The Dutch Shoe Mystery

Chapter One Operation

Inspector Richard Queen’s alter ego, which was in startling contrast with his ordinarily spry and practical old manner, often prompted him to utter didactic remarks on the general subject of criminology. These professorial dicta were habitually addressed to his son and partner-in-crime-detection, Ellery Queen, in moments when they browsed before their living-room fire, alone except for the slippery shadow of Djuna, the wraith-like gypsy lad who served their domestic needs.

“The first five minutes are the most important,” the old man would say severely, “remember that.” It was his favorite theme. “The first five minutes can save you a heap of trouble.”

And Ellery, reared from boyhood on a diet of detectival advice, would grunt and suck his pipe and stare into the fire, wondering how often a detective was fortunate enough to be on the scene of a crime within three hundred seconds of its commission.

Here he would put his doubt into words, and the old man would nod sadly and agree — yes, it wasn’t very often that such luck came one’s way. By the time the investigator reached the scene the trail was cold, very cold. Then one did what one could to atone for the unsympathetic tardiness of fate. Djuna, hand me my snuff!...

Ellery Queen was no more the fatalist than he was the determinist, or pragmatist, or realist. His sole compromise with isms and ologies was an implicit belief in the gospel of the intellect, which has assumed many names and many endings through the history of thought. Here he swung wide of the fundamental professionalism of Inspector Queen. He despised the institution of police informers as beneath the dignity of original thinking; he pooh-poohed police methods of detection with their clumsy limitations — the limitations of any rule-plagued organization. “I’m one with Kant at least to this extent,” he liked to say, “that pure reason is the highest good of the human hodge-podge. For what one mind can conceive another mind can fathom...”

This was his philosophy in its simplest terms. He was very near to abandoning his faith during the investigation of Abigail Doorn’s murder. Perhaps for the first time in his sharply uncompromising intellectual career, doubt assailed him. Not doubt of his philosophy, which had proved itself many times over in former cases, but doubt of his mental capacity to unravel what another mind had conceived. Of course he was an egoist — “bobbing my head vigorously with Descartes and Fichte,” he used to remark... but for once in the extraordinary labyrinth of events surrounding the Doorn case he had overlooked fate, that troublesome trespasser on the private property of self-determination.

Crime was on his mind that raw blue Monday morning in January, 192-, as he strode down a quiet street in the East Sixties. Heavy black ulster bundled about him, fedora pulled low over his forehead shading the cold gleam of his pince-nez glasses, stick cracking against the frosty pavement, he made for a low-slung group of buildings clustered solidly on the next block.

This was an unusually vexing problem. Something must have occurred between the moment of death and rigor mortis... His eyes were tranquil but the skin of his smooth brown cheek tightened and his stick struck the concrete with force.

He crossed the street and made rapidly for the main entrance to the largest building of the group. Looming before him were the red granite steps of an immense curving stairway which rose from two distinct points of the pavement to meet on a stone platform above. Carved in stone over a huge iron-bolted double door appeared the legend:

He ran up the steps and, panting a little from his exertions, heaved on one of the big doors. He was looking into a serene, high-ceilinged vestibule. The floor was of white marble, the walls heavily coated with dull enamel. To his left was an open door displaying a white plaque marked: OFFICE. To his right was a door similarly marked: WAITING ROOM. Directly ahead, beyond the vestibule, he could see through a glass swinging door the grillwork of a large elevator, in the entrance to which sat an old man in spotless white.

A burly, hard-jawed, red-faced man similarly dressed in white trousers and jacket, but wearing a black-visored cap, stepped out of the Office as Ellery paused to look around.

“Visitin’ hours from two t’ three,” he said gruffly. “Can’t see nobody in the Horspit’l till then, mister.”

“Eh?” Ellery plunged his gloved hands deeper into his pockets. “I want to see Dr. Minchen. Quickly.”

The attendant rasped his jaw. “Dr. Minchen, is it? D’ya have an appointment with th’ Doctor?”

“Oh, he’ll see me,” I said quickly, “please.” He fumbled in his pocket, brought out a piece of silver. “Now get him, won’t you? I’m in the devil of a hurry.”

“Can’t take tips, sir,” said the attendant regretfully. “And I’ll tell th’ Doctor who—?”

Ellery blinked his eyes, smiled, put the coin away. “Ellery Queen. No tips, eh? What’s your name? Charon?”

The man looked dubious. “No, sir. Isaac Cobb, sir. ‘Special.’” He indicated a nickel badge on his coat, shuffled off.

Ellery stepped into the Waiting Room and sat down. The room was empty. He wrinkled his nose unconsciously. A faint odor of disinfectant pinched the sensitive membrane of his nostrils. The ferrule of his stick tapped nervously on the tiled floor.

A tall athletic man in white burst into the room. “Ellery Queen, by thunder!” Ellery rose swiftly; they shook hands with warmth. “What on earth brings you down here? Still snooping around?”

“The customary thing, John. A case,” murmured Ellery. “Don’t like hospitals as a rule. They depress me. But I need some information—”

“Only too glad to be of service.” Dr. Minchen spoke incisively; he had very keen blue eyes and a quick smile. Grasping Ellery’s elbow he steered him through the door. “But we can’t talk here, old man. Come into my office. I can always find time for a chat with you. Must be months since I’ve seen you...”

They passed through the glass door and turned to the left, entering a long gleaming corridor lined on both sides with closed doors. The odor of disinfectant grew stronger.

“Shades of Aesculapius!” gasped Ellery. “Doesn’t this awful smell affect you at all? I should think you’d choke after a day in here.”

Dr. Minchen chuckled. They turned at the end of the corridor and strode along another at right angles to the one they had just traversed. “You get used to it. And it’s better to inhale the stink of lysol, bichloride of mercury and alcohol than the insidious mess of bacteria floating about... How’s the Inspector?”

“Middling.” Ellery’s eyes clouded. “A stubborn little case just now — I’ve got everything but one detail... If it’s what I think...”

Again they turned a corner, proceeding down a third hall parallel to the first through which they had passed. To their right, along the entire length of the corridor, there was blank wall broken only at one spot by a solid-looking door labeled: AMPHITHEATER GALLERY. To their left they passed in succession a door marked: DR. LUCIUS DUNNING, CHIEF INTERNIST; a little farther on another door inscribed: WAITING ROOM; and finally a third door at which Ellery’s companion halted, smiling. The door was lettered: DR. JOHN MINCHEN, MEDICAL DIRECTOR.

It was a large, sparsely furnished room dominated by a desk. Several cabinets with metallic instruments gleaming on glass shelves stood against the walls. There were four chairs, a low wide bookcase filled with heavy volumes, a number of steel filing-cases.

“Sit down, take your coat off and let’s have it,” said Minchen. He flung himself into the swivel-chair behind the desk, leaned backward, placed his square-fingered hard hands behind his head.

“Just one question,” muttered Ellery, throwing his ulster over a chair and striding across the room. He leaned forward over the desk, stared earnestly at Minchen. “Are there any circumstances which will alter the length of time in which rigor mortis usually sets in?”

“Yes. What did the patient die of?”

“Gunshot...”

“Age?”

“I should judge about forty-five.”

“Pathology? I mean — any disease? Diabetes, for example?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Minchen rocked gently in his chair. Ellery retreated, sat down, groped for a cigarette.

“Here — have some of mine,” said Minchen... “Well, I’ll tell you, Ellery. Rigor mortis is tricky, and generally I should like to examine the body before making a decision. I asked about diabetes particularly because a person over forty affected by an excess saccharine condition in the blood will almost inevitably stiffen up after a violent death in about ten minutes—”

“Ten minutes? Good God!” Ellery stared at Minchen, the cigarette drooping from his thin firm lips. “Ten minutes,” he repeated to himself softly. “Diabetes... John, let me use your ‘phone!”

“Help yourself.” Minchen waved, relaxed in his chair. Ellery snapped a number, spoke to two people, made connection with the Medical Examiner’s office. “Prouty? Ellery Queen... Did the autopsy on Jiminez show traces of sugar in the blood?... What? Chronic diabetic condition, eh? I’ll be damned!”

He replaced the receiver slowly, drew a long breath, grinned. The lines of strain had vanished from his face.

“All’s well that ends ill, John. You’ve rendered yeoman service this morning. One call more, and I’m through.”

He telephoned Police Headquarters. “Inspector Queen... Dad? It’s O’Rourke... Positive. The broken leg... Yes. Broken after death, but within ten minutes... Right!... And so am I.”

“Don’t go, Ellery,” said Minchen genially. “I’ve a bit of time on my hands and I haven’t seen you for ages.”

They sat back in their chairs, smoking. Ellery wore a singularly peaceful expression.

“Stay here all day, if you want me to.” He laughed. “You’ve just provided the straw that broke a stubborn camel’s back... After all, I mustn’t be too harsh with myself. Not having studied the mysteries of the Galenic profession, I couldn’t possibly have known about diabetes.”

“Oh, we’re not a total loss,” said Minchen. “As a matter of fact, I had diabetes on my mind. Just about the most important personage in the Hospital — chronic case of diabetes mellitus — had a bad accident this morning on the premises. Nasty fall from the top of a flight of stairs. Rupture of the gall bladder and Janney’s getting ready to operate immediately.”

“Too bad. Who is your first citizen?”

“Abby Doorn.” Minchen looked grave. “She’s over seventy, and although she’s well preserved for her age the diabetic condition makes the operation for rupture fairly serious. The only compensating feature of the whole business is that she is in a coma, and anæsthesia won’t be necessary. We’ve all been expecting the old lady to go under the knife for mildly chronic appendicitis next month, but I know that Janney won’t touch the appendix this morning — just not to complicate her condition. It’s not so serious as I’m probably making it sound. If the patient weren’t Mrs. Doorn, Janney would consider the case interesting but nothing more.” He consulted his wrist watch. “Operation’s at 10:45 — it’s almost 10:00 now — how would you like to witness Janney’s work?”

“Well...”

“He’s a marvel, you know. Best surgeon in the East. And Head Surgeon of the Dutch Memorial, partly because of Mrs. Doorn’s friendship and of course through his genius with the knife. Why not stay? Janney will pull her through — he’s operating in the Amphitheater across the corridor. Janney says she’ll be all right and when he says so, you can bank on it.”

“I suppose I’m in for it,” said Ellery ruefully. “To tell the truth, I’ve never witnessed a surgical operation. Think I’ll have the horrors? I’m afraid I’m a wee bit squeamish, John...” They laughed. “Millionaire, philanthropist, social dowager, financial power — damn the mortality of the flesh!”

“It hits us all,” mused Minchen, stretching his legs comfortably under the desk. “Yes, Abigail Doorn... I suppose you know she founded this Hospital, Ellery? Her idea, her money — really her institution... We were all shocked, I can tell you. Janney more than the rest of us — she’s been fairy godmother to him practically all his life — sent him through Johns Hopkins — Vienna — the Sorbonne — just about made him what he is to-day. Naturally he insisted on operating, and naturally he’ll do the job. No finer nerves in the business.”

“How did it happen?” asked Ellery curiously.

“Fate, I guess... You see, Monday mornings she always comes down here to inspect the Charity Wards — her pet idea — and as she was about to walk down a flight of steps on the third floor she went into a diabetic coma, fell down the stairs and landed on her abdomen... Luckily Janney was here. Examined her at once, and even from a superficial examination saw that the gall bladder had been ruptured by the fall — abdomen swollen, bloated... Well, there was only one thing to do. Janney began to give her the insulin-glucose emergency treatment...”

“What caused the coma?”

“We’ve discovered it was negligence on the part of Mrs. Doorn’s companion, Sarah Fuller — middle-aged woman who has been with Abby for years, runs the house, keeps her company. You see, Abby’s condition called for an insulin injection three times a day. Janney’s always insisted on doing it himself, although in most cases of this sort even the patient may inject the insulin. Last night Janney was kept by a very important case, and as he usually did when he couldn’t run over to the Doorn house, he ’phoned for Hulda, Abby’s daughter. But Hulda wasn’t home, and he left word with this Fuller woman to tell Hulda when she got in to administer the insulin. Fuller woman forgot or something. Abby is generally careless about it — the result was the dose wasn’t given last night. Hulda slept late this morning, never knowing of Janney’s message, and again this morning Abby didn’t get her injection. And on top of it ate a hearty breakfast. The breakfast finished the job. Sugar content in her blood quickly overbalanced the insulin, and coma inevitably followed. As luck would have it, it struck her at the top of a flight of stairs. And there you are.”

“Sad!” murmured Ellery. “I suppose everybody’s been notified? There’ll be a sweet family party here, I’ll wager.”

“Not in the operating-room, there won’t,” said Minchen grimly. “The whole kit and boodle of ’em will be in the Waiting Room next door. Family’s barred from the theater, don’t you know that? Well! How’d you like to take a little walk around? Love to show you the place. If I do say so, it’s a model of hospitalization.”

“With you, John.”

They left Minchen’s office and walked down the North Corridor the way they had come. Minchen pointed out the door to the Amphitheater Gallery, from which they would later view the operation; and the door to the Waiting Room. “Some of the Doorn crowd are probably in there now,” commented Minchen. “Can’t have ’em wandering around... Two auxiliary operating-rooms off the West Corridor,” he went on as they rounded the corner. “We’re pretty busy at all times — have one of the largest surgical staffs in the East... Across the corridor, on the left here, is the main operating-room — called the Amphitheater — which has two special rooms, an Anteroom and an Anæsthesia Room. As you can see, there’s a door to the Anteroom off this corridor — the West — and another entrance, to the Anæsthesia Room, around the corner in the South Corridor... Amphitheater’s where the big operations take place; it’s also used for demonstration purposes to the internes and nurses. Of course, we have other operating-rooms upstairs.”

The Hospital was strangely quiet. Occasionally a white-garbed figure flitted through the long halls. Noise seemed to have been entirely eliminated; doors swung on heavily oiled hinges and made no sound when they slipped shut. A soft diffused light bathed the interior of the building; and except for the chemical odor the air was singularly pure.

“By the way,” said Ellery suddenly, as they sauntered into the South Corridor, “I believe you said before that Mrs. Doorn wouldn’t be given anæsthetic for the operation. Is that only because she is in a coma? I’ve been under the impression that anæsthesia is administered in all surgical cases.”

“Fair question,” admitted Minchen. “And it’s true that in most cases — virtually all cases — anæsthesia is used. But diabetics are funny people. You know — or rather I suppose you don’t know — that any surgical operation is dangerous to a chronic diabetic. Even minor surgery may be fatal. Had a case just the other day — patient came into the dispensary with a festered toe — some poor devil. The doctor in charge — well, it’s just one of those unforeseeable accidents of dispensary routine. The toe was cleaned, the patient went home. Next morning he was found dead. Post mortem examination showed the man to be full of sugar. Probably never knew it himself...

“What I started out to say was that cutting is holy hell on diabetics. When an operation is absolutely necessary a buildup process is instituted — which accomplishes over a comparatively short period the task of temporarily restoring a normal sugar content in the patient’s blood. And even while the operation is being performed alternate injections of insulin and glucose are given without let-up to keep the sugar content normal. They’ll have to do that with Abby Doorn. She’s being injected now with these insulin-glucose treatments; taking blood-tests right along to check up on the diminution of sugar milligrams. This emergency treatment takes about an hour and a half, perhaps two hours. Generally the treatment is stretched over a month or so; too rapid building up may affect the liver. But we have no choice with Abby Doorn; that gall bladder rupture can’t be neglected, even for half a day.”

“Yes, but how about the anæsthetic?” objected Ellery. “Would that make the operation even riskier? Is that why you’re relying on the comatose condition to pull her through the shock?”

“Exactly. Riskier and more complicated. We must take what the gods provide.” Minchen paused with his hand on the knob of a door lettered: EXAMINING ROOM. “Of course, an anæsthetist will be standing beside the operating-table prepared to administer without a second’s delay should Abby pop out of the coma... Come in here, Ellery; I want to show you how a modern hospital does things.”

He pushed the door open and waved Ellery into the room. Ellery noticed that a small panel on the wall illuminated by a tiny electric bulb flashed on as the door opened to announce that the Examining Room was now occupied. He paused appreciatively on the threshold.

“Neat, eh?” grinned Minchen.

“What’s that thingamajig over there?”

“Fluoroscope. There’s one in every Examining Room. Of course, there’s the stock examining-table, small sterilizing-machine, drug cabinet, instrument racks... You can see for yourself.”

“The instrument,” said Ellery didactically, “is an invention of man to mock his Creator. Heavens, aren’t five fingers sufficient?” They laughed together. “I’d stifle in here. Doesn’t anybody ever throw things around?”

“Not while John Quintus Minchen is boss,” grinned the physician. “Actually, we make a fetish of orderliness. Take minor supplies, for instance. All kept in these drawers—” he flipped his hand at a large white cabinet in one corner, “and quite out of sight or knowledge of meddling patients or visitors. Everybody in the Hospital who has to, knows just where to get supplies. Makes things confoundedly simple.”

He pulled open a large metal drawer at the bottom of the cabinet. Ellery bent over and stared down at a bewildering display of assorted bandages. Another drawer contained absorbent cotton and tissue; another medicated cotton; another adhesive tapes.

“System,” murmured Ellery. “Your subordinates get demerit marks for dirty linen and untied shoelaces, don’t they?”

Minchen chuckled. “You’re not so far off at that. Standing rule of the Hospital makes it mandatory to dress in Hospital uniform, which for men is white canvas shoes, white duck trousers and coat; and for women white linen throughout. Even the ‘special’ outside — well, you remember he wore white, too. The elevator men, mopmen, kitchen help, clerical force — everybody wears the standardized uniform from the moment he sets foot on the Hospital premises until he leaves.”

“My head’s absolutely a-buzz,” groaned Ellery. “Let me out of here.”

As they emerged once more into the South Corridor, they caught sight of a tall young man dressed in a brown greatcoat, hat in hand, hurrying toward them. He looked their way, hesitated, then turned suddenly into the East Corridor at his right and disappeared.

Minchen’s frank face fell. “Forgot Abigail the Mighty,” he muttered. “There goes her attorney now — Philip Morehouse. Bright young coot. Devotes all his time to Abby’s interests.”

“He’s heard the news, I gather,” remarked Ellery. “Is he interested so personally in Mrs. Doorn?”

“I should say in Mrs. Doorn’s lovely young daughter,” replied Minchen dryly. “He and Hulda have hit it off quite famously. Looks like a romance to me. And from all accounts Abby, in her grand lady-of-the-manor fashion, smiles on the affair... Well! I suppose the clans are gathering... Hullo! There’s the old master himself. Just out of ‘A’ operating-room... Hi there, Doctor!”

Chapter Two Agitation

The man in the brown greatcoat ran up to the closed door of the Waiting Room in the North Corridor and rapped sharply. There was no sound from beyond the door. He tried the knob, pushed...

“Phil!”

“Hulda! Darling...”

A tall young woman, her eyes red with tears, flew into his arms. He cradled her head on his shoulder, murmuring wordless incoherent sympathy.

They were alone in the vast bare room. Long benches squatted stiffly along the walls. Over one was thrown a beaver coat.

Philip Morehouse gently raised the girl’s head, tipped her chin upward, looked into her eyes.

“It’s nothing, Hulda — she’ll be all right,” he said huskily. “Don’t cry, dear, I... please!”

She blinked, made a convulsive effort to smile at him. “I’ll — oh, Phil, I’m so glad you’ve come... sitting here all alone... waiting, waiting...”

“I know.” He looked around with a slight frown. “Where are the others? What the devil are they thinking of to leave you alone in this room?”

“Oh, I don’t know... Sarah, Uncle Hendrik — they’re about somewhere...”

She groped for his hand, snuggled against his breast. After a long moment they walked to a bench and sat down. Hulda Doorn stared wide-eyed at the floor. The young man fumbled desperately for words, but none came.

About them, silent and huge, lay the Hospital, humming with the work of life. But in the room there was no sound, no footfall, no cheerful voice. Only white dull walls...

“Oh, Phil, I’m afraid, I’m afraid!”

Chapter Three Visitation

A small, queerly shaped man had walked into the South Corridor, heading toward Minchen and Ellery. Ellery received an instant impression of personality, even while the man’s features could not be clearly distinguished. Perhaps this feeling arose from the peculiarly stiff manner in which he held his head, and the pronounced limp with which he walked. That there was something wrong with his left leg was apparent from the manner in which he put his weight on the right. “Probably muscular paralysis of some sort,” muttered Ellery to himself as he watched the little doctor approach.

The newcomer was dressed in full surgical regalia — a white gown under which protruded the bottoms of white duck trousers and the tips of white canvas shoes. The gown was stained with chemicals; on one sleeve was a long bloody smudge. On his head perched a white surgical cap, turned up at the corners; he was fumbling with the string of his face-gag as he limped toward the two waiting men.

“Ah there, Minchen! We did it. Perforated appendix. Managed to avoid peritonitis. Dirty job... How’s Abigail? Seen her? What’s the milligram content at last report? Who’s this?” He spoke with gatling-gun rapidity, his bright little eyes never still, darting from Minchen to Ellery.

“Dr. Janney, meet Mr. Queen. Particularly old friend,” said Minchen hastily. “Ellery Queen, the writer.”

“Hardly,” said Ellery. “This is a pleasure, doctor.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, all mine,” snapped the surgeon. “Any friend of Minchen’s is welcome here... Well, John — got to rest up now. Worried about Abigail. Thank God for her pumper. Bad rupture. How about those intravenous injections?”

“Coming along splendidly,” replied Minchen. “They pulled her down from 180 to 135 when I last heard, a little before 10:00. Ought to be ready as scheduled. She’s probably in the Anteroom now.”

“Good! She’ll be hopping around again in no time.”

Ellery smiled apologetically. “Pardon my ignorance, gentlemen, but just what is meant by your cabalistic reference to ‘180 to 135’? Blood pressure?”

“Good God, no!” shouted Dr. Janney. “180 milligrams of sugar to 100 c.c. of blood. We’re pulling it down. Can’t operate until we get to normal — 110, 120. Oh, you’re not a medical man. Excuse me.”

“I’m overwhelmed,” said Ellery.

Minchen cleared his throat. “I suppose our plans for tonight on the book are shot, with Mrs. Doorn so badly off?”

Dr. Janney rubbed his jaw. His eyes continued to dart between Ellery and the Medical Director. They made Ellery distinctly uncomfortable.

“Of course!” Janney turned unexpectedly toward Ellery, placing his small rubber-sheathed hand on Minchen’s shoulder. “You’re a writer, aren’t you? Well—” he chuckled, showed tobacco-stained teeth in a weird grin, “you’re looking at another writer, here, young man. Johnny Minchen. Smart as a whip. Helping me profoundly with a book we’re doing together. Something quite revolutionary. And I’ve picked the best co-author in the profession. Know what Congenital Allergy is, Queen? Didn’t think you would. Make a big stir in the medical world. We’ve proved something the bone-setting business has been messing about for years...”

“Well, John!” Ellery smiled in amusement “You didn’t tell me—”

“Pardon me,” said Dr. Janney abruptly, swinging on his right heel. “Well, Cobb, what is it?”

The white-garbed doorman had shuffled shyly up to the three men, and now stood uncomfortably in the background trying to attract the attention of the little surgeon. He took his cap off.

“Man outside wants t’ see ye, Dr. Janney,” he said hastily. “Says he’s got an appointm’t. Sorry to bother ye, Doctor—”

“He’s a liar,” barked Dr. Janney. “You know I can’t see anybody, Cobb. How many times must I tell you not to bother me about these things? Where’s Miss Price? You know she takes care of all that truck for me. Go on now — beat it. Can’t see him. Too busy.”

He turned his back on the doorman. The scarlet of Cobb’s face deepened. Nevertheless, he did not move away.

“But I... she... he says...”

“You must have forgotten, Doctor,” interposed Minchen. “Miss Price has been copying the Congenital Allergy manuscript all morning, and she’s with Mrs. Doorn now, by your own order...”

“Shucks! That’s right, too,” muttered Dr. Janney. “But I won’t see that man, Cobb, I—”

Mutely, the doorman lifted his huge hand and thrust a white card toward the surgeon, handling it as if it were a precious document.

Janney snatched at it “Who’s this? Swanson... Swanson... Oh!” The tone of his voice changed instantly. His bright little eyes clouded as he froze to immobility. Then he lifted his gown and tucked the card into a pocket of his coat. With the same deft motion he whipped a watch from his underclothes. “10:29,” he mumbled. Surprisingly, with that effortless ease which marked all his manual movements, he replaced the watch and smoothed down his gown. “All right Cobb!” he said clearly. “Lead the way. Where is he?... See you later, John. ’Bye, Queen.”

As suddenly as he had appeared, he swung about and limped off in the wake of Cobb, who seemed anxious to depart. Minchen and Ellery stared down the corridor after them for a long moment. Both men turned away just as Janney and the doorman were passing the elevator opposite the main entrance.

“Janney’s office is down there,” said Minchen, shrugging. “Queer sort of cuss, isn’t he, Ellery? But as great as they come... Let’s go back to my office. There’s still a good quarter of an hour before the operation.”

They turned the corner and walked with leisurely steps up the West Corridor.

“Reminds me of a bird, somehow,” said Ellery thoughtfully. “They way he holds his head, keeps darting those avian eyes of his about... Interesting little fellow. About fifty, isn’t he?”

“Thereabouts... Interesting in more ways than one, Ellery.” Minchen spoke boyishly. “There’s one medical man who’s really devoted his life to his profession. He’s spared neither himself nor his personal fortune. I’ve never known him to refuse a case on grounds of a small fee. In fact he’s done scores of jobs for which he never saw a cent, and didn’t expect to... Don’t get him wrong, Ellery; you’ve just met a genuine personage.”

“If what you said about his relationship with Mrs. Doorn is true,” commented Ellery, smiling, “I don’t suppose Dr. Janney has much to worry about financially.”

Minchen stared. “Why, how did you—? Well, of course,” he chuckled sheepishly, “it’s probably evident. Yes, Janney is due for a whacking big legacy on Abby’s departure from this world. Everybody knows that. He’s been quite like a son to her... And here we are.”

They had reached Minchen’s office. Minchen telephoned briefly, seemed satisfied with what he heard.

“They have Abby in the Anteroom already,” he stated, putting down the instrument. “They got her blood sugar down to 110 milligrams — it’s a question of minutes now. Well, I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

Ellery shivered slightly. Minchen pretended not to notice. Over cigarettes, they sat in silence; an indefinable gloom hovered between them.

With an effort Ellery shrugged his shoulders and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “About this co-authorship, John,” he said lightly. “I never suspected that you’d succumb to the writing bug. What’s it all about?”

“Oh, that” Minchen laughed. “Most of the work is bound up with actual case histories, proving a theory which both Janney and I hold in common; and it is possible to predict the predisposition to specific ailments of embryos by careful analysis of congenital influences. Complicated?”

“Overwhelmingly scientific, professor,” murmured Ellery. “How about letting me peep at the manuscript? I might be able to give you a few pointers in a literary way.”

Minchen flushed. “Thunder! Can’t do that, old son,” he said awkwardly. “Janney’d have my life. As a matter of fact, both the manuscript and the case records we are using in the book are kept absolutely private; Janney guards ’em as jealousy as his life. Why, the old man recently cashiered an interne who had the unhappy impulse to root around in Janney’s filing-cabinet — merely out of academic curiosity, I suppose... Sorry, Ellery. The only people who can see those records are Janney, myself and Miss Price, Janney’s assistant — she’s a trained nurse — and she does only the routine clerical work.”

“All right, all right!” grinned Ellery, closing his eyes. “I surrender. I just wanted to help you, you blamed old codger... Of course you remember your Iliad? ‘Light is the task when many share the toil.’ If you spurn my assistance...”

They laughed together.

Chapter Four Revelation

Ellery Queen, dilettante of criminology, had no stomach for blood. Raised on stories of crime, fed with tales of murder, in daily contact with desperadoes and manhunters, he nevertheless endured the sight of maltreated flesh with difficulty. His position as son of a policeman; his association with brutality and warped minds; his own literary dabblings in the mire of criminal psychology — these had not inured him to the reeking evidences of man’s inhumanity to man. On the scene of a slaughter his eyes were keen, his judgment swift, but always his heart was sick...

He had never attended a surgical operation. Dead bodies he had seen galore; mangled corpses in morgues, fished out of rivers and the sea, huddled on railroad tracks, lying still in the streets after gang-fights — of death at its unprettiest he had bitter and plentiful knowledge. But chilled steel biting into warm flesh, cutting through live tissue, severing veins through which red blood spurted — the thought nauseated him.

It was with a sensation of mingled dread and excitement, then, that he took his seat in the gallery of the Dutch Memorial Hospital Amphitheater, eyes glued on the scene of calm noiseless activity being enacted twenty feet away in the orchestra of the theater. Dr. Minchen lolled in a chair by his side, quick blue eyes missing nothing of the preparations for the operation... A whisper of conversation came dimly to their ears from a group of people seated about them in the gallery. Directly in the center was a handful of white-garbed men and women — internes and nurses gathered to watch the professional handiwork of the surgeon. They were very still. Behind Ellery and Dr. Minchen sat a man, also in hospital regalia, and a fragile-looking young woman in white who whispered intermittently in his ear. The man was Dr. Lucius Dunning, Chief Internist; the girl his daughter, attached to the Social Service Department of the institution. Dr. Dunning was grey, with a startling seamed face from which mild brown eyes peered. The girl was fair and unhandsome. There was an appreciable tic in one eyelid.

The gallery rose from the floor of the theater, separated from the orchestra by a high impassable barrier of white wood. The rows of seats ascended steeply toward the rear — much as in the balcony of a theater for the drama. At the rear wall was a door, opening outward on a circular staircase which led to the floor below and gave directly on the North Corridor.

The sound of footsteps now became audible, the door swung open, and Philip Morehouse stepped nervously into the gallery, his eyes roving. His brown overcoat and hat had disappeared. Spying the Medical Director, he ran down the stepped ramp and bent over to whisper into Minchen’s ear.

Minchen nodded gravely, turned to Ellery. “Meet Mr. Morehouse, Ellery — Mr. Queen.” He waved his fingers. “Mrs. Doorn’s attorney.” The two men shook hands; Ellery smiled mechanically, turned back to watch the orchestra.

Philip Morehouse was a lean man with steady eyes and a stubborn jaw. “Hulda, Fuller, Hendrik Doorn — they’re downstairs now in the Waiting Room. Can’t they possibly be present during the operation, Doctor?” he whispered urgently. Minchen shook his head. He indicated the seat next to him. Morehouse frowned, but sank into the chair and instantly became absorbed in the movements of the nurses below.

An old man in white shuffled up the steps, peered into the gallery, caught the eye of an interne, nodded violently, and at once disappeared. The click of the lock in the door held a note of finality. For an instant the old man could be heard rustling about behind the door; then even the sound of his movements died.

The orchestra of the Amphitheater had settled down now to a hushed expectancy. Ellery thought it very like the moment in a legitimate theater just before the rise of the curtain, when the audience holds its breath and absolute quiet descends on the house... Under a triple brace of electric globes of immense size, emitting a cold, steady and brilliant light, stood an operating-table. It was denuded, pitiless in its lack of color. Near it was a table stacked with bandage, antiseptic cotton, small bottles of drugs. A glass-covered case of shining, wicked-looking steel instruments was being watched over by an interne, who kept sterilizing them in a compact little machine at his right hand. At one side of the room two white-gowned surgical assistants — men — stood over porcelain bowls carefully washing their hands in a bluish fluid. One imperiously reached for a towel handed him by a nurse; he dried his hands quickly and on the instant bathed them once more, this time in a watery-looking fluid.

“Bichloride of mercury solution, then alcohol,” whispered Minchen to Ellery.

Immediately upon drying his hands of the alcohol, the assistant surgeon held them out while a nurse removed a pair of rubber gloves from a sterilizing machine and smoothed them onto the doctor’s hands. A similar procedure was followed with the other surgeon.

Suddenly the door at the left of the room opened and the slight, limping figure of Dr. Janney appeared. He looked around with one of his bird-like glances, then limped rapidly over to a wash-bowl. He slipped out of his gown and a nurse skilfully dressed him in a freshly sterilized gown. While the surgeon bent over the bowl, rinsing his hands thoroughly in the blue bichloride solution, another adjusted a fresh white cap on his head, carefully tucking in his greyish hair.

Dr. Janney spoke without looking up. “The patient,” he said brusquely. Two assistant nurses quickly opened the door leading to the Anteroom. “The patient; Miss Price!” one said. They disappeared into the room, emerging a moment later pushing a long, white rubber-shod wheel-table on which lay a quiet figure covered with a sheet. The patient’s head was thrown far back; it was ghastly, bluish-white. The sheet was tucked around the neck. The eyes were closed. A third figure entered the operating-room from the Anteroom — another nurse. She stood quietly in a corner, waiting.

The patient was lifted from the wheel-table and deposited on the operating-table. The wheel-table was instantly removed to the Anteroom by the third nurse. She closed the door carefully, disappearing from sight. A gowned and gagged figure took his place close by the operating-table, fussing with a small taboret on which were various instruments and cones.

The anæsthetist,” muttered Minchen; “they’ve got to keep one handy in case Abby comes out of the coma during the operation.”

The two assisting surgeons approached the operating-table from opposite sides. The sheet was whipped off the patient, discarded; a peculiarly-cut garment was immediately substituted. Dr. Janney, now gloved, gowned and capped, was standing patiently at one side while a substitute nurse adjusted a gag about his mouth and nose.

Minchen leaned forward in the chair, a curiously intent look in his eyes. His gaze was riveted on the body of the patient. He muttered to Ellery in a queerly tense tone.

“Something wrong, Ellery; something wrong!”

Ellery answered without turning his head. “Is it the stiffness?” he whispered. “I noticed that. A diabetic...”

The two assisting surgeons were bending over the operating-table. One lifted an arm, let it fall. It was rigid and unbending. The other touched an eyelid, peered at the eyeball. They looked at each other.

“Dr. Janney!” said one of them insistently, straightening up.

The surgeon wheeled, stared. “What’s the matter?” He brushed aside a nurse; limped forward rapidly. In a flash he had covered the distance, bent over the inert body. He tore the garment from the table, felt at the old woman’s neck. Ellery saw his back stiffen as if he had been struck.

Without raising his head Dr. Janney uttered two words: “Adrenalin. Pulmotor.” As if by magic the two surgical assistants, the two nurses, the two substituting nurses leaped into activity. The words were hardly dead before a large slender cylinder was carried over and several figures grew busy about the table. A nurse handed Dr. Janney a small glistening object; he forced open the mouth of the patient, held the object before it. He then intently examined its surface — it was a metal mirror. He threw it aside with a muffled curse, reached with one prehensile arm for a hypodermic ready in the hand of a nurse. He bared the torso of the old woman, plunged the needle into her body directly over the heart Already the pulmotor was in operation, forcing oxygen into her lungs...

In the gallery the nurses and internes, Dr. Dunning, his daughter, Philip Morehouse, Dr. Minchen, Ellery sat on the edge of their seats, motionless. There was no sound in the Amphitheater except the sucking of the pulmotor.

In fifteen minutes, exactly at 11:05 — Ellery mechanically consulted his watch — Dr. Janney straightened from his crouched position above the patient, turned around and crooked his forefinger furiously toward Dr. Minchen. Without a word the Medical Director left his seat, ran up the steps toward the door at the rear and disappeared. A moment later he had burst through the theater-door on the West Corridor and run up to the operating-table. Janney stepped back, pointed mutely at the neck of the old woman.

Minchen’s face whitened... Like Janney, he too stepped back and turned; and this time the crooked finger beckoned Ellery, who sat like stone where Minchen had left him.

Ellery rose. His eyebrows went up. His lips formed one soundless word, which Minchen caught. Dr. Minchen nodded. The word was:

“Murder?”

Chapter Five Strangulation

Ellery no longer felt the qualms of temperament which had assailed him while viewing the preparations for an assault on mortal flesh. Life was now extinct, he felt sure, although as he opened the door of the theater from the West Corridor the surgeons and nurses still worked over the body. One who had lived was dead; and dead of violence. And deaths of violence were commonplace to a writer of mystery stories, an unofficial investigator of crime, and the son of a police Inspector.

Unhurriedly he approached the nucleus of swirling activity. Janney looked up, frowned. “Have to stay out, Queen.” He turned back to the table, Ellery already forgotten.

Minchen interposed. “Dr. Janney.”

“Well?”

Minchen spoke eagerly. “Queen is practically a member of the Police Department, Doctor. He’s the son of Inspector Queen, and he’s helped solve a lot of murder mysteries. Perhaps he’d—”

“Oh.” Janney’s smoldering little eyes twisted toward Ellery. “That’s different. Take charge, Queen. Anything you want. I’m busy.”

Ellery immediately turned to face the gallery. Every one had stood up. Dr. Dunning and his daughter were already hurrying up the steps toward the rear exit

“Just a moment” His voice rang crystal-clear in the amphitheater. “You will oblige me by remaining in the gallery — every one, please — until the police arrive and give permission to leave.”

“Preposterous! Police? What for?” Dr. Dunning turned, his face white with strain. The girl placed her hand on his arm.

Ellery did not raise his voice. “Mrs. Doorn has been murdered, Doctor.” Dr. Dunning, speechless, took his daughter’s arm; they groped their way down to the fore portion of the gallery; no one spoke.

Ellery turned to Minchen, spoke insistently in a low voice. “Do this at once, John...”

“Whatever you say.”

“See that every door of the Hospital is immediately closed and guarded. Have some one with intelligence discover, if possible, who has left the premises within the past half-hour. Patients, staff — everybody and anybody. That’s important. Telephone my father at Police Headquarters. Get in touch with the local precinct and tell them what’s happened. Understood?”

Minchen hurried away.

Ellery stepped forward, stood slightly aside. He watched the smooth efficient movements of the doctors working over the old woman. But, he could see at a glance that there was no hope of restoring life. The founder of the Hospital, millionairess, benefactress of countless charities, social leader, manipulator of fortunes, was beyond human aid.

He asked quietly of Janney’s lowered head, “Any hope?”

“None whatever. This is utterly useless. She’s gone — was dead a half-hour ago. Rigor mortis had already set in when she was brought into this room.” Janney’s muffled voice was as impersonal as if he had been discussing a Potter’s Field cadaver.

“What killed her?”

Janney straightened; he ripped the gag from his face. He did not reply to Ellery at once. Instead he motioned to his two assistants, shook his head significantly. The doctors removed the pulmotor apparatus in silence. A nurse, stony-faced, lifted the sheet to conceal the aged flesh...

Ellery restrained a start when Janney turned to him. The surgeon’s lips were trembling. His face was grey.

“She’s been — strangled,” he said thickly. “God.”

He turned away, reached beneath his gown with shaking fingers and brought out a cigarette.

Ellery bent over the corpse. Around the old woman’s neck was a deep, thin bloody line. On a small table nearby lay a short length of ordinary picture-wire, stained with blood. Without touching it, Ellery examined it and noted that it bent in two places, as if the wire had been tied in a knot.

Abigail Doorn’s skin was dead-white, with a faint bluish tinge, and peculiarly puffy. The lips were tightly pressed together, the eyes deep-sunken. The body was stiff, unnatural...

The corridor-door opened and Minchen reappeared.

“Everything taken care of, Ellery,” he croaked. “I put James Paradise, our Superintendent, on the job of checking up arrivals and departures; we’ll have a report soon. Called your father; he’s on his way with his staff. The precinct is sending a few men—”

A bluecoat stamped into the theater, looked around, made for Ellery.

“Hullo, Mr. Queen. Just got me flash from the precinct. Takin’ charge?” he rumbled.

“Yes. Stand by, won’t you?”

Ellery glanced about the Amphitheater. The occupants of the gallery had not moved. Dr. Dunning sat sunk in thought His daughter looked faint, sick... In the orchestra Dr. Janney had walked to the farther wall and stood facing it, smoking. The nurses, the assistants wandered aimlessly.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Ellery suddenly, to Minchen. “Where can we go?”

“Shall I—?”

“Notify Mrs. Doorn’s relatives outside of what’s happened?” finished Ellery abruptly. “No. Not yet. We have plenty of time. In here?”

“Yes.”

Ellery and Minchen approached the door. Ellery turned, his hand on the knob.

“Dr. Janney.”

The surgeon turned slowly, took a limping step forward, stopped.

“Well?” His voice was harsh, again emotionless.

“I should appreciate your not leaving this room, Doctor. I want to talk with you — soon.”

Dr. Janney stared, seemed about to speak. But he clamped his lips firmly together, wheeled and limped back to his wall.

Chapter Six Examination

The anteroom to the Amphitheater was almost square except for one corner, where it was cut off by a small cubicle. On the same wall stood a compartment, the door of which bore the words:

For the rest, there were a few of the familiar cabinets, shining with enamel and glass, a washbowl, a wheel-table and one white metal chair.

Minchen paused at the door from the theater, and commandeered the use of several chairs. These were brought in by nurses and the door closed.

Ellery stood still in the center of the room and surveyed this unpromising domain.

“Scarcely a plethora of clews, eh, Minchen?” he said with a grimace. “This, I take it, is the room in which Mrs. Doorn was kept before being taken into the theater?”

“That’s right,” replied Minchen gloomily. “Was brought in here about a quarter after ten, I think. She was certainly alive then, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

“There are a few elementary problems to solve, old man,” murmured Ellery, “besides the question of whether she was alive when they brought her into this room. By the way, how can you be sure? She was in a coma, wasn’t she? Seems perfectly possible that she might have been done in before.”

“Janney ought to have an idea about that,” Minchen muttered. “He examined her pretty thoroughly in the theater while they were applying the oxygen and adrenalin.”

“Let’s get Dr. Janney in here.”

Dr. Minchen went to the door. “Dr. Janney,” he called in a low voice. Ellery heard the slow, limping footsteps of the surgeon approach, lag, then resume with a sudden vigor. Dr. Janney stamped into the Anteroom, regarded Ellery challengingly.

“Well, sir!”

Ellery bowed. “Be seated, Doctor. We may as well be comfortable...” They sat down. Minchen prowled back and forth before the door to the theater.

Ellery smoothed his right palm on his knee, regarded his shoe-top lovingly. Suddenly he looked up. “I think, Doctor, it would be best for us to begin in the most incipient place — to wit, the beginning. Please relate to me the incidents of this morning in relation to Mrs. Doorn. I have an avid ear for detail. Would you mind—?”

The surgeon snorted. “Good God, man, do you want me to give you a case history now? I’ve things to do — arrangements to make — patients to see!”

“Nevertheless, Doctor,” smiled Ellery, “as you must know very well, there’s nothing quite so important in a murder investigation as the apprehension of the murderer. Perhaps you’re not familiar with the New Testament? So few scientists are! ‘Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.’ I mean to gather up the fragments. I believe you possess some of them. Well, sir!”

Janney stared fixedly at Ellery’s cheerful lips. He darted one of his quick, keen glances at Minchen from the corner of his eye.

“I see I’m in for it. What precisely do you want me to tell you?”

“A small order. Everything.”

Dr. Janney crossed his legs, lit a cigarette with steady fingers. “At 8:15 this morning I was summoned from my first inspection in the Surgical Ward to the foot of the main stairway of the third floor. There I found Mrs. Doorn, where she had just been picked up. She had fallen from the head of the stairs and ruptured her gall-bladder as a result of the impact to her abdomen as she landed. Preliminary examination indicated that she had been seized by a typical diabetic coma while in the act of descending, and naturally, becoming unconscious, lost command of her muscular action.”

“Very good,” murmured Ellery. “You had her immediately removed, I suppose?”

“Of course!” barked the surgeon. “Had her taken to one of the private rooms on the third floor, undressed at once, and put to bed. Rupture was bad. Absolutely demanded immediate surgical attention. But the diabetic complication forced us to lower the sugar content by the dangerous but essential insulin-glucose treatments. The coma was lucky — only bit of good fortune in the whole business. Anæsthesia would have added to the risk... As it was, we worked her sugar down to normal by these intravenous injections, and by the time I was through with a rush case in Operating Room ‘A’ the patient was already in the Anteroom, waiting.”

Ellery said swiftly, “Are you prepared to say, Doctor, that Mrs. Doorn was alive when she was wheeled into the Anteroom?”

The surgeon’s jaws clamped together. “I’m prepared to say nothing of the kind, Queen — not from personal experience. Patient was under the care of Dr. Leslie, an associate, while I operated in ‘A.’ Better ask Leslie... From the condition of the body, though, I should say she’d been dead no longer than twenty minutes, possibly a few minutes less, when we discovered the wire around her neck.”

“I see... Dr. Leslie, eh?” Ellery stared thoughtfully at the rubber-tiled floor. “John, old man, would you mind calling Dr. Leslie, if he’s available? It’s all right, Dr. Janney?”

“Oh, yes. Of course, of course.” Janney waved his white muscular hand negligently. Minchen left the room by the Amphitheater door, returning promptly with a white-garbed surgeon in tow — one of the men who had aided Dr. Janney.

“Dr. Leslie?”

“Arthur Leslie, that’s right,” said the surgeon. He nodded to Janney, who sat morosely in his chair puffing at his cigarette. “What’s this — an inquisition?”

“Of a sort...” Ellery leaned forward. “Dr. Leslie, were you with Mrs. Doorn from the time Dr. Janney left her to attend his other operation until the time Mrs. Doorn was wheeled into the Amphitheater?”

“Not at all.” Leslie looked interrogatively at Minchen. “Am I suspected of murder, John?... No, old man, I wasn’t with her all the time. Left her in this Anteroom under the care of Miss Price.”

“Oh, I see! But you were with her every minute of the time before she was brought here?”

“Now you’re talking. That’s right.”

Ellery tapped his finger lightly on his knee. “Are you prepared to swear, Dr. Leslie, that Mrs. Doorn was alive when you left this room?”

The surgeon’s eyebrows went up quizzically. “Don’t know how valid my oath is, but — yes. I examined her before leaving this room. Heart was certainly pumping. She was alive, brother.”

“Well, well! We’re getting somewhere at last,” murmured Ellery. “Limits the time nicely, and corroborates Dr. Janney’s estimate about the approximate time of death. That will be all, Doctor.”

Leslie smiled, turned on his heel. “Oh, by the way, Doctor,” Ellery drawled. “At exactly what time was the patient brought into this room?”

“Ask me a harder one. 10:20. Wheeled right from her room on the third floor to the lift over there” — he pointed across the room to the door marked AMPHITHEATER LIFT — “and carried directly from the lift into this room. Lift’s used only to convey patients to and from operations in the Amphitheater, you know. To make the report minutely correct, Miss Price and Miss Clayton accompanied me downstairs, after which Miss Price was left to watch the patient while I went into the theater to get things ready and Miss Clayton departed for other duties. Miss Price is Dr. Janney’s assistant, you know.”

“She’s been helping Dr. Janney with Mrs. Doorn for several years,” interposed Minchen.

“Is that all?” demanded Dr. Leslie.

“Quite. Will you ask Miss Price and Miss Clayton to step in here, please?”

“Right!” Leslie departed, whistling cheerfully.

Janney stirred. “Look here, Queen, surely you don’t need me any more. Let me get out of here.”

Ellery rose, flexed his biceps. “Sorry, Doctor — we’ve still a use for you... Ah, come in!”

Minchen opened the door wide to admit two young women in regulation white uniform.

Ellery bowed gallantly, looked from one to the other. “Miss Price — Miss Clayton?”

One of the nurses — a tall, fair girl with roguish dimples — said quickly, “Oh, I’m Clayton, sir. This is Miss Price. Isn’t it dreadful? We—”

“Undoubtedly.” Ellery stepped back, indicated two chairs. Janney had not risen. He sat glaring savagely at his left leg. “Won’t you sit down?... Now, Miss Clayton, I understand that you and Miss Price brought Mrs. Doorn down on a wheel-table from the third floor some time ago, in company with Dr. Leslie. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. Then Dr. Leslie went into the Amphitheater and I had to get back to Ward G — that’s off the third floor — and Miss Price remained here,” replied the tall nurse.

“Right, Miss Price?”

“Yes, sir.” The second nurse was a medium-sized brunette with fresh rosy skin and clear eyes.

“Excellent! Ellery beamed. “Miss Price, can you recall what happened while you were in this room alone with Mrs. Doorn?”

“Oh, perfectly.”

Ellery shot a quick glance toward the other occupants of the room. Janney still sat glowering; to judge from the expression on his face, he was absorbed in dour reflections. Minchen leaned against the door, intently listening. Miss Clayton was watching Ellery with a sort of frank fascination. Miss Price sat quietly, hands folded in her lap.

Ellery leaned forward. “Miss Price, who entered this room after Dr. Leslie and Miss Clayton left?”

The extraordinary earnestness of his tone seemed to befuddle the nurse. She hesitated. “Why — no one but Dr. Janney, sir.”

“Hey?” roared Dr. Janney. He had leaped to his feet so suddenly that Miss Clayton uttered a stifled scream. “Why, Lucille, you must be mad! Do you mean to sit there and say to my face that I came into this room before the operation?”

“Why, Dr. Janney,” said the girl faintly. Her face had whitened. “I... I saw you.”

The surgeon stared at his assistant, his long simian arms dangling ludicrously to his knees. Ellery looked at Janney, at Miss Price, at Minchen — and clucked tenderly beneath his breath. When he spoke his voice was soft, a little vibrant.

“You may go now, Miss Clayton.”

The fair nurse opened her eyes widely. “Oh, but—”

“If you please.”

She left the room reluctantly, casting a longing glance back over her shoulder as Minchen closed the door behind her.

“Now!” Ellery removed his pince-nez eyeglasses; he began with a gentle circular motion to polish them. “We seem to have reached a slight point of disagreement. You say, Doctor, that you weren’t in this room before the operation?”

Janney glared. “Of course I say so! It’s the most ridiculous nonsense! Why, you yourself talked to me about 10:30 in the corridor just after I’d been operating for twenty minutes, and I don’t doubt saw me leave with Cobb the doorman to go toward the Waiting Room. How could I have been in this room? Lucille, you’re absolutely mistaken!”

“Just a moment, Doctor,” interposed Ellery. “Miss Price, at what time did Dr. Janney enter? Can you recall?”

The nurse’s fingers were nervously plucking at her starched gown. “Why — I don’t remember exactly — about 10:30 — perhaps a few minutes later. Doctor, I’m—”

“And how do you know it was Dr. Janney, Miss Price?”

She laughed, nervously. “Why, naturally I thought — I just recognized him — I took it for granted it was Dr. Janney...”

“Ah! You took it for granted?” said Ellery. He took a swift step forward. “Why, didn’t you see his face? Surely, if you had seen his face you’d have known positively.”

“Certainly!” interrupted Janney. “You’ve known me long enough, Lucille. I can’t understand—” Beneath his irritation he seemed bewildered. Minchen looked on in stupefaction.

“Oh, you — he wore gown, cap and gag,” stammered the girl, “so I could only see the eyes — but — well, he limped, sir, and he was about the same height, and — you see, that’s what I mean by taking it for granted. You never quite know why.”

Janney stared at her. “By God, some one’s been impersonating me!” he cried. “That’s it! I’m damn easy to impersonate... game leg... gag... Queen, some one — some one...”

Chapter Seven Impersonation

Ellery placed a restraining hand on the little surgeon’s quivering arm. “Take it easy, Doctor. Sit down, sit down. We’ll get to the bottom of this only too quickly... Well. Come in!”

There had been a short knock on the door. It opened now to admit a giant of a man in street clothes. He had tremendous shoulders, light eyes, a rock-ribbed face.

“Velie!” exclaimed Ellery. “Dad here already?”

The newcomer under thick brows examined Janney, Minchen, the nurse... “No, Mr. Queen. On his way. Men from the local precinct and detectives from District Headquarters are here. Want to come in. I suppose you don’t want—” He glanced significantly at Ellery’s audience.

“No, no, Velie,” said Ellery quickly. “Keep those fellows busy outside. Don’t let any of ’em in here until I give the word. Let me know the instant dad arrives.”

“Okay.” The giant retreated silently, and as silently closed the door behind him.

Ellery addressed the nurse again. “Now, Miss Price, you must be as exact as if your life depended upon accuracy. Tell me just what happened in here all the time from the moment Dr. Leslie and Miss Clayton left you alone with Mrs. Doorn until she was wheeled into the theater next door.”

The nurse moistened her lips and cast a shy, nervous glance at the surgeon, who had subsided into his chair and was watching her with dull eyes.

“I... well...” she laughed forcedly. “It’s so simple, really — Mr. Queen, is it?... Dr. Leslie and Miss Clayton left directly after we brought Mrs. Doorn down here from the third floor room. There was nothing for me to do. The doctor had taken another look at the patient and everything was apparently all right... Of course you know that no anæsthesia was used?” Ellery nodded. “That meant that it wasn’t necessary for an anæsthetist to be present with me, nor for me to watch the patient’s pulse continually. She was in a coma and ready for the operation...”

“Yes, yes,” said Ellery impatiently, “we know that, Miss Price. Please get on to your visitor.”

The nurse flushed. “Yes, sir... The man I... I thought was Dr. Janney came into the Anteroom about ten or fifteen minutes after Dr. Leslie, and Miss Clayton left. He—”

“Through which door did he enter?” demanded Ellery.

“This one.” The nurse pointed to the door leading to the Anæsthesia Room.

Ellery turned swiftly to Dr. Minchen. “John, who was in the Anæsthesia Room this morning? Was it being used?”

Minchen looked blank. Miss Price volunteered, “There was a patient being anæsthetized there, Mr. Queen. I think Miss Obermann and Dr. Byers were there...”

“Very well.”

“This man who came in limping, with surgical clothing on, closed the door—”

“Quickly?”

“Yes, sir. He immediately closed the door behind him and approached the wheel-table over there on which Mrs. Doorn was lying. He bent over her, then looked up and sort of absent-mindedly made a washing motion with his hands.”

“Mum, eh?”

“Oh, yes, sir; he didn’t say a word — just rubbed his hands together. Of course I understood immediately what he wanted. It’s a very familiar, well, gesture with Dr. Janney. It signified he wanted to disinfect his hands — probably because he meant to give the patient a last examination before the operation. So I went into the Sterilizing Room there” — she pointed to the cubicle at the northeast corner of the room — “and prepared a bichloride of mercury solution and an alcohol wash. I—”

Ellery looked pleased. “How long, do you judge, were you in the Sterilizing Room?”

The nurse hesitated. “Oh, it was three minutes or so. I can’t recall exactly... I came back into the Anteroom and placed the disinfectants on the washbowl there. Dr. Janney — I mean the man, whoever he was — rinsed his hands quickly—”

“More quickly than usual?”

“Yes, I noticed that, Mr. Queen,” she replied, keeping her head averted from the surgeon, who leaned his elbow on his knee and stared steadily at her. “Then he dried his hands on a surgical towel I had ready and waved the bowls away. As I was taking them back into the Sterilizing Room I noticed that he went back to the wheel-table and again leaned over the patient. When I returned he was just straightening up, patting the sheet back into place.”

“Very clear, Miss Price,” said Ellery. “A few questions, if you please... When you stood near him as he disinfected himself, did you notice his hands?”

She knit her brows. “Why — not particularly. You see, I wasn’t suspicious about anything and naturally took all his actions as a matter of course.”

“Too bad you didn’t notice his hands,” murmured Ellery. “I have great faith in the character of hands... Miss Price, tell me this. How long were you gone the second time — when you restored your materials to the Sterilizing Room?”

“Not more than a minute. I just poured out the bichloride and alcohol solutions, rinsed the basins, and came out again.”

“How soon after you returned did this man leave?”

“Oh, immediately!”

“Through the same door by which he entered — the Anæsthesia Room door?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see...” Ellery took a short turn about the room, tapping his pince-nez thoughtfully against his chin. “From what you say, Miss Price, there seems to have been an astonishing dearth of conversation. Didn’t your mysterious visitor say anything at all during the entire proceedings — a word, just one all-important word?”

The nurse looked faintly surprised. Her clear eyes stared into space. “Do you know, Mr. Queen — why, he never opened his mouth all the time he was here!”

“Scarcely amazing,” said Ellery dryly. “Ingenious, the whole thing... Didn’t you say anything either, Miss Price? Didn’t you greet him when he entered the room?”

“No, I didn’t greet him, sir,” she said quickly, “but I did call out to him while I was in the Sterilizing Room the first time.”

“Exactly what did you say?”

“Nothing terribly important, Mr. Queen. I know Dr. Janney’s nature quite well — he’s a little impatient some times.” A smile hovered about her lips. It faded quickly as the surgeon grunted. “I... I called out: ‘I’ll have it ready in a moment, Dr. Janney!’”

“You actually called him ‘Dr. Janney,’ eh?” Ellery looked quizzically at the surgeon. “A perfect get-up, I should say, Doctor.” Janney muttered, “Evidently, evidently!” Ellery turned to the nurse again. “Miss Price, is there anything else you remember? Have you covered absolutely everything that occurred while this man was in the room?”

She looked thoughtful. “Well — if I recall correctly, something else did happen. But it wasn’t very important, Mr. Queen,” she added apologetically, turning her eyes upward to his.

“I’m considered a good judge of unimportant things, Miss Price,” smiled Ellery. “What was it?”

“Why, while I was in the Sterilizing Room the first time, I heard a door in the Anteroom open and a man’s voice say, after the slightest hesitation, ‘Oh, pardon me!’ and then the door swung back. At least I heard the sound of a door again.”

“Which door?” demanded Ellery.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I really don’t know. You just can’t make out direction of sounds like that; at least I can’t. And of course I was out of sight.”

“Well, then! Did you recognize the voice?”

Her fingers twisted nervously in her lap. “I’m afraid I’m not much help, Mr. Queen. It sounded sort of familiar, I suppose, but I wasn’t particularly interested, really, and I don’t know who it might have been.”

The surgeon got wearily to his feet, looked in despair at Minchen. “God, what stuff and nonsense!” he growled. “It’s the baldest kind of frame-up. John, you don’t believe that I was implicated in this business, do you?”

Minchen ran his finger under the collar of his gown. “Dr. Janney, I don’t — can’t believe it. I don’t know what to think.”

The nurse rose swiftly, approached the surgeon, put her hand appealingly on his arm. “Dr. Janney, please — I didn’t mean to get you in wrong — of course it wasn’t you — Mr. Queen understands that...”

“Well, well!” chuckled Ellery. “A tableau! Come, now, let’s not be melodramatic about this matter. Please sit down, sir. And you, too, Miss Price.”

They seated themselves, a trifle stiffly. “Did anything strike you as unusual, or out-of-the-way, during the time this — well, let’s call him ‘impostor’ temporarily — this impostor was in the room?”

“At the time, no. Of course, now I can see that his not talking, and the disinfectant business, and all that — I can see now that it was funny.”

“What happened after our precious impostor left?”

“Why, nothing. I took it that the doctor had just examined the patient to see that nothing had gone wrong. So I just sat down on the chair and waited. Nobody else came in and nothing really happened until the operating-room staff came in from the theater to wheel the patient away. And then I followed them into the theater.”

“Didn’t you look at Mrs. Doorn during all this time?”

“I didn’t go over to feel her pulse or examine her closely, if that’s what you mean, Mr. Queen.” She sighed. “Of course I glanced at her now and then, but I knew she was in a coma — her face was very pale — but then, too, the doctor had examined her — well, you see...”

“I see. I quite see,” said Ellery gravely.

“Anyway, my orders had been not to disturb the patient unless something unexpected happened, or seemed to be wrong...”

“Yes, of course! One thing more, Miss Price. Did you notice on which foot the impostor placed his weight? You remember you said he limped?”

Her body drooped wearily in the chair. “It was his left foot that seemed to be the weak one. He put all his weight on the right — just like Dr. Janney. But then—”

“Yes,” said Ellery, “but then any one who wanted to do a thorough job of impersonation would be careful about that... That’s all, Miss Price. You’ve been very helpful. You may go into the theater now.”

She said, “Thank you,” in a low voice, looked earnestly at Dr. Janney, smiled to Dr. Minchen, and departed through the door to the Amphitheater.

There was a little silence after Minchen softly shut the door. The Medical Director coughed, hesitated, then sank into the chair the nurse had left. Ellery put his foot on another chair, leaning his elbow on his knee and playing with his glasses. Janney fidgeted, took out a cigarette, crushed it between his hard white fingers... Suddenly he leaped to his feet.

“Now, look here, Queen,” he shouted, “this thing’s gone far enough, don’t you think? You know damn well I wasn’t there. Why, it could have been any murdering scoundrel familiar with me and the Hospital! Everybody knows I limp. Everybody knows I’m wearing surgical clothes three-quarters of the time I’m here. It’s as plain as a pregnancy! God!” He shook his head like a shaggy dog.

“Yes, it looks remarkably like an imposition on your good nature, Doctor,” said Ellery mildly, peering at Janney. “But you can’t get away from it — the man’s clever.”

“I’ll give him credit for that, all right,” grumbled the surgeon. “Fooled Miss Price — she’s been with me for years now. Probably fooled a couple of others in the Anæsthesia Room... Well, Queen, what are you going to do with me?” Minchen stirred uncomfortably.

Ellery’s eyebrows shot up. “Do?” He chuckled. “My métier, Doctor, is dialectic. I’m an avatar of Socrates. I ask questions... So I’m going to ask you — and I know you’ll be truthful — where were you, Doctor, and what were you doing during the time this droll bit of play-acting was taking place?”

Janney straightened, sniffed. “Why, you know where I was. You heard Cobb’s piece. You saw me go off with the man to see my visitor. Good God, man, that’s infantile.”

“I’m singularly ingenuous this morning, Doctor... How long did you speak with your visitor? And where? These are some of the things, Doctor...”

Janney grunted. “Luckily, I looked at my watch just as I was leaving you. If you recall, it was 10:29. And my watch is accurate — has to be... Went back with Cobb, met my caller in the Waiting Room, and took him to my office, which is just across the corridor next to the main lift. That’s all, I think.”

“Hardly, Doctor... How long were you in your office with your visitor?”

“Until 10:40. Zero hour was approaching, and I had to cut the interview short. Still had to get ready — get into fresh surgical clothes — be disinfected... So my visitor left and I went directly to the Amphitheater.”

“Entering from the West Corridor door, as I saw you,” murmured Ellery. “Check... Did you escort your visitor to the main entrance? Did you see him out?”

“Naturally.” The surgeon grew restless again. “Now see here, Queen, after all— You’re questioning me as if I were the criminal.” Again the dynamic little surgeon had worked himself into a rage. His voice rose shrilly; livid veins stood out on his gnarled neck.

Ellery approached Janney with a pleasant smile. “And by the way, Doctor, who was your visitor? Of course, since you’ve been so frank with me about everything else, you won’t mind telling me this?”

“I—” Janney’s rage ebbed from his face slowly. He grew quite pale. With a sudden gesture he stood straight, clicked his heels together, moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue...

A peremptory knock on the Amphitheater door sounded like thunder in the Anteroom. Ellery swung about instantly. “Come!”

The door opened and a small, slim man dressed in dark grey, white-haired and white-mustached, smiled in at them. Behind him stood a group of formidable-looking men.

“Well, dad,” said Ellery. He hurried forward. Their hands clasped and they looked earnestly at each other. Ellery shook his head the merest trifle. “You come in a most dramatic moment. It’s the most fascinating mess you’ve ever tackled, sir. Come on in!”

He stepped aside. Inspector Richard Queen advanced with springy steps, motioning the men behind to follow. He shot one quick comprehensive glance around the room, nodded affably to Dr. Janney and Dr. Minchen, hopped forward again.

“In, boys, inside,” he chirped. “There’s work to do. Ellery — on the job? Solved it yet? Thomas, come in and shut that door! And these gentlemen? Ah, doctors! A great profession... No, Ritchie, you’ll find nothing in this room. I take it the poor old lady was lying here when she was done in? Shocking, shocking!”

He looked around, chattering incessantly, his keen little eyes missing nothing.

Ellery introduced the two doctors. Both bowed without speaking. The detectives with the Inspector had spread about the room. One poked the wheel-table curiously; it slid a few inches on the rubber floor.

“District detectives?” asked Ellery with a grimace.

“Ritchie’s gang like to be in on everything,” chuckled the old man. “Don’t let ’em bother you... Come over to that corner, sir, and let’s hear the worst. I gather it’s something of a puzzle.”

“You gather correctly,” replied Ellery with a grim smile. They moved quietly away, by themselves, and Ellery in an undertone gave his father a résumé of the morning’s events, including the testimony that had been given. The old man nodded often. As Ellery’s recital drew to a close, the Inspector’s face grew graver. He shook his head.

“Worse and worse,” he groaned. “But that’s the life of a policeman. For every hundred open-and-shut cases there’s one that requires a mind trained in a dozen universities. Including the university of crime... There are a few things to be done at once.”

The Inspector turned back to his staff, approached the tall, hard-jawed detective-sergeant named Velie.

“What did ‘Doc’ Prouty say, Thomas?” he demanded... “No, sit still, Dr. Minchen; I’ll be prancing around... Well?”

“Medical Examiner kept him on something,” boomed Velie in his deep bass. “Be here later.”

“Good enough. Well, gentlemen...”

He grasped Velie’s lapel, opened his mouth to speak. Ellery paid scant attention to the Inspector; out of the corner of his eye he was watching Dr. Janney, who had retreated to the wall and stood quietly regarding his shoe-tips.

With an unmistakable air of relief.

Chapter Eight Corroboration

The inspector was talking paternally to Velie, who towered above him.

“Now, you’ve got some things to do, Thomas,” said the old man. “First thing is to run down this feller Paradise — that his name, Dr. Minchen? — he’s superintendent of the Hospital, Thomas — and get his report on people who came in and people who went out this morning. I understand Paradise was put on the job immediately after the murder was discovered. Find out what he’s done. Second thing — check up the guards at all exits and entrances and substitute our own men. Third thing — send in this Dr. Byers and Miss Obermann on your way out. Scoot, Thomas!”

As Velie opened the Amphitheater door, a number of blue-coats became visible, wandering slowly about the operating-room. Ellery caught a brief flash of the gallery; Philip Morehouse was on his feet, protesting violently about something. He was in the grip of a burly policeman. To the side, Dr. Dunning and his daughter sat in what seemed to be stupefied silence.

Ellery exclaimed sharply, “Heavens, dad, the relatives!” He turned to Minchen. “John, there’s a dirty job for you. Will you go back to that Waiting Room — here’s an idea; take young Morehouse with you; he’s evidently in trouble up there — and inform Hendrik Doorn and Hulda Doorn, Miss Fuller and whoever else is there... Just a moment, John.” He conversed in low tones with the Inspector. The old man nodded and motioned to a detective.

“Here, Ritchie, you’re aching for something to do. Let’s see the District acquit itself,” said the Inspector. “Go over to that Waiting Room with Dr. Minchen and take charge. Keep ’em all in there — Doctor, you’ll probably need help; shouldn’t wonder if there’d be fainting and things there; might get a few nurses to help. Don’t let one of them go until I give permission, Ritchie.”

Ritchie, a black-jowled individual with a sullen air, made some indistinct reply and followed Minchen surlily from the room. Through the open door Ellery saw Minchen gesture upward toward Morehouse, who ceased struggling and bounded up to the gallery exit.

The door swung shut. Almost immediately it opened again to admit a white-clad physician and a nurse.

“Ah... Dr. Byers?” cried the Inspector. “Come in, come in! Glad you could come so soon. Not taking you or this charming young lady away from your work? No? Well, Well!... Dr. Byers,” he snapped suddenly, “were you in that Anæsthesia Room next door this morning?”

“Certainly.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“I was administering anæsthesia to a patient with the aid of Miss Obermann here. She’s my regular assistant.”

“Was any one besides you, Miss Obermann and your patient in the room?”

“No.”

“At what time were you attending to this duty?”

“We used the room from 10:25, when we took it over, until about 10:45. The patient was an appendectomy, scheduled to be operated on by Dr. Jonas, who was a little late. Had to wait for both ‘A’ and ‘B’ operating-rooms to be vacated — we’re busy to-day.”

“Hmm.” The Inspector smiled pleasantly. “And, Doctor, did any one enter the Anæsthesia Room while you occupied it?”

“No — that is,” added the physician hastily, “no stranger. Dr. Janney passed through about 10:30, I should say, perhaps a minute or two after, going into the Anteroom; and about ten minutes later came out again. Ten minutes or a little less.”

“You, too,” muttered Dr. Janney, flashing a venomous glance at Dr. Byers.

“Eh? I beg your pardon—?” stammered Dr. Byers. The nurse at his side looked astonished.

The Inspector came forward a little, speaking hurriedly. “Ah — never mind that now, Dr. Byers. Dr. Janney is not feeling well — a little upset — naturally, naturally!... Now, sir, you would be willing to make a sworn statement, I suppose, that the man you saw pass in and out of that room this morning was Dr. Janney?”

The doctor shifted restlessly, hesitating. “You put it pretty bluntly, sir... No, I wouldn’t make a sworn statement. After all,” he said, brightening up, “I didn’t see his face. He wore a surgical gag, gown, and the rest. Quite covered — oh, yes!”

“Indeed!” commented the Inspector. “So you wouldn’t swear to it. Yet a moment ago you seemed very sure it was Dr. Janney. Why?”

“Well...” again Dr. Byers hesitated, “of course there was the limp that we have grown so accustomed to...”

“Ha! the limp! Go on.”

“And then too, subconsciously, I suppose, I more or less anticipated the presence of Dr. Janney, since I knew that his next surgical case was in the Anteroom — we were upset about it — Mrs. Doorn, you know... and, well — I just thought so, that’s all.”

“And you, Miss Obermann,” the Inspector turned swiftly to the nurse, taking her by surprise — “did you assume it was Dr. Janney?”

“Yes... yes, sir,” she stammered, flushing. “For the — the same reasons as Dr. Byers.”

“Hmm!” grunted the Inspector. He took a turn about the room. Janney was staring unwinkingly at the floor. “Tell me Doctor,” continued the old man, “did your patient see Dr. Janney enter and leave? Was he conscious during this time?”

“I think,” faltered the physician, “that he might have seen Dr. — Dr. Janney come in, because the cone had not yet been applied and his table faced the door. But he was under ether when Dr. Janney reappeared, and couldn’t have seen, of course.”

“And who is this patient?”

A fleeting grin appeared on the lips of Dr. Byers. “I imagine he’s quite well known to you, Inspector Queen. Michael Cudahy.”

“Who? What! ‘Big Mike’!” The exclamations flew about the room. Every detective there had jerked about in surprise. The Inspector’s eyes narrowed.

He turned abruptly to one of his staff. “I thought you told me Michael Cudahy went to Chicago, Ritter,” he snapped. “You certainly get the fanciest ideas!” He wheeled on Dr. Byers. “Where’s ‘Big Mike’ now?” he demanded. “What room? I want to see that guerrilla!”

“He’s in a private room — 32 — on the third floor, Inspector,” replied the physician. “But it won’t do you any good to see him. He’s dead to the world, sir — they’ve just carted him out of the operating-room ‘B.’ Jonas operated. Your man caught me just as Jonas finished. He’s in his room now, but he won’t be out of the ether for a good couple of hours.”

“Johnson!” said the Inspector grimly. A small drab-looking man stepped forward. “Make a note to remind me to grill ‘Big Mike.’ Under ether, hey? That’s a new one.”

“Dr. Byers.” Ellery’s voice came quietly. “While you were working in the Anæsthesia Room, it is barely possible that you overheard some conversation emanating from here. Do you recall? Or you, Miss Obermann?”

Doctor and nurse regarded each other for a long moment. Dr. Byers looked frankly at Ellery. “Now, that’s funny,” he said. “It just happens that we overheard Miss Price call out to Dr. Janney that she would be ready in a moment, or something like that; and I remember remarking to Miss Obermann that the old ma — I mean Dr. Janney must be unusually cross to-day, because he didn’t even answer.”

“Ah! Then you mean you overheard no statement or question of any kind from Dr. Janney during the entire course of his visit to this room?” asked Ellery quickly.

“Not a syllable,” said Dr. Byers. Miss Obermann nodded in agreement.

“Do you remember hearing a door open and close in here and a voice say, ‘Pardon me!’?”

“I don’t believe I do.”

“You, Miss Obermann?”

“No, sir.”

Ellery whispered into the Inspector’s ear. The Inspector sucked his lip, nodded, motioned imperiously to a Swedish-looking detective of solid build. “Hesse!” The man slouched near. “Get this straight now, won’t you? Go out into the operating-room and ask the doctors and internes if any one of them poked his head in here between 10:30 and 10:45. And bring him back.”

While Hesse departed on his errand the Inspector dismissed Dr. Byers and the nurse. Janney watched them go with gloomy eyes. Ellery conversed with his father until the door reopened to admit a young dark-haired man of Semitic cast, dressed like the others in white Hospital regalia. Hesse herded him into the room.

“Dr. Gold,” said Hesse briefly. “He was the one.”

“Yes,” said the young interne at once, addressing himself to the diminutive Inspector, “I stuck my head in through that door—” he pointed to the door leading to the West Corridor — “about 10:35, I should say, looking for Dr. Dunning to ask about a diagnosis. Of course I immediately saw it wasn’t Dr. Dunning — saw it just as I opened the door — so I excused myself without going in and went away.”

Ellery leaned forward. “Dr. Gold, how far did you open the door?”

“Oh, just about a foot or so — enough to get my head in. Why?”

“Well,” smiled Ellery, “why not? At any rate, whom did you see?”

“Some doctor — don’t know who it was.”

“How did you know it wasn’t Dunning?”

“Why, Dr. Dunning is tall and thin, and this man was rather short and stocky — cut of the shoulders was different — I don’t know — simply wasn’t Dr. Dunning.”

Ellery polished his pince-nez vigorously. “And how was this doctor standing — tell me what you saw when you opened the door.”

“His back was to me, and he was slightly bent over the wheel-table. His body concealed whatever was on the table.”

“His hands?”

“I couldn’t see them.”

“Was he the only person in the room?”

“Only one I could see. Of course, the patient must have been on the table; but as for any one else, I can’t say.”

The Inspector cut in gently. “You said, ‘Oh pardon me!’, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir!”

“And what did the man reply?”

“Why, nothing. Didn’t even turn around, although I saw his shoulders sort of twitch when I spoke. Anyway, I stepped back, closed the door and went away. The whole business didn’t take more than ten seconds.”

Ellery approached Dr. Gold, tapped him on the shoulder. “One thing more. Might this man have been — Dr. Janney?”

The young interne drawled, “Oh-h, I suppose so. But it might have been a dozen others, too, from what I saw... Anything wrong, Doctor?” He twisted his head to stare at the surgeon, who did not reply. “Well, I guess I’ll be going if that’s all...”

The Inspector cheerily waved him out

“Get Cobb — the doorman.” Hesse sauntered out.

“Good God,” said Janney quite tonelessly. No one paid the slightest attention.

The door opened to admit Hesse and Isaac Cobb, the crimson-faced ‘special.’ His cap was jauntily set on his head and he looked around expansively, as if he felt a kinship with these men of the police.

The Inspector wasted no words. “Cobb, stop me if I say something that isn’t so... You approached Dr. Janney while Mr. Queen and Dr. Minchen were talking with him in the corridor. You told him that a man wanted to see him. He refused at first, but when you handed him the man’s card — bearing the name ‘Swanson’ — he changed his mind and followed you down the corridor toward the Waiting Room. What happened then?”

“The Doctor says ‘Hello’ t’ this man,” replied Cobb in a conversational tone, “an’ then they went out of the Waiting Room, turned t’ the right — ye know Dr. Janney’s office is that way — an’ they went into the Doctor’s office. An’ they closed the door — I mean the Doctor. So I went back t’ my station in the vestibule an’ I stood there all th’ rest of the time until Dr. Minchen came along an’ said...”

“One moment, one moment!” said the Inspector testily. “Granted that you didn’t leave your post for a moment. Suppose—” he glanced at Dr. Janney, who was hunched up in his corner, suddenly tense, alert — “suppose Dr. Janney or his visitor had decided to leave Dr. Janney’s office to go toward the, let us say, operating-rooms, could he have passed without your seeing him?”

The doorman scratched his head. “Sure! I guess so. I don’t always face the inside. Sometimes I open th’ door and look out into th’ street.”

“Did you look out into the street this morning?”

“Well — sure! I guess so.”

Ellery interrupted. “You say Dr. Minchen came along and told you to lock the door. How long before this did Dr. Janney’s visitor — this man Swanson — leave the building? By the way, he left the building, didn’t he?”

“Oh, sure!” Cobb grinned broadly. “Even gave me — I mean wanted to give me a quarter. But I wouldn’t take it — against the regulations... Yes, I’d say this feller passed out into th’ street about ten minutes or so before Dr. Minchen gave me the order.”

“Did any one else,” continued Ellery, “go out of that front door between the time Swanson left and the time you locked the door?”

“Nary a soul.”

Ellery confronted Dr. Janney, who immediately straightened and looked off into space. “There’s a little matter, Doctor,” Ellery began softly, “that we haven’t had time to settle. You recall, don’t you? I believe you were about to tell me who your visitor was when the Inspector came in and...” He broke off with a tightening of his lips as the door banged open and Sergeant Velie stalked in, flanked by two detectives.

“Ah, well,” said Ellery with a slight smile, “we seem doomed to defer the fatal question... Carry on, sire. Messer Velie seems bursting with information.”

“Well, Thomas?” demanded the Inspector.

“No one left the Hospital since 10:15 except Dr. Janney’s visitor. Cobb told us about this Swanson a few minutes ago outside,” Velie growled. “Got a list of some people who came into the building during that time, but we’ve checked ’em over and they’re all accounted for. Got ’em all in the building too — we haven’t let any one go out.”

The Inspector beamed. “Excellent, Thomas, excellent! there you are, Ellery,” he exclaimed, turning to his son, “the Queen luck for you. Our murderer’s still in the building. Can’t get away!”

“Probably doesn’t want to,” said Ellery dryly. “I shouldn’t be too hopeful about that... And, dad—”

“Well?” said the Inspector, suddenly glum. Janney looked up with a peculiar gleam in his eye.

“A persistent idea has been buzzing about in my conk,” said Ellery dreamily. “Let’s assume, for the sake of argument and—” he bowed toward the surgeon — “and I should hope for the sake of Dr. Janney, that the gentleman who perpetrated this plot was not Dr. Janney but a rank and nervy impostor.”

“Now you’re talking sense,” growled Janney.

“And let us go further in our supposition,” continued Ellery, rocking on his toes and gazing at the ceiling, “by assuming that our slippery criminal, having a dark but valid reason for putting as much distance as possible between himself and the clothes which he wore, divested himself of these figuratively bloody garments and hid them somewhere... Now we know that he hasn’t left the building. Is it too much to hope that by assiduously scouring the premises...”

“Ritter!” barked the Inspector. “You heard Mr. Queen? Take Johnson and Hesse and start!”

“I heartily detest,” grinned Ellery, “introducing a literary allusion at such a solemn moment — but Longfellow seems to have anticipated me. Remember? ’Till all that it foresees it finds...’ And I sincerely pray you find, Ritter — if only for Dr. Janney’s peace of mind!”

Chapter Nine Implication

“And again,” said Ellery, bowing deferentially to Dr. Janney as the door closed on the three detectives, “we return to the fountain-head of knowledge. Doctor... precisely who was your visitor?”

Inspector Queen moved chairward. In walking across the room he trod softly, as if he were afraid of breaking a spell. Ellery stood in utter stillness — even the practical, unimaginative men circulating slowly about the room sensed something of the drama in his lightly worded question.

Dr. Janney did not reply at once. He puckered his lip and frowned, as if within himself he was debating some abstruse problem known to him alone. And when he spoke his brow was untroubled.

He said simply, “You’re making a fuss, Queen, about a very small matter. My visitor was a friend...”

“A friend by the name of Swanson.”

“Exactly. He happens to be strapped financially, and he called upon me for a personal loan.”

“Very laudable, very!” murmured Ellery. “He needed money, and he asked you for some... Nothing mysterious about that, I agree!”...

He smiled again. “Of course you gave it to him?”

The surgeon stiffened. “Yes — my personal check for fifty dollars.”

Ellery laughed outright, inoffensively. “Hardly an embarrassing touch, Doctor! You were lucky at that... By the way, what is your friend’s full name?”

He paused carelessly, as if his question were the most natural one in the world. Inspector Queen, keeping his eyes on Janney, explored his pocket and brought out a brown old snuff-box. Midway between the box and his nostrils, his hand stopped — waiting...

Janney’s rejoinder was curt. “I prefer not to tell you!” Inspector Queen’s hand continued its journey, performed its function and returned. He sniffed and rose, stepping forward with a mild look of inquiry on his placid features.

But Ellery forestalled him. He said in even tones, “That is exactly what I wanted to know, Doctor... This chap Swanson must be very dear to you indeed to merit such heroic shielding. He is an old friend, of course?”

“Oh, no!” said Janney quickly.

“No?” Ellery’s eyebrows went up. “Scarcely consistent with your attitude, Dr. Janney...” He stepped up to the little surgeon, loomed over him. “Answer one question, Doctor, and you silence me forever...”

“I don’t see what you’re driving at,” muttered Janney, retreating a step.

“Nevertheless,” said Ellery softly, “answer... Why, if this man Swanson is not a particularly close friend, did you give him fifteen minutes of your precious time this morning, while your benefactress lay desperately ill, unconscious, awaiting the unique skill of your hand and knife?... And take all the time you want in answering.”

He turned on his heel even while Janney, a steadily growing light of rebellion in his eyes, said coldly, “I have nothing to say that can have any bearing on your investigation.”

Ellery sauntered to the chair his father had vacated, sat down and waved his hand, as if to say, “Your witness.”

The old man’s smile, if anything, grew gentler. He paced up and down before Janney, followed by the surgeon’s defiant little eyes.

“Needless to say, Dr. Janney,” began the Inspector politely, “we cannot accept your stand in this matter. You see that, of course...” It was a challenge. “Perhaps you’ll honor me by giving straight replies, without subterfuge.” Janney said nothing. “Very well, let me begin... What happened between you and Swanson in the fifteen minutes you were together in your office?”

“I’m really not being stubborn,” said Dr. Janney with a startling change of manner. He looked tired, sought the back of a chair for support “Swanson came to see me, as I told you, to borrow fifty dollars, which he needed urgently and could not get elsewhere at the moment. I refused at first. He began to explain the circumstances. They were such that common decency demanded I accede to his request. I gave him my check, we talked about his affairs, he left. That’s all.”

“A most reasonable statement, Doctor,” replied the Inspector gravely. “However, if this is all as innocent as you make it out to be, why won’t you give us the man’s name — his address? You must realize that we have certain routine inquiries to pursue, that your friend’s testimony is necessary to support your own. Give us the information we’re lacking, and there’s an end of it!”

Janney wagged his shaggy head heavily. “I’m sorry, Inspector... Perhaps I should explain that my friend is an unfortunate, a victim of circumstances — sensitive nature and excellent breeding. Any notoriety particularly at this time would be bad in its effect on him. And he simply couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder of Mrs. Doorn.” His voice rose slightly, became shrill. “By God, why do you insist?”

Ellery scrubbed his pince-nez glasses thoughtfully, his eyes never leaving the face of Dr. Janney.

“I suppose it’s useless for me to ask you to describe Swanson?” demanded the Inspector. The smile had left his face.

Janney clamped his lips together.

“Very well, then!” snapped the old man. “You realize that without Swanson’s testimony to bolster yours your position becomes downright dangerous, Dr. Janney?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“I shall give you exactly one more chance, Dr. Janney.” The Inspector’s voice was deadly now with cold rage; his lips trembled slightly. “Give me Swanson’s visiting card.”

There was a short stifling silence. “Eh?” growled Janney.

“The card, the card!” cried the Inspector impatiently — “the card with Swanson’s name on it, which the doorman handed you while you talked in the corridor with Dr. Minchen and Mr. Queen. Where is it?”

Janney raised haggard eyes to the old man. “I haven’t got it”

“Where is it!”

Janney remained still as the grave.

The Inspector whirled instantly to Velie, who stood aloof and glowering in the corner. “Search him!”

The surgeon gasped, retreated to the wall, glaring about him with a hunted, animal look. Ellery half-rose in his chair, but sank back as Velie crowded the little man to a corner and said, impersonally, “Will you hand it over or do I have to take it from you?”

“By God!” gasped Janney, livid with rage, “you touch me and — and I’ll...” His voice trailed off from sheer impotence.

Velie swept his huge arm about the fragile figure of the surgeon, gathered him in as easily as if Janney had been a child. Beyond one frantic shudder of his frame, the surgeon did not resist. The rage fled from his face, drained out of his eyes...

“Nothing.” Velie stepped back to his corner.

Inspector Queen gazed earnestly at the little man, with a sort of unwilling admiration. He spoke without turning his head, spoke almost casually. “Search Dr. Janney’s office, Thomas.”

Velie lumbered out of the room, taking a detective with him...

Ellery was frowning. He unrolled his lean length from the chair. He spoke in low tones to the Inspector. The old man waggled his head doubtfully.

“Dr. Janney.” Ellery’s voice was low. The surgeon stood limply against the wall, staring at the floor. His face was dark with blood and he breathed in heavy, uneven pants. “Dr. Janney, I’m frightfully sorry this occurred. You gave us no choice... We are trying, really trying, to see your point of view... Doctor, hasn’t it struck you that if Swanson, whom you mask so valiantly, is as good a friend of yours as you are of his he will want to step forward and substantiate your story? No matter how unfortunate he is... Don’t you see?”

“I’m sorry...” Janney spoke in so hoarse a tone that Ellery cocked his head sharply to catch the words. But defiance had fled. The doctor seemed utterly spent.

“I see.” Ellery was grave. “Then there is only one thing more to ask. I can see no way of forcing you to reply... Dr. Janney, did either you or Swanson leave your office even for a moment, between the time you entered and the time you said good-by to each other?”

“No.” And Janney raised his head to look full into Ellery’s eyes.

“Thank you.” Ellery stepped back and sat down again. He brought out a cigarette and lighted it, puffing thoughtfully.

Inspector Queen sent a detective off with a curt command. A moment later the man returned with Isaac Cobb. The doorman entered confidently, his red face shining.

“Cobb,” began the Inspector without preliminary, “you said before that you saw Dr. Janney’s visitor both when he entered the Hospital and left it. Describe him to me.”

“Oh, sure!” Cobb beamed. “I never forget a face, sir... Yes, sir. This feller was just about middlin’ in height sort of blond, I’d say, clean-shaved, and he was rigged out in kind of dark clothes. Wore a black overcoat anyway.”

“Did you get the idea,” put in Ellery instantly, “that he was well off, Cobb — I mean from the way he dressed?”

“Cripes no!” The doorman was emphatic, shaking his head vigorously. “Looked down at th’ heel, I’d say... Yeah, an’ he must have been — oh, I’d say thirty-four, five or somewhere thereabouts.”

“How long have you been here, Cobb?” asked Ellery.

“Mighty nigh onto ten years.”

The Inspector said coolly, “And have you ever seen this man Swanson before, Cobb?”

The doorman did not reply at once. “We-e-ell,” he said finally, “seems t’me he looked kinda familiar but — I dunno.”

“Mmm!” Inspector Queen took a pinch of snuff. “Cobb,” he wheezed as the snuff flew up his nostrils, “what was this man’s first name? You know it!” he added sharply, slapping, his snuff-box away into his pocket “You brought Dr. Janney his card!”

The doorman looked frightened. “Why, I... I dunno. I didn’t look at it — just handed it over t’ Dr. Janney.”

“Cobb, my dear fellow,” interposed Ellery lazily, “this is remarkable! You don’t accept honorariums, and you aren’t inquisitive. It simply baffles me!”

“You mean to tell me,” demanded the Inspector threateningly, “that when this man gave you his card, you walked all the way down the corridor to find Dr. Janney and didn’t even look at it once?”

“I... no... no, sir.” Cobb was frankly scared.

“Rubbish!” muttered the Inspector, turning his back. “The man’s a fool. Get out, Cobb!”

Mutely, Cobb slunk away. Sergeant Velie, who had slipped into the room while Cobb was being questioned, came quietly forward.

“Well, Thomas.” The Inspector was clearly not sanguine of his sergeant’s report. He looked at Velie almost grumpily. Ellery stole a glance at Dr. Janney. The surgeon seemed unconcerned, wrapped in thought

“Wasn’t there.”

“Ha!” The Inspector stalked slowly to Dr. Janney. “What did you do with that card? Answer me!” he thundered.

Janney spoke wearily. “I burned it,” he said.

“Very well!” growled the Inspector. “Thomas!”

“Right.”

“Start the wheels moving. I want this man Swanson at headquarters by tonight. Medium height, fair, dark clothes, shabby, about thirty-five, and in poor circumstances. Get busy!”

Ellery sighed. “Velie.” The detective halted on his way to the door. “Just a moment...” Ellery turned to Dr. Janney. “Doctor, have you any objection to showing me your check-book?”

Janney jerked convulsively; anger mounted to his eyes once more. But when he spoke it was with the same deadly fatigue. “Not at all.” He brought out a folded check-book from his hip-pocket, handed it without another word to Ellery.

Ellery turned rapidly to the first leaf on which a check appeared. To the left was a memorandum-page. The last notation read: CASH.

“Ah!” Ellery smiled, returned the book to Janney, who, without moving a muscle of his face restored it to his pocket. “Velie, get that check. Your first stop might be the Bank of the Netherlands. Then the clearing-house. The check-number is 1186, made out to Cash for fifty dollars, dated to-day, on Dr. Janney’s personal account. You’ll have Swanson’s signature, at any rate.”

“One thing more!” Ellery’s voice rang out like a bell. “When you examined Dr. Janney’s office, did you look in his personal address-book for a ‘Swanson’?”

A wintry smile flickered over Velie’s lips. “Sure did. And nothing doing. Nobody by that name. Wasn’t listed on a personal telephone list under the glass top of the doctor’s desk, either. That all?”

“Quite.”

“Look here.” The Inspector stalked over to Janney. “There’s no necessity for you to be standing, Doctor,” he said in a kinder tone. “Why don’t you sit down...” The surgeon looked up in dull surprise. “For,” continued the old man grimly, “we’ll be here for some time yet...”

Janney sank into a chair. There was silence until a tattoo on the West Corridor door brought a detective across the room to open it.

Detective Ritter burst into the Anteroom, bearing a large shapeless white bundle under his arm. Behind him, more sedately, came Johnson and Hesse, both grinning.

Inspector Queen lunged forward. Ellery rose, took an eager step. Janney’s head was sunk on his breast; he seemed asleep.

“What’s this?” cried the Inspector, snatching at the bundle.

“The duds, Chief!” shouted Ritter. “We found the murderin’ crook’s duds!”

Inspector Queen spread the contents of the bundle on the wheel-table from which Abigail Doorn’s lifeless body had been taken. “At last we’ve something to go on,” he muttered. He looked up quickly at Ellery, glee in his eyes.

Ellery bent over the table, prodded the bundle with his long white finger. “More fuel, more fire!” he murmured, and glanced slyly at the chair in which Dr. Janney was now sitting alertly, craning his neck to see what was on the table.

“What are you mumbling about?” demanded the Inspector, busy prodding the clothes.

“Ashes,” said Ellery enigmatically.

Chapter Ten Manifestation

They crowded around the wheel-table, heads cocked over and watched Inspector Queen separate the various articles composing the bundle.

Dr. Janney made an impatient gesture. He half-rose, sank back into his chair, raised himself again. Then curiosity, it seemed, mastered him. He sidled toward the table, peered over the shoulders of two detectives.

The Inspector lifted a long white garment and held its spotless length high. “Hmm. Surgical gown, eh?” His grey brows bunched suddenly; he shot a droll sidewise look at Janney. “This yours, Doctor?”

Janney muttered, “How can I tell?” Nevertheless he wedged himself between the two detectives and fingered the gown. Ellery murmured, “Would it fit you, I wonder?” and the Inspector raised the garment before Janney. It reached to the surgeon’s ankles. “Not mine,” said Janney, distinctly, “Too long.”

The gown was crumpled but unsoiled. It had apparently been freshly laundered.

“It’s not new,” said Ellery. “Look at those frayed hems.”

“The laundry mark...” The Inspector twisted the garment about suddenly; his fingers sought the inner side of the neckpiece, at the back. Two little punctures testified mutely to the rape of the gown’s laundry mark.

The old man tossed the gown aside.

He picked up a small, biblike linen article with strings at the upper corners. Like the long garment, it was crumpled and unsoiled; it, too, showed unmistakable signs of previous use.

“Might be anybody’s,” volunteered Janney, defensively.

It was a surgeon’s gag.

The next article was a surgeon’s cap; it elicited nothing tangible. Not new, unsoiled, plentifully wrinkled... Ellery took it from his father’s hand and turned it inside out. Adjusting his pince-nez carefully, he brought the headpiece close to his eyes and probed with a fingernail in the minute crevices of the surrounding hems.

With a diffident shrug he replaced the cap on the table. He merely said, “Extremely fortunate for the murderer.”

“You mean — no hair?” demanded Janney quickly.

“Something like that. How alert you are, Doctor...” Ellery leaned forward to examine the fourth article which Inspector Queen had picked up. The old man held it up to the light. It was a pair of stiffly-starched white duck trousers.

“Here! What’s this?” cried the Inspector. He threw the trousers onto the table, pointed an eager forefinger at the thighs of the garment. On both legs, two inches above the slightly baggy knee, was a broad pleat.

Ellery unaccountably appeared pleased. He removed a silver pencil from his vest-pocket and delicately lifted the sharp edge of one of the pleats. The pencil caught on something. They bent lower and saw that several basting-stitches had been taken in the thighs to hold down the pleats. The stitches were of coarse white thread, and widely separated. On the under side of the trousers similar stitches appeared.

“Evidently our impromptu tailor,” murmured Ellery, “intended his sewing as a purely temporary measure. You see,” he said airily, “basting was sufficient unto the moment...”

“Thomas!” The Inspector looked about quickly.

Velie loomed at the other end of the table.

“Think you could trace this cotton?”

“Not a chance.”

“Take a stab at it.”

Velie produced a pen-knife and cut off a two-inch length of thread from the pleat of the right leg. He stowed it away in a glassine envelope as carefully as if it were a hair from the murderer’s head.

“Let’s take a look at this on you, Doctor.” The Inspector did not smile. “No, I don’t mean actually on your legs; up against ’em will do.” Janney silently took the trousers and held them up before him, fitting the waistline to his belt. The cuffs fell exactly to his shoetops.

“And with those pleats let out,” ruminated Ellery aloud, “since the pleats take in about four inches of the material...

What’s your height, Doctor?”

“Five-five.” The surgeon tossed the trousers back to Inspector Queen.

Ellery shrugged. “Not that it signifies anything,” he said, “but the original owner of these trousers is — or was — five feet nine inches tall. But—” he smiled frostily, “that’s hardly a clew. They might have been stolen from any one of the hundreds of hospitals in the City, or from any one of the thousands of physicians, or...”

He stopped short. Inspector Queen had swept aside gown, gag, cap and trousers, and now reverently revealed a pair of white canvas shoes — low-cut oxfords. The old man’s hand shot forward...

“One moment!” rapped Ellery. “Before you pick them up and handle them, dad...”

He eyed the shoes in speculative silence. “Ritter.” The detective mumbled in reply. “Did you touch these shoes before you brought them in here?”

“Nope. Just picked up the bundle the way I found it. Felt the shoes inside, in the middle.”

Ellery stooped again and applied his silver pencil. This time he stirred the tip of the white lace on the right shoe.

“Alors — that’s more like it!” he said, straightening up. “A clew at last.” He whispered into his father’s ear. The old man nodded doubtfully.

On the shoelace at the third set of eyelets there was a half-inch strip of adhesive tape. Its outer surface was perfectly clean. A curious depression in the center of the tape’s width attracted the Inspector. He looked up inquiringly at Ellery.

“Lace broke, I’ll bet a cookie,” muttered the Inspector, “and that dent there is where the two broken ends come together. They don’t fit exactly.”

“Hardly the nucleus of the point,” murmured Ellery. “The tape — the tape! It’s uncommonly dazzling.”

Dr. Janney stared. “Rot!” he said in a loud clear voice. “Don’t see it at all, and I’m accustomed to interpreting phenomena... Somebody’s merely used adhesive to mend a broken lace. Only thing I’m interested in is the size. Any one can see that’s a smaller shoe than the one I wear.”

“Perhaps. No, don’t touch it!” cried Ellery, as Janney reached forward to grasp one of the shoes. The surgeon shrugged, looked about pleadingly. Then he trudged back to the farther side of the room and sat down, where he waited with stoic eyes.

Ellery raised a tiny corner of the adhesive, felt the underside briefly with the tip of his forefinger. “Well, Doctor,” he called out, “with apologies to you, your skill and your profession, I’m going to supersede you and perform a surgical operation myself. Velie, let’s have your pen-knife.”

He pried the two ends of the strip of tape apart. One edge was curiously jagged. Grasping a corner, he pulled; the adhesive came away with ease. “Still moist,” he said with elation in his voice. “Confirmation — confirmation! Have you noticed, dad—” he hurried on, motioning to Velie “—an envelope, old man! — that it was applied in quite obvious haste? The one edge didn’t even adhere to its brother-surface, and this is powerful stuff.” He deposited the strip of tape in another glassine envelope, which he immediately tucked into the breast-pocket of his coat.

Stooping over the table once more, he pulled on the frayed end of the upper piece of string — it was still in the shoe — and exercising meticulous care not to waste even a quarter-inch, he tied the broken ends together. To do this, he found it necessary to draw in so much of the tip-end that a bare inch of the white lace remained hanging from the topmost eyelet.

“It doesn’t require a necromancer,” he smiled, turning to the Inspector, “to see that if the broken ends had been tied together at the break, not enough would have remained to lace the shoe. Consequently — the adhesive, for which we may thank some nameless but divinely-cast shoelace manufacturer.”

“But Ellery,” protested the Inspector, “what of it? Can’t say that I see much to be gay about.”

“Believe me, sir, my levity was never in more proper order.” Ellery grinned. “Very well, since you’ve asked for it. — Suppose your shoelace broke at any given time — let’s say a particularly awkward moment — and you found that by knotting the torn ends you had so shortened the lace that it was impossible to tie your shoe. What would you do?”

“Oh!” The Inspector tugged at his grey mustache. “Well, I guess I’d make shift with something else, just as the murderer did. But even then—”

“That is so sufficient,” said Ellery didactically, “that I am beginning to feel the gnawing pangs of interest...”

Detective Piggott coughed with the obvious purpose of attracting attention. Inspector Queen turned impatiently.

“Well?”

Piggott reddened. “Somethin’ I sort of noticed,” he said shyly. “Where the devil’s the tongues of these here shoes?”

Ellery chuckled explosively. Piggott regarded him with hurt suspicion. But Ellery took off his pince-nez and began to scrub at them. “Piggott, you deserve a substantial increase in salary.”

“Eh? What’s that?” The Inspector seemed vaguely displeased. “Poking fun at me?”

Ellery pulled a face. “Now, look here,” he said. “Aside from the lace, the — I might call it the Astounding Mystery of the Missing Tongues — becomes a positively integral part of this investigation. Where are they? When I was examining the shoe before, I discovered — this!”

He grasped the shoe swiftly and poked his finger beneath me laces, far into the forward portion of the vamp, near the toe box. With an effort he scraped at something, and in a moment had pulled out the hidden tongue.

“Here it is,” he said. “And it’s significant that it was pressed, tight and smooth, against the upper wall of the toe box... And, unless a most promising little theory has gone a-begging...”

He explored the recesses of the left shoe. Its tongue was also plastered upward and out of sight.

“That’s a queer one,” muttered Inspector Queen. “You’re sure now, Ritter, that you didn’t monkey with these shoes?”

“Johnson’ll tell you,” replied Ritter in an aggrieved tone.

Ellery looked keenly from the Inspector to Ritter; but it was the keenness of introspection. He turned away from the table, head bowed in thought.

“You might be careful of those shoes,” he said absently, striding up and down the Anteroom. He halted. “Dr. Janney.”

The surgeon closed his eyes. “Well.”

“What size shoe do you wear?”

Janney instinctively stole a downward glance at his canvas shoes — apparently exact duplicates of the shoes on the table. “Guess I’m lucky,” he drawled. He rose suddenly, like a Jack-in-the-box. “Still hot on the scent?” he snarled, thrusting his face close to Ellery’s and glaring into his eyes. “Well, Queen, you’re off your trail this time. I wear size 6 ½.”

“Rather small at that,” reflected Ellery... “But you see, these shoes are only size 6!”

“Size 6 it is,” interrupted the Inspector. “But—”

“Hush!” smiled Ellery. “You can’t know how satisfied I feel to find that the murderer wore these shoes — as they are... And my satisfaction has little, Doctor, to do with you... Ritter, where did you find these clothes?”

“Lyin’ on the floor of the telephone booth at the corner of the South and East Corridors.”

“So!” Ellery pulled at his lip, frowning for a long moment. “Dr. Janney, you saw the strip of adhesive I took from this shoe. Is it the same brand as the tape used here?”

“Certainly. What of it? It’s the brand used by practically every hospital in the City.”

“I can’t say I’m drooping with disappointment,” said Ellery. “It was too much to expect that... Of course, Doctor, none of these articles is yours?”

Janney spread his hands. “Oh, what the devil good will it do me to say yes or no? They don’t look it. But I’ll have to check over my locker to make sure.”

“Cap and gag might be yours, eh?”

“Might be anybody’s!” Janney tore at the tight neckband of his gown. “You saw the gown was too long. As for the trousers — just a clumsy disguise. And I’m certain the shoes aren’t mine.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said the Inspector belligerently. “At least we’ve no proof they aren’t.”

“Oh, but we have, dad,” said Ellery in his gentlest voice. “Look here.”

He turned both shoes over and pointed to the heels. They were of black rubber. The shoes showed signs of long usage and the heels had been rubbed smooth by the friction of walking. On the right shoe the heel was considerably worn down on the right side. On the left shoe the heel was similarly worn down on the left side. Putting the shoes close together, Ellery pointed to the heels.

“You’ll observe,” he drawled, “that each heel has been rubbed away to approximately the same depth...”

The Inspector’s glance strayed floorward, to the little surgeon’s left foot. Janney’s weight rested on the other.

“Dr. Janney,” continued Ellery, “is quite right. These shoes are not his!”

Chapter Eleven Interrogation

Dr. John Minchen’s orderly soul received blow after blow during the hectic morning of Abigail Doorn’s death. His Hospital was disorganized. His internes were stewing about the corridors, smoking in flagrant violation of the rules and discussing the murder in lively professional conversation. The feminine contingent seemed to feel that the tragedy suspended all regulations; they giggled and chattered among themselves until the senior nurses, scandalized, herded them back to their wards and private rooms.

The main floor was crowded with detectives and policemen. Minchen, scowling, weaved his way through the groups which dotted the corridors until he came to the door leading into the Anteroom. He rapped and was admitted by a tobacco-chewing detective.

In a quick glance he encompassed the tableau — Janney, his face pale and set, standing as if at bay in the center of the room; Inspector Queen confronting him, lines of perplexity and irritation on his smooth old face; Ellery Queen leaning against the wheel-table, fingering a white canvas shoe; plain-clothesmen scattered about, silent and watchful.

He coughed. The Inspector pivoted on his heel and walked across the room to the table. A little color came into Janney’s cheeks; his body sagged like an empty sack into a chair.

Ellery smiled. “Yes, John?”

“Sorry to interrupt.” Minchen was nervous. “But things have taken a slightly serious turn in the Waiting Room and I thought—”

“Miss Doorn?” asked Ellery quickly.

“Yes. She’s on the verge of collapse. Really ought to be taken home. Do you think you could possibly—?”

Ellery and the Inspector conferred in low tones. The Inspector looked anxious. “Dr. Minchen, is it really your opinion that the young lady needs...” He chopped his thought abruptly. “Who is her closest kin?”

“Mr. Doorn — Hendrik Doorn. He’s her uncle — Abigail Doorn’s only brother. I would also suggest that a woman accompany her — perhaps Miss Fuller...”

“Mrs. Doorn’s companion?” said Ellery slowly. “No, I think not. Not just yet... John, are Miss Doorn and Miss Dunning chums?”

“Fairly well acquainted.”

“It’s quite a problem.” Ellery gnawed at a fingernail. Minchen stared at him, as if he could not understand the exact nature of this “problem.”

Inspector Queen interposed impatiently, “Oh, after all, son... She can’t very well remain here, in the Hospital. If she’s feeling so badly — poor child! — her place is at home. Let her go, now, and let’s get on.”

“Very well.” The frown did not leave Ellery’s forehead. He patted Minchen’s shoulder absently. “Have Miss Dunning accompany Miss Doorn and Mr. Doorn. But before they go — Yes, that’s best. Johnson, get Mr. Doorn and Miss Dunning in here for a moment. I shan’t keep them long. I suppose, John, there’s a nurse with Miss Doorn?”

“Certainly. And young Morehouse is with her, too.”

“And Sarah Fuller?” demanded Ellery.

“Yes.”

“Johnson. While you’re about it take Miss Fuller up to the gallery of the Amphitheater and see that she’s kept there until we call for her.”

The drab-looking detective quickly left the room.

A white-coated young interne slipped past the man at the corridor-door and, looking around timidly, approached Dr. Janney.

“Here!” roared the Inspector. “Where do you think you’re going, young man?”

Velie sauntered slowly to the side of the interne, who wilted perceptibly. The surgeon rose.

“Oh, it’s all right,” he droned in a tired voice. “What do you want, Pearson?”

The young man gulped. “Dr. Hawthorne’s just called, Doctor, about that angina consultation. He said to get a move on...”

Janney clapped his hand to his forehead. “Rats!” he exclaimed. “Forgot all about it! Slipped my mind completely. — Look here, Queen, you’ll have to let me go. Serious matter.” Rare case. Ludwig’s angina. Terrific mortality rate...”

Inspector Queen looked at Ellery, who waved his hand negligently. “We’re certainly not privileged to retard the miraculous processes of healing, Doctor. If you must, you must. Au revoir!”

Dr. Janney was already at the door, pushing the young interne before him. He paused, hand at the knob, and looked back with a brown-toothed and strangely-refreshed grin. “Took a death to get me in here, and a near-death to get me out... ’Bye!”

“Not so fast, Dr. Janney.” The Inspector stood quite still. “You are not to leave town under any circumstances!”

“Good God!” groaned the surgeon, popping back into the room. “That’s impossible. I’ve got a medical convention in Chicago this week and I planned to skip out tomorrow. Why, Abby herself wouldn’t have wanted—”

“I said,” repeated the old man distinctly, “that you are not to leave the City. And I meant it. Convention or no convention. Otherwise—”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” screamed the surgeon, and he ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Velie crossed the Anteroom in three strides, pulling the burly figure of Detective Ritter with him. “After him, you!” he growled. “And don’t let him out of your sight, or I’ll fan your tail!”

Ritter grinned and lumbered into the corridor, disappearing in Janney’s wake.

Ellery was saying with amusement, “Our surgical friend’s fondness for calling upon his Creator doesn’t jibe at all with his professional agnosticism, d’ye know?...” when Johnson opened the door from the Amphitheater and stepped aside to allow Edith Dunning and a short man of tremendous girth to precede him.

Inspector Queen hopped forward. “Miss Dunning? Mr. Doorn? Come in, come in! We shan’t keep you a moment!”

Edith Dunning, her fair hair disheveled, her eyes red-rimmed and cold, stopped short on the threshold. “Make it snappy.” She spoke in a remarkably metallic voice. “Hulda’s in bad shape and we’ve got to get her home.”

Hendrik Doorn shuffled two paces into the room. The Inspector eyed him amiably, and not without astonishment. Doorn’s abdomen bulged in fold after fold of fat flesh; he seemed to ooze forward rather than walk; his gelatinous belly quivered with each step in a gross rhythm. His face shone moon-like and greasy; it was mottled with tiny pink spots, condensed into a broad reddish bulb at the tip of his nose. He was completely bald, with an unhealthy white skull which reflected the light of the room.

“Yess,” he said, and his voice was no less remarkable than his appearance. It was pitched high, yet it had a curiously grating, rusty quality. “Yess,” he squeaked, “Hulda needts her bedt. What iss this foolish bother? We know nothings.”

“A moment, just a moment,” said the Inspector soothingly. “Please come in. We must have that door closed. Sit down, sit down!”

Edith Dunning’s narrow eyes never left the Inspector’s face. Stiffly, like a machine, she sat down in a chair which Johnson held out for her and folded her hands angularly in her lap. Hendrik Doorn waddled to another chair and sank, groaning, into it. His gross buttocks hung limply over the sides.

The Inspector took a generous pinch of snuff and promptly sneezed. “Now, sir,” he began politely, “one question and you’ll be on your way... Have you any idea who might have had cause to murder your sister?”

The fat man mopped his cheeks with a silk handkerchief. His little black eyes shifted from the Inspector’s face to the floor and back again. “I... Gott! This iss a terrible business for uss all. Who knows? Abigail wass a funny womans — a wery funny womans...”

“Look here.” Inspector Queen was sharp. “You must know something about her private life — enemies, whatnot. Can’t you suggest a possible line of inquiry—?”

Doorn kept wiping his face with short heavy swoops of his arm. His porcine little eyes roved, were never still. He seemed inwardly to be debating something with himself. “Well—” he said at last, weakly, “there iss somethings... Budt nodt here!” He heaved himself out of the chair. “Nodt here!”

“Ah, then you do know something,” said the Inspector softly. “Very interesting, I’m sure. Out with it now, Mr. Doorn — out with it, or we shan’t let you go!”

The girl sitting beside the fat man stirred impatiently. “Oh, for the love of Pete, mister, let’s get out of here...”

The door-knob rattled violently and the door was kicked open. They all turned to see Morehouse stagger in, supporting a tall young woman whose eyes were closed and whose head was bent forward, rolling a little. A nurse held tightly to her on the other side.

The young lawyer’s face was crimson with anger. His eyes spat fire as the Inspector and Ellery sprang forward to help carry the girl into the Anteroom.

“Dear, dear!” muttered the Inspector in an agitated voice. “So this is Miss Doorn”, eh? We were just—”

“Yes, you were just— Junk!” roared Morehouse. “And it’s about time. What is this — the Spanish Inquisition? I demand permission to take Miss Doorn home!... Outrage! Criminal! Oh, get out of the way, will you!”

He shoved Ellery roughly to one side as they half-lifted the unconscious girl into a chair. Morehouse stood stiff-legged over her, fanning her face with his hand, spluttering incoherently. The nurse pushed him impersonally away and applied a vial to the girl’s nostrils. Edith Dunning had risen; she was bent over Hulda, slapping the girl’s cheeks.

“Hulda!” she called irritably. “Hulda! Don’t be a little fool. Come out of it!”

The girl’s eyes fluttered open; she shrank back from the vial. She looked blankly at Edith Dunning; then she turned her head slightly and saw Morehouse.

“Oh, Phil! She’s... she’s...” She got no further. Her voice blurred with sobs; she stretched her arms blindly toward Morehouse and began to cry. The nurse, Edith Dunning, Ellery stepped back; Morehouse’s face had magically softened; he leaned over Hulda, talking rapidly to her in a whisper.

The Inspector blew his nose. Hendrik Doorn, who still stood before his chair and had merely glanced at the girl while she was being attended, quivered all over his immense body.

“Let uss be going,” he squeaked. “The girl—”

Ellery confronted him swiftly. “Mr. Doorn, what were you going to say? You know some one with a grudge? A desire for vengeance?”

Doorn quavered, “I had rather nodt say. I am in danger of my life. I...”

“Oho!” murmured the Inspector, stepping to Ellery’s side. “A hush story, hey? Somebody’s threatening, Doorn?”

Doorn’s lip trembled. “I will nodt speak in this place. This afternoon — maybe. At my house, now — no.”

Ellery and Inspector Queen exchanged glances, and Ellery retreated. The Inspector smiled agreeably at Doorn and said: “Very well. This afternoon at your house... And you’d better be there, old boy. Thomas!” The giant grunted. “You’d do well to send some one along with Mr. Doorn, Miss Doorn and Miss Dunning — just to take care of them.”

“I’m going along,” cried Morehouse suddenly, spinning around. “And I don’t need any of your damned snooping detectives, either... Miss Dunning, grab hold of Hulda!”

“Oh, but you’re not, Mr. Morehouse,” said the Inspector in his mildest voice. “You’re going to stay a while. We need you.” Morehouse glared; their glances clashed. Then the lawyer looked around at the ring of grim faces. He shrugged, helped the weeping girl to her feet, walked with her to the corridor door. Her hand clung to his until Hendrik Doorn and Edith Dunning, followed by a detective, reached the door. There was a furtive handclasp, the girl squared her shoulders, and Morehouse was left alone at the door to watch the little company go slowly down the hall.

There was silence as he closed the door and turned back to face them.

“Well,” he said bitterly, “here I am. Now what do you want with me? Please don’t keep me — too long.”

They took chairs as several of the remaining district and local detectives, on a sign from the Inspector, marched out of the Anteroom. Velie put his gargantuan back against the corridor door and folded his arms...

“Mr. Morehouse.” The Inspector settled himself comfortably and clasped his tiny hands in his lap. Ellery lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He became absorbed in the glowing tip.

“Mr. Morehouse. You’ve been Mrs. Doorn’s attorney for a long time?”

“A number of years,” sighed Morehouse. “My father handled her affairs before me. Sort of family client, the old lady was.”

“You know her private as well as her legal affairs?”

“Intimately.”

“What was the relationship between Mrs. Doorn and her brother Hendrik? Did they get along? Tell me everything you know about the man.”

Morehouse made a moué of distaste. “You’d be getting an earful, Inspector... Of course, you must realize that some of the things I’m going to say are purely opinions — as a friend of the family I’ve naturally observed and heard things...”

“Go on.”

“Hendrik? An eighteen-carat parasite. He’s never done a lick of work in his life. Perhaps that’s why he’s so abominably fat... He’s not only a blood-sucking leech, but an expensive one to maintain. I know, because I’ve seen some bills. And the little playmate has all sorts of pleasant vices. Gambling, women — the usual thing.”

“Women?” Ellery closed his eyes and smiled dreamily. “I can’t quite believe it.”

“You don’t know some women,” replied Morehouse grimly. “He’s been Broadway’s roly-poly sugar-daddy to so many women he probably doesn’t remember them all himself. It hasn’t reached the papers much — Abigail saw to that... You’d think he might live fairly comfortably with the allowance of twenty-five thousand a year Abigail provided for him. But not Hendrik! He’s perpetually broke.”

“Hasn’t he any money in his own right?” asked the Inspector.

“Not a red cent. You see, Abigail has made every penny of her enormous fortune by her own wits. The family originally was poorer than the public knows. But she had a genius for finance... Interesting woman, Abby. It’s a damned shame.”

“Legal trouble? Shady deals? Anything underhanded?” demanded the old man. “Seems likely he’d have to pay hush money to some of those Jezebels of his.”

Morehouse hesitated. “Well... I can’t say.”

The Inspector smiled. “Hmm... And the relationship between Hendrik and Mrs. Doorn?”

“Lukewarm. Abby wasn’t anybody’s fool. She knew what was going on. She put up with it because she had a fierce pride of family and wouldn’t allow the world to talk about any one with the name of Doorn. Occasionally she put her foot down, and there would be a row...”

“How about Mrs. Doorn and Hulda?”

“Oh, the most affectionate relationship!” said Morehouse at once. “Hulda was Abigail’s pride and joy. There wasn’t anything in Abby’s possession that Hulda couldn’t have by a mere word. But Hulda has always been pretty conservative in her tastes — certainly she doesn’t live up to her position as one of the world’s richest heiresses. Quiet, modest — but you saw her. She’s a—”

“Oh, beyond a doubt!” said the Inspector hastily. “And does Hulda Doorn realize her uncle’s reputation?”

“I imagine so. But it hurts her terribly, I suppose, and she’s never spoken of it, even to—” he paused — “even to me.”

“Tell me,” asked Ellery, “how old is the young lady?”

“Hulda? Oh, nineteen or twenty.”

Ellery twisted his neck toward Dr. Minchen, who had been sitting quietly in a far corner of the room, observing everything and saying nothing. “John!”

The physician started. “My turn now?” he asked with a wry smile.

“Hardly. I was just going to comment that we seem to have struck one of those not infrequent gynecological phenomena you pill-peddlers are always talking about. Didn’t you tell me this morning in one of our pre-garrotte chats that Abigail was over seventy?”

“Why, yes. But what do you mean? Gynecology refers to the diseases of women, and the old lady wasn’t—”

Ellery flicked a finger nonchalantly. “Well, surely,” he murmured, “pregnancy past a certain age might have a pathological root?... Mrs. Doorn must have been,” he said, “a most remarkable woman in more ways than one... By the way, what about the late Mr. Doorn? I mean — Abigail Doorn’s spouse? When did he shuffle off the mortal coil? I don’t keep in touch with the society editors, you know.”

“About fifteen years ago,” put in Morehouse. He continued heatedly, “Now see here, Queen, what did you mean by your nasty insinuation that—?”

“My dear Morehouse,” smiled Ellery, “it is a bit odd, isn’t it, that astonishing difference in age between mother and daughter? You can scarcely blame me for politely raising my eyebrows.”

Morehouse looked disturbed. The Inspector broke in, “Here! We’re getting nowhere. I want to hear things about this Fuller woman in the gallery outside... What was her official position in the Doorn household? I’m not clear on the point.”

“Abby’s companion — she’s been with her for a quarter of a century, more or less. And a queer character, too. Crotchety, domineering, a religious fanatic, and I’m certain heartily disliked by the rest of the house — I mean the servants... As for Sarah and Abby, you wouldn’t think they’d been together for so many years. They were always quarreling.”

“Quarreling, hey?” growled the Inspector. “What about?”

Morehouse shrugged. “Nobody seems to know. Just bickering, I guess. I know Abby has often said to me in a fit of pique that she was going to ‘let that woman go,’ but somehow she never did. Matter of habit, I suppose.”

“And the servants?”

“The usual batch. Bristol the butler, a housekeeper, a tribe of maids — nothing of interest for you there, I’m sure.”

“We seem to have arrived,” murmured Ellery, crossing his legs and sighing, “at that dreadful stage in every murder investigation when it becomes necessary to ask questions about the — God save us! — the will... Get out your best brand of Will Talk, Morehouse. Let’s have it.”

“I’m afraid,” retorted Morehouse, “it’s all duller than usual. Not a thing sinister or mysterious. All absolutely aboveboard and regular. No bequests to long-lost relatives in Africa, or any of that brand of tripe...

“The bulk of the estate goes to Hulda. Hendrik is provided for in a very liberal trust-fund — better than he deserves, the old belly-shaker! — which will keep him in ducats for the rest of his life provided he doesn’t try to drain the annual liquor supply of New York.

“Sarah comes in for a neat inheritance — Sarah Fuller, that is — a heavy cash bequest and an assured income for life-more than she can possibly use. The servants, of course, receive generous legacies. The Hospital is provided for by a whopping big fund which guarantees its continued existence for many years. It’s a paying proposition, anyway.”

“Seems quite in order,” muttered the Inspector.

“Well, that’s what I told you.” Morehouse fidgeted in his chair. “Let’s get this over with, gentlemen. — You might be surprised to hear that Dr. Janney comes into the picture twice.”

“Eh?” The Inspector bolted upright. “What’s that?”

“Two distinct bequests. One is personal. Janney was Abby’s protégé almost from the time he took his first shave. The other is for the maintenance of a fund which would allow Janney and Kneisel to continue some research they’re jointly working on.”

“Here, here!” demanded the Inspector, “hold on. Who’s Kneisel? First time I’ve heard his name mentioned.”

Dr. Minchen hitched his chair forward. “I can tell you about him, Inspector. Moritz Kneisel is a scientist — Austrian, I think — who is working with Dr. Janney on a revolutionary idea. Something in the line of metals. He has a laboratory on this floor specially put in for him by Janney — where he keeps busy day and night. Regular mole, that fellow.”

“What sort of research is it, precisely?” asked Ellery.

Minchen looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think any one knows exactly except Kneisel and Janney. They keep quite mum about it. The laboratory’s the joke of the Hospital. No one’s ever been inside its four walls except the two of ’em. It has a massive safe-lock door, reënforced walls, and no windows. There are only two keys in existence for the inner door, and you have to know the combination of the outer one to reach it. Kneisel and Janney possess the keys, of course. Janney has absolutely forbidden entry into the laboratory.”

“Mystery upon mystery,” murmured Ellery. “We’re becoming medieval, by gad!”

The Inspector jerked his head at Morehouse. “You know anything more about this?”

“Nothing about the work itself — but I think you’ll find a little item of mine interesting. Rather recent development, in fact...”

“Just a moment” The Inspector beckoned to Velie. “Send somebody to get this fellow Kneisel. We’ll want to talk to him. Keep him out in the theater until I call...” Velie spoke to some one in the corridor. “Now Mr. Morehouse, you were going to say—?”

Morehouse replied dryly, “I think you’ll find it interesting... You see, despite Abby’s grand old heart and wise old head, she was still a woman. Mighty changeable, Inspector... And so I wasn’t particularly surprised when, two weeks ago, she told me to draw up a new will!”

“By the Pentateuch!” moaned Ellery, “this case is simply overrun with technicalities. First it’s anatomy, then it’s metallurgy, now it’s law...”

“Don’t get the idea there was anything wrong with the first will!” interrupted Morehouse hastily. “She’d merely had a change of mind about a certain bequest...”

“Janney’s, I suppose?” asked Ellery.

Morehouse gave him a startled glance. “Yes, Janney’s. Oh, not Abby’s personal bequest to him, but the one providing the working fund for the Janney-Kneisel researches. She wanted that clause stricken out entirely. It wouldn’t have necessarily demanded a new will, but there were additional bequests to servants and a few charities and things, since the first will was two years old.”

Ellery was sitting up quite straight “And the new will was drawn up?”

“Oh yes. Executed preliminarily — but not signed,” replied Morehouse with a grimace. “This coma business, and now the murder, intervened. You see, if only I’d known she’d be taken this way! But of course none of us had the slightest warning. In fact, I was intending to present the will for Abby’s signature to-morrow. Now it’s too late. The first will remains in force.”

“This will have to be looked into,” grumbled the Inspector. “Wills always cause trouble in a homicide... Did the old lady sink a lot of money into Janney’s metallic ventures?”

“Sink is right,” retorted Morehouse. “I’m inclined to think we could all live very comfortably indeed on the money Abby turned over to Janney for those mysterious experiments of his.”

“You said,” put in Ellery, “that no one except the surgeon and Kneisel knows the nature of the research. Didn’t Mrs. Doorn know? It doesn’t seem possible, with the old lady reputed so astute in business affairs, that she would finance a project without knowing pretty much everything about it first.”

“There’s a fault in every strong structure,” said Morehouse sententiously. “Abby’s weakness was Janney. She hung on his words. I’ll give the devil his due and say that to my knowledge, Janney has never abused her devotion. She certainly didn’t know much about this project in its scientific details, anyway. You know, Janney and Kneisel have been working away at this thing, whatever it is, for two and a half years.”

“Whew!” Ellery grinned. “Drachmas to doughnuts the old lady wasn’t as weak as you make her out. Wasn’t it because they were taking too long that she wanted to omit the fund from the second will?”

Morehouse raised his eyebrows. “Smart guess, Queen. That’s exactly the point. They promised to complete the work in six months originally, and it’s dragged out to five times that. Although she was still as crazy about Janney as ever, she said — these are her exact words — ‘I’m through subsidizing such a tenuous and experimental undertaking. Money’s tight these days.’”

The Inspector rose suddenly. “Thank you, Mr. Morehouse. I don’t think there’s anything else. Get along.”

Morehouse leaped from his chair, like a cramped prisoner unexpectedly released from his bonds. ‘Thanks! I’m on my way to the Doorns’,” he called over his shoulder. He stopped at the door and grinned boyishly. “And don’t bother to tell me to keep in town, Inspector. I’m used to that sort of thing.”

And he was gone.

Dr. Minchen whispered to Ellery, bowed to the Inspector, and slipped out.

A commotion in the corridor turned Velie sharply about. He opened the door and wagged his huge head.

“D.A.!” he exclaimed. The Inspector trotted across the room. Ellery rose, fingering his pince-nez...

Three men walked into the room.

District Attorney Henry Sampson was a sturdy, powerfully built man, still youthful; at his side was his assistant, a thin, eager man of middle age with violent red hair, Timothy Cronin; and behind them sauntered a slouch-hatted, cigar-smoking old man with shrewd, wandering eyes. His hat was pushed back on his forehead and a ragged thatch of white hair straggled over one eye.

Velie grasped the white-haired man by the coat-sleeve as he strolled across the threshold. “Here you, Pete,” he growled, “where you going? How’d you get in?”

“Aw, be yourself, Velie.” The white-haired man shook off the sergeant’s great fist. “Can’t you see I’m here as a representative of the American press by the personal invitation of the District Attorney? Hey... lay off!... H’lo there, Inspector. How’s every little murder? Ellery Queen, you old son-of-a-gun! It must be hot if you’re on it. Find the dastardly dastard yet?”

“Be quiet, Pete,” said Sampson. “Hello, Q. What’s doing? I don’t mind telling you we’re in one hell of a mess.” He sat down and threw his hat on the wheel-table, looking about the room curiously. The red-haired man pumped hands with Ellery and the Inspector. The newspaperman slouched to a chair and sank into it with a sigh of satisfaction.

“It’s complicated, Henry,” said the Inspector quietly. “No light yet. Mrs. Doorn was strangled while she was unconscious and waiting to be operated on; somebody seems to have impersonated the operating surgeon; nobody can identify the impostor; and we’re generally up a tree. It’s been a bad morning.”

“You won’t be able to cover up this case, Q.,” said the District Attorney with a harassed frown. “Whoever did the job picked on just about the most prominent figure in New York City. The newspaper boys are howling their heads off outside — we’ve got half the local precinct keeping ’em off the premises — Pete Harper here being the privileged character, God help me! — and I received a call from the Governor a half-hour ago. You can imagine what he said. It’s big, Q., big! What’s behind it — personal revenge, a maniac, money?”

“I wish I knew... Look here, Henry,” sighed the Inspector, “we’ll have to make an official statement to the press, and, by cripes, there’s nothing to say. You, Pete,” he went on grimly, turning to the white-haired man, “you’re here by sufferance. One breach of faith on your part and I’ll have your hide. Don’t print anything the other boys don’t get. Otherwise you can’t sit in. Understand?”

“I’m ’way ahead of you, Inspector,” grinned the reporter.

“And Henry. Here’s the situation up to the present.” He rapidly recounted the events, discoveries and perplexities of the morning to the District Attorney, in an undertone. When the Inspector had concluded his recital he called for pen and paper, and in a short time, with the aid of the District Attorney, had drafted a statement for the reporters milling about outside the Hospital. A nurse was conscripted to make typewritten copies, which Sampson signed; whereupon Velie sent a man to distribute them.

Inspector Queen went to the door of the Amphitheater and bawled a name. Almost immediately the tall, angular figure of Dr. Lucius Dunning crossed the threshold. The physician was flushed; his eyes smoldered; the seams on his face writhed.

“So you’ve decided to call me at last!” he rasped. His grey head jerked from side to side as he challenged them all, impartially, with stabbing glances. “I suppose you think I’ve nothing better to do than to sit outside like an old woman or a twenty-year-old boy and await your pleasure! Well, let me tell you once for all, sir—” he stalked up to the Inspector and brandished this thin fist above the old man’s head, “this outrage is going to mean something to you!”

“Now, really, Dr. Dunning,” said the Inspector meekly, as he slipped under the physician’s uplifted arm and shut the door.

“Restrain yourself, Dr. Dunning!” interrupted District Attorney Sampson in his sharpest courtroom manner. “The investigation is in the most capable hands in New York. If you’ve nothing to conceal, you’ve nothing to fear. And,” he added with asperity, “any complaints you may have should be addressed to me. I’m the District Attorney of this County!”

Dunning jammed his hands into his white coat-pockets. “I don’t care a hoot if you’re the President of the United States,” he snarled. “You’re keeping me from my work. There’s a bad case of gastric ulcer that I must follow up immediately. Your men outside prevented me five times from leaving the theater. Why, it’s criminal! I’ve got to see that patient!”

“Sit down, Doctor,” said Ellery with a soothing smile. “The longer you protest, the longer you’ll be here. Just a few questions, and the gastric ulcer is yours...”

Dunning glared about like an angry tomcat, struggled with his tongue for a long moment, and finally snapped his lips shut and flung his lean length into a chair.

“You can question me from to-day until to-morrow,” he said defiantly, folding his arms across his bony chest, “but you’ll merely be wasting your time. I know nothing. You’ll get nothing from me that can possibly help you.”

“Surely that’s a matter of opinion, Doctor?”

“Oh, come, come!” interrupted the Inspector. “Less of this bickering. Let’s hear your little story, Doctor. I want a strict account of your movements this morning.”

“Is that all?” muttered Dunning bitterly. His tongue flicked out over his nervous lips. “I arrived at the Hospital at 9:00, and saw patients in my office until about 10:00. From 10:00 until the time of the operation I remained in my office checking over case-records. There were some histories and prescriptions. A few moments before 10:45 I went across the North Corridor to the rear of the Amphitheater, mounted to the gallery, met my daughter there, and—”

“That’s quite enough. Any visitors after 10:00?”

“No.” Dunning paused. “That is, no one but Miss Fuller — Mrs. Doorn’s companion. She stopped in for a few moments to inquire about Mrs. Doorn’s condition.”

“How well,” asked Ellery, bending forward in his chair and clasping his hands between his knees, “did you know Mrs. Doorn, Doctor?”

“Not — intimately,” replied Dunning. “Of course, I’ve been on the staff here ever since the founding of the Hospital, and I naturally came to know Mrs. Doorn in my official capacity. I’m on the Board of Directors along with Dr. Janney, Dr. Minchen and the others...”

District Attorney Sampson leveled his forefinger at the physician. “Let’s be frank with each other,” he said. “You know Mrs. Doorn’s position as a world figure, I might say, and you know what a furor will be raised when the world learns that she has been murdered. For one thing, the reverberations will certainly be heard in the stock market. The sooner this case is solved and forgotten, the better off everybody will be... Just what do you think about the entire affair?”

Dr. Dunning got slowly to his feet, began to walk up and down, up and down. As he walked he cracked his knuckles. Ellery winced, crouched in his chair.

“You were about to say...” he murmured in almost unpleasant accents.

“What?” Dunning appeared confused. “No, no. I know nothing at all. It’s a complete mystery to me...”

“Amazing, how all-pervasive this mystery seems to be,” snapped Ellery. He eyed Dunning with a species of curious disgust. “That’s quite all, Doctor.”

Dunning strode out of the room without another word.

Ellery sprang to his feet and began to prowl. “By the Minotaur!” he cried. “All this is leading us nowhere. Who else is waiting outside? Kneisel, Sarah Fuller? Let’s get this over with. There’s work to be done...”

Pete Harper stretched his legs luxuriously and chuckled. “Headline,” he said. “‘Noted Sleuth Gets Cramp in Belly; Bad Circulation Affects Temper...’”

“Hey, you,” growled Velie, “shut up.”

Ellery smiled. “You’re right, Pete. It’s got me... Shoot, Dad. Out with the next victim!”

But the next victim was destined to bide his time in continued patience. For from the West Corridor came the broken sounds of a violent altercation, and the door crashed open to admit Lieutenant Ritchie and a trio of odd-looking men being prodded forward by three bluecoats.

“What’s this?” demanded the Inspector, starting up. “Well, well, well,” he said equably, his wand straying to his snuffbox. “If it isn’t Joe Gecko, Little Willie and Snapper! Ritchie, where in time did you pick ’em up?”

The policemen pushed the three captives into the room. Joe Gecko was a lean, cadaverous individual with burning eyes and a preternaturally cartilaginous nose. Snapper was his direct antitype — small and cherubic, with rosy cheeks and full wet lips. Little Willie was the most sinister-appearing of the three: his bald, triangular head was covered with noxious brown-flecked skin; he was huge and bulky and flabby, but his nervous movements and uneasy eyes belied the promise of strength in his powerful frame; he looked dull, even stupid, but there was something loathsome and terrifying in his very stupidity.

“Pompey, Julius and Crassus,” murmured Ellery to Cronin. “Or perhaps it’s the Second Triumvirate of Mark Antony, Octavius and Lepidus. Where have I seen them before?”

“Probably in the line-up,” grinned Cronin.

The Inspector confronted the captives with a frown. “Well, Joe,” he said peremptorily, “what’s the racket this time? Sticking up hospitals? Where’d you find ’em, Ritchie?”

Ritchie looked pleased with himself. “Skulking around upstairs — 328 — a private room.”

“Big Mike’s room!” exclaimed the Inspector. “So you’re playing nurse to Big Mike now, hey? I thought you guerrillas were running with Ikey Bloom’s mob. Changed your luck, eh? Spit it out, boys — what’s the dirt?”

The three gunmen looked at each other uneasily. Little Willie uttered a hoarse, shy chuckle. Joe Gecko screwed up his eyes and slid back tensely on his heels. But it was Snapper, rosy and smiling, who replied.

“Jeeze, give us a break, Inspector,” he said, and the lisp in his mincing voice did not seem strange. “You got nuttin’ on us. We wuz on’y waitin’ for th’ boss. They been takin’ out his guts or somepin’.”

“Sure, sure!” replied the Inspector affably. “You’ve been holding his hand and telling him bedtime stories.”

“Naw, he’s a reg’lar,” said Snapper seriously. “We been hangin’ around his room upstairs. Y’know how it is — th’ boss layin’ there an’ there’s a lotta guys don’t like’m, sorta...”

Inspector Queen snapped at Ritchie, “Did you frisk them?”

Little Willie shuffled his gigantic feet spasmodically and began to edge toward the door. Gecko hissed, “Snap outa it!” and grabbed the big man’s arm. The policemen closed in and Velie grinned expectantly.

Ritchie said, “Three little gats, Inspector,” with satisfaction.

The old man laughed merrily. “Caught at last! And by the good old Sullivan Law. Snapper, I’m surprised at you... All right, Ritchie. They’re your meat. Take ’em out and book ’em on the gun-toting charge... Just a second. Snapper, what time did you men get here?”

The little gangster mumbled, “We wuz here all mornin’, Inspector. Just watchin’. Jeeze...”

Gecko snarled, “I tola you, Snap’...!”

“I suppose you don’t know anything about the murder of Mrs. Doorn here this morning, boys?”

“A bump-off!”

They stiffened. Little Willie’s mouth began to quiver, it seemed extraordinarily as if he were about to cry. Their eyes curled toward the door and their hands made jerky movements. But they remained mute.

“Oh, all right,” said the Inspector indifferently. “Take ’em away, Ritchie.”

The district detective followed the policemen and the shambling gunmen with alacrity. Velie shut the door after them with the light of a vague disappointment in his eyes.

“Well,” said Ellery wearily, “we’re still awaiting the no doubt slavering presence of Miss Sarah Fuller. She’s been sitting out there for three hours... She’ll need a hospital when she’s through, and I need nourishment. Dad, how about sending out for sandwiches and coffee? I’m famished...”

Inspector Queen gnawed his mustache. “Didn’t realize the time... How’s it strike you, Henry? Have lunch?”

“Well, I’m in favor of it,” announced Pete Harper suddenly. “This sort of work gets you hungry. Is it on the City?”

“All right, Pete,” retorted the Inspector, “I’m glad to hear it. And, City or no City, you’re elected. There’s a cafeteria on the next block.”

When Harper was gone, Velie ushered in a middle-aged woman dressed in black who held her head so rigidly and whose eyes were so fiercely intent that District Attorney Sampson muttered in an undertone to Cronin and Velie himself hitched more closely to her.

Ellery gave her no more than a passing glance as she entered. He saw through the open door a group of internes gathered about the operating-table on which the dead body of Abigail Doorn still lay, entirely covered by a sheet.

He stepped into the Amphitheater, gesturing to his father.

The Amphitheater was quiet now; it gave a queer impression of disorganization, of indecision. Nurses and internes strolled about, talking in broadly gay voices, deliberately ignoring the bluecoats and plainclothesmen who stood about, placidly watchful. And beneath all the talk there was a little note of hysteria that crept quietly along and then, suddenly, leaped out of a conversation, to be followed at once by a painful silence.

Except for the men grouped about the operating-table, no one looked at the outlined body of the dead woman.

Ellery stepped to the table. In the slight hush that followed his appearance he made a brief remark to which several of the young doctors nodded assent. He immediately returned to the Anteroom, closing the door softly behind him.

Sarah Fuller stood somberly in the middle of the room. Her thin, blue-veined hands were clenched at her sides. She stared with hard-pressed stony lips at the Inspector.

Ellery stepped to his father’s side. “Miss Fuller!” he said abruptly.

Her agate-like, faded blue eyes shifted to his face. A bitter smile twitched the corners of her mouth. “Another,” she said. The District Attorney cursed beneath his breath. There was something weird about this woman. Her voice was hard and cold and tight, like her face. “What do you want with me, all of you men?”

“Sit down, please,” said the Inspector fretfully. He shoved a chair toward her; she hesitated, sniffed, and sat down like a stick.

“Miss Fuller,” said the Inspector at once, “you’ve been with Mrs. Doorn for twenty-five years, haven’t you?”

“Twenty-one come May.”

“And you and she didn’t get along, did you?”

Ellery noted with a faint sensation of surprise that the woman had a pronounced Adam’s apple which jerked up and down with the vibrations of her speech. She said coldly, “No.”

“Why?”

“She was a miser and an infidel. Out of heart proceedeth covetousness. She was a tyrant. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. To the world she was the voice of virtue. To her dependents and retainers she was the breath of evil. Sufficient unto the day...”

This remarkable speech was accompanied by the most matter-of-fact tone. Inspector Queen and Ellery exchanged glances. Velie grunted and the detectives nodded their heads significantly. The Inspector threw up his hands and sat down, leaving the field to Ellery.

He smiled gently. “Madame, you believe in God?”

She raised her eyes to his. “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

“Nevertheless,” replied Ellery, “we should prefer less apocalyptic answers. You speak the God’s truth at all times?”

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

“A noble sentiment. Very well, Miss Fuller. Who killed Mrs. Doorn?”

“When will ye be wise?”

Ellery’s eyes glittered. “Scarcely a reply upon which to base an arrest. Do you know, or don’t you?”

“The deed — No.”

“Thank you.” His lips quivered with inward amusement. “And did you or did you not quarrel with Abigail Doorn habitually?”

The woman in black did not stir nor change her set expression. “I did.”

“Why?”

“I have told you. She was evil.”

“But we have been given to understand that Mrs. Doorn was a good woman. You’ve attempted to make her out a Gorgon. You say she was miserly and tyrannical. How? Household affairs? Little things or big things? Please answer clearly.”

“We did not get along.”

“Answer the question.”

Her fingers were tightly intertwined. “We hated each other deeply.”

“Ha!” The Inspector jumped from his chair. “Now we’re getting it, and in twentieth century language. Couldn’t stand the sight of each other, eh? Scrapped like wildcats. Well then” — he accused her with his finger — “why in tunket did you stay together for twenty-one years?”

Her voice grew animated. “Charity beareth all things... I was the beggar, she the lonely queen. The habit grows. We were linked by ties as strong as blood.”

Ellery regarded her with puzzled brows. Inspector Queen’s face went blank; he shrugged his shoulders and looked eloquently at the District Attorney. Velie’s lips framed the word, “Nuts.”

In the silence, the door scraped open and several internes wheeled in the operating-table bearing the body of Abigail Doorn. At the Inspector’s furious look Ellery smiled warningly; he stood back, watching Sarah Fuller’s face.

A peculiar change had come over the woman. She rose, hand clutching her thin, narrow bosom. Two bright pinkish spots appeared magically in her cheeks; she looked steadily, almost curiously, at the dead face of her mistress, pitilessly uncovered to the neck.

A young doctor pointed apologetically to the blue, bloated face. “Sorry,” he said. “Cyanosis. Always pretty ugly. But you said I should un—”

“Please!” Ellery waved him away with acerbity; he was intent on Sarah Fuller’s movements. Slowly she approached the table; slowly she examined the stiff outlines of the dead body. When her eyes had traveled the entire length of the corpse and had reached the head, she paused in horrible triumph.

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” she cried. “In prosperity the destroyer shall come!” Her voice rose to a shriek. “Abigail, I warned you! I warned you, Abigail! The wages of sin...”

Ellery chanted deliberately, “Know that I am the Lord that smiteth...”

At the sound of his cool, insistent voice she turned furiously; her eyes shot fire. “Fools make a mock at sin!” she screamed. Her voice fell. “I have seen what I came to see,” she continued more quietly, in a repressed, exultant tone. Already she seemed to have forgotten her hot words. She breathed deeply, raising her thin chest. “Now I can go.”

“Oh, no, you can’t,” retorted the Inspector. “Sit down, Miss Fuller. You’re going to be here for some time yet.” She seemed deaf. An exalted expression crept over the harsh lines of her face. “Oh, for God’s sake!” shouted the Inspector, “stop acting and come down to earth! Here—” He ran across the room and gripped her arm roughly, shaking her. The peaceful, remote look did not leave her. “You’re not in church now — snap out of it!”

She permitted the Inspector to lead her to the chair, but absently, as if he and all his cohorts could do nothing to harm her. She did not again glance at the dead woman. Ellery, who was watching thoughtfully, signaled to the internes.

Hastily, in open relief, the white-garmented attendants wheeled the table to the elevator-shaft at the right side of the Anteroom, opened the door, and disappeared into the elevator. Ellery could see, beyond the grilled car, another door which apparently led to the East Corridor. The door closed and the slight sound of the moving vehicle came through the thin shaft-wall as the elevator descended slowly to the morgue room in the basement.

The Inspector muttered to Ellery, “Here, son, there’s nothing to be got out of her. She’s a lunatic. To my mind, we’d do better to follow up by questioning others about her. What do you think?”

Ellery glanced at the woman, who sat stiffly in the chair, eyes far away. “If nothing else,” he said grimly, “she’s a fine psychiatric object-lesson. I think I’ll have another go at her and see her reaction... Miss Fuller!”

Her rapt eyes turned to him, blankly.

“Who might have desired to kill Mrs. Doorn?”

She shivered; the film began to fade from her eyes. “I... don’t... know.”

“Where were you this morning?”

“At home, first. Some person telephoned. There was an accident, they said... God of vengeance!” Her face flamed; when she continued it was more lucidly, in a flatter tone. “Hulda and I came to this place. We waited for the operation.”

“You were with Miss Doorn all the time?”

“Yes. No.”

“Which is it?”

“No. I left Hulda in that Waiting Room across the hall. I was nervous. I walked about. Nobody stopped me. I walked, and walked, and then” — a cunning look crept into her eyes — “then I came back to Hulda.”

“And you didn’t speak with any one?”

She looked up slowly. “I sought information. I looked for a doctor. Dr. Janney. Dr. Dunning. The young Dr. Minchen. I found only Dr. Dunning, in his office. He reassured me, and I went away.”

Ellery murmured, “Check!” and began to stride up and down before her. He seemed to be revolving something in his mind. Sarah Fuller sat stolidly and waited.

When he spoke, it was with a crackle of menace in his voice. He whirled upon her. “Why didn’t you transmit Dr. Janney’s telephone message last night to Miss Doorn about administering the insulin injection?”

“I was ill myself yesterday. I was in bed most of the day. The message came and I took it. But by the time Hulda returned I was asleep.”

“Why didn’t you tell her in the morning?”

“I forgot.”

Ellery leaned over her, stared into her eyes. “You realize, don’t you, that by your unfortunate lapse of memory, you are morally responsible for Mrs. Doorn’s death?”

“Why... what—?”

“If you had given Miss Doorn Dr. Janney’s message, she would have administered the insulin to Mrs. Doorn, Mrs. Doorn would not have fallen into the coma this morning, and consequently would not have been placed on an operating-table to lie at the mercy of a murderer. Well?”

Her glance did not waver. “His will be done...”

Ellery straightened, murmured, “You quote Scripture nicely... Miss Fuller, why was Mrs. Doorn afraid of you?”

She drew in her breath sharply. Then she smiled an odd smile, compressed her lips and sank back against the chair. There was something eerie in her bitter old face. And her eyes were still hard and icy and, somehow, unearthly.

Ellery retreated. “Dismissed!”

She rose, arranged her garments with a shy movement and, without a glance or a word, floated from the room. At a sign from the Inspector the detective named Hesse followed. The Inspector took a short and irritable turn about the room. Ellery mused deeply where he stood.

A black-jowled man in a rakish derby hat strolled into the Anteroom, past Velie. He was chewing a dead, foul-smelling cigar. He tossed a black physician’s bag onto the wheel-table and stood rocking on his heels, surveying the gloomy little group quizzically.

“Hi there!” he said at last, spitting a piece of tobacco on the tiled floor. “Don’t I get any attention? Where’s the funeral?”

“Oh, hello, Doc.” The Inspector absently shook hands. “Ellery, say hello to Prouty.” Ellery dutifully nodded. “The body is in the morgue now, Doc,” said the old man. “They’ve just carted it down into the basement.”

“Well, I’ll be on my way, then,” said Prouty. He strode to the elevator-door. “This it?” Velie pressed a button and they heard the elevator grind upward. “By the way, Inspector,” said Prouty, opening the door, “the Medical Examiner may come into this thing himself. Doesn’t seem to trust his assistant.” He chuckled. “So old Abby’s got it at last, eh? Well, she’s not the first, and she won’t be the last. Keep smiling!” He disappeared into the car and the elevator again clanked its way to the floor below.

Sampson rose and stretched hugely. “A-a-ah!” He yawned, scratched, his fine head. “I’m absolutely stumped, Q.” The Inspector nodded dolefully. “And that crazy old loon simply muddled things worse than ever...” Sampson looked shrewdly at Ellery. “What do you make of it, son?”

“Precious little.” Ellery fished a cigarette from his capacious side-pocket and fingered it tenderly. He looked up. “Oh, I’ve managed to deduce a few things — interesting things at that.” He grinned. “There’s the faintest glimmer of light away down deep in my consciousness, but I’d scarcely call it a complete and satisfactory solution. The clothes, you know...”

“Aside from a few obvious facts...” began the District Attorney.

“Oh, they’re not obvious,” said Ellery gravely. “Those shoes, for example — most illuminating.”

Red-headed Timothy Cronin snorted. “And what do you get out of them? I must be thick. I can’t see a darned thing.”

“Well,” said the District Attorney tentatively, “the person who originally owned them was a good few inches taller than Dr. Janney...”

“Ellery commented on that before you came. And a fat lot of good it does us,” said the Inspector dryly. “We’ll send out a general alarm for the theft of the clothing, but I can tell you right now it will be like looking for the needle in the haystack... Attend to that, will you, Thomas?” He turned to the giant. “And start with this Hospital; we might get a break right here.”

Velie discussed details with Johnson and Flint, and they departed. “Not much there,” boomed the sergeant “But if there is a trail, the boys will get it.”

Ellery was smoking, inhaling deeply. “That woman...” he murmured. “The religious mania is significant. Something has unbalanced her. A very real hatred existed between her and the dead woman. Motive? Cause?” He shrugged. “She’s most fascinating. And if her blessed Jehovah is with us, we’ll cry ‘Selah!’ at the proper time, no doubt.”

“This man Janney,” began Sampson, stroking his jaw, “darned if we haven’t enough, Q., to—”

Whatever the District Attorney meant to say was lost in the hubbub of Harper’s return to the Anteroom. He kicked the corridor door open and made a triumphant entrance, bearing a huge paper bag in his arms.

“The white-haired boy returns with FOOD!” he shouted. “Dig in, fellers. You too, Velie — you old Colossus. Doubt if we’ve enough to fill your craw... Here’s coffee, and sweet ham, and pickles and cream cheese and Christ knows what else...”

They munched sandwiches and sipped coffee in silence. Harper eyed them keenly and said nothing further. It was only when the elevator-door reopened and Dr. Prouty, looking gloomy, emerged that they again began to talk.

“Well, Doc?” Sampson paused in the act of biting into a ham sandwich.

“Strangled, all right.” Prouty dropped his bag and unceremoniously helped himself from the stack of sandwiches on the wheel-table. His teeth clicked fiercely on the bread and he sighed. “Hell,” he mumbled, between mouthfuls, “that was an easy kill. One twist of the wire and the poor old lady was through. Snuffed out like a candle... This Janney guy. Quite a surgeon.” He peered at the Inspector shrewdly. “Too bad he didn’t get the chance to operate. Bad rupture of the gall bladder. Diabetic, too, I gathered... No; the original verdict was quite correct. Autopsy’s almost unnecessary. Hypo marks all over her arm. Stringy muscles. Must have had quite a job with the intravenous injections this morning...”

He chattered on. The conversation became general. Speculations and conjectures swirled about Ellery Queen as he ate. He tilted his chair against a wall and gazed at the ceiling, his lean jaws masticating powerfully.

The Inspector daintily wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Well,” he grumbled, “there’s darned little left except this man Kneisel. Suppose he’s outside, burning up like the rest of ’em. All right with you, son?”

Ellery waved his hand vaguely. But suddenly his eyes narrowed and his chair-legs banged on the floor. “There’s an idea,” he said. Then he chuckled. “Stupid of me to overlook that!” His auditors looked blankly at each other. Ellery got to his feet excitedly. “Now that you mention it, let’s have a look-see at our friend the Austrian scientist. You know, this mysterious Paracelsus of ours may prove interesting... Always charmed by alchemists, anyway. And there’s a faint voice — the voice of one crying in the wilderness...” he smiled “—to quote the triply blessed authority of Luke, John and patriarchal Isaiah...”

He ran to the Amphitheater door.

“Kneisel! Is Dr. Kneisel in here?” he cried.

Chapter Twelve Experimentation

Dr. Prouty brushed a few vagrant crumbs from his lap, rose, inserted his forefinger into the ample orifice of his mouth, probed delicately for a remnant of his sandwich, discovered it, spat it forth in triumph, and finally picked up his black bag.

“Be goin’,” he announced. “G’bye.” He tramped through the corridor door, whistling tunelessly as he searched his pocket for a cigar.

Unsmiling, Ellery Queen stepped back into the Anteroom to allow Moritz Kneisel to enter from the Amphitheater.

In Inspector Queen’s instantly formed although unspoken judgment, Moritz Kneisel joined that classification of human subjects to which the old man referred simply as “a card.” Individually, the characteristics of the scientist were not startling; it was only when they were viewed as links in a single personality that they gave that impression of grotesquerie. That he was small, that he was swarthy and dark and Central European-looking, that he wore a frayed and tatterdemalion little black beard, that his eyes were as deep and soft as a woman’s — these things were common enough. Yet, by some alchemy of nature, they blended to make Moritz Kneisel quite the most unusual character the Queens had yet encountered in their investigation of Abigail Doorn’s murder.

His fingers were bleached, brown-spotted, blotched with chemical stains and burns. The tip of his left index-finger was crushed-looking and raw. His professional gown appeared as if it had withstood a chemical deluge; it was literally covered with ragged color-splotches which in many spots had eaten away the linen. Even the cuffs of his white duck trousers and the tips of his canvas shoes were splattered.

Ellery, regarding him out of half-closed eyes, meaningly put the door to and pointed to a chair.

“Sit down, Dr. Kneisel.”

The scientist obeyed in complete silence. He radiated an aura of self-absorption that was disconcerting. He did not meet the impersonal stares of Inspector Queen, the District Attorney, Cronin, Velie; and it was remarkable that they understood at once the cause of his aloofness. He was not afraid, or wary, or evasive; he was simply deaf and blind to his surroundings.

He sat in a world of his own, a queer little figure out of a pseudo-scientific tale of lofty adventure among the stars.

Ellery took his stand solidly before Kneisel, boring him through and through with his eyes. After a strained interval the scientist seemed to sense the force of Ellery’s scrutiny; his eyes lifted and cleared.

“I am so sorry,” he said in a clipped, precise English that carried in its accents the merest suggestion of an alien tongue. “You want to question me, of course. I have just heard outside that Mrs. Doorn has been strangled.”

Ellery relaxed and sat down. “So late, Doctor? Mrs. Doorn has been dead for hours.”

Kneisel slapped the back of his neck absently. “I am something of a recluse here. In my laboratory there is a separate world. The scientific spirit...”

“Well,” said Ellery conversationally, crossing his legs, “I’ve always maintained that science is another form of Nihilism... You don’t seem overcome by shock at the news, Doctor.”

Kneisel’s soft eyes became suffused with a queer surprise. “My dear sir!” he protested. “Death is hardly a cause for emotion in the scientist. I am interested in the fatality, naturally, but not to the point of sentimentality. After all—” He shrugged, and a whimsical smile appeared on his lips. “We’re above the bourgeois attitude toward death, aren’t we? ‘Requiescat in pace,’ and all that sort of thing. I should much rather quote the Spaniard’s cynical epigram — ‘She is good and honored who is dead and buried.’”

Ellery’s brows rose instantly, much as the tail of a setter jerks to the horizontal in the perfect point. An animated humor, a light of anticipation, leaped into his eyes.

He said warmly, “I salute your erudition, Dr. Kneisel. You know, when the Coachman, Death, takes on his new and unwilling passenger, he sometimes, discharges another in order to balance the load... I refer, of course, to the vulgar institution of post-mortem bequests. There was something interesting about Abigail Doorn’s first will, Doctor...

“May I complement your quotation with another? — ‘He who waits for a dead man’s shoes is in danger of going barefoot.’ That,” he said, “is, curiously enough, from the Danish.”

Kneisel replied in a grave and pleasant voice, “And from the French, too, I believe. A great many aphorisms have common roots.”

Ellery laughed happily; he nodded with open admiration. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I shall make a point of checking up on you. Now—” The Inspector chuckled.

“You no doubt wish to know,” said Kneisel with the utmost urbanity, “where and how I spent my morning...”

“If you will.”

“I arrived at the Hospital at 7:00 A.M., my usual hour,” explained Kneisel, folding his hands peacefully in his lap. “I went to my laboratory after changing into these clothes in the general dress-rooms in the basement.

“The laboratory is on this floor, diagonally across the corridor from the northwest corner of the Amphitheater. But I am sure you already know this...”

“Mais certainement!” murmured Ellery.

“I locked myself in and I was there until your man summoned me some time ago. I proceeded at once to the theater, according to your request, and there discovered for the first time that Mrs. Doorn had been murdered during the morning.”

He paused, holding himself uncannily still. Ellery’s glittering watchfulness did not waver.

When Kneisel continued, it was with serene emphasis. “No one disturbed me this morning. To phrase it differently, I was alone in my laboratory without interruption from a few moments after 7:00 until a short time ago. Without interruption — and without witnesses. Not even Dr. Janney appeared in my work-shop, probably because of Mrs. Doorn’s accident and his other work which accumulated as a result of it. And Dr. Janney invariably visits the laboratory every morning... I believe,” he concluded thoughtfully, “that is all.”

Ellery continued to transfix him with his stare. Inspector Queen, watching them both unwinkingly, was forced to make the grudging inner admission that, despite Ellery’s outward savoir faire, he had never appeared more discomposed.

The old man scowled loyally. He began to feel the stirrings of a vague but tempestuous anger.

Ellery smiled. “Perfect, Dr. Kneisel. And since you seem to know exactly what I intend to question you about, suppose you answer my next query without my asking it at all!”

Kneisel stroked his frumpy beard speculatively. “Not such a difficult problem, Mr. — Queen, I think?... You would like to know the nature of the research Dr. Janney and I have been conducting. Am I right?”

“You are.”

“The advantages of a scientific mental training are innumerable, you see,” commented Kneisel, good-humoredly. Facing each other and smiling with evident pleasure, the two men seemed like old friends... “Very well. Dr. Janney and I have for two and a half years — but no; it will be two years and seven months next Friday — been working on the development of a metallic alloy.”

Ellery replied with perfect gravity, “Your intellectual clairvoyance, Doctor, has not been sufficiently clair — if I may commit the sin of solecism in a highly modified form... I want to know much more than that. I want to know what the exact nature of this alloy is. I want to know how much money has been expended in experiment. I want to know something of your background, and something of the circumstances under which you and Dr. Janney formed this heroic scientific coalition. I want to know why Mrs. Doorn decided to discontinue her contributions toward the furtherance of your work...” He paused, twisted his mouth wryly. “I also want to know who killed Mrs. Doorn, but that, I suppose...”

“Oh, it is not a futile question, sir — not at all,” replied Kneisel with a faint smile. “My scientific training has taught me that all the analyst really requires for the solution of a problem is, first, the painstaking assembly of all the phenomena; second, exhaustive patience; and third, the ability to comprehend the whole problem with a fresh and unbiased imagination... But that is not answering your questions.

“The exact nature of our alloy? I fear,” he said courteously, “that I must refuse to divulge it. In the first place, knowledge of this phenomena in the array of facts would not help you to a solution of the crime. In the second place, our work is a secret between Dr. Janney and me alone... I can say this, however: when we have completed our task to our satisfaction, we will have produced an alloy which will wipe steel off the face of the earth!”

In silence the District Attorney and his assistant exchanged glances, then turned back to regard the bearded little scientist with newly appraising eyes.

Ellery chuckled. “I won’t press you,” he said. “If you can replace steel commercially with a cheaper and superior alloy, you and Dr. Janney will become millionaires over night.”

“Exactly. That is the reason for the strongly built laboratory, the reënforced walls, the safe-doors, and all of the rest of our extraordinary precautions against curiosity or theft. I might say,” Kneisel continued with a trace of pride, “that our finished product will be considerably lighter, more tensile, more malleable, more durable and just as strong, besides being appreciably less expensive to manufacture.”

“You haven’t by any chance stumbled on the Philosophers’ Stone, have you?” murmured Ellery, with a perfect gravity.

Kneisel’s veiled gaze sharpened. “Do I look like a charlatan, Mr. Queen?” he asked simply. “Certainly Dr. Janney’s open faith in me and cooperation with me is a guarantee of my scientific integrity.

“I tell you,” and his voice rose slightly, “that we have perfected the building-material of the future! It will revolutionize the science of aeronautics. It will solve one of the big problems confronting the astrophysicists — an incredibly light metal building-material with the strength of steel. Man will bridge space, conquer the solar system. This alloy will be utilized in everything from pins and fountain-pens to super-skyscrapers... And,” he concluded, “it is almost an accomplished fact.”

There was a little silence. The words themselves seemed, in retrospect, utterly extravagant. And yet something in the sober matter-of-fact air of the little savant made them poignant possibilities.

Ellery seemed less impressed than the others. “I should heartily dislike placing myself in the same category with those myopic scoffers who martyrized Galileo and sneered at Pasteur, but as one analyst to another — I should like to be shown. Or words to that effect... The cost so far, Dr. Kneisel?”

“I do not know exactly, although I believe it is well over eighty thousand dollars. Dr. Janney attends to the finances.”

“Naïve little experiment,” murmured Ellery. “So simple... Well, sir, chromium, nickel, aluminum, carbon, molybdenum — surely these ores can’t possibly total such a huge sum unless you order the stuff by the carload. No, Doctor, you’ll have to enlighten me further.”

Kneisel permitted himself a discreet smile. “I see you are not unfamiliar with the experimental ores. You might have mentioned molybdenite, wulfenite, scheelite, molybdite and a few others from which the essential molybdenum is extracted. But I shan’t even admit that I am using molybdenum. I have tackled the problem from an entirely unorthodox angle...

“As to cost, however, you have overlooked some essential items. I refer to the installation of the laboratory, and the purchase of apparatus. Have you any idea of the cost of a special ventilation system, of smelting furnaces, of refining equipment — of turbines, electrolytic apparatus, cathode tubes and the like?”

“My apologies. I’m the veriest layman. Your background, Doctor?”

“Munich in Germany, the Sorbonne in France, M.I.T. in the States. Special laboratory and research work under Jublik of Vienna and the elder Charcot in Paris. Three years at the United States Bureau of Standards in the Department of Metallurgy, after I had obtained my American citizenship. Five years with one of the largest steel-manufacturing companies on the American continent. Interspersed with independent researches during which the idea I am now working on slowly germinated.”

“How did you and Janney meet?”

“We were brought together by a scientific colleague who was slightly in my confidence. I was poor. I required the aid of a man who could secure finances for my experiments as well as assist me in the technical end. And above all a man whom I could trust... Dr. Janney met all my requirements. He became enthusiastic. The rest you can infer.”

Ellery stirred lightly. “Why did Mrs. Doorn decide to stop financing your project?”

A thin white vertical line appeared between Kneisel’s eyes. “She was tired. Two weeks ago she summoned Dr. Janney and me to her home. The six months’ duration of our experiments, which we had originally promised, had stretched to two and a half years and we were still not finished. She had lost interest, she said. In perfect amiability she informed us of this, and nothing we could say would move her to change her decision.

“We left dispiritedly. There was still some money left. We decided to discontinue only when our money was used up, and until then work as if nothing had happened, without stint. In the meantime Dr. Janney would attempt to raise funds elsewhere.”

District Attorney Sampson cleared his throat with a brisk rasp. “When she told you this, did she also tell you that her lawyer was drawing up a new will?”

“Yes.”

Inspector Queen tapped the scientist’s knee. “To your knowledge, was this new will drawn up and signed?”

Kneisel shrugged. “I do not know. I sincerely hope not. It will simplify matters if the first will is still in force.”

Ellery said softly, “And aren’t you curious to know whether the second will was signed?”

“I never allow mundane considerations to interfere with my work.” Kneisel stroked his beard calmly. “I am something of a philosopher as well as a metallurgist. What will be, will be.”

Ellery unslung his length from the chair and got wearily to his feet. “You’re too good to be true, Doctor, really.” He ran his hand through his hair and stared down at Kneisel.

“Thank you, Mr. Queen.”

“And yet I feel that you’re not quite so unemotional as you pretend to be. For example!” Ellery loomed over the little man, resting his hand familiarly on the back of the chair. “I feel sure that, if a cardiometer were to be attached to your scientific carcass at this moment, Doctor, it would register an accelerated pulse-percussion at the following statement: Abigail Doorn was murdered before she could sign the second will...”

“On the contrary, Mr. Queen.” Kneisel’s white teeth glistened in his swarthy face. “I am not at all surprised, since both your method and your motive are so obvious. In fact, I feel morally certain that the innuendo is unworthy of your intellect... Is that all, sir?”

Ellery straightened suddenly. “No. Are you aware of the fact that Dr. Janney is slated for a personal slice of Mrs. Doorn’s estate?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then you may go.”

Kneisel slipped out of his chair and bowed to Ellery with continental grace. He turned to salute the Inspector, the District Attorney, Cronin and Velie, then imperturbably walked out of the Anteroom.

“And there,” groaned Ellery, sinking into the vacated chair, “but for the grace of God goes Ellery Queen... who, incidentally, confesses to having met his match.”

“Oh, tosh!” The Inspector sneezed on a pinch of snuff and irritably jumped up. “The man’s a human test-tube.”

“He’s a fish,” grunted Sampson.

Harper, the newspaperman, had been huddled in a chair at a far corner of the room, his hat pulled low over his eyes. Not once during the examination of Dr. Kneisel had he uttered a sound or shifted his gaze from the face of the scientist.

Now he rose and sauntered across the room. Ellery looked up and they regarded each other in silence.

“Well, old boy,” said Harper finally, “I think you’ve got a hot tip. You don’t mind my mixing metaphors?” He grinned. “A hot tip on a human iceberg.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, Pete.” Ellery smiled wanly as he stretched his legs. “Evidently you haven’t glossed over the scientific fact that eight-ninths of most icebergs are completely submerged...”

Chapter Thirteen Administration

Sergeant Velie’s bulky arm rested against the door-jamb as he conversed earnestly with an invisible henchman in the corridor.

Ellery Queen was sitting in a sort of concentrative stupor, communing, from the dark expression on his face, with bitter and unfruitful thoughts.

Huddled together, arms about each other, Inspector Queen, the District Attorney and Timothy Cronin were engaged in a summary discussion of the complex features of the case.

Only Pete Harper, head drooped on his breast, feet entwined about the rungs of his chair, seemed entirely at peace with himself and the world.

This was the vacuous and still-life scene upon which a corps of police photographers and fingerprint experts noisily intruded a few moments later.

The room suddenly filled with officials.

Sampson and Cronin took their overcoats and hats from the chair on which they had been loosely thrown, and stood aside.

The chief photographer muttered some excuse about “another job” and without further conversation the men from headquarters went to work.

They invaded the Amphitheater as well as the Anteroom and Anæsthesia Room; they thronged about the operating-table; two men used the Anteroom lift to descend into the basement for a series of photographs of the dead woman and her wound. Blue-white flashes and muffled explosions punctuated the bedlam all through the main floor of the Hospital. The acrid odor of flashlight powder mingled with the sharp medicinal odor of the halls and rooms in an overpowering stench.

Ellery, chained by his thoughts, Prometheus-like, to the Caucasus of his chair, sat in the vortex of the confusion, barely conscious of sights, sounds and smells...

The Inspector sent a bluecoat off with a word, and almost immediately the officer returned with a youngish, sandy-haired man of serious mien.

“Here he is, Chief.”

“You’re James Paradise, Superintendent of the Hospital?” demanded the Inspector.

The white-garbed man nodded, gulping. His eyes were liquid, giving him a dreamy, tearful look. The tip of his nose was unnaturally bulbous, the nostrils angular and almost without normal convolutions. He had huge red ears.

The elfin face was not unprepossessing. The man seemed too simple to be insincere, too frightened to be untruthful.

“M-m-my wife...” he began to stutter. He was deathly pale, except for the flaming shells of his ears.

“Hey? What’s that?” growled the Inspector.

The Superintendent managed a sickly grin. “My wife Charlotte,” he whispered. “She’s always having visions. She told me this morning that she’d had a warning during the night — an inner voice — that said, plain as fate, ‘There’s going to be trouble to-day!’ Isn’t that funny? We—”

“Very funny, certainly.” The Inspector looked annoyed. “See here, Paradise, you helped us a lot this morning and you don’t seem as dumb as you look. We’re busy and I want quick answers to quick questions.

“Your private office is directly opposite the East Corridor, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Were you in your office all morning?”

“Yes, sir. I’m busiest mornings. I didn’t leave my desk until Dr. Minchen came running—”

“I know. I understand that your chair and desk face your office door obliquely. Was the door open at any time during the morning?”

“Well — half-open.”

“Can you see — did you see — the telephone-booth through the half-open door?”

“No, sir.”

“Too bad, too bad,” muttered the Inspector. He bit his mustache vexatiously. “Well, then — did a doctor pass your line of vision between 10:30 and 10:45?”

Paradise scratched the bulb of his nose reflectively. “I... don’t... know. I was so busy...” His eyes filled with tears. The Inspector retreated in embarrassment, “And doctors keep passing up and down the corridors all day...”

“Oh, very well. Don’t cry, man, for heaven’s sake!” The old man turned away. “Thomas! All the doors manned? Everything all right so far — no attempts to break out?”

“Nothing stirring, Inspector. And the boys are on their toes,” rumbled the giant. He glowered at the shrinking figure of the Superintendent.

Inspector Queen beckoned imperiously to Paradise. “I want you to keep your eyes open,” he snapped. “Work right along with my men: The Hospital will be under guard continuously until we discover the murderer of Mrs. Doorn. Give us your complete cooperation and I’ll see you won’t suffer for it. Understand?”

“Y-y-yes, but—” Paradise’s ears flamed dangerously. “I... I... I’ve never had a murder in my Hospital yet, Inspector... I hope you — your men will not disrupt my organization—”

“Nothing of the kind. Beat it now!” The Inspector slapped Paradise’s quaking back, not without friendliness, and shoved him toward the door. “Off with you!”

The Superintendent disappeared.

“I’ll be with you in a moment, Henry,” said the Inspector. Sampson nodded patiently. “Now, Thomas,” went on the old man to Sergeant Velie, “you’re to put the finishing-touches on things down here. I want the theater and this room and the Anæsthesia Room next door guarded. No one is to be allowed inside; no one at all.

“And while you’re at it, you might try to trace the back-trail of the murderer from the Anæsthesia Room down the corridor, and see if you can’t find some one who saw him. He probably kept up that limp business all the way down, wherever he went.

“And then I want you to take the names and addresses of every one — nurses, doctors, internes, outsiders, and all the rest. And one thing more...”

Sampson put in quickly, “The histories, Q.?”

“Yes. Listen, Thomas. Put a squad of men to work going over the private history of every person, without exception, that we’ve encountered so far. Just a check-up, that’s all. Kneisel, Janney, Sarah Fuller, doctors, nurses — everybody you have any record of. Don’t bother to give me a long report unless you run across something unusual. What I’m interested in is facts which don’t corroborate or are missing from the testimony already given.”

“Sure thing. Guards, murderer’s getaway, names and addresses, morgue stuff. I got you,” replied Velie, scribbling in his notebook. “By the way, Inspector, Big Mike is still under the influence of ether. Won’t be able to talk for hours yet. Some of the boys are watching upstairs.”

“Fine, fine! On the job, Thomas.” The Inspector ran through the Amphitheater door, barked rapid instructions to detectives and policemen, and returned at once.

“All set, Henry.” He reached for his coat.

“Dismissing them?” The District Attorney sighed and jammed his hat over his ears. Harper and Cronin moved toward the door.

“Might as well. We’ve done all we can down here for the present. Let’s... Ellery — wake up!”

His father’s voice penetrated dimly into the fog of Ellery’s thoughts. Not once had he looked up or lost his frown during the swirling activity of the preceding few minutes. Now he raised his head and saw the Inspector, Sampson, Cronin and Harper ready to leave.

“Oh... All the garbage incinerated?” He stretched mightily. The wrinkles vanished from his forehead.

“Yes, come on, Ellery. We’re going to the Doorn place to clean up,” said the old man testily. “Don’t dawdle, son — there’s too much to be done.”

“Where’s my coat? Here, somebody — my things are in Dr. Minchen’s office.” He rose to his full height. A policeman was dispatched on the errand.

Ellery did not speak again until the heavy black ulster was on his back. He tucked his stick under one arm and twisted the brim of his hat thoughtfully between his long fingers.

“Do you know,” he murmured, as they left the Anteroom and watched a bluecoat set his back against the door, “Abigail Doorn should have emulated the Emperor Adrian. Remember what he had inscribed on his tomb?” As they passed out of the Anæsthesia Room another man took his stand at the door. “‘A multitude of physicians have destroyed me...’”

The Inspector froze in his tracks. “Ellery! You don’t mean—”

Ellery’s stick described a short arc and struck the marble floor resoundingly. “Oh, it’s not an accusation,” he said gently. “It’s an epitaph.”

Chapter Fourteen Adoration

“Phil...”

“I’m sorry, Hulda. When I came here an hour ago from the Hospital, you were resting, Bristol said, and I knew Edith Dunning was with you, and Hendrik... I didn’t want to disturb you. And I had to go. Some business at the office — very urgent business... But now I’m here, Hulda, and — Hulda—”

“I’m so tired.”

“I know, dear, I know. Hulda — how can I say it? — Hulda, I...”

“Phil. Please.”

“I don’t know what to say, or how to say it. Dearest. That means something, doesn’t it? Darling. You know how I feel. Toward you. But the world — the newspapers — you know too what they’d say if you — if we...”

“Phil! Do you think that would make any difference to me?”

“They’d say I was marrying Abby Doorn’s millions!”

“I don’t want to discuss marriage. Oh, how can you even think...”

“But, Hulda. Hulda! Oh, darling. I’m a beast to make you cry...”

Chapter Fifteen Complication

The police car rolled to the curb and stopped before the massive iron gates of the Doorn estate. Mansion and grounds covered the entire Fifth Avenue frontage between two streets in the Sixties. A high stone wall, weather-beaten and moss-grown, surrounded the house and gardens like an old granite cloak. It concealed the lower floors of the structure nestled deeply beyond the lawns.

One might, by stopping his ears to the automotive sounds of the flanking avenues, imagine himself in an old-world realm of châteaus and parks, of marble garden figures, stone benches and winding walks.

Across the street lay Central Park. Up Fifth Avenue the white dome and severe walls of the Metropolitan Museum gleamed. Beyond the bare branches of the park’s trees, in the crystal air, the tiny turrets and box-like façades of Central Park West could be seen, small and delicate as toys.

Inspector Queen, District Attorney Sampson and Ellery Queen left three smoking detectives in the police car and tramped unhurriedly through the gates, along the stone approach, toiling up the steep ramp. It led to a portico, a classical structure supported by fluted marble columns.

A lanky old man in livery opened the outer door. Inspector Queen brushed him aside and found himself in a vaulted room of vast dimensions. “Mr. Doorn,” he said with a snarl. “And don’t stop to ask me questions.”

The butler opened his mouth to protest, hesitated. “But who shall I say is—?”

“Inspector Queen. Mr. Queen. District Attorney Sampson.”

“Yes, sir!... If you’ll step this way, gentlemen.” They followed him through rich rooms, tapestried halls. He stopped at a double-door, pushed them apart.

“If you will please wait with the other gentleman...” He bowed and slowly walked off in the direction from which they had come.

“The other gentleman, hey?” muttered the Inspector. “Who... why, Harper!”

They stared across the brown somber room to a corner, where Pete Harper, ensconced in the leathery depths of a club-chair, grinned up at them.

“Say,” demanded the Inspector, “I thought you said you were going back to your paper. Trying to steal a march on us?”

“Fortunes of war, Inspector.” The old reporter waved gayly. “Tried to see Hendrik the playboy, but couldn’t — so I waited for you. Sit down, fellers.”

Ellery wandered thoughtfully about, examining the library. On all the walls, from floor to the lofty old-fashioned ceiling, were books — thousands of them. Reverently he ran his eye over some titles. The reverence banished and a peculiar smile appeared on his face as he plucked one volume from its shelf. It was a heavy, richly bound tome in golden calfskin. He flipped its pages experimentally. The sheets fell together, in sections.

“Well,” he commented dryly, “we, seem to have encountered another secret vice of our millionaires. Lovely books with neither fathers nor mothers.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sampson, who was following with curiosity.

“Here’s a copy of Voltaire in a perfectly magnificent format, specially designed, specially printed, specially bound — and specially unread. Poor Arouet! The leaves aren’t even cut. I’ll wager ninety-eight per cent of these volumes haven’t been referred to since they were purchased.”

The Inspector had sunk, groaning, into a Morris chair. “I wish that fat old fool...”

The fat old fool was genie to the wish: he appeared suddenly between the double-door in the bulky flesh, a wide nervous smile creasing his cheeks.

“Wery nice!” he squeaked. “Gladt to see you, gentlemans. Sidt down, sidt down!”

He oozed forward, like a seal.

The District Attorney obeyed slowly, regarding Abigail Doorn’s brother with a scowl of disgust. Ellery paid not the least attention to their host; he kept wandering about the room, looking at the books.

Hendrik Doorn collapsed on a broad divan and folded his fat hands moistly together. His smile vanished as he caught sight of the sprawling figure of Harper across the room.

“Iss that the reporter?” he shrilled. “I will nodt speak before a reporter, Inspector. Raus, you!”

“Raus yourself,” said Harper. He continued soothingly, “Now, keep your shirt on, Mr. Doorn. I’m not here as a newspaperman — am I, Mr. Sampson? The District Attorney will tell you, Mr. Doorn. I’m just helping along with the case. Friendly, sort of.”

“Harper’s all right, Mr. Doorn,” said the District Attorney sharply. “You can speak as freely before him as before us.”[2]

“Well...” Doorn eyed the reporter askance. “And he wouldn’t prindt anythings I say nodt to?”

“Who... me?” Harper looked scandalized. “Listen, Mr. Doorn, you’re insulting me. I’m the original clam.”

“You told us at the Hospital,” interrupted the Inspector, “about a story. You hinted it was as much as your life is worth to breathe a word about it. Well, sir?”

Doorn settled himself with painful fussiness on the protesting divan. He said carefully, not looking up, “Budt first you gentlemans must promise me somethings.” He lowered his voice. “Secrecy!” He regarded them quickly, in turn, like an arch-conspirator.

Inspector Queen closed his eyes. He dipped his fingers into the old brown snuff-box which was his constant companion. He seemed to have lost his ill-temper. “Are you making us a proposition?” he murmured. “A pact with the police, eh? Well, Mr. Doorn,” he opened his eyes and sat erect suddenly, “you’ll tell us that story and you’ll do it without bargains, too.”

Doorn wagged his bald head cunningly. “Ah, budt no,” he said in his thin falsetto. “You cannodt intimidate me, Mynheer Inspektor. You promise, I speak. Otherwise — no.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said the Inspector suddenly. “You’re evidently afraid for your hide, Mr. Doorn. Suppose we assure you that, if you need protection, we’ll give it to you.”

“You will give me police, detectives?” demanded Doorn eagerly.

“If your safety demands it, yes.”

“Wery well.” Doorn leaned forward, began to whisper rapidly. “I am in debt to — to a bloodt-sucker. For years I have been borrowing money from him. Large sums!”

“Here, here!” put in Inspector Queen. “This requires a little explaining. I’ve been given to understand that you have a tidy little income.”

The fat man brushed the remark aside with a ponderous wave of his hand. “Nothings. Nothings. I play at cardts, horses. I am — what you call — a spordtsman. My luck has been badt — wery badt. So! This man — he lendts me the money. Then he says, ‘I want back my money.’ And I cannodt pay. I talk, and he lendts me more. I give I.O.U.’s. How much — Gott! One hundred and ten thousands of dollars, gentlemans!”

Sampson whistled. Harper’s eyes flamed. The Inspector’s expression grew grim. “What security did you offer?” he asked. “After all, Mr. Doorn, you are not independently wealthy, as all the world knows.”

Doorn’s eyes narrowed. “Securidty? The besdt in the worldt!” He smirked all over his fat face. “My sister’s fordtune!”

“Do you mean,” demanded Sampson, “that Mrs. Doorn endorsed your I.O.U.’s, okayed your notes?”

“Oh, no!” He gasped audibly. “Budt as the brother of Abigail Doorn, I wass naturally known as the heir to greadt wealth. My sister knew nothings of this affair.”

“Isn’t that interesting,” murmured the Inspector. “Shylock loans you the money knowing that when Abby Doorn died you’d come into most of the fortune. A pretty arrangement, Mr. Doorn!”

Doorn’s lips hung loose and wet. He looked frightened.

“Well, well!” exclaimed the Inspector. “What’s the point of all this? Let’s have it!”

“The poindt iss this...” Doorn’s jowls sagged as his body inclined toward them. “When the years passed and Abigail did nodt die, and consequently I could nodt repay — he said she must be killed!”

He stopped dramatically. The Inspector and Sampson looked at each other. Ellery had paused in the act of opening a little book; he stared at Doorn.

“Now that’s a story, isn’t it?” muttered Inspector Queen. “Who is this money-lender? Banker? Broker?”

Doorn blanched. He peered out of his piggish eyes at all corners of the room, uneasily. It was apparent that his trepidation was very real. When he spoke, it was in a heavy whisper.

“Michael Cudtahy...”

“Big Mike!” the Inspector and Sampson exclaimed together. The old man leaped to his feet and began to trot up and down the thick-piled rug. “Big Mike, by juniper! And in the Hospital, too...”

“Mr. Cudahy,” said Ellery in cool accents, “has the perfect alibi, dad. At the instant Abigail Doorn was having her throat constricted, he was being put to sleep by a doctor and two nurses.” He turned back to the book-shelves.

“Sure he’d have an alibi,” chuckled Harper suddenly. “That guy is an eel. Smooth... smooth!”

“Oh, it couldn’t have been Cudahy,” muttered the Inspector.

“But it could have been one of his three strong-arm boys,” put in the District Attorney animatedly.

The Inspector said nothing. He looked dissatisfied. “I don’t see it,” he mumbled. “This crime is too refined, too polished. Not direct enough for Little Willie, Snapper, or Joe Gecko.”

“Yes, but with Cudahy’s brain directing it...” argued Sampson.

“Now, now,” said Ellery from his corner. “Don’t be hasty, any of you gentlemen. Old Publius Syrus knew what he was talking about when he said: ‘We ought to weigh well what we can only once decide.’ You can’t afford to make a mistake in calling the turn, dad.”

The fat man seemed singularly pleased at the stir he had created. Although his eyes were carefully screwed up in scores of tiny crinkles, he was smirking. “At first Cudtahy said I should do it. Budt,” virtuously, “it wass an infamous suggestion. I threatened to go to the police. What? I said. My flesh and blood... He laughed and said he midght do it. I said, ‘You are nodt serious, Mike?’ He said, ‘That iss my business. Budt you are to keep your mouth shudt, you understand?’ What could I do? He — he would have killed me...”

“When did this conversation take place?” demanded Queen.

“Last September.”

“Has Cudahy ever discussed it since?”

“No.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Three weeks ago... There iss little else.” Doorn was perspiring unpleasantly; his little eyes, unsettled, roved from face to face. “When I saw this morning that my sister she wass dead, murdered — what else could I think budt that Cudtahy... You see? Now I will have to — I mean I will be able to pay my debt to him. That iss what he wants.”

Sampson shook his head worriedly. “Cudahy’s mouthpiece would riddle your story to bits, Mr. Doorn. Have you any witnesses to his threat? I thought not. No, I’m afraid we have nothing on which to hold Big Mike. Of course, we can keep our fingers on his three thugs, but not for long unless definite evidence against them is found.”

“They’ll try to spring ’em to-day,” said the Inspector grimly. “But those boys will stay in our hands. I’ll promise you that, Henry... Only, it doesn’t ring true. Snapper’s the only one of the three who is small enough to have impersonated Janney, and somehow...”

“I tell you this story,” interposed Doorn in an eager squeak, “because of my sister.” His brow darkened. “Vengeance! The murderer will pay the penalty!” He sat erect, like a fattened rooster.

Harper placed the tips of his tobacco-stained fingers together and tapped them against each other in silent applause; Ellery caught the movement and smiled.

Sampson said, “It seems to me, Mr. Doorn, that you have very little to fear from Cudahy or his mob.”

“You think so?”

“I’m positive. You’re worth much more to Cudahy alive than dead. If something happened to you, he wouldn’t stand a chance of collecting — not Cudahy, on I.O.U.’s. No, sir! His best bet is to let you alone, have the estate settled, and then bully you into paying him what you borrowed.”

“I suppose,” queried the Inspector sardonically, “you’re paying regular rates of interest?”

Doorn groaned. “Fifteen per cent...” There was silence as he swabbed the perspiration from his face. “You won’dt tell?” His jowls quivered ludicrously.

“Usury...” The Inspector mused. “We’ll treat your story confidentially, Mr. Doorn, I can promise you that. And you’ll have ample protection from Cudahy.”

“Thank you, thank you!”

“Now, suppose you give us an account of your own movements this morning?” ventured the Inspector casually.

“My movements?” Doorn stared with goggle-eyes. “Budt surely you don’t... Ha! So. It iss a matter of form, no? I heard by the telephone of my sister’s fall. The Hospital called. I wass still in bedt. Hulda and Sarah left before me. I arrived at the Hospital aboudt 10:00 o’clock. I wass trying to findt Dr. Janney. Budt I could nodt, and aboudt five minutes before the operation I came to the Waidting Room where wass Hulda and young Morehouse, the lawyer.”

“Just wandered about, eh?” The Inspector looked glum. He gnawed his mustache. Ellery, striding into the group, smiled down at Hendrik Doorn.

“Mrs. Doorn,” he said, “was a widow. How is it, then, that she was known as ‘Mrs. Doorn’? Isn’t the family name Doorn? Or did she marry a distant cousin of the same name?”

“Wery goodt,” piped the fat man. “You see, Mr. Queen, Abigail married Charles Van der Donk, budt when he died she took back her maiden name and added the ‘Mrs.’ for her dignity. She was very proud of the Doorn name.”

“I can substantiate that,” put in Harper lazily, “because I took a quick look at the back-files before I dashed down to the Hospital this morning.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it in the least.” Ellery polished his glasses with vigor. “I, was just curious. And how about your obligations to Michael Cudahy, Mr. Doorn? You mentioned cards, horses. How about the larger and more exciting game? The ladies, to be literal.”

“Hein?” Doorn’s face once more assumed a glistening aspect as the perspiration beaded it. “Why... ah—”

“Attention!” said Ellery sharply. “Answer my question, Mr. Doorn. Are there any women on your list to whom you still owe money? Note that I am the perfect gentleman and omit mentioning the reason.”

Doorn licked his blubbery lips. “No. I... I am all paid up.”

“Danken sie!”

The Inspector was regarding his son keenly. Ellery’s head jerked the merest bit. The Inspector rose and, with the utmost casualness, put his hand on Doorn’s huge soft arm.

“I think that will be enough for the present, Mr. Doorn. Thanks, and don’t worry about Cudahy.” Doorn struggled to his feet, wiping his face. “By the way, we should like to see Miss Hulda for a moment. On the way up, will you—”

“Yes. Yes. Goodt-by.”

Doorn waddled quickly out of the room.

They looked at each other. Inspector Queen located a telephone on a desk and called Police Headquarters. It was while he conversed with a deputy inspector that Ellery murmured, apropos of nothing, “Did it strike you that friend Doorn, the living Colossus of Rhodes, has upset the dictates of his own slimy nature by spilling his story?”

“Sure it has,” drawled Harper. “The cush.”

“You mean if Cudahy were convicted of Abigail Doorn’s murder he wouldn’t...” Sampson knit his brows.

“Exactly,” said Ellery. “The mammoth wouldn’t have to pay back what he owes. Perhaps that accounts for his anxiety to cast suspicion on Cudahy...”

And then Hulda Doorn entered the library leaning on Philip Morehouse’s arm.

With a glum and watchful young Morehouse hovering about her, Hulda Doorn soon revealed that behind the thick old walls of the rococo Doorn chambers a bitter feud had grown up. She revealed it only after the combined cross-questions of the Inspector and the District Attorney made excuses and subterfuge no longer possible.

Morehouse stood behind her, his crisp features dark with irritation.

Abigail Doorn and Sarah Fuller... two old women, snapping at each other behind closed doors, wrangling like fishwives over no one knew what. Hulda did not know. For weeks the two women, septuagenarian and spinster faded prematurely by an obsession, would live side by side without speaking to each other. For months they would confer only on essentials, and then in monosyllables. For years they had not had a kind word for each other. And yet weeks and months and years passed and Sarah Fuller remained in the service of Abigail Doorn.

“Was there ever any question of Mrs. Doorn discharging her?”

The girl shook her head mechanically. “Oh, mother would be angry and sometimes say she was through with Sarah, but we all knew it was just talk... I used to ask mother why she and Sarah didn’t get along. She... she used to look strange and say it was just my fancy, and that a woman in her position couldn’t very well be intimate with even a high grade of servant. But that... that wasn’t like mother either. I—”

“I told you about all this,” snapped Morehouse. “Why do you torture—”

They paid, no attention to him... Domestic quarrels, ventured Hulda finally. Surely it could have been nothing more serious. Otherwise why—

The Inspector suddenly dropped the matter.

Questioned as to her movements of the morning, Hulda corroborated Sarah Fuller’s recital in the Anteroom of the Hospital.

“You say,” pursued the Inspector, “that Miss Fuller left you in the Waiting Room and wandered off somewhere, and that Mr. Morehouse came to you there shortly after Miss Fuller left... Was Mr. Morehouse with you all the time from then until he left to witness the operation?”

Hulda pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Yes. Oh, except for about ten minutes or so, I think. I asked Philip if he would please find Dr. Janney and bring back some word to me about mother. Sarah had gone and not returned. Philip came back later saying he couldn’t find the doctor. Isn’t that so, Phil? I... I’m not very clear about... about...”

Morehouse said quickly, “Yes. Yes. Of course.”

“And at what time, Miss Doorn,” asked the Inspector delicately, “did Mr. Morehouse return to you?”

“Oh, I don’t remember. What time was it, Phil?”

Morehouse bit his lip. “I should say — it must have been 10:40, because I left you again almost immediately to go to the Amphitheater gallery, and the operation — the operation was begun in a very short while.”

“I see.” The Inspector rose. “I believe that’s all.”

Ellery said smoothly, “Is Miss Dunning in the house, Miss Doorn? I should like to speak with her.”

“She’s gone.” Hulda closed her eyes wearily; her soft lips looked parched, fevered. “She was so sweet, coming here with me. But she had to go back to the Hospital. She has charge of the Social Service Department there, you know.”

“By the way, Miss Doorn.” The District Attorney was smiling. “I’m sure you will want to give the police every possible assistance... It will be necessary to examine Mrs. Doorn’s private papers for a possible clew.”

The girl nodded; a spasm of horror twitched her white features. “Yes. Yes; I just — can’t believe...”

Morehouse said angrily, “There’s nothing in the house here that can help you. I have all her business papers and those things. Why don’t you leave...”

Morehouse bent over Hulda. She looked up at him.

They left the room together, quickly.

The old butler was summoned. He had a wooden face but extraordinarily bright little eyes.

“Your name is Bristol?” said the Inspector briskly.

“Yes, sir. Harry Bristol.”

“You realize that I expect you to tell the exact truth?”

The man blinked. “Oh, yes, sir!”

“Very well, then.” The Inspector tapped Bristol’s quiet livery with a punctuating forefinger. “Mrs. Doorn and Sarah Fuller quarreled frequently?”

“I... well, sir...”

“Didn’t they?”

“Well... Yes, sir.”

“What about?”

A helpless look crept into the man’s eyes. “I don’t know, sir. They were always arguing. We heard them sometimes. But we never knew the reason. Just — they were just unpleasant to each other.”

“And you’re sure no one belowstairs knew why?”

“No, sir. They were always careful, it seemed to me, not to quarrel before the help, sir. Always in Mrs. Doorn’s rooms, or in Miss Fuller’s.”

“How long have you been serving here?”

“Twelve years, sir.”

“That’s all.”

Bristol bowed and walked sedately out of the library.

They rose.

“How about this Fuller woman again, Inspector?” said Harper. “Seems to me she might be put on the grill.”

Ellery shook his head violently. “Let her alone. She won’t run away. Pete, I’m surprised at you. We’re not dealing with a thug or a normal citizen. She’s a mental case.”

They left the house.

Ellery inhaled deeply of the fresh cold January air. He was accompanied by Harper. The Inspector and Sampson preceded them at a crisper pace, striding toward the Fifth Avenue gate.

“What do you think Pete?”

The reporter grinned. “Hooey, the whole set-up,” he said. “Can’t see any real lead. Everybody had a chance to pull the trick and a lot of ’em had motive.”

“Anything else?”

“If I were the Inspector,” continued Harper, kicking a pebble out of the path, “I’d dig in a little and follow the Wall Street angle. Old Abby ruined many and many a budding Rockefeller. Maybe some one in the Hospital this morning had a revenge-financial motive...”

Ellery smiled. “Dad’s not exactly a novice at this game, Pete. He has that line out already... You might be interested in knowing that I’ve already made certain eliminations...”

“Eliminations!” Harper halted. “Say, look here, old man, give me a break, will you? What is it, this Fuller-Doorn business?”

Ellery shook his head. The smile vanished; his face clouded over. “There’s something strange there. Two old viragoes following Napoleon’s advice. ‘People should wash their linen in private.’ It’s unnatural, Pete.”

“You think there’s a deep underlying secret, huh?”

“I’m sure of it. It’s perfectly apparent that this Fuller woman shares it, and that somehow it’s shameful... By heaven, it worries me!”

The four men climbed into the police car. It sped away, leaving its former occupants, three detectives, on the sidewalk. They sauntered through the gate and up the walk.

At the same instant Philip Morehouse emerged from the front door, looked about with peculiar caution, and stopped dead as he caught sight of the approaching trio of plain-clothesmen.

Then he buttoned his overcoat tightly up to his chin and ran down the steps. He brushed by the detectives with a muttered apology and hurried toward the gate. They stared after him.

Morehouse reached the pavement, hesitated, then struck out with long strides to the left, in the downtown direction. He did not look back.

The three detectives parted at the portico. One doubled on his tracks and slouched after Morehouse. The second disappeared into a patch of shrubbery near the main house. The third clambered up the steps and knocked thunderously on the front door.

Chapter Sixteen Alienation

District attorney Sampson urged speed; he was overdue at his office. Harper was dropped off on the West Side to dash for a telephone. The police car screamed on its way through the dense midafternoon traffic.

In the lurching vehicle Inspector Queen glumly counted off on his fingers the details which he must supervise when he reached the big stone building on Centre Street... The search for Janney’s mysterious visitor; the investigation of the impostor’s clothes in an endeavor to trace their real ownership; the hunt for the hardware or department store which had sold the strangling picture-wire; the gathering into a smoother fabric of the dark dangling threads.

“Most of ’em hopeless,” shouted the old man above the roar of the motor and the shriek of the siren.

The car stopped briefly at the curb outside the Dutch Memorial Hospital to deposit Ellery on the sidewalk; it immediately picked up speed and disappeared in the downtown traffic.

For the second time that day Ellery Queen found himself mounting the steps of the Hospital, and for the second time alone.

Isaac Cobb was on duty in the vestibule, talking with a policeman. Opposite the main elevator Ellery found Dr. Minchen.

He glanced up the corridors. At the entrance to the Anæsthesia Room stood the detective who had been left there an hour before. Bluecoats sat chatting in the main Waiting Room. Three men lugging bulky photographic equipment tramped in his direction from a corridor to the right.

Ellery and Dr. Minchen strolled to the left and turned into the East Corridor. They passed the telephone booth in which the discarded clothing had been found. The booth was sealed with tape. Several feet farther up the corridor, to the left as they proceeded toward the North Corridor, there was a closed door.

Ellery halted. “This is the outer door to that Anteroom lift, isn’t it, John?”

“Yes. There’s a double door here,” replied Minchen drearily. “The lift can be entered either through the corridor here or through the Anteroom. The corridor door is used when the patient to be operated comes from a ward on this floor. Eliminates having to cart ’em all the way round into the South Corridor.”

“Smart,” commented Ellery. “Like everything else around here. And I see our good Sergeant has had the door taped up.”

A moment later, in Minchen’s office, Ellery said abruptly, “Tell me a little about Janney’s relations with the rest of the staff. I’m anxious to discover how people here regard him.”

“Janney? He’s not an easy man to get along with, of course. But then he’s given healthy respect because of his position and reputation in surgery. It makes a difference, Ellery.”

“You would say,” demanded Ellery, “that Janney has no enemies in the Hospital?”

“Enemies? Hardly. Unless there’s a personal undercurrent outside my ken.” Minchen pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, there’s one individual in the place who’s been rather at dagger-points with the old man...”

“Really! Who?”

“Dr. Pennini. Head — or rather former Head of the Obstetrical Department.”

“Why ‘former’? Is Pennini leaving — resigned?”

“Oh, no. There was a change in administration recently and Dr. Pennini was demoted to Assistant Head. Janney was, nominally at least, put in charge of the Obstetrical Department.”

“But why?”

Minchen grimaced. “No fault of Dr. Pennini’s. Just another manifestation of the deceased’s affection for Janney.”

A shadow crossed Ellery’s face. “I see. Dagger-points, eh? Just a case of petty professional jealousy. Well...”

“Not petty, Ellery. You don’t know Dr. Pennini, or you wouldn’t say that. Latin blood, fiery, the vengeful type, she’s certainly far from—”

“What’s that?”

Minchen seemed surprised. “I said she was the vengeful type. Why?”

Ellery lit a cigarette with elaborate ceremony. “Naturally. Stupid of me. You didn’t mention... I’d like to see this Dr. Pennini of yours, John.”

“Of course.” Minchen telephoned. “Dr. Pennini? John Minchen speaking. Glad I found you so easily. You usually gad about so... Can you come to my office for just a moment, Doctor?... No, nothing, nothing important. An introduction, a few questions Yes. Please.”

Ellery regarded his fingernails until there was a knock on the door. Both men rose and Minchen said clearly, “Come!” The door opened to admit a stocky, white-garbed woman of nervous movements.

“Dr. Pennini, allow me to present Mr. Ellery Queen. Mr. Queen is helping with the investigation of Mrs. Doorn’s murder, you know.”

“Indeed.” Her voice was rich, throaty, almost masculine. Motioning imperiously toward their chairs, she sat down.

She was a striking woman. Her skin was olivaceous; the faintest smudge of hair appeared above her upper lip. Keen black eyes flashed in a regular-featured face. Her jet hair, set off at one side by a thick white streak, was parted severely in the center of her scalp. Her age was elusive; she might have been thirty-five or fifty.

“I understand, Doctor,” began Ellery in his mildest voice, “that you have been with the Dutch Memorial Hospital for a good many years.”

“Very true. Let me have a cigarette.” She looked amused. Ellery offered his gold-chased case, gravely held a match to the tip of the cigarette. She puffed deeply and relaxed, eying him with open curiosity. “You know,” he said, “we’re up against a stone wall in this investigation of Mrs. Doorn’s murder. The thing seems utterly inexplicable. I’m just asking questions of anybody and everybody... How well did you know Mrs. Doorn?”

“Why?” Dr. Pennini’s black eyes twinkled. “Do you suspect me of her murder?”

“My dear Doctor...”

“You listen to me, Mr. Ellery Queen.” She set her full red lips firmly. “I didn’t know Mrs. Doorn well. I know nothing of her murder. You’re wasting your time if you think I do. Now does that satisfy you?”

“How could it?” murmured Ellery ruefully. Nevertheless his eyes narrowed. “And I shouldn’t jump at conclusions so. The reason I asked you how well you knew Mrs. Doorn is this — if you did know her well you might be in a position to name possible enemies. Can you?”

“I’m sorry. I cannot.”

“Dr. Pennini, let’s stop fencing. I am going to be very frank.” He closed his eyes and rested his neck on the back of his chair. “Did you or did you not” — he snapped bolt upright and fixed her with his eyes — “utter threats at Mrs. Doorn in the presence of witnesses?”

She stared at him too amazed, from her look of astonishment, to be angry. Minchen put up a protesting hand and muttered something apologetic; he was regarding Ellery with the utmost consternation.

“Did you?” Ellery’s tone was flat, stern. “In this very building?”

“Utterly preposterous.” She laughed without amusement, throwing her head back defiantly. “Who told you that cock-and-bull story? I couldn’t possibly have threatened the old lady. I hardly knew her. I never made remarks about her or any one. That is, I—” She stopped suddenly in confusion, flashed a look at Dr. Minchen.

“That is... what?” prompted Ellery. He had lost his severity and was smiling.

“Well — you see — I did make derogatory remarks about Dr. Janney some time ago,” she explained stiffly, “but they weren’t threats, and they certainly weren’t directed against Mrs. Doorn. I can’t see, anyway—”

“Good!” Ellery beamed. “It was Dr. Janney, not Mrs. Doorn. Very well, Dr. Pennini. What have you against Janney?”

“Nothing terribly personal. I suppose you’ve heard” — she glanced sidewise at Dr. Minchen once more; he flushed and avoided her eyes — “that I was demoted through the interference of Mrs. Doorn from the position of Head of the Obstetrical Department. I was naturally resentful, and I am still resentful. I feel that it was Dr. Janney’s propaganda in the ear of the old lady which was responsible. In the heat of the moment I suppose I said some nasty things, and Dr. Minchen and a few others heard me. But what all this has to do with—”

“Very natural, very natural,” said Ellery sympathetically. “I quite understand.” She sniffed. “Now, Doctor, a little routine matter... Please account to me for your movements in the Hospital this morning.”

“My dear sir,” she returned coldly, “you’re so obvious! I’ve nothing at all to conceal. I had an early confinement this morning, operating at eight o’clock. Twins, if it interests you. Caesarian, and one died. Mother will probably go soon, too... I had breakfast and then made my regular rounds in the Maternity Ward. Dr. Janney, you know,” she said with sarcasm, “doesn’t bother with routine. His title is purely honorary. I visited about thirty-five patients and an army of squealing brats. I was on the go most of the morning.”

“And you weren’t in one place long enough to provide you with an alibi.”

“If I had needed an alibi I might have been careful to provide myself with one,” she retorted.

“Not in a certain eventuality,” murmured Ellery. “Did you leave the building at all up to noon?”

“No.”

“So helpful, Doctor... And you can’t offer a plausible explanation of this hideous business?”

“No again.”

“You’re positive?”

“If I could, I should.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” Ellery rose. “Thank you.”

Dr. Minchen got to his feet awkwardly and they stood silently until the door slammed shut behind the woman. Minchen sank back into his swivel-chair and grinned feebly. “Quite a woman, isn’t she?”

“Quite!” Ellery lit another cigarette. “By the way, John, do you know if Edith Dunning is in the Hospital? I haven’t talked with her since she left this morning to take Hulda Doorn home.”

“See in a moment.” Minchen busied himself with his telephone. “She isn’t in. Went out on a Service call not long ago.”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Ellery inhaled hugely. “Interesting woman...” He expelled a nimbus of smoke. “Come to think of it, John — Euripides wasn’t so far wrong when he said, ‘I hate a learned woman.’ And don’t think, either, that the Grecian remark was so unallied to that classic statement of Byron’s...”[3]

“In heaven’s name,” groaned Minchen, “of which one are you talking — Miss Dunning or Dr. Pennini?”

“That doesn’t matter either.” Ellery reached for his coat, sighing.

Chapter Seventeen Mystification

The peculiar relationship between Inspector Queen and his son — comradely rather than paternal-filial — was never more marked than at meal-times. The hour of sustenance, whether breakfast or dinner, was a period of jest, of reminiscence, of lively and good-natured chaffing. With young Djuna serving, the fire crackling, the wind howling through the canyons of West 87th Street and rattling the window panes, the Queens-at-home-of-a-wintry-evening was a spectacle famed in story and song throughout the vestries of the Police Department.[4]

But the tradition was shattered on the evening of the January day on which Abigail Doorn went to her reward.

Here was neither laughter nor peace. Ellery sat absorbed in thought and wrapped in gloom, cigarette smoldering above a half-empty coffee-cup. The Inspector shivered and wheezed as he sat hunched in his great armchair before the fire; his teeth chattered despite an armor of three old dressing-gowns. Djuna, ever the interpreter of moods, removed the dinner-dishes in a silence inhumanly complete.

The first real search had failed ignobly. Swanson, the wraith, was still at large. Sergeant Velie’s myrmidons had failed to find the faintest trace of him, despite a thorough canvass of all the Swansons in the borough directories. Headquarters was in an uproar, the Inspector tied to his chambers by a suddenly developed coryza. Preliminary reports from the detectives scouring hospitals and other institutions brought no word about the original source of the surgical clothing found in the telephone booth. The quest for the establishment which sold the picture-wire seemed hopeless, and chemical analysis of the wire revealed nothing. A scrutiny of Abigail Doorn’s financial rivals had as yet borne no fruit. The murdered woman’s private papers were as innocent, it seemed, as a child’s primary notebook. And, to complicate matters further, District Attorney Sampson had just telephoned to transmit the news of two hurried conferences with the Mayor and another long-distance call from the Governor at Albany. City and State officials were harried, anxious, clamorous for police action. The newspapermen hounded headquarters, besieged the closely guarded scene of the crime.

It was this state of affairs which had the Inspector, helpless in his chair, half hysterical with impotent rage. Ellery persisted in maintaining silence, sunk in a sea of speculation...

Djuna leaped out of his kitchen at the shrill br-r-ring of the telephone bell. “For you, Dad Queen.”

The old man hurried across the room, shaking with ague and licking his parched lips. “Hello. Who? Thomas? Well...” His voice sharpened, became eager. “Oh. Oh. WHAT? Oh, good glory. Hold the wire a moment.”

His face was parchment-ivory as he turned to Ellery. “The rottenest luck, son. It’s happened. Janney has given Ritter the slip!”

Ellery got to his feet, startled. “Stupid!” he muttered. “Find out more about it, dad.”

“Hello! Hello!” Inspector Queen wheezed viciously into the mouthpiece. “Thomas. You tell Ritter for me that he has some tall explaining to do or back he goes on a beat... No news on Swanson yet, eh?.... Well, you’ll have to work all night... WHAT? Good for Hesse... Yes, I know. He was backstairs in the house this afternoon while we were there... All right, Thomas. Have Ritter go back to Janney’s hotel and stay there... He’d better!”

“What’s up?” demanded Ellery as the old man trundled back to his chair and warmed his hands at the fire.

“Plenty. Janney lives at the Tareyton, on Madison Avenue. Ritter tailed him all day. He hung about watching the place and at 5:30 Janney came out in a hurry, took a cab at the door, which headed north. Ritter got a bad break, I’ll say that for him — he couldn’t get a cab for several moments — it all happened so fast he was paralyzed...

“When he located a hack he followed, picked up the trail, then lost it in traffic. Picked it up again near 42nd Street and was just in time to see Janney jump out of the cab at Grand Central, pay off his driver, and disappear into the terminal... And that’s the last of Janney, blast the luck!”

Ellery looked thoughtful. “Deliberately disobeyed instructions, eh? Skipped town. Of course, it’s only one thing...”

“Naturally. He’s gone to warn off Swanson.” The old man was morose now. “Ritter was caught in a jam around the terminal and by the time he got out and into the station Janney had disappeared. He recruited a squad of cops right away to watch the outgoing trains but it was useless. Like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Well,” muttered Ellery, frowning, “it’s practically certain that Janney went to warn Swanson, and that Swanson therefore lives somewhere in the suburbs.”

“Taken care of already. Thomas has a group working on the suburb angle...” The Inspector’s eyes brightened momentarily. “There’s one ray of light, though. Know what this Fuller lunatic has done?”

“Sarah Fuller!” The name leaped from Ellery’s lips. “What?”

“Slipped out of the Doorn house about an hour ago. Hesse was tailing her all day. He followed her to — the home of Dr. Dunning! What do you think of that?”

Ellery stared at his father. “Dr. Dunning, eh?” he said slowly. “Now, that is interesting. Anything else from Hesse?”

“Nothing much. The fact alone is enough. She remained in the house for a half-hour. When she came out she took a taxicab directly back to the Doorn place. Hesse reported by ’phone and is still there, working with another man on the job.”

“Sarah Fuller and Dr. Lucius Dunning,” murmured Ellery. He sat down at the table and, looking into the fire, drumming incessantly on the cloth. “Sarah Fuller and Lucius Dunning. There’s a combination for you...” He smiled at his father suddenly. “The prophetess and the healer. A classic non sequitur.”

“It’s funny, right enough,” said the Inspector. He drew his outer robe more closely about him. “We’ll have to follow that up in the morning.”

“Evidently,” said Ellery with a strange satisfaction, “on the Slavic assumption that ‘the morning is wiser than the evening.’ Well... we’ll see.”

The old man said nothing. Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the pleasure vanished from Ellery’s face. He rose quickly and went into his bedroom.

Chapter Eighteen Condensation

The journalistic explosion which later was to reverberate through the press of the entire world did not achieve its full fury until the day after Abigail Doorn’s murder.

On Tuesday morning every newspaper in the United States carried blazing headlines, voluble front-page stories, and a pitiful handful of facts. The New York press in particular made up for the dearth of available data by devoting whole pages of stories to Abigail Doorn’s astonishing career, her outstanding financial transactions, her enormous list of charities, and the details of her romance with the long-deceased Charles Van der Donk. One syndicate began a hastily assembled series of feature articles titled The Life Story of Abigail Doorn.

With the early afternoon editions, peals of editorial thunder began to make themselves heard. Thinly veiled shafts of criticism were hurled at the Police Commissioner, at Inspector Queen, at the Police Department as a whole, and in one case, obviously as a political move, at the Mayor. “Twenty-four precious hours have slipped into eternity,” ran one indignant account, “and still not the tiniest shred of fact or clew has been unearthed which might lead to the identity of that foul murderer whose bloody hand yesterday sent the great soul of a great woman weeping into the hereafter, long long before her time.” “Is the redoubtable Inspector Queen about to fall down after so many years of successful man-hunting in this, his most important assignment?” queried another. A third stated categorically that the Police Department of the greatest city in the world, for years “notoriously incompetent” in its regulation of the morals of that vastly moral community, would now have the unexampled opportunity of displaying to the sneering world exactly how incompetent it was.

The only newspaper in New York which neither groaned nor flayed the police was the sheet, strangely enough, to which Pete Harper rendered reportorial service.

But it had not required the insinuations and accusations of a vitriolic press to rouse officialdom from its alleged lethargy. The political and social worlds were rocked to their foundations, and the tremors were recorded on the sensitive seismographs of Headquarters. Public figures in all walks of life showered the Mayor with telegraphed, telephoned and personal demands for swift justice. Wall Street, alarmed at the financial unrest and unable to stem the inevitable tide of falling quotations and growing panic, rose in its wrath. The Federal Government evinced an unusual interest in the case. A Senator in whose State Abigail Doorn owned huge properties made a flaming speech from the floor of Congress.

City Hall was a maelstrom of frenzied conferences. Centre Street buzzed like a gigantic bee-hive. Inspector Queen was nowhere to be found; Sergeant Velie flatly refused to talk to reporters. Rumors, feeding on the atmosphere of mystery and doubt, circulated magically all over the City, whispering that an unnamed and “protected” financier of great power had strangled Abigail Doorn with his own hands in revenge for a financial struggle which he had ignominiously lost to the dead woman. The rumor’s patent absurdity, it seemed, did not retard its circulation. Within two hours official cognizance was being taken of it...

Late Tuesday afternoon a solemn group gathered secretly in the innermost sanctum of the Mayor’s chambers. Seated around the conference table in the thick smoky air were the Mayor himself, the Police Commissioner, District Attorney Sampson and his aides, the Borough President of Manhattan, and a half-dozen secretaries. Inspector Queen was conspicuous by his absence.

Gloom hovered over them, leering. They had discussed the case from every conceivable angle while a mad, chattering horde of reporters besieged the outer offices for interviews. The Mayor held in his hand a great sheaf of reports, all signed by Inspector Queen, which gave in painstaking detail every fact, conversation and finding accumulated in the case up to Tuesday morning. Personalities had been weighed and judged: the Borough President had expressed himself as satisfied that the fine Irish hand of Big Mike Cudahy was somewhere mixed into the murder, possibly employed by a mysterious enemy of Abigail Doorn. Dr. Janney’s stubborn silence, the search for Swanson, were the subjects of fruitless debate.

The conference seemed doomed to failure. Nothing new had been discovered; not even a lead toward possible action. A private wire to Police Headquarters stood waiting at the Commissioner’s elbow; it rang incessantly, reporting failure in the investigation of the scant hoard of clews.

It was precisely at this critical moment that the Mayor’s personal secretary entered the room with a heavily sealed envelope addressed to the Police Commissioner.

He tore it open and eagerly scanned the top sheet of a number of typewritten pages.

“Special report from Inspector Queen,” he muttered.

“He says here a full report will come later. Let’s see...” He read in silence. Suddenly he handed the papers to a stenographer at his side. “Here, Jake, read these aloud.”

The clerk began to read rapidly in a clear flat voice.

The clerk deposited this report carefully on the table and picked up another, clearing his throat.

“A blank again,” grumbled the Commissioner. “This bird Cudahy is as slippery as an eel, Mr. Mayor. But if there’s anything there, Queen will sweat it out of him.”

“Come, come!” interrupted the Mayor. “We’re getting nowhere. Who’s the next report on?”

The clerk read:

“Still nothing,” murmured the Mayor with annoyance. “I feel sorry for your Department, Commissioner, if you can’t make better progress than you’ve evinced so far. Is this man Queen competent to handle this case?”

The Borough President twisted in his chair. “Oh, come now,” he said irritably. “We can’t expect the old warhorse to perform miracles. Blamed case is only thirty hours old anyway. It seems to me he hasn’t overlooked one lead. I—”

“And not only that,” put in the Police Commissioner stiffly, “but this isn’t a mere mob bump-off, Mr. Mayor, where the police can get stool-pigeon information. It’s quite out of the usual run of murders. I think—”

The Mayor threw up his hands. “Who’s next?”

“Edith Dunning.” The clerk crackled the paper in a businesslike way and began to real unemotionally:

“Oh, unquestionably,” said the Mayor. “Who’s on the list after that? Let’s have it, quickly!”

The stenographer continued:

“Further Report on Dr. Janney”

He paused as there was a distinct murmur from his intent audience. To a man, they hitched their chairs closer to the table. The clerk picked up the thread of the typewritten report:

The clerk quietly laid the report on the table. The Mayor and the Police Commissioner regarded each other with deepening gloom. Finally the Mayor sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m inclined, for one,” he said, “to agree with that conclusion of the Inspector’s. Despite all this newspaper hullabaloo, I’d rather see you men go easy and make no mistakes than be hasty and pull a nasty boner. What do you think, Sampson?”

“Absolutely in accord.”

“I’d follow Queen’s advice,” remarked the Commissioner.

The clerk picked up another typewritten sheet and read aloud:

“Unbelievable, how little these people have revealed,” exclaimed the Borough President.

“I’ve never seen a more stubborn set of witnesses,” muttered the Commissioner. “Anything else there, Jake?” he snarled.

There was one report more. It was quite long and the attention of the conferees riveted immediately upon it. The clerk read: