The Blind Barber

well-known jewel-drink collector who didn't omit any precautions against thieves, 'P, ordinary or extraordinary, as he thought. He left the Embassy one night, and was robbed without fuss. What looked like magic was his being decoyed or robbed by any ordinary make criminal, and also how the criminal should have known of

the necklace to begin with… But it is not at all magical if two well-known jewel-collectors exhibit their treasures to each other and have a tendency to talk shop. It is not at all magical for an eminent peer, even if he is so hermitlike that nobody knows him, to be welcomed at the Embassy in a foreign country, provided he has the documents to prove his identity. These coincidences, you see, are piling up.

'But this peer doesn't travel entirely alone. He is known to have a secretary. The first glimpse we have of him in the narrative is his rushing up the gangplank of a ship (so notoriously eccentric that he can wrap himself round in concealing comforters) and accompanied by this secretary.⁵ In the passenger-list I find a Miss Hilda Keller occupying the same suite as Lord Sturton, as I think you yourselves found later.⁶ But for the moment I put that aside…'

There was a gurgling noise as Dr. Fell chuckled into his pipe.

'Definitely, things began to happen after some days out (during all of which time Lord Sturton has kept entirely to his cabin, and the secretary with him).⁷ The first part of the film was stolen. The mysterious girl appeared, obviously trying to warn young Warren of something. There was the dastardly attack on Captain Whistler — the absence of the attackers on deck for some half an hour — and the subsequent disappearance of the girl. You believed (and so did 1) that she had been murdered and thrown overboard. But, putting aside the questions of who the girl was and why she was killed, we have that curious feature of the bed being remade thoroughly, a soiled towel even being replaced. That is what I call, from deductions you will see in a moment, the Clue of Invisibility…' ⁸

Mr. Nemo wriggled back in the chair. He put down his glass; his face had gone more pale and his mouth twitched — but not from fear at all. He had nothing to conceal. He was white and poisonous from some emotion Morgan did not understand. You felt the atmosphere about him, as palpably as though you could smell a drug.

'I was crazy about that little whore,' he said, suddenly, with such a change in voice and expression that they involuntarily started. 'I hope she's in hell.'

'That's enough,' said Dr. Fell, quietly. He went on: 'If somebody wished (for whatever reason) to kill her, why was she not merely killed and left there? The inference first off was that she would be more dangerous to the murderer if her body were discovered than if she were thrown overboard. By why should this be. Disappearance or outright murder, there would still be an investigation… Yet observe! What does the murderer do? He carefully makes up the berth and replaces the towel. This could not be to make you think the stunned girl had recovered and gone to her own cabin. It would have exactly the opposite effect. It means that the murderer was trying to make those in authority think — meaning Captain Whistler — that the girl was nothing but a mythical person; a lie invented for some reason by yourselves.

'Behind the apparent madness of this course, since four people had seen her, consider what the murderer's reasons must have been. To begin with, he knew what had happened on C deck; he hoped Whistler would spot young Warren as the man who had attacked him, and yourselves ^ as the people who had stolen the emerald; he knew that ® Whistler would not be likely to credit any story you told, and give short shrift to your excuses. But to adopt such a dangerous course as pretending she was a myth meant (a) that the girl would be traced straight to him if she were found dead, and that he could not stand the light of any investigation whatever by police authorities afterwards. It?^1? also meant (b) it was far less dangerous to conceal her absence, and that he had good reason to think he could ^ conceal it.

'Now, this, gentlemen, is a very remarkable choice indeed, when you try to conceal an absence from a community of only a hundred passengers. Why couldn't he stand any investigation? How could he hope to convince investigators that nobody was missing?

'First ask yourself who this girl could have been. She could not have been travelling alone: a solitary passenger is not connected closely enough with anybody else to lead absolutely damning evidence straight to him among a hundred people, and to make it necessary to pretend the girl had never existed; besides, a solitary passenger would be the first to be missed. She was not travelling in a family party, or, as Captain Whistler shrewdly pointed out, there might possibly have been complaint at her disappearance. She was travelling then, with just one other person — the murderer. She was travelling as wife, companion, or what you like. The murderer could hope to conceal her disappearance, first, because she must have made no acquaintances and have been with him every moment of the time. That means the murderer seldom or never had left his cabin. He might conceal it, second, because he was so highly placed as to be above suspicion—not otherwise— and because he himself was the victim of a theft that directed attention away from him. But, if he were all this, why couldn't he stand any investigation whatever? The not-very-complicated answer is that he was an impostor who had enough to do in concealing his imposture. If you then musingly consider what man was travelling with a single female companion, what man had kept to his cabin every moment of the time, what man was so highly-placed as to be above suspicion; what man had been the victim of a theft; and, finally, what man there is whom we have some slight reason to think as an impostor; then it is remarkable how we swing round again to Lord Sturton. All this is built up on the clue of a clean towel, the clue of invisibility. But it is still coincidence without definite reason, though we find rapid support for it.

'I mean that razor incautiously left behind in the berth…'

Mr. Nemo, who had been mouthing his cigar for some time, twitched round and looked at each in turn. His pale, bony face had worn an absent look, but now it had such a wide smile of urbanity and charm that Morgan shivered. 'I cut the little bitch's throat,' offered Mr. Nemo, making a gesture with the cigar. 'Much better for her. And more satisfactory for me. That's right, old man,' he said to the staring Hamper; 'write it down. It's much better to damage their skulls. A surgeon showed me all about that once. If you practise, you can find the right spot. But it wouldn't do for her. I had to take one of Sturton's set of razors to do it, and throw the others away. It hurt me. That case of razors must have cost a hundred-odd pound.'

He jerked with laughter, lifted his bowler off his head as though in tribute, smirked, kicked his heels, and asked for another drink.

'Yes,' said Dr. Fell, staring at him curiously, 'that's what I mean. I asked my young friend here not to think of one razor, but of seven in a set. I asked him to think of a set of razors as enormously expensive as those carven, silver-studded, ebony-handled rarities, which were obviously made to order. No ordinary man would have had them. The person likeliest to have them, said my Clue of Seven Razors, was the man who went after costly trinkets, who bought the emerald elephant, 'because it was a curiosity and a rarity, of enormous intrinsic value.'…And the razors bring us back again to the question of who the girl was.

'Her solitary appearance in public was in the wireless-room, where she was described by the wireless- operator as 'having her hands full of papers'; and this I call, symbolically, my Clue of Seven Radiograms.What does that appearance sound like? Not a joyous tourist dashing off an inconsequential message home. There is a businesslike look to it. A number of messages — a businesslike look — and we begin to think of a secretary. The edifice rears. Our Blind Barber becomes not only an impostor masquerading as a highly placed recluse who kept to his cabin, and travelled with a female companion; but the girl becomes a secretary and the recluse an enormously wealthy man with a taste for grotesque trinkets… '

Dr. Fell lifted his stick and pointed suddenly.

'Why did you kill her?' he demanded. 'Was she an accomplice?'

'You're telling the story,' shrugged Mr. Nemo. 'And while I'm bored, I'm bored as hell with it, because just at the moment / feel like talking, still — your brandy's not at all bad. Ha-ha-ha. Ought to get hospitality. Go on. You talk. Then I'll talk, and I'll surprise you. Give you a little hint, though. Yes. Sporting run for your money, like old Sturton would… Didn't I come down on old Whistler, though! Ho-ho! Yes… Hint is, she was what you'd call virtuous in the way of being honest. She wouldn't step into my game with me when she found out who I was. And when she tried to warn that young fellow— Tcha! Bloody little fool! Ha-ha! Eh?' inquired Mr. Nemo, putting back his cigar with a portentous wink.

'Did you know,' said Dr. Fell, 'that a man named Woodcock saw you when you stole the first part of that film?'

'Did he?' asked Mr. Nemo, lifting one shoulder. 'What did I care? Remove sideburns — they're detachable —