— "As for you—" said Spinelli. "You're thinking, 'How much does he know?' You’ll find out… So this is the proposition. I'm to tell you everything I know. In return for that, you promise not to prosecute for using a faked passport, and allow me one week to get out of the country. Is that it?"
Langdon moved forward. His voice went up shrilly, he said:
"Don't be a fool-!"
"Knocks the wind out of you, does it?" asked Spinelli. "I thought it would. Keep on thinking, 'How much does he know?' "
The American sat down opposite Langdon. With the lights just above his head, his face was hollowed out in shadows; under the eyes and cheekbones, and in sharp lines down his jaws; but his hair had a high gloss like his small defiant eyes. Then he seemed to remember that he had not been acting exactly in the character of a cultured and cosmopolitan traveller. His manner changed, with a jerk. Even his voice seemed to change.
"May I smoke?" he inquired.
This attempt at suavity, considering the haze of smoke round him, was not a success. He seemed to know it, and it angered him. He lit a cigarette, twitching out the match with a snap of his wrist. His next remark was obviously more sincere; as his eyes were roving round the room, he appeared surprised and rather puzzled. "So this," he said abruptly, "is an English country house. It's disappointing, I don't mind telling you. That thing" — his cigarette stabbed at another of the bad Venetian scenes—"is an eyesore. So is that. Your imitation Fragonard over the fireplace would disgrace Pine Falls, Arkansas. Gentlemen, I hope I’m in the right place?"
Inspector Murch was insistent. "Never mind that. You see you do stick to the subject; look." He scowled. "I don't mind saying, myself, that I do favor no bargains with you. ‘Tes Dr. Fell who's done it, and it's done, and he's responsible to Scodand Yard; now we'm here to get the benefit from it… if you do satisfy us that you'm not the one who shot Mr. Depping. First, we want to know—"
"Nonsense, inspector!" said Dr. Fell affably. His wheezy gesture bade Spinelli continue on whatever line he liked; he folded his hands over the ridges of his stomach and assumed an almost paternal air. "You're quite right, Mr. Spinelli, about the pictures. But there's a more interesting one, in water color, on the table beside you — that card. Look at it. What do you make of it?"
Spinelli glanced down; he saw the card with the eight swords painted on it, and forgot his lethargy.
"Hell's bells! The taroc, eh? Where did you get this?"
"You recognize it?… Good! That was better than I had hoped for. I was going to ask. you whether Depping, when you knew him, ever dabbled in pseudo-occultism of this kind. I presumed he did; he had several shelves of books dealing with the more rarified forms — people like Wirth, and Ely Star, and Barlet, and Papus. But nobody seemed to know anything about his interest in such matters, if — h'mf — if he had any."
"He was a sucker for it," Spinelli answered simply. "Or for anything in the line of glorified fortune telling. He didn't like to admit it, that's all. Actually, he was as superstitious as they make 'em. And the taroc was his favorite."
Inspector Murch lumbered over and seized his notebook.
"Taroc?" he repeated. "What's this taroc?"
To answer that question, my friend, fully and thoroughly" said Dr. Fell, squinting at the card, "you would need to be initiated into the mysteries of theosophy; and even then the explanation would baffle any ordinary brain, including my own. You'll get some idea of the modest functions it is supposed to have if I tell you some of the claims they make for it. The taroc reveals the world of ideas and principles, and enables us to grasp the laws of the evolution of phenomena; it is a mirror of the universe, wherein we find symbolically the threefold theogonic, androgonic, and cosmogonic theory of the ancient magi; a double current of the progressive materialization or involution of the God-mind, and the progressive redivinisation of matter which is the basis of theosophy. It is also—"
"Excuse me, sir," said Inspector Murch, breathing hard, "but I can't write all that down, you know. If you'd make yourself a bit clearer…"
"Unfortunately" said the doctor, "I can't. Damned if I know what it means myself. I only inflicted that explanation, as I have read it, because I am fascinated by the roll and stateliness of the words. H'm. Say that according to some people the taroc is, in summo gradu, a key to the universal mechanism… In substance it is a pack of seventy-eight cards, with weird and rather ghastly markings. They use it like a pack of ordinary playing cards, for what Mr. Spinelli has called glorified fortune telling."
Murch looked relieved and interested. "Oh, ah. Like reading the cards? Ah, ay; done it meself. Me sister's cousin often reads the cards for us. And tea leaves as well. And, lu' me, sir," he said in a low earnest voice, "if she don't 'ave it right, every time…!" He caught himself up, guiltily.
"Don't apologize," said Dr. Fell, with a similarly guilty expression. "I myself am what Mr. Spinelli would describe as a sucker for such things. I am never able to pass a palmist's without going in to get my hand read, or my future revealed in a crystal. Hurrumph. I can't help it," he declared, rather querulously. "The less I believe in it, I'm still the first to howl for my fortune to be told. That's how I happen to know about the taroc."
Spinelli's lip lifted in a sardonic quirk. He sniggered. "Say, are you a dick?" he asked. "You're a funny one. Well, we live and learn. Fortune telling—" He sniggered again.
"The taroc pack, inspector," Dr. Fell continued equably, "is supposed to be of Egyptian invention. But this card has the design of the French taroc, Which dates back to Charles VI and the origin of the playing card. Out of the seventy-eight cards, twenty-two are called major arcana and fifty-six minor arcana. I needn't tell you such a pack, or even the knowledge of it, is very rare. The minor arcana are divided into four series, like the clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades; but in this case called…?"
"Rods, cups, pence, and swords," said Spinelli, examining his finger nails. "But what I want to know is this: Where did you get that card? Was it Depping's?"
Dr. Fell picked it up. He went on: "Each card having a definite meaning. I needn't go into the method of fortune telling, but you'll be interested in the significance… Question for question, Mr. Spinelli. Did Depping ever possess a taroc pack?"
"He did. Designed it himself, from somebody's manual. And paid about a grand to have it turned out by a playing-card company. But that card didn't come from it… unless he made a deck for himself. I'm asking you, where did you get it?"
"We have reason to believe that the murderer left it behind, as a sort of symbol. Who knows about high magic in the wilds of Gloucestershire?" mused Dr. Fell.
Spinelli looked straight in front of him. For an instant Hugh Donovan could have sworn the man saw something. But he only sniggered again.
"And that card means something?" Murch demanded.
"You tell him," Dr. Fell said, and held it up. The American relished his position. He assumed a theatrical air; glanced first to one side and then the other. "Sure I can tell you, gentlemen. It means he got what was coming to him. The eight of swords— Condemning justice. It put the finger on old Nick Depping, and God knows he deserved it."
CHAPTER XIII
Bullet-Proof
Again they were all locked up with their own thoughts, because each new development seemed to lead the case in a different direction; and each box opened up like a magician's casket, to show only another box inside the last. It was growing hot and stuffy in the library. Somewhere in the house a clock began to strike. It had finished banging out the hour of nine before Dr. Fell spoke again.