Daisy was in the hall, hoverin' round the drawing-room door with all her attention concentrated there, as he knew she'd be. What did Hubert do then? As we know, he walked back to the dining room. Now I want you to think back. You!" He pointed at Courtney. "The first time you ever set eyes on Hubert Fane, or I ever set eyes on him, what was he doing?"
Courtney reflected.
"He was standing in the dining room," Courtney responded, "by the sideboard. Taking a nip out of a bottle of brandy. In the dark."
H.M. nodded.
"Uh-huh. Sneaking a drink in the dark, as his habit was. As Daisy in the hall knew and expected.
"But this time he didn't do it. On Sunday I noticed somethin' else about that dining room. I noticed it after a nasty accident when I slipped on a rug and caused myself a serious injury that's mebbe goin' to leave me lame. Those rugs are arranged like islands. They're arranged so a man can walk quickly from the sideboard to the kitchen door without his foot makin' a noise on the hardwood.
"And something else. Has any of you noticed that the swing-door to the kitchen is absolutely noiseless and don't creak at all?"
"Yes," returned Courtney, thinking back. "I remember noticing it myself."
"So Hubert walked into the dining room, partly closing the door. He thumped over and made a bottle clink. Then he slipped as quiet as a ghost to the kitchen door, through the kitchen, and out the back door.
"He knew he wouldn't meet anybody, because (don't we know?) Mrs. Propper always goes to bed at nine o'clock every night of her life. Now. Outside the kitchen door, Hubert has left… well, what? You tell me. You used the same article yourself, fast enough, on Sunday night, and for the same purpose as Hubert used it."
Courtney spoke into a vast silence.
"A short ladder," he said.
"Right. A short ladder.
"Y'see, my fatheads, all this guff and hoo-ha about a four-foot unmarked flower-bed, and dust on the window-sills, doesn't mean a curse. Why should either trouble you — if all you've got to do is prop up the ladder on a concrete drive, across the flower-bed, and rest it on the outer edge of the window-sill?
"All your assumptions, you understand, were based on the belief that somebody must have climbed through the window and into the room. But, of course, nobody ever did get into the room at all. It wasn't necessary."
Again there was a silence.
"But the time taken to do all this!" protested Sharpless.
H.M. emitted a ghoulish chuckle. "I sort of thought somebody would mention that. I got here—" he held it up—"a stop-watch. You, son, go out into the dining room now. When you hear somebody shout 'Go!' run through the same motions as Hubert. You'll find the ladder outside. Prop it up, and stick your head through the window."
H.M. handed the stop-watch to Courtney as Sharpless strode out of the room.
"Clock him," H.M. instructed.
Sharpless called out, unseen, that he was ready.
"Go!" shouted Courtney, and pressed the pin of the watch.
The steady little hand traveled. In the dusk, the edge of a ladder presently appeared on the window-sill, clearly to be seen when die curtains were open. As Sharpless's head reared up, Courtney stopped the watch.
"There must be something wrong with this thing!" he said. "It's only thirteen seconds."
"No, son. That's about right. Now clear the center of the room, and put the little table there."
They all moved back as Ann and Courtney set out the table. H.M. gravely laid a rubber dagger on the table.
"Now watch," he instructed.
From his inside pocket he took out an object which made them blink. It was made of very light, thin wood, painted white. It was folded together in a series of strips, with handles at one end.
"But what is it?" inquired Ann.
"It's a lazy-tongs," said H.M. "You've probably seen 'em. Woolworth's used to sell toy ones; I expect they still do."
He pressed the handles. What had seemed a flattened fine of wooden strips suddenly began to elongate. They now saw that it was composed of a series of lightly jointed pieces of wood, diamond-shaped.
When the handles were pressed, the joinings stretched out into diamonds and then flattened again as the contraption stretched out farther and farther— a foot, two feet, six feet, eight — like a rigid snake. H.M. pressed the handles the other way, and it drew back again into its small, compact shape.
"I first thought o' this little joker," he went on, "on Thursday, when we were talkin' about the trick of driving a pin into the arm without pain.
"The lazy-tongs is used by conjurers; and, of course, fake spiritualists. While they're in one place, they can stretch it out in the dark and make things move across any part of the room. Thus a ghostly luminous hand floats in the air, and so on.
"I deliberately mentioned a lazy-tongs in front of Masters on Sunday, in connection with those two roarin' fake spiritualists the Davenport brothers, to see if he'd tumble to it. But he didn't.
"And then — oh, love a duck! — I began to be pursued by lazy-tongs. They haunted me. The rose-trellises in your garden here are shaped like lazy-tongs. Hubert stood in a forest of 'em, and talked to us. Then I sat down at the telephone in Agnew's office; and there, starin' back at me, was a telephone on a foldin' steel framework, to push out or push back, with exactly the same principle.
"I'm haunted, I am.
"Hubert made one of 'em for himself. On the end of it (see) is a little spring that'll fit over any object it touches and hold it tight.
"He stood outside the window, peepin' through a chink in the curtains. When Mrs. Fane was told to shoot her husband, and every eye in this room was burnin'ly concentrated on that spectacle, the lazy-tongs slid in through the curtains.
"It caught the dagger, twelve feet away, and snaked back with it. Good old Hubert put the real dagger, which is hardly heavier than the rubber one, lightly attached to the end so that a touch on the table would release it.
"When Rich cried to Mrs. Fane, 'One — two — three— fire,' and nobody in here would have seen a herd of elephants, the lazy-tongs whisked out again. A touch released the dagger on the table. Any small noise it might have made was deadened by the rubber handle, and your own preoccupation. And there you are. To change the daggers, Masters and I found, takes about ten seconds."
He swung round to Sharpless.
"Now, son. Climb down. Shove the ladder in the shed, and hurry back in here.. Clock him as he does it."
The clicking little hand of the watch moved steadily, while nobody spoke.
Then Sharpless opened the door to the hall, and Courtney pressed the stem of the watch.
"Longer," he said. "Seventeen seconds."
''Thirteen plus ten plus seventeen," said H.M. dreamily. "Forty seconds. Less than a minute. But allow a little leeway for judgin', and studyin' on Hubert's part, and say one minute.
"Does that strike you as bein' very long? Do you wonder that Daisy was willing to swear Hubert only walked into the dining room and took a drink?
"So Hubert, as you remember, came back briskly just in time to open the door and see Arthur Fane stabbed to death in the chair."
H.M. grumpily folded up the lazy-tongs and replaced it in his breast pocket.
"That's the whole sad story, my children. He had the tongs on him then, and the rubber dagger. All he had to do afterwards was shove the rubber dagger down out of sight in the sofa. Whether he had the wild, starin', brass-bound cheek to nail up the joints of his lazy-tongs, so that it became rigid at half its extended length, and then get rid of it by stickin' it in the garden as a rose-trellis in plain sight… well, I dunno. But I've got a hazy idea that it'd be like Hubert. It'd appeal to his sense of humor." They all sat down again.