'Apparently it wasn't playing loudly enough to - Yes, it was, though. It made such a racket they could hardly hear the fake "Pettis's" voice. But put that in order: '9.45 Door - bell rings.

'9.45 to 9.50 E. Dumont goes to answer door; speaks to visitor (failing to recognize voice). She receives card, shuts the door on him, examines card and finds it blank, hesitates, and starts upstairs...

'9.45 to 9.50 Visitor, after E.D. has started upstairs, gets inside somehow, locks Rosette G. and Boyd M. in front room, answers their hail by imitating the voice of Pettis -'

'I don't like to keep on interrupting you,' cut in Dorothy. 'But doesn't it seem to have taken them a terribly long time to sing out and ask who the caller was? I mean, would anybody wait so long? If I were expecting a visitor like that, I know I should have piped up, "Hullo! who is it?" as soon as I heard the door open.'

'What are you trying to prove? Nothing? Sure of that? Don't be so hard on the blonde! It was some time before they expected anybody, remember - and that sniff of yours indicates prejudice. Let's continue, with the still inclusive times of nine - forty - five to nine - fifty, the interval between the moment X entered the house and the moment he entered Grimaud's study: '9.45 to 9.50 Visitor follows E. Dumont upstairs, overtakes her in upper hall. He takes off cap and pulls down collar, but does not remove mask. Grimaud comes to the door, but does not recognize visitor. Visitor leaps inside and door is slammed. (This is attested by both E. Dumont and S. Mills.) '9.50 to 10.10 Mills watches door from end of hall; Dumont watches same door from staircase landing.

'10.10 Shot is fired.

'10.10 to 10.12 Mangan in front room finds door to hall locked, on the inside.

'10.10 to 10.12 E. Dumont faints or is sick, and gets to her room. (N.B. - Drayman, asleep in his room, does not hear shot.) '10.10 to 10.12 Mangan in front room finds door to hall locked, attempts to break it and fails. He then jumps out window, just as - '10.12 We arrive outside; front door unlocked; we go up to study.

'10.12 to 10.15 Door is opened with pliers, Grimaud found shot.

'10.15 to 10.20 Investigation, ambulance sent for.

'10.20 Ambulance arrives. Grimaud removed. Rosette goes with him in ambulance. Boyd M., at orders from Hadley, goes downstairs to telephone police.

'Which,' Rampole pointed out with some satisfaction, ' absolutely clears both Rosette and Boyd. I don't even need to set down minute times there. The ambulance - men coming upstairs, the doctor's examination, the body taken down to the ambulance - all that in itself would have taken at least five minutes if they'd moved fast enough to slide down the banisters with that stretcher. By G.o.d! it's as plain as print when you write it out! It would have taken a good deal longer before they could get to the nursing - home - and yet Fley was shot in Cagliostro Street at just ten - twenty - five! Now, Rosette did ride over with the ambulance. Boyd was in the house when the ambulance - men arrived, because he came upstairs with them and went down after them. There's a fairly perfect alibi.'

'Oh, you don't need to think I'm so anxious to convict them! - especially Boyd, who's rather nice what little I've seen of him.' She frowned. 'That's always granting your guess that the ambulance didn't arrive at Grimaud's before ten - twenty.'

Rampole shrugged. ' If it did, he pointed out, ' then it flew over from Guilford Street. It wasn't sent for before ten-fifteen, and even so it's something like a miracle that they had it at Grimaud's in five minutes. No, Boyd and Rosette are out of it. Besides, now that I remember, she was at the nursing - home - in the presence of witnesses - when she saw the light in the window of Burnaby's flat at ten - thirty. Let's put the rest into the record and exonerate anyone else we can.

'10.20 to 10.25 Arrival and departure of ambulance with Grimaud.

'10.25 Fley shot in Cagliostro Street.

'10.20 to (at least) 10.30 Stuart Mills remains with us in study, answering questions.

'10.25 Madame Dumont comes into study.

'10.30 Rosette, at nursing - home. sees a light in the window of Burnaby's flat.

'10.25 to 10.40 Madame Dumont remains with us in the study.

'10.40 Rosette returns from nursing - home.

'10.40 Arrival of police at Hadley's call.'

Rampole, sitting back to run his eye down the scrawl, drew a long flourish under the last item.

'That not only completes our time - table as far as we need to go,' he said, 'but it unquestionably adds two more to our list of innocents. Mills and Dumont are out. Rosette and Boyd are out. Which accounts for everybody in the house except Drayman.'

'But,' protested Dorothy, after a pause, 'it's getting even worse tangled up. What happens to your brilliant inspiration about the overcoat? You suggested somebody was lying. It could only have been either Boyd Mangan or Ernestine Dumont; and both are exonerated. Unless that girl, Annie - But that won't do, will it? Or it shouldn't.'

Again they looked at each other. Wryly he folded up his list and put it into his pocket. Outside the night wind whirled by in a long blast, and they could hear Dr Fell blundering round his cubby - hole behind the closed door.

Rampole overslept the next morning, partly from exhaustion and partly because the following day was so overcast that he did not open his eyes until past ten o'clock. It was not only so dark that the lights were on, but a day of numbing cold. He had not seen Dr Fell again last night, when he went downstairs to breakfast in the little back dining - room, the maid was indignant as she set out bacon and eggs.

'The doctor's just gone up to have a wash, sir,' Vida informed him. 'He was up all night on them scientific things, and I found him asleep in the chair in there at eight o'clock this morning. I don't know what Mrs Fell will say, indeed I don't. Superintendent Hadley's just got here too. He's in the library.'

Hadley, who was impatiently knocking his heels against the fender as though he were pawing the floor, asked for news with some eagerness.

'Have you seen Fell?' he demanded. 'Did he go after those letters? And if so -?'

Rampole explained. 'Any news from you?'

'Yes, and important news. Both Pettis and Burnaby are out. They've got cast - iron alibis.'

Wind whooped past along Adelphi Terrace, and the long window - frames rattled. Hadley continued to paw the hearth - rug. He went on: 'I saw Burnaby's three card - playing friends last night. One, by the way, is an Old Bailey judge; it'd be pretty difficult to drag a man into court when the judge on the bench can testify to his innocence. Burnaby was playing poker on Sat.u.r.day night from eight o'clock to nearly half - past eleven. And this morning Betts has been round to the theatre where Pettis said he saw the play that night. Well, he did. One of the bar - attendants at the theatre knows him quite well by sight. It seems that the second act of the show ends at five minutes past ten. A few minutes afterwards, during the interval, this attendant is willing to swear he served Pettis with a whisky - and - soda in the bar. In other words, he was having a drink at just about the exact moment Grimaud was shot nearly a mile away.'

'I expected something like that,' said Rampole, after a silence. 'And yet, to hear it confirmed - I wish you'd look at this.'

He handed over the time - table he had made last night. Hadley glanced over it.

'Oh, yes. I sketched out one of my own. This is fairly sound; especially the point about the girl and Mangan, although we can't swear too closely to time in that respect. But I think it would hold.' He tapped the envelope against his palm. 'Narrows it down, I admit. We'll have another go at Drayman. I phoned the house this morning. Everybody was a bit hysterical because they've brought the old man's body back to the house, and I couldn't get much out of Rosette except that Drayman was still only half conscious and under morphia. We - '

He stopped as he heard the familiar, lumbering step with the tap of the cane, which seemed to have hesitated just outside the door as though at Hadley's words. Then Dr Fell pushed open the door. There was no twinkle in his eye when he entered. He seemed a part of the heavy morning, and a sense of doom pervading that leaden air.

'Well?' prompted Hadley. 'Did you find out what you wanted to know from those papers?'

Dr Fell fumbled after, found, and lit his black pipe. Before he answered he waddled over to toss the match into the fire. Then he chuckled at last, but very wryly.

'Yes, I found out what I wanted to know. Hadley, twice in my theories on Sat.u.r.day night I unintentionally led you wrong. So wrong, with such a monstrous and dizzying stupidity, that if I hadn't saved my self - respect by seeing the truth of this thing yesterday, I should have deserved the last punishment reserved for fools. Still, mine wasn't the only blunder. Chance and circ.u.mstance made an even worse blunder, and they've combined to make a terrifying, inexplicable puzzle out of what is really only a commonplace and ugly and petty murder case. Oh, there was shrewdness to the murderer; I admit that. But - yes, I've found out what I wanted to know.'

'Well? What about the writing on those papers? What was on those papers?'

'Nothing,' said Dr Fell.

There was something eerie in the slow, heavy way he spoke the word.

'You mean,' cried Hadley, 'that the experiment didn't work?'

'No, I mean that the experiment did work. I mean that there was nothing on those papers,' boomed Dr Fell. 'Not so much as a single line or sc.r.a.p or shred of handwriting, not so much as a whisper or pothook of the deadly secrets I told you on Sat.u.r.day night we might find. That's what I mean. Except - well, yes. There were a few bits of heavier paper, rather like thick cardboard, with one or two letters printed there.'

'But why burn letters unless -?'

'Because they weren't letters. That's just it; that's where we went wrong. Don't you see even yet what they were? ... Well, Hadley, we'd better finish this up and get the whole mess off our minds. You want to meet the invisible murderer, do you? You want to meet the d.a.m.ned ghoul and hollow man who's been walking through our dreams? Very well; I'll introduce you. Got your car? Then come along. I'm going to see if I can't extract a confession.'

'From -?

'From somebody at Grimaud's house. Come on.' Rampole saw the end looming, and was afraid of it, without an idea in his whirling head as to what it might be.

Hadley had to spin a half - frozen engine before the car would start. They were caught in several traffic blocks on the way up, but Hadley did not even curse. And the quietest of all was Dr Fell.

All the blinds were drawn on the house in Russell Square.

It looked even more dead than yesterday, because death had come inside. And it was so quiet that even from outside they could hear the ringing of the bell when Dr Fell pressed it. Alter a long interval Annie, without her cap or ap.r.o.n, answered it. She looked pale and strained, but still calm. 'We should like to see Madame Dumont,' said Dr Fell. Hadley jerked his head round to look, even though he remained impa.s.sive. Annie seemed to speak out of the darkness in the hall as she moved back.

'She is in with the - she's in there,' the girl answered, and pointed towards the drawing - room door. 'I'll call - ' She swallowed.

Dr Fell shook his head. He moved over with surprising quietness and softly opened the drawing - room door.

The dull brown blinds were drawn, and the thick lace curtains m.u.f.fled what little light filtered through. Although the room looked vaster, its furniture was lost in shadow; except for one piece of furniture, of gleaming black metal lined with white satin. It was an open coffin. Thin candles were burning around it. Of the dead face Rampole afterwards remembered that from where he stood he could see only the tip of a nose. But those candles alone, or the faint thickness of flowers and incense in the air, moved the scene weirdly from dun London to some place of crags and blasts among the Hungarian mountains: where the gold cross loomed guard against devils, and garlic wreaths kept off the prowling vampire.

Yet this was not the thing they first noticed. Ernestine Dumont stood beside the coffin, one hand gripping its edge. The high, thin candle - light above turned her greying hair to gold; it softened and subdued even the crumpled posture of her bent shoulders. When she turned her head slowly round, they saw that her eyes were sunken and smeared - though she still could not weep. Her breast heaved jerkily. Yet round her shoulders she had wound a gay, heavy, long - fringed yellow shawl, with red brocade and bead embroidery that burnt with a shifting glitter under the light. It was the last touch of the barbaric.

And then she saw them. Both hands suddenly gripped the edge of the coffin, as though she would shield the dead. She remained a silhouette, one hand outspread on either side, under the unsteady candles.

'It will do you good, madame, to confess,' said Dr Fell, very gently. 'Believe me, it will do you good.'

For a second Rampole thought she had stopped breathing. Then she made a sound as though she were half coughing, which is only grief before it becomes hysterical mirth.

'Confess?' she said. 'So this is what you think, all you fools? Well, I do not care. Confess! Confess to murder?'

'No,' said Dr Fell.

His voice, in that one quiet monosyllable; had a heavy note across the room. And now she stared at him, and now for the first time she began to stare with fright as he moved across towards her.

'No,' said Dr Fell. 'You are not the murderer. Let me tell you what you are.'

Now he towered over her, black against the candlelight, but he still spoke gently.

'Yesterday, you see, a man named O'Rourke told us several things. Among them was the fact that most illusions either on or off the stage are worked with the aid of a confederate. This was no exception. You were the confederate of the illusionist and murderer.'

'The hollow man,' said Ernestine Dumont, and suddenly began to laugh hysterically.

"The hollow man,' said Dr Fell, and turned quietly to Hadley, 'in a real sense. The hollow man whose naming was a terrible and an ironic jest, even if we did not know it, because it was the exact truth. That is the horror and in a way the shame. Do you want to see the murderer you have been hunting all through this case? - The murderer lies there,' said Dr Fell, 'but G.o.d forbid that we should judge him now.'

And with a slow gesture he pointed to the white, dead, tight - lipped face of Dr Charles Grimaud.

CHAPTER 20.

THE TWO BULLETS.

DR FELL continued to look steadily at the woman,, who had again shrunk against the side of the coffin as though to defend it.

'Ma'am,' he went on, 'the man you loved is dead. He is beyond the reach of the law now and, whatever he has done, he has paid for it. Our immediate problem, yours and mine, is to hush this thing up so that the living may not be hurt. But, you see, you are implicated, even though you took no actual hand in the murder. Believe me, ma'am, if I could have explained the whole thing without bringing you into it at all, I should have done so. I know you have suffered. But you will see for yourself that such a course was impossible if I were to explain the entire problem. So we must persuade Superintendent Hadley that this affair must be hushed up.'

Something in his voice, something of the unweary, unchanging, limitless compa.s.sion that was Gideon Fell, seemed to touch her gently as sleep after tears. Her hysteria had gone.

'Do you know?' she asked him, after a pause, and almost eagerly.' Do not fool me! Do you really know?'

'Yes, I really know.'

'Go upstairs. Go to his room,' she said in a dull voice, 'and I will join you presently. I - I cannot face you just now. I must think, and - But please do not speak to anybody until I come. Please! No, I will not run away.'

Dr Fell's fierce gesture silenced Hadley as they went out. Still in silence they tramped up the gloomy stairs to the top floor. They pa.s.sed no one, they saw no one. Once more they came into the study, where it was so dark that Hadley switched on the mosaic lamp at the desk. After he had made sure the door was closed, Hadley turned round rather wildly.

'Are you trying to tell me that Grimaud killed Frey?' he demanded.

'Yes.'

'While he was lying unconscious and dying under the eyes of witnesses in a nursing - home, he went to Cagliostro Street and -!'

'Not then,' said Dr Fell quietly. 'You see, that's what you don't understand. That's what led you wrong. That's what I meant by saying that the case had been turned not upside down, but the wrong way round. Fley was killed before Grimaud. And, worst of all, Grimaud was trying to tell us the exact, literal truth. He did tell us the exact truth, when he knew he was dying beyond hope - it's one of the good gleams in him - but we chose to misinterpret it. Sit down, and I'll see if I can explain it. Once you have grasped the three essential points, you will need no deduction and very little elucidation from me. The thing will explain itself.'

He lowered himself, wheezing, into the chair behind the desk. For a little time he remained staring vacantly at the lamp. Then he went on: 'The three essential points, then, are these: (1) There is no brother Henri; there are only two brothers; (2) Both these brothers were speaking the truth; (3) A question of time has turned the case wrong way round.

'Many things in this case have turned on a matter of brief s.p.a.ces of time, and how brief they are. It's a part of the same irony which described our murderer as the hollow man that the crux of the case should be a matter of mistaken time. You can easily spot it if you think back.

'Now remember yesterday morning! I already had some occasion to believe there was something queer about that business in Cagliostro Street. The shooting there, we were told by three (truthful) witnesses who agreed precisely and to a second, took place at just ten - twenty - five. I wondered, in an idle sort of way, why they corroborated each other with such startling exact.i.tude. In the case of the usual street accident, even the most cool witnesses don't usually take such notice, or are careful to consult their watches, or (even if they do) agree about the time with such uncanny precision. But they were truthful people, and there must have been some reason for their exact.i.tude. The time must have been thrust on them.

'Of course there was a reason. Just across from where the murdered man fell there was a lighted shop - window - the only lighted window thereabouts - of a jeweller's shop. It was the most noticeable thing in the foreground. It illuminated the murdered man; it was the first place to which the constable rushed in search of the murderer; it quite naturally focussed their attention. And, facing them from that window, there was an enormous clock of such unusual design that it immediately took the eye. It was inevitable that the constable should look for the time, and natural that the others should also. Hence their agreement.

'But one thing, not apparently important at that time, bothered me a little. After Grimaud was shot, Hadley summoned his men to this house, and instantly dispatched one of them to pick up Fley as a suspect. Now, then, those men arrived here - about what time?'

'About ten - forty,' said Rampole, 'according to a rough calculation. I've got it in my time - table.'

'And,' said Dr Fell, 'a man was sent immediately to get Fley. This man must have arrived in Cagliostro Street - when? Between fifteen and twenty minutes after Fley was presumed to have been killed. But in the s.p.a.ce of that brief time, what has happened? An incredible number of things! Fley has been carried down to the doctor's house, he has died, an examination has been made, a fruitless effort undertaken to identify Fley; and then, "after some delay" in the words of the newspaper account, the van is sent for and Fley removed to the mortuary. All this! For, when Hadley's detective arrived in Cagliostro Street to pick up Fley, he found the whole business finished - and the constable back making inquiries from door to door. The entire excitement had died down. Which seemed incredible.

'Unfortunately, I was so dense that I didn't see the significance of this even yesterday morning when I saw the clock in the jeweller's window.

'Think back once more. Yesterday morning we had breakfast at my house; Pettis dropped in, and we talked to him - until what time?'

There was a pause.

'Until exactly ten o'clock,' Hadley answered, suddenly, and snapped his fingers. 'Yes! I remember, because Big Ben was striking just as he got up to go.'

'Quite right. He left us, and afterwards we put on our lulls and coats and drove straight to Cagliostro Street. Now, allow any reasonable margin of time you like for our putting on our hats, going downstairs, driving a short distance on deserted roads Sunday morning - a drive that took us only ten minutes when there was Sat.u.r.day night traffic. I think you'll say the whole process can hardly have taken twenty minutes in all ... But in Cagliostro Street you showed me the jeweller's shop, and that fancy clock was just striking eleven.

'Even then in my musing density it never occurred to me to look at that clock and wonder, just as in their excitement it never occurred to the three witnesses last night. Just afterwards, you recall, Somers and O'Rourke summoned us up to Burnaby's flat. We made quite a long investigation, and then had a talk with O'Rourke. And while O'Rourke was speaking, I noticed that the earlier dead quiet of the day - the quiet when in the street we heard only the wind - had a new sound. I heard church bells.

'Well, what time do church bells begin to ring? Not after eleven o'clock; the service has begun. Usually before eleven, for a preparatory bell. But, if I accepted the evidence of that German clock, it must then be a very long time past eleven o'clock. Then my dull mind woke up. I remembered Big Ben and our drive to Cagliostro Street. The combination of those bells and Big Ben - against (hem!) a trumpery foreign clock. Church and State, so to speak, couldn't both be wrong - In other words, the clock in that jeweller's window was more than forty minutes fast. Hence the shooting in Cagliostro Street the night before could not have taken place at twenty - five minutes past ten. Actually it must have taken place a short time previous to a quarter to ten. Say, roughly, at nine - forty.

'Now, sooner or later somebody would have noticed this; maybe somebody has noticed it already. A thing like that would be bound to come out in a coroner's court. Somebody would come forward to dispute the right time. Whether you'd have instantly seen the truth then (as I hope), or whether it would have confused you even more, I don't know ... But the solid fact remains that the affair in Cagliostro Street took place some minutes before the man in the false face rang the bell of this house at nine - forty - five.'

'But I still don't see -!' protested Hadley.