"Hey!" said H. M.
Inspector Potter appeared dimly in the driveway below.
"We're up in the show-room. Hop into the house, will you, son, and get that feller Thompson? Send him up here fast. I've just thought of somethin'. Thanks."
The window closed with a bang. Masters said:
"But look here, sir, let's get back to the subject! I don't understand this at all. You suddenly and calmly say that you expect to show us the murderer at eleven o'clock. And that you'll do it by reproducing that attempt to shove Miss Tait down the steps..:'
"That's right."
"I'm not going to question your ideas. I'd be the first to admit, sir, that they've been pretty good ones in the past. But what sort of spectacular stunt have you got in your mind, and what good will it do? You can't expect the murderer to obligingly up and shove somebody else, can you? And it's no good trying to catch anybody out in a lie about how he or she was standing out there; I've questioned them all, and they were so confused with only the one candle burning that nobody remembers where anybody else was. Well, then! What else-?"
Masters stopped. His dubious gaze wandered over to the big narrow door of the staircase, with its iron binding and long iron bolt above a big disused keyhole. H. M., who watched him out of those small shrewd uncanny eyes, was imbued with a sort of wooden mirth.
"Ho ho. I know what you're thinkin'!" he volunteered. "Masters, you got a mind that just naturally runs to melodrama. I must 'uv read a dozen stories like that, and they were funnier than watchin' somebody sit on a silk hat. I know, I know… We dress up somebody like Tait; say Miss Bohun here. We put her at the bottom of the stairs. Lights are turned out; group of people assembles on landing; light of candle is held up; mysterious ghostly figure is seen returned from her gibberin' grave. Ghostly figure lifts her arm and points upstairs, intonin' in a tomb-like voice, 'You done it!' Conscience-stricken murderer instantly screams and collapses. Burn me, Masters, but wouldn't police work be a bed of soft rose-petals if the whole business were as easy as that?"
He meditated, ruffling his hands across his head.
"That's a funny thing, too, Masters. In nine cases out of ten the murderer would only look bored and tell us to take off our false whiskers… But I can't help feelin' that this is the tenth case; and that — we really would give X one hell of a shock if we worked a fungus-grown trick like that. It's the imagination that counts: the imagination workin' on a person of this particular type. Brains don't count. Besides, X has plenty of brain right enough, but it didn't help greatly in committing the murder. I said before, and I say again, that the real beauty of it lay in the luckiest accident that ever answered a murderer's prayer..”.
"But we're not workin' any stale tricks like that, because it'll do no good to scare him if we can't prove anything. I got other ideas. I was just sittin' and thinkin', and all of a sudden I got an idea that'll hang X higher than Judas if it works. If, if, if! I dunno that it will. Burn me, Masters, it worries me..:'
"I suppose, sir," the Chief Inspector growled. "it's no good asking you-'
"No. Except for instructions. I want Potter and a couple of men here, placed where I'll tell you; and it won't do any harm to have 'em armed. Then I'm expectin' an answer to a telegram, and I've got to have that or I may look foolish. Above all, I've got to ask that feller Thompson a question that's just about the most important thing in my whole case. Assemblin' my five characters on the landing of that staircase, with me playin' the part of Marcia Tait to make it six, won't mean a blasted thing and it'll all be wasted effort if I get the wrong answer."
"From Thompson?" demanded Masters. "A question about what?"
"About his tooth," said H. M.
"All right!" snapped Masters grimly, after a silence. "I know this mood, and I know you're serious no matter how you sound. We'll do what you say. But there's one thing I've got to get straight and understood, and at least you can tell me that. This story of Maurice Bohun's about Rainger committing the murder — do you believe it, or don't you? You've scouted every other suggestion, but you didn't shout him down when he spoke. Is he right? The thing's got me fair insane, sir; and I swear I don't know the truth of it.
"I do," said Katharine.
Her voice fell with quiet assurance into the cold room. She stood just in front of the table, her fingers touching it lightly. The light of the electric candles gleamed on the dark hair; her breast rose and fell rapidly under the old tweed coat, but it was the only sign of nervousness.
"You insist," she said, "on going through with this — this scheme of yours for tonight, whatever it is?"
"Well, now!" said H. M. He shifted. One hand shaded his eyes. "I think we'd better, somehow. You don't mind, do you?"
"No. But before you start you can rule out one person. Maybe two."
"That's interestin'. Why, Miss Bohun?"
"Just before you came in here, I heard all about Uncle Maurice's theory. I heard every bit of it. Oh, it's clever. It sounds like him. I don't know whether that man Rainger committed the murder. But I do know that the whole case against him, so far as I can see it, is built up on one person. Without that one person, it may not mean that the case goes to smash. "
"You mean-'
"Louise." She brought her fingers down sharply on the table. Then she began to speak more rapidly. "That Louise went to the pavilion. That afterwards there really wasn't anybody walking in the gallery; who smeared blood on her wrist, and that she invented it all… Now I'll tell you. I heard it all from Dr. Wynne, and he'll swear to it. This morning, after he'd examined Louise, he took Jervis Willard out in the gallery and was going to tell him something. That was when they heard the shot. " Her eyes darted to the scrubbed space on the gray carpet; and she could not continue. "That was when they heard it. And Dr. Wynne was so busy taking care of John that he didn't mention it again then.
"But it's this. Some time late last night, he says Louise must have taken a terrific overdose of some sleeping-drug like veronal. You may be able to guess why. Well, she took so much that it had exactly the opposite effect: that is, it kept her mind awake and wild, but it partly paralyzed her body. She might have had the idea of going down to that pavilion; she might get hallucinations and even try to go. That may have been where she was going when she collapsed outside my room. But Dr. Wynne is willing to swear after his examination that she took the drug not later than one o'clock, and that for the next four or five hours it would have been absolutely impossible to have walked more than twenty or thirty feet from her own room. It simply couldn't have been done. The farthest she could get was where she did get. She bumped into this person in the dark because she was stumbling all over the gallery; and there was a person, and she didn't imagine it, and, finally, it proves you can't possibly accuse her of murder."
Masters, who had got out his notebook, lowered it to the table and swore. He stared at H. M. "Is that possible, sir?"
"Uh-huh. Quite possible. Depends on the dose, and depends on the person even more. Bit reckless to speculate without knowin' a patient's nerve status, but let Wynne have his way. He may be right, he may be wrong. I rather imagine he's wrong, but suit yourself." A sluggish grin crept over H. M.'s face. "Well, Masters?"
"You mean, sir, that you believe in Mr. Bohun's explanation?"
H. M. shifted uncomfortably.
"Look here, Masters, I don't want to mix you up any more than's necessary for a very definite purpose. This business is black enough, and tangled enough, as it is. All I can tell you is that I'm not wavin' my hands over the crystal and makin' mysterious noises out of pure cussedness. But there's somethin' you can see for yourself. Miss Bohun's right about one thing. If you accept the hypothesis that Rainger is guilty, then you can't take only the parts of it that appeal to you: you've got to accept all of it or none of it. And the keystone arch of that theory is the girl who says somebody smeared her wrist with blood. If you believe that prowler-in-thegallery was a myth, all right. But, if you believe he was a real person, then you've got to discard the theory of Rainger's guilt. Because why? Because it would be too staggerin' and monstrous a coincidence to imagine two people with bloodstained hands wanderin' about these grounds. And, at the time that girl says she bumped into her man in this house, by the very basis of Maurice Bohun's theory Rainger must have been at the pavilion. He never left the pavilion until he walked back in John's tracks. Right you are, then. Either the prowler-in-the-gallery is a myth, or else he ain't. But if he ain't a myth, then you've shaken the theory and done some towards establishin' Rainger's innocence."