The Hollow Man

by John Dickson Carr

  'The two brothers met in that gas - lit room at nine. What they talked about we don't know. We shall never know. But evidently Grimaud lulled Fley's suspicions; they became pleasant and amiable and forgot old scores; Grimaud jocularly persuaded him to write that note for the landlord. Then - '

  'I'm not disputing all this,' said Hadley, quietly,' but how do you happen to know it?'

  'Grimaud told us,' said Dr Fell.

  Hadley stared.

  'Oh, yes. Once I had tumbled to that terrible mistake in times, I could understand. But to continue:

  'Fley had written his note. He had got into his hat and coat for departure - because Grimaud wished it to be assumed that he had killed himself just after having returned from a journey outdoors: his return from the phantom visit to Grimaud, in other words. They were all ready to go. And then Grimaud leaped.

  'Whether Fley was subconsciously on his guard; whether he twitched round to run for the door, since he was no match for the powerful Grimaud; whether it happened in. the twisting and scuffle - this we do not know. But Grimaud, with the gun against Fley's coat as Fley wrenched round from him, made a hellish mistake. He fired. And he put the bullet in the wrong place. Instead of getting his victim through the heart, he got him under the left shoulder - blade: a wound of almost the same sort, although at the back, as the one from which Grimaud later died himself. It was a fatal wound, but far from instantly fatal. The poetic ironies were working to kill these brothers, with interchangeable methods, in precisely the same way.

  'Of course Fley went down. He could do nothing else; and it was the wisest course, or Grimaud might have finished him. But Grimaud, for a second, must have lost his nerve in sheer terror. This might have wrecked his whole plan. Could a man shoot himself in that spot? If not. God help the murderer. And worse - Fley, not caught quickly enough, had screamed out before the bullet went home, and Grimaud thought he heard pursuers.

  'He had sense enough, and guts enough, even in that hellish moment, to keep his head. He jammed the pistol into the hand of the motionless Fley, lying on his face. He picked up the coil of rope. Somehow, in spite of crash and fuddlement, the plan must go on. But he had more sense than to risk the noise of another shot to be heard by people possibly listening, or to waste more time. He darted out of the room.

  'The roof, do you see! The roof was his only chance. He heard imaginary pursuers everywhere; maybe some grisly recollection came back to him of three graves in a storm below the Hungarian mountains. He imagined that they would hear him and track him across those roofs. So he dashed for the trap - door at Burnaby's, and down into the dark of Burnaby's flat.

  'It was only then that his wits began to recover themselves ...

  'And, meantime, what has happened? Pierre Fley is fatally hurt. But he still has the ribs of that iron frame which once enabled him to survive being buried alive. The murderer has gone. And Fley will not give in. He must get help. He must get to -

  'To a doctor, Hadley. You asked yesterday why Fley was walking towards the other end of the street, towards the end of a blind alley. Because (as you saw in the newspaper) a doctor lived there: the doctor to whose office he later was carried. He is mortally hurt and he knows it; but he will not be beaten! He gets up, still in his hat and overcoat. The gun has been put into his hand; he rams it in his pocket, for it may be useful. Down he goes, downstairs as steadily as he can, to a silent street where no alarm has been raised. He walks on -'

  'Have you asked yourself why he was walking in the middle of the street and kept looking so sharply round? The most reasonable explanation is not that he was going to visit anybody; but that he knew the murderer to be lurking somewhere, and he expected another attack. He thinks he is safe. Ahead of him, two men are walking rapidly. He passes a lighted jeweller's, he sees a street lamp ahead on the right -

  'But what has happened to Grimaud? Grimaud has heard no pursuit, but he is half insane with wondering. He does not dare go back to the roof and risk investigation. But stop a moment! If there has been any discovery, he will be able to know by looking for a second out into the street. He can go down to the front door, look out, and peer up the street, can't he? No danger in that, since the house where Burnaby lives is deserted.

  'He goes softly downstairs. He opens the door softly, having unbuttoned his coat to wind the coil of rope round him inside that overcoat. He opens the door - full in the glow of a street lamp just beyond that door - and facing him, walking slowly in the middle of the street, is the man he left for dead in the other house less than ten minutes ago.

  'And for the last time those brothers come face to face.

  'Grimaud's shirt is a target under that street lamp. And Fley, driven mad with pain and hysteria, does not hesitate. He screams. He cries the words, "The second bullet is for you!" - just before he whips up the same pistol and fires.

  'That effort is too much. The haemorrhage has got him, und he knows it. He screams again, lets go the gun as he tries to throw it (now empty) at Grimaud; and then he pitches forward on his face. That, my lads, is the shot which the three witnesses heard in Cagliostro Street. It was the shot which struck Grimaud in the chest just before he had time to close the door.'

  CHAPTER 21

  THE UNRAVELLING

  'AND then?' prompted Hadley, as Dr Fell paused and lowered his head.

  'The three witnesses did not see Grimaud, of course,' said Dr Fell, wheezing, after a long pause, 'because he was never outside the door; never on the steps at all; never within twenty feet of the man who seemed to have been murdered in the middle of a snow desert. Of course Fley already had the wound, which jetted blood from the last convulsion. Of course any deduction from the direction of the wound was useless. Of course there were no fingerprints on the gun, since it landed in snow and in a literal sense had been washed clean.'

  'By God!' said Hadley, so quietly that he seemed to be making a statement. 'It fulfils every condition of the facts, and yet I never thought of it... But go on. Grimaud?'

  'Grimaud is inside the door. He knows he's got it in his chest; but he doesn't think it's very serious. He's survived worse things than bullets, and other things (he thinks) are more serious.

  'After all, he's only got what he was going to give himself - a wound. He could bark out that chuckle of his at such a thing. But his plan has crashed to hell! (How is he to know, by the way, that the clock at the jeweller's will be fast? He doesn't even know that Fley is dead, for there is Fley walking in the street with fire and sting still in him. Luck - by reason of the jeweller's clock - is with him when he thought it had deserted him, but how is he to know it?) All he is sure of is that Fley will never now be found, a suicide up in that little room. Fley - probably dangerously wounded, yes, but still able to talk - is out in that street with a policeman running towards him. Grimaud is undone. Unless he can use his wits, he's on his way to the hangman, for Fley will not keep silent now.

  'All this comes an instant after the shot, the rush of fancies crowding in. He can't stay here in this dark hall. He'd better have a look at that wound, though, and make sure he doesn't leave a trail of blood. Where? Burnaby's flat upstairs, of course. Up he goes, gets the door open, and switches on the lights. Here's the rope wound round him - no use for that thing now; he can't pretend Fley came to call on him when Fley may now be talking with the police. He flings the rope off and leaves it.

  'A look at the wound next. There's blood all over the inside of that light tweed overcoat, and blood on his inner clothes. But the wound is of small consequence. He's got his handkerchief and his adhesive tape, and he can plug himself up like a horse gored in the bull ring. Karoly Horvath, whom nothing can kill, can afford to chuckle at this. He feels as steady and fresh as ever. But he patches himself up - hence the blood in the bathroom of Burnaby's flat - and tries to collect his wits. What time is it? Good God! he's late; it's just on a quarter to ten. Got to get out of here and hurry home before they catch him...

  'And he leaves the lights on. When th
ey burnt up a shilling's worth and went out in the later course of the night, we don't know. They were on three - quarters of an hour afterwards, anyhow, when Rosette saw them.

  'But I think that his sanity returns as he hurries home. Is he caught? It seems inevitable. Yet is there any loophole, any ghost of a fighting chance, however thin? You see, whatever else Grimaud is, he's a fighter. He's a shrewd, theatrical, imaginative, sneering, common - sense blackguard: but don't forget that he's also a fighter. He wasn't all of a black colour, you know. He would murder a brother, but I question whether he would murder a friend or a woman who loved him. In any case, is there some way out? There's one chance, so thin that it's almost useless; but the only one. That's to carry through his original scheme and pretend that Fley has called on him and given that wound in his own house. Fley still has the gun. It will be Grimaud's story, and his witnesses' word, that he never left the house all the evening! Whereas they can swear that Fley did come to see him - and then let the damned police try to prove anything! Why not? The snow? It's stopped snowing and Fley won't have left a track. Grimaud has thrown away the rope Fley was supposed to have used. But it's a toss - up, a last daring of the devil, the only course in an extremity...

  'Fley shot him at about twenty minutes to ten. He gets back here at a quarter to ten or a little after. Getting into the house without leaving a footprint? Easy! for a man with a constitution like an ox, and only slightly wounded. (By the way, I believe he was really wounded only slightly, and that he'd live now to hang, if he hadn't done certain things; you'll see.) He'll return by way of the steps down to the area - way, and the area door, as arranged. How? Well, there is a coating of snow on the areaway steps, of course. But the entrance to the areaway steps is beside the next house, isn't it? Yes. And at the foot of the area steps the basement door is protected from snow by a projection: the projection of the main front steps overhanging. So that there is no snow exactly in front of the area door. If he can get down there without leaving a mark -

  'He can. He can approach from the other direction, as though he were going to the house next door, and then simply jump down the area steps to the cleared patch below ... Don't I seem to remember a thud, as of someone falling, which someone heard just before the front - door bell rang?'

  'But he didn't ring the front - door bell!'

  'Oh, yes, he did - but from inside. After he'd gone into the house by way of the area door, and up to where Ernestine Dumont was waiting for him. Then they were ready to perform their illusion.'

  'Yes,' said Hadley. 'Now we come to the illusion. How was it done, and how do you know how it was done?'

  Dr Fell sat back and tapped his finger - tips together as though he were marshalling facts.

  'How do I know? Well, I think my first suggestion was the weight of that picture.' He pointed sleepily at the big slashed canvas leaning against the wall. 'Yes, it was the weight of the picture. That wasn't very helpful, until I remembered something else...'

  'Weight of the picture? Yes, the picture,' growled Hadley. 'I'd forgotten that. How does it figure in the blasted business, anyhow? What did Grimaud mean to do with that?'

  'H'mf, ha, yes. That's what I wondered, you see.'

  'But the weight of the picture, man! It doesn't weigh very much. You yourself picked it up with one hand and turned it round in the air.'

  Dr Fell sat up with an air of some excitement. ' Exactly. You've hit it. I picked it up with one hand and swung it round ... Then why should it take two husky men, the cabman and one extra, to carry it upstairs?'

  'What?'

  'It did, you know. That was twice pointed out to us. Grimaud, when he took it from Burnaby's studio, easily carried it downstairs. Yet, when he returned here with that same painting late in the afternoon, two people had a job carting it up. Where had it picked up so much weight all of a sudden? He didn't have glass put in it - you can see that for yourself. Where was Grimaud all that time, between the morning when he bought the picture and the afternoon when he returned with it? It's much too big a thing to carry about with you for pleasure. Why was Grimaud so insistent on having the picture all wrapped up?

  'It wasn't a very far - fetched deduction to think that he used that picture as a blind to hide something that the men were carrying up, unintentionally, along with it. Something in the same parcel. Something very big - seven feet by four - h'm -'

  'But there couldn't have been anything,' objected Hadley, 'or we'd have found it in this room, wouldn't we? Besides, in any case the thing must have been almost absolutely flat, or it would have been noticed in the wrappings of the picture. What sort of object is it that's as big as seven feet by four, and yet thin enough not to be noticed inside the wrappings of a picture; what's as huge an object as that picture, which can nevertheless be spirited out of sight whenever you wish?'

  'A mirror,' said Dr Fell.

  After a sort of thunderous silence, while Hadley rose from his chair, Dr Fell went on sleepily: 'And it can be spirited out of sight, as you put it, merely by being pushed up the flue of that very broad chimney - where we've all tried to get our fists, by the way - and propped up on the ledge inside where the chimney turns. You don't need magic. You only need to be damnably strong in the arms and shoulders.'

  'You mean,' cried Hadley,' that damned stage trick - '

  'A new version of the stage trick,' said Dr Fell, 'and a very good one which is practical if you care to try it. Now, look round this room. You see the door? What do you see in the wall directly opposite the door?'

  'Nothing,' said Hadley. 'I mean, he's had the bookcases cleared away in a big space on either side. There's blank panelled wall, that's all.'

  'Exactly. And do you see any furniture in a line between the door and that wall?'

  'No. It's cleared.'

  'So, if you were out in that hall looking in, you would see only black carpet, no furniture, and to the rear an expanse of blank oak - panelled wall?'

  'Yes.'

  'Now, Ted, open the door and look out into the hall,' said Dr Fell. 'What about the walls and carpet out there?'

  Rampole made a feint of looking, although he knew. 'They're just the same,' he said. 'The floor is one solid carpet running to the baseboards, like this one, and the panelling is the same.'

  'Right! By the way, Hadley,' pursued Dr Fell, still drowsily, 'you might drag out that mirror from behind the bookcase over there. It's been behind the bookcase since yesterday afternoon, when Drayman found it in the chimney. It was lifting it down that brought on his stroke. We'll try a little experiment. I don't think any of the household will interrupt us up here, but we can head off anybody who does. I want you to take that mirror, Hadley, and set it up just inside the door - so that when you open the door (it opens inwards and to the right, you see, as you come in from the hall) the edge of the door at its outermost swing is a few inches away from the mirror.'

  The superintendent, with some difficulty, trundled out the object he found behind the bookcase. It was bigger than a tailor's swinging mirror; several inches, in fact, higher and wider than the door. Its base rested flat on the carpet, and it was supported upright by a heavy swing - base on the right - hand side as you faced it. Hadley regarded it curiously.

  'Set it up inside the door?'

  'Yes. The door will swing open a short distance; you'll see an aperture only a couple of feet wide at the most ... Try it!'

  'I know, but if you do that - well, somebody sitting in the room down at the end of the hall, where Mills was, would see his own reflexion smack in the middle of the mirror.'

  'Not at all. Not at the angle - a slight angle, but enough; a poor thing, but mine own - not at the angle to which I'm going to tilt it. You'll see. The two of you go down there where Mills was while I adjust it. Keep your eyes off until I sing out.'

  Hadley, muttering that it was damned foolishness, but highly interested in spite of that, tramped down after Rampole. They kept their eyes off until they heard the doctor's hail, and then turned round.
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  The hallway was gloomy and high enough. Its black - carpeted length ran down to a closed door. Dr Fell stood outside that door, like an overfat master of ceremonies about to uuveil a statue. He stood a little to the right of the door, well back from it against the wall, and had his hand stretched out across to the knob.

  'Here she goes!' he grunted, and quickly opened the door - hesitated - and closed it. 'Well? What did you see?'

  'I saw the room inside,' returned Hadley. 'Or at least I thought I did. I saw the carpet, and the rear wall. It seemed a very big room.'