Pettis was sitting forward, his bald head gleaming by the glow of the red-shaded lamp as he bent over an envelope. He was making neat notes with a neat gold pencil. Now he raised his prominent eyes, which seemed more prominent and rather frog-like as he studied Dr Fell.

  ‘Er – yes,’ he said, with a short cough. ‘But that point number 5 is suggestive, I should think. Illusion! What if Mills and Mrs Dumont really didn’t see somebody go in that door; that they were hoaxed somehow or that the whole thing was an illusion like a magic-lantern?’

  ‘Illusion me foot,’ said Hadley. ‘Sorry! I thought of that, too. I hammered Mills about it last night, and I had another word or two with him this morning. Whatever else the murderer was, he wasn’t an illusion and he did go in that door. He was solid enough to cast a shadow and make the hall vibrate when he walked. He was solid enough to talk and slam a door. You agree with that, Fell?’

  The doctor nodded disconsolately. He drew in absent puffs on his dead cigar.

  ‘Oh yes, I agree to that. He was solid enough, and he did go in.’

  ‘And even,’ Hadley pursued, while Pettis summoned the waiter to get more coffee, ‘granting what we know is untrue. Even granting a magic-lantern shadow did all that, a magic-lantern shadow didn’t kill Grimaud. It was a solid pistol in a solid hand. And for the rest of the points, Lord knows Grimaud didn’t get shot by a mechanical device. What’s more, he didn’t shoot himself – and have the gun whisk up the chimney like the one in your example. In the first place, a man can’t shoot himself from some feet away. And in the second place, the gun can’t whisk up the chimney and sail across the roofs to Cagliostro Street, shoot Fley, and tumble down with its work finished. Blast it, Fell, my conversation is getting like yours! It’s too much exposure to your habits of thought. I’m expecting a call from the office any minute, and I want to get back to sanity. What’s the matter with you?’

  Dr Fell, his little eyes opened wide, was staring at the lamp, and his fist came down slowly on the table.

  ‘Chimney!’ he said. ‘Chimney! Wow! I wonder if—? Lord! Hadley, what an ass I’ve been!’

  ‘What about the chimney?’ asked the superintendent. ‘We’ve proved the murderer couldn’t have got out like that: getting up the chimney.’

  ‘Yes, of course; but I didn’t mean that. I begin to get a glimmer, even if it may be a glimmer of moonshine. I must have another look at that chimney.’

  Pettis chuckled, tapping the gold pencil on his notes. ‘Anyhow,’ he suggested, ‘you may as well round out this discussion. I agree with the superintendent about one thing. You might do better to outline ways of tampering with doors, windows, or chimneys.’

  ‘Chimneys, I regret to say,’ Dr Fell pursued, his gusto resuming as his abstraction left him, ‘chimneys, I regret to say, are not favoured as a means of escape in detective fiction – except, of course, for secret passages. There they are supreme. There is the hollow chimney with the secret room behind; the back of the fireplace opening like a curtain; the fireplace that swings out; even the room under the hearthstone. Moreover, all kinds of things can be dropped down chimneys, chiefly poisonous things. But the murderer who makes his escape by climbing up is very rare. Besides being next to impossible, it is a much grimier business than monkeying with doors or windows. Of the two chief classifications, doors and windows, the door is by far the more popular, and we may list thus a few means of tampering with it so that it seems to be locked on the inside:

  Tampering with the key which is still in the lock. This was the favourite old-fashioned method, but its variations are too well-known nowadays for anybody to use it seriously. The stem of the key can be gripped and turned with pliers from outside; we did this ourselves to open the door of Grimaud’s study. One practical little mechanism consists of a thin metal bar about two inches long, to which is attached a length of stout string. Before leaving the room, this bar is thrust into the hole at the head of the key, one end under and one end over, so that it acts as a lever; the string is dropped down and run under the door to the outside. The door is closed from outside. You have only to pull on the string, and the lever turns the lock; you then shake or pull out the loose bar by means of the string, and, when it drops, draw it under the door to you. There are various applications of this same principle, all entailing the use of string.

  Simply removing the hinges of the door without disturbing lock or bolt. This is a neat trick, known to most schoolboys when they want to burgle a locked cupboard; but of course the hinges must be on the outside of the door.

  Tampering with the bolt. String again: this time with a mechanism of pins and darning-needles, by which the bolt is shot from the outside by leverage of a pin stuck on the inside of the door, and the string is worked through the keyhole. Philo Vance, to whom my hat is lifted, has shown us this best application of the stunt. There are simpler, but not so effective, variations using one piece of string. A “tomfool” knot, which a sharp jerk will straighten out, is looped in one end of a long piece of cord. This loop is passed round the knob of the bolt, down, and under the door. The door is then closed, and, by drawing the string along to the left or right, the bolt is shot. A jerk releases the knot from the knob, and the string drawn out. Ellery Queen has shown us still another method, entailing the use of the dead man himself – but a bald statement of this, taken out of its context, would sound so wild as to be unfair to that brilliant gentleman.

  Tampering with a falling bar or latch. This usually consists in propping something under the latch, which can be pulled away after the door is closed from the outside, and let the bar drop. The best method by far is by the use of the ever-helpful ice, a cube of which is propped under the latch; and, when it melts, the latch falls. There is one case in which the mere slam of the door suffices to drop the bar inside.

  An illusion, simple but effective. The murderer, after committing his crime, has locked the door from the outside and kept the key. It is assumed, however, that the key is still in the lock on the inside. The murderer, who is first to raise a scare and find the body, smashes the upper glass panel of the door, puts his hand through with the key concealed in it, and “finds” the key in the lock inside, by which he opens the door. This device has also been used with the breaking of a panel out of an ordinary wooden door.

  ‘There are miscellaneous methods, such as locking a door from the outside and returning the key to the room by means of string again, but you can see for yourselves that in this case none of them can have any application. We found the door locked on the inside. Well, there are many ways by which it could have been done – but it was not done, because Mills was watching the door the whole time. This room was only locked in a technical sense. It was watched, and that shoots us all to blazes.’

  ‘I don’t like to drag in famous platitudes,’ said Pettis, his forehead wrinkled, ‘but it would seem pretty sound to say exclude the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. You’ve excluded the door; I presume you also exclude the chimney?’

  ‘I do,’ grunted Dr Fell.

  ‘Then we come back in a circle to the window, don’t we?’ demanded Hadley. ‘You’ve gone on and on about ways that obviously couldn’t have been used. But in this catalogue of sensationalism you’ve omitted all mention of the only means of exit the murderer could have used . . .’

  ‘Because it wasn’t a locked window, don’t you see?’ cried Dr Fell. ‘I can tell you several brands of funny business with windows if they’re only locked. It can be traced down from the earliest dummy nail-heads to the latest hocus-pocus with steel shutters. You can smash a window, carefully turn its catch to lock it, and then, when you leave, simply replace the whole pane with a new pane of glass and putty it round; so that the new pane looks like the original and the window is locked inside. But this window wasn’t locked or even closed – it was only inaccessible.’

  ‘I seem to have read somewhere of human flies . . .’ Pettis suggested.

  Dr Fell shook his head. ‘We won’t debate whether a human fly can walk on a sheer smooth wall. Since I’ve cheerfully accepted so much, I might believe that if the fly had any place to light. That is, he would have to start from somewhere and end somewhere. But he didn’t; not on the roof, not on the ground below . . .’ Dr Fell hammered his fists against his temples. ‘However, if you want a suggestion or two in that respect, I will tell you—’

  He stopped, raising his head. At the end of the quiet, now deserted dining-room a line of windows showed pale light now flickering with snow. A figure had darted in silhouette against them, hesitating, peering from side to side, and then hurrying down towards them. Hadley uttered a muffled exclamation as they saw it was Mangan. Mangan was pale.

  ‘Not something else?’ asked Hadley, as coolly as he could. He pushed back his chair. ‘Not something else about coats changing colour or—’

  ‘No,’ said Mangan. He stood by the table, drawing his breath in gasps. ‘But you’d better get over there. Something’s happened to Drayman; apoplectic stroke or something like that. No, he’s not dead or anything. But he’s in a bad way. He was trying to get in touch with you when he had the stroke . . . He keeps talking wildly about somebody in his room, and fireworks, and chimneys.’

  XVIII The Chimney

  Again there were three people – three people strained and with frayed nerves – waiting in the drawing-room. Even Stuart Mills, who stood with his back to the fireplace, kept clearing his throat in a way that seemed to drive Rosette half frantic. Ernestine Dumont sat quietly by the fire when Mangan led in Dr Fell, Hadley, Pettis, and Rampole. The lights had been turned off; only the bleakness of the snow-shadowed afternoon penetrated through heavy lace curtains, and Mills’ shadow blocked the tired gleam of the fire. Burnaby had gone.

  ‘You cannot see him,’ said the woman, with her eyes fixed on that shadow. ‘The doctor is with him now. Things all come at once. Probably he is mad.’

  Rosette, her arms folded, had been pacing about with her own feline grace. She faced the newcomers and spoke with harsh suddenness.

  ‘I can’t stand this, you know. It can go on just so long, and then— Have you any idea of what happened? Do you know how my father was killed, or who killed him? For God’s sake say something, even if you only accuse me!’

  ‘Suppose you tell us exactly what happened to Mr Drayman,’ Hadley said, quietly, ‘and when it happened. Is he in any grave danger?’

  Mme Dumont shrugged. ‘That is possible. His heart . . . I do not know. He collapsed. He is unconscious now. As to whether he will ever come alive again, that I do not know, either. About what happened to him, we have no idea what caused it . . .’

  Again Mills cleared his throat. His head was in the air, and his fixed smile looked rather ghastly. He said:

  ‘If, sir, you have any idea of – um – foul play, or any suspicion that he was murderously set upon, you may dismiss it. And, strangely enough, you will receive confirmation of it from us in – what shall I say – pairs? I mean that the same people were together this afternoon who were together last night. The Pythoness and I,’ he bowed gravely towards Ernestine Dumont, ‘were together upstairs in my little workroom. I am given to understand that Miss Grimaud and our friend Mangan were down here . . .’

  Rosette jerked her head. ‘You had better hear it from the beginning. Did Boyd tell you about Drayman coming down here first?’

  ‘No, I didn’t tell ’em anything,’ Mangan answered, with some bitterness. ‘After that business of the overcoat, I wanted somebody to give me a little confirmation.’ He swung round, the muscles tightening at his temples. ‘It was about half an hour ago, you see. Rosette and I were here alone. I’d had a row with Burnaby – well, the usual thing. Everybody was yelling and fighting about that overcoat affair, and we’d all separated. Burnaby had gone. I hadn’t seen Drayman at all; he’d kept to his room this morning. Anyhow, Drayman walked in here and asked me how he could get in touch with you.’

  ‘You mean he had discovered something?’

  Rosette sniffed. ‘Or wanted us to think he had. Very mysterious! He came in with that doddering way of his, and as Boyd says, asked where he could find you. Boyd asked him what was up . . .’

  ‘Did he act as though he might have – well, found something important?’

  ‘Yes, he did. We both nearly jumped out of our shoes . . .’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So would you,’ said Rosette, coolly, ‘if you were innocent.’ She twitched her shoulders, her arms still folded, as though she were cold. ‘So we said, “What is it, anyhow?” He doddered a little, and said, “I’ve found something missing from my room, and it makes me remember something I’d forgotten about last night.” It was all a lot of nonsense about some subconscious memory, though he wasn’t very clear on the point. It came down to some hallucination that, while he was lying down last night after he’d taken the sleeping-powder, somebody had come into his room.’

  ‘Before the – crime?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who came into his room?’

  ‘That’s it! He either didn’t know, or wouldn’t say, or else the whole thing was a plain dream. Of course that’s probably what it was. I won’t suggest,’ said Rosette, still coolly, ‘the other alternative. When we asked him, he simply tapped his head, and hedged, and said, “I really can’t say,” in that infuriating way of his . . . Lord! how I hate these people who won’t come out and say what they mean! We both got rather annoyed—’

  ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Mangan, whose discomfort appeared to be growing. ‘Only, damn it all, if I hadn’t said what I did . . .’

  ‘Said what?’ asked Hadley, quickly.

  Mangan hunched his shoulders and looked moodily at the fire. ‘I said, “Well, if you’ve discovered so much, why don’t you go up to the scene of the ’orrid murder and see if you can’t discover some more?” Yes, I was sore. He took me seriously. He looked at me for a minute and said: “Yes, I believe I will. I had better make sure.” And with that out he went! It was maybe twenty minutes later that we heard a noise like somebody banging downstairs . . . You see, we hadn’t left the room, although—’ He checked himself suddenly.

  ‘You might as well go on and say it,’ Rosette told him, with an air of surprised indifference. ‘I don’t mind who knows it. I wanted to sneak up after him and watch him. But we didn’t. After that twenty minutes, we heard him blundering downstairs. Then, apparently when he’d just got to the last step, we heard a choking sound and a thud – flap, like that. Boyd opened the door, and there he was lying doubled up. His face was all congested, and the veins up round the forehead were standing out in a blue colour; horrible business! Of course we sent for the doctor. He hasn’t said anything except to rave about “chimneys” and “fireworks.”’

  Ernestine Dumont still remained stolid, her eyes not moving from the fire. Mills took a little hopping step forward.

  ‘If you will allow me to take up the story,’ he said, inclining his head, ‘I think it probable that I can fill the gap. That is, of course, with the Pythoness’ permission . . .’

  ‘Ah, bah!’ the woman cried. Her face was in shadow as she looked up, there was about her a rigidity as of whalebone, but Rampole was startled to see that her eyes blazed. ‘You must always act the fool, must you not? The Pythoness this, the Pythoness that. Very well, I must tell you. I am Pythoness enough to know that you did not like poor Drayman, and that my little Rosette does not like him, either. God! what do you know of human men or sympathy or . . . Drayman is a good man, even if he may be a little mad. He may be mistaken. He may be full of drugs. But he is a good man at the heart, and if he dies I shall pray for his soul.’

  ‘Shall I – er – go on?’ observed Mills, imperturbably.

  ‘Yes, you shall go on,’ the woman mimicked, and was silent.

  ‘The Pythoness and I were in my workroom on the top floor; opposite the study, as you know. And again the door was open. I was shifting some papers, and I noticed Mr Drayman come up and go into the study . . .’

  ‘Do you know what he did there?’ asked Hadley.

  ‘Unfortunately, no. He closed the door. I could not even venture a deduction as to what he might be doing, since I could hear nothing. After some time he came out, in what I can only describe as a panting and unsteady condition—’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Mills frowned. ‘I regret, sir, that it is impossible to be more precise. I can only say that I received an impression as though he had been indulging in violent exercise. This, I have no doubt, caused or hastened the collapse, since there were clear evidences of an apoplectic stroke. If I may correct the Pythoness, it had nothing to do with his heart. Er – I might add something which has not yet been mentioned. When he was picked up after the stroke, I observed that his hands and sleeves were covered with soot.’

  ‘The chimney again,’ Pettis murmured, very softly, and Hadley turned round towards Dr Fell. It gave Rampole a shock to see that the doctor was no longer in the room. A person of his weight and girth can, as a rule, make small success of an effort to fade mysteriously away; but he was gone, and Rampole thought he knew where.

  ‘Follow him up there,’ Hadley said quickly to the American. ‘And see that he doesn’t work any of his blasted mystification. Now, Mr Mills—’

  Rampole heard Hadley’s questions probing and crackling as he went out into the sombre hall. The house was very quiet; so quiet that, as he mounted the stairs, the sudden shrilling of the telephone bell in the lower hall made him jump a little. Passing Drayman’s door upstairs, he heard hoarse breathing inside, and quiet footfalls tiptoeing about the room: through the door he could see the doctor’s medicine-case and hat on a chair. No lights burned on the top floor; again such a stillness that he could distinctly hear Annie’s voice answering the telephone far below.