The Great Detective

"C'est impossible!" exclaimed Inspector Jarre, peering out the narrow and barred window that pierced the cramped garret. "Even if the killer somehow left by this window, he would have fallen fifteen meters to his certain death!"

"Yes," replied the famous Orrington, puffing calmly on his ubiquitous glass pipe. "But he did not leave by the window."

Herndon, the young reporter, looked puzzled.

"But monsieur, it could not have been by the door!" protested Jarre. "I posted four of my most trusted men there this very evening. I will swear upon the doors of the Cathedral that the murderer did not leave by that way!"

Orrington smiled cryptically. "If you so swear it, Inspector," the brilliant sleuth announced with some amusement, "then I am forced to believe you as well."

Jarre threw his hands up in the air. "No window, no door!" protested the Inspector. "What other means of escape is there? Did the killer simply vanish?"

"Tut tut -- no, no," scolded Orrington, a trace of scorn audible in his remonstration. "The matter is most simple, my dear Inspector. You're simply not seeing it clearly enough." He stepped around the murdered man, still sprawled in his comfortable chair with a look of terror on his pallid face.

"That's your trademark, Mister Orrington, isn't it?" asked Herndon, holding his cramped notebook behind hsi back. The book was full of scrawled and battered pages and bound together with twine. "I mean, it's your speciality. You come into a baffling crime scene, notice something nobody else has noticed before, and suddenly the crime is solved."

"I do have certain gifts, young man," declared the detective, making a close observation of the victim's nostrils. "I do not wish to overstate my abilities, of course, but it is well known that sleuthing is nothing more than a simple exercise of one's higher mental faculties...."

"Yes, but Mister Orrington," pressed Herndon, "some say you have a supernatural ability to find that which others cannot. You dig out clues that have been buried for hundreds of years. You track down witnesses with no obvious trail leading to them. Things that are overlooked by the best police minds are spotted by you in seconds. How, sir, can you explain this?"

Orrington frowned slightly at Herndon. "Are you accusing me of doctoring crimes, Master Herndon?" he asked quietly.

Herndon shook his head vigorously and held out his notebook for inspection. "I'm just looking for an explanation," the reporter asserted. "I've documented all of your great career here. The Sphinx Murders, the Syrian Affair, all of it. It's fascinating stuff -- too incredible to believe, really. I just want to know -- that is, my readers want to know how you do it!"

Orrington stared at Herndon a while longer, then relaxed and smiled broadly.

"It's really quite simple," said Orrington, puffing on his pipe once more. "There's no trick to it. I just allow myself to relax, and then the brain does the rest." His eyes defocused, then glanced down to the ground at the feet of the victim. One of Orrington's eyebrows rose, and the smoke pulsed from his glass pipe.

"Observe, for instance," he said, "the minute scrape marks in the floor, just here, close to the legs of the chair."

"What is this?" Jarre demanded incredulously. He came over to see. His eyes widened with astonishment. "I do not know how I could have missed this, Monsieur Orrington! but what does it signify?"

"All in good time," Orrington soothed. "A simple object lesson: one must be able to observe every detail! Anything, even the tiniest fact, may be the key to solving a crime!"

"But surely those scratches would have been noted by the Inspector's men," protested Herndon. "That's basic police work!"

Orrington eyed the brash reporter coldly. "Apparently not, sir."

"Yes, apparently not!" echoed Inspecter Jarre hotly. "Perhaps the young monsieur should leave the scene if he is going to be so rude!"

"Not yet, not yet, Inspector," insisted Orrington. "Let us instead turn our minds to the matter of the murder weapon."

"The missing pistol!" replied Jarre eagerly. "Yes, it must have vanished with the criminal!"

"Perhaps we should ask the witnesses to the murder," Orrington mused quietly. The other two men turned to stare at him.

Herndon broke the silence. "What witnesses?" he asked.

"The manservant, hiding in the secret cabinet by his master's bedside," replied Orrington calmly. A crack appeared in the wall where no seam had been before, and a sheepish looking valet emerged. "Or the long-lost granddaughter, concealed behind a panel in the ceiling." A cheery-looking waif popped her head through a trapdoor and waved heartily.

Jarre boggled. Herndon folded his arms and looked disgusted.

"Oh, come on," he growled. "This is getting ridiculous."

"So you say, Master Herndon," said Orrington quietly, "but only because you have something to hide yourself."

Herndon blinked. "What are you talking about?" As he spoke he felt a twitching movement at the back of his pants, and something cold and iron slid down to press itself against his skin.

"The pistol that murdered the victim," answered Orrington, a vein pulsing at his temple, his eyes fully dilated. "You're hiding it in your pants."

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"So it was the reporter all along!" wondered Inspector Jarre, walking back to his office with Orrington.

"Yes, it was a diabolical plot," conceded Orrington. "The forged will, the failed blackmail and the lost shipment from Burma -- all these things led to an inescapable conclusion."

"But how did you know," pressed Jarre, "that young Herndon would return to the scene of his crime?"

Orrington smiled. "The little grey cells, my dear Inspector," he reminded his friend, tapping his temple knowingly.

"They do all the work."