The Problem of the Green Capsule (19 page)

“Look at the clock,” someone said with shattering loudness from behind Elliot’s shoulder. It drowned out the steady whirring of the projector. “Look at the clock! What’s the time?”

“Gawdlummycharley—” said Bostwick’s voice.

A stir went through the room, as though it were the furniture that had moved rather than the people.

“What’s the time there? What do you say?”

“They were all wrong,” said Bostwick’s voice, “that’s what it is. One of ’em said midnight; one said about midnight; and Professor Ingram said one minute to midnight. They’re all wrong. It’s one minute
past
midnight.”

“Sh-h-h!”

The little mimic world was unaffected. With great deliberation Marcus Chesney drew out the desk-chair and sat down. He reached out and pushed the chocolate-box a little to his own right, with great nicety as contrasted to the flickering of the film. Next he picked up a flattish pencil, and with it he industriously and rather self-consciously pretended to write. Next—having to dig his finger-nails a little into the blotter, and showing some difficulty in picking it up—he took the other tiny article. They saw it clearly, straight against the light.

Professor Ingram’s description of it flashed into Elliot’s mind. The professor had described it as something like a pen, but narrower and much smaller. He had described it as a thin silver, under three inches long, blackish, sharptipped. And this was a correct description.

“I know what that is,” said Major Crow.

There was a scrape of a chair. Major Crow walked quickly out of the group, edged sideways, and stuck his head into the beam of light to get a better look. His shadow blotted out half the screen; and a series of fantastic pictures, of Marcus Chesney writhing wildly, danced in faint outline across the back of his raincoat.

“Stop the picture,” said Major Crow, turning round full in the beam from the projector. His voice was going high.

“I know what it is right enough,” he repeated. “It’s the minute-hand of a clock.”

“The what?” demanded Bostwick.

“The minute-hand of that clock on the mantelpiece,” shouted Major Crow, raising his finger as though to illustrate. “We noticed the clock had a dial six inches in diameter. Don’t you see it? It’s the long minute-hand as opposed to the short hour-hand. All Chesney had to do before the performance was unscrew the head of the spindle holding the hands (we saw it had a screw-head), remove the minute-hand from the spindle, and replace the screw-head. That left only one hand on the clock; the short hour-hand pointing dead to twelve.

“Gad, take my—don’t you see it yet? There was only one hand on the clock. The witnesses all thought they saw two hands. What they really saw was the hour-hand; and a sharp, black shadow of the hour-hand thrown above and beside it on the white face of the clock by that brilliant light shining up on it from below.”

He pointed his finger; he seemed to fight down a tendency to dance.

“It even accounts for all the differences in the testimony, don’t you see? The witnesses differ according to the direction in which they saw the shadow fall. Professor Ingram, sitting to the extreme right, saw the shadow fall at one minute to twelve. Miss Wills, sitting in the centre, saw it dead on midnight. This film, taken from the extreme left, shows it at one minute past twelve. After the performance—when Chesney carefully closed the double-doors on them—all he had to do was replace the minute-hand on the clock: which would take about five seconds. And the clock showed the right time again. But during the performance Chesney had the colossal cheek to sit there holding the minute-hand under their very eyes; and not one of ’em saw it.”

There was a silence.

From the gloom came the sound of Bostwick appreciatively slapping his thigh, of an approving grunt from Dr. Fell, and of Stevenson muttering as he struggled with a jammed film. Major Crow added, more mildly, but bursting with pride:

“Didn’t I tell you there was some jiggery-pokery about that clock?”

“You did that, sir,” said Bostwick.

“It’s sound psychology,” admitted Dr. Fell, nodding with vigour. “You know, I would offer a small wager that the trick would have deceived them even if there had been no shadow. When the hands of a clock are on midnight we see only one hand; we glance no further; custom deceives us. But our good Chesney went even further and made his scheme triple foolproof. That, we begin to see, was why he insisted on holding the show round about midnight. The shadow illusion, granted, would work with the hands at any position on the dial. But by getting the hour-hand vertical at midnight he made sure that three different witnesses in three different positions saw three different, sharply emphasised times on the clock. And he would catch them out in no less than two questions out of his ten. But look here! The question is—steady—the question now is, what was the
real
time?”

“Ah,” said Bostwick.

“That hour-hand is vertical, isn’t it?”

“It is,” affirmed Major Crow.

“Which means,” scowled the doctor, “which means, if I recall anything of my own various tinkerings with clocks, that the position of the minute-hand could have been anything from five minutes before midnight to five minutes past midnight. The hour-hand stays more or less vertical during those times, depending on the size and mechanism of the clock. The time before midnight does not concern us. The time after midnight does concern us. It means——”

Major Crow put away his pipe in his pocket.

“
It
means,” he said, “that Joe Chesney’s alibi is shot to blazes. Everything depended on his leaving Emsworth’s house at just midnight, the same time (we supposed) that Dr. Nemo was in the office at Bellegarde. Joe Chesney really did leave the Emsworths’ at midnight. But Dr. Nemo didn’t walk into the office and kill Chesney at midnight. No; the real time was past midnight. Probably five or six minutes past midnight. Joe Chesney could easily have driven from the Emsworths’ to Bellegarde in three minutes. Q.E.D. Open those curtains, somebody. I’ve got nothing against Joe Chesney; but I’m inclined to think he’s the lad we want.”

It was Elliot who threw back the curtains on one window. Daylight came in with grey pallor, paling the beam from the projector, showing Major Crow standing before a picture still twisted and stuck faintly on the sheet hung between the doors.

And Major Crow’s excitement was growing.

“Inspector,” he said, “I never fancied myself much in the analytical way. But this is so plain we can’t overlook it. You know? Poor old Marcus Chesney actually planned the way in which another person could kill him——”

“So?” observed Dr. Fell thoughtfully.

“Joe Chesney could have known all about the clock and the shadow-illusion. You see that? Either he could have hung about Bellegarde after dinner: Marcus and Wilbur Emmet were in the study, with windows open, for nearly three hours. Or else, which seems more likely, Marcus and Emmet were planning this show for days ahead; and Joe could have known all about it beforehand.

“He knew Marcus wouldn’t start the show until the hand of that clock was vertical. In the ordinary way, you know, that clock couldn’t be tampered with; Marcus couldn’t reset the hands. If Joe could get himself an alibi at the Emsworths’—if he could get back to Bellegarde —and if Marcus chose to put on the show at a tune after midnight rather than a time before midnight, Joe Chesney would be in clover. And wait! There’s one thing (by Jove, I’ve just thought of this) there’s one thing he would certainly have to do afterwards.”

“Which is?” said Elliot.

“He’d have to kill Wilbur Emmet as well,” said the Major. “Emmet knew all about the trick with the clock. And how many other people hereabouts, do you think, knew how to use a hypodermic needle?” He let this sink in. “Gentlemen, it’s as plain as anything I ever saw. He’s got a head, that chap has. Who would suspect him?”

“You would,” said Dr. Fell.

“What’s that?”

“In fact, you did,” the doctor pointed out. “It was the very first thing you thought of. I suspect that in your correct Woolwich head there has long been stirring a profound distrust of Joseph Chesney’s too-roaring manners. But continue.”

“Gad, I’ve got nothing against the fellow!” protested Major Crow rather querulously. He became formal again, and turned to Elliot. “Inspector, this is your case. After this morning, I will have nothing more to do with it. But it strikes me you’ve got some very good grounds here. It’s well known that Joe Chesney hates work, as he would; and that Marcus somehow kept him at it or bullied him into it; and that, so far as grounds for arrest are concerned——”

“What grounds?” interrupted Dr. Fell.

“I don’t follow you.”

“I said what grounds?” repeated Dr. Fell. “In your highly intelligent reconstruction you seem to have forgotten one small but possibly important fact. It was not Joseph Chesney who hoaxed you with the clock. It was his brother Marcus. You have got the direction of the evidence mixed. You are robbing Peter to hang Paul.”

“Yes; but——”

“And therefore,” said Dr. Fell with emphasis, “by some mental sleight-of-hand you have convinced yourself that you ought to arrest a man simply because you have broken an alibi which somebody else constructed for him. You do not even suggest that he constructed it. You want to arrest him simply because he has no alibi. I will make no comment on the other glaring weaknesses in your hypothesis; I will confine myself to the simple observation that you cannot do that there here.”

Major Crow was offended.

“I didn’t say anything about arresting him. I know we’ve got to have evidence. But what do you suggest?”

“What about getting on with it, sir,” suggested Bostwick, “and finding out?”

“Eh?”

“This chap in the top-hat. We haven’t
seen
him yet.”

“—and is it understood,” Dr. Fell said savagely, when order was restored and the curtains drawn again, “that this time nobody interrupts until the film is finished? Is it agreed? Good! Then kindly bite on a bullet and restrain yourselves and let us see what is happening. Fire away, Mr. Stevenson.”

Again the click and hum of the projector filled the room. The mimic scene silenced them to coughs and rustlings. Now, as Elliot looked at the screen, the thing seemed so obvious that he wondered how mind co-related with eyesight could have gone so far astray. The larger hand on that clock clearly was a shadow: nothing more. Marcus Chesney, holding the real clock-hand and industriously pretending to write with it, wore an expression that betrayed nothing.

Marcus Chesney dropped it on the blotter. He seemed to hear something. He turned round a little way, to his right. His face, bony and unpleasantly hollowed with shadow, swung round so that they had an even better view of it.

And into the picture stepped the murderer.

Dr. Nemo, in fact, turned round slowly and looked at them.

He was a dingy figure. The nap of the tall hat was badly rubbed and looked moth-eaten. The raincoat, a muddy light grey, had its collar turned up to where the ears might have been. A fuzzy greyish blob, which might have been the face of an insect or the windings of a muffler, filled up the space between; and the black spectacles stared at them opaquely.

Their first view of him was a fairly full view, though taken from the left. He was standing within the radius of light; but at the moment he was standing too far to the front, and the light was placed too high, so that his trousers and shoes were too dim to be made out. The fingers of his gloved right hand, smooth and jointless as a dummy’s, held the black bag with its painted name towards them.

Then he moved with blinding swiftness.

Elliot, on the alert for it, saw what he did. His back was partly turned to them when he looked back at Marcus Chesney, and the movement was easier to follow. Approaching the table, he put down the bag. He put it down just behind the chocolate-box there. Instantly, as though altering his intention, he picked it up again and put it down on top of the chocolate-box. By his first movement he had released the duplicate chocolate-box on the table from the spring-grip bag. By his second movement he snapped up the original box into the bag.

“So that’s how he changed ’em over!” said Major Crow’s voice out of the gloom.

“Sh-h-h!” roared Dr. Fell.

But there was not time to think, for the whole affair was over too soon. When Nemo circled the table outside the range of light he became a sort of exploding blur, unpleasantly as though he had no existence and were dematerialising.

Then they saw a man murdered.

Nemo reappeared on the other side of the table. Marcus Chesney spoke to him soundlessly. Nemo’s right hand—which they could see because he was now partly facing them—was in his pocket. It came out; the movement of the hands flickered a little, but he was taking something out of what looked like a tiny cardboard box.

Hitherto his movements had been swift and precise. Now they became charged with a kind of malignancy. The fingers of his left hand fastened lightly round Marcus Chesney’s throat; they moved, and tilted up the chin. Even in the hollows of the eyesockets you could see the startled gleam of Marcus Chesney’s eyes. Nemo’s right hand wormed over his captive’s mouth; it pressed a capsule inside, and flattened out.

Superintendent Bostwick spoke out of the gloom.

“Ah,” he said. “That was where the lady cried out,
‘Don’t, don’t!’”

Nemo disappeared again.

Circling back round the table in a shadowy dazzle, he picked up the black satchel. But this time he moved back to the extreme rear of the room as he was going out. Dimly but clearly, the light picked up his full figure. It showed the dress trousers and the evening shoes. It also showed the distance of the bottom of the raincoat from the floor. In one flash they could estimate his height almost as clearly as though they held a measure.

“Stop the film!” said Major Crow. “Stop it right there! You can see——”

It was unnecessary to stop the film. It had come to its end. With a series of flapping noises from the projector, the screen flickered, darkened, and grew blankly white.