Ah Tsong stared stupidly, whereupon Paul Harley addressed him in his
native language, rapidly and in a low voice, in order, as I divined,
that the Inspector should not hear him.
“I feel dreadfully guilty, Knox,” he confessed, in a murmured aside.
“For any Englishman, fictitious characters excepted, to possess a
knowledge of Chinese is almost indecent.”
Presently, then, I found myself once more in that unkempt garden of
which I retained such unpleasant memories.
Inspector Aylesbury stared all about and up at the back of the house,
humming to himself and generally behaving as though he were alone.
Before the little summer study he stood still, and:
“Oh, I see,” he muttered.
What he had seen was painfully evident. The right-hand window, beneath
which there was a permanent wooden seat, commanded an unobstructed view
of the Tudor garden in the grounds of Cray’s Folly. Clearly I could
detect the speck of high-light upon the top of the sun-dial.
The Inspector stepped into the hut. It contained a bookshelf upon which
a number of books remained, a table and a chair, with some few other
dilapidated appointments. I glanced at Harley and saw that he was
staring as if hypnotized at the prospect in the valley below. I observed
a constable on duty at the top of the steps which led down into the
Tudor garden, but I could see nothing to account for Harley’s fixed
regard, until:
“Pardon me one moment, Inspector,” he muttered, brusquely.
Brushing past the indignant Aylesbury, who was examining the contents
of the shelves in the hut, he knelt upon the wooden seat and stared
intently through the open window.
“One-two-three-four-five-six-_seven_,” he chanted. “Good! That will
settle it.”
“Oh, I see,” said Inspector Aylesbury, standing strictly upright, his
prominent eyes turned in the direction of the kneeling Harley. “One,
two, three, four, and so on will settle it, eh? If you don’t mind me
saying so, it was settled already.”
“Yes?” replied Harley, standing up, and I saw that his eyes were very
bright and that his face was slightly flushed. “You think the case is so
simple as that?”
“Simple?” exclaimed the Inspector. “It’s the most cunning thing that was
ever planned, but I flatter myself that I have a good straight eye which
can see a fairly long way.”
“Excellent,” murmured Harley. “I congratulate you. Myopia is so common
in the present generation. You have decided, of course, that the murder
was committed by Ah Tsong?”
Inspector Aylesbury’s eyes seemed to protrude extraordinarily.
“Ah Tsong!” he exclaimed. “Ah Tsong!”
“Surely it is palpable,” continued Harley, “that of the three people
residing in the Guest House, Ah Tsong is the only one who could possibly
have done the deed.”
“Who could possibly--who could possibly----” stuttered the Inspector,
then paused because of sheer lack of words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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