'Just after you left us in the Warders' Hall,' the doctor interposed, slowly, 'you got the fright of your life, and it sent you out to Golders Green in a, blind panic. What was it?
Arbor seemed to have come to a jumping-off place in his narrative; he hesitated on the brink of the leap, tapping his glasses and peering over.
`Inspector,' he said, `before I tell you what you must regard as completely incredible, let; me ask you a question' or two. In that room when you were questioning me, who was present?'
`H'm. There was Hadley, my my colleague; and Mr Rampole here; and General Mason, and Sir Wil — Hold on, no! I'm wrong. Bitton wasn't there. He had gone up to Mason's rooms.'
Arbor stared. `Bitton was at the Tower?'
`Yes.. But he wasn't in the room with us. Proceed.'
`The next thing,' Arbor said, carefully, `is… ah, what shall I say?… an impression, rather than a question. Speaking with someone on the telephone is, in a certain sense, somewhat like speaking to a person in the dark. You hear the voice alone. There is no personality or physical appearance to distract you from your impressions,' of the voice itself. If you heard a voice on the telephone, without having seen the speaker, and later you meet the speaker in real life, you might not recognize him, because his appearance or his personality might destroy the impressions of the voice. But if you heard him in the dark… '
`I think I understand.'
`Very well. You dismissed me after the questioning, you will recall, and I went outside. The door of the room in which you had been talking to me was not quite closed. It was very dark and quite misty under the arch of the Tower there. I stood outside the door to accustom my eyes to the gloom. As it was, I was terrified. I could with difficulty make a good exit from the room. There was a; warder on duty, but he stood at some distance from me. I could hear you talking in the room I had left….
`Then Inspector,' said Arbor, bending forward with fist clenched, `I think I received the most horrible shock of my life. In the room I had not noticed it, I suppose, because the influence of personalities had overborne the impressions of my hearing.