COMMON SENSE
Well, that’s all there was to it. As I said at the beginning, this is
really Tish’s story. She told us the whole thing that night sitting up
in bed, with the Chief of Police and the hospital superintendent on one
side of the bed, and Miss Lewis and I on the other. Aggie lay on the
couch with a cubeb cigarette burning beside her, and stared at Tish
with admiration mixed with awe.
“In the first place,” said Tish, to the Chief of Police, “here are the
two towels that figure in the case. One of them is the one that hung
Mr. Johnson’s body three nights ago to the chandelier, the other is the
one with which the ape, Hero, is supposed to have committed suicide at
the Zoo the following night. As you see, the two towels are alike. Do
you know what S. P. T. stands for?” she asked.
“I can’t say I do,” said the Chief of Police, and picked up one of the
towels.
“Humph!” said Tish. “Well, it means ‘Sick Patient Towel,’ and they are
used in hospitals for tying up delirious patients. The trouble was,
there wasn’t a delirious patient in the hospital strong enough to walk,
let alone tie up a body to a chandelier.
“But before I learned from Bates what S. P. T. meant, I’d been to the
Zoo. That was yesterday morning. Maybe you believe that a lonely monkey
will commit suicide; maybe he will, I don’t know. But when he hangs
himself with a roller towel from the Dunkirk hospital, I want to know
how he got that towel.”
“Oho!” said the Chief of Police, “so the little rascal got loose, did
he?”
“He did not,” said Tish tartly. “They said he was lonely for his
keeper. Very well, said I, where is his keeper? Where is this man
he was so fond of that he couldn’t live without him? The answer,
gentlemen, was that this keeper was a patient in the Dunkirk hospital,
as the result of being crushed almost to death by the beast that was
supposed to be pining for him! The keeper’s name was Wesley Barker!”
“Barker!” said Tommy. “Why, that was the big Englishman--! Go on, Aunt
Tish.”
“I came back to the hospital with a strong desire to talk to Wesley
Barker, but Wesley Barker was not in the hospital. He had been
dismissed three days ago. Bates recalled taking his dismissal card to
the elevator man, about seven o’clock Tuesday evening. That put Barker
out of the case, apparently, but I sent for Jacobs and asked him how
easily a man could get into the building at night. He said it was
impossible. The doors are always locked, the basement entrances and
fire-escapes lead from the courtyard, and the courtyard is locked and
in charge of a gate man. That seemed to cut out Wesley Barker, as I
say. If he was out, he could hardly get back without using dynamite.
“I got out my notes again, and went over them. I couldn’t see how Miss
Blake and Miss Linda Smith were mixed up in it. They were the day
nurses in K ward, Miss Smith in charge and Miss Blake assisting. I had
several notes on them: Tuesday at midnight Miss Smith coaxed the night
nurse to go to the basement with her, where the patients’ clothes are
kept in lockers: she was missing for a time, and when Bates saw her
later she carried a ‘darkish bundle,’ possibly clothing. Why?”
The Chief of Police looked wise; he had a way of wriggling his nose
like a rabbit.
“The next morning, Miss Blake being ill, we heard Miss Smith crying in
her room and blaming herself for the girl’s condition,” Tish went on.
“Again, why?
“On Wednesday night Miss Blake, still weak and ill, made a complete
search of the third floor. Not another nurse in the house would have
gone there, or to the mortuary and later to the roof, as she did. Some
strong purpose sent the girl, of course--but what?
“That night, following Miss Blake to the roof, my nephew was thrown
through a skylight. Later he confessed to a bite on the shoulder. The
same night, apparently in a spirit of wanton mischief, the guinea-pigs
in the laboratory were killed and three rabbits were taken away. Miss
Blake had been there. My nephew confessed later to finding a rosette
from her slipper there. Again--why?”
Tish stopped and looked at the Chief of Police, who sat stroking his
chin.
“How would you have gone about the case, Mr. Chief of Police?” Tish
demanded.
“Probably much as you did,” he said, looking at her with a patronizing
smile. “It’s a simple matter when we know the answer, to say that two
and two make four, but you are giving me the four, and asking me
whether you reached that conclusion by adding three and one, or two and
two, or four and nothing. Given a certain number of clues, the logical
mind often achieves remarkable results, but it is usually the trained
mind. That you succeeded so well, my dear lady, I consider remarkable.
Remarkable!”
“Given the same clues,” Tish persisted, “you’d have reached the same
result?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Well,” said Tish, mildly. “It’s strange that I couldn’t. There were a
few gaps my mind wouldn’t jump. And I noticed your men here seemed to
feel the same way. It seemed like some distance from a roller towel in
the Zoo to Johnson’s brown tweed coat.”
The Chief of Police looked uneasy.
“By exactly _what_ mental process did you connect the two?” he asked,
wriggling his nose.
“I didn’t,” said Tish calmly. “While you and your men were measuring
finger-prints and reassembling Mr. Johnson from where he’d been
scattered to, I did what any person with common sense would have done,
_I went to Miss Blake and asked her_!”