The Door Between

12

“Did you see Esther Leith die, Doctor?” asked Inspector Queen quietly.

“Don’t pay any attention to this nonsense, Eva,” growled the big man. “It’s just some damned fantastic coincidence.”

‘But, daddy,” cried Eva, “her own sister! It’s... it’s horrible.”

“I say don’t believe it! Do you hear me?”

“Now don’t fly off the handle,” said the Inspector. “We won’t get anywhere that way.”

“It’s preposterous!” stormed the doctor. “Esther committed suicide — threw herself into the Pacific during a holiday outing!”

“Was that,” asked Ellery, “the tragedy you were so reluctant to discuss on the Panthia Monday afternoon, Doctor?”

“Yes.” The doctor scowled. “Naturally I didn’t like to discuss it. I was in New England at the time, and Karen wrote me all about it. In fact, there was even a piece in the Boston papers, where Dr. Leith originally came from, about it.”

“Funny,” mused the Inspector.

“It is true, Inspector!” cried Eva inconsistently. “Karen once told me about it. She didn’t like to discuss it, either, but she told me about it.”

“Excuse me a minute,” said Inspector Queen.

He brushed past Ellery and they heard him descending the attic stairs. Terry Ring shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if he had been awaiting his opportunity to do so.

“All right, Thomas,” they heard the Inspector call out in the bedroom below. “Keep a sharp eye out,” and then they heard him coming up again. When he appeared at the head of the stairs they saw he was carrying a small bundle of letters, tied with a length of thin red ribbon.

“What’s that?” demanded Ellery. “I didn’t see that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” retorted the Inspector in an amiable tone. “We put it away the very first thing. It didn’t mean much then — but it does now.”

Dr. MacClure was staring at the bundle and the last vestige of color left his rocky cheeks.

“You see we know,” said the Inspector kindly. “It’s a bunch of letters Miss Leith kept — found it in the bottom of that old teak chest in the cellar. Most of them are dated 1913, but there are two from 1918, and the 1918 ones were written by you, Doctor, to Esther... Leith... MacClure.”

Dr. MacClure sat suddenly down in the chair by the desk. “I suppose the others are correspondence between Esther and Floyd?” he groaned. “I see how foolish it was to hope—”

“Daddy,” frowned Eva. “What is this all about?”

“I should have told you long ago,” said the big man wearily. “Esther Leith was my sister-in-law. In 1914 she married my brother Floyd in Tokyo.”

The doctor told his story in a lifeless voice. When in 1913 he had crossed the ocean westward in search of the cancer clue that never materialized, his younger brother Floyd, also a medical doctor, had accompanied him. He told something about his brother — an irresponsible youngster, gay, harmless, easily influenced, who had worshipped his elder brother and had studied medicine more in emulation of an idol than from personal desire.

“We met the Leith girls in Tokyo,” said Dr. MacClure, staring at the floor, “through old Professor Matsudo, the man I’d come to Japan to see. He taught pathology at the Imperial University, and of course he knew Hugh Leith, the American teacher of literature. Leith rather liked us — he didn’t see many Americans in those days — and the result was we spent a lot of time at his home. Well, Esther and Floyd fell in love, and they were married in 1914, in the summer — a few weeks before Japan declared war on Germany.”

Eva went to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“But you loved her, too,” said the Inspector. He tapped the bundle of letters. “It wasn’t hard to see, Doctor.”

He flushed. “Damn those letters! Well, I won’t deny it. I was a pretty serious young man in those days, though, and I could see Floyd had the inner track. I don’t think he ever knew — how I felt.”

“Darling,” whispered Eva.

“When they were married the war was already talked about and... Everything had gone wrong — my search was a failure — well, I went back to the States, leaving Floyd in Japan. He fell into his new life easily — he loved the country, and he wanted to stay there with his wife. I never saw him alive again.”

He was silet for a while. The Inspector said encouragingly: “Go on, Doctor. He was killed, wasn’t he — in an accident? One of your 1918 letters to Karen Leith refers to it.”

“Yes. Karen wrote me all about it. Floyd had one hobby — guns. He’d always been an enthusiast, and he set up a shooting-range in the garden of his Tokyo home after his marriage to Esther. He’d tried to teach her to shoot even before.”

“She shot him?” asked Ellery sharply.

They could barely hear his voice. “Oh, it was one of those cursed accidents — there have been thousands of them. She was aiming at the target and he was standing dangerously near. And she was nervous. The bullet went through his brain. He died instantly. Never knew what hit him.”

He paused again. But the Inspector said: “That isn’t all, is it, Doctor? There’s a reference to another woman—”

“So you know that, too! I never dreamed those letters were still...” Dr. MacClure got to his feet and began pacing. “Yes. There was another woman. It was never proved, and I can’t be sure now. Even if there was, I know Floyd didn’t mean anything by it. He was handsome and weak, and women were attracted to him. I’d swear he loved Esther, and Esther only. But — apparently there was gossip. Somehow it got to Esther’s ears.”

“Oh,” said Eva pityingly.

“You’d have to know Esther. She was a magnificent woman, really beautiful, sensitive, intelligent, a writer... but her physical deformity preyed on her mind, and I suppose any whisper of a defection by Floyd would have given her agony. So when she shot Floyd, she came to believe” — his face darkened — “that subconsciously she had wanted to kill him, that it hadn’t been an accident at all, that it had been murder. And after a while she even talked herself into believing that it had been conscious and deliberate murder.”

“Was that why she committed suicide?” asked Ellery.

“Yes. After the inquiry, which completely exonerated her, she had a nervous breakdown and went temporarily insane.” The doctor’s face was wet with perspiration. “The accident occurred in 1918. I went out there when I heard about it, saw I couldn’t do anything, and returned to the States. That was early in 1919.” He paused for no apparent reason, then went on. “Dr. Leith had died in 1916, during the War, so Karen was left alone with Esther. Then in 1924 I learned that Esther had drowned herself and in 1927 Karen pulled up roots and came to New York. I didn’t even know she was coming — the first I learned of it was mention of her name in the literary column of a Boston newspaper. Naturally I looked her up and... everything followed.” He wiped his face slowly. “So you see why I say it’s nonsense about Esther being the woman who lived in this room.”

Eva stiffened. “I know! It’s all so simple. Karen just reconstructed this room, with all of her sister’s clothes and things, out of sentiment. Of course — that’s it! Daddy’s right — she isn’t alive at all.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Terry Ring, studiously examining his fingernails. “What did Karen do — save her sister’s hairbrush with some of the hair on it?”

“Wait!” Eva held her throat. “Or it’s possible she is alive, but... a little mad. daddy, you said she went insane after the accident. That might account for — for Karen’s keeping up the pretence of her suicide and... having her live here. If she was harmless — maybe Karen didn’t want to put her in an institution—”

The Inspector looked thoughtful. “Say, there’s something in that, Miss MacClure.”

Ellery went over to the writing-desk and fingered some papers. He looked troubled. “Well, you’d better get on the job, dad. You have a pretty full description, and she can’t have been gone long, whoever she is.”

“I’ve already put Thomas on it. He’s going to check with Japan by cable on the death certificate, and so on. If we find anything phony about her death, we’ve got samples of her handwriting for a cross-check — some of these old letters.”

“I tell you it can’t be,” said the doctor futilely.

Inspector Queen went to the head of the stairs and shouted: “Kinumé! Hey, come up here, Kinumé — attic!” He turned back and went on in a grim tone:

“There’s one check we can make right now. Karen Leith didn’t keep a woman hidden up here for years without help. Somebody had to assist her. If the woman is Esther Leith, it’s certain this old Japanese woman was in on it. She came over with Miss Leith, didn’t she? Kinumé!”

Dr. MacClure said hoarsely: “I don’t think she—”

“Somebody had to clean up this place. Fact, it was cleaned only a few days ago, as I said before. Somebody had to watch. And if the woman was cracked, somebody had to do the dirty work. Come up here, Kinumé.”

The old woman ascended slowly, stopping on each step to catch her breath. When she finally appeared her oblique eyes were filled with fear; her frail figure was trembling. She glanced about the attic-room involuntarily, as if to see if someone she knew was there; and then lowered her eyes and folded her hands in her sleeves and waited.

“Kinumé”, said the Inspector, “where is Esther?”

Kinumé said calmly: “’Lo, Eva, ’lo, Dr. MacCloo.”

“Did you hear what I said? Where’s Esther Leith!”

Kinumé bowed. “Missie Esther dead. She die long time. She die in big water.”

“Who lived in this room?”

“Missie Karen. She live here some time.”

“Nobody else, huh?”

“Missie Karen, she live here.”

“Did you clean this room a few days ago?”

“Missie no let nobody this room. Missie holluh.”

“All right,” sighed the Inspector. “Get out. When a Jap won’t say anything, he just won’t, that’s all.”

And Kinumé bowed again and went sedately down the stairs, unmindful of his carelessness with pronouns.

“Suppose you two go on home and get some rest,” continued the Inspector. “There’s nothing more you can do to-day. When I get something on this Esther business, I’ll ring you.”

“Good-bye,” said Eva in a low voice to no one in particular. But as she and Dr. MacClure, who looked grateful, began to descend the stairs Terry Ring stirred himself, as if to follow.

“No,” said the Inspector softly. “Not you, Terry.”

13

“Oh,” said Terry Ring, and he stopped. The Inspector went to the attic door and closed it.

Ellery sighed and stepped to the window to look down at the garden. It was peaceful in the dusk, and quite empty. He wondered if on the evening of Karen Leith’s garden-party the woman who had lived in this attic had not stood where he was standing now, with the lights off, looking down even as he was looking down. And he wondered, too, what had been in her heart.

He noticed that shutters were folded back from the window — heavy wooden shutters, with just a few decorative holes for air. And rolled up there was a midnight-blue shade. Yes, he thought, it was very like a cell.

“It’s incredible,” he remarked without turning around, “how a human being could have lived here for years without a single person even suspecting. It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of.”

“Never mind that now,” said Inspector Queen. “Terry!”

“What is it this time, pop?” sighed the brown man. “The bracelets? Come on, act your age.”

Ellery turned. The two men stood facing each other like polite duellists, and each was smiling a little.

“I’ve known you for a good many years,” said Inspector Queen mildly. “You’ve always been a good boy. You’ve kidded some of the men at Headquarters at times, but I’ve never known you to do a crooked thing or, for that matter, a mean one. I’ve always liked you, Terry.”

“That goes double, pop,” said Terry gravely.

“Why don’t you tell me where you figure? You can help us, Terry. There’s a lot behind this thing. What do you know?”

“Well, if the Giants fold again, I’ll root for the St. Louis Browns next year, so help me,” said Terry.

“I can’t see,” replied the Inspector without turning a hair, “that you’ve got anything to gain by working against us. Who’s going to pay your fee? Karen Leith’s dead.”

The shot went home, but only for an instant did it show. Then the brown man grinned. “When’s the funeral?”

“Now that’s pretty sad,” said the old man, “pretty sad, my boy. You see, if I didn’t know your record I’d hold you as a material witness. Lone-wolf private dicks don’t appeal to me. They’re a pretty shady lot, most of them. Blackmailers, strong-arm men, labor spies, ex-lushes — a bad crew. But you’re different, Terry.”

“That’s swell, pop. I can use a recommendation like that,” said Terry heartily. “Can I quote?”

“You can quote this,” said the Inspector. “If you don’t talk you’ll be in the Tombs before the week is out.” Terry Ring began to look around the room. “What are you looking for?”

“A ’phone. I’ve got to call my lawyer. Isn’t that what all crooks do when the law gets its monkey up?”

The Inspector’s voice rose. “By God, I’ll book you on a charge that’ll stick!”

“Gosh,” said Terry. “Then it looks as if I’m in for it.”

The old man’s face darkened with fury. He jumped to the stairway and yelled: “Thomas! Where the devil are you? Thomas! Come up here!”

Terry waited complacently while the thunder of large feet shook the room beneath them; and then Sergeant Velie’s colossal figure surged into view.

“What’s the matter?” he rumbled. “Is this bird acting up?”

“Take him downtown and make him talk!” roared the Inspector.

Sergeant Velie rubbed what passed for his hands together. “Come along, Terry.”

“Go to hell,” said Terry pleasantly. He was backed against the bed now, leaning against one of the posts; and his body was loose and slightly crouched, although the smile never left his face.

“Say, that’s too bad,” said Sergeant Velie with a grin. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you, toots. I used to kick you in the pants when you sold papers on Centre Street. You coming, or do I have to pick you up and carry you?”

“You,” asked Terry, “and how many hundred like you?”

The Sergeant’s grin became a snarl. He licked his leathery lips and bent for a spring.

“Just a moment,” sighed Ellery, “before we unleash the primitive.” The Sergeant unbent and looked a little sheepish. “Don’t you think, dad, you’re letting your temper run away with you? Terry’s right in one thing — you’d get him down to Headquarters but he’d be out in two hours. And he might be pardonably vengeful, if you mussed him up. The newspaper boys like him.”

The Inspector’s mustache bristled as he glared at the brown man, who looked interested. Then he yanked out his snuff box, pinched some brown stuff into his nostrils, inhaled prodigiously, sneezed a Cyclopean sneeze, and said with a growl: “Come along, Thomas. I won’t forget this, Terry.”

With Sergeant Velie trailing his trim little figure like a wolfhound after a terrier, the Inspector marched down and out of sight. They heard the bedroom door bang a moment later.

“Whew,” said Terry, taking out a cigaret. “Great little guy, your old man.” He chuckled. “I’d like to see him get mad. Butt?”

Ellery took one and Terry held a match for him. “What would you have done,” murmured Ellery, “if that man-eater had really jumped you? I’ve seen Velie mop up a mob of seven single-handed. And they weren’t exactly mama’s boys, either.”

“Damned if I know,” said Terry, scratching his head. Then he grinned ruefully. “In a way I’m sorry you stopped him. I’ve always wanted to see if I could put that big ape away, but I never had a real excuse.”

“Oh, come along,” said Ellery. “You he-men give me a pain.”

On their way downstairs they passed Kinumé. The old woman was trudging up like any other old woman; she flattened against the wall to let them by, keeping her aged eyes on the carpet. Ellery looked back; she was trudging upward again.

“Won’t do her any good,” remarked Terry dryly, “if she’s up to any devilment in those rooms. That mugg Ritter would slough his own grandmother.”

Ellery frowned. “Kinumé... She could solve one problem, anyway. Blast these Orientals!”

“What you got against her?”

“Oh, nothing but admiration. It’s the temper of the race that frets me. You know, the Japanese are probably the most inferiority-complexed people on earth. That’s why they’re always raising so much hell in Asia. It’s the curse of the superior-white man psychology.”

“How do you get away with that kind of stuff?”

“Don’t be funny. I mean that Kinumé has never overcome her veneration for a white skin. She was Karen Leith’s creature. Now unquestionably she knows everything that went on in that attic-room, but Karen swore her to silence and her typical loyalty to the lack of pigmentation in the epidermis keeps her old mouth as tightly shut as — well, let’s say as yours.”

“Oh,” said Terry; and after that he was silent.

They had to pass through a small sunroom in the rear to get to the gardens. The vinaceous-hued Loo-choo jay hung in his cage there, and as they approached the back door he followed them balefully with his brilliant, inhuman eyes.

“He gives me the willies,” said Ellery uncomfortably. “Scat!”

The jay opened his powerful beak and emitted a raucous, unlovely cry in Ellery’s direction that raised the fine hairs on the nape of his neck. He followed his companion hastily on to the little back veranda overlooking the garden.

“I should think,” he growled, “Karen Leith would have wrung his gorgeous neck.”

“Maybe,” suggested Terry, although he was patently thinking of something else, “maybe he’s a one-woman bird.”

They strolled down among the flower-beds, alone in the garden among the dwarf trees, the scents of late blossoms, and the chirp of unseen birds. It was so cool and pleasant that Ellery winced a little guiltily at the thought of the slight, stiff body lying on the slab in Dr. Prouty’s morgue.

“Let’s sit down,” he said. “I haven’t had time to think.”

They seated themselves on a bench facing the rear of the house, and for a while neither man spoke. Terry smoked, waiting. And Ellery slumped on the tail of his spine and closed his eyes. Once Terry caught sight of an ancient Japanese face pressed to a lower window, watching; and again the sullen, stupid face of Geneva O’Mara, the white maid, from another. But he gave no sign, and after a time the faces disappeared.

Then Ellery opened his eyes and said: “There are so many unknown quantities in this equation that it isn’t possible even to guess at the answer. I must have some of them cleared up. You hold the key to one — I think an important one.”

“Do I?”

“Pshaw. In whose interest do you think I’m working?”

“How should I know? If you think Eva MacClure’s innocent, it’ll be the first time you ever took anybody’s word for anything.”

Ellery laughed. “Aren’t you wearing a somewhat similar brogan?”

The brown man scuffed some gravel on the path.

“Very well,” sighed Ellery, “let’s see what a little unassisted guesswork can accomplish. First of all, there’s that matter of the telephone call Monday afternoon which Karen Leith didn’t answer, for the good and sufficient reason that she was dead when the ’phone rang. It’s been annoying my father, but I can’t say it’s really annoyed me. I’ve felt all along that you made that call.”

“Guess again.”

“Oh, really, Terry!” protested Ellery with another laugh. ‘Don’t be a child. It doesn’t take genius to see that you and Karen Leith were connected with a professional bond — that is, you knew her through your business, which is private detection. No offence, but it’s improbable that she was interested in your mind.”

“What the hell’s wrong with my mind?” flared Terry. “Just because I never went to college, like the rest of the stuffed shirts—”

“Oh, it’s a very good mind, except that I don’t believe it would have entranced Miss Leith. Your physique might have appealed more... Very well, she engaged you in your professional capacity. Secret stuff — people don’t go to private detectives unless they want secrecy. Secret stuff — and there’s the trail of a woman hidden in that attic for years. Connection? I think so. Yes, indeed!”

“All right. What of it?” said Terry sullenly.

“Precisely what is the connection?”

“You’re doing the guessing.”

“Hmm. Suddenly Miss Leith takes the necessary steps to establish a second connection — this time with the regular police. Deduction: either you failed her and she was forced to turn to the conventional channels of investigation; or you had succeeded and your success somehow completed the dirty end of the job.”

“Why, you—” began the brown man, beginning to rise.

Ellery touched his arm. “Tut, tut. Such muscles! Sit down. Tarzan.” Terry glared, but obeyed. “In either event your services were no longer required. Let me romance a bit. You were piqued. It’s your business to know things, and somehow you learned that she had called for a Headquarters detective. She may even have told you so herself.” Terry remained silent. “Knowing of the five o’clock Monday appointment with Guilfoyle, you hotfooted it down to Washington Square, stopped in at University Place, let’s say, to ’phone. No answer. The times coincide — in a minute or so you were in the house and found her dead.”

“You’re cockeyed,” said Terry. “But I’ll tell you one thing, seeing as there’s no witness. I did make that call. So what? Anything wrong with that?”

“Ah,” said Ellery — a little luxury of triumph he was immediately sorry for, since his companion turned sullen again. “Well, as long as I’m theorizing... Terry, I don’t believe our friend the blonde woman was in that house at all last weekend. What do you say to that?”

The brown man jumped up. “You’ve got inside information!” he cried. “What the hell d’ye think you’re doing — pumping me when you know!”

“Then it’s true.”

Terry’s excitement dissipated. He stared down at Ellery, made a mock motion — hitting himself lightly in the jaw with his own fist — and shrugged. “A sucker again. You’re slicker than I thought you were.”

“That is praise,” grinned Ellery. “I see it all now. The blonde woman escaped from the attic. Her escape terrified Karen Leith — why, I confess I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.”

“You’re good at that, all right,” said Terry gloomily.

“She hired you as a private investigator to trace the woman. You took the case. She became impatient. Apparently she felt it imperative to have the woman located. When you called her to make a negative report, she fired you and told you she was turning to the regular police, gave you the details. That riled you. You decided to horn in.”

“Warm,” conceded Terry, kicking the gravel.

“Did she tell you the name of the blonde, or that she had lived in the attic?”

“No, I found that out by myself. She just said it was someone she was interested in and gave me a description.”

“No name?”

“No. Said she’d probably use a phony.”

“How did you find out about the attic?”

“What do you want — all my trade secrets?”

“So you couldn’t find the woman?”

Terry Ring rose and deliberately sauntered up the path. Ellery watched him intently. He stooped and picked up a rock from the border of the path, weighing it in his hand. Then he wheeled and came back.

“I’ll give it to you straight, Queen. I don’t trust you.”

“Why did you help Eva MacClure? What difference would it have made to you if that door had remained bolted and the police arrested Eva as the only possible killer of Karen Leith? Eh?” Terry Ring looked at the rock in his hand. “Is it possible that you have made a deal with someone else in the meantime? That you were double-crossing Karen Leith about the blonde woman?”

For an instant Ellery felt the breath of danger whistle by his ears. The brown fist about the rock tightened, and it occurred to him uncomfortably how easy it would be to brain a man with that innocent-appearing excrement of Nature. Then Terry whirled and raised his arm and let fly. The rock went like a baseball to the top of the garden wall at the side, struck a branch hanging over from a tree in the next garden, and disappeared with a faint series of thuds.

“You can talk your damned head off,” he panted. “I’m not answering any of your lousy questions.”

Ellery was staring, however, wide-eyed at the branch which hung dolefully now, broken, from the tree. “Good lord,” he said. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Do what on purpose?”

“Aim at that branch?”

“Oh, that.” Terry shrugged. “Sure.”

“Heavens, man, it’s a good forty feet!”

“I’ve done better,” said Terry indifferently. “I aimed at the tip leaf, but I only hit the third one.”

“And with an oval stone,” murmured Ellery. “Do you know, Terry, that gives me an idea?”

“I once pitched for the Reds... What idea?” His head came up abruptly.

Ellery looked up. He looked up at a barred window on the second storey of the house, a window whose panes, one behind the other, had been shattered Monday afternoon by a stone.

Terry growled: “You know I was up there with the girl when that rock broke the window Monday. So what the hell are you—”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” said Ellery impatiently. “Terry, find a rock about the same size and shape as the one that broke that window. Even smaller, if you can.”

Terry shook his head and began scouting about the garden. “Say! Here’s a bunch of ’em!”

Ellery came on the run. And there they were — a number of smooth ovals almost perfectly matched, as far as he could judge the same size as the stone now lying on the floor of Karen Leith’s bedroom. They hem-stitched the border of the path. In one place there was a gap among the evenly spaced rocks, and an oval depression in the soft earth.

“So it came from here.”

“Looks like it.”

Ellery picked two of them up. “Take a few.” And as Terry stooped he walked back to the bench and looked up again at the barred, broken window. “Well,” he said after a pause, “here goes,” and he twirled his arm and threw the stone.

It struck two feet to the left of the barred window, crashing against the wall and falling back into the garden.

“It’s not so easy at that,” he muttered, while Terry watched frowning. “Off-centre, hard to get a grip. Umph!”

He threw the second one. This time it landed a foot below the barred window. A startled head peered through the bars protecting the sitting-room window.

“Hey!” yelled Detective Ritter. “What the hell you guys doin’ down there?” Then he recognized Ellery. “Oh, I didn’t know it was you, Mr. Queen. What’s the matter?”

“A rather unsuccessful experiment in the interests of pure science,” said Ellery disgustedly. “Don’t mind the noise, Ritter. And watch your noodle. We may pull a miracle.”

The detective hastily withdrew his head from view. From the lower windows Kinumé and the O’Mara girl were watching again, fascinated and frightened.

“You try,” urged Ellery. “You’ve been a professional pitcher, haven’t you? You can hit specified leaves on trees from a distance of forty feet, can’t you? Try to break that window up there — the one next to the broken one.”

“How do you expect me to get the stone past those bars?” demanded Terry, glancing up at the oriel windows.

“The very point. That’s your problem. You’re an expert. Proceed.”

Terry stripped off his coat, loosened his lemon-yellow necktie, flipped his hat on the bench, and hefted one of the oval rocks. He squinted up at the right-hand oriel window, shifted position, settled his feet securely in the gravel, wound up his arm, and let fly. The rock clanged against two iron bars and thudded back into the garden.

“Again,” said Ellery judicially.

Terry tried again. This time he gripped the stone differently. But the window remained intact; only an iron bar protested.

“Not bad,” said Ellery. “Once more, my gifted friend.”

For the third time the stone dropped back, leaving the window unbroken; a fourth time, a fifth...

“Hell!” said Terry disgustedly. “It just can’t be done.”

“And yet,” said Ellery in a thoughtful tone, “it was.”

Terry retrieved his coat. “No one can tell me that someone aimed to throw one of those rocks through those bars. I wouldn’t even have tried it if you hadn’t told me to. There can’t be more than a half-inch or so clearance on each side of the rock when it gets smack between two bars.”

“No,” said Ellery, “that’s quite true.”

“Big Train couldn’t have done it!”

“No,” said Ellery, “I don’t believe Mr. Johnson could.”

“The Diz couldn’t do it!”

“Nor Mr. Dean. You know,” said Ellery, frowning, “this demonstration proves something.”

“Yeah,” said Terry sarcastically, clamping on his hat. “It proves the rock had nothing to do with the murder. I knew that Monday afternoon.”

14

Venetia was waiting for the MacClures with a set table and drawn tubs; and the doctor fled the black woman’s affectionate advances to wallow in a steaming bath. There were pages of notes in Venetia’s laborious hand in the message book on the telephone table in the foyer, a stack of telegrams and letters, and boxes and sheaves of flowers.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Eva. “I suppose we’ll have to answer all these people. I didn’t know Karen had so many friends.”

“It ain’t her,” sniffed Venetia. “It’s Dr. John. They’s been mo’ doctors!”

“Hasn’t Dr. Scott called?”

“No, honey, he ain’t. Now look-a here. You go take off your clo’es an’ soak in that tub, you hear me?”

“Yes, Venetia,” said Eva submissively, and went to her room. Venetia glared at the telephone and returned, muttering, to her kitchen.

The telephone rang four times while Eva was bathing, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything any more. As she used the big puff on her body in the black-tiled bathroom, looking at herself in the full-length mirror, she wondered what it must feel like to die. If you died like Karen there was a bite, a pain, and then... what? What had Karen been thinking of as she lay on the dais before the oriel windows, unable to move, unable to open her eyes, dying, knowing she was dying — perhaps even hearing everything Terry Ring and Eva had said? Oh, if only she’d had the courage, thought Eva, to feel Karen’s heart! Karen might have talked. Karen might have said something in that last gasping moment which would have solved everything... That glare in Karen’s eyes when she gurgled in her torn throat and they saw she was still alive. The brown man thought — Eva knew he had — that Karen was accusing Eva with her eyes. But Eva knew how impossible that was. Eva knew that the glare was only the last glare before death, when Karen saw the light fail and felt her heart stop beating...

Eva dashed the puff over her eyes angrily. Then she sat down before the vanity to cold-cream her face.

All those telephone messages, letters, flowers. People must have been puzzled and uneasy. They didn’t quite know what to do. When a person died decently you telephoned and wrote notes of condolence and sent flowers, all very sad and gracious and beautiful, and everyone felt that it was good to be alive, even the mourners who saw the dead one in every dark nook and cranny. But when a person was murdered! The book of etiquette didn’t say anything about that. Especially when the victim had been murdered under mysterious circumstances and no one knew who might have done it. You might send flowers to the murderer!

It was so absurd and tragic that Eva put her head on the vanity and wept through the cold-cream. If people only knew! If people only knew that she was the only one who could have murdered Karen Leith — she, Eva MacClure, herself, the girl, the woman. If Dick only knew...

“Eva,” called Dr. Scott from the other side of the bathroom door.

He’d come!

Eva scrubbed off the cold-cream, dashed cold water over her face, dried and powdered it, used her newest shade of lipstick in three dabs — peach-coral to match her nails and the glints in her hair — wriggled into her Turkish-towel robe, flung open the door, and fell into Dr. Scott’s arms.

Venetia, hovering in the bedroom doorway, was shocked.

“Eva! You... that ain’t decent!”

“Go away,” said Dr. Scott.

“Now you listen to me, suh! I’m goin’ right in an’ tell Dr. John—”

“Venetia,” said Eva through her teeth, “go away.”

“But yo’ hair — it’s all mussed, and you’s in bare feet!”

“I don’t care,” said Eva, and kissed Dr. Scott for the third time. He felt her body tremble under the woolly toweling.

“You’ll catch yo’ death of cold on that floor!”

Dr. Scott detached himself from Eva’s arms, went to the bedroom door, and firmly closed it in Venetia’s outraged face. Then he came back and picked Eva up and sat down with her in the Cape Cod rocker.

“Oh, Dick,” moaned Eva.

“Don’t talk, darling.”

He held her very tightly, and Eva through the warmth of his arms and her own distress began dimly to wonder. There was something bothering him. That was it. He was comforting her, but it was really himself he was trying to comfort. And his unwillingness to talk showed that he didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to think about anything. He just wanted to sit there holding her in his arms and feeling her closeness.

She pushed away from him and flung her hair back from her eyes. “What’s the matter, Dick?”

“Matter? Why do you ask that? Nothing at all.” He tried to pull her down again. “Let’s not talk, Eva. Let’s just sit.”

“But there is something wrong. I know it.”

He tried to smile. “What makes you so intuitive all of a sudden? It’s been a bad day, that’s all.”

“The hospital? You poor lamb!”

“I lost a confinement case. Caesarian. She’d have been all right if she’d taken care of herself.”

“Oh,” said Eva, and she snuggled down again.

But now, perversely, he seemed to want to talk, as if defending himself was important. “She lied to me. I’d put her on a rigid diet. I couldn’t watch her like a dog, could I? Now I find out she’d been stuffing herself with ice-cream and whipped cream and fatty meats and God knows what else.” He said bitterly: “If a woman can’t tell the truth to her doctor, what chance does a mere husband stand?”

So that was it. Eva lay still in his arms. Now she understood. It was his way of asking questions. She could feel the slightly unsteady beating of his heart. Those puzzled looks he had been giving her since Monday evening!

“And then I’ve been hounded by those damned reporters all day.” It was coming out now, Eva thought, in a gush. “What the devil do they want of me? I haven’t done anything! One filthy sheet had my picture this afternoon. Young Society Doctor Denies. Denies what? My God! I don’t know anything!”

“Dick,” said Eva quietly, sitting up.

“I felt like slamming into the lot of ‘em! What’s the low-down, Doc? Who bumped Karen Leith? What’s your angle? Where do you fit in? Is it true she was a cardiac? Did you tell your fiancée not to talk? Why? Where? When? How?” He snapped his jaws shut, glowering. “They’ve been infesting my office, pestering my patients, hounding me at the hospital, cross-questioning my nurses — and they want to know when we’re going to be married!”

“Dick. Listen to me, dear.” She took his flushed face in her hands. “I want to tell you something.”

The tip of his handsome nose, that Eva had so often kissed, grew faintly pale. He said: “Yes?” in a hoarse voice. Scared. He was scared. Eva could see it written all over him. She almost asked him what he was scared of. But she knew.

“The police don’t know everything about Karen’s death. There’s one important thing they don’t know.”

He sat very still, not looking at her. “Yes?” he said again, and this time he didn’t even try to keep from showing how scared he was.

“Oh, Dick!” cried Eva in a rush. “That door wasn’t open! It was bolted from inside the bedroom!”

There. It was out. She felt better already. Let him be scared, Eva thought with a little snap. If he was scared, this would petrify him.

It did petrify him. Dr. Scott half-rose from the Cape Cod chair, almost dumping Eva on to the floor. Then he sank back. “Eva! What door?”

“The door in Karen’s bedroom which leads to the attic stairs. When I came into the room that door was bolted. Bolted from inside the bedroom.”

Eva kept looking at him appraisingly, wondering at her lack of excitement. The only thing she felt was compassion; he looked terribly distressed. He worked his mouth twice.

“But, Eva,” he said in a dazed tone, “how could anyone have— No one could have got away through the attic, then!”

“No.”

“And the windows in the bedroom—”

“They’re barred,” said Eva, as if she were talking about the trimming for a new hat.

“And the only other way out is through the sitting-room, where you were waiting.” His eyes brightened. “Eva! Someone did go through that sitting-room. That’s it, isn’t it? Somebody went through and you’ve — well, you haven’t told the police.”

“No, darling,” said Eva. “Not even a mouse went through.”

“But, good God!”

“I didn’t lie about that, if that’s what you mean.”

His mouth worked again, and then he set her down on the floor and began to race up and down, like a man hurrying for a train. “But, Eva, you don’t know what you’re saying. That means no one — no one but you could have...”

“That means,” said Eva calmly, “that no one but I could have murdered Karen. Say it. Don’t be afraid to say it, dear. I want you to say it. I want to hear how you say it.”

He stood still then, and looked at her, and she looked back at him, and there was no sound except Dr. MacClure’s growl about something to Venetia from the living-room.

Dr. Scott’s glance wavered. He slammed his hands into his pockets and kicked Eva’s rug so hard it wrinkled up in protest. “Damn it all!” he exploded. “It’s impossible!”

“What’s impossible?”

“The whole situation!”

“What situation — the murder... or ours?”

He tousled his hair so desperately Eva wanted to look away. “Listen, Eva. I’ve got to think. You’ve got to give me time to think. You can’t spring a thing like this—”

Eva pulled the white robe closer about her. “Look at me, Dick. Do you believe I killed Karen?”

“Good God, no!” he shouted. “How should I know? A room — one exit only — nobody went through... What’s a man to think? Be reasonable, Eva. Give me time!”

It was so absurdly inconsistent, so full of pain and doubt, so really definite, that Eva felt a stab in her chest, as if something had suddenly broken inside. For an instant she fought down the feeling that she was going to be ill. But she wasn’t through. There was still one thing more to say. One thing more to ask. Then, she thought, she would really know. She steeled herself.

“Monday afternoon you asked me to marry you. I held you off, Dick, because of that bolted door. I wanted time, too, because I... I couldn’t bear to tell you. And yet I couldn’t marry you without telling you. Don’t you see? Well, now I’ve told you.”

Eva stopped, because there was really no necessity to be any blunter about it. They weren’t children; certain things took on adult meaning without being said in so many words.

He licked his lips. “Get married — you mean, now?”

“Tomorrow,” said Eva relentlessly. “Whenever you get the license. At City Hall. Connecticut. Anywhere.”

It didn’t sound like her own voice. Perhaps that was because there was a coating of ice around her heart, chilling each drop of blood as it went through. She really had found the answer to her question. He didn’t have to speak. Monday he had wanted to marry her; to-day, Wednesday, he was asking for time.

Eva didn’t quite expect what happened. He seized her hands. “Eva!” There was something new in his voice. “I’ve just thought of it. Who unbolted that door Monday before the police came — you, or that Ring fellow?”

“It doesn’t make any difference,” said Eva listlessly. “It was Mr. Ring. He thought of it, and saved me.”

“Who else knows?”

“Daddy. Mr. Queen — the young one.”

“Everyone but me!” He was bitter. “And you expect me to—” He scowled at her. “What’s going to happen when that Inspector finds out?”

“Oh, Dick,” whispered Eva, “I don’t know.”

“What’s Ring’s game? Why should he do a thing like that for a girl he never saw before?” Dr. Scott’s eyes were inflamed. “Or do you know him? Do you?”

Stupid; it was all so futile and stupid. “No, Dick. He’s merely been kind to me in his own way.”

“His own way,” sneered Dr. Scott. “I know his way! That East Side scum! I’ve looked him up. I’ve been finding out things about him. Crony to every gangster in town! I know what he wants. I know his sort!”

“Dick, that’s the foulest thing you’ve ever said.”

“Defending him! I just want to know what dirt my intended wife’s getting into. That’s all!”

“Don’t you dare talk to me that way!”

“Mixed up in a filthy murder—”

Eva flung herself on the bed and buried her face in the candlewick spread. “Oh, go away,” she sobbed. “I never want to see you again. You think I killed her. You suspect me of all sorts of horrible things with... with that Terry person. Go away!”

She lay there, pressed into the mattress, crying into the spread, the robe askew and her bare legs dangling over the floor. But she didn’t care. It was all over. He... he was gone; that was gone, too. Now that he was gone, although she hadn’t heard the door bang, she saw how unreasonable she had been to expect him just to believe. Blindly, without questions. It wasn’t human. No woman could expect it of any man. After all, what did he know about her? Nothing, nothing at all. When a man and woman were in love and spent their time kissing and babbling nonsense, they really didn’t get to learn much about each other. They came to learn every line in each other’s face, every trick of breathing and kissing and sighing — but nothing else, nothing real, nothing on the inside, about which knowledge was paramount. So how could she blame him? And there was his career. It meant everything to him. Now that he suddenly found out, without warning, that his fiancée was up to her neck in a murder, how could he help thinking about his own future — about how people would whisper behind his back — even if everything turned out all right? He was sensitive; he came from a good family; perhaps his family was behind all this — pumping away at him, talking to him. That stiff-necked mother of his from Providence, his bankerish father with the mean face...

Eva sobbed harder. She saw it all now, what a selfish and uncomprehending little beast she’d been. He couldn’t help his family, or the situation she found herself in. He was just a man — a dear, dear... And now she had sent him away for good, and even the chance for happiness had escaped, and there was nothing facing her but that grim and terrible little Inspector.

Dr. Scott unclenched his fists and dropped on the bed, close to her, pressing against her, his face contorted with contrition and eagerness.

“I love you. Darling, I love you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Just kiss me, Eva. I love you.”

“Oh, Dick!” wept Eva, twisting and putting her arms tightly about his neck. “I didn’t understand. It’s my fault for expecting...”

“Don’t say any more. We’ll see it through, together. Just hold me — this way. Kiss me, darling.”

“Dick...”

“If you want to get married to-morrow—”

“No! Not until everything... everything—”

“All right, darling. Whatever you say. Just don’t worry.”

And a little later Eva lay still on the bed and he sat still beside her, only his fingers moving, his cool physician’s fingers stroking her temples, soothing the pulsing blood vessels, making her peaceful and sleepy. But above her tumbled hair Dr. Scott’s face was drawn and troubled.

15

“The trouble with this case,” complained Ellery to Terry Ring on Thursday afternoon, “is its unbelievable instability. It’s a bee flashing from flower to flower. You can’t keep up with it.”

“What’s the matter now?” Terry flicked the ashes off his mauve tie on its field of wine-colored shirtfront. “Damn it, there goes a burn in my tie!”

“By the way, must you wear these atrocious shirts?” They paused at the little bridge in Karen Leith’s garden. It seems to me that recently you’ve taken to sporting an almost male-bird coloration. It’s September, man, not spring!”

“You go to hell,” said Terry, flushing.

“You’ve made the wrong movie star your idol.”

“I said go to hell! What’s on your mind to-day?”

Ellery dropped a pebble into the tiny pool. “I’ve made a discovery that bothers me.”

“Yeah?”

“You knew Karen Leith, at least for a short time. And I know you’re a self-taught and dependable student of human nature. What kind of a woman would you say she was?”

“I only know what I read in the papers. Famous writer, around forty, kind of pretty if you like ‘em washed out, clever as hell and just as deep. Why?”

“My dear Terry, I want your personal reaction.”

Terry glared at the goldfish. “She was a phony.”

“What!”

“You asked for it. She was a phony. I wouldn’t have trusted her with my old lady’s store teeth. Mean streak. Tough as a floozy underneath and ambitious as hell. And no more conscience than Dutch Brenner’s mouth-piece.”

Ellery stared at him. “My worthy opponent! That’s characterization. Well, it’s true.” His grin faded. “You don’t know, I imagine, just how true it is.”

“Doc MacClure’s lucky to be rid of her. He’d have punched her in the nose in three months if they’d ever hitched up.”

“Dr. MacClure belongs to the Leslie Howard rather than the Victor McLaglen school, for all his physique. Nevertheless, it’s probably true.”

Terry said casually: “If the doc hadn’t been on a ship a thousand miles to sea when she was bopped, I’d say he did it himself.”

“There were no hydroplanes around, if that’s what you’re thinking,” chuckled Ellery. “No, I fancy I know what’s bothering the doctor. And it’s more concerned with Eva than with his deceased fiancée.” He studied the pool. “I wish I knew exactly what it is.”

“Me, too,” said Terry. He fingered his tie. “Come on, spit it out. What’s up? What did you find out?”

Ellery stared from his reverie and lit a cigaret. “Terry, do you know what Karen Leith really was? I’ll tell you. A parasite. A very special kind of pediculous monster. One of the most incredible vessels of evil God ever designed for skirts.”

“You going to talk or aren’t you?” said Terry impatiently.

“What amazes me is how she was able to concentrate on one vicious objective for years, going through what must have been agonies of continuous apprehension. It’s indecent. Only a woman could have done it — a woman as full of silence and fury as she must have been. I don’t know what’s behind it, but I can guess. I think, many years ago, she loved Floyd MacClure.”

“That’s tall guessing, my friend.”

“A love-affair crushed at its inception... yes, it might have started the ball rolling.”

“Ah, nuts,” said Terry.

But Ellery was gazing again in profound reflection at the pool. “And then there’s the crime itself. Even knowing what the Leith monster was, the crime remains an enigma.”

Terry flung himself in disgust on the grass and tipped his pearl-grey felt over his eyes. “You should have run for Congress.”

“I’ve been over those two rooms upstairs with, figuratively, a stethoscope and a selenium cell. I tested those bars on the oriel windows. They’re solid iron embedded in concrete and there’s nothing wrong with them. Immovable. Not set in false sockets. None has been recently replaced. No, no one got in or out of those windows, Terry.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I tackled the door and bolt. You found the door bolted from inside her bedroom, but it was conceivable that the bolt might have been drawn from the wrong side of the door by some mechanical contrivance.”

“Whoosh,” said Terry from under his hat. “You’ve been reading one of your own lousy detective stories.”

“Oh, don’t sneer; it’s been done. But not with this particular door. I tried with every method known to my peculiar science, and none of them worked. So mechanics was out.”

“You’ve certainly made progress, haven’t you?”

“With the doors and windows eliminated, I thought of... don’t laugh now—”

“I’m laughing already!”

“A secret panel. Well, why not?” asked Ellery defensively. “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. You don’t spit on your great-grandmother just because she’s hung around a long time? But there isn’t any panel. That room’s as solid as the walls of the Great Pyramid.”

“Closets?”

“Are just closets. I don’t know.” Ellery made a face. “It leaves you with the hollowest feeling.”

“You’re telling me,” said Terry glumly.

“I’ve thought of everything — that the crime, for instance, might have been committed through the window-bars, with the murderer somehow outside. But that doesn’t gel, either — there’s the weapon.

“It was withdrawn from Karen’s neck. It was wiped off. Even if we postulate the strained theory that Karen stood at the window, was knifed through the bars, fell, that the killer wiped off the blade and threw the knife through the bars to land on the desk... it still doesn’t gel. The body was out of position for that. And there should have been a trace of blood on the sill, on the floor directly below the sill. But the bloodstains are along the edge of that dais. She couldn’t have been stabbed from the window at that spot, unless her assailant was a gorilla.”

“Even a gorilla wouldn’t have arms that long.”

“It makes you think of Poe. It’s mad. It’s impossible.”

“Unless,” said Terry, squinting, “Eva MacClure’s a liar.”

“Yes, unless Eva MacClure’s a liar.”

Terry got to his feet with a leap. “Well, she isn’t! I’m not the prize sucker of all time, am I? I tell you she’s on the level. She told the truth. I couldn’t be wrong. I’ve been right about women too damned many times!”

“Human beings will do inconsistent things to save their skins.”

“Then you do think she killed that phony!”

Ellery did not reply for some time. A goldfish flopped back into the water, leaving circles. “There’s one other possibility,” he said suddenly. “But it’s so fantastic I scarcely credit it myself.”

“What is it? What is it?” Terry stuck his brown face forward. “The hell with how it looks. What is it?”

“It involves Eva herself. It would make it possible for her to have told the truth and yet to have...” He shook his head.

“Talk, you exasperating ape!”

But just then Ritter pressed his red face to the bars of the sitting-room window upstairs and yelled: “Hey, Mr. Queen! These MacClure people are here, askin’ for you. Mr. Queen!”

“Stop bellowing.” Ellery nodded curtly to Terry. “Trail along. I’ve asked them over.” Then he winced. “We may as well get it over with.”

But when they went into the house they found three people — Dr. MacClure, Eva, and Dr. Scott. Eva looked quieter this afternoon, as if she had spent a peaceful, dreamless night. And Dr. MacClure had got a grip on himself: the redness had left his eyes and there was something resigned, almost fatalistic, in them. But Dr. Scott looked as if he had slept badly; and somehow, without being told, Ellery knew that the story of Karen Leith’s mysterious blonde tenant had been related to him. But why, he thought, should that worry young Dr. Scott? Did he have a traditional distaste for family skeletons?

“Hello,” he said with an attempt at cheerfulness. “You all look worlds better to-day.”

“What’s happened?” asked Dr. MacClure. “You sounded—”

“I know,” sighed Ellery. “It’s important, Doctor.” He stopped to let Kinumé flit by. Then he said to his fingernails: “If I have something of — well, great and tragic significance to tell you... is it all right to disclose it before Dr. Scott?”

“Why not?” asked the young doctor angrily. “If you’re ready to spill something before this fellow” — he stabbed at Terry with his forefinger — “why not before me? I’ve more rights than he has! I’m—”

“You don’t have to be so damned snooty about it,” said Terry, swinging on his heel. ‘I’ll go.”

“Wait,” said Ellery. “I want you here, Terry. Let’s not become involved in emotional entanglements, please. This is something much too grave to be squabbled over.”

Eva said quietly: “I told Dick last night — everything.”

“Oh. Well, that’s your affair, Miss MacClure. You know best. Upstairs, please.”

He led the way, saying something to Ritter at the head of the stairs, and when they entered the sitting-room Ritter closed the door behind them. Terry went last, as usual, and Dr. Scott turned at every few steps to glare back.

“Let’s go up to the attic,” said Ellery. “I’m expecting Karen Leith’s publisher. We can wait there.”

“Buescher?” frowned Dr. MacClure. “What’s he to do with it?”

“I need him to verify a conclusion of mine.” And Ellery in silence led them up the attic stairs.

They were scarcely in the slant-roofed room when Ritter’s voice yelled from below: “Hey, Mr. Queen! This Mr. Boosher’s here.”

“Come up, Mr. Buescher,” called Ellery. “I suppose we may as well make ourselves comfortable... Ah, Mr. Buescher. You know the MacClures, of course. And this is Dr. Scott, Miss MacClure’s fiancé, and Mr. Ring, a private detective.”

Karen Leith’s publisher offered a sweating palm to the two young men, but he said to Dr. MacClure: “I’m horribly sorry, Doctor. I’ve sent my condolences, but... Great shock, of course. Nastiest business. If there’s anything I can do—”

“It’s all right, Mr. Buescher, it’s all right,” said Dr. MacClure steadily. He went to one of the windows and clasped his hands behind his broad back.

Buescher was a calfish man with a clever face — a prancer, something of a buffoon. But no one who knew him underrated his intelligence. He had built up a house with seven important authors and a score of paying small fry out of nothing but a hope and a plan. He sat down gingerly on the edge of a cane chair, putting his hands on his skinny knees. His large, innocent eyes went from face to face and finally settled on Ellery’s.

“Just how can I help you, Mr. Queen?”

“Mr. Buescher, I know your reputation very well,” said Ellery. “You’re a clever man. But how good are you at keeping secrets?”

The publisher smiled. “A man in my position learns to keep his mouth shut. Of course, if it’s anything illegal—”

“Inspector Queen knows already. I told him this forenoon.”

“Then in that case... naturally.”

“Knows what, Queen?” demanded Dr. MacClure. “What?”

“The reason I pound the point,” said Ellery, “is that to a publisher this information might be tempting. Marvellous publicity, and all that.”

Buescher spread his hands without lifting them from his knees. “I think,” he said dryly, “if it concerns Karen Leith, we’ve had as much publicity in the last few days as the traffic will bear.”

“But this is ever so much more important news than Karen Leith’s death.”

“More important—” began the doctor, and stopped.

Ellery sighed. “Dr. MacClure, I have proved to my own satisfaction that the occupant of this room was Esther Leith MacClure.”

The doctor’s back twitched. Buescher sat staring.

“Miss MacClure, you were wrong yesterday. Esther Leith MacClure is as sane as you or I. That makes,” he said with a snap of his teeth, “that makes Karen Leith something of a fiend.”

“Mr. Queen, what have you found out?” cried Eva.

Ellery went to the teakwood desk. He opened the top drawer and extracted a red-ribboned bundle of old letters, the bundle Inspector Queen had shown them the day before. He laid this on the desk. Then he poked his finger at a neatly stacked series of typewritten letters.

“How well do you know Miss Leith’s work, Mr. Buescher?”

Buescher said uncertainly: “Very well, of course.”

“In what form was she accustomed to deliver her novels?”

“Typewritten.”

“You read them yourself in the original manuscript?”

“Naturally.”

“All this is true, of course, of Eight-Cloud Rising, her last novel — the prize-winner?”

“Especially true of Rising. I recognized at once that it was a significant novel. We were all quite mad about it.”

“Do you recall that when you read the manuscript there were written corrections? I mean — typed words crossed out, penciled emendations careted in?”

“There were a few, I believe.”

“Is this the original manuscript of Eight-Cloud Rising?” Ellery handed the man a thin sheaf of manuscript. Buescher affixed a pair of gold spectacles to his nose and glanced through the papers.

“Yes,” he said at last, handing them back. “Mr. Queen, may I ask what the point of this — ah — extraordinary inquisition is?”

Ellery put down the manuscript and picked up the neat pile he had poked. “I have here various samples of Karen Leith’s handwriting — indisputably Karen Leith’s, according to Morel. Dr. MacClure, would you be kind enough to look these over and confirm the lawyer’s opinion?”

The big man came away from the window. He did not take the papers from Ellery. He merely stood with his hands behind his back and glanced at the top sheet.

“That’s Karen’s handwriting, all right.” And he went back.

“Mr. Buescher?”

The publisher was more thorough. He went through the pile. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” He was perspiring.

“Now then,” continued Ellery, setting the pile down and picking up the manuscript again, “let me read you a few fragments from Eight-Cloud Rising.” He adjusted his pince-nez and began to read in a clear voice.

“Old Mr. Saburo sat on his haunches and laughed to himself at nothing; but from time to time a thought was visible through the vacant veils of his eyes.”

He paused. “Now let me read you the sentence as it is emended in pencil.” He read slowly:

“Old Mr. Saburo sat on his haunches and laughed to himself at nothing; but from time to time a thought flickered behind the empty windows of his head.”

“Yes,” muttered the publisher. “I remember that.” Ellery flipped a few pages.

“Unperceived from the terrace Ono Jones perceived her standing in the garden below.”

He looked up. “This, observe, has been changed to read as follows.” He looked down.

“Unperceived from the terrace Ono Jones perceived her black shape standing across the moon.”

“I don’t quite understand—” began Buescher.

Ellery turned more pages. “Here’s a place in which a Japanese summer sky is described as ‘cloisonné’. The word has been crossed out, and ‘enamel’ substituted. In the same paragraph the panoramic outdoor scene over the characters’ heads is ‘an inverted, delicate bowl.’ The writer changes her mind and the sentence becomes ‘They stood beneath a painted teacup turned upside down.’ ” Ellery closed the manuscript. “Mr. Buescher, what kind of corrections would you call these?”

The man was plainly puzzled. “Why, creative ones, of course. Question of feeling for the look of certain words — one figure of speech as against another. Every writer makes them.”

“They’re highly personalized? No one would dare take such liberties with someone else’s work?”

“Well, you’re a writer yourself, Mr. Queen,” said Buescher.

“In other words, you would say Karen Leith penciled in those corrections — and all other such corrections in all her novels?”

“Certainly!”

Ellery went to the man with two things. “Please compare the handwriting of the manuscript corrections,” he said quietly, “with the attested handwriting of Karen Leith.”

Buescher stared for an instant; and then he grabbed the papers and began feverishly scrambling through them. “My God,” he mumbled. “someone else’s handwriting!”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” said Ellery. “From this and certain other indications the truth is very clear. Karen Leith did not write Eight-Cloud Rising. Karen Leith did not write The Sun, which preceded it, nor Water Children, nor any of the other gifted novels ascribed to her pen and which she took credit for. Karen Leith had no more to do with the works on which she built her international reputation than Mr. Buescher’s lowliest proof-reader.”

“But there must be some mistake,” cried Eva. “Who could have written them? Who’d permit someone else to get credit for his own writing?”

“Not his, Miss MacClure — her. And I didn’t say it was by permission, which is the most deceptive of words. There are many ways of executing a vile and treacherous plan.” Ellery pursed his lips. “All these novels were written by Karen Leith’s sister, Esther.”

Dr. MacClure sat down suddenly on the edge of the window.

“There’s really not the slightest question about it,” said Ellery. “I’ve checked it every possible way and the answer’s always the same. The handwriting of the revisions is definitely Esther Leith’s — I have plenty of samples of her handwriting in that bunch of old letters — dating as far back as 1913. There are a few time differences, but I had them expertized this morning and the verdict was unanimous. And it couldn’t be that Esther has been acting merely as her sister’s secretary, because as Mr. Buescher had told you the corrections are creative.”

Dr. Scott cleared his throat. “Aren’t you perhaps making more of it than really exists? Possibly the corrections were Miss Leith’s, with her sister acting as a mere stenographer.”

“Then how do you explain,” said Ellery, picking up a fat notebook, “that in this notebook, in Esther Leith’s handwriting, is the complete working plan of Eight-Cloud Rising — copious notes, all creative, all personal, with little side-comments which clearly indicate the ideas were hers?”

“But she’s dead,” said Eva. “Daddy says so. Karen — Karen told me so.”

“Your father was deliberately misled by Miss Leith, as you were. Esther is alive. According to the story of her “suicide”, it took place in 1924. But all of these books have been written since, you see.”

“But they could have been old books, old notes, dating “way back, and just dug up—”

“No, Miss MacClure. Most of them show internal evidence — references to contemporary events — which far post-date 1924. She’s alive all right, and she wrote Karen Leith’s books, and she wrote them in this very room.”

“Good lord,” said Buescher. He was on his feet now, restlessly pacing. “The scandal! It will turn the literary world upside down.”

“Not if we don’t want it to,” said Dr. MacClure hoarsely. His eyes were red again. “She’s dead. Why resurrect—”

“And then there’s the prize,” groaned the publisher. “If there’s been fraud here, or plagiarism—”

“Mr. Buescher,” said Ellery abruptly, “could Eight-Cloud Rising have been written by a madwoman?”

“Good God, no!” shouted Buescher. He rumpled his hair. “I can’t figure it out. Perhaps this Esther Leith did it willingly — for some reason of her own. Perhaps—”

“I don’t suppose,” drawled Ellery, “Karen Leith stood over her sister with a revolver and forced her into a living death.”

“The... the calmness of her! At the party in May—”

“There are other ways,” finished Ellery. He sat down behind the teakwood desk, thinking.

“Nobody’d believe it,” moaned Buescher. “I’d be the laughing stock—”

“And where is the poor soul?” cried Eva. “After all, it isn’t fair to her.” She ran over to the doctor. “I know how you feel, daddy, about raking up this... this— If Karen did this horrible thing to her it’s up to us to find Esther and make it up to her!”

“Yes,” muttered the doctor. “We’ve got to find her.”

“Why not wait until you do?” said Terry Ring coolly. “You can keep quiet about it and then decide when you talk to her.”

“Terry’s right,” said Ellery. “Yes, that’s what we’ll do. I’ve already discussed it with my father. He’s redoubling his efforts to locate her.”

“Oh, I know he will!” cried Eva. “Daddy, aren’t you happy that she’s alive and—” She stopped. There was something rather awful in the big man’s face. Eva remembered his shy, grim confession that once, in his youth, he had loved the woman his brother had married.

But he sighed and said: “Well, we’ll see. We’ll see.”

Then Ritter bellowed from downstairs: “Mr. Queen! The Inspector’s on the wire!”

16

When Ellery came up from Karen Leith’s bedroom his face was grave.

“They’ve found her!” said Eva.

“No.” Ellery turned to the publisher. “Thank you, Mr. Buescher. That’s all, I think. You won’t forget your promises?”

“I’m not likely to.” Buescher wiped his face. “Doctor — I can’t tell you how sorry—”

“Good-bye, Mr. Buescher,” said Dr. MacClure steadily.

The publisher shook his hand and went away with compressed lips. When the sound of Ritter closing the sitting-room door after him came up the attic stairs Ellery said: “My father wants you folks to come down to Centre Street at once.”

“Headquarters again,” said Eva damply.

“I think we’d better go now, please. Dr. Scott, you needn’t come if you prefer not to. He didn’t mention you.”

“Well, I want to,” said Dr. Scott shortly. He flushed and took Eva by the elbow and steered her down the stairs.

“What is it?” whispered Dr. MacClure to Ellery quickly. “Is he... has anything—?”

“I don’t know, Doctor, he wouldn’t say.” Ellery scowled. “But I know my father, and he sounded triumphant. We’d better be prepared for the worst.”

The doctor nodded wordlessly and followed the young couple down the steep stairs.

“It’s the pay-off,” said Terry Ring out of the side of his mouth. “I know your old man, too. I wondered when he’d get around to those fingerprints.”

“It has to be more than fingerprints, Terry.”

“Did he want me, too?”

“No.”

Terry gripped his pearl-grey fore and aft and set it firmly on his head. “Then I’ll come.”

When the deskman showed them into Inspector Queen’s office at Police Headquarters, the old man was deep in conversation with Morel, the fat little lawyer.

“Oh, come in,” said the Inspector, rising; his bird’s eyes were bright. “I think you all know Mr. Morel — well, it doesn’t matter. Just a servant of the public — aren’t you Morel?”

“Ha, ha,” said Morel; he was perspiring copiously, and he seemed to find it difficult to meet the eyes of the MacClures. He bounced up and ran behind his chair, as if he felt the need for more than a spiritual prop.

“You, too?” growled the old man, spying Terry. “Just like a bad scent. I didn’t want you. Clear out.”

“I think you do want me,” said Terry.

“Oh,” said the Inspector grimly. “Well, sit down, all of you.”

“Goodness!” said Eva with a hysterical laugh. “This all sounds so dreadfully serious.”

“You, too, Dr. Scott, as long as you’re here. Although it may not be so pleasant for you.”

Scott said in a faltering voice: “May not—” He went pale, and after one sideways glance at Eva looked away.

The Inspector sat down. “Now why do you think I want you, Terry?”

“Because you were damned anxious to know yesterday what I knew.”

“That’s different,” said the old man instantly. “That’s a horse of a different color, my boy. Ready to talk, eh?” He pressed a button. “Now that’s a sensible lad. Now you’re the old Terry again. In the first place—”

“In the first place,” said Terry dryly, “I’m not talking till I find out what’s up your sleeve, you old robber.”

“Mmm. It’s a deal, is it?”

“Do I stay?”

“You stay... Mushie.” A man in uniform had come in. “Take it down.” The man seated himself at the side of the desk and opened a stenographer’s notebook. “Now then.” The old man rubbed his hands together and leaned back in his chair. “Miss MacClure, why did you murder Karen Leith?”

So here it is, thought Eva calmly. There it is. My big moment. She almost laughed aloud. He had found the fingerprints. And nobody could do anything about that — not Dr. MacClure, who sat like a chunk of granite; not Terry, who put his hands slowly into his pockets; not Dr. Scott, who bit his lips and then, as if remembering a lesson, took her hand; not Ellery Queen, who stood motionless at the window with his back turned as if he hadn’t even heard...

It was not going to be pleasant in prison, Eva thought. They gave you rough underwear and shapeless prison dresses and made you scrub floors... at least, that’s the way the movies had it, and their experts knew. She wondered how she could sit so calmly and think so calmly, with the thunder of collapse in her ears and the iron doors of the prison blotting out everything in her young and foolish and unlived life. It might even be worse. It might even be...

But that was one thing Eva could not bring herself to put into thought. She closed her eyes to fool the word. But the word kept sneaking back, forcing her to think it, and after that she felt a little sick and her legs trembled under the sheer silk as if she had run a mile without stopping.

“Just a moment,” said Ellery.

“No,” said Inspector Queen flatly.

“Yes. I don’t know what you have but — don’t be hasty. Take your time. Miss MacClure won’t run away. Take your time.”

“I’ve taken it,” said the Inspector, “all the time I’m going to. I’ve got my job to do.”

“Don’t you realize what a mistake will mean to Miss MacClure?”

“The gossip, the notoriety, the newspapers,” gasped Dr. Scott.

“She should have thought of that when she stabbed Karen Leith. Besides, I’m a policeman, not a judge. Keep out of this, all of you... Wait. Ellery, do you know anything that says Eva MacClure did not stab that woman?”

“Not yet. But I’ve caught a glimmer—”

The old man turned away. “Well, Miss MacClure?”

“I... I beg your pardon,” stammered Eva. “I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.”

“Not listening!”

“For God’s sake!” shouted Dr. MacClure. “Can’t you see the child’s on the verge of collapse? Eva!” He bent over her, angry, bristling, his old self. “Hold on! Don’t lose your nerve, honey! Do you hear me?”

“Yes. Yes,” said Eva faintly. She tried to open her eyes, but it was the queerest thing — they wouldn’t open. Just as if they were stuck together.

“You damned old stinker!” roared Terry Ring. He sprang to the Inspector’s desk and glared. “Who the hell d’ye think you are, kicking that poor kid in the slats this way? Murder! She couldn’t murder a fly! Making the kid take the rap because your department’s too damned numb to nab the real killer! For two cents—”

“Hey,” said the old man quickly. “Don’t forget yourself, you big lunk. What is this, a gang-up? You seem to forget one thing, all of you. I don’t throw accusations of murder around. I’ve got evidence.” His eyes blazed. “As for you Terry, you’d better stop playing Miss MacClure’s game and start thinking about yourself. I might be able to slap an accessory charge on you!”

Terry quieted down; the wine color left his face. He went over to Eva’s chair and stood behind it. Morel, watching like a frightened porpoise, could scarcely stand still. He kept shifting his glance to the door.

“All right, dad. Let’s have it,” said Ellery. He had not moved from the window.

The Inspector took something which was carefully wrapped in cotton batting out of his top drawer. “This is the weapon that killed Karen Leith.” He glowered. “It has Eva MacClure’s fingerprints on the blade, bow, and shank.”

“My God,” said Dr. Scott hoarsely. Eva heard him as from a long distance off.

“The blade was wiped clean of blood, but you weren’t very careful afterwards, were you, Miss MacClure?” The old man was in front of her now, brandishing the half-scissors. Its encrusted stones glittered in the light.

“She can explain that,” said Terry. “She—”

“I’m talking to Miss MacClure. You needn’t answer, Miss MacClure. The police stenographer is ready to take down everything you may say. But it’s your right to say nothing, and my duty to warn you that if you do talk the State may use it against you.”

Eva opened her eyes. They came open easily, as if what he had said was a key to a door.

“Eva — honey. Don’t talk,” groaned Dr. MacClure.

“But it’s all so silly,” said Eva in a marvelling voice. “I went in there and saw Karen lying there and leaned on the desk and my hand touched that... that thing. Before I knew what I was doing I picked it up. Then I realized it must have killed her and I dropped it. It fell off into the basket.”

“I see,” said Inspector Queen, never taking his clever eyes off her. “So that’s your story. Was it wiped clean when you picked it up?” She stared. “Was there blood on it?”

“No, Inspector Queen.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this when I questioned you Monday afternoon?”

“I was afraid,” whispered Eva.

“Afraid of what?”

“I don’t know. Just afraid.”

“Afraid it would look bad for you?”

“I... Yes. I suppose so.”

“But why should you be afraid if you didn’t kill Karen Leith? You knew you were innocent, didn’t you?”

“Of course! I didn’t kill Karen! I didn’t!”

The Inspector surveyed her in silence. Then Eva’s eyes fell and filled with tears. It was supposed to be a sign of clear conscience and honesty to be able to look a person straight in the eye. But how could she, when that eye was so merciless, so hostile, so suspicious? Anyone with sensitivity would look away from something disagreeable, cruel...

“If that’s all you’ve got, pop,” said Terry Ring derisively, “you’d better go home and play your harmonica.”

Inspector Queen stalked back to his desk without replying. He opened the top drawer again, put down the half-scissors, and took out a manila envelope. Then he stalked back.

“In the grate of the fireplace in the sitting-room next to the scene of the crime,” he said, “we found this.” He took something out of the envelope. Eva forced herself to look, feeling nauseated. It was impossible. It couldn’t be. Fate couldn’t play such a mean trick. But it had. It had. There it was, the corner of her cambric handkerchief, just the corner, with the hypotenuse of the triangular scrap a wavy, charred edge, and her silk-stitched initials of white smeared hideously with Karen Leith’s blackish blood.

She heard Terry Ring suck in his breath behind her. There was one danger he hadn’t foreseen. That was the only job he’d given her to do, had thought she’d done, and that he saw she had bungled. She could almost feel his bitterness, the bite of his contempt, from behind.

“Is this your handkerchief, Miss MacClure?”

“Eva! Don’t answer, honey! Don’t say a word. He’s got no right!”

She’d run away before making sure the handkerchief was completely consumed. And, of course, the fire petered out. It would. It would.

“It bears the initials EM,” said the Inspector coldly, “and don’t delude yourself, Dr. MacClure, that it will be hard to prove this handkerchief belongs to your daughter. As a matter of fact—” But then he stopped, as if he felt he might say too much. “Another thing. This stain on the corner is human blood. Our chemists have established that. They have also established that it is blood of the type in Karen Leith’s body — a rather unusual type, just to make it easier for us and harder for you, Miss MacClure.”

“Eva. Shut up,” said Terry queerly. “Keep your mouth shut.”

“No!” Eva managed to get out of the chair. “This is stupid, stupid! Yes, it is my handkerchief, and it is stained with Karen’s blood, and I did try to burn it!”

“Ah,” said the Inspector. “Did you get that, Mushie?”

“My God,” said Dr. Scott again, in exactly the same way as before. He seemed incapable of saying anything else. Terry Ring glanced at Ellery, shrugged, and lit a cigaret.

“But it was only because I’d stooped over Karen in the oriel and... and got some blood from the floor on my hand, and wiped it with my handkerchief. It was like jelly.” Eva shuddered. “Don’t you see? Anyone would have done it. No one likes to... to get blood on his fingers. You wouldn’t, would you?” She began to sob. “And then I burned it. I burned it! I was afraid again, afraid!” She collapsed in the doctor’s arms.

“So that’s how it was,” said Inspector Queen.

“Listen, pop, Inspector.” Terry Ring caught the old man’s arm. “I’ll give it to you on the level. It was my idea. I told her to burn it.”

“Oh, you did, did you?”

“When I popped in there she told me what had happened. I made her burn the damned thing. So don’t think you can pin that on her. I’ll testify to that!”

“And why,” purred the Inspector, “did you advise Miss MacClure to burn the handkerchief, Mr. Ring? Were you afraid, too?”

“Because I knew what a dumb cop with a catcher’s mitt for a brain would think if he found it. That’s why!”

Morel coughed. “Inspector Queen, do you really need me? I have — ah — a client waiting...

“You stay where you are!” yelled the old man. Morel shrank back, clutching the chair harder. “Did you get down what this wisenheimer said, Mushie? Okay! Now, Miss MacClure, I’ll tell you what really happened!

“You stabbed Karen Leith with the half-scissors, you wiped the blood off the blade with your handkerchief, and then you tried to burn the handkerchief to destroy the evidence. We have two exhibits — evidence no lawyer could shake — to prove our theory. If our friend Mr. Ring wants to stick to his story that it was his suggestion to burn the handkerchief, we’ll hang an accessory charge around his neck.

“We have the Japanese woman’s testimony to prove that Karen Leith was alive when you were left alone in the sitting-room. We have your own statement, taken at the scene, that no one went through that sitting-room during the half-hour in which you claim you sat there. We have Karen Leith’s own letter to prove that she had no thought of murder or death in her mind when she sat down to write an ordinary business note to Morel — a letter which wasn’t started until after Kinumé gave her the stationery, which was just when you arrived. We’ll show that only the murder could have interrupted that letter. We have Terry Ring’s own statement of Monday that when he arrived he found you in the bedroom over the still-living body of Karen Leith with no one else there.” The old man spun about. “Well, Morel, you’re a lawyer. Is there a case?”

“I... I’m not a criminal lawyer,” stuttered Morel.

“Well,” said Inspector Queen dryly, “Henry Sampson is — and he’s the smartest D.A. this town ever had. And Sampson thinks he’s got something to work on.”

There was a profound silence, punctuated rather than broken by Eva’s exhausted sobbing on Dr. MacClure’s breast.

“Excuse me for butting in,” said Terry Ring in the silence, “but what about the blonde dame from the attic?”

The Inspector blinked. Then he went over to his desk and sat down. “Oh, yes. The blonde woman. Karen Leith’s sister.”

“Yeah, her sister. What about her?”

“What about her?”

“Don’t you think you might clear that up before you go putting the finger on this poor kid? You know that Karen Leith kept that woman practically a prisoner for nine years in that room. You know she escaped. You know she had a damned good reason to hate her sister’s guts — with the little one stealing her stuff and taking credit for it. You know she had a way to come down and a way to get out. You know the scissors came from the attic, where she lived!”

“Karen Leith’s sister,” murmured the Inspector. “Yes, indeed, Doctor, we’ve traced that suicide business.”

“You listen to me!” shouted Terry.

“The body was never found in the sea. She just disappeared. We also found out that when Karen Leith came over from Japan, she traveled with two people — this Kinumé and a blonde woman who kept to their cabin all through the voyage and was listed under an obviously false name. That’s why Miss Leith didn’t let you know she was coming — she wanted to get settled and her sister hidden away before anyone from her old life found out.”

“Then it is true,” mumbled Dr. Scott unexpectedly. “That woman — the one who murdered Dr. MacClure’s brother—”

“That’s a damnable lie!” thundered the doctor. His light blue eyes flamed so dangerously Dr. Scott paled still more.

“I think,” said Ellery from the window in a cold tone, “that we’re beginning to divagate. You mentioned something about a case.” Father and son eyed each other. “I haven’t heard a whisper about motive.”

“The State doesn’t have to prove motive,” snapped the old man.

“But it comes in handy when you’re trying to convince a jury that a harmless young woman of spotless reputation and no previous criminal record stabbed her father’s fiancée to death with murderous intent.”

“The funny part of it is,” said the Inspector, teetering in his chair, “that I was puzzled at first about the motive, too. I couldn’t figure why a girl of Miss MacClure’s bringing-up and family should turn killer. It’s one reason I held back. But all of a sudden I find a motive — a motive any jury will understand, even sympathize with.” He shrugged. “But that’s out of my line.”

“Motive?” Eva raised her head from the arm of her chair. “I had a motive to kill Karen?” She laughed wildly.

“Morel.” The Inspector swiveled. “What did you tell me to-day?”

Morel struggled as he felt cold eyes on him; it was apparent he would have welcomed escape with open arms. He dabbed at his forehead with an already wet handkerchief. “I— Please understand, Dr. MacClure. It was pure accident. I mean I didn’t intend to meddle. But when I found out — naturally, my duty to the law—”

“Cut the baloney,” growled Terry Ring.

The lawyer did not seem to know what to do with the handkerchief. “Years ago Miss Leith left a certain — well, large envelope in my care with instructions to — well, open it on her death. I’d... well, completely forgotten about it until this morning. Then I opened it, and the papers in it all related to Esther Leith MacClure — old letters between Dr. MacClure and Miss Leith dated 1919, a written statement by Miss Leith making certain arrangements for the disposition of her sister — in case of her own death — to send her back to Japan secretly—”

“They’re all here,” said the old man, patting his desk. And now, as he looked at Dr. MacClure, there was pity in his eyes. “You’ve kept the secret well, Doctor. I know why you did. But I’m sorry — I’ve got to reveal it.”

“Don’t tell her. Let that one — thing — be,” whispered Dr. MacClure. He hovered over the Inspector, his hands shaking.

“I’m sorry. It’s a good show you’re putting on, Doctor, but the girl knows. Even if you don’t think she knows, I tell you she does.” He took a long document from a basket on his desk and caught Eva’s eye. He cleared his throat. “I have here, Miss MacClure, a warrant for your arrest, charging you with the murder of Karen Leith.”

“I think,” began Eva, swaying on her feet, “I think—”

“No. Wait, Inspector.” Terry Ring was in front of the desk, speaking fast. “That deal we spoke about. I’ll make it. Give the kid a chance. She’s no common criminal. Hold off on the pinch. You can’t go off half-cocked with this Esther at large.” The Inspector said nothing. “She could have done it, I tell you! She had two motives. One was the dirty deal her sister gave her. The other was the money — the Leith woman’s money coming from her great-aunt.”

“Yes?” said Inspector Queen.

“Morel will tell you! Karen Leith died before forty. The aunt’s fortune then goes to Karen’s nearest blood-relative. But with Esther alive, she’s the relative! Her sister! She gets that dough! Morel.”

“Y-yes.”

“How much is involved?”

“Nearly a million and a quarter.”

“There! See, Inspector? That’s dough, isn’t it? She falls into that dough, doesn’t she?” Terry’s gray eyes glittered. “And where’s your motive for this kid here? It can’t stand up against a million and a quarter!”

The Inspector said: “What’s the deal, Terry?”

Terry straightened up. “If you ask me hard enough,” he said coolly, “I think maybe I might be able to find Esther Leith for you.”

The old man smiled. “No dice, Terry. You’re forgetting one thing. Morel, what would have happened to that money if Karen Leith had lived another month?”

“She would have inherited it,” said Morel nervously. “It would have gone to her estate.”

“And she left all her money to charities and institutions, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“In other words, Terry, if Eva MacClure hadn’t killed Karen Leith when she did, she would never have got her hands on that fortune at all — neither she nor Esther Leith.” Terry frowned, puzzled. “And then the fingerprints on the weapon are the girl’s. The handkerchief is the girl’s. And there’s no evidence to show that Esther was even in the house during the commission of the crime. Nothing doing, Terry.” He paused. “But... you say you know where she is? I’ll remember that.”

“Never have got her hands on the fortune!” sneered Terry. “What’s the matter with you, pop — you crazy? How could Eva ever get her hands on it? It could go only to a blood-relative—”

Dr. Scott broke his bonds. He said unsteadily: “Inspector Queen. Was that the motive you mentioned — I mean, my fiancée committed murder for money?”

“That,” said Inspector Queen, waving the warrant, “and revenge.”

“Daddy,” said Eva. “Did you hear what he said? Revenge!”

“Stop acting!” said the Inspector sternly. “Dr. MacClure’s no more your father than I am!”

“Not — Eva’s — father—” said Dr. Scott, dazedly.

“Revenge?” repeated Eva, swaying a little more.

“Revenge for what Karen Leith did to Esther — keeping her prisoner for nine years, stealing her work, her life, her family, her happiness.”

“I think,” said Eva faintly, “I think I’ll go mad if someone doesn’t — tell — me — what...”

“What the hell difference could it make to her,” demanded Terry fiercely, “what Karen Leith did to her sister Esther? You little dumb-bell!”

The Inspector replied: “What difference? Oh, I don’t know. Mightn’t it possibly make you boil a little if a woman like Karen Leith did what she did to your own mother?”

“Her — mother—” gasped Dr. Scott.

“Yes, Dr. Scott. Esther Leith MacClure is your fiancée’s mother.”

Eva gaped. Then she screamed in an unrecognizable voice: “My mother!”

Terry Ring and Ellery Queen jumped for her as she tottered, but it was the brown man who got there first.