Armadale was so engrossed in a reconsideration of the evidence that apparently Wendover’s mockery escaped his attention.
“Then your case is that the wristwatch stopped at 11:19, when he fell the first time, but that the glass wasn’t broken until he was shot down, later on?”
“That’s what seems to fit the facts,” Wendover averred, though without letting himself be pinned down definitely.
“It’s one way of looking at the business, certainly,” the inspector was forced to admit, though only grudgingly. “I can’t just see a way of upsetting your notions right away. I’ll think it over.”
Sir Clinton had been listening with a detached air to the whole exposition. Now he turned to Wendover.
“That was very neatly put together, squire, I must admit. The handling of the watch-stopping portion of the theme showed how well you’ve profited by your study of the classics. I wish I had time to read detective stories. Evidently they brighten the intellect.”
Wendover was not deceived by this tribute to his powers.
“Oh, of course I know well enough that you spotted the flaw long before I did. You told us, days ago, that there was one. It was when the inspector produced the pistol from Mrs. Fleetwood’s blazer, I remember.”
“There’s a flaw in almost every case that depends purely on circumstantial evidence, squire; and one can never guess how big that flaw is till one has the whole of the evidence together. It’s safest to wait for all the evidence before publishing any conclusions; that’s what I always bear in mind. Mistakes don’t matter much, so long as you keep them to yourself and don’t mislead other people with them.”
He turned to Armadale, who was still in deep cogitation.
“I’m going up to town this afternoon, inspector, to look into that end of the Fordingbridge business. In the meantime, I want you to do two things for me.”
“Very good, sir,” said the inspector, waking up.
“First of all, put all that sand-heap we’ve collected through fairly fine sieves, and see that you don’t miss a .38 cartridge-case if it happens to be there. Quite likely it may not be; but I want it, if it should chance to turn up.”
“So that’s what you were looking for all the time?” Wendover demanded. “I must say, Clinton, you came as near lying over that as I’ve known. You said you were looking for shells, or the brass bottle with the genie in it; and you insisted you were telling the truth, too; and that makes it more misleading still.”
“Not a bit of it, squire. I told you the plain truth; and if you take the wrong meaning out of my words, whose blame is it? Did you never hear an American use the word ‘shell’ for an empty cartridge-case? And the genie’s brass bottle, too. Could you find a neater description of a cartridge-case than that? Didn’t the genie come out in vapour, and expand till no one would have supposed he could ever have been in the brass bottle? And when you fire a cartridge, doesn’t the gas come out—far more of it than you’d ever suppose could be compressed into the size of the cartridge? And wasn’t the genie going to kill a man—same as a pistol cartridge might do? I really believed that I’d produced a poetical description of a cartridge-case which would be fit to stand alongside some of Shakespeare’s best efforts; and all you can say about it was that it misled you! Well, well! It’s sad.”
Wendover, now that he saw the true interpretation, could hardly protest further. He had to admit the ingenuity which had served to mislead him.
“Then there’s another thing, inspector, which is much more important. You’ll go at once to a magistrate and swear information against Mrs. Fleetwood on a charge of murder, and you’ll get a warrant for her arrest. That’s to be done immediately, you understand. You’ll hold that warrant ready for execution; but you won’t actually arrest her until I wire to you: ‘Take Fleetwood boat on Thursday.’ As soon as you get that message, you’ll execute the warrant without any delay whatsoever. That’s vital, you understand? And, of course, there mustn’t be a whisper about this until the moment of the arrest.”
As he heard these instructions, the inspector glanced at Wendover with the air of one who has pulled a rubber out of the fire at the last moment. Wendover, thunderstruck, stared at Sir Clinton as though he could hardly believe his ears.
XIV
The Telegram
On the departure of Sir Clinton, Wendover found himself in a position of isolation. The Fleetwoods and Miss Fordingbridge kept to their own suite, and did not show themselves in the public rooms; but the whole hotel was astir with rumours and discussions among the guests on the subject of the recent tragedies; and Wendover shrank from associating too closely with anyone. He felt that he was in a position of trust, and he feared lest, under the strain of questioning, he might be betrayed into divulging, unconsciously, something or other which was best kept from the public. A reporter from a newspaper in the nearest town demanded an interview, in the hope of eliciting something; but Wendover had the knack of posing as a dull fellow, and the reporter retired baffled and uncertain as to whether his victim had any exclusive information or not. Armadale was the only person with whom Wendover might have talked freely; and Armadale was entirely antipathetic.
Wendover filled in his time as best he could by taking long walks, which kept him out of reach of the more inquisitive guests as much as possible. He reviewed the whole range of affairs from the beginning, in the hope of seeing his way through the tangle; but there seemed to be so many possible cross-trails that he had to admit to himself that even an approximate solution of the problem was
