A Fine and Private Place

Fifth Month MAY, 1967

The halfway stage of the pregnancy finds the lower portion of the fetus’s abdomen enlarging proportionately, and the legs beginning to catch up.

The mother is note very much aware of what she is bearing. Its arms and legs are in frequent vigorous motion in her body.

Ellery had had his study done over in driftwood paneling, a choice that had seemed inspired at the time. The pitted and irregularly furrowed surface looked as if it had been clawed by the tides of years, and it was artistically stained a salty sea-foam gray. Contemplating it, he could feel the rise and fall of his floor and little imaginary stings on his cheeks. With the air conditioner set to maximum, it was very hard to keep reminding himself that he was not on the deck of a pleasure craft plowing up the Sound.

This proved a serious deterrent to the requirements of reality. The conversion of his workaday walls had altered his environment to the critical point, turning a functional study in an ordinary Manhattan apartment into a playful distraction. Ellery had always held that, for the most efficient use of time and the maintenance of a schedule, a writer required above all things a working atmosphere of familiar discomfort. One should never change so much as the Model T pencil sharpener on the windowsill. The very grime around the ratholes was an encouragement to labor. In the ancient metaphor, the creative flame burned brightest in dark and dusty garrets; and so forth.

Why had he excommunicated the dear old dirty wallpaper that had seen him devotedly through so many completed manuscripts?

He was glaring at the four and a half sentences in his typewriter and making beseeching motions with his hands when his father looked in, said, “Still working?” in a tired voice, and retreated from the sight of that anguished tableau.

Five minutes later, somewhat refreshed and bearing a frosty, green-tinged cocktail, the old man reappeared. Ellery was now smiting himself softly on the temple.

Inspector Queen sank onto Ellery’s sofa, taking a thirsty swallow on the way down. “Why keep beating your brains in?” he demanded. “Knock it off, son. You’ve got less on that page than when I left for downtown this morning.”

“What?” Ellery said, not looking up.

“Call it a day.”

Ellery looked up. “Never. Can’t. Way behind.”

“You’ll make it up.”

He burped a hollow laugh. ‘Dad, I’m trying to work. Mind?”

The Inspector settled himself and held up his cocktail. “How about I make you one of these?”

“What?”

“I said,” the Inspector said patiently, “would you like a Tipperary? It’s a Doc Prouty special.”

“What’s in it?” Ellery asked, making a micrometric adjustment of the sheet in his machine, which was already adjusted to a hundredth of an inch. “I’ve sampled Doc Prouty specials before, and they all taste the way his lab smells. What’s the green stuff?”

“Chartreuse. Mixed with Irish whiskey and sweet vermouth.”

“No creme de menthe? God keep us all from professional Irishmen! If you’re bent on barkeeping, dad, make mine a Johnnie on the rocks.”

His father fetched the Scotch. Ellery surrounded half of it with sedate gratitude, set the glass daintily down beside his typewriter, and flexed his fingers. The old man sat back on the sofa, knees touching like a vicar’s on duty call, sipping his Tipperary and watching. Just as the poised filial fingers were about to descend on the keys, the paterfamilias said, “Yes, sir. Hell of a day.”

The son slowly lowered his hands. He sat back. He reached for his glass. “All right,” he said. “I’m listening.”

“No, no, I just happened to think out loud, son. It’s not important. I mean, sorry I interrupted.”

“So am I, but the fact, as de Gaulle would say in translation, is accomplished. I couldn’t compose a printable line now if I were on my deathbed.”

“I said I was sorry,” the Inspector said in a huff. “I see I’d better get out of here.”

“Oh, sit down. You obviously invaded my domain with malice aforeceps, as a show biz lady of my acquaintance liked to say, in contravention of my rights under the. Fourth Amendment.” The old man sat back, rather be-wilderedly mollified. “By the way, how about not talking on an empty stomach? Dinner simmers on the hod. Mrs. Fabrikant left us one of her famous, or to put it more accurately, notorious Irish stews. Fabby had to leave early today-”

“I’m in no hurry to eat,” the Inspector said hurriedly.

“Done! I’ll run down to Sammy’s later for some hot kosher pastrami and Jewish rye and lots of half-sour pickles and stuff, and we can feed Fabby’s stew to the Delehantys’ setter, he’s Irish-”

“Fine, fine.”

“Therefore how about another round?” Ellery struggled to the vertical, revived a few moribund muscles and tendons, shook himself, and then came round the desk with his glass. He took his father’s empty from the slack fingers. “You still traveling that long way?”

“Long way?”

“To Tipperary. Proportions?”

“Three-quarters of an ounce each of Irish, sweet vermouth, and-”

“I know, green chartreuse.” He shuddered (the Inspector snapped, “Very funny!”) and dodged into the living room. When he returned, instead of reoccupying his desk chair Ellery dropped into the overstuffed chair facing the sofa.

“If it’s ambulatory help you need, dad, I can’t lift my duff. That damn deadline’s so close the back of my neck is recommending Listeriiie. But if you can use an armchair opinion… What’s this one about?”

“About a third of a half billion dollars,” Inspector Queen grunted. “And you don’t have to be so darn merry about it.”

“It’s frustrated-writer’s hysteria, dad. Did I hear you correctly? Billion?”

“Right. With a huh.”

“For pity land’s sake. Who’s involved?”

“Importuna Industries. Know anything about the outfit?”

“Only that it’s a conglomerate of a whole slew of industries and companies, great and small, foreign and domestic, the entire shtik owned by three brothers named Importuna.”

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Owned by one brother named Importuna. The other two carry the handle Importunato.”

“Full brothers? Or half, or step?”

“Full, far as I know.”

“How come the difference in surnames?”

“Nino, the oldest, is superstitious, has a thing about lucky numbers or something-I had more important things to break my head about. Anyway, he shortened the family name. His brothers didn’t.”

“Noted. Well?”

“Oh, hell,” his father said, and swigged like a desperate man. “Ellery, I warn you… this is wild. I don’t want to be responsible for dragging you into a complicated mess when you’ve your own work to do… “

“You’re absolved, dad, shriven. I’ll put it in writing if you like. Satisfied? Go on!”

“Well, all right,” the Inspector said, with an on-your-head-be-it sigh. “The three brothers live in an apartment house they own on the upper East Side, overlooking the river. It’s an old-timer, 9 stories and penthouse, designed by somebody important in the late ‘90s, and when Nino Importuna bought it, he had it restored to its original condition, modernized the plumbing and heating, installed the latest in air conditioning, and so on-turned it into one of the snootiest buildings in the neighborhood. I understand that prospective tenants have to go through a tougher check than the security men assigned to the President.”

“I gather not quite,” Ellery suggested.

“I’m coming to that. The place is one of I don’t know how many homes the brothers maintain around the world-especially Nino-but 99 East, as Importuna calls it, seems to be the one they run the conglomerate from, at least the American components.”

“Don’t they have offices?”

“Offices? Whole chains of office buildings! But the real dirty work, the high command decisions, that all originates at 99 East.-Okay, Ellery! But before I can get to the murder-”

At the lethal word Ellery’s nose twitched like a Saint Bernard’s. “Can’t you at least tell me who was schlogged? How? Where?”

“If you’ll wait just a minute, son! The setup’s as follows: Nino occupies the penthouse. His brothers Marco and Julio live in the apartments that make up the top floor of the building, the floor directly underneath the penthouse-there are two apartments to a floor except on the roof, and they’re enormous, I don’t know how many rooms to an apartment. You know those swanky old buildings.

“Now the brothers share the services of a confidential secretary, a fellow named Ennis, Peter Ennis, good-looking guy who’s got to be mighty sharp or he wouldn’t be holding down a job like that-”

“Confidential secretary could covei a lot of territory. Just what does Ennis handle for the brothers?”

“Their personal affairs mostly, he says, although of course, with the brothers operating so much from their homes I don’t see how Ennis could fail to get in on some of the business shenanigans, too. Anyway, this morning, early-”

“Are all the brothers married?”

“Nino. The other two are single. Do you want me to get to the murder or don’t you?”

“I’m nothing but ears.”

“When Ennis showed up for work this morning, he made his rounds of the three apartments, he says, the way he always does, to get squared away for the day. He found Julio, who’s the youngest brother, dead. Bloody dead-a real mess.”

“Where did he find him?”

“In Julio’s apartment, the library there. Importunato had his head beaten in. I mean he was zonked. Just one sock, but it was a beaut-clobbered his brains into mush. On that side, anyway. It’s a nasty homicide, Ellery, and considering the murderee is one of the ruling dynasty of the Importuna empire, it’s a sizzler. The shock waves… “ Inspector Queen gulped generously.

“What shock waves?”

“Didn’t you listen to the six o’clock news?”

“I haven’t turned the radio on all week. What happened?”

“Julio Importunato’s murder rocked the stock market. Not only Wall Street-the money markets of Europe, too. That was the first aftereffect. The second came down from the commissioner. He’s putting the squeeze on, son-so is the mayor-and I’m one of those caught between the nutcrackers.”

“Damn.” Ellery shafted a malevolent glance at his stubborn typewriter. “And? Well?”

“On second thought, what’s the point? It’s no use, Ellery. You go on back to your work.” The Inspector made a rather theatrical move to rise. “I’ll manage. Somehow.”

“You know, you can be an exasperating old man?” Ellery exclaimed. “What do you mean, it’s no use? There’s always a ‘use’! But I can’t be of use if you keep me in ignorance. What are the facts? Are there any clues?”

“Oh. Well, yes. At least two.” He stopped.

“And?” Ellery snapped after a while. “Specify!”

“In fact,” the Inspector replied joylessly, “they both point straight at the killer.”

“They do? At whom?”

“Marco.”

“His brother?”

“Right.”

“Then what’s the problem? I don’t understand, dad. You’re acting as if you’re stumped, and in the same breath you say you have a couple of clues that link the victim’s brother directly to the crime!”

“That’s correct.”

“But… For heaven’s sake, what kind of clues are they?”

“The open-and-shut kind. The real old-fashioned variety, you’d have to call ‘em. The kind,” Inspector Queen said, shaking his mustache, “you mystery writers wouldn’t be caught dead putting in one of your stories in this day and age.”

“All right, you’ve whipped my interest to a bloody froth,” Ellery said in a grim voice. “Now let’s get down to cases. What-precisely-are these open-and-shut, old-fashioned, downright corny clues?”

“From the condition in which we found Julio’s library, there’d been a fight, a violent struggle. Real donnybrook. Well, we found on the scene a button-”

“What kind of button?”

“Solid gold. Monogram MI on it.”

“Identified as Marco Importunato’s?”

“Identified as Marco Importunato’s. Threads still hanging from it. That’s clue the first.”

“Button,” Ellery repeated. “Buttons-found-on-scene-of-crime went out with spats and Hoover collars. And the other clue?”

“Went out with zoot suits.”

“But what is it?”

Inspector Queen said, “A footprint.”

“Footprint! You mean of a naked foot?”

“Of a shoe. A man’s shoe.”

“Where was it found?”

“Dead man’s library. Scene of the homicide.”

“But… And you tied the print into Marco?”

“We sure did.”

“A button and a footprint,” Ellery said, marveling. “In the year 1967! Well, I suppose anything’s possible. A time warp, or something. But if it’s that pat, dad, what’s bothering you?”

“It isn’t that pat.”

“But I thought you said-”

“I told you. It’s very complicated.”

“Complicated how? By what?”

The old man set his empty glass on the floor, where presumably it could be more conveniently kicked. Ellery watched him with sharpening suspicion.

“I’m sincerely sorry I told you anything about it,” his father said sincerely, and rose. “Let’s forget it, son. I mean, you forget it.”

“Thanks a heap! How do I do that? It’s apparently one of those lovely deceptive ones that only appears to be a simple case. Therefore… “

The “Yes?” came out of the Inspector’s birdy face like an impatient twitter.

“I’ve suddenly come down with a recurrence of my old enteric fever. You know, dad, the aftermath of the jezail bullet that grazed my subclavian artery and shattered my shoulder at the battle of Maiwand?”

“Shattered your shoulder?” his father cried. “What bullet grazed your artery? At which battle?”

“I’ll consequently have to notify my publisher that there will be a slight delay in the delivery of my next book. After all, what difference can it make to anyone there? It’s probably wandering around somewhere on their schedule, hopelessly lost. Nobody in the publishing profession pays any attention whatever to a mystery writer except when banking the profits from his mean endeavors. We’re the ditchdiggers of literature.”

“Ellery, I don’t want to be the cause of-”

“You’ve already said that. Of course you do, or you’d have swallowed a few mouthfuls of Fabby’s well-meant swill and crept into bed without my being aware you’d even come home. And why not? There are heavyweight VIPs involved, the crunch is on downtown, you’re not getting any younger, and did I ever leave you in the lurch? Now let’s get to it.”

“You really want to, son?”

“I thought I’d just said so.”

A beautiful change came over Inspector Queen. The relief map of his face turned into a map of relief.

“In that case,” he cried, “you get your jacket!”

Ellery rose to oblige. “Where to?”

“Lab.”

A sergeant, Joe Voytershack, one of the Technical Services Bureau’s most reliable men, was/ on overtime duty tonight, by which Ellery gauged the importance of the case in the eyes of the budget-conscious brass. Sergeant Voytershack was studying a button under his loupe. The button was of gold, and a clump of navy blue threads protruded from it.

“What’s the problem, Joe?” Inspector Queen asked. “I thought you’d finished with the button.”

“I had.”

“Then why are you examining it again?”

“Because,” Sergeant Voytershack said sourly, “I’m goddam unhappy about it. Because I don’t like this button. Because I don’t like it from bupkes. And I don’t see you leaping for joy, either, Inspector.”

“Ellery wants a look.”

“Hello, Joe,” Ellery said.

“Be my guest.” The sergeant handed him the loupe and the button.

Ellery peered.

“I thought, dad, you said this button was torn off during a struggle.”

“Did I say that?”

“Not exactly. But I naturally assumed-”

“I think you’re going to find out, my son,” Inspector Queen said, “that in this case assumptions are kind of risky. What I said was that there were indications of a violent struggle, which there are, and that we found a gold button on the scene, which we did. I didn’t say one necessarily had to do with the other. Just for ducks, Ellery: What do you see?”

“I see a clump of threads of identical length, with very sharp, clean ends. If the button had been yanked off during a struggle-that is, by hand-the lengths of the threads would vary and the ends, instead of being sharp and clean, would be ragged. This button was snipped off whatever it was attached to by a sharp-edged instrument, a scissors or knife, more likely a scissors.”

“Right,” said Sergeant Voytershack.

“Right,” said Inspector Queen.

“Was it found in the dead man’s hand?”

“It was found on the dead man’s floor.”

Ellery shrugged. “Not that it would change the picture if you’d found it in his hand. The fact is, someone cut this button off something belonging to Marco Importunato. Since it was found on the scene of the murder, the indicated conclusion is that it was planted there for the benefit of you gents of the fuzz. Somebody doesn’t care for Brother Marco, either.”

“Yes, sir, you just hit a couple of nails,” his father said. “Turning what looked at first like a nice clean clue against Marco into a dirty frame-up of Marco. See? Simple into not so simple.”

Ellery scowled. He picked the button up by its rim and turned it over. The relief design on its face formed a conventional frame of crossed anchors and hawsers, with the initials MI in an elaborate intertwine engraved within the frame.

He set the button down and turned to the technical man. “Was a cast made from the shoeprint, sergeant? I’d like to see it.”

Voytershack shook his grizzled head. “Didn’t the Inspector describe it to you?”

“Didn’t tell him a bloody thing about it,” the old man said. “I don’t want to influence his impressions.”

The sergeant handed Ellery a number of photographs. They were largely close-ups, from various angles, of the same object, which was lying on what appeared to be a short-piled rug.

“What is that material the shoeprint shows up on?” Ellery asked. “Looks like ashes.”

“It is ashes,” Voytershack said.

“What kind?”

“Cigar.”

There was a great deal of it. In one picture, taken at slightly longer range, a large glass ashtray in what seemed to be an ebony holder was visible on the rug a foot or so from the ash deposit. The ashtray lay face down.

“Whose cigars?” Ellery asked. “Do you have a make on that?”

“They’re from the same cigars the boys found in a humidor on the murdered guy’s desk,” the sergeant said. “Prime Cuban. The finest.”

“The tray must have been piled pretty high to have dumped this much ash when it overturned.”

“They all claim Julio was a cigar chain-smoker,” Inspector Queen said. “And the maid hadn’t yet cleaned up his library this morning from yesterday.”

“So presumably the tray was knocked off the desk in the struggle?”

“That’s the way it figures. Joe’ll show you the series of photos of the room. Chairs and lamps knocked over, a 200-year old Chinese vase smashed to bits, a rack of fire tools upset-one of them, a hefty three-foot trident-type poker, was the murder weapon-an antique taboret squashed to kindling wood where somebody must have fallen on it-as I told you back home, a donnybrook. What do you make of the shoeprint, Ellery?”

“Man’s right shoe, smallish size-I’d estimate no more than an eight, could even be a seven. The sole is rippled. Might be of crepe. Certainly a sports shoe of some type. Also, diagonally down the length of the sole there’s something that looks like a deep cut in the crepe. It’s definitely not part of the design of the sole. The cut crosses four consecutive ripples of the crepe at an acute angle. Dad, this should have made identification a kindergarten exercise. That is, if you found the shoe.”

“Oh, it was, and we did,” the Inspector said. “The shoe-a yachting shoe, by the way, and crepe-soled, as you say-was found on the 9th floor of 99 East, in a shoe rack of the east apartment’s dressing room adjoining the master bedroom. Size about 71/oC. Fits the imprint in the ashes like a glove. And with a cut in the sole positioned exactly as in the ashes, crossing the same four ripples at the same angle.”

“Marco Importunato’s apartment. His shoe.”

“Marco’s apartment, his shoe. Right.”

“Joe, do you have the shoe here?”

Sergeant Voytershack produced it. It was a common navy blue sports oxford with the characteristic thick crepe sole. Ellery studied the crosscut.

“May I have a caliper or a tongs, Joe-something to pry the edges of the cut apart?”

Voytershack handed him a tool and a magnifying glass. The two officers watched without expression. Ellery separated the lips of the cut and peered into its vitals through the glass.

He looked up with a nod. “Can’t be much doubt. The cut down the sole looks fresh-definitely not an old cut; in fact, it was made very recently. And I don’t see how a slash of this length and uniform depth could have been the result of stepping on something, unless the wearer of the shoe was doing a balancing act on an ax blade. So the cut across these ripples in the crepe was made deliberately. And since this is a mass-produced sports shoe obtainable almost anywhere, making it hard to trace, the purpose of the cut can only have been for identification-to connect the distinctive print the shoe left in the cigar ashes with the specific shoe belonging to Marco Importunato. In other words-again-to frame Marco for his brother Julio’s murder. Has Marco been questioned yet?”

“Very delicately,” Inspector Queen said. “Sort of in passing. In this case, we decided, haste makes headaches. We’re sort of feeling our way around.”

Ellery set Marco Importunato’s shoe down. Sergeant Voytershack carefully stowed it away.

“And that’s the extent of the case against Marco?” Ellery asked. “The gold button? The shoeprint?”

His father said, “He’s also left-handed.”

“Left-handed? Impossible. Nobody stoops to using left-handed murderers anymore.’”

“In mystery stories.”

“There’s a clue to left-handedness?”

“Not exactly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The crime could have been committed by a left-handed man.”

“And I suppose all the other suspects are right-handed?”

“I don’t know about all the suspects-’all’ covers a lot of ground, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of the potentials. For what it’s worth, Marco’s brothers, Julio who was the victim and Nino who heads the whole shebang, were… are… whatever the devil it is!-both right-handed.”

“Why do you say the crime could have been committed by a southpaw? Where’s the clue to that?”

Inspector Queen’s chin jerked at the sergeant. In silence Voytershack handed Ellery a portfolio of photographs.

The Inspector tapped the uppermost photo. “You tell me.”

It showed a corner of a room.

The picture was not a sample of the lensman’s art by any criterion of esthetics. There was a long desk, heavy-looking, with an oak grain in a feudal finish, extensively carved. A man, or what had been a man, was seated in what appeared to be a swivel chair, midway behind the desk. The view was from across the desk, facing the dead man. The upper torso and head lay fallen forward on the desk top, and one side of the head was caved in.

The large desk blotter and some papers scattered on the desk-fortuitously, one of them on the squashed side was a newspaper-had sopped up most of the blood and brain matter. That entire side-of the head, the shoulder, the desk-was a continuous ruin.

“From the wound,” Ellery said, making a face, “a single blow, a crusher; had to have been full arm. A home run in any park.” He snapped a fingertip at the color print. “Question: If there was a battle royal between Julio and his killer of sufficient violence to shatter vases and break furniture, how come Julio was found seated more or less peaceably behind the desk?”

“We have to figure he lost the fight,” the Inspector said with a shrug. “Killer then forced him to sit down behind the desk, or conned him into it, on what excuse or threat or sweet talk is anybody’s guess. Maybe to talk over their differences, whatever they were… I mean why they fought in the first place. However the killer managed it, it led to his crowning Julio with the poker. It’s the only theory that makes sense to us. If any of this makes sense.”

“Any fix on the time of the murder? Did Prouty’s man say?”

“Prouty’s man? Are you kidding? This one was important enough to bring the eminent Dr. Prouty trotting out in the flesh. Last night around 10 p.m. is Doc’s preliminary estimate.”

“Didn’t anyone hear the fight?”

“The servants’ quarters are way to hell and gone at the other end of Julio’s apartment, which goes on forever. And as far as overhearing is concerned, you could stage a kid gang rumble in one of those rooms and nobody’d know it. They built walls that were walls in the days when 99 East was put up, not the cardboard partitions they use today. No, nobody heard the fight.”

Ellery set the photograph down. Sergeant Voytershack reached for it. But Ellery had already picked it up again. “And Prouty couldn’t be more exact about the time?”

“Restless, my son?” his father asked. “Doesn’t this case come up to your usual standard? No, Doc couldn’t-not today, anyway. He says he’ll give us, quote, ‘a more accurate stab in the dark,’ unquote, as soon as he can. If he can.”

“You don’t seem to have much confidence in anything about the case.”

“And you,” Inspector Queen retorted, “don’t seem in much of a hurry to hold forth on the left-handedness business.”

Ellery scowled and squinted at the photograph. One of the short ends of the desk met the side wall. The desk’s long dimension was therefore parallel with the rear wall, the one behind the dead man’s chair.

“No mystery about it,” Ellery said. “Certainly not from this photo. From the position and angle of the line of impact made on this side of the skull by the weapon, assuming that when Julio was struck he was sitting up normally in the chair, the blow could certainly have been delivered by a left-handed man.”

The Inspector and Sergeant Voytershack nodded without enthusiasm.

“That’s it?” Inspector Queen asked.

“Not to me it isn’t,” Ellery said. “Not yet. It’s consistent with Marco’s left-handedness, all right, but that may be the trouble. If Marco’s being framed, if the button and shoe-print were plants, this left-handedness possibility may be a plant, too. I’d like to see Julio’s library close up, dad. And can you arrange to have the confidential secretary-what’s his name? Peter Ennis?-join us there?”

It was 9:35 p.m. when the Queens rode the small private elevator to the top floor of 99 East and stepped out into the modest vestibule that served both the east and west 9th-floor apartments. They had had to struggle through the wasps’ nest of reporters and photographers downstairs, and both men were ruffled.

“Open up,” Inspector Queen snapped to the officer on guard at the east door. The man rapped three times, and the door was unlocked from inside by another officer.

“Bad down there, Inspector?” he asked.

“It’s as much as your life is worth. It’s all right, Mulvey, we’ll find it. I have hound-dog blood in me.”

Ellery followed his father, taking in the high ceilings and rococo ornamentation of the apartment. The furniture was ponderous and for the most part Italian, but the decor was haphazardly bright, expressing no particular scheme or period but rather the whims of the decorator, undoubtedly Julio Importunato himself. The murdered man, Ellery reflected, must have been a lighthearted, chromatic amante of life. The life-sized oil portrait in the living room through which they passed confirmed his guess. It was of a large, doughy man with a lusty mustache and eyes that reminded him of a Hals he had seen in the Louvre, The Gypsy, brimming over with amiable mischief. The portraitist’s symbolism was as hearty as the subject himself. On the table at which the artist had painted the youngest brother lay an overturned leather dicebox with the dice spilled out beside an empty bottle of vino; a slopping wineglass was clutched in the fist resting on the table. And, reflected in a background mirror (the curlicued frame was festooned with gold cupids), on an opulent bed, lay a smiling woman of noble dimensions with one rosy leg drawn up and no clothes on.

“Pity,” Ellery said.

“What?”

“I was having a platitudinous thought about death. An epitaph for Julio. How many rooms are there in this labyrinth, anyway?”

They finally penetrated to the scene of the murder. The library, Inspector Queen said, was in the same condition as when Peter Ennis had found the dead man, except for what had necessarily been disturbed in the police workover. Chairs were overturned, lamps lay broken on the floor, the rack of fire tools at the fireplace sprawled on the hearthstone; even the debris of the antique taboret lay where it had collapsed. And while Julio Importunato’s body was no longer there, its surrogate remained-the ghostly outline of his torso and head chalked on the bloodied desk.

“That’s where the shoeprint was?” Ellery pointed with his toe to an erratic hole some two feet in diameter in the cobalt blue Indian rug. The piece had been cut out of the rug near one of the front corners of the desk.

Inspector Queen nodded. “For the D.A.’s office.” He added, “Hopefully.”

“That’s the name of this game. Is Ennis here?”

The Inspector nodded to the patrolman on duty and the patrolman opened a door at the far end of the library. Two men came in. The man who appeared first could not have been Ennis in any event; he strolled, in no hurry, the captain of a ship, unquestioned master of his decks. Peter Ennis followed with quick small steps, in a sort of choreography, the very model of the subordinate; the small steps shrank his natural advantage of height over his employer to their real proportions.

“This is Mr. Importuna,” the younger man announced. “Mr. Nino Importuna.” He possessed a surprising high tenor voice, incongruous in a man of his size and virile blond appearance.

No one acknowledged the fanfare; Ennis took one step back, flushing.

Importuna stopped before his murdered brother’s desk, surveying the dried blood, the bits of tissue, the chalked outline. Whatever he felt, he did not allow it to show.

“This is the first time I’ve seen”-his right hand with its four fingers described a vague oval-”this. They wouldn’t let me in before.”

“You shouldn’t be here now, Mr. Importuna,” Inspector Queen said. “I’d rather have spared you this.”

“Kind but not necessary,” the multimillionaire said. His voice sounded deep and dry, with a faint echo of remorse, like an abandoned well. “Italian contadini are used to the sight of blood… So this is how the murder of a brother looks. Omicidio a sangue freddo.”

“Why do you say ‘in cold blood,’ Mr. Importuna?” Ellery asked.

The adversary eyes turned Ellery’s way. They took his measure. “Who are you? You’re not a policeman.”

“My son Ellery,” the Inspector said, quickly. “He has a professional interest in homicide, Mr. Importuna, though his profession isn’t police work. He writes about it.”

“Oh? My brother Julio becomes your raw material, Mr. Queen?”

“Not for profit,” Ellery said. “We have the feeling this is a difficult case, Mr. Importuna. I’m helping out. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“You understand Italian?”

“A very little. Why in cold blood?”

“One stroke of the weapon, I understand. Directed with great force and precision. That is not the work of anger or blind hatred. If my brother had been attacked in passion, there would have been not one blow but many.”

“You should be a detective, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery said. “You’ve just made a most important observation.”

Nino Importuna shrugged. “By the way, gentlemen, I apologize for the failure of my wife to make an appearance. Mrs. Importuna was very fond of Julio. His murder has so affected her I’ve had to forbid her to set foot in his apartment.”

“We’ll have to talk to her, of course,” Inspector Queen said. “But there’s no hurry, Mr. Importuna. At your wife’s convenience.”

“Thank you. I understand you want to question my secretary again? Mr. Ennis here?”

“My son wants to.”

“Peter, tell Mr. Queen whatever he wants to know.”

The heavyset man retreated to the nearest wall. There was a chair nearby, but he leaned against the wall. His womanish mouth was compressed. He kept his eyes on Ennis.

“I suppose,” Peter Ennis said to Ellery, “you want me to repeat my story-I mean how I came to find-”

“No,” Ellery said.

“No?”

“No, I’d like you to tell me what your impressions were, Mr. Ennis, when you got over the first shock of finding Mr. Importunato murdered.”

“I’m afraid,” the blond secretary stammered, “I’m afraid I don’t exactly understand what you… “

Ellery smiled at him. “I don’t blame you for being confused. I’m not quite sure myself what I’m groping for. Let’s try this: Was there anything about the room at that time that struck you, well, as different from usual? I understand you’re familiar with all three apartments. Sometimes on entering familiar surroundings we get an uneasy feeling, a sense of disturbance, because something is out of place, or missing, or even added.”

“Of course, the overturned things, this broken stuff-”

“Aside from those, Mr. Ennis.”

“Well… “

“One moment.”

To Inspector Queen’s eye Ellery was at the old point, like the bird dog he often resembled. He was almost quivering, he stood so still. He was concentrating his attention on something in the rug, about halfway between the end of the desk jutting into the room and the rear wall.

Suddenly he ran over to it, dropped to one knee, and studied it at close range. Then he scuttled over to a point well behind the desk, near the base of the rear wall, and intently examined something there. Whereupon he sprang to his feet, ran around to the front of the desk, got down on all fours, and peered underneath at a point about one-third the desk’s length from the side wall.

This time when he rose he beckoned the patrolman.

“Would you help me, please?”

He directed the officer to lift the desk at its front corner, the corner nearest the side wall. “Just an inch or so. A little higher. That’s it. Hold it a moment.” He peered closely at the rug directly below the corner leg. “Fine. Now over here.”

He had the patrolman repeat the procedure at each of the other corners of the desk. His examination at the rear corner beside the side wall took a little longer.

Finally he nodded to the patrolman and rose.

“Well?” There was no expectation of surprise in the Inspector’s voice.

Ellery glanced over at Ennis and Importuna. His father replied with the slightest nod. Ellery promptly returned to his original point of survey. “If you’ll examine the rug here,” he said, “you’ll see a circular depression in it, of the same diameter as the end of one of these desk legs, but on a spot where no desk leg stands. On the other hand, if you raise the nearest corner of the desk and examine the rug where a leg is standing, you find a curious thing: the depression there is not nearly as deep as the one where no leg stands.

“Over here”-and Ellery proceeded to his second point of examination, behind the desk and almost at the base of the rear wall-”exactly the same phenomenon: a very deep depression where no desk leg now stands but where obviously one did stand for a long time. And where a corresponding leg actually does stand, there’s a much shallower depression.

“Go around to the front of the desk, a short way from the side wall, and partway under the desk you’ll see another deep depression, whereas the rug under the nearest leg to it shows the shallower depression, too.

“And if you examine the rug under the rear leg nearest the side wall, you discover the most interesting phenomenon of all: not a shallow depression, as where the other three legs now stand, but one even deeper than the other deep impressions! As if, in fact, that leg had been used as a pivot.

“The only possible conclusion,” Ellery said, “is that the desk was moved-shifted from where it usually stood to where it stands now. And, judging from the shallowness of the depressions under the legs in their present position, it was shifted very recently.”

“So?” the Inspector said in the same unmoved way.

“So let’s use the deep depressions as guides-Officer, would you mind grabbing hold of the end of the desk here?-and, pivoting the desk on that rear leg at the side wall, let’s set it down exactly on the deep depressions-no, a bit more, Officer; that’s it-and we’ve got the desk back to where it customarily stands… catercornered, as you see, with the swivel chair virtually boxed in in what’s now a triangular space behind the desk. Leaving hardly enough room at either end for anyone to get behind it. In fact, it must have been a tight squeeze for Mr. Importunato, with his bulk, when he wanted to sit down there. Isn’t that so, Mr. Ennis?”

Peter Ennis’s embarrassment was embarrassing. “I really don’t know what to say, Mr. Queen. Of course this is the way the desk’s always stood. I can’t imagine why I didn’t notice it had been shifted about from the catercornered position. Unless it was because of the shock… “

“That may well be it,” Ellery said pleasantly. “And you, Mr. Importuna? Apparently the shift has escaped you, too.”

“Mr. Importuna rarely comes down here-” Ennis began quickly.

“I can talk for myself, Peter,” Nino Importuna said, and the younger man flushed again. “I did notice the desk had been moved, Mr. Queen. The moment I walked in here. But I thought the police had moved it during their first investigation.” The eyes were illegible. “Does it make a difference? Do you see a meaning in it?”

“Every difference makes a difference,” Ellery said. “And yes, I see a meaning in it, Mr. Importuna. Like the button and the shoeprint-”

“Button? Shoeprint?” The multimillionaire stared. “Which button? Whose shoeprint? No one has told me-”

The Inspector enlightened him with a remarkable lack of reticence. The old man’s eyes were equally difficult to read.

“The button and the shoeprint were plants to incriminate your brother Marco, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery explained. “The shifting of Julio’s desk appears to have had a similar motivation. Marco is left-handed. From the position of the desk when Julio’s body was found-parallel to the rear wall-and judging from which side of Julio’s head received the blow, could the blow have been struck by a left-handed man? Yes, it could. So again we have an indication of Marco’s guilt. Or at least no incompatibility with the concept.

“But now we know that the placement of the desk was also a plant. Because what happens when the desk is returned to its usual position, to the catercornered position in which it actually stood when the blow was struck? In this position it would have been impossible for a left-handed blow to have been delivered to the side of Julio’s head on which we find the killing wound, as the merest consideration shows. There simply isn’t enough room to swing the poker and hit that side of the head. The killer must have realized this and, in order to make the supposition of a left-handed blow possible, he had to shift the desk.

“So now,” Ellery said, “not only is the button suspect, not only is the shoeprint suspect, but the left-handedness is suspect, too. In short, all the evidence against Marco is suspect. Which will come as a great relief to Marco, I’m sure, but leaves us without a lead.”

He looked at his father. “You knew about the desk, too.”

Inspector Queen nodded. “That’s why I was anxious to get you in on this, Ellery. This kind of extra-smart frame is up your alley, not ours.”

“I think,” Nino Importuna rasped, “I do not understand.”

“Somebody not only had it in for your brother Julio, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery said, “but apparently he’s out to do your brother Marco dirt as well. Or at least he didn’t shrink from setting Marco up for the rap, which hardly classifies him as a friend. Who hated Julio? And possibly Marco as well? Enough to murder the one and frame the other for it?”

“I already told Inspector Queen and the other police officials who’ve been here today, Mr. Queen, about Julio in that respect. I can’t even imagine it in Julio’s case. He was like a fat and frisky dog, a Saint Bernard puppy bumping into things in his play, knocking people over with his affection. He had no meanness, no wish to hurt anyone. Full of fun and jokes and good nature. Generous with money, always helping people. A pious man-”

“You’re describing a saint, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery murmured. “But his portrait in this apartment suggests that the saint did have a few weaknesses. Gambling, for one.”

“If you’re supposing that he was in financial difficulties with, say, the Mafia, or anyone in the world of violence, Mr. Queen, that would be very amusing. I assure you he was not. And if Julio had been, Marco and I would have bailed him out a hundred times over.” The soft lips were actually smiling.

“Women, for another,” Ellery said.

“Oh, yes, women,” Nino Importuna said with a shrug. “Julio had many women. By the time he was finished with them, they were richer and happier.”

“Women sometimes have husbands, Mr. Importuna. Jealous ones.”

“Julio didn’t play around with married women,” the multimillionaire said sharply. “This has always been strictly forbidden in our family. The sanctity of the marriage vows was lashed into us from childhood. Julio would have been as likely to rape a nun as bed another man’s wife.”

“What about your business empire, Mr. Importuna? You three could hardly have risen to where you are without having stepped on a great many toes-without, in fact, having ruined some lives. Was Julio a saint in your business affairs, too?”

The lips lifted again. “You don’t hesitate to speak your mind, Mr. Queen, do you?”

“Not when murder is involved.”

The multimillionaire nodded. “A dedicated man, I see. No, Mr. Queen, Julio didn’t care for big business. As he often remarked, he would have been happier as a venditore di generi alimentari, selling pasta and tomatoes and cutting cheese all day. I don’t deny what you say. To make great sums of money in the international marketplace one must be-how do you say?-inumano… spietato… without feeling. Marco and I, mostly I, have been spietato when it was necessary. I never asked Julio to join us in such things, and he would have said no if I asked. I kept him clean for the sake of his peace of mind-for the sake of his soul, he’d say, laughing. As I said, a pious, a good, man. Everyone, everyone loved him.”

“Not everyone, I’m afraid,” Ellery said. “We know of at least one dissenter. And Marco, Mr. Importuna? Does everyone love Marco, too?”

The massive head shook, whether negatively or in irritation at the question Ellery could not decide. He said something softly and rapidly in Italian that Ellery could not catch. Observing Importuna’s extraordinary eyes, he thought that perhaps it was just as well.

“I think,” Inspector Queen remarked suddenly, “we’ll mosey on over across the hall, Mr. Importuna, and have ourselves an overdue session with your brother Marco.”

If his surroundings bespoke the man, Ellery ruminated en route, Marco Importunato was the mad sophisticate of the three brothers. His apartment was as unlike Julio’s as the era of Andy Warhol differed from Michelangelo’s Florence. Every ornamental sign of the late Victorian had been removed, rebuilt, or concealed. They passed through stark white cubical rooms, like stripped hospital wards, except for the floors, which met the feet with assaults of raw and clashing colors. The occasional expected artifact of the unexpected smote the eye-a writhing piece of furniture in an improbable material; an isolated assembly of articulated junkyard sculpture; or, as on one of the walls, a gigantic Texaco pump leaning out into the room like the Tower of Pisa, about to topple onto the pop art-lover’s head. In one small room Ellery paused to admire a triumph of modernity over camp, a faithful reproduction of Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black-faithful, that is, except that the old lady’s hand grasped a rather heroic banana. Another room was apparently given over to psychedelic performances of light; Ellery saw equipment-floods, spots, wheels, pinpoint lights that could be played on an organlike instrument-that must have required enough wiring for 10,000 watts. It struck him that Marco was the type of Playboy New Yorker who rushes out to buy a Maserati Ghibli because he is impressed with its capability to accelerate from zero to 100 mph in 19.8 seconds and heads straight for the West Side highway during the evening rush hour to try it out.

They found the owner of all these contemporary riches in an orthodox combined gymnasium and game room adjoining his private quarters. He was dressed in puce gym tights and he was sitting cross-legged on a trampoline clutching a highball glass of what looked and smelled like straight sour-mash whisky. The ebony-and-lucite bar nearby, evidently dragged in from elsewhere, showed ring traces of numerous antecedent libations.

“Nino.” He crawled off the trampoline balancing the glass. “Thank God. Do you know I’ve been trying and trying to reach you? I’ve called Virginia I don’t know how many times. Where have you been? My God, Nino, if ever I needed you it’s been today. Most awful day of my life.” Marco Importunato stumbled into his brother’s arms, slopping whisky over both of them.

He began quite frankly to sob.

“Peter,” Importuna said. As usual, there was nothing to be told from his tone, not annoyance or embarrassment or distaste, not even concern.

Ennis hurried forward. Between them they hauled Marco backward to a chair, Importuna taking the glass from him. Ennis grabbed a bar towel and began to dab at Importuna’s jacket.

“Never mind,” the multimillionaire said. “He’s drunk, as you can see, Inspector Queen. I think you’d better question him another time.”

“No, sir, I’ll question him now, if you don’t mind,” the Inspector said. He stooped over the weeping man. “Mr. Importunato, do you remember me from this afternoon?”

Importunato grunted.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Sure I know who you are,” Marco said with peevish clarity. “What kind of a question is that? Anyway? You’re a cop. Inspector somebody.”

“Queen. This is Ellery Queen, my son. I’m sorry we’ve had to keep you waiting all day-”

“Damn right. Right, Nino? That’s why I’m sloshed. Waiting for their damn questions and nothing to think about but poor old Julio. That poor slob. Never hurt a fly. Gimme my glass back.”

His brother said, “No more, Marco.”

Marco staggered upright and lunged for it. Importuna stepped in his way. The younger man clung to him, weeping again.

“What do you expect to get out of him in this condition?” Importuna said to the Inspector.

The Inspector said, “You never know. And I can’t wait for him to sober up.”

“But what can he know about Julio’s death?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Importuna. That’s what I have to find out.”

Ellery was taking the opportunity to evaluate the man in the gym tights. Where Nino was squat and powerful, and Julio had been large and soft, the middle brother was slight, weak boned, almost phthisical. His olive skin had a bleached look, as if it had been too long deprived of sun. There were deep anxiety lines around his mouth and bloodshot eyes.

Marco Importunato was evidently a neurotic, with a dependency on his eldest brother that must reach into many areas of his existence. Observing the sallow, sunken face lacerated with grief and fear, yet relieved at his brother’s proximity, Ellery caught himself thinking of a terrified child wrapping his legs about his father. Instant analysis it might be, and consequently suspect, but it was after all the universality of such relationships that made them trite. The next moment he was not so sure. He glanced from clutcher to clutched and thought he detected on the older, heavier face the faintest expression of affectionate contempt. And that would follow, too. Nino Importuna did not seem to him the sort of man who could respect a weakness, especially in one of his own blood. It struck too close to home.

Importuna signaled Ennis, and the secretary sprang forward again to help deposit Marco in the chair. The squat man went behind the bar, poured out most of the contents of the highball glass, and brought his brother the little that remained. Marco took a shaky swallow. Then he nodded at something Importuna said to him in an undertone.

“He can talk now,” the multimillionaire said, and he took the glass away.

“Mr. Importunato,” Inspector Queen said immediately, “do you recall early today being shown a gold button with an anchor-and-rope design and the monogram MI on it?”

Marco muttered something about button, button?

“Assistant Chief Inspector Mackey of Manhattan North showed it to you, Mr. Importunato, and you identified it at that time as your property. Don’t you remember that?”

“Oh. Sure. Sure thing. Came off a yachting jacket of mine. ‘Swhat I told him, all right. Nice old bird. Terrible case of bad breath, though. His best friend ought to tell him.”

“Marco,” the elder brother said.

“Si. Si bene, Nino.”

“Do you know where your button was found?”

Marco’s head wobbled.

“It was found on the floor of your brother Julio’s library.”

“You don’t say.”

“Can you explain how it got there, Mr. Importunato? And when?”

Marco Importunato blinked through the fog.

Inspector Queen went to the trampoline, pulled it over near the chair, and sat down. He tapped the half-naked man’s hairy knee in a friendly way. “I’m going to break one of the rules of police interrogation, Marco--you don’t mind if I call you Marco?-and tell you just what else we’ve found out about that gold button of yours. Are you paying attention, Marco?”

“Si. I mean yes.”

“At first we thought that you were the man who’d had the battle with Julio, and that in the scrap he yanked the button off your jacket.”

“Uhn-uhn,” Marco said with an almost vigorous shake of his head.

“But on closer examination we saw that the button hadn’t been pulled off your jacket, it was snipped off, most likely by a scissors. So we decided somebody’d tried to frame you for the murder of your brother. Do you understand me, Marco?”

“Sure I understand you,” Marco replied with dignity “And you know what I say to you? Ri… die… u… lous!”

“What do you mean?”

“I can tell you who cut that button off my coat.”

“You can? Who?”

“Me.”

“You?”

“Cut it off, snip-snip, and that’s it. With my bathroom scissors. Was hanging loose and I didn’t want to lose it. Gold, after all. The Importunatos were ever a thrifty clan. Not that the famiglia had a choice. Can’t be a swinger without something to swing with, hey, Nino?” Marco leered at his brother.

Importuna did not smile back.

“When did this happen, Mr. Importunato?” Ellery asked. “When did you cut the button off your jacket?”

“I don’t know. What’s today? Yesterday. That’s it. Didn’t get a chance to tell Tebaldo to sew it back on.”

“Tebaldo?”

“His valet,” Importuna said.

“What did you do with the button, Mr. Importunato?”

“What did I do with it?” the man in the tights said, offended. “I put it in my pocket, that’s what I did with it. Say, who are you again?”

“My name is Queen. The pocket of what? Your yachting jacket?”

“Aye, aye, sir. Si, capitano mio.”

“Dad, is the jacket downtown? I assume the tech men took it.”

“It’s at the lab.”

“I should have thought to examine it while we were down there. Mr. Importuna, where’s a phone I can use?”

“There’s an extension in my brother’s bedroom.”

“May I, Mr. Importunato?”

“Call Tokyo. Call anyplace.” Marco waved amiably.

Ellery was back in a few minutes. He was pulling his nose as if it were taffy. “This one’s simply overflowing with surprises, dad. I’ve just been informed that an examination of the left pocket-the jacket has patch pockets-shows some of the stitching’s crept out, so there’s a gap, not very noticeable, at the base of the pocket. It’s wide enough, I’m told, for the button to have slipped through.”

The Queens eyed each other.

“That stupido Tebaldo,” Marco said, shaking his head. “I shoulda fired him the day I hired him. Hey, did you hear that? I’m a poet and I don’t know it.”

“Tell me something, Marco,” Inspector Queen said. “You know that shoe of yours we borrowed today? The one with the crepe sole?”

“Keep it,” Marco said grandly. “You can have the other one, too. I’ve got more shoes than Macy’s and Gimbel’s put together.”

“Do you know there’s a deep gash almost half the length of the sole?”

“What d’ye mean do I know? Course I know! Happened-when was it? Well, it isn’t important. Few days ago.”

“Oh?” The Inspector looked puzzled. “Happened how?”

“I was taking a special girl friend o’ mine sailing in Larchmont-keep one of my boats there. She was coming in from upstate and I was at Grand Central to meet her. What do I do but step on a gobboon of chewing gum some slob ‘d spit on the floor. Made me madder ‘n hell. So I went downstairs to the men’s room and I took the shoe off and borrowed a knife from the attendant, and while I was digging the gum out from the ripples the blade slipped and, zippo!-sweetest little gash you ever did see. Practically surgery. Oh, you did see it. That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before about snipping the button off your jacket and slicing into the sole of your shoe?” the Inspector growled.

“You didn’t ask me,” Marco said, in a huff again. “Nobody asked me. Nino, gimme another drink. I’m getting good and teed off answering all these stupid questions.”

“No,” his brother said.

Something in his voice made Marco blink cautiously. He decided to laugh. “Y’know Nino won’t touch the hard stuff? A little vino once in a while and that’s it with him. That’s my brother. Nobody ‘11 ever catch him crocked. Too smart. Hey, Nino?”

“I think,” Importuna said to the Inspector, “my brother’s answered enough questions.”

“I’m almost through, Mr. Importuna.”

“I don’t want to seem uncooperative, but if you’re going to keep this up, I’ll have to demand that one of our attorneys be present. I should have insisted on it from the start. You can see Marco’s condition, Inspector. This has been a very bad day for us all-”

“What about my condition?” Marco cried. “What’s wrong with my condition?” He tottered to his feet and began to wave his bony fists. “Next thing they’ll be calling me a drunk. Why, I’ll take any old test they wanna throw at me… “

Importuna nodded curtly, and Peter Ennis jumped forward once more to help him with the now bellicose man. While they were cajoling him and easing him back to the chair, the Queens took the opportunity to commune out of earshot.

“With Marco himself snipping that button off,” Inspector Queen muttered, “and slicing into his shoe accidentally, there goes the frame-up theory, Ellery. The button simply fell out of that hole in his pocket, and the shoeprint in the cigar ash showing the cut is a legitimate clue. With these admissions of his, they both place Marco in that library of Julio’s for real.”

“With every cock-eyed thing that’s happened so far, is it all right with you if I wonder?” Ellery had transferred his yanking and hauling from nose to lower lip. “Look, dad, there seem to be ifs all over this case. Let’s try to clear some of them up. Do you want to tackle Marco, or shall I?”

“I’d better do it. Importuna’s set to throw his weight around. It’s harder for him to give me the heave… Feeling a little feisty, Mr. Importunato? I don’t think-the way things look for you right now-you can afford it.”

Marco twitched. The sallow skin was beginning to show a greenish undertinge.

“Take it easy, Marco,” his brother said. “Just what do you mean, Inspector Queen?”

“It’s very simple. We know now that Marco was not framed; he’s knocked that theory out by his admissions here. But we did find his button and shoeprint in Julio’s library. In my book that places your brother Marco on the scene of the crime legitimately. So before the district attorney gets into the act, if Marco has an explanation I’d strongly advise him to give it.”

“He does not have to tell you anything,” the multimillionaire said harshly. “In fact, I’m growing very tired of this-”

“Nino.” Marco Importunato raised his head from his trembling hands. “I think I’d better.”

“I’d rather you kept quiet. At least until I can get Emerson Lundy up here.”

“Why should I yell for a lawyer, Nino?” Of a sudden he was hysterically sober. “As if I were guilty? I have nothing on my conscience! If these people think I could kill Julio… My God, Julio was jamiglia… blood brother. It’s true, Inspector Queen, that I was in Julio’s library last night. And we did have a quarrel. But-”

“What time was this, Mr. Importunato?” the Inspector asked casually, as if Marco had said something trivial.

“I don’t know exactly. It was before 9 o’clock, because I do know it wasn’t quite 9 when I left him.” The man’s blood-streaked eyes sought the Inspector’s. “Left him,” he said. “Alive and well.”

“What about the condition of the room? The broken furniture, the knocked-over lamps-”

“I don’t know a thing about that. When I walked out of Julio’s library everything was in place. We didn’t have a fist fight, for the love of Christ! It was just an argument, Inspector. Some hot talk between brothers. Julio and I argued a lot. Ask Nino. Ask anybody.”

“Marco, I want you to keep your mouth shut,” his brother said. “I order you! Do you hear me?”

“No,” Marco said hoarsely. “They think I killed Julio. I’ve got to convince them I didn’t. Ask me more questions, Inspector! Go ahead, ask me.”

“About what was this particular argument last night?”

“Business. We’ve always had a family rule that all important investment decisions of Importuna Industries have to have the unanimous agreement of Nino, Julio, and myself. If one of us says no, it’s no deal. We don’t usually have trouble agreeing. But recently Nino proposed that we set up a new corporation and buy 19,000,000 acres of Canadian Arctic land-our top geologist thinks there’s a good chance that particular area is one big oil deposit-no, Nino, I’m not going to shut up!-a bigger field than Texas and Oklahoma. And we could buy it for $1.50 an acre, so the investment isn’t very big. After checking the reports I agreed with Nino it was a good gamble. But Julio wouldn’t go along. So we didn’t have the necessary three-man agreement and we had to drop the deal. Nino was put out about it, and so was I. But-murder?” His head kept wobbling like an infant’s or a very old man’s. Whether it was a conscious expression of negation or simply a weakness of the neck muscles brought on by the sour-mash whiskey he had consumed they could not tell.

“All right,” Inspector Queen said. “So you dropped into Julio’s apartment last night and you and Julio had a fight about his turndown of the deal?”

“Not a fight! An argument. There’s a difference, you know!”

“I’m sorry, an argument. Go ahead, Mr. Importunato.”

“I thought maybe he’s in a different mood tonight, maybe I can change his mind. But no, he was still dead set against it-he’d got it into his head that either some-body’d bribed our geologist to con us out of a bundle or that, even if oil was found, it would be an economic disaster trying to handle a production and pipeline setup across thousands of miles of frozen wasteland. Anyway, one word led to another, and we wound up yelling Italian curses at each other.” Marco raised his tear-swollen face. “But Julio could never stay mad very long. All of a sudden he said, ‘Look, fratello, what are we arguing for? The hell with it, so we’ll blow 28, 29 million bucks. What’s money?’ and he laughed, so I laughed, and we shook hands across the desk, and I said good night and walked out. And that was it, Inspector Queen. I swear.”

He was sweating heavily now.

“You mean Julio gave his consent to the deal, Marco?” Nino Importuna demanded. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t get the chance.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Importuna,” the Inspector said. “You didn’t come to blows, Mr. Importunato? Throw things? Break anything?”

“Julio and me? Never!”

“Mr. Importunato,” Ellery said; his father gave him a look and stepped back at once. “Did either you or your brother accidentally knock his ashtray off the desk?”

At this assault from another quarter Marco’s head snapped about. He immediately drew it in, turtle-fashion. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

“When you left him, where exactly was Julio? I mean where in the library.”

“I left him sitting behind his desk.”

“And the desk was in its usual position? Catercornered?”

“That’s right.”

“While you were in the room, did either you or your brother move the desk?”

“Move it? Why should we move it? I don’t think I even put my hand on it. And Julio never once got up from behind it.”

“And you left the library no later than 9 o’clock, you said. You seemed very sure of the time, Mr. Importunato. How come?”

Marco began to shout. “Holy Mother, don’t you people take a man’s word for anything? A chick was meeting me at my apartment at 9:15 to go swinging. I checked my watch as I was leaving Julio. I saw it was a couple minutes to 9. That gave me just time enough to change my clothes. Satisfied?” He thrust his lower lip forward.

“Change which clothes? What were you wearing when you visited Julio last night?”

The lips clamped down. His hands were gripping the arms of the chair and his knuckles were yellow-white.

“Your yachting jacket, Mr. Importunato?” Ellery said. “The crepe-soled shoes?”

“I’m not answering any more questions. You’re through here, Mister whoever-the-hell-you-are. Get out of my apartment!”

“Oh?” Ellery said. “Why the sudden clam-up?”

“Because! I can see you’ve made up your minds I’m guilty. I ought to’ve taken Nino’s advice and not opened my yap. Anything else you want to find out, you can goddam well talk to my lawyer!”

Marco Importunato got to his feet and staggered over to the bar. His brother stepped in his way, and he brushed the older man violently aside, seized the whisky bottle, threw his head back, and began to glug. Importuna and Ennis closed in on him.

Under cover of the ensuing scuffle the Inspector, sotto, said, “What do you think, Ellery? The button could have fallen out of his pocket without his knowing. And the ashtray could have been shoved off the desk and Marco’s foot stepped on the ashes.”

“But the moving of the desk, dad. With Marco the killer it makes no sense. Suppose he’s lying and he did move it. Why? Well, its effect is to make the murder appear as if it could have been committed by a left-handed man. And Marco’s left-handed. So was he trying to implicate himself?” Ellery shook his head. “I feel like a yoyo. At the moment I’m inclined to believe him. Somebody else moved that desk. Unless… “

He stopped.

“Unless what, son?”

“I see,” Ellery said. “That is, I think I see… It’s certainly a possibility.”

“What is?”

“Dad, let’s go back to Julio’s library. And call for a man to meet us there on the double with a dusting kit.”

Nino Importuna and Peter Ennis rejoined the Queens in the dead man’s library not long after. They had remained behind in Marco’s apartment to quiet him. The Inspector was resting in an easy chair; he looked tired. Ellery stood at the desk.

“We finally got him into bed.” Ennis was evidently ruffled; he was brushing his clothes with unnecessarily powerful strokes. “I sincerely hope he stays there! Marco’s a bit of a handful when he’s loaded.”

“Tebaldo will take care of him,” the multimillionaire said brusquely. “Mr. Queen, is there an end to this day? I’m beginning to feel persecuted. What is it now?”

“This business of the desk, Mr. Importuna.” Ellery was staring at it; it was as they had left it, in the catercornered position. “With the desk catercornered, and on the assumption that Julio was sitting up in the swivel chair behind it facing his assailant, it wouldn’t have been possible for whoever killed him, as I pointed out earlier, to have delivered a left-hand blow to the side of Julio’s head where the wound is. Unless the killer struck a backhand blow, which is theoretically possible, I suppose, but I strongly question whether anyone outside a Mr. America contest could have used that poker backhandedly with sufficient force and certainly with such deadly aim as to have left that very deep and fatal wound--especially in view of the fact that the attack consisted of a single blow. No, we have to conclude that if Marco, say, had been at the striking end of the poker the wound would have been found on the opposite side of Julio’s head from where it actually landed. Unless”-and Ellery swung about suddenly-”unless our assumption is wrong and Julio was not facing his assailant at the instant of impact.’’’’

“I don’t see-” Importuna began.

“Hold it!” the Inspector yawped. “How exactly do you figure that, son?”

“Suppose Julio-while facing the other man in the natural vis-a-vis position-anticipated the blow. A split second before the poker came down, suppose he tried to dodge and succeeded only in swiveling his chair 180°. So that when the blow landed he was turned completely about, facing the corner, with the back of his head presented to the descending poker, instead of the front, as we’ve been assuming. Then the poker would have struck the opposite side of his head!” Ellery was striding irritably about. “Where the devil is that fingerprint man?”

“I’ll be damned,” his father breathed; and he repeated it. Then he shook his head. “And none of us saw it! But Ellery, why a fingerprint man?”

“To test a theory that grows out of the point I just made.

As the chair swiveled around with Julio trying to escape the poker, isn’t it likely that he’d have thrown his arms forward instinctively to keep from toppling from the chair? And, if that happened, I don’t see how Julio’s hands could have avoided making contact with those walls that meet in the corner.” Ellery squeezed behind the desk. “Just about here, I’d estimate-Ah, here he is! Over here, please-Maglie, isn’t it?”

“But we dusted everything, Mr. Queen.” The tech man was tieless, unshaven, and he was wearing a badly creased and grimy white shirt. His long face said he had been summoned from before his TV set and a bottle of beer. “What’s the problem, Inspector Queen?”

The old man waved a dragging hand. “In that corner, Maglie. On the walls. Ellery ‘11 show you.”

And several minutes later they were staring at two large, smudged palm prints, shoulder high to a seated man, each print about a foot from where the two walls met, and each tilted at the finger ends toward the other.

Nobody said a word until the fingerprint man packed up and left.

“Good as a photo,” the Inspector said; he had perked up considerably, and he was trying, not altogether successfully, to keep a chortle out of his voice. “That’s what happened, all right! With Julio’s back to the killer, the head wound is just where it would be if the strike had come from the killer’s left side. No ifs about it, Julio was killed by a left-handed man-not just possibly anymore, but positively. That, Mr. Importuna, I’m sorry to say, along with the gold button and the shoeprint, points to your brother Marco again, only this time a lot stronger than before.”

“Wait, wait,” Nino Importuna said thickly. “You don’t answer important questions. Why wasn’t Julio left that way-I mean the way he died, facing the corner? Why was his body turned around so that his face fell forward on the desk?”

“If you weren’t so upset, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery said, “you’d be able to answer that yourself. We’re hypothesizing now that, by the weight of the evidence, your brother Marco was Julio’s murderer. Marco’s just struck the lethal blow and he’s looking down at Julio’s unexpectedly reversed head, crushed in on the side that unmistakably betrays a left-hand blow. And he, Marco, is left-handed. Murderers don’t want to be caught, Mr. Importuno, at least not consciously. So Marco turns Julio’s body around to face him. In the face-to-face position, as indeed we’ve been assuming until now, a left-hand blow appears impossible. Isn’t that reason enough for Marco not to have left Julio to be found in the about-face position?”

“Yes, but then why would Marco move the desk?” Importuna argued. “If he had left it catercornered, but turned Julio around to the face-to-face position so that the blow would seem to have come from the opposite side, you’d have had to say: The killer was right-handed, not left-handed. If Marco killed Julio, he had every reason not to move the desk. So again I ask: Why did he move it and defeat his own purpose, Mr. Queen? You can’t have it both ways!”

“You know, Ellery,” the Inspector said, looking tired again, “he has a point there.”

Ellery was back at his nose-pulling exercise, and he was muttering, something he rarely did. “Yes… that’s so, isn’t it? If Marco was clear-headed enough to turn the body, he should have been clear-headed enough not to shift the desk. This is the queerest case… We’d better talk to Marco again. Maybe he can clear the point up.”

But they were not to talk to Marco Importunato again on that night, or indeed on any night short of the resurrection. They found him in the tall-ceilinged gymnasium hanging halfway down the climbing rope. He had fashioned a loop in the thick hemp, thrust his head into it, evidently shinnied with it to the ceiling, and then launched himself head first toward the floor. At the end of the dive the contention of gravity with the rope claimed his neck.

That sometime imperfect gentleman’s gentleman, Tebaldo, was stretched out on the trampoline like a martyr of the Inquisition, snoring with vigor and nuzzling a three-quarter-empty bottle of Italian barley brandy. Much later, on being resuscitated and approximately sobered, Tebaldo stated that his cugino Marco-he said he was a fifth cousin Marco had brought over from the old country at great expense in the spirit of famiglia, a virtue rarely to be found, alas, in this otherwise great America-had suddenly crawled forth from the bed and challenged him, Tebaldo, to a drinking competition, during which Tebaldo had attempted manfully to keep up, and about the outcome of which he, Tebaldo, remembered nothing but Cousin Marco’s inflamed eyes, which he insisted-crossing himself several times-had resembled nothing so much as two of the fires of hell.

“Son, son,” Inspector Queen was saying as they watched Marco’s body being taken down-the lab men were confiscating most of the climbing rope, including the noose, foi later examination-”anybody can get fouled up in a case like this. Don’t feel so bad. I’m as responsible as you are when you get down to it. I couldn’t believe all that evidence pointing straight to Marco, either. Yet it was pretty much open and shut from the start. Everything says it was Marco-the button dropped out of his pocket, the shoeprint in the ashes, that left-handed business, and now he commits suicide. Hanging himself is as good as a signed confession… What’s the matter, Ellery? Why the long puss again? You still aren’t satisfied?”

“Since you’re putting the direct question, I’ll have to answer you in kind,” Ellery said. “No.”

“No? Why not? What’s eating you now?”

“A number of things. For one, why Marco didn’t leave the desk catercornered. For another, the fact that his committing suicide doesn’t necessarily add up to a confession of murder, tempting as it is to think it does. Hanging himself might well have been the result of pouring that appalling quantity of alcohol into his system-and we saw how jittery and upset he was to start with-so much, in fact, that he may have gone temporarily psycho. In which condition a rope around his neck could seem the logical answer to his grief and guilt feelings about having quarreled with Julio. Not to mention-if he was innocent-panic over being framed.

“Also,” Ellery went on, “lest we forget, dad, cui bono? as a canny old gent named Cicero put it some time ago. For whose benefit? Who profits by the Importunato brothers’ deaths?”

“You know what I think?” the Inspector exploded. “I think you’re looking for any excuse not to get back to that book of yours! All right, we’ll go ask Importuna.”

“Let me do the talking, dad.”

The old man shrugged.

He had sent Importuna and Ennis into Marco’s bedroom while the technicians worked. They found the secretary drooping in a chair, but Importuna was standing lik statuary at the foot of his brother’s bed, a yard away from it; Ellery received the ludicrous impression that he might be perched on one leg, like a stork or a Far East religious fanatic. Otherwise, if the multimillionaire felt anything at the violent loss of his second brother in 24 hours, Ellery was unable to detect a sign of it. Those heavy features were modeled, beyond alteration, in bronze.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Importuna?” Ellery asked. Distant as the man was, it was hard not to feel compassion for him. “We’re not insensitive to what this must mean to you.”

But Nino Importunato said, not stirring a muscle, “What do you want?” with great harshness. The espresso-colored eyes, the bitter eyes of the enemy, turned full on Ellery. Their expression, and his tone of voice, testified that something had sprung up between them, something frigid and deadly that bridged the gap and now held them fast to each other. Perhaps, Ellery thought, it’s been there all the time. Perhaps he recognized me as the adversary from the beginning.

“Who inherits your brother Julio’s estate, Mr. Importuna? And Marco’s? Since neither of them was married.”

“No one.”

“No one?”

“The conglomerate.”

“Of which you’re now sole owner?”

“Of course. I’m the last of the brothers. The last of our entire family.”

“I thought Tebaldo is a fifth cousin.”

“An old joke of Marco’s that by now Tebaldo half believes. On a visit to Italy Marco got Tebaldo’s sister pregnant. That was years ago. Marco hired Tebaldo as his valet to shut him up, at the same time that he made a settlement with the girl. The drunken fool isn’t of our blood. So if you’re asking who gains by the deaths of Julio and Marco, Mr. Queen,” Nino Importuna said, “the answer is that I do. No one else.”

Their eyes locked.

“Dad,” Ellery said, without looking at the Inspector, “at what time last night did you say Dr. Prouty thought Julio had died?”

“Around 10 o’clock, give or take a half hour. From the way he talked, I don’t think the M. E. thinks he’ll be able to narrow it down any finer.”

“Mr. Importuna,” Ellery asked politely, “would you tell us-if you don’t mind waiving your right to be silent, of course-just where you were last night between 9:30 and 10:30?”

The evenness of his voice in contrast to Importuna’s harshness gave Ellery an advantage that the multimillionaire was quick to sense. When he spoke again, it was in an equally quiet tone.

“Peter.”

Ennis had long since climbed to his feet, alerted by the sounds of battle under the exchange.

“Telephone upstairs and ask Mrs. Importuna to join us here right away. In view of the trend of the questioning, gentlemen, you won’t mind if I call my wife in on this.” He might have been referring to a trivial tidbit of gossip overheard at one of his clubs.

In no more than three minutes a chalky Tebaldo announced her arrival and rather waveringly vanished.

Virginia Whyte Importuna went directly to her husband and took her place by his side. Ellery noticed with sharp interest that she did not grope for his hand, or brush against him, or allow any part of her body to come in contact with his. She simply stood near, erect and attentive, like a soldier summoned into the commanding officer’s presence, an invisible gulf between them. Apparently she did not want for herself, or feel the need to give him, a physical reassurance. Or was it something else?

She was a natural very-light-cafe-au-lait blond with intelligent violet-blue eyes of great size, high northern European cheekbones, and a little straight nose passionately flared. Really exquisite, Ellery thought. Her beauty had an ethereal patina, almost a poetry, but he was sure that it covered a rustproof undercoating resistant to assault. What other kind of woman could cope with a man like Nino Importuna?

She wore a high-fashion dress of deceiving simplicity that set off her long legs and hourglass figure. She stood taller than her husband, even though he wore built-up shoes and she was in low heels, no doubt at his direction. Ellery judged her to be in her mid-20s. She could have passed for Importuna’s granddaughter.

“Virginia, this is Inspector Queen of police headquarters, and this is Inspector Queen’s son, Ellery Queen. Mr. Queen is an amateur criminologist who’s interested himself in our troubles. Oh, by the way, my dear, there’s been no opportunity to notify you. Marco just committed suicide.”

“Marco…?” Faintly. But that was all she said. She bounced back from her husband’s savage announcement with the speed of a rebound. Her only concession to shock was to sink into the nearest so-called chair, in the new pneumatic mode, a billowing transparent bladderlike creation inflated with air.

Importuna seemed proud of her fortitude. He moved toward her with a fond, bitter look.

“And now it seems,” he went on, “Mr. Queen’s nose is sniffing in my direction. He just asked me, Virginia, where I was last night between 9:30 and 10:30. Will you tell him?”

Virginia Importuna said immediately, “My husband and I, with four guests, were at the opera.” Her very feminine voice was deadly in its control, a musical enigma. Ellery was enthralled. He had heard of Importuna’s devotion to his wife; he was beginning to understand why. She was the fitting lady to his lordship.

“In our season box, Mr. Queen,” Importuna said. “Parsifal,. This will shock you, no doubt, but I find Parsifal an interminable bore. Hard for an Italian peasant who enjoys Puccini and Rossini to sit through. But then Wagner has never been one of my enthusiasms, even ideologically, in spite of Mussolini’s love for the Germans. Although Virginia adores Wagner-don’t you, my dear?-naturally, being all woman. Nevertheless, I deserve a hero’s medal-I endured the entire performance. Didn’t I, my dear?”

“Yes, Nino.”

“So that at 10 o’clock, since that’s the hour you’re interested in, Mr. Queen, at 10 o’clock, give or take not a half hour but more like two hours, Mrs. Importuna and I were in the company of four other people. Constantly. None of us left the box except at intermissions, and then we left as a group. Isn’t that so, Virginia?”

“Yes, Nino.”

“You’ll want to know their names, of course. Senator and Mrs. Henry L. Factor-that’s United States Senator Factor, Mr. Queen. Oh, and Bishop Tumelty of the New York diocese and Rabbi Winkleman of the Park Avenue Reformed Temple. I think the rabbi enjoyed the Parsifal as much as the bishop! Didn’t you think so, too, my dear? Your father can, and I’m sure will, Mr. Queen, check up on our alibi with the senator and the two clergymen. Have I answered your question?”

“You’ve answered my question,” Ellery said.

“Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”

“A great many things, Mr. Importuna, but I have the feeling I’d be wasting your time and mine.”

The squat man shrugged. “You, Inspector Queen?”

“No, sir.”

But Importuna persisted in a brittle, courteous way. “Perhaps you have a few questions for my wife, Inspector, now that she’s here.”

“No,” the old man said. “No more questions tonight.”

“Benone! Allora rivederla.” He clucked at his wife and Ennis as if they were small children. “Andiamo, andiamo! We still have work tonight, Peter, on that Midwest dairy combine. And I can’t keep Mr. E waiting upstairs forever.”

The Queens stood silently by as the Importunas swept archward followed at some distance with lowered eyes by Peter Ennis. The survivor of the brothers halted so unexpectedly that his wife passed entirely under the arch and out of their view, and Ennis almost ran him down.

“Oh, Mr. Queen, it occurs to me… “

“Yes?” Ellery said.

“By the way, may I call you by your Christian name?”

Ellery smiled. “You mean like, say, Peter?” He saw the neckline under Ennis’s dark blond hair redden, and he said, “No offense, Mr. Ennis. I was merely exemplifying a relationship.”

“Touche, Mr. Queen.” Importuna smiled back; his teeth were very large and disconcerting. “Are you available for profitable employment? As an executive, of course. In a confidential capacity. I can use a man of your talents and temperament.”

“Thanks for the compliment, Mr. Importuna, but no, thanks. I’m the self-employed type.”

“Ah. Well. Too bad. If you should ever change your mind, Mr. Queen, you know where I am.”

“I wonder,” Ellery said on the way home in the squad car.

“Wha’?” Inspector Queen was nodding.

“Importuna’s parting shot. About knowing where he is. I wonder if anyone, including his wife, knows where Nino Importuna is. Where he is or what he is. A tough man. Dangerous man! Talking about his wife, dad, did you notice something remarkable about Peter Ennis?”

“You hop around like hot fat,” the Inspector complained. “If we’re talking about Mrs. Importuna-quite a knockout, by the way-why should I notice anything about Ennis? He hardly glanced at her all the time she was there.”

“To borrow from the old master, that’s what’s remarkable, dad. I suppose Ennis could be gay, although I don’t think so, but if he’s a red-blooded man how could he be in the same room with that ravishing female and not keep looking at her, reacting to her in some way?”

“You figure it out,” the old man mumbled. “Far as I’m concerned the murder of Julio Importunato was solved when his brother Marco hanged himself. And, son.”

“Yes, dad?”

“Don’t tangle with Importuna. Take my advice, you’ll o* 1 come to grief. He carries too much clout for you… what? What did you say?”

“Mr. E,” Ellery muttered.

“Who?”

“Mr. E. Didn’t you hear Importuna? He mustn’t keep Mr. E waiting. I wonder who the devil Mr. E is… Dad?”

But the Inspector was asleep.