Seeing is Believing

'My God,' the chief inspector said, 'the fool's tried it again,'

Courtney could never afterwards remember which of them reached the door first. He thought it was H.M., but this seemed impossible for so ungainly a bulk. He knew that they all surged round it, and got wedged in the doorway, before they sorted themselves out.

Then, with Masters in the lead, they all ran for the stairs.

The bare hall upstairs, its hardwood floor gleaming, contained three figures. One was Frank Sharpless, standing back against the wall and staring. On the floor, lying sideways, flapping and kicking, lay a figure that cried out with shrill moaning protests as Inspector Agnew bent over it. Courtney looked, and could not believe his eyes.

Masters, hurrying down the hall, joined that fighting group. Masters drew something from his pocket.

He looked back at Ann, with red-faced grimness.

'Excuse the handcuffs, miss,' he said, as he snapped the catches round Hubert Fane's wrists. 'But Mr. Hubert Fane is a killer by instinct as well as necessity, so we thought we'd better not take any chances.'

Twenty

It was just a week later, the fine mellow evening of September third, when many persons were gathered in that same back drawing room.

Vicky Fane was there, now restored to radiant health. Frank Sharpless was there. Ann Browning was there, with Courtney sitting on the arm of her chair. Dr. Richard Rich occupied a modest corner. Dr. Nithsdale, who had dropped in to see Vicky and pronounced her fit for anything, occupied a less modest corner.

Finally, H.M. was there.

'Y’see,' said H.M., assuming his stuffed position with finger at temple because he was proudly conscious of his own importance, and preening it in the chair, 'the truest word in this case was spoken by accident.' He looked at Ann. 'You spoke it.'

'I did?'

'Yes. You said it would be pretty awful if somebody we thought figured in one role really figured in exactly the opposite role. Remember?'

'Yes; but-'

H.M. looked at Vicky.

'You, ma'am, thought that Arthur Fane was a murderer and Hubert Fane was a blackmailer. Actually, it was just the other way round. Hubert was the murderer and Arthur the blackmailer. Hubert had killed Polly Allen; and Arthur, who knew it, was makin' a very good thing out of it. That's the whole secret of this case; and as far as I’m concerned, its only novelty.' He crossed his knees.

'Y'see, ma'am, your knowledge that your husband was a murderer was the 'admitted' fact. 'Sure. But who admitted it?

'If this were all written down and traced back, you'd find that there was only one source for all the details about Arthur: Hubert himself. You found a handkerchief in a chair. You heard Arthur, in his sleep, mumblin' some words about the murder of Polly Allen. It was on his conscience, all right; but not in the way you thought it was. You jumped to the conclusion, as most women would, that he was guilty. You went to Hubert. And Hubert told you as fine a little ghost-story as he ever devised.'

Vicky nodded. A shadow was on her face.

H.M. lit one of his offensive cigars without apologizing.

'Unfortunately, we — Masters and I — didn't know what you knew, or thought you knew, until you told us all about it on that Sunday afternoon. If we'd been able to pool our information beforehand, we'd have nabbed Master Hubert even faster than we did. When we heard, that tore it.

'Y'see, most people thought Hubert was a wealthy man. Sharpless thought so. Rich thought so. Masters thought so. And the joker in the pack is that he teas a wealthy man.

'What led you and your husband astray at the be-ginnin' was one little fact. Hubert Fane was mean. Just ordinary, plain, miserly mean. He's the sort of person — we all know 'em — who couldn't put his hand in his pocket to pay for a round of drinks if his life depended on it; and who'd think nothin' of charmingly sponging off relatives by living with 'em all year, when all the time he could buy 'em out ten times over.

'Charming people these are, mostly. But I group 'em with my own late uncle under the general category of lice.

'Now, you thought Hubert was a blackmailer. Whereas Masters and I were all at sea simply because, burn me, we did know the facts!

'Last Sunday afternoon, Masters came round to me with a lot of accumulated facts. With the assistance of the bank, he'd looked up the financial standing of everybody in this case; and, as he said, he found absolutely nothing to surprise or help us in any way. In other words, Hubert was just what he pretended to be: a rich man.

'But I didn't at all like die statement of Arthur's financial position.

'What did we know? Six months ago, Arthur was so flat broke and in debt that he had to cash in on his life insurance. But what happened? He got it back later. And what else? All of a sudden, streams of cash were runnin' into Arthur's account — into the current account, where he could use 'em to pay debts — and by the middle of August his books were all straight again.'

Again H.M. peered over his spectacles at Vicky. He chewed at the end of his black cigar.

'We then talked to you. You poured out the details of how Arthur had killed Polly Allen (details supplied by Hubert alone); and you told us how Hubert was a penniless blackmailer who'd been bleedin' Arthur in a mild, gentlemanly way.

'And, I repeat, that tore it. I saw how the whole situation had been put the wrong way round. If Hubert himself was the murderer, and Arthur the blackmailer, that made everything fit together with a wallop. It supplied the thing that had bothered me like blazes: motive.'

Vicky had a wrinkle between her brows. She made several false starts before she managed to speak.

'Then Arthur,' she said hesitantly, 'never…?'

'Played the rip?' said H.M. 'No. He was a crook financially. But he was a strictly faithful husband. He said, and believed it himself, that there wasn't a happier couple in England than himself and his wife.'

Vicky put her hands over her eyes.

H.M. looked uncomfortable.

'But maybe,' he went on, puffing out a cloud of poisonous smoke, 'I'd better take the story from the beginning.

'Now, I had my eye on Uncle Hubert from the start. Maybe he reminded me of a certain blighter I once knew years ago. But never mind that. The closer you looked at him, the fishier everything about him seemed.

'For instance, he liked to play the part of the paternal uncle, the father of his female friends, the 'dear old gentleman' who had only benevolent advice for young ladies. But he wasn't old, unless you're young enough to consider the middle-fifties old. And what did we hear about him from Dr. Rich, the man who'd been his doctor and ought to know?'

H.M. craned his neck round and peered at Rich, who was gloomily regarding the floor.

'Do you remember savin', son, that you could have understood it very well if the charge of hypnotizing a woman in order to seduce her had been made against Hubert Fane?'

'I do,' said Rich.

'And you consider that a pretty fair estimate of his character?' 'I did and do.'

'Uh-huh. Well, everything about Hubert Fane: the way he looked, the way he dressed, the way he acted: all indicated that he was a real sizzler. He liked his women young, the younger the better. He liked 'em delicate and fragile. Like Polly Allen, for instance. Or like-'

'Were you looking at me?' inquired Ann, as H.M. peered so strongly and obviously in her direction that she