"Who says I'm emotionally involved?"
"Aren't you?" said Denham. "I was tring to find out."
"It seems I misjudged you, Charlie. By the Lord, I think you'd give anything on earth to see me come a cropperl"
"No, no, no!" protested Denham, He weakened, as usual.
"But I won't come a cropper," said Butler, "Not until grass turns red and you've got a beard that winds three times round the Nelson Monument. Why did you get me to come down here, anyway? With a fake story about the police?"
"Not exactly the police," Denham conected him. "May I introduce Dr. Gideon Fell?"
The presence of Dr. Fell in this room—or, in fact, any room—could have gone unnoticed only by someone wearing mental blinkers. Dr. Fell let out a tentatie harrumph to indicate it.
Standing near the white-marble mantelpiece, leaning on one cane instead of two, and with his old black cloak over his shoulders, Dr. Fell dwarfed even Butler as his bulk dwarfed the room. On top of this bulk a large red face, dominated by a mop of greyish hair, beamed dow'n on Butler through eyeglasses on a broad black ribbon. Dr. Fell was so delighted that his red cheeks were bunched up, like his several chins, and it gave him an almost toothy look under his bandit's moustache.
"Sir," he intoned, "I have longed to make your acquaintance. I do not say"—here Dr. Fell made a dangerous wide-sweeping gesture with his cane, flapping back the cloak—"that in your legal tactics there has
ever been the slightest whisper of a suggestio ialsi. No! Since I myself have so often flummoxed the evidence, and cheerfully perverted justice for a good end, I beg leave to consider you only a right-thinking amateur. Sir, I am your well-wisher!"
"Sir," replied Butler, instantly liking him and bowing as he might have bowed to Dr. Johnson, "I am yours!"
"Thankee," beamed Dr. Fell, hanging the crook of the cane over his arm so that he could rub his hands together. "Shall we proceed to business?"
"What business?"
"The murder of Richard Renshaw."
An arrow of distrust shot through Butler's mind, though he continued to smile.
"I know you, Dr. Fell, as an old friend of Superintendent Hadley. Are you here on police business?"
"No," said Dr. Fell, looking unhappy. "At the moment, as often happens, I am in disgrace at Scotland Yard. You see, I am one of those who believe that Joyce Ellis was innocent."
"Good! Then you agree the prosecution didn't consider the evidence properly?"
"Sir," returned Dr. Fell, "nobody considered the evidence."
There was a brief silence. Dr. Fell boomed out this dictum with such flat positiveness, whacking the ferrule of his cane on the floor, that Butler and Denham exchanged glances.
"Oh?" smiled Butler. "Not even counsel for the defence?"
"With all respect, sir; not even counsel for the defence. That was only natural. You were seeking the ingenious explanation rather than the true explanation. But . . . Archons of Athens! It did seem to me at that trial, even as an old scatterbrain," Dr. Fell spoke apologetically, "that both sides were looking up into trees for the roots and digging underground for the branches. When I heard Mr. Richard Renshaw had been poisoned afterwards, I can't say I was surprised."
"Weren't surprised? Why not?"
"For one reason," said Dr. Fell, "because I rather expected it."
"You expected Mr. Renshaw to be murdered?"
"Well," argued Dr. Fell, squinting hideously down his nose, "I expected somebody to be murdered. Dash it all!" he complained, in the querulous tone of one who is trying to be reasonable, "surely it was at least probable that somebody would be murdered! Er—am I making myself clear?"
"Frankly, you're not. Dr. Fell," said Butler, "what's your interest in this case?"
"Mass-murder," said Dr. Fell. "May I remind you, as I reminded Mr. Denham today, that during the past three months there have been nine unsolved poisoning cases in various parts of the country? For reasons with which I will not bore you, I do not include the case of Mrs. Taylor. But I very much include the case of Richard Renshaw. And that makes ten."
Mass-murder by poison. To Butler it conjured up such a gruesome image that he fought against it.
"Look here! You don't think all these cases are connected?"
"By thunder, I do!" roared Dr. Fell, firing up and rearing up. "It may be, I acknowledge, only my own morbid fancy. And yet I will venture a further suggestion. I will make a guess that all these murders were brought about—or at least directed—by one person and one person only."
"But, my God, why?"
"For pleasure and profit," returned Dr. Fell.
"Just a moment," interposed Charles Denham, leaning fonvard on the sofa. "Are you suggesting," he hesitated, "a kind of gangster organization to kill any given person for money?"
"No, no, no!" said Dr. Fell with violent emphasis. "An organization of that kind simply would not work in this country."
Dr. Fell, filled vdth mysterious internal snortings which crept up over the ridges of his waistcoat and threatened to dislodge his eyeglasses, began to take a turn round the room. Then he stopped, and pointed with his cane.
"Hadley knows, if I don't," he continued. "The so-called underworld is too small, too closely knit, too full of narks, too leaky with information! A whisper of this would get to Scotland Yard in three weeks, much less three months. No, you may eliminate the professional criminal.
"But," argued Dr. Fell, again making a hideous face for emphasis, "what sort of group might exist and lie concealed in dead silence? That's what I ask myself; and I reluctantly admit that I don't know. How could there be nine murders without a single clue? How could somebody obtain poison and leave never a record anjwhere? How—"
Dr. Fell stopped dead.
"O Lord!" he breathed, puffing out his cheeks. "O Bacchus!"
For Dr. Fell was peering dowm, like an immense red genie oer a
microscope, at one of the larger silver candelabra on the table behind the sofa.
"What's the matter?" Denham asked rather sharply.
Dr. Fell did not reply. He picked up the candelabrum, which was one of the perfectly plain type which may be found in any well-to-do home. Turning it over in his hand, he examined it carefully. He peered into the sockets of the candle-holders. He scraped inside with his fingernail, and produced what appeared to Butler only traces of wax gone black with dust.
"Dr. Fell!" said the exasperated barrister, who was preoccupied with Lucia and not inclined to take the learned doctor very seriously.
"Eh?"
"Shall we get back to the man who was poisoned in this house last night? What do you know about it?"
"Only"—Dr. Fell replaced the candelabrum on the table—"that the lady had wanted a divorce for some time. ..."
"You can't find a motive in that!"
"Sir," replied Dr. Fell, frowning in a ruffled way. "I was not speaking of motive. Finally: I know that her husband returned home and drank from a poisoned water-bottle, and that for some reason Mrs. Renshaw was in his room that night."
"May I ask who told you this?"
"I'm afraid," interposed the voice of Lucia Renshaw from the doorway, "I'm afraid I did." She gave a murmur of a nervous laugh. "I 'phoned him. Wasn't it all right?"
No, it wasn't all right! But Patrick Butler could not say so.
He realized, with angry disappointment, that his sense of intimacy with Lucia was now gone. It would not return tonight. Lucia smiled, with her warmth of personality, on all three guests.
She was now fully dressed, in grey silk blouse and black skirt, grey silk stockings and black shoes. Her hair, done up as though in haste and carelessness, yet emphasized its softness and sheen. If Lucia still felt trapped and terrified, she gave no sign of it. Beyond her in the doorway showed the gentle face and pince-nez of Miss Agnes Cannon.
"It was awfully good of you to come here. Dr. Fell," said Lucia earnestly. "And I didn't ask you because—well, because of the awful trouble I'm in. I'm sure Mr. Butler
and Mr. Denham can deal with that. Oh! Isn't Dr. Bierce here?"
"That's four of us," murmured Denham, who had got to his feet.
"He was here, Lucia," Denham added aloud, "but he had to go. Evening surgery."
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Lucia was conscience-stricken, "I didn't want to inconvenience him. You see, I was rather moping and brooding upstairs. Dear Agnes—Miss Cannon here—persuaded me to come dov^Ti."
Dear Agnes, Patrick Butler thought furiously, deserv'ed a good swift kick with a football shoe.
"But I wanted to talk to you, Dr. Fell," Lucia rushed on, "because you're the one—aren't you?—who knows all about locked rooms."
"Locked rooms!" exclaimed Butler. "There's no locked room here!"
"No, of course not. But how could someone have poisoned that bottle when there wasn't anyone to do it except myself? If I could tell you the circumstances, Dr. Fell. . . ."
And she told him.
Butler, it must be confessed, was growing madder and madder. He concealed this by an air of greater and greater arrogance. As though severing himself from the whole proceeding, he strolled over and sat by an open writing-desk.
All the same, as Lucia's half-breathless account went on—the water-bottle rinsed and refilled, the poison gulped down under the crucifix, Dick Renshaw writhing in his last convulsion—it seemed to throw its evil spell and contaminate this room as it had contaminated the room upstairs.
And Butler noticed, with deep satisfaction, that Dr. Fell was becoming as puzzled and uneasy as the barrister himself. Before the end of the story, Dr. Fell, now piled massively into one comer of the sofa, appeared so struck with consternation that even Lucia observed it.
"What is it?" she asked quickly. "Is anything wrong?"
"By thunder, there is!" wheezed Dr. Fell. "Everything is wrong! Do you know, Mrs. Renshaw, this is not what I expected at all?" He ruffied
up his greyish hair, and he appeared to have more chins. "I expected.
"What?"
"To take one minor point. About the character of your late husband-"
"I don't want you to think I wasn't sorry for him!" cried Lucia. "I was sorry."
Standing behind Lucia's chair, the fluffy white hair framing her young-looking face. Miss Agnes Cannon spoke suddenly.
"You have no need to feel sorry for him, my dear," said Miss Cannon, in her soft and cultured voice. "I have told you before he was better dead."
"Agnes, you mustn't say that!"
"Dick Renshaw was a bounder and a waster," declared Miss Cannon, though a thin film of tears appeared behind the pince-nez. "He pursued women and he lived above his income." Unexpectedly she added: "He was a spiv and a drone and an eel and a butterfly!"
Dr. Fell blinked at her. "I—harrumph—beg your pardon?"
Patrick Butler was instantly on his feet.
"The term she mentions. Doctor," he said richly, "were framed by our Labour Government to describe any man who works with his brain rather than his hands."
The star of the fanatic sprang into Miss Cannon's eyes; as, on the other side of the fence, it was also in Butler's.
"The Government, young man," Miss Cannon said pityingly, "do not exactly work with their hands."
"No, madam. Or with their brains. I should respect them more if they did either."
"You ought to be jailed for speaking against the Government!" cried Miss Cannon. "We're living in a democracy!"
"Madam," said Butler, closing his eyes, "your remark is such a perfect thing that its beauty must not be spoiled by comment. I accept the definition."
"Stop it!" roared Dr. Fell.
"Speaking for myself," continued Dr. Fell mildly, when silence had been restored, "I share the sentiments of Mr. iButler. If necessary, I could express them with a fluency guaranteed to blast the walls. But that is why we must not discuss them now. We feel too strongly to talk sense on either side. And now perhaps (confound it!) may I ask Mrs. Renshaw a relevant question about her husband's death?"
Lucia nodded expectantly, her dark-red mouth vivid against heightened colour, her body bent forward in the chair.
"You told this girl—harrumph—Kitty," said Dr. Fell, "to change the beds. Did you also tell her to sweep and dust?"
"To sweep and . . . why on earth do you want to know that?"
"Indulge me!" begged Dr. Fell. "Did you?"
"I'm not sure whether I told her. But I remember her running the carpet-sweeper back and forth, with the handle of my knitting-bag over her arm in case she forgot it. Yes; and I think she dusted."
"Alas and alack!" Miss Cannon said indulgently, with a bright friendly look to show no offence over political matters. "With all my efforts, I've never been able to make Lucia a good housekeeper. I attend to such things here."
"Ah!" muttered Dr. Fell.
"Kitty did dust, after a fashion," said Miss Cannon, with brisk competence. "But it's a pity I wasn't there longer. Dear Lucia almost drove me out of the room."
"Agnes, that was only because I was afraid Dick would be there any minute!"
"Well, Kitty made a bad job of it. There was a great deal of dust today, when I cleaned out the bedroom and the bathroom." Miss Cannon shuddered. "After the police had gone. One could even see marks in the dust."
Dr. Fell sat up suddenly, amid a creaking and cracking of woodwork which endangered the whole sofa.
"What marks?" he demanded.
"Really, sir, I . . . well!" Miss Cannon retreated a little. "I hardly remember."
"Are the marks there now?"
"Not after I cleaned, I assure you."
"Then for the love of Heaven try to describe them!"
Every person in that room sat or stood as still as death. Patrick Butler, by the writing-desk, found himself gripping a well-polished and flattish sea-stone used as a paperweight. As a boy in Ireland, the memory flashed through his head, he could throw a heavy stone hard and with uncanny accuracy; he had the knack yet. He would like to throw this one, as a relief for his feelings, at the blackening centre of a mystery.
"I think," Miss Cannon's pale brown eyes narrowed behind the pince-nez, "it was as though someone had scratched in the dust of the window sill. There were two or three marks."
"Shaped like what?"
"Something like the letter T' reversed. And perhaps with a little tail to it. I don't know! I'm not sure!"
For a moment Dr. Fell remained motionless. Then, with infinite labour, he wheezed and propelled himself to his feet.
"Mrs. Renshaw," he said in a voice he very seldom used, "I should like you and Mr. Butler to come upstairs with me for a private conference. Believe me, I do not make the request idly."
While Charles Denham and Agnes Cannon remained still, Lucia
led the way out of the drawing room. She walked rigidly and did not speak; it was as though her mouth would tremble if she attempted speech.
On the stairs Dr. Fell asked to be taken to Dick Renshaw's bedroom. Silently Lucia opened the door and pressed the electric-switch just inside.
The muffled lamp glowed again on the bedside table. Two oblongs of orange-yellow colour stole into the electric-fire. With scarcely a glance at the room itself, Dr. Fell carefully closed the door and faced Lucia and Butler.
"Ma'am," he said to Lucia in a heavy voice, "please accept now the fact that I am a bumbling old duffer. I suffer from, as it were, a certain absence of mind. I am just as apt to lift my hostess's best Wedgwood-china tea-pot and drop it on the hearthstone under the impression that there is a table there. But you had better hear these things from me than from Chief Inspector Soames."
"Just a minute!" Butler was beginning, when Dr. Fell's gesture cut him short.
"So I want to speak to you," the doctor went on to Lucia, "in the presence of your counsel and with his permission. For your own sake don't lie to me. The police have only begun to work. They are endlessly patient to track down a lie." Dr. Fell's face grew lopsided with supplication. "Mrs. Renshaw, do you have any antimony in your possession?"
"No!" Lucia said in horror.
"Did you ever buy it, or try to buy it? At any time in the past?"
"Never!"
Instinctively Lucia had taken hold of Butler's arm; and the current of intimacy wound them together again.
"That in itself," Butler interposed dryly, "is a stone-wall for the defence. You couldn't convict Satan himself unless you could show he had access to poison."
"Sir," retorted Dr. Fell, with a shade of wonder, "is it possible that even you don't realize the danger of the situation?"
"Naturally I realize it! But, in the remote chance that they did arrest Lucia," Butler glanced at her soothingly, "I mean to get her acquitted."
"And suppose you did? Would that solve your problem?"
Butler realized, with surprise, that he was still gripping the stone paperweight from the writing-desk downstairs. He looked at it blankly, as he looked at Dr. Fell, and dropped it into his side-pocket.
"Suppose," continued Dr. Fell with fiery emphasis, "you devised an explanation—as you or I probably could!—of how the poison got into the water-bottle. Suppose you secured Mrs. Renshaw's acquittal in a blaze of triumph. Don't you see the police might have still another charge against her?"
"Another charge? What charge?"
"The murder of Mrs. Taylor."
FOR about ten seconds Lucia Renshaw did not seem to understand.
Then her shm hand, with the pink fingernails, shd from Butler's arm as though her whole body had gone nerveless. She backed slowly away from Dr. Fell, an oddly crouching gesture for so tall and graceful a woman.
She backed into one of the twin beds, started to sit down there, suddenly looked round in horror until she saw it was not the bed where Dick Renshaw had died, then sat down and supported herself with the palms of her hands flat on the bed.
"Mrs. Taylor?" Lucia almost screamed. "Aunt Mildred?"
Dr. Fell nodded.
"But that's s-silly!" protested Lucia, with the air of a child who stretches out its hand towards fire and is unsure whether the fire will bum. "It's ridiculous! It's all finished and done with!"
"It is never done with, I fear. After Joyce Ellis, you were the principal suspect from the beginning."
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