Seeing is Believing

Holding the pin in his mouth, H.M. reached into his pocket and took out a box of matches. Squinting, he held the pin by the head in his left hand, and carefully moved the match-flame over it from end to end.

'I hope our friend Rich,' he grunted, 'sterilized that pin before he used it on Mrs. Fane?'

'He didn't, that I remember,' said Ann.

'So? Careless. And blinkin' dangerous too. Now watch closely, and the old man'll give you a demonstration.'

Holding his left forearm against his leg so that the skin was taut, H.M. searched for a place in the upper side of the forearm. He set the point of the pin there, and with a quick push drove it to the head in his arm.

Everyone had instinctively stiffened in protest. It formed a grotesque contrast: the late afternoon sunshine, the quiet green lawn with the white clock-golf numerals, and the push that drove steel into flesh.

'Brr!' said Ann, moving her shoulders. 'But you didn't jump?'

'No, my wench. Because it didn't hurt, I didn't even feel it.'

Masters regarded him incredulously.

'True, son,' H.M. assured him. 'Just a medical fact, like hypnotism. This is an old parlor trick, well known to conjurors and—'

He paused, blinking. Then his eyes grew fixed as he looked into vacancy, and a sniff rumbled through his nose. An idea seemed to be stirring with considerable effect. In the same dream he stretched out his right hand, moving the fingers as though pressing something. But, as the others clamored at him, he woke up.

'No!' he snapped. 'Burn it all, I'm no Yogi. Anybody can do this. You can do it yourselves, if you choose a part of the arm where you don't hit a vein or an artery, make sure the skin is firm, and drive it in firmly.' He plucked out the pin, which was followed by not a speck of blood. 'Like to try it?'

'No, thanks,' shivered Ann.

'Let me have a go,' requested Courtney.

He was not at all easy about this. But Ann's eyes were on him, and he tried not to hesitate. Baring his left arm to the elbow, he took the pin (which H.M. insisted on sterilizing again), set it to his arm, gritted his teeth, and…

'Ow!' he yelled, bouncing as though an adder had bitten him.

Nor was he soothed by H.M.'s manifest glee.

'I knew I was goin' to crack your poker-face sooner or later,' declared H.M. Then his tone changed. 'You didn't work it,' he explained patiently, 'because you. were instinctively afraid of hurtin' yourself. You jabbed it in with a little bit of a push to see if you would feel it, and so of course you did. That's not the way, son. Your subconscious—'

'Everything in this ruddy case,' said Masters, 'is subconscious. Look here, sir: this trick really works?'

'Oh, son, of course it does. You saw me do it. Wants practice and strength of mind, naturally.'

Masters eyed him.

'You're full of tricks, aren't you?'

'He is,' said Courtney, plucking the pin from a smarting arm. 'If you were taking down his memoirs, Chief Inspector, you'd realize that that's all he ever thinks about.'

H.M. looked pleased.

'I've got a theory,' Courtney pursued, 'that it's the explanation of how he catches murderers. His mind works like theirs.'

'But the point is,' insisted Masters, sweeping this aside, 'that this thing is practical and Mrs. Fane could have been shamming. Hold on, though! It was Dr. Rich who worked that game. Does that mean he was in cahoots with her?'

'No, no, no, no, no!' growled H.M. 'It doesn't mean Mrs. Fane was shamming, and it doesn't mean Rich was in cahoots with her. Rich knew very well she wasn't shamming—'

'Oh?' inquired Masters skeptically.

'— or he wouldn't have asked her certain questions later, under hypnosis, that I'm goin' to tell you about in a minute. But this gal here—' he pointed at Ann— 'was doubtful. So Rich took the opportunity of getting rid of her quickly by a trick. That's all.'

Masters took out his notebook. He balanced it on his knee. He shot back his shirt-cuffs, to make plain that his words would be careful and weighty.

'Now listen to me for a minute, sir. You yourself admit that Mrs. Fane is the only person who could be guilty. Now don't you?'

'According to the evidence, yes.'

'Just so. And she could have shammed being hypnotized, couldn't she?'

'I s'pose so.'

'In a way that could have deceived even Dr. Rich himself? Just so!' Masters was warming up again. 'It'd take a thundering good piece of acting, granted. But we've met these good actresses before. Remember Glenda Darworth? And Janet Derwent? And Hilary Keen?

'She could have switched the daggers, right enough. The next question is: what happened to the rubber dagger afterwards? She 'slipped it in her sleeve,' you suggest. But it didn't stay there. Where is the rubber dagger, then? Agnew tells me he made a thorough search of that back sitting room, but he didn't find it.'

'No,' said H.M. disconsolately, 'I found it.'

'You found it?'

H.M. reached into his trousers pocket. He took out the rubber dagger, flimsy and tawdry-looking against sunlight, its scratched silver paint showing shreds and patches of darker rubber beneath. He bent it back and forth.

'Where did you find that thing, sir?'

'In the sofa. Poked down between the bottom and back cushions, out of sight. On the same sofa where Mrs. Fane was lyin' afterwards, presumably hypnotized.'

The ensuing pause, as they all envisaged Vicky Fane lying there, was not more sinister than Masters' rather affable voice.

'You don't tell me now?' inquired the chief inspector, taking the dagger from H.M. and examining it. 'And when did you find it there?' 'Last night.'

'Last night? Then why in blazes couldn't you have said something about it?'

H.M. scratched the side of his nose.

'For the same reason I'm not awful keen on showing it now. Masters, the idea is a beauty. I admit that. Woman gets herself (apparently) hypnotized. Then polishes off her husband. And everybody thinks, as you say, that the murderer is the only person who can't possibly be guilty.'

'The idea,' breathed Ann, 'is horrid and fascinating at the same time. It would be rather awful, wouldn't it, if somebody we thought figured in one role really figured in exactly the opposite role?'

Though H.M. showed a passing gleam of interest in this, turning round to look at her, he addressed Masters again.

'Ah the evidence shouts belief. Oh, my eye, doesn't it? The plot is perfect. The motive is there. The evidence is strong. There's only just one little difficulty about it.'

'What's that?'

'It ain't true,' said H.M.

Masters was commencing to lose his temper.

'What's the good of saying that, sir? When you yourself will admit—'

'This feller,' interrupted H.M., pointing at Courtney, 'was out on the balcony of Mrs. Fane's bedroom between the time Frank Sharpless carried her up there almost to the time she was waked up out of her sleep. Now listen to what he has to say; and then go and eat worms.'

Phil Courtney was hotly uncomfortable. Ann's eyes flashed round to his, startled: he avoided them, but he retained the memory of them while he told his story.

He remembered how H.M. had dragged the facts out of him last night, standing in the moonlight in front of Fane's house, with the shadows of the elms against the sky. It sounded, he thought (or at least it must sound to Ann) like the tale of a prowler and a spy. Yet for Vicky Fane's sake he was glad to tell it, and very quick to tell it.