"So he shut her up by agreein' with what she thought, supplying such extra details as his fancy thought up, and pretendin' to be the harmless blackmailer she believed he was. The dear old gentleman again.
H.M. pointed a raw-burning cigar at Vicky, and raised his eyebrows.
"I'd just like to bet, ma'am, that the first words he said to you, in a good deal of a nervous and apologetic way, was something like this: 'Why don't you talk the matter over with Arthur?"
Vicky nodded.
"Yes, he did," she cried. "But I couldn't! I couldn't have mentioned it to Arthur. At least, not then. Not yet. Not till I'd had time to think."
"Right," said H.M., "and very well he knew it. And by the time you might have screwed up your courage, it'd be too late. For this ingenious feller, who knows the names of Sergeant Cuff and Hamilton Qeek in a day when most people have unhappily forgotten 'em, had now planned Arthur's murder down to the last detail.
"Hubert invited Rich to this house. He knew the conversation was bound sooner or later to get round to hypnotism. If it didn't, he could always drag it there. But he got his opportunity in the persistence of an argumentative young chap like Sharpless. Then Rich-"
H.M. paused, sniffed, and stirred uncomfortably.
"Scenting another good dinner," supplied Rich curtly. "Go on. Don't be afraid. Say it"
"Rich offered to do his parlor trick. It was Hubert (remember?) who insisted that you should all get together for dinner again on the followin' night. And so the scheme was ready.
"The important thing to remember about this 'experiment,' as Rich told me himself, was that it never varied and it could be timed to a second. Correct, son?"
Rich nodded. "Yes. Any entertainer will tell you the same. It becomes automatic. If possible, I always began at nine o'clock."
"Now, ladies and gents, where Hubert learned about the trick we don't know and your guess is as good as mine. But he must have seen it, probably more than once. He had it taped and he had it timed.
"To plan his details wasn't difficult. If you tell a Scottish-Jew bookie—"
"There are na' any Jews in Sco'land," interrupted Dr. Nithsdale. "They canna mak' a living there."
"Shut up. If you tell a Scottish-Jew bookie, whom you owe five pounds, to be at your house at a certain time to collect it, the one thing in this good green world you can be sure of is that he'll be on time to the tick. Donald MacDonald was timed to arrive durin' the pause, or breather, after Mrs. Fane had been put to sleep. And out went Hubert."
The summer dusk was deepening outside the windows. The ceiling lights were on in the back drawing room, making a brilliant glow where formerly there had been only the bridge lamp. All H.M.'s listeners were bending forward with gratifying absorption in what he said.
"Next," pursued H.M., "lenune ask you a question. What was the one time in the whole 'experiment' when you could be certain — absolutely certain — that every witness would have his eyes glued on either Mrs. Fane or Arthur Fane, and wouldn't have looked round if a bomb had gone off?
"I'll tell you. It was the time when Mrs. Fane was asked to pick up the revolver, walk over while Rich gave her a little lecture, and shoot her husband. Now wasn't it?"
"Yes," admitted Ann.
The others nodded.
"Hubert Fane went out into the hall, and to the front door. There he stood talkm' to the bookie, with one eye on his wrist-watch. When he judged the time was approaching, he sent Donald MacDonald away.
Daisy was in the hall, hoverin' round the drawing-room door with all her attention concentrated there, as he knew she'd be. What did Hubert do then? As we know, he walked back to the dining room. Now I want you to think back. You!" He pointed at Courtney. "The first time you ever set eyes on Hubert Fane, or I ever set eyes on him, what was he doing?"
Courtney reflected.
"He was standing in the dining room," Courtney responded, "by the sideboard. Taking a nip out of a bottle of brandy. In the dark."
H.M. nodded.
"Uh-huh. Sneaking a drink in the dark, as his habit was. As Daisy in the hall knew and expected.
"But this time he didn't do it. On Sunday I noticed somethin' else about that dining room. I noticed it after a nasty accident when I slipped on a rug and caused myself a serious injury that's mebbe goin' to leave me lame. Those rugs are arranged like islands. They're arranged so a man can walk quickly from the sideboard to the kitchen door without his foot makin' a noise on the hardwood.
"And something else. Has any of you noticed that the swing-door to the kitchen is absolutely noiseless and don't creak at all?"
"Yes," returned Courtney, thinking back. "I remember noticing it myself."
"So Hubert walked into the dining room, partly closing the door. He thumped over and made a bottle clink. Then he slipped as quiet as a ghost to the kitchen door, through the kitchen, and out the back door.
"He knew he wouldn't meet anybody, because (don't we know?) Mrs. Propper always goes to bed at nine o'clock every night of her life. Now. Outside the kitchen door, Hubert has left… well, what? You tell me. You used the same article yourself, fast enough, on Sunday night, and for the same purpose as Hubert used it."
Courtney spoke into a vast silence.
"A short ladder," he said.
"Right. A short ladder.
"Y'see, my fatheads, all this guff and hoo-ha about a four-foot unmarked flower-bed, and dust on the window-sills, doesn't mean a curse. Why should either trouble you — if all you've got to do is prop up the ladder on a concrete drive, across the flower-bed, and rest it on the outer edge of the window-sill?
"All your assumptions, you understand, were based on the belief that somebody must have climbed through the window and into the room. But, of course, nobody ever did get into the room at all. It wasn't necessary."
Again there was a silence.
"But the time taken to do all this!" protested Sharpless.
H.M. emitted a ghoulish chuckle. "I sort of thought somebody would mention that. I got here—" he held it up—"a stop-watch. You, son, go out into the dining room now. When you hear somebody shout 'Go!' run through the same motions as Hubert. You'll find the ladder outside. Prop it up, and stick your head through the window."
H.M. handed the stop-watch to Courtney as Sharpless strode out of the room.
"Clock him," H.M. instructed.
Sharpless called out, unseen, that he was ready.
"Go!" shouted Courtney, and pressed the pin of the watch.
The steady little hand traveled. In the dusk, the edge of a ladder presently appeared on the window-sill, clearly to be seen when die curtains were open. As Sharpless's head reared up, Courtney stopped the watch.
"There must be something wrong with this thing!" he said. "It's only thirteen seconds."
"No, son. That's about right. Now clear the center of the room, and put the little table there."
They all moved back as Ann and Courtney set out the table. H.M. gravely laid a rubber dagger on the table.
"Now watch," he instructed.
From his inside pocket he took out an object which made them blink. It was made of very light, thin wood, painted white. It was folded together in a series of strips, with handles at one end.
"But what is it?" inquired Ann.
"It's a lazy-tongs," said H.M. "You've probably seen 'em. Woolworth's used to sell toy ones; I expect they still do."
He pressed the handles. What had seemed a flattened fine of wooden strips suddenly began to elongate. They now saw that it was composed of a series of lightly jointed pieces of wood, diamond-shaped.
When the handles were pressed, the joinings stretched out into diamonds and then flattened again as the contraption stretched out farther and farther— a foot, two feet, six feet, eight — like a rigid snake. H.M. pressed the handles the other way, and it drew back again into its small, compact shape.
"I first thought o' this little joker," he went on, "on Thursday, when we were talkin' about the trick of drivi
ng a pin into the arm without pain.
"The lazy-tongs is used by conjurers; and, of course, fake spiritualists. While they're in one place, they can stretch it out in the dark and make things move across any part of the room. Thus a ghostly luminous hand floats in the air, and so on.
"I deliberately mentioned a lazy-tongs in front of Masters on Sunday, in connection with those two roarin' fake spiritualists the Davenport brothers, to see if he'd tumble to it. But he didn't.
"And then — oh, love a duck! — I began to be pursued by lazy-tongs. They haunted me. The rose-trellises in your garden here are shaped like lazy-tongs. Hubert stood in a forest of 'em, and talked to us. Then I sat down at the telephone in Agnew's office; and there, starin' back at me, was a telephone on a foldin' steel framework, to push out or push back, with exactly the same principle.
"I'm haunted, I am.
"Hubert made one of 'em for himself. On the end of it (see) is a little spring that'll fit over any object it touches and hold it tight.
"He stood outside the window, peepin' through a chink in the curtains. When Mrs. Fane was told to shoot her husband, and every eye in this room was burnin'ly concentrated on that spectacle, the lazy-tongs slid in through the curtains.
"It caught the dagger, twelve feet away, and snaked back with it. Good old Hubert put the real dagger, which is hardly heavier than the rubber one, lightly attached to the end so that a touch on the table would release it.
"When Rich cried to Mrs. Fane, 'One — two — three— fire,' and nobody in here would have seen a herd of elephants, the lazy-tongs whisked out again. A touch released the dagger on the table. Any small noise it might have made was deadened by the rubber handle, and your own preoccupation. And there you are. To change the daggers, Masters and I found, takes about ten seconds."
He swung round to Sharpless.
"Now, son. Climb down. Shove the ladder in the shed, and hurry back in here.. Clock him as he does it."
The clicking little hand of the watch moved steadily, while nobody spoke.
Then Sharpless opened the door to the hall, and Courtney pressed the stem of the watch.
"Longer," he said. "Seventeen seconds."
''Thirteen plus ten plus seventeen," said H.M. dreamily. "Forty seconds. Less than a minute. But allow a little leeway for judgin', and studyin' on Hubert's part, and say one minute.
"Does that strike you as bein' very long? Do you wonder that Daisy was willing to swear Hubert only walked into the dining room and took a drink?
"So Hubert, as you remember, came back briskly just in time to open the door and see Arthur Fane stabbed to death in the chair."
H.M. grumpily folded up the lazy-tongs and replaced it in his breast pocket.
"That's the whole sad story, my children. He had the tongs on him then, and the rubber dagger. All he had to do afterwards was shove the rubber dagger down out of sight in the sofa. Whether he had the wild, starin', brass-bound cheek to nail up the joints of his lazy-tongs, so that it became rigid at half its extended length, and then get rid of it by stickin' it in the garden as a rose-trellis in plain sight… well, I dunno. But I've got a hazy idea that it'd be like Hubert. It'd appeal to his sense of humor." They all sat down again.
"It's a part of the story," prompted Ann, "but not all. What happened afterwards?"
"The rest," said H.M., settling back, "is plain sailing for us. But not for him. On that same night, after his trick was over, he got one hell of a shock.
"For Rich's curiosity had been roused by the rummy emotional undercurrents in this place. Rich wanted to know what ailed Mrs. Fane. While she was under hypnosis, up in that bedroom, Rich asked questions. And, in front of Rich and another witness, she told about the murder of Polly Allen."
"But how could Hubert have known that?" demanded Courtney.
"Because he heard you and me talkin', that's how!" snapped H.M. "Think back, son. Where were we when you first told me all about what you'd heard eavesdroppin' on that balcony?"
Courtney reflected.
"We were standing just outside the front door of this house," he answered, "in the dark."
"Yes. And who occupies the other front bedroom: across the hall from Mrs. Fane's, and also with a balcony facing the front lawn?"
"Hubert," replied Ann instantly.
"We — we moved him to it after the fifteenth of July," Vicky gritted.
"And," said Ann, "Phil and I saw his shadow pass the window there the night you were so ill."
"That's right," agreed H.M. "I sort of thought at the time there was a ghosty kind of shadow up over our heads. But I paid no attention. Hubert, pokin' his big nose out to get a breath of air, heard Courtney tellin' me all about Polly Allen.
"To say that Hubert must have got the breeze up would be puttin' it mildly. The coppers mustn't even hear about Polly. But they had. Under pressure, Mrs. Fane was almost certain to speak out. Why shouldn't she? Her husband, who she thought was the murderer, was dead. The police would get to pryin'. They'd connect Hubert with it. They'd find out that instead of being a 'penniless blackmailer—'
"Well, what Hubert had to do was to shut her mouth before she told the police that he knew anything about Polly Allen. Up to that time (remember?) we didn't know Hubert had any connection with it at all.
"/ gave him his bright idea, curse him. I got rather a phobia about sterilizin' things, and raised a rumpus with Courtney about Rich using a pin on the lady's arm without sterilizing it.
'That gave Hubert to think. If Mrs. Fane died an accidental death, poor gal, of tetanus…
"He went down to the library and looked up tetanus in the encyclopedia. There, starin' back at him in the article (as you can verify by reading it) was the information that the symptoms of tetanus are just the same as those of strychnine poisoning.
"So he had a use for his strychnine after all."
H.M. paused, and pulled at a dead cigar.
"The next day, Thursday, Mrs. Fane would be feel-in' awful ill and upset after what she'd been through. When she felt like that, she ate nothin' but grapefruit. All he had to do was hang about with a little heap of poison in his hand until he saw his opportunity."
Sharpless interposed.
"But what opportunity, sir? I carried the damned grapefruit up to her, and I can swear—"
"Oh, no, you can't, son. Lemme ask you a question. You carried a tray. What was on that tray?"
"The grapefruit, in a glass dish, and a spoon."
"Yes. What else?"
"Nothing but the sugar-bowl."
"That's right. As you were walkin' through the hall, Hubert passed you and stepped up in front of you. Didn't he?"
"Only for a fraction of a second. I didn't stop. I—" "All right. And what did Hubert say? He said,
'Grapefruit, eh?' Didn't he? And what else did he do?
He stretched out his hand and pointed to it, didn't he?"
"Yes, but he didn't touch the grapefruit."
"He didn't need to. While you automatically looked where his finger was pointin', his other hand did the trick. It dropped strychnine into white sugar in the sugar-bowl.
"Mrs. Propper, d'ye see, had put only a very little sugar on. Mrs. Fane likes the stuff sweet. She added sugar mixed with strychnine to it; and saved her own life by puttin' an overdose on the fruit. That's all. Hubert, who was popular in the kitchen, had a dozen opportunities to clean out the sugar-bowl later.
"He didn't even bother to be subtle about it. For he never even expected strychnine to be thought of, once he'd planted that rusty pin in the bedroom. The one thing that realty surprised him, later, was when we told him it wasn't tetanus but strychnine.
"An ass, Hubert, in a way. For it was suspected. And his victim didn't die.
"I'll pass over his state of mind that same Thursday night, when you saw him walkin' past the window and slapping his hands together like a wild man. He had to let himself go in some way. I'll pass over, to save embarrassment, the other thing he did that night. I mean the pl
ay he made at a certain gal, in the lane behind here: the thing he'd been burnin' to do for so long. The thing he wanted to do so much that it had got him involved in murder to begin with."
Courtney, on the arm of Ann's chair, glanced down at her. Her hands were clasped together, and she regarded them without expression.
'That was Hubert, then?" she asked.
"It was, my wench," said H.M., "and I think you knew it. Courtney scared him away, or there might have been real trouble. Pleasant gentleman, Hubert. Dear old gentleman."
H.M. sniffed.
"So we come to the last act.
"On Sunday afternoon Masters came round to me with his bunch of reports. I was dead certain our man was Hubert by that time, if we could only find a motive.
"Hubert, if you remember, begged us not to ask Mrs. Fane too many questions when we went over to question her. I promised we wouldn't. But—" he studied Vicky—"we did ask you questions. And you gave us the whole story of Arthur and Hubert and Polly Allen. The case was complete at last.
"But, oh, my eye, was it worryin'! For the first time since your illness you were, to all intents and purposes, alone in that house with a murderer. And the nurse, who'd slept in your room, had been dismissed that day."
Vicky shivered.
And Courtney remembered H.M.'s expression as H.M. had come out to them as they sat under the fruit trees, after his interview with Vicky.
"Masters and I felt the blighter might have another go at you." He craned round towards the others. "We persuaded this gal to ask Ann Browning to come and stay the night with her. With somebody in the same room, we didn't think even Hubert would be loony enough to try anything.
"We also jumped for joy when a little informal search of Hubert's room revealed a cache of strychnine powder, an alcohol solution ready for it, and a hypodermic. For the strychnine we sort of substituted salts, and went our way.
"The case wasn't complete. We didn't dare let Hubert know we twigged him yet, in case he claimed the stuff had been planted on him. We warned Mrs. Fane not to let on she'd told us anything, in case he questioned her—"
"As he did," muttered Vicky.
Seeing is Believing shm-12 Page 18
