“All right, sir. Call Mr. Fortune,” Bell grinned.
“I don’t say it’ll ever go into court. But some things we do know. The dead man is Rand, the elusive Rand. He had papers worth burning. He was killed by a powerful man with one or two blows, probably in the sitting-room. After death he was stripped and dressed in the unmarked clothes, probably here. For his body was brought where a mess could be cleaned up, to have the face smashed in. You can see the dents in the linoleum where his head lay. And then he was pitched out by that window. There’s a bit of animal matter, probably human tissue, on that scrap of wood. Then the slayer packed up everything that was bloody and went off; and one of ’em—the tidy slayer or the elusive Rand—one of ’em used cocaine.”
Superintendent Bell shrugged his shoulders. “It don’t take us very far, sir, does it? It don’t amount to so much. What I should call a baffling case. I mean to say, we don’t seem to get near anybody.”
Reggie grunted, got off the bath, and taking with him his bit of wood, went back to the sitting-room, the two detectives in silent attendance. There he tumbled Mr. Rand’s cigarettes out of their box, and put his bit of wood in it.
“I suppose there’s nothing more here,” he murmured, his eyes wandering round the room. “Try it with the lights on. Switch on, inspector. … No. Ah, what’s that?” He went to the gas fire and picked out of its lumps of sham coal a scrap of gleaming metal. The next moment he was down on his knees, pulling the fire to pieces. “Give me an envelope, will you?” he said over his shoulder, and they saw he was collecting scraps of broken glass.
“What is it, sir?”
“That’s the bridge of a pair of rimless eyeglasses. And if we’re lucky we can reconstruct the lenses. When Rand was hit, his glasses jumped off and smashed themselves. That’s the fourth thing the slayer didn’t think of.”
“You don’t miss much, Mr. Fortune. Still, it is baffling, very baffling. Even now, we don’t know anybody, so to speak. We don’t even know Rand. What was Rand, would you say? It was worth somebody’s while to do him in. I suppose he knew something. But what did he know? Who was Rand?”
Reggie was putting on his overcoat. He collected his envelope and his cigarette box and put them away, looking the while with dreamy eyes at Superintendent Bell. “Yes,” he said; “yes, there’s a lot of unknown quantities about just now. Who the devil was Rand? Well, well! I think that finishes us here. Will you ring for the lift, inspector?” When he was left alone with Bell, he still gazed dreamily at that plump, stolid face. “Yes. Who the devil was Rand? And if you come to that, who the devil is Sandford?”
“Good Lord, Mr. Fortune, do you mean this business is that business?”
“Well, there’s a lot of unknown quantities about,” said Reggie.
Phase IV
The Charge
When they talked about the case afterwards, Reggie and Lomas used to agree that it was a piece of pure art. “Crime unstained by any vulgar greed or sentiment; sheer crime; iniquity neat. An impressive thing, Lomas, old dear.”
“So it is,” Lomas nodded. “One meets cases of the kind, but never quite of so pure a style. Upon my soul, Fortune, it has a sort of grandeur—the intensity of purpose, the contempt for ordinary values, the absolute uselessness of it. And it was damned clever.”
Reggie chose a cigar. “Great work,” he sighed. “All the marks of the real great man, if it wasn’t diabolical. He was a great man, but for the hate in him. Just like the devil.”
“You’re so moral,” Lomas protested. “Don’t you feel the beauty of it?”
“Of course I’m moral. I’m sane. Oh, so sane, Lomas, old thing. That’s why I beat the wily criminal. And the devil, God help him.”
“Yes, you’re as sane as a boy,” Lomas nodded.
But all that was afterwards.
Everything that was done in the case is not (though you may have feared so) written here. We take it in the critical, significant scenes, and the next of them arrived some days after the discovery of the corpse.
Lomas was in his room with Superintendent Bell, when Kimball came to them. He was brisker than ever. “Anything new, is there? Have you hit on anything? I came round at once, you see, when I got your note. Delighted to get it. Much better to have all the details cleared up. Well, what is it?”
“I’m afraid I’ve nothing for you myself,” said Lomas. “The fact is, Fortune thought you might be able to give him some information on one or two points.”
“I? God bless me, you know all that I know. Where is he, then, if he wants me?”
And Reggie came. “Have you been waitin’?” he said, with his airiest manner. “So sorry. Things are really rollin’ up, you know. New facts by every post. Well, well.” He dropped into a chair and blinked at the party. “What are we all doin’ here? Oh, ah! I remember.” He smiled and nodded at Kimball. “It was that fellow I wanted to ask you about.”
Kimball, as was natural, did not relish this sort of thing. “I understood you had something important on hand. I’ve no time to waste.”
“Why, it’s so jolly hard to understand what’s important and what isn’t, don’t you know? But it all comes out in the end.”
“You think so, do you? This is the coal affair?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Reggie answered thoughtfully. “No, I wouldn’t say that. After all, the Coal Ramp isn’t the only pebble on the beach.”
“Then why the devil do you bother me?” Kimball cried.
Reggie sat up suddenly. “Because this is something you must know.” He rearranged his coat and slid down into the chair again, and drawled out what he had to
