“Getting tired of it?” asked the man.
“Night journeys are always a bit tedious,” replied Pender, half relieved and half reluctant. “Would you like a book?”
He took The Paper-Clip Clue from his briefcase and held it out hopefully. The other man glanced at the title and shook his head.
“Thanks very much,” he said, “but I never read detective stories.
They’re so — inadequate, don’t you think so?”
“They are rather lacking in characterization and human interest, certainly,” said Pender, “but on a railway journey—”
“I don’t mean that,” said the other man. “I am not concerned with humanity. But all these murderers are so incompetent — they bore me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Pender. “At any rate they are usually a good deal more imaginative and ingenious than murderers in real life.”
“Than the murderers who are found out in real life, yes,” admitted the other man.
“Even some of those did pretty well before they got pinched,”
objected Pender. “Crippen, for instance; he need never have been caught if he hadn’t lost his head and run off to America. George Joseph Smith did away with at least two brides quite successfully before fate and the News of the World intervened.”
“Yes,” said the other man, “but look at the clumsiness of it all; the elaboration, the lies, the paraphernalia. Absolutely unnecessary.”
“Oh come!” said Pender. “You can’t expect committing a murder and getting away with it to be as simple as shelling peas.”
“Ah!” said the other man. “You think that, do you?”
Pender waited for him to elaborate this remark, but nothing came of it. The man leaned back and smiled in his secret way at the roof of the carriage; he appeared to think the conversation not worth going on with. Pender found himself noticing his companion’s hands.
They were white and surprisingly long in the fingers. He watched them gently tapping upon their owner’s knee — then resolutely turned a page — then put the book down once more and said:
“Well, if it’s so easy, how would you set about committing a murder?”
“I?” repeated the man. The light on his glasses made his eyes quite blank to Pender, but his voice sounded gently amused. “That’s different; I should not have to think twice about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I happen to know how to do it.”
“Do you indeed?” muttered Pender, rebelliously.
“Oh yes; there’s nothing to it.”
“How can you be sure? You haven’t tried, I suppose?”
“It isn’t a case of trying,” said the man. “There’s nothing uncertain about my method. That’s just the beauty of it.”
“It’s easy to say that,” retorted Pender, “but what is this wonderful method?”
“You can’t expect me to tell you that, can you?” said the other man, bringing his eyes back to rest on Pender’s. “It might not be safe. You look harmless enough, but who could look more harmless than Crippen? Nobody is fit to be trusted with absolute control over other people’s lives.”
“Bosh!” exclaimed Pender. “I shouldn’t think of murdering anybody.”
“Oh yes you would,” said the other man, “if you really believed it was safe. So would anybody. Why are all these tremendous artificial barriers built up around murder by the Church and the law?
Just because it’s everybody’s crime and just as natural as breathing.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” cried Pender, warmly.
“You think so, do you? That’s what most people would say. But I wouldn’t trust ’em. Not with sulphate of thanatol to be bought for two pence at any chemist’s.”
“Sulphate of what?” asked Pender sharply.
“Ah! you think I’m giving something away. Well, it’s a mixture of that and one or two other things — all equally ordinary and cheap.
For nine pence you could make up enough to poison the entire Cabinet. Though of course one wouldn’t polish off the whole lot at once; it might look funny if they all died simultaneously in their baths.”
“Why in their baths?”
“That’s the way it would take them. It’s the action of the hot water that brings on the effect of the stuff, you see. Any time from a few hours to a few days after administration. It’s quite a simple chemical reaction and it couldn’t possibly be detected by analysis. It would just look like heart failure.”
Pender eyed him uneasily. He did not like the smile; it was not only derisive, it was smug, it was almost gloating, triumphant! He could not quite put the right name to it.
“You know,” pursued the man, pulling a pipe from his pocket and beginning to fill it, “it is very odd how often one seems to read of people being found dead in their baths. It must be a very common accident. Quite temptingly so. After all, there is a fascination about murder. The thing grows upon one — that is, I imagine it would, you know.”
“Very likely,” said Pender.
“I’m sure of it. No, I wouldn’t trust anybody with that formula — not even a virtuous young man like yourself.”
The long white fingers tamped the tobacco firmly into the bowl and struck a match.
“But how about you?” said Pender, irritated. (Nobody cares to be called a virtuous young man.) “If nobody is fit to be trusted—”
“I’m not, eh?” replied the man. “Well, that’s true, but it can’t be helped now, can it? I know the thing and I can’t unknow it again.
It’s unfortunate, but there it is. At any rate you have the comfort of knowing that nothing disagreeable is likely to happen to me. Dear me! Rugby already. I get out here. I have a little bit of business to do at Rugby.”
He rose and shook himself, buttoned his raincoat about him, and pulled the shabby hat more firmly down about his enigmatic glasses.
The train slowed down and stopped. With a brief good night and a crooked smile the man stepped onto the platform. Pender watched him stride quickly away into the drizzle beyond the radius of the gas light.
“Dotty or something,” said Pender, oddly relieved. “Thank goodness, I seem to be going to have the compartment to myself.”
He returned to Murder at the Manse, but his attention still kept wandering from the book he held in his hand.
“What was the name of that stuff the fellow talked about? Sulphate of what?”
For the life of him he could not remember.
It was on the following afternoon that Pender saw the news item.
He had bought the Standard to read at lunch, and the word “Bath”
caught his eye; otherwise he would probably have missed the paragraph altogether, for it was only a short one.
WEALTHY MANUFACTURER DIES IN BATH
WIFE’S TRAGIC DISCOVERY
A distressing discovery was made early this morning by Mrs.
John Brittlesea, wife of the well-known head of Brittlesea’s Engineering Works at Rugby. Finding that her husband, whom she had seen alive and well less than an hour previously, did not come down in time for his breakfast, she searched for him in the bathroom, where the engineer was found lying dead in his bath; life having been extinct, according to the medical men, for half an hour.
The cause of the death is pronounced to be heart failure. The deceased manufacturer…
“That’s an odd coincidence,” said Pender. “At Rugby. I should think my unknown friend would be interested — if he is still there, doing his bit of business. I wonder what his business is, by the way.”