The Chinese Orange Mystery

The Trap

A police car was chugging at the curb. One of the officers was on the sidewalk holding the door open.

“Jump in, Inspector,” he said quickly, saluting. “We just got the flash on the short-wave to call for you.”

“Glad somebody had a brainstorm. Good work, Schmidt,” said the Inspector. “’Lo, Raftery. Here, pile in, El... Grand Central, Raf. Keep that siren of yours howling.”

They shot away from the curb leaving Officer Schmidt behind, skidded round the corner on two wheels, and headed south, the siren screaming its head off.

“Now,” panted Ellery, cramped between his father and the door as he struggled to tie his shoelaces, “suppose you tell me what prompts this aborted Ride of the Valkyries.”

The old man faced grimly ahead, watching the traffic rush by. It was as if all other cars in the world stood still. Officer Raftery drove with a magnificent nonchalance while the radio droned in his car. Ellery groaned and stooped lower; they had missed a pedestrian by the proverbial cat’s whisker.

“Here’s the pay-off. A few minutes ago a Postal Telegraph messenger presented a baggage-check at the checkroom of the Hotel Chancellor. One of the regular brass checks they issue there. The clerk hauled out the bag called for by the check. As he was slippin’ the tag off, he suddenly remembered something. Like a shot, he said. Seems this is a funny sort of bag — big canvas valise, like those carpet-bags the farmers used to carry — and a clerk messing around with modern luggage would remember a thing like that.”

“Don’t tell me—” grunted Ellery, fumbling with his necktie.

“I am telling you,” growled the Inspector. “This clerk saw from the stamped date on the tag that the valise had been in the checkroom for a long time — much longer than usual, because most of their checking is transient-overnight, more’n likely. But the date on this bag was the day of the murder.”

“So your hunch was correct,” said Ellery, going into a violent contortion to slip his suspenders over his shoulders. “What—”

“Keep quiet, will you? You want the story, don’t you?” The Inspector winced suddenly as the radio-car twisted like a bolt of lightning around a startled Cadillac. “Anyway, this clerk remembered in a flash who had left the bag with him — the man whose face, he said, the detective had shown him in a photo only yesterday. That was when Thomas’s boys got around to the Chancellor in that city-wide canvass of all the checkrooms I’d ordered.”

“Then it’s definitely the murdered chap’s bag?” murmured Ellery.

“Seems to be.”

“But why on earth didn’t he identify the victim from the photograph? If he remembered today—”

“Well, his story is that the face on the picture didn’t mean a thing to him. He’d completely forgotten all about the little fat guy. But it was hauling out the bag that brought it all back to him—”

“Not implausible, at that,” muttered Ellery. “There! I’m all in one piece at last. Raftery, you fiend, for God’s sake be careful... The point is that it took the bag to bridge the gap of association — a bridging not effected by sight of the man’s photograph. Hmm. Well, go on.”

“So,” grunted the Inspector, “bein’ a smart lad, he held the boy there and called Nye, that sweet-smelling house manager. He didn’t want to take any of the responsibility himself, I suppose. Nye and Brummer, their dick, heard the clerk’s story and Brummer called the police. The boys were working in midtown and the call was relayed to Thomas, who hotfooted it to the Chancellor. The messenger boy stuck to his story and Thomas checked it by ’phone with the Postal Telegraph branch where the kid works.”

They swung into 59th Street, the siren clearing the way like a machine-gun.

“Well, well?” said Ellery impatiently. “And what did the Postal people say?”

“The branch-manager said that earlier today a package had come into the telegraph office containing the Chancellor baggage-check and a typed note. In the envelope with the note was a five-dollar bill; and the note instructed the Postal people to send a messenger with the check to the Chancellor, pick up the bag, and deliver it to the signer near the information desk at the Upper Level in Grand Central. That’s their personal service, or something.”

“Good Lord,” groaned Ellery. “What an opportunity! I suppose the signature doesn’t mean anything?”

“Not a thing. It was signed ‘Henry Bassett,’ or some such phony. Wasn’t even written for that matter. The name was just typed out. Oh, this bird isn’t taking any chances. It’s just that he fell into something he couldn’t have foreseen.” They jerked around the Plaza and roared down Fifth Avenue, traffic opening magically before them. “It was his tough luck that the clerk has a good memory. Otherwise he’d have got away with it.”

Ellery lighted a cigaret and squirmed about, seeking a comfortable position for his shoulders. “Velie didn’t open the bag?”

“No time. I told him to let the kid take the bag and beat it down to Grand Central, as per instructions.” The Inspector smiled grimly. “We didn’t lose much time. There’s only plainclothesmen on the job, and with the crowds in the terminal it ought to be a pipe. Thomas didn’t let anything stand in his way; he sent one of the boys off to the Postal Telegraph office to pick up the note — that’s evidence, or I’ll eat my hat. Didn’t lose more’n a half-hour all told. It ought to work.”

They switched east on Forty-fourth Street, making for the taxicab entrance to Grand Central Terminal. Cross-traffic on Madison parted for them as if they were a comb running through a tangled coiffure. Another moment, and they were streaking across Vanderbilt into the vehicle-entrance. The siren had stopped at the Inspector’s command at Fifth and Forty-fourth. There were a few careless stares from taxicab drivers as the Queens jumped out of the police-car, but that was all. Officer Raftery touched his visor, grinned angelically, and swung the car away. The Queens walked briskly into the Terminal.

It was still early, and most of the traffic in Grand Central was incoming. The huge chamber was murmurous with the usual sounds; occasionally a hollow shout echoed; there were few people at the ticket windows; porters scuttled about; a little crowd of people waited before one of the remoter track-entrances; from two others streams of commuters flowed.

The Queens descended the marble staircase from the Vanderbilt Avenue side with unhurried steps, their eyes focusing instantly on the round marble booth in the center of the Terminal — Information. Without difficulty they made out the slender figure of the Postal Telegraph boy in the characteristic blue uniform waiting on the north side of the booth, a large, roughly triangular valise of stained canvas at his feet. Even from their distant position they could discern signs of nervousness in the lad. He kept jerking his head from side to side spasmodically, and his face under the blue cap seemed peaked and pale.

“Damn that kid,” muttered the Inspector as they reached the floor of the station. “He’ll spoil everything. Nervous as a cat.” They strolled toward the south wall, where the ticket offices were. “We’d better make ourselves scarce, El. Better not take a chance on being spotted by this bird. He’s bound to be careful, and it’s a sure bet he’s somebody that knows us. One peep at us and he’ll run like hell.”

They sauntered to the central exit giving upon Forty-second Street and took up their stand quietly to one side, out of sight of people coming and going through the exit but with a perfect command both of the exit and the boy beyond the information desk.

“Where’s Velie?” murmured Ellery, smoking. He was very nervous himself and unusually pale.

“Don’t worry; he’s around,” said the Inspector without taking his eyes off the telegraph messenger. “And so are the others. There’s Hagstrom now. With that old suitcase. Standing near the booth talking to one of the Information men. Good boy!”

“What time—”

“The boy was a little early. Ought to come off any minute now.”

They waited for what seemed to Ellery, at least, an eternity.

He kept shifting his attention from the fidgety boy in blue to one of the four huge gilded docks above the information booth. The minutes sucked by lazily. He had never realized before how long a minute could be; how long and empty and nerve-racking.

The Inspector watched without change of expression. He was accustomed to these interludes and from years of experience had developed a patience with anticipated events which was, to Ellery, little short of marvelous.

Once they caught sight of Sergeant Velie. The giant was on the balcony on the east wall of the Upper Level, his hard eyes fixed on the scene below. He was either sitting or crouching, for from the floor where they stood he did not seem a big man.

The minutes slogged past. Hundreds of people came and went. Hagstrom had vanished from the information booth; apparently he felt that it was unwise to linger too long. But his place was instantly taken by Detective Piggott, also a veteran member of the Inspector’s personal squad.

The boy waited.

Porters scurried by. There was an amusing interlude: a woman carrying a fat sleepy dog became involved in an altercation with a porter. Once a celebrity arrived: a diminutive woman decked in fresh orchids and surrounded by clamoring reporters and cameramen. She posed at the gate to Track 24. She smiled. There were blue streaks from flashlights. She disappeared; the crowd disappeared.

Still the boy waited.

By this time Detective Piggott was gone from the round booth, and Detective Ritter — burly and positive, smoking a cigar — was demanding information in a loud voice from one of the gray-haired attendants.

Quiet Detective Johnson sauntered over and consulted a time-table.

And still the boy waited. Ellery, gnawing his fingernails, consulted the clock for the hundredth time.

When two and a half hours had elapsed with no result the Inspector crooked his finger at Sergeant Velie on the balcony, shrugged philosophically, and without a word stalked across the marble floor to the information desk. The boy was sitting on the valise now in an attitude of hopeless resignation; the canvas was crushed beneath his slight weight. He looked up eagerly at the approach of Sergeant Velie.

“Get off that,” rumbled the Sergeant, and he shoved the boy gently aside and lifted the bag and joined the Inspector and the group of men who had miraculously materialized from all parts of the terminal.

“Well, Thomas,” said the Inspector with a wry grin, “it’s no dice, I guess. Scared our man off.” He eyed the bag with interest.

“Guess so,” said the Sergeant gloomily. “But how the hell he got wise I don’t know. We didn’t slip anywhere, did we?”

“Well, you handled it, Thomas,” murmured the old man. “However, there’s no sense in crying over spilt milk.”

“It’s probably infantile enough,” said Ellery, frowning. “He suspected a trap at once. At the source.”

“How could he, Mr. Queen?” protested Velie.

“It’s easy to be clever after the event. It occurred to me two hours ago that the person who sent the five-dollar bill and the note with instructions was taking excellent care indeed to keep himself invisibly in the background.”

“So?” said the Inspector.

“So,” drawled Ellery, “what do you think he’d do? Leave matters to chance?”

“Don’t get you.”

“Well, good heavens, dad,” said Ellery impatiently, “you’re obviously not dealing with an imbecile! Wouldn’t it have been extraordinarily simple for him to have been lounging about the lobby of the Chancellor keeping an eye on the checkroom while the messenger was presenting the baggage-check?”

Sergeant Velie went crimson. “By crap,” he said hoarsely, “I never thought of that.”

The Inspector stared at Ellery with a solemn conviction mounting in his marbly little eyes. “That sure sounds kosher to me,” he said in a rueful voice.

“Disgusting,” said Ellery bitterly. “I didn’t think of it, either, until it was too late. Golden opportunity. And yet I don’t see how else... Of course he’d be on the alert. Just to make sure nothing went wrong. He was safe there—”

“Especially,” muttered Velie, “if he lived there.”

“Or normally had business there. But that’s beside the point. His plan patently was to watch the boy pick up the bag in the Chancellor and then follow him to Grand Central. In that way he’d be absolutely sure everything was all right.”

“So he saw the clerk call Nye and Brummer, saw Thomas, saw the boys...” The Inspector shrugged. “Well, that’s that. At least we’ve got the valise. We’ll go back to Headquarters and give it the once-over. Wasn’t a total loss, anyway.”

It was on the journey downtown that Ellery suddenly exclaimed: “I’m witless! I’m the world’s biggest idiot! I should have my head examined!”

“Granting,” said the Inspector dryly, “the truth of all that, what’s eating you now? You hop around inside that head of yours like a flea.”

“The bag, dad. It’s just struck me. My mental processes seem to have slowed down with the years. Hardening of the cerebrum. I remember the time when a thought like that would have been instantaneous with the event... It was perfectly logical of you to conjure up a possible bag from the fact that the victim doesn’t seem to have been a native of New York. And so to institute a search for it. But,” frowned Ellery, “why does the murderer want it?”

“You are running down,” snorted the Inspector. “Why d’ye suppose? I’ll admit I hadn’t foreseen that eventuality myself, but still it’s easy enough to explain when you think of it. This killer took every precaution against our finding out the identity of the dead man, didn’t he? So if the dead man’s valise is floating around and liable to be picked up by the police, do you think the killer’s going to sit back and let it be picked up? Not if he can help it! He’s afraid, or else he positively knows, that there’s something in that bag that will establish the dead man’s identity!”

“Oh, that,” said Ellery, eying the bag at their feet with suspicion.

“So what are you yelping about? I’m surprised at you, asking a question like that!”

“Rhetorical question purely,” murmured Ellery, his eyes still on the bag. “The mere existence of the brass check is enough to point to the answer. He found the Chancellor check on the victim’s body after the murder when he was cleaning out the little fellow’s pockets. The check tells its own story. The murderer took it away with him. But why hasn’t he picked up the bag before this? Why has he waited so long; eh?”

“Afraid,” said the Inspector contemptuously. “No guts. Scared to take the chance. Especially since the bag was checked at the Chancellor. It’s that fact itself that convinces me our man has some connection with the hotel, El. I mean he’s known there. He knew damn’ well that we have the Chancellor under observation. If he were an outsider altogether he wouldn’t Have had any hesitation in making a play for the valise. But if we knew him he’d be scared.”

“I suppose so.” Ellery sighed. “I’m itching to get my claws inside that thing. Lord knows what we’ll find.”

“Well, it won’t be long now,” said the Inspector placidly. “I’ve got the funniest feeling that even if we did miss out in, our chance to collar the killer, this bag is going to tell a sweet story.”

“I sincerely,” muttered Ellery, “hope so.”

There was a solemn moment in Inspector Queen’s office before the valise, so shabbily innocent-appearing from the outside, was opened. The door was shut, their coats and hats were flung helter-skelter in a corner, and the Inspector, Ellery, and Sergeant Velie stared at the bag on the Inspector’s desk with varying expressions of emotion.

“Well,” said the Inspector in a rather hushed voice, at last, “here goes.”

He picked up the valise and examined its worn, grimy canvas exterior carefully. It bore no labels of any kind. Its metal hasps were rather rusty. The canvas was eaten away in the creases. There were no initials or insignia.

Sergeant Velie growled: “Sure has seen service.”

“Sure has,” murmured the Inspector. “Thomas, hand me those keys.”

The Sergeant silently offered his superior a ringed bunch of skeleton keys. The Inspector tried a half-dozen before he found one that fitted the rusty lock of the valise. The tiny bolt turned over inside with a grating little noise; the Inspector pulled up the clamps on each side, pressed the central section of metal, and yanked the two halves of the bag apart.

Ellery and Velie leaned over the desk.

Inspector Queen began to pull things out of the bag, like a prestidigitator over a silk hat. The first object he brought out was a black alpaca coat, creased and worn-looking, but clean.

Ellery’s eyes narrowed.

The old gentleman fished the things out swiftly, ranging them in piles on his desk. When the bag was empty he scrutinized its interior closely, holding it up to the light, grunted, tossed the bag aside, and turned back to the desk.

“If we have to we can try to trace that thing,” he said in a slightly disappointed voice. “Well, let’s see what it comes to. Isn’t much, is it?”

The coat was part of a two-piece suit, the other being a pair of trousers of faintly foreign cut. The Inspector held it up against himself; it was just right for his own short legs. “That looks like it might have been his,” he muttered. “Nothing in the pockets, darn the luck.”

“Or in the coat, either,” reported the Sergeant.

“No vest,” said the Inspector thoughtfully. “Well, there wouldn’t be with this summer suit. Don’t see many of ’em in these parts.”

The next series of exhibits consisted of shirts — linen and cotton, all with collarless neckbands and all, from their crisp appearance, fairly new.

The next pile was of hard collars, narrow and shiny and old-fashioned.

Beside it lay handkerchiefs.

A little heap of clean, light tropical underwear.

A half-dozen pairs of black cotton socks.

A pair of worn black shoes, knobby and old.

“That’s Doc Prouty’s corn-and-bunion diagnosis,” murmured Ellery.

All the garments from the bag were cheap. And all, with the exception of the suit and shoes, were new and bore the label of a Shanghai haberdasher.

“Shanghai,” said the Inspector thoughtfully. “That’s China, El,” in a wondering tone. “China!”

“So I see. What’s remarkable about that? Bears out the Missing Persons Bureau’s guess that the man didn’t hail from the United States.”

“I still think—” Then the Inspector stopped with a curious light in his eyes. “Say, this couldn’t be a plant!”

“Is that a question or an assertion?”

“I mean, is it possible it is?”

Ellery raised his eyebrows. “I don’t see how, if that clerk in the Chancellor checkroom maintains that it was really the victim who checked the bag.”

“I guess you’re right. S’pose I’m just naturally suspicious.” The Inspector sighed and looked over the assortment of clothing on his desk. “Well, it gives us something to work on, anyway. Sa-a-ay!” He eyed Ellery shrewdly. “What’s coming off here? I thought it was you who were always so soft on that China tie-up in this case. Now you say it’s not remarkable, or something. How come?”

Ellery shrugged. “Don’t interpret everything I say literally. Let’s see that Bible.”

He delved among the miscellaneous objects from the bag and fished out a torn, worn, coverless book. It looked as if it had been used as ammunition in a major conflict.

“Not a Bible. Ordinary cheap little breviary,” he muttered. “Hmm. And those pamphlets — ah, religious tracts! We seem to have struck a very godly old gentleman, dad.”

“Godly old gentlemen rarely get themselves bumped off,” said the Inspector dryly.

“And this.” Ellery put down the book and picked up another. “An ancient edition — London — of Hall Caine’s The Christian. And here’s Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth in the original American edition that looks as if it had been kicked from here to Peiping. Who says that never the twain shall meet?... Queer.”

“What’s queer about it? He’d probably read that Buck book if he came from China.”

Ellery started from a reverie. “Oh, certainly! I’m just communing with myself. I didn’t mean the books.” He fell silent, sucking his thumb and staring at the littered desk.

“Might ’a’ known,” grumbled Sergeant Velie, looking disgusted, “that this would be a dud. Not even a clue to his monicker.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said the Inspector with a faraway expression. “It’s not so bad, Thomas. We’ll know soon enough who he is.” He sat down at his desk and pressed a button. “I’ll cable the American consul in Shanghai right off, and I’ll bet you it won’t be long before we’ve got the whole story of this bird’s life. After that it ought to be a cinch.”

“How d’ye figure that?”

“The killer took the devil of a lot of pains to keep the dead man’s identity a secret. So when we find it out I figure we’ll strike something real hot. Oh, come in, come in. Take a cable to the American consul in Shanghai, China—”

While the Inspector was dictating his cable Sergeant Velie drifted out of the office. Ellery folded his lean length in the Inspector’s best chair and pulled out a cigaret and lit it and smoked away with a deep frown. There was the most extraordinary expression on his face. Once he opened his eyes and re-examined what lay on the desk. Then he closed them again. He snuggled back in the chair until he rested on the nape of his neck — a favorite position with him, which he assumed chiefly during his more passionately concentrative moments — and he remained that way without stirring until his father’s deskman went out and the old gentleman turned back with a chuckle, rubbing his hands briskly together.

“Well, well, it won’t be long now,” said the Inspector genially. “Just a question of time. I’m sure we’ve got it now, El. Everything clears itself up, when you think it out. For instance, that business of our check-up with all the shipping people. We concentrated on the Atlantic. That was a mistake. He probably came by the Pacific route and then took a train across the continent from San Francisco.”

“Then why,” murmured Ellery, “didn’t some genius like your Chancellor clerk remember him? I thought you’d rather thoroughly canvassed the railroad people.”

“I told you once that that’s a tough job. Nothing wrong there. He was an ordinary-looking little coot, and I s’pose nobody noticed him, that’s all. These people see thousands of faces every day. In a story I guess he’d have been spotted. But things don’t always work out that way in real life.” He leaned back, gazing dreamily at the ceiling. “Shanghai, eh? China. Guess you were right.”

“About what?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I was just thinking... I s’pose we were wrong, at that, about this guy Cullinan. Can’t sort of connect Paris and Shanghai. We’ll be hearing from Chiappe soon, and then we’ll know definitely.” He chattered on.

He was brought to an abrupt realization of his surroundings by a sudden crash. He jerked upright, startled, to find Ellery on his feet.

“What’s the matter, for God’s sake?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” said Ellery. There was a rapt expression on his face. “Nothing at all. God’s in His heaven, the morning’s dew-pearled, all’s right with the world. Good old world. Best little world... I’ve got it.”

The Inspector gripped the edge of his desk. “Got what?”

“The answer. The ruddy, bloody answer!”

The Inspector sat still. Ellery stood rooted to the spot, his eyes clear and excited. Then he nodded to himself several times, vigorously. He smiled and went to the window and looked out.

“And just what,” said the Inspector in a dry voice, “is the answer?”

“Most remarkable thing,” drawled Ellery without turning round. “Perfectly amazing how things come to you. All you have to do is think about them long enough and, pop! something bursts and there it is. It’s been there, staring us in the face from the very beginning. All the time! Why, it’s so simple it’s childish. The whole thing. I can scarcely believe it yet, myself.”

There was a long silence. Then Inspector Queen sighed. “I suppose that long string of chatter means you don’t want to tell me.”

“I haven’t begun to glimpse all the possibilities as yet. It’s just that I’ve discovered the key to the whole business. It explains—”

The Inspector’s deskman came in with an envelope. Ellery sat down again.

“Well, the dead man isn’t Cullinan,” growled the old gentleman. “Here’s a wire from the Prefect of Police in Paris. Chiappe says Cullinan’s in Paris. On his uppers, but alive right enough. So that’s that. What were you saying?”

“I was saying,” murmured Ellery, “that the key explains virtually every important mystery.”

The Inspector looked skeptical. “All that turning-around business — the clothes, the furniture in the room, all that?”

“All that.”

“Just one little key, hey?”

“Just one little key.”

Ellery rose and reached for his hat and coat. “But there’s still something eluding me. And until I figure it out I can’t do anything drastic, you see. So I’m going home, mon pèrey and I shall get into my slippers and root myself before the fire and dig in until I catch that slippery fugitive. I’ve got only part of the answer now.”

There was another silence, this time distinctly awkward. It had always been a bone of contention between them that Ellery was stubbornly uncommunicative until the very dénouement of a case. Neither pleas nor wild horses could drag a single explanatory word out of him until he was mentally satisfied that he had built up a flawless and impenetrable argument. So there was really no point in asking questions.

And yet the Inspector felt chagrined. There all the time! “What gave you the tip-off, then?” he demanded with irritation. “I’m not the world’s biggest dope, and yet I’ll be switched if I can see—”

“The bag.”

“The bag!” The Inspector looked at the top of his desk in bewilderment. “But I thought you said the answer was there all the time. And we only found the bag a couple of hours ago.”

“True,” said Ellery, “but the bag served the double purpose of setting off the spark of association and confirming what went before when the result of the conflagration was assimilated.” He went to the door thoughtfully.

“Talk English, will you? Just how much do you know? Who is the dead man?”

Ellery laughed. “Don’t let me dazzle you with my display of mental pyrotechnics. I’m not a crystal-gazer. His. name is the least important part of the solution. On the other hand, his title—”

“His title!”

“Precisely. I think I know why he was murdered, too, although I haven’t given that phase of it sufficient thought. The big thing bothering me at the moment is how, not who or why.”

The Inspector gasped. “Do you realize what you’re— What d’ye mean, El, for jiminy’s sake? Have you gone batty?”

“Not at all. There’s a vital problem tied up there somehow; I don’t know exactly how at the moment. That’s going to be my job until I get the answer.”

“But you do know how he was murdered!”

“Strangely enough, I don’t.”

The Inspector bit his fingernails in a fever of baffled uncertainty. “You’ll be the death of me yet with your damn’ puzzles. Why, you act as if you didn’t even care what the American consul is going to cable me!”

“I don’t.”

“Cripe! You mean to say it doesn’t make any difference to you what he finds out about the dead man?”

“Not,” said Ellery with a smile, “a particle.” He opened the door. “I could tell you right now, as a matter of fact, what his reply in substance will be.”

“Either I’m crazy or you are.”

“Isn’t lunacy a question of point of view? Now, now, dad, you know how I am. I’m not entirely sure of my ground yet.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to burn up waiting. You’re sure, now, you do know who pulled the murder? You haven’t gone off half-cocked on some wild notion?”

Ellery tugged at the brim of his hat. “Know who did it? What put that idea in your head? Of course I don’t know who did it.”

The Inspector sank back, utterly overwhelmed. “All right, I give up. When you start lying to me—”

“But I’m not lying,” said Ellery in a hurt voice. “I really don’t know. Oh, I might hazard a guess, but... That doesn’t say, however,” he went on, his lips compressing, “that I won’t know. I’ve a remarkable start; simply unbelievable. I must find the answer now. It would be unthinkable that after this—”

“According to what you say,” said the Inspector bitterly, “you don’t know any of the really important things. I thought you had something.”

“But I have,” said Ellery in a patient tone.

“Well, what the devil did those two African spears sticking up the dead man’s backside mean, then?” The Inspector half-rose from his chair, shocked by the look on Ellery’s face. “For the love of Mike! What’s the matter now?”

“The spears,” muttered Ellery, staring blindly at his father. “The spears.”

“But—”

“Now I do know how...”

“I know, but—”

Ellery’s face came alive. His cheeks screwed up, and his eyes blazed, and his lips trembled. Then he howled like a maniac: “Eureka! That’s the answer! Those blessed spears!”

And with a whoop he dashed out of the office, leaving a dazed and collapsed Inspector behind.