The Door Between

22

“It’s premature,” said Ellery, “but your insistence on immediate action forces my hand. Logically this case has only one proper solution. In view of your haste, we’ll have to resort to intellectual proof and defer the legal proof for a while.”

“If you know the right answer to this jigsaw,” said Terry Ring grimly, “I’ll hang up my license and go back to baseball. Eva, sit down here with me. This bird has me groggy.”

The Inspector eyed Sergeant Velie and made a little futile signal. Then he, too, sat down; and Sergeant Velie came in to lean against the foyer jamb and listen.

“I won’t deny it,” began Ellery, lighting another cigaret, “that I’ve harbored my full quota of fantastic theories. This has been the damnedest case. A number of grainy little facts, interesting, puzzling, and apparently incompatible. Studding a central situation that, on the face of it, is frankly impossible.”

They sat very still.

“Here’s a case in which a room has two exits — the door to the attic and the door to the sitting-room. There is no possible exit through the iron-barred windows, and the room is structurally without hidden passages. Yet the attic door after the crime was found bolted from inside the room itself, making it impossible for anyone to have left by that route; and the other door led to the sitting-room, where during the entire period of the crime Miss MacClure sat. And Miss MacClure has maintained stubbornly that no one passed through that sitting-room. Impossible situation, as I say. Yet Karen Leith was alive when Miss MacClure seated herself there, and was dead by violence when Miss MacClure burst into the bedroom.”

Ellery made a face. “There were so many oblique theories possible. One was that the attic door wasn’t bolted at all, and that Terry Ring only pretended it was. I ragged him about that yesterday. But it really didn’t make sense; and besides Kinumé did testify that the wood was warped and the bolt stuck. Another was, despite all your insistence, Eva, that someone did pass through that sitting-room while you occupied it.”

“But that can’t be,” cried Eva. “I tell you no one did. I know I didn’t fall asleep!”

“But suppose,” murmured Ellery, “you were hypnotized?”

He paused a moment, enjoying their stupefaction. Then he laughed and said: “Don’t blame me for thinking of hypnosis. There had to be some rational explanation if you were innocent, Eva. Hypnosis explains the phenomenon. The only trouble with the theory is that it’s far-fetched, absolutely incapable of proof, and — quite untrue.”

Dr. MacClure sank back, sighing with relief. I’m glad that’s not your explanation.”

Ellery squinted at his cigaret. “For it struck me, if I proceeded on the assumption that Eva didn’t kill her aunt, that there was one sane, reasonable, and provocative theory that explained everything, that made it unnecessary to resort to fantasy, that was really so simple it’s surprising no one thought of it before.

“Look at the facts. Eva MacClure is the only one who could have murdered Karen Leith — the only physical possibility. That’s what the facts seem to say. But suppose — let’s just suppose — that Eva MacClure didn’t murder Karen Leith. Is it still true that she’s the only physical possibility — is it still true if she’s innocent the crime couldn’t have happened? No. There is one other person who could have stabbed Karen Leith and caused her death.”

They stared at him. Then Terry Ring said gruffly, and with a disappointment hardly concealed: “You’re crazy.”

“Oh, come,” said Ellery. “Couldn’t Karen Leith have stabbed herself?”

An automobile horn honked impatiently in West Eighty-seventh Street. But in the Queens” living-room time stopped, arrested by pure astonishment.

Then the Inspector was on his feet, red-faced and protesting. “But that’s not murder — that’s suicide!”

“Perfectly true,” admitted Ellery.

“But the weapon,” cried the old man. “What happened to that missing half-scissors with the broken point? With the suicide weapon gone from that room, it can’t have been suicide!”

“Why must we always resent the truths we haven’t thought of ourselves? You say that the missing weapon wasn’t in that room, that therefore the crime was not suicide but murder. I say the facts point indisputably to suicide — facts all of you have overlooked. And I suggest we worry about the phenomenon of the missing weapon when we come to it.”

The Inspector sank back into his chair; and for a space he tugged at his mustache. Then he demanded in a calm voice: “What facts?”

“That’s better,” smiled Ellery. “What facts? Now we’re launched. What facts point to suicide as the answer? I say there are five — three minor, two major, with little participles of fact hanging from the last like fruit from a tree.”

Terry Ring was gaping at Ellery; he put his arm about Eva and shook his head as if he could not believe his ears. Dr. MacClure sat forward a little, listening intently.

“The minor ones are relatively weak — but only relatively. They gather strength from the major ones. Let me begin with the weak sisters.”

“First. What was the last thing, as far as we know, that Karen Leith did of her own volition before the actual events of her death? She began a letter to Morel. Who is Morel? Her lawyer and literary representative. What was the letter about? It was a demand that Morel check over her royalty moneys due to her from abroad — ‘at once, thoroughly and completely... to effect immediate payments.’ There was a definite note there, finality of demand, as if she had said: ‘Morel, the time has come to clean up my affairs.’ Foreign royalties are notoriously slow; they come in, but at their sweet time. Why this sudden insistence on immediacy? Did she need money? No, we learn she had more than enough. Why this sudden insistence,” demanded Ellery, “unless she was thinking of cleaning up her affairs — then, Monday afternoon, in her room, a few minutes before she died! Isn’t that what many suicides do just before taking their lives? It isn’t conclusive by any means, and logically it might have a simple, unaccented meaning. But... it’s a point. It’s a point that gathers strength, as I said, from the other things.”

He sighed. “The next paragraph in her letter to Morel — the paragraph she didn’t finish — we’ll never be able to evaluate beyond question, now that she’s dead. But it can’t have referred to anything but her sister Esther. Probably she intended to place the whole matter of Esther’s secret disposition, when she should be found — remember Karen died still thinking Esther was alive — in Morel’s hands. But then she crumpled the letter unfinished... as if she had changed her mind, as if she didn’t care what happened... about her money, about her sister, about secrecy, about anything. It fits. It fits with the suicide theory.”

He crushed out his cigaret. “Point three is just as inconclusive by itself and just as significant when you add it to its big brothers.” He went over to little Kinumé, crouched in a corner confused by all this talk. “Kinumé, you remember the scissors — in the shape of a bird? The thing that cuts?”

“Oi! Missie Esther bring from Japan. It always broke. In case.”

“And it was kept always in the attic-room, was it not?”

Kinumé nodded. “Last time I seeing is when I clean attic.”

“So you did clean it,” muttered the Inspector.

“And when was that?”

“Sunday.”

“The day before Karen’s death,” said Ellery with satisfaction. “It fits! The Japanese scissors were kept in the attic, they belonged to Esther, they were never in Karen’s bedroom downstairs. Yet we find them in Karen’s bedroom after the crime. Who could have brought them down from the attic? Not Esther — Kinumé saw them there Sunday, and Esther was dead in Philadelphia Saturday night. Then the probabilities point to Karen as having fetched those scissors from the attic herself. Even if she didn’t — even if she asked Kinumé to fetch them for her (which is a distinction of no importance) — why? Certainly not to provide a convenient weapon for some murderer. Certainly not as scissors — they were broken and had no utility as scissors. I say that Karen’s deliberate fetching of that unusual implement to the scene of her death before the bolt got stuck, which was shortly before her death, indicates psychologically that she intended to use it for the purpose of taking her own life.”

“But why such a queer thing?” demanded the Inspector.

“There’s a reason for that, too,” said Ellery, “which I’ll get to in a moment.

“But let me go on to point number four, the first really powerful indication of suicide. Kinumé told me over the telephone a few minutes ago that when she left the bedroom just before Karen’s death, the Loo-choo jay — that bird that dislikes me so vociferously — was hanging in its cage beside Karen’s bed.”

“It was?” said the old man slowly.

“It was. We never thought of asking her that specific question before, and Kinumé isn’t the sort that volunteers information when she has been trained for years to keep her mouth shut. But the bird was hanging in its cage in the bedroom just before the crime, and when Eva entered the room a half-hour later, the cage was empty. This is confirmed by Terry. Let me ask you: Who released that bird during the half-hour interval?”

“Karen was the only one who could have,” muttered the doctor.

“Exactly. Only Karen. Karen released her beloved pet from its bondage.”

“But how did it get out of the room?” demanded Terry.

“Very simply. Since it couldn’t have opened the cage itself then Karen — alone in the room — must have opened the cage for it. This suggests that she took out the bird, carried it to the window, and passed it out through two of the iron bars. A human being couldn’t get out through those bars,” said Ellery casually, “but a bird could.”

He frowned. “Karen loved that cursed jay — all sorts of testimony to that effect. The bird was never allowed out of its cage. The only times it had got loose within the memory of man was when Miss O’Mara” — the Irish girl looked even more sullen — “in feeding it during an illness of Kinumé’s some weeks ago let it get away from her and it escaped into the garden. Will you tell us again, as you told us Wednesday, what happened on that occasion, Miss O’Mara?”

“I don’t know what for,” snapped the girl. “She all but tore my head off. Miss Leith, I mean; wanted to fire me. Let me go, will you? I want to get out of here.”

But Ellery said: “You see? Now we have logical reason to believe that a few minutes before she died, Karen Leith, who had always jealously kept her bird caged, herself took it from its cage and sent it off through the barred window. She gave it its freedom. Why? Why do people free well-beloved pets? Because their thralldom to an individual is over. Because their thralldom ends with the individual’s end. Because Karen Leith meant to commit suicide.”

The Inspector bit his fingernails.

“And so we come to the fifth, really the most conclusive point of all. It is compounded of an Occidental mind turned Oriental, of a kimono, of a little raised step, of a jeweled dagger, of a wound in the throat. It is compounded of everything Karen Leith’s warped soul was, and of everything Karen Leith’s tired body did. And if this point had stood alone, it would have told me Karen Leith committed suicide.”

“Will you explain?” said the Inspector fretfully.

“It’s a nice point — really beautiful; perfect symmetry. What was Karen Leith? Well, her skin was white, but its underside had turned yellow. She had lived so long in Japan, loved so deeply things Japanese, that she had become more than half Japanese. Consider how she lived in Washington Square — in quarters nostalgic for Japan, Japanese furniture, art, decorations; even her garden was Japanese. At every opportunity she wore Japanese dress. She loved Japanese customs — do you remember that ceremonious tea? She had been brought up in a semi-Japanese home, had associated with Japanese friends, with Japanese servants, had taught Japanese students at the Imperial University after her father’s death. In a sense, she was a convert to the spirit of Japan — it isn’t difficult to think of her as mentally and psychologically more Japanese than Occidental. As a matter of fact, there have been numerous instances of Westerners becoming converted to Japan — do you remember Lafcadio Hearn, for instance?

“Now if you consider Karen Leith in this light, what is suggested by the specific conditions of her death: dressed in a Japanese kimono, her throat cut, the weapon a thing of steel and crusted with gems? Eh? Why, a half-hour or so before her death, did she change from ordinary Western dress — as Kinumé will tell you — to the kimono? How explain the rather delicately grim choice of death — a cutting of the throat? Why that specific weapon — half of a begemmed Japanese scissors, which in the absence of a ‘jeweled dagger’ can easily be visualized as such? I’ll tell you why.” Ellery waved his pince-nez. “Because these three elements — jeweled dagger, cut throat, and kimono — are mandatory in the age-old Japanese ceremony of hara-kiri. And hara-kiri is the age-old Japanese ceremony of suicide.”

“No,” said the Inspector stubbornly after a moment. “No! That’s not so. I don’t know a lot about it, but I do know that this hara-kiri business isn’t throat-cutting. I heard of a case of a Jap a few years ago who did it by disembowelment. I looked it up then. They always slash their abdomens.”

“This Japanese was a man?” demanded Ellery.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t look into it deeply enough. I did. Male Japanese suicides cut their abdomens open. Females their throats.”

“Oh,” said the Inspector.

“But that isn’t all. Hara-kiri isn’t promiscuous; it must have narrow and specific motivation. It’s all neatly tied up with honor. You do not take your life by hara-kiri lightly in Japan. It’s only when you’ve committed a dishonorable act. This ritual form of suicide wipes out the dishonor — at least, that’s the aesthetics of it. But how about Karen Leith? Didn’t she have a dishonor to wipe out — the theft of her sister’s genius? And didn’t she die on a little step — the edge of the dais before the oriel windows — which makes it easy to visualize her as kneeling? But that’s another requirement in hara-kiri, you see.

“No, no. One, or even two, of these five indications — except the last — would have meant little. But with this last and the other four to bolster it, a theory of suicide is erected which simply cannot be disregarded.”

They were silent.

At last the Inspector exclaimed: “But there’s no confirmation, there’s no evidence, there’s no proof. It’s only a theory. I can’t let Miss MacClure out on an unsupported theory. Be reasonable!”

“I’m being the soul of reason,” sighed Ellery.

“And then where’s the missing half of the scissors with which you say she killed herself?” The old man rose, shaking his head. “It’s no go, Ellery. You’ve got a pretty theory with a hole in it, and I’ve got a theory with evidence to back it up.”

“Look,” said Ellery. “Had you found that missing half-scissors with its identifying broken point near Karen’s body, with all the other conditions remaining the same, wouldn’t you have accepted a theory of suicide? Would the mere presence of Eva MacClure in the next room have convinced you it was murder?”

“But we didn’t find the weapon by the body, you see. I mean the real weapon — not the other half with Miss MacClure’s fingerprints on it.”

“You want proof.”

“That’s what the jury will want,” said the Inspector apologetically. “Even before that, that’s what the District Attorney will want. You’ll have to satisfy Henry Sampson, not me.”

It sounded final. Eva relaxed against Terry hopelessly.

“In other words,” continued Ellery in a murmur, “I’ve got to do two things: explain why the weapon wasn’t found on the scene of the crime; and then locate it. If I can do both, you’ll be satisfied?”

“You do ’em.”

“Just where did you search? Tell me again.”

“The whole place.”

“No, no, be specific”

“The whole interior of the house. We didn’t miss a thing. We even searched the cellar. That goes for the attic, too. And the grounds around the house, thinking maybe it had been thrown out of a window. But it wasn’t.” His sharp eyes rested on Eva. “Despite what you say, it would have been a cinch for either Miss MacClure or this Terry spalpeen to have sneaked it off Monday, when I let ’em go.”

“Or passed it to an accomplice outside the house?”

“Yes!”

Ellery chuckled suddenly. “Have you given any real thought to that rock?” he asked.

“The rock?” repeated Inspector Queen slowly.

“Yes, yes, that very common garden-variety of rock from the border of the path behind the house. The rock that shattered Karen Leith’s window shortly after the crime.”

“Some kid threw that.”

“I said that long ago,” said Terry. Then they both glared at Ellery.

“Well, did you ever find a trace of such a child?”

“What’s the difference?” grumbled the Inspector. “And if you’ve got anything up your sleeve,” he added testily, “I wish you’d come out with it!”

“The other day,” said Ellery, “Terry and I tried an experiment. Ask Ritter. He saw us and probably thought we were insane. We stood in the garden and threw rocks of the approximate size and shape of the one that broke the window. We threw “em at those very oriel windows.”

“What for?”

“Well, Terry’s an ex-baseball player, you know. Professional pitcher. He can throw. I saw him throw. Wonderful control — almost perfect marksmanship.”

“Stop it,” growled Terry. “You’ll have me making a speech in a minute. Come on!”

“Terry,” continued Ellery equably, “at my direction tried a half-dozen times to send a rock past those iron bars into Karen Leith’s bedroom. He failed each time — the rocks struck the bars and fell into the garden. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even want to try — anyone, he said, with any sense, would know you couldn’t throw a rock five inches long by three inches wide between two iron bars only six inches apart — moreover, throwing upward, from an awkward position, from the ground to a second-story window.”

“It was done, wasn’t it?” demanded the Inspector; “That proves it can be done, Terry or no Terry.”

“But not that it was intended to be done! Terry was right. No one with sense would even have tried, seeing those iron bars so close together. And even if they had, why? Why should anyone have tried to throw a rock into that room from the garden? Not to attract attention, because that would imply a distraction in order to draw attention away from something; but nothing happened. Not to hit anyone, because that would be even more futile than to try to get the rock past the bars in the first place. Not to send a message, because no message was tied to the rock.”

“No, dad, you can’t escape it. The rock that broke Karen Leith’s window wasn’t meant to break Karen Leith’s window. It got past the bars and into the room only by accident. That rock wasn’t thrown at Karen Leith’s window at all!”

They all looked so puzzled Ellery smiled. “If the rock wasn’t thrown at the window, what was it thrown at? Surely at something near the window, in that approximate area? What could that something have been? Well, we know that just before she died Karen Leith released her Loo-choo jay through that window. Then the Loo-choo jay was on the outside, probably somewhere in the vicinity; it had lived too long in that house to leave it. Suppose the bird had flown to a gable just above the oriel windows — that is, to the edge of the roof — and perched there? Just suppose? Can’t you conceive of someone hurling a stone at the bird from the garden and of the cast falling short and of the stone entering the room by merest accident?”

“But what could that have to do—” began Dr. MacClure in frank amazement.

“We’re supposing,” said Ellery whimsically. “Now we know that a few weeks ago the jay escaped through the carelessness of Miss O’Mara. We also know that Miss Leith bawled the hell out of Miss O’Mara for that carelessness. Now let’s suppose again. Let’s suppose Miss O’Mara was in the garden late Monday afternoon and suddenly saw that very bird perched on the gable or on the top of the oriel window outside. Mightn’t Miss O’Mara instantly think that Karen Leith would hold her responsible for what she pardonably thought was a second escape of the bird? Wouldn’t it be natural for Miss O’Mara to try to catch the bird and return it to its cage in the sunroom before the ogrish Miss Leith found out? But the pesky creature was high up, quite beyond her reach; and so isn’t it easy to suppose that Miss O’Mara picked up a rock from the border of the path and threw it up at the bird to scare it into flying down?”

The Irish girl looked so frightened as their eyes turned on her that they knew Ellery had supposed with remarkable point.

She retorted with a defiant toss of her head: “All right. What about it? There’s nothing wrong in that, is there? What are you all looking at me that way for?”

“And then when the window crashed you grew frightened and ducked out of sight around the house, eh?” asked Ellery softly.

“Yeah!”

“And when you thought the coast was clear you came out again and found the bird peaceably pecking about the garden and caught and restored it to its cage in the sunroom?”

“Yeah,” she said sullenly.

“You see,” sighed Ellery, ‘that was the only reconstruction which accounted for two things: the disappearance of the Loo-choo jay from its bedroom cage upstairs just before the crime and its appearance in the sunroom cage downstairs just after the crime. And it was all ably assisted into crystallization by the curious incident of the rock.”

The inspector frowned. “But what has all this to do with the missing half-scissors?”

“Well,” said Ellery dryly, “it establishes the bird at the top of the house, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t get you!”

“I mean that this bird of Karen Leith’s is a jay. I mean that all jays are notoriously thievish. I mean that like all jays the Loo-choo must be instinctively attracted by brightly colored objects. And I say that after Karen Leith gave the jay its unwanted freedom it felt unaccustomed to its new estate and tried to return to its mistress. I say that it alighted on the window ledge, folded its wings, strutted through two of the iron bars — the window was open from the bottom, remember — and flew down to the floor of the dais where Karen Leith lay dying in her own blood. And I say that half-scissors with its broken point was lying there by her hand, steeped in her blood. And I say that, attracted by the glitter of the semiprecious jewels which stud the shank and bow, the jay picked up the weapon with its beak, a strong one (and a light weapon), flew up to the window sill, and walked out between the bars. Let me point out that the half-scissors is only five inches long and the space between the bars is six inches. Outside what did the Loo-choo bird do? With the instincts of its jayish, magpie-ish blood, it looked for a place to hide its attractive find. But where did we leave the jay? Perched on or near the roof of the house.”

Ellery chuckled. “You searched in the house, around the house, even under the house, so to speak, but you didn’t search on top of the house. So it all ties in very neatly, and if you find that missing half-scissors lying on the gable or in the eaves-trough on the roof, then I’m right and you’re wrong.”

So that was the gamble, Dr. MacClure thought grimly; and he saw now with clarity what a gamble it was. The whole thread of Ellery’s reasoning was fine and gossamer; it seemed real — but was it? Only the roof could tell. And if the roof disappointed them... He pressed Eva’s hand, and Eva returned the pressure convulsively. None of them was capable of a word, and all of them were painfully aware on what a slender thread Eva’s safety hung.

The Inspector frowned. “I’ll admit it’ll look different if we find it where you say it is. But even so, why couldn’t this girl still have murdered her aunt, then released the bird from the cage herself, and sent it flying away through the bars with the half-scissors? Tell me that!”

It was such a startling thought that the three huddled together stiffened with a single movement.

But Ellery shook his head. “What would Miss MacClure’s motive have been?”

“To get rid of the weapon!”

“Ah, but if she murdered Karen Leith the best illusion she could hope to create would be that of suicide! Yet by disposing of the weapon she would accomplish what? That which actually happened — to make the crime look like murder and herself like the only possible murderess. No, dad, that doesn’t wash.”

The Inspector grunted, defeated.

“I’m hoping,” continued Ellery quietly, “that we’re lucky. There’s one thing in our favor. It hasn’t rained since the crime. If the half-scissors was dropped by the jay in a protected spot, like the eaves-trough, it should still show fingerprints. The worst we have to contend with is the effect of the dew. But if the weapon hasn’t rusted, you’ll have absolute proof of Miss MacClure’s innocence.”

“It’ll show the Leith woman’s prints!” shouted Terry.

“Yes, and hers only. And if you find that, dad, even you will have to admit that the last doubt of Karen Leith’s suicide will have been removed.”

Gloomily the Inspector put in a call to Police Headquarters; and gloomily he commandeered two cabs and had the party driven downtown to the Leith house in Washington Square.

Two men from Headquarters were waiting for them when they arrived — fingerprint experts.

Sergeant Velie scoured the neighborhood for a long ladder. Then Ellery clambered from the garden up to the sloping roof, and the first thing he saw was the glitter of the missing half-scissors with its broken point lying in a semi-protected position in the eaves-trough almost directly over Karen Leith’s oriel windows.

As Ellery straightened up, waving the blood-tipped weapon, Terry sent up a shout from below that almost tumbled Ellery into the garden; and from where they stood in a group, craning, there was a cry of hysterical joy from Eva as she threw her arms about Dr. MacClure.

The fingerprint men found clear, unmistakable impressions of Karen Leith’s fingers all over the rust-proof metal. And the fingerprints of no one else. And, as a last proof, one of them fitted the tiny triangular sliver of steel from Karen Leith’s throat to the broken end of the half-scissors, and it matched exactly.

23

On Friday night the MacClures were shepherded by Terry Ring into a swanky place in the East Fifties and had a dinner which did not “smell,” as Terry put it with characteristic candor, “of the East Side.”

They were subdued, and for the most part dined with only monosyllabic conversation. The doctor looked tired, and Eva positively exhausted.

“Thing about you,” said Terry at last, “is you need a rest. Change. Vacation. Something to take your mind off things. Now you can go off and marry this Park Avenue guy.”

“Didn’t Eva tell you?” asked Dr. MacClure subtly. “She’s returned Scott’s ring.”

“No!” Terry set his fork down and stared. “Well, what do you know about that,” he said, staring some more.

Eva flushed. “It was a mistake, that’s all.”

“Well, say,” mumbled Terry. “That’s swell — I mean too bad.” And he seized his fork and attacked his filet with such zest that Dr. MacClure hid a smile behind his napkin.

“Why didn’t Mr. Queen come?” asked Eva hastily, to change the subject.

“He’s got a headache or something,” said Terry. He flung his fork down again, to the horror of the hovering waiter. “Look, gorgeous. How about you and me...” He picked it up again. “Forget it.”

“I think,” said Dr. MacClure, rising, “you two will have to suffer along by yourselves. I’m going.”

“No,” cried Eva. “Don’t go, daddy.”

“No, really,” said the doctor, “you’ll have to excuse me. I’d expected to see Queen this evening. I haven’t really thanked him properly for all he’s done.”

“Then I’ll go, too,” said Eva, beginning to push back from the table. “I owe him more than anyone.”

“You’ll stay right here,” growled Terry, hauling her back. “Go on, Doc, scram. I’ll fix her wagon.”

“Daddy,” wailed Eva.

But Dr. MacClure shook his head and smiled and left.

“Look,” said Terry eagerly, leaning far across the table. “I’m not much — I know that. But if you—”

“Poor daddy,” said Eva. “He looks simply awful. All this suspense and worry have aged him ten years. He looks worse to-night than he looked yesterday. He—”

“He’s a swell guy,” said Terry heartily. “Say, he’s got tact! We’ll get along all right. Eva, would you...”

“I’m worried about him,” frowned Eva, poking at her chop. “He’s going to plunge right into work at that Foundation of his like a madman. I know him. He really ought to go away again.”

“You and him and me, too,” cried Terry. “We could all go together!”

“Why, what do you mean?” asked Eva, widening her eyes.

“I mean — say we all... Look.” Terry bellowed at her. “The first thing I’m going to do is hie me up Park Avenue a way and take a poke at that palooka who ran out on you!”

“Terry!”

“Well, all right, I won’t if you say so,” grumbled Terry. His brown features twisted desperately; he took a deep breath and leaned forward again. “Eva, what say you and I—”

“Pardon,” whispered a firm voice. They looked up. It was the headwaiter. “Pardon, pardon, Monsieur, mais vous faites trop de bruit!”

“Huh?” said Terry blankly.

“Monsieur will be so kind!”

“Go away, Lafayette,” said Terry, seizing Eva’s hands. “Look, hon, what I mean was—”

“He says,” said Eva faintly, pulling away, “that you’re making too much noise.”

“And if Monsieur does not abate the tone,” added the headwaiter even more firmly, “I shall ask him to depart!”

Terry stared up. Then he said flatly to Eva: “Stay right where you are.” He got to his feet and faced the Gallic gentleman spread-legged. “Did I understand you to say,” he asked in a gentle voice, “that I’m making too much bruit for this dump?”

The headwaiter took a backward step. “Philippe! Antoine!” Two large and swarthy garçons came up. “Escort Ma’m’selle and Monsieur—”

“Hold everything, Antoine,” said Terry.

A silence fell. All over the restaurant people were staring, shocked. Eva felt herself grow hot and cold by turns. She could have crawled under the table.

“Please, Terry,” she whispered. “Don’t forget where... Please don’t—”

“Proceed, Antoine,” said the headwaiter nervously.

Antoine’s brawny fist reached for Terry. Terry crouched a little, and Eva shut her eyes. She knew what was coming. A brawl. In a nice restaurant. Where did he think... It would be in the newspapers... The last straw!

“I said hold it,” she heard Terry say, in such a peculiar tone that she opened her eyes quickly.

Terry was hanging on to Antoine’s fist almost imploringly. And he was perspiring. “Listen, Antoine,” he said, licking his lips. “You ever been in... love?”

Antoine gaped. He looked at the headwaiter. The headwaiter paled. He said, quavering: “Perhaps Monsieur does not feel well? Perhaps a doctor—”

“Love! Love!” said Terry tensely: “You know what love is, don’t you? A-mour! Kitchy-koo! L-o-v-e!”

“He is cra-zee,” muttered Antoine, carefully retreating.

“Sure I’m crazy!” shouted Terry, waving his long arms. “I’m off my nut trying to figure out a way to propose to my girl, and he tells me I’m making too much noise!”

Eva thought she knew what Joan of Arc had gone through at the stake. Her cheeks felt burned to crisps. She had never been so humiliated in her life. The restaurant was in an uproar. Everybody was laughing. Even the headwaiter smiled, definitely relieved.

“You oaf!” panted Eva, jumping up. “After all I’ve been through!”

And she fled, pursued by bellows of delight from all sides. It was like a nightmare. How could he— The... the—

But she got only as far as the rubber mat under the canopy outside. There, inexplicably, she found Terry facing her.

“Listen, kid,” he said hoarsely. “Marry me and put me out of my misery!”

“Oh, Terry,” sobbed Eva, putting her arms around his neck. “I’m so happy. You’re such a fool. I love you so much.”

There was an enthusiastic huzza behind them, and they wheeled to find the restaurant doorway thronged and the headwaiter bowing gallantly in their direction.

“Vive la France,” said Terry feebly, and he kissed her.

Dr. MacClure’s ring was answered by Djuna, who looked first surprised, then angry, and finally philosophical. Djuna was accustomed to people who appeared, hat in hand, at the conclusion of a case.

“Hello,” said Ellery slowly, getting out of the arm-chair before the fireplace. “Come in, Doctor.”

“I won’t keep you long,” said Dr. MacClure. “I felt that I hadn’t thanked you properly, and of course—”

“Oh, that.” Ellery seemed embarrassed. “Sit down, Doctor. Dad’s at Headquarters cleaning up the last details and satisfying the reporters. So I’m rather alone.”

“Terry says you aren’t feeling especially well,” remarked the doctor, accepting a cigaret. “I suppose it’s the reaction. Really wonderful piece of rationalization. You don’t look well. How do you feel exactly?”

“Low. It’s funny, but it struck me that you’re rather peaked yourself.”

“Oh, I.” The doctor shrugged over his cigaret. “Well, I’m human. No matter how calloused the human temperament becomes, there are some things that penetrate it. One is danger to someone you love. Another is shock — there was Esther, and finding out she was alive, only to find out she was dead after all. And there was,” he added quietly, “Karen.”

Ellery nodded, staring into the dark fireplace. The doctor sighed and rose. “Well, it’s hardly necessary for me to put into words—”

“Doctor, sit down.”

Dr. MacClure looked at him.

“I must talk to you.”

The big man’s arm remained poised, the cigaret smouldering in his fingers. “There’s something the matter, Queen?”

“Yes.”

Dr. MacClure seated himself again. The anxiety returned to his gaunt, chunky face. His brows met.

Ellery got out of his chair and went to the mantel. “I’ve been thinking hard all afternoon and evening. I’ve hardly got out of that chair... Yes, there’s something the matter.”

“Vital?”

“Extremely.”

“If you mean,” began the doctor slowly, ‘that Karen didn’t really commit suicide...”

“Oh, she committed suicide, all right,” said Ellery scowling at the crossed sabres above the mantel. “That part of it is right.”

“Then what do you mean?” The big man jumped up. “You can’t mean that somehow Eva — that she’s still—”

Ellery turned round. “There are certain aspects of this case, Doctor, which have not yet been touched upon. The case is not closed by any means. It’s closed as far as the police are concerned — my father, too — but that’s not enough. I have a terrible problem to solve — the most difficult in my experience. I don’t know, frankly, what to do.”

The doctor sank back in bewilderment. “But if Eva isn’t — if Karen committed suicide — I fail to see—”

“I’m glad you’ve come. Apparently there’s a design in human relations that isn’t quite material.” Ellery removed his pince-nez and began to polish them absently. “Your coming resolves some of the difficulty. Have you a little time, Doctor?”

“Of course. As long as you want me.” The big man stared at him anxiously.

Ellery went to the kitchen. “Djuna.” Djuna appeared like Jack-in-the-box. “How would you like to take in a movie?”

“I don’t know,” said Djuna doubtfully. “I saw all the pictures around here.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something.” Ellery pressed a bill into the boy’s hand. Djuna stared up at him. Their eyes locked.

Then Djuna said: “Sure. I guess so,” and he went quickly to the closet and got his hat and let himself out of the apartment.

“You see,” said Ellery, as soon as the door closed, “my dilemma is an unusual one: Shall I tell my father what I know and he doesn’t, or shan’t I? And since there’s a delicate point involved that isn’t amenable to the usual methods, I’m forced to ask for your help.”

“But how can I help you, Queen? Do you mean that it has something to do with Eva, after all?”

Ellery sat down and slowly lit a cigaret. “Suppose I begin at the beginning. In the final analysis, it’s not an ordinary decision; it’s not even my decision. You’ll have to make it. And I’ll be guided by your advice — whether to leave the case officially closed, as it is to-night, or open it to-morrow with a bang that will rock New York.”

Dr. MacClure was pale. But he said in a steady voice: “I’ve stood almost every shock possible to human flesh, so I suppose I can stand another. Go on, Queen.”

Ellery took a folded sheet of paper out of the pocket of his dressing-gown. The doctor waited quietly as Ellery unfolded it.

“I have here,” began Ellery, ‘my father’s copy of the suicide note left by your sister-in-law Esther in Philadelphia.”

“Yes?” said the doctor blankly.

“The original, of course, is in dad’s hands. Let me assure you at once — there’s nothing wrong with the authorship of that letter. The handwriting has been checked and established as Esther’s beyond any question.

“Now, of course,” continued Ellery in a faraway voice, “we’ve got to make certain readjustments of interpretation regarding this letter, in the light of Karen Leith’s suicide. We assumed that Esther’s reference to herself as a murderess applied to Karen Leith — that is, that she was confessing to Karen Leith’s murder. Well, obviously, if Karen committed suicide Esther couldn’t have murdered her. She couldn’t have murdered her even if Karen hadn’t committed suicide, since Karen was alive when Esther was dead. Nor could Esther have been deliberately taking the blame for Karen’s death, since Karen wasn’t dead when Esther wrote the note.”

“Of course she was referring to my brother’s death, not Karen’s,” nodded the doctor. “Apparently until she took her own life Esther considered herself Floyd’s murderess.”

“Yes. That’s undoubtedly so. Her old phobia. Now that’s significant, because it fully implies the answer to one of the most puzzling phases of the entire case — exactly what hold it was that Karen had on Esther which made Esther submit to a life of fantastic exploitation by her own sister... to the extent of even agreeing to seem dead.”

The doctor knit his brow. “I don’t see—”

“It’s all a matter of the most cunning and morbid and vicious psychology,” said Ellery. “You said yourself you were astounded at the depths of Esther’s obsession seventeen years ago — how she insisted on thinking that she had murdered your brother against all the plain facts. But can you understand her obsession if I visualize for you a clever, unscrupulous woman who undid every step in Esther’s cure — who kept whispering to Esther that she had killed your brother intentionally, who so worked on the poor, harassed, tortured soul that eventually Esther was sure she had murdered her husband?”

The doctor was gaping at him.

“It explains everything,” said Ellery gloomily. “It explains Esther’s eagerness to send her child away — for how could her gentle nature stand the thought that some day her daughter would learn she was the daughter of a murderess? You told me yourself how Esther pressed the point that you adopt Eva and take her to the States, to bring her up in ignorance of her parentage.”

“That’s true,” muttered the doctor. “And Karen backed her up.”

“Of course; the idea was probably planted by Karen! Now Karen was a twisted being. There’s no doubt about that. To have done what she did, to have planned the foul thing she planned, she must have been off-center morally, a conscienceless, scheming woman. She knew Esther’s talent, a talent she herself did not possess. And Karen was a woman of tremendous ambition. So she fostered Esther’s belief that she had murdered your brother Floyd; and in Esther’s unbalanced emotional state she easily became a prey to Karen’s ambition and lay down under Karen’s thumb... Why did she do it? It wasn’t only ambition. It must have been thwarted passion, too. I think Karen Leith loved your brother Floyd. I think she wanted to make Esther suffer for having won the man she herself wanted.”

The doctor shook his head in a dazed way.

Ellery glanced at the sheet. “‘Your mother,’ she wrote to Eva — this is Esther speaking in her suicide note — ‘is a monster; thank God the monster kept her secret from you.’”

“What can that mean except that everything Esther submitted to was for Eva’s sake? Eva, then, was Karen’s strongest weapon — she convinced Esther that if Eva should ever learn that her mother had murdered her father, Eva’s whole life, her outlook on life, would be ruined. And Esther agreed. She saw that. She saw that Eva must never know.

“Is it so hard to visualize Karen coldly and fantastically planning Esther’s ‘death’ by ‘suicide’ in Japan, with Esther’s consent and cooperation, just because she — Karen — felt her ambition would be consummated by removing to the States and reaping the full harvest in her native country of Esther’s genius? Is it so hard to see that Karen would take delight in this notion of getting close to Eva, so that Esther would suffer agonies in proximity with her daughter, knowing that she could never reveal herself? For that would be part of Karen’s revenge, too... And always Karen had one weapon to insure Esther’s silence. To threaten Esther that she would tell Eva who her mother was and what she had done!”

Dr. MacClure clenched his hairy hands. “The devil,” he said in a dry, remote rumble.

“Or at least,” nodded Ellery, ‘the devil’s mate. But I haven’t got to the most interesting part of all. Listen.” He read again from the copy of Esther’s suicide note. “‘For you are the only one in the world who might have saved my sister’s life.’” Ellery cried: “‘Who might have saved my sister’s life!’ How did Esther know that Karen was doomed to die? How could Esther have known that Karen would be dead, when Esther herself died forty-eight hours before Karen!”

He got out of the chair and began to pace restlessly.

“Esther could only have known if she knew Karen meant to commit suicide. But how could Esther have known in advance that Karen planned suicide? Only if Karen had told her. ‘I have seen it coming,’ she writes, ‘and I have been powerless against it.’ Then Esther took a desperate step. She didn’t want Karen to die and herself to be found alive in that house — she didn’t want herself found even dead in that house, for in either event Eva would have found out after Karen’s death that her ‘monster’ of a mother was alive. So, in panic, Esther fled, to commit suicide herself in another city under a false name. That’s what she was referring to when she wrote: ‘And so I have done what in my monstrous helplessness I must do.’”

“It’s very clear,” said the doctor tiredly.

“Is it, Doctor? Why did Karen commit suicide?” Ellery leaned across the little table. “Why? She had everything to live for — fame, wealth, approaching marriage. Why did she commit suicide?”

The doctor looked startled. “You said yourself it must have been remorse, conscience.”

“Do you think so? Does a woman like Karen Leith really experience remorse? Then why didn’t she confess to the world before she committed suicide? Remorse means an awakening, a rebirth of human conscience — and it brings with it an effort to repay, to atone, to give back. Did Karen Leith die telling the world she had been a fraud for years? Did she change her will to restore to Esther what was rightfully hers? Did she do any of the things a conscience-stricken woman would have done under the peculiar circumstances? No. She died as she had lived — hiding a secret. No, Doctor, not remorse!

“And what,” cried Ellery, “is the tone of Esther’s letter? Is it the letter of a woman who has just been told by her sister the truth about that sister’s real crime against her? What did Esther mean by ‘our lightning destiny,’ ‘our insensate fate’? Isn’t there even a note of sympathy in the way she wrote about Karen? And, even if she had been an angel, could Esther have written sympathetically about Karen if she had just learned that Karen had lied to her about that seventeen-year-old murder, that Karen had wilfully and criminally used her, with a lie and a threat as weapons? No, Doctor, Karen committed suicide not out of remorse for what she had done to Esther; Karen committed suicide without having told Esther the truth about what she had done to Esther. Karen committed suicide for another reason altogether — a reason having nothing to do with Esther, a reason she could confide to Esther, a reason that could make Esther write sympathetically about her and pray God’s mercy on both their souls!”

“You confuse me,” said the doctor, passing his hand over his forehead. “I don’t understand.”

“Then perhaps I can make you understand.” Ellery picked up the transcript again. “‘If only,’” he read, “‘you had not gone away’ — referring to you, Doctor. ‘If only you had taken her with you. For you are the only one in the world who might have saved my sister’s life.’ Does that make it clearer?”

“Esther meant,” sighed the doctor, ‘that if I hadn’t left for that European vacation, or if I had taken Karen with me, Karen probably wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

“But why,” asked Ellery in a soft voice, “did she write that you’re the only one in the world who might have saved Karen?”

“Well,” frowned the doctor, “a fiancé’s influence — I was the only one Karen really cared for—”

“Why did she write that with your leaving went Karen’s last protection, her last hope?”

The doctor stared at him with his light blue eyes, painfully focussed.

“I’ll tell you, Doctor,” said Ellery slowly. “This room is a tomb, and I can tell you. I can say it aloud in this room — I can voice this fancy of mine, this little thing, this monstrous and persistent thing, this conviction that has tortured me all evening.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dr. MacClure, gripping the arms of his chair.

“I mean, Doctor, that you murdered Karen Leith.”

24

Dr. MacClure got out of the chair after a moment and went to the window, to clasp his hairy hands behind him in the loose and powerful way to which Ellery had become accustomed. The big man turned around then, and to Ellery’s astonishment there was an expression of quiet amusement on his face.

“Of course, Queen,” said the doctor, chuckling, “you’re joking.”

“I assure you I’m not,” said Ellery a little stiffly.

“But, man — you’re so inconsistent! First you say Karen committed suicide — and what’s more, prove it! — and now out of a clear sky you accuse me of murdering her. You’ll understand my natural bewilderment.”

Ellery scraped his lean jaw for an instant. “I can’t decide whether you’re amusing yourself at my expense or being very forbearing. Doctor, I’ve just accused you of the worst crime on the human calendar. Would you like me to defend my accusation?”

“By all means,” said the doctor instantly. “I’m curious to learn how you go about logically proving that a man can kill a fellow-creature in a house in New York while he’s lying in a deckchair on a ship in mid-ocean, a day and a half from port.”

Ellery flushed. “You’re insulting my intelligence. In the first place, I didn’t say I could prove it by strict logic. In the second place, I didn’t say you committed the murder of Karen Leith with your hands.”

“You interest me even more. How did I do it — with my astral body? Come, come, Queen, confess you’re having a little joke with me, and let’s stop this discussion. Come on over to the Medical Club and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I haven’t the slightest objection to drinking with you, Doctor, but I think we had better clear the air first.”

“Then you are serious.” The doctor surveyed Ellery thoughtfully, and Ellery felt a little uncomfortable under the direct scrutiny of those penetrating eyes. “Well, go ahead,” said the doctor at last. “I’m listening, Queen.”

“Smoke?”

“No, thank you.”

Ellery lit another cigaret. “I must repeat, in quoting again from Esther’s letter — why were you the only one in the world who might have saved Karen? Why were you her last hope?”

“And I must repeat — although I can’t pretend to know beyond question what was in poor Esther’s mind — that it seems to me a simple matter. My physical presence, Karen’s attachment to me, would have prevented her from taking her own life.”

“Yet Esther didn’t seem too sure, did she?” murmured Ellery. “She didn’t say you could have saved Karen’s life; she only said you might have.”

“You’re quibbling about pretty distinctions,” said Dr. MacClure. “Certainly I might have; even had I been here Karen might still have committed suicide.”

“On the other hand,” said Ellery mildly, ‘the suspicion struck me that if there was any uncertainty in Esther’s mind about your inability to prevent Karen from committing suicide, the reason may have had nothing at all to do with you as Karen’s lover, you see.”

“I’m dense tonight,” smiled the doctor. “I confess I don’t grasp what you’re driving at.”

“Doctor,” said Ellery abruptly, “what is it that you can do better than anyone else in the world?”

“I’ve never been conscious of any overwhelming superiority. But I’m flattered, naturally.”

“You’re too modest. You are famous for — you have just received international recognition for — you have devoted your life, your renowned skill, your fortune to — the study and treatment of human cancer.”

“Oh, that!” said the doctor, waving his hand.

“Everyone knows that you are top cancer man in your profession. Even Esther must have known that — she was shut in physically, but her books show how closely through reading she kept in touch with the world. Now isn’t it strange that Esther, knowing you to be the greatest authority on cancer, should write that you are the only one in the world who might have saved Karen’s life?”

Dr. MacClure came back to his chair and sprawled in it, folding his hands on his chest and half-closing his eyes.

“This is fantastic,” he said.

“Not really,” drawled Ellery. “For we still must find a reason why a woman who has everything to live for should suddenly take it upon herself to commit suicide. We have no motive, you see. Unless we say: She felt the hand of death upon her. She was suffering from an incurable disease. Unless we say: She knew death to be a matter of only a short time.

“Then her suicide in the face of her impending personal happiness, her fresh and supreme literary honors, her comfortable circumstances, her inheritance of a large fortune only a month away — then, I say, her suicide in the face of these things becomes comprehensible. And only then.”

The doctor shrugged in a queer way. “You’re suggesting, I believe, that Karen had cancer?”

“I believe that that was what Esther had in mind when she wrote that you were the only one in the world who might have saved her sister’s life.”

“But you know as well as I that in the autopsy report of your own Dr. Prouty there was no mention of cancer! — not a breath of it. Don’t you think if Karen’d had an advanced cancer he would have found it in autopsy?”

“Exactly the point!” Ellery pounded the little table. “Karen Leith committed suicide thinking she had cancer when she didn’t have it at all! And her sister Esther thought the same thing!”

The doctor’s face was calm and grave now. He sat up a little in the chair. “I see,” he said quietly. “So now it’s out. So that’s what you had in mind.”

“Yes! Karen’s body showed no trace of cancer, yet she committed suicide thinking she had it. Then she was convinced beyond a doubt of an organic trouble that didn’t exist!” Ellery leaned forward. “Who do you suppose, Dr. MacClure, could have convinced her?”

The doctor said nothing.

“Let me quote you, ‘She never had another physician.’ ‘She followed instructions to the letter. Ideal patient.’ Yes, Doctor, you were her physician, you diagnosed her simple condition of neurasthenia and anaemia — loss of weight and appetite, perhaps malnutrition, probably indigestion, discomfort after eating — as cancer, and because you were her fiancé she believed you, and because you were the greatest authority on cancer in the world she didn’t dream of consulting another doctor, and you knew she would not!”

The doctor still said nothing.

“Oh, I don’t doubt you did a thorough job. You may even have shown her X-ray pictures purporting to be hers. You certainly told her she had a hopeless type of cancer — probably stomachic, spreading to the liver and abdomen, quite inoperable, too far gone for surgery. You did it so well, you were so convincing, that within a short time, without ever having said a direct word or made a direct suggestion, she was psychologically your victim, so that in her neurotic condition it was inevitable that she should give up the fight and plan suicide.”

“I see,” said the doctor, ‘that you’ve been asking questions.”

“Oh, I telephoned a doctor I knew well, asked him casually — discovered how simple it would be for an unscrupulous physician to convince a neurotic, anaemic patient that she had cancer!”

“In all this,” said the doctor pleasantly, “you have overlooked the possibility that a physician might, with the best intentions in the world, make a wrong diagnosis. I have known cases where every test and symptom indicated cancer — yes, including X-rays — and the truth was quite otherwise.”

“Most unlikely, Doctor, that you erred, in view of your knowledge and experience. But even if innocently it was a wrong diagnosis, why did you tell her? Just before your marriage? It would have been kinder to keep her in ignorance.”

“But an erring physician, sincerely thinking it was cancer, could not keep the patient in ignorance. He would have to treat the case, no matter how far gone.”

“And yet you did not, did you, Doctor? You abandoned your “patient”! You went off to Europe! No, Doctor, you weren’t feeling kind — quite the reverse. You deliberately told her she was suffering from an incurable cancer, you deliberately told her treatment was worse than useless. You did this to torture her, to take away the remnant of hope — in the light of what happened, to drive her to suicide.”

The doctor sighed.

“Now do you understand,” demanded Ellery softly, “how a man might kill a woman from a very great distance?”

The doctor shaded his face with his hand.

“Now do you understand what I meant when I said that, despite the fact that Karen Leith committed suicide, she was really murdered by you? It’s a queer sort of murder, Doctor, mental murder, murder by pure suggestion, but murder it is... as much murder as if you’d been in that room and driven that half-scissors into Karen Leith’s neck with your own hand, instead of being in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in a deckchair.”

Dr. MacClure looked thoughtful. “And what motive in all this fantastic theorizing,” he asked, “do you ascribe to my Machiavellian self?”

“Not Machiavellian,” murmured Ellery, “and the motive was human and understandable and even worthy. For somehow you found out — between Karen Leith’s garden-party and the time you sailed — that Esther Leith MacClure, whom you had loved long ago in Japan, had for all these years been occupying the attic above your fiancée’s head... a prisoner, crushed, lied to, exploited, used, the products of her genius stolen — all the rest of it. You may even have seen Esther yourself, and spoken to her, and kept quiet for Eva’s sake. But somehow you found out, and your affection for Karen turned into bitterness and a desire for vengeance — you saw the woman for the first time as she really was, a monster who didn’t deserve to live.”

“On that point,” said Dr. MacClure, “there is no argument.”

“It was even unnecessary for you to act,” continued Ellery gloomily, “when you were notified on shipboard that your fiancée had been murdered. You had gone away, certain that she meant to take her own life; but discovering that she was apparently murdered gave you a terrific shock. You never dreamed of that. You reacted normally. You were anxious about Eva — even conceived the possibility that she had discovered the secret, too, and murdered Karen herself. You were convinced Karen had been murdered until I proved her a suicide — and then you felt the stigma of murder on your own hands, and knew that you had killed her after all.”

And Dr. MacClure said: “May I have another cigaret?”

Silently Ellery offered him one, and for a long time they sat opposite each other, smoking like very good friends who feel such a communion of spirit that conversation is unnecessary.

And finally Dr. MacClure said: “I’ve been trying to think of what your father would say if he’d been present here tonight.” He smiled, shrugging. “Would he believe such a story? I wonder. For what proof exists? None at all.”

“What is proof?” asked Ellery. “It’s merely the clothing of what we already know to be true. Anybody can prove anything, given sufficient will to believe.”

“Nevertheless,” said the doctor, “our courts and our code of justiciary ethics perhaps unfortunately operate on a more tangible basis.”

“That,” admitted Ellery, “is true.”

“So let’s say we’ve had a pleasant evening of fiction,” said the doctor, “and stop this nonsense and go down to my club for that drink I promised you.” He rose, still smiling.

Ellery sighed. “I see I must show all my cards after all.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dr. MacClure slowly.

“Excuse me.” Ellery got up and went into his bedroom. Dr. MacClure dabbed his cigaret out in an ashtray, frowning a little. Then Ellery came back, and Dr. MacClure turned and saw that he was carrying an envelope.

“The police,” said Ellery at once, “know nothing of this letter.” He handed the envelope to the doctor. The big man turned it over in his strong, hair-backed fingers. It was a delicate envelope, very thin in texture, with a faint rose-on-ivory pattern of chrysanthemums. On its face, in Karen Leith’s neat hand, were the words: To John. The flap on the reverse side had been sealed in Karen’s gold wax with the odd little ideographic Japanese seal the doctor knew so well. Someone had slit the envelope open; between its frayed top edges the doctor saw a folded sheet of deckle-edged notepaper. The envelope was dirty and dew-stained, as if from long exposure to the weather.

“I found it,” said Ellery, watching the doctor, ‘this afternoon in the eaves-trough on Karen Leith’s roof. It was lying near the half-scissors. It was sealed, and I have opened it. And I haven’t told anyone about it — until now.”

“The jay,” said the doctor a little absently.

“Undoubtedly. It must have made two trips through the bars — one with the half-scissors, the other with this envelope. I suppose the gold wax attracted its thieving eye.”

The doctor nodded and turned the envelope over again. “I wonder,” he murmured, “where Karen got this?” I thought when she sent Kinumé for the stationery that she had none available—”

“Oh, she probably had one sheet and envelope left,” said Ellery indifferently, “but since she had two letters to write, one to you and one to Morel...”

“Yes,” said Dr. MacClure. He put the envelope down on the little table and turned his back to Ellery.

“Unfortunately,” said Ellery, “we can’t always order things as we should like. Had that bird not interfered, everything would have been different. For in that envelope, if you will take out the note, is Karen Leith’s last message. In it she says she is going to take her own life, and in it she tells why — because, she says, the cancer you had diagnosed as incurable made suicide the only way out.”

Dr. MacClure muttered: “So that’s how you knew! I thought that intellectual process was a little far-fetched.”

But Ellery said: “So you see why I had to ask your advice, Doctor. It’s too bad that I’m cursed with a never-satisfied mind. I’m dreadfully, dreadfully sorry. Yours was a crime that deserved a better fate than being found out. I had to ask your advice because I can’t decide what to do. I feel that the decision must remain in your hands.”

“Yes,” said the doctor thoughtfully.

“You can do one of three things: walk out of here and preserve your silence, in which case you toss the ethical problem right back in my lap; walk out of here and give yourself up to the police, in which case you deliver the finishing blow to poor Eva; or walk out of here and—”

“I think,” said the doctor quietly, turning around, ‘that I know what I have to do.”

“Ah,” said Ellery, and he groped for his cigaret-case.

The doctor picked up his hat. “Well,” he said, “good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said Ellery.

Dr. MacClure extended his powerful right hand. Ellery shook it slowly, as one shakes the hand of a friend for the last time.

When the doctor had gone, Ellery sat down before the fireplace in his dressing-gown, reached for the envelope, stared at it glumly for a moment and then, striking a match, ignited one corner of the paper and laid it down in the empty grate.

He sat back with folded hands, watching the envelope burn. Something Dr. MacClure had said in those last moments came back to him. “So that’s how you knew! I thought that intellectual process was a little far-fetched.”

And Ellery thought of how carefully he had searched Karen’s house late that afternoon for the stationery, without telling anyone; and of how he had sat down in the stillness of Karen Leith’s death-room to imitate her handwriting in the two essential words; and of how he had slipped a blank sheet of the deckle-edged paper into the prepared envelope and sealed the envelope and then slit it open and then affixed the gold wax to the flap with Karen Leith’s own seal. And of how he had dirtied it and faked the marks of dew.

Intellectual process! Yes, he thought, very intellectual indeed.

And he wondered as he watched the gold wax melt and run under the heat: How prove a case of mental murder? How prove that a man can commit murder not with his hands but with his brain? How punish a natural force, like the desire for rightful vengeance? How catch a wind, or trap a cloud, or make justice condemn itself to death?

Ellery stared morosely into the grate. The last fragile scrap of stationery was licked up by the flame as he watched, and all that was left was a residue of ash with a gold blob weighing it down like a mass of mortality.

And he thought that bluff was man’s defense against the impalpable, and conscience his only guide. And he thought how easy it was, and how terrible it was, with only pen and ink and paper and wax as his tools, for a man to accomplish the one and stir up the other.

He shivered a little before the dark fireplace. It was too much like playing God to feel entirely comfortable.