The Blind Barber dgf-4

by John Dickson Carr

  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. But. though you don't make any noise or speak, out he darts to see you and closes the door. 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… "

  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. 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!"… 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.

  22 — Exit Nemo

  It was growing shadowy in the room. Nemo took of! 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; / 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 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. It went wrong. God damn the whole world! It 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." 2 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… "

  "Wait a bit!" protested Morgan. "I don't see that. How so?"

  "Well, there were obviously two emeralds. If one had been
lying all the time in a box behind Kyle's trunk, it couldn't be the one in Sturton's hands. Yet — the box containing the emerald was the one which Captain Whistler had received straight from Sturton's hands! Sturton gave it to him; it was presumably the real emerald; yet here is Sturton flourishing another elephant which he says is genuine! The Clue of Known Doubles lies simply in your own statement that, if there were two emeralds, Sturton would surely know a true from a false… 2 Certainly he would; but, if the emerald he gave in the steel box to Whistler were real, then the one returned to him couldn't have been; and yet he said it was real. It is not a very abstruse deduction, is it? And it leads straight back to our gallant impostor." Dr. Fell stared at him. "But what I didn't see for a second, friend Nemo, was why you risked the bogus emerald lying in Kyle's cabin and the deadly chance of having it brought forward."

  Nemo was so inexplicably excited that he overturned and smashed his glass. The excitement seemed to have been growing on him for some time, as though he were waiting for something that did not happen.

  "I thought it had gone overboard," he snarled. "I knew it had gone overboard! I heard that — that swine" — he stabbed his finger at Morgan—"distinctly say — there was a lot of noise on the deck from the waves — but I was listening, and I heard him say, 'Gone overboard… ' " 3

  "You missed part of it, I fear," said Dr. Fell, composedly, and ran his pencil through the Clue of Misunderstanding. "And the final proof conclusive — it must have shaken you — was when the other emerald did turn up. Even to the last you screamed that there had been no robbbery, and went so ridiculously far as to forbid anybody mentioning it.4 As it was, your goose was burned to a cinder and your identity out with a yell if anybody hadn't been fairly sure before. What you should have done was try even the thin tale that you had been robbed again. And yet (bow, friend Nemo, and prostrate yourself before the Parcae) for a second you were saved by good old Uncle Jules chucking it overboard."

  Mr. Nemo straightened up. He twisted his neck.

  "I may be a ghost," he said with a glassy-eyed and absolute seriousness which was not absurd, but rather terrible} "and yet, my friend, I'm not omniscient. Ha-ha! Well, I shortly shall be; and then I'll come back with a razor, some night, when you aren't looking."

  He exploded into mirth.

  "What the devil ails him?" demanded Dr. Fell, and got slowly to his feet.

  "That little bottle," said Nemo. "I drank it an hour ago, just when we left the train. I was afraid it wasn't working; I've been afraid, and that's why I had to talk. I drank it. 1 tell you I'm a ghost. A ghost has been sitting with you for an hour; I hope you remember it and think about it at night."

  In the eerie yellow light, against which Dr. Fell's great bulk was silhouetted black, the mirth of the prisoner bubbled, and his body made a rustling sound which froze Morgan… And then, in the silence, Inspector Jennings got slowly to his feet. His face was impassive. They heard the creak and clink of the handcuffs.

  "Yes, Nemo," said Inspector Jennings, with satisfaction, "I thought you'd try that. That's why I changed the contents of it. Most of 'em try the trick. It's old. You're not going to die of poison… "

  The mirth struck off in a choking sound, and the man began to flap at the handcuffs…

  "You're not going to die of poison, Nemo," said Inspector Jennings, moving slowly towards the door. "You're going to hang… Good night, gentlemen, and thanks."

  Примечания

  1

  And meanwhile let me call your attention to two earlier Collier Books reprints: Elliot Paul's Mysterious Mickey Finn (AS244X) and Mayhem in B-Flat (AS245X).

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