I shrugged. “Give me the money,” I said.
“No, no,” said Harry, stepping forward. “It is essential that you are believable in the part. Take out your gun! Threaten him!”
I pulled out the Navy Colt. “Give me the money,” I repeated, somewhat apologetically.
“You’re hopeless, Dash,” said Harry, snatching the Colt from my hands. “Here’s how it’s done.” He turned to Patrell and snarled at him across the desk, waving the gun menacingly. “See here, you low-down, four-flushing, no- account, miserable, rotten, lousy, cheap, dishonest-”
“I think we get the point, Houdini,” said Patrell.
“Quite so,” Harry agreed, in a much brighter tone. He set the gun down and turned away, twirling a juggling club carelessly at the tips of his fingers. “And then, when you refused to surrender the money, he shot you and stole away under cover of darkness.”
Ben Zalor squirmed uncomfortably atop his packing crate. “We know all this, Houdini,” he said.
“Indeed,” said my brother, clearing his throat, “but later that same evening, something even more remarkable occurred. I believe that Addison Tate had no sooner fled into the night than he realized that he could not leave Mr. Patrell alive to tell what he knew. Tate would never be able to show his face again for fear of being arrested. The charge would be attempted murder.”
Emma Henderson gave a horrified gasp. “You’re saying that Tate came back here to finish Mr. Patrell off?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, my dear lady. But Tate found himself in a terrible quandary. He knew that he had wounded his victim, but he could not enter the office and confront him directly. Patrell had likely summoned help by this time. What’s more, Tate had dropped his gun earlier. He was unarmed. So what did he do? Ah, here was the genius of the thing. Creeping stealthily into the back room, Tate noticed a ventilator duct that communicated directly with Mr. Patrell’s office.”
“Ventilator duct?” asked Grader, scratching his skull-like head.
“Yes, for the circulation of fresh air. Essential in a property that had once been a fish market. Tate noticed a faint light glowing through the opening, which told him that Mr. Patrell was still in his office. The absence of noise confirmed that his victim was alone, possibly even unconscious from the gunshot. Tate seized this opportunity without hesitation. Reaching into the folds of his cloak, he withdrew a small but deadly swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India, which he had secured during his dealings with-”
“For heaven’s sake, Mr. Houdini,” cried Miss Henderson. “This is the most absurd yarn I’ve ever heard!”
“It’s preposterous,” said Patrell, reaching for another walnut. “And by the way, aren’t you describing the plot of a Sherlock Holmes adventure?
Harry waved the objections aside. “Perhaps that put the idea into Tate’s head. In any event, the problem now remained of inducing the deadly snake to travel through the ventilator passage into Mr. Patrell’s office. How could this be achieved? Searching through the back room, Tate chanced upon-” Harry broke off at the sound of a walnut cracking. An enormous smile broke across his face. “You see it, Dash?” he cried, springing forward. “You see it?”
“I see it, Harry.”
“See what, Dash?” asked Ben Zalor. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you see what Mr. Patrell is holding in his hands?” I asked.
Zalor turned to the desk. “Your gun. What of it?”
“Do you see what he’s doing with it?”
“He cracked a walnut. So what?”
“He cracked a walnut with the butt of an ivory-handled Navy pistol. We know he’s done it more than once because there are markings on the handle that weren’t there when Addison Tate cared for the gun.”
“But what does it matter?” asked Miss Hendricks.
“Addison Tate didn’t shoot Mr. Patrell,” I told them. “Patrell shot himself. Again and again, we’ve seen that Mr. Patrell has a fondness for walnuts, and a tendency to crack the shells with whatever implement is at hand-a table knife, a rock, a juggling club. Tonight, Harry set the gun down on his desk and walked away with the juggling club. When Patrell had his next impulse to crack a walnut, he grabbed for the closest heavy object.”
“The gun,” said Zalor.
“Exactly. And the same thing happened on the night Mr. Patrell was injured-the night he claims that Addison Tate shot him. But Tate didn’t shoot anyone. Gideon Patrell shot himself, accidentally, while cracking a walnut.”
“Tonight, the gun didn’t go off,” Harry put in, “because Dash had adjusted the trigger mechanism. But Tate liked a lighter touch-almost a hair trigger-so the gun went off when Mr. Patrell cracked the handle against the nut. He’s lucky he wasn’t killed.”
“This is absurd!” shouted Patrell, his face darkening. “It’s crazier than the story about the swamp adder!”
“The wonder of the thing is that you did it twice,” I said. “You’d think that a man who had shot himself once would be a little more careful.”
“That’s why I had to distract you with my spellbinding story,” Harry said. “So that you wouldn’t notice what you were doing. As long as your arm has been in that sling, you’ve simply grabbed for whatever object was close at hand.”
Emma Henderson was staring at Patrell with an expression of fascination mixed with horror. “Why would he do such a thing? If it was an accident, why would he blame Addison Tate?”
“Two reasons,” I said. “First, with Tate out of the way, he believed he had an opportunity to win the affections of Miss Horn.” The young lady blushed deeply and turned away. “At the same time,” I continued, “it allowed Patrell to salt away the money for himself. I have to give him credit. At the very instant that he shot himself, he figured out a way to turn it to his profit. He certainly showed a cool head.”
“I don’t understand,” said Miss Henderson. “Why didn’t Addison Tate simply speak up and defend himself? He left Mr. Patrell’s office that evening when all the rest of us did. We would have vouched for him.”
“Tate returned later that evening. That part of the story is true. He wanted to try again to convince Patrell to let him have the money. When Patrell refused a second time, Tate saw that it was hopeless. He turned to go, leaving his gun behind as he always did, to be locked up in the strongbox overnight. Later, when he heard that Patrell had been shot and the police were looking for him, he panicked and ran.”
“Incredible,” said Zalor. “So that whole cock-and-bull story about recreating the crime, about snakes in the ventilator-you were just waiting for Mr. Patrell to crack a walnut?”
“Exactly,” I said.
“It’s a pack of lies,” said Patrell, his voice sinking to a menacing register. “You’ve made the whole thing up.”
“Not at all,” said Harry. “Once we realized what had happened, it was a simple matter to find Addison Tate- with Miss Horn’s help, of course.”
“You found him?” asked Miss Henderson. “Where?”
“Why, visiting his mother, of course,” said Harry. “She’s in the hospital awaiting an operation, just as Mr. Tate had said. He has been at her bedside every day, though he took the precaution of shaving off his ‘Wild West’ beard and moustache so that he wouldn’t be easily recognized. This afternoon, he told the entire story to a friend of ours down at the police department.”
“More lies!” insisted Patrell. “He’ll be halfway across the Atlantic by now.”
Just then, there was a stirring at the back of the room as the “Wild Man of Borneo” struggled to pull off his wig and mask, revealing not the familiar sight of Nigel Kendricks but a younger, smoother face.
Patrell gave a hoarse cry. “You! This is-”
“Hello, Gideon,” said Addison Tate. “Would you mind returning my Colt?”
“But it was ridiculous!” I told Harry at breakfast the next morning. “Ridiculous on a grand scale!”
“All part of the plan,” said Harry. “You told me to keep talking until he reached for the gun.”
“I know,” I said, “but really… a swamp adder in the ventilator?”
“I thought it was a rather tidy explanation,” said Harry, reaching for a slice of brown toast. “And after all, there
“No, I suppose not,” I said. “Things got a bit chaotic last night.”
