The windows at the narrow end of the room were open. But their curtains had been partly drawn, so that only the last shreds of daylight entered when Richard Rich took up a position with his back to the red-brick fireplace.
Dr. Rich was a short, stocky, comfortable-looking man in an untidy dinner jacket. He had thrust his hands into the pockets of it. He was bald except for an unexpected brush of hair, black streaked with gray, which began half way down the back of his skull and curled out over his collar. It formed the only vaguely theatrical touch to an otherwise stout, ordinary personality. His round face was slightly flushed with the heat, or with the brandy he had taken after dinner. He was smiling.
"And when we do begin," he continued, softly over a note of heavy brass. "I think Captain Sharpless will understand why I couldn't proceed last night."
Sharpless waved this aside.
"All right. But what is this experiment, exactly?"
"That's what I want to know," agreed Arthur Fane rather sharply. "What are you going to do?"
Dr. Rich smiled in a maddeningly cryptic way.
"With your permission," he said, "I first of all propose to place one of you under hypnosis."
"You're not going to place me under hypnosis," said Arthur, "and get me to make a fool of myself in public. Besides, I don't hold with this. It's — it's morbid."
"You would be a bad hypnotic subject anyway," smiled Dr. Rich. "No. With her permission, the person I propose to use for the experiment is Mrs. Fane."