The Blind Barber dgf-4

by John Dickson Carr

"You haven't found it, by any chance, have you?" asked Morgan.

  "No! I have searched this ship with fifteen picked men from fo'c's'le-head to rudder, and I have not found it, young man. Now, then, be quiet and listen. I don't think he'll sue the line. But there's a question of law to be considered. That question is: Was I, or was I not, guilty of careless conduct? The emerald was technically in my possession, although I had not locked it in my safe. Show me the lubber," snarled Captain Whistler, glaring from one to the other of them, "who says I was guilty of careless conduct — contributory negligence — just show him to me, that's all. Let me so much as glimpse his sky-s'ls, and I'll make him regret the day his father first went courting. Am I guilty of careless conduct if four armed Dagoes take me from behind and give me the marlinspike with a bottle? Am I? No," was Captain Whistler's reply, delivered with a gesture like that of the late Marcus Tullius Cicero, "no, I am not. Well, then. If somebody would tell old Sturton that I was murderously set on without a chance to defend myself… Mind, I don't want you to tell him you saw me attacked. If there's any lying to be done, sink me! I can do it myself. But if you could tell him you are able to swear, from your own observation at the time, that you believed me to be the victim of a ruthless attack… well, the money don't count much with him, and I'm pretty certain he won't sue… How about it?" inquired the captain, suddenly lowering his voice to a startlingly more normal tone.

  There was a chorus of assent.

  "You'll do it?" Whistler demanded.

  "I'll do more than that, Skipper," said Warren, eagerly. "I'll tell you the name of the son of a bachelor who's got that emerald right now."

  "Eh?"

  "Yes. I'll give it to you straight from the table. And the man who's got that emerald at this very minute," announced Warren, leaning over and pointing his finger in the captain's face, "is none other than the dastardly crook who's masquerading on this boat as Doctor Oliver Harrison Kyle."

  Morgan's spirit, uttering a deep groan, rose from his body and flapped out the porthole on riddled wings. He thought: It's all up now. This is the end. The old mackerel will utter one whoop, go mad, and call for assistance. Morgan expected many strange, possibly intricate observations from the captain. He expected him to order a strait-waistcoat. He expected, in fact, every conceivable thing except what actually happened. For fully a minute Whistler stared, his handkerchief at his forehead.

  "You, too?" he said. "You think so, too?" His voice awed. "Out of the mouths of babes and — and lunatics. But wait. I forgot to show you. That was why I wanted you here. I don't believe it. I can't believe it. But when even the maniacs can see it, I've got to hard my helm. Besides, it may not mean that. I don't believe it. I'm going insane myself. Here! Here! Read this!" He whirled to his desk and rummaged. "This was what I wanted you to see. It came this morning."

  He held out a radiogram, delicately scented with Swat Number 2 Instantaneous Insect Exterminator, and handed it to Morgan.

  Commander, S.S. Queen Victoria, at sea [it ran]. Federal agent reports unknown man picked up supposedly dying Chevy Chase outside Washington March 25. Thought victim auto accident concussion of brain. No identification no papers or marks in clothing. Patient rushed to Mercy Hospital in coma. Two weeks delirious until yesterday. Still incoherent but claims to be person aboard your ship. Federal agent thinks crook responsible Stelly and MacGee jobs. Federal agent thinks also physician is impostor on your ship. Well-known figure and must be no mistake made or trouble, and medical profession influential care all sides…

  Morgan whistled. Warren uttered an exclamation of triumph as he read the message across the other's shoulder. "You've come to that, have you?" demanded Captain Whistler. "If that message is right, I don't know what to think. There's no other physician than Dr. Kyle aboard the ship — except the ship's doctor, and he's been with me seven years."

  Will not be definite case trouble. Arrest nobody yet. Am sending man Inspector Patrick knows accused personally. Patrick sailed S.S. Etrusca arrive Southampton one day before you. Afford him facilities. Advise.

  Arnold, Commissioner N.Y.P.D.

  "Ha-ha!" said Warren. He threw out his chest. He took the radiogram from Morgan and flourished it over his head. "Now say I'm crazy, Skipper! Go on, say it — if you can. By God! I knew I was right. I had him figured out… " "How?" demanded Captain Whistler. Warren stopped, his mouth slightly open. They all saw the open trap into which, with cheers and wide eyes, Warren had deliberately walked. To tell why he thought Dr. Kyle guilty was exactly the one thing he could not do. Morgan froze. He saw his companion's eyes assume a rather glassy look in the long silence…

  "I'm waiting, young man," said Whistler, snappishly. "Sink me! I'd be eternally blasted if I'd let the police get all the credit for a capture on my ship, sink me! provided I could think of a way to trap that — Go on! Speak up! Why do you think he's guilty?"

  "I tell you I've said it from the first. Ask Peggy and Hank and the captain if I haven't! I've sworn he was posing as Dr. Kyle, ever since he batted me over the head in my cabin…"

  He stopped suddenly. Captain Whistler, who had started to take a healing pull at his whisky-and-soda, choked. He put down the glass.

  "Dr. Kyle batted you over the head in your cabin?" he said, beginning to look curiously at the other. "When was this?"

  "I mean, I was mistaken. That was an accident! Honest it was, Captain. I fell and hit my head—"

  "Then I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, young man.

  / will not be trifled with any longer. You made an accusation, and it seems — I say it seems—to be right. Why did you accuse Dr. Kyle?" Warren ruffled his hair. He gritted his teeth feverishly.

  "Well, Captain," he said,after a pause, "I knew it! He looked guilty. He — had a kind of guilty look about him when he was so pleasant at breakfast and said somebody'd been raped; that's why… You don't believe me, do you? Well, I'm going to show you, and I'm going to prove that he's got to be put under lock and key! So I'll tell you why I came up here to see you. There was a murder committed aboard this boat last night, you old sturgeon! Hank," said Warren, whirling around, "give me that razor."

  It is a literal fact that Captain Whistler shot at least six inches into the air. Without doubt this was due partly to the extraordinary power in his sea-legs that uncoiled him from his chair like a spring; but behind this materialistic explanation there surged a stronger spiritual ecstasy. And he did not forget what to do. Even as he was descending, his hand flashed into the drawer of the desk and emerged levelling an automatic pistol.

  "All right," he said. "Steady, me lads____"

  "Captain, it's absolutely true," said Morgan, seizing his arm. "He's not mad and he's not joking. This criminal did commit a murder; I mean, the impostor on the boat. If you'll give me one minute, I'll prove it. Come on, Valvick. To hell with his gun. Let's hold him back in his chair and sit on him until we can jam the truth down his throat. By this time your second officer will have made the rounds of the boat, and he'll find a woman missing. That woman was murdered last night, and she's overboard now—" There was a knock at the door. Everybody froze; why, none of them knew, except that it may have been some latent idea they were all making outstanding asses of themselves. A silence fell while Whistler gibbered a command to come in.

  "Beg leave to report, sir," said the crisp voice of the second officer. "And" — his eyes flashed over—"and to Mr. Morgan, as you ordered. Two of us have made a complete round of the ship. We have investigated every passenger and member of the crew. There was nobody hurt last night."

  A vein was beginning to beat in Morgan's temple. He controlled his voice. "Right-ho, Mr. Baldwin. But we're not looking for a person who was merely hurt. We're looking for a woman who is murdered and missing… "

  Baldwin stiffened. "Well, sir, you may be," he said in a tone of regret. "But you won't find her. I have checked over personally everybody on this ship, and there is nobody missing, either."

  "Is that so, Mr. Baldwin?" inquir
ed Whistler, almost genially. "Well, well."

  Warren was escorted to the brig, under heavy guard, at exactly 11:45 Eastern daylight-saving time.

  INTERLUDE

  Observations of Dr. Fell

  In run great book-lined room above Adelphi Terrace the warm May sun threw flat shadows on the floor and the river glittered under its blaze. Through the open windows they could hear the distant bang of the clock in Westminster Tower beating out twelve. Cigar stumps had accumulated, and Morgan was growing hoarse from his recital.

  Sitting back in the chair, his eyes half-closed behind the eyeglasses on the ribbon, his chins upheaving in chuckles under the bandit's moustache, Dr. Fell shifted his gaze from the distant traffic along the Embankment.

  "Noon," said Dr. Fell. "Now, break off for a minute and I'll order up some lunch. A long cool draught of beer will do you an uncommon amount of good." Wheezing, he pulled a bell-cord. "First, my boy, allow me to say that I would have given a year of my already wasted life to have been with you on that voyage. Heh! Heh-heh-heh! And at the moment I will ask only one question. Is there more to come? Is it really possible for any given group of people to get in more trouble than your excellent band has already done?"

  Morgan croaked slightly.

  "Sir," he said, with a deep gesture of earnestness, "what I've already told you is a — a microscopic atom, an invisibility, a microbe concealed in a drop of water in the vast comprehensive ocean of trouble which is to come. You have heard nothing yet, nothing. That my brain is still whole I am prepared to admit, but why it is still whole 1 can't tell you. After the sinister episode of the gold watches… but that's yet to come."

  He hesitated.

  "Look here, sir. I know your interest in detective plots, and if I came to ask your aid, I'd want to get everything straight first. That is, I like my own plots to be clean-cut. If it's going to be really a murder story, in spite of all entangled nonsense, I want to know that so that I can be prepared, and not have the whole thing sprung on me as a hoax. I like to see the body on the floor. When somebody disappears in a story, you've nothing solid to go on. It might be — and generally is — a dastardly trick to prove that there's been no murder, or that the wrong person's been murdered, or something that only annoys you… That's from the analytic side, you understand, and not the human side. But, as to the murder, if you ask me at this moment whether there's really been a murder, I've got to admit I can't tell you."

  Dr. Fell grunted. He had a pencil in one hand, with which he had been tapping some notes.

  "Well, then," he said, blinking over his eye-glasses, "in that case, why don't you ask me?"

  "You — er — think—?"

  "Yes, there's been a murder," replied Dr. Fell. He scowled. "I dislike having to tell you that. I dislike having to think of it, and I hope I may be wrong. There is one thing that, inevitably, you have got to tell me, which will settle any doubts. But one thing I insist on. Don't be afraid of the nonsense. Don't apologise for the vast Christian joy of laughing when an admiral slips on a cake of soap and sits on his own cocked hat. Don't say that it has no place in a murder case, or that a murderer himself can't laugh. Once you set him up as a waxworks horror, leering over his red hands, you will never be able to understand him and you will probably never see who he is. Damn him if you will, but don't say that he isn't human or that real life ever attains the straight level of ghastliness to be found in a detective-story. That's the way to produce dummy murderers, and dummy detectives as well. And yet—"

  He stabbed at the notes with his pencil.

  "… and yet, my lad, it's both logical and ironical that this particular case should produce what is in a sense a dummy murderer… "

  "A dummy murderer?"

  "I mean a professional criminal; an expert mimic; a mask. In short, a murderer who kills for the sake of expediency. How can a person who's playing a part as somebody else be anything more or less than a good or bad copy of the original? So he eludes us in his own personality, ltd till we've got to judge by is how well he speaks stolen lines. H'm! It makes for better analysis, I dare say, and the mask is undoubtedly lifelike. But, as for seeing his real self in the mask, you might as well question one of M. Fortinbras's marionettes… " He stopped. The small, lusty eyes narrowed. "You jumped a little there. Why?"

  "Well — er," said Morgan, "as a matter of fact, they've — er- they've got old Uncle Jules in the brig."

  For a moment Dr. Fell stared, and then his vast chuckle blew a cloud of sparks from his pipe. He blinked thoughtfully.

  "Uncle Jules in the brig?" he repeated. "Most refreshing. Why?"

  "Oh, not for murder or anything like that. I'll tell you nil about it. Of course they're going to let him out to-day. They—"

  "Humf. Harrumph! Now let me see if I understand this. Let him out to-day? Hasn't the boat docked yet?"

  "That's what I was getting at, sir. It hasn't. Thank the Lord for what you've said, anyhow, because that's why I'm here… You know Captain Whistler, don't you? And he knows of you?"

  "I have had some experience," replied Dr. Fell, shutting up one eye meditatively, "with the old — um — cuttlefish. Heh! Heh-heh-heh! Yes, I know him. Well?"

  "We were to dock early this morning. The trouble was that at the last minute there was a mix-up about our dock or berth or whatever they call it; the Queen Anne didn't get under way so that we could move in, and we were left lying in the harbour, with no chance of docking until about two o'clock this afternoon… "

  Dr. Fell sat up. "And the Queen Victoria is still—?"

  "Yes. Due to something you shall hear of in due course, I was able to persuade Whistler to let me go ashore with the pilot; I had to sneak it, of course, or the others would have been wild. But," he drew a deep breath, "Whistler knowing you, I contrived to convince him that, if I could get to you before the passengers left that ship, there might be kudos in it for him. Actually, sir, you'll say I had the hell of a nerve, but what I did was practically promise him you'd land him an outstanding crook with credit for it if I could get to you before the passengers left the Queen Victoria."

  He sat back and shrugged his shoulders; but he watched Dr. Fell closely.

  "Nerve? Ha! Heh-heh-heh!" Nonsense!" rumbled the doctor, affably. "What's Gideon Fell, for, I ask you, if not for that? Besides, I owe Hadley one for doing me in the eye over that Blumgarten business last week. Thank'ee, my boy, thank'ee."

  "You think—?"

  "Why, between ourselves, I rather think we'll land the Blind Barber. I have rather a strong suspicion," said Dr. Fell, scowling, with a long rumbling sniff through his nose, "who this Blind Barber is. If I'm wrong, there'll be no harm done aside from a little outraged dignity… But, look here, why is it necessary? What about this New York man who was supposed to arrive on the Etrusca this morning?"

  Morgan shook his head.

  "I suppose it's bad to run ahead of my story," he said, "but we've had so many mix-ups, setbacks, and dizzy confusions that one more out of place is comparatively small. The Etrusca arrived right enough, but Inspector Patrick isn't on her. He didn't sail at all. I don't know why; I don't make any sense of it at all; but the fact remains that if something isn't done the Barber will walk off that ship a free man in exactly three hours."

  Dr. Fell sat back in his chair and for a moment he sat looking vacantly, and in a cross-eyed fashion, at the notes on the table.

  "Um! H'm, yes! Hand me that A.B.C. on the tabouret there, will you? Thanks… What train d'jou take this morning? Seven fifty-three to Waterloo? So. Now, then… H'm yes! This would do it. I don't suppose by any chance you have a passenger-list of that ship with you?"

  "Yes. I thought—"

  "Hand it over." He flicked the pages rapidly until he found a name. Then he went very slowly through it, his

  fingers following the list of cabins. When he found what he seemed to want, he made a comparison; but it was on the other side of the table and Morgan could not see precisely what had been done. "Now, then, exc
use the old charlatan I moment. I am going to make some telephone-calls. Not Under torture would I reveal what I intend to do, or where's the fun of mystifying you, hey? Heh! There's no pleasure like mystification, my boy, if you can pull it off… As A matter of fact, I'm just going to wire the name of the murdered woman to Captain Whistler, with a few suggestions. Also it would be a good idea to ring up a branch of Victoria 7000 and make other suggestions. Have another bottle of beer."

  lie lumbered across the room, chuckling fiendishly and Stamping his cane. When he returned, he was rubbing his hands in exultation behind a woman laden with the largest, most elaborately stocked lunch-tray Morgan had seen in a long time.

  "Mash and sausage," he explained, inhaling sensuously. "Down here, Vida… Now, then. Let's get on with our story. There are several points on which I want to be enlightened, if you feel up to talking over the food. Your case, my boy, is the best surprise-package I've opened yet. With each separate event, I discover, there is no telling whether the thing is a water-pistol or a loaded automatic until you pull the trigger. In a way it's unique, because some of the best clues are only half-serious… "

  "Question," said Morgan.

  "1 exactly. Have you ever reflected," boomed Dr. Fell, tucking a napkin under his chin and pointing at his guest with a fork in the serene assumption that he had never reflected, "on old proverbs? On the sad state of affairs which makes old proverbs so popular, and so easy to quote, precisely because those old platitudes are the only maxims which to-day nobody believes? How many people really believe, for instance, 'honesty is the best policy'?—particularly if they happen to be honest themselves. How many people believe that 'early to bed and early to rise' have the e fleet designated? Similarly, we have the saw to the effect that many a true word is spoken in jest. A true application of

  that principle would be too exciting; it would call for much more ingenuity and intelligence than most people are able to display; and it would make social life unendurable if; anybody for a moment believed that a true word could bespoken in jest — worse, for instance, than going out to] dinner with a crowd of psycho-analysts."