The Four of Hearts

Chapter 6 Chocolate Mountains

The sky was so close. Because it was falling down. Down the chute of a trillion miles. Down through the pinhole stars. Down to the gorse-covered plateau. Down on Bonnie’s head.

She pressed her palms to her eyes. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”

“Bonnie,” said Jacques Butcher.

“But it can’t be. Not Blythe. Not mother.”

“Bonnie. Darling. Please.”

“She always said she’d never grow old. She always said she’d live a million, million years.”

“Bonnie, let me take you away from here.”

“She didn’t want to die. She was afraid of death. Sometimes in the middle of the night she’d start to cry in her sleep, and I’d crawl into bed with her and she’d snuggle up to me like a baby.”

“I’ll get one of these Army pilots to fly you back to Los Angeles—”

Bonnie dropped her hands. “It’s a horrid joke of some kind,” she said slowly. “You’re all in a conspiracy.”

Tyler Royle came stalking back, his face blank against the pale background of the flares.

As he passed he said: “Come on, Bonnie,” as if only he and Bonnie existed in a dark dead world.

And Bonnie turned from Butch and followed Ty with something of the otherworldly stiffness of a Zombie.

Lew Bascom came up to Butcher, who was standing still, and said hoarsely: “For gossakes, how do you get outa here?”

“You grow a pair of wings.”

“Nah,” said Lew. “I’m — pooped.” He stuck his fat face out over the gorse and made a sickish, retching sound. “Butch, I gotta get off this damn table-top. I need a drink. I need a lot o’ drinks.”

“Don’t bother me.”

“I never could stand a stiff. Are they... are they—”

Butcher walked away. Ty and Bonnie seemed to be floating in the weird aura of mingled flarelight and starshine. They merged with and were lost in the black figures about the resting plane.

Lew sank to the harsh grass, clutching his belly and shivering in the wind. After a moment he struggled to his feet and waddled towards an Army plane, its propeller roaring for a take-off.

“You gettin’ outa here?” he shrieked.

The pilot nodded, and Lew scrambled into the rear cockpit. His hat flew off in the backwash of air. He sank low in the cockpit, trembling. The plane trundled off.

In the red-and-gold monoplane a man in flying togs was saying: “Hijacked by a pilot who made pretty sure he wouldn’t be recognized — and then this. It looks funny, Mr. Queen.”

“Funny?” scowled Ellery. “The Greeks had another word for it, Lieutenant.”

John Royle and Blythe Stuart half-sat, half-lay in upholstered swivel chairs in the cabin, across the aisle from each other. Their luggage, baskets of flowers, the wicker hamper were in the aisle between them. The lid of the hamper stood open. On the floor under Royle’s slack left hand lay the half-eaten remains of a ham sandwich. One of the thermos bottles from the hamper stood beside it. The empty cap-cup of the bottle was wedged between his thighs. His handsome features were composed. He looked as if he had fallen asleep.

The second thermos bottle had obviously fallen from Blythe’s right hand: it lay, mouth tilted up, among the bruised blossoms of a rose-basket beside her. A wad of crumpled waxed paper, the wrappings of a consumed sandwich, was in her lap. The cup of the other thermos bottle had fallen to the floor between her feet. And she, too, eyes closed, serene of face, seemed asleep.

“It’s awfully queer,” remarked the Lieutenant, studying the still cold faces, “that they should both pop off around the same time.”

“Nothing queer about it.”

“They haven’t been shot or stabbed or strangled; you can see that. Not a sign of violence. That’s why I say... Only double heart-failure isn’t — well, it’s quite a coincidence.”

“You could say,” retorted Ellery, “that a man whose skull had been bashed into turkey-hash with a sledge-hammer died of heart-failure, too. Look here, Lieutenant.”

He stooped over Royle’s body and with his thumb pressed back the lid of the right eye. The pupil was almost invisible; it had contracted to a dot.

Ellery stepped across the littered aisle and opened Blythe Stuart’s right eye.

“Highly constricted pupils,” he shrugged. “And notice that pervasive pallor — cyanosis. They both died of morphine poisoning.”

“Jack Royle and Blythe Stuart murdered?” The Lieutenant stared. “Wow!”

“Murdered.” Bonnie Stuart stood in the cabin doorway. “No. Oh, no!”

She flung herself upon her mother’s body, sobbing. Ty Royle came in then, looked down at his father. After a moment his hand felt for the cabin wall. But he did not take his eyes from that calm marble face.

Bonnie suddenly sat up, glaring at her hands where they had touched her mother’s body. Although there was no mark on her white flesh, Ellery and the Lieutenant knew what she was staring at. She was staring at the invisible stain, the impalpable taint, the cold outer-space enamel of death.

“Oh, no,” whispered Bonnie with loathing.

Ty said: “Bonnie,” futilely, and took an awkward step across the aisle towards her.

But Bonnie sprang to her feet and screamed: “Oh, no!” and, standing there, tall and distraught, her cheeks pure gray, her breast surging, she swayed and began to fold up like the bellows of an accordion. And as she crumpled in upon herself her eyes turned completely over in their sockets.

Ty caught her as she fell.

Icy bristles of mountain wind curried the plateau. Butch took Bonnie from Ty’s arms, carried her through the whipping grass to an Army plane, and threw a borrowed fur coat over her.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” said Ty in a cracked voice. “Death by freezing?”

And the Lieutenant said: “Take it easy, Mr. Royle.”

“What are we waiting for?” shouted Ty. “Damn it, there’s a murderer loose around here! Why doesn’t somebody start tracking the scum down?”

“Take it easy, Mr. Royle,” said the Lieutenant again, and he dived into a plane.

Ty began to thrash around in the knee-high grass, trampling swatches of it down in blind parabolas.

Ellery said to a pilot: “Just where are we?”

“On the north tip of the Chocolate Mountains.”

He borrowed a flashlight and began to examine the terrain near the red-and-gold monoplane. But if the mysterious aviator who had borne Jack Royle and Blythe Stuart through the circumambient ether to their deaths had left tracks in making his escape from the grounded plane, the tracks had long since been obliterated by the milling feet of the Army men. Ellery wandered farther afield, skirting the rim of the plateau.

He soon saw, in the powerful beam of the electric torch, that the task of finding the unknown pilot’s trail quickly was almost a hopeless one. Hundreds of trails led from the plateau down through scrub pine to the lowlands — chiefly horse-trails, as he saw from the many droppings and steel-shoe signs. To the east, as he recalled the topography, lay Black Butte; to the northwest the southern range of the San Bernardino Mountains; to the west the valley through which ran the Southern Pacific Railroad, and beyond it the Salton Sea and the San Jacinto range. The fleeing pilot could have escaped in any of the three directions, through sparsely settled country. It would take days by experienced trackers to find his trail, and by that time it would be stone-cold.

Ellery returned to the red-and-gold plane. The Lieutenant was there again. “It’s a hell of a mess. We’ve made three-way contact by radiophone with the authorities. There’s a mob of ’em on their way up.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“This end of the Chocolate Mountains just laps over into Riverside County — most of it lies in Imperial County to the south. The plane in coming here passed over Los Angeles County, of course, and probably the southeast tip of San Bernardino County. That makes three different counties in which these people may have died.”

“So the assorted gentlemen of the law are fighting,” nodded Ellery grimly, “for the right to sink their teeth into this juicy case?”

“Well, it’s their oyster — let ’em scramble for it. My responsibility ends when some one shows up to claim jurisdiction.”

Butcher said curtly: “I don’t know about your legal responsibility, Lieutenant, but something’s got to be done about Miss Stuart. She’s in a bad way.”

“I suppose we could fly you folks back to the municipal airport, but—”

“What’s the trouble?” asked Ty Royle in a high-pitched voice. Ellery felt uncomfortable at the sight of his haggard face. His lips were blue and he was shivering with a cold not caused by the wind.

“Bonnie’s collapsed, Ty. She’s got to have a doctor.”

“Well, sure,” said Ty abstractedly. “Sure. I’ll fly her down myself. My plane—” But then he stopped.

“Sorry,” said the Lieutenant. “That’s the one thing that doesn’t leave this place till the police get here.”

“I suppose so,” mumbled Ty. “I guess so.” He yelled suddenly: “Damn it to hell!”

“Here,” said Ellery grabbing his arm. “You’re not far from collapse yourself. Lieutenant, have you any notion how far Tolland Stuart’s place is from here? It’s supposed to be on a butte in the Chocolate Mountains, somewhere below in Imperial County.”

“It’s only a few minutes south by air.”

“Then that’s where we’ll take her,” rasped Butcher. “If you’ll be good enough to place a plane at our disposal—”

“But I don’t know if I ought to.”

“We’ll be at Tolland Stuart’s when they want us. You said yourself it’s only a few minutes’ hop from here.”

The Lieutenant looked unhappy. Then he shrugged and shouted: “Garms! Turn ’em over.”

A pilot saluted and climbed into a big Army transport. The motors began to spit and snarl. They all broke into a run.

“Where’s Lew?” shouted Ellery above the din.

“He couldn’t take it,” Butcher shouted back. “Flew back to L.A. with one of the Army pilots.”

A few minutes later they were in the air headed southeast.

The brightness on the plateau dwindled to a pale blob, then to a pinpoint, and finally blinked out altogether. Butcher held Bonnie, whose eyes were closed, tightly to his chest. Ty sat alone, forward, buried to the nose in his thin coat; he seemed to be dozing. But once Ellery caught the wild shine of his eyes.

Ellery shivered and turned to peer down at the black wrinkled face of the mountain slipping by below.

In less than ten minutes the transport was wheeling over a luminous rectangle lying flat among the crags. To Ellery it seemed no larger than a postage stamp, and he began uncomfortably to think of his own immortal soul.

As he clutched the arms of his seat he saw dimly a massive pile of stone and wood beyond the lighted field. Then they were rushing down the little landing-place, bound, he could swear, for a head-on collision with a hangar.

Miraculously, however, the plane bumped and hopped to a safe stop; and Ellery opened his eyes.

A tall emaciated man was standing outside the hangar, shading his eyes from the glare of the arcs, staring at the plane. It seemed to Ellery that there was something peculiar about the man’s rigidity — as if the plane were some Medusa-like monster and he had been petrified by the mere sight of it.

Then the man relaxed and ran forward, waving his arms.

Ellery shook his head impatiently at the mercurial quality of his imagination. He tapped Ty on the shoulder and said gently: “Come on, Ty.” Ty started. “We’re here.”

Ty got up. “How is she?” Butcher shook his head. “Here. I’ll... I’ll give you a hand.”

Between them they managed to haul Bonnie out of the plane. Her body was flaccid, as if all her bones had melted; and her eyes were open, ignoring Butcher, ignoring Ty, fixed on space with a rather terrifying blankness.

Ellery stopped to talk to the pilot. When he jumped to the ground a moment later he heard the tall thin man exclaiming in a distressed voice. “But that’s not possible. Perfectly ghastly. When did it happen?”

“We can talk later,” said Butch shortly. “Miss Stuart needs your professional attention now, Dr. Junius.”

“Appalling,” said the doctor. “And the poor child; all broken up. Naturally! This way, please.”

The Army transport took to the air again as they passed the hangar, in which Ellery noted a small, stubby, powerful-looking plane, and entered a tree-canopied path leading to the dark mansion beyond. The transport circled the field once, raising echoes from the surrounding mountain walls, and then darted off towards the northwest.

“Careful. The path is rough.” Dr. Junius swept the ground with the beam of a flash. “Watch these steps.” Silently pursuing, Ellery made out a wide doorway. Open. A sepia cavern lay behind. The flashlight stabbed here and there; then it went out and lights sprang on.

They stood in an enormous, damp-smelling chamber, heavily raftered, with bulky oak furniture, a stone mat-strewn floor, and an immense dark fireplace.

“The settee,” said Dr. Junius briskly, running back to shut the door. Except for one penetrating glance in Ellery’s direction, the doctor paid no attention to him.

The man’s skin was yellowed and bland, so tightly drawn over his bones that it could not wrinkle. The eyes were clever and unfriendly. The figure was stooped, even thinner than Ellery had thought at first sight. He wore a pair of shapeless grimy slacks tucked into high, laced, lumberman’s shoes, and a mildew-green smoking-jacket glazed with age. Everything about the man was old — a creature who had grown old by a process of dehydration. There was something cringing about him, too, and watchful, as if he were constantly on the dodge from blows.

Ty and Butch laid Bonnie gently down on the settee.

“We weren’t expecting visitors,” whined Dr. Junius. “Mr. Royle, would you be good enough to start the fire?”

He scurried away, vanishing down a small side-hall, while Ty struck a match and applied it to the paper and kindling beneath the large logs in the fireplace. Butch rubbed his freezing hands, staring sombrely down at Bonnie’s white face. She moaned as the fire blazed up with a great snapping and crackling.

Dr. Junius came hurrying back with an armful of blankets and a small green-black bag, its handle hanging by one link.

“Now if you gentlemen will clear out. Would one of you be kind enough to watch the coffee? Kitchen is at the end of that hall. Brandy, too, in the pantry.”

“Where,” asked Ellery, “is Mr. Tolland Stuart?”

Dr. Junius, on his bony knees before the settee tucking Bonnie’s tossing figure into the blankets, looked up with a startled, ingratiating smile. “You’re the gentleman who phoned me a few hours ago from the Griffith Park airport, aren’t you? Voice has a distinctive ring. Hurry, please, Mr. Queen. We can discuss Mr. Stuart’s eccentricities later.”

The three men went wearily down the hall and, passing through a swinging door, found themselves in a gigantic kitchen, badly illuminated by a single small electric bulb. A pot of coffee bubbled on an old-fashioned range.

Ty sank into a chair at the worktable and rested his head on his arms. Butch blundered about until he found the pantry, and emerged with a dusty bottle of cognac.

“Drink this, Ty.”

“Please. Let me alone.”

“Drink it.”

Ty obeyed tiredly. The Boy Wonder took the bottle and another glass and went out. He returned empty-handed, and for some time they sat around in silence. Ellery turned off the light under the coffee. The house seemed unnaturally quiet.

Dr. Junius bobbed in.

“How is she?” asked Butch hoarsely.

“Nothing to be alarmed about. She’s had a bad shock, but she’s coming around.”

He ran out with the coffee. Ellery went to the pantry and, for lack of anything else to do, nosed about. The first thing he spied was a case of brandy on the floor. Then he remembered the ruddy bulb on Dr. Junius’s nose. He shrugged.

A long time later Dr. Junius called: “All right, gentlemen,” and they trooped back to the living-room.

Bonnie was sitting up before the fire, sipping the coffee. There was color in her cheeks and, while the circles under her eyes were heavy and leaden, her eyes were sane again.

She gave Butcher one hand and whispered: “I’m sorry I’ve been such a fuss, Butch.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Butch roughly. “Drink that java.”

Without turning her head she said: “Ty. Ty, it’s so hard to say... Ty, I’m sorry.”

“For me?” Ty laughed, and Dr. Junius looked alarmed. “I’m sorry, too. For you. For dad. For your mother. For the whole God-damned world.” He shut off the laugh in the middle of its highest note and flung himself full length on the mat before the fire at Bonnie’s feet, covering his face with his hands.

Bonnie looked down at him. Her lower lip began to quiver. She set the coffee-cup down blindly.

“Oh, here, don’t—” began Butcher miserably.

Dr. Junius whispered: “Let them alone. There’s really nothing to do for them but let the shock and hysteria wear off naturally. A good cry will do wonders for her, and the boy is fighting it off very nicely by himself.”

Bonnie wept softly into her fingers and Ty lay still before the fire. The Boy Wonder cursed and began to prowl up and down, throwing epileptic shadows on the flame-lit walls.

“Once again,” said Ellery. “Dr. Junius, where the hell is Tolland Stuart?”

“I suppose you find it strange.” The doctor’s hands were shaking, and it occurred to Ellery that Tolland Stuart’s dictum against alcohol worked a special hardship on his physician. “He’s upstairs behind a barricade.”

“What!”

Junius smiled apologetically. “Oh, he’s quite sane.”

“He must have heard our plane coming down. Hasn’t the man even a normal curiosity?”

“Mr. Stuart is — peculiar. He’s been nursing a grudge against the world for so many years that he detests the very sight of people. And then he’s a hypochondriac. And odd in other ways. I suppose you noticed the lack of central heating. He has a theory about that — that steam heat dries up your lungs. He has a theory about nearly everything.”

“Very amusing,” said Ellery, “but what’s all this to do with the fact that his granddaughter has come calling for the first time in years? Hasn’t he the decency to come downstairs to greet her?”

“Mr. Queen,” said Dr. Junius, baring his false teeth in a humorless grin, “if you knew as much about Mr. Tolland Stuart as I do you wouldn’t wonder at any of his vagaries.” The grin became a whining snarl. “When he came back late this afternoon from his damned eternal rabbit-shooting, and I told him about your call and his daughter Blythe apparently kidnapped on her wedding day and all, he shut himself up in his room and threatened to discharge me if I disturbed him. He claims he can’t stand excitement.”

“Can he?”

The doctor said spitefully: “He’s the healthiest man of his years I know. Damn all hypos! I have to sneak my liquor and coffee up here, go out into the woods for a smoke, and cook meat for myself when he’s out hunting. He’s a cunning, mean old maniac, that’s what he is, and why I bury myself up here with him is more than I can understand!”

The doctor looked frightened at his own outburst; he grew pale and silent.

“Nevertheless, don’t you think you might make an exception in this case? After all, a man’s daughter isn’t murdered every day.”

“You mean go up those stairs and into his bedroom, when he’s expressly forbidden it?”

“Something like that.”

Dr. Junius threw up his hands. “Not I, Mr. Queen, not I. I want to live out the few remaining years of my life with a whole skin.”

“Pshaw, he has you buffaloed.”

“Well, you’re welcome to try, if you don’t mind risking a load of buckshot. He always keeps a shotgun by his bed.”

Ellery said abruptly: “Ridiculous!”

The doctor made a weary gesture of invitation towards the oak staircase and trudged down the hall to the kitchen — and his cache of brandy — with sloping shoulders.

Ellery went to the foot of the staircase and shouted: “Mr. Stuart!”

Ty raised his head. “Grandfather,” said Bonnie limply. “I’d forgotten about him. Oh, Butch, we’ll have to tell him!”

“Mr. Stuart?” called Ellery again, almost angrily. Then he said: “Damn it, I’m going up.”

Dr. Junius reappeared, his ruddy nose a little ruddier. “Wait, please. If you insist on being foolhardy, I’ll go up with you. But it won’t do you any good, I warn you.”

He joined Ellery and together they began to ascend the stairs into the thickening shadows above.

And just then a low humming mutter came to their ears, growing louder with each passing moment, until it became raw thunder. They stopped short halfway up the stairs.

“A plane!” cried Dr. Junius. “Is it coming here?”

The thunder grew. It was a plane, unquestionably, and it was circling Tolland Stuart’s eyrie.

“This is the last straw,” moaned the doctor. “He’ll be unbearable for a week. Stay here, please. I’ll go out.”

And without waiting for an answer he hurried down the stairs and out into the darkness.

Ellery remained uncertainly on the staircase for an instant. Then he slowly descended.

Bonnie said: “I can’t understand grandfather. Is he ill? Why doesn’t he come down?”

No one answered. The only sounds came from the fire. The thunder had died.

And then Dr. Junius reappeared, wringing his hands. “He’ll kill me! Why did you all have to come here?”

A large man in an overcoat and fedora marched in, blinking in the firelight. He blinked at each of them, one by one.

Ellery smiled. “It seems we meet again, Inspector Glücke.”

Chapter 7 The Old Man

Inspector Glücke grunted and went to the fire, shedding his coat and rubbing his great red hands together. A man in flying togs followed him, and Dr. Junius hastily shut the outer door against a rising wind. The aviator sat quietly down in a corner. He said nothing, and Inspector Glücke did not introduce him.

“Let’s get you people straight now,” said Glücke, contracting his black brows. “You’re Miss Stuart, I suppose, and you’re Mr. Royle? You must be Butcher.”

Ty scrambled to his feet. “Well?” he said eagerly. “Have you found him?”

Bonnie cried: “Who is he?”

“No, now, all in good time. I’m half-frozen, and we’ve got a long wait, because the pilot says there’s a storm coming up. Where’s the old man?”

“Upstairs sulking,” said Ellery. “You don’t seem very glad to see me, old friend. And how did you horn into this case?”

Glücke grinned. “What d’ye mean? They were Angelenos, weren’t they? Say, this fire feels swell.”

“I take it you simply jumped in feet first and usurped the authority to handle the case?”

“Now don’t start anything, Queen. When we got the flash at Headquarters that Mr. Royle and Miss Stuart had been found dead — we already knew they’d been snatched — I got me a plane and flew up to that plateau. I beat the Riverside and San Bernardino County men by a hair. If you ask me, they were tickled to death to have L.A. step in and take over. It’s too big for them.”

“But not for you, eh?” murmured Ellery.

“Oh, it’s simple enough,” said the Inspector.

“Then you have found him!” cried Ty and Bonnie together.

“Not yet. But when we do, there’s our man, and that’s the end of it.”

“When you find him?” said Ellery dryly. “Don’t you mean ‘if’?”

“Maybe, maybe.” Glücke smiled. “Anyway, it’s no case for you, Queen. Just a plain, everyday manhunt.”

“How sure are you,” said Ellery, lighting a cigaret, “that it was a man?”

“You’re not suggesting it was a woman?” said the Inspector derisively.

“I’m suggesting the possibility. Miss Stuart, you and Mr. Royle saw that pilot in good light. Was it a man or woman?”

“Man,” said Ty. “Don’t be foolish. He was a man!”

“I don’t know,” sighed Bonnie, trying to concentrate. “You couldn’t really tell. Those flying togs were a man’s, but then a woman could have worn them. And you couldn’t see hair, or eyes, or even face. The goggles concealed the upper part of the face and the lower part was hidden by the turned-up collar.”

“He walked like a man,” cried Ty. “He was too tall for a woman.”

A spirited note crept into Bonnie’s voice. “Nonsense. Hollywood is full of impersonators of both sexes. And I’ll bet I’m as tall as that... creature was.”

“And nobody,” put in Ellery, “heard the creature’s voice, for the excellent reason that the creature took remarkable care not to speak. If it were a man, why the silence? He could have disguised his voice.”

“Now listen, Queen,” said Glücke plaintively, “stop throwing monkey-wrenches. All right, we don’t know whether it was a man or a woman. But, man or woman, we’ve got the height and build—”

“Have you? Heels can be built up, and those flying suits are bulky and deceptive. No, there’s only one thing you can be sure of.”

“What’s that?”

“That the pilot can fly an airplane.”

Glücke growled deep in his throat. Dr. Junius coughed in the silence. “I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but... I mean, don’t you think it would be wise to take off now, before the storm breaks, Inspector?”

“Huh?” The Inspector turned cold eyes on Dr. Junius.

“I said—”

“I heard what you said.” Glücke stared hard at the doctor’s saffron face. “What’s the matter with you? Nervous?”

“No. Certainly not,” said the doctor, backing away.

“Who are you, anyway? What are you doing here?”

“My name is Junius, and I’m a medical doctor. I live here with Mr. Stuart.”

“Where’d you come from? Did you know Blythe Stuart and Jack Royle?”

“No, indeed. I mean — I’ve seen Mr. Royle in Hollywood at times and Miss Blythe Stuart used to come here... But I haven’t seen her for several years.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Ten years. Mr. Stuart hired me to take care of him. At a very nice yearly retainer, I must say, and my own practice wasn’t terribly—”

“Where’d you come from? I didn’t hear you say.”

“Buenavista, Colorado.”

“Police record?”

Dr. Junius drew himself up. “My dear sir!”

Glücke looked him over. “No harm done,” he said mildly. The doctor stepped back, wiping his face. “Now here’s what we’ve found. You were right, Queen, about the cause of death. The coroner of Riverside County flew up there with his sheriff, examined the bodies—”

Bonnie grew pale again. Butcher said sharply: “Dr. Junius is right. We ought to clear out of here and get these kids home. You can talk to them tomorrow.”

“It’s all right,” said Bonnie in a low voice. “I’m all right, Butch.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” growled Ty, “the sooner you get started the better I’ll like it. Do you think I could sleep and eat and laugh and work while my father’s murderer is breathing free air somewhere?”

The Inspector went on, quite as if nobody had spoken: “Well, as I was saying, preliminary examination showed they both died of very large doses of morphine.”

“In the thermos bottles?” asked Ellery.

“Yes. The drinks were loaded with the stuff. The Doc couldn’t be sure without a chemical analysis, but he says there must easily have been five grains to each cocktail drink. I’m having Bronson, our chemist, analyze what’s left in the bottles as soon as he can lay his hands on them.”

“But I don’t understand,” frowned Bonnie. “We all drank from the bottles just before the take-off. Why weren’t we poisoned, too?”

“If you weren’t, it’s because the drinks were okay at that time. Does anybody remember exactly what happened to that hamper?”

“I do,” said Ellery. “I was shoved about by the crowd and was forced to sit down on the hamper immediately after the last round, when the bottles were put back. And I had my eye on that hamper every instant between the time the bottles were stowed away and the time I sat down on the hamper.”

“That’s a break. Did you sit on the hamper till this disguised pilot hijacked the plane?”

“Better than that,” said Ellery wryly. “I actually got up and handed it to him with my own hands as he got into the plane.”

“So that means the drinks were poisoned inside. We’ve got a clear line there.” Glücke looked pleased. “He swiped the plane, poisoned the drinks in the plane as he was stowing away the hamper, took off, waited for Jack and Blythe to drink — stuff’s practically tasteless, the coroner said, in booze — and when they passed out he just set the plane down on that plateau and beat it. No fuss, no bother, no trouble at all. Damned neat, and damned cold-blooded.”

The pilot’s predicted storm broke. A thousand demons howled, and the wind lashed at the butte, pounding the old house, banging shutters and rattling windows. Suddenly lightning crashed about the exposed mountain-top and thunder roared.

Nobody spoke. Dr. Junius shambled forward to throw another log on the fire.

The thunder rolled and rolled as if it would never stop. Ellery listened uneasily. It seemed to him that he had detected the faintest undertone in the thunder. He glanced about, but none of his companions seemed conscious of it.

The thunder ceased for a moment, and Glücke said: “We’ve got the whole State looking for that pilot. It’s only a question of time before we catch up with the guy.”

“But this rain,” cried Ty. “It will wipe out his trail from the plateau!”

“I know, I know, Mr. Royle,” said Glücke soothingly. “Don’t fret yourself. We’ll collar him. Now I want you young people to tell me something about your parents. There must be a clue somewhere in their background.”

Ellery took his hat and coat from the chair near the front door where he had dropped them and, unobserved, slipped down the hallway to the kitchen and out the kitchen door into the open.

The trees about the side of the house were bent over in the gale, and a downpour that seemed solid rather than liquid drenched him the instant he set foot on the spongy earth. Nevertheless he lowered his head to the wind, clutching his hat, and aided by an occasional lightning-flash fought his way toward the distant glow of the landing-field.

He stumbled onto the field and stopped, gasping for breath. A commercial plane, apparently the one which had conveyed Glücke to Tolland Stuart’s mountain home, strained within the hangar beside the small stubby ship; the hangar doors stood open to the wind.

Ellery shook his head impatiently, straining to see the length of the field in the badly flickering arc-lights. But the field was empty of life.

He waited for the next flash of lightning and then eagerly searched the tossing skies overhead. But if there was anything up there, it was lost in the swollen black clouds.

So it had been his imagination after all. He could have sworn he had heard the motors of an airplane through the thunder. He retraced his steps.

And then, just as he was about to break from under the trees in a dash back to the house, he saw a man.

The man was crouching in the lee of the house, to the rear, a black hunched-over figure. The friendly lightning blazed again, and Ellery saw him raise his head.

It was an old face with a ragged growth of gray beard and mustache, a deeply engraved skin, and slack blubbering lips; and it was the face of one who looks upon death, or worse. Ellery was struck by that expression of pure, stripped terror. It was as if the old man had suddenly found himself cornered against an unscalable wall by a horde of the ghastliest denizens of his worst nightmare.

In the aftermath of darkness Ellery barely made out the stooped figure creeping miserably along the side of the house to vanish somewhere behind it.

The rain hissed down, and Ellery stood still, oblivious to it, staring into the darkness. What was Mr. Tolland Stuart doing out in the storm raging about his mountain retreat at a moment when he was supposed to be shivering behind the barred door of his bedroom?

Why, indeed, only a few hours after the murder of his only child in an airplane, should he be crawling about his estate with a flyer’s helmet stuck ludicrously on his head?

Ellery found the Inspector straddle-legged across the fire. He was saying: “Not much help... Oh, Queen.”

Ellery dashed the rain from his hat and spread his coat before the flames. “I thought I heard something on the landing-field.”

“Another plane?” groaned Dr. Junius.

“It was my imagination.”

Glücke frowned. “Well, we’re not getting anywhere. Then aside from this down-and-outer Park you mention, Mr. Royle, you’d say your father had no enemies?”

“None I know of.”

“I’d quite forgotten that little flare-up at the Horseshoe Club a couple of weeks ago,” said Ellery slowly.

“Nothing to it. The man was just peeved about being found out. It’s not going to be as easy as all that.”

“The man’s cracked,” said Ty shortly. “A crackpot will do anything.”

“Well, we’ll check up on him. Only if he’s the one, why did he kill Miss Stuart’s mother as well as your father? He couldn’t have had anything against her!”

“He could have held her responsible for the whole situation,” snapped Ty. “An irrational man would react that way.”

“Maybe.” Glücke looked at his fingernails. “By the way. It seems to me there’s been a lot of talk about your two families sort of — well, not getting along.”

The fire crackled, and outside the thunder and lightning went out in a spectacular finale. The rain fell to a steady patter.

The pilot got up and said: “I’ll take a look at my crate, Inspector,” and went out.

And then the Boy Wonder mumbled: “Nonsense.”

“Did I say something wrong?” inquired Glücke innocently.

“Didn’t Jack and Blythe make up? You couldn’t want better proof than their reconciliation and marriage.”

“But how about these two?” said Glücke. There was another silence. “Hey?” said Glücke.

Bonnie stared straight at the lowest button of the Inspector’s jacket. And Ty turned his back to look at the fire.

“There’s no sense smearing it, Butch. We’ve hated each other’s guts since we were kids. We were brought up on hate. When a thing like that is fed to you morning, noon, and night from your nursery days it gets into your blood.”

“You feel the same way, huh, Miss Stuart?”

Bonnie licked her dry lips. “Yes.”

“But that doesn’t mean,” said Ty slowly, turning around, “that one of us committed those murders. Or do you think it does, Inspector Glücke?”

“But he couldn’t think a horrible thing like that!” cried Bonnie.

“How do I know,” said Glücke, “that story about the hold-up at the hangar in Griffith Park airport is on the level?”

“But we’ve got each other as witnesses!”

“Even if we didn’t,” growled Ty, “do you think I would poison my own father to revenge myself on Bonnie Stuart’s mother? Or that Bonnie Stuart would murder her own mother to get even with my father? You’re crazy.”

“I don’t know anything,” said the Inspector blandly, “about anything. You might be interested to learn that the Homicide Detail’s turned up the boy who brought Miss Stuart the message before the take-off. I got the news by radiophone while I was examining your plane on the plateau.”

“What’s he got to say for himself?”

“He says he was stopped near the hangar — he’s a page, or steward, or something, at the municipal field — by a tall thin man bundled up in flying clothes, wearing goggles.” The Inspector’s tone was amiable, but he kept glancing from Bonnie to Ty and back again. “This man held up a piece of paper with typewriting on it in front of the kid’s nose. The paper said for him to tell Miss Stuart Mr. Royle wanted her in the hangar.”

“The come-on,” muttered Ty. “That was the pilot, all right. What a clumsy trick!”

“Which worked nevertheless,” remarked Ellery. “You’re positive the boy’s on the level, Inspector?”

“The airport people give him a clean bill.”

“How about the typewritten note?”

“The kid never got his hands on it. It was just shown to him. Then the disguised pilot faded into the crowd, the kid says, taking the paper with him.”

Bonnie rose, looking incensed. “Then how can you believe one of us had a hand in those horrible crimes?”

“I’m not saying you had,” smiled Glücke. “I’m saying you could have had.”

“But if we were held up and tied!”

“Suppose one of you hired that tall fellow to fake the hold-up — to make you look innocent?”

“Oh, my God,” said Butch, throwing up his hands.

“You’re a fool,” said Ty curtly. He sat down on the settee and cupped his face in his hands.

Inspector Glücke smiled again and, going to his coat, fished in one of the pockets. He came back to the fire with a large manila envelope and slowly unwound the waxed red string.

“What’s that?” demanded Ellery.

Glücke’s big hand dipped into the envelope and came out with something round, thin, and blue. He held it up.

“Ever see one of these before?” he asked of no one in particular.

They crowded about him, Dr. Junius nosing with the rest. It was a blue chip, incised with a golden horseshoe.

“The Horseshoe Club,” exclaimed Bonnie and Ty together. In their eagerness they bumped against each other. For a moment they were pressed together; then they drew apart.

“Comes from Jack Royle’s pocket,” said the Inspector. “It’s not important.” Nevertheless, Ellery noted the careful manner in which he handled it, holding it between thumb and forefinger on the thin edge of the disc, as if he were afraid of smudging a possible fingerprint.

He dropped the plaque back into the envelope and pulled out something else — a sheaf of ragged pieces of paper held together by a paper-clip.

“This clip is mine,” he explained. “I found these torn scraps in Royle’s pocket, too.”

Ellery seized them. Separating the scraps, he spread them on the settee. It took only a few minutes to assemble the pieces. Reassembled, they constituted five small rectangles of linen memorandum paper, with the words: THE HORSESHOE CLUB, engraved in blue over a tiny golden horseshoe at the top of each sheet.

Each sheet bore a date; the dates covered roughly a period of a month, the last date being the second of the current month. In the same-colored ink, boldly scrawled, were the letters IOU, a figure preceded by a dollar-sign, and the signature John Royle. Each IOU noted a different sum. With a frown Ellery totaled them. They came to exactly $110,000.00.

“Know anything about these things?” asked the Inspector.

Ty studied them incredulously. He seemed baffled by the signature.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ellery quickly. “Isn’t that your father’s signature?”

“That’s just the trouble,” murmured Ty. “It is.”

“All five?”

“Yes.”

“What d’ye mean trouble?” demanded Glücke. “Didn’t you know about these debts?”

“No. At least I didn’t know dad had got in so deep with Alessandro. A hundred and ten thousand dollars!” He plunged his hands into his pockets and began to walk up and down. “He was always a reckless gambler, but this—”

“You mean to say he was that broke and his own son didn’t know it?”

“We rarely discussed money matters. I led my life and—” he sat slowly down on the settee, “he led his.”

He fell into a deep inspection of the fire. Glücke gathered the scraps together, clipped them, and in silence stowed them away in the manila envelope.

Some one coughed. Ellery turned around. It was Dr. Junius. He had quite forgotten Dr. Junius.

Dr. Junius said nervously: “The rain’s stopped, I think. You ought to be able to fly out safely now.”

“Oh, it’s you again, Doctor,” said the Inspector. “You are in a fret to get rid of us, aren’t you?”

“No, no,” said the doctor hastily. “I was just thinking of Miss Stuart. She must have a night’s rest.”

“And that reminds me.” Glücke looked at the staircase. “While I’m here I think I’ll have a talk with the old man.”

“Dr. Junius doesn’t think that would be wise,” said Ellery dryly. “Are you impervious to buckshot? Tolland Stuart keeps a shotgun by his bed.”

“Oh, he does, does he?” said Glücke. And he strode towards the staircase.

“Be careful, Inspector!” cried Junius, running after. “He doesn’t even know his daughter’s dead.”

“Go on,” said Glücke grimly. “That shy kind have a cute habit of listening at keyholes and at the top of stairs.”

He strode on. Ellery, remembering the fact of the old man in the downpour outside the house, silently applauded Glucke’s shrewdness. That livid old man had known the facts of death; there was no question about that.

He followed the two men up the stairs.

The light of the downstairs chamber faded as they ascended, and by the time they reached the landing upstairs they were in iced and murky darkness.

Glücke stumbled on the top step. “Aren’t there any lights in this blasted morgue?” Dr. Junius brushed hurriedly and sure-footedly by.

“Just a moment,” he whined. “The switch is—”

“Wait,” said the Inspector. Ellery waited. But, strain as he might, Ellery heard nothing but the hiss of the fire downstairs and the murmur of Butcher’s voice soothing Bonnie.

“What’s the matter?”

“Thought I heard some one scramble away. But I guess I was wrong. This place could drive a man nuts.”

“I don’t think you were wrong,” said Ellery. “Our aged friend has probably been ensconced up here for some time, eavesdropping, as you suggested.”

“Switch those lights on, Junius,” growled Glücke, “and let’s have a look at the old turkey.”

The magic of sudden light after darkness materialized a wide draughty hall, thickly carpeted and hung with what seemed to Ellery a veritable gallery of old masters — lovely pictures with the rich brown patina of the Dutch period and uniformly framed in a dust no less rich and brown. There were many doors, and all were closed, and of Tolland Stuart no sign.

“Mr. Stuart!” cried Junius. There was no answer. He turned to the Inspector piteously. “There you are, Inspector. Can’t you come back tomorrow? He’s probably in an awful state.”

“I can, but I won’t,” said the Inspector. “Which one is his cave?”

The doctor made a despairing gesture and, crying out: “He’ll probably shoot us all!” led the way to a double door at the farthest point in the corridor. Trembling, he knocked.

An old man’s voice quavered: “Keep out!” and Ellery heard scuttling sounds, as if the possessor of the voice had scrambled away from the other side of the door.

Dr. Junius yelped and fled.

Glücke chuckled: “The old guy must have something at that. Chicken-hearted mummy!” And he thundered: “Come on, open up there, Mr. Stuart!”

“Who is it?”

“The police.”

“Go away. Get off my grounds. I’ll have no truck with police!” The quaver was a scream now, with a curious lisping quality to the syllables which could only be effected by a toothless mouth.

“Do you know, Mr. Stuart,” shouted the Inspector sternly, “that your daughter Blythe has been murdered?”

“I heard ’em. I heard you! Get out, I say!”

Bonnie came running up the hall towards them, crying: “Grandfather!”

Dr. Junius sidled after, pleading: “Please, Miss Stuart. Not now. He isn’t — pleasant. He’ll upset you.”

“Grandfather,” sobbed Bonnie, pounding on the door. “Let me in. It’s Bonnie. Mother — she’s dead. She’s been killed, I tell you. There’s only us now. Please!”

“Mr. Stuart, sir,” whined Dr. Junius, “it’s your granddaughter, Bonnie Stuart. She needs you, sir. Won’t you open the door, talk to her, comfort her?”

There was no reply.

“Mr. Stuart, sir. This is Dr. Junius. Please!”

Then the cracked, lisping voice came. “Go away, all of you. No police. Bonnie, not — not now. There’s death among you. Death! Death...” And the shriek was choked off on its ascending note, and they distinctly heard the thud of a body.

Bonnie bit her fingers, staring at the panels. Butcher came running up. Glücke said gently: “Stand aside, Miss Stuart. We’ll have to break the door in. Get out of the way, Junius.”

And Ty came up, too, and watched them from narrowed eyes as he stood quietly at the other end of the hall.

The Inspector hurled himself at the juncture of the two doors. Something snapped inside; the doors flew open. For a moment he stood still, breathing hard. The moment seemed interminable, with the infinitude of some arrested moments.

The room was vast, and gloomy, and filled with solid pieces like the great chamber downstairs; and the four-poster English bed of hand-carved antique oak, with its red fustian tester, was disheveled; and, surely enough, there stood a heavy shotgun by its side, handy to a reaching arm. And on the floor, before them, lay the crumpled body of the old man Ellery had glimpsed outdoors, clad in flannel pajamas and a woolen robe, thick socks, and carpet slippers over his bony feet. The only light came from a brown mica lamp near the bed; the fireplace was dark.

Dr. Junius hurried forward to drop on his knees beside the motionless figure.

“He’s fainted. Fear — venom — temper; I don’t know what. But his pulse is good; nothing to worry about. Please go now. It’s useless to try to talk to him tonight.”

He got to his feet, and stooped, and with a surprising strength for a man of his sparse physique and evident years, lifted the old man’s body and bore him in his arms to the bed.

“He’s probably shamming,” said Inspector Glücke disgustedly. “Crusty old termite! Come on, folks, we’ll be riding the air back to Los Angeles.”

Chapter 8 Two for Nothing

“Where to?” asked the pilot.

“Municipal airport, L.A.”

The plane was not large, and they sat about in a cramped silence while the pilot nosed his ship sharply northwestward. He sought altitude; and soon they were flying high above a black valley, splitting the breeze to a hairline above and between the San Bernardino and San Jacinto ranges.

“What’s happened to my plane?” asked Ty, his face against a drizzle-misted window.

“It’s probably in Los Angeles by this time,” replied the Inspector. He paused. “Of course, we couldn’t leave them... it there.”

Bonnie stirred on Butcher’s motionless shoulder. “I was in a morgue once. It was a movie set. But even in make-believe... It was cold. Mother didn’t like—” She closed her eyes. “Give me a cigaret, Butch.”

He lit one for her and stuck it between her lips.

“Thanks.” She opened her eyes. “I suppose you all think I’ve been acting like such a baby. But it’s just that it’s been... a shock. It’s even worse, now that I can think again... Mother gone. It just isn’t possible.”

Without turning, Ty said harshly: “We all know how you feel.”

“Oh? Sorry.”

Ellery stared out at the stormy dark. A cluster of lights far below and ahead began to mushroom, resembling loose diamonds strewn on a black velvet cushion.

“Riverside,” said the Inspector. “We’ll pass over it soon, and after that it’s not far to the airport.”

They watched the cluster glow and grow and shrink and fade and disappear.

Ty suddenly got up. He blundered blindly up the aisle. Then he came back. “Why?” he said.

“Why, what?” asked the Inspector, surprised.

“Why was dad knocked off? Why were they both knocked off?”

“If we knew that, son, it wouldn’t be much of a case. Sit down.”

“It doesn’t make sense. Were they robbed? He had a thousand dollars in cash on him. I gave it to him only this morning as a sort — sort of wedding gift. Or — Bonnie! Was your mother carrying much money?”

“Don’t talk to me,” said Bonnie.

“It’s not that,” said Glücke. “Their personal belongings weren’t touched.”

“Then why?” cried Ty. “Why? Is he a lunatic?”

“Sit down, Ty,” said the Boy Wonder wearily.

“Wait!” His bloodshot eyes narrowed. “Could it have been an accident? I mean, could it have been that only one of them was meant to be killed, that the other one was a victim of some—”

“Since you’re discussing it,” drawled Ellery, “Suppose you discuss it systematically.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think motive is the keystone of this case.”

“Yeah?” said the Inspector. “Why?”

“Simply because there doesn’t seem to be any.”

Glücke looked annoyed. Ty suddenly sat down and lit a cigaret. His eyes did not leave Ellery’s face. “Go on. You’ve got an idea about this thing.”

“He’s a crazy galoot,” growled Glücke, “but I admit he’s got something besides sand in his skull.”

“Well, look.” Ellery put his elbows on his knees. “Let’s begin in the proper place. Among the things I’ve observed in the past few weeks, Ty, is that your father never drank anything but Sidecars. Is that right?”

“Brandy, too. He liked brandy.”

“Well, of course. A Sidecar is nothing but brandy with Cointreau and a little lemon juice added. And as for your mother, Bonnie, she seemed exclusively fond of dry Martinis.”

“Yes.”

“I seem to recall, in fact, that she recently made some disparaging remark about Sidecars, which would indicate she disliked them. Is that true?”

“She detested them.”

“And dad couldn’t stand Martinis, either,” growled Ty. “So what?”

“So this. Some one — obviously the murderer; it could scarcely have been coincidence; the exact means of murder wouldn’t have been left to chance — some one sends Blythe and Jack a going-away hamper and lo! inside are two thermos bottles and lo! in one of them is a quart of Sidecars and in the other an equal quantity of Martinis.”

“If you mean,” said Butch with a frown, “that in sending those bottles the murderer betrayed an intimate knowledge of Blythe’s and Jack’s liquor preferences, Ellery, I’m afraid you won’t get far. Everybody in Hollywood knew that Blythe liked Martinis and Jack Sidecars.”

Inspector Glücke looked pleased.

But Ellery smiled. “I didn’t mean that. I’m attacking Ty’s accident theory, improbable as it is, just to get it out of the way. It lends itself to logical disproof.

“For if, as seems indisputable, the donor of that hamper knew that Blythe liked Martinis and Jack Sidecars, then the dosing of each bottle of heavenly dew with a lethal amount of morphine means that each drinker — Jack, the drinker of Sidecars, Blythe, the drinker of Martinis — was intended to be poisoned. Had only Blythe been marked for death, only the bottle of Martinis would have been poisoned. And similarly if Jack were to be the sole victim.” He sighed. “I’m afraid we’re faced with no alternative. Neither your father, Ty, nor your mother, Bonnie, was intended ever to come out of that plane alive. It’s the clearest case of a deliberate double-killing.”

“And where does all this folderol get you?” scowled Glücke.

“I’m sure I don’t know. One rarely does at this stage of the game.”

“I thought,” put in the Boy Wonder shortly, “you began to talk about motive.”

“Oh, that.” Ellery shrugged. “If the same motive applied to both of them, as seems likely, it’s even more mystifying.”

“But what could it be?” cried Bonnie. “Mother wouldn’t have harmed a fly.”

Ellery did not reply. He looked out the window at the swirling darkness.

The Inspector said suddenly: “Miss Stuart, is your father alive?”

“He died when I was an infant.”

“Your mother never remarried?”

“No.”

“Any...” The Inspector hesitated. Then he said delicately: “Did she have any... romantic attachments?”

“Mother?” Bonnie laughed. “Don’t be absurd.” And she turned her face away.

“How about your father, Royle? Your ma’s dead, too, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Well, from all I’ve heard,” said the Inspector, clearing his throat, “your dad was sort of a lady’s man. Could there be some woman floating around who had — well, who thought she had good reason to get sore when Jack Royle announced he was going to marry Blythe Stuart?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t dad’s nursemaid.”

“Then there could be such a woman?”

“There could,” snapped Ty, “but I don’t think there is. Dad was no angel, but he knew women, he knew the world, and underneath he was a right guy. The few affairs I know about ended without a fuss. He never lied to his women, and they always knew exactly what they were letting themselves in for. You’re a million miles wrong, Glücke. Besides, this job was pulled by a man.”

“Hmm,” said the Inspector, and he slumped back. He did not seem immovably persuaded.

“I suggest,” said Ellery, “we eliminate. The usual attack in theorizing about motive is to ask who stands to gain by the murder. I believe we’ll make faster progress if we ask who stands to lose.

“Let’s start with the principals, you, Ty, and you, Bonnie. Obviously, of every one involved you two have sustained the greatest possible loss. You’ve lost your sole surviving parents, to whom you were plainly tremendously attached.”

Bonnie bit her lip, staring out the window. Ty crushed the burning tip of his cigaret out in his fingers.

“The studio?” Ellery shrugged. “Don’t look so startled, Butch; logic knows no sentiment. The studio has suffered a large monetary loss: it has lost forever the services of two popular, money-making stars. To bring it closer home, your own unit suffers a direct and intimate loss: the big production we’ve been working on together will have to be abandoned.”

“Wait a minute,” said Glücke. “How about a studio feud? Any contract trouble with another studio, Butcher? Know anybody who wouldn’t mind seeing Magna’s two big stars out of pictures?”

“Oh, don’t be a fool, Inspector,” snapped Butch. “This is Hollywood, not mediaeval Italy.”

“It didn’t seem likely,” grunted Glücke.

“To continue,” said Ellery, glancing at the Inspector with amusement. “The agency holding contracts for Jack’s and Blythe’s personal services — I believe it’s Alan Clark’s outfit — also loses.

“So that, in a sense, every one connected with Jack and Blythe personally and professionally stands to lose a great deal.”

“You’re a help.”

“But good Lord, Ellery,” protested Butch, “it stands to reason somebody gains by this crime.”

“From a monetary standpoint? Well, let’s see. Did Jack or Blythe leave much of an estate?”

“Mother left practically nothing,” said Bonnie lifelessly. “Even her jewels were paste. She lived up to every cent she earned.”

“How about Jack, Ty?”

Ty’s lip curled. “What do you think? You saw those IOU’s.”

“How about insurance?” asked the Inspector. “Or trust funds? You Hollywood actors are always salting it away in insurance companies.”

“Mother,” said Bonnie tightly, “didn’t believe in insurance or annuities. She didn’t know the value of money at all. I was always making up shortages in her checking account.”

“Dad took out a hundred-thousand-dollar policy once,” said Ty. “It was in force until the second premium came due. He said to hell with it — he had to go to the racetrack that afternoon.”

“But for Pete’s sake,” exclaimed the Inspector, “there’s got to be an angle somewhere. If it wasn’t gain, then revenge. Something! I’m beginning to think this guy Park better be tagged right away, at that.”

“Well,” said Ty coldly, “how about Alessandro and those IOU’s?”

“But they turned up in your father’s possession,” said Ellery. “If he hadn’t paid up, do you think Alessandro would have returned the IOU’s?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” muttered Ty. “All I ask is: Where would dad get a hundred and ten thousand?”

“You’re absolutely sure,” said Glücke slowly, “he couldn’t lay his hands on that much, huh?”

“Of course not!”

The Inspector rubbed his jaw. “Alessandro’s real handle is Joe DiSangri, and he’s been mixed up in a lot of monkey-business in New York. He used to be one of Al’s hoods, too, way back.” Then he shook his head. “But it doesn’t smell like a gang kill. Poisoned drinks! If Joe DiSangri wanted to rub out a welcher, he’d use lead. It’s in his blood.”

“Times have changed,” snarled Ty. “That’s a hell of a reason to lay off the skunk! Do I have to look him up myself?”

“Oh, we’ll check him.”

“At any rate,” said Ellery, “did Joe DiSangri, alias Alessandro, also kill Bonnie’s mother because your father welched on a gambling debt?”

Bonnie said passionately: “I knew it would only lead to trouble. I knew it. Why did she have to do it?”

Ty colored and turned aside. Glücke gnawed a fingernail. And kept looking at Bonnie and Ty.

The pilot opened his door and said: “We’re here.”

They looked down. The field was blackly alive, heaving with people.

Bonnie blanched and groped for Butch’s hand. “It... it looks like a — like something big and dead and a lot of little black ants running all over it.”

“Bonnie, you’ve been a trump so far. This won’t last long. Don’t spoil it. Keep your chin up.”

“But I can’t! All those millions of staring eyes—” She held on to his hand tightly.

“Now, Miss Stuart, take it easy,” said the Inspector, getting to his feet. “You’ve got to face it. We’re here—”

“Are we?” said Ty bitterly. “I’d say we were nowhere. And that we’d got there damned fast.”

“That’s why I pointed out,” murmured Ellery, “that when we found out why Jack and Blythe were poisoned — when we got a clear line on the motive — we’d crack this case wide open.”

Chapter 9 The Club Nine

On Wednesday the twentieth the only completely peaceful persons in the City of Los Angeles and environs were John Royle and Blythe Stuart: they were dead.

It had been a mad three days. Reporters; cameramen, of the journalistic, artistic, and candid varieties, aging ladies of the motion picture press; State police and men of Inspector Glücke’s Homicide Detail; stars; producers; directors looking for inspiration; embalmers; preachers; debtors; mortuary salesmen; lawyers; radio announcers; real estate men; thousands of glamour-struck worshipers at the shrine of the dead pair — all milled and shouted and shoved and popped in and out and made the waking hours — there were few sleeping ones — of Bonnie and Ty an animated nightmare.

“Might as well have planned services for the Bowl,” cried Ty, disheveled, unshaven, purple-eyed from lack of rest. “For God’s sake, somebody, can’t I even send the old man out decently?”

“He was a public figure in life, Ty,” said Ellery soothingly. “You couldn’t expect the public to ignore him in death.”

“That kind of death?”

“Any kind of death.”

“They’re vultures!”

“Murder brings out the worst in people. Think of what poor Bonnie’s going through in Glendale.”

“Yes,” scowled Ty. “I guess... it’s pretty tough on a woman.” Then he said: “Queen, I’ve got to talk to her.”

“Yes, Ty?” Ellery tried not to show surprise.

“It’s terribly important.”

“It’s going to be hard, arranging a quiet meeting now.”

“I’ve got to.”

They met at three o’clock in the morning at an undistinguished little café tucked away in a blind alley off Melrose Street, miraculously unpursued — Ty wearing dark blue glasses and Bonnie a heavy nose-veil that revealed little more than her pale lips and chin.

Ellery and the Boy Wonder stood guard outside the booth in which they sat.

“Sorry, Bonnie,” said Ty abruptly, “to bring you out at a time like this. But there’s something we’ve got to discuss.”

“Yes?” Bonnie’s voice startled him; it was flat, brassy, devoid of life or feeling.

“Bonnie, you’re ill.”

“I’m all right.”

“Queen — Butch — somebody should have told me.”

“I’m all right. It’s just the thought of... Wednesday.” He saw her lips quiver beneath the veil.

Ty played with a glass of Scotch. “Bonnie... I’ve never asked a favor of you, have I?”

“You?”

“I’m... I suppose you’ll think I’m a fool, getting sentimental this way.”

“You sentimental?” Bonnie’s lips curved this time.

“What I want you to do...” Ty put the glass down. “It’s not for me. It isn’t even for my dad exclusively. It’s as much for your mother as for dad.”

Her hands crept off the table and disappeared. “Come to the point, please.”

He blurted: “I think they ought to have a double funeral.”

She was silent.

“I tell you it’s not for dad. It’s for both of them. I’ve been thinking things over since Sunday. Bonnie, they were in love. Before... I didn’t think so. I thought there was something else behind it — I don’t know what. But now... They died together. Don’t you see?”

She was silent.

“They were kept apart so many years,” said Ty. “And then to be knocked off just before... I know I’m an idiot to be talking this way. But I can’t get over the feeling that dad — yes, and your mother — would have wanted to be buried together, too.”

She was silent for so long that Ty thought something had happened to her. But just as he was about to touch her in alarm, she moved. Her hands appeared and pushed the veil back from her face. And she looked and looked and looked at him out of her dark-shadowed eyes, not speaking, not changing her expression; just looking.

Then she said simply: “All right, Ty,” and rose.

“Thanks!”

“It’s mother I’m thinking of.”

Neither said another word. They went home by different routes — Ty in Ellery’s coupe to Beverly Hills, Bonnie in the Boy Wonder’s limousine to Glendale.

Then the coroner released the bodies, and John Royle and Blythe Stuart were embalmed, and for several hours on Wednesday morning their magnificent mahogany caskets, sheathed in purest Anaconda copper, with eighteen-carat gold handles and $50-a-yard hand-loomed Japanese silk linings stuffed with the down of black swans, were on public display in the magnificent mortuary on Sunset Boulevard which Sam Vix, who was surreptitiously superintending the production on a 2 %-commission basis, persuaded Jacques Butcher to persuade Ty Royle to beg the favor of Bonnie Stuart to select, which they did, and she did; and four women were trampled, one seriously, and sixteen women fainted, and the police had to ride into the crowd on their magnificent horses, which were all curried and glossed for the occasion; and one poorly dressed man who was obviously a Communist tried to bite the stirrup of the mounted policeman who had just run over him and was properly whacked over the head with a billy and dragged off to jail; and inside the mortuary all the glittering elect, tricked out in their most gorgeous mourning clothes — Mme. Flo’s and Magnin’s and L’Heureuse’s had had to hire mobs of seamstresses to get the special orders out in time for the funeral — remarked how beautiful Blythe looked: “Just as if she were asleep, the darling; if she weren’t under glass you’d swear she was going to move!” “And yet she’s embalmed; it’s wonderful what they can do.” “Yes, and to think she’s got practically nothing left inside. I read that they performed an autopsy, and you know what they do in autopsies.” “Don’t be gruesome! How should I know?” “Well, but wasn’t your first husband—” — and didn’t Bonnie show a too, too precious taste in dressing Blythe up in that gorgeous white satin evening gown with that perfectly clever tight bodice — “She had a beautiful bust, my dear. Do you know she once told me she never wore a girdle? And I know for a fact that she didn’t have to wear a cup-form brassiere!” — with the shirring at the waist and those thousands of accordion pleats — “If she could only stand up, darling, you’d see what a cunning fan effect those pleats give!” — and that one dainty orchid corsage and those exquisite diamond clips at the shoulder-straps — “I mean they look exquisite. Are they real, do you think, dear?” And how handsome poor old Jack looked, in his starched bosom and tails, with that cynical half-smile on his face: “Wouldn’t you swear he was going to get right out of that casket and put his arm around you?” “Who put that gold statuette that Jack won in thirty-three in there with him?” “I’m sure I don’t know; it does seem a little like bragging, doesn’t it?” “Well, there’s the Academy committee and they looked simply devastatingly pleased!” “He was a handsome devil, though, wasn’t he? My second husband knocked him down once.” “Don’t you think that’s a little indiscreet, darling? — I mean with all these detectives around? After all, Jack was murdered.” “Don’t be funny, Nanette! You know Llewelyn ran off to Africa or some place with that snippy extra-girl with the g-string and hips two years ago.” “Well, my dear, the things I could tell you about Jack Royle — not that I’m speaking ill of the dead, but in a way Blythe’s better off. She’d never have been happy with him, the way he chased every chippy in town.” “Oh, my darling! I’d forgotten that you knew him well, didn’t you?”

And over in Glendale, in the big seething house, Bonnie stood cold and tearless and almost as devoid of life as her mother down in Hollywood being admired by thousands; while Clotilde, whose plump cheeks and Gallic nose seemed permanently puffed out from weeping, dressed her — unresisted — in soft and striking black, even though Bonnie had often said she detested public displays of grief and typical Hollywood funerals; dressed Bonnie without assistance from Bonnie, as if in truth she were dressing a corpse.

And in Beverly Hills Ty was cursing Louderback between gulps of brandy and refusing to shave and wanting to wear slacks and a blazer, just to show the damned vultures, and Alan Clark and a hastily recruited squad of husky friends finally held him down while Louder-back plied the electric razor and a doctor took the decanter away and forced Ty to swallow some luminal instead.

And then Ty and Bonnie met over the magnificent twin coffins at the mortuary, framed and bowered in gigantic banks of fresh-cut flowers until they and the corpses and the mortician’s assistants and the Bishop looked like figures on a float at the annual flower festival; and neither said a single word; and the Bishop read a magnificent service against the heady-sweet background, bristling with “dear Lords” and “dear departeds,” and Inspector Glücke almost wore his eyes out scanning the crowd on the fundamental theory that a murderer cannot resist visiting the funeral of his victims, and saw nothing, even though he stared very hard at Joe DiSangri Alessandro, who was present looking like a solemn little Italian banker in his morning coat and striped trousers; and Jeannine Carrel, the beautiful star with the operatic voice than whom no soprano in or out of the Metropolitan sang Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life more thrillingly, tearfully sang Nearer, My God, to Thee accompanied by the entire male chorus of Magna Studio’s forthcoming super-musical production, Swing That Thing; and Lew Bascom did not even stagger under his share of the weight of Blythe’s coffin, which was a testimonial to his stamina and capacity, since he had consumed five quarts of Scotch since Sunday night and his breath would have sent a buzzard reeling in dismay.

And among the other pallbearers present were Louis X. Selvin, executive president of Magna; an ex-Mayor; an ex-Governor; three outstanding stars (selected by Sam Vix on the basis of the latest popularity poll conducted by Paula Paris for the newspaper syndicate for which she worked); the president of the Motion Picture Academy; a Broadway producer in Hollywood making comical short subjects; Randy Round, the famous Broadway columnist, to whom no set in filmland was forbidden ground; an important official of the Hays office; and a special delegate from the Friars’ Club. There was a good deal of crowding.

And somehow, aeons later, the motored processional, rich with Isotta-Fraschinis, Rolls-Royces, Cofds, Lincolns, and special-bodied Duesenbergs managed to reach and penetrate the memorial park — Hol-lywoodese for “cemetery” — where a veritable ocean of mourners surged in eye-bursting waves, mourning, to await the interment ceremonies; and the Bishop, who seemed indefatigable, read another magnificent service while a choir of freshly scrubbed angel-faced boys in cute surplices sang magnificently, and thirty-one more women fainted, and ambulances came unobtrusively and plaintively to the scene, and one headstone was knocked over and two stone angels lost their left arms, and Jack and Blythe were lowered side by side into magnificent blue spruce-trimmed graves edged in giant fern and topped off with plaits of giant lilies; and Bonnie, disdaining the Boy Wonder’s arm, stood cold, lifeless, straight of back, and watched her mother make the last slow descent, magnificently dramatic, into the earth; and Ty stood alone in his own empty dimension, with incurving shoulders and a wonderfully bitter smile, watching his father’s clay make the same slow descent; and finally it was practically — not quite — over, and the only part of her costume Bonnie surrendered to posterity was her dry black lawn handkerchief, snatched from her hand by a sabled fat woman with maniacal eyes as Butcher led Bonnie back to his limousine; and Ty, observing, lost the last shred of his temper and shook his fist in the fat woman’s face, to be dragged off by Lew, Ellery, and Alan Clark; and stars and stars and stars wept and wept, and the sun shone blithely over Hollywood, and everybody had a lovely time, and Sam Vix said with emotion, wiping the dampness from under his black patch, that it had all been simply — there was no other word for it — magnificent.

But once safely away from the Argus-eyed mob, Bonnie gave vent to a wild sobbing in the Boy Wonder’s arms as the limousine dodged through traffic trying to escape the pursuing cars of the insatiable press.

“Oh, Butch, it was so awful. People are such pigs. It was like the Rose Bowl p-parade. It’s a wonder they didn’t ask me to sing over the r-radio!”

“It’s over now, darling. Forget it. It’s all over.”

“And grandfather didn’t come. Oh, I hate him! I phoned him myself this morning. He begged off. He said he was ill. He said he couldn’t stand funerals, and would I try to understand. His own daughter! Oh, Butch, I’m so miserable.”

“Forget the old buzzard, Bonnie. He’s not worth your misery.”

“I hope I never see him again!”

And when they got to the Glendale house Bonnie begged off and sent Butcher away and instructed Clotilde to bang the door in the face of any one, friend or foe, who so much as tapped on it. And she shut herself up in her bedroom, sniffing, and tried paradoxically to find comfort in the bulky bundles of mail Clotilde had left for her.

Ty, who had to traverse the width of Hollywood to get home to Beverly Hills, changed from open rebellion to a sulky, shut-in silence; and his escort wisely left him to Louderback’s stiff ministrations and departed. He had scarcely finished his third brandy when the telephone rang.

“I’m not in,” he snarled to Louderback. “To any one, d’ye hear? I’m through with this town. I’m through with every one in it. It’s a phony. It’s mad. It’s vicious. Everybody here is phony and mad and vicious. Tell whoever it is to go to hell.”

Louderback raised suffering eyes ceilingward and said into the telephone: “I’m sorry, Miss Stuart, but Mr. Royle—”

“Who?” yelled Ty. “Wait. I’ll take it!”

“Ty,” said Bonnie in a voice so odd a cold wave swept over him. “You’ve got to come over at once.”

“What the devil’s the matter, Bonnie?”

“Please. Hurry. It’s — frightfully important.”

“Give me three minutes to change my clothes.”

When Ty reached Bonnie’s house he found Clotilde weeping at the foot of the hall staircase.

“Clotilde, where’s Miss Stuart? What’s the trouble?”

Clotilde wrung her fat hands. “Oh, M’sieu’ Royle, is it truly you? Of a surety Ma’m’selle has become demented! She is up the stairs demolishing! I desired to telephone M’sieu’ Butch-erre, but Ma’m’selle menaces me... Elle est une tempête!”

Ty took the stairs three at a time and found Bonnie, her mauve crepe negligee flying, snatching things out of drawers like a madwoman. The boudoir, her mother’s, looked as if it had been struck by lightning.

“They aren’t here!” screamed Bonnie. “Or I can’t find them, which is the same thing. Oh, I’m such a fool!”

She collapsed on her mother’s bed. Her hair was bound loosely by a gold ribbon and cascaded like molten honey down her back where the sun caught it.

Ty twisted his hat in his hands, looking away. Then he looked at her again. “Bonnie, why did you call me?”

“Oh, because I suddenly remembered... And then when I looked through the mail...”

“Why didn’t you call Butch? Clotilde says you didn’t want Butch. Why... me, Bonnie?”

She sat very still then and drew the negligee about her. And she looked away from the burn in his eyes.

Ty went to her and hauled her to her feet and put his arms about her roughly. “Shall I tell you why?”

“Ty... You look so strange. Don’t.”

“I feel strange. I don’t know what I’m doing. This is the nuttiest thing of all. But seeing you there on the bed, alone, scared, like a lost kid... Bonnie, why did you think of me first, when you had something important to tell some one?”

“Ty, please. Let go of me.”

“We’re supposed to hate each other.”

She struggled away from him then, not very strongly. “Please, Ty. You can’t. You... mustn’t.”

“But I don’t hate you,” said Ty in a wondering voice. His arms tightened. “I just found that out. I don’t hate you at all. I love you.”

“Ty! No!”

He held her fast and close to him with one arm, and with the other hand he tilted her chin and made her look up at him. “And you love me. You’ve always loved me. You know that’s true.”

“Ty,” she whispered. “Let me go.”

“Nothing doing.”

Her body trembled against him in its rigidity, like a piece of glass struck a heavy blow; and then all at once the rigidity shivered away and her softness gave itself to him utterly.

They stood there clinging to each other, their eyes closed against the hard, unyielding vision of the disordered room.

A long time later Bonnie whispered: “This is insane. You said so yourself.”

“Then I don’t want ever to be sane.”

“We’re both weak now. We feel lost and— That horrible funeral...”

“We’re both ourselves now. Bonnie, if their deaths did nothing else—”

She hid her face in his coat. “It’s like a dream. I felt naked. Oh, it is good to be close to you this way, when I know you and I, of all the people in the world, are—”

“Kiss me, Bonnie. Christ, I’ve wanted to...” His lips touched her forehead, her eyelids, her lashes.

Bonnie pushed away from him suddenly and sat down on the chaise longue. “How about Butch?” she said in an empty voice.

“Oh,” said Ty. The hunger and the gladness drained out of his haggard face very quickly. “I forgot Butch.” And then he cried angrily. “To hell with Butch! To hell with everybody. I’ve been deprived of you long enough. You’ve been my whole life, the wrong way — we’ve got to make up for that. What I thought was hate — it’s been with me, you’ve been with me, night and day since I was a kid in knee-pants. I’ve thought more of you and about you and around you... I’ve more right to you than Butch has!”

“I couldn’t hurt him, Ty,” said Bonnie tonelessly. “He’s the grandest person in the world.”

“You don’t love him,” said Ty with scorn.

Her eyes fell. “I’m... I can’t think clearly now. It’s happened so suddenly. He loves me.”

“You’ve been my whole life, Bonnie.” He tried to take her in his arms again, seeking her mouth.

“No, Ty. I want some... time. Oh, it does sound corny! But you can’t expect... I’ve got to get used to so much.”

“I’ll never let go of you.”

“No, Ty. Not now. You’ve got to promise me you won’t say anything... about this to anyone. I don’t want Butch to know yet. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe... You’ve got to promise.”

“Don’t think of any one but me, Bonnie.”

She shivered. “The only thing that’s really emerged these last three days has been to see mother avenged. Oh, you simply can’t say real things without sounding — dramatic! But I do want that... badly. She was the sweetest, most harmless darling in the world. Whoever killed her is a monster. He can’t be human.” Her mouth hardened. “If I knew who it was I’d kill him myself, just the way I’d put a mad dog out of the way.”

“Let me hold you, darling—”

She went on fiercely: “Anybody — anybody who was in any way involved... I’d hate him just as much as I’d hate the one who poisoned her.” She took his hand. “So you see, Ty, why all this... why we have to wait.”

He did not reply.

“Don’t you want to find your father’s murderer?”

“Do you have to ask me that?” he said in a low voice.

“Then let’s search together. It’s true — I see it now — we’ve always had at least one thing in common... Ty, look at me.” He looked at her. “I’m not refusing you, darling,” she whispered, close to him. “When all this happened... I admit it, the only one I could think of was you. Ty, they — they died and left us alone!” Her chin began to quiver.

Ty sighed, and kissed it, and led her to the bed and sat her down. “All right, partner; we’re partners. A little private war on a little private crime.” He said cheerfully: “Let’s have it.”

“Oh, Ty!”

“What’s all the excitement about?”

Bonnie gazed up at him through tears, smiling back. And then the smile chilled to a bleak determination, and she withdrew an envelope from her bosom.

“For some time,” Bonnie said, sniffling away the last tear, “mother’d been receiving certain letters. I thought it was the usual crank mail and didn’t pay any attention to them. Now... I don’t know.”

“Threatening letters?” said Ty swiftly. “Let’s see that.”

“Wait. Do you know anybody who sends cards in the mail? Do cards mean anything to you? Did Jack ever get any?”

“No. Cards? You mean playing-cards?”

“Yes, from the Horseshoe Club.”

“Alessandro again, eh?” muttered Ty.

“I’ve been searching for those other envelopes, the ones that came before the — accident. But they’re gone. When I got back from the funeral I began going through a heap of letters and telegrams of condolence and found — this. That’s what made me remember the others.”

Ty seized the envelope. It was addressed in a washed-out blue ink, and the writing — block-letters crudely penned — was scratchy.

“But it’s addressed to Blythe Stuart,” said Ty, puzzled. “And from the postmark it was mailed in Hollywood last night, the nineteenth. That’s two days after her death! It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s why,” said Bonnie tensely, “I think it is important. Maybe when we add up all the things that don’t make sense, we’ll have something that does.”

Ty took out what lay in the envelope and stared at it. “And this is all there was?”

“I told you it was mad.”

The only thing in the envelope was a playing-card with a golden horseshoe engraved on its blue back.

The card was the nine of clubs.

Chapter 10 Freedom of the Press

Whether it was because of the story in the paper or because banishing indecision meant seeing Paula Paris again, Mr. Ellery Queen concluded a three-day struggle with himself by driving on Thursday morning to the white house in the hills.

And there, in one of the waiting-rooms intently conning Paula’s Seeing Stars column in the previous Sunday’s night-edition of the Monday morning paper, sat Inspector Glücke. When he saw Ellery he quickly stuffed the paper into his pocket.

“Are you one of Miss Paris’s doting public, too?” asked Ellery, trying to conceal his own copy of the same edition.

“Hullo, Queen.” Then the Inspector growled: “What’s the use of beating around the bush? I see you’ve spotted that column. Darned funny, I call it.”

“Not at all! Some mistake, no doubt.”

“Sure, that’s why you’re here, no doubt. This dame’s got some tall explaining to do. Give me the runaround since Monday, will she? I’ll break her damned neck!”

“Please,” said Ellery frigidly. “Miss Paris is a lady. Don’t speak of her as if she were one of your policewomen.”

“So she’s hooked you, too,” snarled Glücke. “Listen, Queen, this isn’t the first time I’ve locked horns with her. Whenever she comes up with something important and I ask her — in a nice way, mind you — to come down to HQ for a chin, I get the same old baloney about her not being able to leave this house, this crowd phobia of hers—”

“I’ll thank you,” snapped Ellery, “to stop insulting her.”

“I’ve subpoenaed her from Dan to Beersheba time after time and she always wriggles out, blast her. Doctor’s affidavits — God knows what! I’ll show her up for a phony some day, mark my words. Crowd phobia!”

“Meanwhile,” said Ellery nastily, “the mountain again approaches Mohammed. By the way, what’s doing?”

“No trace of that pilot yet. But it’s only a question of time. My own hunch is he cached a plane somewhere near that plateau, maybe on the plateau itself. Then when he grounded Ty’s plane he simply walked over to his own ship and flew off. You don’t leave much of a trail in thin air.”

“Hmm. I see Dr. Polk has confirmed my guess as to the cause of death officially.”

“Autopsy showed an almost equal amount of morphine, a little over five grains, in each body. That means, Doc says, that a hell of a lot of morphine was dropped into those thermos bottles. Also some stuff Bronson calls sodium allurate, a new barbiturate compound — puts you rockababy.”

“No wonder there was no struggle,” muttered Ellery.

“Polk says the morphine and sodium allurate would put ’em to sleep in less than five minutes. While they were sleeping that terrific dose of morphine began to get in its licks, and they must have died in less than a half-hour.”

“I suppose Jack went first, and Blythe thought he was merely dozing. The soporific performed an important function. You see that? While the first victim, whichever it was, was apparently asleep although really dying or dead the second one, unsuspicious because of that sleeping appearance of the other, would drink from the other thermos bottle. The allurate was a precaution — just in case they didn’t both drink at the same time. Damned clever.”

“Clever or not, it did the trick. Death by respiratory paralysis Polk calls it. The hell of it is we can’t trace the stuff. Sodium allurate’s now available in any drug store, and you know what a cinch it is to lay your hands on morphine.”

“Anything new?”

“Well,” said Glücke bashfully, “I’m not saying — much. I tried tracing the sender of that hamper, but no dice; we found the place it came from, but the order was mailed in and they threw away the letter. Phony name, of course. The plane’s sterile; the only fingerprints are Jack’s and Blythe’s and Ty’s — this guy must have worn gloves throughout. On the other hand...”

“Yes? You’re eating my heart out.”

“Well, we sort of got a line on Jack’s lady-friends. I swear he was a man, that billy-goat! Got a couple of interesting leads.” The Inspector chuckled. “From the way the gals in this town are running for cover you’d think—”

“I’m not in the mood for love,” said Ellery somberly. “How about this man Park? Not a word about him in the news.”

“Oh, he’s dead.”

“What!”

“Committed suicide. It’ll be in tonight’s papers. We found his duds intact in the cheap flophouse in Hollywood where he bedded down, with a note saying he was dying anyway, he was no good to his wife and crippled boy back East, who are on relief, he hadn’t earned enough to keep his own body and soul together for years, and so he was throwing himself to the tuna.”

“Oh,” said Ellery. “Then you didn’t find his body?”

“Listen, my large-brained friend,” grinned Glücke. “If you think that suicide note is a phony, forget it. We verified the handwriting. For another thing, we’ve definitely established the old guy couldn’t fly a plane.”

Ellery shrugged. “By the way, do something for me after you get through boiling Miss Paris in oil.”

“What?” demanded the Inspector suspiciously.

“Put a night-and-day tail on Bonnie.”

“Bonnie Stuart? What the hell for?”

“Blamed if I know. It must be my Psyche sniffing.” Then he added quite without humor: “Don’t neglect that, Glücke. It may be of the essence, as our French friends say.”

Just then one of Paula Paris’s secretaries said with an impish smile: “Will you come in now, Inspector?”

When Inspector Glücke emerged from Paula’s drawing-room he looked positively murderous.

“You like that dame in there, don’t you?” he panted.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ellery, alarmed.

“If you do, get her to talk. Sock her, kiss her, do anything — but find out where she picked up that story!”

“So she won’t talk, eh?” murmured Ellery.

“No, and if she doesn’t I’ll drag her out of this house by that pretty gray streak in her hair and lock her up, crowd phobia or no crowd phobia! I’ll book her on a charge of... of criminal conspiracy! Hold her as a material witness!”

“Here, calm down. You wouldn’t try to coerce the press in this era of constitutional sensitivity, would you? Remember the lamentable case of that newspaperman Hoover.”

“I’m warning you!” yelled Glücke, and he stamped out.

“All right, Mr. Queen,” said the secretary.

Ellery entered the holy of holies soberly. He found Paula finishing an apple and looking lovely, serene, and reproachful.

“You, too?” She laughed and indicated a chair. “Don’t look so tragic, Mr. Queen. Sit down and tell me why you’ve neglected me so shamefully.”

“You do look beautiful,” sighed Ellery. “Too beautiful to spend the next year in jail. I wonder—”

“What?”

“Which part of Glücke’s advice to take — whether to sock you or kiss you. Which would you prefer?”

“Imagine that monster playing Cupid,” murmured Paula. “Disgusting! Why haven’t you at least phoned me?”

“Paula,” said Ellery earnestly. “You know I’m your friend. What’s behind this story?” He tapped the Monday newspaper.

“I asked a question first,” she said, showing the dimple.

Ellery stared hungrily. She looked ravishing in a silver lame hostess-gown with a trailing wrap-around skirt over Turkish trousers. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll take Glücke’s advice?”

“My dear Mr. Queen,” she said coolly, “you overestimate your capacity — and his — for inspiring fear.”

“I,” said Ellery, still staring, “am. Damned if I’m not!”

He advanced. But the lady did not retreat. She just looked at him. “I see,” she said in a pitying way, “that Hollywood’s been doing nasty things to you.”

Mr. Queen stopped dead, coloring. Then he said sharply: “We’ve strayed from the point. I want to know—”

“How it is that my column ran a story in the night-edition of the Monday paper, appearing Sunday evening, to the effect that Jack and Blythe were kidnapped on their wedding trip?”

“Don’t evade the question!”

“How masterful,” murmured Paula, looking down demurely.

“Damn it,” cried Ellery, “don’t be coy with me! You must have written that item, judging by the relative times involved, before the actual kidnapping!” Paula said nothing. “How did you know they were going to be kidnapped?”

Paula sighed. “You know, Mr. Queen, you’re a fascinating creature, but what makes you think you’ve the right to speak to me in that tone of voice?”

“Oh, my God. Paula, can’t you see the spot you’re in? Where’d you get that information?”

“I’ll give you the same answer,” replied Paula coldly, “that I gave Inspector Glücke. And that is — none of your business.”

“You’ve got to tell me. I won’t tell Glücke. But I must know.”

“I think,” said Paula, rising, “that will be all, Mr. Queen.”

“Oh, no, it won’t! You’re going to tell me if I have to—”

“I’m not responsible for the care and feeding of your detective instincts.”

“Blast my detective instincts. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Really, Mr. Queen,” cooed Paula.

Ellery scowled. “I... I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Oh, but you did.” Paula smiled at him; there was that damned dimple again! “Are you truly worried about me?”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant—”

She burst into laughter suddenly and collapsed in her chair. “Oh, this is so funny!” she gasped. “The great detective. The giant intellect. The human bloodhound!”

“What’s so funny about what?” asked Ellery stiffly.

“You thinking I had something to do with those murders!” She dabbed at her eyes with a Batique handkerchief.

Ellery blushed. “That’s — absurd! I never said anything like that!”

“But that’s what you meant. I don’t think so much of your finesse, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Trying to put it on a personal basis! I ought to be furious with you... I am furious with you!” And Ellery, bewildered, saw that she was indeed furious with him.

“But I assure you—”

“It’s contemptible. You overlords, you Mussolinis, you strutting men! You were going to take the poor, psychically ill little newspaperwoman and give her a delightful free ride, weren’t you? Make love to her, sweep her off her silly feet, talk dizzy pretty nonsense — dash gallantly into a romantic attack, hoping all the time you’d find out something damning about her!”

“I should like to point out, in self-defense,” said Ellery with dignity, “that my ‘romantic attack,’ as you put it so romantically, was launched long before either Jack Royle or Blythe Stuart was murdered.”

Paula half-turned her shapely back, applying the handkerchief to her eyes, and Ellery saw her shoulders twitch convulsively. Damn him for a clumsy fool! He had made her cry.

He was about to go to her and act terribly sympathetic and powerful, when to his astonishment and chagrin she faced him and he saw that she was laughing.

“I am a fool,” he said shortly, pierced to the soul. And he stalked to the door. Laughing at him.

She flew past him to set her back against it. “Oh, darling, you are,” she choked. “No. Don’t go yet.”

“I don’t see,” he said, not mollified, but not going, “why I should stay.”

“Because I want you to.”

“Oh, I see.” Not frightfully clever, that remark. What had happened to his celebrated wits? It was bewildering.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Paula, facing him with large, soft eyes. “I’ll give you something I didn’t give that lout Glücke. Now will you stay?”

“Well...”

“There! We’re friends again.” She took him by the hand and led him back to the sofa. Ellery felt suddenly pleased with himself. Not badly handled, eh? Proved something, didn’t it? She liked him. And her hand was so warm and small. She did have tiny hands for a woman of her size. Not that she was so big! Well... she wasn’t small. But not fat. Certainly not! He didn’t like small women. He had always maintained a man cheated himself when he took to his bosom a small woman; man was entitled to a “generous measure of devotion.” Oho, not bad, that! He looked Paula over covertly. Yes, yes, generous was the word. The richness of the cornucopia and the aristocracy of a court sword. Beautiful patrician. Quite the grand lady. Queenly, you might say.

“Queenly,” he chuckled, pressing her hand ardently.

“What?” But she did not withdraw her hand.

“Oh, nothing,” said Ellery modestly. “A little pun I just thought of. Queenly... ha ha! I mean — what were you going to tell me?”

“You do talk in riddles,” sighed Paula, pulling him down with her. “I think that’s why I like you. It’s so much fun just trying to keep up.”

Ellery wondered what would happen if he let his arm — oh, casually, of course — slip around her shoulders. They did look so strong, and yet womanly; were they soft? Would she flee to the arms of her phobia? Science — yes, the pure spirit of science — made it mandatory to try the experiment.

“What,” he mumbled, trying the experiment, “happened?”

For one delicious instant she endured the reverent pressure of his arm. Her shoulders were strong and yet soft; just right, just right. Mr. Queen, in a heat of scientific ardor, squeezed. She jerked away from him like a blooded mare; then she sat still, coloring.

“I’ll tell you just this,” said Paula to her handkerchief, in a voice barely audible. “I—” And she stopped and got up and went to the nearby table and took a cigaret from a box.

Ellery was left with his arm in empty air, feeling rather foolish.

“Yes?” he said abruptly.

She sat down in the Cape Cod rocker, busy with the cigaret. “About an hour before the plane was stolen, I received a telephone call. I was told Jack and Blythe were about to be kidnapped.”

“Where was the call from?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Don’t you know?” She did not reply. “Who called?” Ellery jumped up. “Paula, did you know Jack and Blythe were going to be murdered?”

Her eyes flashed then. “Ellery Queen, how dare you ask me such a filthy question!”

“You bring it on yourself,” he said bitterly. “Paula, it’s — very queer.”

She was wordless for a long time. Ellery mooned down at her sleek hair with its fascinating band of gray. Teach him a lesson, he thought. The one thing he didn’t know anything about was women. And this one was exceptionally clever and elusive; you just couldn’t grasp her. He turned and for the second time made for the door.

“Stop!” Paula cried. “Wait. I’ll... I’ll tell you what I can.”

“I’m waiting,” he growled.

“Oh, I shouldn’t, but you’re so... Please don’t be angry with me.”

Her splendid eyes shed such soft, luminous warmth that Ellery felt himself beginning to melt. He said hastily: “Well?”

“I do know who called.” She spoke in a very low tone, her lashes resting on her cheeks. “I recognized the voice.”

“Then this man didn’t give you his name?”

“Don’t be clever; I didn’t say it was a man. As a matter of fact, this — person did give a name. The right name, because the voice checked.”

Ellery frowned. “Then there was no secret about this caller’s identity? He — or she — made no effort to conceal it?”

“Not the slightest.”

“Who was it?”

“That’s the one thing I won’t tell you.” She cried out at his sudden movement. “Oh, can’t you see I mustn’t? It’s against every rule of newspaper ethics. And if I betrayed an informant once, I’d lose the confidence of the thousands of people who sell me information.”

“But this is murder, Paula.”

“I haven’t committed any crime,” she said stubbornly. “I would have notified the police, except that as a precaution I had the call traced, found it came from the airport, and by the time I got my information the plane had left and the police already knew what had happened.”

“The airport.” Ellery sucked his lower lip.

“And besides, how was I to know it would wind up in murder? Mr. Queen... Ellery, don’t look at me that way!”

“You’re asking me to take a great deal on faith. Even now it’s your duty as a citizen to tell Glücke about that call, to tell him who it was that called you.”

“Then I’m afraid,” she half-whispered, “you’ll have to take it that way.”

“All right.” And for the third time Ellery went to the door.

“Wait! I— Would you like a real tip?”

“More?” said Ellery sarcastically.

“It’s only for your ears. I haven’t printed it yet.”

“Well, what is it?”

“More than a week ago — that’s the thirteenth, last Wednesday — Jack and Blythe took a quiet little trip by plane.”

“I didn’t know about that,” muttered Ellery. “Where did they go?”

“To the Chocolate Mountain estate of Blythe’s father.”

“I don’t see anything remarkable in that. Jack and Blythe had made up by that time. Quite natural for two people intending to be married to visit the bride-to-be’s father.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Ellery scowled. “You possess an omniscience, Paula, that disturbs me. Who poisoned Jack and Blythe?”

“Quien sabe?”

“What’s more to the point, why were they poisoned?”

“Oh,” she murmured, “so that’s bothering you, eh?”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Darling,” she sighed, “I’m just a lonely woman shut up in a big house, and all I know is what I read in the papers. Nevertheless, I’m beginning to think... I could guess.”

“Guess!” He wrinkled his nose scornfully.

“And I’m also beginning to think... you can, too.” They regarded each other in sober silence. Then Paula rose and smiled and gave him her hand. “Goodbye, Ellery. Come and see me some time. Heavens, I’m starting to talk like Mae West!”

But when he had gone, definitely this time, Paula stood still, staring at the panels of the door, her hands to her flushed face. Finally she went into her bedroom, shut the door, and sat down at her vanity and stared some more, this time at her reflection.

Mae West... Well, why not? she thought defiantly. It merely took courage and a... and a certain natural equipment. And he did seem...

She shivered all at once, all over her body. The shiver came from a sensitive spot in the area of her shoulder where Mr. Queen, in a spirit of scientific research, had squeezed it.

Chapter 11 It’s in the Cards

Mr. Queen, even as he drove away from Paula’s house admiring his own charms in thought, felt a premonitory chill. He had the feeling that he had not heard quite everything.

The infallibility of his intuition was demonstrated the instant he stepped into Jacques Butcher’s office. The Boy Wonder was reading Paula’s column in a grim silence, while Sam Vix tried to look unhappy and Lew Bascom conducted a monologue shrewdly designed to distract the Boy Wonder’s mind.

“I’m like the Phoenix,” Lew was chattering. “It’s won’erful how I rise outa my own ashes. We’ll go ahead with the original plans for the picture, see, only we’ll have Bonnie and Ty double for Blythe and Jack, an’—”

“Can it, Lew,” warned Sam Vix.

“Here’s the mastermind,” said Lew. “Looka here, Queen. Don’t you think—”

Without taking his eyes from the newsprint, Butch said curtly: “It’s impossible. For one thing, Bonnie and Ty wouldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t blame them. For another, the Hays office would crack down. Too much notoriety already. Hollywood’s always sensitive about murders.”

“What’s the matter, Butch?” demanded Ellery.

Butch looked up then, and Ellery was startled at the expression on his face. “Nothing much,” he said with an ugly laugh. “Just another little scoop of Paula Paris’s.”

“Oh, you mean that Monday column?”

“Who said anything about Monday? This is today’s paper.”

“Today?” Ellery looked blank.

“Today. Paula says here that Ty and Bonnie are on their way to honeymoonland.”

“What!”

“Aw, don’t believe what that halfwit writes,” said Lew. “Here, Butch, have a drink.”

“But I just saw Paula,” cried Ellery, “and she didn’t say anything about that!”

“Maybe,” said Vix dryly, “she thinks you can read.”

Butch shrugged. “I guess I had to wake up some time. I think I’ve known all along that Bonnie and I... She’s crazy about Ty; if I hadn’t been so blind I’d have realized all that bickering covered up something deep.” He smiled and poured himself a water-glass full of gin. “Prosit!”

“It’s a dirty trick,” mumbled Lew. “She can’t do that to my pal.”

“Do they know you know?” asked Ellery abruptly.

“I guess not. What difference does it make?”

“Where are they now?”

“I just had a call from Bonnie, gay as a lark — I mean, considering. They’re going to the Horseshoe Club to play cops and robbers with Alessandro. Good luck to ’em.”

Ellery departed in haste. He found Bonnie’s scarlet roadster parked outside the Horseshoe Club; the interior was depressingly deserted, with charwomen scrubbing up the marks of the expensive shoes of Hollywood’s elite and one bartender listlessly wiping glasses.

Bonnie and Ty were leaning side by side over the horseshoe-shaped desk in Alessandro’s office, and Alessandro sat quietly before them, drumming a tune with his fingers.

“This seems to be my bad day,” he remarked dryly when he saw Ellery. “It’s all right, Joe; these folks don’t pack rods. Well, shoot. What’s on your mind?”

“Hello, Mr. Queen,” cried Bonnie. She looked lovely and fresh in a tailored gabardine suit and a crimson jellyroll of a hat tipped on her honey hair; her cheeks were pink with excitement. “We were just asking Mr. Alessandro about those IOU’s.”

So they didn’t know yet, Ellery thought. He grinned: “Coincidence. That’s why I’m here, too.”

“You and Inspector Glücke,” chuckled the little fat gambler. “The flattie! Only he was here Monday.”

“I don’t care about that,” barked Ty. “You admit my dad owed you a hundred and ten thousand dollars?”

“Sure I admit it. It’s true.”

“Then how is it those IOU’s were found on his body?”

“Because,” said Alessandro gently, “he paid up.”

“Oh, he did, did he? When?”

“On Thursday the fourteenth — just a week ago.”

“And with what?”

“With good stiff American dough. Thousand-buck bills.”

“You’re a liar.”

The man called Joe growled. But Alessandro smiled. “I’ve stood a lot from you people,” he said amiably, “you and your folks, get me? I ought to give Joe here the office to slug you for that crack, Royle. Only your old man just got his, and maybe you’re a little excited.”

“You and your gorillas don’t scare me.”

“So you think maybe I had something to do with those murders, hey?” Alessandro snarled. “I warn you, Royle, lay off. I run a clean joint and I got a reputation in this town. Lay off, if you know what’s good for you!”

Bonnie sucked in her breath. But then her eyes snapped and she snatched an envelope from her purse and tossed it on the desk. “Maybe you can explain this!”

Ellery goggled as he saw Alessandro take a blue-backed playing-card out of the envelope and stare at it. One of those cryptic messages! He groaned inwardly. They had utterly slipped his mind. He was growing senile.

Alessandro shrugged. “It comes from the Club, all right. So what?”

“That,” growled Ty, “is what we’re trying to find out.”

The gambler shook his head. “No dice. Anybody could get hold of our cards. Hundreds play here every week, and we give dozens of packs away as souvenirs.”

“I imagine,” said Ellery hurriedly, “Alessandro is right. We’re not learning anything here. Coming, you two?”

He herded them out before they could protest, and the instant they were in Bonnie’s roadster he snapped: “Bonnie, let me see that envelope.”

Bonnie gave it to him. He studied it intently, then put it into his pocket.

“Here, I want that,” said Bonnie. “It’s important. It’s a clue.”

“You’re a better man than I am for spotting it as such,” said Ellery. “I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind — as I happen to have kept the others. Oh, I’m an idiot!”

Bonnie almost ran over a Russian wolfhound. “You!” she cried. “Then it was you—”

“Yes, yes,” said Ellery impatiently. “I fancy I’m better qualified for all my forgetfulness. Magna Studios, Bonnie.”

Ty, who was scarcely listening, muttered: “He’s lying. It couldn’t be anything but a lie.”

“What?”

“Alessandro. We’ve only got his word that those IOU’s were paid. Suppose dad refused to pay, or what’s more likely pointed out how impossible it was for him to pay? It would have been pie for Alessandro to get one of his plug-uglies to play the pilot and after poisoning dad and Blythe put the torn IOU’s into dad’s pocket.”

“But why, Ty?” frowned Bonnie.

“Because he’d know he’d never get his money anyway. Because knowing that, he’d want revenge. And planting the IOU’s on dad would make it seem to the police as if the money was paid, in that way eliminating in their minds any possible motive on Alessandro’s part.”

“A little subtle,” said Ellery, “but conceivable.”

“But even if that’s so,” said Bonnie, “why mother? Don’t you see, Ty, that’s the thing that confuses everything? Why was mother poisoned, too?”

“I don’t know,” said Ty doggedly. “All I know is dad couldn’t possibly have laid his hands on a hundred and ten grand. He had no money, and nowhere to get any.”

“By the way,” remarked Ellery casually, “did you people know that in today’s column Paula Paris hints you two have made up rather thoroughly?”

Bonnie went slowly pale, and Ty blinked several times. Bonnie pulled up to a curb and said: “What?”

“She says you’re well on your way to love and kisses.”

Bonnie looked for a moment as if she was going to have a crying spell again. But then her chin came up and she turned on Ty furiously. “And you promised me!”

“But, Bonnie—” began Ty, still blinking.

“You — fiend!”

“Bonnie! You certainly don’t think—”

“Don’t speak to me, you publicity hound,” said Bonnie with a sick, heavy, hot loathing.

That was the start of an extraordinary day, and every one was thoroughly miserable; and when they got to the Boy Wonder’s office Bonnie went to him and deliberately kissed his mouth and then took up the phone and asked Madge to get Paula Paris on the wire.

Butch looked bewilderedly from Bonnie to Ty; both their faces were red with anger.

“Miss Paris? This is Bonnie Stuart speaking. I’ve just heard that, with your usual cleverness, you’ve found out that Ty Royle and I are going to be married, or something as foul and lying as that.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” murmured Paula.

“If you don’t want to be sued for libel you’ll please print a retraction of that story at once!”

“But, Bonnie, I had it on excellent authority—”

“No doubt. Well, I detest him as much as I detest you for listening to him!”

“But I don’t understand. Ty Royle—”

“You heard me, Miss Paris.” Bonnie slammed the phone down and glared at Ty.

“Well, well,” chuckled Lew. “This is like old times, for gossakes. Now about that picture—”

“Then it isn’t true?” asked Butcher slowly.

“Of course not! And as far as this contemptible — person is concerned...”

Ty turned on his heel and walked out. Ellery hurried after him. “You didn’t give that story to Paula?”

“What do you think I am?”

“Hmm. Very pretty scene.” Ellery glanced at him sidewise. “I shouldn’t be surprised if she did it herself.”

“What!” exploded Ty. He stopped short. “Well, by God, maybe you’re right. She’s been stringing me along. I see it all now — the whole thing, leading me on just so she could turn around and slap me down the way she’s always done. What a rotten trick!”

“That’s women for you,” sighed Ellery.

“I thought at first it was that damned Frenchwoman. She’s the only other one who could possibly have overheard.”

“Oh, then you did get cuddly?”

“Well... But it’s over now — finished! I’m through with that scheming little double-crosser for good!”

“Nobly resolved,” said Ellery heartily. “Man’s much better off alone. Where are you going now?”

“Hell, I don’t know.” They were standing before a row of pretty little stone bungalows. “That’s funny. Here’s dad’s old dressing-room. Force of habit, eh?” Ty muttered: “If you don’t mind, Queen, I think I’ll sort of go in alone.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Ellery, taking his arm. “We’ve both been made fools of, so we ought to pool our misery.”

And he went into John Royle’s studio bungalow with Ty.

And found the key to the code.

He found it by accident, merely because he was in the dead man’s room and it occurred to him that no one had disturbed it since the elder Royle’s death. There was even a soiled towel, with the stains of makeup on it, lying on the make-up table beside a new-looking portable typewriter.

So Ellery poked about while Ty lay down on the couch and stared stonily at the oyster-white ceiling; and almost the first thing Ellery found in the table drawer was a creased and crumpled sheet of ordinary yellow paper, 8 ½ by 11 inches in size, one side blank and the other well-filled with typewritten words.

And Ellery took one look at the capitalized, underscored heading: meaning of the cards, and let out a whoop that brought Ty to his feet.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“I’ve found it!” yelled Ellery. “Of all the colossal breaks. The cards! All typed out. Thanks, kind Fates. Yes, here’s the whole thing... Wait a minute. Is it possible—”

Ty frowned over the sheet. Ellery whipped the cover off the portable typewriter, rummaged until he found a sheet of blank stationery, pushed it under the carriage, and began rapidly to type, referring to the crumpled yellow paper from time to time. And as he typed, the gladness went out of his face, and it became dark with thought.

He got up, replaced the cover of the typewriter, put the papers carefully into his pocket, picked up the machine, and said in a flat voice: “Come along, Ty.”

They found Bonnie and the Boy Wonder in each other’s arms, Bonnie’s face still stormy and Butch looking wildly happy. Lew sat grinning at them both, like a benevolent satyr.

“We come bearing news,” said Ellery. “Unhand her, Butch. This requires confabulation.”

“Whassa matter?” asked Lew suspiciously.

“Plenty. I don’t know whether you know it or not, Butch, but Ty and Bonnie do. Blythe for some time before last Sunday had been receiving anonymous messages.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Butch slowly.

“What kind?” frowned Lew. “Threats?”

“Plain envelopes addressed in block letters by obviously a post-office pen, mailed in Hollywood, and containing nothing but playing-cards.” He took out his wallet and tossed over a small bundle of envelopes bound by an elastic. Butch and Lew examined them incredulously.

“Horseshoe Club,” muttered Lew.

“But what do they mean?” demanded Butch. “Bonnie, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think they were important.”

“I’m more to blame. I’ve been carrying these things around in my pocket and didn’t once think of them after Sunday. But just now,” said Ellery, “I found the key to those cards.”

He laid down on Butcher’s desk the yellow sheet. Lew and Butch and Bonnie read it with blank faces.

“I don’t understand,” murmured Bonnie. “It looks like some kind of fortune-telling.”

“It told a remarkably grim fortune,” drawled Ellery. “This — you might call it a codex — tells what each card sent through the mail means.” He picked up the envelopes. “The first envelope Blythe received was mailed on the eleventh of this month and delivered on the twelfth. That was nine days ago, or five days before the murders. And what was in the envelope? Two playing-cards — the knave and seven of spades.”

Automatically they craned at the yellow sheet. The meaning assigned to both the knave and seven of spades was: “An Enemy.”

“Two enemies, then,” said Ellery. “Just as if some one had written: ‘Watch yourself. We’re both after you.’”

“Two — enemies?” said Bonnie damply. There was horror in her eyes as she glanced, as if against her will, at Ty’s pale face. “Two!”

“The second envelope arrived on Friday the fifteenth. And it contained two cards also — the ten of spades and the two of clubs. And what do they mean?”

“‘Great Trouble,’” muttered Ty. “That’s the spade ten. And ‘In Two Days or Two Weeks’ on the deuce of clubs.”

“Two days,” cried Bonnie. “Friday the fifteenth — and mother was murdered on Sunday the seventeenth!”

“And on Sunday the seventeenth, at the field,” continued Ellery, “I saw Clotilde deliver the third envelope. I picked it up after your mother, Bonnie, threw it away. It was this — the eight of spades, torn in half. If you’ll refer to that note at the bottom of the sheet, you’ll see that the meaning is intended to become reversed when a card is torn in half. Consequently the message becomes — only a few minutes before the plane is hijacked and the murder occurs: ‘Threatened Danger Will not Be Warded Off!’”

“This,” said Butcher pallidly, “is the most childish nonsense I’ve ever heard of. It’s completely incredible.”

“Yet here it is.” Ellery shrugged. “And just now Bonnie gave me the last message — the nine of clubs enclosed, meaning: ‘Last Warning.’ That seems the most incredible nonsense of all, Butch, since this ‘warning’ was sent to Blythe two days after her death.”

The Boy Wonder looked angry. “It was bad enough before, but this... Damn it, how can you credit such stuff? But if we must... it does look as if whoever mailed this last letter didn’t know Blythe was dead, doesn’t it? And since all the letters were obviously the work of the same person, I can’t see the relevance of any of it.”

“It’s ridiculous,” jeered Lew. “Plain nut stuff.” Nevertheless he asked: “Say, where’d you find this sheet?”

“In Jack Royle’s dressing-room.” Ellery took the cover off the portable typewriter. “And what’s more, if you’ll examine this sample of typewriting I just made on this machine and compare it with the typing on the yellow sheet, you’ll find that the small h’s and r’s, for instance, have identically broken serifs. Identically broken,” he repeated with a sudden thoughtful note; and he seized a paperweight sunglass on Butcher’s desk and examined the keys in question. Freshly filed! But he put the glass down and merely said: “There’s no doubt about it. This code-sheet was typed on Jack Royle’s typewriter. It was your dad’s, Ty?”

Ty said: “Yes. Yes, of course,” and turned away.

“Jack?” repeated Butch in a dazed voice.

Lew snarled: “Aw, go on. What would Jack want to play games for?” but the snarl was somehow unconvincing. He glanced uneasily at Bonnie.

Bonnie said huskily: “On Jack Royle’s typewriter... You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely. Those broken keys are as good as fingerprints.”

“Ty Royle, did you hear that?” asked Bonnie of his back, her eyes flashing. “Did you?”

“What do you want?” muttered Ty, without turning.

“What do I want?” screamed Bonnie. “I want you to turn around and look me in the face! Your father typed that sheet — your father sent those notes with the cards in them to mother — your father killed my mother!”

He turned then, defensively, his face sullen. “You’re hysterical or you’d know that’s a stupid, silly accusation.”

“Is it?” cried Bonnie. “I knew there was something funny about his repentance, about proposing marriage to mother after so many years of hating her. Now I know he was lying all the time, playing a game — yes, Lew, but a horrible one! — covering himself up against the time when he expected to — to murder her. The engagement, the wedding, it was all a trap! He hired somebody to pretend to kidnap them and then poisoned my mother with his own foul hands!”

“And himself, too, I suppose?” said Ty savagely.

“Yes, because when he realized what an awful thing he’d done he had the first decent impulse of his life and put an end to it!”

“I’m not going to fight with you, Bonnie,” said Ty in a low voice.

“Enemies... two enemies! Well, why not? You and your father! The neat little love scene yesterday... oh, you think you’re clever, too. You know he killed my mother and you’re trying to cover him up. For all I know you may have helped him plan it — you murderer!”

Ty made two fists and then opened them. He rubbed the back of one hand for a moment as if it itched, or pained, him. Then without a word he walked out of the office.

Bonnie flew, weeping, into Butcher’s arms.

But later, when she got home and Clotilde let her in, and she crept up to her room and without undressing lay down on her bed, Bonnie wondered at herself in a dark corner of her aching head. Was it really true? Could it really be? Had he been acting yesterday when he said he loved her? Suspicions were horrible. She could have sworn... And yet there it was. The facts were all against him. Who could have told Paula Paris about their reconciliation? Only Ty. And after she had begged him not to! And then, finding that sheet... You couldn’t wipe out years and years of hatred just by uttering three one-syllable words.

Oh, Ty, you monster!

Bonnie remained in her room, shut against the world, sleepless, sick, and empty. The night passed, and it was a long night peopled with so many shadows that at three o’clock in the morning, railing at her nerves and yet twitchy with morbid thoughts, she got up and switched on all the lights. She did not close her eyes the whole night.

At eight she admitted Clotilde, who was frantic.

“Oh, Bonnie, you shall make yourself ill! See, I have brought p’tit déjeuner. Galettes et marmelade—”

“No, thanks, ‘Tilde,” said Bonnie wearily. “More letters?”

She dipped into the heap of envelopes on the tray. “Dear Bonnie Stuart: My heart goes out to you in your grief, and I want to tell you how much I feel for you...” Words. Why couldn’t people let her alone? And yet that was ungrateful. They were dears, and they had loved Blythe so...

Her heart stopped.

There was an envelope — it looked so horribly familiar... She tore an end off with shaking fingers. But no, it couldn’t be. This one was addressed in typewriting, sloppily. But the envelope, the Hollywood postmark...

A blue playing-card dropped out. The seven of spades.

Nothing more.

Clotilde stared at her open-mouthed. “Mais chérie, il semble que tu—”

Bonnie breathed: “Go away, ‘Tilde.”

The seven of spades. Again... “An Enemy”...

Bonnie dropped the card and envelope as if they were foul, slimy things. And for the first time in her life, as she crouched in her tumbled bed with Clotilde gaping at her, she felt weak with pure fright.

An enemy. Ty... Ty was her only enemy.

Before Ellery left the Magna lot he went on impulse, still toting Jack Royle’s typewriter, to the studio street where the stars’ stone bungalows were and quietly let himself into Blythe Stuart’s dressing-room.

And there, as he had half-expected, he found a carbon copy on yellow paper of the “Meaning of the Cards.” In a drawer, hidden away.

So Blythe had known what the cards meant! Ellery had been positive her too casual dismissal of the letters had covered a frightened knowledge.

He slipped out and made for the nearest public telephone.

“Paula? Ellery Queen.”

“How nice! And so soon, too.” Her voice was happy.

“I suppose,” said Ellery abruptly, “it’s useless for me to ask where you learned about Ty and Bonnie.”

“Quite useless, Sir Snoop.”

“I imagine it was that Clotilde — it couldn’t have been any one else. There’s loyal service for you!”

“You won’t pump me, my dear Mr. Queen,” she said; but from something defensive in her tone Ellery knew he had guessed the truth.

“Or why you didn’t tell me this morning when I saw you. However, this is all beside the point. Paula, would you say Jack Royle killed Blythe Stuart — that his change of heart, the engagement, the wedding, were all part of a careful, murderous scheme to take his revenge on her?”

“That,” said Paula crisply, “is the silliest theory of the crime I’ve heard yet. Why, Jack couldn’t possibly... Is it yours?”

“Bonnie Stuart’s.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “The poor child gave me Hail Columbia over the phone a few moments ago. I suppose running that yarn was a rotten trick, so soon after the funeral. But that’s the trouble with newspaper work. You can’t be nice, and efficient, too.”

“Look, Paula. Will you do me one enormous favor? Print that retraction of the reconciliation story Bonnie demanded. Right away.”

“Why?” Her voice was instantly curious.

“Because I ask you to.”

“Ouch! You are possessive, aren’t you?”

“Forget personalities or your job. This is — vital. Do you know the derivation of that word? Paula, you must. Swing back into the old line — their furious feud from childhood, how they detest each other, how the death of their parents has driven them farther apart. Feed them raw meat. Keep them fighting.”

Paula said slowly: “Just why do you want to keep those poor mixed-up kids apart?”

“Because,” said Ellery, “they’re in love.”

“How logical you are! Or are you a misogamist with a mission in the world? Keep them apart because they’re in love? Why?”

“Because,” replied Ellery grimly, “it happens to be very, very dangerous for them to be in love.”

“Oh.” Then Paula said with a catch in her voice. “Aren’t we all?” and hung up.