The Blind Barber

What?'…' Here Mr. Nemo chuckled with delight. A curious wondering expression, however, had come into his eyes… 'They would say, 'Your Lordship, you've been had. This isn't real.' And there would be a terrific joke at my expense, and I would curse and jump, and give them big tips to keep quiet about it. And walk off with it in my luggage… So, to make it look more real, I let the captain lock it in his safe…

'But what happened. It went wrong. God damn the whole world! It went wrong! Those kids—'

Dr. Fell cut him off. 'Yes,' he said, quietly, 'and that was where you made a mistake; and what I call the Clue Direct. The last thing you wanted was the emerald to be stolen, especially as it was false, because that meant there would be an inquiry on the ship and afterwards a police inquiry, which was the one thing you couldn't risk. The only thing you could do was shut off investigation by producing the real emerald and saying it had been returned to you. That would stop things. The Clue Direct, and your whole mistake, was that you acted entirely out of character for the first time; you did something Lord Sturton would never have done; you said, 'I don't know how it happened, and I don't care, now I've got it back.' ² Not one word of all that rang true, friend Nemo. What puzzled me for a moment, though I see the explanation now, is why you left the bogus emerald lying in the steel box behind the cabin trunk; and risked having it found. You must have known where it was, if you were on hand and saw the whole scene. Anybody could have seen it was your work from the time young Warren found the bogus emerald there… '

'Wait a bit!' protested Morgan. 'I don't see that. How so?'

'Well, there were obviously two emeralds. If one had been lying all the time in a box behind Kyle's trunk, it couldn't be the one in Sturton's hands. Yet — the box containing the emerald was the one which Captain Whistler had received straight from Sturton's hands! Sturton gave it to him; it was presumably the real emerald; yet here is Sturton flourishing another elephant which he says is genuine! The Clue of Known Doubles lies simply in your own statement that, if there were two emeralds, Sturton would surely know a true from a false… ² Certainly he would; but, if the emerald he gave in the steel box to Whistler were real, then the one returned to him couldn't have been; and yet he said it was real. It is not a very abstruse deduction, is it? And it leads straight back to our gallant impostor.' Dr. Fell stared at him. 'But what I didn't see for a second, friend Nemo, was why you risked the bogus emerald lying in Kyle's cabin and the deadly chance of having it brought forward.'

Nemo was so inexplicably excited that he overturned and smashed his glass. The excitement seemed to have been growing on him for some time, as though he were waiting for something that did not happen.

'I thought it had gone overboard,' he snarled. 'I knew it had gone overboard! I heard that — that swine' — he stabbed his finger at Morgan—'distinctly say — there was a lot of noise on the deck from the waves — but I was listening, and I heard him say, 'Gone overboard… ' ' ³

'You missed part of it, I fear,' said Dr. Fell, composedly, and ran his pencil through the Clue of Misunderstanding. 'And the final proof conclusive — it must have shaken you — was when the other emerald did turn up. Even to the last you screamed that there had been no robbbery, and went so ridiculously far as to forbid anybody mentioning it.⁴ As it was, your goose was burned to a cinder and your identity out with a yell if anybody hadn't been fairly sure before. What you should have done was try even the thin tale that you had been robbed again. And yet (bow, friend Nemo, and prostrate yourself before the Parcae) for a second you were saved by good old Uncle Jules chucking it overboard.'

Mr. Nemo straightened up. He twisted his neck.

'I may be a ghost,' he said with a glassy-eyed and absolute seriousness which was not absurd, but rather terrible} 'and yet, my friend, I'm not omniscient. Ha-ha! Well, I shortly shall be; and then I'll come back with a razor, some night, when you aren't looking.'

He exploded into mirth.

'What the devil ails him?' demanded Dr. Fell, and got slowly to his feet.

'That little bottle,' said Nemo. 'I drank it an hour ago, just when we left the train. I was afraid it wasn't working; I've been afraid, and that's why I had to talk. I drank it. 1 tell you I'm a ghost. A ghost has been sitting with you for an hour; I hope you remember it and think about it at night.'

In the eerie yellow light, against which Dr. Fell's great bulk was silhouetted black, the mirth of the prisoner bubbled, and his body made a rustling sound which froze Morgan… And then, in the silence, Inspector Jennings got slowly to his feet. His face was impassive. They heard the creak and clink of the handcuffs.

'Yes, Nemo,' said Inspector Jennings, with satisfaction, 'I thought you'd try that. That's why I changed the contents of it. Most of 'em try the trick. It's old. You're not going to die of poison… '

The mirth struck off in a choking sound, and the man began to flap at the handcuffs…

'You're not going to die of poison, Nemo,' said Inspector Jennings, moving slowly towards the door. 'You're going to hang… Good night, gentlemen, and thanks.'

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Примечания

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And meanwhile let me call your attention to two earlier Collier Books reprints: Elliot Paul's Mysterious Mickey Finn (AS244X) and Mayhem in B-Flat (AS245X).