‘That’s curious,’ commented Garland.
‘It was,’ said Hart. ‘There wasn’t the slightest sound. I groped for the switch at the door. It had been turned off. I switched on the lights and they came on all right. I thought at first that they might have fused and that Tremayne had had a kind of fit. But even that wouldn’t have explained his—Oh well! And that’s all I know. The room was just as you see it now. Absolutely empty.’
‘Extraordinary!’
‘It is. I do hope you can do something. I’m terribly worried.’
Here he broke down altogether.
‘Cheer up,’ said Garland. ‘There must be some explanation. I’ll just have a bit of a look round. I wonder if you would mind getting his hat and coat from your office. I’d like to have a look at them. By the way, was there anyone else who would have seen him coming to work to-night?’
‘Yes. Sergeant Jones, the commissionaire at the front door.’
‘Oh, yes. Would you mind sending him up? I’ll see the rest of the staff later. How many are there?’
‘About a dozen.’
And with that he went out, looking thoroughly miserable.
When he had gone we both had a thorough search of the room. We found absolutely nothing. The walls were solid everywhere. The only opening was the door. The floor under the carpet we soon found to be made of solid concrete. Any entrance or escape through the ceiling was out of the question. Even if there had been a trap (which there wasn’t) no one could have dropped through, strangled Tremayne, and got back again (even if he had had a ladder) in the time between the crime and the entrance of Hart.
‘Very baffling,’ said William, with a queer smile.
‘Very,’ I agreed.
The commissionaire at the front door came in at that moment. A typical army man was Sergeant Jones.
Yes. He had seen Tremayne come in earlier in the evening. He arrived at his usual time. He would know him out of a thousand. Very peculiar walk he had. Coat collar turned up as usual. Glasses? Yes, everything quite ordinary and as usual.
He was dismissed with a benediction.
A clerk was then produced who had passed him coming up the stairs. He, too, was dismissed with thanks.
Sergeant Jones, recalled, said that, even supposing a body had been carried past Mr. Hart’s office without being noticed, it would not go into the street without him, Sergeant Jones, seeing it. Most indignant he was about this. Of course, the thing was impossible. He was there to watch people coming in and going out, and, if he didn’t notice a body going out, he wasn’t worth his money.
‘Why,’ he went on, ‘I could tell you every movement of every member of the staff to-day.’
And he went on to enumerate a long list, finishing with Tremayne, who had come in at 5.30, and Mr. Hart, who had come in at noon, and not left the office since.
Garland scratched his head thoughtfully at this information, and decided that he had learnt enough here.
‘I’m going round to see Mrs. Tremayne,’ he said to me. ‘And I’m sure that one’s enough for an interview with an hysterical woman who’s probably a widow. You run back to your office. I’ll give you a ring if anything else happens to-night.’
With that he left me, and I walked thoughtfully back to my office.
He didn’t ring me up that night, and when I went to bed I was still as puzzled as ever by the mystery. My two reporters, good boys both, had done their best, and produced some very readable stuff, but they had not been allowed much scope by the local police, who knew their job much too well. All the newspapers could get was a very little fact and a great amount of conjecture.
And it was not an easy case to conjecture about. I, for one, was hopelessly baffled. The wife of the vanished announcer had been interviewed by my reporter as well as by the detective, and she swore that it was her husband’s voice she had heard from the loud speaker. And there was no doubt that she ought to know.
It was really most amazing. Tremayne had been attacked in an empty and unapproachable room, and then had been spirited away—all in a space of less than two minutes.
No wonder that next day all the newspapers were full of it. One after another they gave the case flaring headlines. Some went so far as roundly to declare that the whole thing was due to magic.
The thing was so surprising that it might have been considerably more than a seven days’ wonder; but the newspapers this time were not to have a long drawn out mystery, for by the following evening Garland had drawn the net tight and all was over, bar the shouting—and the scaffold. It made the story even more surprising but, as a journalist myself, I could not help thinking regretfully of the cleverness of this relative of mine, which had so soon ended the newspaper sensation of years.
I was down at the office that afternoon when the telephone bell rang. It was Garland. He wanted to see me, and I told him to come along. In a very few minutes he was shown in. He looked tired—and, to my trained eye, immoderately triumphant.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘Very,’ he answered. ‘I want to relieve my brain, so I’ll talk to you for a few minutes. You will admit, won’t you, that it’s impossible for a man to be strangled in an empty sealed room, and also impossible for him, when he’s been strangled, to vanish from that room?’
‘Yes. But was the studio sealed?’
‘We examined it ourselves. The police have been over it again to-day. A fly couldn’t have walked out of it without being noticed. The walls are solid, the ceiling is solid, the floor is concrete. How on earth was the victim removed?’
‘The only way was through the door.’
‘That certainly seems the only way, but you must remember this—Hart was in his office all the time with his door open. He was bound to hear and see anything being taken past his door. And, even supposing that he hadn’t noticed anything, there was the commissionaire downstairs.’
‘He may have been bribed.’
‘Possible, but not very probable. Besides, there wasn’t time for anything to be carried away between the strangling and the opening of the door. Hart was in the room, he says, almost as soon as the deed was done. There’s proof, too, because you could hear someone coming into the room over the wireless.’
‘Did his wife tell you anything?’
‘Nothing directly. She’s very attractive. No children and no sign of trouble. Husband happy at the studio. On good terms with his boss. Hart, she confided, had even condescended to come to tea once. A tremendous honour, I gathered. She’s very distraught, of course, but convinced that her husband’s alive and kicking somewhere.’
‘But the thing’s impossible,’ I cried. ‘The thing’s positively eerie. He’s simply vanished into thin air.’
‘That’s certainly what it seems like, but things you see, as Gilbert once observed, are not always what they seem.’
He yawned, and then went on:
‘Would you like to be in at the death?’
I started.
‘Of course. Is it a matter of death, do you think?’
‘I don’t think. I’m sure. There’s been a particularly heartless murder; but murder will always out. It’s a thing that—given a little intelligence on the other side—is bound to be discovered. Take this case. There aren’t any clues. What then? Why, the very lack of them is significant. That was what got me started on the right track. Lack of clues plus logic plus (possibly) a little luck. That was the formula. And in an hour the whole mystery will be exploded. It seems rather a shame, because it was all very clever and artistic.’
‘It baffled me anyhow,’ I said.
‘It baffled me for nearly twelve hours. I got quite puzzled, until I began to think of human nature. Then everything was moderately simple.’
With that he looked at his watch.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you want to be in at the death, foll
ow me, O fourth-cousin-twice-removed.’
And he led the way to a waiting police car.
He was very quiet during the journey, and my feeble attempts to make conversation soon fizzled out. Luckily, it was not a long ride. We soon stopped at a large detached house on the outskirts of the city. On the pavement were a couple of constables. After a whispered consultation, they took up their positions just inside the gate.
‘Do you know who lives here?’ said Garland.
‘No.’
‘The widow of the murdered man.’
Our ring was answered by a trim maid.
‘Tell your mistress,’ he said, ‘that the detective’s back again and wants to see her.’
The maid returned in a second and we were ushered into a sitting-room. In a corner was seated an attractive woman of about thirty. She was very pale, and obviously stricken with grief, and, when she saw us, she seemed involuntarily to shrink back from us. I could sympathise with her, and I was about to murmur my condolences when my companion spoke.
I had never heard him use such a tone before, and I was not surprised that he was the terror of criminals.
‘Excuse the intrusion,’ he rapped out. ‘But I wanted to talk to Mr. Hart in your presence. I asked him to come here at seven. It’s just that now.’
At these words she turned so pale that I thought she was going to faint. She did not say a word, but motioned to us to sit down, and at that moment Hart came in. The maid did not announce him. At any other time I should have been surprised, but now there were too many other matters of surprise for me to think of that little detail.
He smiled at the pale woman in front of him, went over to her, and stood by her side.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Sorry to worry you like this,’ said Garland; ‘but there are one or two questions I want answered, and I thought that I’d better ask them here. I like doing things on the spot.’
At this the man went as pale as the woman.
‘Well?’
‘I wish it were,’ answered the other gravely. ‘Now, don’t let’s beat about the bush. I’m not a fool. Why did you do it?’
‘Do what?’ gasped the man.
‘And,’ went on Garland, ignoring the question, ‘where—?’
At this query both of them looked instinctively towards a French window leading into the garden beyond. The look was only the matter of a fraction of a second but Garland noticed it.
‘Ah! I thought so,’ he said. ‘Well, is there any need to go on with this farce any longer?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand you,’ said the man in a self-possessed voice.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Quite.’
‘Right,’ said Garland, turning to me. ‘Go and fetch those two policemen. There are some tools in the car. Tell them to wait for me in the garden just outside the window. Our friends here will be able to watch what they’re doing nicely.’
I turned to the door, and at that moment the woman let forth a scream such as I never hope to hear again. The man held her in his arms and tried to soothe her, but it was too late and, do what he could, he could not stop her from sobbing out the whole miserable story. And what a miserable story it was!
How Garland had guessed the truth I could not imagine; but he had, and now that his theories were vindicated, he looked as miserable as the two unfortunates he had trapped.
It was the old, old story. The eternal human triangle. The murdered husband had neglected his wife. The other had consoled her. Things had got worse and worse until the husband had actually begun to ill-treat his wife. Then they resolved to get rid of him. They had—But the sequel can best be told in Garland’s words.
The last I saw of those two unfortunate creatures caught up in the web of their own crime was as they were led out by the two policemen. They had no eyes except for each other, and each was trying to help the other. It was pitiful. There was true love there, if there had ever been true love in the world. And they were going inevitably to the scaffold!
The body, of course, was buried in the front garden. When Garland had finished all the unpleasant formalities connected with the arrests and the digging up of the body, he came round to the office.
‘Life’s a rum business,’ he said, flinging himself into a chair. ‘Those two would have made a model married couple. As two sides of a human triangle, they were nothing less than fiends.’
‘So I see; but when did you begin to guess. I’m still as baffled as ever I was.’
‘I was at sea at first. I almost got to the point of thinking something super-natural had happened, and that’s no way for a detective to think. It was obvious that there must be some material explanation of the entire disappearance of a man who, if one’s ears are to be trusted, was either unconscious or dead. We examined the room pretty thoroughly. It was as solid as a coffin.’
I shuddered.
‘Yes. But that’s just what it wasn’t. No body could possibly have been taken out of that room without the knowledge of Hart, and I was soon convinced that no body could have been taken out of the building at all. The commissionaire’s evidence was good enough, apart from anything else. And there were other people about. No, the thing was impossible. It couldn’t have happened.’
‘But it did.’
‘I know it did, but not there. All that took place was that an idea that it happened there was projected to us through one of our senses. A clever fellow, Hart, to contrive that touch. He knew it was impossible to hide a murder altogether. So he made it appear that the murder should take place at a spot which would baffle everyone. The studio was only a red herring. No body had left the building. There was no body in it. What, then? There never was a body there at all.’
I nodded.
‘But,’ I objected, ‘What about his voice over the wireless?’
‘Yes. That was a good bit of psychology, too. I suppose you’ve heard the voices of a good many announcers in your time. Very Oxford, aren’t they? And, even if you knew the men, I bet you’d find it darned difficult to tell the difference between one and another. These two, Hart and Tremayne, used to interchange the announcing work occasionally, and I soon found that there was no one in Birchester, who could swear that there was any violent difference in their voices. Announcers are like leaders in The Times. They’re all anonymous and all alike.’
‘Yes, that’s all right,’ I said. ‘Their voices when they are actually making announcements may be all alike, but what about the scream? I can’t imagine two men screaming alike.’
‘That’s all very well, but who has heard either of these two men scream? People aren’t in the habit of screaming in public. The only real evidence that that scream came from the dead man was the evidence of his wife. She swore it was his scream. She certainly ought to know, if anyone could, but I doubt if even many wives have heard their husbands scream. That was what first aroused my suspicions. She was so sure that it was his scream. And I wondered if it was possible to be as sure as that.’
‘I see.’
‘So that the only evidence that the voice over the wireless was actually his was provided by the wife and his chief. I was now convinced that Tremayne had never been to the studio at all, and things began to narrow down very considerably.’
‘But,’ said I, ‘what about the commissionaire? He saw Tremayne coming in, and swore to its being him.’
‘Pardon me. He swore to seeing a man come in with a limp, with Tremayne’s coat, and so on, but he only thought that it was Tremayne. What easier disguise could there be? A limp, glasses, coat collar turned up. Good God! The thing leaps at one. Someone had impersonated Tremayne for reasons of his own. Only one man could have done it. That was Hart.’
‘But he was in his office all day. That was corroborated.’
‘Oh, no. It was proved that he came in early and was not seen
to leave again. That was all. Did you notice, by the way, that there was a telephone by Jones’ cubby-hutch in the front hall?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there was. What could be easier than for Hart to arrange for a call to be put through at a definite time, say by an accomplice, say by the wife in the case, and to slip out while Jones was answering it? That is precisely what did happen. I found out that there had been an exasperating wrong number just before six, and, mark you, Hart had given orders that he was not to be disturbed between 5.30 and 6.30. He was working behind closed doors then, too. Are you beginning to see now?’
‘Yes.’
‘He left the building then, put on Tremayne’s hat and coat, which he had secreted round the corner, and then came in again to act his little piece. The murder had been done already. The body was buried in the garden there. You see, if the dead man were missed from his home, suspicion was bound to fall on his wife. If he were to disappear from the studio, on whom could suspicion fall?’
‘Dashed clever!’
‘It was. When Hart returned he did that clever little piece of acting, and then reappeared in his own fair form. It might have succeeded, you know. No one would have thought of looking at his house for a crime that was obviously committed a mile away. Well, I’ve no doubt, from the sound of him, that the husband deserved all he got. But I’m afraid they’ll both hang, poor devils. They found the body all right. Sack over the head and the head battered in terribly. Horrible mess! I found that Tremayne was away for the night that night. He was at Stanport on business. The wife sent him an urgent telegram to come back by a particular train, and they struck him down at the very second he entered his house. The maid, I need hardly add, had a nice night off. Terrible! Terrible!’
That should have been the end of the story but it wasn’t.
I was sitting in my office the next afternoon when a man called on what he announced to be very important business.
Miraculous Mysteries Page 19
