Chapter XII

But for the officer in charge of the exhibits I should have caught McNab before he got down the steps. For I had no mind to undergo the discipline of waiting to learn what the startling discovery was. The tantalizing refusal to tell me I owed to the evidence I had just given, which happened to support Snargrove's theory. But the policeman at the door stopped me. Recalled to a sense of his duty, I dare say, by McNab's dash past him, he became uneasy, and detained me till he had counted and scrutinized all the exhibits. That needn't have taken very long, but by the time he had finished scratching his head over them McNab was beyond reach.

When I got to the office I heard McNab had been closeted with Matheson for the last twenty minutes. That, I thought, settled my chance of hearing more. Matheson would be sure to order McNab to say nothing. But just as I was resigning myself to the situation the chief's phone rang sharply, and the order came through to send me up the moment I came in.

When I entered it was to find Matheson at his table in the hunched up, thoughtful attitude I knew so well. McNab on the hearth-rug, his story apparently finished, stood fiddling with a cigarette. Matheson, unlike McNab, cared nothing for the niceties of a criminal case, and McNab, unlike Matheson, cared nothing as to whether or not a case would make a rousing stunt for the paper. I knew therefore that I had been called in not by McNab but by the chief, so that he might be sure the affair was worth the _Record's_ money. And that told me two things. First, as I already knew that Matheson wanted McNab to take up the case, I saw that the case must have taken on an unexpected aspect; secondly, that it seemed likely to cost more than Matheson bargained for.

But for a time neither of them even glanced at me. McNab, having unloaded his mind, stood at his ease, breathing out a cloud of smoke, and looking more than ever like a doctor who has completed the successful diagnosis of some perplexing case. Matheson, though, seemed doubtful. He twisted uneasily in his chair, looking down at the notes he had evidently made of what the other had said.

"If one could only be sure."

"Sure of how much--all?" McNab enquired.

"Well, less would do. But some indubitable facts we must have." He pondered heavily for a moment. "Perhaps if you were to recapitulate the absolute certainties in the case it would help us to a decision."

I could see McNab stiffen as he listened.

"If you will only back a certainty," he said tartly, "you'd better drop this and wait for the Derby."

It was good to hear some one speak like that to Matheson; but I thought McNab rash if he wanted the paper to take up the affair. Yet Matheson, fingering his notes, replied quite mildly:

"Didn't you say you were certain the police were on the wrong scent?"

"In my own mind; but there's nothing absolute in that."

Matheson grunted.

"Then just enumerate any other points on which in your own mind you are equally certain." He glanced over at me to add in quite another tone: "Attend, please; this is where you come in, Chance."

McNab threw his cigarette into the fire.

"First," he said, "it seems a certainty to me that Mr. Ponsonby Paget that night expected a visitor whom for some reason he feared. It is Snargrove's view that this visitor failed to come, and that the deceased went out to look for him. But on the latter point the balance of probability surely is that it was Chance for whom he scoured the roads that night. For some reason unknown, Ponsonby Paget felt compelled to face his visitor, otherwise he might have evaded the visit by an absence from home. I regard his dread as proved by the anxiety he showed to secure Chance's presence. Naturally, then, it was for Chance he searched, for Chance who had never before been to the house, and who might well, on such a night, be stumbling about in search of it.

"The next point is still more certain. Those two whisky glasses show us that the host expected but one visitor. But the visitor did exactly what Ponsonby Paget tried to do when he rang up Chance from his club: he too arranged to have another person present. And he succeeded where his host failed."

Matheson looked up.

"What reason have you for that conclusion?" he asked.

"The list of exhibits is before you. A blind man does not carry a mirror. Neither did Mr. Ponsonby Paget. It follows that the walking-stick and the mirror belonged to different persons. It is thus established that two at least were concerned in the murder."

Here I felt bound to intervene.

"But," I burst in, "how do you know there was a blind man there at all?"

A smile flickered from McNab as he saw me agape with incredulity.

"That stick is a blind man's stick," he said. "It is worn away across the heel, as you saw, just where he held it well out in front of him to feel his way. If you doubt it, stop the first blind man you meet and examine the end of his stick. Yet," he continued, "the walking-stick alone might have told me nothing without those marks on the wall. Those marks were, and are, simply inexplicable unless the man who made them did not see what he was doing. Therefore, one of two things: either the room was in darkness or he was blind. But you yourself, Chance, asserted the room was not in darkness when you entered it a few moments after the murder had been committed. Now--"

Again I had to cut in.

"Not so fast, McNab. You say I entered a few moments after the murder. That is news to me."

"There are two facts that 'time' the deed. First, we must conclude that it was at a late hour, long after you were expected, since the man went out to look for you. That act implies a high degree of prolonged nervous strain, for really it was long odds against finding you. The man was fairly desperate before he went out. But better than that is the witness of the fire. You said in your evidence before the coroner to-day that you were startled by a sudden crackling from the fire which then burst into flame, and revealed a foot lying where the table had previously cast a shadow. That crackle of coal was significant. It is only newly added coal, expanding with the heat, that crackles like that. So unless we are to suppose that the murderer thoughtfully mended the fire before leaving, that coal was added _before_ the murder was committed."

This reasoning carried conviction. It staggered me to think I had been so close to the criminal. But just as I found my voice Matheson cut in impatiently.

"Let's get back to the blind man, if you please."

I knew what Matheson was nosing after: more sensational and exclusive matter for the _Record_. McNab turned to him.

"Only two facts remain which I can regard as certainties," he said. "The first is that the blind man is innocent."

With my eyes still on Matheson I saw, and understood, his disappointment. Indeed, as a journalist I sympathized with him there.

THE EALING MURDER
HUNT FOR A BLIND MAN

What a provocative bill that would have made! And Matheson was good at bills. When he had anything exclusive to put on them he did them himself.

"Hm," he almost grunted, "let's hear why you so conclude."

"A review of the known facts forces me to it. First there's the medical evidence. The job was so neat--one stroke under the fourth costal rib. By a miracle a blind man might have been so neat. And miracles sometimes happen. But remember the smashed and scattered furniture! That took my eye the moment I entered the room. Had the dead man made all the fight implied by that confusion? I asked myself. If so his body would have borne the marks of it, and he would not have been knifed so neatly by any one. Now, with a blind man present, I can account for what I saw. Most of that confusion at all events could result from a blind person's frantic blundering about in an unfamiliar room among furniture he could not see. Further, those marks on the wall tell the same tale--a frantic and useless effort to get away. But they got him down at last. Yes, and took him away with them by force."

As McNab stopped speaking and began to pace the room with rising excitement, I believe our presence was forgotten. His kindled imagination was seeing the successive events that followed the murder. But the practical Matheson drew him back to earth.

"By force," he said after a moment, "where is the evidence for that?"

McNab wheeled round impatiently.

"Lord, man, are you still forgetting that stick! Have you considered what a walking-stick is to a blind man? It is what your eyes are to you. No, take that as settled, he did not go willingly without his stick. He was carried off by some one--oh, yes--by some one who may very well have been unaware he was blind, and who supposed the blind man would be certain to know him at sight."

"You mean he was an acquaintance?"

"I do not. For in that case he would have known he was blind."

Matheson sat up.

"So you mean the murderer was a person of distinction--a public man?"

McNab, I remember, did not reply. He stood gazing dumbly into vacancy with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

"There are things in the case I cannot fathom, though. Why didn't they finish off the blind man when he was on the floor against the wall? He was certainly not an accomplice. One cannot visualize any one bringing a blind man as an assistant in murder. Therefore he was there by accident. He stumbled in at the garden window--just as Chance himself did later on--probably while the man was being murdered. There must have been a cry, you know. Something that told him something untoward was happening; and he went forward to help, fell, and got the man's life blood on his hands. What happened when he felt the fluid was _warm_? But, Lord, how he must have startled _them_! Ay, but what have they done with him? Where is he _now_? That is the new mystery."

He withdrew his hands, and turning to us smote one fist on an extended open palm with great violence.

"Matheson, the Acton Green affair was nothing to this."

"Oh, of course, in that affair it was only the social position of the guilty man that attracted interest."

McNab nodded.

"And in this case we have that interest too, and others as well."

Matheson pricked up his ears. But I knew it was not because some one had come knocking at the door. Several times in the last half-hour people had knocked at that same door, and he had paid no heed. He said:

"I don't exactly see how the--er--social status of the guilty man is evident in the present case."

McNab, pausing as he walked about the room, opened his eyes in surprise.

"No? Why, that to me is so palpable that I took it for granted. You don't see it? Well, consider this. You know Ponsonby Paget and his paper. The most popular man in England they called him. He was--with the masses. But he had his enemies. Big ones! In his paper he shot only at the biggest game--eh? The smaller fry were not worth his powder and shot. Well, we needn't look in the East End, or even in Suburbia, for the man who killed him. And he was sure the man who stumbled into that room would recognize him. Och, I've no doubt you've published his portrait in your own paper often enough."

Matheson's face lighted up.

"Go ahead, then. We'll be ready to insert his portrait again--when the time comes. The _Daily Record_ is behind you," he said, rising. "In the interests of Justice that man must be unmasked."

* * * * *

And McNab at once began to set his machinery in motion. In the corridor outside, where I waited for him after Matheson had dismissed me, he gripped my arm.

"You are to work with me," he said. "I stipulated for that. But nobody is to know," he added. "You're to act as go-between, you understand, between me and the _Record_."

This was better than I had hoped.

"Right," I cried joyfully, shaking his hand.

"Here's your first duty, then. Find out if any report has recently come in of a blind man missing from his home. Bring me round all particulars."

"That won't take five minutes. If you wait--"

"No! That is the point. Not a soul must guess for whom the information is wanted. And that's not all. Look out too for any item that may come in reporting the finding of the body of some unknown man. And, if these news items haven't already appeared, don't forget I want them before publication."

The second request startled me. McNab had stirred the imagination by his conjectures on the blind man's share in the tragedy. It had moved me to think of that man stumbling innocently by the same entrance as myself into that room and getting caught in the whirlpool of crime.

"You don't think--" I began.

But he cut me short.

"What I think will keep," he said. "You go and get me what I want to know."

It took me longer than five minutes to get the information he desired in the way he ordered. For I could see that if I had to go on repeating the request for possible news of a missing blind man, or the discovery of a body, questions would be asked which would be awkward to explain away. The thing might even become a joke against me, and be bandied about among the staff. So I had to think out a plan, and set it in motion tactfully. But I did elicit the information that no such reports had come in since the date I gave. About five o'clock I went round to the Adelphi to tell McNab. He seemed to be working out notes on the case, for his table was littered with foolscap, and I observed a piled up quantity of the _Eye Opener_ on his left hand. He looked up eagerly.

"Nothing come in yet," I said. "Nobody missing, and no body found."

"Sit down."

"McNab, you don't really think they'll do away with this blind man now?"

A snort of indignation came.

"There's nobody, it seems, would miss him much. Queer that nobody's asking for him. Does that tell you anything?"

"Possibly he got back to his home."

"And said nothing?"

"They'd have done him in before now, wouldn't they? Why haven't they done it already?"

He turned on me.

"You offer a fine field for unprofitable speculation there. Why does a parrot always eat from its left hand? The point is that they have not, and as long as he remains alive he is likely to prove very useful to us. For after all, Chance, there are not so many blind men in England, and of homeless ones still less, thank God."

"You speculated long enough before Matheson."

He laid down his pencil.

"Now don't get huffy. I said unprofitable speculation. I'm ready enough to speculate where I have data on which to work. On the question as to why he wasn't finished off along with the old gentleman I have none."

He glanced at me quizzically.

"That doesn't content you?" he asked, feigning indignation.

"Well," I said, "it isn't true. You must have formed _some_ theory as to why the man's life was spared that night."

"Half a dozen! Here's the best of them, and if you can choose between them it's more than I can do," he cried in a sudden burst of impatient disgust. "First, it's possible they turned squeamish, especially if there was a woman in it. She would be for cajoling him into silence. A woman's weapon is not violence but guile. Second, they may have discovered he was blind after they got him down on the floor near the door, and so knew he could not be sure as to what exactly had happened in that room, or even, if he had lost his way and strayed in, in whose house he was. Again, they could have no grudge against him, such as had moved them to murder in the case of Ponsonby Paget. Thirdly, the condition of the room points to the fact that at first the blind stranger was attacked. That scrap of human hair, whoever it belongs to, tells the same tale. Yet they evidently changed their minds about him. Why? Chance, can you visualize that scene! Suppose you had strung yourself up through black hate to the point of murder, and unexpectedly found yourself, in the midst of your deed, confronted by a stranger. The first instinct, with your weapon still in your hand and your blood up, would be to attack him. But think! When you had him on the floor, and saw those sightless eyes turned on you, straining to see, fearful of your blow, yet not knowing where, or when, it was to fall. What then? Could you do it?"

"No; it must have been that."

"Ay, maybe. We cannot tell. But I can tell you this, Chance"--the impatience had dropped from his voice and he spoke with the utmost solemnity--"little as he may dream of it now, if they once discover how dangerous he is to them his fate is sealed. Blindness will only have bought him a respite."

* * * * *

It was only on that first occasion that McNab talked so freely with me on the case. In the course of the next few days he turned much less expansive, and it seemed the affair so gripped him that he must go like a hound with his nose on the scent, looking neither to right nor left. On the few occasions on which he did speak at all, I had the fancy that he was merely using me as a whetstone to stimulate thought, or focus certain ideas floating in his fertile brain. For, careful as he had been to warn me against talking to others about the case, I must here say that in his irritating, Scotch fashion he made doubly sure of my prudence by telling me no more than he could help. And even then he broached the matter in the most roundabout way. One day he said:

"I suppose your paper has representatives in different parts of the country?"

"We have our own correspondents in most places, if that's what you mean."

He nodded assent.

"Well, ye see, the other day a car knocked down a plumber in Maida Vale, and I'm particularly anxious to trace it." He looked up at my exclamation. "What is it now?"

"Have you abandoned the Ealing case then?"

"Oh, no; but this affair in Maida Vale--I'm sure it was Maida Vale--has upset the equanimity of my mind, you see. It must be settled first, and I've thought your correspondents might help me."

"What can they do?" I asked in disgust at what seemed a desertion of the momentous Ealing tragedy for a petty accident in Maida Vale.

"Report to you the presence of the car in their locality. The car, you see, has certain well defined characteristics."

"Oh, well, if you give me a description I'll see that it goes into to-morrow's issue."

"But that's exactly what I don't want it to do, the car's chief characteristics being removable. My notion was that the description could be sent out privately, and so we could cover a large area. It's a case in which I'm particularly keen to beat Snargrove," he added.

"Is Snargrove in this too?" I asked, surprised.

"He is that. But whether he found traces of the car when we both examined the drive at Ealing I cannot say."

"Ealing? You said Maida Vale just now."

"Did I? Well, it was one or the other. But you'd better be careful to call it Maida Vale to your correspondents."

Then I comprehended.

"Damn you, McNab," I cried, irritated, "why do you trifle with me like this?"

"Oh," he said coolly, "you're very young, and I put it like that just to impress you with the need for caution."

Caution! But I sat down again, relieved to find he had not abandoned the big case.

"You recall that day at Ealing," he resumed, "when we came on Snargrove examining the drive, and I joined him while you looked on, pitying us both?"

"The road had been trampled by scores that morning," I said defensively.

"True. It was all trodden by sightseers--women mostly--too curious to mind the mud. Still, I found something there. Nothing to do with footprints, you know."

"You found a clue?" I cried, starting up. "Tell me!"

He said nothing at first. I could see it was something big, from the way he looked at me. And he had kept it to himself all the time. I never knew a man like McNab for keeping a thing till it was ripe.

"What sort of clue was it?" I demanded.

"An amazing one. The wheel-marks took my eye first. I was idly wondering why there were so few. Then I remembered that no vehicles had come to the house that morning, which was Tuesday, since the gate was closed by the police, and that since there had probably been none on the Sunday, such wheel-marks as showed very likely belonged to the Monday's traffic. It was quite easy to count three marks--a studded Dunlop, the criss-cross of a Michelin, a third with grooved tyres much worn on the tread, but with the pattern quite discernible at the two sides of the deep impression made in the soft road. Besides these three there was a plain unpatterned track, too narrow in the tread to be made by a tyre, which zigzagged slightly as if from the stride of an eager horse. 'Four tradesmen, three of them prosperous,' I said to myself, 'called at the house on Monday.' Merely as a matter of routine I went to verify this at the house. Brown could not tell me much, and took me to the kitchen, where the domestics put their heads together. There was disagreement at first, and a rather hot dispute began between a housemaid and the cook as to whether the greengrocer's man had, or had not, called. But when I got it into their heads that I was not interested in tradesmen who called on foot, or on bicycles, there was general agreement that three motor vehicles only--the laundry, the general stores and the baker--had been to the house. As I made a note of the names and addresses I said, 'And whose was the horse drawn van?' Then came the surprise. There was no disagreement about the horse van: no such vehicle had been to the house. I tried to dispute this, but found that on that point at least they were all quite positive.

"It is queer how a trifle will vex a man. I took Brown out, almost by the scuff of the neck, to let him see those narrow wheel tracks which, being far more visible than any of the others, spoke of a vehicle heavily loaded. Then just as I lifted my finger to point them out to him I saw the strange thing."

McNab paused, and ceased twiddling his thumbs.

"A car is heavier than a man, and therefore makes deeper marks on a moist road. But a horse is also heavier than a man, and hoofs cut deep in pulling a weight. Well, in between those narrow ruts there were _no hoof marks_. Not one in the whole length of the drive, Chance. Not one. To tell you the truth their absence struck me dumb, for this was no hand cart, the wheel-marks were too far apart for that to be conceivable. What I said to the butler I don't know, but when he had gone I made a close inspection of those same tracks."

McNab opened a drawer, extracted a paper and handed it over to me.

"That is what I found."

On the paper there appeared two upright lines two inches apart, and close to the line on the right there was a circle about the size of a shilling.

"That," said McNab, "is the brass cap of a number .8 cartridge which this tyre had picked up, and which became embedded in the solid rubber. Very firmly embedded it was, for when dug out it brought away a clean-cut disc of rubber. In the soft earth of the drive that hole left a protuberance which for neatness might have been stamped out with a baker's biscuit mould.

"You see that tyre was solid rubber, but it was on no horse van, for there were no hoof marks. Well, there is only one type of car that answers to these facts, and on this particular one that hole appears on the outside edge of the offside back wheel of a Trojan car. That is why I want a copy of this drawing to be sent out to all your local correspondents."

"But Matheson will want to put this in the paper, probably with a drawing of the wheel showing its exact position," I said. "It's irresistible, a thing like this. I'd put it in myself if I were in his place, especially in so sensational a case."

McNab lifted his eyebrows.

"Sensational--a plumber knocked down in Maida Vale!"

Then I saw the reason for his earlier pretence. Matheson assuredly would not trouble about an accident in Maida Vale which had not even got into the press. I was so thinking when McNab, laying his hand on my arm, spoke in a quiet, confidential tone.

"It was this car that stood somewhere behind the house, that night, when you stumbled about the garden or were maybe already in that room. You understand, Chance? This car which no one saw, which none of the servants knew of, is the car that carried off the blind man." His grip tightened. "If they keep him we have them," he whispered with eyes aglow.

* * * * *

And it was only when I caught myself in the midst of this eager hope of McNab's that I realized how intense was the interest I felt in that blind man's fate. His would be a story worth telling once we found him. But it wasn't only as a journalist I wanted him. The human element was in it too. The man himself as McNab had pictured him, unconscious of the sudden death that hovered over him, aroused one's sympathy.

Well, news came at last. News that I had indeed planned and schemed to receive, but had ceased to look for by this time. For in my concern with posting up the local correspondents I had almost forgotten that news might come in independently. This news item was ticked off by the tape machine about 6 p.m. and was laid on my desk with other items from the same news agency. As soon as I had read it through I put on my hat and took it round to the Adelphi. How did I know I should find McNab at home that night? I cannot tell. We always seem to be at home when bad news comes knocking at the door.

McNab was in. He looked up quickly at my entrance, divining I brought news, and supposing, no doubt, that something about the car had come in from one of our correspondents.

"We are too late, McNab."

"Too late?" he repeated, a sudden shadow coming on his face.

"Read this."

I laid the flimsy piece of paper before him on the desk. As his eyes took in the first words I saw him stiffen suddenly, pass a hand over his eyes with a quick gesture, and then go on reading. Over his shoulder I followed the words again:

Man Found Dead. Rye, Sussex. At a lonely spot near Stone, Isle of
Oxney, the dead body of a man was to-day discovered among some
bushes close to a hayrick by a farm labourer proceeding to work.
The body is that of a man in the early thirties, clean-shaven,
with dark hair and refined, regular features, and it is regarded
as curious that though well-dressed nothing was found on him which
could establish identity. The cause of death was not apparent, and
is so far unknown.

McNab sat looking fixedly at the slip of paper long after he must have finished reading it. Then a sigh came.

"So they've done it after all," he said.

"I had ceased looking out for this."

"It was always a probability. Pass me that time-table."

The pages whirled under his deft fingers.

"Charing Cross to Ashford ... 9.15 Appledore.... Yes, we can just do it, Chance."

"You are going to Stone?"

"You too. I'll need you. Phone Matheson now."

I was more than ready for the expedition. Then as I stepped to the phone a thought pulled me up.

"McNab, how can you identify this man? I mean, how can one tell a man has been blind after he is dead?"

McNab, already stuffing some things into a handbag, looked up.

"From the track of a car, if we find any in those lanes," he said. "If a small disc shows in its tread this dead man was blind. Yes, and by God, the man that did this thing shall die too, because he was strong and had no pity."