“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. 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.’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 … ”
“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 robbery, 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 Parcæ) 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. I 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 the 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.”
1. Page 187.
2. Page 225.
3. Page 60.
4. Page 263.
About the Author
John Dickson Carr (1906–1977) was one of the most popular authors of Golden Age British-style detective novels. Born in Pennsylvania and the son of a US congressman, Carr graduated from Haverford College in 1929. Soon thereafter, he moved to England where he married an Englishwoman and began his mystery-writing career. In 1948, he returned to the US as an internationally known author. Carr received the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and was one of the few Americans ever admitted into the prestigious, but almost exclusively British, Detection Club.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1934 by John Di
ckson Carr
Copyright © renewed 1962 by John Dickson Carr
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4804-7244-0
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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THE DR. GIDEON FELL
MYSTERIES
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The Blind Barber Page 26