The Door Between

7

From far away Eva’s cheeks began to tingle under the impact of remote blows. And she began at the same time to hear the brown man’s voice saying remotely: “Snap out of it. For the love of Mike, fainting! Snap out of it.”

Then his voice came in full and bass, and she opened her eyes to find herself on the floor again with the brown man kneeling by her and slapping her with curt, snappy strokes that hurt.

“Stop slapping me,” said Eva feebly, pushing his hand away and sitting up. “I’m not a child.”

He hauled her to her feet and held her close to his chest, gripping her elbows; he shook her. “Did you knife Karen Leith or didn’t you? Talk, will you!.. Fainting!”

He glowered down at her resentfully. Karen’s bedroom went dark again. Something like this had happened long ago. Long ago. There had been a boy in Nantasket with a quick brown face, like his, and hard gray eyes, like his; and she had once fallen from a tree and fainted and the boy had slapped her until she awoke screaming with the sting to slap back at him and call him names, red all over because she had fainted and he had seen her so. Her palms itched in the darkness, and she had to fight with herself to keep from slapping the brown man back. The fight dispelled the darkness.

“No,” said Eva, “I didn’t.”

His eyes were so suspicious, so puzzled, so like a little boy’s in their hardness and uncertainty, that Eva illogically felt sorry for him.

“If you did, tell me. I can keep my mouth shut if I want to. Talk!”

Eva MacClure, thought Eva — a girl engaged to be married, the envy of her friends, the center of a closed little universe of her own... caught in a trap. Caught in an enormous trap. She felt the bite of it. It cut clear through, shearing through everything with one snick of its jaws. Its painful teeth cut through the shadows, too. Karen... Karen was just a stiffening corpse, Dr. MacClure a man far away, Dick Scott a dangling delicacy never more to be tasted. Only she remained in this shut-in world of nasty reality — this frightening room with its corpse and blood and brown man... only she remained, and this bitter brown man holding fast to her elbows. Or no — it was she who was really holding fast to him. He was good to cling to. The grip of his hands was strong and warm and immediate.

“I didn’t kill Karen, I tell you.” She went limp against him.

“You’re the only one. Don’t try to kid me — I’ve been kidded by experts. No one else could have done it.”

“If you’re so sure, why do you ask me?”

He shook her again, pushing her back, looking down into her eyes.

Eva closed them, and opened them the next moment. “You’ll have to believe me,” she sighed. “I can only give you my word. You’ll have to believe me.”

He scowled, pushed her from him, and she fell back against the writing-desk. His mouth was a straight line.

“Damn fool,” he muttered. She knew he was talking about himself.

He began to look around with those quick animal movements which had such power to fascinate her.

“What are you going to do?” breathed Eva.

He jumped for the attic door, whipping out his handkerchief. He wrapped the linen around his right hand and went for the bolt on the attic door like a beast charging its prey. His swathed fingers grasped the little knob of the sliding bar and pushed. The bar did not move. He changed position and pulled. The bar refused to budge.

“Stuck.” He kept pulling. “That handkerchief. Get a move on. With the blood on it.”

“What?” said Eva dazedly.

“On the floor! Burn it. Quick.”

“Burn it,” repeated Eva. “Why? Where?”

“Fireplace in the sitting-room. Shut the door there first. Get a move on, will you!”

“But I have no—”

“My coat pocket. Damn it, jump!”

Eva jumped. Things had gone completely beyond her. Her brain was a blank, and she was grateful.

She fumbled in his pocket as he struggled with the stubborn bolt, feeling the writhing of his hips as he twisted and tugged. His lips were all but invisible and the tendons of his neck swollen and rigid. Then she found the matches, cool against her fingers.

She walked back, picked up the blood-smeared handkerchief by its monogrammed corner, and went slowly into the sitting-room. As she shut the sitting-room door to the hall she could hear the brown man panting in the bedroom over the bolt.

Then she was on her knees before the fireplace.

A fire had recently gone out in the grate; there were still a few ashes, debris. Eva found herself thinking mechanically that it had been cool the evening before and that Karen was always feeling chilly. Karen, with her thin blood. But it was Karen’s blood on Eva’s handkerchief. Karen’s blood.

The wisp of cambric fell into the grate and Eva found her fingers trembling so badly she had to strike three matches before she could achieve a flame. Some coils of half-charred old paper beneath the kerchief caught fire and the fire touched the edge of the cambric.

Karen’s blood, thought Eva. She was warming Karen’s blood... The kerchief blazed up with a little hiss.

Eva got to her feet and stumbled back into the bedroom. She did not want to see that bloody kerchief burn. She really did not. She wanted to forget that handkerchief, that thing on the floor that was not Karen any more, that choking around her own neck.

“I won’t stay here any more!” she screamed, bursting in on him. “I’m going to run away — hide! Take me away from here — Dick, home, anywhere!”

“Stop it.” He did not even turn around. The light cloth was strained across his shoulders.

“If I get out of here—”

“You’re through.”

“The police—”

“They’re late. It’s a break. Did you burn it?” His brown face was shiny with perspiration.

“But if they don’t find me here—”

“The Jap saw you, didn’t she? Damn — this — bolt.” He chopped at it with the edge of his wrapped hand, savagely.

“Oh, God,” moaned Eva. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t—”

“If you don’t pipe down — I’ll clout you one... Ah!”

The bolt gave suddenly with a scream. His wrapped hand yanked the door open. He disappeared into the gloom beyond.

Eva dragged herself to the open door and leaned against the jamb. It was a cramped space; there was a flight of narrow wooden steps leading up... To the room in the attic. The room. What was in the room?

Her own room in the apartment. Her bed, the lovely candlewick spread, yellow dots against the white crêpe; the third drawer from the top in her bureau, where she kept her stockings rolled into balls. The closet with her summer hats. The old suitcase with its torn labels. Her new black underwear that Susie Hotchkiss had said was worn only by kept women and actresses: how angry she’d been! The Bouguereau atrocity over her bed — it had bored her and scandalized Venetia and Dr. MacClure had liked it...

She heard the brown man swooping about overhead, heard the metallic click of a window-latch, the thin screech of a window being opened... She’d forgotten to put away the nail-polish. Venetia would scold her with all the good fury of her good black soul. She’d spilled a drop on the hooked rug...

Then he was bounding down the narrow staircase towards her, shoving her out of his way, leaving the door open. He looked around at the bedroom again, his chest rising and falling lightly.

“I don’t understand,” said Eva. “What are you doing?”

“Giving you an out.” He did not look at her. “What will I get for it — hey, gorgeous?”

She shrank against the jamb. So that was why—

“I’ll tell you,” he said bitterly. “A kick in the pants. Teach me to mind my own damned business.”

He lunged for the Japanese screen and set it carefully against the wall, out of the way.

“What are you doing?” asked Eva again.

“Giving the cops something to think about. The door was bolted from inside here, so I’ve opened it. They’ll figure the killer got in and out that way. They’ll figure he climbed from the garden to the ell-roof back there, up into the attic” He chuckled. “Two windows up there, both locked — from the inside, of course. Nobody could have got in. But I opened one of ’em. I ought to be in King’s Park.”

“I don’t understand it,” whispered Eva. “It’s not possible. It can’t be.”

“They’ll figure he got in through the attic window, came down here, pulled the job, and made his getaway the same way. Powder your nose.”

“But—”

“Powder your nose! Do I have to do that for you, too?”

Eva ran back to the sitting-room for her bag; it was on the funny couch where she had been reading that book... how long ago? There was a faint odor of fire and—

He was looking around the bedroom again, making sure, making sure.

Downstairs — they both heard it — the doorbell rang.

Eva opened her bag somehow. But it was torn from her fingers, snapped shut, flung on the couch. She found herself lifted off the floor and deposited with a thump beside it.

“No time,” whispered the brown man. “Better anyway — you look as if you’d been crying. What were your hands on in there?”

“What?”

“What did you touch? For the love of Mike!”

“The desk,” whispered Eva. “The floor under the windows. Oh!”

“For God’s sake!”

“I forgot! Something else. The bird with all those shiny stones on it!”

She thought he was going to slap her again, his eyes were so hot and furious. “Bird. Stones. What the hell! Listen. Keep your trap shut. Follow my leads. Cry, if you feel like it. Faint. Do any damned thing you please, only don’t talk too much.”

He didn’t understand. The bird, the half-bird. “But—”

“When you have to talk, tell ’em what you first told me.” He was racing back to the bedroom again. “Only don’t say anything about the attic door being bolted. Understand? The way it is now is the way you found it.”

He was gone.

He was gone, and the only thing Eva was conscious of was the clamor of her heart. The police! She could hear voices — the new maid’s, Kinumé’s, a man’s heavy and vibrant... on the stairs at the end of the hall. The two maids seemed to be protesting and the man to be jeering at them.

He didn’t understand, thought Eva, sitting tight on the couch and clutching the edge of its seat with spread hands. That little half-scissors she had found on the desk, with its bright semi-precious stones, its bird shape, the blade the beak, the shank the body, the bow the legs... He had thought she was crazy. But she handled it!

She jumped from the couch, opened her mouth to call him.

A fist smacked against the sitting-room door from the hall.

Eva fell back on the couch. She started to say: “Come in,” but she was surprised to find that nothing came out of her mouth but a rush of breath.

From the bedroom the brown man’s voice was saying urgently: “Come on, come on, sister. Give me Police Headquarters. Where are you? Come on, there!”

He kept repeating the words “Police Headquarters” rather, loudly. The rapping on the door stopped and the knob spun and the door was smashed open.

Eva saw a small emaciated gray man with a brand-new felt hat on his head and an old blue serge suit standing alertly in the doorway, his right hand in his hip pocket.

“What’s this about Police Headquarters?” demanded the newcomer, not moving and looking around. The white maid and Kinumé were peering in fright over his shoulder.

“I think—” began Eva, then remembered what the brown man had told her and stopped.

The man in the doorway was puzzled. “You Miss Leith?” he asked courteously, still looking around without moving

“Police Headquarters!” yelled the brown man from the bedroom. “What the hell’s the matter with this line? Hey! Operator!” They heard the violent jiggling of the hook.

The little gray man moved then, swiftly; but the brown man moved even more swiftly, for they met outside the bedroom and the brown man’s shoulders filled the doorway.

Eva, sitting on the couch, felt like a spectator at an exciting melodrama. She could only sit and watch, and feel her heart hammering at the base of her throat. Only this was real. It was real melodrama... real.

“That’s service,” drawled the brown man. “They send a fly-cop up before you can even tell ’em there’s been a crime. Hello, Guilfoyle. How’s the missus?”

The grey-haired man scowled. “So it’s you again, huh? What the hell is this merry-go-round?” He turned to Eva. “I said you Miss Leith — Karen Leith? I was sent up here—”

Kinumé, from the doorway, burst into a cascade of sibilant Japanese. The brown man glanced her way, and she stopped. Both maids, thought Eva suddenly, seemed to know him. Then he caught Guilfoyle’s arm and spun him about.

“That’s not Karen Leith, you dumb cluck. That’s Miss Eva MacClure. Take your hat off to a lady.”

“Listen, Terry,” said Guilfoyle plaintively. “Don’t start, now. What is this, anyway? I was sent—”

“I said take your hat off,” laughed the brown man, and he twitched the new felt hat off Guilfoyle’s head. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “You’ll find Miss Leith in there.”

Guilfoyle stooped for his hat, petulantly. “Take your hands off me, you. What is this? I get an order from the boss to come down here and all of a sudden I walk into Terry Ring.” His pale features sharpened with suspicion. “Say! Crime? Did you say a crime?”

So that was his name, thought Eva. Terry Ring. Probably Terence. He did look Irish. And he was so different now with this man, Guilfoyle, this detective. Good-humored; yes, quite good-humored, his gray eyes crinkling like crêpe at the corners, his hard lips smiling. Only his eyes remained as they had been when he had walked in on her. Watchful. He had watched her. Now he was watching Guilfoyle.

Terry Ring stepped aside with a mock bow and the detective ran by him into the bedroom.

“Didn’t I tell you to take your hat off?” said Terry Ring. “Now will you take your hat off?”

He looked after Guilfoyle, still smiling; but his left hand made a slight soothing gesture in Eva’s direction that was so friendly she doubled up on the couch and began to weep normally and luxuriously into the haven of her hands.

Terry Ring then stepped into the bedroom without looking back and shut the door; and through her sobs Eva heard the exclamation of the man Guilfoyle and the clatter of the telephone being snatched from Karen’s writing-desk.

8

Things happened after that. Eva watched them without really seeing them or hearing their meaningless sounds. Time must have passed, but Eva sat on the couch unconscious of it, suspended in haze.

The sitting-room was suddenly overrun, she was conscious of that; as if it had been a caterpillar’s nest one moment sleek and white and still and the next eruptive with crawling larvae.

There were men, many men, only men. First two uniformed officers from a radio car; she saw their insignia. Then two plain-clothes men from some precinct. Then a big man, bigger than Terry Ring, with the biggest shoulders Eva had ever seen; the man’s name was Sergeant Velie and although he seemed to know Terry Ring they did not speak. Then there was a little gray man, littler and grayer than Guilfoyle, with an air of authority and a mild voice and very, very sharp eyes, whom everyone greeted respectfully and whose name seemed to be Inspector Breen, or Queen — Eva didn’t quite catch it. There were also men with cameras and men who went about like women with little brushes and bottles. The two rooms filled with smoke. It was like Saturday night at a men’s political club.

Finally there was a man named Prouty with a black cigar and a doctor’s bag, who went into the bedroom and shut the door. When he came out two men in uniform brought in a basket and went into the bedroom and shut the door. Then the two men came out with the basket, and it seemed heavier than before, because Eva could see the effort with which they carried it.

Eva wondered what they would be carrying in a basket, like a side of beef.

There were questions, too, while Terry Ring jeered at the busy men about him and contrived always to be near Eva with a word, a glance, an air.

Inspector Queen asked some questions himself, speaking very mildly to Kinumé and the new maid, whose name Eva discovered was Geneva O’Mara; and in a most fatherly and sympathetic tone to Eva herself, asking his little questions and smiling and saying things in undertones to men named Flint and Piggott and Hagstrom and Ritter.

And all the while men wandered about without the least semblance of plan, and others crawled up and down the attic stairs and shouted for help and called encouragement to one another and made jokes that Eva felt dimly were in bad taste.

Once Eva felt a hand on her shoulder and she turned to find little Kinumé standing brokenly by the couch, the wrinkled old face contorted with pain, the slanted eyes red with weeping. She groped for Kinumé’s hand and pressed it, feeling very motherly towards the old Japanese woman. That was not long after the two men carried the basket out.

She made Kinumé sit beside her; and the old woman rocked a little in her grief, hiding her face in the folds of her kimono sleeves. Eva was surprised at that; somehow she had never thought of a Japanese as capable of emotion. It struck her suddenly that just because their eyes were shaped differently was no sign they possessed no tear-ducts. The discovery so warmed Eva’s heart that she embraced the old, fragile shoulders.

There was talk about the brown man, too — a bit here, some scraps there — hilarious references to his past, present, and probable future, and some cruel comments on his paternity. Eva found herself ignored and almost pleasantly listening in the ferment; nothing was real, anyway, and all this, while it had undoubtedly happened, couldn’t possibly have happened. All the rules of human conduct were suspended: one could eavesdrop, laugh, die, murder, do anything at all while one’s head swam in the hurly-burly and smoke and questions and merriment.

It seemed Terry Ring was one of those strange creatures known as a “private detective”. He knew all the regular police and they all knew him; but there was animosity between them. The gibes were thinly sheathed and barbed.

He was a “self-made man,” it appeared, rising out of the miasma of the East Side where, despite all better fortune, he still lived. He was twenty-eight — “a mere broth.” In the past he had been circus barker and sandhog, race-track gambler and checker in a meat-packing house, hobo, professional baseball player, pool shark, and, for a short time, Hollywood extra. Eva thought it odd a man so young should have been all these things; he must have begun early, she thought; she felt a spasm of pity for him. She knew instinctively that he was an orphan, a product of the streets, one of the very children she contended with daily at her settlement house. How he had drifted into his present occupation did not clearly come out; someone said it was “the breaks,” and there was reference to a notorious jewel-robbery in Hollywood, a grateful motion-picture star, innuendoes that Terry Ring tossed off lightly, while his eyes remained, unrelaxing, on Eva.

But always Inspector Queen came back with some pertinent little question — when Terry Ring had got there — how it was neither Kinumé nor Geneva O’Mara had heard him come into the house — how it was there were no footprints in the soft earth below the ell-roof, where the “killer” had “undoubtedly” dropped in making his escape — what Terry was doing there at all.

“Be a good boy, now, Terry,” said Inspector Queen good-naturedly. “I’ve always been a friend of yours. What were you doing here to-day?”

“I had a date with Karen.”

“The O’Mara girl says you were here last week, too.”

“I had a date with her then, too,” said Terry with a wink at the Inspector; and they both chuckled and the Inspector nodded in a pleased way, quite as if this were gospel truth, but all the while his sharp, sharp eyes went from Eva to Terry and then to Kinumé and finally back to Eva.

“And you, Miss MacClure — didn’t you hear anything at all in the twenty minutes you sat here — a gasp, a cry, a word, any sound at all?”

Eva shook her head; she saw Terry Ring behind the Inspector, tall as a tree, looking at her. “I was reading a book. And... and thinking.”

“Not really reading, then, eh?” beamed the old man.

“I... I’d just got myself engaged to be married, you see,” sighed Eva. “So—”

“Oh! I see. Naturally. Naturally you’d be thinking. Deaf as a post, I’ll bet. It’s too bad. There must have been some sound.”

He moved away and Eva saw Terry Ring move with him, turning abruptly on his heel and going into the bedroom... The bedroom. The bedroom.

Panic seized her. That waste-paper basket... the half-scissors had fallen into the basket when she had dropped it. Were there papers in the basket? It seemed — yes, there were. Perhaps they wouldn’t find... But they would. Eva knew they would. The police always found everything. They’d know it was the weapon in a minute. They had been looking for it for some time. Of course. Karen had been stabbed. There was always the chance the murderer had left his weapon behind. They’d look until they found it. If only she dared follow them...

Terry Ring had gone into the bedroom and no one had stopped him. They tolerated him, that was it. He was a privileged character. Not even a reporter had been admitted — she heard them all over the house downstairs clamoring angrily. But Terry Ring stalked about like a — well, like some sort of minor god with a special dispensation from the police department. They must know him very well. They must have confidence in his integrity, or they wouldn’t... Or would they? Perhaps they suspected him! Perhaps they were watching him, giving him rope... Eva shivered.

All he had told them was that he had had an appointment with Karen for five — that seemed significant to the funny little Inspector — and that he had come in, finding the downstairs door open (which Geneva O’Mara denied) just before Guilfoyle, who stood about now watching his mates’ activity with a grieved expression. He had found the body and Miss MacClure over it in a state of near-collapse. He had tried to telephone Headquarters. And that was all... Eva had fitted her story to his. She had come to call on Karen, Kinumé had told her Karen was writing, she had waited in the sitting-room, and then when the telephone rang and went unanswered she had gone into the bedroom, thinking something had happened to Karen. She had been there only a moment when Terry Ring had come in and found her.

They asked Kinumé questions, and the old woman in her broken English told about Eva’s arrival and the deckle-edged writing paper which, she claimed, Karen had sent her for only a short time before Eva came. They came to Eva for a verification of Karen’s handwriting with the crumpled letter. They had found no other writing-paper in the bedroom, it appeared. Then they took Kinumé away and questioned her some more.

The little Inspector seemed bothered by the strange telephone call. Terry Ring stood about and just smiled. He kept smiling all the time now.

But that little half-scissors, thought Eva. Had they found it? She kept glancing at men’s faces, trying not to appear anxious. And what would the brown man say when they found it? He would probably — Eva’s cheek tingled again. He did slap people so. Then she felt absurd and watched some more. He would blame her for not telling him about it. Everything was so mixed up. She leaned back against the couch, too sick to think any longer.

Inspector Queen was saying: “Miss MacClure.”

Eva glanced up. He was standing before her, smiling, and there was a man with an inky pad and some small sheets of marked paper beside him.

It had come. It had come! What was he saying? She tried desperately to concentrate.

“Now don’t be alarmed, Miss MacClure. This is going to be very helpful to us.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Terry Ring come out of the bedroom. The Inspector had come out of the bedroom, too. Eva sent one full glance at the brown man, and looked quickly away. He knew; the Inspector knew. No, the Inspector couldn’t; he didn’t have her fingerprints yet. But Terry Ring remembered what she had said about the bird and the stones. He knew.

“In your confused state,” said the Inspector, patting her shoulder, “you must have touched some things in the bedroom; and certainly you handled many objects in this room. We can discount this room, because you say no one went through it all the time you were in here. But the bedroom is important.”

“Yes,” said Eva stiffly.

“Now we have found some fingerprints in the bedroom — several different sets — and we must find out whose prints they are. We must find out which are Miss Leith’s, which are the Japanese woman’s, which are yours, and so on. What’s left over may be... You see?”

“What about mine?” asked the brown man, winking.

“Oh, we’ll take yours, too,” chuckled the Inspector. “Although I know darned well you didn’t leave any. I wouldn’t want you as a murderer.” They laughed together, heartily.

She held out her hands, trying to keep them from trembling, and the fingerprint man did things very swiftly with them. It was all over in an incredibly short time, and Eva stared at the ten inky patterns on the two sheets of marked paper.

“So those are my fingerprints,” she thought. It was all over. It was all over. She was so exhausted she could not even cry. She could only sit there and watch the little Inspector patter off with his men, and feel Terry Ring’s terrifying smile transfixing her from above.

Eva had just decided that she must never breathe a word about her handling of the scissors to anyone — not to Dick, not to Dr. MacClure, not even to Terry Ring. Perhaps he didn’t remember. Perhaps she hadn’t really got her fingerprints on the half-scissors at all. Perhaps no one would ever find out.

Then she heard the voice, and it was so welcome and so anxious and so warm with distress that it poured over Eva like a balm, soothing her and making her legs tremble with reaction.

Everything would be all right. Now everything must be all right. It was Dick. She needn’t worry any longer about Terry Ring or Inspector Queen or anyone.

She stretched her arms out to him and he dropped to the couch beside her, his handsome face puckered with worry and tenderness. She knew everyone was looking — Terry Ring, too; she saw him looking — but she didn’t care. She burrowed into Dr. Scott’s arms like a child, rubbing her nose on his chest.

“It’s all right, darling,” he was saying over and over. “Take it easy. It’s all right.”

“Oh, Dick,” she sighed, and burrowed some more. She was glad, inside, that Terry Ring was looking. She had her own man, now, to take care of her. He needn’t think he was almighty. This was her family, now, her very own. He was a stranger. She put up her face and kissed Dr. Scott. Terry Ring smiled.

The doctor sat crooning his song of reassurance over her and Eva felt peaceful. Nothing could go wrong now.

“For God’s sake, Eva, what happened?” whispered Dr. Scott at last. “I can’t believe it. It’s too damned unreal.”

It was not all right. Not any more. She had forgotten. She was a fool ever to have thought, even for a second, that her troubles were over. “What happened?” What happened? What happened was that she had lost Dick forever.

Eva sat up slowly. “Nothing, Dick. It’s just— Someone’s murdered Karen. Nothing at all!”

“You poor kid.” His doctor’s eyes were looking her over. “Why don’t you cry it out?” He seemed to feel that her calmness was unnatural. If he only knew!

“I’ve cried already. Don’t worry about me, Dick. I won’t make a fool of myself.”

“I want you to make a fool of yourself. You’ll feel better. You mustn’t forget, darling — there’s your father.”

Yes, thought Eva; there was Dr. MacClure. There was Dr. MacClure.

“You’ve got to be ready for him. This is going to be a terrible shock to him. When he comes, it’s you who’ll have to comfort him.”

“I know, Dick. I’ll be all right.”

“They’ve notified him already. I’ve been talking to that Inspector. They got the Panthia on the wire. He won’t be here before Wednesday morning... Eva.”

“Yes, Dick.”

“You aren’t listening.”

“Oh, I am, Dick, I am!”

“I don’t know what it was — something bothered me after you left, something made me restless and I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d come down here and pick you up... Eva.”

“Yes, Dick.”

She felt his arms tighten about her. “I want you to do something for me. And for yourself.”

She pushed away a little, staring up into his eyes.

“I want you to marry me right away. To-night.”

Marry him! How she had wanted to this afternoon — how she wanted to now, this instant, without even getting up from the couch!

“Silly. We have no license.” How could she talk so calmly?

“To-morrow then. We’ll go down to City Hall to-morrow.”

“But—?”

“You can do it all in one. We’ll be married before your father gets back. Quietly... darling.”

Eva thought desperately. How tell him things had changed since the afternoon? He would want to know why. And she didn’t want ever to have to tell him. There was a noose around her neck. All it needed was someone — Inspector Queen, that huge and frightening Sergeant Velie — to come along and yank it tight. But if she married Dick now, the noose would tighten around his dear neck, too. She couldn’t drag him into her own troubles. The scandal, the papers, all the sucking leeches...

A voice said to her inside: “Tell him. Everything. He’ll understand. He’ll believe you. He’ll stand by you.”

But would he? After all, it did look black against her — if you knew the facts. But Terry Ring knew the facts, and he... But she was in his power, that was it. He had some axe of his own to grind. She was a pawn to him — he didn’t really believe her innocent. How could anyone? How could Dick, if he knew? It just wasn’t possible for anyone else to have killed Karen. Terry Ring had said so. It would be too much to expect even from a lover — perfect faith in the face of the most damning facts. And she would never be able to bear Dick’s standing by her if he thought her a murderess.

Everything was against her. That time she had had an argument with Karen... over what? She did not remember. But it was a bitter argument, and Elsie — Karen’s former white maid — had overheard. Of course they would dig up Elsie; they would dig up everyone who had ever been connected with Karen... Then there was the time — only a few months ago — when Dr. MacClure had had his understanding with Karen. Eva had been against it. Eva had always thought Karen strange. She had never liked Karen; everyone knew that. When you analysed it, there was too much shut-in about her, too much mystery, an air of hidden things; and hidden things were so often shameful. And Karen had known. They had always been polite to each other after the Leith-MacClure engagement was settled; but it had been a women’s politeness, sharp and acid underneath. Suppose they found—

“No. Dick!” cried Eva. “No!”

He was surprised at her vehemence. “But, Eva, I thought—”

“It’s different now, Dick. With Karen dead, all this hateful mystery, daddy... I couldn’t now. Not for a while. Please understand, darling. Please.”

“Of course I understand.” He patted her hand. But she knew he did not; there was something almost queer in the depths of his eyes. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have suggested it. I only thought it might help—”

“I know Dick. You’re the dearest dear. Oh, Dick!”

She cried then, against him, and he seemed to take a rather absent comfort from her tears. They sat there in the center of the noisy room, oblivious to everything.

Then Terry Ring said: “Hello. Pulling the weeps again?”

Eva sat up like a shot. He was smiling down at them, as cool and immaculate and unruffled as if murders and crying women and dangerous secrets were part of his everyday existence.

Dr. Scott rose, and the two big men looked at each other. “Who’s this?” he said abruptly. “Why don’t you fellows let her alone? Can’t you see what a shock she’s had?”

“Dick,” said Eva, putting her hand on his arm. “You don’t understand. This is the gentleman who... who came in when I found... This is Mr. Ring.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Dr. Scott colored. “Nasty business.”

“Uh-huh,” said Mr. Ring, and then he looked at Eva. There was a question and a warning in his gray eyes. Eva almost gasped. The pure, unadulterated nerve! Warning her not to say anything to her own fiancé.

But then Eva remembered that she hadn’t said anything to her own fiancé after all, and why; and she felt so miserable and alone she almost burst into tears again, only she had no more tears left. She could only sit there dumbly and, for the second time in a few months, but with much more point, wish herself completely and peacefully dead.

9

Tuesday passed blurrily. Eva had to go down to Police Headquarters. Terry Ring was there; he did not speak to her. Dr. Scott was a little stiff in the iron surroundings, but he stood by her and tried to defend her from everything. There were statements to sign and more questions to answer. Eva did not eat all day. In the evening Dr. Scott took her back to the MacClure apartment in the East Sixties. There was a cable waiting from Dr. MacClure.

It said simply: “Do not worry. Docking Wednesday A.M. Chin up. Love. Dad.”

Eva wailed at the magnificence of it and completely ignored the pile of telephone messages on the foyer table — condolences from friends which had poured in all day and driven poor black Venetia crazy. Eva flung herself on the maple bed and let Dr. Scott put cold compresses to her forehead. The telephone rang, and Venetia reported that it was a Mr. Terence Ring on the wire. Dr. Scott growled that Miss MacClure was not at home, and Eva did not have the strength to argue.

He gave Eva something nasty to drink and she fell asleep. When she awoke at ten he was still sitting by her, scowling at the window. He went into the kitchen and came back, and a little later Venetia brought some hot soup. Eva felt so drowsy she fell asleep over the soup and did not know until next morning that Dr. Scott had flung himself on the living-room divan and slept there in his clothes all night, to the complete horrification of Venetia, whose sturdy Baptist soul was constantly rebelling at the loosenesses of modern life.

Wednesday morning on the way to the midtown pier they had to dodge reporters like a pair of fleeing criminals. But when they finally reached the sanctuary of the big shed there was Terry Ring, in a honey-colored gabardine suit and a brown shirt and a yellow tie, lounging near the Customs desk and looking bored. He did not even glance at them. Dr. Scott surveyed the tall tan figure with a wrinkle between his eyes.

The doctor left Eva in the waiting-room and hurried off for information. No sooner had he gone than Eva looked up to find the brown man before her.

“Hi, gorgeous,” said Terry. “Look better this morning. Where’d you get that hat? It looks swell.”

“Mr. Ring,” said Eva hurriedly, glancing about.

“Terry to you.”

“Terry. I didn’t get a chance to thank you for all you—”

“Skip it. I’m a dope. Listen, Eva.” He said it so naturally Eva scarcely noticed it. “Did you spill the real story to your boyfriend?”

Eva looked down at her perforated pigskin gloves. “No.”

“That’s a smart girl.” She was angry with herself for not wanting to look up at him. “Just keep on keeping your mouth shut.”

“No,” said Eva.

“I say yes!”

“No. Please. I couldn’t keep it from my father. It’s not right, Mr. Ring.”

“Terry.” She knew he was angry by the growl in his voice. “Don’t you realize the jam you’re in? First you’re smart, then you’re dumb!”

“Terry.” Eva felt she had to say it. “Just what is it you’re helping me for?”

He did not answer. She looked up then, and saw his eyes flickering in an embarrassed and yet furious way.

“If it’s money,” said Eva quickly, “I—”

She thought he would strike her then and there, in full view of the waiting-room. “Listen to me. Listen to me.” He stooped, his brown face mahogany with passion. Then it went suddenly mauve and he said quietly: “How much you got?”

“Oh,” said Eva. “I’m so sorry.”

“Afraid I was going to shake you down, huh? Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again.”

Eva felt terribly ashamed; she put her gloved hand on his arm, but he jerked it away and stood straight again. Under the front dip of her yellow coolie felt she saw his fists open and close.

“I’m really sorry, Terry. But what could I think?”

“Because I’m a roughneck. Huh!”

“I don’t know why you’re doing this for me—”

“I’m a guy in a tin shirt. I go around rescuing maidens in distress.”

“But if I can trust a perfect stranger, then surely I can confide in my own father?”

“Suit yourself.”

“And then I can’t put you in any more danger than—”

“Yah,” he jeered. “Who’s going to help you?”

She felt her temper surge. “Dick! You’re the most—”

“Why didn’t you give him the lowdown, then?”

Eva’s eyes fell. “There was a... reason.”

“Scared he’d run out on you?”

“No!”

“Only a louse would do that. You’re afraid. You don’t want to find out your pretty boy’s a louse. Don’t tell me.”

“You’re simply the most loathsome—”

“You know the spot you’re in. That old shark Queen doesn’t miss many tricks. I’ve seen him work before. He’s suspicious. You know he is.”

“I’m afraid,” whispered Eva.

“You ought to be.” He stalked away. There was boyish cruelty in the swagger of his walk; he had pushed his tan fedora off his forehead in a bitter sort of way.

Eva watched him through a mist. He did not leave the pier. He went back to the Customs desk to be surrounded by a swarm of reporters.

“The Panthia’s in Quarantine,” reported Dr. Scott, dropping to the bench. “They’ll be taken off by a police boat — special arrangement with the port authorities. They should be on their way in now.”

“They?” repeated Eva.

“Your father and a fellow named Queen. Seems they met on the boat.”

“Queen!”

Dr. Scott nodded gloomily. “That Inspector’s son. No connection with the police. He writes detective stories or something. Wasn’t he at Karen’s coming-out party?”

“Queen,” said Eva again in a damp voice.

“I can’t imagine what he can have to do with it,” muttered Dr. Scott.

“Queen,” said Eva feebly for the third time. She didn’t like that name at all. It was uncanny how it kept turning up. She remembered vaguely the tallish young man in pince-nez eyeglasses at Karen’s party — he had seemed a decent enough sort, and he had looked at her quite humanly. She had even been rude to him, which was pleasant. But that was then. Now...

She leaned against Dr. Scott’s shoulder, afraid to think. He was looking down at her again with that funny look — so like the look Terry Ring had given her — and already, despite the fact that he was tender with her and she was so grateful for his tenderness, something had sprung up between them that had never existed before.

The day of the chocolate soda seemed inconceivably distant.

Then Dr. Scott saw the reporters swooping down on them, and he pulled her to her feet and they fled.

Eva never recalled much about her reunion with Dr. MacClure, probably because she had a guilty conscience and chose to forget as much of it as she could. For all her resolutions and the stiffening she had given herself for two nights and a day, it was she who broke down and he who was steady. She wept on his breast as she had wept when broken dolls were human, and the fields about the Nantasket house had seemed the spread of the world. She wept because he was so steady.

It was all the more tragic because he was so thin and earthy-colored and aged. His eyes were hot red circles, as if he had done his own crying in private on board ship and had not slept since hearing the news.

The tallish young man in pince-nez had murmured something sympathetic and vanished for a while on the pier, to return not long after from the direction of the telephone booths, looking grim. Probably telephoning his father, thought Eva with a shiver. Then he spoke negligently to a group of loungers with large feet and everything took on acceleration — Customs, formalities, even delays. And the press, who had been irresistible, ceased to molest them. When the doctor’s luggage was on its way to the MacClure apartment young Mr. Queen herded the three of them towards the taxicabs, quite as if he had construed himself their male duenna.

Eva contrived to linger behind with her fiancé. “Dick — would you mind? I’d like to talk to daddy alone.”

“Mind? Of course not.” Dr. Scott kissed her. “I’ll make some excuse and beat it. I understand, dear.”

Oh, Dick, thought Eva, you don’t understand at all! But she smiled wanly at him and let him take her to where Dr. MacClure and Ellery Queen were waiting.

“Sorry, sir,” said Dick to the doctor. “I’ve simply got to get back to the hospital. And now that you’re here—”

Dr. MacClure rubbed his forehead in a tired way. “Go on, Dick. I’ll take care of Eva.”

“See you to-night, darling?” Scott kissed her again, glanced rather defiantly at Ellery, and drove off in a cab.

“All aboard,” called Ellery. “Jump in, Miss MacClure.”

Eva did not jump in. She pressed her pigskin bag to her breast and looked terrified.

“Where are we going?”

“With Mr. Queen,” said Dr. MacClure. “Don’t worry, honey.”

“But, Daddy! I wanted to talk to you.”

“We can talk with Mr. Queen, Eva,” said the doctor oddly. “I’ve sort of engaged him.”

“Not really engaged, Miss MacClure,” said Ellery, smiling. “Let’s say as a matter of friendship. Will you get in?”

“Oh,” said Eva in a choked voice, and got in.

And all the way uptown, while Mr. Queen chattered on about European politics and the quaint ways of the Bretons, Eva wondered with a sinking stomach how kind Mr. Queen would be when he learned the truth.

Djuna, the Queens’ dark-eyed boy-of-all-work, had to be forcibly restrained from prolonging his joyful demonstration at the return from abroad of his idol. Eventually Ellery managed to quiet him and get him busy in the kitchen preparing coffee. And for a while Ellery busied himself about their comforts, with cigarets and cushions and Djuna’s coffee and gossip.

Then the doorbell rang, and Djuna opened the door. Whereupon a tall brown young man with his hands in his pockets sauntered through the foyer without being asked. Eva caught her breath.

“Hi, Queen,” said Terry Ring, scaling his hat on to the mantel. “Remember Mrs Ring’s brat Terence?”

Even here!

If Ellery was displeased at the interruption, he did not show it. He shook hands cordially and introduced Terry to Dr. MacClure.

“My Dad’s told me all about your part in this deplorable business, Terry,” said Ellery. “That is — all he knows, which doesn’t seem to be much.”

Terry smiled, eyed Dr. MacClure, who returned the stare, and sat down.

Eva murmured, sipping her coffee. “So you know Mr. Ring?”

“Who doesn’t? Terry and I are brothers under the skin. We’ve both pestered the department so long they hate the sight of us.”

“Only difference,” said Terry amiably, “is I work at it and you don’t. I always say,” he continued, speaking over Eva’s head, “you can trust a guy who works for his living, but you can’t always trust a... what do you call it? — dilettante.”

So he didn’t want her to tell Ellery Queen. As if she would! She suppressed a shiver.

And then she sat very still. Mr. Ellery Queen was regarding her with fixity. He turned to regard Terry Ring the same way. Then he sat down with a cigaret and regarded both of them together.

“Well, Terry,” he said at last, “and what’s the purpose of this unexpected visit?”

“Friendly, just friendly,” grinned Terry.

“I suppose you know you’re being watched.”

“Huh? Oh, sure,” said Terry with a wave of his hand.

“I’m informed that since the afternoon of Miss Leith’s death you’ve been following Miss MacClure about like a masher.”

The brown man’s eyes contracted. “That’s my business.”

“And mine,” said Dr. MacClure quietly.

“It couldn’t be,” said Ellery, “that you’re afraid Miss MacClure may say something to someone which might be damaging — let’s say, to you?”

Terry opened a fresh packet of cigarets. Ellery got up and politely held a match for him. “What put that idea in your head?”

“Dr. MacClure and I have decided you know rather more than you’ve told my father.”

“That makes you a couple of smart hombres. Been spending the doc’s dough on transatlantic telephone calls?”

Ellery blew some smoke. “I think we’d better start with a fresh slate. All right, Doctor.”

Eva said in a rush: “Daddy, can’t we — I mean, let’s have this talk with Mr. Queen some other time. Let’s go home. I’m sure Mr. Queen and Mr. Ring will excuse us.”

“Eva,” said Dr. MacClure heavily. He placed his hairy hands on her shoulders. “I want you to tell me something.”

Eva was so frightened she gnawed at the forefinger of her glove. She had never seen Dr. MacClure so pale, so stern. The three men just looked at her; she felt trapped.

“Eva.” The doctor tilted her face up. “Did you kill Karen?”

The question burst over her with such a shock she could not reply. She could only stare back into Dr. MacClure’s troubled blue eyes in a daze.

“You’ve got to answer me, honey. I must know.”

“And I,” said Ellery, “I must know, too. As a matter of fact, Miss MacClure, you’re doing your father a great injustice by looking at him with such horror. The question is really mine.”

She dared not move, dared not glance at Terry Ring.

“I’d like to have one thing understood,” said Ellery cheerfully, and Dr. MacClure made a broken gesture and sat down on the divan. “We’re four people in a room, and these walls haven’t even the vestige of ears. And my father is away.”

“Your father,” choked Eva.

“You must understand, Miss MacClure, that there’s no sentiment in our family where business is concerned. My father lives his life, and I live mine. Our methods, our techniques, are different. My father looks for evidence, I look for truth. They don’t always turn out to lie in the same direction.”

“What do you know?” asked Terry Ring abruptly. “Let’s cut the prelims.”

“All right, Terry, it’s cards on the table. I’ll tell you just what I know.” Ellery crushed out his cigaret. “I’ve been in constant communication with my father from the Panthia. He hasn’t been specific, but I think he’s suspicious of both of you.” Eva lowered her eyes. “Dad works cautiously. I should say that neither of you is out of the woods.”

“Eva, honey,” groaned Dr. MacClure. “Why don’t you—”

“Please, Doctor. Now I want to explain my own position. I’ve got to know Dr. MacClure well, and to like him immensely. I’d met Miss Leith and you, Miss MacClure, and your father has been kind enough to tell me many things about the background of your relationship which, frankly, have aroused my interest. I agreed to help. My father knows that; I’ve told him. From now on he goes his way and I go mine. What I learn I keep to myself, what he learns he keeps to himself.”

“Come on,” drawled Terry Ring. “You’re wasting time.”

“Is it so valuable? Now from what I’ve gathered, it appears that an unknown assailant got into Miss Leith’s house through the attic window, came down the attic stairs, stabbed Miss Leith, and made his escape by the same route. This is a theory. But a theory only. For there’s apparently not a single clue, not a single item of evidence, to support it... no footprint in the garden under the ell-roof, no fingerprints so far, nothing at all but a hypothetical way of entrance and exit. It’s the only theory which accounts for Miss Leith’s murder on the basis of physical accessibility.” He shrugged. “Unless you stabbed her yourself.”

“Oh,” said Eva faintly, and Terry started.

“Forgive me for speaking so bluntly, but as I’ve explained to your father, Miss MacClure, I must treat these things as problems in mathematics. There is no evidence to support the theory of an outsider using that open window and door. And you were admittedly in the next room.”

“Eva—” began Dr. MacClure in an agonized voice.

“If you can’t satisfy me about your innocence,” continued Ellery gently, “I shall step out now. With you guilty, this is no case for me — and I shouldn’t care to take it for Dr. MacClure’s sake.”

“Satisfy you!” cried Eva, springing up. “How can I? How could anyone!”

“Did you?” muttered the doctor. “Did you, honey?”

Eva seized her temples with both hands, pushing the coolie hat back. “I think I’m going... No one could believe me. There’s nothing I can say. I... I’m just trapped!”

“Stop it,” said Terry in a low voice.

“I won’t! I didn’t kill Karen! Why should I want to kill her? I was happy — Dick had just promised to marry me — I rushed over to tell Karen. Even if I had a reason, would I have murdered Karen feeling as I did Monday afternoon? Kill!” She sank back in the chair, trembling. “I couldn’t kill a... a bug.”

The doctor stared at her with a different light in his eyes.

“But if I told you the truth,” continued Eva hopelessly, “I—”

“Don’t be a fool,” growled Terry. “Remember what I said!”

“Yes?” prompted Ellery.

“You’d have to say I did it. Anyone would, anyone. Anyone!” She began to cry on the arm of the chair.

“Perhaps that’s just the reason,” murmured Ellery, “I wouldn’t.”

Terry Ring looked at her, and then he shrugged and went to the window to smoke furiously. Dr. MacClure leaned over to brush her hat off and stroke her hair.

Ellery went to the chair and lifted Eva’s face.

Then Eva sobbed: “I’ll tell you everything.”

Terry swore and hurled his cigaret butt out the window.

When Eva was finished she lay back and closed her eyes, drained and empty. Dr. MacClure was cracking his knuckles in a savage, masochistic way, glaring at his shoes.

Terry said from the window: “All right, Sherlock. What’s the verdict?”

Ellery went into his bedroom and shut the door. They heard the tinkle of the telephone. Then he came out and said: “I really can’t do anything until I’ve gone over that house. I’ve asked Morel, Miss Leith’s lawyer, to meet us there. There are some questions I want to ask him. Miss MacClure.”

“Yes?” said Eva without opening her eyes.

“I want you to get a hold on your nerves. You can help tremendously by being sane about this thing.”

“I’m all right.”

“She’s all right,” said Terry.

“And you, Terry. You’re a professional. Apparently you spotted Miss MacClure’s predicament in a moment. What do you think?”

“I think she’s okay just as long as you keep your mouth shut about that bolted door.”

“Always the iconoclast,” murmured Ellery. He took a turn about the room. “I confess it’s a poser. If we assume Miss MacClure’s innocence, the thing’s impossible. It can’t have been done. And yet apparently it was... Terry, why were you in Karen Leith’s house Monday?”

“None of your business.”

“That’s hardly cooperative. And how did you know a Headquarters detective was due there by appointment with Karen Leith, at her own telephoned request Sunday morning, at five o’clock Monday?”

“A little birdie told me.”

“Most important of all, why did you become an accomplice of a girl whom the facts said was a murderess?”

“I’ll tell you that,” rapped Terry, swinging about. “Because it’s too damned pat. Because she’s the only one. Because things just don’t happen that way. Because I think she’s being taken for a ride!”

“Ah! Frame-up, eh?”

“Frame-up?” Dr. MacClure shook his head wearily. “That’s impossible, Ring. There just isn’t anyone—”

“But mostly,” said Terry, going over to Eva and smiling down at her, “because I think she’s telling the truth. Maybe I’m a sucker; I don’t know. But stick to it, kid. I’m with you to the end of the line.”

Eva flushed; her lower lip quivered. Terry scowled then and began to march across the room.

“I haven’t told you, Ring,” began the doctor awkwardly, “how much I appreciate—”

“Thank him,” said Terry, disappearing into the foyer. “He goes for that stuff in a big way.” And they heard the slam of the front door.

“I think,” said Ellery dryly to Eva, “you’ve made a conquest. It’s the only time, to my knowledge, that the feat has been accomplished.”

10

On the way downtown in a taxicab Ellery asked: “Did anyone know in advance that you were going to Karen Leith’s house Monday afternoon?”

“No one except Dick.” Eva leaned against her father’s shoulder; they both seemed to take comfort from it. “And Dick only knew at a few minutes to four.”

“You went on impulse?”

“Entirely.”

“Terry Ring is wrong then. You couldn’t have been framed.”

To their astonishment they found the peripatetic Mr. Ring in the Washington Square house, guying Inspector Queen, who seemed to be doing nothing at all but enjoying the banter. The two Queens greeted each other with their eyes and then Ellery introduced Dr. MacClure, who looked tired and ill.

“Why don’t you go on home, Doctor?” said the Inspector. “This can’t be pleasant for you. We’ll talk some other time.”

Dr. MacClure shook his head and put his arm about Eva.

The Inspector shrugged. “Well, son, here’s the layout. Kept just as it was found, except for the body.”

Ellery’s nostrils were undulating a little. He gave only a glance to the sitting-room and went straight into the bedroom. They followed him in silence.

Ellery stood on the threshold and looked. He looked and looked without stirring. “Find the weapon?”

“Well... yes,” said the Inspector. “Yes, I think we have.”

Ellery glanced up at his coy tone and began to prowl. “By the way,” he said, looking through the writing-desk, “just how and why did Miss Leith call for a detective?”

“She phoned Headquarters around nine Sunday morning and asked to have a man sent over here at five o’clock Monday. Guilfoyle came and found her dead, with Miss MacClure and Terry here. As she didn’t say why, we’ll probably never know.”

Eva turned her face away. Everything the little old man said went through her like a knife.

“Are you sure,” asked Ellery, “it was Karen Leith who phoned?”

“The Japanese woman, Kinumé, was right here with her when she called up. Listen, Terry,” chuckled the Inspector, “why don’t you come clean? Give us a break.”

“I’m listening,” said Terry shortly.

“You phoned Karen Leith several times over last week-end — fact, you called her Sunday afternoon. O’Mara girl told me. What was your business with Miss Leith?”

“Who says it was business? You coppers give me a pain.”

Inspector Queen shrugged philosophically. He could wait. He had always been good at waiting... Ellery straightened up and fixed his gaze on the empty birdcage hanging near the low Japanese bed.

“Is that supposed to be symbolism, or was there really a bird in that cage?”

“I don’t know,” said the Inspector. “That’s the way we found it. Was it empty when you came in here Monday, Miss MacClure?”

“I really don’t remember.”

“It was empty,” snapped Terry.

“Oracularly spoken,” said Ellery. “Do you know anything about the bird that probably inhabits it, Doctor?”

“Very little. I’ve seen it around, that’s all. Some sort of Japanese bird that Karen brought back with her from Tokyo nine years ago. She was very much attached to it — gave it as much care as a child. Kinumé would know more about it; they came over together.”

The Inspector went out and Ellery resumed his leisurely inspection of the room. He did not glance once into the passage beyond the open attic door. He did look at the bolt, however. Dr. MacClure sat down on a queer little Japanese footstool and buried his face in his hands. Eva edged closer to Terry. There was something in the room that made talking difficult.

When the Inspector returned he was followed by Kinumé, who carried a second cage — different from the one hanging over the bed. There was a bird in the cage. The white maid, O’Mara, was behind Kinumé, stopping in the doorway and peering in with a stupid, avid, and yet fearful curiosity.

“What a beauty!” exclaimed Ellery, taking the cage from the Japanese woman. “You’re Kinumé; I remember. You are sorrowful that your mistress has been taken from you, Kinumé?”

The old woman lowered her eyes, still red from weeping. “This is evil thing, gentleman,” she muttered.

Ellery looked from her to the bird. The two seemed somehow to go together. There was something exotic about the creature, with its head, wings, and tail of purple and its purplish-chocolate body, with delicate hairlines of white on its throat. It had a strong beak, and from beak to tail it was about a foot long. It seemed to resent Ellery; it fixed its brilliant eyes on him, opened its beak, and emitted a harsh, ugly cry.

“Natural compensation,” remarked Ellery. “There had to be a touch of ugliness somewhere. Kinumé, what is the name of this bird?”

“Kashi-dori,” hissed Kinumé. “You saying — jay. Loo-choo kashi-dori. He come from my land. He old.”

“Loo-choo jay,” said Ellery thoughtfully. “He does look jayish. Why is he not in his cage in this room, Kinumé?”

“Sometime he here, sometime he downstairs. In other cage. In room of sun. He make noise at night. Missie no can sleep.” Kinumé hid her eyes in her kimono sleeves and wept. “Missie love. Missie love more’n anything. Missie take care all time.”

“I’ll say,” said the O’Mara girl unexpectedly from the doorway. Then, startled by the sound of her own voice, she looked around swiftly and began to retreat.

“Just a moment! What was that?” demanded Ellery.

She stopped, hesitated, began fingering her hair. “I didn’t say nothing,” she replied sullenly.

“But you did.”

“Well, she was crazy about that thing.” The girl began to edge towards the sitting-room door again, eyeing the Inspector.

“Come here,” said Ellery. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

“What’s all this fuss about a bird?” scowled the Inspector.

“No fuss at all. I’m just seeking information. What’s your name and how long have you been here?”

“Geneva O’Mara. Three weeks.” She was frightened now, and with a stupid perversity which seemed characteristic she was also ill-humored.

“Do you take care of this bird?”

“She does. But I wasn’t here a week — she was sick—” she interpolated, pointing at Kinumé with Nordic scorn, “so I had to feed him his beef and egg and whozis, and the devil got out of the cage and flew into the backyard and we had a terrible time chasing him. He wouldn’t come down from the roof. I thought Miss Leith would throw a fit, she was that mad. She’d like to fire me on the spot. She was always firing her maids. Elsie told me — that’s the last one. All except her.”

“You bad girl!” cried Kinumé, her slanted eyes flashing.

“You shut up!”

“Please,” said Dr. MacClure; and the white girl took fright again and fled. The Loo-choo jay squawked again. “Take the damned thing out of here,” said the doctor wearily.

“Birds,” said Terry Ring; he looked disgusted.

“You may go,” said Ellery to Kinumé; and she bowed humbly and took the caged bird away.

Ellery was just smoothing out the ball of Japanese stationery on the writing-desk when a fat little man in a crushed linen suit and carrying a briefcase bustled in, mopping his bald spot.

“I’m Morel,” he announced in a squeak. “Miss Leith’s lawyer. Hello, Inspector. Hello, Miss MacClure. Ah, tragedy. The work of some madman, no doubt. And you — I’ve seen your picture — Mr. Ellery Queen, of course.” He offered a wet hand.

“Yes,” said Ellery. “I think you know everyone, then, but Mr. Ring.”

“Mr. Ring,” said Morel, squinting. “How do.” Terry Ring looked at the wet hand. “Uh... now, Mr. Queen, just what—”

“Have you read this letter?”

“Yesterday. Odd that she didn’t finish it. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she was — I mean, before she could finish—” The lawyer coughed.

“Then who crumpled it?” said Terry Ring disdainfully.

Ellery glanced at him and then read the letter. It was written in a small, almost scientifically precise script, and it was dated Monday afternoon.

“How is it,” asked Ellery, looking up, “that Miss Leith asks you to check up on her foreign royalties, Mr. Morel? Didn’t she have a literary representative?”

“Didn’t believe in them. Trusted me absolutely. I’ve been her attorney and agent and heaven knows what else.”

Ellery went on to the second paragraph:

Morel, I want you to do something for me. It is a matter of the utmost importance, and extremely confidential. I know I can trust you never to expo—”

“Hmm,” said Ellery. “Stopped before she explained. I think Terry’s right. She simply changed her mind.”

“It’s important to know what she was referring to,” squeaked Morel. “I want most definitely to know.”

“Who doesn’t?” growled Terry; and Dr. MacClure and Eva went to the writing-desk to read the letter together.

The big man shook his head. “The only thing I can think of that’s important and confidential is a will.”

“No, sir. No, sir. Miss Leith told me only last week that she was eminently satisfied with her will as it stood.”

“She died testate, then?” demanded Ellery.

“Yes. She willed her estate on liquidation to be split into literary endowments for the benefit of several institutions of learning—”

“Colleges,” said Terry, interpreting. He seemed to dislike Morel.

“One endowment,” proceeded the lawyer stiffly, “goes to the Imperial University of Tokyo. She taught there, you know, after her father died.”

“So Dr. MacClure has told me. How about personal bequests?”

“None.”

“But didn’t she intend to change her will in view of her coming marriage with Dr. MacClure?”

“She did not, sir.”

“Wasn’t necessary,” said the doctor tonelessly. “My own income is considerably larger than hers, and she knew it.”

“Just screwy, the whole thing,” decided Terry.

“But didn’t anyone — I mean, any individual — stand to gain by her death?”

“Not a living soul,” squeaked Morel promptly. “Miss Leith had a large annual income from the estate of a long-deceased paternal relative — a great-aunt, I think. Under the terms of the aunt’s will Miss Leith was to receive the income until she attained the age of forty, after which the principal also became hers.”

“Then she died a wealthy woman?”

“Depends,” said the lawyer, “what you mean. Wealth — ha, ha! — is a comparative term. Well-cushioned, I should say.”

“But I thought you said she had inherited a fortune?”

“Oh, not yet! Fact is, she died before the stipulated age for the turning over of the fortune. That is, she died before forty — her fortieth birthday was to have been in October. Missed it by a month, b’George!”

“That’s... interesting, to say the least.”

“Or rather unfortunate. You see, the aunt’s will provided against that contingency, too. If Miss Leith died before she reached the age of forty, the entire aunt’s estate was to go to Miss Leith’s nearest blood-relative.”

“Who is?”

“No one at all. She hadn’t any. Absolutely alone in the world. Told me so herself. And so now the aunt’s estate goes to certain charities specifically provided for in the aunt’s will.”

Inspector Queen scratched his jaw. “Dr. MacClure, was there any disappointed suitor in Miss Leith’s life?”

“No. I was her first — and last.”

“Mr. Morel,” said Ellery, “do you know anything about Miss Leith’s private affairs which might give us a clue to her murder?”

Morel swabbed his bald spot again. “Does this answer you? She told me not long ago that she hadn’t an enemy in the world.”

Terry Ring said: “That’s what she thought.”

Morel looked at him with two bright little eyes, murmured something Delphic, bobbed, and took himself and his briefcase off without ever having opened it. Eva wondered rather hysterically why he had brought it at all.

And Ellery said: “You know, that’s strange. Here’s a woman with everything to live for, to whom death could only have been the cruelest misfortune. She was famous — she had just achieved one of the highest honors possible to an American author. She was potentially — almost immediately — very rich: in a month she was to have inherited a fortune. She was happy, and had every prospect of becoming happier — in a short time she was to have been married to the man of her choice... And suddenly, in the midst of all this beatitude, she’s struck down by an assassin.”

“It’s beyond me,” muttered Dr. MacClure.

“Why do people commit murder? For gain? But no one stood to gain a single penny by her death, except a few public institutions which can scarcely be suspected of homicide. For jealousy? But there was obviously no love-entanglement in her life — this was not a crime passionel. For hate? But you heard what Morel said — she hadn’t an enemy. It’s certainly strange.”

“I wish I knew what to suggest,” said the doctor. There was a stiffness about him that made Eva avert her face.

“That lawyer mightn’t have been so far wrong at that,” said Terry Ring suddenly. “A lunatic.”

And they were silent

Finally Ellery said: “Sit down, Miss MacClure. This is brutal for you people, I know. But I may need you. Sit down.”

“Thank you,” said Eva faintly. “I... I believe I will.” She sat down on the edge of the low bed.

Ellery circled the writing-desk and began to pick at the debris in the waste-paper basket.

“And there’s that rock that broke the window,” complained the Inspector. He pointed his shoe at the rock, lying on the floor exactly where Eva had seen it last.

“Oh, the rock,” said Ellery, glancing at it. “You know, Terry has a theory about that rock, dad. He thinks some child threw it. Mischief.” He continued to delve in the basket.

“He does, does he? Might be, at that.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Ellery, scooping something out of the bottom. He handled it as if it were a bomb.

“Don’t worry about prints,” said the Inspector casually. “It’s been mugged.”

Dr. MacClure came forward with staring, bloodshot eyes. “That’s something new,” he said sharply, with a resurgence of his old force. “I’ve never seen that before, Mr. Queen.”

“It’s not new,” corrected the Inspector. “At least, that’s what the old woman says. She says Miss Leith brought it over with her from Japan.”

It was the half-scissors Eva had discovered on the desk Monday afternoon. The whole implement, when the missing half was in place, Ellery saw at a glance, must have presented the appearance of a bird with brilliant plumage and a beak two and a half inches long. The workmanship was unmistakably Oriental. The metal was inlaid with porcelain in a cunning fashion. The blades must in the whole scissors have represented the beak, the shanks the body, and the bow the legs — a most unorthodox-appearing scissors, but from the sharpness of the blade a serviceable one. Chips of semi-precious stones of all colors encrusted the body in an illusion of feathers; and in the light coming through the oriel windows they glittered with a multi-colored fire. Despite the five-inch length of the half-scissors it lay so lightly in Ellery’s hand that he could hardly feel it — as feathery as the creature it was meant to represent.

“Ingenious idea. I wonder what kind of bird it’s supposed to be.”

“Kinumé says it’s a crane — she gave it some Japanese name like tsuru or something,” explained Inspector Queen. “Sacred bird, she says. It seems Miss Leith was fond of all birds.”

“I remember now! The Japanese crane — symbol of longevity. It doesn’t seem to have been very prophetic, does it?”

“You can see something subtle in it if you want,” said the old man dryly. “To me it’s just the knife that killed her.”

Eva felt as if she must scream if the little man preserved his mild inscrutability one second longer. Oh, if only she’d remembered in time and they had wiped off her fingerprints!

“You’re sure that’s the weapon?” murmured Ellery.

“Sam Prouty says the wound is exactly the same width and thickness as that blade there. It could hardly be a coincidence.”

“No. But it could be something else.”

“Not the sheath!”

“What sheath?”

“We found a case upstairs in the attic-room that the Jap woman says always used to hold the scissors. But it’s not sharp.”

“The attic?” Ellery’s eyes were on the writing-desk, fixed on a stick of gold sealing-wax and a metal seal whose insignia was a Japanese ideogram; but he did not seem to see them.

The attic! Eva had completely forgotten about the attic. The attic she had never seen and that no one had ever been permitted to see. What was up there? But she didn’t really care. It made no difference...

“So the scissors came from up there,” said the Inspector. “That’s why nobody remembers it but this Kinumé. It’s been broken for years, she says. Seems to fit, all right. Killer got in through the attic window, picked up this half-scissors, came down, stabbed Miss Leith, wiped the blood off the blade, dropped it in the basket, and escaped the way he’d come. Yes, it does seem to fit.”

Was there the merest trace of mockery in his voice? Eva wondered wildly. What he said was impossible — the murderer couldn’t have come from the attic. Not with the door bolted from inside the bedroom. Did he really believe what he was saying?

“I think,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “I’ll have a look at that attic.”

11

The stairs were narrow, steep, and creaked; and after Ellery went Eva and her father together, feeling the need for proximity. For an instant Terry Ring contested with Inspector Queen for the curious right to trail the procession; and it was the brown man who, to the Inspector’s irritation, finally won. The old man disliked people behind him; he especially disliked people who mounted creaky stairs without the least noise.

They emerged into a cool, slope-ceilinged room, not at all the chamber of mysteries Eva’s aroused imagination had pictured it: after the climb in shadows it glowed with sun, an innocent, dainty, almost virginal room not even remotely sinister. Its two windows were dressed in blowy marquisette curtains and its bed, a four-poster of maple, was covered with the same cherry chintz that framed the curtains in flowers. But there were old Japanese water-colors on the walls and mats on the polished floor that could only have come from beyond the Pacific.

“What a pleasant room!” exclaimed Eva involuntarily. “No wonder Karen could write here.”

“I find it,” said Dr. MacClure in a choking voice, “stuffy.” He went to the open window and turned his back to them.

“And what a queer mixture of East and West,” remarked Ellery, glancing at the tiny teakwood desk with its ancient typewriter. “It’s an anomaly that doesn’t exist downstairs.”

In one angle of the room there was an electric refrigerator with a kitchen cabinet above it and a gas-range to its side. A tiny bathroom, quite modern in its fixtures, led off the bedroom; it had a small window and a skylight, but no other door. The little apartment looked as if it had been lived in by a woman of refined and lacy habits — a guarded haven, the door at the head of the attic stairs its sole exit to the world.

“That’s solitude with a vengeance,” said Ellery. “What did she do — divide her time between the rooms downstairs and this attic?”

“She wrote Eight-Cloud Rising here,” said Eva with tears in her eyes. “I never dreamed it was so... nice.”

“From what I’ve been able to find out,” said Inspector Queen, “she’d lock herself up here for a week or two at a time when she wanted to write something special.”

Ellery glanced at the tier of bamboo bookshelves crowding the walls — works of reference in half a dozen languages, books in Japanese, books by Lafcadio Hearn, Chamberlain, Aston, Okuma; translations of the Japanese poets into English and French and German — all in the midst of a library of classic Occidental literature catholic in range and aged with use. And on the desk and in its drawers, which Ellery proceeded calmly to go through, were more books, scraps of manuscript, whole sections of rather enigmatic notes neatly typed — the complete paraphernalia of the writer, fixed in time by the extinction of the writer’s life, arrested in the very process of creation. To Eva, repelled and fascinated, Ellery’s brusque inspection of the littered papers seemed a sacrilege.

He picked up, then, a slender scissors-sheath of walrus-tusk ivory, covered with relief carvings, with a silk cord attached at the end of which dangled a good-luck coin inscribed with a Japanese motto.

“The scissors-case,” nodded the Inspector.

“Have you found the other half of the scissors?”

“Not yet. It’s probably been lost for years.”

Ellery laid the case down, looked around, and went to an open closet door. The closet was hung with women’s things — a variety of rather faded-looking garments; on its floor were two shoes. There were no hats or coats. He looked in, looked down, shook his head, and went to the tiny maple dressing-table on which lay a comb and brush, a toilet set, and a lacquered box full of quite beautiful trinkets, hair-pins, manicuring implements. His eyes narrowed.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Inspector Queen.

Ellery took off his pince-nez, polished them, and put them back on the bridge of his nose. Then he went back to the closet. He lifted a print dress by its hanger, looked at it. He put it back and took out another, a black silk trimmed with écru lace. He put that one back, too, pulled his lower lip, stooped, regarded the two shoes on the floor. Then something caught his eye and he fished it out of the back of the closet, where it had been half-hidden by the hanging garments. It was an old violin-case.

A peculiar suspicion began to form in Eva’s mind. She wondered if he had noticed. The others didn’t seem—

Ellery opened the case. Inside lay a chocolate-colored violin, its four strings dangling from the peg-box, having snapped apparently from the heat of some past summer. He regarded it, a broken Muse, for a long time.

Then, carrying the case, he crossed to the bed and deposited it on the chintz. They were all staring at him now — even Dr. MacClure, who had been impelled to turn from the window by the palpable silence.

“Well,” sighed Ellery. “Well!”

“Well what? What’s the matter with you?” demanded the Inspector crossly.

Terry Ring said in a deep voice: “The eminent Mr. Queen is going into his dance. Made a find, Mr. Queen?”

Ellery lit a cigaret and stared at it thoughtfully. “Yes, I have. A rather remarkable one... Karen Leith did not live in this room!”

“Karen... didn’t—” began Dr. MacClure, goggling. Eva could have screamed. So Mr. Queen had seen it! Her brain was boiling with thoughts. If only — that one thing — maybe—

“No, Doctor,” said Ellery. “For years, I should say, and until very recently, this room has been occupied as permanent living-quarters by another woman altogether.”

Inspector Queen’s little mouth fell open, and the hairs of his gray mustache bristled with surprise and indignation.

“Oh, come now!” he cried. “What do you mean Karen Leith didn’t occupy this room? The boys have been over—”

“Let’s say,” shrugged Ellery, “that the boys weren’t functioning at par. There’s really no question about it.”

“But it’s not possible!” spluttered Dr. MacClure.

“My dear Doctor! Am I justified in believing that Miss Leith was right-handed?”

“Of course she was!”

“Yes, I seemed to recall that she mixed her Japanese tea on the evening of the garden-party with her right hand. So that fits. Isn’t it also true that your fiancée was at most five feet one or two inches tall and weighed no more than a hundred and five pounds?”

“That’s right, Mr. Queen,” said Eva breathlessly. “She was five-one-and-a-half and weighed a hundred and three!”

“And she was a pronounced brunette, of course — quite the blackest hair I’ve ever seen. With a dark, sallow complexion.”

“Well, well?” said the Inspector impatiently.

“Well! She was right-handed — yet I saw at a glance that this violin was used by a left-handed person. Most unusual.” He picked up the violin, fingered the dangling strings. “Look at these strings. The usual order, from left to right as you face the instrument, is G, D, A, E. These run, as you can tell by the thickness of each string, E, A, D, G. Reversed. Left-handed.”

Ellery put the violin back in its case and went to the closet. He lifted out the print dress again.

“How about it, Miss MacClure? Would you say this dress could be properly worn by a woman as short and light as Miss Leith?”

“Oh, goodness no,” said Eva. “I saw that the moment you took it out of the closet. Karen wore a size twelve — awfully small. That’s at least a thirty-eight. And so is the black silk you looked at!”

He hung the print back, went to the dressing-table. “And would you say,” he asked, taking up the hairbrush, “that these strands of hair came from Karen Leith’s head?”

They were crowded about him now. They saw several ash-blonde wisps of hair caught in the tufts of the brush.

“Or,” Ellery went on, picking up the powder box of the toilet set, “that this very light shade of powder would have been used by a woman as dark-complexioned as Karen Leith?”

Dr. MacClure dropped on to the bed. Eva pulled his huge, shaggy head to her breast. Now there was someone! Someone for that terrible little Inspector to think about! A woman had lived up here, a strange woman... Inspector Queen would think this woman had killed Karen. He would have to. She was glad, glad! She refused to think at all about the fact that the woman couldn’t have killed Karen — not with that bolted door. Not with that bolted door. Bolted door. Bolted door...

“I’ll have someone’s hide for this,” said the Inspector angrily.

Ellery restored the powder box and hairbrush to their places on the dressing-table. He said rather abruptly: “The picture is quite clear. The woman who occupied this room can be reconstructed. Did your men find any fingerprints here?”

“Nary one,” snapped the old man. “The room must have had a thorough cleaning recently. The Jap woman won’t talk.”

“Let’s see,” mused Ellery. “From the dresses — I should say she’s about five feet seven or eight inches tall. She must weigh between a hundred and thirty and a hundred and forty. She has naturally light blonde hair and a fair complexion. From the type of garment in the closet — not a young woman. Do you agree with me, Miss MacClure?”

“Yes, they’re the sort of things a woman in her forties might wear. Quite old-fashioned, too.”

“And she plays, or used to play, the violin. And there’s a secret — some important secret — bound up with her. Otherwise why Miss Leith’s deception? Why didn’t she ever reveal the existence of this woman? Why did she go to such pains to conceal any hints of her? — the ironclad rule that no one was to come up here, for example; the frequent changing of white servants; the soundproof walls — if you’ll just examine them... A secret!” He whirled on Dr. MacClure. “Doctor, doesn’t my description fit any one you know?”

Dr. MacClure rubbed his face slowly. “I don’t recall—”

“Think. It’s probably no one from the American chapter in her life. This thing has the earmark of age. Japan, Japan!” He leaned forward eagerly. “Come, Doctor, think! You knew her in Tokyo — her family...” He unbent very slowly. “Her family. Yes, that sounds... Wait!”

He ran to the closet and returned with the two shoes. “Here’s something else; I almost forgot. Two shoes. Two right shoes. And that’s all. No left. Don’t you see?”

“Good for you, Sherlock,” muttered Terry Ring.

“They’re brand-new. They’ve never been worn.” Ellery smacked them together in his impatience. ‘It suggests one of two things — either a woman with her right leg gone, or something so wrong with it she wears a specially built shoe — either possibility making the normal right shoe of no utility. Well, Doctor?”

Dr. MacClure looked as if he were striking an attitude. But his voice came queerly strained. “No. It’s impossible.”

“Daddy!” cried Eva. She shook him. “What? Tell us!”

Terry Ring drawled: “Of course, it would be easy enough to find out. Just a matter of time, Doc.”

“I say it’s impossible!” roared the big man. Then his shoulders sagged and he went to the window again. This time his voice came hard and flat, without the least intonation. They could see his hands, however, crushing the chintz drapes.

“There was one woman in Karen’s life who fitted your description. When I knew her she was blonde, fair, about the same height and weight as you’ve pictured the occupant of this room, was left-handed, and played the violin. But that was over twenty years ago. She was twenty-two... She wore a specially built right shoe, for she’d had a short right leg from birth. It... dragged.”

“Who was it, Doctor?” asked Ellery gently.

“Karen’s sister. Karen’s elder sister Esther.”

Eva, who was on her feet, groped blindly for the bed behind her. This was too much, really too much. She knew about Esther Leith. She knew why Dr. MacClure had said it was impossible for Esther Leith to have lived in this attic room...

“That couldn’t be a coincidence,” said the Inspector slowly. “That must be the woman.”

“Do you think so?” Then Dr. MacClure turned around and they saw his face. Eva made a little whimpering sound. “Do you think so? Then what will you say when I tell you that Esther Leith never left Japan? That Esther Leith is still in Japan?”

“Oh, come,” snapped the old man, “You can’t be sure of that.”

“I’m quite sure of that,” said Dr. MacClure grimly. “Esther Leith died in Tokyo in 1924 — over twelve years ago.”