Free He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr

employment agency for a librarian to do cataloguing work?’
    â€˜I did,’ said Miles. ‘And they promised to send an applicant round this evening. The applicant didn’t turn up, which made me very late for a dinner I was attending.’
    â€˜The applicant did turn up, sir, eventually. The lady says she’s very sorry, but it was unavoidable. She says could you please see her to-morrow morning? She says things are very difficult, since she’s only just been repatriated from France …’
    â€˜Repatriated from France?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    The hands of a gilt clock on the grey-green wall pointed to twenty-five minutes past eleven. Miles Hammond stood very still, and stopped twirling the key in his hand.
    â€˜Did the lady leave her name?’
    â€˜Yes, sir. Miss Fay Seton.’

CHAPTER 6
    O N the following afternoon, Saturday, the second of June, Miles reached Waterloo Station at four o’clock.
    Waterloo, its curving acre of iron-girdered roof still darkened over except where a few patches of glass remained after the shake of bombs, had got over most of the Saturday rush to Bournemouth. But it still rang with a woman’s spirited voice over a loud-speaker, telling people what queues to join. (If this voice ever begins to say something you want to hear, it is instantly drowned out by a hiss of steam or the thudding chest-notes of an engine.) Streams of travellers, mainly in khaki against civilian drabness, wound back among the benches behind the bookstall and, to the ladylike annoyance of the loudspeaker, got mixed up in each other’s queues.
    Miles Hammond was not amused. As he put down his suitcase and waited under the clock, he was almost blind to everything about him.
    What the devil, he said to himself, had he done?
    What would Marion say? What would Steve say?
    Yet if anybody on this earth represented sanity, it was his sister and her fiancé. He was heartened to see them a few minutes later, Marion laden with parcels and Steve with a pipe in his mouth.
    Marion Hammond, six or seven years younger than Miles, was a sturdy, nice-looking girl with black hair like her brother but a practicality that he perhaps lacked. She was very fond of Miles and tirelessly humoured him; because she really did believe, though she never said so, that he was not mentally grown up. She was proud, of course, of a brother who could write such learned books, though Marion confessed she didn’t understand such things herself: the point was that books had no relation to serious affairs in life.
    And, as Miles sometimes had to admit to himself, perhaps she was right.
    So she came hurrying along under the echoing roof of Waterloo, well dressed even in this year because of new tricks with old clothes, her hazel eyes at ease with life under their dark straight brows, and intrigued – even pleased – by a new vagary of Miles’s nature.
    â€˜Honestly, Miles!’ said his sister. ‘Look at the clock! It’s only a few minutes past four!’
    â€˜I know that.’
    â€˜But the train doesn’t go until half-past five , dear. Even if we’ve got to be here early to have a prayer of getting a seat, why must you make us get here as early as this?’ Then her sisterly eye caught the expression on his face, and she broke off. ‘Miles! What’s wrong? Are you ill?’
    â€˜No, no, no!’
    â€˜Then what is it?’
    â€˜I want to talk to both of you,’ said Miles. ‘Come with me.’
    Stephen Curtis took the pipe out of his mouth. ‘Ho?’ he observed.
    Stephen’s age might have been in the late thirties. He was almost completely bald – a sore subject with him – though personable-enough looking and with much stolid charm. His fair moustache gave him a vaguely R.A.F. appearance, though in fact he worked at the Ministry of Information and Strongly resented jokes about this institution. He had met Marion there two