Melson was watching Lucia and Mrs. Steffins. On the latter’s face was only a stupid expression, like a drunken person fumbling with keys. Then realization came and she sagged. Her head went over against the back of the chair in an unconsciously theatrical gesture, and her shaky lips framed words which Melson could have sworn were, “Thank God.”
“Are you mad?” said Lucia Handreth.
It was not a question, but a quick, sharp, incredulous statement.
She took a step forward. Her breast rose and fell. “Doesn’t it please you, Miss Handreth?”
“Kindly don’t try to be suave. I—I am neither pleased nor displeased. I simply don’t believe it. Is this a joke? You told me this morning—”
“Yes. But since then we have heard other things. I’m afraid all of your evidence wasn’t … altogether corroborated, if you understand me? I think you do.”
“Yet with all that evidence—?” Her voice began to rise. “What did she say? What did she tell you? You mean Don is really going to m—What do you mean?”
Then Carver moved across Melson’s line of vision. He put the dead pipe back in his mouth and drew at it noisily. He looked as though a great weight had been taken from him; not angry with the trick, or even curious, but with the energy drawn from his brittle bones now that there was no longer occasion for it.
“Thank you for your good sense,” he remarked, rather shakily. “You’ve given us the worst scare we ever had. At least we seem well out of it now. What—what do you wish us to do?”
They heard the faint slam of the front door, footsteps, and somewhere a telephone insistently ringing. Clearly not knowing what to do, Hadley lifted his hand and waited. There were mumbling voices, and the whisper of the rain grew louder. Then Kitty appeared.
“Dr. Fell’s ’ere, sir,” she said to the chief inspector. “And they want you on the telephone …”
Through the open doorway Melson had a glimpse of the doctor’s rain-spattered cloak as he stood with his back to them muttering hurriedly to Sergeant Betts and Constable Sparkle. They slid back out of sight in a moment. Dr. Fell, his shovel-hat in his hand, lumbered into the room as Hadley went out. They did not speak; the doctor’s face was heavy with weariness.
“Ah—good evening,” he greeted them, wheezing a little. “I’m just on time, I fancy. It seems we’re always setting this house by the ears, but I’m glad to say that tonight will probably be the last time.”
“The last time?” repeated Carver.
“I hope so. I hope to make the acquaintance of the real murderer,” said Dr. Fell, “tonight. Under these circumstances you must allow me to send you all out of this room, until I summon you here presently. Go anywhere you like, but none of you must leave the house … No hysterics, ma’am!” he added, swinging towards Mrs. Steffins. He seemed to tower. “I think I see it in your eye that you are about to accuse Miss Handreth of being the cause of all your trouble and worry. Perhaps she is; but this is not the time to discuss it … Mr. Carver, will you please take charge of these ladies? All of you are to be within call.”
He stood back. Muffled by the falling rain, the voice of Lincoln’s Inn bell began to toll nine. In the midst of the strokes, as though at an agreed signal, the house bell began buzzing in bursts under somebody’s finger, and the big doorknocker banged out under a vigorous hand. Kitty flew to answer it. The voices of the newcomers were stilled as Eleanor, shaking rain from her coat, moved into the hall so that those in the sitting-room could see her. Behind her loomed Hastings, sullenly jubilant; Boscombe, dryly pleased; and Paull— slightly drunk and very wet, standing puzzled with his rolled umbrella gripped under his arm.
Eleanor faced them.
“Here I am,” she said. Her voice could not find the right level, and echoed thinly. But she stood very straight. “Not in gaol. Free— for the first time.” She looked at Lucia. “Aren’t you sorry?”
“Don, you fool!” screamed Lucia. She dashed her hand across her eyes; hesitated, and then flung out of the room as though she were running for the group. But she passed them, while Eleanor was palely smiling, darted into her own room, and slammed the door. Mrs. Steffins’s wail took up the echo of the noise; but Carver paid no attention. He walked out slowly and said something to Eleanor.
“Thanks, J.,” she replied. “Come upstairs with us, won’t you?”
As in a dream Melson heard Dr. Fell giving instructions; the group fell silent, but terror was here as well as tensity when the doctor returned with Hadley and the hall was cleared. The chief inspector, his back to the door, stood and stared at Dr. Fell.
“Well?” the latter barked. “What is it? Anything wrong?”
“Everything—now. Everything. Somebody’s blown the gaff.”
“What gaff?”
“Call from the office,” Hadley replied, heavily. “It’s in all the late editions of the evening papers. Somebody at the Yard talked; my instructions weren’t understood. Hayes got into a mix-up with the Press Bulletin, but they won’t hold that as his fault. It may be my job in my last couple of weeks, and the pension with it … They know Stanley was here last night, mixed up in funny business, and the Assistant Commissioner told me what would happen if it leaked out. I shall be the scapegoat for all of ’em. Even if we do catch the real murderer now—”
“Do you think I didn’t foresee all that?” asked Dr. Fell, quietly. “Foresee?”
“Steady, son. You’ve been thirty-five years in the Force without losing your nerve, and don’t lose it now. Yes, I saw the trouble; and there’s only one way to meet it, if we can meet it …”
“Yes, thirty-five years,” nodded Hadley. He stared at the floor. “You’ve got something arranged?”
“Yes.”
“You realize what will happen if you bungle it, don’t you? Not merely to me, but to—”
He stopped. Kitty was there again, looking more frightened, as though she had darted away from the front door.
“Sir,” she said, “Mr. Peter Stanley is here …”
For a second the chief inspector stood stonily; then, as he started to move, Dr. Fell gripped his arm. Hadley said:
“That’s done it. That’s done it now. Somebody’ll see him, and we’re ruined. He was to be kept in the background. Now—”
“Be quiet, you fool,” said Dr. Fell, very softly. “Sit down there, and whatever happens don’t move or speak. I sent a message for him to come. Send Mr. Stanley in here, Kitty.”
Hadley backed away and sat down by the table. So did Dr. Fell. Standing in the background by the glass cases, Melson gripped the edge of one to steady himself …
“Come in, Mr. Stanley,” continued Dr. Fell, almost drowsily. “Don’t trouble to close that door. Take a chair, please.”
He entered with a curiously soft step for such a big man. Melson had never yet seen him in full light, and all past feelings and insinuations about him returned now with a sort of shock. He seemed to jerk back from the full glow of the lamp, as an animal might. Wearing a sodden ulster, he was hatless; and when the rain dripped down his face he would twitch his head. His eyes were set and sunken, and the broad face with the projecting ears, which last night had been of a leaden colour, was now of a blotchy pallor—and he was smiling.
“You sent for me,” he said, heavily, and opened his eyes wide.
“That’s right. Sit down. Mr. Stanley, this afternoon certain accusations—suggestions—were made about you …”
He sat down, his big fingers outspread on his knees. Nor was he really smiling, Melson saw; it was a twitching of the lips he could not control. He sat there as motionless as wax, power and danger poised and growing tense in the white lamplight. Suddenly he leaned forward.
“What do you mean, accusations?”
“Did you know the late Inspector George Ames?”
“I did—once.”
“But you didn’t recognize him when you saw him dead last night?”
“I didn’t recognize him,” said Stanley, leaning forward
still further. “The way he looked then. Pretty, wasn’t it? Yes.”
He started to laugh.
“But I suppose,” said Dr. Fell, “you do know your own handwriting when you see it?”
It was as though he had cracked a whip before the other’s face, and Stanley jerked back. Then Melson knew. He knew what Stanley had reminded him of ever since the man came in. The soft movements despite his heaviness, the snarl in the voice, the witless, incalculable stare of the eyes that looked back, the quick jerks. They were in a cage, with something between them and the door.
“Know my own handwriting?” he snapped. “What the hell do you mean? Of course I know my own handwriting. Do you take me for a lunatic?”
“Then,” said Dr. Fell, “you wrote this.”
He reached in his pocket, took out the folded letter, and flung it across. It landed on Stanley’s knees, but he did not touch it.
“Read it!”
Again the whip-crack. Stanley touched the letter, then slowly unfolded it.
“You wrote that.”
“I did not.”
“It’s your signature.”
“I’m telling you that I didn’t write it and never saw it before. You call me a liar, do you?”
“Wait until you hear what they say, Stanley. I’m your friend, you know, or I wouldn’t be telling you this. Wait until you hear what they say.”
“Say?” He moved back a little. “What do they say?”
“That you’re mad, my friend. Mad. That there’s a little maggot up in your head that’s eaten away the brain …”
He was leaning forward as Dr. Fell spoke, to throw the letter on the table. From him came a strong door of wet clothes and brandy. As his hairy hand came forward, his ulster and coat fell a little open, and Melson saw something in the pocket …
Stanley was carrying a gun.
“Mad,” said Dr. Fell. “And that was why you killed George Ames.”
For a second Melson thought the damned thing was going to turn on them. It switched in the chair, and seemed to grow larger.
“But to show you what I think of your brain,” Dr. Fell went on, looking straight into the round yellowish eyes that seemed to contract and expand, “I’m going to tell you what the evidence against you is. This is what somebody thinks about you, as somebody said …
“Last night, while Ames was walking up those stairs, you couldn’t have gone out through the double doors to the hall. We all know that, and admit it.
“But there was a very odd bit of testimony in the evidence, the oddest bit we have. A man standing out in the dark hall saw a little line of moonlight. The door to the passage, the passage that runs up to the roof, was open—you understand that?—and in that passage he saw moonlight. He said that it came from the trapdoor to the roof. But that must have been impossible, because the trap was heavily bolted and nobody could have got at it. Remember that he said ‘a line’; not a patch or a square such as an opened trap could make, but a little line … like the opening, say, of one of these secret wall panels of which we know there are half a dozen in this house.
“Remember the position of the rooms—that your host’s bedroom is at the left, and that its wall is the wail of that passage. Remember that you could have slipped from behind the screen, also at the left, in your dark-grey suit—slipped unseen into the bedroom— and opened the wall panel to get out. Remember that the back windows face the moon. That moonlight fell into the bedroom, and shone out through the partly open panel as you slipped out, opened the spring lock of the door from the inside, and struck down Ames on the landing! That’s what your enemy says you did, unless you can make him tell different, and his name is—”
“LOOK OUT!” yelled Hadley.
They heard the rest of it as Stanley’s big hand smashed forward and swept the lamp off the table. Firelight rose up through the momentary blindness in their eyes; they saw Stanley’s eyes, the gleam of metal in his hand, and heard a sob of breath.
“Stand back,” said Stanley. “I’ll get him.”
A big shape blocked the light from the hall as he turned and ran; the light disappeared in the crash of the door-slamming, and the key was twisted in the lock even as Hadley plunged for the knob.
“He’s locked us—” Hadley’s fists beat the panels. “Berts! You! All of you—get him—open this! Fell, in the name of God, you’ve turned a maniac loose. BETTS! Can’t you stop—”
“Do—Fell—he said not to stop him!” yelled a voice from outside. “You said—He’s taken the key!”
“You bloody idiot, stop him! Do some … Sparkle! Smash this door!”
A weight crashed against it from the outside, a grunt, and then another crash. From upstairs came a scream, and then a pistol-shot.
They heard the second shot just before the lock ripped out in a tearing screech, and a big figure stumbled through on its knees. Hadley knocked the door aside, writhed out, and was off towards the stairs, with Melson after him. A voice was speaking clearly through the house. It was loud, but very cool and level, and it seemed pleased.
“You see, they think I’m mad, so I can kill you slowly without any danger whatever. I may kill you whether you tell the truth or not; that I haven’t decided. But one bullet for the leg—one for the belly—one for the neck—the whole thing is, it must go on slowly until you open your lying mouth. You see, don’t you, that nobody’s interfering with me? There’s a police officer at the door, and he does nothing to help you, although he has a gun himself. I saw the bulge of it in his hip pocket, but you observe he does nothing even though my back is to him. Now I’m coming in for another shot …”
A scream, more like a rabbit in a snare than anything human, made Melson’s knees turn to water as he staggered on the stairs behind Hadley. The scream was repeated.
“No,” said the voice, pleasantly, “you can’t run away, you see. A room has only four walls and you’re a good deal in a corner. You know, I was a fool when I once shot that banker with four bullets in the head. But then I had nothing against him.”
The painful breath gasping in his nostrils, Hadley plunged up the last step. Cordite fumes blurred pale faces there; faces that did not move, that watched, twisted and stricken. Through open double doors Melson saw Stanley’s back. Beyond him he saw a face that was not human at all. It was a writhing figure, flapping away, hurling out his arms, trying to bore himself into a tall painted screen as Stanley moved towards him.
“This one,” said Stanley, “is for your belly,” and raised his arm to fire.
The other man stopped screaming.
“Take him off,” a queer voice muttered, not loudly. “It’s all right. I killed Ames. I killed Ames, damn you all! I killed Ames, and admit it. Only for the love of God take him off.”
The voice rose despairingly. The grey face lifted and strained back against painted flames. Then Calvin Boscombe, his mouth slobbering, tumbled down against the screen in a dead faint.
For a moment Stanley stood motionless; at length he drew a shuddering breath and put the pistol in his pocket. He turned a dull face towards Dr. Fell, who lumbered slowly across the room and stared at the open-mouthed caricature on the floor.
“Well?” asked Stanley, heavily. “Was it all right? He cracked.”
“It was a damned good show,” said Dr. Fell, gripping his shoulder, “and we couldn’t have planned a better one … Only, for Lord’s sake don’t fire off any more of those blanks or you’ll rouse the whole neighbourhood.”
He turned to Hadley.
“Boscombe’s not hurt,” he added. “He’ll live to hang. I wonder what he thinks of the ‘reactions of a man about to die’ now?”
22
The Truth
THE DAILY SPHERE: “Brilliant Strategy By Retired Police Officer Avenges Murder of Old Comrade!” The Daily Banner: “Scotland Yard Again Triumphs by Faith in Disgraced Chief Inspector!” The Daily Trumpeter: “Pictures: Left, Chief Inspector David Hadley, who unerringly spotted the solution within twenty-f
our hours, receiving handshake from Assistant Commissioner the Hon. George Bellchester; and Right, Mr. Peter E. Stanley, the hero of the hour, who, unfortunately, could not be interviewed, as he had started on a long sea voyage for the benefit of his health.”
The Daily Trumpeters leader said: “Again has been signally demonstrated the efficiency of the law’s guardians, even those who have no longer a connection with the institution they reverence even in retirement. Only in Britain, we may proudly boast, could such a thing—”
Dr. Fell said: “Well, dammit! It was the only possible way to save all their faces. Have another glass of beer.”
But, since this is a story not so much of saved faces as of a murder committed by a man who thought himself too shrewd, we must refer for enlightenment to a conversation which occurred in the early hours of that same morning at Dr. Fell’s hotel in Great Russell Street. Hadley had to brush up in secret on the facts of his triumph, and only he and Melson were there when the doctor talked.
It was past twelve o’clock when he began, for much had to be done and Boscombe’s signature, with witnesses, had to go on a statement before he gathered back enough of his nerve to attempt a denial. But the work was over; a bright fire was kindled, padded chairs were set out, and ready to hand stood a case of beer, two bottles of whisky, and a box of cigars. Dr. Fell beamed on his domain and prepared for the recital.
“I’m not joking,” he said, “When I tell you I was honestly sorry to have to deceive you all the way through. I not only had to drop hints to you of my belief in Boscombe’s innocence, but even to Boscombe himself. You remember I told you, just after we went to his room this morning and found missing the watch he had stolen from himself, that I had just been through one of the worst interludes of my life. When I even had to stand there and pay compliments to that fish-blooded devil, they choked me like castor oil. But it was necessary. If he is the meanest murderer in my experience, he is also one of the cleverest; he left no tangible clue to work on. My only chance to trap him was the chance I took. You were in such a state this morning that, if I had let you know what I thought, you would have tried to verify it and let him know he was under suspicion. Then he would have begun to slip and twist away from us again, and he would certainly have been suspicious of the trap I planned to lay with Stanley. Boscombe didn’t fear the law: it was Stanley he feared, Stanley’s poor goblin-ridden brain turning with claws to tear him. And I saw it was all he feared.”
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