Then Rich reached out and touched the black handle projecting from Arthur's chest. He pressed it between his fingers.
"And I'll tell you something else," he added, his color going up.
"That's not the dagger I brought to this house."
"I shouldn't touch it, if I were you," warned Sharpless. "The police always kick up a row if you mess about with the evidence. At least, they do in the stories. Don't touch it!"
"But why not?" asked Ann Browning. "After all— we know who stabbed him, don't we?"
For the first time they felt the full shock.
Vicky Fane was standing quietly a few feet away from the man she had killed. Her hands hung down at her sides. She was not looking at him, or at anything else. The sight of that witless creature, with intellect removed and eyes as dead as blue china, where formerly there had been a vital, laughing, attractive girl, was almost too much for Frank Sharpless. The grimy marks of tears still streaked her cheeks, though she showed no emotion now.
"Dr. Rich," said Sharpless, "the celebrated Dr. Frankenstein had nothing on you."
Rich put his hands to his forehead.
"Don't wake her up!" snapped Sharpless, misinterpreting the gesture. "For God's sake don't wake her up!"
"I wasn't going to wake her up, young man."
"Can she hear us?"
"No."
"But even if you don't wake her up" — Sharpless swallowed hard—"can't you do something?"
"Yes. One moment." Rich turned to Vicky. His voice was slow and heavy. "Victoria Fane, go over to the sofa. Put a pillow under your head. Lie down."
With instant obedience Vicky went to the sofa. She shuddered violently as she touched it, and Rich was after her in an instant. He put his fingers lightly on her temples; the shuddering died away, and she lay down.
"Now sleep," murmured Rich, in the voice that could influence them all. "You are yourself again, Victoria Fane. But sleep. You will not awaken until I tell you to. When you wake up, you will have forgotten everything that happened here. Now sleep. Sleep.. "
Sharpless hurried to her side. And in a moment or two he breathed something like a strangled prayer.
It was like watching a blurred image come into focus, or cold clay warmed again with humanity. Something (mind? heart? soul?) seemed to flow into her, altering even the lines of the face. Vicky Fane lay where the dummy had lain, the smudged marks of the tears incongruous on her cheeks.
Her color was back, the faint tan of health, the familiar curve of the lips. Her breathing was slow and easy, and she smiled in sleep.
"Thank.. God. If anybody ever does that to her again—"
Rich looked round.
"Captain Sharpless, has Mrs. Fane any unpleasant mental association with this sofa?" "I'll swear I don't know."
"Mr. Hubert Fane, has she any unpleasant mental association with this sofa?"
"My dear doctor, you must not ask me." For all his elegance and poise, Hubert's complexion was muddy gray under the gray-white hair. "I can scarcely imagine that an inanimate piece of furniture could so affect anybody. Does — does the girl know what has happened?"
"No," snapped Rich. "Do you?"
"I'm beginning to think I do," said Sharpless.
"Yes. And I," agreed Rich. "Somebody switched the daggers. Look here."
Again he knelt beside Arthur's body. With some difficulty, and despite an instinctive protest from everyone, he pulled the weapon out of the wound. Since the heart had stopped pumping, only a little blood followed it.
It was a knife made of very light, very thin steel, with a blade perhaps four inches long. When Rich cleaned it on a handkerchief, they saw that the blade had been painted over a dirty silver-gray. A covering of soft black rubber had been gummed round and over what was presumably a very thin handle.
Moved a little away from the light, it looked very much like the rubber dagger they had seen.
"I thought so," said Rich. "Thick rubber round the handle. And it's pretty dark by that little table. When Mrs. Fane picked it up, she felt the rubber and even her subconscious mind told her it was the same toy dagger she expected it to be. So she didn't hesitate to obey the order." He balanced the knife in his palm. "Even the weight wouldn't tell her any different. Somebody's got a lot to answer for."
"You mean-"
"I mean," said Rich, putting the knife on the floor and getting up, "that I can't be held responsible. Not this time. Someone exchanged a harmless dagger for a real one, and got Mrs. Fane to kill her husband without knowing what she was doing." He pressed a hand to his pink forehead. "It's odd. It's devilish odd. We know the murderer. But we don't know the guilty person."
There was a silence.
"But how could anybody have exchanged the daggers?" wondered Ann Browning. "Eh?"
"I said," repeated Ann in a small but clear voice, "how could anybody have exchanged the daggers?"
They all turned to look at her.
For the first time they became conscious of her as a personality, because in these events she had (they remembered) not cried out, or whimpered, or fainted, or done anything they might have expected.
She was rather pale, and she had pushed her chair farther back from Arthur's body: no more. Her slim fingers plucked at the arms of the chair.
"You see—" She stopped as though confused, but presently went on. "The last person to touch the dagger was Mr. Fane himself. Wasn't it?"
Again there was a silence.
"It was," Sharpless said abruptly.
"He was sitting there," pursued Ann, puckering up her face, "with the revolver and the dagger in his hands. It was a rubber dagger then. Because I remember him twisting it back and forth."
The memory of everyone present moved back into the past, recalling images.
"That's true," admitted Rich, with the same abruptness. "I saw him do it myself."
"Then you—" Ann looked at Rich—"told him to put the revolver and the dagger on that little table. He got up, and went to the table, and put them down, and came back here.
But not one of the rest of us has been anywhere near that table since."
The recollection was so clear, the fact so undeniable, that no one spoke. They all turned to look at the table, which was in the middle of the room at least twelve feet away from the huddled group round the easy chair.
Ann hesitated, moistening her pink lips. "Please. I don't want you to think I'm intruding, or speaking up when I shouldn't. But look.
"None of us left this semi-circle where we were standing or sitting. We stayed where we were, even when Vicky was out of the circle herself and going to the other end of the room. Dr. Rich didn't follow her: he stayed here too. We could all see each other all of the time. Nobody went near that table. None of us could have exchanged the daggers."
Once more the long pause stretched out….
"That's true!" Sharpless exploded. "It's as true as gospel!"
Rich managed a smile, a heavy, uneasy twist of a smile.
"You're quite a detective, Miss Browning," he observed, and the color rose in her face. "I can't help agreeing. It is true. And in that case…"
Ann frowned.
"Well, you see, in that case it means that somebody who wasn't in the room must have sneaked in and—"
She paused. As her eyes moved round, they rested on Hubert Fane; and her expression became frightened.
"So," observed Dr. Rich thoughtfully.
Hubert Fane had one hand on the back of a chair. He looked like a man on whom the fates are playing dirty tricks much faster and more unreasonably than any human being ever deserved.
"Please don't think—!" began Ann.
Hubert cleared his throat.
"Your delicacy, Miss Browning," he said, "fills me with ecstasy. At the same time, I. am capable of taking a bint. Madam, I did not kill my nephew. I think I can give you my solemn assurance that he was the last person in the world I wished to see dead. It is true that I was obliged to leave the room. But, apart from the fact that I was talking to a grasping bookmaker named—"