The Footsteps at the Lock

Bridge, wasn’t it, that the landlady remembered him as a gentleman who held himself very straight? Anyhow, that was the impression he contrived to make everywhere; or rather, his tailor contrived to make it for him. Mr. Quirk was the real Nigel, as his friends never saw him. The real Nigel, too, had his face disfigured by a yellow blotch⁠—you’ve been seeing it on Mr. Quirk all this last week. As an undergraduate, he got rid of the defect by making up; he was a pretty good actor, you know, and his makeup imposed upon the world at large.⁠ ⁠… Though I imagine some of his friends wouldn’t have minded much if they had known about it; it would only have been a single affectation added to the rest. Of course, if that had been his natural complexion, it would have been tanned a deep brick-red after ten days on the river, and Mr. Quirk couldn’t have happened. But I think his hair made more difference than anything; he used to wear it very long and brushed straight back⁠—rather shiny hair it was; and when he had it cropped quite close (that was at a small shop in Swindon) it showed up his slight baldness and made him look absolutely different. Another thing everybody remembered was his voice, a slow, affected, disgustingly superior drawl. That was quite unreal, too; he found no difficulty in dropping it when need arose, and talking like an American instead.”

“He’s certainly a good actor. I can’t think how he managed to keep up the American part so well.”

“You mean his pronunciation of English? No, that was comparatively simple; his mother, as you know, married an American, and his home was in the States, as far as he had one. What impresses me more is the way he managed to keep up the American attitude towards life⁠—that curious freshness and simplicity they have; that was foreign to his nature, if you like. That habit of always talking as if everything was quite different on the other side of the Atlantic⁠—I shouldn’t be surprised to hear an American say that the earth goes round the sun on the other side. He did that to perfection. Yet, in a sense, that simplicity was itself only a shedding of his own beastly affectedness. I don’t think he had any positive disguise, if you see what I mean, except, of course, the horn spectacles; and they don’t go far.”

“But you say you didn’t recognize him straight away from the start? Didn’t even feel suspicious about him?”

“No; why should I? I did take just a look to make sure he wasn’t Derek; but that was obvious; there’s no trace of drugs on him. I didn’t think of his being Nigel because, when he introduced himself here, Nigel wasn’t yet missing. If you’d come in at two o’clock, telling me that Nigel had disappeared, and then Mr. Quirk had rolled up at four, I should have spotted the thing at once. As it was, he got the start of you; he was already established here before you came. The human mind doesn’t solve problems until they have been set.”

“He took big risks in coming here.”

“Ah, but he had no notion I was here, you see. I was out when he arrived, and it was too late to draw back when Angela introduced us. As I say, I had a slight thrill of recognition, but I bottled it up⁠—I always do. Of course, somebody coming out from Oxford might have recognized him, but it wasn’t likely; Oxford’s all down by now. And as for the staff of the hotel, they never notice that kind of thing. Business, to them, is an endless succession of strange faces; consequently no one face calls for remark.”

“What gave you the notion that something was wrong?”

“Why, I believe the first thing was when he told Angela it was lucky I was such a good photographer. What did he know about it? It puzzled me. Then, you remember, there was that business of the notecase.”

“Which notecase? The one at the island or the one the scouts found?”

“The one the scouts found. Of course, it was nonsense supposing that Derek Burtell carried two purses. That meant that one or the other was a fraud, a blind. It seemed natural to suppose that it was the one with the visiting-card in it. The visiting-card had so obviously been put there. Now, the curious thing was that those scouts had been diving in that precise spot from Monday till Saturday, but it wasn’t till Saturday they came across the notecase. Was it possible, I asked myself, that the notecase had been dropped in calmly overnight? If so, who had dropped it? Then I remembered that Mr. Quirk had been anxious to know the precise spot where the canoe was found, and that he had gone out for a walk there the evening before. I wanted to know more about Mr. Quirk.”

“Thank God that riddle’s solved. It was driving me crazy.”

“I still didn’t feel certain that Mr. Quirk was Nigel. I toyed with the idea that he was some American friend whom Nigel had put on to watch me. I’d only seen Nigel for quite a short time, you must remember, and in a rather dark room. But my suspicions were aroused, and I thought it would be a good thing to watch Mr. Quirk pretty closely, and give him his head. Though I never dared to credit him with the audacity which he proceeded to show.”

“You mean all that business about Millington Bridge⁠—the one cousin sleeping in the two rooms? Yes, it was pretty bold. Why did he give us such a big slice of the truth?”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt as to his primary object. He wanted us to take him into his confidence, so that he could keep a watch on what we were doing. And in order to do that, he felt he must put up some sensational bit of detective