"Certainly, certainly," Sir Charles agreed with alacrity.
Everybody looked, and felt, very serious.
"I suppose," Mr. Chitterwick dropped shyly into all this solemnity, "I suppose you couldn't put it off for twenty - four hours, could you?"
Roger looked his surprise. "But why?"
"Well, you know ..." Mr. Chitterwick wriggled with diffidence. "Well - I haven't spoken yet, you know."
Five pairs of eyes fastened on him in astonishment. Mr. Chitterwick blushed warmly.
"Of course. No, of course." Roger was trying to be as tactful as he could. "And - well, that is to say, you want to speak, of course?"
"I have a theory," said Mr. Chitterwick modestly. "I - I don't want to speak, no. But I have a theory."
"Yes, yes," said Roger, and looked helplessly at Sir Charles.
Sir Charles marched to the rescue. "I'm sure we shall all be most interested to hear Mr. Chitterwick's theory," he pronounced. "Most interested. But why not let us have it now, Mr. Chitterwick? "
"It isn't quite complete," said Mr. Chitterwick, unhappy but persistent. "I should like another twenty - four hours to clear up one or two points.
Sir Charles had an inspiration. "Of course, of course. We must meet tomorrow and listen to Mr. Chitterwick's theory, of course. In the meantime Sheringham and I will just call in at Scotland Yard and - - "
"I'd much rather you didn't," said Mr. Chitterwick, now in the deeps of misery. "Really I would." Again Roger looked helplessly at Sir Charles. This time Sir Charles looked helplessly back.
"Well - I suppose another twenty - four hours wouldn't make much difference," said Roger with reluctance. "After all this time."
"Not very much difference," pleaded Mr. Chitterwick.
"Well, not very much difference certainly," agreed Sir Charles, frankly puzzled.
"Then have I your word, Mr. President?" persisted Mr. Chitterwick, very mournfully.
"If you put it like that," said Roger, rather coldly. The meeting then broke up, somewhat bewildered.
CHAPTER XVII
IT was quite evident that, as he had said, Mr. Chitterwick did not want to speak. He looked appealingly round the circle of faces the next evening when Roger asked him to do so, but the faces remained decidedly unsympathetic. Mr Chitterwick, expressed the faces plainly, was being a silly old woman.
Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat nervously two or three times and took the plunge. "Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I quite realise what you must be thinking, and I must plead for leniency. I can only say in excuse of what you must consider my perversity, that convincing though Miss Dammers's clever exposition was and definite as her proofs appeared, we have listened to so many apparently convincing solutions of this mystery and been confronted with so many seemingly definite proofs, that I could not help feeling that perhaps even Miss Dammers's theory might not prove on reflection to be not quite so strong as one would at first think." Mr. Chitterwick, having surmounted this tall obstacle, blinked rapidly but was unable to recall the next sentence he had prepared so carefully.
He jumped it, and went on a little. "As the one to whom has fallen the task, both a privilege and a responsibility, of speaking last, you may not consider it out of place if I take the liberty of summing up the various conclusions that have been reached here, so different in both their methods and results. Not to waste time however in going over old ground, I have prepared a little chart which may show more clearly the various contrasting theories, parallels, and suggested criminals. Perhaps members would care to pass it round."
---------------------------------- MR CHITTERWICK'S CHART --------------
Solver - Motive - Angle of View - Salient Feature - Method of Proof - Parallel Case - Criminal
Sir Charles Wildman - Gain - Cui bono - Notepaper - Inductive - Marie Lefarge - Lady Pennefather
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming - Elimination - Cherchez la femme - Hidden Triangle - Intuitive and Inductive - Molineux - Sir Charles Wildman
Bradley (1) - Experiment - Detective-novelist's - Nitro-benzene - Scientific deduction - Dr. Wilson - Bradley
Bradley (2) - Jealousy - Character of Sir Eustace - Criminological knowledge of murderer - Deductive - Christina Edmunds - Woman unnamed
Sheringham - Gain - Character of Mr. Bendix - Bet - Deductive and Inductive - Carlyle Harris - Bendix
Miss Dammers - Elimination - Psychology of all participants - Criminal's character - Psychological deduction - Tawell - Sir Eustace Pennefather
Police - Conviction, or lust of killing - General - Material clues - Routine - Horwood - Unknown fanatic or lunatic
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With much hesitation Mr. Chitterwick produced the chart on which he had spent so much careful thought, and offered it to Mr. Bradley on his right. Mr. Bradley received it graciously, and even condescended to lay it on the table between himself and Miss Dammers and examine it. Mr. Chitterwick looked artlessly gratified.
"You will see," said Mr. Chitterwick, with a shade more confidence, "that practically speaking no two members have agreed on any one single matter of importance. The divergence of opinion and method is really remarkable. And in spite of such variations each member has felt confident that his or her solution was the right one. This chart, more than any words of mine could, emphasises not only the extreme openness, as Mr. Bradley would say, of the case before us, but illustrates another of Mr. Bradley's observations too, that is how surprisingly easy it is to prove anything one may desire, by a process either of conscious or of unwitting selection.
"Miss Dammers, I think," suggested Mr. Chitterwick, "may perhaps find that chart especially interesting. I am not myself a student of psychology, but even to me it was striking to notice how the solution of each member reflected, if I may say so, that particular member's own trend of thought and character. Sir Charles, for instance, whose training has naturally led him to realise the importance of the material, will not mind if I point out that the angle from which he viewed the problem was the very material one of cui bono, while the equally material evidence of the notepaper formed for him its salient feature. At the other end of the scale, Miss Dammers herself regards the case almost entirely from a psychological view - point and takes as its salient feature the character, as unconsciously revealed, of the criminal.
"Between these two, other members have paid attention to psychological and material evidence in varying proportions. Then again, the methods of building up the case against a suspected person have been widely different. Some of us have relied almost entirely on inductive methods, some almost wholly on deductive; while some, like Mr. Sheringham, have blended the two. In short, the task our President set us has proved a most instructive lesson in comparative detection."
Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat, smiled nervously, and continued. "There is another chart which I might have made, and which I think would have been no less illuminating than this one. It is a chart of the singularly different deductions drawn by different members from the undisputed facts in the case. Mr. Bradley might have found particular interest in this possible chart, as a writer of detective - stories.
"For I have often noticed," apologised Mr. Chitterwick to the writers of detective - stories en masse, "that in books of that kind it is frequently assumed that any given fact can admit of only one single deduction, and that invariably the right one. Nobody else is capable of drawing any deductions at all but the author's favourite detective, and the ones he draws (in the books where the detective is capable of drawing deductions at all which, alas, are only too few) are invariably right. Miss Dammers mentioned something of the kind one evening herself, with her illustration of the two bottles of ink.