“Now he’s all set and all he’s got to do is to wait for a favourable opportunity. When Porter asks him if he can use the demonstration room durin’ the lunch hour, he wonders if this can be the opportunity which he has wanted. He goes along to see Powys, with whom he has arranged to have lunch and chats with him for a few minutes. Then, just as he’s going to excuse himself to go and wash his hands, or something of the sort, the convenient Powys says, ‘Just a mo’ before we go off. I must feed the dogs. Wait here for me, it’ll only take a few minutes.’ Swartz nods and says he’ll amuse himself by looking at the dogs.
As soon as Powys has gone Swartz sprints round to his room and strolls in, ready to excuse himself if Silver is there with Porter. To his surprise Porter is lying on the floor, knocked out. Perhaps he is beginning to stir a little. To Swartz this seems a blessing as it means that he will not need to waste any time on palaver before he does the deed. He injects his cyanide into Porter, pours the rest of it into one of his little glasses, arranges the body artistically, and hastily fills up one of the taste-testing forms to show where Porter had reached when he drunk the cyanide. Then he dashes back to see Powys, slowing down to a stroll and again he has some excuse ready if Powys is there before him. However, he is back first and he climbs into the pen and starts playin’ with the puppies. Powys returns and sees Swartz in the middle of the dogs and assumes that he has not left the pen.
“Then they go off to lunch together. Swartz probably thinks of throwin’ away all the evidence that he still carries with him, but, on second thoughts, he decides that he’ll keep the syringe, loaded with cyanide as a good red herring if the police get curious about him. It occurs to him that the one alibiless (is that a new word?) person against whom it would be impossible to get a conviction is my nephew, and he comes to the conclusion that a few days in gaol won’t do Blake any harm, while, ten days or less from now, he will be on his way back to America and though, once Andrew Blake is cleared, suspicion may fall on him, there is no direct evidence to connect him with the murder and he doubts if the police will bother about extradition when they can’t be at all certain of obtaining a conviction.
“So, laughin’ to himself, he walks beside Blake through the corridors and drops the hypodermic syringe down the funnel made by the papers, at the same time bumpin’ against him so that he will not notice the arrival of the foreign body in his pocket. By this time he knows that Andrew Blake, having read the subject up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has recognised that the apparatus in the room he chanced to use was used for making cyanide and has been afraid to tell the police that he has recognised it, in case they suspect him, a fact that will tell against him in the mind of Inspector Hargrave.
“Havin’ everythin’ arranged so neatly Swartz just sits back and waits for the end of the congress, when he will return to America feelin’ that he has done some extremely good work while in England. There is no reason for him to worry for there is no fear of Andrew Blake bein’ hanged as some cunnin’ barrister, or that old fox John Stubbs, is bound to hit on the fact that of everyone at the Congress, Blake is the least likely to have done the murder, and that it is impossible for him to have done it as his weapon is the pen and could never be the hypodermic syringe.
“There, then, is your case against Swartz, QED. I can’t say that I like it. There are far too many lucky accidents in it, but you wanted a case and I’ve given it to you and I may tell you that it is a far stronger case than the one you have put up against my nephew. It is at least made of good stout cardboard, while your case is built of rice-paper and will melt the first time it gets damp.”
Taking a gaudy coloured handkerchief from his breast pocket, Inspector Hargrave mopped his forehead, and looked up, his face rather brighter than before. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Professor Stubbs, I think you’ve got something there. Of course, there are a lot of gaps in your story, but I dare say we’ll be able to fill them. It’s surprising how much evidence you can unearth once you have a line to work upon. It’s getting the line that is the real job, for as you will realise, we in the Force work at a disadvantage. The spectator who watches the whole of the game should be better at describing it than the man who is called in to commentate on the second half only. You know all the people who are mixed up in this affair and you know how they would behave in certain circumstances, where I can only judge them by what I’ve seen under admittedly difficult circumstances. You can have no idea, Professor, how grateful I am to you for your assistance and I will certainly ask my superiors to review the case of Andrew Blake in the light of this new evidence, first thing tomorrow morning.”
Professor Stubbs’s eyes twinkled as he looked over the tops of his glasses. “Inspector Hargrave,” he said softly, “you are not forgettin’ that I told you that I could make out an equally good case against myself, Professor Silver, Mary Lewis, or Dr. Hatton, are you? I wouldn’t forget that.”
The inspector laughed cheerfully. “You must have your little joke, eh, Professor? Well, I must say that the case you’ve given me is good enough for the time being. I always had my doubts about that American.”
Gathering up his sheaf of documents the professor stuffed them into his pocket and, nodding at the inspector with the gawkiness of a friendly Great Auk, stamped out of the office and along the stone-paved corridor. Inspector Hargrave listened until the footsteps had died away and then, after sharpening his pencil with an old razor-blade, he took some sheets of paper out of a drawer and started to write.
Chapter 10
You Takes Your Choice
ANDREW BLAKE sat on the edge of his bunk and swung his legs and looked out at the patch of blue sky that informed him that it was a fine day. Being in prison, he decided, was not really so bad after all. They had been inclined to be a little tough with him at first, but for some reason or other they had become more gentle as time went on and in the middle of the evening Inspector Hargrave had actually come along and inquired how he was getting on. After that he had been given his cigarettes and matches and the top of a tin of Barneys as an ashtray, and they had allowed him to read a book.
He was mildly annoyed with his uncle for neglecting to pay him a visit to liven him up in his cell. It was only when he remembered that he was in prison on a charge of murdering Dr. Porter that he felt rather uncomfortable, for he was forced to admit that if you looked at it one way, the evidence against him was fairly strong and now the coroner, a nasty prim little man, had done his best to back the police up in their wrongness. Several times during the night he had woken up suddenly with the feeling that he was falling through space, and he had stayed awake for a long time, wondering whether he could have murdered Porter and then forgotten all about it. It did not seem possible, for one did not go around committing murders in an absent-minded way, however many cigarettes one could light without noticing it.
He had always believed that prisoners were fed on skilly and grey bread, and so was pleasantly surprised when the police officer brought him bacon and eggs, toast, butter and marmalade and coffee on a tray from a nearby restaurant. He gathered that before his trial a prisoner was treated as if he was a normal man who had to be locked up but who was otherwise all right. The policeman who was acting as warder was, if possible, even more polite than he had been the previous night.
When he had eaten his breakfast and was wondering how he was to get a shave, for his face felt rather like a newly-mowed cornfield, the warder came to the door and, unlocking it with a clank of vast keys, pushed his head in, announcing, “A visitor to see you, Mr. Blake.”
Professor Stubbs, looking even more untidy than he had done the previous afternoon, stumped into the cell and dumped himself on the edge of the bunk, which groaned under his weight, having been made for men of more normal proportions. “Humph,” he snorted, “sleep well? How do you like being shut up? Have you tried stretchin’ your neck to accustom it to the rope? A man called John Lee once managed to get away as they failed to hang him three times. This was
taken as proof of his innocence, but Charles Duff, in his Handbook on Hanging, suggests that it was a heredity immunity. Ha.”
He laughed and it sounded as if a whole brass band had been shut up in the little cell. Andrew looked at his uncle sternly. “I do not think that all this talk about hanging is in the best of taste. I have no wish to try conclusions with a gallows and I hope that the occasion for me to do so is still very far distant.”
“Oh, I don’t think that this affair is goin’ to go any further. Humph, I came along here last night and had an interview with Inspector Hargrave and, I think, I convinced him that whoever did the murder, it could not have been you, as you have not the technical skill necessary to have done this murder. I offered to prove that anyone of us others could have done it and he was so excited that he almost had tears in his eyes as he thanked me for my help. Oh, they’ll let you out soon as they’ll see that the case against you has fallen to nothin’. I may have led the inspector up the garden path, but it’s all in a good cause. I think I now know who murdered Porter, so that, if I’m right, it’s who and when and how answered. I’ve still got to find the answer to why and then I think I may get the proof I need. Ha, I see from your expression that you don’t believe me? Of course, I’m just an amateur at this game and can’t be expected to enter into competition with the police on their own ground. I’ve been readin’ about murders, the most impossible murders, the more impossible the better, for donkey’s years, and now I have a good plain murder dumped down under my nose with plenty of nice suspects, and I want to be clever about it. I would like a murder of a man in a sealed room, so the only murder I get is the opposite of that. A man alone in a room to which about twelve hundred people have had free access.”
While he spoke the professor slapped his knees noisily and the warder, who had remained at the door, looked at him suspiciously as if he thought that this noise was cover for some other noise, such as the passing of a file. “Murder,” announced Professor Stubbs boisterously, “is great fun when you don’t like the murdered, and I can’t pretend that I liked Porter, but it looks to me as though the murderer might be someone whom we don’t dislike.” He got up. “I must now go and take a look at my plants, for, after all, I came here to show them off, not to track down crime. ‘Crime doesn’t pay’ we’re told. Well, I certainly seem to have wasted a lot of time on it, but I consider that I’m well paid if I can work out the puzzle to my satisfaction.”
His step military in its precision, Inspector Hargrave snapped into the cell immediately after Professor Stubbs had left it. “Good morning, Mr. Blake. I’ve got good news for you. Owing to the fact that fresh evidence has come to light I have informed my superiors that I wished to discharge you. You will understand that you are not to leave town without informing us.”
“Why? Have you found the murderer?”
The inspector slapped his hands together briskly, the gesture of an Eastern potentate requiring the presence of one of his slaves. “Well, of course you will understand that I cannot give away anything at the present time, but I can tell you this. We have a strong suspicion, almost amounting to a certainty, that a certain gentleman is neither so innocent nor so guileless as he would have us believe. It is merely a matter of hours before we are in a position to make an arrest. Once we have tied up a few loose ends everything will slip into place and we will have as neat a case as you can desire. A case that even your uncle, with all his cleverness, won’t be able to demolish. We are very grateful to Professor Stubbs, but you must admit that he is inclined to be too clever by half.” He paused and rolled the phrase over on his tongue appreciatively, repeating it, “Too clever by half. If you will come with me now, Mr. Blake, we will go through the formalities of giving you back your things and discharging you.”
When Andrew had finished with the official formalities and could once again jangle his loose change in his pockets, he went out to the front of the police station. He heard a familiar voice declaiming and saw his uncle leaning on the desk in front of the sergeant. “Beer,” he was shouting, “varies more than any other drink and is more of a gamble. You know that a bottle of a certain wine of a certain vintage should be drinkable, but you go into a strange pub and order a pint of four-ale you got no surety that it’ll be any good. The pub-keeper may not take care of his pipes, his cellar may not be the right temperature. The beer may be sour or flat or one of a million other things. Beer, I tell you, is the hell of an undependable drink.”
He crashed his fist down on the desk, so that ink pots, pens and blotting-pads jumped, and turned round to face Andrew. “Humph, so they’ve let you out, have they? You’ve been robbed of your place in the Famous Trials series. That’s hard luck. I’ve just been telling this dolt,” he looked at the sergeant and grinned, his eyes twinkling over the top of his glasses, “telling this dolt a few facts about beer. In spite of the fact that he drinks it, an Englishman knows nothing about his national drink. He is afraid to admit that beer can vary in case someone accuses him of being fussy. My God,” he exploded and spread out his arms in a sweeping gesture which prompted the sergeant to put his hand on the ink bottle, “My God, why should people be ashamed of knowin’ what they’re drinkin’? Go to France and you will find that the simplest labourer knows more about the wine he drinks with his lunch. So far as the Englishman is concerned, his beer might be a chemical compound that started its life in a laboratory at the other end of a pump, and it often tastes as if it was. Pah, and they have the damned effrontery to be proud, yes, proud, of their ignorance. When I murder someone my motive will be that the murdered was proud of his ignorance.” He glared fiercely at the sergeant, blowing out his moustache. “The next time you take a glass of beer, my good fellow, think of it as a drink and not as a medicine. Instead of ramming it back into your stomach—a disgustin’ German students’ trick—try tastin’ it. Yes, I said try tastin’ it. Don’t look so damned surprised. It won’t poison you and you’ll learn to enjoy it for its own sake.”
With a jerk of his hand the professor gestured to Andrew to follow him and swept out of the police station, if someone shaped rather like a heavy tank can be described as sweeping out of anywhere.
Inspector Hargrave, his lips twisted with a suppressed smile, listened to the machine-gun chatter of the Bentley as it heated up and then the slash of gears and the roar as it started off. When the noise of departure had become no louder than the distant rumble of artillery, he shook his head slowly, as if mourning over the fact that a clever man like Professor Stubbs should be mad.
Pursing his mouth into the shape of a violet the inspector whistled slowly and walked back to his room. He sat down at his desk and looked at the sheets of paper, over which he had sat for half the night. He scribbled for some time and then read through the results of his work, lighting a cigarette to help him to think. When he laid down the sheets of paper he lay back in his chair for a few minutes with his eyes closed, one finger stroking the wispy straw-coloured moustache on his lip. Suddenly he came to a decision and leaned forward, stubbing out the glowing end in his ashtray, and picked up the telephone. “Please tell Sergeant Jenkins that I want to see him, and ask him to bring along his notes on the Porter case.”
The sergeant entered the room. “Good morning, Inspector, I see you’ve let Blake go. The case against him collapsed?” The inspector was short with his subordinate, passing on the abrupt manner of his superiors when they had reprimanded him for making an arrest without a sufficiency of evidence. However, as he finished he thawed a little and provided Jenkins with an outline of the case he had built up from Professor Stubbs’s remarks on Swartz. “So I think the best thing we can do is to go up to the university and see what this American has to say for himself. I don’t mind telling you that I think we’ve got a pretty strong case against him. We’ll ask him a few questions and just see if his answers tally with his earliest statements. If they don’t… well….”
At the university everything seemed to be going on as though nothing had happ
ened, no longer were there little knots of men chattering in the hall and the name Porter was as nearly forgotten as that of Erasmus Paviom or John Dereham. Even the janitor did not straighten up into a military alertness, but merely nodded in an offhand way to the inspector and sergeant as they walked into his cubby. “Is Dr. Swartz in this morning?” snapped the inspector, faintly nettled by the man’s negligence. The janitor did not even bother to enunciate clearly as he mumbled, “Can’t say. I haven’t seen him, but then this damned place has as many entrances as a damned honeycomb.” The word he used was not “damn” and the inspector looked a trifle shocked and said sharply, “Don’t swear when you talk to me.” The janitor scowled but did not reply.
Inspector Hargrave, followed closely by the sergeant, walked smartly along the corridors, and as they went their shoes clicked on the stone flags like the shoes of a pony on a frosty road. The door of the demonstration room was open and they walked in. Mary Lewis was working at her bench and the two assistants were there, a few people were being tested for their blood-groups and tasting ability, but there were no signs of Dr. Swartz. The inspector walked over to Mary and waited until she had finished stirring up some drops of blood on slides. “Excuse me, Miss Lewis,” he said, and she laid down the glass rod on a piece of filter-paper and turned round. “Have you seen Dr. Swartz this morning? I wanted to ask him a few questions.”
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