The Blind Barber dgf-4

by John Dickson Carr

Blind Barber from a hundred passengers to a very, very few people. The Police Commissioner of the City of New York — not unusually timorous or faint-hearted about making arrests, even if they happen to be wrong arrests— wires thus: 'Well-known figure and must be no mistake made or trouble,' and adds, 'Will not be definite in case of trouble.' Now, that is suggestive. It is even startling. The man, in other words, is so important that the Commissioner finds it advisable not to mention his name, even in a confidential communication to the commander of the ship. Not only does it exclude John Smith or James Jones or Charles Woodcock, but it leads us towards men of such wealth or influence that the public is (presumably) interested in newspaper photographs of them (or anybody else) playing golf. This coy reticence on the part of the New York authorities may also be due partly to the possibility that the eminent man is an Englishman, and that severe complications may ensue in case of an error. But I do not press the point, because it is reasoning before my clues."

  He had clearly been listening absently for the doorbell; and now, as the doorbell rang, he nodded and lifted his head to bellow:

  "Let 'em in, Vida!"

  There was a tramping of footfalls up the steps. The door of Dr. Fell's study opened to admit two large men with a prisoner between them. Morgan heard Dr. Fell say, "Ah, good afternoon, Jennings; and you, too, Hamper. Inspector Jennings, this is Mr. Morgan, one of our witnesses. Mr. Morgan, Sergeant Hamper. The prisoner, I think you know…"

  But Morgan was looking at the latter, who said, almost affably:

  "How do you do, Doctor? I — er — I see you're looking at my appearance. No, there's no deception and damned little disguise. Too tricky and difficult… Good afternoon, Mr. Morgan. I see you're surprised at the change in my voice. It's a relief to let down from the jerky manner; but I'd got so used to it it almost came natural. Rubbish rubbish rubbish!" squeaked the bogus Lord Sturton, with a sudden shift back to the manner he had previously used, and crowed with mirth.

  Morgan jumped a little when he heard that echo of the old manner. The bogus Lord Sturton was in sunlight now, where Morgan remembered him only in the gloom of a darkened cabin like a picture-book wizard: his head hunched into a shawl, his face shaded by a flopping hat. Now he was revealed as a pale, long-faced, sharp-featured man with a rather unpleasant grin. A checked comforter was wound round his scrawny throat, and his clothes were weird. But he wore a bowler hat pushed back on his head, and he was smoking a cigar. Yet, although the grotesquerie had been removed, Morgan liked his look even less. He had an eye literally like a rattlesnake's. It measured Dr. Fell, swivelled round to the window, calculated, and became affable again.

  "Come in!" said Dr. Fell. "Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. I've been wanting very much to make your acquaintance, if you're willing to talk… "

  "Prisoner's pretty talkative, sir," said Inspector Jennings, with a slow grin. "He's been entertaining Sergeant Hamper and me all the way up on the train. I've got a note-book full and he admits—"

  "Why not?" inquired their captive, lifting his left hand to take the cigar out of his mouth. "Rubbish rubbish rubbish! Ha-ha!"

  "… But all the same, sir," said Jennings, "I don't think I'll unlock the handcuff just yet. He says his name's Nemo. Sit down, Nemo, if the doctor says so. I'll be beside you."

  Dr. Fell lumbered to the sideboard and got Nemo a drink of brandy. Nemo sat down.

  "Point's this," Nemo explained, in a natural voice which was not quite so shrill or jerky as the Lord Sturton impersonation, but nevertheless had enough echo of it to make Morgan remember the whole scene in the darkened ill-smelling cabin. "Point's this. You think you're going to hang me? You're not. Rubbish!" His snaky neck swivelled round, and his eye smiled on Morgan. "Haha, no, no! I've got to be extradited first. They'll want me in the

  States. And between that time and this — I've got out of worse fixes."

  Dr. Fell put the glass at his elbow, sat down opposite, and contemplated him. Mr. Nemo worked his head round and winked.

  "Point is, I'm giving this up because I'm a fatalist. Fatalist! Wouldn't you be? Best set-up I ever had — meat— pie — easy; ho-ho, how easy? Wasn't as though I had to be a disguise expert. I told you there was no deception. I'm a dead ringer for Sturton. Look so much like him I could stand him in front of me and shave by him. Joke. But I can't beat marked cards. Sweat? I never had such a bad time in my life as when those God-damned kids—" again he twisted round and looked at Morgan, who was glad he had not a razor in his hands at that moment—"when those God-damned kids tangled it all up… "

  "I was about to tell my young friend," said Dr. Fell, "at his own request, some of the points that indicated you were — yourself, Mr. Nemo…"

  The doctor was getting great if sleepy enjoyment as he sat back against the dying light from the window and studied the man. Mr. Nemo's lidless eyes were returning the stare.

  "Be interested to hear it myself," he said. "Anything to — delay things. Good cigar, good brandy. You listen, m'boy," he said, leering at Jennings. "Give you some pointers. If there's anything you don't know — well, when you've finished I'll tell you. Not before."

  Jennings gestured to Sergeant Hamper, who got out his notebook.

  Dr. Fell settled himself to begin with relish:

  "Sixteen clues, then. Casting my eye over the evidence presented — you needn't take all this down, Hamper; you won't understand all of it — I came, after the obvious giveaway of the impostor being an important man…"

  Mr. Nemo bowed very gravely, and the doctor's eye twinkled.

  "… to what I called the Clue of Suggestion. It conveyed the idea. It opened the door on what first seemed a mad notion. During a heated argument between you, Morgan, and your friend Warren, while Warren was enthusiastically pleading the guilt of Dr. Kyle on the basis of detective fiction, you yourself said: 'Oh, and get rid of the idea that somebody may be impersonating him… That may be all right for somebody who seldom comes in contact with anyone, but a public figure like an eminent physician won't do."

  "It wasn't evidence. It only struck me as a curious coincidence that there really was aboard the ship somebody who seldom came in contact with anyone; who was known, I think, you said, as 'The Hermit of Jermyn Street.' 'He'll i see nobody,' you remarked; 'he has no friends; all he does t is collect rare bits of jewellery. These were only supporting facts to my real clue of suggestion; but undeniably Lord Sturton filled the qualifications of the radiogram. a Merely a coincidence…

  "Then I remembered another coincidence: Lord Sturton to was in Washington. A Sturton, real or bogus, had called on Uncle Warpus and told him of the purchase of the emerald elephant, which is the Clue of Opportunity.3 Wit Whether he was at the reception on the night of Uncle Warpus's indiscretion some time later, and learned about full the moving-picture film…"

  " "He was," said Mr. Nemo, and chortled suddenly, to t, this I didn't know. But what we do know is that the bish Stelly affair occurred next in Washington, as Warren explained. This account of the Stelly business is what I call the Clue of Fraternal Trust.4 It was described as a crime Sit d that looked like magic and was connected with the British Embassy. Stelly was a shrewd, careful, well-known jewel-drink collector who didn't omit any precautions against thieves, "P, ordinary or extraordinary, as he thought. He left the Embassy one night, and was robbed without fuss. What looked like magic was his being decoyed or robbed by any ordinary make criminal, and also how the criminal should have known of

  the necklace to begin with… But it is not at all magical if two well-known jewel-collectors exhibit their treasures to each other and have a tendency to talk shop. It is not at all magical for an eminent peer, even if he is so hermitlike that nobody knows him, to be welcomed at the Embassy in a foreign country, provided he has the documents to prove his identity. These coincidences, you see, are piling up.

  "But this peer doesn't travel entirely alone. He is known to have a secretary. The first glimpse we have of him in the narrative is his rushing up the gang
plank of a ship (so notoriously eccentric that he can wrap himself round in concealing comforters) and accompanied by this secretary.5 In the passenger-list I find a Miss Hilda Keller occupying the same suite as Lord Sturton, as I think you yourselves found later.6 But for the moment I put that aside…"

  There was a gurgling noise as Dr. Fell chuckled into his pipe.

  "Definitely, things began to happen after some days out (during all of which time Lord Sturton has kept entirely to his cabin, and the secretary with him).7 The first part of the film was stolen. The mysterious girl appeared, obviously trying to warn young Warren of something. There was the dastardly attack on Captain Whistler — the absence of the attackers on deck for some half an hour — and the subsequent disappearance of the girl. You believed (and so did 1) that she had been murdered and thrown overboard. But, putting aside the questions of who the girl was and why she was killed, we have that curious feature of the bed being remade thoroughly, a soiled towel even being replaced. That is what I call, from deductions you will see in a moment, the Clue of Invisibility…" 8

  Mr. Nemo wriggled back in the chair. He put down his glass; his face had gone more pale and his mouth twitched — but not from fear at all. He had nothing to conceal. He was white and poisonous from some emotion Morgan did not understand. You felt the atmosphere about him, as palpably as though you could smell a drug.

  "I was crazy about that little whore," he said, suddenly, with such a change in voice and expression that they involuntarily started. "I hope she's in hell."

  "That's enough," said Dr. Fell, quietly. He went on: "If somebody wished (for whatever reason) to kill her, why was she not merely killed and left there? The inference first off was that she would be more dangerous to the murderer if her body were discovered than if she were thrown overboard. By why should this be. Disappearance or outright murder, there would still be an investigation… Yet observe! What does the murderer do? He carefully makes up the berth and replaces the towel. This could not be to make you think the stunned girl had recovered and gone to her own cabin. It would have exactly the opposite effect. It means that the murderer was trying to make those in authority think — meaning Captain Whistler — that the girl was nothing but a mythical person; a lie invented for some reason by yourselves.

  "Behind the apparent madness of this course, since four people had seen her, consider what the murderer's reasons must have been. To begin with, he knew what had happened on C deck; he hoped Whistler would spot young Warren as the man who had attacked him, and yourselves ^ as the people who had stolen the emerald; he knew that ® Whistler would not be likely to credit any story you told, and give short shrift to your excuses. But to adopt such a dangerous course as pretending she was a myth meant (a) that the girl would be traced straight to him if she were found dead, and that he could not stand the light of any investigation whatever by police authorities afterwards. It?1£ also meant (b) it was far less dangerous to conceal her absence, and that he had good reason to think he could ^ conceal it.

  "Now, this, gentlemen, is a very remarkable choice indeed, when you try to conceal an absence from a community of only a hundred passengers. Why couldn't he stand any investigation? How could he hope to convince investigators that nobody was missing?

  "First ask yourself who this girl could have been. She could not have been travelling alone: a solitary passenger is not connected closely enough with anybody else to lead absolutely damning evidence straight to him among a hundred people, and to make it necessary to pretend the girl had never existed; besides, a solitary passenger would be the first to be missed. She was not travelling in a family party, or, as Captain Whistler shrewdly pointed out, there might possibly have been complaint at her disappearance. She was travelling then, with just one other person — the murderer. She was travelling as wife, companion, or what you like. The murderer could hope to conceal her disappearance, first, because she must have made no acquaintances and have been with him every moment of the time. That means the murderer seldom or never had left his cabin. He might conceal it, second, because he was so highly placed as to be above suspicion—not otherwise— and because he himself was the victim of a theft that directed attention away from him. But, if he were all this, why couldn't he stand any investigation whatever? The not-very-complicated answer is that he was an impostor who had enough to do in concealing his imposture. If you then musingly consider what man was travelling with a single female companion, what man had kept to his cabin every moment of the time, what man was so highly-placed as to be above suspicion; what man had been the victim of a theft; and, finally, what man there is whom we have some slight reason to think as an impostor; then it is remarkable how we swing round again to Lord Sturton. All this is built up on the clue of a clean towel, the clue of invisibility. But it is still coincidence without definite reason, though we find rapid support for it.

  "I mean that razor incautiously left behind in the berth…"

  Mr. Nemo, who had been mouthing his cigar for some time, twitched round and looked at each in turn. His pale, bony face had worn an absent look, but now it had such a wide smile of urbanity and charm that Morgan shivered. "I cut the little bitch's throat," offered Mr. Nemo, making a gesture with the cigar. "Much better for her. And more satisfactory for me. That's right, old man," he said to the staring Hamper; "write it down. It's much better to damage their skulls. A surgeon showed me all about that once. If you practise, you can find the right spot. But it wouldn't do for her. I had to take one of Sturton's set of razors to do it, and throw the others away. It hurt me. That case of razors must have cost a hundred-odd pound."

  He jerked with laughter, lifted his bowler off his head as though in tribute, smirked, kicked his heels, and asked for another drink.

  "Yes," said Dr. Fell, staring at him curiously, "that's what I mean. I asked my young friend here not to think of one razor, but of seven in a set. I asked him to think of a set of razors as enormously expensive as those carven, silver-studded, ebony-handled rarities, which were obviously made to order. No ordinary man would have had them. The person likeliest to have them, said my Clue of Seven Razors, was the man who went after costly trinkets, who bought the emerald elephant, "because it was a curiosity and a rarity, of enormous intrinsic value."…And the razors bring us back again to the question of who the girl was.

  "Her solitary appearance in public was in the wireless-room, where she was described by the wireless-operator as 'having her hands full of papers'; and this I call, symbolically, my Clue of Seven Radiograms.What does that appearance sound like? Not a joyous tourist dashing off an inconsequential message home. There is a businesslike look to it. A number of messages — a businesslike look — and we begin to think of a secretary. The edifice rears. Our Blind Barber becomes not only an impostor masquerading as a highly placed recluse who kept to his cabin, and travelled with a female companion; but the girl becomes a secretary and the recluse an enormously wealthy man with a taste for grotesque trinkets… "

  Dr. Fell lifted his stick and pointed suddenly.

  "Why did you kill her?" he demanded. "Was she an accomplice?"

  "You're telling the story," shrugged Mr. Nemo. "And while I'm bored, I'm bored as hell with it, because just at the moment / feel like talking, still — your brandy's not at all bad. Ha-ha-ha. Ought to get hospitality. Go on. You talk. Then I'll talk, and I'll surprise you. Give you a little hint, though. Yes. Sporting run for your money, like old Sturton would… Didn't I come down on old Whistler, though! Ho-ho! Yes… Hint is, she was what you'd call virtuous in the way of being honest. She wouldn't step into my game with me when she found out who I was. And when she tried to warn that young fellow— Tcha! Bloody little fool! Ha-ha! Eh?" inquired Mr. Nemo, putting back his cigar with a portentous wink.

  "Did you know," said Dr. Fell, "that a man named Woodcock saw you when you stole the first part of that film?"

  "Did he?" asked Mr. Nemo, lifting one shoulder. "What did I care? Remove sideburns — they're detachable — little wa
x in mouth; strawberry mark on cheek; who'll identify me afterwards, eh?"

  Dr. Fell slowly drew a line through one line on a sheet of paper.

  "And there we had the first direct evidence: of Elimination. Woodcock said definitely that you were a person he'd never seen before. Now, Woodcock hadn't been seasick. He'd been in the dining-room at all times, and after the sea-sick passengers came out of their lairs he would have spotted the thief — if the thief hadn't been still among the very, very few who kept to their cabins. Humf! Ha! I was wondering whether anybody had fantastic suspicions of — well, say Perrigord or somebody of the sort. But it ruled out Perrigord, it ruled out Kyle, it ruled out nearly everybody. The thing is plain enough, but where everybody went off on the wrong scent was over that radiogram from New York." Dr. Fell wrote rapidly on a sheet of paper and pushed it across to Morgan.

  Federal agent thinks crook responsible for Stelly and MacGee jobs. Federal agent thinks also physician is impostor on your ship…

  "Well?" said Morgan. The doctor made a few marks, and held it out again.

  "The Clue of Terse Style," said Dr. Fell, "indicates that the word "also" is a supernumerary, is out of place, is a word merely wasted in an expensive radiogram if what it means is, "Federal agent also thinks… " But read it thus."

  Federal agent thinks — also physician — is impostor on your ship…

  "Meaning," said Dr. Fell, crumpling up the paper, "an entirely different thing. The remark about 'medical profession influential' simply means that the doctor in attendance is making a row; he is insisting that, despite the patient at the hospital being apparently out of his head in insisting he is Sturton, the doctor believes it and they mustn't disregard it. But, good God! Do you seriously think that, if he had meant Dr. Kyle was a murderer, the whole medical profession would have wanted to shield him? The idea was so absurd that I wonder anybody considered it. It refers to Sturton! Sweep away the whole flimsy tangle, now. Let's have one point piled on top of the other until you'll realise it couldn't have been anybody; let's come at last to the gigantic and damning proof."