The Blind Barber

by Carr, John Dickson

  Dr. Fell grunted. He had a pencil in one hand, with which he had been tapping some notes.

  “Well, then,” he said, blinking over his eye-glasses, “in that case, why don’t you ask me?”

  “You—er—think—?”

  “Yes, there’s been a murder,” replied Dr. Fell. He scowled. “I dislike having to tell you that. I dislike having to think of it, and I hope I may be wrong. There is one thing that, inevitably, you have got to tell me, which will settle any doubts. But one thing I insist on. Don’t be afraid of the nonsense. Don’t apologise for the vast Christian joy of laughing when an admiral slips on a cake of soap and sits on his own cocked hat. Don’t say that it has no place in a murder case, or that a murderer himself can’t laugh. Once you set him up as a waxworks horror, leering over his red hands, you will never be able to understand him and you will probably never see who he is. Damn him if you will, but don’t say that he isn’t human or that real life ever attains the straight level of ghastliness to be found in a detective-story. That’s the way to produce dummy murderers, and dummy detectives as well. And yet—”

  He stabbed at the notes with his pencil.

  “ … and yet, my lad, it’s both logical and ironical that this particular case should produce what is in a sense a dummy murderer … ”

  “A dummy murderer?”

  “I mean a professional criminal; an expert mimic; a mask. In short, a murderer who kills for the sake of expediency. How can a person who’s playing a part as somebody else be anything more or less than a good or bad copy of the original? So he eludes us in his own personality, and all we’ve got to judge by is how well he speaks stolen lines. H’m! It makes for better analysis, I dare say, and the mask is undoubtedly lifelike. But, as for seeing his real self in the mask, you might as well question one of M. Fortinbras’s marionettes … ” He stopped. The small, lazy eyes narrowed. “You jumped a little there. Why?”

  “Well—er,” said Morgan, “as a matter of fact, they’ve—er—they’ve got old Uncle Jules in the brig.”

  For a moment Dr. Fell stared, and then his vast chuckle blew a cloud of sparks from his pipe. He blinked thoughtfully.

  “Uncle Jules in the brig?” He repeated. “Most refreshing. Why?”

  “Oh, not for murder or anything like that. I’ll tell you all about it. Of course they’re going to let him out to-day. They—”

  “Humf. Harrumph! Now let me see if I understand this. Let him out today? Hasn’t the boat docked yet?”

  “That’s what I was getting at, sir. It hasn’t. Thank the Lord for what you’ve said, anyhow, because that’s why I’m here … You know Captain Whistler, don’t you? And he knows of you?”

  “I have had some experience,” replied Dr. Fell, shutting up one eye meditatively, “with the old—um—cuttlefish. Heh! Heh-heh-heh! Yes, I know him. Well?”

  “We were to dock early this morning. The trouble was that at the last minute there was a mix-up about our dock or berth or whatever they call it; the Queen Anne didn’t get under way so that we could move in, and we were left lying in the harbour, with no chance of docking until about two o’clock this afternoon …”

  Dr. Fell sat up. “And the Queen Victoria is still—?”

  “Yes. Due to something you shall hear of in due course, I was able to persuade Whistler to let me go ashore with the pilot; I had to sneak it, of course, or the others would have been wild. But,” he drew a deep breath, “Whistler knowing you, I contrived to convince him that, if I could get to you before the passengers left that ship, there might be kudos in it for him. Actually, sir, you’ll say I had the hell of a nerve, but what I did was practically promise him you’d land him an outstanding crook with credit for it if I could get to you before the passengers left the Queen Victoria.”

  He sat back and shrugged his shoulders; but he watched Dr. Fell closely.

  “Nerve? Ha! Heh-heh-heh! Nonsense!” rumbled the doctor, affably. “What’s Gideon Fell for, I ask you, if not for that? Besides, I owe Hadley one for doing me in the eye over that Blumgarten business last week. Thank’ee, my boy, thank’ee.”

  “You think—?”

  “Why, between ourselves, I rather think we’ll land the Blind Barber. I have rather a strong suspicion,” said Dr. Fell, scowling, with a long rumbling sniff through his nose, “who this Blind Barber is. If I’m wrong, there’ll be no harm done aside from a little outraged dignity … But, look here, why is it necessary? What about this New York man who was supposed to arrive on the Etrusca this morning?”

  Morgan shook his head.

  “I suppose it’s bad to run ahead of my story,” he said, “but we’ve had so many mix-ups, setbacks, and dizzy confusions that one more out of place is comparatively small. The Etrusca arrived right enough, but Inspector Patrick isn’t on her. He didn’t sail at all. I don’t know why; I don’t make any sense of it at all; but the fact remains that if something isn’t done the Barber will walk off that ship a free man in exactly three hours.”

  Dr. Fell sat back in his chair and for a moment he sat looking vacantly, and in a cross-eyed fashion, at the notes on the table.

  “U! H’m, yes! Hand me that A.B.C. on the tabouret there, will you? Thanks … What train d’jou take this morning? Seven fifty-three to Waterloo? So. Now, then … H’m yes! This would do it. I don’t suppose by any chance you have a passenger-list of that ship with you?”

  “Yes. I thought—”

  “Hand it over.” He flicked the pages rapidly until he found a name. Then he went very slowly through it, his fingers following the list of cabins. When he found what he seemed to want, he made a comparison; but it was on the other side of the table and Morgan could not see precisely what had been done. “Now, then, excuse the old charlatan a moment. I am going to make some telephone-calls. Not under torture would I reveal what I intend to do, or where’s the fun of mystifying you, hey? Heh! There’s no pleasure like mystification, my boy, if you can pull it off … As a matter of fact, I’m just going to wire the name of the murdered woman to Captain Whistler, with a few suggestions. Also it would be a good idea to ring up a branch of Victoria 7000 and make other suggestions. Have another bottle of beer.”

  He lumbered across the room, chuckling fiendishly and stamping his cane. When he returned, he was rubbing his hands in exultation behind a woman laden with the largest, most elaborately stocked lunch-tray Morgan had seen in a long time.

  “Mash and sausage,” he explained, inhaling sensuously. “Down here, Vida … Now, then. Let’s get on with our story. There are several points on which I want to be enlightened, if you feel up to talking over the food. Your case, my boy, is the best surprise-package I’ve opened yet. With each separate event, I discover, there is no telling whether the thing is a water-pistol or a loaded automatic until you pull the trigger. In a way it’s unique, because some of the best clues are only half-serious …”

  “Question,” said Morgan.

  “Exactly. Have you ever reflected,” boomed Dr. Fell, tucking a napkin under his chin and pointing at his guest with a fork in the serene assumption that he had never reflected, “on old proverbs? On the sad state of affairs which makes old proverbs so popular, and so easy to quote, precisely because those old platitudes are the only maxims which to-day nobody believes? How many people really believe, for instance, ‘honesty is the best policy’?—particularly if they happen to be honest themselves. How many people believe that ‘early to bed and early to rise’ have the effect designated? Similarly, we have the saw to the effect that many a true word is spoken in jest. A true application of that principle would be too exciting; it would call for much more ingenuity and intelligence than most people are able to display; and it would make social life unendurable if anybody for a moment believed that a true word could be spoken in jest—worse, for instance, than going out to dinner with a crowd of psycho-analysts.”

  “What’s all this?” said Morgan. “You can’t hang a man on a joke.”

  “Oh, they’re not jokes. Y
ou have no idea as to the trend of this?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Fell scribbled rapidly on a sheet of paper, and passed it over.

  “Here, for your further enlightenment,” he said, frowning. “I have tabulated eight clues. Eight suggestions, if you will. Not one of ’em is direct evidence—it’s the direct evidence I’m looking for you to supply in your next instalment of the story. I feel fairly certain you will mention the evidence I want; and my hunch is so strong that I—like several others—will risk Whistler’s official head on it. Eh?”

  Morgan took the paper, which read

  1. The Clue of Suggestion.

  2. The Clue of Opportunity.

  3. The Clue of Fraternal Trust.

  4. The Clue of Invisibility.

  5. The Clue of Seven Razors.

  6. The Clue of Seven Radiograms.

  7. The Clue of Elimination.

  8. The Clue of Terse Style.

  “It doesn’t mean a devil of a lot to me,” said Morgan. “The first two you could apply in any way you like … Wait! Don’t puff and blow, sir!—I say ‘you’ meaning myself. And I don’t like to consider the suggestion of the third … But what about seven razors? We didn’t find seven razors.”

  “Exactly,” boomed the doctor, pointing his fork as though that explained it. “The point is that there probably were seven razors, you see. That’s the point.”

  “You mean we ought to have looked for them?”

  “Oh, no! The Barber would have got rid of the others. All you should have done was remember that they were seven. Eh?”

  “And then,” said Morgan, “this point about seven radiograms … What seven radiograms? There are only two radiograms I mentioned in my story.”

  “Ah, I should have explained about that,” said Dr. Fell, skewering a sausage. “Seven—mystic number; rounded, complete, suggestive number with a curious history. I use it advisedly in place of the word ‘several,’ because we assume there were several. The interesting thing is that I am not referring to any radiograms you saw. You didn’t see ’em. That’s very significant, hey?”

  “No, I’ll be damned if it is,” said Morgan, somewhat violently. “If we didn’t see ’em—”

  “Proceed, then,” requested the doctor, waving a large flipper. “I feel positive that before you have finished I shall have noted down eight more clues—sixteen, say—by which we finish and round out our case.”

  Morgan cleared his throat and began.

  Part II

  13

  Two Mandarins

  AMONG UNTHINKING CHRONICLERS IT is much the fashion, at certain movements of mysticism, to embark on a reflection as to how, if it were not for such-and-such a small thing happening, then such-and-such a larger thing would not have happened, and so on until they have ultimately proved King Priam’s bootblack responsible for the fall of Troy. Which is, demonstrably, nonsense.

  Doubtless, such a historian would say that all would yet have been well, when Curtis Warren was installed in a padded cell on D deck, if it were not for two tiny circumstances harmless in themselves. In proof of this he would point out that—if they had only known it—the conspirators were within an ace of catching the Blind Barber himself at least once that day; and there would have been no more lurid happenings aboard the Queen Victoria. The present chronicler does not believe it. Men go straight as a stream of liquid exterminator from the nozzle of the Mermaid Automatic Electric Bug-Powder Gun along the line that is determined by their characters, nor can any horseshoe nail affect their destinies. Curtis Warren, as may have been observed from time to time, was a fairly impetuous young man much influenced by the power of suggestion. If he had not got into more trouble one way; it would have been in another; and only a thoughtless quibbler could lay the blame on such excellent articles as a detective novel and a bottle of Scotch whisky.

  Sic volvere parcæ! To solace him in captivity they could not share, Peggy Glenn presented him with a bottle of whisky (full size) and Henry Morgan with one of his old detective-novels.

  Thereby, incidentally, they showed their own characters. If anybody says Morgan should have known better, it will shortly be indicated how much he had on his mind. Morgan was fighting mad at the perverse orneriness of the Parcæ, and his own none-too-good sense reduced to a minimum. Besides—as he agreed with Peggy—if that stormy petrel, Curtis Warren, were not safe from causing trouble when locked and bolted in a padded cell, where the devil would he be safe?

  Now let’s quit this philosophising and get down to business.

  There had been an almost touching scene of farewell after Warren had been shot into the padded cell by three sturdy seamen, of whom two had to undergo considerable repairs in the doctor’s office immediately afterwards. It would also take too much time to dwell on their progress down from the captain’s cabin to D deck, which resembled an erratic Catharine wheel of arms and legs whirling down companionways and causing pale-faced passengers to bolt like rabbits. With a last heave he was fired into the cell and the door slammed; yet, damaged but undaunted, he still continued to shake the bars and hurl raspberries at the exhausted sailors.

  Peggy, in a tearful frenzy, refused to leave him. If they would not let her stay with him, she made a loyal attempt to kick Captain Whistler in a vital spot and get locked up herself. Morgan and Valvick also loyally insisted that, if the old sea-cow thought Warren off his onion, they were loony, too, and demanded their rights of being imprisoned. But this Warren—either with a glimmer of sense or a desire to make a gallant gesture—would not hear of.

  “Carry on, old man!” he said, grimly and heroically, shaking hands with Morgan through the bars of the cell. “The Barber’s still loose, and you’ve got to find him. Besides, Peggy’s got to help her uncle with those marionettes. Carry on, and we’ll nail Kyle yet.”

  That Whistler did not accede to their demands for a uniform imprisonment, both demand and consent being made in the heat of rage, Morgan afterwards attributed solely to his desire to produce them as witness to Lord Sturton that he had been treacherously attacked. This did not occur to him at the time, or he would have made use of it as a threat; and Captain Whistler would have been saved trouble, as shall be seen, with the choleric peer. All the three conspirators knew was that their ally had been locked away in the bowels of the ship: down a dark companionway, through a steel-plated corridor pungent with oil and lit by one sickly electric bulb which quivered to the pounding of the ship’s engines, and behind a door with a steel grill through which he stared out like King Richard in exile. A sailor with a whistle, reading Hollywood Romances, had been stolidly posted on a chair outside, so that the possibility of a jail-break was nil.

  There was, however, one consolation. The rather sardonic ship’s doctor—who believed not at all in Warren’s insanity, but found it prudent from long experience not to cross Captain Whistler before his temper subsided—made no objection to supplying the maniac with cigarettes and reading-matter. If he saw the bottle of whisky which Peggy smuggled through in a roll of magazines, he made no sign.

  Morgan’s contributions to the captive were a box of Gold Flake and a copy of one of his earlier novels called, Played, Partner! Now, if you are a very prolific writer of detective stories, you will be aware that the details of earlier ones tend to fade from your mind even more quickly than they do from the reader’s. Morgan remembered in a general way what the book was about. Played, Partner! was the tale of Lord Gerald Derreval, known to West End Clubland as a wealthy idler, dilettante, and sportsman; but known to Scotland Yard under the enigmatic and terrible pseudonym of The Will-o’-the-Wisp. As a gentleman burglar, Lord Gerald was hot stuff. His thrilling escapes from captivity under heavy guard made Mr. Harry Houdini look like a bungler who had got out of clink only with a writ of habeas corpus. Of course, there was never anything really crooked about Lord Gerald. All he did was pinch the shirt off any old reprobate who had been low-minded enough to get rich, thereby qualifying Lord Gerald for a high place in the So
cialist literature which is so popular nowadays. Besides, he was redeemed by his love for the beautiful Sardinia Trelawney. In the end he trapped the real villain who had tried to saddle a murder on him; and made it up with Inspector Daniels, the man who had sworn to get him and was in general so weak-minded and got the bird so often that even in the midst of pitying him you wondered how he contrived to hold his job.

  These were the details that had faded from Morgan’s mind, but such was the dynamite placed in the hands of Mr. Curtis Warren along with an imperial-quart of Old Rob Roy. It would, perhaps, have been wiser to give him a Bradshaw or a volume of sermons; but the moving finger writes, and, having writ, moves on; and, besides, philosophical remarks on this question have already been made. After Peggy had bidden him a tearful good-bye, and Morgan and Valvick had shaken hands with him, they went up in a thunder-fraught mood to see the captain.

  “Honest, now,” said Valvick rather broodingly, as they crossed the boat-deck in the sunlight that Warren was forbidden to see, “do you t’ank we are right, or iss dere a mistake? Dat wass no yoke, what dey tell us. If dey say dere is nobody missing, den ay don’t see how dere is somebody missing. Maybe we talk about a murder and dere is no murder.”

  “I tell you we’re right!” snapped Morgan. “We’re right, and it’s got to be proved somehow. First thing, I’ll tackle Whistler in as cool a frame of mind as I can. I’ll challenge him to get that blood on the razor and in the berth tested. The ship’s doctor can do it, or maybe Dr. Kyle … ”

  “Kyle?” said Peggy, staring at him. “But Dr. Kyle—”

  “Will you get your mind off that tedious joke?” said Morgan, wearily. “Let’s dispose of it once and for all. Don’t you realise that Kyle is the one person on the whole ship who can’t possibly be guilty?”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s the one man who’s got an alibi, old girl. Look here, Skipper. You’re pretty sure your friend with the toothache, the Bermondsey Terror, is honest; aren’t you?—all right. And what did he say? He said that he didn’t lose sight of Kyle’s door all night; that he heard the row on deck from the beginning … Wait a bit. You didn’t know about that, did you, Peggy?” He rapidly sketched out the Bermondsey Terror’s information, and also gave Valvick the evidence of the Perrigords. “So what? The Blind Barber stole the rest of that film and killed the girl while the row was going on out on deck. Nobody went in or out of Kyle’s door all night. So how did Kyle get out and back? It won’t wash, I tell you.”