The reporters scribbled furiously. Some of them seemed to gather that he had cast aspersions on the United States of Atlantis. Despite any aspersions, Inspector La Strada sat there smiling as he dripped. Several hands flew into the air. Other reporters neglected even that minimal politeness, bawling out Helms' name and their questions.
"Gentlemen, please," Helms said several times. When that failed, he shouted, "Enough!" in a voice of startling volume. By chance or by design, the acoustics of the hall favored him over the reporters. Having won something resembling silence except for being rather louder, he went on, "I shall respond to your queries in due course, I promise. For now, please let me proceed. Perhaps more questions will occur to you as I do."
Dr. Walton knew he would have been ruder than that. To the good doctor, the reporters were nothing but a yapping pack of provincial pests. To Athelstan Helms, almost all of mankind fell into that category, Atlanteans hardly more than Englishmen.
"It seemed obvious from the beginning that the House of Universal Devotion was behind the recent campaign of extermination against its critics," Helms said. "There can be no doubt that the House has responded strongly in the past to any and all efforts to call it to account for its doctrinal and social peculiarities. Thus a simple, obvious solution presented itself--one obvious enough to draw the notice of police officials in Hanover and other Atlantean cities."
He got a small laugh from the assembled gentlemen of the press. Inspector La Strada laughed, too. Why not? Despite sarcasm, Helms had declared the solution the police favored to be the simple and obvious one. Was that not the same as saying it was true?
It was not, as Helms proceeded to make clear: "Almost every puzzle has a solution that is simple and obvious--simple and obvious and, unfortunately, altogether wrong. Such appears to me to be the case here. As best I have been able to determine, there is no large-scale conspiracy on the part of the House of Universal Devotion to rid the world of its critics--and a good thing, too, or the world would soon become an empty and echoing place."
"Well, how come those bastards are dead, then?" a reporter shouted, careless of anything resembling rules of procedure. Inspector La Strada, Dr. Walton noted, was no longer smiling or laughing.
"Please note that I did not say there was no conspiracy," Athelstan Helms replied. "I merely said there was none on the part of the House of Universal Devotion. Whether there was one against the said House is, I regret to report, an altogether different question, with an altogether different answer."
Walton saw that keeping the proceedings orderly would be anything but easy. Some of the reporters still seemed eager and attentive, but others looked angry, even hostile. As for La Strada, his countenance would have had to lighten considerably for either of those adjectives to apply. As a medical man, Dr. Walton feared the police official was on the point of suffering an apoplexy.
Impassive as if he were being greeted with enthusiasm and applause, Athelstan Helms continued, "To take the particular case of Mr. Benjamin Morris, his killer was in fact not an outraged member of the House of Universal Devotion, but rather one Sergeant Casimir Karpinski of the Thetford Police Department."
Pandemonium. Chaos. Shouted questions and raised hands. A fistfight in the back rows. One question came often enough to stay clear through the din: "How the devil d'you know that?"
"My suspicions were kindled," Helms said--several times, each louder than the last, until his voice finally prevailed, "My suspicions were kindled, I say, when Karpinski repaired to the scene of the crime with astounding celerity, and also smelling strongly of black-powder smoke, such being the propellant with which the caliber .465 Manstopper is charged. The Manstopper is the Thetford Police Department's preferred arm, and the late Mr. Morris was slain with copper-jacketed bullets, which the police department also uses. But the odor of powder was what truly made me begin to contemplate this unfortunate possibility. The nose is sadly underestimated in detection." He tapped his own bladelike proboscis.
"Sounds pretty goddamn thin to me!" a reporter called. Others shouted agreement. "You have any real evidence besides the big nose you're sticking into our affairs?" The gentlemen of the press and Inspector La Strada nodded vigorously.
"I do," Holmes said, calmly still. "Dr. Walton, if you would be so kind...?"
"Certainly." Walton hurried over to the door through which he and his colleague had entered the hall and said, "Bring him in now, if you please."
In came Sergeant Karpinski, a glum expression on his unshaven face, his hands chained together behind him. His escorts were two men even larger and burlier than he was himself: not police officers, but men who styled themselves detectives, though what they did for a living was considerably different from Athelstan Helms' definition of the art.
"Here is Casimir Karpinski," Helms said. "He will tell you for himself whether my deductions have merit."
"I killed Benjamin Morris," Karpinski said. "I'm damned if I'd tell you so unless this bastard had the goods on me, but he does, worse luck. I did it, and I'm not real sorry, either. The House of Universal Devotion needs taking down, and this was a way to do it. Or it would have been, if he hadn't started poking around."
A hush settled over the lecture hall as the reporters slowly realized this was no humbug. They scribbled furiously. "Why do you think the House needs taking down?" Helms asked.
"It's as plain as the nose on my face. It's as plain as the nose on your face, by God," Karpinski replied, which drew a nervous laugh from his audience. "They're a state within a state. They have their own rules, their own laws, their own morals. People are loyal to the Preacher, not to the United States of Atlantis. Time--past time--to bring 'em into line."
"Are these your opinions alone?" the detective inquired.
Karpinski laughed in his face. "I should hope not! Any decent Atlantean would tell you the same."
"The decency of framing the Preacher and his sect for a crime they did not commit I leave to others to expatiate upon," Athelstan Helms said. "But did you act alone, Sergeant, or upon the urging of other 'decent Atlanteans' of higher rank in society?"
"I got my orders from Hanover," Sergeant Karpinski answered. "I got them straight from Inspector La Strada, as a matter of fact."
"That's a lie!" La Strada roared.
"It is not." Helms pulled from an inside jacket pocket a folded square of pale yellow paper. "I have here a telegram found in Sergeant Karpinski's flat--"
Inspector La Strada, his face flushed a deep, liverish red suggestive of extreme choler, pulled from a shoulder holster a large, stout pistol that would have been better carried elsewhere upon his person; even in that moment of extreme tension, Dr. Walton noted that the weapon in question was a Manstopper .465: a recommendation for the model, if one the good doctor would as gladly have forgone. La Strada leveled, or attempted to level, the revolver not at either of the two Englishmen who had uncovered his nefarious machinations, but rather at Sergeant Karpinski, whose testimony could do him so much harm.
He was foiled not by Helms or Walton, but by the reporter sitting to his right. That worthy, possessed of quick wits and quicker reflexes, seized Inspector La Strada's wrist and jerked his hand upward just as the Manstopper discharged. The roar of the piece was astoundingly loud in the enclosed space. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling, followed a moment later by several drops of water; the pistol had proved its potency by penetrating ceiling and roof alike.