The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

using his pistol.”

I wanted to kick myself for blurting without thinking. Not only would it have been impossible for the taxi-man to miss such pistol play, Mrs Ferris must have heard the report too. Crestfallen, then, I was surprised when Toft unlimbered his reedy limbs, and, ignoring Grimes’ “What the devil -?” crossed to the door to call the taxi-man into the room again.

But even the suggestion of hope that brought proved vain. The taxi-man was as contemptuous of the pistol idea as Grimes.

“A pistol? Not a chance,” he said emphatically. “I tell you I had my eyes on Gerald all the time… Expecting fireworks when his uncle saw him, you see. He couldn’t ha’ used a pistol without my seeing-let alone me hearing.”

“That’s sure-you heard nothing?” Grimes insisted.

“Not a thing-an’ I know what pistols sound like, too.”

“He might have been using one with a silencer,” I put in. “You say he called out loudly to his uncle…”

“He did, sir. But that made no manner o’ difference. I mean, I’m ready to swear there wasn’t even the ghost of another noise.”

“Your engine was still running though,” Toft put in.

“Maybe,” the man shrugged. “But that wouldn’t make any difference. We get so used to it we hear other sounds agin it – and I’d have heard even a silencer… An’ then, as I say, I was watching him close. He didn’t make the motions like shooting. Just stood still an’ stiff all the time.”

“How can you be so sure?” I objected. “Can you remember exactly how he stood?”

“Well, I can then,” the man snapped. “He stood practically half out o’ that sitting-room door all the time. His hand was holding it open by the knob all the time… the nearest hand that’d be, the left. His right hand was in his pocket. His arm never lifted or moved or anything-no, not even up to when I shoved him aside to go in to his uncle.”

“But that means his right hand was hidden from you by his body,” I fill muttered. “I’ve heard of people shooting from their pockets…”

Grimes cut in: “You say Gerald took off his coat to put under his uncle’s head – were you able to see if there was a pistol in its pocket, or anywhere on him?”

“There wasn’t, sir,” the taxi-man declared. “I’m certain of that. I’ll tell you why: I noticed how ragged the lining of that coat was, thinking what a come-down it was for a chap like him. It was so ragged that I couldn’t ha’ missed seeing a pistol poking out or bulging. Another thing. It was me he handed the coat to before Mrs Ferris told him to get a cushion-an’ from the weight o’ that coat, there couldn’t have been a pistol in it.”

That seemed conclusive enough, yet Paul Toft muttered: “Odd bit of by-play, that coat business… as though it were part of a thought-up alibi…”

We did not pay much attention to him. The pistol theory was destroyed, especially as the taxi-man went on:

“An’ it’s all stuff, anyhow. As if I didn’t know what bullets do to people… I saw plenty enough in the War. An’ there was no sign o’ wound on poor old Mr Stanley.”

That clinched the matter, as it were, but it also reminded me that it was about time I took a look at the dead man. The body had been taken into the sitting-room behind the one we were in, and as I examined it the thought of foul play receded farther and farther from my mind. There was simply no sign of wound or violence. I pointed this out to Paul Toft, who stood brooding over me as I worked.

“Eh? Nothing there, Doctor?” he muttered, coming out of his medium’s trance… “Nothing that would show, no… I feel that’s it… Something that was sure not to show… How?” He examined the body. “Hair, maybe… Hair still thick and black…”

“It couldn’t hide a bullet wound,” I said.

“No… no, not a bullet wound, but… How would he have stood as Gerald came into the door? Left front to Gerald, eh…? Shave the head on the left side, please, Doctor…”

I did this, not with much hope, but rather because I was always peculiarly under the spell of this strange, lank man’s strange powers. The more of the surface of the skull I uncovered the more pessimistic I became-until Toft’s bony finger prodded forward and he muttered:

“What do you make of that, Doctor?”

It was a tiny puncture in the skin well above the left ear, a little red speck so small that it might have been anything from a flea-bite to the prick of a needle-point. I said as much.

“Needle-point!” he breathed. “Ah, we’re getting warmer.”

“How?” barked Grimes, who had joined us after a routine search of the house. “You suggesting that Gerald jabbed a poisoned needle into the old fellow? Just when did he manage that-never having been near him?”

“A dart might have done it”; I had taken fire at Toft’s suggestion. “A poisoned dart.”

“Fine!” Inspector Grimes jeered. “An’ Gerald being a rackety one was no doubt a first-class darter from practice in pubs. Only you’re forgetting the taxi-man swears he never took his hand from his pocket. Also…”

“An air-pistol fires darts,” I said excitedly. “And, by Jove, an air-pistol makes next to no noise, not enough to be heard above the sound of a taxi-engine, I’ll bet.”

“Fine, Doctor,” Toft smiled at me, but the Inspector went on grimly:

“As I was about to finish-also even air-pistol darts aren’t invisible to the naked eye. They’re quite solid bits of metal, with a point and a lead butt an’ tufts o’ silk to steady ’em. How is it the taxi-man missed such a dart sticking in the old man’s head? Remember Gerald never went near enough to pull it out.”

“I feel… it fell out,” Toft said, but I could not support him there. From the nature of the wound it would have remained sticking into the head.

“The doctor doesn’t think so,” Grimes said, reading my face. “Also, say it did fall out, it would have dropped close to the body. It’s a plain dark brown carpet in that room. Would the taxi-man, Mrs Ferris, and the other doctor have missed seeing it as they worked on the body? It’s a thousand to one against. There was no sign of it in the room then – no sign of it now. I’ve been over that room with a hand-brush. I’ll show you.”

He called out, and the local sergeant brought in a dust-pan with the sweepings of the sitting-room. There was little more than a litter of fluff and scraps, tiny bits of coal, fragments of paper, a couple of wireless screws, a thin, capped pencil, also the little red cylinder of indiarubber that belonged to it though it had been trodden out, one or two buttons, the half of what looked like the elastic button strap of a pair of braces… stuff like that, but no sign of anything like a dart.

“You’re going to say Gerald might have picked his dart up,” Grimes said. “Well, I don’t think he could have, not before it was seen. What’s more, I don’t think he’d risk his neck on anything so conspicuous… And then, there’s the pistol? What became of that? There’s no sign of it anywhere about or on Gerald… No, it won’t wash. You’re only making a case out o’ moonbeams, Toft.”

It seemed so. I stood dejected. Paul Toft said in his dreamy calm:

“There’s no getting over that.” He touched the tiny puncture on the skull. “That’s how he died… I feel that. And he was deliberately wounded under the hair so that we’d miss it.”

“Oh, heck!” wailed Grimes; “an’ I’ve just been telling you that all the facts say no!”

“Of course they would. The whole thing was carefully, brilliantly schemed to make facts say no,” the reedy man mused on. “From the careful employment of that taxi-driver as a witness, to the firing of an all but silent air-pistol from the pocket… a helpfully ragged pocket, remember… And you’ll probably find that Gerald Park is a first-rate marksman.”

“I probably will,” the Inspector said bitterly. “That won’t be so hard as to find how he managed to make a dart and a pistol vanish into thin air under the noses of witnesses. Just crank up a really good feeling to explain that, my lad.”

Toft only blinked and looked at me, and in trying to think of a way out I did remember something.

“Just precisely when did Gerald offer his empty coat to his uncle?” I asked.

“Didn’t you hear Mrs Ferris say it was after she came into the sitting-room,” Grimes said sourly.

“After he’d fetched the brandy,” Toft put in swiftly. “Yes, that’s the loophole, Doctor. He was out of sight of witnesses, at least while he was in the dining-room getting the brandy.”

“An’ a fat lot that’s going to help,” Grimes said as we went into the dining-room. It was, indeed, sparsely furnished; just a gate-table, six stiff chairs, and a side-board with two cupboards, one of which was the