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 collar, which had always looked grotesque on him. To wear it now would have been an unpleasant parody; perhaps he felt that or perhaps he didn't, but in any case his scrawny bare neck stuck at some length out of a dead-black costume. He was as limp and weedy and blue-chinned as ever. Though his shrewd eyes behind the glasses were a little shaky with liquor, he was sober in the sense that he had full possession of all his faculties — possibly too much so. He seemed upheld and blunted by the superiority of the young intellectual. He looked on us with somewhat glazed aloofness, and smiled. The short, lank black hair stuck to his forehead, as though he had been dousing his head to cool it.
Then he saw me, and I think it jolted him a little. So far as I could judge he did not recognize me; but he knew he had seen me before, and that a game was being played somewhere. I did not say anything, or he would have spotted me. It seemed best to let him wait a few minutes first. Yet the fellow had his nerve well about him.
"Sit down," H.M. said, without preamble. "You're a fine feller, now, aren't you?"
Serpos almost laughed. The wary, twisting gleam was behind his eyes again; he was cool, and almost contemptuous. "Really, old boy," he said, "do you think you can ruffle me with any such nonsense as this? Stuff It is childish. I had expected better things of you."
H.M. eyed him down his nose.
"I hear the echo of some plays-" he said vaguely, and scowled. "You goin' to act like that, son? You ain't afraid of arrest?"
"No."
"You're almost the only person in the world who ain't, then. Why not?"
"Let's get this straight," said Serpos with a cool candour. "Because it wouldn't do, that's why. It wouldn't do at all. I'm a heritage from an old friend of Charters's; his old friend's son; delicate health; nice young fellow, first misstep. And I stole only counterfeit money. Oh, no; I shan't be arrested. I shall get the sack, of course. But then I shall go on and do better for myself, for I have ingratiating manners. Understand? — I suppose I must listen to your questions, because I have no choice. But I am not going to pay any attention to them when you use such childish tricks as threats of arrest."
Now this is the sort of talk that makes you want to hit a man. And it was also a very dangerous game to play with H.M. of all people. But H.M. remained stolid.
"Well, d'ye see, the arrest part of it is rather out of my jurisdiction. But, whatever happens, you're goin' to look an awful damn fool, son."
`Stuff! Nor with that sort of talk either."
"I know, I know; but this ain't a threat. It's only a reconstruction of what happened. Look here: you worked up a disguise-and-cut-and-run scheme as fancy as any in a thriller. If you'd scooped a sackful of real money, it would 'a' been high crime; as it stands it's only comic. But that's not all. You broke down when a bogus copper only touched you on the shoulder, and in the first couple of hours of your criminal career you got shut up in a lavatory while an inspector walked off with your bag and your shirt. In short, you let yourself be bamboozled even out of counterfeit money. Your inspirin' personality may smooth things over and let people pardon you for thieving. But there's one thing that'll stay with you. I don't mind crooks, myself. I got several in my employ as it is. I don't care whether they're good Christians. But I do care whether they're good crooks."
Serpos made an assenting gesture.
"In order," he suggested, "to spare you the necessity of being a good detective? I quite see the point, of course. And I could also ask-having learned most of the story of what has happened tonight — whether, in the matter of foolish behaviour, there is much to choose between you and me?" He smiled, with ineffable calm. "Oh, no, my friend. Your attitude is very ingenious and amusing, but you must see that I am not taken in by it. Not for a minute."
Again Serpos considered.
"It's to be admitted that I made a mistake. I am not bound to explain anything to you: but I submit here that it was a reasonable mistake."
"I dunno," growled H.M., inspecting his fingers. He was very gentle. "That's the one part that'll be so hard for everyone to swallow — why you thought that slush was real money. Grantin' that you were away at the time Willoughby was nabbed, still you must have heard something about the case. You were right here. You surely didn't think that all that money belonged to Charters, and that he just brought it home casually and shoved it into his safe? Didn't you ask any questions at all? Any copper on point-duty from here to Bristol could 'a' told you what it was. Well, then? Why did it have to be you that made the bloomer?"
Serpos appeared to consider this from every angle, like a cat putting out its paw to touch something on the floor.
"Yes, I must tell you that," he said. "It is not that I knew too little about the case. The mistake was made because I knew, or thought I knew, too much about it. Perhaps you will allow me to ask Sergeant Davis a few questions?"
"Yes. Sure. Go ahead."
Davis glowered. down on Serpos, but he stood at attention again.
"Sergeant," said the latter, with a shrewd and wary eye out, "you were present at the capture of Willoughby, weren't you: when he was killed resisting arrest?"
"I was," growled the sergeant, conquering a disinclination to answer.
"Ah, good. Was anyone else captured besides Willoughby?" "No."
"But it was known or believed, was it not," pursued Serpos, with an able theatrical consciousness that he had the scene in hand, "that there was a Willoughby gang?"
` A man," said the servant obstinately, "can't design, and print, and pass the stuff all by himself. There's got to be others with him. That's all I know. Or any of us."
The Adam's apple moved up and down in Serpos's scrawny neck as he swallowed and cleared his throat delicately.
"A little study of criminology, sergeant," he observed, "wouldn't hurt your work at all. You knew Willoughby was an American, didn't you? Yes. Were you acquainted with his nick-name on the other side?"
At this point Johnson Stone sat forward in his chair His fist was held half-way in the air, as at an access of illumination, and he spoke to H.M. in an eager, throaty voice.
"Sorry to butt in right here," he said; "but I've just thought of something. Yes, indeed. Do you mind if I have that paper of mine back for a minute, to add something to it?"
Without a word H.M. picked up one of the prescription-blanks and passed it across to him: but H.M. did not take his eyes off Serpos. Serpos, who was sitting near Stone, directed a glazed look at him and turned his attention back after a brief glance at Stone's moving pencil. It seemed to me that Serpos was struggling with some inner enjoyment, which, if it had not been for the whisky which gave him his poise, might have been inner fear.
"Willoughby was called Cash-Down," Serpos resumed, "and it remained Cash-Down until it became Cash-In. He liked the ready. He kept the ready by him. It appears that he did not like banks, and he was always afraid of his associates — whoever they were. He was supposed to have a very large sum close at band. Well!" Serpos's face darkened. "I hear that they have caught Willoughby. I see a large sum of money being carefully put away with all the numbers noted. God's truth, I am not a police secretary; I am a private secretary; I am not admitted to the Eleusinian mysteries of policecraft. I supposed, and I think naturally, that they had found Willoughby's real money. I did not ask, since I hardly wanted suspicion at the beginning, and what I thought I knew I was not supposed to know at all. It was a mistake — but, I again submit, a natural mistake. And that, my friends, is all I think I need tell you."
"Does you good to get it off your chest, though, don't it?" asked H.M. The corners of his mouth were turned down. "Lemme see if there's something that don't go with this. Last night you were nabbed at Moreton Abbot railway station by somebody you thought was a real policeman. You broke down. Then you tumbled to the fact that it wasn't a real policeman. Whereupon, son, you turned nasty. If I got the story correctly, you said somethin' like, `You never came from the police. You never came from Charters or Merrivale. I know where you come from. And you know all about it.' — Uh-huh. You thought, didn't you, it was a member of the Willoughby gang hidin' you up for the money?"
Serpos shrugged his shoulders with fluent motion.
"It explains matters, doesn't it?"
"Oh, no. That's just it. It makes a contradiction. It don't explain, for instance," argued H.M., inspecting his fingers, "why you were so weepily anxious a moment before that to return and take your punishment…. But let's pass that over. You seem to know an awful lot about this whole case, my lad, that I don't see how you could have learned unless — "
"Unless?" the other prompted, with a pale smile. "Is this the old bluff? It won't go down, you know."
"I mean, you were twittin' me with all kinds o' suave digs, just a minute ago, for mismanaging my part of the business to-night."
"You mean," said Serpos satirically, "the sending of a dread Secret-Service agent to Hogenauer's at Moreton Abbot, the quest of the Compleat Burglar, and all that —? My good friend: I heard the whole conversation. I was at Charters's, you know. You could not see me, and I could not see ycu, but I heard you giving instructions to someone you addressed as Blake…"
"Sure, sure. I understand that. But how'd you know it was mismanagement? How'd you know there wasn't some political hanky-panky goin' on, with Hogenauer mixed up in it?"
Serpos's mouth was twisted ironically.
"You underrate me, I think. I suspected a long time ago that Hogenauer, poor Hogenauer, with all this talk of `flying in the air,' was merely engaged in some sort of hypnotic experiments. When I heard about his murder to-night, from an over-talkative policeman who brought me from Moreton Abbot-" Serpos's eyes were feverish with a kind of real inspiration. I believe the whisky was clearing off. "The lights. The cuff-links. The visit from Dr. Keppel-'
"That's all I wanted to know," said H.M.
There was such a heavy, dreary, bitter note in his voice, that it seemed to change the atmosphere of the room. It was like a door shut or a conclusion reached.
"That's torn it," explained H.M., with his head in his hands.
Serpos's voice went up a note or two. "It's very ingenious of you," he said with thinning sarcasm, "but you don't believe you can drag me into, this murder, do you?"
"Well… now. You don't deny you know Hogenauer?" "I had met him in this house, very briefly. I didn't know …’
H.M. peered up. "Ever visit his house, son?"
"Never."
"So," pursued H.M., "when you stole the money and cut for it, you merely spent a couple of hours puttin' on your disguise somewhere, and layin' a false trail, and ditchin' the car before you took the train at Moreton Abbot?"
"That is correct."
"But, before you pinched the money out of Charters's safe, didn't you examine it at all on the off-chance that it might be counterfeit? Didn't that ever occur to you?"
Again Serpos shrugged his shoulders. "I examined it, yes," he admitted. "But it looked quite genuine to me. I know nothing about such matters."
"And so," pursued H.M., tapping his pencil softly in measured beats on the top of the skull, "a moderately good fraud would deceive you, hey?"
"Obviously."
"In fact, you're as innocent as a babe unborn about all the higher jugglery of bogus money and the tricks of forgers?"
"Quite so."
H.M. tapped the pencil with soft beats against the skull, and then put it down.
"You're a damned liar, son," he said harshly. "One of the first things we learned about you was that, before you came to this job, you worked in a bank."