Chapter XIV

That a man should remember his successes in the hour of failure and his failures in the hour of success--this I have heard Francis McNab say was the one sure way to keep a level head. He regarded both success and failure as very severe mental temptations, the one inclining us to take too rosy, the other too black a view of our abilities. But he himself, I always thought, emerged better from success than from failure. A mere check he could surmount. Indeed a check stimulated him, whetted his appetite and all that. But in his investigations into the Ealing murder it was not one check he met with, but a succession of them with, at the end, a rank and final failure staring him in the face.

That journey to Stone, near Rye, proved to be but the first of a series of false scents. We had set off on the hasty journey confident that we were on the right track. And we reached Stone in time to see the body of the young man found by the estate worker identified by relatives who, indeed, had travelled down by the same train as ourselves. That the deceased had not been blind, and could have no possible connection with the Ealing affair, these facts were placed beyond doubt inside half an hour.

That was a failure out of which McNab emerged shaken. What he was thinking of as we returned to town I cannot say, but if it was some former success one would never have guessed it from his face. It was both grievous to me and astonishing to see the settled gloom with which he gazed through the window while our train flew across the Weald of Kent. Only now and then I stole a look at him, and as for speaking to him--well, I hope I know when to keep silence. But what a relief it was when the train left the fresh, green fields and orchards behind, and climbed up into the cavernous darkness of the Sevenoaks tunnel! Here, at least, in that murky gloom, was the right environment for us. There was just this difference, though: the train every second was moving on to daylight, but I doubted if Francis McNab saw any daylight ahead of him.

Yet for all that, after our return, I did not doubt that he began at once to cast about for another scent. Occasionally in the days following, I took him an advertisement for some person missing; sometimes, in fact, quite a crop of such notices. But of course every day that passed lessened the likelihood that any of these had a connection with our case, and soon almost every one of them could be eliminated, as the person advertised for had disappeared at a date much later than that on which the murder took place. How often he must have found himself barking up the wrong tree in those days!

McNab's darkest hour while on the case came, it seemed to me, on a day I well remember. For ten days I had been away on some work at Manchester. And for several days before that I had not been round to the Adelphi, for it did really pain me to see McNab at a loss. And so even after my return I might not have gone round so soon but for the message I received that he expected me. Of course I hurried off at once, hopefully. I found him pacing up and down his room overlooking the river. This restlessness revealed to me, without the need for words, the exact state of his mind. Obviously he was not then engaged in recalling his former successes. On the contrary every symptom showed that he was chafing and fretting over his present failure in a very human way. And as I remembered his saying that the world was crowded with men just not good enough for the jobs their ambition had made them take on, I suspected that he was just then including himself in the ranks of that ignoble army. Francis McNab was no all-over superman. But some qualities he had in super-excellence, and one was his tenacity. He never acquiesced in defeat. The new way under defeat and failure is to "cut one's losses," to console oneself by saying it is no use crying over spilt milk, and so on. But none of these modern phrases, masquerading as wisdom, and meant to comfort the ineffective and the unsuccessful, did I ever hear on his lips. Defeat stung, rankled and reproached him.

Much of this passed through my mind as I stood with my back to him, looking out on the river, waiting for him to speak. And at last I heard the restless steps behind me cease.

"Chance," he said, "what do you consider the greatest enemy of Justice?"

"Justice?" I repeated, turning round.

"Yes, Justice, the blindfolded goddess with the sword in her hand who does not know where to strike."

"Oh, some say the lawyers," I replied flippantly.

"And others the police. They're both wrong. It's Time, the old fellow with the scythe in his hand, who strikes at everybody and all things." He came over and stood beside me at the window, looking down upon the traffic on the Embankment. At least his eyes rested there. "Time fights hard for the criminal. Clues are destroyed by time, traces vanish, evidence is blotted out, things alter, and people's relations to each other. Why, the mere lapse of time is held to lessen guilt: 'It is so long ago,' people say."

"Is that what you think they'll say about the Ealing murder?"

"No, it hasn't come to that yet, thanks to the _Record_, for keeping the public agog with expectation, but--" He broke off, sighed and shook his head helplessly.

"The _Eye Opener_ isn't letting the murder drop out of sight, either," I said. "This week's number gives the winning design in the competition for the memorial to be erected over the grave in Kensal Green. Have you seen it?"

"Over Ponsonby Paget's grave?" McNab enquired as if he had not been listening.

"Of course. It's a fine thing, a life size reproduction in white marble of the female figure on the cover of the paper; but with one significant difference--the two pennies no longer cover the eyes, which are now wide open and uplifted as if in an appeal to heaven. A fine touch, don't you think, to remove the two pennies, the only _earthly_ details on that figure?"

"Well, he was a man, they say, who saw all things in terms of money. And of course he won't be doing that now," McNab said in a way that reminded me of Matheson. That irritated me. Besides, I felt a trifle huffy over my off-hand reception after so long an absence.

"The trouble is," I said petulantly, "you didn't like Ponsonby Paget. If you had you might have had more to show for your ten weeks' work on the case."

It was a stupid speech, and McNab eyed me reproachfully for it. Then he said:

"You don't care much for Matheson, do you? Oh, I know you never say a word against him. But don't you find your prejudice affects your work?"

"Certainly not," I declared. "If it did I couldn't stay on. A journalist does his best irrespective of likes and dislikes."

McNab nodded.

"So do some others, my lad, who are not journalists. And I don't need to admire Ponsonby Paget to sharpen my wish to see his murderer hang. So let's have tea." He rang the bell.

When Janet, the old housekeeper, had departed, I tried to explain the anxiety which had possessed me, an anxiety which I shared with Matheson himself.

"The paper has backed you to win," I said, "and after what it has said about the police it would be a bad knock if they should prove to be right and get home first."

This I said with a sigh, intending both to sting and stimulate him, for I could not forget it was now over a month since we went to Stone.

"Well," he replied calmly, "the police have great advantages."

"You mean their finger-print register?"

"That and a lot of other things--their organization and well-knit system, and their numbers, their familiarity with the methods and haunts of the habitual criminals and so on. But they're at a loss in this case for all that. Why? Because the man we are looking for hadn't got his finger-prints on the Scotland Yard register. He does not belong to the criminal classes. This deed of his was an exceptional incident in his life."

McNab became more animated as the tea progressed.

"That is not a rare thing, Chance. There are many who are what you might call one-act criminals. Any policeman will tell you what a troublesome problem they make. And they would be a more trying problem for the law than they are but for one fact--the fact that in their inexperience they are apt to make mistakes. Take this case. That room in Ealing was scattered with evidence. We had a table, you remember, almost loaded with exhibits. Snargrove at once pronounced the murder to be the work of an amateur. He was quite right. But--mark this--the man did not follow up the 'mistakes' left in the room by making others afterwards, as Snargrove expected he would. Once he got away from that house he left no traces and gave no sign. There was no bungling. And when we know that he had to carry a blind man with him, and dispose of him somewhere, surely it is obvious to you that we are dealing with a man of remarkable talent and resources."

"Yes," I agreed, "that seems clear. Still there were clues left in that room."

"Not by the criminal. Those marks on the wall were made by the blind man; the stick was his too. And for all we yet know the finger-prints on the glass may be his also, and that shred of hair as well. The one thing, in fact, which could _not_ have been the blind man's is that splinter of looking-glass. That man was a genius in organization. Just think. He had the deed all carefully planned, and it would have gone off pat but for the unexpected entrance of the blind man. And you can read both his alarm and the blind man's innocence from the fact that the murderer left no trace of his own but many of the other's presence. He could not foresee and provide for the presence of that blind intruder, yet even in that terrible moment he made no blunder that gave _himself_ away." McNab prodded me with a stiff forefinger. "Now, Mr. Godfrey Chance, do you begin to see the niceties of this particular case?"

"One thing I can't see--why you concentrated on finding this blind man instead of going straight for the actual murderer, as Snargrove is doing," I replied.

McNab waved towards the window.

"Look out there and tell me what you see," he commanded.

A good deal was visible from that lofty window as I went over, cup in hand.

"There's the river," I said, "and four barges sliding down it on the ebb tide, and there's two trains crossing the bridge, and numberless motors whirling along the Embankment, besides a stationary tram with a bunch of people struggling to get in, and a stream of pedestrians flowing into the Underground from the foot of Villiers Street."

"Good! Now, look here! One among all these people has just stolen a banana from a dealer in the Strand. He has it concealed about his person, he is hurrying away in the train now out of sight, I suppose, or on the barges or in the trams or taxis or on foot, and he will certainly vanish utterly unless we find him in time."

I stared at McNab. He seemed quite serious. But he was like that, even when, as now, he tried to be humorous.

"What else do you know about the man?" I asked.

"Nothing. The dealer didn't see the banana lifted--only missed it off the bunch."

"Has the dealer issued a description of the banana?" I asked, not to be outdone in affecting seriousness.

"No. It would be useless, for the man will eat it at the first quiet moment and so destroy the evidence against him."

"Looks hopeless."

"Ah, but there's a postman, among these people, who _knows_ who took the banana. That both narrows the field of search and speeds things up."

It was easy to follow his argument.

"So you went for the postman--in other words, the blind man. But after all, though it is as easy to pick out a blind man in a crowd as a postman, you haven't got him yet. And you are sitting here doing nothing."

"Not doing nothing."

"Well, only talking to me about the case."

"That would be doing nothing."

In certain moods McNab, as will have been observed, could be extremely irritating.

"What else do you think you're doing?" I demanded.

"Besides lighting this cigarette I'm listening for a ring at my door bell."

"Oh, you expect some one." Then, gathering from his tone that it was no ordinary caller, I cried, "Some one connected with the case?"

"Yes. Some one who can tell us a lot about the case."

That was a big enough surprise for me. But more was to follow. As I stood still in astonishment McNab crossed to his desk and opening a file extracted something from it which he laid on the table before me. It was a photographic print about six inches square, evidently an enlargement from a group of soldiers, for the shoulders of two other men showed on each side of the print. The face of the man thus picked out of the group yielded what seemed a good likeness. Under an open, unlined forehead the eyes showed clear, dark and well apart, with a hint of the cheek-bones showing, after the Slavonic type, and though the nose was straight and well proportioned there was something of delicacy, if not weakness, in the smiling mouth.

"Who is it?"

"The postman," said McNab.

"What--the blind man?" I cried.

"In other words, the blind man."

That sent my eyes to the print once more, and I crossed to the window to get a fuller light on the face of the man we had hunted for so long. Things had evidently been moving during my absence. If this thing in my hand was a photograph of the blind man, McNab had certainly succeeded in picking his postman out of the crowd that moved on and changed so swiftly, I thought, looking down for a moment on the Embankment.

"That's right, my lad," McNab's voice came, sarcastically humorous, "take another look at the ugly old bridge. A lot of water has run under it since you were last here."

"How did you get it?" I asked, holding out the portrait.

"I'd have got it sooner except for your blundering. But there's no time to tell you the story now," he replied, as he looked again at his watch.

Things had not only been happening; things, I saw, were about to happen. The restlessness which I had taken as a symptom of failure, the talk which had seemed idle trifling, and this slow pacing about the room which I had assumed to come from a sense of depression and defeat--all this took on a new meaning now. Every moment he was expecting something was about to happen. Some one was about to ring that bell. How often I had rung it myself. How familiar its sound was to me--an old-fashioned handle you pulled. You could hear something like a chain grate against wood as you pulled it, and then the subdued tinkle in the distance. Like McNab himself I began to listen. There were, of course, a dozen questions I wanted to put. One was, under this strain, irresistible.

"Who is it--is it really the blind man--is it him you expect?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"I don't know. Wait and we'll see. He has only a few minutes left."

That characteristic reply sticks in my memory. It roused the maximum of curiosity and gave the minimum of satisfaction. And that was what McNab liked to do when he was "out" with me.

Ten more minutes passed. They passed in silence. For I did not risk expulsion by probing him with any more questions. The memory of how he had got rid of me after the inquest at Ealing when he made his great inference from the walking-stick was too vividly reawakened now that I held in my hands the portrait of that stick's owner.

Then just as McNab was glancing again at his watch, the shadow of a frown on his face, he looked up sharply, lifting a hand.

The next moment there came a quick, decided ring at the bell.