The Blind Barber (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 4)

by John Dickson Carr

  “He means, Curt,” said Peggy, regarding Mr. Woodcock with a fascinated horror—“he means, you see—”

  Woodcock nodded. “You get it lady. I want a testimonial of endorsement from the Hon. Thaddeus G. Warpus for the Mermaid Electrically-fitted Mosquito Gun, fitted with Swat No. 2 Liquid Insect Exterminator; saying that he personally uses it at his country home in New Jersey, and warmly recommends it. This is my chance, and I’m not going to miss it. For years we’ve been trying to get testimonials for our stuff from the big shots or the society women. And we can’t. Because why? Because they say it isn’t dignified. But what’s the difference? Cigarettes, toothpaste, face cream, shaving soap—you’ll get them recommended all right, and what’s the difference? I’m not asking you to recommend a bug-powder, but a neat, svelte-looking, silver-plate and enamel job. Let me show it to you, let me explain how it works—it combines all the advantages of a double-sized electric torch with—”

  Eagerly, as though to press an advantage, he began to take off the wrappings of the parcel. Morgan, as he looked at Curtis Warren, was more and more startled. This business, which had the elements of howling farce, was not farce at all. Warren was as serious as the Bug-powder Boy.

  “But, man, have some sense!” he protested, waving his arms. “If it had been anything else, toothpaste, cigarettes … It can’t be done. It’d make him out to look foolish … ”

  “Yeah?” said Woodcock coolly. “Well, answer me this. Which is going to make him look more foolish, which is going to show he’s more of a mug, this neat little apparatus or that film? Sorry, old man, but there you are. That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”

  “And otherwise you won’t tell who stole that film?”

  “That’s what I said,” agreed the other, almost cordially. “I’ll tell you what, old man. You get the cablegrams working; you tell him his bare skin’ll be saved if he plays ball with Charley Woodcock … ”

  “But he’d never do it!”

  “Then it’ll be just too bad for him, won’t it?” asked the other candidly. He folded his arms. “Now you’re a nice fellow and I like you. There’s nothing personal in it. But I’ve got to look out for myself … Oh, and don’t try to start anything either,” he suggested, as Warren suddenly got to his feet. “You start any funny business, and I may not get my testimonial, but the story of T. G. Warpus’s brief movie stardom is going to be all over the world as fast as I can broadcast it. Get me? In fact, old man,” said Mr. Woodcock, trying to keep his confidential suavity, but breathing a little hard now, “if I don’t get some assurance before we leave this boat that T. G. Warpus is a right guy who can take his medicine, I might get indiscreet when I’d had a drink too many in the bar.”

  “You wouldn’t do that!” said Peggy.

  There was a long silence. Woodcock had turned away to stare past the curtain at the sea, his hand fluttering at his bony chin. The hand dropped and he turned round.

  “All right, lady,” he said in a rather different voice. “I suppose you win there. No, I guess I wouldn’t.” He addressed Warren fiercely. “I’m not a crook. I just got mad for a minute, that was all. At least you don’t have to worry about that part of it. I may try to pull some fast ones, but I’m not a lousy blackmailer. I’ve made you a straight proposition, and it stands. Come on, now; I apologise. What about it?”

  Warren, slowly hammering his fist on one knee, said nothing. He looked at Peggy. He looked round at Henry Morgan. Morgan said:

  “I’m glad you said that, Mr. Woodcock.”

  “Said what? Oh, about not being a crook? Thanks,” the other answered bitterly, “for nothing. I’m not one of those smooth boys who can scare you into doing anything, only they call it successful salesmanship … Why?”

  “For instance,” said Morgan, trying to keep his voice steady. He had an idea, and he only prayed that he would not bungle it. “For instance, would you like to be tried as accessory after the fact in a murder?”

  “Oh, cut it,” said Woodcock. “I’ve been wondering when the bluff would start.”

  All the same, his pale blue eyes briefly flashed sideways. He had got out a handkerchief and begun to mop his forehead as though he were tired of the whole business; but his bony hand stopped. The word “murder” comes rather startingly in a business discussion. As the idea grew on Morgan—he thought that in a few minutes, if he kept his jugglery going with a steady hand, they might hear the Blind Barber’s name—he had still more difficulty to keep from showing his nervous excitement. Easy, now. Easy does it …

  “Let’s see. You know the name of the man who stole a piece of film from Curt Warren’s cabin?”

  “I could point him out to you. There’s not much chance of his leaving the boat.”

  “He committed a murder last night. He cut a woman’s throat in the cabin next to Curt’s. I thought you’d better be warned, that’s all. Do you want me to show you the razor he did it with?”

  “For God’s sake,” said Woodcock, jerking round, “be yourself!”

  It was dusky and stuffily warm in the white writing-room, with its parade of gold-leafed mirrors and mortuary chairs. The white glass-topped desks, the inkwells and pen-racks rattled slightly with the slight roll of the Queen Victoria; and, with the motion, a drowsy curling swish of water would rise in the silence. Morgan reached into the breast pocket of his coat and took out a folded dark-smeared handkerchief. He opened it just beneath a long beam of sunlight that came through the curtains, and a dull glitter shone inside.

  Again there was silence …

  But Mr. Woodcock was not having any. Morgan saw him sitting there very straight, his hands relaxed, and a very thin smile fluttered across his face. It was a curious psychological fact, but the very production of evidence, the very display of a blood-stained razor with such sudden convenience, was what seemed to convince Woodcock that he was being elaborately bluffed.

  He shook his head chidingly.

  “Oh, I remember now, Hank, old man. You’re the fellow who writes the stories. Say, I’ve got to hand it to you at that. You had me wondering for a second.” The man looked as though he honestly relished this. “It’s all right. I appreciate a good try. I’ve done the same thing myself. But put it back, old man; put it back and let’s talk turkey.”

  “We don’t know who the girl was,” Morgan went on, but with a desperate feeling that he had lost his game; “that is, not yet. We were just going up to the captain to find out. It’ll be very easy to prove … ”

  “Now listen,” said Woodcock, with an air of friendly if slightly bored tolerance. “The gag’s all right, unnastand. It’s swell. But why keep on with it? I’ve told you I’m not falling for it; I’m too old a bird. So why not talk business?”

  “It’s true, Mr. Woodcock!” Peggy insisted, clenching her hands. “Won’t you see it’s true? We admit we don’t know who was killed yet—”

  “Well, well!”

  “But we will know. Can’t you tell us? Can’t you give us a hint?”

  “You’d never suspect,” said Woodcock. He smiled dreamily, and looked at the roof with the expression of one who knows the answer in a guessing game that is driving all the players wild. It was having just that effect on these three. To know that the answer was locked up in the bony skull of the man before them, yet to be told coolly they were not to hear it … “I’ll give you the answer,” observed the Bug-powder Boy, “the moment I get the right answer back from T. G. Not before.”

  “I’ll try,” began Warren, but the other pointed out that was no guarantee.

  “You don’t believe,” Morgan went on grimly, “that there’s been a murder by the man who stole that film. Well, suppose you were convinced of it. Wait a bit now! You had your hypothesis, so at least pass an opinion on mine. Suppose there had been a murder and we could prove it, so that you’d be withholding evidence if you kept quiet. Would you tell us then?”

  Woodcock lifted his shoulder, still with the pale, tolerant smile on his face. “We-el, old m
an! No reason why I shouldn’t concede that point—in theory. Yes, indeed. If there’d been a murder done, if somebody’s been killed, that would be a different thing. I sure would tell you.”

  “You promise that?”

  “Word of honour. Now, if we can just get back to business—”

  “All right,” said Warren, coming to an abrupt decision. He got up. “We’re going to see the captain now. And I’ll make a little deal with you. If we can convince you by today that a murder’s been committed, then you tell what you know. If we can’t, then somehow or other, I give you my solemn word I’ll get that testimonial from Uncle Warpus.”

  For the first time Woodcock seemed a little shaken. “I don’t know what the gag is,” he remarked critically, “and I’m damn sure there’s a gag somewhere; but my answer is, You’re on … Put’er there, old man; shake on it. All right! In the meantime, just as a favour to me, you take the little Mermaid along and test it, will you? There are full directions for use inside, but maybe I’d better explain some of the salient points; some features, I’m telling you, that will make the Mermaid Automatic Electric Mosquito Gun the most talked-about item in the advertising world. For example, gentlemen! The old-fashioned, out-moded type of squirt-gun for insects you had to work by hand—working a plunger in and out by hand—didn’t you? Exactly. Now, the Mermaid here is automatic. Simply twist this small enamelled button, and electricity does the rest. From the nozzle issues a fine stream of liquid insect exterminator, which can be regulated to greater or less power and range; also to spray in fan-like fashion over a wide area, all by means of buttons. Then again, gentlemen, there is our own unique feature of the electric light. How will you find those troublesome mosquitoes that, under cover of darkness, are making you lose sleep and undermining your health? I’ll show you. Simply press this button … ”

  Warren took the gift from the Greek and Morgan and Peggy hurried him out in case he grew violent in an effort to make Mr. Woodcock disgorge information. Woodcock stood teetering on his heels, smiling tightly, as they left him. In the passage outside they leaned against the wall, rather breathless.

  “The low-down crook!” breathed Warren, shaking in the air the Mermaid Automatic Electric Mosquito Gun. “The dirty double-crosser! He knows! He knows, and he won’t—”

  “But was he serious about that testimonial?” asked Peggy, who could still not get this part of the matter untangled. “I mean, fancy! He can’t really mean that he wants your uncle to appear in the newspapers saying, ‘I’m wild about Woodcock’s bug-powder,’ can he? I mean, that would be awful!”

  “Baby, that’s just it. He’s as serious—well, he’s as serious as Uncle Warpus trying to swing an international treaty and protect somebody’s neutrality. You don’t know,” said Warren, with some violence, “how self-complacent modern advertising is. They call it public service. Come on. Let’s go up and see the old horse-thief upstairs. What Uncle Warpus would say to me if I forced him into endorsing bug-powder is more than a drinkless stomach allows me to contemplate. I have a feeling that the sooner we see Captain Whistler, the old herring, and get this business about the girl straightened out, the sooner I’m going to feel well again. Come on.”

  “And I have a feeling—” said Morgan, and stopped.

  He did not continue. But he was right.

  12

  Indiscretions of Curtis Warren

  WHEN THEY KNOCKED AT the door of Captain Whistler’s cabin just abaft the bridge, it was opened by a melancholy steward who was making up the berth and clearing away breakfast dishes in a large, comfortable, rosewood-panelled cabin with curtains of rather startling pattern at the portholes.

  “Commander ayn’t ’ere, sir,” the steward informed them, squinting at Warren in a rather sinister fashion. “’E’s gorn to see Lord Sturton, ’e said you wos to wait, if you please.”

  Warren tried to be nonchalant, but he showed his apprehension.

  “Ah,” he said, “Ah! Thanks, steward. How is the old mackerel feeling this morning? That is—er—”

  “Ho!” said the steward significantly, and punched at a pillow as he arranged it.

  “I see,” said Warren. “Well, we’ll—er—sit down.”

  The steward pottered about the cabin, which gave evidence that the captain had fired things about in some haste, and finally doddered out with the breakfast tray. The nasty look he gave them over his shoulder confirmed their hypothesis that the beauties of nature did not induce in Captain Whistler any mood to stand on the bridge and sing sea-shanties.

  “I guess he’s still peeved,” was Warren’s opinion. “And this is kind of a delicate matter, Hank. You do all the talking now. I don’t think I care to risk it.”

  “You bet your sweet life I’ll do all the talking,” agreed Morgan. “I wouldn’t answer for any of us if the skipper walked in here and saw you with this razor in your hands. Especially as he’s just gone to see Sturton, he is not likely to be in a playful frame of mind. Understand—you are to keep absolutely silent throughout the whole interview. Not a word, not a movement unless you’re asked to confirm something. I refuse to take any more chances. But I don’t know—” He sat down in a leather chair, ruffled his hair, and stared out of one porthole at the pale sky. The sunlit cabin, swaying with drowsy gentleness in a murmurous swish of water conveyed no sense of peace. “I don’t know,” he went on, “that I feel altogether right about it myself. For the moment let Woodcock keep his information and blast him. What has happened to that emerald? That’s the question.”

  “But after all, Hank, it isn’t any business of ours,” Peggy pointed out, with a woman’s practical instinct. She took off her shell-rimmed glasses with a pleased air of having solved the thing, and shut them into her handbag with a decisive snap. “I shouldn’t bother, old boy. What’s the odds?”

  “What’s the odds?”

  “Yes, of course I’m jolly sorry for Lord Sturton, and all that; but, after all, he’s got pots of money hasn’t he? And all he’d do would be to lock the emerald up in some nasty old safe, and what’s the good of that? … Whereas this film of Curt’s is really important, poor boy. I know what I’d do if I were a man,” she declared scornfully. “I’d take that nasty little Woodcock chap and torture him until he told. Or I’d lock him up somewhere, the way they did to that baron what’s-his-name, in The Count of Monte Cristo, and not let him have anything to eat and hold soup under his nose and laugh ha-ha until he was willing to tell me. You men Bah! You make me tired.”

  She made a gesture of impatience.

  “Young lady,” said Morgan, “both your ruthlessness and your logic are scandalous. I have sometimes observed a similar phenomenon in my own wife. Aside from the practical impossibility of holding soup under the bug-powder king’s nose and laughing ha-ha, there’s the sporting element to consider. Don’t say ball. The fact remains that we have pinched old Sturton’s emerald and the responsibility—What the devil’s that noise?”

  He jumped a little. For some moments he had been conscious of a low, steady, hissing noise somewhere about him. In his present frame of mind, it sounded exactly like the sinister hissing which Dr. Watson had heard at midnight in the dark bedroom during the Adventure of the Speckled Band. It was, in fact, the Mermaid Automatic Bug-Powder Gun.

  “Curt,” said Peggy, whirling suspiciously, “what are you up to now?”

  “Handy little gadget at that,” declared Warren, in some admiration. His eyes were shining, and he bent absorbedly over the elaborate silver and enamel tube. It was a streamlined cylinder full of scrolls and flutings, with a complicated array of black buttons. From the nozzle a thin wide spray, as advertised, was flying out across the captain’s papers on the centre table. Warren moved it about. “All the buttons are marked, you see. Here’s ‘Spray’—that’s what I’ve got on now. Then there’s ‘Half Power’ and ‘Full Power’.” …

  Peggy put a hand over her mouth and began to gurgle. This unseemly mirth annoyed Morgan still more. Besides, the spray was
peculiarly pungent.

  “Turn the damn thing off!” he howled, as a thin spray began to glitter all about them. “No, don’t turn it at the wardrobe, you fathead. Now you’ve got the captain’s spare uniform. Turn it—”

  “All right, all right,” said Warren, rather testily. “You needn’t get griped about it. I was only trying the thing out … All I’ve got to do, you see, is press this dingus and—What’s the matter with the fool thing? Hey!”

  The pressing of the dingus, it is true, did away with the spray. It substituted what to the skilful engineers who designed it was presumably “Half Power.” A thin but violent stream of liquid bug-powder ascended past Warren’s shoulder as he tried to look at the nozzle and somewhat frantically twisted buttons. All he succeeded in doing was turning on the electric light.

  “Give me the swine,” said Morgan. “I’ll fix it. Do something, can’t you? It’s raining bug-powder; the place is becoming impregnated with bug-powder! Don’t turn it on yourself, you blithering idiot. Turn it … O my God, no! Not in the captain’s berth. Take it out of the captain’s berth … No, you can’t shut it off with a pillow. Not under the bed clothes, dummy! You’re—”

  “Well, it’s better than having it soak up the room, isn’t it?” inquired Warren’s hoarse voice, out of a luminous mist of bug-powder. “All right. Don’t get apoplexy. I’ll shut it off. I’ll—” He avoided Morgan’s arm, a fiendish expression on his face, and rushed to the middle of the cabin. “No, you don’t. I turned this thing on and, so help me, I’ll turn it off!” He gestured with the Mermaid, which was hissing like an enthusiastic cobra. “And this is the lousy thing my uncle is asked to endorse, is it? It’s a cheat! It’s no damn good! I’ll find Woodcock and tell him so! I’ve turned every lousy knob … ”