The Hollow Man

by John Dickson Carr

  'Scrum,' he said, 'a little comparing of notes, I admit, will be advisable before we tackle the next witnesses. But not for a second about the seven towers. I'll lead up to those gradually, like Childe Roland. Hadley, a few disjointed words - the only real evidence we have, because it comes from the victim - may be the most important clue of all. I mean those few mutterings from Grimaud just before he fainted. I hope to heaven we all heard 'em. Remember, you asked him whether Fley had shot him. He shook his head. Then you asked him who had done it. What did he say? - I want to ask each of you in turn what you thought you heard.'

  He looked at Rampole. The American's wits were muddled. He had a strong recollection of certain words, but the whole was confused by a too - vivid picture of a blood-soaked chest and a. writhing neck. He hesitated. 'The first thing he said,' Rampole answered, 'sounded to me like _hover_ -'

  'Nonsense,' interrupted Hadley. 'I jotted it all down right away. The first thing he said was Bath or "the bath", though I'm hanged if I see - '

  'Steady now. Your own gibberish,' said Dr Fell, 'is a little worse than mine. Go on, Ted.'

  'Well, I wouldn't swear to any of it. But then I did hear the words not suicide, and he couldn't use rope. Next there was some reference to a roof and to snow and to a fox. The last thing I heard sounded like too much light. Again, I wouldn't swear it was all in consecutive order.'

  Hadley was indulgent. 'You've got it all twisted, even, if you have got one or two of the points.' He seemed uneasy, nevertheless. 'All the same, I'm bound to admit that my notes don't make much better sense. After the word bath, he said salt and wine. You're right about the rope, although I heard nothing about suicide. Roof and snow are correct; "too much light" came afterwards; then "got gun". Finally, he did say something about a fox and the last thing - I barely heard it because of that blood - was something like Don't blame poor - And that's all.'

  'O Lord!' groaned Dr Fell. He stared from one to the other. ' This is terrible. Gents, I was going to be very triumphant over you. I was going to explain what he said. But I am beaten by the staggering size of your respective ears. I never heard all that out of the gabble, although I dare say you're within some distance of the truth. Wow!'

  'Well; what's your version?' demanded Hadley.

  The doctor stumped up and down, rumbling, 'I heard only the first few words. They make tolerably good sense if I'm right - if I'm right. But the rest is a nightmare. I have visions of foxes running across roofs in the snow or -'

  'Lycanthropy?' suggested Rampole. 'Did anybody mention werewolves?'

  'No, and nobody's going to!' roared Hadley. He struck his note - book. 'To put everything in order, Rampole. I'll write down what you thought you heard for comparison ... So. We now have: Your list. Hover. Not suicide. He couldn't use rope. Roof. Snow. Fox. Too much light.'

  'My list. Bath. Salt. Wine. He couldn't use rope. Roof. Snow. Too much light. Got gun. Don't blame poor -

  'There we are. And, as usual, with your own brand of cussedness, Fell, you're most confident about the most senseless part. I might rig up an explanation that could fit together all the latter part, but how the devil does a dying man give us a clue by talking about bath and salt and wine?'

  Dr Fell stared at his cigar, which had gone out.

  'H'mf, yes. We'd better clear up a little of that. There are puzzles enough as it is. Let's go gently along the road ... First, my lad, what happened in that room after Grimaud was shot?'

  'How the hell should I know? That's what I'm asking you. If there's no secret entrance - '

  'No, no, I don't mean how the vanishing - trick was worked. You're obsessed with that business, Hadley; so obsessed that you don't stop to ask yourself what else happened. First, let's get clear the obvious things for which we can find an explanation, and go on from there. Humph. Now, then, what clearly did happen in that room after the man was shot? First, all the marks centred round the fireplace-'

  'You mean the fellow climbed up the chimney?'

  'I am absolutely certain he didn't,' said Dr Fell testily, 'That flue is so narrow that you can barely get your fist through. Control yourself and think. First, a heavy sofa was pushed away from in front of the fire - place; there was a good deal of blood on the top, as though Grimaud had slipped or leaned against it. The hearth - rug was pulled or kicked away; there was blood on that; and a fireside chair was shoved away. Finally, I found spots of blood on the hearth and even in the fire - place. They led us to a huge mass of burnt papers that had nearly smothered the fire.

  'Now consider the behaviour of the faithful Madame Dumont. As soon as she came into that room, she was very terribly concerned about that fire - place. She kept looking at it all the time, and nearly grew hysterical when she saw I was doing so too. She even, you recall, made the foolish blunder of asking us to light a fire - even though she must have known that the police wouldn't go fooling about with coals and kindling to make witnesses comfortable on the very scene of a crime. No, no, my boy. Somebody had tried to burn letters or documents there. She wanted to be certain they had been destroyed.'

  Hadley said heavily: 'So she knew about it then? And yet you said you believed her story?'

  'Yes. I did and do believe her story - about the visitor and the crime. What I don't believe is the information she gave us about herself and Grimaud ... Now think again what happened! The intruder shot Grimaud. Yet Grimaud, although he is still conscious, does not shout for help, try to stop the killer, make a row of any kind, or even open the door when Mills is pounding there. But he does do something. He does do something, with such a violent exertion that he tears wide open the wound in his lung: as you heard the doctor say.

  'And I'll tell you what he did do. He knew he was a goner and that the police would be in. He had in his possession a mass of things that must be destroyed. It was more vital to destroy them than to catch the man who shot him or even save his own life. He lurched back and forth from that fireplace, burning this evidence. Hence the sofa knocked away, the hearth - rug, the stains of blood - You understand now?'

  There was a silence in the bright, bleak hall.

  'And the Dumont woman?' Hadley asked heavily.

  'She knew it, of course. It was their joint secret. And she happens to love him.'

  'If this is true, it must have been something pretty damned important that he destroyed,' said Hadley, staring. 'How the devil do you know all this? What secret could they have had, anyway? And what makes you think they had any dangerous secret at all?'

  Dr Fell pressed his hands to his temples and ruffled his big mop of hair. He spoke argumentatively.

  'I may be able to tell you a little of it,' he said, 'although there are parts that puzzle me beyond hope. You see, neither Grimaud nor Dumont is any more French than I am. A woman with those cheek - bones, a woman who pronounces the silent "h" in honest never came from a Latin race. But that's not important. They're both Magyar. To be precise: Grimaud came originally from Hungary. His real name is Karoly, or Charles, Grimaud Horvath. He probably had a French mother. He came from the principality of Transylvania, formerly a part of the Hungarian kingdom, but annexed by Rumania since the War. In the late nineties or early nineteen hundreds, Karoly Grimaud Horvath and his two brothers were all sent to prison. Did I tell you he had two brothers? One we haven't seen, but the other now calls himself Pierre Fley.

  'I don't know what crime the three brothers Horvath had committed, but they were sent to the prison of Siebenturmen, to work in the salt - mines near Tradj in the Carpathian Mountains. Charles probably escaped. Now the rather deadly "secret" in his life can't concern the fact that he was sent to prison or even that he escaped before finishing the sentence; the Hungarian kingdom is broken up, and its authority no longer exists. More probably he did some black devilry that concerned the other two brothers; something pretty horrible concerning those three coffins, and people buried alive, that would hang him even now if it were discovered ... That's all I can hazard at the moment. Has anybody got a match?'


  CHAPTER 6

  THE SEVEN TOWERS

  In the long pause after this recital Hadley tossed a matchbox to the doctor, and eyed him malevolently.

  'Are you joking?' he asked. 'Or is this black magic?'

  'Not about a thing like this. I wish I could. Those three coffins - dammit, Hadley!' muttered Dr Fell, knocking his fists against his temples, ' I wish I could see a glimmer - something -'

  'You seem to have done pretty well. Have you been holding out information, or how do you know all that? Stop a bit!' He looked at his note - book. '"Hover." "Bath." "Salt." "Wine." In other words, you're trying to tell us that what Grimaud really said was, "Horvath" and "salt - mine"? Take it easy now! If that's your basis, we're going to have a lot of star - gazing on our hands to twist round the rest of those words.'

  'This assumption of rage,' said Dr Fell, 'shows that you agree with me. Thankee. As you yourself shrewdly pointed out, dying men do not commonly mention bath - salts. If your version is correct, we might as well all retire to a padded cell. He really said it, Hadley. I heard him. You asked him for, a name, didn't you? Was it Fley? No. Who was it, then? And he answered Horvath.'

  'Which you say is his own name.'

  'Yes. Look here,' said Dr Fell, 'if it will salve your wounds, I will cheerfully admit that it wasn't fair detective work, and that I didn't show you the sources of my information from that room. I'll show you them presently, although Lord knows I tried to show them to you at the time.

  'It's like this. We hear from Ted Rampole about a queer customer who threatens Grimaud, and significantly talks about people "buried alive". Grimaud takes this seriously; he has known that man before and knows what he is talking about, since for some reason he buys a picture depicting three graves. When you ask Grimaud who shot him, he answers with the name "Horvath" and says something about salt - mines. Whether or not you think that's odd of a French professor, it is rather odd to find up over his mantelpiece the device of a shield graven thus: coupe, a demi - eagle issuant sable, in chief a moon argent -'

  'I think we may omit the heraldry,' said Hadley with a sort of evil dignity. 'What is it?'

  'It's the arms of Transylvania. Dead since the War, of course, and hardly very well known in England (or France) even before that. First a Slavic name, and then Slavic arms. Next those books I showed you. Know what they were? They were English books translated into the Magyar. I couldn't pretend to read 'em -'

  'Thank God.'

  '- but I could at least recognize the complete works of Shakespeare, and Sterne's Letters from Yorick to Eliza, and Pope's Essay on Man. That was so startling that I examined 'em all.'

  'Why startling?' asked Rampole. ' There are all sorts of funny books in anybody's library. There are in your own.'

  'Certainly. But suppose a scholarly Frenchman wants to read English. Well, he reads it in English, or he gets it translated into French. But he very seldom insists on getting its full flavour by first having it translated into Hungarian. In other words, they weren't Hungarian books; they weren't even French books on which a Frenchman might have been practising his Magyar; they were English. It meant that whoever owned those books, his native language was Hungarian. I went through all of 'em, hoping to find a name. When I found Karoly Grimaud Horvath, 1898 faded out on one fly - leaf, it seemed to put the tin hat on it.

  'If Horvath was his real name, why had he kept up this pretence for so long? Think of the words "buried alive", and "salt mines", and there is a gleam. But, when you asked him who shot him, he said Horvath. A moment like that is probably the only time when a man isn't willing to talk about himself; he didn't mean himself, but somebody else named Horvath. While I was thinking of that, our excellent Mills was telling you about the man called Fley at the public - house. Mills said that there seemed something very familiar about Fley, although he had never seen him before, and that his speech sounded like a burlesque of Grimaud's. Was it Grimaud he suggested? Brother, brother, brother! You see, there were three coffins, but Fley mentioned only two brothers. It sounded like a third.

  'While I was thinking about this, there entered the obviously Slavic Madame Dumont. If I could establish Grimaud as coming from Transylvania, it would narrow down our search when we tried to find out his history. But it had to be done delicately. Notice that carved figure of a buffalo on Grimaud's desk? What does that suggest to you?'

  'It doesn't suggest Transylvania, I can tell you that,' the superintendent growled. 'It's more like the Wild West - Buffalo Bill - Indians. Hold on! Was that why you asked her whether Grimaud had ever been in the United States?'

  Dr Fell nodded guiltily. ' It seemed an innocent question, and she answered. You see, if he'd got that figure in an American curio shop - H'm. Hadley, I've been in Hungary. I went in my younger and lither days, when I'd just read Dracula. Transylvania was the only European country where buffaloes were bred; they used 'em like oxen. Hungary was full of mixed religious beliefs; but Transylvania was Unitarian. I asked Madame Ernestine and she qualified. Then I threw my hand - grenade. If Grimaud had been innocently associated with salt - mines, it wouldn't matter. But I named the only prison in Transylvania where convicts were used to work the salt - mines. I named the Siebenturmen - or the Seven Towers - without even saying it was a prison. It almost finished her. Now perhaps you will understand my remark about the seven towers and the country that does not now exist. And for God's sake, will somebody give me a match?'

  'You've got 'em,' said Hadley. He took a few strides round the hall, accepted a cigar from the now bland and beaming Dr Fell, and muttered to himself: 'Yes - so far as it goes, it seems reasonable enough. Your long shot about the prison worked. But the whole basis of your case, that these three people are brothers, is pure surmise. In fact, I think it's the weakest part of the case ...'

  'Oh, admitted. But what then?'

  'Only that it's the crucial point. Suppose Grimaud didn't mean that a person named Horvath had shot him, but was only referring to himself in some way? Then the murderer might be anybody. But if there are three brothers, and he did mean that, the thing is simple. We come back to the belief that Pierre Fley did shoot him after all, or Fley's brother did. We can put our hands on Fley at any time, and as for the brother -'

  'Are you sure you'd recognize the brother,' said Dr Fell reflectively, ' if you met him?'

  'How do you mean?'

  'I was thinking of Grimaud. He spoke English perfectly, and also passed perfectly for a Frenchman. I don't doubt he did study at Paris, and that the Dumont woman did make costumes at the Opera. Anyhow, there he went stumping round Bloomsbury for nearly thirty years, gruff, good - natured, harmless, with his clipped beard and his square bowler, keeping a check on a savage temper and placidly lecturing in public. Nobody ever saw a devil in him - though somehow I fancy it must have been a wily, brilliant devil. Nobody ever suspected. He could have shaved, cultivated tweeds and a port - wine complexion, and passed for a British squire, or anything else he liked ... Then what about his third brother? He's the one that intrigues me. Suppose he's right here somewhere in our midst, in some guise or other, and nobody knows him for what he really is?'

  'Possibly. But we don't know anything about the brother.'

  Dr Fell, struggling to light his cigar, peered up with extraordinary intentness.

  'I know. That's what bothers me, Hadley.' He rumbled for a moment, and then blew out the match with a vast puff. 'We have two theoretical brothers who have taken French names: Charles and Pierre. Then there's a third. For the sake of clearness and argument, let's call him Henri -'

  'Look here. You're not going to tell me you know something about him also?'

  'On the contrary,' returned Dr Fell, with a sort of ferocity, 'I'm going to emphasize just how little we know about him. We know about Charles and Pierre. But we haven't even the merest hint about Henri, although Pierre appears to be for ever talking about him and using him as a threat. It is, "My brother who can do much more than I can." "My brother who wants
your life." "I am in danger when I associate with him." And so on. But no shape comes out of the smoke, neither man nor goblin. Son, it worries me. I think that ugly presence is behind the whole business, controlling it, using poor half - crazy Pierre for his own ends, and probably as dangerous to Pierre as to Charles. I can't help feeling that this presence staged the whole scene at the Warwick Tavern; that he's somewhere close at hand and watchful; that -' Dr Fell stared round, as though he expected to see something move or speak in the empty hall. Then he added: 'You know, I hope your constable gets hold of Pierre and keeps hold of him. Maybe his usefulness is over.'

  Hadley made a vague gesture. He bit at the end of his clipped moustache. 'Yes, I know,' he said; 'but let's stick to the facts. The facts will be difficult enough to dig out, I warn you. I'll cable the Rumanian police tonight. But if Transylvania's been annexed, in the fuss and uproar there may be few official records left. The Bolshies were storming through there just after the War, weren't they? Um. Anyhow, we want facts! Come on and let's get after Mangan and Grimaud's daughter. I'm not entirely satisfied with their behaviour, by the way ...'