The Doctor's Case Read online

  "Did you believe it, Watson?" Holmes asked, snapping me out of what was almost a hypnotic trance. Something... something about that coffee-table...

  "Believe what, Holmes?"

  “That all four of them simply walked out of the parlor, in four different directions, four minutes before the murder?"

  "I don't know," I said faintly.

  "/ don't believe it; not for a mo -- " He broke off. "Watson! Are you all right?"

  "No," I said in a voice I could hardly hear myself. I collapsed into one of the library chairs. My heart was beating too fast. I couldn't seem to catch my breath. My head was pounding; my eyes seemed to have suddenly grown too large for their sockets. I could not take them from the shadows of the coffee-table legs upon the rug. "I am most... definitely not... all right."

  At that moment Lestrade appeared in the study doorway. "If you've looked your fill, H -- " He broke off. "What the devil's the matter with Watson?"

  "I believe," said Holmes in a calm, measured voice, "that Watson has solved the case. Have you, Watson?"

  I nodded my head. Not the entire case, perhaps, but most of it. I knew who; I knew how.

  "Is it this way with you, Holmes?" I asked. "When you... see?"

  "Yes," he said, "though I usually manage to keep my feet."

  "Watson's solved the case?" Lestrade said impatiently. "Bah! Watson's offered a thousand solutions to a hundred cases before this, Holmes, as you very well know, and all of them wrong. It's his bete noire. Why, I remember just this last summer -- "

  "I know more about Watson than you ever shall," Holmes said, "and this time he has hit upon it. I know the look." He began to sneeze again; the cat with the missing ear had wandered into the room through the door, which Lestrade had left open. It moved directly toward Holmes with an expression of what seemed to be affection on its ugly face.

  "If this is how it is for you," I said, "I'll never envy you again, Holmes. My heart should burst."

  "One becomes inured even to insight," Holmes said, with not the slightest trace of conceit in his voice. "Out with it, then... or shall we bring in the suspects, as in the last chapter of a detective novel?"

  "No!" I cried in horror. I had seen none of them; I had no urge to. "Only I think I must show you how it was done. If you and Inspector Lestrade will only step out into the hall for a moment..."

  The cat reached Holmes and jumped into his lap, purring like the most satisfied creature on earth.

  Holmes exploded into a perfect fusillade of sneezes. The red patches on his face, which had begun to fade, burst out afresh. He pushed the cat away and stood up.

  "Be quick, Watson, so we can leave this damned place," he said in a muffled voice, and left the room with his shoulders in an uncharacteristic hunch, his head down, and with not a single look back. Believe me when I say that a little of my heart went with him.

  Lestrade stood leaning against the door, his wet coat steaming slightly, his lips parted in a detestable grin. "Shall I take Holmes's new admirer, Watson?"

  "Leave it," I said, "and close the door when you go out."

  "I'd lay a fiver you're wasting our time, old man," Lestrade said, but I saw something different in his eyes: if I'd offered to take him up on the wager, he would have found a way to squirm out of it.

  "Close the door," I repeated. "I shan't be long."

  He closed the door. I was alone in Hull's study... except for the cat, of course, which was now sitting in the middle of the rug, tail curled neatly about its paws, green eyes watching me.

  I felt in my pockets and found my own souvenir from last night's dinner -- men on their own are rather untidy people, I fear, but there was a reason for the bread other than general slovenliness. I almost always kept a crust in one pocket or the other, for it amused me to feed the pigeons that landed outside the very window where Holmes had been sitting when Lestrade drove up.

  "Pussy," said I, and put the bread beneath the coffee-table -- the coffee-table to which Lord Hull would have presented his back when he sat down with his two wills, the wretched old one and the even more wretched new one. "Puss-puss-puss."

  The cat rose and walked languidly beneath the table to investigate the crust.

  I went to the door and opened it. "Holmes! Lestrade! Quickly!"

  They came in.

  "Step over here," I said, and walked to the coffee-table.

  Lestrade looked about and began to frown, seeing nothing; Holmes, of course, began to sneeze again. "Can't we have that wretched thing out of here?'' he managed from behind the table-napkin, which was now quite soggy.

  "Of course," said I. "But where is the wretched thing, Holmes ?"

  A startled expression filled his wet eyes. Lestrade whirled, walked toward Hull's writing-desk, and peered behind it. Holmes knew his reaction should not have been so violent if the cat had been on the far side of the room. He bent and looked beneath the coffee-table, saw nothing but the rug and the bottom row of the two bookcases opposite, and straightened up again. If his eyes had not been spouting like fountains, he should have seen all then; he was, after all, right on top of it. But one must also give credit where credit is due, and the illusion was devilishly good. The empty space beneath his father's coffee-table had been Jory Hull's masterpiece.

  "I don't -- " Holmes began, and then the cat, who found my friend much more to its liking than any stale crust of bread, strolled out from beneath the table and began once more to twine ecstatically about his ankles. Lestrade had returned, and his eyes grew so wide I thought they might actually fall out. Even having understood the trick, I myself was amazed. The scarred tomcat seemed to be materializing out of thin air; head, body, white-tipped tail last.

  It rubbed against Holmes's leg, purring as Holmes sneezed.

  "That's enough," I said. "You've done your job and may leave."

  I picked it up, took it to the door (getting a good scratch for my pains), and tossed it unceremoniously into the hall. I shut the door behind it.

  Holmes was sitting down. "My God," he said in a nasal, clogged voice. Lestrade was incapable of any speech at all. His eyes never left the table and the faded Turkish rug beneath its legs: an empty space that had somehow given birth to a cat.

  "I should have seen," Holmes was muttering. "Yes... but you... how did you understand so quickly?'" I detected the faintest hurt and pique in that voice, and forgave it at once.

  "It was those," I said, and pointed at the rug.

  "Of course!" Holmes nearly groaned. He slapped his welted forehead. "Idiot! I'm a perfect idiot!"

  "Nonsense," I said tartly. "With a houseful of cats -- and one who has apparently picked you out for a special friend -- I suspect you were seeing ten of everything."

  "What about the rug?" Lestrade asked impatiently. "It's very nice, I'll grant, and probably expensive, but -- "

  "Not the rug," I said. "The shadows."

  "Show him, Watson," Holmes said wearily, lowering the napkin into his lap.

  So I bent and picked one of them off the floor.

  Lestrade sat down in the other chair, hard, like a man who has been unexpectedly punched.

  "I kept looking at them, you see," I said, speaking in a tone which could not help being apologetic. This seemed all wrong. It was Holmes's job to explain the whos and hows at the end of the investigation. Yet while I saw that he now understood everything, I knew he would refuse to speak in this case. And I suppose a part of me -- the part that knew I would probably never have another chance to do something like this -- wanted to be the one to explain. And the cat was rather a nice touch, I must say. A magician could have done no better with a rabbit and a top-hat.

  "I knew something was wrong, but it took a moment for it to sink in. This room is extremely bright, but today it's pouring down rain. Look around and you'll see that not a single object in this room casts a shadow... except for these table-legs."

  Lestrade uttered an oath.

  "It's rained for nearly a week," I said, "but both Holmes's baro
meter and the late Lord Hull's" -- I pointed to it -- "said that we could expect sun today. In fact, it seemed a sure thing. So he added the shadows as a final touch."

  "Who did?"

  "Jory Hull," Holmes said in that same weary tone. "Who else?"

  I bent down and reached my hand beneath the right end of the coffee-table. It disappeared into thin air, just as the cat had appeared. Lestrade uttered another startled oath. I tapped the back of the canvas stretched tightly between the forward legs of the coffee-table. The books and the rug bulged and rippled, and the illusion, nearly perfect as it had been, was instantly dispelled.

  Jory Hull had painted the nothing under his father's coffee-table, had crouched behind the nothing as his father entered the room, locked the door, and sat at his desk with his two wills, and at last had rushed out from behind the nothing, dagger in hand.

  "He was the only one who could execute such an extraordinary piece of realism,'' I said, this time running my hand down the face of the canvas. We could all hear the low rasping sound it made, like the purr of a very old cat. “The only one who could execute it, and the only one who could hide behind it: Jory Hull, who was no more than five feet tall, bow-legged, slump-shouldered.

  "As Holmes said, the surprise of the new will was no surprise. Even if the old man had been secretive about the possibility of cutting the relatives out of the will, which he wasn't, only simpletons could have mistaken the import of the visit from the solicitor and, more important, the assistant. It takes two witnesses to make a will a valid document at Chancery. What Holmes said about some people preparing for disaster was very true. A canvas as perfect as this was not made overnight, or in a month. You may find he had it ready, should it need to be used, for as long as a year -- "

  "Or five," Holmes interpolated.

  "I suppose. At any rate, when Hull announced that he wanted to see his family in the parlor this morning, I imagine Jory knew the time had come. After his father had gone to bed last night, he would have come down here and mounted his canvas. I suppose he may have put down the faux shadows at the same time, but if I had been Jory I should have tip-toed in here for another peek at the glass this morning, before the previously announced parlor gathering, just to make sure it was still rising. If the door was locked, I suppose he filched the key from his father's pocket and returned it later."

  "Wasn't locked," Lestrade said laconically. "As a rule he kept the door shut to keep the cats out, but rarely locked it."

  "As for the shadows, they are just strips of felt, as you now see. His eye was good, they are about where they would have been at eleven this morning... if the glass had been right."

  "If he expected the sun to be shining, why did he put down shadows at all?" Lestrade grumped. "Sun puts em down as a matter of course, just in case you've never noticed your own, Watson."

  Here I was at a loss. I looked at Holmes, who seemed grateful to have any part in the answer.

  "Don't you see? That is the greatest irony of all! If the sun had shone as the glass suggested it would, the canvas would have blocked the shadows. Painted shadow-legs don't cast them, you know. He was caught by shadows on a day when there were none because he was afraid he would be caught by none on a day when his father's barometer said they would almost certainly be everywhere else in the room."

  "I still don't understand how Jory got in here without Hull seeing him," Lestrade said.

  "That puzzles me as well," Holmes said -- dear old Holmes! I doubt that it puzzled him a bit, but that was what he said. "Watson?"

  "The parlor where Lord Hull met with his wife and sons has a door which communicates with the music room, does it not?"

  "Yes," Lestrade said, "and the music room has a door which communicates with Lady Hull's morning room, which is next in line as one goes toward the back of the house. But from the morning room one can only go back into the hall, Doctor Watson. If there had been two doors into Hull's study, I should hardly have come after Holmes on the run as I did."

  He said this last in tones of faint self-justification. "Oh, Jory went back into the hall, all right," I said, "but his father didn't see him."

  "Rot!"

  "I'll demonstrate," I said, and went to the writing-desk, where the dead man's cane still leaned. I picked it up and turned toward them. "The very instant Lord Hull left the parlor, Jory was up and on the run."

  Lestrade shot a startled glance at Holmes; Holmes gave the inspector a cool, ironic look in return. I did not understand those looks then, nor give them much thought at all, if the whole truth be told. I did not fully understand the wider implications of the picture I was drawing for yet awhile. I was too wrapped up in my own re-creation, I suppose.

  "He nipped through the first connecting door, ran across the music room, and entered Lady Hull's morning room. He went to the hall door then and peeked out. If Lord Hull's gout had gotten so bad as to have brought on gangrene, he would have progressed no more than a quarter of the way down the hall, and that is optimistic. Now mark me, Inspector Lestrade, and I will show you the price a man pays for a lifetime of rich food and strong drink. If you harbor any doubts when I've done, I shall parade a dozen gout sufferers before you, and each one will show the same ambulatory symptoms I now intend to demonstrate. Please notice above all how fixed my attention is... and where.''

  With that I began to stump slowly across the room toward them, both hands clamped tightly on the ball of the cane. I would raise one foot quite high, bring it down, pause, and then draw the other leg along. Never did my eyes look up. Instead, they alternated between the cane and that forward foot.

  "Yes," Holmes said quietly. "The good doctor is exactly right, Inspector Lestrade. The gout comes first; then the loss of balance; then (if the sufferer lives long enough), the characteristic stoop brought on by always looking down."

  "Jory would have been very aware of how his father fixed his attention when he walked from place to place," I said. "As a result, what happened this morning was diabolically simple. When Jory reached the morning room, he peeped out the door, saw his father studying his feet and the tip of his cane -- just as always -- and knew he was safe. He stepped out, right in front of his unseeing father, and simply nipped into the study. The door, Lestrade informs us, was unlocked, and really, how great would the risk have been? They were in the hall together for no more than three seconds, and probably a little less." I paused. "That hall floor is marble, isn't it? He must have kicked off his shoes."

  "He was wearing slippers," Lestrade said in a strangely calm tone of voice, and for the second time, his eyes met Holmes's.

  "Ah," I said. "I see. Jory gained the study well ahead of his father and hid behind his cunning stage-flat. Then he withdrew the dagger and waited. His father reached the end of the hall. Jory heard Stanley call down to him, and heard his father call back that he was fine. Then Lord Hull entered his study for the last time... closed the door... and locked it."

  They were both looking at me intently, and I understood some of the godlike power Holmes must have felt at moments like these, telling others what only he could know. And yet, I must repeat that it is a feeling I should not have wanted to have too often. I believe the urge to repeat such a feeling would have corrupted most men -- men with less iron in their souls than was possessed by my friend Sherlock Holmes.

  "Old Keg-Legs would have made himself as small as possible before the locking-up happened, perhaps knowing (or only suspecting) that his father would have one good look round before turning the key and shooting the bolt. He may have been gouty and going a bit soft about the edges, but that doesn't mean he was going blind."

  "Stanley says his eyes were top-hole," Lestrade said. "One of the first things I asked."

  "So he looked round," I said, and suddenly I could see it, and I suppose this was also the way it was with Holmes; this reconstruction which, while based only upon facts and deduction, seemed to be half a vision. "He saw nothing to alarm him; nothing but the study as it always was, empty save fo
r himself. It is a remarkably open room -- I see no closet door, and with the windows on both sides, there are no dark nooks and crannies even on such a day as this.

  "Satisfied that he was alone, he closed the door, turned his key, and shot the bolt. Jory would have heard him stump his way across to the desk. He would have heard the heavy thump and wheeze of the chair cushion as his father landed on it -- a man in whom gout is well-advanced does not sit so much as position himself over a soft spot and then drop onto it, seat-first -- and then Jory would at last have risked a look out."

  I glanced at Holmes.

  "Go on, old man," he said warmly. "You are doing splendidly. Absolutely first rate." I saw he meant it. Thousands would have called him cold, and they would not have been wrong, precisely, but he also had a large heart. Holmes simply protected it better than most men do.

  "Thank you. Jory would have seen his father put his cane aside, and place the papers -- the two packets of papers -- on the blotter. He did not kill his father immediately, although he could have done; that's what's so gruesomely pathetic about this business, and that's why I wouldn't go into that parlor where they are for a thousand pounds. I wouldn't go in unless you and your men dragged me."

  "How do you know he didn't do it immediately?" Lestrade asked.

  "The scream came several minutes after the key was turned and the bolt drawn; you said so yourself, and I assume you have enough testimony on that point not to doubt it. Yet it can only be a dozen long paces from door to desk. Even for a gouty man like Lord Hull, it would have taken half a minute, forty seconds at the outside, to cross to the chair and sit down. Add fifteen seconds for him to prop his cane where you found it, and put his wills on the blotter.