Double, Double

Tuesday, June 13

“But we can’t get a thing out of Chalanski or Dakin,” said Malvina Prentiss. “If they know anything of importance, which I doubt.”

“The only one besides you,” said Francis O’Bannon in his most precise Harvard accent, “who can give us the whole story is Winship, and it seems he won’t talk even to his lawyer.”

“Why did he do it, Ellery, and how did you crack it? That’s what the Record wants to know — before AP and UP and INS get onto you — and if you think you’re sneaking off on that train...”

It was the hour of doldrums at the Roadside Tavern, midafternoon of a greengold day, when the saloon seemed becalmed on an empty sea, Gus reading a racing form on the bridge and over everything the cool smell of suds. There was simply no wriggling out. Ellery had played back to Chalanski, in adequate periods, the epitasis of the Winship tragedy; the legal business was all attended to; he would not be needed again until the trial; nothing had remained, it seemed, but to take the first train south. Still, a feeling of incompletion had made him linger. Rima, of course. For one thing, Rima’s predicament appalled him. What would she do? Where would she go? How would she live? She had nothing. When this was over she would have no home, no husband, no income, no money — no friends. Ellery had applied himself to the problem with ferocity. Finally he remembered the Natural History Museum in Slocum, and Dr. Josiah Bull. And afterwards, when he had come back from Slocum, he could not even communicate with her. She had locked herself in at the Dodd house, refusing to see anyone, refusing to come to the phone. So he had sent a note over to Algonquin Avenue by Hosy Dowling, the elderly messenger boy of the telegraph office in the Bluefield Block, and that was that, and Ellery had negotiated his departure. Only... he still lingered. How could he leave Wrightsville without a goodbye? He had even indulged in a brief fantasy in which he revisited Ytaioa with her. The delay had been fatal. Rosalind Russell and her man Friday had caught him at the station, and now he was in their hot clutch having to ransom himself like Scheherazade to get back to his checked suitcase and the next through train, which was the 6:02.

“The thing that threw me most of all throughout,” Ellery began with a sigh, “was the dull question of motive. The more I beat my everloving brains out over what was happening, the more convinced I became that the crimes were not the work of a homicidal maniac. The homicidal maniac makes no attempt to conceal his crimes — usually he flaunts them — but in these deaths there was never any certainty that it was murder at all; every death, until I was shot at, might have been natural or accidental. And when it became positive that the deaths were following a preconceived sequence, I was sure a rational mind was directing events. Because the homicidal maniac doesn’t kill in a precise, undeviating pattern, either.”

Ellery swallowed some of his beer without zest. O’Bannon was writing furiously in his notebook.

“I went over every conceivable motivation. Hate. Revenge. Jealousy. Fear of dangerous knowledge. Elimination of obstacles to what-have-you. Self-protection. Protection of another, or others. To every motive I thought of there were strong objections. Except one — gain.”

“Gain?” frowned Malvina Prentiss. “But—”

“I know. But you couldn’t avoid that allover sheen of property, Miss Prentiss. There was money in everything, at least up to a certain point; either money, or the conspicuous absence of it. Gain seemed the reasonable theory.

“But when I broke it down gain didn’t make sense, either. MacCaby left a large fortune when he died and it went to Dodd. Carry Dodd. John Spencer Hart’s death left Dodd a clear field for the operation of the Wrightsville Dye Works. Carry Dodd again. As for Hart, he died not merely penniless, but bankrupt. Tom Anderson died possessed of five thousand dollars, given to him by Dodd, and this five thousand was appropriated by Nick Jacquard — through Anderson’s folly, incidentally — but Jacquard himself subsequently died and Anderson’s money was found by Dakin, refused by Rima, and made its way back to its original donor. Carry Dodd a third time. All right, there’s Dodd, who so far benefited from everything. But what happened to Dodd? He willed the bulk of his inherited estate to the Wrightsville General Hospital! Dead end. Holderfield? Died broke. Jonathan Waldo? His death benefited no one; his brother David owned the tailoring business and the house was in David’s name all the time. I had to reach the puzzling conclusion that while gain was the only plausible motive, still nobody gained from any of the seven deaths.

“There were other perplexities,” continued Ellery, slumping to his tail and addressing Gus Olesen’s measled tin ceiling. “Were the deaths all natural-or-accidental or were they all criminal? Were some of the deaths natural-or-accidental and others criminal? If so, which deaths were natural-or-accidental and which were criminal? There was no means of telling. There were no clues. If these were crimes, they were flawless.

“Then I got my first break in two months.”

“What was that?” asked Malvina Prentiss. O’Bannon’s pencil waited.

“Saturday night in a Connhaven hotel room David Waldo revealed to me a fact I hadn’t known before. The Waldo twins, who had been witnesses to Sebastian Dodd’s will, had acted in that capacity not once but twice, on two successive days — on the third day, and again on the second day, preceding Dodd’s death.

“To be called upon to witness the same man’s will twice within twenty-four hours could mean only one thing: in that twenty-four hours testator had changed his mind about the provisions of his first will and had had his lawyer draw up a new one.

“What did the new, or second, will provide? That we’ve known: except for a few trifles, Dodd left everything for the financing of a new hospital. What did the first, the superseded, will provide?”

“What?” asked O’Bannon sharply.

“Well, O’Bannon,” said Ellery with a faint smile, “I had no more information than you. But I felt that that first, discarded will concealed a fact of great importance. It was no use hammering away at Waldo; he’d merely witnessed Dodd’s signature. Only three people knew what was in that first will — Otis Holderfield, who prepared it; Flossie Bushmill, Holderfield’s ‘secretary,’ who undoubtedly typed it; and Dr. Dodd. Holderfield and Dodd were dead, and Flossie’d run off heaven knows where with some salesman. So I had to puzzle over it.”

Ellery studied his suds. “Whatever the provisions of that first will were, I could be sure that they were different from the provisions of the later one. But that reopened the whole question of motive.

“In a rather odd way,” Ellery added, looking up. “Cui bono, future tense. Not who benefits, but who expects to benefit.”

He was silent, and after a moment Malvina Prentiss said intently, “I don’t entirely follow.”

“Dodd changed his will. We know what he changed it to — his chief beneficiary is a hospital. But what had he changed it from? Whose loss was the hospital’s gain? Who could have been Dodd’s chief beneficiary before his overnight change of mind?

“Only one person. Dodd left no family. The only one close to him was a young fellow whose career he had financed and sponsored, whom he had sent through medical school, whom he had taken into his home afterward as his companion, protégé, and professional associate. And then I remembered a remark of Ken Winship’s the day Otis Holderfield came to the house to read the will-in-force. After Holderfield left, Ken unwisely said to Rima that he couldn’t offer her as much as he’d ‘hoped’ to be able to. It meant nothing at the time; in retrospect now, the remark took on a significant shade of red.

“There was no doubt in my mind, then, that it was Kenneth Winship whom Dodd had named in his first will. And it was equally obvious that, considering his sole and unique relationship with Dodd, Ken had every right to expect to be named in Dodd’s will. And that,” said Ellery, “was just about that.

“Why Dodd cut Winship off at the last moment? I really couldn’t say. There are possibilities. Toward the end Dodd wasn’t exactly stable. Or the hospital’s needs had grown to such proportions in his mind as to overshadow personal considerations. Or, in a flash, Dodd saw or suspected the truth.

“Anyway, I finally had a clear motive — the expectation of gain — and someone to pin it on.”

Ellery made rings with his beer glass. “Dr. Kenneth Winship wanted those millions of dollars, and he didn’t want to wait for them. Besides, Dodd was so free-handed. Planned a children’s wing for the hospital the moment he found out he was MacCaby’s heir. Gave Hart’s widow an income for life. Handed Tom Anderson five thousand dollars. Settled an income on Nick Jacquard’s widow and children. At that rate, even millions wouldn’t last long. It was apparent to Ken that if he was to get that fortune in anything like its original size, he had to hurry things a bit.

“But there was a rub here, too. Dodd had not made out a will. At all. You heard Holderfield that morning — he’d been after Dodd for some time to do that very thing. As it was, Dodd didn’t have it done until the week of his death.

“In law, if Dodd died intestate, Ken had no claim whatever; he and Dodd had no legal relationship. So while he was hurrying things along, Ken had to be sure Dodd left a will. The problem, in principle, must have seemed simple to Ken. If Dodd made his will, Ken would be the heir. Whom else did the childless country doctor have to leave his money to? Ken was as interested in medicine as he was; he looked on Ken as a son, and he was as proud of Ken as if he were Ken’s father.”

Malvina Prentiss looked disturbed, and O’Bannon looked sick.

Ellery growled, “But in practice the problem wasn’t simple at all. Ken knew all about Dodd’s death phobia, of course, long before I smoked it out. Naturally. He was a doctor and he lived in the same house. Ken knew all there was to know about Dodd.

“Now a man who morbidly dreads death rarely makes a will of his own volition; to such a man, the very act seems like tempting fate. That’s why Dodd kept putting it off. How could Ken force Dodd, in the face of that phobia, to go to a lawyer and have a will drawn? Ken found the answer; he was very resourceful. The man morbidly afraid to die resists the act of will-making because he is desperately hanging on to life and the hope of its indefinite continuance. But suppose he could be made to come to believe that the hope is nonexistent? That his death is not merely inevitable but imminent?

“As Ken saw it, he had to smash Dodd’s hold on hope. He had to convince Dodd beyond the quiver of a doubt that death was a matter of days and that nothing he or anyone else did could stop it.”

“My God,” breathed O’Bannon.

“And then Winship got one of the most diabolical inspirations in the history of murder. There had been two deaths in Wrightsville recently which involved and affected Sebastian Dodd: the death of old Luke MacCaby from heart disease and the suicide of John Spencer Hart. Winship noticed that MacCaby, always considered a pauper, died a rich man, and that Hart, always considered one of the town’s nabobs, died a poor man. The contrast struck him. Rich man-poor man. Rich-man-poor-man.

“Into Ken’s brain, sharpened by acquisitiveness, sickened by his war experiences — Dakin told me Winship went to pieces when he got back from overseas — into Ken’s mind leaped the old children’s jingle.

“Immediately,” said Ellery, “immediately Ken saw his implementation whole. Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief — and then doctor. If the death of MacCaby, who had willed his fortune to Dodd, and the death of Hart, which left Dodd in sole possession of the great Wrightsville Dye Works, should be followed by the deaths of a ‘beggar’ and a ‘thief,’ two people with whom Dodd also had a connection, and if that sinister progression were to be brought forcefully to Dodd’s notice, then Dodd would be convinced of two things: first, that a doctor would certainly be the next to die, and second, that he, Dodd, would certainly be that doctor. And if Dodd were so convinced, he would make a will.”

“And if he didn’t?” said O’Bannon.

“But he did, O’Bannon,” said Ellery dryly. “Anyway, that’s the chance a murderer takes. There’s at least one in every crime. Ken took his, and won.”

“Go on!” said Malvina Prentiss.

“Winship got going immediately. His first step was to find somebody in town who fitted the third character in the rhyme. He hadn’t far to look. Tom Anderson was known as The Town Beggar as well as The Town Drunk, and Dodd had given him a large sum of money. Winship arranged a meeting with Anderson at Little Prudy’s Cliff late one night and tossed Anderson into the quicksand below. And once Anderson’s disappearance was accepted as death, Ken mailed newspaper clippings concerning the three deaths — MacCaby’s and Hart’s, with which he had utterly nothing to do and which were exactly what they purported to be, and Anderson’s — to me, anonymously.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Oh, that was very nearly the most important part of his plans, Miss Prentiss,” smiled Ellery. “The key objective of his campaign was to convince Dodd absolutely that death was just around the corner. Ken knew my weakness for the bizarre and he reasoned that if I could be brought into it to expound the death rhyme to Dodd, the job was done. If I didn’t bite, or if I failed to see the death scheme, Ken could always ‘discover’ it himself, or disclose the rhyme pattern through an unsigned letter to the Record. But I was the ideal instrument. Wrightsville knew me. I had reputation and authority. A disclosure by me to Dodd would insure Dodd’s acceptance of the inevitability of his early death... Of course, Ken couldn’t have known Rima would ask me to investigate her father’s disappearance. But I probably would have come to Wrightsville, anyway, on the strength of those three clippings he sent me. Once I showed up in Wrightsville he knew he was on the right track. And he prepared his next move.”

“Jacquard.”

“Yes. The problem there was to get Jacquard to break into the Dodd house. Exactly how he managed it I don’t know — it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Ken duped Jacquard into attempting a burglary. When Ken turned his head, ostensibly to hand me the gun so he could get some rope, it was not an act of carelessness. He was inviting Jacquard to jump him. Had Jacquard failed to do so, Ken would have tried something else — conned him into trying to make a break for it, perhaps. In any event, it’s perfectly clear what Ken’s plan was: to shoot Jacquard in cold blood, but under such circumstances that the shooting would seem an unavoidable and justifiable act. This was the most daring murder of them all, committed before three competent witnesses all of whom swore with perfect honesty that it was an act of self-defense. Ken must have got quite a kick out of that.”

Ellery lit a cigaret. “Now his stage was set. Four Wrightsvillians had died — a rich man, a poor man, a beggar, and a thief. All he had to do was wait for me to see it. And I saw it, as he’d schemed and hoped, and I rushed to Dodd to recite the doggerel and warn Dodd he was next on the list. Dodd accepted the idea of his doom at once. And how Winship must have preened himself on that.”

“This is,” said Malvina Prentiss, moistening her lips, “this is fabulous.”

“Yes,” said Ellery. “Only more so. Winship was a master of detail. I’d obligingly shattered the living hope in Dodd, but there might be fragments that still squirmed. Ken went methodically to work to destroy them. He turned Dodd’s own weapons against him... Which weapons? Oh, you don’t know about Dodd’s secret belief in divination, do you?”

“In what?”

“In divination.” Into their incredulous ears he poured the story of Sebastian Dodd’s attic room and its contents.

“You may be sure Ken knew all about that room and what went on there; in fact, his knowledge of Dodd’s superstitious practices may have been the spark that inspired Ken’s whole plan. He undoubtedly had a duplicate key to the room, unknown to Dodd. How many times he secretly watched Dodd probe the future in that room only he knows, but by the time he was ready to move he was perfectly sure of his ground.

“First, Ken engineered the illusion of the death card, the ace of spades, that grand old standby of bad omens — the double death card, because I myself watched Dodd cut two decks of cards and both times uncover the spade ace. How Ken managed this? Suppose it was your problem. The solution is obvious. You’d buy a hundred and four decks of cards of the same design as the decks Dodd was using, you’d remove the ace of spades from each deck, and with your hundred and four spade aces you’d make up two decks of fifty-two spade aces each. Can’t miss. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to get a workable duplicate key to the attic door, Ken had slipped into the room, removed the planted decks, and restored Dodd’s originals. Those perfectly normal decks of cards gave me rather a bad time.”

“Risky,” mumbled O’Bannon.

“No,” said Ellery. “Dodd never looked at the other cards when he cut for fortune, apparently. A habit is as predictable as a thing. Ken’s knowledge of Dodd was thorough.

“Having dealt Dodd the twin blow of the black pip, Ken followed it with the dog that howled in the night, another common omen of death. He wasn’t aware that he had already won the game, that Dodd had visited Otis Holderfield the morning after my revelation of the jingle and had made his will — the first will. Unaware of this, Ken kept hammering away. He planted a bird in Dodd’s study, still another omen of death.

“It may be,” said Ellery, dropping his cigaret butt moodily into his beer, “that Ken’s own perfectionism defeated him. He kept adding little artistic touches — the cards, the dog, the bird — when, as events proved, they weren’t needed. Under the added pressures, completely demoralized, Dodd not merely made a will — he made two. With one hand he gave, with the other he took away. For twenty-four hours, as it were, Kenneth Winship had his day and didn’t know it. Then it was the morning after. But he still didn’t know it. He must have learned of Dodd’s visits to Holderfield’s office after the bird incident, naturally assumed them to mean a single will, assumed that his objective had been won, and prepared himself for the last move, the mop-up. He waited until an emergency night call took Dodd into an outlying district and then he simply followed and forced Dodd off the road at a spot where death was sure. Or perhaps he listened on the extension, learned Dodd’s destination, went off in advance, waylaid Dodd, hit him on the head, and sent Dodd’s car spinning into the gulley. So it was done.

“It was done,” said Ellery, “and Ken Winship went through all the easy motions of dazed grief, and Dr. Dodd was buried, and the day came when the doctor’s will was read. And Winship, brilliant schemer, artist of crime, three-times murderer, learned that for his great exertions he was going to get his rent free for a few years — and that was all.”

And Ellery was silent again.

Malvina Prentiss stirred. “But the murders didn’t stop. Why, when he had nothing to gain—?”

“That’s true. He had nothing to gain, and he knew it better than anyone in the world. So at first Ken Winship did the only thing he could do: he accepted his defeat. He made the best of it. Wrote the past off. He had something powerful to help him over the hump. He’d fallen in love and he was loved in return. By some crippled ethic he may have consoled himself that his failure to win a fortune through murder was what made it morally possible for him to marry Rima. At any rate, he married her and settled down to the unexciting life of a country doctor. As far as Ken was concerned, considering his failure, he was in a pretty fair position. The fact that he gained practically nothing from Dodd’s death left him above suspicion. There was still the hanging loose end of the child’s rhyme, but he was quite content to let me break my head over it.

“And then a queer thing happened,” said Ellery, “and, O’Bannon, you might put this down in double pothooks, because it’s the really beautiful part of the story.

“Up to this time, Ken had manipulated events.

“Now events began to manipulate Ken.

“You know,” said Ellery, “every once in a while I’m caught up short. There’s no explaining some things in feet, minutes, or pounds. There are times when nature, fiddled with, cracks down with a sort of cynical intelligence. Determinism seems proved and fate seems to work in a dark humor. What Hardy called satires of circumstance. Certainly Kenneth Winship must have found himself in the grip of a force he didn’t grasp. He had brought a certain pattern of events into being. When he tried to stop, by a tremendous irony he found he couldn’t.”

“What do you mean?” asked Malvina Prentiss.

But Ellery went on talking as if he were alone. “Where does coincidence end and the force of circumstances begin? It’s a fine point. In the last analysis there may be no such thing as coincidence. At least it wasn’t coincidence that kept Ken’s pattern going. It couldn’t have been. It was too implacably right.

“What do I mean?” Ellery looked up. “I mean that the pattern, entirely aside from Ken, insisted on completing itself.

“Holderfield drew both of the Dodd wills. Therefore Holderfield knew that in the first — the revoked — will Kenneth Winship had been Dodd’s heir. Under his lard Otis Holderfield was a sharp, shrewd citizen. He solved the mystery. He saw that Winship, and Winship alone, had a motive for murder.

“At one point in this game,” said Ellery, “I played with the theory that Tom Anderson might have been blackmailing Sebastian Dodd. There was a blackmailer in the case, all right, only it wasn’t Anderson. After Dodd’s death Holderfield must have talked to Winship, told Winship what he knew, and promised silence on the damning fact of the first will — for a consideration.

“Ken had no money that would satisfy a blackmailer, but he had inherited Dodd’s practice, or most of it. It’s likely, therefore, that Holderfield proposed a steady bleeding, a share of Ken’s earnings on a businesslike basis. That’s why Holderfield, who on the morning he read Dodd’s will to us was angry and embittered, shortly afterward was all smiling heartiness again. He’d figured out his blackmail scheme... And there was Ken, with nothing to show for his crimes, and now he was in even a worse position: now he had to pay for them.

“Ken saw what he had to do. He was not the kind of man who submits meekly to blackmail, as Holderfield should have known. One murder more would hardly stop him. He stole into the Granjon Block late one Saturday afternoon, when the building was deserted, and tossed Holderfield out of his own window. If Holderfield had a copy of that first will in his office, as he undoubtedly did, Ken looked for it, found it, and destroyed it.

“Another murder, committed without hope of gain, entirely against his wishes, I’m sure, and only because of expediency. The murder of a blackmailer named Holderfield. The only thing was... in murdering a blackmailer named Holderfield, Ken murdered a lawyer, and a lawyer was what the pattern called for to follow the doctor. Coincidence? I can’t think so.”

“Kind of odd, at that,” muttered O’Bannon, scribbling away.

“If this had been the end of it, merely ‘odd’ might have described it. But it wasn’t. Having eliminated Holderfield, Winship found he still couldn’t stop. The Waldo twins had witnessed that will, the will which established Winship’s sole motive. For all he knew, the Waldos knew its contents. But even if they did not, they knew there were two wills a day apart, and that knowledge was dangerous, too... The Waldos took nembutal to make them sleep, they lived directly across from the Dodd house, and their house was an old tinderbox. Ken set a fire in their cellar and went back to bed.

“He may have planned the murder, too, of Floss Bushmill, Holderfield’s secretary, who had been the third witness to the will — after all, if he got nothing out of all his work, the least he could do was remove all trace of his involvement. But then everything went to pot and by the time he was bogged down in stickier problems Floss had skipped Wrightsville for greener fields.

“Doctor, lawyer, merchant... He had planned to murder two brothers who possessed some dangerous knowledge. In setting that fire Ken may have overlooked the fact that tailors are merchants, but it’s obvious that some higher authority had not.”

“Incredible,” said Malvina Prentiss.

“The authority I’m referring to, Miss Prentiss,” said Ellery with a smile, “specializes in incredibilities. Only this doesn’t happen to be one of them. A law almost as natural as Newton’s controlled Winship’s ‘happening’ to murder a merchant after a lawyer when the jingle called for precisely that sequence. For how did the ‘merchant’ Waldos get on Winship’s list? They were called in by Lawyer Holderfield to witness Sebastian Dodd’s will. Now note that Lawyer Holderfield’s office was in an office building, and that the office building, like virtually all office buildings, contains retail stores on its ground floor, and that the building is in the heart of the business district of Wrightsville, which is largely composed of retail storekeepers. Nine out of any ten people Holderfield called in to witness Dodd’s will would therefore have been merchants of one sort or another. The two who were called happened to be merchant tailors. They might just as well have been Mr. Purdy of the drygoods store or Jeff Hernaberry of the sporting goods store. No, not incredible, Miss Prentiss; not coincidence.

“But to get on to the end of this. Fate was coming to enjoy the game. One of the Waldo brothers failed to die in the fire.

“At this point everything began to move rapidly. Ken realized that in David Waldo’s survival lay the very danger he had tried to stave off by setting fire to the Waldo house. He could hardly murder Waldo in the hospital — far too great a risk of detection. Then Waldo, frightened witless, got out, secretly cleaned up his Wrightsville affairs, and disappeared.

“Ken knew I was determined to find Waldo. If I did, I might pry out of him the story of that first will. When Waldo was found, therefore, and I left a note at the Dodd house telling Rima and Ken where I was going, Ken waited until there was a night call for his professional services, or more likely invented one for Rima’s benefit, got his car out, and followed me to Connhaven. All along, by the way, his profession gave him beautiful mobility. No one dreams of questioning a doctor’s going out in the middle of the night.

“He followed me, he set a trap, the trap worked, and he fired two shots at my heart from a distance of six inches.

“And fate had a good belly laugh at his expense. First, I was wearing, of all things, a bulletproof vest. And second, I was — and utilized in my countertrap — a ‘chief.’ Winship must have thought he was having a nightmare — he certainly wasn’t trying to fill out the last line of that rhyme when he shot me!

“It’s true that ‘chief’ didn’t die. But it’s also true that I was ‘chief’ only in the most absurd and narrow of senses. The pattern is going to fulfill itself quite realistically. There’s still a death to come.”

O’Bannon’s pencil point snapped and Malvina Prentiss sat up very straight.

“Ken’s, for his crimes,” said Ellery. “And there, without a note of sophistry, you’ll have the supreme satire of circumstance. Because the truth is Ken was the chief of everything. The chief criminal, the chief planner, the chief of operations, the chief victim. The perfect ending to his rhyme, although I doubt that he’ll fully appreciate it until it’s too late. Are you people as dry as I am? I’d like another beer.”

The place was half full now, workmen from the mills, businessmen on their way home. It took some time to get Gus’s attention. Meanwhile, Francis O’Bannon was staring at his notebook in a thoughtful way. Malvina Prentiss tapped her silver fingernails on the table absently. Ellery lit another cigaret.

“What’ll it be?” asked Gus.

“One beer,” said the publisher of the Record. “For Mr. Queen.” She laid a bill on the table and rose.

“Make mine a bottle of bourbon,” said Francis O’Bannon.

She stared coldly down at his red thatch. “I thought we’d gone all through that, Spec. Get off your bottom and back to the shop. We’ve got quite a haul ahead of us.”

“Bourbon,” said O’Bannon.

“Yes, sir,” said Gus doubtfully.

“Spec,” said Malvina Prentiss. “I spoke to you.”

“You spoke to me. What do you know about that.” Harvard’s crimson was slowly rising in O’Bannon’s neck. “What am I supposed to do?”

“What you’re paid to do. Jump through a hoop!”

“Malvina,” said O’Bannon softly, “you can damn well go back to the shop yourself. Gus, bourbon.”

“Back Bay,” said Malvina contemptuously. “You sound more like a New York garbage collector.”

“Well, that’s what I am, you silverplated refugee from Madame Tussaud’s!” O’Bannon sprang to his feet. He snatched off his glasses and broke them excitedly before her eyes.

“Spec.” She was horrified.

“Spec your left one! Gus, you get me that bottle of bourbon or I break up the joint. Why, Malvina honey, I’m a phony, didn’t you know that? I let you wipe up the Record floor with me because I liked it. Well, I don’t like it any more!” he yelled. “You can take your powder room job and stuff it!”

“Spec—” she stammered.

“Francis Vincent Xavier O’Bannon is the name, and now I’m going to call you a few, my proud hunk of beauty!” And Francis Vincent Xavier O’Bannon did so, with a blasphemous fluency that brought respectful silence from Gus’s customers. And all the time she was being so graphically described, Malvina Prentiss stood in the booth with her mouth open, a vision of stupefaction. And when O’Bannon had concluded, and he had downed a quarter of a fifth of bourbon via the mouth of the bottle Gus had fetched, and he had saluted Ellery and stalked from the tavern to the accompaniment of whistles and applause from the multitude, Malvina Prentiss shut her mouth, looked around fearfully, blushed to the roots of her platinum hair, and fled.

And now two will be one, thought Ellery. Life goes on, unifying dualities.

He looked up from his watch to see Rima in the doorway.

They met in the middle of the barroom, beside a table at which an overalled man with a grease streak on his nose was lining up four glasses of whisky, carefully.

“Are you a detective, too?” asked Ellery, not smiling.

“You weren’t hard to find. You’re very famous.”

“I’m glad you came, Rima.”

“That was sweet of you — getting me a job.”

“You’ve spoken to Dr. Bull?”

“I phoned him.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me a great many questions. He’s putting me in the Wild Life wing — assistant to the curator. It was very sweet of you, Ellery.”

“I’m sure you’ll be happy there, Rima. There’s a great deal of field work involved, I understand. When do you start?”

“Dr. Bull said any time at my convenience. I picked tomorrow morning.”

“Well,” said Ellery with a smile. Then he said, “I’m glad you picked tomorrow. It’s an excellent day for it.”

Rima looked as if she did not quite agree.

“Besides,” she said, “I couldn’t let you leave without saying goodbye.”

“I’ll be back, Rima.”

“Oh, yes. For the trial.”

“Not entirely for the trial.”

A big fellow in a checkered shirt yelled, “Gus!”

“Not... entirely, Ellery?” It pained him to look at the purple-brown underscoring of her eyes.

“Have you forgotten my lecture in Ytaioa? Rima, I’ve got to go. Cab down to the station with me.”

“Lecture?” Rima said.

“There are always,” said Ellery, “two possibilities.”

The color of something alive entered her face, and as Ellery took Rima outside to where Ed Hotchkiss was waiting in his hack he kept thinking, not very originally, that it was like seeing the sun come up on a darkened world.