Mr. Sheringham Sees Visions
They entered the house by the front door, which always stood open
whenever a party was in progress. The unspoken thought was in the
minds of both that they preferred not to pass through the library.
Alec hurried upstairs at once. Roger, noticing that the butler was in
the act of sorting the second post and arranging it upon the hall
table, lingered to see if there was a letter for him.
The butler, observing his action, shook his head. “Nothing for you,
sir. Very small post, indeed.” He glanced through the letters he still
held in his hand. “Major Jefferson, Miss Shannon, Mrs. Plant. No, sir.
Nothing else.”
“Thank you, Graves,” said Roger, and followed in Alec’s wake.
Lunch was a silent meal, and the atmosphere was not a little
constrained. Nobody liked to mention the subject which was uppermost
in the minds of all; and to speak of anything else seemed out of
place. What little conversation there was concerned only the questions
of packing and trains. Mrs. Plant, who appeared a little late for the
meal but seemed altogether to have regained her mental poise after her
strange behaviour in the morning, was to leave a little after five.
This would give her time, she explained, to wait for the safe to be
opened so that she could recover her jewels. Roger, pondering
furiously over the matter-of-fact air with which she made this
statement and trying to reconcile it with the conclusions at which he
had already arrived regarding her, was forced to admit himself
completely at sea again, in this respect at any rate.
And this was not the only thing that perplexed him. Major Jefferson,
who had appeared during the earlier part of the morning subdued to the
point of gloominess, now wore an air of quiet satisfaction which Roger
found extremely difficult to explain. Assuming that Jefferson had been
extremely anxious that the police should not be the first persons to
open the safe—and that was the only conclusion which Roger could draw
from what had already transpired—what could have occurred in the
meantime to have raised his spirits to this extent? Visions of
duplicate keys and opportunities in the empty library which he himself
ought to have been on hand to prevent, flashed, in rapid succession,
across Roger’s mind. Yet the only possible time in which he had not
been either inside the library or overlooking it were the very few
minutes while he was washing his hands upstairs before lunch; and it
seemed hardly probable that Jefferson would have had the nerve to
utilise them in order to carry out what was in effect a minor
burglary, and that with the possibility of being interrupted at any
minute. It is true that he had come in very late for lunch (several
minutes after Mrs. Plant, in fact); but Roger could not think this
theory in the least degree probable.
Yet the remarkable fact remained that the two persons who appeared to
have been most concerned about the safe and its puzzling contents were
now not only not in the least concerned at the prospect of its
immediate official opening, but actually quietly jubilant. Or so, at
any rate, it seemed to the baffled Roger. Taking it all round, Roger
was not sorry that lunch was such a quiet meal. He found that he had
quite a lot of thinking to do.
In this respect he was no less busy when lunch was over. Alec
disappeared directly after the meal, and as Barbara disappeared at the
same time, Roger was glad to find one problem at least that did not
seem to be beyond the scope of his deductive powers. He solved it with
some satisfaction and, by looking at his watch, was able to arrive at
the conclusion that he would have at least half an hour to himself
before his fellow-sleuth would be ready for the trail again. Somewhat
thankfully he betook himself to the friendly cedar once more, and lit
his pipe preparatory to embarking upon the most concentrated spell of
hard thinking he had ever faced in his life.
For in spite of the confidence he had shown to Alec, Roger was in
reality groping entirely in the dark. The suggestion of murder, which
he had advanced with such assurance, had appeared to him at the time
not a little far-fetched; and the fact that he had put it forward at
all was due as much as anything to the overwhelming desire to startle
the stolid Alec out of some of his complacency. Several times Roger
had found himself on the verge of becoming really exasperated with
Alec that morning. He was not usually so slow in the uptake, almost
dull, as he had been in this affair; yet just now, when Roger was
secretly not a little pleased with himself, all he had done was to
throw cold water upon everything. It was a useful check to his own
exuberance, no doubt; but Roger could wish that his audience, limited
by necessity to so small a number, had been a somewhat more
appreciative one.
His thoughts returned to the question of murder. Was it so
far-fetched, after all? He had been faintly suspicious even before his
discovery of the broken vase and that mysterious second shot. Now he
was very much more so. Only suspicious, it is true; there was no room
as yet for conviction. But suspicion was very strong.
He tried to picture the scene that might have taken place in the
library. Old Stanworth, sitting at his table with, possibly, the
French windows open, suddenly surprised by the entrance of some
unexpected visitor. The visitor either demands money or attacks at
once. Stanworth whips a revolver out of the drawer at his side and
fires, missing the intruder but hitting the vase. And then—what?
Presumably the two would close then and fight it out in silence. But
there had been no signs of a struggle when they broke in, nothing but
that still figure lying so calmly in his chair. Still, did that matter
very much? If the unknown could collect those fragments of vase so
carefully in order to conceal any trace of his presence, he could
presumably clear away any evidence of a struggle. But before that
there was that blank wall to be surmounted—how did the struggle end?
Roger closed his eyes and gave his imagination full rein. He saw
Stanworth, the revolver still in his hand, swaying backwards and
forwards in the grip of his adversary. He saw the latter (a big
powerful man, as he pictured him) clasp Stanworth’s wrist to prevent
him pointing the revolver at himself. There had been a scratch on the
dead man’s wrist, now he came to think of it; could this be how he had
acquired it? He saw the intruder’s other hand dart to his pocket and
pull out his own revolver. And then——!
Roger slapped his knee in his excitement. Then, of course, the unknown
had simply clapped his revolver to Stanworth’s forehead and pulled the
trigger!
He leant back in his chair and smoked furiously. Yes, if there had
been a murder, that must have been how it was committed. And that
accounted for three, at any rate, of the puzzling circumstances—the
place of the wound, the fact that only one empty shell had been found
in Stanworth’s revolver although two shots had been fired that night,
and the fact of the dead man’s grip upon the revolver being properly
adjusted. It was only conjecture, of course, but it seemed remarkably
convincing conjecture.
Yet was it not more than counterbalanced by the facts that still
remained? That the windows and door could be fastened, as they
certainly had been, appeared to argue irresistibly that the midnight
visitor had left the library while Mr. Stanworth was still alive. The
confession, signed with his own hand, pointed equally positively to
suicide. Could there be any way of explaining these two things so as
to bring them into line with the rest? If not, this brilliant
theorising must fall to the ground.
Shelving the problem of the visitor’s exit for the time being, Roger
began to puzzle over that laconically worded document.
During the next quarter of an hour Roger himself might have presented
a problem to an acute observer, had there been one about, which,
though not very difficult of solution, was nevertheless not entirely
without interest. To smoke furiously, with one’s pipe in full blast,
betokens no small a degree of mental excitement; to sit like a stone
image and allow that same pipe to go out in one’s mouth is evidence of
still greater prepossession; but what are we to say of a man who,
after passing through these successive stages, smokes away equally
furiously at a perfectly cold pipe under the obvious impression that
it is in as full blast as before? And that is what Roger was doing for
fully three minutes before he finally jumped suddenly to his feet and
hurried off once again to that happy hunting ground of his, the
library.
There Alec found him twenty minutes later, when the car had departed
irrevocably for the station. A decidedly more cheerful Alec than that
of the morning, one might note in passing; and not looking in the
least like a young man who has just parted with his lady for a whole
month. It is a reasonable assumption that Alec had not been wasting
the last half hour.
“Still at it?” he grinned from the doorway. “I had a sort of idea I
should find you here.”
Roger was a-quiver with excitement. He scrambled up from his knees
beside the waste-paper basket, into which he had been peering, and
flourished a piece of paper in the other’s face.
“I’m on the track!” he exclaimed. “I’m on the track, Alexander, in
spite of your miserable sneers. Nobody around, is there?”
Alec shook his head. “Well? What have you discovered now?” he asked
tolerantly.
Roger gripped his arm and drew him towards the writing table. With an
eager finger he stubbed at the blotter.
“See that?” he demanded.
Alec bent and scrutinised the blotter attentively. Just in front of
Roger’s finger were a number of short lines not more than an inch or
so long. The ones at the left-hand end were little more than scratches
on the surface, not inked at all; those in the middle bore faint
traces of ink; while towards the right end the ink was bold and the
lines thick and decided. Beyond these were a few circular blots of
ink. Apart from these markings, the sheet of white blotting paper,
clearly fresh within the last day or two, had scarcely been used.
“Well?” said Roger triumphantly. “Make anything of it?”
“Nothing in particular,” Alec confessed, straightening up again. “I
should say that somebody had been cleaning his pen on it.”
“In that case,” Roger returned with complacency, “it would become my
painful duty to inform you that you were completely wrong.”
“Why? I don’t see it.”
“Then look again. If he had been cleaning his pen, Alexander Watson,
the change from ink to the lack of it would surely be from left to
right, wouldn’t it? Not from right to left?”
“Would it? He might have moved from right to left.”
“It isn’t natural. Besides, look at these little strokes. Nearly all
of them have a slight curve in the tail towards the right. That means
they must have been made from left to right. Guess again.”
“Oh, well, let’s try the reverse,” said Alec, nettled into irony. “He
wasn’t cleaning his pen at all; he was dirtying it.”
“Meaning that he had dipped it in the ink and was just trying it out?
Nearer. But take another look, especially at this left-hand end. Don’t
you see where the nib has split in the centre to make these two
parallel furrows? Well, just observe not only how far apart those
furrows are, but also the fact that, though pretty deep, there isn’t a
sign of a scratch. Now, then, what does all that tell you? There’s
only one sort of pen that could have made those marks, and the answer
to that tells you what the marks are.”
Alec pondered dutifully. “A fountain pen! And he was trying to make it
write.”
“Wonderful! Alec, I can see you’re going to be a tremendous help in
this little game.”
“Well, I don’t see anything to make such a fuss about, even if they
were made by a fountain pen. I mean, it doesn’t seem to take us any
forrader.”
“Oh, doesn’t it?” Roger had an excellent though somewhat irritating
sense of the dramatic. He paused impressively.
“Well?” asked Alec impatiently. “You’ve got something up your sleeve,
I know, and you’re aching to get it out. Let’s have it. What do these
wonderful marks of yours show you?”
“Simply that the confession is a fake,” retorted Roger happily. “And
now let’s go out in the garden.”
He turned on his heel and walked rapidly out on to the sun-drenched
lawn. One must admit that Roger had his annoying moments.
The justly exasperated Alec trotted after him. “Talk about Sherlock
Holmes!” he growled, as he caught him up. “You’re every bit as
maddening yourself. Why can’t you tell me all about it straight out if
you really have discovered something, instead of beating about the
bush like this?”
“But I have told you, Alexander,” said Roger, with an air of bland
innocence. “That confession is a fake.”
“But _why_?”
Roger hooked his arm through that of the other and piloted him in the
direction of the rose garden.
“I want to stick around here,” he explained, “so as to see the
inspector when he comes up the drive. I’m not going to miss the
opening of that safe for anything.”
“Why do you think that confession’s a fake?” repeated Alec doggedly.
“That’s better, Alexander,” commented Roger approvingly. “You seem to
be showing a little interest in my discoveries at last. You haven’t
been at all a good Watson up to now, you know. It’s your business to
be thrilled to the core whenever I announce a farther step forward.
You’re a rotten thriller, Alec.”
A slight smile appeared on Alec’s face. “You do all the thrilling
needed yourself, I fancy. Besides, old Holmes went a bit slower than
you. He didn’t jump to conclusions all in a minute, and I doubt if
ever he was as darned pleased with himself all the time as you are.”
“Don’t be harsh with me, Alec,” Roger murmured.
“I admit you haven’t done so badly so far,” Alec pursued candidly;
“though when all’s said and done most of it’s guesswork. But if I
grovelled in front of you, as you seem to want, and kept telling you
what a dashed fine fellow you are, you’d probably have arrested
Jefferson and Mrs. Plant by this time, and had Lady Stanworth
committed for contempt of court or something.” He paused and
considered. “In fact, what you want, old son,” he concluded weightily,
“is a brake, not a blessed accelerator.”
“I’m sorry,” Roger said with humility. “I’ll remember in future. But
if you won’t compliment me, at least let me compliment you. You’re a
jolly good brake.”
“And after that, Detective Sheringham, perhaps you’ll kindly tell me
how you deduce that the confession is a fake from the fact that old
Stanworth’s pen wouldn’t write.”
Roger’s air changed and his face became serious.
“Yes, this really is rather important. It clinches the fact of murder,
which was certainly a shot in the dark of mine before. Here’s the
thing that gives it away.”
He produced from his pocket the piece of paper which he had waved in
Alec’s face in the library and, unfolding it carefully, handed it to
the other. Alec looked at it attentively. It bore numerous irregular
folds, as if it had been considerably crumpled, and in the centre,
somewhat smudged, were the words “Victor St——,” culminating in a large
blot. The writing was very thickly marked. The right-hand side of the
paper was spattered with a veritable shower of blots. Beyond these
there was nothing upon its surface.
“Humph!” observed Alec, handing it back. “Well, what do you make of
it?”
“I think it’s pretty simple,” Roger said, folding the paper and
stowing it carefully away again. “Stanworth had just filled his
fountain pen, or it wouldn’t work or something. You know what one does
with a fountain pen that doesn’t want to write. Make scratches on the
nearest piece of paper, and as soon as the ink begins to flow——”
“Sign one’s name!” Alec broke in, with the nearest approach to
excitement that he had yet shown.
“Precisely! On the blotting pad are the preliminary scratches to bring
the ink down the pen. What happens in nine cases out of ten after
that? The ink flows too freely and the pen floods. This bit of paper
shows that it happened in this case, too. Stanworth was rather an
impatient sort of man, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I suppose he was. Fairly.”
“Well, the scene’s easy enough to reconstruct. He tries the pen out on
the blotting pad. As soon as it begins to write he grabs a sheet from
the top of that pile of fellow-sheets on his desk (did you notice
them, by the way?) and signs his name. Then the pen floods, and he
shakes it violently, crumples up the sheet of paper, throws it into
the waste-paper basket and takes another. This time the pen, after
losing so much ink in blots, is a little faint at first; so he only
gets as far as the C in Victor before starting again, just below the
last attempt. Then at last it writes all right, and his signature is
completed, with the usual flourish. He picks up the piece of paper,
crumples it slightly, but not so violently as before, and throws it
also into the waste-paper basket. How’s that?”
“That all seems feasible enough. What next?”
“Why, the murderer, setting the room to rights afterwards, thinks he’d
better have a look in the basket. The first thing he spots is that
piece of paper. ‘Aha!’ he thinks. ‘The very thing I wanted to put a
finishing touch to the affair!’ Smoothes it carefully out, puts it in
the typewriter and types those few words above the signature. What
could be simpler?”
“By Jove, I wonder! It’s jolly ingenious.”
Roger’s eyes were sparkling. “Ingenious? Yes; but in its very
simplicity. Oh, that’s what happened, sure enough. There’s plenty of
corroboration, when you come to think of it. The way the whole thing’s
got into the top half of the sheet of paper, for instance. That isn’t
natural, really, is it? It ought to be in the middle, with the
signature about two thirds down. And why isn’t it? Because the
signature was in the middle already, and the fellow had to work
upwards from that.”
“I believe you must be right,” Alec said slowly.
“Well, don’t be so grudging about it. Of course I’m right! As a matter
of fact, those scratches on the blotting paper gave me the idea as
soon as I saw them. I’d been puzzling after a way of getting round
that confession. But when I found that second sheet in the waste-paper
basket of course the thing was as plain as a pikestaff. That was a bad
blunder of his, by the way; not to look through the rest of the
basket’s contents.”
“Yes,” Alec agreed seriously. “And supposing the inspector had found
it. It might have given him something to think about, mightn’t it?”
“It might and it mightn’t. Of course from the inspector’s point of
view there’s been nothing to afford the least question as to the plain
fact of suicide; except the absence of motive, of course, and that’s
really nothing, after all. He hasn’t had his suspicions aroused more
or less by accident, as it were, like we have.”
“We’ve had the luck, all right,” Alec remarked, possibly in his rôle
of brake.
“Undoubtedly, but we haven’t let it lie about untouched,” Roger said
complacently. “In fact, I think we’ve done very well indeed up to
now,” he added candidly. “I don’t see how we could have done more, do
you?”
“No, I’m dashed if I do,” said Alec with decision.
“But there’s one thing needed to round it off nicely.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“To find the murderer,” Roger replied calmly.