'Mind you,' he said, warningly, 'I don't admit anything about stealing. There's a law, and I don't have to commit myself. But I know my duty about telling 'oo was there. All right. It was Dr. Antrim.'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Five Solutions
The rain still fell softly. H.M. laboriously settled back into his chair. Whatever he thought or felt, no change passed over the sour woodenness of his face.
'So it was Dr. Antrim, hey? How do you know that, son? Did you see him?'
Now that fright had begun to leave him, Bowers was snappish.
'No, but I've got me ears, haven't I?' be demanded. 'They were in the back parlour with the door shut. I've 'eard 'em talking when I came in — latish, it was. At least, I heard the governor. He had a voice you couldn't mistake. And he called the other chap `Antrim' a couple of times. So help me!'
'That's all,' grunted H.M.
'Take him out,' he added to Sergeant Davis. 'Then get hold, at long last, of Mr. Joseph Serpos. Wait about five minutes, and then bring him in here.'
Stone, throughout all this, had been sitting back savouring everything with the air of a connoisseur: critical, poised, but benevolent. His face was a little flushed in the smoke-filled room, and there was a gleam on his pince- nez. When he spoke, it was with what he called his Sunday-go-to-meeting manners.
'Allow me, sir,' he said to H.M., extending a lighter elaborately, 'to light your cigar. For the past few minutes,' he went on, in the manner of an after-dinner speaker, 'I have been privileged to listen to a sample of British police methods which, I know, will be of great interest to my colleagues back home. I mean to deliver an address on that subject. But there is one question, just one, which I should like to ask you. In the name of the living Judas, who is guilty?'
As he sat back, H.M.'s moon-face was full of a fantastic jollity. He looked like one who knows the answer in a guessing-game which is driving all the other players wild. It was having just that effect on us.
'Quite,' agreed Charters. He had taken to pacing about the room, heavy-eyed and heavy-shouldered, as though the dawn had got into him and left him without hope or sense.
'It can't be,' he said to himself; 'I tell you it can't be! I 1 used to think I was an intelligent man. I don't think so any longer. Look here, Merrivale: now that Bowers has gone the usual way of the incredible, do we play our usual game of l guilty or not guilty? If so-'
'We'll do better than that,' said H.M. He was more grave now, and somewhere a decision had been made. 'Here!'
He reached out and picked up from the desk a pad of prescription-blanks, which he spent spinning across to me.
'H'm. Sorry we got to use Antrim's dope-sheets, but it'the easiest. Tear off some of those and hand 'em round.
Anybody got some pencils? I want each of you to write down the name of the person you believe is guilty '
'Before we see Serpos?' ask Evelyn quickly.
'Sure. Before you see Serpos. Good old Serpos, the enigmatic figure of the whole case, who's been leerin' round the flame and the witches' broth from the start, never clearly seen and never clearly seeable! But, mind! When you write it down, I don't want anybody to guess. Don't merely take a long shot just because it sounds improbable. Unless you've got some real evidence, don't write anything at all. I want you all to make a strong effort to see what's right under your noses. Put down the name, and what you think the motive was — which is where most of you are goin' to trip up-and the evidence tendin' to prove it.' He blinked round at Stone. 'Like to have a go?'
'I don't mind if I do,' assented Stone. His forehead wrinkled. 'Just the same, it seems I've been wrong once tonight. 1 thought Keppel was behind this. But we know now he couldn't have done it-'
'Yes,' said H.M. in a curious tone, 'we know he couldn't 'a' done it.'
I went round the group handing out the slips, and Stone himself carried enough pencils to equip nearly all of us. When I passed H.M. extending the pad tentatively, he opened and shut his hand in a ghoulish gesture of beckoning, and I gave him one of the slips. Then, before sitting down again, I opened one of the French windows. The hollow tumult of the rain rose from outside; a clean wet air blew into the room, drowsy on my eyelids, and the murky air was a faint grey.
They were at it, concentrating as though in a game. None of us, I think, will be likely to forget that circle round the skull in the doctor's consulting-room. I almost tiptoed back to my chair: for a certain idea had come into my head in the past few minutes. With the paper on the arm of the chair, I wrote rapidly. But I kept glancing at H.M. He had selected a rich blue pencil out of the tray on the desk; his sprawling handwriting began to stagger, and he puffed smoke with one eye shut. Except for the rain, the room was very quiet…
'Time!' said H.M., and brought his hand down with a flat smack.
This meant that he had finished his own.
'Don't jump like that, dammit,' he roared to Stone. 'Now, then. If you got 'em all ready, fold 'em up and hand 'em here to the old man. That's it. Never mind the literary flourishes. What we want is meat.'
He received the four slips, and with a grave face proceeded to shuffle them together so that they were indistinguishable. Then, with equal gravity, he opened each in turn, read it, folded it up, and calmly put it down again.
'H'm,' said H.M.
'So,' he added.
'Woof!' said H.M.
'Oh, lord-love-a-duck,' he breathed.
'Can you do barnyard noises, too?' inquired Evelyn with restraint. 'You know, old boy, if you don't read those out and tell us what's what, you'll be assaulted. I can't stand this much longer.'
'Well… now,' said H.M. He inspected her with a sort of lowering mirth. 'I was just thinking what nasty suspicious minds you people got. You know, after we finished with these papers, they'd better be torn up in little pieces. They're awful libellous. Burn me, I never did see so many Look here. There are four of you, and each of you has written down a different name.'
At this point Stone grew angry.
'Yes, but what's on yours?' he demanded.
'In a minute, in a minute. The official police come first. Here, Charters: hold on to your hat and read these.'
Charters read the first four without comment; but when he came to H.M.'s scrawled slip, he stared with a sort of grey blankness.
`Impossible!' he said. 'I tell you, Merrivale, this is absolutely'
'Oh, no, it ain't, son. You think it over.'
'But this person hasn't got any-.-'
Here Evelyn rose up rather stiffly from her chair. She took a few quick little walks up and down the room, her face pink. Then, without saying anything, she made a dive to tear the papers out of Charter's hand. Charters was soothing, but grim, when he put the papers behind his back.
'You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' H.M. said austerely. He turned back. 'No motive, were you goin' to say? Oh, yes; plain as your nose. But I told you it was goin' to be the big stumbling-block of the case. Point is — I say, Ken, where's that ?100 note? No, wait; I got it here myself. Point is, first of all we've got to check this with the list of numbers from the, Willoughby slush. You go and get your list while we entertain friend Serpos with a little light causerie. But don't make any mistake.'
Charters looked unwontedly worried as he went out: much more worried than Serpos, whom Sergeant Davis brought in at that moment. I had seen him before only in the half-light at the station; but there had been no mistake about the impression he made. The only change in his appearance was that he had taken off his clerical
