The Blind Barber (32 page)

“I mean that razor incautiously left behind in the berth …”

Mr. Nemo, who had been mouthing his cigar for some time, twitched round and looked at each in turn. His pale, bony face had worn an absent look, but now it had such a wide smile of urbanity and charm that Morgan shivered. “I cut the little bitch’s throat,” offered Mr. Nemo, making a gesture with the cigar. “Much better for her.
And
more satisfactory for me. That’s right, old man,” he said to the staring Hamper; “write it down. It’s much better to damage their skulls. A surgeon showed me all about that once. If you practise, you can find the right spot. But it wouldn’t do for
her
. I had to take one of Sturton’s set of razors to do it, and throw the others away. It hurt me. That case of razors must have cost a hundred-odd pound.”

He jerked with laughter, lifted his bowler off his head as though in tribute, smirked, kicked his heels, and asked for another drink.

“Yes,” said Dr. Fell, staring at him curiously, “that’s what I mean. I asked my young friend here not to think of one razor, but of seven in a set. I asked him to think of a set of razors as enormously expensive as those carven, silver-studded, ebony-handled rarities, which were obviously made to order.
⁹
No ordinary man would have had them. The person likeliest to have them, said my Clue of Seven Razors, was the man who went after costly trinkets, who bought the emerald elephant, ‘because it was a curiosity and a rarity, of enormous intrinsic value.’ …
¹⁰
And the razors bring us back again to the question of who the girl was.

“Her solitary appearance in public was in the wireless-room, where she was described by the wireless-operator as ‘having her hands full of papers’; and this I call, symbolically, my Clue of Seven Radiograms.
¹¹
What does that appearance sound like? Not a joyous tourist dashing off an inconsequential message home. There is a businesslike look to it. A number of messages—a businessnesslike look—and we begin to think of a secretary. The edifice rears. Our Blind Barber becomes not only an impostor masquerading as a highly placed recluse who kept to his cabin, and travelled with a female companion; but the girl becomes a secretary and the recluse an enormously wealthy man with a taste for grotesque trinkets …”

Dr. Fell lifted his stick and pointed suddenly.

“Why did you kill her?” he demanded. “Was she an accomplice?”

“You’re telling the story,” shrugged Mr. Nemo. “And while I’m bored, I’m bored as hell with it, because just at the moment
I
feel like talking, still—your brandy’s not at all bad. Ha-ha-ha. Ought to get hospitality. Go on.
You
talk. Then I’ll talk, and I’ll surprise you. Give you a little hint, though. Yes. Sporting run for your money, like old Sturton would … Didn’t I come down on old Whistler, though! Ho-ho! Yes … Hint is, she was what you’d call virtuous in the way of being honest. She wouldn’t step into my game with me when she found out who I was. And when she tried to warn that young fellow—Tcha! Bloody little fool! Ha-ha! Eh?” inquired Mr. Nemo, putting back his cigar with a portentous wink.

“Did you know,” said Dr. Fell, “that a man named Woodcock saw you when you stole the first part of that film?”

“Did he?” asked Mr. Nemo, lifting one shoulder. “What did I care? Remove sideburns—they’re detachable—little wax in mouth; strawberry mark on the cheek; who’ll identify me afterwards, eh?”

Dr. Fell slowly drew a line through one line on a sheet of paper.

“And there we had the first direct evidence: of Elimination.
¹²
Woodcock said definitely that you were a person he’d never seen before. Now, Woodcock hadn’t been sea-sick. He’d been in the dining-room at all times, and after the sea-sick passengers came out of their lairs he would have spotted the thief—if the thief hadn’t been still among the very, very few who kept to their cabins. Humf! Ha! I was wondering whether anybody had fantastic suspicions of—well, say Perrigord or somebody of the sort. But it ruled out Perrigord, it ruled out Kyle, it ruled out nearly everybody. The thing is plain enough, but where everybody went off on the wrong scent was over that radiogram from New York.” Dr. Fell wrote rapidly on a sheet of paper and pushed it across to Morgan.

Federal agent thinks crook responsible for Stelly and MacGee jobs. Federal agent thinks also physician is impostor on your ship …

“Well?” said Morgan. The doctor made a few marks, and held it out again.

“The Clue of Terse Style,” said Dr. Fell, “indicates that the word “also” is a supernumerary, is out of place, is a word merely wasted in an expensive radiogram if what it means is, “Federal agent
also
thinks … But read it thus.”
¹³

Federal agent thinks—also physician—is impostor on your ship …

“Meaning,” said Dr. Fell, crumpling up the paper, “an entirely different thing. The remark about ‘medical profession influential’ simply means that the doctor in attendance is making a row; he is insisting that, despite the patient at the hospital being apparently out of his head in insisting he is Sturton, the doctor believes it and they mustn’t disregard it. But, good God! Do you seriously think that, if he had meant Dr. Kyle was a murderer, the whole medical profession would have wanted to shield him? The idea was so absurd that I wonder anybody considered it. It refers to Sturton! Sweep away the whole flimsy tangle, now. Let’s have one point piled on top of the other until you’ll realise it couldn’t have been anybody else; let’s come at last to the gigantic and damning proof.”

He flung the paper on the table with an angry gesture.

“You visit Sturton to pacify him over the loss of the emerald. Do you see his secretary? No! You hear him
apparently
talking to somebody behind a door in the bedroom.
¹⁴
But, though you don’t make any noise or speak, out he darts to see you and closes the door.
¹⁵
He knew you were there already, and he put on that show for your benefit. The mistake, the Clue of Wrong Rooms, was—why in the bedroom? It wasn’t in the drawing-room where he’d been apparently lying, with his medicine-bottles around; that was his haunt. But he had to be out of sight … ”
¹⁶

Morgan heard Mr. Nemo’s shrill laughter and the steady scratching of a pencil; but Dr. Fell went on:

“Then there was the business of Lights: curtains always drawn, shawl round his shoulders, hat on, always back to the light.
¹⁷
There was the straight suggestion of his Personal Taste: the toy trinket with real rubies for eyes, winking and leering at you as he deliberately tapped it while he bamboozled you; and still you didn’t see the connection between the wagging Mandarin-head and the costly trinket of the razor.
¹⁸
And what happened,” said Dr. Fell, rapping his stick sharply on the table, “when you and Captain Valvick and Mrs. Perrigord went round with the grim intention of finding the missing girl? You combed the boat through—but yet in sublime innocence of heart you did not demand to see Sturton’s secretary; you went there, you asked a question, and you let him rush you out of the cabin without ever going any further!” …
¹⁹
After a pause Dr. Fell wheeled round and looked at Inspector Jennings. “I’m going off my base, Jennings. I suppose you don’t understand any of this?”

The inspector smiled grimly. “I understand every word of it, sir. That’s why I haven’t interrupted you. Nemo here regaled us with a whole account of it on the train. It’s fine. Eh, Nemo?”

“Rubbish rubbish rubbish!” squeaked Nemo, in repulsive glee at his successful imitation. “Mad Captain Whistler. Prosecute the line! And all the while I was wondering … Eh, Inspector?”

The inspector studied him curiously. He seemed to wish he were farther away than handcuffed to Nemo’s wrist.

“Oh, it’s a great joke,” he said coolly. “But you’ll hang for all of it, you filthy swine. Go on, Dr. Fell.”

Nemo straightened up.

“I’ll kill you for that, one day,” he remarked, just as coolly. “Maybe to-morrow, maybe next day, maybe a year from now.” His eye wandered round the room; his face was slightly paler, and he breathed hard. Morgan felt he was keeping his spirits up with desperate jocularity. “Shall
I
talk now?” he asked suddenly.

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I
T WAS GROWING SHADOWY
in the room. Nemo took off his hat and brushed its brim across his forehead. He gestured with it.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “why you can’t beat what’s cut out for you at birth. I’ll fill up your story. I’ll show you how a trick nobody could help cheated me out of the cushiest soft spot on earth. And those kids—they thought it was funny …

“I won’t tell you who I am,” he said, looking round at them with a curious expression which reminded Morgan of Woodcock squinting at the ceiling in the writing-room. “I might be anybody. You’ll never know. I could say I was Harry Jones of Surbiton, or Bill Smith of Yonkers—or maybe somebody not very much different from the man I was impersonating. I’ll tell you what I am, though—I’m a ghost. Reason that out how you like;
I’m
not telling. I’ll never have any occasion to tell.”

He grinned. Nobody spoke. The yellow twilight outside showed in queer colour his face peering at Dr. Fell, at Jennings, at Morgan.

“Or maybe I’m only Mad Tommy, of … who’s going to tell? But what I will tell you is that I put through that trick neatly. I passed as Sturton without anybody being suspicious, but I won’t tell you how I managed it, because it might get others in trouble. I deceived his secretary. I admit she’d only been with him for a month or two—but I deceived her. If I was an eccentric who couldn’t remember my business affairs,
she
took care of it. She was nice.” He stroked the air and chortled. “I did it so well that I thought, ‘Nemo, you only intended to impersonate Sturton long enough to make a haul: but why not keep on?’

“I kept her with me. I shouldn’t have killed MacGee in New York; but he was a diamond man, and I couldn’t resist diamonds. When I sailed aboard that ship I had unlimited cash of Sturton’s—ever see me imitate a signature?—and nearly five hundred thousand pounds in jewels. The only thing people knew I had was the emerald elephant. And what did I intend to do? Pay duty on it, like an honest man; no fuss at all. For the rest, I was the well-known Sturton;
I
wouldn’t smuggle in other things, and they’d be very careless about my luggage. I knew that, being close to me aboardship, Hilda—Miss Keller, my Hilda—might find out who I was. But I wanted her to. I was going to say: ‘You’re in deep; too deep; I’m the one you’ll have to stick with; so’”—he made a gesture and spoke in a rather, thick ghastly voice—“‘so move your belongings into my berth, Hilda,’ I’d say to her. “Ha! …”

“If you had all that money,” said Dr. Fell, sharply, “why did you want to steal the film?”

“Trouble,” said Nemo, tapping his free hand on the side of his nose. “To make trouble for—oh, everybody I could, do you see? No, you don’t. I meant to give away that film, free, to whoever could do the most damage with it. You don’t see? But I do. I’m like Sturton. I might be Sturton’s ghost; I hate—people.” He laughed, and massaged his head. “I’d heard of it in Washington. Hilda, still not knowing who I was, came to my cabin that afternoon. She told me all about a very, very curious radiogram she’d overheard. Then my wits—
my
wits—remembered. And I thought, ‘Here’s my chance to break it to her gently.’ I’d get the film, I’d show it to her, and we’d appreciate—both of us—how much trouble we could make.

“I did,” said Nemo, in a sudden loud, harsh voice like a crow. “But she didn’t understand. That was why I had to kill her.

“And what happened just before that? Eh? Eh? I had
another
inspiration, to make her love me still more. When I first planned to rob old Sturton, I hadn’t intended to impersonate him; never mind all that; I was after the elephant, and I had a nearly perfect duplicate made to switch on him. That was the way I meant to work it …

“But I thought, why not make a clean sweep? Why pay duty on the real emerald at all? And it would be easy. I would take the imitation emerald across with me, and the real one hidden, and it would be the imitation I’d offer to the customs men. They’d say, ‘This isn’t real,’ when I was offering to pay the enormous duty. I would say, ‘What?’ … ” Here Mr. Nemo chuckled with delight. A curious wondering expression, however, had come into his eyes … “They would say, ‘Your Lordship, you’ve been had. This isn’t real.’ And there would be a terrific joke at my expense, and I would curse and jump, and give them big tips to keep quiet about it. And walk off with it in my luggage … So, to make it look more real, I let the captain lock it in his safe …

“But what happened. I
T WENT WRONG
. God damn the whole world! I
T WENT WRONG
! Those kids—”

Dr. Fell cut him off. “Yes,” he said, quietly, “and that was where you made a mistake; and what I call the Clue Direct. The last thing you wanted was the emerald to be stolen, especially as it was false, because
that meant there would be an inquiry on the ship and afterwards a police inquiry
, which was the one thing you couldn’t risk. The only thing you could do was shut off investigation by producing the real emerald and saying it had been returned to you. That would stop things. The Clue Direct, and your whole mistake, was that you acted entirely out of character for the first time; you did something Lord Sturton would never have done; you said, ‘
I don’t know how it happened, and I don’t care, now I’ve got it back.
’
¹
Not one word of all that rang true, friend Nemo. What puzzled me for a moment, though I see the explanation now, is why you left the bogus emerald lying in the steel box behind the cabin trunk; and risked having it found. You must have known where it was, if you were on hand and saw the whole scene. Anybody could have seen it was your work from the time young Warren found the bogus emerald there … ”