The Egyptian Cross Mystery

24. T’s Again

It was a silent company that embarked from the mainland to the Helene that morning. A silence enforced by the horror of this swift and murderous act after long days of lull: a silence of the stunned. Ellery, pale as his linen suit, stood nervously at the rail of the big police launch and stared at the yacht. It did not require a queasy landsman’s stomach to make him feel sick; the nerves of his stomach were stabbing and throbbing, and he tasted bitter nausea in his dry mouth. The Professor standing quietly at his side was muttering, over and over: “Incredible. Monstrous.” Even the detectives accompanying them were subdued; they all kept studying the trim lines of the yacht as if they had never seen it before.

Men moved rapidly about the deck. The center of activity seemed to be about the superstructure amidships; a little knot of men stood there, the vortex, and grew every instant as police launches anchored alongside and their crews of police and detectives clambered aboard.

And, limned clearly against the placid morning sky, was that ghastly symbol, clad in blood-smeared pajamas. It was stiffly attached to the first of the two antenna masts. It resembled nothing human, least of all that vigorous, warm-blooded man who had spoken to them a bare twelve hours before. It mocked them from its position of eminence; its two legs, strapped to the mast, were attenuated out of all proportion to human shape; the whole dreadful effigy of flesh gave the illusion of heroic size.

“Christ on Golgotha,” croaked Professor Yardley. “Lord, it’s hard to believe, hard to believe.” His lips were ashen.

“I’m not a religious man,” said Ellery slowly, “but for God’s sake, Professor, don’t blaspheme. Yes, it’s hard to believe. You read the old stories, history — of Caligula, of the Vandals, of Moloch, of the Assassins, of the Inquisition. Dismemberments, impalements, flayings... blood, the pages are written in blood. You read... But mere reading doesn’t begin to give you the full, the hot and smoking horror of it. Most of us can’t grasp the monstrous versatility of madmen bent on destroying the human body... Here in the twentieth century, despite our gang wars, the Great War, the pogroms still raging in Europe, we have no clear conception of the true horror of human vandalism.”

“Words, just words,” said the Professor stiffly. “You don’t know, and I don’t know. But I’ve heard stories of returned soldiers...”

“Remote,” muttered Ellery. “Impersonal. Mass madness can never be so directly sickening as the orgiastic satanism of individual madness. Oh, hell, let’s stop it. I feel sick enough.”

Neither man said another word until the launch drew alongside the Helene and they had climbed the ladder to the deck.

Of all the busy men holding down the Helene’s decks that morning, Inspector Vaughn seemed the least touched by the phantasmagoric nuances of the crime. To him this was business — bad business, fantastic and bloody business, to be sure, but quite in the line of duty; and if his eyes rolled and his mouth said bitter things it was not because Stephen Megara — into whose living eyes he had glared the night before — hung like a figure of red and mutilated wax on the antenna mast, but because he was horrified by the shocking inefficiency, as he evidently believed it to be, of his subordinates.

He was storming at a lieutenant of water police. “Nobody got by you last night, you say?”

“No, Inspector. I’d swear to it.”

“Stop alibi-ing. Somebody did get by!”

“We were on the lookout all night, Inspector. Of course, we had only four boats, and it’s physically possible that—”

“Physically possible?” sneered the Inspector. “Hell, man, it was done!”

The lieutenant, a young man, flushed. “Might I suggest, Inspector, that he came from the mainland? After all, we could protect only the north, the Sound side of the yacht. Why couldn’t he have come out from Bradwood or nearby?”

“When I want your opinion, Lieutenant, I’ll ask for it.” The Inspector raised his voice. “Bill!”

A man in plainclothes stepped out of a group of silent detectives.

“What have you got to say for yourself?”

Bill rubbed his unshaven jaw and looked humble. “That’s a lot of territory we’ve got to cover, Chief. I’m not saying he didn’t come that way. But if he did, you really can’t blame us. You know yourself how easy it is to make a sneak through a bunch of trees.”

“Listen, men.” The Inspector stepped back and clenched his right fist; they listened. “I don’t want any debates or alibis, understand? I want facts. It’s important to know how he got to the yacht. If he came across the Sound from the New York shore, that’s important. If he came from the Long Island mainland, that’s important. Chances are he didn’t go through Bradwood itself. He’d know it was patrolled. Bill, I want you to—”

A launch shot alongside, towing a rowboat which Ellery, through the sickish haze before his eyes, dimly recognized. A policeman stood up and shouted: “We got it!”

They all ran to the rail. “What’s that?” cried Vaughn.

“Found this rowboat floatin’ in the Sound,” yelled the officer. “Markings show she belongs to that estate next door to Bradwood.”

“A light leaped into Vaughn’s eyes. “The Lynn boat! Sure, that’s the answer. Anything in it, officer?”

“Nothing except the oars.”

The Inspector spoke rapidly to the man named Bill: “Take a couple of the boys and go over that Lynn estate. Examine the slip especially, and the ground around it for footprints. Go over every inch of the place. See if you can trace the guy before he got there.”

Ellery sighed. A ripple went through the mass of men about him. Orders were shouted, detectives scrambled overside. Vaughn strode about, Professor Yardley leaned against the door of the radio operator’s cubicle — above which loomed the antenna masts and Stephen Megara’s body. District Attorney Isham bent over the rail with a greenish look about him. A little motorboat scooted up with Dr. Temple, his face startled; on the Bradwood dock a group of tiny men — women, too, from the white skirts.

A little moment of quiet ensued. The Inspector came over to where Ellery stood with the Professor, leaned against the door on his elbow, stuck a cigar into his mouth, and looked contemplatively up at the rigid corpse.

“Well, gentlemen?” he said. “How do you like it?”

“Ghastly,” muttered the Professor. “A perfect nightmare of insanity. The T’s again.”

Ellery was struck by a little blow of surprise. Of course. In the unsettled state of his emotions he had entirely overlooked the significance of the antenna mast as an instrument of crucifixion. The upright of the mast and the horizontal bar at the top from which the aerial wires were strung to the corresponding bar on the other side of the cabin roof resembled nothing so much as a slender steel capital T... He noticed now, for the first time, that two men were on the roof behind the crucified body. One he recognized as Dr. Rumsen, the Medical Examiner; the other he had never seen before — a dark, lean old man with a look of the sea about him.

“They’ll be taking the body down in a minute,” remarked the Inspector. “That old bird up there is a sailor — expert on knots. I wanted him to have a look at the lashings before we cut the body down... What d’ye say, Rollins?” he shouted at the old man.

The knot expert shook his head and straightened up. “No sailor ever tied them knots, Inspector. Just about as clumsy as a ’prentice hand would tie ’em. And another thing. They’re the same kind o’ knots as on that clothesline y’gave me three weeks ago.”

“Good!” said the Inspector cheerfully. “Take him down, Doc.” He turned back. “Used clothesline again — guess he didn’t want to waste time looking for rope on board. It isn’t as if this were an old sailing vessel, y’know. Same knots as we found on the rope used to lash Brad to the totem pole. Same knots, same man.”

“Not necessarily a sequitur,” said Ellery, “but with the other things you’re perfectly right. Exactly what is the story, Inspector? I understand Captain Swift was assaulted.”

“Yes. The poor old mutt is still out. Maybe he can tell us something... Come up here, Doc,” said Vaughn to Dr. Temple, who was still standing in his motorboat alongside, hesitantly, as if he did not know whether to board the yacht or not, “we’ll need you.” Temple nodded and climbed the ladder.

“Good God,” he said, staring with fascination at the body, and went up to the radio operator’s cabin. Vaughn pointed to the wall and Dr. Temple found a skeleton ladder at the side of the cabin, which he climbed.

Ellery clucked to himself; the shock of the tragedy had so unnerved him that he had not observed the unsteady trail of blood on the deck. It ran in gobs and spatters from Megara’s cabin farther aft to the ladder leading up to the roof of the radio operator’s cabin... On the roof Dr. Temple greeted Dr. Rumsen, introducing himself, and the two men, aided by the old sailor, began the unpleasant task of cutting down the body.

“The story is this,” resumed Vaughn quickly. “The body was seen as you see it now from the Bradwood dock this morning by one of my men. We beat it over here and found Captain Swift tied like an old chicken in his cabin, out like a light, with a bloody gash at the back of his head. Gave him a little first aid, and he’s resting now. You might take a look at Captain Swift, Doc!” he yelled up at Temple, “as soon as you’re through up there.” Temple nodded, and the Inspector continued: “Dr. Rumsen fixed the old man up a little as soon as he got here. Far as I can see — damned few facts — it’s a plain story. There was nobody aboard here last night except Megara and the Captain. Krosac somehow got to that Lynn estate, took the rowboat which has been tied to the slip there, and rowed out to the yacht. It was plenty dark last night, and the only light on the yacht came from the regular riding lights. Boarded, knocked the Captain on the head, and trussed him up, then sneaked into Megara’s cabin and did him in. The cabin’s a mess — just like the summerhouse was in the Brad murder.”

“There’s a bloody T somewhere, of course?” asked Ellery.

“On the door of Megara’s cabin.” Vaughn scraped his blue jaws. “When I stop to think of it, it’s absolutely unbelievable. I’ve seen plenty of murder in my time, but nothing as coldblooded as this; and don’t forget, when we investigate a Camorra kill, for instance, we find fancy carving! You go into that cabin and see what’s there. Or maybe you’d rather not. It looks like the inside of a butcher shop. He hacked Megara’s head off right on that floor, and there’s enough blood splashed about in there to paint the yacht red.” The Inspector added thoughtfully: “It must have been a man-size job toting Megara’s body from the cabin up that ladder to the top of the radio operator’s cubbyhole, but I guess it wasn’t any tougher than stringing Brad up on the totem pole. Krosac must be one hefty guy.”

“It seems to me,” said Professor Yardley, “that he couldn’t avoid being splashed with the blood of his victim, Inspector. Don’t you think there may be a trail to a man with bloodstained clothes?”

“No,” said Ellery before Vaughn could reply. “This crime, like the murder of Kling and the murder of Brad, was planned in advance. Krosac knew that his crime would entail the spilling of blood, so he provided himself in each case with a change of clothing... Really elementary, Professor. I should say, Inspector, that your trail will lead to a limping man who carried either a bundle or a small cheap valise. It isn’t likely that he would wear the change of garments underneath those which he knew would become bloodied.”

“Never thought of that,” confessed Vaughn. “A good point. But I’ll take care of both ends — I’ve got men out all along the line on the prowl for Krosac.” He leaned over the side and shouted an order to a man in a launch; the launch departed at once.

By this time the body had been cut down, and Dr. Rumsen was kneeling on the roof of the cabin beneath the denuded antenna mast examining the corpse. Dr. Temple had descended some minutes before, talked to Isham at the rail, and then turned aft. A few moments later they all followed, bound for Captain Swift’s cabin.

They found Dr. Temple bending over the prone figure of the old sailing master. Captain Swift was lying in a bunk, eyes closed. The top of his tousled old head was caked with dry blood.

“He’s coming around,” said the physician. “Bad gash there, worse than the one I got. It’s lucky he’s such a tough old fellow; it might easily have given him concussion of the brain.”

The Captain’s cabin was in no way disordered; here, at any rate, the murderer had met with little resistance. Ellery noted that a stubby automatic lay on a table within arm’s length of the bunk.

“Not fired,” said Vaughn, observing the direction of his glance. “Swift didn’t get a chance to grab it, I guess.”

The old man uttered a hollow retching groan, and his eyelids twitched open to reveal glassy, faded eyes. He stared up at Dr. Temple fixedly for a moment, and then his head turned in a slow arc to regard the others. A swift spasm of pain contracted his body; it convulsed like a snake from head to foot, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the glassiness had gone.

“Take it easy, Captain,” said the physician. “Don’t move your head. I’ve a little decoration for you.” They noticed that the wound had been treated. Dr. Temple rummaged in a medicine cabinet, found a roll of bandage, and without a word being spoken by anyone, swathed the wounded head until the old sea dog resembled a war casualty.

“Feel all right now, Captain?” asked District Attorney Isham eagerly. He was panting in his zeal to talk to the old man.

Captain Swift grunted. “Reckon so. What th’ devil happened?”

Vaughn said: “Megara’s been murdered.”

The seaman blinked, and moistened his dry lips. “Got his, eh?”

“Yes. We want your story, Captain.”

“Is it th’ next day?”

No one laughed; they knew what he meant. “Yes, Captain.”

Captain Swift stared up at the ceiling of the cabin. “Mr. Megara ’n’ me, we left the house last night an’ rolled back to th’ Helene. Far as I c’d tell, everything was shipshape. We chinned awhile — Mr. Megara said somethin’ about maybe makin’ a voyage to Africa after everything blew over. Then we turned in — him to his cabin an’ me to mine. But first I took a turn on deck, like I always do; no watchman aboard, an’ I like to be on th’ safe side.”

“You saw no evidence of a man hiding on board?” asked Ellery.

“Nope,” croaked the Captain. “But I can’t say for sure. Might ’a’ been skulkin’ in one o’ the cabins, or below.”

“And then you turned in,” said Isham encouragingly. “What time was this, Captain?”

“Seven bells.”

“Eleven-thirty,” murmured Ellery.

“Right. I sleep heavy when I sleep. Can’t tell ye what time it was, but I found I was sittin’ up in my bunk, listenin’. Felt somethin’ was wrong. Then I thought I heard a man breathin hard ’longside the bunk. I made a quick grab for the gun on th’ table; but I never reached it. A flash lit in my lamps, an’ somethin’ hit me a fierce crack on th’ head. That’s all I knew till just now.”

“Little enough,” muttered Isham. “Didn’t you get a look at whoever it was that struck you?”

The Captain shook his head gingerly. “Not a peep. The room was darker’n pitch, an’ when the flash hit me, I was blinded.”

They left Captain Swift in Dr. Temple’s care and returned to the deck. Ellery was thoughtful; more, he was worried. He seemed to be searching his mind for an idea which persisted in remaining evasive. Finally he shook his head in disgust and gave up the effort.

They found Dr. Rumsen waiting for them on the deck below the antenna masts. The knot expert had disappeared.

“Well, Doc?’ asked Vaughn.

The Medical Examiner shrugged. “Nothing startling. If you remember what I told you about the body of Brad three weeks ago, I don’t have to say a word.”

“No marks of violence, eh?”

“Not below the neck. And above the neck—” He shrugged again. “As far as identification is concerned, it’s all clear. This Dr. Temple that was up here a while ago told me Megara was suffering from a recently contracted hernia testis. Is that right?”

“Megara said as much himself. It’s right, all right.”

“Well, this body is his, then, because there’s evidence of the hernia. Don’t even need an autopsy. And Temple looked at it directly after we cut the body down, before he went off. Said the body was Megara’s — he’d given the man a thorough examination in the nude, he said.”

“Good enough. What time do you figure Megara was killed?”

Dr. Rumsen squinted thoughtfully aloft. “All things considered, I’d say between one and one-thirty this morning.”

“Okay, Doc. We’ll take care of the corpse. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” The physician snorted and crept down the ladder to a waiting launch below. It immediately made off toward the mainland.

“Did you find anything stolen, Inspector?” frowned Ellery.

“No. There was a little cash in Megara’s wallet in the cabin. It wasn’t taken. And the wall safe wasn’t touched.”

“There’s one thing more—” began Ellery, when a launch slid up and discharged a group of perspiring men.

“Well?” demanded Vaughn. “Any signs of it?”

The leader of the group shook his head. “No, Chief. We’ve combed the grounds for a mile around.”

“Might have sunk it in the Cove,” muttered Vaughn.

“What’s that?” demanded Isham.

“Megara’s head. Not that it makes a hell of a lot of difference. I don’t think we’ll even drag.”

“I should if I were you,” said Ellery. “I was about to ask you if you’d searched for the head.”

“Well, maybe you’re right... You, there, telephone for the dragging apparatus.”

“Do you think it’s important?” asked Professor Yardley in a low tone.

Ellery flung his hands out in an unaccustomed gesture of despair. “Damned if I know what’s important and what isn’t. There’s something buzzing about inside my brain. I can’t get hold of it... It’s something I ought to do — I feel it, know it.” He stopped short and jammed a cigarette into his mouth. “I must say,” he snapped after a moment, “that as a member of the detective craft, I’m the profession’s most pitiable object.”

“Know thyself,” said the Professor dryly.

25. The Limping Man

A detective climbed aboard with a familiar envelope.

“What’s this?” demanded Vaughn.

“Cable. Just got here.”

“Cable,” repeated Ellery slowly. “From Belgrade, Inspector?”

Vaughn tore open the envelope. “Yes...” He ran his eye over the message, nodded gloomily.

“Just late enough,” remarked Isham, “to be of no use. What’s it say?”

The Inspector handed the cable to the District Attorney, and Isham read it aloud:

It was signed by the Minister of Police, Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

“So,” said Professor Yardley. “You were right after all, Queen. They were nothing but common thieves.”

Ellery sighed. “An empty triumph. It merely means that Velja Krosac had an additional motive for the murder of the Tvar brothers. His family wiped out, his money stolen. I can’t see that it clears up anything but a minor point... As for Megara’s story about having kept track of the young Krosac — it’s probably true. Except that instead of sending agents out from Montenegro, they employed men via the mails when they got to this country.”

“Poor devil. I can almost find it in my heart to pity him.”

“You can’t take away the blood and brutality of the crimes, Professor,” said Vaughn sharply. “Sure he has motive. There’s a motive for every murder. But you don’t find murderers getting off scot-free just because they had a reason... Well, what is it?”

Another detective had dropped aboard bearing a sheaf of official-looking papers and telegrams. “Sergeant sent these, Inspector. Last night’s reports.”

“Hmm.” Vaughn rapidly went through the papers. “On the Lynns.”

“Any news?” asked Isham.

“Nothing of importance. Naturally people all over the country think they’ve spotted ’em. Here’s one all the way from Arizona — they’re following it up. Another from Florida — man and a woman of the general description seen in a car round Tampa way. Maybe, maybe.” He stuffed the reports into one of his pockets. “I’ll bet they’ve holed up in New York. Be damned fools to go shooting across country. Canadian and Mexican borders seem to be okay. I don’t think they’ve slipped out of the country... Hullo! Bill seems to have found something!”

The detective was standing up in an outboard waving his hat and yelling something indistinguishable. He scrambled aboard like a monkey, eyes shining.

“Righto, Chief!” he cried, as soon as he had his feet on the deck. “You hit it on the head. Found plenty over there!”

“What?”

“Checked up on the rowboat first; it’s the one that belongs to that slip, all right. Rope was cut with a sharp knife; the knot’s still hangin’ on the slip ring, and the rope on the boat itself shows a cut that matches the other end.”

“All right, all right,” said Vaughn impatiently. “He used that rowboat; we know that. Did you find anything near the dock there?”

“And how. Footprints.” They all echoed the word and leaned forward. Bill nodded. “There’s soft earth just behind the slip. In it we found five prints — three lefts and two rights of the same size shoe — man’s, about eight and a half, I’d say. And whoever made those prints limped.”

“Limped?” repeated Professor Yardley. “How on earth do you know?”

Bill turned a pitying glance on the tall ugly scholar. “What the — Say, that’s the first time I ever heard anybody ask a question like that. Don’t you read the pulps? Prints of the right shoe were much deeper than the left. A hell of a lot. Right heels dug way in. A bad limp in his left leg, I’d say; left heels hardly show.”

“Good work, Bill,” said Vaughn; he regarded the antenna masts. “Mr. Megara,” he said grimly, “next time — if there’s another world and I’m there with, you — you’ll listen to me. No protection, hey? You saw where you got with protection... Anything else, Bill?”

“No. The path down from the main road, between the Lynn place and Bradwood, is gravel, and the main road is macadam. So there aren’t any other prints. The boys are workin’ on the limping-man trail anyway; didn’t need the prints, although they help.”

The boys, it seemed had worked not without success.

A new deputation scudded over the blue water of Ketcham’s Cove toward the yacht; several detectives surrounded a middle-aged man with a badly frightened look, who sat on a thwart clutching its edges with both hands.

“Who the devil have they picked up?” growled Vaughn. “Come aboard; who you got there?” he shouted across the narrowing strip of water.

“Great news, Chief!” yelled one of the plainclothesmen faintly. “Got a hot tip!”

He helped his middle-aged captive up the ladder by a gentle boost in the slack of the man’s trousers; the man crawled up with a sickly half-grin and took his fedora hat off on deck, quite as if he were in the presence of royalty. They examined him curiously: he was a colorless individual with gold teeth and an air of shabby gentility.

“Who’s this, Pickard?” demanded the Inspector.

“Tell your story, Mr. Darling,” said the detective. “This is the big chief.”

Mr. Darling looked awed. “Pleased to meet you, Captain. Why, it’s nothing much. I’m Elias Darling of Huntington, Captain. I own a cigar and stationery store on Main Street there. I was closing up last night at midnight and happened to notice something in the street. There’d been a car parked in front of my store for a few minutes — a Buick, I think it was — Buick sedan. I’d happened to notice the man who parked it — a little fellow with a young girl. Just as I was closing up I saw a man, tall fellow, walk up to the car and sort of look inside — the front window was open, car wasn’t locked, you see. Then he opened the door, started the ignition, and drove off in the direction of Centerport.”

“Well, what of it?” snarled Vaughn. “Might have been the little guy’s father, or brother, or friend, or something. Maybe he was from the finance company taking the car away because the little guy didn’t pay up.”

Mr. Elias Darling looked panic-stricken. “Goodness,” he whispered, “I never thought of that! And here I am practically accusing— You see, Captain...”

“Inspector!” shouted Vaughn.

“You see, Inspector, I didn’t like the looks of it. I thought of saying something to our Chief of Police, but then I figured it wasn’t any of my business. But I remember the man limped on his left foot—”

“Hey!” roared Vaughn. “Wait a minute! Limped, did he? What did he look like?”

They hung on Mr. Darling’s words; each man felt that here at last was the turning-point of the investigation — an actual description of the man who called himself Krosac... Detective Pickard was shaking his head sadly; and Ellery sensed that Darling’s description would be no more informative than had been Croker’s, the Weirton garageman.

“I told the detective here,” said the Huntington merchant, “I didn’t see his face. But he was tall, kind of broad-shouldered, and he was carrying one of those little valises — overnight bag, my wife calls ’em.”

Isham and Vaughn relaxed, and Professor Yardley shook his head. “All right, Mr. Darling,” said Vaughn. “Thanks a lot for your trouble. See that Mr. Darling gets back to Huntington in a police car, Pickard.” Pickard assisted the storekeeper down the ladder, and returned when the launch glided off toward the mainland.

“How about the stolen car, Pickard?” asked Isham.

“Well,” drawled the detective, “it isn’t much help. A couple answering the description given by Darling reported the theft of their automobile to the Huntington police at two in the morning. God knows where they’d been — I don’t. Buick sedan, as Darling says; the little guy was so excited about his broad, I suppose, that he forgot to take his ignition key out of the lock.”

“Send out a description of the car?” demanded Vaughn.

“Yes, Chief. Plates and all.”

“Fat lot of good it’ll do,” grumbled Isham. “Naturally, Krosac would want a car last night for his getaway — too risky to take a train at two or three in the morning, where the chances are somebody would remember him.”

“In other words,” murmured Ellery, “you believe Krosac stole the car, drove it all night, and ditched it somewhere?”

“He’d be a fool to continue driving it,” snapped the Inspector. “Sure that’s right. What’s wrong with it, Mr. Queen?”

Ellery shrugged. “Can’t a man ask a simple question without having his head bashed in, Inspector? Nothing’s wrong with it, so far as I can see.”

“It seems to me,” said the Professor thoughtfully, “that Krosac was taking a long chance in depending upon being able to steal a car so close to the time and scene of his projected crime.”

“Long chance my eye,” said Vaughn curtly. “Trouble is with people, they’re generally honest. You could steal a dozen cars in the next hour if you wanted to — especially out here in Long Island.”

“A good point, Professor,” drawled Ellery, “but I’m afraid the Inspector’s right.” He paused at the sounds of shuffling feet above. They looked up; the sheet-draped body of Stephen Megara was being lowered from the roof of the radio operator’s cabin to the deck. At the rail a few feet away, in a faded old sou’wester under which were his pajamas, stood Captain Swift, gazing with stony eyes at the proceedings. Dr. Temple was at his side, silent, puffing at a dead pipe.

Ellery, Vaughn, Isham, and the Professor descended one by one to the large police launch waiting below. The Helene, as they drew off, rode gently in the waters of Ketcham’s Cove. The body was on its way over the side to another boat. On shore they could see Jonah Lincoln’s tall figure, waiting; the women had vanished.

“What do you think, Mr. Queen?” asked Isham with pathetic eagerness, after a long silence.

Ellery wriggled about and stared back at the yacht. “I think that we’re as far from the solution of these crimes as we were three weeks ago. As far as I’m concerned, I confess to complete frustration. The murderer is Velja Krosac — a wraith of a man who might be nearly anybody. The problem still confronts us: Who is he, really?” He took off his pince-nez and rubbed his eyes impatiently. “He’s left his trail — flaunted it, as a matter of fact...” His face hardened, and he fell silent.

“What’s the matter?” asked Professor Yardley, anxiously surveying his protégé’s bleak expression.

Ellery clenched his fist. “That idea — something! What in the name of six Peruvian devils is it?”

26. Ellery Talks

They walked quickly through Bradwood, intent on avoiding the poor victims of bewilderment and nausea moving restlessly about the estate. Jonah Lincoln said not a word; he seemed too stunned for speech and merely followed them up the path as if that were as sensible a course of action as any other. The death of Megara, peculiarly enough, hung far more like a pall over Bradwood than had the death of its owner. A white-faced Fox was sitting on the steps of the porch, his head in his hands. Helene sat in a rocker, staring fixedly at the sky without seeing one wisp of the massing thunder clouds which had sprung up. Mrs. Brad had collapsed; Stallings mumbled that Dr. Temple should see her: she was crying hysterically in her room and no one, not even her daughter, seemed, capable of taking care of her. Mrs. Baxter’s moans could be heard as they passed the rear of the house.

They hesitated in the driveway, and then forged on by tacit agreement. Lincoln followed them blindly as far as the outer gateway. There he stopped to lean against the stone pillar. The Inspector and Isham had dropped off somewhere, busy about their own affairs.

Old Nanny’s wrinkled black face was screwed up with horror; she opened the front door for them, muttering: “Dey’s a ha’nt behin’ dis, Mistuh Ya’dley, you ma’k mah words.”

The Professor did not reply; he went directly to his library, and as if refuge lay there Ellery followed.

They sat down in the same inadequate silence. On the Professor’s craggy face, beneath the shock and the distaste, lay challenge. Ellery sank into a chair and began mechanically to search his pockets for a cigarette. Yardley shoved a large ivory box across the table to him.

“What’s bothering you?” he asked gently. “Surely the thought couldn’t have entirely escaped you.”

“It’s as if it never was, except for the most ridiculous sensation.” Ellery puffed furiously at a cigarette. “You know those intangible feelings? Something leads you a chase through all the back alleys of your brain, and you never once get more than a blurred glimpse of it. That’s the way it is with me. If I could catch it... It’s important. I have the overwhelming feeling that it’s important.”

The Professor tamped tobacco into his pipe bowl. “A common phenomenon. I’ve found with myself that concentration on the capture of the idea is futile. A good plan is to erase every thought of it from your mind and talk about other things. It’s surprising how often the method works. It’s as if, by ignoring it, you tantalize it into popping out at you. Out of nowhere the full, clear picture of what you’ve been trying to recollect will appear; created, it would seem, out of irrelevancies.”

Ellery grunted. A thunder clap shook the walls of the house.

“A moment ago — fifteen minutes ago—” continued the Professor with a sad smile, “you said that you were as far from a solution today as you were three weeks ago. Very well. Then you face failure. At the same time you’ve made reference on several occasions to conclusions which you’ve reached, not obvious on the surface, unknown apparently to Isham and Vaughn and myself. Why not go over them now? Perhaps there’s something which in the exclusive concentration of your analysis has eluded you, but which will become clear if you express your thoughts in words. You may take my word for it — my whole life has been inextricably tied up with just such experiences — that there is a vital difference between the cold seclusion of independent thinking and the warm personality of a tête-à-tête discussion.

“You mentioned checkers, for example. Evidently the Bradwood study, the checker table, the disposition of the pieces, had a significance for you which completely escaped the rest of us. Go over it aloud.”

Under the flow of Professor Yardley’s deep and soothing voice Ellery’s keyed nerves relaxed. He was smoking more quietly now, and the lines of strain on his face had softened. “Not a bad plan, Professor.” He shifted to a more comfortable position and half-closed his eyes. “Let me tackle it this way. What story did you piece together from Stallings’s testimony and the checker table as we found it?”

The Professor thoughtfully blew smoke toward his fireplace. The room had appreciably darkened; the sun had disappeared behind a barrage of black clouds. “Many theories unsupported by concrete evidence have come to mind, but I see no logical reason for doubting the surface appearance of the data.”

“And that is?”

“When Stallings last saw Brad — presumably he was the last person except the murderer who did see Brad — Brad was seated at his checker table playing checkers with himself. There is nothing unusual or incongruous about this; Stallings testified that he often did it, working out moves for both sides — as only an enthusiast and expert will — and I myself can confirm this. Then it would appear that after Stallings’s departure, and while Brad was still playing with himself, Krosac gained access to the study, killed Brad, and so on. Brad had in his hand at the time he was killed one of the red checkers, which explains how we found it near the totem post.”

Ellery rubbed his head wearily. “You say — ‘gained access to the study.’ Just what do you mean?”

Yardley grinned. “I was coming to that. You remember I said a moment ago that I had many theories unsupported by evidence. One of them is that Krosac — who, as you’ve repeatedly held, may be someone very close to us — was Brad’s expected visitor that night, which explains how he got into the house. Brad, of course, being ignorant of the fact that some one he thought a friend or acquaintance was in reality his blood enemy.”

“Unsupported!” Ellery sighed. “You see, I can outline this instant an indestructible case for one theory. Not a stab in the dark, Professor, not a conjecture, but a conclusion reached by clear logical steps. The only trouble with it is — it doesn’t thin out the fog in the slightest.”

The Professor sucked thoughtfully at his pipe. “Just a moment. I haven’t finished. I can offer another theory — again unsupported by evidence, but as far as I can see just as likely to be true as the other. And that is, that Brad had two visitors that night: the person whom he expected, and for whose visit he sent his wife, stepdaughter, and household away; and Krosac, his enemy. In this case the legitimate visitor, whether he came before or after Krosac — which is to say, while Brad was still alive or when he was already dead — naturally kept silent about his visit, not wishing to be implicated in any way. I’m surprised no one has thought of this before. I’ve been expecting you to propound it for the past three weeks.”

“So?” Ellery took off his pince-nez glasses and placed them on the table; his eyes were red and bloodshot. A lightning flash momentarily illuminated the room, painting their faces a ghastly blue. “Great expectations.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of it!”

“But I’m not. I never mentioned it because it isn’t true.”

“Ha,” said the Professor. “Now we’re getting it. Do you mean to sit here and tell me you can prove there was only one visitor to that house on the murder night?”

Ellery smiled feebly. “You place me in an uncomfortable position. Proof is after all dependent not so much upon the prover as upon the approver... It’s going to be slightly complicated. And you remember what that French moralist with the improbable name, Luc de Clapier de Vauvenargues, said: ‘Lorsqu’une pensée est trop faible pour porter une expression simple, c’est la marque pour la rejeter.’ [2] But I’ll get to it in due course.”

The Professor leaned forward expectantly, and Ellery continued, replacing the pince-nez on the bridge of his nose: “My point depends upon two elements: the disposition of the checkers on Brad’s table and the psychology of expert players. Do you understand the game, Professor? I recall you said that you had never played with Brad, or words to that effect.”

“That’s true, although I understand the game. Rather a dub at it. I haven’t played for years.”

“If you understand the game, you’ll understand my analysis. When Stallings entered the study, before quitting the house, he saw Brad beginning a game with himself, saw two moves of the opening, in fact. It was this testimony which led our friends astray. They assumed that because Brad was playing with himself when Stallings last saw him, he was still playing with himself when he was murdered. You fell into the same error.

“But the pieces on the table told an entirely different story. What was the disposition not only of the checkers in play but of those which had been ‘captured’ and taken off the playing board? You will recall that Black had captured nine red pieces, which lay in the margin between the board itself and the edge of the table; that Red had captured only three black pieces, which lay in the margin on the opposite side. Obviously, then, to begin with, Black was vastly superior to Red.

“The board itself, remember, held three kings, or double pieces, for Black, plus three single black checkers; and a meager two single pieces for Red.”

“What of it?” demanded the Professor. “I still don’t see that it means anything except that Brad was playing a game with himself and had worked out a series of moves most disastrous to his hypothetical opponent, Red.”

“An intolerable conclusion,” retorted Ellery. “From the standpoint of experiment, an expert gamester is interested only in opening and closing moves. It’s as true in checkers as it is in chess, or any other game in which wits are pitted and the outcome depends solely on the skill of the individual player. Why should Brad, playing purely for practice against himself, bother with a game in which one side has the overwhelming advantage of three full kings and a piece? He would never allow an experimental game to reach such a stage. Experts can tell you by a single glance at the board, even when the advantage is considerably less — a single piece, or even an equality of pieces but a strategic advantage of position — what the outcome will be if both sides play without error. For Brad to have seriously played that unequal game with himself would be tantamount to Alekhine playing an experimental chess game with himself in which one side has the advantage of a queen, two bishops, and a knight.

“So we come to this: Whereas Brad was playing an experimental game when Stallings saw him, he nevertheless played a genuinely competitive game later in the evening. For while an expert wouldn’t experiment with such a one-sided division of strength, that one-sided division becomes comprehensible when you take the alternative: that he played with some one.”

Outside it had begun to pour — sheets of gray water pounded against the windows.

Professor Yardley’s teeth showed white above his black beard in a grudging grin. “Granted. Granted. I see that. But you still haven’t eliminated the plausible theory that while Brad played checkers with his legitimate visitor that night, leaving the game as we found it, he was murder by Krosac later, after the visitor had gone, perhaps.”

“Ingenious,” chuckled Ellery. “You die hard. And compel me to fire a double barrel — logic and common sense.

“Look at it this way. Can we fix the time of the murder in relation to the time period of the game?

“I maintain in all logic that we can. For what did we find? On Black’s first row one of the two red checkers was still in play. But in checkers when you have reached your opponent’s first row you are entitled to have your piece crowned, or kinged; which as you know means placing a second checker on top of the first. How, then, does it happen that Red in this game has a man on the king row which is nevertheless uncrowned?”

“I begin to see,” muttered Yardley.

“Simply because the game stopped at that point, for it could not have been continued unless the red king were crowned,” Ellery went on rapidly. “Is there confirmation that the game stopped at this point? There is! The first question to settle is: Was Brad playing Black in this game, or Red? We have all sorts of testimony to the fact that Brad was an expert checker player. He had once, in fact, entertained the National Checker Champion and held that worthy even. Is it conceivable, then, that Brad should be the Red in this game where Red was obviously the inferior player — so inferior that his opponent had an advantage of three kings and a piece? No, it isn’t conceivable, and we can assert at once that Brad was playing Black... Incidentally, to get the record straight, let me interpolate an amendment. Now we know that Black’s advantage over Red was not three kings and a piece, but two kings and two pieces, since one of the red pieces is supposed to be a king.

“Still, however, a tremendous advantage.

“But if Brad was playing Black, then he must have been sitting during the game in the chair near the secretary rather than on the other side of the table, away from the secretary. This is so, because all the captured red checkers were on the side near the secretary, and Black captures Red, of course.

“So far, so good. Brad was playing Black, and he sat in the chair near the secretary; his visitor and checker opponent, therefore, sat opposite, facing the secretary while Brad had his back to it.”

“But where does that—?”

Ellery closed his eyes. “If you have aspirations to genius, Professor, take Disraeli’s advice and cultivate patience. I’m getting in my licks, honored Professor. Many’s the time I’ve sat burning at my desk in your classroom, trying in vain to anticipate your leisurely point about the Ten Thousand, or Philip, or Jesus...

“Where was I? Yes! There was one missing red checker, and we found it outside near the scene of Brad’s crucifixion. On the palm of his hand there was a circular red stain. He had been holding the checker when he was killed, then. Why had he picked up the red checker and held it? Theoretically many explanations are possible. But there is only one explanation which has a known fact to support it.”

“What’s that?” demanded the Professor.

“The fact that a red checker was on Black’s king row, and that it was uncrowned. In Brad’s hand — in the hand of Black, observe — was the only missing red checker. I don’t see,” said Ellery crisply, “how you can escape the conclusion that Red, Black’s opponent, managed to get one of his pieces on Black’s king row; that Black, or Brad, picked up one of the captured red pieces to place it on top of the red piece just arrived on his king row; that before he could so place the red piece he had picked up, something occurred which effectually terminated the game. In other words, the fact that Brad had picked up a red piece for the specific purpose of crowning his opponent’s man, but never completed the action, shows us by direct inference, not only when the game stopped, but why.”

Yardley remained silent and intent.

“The inference? Simply that Brad never completed his action because he could not.” Ellery paused, and sighed. “He was attacked at that moment and, to put it mildly, rendered incapable of crowning Red’s king.”

“And the bloodstain,” muttered the Professor.

“Exactly,” said Ellery. “And there is the confirmation — the position of the bloodstain on the rug. The bloodstain lay two feet behind the chair in which Black — or Brad — was sitting. We have long ago proved that the murder took place in the study; and that bloodstain is the only one in the study. If Brad had been struck on the head from the front, as he sat at the table, about to crown the red piece, he would have fallen backwards, between his chair and the secretary. And that is precisely where we found the bloodstain... Dr. Rumsen maintained that Brad must have been struck on the head originally, since no other mark of violence showed on his corpse; then it was a free-flowing wound which stained the rug where he fell, before his murderer could lift the body and remove it to the summerhouse. All the details dovetail. But the salient fact stands out: Brad was attacked as he sat playing checkers with his assailant. In other words, Brad’s murderer was also his checker opponent... Ah, you have objections.”

“Certainly I have,” retorted Yardley. He relit his pipe, and puffed energetically. “What is there in your argument which invalidates the following? That Brad’s checker opponent was either innocent or an accomplice of Krosac’s; that while this innocent checker opponent played with Brad, or while the accomplice played with Brad to distract his attention, Krosac sneaked into the study and struck Brad from behind, as I said the day we discovered the bloodstain.”

“What? A muchness, Professor.” Ellery’s eyes twinkled. “We showed long ago that Krosac would not have an accomplice. Summarily these are crimes of vengeance, and there is nothing in the crimes to tempt an accomplice from a monetary standpoint.

“The possibility that there were two people all the time, one of them Krosac, the other an innocent visitor who played checkers with Brad?... Please consider what this would mean. It would mean that Krosac deliberately attacked Brad in the presence of an innocent witness! Preposterous; surely he would have waited for the witness to leave. But suppose he did attack in the presence of a witness. Wouldn’t he then make every effort to silence this witness? A man like Krosac, with so much blood on his conscience, would scarcely balk at the necessity of taking another life. Yet the witness apparently left unharmed... No, Professor, no witness, I’m afraid.”

“But how about the witness coming before Krosac, and leaving before — a witness who played checkers with Brad?” persisted the Professor.

Ellery clucked with concern. “Dear, dear, you’re becoming groggy, Professor. If he came before or after Krosac, he wouldn’t be a witness, would he?” He chuckled. “No, the point is that the game we found was the Brad-Krosac game, and that if there were a previous or later visitor, this would not invalidate the fact that Krosac — the murderer — did play with Brad.”

“And your conclusion from all this rigmarole?” muttered Yardley.

“As I said before: That Brad’s murderer played checkers with him. And that Krosac was well-known to Brad, although not, of course, as Krosac but as someone else.”

“Aha!” exclaimed the Professor, slapping his thin shank. “I’ve got you, young man. Why well-known? Eh? You mean to say that’s logic? That because a man like Brad played checkers with someone, that that someone was necessarily a friend of his? Fiddlesticks! Why, Brad would play with a manure collector. Any stranger was prey, provided he could play the game. It took me three weeks to convince him that I really wasn’t interested!”

“My nerves, Professor. If I gave you the impression that it was from the checker game that I deduced Brad’s opponent to have been a friend of his, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to. There is a much more potent reason. Did Brad know that Krosac, enemy of the Tvars, was abroad thirsting for that good old Tvar blood?”

“Yes, of course. The note he left shows that, and then Van himself wrote Brad and warned him.”

“Bien assurément! Would Brad, knowing Krosac to be abroad, make an appointment with a stranger, deliberately sending all possible protectors of his hide from the premises, as he did?”

“Hmm, I suppose not.”

“You see,” said Ellery with a tired sigh, “you can prove anything if you collate sufficient data. Look here — let me take the most extreme case. Suppose Brad’s expected visitor that night did come, did transact his business with Brad, did leave. Then Krosac appeared. An utter stranger, mind. But we’ve shown that Krosac, Brad’s murderer, played checkers with Brad. That would mean that Brad deliberately invited into his defenseless house an utter stranger... Wrong, of course. Then Krosac must have been well-known to Brad, whether he was the visitor expected by Brad or a chance guest of the evening. Actually, I don’t care a tittle which. My own belief is that only one person besides Brad was in the study that night — Krosac. But if there were two, or three, or a dozen, it doesn’t invalidate the conclusion that Brad knew Krosac well in whatever guise he appeared, and that Brad played checkers with him and was murdered during the game.”

“And where does that get you?”

“Nowhere,” said Ellery ruefully, “which is why I said before that I’m no better off now than I was three weeks ago... You know, there’s another positive fact, now that I come to think of it, which we can fish out of this mess of indecision. I’m an ass not to have thought it out before.”

The Professor rose and knocked out his pipe against the fireplace. “You’re full of surprises tonight,” he said, without turning. “What’s that?”

“We can assert with absolute assurance that Krosac does not limp.”

“We said that before,” retorted Yardley. “No, you’re right. We said we couldn’t be sure. But how—?”

Ellery got to his feet, stretched his arms, and began to pace up and down. It was humid in the library; the downpour outside redoubled in hissing intensity. “Krosac, whoever he’s pretending to be, was well-known to Brad. No one who was well-known to Brad limps. Therefore Krosac actually does not limp; but has utilized his youthful infirmity as a consistent physical characteristic merely to lead the police astray.”

“That’s why,” muttered Yardley, “he’s been so apparently careless about leaving a trail to a limping man.”

“Exactly. He discards the limp the moment he scents danger. No wonder no trace of him has been found. I should have thought of it before.”

Yardley teetered on his big feet, cold pipe jutting from his mouth. “And there we are.” He regarded Ellery keenly. “No sign of the fugitive thought, eh?”

Ellery shook his head. “Still hiding behind a convolution somewhere... Let’s see now. Murder of the first victim, Kling, satisfactorily explained. Krosac, and the pseudo-limp, in the direct vicinity; motive, proximity, peculiar nature of crime — all fit. There is a feud. Krosac thinks he has killed Andreja, one of the brothers. How does he finally get on the track of Van, the most remote of the three Tvars? Query unanswerable; to be answered God knows when... Krosac strikes once more. Brad this time; same query, also unanswerable. The plot thickens deliciously: Krosac finds Brad’s note which tells him for the first time that he has made a mistake in the introductory murder, that Van is still alive. But where is Van? Must be found, says Krosac to himself, or my vengeance is incomplete. Curtain on second act — very melodramatic... Megara returns; Krosac knows he will; enter the sole possessor, according to the note, of the secret of Van’s new identity and present whereabouts... Time out. Delay. And then... By God,” said Ellery.

Professor Yardley stiffened, scarcely breathing. All the signs pointed to the apprehension of the fugitive. Ellery was rooted to the floor, glaring at his host with the ferocious light of discovery in his eyes.

“By God,” shouted Ellery, leaping two feet into Professor Yardley’s humid air, “what a fool I’ve been! What an idiot, what an imbecile, moron, mental defective! I’ve got it!”

“It always works,” grinned the Professor, relaxing. “What — Here, my boy; what’s the matter?”

He paused in alarm. A remarkable change had come over Ellery’s exulting face. His jaw dropped, his eyes clouded, and he winced as people do sometimes at the purely imaginary shock of a fancied blow.

The expression came, and went. Ellery’s jaw was outlined on his smooth brown cheek. “Listen,” he said rapidly. “I haven’t time for anything but the sketchiest analysis. What were we waiting for? What was Krosac waiting for? We were waiting for Krosac to attempt to discover through Megara, the only source of information, where Van is. Krosac was waiting to make this discovery. And then he killed Megara. It can mean only one thing!”

“He found out,” cried Yardley, the gravity of the thought causing his deep voice to crack. “My God, Queen, what fools, what blind fools we’ve been! It may be too late already!”

Ellery wasted no time in reply. He sprang to the telephone. “Western Union... Take a telegram. Fast. Addressed to Constable Luden, Arroyo, West Virginia... Yes. Message: ‘Form posse immediately and go to hut of Old Pete. Protect Old Pete until my arrival. Notify Crumit Krosac returning. If anything has happened by time you reach hut pick up Krosac trail but leave scene of crime intact.’ Sign it Ellery Queen. Repeat, please... Krosac — K-r-o-s-a-c. Right... Thanks.”

He flung the instrument from him, then changed his mind and picked it up again. He put in a call to Bradwood, across the road, asking for Inspector Vaughn. Vaughn, he discovered from Stallings, had left Bradwood hurriedly not long before. Ellery dismissed Stallings peremptorily and asked for one of Vaughn’s men. Where was Inspector Vaughn? The man on the other end of the wire was sorry, but he had no idea. The Inspector had received a message, and he and District Attorney Isham had immediately commandeered a car and dashed away.

“Damn it,” groaned Ellery, hanging up, “what are we going to do now? We haven’t any time to dawdle!” He dashed to a window and looked out. The rain seemed to be steadily increasing in force, coming down in torrents; lightning flashes streaked the sky; the thunder was almost incessant. “Listen,” said Ellery, turning back. “You’ll have to remain behind, Professor!”

“I really don’t like the idea of your going there alone,” replied Yardley reluctantly. “Especially in this storm. How are you going to get there?”

“Never mind. You stay here and try your damnedest to get in touch with Vaughn and Isham.” Ellery leaped to the telephone again. “Mineola flying field. Quick!”

The Professor rubbed his beard uncomfortably as Ellery waited. “Oh, I say, now, Queen, you can’t be thinking of going up in a sky like this.”

Ellery waved one hand. “Hello, hello! Mineola? Can I charter a fast plane for a southwestern flight at once?... What?” His face fell, and after a moment he put down the telephone. “Even the elements are conspiring against us. Storm came up from the Atlantic and is traveling west and south. The Mineola man says it will be bad in the Alleghenies. They won’t send a plane up. What the devil can I do?”

“Train,” suggested Yardley.

“No! I’ll trust the old Duesie! Have you a slicker or a raincoat I can borrow, Professor?”

They raced into the Professor’s hall and Yardley opened a closet and brought out a long slicker. He helped Ellery into it. “Now, Queen,” he panted, “don’t go off half-cocked. That’s an open car, the roads will be bad, it’s a terribly long drive—”

“I shan’t take unnecessary chances,” said Ellery. “Luden should cover things, anyway.” He hopped forward and opened the door, and the Professor followed him into the vestibule. Ellery was silent, and then offered his hand. “Wish me luck, old man. Or rather wish Van luck.”

“Go ahead,” grunted the Professor, pumping Ellery’s hand up and down. “I’ll do my best to find Vaughn and Isham. Take care of yourself. You’re certain about it now? It isn’t an unnecessary trip?”

Ellery said grimly: “There was only one thing that kept Krosac from killing Megara for the past two weeks. That was — he didn’t know where Van was. If he killed Megara finally, it must be that he discovered the Old Pete ruse and the mountain hideaway. Extorted the information from Megara, probably, before he killed him. It’s my job to prevent a fourth murder; Krosac is undoubtedly on his way to West Virginia at this moment. I’m hoping that he took time out to sleep last night. Otherwise—” He shrugged, smiled at Yardley, who looked longingly after, and then dashed down the steps in the buffeting downpour, under the lightning, toward the driveway at the side where the garage and the old racing car lay.

Mechanically Professor Yardley consulted his watch. It was exactly one o’clock.

27. The Slip

The Duesenberg clawed its way through New York City, scrambled downtown, darted through the Holland Tunnel, dodged in and out of traffic through Jersey City, slipped through a maze of New Jersey towns, and then straightened out on the road to Harrisburg, shooting ahead like an arrow. Traffic was light; the storm had not abated; and Ellery alternately prayed to the gods of chance and played havoc with the speed laws. His luck held; he shot through town after town in Pennsylvania unpursued by motorcycle police.

The old car, which afforded no protection from the rain, was flooded; and he himself sat with soaked shoes and a dripping hat. Somewhere in the car he had salvaged a pair of racing goggles; and he made a grotesque figure in linen suit covered with a slicker, a light felt hat which sopped about his ears, amber goggles over pince-nez spectacles, and a grim look about him as he sat hunched over the enormous wheel rocketing the car through the storm-lashed Pennsylvania countryside.

At a few minutes to seven that evening, with the rain still driving steadily — he seemed to be traveling in its wake — he slid into Harrisburg.

He had no luncheon and hunger pinched his flat stomach. He parked the Duesenberg in a garage with specific instructions to the mechanic, and strode off in search of a restaurant. Within an hour he was back at the garage, had checked his oil, gasoline, and tires, and made his way out of town. He remembered the route well, sitting there behind the wheel, cold and clammy and uncomfortable. Within six miles he was through Rockville and arrowing straight ahead. He crossed the Susquehanna River, and flashed on. Two hours later he passed the Lincoln Highway, sticking stubbornly to the road he was on. The rain persisted.

At midnight, chilled, exhausted, his eyelids refusing to function, he pulled into Hollidaysburg. Again a garage was his first stop; and after a lively conversation with a grinning mechanic he left on foot for a hotel. The rain lashed against his wet legs.

“Three things I want,” he said from stiff lips in the little hotel. “A room, my clothes dried, and a call for seven tomorrow morning. Can you produce?”

“Mr. Queen,” said the clerk, after consulting Ellery’s signature on the register, “you watch me.”

The next morning, considerably refreshed, in dry clothing, stomach full of bacon and eggs, the Duesenberg roaring along, Ellery pressed forward on the last lap of the journey. Evidences of the storm’s havoc flashed by him — uprooted trees, swollen streams, wrecked cars abandoned by the roadside. But the storm, which had raged all night, had abated suddenly in the early hours, although the sky still lowered, the color of lead.

At 10:15 Ellery piloted the roaring Duesenberg through Pittsburgh. At 11:30, under a brightening sky, with the sun making valiant efforts to illuminate the peaks of the Alleghenies all about, Ellery brought the Duesenberg to a grinding stop before the Municipal Hall in Arroyo, West Virginia.

A man in blue denim whom Ellery vaguely remembered was sweeping the walk before the entrance to the Municipal Hall.

“Here, mistuh,” said this worthy, dropping his broom and clutching at Ellery’s arm as he dashed past, “where you goin’? Who you want t’see?”

Ellery did not reply. He ran quickly through the dingy hall to the rear, where Constable Luden’s office lay. The constabulary door was closed; and as far as he could see, Arroyo’s civic citadel was empty of life. He tried the door; it was unlocked.

The man in denim, a stubborn look on his loutish face, had shuffled after him.

Constable Luden’s office was unoccupied.

“Where’s the Constable?” demanded Ellery.

“Whut I been tryin’ t’tell ye,” said the man doggedly. “He ain’t here.”

“Ah!” said Ellery with a sagacious nod. Luden, then, had gone on to the hills. “When did the Constable leave?”

“Mond’y mornin’.”

“What!” Ellery’s voice overflowed with astonishment, woe, and a surging realization of catastrophe. “Good heavens, then he didn’t get my—” He darted forward to Luden’s desk. It was a mess of untidy papers. The man in blue put out his hand in blank protest as Ellery began to toss the Constable’s official correspondence — if it was official correspondence — about. And, as he had with dread expected, there it lay. A yellow-enveloped message.

He tore it open, and read:

A panoramic picture flashed before Ellery’s eyes. Through a hideous and mischievous blunder, a turn of the fateful wheel, his telegram to Luden might never have been sent at all for the good it had accomplished. The man in denim patiently explained that the Constable and Mayor Matt Hollis had left two mornings before on their annual fishing trip; they were customarily gone a week, camping out, angling on the Ohio and its tributaries. They would not be back until Sunday. The telegram had arrived a few minutes past three the day before; the man in denim — who announced himself as janitor, caretaker, and man-of-all-work — had received it, signed for it, and in the absence of Luden and Hollis placed it on the Constable’s desk, where it might have lain a week but for Ellery’s fortuitous visit. The janitor seemed to have something pressing in mind, and began a rambling dissertation, but Ellery brushed him aside and, dim horror in his eyes, scrambled back to Arroyo’s main street and leaped into the Duesenberg.

He sent it roaring around the corner and along the route he recalled from his previous expedition with Isham and Constable Luden. There was no time to communicate with District Attorney Crumit of Hancock County or with Colonel Pickett of the county troopers. If what he feared had not yet occurred, he was certain he could handle any situation which might arise; in the pocket of the Duesenberg lay a loaded automatic. If it had occurred...

He left the car in the old clump of bushes — faint traces of his last visit were still impressed, despite the rain, in the densely brush-covered earth and grass — and, automatic in hand, began the hard ascent up the mountain along the dim trail Constable Luden had followed. He climbed rapidly, and yet with caution; he had no idea of what he might encounter, and he was grimly determined not to be caught unawares by anything or anybody. The lush, dense woods were quiet. He slipped along, praying that he might be in time, conscious through the faint warning bell ringing in his brain that it was too late.

He crouched behind a tree and peered out into the clearing. The fence was intact. Although the front door was shut, Ellery felt encouraged. At the same time he was taking no chances. He slipped the safety catch of the automatic back and emerged noiselessly from behind the tree. Was that the familiar beard-fringed face of Old Pete at the barbed-wired window? No; it had been his imagination. Clumsily he went over the fence, gripping the weapon still. And then he noticed the footprints.

He stood where he was for a full three minutes, studying the story as it was clearly told by the marks on the damp earth. Then, avoiding these tell-tale impressions, he circled widely, setting his own feet down with care until he reached the door.

The door, he now observed, was not entirely closed, as he had thought at first glance. A tiny crack was visible.

Automatic in his right hand, he stooped and placed his ear to the crack. No sound came from the interior of the shack. He straightened, and with his left hand struck the door a smashing blow, so that it swung back quickly, revealing the interior...

For the space of several heartbeats he stood that way, left hand in mid-air, right hand leveling the weapon at the interior of the hut, eyes riveted on the horrible scene before him.

Then he sprang across the threshold and bolted the heavy door securely behind him.

At 12:50 the Duesenberg screeched to a stop before the Municipal Hall again, and deposited Ellery on the sidewalk. A strange young man, the janitor must have thought, for his hair was disheveled, in his eyes burned a maniacal light, and he pounced on the man as if he contemplated, nothing less than mayhem.

“H’lo,” said the man in denim uncertainly. He was still sweeping the walk under the hot sun. “So ye’re back, hey? Had somethin’ t’tell ye, mistuh, but ye wouldn’t let me ’fore. Y’r name ain’t—?”

“Stow it,” snapped Ellery. “You seem to be the sole gentleman of official responsibility left in this energetic bailiwick. You’ve got to do something for me, Messer Janitor. Some men from New York are going to be here — when, I don’t know. But if it takes hours, you’ve got to wait here, do you understand?”

“We-ell,” said the janitor, leaning on his broom, “I don’t rightly know. Listen, you ain’t a man by th’ name o’ Queen now, are ye?”

Ellery stared. “Yes. Why?”

The janitor fished in the depths of a roomy denim pocket, and paused to expectorate a stream of brown liquid. Then he brought out a folded scrap of paper. “Tried to tell ye ’fore, when you was here, Mr. Queen, but ye didn’t give me no chance. Feller left this here note fer ye — tall ugly sort o’ coot. Looked like of Abe Lincoln, by gee.”

“Yardley!” ejaculated Ellery, snatching the note. “Heavens, man, why the devil didn’t you tell me before?” He almost ripped the sheet in his haste to unfold it.

It was a hurried pencil scrawl signed by the Professor:

Ellery’s eyes were wild. “What time did your friend Abraham Lincoln write this note, janitor?”

“’Leven o’clock or there’bout,” drawled the janitor. “Not long ’fore ye came yerself.”

“Now I know,” groaned Ellery, “why men commit murder... When did the rain stop last night?” he asked suddenly, struck by a thought.

“Hour or so ’fore midnight. Rain petered out hyah, though ’twas pourin’ like fury ’cross th’ river all night. Listen here, Mr. Queen, don’t ye think—”

“No,” said Ellery firmly. “Give this note to the men from New York when they arrive.” He scribbled an additional message on the blank side of the sheet and pressed the paper into the janitor’s hand. “Stay out here — sweep, chaw, do anything you like — but stick to this walk until they come. Isham, Vaughn. Police. Do you understand? Isham, Vaughn. Give ’em this note. Here’s something for your trouble.”

He tossed a bill toward the janitor, jumped into the Duesenberg, and was off down Arroyo’s main street in a cloud of dust.

28. Twice Dead

Inspector Vaughn and District Attorney Isham motored into Bradwood at eight o’clock Wednesday morning, tired but happy. With them was a man from the United States Attorney’s office. And seated in the tonneau, sullenly defiant, were Percy and Elizabeth Lynn.

The British thieves were packed off to Mineola under guard, and the Inspector was stretching his arms at luxurious ease when his lieutenant, Bill, ran up waving his arms and talking fast. The expression of triumph faded from Vaughn’s face, to be replaced by one of anxiety. Isham heard the full story left by Professor Yardley and swore fretfully.

“What the deuce shall we do?”

Vaughn snapped: “Follow, of course!” and climbed back into the police car. The District Attorney rubbed his bald spot and followed with the weariness of resignation.

In Mineola, at the flying field, they picked up news of Yardley. The Professor had hired an airplane at six that morning, headed for an unnamed destination southwest. Ten minutes later they were in the air, winging toward the same goal in the cabin of a powerful tri-motored machine.

It was 1:30 P.M. when they trudged into Arroyo. The plane had set them down in a pasture a quarter-mile out of town. They headed for the Municipal Hall. A man in blue denim sat on the steps of the building, a ragged broom at his feet, snoring peacefully. He scrambled to his feet at the Inspector’s growl.

“You from N’Yawk?”

“Yes.”

“Name o’ Vaughn, er Ish’m, er somethin’?”

“Yes.”

“Got a note fer ye.” The janitor opened his huge palm; in it, crumpled and dirty and damp but intact, lay Professor Yardley’s note.

They read the Professor’s message in silence, and then turned the paper over. Ellery had scribbled the addendum:

“It’s happened,” groaned Isham.

“What time did Mr. Queen leave here?” snarled Vaughn.

“’Bout one o’clock,” replied the janitor. “Say, whut’s goin’ on, Cap? Peck o’ traipsin’ ’bout, seems to me.”

“Come on, Isham,” muttered the Inspector. “Lead the way. We’ve got to see that hut first.”

They swung off round the corner, leaving the janitor staring and shaking his head.

The hut’s door was closed.

Isham and Vaughn with difficulty scaled the barbed-wire fence. “Don’t walk over those prints,” said the Inspector shortly. “Let’s see... These are Queen’s, I guess, the ones that make the detour. The other set—”

They stood still and followed with their eyes the line of footprints which Ellery had observed little more than an hour before. There were two complete sets made by the same pair of shoes; and, with the exception of Ellery’s, no others. The two sets were plainly defined: one going from the fence to the door of the shack; the other returning on a slightly deviating line. Beyond the wire fence the rocky nature of the ground precluded a visible trail. The prints which approached the cabin were more deeply impressed in the earth than those which left. In all the footprints the impression of the right foot was heavier than the corresponding impression of the left.

“The limping trail, all right,” mumbled Vaughn. “That first set — queer.” He advanced around the double track of footprints and opened the door, Isham following.

They stared in raw horror at what they saw.

On the wall opposite the door, nailed to the rough-hewn logs like a trophy, was the body of a man. It was headless. The legs had been nailed close together. From the bloody tatters in which it was clad — the tatters of the pseudo-hillman — it was the corpse of the unfortunate schoolmaster.

Blood had dripped to the stone floor. Blood had spattered over the walls. The shack, which had been so neat and cozy when Isham had visited it before, now looked like the inner shrine of an abattoir. The rush mats were mottled with thick red spots. The floor showed red streaks and smears. The top of the sturdy old table, swept clean of its usual objects, had been utilized as a slate; and on this slate, in a gigantic letter of blood, was the familiar symbol of Krosac’s vengeance — a capital T.

“Jeeze,” muttered Vaughn. “It turns your stomach. I think I’d choke that cannibal with my bare hands, justification or not, if I got hold of him.”

“I’m going outside,” said Isham hoarsely. “I feel — faint.” He staggered through the doorway and leaned against the wall outside, retching with nausea.

Inspector Vaughn blinked, squared his shoulders, and stepped across the room. He avoided the stiffened pools of blood. He touched the body; it was rigid. Little trickles of red emanated from the spike-heads in the palms and feet.

“Dead about fifteen hours,” thought Vaughn, clenching his fist. His face was white as he stared up at the crucified corpse. With a raw crimson hole where the head had been, with the arms stiffly outstretched, with the legs together, it was a grotesque and insane travesty on a devil’s humor... a monstrous and monster T formed of dead human flesh.

Vaughn shook the vertigo out of his head and stepped back. He reflected dully that there must have been something of a struggle; for on the floor near the table lay several objects which told a gruesome story. The first was a heavy ax, its haft and blade painted with dry blood; obviously the weapon which had decapitated Andreja Tvar. The second was a round coil of bandage, like a two-dimensional doughnut; its edges were frayed and dirty, and it was soaked through on one side with a brownish-red liquid, now dry. The Inspector stooped and gingerly picked up the coil; it came apart as he lifted it and, somewhat to his surprise, he saw that it had been sliced through by a sharp implement. A scissors, Vaughn conjectured; and looked about. Yes, a few feet away on the floor, as if it has been flung there in desperate haste, lay a heavy shears.

Vaughn went to the door; Isham, while pale and peaked-looking, had partially recovered. “What’s this look like to you?” asked Vaughn, holding up the severed coil of bandage. “Cripes, you picked out a nice place to be sick, Isham!”

The District Attorney crinkled his nose. He looked miserable. “Bandage around a wrist,” he faltered. “And a bad wound, too, to judge from the bloodstains and iodine on it.”

“You’re right,” said Vaughn grimly. “From the circumference of the coil it must be a wrist. There isn’t another part of the human body exactly that small around, not even the ankle. I’m afraid Mr. Krosac has a little wound stripe on his wrist!”

“Either there was a fight or he cut himself while he was — was butchering the body,” ventured Isham with a shiver. “But why did he leave the bandage for us to find?”

“Easy. See how bloody it is. Cut must have been made early in the fight, or whatever it was. So he cut off his first bandage and put on a fresh one... As for why he left it — he was in one sweet hurry, Isham, to get out of the neighborhood of this shack. And he’s not really in danger, I suppose. The very fact that he left the bandage tends to show that the wound is in a place which can be kept covered. Cuff probably hides it. Let’s go back inside.”

Isham gulped and bravely followed the Inspector back into the hut. Vaughn pointed out the ax and shears; and then indicated a large opaque bottle lying on the floor near the spot where he had found the bandage, a bottle of dark blue glass without a label. It was almost empty; most of its contents stained the floor brown where it lay, and its cork had bounced a few feet away. Nearby lay a roll of bandage, partly unwound.

“Iodine,” said Vaughn. “That tells the whole story. He got it from that medicine shelf over there when he cut himself. Left the bottle on the table and later upset it by accident, or just threw it on the floor — he should give a damn. It’s thick glass, and didn’t break.”

They went to the wall where the body hung; several feet to the side, in a corner, over the basinlike arrangement and the pump-handle, was the shelf which Isham had noticed on his previous visit to the shack. Except for two spaces the shelf was full; upon it stood a large blue package of cotton, a tube of tooth-paste, a roll of adhesive, a roll of bandage, and one of gauze, a small bottle labeled iodine and a companion bottle labeled mercurochrome and several small bottles and jars — cathartics, aspirin, zinc salve, Vaseline, and the like.

“It’s clear enough,” said the Inspector gloomily. “He used Van’s stuff. The bandage and the big bottle of iodine came from Van’s shelf, and he should worry about putting ’em back.”

“Just a minute,” said Isham, frowning. “You’re jumping to the conclusion that it was Krosac who was cut. Suppose it was this poor chump hanging on the wall. Don’t you see, Vaughn? If it wasn’t Krosac who got the wound, and it was Van, then we’d be on a false trail if we looked for a man with a cut wrist, thinking it was Krosac.”

“You’re not so dumb,” exclaimed Vaughn. “Never thought of that. Well!” He threw back his chunky shoulders. “Only one thing to do — take a look at the body.” He advanced toward the wall with set lips.

“Oh; say,” groaned Isham, wincing, “I... I’d rather not, Vaughn.”

“Listen,” snarled Vaughn, “I don’t like this job any more than you do. But it’s got to be done. Come on.”

Ten minutes later the headless body lay on the floor. They had extracted the spikes from the palms and feet. The rags Vaughn had shorn away from the corpse and it lay nude and white, a mockery of God’s image. Isham leaned against the wall with his hands pressed to his stomach. It was the Inspector who, with an effort, went over the bare flesh for wounds; turned the hideous thing over, and repeated his examination on the back.

“No,” he said, rising, “no wounds except the nail holes in the palms and feet. That wrist cut is Krosac’s, all right.”

“Let’s get out of here, Vaughn. Please.”

They returned to Arroyo in thick silence, breathing deeply of the untainted air. In town Inspector Vaughn sought out a telephone, and called Weirton, the county seat. He spoke to District Attorney Crumit for five minutes. Then he hung up and rejoined Isham.

“Crumit’ll keep quiet,” he said grimly. “Was he surprised! But it won’t leak out and that’s all I’m interested in. He’s bringing Colonel Pickett down here, and the Coroner. I told him we took a few liberties with Hancock County’s newest stiff.” He chuckled humorlessly as they emerged into Arroyo’s main street and hurried toward the tiny garage. “Second time they’ll have to hold an inquest into the death of Andrew Van!”

Isham said nothing; he was still in the clutch of nausea. They hired a fast car and set out — an hour and a half behind Ellery — raising an identical cloud of dust. They headed for the Ohio River, the bridge, and Steubenville.

29. A Matter of Geography

That was an historic Wednesday, the beginning of as odd and exciting a manhunt as the records of four states contained. It covered some five hundred and fifty miles of zigzag territory. It involved the use of all forms of modern rapid transit — automobile, express train, and airplane. Five men took part in it — and a sixth whose participation came as a complete surprise. And it covered, from the time Ellery set foot in Steubenville, Ohio, nine hard hours which to all except the leader seemed nine centuries.

A triple pursuit... It was remarkable how they chased one another — a long strung-out hunt in which the quarry was always just out of reach; in which there was no time for rest, for food, for consultation.

At 1:30 Wednesday afternoon — just as District Attorney Isham and Inspector Vaughn trudged up to the Municipal Hall in Arroyo — Ellery Queen raced his Duesenberg into Steubenville, a busy town, and after a short delaying during which he questioned a traffic officer, pulled up before the Fort Steuben Hotel.

His pince-nez glasses were awry on his nose and his hat was pushed far back on his head. He looked the motion-picture conception of a reporter, and perhaps that is what the clerk at the hotel desk took him for; for he grinned and neglected to push the register forward.

“You’re Mr. Ellery Queen, aren’t you?” he asked, before Ellery could catch his breath.

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Mr. Yardley described you,” said the clerk, “and said you’d be along this afternoon. He left this note for you.”

“Good man!” cried Ellery. “Let’s have it.”

The note had been written in great haste, in a most unprofessorial scrawl:

Ellery’s eyes were gleaming as he tucked the note into his pocket. “At what time did Mr. Yardley leave Steubenville?”

“Noon, sir, in a hired car.”

“Zanesville, eh?” Ellery was thoughtful. Then he picked up a telephone and said: “Let me have the Chief of Police of Zanesville, please... Hello. Police department? Let me speak to the Chief... Hurry! Never mind who I am... Hello! This is Ellery Queen of New York City speaking. Son of Inspector Richard Queen of the New York homicide squad... Yes! I’m in Steubenville, Chief, and I’m on the trail of a tall dark man with a bandaged wrist in a hired automobile, followed by a tall man with a beard in another hired car... The first man’s a killer... Yes! He left Steubenville at half-past seven this morning... Hmm. I suppose you’re right; he must have passed through long ago. Pick up what trail you can, please. The second man can’t have reached Zanesville yet... Keep in touch with the clerk at the Clarendon Hotel. I’ll stop by as soon as I can.”

He hung up and dashed out of the Fort Steuben Hotel. The Duesenberg, like the Pony Express, clattered off toward the west.

In Zanesville Ellery quickly found the Clarendon Hotel, the Clarendon Hotel clerk, and a short tubby man in police uniform who met him with outstretched hand and a wide Rotarian smile.

“Well?” demanded Ellery.

“I’m Hardy, the chief here,” said the fat man. “Your man with the chin-whiskers telephoned a message to the clerk not long ago. At least, he identified himself as such. Seems that the first man changed his route and instead of coming to Zanesville took the road to Columbus.”

“Oh, heavens!” cried Ellery. “I might have known Yardley would bungle it, poor old bookworm. Have you notified Columbus?”

“Sure have. Important arrest, Mr. Queen?”

“Important enough,” said Ellery shortly. “Thank you, Chief. I’m on—”

“Excuse me,” said the clerk timidly. “But the gentleman who called said he would leave a message for you at the Seneca Hotel in Columbus. The clerk there is a friend of mine.”

Ellery retreated with celerity, leaving the short gentleman in uniform slightly bewildered.

At 7:00 — while Vaughn and Isham were blundering along the muddled trail between Steubenville and Columbus — Ellery was threading his way through East Broad Street in Columbus looking for the Seneca Hotel, after a hair-raising drive from Zanesville.

He met with no obstacle this time. From the clerk behind the desk he got Yardley’s scribbled message:

“When he gets colloquial,” muttered Ellery to himself, “he’s almost insufferable... What time did this gentleman write the note?” He swabbed the perspiration from his grimy brow.

“Five-thirty, sir.”

Ellery snatched a telephone and put in a call for Indianapolis. In a few moments he was talking with Police Headquarters. He introduced himself and discovered that word had already been passed along by the Columbus police. Indianapolis was extremely sorry, but identification had been difficult from the unsatisfactory description, and they had found no trace of the hunted man.

Ellery hung up with a toss of his head. “Any other message for me from Mr. Yardley?”

“Yes, sir. He said he’d leave word at the airport in Indianapolis.”

Ellery produced his wallet. “A fat largess, old man, for rapid service. Can you get me an airplane at once?”

The clerk smiled. “Mr. Yardley said you might want one. So I’ve taken the liberty of chartering one for you, sir. It’s waiting at the field.”

“Damn Yardley!” muttered Ellery, tossing a bill on the desk. “He’s stealing my thunder. Whose chase is this, anyway?” Then he grinned and said: “Great work. I didn’t think I’d find such intelligence in the hinterland. My car is outside — an ancient Duesenberg. Take care of it for me, will you? I’ll be back — God knows when.”

And he was out in the street hailing a taxicab. “Flying field!” he shouted. “Fast!”

It was a little past eight o’clock — an hour after Ellery had left Columbus in the chartered airplane, nearly three hours behind Yardley, and seven hours after their quarry had left Columbus by train — when Vaughn and Isham, two sorely fatigued travelers, raced into Columbus. Vaughn’s official position had lent their trip wings. Messages had flashed ahead from Zanesville. An airplane waited for them at the Columbus port. They were in the air, bound for Indianapolis, before District Attorney Isham could groan three times.

The chase would have been humorous had it not had such grim purpose behind it. Ellery relaxed in his plane and thought of many things. His eyes were abstracted. So much that had been unclear and indecisive for seven months was clear now! He went over the entire case in his mind, and when he came to the murder of Andrew Van he regarded the result of his mental labor and found it good.

The plane sailed on, quite as if it hung in the cloud-strewn air, and only the crawling of the town-dotted terrain far below destroyed the illusion of a body at rest. Indianapolis... Would Yardley pounce on the fox there? It was, Ellery knew after a rapid calculation, temporally possible. The man who hid beneath the cloak of Krosac had left Columbus by railroad train; he could not reach Indianapolis before approximately six o’clock, perhaps a few minutes later — a trip of some five hours by rail. Whereas Yardley, leaving Columbus by plane at 5:30, should cover the comparatively short air-distance by seven o’clock. Flying conditions were favorable, as Ellery could see and feel. Should Krosac’s train be the least bit late, or should he be delayed in leaving Indianapolis for the next stop on his itinerary, there was every possibility that the Professor would catch up with him. Ellery sighed and half wished that Krosac would evade the Professor’s unpracticed clutches. Not that Yardley had done badly, for a novice, so far!

They drifted down on the field of the Indianapolis airport like a scudding leaf in the rosy afterglow of dusk. Ellery consulted his watch. It was 8:30.

As three mechanics grabbed the wings of the plane and rammed chock-blocks under the heels, a young man in uniform came running up to the door of the cabin. Ellery stepped out and looked around.

“Mr. Queen?”

He nodded. “A message for me?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes, sir. A gentleman named Yardley left it for you a little less than an hour and a half ago. He said it was important.”

“A mild word,” muttered Ellery, grabbing the note. This affair, he reflected as he opened it, was becoming a saga of wild rides and alternate messages.

Yardley’s scrawl merely said:

“Mr. Yardley caught a plane at seven-fifteen?” demanded Ellery.

“That’s right, sir.”

“Then he should get to Chicago between 9:00 and 9:15?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ellery slipped a small bill into the young man’s hand. “Lead me to a telephone and you’re my benefactor for life.”

The young man grinned and broke into a run, Ellery loping after.

At the airport terminal building Ellery frantically put in a call to Chicago. “Police Headquarters? Give me the Commissioner... Yes, the Commissioner of Police!... Hurry, you fool, this is a matter of life and death... Commissioner? What?... Look here, this is Ellery Queen of New York City and I have a personal message for the Commissioner. Important!” He stamped his feet in impatience as his cautious tête-à-tête at the other end of the wire asked questions. Five minutes of mingled abuse and pleading elapsed before the voice of the august gentleman who controlled Chicago’s police affairs boomed into his receiver. “Commissioner! You remember me — Inspector Richard Queen’s son... Cleaning up the Long Island murders. Yes!... Tall dark man with a bandaged wrist is arriving between 8:45 and 9:00 at Chicago tonight in an Indianapolis plane... No! Don’t nab him on the field... Matter of personal satisfaction. Will you have him trailed to wherever he goes, and then surround the place?... Yes. Arrest him only if he tries to leave Chicago. It’s possible he’s heading for Canada... or the Pacific coast, yes... He doesn’t know he’s being followed... Incidentally, look out for a tall man with a beard like Abe Lincoln’s on the same field flying from Indianapolis — Professor Yardley. Tell your people to grant him every courtesy... Thanks and good-by.

“And now,” shouted Ellery, to the grinning young man outside the booth, “lead me to a plane!”

“Where are you going?” asked the young man.

“Chicago.”

At 10:25 the monoplane circled the Chicago field, brilliantly illuminated throughout its length and breadth. Ellery, craning before the glass window, could make out the sprawled buildings, the hangars, the landing field, a line of machines, and the scurrying figures of people. These details blurred in the swoop of the landing — his pilot had been energized by the offer of a premium for speed — and by the time he regained his breath and the proper stomachic balance they were very near the ground, hurtling toward the line. He closed his eyes, and felt the wheels of the monoplane bump on the ground; the nature of the sensation changed, and he opened his eyes to see that they were taxiing along the cement in a swift glide.

He rose rather uncertainly and fumbled with his tie. The end... The motor uttered a final triumphant roar, and the machine’s motion stopped. The pilot twisted his head and yelled: “Here we are, Mr. Queen! Did the best I could.”

“Excellent,” said Ellery with a grimace, and staggered to the door. There was such a thing as obeying orders too well... Someone opened the door from the outside, and he dropped onto the field. For a moment he blinked in the strong glare at a group of men ten feet away, watching him.

He blinked again. There was the tall, pseudo-saturnine figure of Professor Yardley, his beard almost horizontal in a grin; the strong beefy figure of Chicago’s police commissioner, whom Ellery recalled from that initial trip to the Windy City which he had taken with his father seven months before, and which had resulted in his investigation of the Arroyo murder; several indeterminate figures, whom he took to be detectives; and... who was that? That small man in the neat gray suit, with the neat gray fedora, and the neat gray gloves — that little chap with the old face and the cocked head...?

“Dad!” he cried, springing forward and seizing Inspector Richard Queen’s gloved hands. “How in the name of all that’s holy did you get here?”

“’Lo, son,” said Inspector Queen dryly. He grinned. “You’re one hell of a detective if you can’t figure it out. Your friend Hardy, of the Zanesville police, telephoned me in New York after you called him, and I told him you were my son. Just wanted to check up on you, he said. I put two and two together, decided it was the end of your case, figured your man would head either for Chicago or St. Louis, left New York by plane at two, landed fifteen minutes ago, and here I am.

Ellery threw his arm about his father’s spare shoulders. “You’re the eternal wonder, the modern Colossus of Rhodes. By the good Lord, Dad, I am glad to see you. It’s a caution how you old fellows get around... Hullo, Professor!”

Yardley’s eyes twinkled as they shook hands. “I suppose I’m included in the septuagenarian classification? Your father and I have had a hearty talk about you, young man, and he thinks you’ve got something up your sleeve.”

“Ah,” said Ellery, sobering. “He does, does he? How d’ye do, Commissioner? Thanks a thousand times for your quick acceptance of my nasty telephone manner. I was in the devil of a hurry... Well, sir, what’s the situation?”

They an walked slowly across the field to the terminal. The Commissioner said: “It looks great, Mr. Queen. Your man arrived by plane at five minutes to nine — we barely got our detectives here in time. He doesn’t suspect a thing.”

“I was just twenty minutes late,” sighed the Professor. “I was never so frightened in my life as when I hauled my creaking old bones out of the ship and a detective grasped my arm. ‘Yardley?’ he said in a stern voice. Well, my boy, I—”

“Hmm, yes,” said Ellery. “Where is — er — Krosac now, Commissioner?”

“He took his sweet time getting off the field, and at five after nine he got into a taxi and was driven to a third-rate hotel in the Loop — the Rockford. He didn’t know it,” added the Commissioner grimly, “but he had an escort of four police cars all the way. He’s there now, in his room.”

“He can’t get away?” asked Ellery anxiously.

“Mr. Queen!” said the Commissioner in an offended voice.

The Inspector chuckled. “Incidentally, I understand that Vaughn and Isham of Nassau County are trailing you, son. Aren’t you going to wait for them?”

Ellery stopped short. “Heavens, I forgot about them! Commissioner, will you be kind enough to detail some one as an escort for Inspector Vaughn and District Attorney Isham as soon as they arrive? They’re only an hour or so behind me. Have them taken to the Rockford Hotel. It would be a shame to cut them out of the last act!”

But District Attorney Isham and Inspector Vaughn were considerably less than an hour behind Ellery. They descended out of the dark sky upon the Chicago airport at precisely eleven o’clock, were met by several detectives, and were escorted to the Loop in police cars.

The reunion of the pilgrims was slightly hilarious. They met in a private suite at the Rockford which was thick with detectives. Ellery was stretched out on the bed, coat off, blissfully resting. Inspector Queen and the Commissioner were conversing in a corner of the room. Professor Yardley was washing the accumulated grime of several states off his face and hands in the lavatory... They looked around, two journey-battered gentlemen with bleary eyes.

“Well?” growled Vaughn. “Is this the end, or do we keep on chasing our tails to Alaska? What is this guy — a marathon runner?”

“This,” chuckled Ellery, “is truly the end, Inspector. Sit down, and you too, Mr. Isham. Rest your weary bones. We have all night. Mr. Krosac can’t get away. How about a snack?”

There were introductions, steaming food, remarkably hot coffee, laughter and speculation. Through it all Ellery remained quiet, his thoughts on something far distant. Occasionally a detective would report. Once word came that the gentleman in Room 643 — he had registered as John Chase, Indianapolis — had just telephoned the clerk to make a reservation for him on the morning transcontinental to San Francisco. This was delicately discussed; it was evident that Mr. Chase, or Mr. Krosac, was planning to leave American shores for an extended tour through the Orient, for it was not reasonable that he would stop in San Francisco.

“By the way,” said Ellery lazily, at a few minutes to midnight, “just whom do you think, Professor, we’ll turn up when we burst in on Mr. John Chase of Indianapolis, Room 643?”

The old Inspector regarded his son quizzically. Yardley stared. “Why, Velja Krosac, of course.”

“Indeed,” said Ellery, blowing a smoke ring.

The Professor started. “What do you mean? By Krosac I refer, naturally, to the man born with that name, but who’s probably known to us by a different one.”

“Indeed,” said Ellery again. He rose and stretched his arms. “I do think, gentlemen, it’s time we brought Mr. — Krosac, shall I say? — to earth. Is everything ready, Commissioner?”

“Just waiting for the word, Mr. Queen.”

“One minute,” said Inspector Vaughn. He looked wrathfully at Ellery. “Do you mean to say you know the real identity of the man in 643?”

“Of course! I’m really astonished, Inspector, at your lack of perspicacity. Wasn’t it plain enough?”

“Plain? What was plain?”

Ellery sighed. “Never mind. But I daresay you’re in for a whopping surprise. Shall we go? En avant!”

Five minutes later the corridors on the sixth floor of the Rockford Hotel resembled the parade ground of an army encampment. There were police and plainclothesmen everywhere. The floor above and the floor below were impassable. The elevators had been shut down, very quietly indeed. Room 643 had only one exit — the corridor door.

A small and frightened bellboy had been pressed into service. He stood before the door, encircled by the group — Ellery, his father, Vaughn, Isham, the Commissioner, Yardley — awaiting the word of command. Ellery looked around; there was no sound except the sound of breathing. Then he nodded grimly to the boy.

The boy gulped and advanced to the door. Two detectives with drawn revolvers stood flat against the panels. One of them knocked briskly. There was no reply; the room, as they could tell from the transom, was in darkness and its occupant probably asleep.

The detective knocked again. This time there was a faint sound from behind the door, and the creaking of bedsprings. A man’s deep voice called out sharply: “Who’s there?”

The bellboy gulped again and cried: “Service, Mr. Chase!”

“What—” They heard the man snort, and the bed creaked again. “I didn’t call for service. What do you want, anyway?” The door opened and a man’s tousled head stuck out...

Of all the incidents that followed — the instant pounce of the two plainclothesmen, the scrambling away of the bellboy, the struggle on the floor, halfway across the threshold — Ellery remembered only one picture. It was in that split second during which no one moved, during which the man took in the scene in the corridor — the waiting officials, the detectives, the uniforms, the faces of Ellery Queen and District Attorney Isham and Inspector Vaughn. The expression of utter stupefaction that was stamped on that white face. The flared nostrils. The distended eyes. The bandage on the wrist of the hand which gripped the jamb...

“Why, it’s... it’s—” Professor Yardley wet his lips twice, and could not find the words.

“It’s as I knew it would be,” drawled Ellery, as he watched the fierce struggle on the floor. “I knew it as soon as I had examined the shack in the hills.”

They managed to subdue Mr. John Chase, of Room 643. A slight dribble of saliva ran from a corner of his mouth. His eyes were wholly mad now.

They were the eyes of the schoolmaster of Arroyo — Andrew Van.

30. Ellery Talks Again

“I’m stumped. I’m absolutely stumped,” snapped Inspector Vaughn. “I can’t get it through my head how a solution was possible from the facts. I’m stumped, Mr. Queen, and you’ll have to convince me that it wasn’t just guesswork.”

“A Queen,” said Ellery severely, “never guesses.”

It was Thursday, and they were seated in a drawing room compartment of the Twentieth Century Limited en route to New York. Yardley and Ellery and Inspector Queen and Isham and Vaughn. A tired but not unhappy party. Their faces betrayed the strain of the nerve-racking experience they had been through — all except, of course, Inspector Queen, who seemed to be enjoying himself in his quiet way.

“You’re not the first,” chuckled the old man to Vaughn. “I’ve never known it to fail. Every time he solves a humdinger somebody wants to know how it was done and says it was guesswork. I’ll be damned if I know myself how he does it most of the time, even after he explains.”

“It’s pure mystery to me,” confessed Isham.

Professor Yardley seemed nettled at the challenge to his intellect. “I’m not an untutored individual,” he growled, as Ellery grinned, “but I’ll hang as high as Haman if I can see how logic applied in this case. It’s been a welter of inconsistencies and contradictions from beginning to end.”

“Wrong,” drawled Ellery. “It was a welter of inconsistencies and contradictions from the beginning to the fourth murder. At that point it became clear as crystal, all the mud decanting off. You see,” he said, knitting his brows, “all along I felt that if I could grasp just one tiny piece and place it in the key position, all the other pieces — so scrambled and illogical in appearance — would take comprehensible shape. That piece was supplied in the West Virginia shack.”

“So you said last night,” grunted the Professor. “And I still can’t see how—”

“Naturally not. You never examined the hut.”

“I did,” snarled Vaughn, “and if you can show me what solved the damned thing—”

“Ah, a challenge. Certainly.” Ellery blew smoke at the low ceiling of the compartment. “Let me go back a bit. Up to the murder in Arroyo Tuesday night, I knew little enough. The first murder in Arroyo was altogether a mystery until Andrew Van himself appeared. He said at that time that his servant Kling had been killed by mistake, that a man named Velja Krosac with blood-motive had been the murderer of this Kling. Thomas Brad, Van’s brother, was murdered. Stephen Megara, Van’s brother, was murdered. Megara had confirmed the story of Krosac, as had the official investigators in Yugoslavia. It all seemed clear enough in its general purport — a monomaniac whose brain had been addled by a lifelong unsatisfied vengeance was running amok among the killers of his father and uncles. When we discovered that the Tvars had also robbed Krosac of his inheritance, an additional motive bolstered the theory.

“I’ve explained to Professor Yardley that there were two definite conclusions to be drawn from the circumstances surrounding the death of Brad. One was that Brad’s murderer was well-known to him; the other that Brad’s murderer did not limp. Is that correct, Professor?” Yardley nodded, and Ellery quickly summarized his reasoning based on the disposition of the checkers and the other facts known to Vaughn and Isham.

“But these conclusions got me nowhere. We had already assumed the possibility of both without conclusive reasoning. The fact that I proved them was therefore of little value. So until I found the body in the shack my only explanation for the queer details of the first three murders was Krosac’s insanity and obsession with a peculiar T phobia — the severing of the heads, the scrawling of the T’s, the very odd T significances surrounding all three crimes.”

Ellery smiled reminiscently and regarded his cigarette with affection. “The astonishing part of it was that very early in the investigation — in fact, seven months ago when I looked upon the first horrible corpse in the Weirton courthouse — a thought struck me which, had I followed it through, might well have terminated the case then and there. It was an alternative explanation for the scattered T’s. It was just a groping thought, the result of my discipline in logic. But it seemed so remote a possibility that I discarded it; and continued to discard it when nothing occurred thereafter to give it the slightest factual support. But it kept persisting...”

“What was that?” asked the Professor with interest. “You recall when we discussed the Egyptian—”

“Ah, let that go,” said Ellery hastily. “I’ll come to it in a moment. Let me first go over the details of the fourth murder.” Rapidly he drew a word-picture of the physical scene that had met his eye when he stepped over the threshold of the barricaded hut just the day before. Yardley and Inspector Queen listened with drawn brows, concentrating on the problem; but when Ellery had finished they regarded each other blankly.

“A perfect vacuum as far as I’m concerned,” confessed the Professor.

“Count me out, too,” said the Inspector.

Vaughn and Isham were looking at Ellery suspiciously.

“Good lord,” cried Ellery, flinging his butt out of the window, “it’s so clear! There’s an epic story written in and around that hut, gentlemen. What’s that motto hanging in the classroom of the School for Scientific Police at the Palais de Justice, Dad? ‘The eye sees in things only what it looks for, and it looks only for what is already in mind.’ Our American police might take that to heart, Inspector Vaughn.

“Outside the hut, the footprints. You examined them carefully?”

Vaughn and Isham nodded.

“Then you must have seen at once the patent fact that only two people were involved in that murder. There were two sets of prints — one ingoing, the other outgoing; from the shape and size of the tracks both sets had been made by the same shoes. It was possible to fix roughly the time the tracks had been made. The rain had stopped in Arroyo at about eleven o’clock the previous night. It had been a heavy rain. Had the prints been made before the rain stopped they would, in their exposed position, have been completely washed out and obliterated. Then they were made certainly at eleven or later. The condition of the body crucified to the wall of the hut at the time I saw it showed me that the victim was dead about fourteen hours — had died, in other words, at about eleven o’clock the night before. The prints — the only prints, incidentally — were made therefore at approximately the time of the murder.”

Ellery stuck a fresh cigarette into his mouth. “What did the prints reveal? That only one person had walked into and out of the hut during the approximate period of the murder. There was only one entrance or exit — the door; the single window being effectively barred with barbed wire.”

Ellery applied a match to his cigarette and puffed thoughtfully. “It was elementary, then. There was a victim and there was a murderer. We had found the victim. Then it was the murderer whose tracks were impressed on the wet earth before the shack. The tracks showed a limping man — so far, so good.

“Now, on the stone floor of the hut there were several most illuminating objects. Exhibit Number One was a bloody and iodine-stained coil of bandage which from its shape and circumference could only have been wound about a wrist. Nearby lay a partially used roll of bandage.”

Again Isham and Vaughn nodded, and the Professor said: “So that’s it! I wondered about the wrist.”

“Exhibit Number Two: a large blue-glass bottle of iodine, its cork a few feet away on the floor. The bottle was opaque, and it had no label.

“The question immediately confronted me: On whose wrist had that bandage been wound? There were two people involved: victim and murderer. Then it came from one or the other. If the victim had worn the bandage, then one of his wrists would show a wound. I examined the wrists of the corpse — both unmarked. Conclusion: the murderer had cut one of his own wrists. By inference when he had wielded the ax on the victim’s body, or possibly during a struggle before the victim was killed.

“If the murderer had cut his wrist, it was he then who had used iodine and bandage. The fact that he had cut off the bandage later was irrelevant — the wound must have bled profusely, as the bandage indicated, and he merely changed dressings before leaving the hut.”

Ellery brandished the smoking cigarette. “But observe what a significant fact has been brought out! For if the murderer used the iodine, what have we? It should be child’s play now. Don’t you see it yet, any of you?”

They tried very hard, from their scowls and finger-gnawings and looks of deep concentration; but in the end they shook their heads.

Ellery sank back. “I suppose it’s one of those things. To me it seems extraordinarily clear. What were the two characteristics of the iodine-bottle, peculiar to that bottle itself, which the murderer had left on the floor? First: it was of opaque blue glass. Second: it bore no label.

“Then how did the murderer know it contained iodine?”

Professor Yardley’s jaw dropped, and he smote his forehead in a manner amusingly reminiscent of District Attorney Sampson, that admirable prosecutor associated with Ellery and Inspector Queen in so many of their metropolitan cases. “Oh, what an idiot I am!” he groaned. “Of course, of course!”

Vaughn wore a look of immense surprise. “It’s so damned simple,” he said in a wondering tone, as if he could not understand how it had escaped his observation.

Ellery shrugged. “These things generally are. You see, therefore, the line of reasoning. The murderer couldn’t have known it was iodine from the bottle itself, since there was no label and the blue color and opacity of the glass disguised the hue of its contents. Then he could have known its contents only in one of two alternative ways: either by being familiar with the contents of the bottle from previous experience, or by uncorking it and investigating.

“Now you will recall that there were two blank spaces on the medicine-supply shelf above ‘Old Pete’s’ homely little lavatory. It was apparent at once that those two blank spaces had held the two objects on the floor — the bottle of iodine and the roll of bandage — both of which would normally stand on a medicine shelf. In other words the murderer, having wounded himself, was constrained to apply to the medicine shelf for bandage and iodine.”

Ellery grinned. “But how odd! What else was on the shelf? Surely you recollect that, among miscellaneous and innocuous articles, there were two bottles which the murderer might have taken down for use in his extremity — one of iodine and one of mercurochrome, both plainly labeled? Why, then, should he uncork the unlabeled, opaque bottle in a search for an antiseptic when there were two clearly marked bottles of antiseptic in full view? Actually, there can be no reason; no man, a stranger to that hut, with time at a premium, would explore a bottle whose contents were unpredictable when what he wanted was right before his eyes all the time.

“Then the first of my two possibilities must apply: the murderer must have been familiar with the large opaque unlabeled bottle, must have known in advance that it contained iodine! But who could have such knowledge?” Ellery sighed. “And there it was. From the circumstances and Van’s own story of the isolation of his hideaway, only one person could have had such knowledge — the owner of the hut.”

“I told you so,” said Inspector Queen excitedly, as he reached for his ancient brown snuff box.

“We have shown that only two people were involved — murderer and victim — and that it was the murderer who cut his wrist and used the iodine. So if the owner of the hut, Andreja Tvar, alias Andrew Van, alias Old Pete, was the only one who could have known in advance that the mysterious bottle contained iodine, then it was Andrew Van whose wrist was cut, and the poor fellow crucified to the wall was not Andrew Van, but had been murdered by Andrew Van.”

He lapsed into silence. Inspector Vaughn stirred uneasily, and District Attorney Isham said: “Yes, but how about the preceding murders? You said last night after we took Van in custody that the whole thing was clear to you from beginning to end as soon as you investigated the last murder. I can’t see, even granting the argument about Van as the culprit in the last murder, how you can logically prove him to have been the murderer in the preceding crimes.”

“My dear Isham,” said Ellery, raising his eyebrows, “surely from here it’s an open-and-shut case? Just a matter of analysis and common sense. Where did I stand at that point? I knew then that the missing man, the man who had left the limp-footprints, the murderer, was Andrew Van himself. But that he was the murderer was not sufficient. I could visualize a situation in which Van might have murdered a marauding Krosac, for example, purely in self-defense; in which case he could not under any circumstance be considered the murderer of the other three. But one fact stood out: Andrew Van had killed somebody and left the corpse of that somebody in his hut dressed in the rags of Old Pete; which is to say, dressed as himself. Then here was deception! I knew then that the problem would be relatively simple. Who had been murdered in this last butchery?

“The body was not Van’s, as I’ve already shown. The incongruous possibility that it might be Brad’s I considered and discarded: Brad’s body had been positively identified by his widow through the strawberry birthmark on his thigh. Purely for logical purposes I asked myself in the same vein if this last corpse was Megara’s. No, it could not be; Dr. Temple had diagnosed Megara’s ailment as a specific form of hernia, and Dr. Rumsen had found in the body strung up on the Helene’s antenna-mast an identical hernia. Then the bodies taken to be Brad’s and Megara’s had been genuinely theirs. Only two other figures were involved in the case — discarding the remote possibility of a total stranger: they were Velja Krosac and Kling, Van’s manservant.”

Ellery paused for breath, then continued: “Could the body have been Krosac’s? This would be the superficial conclusion. Yet if this was Krosac and Van had killed him, Van would have had a perfect plea of self-defense! All he would have had to do was call in the police, point to the body, and with the background of the case known and accepted, would have been freed without question. From Van’s viewpoint, if he were an innocent man, such a procedure would be inevitable. The fact that he didn’t do this proves that he couldn’t. Why? Because the body was not Krosac’s!

“If it wasn’t Krosac, it must have been Kling, the only remaining possibility. But Kling was supposed to have been killed in the first crime, that murder in Arroyo at the crossroads seven months ago! Ah, but how did we know that first body was Kling’s? Only through Van’s own story, and Van is now proved a murderer, and a deceiver to boot. We have a perfect right to hold that any unsupported testimony given by Van is open to doubt, and that under the circumstances, since the facts point to it as the sole possibility left, the last corpse must have been Kling’s.”

Ellery went on rapidly. “See how everything fell neatly into place. With the last body Kling’s, where the devil was Krosac? Brad’s body and Megara’s body are accounted for in their respective murders. Then the only person who logically could have been done to death in Arroyo seven months ago was Krosac himself? The ‘devil’ who for seven months has been sought by the police of forty-eight states and three nations... No wonder no trace of him was found. He was dead all the time.”

“Amazing beyond belief,” said the Professor.

“Oh, you listen to him,” chuckled Inspector Queen. “He’s full of surprises like that.”

A Negro porter appeared with a tray of iced drinks. They sipped in silence and stared out of the windows at the chameleon landscape. When the porter had gone, Ellery said: “Who killed Krosac in Arroyo? We lay down the fundamental qualification at once that, whoever committed that first murder, knew and utilized the history of the Tvars by leaving those T signs. Who had knowledge of the Tvar history? Van, Megara, Brad, and Krosac; for both Van and Megara told us that only the Tvar brothers and Krosac knew this back-history. Could Megara, then, have murdered Krosac in Arroyo and left the T signs? No; Megara is ruled out for purely geographical reasons — he was on the other side of the world. Brad? Impossible; Mrs. Brad had testified in the presence of persons who could deny it if it were untrue, that Brad had entertained the National Checker Champion on Christmas Eve and had played with him incessantly that night Krosac, the victim, is out, of course. Kling, the only other physical possibility? No, for besides being ignorant of the fatal T significances he has been repeatedly characterized as a weak-witted, moronic individual, who would be mentally incapable of executing such an intelligent crime. Then Krosac must have been murdered by Van, the only factor remaining who fills all the qualifications of the Krosac killer.

“And there it was. Van had murdered Krosac. How, under what circumstances? The story can be pieced together. He knew Krosac was after him and his brothers. In some way he discovered where Krosac was — traveling with the old lunatic, Stryker. He himself must have baited Krosac into coming to Arroyo by an anonymous letter. Krosac, seeing that his dream of vengeance was actually on the brink of fulfillment, swallowed the bait — not questioning the source of his information in his eagerness — and maneuvered the movements of his dupe, Stryker, so that the caravan came to the neighborhood of Arroyo. Then Krosac — Krosac himself, for the one and only time he actually appeared in the case as an active participant — hired the car from Croker, the Weirton garage-man, and had himself driven to the crossroads. Krosac carried no valise, you recall, in Weirton — significant when you consider that the murderer did carry a valise in the subsequent crimes. Why didn’t Krosac carry a valise that first time — that only time, for him? Because he had no intention of making chop-meat out of his victim; he was probably a sane, if determined, avenger who would have been satisfied by the mere death, not the butchery, of his enemies. If Krosac’s plan had succeeded, we should have found the body of the Arroyo schoolmaster, quite unmutilated, probably shot to death.

“But Van, the instigator of the entire chain of events, was lying in wait for the unsuspecting avenger, and killed him. Having already bound up and hidden the living body of the unfortunate Kling, Van proceeded to dress the dead Krosac in his own clothes, then decapitated the corpse, and so on and so on.

“It’s evident that this was the plot of Van, or Andreja Tvar, from the beginning. A crime of years in the making. He planned the series of murders in such a way that they appeared to be the vengeance of a man, Krosac, who might very well have become crazed by years of brooding. He hid Kling away for the express purpose of using his body at the end to appear his own. Then his plot made it seem that Krosac, after killing an innocent man first, murdered two of the Tvar brothers and finally the third — a correction of the apparent error seven months before. As for Van, this last deceptive murder made it seem as if he, too, had been caught by the monomaniac’s revenge; while he himself actually made an escape with his life’s savings and the tidy sum which he had craftily managed to worm out of his brother Stephen. Meanwhile the police would search eternally for the phantasmal, long-dead Krosac... The deceptions in the bodies were easily contrived; remember that Van himself hired Kling in the Pittsburgh orphan asylum, and so could select a servant whose physical appearance was similar to his own. As for the first deception — making Krosac’s body seem to be his own — it was probably the similarity in physique between himself and Krosac — a similarity he discovered when he first located the Montenegrin, before sending the anonymous letter — that helped inspire the entire plot.”

“You said something before,” remarked the Inspector thoughtfully as he dipped again into his snuff box, “about having been on the right trail in the beginning but going off it. What did you mean?”

“And not only in the beginning,” said Ellery mournfully. “It kept recurring throughout the case, and I kept throwing it aside. It wasn’t sufficiently exclusive... For, observe. Even in the very first murder one point stood out: the head of the corpse had been severed and taken away. Why? There seemed to be no answer then except the one of the killer’s mania. Later we discovered the business of the Tvars and the surface meaning of the T’s as the symbol of Krosac’s vengeance. So, of course, we said the heads were lopped off to give the dead bodies the physical appearance of a capital T. But that old doubt...

“For after all there was an alternative explanation for the severing of the heads — a remarkable theory. That the body was made to resemble a T, that the other T elements — the crossroads, signpost, and scrawled T in the first crime; the totem post in the second; the antenna mast in the third (the scrawled T kept recurring, of course — in the fourth crime as well) — that all these conglomerate T elements had been strewn about the scenes of the crimes for only one purpose: to cover up the fact that the heads had been cut off. Other means of identification being unknown, the head, or face, is the most marked means of identifying a corpse. So, I said to myself, it is logically possible that these are the crimes not of a monomaniac with a T obsession, but of a perfectly lucid (if unbalanced) plotter who cut off heads for the purpose of falsifying identification. There seemed to be a confirmation of this: none of the heads were found. Why didn’t the murderer leave the heads at the scenes of his crimes, or nearby, getting rid of them as soon as possible — which would be the natural impulse of a murderer, insane or not? The bodies would still form T’s, still satisfying his T complex. But the heads were irretrievably gone. It seemed possible to me that all was not exactly as it should have been; yet because this was only a theory, and because all the other facts pointed so damningly to a crazed vendettist as the murderer, I kept discarding what was in reality the truth.

“But when, at the investigation of the fourth murder, I knew Andreja Tvar to be deus ex machina, the whole motif was plain. In his first murder — the killing of Krosac — he was forced to decapitate Krosac to prevent identification of the body and to permit an acceptance of the initial idea that the body was Van’s, and the subsequent idea that the same body was Kling’s. Yet merely to sever the heads would have been to invite suspicion and disaster; any investigator would have swung into the right track. So Van manufactured the brilliant and objectively irrational conception of maniac-conceived T’s — T shapes of every description and with no possible interrelationship. These so confused the main issue that he was sure no one would grasp the real significance of the missing heads; which was, of course, to permit false identifications of the first and last bodies.

“Once started, naturally, he was forced to continue the vagaries of the nightmarish T’s. He had to cut off Brad’s head and Megara’s head to maintain the continuity of a Krosac-T-phobia interpretation. At the last murder, of course, the head-severing served a genuine purpose again. It was a damnably clever plot, both psychologically and in execution.”

“About the last murder,” said Isham, swallowing. “Er — was it just my imagination, or was the set of footprints leading into the hut deeper than the set coming out?”

“Excellent, Mr. Isham!” cried Ellery. “I’m glad you brought that up — a good point. It served as a prime confirmation of the entire recapitulation of the case. I noticed, as you say, that the murderer’s footprints approaching the shack were deeper than those departing from it. Explanation? A simple enough syllogism in logic.[3] Why should the identical footprints in the identical earth be heavier in one case than the other? Because in one case the murderer was carrying something heavy; in the other he was not — the only argument which will logically explain the strange difference in weight of the same individual in approximately the same period. This fitted admirably. I knew that Kling’s was the last body found. Where had Van kept Kling? Not in the hut; then it must have been somewhere in the vicinity. Constable Luden once said that the hills in West Virginia are riddled with natural caves; Van himself at one point said that he had found the abandoned hut while he was on a little cave-exploring expedition! (Probably with this very thought in mind!) So Van went to the cave where he had kept Kling a prisoner for long months, got Kling, and carried him into the hut. The rain must have stopped after Van left the hut to get Kling, but before he returned carrying Kling; it wiped out his outgoing footprints, but took the impression of his returning footprints. So the deep prints were made when he lugged Kling into the shack; and the shallower ones when he left the hut after the murder, for the last time.”

“Why didn’t he make Kling walk into the hut?” demanded Isham.

“Obviously because he intended from the first to leave a trail to a limping man, Krosac. By carrying Kling and limping he achieved the double end of getting the victim into the house and also making it appear that one man — Krosac — had entered. By limping away he clinched the illusion of Krosac’s escape. He made only one mistake: he forgot that, weighted down, the impressions in soft earth would be deeper.”

“I can’t get it through my thick skull,” muttered the Professor. “The man must have been — must be — a genius. Perverted, and all that; but that plot of his required a brilliant brain.”

“Why not?” asked Ellery dryly. “An educated man, with years in which to plan. But brilliant nevertheless. For example: Van was faced throughout with this problem: he had to arrange matters so that there was always a legitimate reason for Krosac to have done the very things that he himself, Van, had to do. That business of the pipe, for instance, and the turned-about rug with the bloodstain on it, and the deliberate leaving of Brad’s note. I’ve already related to you Krosac’s reason for wanting a delay in the discovery of the real scene of the crime — which was to have it discovered only when Megara arrived on the scene, so that Megara could seemingly lead Krosac to Van, who from the note Krosac supposedly learned was still alive.

“But Van, while he provided us with this ingenious Krosac reason, as the real murderer had even better reasons for causing the delay. If the police searched the library at once they would have found Brad’s note — undoubtedly suggested to Brad by Van himself — long before Megara’s return. They would know at once, then, that Van was still alive. If any slip-ups in Van’s activities caused the police to suspect that Old Pete was Van, then Van’s position became precarious. Suppose Megara never returned, died on shipboard somewhere. Then there would be no one left alive to confirm for the police the fact that Old Pete, or Van, was actually a brother of Brad and Megara. By causing the delay he insured a confirmation of his brotherhood at precisely the time Megara returned. On his unsupported word he might come under suspicion; with Megara to corroborate every statement he made, he looked like an innocent man.

“But why should he want to reappear on the scene at all? Ah, but here we see the real end achieved by his complicated arrangement of a delay until Megara returned. By contriving beforehand that Brad leave the note that instituted the whole chain of events which ended with the return to the scene of Andrew Van as an accredited brother of the Tvars, Van clinched his inheritance. By that I mean: Van could have made the police believe he actually had been murdered in the first crime, and could have remained legally dead thereafter, while he continued his plot of killing his brothers from the dark of the Krosac guise. But if he had remained legally dead, how was he to collect the money which Brad was leaving him by will? So he had to come back — alive. And at a time when Megara could confirm the fact that Van was a brother. In this way he collected the five thousand dollars due him with perfect safety. Incidentally, his constraint was commendable. Do you recall that Megara, touched by his ‘frightened’ brother’s plight and his own conscience, actually offered Van an additional five thousand — and Van refused? He wanted only what was coming to him, he said... Yes, a clever rogue. He knew that refusal would cement the illusion of the eremetic character he had so carefully built up.

“And finally, by means of the note and the story he told on his return to the scene, he prepared the police for an acceptance of his own second murder, since now they knew that a vendettist was on the trail of the Tvars and had discovered that he had made a mistake in the first murder. Devilish, really.”

“Too deep for me,” said Vaughn, shaking his head.

“That’s what I’ve been up against ever since I became a father,” murmured Inspector Queen. He sighed, and looked happily out of a window.

But Professor Yardley had no paternity to feed his ego, and he did not look even remotely happy. He was pulling at his short beard with powerful if abstracted fingers. “Granted all that,” he said. “I’m an old hand at puzzles — chiefly ancient, I confess — so another example of man’s ingenuity doesn’t precisely amaze me. But one thing does... You say Andreja Tvar, blood-brother to Stefan and Tomislav Tvar, partner in their family and personal iniquities, planned for years the extermination of these same brothers. Why? In the name of a merciless God, why?”

“I can see what’s troubling you,” said Ellery thoughtfully. “It’s the horrible complexion of the crimes. Aside from motive, there’s an explanation for that. You will grant two things? For the whole plan to be successful, it was necessary that Andreja Tvar do various unpleasant things — cut people’s heads off (including his brothers’), nail dead hands and feet to makeshift crosses, spill an uncommon quantity of blood... And second, that Andreja Tvar is a madman. He must be. If he was sane when he conceived this grotesque plan, he was insane when he began to carry it out. Then the whole thing clarifies — a madman spills oceans of the divine ichor, part of which comes from the bodies of his own brothers.” Ellery stared at Yardley. “Wherein essentially does the difference lie? You were ready to accept Krosac as a madman — why not Van? The only distinction is the fine one of mutilating strangers as against mutilating brothers. But surely even your unprofessional knowledge of crime includes the sordid stories of husbands incinerating wives, of sisters chopping sisters into little bloody pieces, of sons battering out the brains of their mothers, of incest and degeneracy and every form of intra-familial crime. It’s hard for a normal human being to understand; but you ask my father, or Inspector Vaughn — you’ll hear true stories of atrocities that would make that beard of yours curl up in horror.”

“True,” said Yardley, “I can understand such things even on a basis of repressed sadism. But the motive, my boy, the motive? How the devil could you have known Van’s motive if up to the fourth crime you yourself considered Velja Krosac the culprit?”

“The answer to which,” smiled Ellery, “is that I didn’t know Van’s motive, and that I don’t know it this minute. Actually, what difference does it make? A madman’s motive — it may be as evanescent as air, as hard to crystallize as a pervert’s. When I say madman, of course, I don’t necessarily mean a raving maniac. Van, as you yourself saw, is apparently in full possession of his sanity. His mania is a quirk, a twist in his brain — in everything but one he is sane. My father or Inspector Vaughn can quote you scores of cases in which murderers are apparently as normal as you or I, but actually are the most vicious psychopathic cases.”

“I can tell you the motive,” said Inspector Queen, sighing. “Too bad you weren’t present last night, son, or you, Professor, while the Commissioner and Vaughn, here, had Van on the griddle. Most interesting examination I’ve ever attended. He almost had an epileptic fit, but finally he calmed down and told it — between the curses on the heads of his two brothers.”

“Which, incidentally,” remarked Isham, “he said he had sunk in the Sound with weights. The other heads he buried in the hills.”

“His motive against his brother Tomis — Tomis — Tom,” continued the old man, “was the usual thing — a woman. It seems that in the old country Van had loved a girl, but his brother Tom stole her away from him — the old story. That was Brad’s first wife who, says Van, died through Brad’s ill-treatment. Whether that’s true or not we’ll probably never know; but that’s what he says.”

“And against Megara?” asked Ellery. “He seemed a decent, if saturnine, sort of chap.”

“Well, it’s a little foggy,” replied Vaughn, scowling at his cigar-tip. “It seems that Van was the youngest of the three brothers, and as such wasn’t entitled to any of the old man Tvar’s estate. Seems that Megara and Brad did Van out of his dough, or something. Megara was the eldest, and he controlled the old exchequer. And then they didn’t give Van a cent of the money they stole from the Krosacs — told him he was too young, or something. Did he show them!” Vaughn grinned sardonically. “He couldn’t squeal, of course, because he was in on it. But all this explains why, when the three brothers came to this country, Van broke away from the other two and kept by himself. Brad must have felt a little conscience-stricken, because he left Van that five grand. Fat lot of good it did both of ’em!”

They were all silent for a long time. The Twentieth Century thundered across New York State.

But Professor Yardley was a bulldog. He refused to loosen his grip on his perplexities. He sucked at his pipe for many minutes, turning something over in his mind. Then he said to Ellery: “Tell me this, O Omniscience. Do you believe in coincidence?”

Ellery sprawled on his spine and blew smoke-rings. “The Professor’s in trouble... No, I do not — not in murder, old chap.”

“Then how do you explain the tormenting fact,” demanded Yardley, his pipe waggling in rhythm, “that friend Stryker — another lunatic; heavens! there’s a coincidence in itself! — appeared both on the scene of the Arroyo crime and on the scene of the subsequent crimes so far away? For, since Van is the culprit, poor old Ra-Harakht the sun-god must be innocent... Isn’t his presence in the second murder an appalling coincidence?”

“You’re a valuable companion, Professor. I’m glad you brought that up,” said Ellery briskly, sitting erect. “Of course it wasn’t coincidence, as I explained inferentially the day we had our first talk in your friend’s selamik — how I love that word! Can’t you see the logical inferences from the facts? Krosac was not a myth, he was reality. He learned that one of the Tvars was in Arroyo, West Virginia; it isn’t fanciful to say, therefore, that the same ‘anonymous’ letter which Van wrote also told Krosac where the other Tvars were — Brad in Long Island, Megara living with Brad. There could be no hitch in Van’s own plot; Van knew that Krosac was traveling about with Stryker in Illinois, or even farther west, and that since he had to pass through West Virginia on his way East, he would tackle the schoolmaster first.

“Very well. Krosac,” we must believe, is himself, not altogether the fool. He is going to kill first the Tvar calling himself Andrew Van, and then the Tvars calling themselves Brad and Megara. He knows, too, that the murder of the poor ‘unsuspecting’ schoolmaster, Van, will raise a hullabaloo, and that it will be necessary for him to hide out. Conclusion: why not hide out in the vicinity of his second and third victims’ dwelling? So he looks in the New York papers, finds old Ketcham’s ad for the rental of Oyster Island, gets poor Stryker to agree to go there and start a sun cult, leases the Island by mail long in advance... You see what happens? Krosac is himself murdered. Stryker, le pauvre innocent, aware of none of the nuances, hooks up with equally innocent Romaine, shows Romaine the lease to Oyster Island, and out they go. Which explains the presence of the sun worshipers and nudists on Oyster Island.”

“By God,” exclaimed the Inspector, “Van couldn’t have arranged things better if he wanted Stryker a suspect!”

“And that reminds me,” said the Professor thoughtfully. “That Egyptian business, Queen. You don’t suggest that there was any preconceived plan in Van’s mind to tie up old Stryker’s Egyptology with the murders?”

“Thanks to you,” said Ellery with a grin, “I suggest nothing of the sort. Come to think of it, I made something of an ass of myself on that ‘Egyptian cross’ peroration of mine, didn’t I, Professor?” He sat up suddenly and slapped his thigh. “Dad, a perfectly cataclysmic thought!”

“Listen,” snapped the Inspector, his good humor quite deserting him, “now that I come to think of it, you must have spent half the Queen bank account hiring airplanes and whatnot on that wild and woolly chase of yours up, down, and across country. Do I have to foot the bill?”

Ellery chuckled. “Let me apply logic to the problem. I have one of three courses open. The first is to charge my expenses to Nassau County.” He looked at District Attorney Isham, who, started, began to speak, and finally sank back with an uncomfortable and rather silly grin on his stout face. “No, I see that — to say the least — is impracticable. The second: to stand the loss myself.” He shook his head and pursed his lips. “No, that’s much too philanthropic... I told you I had a cataclysmic thought.”

“Well,” grumbled Inspector Vaughn, “if you can’t put it down on a swindle sheet, and you won’t stand it yourself, I’ll be damned if I see how—”

“My dear Inspector,” drawled Ellery, “I’ll write a book about it, call it as a memento of my sometimes impulsive erudition The Egyptian Cross Mystery, and let the public pay for it!”

Si finis bonus est,

Totum bonum erit.

— GESTA ROMANORUM