The Notched Hairpin (17 page)

During this recital Millum had sunk still lower as he sat on the ground. Mr. M. turned and put his hand on the bent shoulders.

“Please,” he said, “don't take this part of the tale tragically. When we come back to motive then it will be time to be grave again. And here I shall be able to show to Mr. Silchester, here is a point very much in your favor. Now, to go on with the means: well, I find them showing finish. It might be considered by some people that here was so subtle a false clue, planted so deeply to put a sleuth off the scent, that it would fail to tell. But you see, it was right and paid off just because the police in the higher ranks have now become so intelligent and even scholarly. It illustrates the old advice: it always pays never to talk down to your audience, never to despise your foe, never to patronize the police.

“Now you see, Mr. Silchester,” said Mr. M., for he had now turned to me, as his attempt to keep Millum's mind interested in the means, and the Mycroft way of retracing them had failed to rouse his patient, “you see, Mr. Silchester, why I proposed to you, after the inspector had closed the case, that we look at the other house. The venue of the trial we were holding had to be changed. The real interest no longer lay here in this garden: this was simply the end. The start of the course we had to trace lay, I was sure, over the wall—where the book had come from.

“I had a pointer, too, like the sign of a gun. Indeed, not
like
a sight but, as it happens, an actual sighting line which pointed the way I must go tracing back the source of the mystery. It not only pointed to the house over the way—it actually pointed to the exact place on the house. So we visited Mrs. Sprigg, and you recall I asked that I might ‘view the prospect o'er,' and that quotation and the fact that I wanted to enjoy her countryside made her glad we should have our Pisgah view. And you enjoyed it.”

“And you didn't!” I cut in.

“But wait a minute,” Mr. M. said, “we are still on the way up to our mount.”

“That,” I replied judiciously, “may supply the reason why you were not as full of interest in the landscape when you got there as you'd thought you'd be. Yes, I remember when we came to the final climb and Mrs. Sprigg had faltered and left us—when you reached the top of the last ladderlike flight and you were just going to push open the small glazed door leading out onto the leads, you had to stop to get your breath. Though I must say, the air up there was stifling as an anesthetic.”

“Good memory and fair observation, while deduction, I am glad to say, is as wrong as I'd hoped!”

After that little flourish, which I let pass and forgot in the interest of what he next said, he went on quickly, “As I paused, and hoped you and Mrs. Sprigg—if she were still keeping track of us—would think I was finding my breath, I was lensing that little door. You recall it was made with two leaves so it opened down the middle, and Mrs. Sprigg had said no one had been there since the roof repairers, months ago. But I saw at once clear evidence of almost the date on which someone had but lately gone ahead of us!

“Spiders' webs! We of the 'tec trade are always talking about the web and all that. But why hasn't anyone till now seen that here we have a fascinating trail marker—yes, and even a fascinating colleague!”

At this rhapsody I asked with more than a smile, “Master, are you simply spinning a tale or following a clue?”

“Wait, I beg,” he answered, “for I must tell you that someone has actually written the very book that for years I wished I might have had the time and skill to write. For six years Dr. André Tilquin has watched and noted
La Toile Géometrique des Araignées
. He gave up two rooms of his house that they might demonstrate how they build their gossamer traps, trapezes, and hammock homes. And gradually, from studying this, the finest of lines, he made out from these faint but strictly geometric patterns the shadow of the strange mind that cast this print. You can't, of course, do much with spiders. But what you can, goes like clockwork. That was one of the most interesting finds made by le grand Tilquin. He found that if you put the right kind of species of spider in the corner that was rightly proportionated to its ‘geometric sense,' then it had straightaway—or as soon as it got over the shock of your being about—to weave you a web as quick, sure, and firm as though you had ordered it. No, alas, I didn't come on this find myself. I had to hear of it through crime. A French criminal, following up that old story of how the Protestant family escaped their pursuers by a spider providentially weaving a web over the door they had so lately slipped through, learned that he could so hide his tracks from any casual police pursuit.

“Yes, quite a lot might be done with insects. There's no slacking or moodiness about them. You are, in fact, directing a machine by knowing the exact setup which sets its electromagnetic switches going. But I can say that once my mind had been put on this track I saw that I must study the real nature-made web, and it has yielded me something more useful—at least on my side of the crime game—than just knowing how to hide myself. Threads, after all, have been used for a long while to mark whether someone has passed along a passage. The spider's web is far the best. It's obvious, then, how useful it is to be able to make them spin across gaps you wish to have marked in that way.

“But not only will they tell you if anyone has gone by. I have found they will tell you—within a number of days—how long ago it was that the passer passed. They notice and mark the track of a trespasser, however light-footed and hand-padded. The neatest cat-burglar housebreaker, who breaks in so gently and in such gentlemanly fashion that he would never call without his gloves on, can't help breaking a cobweb and can't know when he has done so. The web has, on each of the transverse bars—not on the radials, only on the laterals—those smears and spots of gum in which the fly is caught. My discovery was to note that when the web has been ruptured and the radials and laterals mixed up, the whole web, perhaps because the gum contains a strong acid (of this I am not sure) rapidly begins to decay. I am pretty sure from this work that I can tell within a day or two, by study of the collapsed web, when it was ruptured.

“I saw, then, that we had had a forerunner of a few days ago, and one that went there without even the housekeeper knowing of it. After that I was free to recover my breath, and we could start taking bigger views. But here you were again a little disappointed in me, for I gave most of my time to what you took to be the poorer view. You were right, if contemplation was your end; but mine was to unravel action. So you find me once again kneeling and pausing. But believe me, while I was so kneeling and, as I said honestly, thinking, I was also getting the view which brought everything else into view. For now, from the broad gutter behind the parapet, I was looking down into this garden so that I was precisely reversing the view we can have from down here.”

Mr. M. pointed up to the gap in the arbor roof.

“I was looking through that gap, and even if I had not known what to look for, my eye would have been guided, would have been sighted, right onto this seat.”

“But, dear master,” I interrupted, “you forget that I looked down here too and saw nothing in particular. Indeed, I doubt whether that hole does really show up from there; for this seat, which you say you could see, is itself mottled green. Honestly, I don't believe it could be clearly detected from there.”

“Right again,” he allowed generously enough; but then added, “If the seat was empty, you could hardly see it. But if it was filled with a white object, say a white silk suit, then it would show up like a white bull's eye in a dark-green target—a very fine mark indeed.”

“Still,” I came back with some force, “what you are really suggesting is that someone went up to that point on the roof and, crouching there, threw that paper knife with such power and aim that it struck home right down there—right into the heart behind that silk suiting! Why, not the most competent of knife throwers with a really fine weapon would think of attempting that. I have seen what they can do at vaudeville shows. It's good, but to claim that for even the most expert is simply drawing the longbow.”

“But bow is precisely the wanted word,” he replied.

Again I was quite ready. “Of course only a bow could do it, but here again, unfortunately, I know something, and what I know doesn't help your clever theory. I once belonged to an archery club. The longbow, the pride of England, has, you may not know, been brought back. It is not only a very graceful weapon but a very powerful one. I was never very competent at it, but I have seen men who were, and they could certainly do the job you suggest. But not at all in the way you imagine. Nor with the weapon you suggest. The longbow depends for its firing upon a proper stance being taken.” I took the position to show. “You see: the whole body has to be swung from the hips and shoulders, as the string is pulled and the arrow discharged. So not only do you have to be standing up and with space about you, but you have to have, for a bow of proper strength and stretch—say a five-foot one (and that at least would have been needed, with a few hundred pounds of pull)—you have to have the cloth-yard arrow of something nearly as long. That wretched paper knife or pin—why, the finest archer in the world couldn't send it more than a yard or two and then he wouldn't be sure it would hit anything at which he aimed.”

This fine counterbattery was met with the unyielding defense of, “Right again in all that you know about.”

And then, with a slow smile, “But being so British and athletic, you naturally forgot that the bow is not a purely British preserve. Men went on thinking about its problem of ballistics long after the longbow was demoded. Indeed, that progress went on until, without a break, the bow turned into the harquebus—you see, the very word has the same root.

“Soldiers were always seeking for a more scientific, less artistic, weapon—one that would permit perfect aim, settled sighting, not just hit or miss, and also more strength. They exhausted the tensile resilience of wood and then they took to steel. But there they came up against a check, the limit of human muscle. You may remember Ulysses' bow (if Odysseus is just now too odious a name for us) that none of the Suitors could draw? It was an approach to the small steel bow. We know it was not the longbow. Its great strength was due to the fact that it was not made of wood but of the horns of certain wild goats. But not Ulysses himself could draw a bow of steel. So they made gears and loaders to stretch the cord to the trigger, and that required a stock and barrel on which the bow could be fixed and strung. Then on this stock there was grooved a channel in which the arrow could lie.

“Don't be surprised that you failed to appreciate the force of this device. Our earliest European bluestocking, the Byzantine princess-authoress Anna Comnena, remarks about this invention that ‘It is a barbarian weapon, entirely unknown to the Hellenes' and Tor ingenuity of construction, length of range, power of penetration, and deadliness of effect, a really devilish contrivance!'

“The inventors of this sire-of-a-gun—if I may coin a name—found that they need no longer use the clumsy, quiver-filling long arrow. In fact, this new weapon called for something much more like a bullet. These last arrows are sometimes called billets, sometimes quarrels, but usually bolts, for they went like bolts from the blue, almost too fast to be seen. In shape they were almost exactly like this.” And Mr. M. held up the paper knife. “This, that fell like a bolt from the blue onto the doomed man in the arbor.

“So you see why, when I had this in my hand, my mind had been opened with this key so that I could find the further lock that this key finally fitted! And recall, I had not one, but several suggestions given me by this bolt that unlocked the door. Three of these were: first, the flukes which had been fitted on it to give it true flight. These, I saw, could be easily and quickly fitted along the haft, just before firing it; second, there was its own rightful forward, or salient, balance, required to keep it front-end on while in flight; and finally, the fact that at its other end was a groove, and in that groove I had found impacted resin! What is resin chiefly used for even now? To make strings that are under very great tension able to keep strong and not fray and burst. You know violin strings are treated with resin, and bow strings are regularly rubbed with it. So it was hardly possible for me to avoid suspecting that this bolt had been shot from a crossbow.

“Then, to judge the range, and whether the weapon in question would serve at the distance from which it had to strike, I crouched in the parapet of the house over the way, at that corner which allows a glimpse down onto this spot in this garden. There I could see what perfect concealment and what perfect rest for the weapon, and, finally, what a perfect aim all were given. It was a part that practically played itself. There was something about the whole thing that reminded me uncannily of the old folk tale of the weapon that actually makes whoever touches it carry out the avenging deed with which the long-dead wizard had charged it.”

He was silent a moment, and certainly Millum did not look at all inclined to comment. But a point did occur to my practical mind, more concerned with getting things into the clear light of fact than tracing fanciful connections in myth.

“Master,” I said, rousing him with the playful courtesy-title, “Master, you speak of the bow practically going off of itself—the manner in which Jane, should she be capable of breaking a piece of porcelain, would fall back on the immemorial defense of all her tribe: ‘Why, Sir, it came to pieces in my hand.' But this crossbow which we shall never see, and for whose actual nature we have to depend on your incomparable powers of reconstruction and historical imagination, Master—can we really assume that such a piece of antiquity remained in such terribly efficient working order right down the centuries? It might well have hung on some baronial walls, but I doubt if for the last few centuries it could ever have been used even to shoot a mud pellet to knock off an archdeacon's top hat! And I don't believe any of … of us,” (I thought this was a courteous and protective way of including Millum) “any of us could have put such an almost-gun into … well, changed it from an antique piece of decorative furniture into something really deadly.”