"It wasn't evidence. It only struck me as a curious coincidence that there really was aboard the ship somebody who seldom came in contact with anyone; who was known, I think, you said, as 'The Hermit of Jermyn Street.' 'He'll i see nobody,' you remarked; 'he has no friends; all he does t is collect rare bits of jewellery. These were only supporting facts to my real clue of suggestion; but undeniably Lord Sturton filled the qualifications of the radiogram. a Merely a coincidence…
"Then I remembered another coincidence: Lord Sturton to was in Washington. A Sturton, real or bogus, had called on Uncle Warpus and told him of the purchase of the emerald elephant, which is the Clue of Opportunity. 3 Wit Whether he was at the reception on the night of Uncle Warpus's indiscretion some time later, and learned about full the moving-picture film…"
" "He was," said Mr. Nemo, and chortled suddenly, to t, this I didn't know. But what we do know is that the bish Stelly affair occurred next in Washington, as Warren explained. This account of the Stelly business is what I call the Clue of Fraternal Trust. 4 It was described as a crime Sit d that looked like magic and was connected with the British Embassy. Stelly was a shrewd, careful, well-known jewel-drink collector who didn't omit any precautions against thieves, "P, ordinary or extraordinary, as he thought. He left the Embassy one night, and was robbed without fuss. What looked like magic was his being decoyed or robbed by any ordinary make criminal, and also how the criminal should have known of
the necklace to begin with… But it is not at all magical if two well-known jewel-collectors exhibit their treasures to each other and have a tendency to talk shop. It is not at all magical for an eminent peer, even if he is so hermitlike that nobody knows him, to be welcomed at the Embassy in a foreign country, provided he has the documents to prove his identity. These coincidences, you see, are piling up.
"But this peer doesn't travel entirely alone. He is known to have a secretary. The first glimpse we have of him in the narrative is his rushing up the gangplank of a ship (so notoriously eccentric that he can wrap himself round in concealing comforters) and accompanied by this secretary. 5 In the passenger-list I find a Miss Hilda Keller occupying the same suite as Lord Sturton, as I think you yourselves found later. 6 But for the moment I put that aside…"
There was a gurgling noise as Dr. Fell chuckled into his pipe.
"Definitely, things began to happen after some days out (during all of which time Lord Sturton has kept entirely to his cabin, and the secretary with him). 7 The first part of the film was stolen. The mysterious girl appeared, obviously trying to warn young Warren of something. There was the dastardly attack on Captain Whistler — the absence of the attackers on deck for some half an hour — and the subsequent disappearance of the girl. You believed (and so did 1) that she had been murdered and thrown overboard. But, putting aside the questions of who the girl was and why she was killed, we have that curious feature of the bed being remade thoroughly, a soiled towel even being replaced. That is what I call, from deductions you will see in a moment, the Clue of Invisibility…" 8
Mr. Nemo wriggled back in the chair. He put down his glass; his face had gone more pale and his mouth twitched — but not from fear at all. He had nothing to conceal. He was white and poisonous from some emotion Morgan did not understand. You felt the atmosphere about him, as palpably as though you could smell a drug.
"I was crazy about that little whore," he said, suddenly, with such a change in voice and expression that they involuntarily started. "I hope she's in hell."
"That's enough," said Dr. Fell, quietly. He went on: "If somebody wished (for whatever reason) to kill her, why was she not merely killed and left there? The inference first off was that she would be more dangerous to the murderer if her body were discovered than if she were thrown overboard. By why should this be. Disappearance or outright murder, there would still be an investigation… Yet observe! What does the murderer do? He carefully makes up the berth and replaces the towel. This could not be to make you think the stunned girl had recovered and gone to her own cabin. It would have exactly the opposite effect. It means that the murderer was trying to make those in authority think — meaning Captain Whistler — that the girl was nothing but a mythical person; a lie invented for some reason by yourselves.