Nobody moved. It may be accounted as doubtful whether anybody could have moved. Such a sight as this had first of all to be understood.
The seconds ticked by: ten, twenty, thirty. Arthur Fane lay partly on his side and partly on his face, also without moving. The light of the lamp was reflected in patches from the polished hardwood floor.
Presently, Dr. Rich went down on one knee beside Arthur. He rolled Arthur over on his back. First he felt for a pulse at the wrist; then he took his watch out of his pocket, and held it so that the crystal almost touched Arthur's lips. No breath clouded the glass. After consulting the watch as to the time, Rich replaced it in his pocket.
"Incredible as it seems, this man is dead."
"Dead?" echoed Sharpless.
"Dead. Stabbed through the heart."
"Oh, no," said Hubert Fane. "No, no, no, no, no!"
Uncle Hubert's tone, at the moment, was merely one of frightened skepticism. His manner indicated that the world couldn't play him a dirty trick like this.
"No, really, now!" he said, as though determined to stop such nonsense at once. "This is too much. I must really protest. Get up, my dear boy! Get up and—"
"He won't hear you," said Rich, as Hubert began to chafe at one of Arthur's wrists. "I tell you he's dead."
Then Rich reached out and touched the black handle projecting from Arthur's chest. He pressed it between his fingers.
"And I'll tell you something else," he added, his color going up.
"That's not the dagger I brought to this house."
"I shouldn't touch it, if I were you," warned Sharpless. "The police always kick up a row if you mess about with the evidence. At least, they do in the stories. Don't touch it!"
"But why not?" asked Ann Browning. "After all— we know who stabbed him, don't we?"
For the first time they felt the full shock.
Vicky Fane was standing quietly a few feet away from the man she had killed. Her hands hung down at her sides. She was not looking at him, or at anything else. The sight of that witless creature, with intellect removed and eyes as dead as blue china, where formerly there had been a vital, laughing, attractive girl, was almost too much for Frank Sharpless. The grimy marks of tears still streaked her cheeks, though she showed no emotion now.
"Dr. Rich," said Sharpless, "the celebrated Dr. Frankenstein had nothing on you."
Rich put his hands to his forehead.
"Don't wake her up!" snapped Sharpless, misinterpreting the gesture. "For God's sake don't wake her up!"
"I wasn't going to wake her up, young man."
"Can she hear us?"
"No."
"But even if you don't wake her up" — Sharpless swallowed hard—"can't you do something?"
"Yes. One moment." Rich turned to Vicky. His voice was slow and heavy. "Victoria Fane, go over to the sofa. Put a pillow under your head. Lie down."
With instant obedience Vicky went to the sofa. She shuddered violently as she touched it, and Rich was after her in an instant. He put his fingers lightly on her temples; the shuddering died away, and she lay down.
"Now sleep," murmured Rich, in the voice that could influence them all. "You are yourself again, Victoria Fane. But sleep. You will not awaken until I tell you to. When you wake up, you will have forgotten everything that happened here. Now sleep. Sleep.. "
Sharpless hurried to her side. And in a moment or two he breathed something like a strangled prayer.
It was like watching a blurred image come into focus, or cold clay warmed again with humanity. Something (mind? heart? soul?) seemed to flow into her, altering even the lines of the face. Vicky Fane lay where the dummy had lain, the smudged marks of the tears incongruous on her cheeks.
Her color was back, the faint tan of health, the familiar curve of the lips. Her breathing was slow and easy, and she smiled in sleep.
"Thank.. God. If anybody ever does that to her again—"
Rich looked round.
"Captain Sharpless, has Mrs. Fane any unpleasant mental association with this sofa?" "I'll swear I don't know."
"Mr. Hubert Fane, has she any unpleasant mental association with this sofa?"
"My dear doctor, you must not ask me." For all his elegance and poise, Hubert's complexion was muddy gray under the gray-white hair. "I can scarcely imagine that an inanimate piece of furniture could so affect anybody. Does — does the girl know what has happened?"
"No," snapped Rich. "Do you?"
"I'm beginning to think I do," said Sharpless.
"Yes. And I," agreed Rich. "Somebody switched the daggers. Look here."
Again he knelt beside Arthur's body. With some difficulty, and despite an instinctive protest from everyone, he pulled the weapon out of the wound. Since the heart had stopped pumping, only a little blood followed it.
It was a knife made of very light, very thin steel, with a blade perhaps four inches long. When Rich cleaned it on a handkerchief, they saw that the blade had been painted over a dirty silver-gray. A covering of soft black rubber had been gummed round and over what was presumably a very thin handle.
Moved a little away from the light, it looked very much like the rubber dagger they had seen.
"I thought so," said Rich. "Thick rubber round the handle. And it's pretty dark by that little table. When Mrs. Fane picked it up, she felt the rubber and even her subconscious mind told her it was the same toy dagger she expected it to be. So she didn't hesitate to obey the order." He balanced the knife in his palm. "Even the weight wouldn't tell her any different. Somebody's got a lot to answer for."
"You mean-"
"I mean," said Rich, putting the knife on the floor and getting up, "that I can't be held responsible. Not this time. Someone exchanged a harmless dagger for a real one, and got Mrs. Fane to kill her husband without knowing what she was doing." He pressed a hand to his pink forehead. "It's odd. It's devilish odd. We know the murderer. But we don't know the guilty person."
There was a silence.
"But how could anybody have exchanged the daggers?" wondered Ann Browning. "Eh?"
"I said," repeated Ann in a small but clear voice, "how could anybody have exchanged the daggers?"
They all turned to look at her.
For the first time they became conscious of her as a personality, because in these events she had (they remembered) not cried out, or whimpered, or fainted, or done anything they might have expected.
She was rather pale, and she had pushed her chair farther back from Arthur's body: no more. Her slim fingers plucked at the arms of the chair.
"You see—" She stopped as though confused, but presently went on. "The last person to touch the dagger was Mr. Fane himself. Wasn't it?"
Again there was a silence.
"It was," Sharpless said abruptly.
"He was sitting there," pursued Ann, puckering up her face, "with the revolver and the dagger in his hands. It was a rubber dagger then. Because I remember him twisting it back and forth."
The memory of everyone present moved back into the past, recalling images.
"That's true," admitted Rich, with the same abruptness. "I saw him do it myself."
"Then you—" Ann looked at Rich—"told him to put the revolver and the dagger on that little table. He got up, and went to the table, and put them down, and came back here.
But not one of the rest of us has been anywhere near that table since."
The recollection was so clear, the fact so undeniable, that no one spoke. They all turned to look at the table, which was in the middle of the room at least twelve feet away from the huddled group round the easy chair.
Ann hesitated, moistening her pink lips. "Please. I don't want you to think I'm intruding, or speaking up when I shouldn't. But look.
"None of us left this semi-circle where we were standing or sitting. We stayed where we were, even when Vicky was out of the circle herself and going to the other end of the room. Dr. Rich didn't follow her: he stayed here too. We could all see each other all of the time. Nobody went near that table. None of us could have exchanged the daggers."
Once more the long pause stretched out….
"That's true!" Sharpless exploded. "It's as true as gospel!"
Rich managed a smile, a heavy, uneasy twist of a smile.
"You're quite a detective, Miss Browning," he observed, and the color rose in her face. "I can't help agreeing. It is true. And in that case…"
Ann frowned.
"Well, you see, in that case it means that somebody who wasn't in the room must have sneaked in and—"
She paused. As her eyes moved round, they rested on Hubert Fane; and her expression became frightened.
"So," observed Dr. Rich thoughtfully.
Hubert Fane had one hand on the back of a chair. He looked like a man on whom the fates are playing dirty tricks much faster and more unreasonably than any human being ever deserved.
"Please don't think—!" began Ann.
Hubert cleared his throat.
"Your delicacy, Miss Browning," he said, "fills me with ecstasy. At the same time, I. am capable of taking a bint. Madam, I did not kill my nephew. I think I can give you my solemn assurance that he was the last person in the world I wished to see dead. It is true that I was obliged to leave the room. But, apart from the fact that I was talking to a grasping bookmaker named—"
"Wait!" urged Ann.
She put her finger-tips to her forehead.
"You don't mind?" she asked Hubert.
Hubert gestured the courteous assent of a man who, privately, would like to put her across his knee and wallop her.
"You couldn't have exchanged those daggers before you went out of the room," said Ann. "Because the same thing applies to you as applies to the rest of us. You never went near that table at any time. When you were called out of the room, I remember watching you. You never left the semi-circle before you walked straight out of the room after Daisy."
"That also," agreed Sharpless, "is true."
"Sir. Madam. I thank you. But—"
"But," said Ann, "I don't see how you — oh, please! — you or anybody else could have got in here to do it afterwards. Or to do it at any time, if it comes to that."
Dr. Richard Rich appeared to be considerably taken aback by the rush with which this quiet girl had gathered up the proceedings in her own hands.
"Nobody could have got in at any time? I don't follow that."
"Well… for instance, the door."
"Yes?"
"It's almost on top of us," said Ann. "It creaks badly no matter how you try to open it. Could anyone have come in there, walked past die light clear across to that table on a bare hardwood floor, changed the daggers, and walked out again, without our seeing him?"
They envisaged this.
"No," said Sharpless. "It's impossible. Besides, I'll swear nobody did."
Rich massaged his head. "But the windows?" he suggested.
"That floor!" cried Ann. "And the drawn curtains! And-"
With a cluck of his tongue as though in realization, Sharpless strode across to the windows. As soon as he reached the section of the floor anywhere near the windows, the resulting creaks and cracks made him pause.
He looked at the white curtains, smoothly drawn and undisturbed. He pushed them aside on one window, and put his head out.
"This window," he reported, "is eight feet up from the ground. Has anybody got an electric torch?"
Hubert Fane fetched one out of a drawer in the telephone table. Sharpless switched it on, and swept its beam outside.
"Eight feet up," he said, "and there's an unmarked flower-bed underneath. Nobody even climbed up here, much less disturbed those curtains, climbed in, and got twelve or fifteen feet across hell's own squeaky floor to the table — all without being seen or heard. It's just impossible. Come and look for yourselves."
He switched off the torch. He turned round from the window and ran a hand through his hair. The tall black-and-scarlet devil seemed to have become a much bewildered and harassed young man.
"But we didn't do it," he protested.
"No." Rich's voice was sharp. "We can be certain we didn't do it. Any of us. We can — what's the word? — give each other an alibi."
"But somebody changed the daggers!"
"How?" asked Ann.
"You don't suppose—" Sharpless hesitated—"you don't suppose Fane did it himself?"
"When," inquired Rich, "he knew he was going to he stabbed with it? And, in fact, insisted on this when I wanted to stop the experiment?"
They looked at each other.
Rich fastened the button of his shabby dinner jacket, and squared his shoulders. Though he seemed the most disquieted person there, you would also have said that he was the most resolute.
"I'm afraid we can't stop here arguing," he dedared. "Whether we like it or not, we've got to call in the police. I suggest that we delegate one of us to ring up now, and try to explain what happened. It won't be easy."
" I'll ring the police, if you like," offered Ann Browning.
Again they turned to stare at her, and she lowered her eyes.
"You see," she explained hesitantly, "I–I live in Cheltenham. But I work in Gloucester. I'm the Chief Constable's, Colonel Race's, private secretary. I know a little about these things, because Colonel Race sometimes takes me along with him. He says I can get things out of the women."
She made a deprecating grimace with her lips.
"So I thought perhaps if I could get in touch with Colonel Race himself, it might help. But still, maybe it would be better if a man did it. Do you think so?"
Rich regarded her with deepening interest. Even Frank Sharpless pricked up his ears, as though he had never noticed the girl before. Hubert Fane's expression was one of mild pride.
"My dear young lady," Rich told her with some fervor, "the job is yours. There's the telephone. Go to it. But what in the name of sanity are you going to tell them?"
Ann bit her lip.
"I don't know," she confessed. "It may be rather nasty for us. Especially if they call in Scotland Yard: as they probably will, because Colonel Race won't like his own people making awkward situations here. But there you are. You see, I'm certain none of us did it. But-"
It was Sharpless who finished this for her. "But," he said rather wildly, "you're just as sure about the other thing. So am I. I've got eyes. I've got ears. I'll take my Bible oath, I’ll swear to my dying day, that nobody could have got in here either by the windows or by the door!"
And, as a matter of fact, he was perfectly right.