“Yes, but damn it all…” Simon began, and got no further.
“Questing stated that on the occasion of his almost fatal signal to Mr. Smith at the railway bridge, Eru Saul wore a blue shirt, but we know that he wore a pink one. Did he lie again? That same evening he fell into Dr. Ackrington’s trap, and agreed that there was no bloom on the trees at Pohutukawa Bay, when, as a matter of fact, the Bay was, and still is, scarlet with blossom. Again, did he lie? Dr. Ackrington, most naturally, concluded that he had not been to the Bay, but we know now that he had. Here I should tell you, in parenthesis, that Mr. Questing’s pyjamas and ties exhibit a recurrent theme of the peculiar shade of puce which it seems he did not recognize in Eru Saul’s shirt. Now we come to the final scene.”
Webley got quickly to his feet. One of the men on the verandah opened the door and came in. He, too, moved quietly. Dikon thought that only he and Gaunt had seen him and his manoeuvre. Gaunt looked quickly from this man to Webley.
“Questing,” said Mr. Falls, “carried a torch when he crossed the thermal reserve. The moon was not yet up and he flashed his torch-light on the white flags that marked the path he must follow. When he reached the mound above Taupo-tapu, over which the track passes, he would see no white flags ahead of him for the one on the top had been displaced. He would, however, see the faded red flags marking the old path on which Taupo-tapu has now encroached. There are several mounds on both sides of Taupo-tapu and they look much alike by torch-light.
“My contention is that Questing followed the red flags and so came by his death. My contention is that Questing’s murderer is the man who knew that he was colour-blind.”
A sharp flick to that fascinating toy, the kaleidoscope, will transfer a jumble of fragments into a symmetrical design. To Dikon, it seemed that Mr. Falls had administered just such a flick to the confused scraps of evidence that had collected about the death of Maurice Questing. If the completed pattern was not yet fully visible it was because there was some defect, not in the design but in Dikon’s faculty of observation. The central motif, the pivot of the system, was still hidden from him but it began to emerge as Falls, disregarding the sharp exclamations that broke from his listeners, and the emphatic slap with which Dr. Ackrington brought his palm down on the table, went on steadily with his exposition. The affectations, and the excessive urbanity of manner, were no longer noticeable in his speech. He was grave and relentlessly methodical.
“Now, it is a characteristic of persons afflicted with colour-blindness that they are most reluctant to admit to this defect. The great Hans Gross has noted this curious attitude and says that a colour-blind person, if he is forced to confess to his affliction, will behave as if he was guilty of some crime. Questing, when challenged by Dr. Ackrington with an attempt to cause the death of Mr. Smith, instead of admitting that he could not distinguish the red signal from the green, said that the signal was not working. Mr. Smith fold you that, later on, Questing gave him the story of the celluloid sun-screen.”
“Yes, but look here…” Simon began and stopped short. “On your way,” he said.
“Thank you. It is also characteristic of these people that they confuse green with red and they have a predilection for that peculiar shade of pink, kaffir pink or puce as it is sometimes called, which, apparently, seems to them to be blue. A patch of red if seen by green torch-light might appear to these people to be colourless. At any rate, with the white flag removed, Questing, if colour-blind, would have no standard of comparison and would most certainly expect the red flag to be white and accept it as such. Accepting for the moment my theory of Questing’s colour-blindness, let us see how it squares up with the evidence of the track. Sergeant Webley,” said Mr. Falls with a slight return to his old mellifluous style, “will correct me if I am wrong. My own investigation took place by torch-light, remember.”
He smiled apologetically and took the tip of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I saw,” he said, “that the clod of displaced earth, or solidified mud as I believe it to be, had split away from the iron flag standard. I could see the groove made by the standard in the broken section of the bank. The heel marks made by the famous nailed boot were immediately behind it, as well as on the clod itself. These suggested a possibility that the heel stabs had been used with the object of loosening the standard rather than dislodging the clod. If one kicked at such a standard in the dark one would make a few dud shots. The standard itself lay a little distance away from the clod. They had both fallen on a narrow shelf of firm ground at the edge of the cauldron.
“Both flag and path were intact when we went to the concert. Of the returning party nobody remembers seeing the flag but, on the other hand, nobody remembers seeing the gap in the path.
But Colonel Claire, who was the last to go through before the tragedy, tells us he fell when he reached the top of the mound.”
“Eh?” said the Colonel with one of his galvanic starts. “Fell? Yes. Yes, I fell.”
“Is it possible, Colonel, that you trod on the clod already loosened by the removal of the flag and that it gave way beneath you, causing you to stumble forward?”
“Wait a bit,” said the Colonel. “Let’s think.”
He shut his eyes and screwed up his face. His moustache twitched busily.
“While Edward is lost in contemplation,” said Dr. Ackrington, “I should like to point out to you, Falls, that if your theory is correct, the flag was removed after we had entered the hall.”
“Yes.”
“And it was intended, originally, that we should all crowd into Gaunt’s car for the return journey.”
“A point well taken,” said Mr. Falls.
“And that the half-caste fellow left the hall during the performance.”
“Returning in time to hear Mr. Gaunt’s masterly presentation of the Saint Crispin’s Eve speech.”
“The speech before Agincourt, wasn’t it?”
“We shall see. Yes, Colonel?”
The Colonel had opened his eyes and relaxed his moustache. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what it was. Astonishin’ I didn’t think of it before. The ground gave way. By George, I might have gone over, you know. What?”
“A most fortunate escape,” said Mr. Falls gravely. “Well now, gentlemen — I have almost done. It seems to me that only one explanation will agree with all the facts I have mentioned. Questing’s murderer was a man with hobnailed boots. He threw the boots into Taupo-tapu. He had visited the Peak, for the boots correspond with Bell’s sketch of the prints. He had access to the reserve during the concert. He knew Questing was colour-blind, and was most anxious that we should not discover this fact. He was an enemy agent and Questing knew it. Now what figure in our cast fits all these conditions?”
“Eru Saul,” said Dr. Ackrington.
“No,” said Falls. “Herbert Smith.” iv
It was Simon who was making the greatest outcry: Simon protesting that Bert Smith wouldn’t hurt a fly, that he couldn’t have done it, that he had tried to join up, that he was all right as long as he kept off the liquor. It was Simon who, with a helpless slackening of his voice, repeated that Falls had no right to bring this accusation and, finally, that Falls did it to protect himself. The Colonel and Dr. Ackrington tried to silence him, Webley attempted to get him out of the room, but he held his ground and in the end he talked himself to a standstill. His lips trembled, he made a gesture of relinquishment. Like an exhausted child, he stumbled clumsily to a seat, beat on the table with his fists, and at last was silent.