“Only one thing more,” Ellery said gently. “You are ill, and you have had to lie in your bed. How can you have noted and remembered the times so exactly?”
It seemed to him that the smallest smile curved the withered lips.
“There is so little time left to me,” said the old Slave, “that I observe time as a young man observes his enemy.”
“I need question you no further. And now if you wish to be taken back to your house ― ’’
The ancient whispered, “I should like to remain,” and glanced at the Teacher; and a look passed between them so intimate, so full of anguish and compassion that Ellery had to turn away.
And to the Crownsil he said, “And so we come to the Teacher’s alibi.”
“Al-i-bi?” repeated someone; and Ellery saw that it was the Superintendent. “This is not a word we have ever heard, Guest.” And Ellery saw, from their faces, that it was so.
He explained it in the simplest terms he could evoke; and when he knew that they understood, he went on.
“We must therefore hold,” Ellery said, “that the Teacher’s alibi ended when he stepped out of the ― of the Slave’s house, which was at fifteen minutes past four o’clock. It is only a few steps from the Slave’s house to the Holy Congregation House; had the Teacher returned here from the Slave’s house at once, he would have had to arrive just before twenty minutes past four, the time that the Storesman was struck down to his death. I have questioned everyone. No one remembers having seen the Teacher in the five minutes between fifteen and twenty minutes past four.’’
He did not look at the Teacher now.
“If anyone in this company now remembers having seen the Teacher, or has heard of another’s having seen the Teacher, he must say so now.” And stopped. And waited. In the long room, no sound. Outside, no sound. In himself, no sound except the terrible beating of his heart.
He felt a tickle on his nose, descending; and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his streaming forehead. “It is thus established,” Ellery said, “that the Teacher could have been here ― in this room ― on the scene of the slaying ― at twenty minutes past four, the very moment that Storicai the Storesman was dealt the mortal blow.”
No one coughed, shifted, snuffled, slewed about. They were turned to stone. What are you saying? their stone faces seemed to ask. What is your meaning? Because meaning your words must have, though to us they mean nothing.
It was as if the entire weight of the matter had been shifted to Ellery’s shoulders. No one of them would help to move it from there one inch to the right or to the left, except as he might wrench their testimony from them.
So there was nothing to do but turn to the source.
To the Teacher, Ellery said painfully, “Teacher, did you go directly from the Slave’s house to this holy house yesterday?” And the old man’s eyes came back from the far place and looked at him; and he said calmly, “It is so, Quenan.”
Now was there something heard in that room, a many-lunged sigh, of which one part was his own. Ellery said, “And were you then already in the holy house before Storicai was slain with the hammer?”
“It is so, Quenan.”
And again the assembled sigh.
Ellery knew light-headedness. He pressed his palms on the long table, leaning. How theatrical this all was, how pompously unnecessary. Why had he called upon the trappings of interrogation, Crownsil, witnesses, the whole dismal reconstruction of the timetable of the Teacher’s movements? When all he had had to do was ask the patriarch the simple question, Did you kill Storicai, Teacher? to get the truthful answer. The Teacher did not lie. The Teacher would not lie.
Ellery actually turned to the old man and opened his mouth before reason took control again. Whatever the cause ― the other-worldliness of the place, the strangeness of the people, his own enervation,the headiness of the encroaching desert ― he had hardly been the same man since setting foot here. A case that rested solely on an accused’s bearing witness against himself was not a civilized proceeding; it was an inquisition. This was not a matter between Teacher and Guest, a duel of antagonists. This was a searching after truth. For what is truth? If you will be persuaded by me, pay little attention to Socrates, but much more to the truth, and if I appear to you to say anything true, assent to it, but if not, oppose me with all your might, taking good care that in my zeal I do not deceive both myself and you, and like a bee depart, leaving my sting behind. And then there were the Crownsil and the people to persuade. Truth might touch their hearts through faith; but in such a dreadful matter it must convince their minds as well, and that could only come through evidence.
Ellery looked away from the Teacher to the faces around the table.
“Storicai is established as having entered this holy house at fifteen minutes past four. He is established as having been struck down to his death at twenty minutes past four. And the Teacher is established as having been here between Storicai’s entering and Storicai’s dying. And these two things establish that the Teacher had the opportunity to commit the crime. But not these two things alone establish his opportunity. There is another thing to support them.”
From his pocket he took the glassine envelope containing the metal button he had found in Storicai’s hand. “This button I removed from the Storesman’s dead hand,” he said. “I shall pass it among you, so that you may look at it closely, and know it for what it is.” And he handed it to the Superintendent, who took it and passed it to the Successor as if it burned; and Ellery watched the button go around the table, quickly, leaving pain behind it.
And when it had been returned to him, Ellery said, “The very presence of this metal button in the slain man’s hand is witness to its meaning.
The threads still clinging to it are witness that it was torn away by Storicai, from the garment to which it was sewn, during the struggle that cost the Storesman his life… torn away from the garment of the person with whom he was struggling ― who else?”
And Ellery said, sickening himself as he said it, “And this places the owner of the button on the scene of the slaying at the very moment of its taking place. And who, alone in Quenan, wears metal buttons on his garments? And who, in fact, had a metal button replaced on his garment?” Someone made a stifled sound.
“I call the Weaver to witness.”
She came slowly, chin on her bosom; nor would she sit, but remained standing before the stool. Once more it was necessary for him to phrase the answer as well as the question: yes, she did sew a button, a new metal button with the sacred N upon it, on the Teacher’s robe at fifteen minutes before five o’clock ― only twenty-five minutes after the murder. Her “yes” was torn from her. And she returned, with the step of an old woman, to her place.
Ellery felt his own legs trembling. He had to steel himself in order to turn to the Teacher.
“Do you then admit, Teacher, that this button found in Storicai’s dead hand came from your garment?”
And calmly the Teacher answered, “It is so.”
Ellery looked about, and he saw that he had company indeed in his distress. The stone had crumbled from their faces; each sat exposed in his knowledge and his grief.
And on those naked faces sat not knowledge and grief alone. For there was fear as well. Fear for themselves? No… no. It was for the Teacher.
They had grown greatly afraid for their Teacher.
And Ellery forced his glance again at that old man, and what he saw shook him more than had he seen its opposite. For on that etching face, the face of the all-but-accused, sat a serenity that could only have come from purest peace within.
And, hating himself, Ellery looked away.
“We now,” he said, and paused to still his crawling flesh, “we now weigh the second of our three measures of guilt ― Means.” To set the scales, he reconstructed the res gestae leading up to the crime ― the thefts of the Teacher’s key in the night, the evidence of an attempt to enter the sanquetum with a faulty duplicate key, and s
o on ― and the clues incident to the murder itself. He described the wounds on the dead Storesman’s head, both at the back and in the forehead. He told them of the specks of baked clay in the dead Storicai’s hair; of the bloody hammer beside the body; of the duplicate key in Storicai’s pocket; of the unlocked door to the sanquetum; of the prayer jar that did not quite fit its base; of the disturbed columns of coins in the arque, and of the purple shard he found under the arque, and of the bloodstain on a corner of the arque.
“Let me sum up for you what all this means,” Ellery said. “The Storesman had secretly made a duplicate key to the sanquetum in order to enter the room forbidden to him, as to all others but the Teacher. He could have had only one purpose in doing this ― to steal the treasure of Quenan. He came to the door of the holy house, he looked about, he did not see that the Miller and the Waterman were observing him, and he entered without announcement or permission. In the holy house, he hurried to the door of the forbidden room, and unlocked it with the duplicate key he had made, and went in, and began to take the silver coins from the arque.”
They were all leaning toward him now, eagerly, like plants toward the sun.“At this moment a person ― let me call him Witness ― a Witness noticed the open sanquetum door and someone within, approached the room, saw the Storesman in the act of stealing the treasure, and in outraged anger plucked one of the scroll-filled prayer jars from its base and raised it high and brought it down on Storicai’s head ― the back of the head, since the Witness struck from behind. The jar shattered, shards of it falling all around, and one of the shards fell under the arque. Storicai collapsed under the blow, and in falling struck the back of his head on a corner of the arque.”
Their sigh made a long, low hissing in the meeting room.
“Now this Witness,” said Ellery, “must have then run from the sanquetum, perhaps to call for help. But almost at once the Storesman recovered from the blow by the prayer jar, leaped to his feet, and desperate to prevent the Witness’s outcry against him, ran after the Witness, caught up with him here ― near this table ― grappled with him and, I have no doubt, in his frenzy of fear at being discovered in the act of sacrilege, tried to kill the Witness. And so they struggled in a terrible silence, and during the struggle the Witness managed to snatch the hammer which the Teacher had left for the Successor on this table, and in defense of his life swung it at Storicai. Storicai flung up his arm, and the first blow smashed my wrist watch on his arm, stopping it at twenty minutes past four. The second blow struck Storicai on the forehead.
There was no need for a third.”
A bit of burning wick detached itself and floated down to the pool of liquefied wax from which the flame rose. Here it continued to burn, separately, as if it had separate life.
“This, then, is a picture of the crime,” Ellery continued. “Now for what happened immediately thereafter. Let us proceed step by step. The first thing the Witness must have done after slaying the Storesman was to return to the sanquetum, in order to restore the room to its former undisturbed state. To do this he had to collect the pieces of the broken prayer jar and dispose of them ― and in doing so, he overlooked one shard under the arque ― and also to replace the broken jar with a whole one and refill it with the scattered scrolls.
“Now, who did this?
“I ask the Potter to come forward.”
The Potter came forward, no longer the Shavian figure he had first appeared. His feet dragged as if they bore a crushing weight. He lowered himself to the stool painfully.
“Someone came to you yesterday for a prayer jar to replace one which had been broken. Who, Potter?”
The Potter’s slip-specked beard trembled, and he opened his mouth.
But nothing came out.
“Who, Potter?” Tension made Ellery’s own voice sound brutal.
This time a strangled noise emerged. But it was a noise without meaning.
“Who, Potter?” shouted Ellery.
And so at last the anguished words were torn from the Potter’s throat:
“The Teacher! The Teacher…!”
And now a soft keening rose, like a mournful wind, and Ellery, who could have keened with them, waited until it died away. And no eye turned to the Teacher, not even Ellery’s.
“And what was the time when the Teacher came to your shed and asked for a new prayer jar for the sanquetum, Potter?”
“At half past the hour of four.”
“Ten minutes after Storicai was struck dead,” Ellery said,and slowly waved and the Potter stumbled back to his place.
“Thus we have connected the Teacher,” Ellery resumed after a moment, “with the first weapon used, the weapon that merely stunned ― the sanquetum jar. Now let us consider the second weapon used, the weapon that took Storicai’s life ― the hammer.” And he reached down and took from the floor, where he had laid it, the wrapped hammer; and he began to unwrap it, and the cloth stuck in the now dry blood, and he had to tear it away as they shuddered. And the bloodstains on the hammer’s head were still to be seen.
“Listen to me,” Ellery said. “Yesterday in this room I took the imprint of the fingertips of all present ― the dead Storesman, the Teacher, the Successor, the Superintendent, and the eleven members of the Crownsil of Twelve still living. Do you remember?”
Oh, yes, they remembered; they could not forget that mystery within a mystery; so much was clear. But did they have any idea of the significance of fingerprints?
“Do you know why I made each of you press your fingertips on the inkpad and then on the white paper?”
They were blanks.
“Then I will tell you.” Ellery said. “Each man here, and each of the women too, lift up your hands and look at the tips of your fingers.” The time they glanced at one another doubtfully; but the Chronicler raised his hands and looked at them, and one by one the others did likewise. “Look closely. Do you see the little lines and loops and whorls in your skin, making up a certain pattern?” There was a concert of nods. “This pattern can be transferred from your fingertips to another surface, especially a smooth dry one. Surely you have all seen the imprint of your fingers, or of the children’s, on a wall or a window?”
“This we know, Elroi,” the Chronicler spoke up suddenly. “But what is the meaning of it?”
“The meaning of it, Chronicler, is that the fingertips of no two people in the world leave the same picture ― no, not even those of twins born of the same egg. In the outside world the fingerprints of millions and millions of people of all nations and races and colors have been collected, and not once have those of one person been found to match exactly those of another. Thus it may be said that each human being carries about with him ― from his birth to his death and beyond, until the body all but crumbles into dust ― a set of marks or signs on his fingers by which he, and he alone, can be told from all others in the world. Now do you grasp my meaning?”
It seemed that they did not; at least, on no face turned up to his did he see anything but a brow-knotted struggle to understand. Or was it a struggle to believe? For this might well come down to a matter, not of comprehension, but of faith.
“You must believe me when I say that it is true,” said Ellery. “I, Elroi Quenan, whose coming in a time of great trouble was foretold.” And may God forgive me, he thought, for that. “So now we come to the weighing of the Means, and to weigh that we must first throw into the balance the fingerprints.”
He held up the bloodied hammer, grasping it by the edges of the head and the bottom of the grip.
“You will see that I have dusted the gripping surface of the hammer with a white powder; and that this white powder, when blown gently away, has left a residue on the fingerprints made by the hand that grasped it in slaying the Storesman, thus revealing a picture of them.” He laid the hammer carefully down on the table and reached for his fingerprinting kit. The prints on the hammer showing white against the darkened wood of the grip, he took out a piece of black paper. “Teacher,
will you allow me to take the fingerprints of your right hand?” And now the silence could be scratched, it was so hard. But the Teacher wore the same expression of serenity.
“It shall be as you say, Elroi,” he said.
Ellery took the old hand; it was warm and quiet in his. If I forget thee, 0
Jerusalem… He rolled the patriarch’s fingers, then brought out the prints with white powder. He laid the black paper beside the hammer, and produced his pocket lens.
“I wish you all to rise and, one at a time, to look through the glass at the fingerprints of the Teacher you have just seen me take, and then at the fingerprints of the slayer on the hammer. And you will see that the fingerprints on the one are identical with the fingerprints on the other.” But ― would they? Primitive people who had never laid eyes on a photograph were often unable to recognize the most familiar people or objects snapped by a camera. There might be a similar blindness here.
And indeed, while the Crownsil and the others filed by and examined the two exhibits in turn through the lens, while a few nodded, most shook their heads. Nevertheless, he waited until they were all seated again, and said, “Thus, from the prints of the Teacher’s fingertips on the hammer, we know that the Teacher, and only the Teacher, could have used the hammer to slay the Storesman. It is proved.”
But was it? To them?
The whole suffocating mantle of fatigue dropped over him again, so that he had to fight his way free of it. And Ellery turned to the serene old man, to prove his guilt by evidence they would have no choice but to accept.
“Teacher,” he said abruptly, “was it you who gathered together the pieces of the broken prayer jar, you who went directly from this holy house after the slaying to the Potter’s for a new jar?” And the old man answered, “It is so, Elroi.”
“And was it your right hand that held this hammer?” This time there was the least pause before the Teacher, still serenely, answered, “It is so, Elroi.”
And on the Eighth Day Page 13