The Egyptian Cross Mystery

3. Professor Yardley

And that was all. Extraordinary, incredible — but it died there. The cryptic connection which Ellery Queen pointed out to the Weirton populace deepened rather than lightened the mystery. As for himself, he could see no solution. He consoled himself with the thought that one could scarcely apply logic to the divagations of a madman.

If the problem was too much for him, it was certainly too much for Coroner Stapleton, District Attorney Crumit, Colonel Pickett, the Coroner’s jury, the citizens of Arroyo and Weirton, and the scores of newspapermen who had flocked to town on the day of the inquest. Directed by the Coroner, who sternly resisted the temptation to leap to the obvious but unsupported solution, the jury scratched its collective head and brought in a verdict of “death at the hands of person or persons unknown.” The newspapermen prowled about for a day or so, Colonel Pickett and District Attorney Crumit went about in ever slowing circles, and finally the case died in the press — a death warrant indeed.

Ellery returned to New York with a philosophic shrug. He was inclined to believe, the longer he mulled over the problem, that the explanation was after all simple. There was no reason, he felt, to doubt the overwhelming indications of the evidence. Circumstantial, to be sure, but positive in their implications. There was a man by the name of Velja Krosac, an English-speaking foreigner, something of a charlatan, who for dark reasons of his own had planned, sought, and finally taken the life of a country schoolmaster, also foreign-born. The method, while interesting from the criminological standpoint, was not necessarily important. It was the horrible but comprehensible expression of a mind buckled by the strange fires of manic psychology. What lay behind — what sordid story of fancied wrong or religious fanaticism or blood-demanding vengeance — would probably never be known. Krosac, his gruesome mission accomplished, would naturally vanish, and perhaps even now was on the high seas, bound for his native country. Kling, the manservant? Undoubtedly the innocent victim, caught between two fires, done away with by the executioner because he had witnessed the crime or caught a glimpse of the murderer’s face. Kling represented in all likelihood a bridge that Krosac felt compelled to burn behind him. After all, a man who did not shrink from severing a human head merely to illustrate in broken flesh the symbol of his revenge would hardly turn squeamish at the necessity of killing an unexpected danger to his own safety.

And so Ellery returned to New York to accept the shrewd twigging of the Inspector.

“I’m not going to say ‘I told you so,’” chuckled the old man over the dinner table on the night of Ellery’s return, “but I want to point out a moral.”

“Do,” murmured Ellery, attacking a chop.

“The moral is: Murder is murder, and ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent of the murders committed anywhere on the face of the globe, you young idiot, are as easy as pie to explain. Nothing fancy, you understand.” The Inspector beamed. “I don’t know what in time you expected to accomplish down in that God-forsaken country, but any flatfoot pounding a beat could have told you the answer.”

Ellery laid down his fork. “But logic—”

“Mumbo-jumbo!” snorted the Inspector. “Go on and get some sleep.”

Six months passed, during which Ellery completely forgot the bizarre events of the Arroyo murder. There were things to do. New York, unlike its kin in Pennsylvania, was not exactly a city of brotherly love; homicides were plentiful; the Inspector dashed about in an ecstasy of investigation, and Ellery trailed along, contributing his peculiar faculties to those cases which piqued his interest.

It was not until June, six months after the crucifixion of Andrew Van in West Virginia, that the Arroyo murder was forcibly brought back to his mind.

It was on Wednesday, the twenty-second of the month, that the spark was touched off. Ellery and Inspector Queen were at breakfast when the doorbell rang, and Djuna, the Queens’ boy-of-all-work, answered the door to find a messenger there with a telegram for Ellery.

“Queer,” said Ellery, tearing open the yellow envelope. “Who the deuce could be wiring me this early in the morning?”

“Who’s it from?” mumbled the old man out of a mouthful of toast.

“It’s from—” Ellery unfolded the message and glanced down at the typed signature. “From Yardley!” he cried, in vast surprise. He grinned at his father. “Professor Yardley. You remember, Dad. One of my profs at the University.”

“Sure I do. The Ancient History feller, hey? Stayed with us one weekend when he came into New York. Ugly chap with chin whiskers, as I recall.”

“One of the best. They don’t make ’em that way any more,” said Ellery. “God, it’s years since I’ve heard from him! Why on earth should he—”

“I’d suggest,” said the old man mildly, “That you read the message. That’s generally the way to find out why a person writes to you. In some ways, my son, you’re thicker than mud.”

The twinkle in his eye disappeared as he watched Ellery’s face. That gentleman’s jaw had dropped perceptibly.

“What’s the matter?” asked the Inspector in haste. “Somebody die?” He still preserved the middle-class superstition that telegrams boded no good.

Ellery tossed the yellow slip across the table, jumped from his chair, hurled his napkin at Djuna, and dashed into the bedroom, flinging off his dressing gown as he went.

The Inspector read:

4. Bradwood

That something extraordinary was going on was apparent miles before the old Duesenberg arrived at its destination. The Long Island highway it was following at Ellery’s customary reckless speed was thick with country troopers, who for once seemed uninterested in the spectacle of a tall earnest young man traveling at the rate of fifty-five miles per hour. Ellery, with the egotism of the specially favored speedster, was half hoping that some one would stop him. He would then have the opportunity of hurling “Police special!” in the teeth of his motorcycled antagonist; for he had cajoled the Inspector into telephoning the scene of the crime and explaining to Inspector Vaughn of the Nassau County police that “my famous son,” as the Inspector subtly said, was on his way, and would Vaughn accord the young hero every courtesy? Especially since, as the old man put it, this famous son had information which should prove of remarkable interest to Vaughn and the District Attorney. Then another call to District Attorney Isham of Nassau County, with a repetition of the encomia and the promise. Isham, a much harassed man that morning, mumbled something about “any news will be good news, Inspector; send him along,” and promised that nothing would be removed from the scene of the crime until Ellery arrived.

It was noon when the Duesenberg swung into one of Long Island’s immaculate private roads and was challenged by a trooper on a motorcycle.

“Bradwood this way?” yelled Ellery.

“Yeah, but you ain’t goin’ there,” replied the trooper grimly. “Turn around, mister, and step on it.”

“Inspector Vaughn and District Attorney Isham are expecting me,” said Ellery with a grin.

“Oh! You’re Mr. Queen? Sorry, sir. Go ahead.”

Vindicated and triumphant, Ellery shot forward and five minutes later drew up in the highway between two estates — one, from the cluster of official cars in its driveway, obviously Bradwood, where the murder had been committed; the other, by inference, since it was across the road, the dwelling of his friend and former instructor, Professor Yardley.

The Professor himself, a tall, rangy, ugly man bearing a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, hurried forward and grasped Ellery’s hand as he jumped out of the Duesenberg.

“Queen! It’s good seeing you again.”

“And you, Professor. Lord, it’s been years! What are you doing here on Long Island? Last I heard of you, you were still living on the campus, torturing sophomores.”

The Professor grinned in his short black beard. “I rented that Taj Mahal across the road” — Ellery turned and saw spires and a Byzantine dome peeping above the trees where Professor Yardley’s thumb pointed — “from a crazy friend of mine. He built that atrocity himself when he was bitten by the Oriental bug. He’s gone on a prowl through Asia Minor, and I’m working here this summer. I wanted a little quiet to do my long-deferred opus on Sources of the Atlantean Legend. You recall the Platonic references?”

“I recall,” smiled Ellery, “Bacon’s New Atlantis, but then my interests were always literary rather than scientific.”

Yardley grunted. “The same fresh youngster, I see... Quiet! Well, this is what I ran into.”

“How on earth did you happen to think of me?”

They strode along the cluttered driveway of Bradwood toward a large colonial house, its vast pillars gleaming in the noon sun.

“The long arm of coincidence,” said the Professor dryly. “I’ve followed your career with interest, naturally. And since I’m always fascinated by your exploits, I read quite avidly the accounts five or six months ago of that extraordinary murder in West Virginia.”

Ellery took in the scene before replying. Bradwood was meticulously landscaped, the estate of a wealthy man. “I might have known nothing would escape the eyes that have examined thousands of papyri and stelai. So you read that highly romanticized version of my little sojourn in Arroyo?”

“I did. And your highly romanticized lack of accomplishment.” The Professor chuckled. “At the same time, I was gratified by your application of the fundamental I tried to drive into your stubborn head — always go to the source. Egyptian cross, my boy? I’m afraid your sense of theater strangled the purely scientific truth... Well, here we are.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Ellery with an anxious frown. “The tau cross was certainly a primitive Egyptian—”

“I’ll discuss it with you later. I suppose you want to meet Isham. He’s been kind enough to let me potter around.”

District Attorney Isham of Nassau County, a stubby man of middle age with watery blue eyes and a horseshoe fringe of gray on his head, was standing on the steps of the long colonial porch engaged in heated conversation with a tall powerful man in civilian clothes.

“Er — Mr. Isham,” said Professor Yardley. “Here’s my protégé, Ellery Queen.”

The two men turned quickly. “Oh, yes,” said Isham, as if he were thinking of other things. “Glad you came, Mr. Queen. I don’t know what you can do to help, but—” He shrugged. “Meet Inspector Vaughn of the Nassau County police.”

Ellery shook hands with both of them. “You’ll permit me to wander about? I promise not to get under your feet.”

Inspector Vaughn displayed brown teeth. “We need somebody to get under our feet. We’re just standing still, Mr. Queen. Like to see the main exhibit?”

“I suppose it’s customary. Come along, Professor.”

The four men descended the steps of the porch and began to walk along a gravel path around the eastern ell of the house. Ellery experienced a sense of the vastness of the estate. The main house, he now saw, was situated halfway between the private highway where he had left his Duesenberg and the waters of a cove, whose sun-painted ripples were visible from the elevation of the main house. This body of water, District Attorney Isham explained, was a tributary of Long Island Sound; it was called Ketcham’s Cove. Beyond the waters of the Cove could be seen the woody silhouette of a small island. Oyster Island, remarked the Professor; housing as queer a collection of...

Ellery looked at him inquiringly, but Isham said: “We’ll get to that,” testily, and Yardley shrugged and refrained from further interruption.

The gravel walk led gradually away from the house, and massed trees enclosed them not thirty feet from the colonial structure. A hundred feet farther, and they came suddenly upon a clearing, in the center of which stood a grotesque object.

They stopped short, and ceased talking, as people do in the presence of violent death. Around the object were county troopers and detectives, but Ellery had eyes only for the object itself.

It was a thick carved post nine feet high which once, to judge from what remained, had been garishly colored, but now was faded and stained and battered, as if it had gone through centuries of weathering. The carving, a conglomeration of gargoyle masks and hybrid animal symbols, culminated at the top in the crudely hewn figure of an eagle with lowered beak and outstretched wings. The wings were rather flat, and Ellery was struck at once with the fact that the post with its outflung wings at the top was very like a capital T.

The decapitated body of a man hung on the post, arms lashed to the wings with heavy rope, legs similarly lashed to the upright about three feet from the earth. The sharp wooden beak of the eagle hovered an inch above the bloody hole where the man’s head had been. There was something pathetic as well as horrible in the hideous sight; the mutilated corpse emanated a helplessness, the pitiful impotence of a beheaded rag doll.

“Well,” said Ellery with a shaky giggle, “quite a sight, eh?”

“Shocking,” muttered Isham. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It makes your blood curdle.” He shivered. “Come on; let’s get this over with.”

They drew nearer the post. Ellery noticed that some yards away, in the clearing, there was a small thatched summer-house, in the entrance to which a trooper stood. Then he returned his attention to the corpse. It was that of a middle-aged man; there was a heavy paunch, and the hands were gnarled and old. The body was clothed in gray flannel trousers and a silk shirt open at the neck, white shoes, white socks, and a velveteen smoking jacket. From neck to toes the body was a gory mess, as if it had been washed in a vat of blood.

“A totem pole, isn’t it?” Ellery asked Professor Yardley, as they passed beneath the body.

“Totem post,” said Yardley severely. “Much the preferred term... Yes. I’m not an authority on totemism, but this relic is either very primitive North American, or a clever fake. I’ve never seen one quite like it. The eagle would signify Eagle Clan.”

“I suppose the body has been identified?”

“Sure,” said Inspector Vaughn. “You’re looking at all that’s left of Thomas Brad, owner of Bradwood, millionaire rug importer.”

“But the body hasn’t been cut down,” said Ellery patiently. “So how can you be certain?”

District Attorney Isham looked startled. “Oh, it’s Brad’s, all right. Clothing checked up, and you couldn’t very well disguise that belly, could you?”

“I suppose not. Who discovered the body?”

Inspector Vaughn told the story. “It was found at half-past seven this morning by one of Brad’s servants, a sort of combination chauffeur and gardener, chap by the name of Fox. Fox lives in a hut on the other side of the house, in the woods; and when he came up to the main building this morning as usual to get the car — garage is at the back of the house — for Jonah Lincoln, one of the people who live here, he found that Lincoln wasn’t ready and went around this end to look at some of the flowers. Anyway, this is what he ran up against. Gave him quite a turn, he says.”

“I imagine it would,” remarked Professor Yardley, who betrayed a surprising lack of squeamishness himself; he was examining the totem post and its grisly burden with thoughtful impersonality, as if it were a rare historic object.

“Well,” continued Inspector Vaughn, “he took hold of himself and ran back to the house. Usual stuff — roused the household. Nobody touched anything. Lincoln, who’s a nervous but levelheaded fellow, took charge until we came.”

“And who is Lincoln?” asked Ellery pleasantly.

“General Manager of Brad’s business. Brad & Megara, you know,” explained Isham, “the big rug importers. Lincoln lives here. Brad liked him a lot, I understand.”

“An embryonic rug magnate, eh? And Megara — does he live here, too?”

Isham shrugged. “When he’s not traveling. He’s off on a cruise somewhere; he’s been away for months. Brad was the active partner.”

“I take it, then, that Mr. Megara, the traveler, was responsible for the totem pole — or post, in deference to the Professor. Not that it matters.”

A cold little man sauntered up the path toward them, carrying a black bag.

“Here’s Doc Rumsen,” said Isham with a sigh of relief. “Medical Examiner of Nassau County. Hi, Doc, take a look at this!”

“I’m looking,” said Dr. Rumsen in a nasty tone. “What is this — the Chicago stockyards?”

Ellery scrutinized the body. It seemed very stiff. Dr. Rumsen looked up at it professionally, sniffed, and said: “Well, get it down, get it down. Do you expect me to climb the pole and examine it up there?”

Inspector Vaughn motioned to two detectives, and they jumped forward unclasping knives. One of them disappeared in the summerhouse, returning a moment later with a rustic chair. He placed it beside the totem post, climbed to the seat, and raised his knife.

“Want me to cut it, Chief?” he asked before bringing the blade down on the lashings of the right arm. “Maybe you’d rather have the rope in one piece. I think I can untie the knot.”

“You cut it,” said the Inspector sharply. “I want to take a look at that knot. Might be a clue there.”

Others came forward, and the depressing business of taking the body down was accomplished in silence.

“By the way,” remarked Ellery, as they stood about watching the proceedings, “how did the murderer manage to get the body up there, and then lash the wrist to the wings nine feet above ground?”

“The same way the detective’s doing it now,” replied the District Attorney dryly. “We found a blood-stained chair, like the one he’s using, in the summerhouse. Either there were two of ’em, or the fellow who pulled this job was a husky. Must have been quite a job heaving a dead body up to that position, even with a chair.”

“You found the chair where?” asked Ellery thoughtfully. “In the summerhouse?”

“Yes. He must have put it back there after he was through with it. There are plenty of other things in the summerhouse, Mr. Queen, that’ll bear looking into.”

“There’s something else that might interest you,” said Inspector Vaughn, as the body was finally freed from its lashings and deposited on the grass. “This.”

He took a small circular red object from his pocket and handed it to Ellery. It was a red wooden checker.

“Hmm,” said Ellery. “Prosaic enough. Where did you find this, Inspector?”

“In the gravel of the clearing here,” replied Vaughn. “A few feet from the right side of the pole.”

“What makes you think it’s important?” Ellery turned the piece over in his fingers.

Vaughn smiled. This is the way we found it. It hasn’t lain here very long, for one thing, as you can see by its condition. And on that clean gray gravel a red object would stand out like a sore thumb. These grounds are gone over by Fox with a finecomb each day; it’s not likely, then, that it was here in the daytime — Fox says it wasn’t, anyway. I’d say offhand that it has something to do with the events of last night; in the darkness it wouldn’t be seen.”

“Excellent, Inspector!” smiled Ellery. “A man after my own heart.” He returned the checker just as Dr. Rumsen ripped out a string of lurid oaths wholly unprofessional.

“What’s the matter?” asked Isham, hurrying over. “Did you find something?”

“The queerest damn’ thing I ever saw,” snapped the Medical Examiner. “Look at this.”

The corpse of Thomas Brad lay outstretched on the grass a few feet from the totem post like a fallen marble statue. It was so unnaturally rigid that Ellery, out of his own sad but thorough experience, realized that rigor mortis had not yet left the body. As it sprawled there, arms still outflung, it bore except for the paunch and clothes a marked resemblance to the body of Andrew Van as Ellery had seen it in Weirton six months before; and both of them, he reflected without satisfaction, were human figures hacked into the shape of a T... He shook his head and stooped with the others to see what had disturbed Dr. Rumsen so.

The physician had raised the right hand of the dead man; he was pointing to the blue dead palm. In the center, neatly printed as if by a die, there was a circular red stain, its outline only faintly irregular.

“Now what on earth d’ye call that?” grumbled Dr. Rumsen. “It isn’t blood. Looks more like paint, or dye. But I’ll be damned if I can see any reason for it.”

“It seems,” said Ellery slowly, “that your prediction is coming true, Inspector. The checker — the right side of the pole — the right hand of the dead man...”

“By God, yes!” cried Inspector Vaughn. He produced the checker again and placed it on the stain in the dead palm. It fitted, and he rose with a mingled look of triumph and puzzlement. “But what the devil?”

District Attorney Isham shook his head. “I don’t think it’s important. You haven’t seen Brad’s library yet, Vaughn, so you don’t know. But there’s the remains of a checker game there. You’ll find out more about it when we go into the house. Brad for some reason had a checker in his hand at the time he was killed, and the murderer didn’t know it. It fell out of his hand about the time he was being strung up, that’s all.”

“Then the crime was committed in the house?” asked Ellery.

“Oh, no. In the summerhouse here. Plenty of evidence for that. No, I think the explanation of the checker is simplicity itself. It looks like a defective piece, and probably the perspiration and heat of Brad’s hand made the color run.”

They left Dr. Rumsen exploring the inhuman figure on the grass, surrounded by silent officers, and made for the summerhouse. It was only a few steps from the totem post. Ellery looked up and around before stepping through the low entrance.

“No electrical fixtures outside, I see. I wonder—”

“Murderer must have used a flashlight. That is, if this thing really did take place,” said the Inspector, “in the dark, Doc Rumsen will clear that up for us when he tells us how long Brad’s been dead.”

The trooper at the entrance saluted and stood aside. They went in.

It was small and circular, constructed of rough tree boughs and limbs in the artificially rustic manner. It had a peaked thatched roof and half-walls, the upper halves composed of green lattice. Inside were a hewn table and two chairs, one of them smeared with blood.

“Not much doubt of it, I’d say,” said District Attorney Isham with a feeble grunt, pointing to the floor.

In the center of the floor there was a large thick stain, brownish-red in hue.

Professor Yardley for the first time showed nervousness. “Why — that isn’t human blood — that ghastly large mess of it?”

“It certainly is,” replied Vaughn grimly. “And the only thing that will explain why there’s so much of it is that Brad’s head was cut off right on this floor.”

Ellery’s sharp eyes were fixed on that portion of the wooden floor which was directly before the rustic table. Scrawled there boldly, in blood, was a capital T.

“Pretty thing,” he muttered, and swallowed hard as he tore his gaze from the symbol. “Mr. Isham, have you been able to explain the T on the floor?”

The District Attorney spread his hands. “Now, I ask you, Mr. Queen. I’m an old hand at this game, and from what I know of you, you’ve had plenty of experience with such things. Could any reasonable man doubt that this is the crime of a maniac?”

“No reasonable man could,” said Ellery, “and no reasonable man would. You’re perfectly right, Mr. Isham. A totem pole! Felicitous, eh, Professor?”

“Post,” said Yardley. “You mean the possible religious significance?” He shrugged. “How anyone could put together symbols of North American fetishism, Christianity, and primitive phallicism is beyond the imagination of even a maniac.”

Vaughn and Isham stared; neither Yardley nor Ellery enlightened them. Ellery stooped to examine something which lay on the floor, near the coagulated blood. It was a long-stemmed brier pipe.

“We’ve looked that over,” said Inspector Vaughn. “Fingerprints on it. Brad’s. His pipe, all right; he was smoking in here. We’ve put it back for you just where we found it.”

Ellery nodded. It was an unusual pipe, of striking shape; its bowl was skillfully carved in the semblance of a Neptune’s head and trident. It was half full of dead gray ashes, and near the bowl on the floor, as Vaughn pointed out, were tobacco ashes of similar color and texture; as if the pipe had been dropped and some of the ashes had spilled.

Ellery stretched his hand out to take the pipe — and stopped. He looked at the Inspector. “You’re positive, Inspector, that this was the victim’s pipe? I mean — you’ve checked up with the residents of the house?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” replied Vaughn stiffly. “I don’t see why the hell we should doubt it. After all, his prints—”

“And he was wearing a smoking jacket, too,” pointed out Isham. “And no other form of tobacco on him — cigarettes or cigars. I can’t see, Mr. Queen, why you should think—”

Professor Yardley smothered a smile in his beard, and Ellery remarked almost idly: “But I don’t think anything of the sort. It’s merely habit with me, Mr. Isham. Perhaps...”

He picked up the pipe and carefully knocked the ashes out on the surface of the table. When no more ashes fell, he looked into the bowl and saw that a covering of half-burnt tobacco remained on the bottom. He produced a glassine envelope from his pocket-kit and, scraping the unsmoked tobacco from the bottom, poured it into the envelope. The others watched in silence.

“You see,” he said, rising, “I don’t believe in taking things for granted. I’m not suggesting that this isn’t Brad’s pipe. I do say, however, that the tobacco in it may be a definite clue. Suppose this is Brad’s pipe, but that he borrowed the tobacco from his murderer. Surely a common enough occurrence. Now, you’ll notice that this tobacco is cube-cut; not a common cut, as you perhaps know. We examine Brad’s humidor; do we find cube-cut tobacco? If we do, then this is his, and he did not borrow it from his murderer. At any rate we have lost nothing; confirmed the previous facts. But if we don’t find cube-cut tobacco, there’s a fair presumption that the tobacco came from his murderer, and that would be an important clue... Excuse me for babbling.”

“Very interesting,” said Isham. “I’m sure.”

“The minutiae of the detectival science,” chuckled Professor Yardley.

“Well, how does it stack up to you so far?” demanded Vaughn.

Ellery polished the lenses of his pince-nez thoughtfully; his lean face was absorbed. “It’s ridiculous, of course, to make any more concrete statement than this: The murderer was either with Brad when Brad came to the summerhouse, or he was not; there is nothing so far to tell. In any event, when Brad strolled out into his gardens, headed for his summerhouse, he had in his hand a red checker which for some peculiar reason he must have picked up in his house — wherever the remains of the checker game are to be seen. In the summerhouse he was attacked and killed. Perhaps the attack occurred while he was smoking; the pipe dropped from his mouth and fell to the floor. Perhaps, too, his fingers were in his pocket playing with the checker absently. At the time he died the checker was still clutched in his hand, and remained so all the time he was being decapitated, hauled to the totem post and lashed to the wings. Then the checker fell and rolled off in the gravel, unobserved by the murderer... Why he brought the checker with him at all seems to me a most relevant query. It may have a definite bearing on the case... An unilluminating analysis, eh, Professor?”

“Who knows the nature of light?” murmured Yardley.

Dr. Rumsen fussed into the summerhouse. “Job’s done,” he announced.

“What’s the verdict, Doc?” asked Isham eagerly.

“No signs of violence on the body,” snapped Dr. Rumsen. “From this it’s perfectly evident that whatever killed him was directed at his head.” Ellery started; it might have been Dr. Strang repeating the testimony he had given in the Weirton courtroom months before.

“Could he have been strangled?” asked Ellery.

“No way of telling now. Autopsy will show, though, by the condition of the lungs. The body’s stiffness is a simple rigor, which won’t wear off for another twelve to twenty-four hours.”

“How long has he been dead?” asked Inspector Vaughn.

“Just about fourteen hours.”

“Then it was in the dark!” cried Isham. “Crime must have been committed around ten o’clock last night!”

Dr. Rumsen shrugged. “Let me finish, will you? I want to go home. Strawberry birthmark seven inches above the right knee. That’s all.”

As they left the summerhouse Inspector Vaughn said suddenly: “Say, that reminds me, Mr. Queen. Your father mentioned over the phone that you had some information for us.”

Ellery looked at Professor Yardley, and Professor Yardley looked at Ellery. “Yes,” said Ellery, “I have. Inspector, does anything about this crime strike you as peculiar?”

“Everything about it strikes me as peculiar,” grunted Vaughn. “Just what do you mean?”

Ellery thoughtfully kicked a pebble out of his path. They passed the totem post in silence; the body of Thomas Brad was covered now, and several men were placing it on a stretcher, They headed down the path toward the house.

“Has it occurred to you to ask,” continued Ellery, “why a man should be beheaded and crucified to a totem post?”

“Yes, but what good does it do me?” snarled Vaughn. “It’s crazy, that’s all.”

“Do you mean to say,” Ellery protested, “that you haven’t noticed the multiple T’s?”

“The multiple T’s?”

“The pole itself — a fantastic T in shape. The pole for the upright, the flatout spread wings for the arms.” They blinked. “The body: head cut off, arms outstretched, legs close together.” They blinked again. “A T deliberately scrawled in blood on the scene of the crime.”

“Well, of course,” said Isham doubtfully, “we saw that, but—”

“And to bring it to a farcical conclusion,” said Ellery without smiling, “the very word totem begins with a T.”

“Oh, stuff and nonsense,” said the District Attorney instantly. “Pure coincidence. The pole, too, the position of the body — it just happened that way.”

“Coincidence?” Ellery sighed. “Would you call it coincidence if I told you that six months ago a murder was committed in West Virginia in which the victim was crucified to a T-shaped signpost on a T-shaped crossroads, his head cut off, and a T smeared in blood on the door of his house not a hundred yards away?”

Isham and Vaughn stopped short, and the District Attorney turned pale. “You’re not joking, Mr. Queen!”

“I’m really astounded at you people,” said Professor Yardley with placidity. “After all, this sort of thing is your business. Even I, the veriest layman, knew all about it; it was reported in every newspaper in the country.”

“Come to think of it,” muttered Isham, “I seem to recall it.”

“But, my God, Mr. Queen!” cried Vaughn. “It’s impossible! It’s — it’s not sensible!”

“Not sensible — yes,” murmured Ellery, “but impossible — no, for it actually happened. There was a peculiar fellow who called himself Ra-Harakht, or Harakht...”

“I wanted to talk to you about him,” began Professor Yardley.

“Harakht!” shouted Inspector Vaughn. “There’s a nut by that name running a nudist colony on Oyster Island across the Cove!”

5. Internal Affairs

For the moment the tables were turned, and it was Ellery’s astonishment which dominated the scene. The brown-bearded fanatic in the neighborhood of Bradwood! The closest link to Velja Krosac appearing on the scene of a crime the duplicate of the first! It was too good to be true.

“I wonder if any of the others are here,” he remarked as they strode up the steps of the porch. “We may be investigating merely a sequel to the first murder, with the identical cast! Harakht...”

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you,” said Yardley sadly. “It seems to me that, with your odd notions about the Egyptian business, Queen, you should already have arrived at my conclusion.”

“So soon?” drawled Ellery. “And what is your conclusion?”

Yardley grinned all over his pleasantly ugly face. “That Harakht, much as I dislike accusing people indiscriminately, is... Well, certainly crucifixions and T’s seem to follow the gentleman about, do they not?”

“You forget Krosac,” remarked Ellery.

“My dear chap,” retorted the Professor tartly, “surely you know me well enough by this time... I don’t forget anything of the sort. Why does the existence of Krosac invalidate what I’ve just timidly suggested? After all, there are such things as confederates, I understand, in crime. And there’s a huge primitive sort of fellow—”

Inspector Vaughn came running back to meet them on the porch, interrupting what promised to be an interesting conversation.

“I’ve just had Oyster Island put under guard,” he panted. “No sense in taking chances. We’ll investigate that bunch as soon as we finish here.”

The District Attorney seemed bewildered by the rapidity of events. “You mean to tell me that it was this Harakht’s business manager who was suspected of the crime? What the devil did he look like?” He had listened to Ellery’s recital of the Arroyo affair with feverish attention.

“There was a superficial description. Not enough, really, to work on, except for the fact that the man limped. No, Mr. Isham, the problem isn’t simple. You see, so far as I know, this man who calls himself Harakht is the only person capable of identifying the mysterious Krosac. And if our friend the sun-god proves stubborn...”

“Let’s go in,” said Inspector Vaughn abruptly. “This is getting too much for me. I want to talk to people and hear things.”

In the drawing room of the colonial mansion they found a tragic group awaiting them. The three people who creaked to their feet on the entrance of Ellery and the others were red-eyed, drawn of face, and so nervous that their movements were a series of jerks.

“Uh-hello,” said the man in a dry, cracked voice. “We’ve been waiting.” He was a tall, lean and vigorous man in his mid-thirties; a New Englander, to judge from his choppy features and the faint twang in his voice.

“Hullo,” said Isham glumly. “Mrs. Brad, this is Mr. Ellery Queen, who’s come down from New York to help us.”

Ellery murmured the conventional condolences; they did not shake hands. Margaret Brad moved and walked as if she were gliding through the horrors of a nightmare. She was a woman of forty-five, but well set up and handsome in a mature well-cushioned way. She said out of stiff lips: “So glad... Thank you, Mr. Queen. I—” She turned away and sat down without finishing, as if she had forgotten what she meant to say.

“And this is the — is Mr. Brad’s stepdaughter,” continued the District Attorney. “Miss Brad — Mr. Queen.”

Helene Brad smiled grimly at Ellery, nodded to Professor Yardley, and went to her mother’s side without a word. She was a young girl with wise, rather lovely eyes, honest features, and faintly red hair.

“Well?” demanded the tall man. His voice was still cracked.

“We’re getting along,” muttered Vaughn. “Mr. Queen — Mr. Lincoln... We want to set Mr. Queen straight on certain things, and our own confab here an hour ago wasn’t any too complete.” They all nodded, gravely, like characters in a play. “You want to handle this, Mr. Queen? Shoot.”

“No, indeed,” said Ellery. “I’ll interrupt when I think of something. Pay no attention to me at all.”

Inspector Vaughn stood powerful and tall by the fireplace, hands clasped loosely behind his back; his eyes were fixed on Lincoln. Isham sat down, mopping his bald spot. The Professor sighed and walked quietly to a window, where he stood looking out upon the front gardens and the drive. The house was quiet, as after a noisy party, or after a funeral. There was no bustle, no crying, no hysteria. With the exception of Mrs. Brad, her daughter, and Jonah Lincoln, none of the other members of the household — servants — had appeared.

“Well, the first thing, I guess,” began Isham wearily, “is to get that business of last night’s theater tickets straight, Mr. Lincoln. Suppose you tell us the whole story.”

“Theater tickets... Oh, yes.” Lincoln glared at the wall above Isham’s head with the glassy eyes of a shell-shocked soldier. “Yesterday Tom Brad telephoned Mrs. Brad from the office that he’d secured tickets for a Broadway play for her, Helene, and myself. Mrs. Brad and Helene were to meet me in the city. He, Brad, was going on home. He told me about it a few minutes later. He seemed rather keen on my taking the ladies. I couldn’t refuse.”

“Why should you want to refuse?” asked the Inspector quickly.

Lincoln’s fixed expression did not change. “It struck me as a peculiar request to make at the time. We’ve been having some trouble at the office; a matter of accounts. I had been intending to remain late yesterday, working with our auditor. I reminded Tom about this, but he said never mind.”

“I can’t understand it,” said Mrs. Brad tonelessly. “Almost as if he wanted to be rid of us.” She shivered suddenly, and Helene patted her shoulder.

“Mrs. Brad and Helene met me at Longchamps for dinner,” continued Lincoln in the same strained voice. “After dinner I took them to the theater—”

“Which theater?” asked Isham.

“The Park Theater. I left them there—”

“Oh,” said Inspector Vaughn. “Decided to do that work, anyway, eh?”

“Yes. I excused myself, promised to meet them after the performance, and returned to the office.”

“And you worked with your auditor, Mr. Lincoln?” asked Vaughn softly.

Lincoln stared. “Yes... God.” He tossed his head and gasped, like a man drowning. No one said a word. When he resumed, it was quietly, as if nothing had happened. “I finished late, and went back to the thea—”

“The auditor remained with you all evening?” asked the Inspector in the same soft voice.

Lincoln started. “Why—” He shook his head dazedly. “What do you mean? No. He left about eight o’clock. I continued to work alone.”

Inspector Vaughn cleared his throat; his eyes were glittering. “What time did you meet the ladies at the theater?”

“Eleven-forty-five,” said Helene Brad suddenly in a composed voice that nevertheless made her mother dart a glance up at her. “My dear Inspector Vaughn, your tactics aren’t too fair. You suspect Jonah of something, goodness knows what, and you’re trying to make him out a liar and — and other things, I suppose.”

“The truth never hurt anybody,” said Vaughn coldly. “Go on, Mr. Lincoln.”

Lincoln blinked twice. “I met Mrs. Brad and Helene in the lobby. We went home...”

“By car?” asked Isham.

“No, by the Long Island. When we got off the train Fox wasn’t there with the car and we took a taxi home.”

“Taxi?” muttered Vaughn. He stood thinking, then without a word left the room. The Brad women and Lincoln stared after him with fright in their eyes.

“Go on,” said Isham impatiently. “See anything wrong when you got home? What time was it?”

“I don’t really know. About one o’clock, I suppose.” Lincoln’s shoulders drooped.

“After one,” said Helene. “You don’t remember, Jonah.”

“Yes. We saw nothing out of the way. The path to the summerhouse...” Lincoln shivered. “We didn’t think of looking there. We couldn’t have seen anything, anyway — it was too dark. We went to bed.”

Inspector Vaughn came back quietly.

“How is it, Mrs. Brad,” asked Isham, “that you didn’t know your husband was missing until this morning, as you told me before?”

“We sleep — we slept in adjoining bedrooms,” explained the woman from pale lips. “So I wouldn’t know, you see. Helene and I retired... The first we knew of what — happened to Thomas was when Fox got us out of bed this morning.”

Inspector Vaughn stepped over and bent to whisper something into Isham’s ear. The District Attorney nodded vaguely.

“How long have you been living in this house, Mr. Lincoln?” asked Vaughn.

“A long time. How many years is it, Helene?” The tall New Englander turned to look at Helene; their eyes met and flashed in sympathy. The man braced his shoulders, drew a deep breath, and the glassiness in his eyes vanished.

“Eight, I think, Jonah.” Her voice trembled, and for the first time tears clouded her eyes. “I... I was just a kid when you and Hester came.”

“Hester?” repeated Vaughn and Isham together. “Who’s she?”

“My sister,” replied Lincoln in a calmer voice. “She and I were left orphans early in life. I’ve — well, she goes with me as naturally as my name.”

“Where is she? Why haven’t we seen her?”

Lincoln said quietly: “She’s on the Island.”

“Oyster Island?” drawled Ellery. “How interesting. She hasn’t become a sun worshiper by any chance, Mr. Lincoln?”

“Why, how did you know?” exclaimed Helene. “Jonah, you haven’t—”

“My sister,” explained Lincoln with difficulty, “is something of a faddist. Goes in for things like that. This lunatic who calls himself Harakht rented the Island from the Ketchams — old-timers who live on the Island; own it, in fact — and started a cult. Sun cult and — well, nudism...” He strangled over something in his throat “Hester — well, Hester became interested in — the people over there, and we had a quarrel over it. She’s headstrong, and left Bradwood to join the cult. The damned fakers!” he said savagely. “I shouldn’t be surprised if they had something to do with this ghastly business.”

“Shrewd, Mr. Lincoln,” murmured Professor Yardley.

Ellery coughed gently and addressed the rigid figure of Mrs. Brad. “I’m sure you won’t mind answering a few personal questions?” She looked up, and down at the hands in her lap. “I understand that Miss Brad is your daughter and was your husband’s stepdaughter. A second husband, Mrs. Brad?”

The handsome woman said: “Yes.”

“Mr. Brad had been previously married as well?”

She bit her lips. “We — we were married twelve years. Tom — I don’t know much about his first — his first wife. I think he was married in Europe, and his first wife died very young.”

“Tch-tch,” said Ellery with a sympathetic frown. “What part of Europe, Mrs. Brad?”

She looked at him and a slow flush filled her cheeks. “I don’t really know. Thomas was Roumanian. I suppose it happened — there.”

Helene Brad tossed her head and said indignantly: “Really, you people are being absurd. What difference does it make where people come from, or whom they were married to years and years ago? Why don’t you try to find out who killed him?”

“Something tells me with insistence, Miss Brad,” replied Ellery, smiling sadly, “that the matter of geography may become extremely important... Is Mr. Megara Roumanian, too?”

Mrs. Brad looked blank. Lincoln said curtly: “Greek.”

“What in the world—?” began the District Attorney helplessly.

Inspector Vaughn smiled. “Greek, eh? You people are all native Americans, I suppose?”

They nodded. Helene’s eyes were flashing angrily; even the fiery glints in her hair seemed to glow brighter, and she looked at Jonah Lincoln as if she expected him to remonstrate. But he said nothing, merely looking down at the tips of his shoes.

“Where is Megara?” went on Isham. “Somebody said he was on a cruise. What kind of cruise — round-the-world?”

“No,” said Lincoln slowly. “Nothing like that. Mr. Megara is something of a globe-trotter and amateur explorer. He has his own yacht and keeps sailing about in it. He just goes off and stays away for three and four months at a time.”

“How long’s he been away on this trip?” demanded Vaughn.

“Almost a year.”

“Where is he?”

Lincoln shrugged. “I don’t know. He never writes — just pops in without warning. I can’t understand why he’s stayed away so long this time.”

“I think,” said Helene, wrinkling her forehead, “that he went to the South Seas.” Her eyes were luminous and her lips quivered; Ellery regarded her curiously and wondered why.

“What’s the name of his yacht?”

Helene flushed. “The Helene.”

“Steam yacht?” asked Ellery.

“Yes.”

“Has he a radio — wireless sending outfit?” demanded Vaughn.

“Yes.”

The Inspector scribbled in his notebook and looked pleased. “Sail it himself, does he?” he asked as he wrote.

“Of course not! He has a regular captain and crew — Captain Swift, who’s been with him for years.”

Ellery sat down suddenly and stretched his long legs. “I do believe... What’s Megara’s first name?”

“Stephen.”

Isham growled deep in his throat. “Oh, Lord. Why can’t we stick to essentials? How long have Brad and Megara been partners in this rug-importing business?”

“Sixteen years,” replied Jonah. “Went into business together.”

“Successful business, is it? No financial troubles?”

Lincoln shook his head. “Both Mr. Brad and Mr. Megara founded very substantial fortunes. They were hit by the depression, like everyone else; but the business is sound.” He paused and an odd look changed the expression of his lean healthy face. “I don’t believe you’ll find money troubles at the bottom of this thing.”

“Well,” grunted Isham, “what do you think is at the bottom of it?”

Lincoln closed his mouth with a little snap.

“You don’t by any chance,” drawled Ellery, “think there’s religion behind it, Mr. Lincoln?”

Lincoln blinked. “Why — I didn’t say so. But the crime itself — the crucifixion...”

Ellery smiled pleasantly. “By the way, what was Mr. Brad’s creed?”

Mrs. Brad, still sitting with her ample back arched, chest out, chin up, murmured: “He once told me he had been raised in the Orthodox Greek Church. But he wasn’t devout, to fact, he was a non-believer in ritual; some people considered him an atheist.”

“And Megara?”

“Oh, he doesn’t believe in anything at all.” There was something in her tone which caused all of them to look at her sharply; but her face was expressionless.

“Orthodox Greek,” said Professor Yardley thoughtfully. “That’s consistent enough with Roumania...”

“You’re looking for inconsistencies?” murmured Ellery.

Inspector Vaughn coughed, and Mrs. Brad regarded him tensely. She seemed to sense what was coming. “Did your husband have any identifying marks on his body, Mrs. Brad?”

Helene looked faintly nauseated, and turned her head aside. Mrs. Brad muttered: “A strawberry birthmark on his right thigh.”

The Inspector sighed with relief. “So that’s that. Now, folks, let’s get down to bedrock. How about enemies? Who might have wanted to do Mr. Brad in?”

“Forget this business of the crucifixion and everything else for the moment,” added the District Attorney. “Who had a motive for murder?”

Mother and daughter turned to regard each other; they looked away almost at once. Lincoln kept staring steadfastly at the rug — a magnificent Oriental, Ellery noted, with a beautifully woven Tree of Life design; an unhappy juxtaposition of symbol and reality, considering the fact he reflected, that its owner...

“No,” said Mrs. Brad. “Thomas was a happy man. He had no enemies;”

“Were you in the habit of entertaining comparative strangers?”

“Oh, no. We lead a secluded life here, Mr. Isham.” There was something again in her tone that made them look keenly at her.

Ellery sighed. “Do any of you recall the presence here — guest or otherwise — of a limping man?” They shook their heads instantly. “Mr. Brad knew no one with a limp?” Another concerted negative.

Mrs. Brad said again: “Thomas had no enemies,” with dull emphasis, as if she felt it important to impress this fact upon them.

“You’re forgetting something, Margaret,” said Jonah Lincoln slowly. “Romaine.”

He looked at her with burning eyes. Helene flashed a glance of horrified condemnation at his clean profile; then she bit her lip and tears came to her eyes. The four men looked on with growing interest and a sense of underflowing byplay; there was something unhealthy here, a sore on the Brad body domestic.

“Yes, Romaine,” said Mrs. Brad, licking her lips; the position of her figure had not changed for ten minutes. “I forgot. They had a quarrel.”

“Who the devil’s Romaine?” demanded Vaughn.

Lincoln said in a low quick voice: “Paul Romaine. Harakht, that lunatic on Oyster Island, calls him the ‘chief disciple.’”

“Ah,” said Ellery, and looked at Professor Yardley. The ugly man raised his shoulders expressively, and smiled.

“They’ve built up a nudist colony on the Island. Nudists!” cried Lincoln bitterly. “Harakht is a nut — he’s probably sincere; but Romaine is a faker, the worst kind of confidence man. He trades on his body, which is only the cloak of a rotten soul!”

“And yet,” murmured Ellery, “didn’t Holmes recommend: ‘Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul’?”

“Sure,” said Inspector Vaughn, intent on soothing this strange witness. “We understand. But about that quarrel, Mr. Lincoln?”

Lean face worked fiercely. “Romaine’s responsible for the ‘guests’ on the Island — works up the business. He’s hooked a bunch of poor fools who either think he’s some kind of tin god, or else are so damn repressed that the very thought of running around naked...” He stopped abruptly. “Excuse me, Helene — Margaret. I shouldn’t talk. Hester... They haven’t been bothering any of the residents here, I’ll admit. But Tom and Dr. Temple feel the same way I do about it.”

“Hmm,” said Professor Yardley. “Nobody consulted me.”

“Dr. Temple?”

“Our neighbor to the east. They were seen capering around Oyster Island absolutely nude, like human goats, and well — we’re a decent community.” Ah, thought Ellery; thus spake the Puritan. “Tom owns all this property fronting the Cove, and he felt that it was his duty to interfere. He had some sort of run-in with Romaine and Harakht. I think he was intending to take legal measures to oust them from the Island, and he told them so.”

Vaughn and Isham looked at each other, and then at Ellery. The Brads, mother and daughter, were very still; and Lincoln, now that he had rid himself of his accumulated bile, looked uneasy and ashamed.

“Well, we’ll look into that a little later,” said Vaughn lightly. “You say this Dr. Temple owns the estate adjoining on the east?”

“He doesn’t own it; he just rents it — rented it from Thomas.” Mrs. Brad’s eyes were relieved. “He’s been here for a long time. A retired army doctor. He and Thomas were good friends.”

“Who lives on that piece of property to the west?”

“Oh! An English couple named Lynn — Percy and Elizabeth,” replied Mrs. Brad.

Helene murmured: “I met them in Rome last fall and we became very friendly. They said they were thinking of paying a visit to the States and so I suggested that they come back with me and be my guests for the duration of their stay.”

“Just when did you return, Miss Brad?” asked Ellery.

“About Thanksgiving. The Lynns crossed with me, but we separated in New York and they traveled about a bit seeing the country. Then in January they came up here. They were wild about the place—” Lincoln grunted, and Helene flushed. “They were, Jonah! So much so that, not wanting to impose on our hospitality — it was silly, of course, but you know how stuffy the English can be sometimes — they insisted on leasing the house to the west, which is — was father’s property. They’ve been here ever since.”

“Well, we’ll talk to them, too,” said Isham. “This Dr. Temple, now. You said, Mrs. Brad, that he and your husband were good friends. Best of terms, eh?”

“There’s nothing in that direction,” said Mrs. Brad stiffly, “if you’re insinuating, Mr. Isham. I’ve never been overfond of Dr. Temple myself, but he’s an upright man and Thomas, a wonderful judge of character, liked him tremendously. They often played checkers together in the evening.”

Professor Yardley sighed, as if slightly bored with this recital of the neighbors’ vices and virtues when he himself could provide a more penetrating analysis.

“Checkers!” exclaimed Inspector Vaughn. “Now, that’s something. Who else played with Mr. Brad, or was this Dr. Temple his only opponent?”

“No, indeed! We all played with Thomas on occasion.”

Vaughn looked disappointed. Professor Yardley rubbed his black Lincolnian beard and said: “I’m afraid you’re on barren ground there, Inspector. Brad was a fiendishly clever checker player, and tackled everyone who came here for a bout. If they didn’t know how to play, he insisted — with patience, to be sure — on teaching them. I think,” he chuckled, “that I was the only visitor here who successfully resisted his blandishments.” Then he became grave and fell silent.

“He was a remarkable player,” said Mrs. Brad with a faint sad pride. “I was told that by the National Checker Champion himself.”

“Oh, you’re a good player yourself, then?” asked Isham quickly.

“No, no, Mr. Isham. But we entertained the champion last Christmas Eve, and Thomas and he played incessantly. The champion said that Thomas held him quite even.”

Ellery jumped to his feet, his keen face intent. “I believe we’re wearing these good people out. A few questions, and we’ll not bother you again, Mrs. Brad. Have you ever heard the name Velja Krosac?”

Mrs. Brad looked genuinely puzzled. “Vel — what a queer name! No, Mr. Queen, I never have.”

“You, Miss Brad?”

“No.”

“You, Mr. Lincoln?”

“No.”

“Have you ever heard the name Kling?”

They all shook their heads.

“Andrew Van?”

Another blank.

“Arroyo, West Virginia?”

Lincoln muttered: “What is this, anyway? A game?”

“In a way,” smiled Ellery. “You haven’t, any of you?”

“No.”

“Well, then, here’s one you certainly can answer. Exactly when did this fanatic who calls himself Harakht come to Oyster Island?”

“Oh, that!” said Lincoln. “In March.”

“Was this man Paul Romaine with him?”

Lincoln’s face darkened. “Yes.”

Ellery scrubbed his pince-nez, perched it on the bridge of his straight nose, and leaned forward. “Does the letter T mean anything to any of you?”

They stared at him. “T?” repeated Helene. “Whatever are you talking about?”

“Evidently it doesn’t,” remarked Ellery, as Professor Yardley chuckled and whispered something in his ear. “Very well, then, Mrs. Brad, did your husband often refer to his Roumanian history?”

“No, he never did. All I know is that he came to the United States from Roumania eighteen years ago, with Stephen Megara. It seems they were friends or business partners in the old country.”

“How do you know this?”

“Why — why, Thomas told me so.”

Ellery’s eyes sparkled. “Pardon my curiosity, but it may be important... Was your husband a wealthy man as an immigrant?”

Mrs. Brad flushed. “I don’t know. When we married, he was.”

Ellery looked thoughtful. He said “Hmm” several times, shook his head in a pleased way, and finally turned to the District Attorney. “And now, Mr. Isham, if I may have an atlas, I shan’t bother you for some time.”

“An atlas!” The District Attorney gaped, and even Professor Yardley seemed disturbed. Inspector Vaughn scowled.

“There’s one in the library,” said Lincoln dully. He left the drawing room.

Ellery strolled up and down, an abstracted smile on his lips. Their eyes followed him without comprehension. “Mrs. Brad,” he said, pausing, “do you speak Greek or Roumanian?”

She shook her head bewilderedly. Lincoln returned, carrying a large blue-covered book. “You, Mr. Lincoln,” said Ellery. “You’re in a business which is largely European and Asian in its contacts. Do you understand and speak either Greek or Roumanian?”

“No. We haven’t occasion to use foreign languages. Our offices in Europe and Asia correspond in English, and our distributors do the same in this country.”

“I see.” Ellery hefted the atlas thoughtfully. “That’s all from me, Mr. Isham.”

The District Attorney waved a weary hand. “All right, Mrs. Brad. We’ll do our best, although frankly it looks like an insoluble mess. Just stick around, Mr. Lincoln, and you, Miss Brad; don’t leave the premises for a while, anyway.”

The Brads and Jonah hesitated, looked at each other, then rose and left the room without speaking.

The instant the door closed after them Ellery hurled himself into an armchair and opened the blue atlas. Professor Yardley was frowning. Isham and Vaughn exchanged helpless glances. But Ellery was occupied with the atlas for five full minutes, during which he returned to three different maps and the index, and consulted each page minutely. As he searched, his face brightened.

He placed the book with studied care on the arm of the chair and rose. They looked at him expectantly.

“I thought, by thunder,” he said, “that it would be so.” He turned to the Professor. “An amazing coincidence, if it is a coincidence. I leave you to judge... Professor, hasn’t something about the names of our peculiar cast of characters struck you?”

“The names, Queen?” Yardley was frankly confounded.

“Yes. Brad — Megara. Brad — Roumanian. Megara — Greek. Does it strike a responsive chord in you?”

Yardley shook his head, and Vaughn and Isham shrugged.

“You know,” said Ellery, taking out his cigarette case and lighting one up with quick puffs, “it’s, little things like this that make life interesting. I’ve a friend who is a lunatic on one subject — that inane and juvenile game called Geography. Why he’s attracted to it the Unknowable only knows, but he plays it at every conceivable opportunity. With Brad it was checkers, with many it’s golf — well, with this friend of mine it’s Geography. He’s developed it to the point where he knows thousands of little geographic names. Something that came up not long ago...”

“You’re being provocative,” snapped Professor Yardley. “Proceed.”

Ellery grinned. “Thomas Brad was a Roumanian — there is a city in Roumania named Brad. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not a damned thing,” growled Vaughn.

“Stephen Megara is a Greek. There is a city in Greece named Megara!”

“Well,” muttered Isham, “what of it?”

Ellery tapped Isham’s arm lightly. “And suppose I tell you that the man who seemingly has no connection with either our millionaire rug importer or our millionaire yachtsman, the poor Arroyo schoolmaster who was murdered six months ago — in a word, that Andrew Van...”

“You don’t mean to say—” spluttered Vaughn.

“Van’s naturalization papers gave his native country as Armenia. There’s a city in Armenia called Van — and a lake, too, for that matter.” He relaxed, and smiled. “And if in three cases, two related on the surface, the other related to one of the two by method of murder, the same phenomenon occurs—” Ellery shrugged. “If that’s coincidence, then I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

“Certainly peculiar,” muttered Professor Yardley. “On the surface a deliberate attempt to authenticate nationalities.”

“As if all the names are assumed, were picked from an atlas.” Ellery blew a smoke ring. “Interesting, eh? Three gentlemen, obviously of foreign extraction, very desirous indeed of concealing their real names, and, judging from the care they employed to authenticate their nationalities, as you say, of concealing their true birthplaces as well.”

“Good God,” groaned Isham. “What next?”

“An even more significant fact,” said Ellery cheerfully. “One would suppose that Van, Brad, and Megara having changed their names, the fourth foreign actor in the tragedy, the elusive Krosac, also picked his moniker from Rand McNally. But he didn’t — at least, there’s no city anywhere in Europe or in the Near East named Krosac. No city, lake, mountain, anything. The inference?”

“Three aliases,” said the Professor slowly, “and one apparently genuine name. With the owner of the apparently genuine name indubitably involved in the murder of one of the aliases. Perhaps... I should say, Queen, my boy, that we’re beginning to grasp the key to the hieroglyphs.”

“You agree, then,” said Ellery with eagerness, “that there’s an Egyptian aroma in the atmosphere?”

Yardley started. “Oh, that! My dear chap, can’t a pedagogue use a simple figure of speech without being taken literally?”

6. Checkers and Pipes

They were all thoughtful as they left the drawing room and Isham led the way to the right wing of the house, where the late Thomas Brad’s study was situated. A detective paraded the hall in front of the closed library door. As they paused before it, a stout motherly-looking woman in rustling black appeared from somewhere in the rear.

“I’m Mrs. Baxter,” she announced anxiously. “Can I offer you gentlemen some luncheon?”

Inspector Vaughn’s eyes grew brighter. “An angel in disguise! I forgot all about chow. You’re the housekeeper, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir. Will the other gentlemen eat, too?”

Professor Yardley shook his head. “I’ve really no right to impose this way. My own place is just across the road, and I know Old Nanny is furious at my absence. Vittles gettin’ cold, as she says. I think I’ll leave now... Queen, you’re my guest, remember.”

“Must you go?” asked Ellery. “I’ve been looking forward to a long talk...”

“See you tonight.” The Professor waved his arm. “I’ll take your bags out of that old wreck of yours and park your car in my own garage.”

He smiled at the two officials and walked off.

Luncheon was a solemn affair. It was served in a cheery dining room to the three men — no one else in the house seemed inclined toward food — and for the most part they ate in silence. Mrs. Baxter served them herself.

Ellery munched doggedly; his brain was spinning like a planet and hurling off some extraordinary thoughts. But he kept them to himself. Isham complained once, with fervor, about his sciatica. The house was quiet.

It was two o’clock when they left the dining room and returned to the right wing. The library proved a spacious affair, the study of a cultured man. It was square, and its immaculate hardwood floor was covered except for a three-foot border by a thick Chinese rug. There were built-in shelves filled with books on two walls, from floor to beamed ceiling. In an alcove chiseled out of the angle of two walls stood a small grand piano with mellow keys, open, its top propped up — evidently as Thomas Brad had left it the night before. A low round reading table in the center of the room was covered with magazines and smoking accessories. A divan stood before one of the walls, its front legs resting on the rug; on the opposite wall a secretary, its dropleaf down. Ellery noticed that on the dropleaf, in plain view, stood two bottles of ink, red and black; both, he observed mechanically, were nearly full.

“I went through that secretary with a magnifying glass,” said Isham, flinging himself upon the divan. “First thing we did, naturally. It stood to reason that if that was Brad’s personal writing desk it might contain papers of value to us in the investigation.” He shrugged. “Nothing doing. Everything is as innocent as a nun’s diary. As for the rest of the room — well, you can see for yourself. Nothing else here of a personal nature, and besides the murder was committed in the summerhouse. It’s just those checkers, now.”

“Now,” added Inspector Vaughn, “that we’ve found the red checker near the totem pole.”

“You’ve gone through the rest of the house, I suppose?” remarked Ellery, strolling about.

“Oh, yes, in a routine way. Brad’s bedroom, and so on. Absolutely nothing of interest.”

Ellery turned his attention to the circular reading table. Taking from his pocket the glassine envelope of tobacco fragments from the pipe found on the summerhouse floor, he unscrewed the cap of a large humidor lying on the table and dug his hand into it. It emerged with a fistful of tobacco identical in color and cut — the uncommon cube-cut — with the tobacco from the pipe.

He laughed. “Well, no question about the filthy weed, at any rate. Another clue gone up the chimney. It was Brad’s, if this humidor was Brad’s.”

“And it was,” said Isham.

Experimentally, Ellery opened a tiny drawer whose outline was visible beneath the table’s circular top. It was, he found, cluttered with a veritable collection of pipes, all of them of excellent quality, all well-used, but all in the conventional shapes — the usual bowls with straight or curved stems. There were Meerschaums, briers, and bakelites; two were thin and very long — old English clay churchwardens.

“Hmm,” he said. “Mr. Brad belonged to the inner shrine. Checkers and pipes — they invariably go together. I’m surprised that there’s no dog before the hearth. Well, nothing here.”

“Any like this one?” demanded Vaughn, producing the Neptune-and-trident pipe.

Ellery shook his head. “You’d scarcely expect to find another, would you? A man wouldn’t have two like that. No case, either. I should think he’d get lockjaw just holding that monstrosity in his mouth. It must have been a gift.”

Ellery turned his attention to the main exhibit — the object which stood to the left of the open secretary on the same wall, across the room from the divan.

It was an ingenious device: a collapsible checker table which, it was evident, could be folded and swung back into a shallow niche in the wall directly behind it, to which it was attached by hinges. A sliding shutter, now resting above the niche, could be lowered to conceal the entire contrivance. In addition, there were two wall chairs, one at each side of the table, which could be similarly swung back into the wall.

“Brad must have been an addict indeed,” remarked Ellery, “to have installed built-in apparatus. Hmm... I suppose this is as he left it. It hasn’t been touched?”

“Not by us, anyway,” said Isham indifferently. “See what you can make of it.”

The top of the table, a glittering piece of craftsmanship, was inlaid in the usual design of sixty-four alternating white and black squares, all surrounded by a rich mother-of-pearl border. There was a wide margin at each player’s side for the stacking of pieces not in play. In the margin, on the side nearer the secretary, nine red checkers lay scattered — red pieces captured by the Black side. In the opposite margin were three black pieces, captured by Red. On the board itself, in position of play, lay three black “kings” (made by placing one black piece above another), and three single black pieces; also two single red pieces, one of which was situated on Black’s first, or starting, row of squares.

Ellery studied the board and the margins thoughtfully. “Where’s the box these came from?”

Isham kicked in the direction of the secretary. On the open dropleaf lay a cheap cardboard rectangular box, empty.

“Eleven red pieces,” said Ellery, gazing at the wall. “There should be twelve, of course. One red piece of the identical description found near the totem post.”

“Right,” sighed Isham. “Checked over with the rest of the household; there aren’t any other checker sets in the house. So that red piece we found must have come from here.”

“Quite so,” said Ellery. “This is interesting, most interesting.” He looked down at the pieces again.

“You think so?” said Isham sourly. “You won’t in a minute. I know what you’ve got in mind. It isn’t so. Wait till I get Brad’s butler in here.”

He went to the door and said to the detective: “Get that Stallings fellow in here again. The butler.”

Ellery raised eyebrows that spoke eloquently, but he said nothing. He went to the secretary and idly picked up the empty cardboard checker box. Isham watched him with a little snarling grin.

“And that, too,” said Isham unexpectedly.

Ellery looked up. “Yes, I wondered about that the moment I came in here. Why an inveterate player who goes to the trouble and expense of installing an elaborate checker outfit should use cheap wooden pieces.”

“You’ll find out in a minute. Nothing startling, I can promise you that.”

The detective opened the door from the hall, and a tall thin man with sallow cheeks and bland eyes entered. He was dressed simply in black. There was something obsequious about him.

“Stallings,” said Isham without preliminary, “I want you to repeat for the benefit of these gentlemen some of the information you gave me this morning.”

“I’ll be glad to, sir,” said the butler. He had a soft, pleasant voice.

“First, how do you explain the fact that Mr. Brad played with these cheap checkers?”

“Very simple, sir, as I told you before. Mr. Brad” — Stallings sighed and rolled his eyes ceilingward — “always used only, the best. He had this table and the chairs made to order, and the wall was hollowed out for them to fit into. At the same time he purchased a very expensive set of ivory checkers, all very intricately carved, you might say, and he has used them for years. Then not long ago Dr. Temple admired the set so much that Mr. Brad, as he said to me one day” — Stallings sighed again — “meant to surprise him by giving him a set just like it. Only two weeks ago he sent his set to some private carver in Brooklyn to have the twenty-four pieces duplicated, and they haven’t come back yet. He couldn’t get anything but these cheap ones at the moment, so he used them in the meantime.”

“And, Stallings,” said the District Attorney, “now tell us about what happened yesterday evening.”

“Yes, sir,” Stallings ran the tip of a red tongue along his lips. “Just before leaving the house last night, as Mr. Brad had ordered—”

“Hold on,” said Ellery sharply. “You were instructed to leave the house last night?”

“Yes, sir. When Mr. Brad got home from the city yesterday, he called Fox, Mrs. Baxter, and myself into this very room.” Stallings swallowed hard at some tender memory. “Mrs. Brad and Miss Helene had already left — they were going to the theater, I believe; Mr. Lincoln didn’t come home for dinner at all... Mr. Brad looked very tired. He took out a ten-dollar bill and gave it to me, and told Fox, Mrs. Baxter, and me to take the evening off after dinner. He said he wanted to be alone for the entire evening, and told Fox he might take the small car. So we went.”

“I see,” muttered Ellery.

“What’s the story about the checkers, Stallings?” prompted Isham.

Stallings bobbed his long head. “Just before I left the house — Fox and Mrs. Baxter were already in the car in the driveway outside — I went into the library to see if there was anything I could do for Mr. Brad before we left. I asked him, and he said no, and he told me, rather nervously, I thought, to go out with the others.”

“An observant chap, aren’t you?” said Ellery, smiling.

Stallings looked gratified. “I try to be, sir. Anyway, as I told Mr. Isham this morning, when I came in here last evening Mr. Brad was sitting at the checker table playing with himself, so to speak.”

“Then he wasn’t playing with somebody,” muttered Inspector Vaughn. “Why the devil didn’t you tell me, Isham?”

The District Attorney spread his hands, and Ellery said: “Just what do you mean, Stallings?”

“Well, sir, he had all the pieces spread out, blacks and reds, and he was playing both sides. It was the beginning of a game. First he moved a piece from the side where he was sitting, then he thought a while and moved a piece from the opposite side. I saw only two moves.”

“So,” said Ellery, with pursed lips. “In which chair was he sitting?”

“In that one, near the secretary. But when he made the red move he got up and sat in the opposite chair, studying the board as he always does.” Stallings smacked his lips. “A very good player, Mr. Brad was, very careful. He used to practice alone that way very often.”

“And there you are,” said Isham wearily. “The checker business doesn’t mean a curse.” He sighed. “Now about yourselves, Stallings.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the butler. “We all drove to the city. Fox dropped Mrs. Baxter and me off at the Roxy Theater, and said he’d come back for us after the picture let out. I don’t know where he went.”

“And did he come back for you?” asked Inspector Vaughn, suddenly alert.

“No, sir, he did not. We waited a full half-hour for him, but we thought he must have had an accident or something, so we took the train back and cabbed from the station.”

“Cabbed, hey?” The Inspector looked pleased. “Boys at the station did a rushing business last night. What time was it you got back?”

“Around midnight, sir, maybe a little after. I’m not sure.”

“Was Fox back when you got here?”

Stallings looked prim. “I’m afraid I can’t say, sir. I don’t know. He lives in the little cabin in the woods near the Cove, and even if there was a light we couldn’t see it because of the trees.”

“Well, we’ll attend to that. You haven’t had much of a talk with Fox, have you, Isham?”

“I haven’t had the opportunity.”

“One moment,” said Ellery. “Stallings, did Mr. Brad say anything to you last night about expecting a visitor?”

“No, sir. He just said he wanted to be alone for the evening.”

“Did he often send you, Fox, and Mrs. Baxter off that way?”

“No, sir. It was the first time.”

“One thing more.” Ellery went to the circular reading table and tapped the humidor with the tips of his fingers. “Know what’s in this jar?”

Stallings looked astonished. “Certainly, sir! Mr. Brad’s tobacco.”

“Very good! Is this the only pipe tobacco in the house?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Brad was fussy about his tobacco, and that’s a special blend he had made up and imported from England. He never smoked anything else. In fact,” said Stallings in a burst of confidence, “Mr. Brad often said there wasn’t an American pipe tobacco worth its salt.”

For no reason at all an incongruous thought flashed into Ellery’s mind. Andrew Van and his caviar; Thomas Brad and his imported tobacco... He shook his head. “There’s another thing, Stallings. Inspector, would you mind showing that Neptune’s-head pipe to Stallings?”

Vaughn produced the carved pipe again. Stallings looked at it for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes, sir, I’ve seen that pipe around.”

The three men sighed in concert. Luck seemed to be working in the interests of crime rather than punishment. “Yes, that’s the way it goes... It was Brad’s, eh?” grunted Isham.

“Oh, I’m sure of it, sir,” said the butler. “Not that he’d smoke any one pipe for very long. He always said that a pipe, like a human being, needs a vacation every once in a while. His drawer is full of very good pipes, sir. But I recognize that one, sir. I’ve seen it many times before. Although not lately, come to think of it.”

“All right, all right,” said Isham irritably. “Beat it, now,” and Stallings, with a stiff little bow, became the butler again and marched out of the study.

“That settles the checker business,” said the Inspector grimly, “and the pipe business, and the tobacco business. Just a lot of wasted time. Gives us an interesting lead on Fox, though.” He rubbed his hands. “Not so bad. And with that Oyster Island bunch to look over, we’re going to have a busy day.”

“Days, don’t you think?” smiled Ellery. “This is quite like old times!”

Someone tapped on the door, and Inspector Vaughn crossed the room to open it. A man with a saturnine face stood there. He whispered for some minutes to Vaughn, and Vaughn nodded repeatedly. Finally, the Inspector closed the door and returned.

“What’s up?” demanded Isham.

“Nothing much. A lot of blanks, I’m afraid. My men report that they haven’t found a damned thing on the grounds. Not a thing. Cripes, it’s unbelievable!”

“What were you looking for?” asked Ellery.

“The head, man, the head!”

No one said anything for a long time, and the chill wind of tragedy crept into the room. It was hard to believe, looking out into the sunny gardens, that the master of all this peace and beauty and luxury lay, a stiff headless corpse, in the County Morgue, like any nameless vagrant fished out of Long Island Sound.

“Anything else?” said Isham at last. He was growling to himself.

“The boys have had the railroad station people over the coals,” said Vaughn quietly. “And every resident within five miles. Been looking, Mr. Queen, for possible visitors last night. From Lincoln’s and Stallings’s stories it’s pretty obvious that Brad expected somebody last night. A man doesn’t ship his wife, his stepdaughter, his business associate, and his servants off unless there’s something queer in the wind and he wants privacy. Never did it before, either, see?”

“I see only too clearly,” retorted Ellery. “No, you’re perfectly justified in that assumption, Inspector. Brad expected someone last night, there’s no doubt about it.”

“Well, we didn’t strike one person who could give us a lead. Even the conductors on the trains and the station people don’t remember a stranger coming by rail around nine o’clock or so last night. Neighbors?” The Inspector shrugged. “Couldn’t expect anything there, I suppose. Anyone might have come and gone without leaving a trail.”

“As a matter of fact,” said the District Attorney, “I think you’re attempting the impossible, Vaughn. No visitor coming here last night with criminal intent would be such a damned fool as to get off at the nearest railroad station. He’d get off a station or two before or after and walk the rest of the way.”

“How about the possibility of the visitor’s having come by automobile?” asked Ellery.

Vaughn shook his head. “We looked for that early this morning. But in the grounds themselves the roads are gravel, which aren’t any help; the highways are macadam, and it didn’t rain or anything — no go, Mr. Queen. It’s possible, of course.”

Ellery mused deeply. “There’s still another possibility, Inspector. The Sound!”

The Inspector stared out of the window. “And haven’t we thought of that,” he said with an ugly little laugh. “What a cinch it would have been! Hire a boat from the New York or Connecticut shore — a motorboat... I’ve got a couple of men following that lead up now.”

Ellery grinned. “Quod fugit, usque sequor — eh, Inspector?”

“Huh?”

Isham rose. “Let’s get the hell out of here. There’s work to do.”

7. Fox and the English

They walked more deeply into fog. No light appeared anywhere.

It was not to be expected that Mrs. Baxter, the housekeeper, for example, would have anything of importance to contribute. Yet it was necessary, in the interests of thoroughness, to question her. They returned to the drawing room and went through the dreary business. Mrs. Baxter, in a flutter, merely confirmed Stallings’s story of the excursion the night before. No, Mr. Brad had said nothing to her about visitors. No, when she served dinner to Mr. Brad alone in the dining room he did not seem particularly upset, or nervous. Just a little absent-minded, perhaps. Yes, Fox had dropped them off at the Roxy. Yes, she and Stallings had returned to Bradwood by train and taxicab, arriving a little past midnight. No, she didn’t believe Mrs. Brad or the others had come home yet, but she wasn’t certain. The house was dark? Yes, sir. Anything seem wrong? No, sir.

All right, Mrs. Baxter... The elderly housekeeper retreated hastily and the Inspector swore with fluency.

Ellery looked on, preoccupied with a spot at the base of a fingernail at odd moments. The name Andrew Van kept swimming about in the channels of his brain.

“Come on,” said Isham. “Let’s talk to that chauffeur, Fox.”

He strode out of the house with Vaughn, and Ellery ambled after, sniffing the June roses and wondering when his colleagues would stop chasing their tails and embark for that very interesting patch of earth and trees in the Sound, Oyster Island.

Isham led the way around the left wing of the main house, along a narrow gravel path which very soon entered a carefully wild grove. A short walk, and they emerged from under the trees to a clearing in the center of which stood a pleasant little cabin built of shaven logs. A county trooper lounged conspicuously in the sun before the hut.

Isham knocked on the stout door, and a man’s deep voice said: “Come on in.”

When they entered, he was on his feet, planted like an oak, fists doubled, his face curiously mottled with spots of pallor. He was a tall straight man, thin and tough as a bamboo shoot. When he saw who his visitors were, his fists unclenched, his shoulders sagged, and he groped for the back of the homemade chair before which he was standing.

“Fox,” said Isham peremptorily, “I didn’t get much of an opportunity this morning to talk to you.”

“No, sir,” said Fox. The pallor, Ellery saw with a little sensation of surprise, was not temporary; it was the man’s natural complexion.

“We know how you found the body,” contributed the District Attorney, dropping into the only other chair in the hut.

“Yes, sir,” muttered Fox. “It was an awful exp—”

“What we want to know now,” said Isham without inflection, “is why you left Stallings and Mrs. Baxter last night, where you went, and when you got home.”

Curiously, the man did not blanch or cringe; the expression on his mottled features did not change. “I just drove around town,” he said. “I got back to Bradwood a little before midnight.”

Inspector Vaughn came forward deliberately and clamped his hand on Fox’s limp arm. “Look here,” he said, almost pleasantly. “We’re not trying to hurt you, or frame you, you understand. If you’re on the level, we’ll let you alone.”

“I’m on the level,” said Fox. Ellery thought he detected traces of culture in the man’s pronunciation and intonations. He watched him with growing interest.

“All right,” said Vaughn. “That’s fine. Now forget all that bunk about just driving around town. Give it to us straight. Where did you go?”

“I’m giving it to you straight,” replied Fox in a dead, even voice. “I drove around Fifth Avenue and through the Park and on Riverside Drive for a long time. It was nice out, and I enjoyed the air.”

The Inspector dropped his arm suddenly and grinned at Isham. “He enjoyed the air. Why didn’t you call for Stallings and Mrs. Baxter after they got out of the movie?”

Fox’s broad shoulders twitched in the suspicion of a shrug. “No one told me to.”

Isham looked at Vaughn, and Vaughn looked at Isham. Ellery, however, looked at Fox; and he was surprised to see the man’s eyes — it seemed impossible — fill with tears.

“Okay,” said Isham finally. “If that’s your story, you’re stuck with it, and God help you if we find out otherwise. How long have you worked here?”

“Since the first of the year, sir.”

“References?”

“Yes, sir.” Silently he turned and went to an old sideboard. He fumbled in a drawer and brought out a clean, carefully preserved envelope.

The District Attorney ripped it open, glanced over the letter inside, and handed it to Vaughn. The Inspector read it more carefully, then, flipping it on the table, inexplicably strode out of the hut.

“Seems all right,” said Isham, rising. “By the way, you, Stallings, and Mrs. Baxter are the only people employed here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Fox without raising his eyes. He picked up his references and kept turning the envelope and paper over between his fingers.

“Er — Fox,” said Ellery. “When you got home last night, did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“No, sir.”

“You stay put,” said Isham, and left the hut. Outside, Inspector Vaughn joined him, and Ellery paused in the doorway. Fox, inside, had not moved.

“He’s lying in his teeth about last night,” said Vaughn loudly; Fox could not help but hear. “We’ll check up right away.”

Ellery winced. There was something ruthless about the tactics of both men, and he could not forget the tears in Fox’s eyes.

In silence they cut over toward the west. Fox’s hut was not far from the waters of Ketcham’s Cove, and they could see the sunny glint of blue through the trees as they stumbled along. A short distance from the hut they struck a narrow road, unfenced.

“Brad’s property,” grunted Isham. “He wouldn’t fence it. The house those Lynn people rented must he over in that stretch beyond the road.”

They crossed the road and at once plunged into cathedral woods. It was five minutes before Vaughn found the footpath which led through the dense underbrush toward the west. Shortly after the path widened, the woods grew sparser, and they saw a low rambling stone house set in the heart of the trees. A man and a woman were sitting on the open porch. The man rose rather hastily as the figures of the three visitors came into view.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lynn?” said the District Attorney, as they paused at the foot of the porch.

“In the flesh,” said the man. “I’m Percy Lynn. My wife here... You gentlemen are from Bradwood?”

Lynn was a tall, dark, sharp-featured Englishman with close-cropped oily hair and shrewd eyes. Elizabeth Lynn was blonde and fat; the smile on her face seemed fixed there.

Isham nodded, and Lynn said: “Well... Won’t you come up?”

“It’s all right,” said Inspector Vaughn pleasantly. “We won’t stay but a minute. Heard the news?”

The Englishman nodded soberly; his wife’s smile, however, did not fade. “Shocking, really,” said Lynn. “The first we knew about it was when I walked down to the road and bumped into a bobby. He told me about the tragedy.”

“Naturally,” said Mrs. Lynn in a shrill voice, “we wouldn’t dream of going over then.”

“No, naturally not,” agreed her husband.

There was a little silence, in which Isham and Vaughn conversed in the language of the eyes. The Lynns remained motionless; there was a pipe in the tall man’s hand, and a little curl of smoke rose without trembling into his face.

He gestured with the pipe suddenly. “Come now,” he said, “I realize perfectly well how deuced awkward it is, gentlemen. You’re the police, I presume?”

“That’s right,” said Isham. He seemed content to permit Lynn to make all the advances, and Vaughn remained in the background. As for Ellery, he was fascinated by that awful smile on the woman’s face. Then he grinned himself; he knew now why it was so rigid. Mrs. Lynn had false teeth.

“You’ll want to see our passports, I fancy,” Lynn went on in a grave voice. “Check up on the neighbors and friends, and all that sort of thing. Eh?”

The passports proved in order.

“I fancy too you’ll want to know just how we come — Mrs. Lynn and I — to be living here...” began the Englishman when Isham returned the passports.

“We’ve heard all that from Miss Brad,” said Isham. He moved up two steps suddenly, and the Lynns stiffened. “Where were you people last night?”

Lynn cleared his throat noisily. “Ah — yes. Of course. As a matter of fact, we were in the city...”

“New York?”

“Quite so. We went into town for dinner and to see a play — crumby sort of thing.”

“What time did you get back here?”

Mrs. Lynn shrilled unexpectedly: “Oh, we didn’t. We spent the night at a hotel. It was much too late to—”

“What hotel?” asked the Inspector.

“The Roosevelt.”

Isham grinned. “Say, how late was it, anyway?”

“Oh, past midnight,” replied the Englishman. “We had a snack after the play, and—”

“That’s fine,” said the Inspector. “Know many people around here?”

They shook their heads together. “Scarcely any one,” said Lynn. “Except the Brads and that very interesting chap, Professor Yardley, and Dr. Temple. That’s all, really.”

Ellery smiled ingratiatingly. “Have either of you by any chance ever visited Oyster Island?”

The Englishman smiled briefly in return. “Blank there, old chap. Nudism is nothing new to us. We had our fill of it in Germany.”

“Besides,” put in Mrs. Lynn, “the people on that island—” She shuddered delicately. “I quite agreed with poor Mr. Brad that they should be ejected.”

“Hmm,” said Isham. “Any explanation to offer for the tragedy?”

“We’re quite at a loss, sir. Quite. Fearful thing, though. Savage.” Lynn tchk-tchked. “Sort of thing that gives your splendid country a black eye on the Continent.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Isham dryly. “Thanks... Come along.”

8. Oyster Island

Ketcham’s cove was a rough semicircle torn out of the shore of Thomas Brad’s estate. In the center of the arc of beach bobbed a large slip, to which several motorboats and a launch lay moored. Ellery, who had returned with his two companions to the westward road and followed it toward the water, found himself standing on a smaller slip several hundred yards from the main moorings. Across the water, not a mile away, sprawled Oyster Island. Its shoreline looked as if the Island had been wrenched bodily out of the mainland, becoming slightly distended in the process. Ellery could not see the other side of the Island, but he judged that its contour had inspired its name.

Oyster Island, set like a green gem in the turquoise background of Long Island Sound, was so far as any outward appearance indicated a primeval tangle of forest. The trees and wild shrubs ran almost to the water’s edge. No... there was a small landing dock. By straining his eyes he could make out its gray rickety outline. But there was no other man-made structure in sight.

Isham strode out on the slip and yelled: “Hi!” to a police launch idly cruising back and forth between the mainland and Oyster Island. Through the little strait to the west Ellery saw the stern of another police launch; it was patrolling close to shore, he realized, as it disappeared behind the Island.

The first launch shot landward and made fast to the slip.

“Well, here goes,” said Vaughn in a rather tense voice, as he stepped into the launch. “Come on, Mr. Queen. This may be the end.”

Ellery and Isham jumped in, and the launch swerved widely as it headed directly for the center of the oyster.

They knifed across the Cove. Gradually they got a clearer view of the Island and the mainland. Not far from the slip at which they had embarked, they now saw, lay a similar slip to the west — evidently for the use of the Lynns. A rowboat, moored to one of the bitts, bleached there in the sun. At a corresponding point eastward across the Cove a replica of the Lynns’ slip was visible.

“Dr. Temple lives off there, doesn’t he?” asked Ellery.

“Yes. That must be his landing place.” The eastern slip was empty of craft.

The launch sheared the water. As they drew nearer the little dock on Oyster Island, its details leaped into view. They sat silently watching it grow.

Suddenly Inspector Vaughn sprang to his feet, his face suffused with excitement, and yelled: “Something’s happening over there!”

They stared at the dock. The figure of a man, carrying a struggling, faintly screaming woman in his arms, had dashed out of the brush, leaped heavily into a tiny outboard motorboat which they now saw was tied to the western side of the dock, dumped the woman unceremoniously on the bow thwart, turned the engine over, and with a rush drove the boat away from the dock, heading directly for the oncoming police launch. The woman, as if stunned, lay still; they could see the man’s dark face as he turned quickly to look back at the Island.

Not ten seconds after the escape — if indeed it was an escape — an astonishing apparition burst out of the woods, following the same path the runaways had taken.

It was a nude man. A tall, wide, brown and heavily muscled fellow, with a mane of black hair tossing with the wind of his passage. Tarzan, thought Ellery; he was half-prepared to see the trunk of Tarzan’s elephantine and improbable companion appear from the brush behind him. But where was the loin skin?... They could make out his curse of disappointment as he stopped short on the dock, glaring after the departing boat. He stood there for a moment, ropy arms hanging loosely, utterly unconscious of his nakedness. He had eyes only for the outboard, and the man in the boat was looking back tensely, apparently unaware of what lay in the path of his craft.

Then, so suddenly that Ellery blinked, the nude man vanished. He had executed a swift dive from the edge of the dock, cleaving the water like a harpoon. He reappeared almost at once and broke into a fast, distance-eating crawl, heading for the runaways.

“The damned fool!” exclaimed Isham. “Does he expect to overhaul a motorboat?”

“The motorboat’s stopped,” observed Ellery dryly.

Isham, startled, looked sharply at the outboard. It lay dead in the water a hundred yards offshore; and its pilot was working frantically over the trailing motor.

“Hit ’er up!” shouted Inspector Vaughn to the police pilot. “That guy’s got murder in his eyes!”

The launch roared, and its siren let out a deep-throated whine that raised echoes behind the Island. As if for the first time conscious of the launch’s presence, the man in the boat and the man in the water froze to search out the source of the warning. The swimmer, treading water, stared for an instant, then shook a cascade from his hair savagely and dived. He reappeared a moment later in another fast crawl, but this time he was retreating to the Island as if all the devils out of hell were in his wake.

The girl on the thwart sat up and stared. The man dropped into the sternsheets limply and waved his hand to the launch.

They pulled alongside just as the naked man leaped out of the water to shore. Without looking back he tore into the protection of the woods, and disappeared.

Astonishingly, as the police craft hooked onto the dead outboard, the man threw back his head and laughed — a deep, hearty laugh of pure relief and enjoyment.

He was a thin wiry individual of indeterminate age, with brownish hair and a face burnt almost purple — a complexion which could only be the result of long years under the equatorial sun. His eyes, too, looked bleached; they were water-gray, almost colorless. His mouth was a trap in flesh; the muscles of his jaw braced his purple cheek like girder-steel. Altogether a formidable person despite his flight, Ellery decided, as he watched the man roll on the sternsheets in the full ecstasy of his glee.

The female this remarkable man had abducted could only be, from her resemblance to Jonah Lincoln, the rebellious Hester. She was a plain but well-made young woman. Well-made, as the embarrassed men in the police launch had no difficulty in seeing; although a man’s coat was draped about her shoulders — the laughing man, Ellery noted, was coatless — beneath it she was scantily concealed in a dirty piece of canvas, as if someone had forcibly covered her nakedness with the first scrap of material which lay at hand.

She returned their stares out of troubled blue eyes, and then she blushed and shivered, hanging her head. Her hands crept insensibly into her lap.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” demanded the Inspector. “And who are you? What d’ye mean by kidnaping this woman?”

The coatless man dashed a tear from his eyes. “Don’t blame you,” he gasped. “Gad, that was funny!” He shook the last remnants of mirth out of his somber face, and stood up. “Sorry. My name’s Temple. This is Miss Hester Lincoln. Thanks for the rescue.”

“Come aboard,” growled Vaughn.

Isham and Ellery helped the silent woman into the launch. “I say, wait a minute,” snapped Dr. Temple. There was no humor in his face now; it was black with suspicion. “Who the devil are you people, anyway?”

“Police. Come on, come on!”

“Police!” The man’s eyes narrowed, and he clambered slowly into the launch. A detective fastened the outboard to the painter of the bigger craft. Dr. Temple looked from Vaughn to Isham to Ellery. The girl had slumped into a seat and was studying the floor. “Now, that’s queer. What’s happened?”

District Attorney Isham told him. His face went ghastly pale; and Hester Lincoln looked up with eyes full of horror.

“Brad!” muttered Dr. Temple. “Murdered... It doesn’t seem possible! Why, only yesterday morning I saw him and—”

“Jonah,” began Hester; she was trembling. “Is — is he all right?”

No one answered her. Dr. Temple was biting his lower lip; a very thoughtful look had come into his pallid eyes. “Have you seen — the Lynns?” he asked in a peculiar voice. “Why?”

Temple was silent; then he smiled and shrugged. “Oh, nothing. Just a friendly question... Poor Tom.” He sat down suddenly and gazed over the water at Oyster Island.

“Head back to Brad’s landing,” ordered Vaughn. The launch churned the water and began to move back toward the mainland.

Ellery noticed the tall outlandish figure of Professor Yardley standing on the big slip, and waved. Yardley waved his gangling arm in reply.

“Now, Dr. Temple,” said District Attorney Isham grimly, “suppose you go into your song-and-dance. What’s the idea of the big kidnaping scene, and who in the name of God is that naked lunatic who was chasing you?”

“It’s unfortunate... I suppose I’d better come out with the truth. Hester — forgive me.”

The girl did not answer; she seemed stunned by the news of Thomas Brad’s death.

“Miss Lincoln,” went on the sun-blackened man, “has been — well, let’s say a little impulsive. She’s young, and certain things make young people lose their heads.”

“Oh, Victor,” said Hester in an infinitely weary voice.

“Jonah Lincoln,” continued Dr. Temple with a frown, “hasn’t taken — how shall I say it? — he hasn’t done his duty, as I see it, toward his sister.”

“As you see it,” said the girl bitterly.

“Yes, Hester, because I feel—” He bit his lip again. “At any rate, when a week passed and Hester hadn’t returned from that damned Island, I thought it was high time someone brought her to her senses. Since nobody else seemed capable of doing it, I assumed the duty. Nudism!” He snorted. “Perversion, as those people practice it. I haven’t been a medical man for nothing. They’re a bunch of fakers trading on the inhibitions of decent people.”

The girl gasped. “Victor Temple! Do you realize what you’re saying?”

“Excuse me for butting in,” said the Inspector mildly, “but might I ask what business it is of yours if Miss Lincoln wants to prance around without any clothes on? She looks of age.”

Dr. Temple snapped his jaws together. “If you must know,” he said angrily, “I feel I have the right to interfere. Emotionally, she’s just a child, an adolescent. She’s been carried away by a handsome physique and a smooth line of talk.”

“That was Paul Romaine, I take it?” put in Ellery with a dry smile.

The physician nodded. “Yes, the insidious blackguard! He’s the living trademark of that crazy cult of the sun. Sun’s all right in its place... I went over there this morning to scout around. Romaine and I had a little tussle. Like cavemen! It was ridiculous, and that’s why I laughed a moment ago. But it was serious then, and he’s a good deal stronger than I. I saw I was in for it, grabbed Miss Lincoln in the approved fashion, and ran for it.” He grinned wryly. “If it wasn’t for the fact that Romaine stumbled and hit his thick head against a rock, I’m afraid I should have been properly thrashed. And there’s the story of the great abduction.”

Hester stared at him dully; she was shivering in her fright.

“But I still don’t see what right you had—” began Isham.

Dr. Temple rose, and something fierce came into his eye. “It’s really none of your damned business, whoever you may be. But I expect to make this young lady my wife someday. That’s what right I have... She’s in love with me, but she doesn’t know it. And, by God, I’ll make her know it!”

He glared at her, and for a moment her eyes sparked with his in an answering glare.

“‘This,’” murmured Ellery to Isham, “‘is the very ecstasy of Love.’”

“Huh?” said Isham.

A trooper caught the line on the main slip. Professor Yardley said: “Hello, Queen! Drifted back to see how you were coming on... ’Lo, Temple! Anything the matter?”

Dr. Temple nodded. “I’ve just kidnaped Hester, and these gentlemen want to hang me.”

Yardley’s smile faded. “I’m sorry...”

“Er — you come along with us, Professor,” said Ellery. “I think we’ll need you on the Island.”

Inspector Vaughn added: “Good idea. Dr. Temple, you said you saw Brad yesterday morning?”

“Just for a moment. As he was leaving for the city. I saw him Monday night, too — night before last. He seemed perfectly normal. I can’t understand it, I really can’t. Any suspicions?”

“I’m asking,” said Vaughn. “How’d you spend last night, Doctor?”

Temple grinned. “You’re not starting with me? I was home all evening — I live alone, you know. A woman comes in every day to cook and clean up.”

“Just as a matter of form,” said Isham, “we’d like to know a little more about you.”

Temple waved a dejected arm. “Anything you want.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Since 1921. I’m a retired army officer, you know — a medical man. I was in Italy at the outbreak of the war and joined the Italian Medical Corps rather impulsively; I was just a shaver out of diapers and Med School. Rank of Major, shot up once or twice — I was in the Balkan campaign and got myself taken prisoner. It wasn’t much fun.” He smiled briefly. “That ended my military career. I was interned by the Austrians in Graz for the duration of the war.”

“And then you came to the States?”

“I knocked about for several years — I’d come into a sizable inheritance during the war — and then drifted back home. Well, you know how things were for many of us. Old friends gone, no family — the usual thing. I settled here, and I’ve been here ever since playing the country gentleman.”

“Thanks, Doctor,” said Isham with more cordiality. “We’ll drop you here and—” A thought struck him. “You’d better go back to the Brad house, Miss Lincoln. There may be fireworks over on the Island. I’ll have your things sent back.”

Hester Lincoln did not raise her eyes. But there was a stubborn hardness in her tone as she said: “I’m not staying here. I’m going back.”

Dr. Temple dropped his smile. “Going back!” he cried. “Are you insane, Hester? After everything that’s hap—”

She flung his coat off her shoulders; the sun blazed on her brown shoulders and her eyes blazed in sympathy with it. “I won’t be told what to do by you or anybody else, Dr. Temple! I’m going back, and you shan’t stop me. Don’t you dare.”

Vaughn looked helplessly at Isham, and Isham began to work up a muttering rage.

Ellery drawled: “Oh, come, now. Let’s all go back. I think it may prove rather a lark.”

And so once more the launch cut across the waters of Ketcham’s Cove, this time achieving the little landing dock without incident. As they stepped to the dock, Hester grimly refusing assistance, they started at the appearance of what at first glance seemed to be a ghost.

It was a little old man, unkempt and brown-bearded, with fanatical eyes. He was swathed in a pure white robe. He wore curious sandals. In his right hand he held a crude and peculiar baton topped with a badly carved representation of a snake... He strode out of the bushes, stuck out his skinny chest, and stared haughtily at them.

Behind him towered the naked swimmer — except that he had in the interim donned white duck trousers and an undershirt. His brown feet were bare.

The two parties eyed each other for an instant, and then Ellery said, with warm appreciation: “Well, if it isn’t Harakht himself!” Professor Yardley smiled in his beard.

The little ghost started, his eyes rolling toward Ellery. But the shimmer in them did not reflect a glint of recognition. “That is my name,” he announced in a shrill clear voice. “Are you worshipers at the shrine?”

“I’ll worship at your shrine, you little peanut,” snarled Inspector Vaughn, striding forward and gripping Harakht’s arm. “You’re the boss grifter of this carnival, aren’t you? Where’s your shack? We want to talk to you.”

Harakht looked helpless, and turned to his companion. “Paul, you see? Paul!”

“He must have liked the name,” murmured Professor Yardley. “A rare disciple!”

Paul Romaine did not shift his gaze; he was glaring at Dr. Temple, who returned the glare with interest. Hester, Ellery noticed, had slipped off into the underbrush.

Harakht turned back. “Who are ye? What is your mission? We are peaceful folk here.”

Isham snorted, and Vaughn grumbled: “Old man Moses himself. Look here, grandpa. We’re the police, understand, and we’re looking for a murderer!”

The little old man shrank as if Vaughn had struck him; his slate lips trembled, and he gasped: “Again! Again! Again!”

Paul Romaine came to life. He brushed Harakht aside roughly and stepped forward to confront the Inspector. “You talk to me, whoever you are. The old man’s a little batty. You’re looking for a murderer? Go ahead and look. But what the hell has that got to do with us?”

Ellery admired him; the man was a splendid animal physically, handsome with a magnetic masculinity that made it easy to understand why women of repressed or sentimental natures would lose their hearts to him.

Isham said quietly: “Where were you and this lunatic last night?”

“Right here on the Island. Who’s been killed?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No! Who?”

“Thomas Brad.”

Romaine blinked. “Brad! Well, it was probably coming to him... What of it? We’re in the clear. We haven’t anything to do with those sniveling old women on the mainland. All we want is to be let alone!”

Inspector Vaughn pushed Isham gently aside; the Inspector himself was no weakling of a man, and his eyes were well on a level with Romaine’s as they locked glances. “Now you,” said Vaughn, digging his fingers into the man’s wrist, “keep a civil tongue in your head. You’re talking to the District Attorney of this county, and the boss cop of the roost. You answer questions like a good little boy, see?”

Romaine wrenched at his arm; but Vaughn’s fingers were iron, and they remained clamped about the thick wrist. “Oh, all right,” he mumbled, “if that’s the way you feel about it. It’s just that nobody lets us alone. What do you want to know?”

“When was the last time you and Chief Bilgewater behind you left the Island?”

Harakht began shrilly: “Paul, come away! These are infidels!”

“Keep quiet!... The old man here hasn’t left the place since we got here. I went into the village a week ago for supplies.”

“That’s the ticket.” The Inspector released Romaine’s arm. “Get going. We want to see your headquarters, or temple, or whatever the hell you call it.”

In single file they followed the incongruous figure of Harakht along a footpath which led from the shore directly into the brush toward the heart of the Island. The Island was curiously still; there seemed to be little bird and insect life, and no human life whatever. Romaine stamped along noncommittally; he seemed to have forgotten the presence of Dr. Temple, who followed in his footsteps, watching the brawny back with unwavering eyes.

Evidently Romaine had sounded a warning before the arrival of the investigating party, for when they emerged from the woods into a large clearing, where the house stood — a sparsely slatted, huge wooden structure crudely put together — the members of Harakht’s cult were awaiting them, all clothed. It had been a hasty warning, for the neophytes, numbering some twenty men and women of all ages and descriptions, were attired in scraps of garments. Romaine growled something indistinguishable, and like a tribe of troglodytes they scuttled back into various wings of the house.

The Inspector said nothing; he was not at the moment interested in infractions of the public decency law.

Harakht glided on, oblivious; he held the home-made uraeus high before him, and his lips moved presumably in prayer. He led the way up the steps of the central building into what was apparently the “shrine” — an amazing room, vast in extent, rigged out with astronomical charts, plastercast statues of Horus, the falcon-headed Egyptian god, cows’ horns, a sistrum, an emblematic disc supporting a throne, and a curious sort of pulpit which was surrounded by bare wooden slabs whose use was, to Ellery at least, obscure. The room was roofless, and the late afternoon sun cast long shadows on the walls.

Harakht went directly to his altar, as if safety lay there, and disregarding his visitors he raised knotted fleshless arms to the sky and began to mumble in a strange tongue.

Ellery looked inquiringly at Professor Yardley, who stood, tall and ugly, listening intently a foot away. “Extraordinary,” muttered the Professor. “The man is an anachronism. To hear a twentieth-century human being speak in ancient Egyptian...”

Ellery was astonished. “Do you mean to say that this man actually knows what he’s talking about?”

Yardley smiled sadly, and whispered: “The man is insane. But he had good reason to go insane, and as for the genuineness of his speech... He calls himself Ra-Harakht. Actually he is — or was — one of the world’s great Egyptologists!”

The sonorous words rolled on. Ellery shook his head.

“I meant to tell you,” whispered the Professor, “but I really haven’t had a moment with you alone. I recognized him the instant I saw him — which was a few weeks ago, when I rowed out to the Island on a purely curiosity-satisfying exploration... Curious story. His name is Stryker. He suffered a horrible sunstroke while excavating in the Valley of the Kings years ago, and never recovered. Poor chap.”

“But — speaking ancient Egyptian!” protested Ellery.

“He’s intoning a priestly prayer to Horus — in the hieratic language. This man,” said Yardley soberly, “was the real thing, please understand. Naturally, he’s addled now, and his memory isn’t what it should be. His lunacy has garbled everything he ever knew. There’s nothing like this room, for example, in an Egyptological sense. Conglomerate — the sistrum and cows’ horns are sacred to Isis, the uraeus is the symbol of the godhead, and there’s Horus floating about. As for the fixtures, the wooden slabs where, I suppose, the worshipers recline during services, his own Biblical turn of speech...” The Professor shrugged. “It’s all been thrown together out of his imagination and the wreckage of his brain.”

Harakht lowered his arms, took an odd censer from a recess of the altar, sprinkled his eyelids, and then descended from the rostrum quietly. He was even smiling, and he seemed more rational.

Ellery regarded him with newborn vision. Insane or not, the man as an authentic figure became a totally different problem. The name Stryker, now that he masticated it in his memory, raised a faint flavor of recollection. Years ago, when he had been in preparatory school... Yes, it was the same man he had read about. Stryker the Egyptologist! Mumbling a language dead for centuries...

Ellery turned to find Hester Lincoln, attired in a brief skirt and sweater, facing them from a low doorway on the opposite side of the altar room. Her plain face, white though it was, showed a steely determination. She did not look at Dr. Temple, but walked across the room to stand openly by Paul Romaine’s side. Her hand took his. Surprisingly, he turned beet red and edged a step away.

Dr. Temple smiled.

Inspector Vaughn was not to be sheered off by trifles. He strode up to Stryker, who was standing quietly regarding his inquisitors, and said: “Can you answer a few simple questions?”

The madman inclined his head. “Ask.”

“When did you leave Weirton, West Virginia?”

The eyes flickered. “After the rite of kuphi five moons ago.”

“When?” shrieked Vaughn.

Professor Yardley coughed. “I think I can tell you what he’s trying to say, Inspector. The rite of kuphi, as he calls it, was practiced by the ancient Egyptian priests at sunset. It consisted of an elaborate ceremony in which kuphi, a confection made of some sixteen ingredients — honey, wine, resin, myrrh and so on — was mixed in a bronze censer while the holy writings were read. Naturally, he’s referring to a similar ceremony held five moons ago at sunset — January, of course.”

It was as Inspector Vaughn nodded and Stryker smiled gravely at the Professor that Ellery let loose a resonant bellow that made them all jump.

“Krosac!”

His eyes were bright as he watched the sun god and his business manager.

Stryker’s smile vanished, and the muscles about his mouth began to twitch. He cringed toward his altar. Romaine was unmoved; rather astonished, from his expression.

“I’m sorry,” drawled Ellery. “I get that way sometimes. Proceed, Inspector.”

“Not so dumb,” grinned Vaughn. “Harakht, where is Velja Krosac?”

Stryker wet his lips. “Krosac... No, no! I do not know. He has deserted the shrine. He has run away.”

“When did you tie up with this goof?” demanded Isham, leveling his forefinger at Romaine.

“What’s all this Krosac business?” growled Romaine. “All I know is I met up with the old man in February. Seemed as if he had a good idea.”

“Where was this?”

“Pittsburgh. Looked like a swell opportunity to me,” continued Romaine with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “Of course, all this” — he lowered his voice — “this bunk about sun gods... It’s good stuff for the yokels but the only thing I’m interested in is getting people to take their stinking clothes off and get into the sun. Look at me!” He inhaled deeply and his magnificent chest rose like a balloon. “I’m not sick, am I? That’s because I let the beneficial rays of the sun get at my skin and under my skin...”

“Oh can it,” said the Inspector. “I know the line, the usual sales talk. I’ve been wearing clothes since I jumped out of my cradle, and I could twist you around my little finger. How’s it happen that you came here, to Oyster Island?”

“You could, could you?” Romaine’s back swelled. “Well, cop or no cop, suppose you try it some time! I’d—”

“It was arranged,” shrilled Stryker anxiously.

“Arranged?” Isham frowned. “By whom?”

Stryker retreated. “It was arranged.”

“Ah, don’t listen to him!” snarled Romaine. “When he gets stubborn, you can’t get a sensible word out of him. When I joined up with him, he said the same thing. It was arranged — to come to Oyster Island.”

“Before you became his — er — fellow-divinity, eh?” asked Ellery.

“That’s right.”

They seemed to have arrived at a dead end. It was evident that, mad or not, the sunstruck Egyptologist could not be prevailed upon to divulge another coherent thought. Romaine knew, or professed to know, nothing about the events of six months before.

Inquiry revealed the information that there were twenty-three nudists living on the Island, most of them from New York City, who had been attracted to this doubtful Arcadia by adroit newspaper advertisements and Romaine’s personal missionary work. Their transportation was provided from the local railroad station; taxicabs brought them to a public landing on the farther boundary of Dr. Temple’s estate; and Ketcham, the owner of the Island, ferried them across in an ancient dory for a small consideration.

Old Man Ketcham, it appeared, lived with his wife on the eastern tip of the oyster.

Inspector Vaughn rounded up the sun god’s twenty-three shrinking neophytes of sun worship and nudism, and a badly frightened lot they were. Most of them, now that their excursion into the forbidden delights of nakedness was held up to the light of public investigation, seemed heartily ashamed of themselves; and several appeared in full regalia dragging hand luggage. But the Inspector grimly shook his head; no one was to leave the Island until he granted permission. He took their names and city addresses, smiling sardonically at the array of Smiths, Joneses, and Browns the pages of his notebook began to display.

“Any of you leave the Island yesterday?” demanded Isham.

A quick shaking of heads; no one, it seemed, had set foot on the mainland for several days.

The investigating party turned to go. Hester Lincoln still stood by Romaine’s side. Dr. Temple, who had patiently waited without once uttering a word, now said: “Hester, come along.”

She shook her head.

“You’re just being stubborn,” said Temple. “I know you, Hester. Be sensible — don’t stay here with this bunch of fakers, grafters, and inhibited morons.”

Romaine leaped forward. “What did you say?” he growled. “What did you call me?”

“You heard me, you fourflushing thickhead!” All the venom and baffled anger in the good doctor’s soul bubbled over; his right arm lashed out, and his fist struck Romaine’s jaw with a dull snick.

Hester stood frozen to the floor for a moment, and then her lips quivered. She turned and ran into the woods, sobbing convulsively.

Inspector Vaughn sprang; but Romaine, after a single instant of stupefaction, threw back his shoulders and laughed. “If that’s the best you can do, you little weasel...” His ears were fiery red. “I warn you, Temple; you stay away from here. If I catch you on this Island again, I’ll break every bone in your damned nosy body! Now get out.”

Ellery sighed.

9. The $100 Deposit

Dense and denser fog. The “important” visit was over.

They left the Island in gloomy spirits. A maniac with the usual complement of cunning and incoherence; a dead trail to a vanished man... the mystery was deeper than ever. They all felt that in some way the presence in the vicinity of Bradwood of the man who called himself Harakht was significant. It could not be coincidence. Yet what possible connection could there be between the murder of a country schoolteacher and the murder of a millionaire hundreds of miles away?

The police launch sputtered out from the landing dock and headed east along the shore of Oyster Island, skirting the green-walled ribbon of beach. At the extreme eastern tip of the Island they saw a similar structure in the water.

“That must be Ketcham’s private slip,” said Vaughn. “Head in.”

The Island at this point was even more desolate than on the western side. From where they stood on the wooden platform they had an unobstructed view of the Sound and the New York shoreline to the north. It was windy, a salty spot.

Dr. Temple, much subdued, and Professor Yardley remained in the launch. District Attorney Isham, Vaughn, and Ellery rattled off the ramshackle landing and followed a crooked path through the woods. It was cool here, and except for the path — which looked as if it had been last trodden by Indian feet — they might have been in virgin forest. Within a hundred and fifty yards, however they came upon a rude evidence of civilization, a cabin constructed of years-tempered, roughly hewn logs. Seated on the doorstep, placidly smoking, a corncob, was a big sunbitten old man. He rose quickly as he saw his visitors, and his white-tufted eyebrows bunched over remarkably clear eyes.

“What might ye be doin’ here?” he demanded in an unfriendly drawl. “Don’t ye know this is private prop’ty, this whole Island?”

“Police,” said Inspector Vaughn succinctly. “You Mr. Ketcham?”

The old man nodded. “P’lice, hey? After them noodists, I’ll warrant. Well, y’ain’t got nothin’ on Mrs. Ketcham and me, gentlem’n. I jest own this here scoop o’ dirt. Ef my tenants been cuttin’ up, that’s their hard luck. I ain’t respon—”

“Nobody’s taking you to task,” snapped Isham. “Don’t you know there’s been a crime committed on the mainland — at Bradwood?”

“Ye don’t tell me!” Ketcham’s jaw dropped, and his pipe seesawed between two brown teeth. “Hear that, Maw?” He turned his head toward the interior of the cabin, and they could discern an old crone’s wrinkled face between his outstretched arm and the jamb of the door. “Been a crime over to Bradwood... Well, well, ain’t that too bad. What’s it got to do with us?”

“Nothing — I hope,” said Isham darkly. “Thomas Brad’s been murdered.”

“Not Mr. Brad!” screamed an old feminine voice from the cabin; and Mrs. Ketcham popped her head out. “Ain’t that awful! Well, I allus said—”

“You git back in there, Maw,” said old Ketcham; his eyes were frosty. The old woman’s head vanished. “Well, gentlem’n, I ain’t what you might say s’prised t’ hear it.”

“Good!” said Vaughn. “Why?”

“Well, there’s been goin’s-on.”

“What do you mean? What kind of goings-on?”

Old Ketcham winked one eye. “Well, Mr. Brad an’ the loonatic” — he jerked a dirt-crusted thumb over his shoulder — “they been havin’ ruckuses ever since them people rented Oyst’r Island from me fer th’ summer season. I own this here Island, ye know. Fam’ly been here over four gen’rations. Since Injun days, I reckon.”

“Yes, we know that,” said Vaughn impatiently. “So Mr. Brad didn’t like the idea of Harakht and his bunch so close to him, eh? Did you—?”

“One moment, Inspector,” said Ellery; his eyes were bright. “Mr. Ketcham, who leased the Island from you?”

Ketcham’s corncob vomited yellow smoke. “Not th’ nutty feller. A man with a durned funny name. Foreign sort o’ name. Kro-sac.” He pronounced it with difficulty.

The three men exchanged glances. Krosac — a trail at last. The mysterious limping man of the Arroyo murder...

“Did he limp?” asked Ellery eagerly.

“Seein’,” drawled Ketcham, “as I never seen him, I can’t say. Wait a minute; I got somethin’ ye might be int’rested in.” He turned and disappeared in the darkness of the cabin.

“Well, Mr. Queen,” said the District Attorney thoughtfully, “it looks as if you called the turn. Krosac... With Van an Armenian, and Brad a Roumanian — well, maybe not, but anyway certainly Central Europeans — and Krosac floating around somewhere after last being seen at the scene of the first crime... It’s hot, Vaughn.”

“Looks that way,” muttered the Inspector. “We’ll have to do something about that right away... Here he comes.”

Old Ketcham reappeared, his face red with perspiration, triumphantly waving a dirty, much-fingermarked sheet of paper.

“This here letter now,” he said, “it come from this Krosac. Y’can see fer y’rselves.”

Vaughn snatched it from him, and Ellery and Isham examined it over his shoulder. It was a typewritten communication on a sheet of undistinguished stationery, dated October thirtieth of the previous year. It was answering, it said, an advertisement in a New York newspaper offering Oyster Island for summer rental. The writer was enclosing, the letter said, a money order for one hundred dollars as a binder until occupancy should be taken, which would be on March first following. The letter was signed — in type — Velja Krosac.

“The money order was enclosed, Mr. Ketcham?” said Vaughn quickly.

“Sure was.”

“Good,” exclaimed Isham, rubbing his hands. “We’ll trace it and get hold of the slip Krosac must have made out in whatever post office he sent it from. It will bear his signature, and that’ll be plenty.”

“I’m afraid,” drawled Ellery, “that if Mr. Velja Krosac, our esteemed and slippery quarry, is as canny as his activity to date indicates, you’ll find the money-order application made out by friend Harakht. There were no samples of Krosac’s handwriting to be found in the Van investigation, remember.”

“Did this man Krosac appear in person on March first?” asked the District Attorney.

“Noss’r. Nob’dy o’ that name ever did come, but the ol’ banshee back yonder — Har — Harakht’s his name? — he come, an’ the feller who come with him, Romaine, they paid over th’ balance o’ the rent in cash an’ took occup’ncy.”

By mutual consent Vaughn and Isham dropped the Krosac line of inquiry. Obviously this old character could contribute nothing more in that direction. The Inspector slipped the letter into his pocket, and began to ask questions concerning the Brad-Harakht quarrel. He discovered that from the beginning, when it was evident that the cult was really a colony of nudists, Brad had come to the Island personally to voice the joint objection of the mainland community. Harakht, it appeared, had been impervious to cajolery or threats; and Romaine had bared his teeth. Brad, in desperation, had offered to reimburse them many times over; he had named a preposterous sum for their lease.

“Who signed the lease, incidentally?” asked Isham.

“The ol’ polecat,” replied Ketcham.

Harakht and Romaine had refused Brad’s offer. Then Brad had threatened legal action on the ground that the two men were maintaining a public nuisance. Romaine had retorted that they were harming no one, that the Island was off the public highways, that for the duration of their lease it virtually belonged to them. Whereupon Brad had endeavored to persuade Ketcham to oust them by legal action on the same ground.

“But they weren’t hurtin’ me an’ Mrs. Ketcham none,” said the old man. “Mr. Brad offered to give me a thousand dollars ef I’d do it. No, sir, says I, not ol’ man Ketcham; no lawsuits fer ol’ man Ketcham.”

The last quarrel, and the most violent, had taken place just three days before, continued Ketcham — on Sunday. Brad had sailed across the waters of the Cove like Troy-bound Menelaus, had met Stryker in the woods, and they had had a fierce battle of words, in the course of which the little brown-bearded man went into a frenzy. “Thought he’d throw a fit, I did,” remarked Ketcham placidly. “This feller Romaine — pow’rful brute, he is — he mixes in an’ orders Mr. Brad offen the Island. Me, I’m watchin’ from the woods; none o’ my business, ’twa’nt. So Mr. Brad, he won’t go, an’ Romaine, he grabs Mr. Brad by th’ neck an’ he says: ‘Now, git, damn ye, or I’ll wallop the everlastin’ daylights outa ye till yer own mother wouldn’t know ye!’ an’ Mr. Brad, he gits, yellin’ that he’d git even with ’em ef it took every cent he had.”

Isham rubbed his hands again. “Good man, Mr. Ketcham. Wish there were more like you around here. Tell me — did any one else from the mainland ever have a run-in with Harakht and Romaine?”

“Betcha.” Old Ketcham looked gratified, and smiled cunningly. “That feller Jonah Lincoln — lives at Bradwood. Had a fist fight with Romaine last week, right here on this Island.” He smacked his leathery lips. “Man, that was a battle! Reg’lar champeenship shindy. Lincoln, he’d come over to git his sister Hester, who’d jest arrived.”

“Well, well?”

Old Ketcham waxed eloquent; his eyes sparkled. “Nice figger, that gal. She went an’ tore off her clothes, durned ef she didn’t, right in front o’ the two of ’em! She was that mad at her brother fer interferin’. Said he’d sat on ’er an’ ruled ’er life since she was a mite, an’ she could do what she dum’ pleased now... I tell ye, that was somethin’. I was lookin’ through the trees...”

“Ketcham, you o’ he-bull!” shrieked the feminine voice from the interior of the cabin. “Y’oughta feel ’shamed o’ yr’self!”

“Mm,” said Ketcham, sobering. “Anyways, when Lincoln hears his sister won’t go back, an’ sees ’er standin’ there nekkid as the day she was born, right there, mind ye, in front o’ Romaine — an’ didn’t he like it! — he hauls off an’ cracks Romaine one, an’ they had their little tussle. Lincoln, he took a pow’rful beatin’, but he’s game, he is — took it like a man. Romaine threw ’im smack into th’ Cove, by thunder. Pow’rful feller, Romaine.”

There was nothing more to be learned from the garrulous old man. They returned to the launch. Professor Yardley was quietly smoking, and Dr. Temple was pacing up and down the deck, his purple face stormy.

“Learn anything?” inquired Yardley mildly.

“A little.”

They were all thoughtful as the launch spluttered and swung about for the mainland.

10. Dr. Temple’s Adventure

The afternoon lengthened. District Attorney Isham departed. Inspector Vaughn issued orders and received reports in an unending — and inconsequential — stream. Oyster Island was quiet. Mrs. Brad was closeted in her bedroom; ill, it was reported, and her daughter Helene was attending her. Jonah Lincoln paced the grounds restlessly. Troopers and detectives yawned all over Bradwood. Reporters came and went, and the evening air was thick with flashlight powder.

Ellery, not a little weary, followed Professor Yardley across the main road, through a gate in a high stone fence, up a gravel walk to Yardley’s house. Both men were subdued and wrapped in their own thoughts.

Evening came, and then a black night unilluminated by any star. Oyster Island as the darkness fell seemed to sink into the Sound.

By tacit consent neither Ellery nor his host discussed the odd problem with which they were grappling. They talked of old and pleasanter things — university days, the crusty old Chancellor, Ellery’s maiden excursions into criminal investigation, Yardley’s placid career in the years since they had parted. At eleven o’clock Ellery girded his loins in a pair of seersucker pajamas, grinned, and went to sleep. The Professor smoked serenely in his study for an hour, wrote several letters, and then retired.

It was nearly midnight when there was a stir on the porch of Dr. Temple’s stone house, and the physician, attired in black trousers, black sweater, and black moccasins, extinguished his pipe and stepped noiselessly off the porch to disappear among the dark trees between his house and the eastern boundary of Bradwood.

The countryside, except for the singsong rasping of crickets, seemed asleep.

Against the black background of the woods and shrubbery he was invisible — a stealthy blob of nothing unbetrayed even by the color of his skin. A few feet from the side of the easterly road he froze behind the shelter of a tree. Someone was pounding along the road, coming in his direction. From the dim silhouette Dr. Temple made out the figure of a uniformed county trooper, evidently on patrol. The trooper passed on, moving toward Ketcham’s Cove.

When the guard’s footsteps were no longer audible, Dr. Temple ran lightly across the road to the cover of the Bradwood trees and began to work his soundless way westward. It took him half an hour to cross Bradwood proper without arousing the suspicions of the occasional dark figures strolling about. Past the summerhouse and the totem post, past the high wire screen which marked off a tennis court, past the main house and the central walk to the Bradwood landing, past Fox’s little cabin to the westerly road separating Bradwood from the Lynn estate.

Here, his wiry body tense, Dr. Temple redoubled his caution, slipping among the trees of the Lynn woods like a wraith until the dark bulk of the house loomed ahead. He had approached it from the front; now he groped his way to the north side, where the trees grew thick almost to the house itself.

There was a light burning in the window nearest him, not five feet from where he crouched behind the trunk of an old sycamore. The blind was completely drawn.

He could hear shuffling footsteps from the room — a bedroom. Once the fat shadow of Mrs. Lynn crossed the window shade. Dr. Temple crept on hands and knees, feeling every inch of the ground before him, until he lay directly beneath the window.

Almost at once he heard the sound of a closing door, and Mrs. Lynn’s high-pitched voice, shriller than usual, say: “Percy! Did you bury it?”

Dr. Temple gritted his teeth, the perspiration poured down his cheeks. But he made no sound.

“Yes, yes. For heaven’s sake, Beth, don’t talk so loudly!” The voice of Percy Lynn was strained. “The bally place is alive with bobbies!”

Footsteps near the window; Dr. Temple hugged the base of the wall, holding his breath. The shade slid up, and Lynn peered out. Then the sound of the shade being drawn again.

“Where?” whispered Elizabeth Lynn.

Dr. Temple tightened all his muscles, strained his ears with an effort that made him tremble. But try as he might, he could not catch the words of Lynn’s whispered reply...

Then — “They’ll never find it,” said Lynn in a more normal tone. “We’re safe enough if we lie doggo.”

“But Dr. Temple — I’m frightened, Percy!”

Lynn swore grimly. “I remember, all right. It was in Budapest after the war. The Bundelein affair... Damn his eyes! It’s the same man, I’d take my oath.”

“He hasn’t said anything,” whispered Mrs. Lynn. “Perhaps he’s forgotten.”

“Not he! Last week, at the Brads... he kept watching me. Careful, Beth. We’re in deuced deep water—”

The light blinked out; a bedspring creaked; the voices sank to an indistinguishable murmur.

Dr. Temple crouched there for a long time; but he heard no further sound. The Lynns had retired.

He rose to his full height, listened intently for a few seconds, and then stole back into the woods. A shadow gliding from tree to tree... As he crept through the woods which fringed the semicircle of Ketcham’s Cove, he could hear the lapping of the water against the Bradwood landing.

And then once more he froze behind a tree; faint voices were coming from the general direction of the landing. He crept with infinite caution closer to the shoreline. Suddenly the black waters gurgled almost at his feet. He strained his eyes: ten feet offshore, a short distance from the murky dock, a rowboat swayed. Two dim figures were visible, seated in the middle of the boat. A man and a woman. The woman’s arms were about the man, and she was pleading with him passionately.

“Why are you so cold? Take me to the Island. We’ll be safer there — under the trees...”

The man’s voice, low and guarded: “You’re acting like a fool. It’s dangerous, I tell you. Tonight of all nights! Are you crazy? Somebody will miss you, and there’ll be hell to pay. I told you we should keep apart, at least until this blows over!”

The woman tore her arms from the man’s neck; she cried in a desperate soprano: “I knew it! You don’t love me any more. Oh, it’s—”

He clapped his palm over her mouth, whispering fiercely: “Shut up! There are troopers around!”

She relaxed in his arms. Then she pushed him away with both hands and slowly sat up. “No. You shan’t have her. I’ll see to that.”

The man was silent. He picked up an oar and poled the boat to shore. The woman rose, and he pushed her roughly out of the boat. Hastily he shoved off and began to row — toward Oyster Island.

The moon came up, then, and Dr. Temple saw that the man rowing away was Paul Romaine.

And the woman standing white-faced and quivering on the shore was Mrs. Brad. Dr. Temple scowled and vanished among the trees.

11. Yoicks!

When Ellery walked up the gravel path of Bradwood the next morning he saw District Attorney Isham’s car parked in the driveway. There was a grim expectancy in the faces of the detectives standing about. With a suspicion that something of importance was occurring, he hurried up the steps of the colonial porch and into the house.

He brushed by a pale Stallings and made for the drawing room. There he found a wolfishly grinning Isham and a most menacing Inspector Vaughn confronting Fox, the gardener-chauffeur. Fox was standing before Isham, a silent figure, his hands tightly clenched; only his eyes betrayed his perturbation. Mrs. Brad, Helene, and Jonah Lincoln were at one side, like the Three Fates.

“Come in, Mr. Queen,” said Isham pleasantly. “You’re just in time. Fox, you’re caught with the goods. Why not speak up?”

Ellery advanced softly into the room. Fox did not stir. Even his lips were taut. “I don’t understand,” he said, but it was apparent that he did understand, and that he was bracing himself for a blow.

Vaughn bared his teeth. “Stop stalling. You visited Patsy Malone Tuesday night — the night Brad was murdered!”

“The night,” added Isham with meaning, “that you dropped Stallings and Mrs. Baxter off at the Roxy. At eight o’clock, Fox.”

Fox stood like stone. His lips turned white.

“Well?” snarled the Inspector. “What have you got to say for yourself, you mug? Why should an innocent chauffeur visit the mob headquarters of a New York gangster?

Fox blinked once; but he did not reply.

“Won’t talk, eh?” The Inspector went to the door. “Mike, bring that inking pad here!”

A plainclothesman appeared at once carrying an inking pad and paper. Fox uttered a strangled cry and lunged forward toward the door. The plainclothesman dropped pad and paper and grasped Fox’s arms, and the Inspector secured a vicious hold on the man’s legs and brought him, struggling fiercely, to the floor. Overpowered, he ceased his struggles and permitted Vaughn to yank him to his feet unresisting.

Helene Brad looked on with horrified eyes. Mrs. Brad seemed unmoved. Lincoln rose and turned his back.

“Take his prints,” said the Inspector grimly. The plainclothesman gripped Fox’s right hand, pressed the fingers to the pad and then expertly to the paper; he repeated the procedure with the left hand. Fox wore a look of agony.

“Check those right away.” The fingerprint man hurried off. “Now, Fox, my lad — if that’s your name, which I know damned well it isn’t — suppose you get a little sense into you and answer my questions. Why did you pay a visit to Malone?”

No answer.

“What’s your real handle? Where do you come from?”

No answer. The Inspector went to the door again and beckoned two detectives standing in the hall. “Take him back to his cabin and keep him locked up there. We’ll attend to him later.”

Fox’s eyes burned as he shambled out between the two detectives. He avoided the eyes of Mrs. Brad and Helene.

“Well!” The Inspector mopped his brow. “Sorry, Mrs. Brad, to raise such a fuss on your drawing-room floor. But the man’s evidently a bad actor.”

Mrs. Brad shook her head. “I can’t understand it. He’s always been such a nice young man. So polite. So efficient. You don’t think he was the one who—”

“If he was, God help him.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t,” said Helene with asperity; her eyes were full of pity. “Fox couldn’t be a murderer or a gangster. I’m sure of it. He’s always kept to himself, it’s true, but he’s never been drunk or disorderly or in any way objectionable. He’s a cultured man, too. I’ve often caught him reading good books and poetry.”

“These fellows are sometimes pretty cagey, Miss Brad,” said Isham. “For all we know he may have been playing a part ever since he got the job here. We looked up his references and they were genuine — but he’d worked for the man only a few months.”

“May have taken that job just for the references,” said Vaughn. “They’ll do all sorts of things.” He turned to Ellery. “You can score this one for your father, Mr. Queen. We got the tip from Inspector Queen, who’s got his fingers on more stool-pigeons and tipsters than any cop in New York.”

“I knew Dad couldn’t keep from putting his oar in,” murmured Ellery. “Was your information so specific?”

“The stoolie saw Fox go into Malone’s headquarters, that’s all. But it’s enough.”

Ellery shrugged. Helene said: “The trouble with you people is that you’re always ready to think the worst of everybody.”

Lincoln sat down and lighted a cigarette. “Perhaps, Helene, we’d better keep out of it.”

“Perhaps, Jonah, you’d better mind your own business!”

“Children,” began Mrs. Brad weakly.

Ellery sighed. “Any news, Mr. Isham? I’m starved for information.”

The Inspector grinned. “Chew on this, then.” He took a sheaf of typewritten papers from his pocket and handed it to Ellery. “If you can find anything in ’em, you’re a genius. But...” he said sharply, turning to Lincoln, who had risen and was about to leave the room, “don’t go yet, Mr. Lincoln. There’s something... I... want to ask you.”

It was timed nicely, and Ellery approved the Inspector’s adroit and deliberate strategy. Lincoln stopped on the instant, reddening. The two women stiffened in their chairs. All at once, from a subdued atmosphere, the air in the room crackled with tension.

“What’s that?” asked Lincoln with difficulty.

“Why,” said Vaughn pleasantly, “did you lie to me yesterday when you told me that you, Miss Brad, and her mother had come home together Monday night?”

“I... Why, what do you mean?”

Isham said: “It appears that you people are making every effort to hinder rather than help the investigation of your husband’s murder, Mrs. Brad. The Inspector’s men have discovered from the taxicab driver who took two of you from the station to Bradwood Monday night—”

“Two?” drawled Ellery.

“—that only Mr. Lincoln and Miss Brad were in the cab, Mrs. Brad!”

Helene sprang to her feet; Mrs. Brad was stricken speechless. “Don’t answer, Mother. This is infamous! Are you suggesting that one of us is implicated in the murder, Mr. Isham?”

Lincoln muttered: “Look here, Helene, perhaps we’d better—”

“Jonah!” She faced him, quivering. “If you dare to open your mouth I’ll... I’ll never speak to you again!”

He bit his lips, avoided her eyes, and walked out of the room. Mrs. Brad uttered a puling little cry, and Helene stood in front of her, as if to shield her from harm.

“Well,” said Isham, throwing up his hands, “there you are, Mr. Queen. That’s what official investigators have to contend with. All right, Miss Brad. I want you to know, though, that from this moment on everyone — and I mean everyone — is under suspicion for the murder of Thomas Brad!”

12. The Professor Talks

With the verve of a dog carrying a bone Mr. Ellery Queen, slightly bewildered special investigator, returned posthaste to his host’s house across the road bearing the reports on work in progress. The noon sun was hot, too hot for haberdashery, and Ellery sought the cool interior with a panting relief. He found Professor Yardley in a room which might have been transported bodily out of the Arabian Nights, a patio-like affair of tessellated marble and Turkish arabesques. It looked like the inner court of a zenana; its chief delight was a pool a-brim to its mosaic lip with water. The Professor was attired in a pair of tight short breeches, and he was dangling long legs in the water while he peacefully puffed on a pipe.

“Phew!” said Ellery. “I’m more than grateful for your little harem, Professor.”

“As usual,” said the Professor severely, “your choice of words is sloppy. Don’t you know that the men’s apartments are called the selamik?... Get out of your clothes, Queen, and join me here. What’s that you’re carrying?”

“A message from Garcia. Don’t move. We’ll go over this together. I’ll be back in a moment.”

He reappeared shortly in trunks, the upper part of his body smooth and gleaming with perspiration. He dived flatly into the pool, throwing up a wave which drenched the Professor and extinguished his pipe, and proceeded to splash about with energy.

“Another one of your accomplishments,” growled Yardley. “You always were a damned poor swimmer. Come out of there before you drown me.”

Ellery grinned, clambered out, stretched full length on the marble, and reached for Inspector Vaughn’s sheaf of reports.

“What have we here?” He ran his eye down the top sheet. “Hmm. Doesn’t look like much. The admirable Inspector hasn’t been idle. Check-up with the Hancock County officials.”

“Oh,” said the Professor, struggling to relight his pipe. “So they’ve done that, have they? What’s been happening down there?”

Ellery sighed. “First, the autopsy findings on the body of Andrew Van. Absolutely devoid of the minutest particle of interest. If you’d read as many autopsy reports as I have, you’d appreciate... And a complete synopsis of the original investigation. Nothing I don’t already know, or that you didn’t read in contemporaneous newspaper accounts... Ha! What’s this? ‘Pursuant’ — digest this, please; it sounds just like that fellow Crumit — ‘Pursuant to District Attorney Isham’s inquiry concerning a possible relationship between Andrew Van, the Arroyo schoolteacher, and Thomas Brad, recently murdered Long Island millionaire, we are sorry to state that no such relationship exists; at least insofar as we have been able to determine from a careful study of the deceased Van’s old correspondence, and so on.’ Neat, eh?”

“A model of rhetoric,” grinned the Professor.

“But that’s all. Alors, we leave Arroyo and return to Ketcham’s Grove.” Ellery squinted at the fourth sheet. “Dr. Rumsen’s autopsy report on the body of Thomas Brad. Nothing that we don’t know, really. No marks of violence on the body itself, no indication of poisoning in the internal organs, and so on, and so on, ad nauseam. The usual trivialities.”

“I remember you asked Dr. Rumsen the other day if Brad mightn’t have been strangled. Does he say anything about that?”

“Yes. Lungs show no signs of suffocation. Ergo, he wasn’t strangled.”

“But why did you ask the question in the first place?”

Ellery waved a dripping arm. “Nothing earth-shaking. But since there were no marks of violence on the rest of the body, it might have been important to know exactly how the man was killed. It had to be his head, you see, which bore the brunt of the assault; which suggested strangulation. But Rumsen in this report says that it could only have been a blow with a blunt instrument on the skull, or possibly a revolver shot in the head. I should say the first, all things considered.”

The Professor kicked up a column of water. “I suppose that’s so. Anything else?”

“Investigation to discover the route the murderer took. Futile, very futile.” Ellery shook his head. “Impossible to procure a list of persons who boarded or descended from trains in the neighborhood of the Cove during the crime period. Troopers on the highways, residents near or on the roads, can offer no information. An attempt to find persons who were on or in the vicinity of Ketcham’s Cove on Tuesday evening has been unsuccessful... And yachtsmen and others who sailed the Sound Tuesday afternoon and evening report no mysterious or suspicious activity, no strange boat which might have landed the murderer in the Cove by a water route.”

“As you say, a futile business.” The Professor sighed. “He may have come by train, automobile, or boat, and I suppose we’ll never know exactly. Might even have come by hydroplane, to reduce it to an absurdity.”

“There’s an idea,” smiled Ellery. “And don’t fall into the error of calling improbabilities absurdities, Professor. I’ve seen some queer things happen... Let’s get on with this.” He scanned the next sheet rapidly. “More nothing. The rope used in lashing Brad’s arms and legs to the totem pole...”

“I suppose it’s also futile,” grunted Yardley, “to expect you to say ‘totem post.’”

“Totem post,” continued Ellery dutifully, “has been found to be ordinary cheap-grade clothesline, which can be purchased at any grocer’s or hardware store. No dealer within ten miles of Bradwood can offer anything which promises to be a live trail. However, Isham reports that the quest will be carried on by Vaughn’s men over a wider area.”

“Thorough, these people,” said the Professor.

“Unwilling as I am to admit it,” said Ellery with a grin, “it’s just such routine thoroughness that solves the run of crimes... The knot, Vaughn’s pet idea. Result — zero. A clumsy inexpert thing, but efficient enough, according to Vaughn’s expert. Just such a knot as you or I might tie.”

“Not I,” said Yardley. “I’m an old mariner, you know. Bowlines, half hitches, and what not.”

“You’re as close to H₂O now as you’ve ever been — I mean in a nautical capacity... Ah, Paul Romaine. An interesting character. The assertive male with a good healthy streak of practicality in him.”

“Your habit,” said the Professor, “of misusing words is really to be deplored.”

“Background, says Inspector Vaughn’s little piece, obscure. Beyond the fact that he joined our Egyptological avatar in Pittsburgh in February, as he himself said, nothing has been discovered about him. His trail before that is a blank.”

“The Lynns?”

Ellery put down the paper for a moment. “Yes, the Lynns,” he murmured. “What do you know about them?”

The Professor caressed his beard. “Suspicious, my boy? I might have known it wouldn’t escape you. There is something faintly spurious about their ring. Although they’ve been quite respectable. Beyond reproach, as far as I know.”

Ellery picked up the paper. “Well, Scotland Yard, while it doesn’t say so in so many words, thinks otherwise, I’ll warrant. Isham cabled the Yard, and the Yard cabled back, according to this report, that they could find no data on a couple named Percy and Elizabeth Lynn, as described. Their passports have also been investigated, but of course they’re in order, as might be expected. Perhaps we’ve been unkind... Scotland Yard intimates that they are continuing a search of civilian records — criminal records, too — in the hope of unearthing information pertinent to the Lynns’ activities in English territory, since they claim to be English subjects.”

“Lord, what a mess!”

Ellery scowled. “You’re just finding it so? I’ve worked on complicated cases in my brief and brilliant time, but never anything quite so snarled as this... You haven’t heard, of course, the latest developments about friend Fox the chauffeur, and Mrs. Brad.” The Professor’s eyebrows went up. Ellery related what had occurred an hour before in the drawing room at Bradwood. “Clear, isn’t it?”

“As the waters of the Ganges,” grunted Yardley. “I’m beginning to wonder.”

“What?”

The Professor shrugged. “I shan’t leap at conclusions. What else does that encyclopedia in your hand disclose?”

“Fast work on Vaughn’s part. The doorman of the Park Theater testified that a woman of Mrs. Brad’s description left the theater Tuesday night in the middle of the first act — about nine o’clock.”

“Alone?”

“Yes... Another thing. Vaughn’s lines have hooked the original of the money-order application for one hundred dollars which was sent to Ketcham as deposit on the Oyster Island rental. It was made out in the Peoria, Illinois post office in the name of Velja Krosac.”

“No!” The Professor’s eyes grew round. “Then they’ve a sample of his handwriting!”

Ellery sighed. “Leaping at conclusions? I thought you were being careful about that. The name was hand-printed. The address was simply Peoria — evidently Stryker’s traveling manna-dispenser stopped there to do a little business among the natives... One thing more of local interest. Accountants are at work checking the books of Brad & Megara. Natural line of inquiry, of course. But so far everything seems aboveboard; the firm is well-known and extremely prosperous; finances are quite in order... Incidentally, our peregrinating friend Stephen Megara, who’s lolling about somewhere on the high seas, is not active in the business — hasn’t been for five years. Brad kept a supervisory eye cocked, but young Jonah Lincoln runs the place almost single-handed. I wonder what’s sticking in his craw.”

“Future mother-in-law troubles, I should say,” remarked the Professor dryly.

Ellery tossed the sheaf to the marble floor of the selamik, as Yardley called it, and then leaned forward quickly to retrieve it. An additional sheet had fallen from the rear of the sheaf. “What’s this?” He scanned it with omnivorous eyes. “Good lord, here’s something!”

Yardley’s pipe remained suspended in mid-air. “What?”

Ellery was excited. “Actually information about Krosac! A later report, from the date. Evidently District Attorney Crumit held it back in his first reply, and then decided to wash his hands of the entire affair and shunt it onto poor Isham... Six months of investigation. Data galore... Velja Krosac is a Montenegrin!”

“Montenegrin? You mean by birth? For there’s no such country as Montenegro today, you know,” said Yardley with interest. “It became one of the political divisions of present-day Yugoslavia — the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes merged officially in 1922.”

“Hmm. Crumit’s investigation revealed that Krosac was one of the first emigrants from Montenegro after peace was declared in 1918. His passport on entry into the United States indicated that he was a Montenegrin by birth but nothing else of value. By the sarcophagus of Tut, the man emerges!”

“Did Crumit discover anything about his American career?”

“Sufficient, although in a sketchy way. He seems to have traveled from city to city, presumably getting acquainted with his adopted country and learning the language. For several years he engaged in a small peddler’s enterprise, apparently a legitimate business. He sold fancy needlework, small woven mats, and that sort of thing.”

“They all do,” remarked the Professor.

Ellery digested the next paragraph. “He met friend Harakht, or Stryker, four years ago in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the two men joined forces. Stryker at the time was selling a ‘sun medicine’ — cod-liver oil with a home-made label. Krosac became his business manager and, for the public’s benefit, ‘disciple,’ helping the poor old lunatic build up the sun cult and the health preaching during their nomadic existence on the road.”

“Anything on Krosac after the Arroyo murder?”

Ellery’s face fell. “No. He’s simply vanished. He managed it adroitly enough.”

“And Kling, Van’s servant?”

“Not a trace of him. It’s as if the earth swallowed up both of ’em. This Kling complication disturbs me. Where the deuce is he? If Krosac sped his soul across the Great Divide, what happened to his body — where did Krosac bury it? I tell you, Professor, until we know the actual fate of Kling we shan’t solve this case... Crumit made exemplary efforts to find a connection between Kling and Krosac, probably on the assumption that they might have been confederates. But he’s found nothing.”

“Which doesn’t necessarily mean that no connection exists,” pointed out the Professor.

“Naturally not. And, of course, so far as Krosac is concerned, we have no way of determining whether he’s been in communication with Stryker or not.”

“Stryker... There’s an example of God’s wrath for you,” muttered Yardley. “Poor devil!”

Ellery grinned. “Stiffen your fibers, sir; this is murder. Incidentally, from this last report the West Virginia people have trailed Harakht to his lair. That is, they have discovered that he is one Alva Stryker, according to Crumit, well-known Egyptologist, who went insane from sunstroke, as you said, many years ago in the Valley of the Kings. He has no kin, as far as could be determined, and he has always seemed a perfectly harmless lunatic. Listen to this — Crumit’s note: ‘It is the belief of the District Attorney of Hancock County that the man Alva Stryker, who calls himself Harakht, or Ra-Harakht, is blameless in the murder of Andrew Van, but has been for years the prey of unscrupulous opportunists who have utilized his odd appearance, his mild lunacy, and his obsession with a garbled cult-worship in an unusual but nonetheless vicious kind of confidence game. It is our opinion also that a man of this type with undiscovered motive for the murder of Van was responsible for the victim’s death. All the facts point to Velja Krosac as this man.’ Neatly phrased, eh?”

“A somewhat circumstantial case against Krosac, isn’t it?” asked the Professor.

Ellery shook his head. “Circumstantial or not, in selecting Krosac as the probable murderer of Van, Crumit has hit on the essential.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The facts. But that Krosac killed Andrew Van isn’t the keystone of the case we’re attempting to build up. The quintessential problem is” — Ellery leaned forward — “who is Krosac?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Professor Yardley.

“I mean that Velja Krosac is known in his true face and figure to only one person in the case,” replied Ellery earnestly. “That is Stryker, who cannot be depended upon for reliable testimony. So I say again: Who is Krosac? Who is Krosac now? He may be anyone about us!”

“Nonsense,” said the Professor uncomfortably. “A Montenegrin, probably with a Croatian accent, a man moreover with a limp in his left leg...”

“Not really nonsense, Professor. Nationalists merge fluidly in this country, and certainly when Krosac conversed with Croker, the Weirton garageman, he spoke colloquial, unaccented English. As for the fact that Krosac may be in our midst — I don’t believe you’ve completely analyzed the elements of the Brad crime.”

“Oh, haven’t I?” snapped Yardley. “Perhaps not. But let me tell you this, young man — you’re crossing the river prematurely.”

“I’ve done that before.” Ellery rose and dived into the pool again. When his head emerged dripping from the water, he was grinning quizzically at the Professor. “I won’t mention the fact,” he said, “that it was Krosac who arranged for the sun cult’s proximity to Bradwood! Before the Van murder, mind you. Significant? Then he might be about here somewhere... Come on!” he said abruptly, climbing out of the pool and lying down with his hands behind his head. “Let’s get together on this. Let’s begin with Krosac. A Montenegrin. Who, let us say, kills a Central European with an apparently assumed Roumanian nationality, and a Central European with an apparently assumed Armenian nationality. Three Central Europeans, then, possibly all from the same country; for I’m convinced that, things being what they are, Van and Brad did not come from Armenia and Roumania.”

The Professor grunted and applied two matches to his pipe. Ellery, sprawled on the hot marble, lighted a cigarette and closed his eyes. “Now think about this situation in terms of motive. Central Europe? The Balkans? Heart of superstition and violence; almost a platitude. Does that suggest anything to you?”

“I’m uncommonly ignorant about the Balkans,” said the Professor indifferently. “The only association that comes to mind when you mention the word is the fact that for centuries that part of the world has been the source of weird and fantastic folklore. I presume it’s a result of the generally low level of intelligence and the desolate and mountainous terrain.”

“Ha! There’s an idea,” chuckled Ellery. “Vampirism! Do you recall Dracula, Bram Stoker’s immortal contribution to the nightmares of innocent burghers? The story of a human vampire, laid in Central Europe. And heads cut off, too!”

“Drivel,” said Yardley with an uneasy stare.

“Right,” said Ellery promptly. “Drivel if only for the fact that no stakes were hammered into the hearts of Van and Brad. No self-respecting vampirist omits that pleasant little ceremony. If we’d found stakes I’d almost be convinced that we are dealing with a superstition-crazed man doing away with what he considered were human vampires.”

“You aren’t serious,” protested Yardley.

Ellery smoked for a moment. “Hanged if I know whether I am or not. You know, Professor, we may in our divine enlightenment pooh-pooh such nursery horribilia as vampirism, but after all if Mr. Krosac believes in vampires and goes about cutting people’s heads off, you can’t very well shut your eyes to the reality of his belief. It’s almost a statement of the pragmatic philosophy. If it exists for him...”

“How about this Egyptian cross business of yours?” asked the Professor gravely; he sat up straighter, shifting about for a more comfortable position, as if he anticipated a long discussion.

Ellery sat up and hugged his brown knees. “Well, how about it? You’ve something up your sleeve; you hinted as much yesterday. Have I, in the language of the classics, pulled a boner?”

The Professor deliberately knocked out his pipe, placed it on the edge of the pool beside him, ruffled his black beard, and became professorish. “My son,” he said solemnly, “you made an ass of yourself.”

Ellery frowned. “You mean the tau cross is not an Egyptian cross?”

“I mean precisely that.”

Ellery rocked gently. “The voice of authority... Hmm. You wouldn’t want to place a small bet, now, would you, Professor?”

“I’m not a betting man; haven’t the income... Where did you get the idea that the crux commissa is called the Egyptian cross?”

“Encyclopaedia Britannica. About a year ago I had occasion to do some research on the general subject of crosses; I was working on a novel at the time. As I recall it now, the tau, or T, cross was described as a common Egyptian device, often called the Egyptian cross, or words to that effect. At any rate, my recollection is that the article definitely linked the words tau and Egyptian in connection with the cross. Would you care to look it up?”

The Professor chuckled. “I’ll take your word for it. I don’t know who wrote that article — for all I know it may have been someone of overwhelming erudition. But the Encyclopaedia Britannica is as fallible as other man-made institutions, and it isn’t always the last authority. I’m not an authority on Egyptian art myself, please understand, but it’s one phase of my work, and I tell you without equivocation that I’ve never encountered the phrase ‘Egyptian cross’; I’m sure it’s a misnomer. Yes, there is something Egyptian shaped like a T...”

Ellery looked puzzled. “Then why do you say the tau isn’t—”

“Because it isn’t.” Yardley smiled. “A certain sacred instrument used by the ancient Egyptians possessed a shape like the Greek T. It occurs frequently in hieroglyphic literature. But that doesn’t make it a tau cross, which is an old Christian religious symbol. There are many fortuities like that. St. Anthony’s Cross, for example, is a name also applied to the tau cross, merely because it resembles the crutch with which St. Anthony is generally depicted. It’s no more St. Anthony’s Cross, strictly speaking, than it is yours or mine.”

“Then the T isn’t properly an Egyptian cross at all,” muttered Ellery. “Damn it all, I would mess it up.”

“If you want to call it that,” said the Professor, “I can’t stop you. It’s true that the cross seems to have been a familiar enough symbol for ages — its use has been variegated and universal from the most primitive times. I could give you numerous examples of variations on the cruciform symbol — by the Indian of the Western Hemisphere before the coming of the Spaniards, for instance. But that’s irrelevant. The essential point is this.” The Professor screwed up his eyes. “If there is one cruciform symbol which you might by stretching a point call an Egyptian cross, it is the ankh.”

“The ankh?” Ellery looked thoughtful. “Perhaps that was what I really was thinking of. Isn’t that the T cross with the circle at the top?”

Yardley shook his head. “Not a circle, my boy, but a drop-or pear-shaped little figure. The ankh in substance somewhat resembles a key. It is called the crux ansata, and appears with extreme frequency in Egyptian inscriptions. It connoted divinity, or royalty, and peculiarly enough characterized the holder as a generator of life.”

“Generator of life?” Something was brewing in Ellery’s eyes. “Good lord!” he cried. “That’s it! The Egyptian cross after all! Something tells me we’re on the right track now!”

“Elucidate, young man.”

“Don’t you see? Why, it’s as clear as Herodotus!” shouted Ellery. “The ankh — symbol of life. Crossbar of the T — the arms. Upright — the body. Pear-shaped dingus at the top — the head. And the head’s been cut off! That means something, I tell you — Krosac deliberately changed the symbol of life to the symbol of death!”

The Professor stared at him for a moment, and then broke into a long and derisive chuckle. “Ingenious, my boy, ingenious as the devil, but a million parasangs from the truth.”

Ellery’s excitement subsided. “What’s wrong now?”

“Your inspired interpretation of Mr. Krosac’s motive in cutting off his victims’ heads might be tenable if the ankh, or crux ansata, were symbolic of the human figure. But it isn’t, Queen. It has a much more prosaic origin.” The Professor sighed. “You remember the sandals Stryker wears? They’re imitations of the typical ancient Egyptian footgear... Now, I shouldn’t like to be quoted on this — after all I’m no more an anthropologist than I am an Egyptologist — but the ankh is generally considered by experts to have represented a sandal strap like the one Stryker uses — the loop at the top being the part that passes around the ankle. The perpendicular below the loop was that part of the strap which went down over the instep and connected with the sole of the sandal between the great toe and the other toes. The shorter, horizontal pieces went down the sides of the foot to the sole of the sandal.”

Ellery was crestfallen. “But I still don’t see how that symbol, if its origin was a sandal, could possibly come to represent the creation of life, even in a figurative sense.”

The Professor shrugged. “Word- or idea-origins are sometimes incomprehensible to the modern mind. The whole thing’s unclear from the scientific standpoint. But since the ankh sign was frequently used in writing various words from the stem meaning ‘to live,’ it came eventually to stand for a symbol of living, or life. So much so that, despite the fact that the material of the true origin was flexible — the sandal generally being made of treated papyrus, of course — eventually the Egyptians employed the sign in rigid forms — amulets of wood, faïence, and so on. But certainly the symbol itself never meant a human figure.”

Ellery polished the damp lenses of his pince-nez, squinting thoughtfully meanwhile at the sunny water. “Very well,” he said with desperation. “We abandon the ankh theory... Tell me, Professor. Did the ancient Egyptians practice crucifixion?”

The Professor smiled. “You refuse to surrender, eh?... No, not to my knowledge.”

Ellery set the glasses firmly on his nose. “Then we abandon the Egyptological theory altogether! At least I do. I went off half-cocked — an alarming symptom of late; I must be getting rusty.”

“A little learning, my boy,” remarked the Professor, “as Pope said, is a dangerous thing.”

“By the same token,” retorted Ellery, “faciunt nae intelligendo, ut nihil intelligant... by too much knowledge they bring it about that they know nothing. That’s not personally intended, of course—”

“Of course not,” replied Yardley with gravity. “And Terence didn’t mean it either, eh?... At any rate, I thought you were bending over backwards in an effort to interpret the facts Egyptologically. You were always prone to romanticize, as I recall, even in the classroom. Once, when we were discussing the source of the Atlantean legend as it was transmitted by Plato, Herodotus, and—”

“If I may interrupt the learned gentleman,” said Ellery a little testily, “I’m trying to shoulder my way out of a lot of mud, and you’re befouling the terrain with irrelevant classicism. Excuse me... If Krosac by lopping off the heads of his victims and strewing T signs about the scenes of his crimes meant to leave the symbol of a cross, it certainly was not an ankh cross and could only have been the tau cross. And since there seems to be little if any significance to the existence of the tau cross in Pharaonic Egypt, the probabilities are that Krosac had no such thought in mind, despite the fact that he was associated with a madman whose obsession was things religious in the Egyptological sense... Confirmation? Yes. Thomas Brad was hung on a totem pole — pardon, post. Another religious symbol worlds removed from hieraticism. Further confirmation — if Krosac meant an ankh cross he would have left the heads rather than removed them... So we have cast doubt upon the Egyptian theory, we have no evidence for the American totem theory except the single fortuitous fact of Brad’s place of crucifixion — and that was apparently chosen because of its T-shaped significance rather than any religious significance — and we cannot persist in the cruciform theory at all... the tau cross in the Christian creed — since decapitation as far as I know has never played a part in the murder of martyrs... Ergo, we abandon all religious theories—”

“Your credo,” chuckled the Professor, “seems to be like the religion of Rabelais — a great Perhaps.”

“—and revert to what was leaning against my nose from the beginning,” concluded Ellery with a rueful smile.

“What’s that?”

“The fact that T probably means T, and not a damned thing else. T in its alphabetical sense. T, T...” Suddenly he stopped, and the Professor studied him curiously. Ellery was staring at the pool with eyes that saw nothing so innocent as blue water and sunlight.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Yardley.

“Is it possible?” muttered Ellery. “No... too pat. And nothing to confirm it. Once before it occurred to me—” His voice trailed off; he had not even heard Yardley’s question. The Professor sighed and picked up his pipe again. Neither man said anything for a long time.

They were sitting that way, two nearly naked figures in the peaceful patio, when an old Negress pattered in with a disgusted look on her shiny black face.

“Mistuh Ya’dley,” she said in a soft complaining voice, “some un’s jest breakin’ th’ do’ down tryin’ to git in hyah.”

“Eh?” The Professor started and shook off his reverie. “Who is it?”

“Dat ’Spectuh man. He’s awful stewy, seems like, suh.”

“All right, Nanny. Send him in.”

Vaughn burst in upon them a moment later waving a small piece of paper; his face was congested with excitement. “Queen!” he shouted. “Great news!”

Ellery shifted about with abstracted eyes. “Eh? Oh, hello, Inspector. What’s this news of yours?”

“Read this.” The Inspector hurled the piece of paper on the marble floor and sank to the edge of the pool, panting like an expectant trespasser in a seraglio.

Ellery and the Professor looked at each other, and then together at the paper. It was a radiogram from the Island of Jamaica.

The message was signed: Stephen Megara.