"We're up in the show-room. Hop into the house, will you, son, and get that feller Thompson? Send him up here fast. I've just thought of somethin'. Thanks."
The window closed with a bang. Masters said:
"But look here, sir, let's get back to the subject! I don't understand this at all. You suddenly and calmly say that you expect to show us the murderer at eleven o'clock. And that you'll do it by reproducing that attempt to shove Miss Tait down the steps..:'
"That's right."
"I'm not going to question your ideas. I'd be the first to admit, sir, that they've been pretty good ones in the past. But what sort of spectacular stunt have you got in your mind, and what good will it do? You can't expect the murderer to obligingly up and shove somebody else, can you? And it's no good trying to catch anybody out in a lie about how he or she was standing out there; I've questioned them all, and they were so confused with only the one candle burning that nobody remembers where anybody else was. Well, then! What else-?"
Masters stopped. His dubious gaze wandered over to the big narrow door of the staircase, with its iron binding and long iron bolt above a big disused keyhole. H. M., who watched him out of those small shrewd uncanny eyes, was imbued with a sort of wooden mirth.
"Ho ho. I know what you're thinkin'!" he volunteered. "Masters, you got a mind that just naturally runs to melodrama. I must 'uv read a dozen stories like that, and they were funnier than watchin' somebody sit on a silk hat. I know, I know… We dress up somebody like Tait; say Miss Bohun here. We put her at the bottom of the stairs. Lights are turned out; group of people assembles on landing; light of candle is held up; mysterious ghostly figure is seen returned from her gibberin' grave. Ghostly figure lifts her arm and points upstairs, intonin' in a tomb-like voice, 'You done it!' Conscience-stricken murderer instantly screams and collapses. Burn me, Masters, but wouldn't police work be a bed of soft rose-petals if the whole business were as easy as that?"
He meditated, ruffling his hands across his head.
"That's a funny thing, too, Masters. In nine cases out of ten the murderer would only look bored and tell us to take off our false whiskers… But I can't help feelin' that this is the tenth case; and that — we really would give X one hell of a shock if we worked a fungus-grown trick like that. It's the imagination that counts: the imagination workin' on a person of this particular type. Brains don't count. Besides, X has plenty of brain right enough, but it didn't help greatly in committing the murder. I said before, and I say again, that the real beauty of it lay in the luckiest accident that ever answered a murderer's prayer..”.
"But we're not workin' any stale tricks like that, because it'll do no good to scare him if we can't prove anything. I got other ideas. I was just sittin' and thinkin', and all of a sudden I got an idea that'll hang X higher than Judas if it works. If, if, if! I dunno that it will. Burn me, Masters, it worries me..:'