Mystery Mile Read Free

momentary silence. Then a woman screamed.
    Concert officials and ship’s officers hurried on to the platform. The noise became greater, and a startled, bewildered crowd swept up to the platform end of the room.
    Judge Lobbett and his tall son were surrounded by an excited group of officials.
    Satsuma chattered wildly in his own tongue.
    The pale young man with the spectacles appeared to be on the verge of fainting with horror. Even the complacent Mr Barber was shaken out of his habitual affability. His heavy jaws sagged, his greasy eyes grew blank with astonishment.
    All the time the cabinet remained glowing with a now evil radiance, bizarre and horrible, a toy that had become a thing of terror.
    The arrival of the chief engineer roused the general stupor. He was a lank Belfast Irishman, yellow-haired, lantern-jawed, and deaf as a post. He gave his orders in the hollow bellow of a deaf man and soon reduced the affair to almost a commonplace.
    â€˜McPherson, just clear the lounge, will you? I don’t want anyone to remain but those intimately concerned. There’s been a small accident here in the temporary fittings,’ he explained soothingly to the bewildered crowd which was being gently but firmly persuaded out of the lounge by an energetic young Scotsman and his assistants.
    â€˜There’s something very wrong with the insulation of your cupboard,’ he went on, addressing the Japanese severely. ‘It’s evidently a very dangerous thing. Have you not had trouble with it before?’
    Satsuma protested violently, but his birdlike twittering English would have been unintelligible to the engineer even had he been able to hear it.
    Meanwhile a small army of mechanics was at work. The chief entered into an incomprehensible technical discussion with them, and their growing astonishment and consternation told more plainly than anything else could have done the terrible tragedy that had only just been averted by the timely sacrifice of the unfortunate Haig.
    It was impossible not to be sorry for the Japanese. There could be no doubt of the sincerity of his wretchedness. He hovered round the electricians, half terrified of the consequences of what had happened and half fearful for the safety of his precious apparatus.
    Marlowe Lobbett, whose patience had been slowly ebbing, stepped up to the chief and shouted in his ear.
    â€˜I don’t know if you’ve heard,’ he began, ‘but back in New York there have been several unsuccessful attempts upon my father’s life. This affair looks very like another. I should be very glad if you could make certain where the responsibility lies.’
    The chief turned upon him.
    â€˜My dear sir,’ he said, ‘there’s no question of responsibility. The whole thing’s an extraordinary coincidence. You see that cable on the floor there?’ He pointed to the exposed part of a cable resting upon the parquet floor of the platform. ‘If, in shifting the piano, the cabinet hadn’t been moved a little so that the one place where the insulation had worn off the cabinet made a connection with it, the affair could never have happened. At the same time, if it hadn’t been for the second purely accidental short, the other contact could not have been made.’ He indicated a dark stain on the polished grille of the cabinet. ‘But,’ he went on, fixing the young American with a vivid blue eye, ‘you’re not suggesting that someone fixed the whole thing up on the very slender chance of getting your father in there, are you?’ The chief was considerably more puzzled than he dared to admit. But since no harm had been done he was not anxious to go into the matter too thoroughly for the ship’s sake.
    Old Judge Lobbett laid his hand on his son’s arm.
    â€˜This isn’t quite the time to discuss this, my boy,’ he said. ‘Someone knew I couldn’t resist a conjuror. But I don’t think