The Problem of the Green Capsule

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The Problem of the Green Capsule Page 15

by John Dickson Carr


  “No, it isn’t,” said Dr. Fell with satisfaction. “Here’s Mr. Stevenson. Now, my lad. We’re ready. Touch her off.”

  An uneasy silence settled on the group.

  Stevenson, conscious of his own importance, trod lightly and had a tendency towards fussiness. After mopping his forehead, he inspected the fire. He glanced at the windows. He studied the sheet hung in the space between the double-doors. After a prolonged scrutiny of the table, he hauled it back, bumping, until it was almost against the wall opposite the sheet. Then he pushed it forward some inches. From a bookcase he dragged out a number of volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which he piled up on the table to make a higher platform for the projector. All four investigators were now smoking pipes, so that a cloud of smoke rose in the dusky room. They had a tendency to prowl.

  “This won’t work,” said Major Crow suddenly. “Something’ll go wrong.”

  “But what can go wrong?” demanded Elliot.

  “I don’t know. Some damned thing. This is too easy. You’ll see.”

  “I assure you it’s all right, sir,” said Stevenson, turning a perspiring face. “Ready in just a second.”

  The silence lengthened, except for an occasional mysterious tinkling sound in Stevenson’s operations, or a mournful whish of traffic from the High Street. Stevenson edged the sofa to one side so that there was an uninterrupted line to the screen. He arranged chairs. There was a slight wrinkle in the screen, so he altered the position of a drawing-pin and smoothed that out. Finally, while a vast breath of relief came from the spectators, he moved back slowly on his heels towards the windows.

  “Now, gentlemen,” he said, groping for one curtain. “Ready. If you’ll just take chairs before I close these curtains——”

  Dr. Fell lumbered over to the sofa. Bostwick sat down gingerly on the edge beside him. Elliot drew a chair to a position closer to the screen but at one side of it. There was a rattle of rings as one set of curtains swept together.

  “Now, gentlemen——”

  “Stop!” said Major Crow, taking the pipe out of his mouth.

  “Oh, my ancient hat,” howled Dr. Fell, “what is it NOW?”

  “No need to get excited about it,” protested the other. He pointed with the stem of his pipe. “Suppose—well, suppose nothing does go wrong.”

  “That’s what we’re waiting to see, you know.”

  “Suppose it comes out as we hope. There are certain things we’re bound to get: Dr. Nemo’s actual height, for instance. It’s only fair to take a show of hands now. What are we going to see? Who was Dr. Nemo? What do you say, Bostwick?”

  Superintendent Bostwick turned round a moon-face over the back of the sofa. He held his pipe in such a way that it seemed to be poised in the air behind his head.

  “Well, sir, if you ask me—I haven’t got much doubt we shall find he was Mr. Wilbur Emmet”

  “Emmet! Emmet? But Emmet’s dead!”

  “He wasn’t dead then,” the Superintendent pointed out.

  “But—never mind, than. What’s your view, Fell?”

  “Sir,” said Dr. Fell with polished courtesy, “my view is this. My view is only that I wish to be allowed to have a view. On some points I am certain what we shall see. On other points I am uncertain what we shall see. On still further points I am beginning not to give a curse what we see, provided only that we are ultimately permitted to get on and see it.”

  “Right-ho!” said Stevenson.

  The remaining curtains swept shut. Now the darkness was broken only by the faint glow of the fire, or the uncertain goblin gleam of a pipe. Elliot became conscious of the dampness which clings to old stone houses; of stuffiness, and smoke. He had no difficulty in making out the shapes or faces of any of his companions: even of Stevenson at the back of the room. Stevenson moved round, stepping gingerly to avoid the electric flex attached to the projector. He switched it on. Chinks and gleams of light sprang up from the box, illuminating him like an alchemist over a crucible; and the beam of the projector, which the smoke caught and followed, appeared on the screen in a blank white patch some four feet square.

  From the back of the room came a series of rattling, tinny sounds, and a click as of something opened or shut. The projector began to hum, rising to a steady whirring noise. The screen flashed, flickered, and then went dead black.

  There was nothing wrong, for the whirring noise still filled the room. The blackness continued, shot a little with grey, and wavering slightly. It seemed to go on interminably. Then a faint blur of light appeared, becoming a dazzle. It was as though a vertical crack was opening down the centre of the screen, with a vague black blur pushing and stretching it open. Elliot knew what it was. They were back in the Music Room facing the office; and Marcus Chesney was pushing open the double-doors.

  Someone coughed. The picture jumped a little; then they saw, as though cut off from them by a lawn of darkness, the back part of the office at Bellegarde. A moving shadow wavered along the edge of it, evidently that of a man walking back to the table. Harding had taken the picture from slightly too far to the left, so that you could not see the French windows. The light was vague and rather bad despite its sharpness of shadow. But you could distinctly see the glimmering mantelpiece, the face of the clock whose pendulum threw back gleams, the back of a desk-chair, the broad table-top, the chocolate-box whose pattern showed grey, and the two tiny pencil-like articles lying on the blotter. Then there was a stir at the edge of the light—and Marcus Chesney’s face stared out from the screen.

  Marcus Chesney was not a pleasant sight. Due to the placing of the light, the absence of make-up, the jumpy flickering world created by the unsteady camera, he looked already dead. His face was bloodless, his eyebrows accentuated and eye-sockets hollowed out, his cheeks streaked with darkness whenever he turned his head. But he wore an expression of high and lofty calmness. He bobbed into the picture, moving leisurely.…

  “Look at the clock,” someone said with shattering loudness from behind Elliot’s shoulder. It drowned out the steady whirring of the projector. “Look at the clock! What’s the time?”

  “Gawdlummycharley—” said Bostwick’s voice.

  A stir went through the room, as though it were the furniture that had moved rather than the people.

  “What’s the time there? What do you say?”

  “They were all wrong,” said Bostwick’s voice, “that’s what it is. One of ’em said midnight; one said about midnight; and Professor Ingram said one minute to midnight. They’re all wrong. It’s one minute past midnight.”

  “Sh-h-h!”

  The little mimic world was unaffected. With great deliberation Marcus Chesney drew out the desk-chair and sat down. He reached out and pushed the chocolate-box a little to his own right, with great nicety as contrasted to the flickering of the film. Next he picked up a flattish pencil, and with it he industriously and rather self-consciously pretended to write. Next—having to dig his finger-nails a little into the blotter, and showing some difficulty in picking it up—he took the other tiny article. They saw it clearly, straight against the light.

  Professor Ingram’s description of it flashed into Elliot’s mind. The professor had described it as something like a pen, but narrower and much smaller. He had described it as a thin silver, under three inches long, blackish, sharptipped. And this was a correct description.

  “I know what that is,” said Major Crow.

  There was a scrape of a chair. Major Crow walked quickly out of the group, edged sideways, and stuck his head into the beam of light to get a better look. His shadow blotted out half the screen; and a series of fantastic pictures, of Marcus Chesney writhing wildly, danced in faint outline across the back of his raincoat.

  “Stop the picture,” said Major Crow, turning round full in the beam from the projector. His voice was going high.

  “I know what it is right enough,” he repeated. “It’s the minute-hand of a clock.”

  “The what?” demanded Bostwic
k.

  “The minute-hand of that clock on the mantelpiece,” shouted Major Crow, raising his finger as though to illustrate. “We noticed the clock had a dial six inches in diameter. Don’t you see it? It’s the long minute-hand as opposed to the short hour-hand. All Chesney had to do before the performance was unscrew the head of the spindle holding the hands (we saw it had a screw-head), remove the minute-hand from the spindle, and replace the screw-head. That left only one hand on the clock; the short hour-hand pointing dead to twelve.

  “Gad, take my—don’t you see it yet? There was only one hand on the clock. The witnesses all thought they saw two hands. What they really saw was the hour-hand; and a sharp, black shadow of the hour-hand thrown above and beside it on the white face of the clock by that brilliant light shining up on it from below.”

  He pointed his finger; he seemed to fight down a tendency to dance.

  “It even accounts for all the differences in the testimony, don’t you see? The witnesses differ according to the direction in which they saw the shadow fall. Professor Ingram, sitting to the extreme right, saw the shadow fall at one minute to twelve. Miss Wills, sitting in the centre, saw it dead on midnight. This film, taken from the extreme left, shows it at one minute past twelve. After the performance—when Chesney carefully closed the double-doors on them—all he had to do was replace the minute-hand on the clock: which would take about five seconds. And the clock showed the right time again. But during the performance Chesney had the colossal cheek to sit there holding the minute-hand under their very eyes; and not one of ’em saw it.”

  There was a silence.

  From the gloom came the sound of Bostwick appreciatively slapping his thigh, of an approving grunt from Dr. Fell, and of Stevenson muttering as he struggled with a jammed film. Major Crow added, more mildly, but bursting with pride:

  “Didn’t I tell you there was some jiggery-pokery about that clock?”

  “You did that, sir,” said Bostwick.

  “It’s sound psychology,” admitted Dr. Fell, nodding with vigour. “You know, I would offer a small wager that the trick would have deceived them even if there had been no shadow. When the hands of a clock are on midnight we see only one hand; we glance no further; custom deceives us. But our good Chesney went even further and made his scheme triple foolproof. That, we begin to see, was why he insisted on holding the show round about midnight. The shadow illusion, granted, would work with the hands at any position on the dial. But by getting the hour-hand vertical at midnight he made sure that three different witnesses in three different positions saw three different, sharply emphasised times on the clock. And he would catch them out in no less than two questions out of his ten. But look here! The question is—steady—the question now is, what was the real time?”

  “Ah,” said Bostwick.

  “That hour-hand is vertical, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” affirmed Major Crow.

  “Which means,” scowled the doctor, “which means, if I recall anything of my own various tinkerings with clocks, that the position of the minute-hand could have been anything from five minutes before midnight to five minutes past midnight. The hour-hand stays more or less vertical during those times, depending on the size and mechanism of the clock. The time before midnight does not concern us. The time after midnight does concern us. It means——”

  Major Crow put away his pipe in his pocket.

  “It means,” he said, “that Joe Chesney’s alibi is shot to blazes. Everything depended on his leaving Emsworth’s house at just midnight, the same time (we supposed) that Dr. Nemo was in the office at Bellegarde. Joe Chesney really did leave the Emsworths’ at midnight. But Dr. Nemo didn’t walk into the office and kill Chesney at midnight. No; the real time was past midnight. Probably five or six minutes past midnight. Joe Chesney could easily have driven from the Emsworths’ to Bellegarde in three minutes. Q.E.D. Open those curtains, somebody. I’ve got nothing against Joe Chesney; but I’m inclined to think he’s the lad we want.”

  Chapter XV

  WHAT THE FILM SHOWED

  It was Elliot who threw back the curtains on one window. Daylight came in with grey pallor, paling the beam from the projector, showing Major Crow standing before a picture still twisted and stuck faintly on the sheet hung between the doors.

  And Major Crow’s excitement was growing.

  “Inspector,” he said, “I never fancied myself much in the analytical way. But this is so plain we can’t overlook it. You know? Poor old Marcus Chesney actually planned the way in which another person could kill him——”

  “So?” observed Dr. Fell thoughtfully.

  “Joe Chesney could have known all about the clock and the shadow-illusion. You see that? Either he could have hung about Bellegarde after dinner: Marcus and Wilbur Emmet were in the study, with windows open, for nearly three hours. Or else, which seems more likely, Marcus and Emmet were planning this show for days ahead; and Joe could have known all about it beforehand.

  “He knew Marcus wouldn’t start the show until the hand of that clock was vertical. In the ordinary way, you know, that clock couldn’t be tampered with; Marcus couldn’t reset the hands. If Joe could get himself an alibi at the Emsworths’—if he could get back to Bellegarde —and if Marcus chose to put on the show at a tune after midnight rather than a time before midnight, Joe Chesney would be in clover. And wait! There’s one thing (by Jove, I’ve just thought of this) there’s one thing he would certainly have to do afterwards.”

  “Which is?” said Elliot.

  “He’d have to kill Wilbur Emmet as well,” said the Major. “Emmet knew all about the trick with the clock. And how many other people hereabouts, do you think, knew how to use a hypodermic needle?” He let this sink in. “Gentlemen, it’s as plain as anything I ever saw. He’s got a head, that chap has. Who would suspect him?”

  “You would,” said Dr. Fell.

  “What’s that?”

  “In fact, you did,” the doctor pointed out. “It was the very first thing you thought of. I suspect that in your correct Woolwich head there has long been stirring a profound distrust of Joseph Chesney’s too-roaring manners. But continue.”

  “Gad, I’ve got nothing against the fellow!” protested Major Crow rather querulously. He became formal again, and turned to Elliot. “Inspector, this is your case. After this morning, I will have nothing more to do with it. But it strikes me you’ve got some very good grounds here. It’s well known that Joe Chesney hates work, as he would; and that Marcus somehow kept him at it or bullied him into it; and that, so far as grounds for arrest are concerned——”

  “What grounds?” interrupted Dr. Fell.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I said what grounds?” repeated Dr. Fell. “In your highly intelligent reconstruction you seem to have forgotten one small but possibly important fact. It was not Joseph Chesney who hoaxed you with the clock. It was his brother Marcus. You have got the direction of the evidence mixed. You are robbing Peter to hang Paul.”

  “Yes; but——”

  “And therefore,” said Dr. Fell with emphasis, “by some mental sleight-of-hand you have convinced yourself that you ought to arrest a man simply because you have broken an alibi which somebody else constructed for him. You do not even suggest that he constructed it. You want to arrest him simply because he has no alibi. I will make no comment on the other glaring weaknesses in your hypothesis; I will confine myself to the simple observation that you cannot do that there here.”

  Major Crow was offended.

  “I didn’t say anything about arresting him. I know we’ve got to have evidence. But what do you suggest?”

  “What about getting on with it, sir,” suggested Bostwick, “and finding out?”

  “Eh?”

  “This chap in the top-hat. We haven’t seen him yet.”

  “—and is it understood,” Dr. Fell said savagely, when order was restored and the curtains drawn again, “that this time nobody interrupts until
the film is finished? Is it agreed? Good! Then kindly bite on a bullet and restrain yourselves and let us see what is happening. Fire away, Mr. Stevenson.”

  Again the click and hum of the projector filled the room. The mimic scene silenced them to coughs and rustlings. Now, as Elliot looked at the screen, the thing seemed so obvious that he wondered how mind co-related with eyesight could have gone so far astray. The larger hand on that clock clearly was a shadow: nothing more. Marcus Chesney, holding the real clock-hand and industriously pretending to write with it, wore an expression that betrayed nothing.

  Marcus Chesney dropped it on the blotter. He seemed to hear something. He turned round a little way, to his right. His face, bony and unpleasantly hollowed with shadow, swung round so that they had an even better view of it.

  And into the picture stepped the murderer.

  Dr. Nemo, in fact, turned round slowly and looked at them.

  He was a dingy figure. The nap of the tall hat was badly rubbed and looked moth-eaten. The raincoat, a muddy light grey, had its collar turned up to where the ears might have been. A fuzzy greyish blob, which might have been the face of an insect or the windings of a muffler, filled up the space between; and the black spectacles stared at them opaquely.

  Their first view of him was a fairly full view, though taken from the left. He was standing within the radius of light; but at the moment he was standing too far to the front, and the light was placed too high, so that his trousers and shoes were too dim to be made out. The fingers of his gloved right hand, smooth and jointless as a dummy’s, held the black bag with its painted name towards them.

  Then he moved with blinding swiftness.

  Elliot, on the alert for it, saw what he did. His back was partly turned to them when he looked back at Marcus Chesney, and the movement was easier to follow. Approaching the table, he put down the bag. He put it down just behind the chocolate-box there. Instantly, as though altering his intention, he picked it up again and put it down on top of the chocolate-box. By his first movement he had released the duplicate chocolate-box on the table from the spring-grip bag. By his second movement he snapped up the original box into the bag.

 

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