# The Haverfordian/Volume 48/The Murder in Number Four

The Murder in Number Four
Further Adventures of Bencolin and Sir John Landervorne
DURING the night run between Dieppe and Paris, on a haunted train called The Blue Arrow, there was murder done. Six passengers in the first-class carriage saw the ghost; one other passenger and the train guard failed to see it, which was why they decided the thing was a ghost. And the dead man lay between the seats of an empty compartment, his head propped up against the opposite door and his face shining goggle-eyed in the dull blue light. He had been strangled.
This Blue Arrow has an evil name. At twelve o’clock the channel boat leaves New Haven. With good weather, it arrives at Dieppe about three A. M. On a wintry night of sleet and dull-foamed waves it is the atmosphere for ghosts. The great echoing customs shed, hollow with steam and the bumping of trunks, the bleary lamps, the bedraggled passengers filing silently up the gangplank, set an imagination running to things weird. Sickness, loss of sleep, the bobbing eerie boat floundering in against the pier, had made a wan crew of these eight people on the night of December 18th. Thus, after a six-hour crossing on which the vessel several times lost the Dieppe light and staggered helpless in the gale, they boarded The Blue Arrow for Paris.
Superstitious porters have many tales about this train. Its engine is misshapen, and sometimes there rides in the cab a blind driver named Death. Along the moon-lit waste people have been ground under the wheels, with no sound save a faint cry and a hiss of blood on the firebox. On this run, too, there was once a fearful wreck; they say that on some nights, when you pass the place, you can see the dead men peering over the ​edge of the embankment, with their smashed foreheads, and lanterns hanging from their teeth.
The testimony of eight witnesses was to be had about the tragedy, on this night of December 18th when the murder was committed. Nobody had particularly noticed the victim; he travelled alone, and in the boat he had sat in a corner of the lounge with this hat pulled over his eyes, speaking to none of them. Sir John Landervorne, on his way to Paris to see his old friend M. Henri Bencolin, had asked this mysterious person what time the Blue Arrow arrived there, but he received only a shrug. Mr. Septimus Depping, another Englishman, had asked him for a match; the stranger merely muttered, “Je ne parle pas anglais.” Miss Brunhilde Mertz, militant feminist, clubwoman, and tourist from the United States of America, had tried to engage him in conversation about the inestimable advantages of prohibition (as she did with everybody), and had been highly incensed when he merely turned his back.
On the Blue Arrow, he went into a compartment by himself and pulled the door closed. He had not changed the blue night-lamps; those who passed in the corridor could see his back as he sat staring out of the window. The guard had got his ticket from his skinny outthrust hand while his back was turned. Even during the examination of passports before they boarded the train, although Miss Brunhilde Mertz had earnestly tried to look over his shoulder, nothing was seen. Then there was a dispute in the customs shed, because Miss Mertz shrilly refused to open her trunk (“Do you think I’m going to let that nosey man look at my underwear?”) until, after she had shrieked “No key! No key!” in ever increasing volume, with the idea that the louder she yelled in English the more easily would she be understood, the weary inspector merely sighed and passed her. ​Under cover of this disturbance, the dark man disappeared into the train.
Now here occurs a random bit of information of which nobody made much. Two of the passengers professed to behold something. These two were M. Canard, one of the most fiery of the French journalists, and his companion, Mademoiselle Lulu, who played a harp. They said that by one pale light on the edge of the pier, they had seen a man standing motionless at the line of the smoky whitish water. He had not been on the boat. He merely stood there, his cloak blown around him, leaning on a cane, and one of his hands clasped over the cane held a cigarette. The next moment he vanished, almost as though he had jumped into the water.
In the train, the midmost compartment was occupied by the man who was to die. That was number four. In number one were M. Canard and Mademoiselle Lulu. In number two, Mr. Septimus Depping and Miss Brunhilde Mertz. Number three was vacant. In number five, Sir John Landervorne. In number six, Villeford, the proprietor of a café in Montmarte of not too good reputation. In number seven Mr. Charles Woodcock, a traveling salesman from America. Number eight was vacant.
A drowsy hush settled on the train when it started, a drugged chill of spirits and bodies, for the heating system would not work. The blue night-lamps flickered a little in the draughty corridor. At one end of this corridor, by the door, stood Si John Landervorne, tall and gray, leaning against the railing and smoking. The train swayed ever so little in a creaking rush: that was the only noise. At the other end of the corridor, from the second of the two doors opening from the car on that side, appeared the train-guard.
Somebody screamed. It was Mademoiselle Lulu. She had had an altercation with M. Canard, and in ​tearful dignity she had swept out of compartment number one and planted herself in the vacant one, number three. Her cry was dreary and chilling in that cold place, as though produced by nightmare; for she had seen a face pressed against the glass of the door giving on the corridor, a bearded face which looked as though it had its nose chopped off. It disappeared in an instant; she put her head against the cushions in terror.
Someone else gave an exclamation. When everyone came tumbling into the corridor, it developed that the face had looked in at every compartment, as the testimony of witnesses showed later. Yet neither Sir John Landervorne, who had been standing at one end o the corridor, nor the train guard, who stood at the other, had seen anybody there, though, at the moment Mademoiselle Lulu cried out, they were looking at each other from opposite ends of the car.
Then Miss Brunhilde Mertz, while they all stood out there shivering, happened to glance into compartment number four. They saw the dark man stretched out between the seats, and he did not move. Then, while they looked at each other with that sinking panic of horror piled on horror, Sir John tried to open the door. It had been bolted on the inside.
Saulomon, the train guard, pulled the emergency cord. With the train stopped on a dismal waste five miles from Dieppe, they investigated. They went round to the other side of the train; it had no door there, but three windows set level together. One of these windows was down halfway, but secured there by its snap; it would go no further. The others were up and locked.
When the corridor door had been pried open, the occupant of compartment four was found with face discolored by strangulation, eyes blood-filled and staring out, the bruises of thick hands on his throat. He was dead.
​Now this man had been seen entering the train, he had been seen sitting at the window, and Saulomon had collected his ticket some ten minutes before. The door was not bolted then. But the door was bolted now, and no murderer could have gone through that door. Nor could a murderer have come through the window. One of the windows was down some inches, but no human being could have squeezed thorugh that space, even if anyone could have reached the window—for it was twelve feet from the ground, and the idea of a murderer clinging to the side of a train was impossible. The other windows were locked.
Two days later, the Parisian police discovered the murdered man’s identity. He was traveling under a forged passport as a lawyer from Marseilles; his real name was Mercier, and he was probably the deftest diamond-smuggler in Europe.
II
There was a conference of puzzled people in the office of M. Villon, he of the great, bald mechanical head and small body, who may be remembered as having worked with M. Henri Bencolin in the LaGarde murder case. He had never forgiven Bencolin for tricking him into smoking the cigarette which held the identity of the woman spy, Sylvie St. Marie; but that was all meaningless ancient history now. For M. le Comte de Villon was now promoted to the position of juge d’ instruction, the most dreaded police official in France, whose cross-examination of suspects is a process which even American third-degree experts are forced to admire. And now Bencolin was away; for some months he had been in the United States on a police mission. Villon was in sole charge of the Blue Arrow mystery; very spiteful in his quiet, ponderous way, with his pin-point eyes and big flabby hands.
​He sat behind his broad desk, blinking slowly. With him were Sir John Landervorne and Saulomon, the train guard, each bright-featured under a reading-lamp in the gloom of the great room.
“It is curious,” Villon said slowly to Sir John, “that you should be coming to France to see M. Bencolin, monsieur. He has been away some time. Surely you would know of that?”
Sir John was little grayer, a little more irascible; the rust had got into his voice and the rime on his features. He seemed to be made of wire and iron, gaunt in the leather chair, and the sharp cheekbones threw odd shadows up over his eyes.
“See here,” he said, “I have had the honor to be associated with the French police many times, my dear sir. I was with Bencolin when he dug the truth out of that Fragneau stabbing in England, and the Darworth business, too. I have yet to be a suspect myself. . . . It’s rather a shame Bencolin isn’t here now. Would you accept him as a character witness?”
Villon muttered, “Bah! Bungler!” under his breath, and shifted, and played with a penholder. But he continued smoothly, “Monsieur, this is not a question of character witnesses. You must realize that both you and M. Saulomon here tell an extraordinary story. You say that you were at opposite ends of this corridor, and that neither of you saw a person there who was plainly seen by six people in the various compartments.” He spread out his hands.
Saulomon, who was tall, smooth-shaven, and rather threadbare, ill-at-ease in Villon’s ponderous presence, made a protesting gesture.
“M. le Comte,” he remarked, “‘is justified in ⟨calling⟩ it extraordinary. But it is true. I swear it is true! I do not lie, I. For ten years I have served—”
“Oh, let him talk! It’s true enough,” Sir John ​said irritably.
“Nothing? You saw nothing? Come, now, my friend—the dim light, the possibility that you might have looked away?—eh?”’
“Nothing! The light was clear enough for me to see this man Saulomon at the other end. I wasn’t looking away, because I was waiting for him to get my ticket.”
“But, if I may ask, what were you doing in the corridor?”
“Great God! Can’t a man step out for a cigar if he likes?”
“You could have smoked in your compartment, if I may mention it. Peste, but no matter! You could not have mistaken each other, possibly?”
“No, we could not. Both of us are over six feet; I have a beard, but it isn’t black, and neither of us went near the compartments at the time this woman screamed. You want a small man with his nose chopped off. But why concentrate here? If I may mention it, why not discover how the person who killed this fellow Merc er killed him anyway? I had only been standing in the corridor five minutes or so. How did the murderer get in and out?”
“He didn’t go through a bolted door,” said Villon, smiling. “He must, therefore, have come through the window.”
“Wriggling a normal body through five or six inches of space while the train was in motion?”
“Well, he might have been a very small man.”
“A dwarf, yes. Where does your dwarf come from? And how is he able to strangle a man?”
“Why—from the roof of the carriage, possibly. They do it frequently in the American moving pictures.” Villon’s face was a strange caricature of an intelligent man being stupid; the dull-smiling lips and suspicious eyes strikingly naive. For Villon was baffled, and he ​was maintaining anything he could think of. Sir John could hardly restrain his bubbling anger, but he asked:
“And the motive for this crime? This phenomenal dwar. who slides down from train-roofs, strangles a large man, walks through a bolted door without disturbing the bolt, and parades up and down the corridor to show his beard and his chopped-off nose—what’s his motive, if any?”
“His motive,” answered Villon with sudden ringing clearness, “was robbery. I have examined the customs officer who looked at the man Mercier’s passport. Mercier took his credentials out of a large wallet. The officer saw that the wallet was filled with thousand-franc notes. When the body was examined, the wallet was empty.”
Villon got up from the desk. His big head seemed to drag down the weight of his body, and he was peering at them shaggily.
“Messieurs, I don’t suspect you. Don’t be under a misapprehension. I want to find out who knew this Mercier, and therefore I must see everybody. The other passengers are coming here tonight.” He touched a bell. “No, be still please.”
Then Villon went over to the window. Lights were strung over the naked city, following the dark curve of the river and the toy bustle on the Pont Alexandre. He shivered. For a while there was silence. Villon’s next remark startled them with its dreary frankness.
“I must confess to failure. I do not seem to handle things the way Bencolin did. He saw to everything. But I’m only human; I have too much work! Work, work, nothing else, and I’m only human, yes—I should have caught ⟨this⟩ man Mercier. I didn’t set the nets, and I should have done so. We were on the watch for him. He had diamonds. This will cost me my position, I fear, messieurs. . .
​“Bien, you shall know everything,” Villon continued with sudden doleful helplessness. “Mercier had been in America. He had smuggled six uncut diamonds of great value past the English authorities; he arrived at Southampton two weeks ago on the liner Majestic. Scotland Yard lost track of him, but we were warned to watch the channel ports. He had a confederate. It is not known where this confederate is now; it is not known whether the confederate is man or woman. We do not even know whether Mercier was carrying the diamonds, or whether he disposed of them in England, but this latter is considered unlikely. They were not on his person when he was killed, nor were they in his hand-luggage. And you should know this. The tide of diamond-smuggling has turned to Europe now; the United States has become so rigorous that it is impossible for even the cleverest of them—like Mercier—to do it safely. I did not set the nets. It will cost me my position.”
Slowly Villon turned round.
“A few things only are to be known as possible clues. The compartment has been tested for finger-prints, both on the glass of doors and windows, and the woodwork near the windows. The only finger-prints are those of Mercier. His luggage, consisting of a small portmanteau, was found rifled and scattered near the station; it had not been carried into the train. Do you make anything of that? Well, I will go on. Sir John, you were the first to examine Mercier after the murder. Did he wear a beard?”
“Why, yes—a brown beard. It was—”
Saulomon abruptly lifted his head.
“But that is—are you sure, monsieur?” he demanded. “I recall distinctly that the man in compartment four had no beard when I took his ticket.”
“Exactly!” Villon cried. “And he had no beard when ​he was before the passport examiner; the passport picture shows a clean-shaven face. But when he was taken to the morgue after the murder, he was bearded. The attendant doctor discovered that the beard was false. It had been hurriedly put on with spirit-gum between the time he left the passport examiner and the time he entered the train. Why?”
After a lengthy silence Sir John observed, “He might have been intending to meet somebody in Paris—” Then he stopped, and began drumming on the chairarms.
Villon went to the desk and leafed through some papers.
“Here are our reports. We had six people on that train, aside from yourselves. Four of them we may eliminate as having no probable connection with this affair. They are useful only as corroborating the evidence. With M. Canard I am personally acquainted; in fact, I may say that I am one of his closest friends. He had never before set eyes on this man Mercier, nor had his petite amie, Mademoiselle Lulu. M. Villefranche and Mr. Woodcock, the American salesman, you yourself have eliminated, Monsieur Landervorne. As you will see by the records, they occupied compartments where they were under your eye the whole journey until the time of the murder—and we shall be forced to accept you as a reputable witness. Besides, thorough inquiry nets no possible connection between either of them and Mercier, or our agents would have discovered it. But, by a curious coincidence, both Mr. Septimus Depping, the Englishman, and Miss Brunhilde Mertz, the American lady, had seen Mercier before; they must have seen him. All three of them travelled to England on the Majestic two weeks before.” He picked up two typewritten sheets. “Here are their records. With your permission, I will read:
​“Depping, Septimus. R., Loughborough Road, Brixton, London. Business; jeweller, Bond Street, London. Age, 50 years, appears in comfortable circumstances. Recently returned from the United States. In Paris now on business for firm of Depping & Davis. Occupied compartment number two with Miss Mertz. Testimony: ‘I was asleep most of the time, when I could, because the woman kept talking a lot of damned drivel about women’s rights, and poked me in the ribs with an umbrella when I dozed off. Once I went out to see whether I could get a drink; that was shortly after the train started, and about ten minutes before we saw the man look in the window. I ⟨couldn’t⟩ get the drink. Yes, I saw the man look in the window, but not very well; I was sleepy. I don’t remember the time. All I remember was that that asinine woman talked loud enough to wake the dead, and complained about everything, and said the American trains were comfortable and much faster than anything she’s seen over here. Address in Paris, Hotel Albert ler, rue Lafayette.”
“Mertz, Brunhilde Nation. R., Jinksburg, Missouri, U.S.A. Author of ‘Woman, the Dominant Sex,’ ‘What Europe Owes to Uncle Sam.’ Age stated as none of our business. Touring the continent for the purpose of lecturing about it in America. Testimony: ‘It’s a pity you can’t ride on a train in this abominable country without getting murdered! And such service! Did you ever hear of the checking system for baggage?’ Examining magistrate: ‘Madame will pardon me if I ask her to confine herself to the essential facts?’ Witness: ‘Well, if that isn’t essential, I’d like to know what is—such cheek!—I want you to know I’m an American citizen, and you can’t bully me, young man, or our ambassador will—’ Examining magistrate: ‘Madame, I beg of you—’ ‘Well, what do you want to know? I didn’t kill the man; I sat right in my compartment the whole time. Certainly I saw the measly, stupid little rat’s face that looked in. . .’”
​“And so on,” said Villon, putting down the paper. “Miss Mertz was a somewhat difficult witness, as you will perceive. That is all.”
He sat down. In the stillness his chair creaked. Taxis hooted along the quai below. Leaning forward, Villon rested his head on his clasped hands.
“It would almost make one think wild things,” Saulomon said in a low voice. “If you were aboard The Blue Arrow, night after night, you would feel it. Thieves, murderers, ghouls, ride it, streams of them, and we don’t know them; we hardly see them—in the mist. But their evil remains, like a draught out of a cellar.” He looked up suddenly. The sharp features, the long, powerful hands, the eyes of a mystic, made him incongruous in his rôle. But in the next instant stolidity closed over him, and he stared down at the floor.
It was as though the imagination of all three, focused on a weird train and a strangler’s hands, brought a little of the blue mystery of it into that room. A sense of remoteness added to their feeling of nearness to a dead man in a false beard—which somehow made it all the more horrible. A sudden noise would have startled them. They were looking at murder, through the distorted magnifying-glass of an eye witness.
III
It was some moments later that Miss Brunhilde Mertz arrived, escorted by Mr. Septimus Depping. They sat in chairs so that a semi-circle was formed round Villon’s desk. Miss Mertz leaned forward, a heavy stuffed woman, staring down over the icy bulges of her figure through glasses which made her eyes terrifying in size; she carried her gray hair like a war-banner, and spoke with the baffled ferocity of a saint who knows he is right but can convince nobody. A hat resembling ​a duck under full sail rode aggressively over one eye. Mr. Depping, on the other hand, was ⟨uncomfortable⟩; he fidgeted, polished his monocle, stroked his ruddy face, smoothed at the creases of the immaculate trousers on fat legs.
“Er—well?” said Mr. Depping.
“—and furthermore,” said Miss Mertz, “if you think you can bullyrag me, I want to tell you you’ve got another think coming!” She shook her finger, and the duck wagged ominously. “The very idea of this outrage, the very idea! Now, none of your parleyvooing on me, sir; you speak English. Everybody ought to speak English over here; the idea of this foolish talk, widdgy-widdgy, and waving your hands, like a lot of crazy people! It isn’t natural, I say! And—”
“Madame,” said Villon, rather awed; he stumbled, and added deftly: “Mademoiselle, of course!—I do not wish to offend you. We are merely trying to get at the truth of this matter, you see. Just a few questions.”
“Questions! Bah! If you were half a police force you would have solved this thing long ago. The idea!”
“Perhaps mademoiselle has some ideas?” Villon asked politely.
“I have found the murderer,” said Miss Mertz.
There was such an abrupt and appalled silence that Miss Mertz enjoyed the full savor of it before she went on. Then she became theatrical. Flustered, pompous, with glasses and hat coming askew at the same moment, she got up.
“Let a real intelligent person show you how to act, you slow pokes!” she cried. “I want to tell you, if you had more people from the good old U. S. A. around, you’d soon know how to handle these things—wouldn’t they, Depping?”
“Er—of course,” said Mr. Depping.
“Now I'll tell you how I did it. I was coming down ​the elevator in the lobby at the Ambassador tonight and right over by the door that runs into a little alcove, I saw a man sitting, and I knew who it was. It was the same one who looked in the compartment at us on the train; I’d swear to it on a stack of Bibles. Well, I knew what to do, and I didn’t waste any time. I got my porter, and he got a policeman. The porter speaks English, and I told ’em what to do. You never can tell what they’ll do against Americans in these foreign cities; if we jumped on the man, he might start a rumpus, and maybe we’d get a knife in us, the way they do in these foreign cities. So I just had the porter call him in the corridor that runs out to the street right by the hotel. They jumped on him, and stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth so he couldn’t yell for his friends and maybe get me killed; and I told the policeman I’d be responsible—to bring him right around here with us, and I’d present you with the murderer.” Triumphant and breathless, she pointed toward the door. “They’ve got him right out there now, and your flunkies all round here are trying to keep him quiet.”
Villon rose heavily, as though lifted by a sort of slow explosion. His mouth was partly open, and he merely stared. Depping was fumbling to adjust his monocle.
“Bring him in!” shrilled Miss Mertz.
Everybody in the room scrambled up, turning a hodge-podge of astonished faces. An apologetic agent de police escorted through the door a very quiet little figure, who was spitting out a handkerchief with gurgles of disgust.
Villon bawled, “Lights! Turn them on over by the door!” When the lights came on, Villon’s mouth opened still further. The prisoner gently ⟨disengaged⟩ his arms from the grasp of the policemen. He stood looking over the group slowly and sardonically—a small man, whose lips were pursed mockingly under ​his pointed black beard, eyebrows raised in quiet amusement. His careful evening dress was slightly rumpled under the long cape, and he held a silk hat under his arm.
“Oh, my God,” Villon said slowly and tonelessly.
“Mademoiselle,” explained the stranger, “is not oversupplied with brains.”
“Brains? Brains?” cried Miss Mertz, glaring around her at the group. “What do you mean, brains? Do you know who I am?”
“Why, naturally,” the stranger replied, smiling. “If I may be so bold as to say so, you are the meddling shrew who has nearly ruined a somewhat important piece of work, and I, mademoiselle, am Bencolin, the prefect of police of Paris.”
IV
Bencolin went over to the desk. He put down his hat, removed his opera cloak, and put that beside it; then he pulled off his white gloves—quietly, in perfect stillness. Villon had not moved.
The prefect of police faced them, his finger-tips spread out on the desk. Under the light of the hanging lamp his head was sharply outlined, with the glossy black hair graying at the temples and parted in the middle; the pouches under the quizzical black eyes, and the wrinkles around them; high hooked nose; curling moustache and short pointed beard—with Bencolin, the caricaturists had always a chance for Mephistopheles.
“I am sorry that I have had to resort to this deception,” he said. You noticed not a little of the aristocrat in the back-thrown head, the slow, graceful speech, the faint and dominant contempt with which he faced Miss Mertz. “I have been in France for several days, but few people knew it. I was not pre​pared to have my presence smashed in on you in such an abrupt fashion, but I had no choice.” He smiled suddenly, and exhibited the gag he still held. “Chiefly, my apologies go to M. Villon. But since I am here, I must make my arrest before I should have chosen to do so.”
Mr. Depping had the monocle in his eye, and was frankly staring. Sir John’s face wore a curious smile. Saulomon was casually searching after cigarettes. Miss Mertz still had her arm extended in the dramatic gesture; she had not straightened the hat over her eye.
“Bencolin,” cried Villon, “you were the man in the corridor, then?”
“Yes. That is why I owe you so many apologies. Won’t you sit down, Miss Mertz? I have much to explain.
“When I arranged this elaborate bit of deception,” he went on, “I did not know that I should have to cope with murder. My intent was to trap the accomplice of the man Mercier. We of the police cannot be content with knowing the identity of our guilty men. Unlike the detectives in fiction, we must have proof. My friends, two months ago I went to America to assist in running down a league of smugglers—that story does not belong here. Four of them are now in the hands of the New York police. The fifth, Mercier, escaped us, and came to England. The sixth and last is here, in this room.
“Please do not interrupt. I knew who he was, [ knew that Mercier would meet him, and Mercier walked into my trap. For Mercier sold in England the diamonds he had brought with him from the States. I know to whom he sold them, and I knew that when Mercier came to France and divided his gains with his last confederate, we should be able to arrest that confederate. For Mercier carried marked money.
​“There was a trustworthy man in whom I confided, privately; he watched Mercier in London, and followed him on the channel boat, which I met at Dieppe. Of course, Sir John Landervorne’s connections with Scotland Yard ceased long ago, but he remains no less valuable for that. I met the boat at Dieppe. I must not be seen; if I were seen, it was necessary that my presence be denied. I had confided in Sir John. I also confided in M. Saulomon, the train guard, because I recognized his intelligence, and also because it was such an ironical joke that I should confide thus in the man who murdered Mercier—M. Saulomon,” he said quietly, “you are caught. I trust that you will make no resistance.”
It would have relieved the tension had anybody exclaimed, or moved, or cried out. Instead, there was such a deadly matter-of-fact calmness in the room that the whole proceeding seemed unreal. Saulomon was lighting a cigarette; his big hands did not tremble, his face was wooden, but under the harsh light the veins were throbbing in his head.
“Proof, monsieur?” he asked.
Abruptly the thought shot through Sir John’s mind, “God, something’s going to happen!”—the stiffness of Bencolin’s pose, the tensity like the sound of drums slowly rising.
“Your strong box at the Credit Lyonnais,” answered Bencolin, “contains the marked money you stole from Mercier’s wallet when you killed him. You said that you took Mercier’s ticket; you did not, because you never went into the compartment. I found it on him when the body was examined at the morgue. They found none of your finger-prints at the scene of the crime; nevertheless, they were found on the metal clasps of Mercier’s rifled portmanteau.”
It was rather like handling a bomb. By his shiftings ​in the chair, the struggle that reddened and pulled his face, they thought for a moment that Saulomon would act. Then, soothingly, the struggle ceased. Saulomon inclined his head.
“I did it, monsieur,” he said.
“Let us reconstruct, then. You knew Mercier was coming over, but you did not know on what day to expect him. At Scotland Yard we did not arrest him; we deliberately forced him over on that boat, letting him think he was distancing us, because we wished to use him as stalking horse for you. Mercier and you had been working cleverly. Consider! A train-guard, who there in that dimly lighted place could pass for a porter, could take a man’s luggage and abstract smuggled stones from them before the luggage went to the customs. A clever plot. But this time Mercier did not play the game. He wanted to get away from you with the money he had gained in England. The false beard? Exactly! He put it on after he had left the passport inspector; he did not turn on the full lights in the compartment, hoping thus to deceive you and slip past. Well, you could play such a game yourself, eh?
“Now! Mercier is already in the train, and you know who this bearded gentleman is. He has bolted his door so that those who got into the train would not enter and see there a man wearing a beard—he did not wear a beard on the boat. You could not enter by the door. But outside; the train is waiting there by its platform, and, as usual, it is a high platform above the tracks, so that one passing by the train finds the train windows on a level with his breast. Inside one compartment, near the window which is half-way down, sits Mercier, opening the wallet which contains his winnings. You see him. You are a tall man—your hands through the open window in an instant, there in the darkness of the platform. Mercier sees only two hands which flash in ​at his throat. He is still gripping the wallet when the life has gone out of him. Had it fallen on the floor, you would have been baffled, for you knew the money was not in the portmanteau which you had already rifled. Look! His knees are drawn up in a death-agony which is grotesquely like that of a sitting man. Here is an alibi. Mercier propped against the window, sitting there as though he were peering out, with his back to the door—you saw the possibility. Nobody could see that he was dead. He would tumble down, of course, after the train started and the movement dislodged him, but if it could be proved that he were alive when the train started, your alibi could be strengthened all along—it was almost perfect. Your error lay in saying that you had taken his ticket, for you wished to keep him alive as long as possible, and you did not want to discover the body—there might be embarrassing questions.”
Bencolin sat down on the edge of the desk and pulled up his trouser-leg. He regarded Saulomon thoughtfully.
“I also made a mistake, M. Saulomon. I should not have gone into the train at all. But, looking through the window outside and seeing Mercier on the floor, I was not unnaturally startled; I came in to see what had happened, and found the door bolted. Then I began to realize what had happened. I wanted to see who was on the train, and when I foolishly exhibited myself at the corridor-window I had to get Sir John and M. Saulomon to swear that they had seen nobody. Why? Well, was it not good tactics? If I revealed myself to the murderer as the prefect of police, got him in the league with me, and threw myself on his mercy for silence, was it not rather good evidence to him that I suspected nothing? Otherwise he would hardly have been so secure in his position, and he would not have deposited in a bank that marked money which ​will send him to the guillotine.”
Saulomon stood up. His eyes were brilliant, he smoothed at his pale hair, and suddenly he laughed.
“It was admirable, M. le prefect. Well!” He glanced towards the policeman in the doorway.
“I could kill you, Bencolin,” said Villon venomously. “If for nothing else, I could kill you for that absurd masquerading as a ghost. Why? Why must you look in and scare everybody to death?”
“That statement,” said Bencolin, “is not flattering. Besides, I did not have my nose chopped off; I merely pressed it against the glass.” He contemplated the speechless Miss Mertz, raised his eyebrows, and chuckled faintly. “Give me pardon for a little curiosity, my friend. I wanted to see whether Miss Brunhilde Mertz had succeeded in getting through the French customs the one of Mercier’s diamonds which she had bought from Mr. Depping in London.”
V
Bencolin and Sir John Landervorne left Villon’s office in the Quai d’Orsay. There had been a somewhat hectic scene, in which Miss Mertz was remembered to have struck somebody with an umbrella. In the midst of it Sir John remembered most distinctly Saulomon’s tall, pale figure standing unmoved among the shadows, on his face a dim smile of wonderment and pity.
Muffled in their greatcoats, Bencolin and Sir John crossed over and stood by the embankment at the river. A faint snow hovered in the air, like a reflection of the weird pale carpet of light which flickered on the dark water, and, beyond, on the dull shine of the Place de la Concorde. A necklace of lamps on a soft bosom which shivered with the cold; windy spaces and low gray buildings, twinkling, muttering; the lighted arch of the bridges; farther on, the closed bookstalls where ​the river curved away. To Bencolin, every house held a quiet mysterious beauty, every street-stone was a shining miracle. He leaned on the balustrade and sniffed the sharp wind.
“A pretty enough chess-board, isn’t it?” he remarked after a while. “A chess game can be a terrible and enthralling thing, when you play it backwards and blindfolded. Your adversary starts out with his king in check, and tries to move his pieces back to where they were at first; that’s why you can’t apply rules or mathematical laws to crime. The great chess player is the one who can visualize the board as it will be after his move. The great detective is the one who can visualize the board as it has been when he finds the pieces jumbled. He must have the imagination to see the opportunities that the criminal saw, and act as the criminal would act. It’s a great, ugly, terrific play of opposite imaginations. Nobody is more apt than a detective to say a lot of windy, fancy things about reasoning, and deduction, and logic. He too frequently says ‘reason’ when he means ‘imagination.’ I object to having a cheap, strait-laced pedantry like reason confused with a far greater thing.”
“But, look here,” said Sir John, “suppose you take this business tonight. You gave a reconstruction of that crime, all right, and perhaps that was imagination. But you didn’t tell us how you knew that was the way it happened. Reason told you that. Didn’t it?—how did you get on to the murder, anyhow?”
“It’s an example of what I was trying to say. There is so much elaborate hocus-pocus around the whole matter of criminal detection that it makes a detective wonder why people think he acts that way. The fiction writers want to call it a science, and attach blood-pressure instruments to people’s arms, and give them Freud tests—they forget that your innocent man is ​always nervous, and acts more like a guilty one than the criminal himself, even his insides. They forget that these machines are operated by the most catankerous one of all, the human machine. And your psychological detective wants to pick out the kind of man who committed a crime; after which he hunts around till he finds one and says, ‘Behold the murderer,’ whether the evidence supports him or not. I hope you'll permit me to say damned nonsense. There is no man who is incapable of a crime under any circumstances; to say that a daring crime was necessarily committed by a daring person is to argue that a drunken author can write on the subject of nothing but liquor, or that an atheistical artist could not paint the Crucifixion. It is frequently the tippler who writes the best temperance essay, and the atheist who finds the most convincing arguments for religion.
“And your so-called ‘reason,’ in an intricate crime, convinces you of exactly what is untrue. It reduces the thing to the silly restricted rules of mathematics. In this Mercier murder, for example, reason said to me, Mercier was alive when the train started, because he was seen sitting by the window, and the guard took his ticket; also, somebody must have been in the compartment with him, since no man could have strangled him from outside while the train was in motion. This was perfectly elementary logic, and quite false. Imagination asked me these questions: Why did not Mercier make an outcry when somebody attacked him? Why did he not struggle; does a person sit quiet and unmoving when he is assailed? Why no resistance, then? Because Mercier did not see the murderer, a thing impossible if anybody were in the compartment. What does it suggest? Hands through the window, obviously; confirmed by the fact that, though Mercier’s wallet was robbed, his pockets were not rifled—the murderer’s ​arms would not be long enough to do this through the window. Discount the testimony for an instant, says imagination, and see whether this would have been possible at any time. Yes, before the train started. Did anybody speak with Mercier after this time, or see him move? Nobody except the train guard. Yet this sole witness first says that the man’s back was turned when he took his ticket; later he announces that Mercier was wearing no beard. How did he see that, if the man’s back were turned and the lights were so dim that you who examined the body face to face could hardly distinguish the features? Then see whether the guard did take the ticket. If not, he lied, and the evidence of the only person who spoke to Mercier after the train started is discounted. I found the ticket.”
“Well, then. Who fits all our specifications for the guilty man? We know him to be a confederate of Mercier; it seems likely that he is also the murderer. Who else? Two others on the train had been associated with Mercier. On the boat from New York he had made arrangements with Mr. Depping to sell Depping his diamonds (I also was on that liner, and it was I who threatened Depping with the law if he did not pay Mercier in marked money). Moreover, Miss Mertz had bought one of the diamonds. Both these people were on the train. Neither had reason to kill Mercier, so far as I knew, and it was physically impossible for either to have killed him. Depping was too small to have reached that window; Miss Mertz had not the strength.”
Bencolin paused, and smiled. “Voila! I’m getting as verbose as a detective in fiction,” he said. “I dragged you over here to Paris, and I don’t mean to talk shop all the time. Suppose we go somewhere and have a drink. Taxi!”
John Dickson Carr.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1977, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 47 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse