The Hollow Man

by John Dickson Carr

  Mme Dumont shrugged. 'That is possible. His heart - I do not know. He collapsed. He is unconscious now. As to whether he will ever come alive again, that I do not know either. About what happened to him, we have no idea what caused it...'

  Again Mills cleared his throat. His head was in the air, and his fixed smile looked rather ghastly. He said:

  'If, sir, you have any idea of - um - foul play, or any suspicion that he was murderously set upon, you may dismiss it. And, strangely enough, you will receive confirmation of it from us in - what shall I say - pairs? I mean that the same people were together this afternoon who were together last night. The Pythoness and I' - he bowed gravely towards Ernestine Dumont - 'were together upstairs in my little workroom. I am given to understand that Miss Grimaud and our friend Mangan were down here - '

  Rosette jerked her head. 'You had better hear it from the beginning. Did Boyd tell you about Drayman coming down here first?'

  'No, I didn't tell 'em anything,' Mangan answered with some bitterness. 'After that business of the overcoat, I wanted somebody to give me a little confirmation.' He swung round, the muscles tightening at his temples. 'It was about half an hour ago, you see. Rosette and I were here alone. I'd had a row with Burnaby - well, the usual thing. Everybody was yelling and fighting about that overcoat affair, and we'd all separated. Burnaby had gone. I hadn't seen Drayman at all; he'd kept to his room this morning. Anyhow, Drayman walked in here and asked me how he could get in touch with you.'

  'You mean he had discovered something?'

  Rosette sniffed. 'Or wanted us to think he had. Very mysterious. He came in with that doddering way of his, and as Boyd says, asked where he could find you. Boyd asked him what was up ...'

  'Did he act as though he might have - well, found something important?'

  'Yes, he did. We both nearly jumped out of our shoes ...'

  'Why?'

  'So would you,' said Rosette coolly, 'if you were innocent.' She twitched her shoulders, her arms still folded, as though she were cold. 'So we said, "What is it, anyhow?" He doddered a little and said, "I've found something missing from my room, and it makes me remember something I'd forgotten about last night." It was all a lot of nonsense about some subconscious memory, though he wasn't very clear on the point. It came down to some hallucination that, while he was lying down last night after he'd taken the sleeping - powder, somebody had come into his room.'

  'Before the - crime?'

  'Yes.'

  'Who came into his room?'

  'That's it! He either didn't know or wouldn't say, or else the whole thing was a plain dream. Of course that's probably what it was. I won't suggest,' said Rosette, still coolly, 'the other alternative. When we asked him, he simply tapped his head and hedged, and said, "I really can't say," in that infuriating way of his ... Lord! how I hate these people who won't come out and say what they mean! We both got rather annoyed - '

  'Oh, he's all right,' said Mangan, whose discomfort appeared to be growing. 'Only, damn it all, if I hadn't said what I did - '

  'Said what?' asked Hadley quickly.

  Mangan hunched his shoulders and looked moodily at the fire. 'I said, "Well, if you've discovered so much, why don't you go up to the scene of the 'orrid murder and see if you can't discover some more?" Yes, I was sore. He took me seriously. He looked at me for a minute and said: "Yes, I believe I will. I had better make sure." And with that out he went! It was maybe twenty minutes later that we heard a noise like somebody banging downstairs ... You see, we hadn't left the room, although - ' He checked himself suddenly.

  'You might as well go on and say it,' Rosette told him, with an air of surprised indifference. 'I don't mind who knows it. I wanted to sneak up after him and watch him. But we didn't. After that twenty minutes, we heard him blundering downstairs. Then, apparently when he'd just got to the last step, we heard a choking sound and a thud - flap, like that. Boyd opened the door, and there he was lying doubled up. His face was all congested, and the veins up round the forehead were standing out in a blue colour; horrible business! Of course we sent for the doctor. He hasn't said anything except to rave about " chimneys" and "fireworks".'

  Ernestine Dumont still remained stolid, her eyes not moving from the fire. Mills took a little hopping step forward.

  'If you will allow me to take up the story,' he said, inclining his head, 'I think it probable that I can fill the gap. That is, of course, with the Pythoness's permission...'

  'Ah, bah!' the woman cried. Her face was in shadow as she looked up, there was about her a rigidity as of whalebone, but Rampole was startled to see that her eyes blazed. 'You must always act the fool, must you not? The Pythoness this, the Pythoness that. Very well, I must tell you. I am Pythoness enough to know that you did not like poor Drayman, and that my little Rosette does not like him either. God! what do you know of human men or sympathy or - Drayman is a good man, even if he may be a little mad. He may be mistaken. He may be full of drugs. But he is a good man at the heart, and if he dies I shall pray for his soul.'

  'Shall I - er - go on?' observed Mills, imperturbably.

  'Yes, you shall go on,' the woman mimicked, and was silent.

  'The Pythoness and I were in my workroom on the top floor; opposite the study, as you know. And again the door was open. I was shifting some papers, and I noticed Mr Drayman come up and go into the study...'

  'Do you know what he did there?' asked Hadley.

  'Unfortunately, no. He closed the door. I could not even venture a deduction as to what he might be doing, since I could hear nothing. After some time he came out, in what I can only describe as a panting and unsteady condition - '

  'What do you mean by that?'

  Mills frowned. 'I regret, sir, that it is impossible to be more precise. I can only say that I received an impression as though he had been indulging in violent exercise. This I have no doubt caused or hastened the collapse, since there were clear evidences of an apoplectic stroke. If I may correct the Pythoness, it had nothing to do with his heart. Er - I might add something which has not yet been mentioned. When he was picked up after the stroke, I observed that his hands and sleeves were covered with soot.'

  'The chimney again,' Pettis murmured, very softly, and Hadley turned round towards Dr Fell. It gave Rampole a shock to see that the doctor was no longer in the room. A person of his weight and girth can, as a rule, make small success of an effort to fade mysteriously away; but he was gone, and Rampole thought he knew where.

  'Follow him up there,' Hadley said quickly to the American. 'And see that he doesn't work any of his blasted mystification. Now, Mr Mills - '

  Rampole heard Hadley's questions probing and crackling as he went out into the sombre hall. The house was very quiet; so quiet that, as he mounted the stairs, the sudden shrilling of the telephone bell in the lower hall made him jump a little. Passing Drayman's door upstairs, he heard hoarse breathing inside, and quiet footfalls tiptoeing about the room: through the door he could see the doctor's medicine - case and hat on a chair. No lights burned on the top floor; again such a stillness that he could distinctly hear Annie's voice answering the telephone far below.

  The study was dusky. Despite the few snow - flakes, some faint lurid light, dull red and orange with sunset, glimmered through the window. It made a stormy glow across the room; it kindled the colours of the shield of arms, glittered on the crossed fencing foils above the fire - place, and made vast and shadowy the white busts on the bookshelves. The shape of Charles Grimaud, half studious, half barbaric like the room, seemed to move and chuckle here after Charles Grimaud was dead. That vast blank space in the panelled wall, where the picture was to have hung, faced Rampole in mockery. And, standing motionless in his black cloak before the window, Dr Fell leaned on his cane and stared out into the sunset.

  The creaking of the door did not rouse him. Rampole, his voice seeming to wake echoes, said: 'Did you -?'

  Dr Fell blinked round. His breath, when he puffed it out with a sort of weary e
xplosiveness, turned to smoke in the sharp air.

  'Eh? Oh. Did I what?'

  'Find anything.'

  'Well, I think I know the truth. I think I know the truth,' he answered, with a sort of reflective stubbornness, 'and tonight I shall probably be able to prove it. H'mf. Hah. Yes. D'ye see, I've been standing here wondering what to do about it. It's the old problem, son, and it becomes more difficult each year I live: when the sky grows nobler, and the old chair more comfortable, and maybe the human heart -' He brushed his hand across his forehead. 'What is justice? I've asked it at the end of nearly every case I ever handled. I see faces rise, and sick souls and bad dreams ... No matter. Shall we go downstairs?'

  'But what about the fire - place?' insisted Rampole. He went over, peered at it, hammered it, and still he could see nothing out of the way. A little soot had been scattered on the hearth, and there was a crooked streak in the coating of soot on the back of the fire - place. 'What's wrong with it? Is there a secret passage after all?'

  'Oh, no. There's nothing wrong with it in the way you mean. Nobody got up there. No,' he added, as Rampole put his hand into the long opening of the flue and groped round. 'I'm afraid you're wasting your time; there's nothing up there to find.'

  'But,' said Rampole desperately, 'if this brother Henri - '

  'Yes,' said a heavy voice from the doorway, 'brother Henri.'

  The voice was so unlike Hadley's that at the moment they did not recognize it. Hadley stood in the doorway, a sheet of paper crumpled in his hand; his face was in shadow, but there was such a dull quietness in his tones that Rampole recognized something like despair. Closing the door softly behind him, Hadley stood in the darkening and went on calmly:

  'It was our own fault, I know, for being hypnotized by a theory. It ran away with us - and now we've got to start the whole case afresh. Fell, when you said this morning that the case had been turned upside down, I don't believe you knew just how true it was. It's not only upside down; it's nonexistent. Our chief prop is knocked to blazes. Damn the rotten, impossible ...!' He stared at the sheet of paper as though he meant to crush it into a ball. 'A phone - call just came through from the Yard. They've heard from Bucarest.'

  'I'm afraid I know what you're going to say,' Dr Fell nodded. 'You're going to say that brother Henri - '

  'There is no brother Henri,' said Hadley. 'The third of the three Horvath brothers died over thirty years ago.'

  The faint reddish light had grown muddy; in the cold, quiet study they could hear from far away the mutter of London awaking towards nightfall. Walking over to the broad desk, Hadley spread out the crumpled sheet on the desk so that the others could read. The shadow of the yellow jade buffalo lay across it sardonically. Across the room they could see the slashes gaping in the picture of the three graves.

  'There's no possibility of a mistake,' Hadley went on. 'The case is a very well - known one, it seems. The whole cablegram they sent was very long, but I've copied the important parts verbatim from what they read over the phone. Take a look.'

  'No difficulty about information desired [it ran]. Two men now in my personal service were at Siebenturmen as warders in 1900, and confirm record. Facts: Karoly Grimaud Horvath, Pierre Fley Horvath, and Nicholas Revei Horvath were sons of Professor Karoly Horvath {of Klausenburg University), and Cecile Fley Horvath (French) his wife. For robbery of Kunar Bank at Brasso, November, 1898, the three brothers were sentenced January, 1899, to twenty years' penal servitude. Bank watchman died of injuries inflicted, and loot never recovered; believed to have been hidden. All three, with aid of prison doctor during plague scare of August, 1900, made daring attempt at escape by being certified as dead, and buried in plague - ground. J. Lahner and R. Gorgei, warders, returning to graves an hour later with wooden crosses for marking, noticed disturbance had taken place on earth at grave of Karoly Horvath. Investigation showed coffin open and empty. Digging into two other graves, warders found Pierre Horvath bloody and insensible, but still alive. Nicholas Horvath had already suffocated to death. Nicholas reburied after absolute certainty made the man was dead; Pierre returned to prison. Scandal hushed up, no chase of fugitive, and story never discovered until end of War. Pierre Fley Horvath never mentally responsible afterwards. Released January, 1919, having served full term. Assure you no doubt whatever third brother dead.

  'ALEXANDER CUZA, 'Police - Director , Bucarest'

  'Oh, yes,' said Hadley, when they had finished reading. 'It confirms the reconstruction right enough, except for the little point that we've been chasing a ghost as the murderer. Brother Henri (or brother Nicholas, to be exact) never did leave his grave. He's there yet. And the whole case - '

  Dr Fell rapped his knuckles slowly on the paper. 'It's my fault, Hadley,' he admitted. 'I told you this morning that I'd come close to making the biggest mistake of my life. I was hypnotized by brother Henri! I couldn't think of anything else. You see now why we knew so remarkably little about that third brother, so little that with my cursed cocksuredness I put all kinds of fantastic interpretations on it?'

  'Well, it won't do us any good just to admit the mistake. How the devil are we going to explain all those crazy remarks of Fley's now? Private vendetta! Vengeance! Now all that's swept away, we haven't a lead to work on. Not a lead! And if you exclude the motive of vengeance on Grimaud and Fley, what is there left?'

  Dr Fell pointed rather malevolently with his stick. 'Don't you see what's left?' he roared. 'Don't you see the explanation of those two murders that we've got to accept now or retire to the madhouse?'

  'You mean that somebody cooked up the whole thing to make it look like the work of an avenger? - I'm at the state now,' explained the superintendent, 'where I could believe nearly anything. But that strikes me as being a good bit too subtle. How would the real murderer ever know we could dig so far into the past? We'd never have done it if it hadn't been, saving your presence, for a few lucky shots. How would the real murderer know we should ever connect Professor Grimaud with a Hungarian criminal, or connect him with Fley or any of the rest of it? It strikes me as a false trail far too well concealed.' He paced up and down, driving his fist into his palm. 'Besides, the more I think of it the more confusing it gets! We had damned good reason to think it was the third brother who killed those two - and, the more I think of that possibility, the more I'm inclined to doubt that Nicholas is dead. Grimaud said his third brother shot him! - and when a man's dying, and knows he's dying, what earthly reason would he have for lying? Or - Stop a bit! Do you suppose he might have meant Fley? Do you suppose Fley came here, shot Grimaud, and then afterwards somebody else shot Fley? It would explain a lot of the puzzles -'

  'But,' said Rampole, 'excuse the interruption, I mean, but it wouldn't explain why Fley kept talking about a third brother as well! Either brother Henri is dead or he isn't. Still, if he is dead, what reason have both victims got to lie about him all the time? If he's really dead, he must be one hell of a live ghost.'

  Hadley shook the brief - case. 'I know. That's exactly what I'm kicking about! We've got to take somebody's word for it, and it seems more reasonable to take the word of two people who were shot by him rather than this cablegram which might be influenced or mistaken for several reasons. Or - h'm! Suppose he really is dead, but the murderer is pretending to be that dead brother come to life?' He stopped, nodded, and stared out of the window.

  'Now I think we're getting warm. That would explain all the inconsistencies, wouldn't it? The real murderer assumes the role of a man neither of the other brothers has seen for nearly thirty years; well? When the murders are committed, and we get on his track - if we do get on his track - we put it all down to vengeance. How's that, Fell?'

  Dr Fell, scowling heavily, stumped round the table. ' Not bad - no, not bad, as a disguise. But what about the motive for which Grimaud and Fley were really killed?'

  'How do you mean?'

  'There has to be a connecting thread, hasn't there? There might be any number of motives, plain or obscure, wh
y a person would kill Grimaud. Mills or Dumont or Burnaby or - yes, anybody might have killed Grimaud. Also, anybody might have killed Fley: but not, I must point out, anybody in the same circle or group of people. Why should Fley be killed by a member of Grimaud's group, none of whom had presumably ever seen him before? If these murders are the work of one person, where is the connecting link? A respected professor in Bloomsbury and a tramp actor with a prison record. Where's the human motive that ties those two together in the murderer's mind, unless it is a link that goes back into the past?'

  'I can think of one person who is associated with both from the past,' Hadley pointed out.

  'Who? You mean the Dumont woman?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then what becomes of somebody impersonating brother Henri? Whatever else you decide on, you must decide that she's not doing that. No, my lad. Dumont is not only a bad suspect; she's an impossible suspect.'

  'I don't see that. Look here, you're basing your whole belief that Dumont didn't kill Grimaud on the grounds that you think she loved Grimaud. No defence, Fell - no defence at all! Remember that she told the whole fantastic story to begin with - '