“Why do you think that confession’s a fake?” repeated Alec doggedly.
“That’s better, Alexander,” commented Roger approvingly. “You seem to be showing a little interest in my discoveries at last. You haven’t been at all a good Watson up to now, you know. It’s your business to be thrilled to the core whenever I announce a farther step forward. You’re a rotten thriller, Alec.”
A slight smile appeared on Alec’s face. “You do all the thrilling needed yourself, I fancy. Besides, old Holmes went a bit slower than you. He didn’t jump to conclusions all in a minute, and I doubt if ever he was as darned pleased with himself all the time as you are.”
“Don’t be harsh with me, Alec,” Roger murmured.
“I admit you haven’t done so badly so far,” Alec pursued candidly; “though when all’s said and done most of it’s guesswork. But if I grovelled in front of you, as you seem to want, and kept telling you what a dashed fine fellow you are, you’d probably have arrested Jefferson and Mrs. Plant by this time, and had Lady Stanworth committed for contempt of court or something.” He paused and considered. “In fact, what you want, old son,” he concluded weightily, “is a brake, not a blessed accelerator.”
“I’m sorry,” Roger said with humility. “I’ll remember in future. But if you won’t compliment me, at least let me compliment you. You’re a jolly good brake.”
“And after that, Detective Sheringham, perhaps you’ll kindly tell me how you deduce that the confession is a fake from the fact that old Stanworth’s pen wouldn’t write.”
Roger’s air changed and his face became serious.
“Yes, this really is rather important. It clinches the fact of murder, which was certainly a shot in the dark of mine before. Here’s the thing that gives it away.”
He produced from his pocket the piece of paper which he had waved in Alec’s face in the library and, unfolding it carefully, handed it to the other. Alec looked at it attentively. It bore numerous irregular folds, as if it had been considerably crumpled, and in the centre, somewhat smudged, were the words “Victor St.—,” culminating in a large blot. The writing was very thickly marked. The right-hand side of the paper was spattered with a veritable shower of blots. Beyond these there was nothing upon its surface.
“Humph!” observed Alec, handing it back. “Well, what do you make of it?”
“I think it’s pretty simple,” Roger said, folding the paper and stowing it carefully away again. “Stanworth had just filled his fountain pen, or it wouldn’t work or something. You know what one does with a fountain pen that doesn’t want to write. Make scratches on the nearest piece of paper, and as soon as the ink begins to flow—”
“Sign one’s name!” Alec broke in, with the nearest approach to excitement that he had yet shown.
“Precisely! On the blotting pad are the preliminary scratches to bring the ink down the pen. What happens in nine cases out of ten after that? The ink flows too freely and the pen floods. This bit of paper shows that it happened in this case, too. Stanworth was rather an impatient sort of man, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I suppose he was. Fairly.”
“Well, the scene’s easy enough to reconstruct. He tries the pen out on the blotting pad. As soon as it begins to write he grabs a sheet from the top of that pile of fellow-sheets on his desk (did you notice them, by the way?) and signs his name. Then the pen floods, and he shakes it violently, crumples up the sheet of paper, throws it into the wastepaper basket and takes another. This time the pen, after losing so much ink in blots, is a little faint at first; so he only gets as far as the C in Victor before starting again, just below the last attempt. Then at last it writes all right, and his signature is completed, with the usual flourish. He picks up the piece of paper, crumples it slightly, but not so violently as before, and throws it also into the wastepaper basket. How’s that?”
“That all seems feasible enough. What next?”
“Why, the murderer, setting the room to rights afterwards, thinks he’d better have a look in the basket. The first thing he spots is that piece of paper. ‘Aha!’ he thinks. ‘The very thing I wanted to put a finishing touch to the affair!’ Smoothes it carefully out, puts it in the typewriter and types those few words above the signature. What could be simpler?”
“By Jove, I wonder! It’s jolly ingenious.”
Roger’s eyes were sparkling. “Ingenious? Yes; but in its very simplicity. Oh, that’s what happened, sure enough. There’s plenty of corroboration, when you come to think of it. The way the whole thing’s got into the top half of the sheet of paper, for instance. That isn’t natural, really, is it? It ought to be in the middle, with the signature about two thirds down. And why isn’t it? Because the signature was in the middle already, and the fellow had to work upwards from that.”
“I believe you must be right,” Alec said slowly.
“Well, don’t be so grudging about it. Of course I’m right! As a matter of fact, those scratches on the blotting paper gave me the idea as soon as I saw them. I’d been puzzling after a way of getting round that confession. But when I found that second sheet in the wastepaper basket of course the thing was as plain as a pikestaff. That was a bad blunder of his, by the way; not to look through the rest of the basket’s contents.”
“Yes,” Alec agreed seriously. “And supposing the inspector had found it. It might have given him something to think about, mightn’t it?”
“It might and it mightn’t. Of course from the inspector’s point of view there’s been nothing to afford the least question as to the plain fact of suicide; except the absence of motive, of course,
