John Dickson Carr

“ Then Villon went over to the window. Lights were strung over the naked city, following the dark curve of the river and the toy bustle on the Pont Alexandre. He shivered. For a while there was silence. Villon’s next remark startled them with its dreary frankness.
“I must confess to failure. I do not seem to handle things the way Bencolin did. He saw to everything. But I’m only human; I have too much work! Work, work, nothing else, and I’m only human, yes—I should have caught this man Mercier. I didn’t set the nets, and I should have done so. We were on the watch for him. He had diamonds. ”

“ Of course, Sir John Landervorne’s connections with Scotland Yard ceased long ago, but he remains no less valuable for that. I met the boat at Dieppe. I must not be seen; if I were seen, it was necessary that my presence be denied. I had confided in Sir John. I also confided in M. Saulomon, the train guard, because I recognized his intelligence, and also because it was such an ironical joke that I should confide thus in the man who murdered Mercier—M. Saulomon,” he said quietly, “you are caught. I trust that you will make no resistance.” ”

“ And your psychological detective wants to pick out the kind of man who committed a crime; after which he hunts around till he finds one and says, ‘Behold the murderer,’ whether the evidence supports him or not. I hope you'll permit me to say damned nonsense. There is no man who is incapable of a crime under any circumstances; to say that a daring crime was necessarily committed by a daring person is to argue that a drunken author can write on the subject of nothing but liquor, or that an atheistical artist could not paint the Crucifixion. ”

“ Saulomon was casually searching after cigarettes. Miss Mertz still had her arm extended in the dramatic gesture; she had not straightened the hat over her eye.
“Bencolin,” cried Villon, “you were the man in the corridor, then?”
“Yes. That is why I owe you so many apologies. Won’t you sit down, Miss Mertz? I have much to explain.
“When I arranged this elaborate bit of deception,” he went on, “I did not know that I should have to cope with murder. My intent was to trap the accomplice of the man Mercier. We of the police cannot be content with knowing the identity of our guilty men. ”

“ There is so much elaborate hocus-pocus around the whole matter of criminal detection that it makes a detective wonder why people think he acts that way. The fiction writers want to call it a science, and attach blood-pressure instruments to people’s arms, and give them Freud tests—they forget that your innocent man is always nervous, and acts more like a guilty one than the criminal himself, even his insides. They forget that these machines are operated by the most catankerous one of all, the human machine. ”

“ Thus, after a six-hour crossing on which the vessel several times lost the Dieppe light and staggered helpless in the gale, they boarded The Blue Arrow for Paris.
Superstitious porters have many tales about this train. Its engine is misshapen, and sometimes there rides in the cab a blind driver named Death. Along the moon-lit waste people have been ground under the wheels, with no sound save a faint cry and a hiss of blood on the firebox. ”

“ A chess game can be a terrible and enthralling thing, when you play it backwards and blindfolded. Your adversary starts out with his king in check, and tries to move his pieces back to where they were at first; that’s why you can’t apply rules or mathematical laws to crime. The great chess player is the one who can visualize the board as it will be after his move. The great detective is the one who can visualize the board as it has been when he finds the pieces jumbled. ”

“ Why did he not struggle; does a person sit quiet and unmoving when he is assailed? Why no resistance, then? Because Mercier did not see the murderer, a thing impossible if anybody were in the compartment. What does it suggest? Hands through the window, obviously; confirmed by the fact that, though Mercier’s wallet was robbed, his pockets were not rifled—the murderer’s arms would not be long enough to do this through the window. Discount the testimony for an instant, says imagination, and see whether this would have been possible at any time. Yes, before the train started. ”

“ It’s true enough,” Sir John said irritably.
“Nothing? You saw nothing? Come, now, my friend—the dim light, the possibility that you might have looked away?—eh?”’
“Nothing! The light was clear enough for me to see this man Saulomon at the other end. I wasn’t looking away, because I was waiting for him to get my ticket.”
“But, if I may ask, what were you doing in the corridor?”
“Great God! Can’t a man step out for a cigar if he likes?”
“You could have smoked in your compartment, if I may mention it. Peste, but no matter! You could not have mistaken each other, possibly?” ”

“ It is frequently the tippler who writes the best temperance essay, and the atheist who finds the most convincing arguments for religion.
“And your so-called ‘reason,’ in an intricate crime, convinces you of exactly what is untrue. It reduces the thing to the silly restricted rules of mathematics. In this Mercier murder, for example, reason said to me, Mercier was alive when the train started, because he was seen sitting by the window, and the guard took his ticket ”

“ Abruptly the thought shot through Sir John’s mind, “God, something’s going to happen!”—the stiffness of Bencolin’s pose, the tensity like the sound of drums slowly rising.
“Your strong box at the Credit Lyonnais,” answered Bencolin, “contains the marked money you stole from Mercier’s wallet when you killed him. You said that you took Mercier’s ticket; you did not, because you never went into the compartment. I found it on him when the body was examined at the morgue. They found none of your finger-prints at the scene of the crime ”

“ Testimony: ‘It’s a pity you can’t ride on a train in this abominable country without getting murdered! And such service! Did you ever hear of the checking system for baggage?’ Examining magistrate: ‘Madame will pardon me if I ask her to confine herself to the essential facts?’ Witness: ‘Well, if that isn’t essential, I’d like to know what is—such cheek!—I want you to know I’m an American citizen, and you can’t bully me, young man, or our ambassador will—’ Examining magistrate: ‘Madame, I beg of you—’ ‘Well, what do you want to know? I didn’t kill the man ”

“ I have a beard, but it isn’t black, and neither of us went near the compartments at the time this woman screamed. You want a small man with his nose chopped off. But why concentrate here? If I may mention it, why not discover how the person who killed this fellow Merc er killed him anyway? I had only been standing in the corridor five minutes or so. How did the murderer get in and out?”
“He didn’t go through a bolted door,” said Villon, smiling. “He must, therefore, have come through the window.”
“Wriggling a normal body through five or six inches of space while the train was in motion?” ”

“ I found the ticket.”
“Well, then. Who fits all our specifications for the guilty man? We know him to be a confederate of Mercier; it seems likely that he is also the murderer. Who else? Two others on the train had been associated with Mercier. On the boat from New York he had made arrangements with Mr. Depping to sell Depping his diamonds (I also was on that liner, and it was I who threatened Depping with the law if he did not pay Mercier in marked money) . Moreover, Miss Mertz had bought one of the diamonds. Both these people were on the train. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1977, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 46 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
It is imperative that contributors ascertain that there is no evidence of a copyright renewal before using this license. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of the work as a copyright violation. ”

“ Business; jeweller, Bond Street, London. Age, 50 years, appears in comfortable circumstances. Recently returned from the United States. In Paris now on business for firm of Depping & Davis. Occupied compartment number two with Miss Mertz. Testimony: ‘I was asleep most of the time, when I could, because the woman kept talking a lot of damned drivel about women’s rights, and poked me in the ribs with an umbrella when I dozed off. Once I went out to see whether I could get a drink; that was shortly after the train started, and about ten minutes before we saw the man look in the window. ”