“It’s more likely the connections are missing,” Markham argued; “and we’ll never find them if we don’t pursue our questionings.”
“You’re much too trustin’.” Vance walked back to the centre-table. “The more questions we ask the farther afield we’ll be taken. Even Professor Dillard didn’t give us a wholly honest account. There’s something he’s keeping back—some suspicion he won’t voice. Why did he bring that bow indoors? Arnesson put his finger on a vital spot when he asked the same question. Shrewd fella, Arnesson.—Then there’s our athletic young lady with the muscular calves. She’s entangled in various amat’ry meshes, and is endeavoring to extricate herself and her whole coterie without leaving a blemish on any one. A praiseworthy aim, but not one conducive to the unadulterated truth.—Pyne has ideas, too. That flabby facial mask of his curtains many an entrancin’ thought. But we’ll never probe his cortex by chivyin’ him with questions. Somethin’ rum, too, about his matutinal labors. He says he was in Arnesson’s room all morning; but he obviously didn’t know that the professor took a sunnin’ on Arnesson’s verandah. And that linen-closet alibi—much too specious.—Also, Markham, let your mind flutter about the widowed Beedle’s tale. She doesn’t like the over-sociable Mr. Drukker; and when she saw a chance to involve him, she did so. She ‘thought’ she heard his voice in the archery-room. But did she? Who knows? True, he might have tarried among the slings and javelins on his way home and been joined later by Robin and Sperling. . . . Yes, it’s a point we must investigate. In fact, a bit of polite converse with Mr. Drukker is strongly indicated. . . .”
Footsteps were heard descending the front stairs, and Arnesson appeared in the archway of the living-room.
“Well, who killed Cock Robin?” he asked, with a satyr-like grin.
Markham rose, annoyed, and was about to protest at the intrusion; but Arnesson held up his hand.
“One moment, please. I’m here to offer my exalted services in the noble cause of justice—mundane justice, I would have you understand. Philosophically, of course, there’s no such thing as justice. If there really were justice we’d all be in for a shingling in the cosmic wood-shed.” He sat down facing Markham and chuckled cynically. “The fact is, the sad and precipitate departure of Mr. Robin appeals to my scientific nature. It makes a nice, orderly problem. It has a decidedly mathematical flavor—no undistributed terms, you understand; clear-cut integers with certain unknown quantities to be determined.—Well, I’m the genius to solve it.”
“What would be your solution, Arnesson?” Markham knew and respected the man’s intelligence, and seemed at once to sense a serious purpose beneath his attitude of sneering flippancy.
“Ah! As yet I haven’t tackled the equation.” Arnesson drew out an old briar pipe and fingered it affectionately. “But I’ve always wanted to do a little detective work on a purely earthly plane—the insatiable curiosity and natural inquisitiveness of the physicist, you understand. And I’ve long had a theory that the science of mathematics can be advantageously applied to the trivialities of our life on this unimportant planet. There’s nothing but law in the universe—unless Eddington is right and there’s no law at all—and I see no sufficient reason why the identity and position of a criminal can’t be determined just as Leverrier calculated the mass and ephemeris of Neptune from the observed deviations in the orbit of Uranus. You remember how, after his computations, he told Galle, the Berlin astronomer, to look for the planet in a specified longitude of the ecliptic.”
Arnesson paused and filled his pipe.
“Now, Mr. Markham,” he went on; and I tried to decide whether or not the man was in earnest, “I’d like the opportunity of applying to this absurd muddle the purely rational means used by Leverrier in discovering Neptune. But I’ve got to have the data on the perturbations of Uranus’s orbit, so to speak—that is, I must know all the varying factors in the equation. The favor I’ve come here to ask is that you take me into your confidence and tell me all the facts. A sort of intellectual partnership. I’ll figure out this problem for you along scientific lines. It’ll be bully sport; and incidentally I’d like to prove my theory that mathematics is the basis of all truth however far removed from scholastic abstractions.” He at last got his pipe going, and sank back in his chair. “Is it a bargain?”