Uneasily Hugh wondered whether the body upstairs had been removed. He supposed it had; they were speaking of it this afternoon; but you did not like to think the old man might still be lying with his dead smirk across the desk… Automatically Hugh did what he and Murch and Morgan had done when they first entered the house a while ago: he went to the door on the right and glanced through to the room where the sniper had hidden.
There were no electric lights here. Hugh did not try to put on the gas; he kindled his pocket lighter and saw, as before, nothing. A dreary and unfurnished place, which might once have been a drawing-room, smelling of damp wallpaper. But they had kept it clean and dusted. The floor, varnished round the edges and bare-boarded in the middle where a carpet should have been, held no footprints. Nor were there any traces that the sniper had been hit by Murch's fire, though the mantelpiece was gouged with bullets and one of them had smashed the mirror that was a part of it. Only stale cordite fumes, and slivers of broken glass round the window.
His foot creaked on a loose board. In the act of blowing out the lighter, he whirled round. Somebody was moving about in the house.
Impossible to tell the direction of sounds. The noise he heard seemed to have come from upstairs. It would be… queer how these inapt words struck him. What he had thought was, it would be embarrassing if old Depping were to walk down the steps now. The bright hallway was full of creakings. Another explanation occurred to him. There was no actual evidence to prove that the murderer had ever left the house at all. They had seen nobody. A slammed door; nothing else. And, if the sniper were still here, there would still be a bullet or two in reserve…
"Good morning," said a voice from the back of the hallway. "How do you like your job?"
He recognized the voice, as well as the lumbering step that followed it, in time to be reassured. It was Dr. Fell's voice; but even then there was a difference. It had lost its aggressive rumble. It was heavy, and dull, and full of a bitterness that very few people had ever heard there. Stumping on his cane, catching his breath harshly as though he had been walking hard, Dr. Fell appeared round the corner of the staircase. He was hatless, and had a heavy plaid shawl round his shoulders. His reddish face had lost color; his great white-streaked mop of hair was disarranged. The small eyes, the curved moustache, the mountainous chins, all showed a kind of sardonic weariness.
"I know," he rumbled, and wheezed again. "You want to know what I'm doing here. Well, I’ll tell you. Cursing myself."
A pause. His eyes strayed up the dark staircase, and then came back to Donovan.
"Maybe, yes, certainly, if they'd told me about that passage in the oak room… Never mind. It was my own fault. I should have investigated for myself. I allowed this to happen!" he snapped, and struck the ferrule of his cane on the matting. "I encouraged it, deliberately encouraged it, so that I could prove my case; but I never meant it to happen. I intended to set the bait, and then head off…" His voice grew lower. "This is my last case. I’ll never play the omniscient damned fool again."
"Don't you think," said Hugh, "that Spinelli got not very far off what he deserved?"
"I was thinking," said Dr. Fell in a queer voice, "of justice, or what constitutes justice, and other things as open to argument as the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. And I couldn't see my way clear as to what to do. This new business" — he pointed toward the door with his cane—"has almost decided it. But I wish it hadn't. I tried to prevent it. Do you know what I've been doing? I've been sitting in a chair in the upstairs hallway at The Grange, after everybody else had gone to bed. I've been sitting there watching the entrance to a passageway giving on a line of bedrooms, where I knew Somebody's bedroom was. I was convinced Somebody would come out of there when the house was asleep, go downstairs, and out for a rendezvous with Spinelli. And if I saw this person, I would know beyond a doubt that I was right. I would intercept this Somebody, and then.. God knows."
He leaned his great bulk against the newel post of the stairs, blinking over his eyeglasses.
"But in my fine fancy conceit I didn't know about the secret passage in the oak room, that leads outside. Somebody did come out — but not past me. It was very, very easy. Out of one room in a step, into another, down the stairs; and I suspected nothing until I heard the shots down here…"
"Well, sir?"
"Somebody's room was empty. Across the corridor, the door of the oak room was partly open. A candle had been indiscreetly left there, lighted, on the edge of the mantel—"
"My father put that candle there," said Hugh, "when he explored—"
"It had been lighted," said Dr. Fell, "against Somebody's return. When I saw the piece of panelling open—"
There was something odd in the doctor's manner; something labored; he went on talking as though he were giving a long explanation for the benefit of some person unseen, and using Hugh only as an audience.
"Why," said the latter, "are you telling me this?"
"Because the murderer did not return," replied Dr. Fell. He had raised his voice, and it echoed in the narrow hall. "Because I stood at the entrance to the secret passage on the outside, and waited there until Murch came up over the hill to tell me the news. The murderer could not get back. The murderer was locked out of that house, with all the downstairs windows locked, and every door bolted; shut out tonight as certainly as Depping was shut out here just twenty-four hours ago." "Then-"
"The whole house is aroused now. It will only be a matter of minutes before the one room is discovered to be empty. Murch knows it already, and so do — several others. A searching party, with flash lights and lanterns, has begun to comb the grounds. The murderer is either hiding somewhere in the grounds, or" — his voice lifted eerily—"is here."
He took his hand off the newel post and stood upright.
"Shall we go upstairs?" he asked gruffly.
After a pause Hugh said quietly, "Right you are, sir. But I suppose Murch told you the fellow's a dead shot, and he's still armed?"
"Yes. That is why, if somebody is here, and could hear me, I would say: Tor God's sake don't commit the madness and folly of shooting when you are cornered, or you will certainly hang. There is some excuse for you now, but there will be none if you turn your gun on the police.'"
Dr. Fell was already climbing the stairs. He moved slowly and steadily, his cane rapping sharply on every tread; bump — rap, bump — rap; and a great shadow of him crouched ahead on the wall.
"I do not intend to look for this person," he said over his shoulder. — "You and I, my boy, will go to the study and sit down. Now I am going to turn on the lights in the upstairs hall, here."
A silence. Hugh felt his heart rise in his throat as the switch clicked; the bare, desolate hallway was empty. He thought, however, that he heard a board creak and a door close.
"Tip-tap, tap-tap … Dr. Fell's cane moved along the uncarpeted floor. His boots squeaked loudly.
In desperation Hugh tried to think of something that would help him. The doctor spoke with quiet steadiness. He was trying to draw the murderer out into the light, delicately, with gloved hands, as you might handle a nest of wasps. And the house was listening again. If the murderer were here, he must have heard in desperation each hope of escape taken from under him; and each tap of the cane must have sounded like another nail…