He paused before Whistler. Lifting the scimitar like an accusing finger, he pointed it at the captain.
"Captain Whistler," he said in a voice of shocked and horrified rebuke, "after all your suspicions of innocent men… Captain Whistler, aren't — you — ashamed of yourself?"
20 — Disclosure
In a certain big room above Adelphi Terrace, a misted nun was beginning to lengthen the shadows. It was beginning to make a dazzle against a huddle of purpling towers westward at the curve of the river; and from one of these towers Big Ben had just finished clanging out the hour of four. A very hoarse story-teller listened to the strokes reverberating away. Then Morgan sat back.
Dr. Fell removed his glasses. With a large red bandana he mopped a moisture of joy from his eyes, said, "Whoosh!" with a wheezing and expiring chuckle, and rumbled:
"No, I'll never forgive myself for not being there. My boy, it's an epic. Oh, Bacchus, what I'd give for one glimpse of Uncle Jules in his last moment supreme! Or of the old mollusc, Captain Whistler, either. But surely that's not all?"
"It's all," said Morgan wearily, "I have the voice to tell you now. Also, I imagine, it's all that's relevant to the issue. If you think the fireworks ended there, of course, you still haven't plumbed the spiritual possibilities of our crowd. I could fill a fair number of pages with the saga of pyrotechnics between nine-fifteen night before last, when Uncle Jules threw his last gallant shoe, until 7 a.m. this morning, when I slipped away from a ship accursed. But I can give you only a general outline… Besides, I hesitated to include all the things I have. It was hair-raising action, if you like, but it seemed to me not to have any bearing on the vital issues… "
Dr. Fell finished mopping his eyes and subsided in dying chuckles. Then he blinked across the table.
"Curiously enough, that's where you're wrong," he said. "Now I can say positively that it's a pleasure to me to find a case in which the most important clues are jokes. If you had omitted any point of that recital I should have been cheated of valuable evidence. The cuckoo's call is the lion's roar, and a jack-in-the-box has a disconcerting habit of showing a thief's face. But the clues are sealed now; you've provided me with my second eight. H'm! Four o'clock. It's too late to do anything more, or hear anything that can help me further. If I'm right, I should know it shortly. If not, the Blind Barber has got away. Still—"
There was a ring downstairs at the bell.