BENNETT MADE A motion with his pipe-stem towards Hobey Raymonds, who was staring up at the ceiling. Tussard agreed, and called out, “Markey! Hey, Markey!”
Markey opened the door.
“Hey, Raymonds! Outside.” Raymonds took up his hat and coat, and departed. Tussard continued to Markey, “All right. Let him go. And no visitors here for a while. That’s all.”
Bennett then composed himself comfortably in the chair Raymonds had left. He blew out a fat cloud of tobacco smoke, and watched it roll in the light on Tussard’s desk. He said, “Really, Tussard, do we agree?”
“Just about.”
“Um.”
“You can take one line, Mr. Bennett, and build on it and follow it up. You can say, this thing is more probable than that thing, so I’ll believe this. But I got to take every damn line I get hold of, and follow it up as if I believed it was the only one, and I got to believe everything till my case breaks; this thing and that thing, probable, improbable, and just plain no damn good at all.”
“Therefore clinging to the theory that Christien is the murderer; that the watchman is alive, and the murderer; and, for all I know, that I am the murderer myself.”
“I can agree with you on your theory,” said Tussard, “and keep all the other theories, too, can’t I?”
“If you’re clever.”
“You see, Mr. Bennett, I know something about Mr. Christien that you don’t know yet, and when you know it, you may change your mind a little.”
“The devil. Really?”
“But I’m not telling you about it, Mr. Bennett, because I don’t know you won’t go right to Christien’s lawyers with it, and I don’t think that would be fair to me. So we won’t argue about it. I’ll say frankly, Mr. Bennett, that my mind is open like a porch right now, and just about as empty, and what you found out tonight has changed everything around a whole lot, and I’m not disagreeing with you at all.”
“Good. Privately, you think Mr. Christien has an accomplice?”
“Maybe.”
“Who?”
“He has a wife, hasn’t he?”
2.
Bennett said, “We may walk a long way, Tussard, and stumble on each insufficient fact a hundred times over, and grow old, and not get to the bottom of this crime. It seems to me that all our little facts are no more use to us than this, cumbrances to stumble over. Facts are rot. The psychology of murder is rot. Indeed, all psychology is pretentious rot, a cold puffing out of some ancient commonplace. Let us both have the grace to stop pretending we are logical and deductive. You think Frederick Christien is the murderer; and you will find your facts to satisfy the thought, and to hang Christien, if the facts exist. No! And justly, too! I shan’t complain—if you discover facts. However, you and your opinion, not facts from which you dispassionately deduce his guilt, will hang the man. I, of course, have another man to hang.”
Tussard said, “Who?”
“My mind, Tussard, is more doddering, and less impulsive, than yours. I must wait. Perhaps the issue of justice to a horrid murderer scarcely excites me, at my age. But prejudice? My dear man, as you are prejudiced in the opinion that Christien is guilty, I am equally prejudiced for equally superficial and illogical reasons in the opinion that Christien is innocent. Christien, you know, is my friend.”
“I hope you get him off.”
“Generous hope. You likewise hope to get him on. How it may turn as the murderer writhes and kicks the dust about, I’m sure I don’t know. Dare say, Tussard, if I had an opinion, I could find the facts tonight in what we both know. And dare say too, that if your opinion were right enough, you, too, could find the facts to put Christien in the dock.”
“Not yet.”
“Who is the murdered man, eh?”
“That’s right.”
“He came on his crippled legs last night, to the terrace outside. He was murdered. The watchman saw the murder, and the murderer. The watchman flashed his torch—Oh, Bauer! you know you sat on my torch, don’t you, at the proper moment? I had it in my hand—”
“Probably got shot if you’d lit it, sir.”
“However. The watchman last night flashed his torch. Perhaps he was astonished, amazed. But he was killed on the spot, before he could speak. Curiously, it was the watchman whom the murderer concealed first. Do you think the other man seemed less dangerous, less easily identified? Do you think, perhaps, that the murderer had brooded in his mind on killing the cripple one day, so that the sight of his dead body frightened him less than the sight of the dead watchman, whose death was not premeditated?”
“That’s pulling it fine, sir,” said Tussard.
“It is, indeed.”
“You say it’s all a guess, who did it. I’d like to hear your guess.”
“Oh no! unjust!”
“Well, if justice is only a guess, the way you said...?
“Good God, I’m done!”
“You know mine, sir. I’d like to hear yours.”
“You’ll hear it all, then. I made a frightful blunder. I let the murderer know I would come here tonight.”
“How?”
“He came to dine with me. I told him, not explicitly, but by inferences, that I would come. He knew, I’m sure, that I meant to find what you, Tussard, had overlooked. He may have thought me more astute than you. At least, he got here before me. No coincidence, you know, that I interrupted his arrangements to depart. It was a kind of race. He won it.”
“Who was this you told?”
“Three people—Ann Crofts, Miss Whittacker, and Anthony Suttro.”
“Which is the one?”
“My guess? Suttro.”
3.
“Suttro telephoned over here about ten o’clock or a little earlier, and told Mr. Levison you’d be coming tonight to have a look for something.”
“The devil.”
“Mr. Levison was in his office, and he went across to Holcomb, who was sitting here in this office of Christien’s and he told Holcomb you were coming.”
“The devil.”
“Holcomb was alone in his office from that time, till Raymonds called for help. Levison was alone in his office.”
“Goon.”
“I’m just showing you what I have to do, Mr. Bennett. I check up on everybody. Ann Crofts was in her little shop, alone. Emma Whittacker was down in the theatre seeing the show, right here in this building. You might have guessed her, and been nearer right.”
“Go on.”
“Mr. Christien was in the hospital, and dead to the world. But Mrs Christien went out about nine o’clock. The first time she left the hospital since last night. She hasn’t got back yet, because they got to ring me when she shows up.”
“Go on.”
“John Boxworth was up in Mr. Suttro’s office when I rang him, and Boxworth says he was with Mr. Suttro from ten o’clock on.”
“Tussard, my humiliation is abject, and profound. May yours be so, too, when you find out the truth about Christien. I withdraw my guess, if I may. I told you, I think, I hadn’t decided properly? Tonight’s prowling might be the work of the murderer’s third cousin, who heard him confessing the crime at family prayers, and who chose to confuse the plot merely for a rag. Suttro! I’ll be dashed.”
“Going, sir?”
“Of course. Dare I stay? Get your coat, Bauer.” Tussard said, “When will you be back?”
“Friday.”
“Anything I can do for you?”
“Forgive me.”
“I mean, anything you want done?”
“Quite seriously, I shall start from abstractions and work towards the prejudice this time. Could you give me dossiers on Levison, Holcomb, Boxworth—and Suttro?”
“Stuff I’ve looked up about their pasts, eh?”
“Precisely.”
“Yes, I can. That’s routine work. When do you want it?”
“Tonight, before I go to Washington. Give it to Hope.”
“I’ll have it sent in a hurry. While you’re in Washington, you can boot my man along. I sent him down by ‘plane this afternoon to look up the records on cripples without faces. Disabled Veterans.”
“Good. Friday, then.”
“That’s right, sir. I’ll have the watchman for you by then, dead or alive.”
“Dead. And Tussard!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Keep the dead watchman under your hat, as they say.”
“I’ll do that,” said Tussard.
4.
Bennett and Bauer came out on Eighteenth in a thin flush of late theatre-goers.
“Supper with Suttro,” murmured Bennett.
“What, sir?”
“Nothing.”
The theatre-goers vanished as the two men strolled towards Eighth. Bennett scowled at the empty street, now glazed and cold in the light of the lamps. A few parked cars made black shadows where they stood.
“What do you think of it, Bauer?”
Discreet and unobtrusive, Bauer said, “I don’t know as I think anything, sir. I haven’t followed the trouble very closely.”
Bennett swung his stick at a crumpled cigarette package and murmured, “Nor, as it seems, have I.”