NECESSARY CREDENTIALS
The moment he appeared Rodney knew that he had been expecting him;
that somewhere at the back of his mind there had been a feeling that
it was he who was coming. His impulse was to take him by the throat
and crush the life out of him before he had a chance of saying a word;
which was the impulse of a badly frightened man. But he seldom lost
his presence of mind for long; and, on that occasion, he had it again
almost as soon as it had gone; indeed, within the same second he was
smiling at himself for having allowed himself to be disposed towards
such crass folly.
So far as Rodney was able to judge the little man was clad just as he
had been on Sunday evening--in the same shabby tweed suit, the old
unbrushed boots, with the same suggestion about him that he might
easily have been improved by a more intimate acquaintance with soap
and water. He had his hat in one hand, and with the other he rubbed
his scrubby chin. No one could have seemed more at his ease. Without
offering any sort of greeting he immediately proceeded to address the
inspector, while the maid was still closing the door, in that thin,
unmusical, penetrating voice which Rodney had so much disliked.
"So you are there, Harlow, are you? I wondered if you'd have sense
enough to come."
He rounded off his sentence with the snigger which had so jarred on
the young man's sensitive nerves, and which affected Gladys so
unpleasantly that, with what seemed to be a start of repulsion, she
moved closer to her lover's side. The stranger noted the movement, and
commented on it--again with the uncomfortable snigger.
"That's right; get as close as you can; he'll keep you safe; anyone
will be safe who gets close enough to him. You're Miss Patterson; I
could tell you anywhere by your likeness to your father. You're not
the kind of girl I care about, any more than he was the kind of man.
Who's the youngster? Now, there is someone worth looking at; why, he's
as handsome as paint, and of quite unusual force of character for so
young a man. Miss Patterson, the girl who gets him for a lover will
have a lover of a kind of which she has no notion. He's a most
remarkable young man."
With a view, perhaps, of checking the stranger's volubility, the
inspector administered what was possibly meant for a rebuke.
"If you would confine yourself to the business which has brought you
here, sir, it would be as well. Are you Mr. Parker?"
"I am; Philip Walter Augustus Parker--a lot of name for a man of my
size."
"You sent me a letter last night from Beckenham?"
"I did."
"Stating that Mr. Graham Patterson did not commit suicide."
"Exactly."
"But was murdered?"
"He was."
"You went on to say that if I were here this afternoon you would point
out to me the murderer."
"I will."
"Point him out."
"I am."
"I thought so."
"I knew you did. I saw on your intelligent visage that you knew what
was coming. You have some experience of cranks who accuse themselves
of crimes of which they are innocent; you take it for granted that I
am one of them, which shows what a dunce you are. I am a lunatic.
That's right, Harlow, smile again. I knew that would tickle you. A
policeman's sense of humour is his own."
"It is necessary, Mr. Parker, that I should warn you that anything you
say will be taken down and used against you."
"Quite right, Harlow; take it down; but as for using it against me,
that's absurd. The law does not punish lunatics; whatever they may do
it holds them guiltless. I'm an example of the inadequacy of the law
to protect the public from what I may describe as the lunatic at
large. It is not sufficiently recognised that there is an order of
dementia which may at any time develop into homicidal mania, and that,
therefore, a lunatic, unless he is kept in safe keeping, may kill,
with impunity, whom he pleases--as I have done. I have killed Graham
Patterson; yet no one may venture to kill me. My life is more sacred
than that of a sane man in the eyes of the law."
The inspector looked at the girl significantly.
"I think, Miss Patterson, that I had better deal with Mr. Parker
alone."
"And, Miss Patterson, I think not. What I am about to say will be
found of interest not only by you, but also by--that extraordinary
young man. Harlow, your duty is to take down what I am about to say in
writing; don't exceed it. Shut the door. Miss Patterson will stay
where she is."
The inspector looked at the lady, as if for instructions. As she gave
no sign, beyond drawing a little closer to her lover, he shut the
door, which he had opened a few inches. Mr. Parker beamed at him with
a grotesque little air of triumph.
"There, Harlow--you see! Now attend to me. Suppose, before I go any
further, we all sit down; my tale may take some minutes; I don't want
anyone to get tired of standing. You won't? Very good--then stand.
There are plenty of chairs, and very comfortable some of them seem;
but, of course, I don't propose to force you to occupy them if you
would rather not. Now--attention! To begin at the beginning."
Again he indulged in the uncomfortable sort of laughter which, more
than anything else, revealed the disorder of the creature's mind.
"On Sunday evening I bolted from my keeper, one Metcalf, in whose
charge I have been for six or seven months, and of whom I was tired to
extinction--an unclubable fellow who never talks unless he has
something to say. I left Brighton station on the 9.10 train. Until the
train started I was the sole occupant of a first-class carriage, at
which I was not displeased. I had some idea of committing suicide
myself. Life, I assure you, has little to offer me. I am just sane
enough to know that I never shall be saner. There's a wall--a wall
which I shall never climb, and which shuts me out--from I don't know
what. If I were left alone--I so seldom am; they won't leave me
alone!--here would be an excellent opportunity to consider the best
way out of it. You may fancy, then, what my feelings were when, just
as the train was starting, another passenger entered--bundled in by an
extremely officious porter. He would never have caught the train if it
hadn't been for the porter--in which case he would have been still
alive--so that one may say, logically, the porter killed him. The
fellow certainly ought to be punished."
He waved his hat with a gesture which was possibly intended to
represent the execution of the porter in question.
"The man who had entered my compartment, Miss Patterson, was your
father--in every respect a most objectionable person, combining in
himself nearly everything that I most object to--bloated, overfed,
nearly drunk, horrible to contemplate. He sat there perspiring,
puffing, panting, gasping for breath; I half expected he would have a
fit. But, instead of having a fit, before the train had gone very far
he was asleep, fast asleep. Could any conduct have been more
disgusting?--drunken sleep! With a man of my stamp at the other end
of the carriage, could anything have been more insulting? And he
snored--such snores! I declare to you he made more noise than the
train did; if that extraordinary young man had been in the next
compartment he'd have heard him. And his jaw dropped open--it was
that gave me the idea. Who is it says that trifles light as air lead
to I don't know what? It was that trifle which led to my killing your
father, Miss Patterson."
Again the cackling giggle, which made the girl try to draw still
nearer to her lover, as if the thing were possible.
"Some time before I had come into possession of quite a quantity of
potassium cyanide; I won't say how--I had. The artfulness of lunatics
is proverbial, and I'm as artful as any of them; on that point I refer
you to Metcalf, as well as to others who have had me in their charge,
both in asylums and out of them--they'll tell you! It was in the form
of tabloids, looking just like sweeties, in a nice little silver box;
enough to kill a street. I had meant to use it to kill myself, but at
the sight of that dreadful man, with his bulging mouth, I thought--why
not use it to kill him? Pop one into his mouth, and the trick was
done! I moved inch by inch and foot by foot along the seat towards his
end of the carriage; he still snored on, paying no attention of any
sort to me; he was a horrid, vulgar man. At last I was right in front
of him; I might have been ten miles away for all he knew. How he
snored, and how his jaws did gape! I had the silver box in one hand
and a tabloid between the finger and thumb of the other, and I leaned
forward and popped it into his open mouth."
Mr. Parker illustrated his words by his gestures, with the air of one
who was telling an amusing tale.
"Oh, what a change came over him! You should have seen it! He snored
the tabloid right down his throat, and he gave a great gasp and was
dead. He had not even waked; I am sure that he never knew I was on the
seat in front of him, or that I was in the carriage at all. There was
his huge carcase bolt upright in front of me, and I knew that he would
never snore any more. It made me feel quite odd; it was all so sudden
and so funny. I daresay it would have made that extraordinary young
man feel odd, eh?"
He looked up at Rodney with a leer which made his mean, wrinkled face
all at once seem bestial. But he never faltered in his story, which he
told with a sniggering relish which lent it a quality of horror which
no display of dramatic, conscience-stricken intensity could possibly
have done.
"My idea had been to tell the porters all about it the first time the
train stopped; it would have been funny to see the fuss they'd have
made; I shouldn't have cared. But it so happened that the signal was
against us, and the train stopped in the middle of Redhill tunnel."
The inspector allowed no hint to escape him of what he knew or did not
know. He kept his eyes fastened on the little man, as if his wish were
not so much to follow his actual words, but to see something which
might be behind them.
"When it stopped I had another idea, quite as brilliant as the first.
Why should I go through the nuisance of a trial for murder? With a
little management, if this objectionable person were found in a
carriage by himself, it might be taken for granted that he had
committed suicide, which would be too funny. So I put the silver box
open in his fingers, slipped out of the carriage into the tunnel--in
the darkness no one saw me--waited for the train to go, then walked
after it, out of the tunnel, up the banks, across the fields to
Redhill Station; had a drink or two, which I was in want of; went on
by the 10.40, until at Croydon I was joined by Metcalf, who had got
there first. For the rest of the tale refer to him."
Continuing, Mr. Parker seemed to address his remarks particularly to
Rodney:
"You never would have thought that it could be so easy to kill a man,
and have it brought in as suicide, would you? When I read the report
of the inquest in the papers, I was amazed to find how easy it
really was. Then it occurred to me that as, of course, he had been
murdered--I knew that--why shouldn't I communicate with the police,
after all? No harm would come to me; lunatics are protected by the
law. It would be different if he had been murdered by--you; you would
quite certainly be hung. I shall go to Broadmoor. I have rather a
fancy for Broadmoor. I am told that they are all of them lunatics
there; I should like to see. At any rate, they have all of them done
something; no lunatic I've met ever did anything worth doing. They
must be interesting people. But certain credentials are necessary for
Broadmoor, and now I think I've earned them. If the part I've played
in this little affair of Graham Patterson doesn't qualify me for
Broadmoor, then I should very much like to know what would. Eh, young
man, eh?"