“Mr. Constant murdered, I suppose,” murmured the Home Secretary, wonderingly.
“Exactly. And so she saw it. And what should you think was the condition of Arthur Constant when the door yielded to my violent exertions and flew open?”
“Why, was he not dead?” gasped the Home Secretary, his heart fluttering violently.
“Dead? A young, healthy fellow like that! When the door flew open Arthur Constant was sleeping the sleep of the just. It was a deep, a very deep sleep, of course, else the blows at his door would long since have awakened him. But all the while Mrs. Drabdump’s fancy was picturing her lodger cold and stark the poor young fellow was lying in bed in a nice warm sleep.”
“You mean to say you found Arthur Constant alive?”
“As you were last night.”
The minister was silent, striving confusedly to take in the situation. Outside the crowd was cheering again. It was probably to pass the time.
“Then, when was he murdered?”
“Immediately afterward.”
“By whom?”
“Well, that is, if you will pardon me, not a very intelligent question. Science and common sense are in accord for once. Try the method of exhaustion. It must have been either by Mrs. Drabdump or by myself.”
“You mean to say that Mrs. Drabdump—!”
“Poor dear Mrs. Drabdump, you don’t deserve this of your Home Secretary! The idea of that good lady!”
“It was you!”
“Calm yourself, my dear Home Secretary. There is nothing to be alarmed at. It was a solitary experiment, and I intend it to remain so.” The noise without grew louder. “Three cheers for Grodman! Hip, hip, hip, hooray,” fell faintly on their ears.
But the Minister, pallid and deeply moved, touched the bell. The Home Secretary’s home secretary appeared. He looked at the great man’s agitated face with suppressed surprise.
“Thank you for calling in your amanuensis,” said Grodman. “I intended to ask you to lend me his services. I suppose he can write shorthand.”
The minister nodded, speechless.
“That is well. I intend this statement to form the basis of an appendix to the twenty-fifth edition—sort of silver wedding—of my book, Criminals I Have Caught. Mr. Denzil Cantercot, who, by the will I have made today, is appointed my literary executor, will have the task of working it up with literary and dramatic touches after the model of the other chapters of my book. I have every confidence he will be able to do me as much justice, from a literary point of view, as you, sir, no doubt will from a legal. I feel certain he will succeed in catching the style of the other chapters to perfection.”
“Templeton,” whispered the Home Secretary, “this man may be a lunatic. The effort to solve the Big Bow Mystery may have addled his brain. Still,” he added aloud, “it will be as well for you to take down his statement in shorthand.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Grodman, heartily. “Ready, Mr. Templeton? Here goes. My career till I left the Scotland-Yard Detective Department is known to all the world. Is that too fast for you, Mr. Templeton? A little? Well, I’ll go slower; but pull me up if I forget to keep the brake on. When I retired, I discovered that I was a bachelor. But it was too late to marry. Time hung on my hands. The preparation of my book, Criminals I Have Caught, kept me occupied for some months. When it was published I had nothing more to do but think. I had plenty of money, and it was safely invested; there was no call for speculation. The future was meaningless to me; I regretted I had not elected to die in harness. As idle old men must, I lived in the past. I went over and over again my ancient exploits; I reread my book. And as I thought and thought, away from the excitement of the actual hunt, and seeing the facts in a truer perspective, so it grew daily clearer to me that criminals were more fools than rogues. Every crime I had traced, however cleverly perpetrated, was from the point of view of penetrability a weak failure. Traces and trails were left on all sides—ragged edges, rough-hewn corners; in short, the job was botched, artistic completeness unattained. To the vulgar, my feats might seem marvelous—the average man is mystified to grasp how you detect the letter e in a simple cryptogram—to myself they were as commonplace as the crimes they unveiled. To me now, with my lifelong study of the science of evidence, it seemed possible to commit not merely one, but a thousand crimes that should be absolutely undiscoverable. And yet criminals would go on sinning, and giving themselves away, in the same old grooves—no originality, no dash, no individual insight, no fresh conception! One would imagine there were an Academy of crime with forty thousand armchairs. And gradually, as I pondered and brooded over the thought, there came upon me the desire to commit a crime that should baffle detection. I could invent hundreds of such crimes, and please myself by imagining them done; but would they really work out in practice? Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the subject—whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence with murder—to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to startle and baffle the world—especially the world of which I had ceased to be. Outwardly I was calm, and spoke to the people about me as usual. Inwardly I was on fire with a consuming scientific passion. I sported with my pet theories, and fitted them mentally on everyone I met. Every friend or acquaintance I sat and gossiped with, I was plotting how to murder without leaving a clue. There is not one of my friends or acquaintances I
