"What's the use of special authority," inquired Dr. Fell, "if you don't use it. Besides, if I had been wrong, and the girl was not really missing, there wouldn't have been an enormous row. But she was. You see, this bogus Sturton was able to conceal her presence or absence admirably so long as you never had any suspicions of him. Lad, at several places he was in devilish tight positions; but his very position, and the fact that he was the one who seemed to suffer most from the theft, kept him entirely immune from being suspected… Don't choke, now; have some more beer. Shall I explain?"
"By all means," said Morgan feelingly.
"Hand me back my list of clues, then. H'mf! I'll see if I can have a modest shot at proving to you that — always supposing your data to be correct and complete — Lord Sturton was the only person aboard the Queen Victoria who could fill all the requirements for the Blind Barber.
"We commence, then, on one assumption: one assumption on which the whole case must rest. This assumption is that there is an impostor aboard, masquerading as somebody else. Fix that fact firmly in mind before beginning; go even to the length of believing a police commissioner's radiogram, and you will have at least a direction in which to start."
"Wait a bit!" protested Morgan. "We know that now, of course; and, since you were the only one who saw who it was, you ought to have the concession. But that radiogram accused Dr. Kyle, and therefore—"
"No, it didn't," said Dr. Fell, gently. "That is precisely where your whole vision strained away into the mist. It went wrong on so small but understandable a matter as the fact that people don't waste money by sending punctuation in radiograms, and you were misled by the absence of a couple of commas. With that error I shall deal in its proper place, under the head of The Clue of Terse Style… For the moment, we have only the conception of an impostor aboard. There is another point in connection with this, stated to you so flatly and frankly that I have not even bothered to include it as a clue. As in other cases of mine, I seem to remember, it was so big that nobody ever gave it a thought. At one sweep it narrowed the search for the
Blind Barber from a hundred passengers to a very, very few people. The Police Commissioner of the City of New York — not unusually timorous or faint-hearted about making arrests, even if they happen to be wrong arrests— wires thus: 'Well-known figure and must be no mistake made or trouble,' and adds, 'Will not be definite in case of trouble.' Now, that is suggestive. It is even startling. The man, in other words, is so important that the Commissioner finds it advisable not to mention his name, even in a confidential communication to the commander of the ship. Not only does it exclude John Smith or James Jones or Charles Woodcock, but it leads us towards men of such wealth or influence that the public is (presumably) interested in newspaper photographs of them (or anybody else) playing golf. This coy reticence on the part of the New York authorities may also be due partly to the possibility that the eminent man is an Englishman, and that severe complications may ensue in case of an error. But I do not press the point, because it is reasoning before my clues."
He had clearly been listening absently for the doorbell; and now, as the doorbell rang, he nodded and lifted his head to bellow:
"Let 'em in, Vida!"
There was a tramping of footfalls up the steps. The door of Dr. Fell's study opened to admit two large men with a prisoner between them. Morgan heard Dr. Fell say, "Ah, good afternoon, Jennings; and you, too, Hamper. Inspector Jennings, this is Mr. Morgan, one of our witnesses. Mr. Morgan, Sergeant Hamper. The prisoner, I think you know…"