XI
Mr. Erasmus Quirk
“It’s no good,” said Leyland; “it doesn’t make the least little bit of sense. Don’t say that the second wallet didn’t really belong to Derek Burtell; that his card was put inside it for a ruse. That note is numbered continuously with the ones we found in the other wallet; all three were among the notes he took out of his bank about a fortnight ago. Two purses, one opposite the end of the island, one opposite the disused boathouse; two notes in one, Derek Burtell’s notes, one note in the other, Derek Burtell’s note, and a card, Derek Burtell’s card—what on earth has he or anybody else been up to?”
“No, you can search me. I’ve known men wear two handkerchiefs, or two watches, or two pipes; but never two purses. Besides, even if he did, what’s the good? Unless, indeed, one fell out in the course of a struggle or in some moment of excitement, while he was alive, and the other slipped from his pocket as his body rolled over into the river. That’s the nearest I can get, but it seems pretty fantastic.”
“Well, it’s better than nothing,” admitted Leyland. “Fantastic, but not impossible.”
“Yes, but you don’t realize the worst of it,” Bredon pointed out. “The place at which Burgess found the first wallet, just below the bridge of the island, wasn’t the place at which the canoe was scuttled.”
“How do you make that out?”
“Don’t I keep on telling you that a canoe with a hole that size in it could only float a few hundred yards before it got waterlogged? And that, once it’s waterlogged, it makes practically no headway at all, because it’s only got the stream to drift it, not the wind? The stream couldn’t possibly have floated the canoe down all that distance between (say) half-past nine and half-past one. So that you have to make two separate episodes in this mad canoe journey—one at the bridge, where the pouch was dropped, one lower down, where the boat was scuttled. It’s all too dashed untidy for words.”
“I’ll tell you what; I’m coming to feel that the only thing is to get on to Nigel Burtell’s tracks. Derek Burtell may be alive or dead; to go chasing round for him is possibly to make fools of ourselves. But Nigel Burtell is presumably alive; he’s done a clear bolt, which shows he’s got a guilty conscience—he must be able to tell us something. I believe we ought to devote ourselves to tracing him.”
“That’s all very well for you; but it’s not what I’m paid to do. If there’s been a murder, the Indescribable doesn’t care a tinker’s curse who did it; my job is to find Derek. But incidentally, there is surely one other person to track down.”
“Who?”
“The man in the punt. He wasn’t far off when the thing happened. He had only to cut across by land, and he could overtake a canoe that was being slackly paddled, or wasn’t being paddled at all. He could get back to his punt, and go on upstream, looking as innocent as you please. I say, then, that (though there’s nothing to implicate him directly) he’s a possible suspect. And meanwhile his movements ought to be traceable. He must have hired the punt somewhere to start with; he must have left it somewhere, or else be still in it, probably somewhere upstream. It’s surely worth finding out who he is.”
It was at this point that their conversation was interrupted by Mr. Quirk. How long he might have been listening to them was not apparent; he moved softly over the grass, and seemed to be interested in the view as he walked. But it was plainly with a purpose that he approached them; and, with the candour which makes for the American people most of its friends and all its enemies, he plunged at once into business.
“See here, gentlemen,” he said, “you don’t need to tell me that you’re both on the Burtell stunt. Now, I’m very much interested in the Burtell stunt myself. And I’ve none of your advantages; I only know what I read in the newspapers, and I guess what’s printed in the newspapers is just about what you want known. But, see here, I’ve a proposition to make to you which I’d like you to consider. I may not be up to all your dodges this side, but I hold my A1 Sleuth certificate from the Detective Society of America, and I do try very humbly to follow in the footsteps of your great Holmes. And my proposition is this: if I can lay my finger on a point in this case which you gentlemen, with all your wonderful advantages, haven’t yet noticed—an important point, mark you, that may put you on the right track—then you gentlemen will let me work in with you to find this Burtell. It would give me very great pleasure to be associated with you in your researches, and of course, if this gentleman here is connected with the police, I don’t want him to spill any secrets to me that the Force might not want spilled. That’s only reasonable. All I want is to get a pointer from you now and again, so that we can have a common policy, and our researches shan’t overlap. Now, I don’t know what you’re going to say; I dare say you’re wanting to kick me downstairs for my confounded impertinence; but if you’ve got any use for me, here I am.”
“I’m on, so far as I’m concerned,” replied Bredon. “But then, thank God, I’m a free agent. What do you say, Leyland?”
“Well, I’m not a free agent. But I don’t mind giving Mr. Quirk pointers, as he calls them, when I think he’s on a wrong track, if he really has got something to contribute to the clearing up of all this business, and is prepared to prove it now. It’s not a case for bargaining, Mr. Quirk. If you can really put us on the track of something, here and now, then I shall believe that you’re a man worth having on my side, and I shall be prepared to keep you there.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to be content with that. Mind you, I’m not saying that this fact is an important fact; I can’t just relate it to the other facts of the case; and there, you see, you have the pull on me, knowing more of them. But let me put it to you just like this: What proof have you that Derek Burtell slept at Millington Bridge last Sunday night, the night before he kind of disappeared?”
“But why on earth not?” expostulated Bredon.
“That’s what I can’t say, why not; I only ask whether he did.”
“But I mean, what earthly reason is there for doubting that he did?”
“Well, I hope Mrs. Bredon hasn’t been indiscreet, but she was telling me these Burtell cousins didn’t seem to have been any too fond of each other. And she said the landlady at Millington Bridge told her that they didn’t come to the inn together, those two, and didn’t breakfast together, and didn’t leave together. Now, in the States we pay a good deal of attention to the problem of human testimony; and some of our greatest speculators in that line have pointed out that an uneducated person will always pass inference for fact. Now, supposing that the same man came up to the hotel twice in the same night, pretending to be a different man the second time, isn’t it likely she would say two strangers came to her inn to spend the night? What we don’t know is that she ever saw the two strangers together.”
“Bredon,” said Leyland, “I believe it’s worth looking into this. Couldn’t we go over and examine that landlady again?”
“Rather. Let’s have some luncheon first, though. I’m hanged if I see what it all means, if this turns out to be true, but it’s certainly worth trying.”
The landlady was thoroughly flustered by the appearance of a police inspector, and became more garrulous than ever. Leyland began by demanding the production of the hotel register, which put the poor old lady in the wrong from the first, because, like most country innkeepers, she had failed to keep any register since the War. Yes, it would have been about ten o’clock the first gentleman came, and it was quite dark there at the door, so she didn’t take much notice of what he looked like; she thought he was a nice-looking young gentleman, held himself very straight, and talked in a slow voice, very drawling and easy.
“That’s Nigel all right,” said Bredon. “And he had no camera with him?”
The landlady hadn’t thought to look. He carried a pack over his shoulders, same as if it might have been his luggage. “I’ll go up to my room,” he had said, “for I’m dog-tired; no, no supper, thanking you all the same.” She had then showed him Number Two, a low room on the first floor, facing the backyard, and Number Three, just opposite, which was a more comfortable room in every way, with a nice view over the front of the hotel, so she thought he’d take that one; but no, nothing would serve him but he must have Number Two.
“Instructive,” said Leyland. “If Mr. Quirk is right, our friend probably wanted to climb out of the window. May we go round and see it? He couldn’t climb out of the front room without risking being seen.”
The window of Number Two certainly seemed to bear out the theory. It was large, and low in the wall; and an outhouse roof made it a very simple climb down. Proceeding, the landlady explained that the second gentleman arrived about five or ten minutes later, and she knew who he was by the camera slung across his back. She couldn’t hardly say whether he was like the other gentleman, but she thought yes; and as for his voice, why, the second gentleman didn’t hardly so much as open his mouth, except to say Thank you. Had the second gentleman a pack on his shoulders too? Why no, she thought not, but she didn’t feel surprised over that, seeing as the pack the first gentleman had was plenty for two; very big pack it was. Was the first gentleman still moving in his bedroom when the second gentleman came upstairs? Ah, she’d have to ask the girl that, it was Lizzy took the second gentleman upstairs. Lizzy was then summoned, and said No, she had not heard the other gentleman move, not to remember it.
“Were his boots outside the door?” asked Leyland.
No, it appeared that neither gentleman had put his boots out to be cleaned. Recalled, and asked whether this behaviour was usual among travellers, the landlady deposed that she couldn’t hardly say; some did, some didn’t. But these river folk would as like as not be wearing sandshoes or something of that; and if so, why then their boots wouldn’t want no cleaning. Were both beds slept in? Lizzy had to be recalled. Yes, both beds had been slept in, very much tumbled about they was, and both basins used. The first gentleman gave no orders about calling; the second asked to have a tray left outside on the mat, with a pot of tea and a couple of nice poached eggs. That was at half-past seven, and the other gentleman, that was the gentleman from Number Two, he came down about a quarter before eight. Did he have breakfast? Oh yes, a pot of tea and a couple of nice poached eggs.
“Good God,” said Bredon, “did the man get through four poached eggs in a morning?”
“Might have shied the bedroom eggs into those bushes,” suggested Leyland. “The birds would have got them by now.”
Number Two, it appeared, had not taken long over his breakfast, but had paid his bill and set out for the river about a quarter-past eight. As for Number Three, there wasn’t nobody could speak to having seen him go out. But the bill was paid for both.
“Has anybody been staying here since,” asked Leyland, “or would the rooms be more or less as they were left?”
No, there had been no later visitors; it wasn’t hardly the season not so early in the month. But Lizzy, of course, she had done the rooms after the gentleman left. Still, they were welcome to go up and see. They inspected both rooms, Leyland and Bredon addressing particular attention to the window-frame of Number Two, in the hope that they might find some traces of a hurried exit. But no scratches were apparent; and it looked as if they would have to return home with the unsatisfactory experience of a theory formed, tested, and corroborated, but not proved. They were already on their way downstairs when the American spoke almost for the first time:
“It’s with considerable diffidence that I make any suggestions to such competent investigators, but isn’t it possible that we might still find some thumbmarks? Our experts in the United States have laid it down that, if there was any grease on the hand, a finger- or thumbmark, even when invisible to the naked eye, may persist for a considerable number of days. And I’ve noticed myself in your country that the hotel servants aren’t always just very particular in the way they do the rooms. Now, I would suggest, that if you’ve got any powder in your kit, you might just try the carafes in those rooms for fingerprints.”
It seemed a desperate remedy; but in default of a better suggestion it was tried. The impossible resulted; on either decanter appeared at least one thumbprint, in tolerably definite outline. There was a tense silence as Leyland carried them to the window, and held them up side by side. There could be no reasonable doubt of the fact—the thumbmarks were exactly similar. Both decanters were carefully wrapped up, and carried off as spoils of the victory.
“Mr. Quirk,” said Leyland, “I’m hanged if I know what to make of your discovery. But you’ve proved your idea up to the hilt, and I must say I hope you’ll keep on working at the case. I’m always ready to give you any ‘pointers,’ as you call them, within reason. You’re staying at the Gudgeon, I think?”
“You’ll find me right there until this business is cleared up, Inspector. I don’t know what it is, but a real detective puzzle kind of gets hold of a man the way he can’t drop it if he wanted to. And I have to be on this side for nearly two months yet, so that the Gudgeon Hotel is a good enough address for me. Without mentioning the company.”
“Bredon,” said Leyland, “you’re being very silent. I believe you’ve got one of your ideas—you’re on the track of a solution.”
“Not within miles of one,” admitted Bredon cheerfully. “But I enjoy fresh complications, as long as they’re not off the point. And I don’t think this complication is off the point.”