The Judas Window

by Carter Dickson

“Right,” agreed H.M., taking his hand away from shading his eyes. He got out his watch, a large cheap one of the turnip variety, and put it on the table. “Listen to me, doctor. I’m not bluffin’. I’ll prove it, if you think I am. But in about fifteen minutes I’m due to be in court. I’ll wind up the defense of Jim Answell this afternoon. I don’t say this as a certainty, mind—but, when I do, I think the betting’s about a hundred to six that you’ll be arrested for murder.”

  The other remained quiet for a time, tapping his fingers on his knees. Then, reaching into an inside pocket, he took out a cigarette-case, extracted a cigarette, and closed the case with a rather vicious snap—as he might have closed a different sort of case. When he spoke, his voice was calm.

  “That is bluff. I wondered, and now I know.”

  “It’s bluff that I know where the inkpad and the golf suit and all the rest of it really disappeared to; and that I’ve got ‘em all in my possession right now?”

  With the same impassive expression, H.M. reached into his own sidepocket. He drew out a black inkpad in its ordinary tin container, and a long rubberstamp inscribed with someone’s name; and he flung them on the table among the plates. For the hundredth time I wondered at the connection, especially at the contrast between the violence of H.M.’s hand and the inscrutability of his face. Dr. Hume did not seem so much taken aback as distressed and puzzled.

  “But my dear sir...yes, of course; but what of it?”

  “What of it?”

  “Dr. Quigley,” answered the other, with quiet bitterness, “disposed of my character in court today. I suppose we shall have to accept his verdict. Granted that you produced every one of those interesting exhibits, what would it prove beyond what has already been proved? The man who has been already drowned views the prospect of a sea voyage with equanimity.” A rather ghastly smile, an edge of the old bouncing and bustling smile, touched his face. “I am not sure whether that is a quotation from Kai Lung. But, since I have already been virtually convicted of one thing, I don’t give a damn for your French monkey tricks.”

  He lit the cigarette with a sharp jerk of the match across its box. H.M. remained staring at him for a short time, and H.M.’s face altered.

  “Y’know—” H.M. began slowly. “Burn me, I’m beginning to believe you really think Answell is guilty.”

  “I am quite certain he is guilty.”

  “Last night you wrote to Mary Hume swearin’ you saw the murder done. Do you mind tellin’ me if that was true?”

  The other blew an edge of ash off his cigarette, holding it upright. “I strongly object to giving an opinion even on the weather, as a rule. This much I’ll tell you. The thing that has so—so fuddled and—yes, and maddened me throughout this whole affair,” he made a fierce gesture, “is that I have done absolutely nothing! Itried to help Avory. I tried to help Mary. Granting that it was unethical, I believed it was for everyone’s good...and what happened? I am being hounded: yes, sir, I will repeat it: hounded. But even yesterday, when I was forced to go away, I tried to help Mary. I admitted to her that I supplied the brudine, at Avory’s request. At the same time I was obliged to point out that James Answell is a murderer; and, if it were with my last breath, I should call him a murderer.”

  Despite the man’s innate love of clichés, his apparent sincerity was such that it overcame even the self-pity in his voice.

  “You saw him do it?”

  “I had to safeguard myself. If I wrote only the first part of the letter, you would take it into court, and it might help to save Answell—a murderer. So I had to ensure that you did not take it into court.”

  “Oh,” said H.M. in a different tone. “I see. You deliberately shoved that lie in so that we wouldn’t dare use it as evidence.”

  Dr. Hume waved this aside, and became more calm.

  “At considerable risk to myself, Sir Henry, I came here. That was in order to get as much information as I received. Fair play, eh? Surely that is fair? What I wish to know is my legal position in this matter. In the first place, I hold a certificate testifying to my illness yesterday—”

  “From a doctor who’s goin’ to be struck off the register.”

  “But who is not yet so discredited,” replied the other. “If you insist on applying technicalities, I must use them as well. I was actually in attendance this morning, you know. In the second place, the Crown have waived their intention to call me as a witness; and their case is closed.”

  “Sure. Still, the defense hasn’t closed the case. And you can still be called as a witness: it won’t matter for which side.”

  Spencer Hume put down his cigarette carefully on the edge of the table. He folded his hands.

  “Sir Henry, you will not call me as a witness. If you do, I will blow your whole case sky-high in just five seconds.”

  “Oh-ho? So we’re doin’ a little arguing about compounding a felony, now, are we?” Hume’s face tightened, and he looked round quickly at us; but H.M. had only a gleam of benevolent wickedness in his dull eye. “Never mind,” H.M. went on. “I’m pretty unorthodox, not to say twisty. Have you got the incredible, stratospheric cheek to threaten you’ll go into the box and tell your story about seein’ the murder done, if I dare to pull you out of retirement? Wow! Honest, son, I really admire you.”

  “No,” said Hume calmly. “I need only tell a plain truth.”

  “Comin’ from you—”

  “No, that will not do,” said the other, and raised one finger with a critical air. “It was established this morning, you know, that this is not a court of morals. Because Mary went the way of all flesh, it is no reason why her testimony about a murder should be discredited. Because I intended bloodlessly and painlessly to put a blackmailer where he belonged (a much less heinous offense to British ears, I assure you), that is no reason why my testimony about a murder should be discredited.”

  “Uh-huh. If you hate blackmailers so much, why try a spot of blackmail on me now?”

  Dr. Hume drew a deep breath. “I honestly and sincerely am not. I merely tell you—don’t call me as a witness. Your whole case has been based on a missing piece of feather. You have repeatedly and even monotonously thundered at every witness, ‘Where is that piece of feather?’”

  “Well?”

  “I’ve got it,” said Dr. Hume simply. “And here it is.”

  Again he took out his cigarette-case. From under a line of cigarettes he carefully pulled out a piece of blue feather, some inch and a quarter long by an inch broad. He put it on the table with equal care.

  “You’ll notice,” he continued, during the heavy silence while H.M.’s face remained as impassive as ever, “that the edges are a bit more ragged than those on the other piece. But I think they’ll fit fairly well. Where was this piece of the feather? God love you, I had it, of course! I picked it up off the floor of the study on the night of the murder. It was no instinct for clews; it was simply an instinct of tidiness. And why didn’t I show it to anyone? I can see you getting ready to ask that. My good fellow, do you know the only person who has ever been at all interested in this feather? That’s you. The police weren’t interested in it. The police never thought greatly about it—like myself. To be quite honest, I forgot all about it. But, if that feather is submitted in evidence, you will readily see the result. Have I convinced you?”

  “Yes,” said H.M., with a broad and terrifying grin. “At last you have. You’ve convinced me you really did know about the Judas window after all.”

  Spencer Hume rose rather quickly to his feet, and his hand knocked to the floor the cigarette on the edge of the table. With an instinct of tidiness he had automatically put his foot on it when there was another knock on the door. This time the door opened more precipitately. Randolph Fleming, ducking under the low lintel, brought his aggressive red mustache into the room—and stopped in midsentence.

  “I say, Merrivale, they tell me that you—hullo!”

  As though disconcerted at being put off his stride, Fleming stoo
d staring at the doctor. In his own quiet way he was as great a dandy as Spencer Hume: he wore a soft gray hat whose angle just escaped being rakish, and carried a silver-headed stick. His withered jowls swelled out as he regarded Spencer; he hesitated, with an embarrassed air, and ended by making sure that the door was closed behind him.

  “Here, hang it!” he said gruffly. “I thought you had—”

  “Cut and run for it?” supplied H.M.

  Fleming compromised with a blurred statement to Spencer Hume over his shoulder, “Look here, won’t you get into a lot of trouble if you turn up now?” Then he faced H.M. in an evident mood to get something off his mind.

  “First, like to say this. I’d like to say no offense; I don’t hold it against you for pitching into me yesterday in court. That’s your business, and all in the day’s work. Lawyers and liars, eh? Always has been. Ha ha ha. But here’s what I want to know. They say that—for some reason I don’t understand—I may be called as a witness for your side as well. What’s up?”

  “No,” said H.M. “I think there’ll be a clear enough identification from Shanks. Even if you do get asked anything, it’ll only be a matter of form. I got a crossbow I want to get identified as belongin’ to Avory Hume. Shanks should be able to do that pretty well.”

  “The odd-jobs man?” muttered Fleming, and brushed up his mustache with the back of his gloved hand. “Look here, would you mind telling me—”

  “Not at all,” said H.M., as the other hesitated.

  “Not to put too fine a point on it,” said Fleming, “do you still think poor Hume was killed with a crossbow?”

  “I always did think so.”

  Fleming considered this carefully. “I don’t admit anything to go back on my opinion,” he pointed out, after a glowering look. “But I thought I was bound to tell you one thing. I tried some experiments last night, just by way of making sure. And it could be done. It could be done, provided the distance was short enough. I don’t say it was, but it could be. Another thing—”

  “Get it off your chest, son,” suggested H.M. He glanced over at the doctor, who was sitting very quietly, and making noises as though he were trying to clear a dry throat without having the sounds become too audible.

  “I tried it out three times—shooting arrows from a crossbow, I mean,” insisted Fleming, with an illustrative gesture. “The guide feather does tend to get stuck in the teeth of the windlass, unless you’re damned careful. Once it stuck and pulled the whole feather off the shaft of the arrow when the bow was released. Another time it cut the feather in half—kkk!—like that. Like the one you showed us in court. Mind you,” he wagged his finger, “not, as I say, that I’d take back one word I said. But things like that worry me. I’m damned if they don’t. I can’t help it. I thought to myself, if there’s anything fishy in this, I ought to tell ‘em about it. Only decent. If you think I like coming here and telling you, you’re off your chump; but I’m going to warn the Attorney-General about it too. Then it’s off my mind. But still, between ourselves, what did happen to that infernal piece of feather?”

  For a short time H.M. looked at him without speaking. On the table, almost hidden by the dishes, lay the piece of blue feather Spencer Hume had put there. Spencer made a quick movement as Fleming spoke, but H.M. forestalled him. Scooping up the feather, H.M. put it on the back of his hand and held it out as though he were going to puff at it.

  “It’s a very rummy thing about that,” remarked H.M., without looking at Spencer. “We were just discussin’ the point as you came in. Do you think, for instance, that this could be the missin’ piece?”

  “Where’d you find it?”

  “Well...now. That’s one of the points under debate. But, as an expert on the subject, would you just look at this little joker and decide whether it could be the one we want?”

  Fleming took it gingerly and rather suspiciously. After a suspicious look between H.M. and Spencer, he carried the feather to the window and examined it in a better light. Several times his sharp little eye moved round during his examination.

  “Rubbish,” he said abruptly.

  “What’s rubbish, son?”

  “This is. I mean, any idea that this is the other part of the feather.”

  Spencer Hume drew a folded handkerchief out of his breast pocket, and, with an inconspicuous kind of gesture, he began to rub it round his face as though he were polishing that face to a brighter shine than it already had. Something in the expression of his eyes, something that conveyed doubt or misery, was familiar. I had seen just that expression somewhere before, and recently. It was too vivid for me to forget the slide of eyes or hands; but why was it so familiar?

  “So?” asked H.M. softly. “You’d say pretty definitely it couldn’t be, eh? Why not?”

  “This is a turkey-feather. I told you—or rather you got it out of me—that poor old Hume didn’t use anything except goose-feathers.”

  “Is there much difference?”

  “Is there much difference. Ho!” said Fleming, giving a fillip to the brim of his hat. “If you go into a restaurant and order turkey, and they serve you goose instead, you’re going to know the difference, aren’t you? Same with these feathers.” A new thought appeared to strike him. “What’s going on here, anyhow?”

  “That’s all right,” grunted H.M., and continued without inflection: “We were just havin’ a bit of a private conference. We—”

  Fleming drew himself up. “I had no intention of staying,” he said with dignity. “I came here to get something off my mind. Now I’ve done it, my conscience is clear again and I don’t deny I shall take some pleasure in saying good-day. I’ll only say that there seems to be something infernally queer going on hereabouts. By the way, doctor. If I do manage to see the Attorney-General, shall I tell him you’re back and ready to testify?”

  “Tell him anything you like,” Spencer answered quietly.

  Fleming hesitated, opening his mouth as though he were bedeviled to the edge of an outburst; then he nodded with ponderous gravity, and made for the door. Although he did not know it, it was his own presence which had disturbed the room in a manner we could not analyze. H.M. got up and stood looking down at Spencer Hume.

  “Aren’t you rather glad you didn’t go into court?” he asked quite mildly. “Set your mind at rest. I’m not goin’ to call you as a witness. In your present frame of mind, I wouldn’t dare. But right here, strictly among ourselves, you faked that evidence, didn’t you?”

  The other studied this. “I suppose you could call it that, in a way.”

  “But why the blazes did you fake it?”

  “Because Answell is guilty,” said the other.

  And then I knew what the expression of his eyes reminded me of: it reminded me of James Answell himself, and of the same trapped sincerity with which Answell had faced accusations. It made even H.M. blink. H.M. gravely made a gesture which I could not interpret; he kept his eyes fixed on Spencer as he did so.

  “The Judas window means nothin’ to you?” he insisted, with another incomprehensible gesture at which Spencer peered doubtfully.

  “I swear it does not.”

  “Then listen to me,” said H.M. “You’ve got two courses open to you. You can clear out. Or you can go to court this afternoon. If Walt Storm’s waived you as a witness, and if you’ve really got a medical certificate for yesterday, you can’t be arrested unless Balmy Bodkin cuts up awful rough—which I don’t think he will. If I were you, I’d go to court. You may hear something that will interest you, and will make you want to speak out. But you ought to know where the real piece of feather, the genuine one, is now. There are two parts of that missin’ piece. Half of the missin’ piece is stuck in the teeth of a crossbow that I’m goin’ to produce in court. The other half was left in the Judas window. If I see the tide startin’ to swing against me, I warn you I’ll put you into the box no matter how dangerous you are. But I don’t think that’ll be necessary. That’s all I’ve got to say, because I’m
goin’ back now.”

  We followed him out, leaving Spencer sitting by the table with the dying firelight red on his face, pondering. It was at this time yesterday that we had first heard of the Judas window. Before an hour had passed it was to be shown in all its hidden obviousness: it was to loom as large and practical as a sideboard, though of slightly different dimensions: and it was to swallow up Courtroom Number One. For the moment we knew only that the room was locked.

  On the landing Evelyn seized H.M.’s arm. “There’s one thing at least,” she said through her teeth, “you can tell. One little question that’s so easy it never occurred to me to think of it before—”

  “Uh-huh. Well?” inquired H.M.

  “What is the shape of the Judas window?”

  “Square,” said H.M. promptly. “Mind that step.”

  XVI—“I Put on This Dye Myself’

  “—SHALL be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “Ai,” said the witness.

  The witness did not chew gum; but the continual restless movement of his jaws, the occasional sharp clicking sound he made with his tongue to emphasize a point, gave the impression that he was occupied with an exhaustless wad of it. He had a narrow, suspicious face, which alternately expressed good nature and defiance; a very thin neck; and hair which seemed to be the color and consistency of licorice. When he wished to be particularly emphatic, he would jerk his head sideways in speaking, as though he were doing a trick with the invisible chewing gum; and turn his eye sternly on the questioner. Also, his tendency to address everyone except H.M. as “your Lordship” may have been veiled awe—or it may have been a sign of the budding Communist tendencies indicated by the curl of his lip and the hammer-and-sickle design in his militant tie.

  H.M. plunged in.

  “Your full name’s Horace Carlyle Grabell, and you live at 82 Benjamin Street, Putney?”

  “That’s right,” agreed the witness with cheerful defensiveness, as though he were daring anyone to doubt this.

  “Did you use to work in the block of service flats in Duke Street, D’Orsay Chambers, where the accused lives?”