Two Bottles of Relish: The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories. Lord Dunsany

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СКАЧАТЬ from me that Steeger had ever killed anyone would be highly criminal, as though he hadn’t been slandering Steeger (if that’s the word for it) himself for the last fifteen minutes. I said I wouldn’t say a word against Steeger, and the inspector left.

      ‘What do you make of it?’ asked Linley.

      ‘Me?’ I said. ‘If he shot Slugger and the bullet didn’t go through, it must be still in the body.’

      ‘But they’ve found that it isn’t,’ said Linley.

      ‘Let me go down there and have a look,’ I said.

      ‘No, Smethers,’ he said. ‘You won’t find anything Scotland Yard has missed.’

      ‘Well, what are you going to do?’ I said.

      ‘Think,’ said Linley.

      ‘What about?’ I asked.

      ‘Evaporating bullets,’ said Linley.

      ‘Are there such things?’ I asked him.

      ‘No,’ said Linley.

      ‘Then what’s the use of thinking about them,’ I said.

      ‘Because it’s happened,’ said Linley. ‘When a thing’s happened you’ve got to admit it, and try and see how.’

      ‘What about a big arrow,’ I said. ‘And pull it back by a string.’

      ‘Worse than the bullet tied to a wire,’ he answered. ‘Still more blood-marks.’

      ‘What about a spear ten yards long,’ I said.

      ‘Ingenious,’ was Linley’s only comment.

      I got a bit huffed when he wouldn’t say more than that, and began to argue with him. But Linley was right. They didn’t find any spear, for one thing, when they searched Steeger’s house; and, for another, there wouldn’t have been space for it in the upstairs room.

      And then the telephone-bell rang. It was Inspector Ulton. Linley went to the ’phone. ‘They’ve found a wad in the street,’ he said.

      ‘A wad?’ said I.

      ‘A wad of the eight-bore,’ he answered. ‘Between the two houses.’

      ‘Then he shot him,’ I said.

      ‘We know that,’ said Linley.

      ‘Well, what’s the difficulty,’ said I, ‘if you know it already?’

      ‘To prove it,’ said Linley.

      He sat thinking in front of the fire for a long time, and I could do nothing more to help him. And after a while he said, ‘Ring up Scotland Yard, Smethers, and ask if there was any sign of burning about the wound.’

      I did it and they said No. The doctor had thought for a moment that he felt some small foreign particle, which made them think that he might have lost the bullet, but he said that he was mistaken, and that there was nothing there, and no sign of burning.

      I told Linley, and all he said was, ‘Then it was nothing that burned away.’

      And he was quite silent again.

      So was I, for I could think of nothing. I knew it was Steeger, just as he did; but that was no good.

      ‘We must hang Steeger,’ he said after a while. And I knew that he was thinking of Nancy Elth, the girl Steeger murdered the last time. He sat silent for so long then that I thought it had beaten him. Time passed and I was even afraid that he had given it up, which I knew he ought not to do, because I was sure he could solve it.

      ‘How did Steeger do it?’ I asked after a while.

      ‘He shot Slugger,’ said Linley.

      ‘How?’ I asked.

      ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And I never shall.’

      ‘Oh, yes, you will,’ I said, ‘if you give your mind to it.’

      ‘Oh, well,’ said he, ‘give me a chess-problem to look at.’

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘If you get looking at them you’ll never leave them alone. Let’s solve this problem first.’

      For I saw he was just on the verge of giving it up.

      ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘then give me some fresh air. I must have a change of some sort.’

      So I opened the window and he leaned right out, breathing the frozen air of the late evening. And there the whole mystery was, the moment he put his head out of the window. What funny things are our minds. Here was one of the brightest minds I had ever known, hard at work on a problem, and yet he had to see what he was looking for by shoving his face into it, and that purely by chance. Yes, there were icicles of all sizes hanging about the window, and he almost bumped his face into them. He drew in his head and said, ‘They won’t get Steeger yet. They’ll never prove this to a jury. The bullet was made of ice.’

       AN ENEMY OF SCOTLAND YARD

      INSPECTOR Ulton came to see Mr Linley today. I am glad to say that he has got used to me; the inspector, I mean. He just said, ‘You’re Mr Smethers, aren’t you?’ And I said I was. And he said, ‘Well, you’ll understand that all this is strictly private.’ And I said I would. And then he started talking to Mr Linley.

      I’d met Inspector Ulton before over the murder at Unge, and the shooting of Constable Slugger. Mr Linley had helped him a lot.

      ‘I’ve come to you again, Mr Linley,’ were his first words.

      ‘Is it Steeger again?’ asked Linley.

      ‘We don’t know who it is,’ said the inspector. ‘We usually know at the Yard who has done a murder. It’s not very difficult. Motive usually points straight at somebody; and we can easily find if he was in the neighbourhood at the time. Proving it is the only difficulty. This time we can’t even find out who it is. We thought you might help us, Mr Linley.’

      ‘What is it?’ said Linley.

      ‘It’s a bad case,’ said the inspector; ‘as bad a case as we’ve had for a long time.’

      ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

      He didn’t pay any attention to me, but I somehow saw from his look that I’d said a silly thing. Bad cases were their job. If they stopped, where would Scotland Yard be? I was sorry as soon as I’d said it.

      ‘We got a letter at Scotland Yard last week,’ he said, ‘threatening that if Mr Cambell went again to his club, or Inspector Island went to watch a billiard-match at Piero’s, or Sergeant Holbuck played football either at the Scramblers Football Ground or the old Sallovians, each one of them that СКАЧАТЬ