“You don’t think, perhaps,” ventured Mr. Chitterwick with an apologetic smile, “that information from such a tainted source might not be entirely reliable? The source seems so very tainted. Why, I don’t think my own man would sell me for a ten-pound note.”
“Like master like man,” returned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming shortly. “His information was perfectly reliable. I was able to check nearly everything he told me, so that I think I am entitled to accept the small residue as correct too.
“I should like to quote another of Sir Eustace’s confidences. It is not pretty, but it is very, very illuminating. He had made an attempt to seduce Miss Wildman in a private room at the Pug-Dog Restaurant (that, for instance, I checked later), apparently with the object of ensuring the certainty of the marriage he desired. (I am sorry again, Sir Charles, but these facts must be brought out.) I had better say at once that the attempt was unsuccessful. That night Sir Eustace remarked (and to his valet of all people, remember); ‘You can take a filly to the altar, but you can’t make her drunk.’ That, I think, will show you better than any words of mine just what manner of man Sir Eustace Pennefather is. And it will also show you how overwhelmingly strong was the incentive of the man who really loved her to put her forever out of the reach of such a brute.
“And that brings me to the second piece of my evidence. This is really the foundation stone of the whole structure, the basis on which the necessity for murder (as the murderer saw it) rested, and the basis at the same time of my own reconstruction of the crime. Miss Wildman was hopelessly, unreasonably, irrevocably infatuated with Sir Eustace Pennefather.”
As an artist in dramatic effect, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was silent for a moment to allow the significance of this information to sink into the minds of her audience. But Sir Charles was far too personally preoccupied to be interested in significances.
“And may one ask how you found that out, madam?” he demanded, swelling with sarcasm. “From my daughter’s maid?”
“From your daughter’s maid,” responded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming sweetly. “Detecting, I discover, is an expensive hobby, but one mustn’t regret money spent in a good cause.”
Roger sighed. It was plain that, once this ill-fortuned child of his invention had died a painful death, the Circle (if it had not been completely squared by then) would be found to be without either Mrs. Fielder-Flemming or Sir Charles Wildman; and he knew which of the two it would be. It was a pity. Sir Charles, besides being such an asset from the professional point of view, was the only leavening apart from Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick of the literary element; and Roger, who had attended a few literary parties in his earlier days, was quite sure he would not be able to face a gathering that consisted of nothing but people who made their livings by their typewriters.
Besides, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming really was being a little hard on the old man. After all, it was his daughter who was in question.
“I have now,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, “established an overwhelming motive for the man who is in my mind to eliminate Sir Eustace. In fact it must have seemed to him the only possible way out of an intolerable situation. Let me now go on to connect him with the few facts allowed us by the anonymous murderer.
“When the Chief Inspector the other evening permitted us to examine the forged letter from Mason & Sons I examined it closely, because I know something about typewriters. That letter was typed on a Hamilton machine. The man I have in mind has a Hamilton typewriter at his place of business. You may say that might be only a coincidence, the Hamilton being so generally used. So it might; but if you get enough coincidences lumped together, they cease to become coincidences at all and become certainties.
“In the same way we have the further coincidence of Mason’s notepaper. This man has a definite connection with Mason’s. Three years ago, as you may remember, Mason’s were involved in a big lawsuit. I forget the details, but I think they brought an action against one of their rivals. You may remember, Sir Charles?”
Sir Charles nodded reluctantly, as if unwilling to help his antagonist even with this unimportant information. “I ought to,” he said shortly. “It was against the Fearnley Chocolate Company for infringement of copyright in an advertisement figure. I led for Mason’s.”
“Thank you. Yes, I thought it was something like that. Very well, then. This man was connected with that very case. He was helping Mason’s, on the legal side. He must have been in and out of their office. His opportunities for possessing himself of a piece of their notepaper would have been legion. The chances by which he might have found himself three years later in possession of a piece would be innumerable. The paper had yellowed edges; it must have been quite three years old. It had an erasure. That erasure, I suggest, is the remains of a brief note on the case jotted down one day in Mason’s office. The thing is obvious. Everything fits.
“Then there is the matter of the postmark. I agree with Sir Charles that we may take it for granted that the murderer, cunning though he is, and anxious though he might be to establish an alibi, would not entrust the posting of the fatal parcel to anyone else. Apart from a confederate, which I
