The Door Between

17

“I’m all right,” said Eva, pushing him away. “Just let me alone, please.” She felt for the back of a chair.

“I’m telling you she didn’t know,” said Dr. MacClure to Inspector Queen. “I tell you I’ve kept it from her...” But there was no belief in the Inspector’s face, and the doctor made a gesture of despair. “Eva. Eva, honey.”

“Did you say my mother?” asked Eva, looking at the Inspector in a very strange way. She seemed quite calm.

But Dr. MacClure saw her eyes, and he brushed aside Dr. Scott, who was standing helplessly by, and took Eva’s elbow and led her like a child to the Inspector’s leather settee. “Get me some water.”

Terry was out and back in a matter of strides with a brimming paper-cup from the cooler in the outer office. The big man chafed Eva’s arms and legs, put water to her lips. And Eva’s eyes filled with awareness, and pain.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, hiding her face in the doctor’s coat.

“There, honey. It’s all right. It’s my fault for keeping it from you. Cry, honey—”

“He said... Then Karen was my aunt. You’re my uncle. She... she’s my mother!”

“I didn’t think you’d ever find out. And when I learned she was dead — how was I to know, honey? — it did seem wiser not to tell you.”

“Oh, dad! My own mother!”

Dr. MacClure was calmer than Ellery had seen him since Monday afternoon on the Panthia’s deck. And he held his shoulders straighter, as if they carried a lesser burden now.

“Take some water, honey.”

The Inspector said: “Very pretty, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask—”

The big man looked at him, and the Inspector bit the end of his mustache and sat down.

“You’ll want to know about it now, Eva,” said the doctor, stroking her hair. “Yes, she’s your own mother — a beautiful and brilliant person. The sweetest woman I’ve ever known.”

“I want her. I want to see her,” sobbed Eva.

“We’re going to find her for you. Lie down, Eva.” He laid her back on the settee and rose to walk up and down, up and down. “I’ll never forget that cable — when you were born. It was from Floyd, and he was very proud. 1916 — the year your grandfather died... Hugh Leith. Two years later Floyd’s accident occurred, and your mother’s breakdown. Karen” — his face darkened — “Karen wrote me, and I went straight to Japan, dropping everything. This was at the end of 1918, right after the Armistice.”

Eva lay on the settee and saw her mother painted on the ceiling. It was funny, to find out a thing like that, just when... Tall, stately, with her ash-blonde, lovely hair; beautiful, of course, and with that pitiful dragging leg that invested her with a single touch of earth. The picture was so clear...

“Esther was in a sanatorium. Her nerves had completely collapsed as a result of Floyd’s death and the way it happened. For a time she was out of her mind. But she regained her sanity. In the process something happened to her. She lost something vital — I don’t quite know what.”

“Did she remember what had happened?” asked Ellery.

“She could think of nothing else. I saw that the fear that she had murdered Floyd would haunt her to the end of her life. She’s a sensitive creature, a bundle of delicate nerves — in those days a poet of great promise.”

“But why did she insist on harping on that one subject, Doctor? Did she really have a guilty conscience?”

“I tell you I investigated it! It had been sheer accident. But there was something I couldn’t put my finger on. I don’t know what it was. It held her back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t do anything with her. It was just as if — well, as if another and inimical force was working outside her, hurting her, delaying her recovery, giving her no rest.”

Poor darling, thought Eva. Poor darling. She had always secretly envied her friends their mothers, even the ones who were cheap and vain and empty. All of them had something to give their daughters that seemed precious, that blotted out the cheapness and vanity and emptiness... Her eyes filled with tears again. And now that she almost had her mother back — what? Scandal. Arrest. Perhaps—

“I stayed in Japan as long as I could. Karen was — helpful. Now that her father was dead, she said, she had her own career to make, and besides she had to take care of Esther. Esther had no aim in life; she needed attention; she was hardly in a condition to bring up her child. Even then,” shouted the doctor, brandishing his fist, “I’ll bet Karen’d concocted her devilish scheme!” His voice sank. “But how was I to know?”

The Inspector stirred uneasily. Morel, he noticed, had taken advantage of the confusion to make his escape. Nothing was working out right, he thought. He pursed his lips.

Dr. MacClure said gently to Eva: “It was Karen who suggested I take you back with me, honey — adopt you. You were less than three then, a skinny little thing with long curls. Of course I knew you would never remember. Well, I did it. We had to do it legally, get Esther’s signature. To my surprise, she gave it. She even insisted on giving you up, and I took you back with me.” He paused. “And here we are.”

And here we are. Eva stared at the ceiling. For the first time the shame of it crept burning over her. Eva MacClure a murderess! Her mother a... They would say it was heredity. That murder, vengeance were in her blood, in Esther’s blood, that was Eva’s. How was she to face them? How was she to face — Dick?

She turned her head slowly. He was standing by the Inspector’s door, shifting from one foot to the other, looking as if he had a bad taste in his mouth and was trying to swallow it. It struck Eva suddenly that her fiancé had done nothing, nothing at all. He had been dumb and comfortless. He had been obsessed with thoughts of personal escape.

“Dick. Why don’t you go home? Your work — the hospital—”

She watched him as she had once seen Dr. MacClure watch the writhings of a guinea pig undergoing anaesthesia.

But he said stiffly, “Don’t be silly, Eva. With this insane charge hanging over you—” He came to her then and stooped to kiss her. His lips felt cold against her cheek.

And here we are, Eva thought. Here I am, stretched out like an animal on the dissecting table, under the eyes of men... She sat up suddenly, swinging her legs to the floor with a clatter.

“You’re not going to frighten me,” she said fiercely to the silent Inspector. “I’ve been acting like a scared child. But you won’t scare me! I did not kill Karen Leith. I did not know my mother is alive. I didn’t even know who my mother is! I’ve given you perfectly reasonable explanations for the fingerprints and the handkerchief. Why aren’t you fair?”

“That’s the stuff, baby!” said Terry Ring, grinning. “Tell the old baboon where the hell he gets off.”

“And you,” said Eva scornfully. “If you know where my mother is, why don’t you tell us? Take me to her this instant!”

Terry blinked. “Now listen, kid, take it easy. I didn’t say I knew positively. I only said—”

“Why don’t you make him tell?” cried Eva to the Inspector. “You’re awfully good at scaring a woman, but when a man stands up to you—”

Terry grabbed her arm. “Listen, kid—”

She shook it off, glaring at the old man. “You’d better find her! God knows what’s happened to her — alone in New York for the first time in her life, after spending nine years cooped up in an attic!”

Inspector Queen nodded at his stenographer. “All right, Mushie,” he sighed. “Send Thomas Velie in. We’ll want to book her.”

Eva relaxed very slowly. Very slowly she stared about her — at Dr. MacClure, pacing, pacing; at Dr. Scott — who was he? it seemed to Eva she had never seen him before — nibbling at a fingernail and studying the sky through the window; at Terry Ring lighting one cigaret from another and frowning deeply; at Ellery Queen, motionless and impotent as the onyx figurine on Inspector Queen’s desk.

The police stenographer said: “Yes, sir,” and rose.

But before he could get to the door it swung open and a tall, lanky, black-jowled man wearing an archaic derby and smoking a black cigar slouched in.

“Oh, company?” scowled Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner of New York County. “Hello, Queen. Ah, Dr. MacClure! Sorry about all this... Listen, Q. I’ve got bad news for you.”

“Bad news for me?” said the Inspector.

“You know that half-scissors — the one you’ve got in your desk?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“It didn’t kill Karen Leith.”

Terry Ring drawled in the very special silence: “Well, what do you know about that.”

“You wouldn’t kid an old man, would you, Sam?” asked the Inspector, trying to smile.

“I’m telling you,” said Prouty impatiently. “Listen, I’ve got to be back at the Morgue in twenty minutes and I can’t stand here gassing. But after that first autopsy report of ours on Tuesday, I guess I owe you an explanation.”

“I guess you do,” growled the old man.

Terry Ring went over to Dr. Prouty and pumped his limp hand. “The Marines have landed!” Then he went to Eva and led her, chuckling, to the settee. “Sit down, kid. This is your show now.”

Bewildered, Eva sat down. She had never felt more alert in her life; it had something to do, she knew vaguely, with the adrenal glands; and yet nothing made sense. The half-scissors... the fingerprints...

“My fault,” said Prouty. “I was busy and left the autopsy to — well, never mind. He’s a youngster and hasn’t had much experience. Besides, I thought it was merest routine. There didn’t seem to be any doubt about the agency of death.”

Ellery ran over to him and gripped his lapel. “Prouty, stop babbling before I throttle you! If the half-scissors didn’t kill her, what did?”

“A different... If you’ll give me a chance—”

Ellery smacked his father’s desk. “Don’t tell me the knife-wound was inflicted over a first wound, a smaller wound — to obliterate it!”

The black jaw, which needed a shave badly, dropped.

“Lord! I never dreamed... Is there any way of telling, Prouty? Is the venom recognizable?”

“Venom?” repeated Dr. Prouty dazedly.

“It was just yesterday. I’d been thinking over the case — its curious angles. I got to thinking about Kinumé.” Ellery was exultant. “And then I remembered Karen Leith’s remarking in the spring that the old Japanese woman came from the Loo-choo Islands. I promptly referred to Britannica and found — pure hunch, mind you! — that a majority of the islands, especially a place called Amami-Oshima, are infested with a genus of venomous reptile called habu.”

“Ha... what?” said Prouty, goggling at him.

“Trimeresurus — I hope I’ve remembered it correctly. No rattle, scaly head, attain a length of six to seven feet, and their bite causes quick death.” Ellery drew a deep breath. “It was the marks of fangs underneath, Prouty?”

Prouty took the dangling cigar out of his mouth. “What’s the matter with him, Q. — is he crazy?”

Ellery’s smile vanished. “You mean it wasn’t a snake?”

“No!”

“But I thought—” began Ellery feebly.

“And who said anything about the knife-wound obliterating another, smaller wound underneath?”

“But when I asked you—”

Prouty threw up his hands. “Look, Q. Put in a call to Matteawan, and then bring out that half-scissors.”

The Inspector took the batting-wrapped half-scissors from his drawer. Prouty unwrapped it. “Hmm. Then I was right.” He threw the thing on the desk and produced a small cardboard box from his pocket. There was a wad of wool inside, and nestling on the wool like a jewel was a small sliver of steel, sharply triangular in shape.

“Dug this out of her throat myself this afternoon. My assistant missed it Tuesday.” He handed the box over to the Inspector, and they crowded around.

“The tip of a scissors” blade,” said the old man slowly. “Snapped off by the blow. And the tip of this half” — he glanced over at the half-scissors on the desk — “is still intact.”

“Same kind of tip exactly, wouldn’t you say?” muttered Terry.

“What do you think, El?”

“No question about it. This sliver is the tip of the missing half-scissors.”

“Then you’re right, Sam,” said the old man gloomily. “This half of the scissors couldn’t have knifed her. It was the other half.”

“Okay, kid!” Terry ran over to Eva. “You sleep in your own bed to-night!”

“Found the other half?” asked Prouty, going to the door.

“No!”

“Well, all right, don’t bite my head off.” Prouty scratched his jaw. “Uh... Dr. MacClure. I don’t want you to think this sort of bungling is usual with our office. Green hand. You know—”

Dr. MacClure waved an absent hand. “By the way,” said Ellery, “what else did you find, Prouty? I didn’t see the report.”

“Oh, nothing much. A coronary thrombosis — did you know that, Doctor? I believe you were her physician.”

“Suspected it,” muttered the doctor.

“Coronary thrombosis?” repeated Ellery. “I thought that was a form of heart disease exclusive with men.”

“It’s commoner in men,” said Prouty, “but plenty of women have it. Karen Leith had a nice thrombus. That’s why she died so quickly.”

“Quickly? She lingered for at least fifteen minutes.”

“Ordinarily with a throat wound they’ll live for hours. Bleed to death, and that takes time. But with a weak pump they’ll die in a matter of minutes sometimes.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing interesting. Anaemia — weak stomach. But that’s about all. After my young man’s boner I did a thorough autopsy myself... Look here, I’ve got to be going. “Bye, Doctor.” And Prouty disappeared.

“I never told Karen about the thrombosis,” sighed Dr. MacClure. “It would only have worried her, and it wasn’t a serious condition. The life she led — no exertion or excitement, plenty of care — she could have lived for many years without danger.”

“She struck me,” said Ellery, “as something of a hypochondriac.”

“Never had another physician — ideal patient,” said the doctor grimly. “Followed my instructions and advice to the letter. I suppose she thought she had a lot to live for.” He sounded bitter.

“By the way, what sort of married life did she contemplate? I’m curious, because I don’t see how she intended to keep up the deception about her sister Esther afterward.”

“She wanted a ‘modern’ marriage. Separate establishments, separate careers, she was to keep her own name — all the rest of it. At the time it sounded like a Lucy Stoner’s whim. But now—” Dr. MacClure scowled — “now I see why. It would have enabled her to continue the deception.” He exploded suddenly. “It’s damnable how a woman can fool a man!”

Or a man, thought Eva, a woman. She said quietly: “I think you can go back to your office now, Dick. There’s no more danger for to-day — is there, Inspector?”

The Inspector picked up the warrant and slowly tore it in half. “Sorry,” he said. But he did not sound sorry. He sounded angry.

“Then I think,” said Dr. Scott with difficulty, “I think I’ll go, Eva... I’ll call you to-night.”

“Yes,” said Eva, and when he made as if to stoop and kiss her again, she turned her face away. He straightened up, smiling a little foolishly; he was white around the lips. Then he left without a word.

“You people might as well go, too,” said the Inspector. “Or no. Wait a minute. You didn’t happen to see the other half of those scissors around anywhere Monday afternoon, did you, Miss MacClure?”

“No, Inspector.” Eva scarcely heard him. The two-carat square-cut diamond on the fourth finger of her left hand burned.

“How about you, Mr. Ring?”

“Me?” said Terry. “Not me.”

“It couldn’t have been in one of your pockets, now, could it, when I let you go Monday?” asked the old man bitterly. “Teach me never to—” But he did not finish.

“Come on, Eva,” said Terry with a grin, seizing Eva’s arm. “The old razorback’ll charge you with lifting his leather if you don’t get out of here quick!”

18

“Chow’s on me,” said Terry Ring as they stood on the sidewalk before the Centre Street Building. He was in high spirits. “Come on, I’ll take you all over to Fung’s. There’s one Chink that knows how to make egg-roll.”

“I’ll go anywhere,” said Eva. She inhaled deeply and with rare enjoyment, as if she had never realized how sweet free air, even in New York, could be.

“How about you, Doc?”

“Can’t eat the stuff,” said Dr. MacClure absently.

“Then we’ll go somewhere else—”

“No.” He kissed Eva. “Run along, honey. Forget everything. You will, won’t you?”

“Yes,” said Eva, but she knew she would not, and she knew he knew she would not. “Oh, come along with us, Daddy! We’ll go—”

“A walk will do me worlds of good.” He paused, and then suddenly said: “Don’t ever call me anything else, Eva,” and swung off up the street. They watched him in silence as his tall, bulky figure marched off toward the police academy on the next block.

“Swell guy,” said Terry. “How about you, Queen? Haven’t you got anywhere to go, either? I’ll bet you’re tired.”

“I’m hungry,” said Ellery.

Terry looked disappointed for an instant. Then he yelled: “Hey, taxi!” and Eva found herself faintly smiling.

He chattered incessantly on the short jolting trip to Chinatown, paid off the driver with a bill, said: “Keep the change, sucker,” and steered them across the narrow Pell Street sidewalk to what looked like the entrance to a cellar.

“Don’t mind the looks of this joint. It’s the real McCoy. All the Chinks eat here themselves. Hello, Fung.” A broad-cheeked Chinese smiled and bobbed in the basement restaurant. The place was empty except for three old Orientals wearing black hats and drinking rice wine out of beer bottles. “Never mind, Fung. I’ll pick my own table. It’s the one the cockroaches keep away from.”

He led them to a corner, held a chair gallantly for Eva. “The cockroaches,” he said, “were a gag.” She smiled again. “The walls are a poisonous green, and plenty dirty, but the kitchen’s spotless. Want to see it?”

“No, thank you.”

“That’s it! You’ve got a dimple near your mouth that you ought to show more often. Hey, Queen! Cheer up. You still seeing snakes?” He chuckled.

“Shut up,” said Ellery irritably. “What on earth do you eat in a place like this?”

“Leave it to Uncle Oscar. Wei!” A little Chinese with an apron tied around his waist and no necktie scuttled over. “Big-big Wan-Tan. Egg-roll, three portions. Shrimp chop-suey. Chow mein, Canton style. Heavy on the rice. Wine. Tea. Shove off!”

“That sounds like an awful lot,” said Eva. “I’ll just have some chow mein and tea.”

“You’ll have what I give you.” Terry chucked his hat carelessly over his shoulder and, by a miracle, it stuck to a peg on the wall. “Take your coat off if you’re hot, Queen. Fung won’t mind.”

“Miss MacClure might.”

“Oh, I don’t!”

“Say, you’re all right, gorgeous! Feel better?”

“You haven’t given me a chance to feel anything,” said Eva. “Where is my mother, Terry?”

Terry glanced away. Through the swinging kitchen doors Wei was emerging, like Atlas, bearing an enormous tray. “I don’t know.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said.” He turned back and took her hand, feeling her fingers absently. “That’s some sparkler, isn’t it? I had to say something, kid. I thought maybe the old boy would fall for it. Stalling, that’s all.”

“Then you don’t know!” cried Eva. “Nobody knows anything!”

“Take it easy, Eva. Don’t think. Remember what your old man said. He’s right. Forget it. It’ll all come out in the wash.”

Wei arrived and set a huge tureen before them with a slip-slopping bang. “Wan-tan,” he announced, and shuffled off.

It was clear Chinese soup choked with doughy masses and floating thick chunks of pork, like chips on the river. The steam smelled savory. “Ah,” said Terry, rubbing his hands. “Here, kid, give me your plate. Chinese knishes, those are. Know what a knish is? I used to buy “em on the cuff off old Finkelstein down in Cherry Street when I was a kid peddling papers. He had a little wagon that pushed—”

To Ellery, listening as Terry rattled on, not giving Eva time to think, making her smile, making her talk, everything looked extremely bleak. As he attacked the soup it occurred to him that for all this breeziness and lack of polish Mr. Terence Ring was an extraordinarily subtle young man. You never knew, he reflected, what Mr. Ring was really thinking.

“Soup’s delicious,” said Ellery. “Now excuse me for interrupting the autobiographical details, but it seems to me, Terry, you’re suspiciously like a man whistling in the dark.”

“You here yet?” groaned Terry.

“What am I going to do?” said Eva in dismay. “You’re right, Mr. Queen. It’s no good pretending.”

“Have some of this egg-roll,” said Terry.

“You’re sweet, Terry, but it’s really useless. I’m in this up to my ears. And you know it.”

Terry glared at Ellery. “Well, you know your old man. What’s he going to do now?”

“Look for the missing half of the scissors. You’re sure you didn’t see it anywhere, Eva?”

“Positive.”

“It wasn’t there,” snapped Terry. “Whoever pulled this job took it away with him. Your old man knows that, too. His men went over those premises with a vacuum-cleaner. Cellar, grounds, house inside and out—”

Ellery shook his head. “I wish I knew what to suggest. But I don’t — completely at sea. I’ve never seen a case so fruity in appearance and with so little actually to chew on.”

“I’m glad of one thing,” said Eva, pecking at the egg-roll. “Mother couldn’t — have done it. Not with that door bolted from inside Karen’s bedroom.”

“Well, we have a breathing-spell, anyway. Until dad finds out about that bedroom door, we’re all right,” said Ellery.

“How’s he ever going to find out? The only way he will is if one of us spills.” Terry scowled. “There’s one who might.”

“Who?” But Eva, flushing, knew whom he meant.

“The guy who gave you that diamond. This Scott. What the hell ever made you fall for him? Have some of this chop-suey.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk about Dick that way! He’s upset — why shouldn’t he be? It’s not easy for him, with a fiancée on the verge of being arrested for murder.”

“Well, it’s no easier for you, is it? Listen, kid, he’s a heel. Give him his walking papers.”

“Please!”

“If I may interrupt this romantic interlude,” said Ellery, putting down the chopsticks with which he had been vainly trying to snare a piece of shrimp, and groping for a fork, “I think I’ve thought of something.”

They cried together: “What?”

Ellery put the paper napkin to his lips. “Eva, where were you standing when friend Terry went over to the bedroom door — I mean the one going to the attic — and discovered it was bolted?”

Terry’s eyes contracted. “What difference does that make?”

“Possibly a great deal. Well, Eva?”

She was staring from him to Terry and back again. “I think I was against Karen’s desk. Watching. Why?”

“That’s right,” said Terry. “Why?”

“Did you see the bolt before he went to the attic door?”

“No. The Japanese screen was hiding it. I told him where the door was and he threw the screen aside.”

“His body was blocking the door, then? You didn’t see the bolt until he moved aside?”

“I didn’t see it then at all. He just told me—”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Terry. “What the devil are you driving at, Queen?”

Ellery slumped back. “You know, I have the type of mind that simply will not digest an impossibility. I’m a chronic unbeliever, Terry.”

“Skip the embroidery!”

“Here’s a situation in which the facts say only one solution is possible. Hypothetically there are three exits from Karen Leith’s bedroom. One is a window — but the windows were iron-barred. One is the door to the attic — that, however, was bolted from inside the bedroom. The third is the sitting-room — but Eva says not a soul passed through it, and she didn’t leave it for an instant. Solution: Eva killed her aunt. She was the only one who could possibly have committed the murder. That is, if the basic facts are really true.”

“Well, she didn’t do it,” said Terry pugnaciously. “So what?”

“Patience, my boy. I’m arguing on the assumption, of course, that Eva is innocent.”

“Thank you,” said Eva ironically.

“Well, what facts have we? The windows — that was a fact I confirmed myself; they simply couldn’t have been used as an exit. The sitting-room — if we assume, as we do, that Eva is guiltless then we must also assume that she is telling the truth, and that no one did pass through. Consequently, we have left only the bolted door to the attic.” Ellery sat up. “And strangely enough, Terry, the evidence that the door was bolted cannot be confirmed.”

“I don’t get you,” said Terry slowly.

“I’m sure you do. How do we know the door was bolted when Eva entered the bedroom and found her aunt dying? Did she see it? No, the screen concealed it. Then you arrived, and eventually you flung the screen aside and announced that the door was bolted. Did Eva see it then? No! And shortly after that, she fainted. True, when she revived, she did see the bolt — you began wrestling with it, finding it apparently stuck — but only after she had been unconscious for some time.”

“Who do you think you’re kidding?” Terry’s face was mahogany again. “She was out only a few seconds. And that bolt was stuck!”

“So you say,” murmured Ellery. “We’ve only your word for it.”

Eva was staring at the brown man now with a horrified inquiry; and he was so furious she thought he would blast Ellery across the room. But he controlled himself and said in a choked voice: “All right, let’s say for the sake of argument that I put one over on Eva. Let’s say the door wasn’t bolted when I looked, I only made believe it was. Why? What was my big idea?”

Ellery thrust a forkful of chow mein into his mouth. “If the door wasn’t bolted at all, the situation isn’t impossible. That’s one point in favor of the theory. It’s possible for someone to have got in through the attic, killed Karen, and escaped the same way.”

“But why should I lie about the bolt!”

“Suppose,” mumbled Ellery through the chow mein, ‘suppose you had stabbed Karen Leith.”

“You crazy — crackpot!” shouted Terry.

Fung ran up, wringing his hands. “Te’y! You no yell. You no make noises. You stop!”

“You go to hell!” yelled Terry. “I did it? Why, you—”

“Now, now, Terry, you haven’t the contemplative spirit. I’m only saying ‘suppose’”. Can’t you suppose calmly? If the attic door was really open all the time, then you could have been the one who got in by the attic route, stabbed Karen Leith while Eva sat waiting in the sitting-room, escaped by the attic, and then came back through the front of the house in order to bolt that door from inside the bedroom!”

“But why?”

“Oh, that’s of the very essence of simplicity. To frame Eva for the crime. To make her appear the only possible criminal.”

“Yah!” sneered Terry. “You’re off your nut. If I made believe the bolt was in the socket, then why the hell did I turn around and save the kid by pulling it out of the socket again?”

“Yes,” said Eva breathlessly. “That doesn’t make sense, Mr. Queen.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Ellery. “Mm, this is really excellent tripe... Well, you might have unframed your victim, Terry, after having first framed her, for the simplest reason in the world. Story-book reason. Sizzling Romances. Mush-mush. The grand and instantaneous passion. You fell in love with her. First sight, you know. Wei! Would you be kind enough to pour some more of this execrable wine?”

Eva turned cherry-red and fumbled with her fork. Fell in love! It was the most preposterous... He was so self-sufficient. Big and strong and defiant and confident. Terry Ring would never fall in love at first sight. Not he. He would be slow, careful, watchful. He’d always have a good reason... She glanced sideways at him and was startled to see him eating furiously, eyes on his plate, manipulating the chopsticks with a savage energy, while the tips of his small, delicate brown ears burned like redfire on election night.

“You see,” sighed Ellery, setting his glass down, “there’s a reason for everything.”

“Don’t talk to me,” snarled Terry. “I didn’t kill that woman. The bolt was in the socket. And I didn’t fall for any dame. Get me?”

“Well, don’t be so vehement about it,” said Ellery, rising. “It’s hardly complimentary to the young lady. Will you excuse me a moment? Wei, your telephone, if any.”

Wei gesticulated, and Ellery strolled through the archway into Fung’s supplementary establishment. Terry and Eva ate in silence, Terry with very Chinese gulps, Eva delicately and with absorption. The three old Chinese gentlemen in black hats glanced over at them and began to gabble suddenly in their contrapuntal tongue. Terry, who understood a little Cantonese, felt his ears burn more brightly. They were saying, it appeared, that the little flower of the brown white man had displeased him, to judge from his wrath, and that it were better to endure the Torture of a Thousand Cuts than to endure a woman who had grown unendurable.

“You know,” said Eva suddenly, “this is the first time we’ve ever been alone. I mean — since Monday.”

“Give me that rice.” He continued to flick chow mein into his mouth.

“I haven’t really thanked you, Terry, for being so wonderful to me. Don’t mind Mr. Queen. I think he was just trying to amuse himself. I know how silly—”

“What’s silly?” he demanded, throwing down the sticks.

Eva colored again. “I mean this love nonsense, and all that. I know why you helped me. You were sorry for me—”

Terry swallowed hard. “Listen, kid, he’s right.” He seized her hand. “First time I ever fell for a skirt, so help me! Poison to me, women. But I’m nuts about you. I can’t sleep or anything. I keep seeing you all the time!”

“Terry!” said Eva, snatching her hand away and looking around. The three Chinese gentlemen shook their heads. The ways of the white man were ever mysterious.

“I never thought I’d fall for a girl like you, anyway. I’ve always liked the big ones. I mean — you know — plenty of what it takes. You’re so damned skinny—”

“I’m not,” cried Eva. “I weigh—”

“Well, maybe skinny isn’t the word,” he said judicially, looking her over. “But you need fattening up. And then there’s your nose. Turned up — that’s what I mean. Like Myrna Loy’s. And the dimples.” He scowled. “Sucker for a dimple!”

Eva felt rather like laughing, and then rather like crying. Things happened so suddenly these days. Terry Ring! This large, uncouth... She felt instantly ashamed. That wasn’t very nice. And he was real, and exciting. You never knew what he would do or say next. Life with him would be... But Eva stopped herself. It was all too ridiculous. What did she know about him? For that matter, she was engaged to another man!

“I know I must seem like some kind of a freak or greaseball to you,” muttered Terry. “No education except what I’ve picked up, dragged up on the streets, no manners or anything. I guess it’s just my lousy luck to fall for a girl who’s miles above me.”

“I don’t like you any better for saying that. Manners and education and how you were brought up — they don’t mean very much.” Eva added bitterly: “Karen Leith proved that.”

“Not that I give a damn, you understand!” he snarled. “I’m okay. I get along all right. And if I wanted to learn what spoon to use on the Beluga, why — say, I’ve learned tougher things than that!”

“I’m sure you have,” murmured Eva.

“What’s this stuffed shirt you’re hooked to got that I haven’t got? Running out on you! No guts, that’s what he’s got. A yellow streak a mile wide — that’s what he’s got!”

“Now please, Terry,” said Eva desperately. “I won’t have you saying things like that about Dr. Scott.”

“So he’s got a family. Me... I was swiping rolls from a bakery and sleeping on the docks at seven. All right, he went to some fancy college and became an M.D. and has dough and knows all the answers and gets all the nit-wits on Park Avenue chasing him—”

“That’s quite enough, Terry,” said Eva, coldly.

“Aw, listen, kid, forget it.” He rubbed his eyes. “I guess I’m being a dope. Forget it.”

Eva smiled suddenly. “I don’t want to quarrel with you, Terry. You’ve been nicer to me than... anyone.” She put her hand on his arm. “I’ll never forget that.”

“’Scuse,” said Fung in Terry’s ear. “Te’y, you come.”

“Huh? Some other time, Fung. I’m busy.”

But Fung was insistent. “You come, Te’y, you come!”

Terry looked away, looked up again. Then he rose, fingering the knot of his tie. “Excuse me a minute, Eva. It’s probably some guy on the ’phone.”

He stalked away after the Chinese, and Eva saw them vanish through the archway into the adjoining room.

As she opened her bag to get her compact, Eva wondered just why Ellery Queen had thought it necessary to employ artifice to speak to Terry Ring. For a moment the world contracted around her and she felt alone again.

Eva slowly unscrewed her lipstick and poised the inner lid of the compact. In the mirror she caught a glimpse of the two men standing together just beyond the archway, in earnest conversation. She saw Terry’s face, and it looked worried. And she also saw something small pass from Ellery to Terry, and Terry putting it into his pocket.

Mystery! More mystery. Eva stroked the lipstick on — two dabs on the upper lip, one in the center of the lower lip; and while her little finger spread the red stuff, shaping it to the curve of her lips, she wondered with a constriction of her heart where it would all end. She put the lipstick away, and powdered herself, and in the mirror regarded the nose which Terry Ring had so fervently admired. And she even tried out — quickly, furtively, of course, and feeling a little guilty — the dimple at the left side of her mouth.

Then the two men came back, grinning to conceal an unconcealable gravity, and Terry paid for the meal, incredibly, with a dollar bill and some coins, and flipped a half-dollar at Wei, who caught it very deftly, and took Eva’s arm and led her up into Pell Street, squeezing her elbow experimentally and yet with reassurance.

And Mr. Ellery Queen followed, sighing.

19

Terry was just putting his arms around Eva on Friday morning and kissing her dimple when Mrs Rabinowitz, the elderly woman who came in every day to clean his Second Avenue apartment and fix his meals, woke him up.

“Huh? What?” grumbled Terry, sitting up in bed.

“It’s a telephone,” said Mrs Rabinowitz, firmly shaking his brown shoulder. “Get up, you loafer! Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, sleeping nakkid?”

“All right, all right. Scram, Gwendolyn,” growled Terry, beginning to throw his covers off.

Mrs Rabinowitz screamed, then giggled, then retreated in haste. Terry got into his robe and cursed. People ought to have their heads knocked off for telephoning at seven o”clock in the morning! But when he picked up the receiver he stopped frowning quickly and grew very quiet indeed.

“Oh, it’s you. Wait a minute.” He ran over to close the living-room door. “All right. What’s the bad news?”

“You may take your hair down now, Terry,” said Ellery. “They’ve found her.”

“Uh, huh,” said Terry. Then after a while he said: “What do you mean?”

“Now, look here,” said Ellery. “I haven’t got up at six-thirty just to parry your evasions, my fine fellow. You know as well as I. They’ve found Esther Leith MacClure, and if you’re interested as I think you are, you’ll get into your pants pronto.”

“Philadelphia?”

“So you do know! Yes. The flash came late last night.”

Terry stared at the telephone. “What else?”

“That’s all we know so far. Dad’s sending Sergeant Velie down there by the ten o”clock train. I thought we might trot down there ourselves — a little earlier.”

“What for?”

“You never know. Are you with me?”

“Does Eva know?”

“Not yet. Nor Dr. MacClure. I thought we might get the doctor off quietly and take him with us.”

“Where’ll I meet you?”

“At the MacClure apartment. A half-hour?”

“Make it twenty minutes.”

Terry jumped for the shower. He did not bother to shave. He was dressed and at the door in eight minutes. But he stopped with a thoughtful frown, went back to his bedroom, took a.38 automatic out of his dresser drawer, slipped it into his coat pocket, chucked Mrs Rabinowitz under her third chin, and left running.

Dr. MacClure was just about to drink his tomato juice when the house ’phone rang. He put the glass down untouched.

Venetia called: “It’s fo’ you, Dr. John. Some man Queen. He’s downstairs.”

The doctor jumped to the telephone. As he listened, his face went slowly gray. “Yes.” He nodded several times. “No, she’s still asleep. I’ll be down in a minute.”

He went to the door of Eva’s bedroom and listened. But Eva was not asleep; she was sobbing. The doctor knocked, and the sobbing stopped.

“Come in,” said Eva in a muffled voice.

The doctor went in and found Eva in bed with her back turned to the door. “I’ve got to go out for a while, honey. The foundation... What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Eva. “I just didn’t s-sleep very well.”

“Dick?”

She did not reply; he saw her shoulders heave. As he bent over to kiss her he thought grimly of young Dr. Scott and of his complete silence and absence the evening before. Dr. MacClure thought he knew why young Dr. Scott had not called. And he thought it was not inconceivable that young Dr. Scott would never call again. Young Dr. Scott had found the pace just a little too hot for him. He had wanted a fiancée not a victim of circumstances; a wife, not a potential headline.

The doctor fondled Eva’s tumbled hair. He saw on her writing-table the diamond ring, lying on a sealed envelope.

He left a vague message for Inspector Queen, should he call, with Venetia, and took the elevator down to the lobby. The three men did not shake hands, did not speak. Terry had a taxicab waiting and they all got in, the driver saying: “Was that Penn Station?”

They missed the eight o”clock by ten minutes and had to wait another fifty for the next train. They dawdled away the interval by having breakfast in the terminal restaurant. There was no conversation. The doctor ate stolidly, without looking up from his plate.

On the train Dr. MacClure sat looking out the window. Ellery leaned back beside him and closed his eyes. And Terry Ring, in front of them, divided his time between three morning newspapers and the smoking car behind.

At ten forty-five, as the train pulled out of the North Philadelphia station, Terry Ring reached for his hat and said: “Come on.” The doctor rose, Ellery opened his eyes, and they went single-file to the platform. At the West Philadelphia station they disembarked and made for the Broad Street shuttle, which was waiting. But as they were about to enter Ellery stopped.

“Where has she been staying, Terry?”

Terry said reluctantly: “West Philly.”

Dr. MacClure’s lids came down. “You knew!”

“Sure, Doc. I knew all the time,” said Terry in a low voice. “But what the hell? What could I do?”

After that, Dr. MacClure kept glancing at the brown man — while they went down into the street, while they got into a taxicab, while Terry gave the driver an address.

“Why go there first?” demanded Terry, leaning back.

“There’s plenty of time,” muttered Ellery.

The cab pulled up before a black-red brick house in a narrow, meandering, dilapidated street. A sign outside said: Rooms. They got out and, as Dr. MacClure stared hungrily up at the cheaply curtained windows, Ellery said to the chauffeur: “Wait.” They then mounted the high, dowdy stoop.

An old woman with wispy gray hair and a disagreeable expression opened the door. “I declare respectable people haven’t any rights any more! Well, come in and get over with it.”

Panting, she led them upstairs to a tan-varnished door very like four others on the floor. She opened it with a long steel key and stood back, hands on her drooping hips. “They told me,” she said venomously, “to keep it just the way it was — why, I don’t know. There it is. I lost a good chance to rent it yesterday, too!”

It was a dingy, dirty chamber with a bed whose spring sagged in the middle and a dresser with one leg broken, so that the thing leaned forward tiredly. The bed was unmade, its blankets tumbled about. A pair of black pumps lay on the floor, one of them with a grotesquely built-up heel and sole; there was a gray woollen dress over the bony rocking-chair, a pair of silk stockings, a slip.

Dr. MacClure went to the dresser and fingered a bottle of ink and a pen which lay there; then he turned around and looked at the bed, at the rocker, at the shoes, at the gilt-bracketed gas-jet over the bed, at the torn streaked blind on the window.

“The detective just stepped out for a minute,” said the old woman less truculently, struck by the silence. “If you want to wait—”

“I think not,” said Ellery abruptly. “Come, Doctor. We can’t learn anything here.”

He had to take the doctor’s arm and lead him like a blind man.

The taxicab took them to Police Headquarters and, after a half-hour of annoying and fruitless inquiry, they finally found the official Ellery was seeking.

“We want to see Esther Leith MacClure,” said Ellery.

“Who are you?” The official, a broad-nosed individual with blackening teeth, inspected them suspiciously in turn.

Ellery handed him a card.

“One of you Sergeant Velie of the New York police?”

“No, but it’s perfectly all right. I’m Queen’s son—”

“I don’t care if you’re Queen himself! I got my orders not to give any information to anyone but this Velie. He’s coming down with a man from the Missing Persons Bureau.”

“I know, but we’ve come from New York just to find out—”

“No information,” said the broad-nosed man shortly. “I got my orders.”

“Look,” said Terry. “I know Jimmie O”Dell down here. I’ll look him up, Queen, and we’ll find out—”

”Say, I remember you,” said the man, starting. “You’re the private dick from New York. Well, it won’t do you any good, see? O”Dell’s got his orders, too.”

Dr. MacClure said stiffly: “For God’s sake, let’s get out of here. This haggling over—”

“But surely we can see her,” protested Ellery. “This is a case of identification. This man is Dr. John MacClure, of New York. He’s the only one who can make a positive identification.”

The man scratched his head. “Well, I guess you can see her, all right. They didn’t say anything about that.”

He took up his pen and scratched out a pass to the Philadelphia city morgue.

They stood around the stone slab in the mortuary, silent. The attendant lounged by indifferently. Dr. MacClure, that man of death, did not seem affected by the sight of death. Ellery could see that the swollen, bluish features, the rigid neck muscles, the distended nostrils were invisible to the big man. It was the regularity of feature he was seeing, the long blonde lashes, the still-beautiful hair, the curve of cheek, the tiny ears. He looked and looked, with a marvelling expression on his gaunt face, as if a miracle had happened and he was witnessing a resurrection.

“Doctor,” said Ellery gently. “Is that Esther MacClure?”

“Yes. Yes. That’s my darling.”

Terry turned aside, and Ellery coughed. The big man had said the last words in a murmur that Ellery knew he did not realize was audible. It was disturbing to Ellery’s sense of decorum. Not indecent, exactly, but too — well, naked. He realized suddenly that he had never really seen the man before.

He caught Terry’s embarrassed eye and gestured with his head towards the distant door.

To Ellery’s amazement, when they emerged from the iron gates into the lower-level waiting-room at the Pennsylvania Station, there was Eva sitting on a bench and staring at the clock, which stood at two. From the fact that she was not waiting at the gate Ellery knew that she was not seeing the clock at all. They had to go up to her and shake her.

“Oh, dear,” she said, and sat there with folded hands.

Dr. MacClure kissed her, sat down beside her, took one of her black-gloved hands. Neither of the younger men said anything; but Terry winced and lit a cigaret. She was dressed in black — a black suit, a black hat, black gloves.

She knew.

“Inspector Queen told me,” she said simply. The area about her eyes, although powdered, was puffy.

“She’s dead, Eva,” said the doctor. “Dead.”

“I know, daddy. You poor, poor thing.”

Ellery strolled over to the nearby news-stand and said to a spruce little gray old man: “What’s the idea?”

“You didn’t think,” said Inspector Queen calmly, “that you were going to get away with anything? I’ve had the MacClure girl and Terry trailed since Monday. I knew you were going to Philly this morning before you even got on the train.”

Ellery flushed. “We didn’t find out anything, if that’s any balm to your dignity.”

“I knew that, too. Come over here.”

Ellery followed his father in a helpless, angry mood. He disliked mysteries. He had always disliked mysteries; they annoyed his sense of intellectual balance. That was why he had always been so interested in the solution of crimes... There were too many mysteries now altogether. Instead of simplifying, everything had massed up. Little things were clear: That Dr. MacClure had expected to find Esther Leith MacClure alive and that a last secret hope had died in him with the news of her death. And that Terry Ring had expected nothing but what they had found — that Esther Leith MacClure had died by her own hand. He had known of her suicide all along. And Ellery could even invent a reason for Terry’s long silence. But that was not enough. Not enough...

“We can talk sensibly for a change,” said the Inspector, pausing at the bench. “Now that the truth’s out.”

“The awful truth, eh?” smiled Dr. MacClure; and it was an awful smile.

“I’m sorry, Doctor. This must be a pretty bad blow to you.” The old man seated himself and took a pinch of snuff. “Did you make a positive identification this morning?”

“It’s Esther. I haven’t seen her for seventeen years, but it’s Esther. I’d know her — under any conditions.”

“I didn’t think there was much doubt about it. Hello, Terry! You see, the Philadelphia police couldn’t identify the body at first. When she was found dead Monday night of cyanide poisoning—”

“Monday night,” repeated Eva in a faint voice.

“—there wasn’t a direct clue to her identity. She had given the landlady a false name and address. They tried to locate someone who knew her under that name and at that address, but they found out right away both were phony. She’d given a local street — Philadelphia — and there wasn’t even a street by that name.”

“How late Monday night?” frowned Ellery. “That blasted bureaucrat in Philadelphia wouldn’t give me any information at all.”

“After midnight. The landlady’d got suspicious or something — I haven’t any details myself. Well, when the New York description went out — fair, blonde, around forty-seven, five feet seven or eight inches tall, weight between one-thirty and one-forty, and with a crippled right leg — they finally checked their morgue records and tied up our description with the rooming-house suicide. Notified us late last night.” The Inspector sighed. “I’ve got my man Velie down there now to get the original of her suicide note.”

“Suicide note!” exclaimed Dr. MacClure.

Ellery stiffened. “What suicide note?”

“They found a note crumpled in her hand under the bedclothes.”

“She wrote a note?” muttered Terry incredulously. No one heard him but Ellery.

Inspector Queen stroked his mustache with embarrassment. “Look here, Miss MacClure, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I know what this is going to mean to you.” Eva turned slowly. “Every bad thing has something good about it. The good thing — for you — is that the Leith murder is solved.”

Dr. MacClure jumped up from the bench. “The Leith murder—”

“Sorry, Doctor. In this note she left before committing suicide, Esther MacClure confessed to the murder of her sister.”

“I don’t believe it!” cried Eva.

He took a folded sheet from his pocket and spread it flat. “They dictated the note to me over the ’phone last night. Would you like to read it?”

Eva’s hand went out in a groping gesture; and Dr. MacClure took the paper from her fingers as they grew nerveless and slack. They read the message together, in pale silence; and then the doctor handed it futilely to Ellery.

Terry Ring scanned it eagerly over Ellery’s shoulder.

Even through the Headquarters stationery and the mechanical perfection of Inspector Queen’s deskman, some of the profound fatigue and depression of its author emerged.

Ellery felt Terry gripping his arm. “Come here!”

They moved aside. “Look,” said Terry fiercely. “Something’s all cockeyed!”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, she wrote it all right. But she never killed her sister!”

“How do you know?” Ellery was re-reading the letter.

“I tell you I know! She couldn’t have, anyway. How did she get out of Karen’s bedroom if she did? Even if she came back from Philadelphia to pull the job and then returned to take poison in that West Philly hole!”

“Well,” murmured Ellery, “Somebody killed Karen Leith, and therefore somebody got out of that room. Why not she?”

Terry stared at him. “Where do you stand? Your old man thinks the case is solved. Are you going to tell him about that bolted door?”

Ellery did not reply; he read the letter through a third time. Terry kept staring at him with a calculating coldness.

Then the Inspector said from behind them: “What are you crackpots jawing about?”

“Oh, we’ve been discussing this note,” said Ellery instantly. He slipped it into his pocket.

“It’s a funny thing,” said the Inspector thoughtfully. “After letting herself be shut up like a prisoner by this Leith woman for nine years, she suddenly goes haywire. Why did she wait so long? I guess she went completely crazy.”

“That’s it,” said Terry. “Something snapped all of a sudden. That’s it, pop.”

“You know,” frowned the Inspector, “I’ve been thinking over this business. You get the queerest notions. Why do you suppose this Japanese woman, Kinumé, had to bring Karen Leith a sheet of stationery from downstairs? You’d think the Leith woman would have gone up to the attic — there was plenty of writing-paper up there.”

The brown man’s face settled like hardening plaster. But he said smoothly, with a laugh: “Leave it to pop, here, to think of something fancy! What’s the difference? You’ve got your killer for the books, haven’t you?”

“I don’t know,” said the Inspector in a troubled way. “I’ve just realized it’s been bothering me... Well, its easy enough to find out. We’ll ask her.”

“Dad—” began Ellery.

But the Inspector was already on his way back to the bench. Terry said swiftly: “I’m going.”

“Where?”

“Leith house. I’ll see that Jap first. Let go of me!”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort, said Ellery. “Terry, don’t be an ass. You’re liable to stir up something that would never have come out at all.”

“Let go of me!”

“No.” They glared into each other’s eyes.

“What’s the matter with you two?” demanded the Inspector. They turned and found the old man, Eva, and Dr. MacClure behind them.

“I’ll pop this half-baked son of yours on the nose!” said Terry coldly; but he managed to grimace at Ellery. “Telling me—”

“You stop that,” said the old man with irritation. “I’m getting sick and tired of you. Come on, Ellery. The MacClures are going with us.”

“Say, don’t go, Eva,” said Terry quickly, barring her way. “You’re all in. Why don’t you amble home and—”

“No,” said Eva drearily. “I want to pick up some of my — some of my mother’s things.”

“You can do that to-morrow!”

“Ring,” said Dr. MacClure.

“But—”

“Please let me pass,” said Eva coldly.

Terry dropped his hands and shrugged.

20

The white maid, O’Mara, admitted them to the house in Washington Square. She wore her old expression of sullenness; her stupid eyes were stormy.

“Say, how long you going to keep me here?” she demanded on seeing the Inspector. “You ain’t got no right to keep me here. My boy-friend says so — he works for a lawyer. And who’s going to pay my wages — huh? Answer me that!”

“You mind your tongue,” said the Inspector mildly. “It won’t be long now, if you’re civil.”

“I’ll pay the girl’s wages,” said Dr. MacClure.

“Oh, then it’s all right,” said the girl instantly, smiling at the doctor.

“Where’s Kinumé?” inquired the old man.

“Somewheres around.”

They went upstairs in silence and found Detective Ritter dozing on the sitting-room couch. “Where’s the Jap woman, Ritter?”

“Huh? Ain’t seen her, Inspector.”

“Well, go find her.”

Ritter departed yawning and Eva took a timid step towards the bedroom. The Inspector said in a kindly voice: “It’s all right, Miss MacClure. Go on up if you want to.”

“I’ll go with you!” said Terry.

“I’d rather be alone, Terry.” Eva vanished through the door leading to the attic stairs. They heard her dragging herself up to the attic, slowly, and yet with determined steps.

“Poor kid,” said the Inspector. “It’s certainly hard on her, Doctor. If there’s anything we can do—”

Dr. MacClure went to the window and looked out over the garden. “Inspector. What will be the disposition of Esther’s body?”

“There’s nothing the law wants of her any more, Doctor.”

“I want to make arrangements for her funeral.” He paused. “And for Karen’s, too, of course.”

“Certainly... Ah, come in, Kinumé.”

The Japanese woman stood timorously in the doorway, her oblique eyes luminous with apprehension. Ritter loomed majestically behind her, cutting off escape.

“One moment, Inspector.” Dr. MacClure turned around, went to Kinumé, took her wrinkled ochre hands. “Kinumé.”

Kinumé mumbled: “’Lo, Dr. MacCloo.”

“We know all about Karen, Kinumé,” he said gently. “And about Esther.”

She looked up at him, frightened. “Esther she die. Esther long time die in big water.”

“No, Kinumé. You know that isn’t true. You know Esther lived in the little room upstairs. You see, it won’t do any good to lie, Kinumé.”

“Esther die,” said Kinumé stubbornly.

“Yes, Kinumé. Esther is dead. But she died only a few days ago. The men of the police have found her body in another city, not far away. You understand?”

For a horrified instant the old woman stared up into his eyes; and then she burst into tears.

“You need not lie for anyone’s sake any longer,” said the doctor in a murmur. “Kinumé.” She kept weeping. “Only Eva is left to you, Kinumé. Only Eva. Do you understand, Kinumé? Only Eva!”

But the old woman was too drowned in her sorrow to catch the subtleties of Occidental suggestion. She could only moan: “Missie die. Now Esther die. What becoming Kinumé?”

Terry muttered to Ellery: “It’s no use. She doesn’t get it.”

The Inspector beamed approval; he permitted Dr. MacClure to lead her to the couch and to sit her down, whereupon she began to rock to and fro in her grief.

“Don’t you worry about what will become of you, Kinumé,” said the doctor insistently. “Would you like to take care of Eva?”

Kinumé nodded suddenly through her tears. “Kinumé take care Eva’s mother. Now Kinumé take care Eva.”

“Protect her?” whispered the doctor. “Say, do nothing to bring her harm? Yes, Kinumé?”

“I take care Eva, Dr. MacCloo.”

The doctor straightened up and returned to the window. He had done all he could.

“Kinumé,” said Ellery. “It was Miss Karen who told you never to say anything about Miss Esther’s being alive in this house?”

“Missie say no tell, I no tell. Now Missie dead, Esther too!”

“Do you know who killed your Missie, Kinumé?” murmured the Inspector.

She raised her tear-stained face in bewilderment. “Kill? Who kill Missie?”

“Esther.”

Kinumé looked from one to another with her mouth slightly open; it was evident that this intelligence was too much for her. She began to weep again.

From the door Eva said faintly: “I can’t... I can’t touch a thing up there. It’s so — quiet. What’s the matter with me?”

“Come here, kid,” began Terry. “Don’t—”

But Eva went steadily to Kinumé and sat down, putting her arms around the weeping Japanese. “Don’t worry, Kinumé. We’ll take care of you.”

“Look,” said the Inspector, sitting down on the other side of the old woman. “Do you remember Monday afternoon, Kinumé? When Miss Karen sent you downstairs for some paper to write on? You remember?”

The gray head nodded; her face was hidden against Eva’s breast.

“Do you know why Miss Karen sent you for writing-paper? For surely she knew that in the attic-room there was much paper. Do you remember, Kinumé? Did she say?”

Kinumé sat up, showing her face. It looked blank and haggard in its yellow age. The three men standing held their breaths. So much depended on Kinumé. So much...

“Missie no can going Esther’s room,” said Kinumé.

So they had failed. Everything for nothing. On the couch Eva sat stonily, waiting with folded hands as a prisoner waits for sentence of death.

“She couldn’t go—” began the Inspector in a puzzled way. Then he stopped. He looked around at them. They were all so still. Terry Ring — he was actually not breathing. Dr. MacClure — so like a dead man. Ellery, so quiet and tense. Eva MacClure... so resigned.

He shook the old woman’s arm with sudden violence. “What do you mean she couldn’t go to Esther’s room? Tell me, Kinumé! Why couldn’t she? The door was open, wasn’t it?”

Poor Kinumé was deaf to overtones. The thought that was beating through the air — Yes. Say it was open. Say it was open — did not reach her. She rocked a little more and said: “The door it stuck. We no can opening.”

“Which door? Show me!”

Kinumé rose a little eagerly, as if anxious to reveal now how cooperative she could be, and plodded into the bedroom to the open doorway leading to the attic. She pressed her wrinkled fingers against a panel; and to Eva, rooted to the couch, it was just like a finger on an electric button. This time, she thought dully, there was no possible intervention This time, she knew, was the end.

Inspector Queen quietly filled his chest with air. “Stuck, eh? This little bolt here — it would not push?”

“Stuck,” nodded Kinumé. “Missie try open — cannot. Kinumé try — no can. We try and try; no strong enough. Missie mad. She say Kinumé go down, bring liting-paper — she want lite letter. Kinumé go.”

“This was just before Miss Eva came, was it not?”

“Eva coming then. Soon as Kinumé bring up liting-paper.”

“I see,” said the Inspector, exhaling.

I see, thought Eva. He knew the truth at last. So now, no matter what Mother had written, it has finally come home to roost upon me. He saw — and to Eva it seemed that he had a thousand eyes, they were so sharp and merciless again as he studied her from the bedroom doorway.

“So you’ve taken me for a ride on the merry-go-round after all, young woman,” said the Inspector. “But it’s my last ride. And yours.”

“Listen, Inspector,” began Terry desperately. “She got it all wrong—”

“Oh, there’s something wrong, all right — very wrong indeed. Your mother couldn’t have killed Karen Leith, Miss MacClure. Just before the crime the attic door wouldn’t open. So no one could have come in or gone out of this bedroom through that door — Karen Leith couldn’t even have admitted anyone into this room through that door. The windows are barred — no one could have used them. And no one, you said yourself, passed through this sitting-room. Then how could your mother have done it? She couldn’t. Only you could. You murdered your aunt.”

“I have said it so often that it’s useless for me to say it again,” said Eva in a barely audible voice. “But for the last time — no. I did not kill Karen.”

“Yes,” said Inspector Queen. He glanced at Terry. “And now that I come to think of it, Mr. Smart-Aleck Ring, I see where you fit in. You unbolted that door after the crime, before Guilfoyle got here. If two other women couldn’t do it, the chances are Miss MacClure couldn’t have, either — so you did it, to open up a way of escape for a killer you knew didn’t exist.

You knew all along only this girl could have killed Karen Leith!”

Eva said: “Please. Oh, please. You must—”

“Don’t talk, Eva,” said Terry rapidly. “Don’t open your mouth. Let him rave.”

“As for this woman Esther, I see now where I went wrong. Stand still, Ring! Ritter, watch him. She was shielding her daughter — confessing to her daughter’s crime. She couldn’t have been telling the truth, because she couldn’t physically have committed the crime.

In the frozen atmosphere the telephone rang on Karen Leith’s writing-desk in the next room. It rang again. Finally the Inspector said: “Watch, Ritter,” and ducked out of sight.

“Hello?... Oh, Thomas! Where are you?... Well, so you’ve found me! What do you want?” The old man listened; he listened some more. Finally, without another word, he put the telephone down and returned to the sitting-room.

“That was Sergeant Velie of my staff,” he said slowly. “He has just returned from Philadelphia. His news removes the last doubt. From what he tells me it appears I’m wrong about Esther’s motive in confessing to a crime she didn’t commit. That’s just one more detail to be cleared up. She can’t have been shielding her daughter, because to do that she had to know Karen Leith was dead. And she couldn’t have known Karen Leith was dead. That reference to ‘saving my sister’s life’ must have meant something else.”

“What has Velie found out?” asked Ellery harshly.

“That Esther Leith MacClure was dead forty-eight hours before her body was found! She committed suicide last Saturday night. And Karen Leith wasn’t murdered until Monday afternoon. So that makes your mother, Miss MacClure, doubly innocent — and you as guilty as hell!”

Eva with staring eyes and a wild cry jumped from the couch and rushed past Ritter into the hall. They heard her clattering down the stairs; they heard the bang of the front door mingled with her sobbing breaths before they could move a muscle.

“Eva,” groaned Dr. MacClure, and he sank on to the couch.

The Inspector shouted, and Ritter, his mouth open, stirred himself. But somehow before he could get through the doorway there was Terry Ring in his way. And as they collided Ritter fell heavily, roaring with astonishment.

“I’ll get her for you, pop,” said Terry Ring in a hard flat voice: and Inspector Queen stared at the.38 automatic in Terry’s hand and remained where he was; and Ritter, sprawled on the floor, chose immobility, too. “I’ll find her. I always did want to be a cop,” said Terry grimly; and before they knew it, he was gone after Eva, and the door, with its key on the sitting-room side, was closed in their faces.

Then the most surprising thing of all occurred. They had all forgotten little Kinumé. Little Kinumé went quietly to the door — so quietly they could only gape — turned the key in the lock, pattered across the room, and under Inspector Queen’s nose tossed the key through the iron bars of the sitting-room window out into the garden.

“Damn!” screamed Inspector Queen, finding his tongue again. He danced up and down, brandishing his fists over Ritter’s outstretched neck. “I’ll give them what for! I’ll show “em! This is a conspiracy, a... a... Lunkhead! Fool! Shoemaker!” He yanked at Ritter’s collar. “Break down that door!”

Ritter scrambled to his feet and began futilely to lunge at the stout panels.

“Escape, will they? Run, will they? They’ve hanged themselves!” The old man scuttled for the bedroom door.

“What are you going to do?” asked Dr. MacClure, staring.

“Have a warrant made out,” shouted the Inspector, “charging ’em with murder and accessory murder — that’s what!”

21

Mr. Ellery Queen rang the bell of his own apartment. And after some time Djuna opened the door, looking frightened.

“It’s all right,” said Ellery, walking briskly into his living-room; but there was no one there. “Djuna, lock the front door. I say,” he called out irritably, “it’s all right, you maniacs!”

Terry Ring stuck his head out of Ellery’s bedroom. “Well, don’t call out the reserves. Come on, kid.”

Eva crept out of the bedroom and dropped into the over-stuffed chair, to crouch in one corner of it with her arms crossed over her chest, as if she were chilly. Terry looked at the revolver in his hand, flushed, and stowed it away.

“Now,” said Ellery, scaling his hat aside, “what in tunket’s name was the brilliant idea, Eva? Have you gone out of your mind?” Eva looked miserable. “Running away! And you, Terry. I thought you had more sense.” He lit a cigaret in disgust.

“So did I,” said Terry bitterly. “At least, I used to have. Give me a fag, will you? I’ve been handing her hell.”

Ellery offered his case. “You pulled a gun on my father!”

“I did not. It just came out of my pocket and that fool Ritter got in my way. Well, what could I do? She’s absolutely the most helpless female I’ve ever seen. She doesn’t know anything. I couldn’t leave her alone. They’d have picked her up on the first street corner.”

“I’ve made a mess of everything,” said Eva hollowly. “How is daddy? I... I didn’t think of him when I ran.”

“I’ve sent him home. How do you think he is?” Ellery scowled at her. “Broken up, of course. He took Kinumé with him. The old lady’s got more spunk than any of us.”

She looked at him. “What shall I do?”

“If I had any more sense than you two I’d say give yourself up,” snapped Ellery. “But I’ve been afflicted with the same mental disease. Of course you realize this can’t go on. Sooner or later you’ll be found.”

“She’s in the safest place in New York,” drawled Terry, flinging himself on the divan and smoking at the ceiling. “Imagine pop’s face when he finds out where she’s been!”

“You have the most perverted sense of humor. Imagine his face when he finds out I’ve connived at it!”

“Terry’s told me,” said Eva limply. “How you gave him your own key at Fung’s. I don’t know why you two men are so kind—”

“Yeah,” said Terry. “What are you yowling about? Using this place as a hideout was your idea.”

“Well, suppose it was! It’s all so damned silly.” Ellery glared at his cigaret. “You’d think this girl was the first to be a suspect in a murder case. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m disgusted with myself.”

“I told you,” said Terry. “She’s got the queerest way of making sane men go screwy. I don’t understand it myself.”

“Sometimes I think—” Eva hid her face. “Sometimes I think I really did kill Karen — in a bad dream, not knowing, not—”

Ellery paced restlessly. “This kind of talk won’t help. We can’t shut out reality any more. We’re face to face with it at last. At the most you have a few hours of freedom, and after that — it’s behind the bars.”

“I’m ready to give myself up now,” whispered Eva. “When he — he said those things something made me run. You always run away from what frightens you. Call him, Mr. Queen.”

“Shut up,” growled Terry from the divan. “You can’t back out now... now you’ve got to stick it out. Maybe something will happen.”

“A miracle?” Eva smiled humorlessly. “I’ve made a mess of everything. Everybody I touch is touched by... Like Mother. Like my Mother.” She paused, and then said suddenly: “It’s like a curse. Does that sound absurd? But I’ve got you into trouble, Terry, and I’ve given daddy only heartache, and made Mr. Queen lie to his father, and—”

“Shut up!” yelled Terry. He got off the divan and began to follow Ellery around the room. Djuna watched them, bewildered, from a crack in the kitchen doorway. The two men circled each other blindly, like men in a fog.

“There’s no use keeping quiet any more,” mumbled Terry. “She’s in your hands, Queen — so am I, as far as that goes. It’s all balled up. I guess I haven’t exactly covered myself with glory. It’s...”

Eva closed her eyes and lay back against the chair.

“Look,” said Terry. “Karen Leith got in touch with me a week ago Thursday. She told me about Eva’s mother — only she didn’t call her that. Just something about a friend staying with her, who was a little sick in the head, and that this friend had taken it on the lam during a ‘spell,’ and she was afraid the poor thing would come to some harm, and wouldn’t I please find her without any publicity and bring her back. It sounded cockeyed, after I got the description — it seems the blonde woman had ducked out during the night without being spotted. I scouted around; I was suspicious. I don’t like funny cases. I even got into that attic without the Leith woman knowing. I saw enough to tell me that something was pretty much off-color. But I took the case — she insisted she didn’t want the police in on it — and got to work.”

Ellery stopped pacing. He sat down and sucked on his cigaret. Eva lay in the big chair watching the brown man’s every move.

“Well, it wasn’t hard.” Terry flung his butt into the dead fireplace. “I got on her trail — traced her via the Penn. R.R. — right into Philadelphia. I tried O”Dell there, at Headquarters, but they didn’t know anything. Anyway, it was detail after that — a taxi driver — you know the technique. I kept reporting to Karen by phone, not telling her how hot I was. Wanted to find out what it was all about. I’d already made it my business to size up the layout — who the Leith woman was, about Doc MacClure, about Eva — but none of it made sense.

“On Monday morning I found her. In that rooming-house. I got into the house, into her room without that old she-weasel of a landlady seeing me. I found her dead of poison.” He glanced at Eva, and away. “I’m sorry, kid.”

Eva felt that she could never experience an emotion again. She was dry and empty inside, like a sun-baked gourd.

“I saw right away she’d poisoned herself, and that she’d been dead a couple of days. I didn’t see the suicide note, because I didn’t touch anything. I began to figure. Should I tell the Leith woman or not? Should I tip off the police? Finally I decided to go back to New York and have it out with Karen — see what she said. The whole thing struck me as funny as hell. So I went back without telling anybody Esther was dead. The landlady must have found her late Monday night by accident. Let’s have another butt.”

Ellery gave him one in silence.

“I got back to New York late Monday afternoon. I already knew Karen had an appointment with a Headquarters detective for five o”clock, because she’d told me so Sunday over the ’phone, when she fired me. So I figured she must be pretty scared about that blonde woman if she was willing to go to the police after saying she didn’t want “em. I ’phoned from the drugstore on University Place, and there was no answer. I figured I knew something nobody else knew, and if there was anything hot on the fire, I wanted my hunk of it.” He muttered apologetically: “You know how it is in my business.”

“And no one answered,” mused Ellery. “In other words, Karen Leith died without learning that her sister was dead?”

“I guess so. Well, I beat it up to the house and found Eva.” Terry scowled again. “After I helped the kid, I was on the spot. I knew Esther couldn’t have pulled the Leith job, because I knew she was dead before Karen was. At the same time, I wanted to give the kid here all the time there was. That body in Philadelphia was my ace in the hole. If I saw the kid in a bad jam, I was going to see to it that the proper identification was made... Anyway, I played for time, and here we are at the deadline. Your old man’s finding out about that attic door spoiled everything.”

“And that’s all, Terry? You’re sure that’s all?”

Terry looked him in the eye. “I’m on the square now, Queen. That’s all I know, so help me.”

“Oh, Terry,” said Eva; and he went to her and looked down at her and she looked up at him. And then he stooped and put his arms around her in an awkward, embarrassed way, and she clung to him.

Ellery sat and smoked furiously.

Fifteen minutes later Ellery looked up. “Eva.” She turned her head vaguely from Terry’s arms. Ellery sprang to his feet. “While you were lying on the couch in the sitting-room — before you discovered your aunt’s body — didn’t you hear a sound coming from the bedroom?”

“Your father asked me that Monday. No, I didn’t.”

“You’re sure?” he said mechanically. “Think, Eva. Any movement, the sound of a scuffle, an outcry, a scrap of talk?”

Eva drew her brows together. Movement, scuffle...

“There may be a clue there,” muttered Ellery. “There’s a piece missing. If I could get my hands on it... Think, Eva!”

The oddest thing was ringing in her head — a harsh sound that baffled description, some sonic curiosity trembling on the verge of remembrance. What was it? What was it? While she was reading the book...

“I know!” she cried. “The bird!”

Terry mumbled: “The bird?”

“That bird! It squawked!”

“Oh, lord,” said Ellery; his fingers, putting the cigaret to his mouth, were shaking slightly. “The Loo-choo jay!”

“It’s just coming back to me. I even remember now thinking what an awful voice it had — so inhuman and annoying.”

“The Loo-choo jay,” repeated Ellery in a wondering voice. “So that’s it!”

“What?” asked Terry swiftly. “What is it?” Eva and he sat up straight, staring at Ellery.

“The key to this whole business,” said Ellery, pacing and smoking like a madman. “If it’s only possible! Didn’t you say — one of you; I don’t recall which — that the cage was empty when you entered the bedroom just after the crime?”

“Sure it was empty,” began Terry, and then he stopped to look puzzled. “Say, how could Eva have heard the bird squawk if the damned thing wasn’t there?” He seized Eva by the shoulders. “Or was it? Was it in the bedroom when you went in? It wasn’t when I got there!”

Eva wrinkled her forehead. “I’m sure it wasn’t. I’d remember if it had been flying about, or if it flew out. And now that I think of it, I’m sure it wasn’t in the cage. No, it wasn’t there.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“Of course,” said Ellery half-aloud, “it’s possible the bird wasn’t actually in the room. It may have been outside, and Eva heard it from... Wait a minute.”

He ran to the bedroom. “Eva! What’s your home ’phone number?” Eva gave it to him. They heard him seize the telephone, give the number. “Hello!.. Oh. Well, let me speak to Dr. MacClure.”

Eva and Terry were in the doorway, watching, puzzled, but aware of a tightness in the atmosphere that seemed to be strangling uncertainty and squeezing out hope.

“Dr. MacClure! This is Ellery Queen.”

“Have you found her, Queen?” asked the doctor hoarsely.

“Are you alone?”

“With Venetia, my colored woman. And Kinumé. Well?”

“Yes. She’s at my apartment. Safe for the moment.”

“Thank God!”

Ellery said eagerly: “Let me speak to—”

But Dr. MacClure said in an agitated voice: “Just a second. There’s the doorbell. If I don’t return in a few moments, hang up. It may be your father or one of his men. Queen — take care of Eva!”

Ellery waited, drumming on the telephone table. In the doorway Terry and Eva crept closer together.

“It’s all right,” said Dr. MacClure with relief. “It was only that O’Mara girl. The Inspector let her go and she’s come up here for the money I promised her.”

Ellery’s face brightened. “Talk about luck! Hang on to her, Doctor. Now let me talk to Kinumé.” He waited, saying to them in a swift aside: “Keep praying, you two. Something tells me—”

Kinumé piped thinly. “’Lo? ’Lo? You got Eva?”

“Yes. Listen, Kinumé. You would like to help your Eva, would you not?”

“I help,” said Kinumé simply.

“Good! Then you must answer some questions.”

“I answer.”

“Listen carefully, think deeply.” Ellery spoke in a deliberate tone, spacing his words. “When you brought up the writing-paper to Miss Karen Monday afternoon, just before you saw Eva behind you, was the Loo-choo bird in its cage in the bedroom? You know — Loo-choo kashi-dori? In cage?”

“Kashi-dori in cage. Yes.”

It was as if Kinumé had promised him his reward in heaven. Ellery beamed with sheer joy. “Kinumé, one thing more. You know how Miss Karen was attired when she was found dead, do you not?”

“In kimono. She wearing kimono some time.”

“Yes. But what I want to know is this: How was she attired when you entered the bedroom with the writing-paper?”

“Same. In kimono.”

He looked disappointed. “How was she dressed when the door was stuck, before she sent you for the writing-paper?”

“Oi! That time she wearing dress, “Merican dress.”

“Ah! Thought so,” muttered Ellery. “Short time, too. Just a few minutes before...” He said swiftly into the telephone: “You have done well, Kinumé, and Eva thanks you. Let me speak to Dr. MacClure... Doctor?”

“Yes, yes, what is it, Queen? What have you found?”

“A good deal! Bless Kinumé. Now listen to me carefully. I can’t do this over the telephone. I want you to take Kinumé and this girl Geneva O’Mara and come down to my apartment. Do you understand?”

“Anything you say. Now?”

“This instant. Doctor, be careful. Make sure no one sees you. Do you think you can get out of the house unobserved?”

“There’s the tradesmen’s entrance in the rear,” muttered the doctor. “And the emergency stairway. It can be managed, I imagine. Do you think they’re watching me?”

“It’s conceivable. They’ll naturally figure Eva would try to get in touch with you. So be careful.”

“I will,” said the doctor grimly. And he hung up.

Ellery turned to the waiting pair. “I think,” he said lightly, “that we are about to enter that critical phase of the plot which is technically known as the dénouement. Buck up, Eva.” He patted her cheek. “And now why don’t you two relax in here while I meditate a little in the living-room?”

He went out and shut the door behind him.

Twenty minutes later Eva opened the bedroom door, Ellery opened his eyes, and Djuna opened the front door simultaneously. Eva was a little flushed, and her eyes looked saner and clearer than they had looked for days. And Terry followed her like an awkward boy, looking foolish.

“Daddy!” She ran to Dr. MacClure. Ellery pulled the two waiting women into the living-room.

“Close that door, Djuna,” he said swiftly. “Don’t be frightened, now, Kinumé. Nor you, Miss O’Mara. I want to talk to both of you.”

“What do you want, anyway?” demanded the Irish girl sullenly. “The doctor pulls me here like I’m—”

“You’ll be all right. Doctor, you weren’t followed?”

“I don’t think so. Queen, what is it? You’ve given me more hope in the last half-hour than—”

“Before this bird gets started, Doc,” interrupted Terry Ring, shuffling forward, “I want to tell you that—”

“If anybody says anything,” remarked Inspector Queen from the doorway, “it will be yours truly.”

Ice settled down, and became silence. They all shrank a little, like guilty conspirators caught in the act.

Then Ellery hurled his cigaret away. “You would show up at the wrong time!” he said angrily.

“I’ll talk to you,” said Inspector Queen without taking his eyes from Terry and Eva, who had instinctively drawn together, ‘later. Thomas, make sure this time they don’t take a walk.”

“They won’t,” said Sergeant Velie from the foyer. He shut the apartment door and set his back against it.

Dr. MacClure, looking curiously shrunken, sank into the arm-chair. “So you followed me after all.”

“It’s all right, daddy. It’s better this way,” said Eva steadily.

“We always watch the back exits, Doctor. Thomas!”

“Yep.”

“Where’s that warrant?”

“Right here.” The Sergeant shoved his bulk forward, dropped a paper into the Inspector’s hand, and retreated.

“Eva MacClure,” began the old man coldly, unfolding the paper, “I arrest you—”

“Dad.”

“I arrest you—”

“Dad. Before you go on. I want a word with Dr. MacClure.”

The Inspector’s face was livid. “And you,” he said bitterly. “To think you’d do a thing like this to your own father. Harboring a criminal in my own house. I’ll never forgive you for that, Ellery.”

“Do I get a word with Dr. MacClure,” said Ellery gently, “or don’t I?”

The Inspector glared at his son. Then he half-turned away, biting viciously on the ends of his mustache.

“Doctor,” whispered Ellery in the big man’s ear, “there’s one chance left — a desperate chance, I warn you. If I’m wrong, we’re through.”

“Are you wrong?”

Whether I am or not is in the lap of the gods. Will you gamble Eva’s immediate chances on me?”

Dr. MacClure pressed the hand lying small and still in his own. Terry Ring was watching Inspector Queen and the mountain of human flesh behind him with a lidded, cobra daring; but it was the alertness of desperation. Wherever he looked, except in Ellery’s direction, the doctor saw surrender, defeating defiance.

“If you can save Eva, go to it. I’ll back you to the limit.”

Ellery nodded, went over to his father, and said: “You’re determined to arrest this girl for the murder of Karen Leith?”

“And neither you nor all the devils in hell,” snapped the Inspector, “are going to stop me!”

“I think,” murmured Ellery, “we’ll manage without help from his satanic majesty. Well, you can spare Miss MacClure and yourself a lot of grief by tearing up that warrant.”

“She’ll defend herself in court!”

“You were saved once before from making a mistake. Don’t make another, dad.”

Inspector Queen rasped his jaw, irritated beyond measure. “She didn’t kill Karen Leith, eh? Despite all the evidence?”

“She didn’t kill Karen Leith.”

“I suppose,” said the Inspector derisively, “you know who did!”

And Ellery said: “Yes.”