The syringe which I had found in my pocket worried me. It had obviously been placed there for the purpose of incriminating me and I did not like it at all. I wondered when it had been placed in my jacket and realised that it might have been there all day without my noticing it, for I could not remember putting my hand into it at all, except to shove more papers in on top of those already there. The funnel that the papers made meant that it would have been a simple job for anyone to slide the morocco case down to the bottom of my pocket without my noticing that anything was wrong. I wrote down a list of the people with whom I had come in contact during the day and realised that that was not going to help me much, for at some time I had spoken to every one who was any way mixed up with the elimination of Ian Farquhar Porter. When I had finished my notes I came to the conclusion that responsibility for the murder rested with Peter Hatton, Dr. Swartz or my uncle and I felt pretty angry with them all if they thought it was a good joke to have me shut up in jail so as to divert suspicion from themselves.
I looked gloomily at the economical furnishings of my cell and compared them, to their disadvantage, with the comfort of my room in the White Lion and, quite methodically, I cursed everything I could think of, watched all the time by a policeman who seemed to be ready to pounce on me if I moved quickly or seemed to be about to cut my throat with my fountain pen nib.
PART TWO
Chapter 9
You Pays Your Penny
THE CORONER POLISHED his rimless glasses carefully on a brown silk handkerchief, chosen to match his suit, and glared at the public benches at the back, quelling the mumbling of the spectators. He looked expectantly toward the jury and the foreman rose to his feet, gripping the edge of the desk in front of him. He cleared his throat quietly and detached one hand from the desk to fiddle with the dimpled puff of his new tie. “We find that the deceased was murdered by Andrew Harvey Blake,” he said precisely and sat down again abruptly, uncertain what he and the rest of the jury were intended to do next.
Professor Stubbs, who was filling his pipe under cover of the man in front of him, rammed the tobacco down too hard and had to pick it out again and tamp it down more gently. He shook his head quickly and the tangle of grey hair fell down over his forehead. He got up heavily and walked heavily out of the court, and, as if automatically, pushed open the door of a pub a few yards along the street.
The barman drew him a pint of bitter and he carried it delicately over to a table in the corner and, after sitting down, he wiped the polished surface dry with the sleeve of his thick grey tweed jacket. Pulling his bundle of papers out of his pockets he chose a few from each wad and spread them out in front of him and started to move them about, so that a casual observer would have thought that he was playing some elaborate game of patience.
This fantastic card game did nothing to reassure him. Sucking the yellow fringe of his moustache he roared to the barman to bring him another pint, and, splitting open an envelope with his thumb he spread it out before him and started to write. When the document was finished he signed it and dated it. For a moment he sat looking into the amber depths of the beer in his tankard and then he swung it to his mouth and bumped it down hard on the polished table so that the other drinkers turned to watch the bulky old man lumbering from the bar.
He walked along the street until he came to the blue sign of the police station. Pushing on the swing doors he entered and asked the sergeant in charge if he could see Inspector Hargrave on a matter of the utmost importance. After a wait of a few minutes he was escorted along a stone-paved corridor and into a small simply furnished office, nearly as austere and comfortless as one of the cells.
The inspector half rose to his feet and gestured toward a wooden chair upon which the professor seated himself heavily; the bentwood creaking in protest. “Good evening, Professor Stubbs. Can I do anything to help you? Would you like an interview with your nephew?” The inspector was gentle with the gentleness of one who, having triumphed, could afford to be magnanimous. He seemed to be well pleased with himself and was conscious of the congratulations of his superiors who had expressed their gratification at the speed with which he had solved his first murder case.
“Inspector Hargrave,” the deep voice boomed like the calling of a bittern in the small room, “you are a fool. In fact, you almost qualify for the title of damned fool. You sit there lookin’ like an overfed cat—one that has just stolen a chicken, purrin’ away to yourself and full of satisfaction. You have the wrong man in custody. In fact, you have arrested the only one of us who could not have committed the murder. Oh, yes, I know that the coroner’s jury congratulated you upon your astuteness and the old boy himself, who has never thought in his life, thought you had done a clever piece of work in untanglin’ this mystery. All you have done is to tangle it a damned sight worse than before.”
He paused and dug his papers out of his jacket pocket, and waved them angrily in the face of the bewildered inspector.
“I can make out a better case against any one of the other actors in this amateur melodrama than you have managed to make out against Andrew Blake. Silver, or Swartz if you like. Dr. Swartz had every reason for killin’ Porter and has no alibi for the necessary period of time, and he has the necessary knowledge and ability which Blake does not possess. Either Mary Lewis or Dr. Hatton had the opportunity, the knowledge and the motive. Can’t you see, Inspector, that the method used means that Porter had some knowledge of the person who killed him. Can’t you see that he wouldn’t have let my nephew get near him.”
The inspector looked at him in a polite but skeptical manner, as if to suggest that either the professor, with his well-known weakness for beer, had taken too much, or else he was more than a little mad. Professor Stubbs leaned forward, blowing out his moustache with an angry snort. “I can’t understand the reason for the glassful of poison, unless it was meant to make us think that Porter had taken a sip of it. The murderer fell down badly there, for Joe Flanagan recognised it for a red herrin’ as soon as he looked inside the stomach. No poison there—obviously Porter had not taken poison internally but had been injected with it. Joe couldn’t find a puncture to account for the idea of its havin’ been injected, but, having always fancied myself as a murderer I quickly came to the conclusion that the ear was a distinct possibility, and I was right. Can’t you see what that means?”
He crashed his closed fist down on the desk and the impact sent the inspector’s papers flying about the room like Brobdingnagian confetti. Inspector Hargrave scowled at him and bent down to gather up the scattered sheets, but the professor paid no attention to the scowl and repeated his question, waving his sheaf of papers under the official’s nose. “I don’t see that it means much,” replied the inspector grudgingly.
Professor Stubbs hoisted himself off the chair, which had been like a shooting stick to an ordinary sized man, and placed his hands on the edge of the desk. “Sir,” he said coldly, “you are either a fool or a stubborn mule and I don’t know that it is worth my while tryin’ to deal with you, but before I leave you to find out your own mistakes, will you answer me this? Under what circumstances would you not be suspicious or startled if someone grabbed you by the ear? Think, man, what the hell would you think if I grabbed you by your donkey’s lug?
“Oh, you’d be surprised, would you? Pah, you’d be surprised. I’ve no doubt you’d be surprised if I planted my foot in your beam-end and you’d be surprised if I took you by the hair and swung you round this room. If the devil came to you in the night and offered you the dominion of the earth I’ve no doubt but that you’d be ‘surprised.’
“Hell, man, if I grabbed you by the lobe of the ear you’d be more than surprised, you would kick up a shindy and would try and hit me. But, if you were goin’ to have your blood grouped you’d think nothin’ of it if the person who was assistin’ you took hold of your ear. Would you?”
The professor was marking time as he spoke by stamping heavily on the floor and his glasses were balanced
extremely precariously on the tip of his blunt nose. The papers in his hand were whisking rapidly to and fro beneath the inspector’s nose and the official mumbled something to the effect that perhaps there was something in what Professor Stubbs was saying.
“Perhaps there’s somethin’ in what I’m sayin’, is there? Humph. What I’m tellin’ you is fact, as much as a fingerprint. The murder of Porter was not one of those which is planned and carried into execution on the spur of the moment. It was quite well thought out. The idea obviously was to pretend that the murderer was goin’ to take a drop of blood from Porter’s ear and, substitutin’ the hypodermic syringe for the spring-lancet, rammed it into the drum. You’ve got the same evidence as I have. Take a look at it? What was Porter goin’ to do in the demonstration room? He was experimentin’ with a new noncoagulant. How is a man goin’ to find out if he has somethin’ that will not allow the blood to solidify if he has no blood for his experiment. Now if you’ll keep your damned fool mouth shut I am goin’ to lecture you until you see sense.
“I don’t think you can doubt that the murderer intended to come into the room and offer to help Porter. The cyanide in the glass was a blind so that we would not think that the murder was committed by one of Porter’s intimates but by anyone in the whole wide world, or at least anyone present at the congress. There’s your reason for the murder takin’ place in this congress. It’s the opposite of a sealed room mystery, anyone could have done it and the murderer was trustin’ to the fact of Porter’s unpopularity to spread suspicion as widely as possible. But he made his mistake in his method. For some reason he neglected to pour the cyanide down Porter’s throat. If he had done that it would have been in the stomach and there would have been nothin’ to make Joe Flanagan suspicious. We’d have suspected everyone who disliked Porter.
“The murderer obviously did not want us to know that, takin’ a tip from Hamlet’s uncle, he poured a leprous distilment whose effect holds such an enmity with blood of man into Porter’s ear. He might have expected Porter to jump as the needle pierced the drum, breaking the needle which would remain a mute witness at the entrance to the brain. He wanted to run no risk of this happenin’ and so he prepared in advance for any such an eventuality. The accident of Porter bein’ knocked out must have seemed to him a fortunate one, for it meant that there would be no struggle or risk of a broken needle, but having prepared his plans he did not trust himself to swerve from them or to invent new plans on the spur of the moment. So, sure of the absolute perfection of his original scheme, he went ahead on it.
“Now you see that the murderer must ’a’ been someone who knew Porter well enough to offer his services with the certainty of their being accepted. Either Dr. Hatton or Miss Lewis could have done that, for they were not to know that things would come to a state where Hatton would knock out Porter. Take Dr. Hatton, for instance, he has the knowledge necessary for the makin’ of cyanide, he has worked on blood, so he’d be quite an acceptable assistant to Porter.
“Remember that until about five past one, neither of them liked the other, but there was no open break between them and Porter was the sort of man who would gain a lot of pleasure from bein’ assisted by a man who hated him. It would have fed his vanity in a strange way. I knew the man and I had noticed that odd characteristic and Hatton had noticed it, too, knowin’ that not one of Porter’s assistants felt either affection or loyalty toward him. If it seems odd to you that this should be so, just think over the things I have told you about him—it is not likely that an assistant, if it could be hidden, would tell him of any new discovery, as one of my assistants would tell me, for that discovery would not be used for the benefit of science, but for the aggrandisement of one man, Dr. Ian Farquhar Porter. He got a great deal of pleasure out of the fact that people disliked him and that he was climbin’ to fame on the shoulders of others. His idea was that if he became well enough known the people who disliked him would be forced to pay him lip-service, at least. He was goin’ to blackmail his way into becoming an F.R.S., by becoming so well known that people who did not know of his methods would use him as a stick to beat the Royal Society, a favourite game, sayin’ that their treatment of him was an example of professional jealousy. Oh yes, he’d have got his F.R.S. and all the rest of it. You must understand all this about the man if you are to understand why anyone of the three, Swartz, Hatton or Miss Lewis, might have been called in to act as his assistant. They would have felt uncomfortable but their discomfort would have added to his confidence.
“The murderer knew this and was countin’ on it. In addition to this, however, the murderer has to be someone who could use the spring lancet. Now Swartz, Mary Lewis and Peter Hatton all answer to that requirement. I could do it, but Porter would not know I could. To him I was a plant physiologist, a botanist, who might be all right with a packet of seeds but helpless with a lancet. The one person who could not have done it is Andrew Blake. Would you ask me to take a fingerprint? No? I thought not. Well, then no more would Porter have allowed a journalist to draw blood from him. However much he might have desired to murder Ian Porter, Andrew Blake would never have worked out the plan I have just outlined to you. There would have been no point in his doin’ so, for he would never have got near to his victim.”
Bowing to the inspector, Professor Stubbs roared, “Therefore, gentleman of the jury, I demand an acquittal, havin’ shown incontrovertibly that this murder is the one murder which the accused, Andrew Blake, could not have committed. The defense rests, m’Lord.” He laid down his sheaf of papers and perched himself on the chair again, beaming benevolently over his glasses.
Inspector Hargrave remained silent for a moment and then held out his pouch toward the professor who was occupied in digging carbon out of his pipe with a broken penknife. “Ah, Professor Stubbs,” he said, “I must admit that you have put up a very fair defense, very fair, and if there was nothing else I might be inclined to agree with you. But the case against Blake is just as strong as that which you have advanced in his favour. There was admittedly bad blood between him and Porter, and he had previously descended to violence, and then he was in contact with the apparatus with which the cyanide was prepared and, this is a telling point, his were the only fingerprints on the polished sides of the syringe.”
Putting a match to his pipe, Professor Stubbs sighed deeply and then spoke very slowly as if to a child, stressing each word with a thump on the desk from his closed fist, “I have just shown you that it would have been absolutely impossible for him to kill Porter in the way he was killed and you still insist upon pullin’ up one or two odd links and pretendin’ that you are in possession of a chain. Look at your evidence, man, and you’ll see that a good counsel will knock it to pieces in five minutes. Of course the only fingerprints on the syringe were Blake’s—it had been planted in his pocket, he found it and fiddled about with it and dozens of people saw him do that. The person who placed it in Blake’s pocket wasn’t goin’ to have his fingerprints on it—if he did that he might just as well have ‘This is the property of John Doe’ engraved on it, substituting his name for that of Doe. Come on, admit that your case falls to bits.”
The blotting pad in front of the inspector was covered with scrawls of all sorts and shapes. Poising his pencil delicately he carefully added a pair of squinting eyes to a pig and did not look up. “I won’t say that you’re not right, Professor, but I’ll need to see my superior before I can do anything further regarding this new evidence which you have provided me with. Now can you tell me anything about the other people, anything, that is, which I don’t already know? This American fellow now, Swartz—that’s the German for black, isn’t it? Well, do you think he could have done the murder?”
Beneath their eaves of heavy grey hair the professor’s eyes twinkled. “Inspector,” he said solemnly, “I could show you that anyone you’d care to name had done the murder. I could probably prove that I’d done it myself and I’d prove it with such a wealth of detail that you would have no hesit
ation in arresting me. Then, of course, just as easily, I would prove that it was absolutely impossible for me to have done it and you would have to let me go again. In fact, I would like to have a shot at provin’ that the unpleasant Dr. Porter was murdered by that intelligent young police officer, Inspector Hargrave.”
Uncertain whether the word “intelligent” was intended as a cut for his credulousness, Inspector Hargrave flushed slightly and shuffled his feet. Then with a gesture of impatience he clicked his fingers, as if to indicate that he had had enough fooling and wanted to get down to business.
“Humph,” the professor snorted, “so you want to make Swartz guilty, do you? Well, that should be easy enough. He had a motive, a stronger motive no doubt than any of the others we’ve heard about, and he had the opportunity. Let’s pretend we’re watchin’ Swartz murderin’ Porter. To begin with, he’s an American and it is unlikely that he would take a special voyage over here in order to murder Porter, so he seizes upon this congress as a suitable stage for his deed. When he arrives here he discovers that Porter has been workin’ on a new non-coagulant and this suggests the scheme to him, and he says somethin’ like, ‘Look here, my demonstration room is all fitted up for blood-groupin’, so if you wish to give your stuff a trial while you’re here, why not just drop in sometime, for it’ll be easier than workin’ just anywhere.’ Porter, being Porter, thinks this offer is just a part of what is due to him as a great man and he grandly remarks that he’ll drop in sometime. Swartz sits down and does a bit of hard thinkin’ and eventually hits on the plan we’ve already looked at. Then there is the problem of gettin’ hold of poison and it occurs to him that as he’s been lucky enough to be planted in the middle of the chemistry department of the university, the best thing he can do is to prepare the poison out of that Department’s materials in one of their rooms, and he looks around and is lucky again for he finds a well-stocked unoccupied lab, apparently just made for his purpose. There is a key in the door of the lab. so, while his distilling operations are in progress, he locks the door and if anyone tries to get in they assume that the door has been locked by the janitor. He works in rubber gloves so as to leave no fingerprints and when he’s finished he leaves the apparatus set up, to show that someone has been makin’ cyanide and to provide the police with a nice clue so that they won’t come chasin’ around after everyone to see who has had cyanide.
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