorm was raging. Then slowly the door opened and a figure entered.

  It advanced toward the other occupied bed. I could neither move nor cry out. The figure glided onwards. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I noticed that the occupant of the other bed. was now lying face downwards in a position which I knew only too well. Beneath the head was a dark, growing stain.

  The figure was now retreating towards the door, but before disappearing it half turned towards me. It was the Profile. She was speaking—speaking to me in a clear, yet somewhat unearthly voice, and across that strange yet familiar room I heard her repeating the marvelous words of that macabre poem by William Blake:

  O Rose, thou art sick!

  The invisible worm

  That flies in the night

  In the howling storm,

  Has found out thy bed

  Of crimson joy;

  And his dark secret love

  Does thy life destroy.

  CHAPTER VI

  Two for Lunch

  I awoke next morning with what can only be described as an emotional hangover. My mouth felt dry and fuzzy, and I had the uneasy sensation of a thousand wrong things done. The outlook was overcast, meteorologically and spiritually. The only coherent thought in my head was that I must see the Profile today and help her if possible.

  As I took a deep draught of tepid water from my ewer, a delicate “Ahem” came from my sitting room. It was Mrs. Bigger. She had been on the staircase last night. Perhaps she had heard or seen something. I must question her without arousing suspicion.

  “Proceed, Sherlock,” I muttered, lighting a cigarette with a kind of haggard nonchalance.

  One glance at my good bedmaker showed me that she was near to bursting point with suppressed ideas. How long she had been waiting for me to wake I cannot tell, but my room had never been so tidy before in its life. This was my first intimation that I had become a Personality.

  “Mr. Fenton,” hemmed Mrs. Bigger, “I didn’t like to slop you up while you was a-sleepin’, sir, ’cos I reckoned you must be tired, seein’ as ’ow it was you what discovered ’im, sir”—here her voice dropped to a gruesome whisper—’’lyin’ stark and rude in nothin’ but ’is own blood, as I heard this mornin’ from that there gentleman as was asking for you, Mr. Fenton.”

  I yawned ostentatiously.

  “Has someone been looking for me, Mrs. Bigger?” I asked. The ostrich plumes nodded in affirmation.

  “Yes, sir. A man with a big red moustache, and ’e said ’e’d be back again later and not to disturb you just now. Her tone implied that it might well be the last undisturbed sleep I should have for a very long white.

  In answer to the implication of her words, therefore, I gave her a bowdlerized version of my last night’s excursion over the roof and the finding of my neighbour’s dead body. When I had finished, she pronounced gravely:

  “It don’t do to speak hill of the dead, Mr. Fenton, but I ’ad told Mr. ’Ankin that Mr. Baumann didn’t ever hort to of been allowed to ’ave a pistol in ’is room, sir. I seed it there wiv me own eyes, Mr. Fenton, but—and this shows the meaness of ’im—he always kep’ it in ’is—ahem—biscuit tin there on the mantel shelf. And when Mr. ’Ankin told ’im I’d complained, Mr. Baumann said, ‘So Mrs. Bigger was after my biscuits, was she?’ So you see I didn’t have no legs to stand on. But I knew the pistol was there, sir, biscuits or no biscuits. And I wasn’t the only one as knew it either.”

  “You’ll probably have to identify the gun at the inquest,” I remarked, and her eyes brightened. “Perhaps you can give some more evidence, too. You were working here pretty late, weren’t you? You didn’t hear the shot by any chance, I suppose, or—er—see anything out of the ordinary?”

  For a moment I found myself hanging on Mrs. Bigger’s lips as though she were a young girl to whom I had just proposed. The reply, when it did come, was reassuring, if a trifle discursive.

  “I didn’t ’ear nothing, Mr. Fenton, and as for seein’, well, with the lights out that way I couldn’t ’ave seen me ’and a hinch from me nose. I’d been ’elping over at the Master’s lodge till almost ten o’clock, sir, ’cos Mary Smith was alone and there was company to dinner. She’d never have got them things washed if it ’adn’t been for me and I’d asked ’er to come round to my ’ouse afterwards, Mr. Fenton, seein’ as Tuesday is ’er day out, sir.

  “I was waitin’ for ’er in the pantry when the lights went out and I didn’t ’ear nor see nothin’ ’cept you when you called out good night and once a noise outside Mr. Somerville’s door, sir. And then, soon after the lights went on again, Mary was waitin’ for me and all I remember is that I said to ’er, jokin’ like, ‘Mary, ’as someone just kissed you? ’Cos you look blinkin’ ’appy,’ and she blushed and looked pretty, sir, ’cos there was Mr. Hankin standin’ there by her side and I thought how they two was a-courtin’, sir, and well—you know wot young people is in the dark, sir, when no one’s lookin’, as it were. And then Mrs. Fancher from ‘C’ joined us and Mr. ’Ankin let us all out the gates and we went round and ’ad a dog’s nose at Fancher’s, sir, ’e being a publican and we ’is wife’s friends—”

  I cut her short. There was no shadow of doubt as to her movements on the previous evening.

  “Mrs. Bigger,” I exclaimed, “What in heaven’s name is a dog’s nose? It sounds perfectly excellent. I feel I could do with one right now.”

  “Well, Mr. Fenton, it’s a mixture of stout and gin. You mix—” But here Mrs. Bigger paused, her face suffused with a maidenly blush.

  We were treading on dangerous ground, and skirting the fringes of a dreadful secret which my bedmaker had, in an expansive moment, confided to me some time previously. She had once been a barmaid. In fact that had been her occupation when the late-lamented Bigger had first spied her ample charms and finally transferred them to his undertaking establishment off Chesterton Road.

  Mr. Bigger had joined his own coffins long since (“sarcophagus in the throat, Mr. Fenton, and crool ’e suffered”); but had Mrs. Bigger slid back into the perilous paths of bar-maidenhood? No, a thousand times no. Whenever she returned to the taps she kept on the customer’s side of the counter, just as when she made beds she kept on the right side of the blanket.

  There was evidently nothing of real importance to be learned from Mrs. Bigger, and I was not altogether sorry when a deputation consisting of Lloyd Comstock, Michael Grayling, and Stuart Somerville caused her to beat a modest retreat. My three “stairmates,” with the possible exception of Comstock, all looked rather the worse for wear this morning. There was an expression on Michael’s face that amounted almost to antagonism and a film of reticence over Stuart’s usually frank blue eyes. I attributed this to the fact that both of them were likely to benefit through Baumann’s death and they would naturally feel some embarrassment about squeezing their feet into the shoes of one so recently dead.

  Lloyd Comstock, however, pressed me for details in a perfectly normal and ingenuous manner. All three of them had already been interviewed by Horrocks and another detective that morning, and not one of them had, as far as I could ascertain, contributed any facts of new or startling interest. The words “murder” or “suicide” were not mentioned, and it was obvious that they looked to me for sensationalism, if there was any to be had. I intended to disappoint them, nursing my guilty secret like a mother with a sick baby.

  So far, so good. My next visitor was Horrocks, who brought with him a long, cadaverous individual whom he introduced as Sergeant Rollings. Horrocks, smartly dressed, carried a small suitcase in his hand.

  “Mr. Fenton,” he explained apologetically, “I’ve been called away to London on the North case. Last night all indications pointed to the fact that North was still somewhere in Cambridge. This morning he’s supposed to have been seen in London. It may be a false alarm, but I’ve got to go. Sergeant Rollings will take care of this Baumann business in my absence. I’m sure you will help him all you can.” We nodded gravely at each other. He continued:

  “If all goes well—and I see no reason why it shouldn’t—they will hold the inquest on Thursday. You will have to appear, of course.” We nodded again and then Horrocks took his leave.

  I accompanied Rollings into Baumann’s room and once again went through the performance of discovering the body for his benefit. His questions were, for the most part, neither intelligent nor pertinent. My only strong emotion in the whole business was a hope that he would not make me late for lunch with the Profile.