The Man Who Knew How

For perhaps the twentieth time since the train had left Carlisle, Pender glanced up from Murder at the Manse and caught the eye of the man opposite.

He frowned a little. It was irritating to be watched so closely, and always with that faint, sardonic smile. It was still more irritating to allow oneself to be so much disturbed by the smile and the scrutiny. Pender wrenched himself back to his book with a determination to concеntrate upon the problem of thе minister murdered in the library. But the story was of the academic kind that crowds all its exciting incidents into the first chapter, and proceeds thereafter by a long series of deductions to a scientific solution in the last. The thin thread of interest, spun precariously upon the wheel of Pender’s reasoning brain, had been snapped. Twice he had to turn back to verify points that he had missed in reading. Then he became aware that his eyes had followed three closely argued pages without conveying anything whatever to his intelligence. He was not thinking about the murdered minister at all—he was becoming more and more actively conscious of the other man’s face. A queer face, Pender thought.

There was nothing especially remarkable about the features in themselves; it was their expression that daunted Pender. It was a secret face, the face of one who knew a great deal to other people’s disadvantage. The mouth was a little crooked and tightly tucked in at the corners, as though savouring a hidden amusement. The eyes, behind a pair of rimless pince-nez, glittered curiously; but that was possibly due to the light reflected in the glasses. Pender wondered what the man’s profession might be. He was dressed in a dark lounge suit, a raincoat and a shabby soft hat; his age was perhaps about forty.

Pender coughed unnecessarily and settled back into his corner, raising the detective story high before his face, barrier-fashion. This was worse than useless. He gained the impression that the man saw through the manoeuvre and was secretly entertained by it. He wanted to fidget, but felt obscurely that his doing so would in some way constitute a victory for the other man. In his self-consciousness he held himself so rigid that attention to his book became a sheer physical impossibility.

There was no stop now before Rugby, and it was unlikely that any passenger would enter from the corridor to break up this disagreeable solitude à deux. But something must be done. The silence had lasted so long that any remark, however trivial, would—so Pender felt—burst upon the tense atmosphere with the unnatural clatter of an alarm clock. One could, of course, go out into the corridor and not return, but that would be an acknowledgement of defeat. Pender lowered Murder at the Manse and caught the man’s eye again.

‘Getting tired of it?’ asked the man.

‘Night journeys are always a bit tedious,’ replied Pender, half relieved and half reluctant. ‘Would you like a book?’

He took The Paper-Clip Clue from his attaché-case and held it out hopefully. The other man glanced at the title and shook his head.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said, ‘but I never read detective stories. They’re so—inadequate, don’t you think so?’

‘They are rather lacking in characterisation and human interest, certainly,’ said Pender, ‘but on a railway journey—’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said the other man. ‘I am not concerned with humanity. But all these murderers are so incompetent—they bore me.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Pender. ‘At any rate they are usually a good deal more imaginative and ingenious than murderers in real life.’

‘Than the murderers who are found out in real life, yes,’ admitted the other man.

‘Even some of those did pretty well before they got pinched,’ objected Pender. ‘Crippen, for instance; he need never have been caught if he hadn’t lost his head and run off to America. George Joseph Smith did away with at least two brides quite successfully before fate and the News of the World intervened.’

‘Yes,’ said the other man, ‘but look at the clumsiness of it all; the elaboration, the lies, the paraphernalia. Absolutely unnecessary.’

‘Oh, come!’ said Pender. ‘You can’t expect committing a murder and getting away with it to be as simple as shelling peas.’

‘Ah!’ said the other man. ‘You think that, do you?’

Pender waited for him to elaborate this remark, but nothing came of it. The man leaned back and smiled in his secret way at the roof of the carriage; he appeared to think the conversation not worth going on with. Pender, taking up his book again, found himself attracted by his companion’s hands. They were white and surprisingly long in the fingers. He watched them gently tapping upon their owner’s knee—then resolutely turned a page—then put the book down once more and said:

‘Well, if it’s so easy, how would you set about committing a murder?’

‘I?’ repeated the man. The light on his glasses made his eyes quite blank to Pender, but his voice sounded gently amused. ‘That’s different; I should not have to think twice about it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I happen to know how to do it.’

‘Do you indeed?’ muttered Pender, rebelliously.

‘Oh, yes; there’s nothing in it.’

‘How can you be sure? You haven’t tried, I suppose?’

‘It isn’t a case of trying,’ said the man. ‘There’s nothing tentative about my method. That’s just the beauty of it.’

‘It’s easy to say that,’ retorted Pender, ‘but what is this wonderful method?’

‘You can’t expect me to tell you that, can you?’ said the other man, bringing his eyes back to rest on Pender’s. ‘It might not be safe. You look harmless enough, but who could look more harmless than Crippen? Nobody is fit to be trusted with absolute control over other people’s lives.’

‘Bosh!’ exclaimed Pender. ‘I shouldn’t think of murdering anybody.’

‘Oh, yes, you would,’ said the other man, ‘if you really believed it was safe. So would anybody. Why are all these tremendous artificial barriers built up around murder by the Church and the law? Just because it’s everybody’s crime, and just as natural as breathing.’

‘But that’s ridiculous!’ cried Pender, warmly.

‘You think so, do you? That’s what most people would say. But I wouldn’t trust ’em. Not with sulphate of thanatol to be bought for twopence at any chemist’s.’

‘Sulphate of what?’ asked Pender sharply.

‘Ah! you think I’m giving something away. Well, it’s a mixture of that and one or two other things—all equally ordinary and cheap. For ninepence you could make up enough to poison the entire Cabinet—and even you would hardly call that a crime, would you? But of course one wouldn’t polish the whole lot off at once; it might look funny if they all died simultaneously in their baths.’

‘Why in their baths?’

‘That’s the way it would take them. It’s the action of the hot water that brings on the effect of the stuff, you see. Any time from a few hours to a few days after administration. It’s quite a simple chemical reaction and it couldn’t possibly be detected by analysis. It would just look like heart failure.’

Pender eyed him uneasily. He did not like the smile; it was not only derisive, it was smug, it was almost—gloating—triumphant! He could not quite put a name to it.

‘You know,’ pursued the man, thoughtfully pulling a pipe from his pocket and beginning to fill it, ‘it is very odd how often one seems to read of people being found dead in their baths. It must be a very common accident. Quite temptingly so. After all, there is a fascination about murder. The thing grows upon one—that is, I imagine it would, you know.’

‘Very likely,’ said Pender.

‘Look at Palmer. Look at Gesina Gottfried. Look at Armstrong. No, I wouldn’t trust anybody with that formula—not even a virtuous young man like yourself.’

The long white fingers tamped the tobacco firmly into the bowl and struck a match.

‘But how about you?’ said Pender, irritated. (Nobody cares to be called a virtuous young man.) ‘If nobody is fit to be trusted—’

‘I’m not, eh?’ replied the man. ‘Well, that’s true, but it’s past praying for now, isn’t it? I know the thing and I can’t unknow it again. It’s unfortunate, but there it is. At any rate you have the comfort of knowing that nothing disagreeable is likely to happen to me. Dear me! Rugby already. I get out here. I have a little bit of business to do at Rugby.’

He rose and shook himself, buttoned his raincoat about him and pulled the shabby hat more firmly down above his enigmatic glasses. The train slowed down and stopped. With a brief goodnight and a crooked smile the man stepped on to the platform. Pender watched him stride quickly away into the drizzle beyond the radius of the gas-light.

‘Dotty or something,’ said Pender, oddly relieved. ‘Thank goodness, I seem to be going to have the carriage to myself.’

He returned to Murder at the Manse, but his attention still kept wandering.

‘What was the name of that stuff the fellow talked about?’

For the life of him he could not remember.

It was on the following afternoon that Pender saw the news-item. He had bought the Standard to read at lunch, and the word ‘Bath’ caught his eye; otherwise he would probably have missed the paragraph altogether, for it was only a short one.

‘WEALTHY MANUFACTURER DIES IN BATH

‘WIFE’S TRAGIC DISCOVERY

‘A distressing discovery was made early this morning by Mrs John Brittlesea, wife of the well-known head of Brittlesea’s Engineering Works at Rugby. Finding that her husband, whom she had seen alive and well less than an hour previously, did not come down in time for his breakfast, she searched for him in the bathroom, where, on the door being broken down, the engineer was found lying dead in his bath, life having been extinct, according to the medical men, for half an hour. The cause of the death is pronounced to be heart-failure. The deceased manufacturer . . .’

‘That’s an odd coincidence,’ said Pender. ‘At Rugby. I should think my unknown friend would be interested—if he is still there, doing his bit of business. I wonder what his business is, by the way.’

It is a very curious thing how, when once your attention is attracted to any particular set of circumstances, that set of circumstances seems to haunt you. You get appendicitis: immediately the newspapers are filled with paragraphs about statesmen suffering from appendicitis and victims dying of it; you learn that all your acquaintances have had it, or know friends who have had it, and either died of it, or recovered from it with more surprising and spectacular rapidity than yourself; you cannot open a popular magazine without seeing its cure mentioned as one of the triumphs of modern surgery, or dip into a scientific treatise without coming across a comparison of the vermiform appendix in men and monkeys. Probably these references to appendicitis are equally frequent at all times, but you only notice them when your mind is attuned to the subject. At any rate, it was in this way that Pender accounted to himself for the extraordinary frequency with which people seemed to die in their baths at this period.

The thing pursued him at every turn. Always the same sequence of events: the hot bath, the discovery of the corpse, the inquest; always the same medical opinion: heart failure following immersion in too-hot water. It began to seem to Pender that it was scarcely safe to enter a hot bath at all. He took to making his own bath cooler and cooler every day, until it almost ceased to be enjoyable.

He skimmed his paper each morning for headlines about baths before settling down to read the news; and was at once relieved and vaguely disappointed if a week passed without a hot-bath tragedy.

One of the sudden deaths that occurred in this way was that of a young and beautiful woman whose husband, an analytical chemist, had tried without success to divorce her a few months previously. The coroner displayed a tendency to suspect foul play, and put the husband through a severe cross-examination. There seemed, however, to be no getting behind the doctor’s evidence. Pender, brooding fancifully over the improbable possible, wished, as he did every day of the week, that he could remember the name of that drug the man in the train had mentioned.

Then came the excitement in Pender’s own neighbourhood. An old Mr Skimmings, who lived alone with a housekeeper in a street just round the corner, was found dead in his bathroom. His heart had never been strong. The housekeeper told the milkman that she had always expected something of the sort to happen, for the old gentleman would always take his bath so hot. Pender went to the inquest.

The housekeeper gave her evidence. Mr Skimmings had been the kindest of employers, and she was heartbroken at losing him. No, she had not been aware that Mr Skimmings had left her a large sum of money, but it was just like his goodness of heart. The verdict was Death by Misadventure.

Pender, that evening, went out for his usual stroll with the dog. Some feeling of curiosity moved him to go round past the late Mr Skimmings’s house. As he loitered by, glancing up at the blank windows, the garden-gate opened and a man came out. In the light of a street lamp, Pender recognised him at once.

‘Hullo!’ he said.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said the man. ‘Viewing the site of the tragedy, eh? What do you think about it all?’

‘Oh, nothing very much,’ said Pender. ‘I didn’t know him. Odd, our meeting again like this.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? You live near here, I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ said Pender; and then wished he hadn’t. ‘Do you live in these parts too?’

‘Me?’ said the man. ‘Oh, no. I was only here on a little matter of business.’

‘Last time we met,’ said Pender, ‘you had business at Rugby.’

They had fallen into step together, and were walking slowly down to the turning Pender had to take in order to reach his house.

‘So I had,’ agreed the other man. ‘My business takes me all over the country, I never know where I may be wanted next.’

‘It was while you were at Rugby that old Brittlesea was found dead in his bath, wasn’t it?’ remarked Pender carelessly.

‘Yes. Funny thing, coincidence.’ The man glanced up at him sideways through his glittering glasses. ‘Left all his money to his wife, didn’t he? She’s a rich woman now. Good-looking girl—a lot younger than he was.’

They were passing Pender’s gate. ‘Come in and have a drink,’ said Pender, and again immediately regretted the impulse.

The man accepted, and they went into Pender’s bachelor study.

‘Remarkable lot of these bath-deaths there have been lately, haven’t there?’ observed Pender carelessly, as he splashed soda into the tumblers.

‘You think it’s remarkable?’ said the man, with his usual irritating trick of querying everything that was said to him. ‘Well, I don’t know. Perhaps it is. But it’s always a fairly common accident.’

‘I suppose I’ve been taking more notice on account of that conversation we had in the train.’ Pender laughed, a little self-consciously. ‘It just makes me wonder—you know how one does—whether anybody else had happened to hit on that drug you mentioned—what was its name?’

The man ignored the question.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘I fancy I’m the only person who knows about that. I only stumbled on the thing by accident myself when I was looking for something else. I don’t imagine it could have been discovered simultaneously in so many parts of the country. But all these verdicts just show, don’t they, what a safe way it would be of getting rid of a person.’

‘You’re a chemist, then?’ asked Pender, catching at the one phrase which seemed to promise information.

‘Oh, I’m a bit of everything. Sort of general utility-man. I do a good bit of studying on my own, too. You’ve got one or two interesting books here, I see.’

Pender was flattered. For a man in his position—he had been in a bank until he came into that little bit of money—he felt that he had improved his mind to some purpose, and he knew that his collection of modern first editions would be worth money some day. He went over to the glass-fronted bookcase and pulled out a volume or two to show his visitor.

The man displayed intelligence, and presently joined him in front of the shelves.

‘These, I take it, represent your personal tastes?’ He took down a volume of Henry James and glanced at the fly-leaf. ‘That your name? E. Pender?’

Pender admitted that it was. ‘You have the advantage of me,’ he added.

‘Oh! I am one of the great Smith clan,’ said the other with a laugh, ‘and work for my bread. You seem to be very nicely fixed here.’

Pender explained about the clerkship and the legacy.

‘Very nice, isn’t it?’ said Smith. ‘Not married? No. You’re one of the lucky ones. Not likely to be needing any sulphate of . . . any useful drugs in the near future. And you never will, if you stick to what you’ve got and keep off women and speculation.’

He smiled up sideways at Pender. Now that his hat was off, Pender saw that he had a quantity of closely curled grey hair, which made him look older than he had appeared in the railway carriage.

‘No, I shan’t be coming to you for assistance yet awhile,’ said Pender, laughing. ‘Besides, how should I find you if I wanted you?’

‘You wouldn’t have to,’ said Smith. ‘I should find you. There’s never any difficulty about that.’ He grinned, oddly. ‘Well, I’d better be getting on. Thank you for your hospitality. I don’t expect we shall meet again—but we may, of course. Things work out so queerly, don’t they?’

When he had gone, Pender returned to his own arm-chair. He took up his glass of whisky, which stood there nearly full.

‘Funny!’ he said to himself. ‘I don’t remember pouring that out. I suppose I got interested and did it mechanically.’ He emptied his glass slowly, thinking about Smith.

What in the world was Smith doing at Skimmings’s house?

An odd business altogether. If Skimmings’s housekeeper had known about that money. . . . But she had not known, and if she had, how could she have found out about Smith and his sulphate of . . . the word had been on the tip of his tongue then.

‘You would not need to find me. I should find you.’ What had the man meant by that? But this was ridiculous. Smith was not the devil, presumably. But if he really had this secret—if he liked to put a price upon it—nonsense.

‘Business at Rugby—a little bit of business at Skimmings’s house.’ Oh, absurd!

‘Nobody is fit to be trusted. Absolute power over another man’s life . . . it grows on you.’

Lunacy! And, if there was anything in it, the man was mad to tell Pender about it. If Pender chose to speak he could get the fellow hanged. The very existence of Pender would be dangerous.

That whisky!

More and more, thinking it over, Pender became persuaded that he had never poured it out. Smith must have done it while his back was turned. Why that sudden display of interest in the bookshelves? It had had no connection with anything that had gone before. Now Pender came to think of it, it had been a very stiff whisky. Was it imagination, or had there been something about the flavour of it?

A cold sweat broke out on Pender’s forehead.

A quarter of an hour later, after a powerful dose of mustard and water, Pender was downstairs again, very cold and shivering, huddling over the fire. He had had a narrow escape—if he had escaped. He did not know how the stuff worked, but he would not take a hot bath again for some days. One never knew.

Whether the mustard and water had done the trick in time, or whether the hot bath was an essential part of the treatment, at any rate Pender’s life was saved for the time being. But he was still uneasy. He kept the front door on the chain and warned his servant to let no strangers into the house.

He ordered two more morning papers and the News of the World on Sundays, and kept a careful watch upon their columns. Deaths in baths became an obsession with him. He neglected his first editions and took to attending inquests.

Three weeks later he found himself at Lincoln. A man had died of heart failure in a Turkish bath—a fat man, of sedentary habits. The jury added a rider to their verdict of Misadventure, to the effect that the management should exercise a stricter supervision over the bathers and should never permit them to be left unattended in the hot room.

As Pender emerged from the hall he saw ahead of him a shabby hat that seemed familiar. He plunged after it, and caught Mr Smith about to step into a taxi.

‘Smith,’ he cried, gasping a little. He clutched him fiercely by the shoulder.

‘What, you again?’ said Smith. ‘Taking notes of the case, eh? Can I do anything for you?’

‘You devil!’ said Pender. ‘You’re mixed up in this! You tried to kill me the other day.’

‘Did I? Why should I do that?’

‘You’ll swing for this,’ shouted Pender menacingly.

A policeman pushed his way through the gathering crowd.

‘Here!’ said he, ‘what’s all this about?’

Smith touched his forehead significantly.

‘It’s all right, officer,’ said he. ‘The gentleman seems to think I’m here for no good. Here’s my card. The coroner knows me. But he attacked me. You’d better keep an eye on him.’

‘That’s right,’ said a bystander.

‘This man tried to kill me,’ said Pender.

The policeman nodded.

‘Don’t you worry about that, sir,’ he said. ‘You think better of it. The ’eat in there has upset you a bit. All right, all right.’

‘But I want to charge him,’ said Pender.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I was you,’ said the policeman.

‘I tell you,’ said Pender, ‘that this man Smith has been trying to poison me. He’s a murderer. He’s poisoned scores of people.’

The policeman winked at Smith.

‘Best be off, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll settle this. Now, my lad’—he held Pender firmly by the arms—‘just you keep cool and take it quiet. That gentleman’s name ain’t Smith nor nothing like it. You’ve got a bit mixed up like.’

‘Well, what is his name?’ demanded Pender.

‘Never you mind,’ replied the constable. ‘You leave him alone, or you’ll be getting yourself into trouble.’

The taxi had driven away. Pender glanced round at the circle of amused faces and gave in.

‘All right, officer,’ he said. ‘I won’t give you any trouble. I’ll come round with you to the police-station and tell you about it.’

‘What do you think o’ that one?’ asked the inspector of the sergeant when Pender had stumbled out of the station.

‘Up the pole an’ ’alf-way round the flag, if you ask me,’ replied his subordinate. ‘Got one o’ them ideez fix what they talk about.’

‘H’m!’ replied the inspector. ‘Well, we’ve got his name and address. Better make a note of ’em. He might turn up again. Poisoning people so as they die in their baths, eh? That’s a pretty good ’un. Wonderful how these barmy ones thinks it all out, isn’t it?’

The spring that year was a bad one—cold and foggy. It was March when Pender went down to an inquest at Deptford, but a thick blanket of mist was hanging over the river as though it were November. The cold ate into your bones. As he sat in the dingy little court, peering through the yellow twilight of gas and fog, he could scarcely see the witnesses as they came to the table. Everybody in the place seemed to be coughing. Pender was coughing too. His bones ached, and he felt as though he were about due for a bout of influenza.

Straining his eyes, he thought he recognised a face on the other side of the room, but the smarting fog which penetrated every crack stung and blinded him. He felt in his overcoat pocket, and his hand closed comfortably on something thick and heavy. Ever since that day in Lincoln he had gone about armed for protection. Not a revolver—he was no hand with firearms. A sandbag was much better. He had bought one from an old man wheeling a barrow. It was meant for keeping out draughts from the door—a good, old-fashioned affair.

The inevitable verdict was returned. The spectators began to push their way out. Pender had to hurry now, not to lose sight of his man. He elbowed his way along, muttering apologies. At the door he almost touched the man, but a stout woman intervened. He plunged past her, and she gave a little squeak of indignation. The man in front turned his head, and the light over the door glinted on his glasses.

Pender pulled his hat over his eyes and followed. His shoes had crêpe rubber soles and made no sound on the sticking pavement. The man went on, jogging quietly up one street and down another, and never looking back. The fog was so thick that Pender was forced to keep within a few yards of him. Where was he going? Into the lighted streets? Home by bus or tram? No. He turned off to the left, down a narrow street.

The fog was thicker here. Pender could no longer see his quarry, but he heard the footsteps going on before him at the same even pace. It seemed to him that they were two alone in the world—pursued and pursuer, slayer and avenger. The street began to slope more rapidly. They must be coming out somewhere near the river.

Suddenly the dim shapes of the houses fell away on either side. There was an open space, with a lamp vaguely visible in the middle. The footsteps paused. Pender, silently hurrying after, saw the man standing close beneath the lamp, apparently consulting something in a notebook.

Four steps, and Pender was upon him. He drew the sandbag from his pocket.

The man looked up.

‘I’ve got you this time,’ said Pender, and struck with all his force.

Pender had been quite right. He did get influenza. It was a week before he was out and about again. The weather had changed, and the air was fresh and sweet. In spite of the weakness left by the malady he felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He tottered down to a favourite bookshop of his in the Strand, and picked up a D. H. Lawrence ‘first’ at a price which he knew to be a bargain. Encouraged by this, he turned into a small chop-house, chiefly frequented by Fleet Street men, and ordered a grilled cutlet and a half-tankard of bitter.

Two journalists were seated at the next table.

‘Going to poor old Buckley’s funeral?’ asked one.

‘Yes,’ said the other. ‘Poor devil! Fancy his getting sloshed on the head like that. He must have been on his way down to interview the widow of that fellow who died in a bath. It’s a rough district. Probably one of Jimmy the Card’s crowd had it in for him. He was a great crime-reporter—they won’t get another like Bill Buckley in a hurry.’

‘He was a decent sort, too. Great old sport. No end of a leg-puller. Remember his great stunt about sulphate of thanatol?’

Pender started. That was the word that had eluded him for so many months. A curious dizziness came over him and he took a pull at the tankard to steady himself.

‘. . . looking at you as sober as a judge,’ the journalist was saying. ‘He used to work off that wheeze on poor boobs in railway carriages to see how they’d take it. Would you believe that one chap actually offered him—’

‘Hullo!’ interrupted his friend. ‘That bloke over there has fainted. I thought he was looking a bit white.’