“I think not, madam-granting your premise. If each of my statements is met with a challenge we’ll never get anywhere. Why don’t you wait till I’m through? By that time, if I have lied, you can bankrupt me with a suit for slander.”
“I turned on the radio. Everyone knows that. You said it was a prearranged signal…”
“So I did. I beg you, let’s don’t turn this into a squabble. I’m discussing murder and making serious charges. Let me finish, let me expose myself, then rebut me if you can; and either I shall be discredited and disgraced, or someone here will be… do you hang in West Virginia, Mr. Tolman?”
Tolman, his eyes riveted on Wolfe’s face, nodded.
“Then someone will die at the end of a rope.-As I was saying, the man concealed in the shrubbery out there”-he pointed to the door leading to the terrace-“was close enough to the open parlor window so that when the radio warned him he could observe the return of Berin to the parlor. Instantly he proceeded to the terrace and entered this room by that door. Laszio, here alone by the table, was surprised at the entrance of a liveried servant-for the man wore Kanawha Spa livery and had a black face. The man approached the table and made himself known, for Laszio knew him well. ‘See,’ the man said with a smile, ‘don’t you know me, I am Mr. White’-we may call him that for the present, for he was in fact a white man-‘I am Mr. White, masquerading, ha ha, and we’ll play a joke on these fellows. It will be quite amusing, ha ha, Laszio old chap. You go behind that screen and I’ll stay here by the table…’
“I confess that no one except Laszio heard those words, or any others. The words actually spoken may have been quite different, but whatever they were, the upshot was that Laszio went behind the screen, and Mr. White, having procured a knife from the table, followed him there and stabbed him to the heart, from behind. It was certainly done with finesse and dispatch, since there was no struggle and no outcry loud enough to be heard in the pantry hall. Mr. White left the knife where he had put it, seeing that it had done its work, and emerged from behind the screen. As he did so a glance showed him that the door to the pantry hall-that door-was open a few inches and a man, a colored man, was peering at him through the crack. Either he had already decided what to do in case of such an emergency, or he showed great presence of mind, for he merely stood still at the end of the screen, looking straight at the eyes peering at him, and placed his finger to his lips. A simple and superb gesture. He may or may not have known-probably he didn’t-that at the same moment the door leading to the terrace, behind him, had also opened, and a woman was looking through at him. But his masquerade worked both ways. The colored man knew he was a fake, a white man blacked up, took him for one of the guests playing a joke, and so was not moved to inquire or interfere. The woman supposed he was a servant and let it go at that. Before he left this room Mr. White was seen by still another man-the headwaiter, Moulton here-but by the time Moulton looked through the door Mr. White was on his way out and his back was turned, so Moulton didn’t see his face.-We might as well record names as we go along. The man who first peered through the door was Paul Whipple, one of our waiters here-who, by the way, is studying anthropology at Howard University. The one who saw Mr. White going out was Moulton. The woman who looked through the terrace door was Mrs. Lawrence Coyne.”
Coyne jerked around to look, startled, at his wife. She put up her chin at Wolfe. “But… you promised me…”
“I promised you nothing. I’m sorry, Mrs. Coyne, but it’s much better not to leave out anything I don’t think-”
Coyne sputtered indignantly. “I’ve heard nothing-nothing-”
“Please.” Wolfe put up a hand. “I assure you, sir, you and your wife have no cause for worry. Indeed, we should all be grateful to her. If she hadn’t hurt her finger in the door, and asked you to kiss it in my hearing, it’s quite probable that Mr. Berin would have got the noose instead of the man who earned it. But I needn’t go into that.
“That’s what happened here Tuesday night. I’ll clear up a point now about the radio. It might be thought of, since it was turned on, as a prearranged signal, while Berin was in here tasting the sauces, that it was timed at that moment so as to throw suspicion on Berin, but not so. There was probably no intention to have suspicion aimed at any specific person, but if there was, that person was Marko Vukcic. The arrangement was that the radio should be turned on a few minutes prior to the visit of Vukcic to the dining room, no matter who was tasting the sauces at that moment. It was chance that made it Berin, and chance also that Laszio had shifted the sauces around to trick Berin. And the chance trap for Berin was actually sprung, innocently, by Moulton, who came to the table and changed the dishes back again before Vukcic entered. I haven’t told you about that. But the point I am making is that the radio signal was given a few minutes prior to the scheduled entrance of Vukcic to the dining room, because Vukcic was the one man here whom Mrs. Laszio could confidently expect to detain in the parlor, delaying his visit to the dining room, and giving Mr. White the necessary time alone with Laszio to accomplish his purpose. As we all know, she insured the delay by putting herself into Vukcic’s arms for dancing, and staying there.”
“Lies! You know it’s lies-”
“Dina! Shut up!”
It was Domenico Rossi, glaring at his daughter. Vukcic, with his jaw set, was gazing at her. Others sent glances at her and looked away again.
“But he tells lies-”
“I say shut up!” Rossi was much quieter, and more impressive, than when he was picking a scrap. “If he tells lies, let him tell all of them.”
“Thank you, sir.” Wolfe inclined his head half an inch. “I think now we had better decide who Mr. White is. You will notice that the fearful risks he took in this room Tuesday night were more apparent than real. Up to the moment he sank the knife into Laszio’s back he was taking no risk at all; he was merely an innocent masquerader. And if afterwards he was seen-well, he was seen, and what if he was, since he was blacked up? The persons who saw him here Tuesday night have all seen him since, with the blacking and livery gone, and none has suspected him. He depended for safety on his certainty that he would never be suspected at all. He had several bases for that certainty, but the chief one was that on Tuesday evening he wasn’t in Kanawha Spa; he was in New York.”
Berin burst out, “God above! If he wasn’t here-”
“I mean he wasn’t supposed to be here. It is always assumed that a man is where probability places him, unless suspicion is aroused that he is somewhere else, and Mr. White figured that such a suspicion was an impossibility. But he was too confident and too careless. He permitted his own tongue to create the suspicion in a conversation with me.
“As you all know, I’ve had wide experience in affairs of this kind. It’s my business. I told Mr. Tolman Tuesday night that I was sure Berin hadn’t done it, but I withheld my best reason for that assurance, because it wasn’t my case and I don’t like to involve people where I have no concern. That reason was this, I was convinced that Mrs. Laszio had signaled to the murderer by turning on the radio. Other details connected with that might be attributed to chance, but it would take great credulity to believe that her hanging onto Vukcic in that dance, delaying his trip to the dining room while her husband was being killed, was also coincidence. Especially when, as I did, one saw her doing it. She made a bad mistake there. Ordinary intelligence might have caused her to reflect that I was present and that therefore more subtlety was called for.