The Fourth Side of the Triangle

III The Third Side Lutetia

There was confusion. Dane kept running around looking for the lawyers, who had left the courtroom. Ashton interposed his formidable body between his wife and the sergeant as if he expected an assault. Judy looked about wildly for Dane. Reporters, catching the drama, were beginning to converge on the group with everything flapping. The sergeant said, “I have to ask you to step out of the way, Mr. McKell. This’ll turn into a mob scene if you don’t let me get her out of here quick.”

Detective Mack had materialized; he was reaching around Ashton to get at Lutetia.

Somehow they managed to shoulder their way through the shouting newsmen.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” growled Ashton, “but we’re going down to headquarters all together.”

“You can’t do that, Mr. McKell.”

“Can’t we?”

“There isn’t room in the car—”

“There is in mine.”

“Look, men,” roared the sergeant, “you’ll get your stories later. Mack, hold these croakers off, will you? Let us through!”

“Where’s Dane?”

“Here he is, Mr. McKell!” Judy screamed.

“They’d already left the building.” Dane elbowed his way through. “I’ve phoned their offices.”

“Get out of the way, will you?”

They drove up to police headquarters from the courthouse in the McKell Continental, Velie trying visibly to smooth his feathers. In the lobby he said to the McKells and Judy, “I’m sorry, but you people will have to wait here.”

“Either we all go,” Ashton retorted, “or we all wait until my lawyers get here.”

“That’s not the way we do things, Mr. McKell. Your wife is under arrest—”

Lutetia was standing beside her husband, turned to stone down to the marbled fingers clutching his arm. Dane thought she was going to faint, and he jumped forward to support her on the other side; but she did not. He thought: She’s pretending she isn’t here, that this is all a bad dream. He was not surprised to see her shut her eyes like a child. Then he felt himself shouldered aside by Judy, who slipped her hand into the older woman’s, squeezing it, murmuring something. But Lutetia did not respond.

“Mr. McKell, you going to stand aside?” bellowed the sergeant.

“I am not,” said Ashton. “I know of no state or municipal law forbidding the family and attorneys of an arrested person to be present during the preliminary questioning by the authorities. Unless you allow it, Sergeant, I’m going to insist that my wife be taken before a magistrate at once — you know as well as I that that’s her right until she’s formally charged. Meanwhile, please let us have some place to sit down.”

Sergeant Velie muttered, “Okay. Come on,” and they trooped after him and into Inspector Queen’s office, where he engaged in some hasty, red-eared, whispered explanations. Meanwhile, Ashton handed his wife into a comfortable chair and said to Dane, “Better tell Ramon where we are, so he can tell O’Brien and Heaton when they get here.”

Dane hurried back downstairs. When he returned, he found Inspector Queen talking quietly to Lutetia, with Sergeant Velie standing stormily by. It seemed that Ashton had made a dicker with the Inspector; in return for being allowed to be present during Lutetia’s preliminary questioning, Ashton had agreed not to insist on waiting for the lawyers. Inspector Queen seemed in complete charge of the case now. This, then, was why he had visited the courtroom, what all the whispering and messages at the district attorney’s table had been about.

But why was his mother being held in the murder for which his father had just been acquitted? Dane strained to find out.

“Mrs. McKell, this is as painful to me as it is to you,” the Inspector was saying. “All you have to do is answer some questions to my satisfaction, and that will be that.”

“Whatever I can,” Lutetia whispered. Her tiny hands were clasped about her purse as if it were holding her instead of the other way around.

“And if you want anything, just say so and I’ll have a matron called.”

“Thank you.”

He began.

Her answers tended to be erratic, as if she were not putting her whole mind into the interrogation. Yes, she remembered the night of September 14th. She had had dinner delayed in the hope that her husband might have decided to return home from Washington instead of staying overnight. (Did the merest flush come into her cheeks?) After dinner she had gone to the music room and tried to read. She had dismissed the servants for the night — they all slept out.

“But I found I couldn’t concentrate on Mrs. Oliphant’s novel,” Lutetia said. “So I thought I would catch up on my needlework...” She wandered off into reminiscence. “It reminds me of when I was a girl. I tended to be willful, especially about things like needlework, and my grandmother was quite severe with me about it. ‘When I was a girl,’ she would say, ‘I had to learn spinning and weaving as well.’ I remember when she lay dying. It all came back to her. I suppose she confused me with her sister, after whom I am named, because she said to me, ‘Lutetia, have you carded the flax yet?’ Of course I said, “Yes, dear.’ And it seemed to me she looked pleased. She said to me then, ‘Whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with all thy might.’”

Dane thought: Damn your girlhood reflections, Mother! You’ll hang yourself.

Inspector Queen had listened patiently. Whether he found Lutetia’s reminiscence of special interest Dane could not tell. The old man waited for a moment, then he cleared his throat. “How long did you spend on your needlework that evening, Mrs. McKell? Can you recall?”

She looked surprised. “I didn’t spend any time at all on my needlework. I said I only thought about doing so.”

“You did, didn’t you? Excuse me, Mrs. McKell, I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Then you didn’t do any sewing that night. What did you do? — after putting the book down, I mean?”

Astonishingly, Lutetia uttered the ghost of a giggle. Inspector Queen looked dumfounded. It was as if Queen Victoria had belched.

“I’m ashamed to say, Inspector. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. Oh, dear, now you’ll think me a complete scatterbrain. Dane, you remember I told you when you came in just past midnight—”

The Inspector glanced at Dane.

“Mother was watching television,” Dane said curtly. He was embarrassed. Why did she have to be such a prig? The old policeman would think it was an act. How could he believe she was being herself? How could anyone who didn’t know her?

“Well, we won’t make a federal case out of that,” Inspector Queen said dryly. “It’s a vice shared by a lot of people, they tell me. Mrs. McKell, how long did you watch TV?”

“For almost three hours,” Lutetia confessed.

“Do you remember what you saw?”

“Oh... dear. I’m afraid I can’t. They’re all sort of the same, aren’t they? I do recall some old motion picture...”

The Inspector pressed her softly. He got little out of her. She had not left the apartment, she had had no visitors.

“We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,” the old gentleman remarked at last.

“Because there’s no place to get.” Ashton McKell rose. “My wife stayed home, Inspector. How can she remember the details of an evening in which nothing happened, and during which she was alone? On what ground are you questioning her? Why are you holding her?”

“Sit down, Mr. McKell,” said Inspector Queen. “This is not a desperate detention — we would hardly take a step like this without a basis in hard fact. Will you sit down? Please?”

Ashton sat down.

“Let’s begin with the fundamentals again — motive, opportunity, means. I hate to poke around old sores, but Mrs. McKell certainly had motive against Sheila Grey, in view of the circumstances — the woman her husband was seeing on the sly.” Ashton reddened; Lutetia reached over and patted his hand, turning him redder. “She also had opportunity, very good opportunity — living in the same building, able to get up to the penthouse any time she wanted without being spotted, and by her own admission just now, all alone all evening until after midnight, when your son came home. There are only four apartments in the building — the Clementses are on a cruise, no one is occupying the Dill apartment at present, Mr. Dill’s will being contested, with the apartment one of the assets his heirs are wrangling about. And the elevator is self-service.

“As for means.” The Inspector paused. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t tell you this, Mr. McKell, but considering that you were acquitted today in the same case, you people are entitled to know just why we’ve made this arrest. You see, today we found new evidence.”

“Evidence?” Dane echoed. “What evidence?”

The old man took from the bowels of his desk a dainty lace handkerchief, bunched together as if it were wrapped around something. The monogram in the corner lay exposed.

“ALDeWMcK,” he said, pointing to it. “It would be a pretty remarkable coincidence if anybody else in any way involved with Sheila Grey had this monogram. Anyway, there won’t be any trouble identifying the handkerchief. This is your property, Mrs. McKell, isn’t it?”

She swallowed and nodded.

The Inspector opened the handkerchief as if it held some sacred relic. Inside nestled five brass-cased .38 cartridges.

Ashton McKell gaped at them. “Where did you find those?”

“In the same place as the handkerchief — in the bottom of a dressing-table drawer in your wife’s dressing room. We did it legally,” he added gently, “with a search warrant.” Yes, thought Dane, and you did it damned fast — after that bartender’s testimony gave you some second thoughts. “Along with the handkerchief and these five cartridges,” and Inspector Queen reached into his drawer again and brought out a small box, “we found this ammo box, which according to the label should contain twenty .38 cartridges. Do you want to count how many are in the box?” He removed the lid; some were missing. “I’ll save you the trouble. It contains fifteen cartridges.

“But the five missing cartridges,” the Inspector went on, “are not the five cartridges we found wrapped up in the handkerchief. The missing ones, like these left in the box, were live ammunition. These five in the handkerchief are blanks.”

“What?” Ashton said feebly.

“Miss Grey was killed with a Smith and Wesson .38 Terrier revolver. An S. & W. 38 Terrier holds only five bullets. — Were you going to say something, Mr. McKell?”

“Are you trying to tell us,” the elder McKell asked out of stiff lips, “that the five blanks in that handkerchief are the same blanks I put into the revolver?”

“Exactly. Somebody removed the five blanks you put into the gun and substituted five live shells — the five missing from this box. And the question is: Who was that somebody?”

There was a long pause. Lutetia’s eyes were shut again. Judy’s lips had turned pearly. In the silence the old clock on the Inspector’s wall ticked noisily.

Finally Inspector Queen asked in a very kind voice, “Would you care to answer that question, Mrs. McKell?”

Lutetia opened her eyes. Her little tongue-tip flicked into view and vanished.

Ashton said hoarsely, “Don’t answer another question, Lu. Not one more!”

But Lutetia said, “Why, no, Inspector Queen, I... don’t know that I can.”

It was a painful moment. Dane wished he were a thousand miles away. Judy seemed about to be sick. Ashton’s hand groped for his wife’s and engulfed it.

“Motive,” said the Inspector. “Opportunity. No alibi. And here are the means. You’ll recall we took a set of everyone’s fingerprints for comparison purposes after your arrest, Mr. McKell. So we had Mrs. McKell’s on file. Well, right after we found these blanks today, we examined them for prints. We found a partial print of Mrs. McKell’s right forefinger and thumb on the jackets of three of these five blanks. And nobody else’s. That means that you, Mrs. McKell, and you alone, handled those blanks. You removed them from the gun that subsequently killed Miss Grey.”

Lutetia nodded a very little, like an old woman in her dotage. Even the Inspector seemed to realize that it was not a nod of acquiescence so much as an uncontrollable tremor.

“Hold on,” said Ashton McKell hoarsely. “Did you find any fingerprints on the cases of the live shells in the gun at the time Sheila Grey’s body was found?”

“We did,” Inspector Queen replied, “and if the D.A. knew I’d told you that I’d face departmental charges. Well, I’ve stuck my neck out before. I suppose I want you people to know we’re not making wild charges out of pique. Yes, we found unmistakable prints of Mrs. McKell’s fingers on two of the five live cartridges. Now you know what this is all about. You, you alone, Mrs. McKell, substituted the live shells for the blank ones in the gun that killed Sheila Grey. You, and you alone, Mrs. McKell, turned that harmless gun into a murder weapon. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t come to the conclusion that you did so for the purpose of committing murder with it.

“So let’s try it again, Mrs. McKell. Do you have anything to tell me?”

“No, you don’t!” shouted Ashton. He actually clapped his hand over his wife’s mouth. “Don’t breathe another syllable, Lu! You don’t have to say a word till you’ve had a chance to talk to O’Brien. That’s my wife’s right, Inspector!”

“It certainly is.” The old policeman was on his feet now. “But I’m going to ask you one more question anyway. Mrs. McKell, did you shoot Sheila Grey to death?”

“She’s not going to answer,” Ashton said furiously.

The Inspector shrugged. “Get the wheels rolling, Velie,” he said. “Drop the suspicion-of-murder charge. I’ve already talked to the district attorney, and he agrees that without satisfactory answers — and they’re not satisfactory — Mrs. McKell is to be formally charged with the murder of Sheila Grey.”

Bail was speedily arranged. Ashton McKell had said, “Let’s have no nonsense about not accepting bond. One fool in the family is enough.”

Lutetia was submissive. Had her husband advised it, she would have marched with equal submissiveness to jail, to make her bed with the prostitutes, drug addicts, shoplifters, and drunks in the euphemistically named House of Detention for Women in Greenwich Village.

Robert O’Brien was hors de combat — this combat, at any rate. The legal warrior was occupied with another case, also a murder indictment, for the trial of which he had exhausted his last legal delay. “The guy is a professional hood,” he told Ashton. “I’m positive he’s committed at least two gangland executions with which he’s never even been charged, and he’ll sure as hell commit more if he gets the opportunity. But he didn’t commit this one, and this is the one I’m concerned with. Of course, as soon as we get Falconetti’s trial out of the way I’ll be back with you, Mr. McKell. But I can’t predict just when that will be. You’d better get another lawyer.”

The tapestries that had graced the walls of the Château de Saint-Loy — unicorns, vainly coursed by hounds and hunters, captured and gentled by comely virgins; Helen, not yet of Troy, and her retinue departing for Cytherea; King Louis confuting the heathen — looked down upon a scene that was certainly not the least strange they had viewed in their long centuries.

There was Lutetia McKell presiding over her tea service as if nothing had happened. “Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea, Judy? You look chilled. I’ve some of your favorite keemun. Ashton? Dane?”

They exchanged despairing glances. “I don’t think any of us wants tea at the moment, Mother,” Dane said. “Dad was saying something.”

“Forgive me, dear. I’m afraid I wasn’t listening closely.”

Her husband inhaled. “Lutetia. Did you substitute the live cartridges for the blanks?”

“Yes, dear,” said Lutetia.

Dane cried, “Why?”

“Well, darling, you see, when your father lent Miss Grey the revolver, because she was nervous about being alone in the penthouse, he told me about it.” Of course. Didn’t his father tell her everything? Well, Dane thought grimly, not everything. “He’d said he was afraid, however, Miss Grey not being accustomed to firearms and so on, that there might be an accident. So, he told me, he’d put blank bullets in the revolver instead of real ones, although he’d bought live shells at the time he purchased the revolver. That’s how I knew, Ashton, that the live cartridges were on the top shelf of your wardrobe.”

Ashton groaned.

Lutetia continued in the same bright tone. One day, she said, she had telephoned the penthouse. Sheila Grey’s maid, who came in daily, answered. Miss Grey, she had told Lutetia, was out. Lutetia had hung up without giving her name.

She had then dressed properly for a neighborly visit and gone up to the penthouse and rung the bell. The maid answered the door.

“Is Miss Grey in?”

“No, ma’am. I don’t expect her for sure till six.”

“You mean she may return before then? In that case, I believe I’ll wait. I’m Mrs. McKell, who lives downstairs.”

The maid had hesitated only for a moment. “I guess it’ll be all right, ma’am. I recognized you. Come in.”

Lutetia had sat down in a chair in Sheila’s living room (not a very comfortable one, she said: “I don’t care for Swedish Modern, do you, Judy?”) and the maid had excused herself. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’ve got my work to do.”

Although Lutetia had never been in the penthouse apartment during Sheila Grey’s occupancy, she was familiar with the apartment’s layout. There were only two bedrooms, one a guest room; any woman could tell at a glance which was which, and both lay at the side of the apartment away from the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a hall. Lutetia waited a few moments, then quietly got up and walked through the door on the other side.

She was wrong about the guest room; there was none. Sheila had converted her second bedroom into a workroom; here was where she plotted her fashions, the GHQ of her organization. With all deliberate speed Lutetia proceeded to the master bedroom.

Logic demanded that the revolver be kept in the night-table drawer. And there it was. She took the weapon, removed its blanks, inserted the live ammunition, returned the revolver to the drawer, and left the bedroom with the blanks clutched in her handkerchief.

She had summoned the maid, said she would not wait after all, and returned to her apartment.

“Then I put the box of bullets in my dressing-table drawer,” Lutetia concluded conversationally, “along with the blank ones in the handkerchief. That’s all there was to it, darling.”

Ashton pounded his palm in frustration. “But why, Lutetia, why?”

“I couldn’t think what else to do with them.”

“I don’t mean that.” Her husband passed his hand over his face. “I mean the whole thing. Why did you switch cartridges at all? What on earth did you have in mind? Didn’t you realize the danger?”

“You don’t understand, Ashton. The danger, as you call it, was the whole point. Some night when that woman — girl — would be all alone, I intended to visit her and tell her that I knew all about you and her. I was going to threaten her, don’t you see?”

“Threaten her?” repeated Ashton, blankly.

“And taunt her, too.”

“Mother,” rasped Dane, “what are you talking about?”

“And make her so angry that she’d shoot me.”

Had Lutetia broken out in Swahili, or Urdu, they could not have regarded her with more bafflement.

“Shoot you,” her husband repeated. The words evidently meant nothing to him. “Shoot you,” he said again.

“Shoot you, Mother?”

“Don’t you see? It was all my fault, your father’s consorting with that woman, turning his back on his wife. If I had been a better, more understanding wife to your father, he would never have taken up with another woman. It was my doing, really. I was the guilty one.”

“You’re lying!” cried Ashton McKell. “What kind of story is that? Do you expect any grown person to believe such a yarn? Lutetia.” He glared at her. “Did you shoot Sheila?”

She was staring at him in horror, like a child who, having told the exact truth, is still accused of fibbing. Her lower lip trembled.

“Ashton, no. How can you think such a thing? I changed those bullets for the reason I told you. Don’t you believe me?”

“No,” he flung at her. Then he muttered, “I don’t know.”

She’s insane, Dane thought, with the creeping kind of insanity that just touches the edge of another world, and he doesn’t see it. He’s still trying to judge her rationally.

The thought was so acute that Dane almost groaned aloud. He had never realized it; now, in the flash of the revelation, it was as if he had known it all his life. Everything was illuminated by it — his mother’s unnatural selflessness, her timidities resting on a bedrock of Victorian stubbornness, her self-isolation, her clinging to a past that for her must always be the present. How long has this been coming on? he wondered; and, looking back, it was impossible for him to judge just when she had crossed the line.

Whenever it had been, there was no spark to convert it into action until she became aware of her husband’s “spiritual infidelity.” Then, in her system of twisted values, she moved; she took the blame on herself by seeking punishment, at the same time that she “protected” her beloved husband and master and laid the onus of punishment on the other woman’s shoulders.

What his father must be thinking, Dane could not imagine. The whole concept was so extraordinary — the guilty man shriven of guilt, but feeling guilt still — that probably his thoughts were one boiling confusion. The elder McKell’s trapdoor mouth was half open, his commanding eyes glossy, his breathing labored. He looked like a man in shock.

It was Judy Walsh who said gently, “But didn’t you realize, Mrs. McKell, that what you did might lead to the accidental death of someone else?” Judy knew.

Lutetia shook the head that now rested on the lacy jabot of her bosom. “I’m so sorry. I never thought of that. How stupid of me. I was so sure it could only happen to me. But it didn’t... The nights came and went, and they were lonely nights... I could never bring myself to carry out my plan.”

Judy turned away; her eyes were filled with tears.

“No,” Lutetia said slowly. “Somehow, I never went back there.”

In Robert O’Brien’s unavailability, and on his recommendation, Ashton McKell engaged the services of Henry Calder Barton, a well-known criminal lawyer of the old school. Barton, assisted and advised by Heaton, indicated his line of defense.

“They can certainly show that Mrs. McKell could have done it,” Barton said. He was a heavy-set old man with a crop of white hair above a turkey-red face. “But they just as certainly can’t prove that she did do it. We’ll play the unknown-prowler bit for all it’s worth.”

“And how much, Mr. Barton,” asked Ashton bleakly, “is that?”

“Quite a lot. After all, Sheila Grey was no frightened little old lady seeing burglars under her bed at the shifting of every shadow. As I understand it, she was a shrewd, clearheaded businesswoman, a woman of spirit and action. If a woman like that became suddenly afraid to be alone, it’s a reasonable assumption that she had cause, or thought she had. There has been a rash of cases of forcible nocturnal entry in Park Avenue apartments this past year, many of them unsolved, and some very near your building. A prowler might well have got into the penthouse apartment, found a gun while rummaging in the drawers, and used it on being surprised by the occupant. If he was wearing gloves, his prints would not be found. Prints are rarely found on guns, anyway, even when they’re handled without gloves on. Yes, I think we can play up the prowler theory very effectively.”

Ashton McKell nodded, but his attention seemed elsewhere. Dane doubted that his father was thinking of prowlers, real or imagined, or of Sheila Grey as merely a “shrewd, clearheaded businesswoman.” Dane himself knew her as far more than that; what must his father know of her? And now she was dead, and no one’s guilt or innocence, no argument or theory, could change the fact for Ashton McKell.

As for Barton, Dane thought he was whistling in the dark. His mother’s fingerprints on the blank shells and on two of the live ones would alone outweigh the heaviest prowler structure Barton could build up in argument.

He took Barton aside. “I think my mother is mentally unstable,” he said quietly. “Isn’t that a better line of defense?”

The lawyer looked at him sharply. “What makes you think your mother is of unsound mind?”

“That story she tells about why she loaded the gun with live ammunition. That wasn’t an act, Mr. Barton, though I know you think it was — I was watching your face... I realize now that this has been coming on for a long time.”

Barton shook his head. “I don’t see how we can effectively use it. It isn’t as if she admits having pulled the trigger... I think we have a better chance with the prowler line. Let the burden of proof rest on De Angelus. He hasn’t got as good a case as he apparently thinks he has. At least in my opinion. There’s a long, long step between proving that she loaded the gun and proving that she pulled the trigger, Mr. McKell. Now don’t worry. We can always pull in the psychiatrists as a secondary line of defense...”

Dane remained unconvinced.

For all the ease with which Dane had accepted her in his arms at the climax of his father’s trial, Judy found their relations becoming more distant. She could not read his mind, but there was no mistaking the coldness of his manner. That moment in the courtroom began to appear an unguarded outpost in time, along with their previous embrace in her apartment. Could his mother’s predicament account for his increasing withdrawal? Judy wondered painfully. That could not be the only reason, even if it was a reason. Something else was bothering him. But what?

Judy phoned him one night after a strained dinner at the McKells’. Dane had driven her home in almost total silence and left her abruptly.

“Dane, this is Judy.”

“Judy?”

She waited. He waited. “Dane, I must know. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“Something is. You seem so...”

He laughed. “My father’s been tried for murder, my mother is under arrest on the same charge — what could be wrong?”

While Judy angrily blinked back the tears, she heard the connection broken. So she stumbled to bed.

She did not phone him again, and when finally he phoned her she assumed a coldness to match his.

“Yes, Dane.”

“I’m just transmitting a message,” he said dully. “Dad and I talked to Ellery Queen a while ago, and he wants us to visit him tomorrow. Dad wants you along. Will you come?”

“Of course.”

She waited, but he said nothing more, and after a moment she hung up. His voice had never sounded so lifeless. The crazy thought struck her that they were all dead — Dane, his parents, Ellery Queen, herself — and that the only living entity in the universe was Sheila Grey. It made her hate Sheila Grey... That was when Judy gave way to her tears.

“Do you own shares in this hospital,” Dane asked, “or are they holding you prisoner?”

Ellery was in the same room at the Swedish-Norwegian Hospital; he was in the same chair, his hockey goalie’s legs propped up. The casts looked new.

“The legs weren’t knitting properly. They’ve had to monkey around with them.” Ellery seemed tired, restless. “It’s a good thing I have no serious psychological problems, or I’m sure I’d be thinking of myself as Toulouse-Lautrec.”

“You poor man.” Lutetia stooped and kissed him on the brow.

“Thank you, Mrs. McKell,” Ellery said. “That hasn’t been done to me for a very long time.”

Dane was wondering what direction her behavior would take next when she said, “Well, I felt I hadn’t thanked you properly for what you did for my husband.”

There was a silence. Then Ellery said, “We’ll have to do the same for you, won’t we? How do matters stand, Mr. McKell?”

There was little to report and, of that little, little that was new. Barton was still talking cheerfully.

“I don’t doubt an acquittal,” Ashton McKell said, convincing no one, perhaps, but his wife. “However, I’d like something better, Mr. Queen, than the equivalent of the Scotch verdict of Not Proven. I don’t want any loose ends.”

“In this business, Mr. McKell,” Ellery said dryly — perhaps he was piqued by a certain commanding-officer quality in the McKell voice — “we generally take what we can get.”

He began to talk to Lutetia of inconsequential things — the deadly sameness of hospital life, her taste in flowers (did she like the ones in the vase? would she take one and pin it on her dress?) — nothing, at first, to remind her that today was Friday, and that in three days she would be going on trial for murder.

Gently and step by step (did he suspect? Dane thought) the invalid led Lutetia to describe once more the events of September 14th.

“So after the servants left for the night, you were completely alone, Mrs. McKell?”

“Completely.”

“You didn’t leave the apartment, even for a few minutes? For a stroll? Some air?”

No, she had not left the apartment for so much as thirty seconds. Of that she was positive. She had not even gone to the door, because no one had rung or knocked.

“How about the telephone? Did you speak to anyone on the phone?”

She hesitated. “Oh, dear.”

“Then you did?”

“I think I did.”

“To whom?”

“I can’t remember. Some man, I think it was.”

“About what?”

She smiled uncertainly. “I feel an utter fool. I just don’t recall. The only reason I remember a call at all is that I was half expecting my husband to phone from Washington.”

“This man called you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure of that.”

“I think I’m sure. I’d probably remember if I made a call to anyone.”

Dane could have shaken her. “Mother, for heaven’s sake, think. This could be all-important. Who phoned you?”

“Dane, don’t look at me that way. If I remembered, don’t you think I’d say? I wasn’t paying much attention to anything that evening. You know television. You just sit there in a vacuum...”

Yes, Dane thought, where you live most of the time.

“...and then so much has happened since, it’s quite driven the details of that evening out of my head.”

“Mrs. McKell, Dane is right,” Ellery said. “This could be of the utmost importance. You simply must try to recollect who called you. Was it during the early part of the evening, or late?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it a wrong number?”

“I don’t believe so...”

“Someone you knew well?”

“Oh, I’m sure not. A stranger, I’m pretty sure of that.” This she said brightly, even anxiously, as at a minor triumph that might be snatched away from her. “I suppose that’s why I don’t remember. It couldn’t have been anything of personal importance.”

“At the time, perhaps not. Now... In any event, you spent the entire evening watching TV — nothing else.”

“That’s correct, Mr. Queen.”

“I want you to keep thinking about that call, Mrs. McKell. It will come back to you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Ellery sagged. He began to rub the bridge of his nose. “We seem to be hung up, don’t we? We have your word, Mrs. McKell, that you didn’t leave your apartment the entire time. Obviously, if you didn’t leave the apartment, you couldn’t have shot Miss Grey. The trouble is, we have only your word for it. Forgive me if I sound like a bookkeeper...

“The problem gets down to the absolute need to substantiate Mrs. McKell’s story,” Ellery told the others. “How to do that is the heart of the business. Her only contact with the outside world, unless she can remember who phoned her, was by way of the television set. Too bad we don’t live in an era of two-way TV communication, as in the science-fiction stories. Well! We seem to have arrived exactly nowhere.”

He sounded fagged; his whole personality appeared to have changed since their discussions of Ashton McKell’s predicament.

“Let me keep thinking about this,” he said. “I’ll discuss it with my father, too.”

“But he’s in charge of the police end of the case,” Dane protested.

“Exactly.”

It was an unsatisfactory session all around. They rose to go in an atmosphere of helpless gloom. The very air in the room smelled stale.

They were at the door when Ellery suddenly said, “Oh, one thing. It probably won’t lead anywhere—”

“Just tell me what it is, Mr. Queen,” said Ashton McKell.

“I’m curious about Sheila Grey’s work. I’d like to see her fashion designs. What’s her establishment called?”

“The House of Grey.”

Ellery nodded. “Can you bring me her drawings, photos, advertisements — anything you can lay your hands on of her creative work, or get permission to borrow? Particularly recent material. But I would like to get an all-over picture, going years back, if necessary.”

“Why, Mr. Queen?”

“If I could answer that, I wouldn’t need the material. Say it’s a hunch.”

“I don’t know if we can...”

“I’ll get it,” Dane said. “I’ll go to work on it right away. Is that all, Mr. Queen?”

“No, when you do bring me the material I’d appreciate Miss Walsh’s coming along with you. You can describe the annual collections to me from a woman’s point of view, Miss Walsh — I’m afraid I know as little as most men about women’s fashions. Will you do that?”

They left him pulling at his lip, and squinting along the bulky line of his casts.

Sheila Grey had died intestate. Her estate fell to an only relative living in Kansas, a sister with a well-to-do invalid husband. Mrs. Potter had no need for money and no interest in The House of Grey. She had asked the staff to carry on for the time being, had signed powers of attorney, had given John Leslie $100 and the request that he “look after things” in the penthouse apartment; and immediately after the funeral she had flown back home.

Dane told Leslie what it was they wanted.

“I don’t know, Mr. Dane,” the doorman said. “Seems like it wouldn’t be right, me letting anybody take anything from Miss Grey’s apartment. Even you, sir. I could get into trouble.”

“Suppose it was okay with the police,” Dane said. “Would you do it then, John?”

“Sure, sir.”

Dane called Ellery; Ellery called his father; Inspector Queen called Sergeant Velie. In the end, Dane got what Ellery wanted. As the Inspector said, “If he can borrow a defendant, I don’t see any harm in letting him have a look at some drawings.”

Sheila Grey had been systematic in her filing. With Sergeant Velie standing by, Dane and Judy went through the dead woman’s workroom in the penthouse. From 1957 on, everything was neatly in place, in chronological order. Under the sergeant’s eye they transferred the contents of the files into boxes they had brought for the purpose. Dane signed a receipt, the sergeant countersigned it, John Leslie went off happy, and at 10 A.M. Saturday, Dane and Judy presented themselves, cum boxes, in the Queen room at the Swedish-Norwegian Hospital.

Ellery perked up at sight of them. A quick riffle through some of the material, and he gestured toward the walls. “I had my Valkyrie nurse buy up all the local stocks of Scotch tape. Let’s start to the right of the door and tape everything up in the proper time sequence... all around the room — drawings, photos, ads, what-have-you. And if the walls give out, spread them on the floor. You’ll note that I persuaded the medical powers to let me abandon my chair for a wheelchair. That’s for mobility.

“Judy, you arrange. Dane, you tape. I’ll ask questions if and as the spirit — and my ignorance — move.”

Judy set to work. She handed Dane the material pertaining to Sheila Grey’s first-shown collection, late in 1957, and he taped them to the wall. In a short time Judy was moved to voice her pleasure.

“Aren’t these Lady Sheila things stunning,” she exclaimed. “Even if they are six years out of date.”

“Lady Sheila?” Ellery said.

“That’s the name of that particular collection.” Judy pointed. “Each showing has a special collection-name, you see. The next year, 1958, is called Lady Nella. To name a collection gives it more character than just a date. Here — 1959—”

“Lady Ruth,” Ellery read. “Mmm. Sheila was her own name, so that was natural enough. Nella sounds a bit fancy, but I suppose the exotic touch is an asset in this mysterious business. But why Ruth? Kind of Plain Jane, isn’t it? Although... yes, I see.”

Dane, who did not, said, “See what, Mr. Queen?”

“Ruth. Named after the matron of the same name in the Bible book of ditto, I’ll bet a ruffle. I don’t know what an archeologist would say, but you could put these dresses — some of them, anyway — on 1000-Girls-1000 in any self-respecting Hollywood Biblical extravaganza and I, for one, wouldn’t detect a false note. That beautifully ancient simplicity of drape and design. Right, Judy?”

Judy said, “Oh, yes!” Her eyes were shining at the drawings of Sheila Grey’s 1960 collection, named Lady Lorna D., with its subtle influences of Scotch color and pattern — gowns which were not so much kilts as kilty, hats which instantly evoked the tam-o’-shanter and Highland bonnet without being either, purses worn in the manner of sporrans but made from the same material as the gown, hinting of plaids and tartans.

“Lady Lorna D.,” Ellery mused. “D. for Doone, I suppose. Was that Scottish? Well, it doesn’t matter. What’s next, Judy?”

Next — as the drawings and photographs, the slick pages from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, marched around the walls — came Lady Dulcea, 1961. Lady Dulcea educed nothing of the past or of far-off exotica; that collection had aimed at the future, and some of its designs might have gone well with a space helmet. Judy shook her head. “I don’t care much for these, compared with the others, I mean. I’m sure it wasn’t her most popular collection. Of course, Sheila Grey never had a style showing that could really be called a failure.”

“Why Dulcea, I wonder?” asked Ellery. “Any notion, Judy?”

Judy looked dubious. She was already absorbed in the 1962 collection, Lady Thelma, with its daring lines, bold colors, and generally theatrical air. “Isn’t it gorgeous? No wonder it was such a sensation.”

Dane had used up all the available wall space, and the final group was accordingly spread out on the floor.

“What’s this?” Ellery muttered. “This” was the collection Sheila Grey had been working on at the time of her death. In this one there were no photographs, no newspaper articles, no slick magazine illustrations, only drawings. Drawings in various stages of completion, from rough sketches through elaborate mock-ups to the almost-fully-delineated.

“Doesn’t look as if she actually got to finish any of them — even these,” Ellery said. He was squinting hard.

Judy picked up a drawing. “This one looks finished,” she said, handing it to him. “The only one in the batch.” At the bottom of the drawing was what was obviously intended to represent the 1963 collection’s name.

In inked block capitals: LADY NORMA.

“Well, that’s it,” said Judy.

Ellery sat bent over in his wheelchair. He nodded slowly. “I wonder if her death could in any way be connected with the intense rivalries that exist in the world of fashion design. It’s hardly credible that any reputable salon would send a thug or a thief to break into the Grey apartment. But suppose some independent operator — a free-lance industrial spy — decided to snatch what he could and sell it somewhere...”

Dane remembered what Sheila had told him on the subject. Ellery listened closely, interrupting: “Did she name names?” “Did she seem seriously worried?” Then he dropped that line of inquiry and turned to Judy. But Judy could contribute nothing that had any relevance to the murder. Finally he wheeled his chair around the room, examining the material on the walls with the most concentrated care.

He was still in silent communion with Sheila Grey’s handiwork when the blond nurse came in with a doctor.

“I’m afraid you two will have to excuse me now.”

“Shall we come back this afternoon?” Dane asked Ellery.

“No, you’d better give me some time to digest all this.”

In the corridor, Dane and Judy exchanged despairing glances. It would not have cheered them to know that in his hospital room Ellery wore very much the same look.

Judy and Dane met on Sunday. Neither found much to say. Finally Judy could stand it no longer.

“Do you feel as discouraged as I do?”

“I’ll match my dragging chin against yours any day.”

“You know, we’re a couple of goops,” Judy said. “I don’t see that we’re accomplishing anything moping and comparing moods. Why don’t we have another look at Sheila Grey’s apartment? Maybe we overlooked something.”

“For two reasons: One, we have no right to enter the premises; two, the police have been over it half a dozen times, and we’re not very likely to find something they missed.” They were seated stiffly in the drawing room of the McKell apartment. Ashton and Lutetia had gone to an afternoon church service. “Anyway, nobody overlooked anything.”

“Why can’t we try? What harm will it do?”

“I told you. We have no right to enter the premises!”

“Dane McKell, don’t you raise your voice to me. I’m only trying to help.”

“Then suggest something helpful!”

Judy blew up. “Why are you treating me so brutally?”

“I’m not treating you any way at all!”

“There could be something in that. Look, buster, I know what’s eating you. You can’t forgive yourself because one night, for a few seconds, you allowed yourself to forget that little Miss Secretary, your father’s hired hand, came from the wrong side of the elevated tracks!”

“Oh, come on, Judy,” Dane said wearily.

“Also, I have the misfortune to be Irish. And not lace-curtain Irish, either!”

“I wouldn’t care if you were a Hottentot.”

“You’d treat me just as badly, is that it?”

“Now you’re talking like a female. It’s nothing you are, Judy. The trouble is me.”

“Don’t give me that baloney,” Judy said tautly. “We worked together so well for a while, until I forgot my place. You haven’t spoken a decent word to me since.”

“Judy, try to understand.” A certain faltering, the way his features twisted, silenced Judy. “It’s something about me. Personally. I can’t explain it. I mean, I may never be able to. Even to you. Especially to you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look, maybe John Leslie can be wheedled into letting us into the penthouse after all. Let’s give your suggestion a workout.”

It was merely a way of terminating their conversation. Leslie, who with the passage of time seemed to have a deepening respect for the law, could not be wheedled, even by Dane; they argued with him half-heartedly, and with each other snappishly; and finally Judy left Dane in a huff, refusing his offer to see her home.

The next day, Monday, when the trial began, Dane and Judy Walsh were seated on opposite sides of the courtroom aisle.

The trial of Lutetia McKell was not quite a duplicate of her husband’s. For one thing, the selection of a jury took almost no time at all. For another, the proceedings developed in an altogether different atmosphere, a here-we-go-again climate that produced more curiosity than heat. The feeling was generated that the district attorney was about to make an ass of himself. As one newspaper put it, “If at first you don’t succeed, prosecute the wife.” It was not fair to De Angelus, but newspaperdom is rarely concerned with fairness.

Henry Barton seized the opportunity. Ridicule became his not-so-secret weapon in cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, and what he could not attack with ridicule he undermined by innuendo. For example, when Detective Mack was on the stand to recount his and Sergeant Velie’s various visits to the McKell apartment, the attorney for the defense said, “Now, Detective Mack, you’ve been assigned to this precinct for — how long is it?”

“Two years.”

“Let’s take the past six months. Have you had occasion to visit other apartments in other apartment buildings in the neighborhood of the McKell building in the past six months?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On official business?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In your capacity as a police detective?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To investigate cases of forcible entry, armed robbery, burglary, and so forth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One case only last August in the very next building to the McKells’?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“In that case a housemaid was tied up and the lady of the house assaulted and robbed?”

The district attorney objected strenuously on the usual ground of improper cross, and a pretty by-play developed among the lawyers and the judge, the result of which was that the questions and answers along this line were ordered stricken; but the impression was implanted in the jury’s mind that the neighborhood of the McKell apartment building was a regular prey of prowlers, which was what Barton was trying to establish.

On the morning of the third day of the trial, Ellery was glumly studying a color photograph of a gaunt model in an evening gown from Sheila Grey’s Lady Dulcea collection when he was rather violently visited by the McKells, father and son.

He sat up alertly, shifting his casts to a less uncomfortable position. “Something up?”

“Last week when you were questioning my wife,” Ashton McKell said, eyes glittering, “do you remember your saying that the television set was her only contact with the outside world?”

“Yes?”

“Look at this!”

“It came,” Dane said, “in this morning’s mail.”

It was an envelope addressed to “Mrs. Ashton McKell” at the Park Avenue address. The enclosure, on the stationery of The Princess Soap Company, was signed by a Justin A. Lattimoore, Fourth Vice-President.

Ellery smiled as he read it:

“Well,” Ellery said. “This could be the straw that breaks the district attorney’s back.”

“It is,” said Dane. “It has to be!”

“Now let’s not get our hopes up too high,” his father cautioned excitedly. “What I can’t understand is why Lutetia didn’t tell us.”

“Don’t you know Mother, Dad? She just forgot, that’s all!”

“But a prize?” murmured Ellery. “A check?”

“What is money to her, or she to money?” Dane misquoted happily. “And prizes mean publicity. Her mind recoils reflexively from such things. This could be the break, Mr. Queen. It really could.”

“We’ll see. Get in touch with this Lattimoore fellow and see if you can’t get him up here. We’ve got to find out all we can about this, and right away.”

One telephone call from the eminent Ashton McKell insured the presence of Fourth Vice-President Justin A. Lattimoore in the Queen hospital room that afternoon. Lattimoore proved to be a fastidiously groomed gentleman with a face the precise shade of flesh-colored grease paint, and (Ellery was positive) with a toupee. He could not seem to decide whether to be more honored by the summons of a captain of industry than supercilious at the sight of a mere writer with two legs in a cast; in any event, he contrived to convey the impression that he was in the company of at least one peer.

“...a quarter-hour morning program for Sudsy Chippos,” Mr. Lattimoore was saying, evidently feeling that the occasion called for a recapitulation of The Princess Soap Company’s radio and television schedule, “and another quarter-hour in mid-afternoon for our Princess Belinda and Princess Anita toiletries. In other words, the A.M. show is Doctor Dolly’s Family, and the P.M. show is Life and Laurie Lewis.

“For TV last season The Princess Hour was a variety show emceed by Bo Bunson, the comedian. I will be frank, gentlemen,” Vice-President Lattimoore said handsomely. “The variety show was a bomb, or suds down the drain, as we say at the shop. Rating-wise, it reeked.

“For this season one of our ad agency’s brighter young men came up with a real doozer. We could not scrap the variety show” — Lattimoore coughed — “our Chairman of the Board has great faith in it, and thinks Bunson is the funniest man in show business — but we would add a gimmick to the format. Throughout the show — we’re on Wednesday nights in prime time, ten to eleven P.M. in the East, as you undoubtedly know — throughout the show a battery of telephone operators would call up people picked out of phone books all over the country by a process I won’t bother to describe, and ask them if they were watching The Princess Hour.

“Of course, most of them said yes, and immediately turned to our channel if they weren’t watching already. The yes-answerers were switched onto the air between numbers, Bo Bunson talked to them over the phone personally — on the air — and each one was given the chance to guess the Lucky Number for that night’s show. The Lucky Number, which could be any number between 1 and 10,000, was selected at random by an IBM machine before we went on the air, and no one, not even the emcee, knew what it was — he had it in a sealed envelope and at strategic spots during the show he exhibited the envelope and made wisecracks about it — supposed to be stimulating suspense-wise, you see.”

Ellery mumbled that he did indeed see; his tone suggested that, for purposes of the subject under discussion, he wished he were temporarily sightless. For the fraction of a moment uncertainty flickered over Mr. Lattimoore’s baby face, which looked as if he scrubbed every hour on the hour with Princess Belinda and Princess Anita soaps, and perhaps with Sudsy Chippos as well — but then the smile flashed back on with no kilowatt impaired.

“The gimmick was that everybody won. First prize was $10,000 — that was for anyone who guessed a number within 25 of the actual Lucky Number. Say the Lucky Number turned out to be 8,951. Any number picked by a contestant between 8,926 and 8,976 would be considered a bull’s-eye; if more than one contestant scored a bull’s-eye, the number closest to the Lucky Number was considered first-prize winner, the next closest getting second prize, which was $2,000. Third money went to the next closest, $1,000; fourth prize to the next closest, $500; all others got $100 consolation prizes.

“Quite an idea, wasn’t it?” glowed Mr. Lattimoore; but then the glow dimmed. “The only trouble was, it lasted a mere four weeks. Not only did B.T. consider it a flop with knobs on because, he said, it lowered the dignity of Princess products — that’s B. T. Worliss, Chairman of the Board — but there were, frankly, hrrm, legal problems, very serious ones. Having to do with the anti-lottery laws. The FCC...” Mr. Lattimoore stopped, the dread initials sticking in his throat. He cleared it. “Well, that’s the story of the ill-fated numbers game,” he said with feeble levity. “What else can I tell you gentlemen?”

“And on the telecast of September 14th,” Ellery mumbled, shading his eyes from the Lattimoore effulgence, “Mrs. McKell was one of the lucky persons telephoned?”

“That’s right. She came out fourth in our little old guessing game. Took the $500 prize.”

“And the check was never cashed.”

Ashton McKell produced a pink check. “And here it is, Mr. Queen. Lutetia simply isn’t used to handling money. She meant to send it to the Church Home, the one she does her needlework for, but she clean forgot.”

When Henry Calder Barton rose to open the defense, he wore a look in marked contrast to the expression of lofty confidence he had displayed previously. The actor was stripped away. Henry Barton had a good thing going suddenly, and he could afford to dispense with the psychology.

He went to work briskly.

“Mr. Graves, you are an assistant account executive with Newby, Fellis, Herkimer, Hinsdale and Levy, an advertising agency located on Madison Avenue? Your firm handles the Princess Soap account for television and radio?”

“Yes.”

Barton led the man skillfully through a description of how the defunct numbers game, a recent feature of The Princess Soap Company’s TV evening hour, worked.

“Thank you, Mr. Graves.”

De Angelus did not cross-examine; he objected. The consultation with Judge Everett Hershkowitz before the bench evidently satisfied His Honor, for he overruled the objection and the district attorney sat down to torment a fingernail. Barton’s new look had not escaped him.

“Call Miss Hattie Johnson.”

“Miss Johnson, what is your line of work?”

“I am a special telephone operator.”

“You do not work for the telephone company itself?”

“No, sir, for Tel-Operator, Incorporated.” Tel-Operator, Incorporated, turned out to be a firm that supplied operators for private corporations which required a type of answering service that the regular answering services were not prepared to furnish. Usually, the witness explained, this special service was for a limited period of time, such as after a “premium offer” was advertised for sale by a department store, and so on. “We have to be very quick and accurate,” Miss Johnson said.

“And you were one of the operators assigned to The Princess Soap Company’s television show Lucky Number gimmick?”

“Yes, sir, on Wednesday nights, for the four weeks it lasted.”

“Do you recall your work in connection with the telecast of Wednesday, September 14th last, Miss Johnson?”

“I do. That was the first show we worked.”

“I show you this transcript. Do you recognize it?”

“Yes, sir. It is a copy of one of my telephone conversations with a person I called that night.”

“Who was the person? Read the name from the transcript, Miss Johnson.”

“‘Mrs. Ashton McKell, 610½ Park Avenue, New York City.’”

Judge Hershkowitz had to resort to his gavel. District Attorney De Angelus was observed to inhale deeply, as after a long run, then fold his arms defensively across his chest.

Barton placed the transcript in evidence. Its contents, read aloud by the witness, almost broke up the court, and the Court almost broke up his gavel. As for the district attorney, he was blitzed.

When order was restored, Barton called Lutetia McKell to the stand.

“—but how could you have forgotten the call, Mrs. McKell? When so much depended on it?”

“I don’t know,” Lutetia replied helplessly. “I did remember speaking to some man over the phone—”

“Was that Bo Bunson, Master of Ceremonies of the Princess Soap show?”

“Yes, I remember him now. But I’m afraid none of the conversation struck me with any sense of importance. It all seemed so silly, in fact, my mind simply dropped it out of sight.”

“In any event, you remember the call now?”

“Yes.”

“You remember winning $500 as a result of that call?”

“Now I do.”

“You’re a very wealthy woman, Mrs. McKell?”

“I beg your pardon? Surely—”

“And all your financial affairs are handled by others? Your husband? Your family attorney? Banks, and so forth?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then you’re not accustomed to handling money?”

“I’m afraid not.”

The D.A. was watching her with admiration, almost affection. The same expression in varying degrees touched the faces of the judge, Barton himself, and Inspector Queen, who was sitting in on the trial and had testified for the prosecution.

“Tell us about your telephone conversation that night with Mr. Bunson.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t understand the game very well. I do not watch television as a rule, and it’s been so very long since I played games. When — Mr. Bunson, is it? — asked me to guess the Lucky Number, I simply could not think of a number. Any at all. It was so peculiar. My mind just froze. Has that ever happened to you?” She was half turned in the witness chair between Henry Barton and Judge Hershkowitz, and it was a tribute to her palpable helplessness that both men responded to it with sympathetic nods. “At any rate, not wishing to disappoint the young man on the TV, and happening at that moment to notice the studio clock above his head, I think I said something like, ‘Does it matter where I get the number?’ and he said something that must have been comical, because the studio audience laughed — I don’t recall just what it was — and then I said, ‘Oh, dear, the only number I can think of is the time the clock over your head shows — twenty-two minutes past ten. So I’ll say 1022.”

“1022,” Henry C. Barton said to the jury in his summation. “Hold on to that number, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to direct you to clear my client of the charge for which she’s being tried.

“Ten. Twenty. Two.

“At twenty-two minutes past the hour of ten o’clock on the night Sheila Grey was shot to death, Lutetia McKell in her own voice and person was answering the telephone in the McKell apartment. You have examined the photostatic evidence of the telephone operator’s handwritten report — Mrs. McKell’s name, her address, her telephone number, the exact time the operator called her and she answered in the McKell apartment. You have listened to an excerpt from the taped recording of the actual show as it was telecast, and you have heard the unmistakable voice of Mrs. McKell talking to Mr. Bunson while the show was on the air, and you have heard her point out the time on the studio clock and use it as her number entry in the guessing game.

“1022.

“There was no collusion. This was by no stretch of anyone’s imagination a put-up job. The advertising agency did not invent this game, The Princess Soap Company did not pay for its production and telecast, all to provide an alibi for Lutetia McKell. Nor is there any way in the world that Lutetia McKell could have anticipated that she would be called at the exact time to provide her with an alibi. These are hard facts, and hard facts do not lie.

“At 10:22 P.M. Lutetia McKell was in her own apartment, speaking over the phone in the hearing of millions of TV viewers.

“At 10:23 P.M. Miss Grey was shot and killed in her apartment two stories above the McKells’.

“One minute later. Sixty seconds!”

Barton took a little stroll before the jury to allow his words time to sink into their heads.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I do not envy the prosecution its job. The district attorney — for all the evidence he has presented about cartridges, revolvers, and fingerprints; for all his charges of jealousy — has the impossible task of asking this jury of intelligent men and women to believe that Mrs. McKell — who, while certainly not showing her years, still is no longer at the Olympic Games sprinter age — hung up her telephone after talking to Bo Bunson, left her apartment, rang and waited for the elevator or sprinted up two flights of stairs (can you see Mrs. McKell sprinting, ladies and gentlemen?) to the penthouse, surreptitiously and cautiously gained entry to the Grey apartment — and I would have you remember that at no time have the People introduced evidence to indicate that Mrs. McKell had any means of gaining that entry to the Grey apartment — surreptitiously and cautiously stole into Miss Grey’s bedroom, searched for the revolver, found the revolver, sneaked into Miss Grey’s workroom, confronted Miss Grey long enough for the poor woman to cry out, and then shot her to death... all in sixty seconds!

“I defy Jesse Owens in his prime to do it! I invite the district attorney to try it himself. It simply couldn’t be done. It was a physical and temporal impossibility.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one point for you to consider in judging the guilt or innocence of this defendant: Did Lutetia McKell, at precisely 10:23 P.M. on the night of September 14th, shoot Sheila Grey to death in the Grey apartment, or did she not? She did not. She did not, and you now know she did not. And the reason you know she did not is simply that she could not. She had not time.”

The case went to the jury at a quarter past eleven on December 23rd, after a brief charge by Judge Hershkowitz (“You are to consider only the question: Did the defendant on the night of September 14th, at 10:23 P.M., fire the shot that killed Sheila Grey? If the defendant did, she is guilty of murder as charged in the indictment. If you find that she did not fire the shot, then you must find that she is not guilty of the crime as charged in the indictment. In making your decision, you must consider the testimony you have heard in this courtroom concerning the accused’s telephone conversation at about that same time. If you hold that testimony to be relevant, you must then consider the matter of timing. This court believes the matter of timing in this case to be all-important...”). At half-past noon the jury had reached a verdict, when the defense attorney and the district attorney had not yet returned from their lunch (the judge, an old hand, had lunch sent into his chambers). Barton and De Angelus, notified, scurried back to the courtroom with their lunches half consumed.

The headline on the tabloid that was first to print the news, FREE LU, was not — as some English-speaking foreigner might have interpreted — an imperative; it was a statement of what the jury had in fact done.

Dane’s mother was acquitted, as her husband before her had been.

Judge Hershkowitz said to the jury, “Your verdict is justified by the evidence... Two indictments have now been returned for the murder of Sheila Grey, and in each case the jury, having seen and heard the evidence, has refused to convict. The killer is, accordingly, still at large. We do not wish an innocent person to be pronounced guilty; at the same time we do not wish a guilty person to escape unpunished.”

This last was taken — accurately — by police, district attorney’s office, and press alike as a juridical nudge to get on with the job, and this time do it right.

The McKells were too overjoyed to weigh nuances. Ashton exclaimed, “What a wonderful Christmas present. We’ll all be together on the Twenty-fifth, and without this nightmare hanging over us. Mr. Barton, how can I express my gratitude?”

The lawyer shook his head. “Don’t thank me, thank that fellow Lattimoore and his uncashed $500 check. All I did was follow through. With that evidence, any kid fresh out of law school could have earned an acquittal.”

The only one present who was not happily jabbering away was Lutetia herself. When Dane asked her why she was so preoccupied, his mother said, “It will always be on my conscience.”

“What, Mother?”

“Replacing the blank cartridges in that revolver with live ones. Why did I do it? She would still be alive—”

“Stop it, Mother. This instant.”

It took them a long time to restore her spirits. At one point Dane got the impression that she would have been content to give herself up and stand trial all over again. As he said to his father, “Thank God for the rule of double jeopardy!”

Henry Calder Barton did not leave the courtroom with them. He went over to talk to the district attorney, who was talking to Inspector Queen.

“As His Honor would say, Henry, mazel tov,” De Angelus said sourly.

“What are you congratulating him for?” snarled old man Queen. “A baby could have walked off with this case. Soap!”

Barton grinned. “I couldn’t agree more, Inspector. Uh... Mr. D.A. I know this isn’t the best time in the world to ask if you’ll let my client, that Gogarty boy, cop a plea for manslaughter. But it would save everybody time and money. What do you say?”

De Angelus grunted, “It sure as hell isn’t. Do you realize that lightning has struck me twice in this Grey murder? With Dick Queen here standing under the same tree?”

“Why take it out on Gogarty?”

“Talk to me about it tomorrow. Today I wouldn’t make bargains with my own mother.”

“Why, Teddy, you wouldn’t be disgruntled because two innocent people have been found not guilty, would you?”

“Look, Henry, I’m unhappy, Inspector Queen’s unhappy, everybody’s unhappy except you and the McKells. So let’s leave it at Merry Christmas, huh?”

Ellery was unhappy, too, the impending Christmas never having seemed less Merry. For one thing, he would have to spend it in the hospital; and the half-promise of his doctor that he might be home and hobbling around before the New Year carried exactly as much conviction as half-promises usually do.

He was now mobile to the extent of wheeling himself about the corridors, so he helped the ravishing blond nurse decorate the Christmas tree on their floor, and he almost enjoyed the Swedish julotta celebration afterward. But the only real pleasure he took was in the joy of the McKell family.

His unhappiness had a broader base, a disdainful disappointment in himself. Armchair detective! What satisfaction he had taken in his role in the case of Ashton McKell — Phase One, as he had come to think of it — was erased by his nonexistent role in Phase Two. By himself he had come up with nothing whatever to help Lutetia. The letter from The Princess Soap Company, from which her subsequent acquittal stemmed, had simply turned up one morning through the courtesy of the ineffable Lattimoore. Its import would have been obvious to a rookie policeman.

And the killer of Sheila Grey was still at large, as Judge Hershkowitz had pointed out, and the great man hadn’t a clue in his head that might be called promising.

Oh, well, Ellery thought with a sigh. At least the McKells’ troubles are over.

The McKells’ troubles were over for exactly one weekend. Father, mother, and son had had a pleasant, if not joyous, Christmas together. They had attended services at the great unfinished cathedral on Christmas Eve, mingling unnoticed with the crowds of worshipers. In the morning they attended services at a chapel in a poor neighborhood whose congregation was almost entirely foreign-born and whose “language” newspaper had run no photograph of the McKell family. The remainder of Christmas Day they spent quietly at home. They had exchanged gifts, listened to the Missa Solemnis on the hi-fi, read the newspapers.

On Monday, Lutetia expressed a desire to see the ocean. Ramon had been given the day off, for Ashton was at home — the McKell enterprises, like most companies, were keeping Monday as part of the holiday — so Dane drove his parents down to Long Beach, where for almost two hours they strolled beside the gray Atlantic sweeping endlessly in from Europe. The walk made them hungry, and when they returned home Lutetia took pleasure in preparing a hearty supper of soup and sirloin steak with her own hands. Ashton read aloud from Matthew, they listened to the enchanting music of Buxtehude’s Missa Brevis and the majestic Mendelssohn Elijah sung ineffably by the Huddersfield Choral Society, and then they called it a day.

Dane was still eating breakfast as well as dining with his parents; he supposed this would stop when he could slip his life back into its independent groove once more, an opportunity he was on the lookout for these days. He was at breakfast in his parents’ apartment, then, two days after Christmas, when Ramon — waiting to drive Ashton to his office — brought in the mail containing the bulky brown envelope.

Ashton, shuffling through the mail, handed the brown envelope to Dane. It was a long one made of kraft paper. Dane slit it open, removed its contents, glanced over them — and the cup he set down in the saucer rattled.

“Dane?” said Lutetia. “Is something the matter?”

He continued to read; his complexion had turned gluey.

“Son, what is it?” Ashton asked.

Dane muttered, “Now it will have to come out.”

“What will have to come out?”

Dane rose. “I’ll tell you, Dad. But first I’ve got to make a phone call.”

Automatically he went to his old room, sat down at his old desk. For a moment he buried his face in his hands. Then he got a grip on himself and dialed a number.

“Judy?”

“Dane.” She sounded remote.

“Judy, I can tell you now what I wasn’t able to tell you before.” The words came tumbling out. “About what’s been worrying me — making me act toward you the way I... Please. Would you — can you — meet me right away in Ellery Queen’s room at the hospital?”

Judy said uncertainly, “All right.” She hung up.

“Dane,” Ashton McKell said from the doorway; Lutetia was peering anxiously from behind him. “You said you’d tell me.”

“Come with me to see Ellery Queen, Dad. Mother, not you.”

“Your mother will stay here.”

“Whatever you think best, dear.”

Left alone, Lutetia frowned out her picture window. The world outside was hurrying so. Trouble, always trouble. Ever since... But Lutetia shut her mind down very firmly. That way lay unpleasantness. There was always one’s duty, no matter how trifling, for relief. She rang for her maid. “Margaret, I shall want my needlework. Tell Helen she may begin clearing off the breakfast things.”

Ellery greeted them with ebullience. “It’s official,” he chortled. “I’ll be out of this Bastille in a few days.” Then he said, in a different tone, “What’s up now?”

Dane handed him the kraft envelope. He peered in. Inside lay a smaller envelope, which he took out; pasted to the smaller envelope was a photograph of three written words: For the Police. Inside the smaller envelope, as in a Chinese puzzle box, there was an envelope smaller still, and on it was pasted a photo of a complete handwritten sentence: To be opened only in the event I die of unnatural causes. And inside the innermost envelope he found the photograph of a holograph statement about three-quarters of an ordinary page long.

Ellery’s head shot up.

“Sheila Grey,” he said sharply. “Is this her handwriting?”

Dane nodded bitterly. Ashton said, “I’ve examined it, compared it with, well, some letters I have. It’s her handwriting without a doubt.” There was nothing in his expression at all, nothing. Only his voice betrayed him.

Ellery glanced over the letter. Every jot of the photographed handscript stood out starkly.

“Miss Walsh.” He held the photo out to her. “Read this aloud. I want to hear it in a woman’s voice.”

“Mr. Queen.”

“Please.”

Judy took it from him as if it were smeared with filth. She began to read; twice she had to pause to swallow.

“‘Dane McKell tonight asked if he could come up to my apartment for a nightcap,’” Judy read. “‘I told him I had work to do, but he insisted. In the apartment he refused to leave and nothing I could say made him do so. I lost my temper and slapped him. He then tried to...’”

Here Judy’s voice faltered altogether. Ellery said harshly, “Go on, please.”

“‘He then tried to strangle me,’” Judy whispered. “‘This is not hysteria on my part — he actually tried to strangle me. He took my throat... in his hands and... squeezed and seemed to be out of his mind with an... with an insane rage.’ I can’t, Mr. Queen, I just can’t go on!”

Ellery read the rest of it himself, rapidly. “‘As he choked me he screamed that he was going to kill me and he called me many obscene names. Then he dropped me to the floor and ran out of the apartment. In another minute I would have been dead of strangulation. I am convinced that he is a dangerous person and I repeat his name, Dane McKell. He definitely tried to kill me. Signed, Sheila Grey.’”

“And I thought the McKell tribe was out of the woods,” Dane said hollowly. He laughed.

No one laughed with him. Judy was blinking back tears as she stared out the hospital window; Ashton was frowning at Ellery, but not as if he could see him. Ellery set the letter down.

“First,” he said. “Assuming Sheila Grey to have written the original of this letter — Dane, is what she wrote true?”

Dane stared at his hands. “When I was a kid at school there was a boy named Philbrick, a stupid kid, I don’t even recall any more what he looked like, only that his nose was always running. He said to me, ‘If your father’s name is Ashton, yours ought to be Ashcan.’ Just silly kid talk, nonsense. But he kept at it. ‘Ashcan.’ Every time he saw me, ‘Ashcan.’ He knew I hated it. One night we were getting ready to go to bed. As he’d said a hundred times before, he jeered, ‘Ashcan, you left your towel in the shower.’ I went wild. Jumped him, knocked him down, got my hands around his throat, began to throttle him. I’d certainly have succeeded if some of the other boys hadn’t pulled me off. You remember, Dad. I was almost kicked out.

“Yes, it’s all true, Mr. Queen, what Sheila wrote,” Dane muttered. “If sanity hadn’t returned in time...”

“Dane’s always had a terrible temper, Mr. Queen,” Ashton said. “We had considerable trouble about that when he was a boy.” He stopped as if to digest the past, made a little gesture of bewilderment. “I thought that was all over, son.”

“So did I, God damn it! Well, it isn’t.”

“I surely thought you’d conquered it. I surely thought so.”

Ellery was staring at the photographic paper. “I wonder just when that night she wrote this.”

“It must have been after I left,” Ashton said. “You remember I got there just a shade before ten o’clock, and there was no indication that she’d been writing. She was crying.”

“So she wrote it in the fifteen minutes or so between your leaving,” Ellery mused, “and her killer’s arrival.” He was poking about in the small envelope. “What’s this?”

“Read it,” growled Dane, “and weep.”

Ellery took from it a note written in anonymous block capital lettering, with an ordinary pencil, on a ragged-edged sheet apparently torn out of a cheap memorandum book.

The note read:

“Mr. I. M. Ecks. A comedian,” Ellery commented. “I must say I don’t blame you for not finding him funny.”

“Blackmail.” Dane let out the same bitter laugh. “What do I do?”

“What I did,” his father said quietly.

“What?” Dane said.

“You paid someone blackmail, too, Mr. McKell?” Ellery turned quickly back from the etched trees he had been studying through his window.

“I got a similar letter — I’m sure the same person sent it, from the kind of note it is, the wording, the paper and so on — shortly after, well, I began visiting Miss Grey.” Ashton McKell swallowed. “It was foolish of me, I know. But I just couldn’t face a scandal. So I paid — $2,000 down, $1,000 a month. It was worth that to me to keep my name and family from being dragged through the newspapers.”

“But you kept seeing her,” Dane said slowly.

“Sheila was important to me in a way which I doubt I could make anyone understand.” His father spoke with difficulty. “Anyway, I kept sending this dirty hound, whoever he is, the thousand a month until I was arrested. Naturally, after that he had no further hold over me, and I stopped paying him. I haven’t heard a word about it since.”

“Do you have any of the notes you received?”

“I got just that first one — the one like this, Mr. Queen. I burned it.”

Ellery brooded. “Dane, let’s go over the ground again, in the light of this new information. You left Sheila before ten o’clock that night. You left her alive. You didn’t show up at your parents’ apartment until after midnight. All right. What did you do in those two hours?”

“I took a little walk first, to cool off. I was horrified at myself, at what I’d almost done. I knew I must have hurt her badly, then I’d run as if I’d murdered her. Finally I decided to go back—”

“You went back?” cried Ellery. Dane’s father and Judy were open-mouthed.

“I’m on one hell of a spot, hey?” Dane said with a wry smile. “That’s what I did, all right. I figured I owed her an explanation, the story of these rages, to ask her forgiveness if nothing else. So I went back to the building—”

“Did anyone see you?”

“I don’t believe so, but I can’t be sure.”

“Go on.”

“I took the elevator up to the penthouse and stood before her door. I raised my hand — I actually raised it — to ring her bell. And... I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to. To ring it, or knock, or use my key, or anything. I chickened out. I couldn’t face her.”

Oddly, he addressed this last to Judy in a pleading way, as if soliciting her understanding. Her face softened.

“Dane, pay attention. This could be important. You say you took a short walk, then returned to the penthouse — at least to her vestibule. Think now. How long were you gone? Can you tell me?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“No idea at all?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say I was gone about fifteen minutes.”

“Then it’s possible you were outside Sheila’s door at 10:23, the time she was shot.”

“I suppose so.”

“Level with me, Dane. If I’m to help you, I need straight answers. Did you hear a shot from inside the apartment?”

“No. I’d remember if I did.”

“I doubt if a shot could be heard, Mr. Queen,” the elder McKell said. “The apartments are solidly soundproofed.”

Ellery murmured, “Dane stood outside that penthouse apartment just about the time Sheila was shot. Do you see what that means? In all likelihood, you were standing in that vestibule while the killer was inside. Didn’t you see or hear anything? How long did you stand there?”

Dane shook his head. “A very short time. I couldn’t ring or knock, so I went away. I didn’t hear or see anything at all.”

“You went away. Where?”

“Walked some more.”

“Did anyone see you leave? Did you meet anyone you knew, Dane? Say, in the building?”

“I can’t remember anybody. I was in a fog. I do recall being in a movie theater—”

“That’s something,” his father exclaimed. “Which movie theater, son?”

“I don’t know. Some neighborhood house. Probably around Lexington or somewhere.”

“What was the title of the picture?”

“How should I know? I tell you I was half off my rocker!” Dane was growing angry. “I sat there watching a Western, I remember that, in color, all the fixings, but when the shooting started and the bodies began flying around I got up, sick to my stomach, and walked out. And back to the house and apartment. That’s all I can tell you, Dad.”

“Do you have the ticket stub, son?”

“I’ve looked for it in all my suits. I can’t find it. Must have thrown it away. Who holds on to movie theater ticket stubs?”

“None of this matters in the least,” Ellery said, frowning. “The essential fact is that Dane was at the door of the penthouse just about the time the murder was committed. What difference does it make where he went afterward?”

There was silence. Ellery began to pull at an invisible beard; his eyes went perceptibly far, far away. Dane, his father, Judy, sat uncomfortably still while he reflected. A truck backfired somewhere, startling them. A dressing cart clashed by in the corridor. Someone laughed. In the distance a police siren went off.

After a long time Ellery returned from wherever he had been. “All right, that’s past,” he said slowly. “What’s the present situation? First, the blackmailer. His identity? Well, there have been two blackmailing letters of which we know, each demanding $2,000 down and $1,000 a month thereafter. Each has specified that the payments were to be in $20 bills. Each has been written in block capitals — yours was in pencil, too, Mr. McKell? — and each used the alias ‘Mr. I. M. Ecks,’ care of General Delivery, main post office. And so on. The similarities are too striking to be coincidence. I agree with you, Mr. McKell, both blackmail notes were written by the same person. So — we’re dealing with a single blackmailer.”

A touch of color had invaded Ellery’s face, paled by several months of exile from the sun.

“The obvious question is: Having a killer at large on the one hand, and a blackmailer at large on the other, what connection — if any — exists between the two?”

“Why, that’s so, isn’t it?” said Judy thoughtfully. “I didn’t think of that.”

“A connection very probably exists. The blackmailer’s hold on Dane is based on his possession of the original of the letter Sheila Grey wrote just before she was killed. How did the blackmailer get hold of the letter? Well, let’s see if we can reconstruct what must have happened on the night of the shooting.”

They were sitting forward in their chairs now. Ellery went on deliberately.

“Dane and Sheila had a bitter quarrel. He began to choke her, caught himself in time, ran out of the apartment. He left her alive. A very few minutes later you, Mr. McKell, arrived. You were there just about long enough for Miss Grey to ask you to leave, which you did. That was a few minutes past ten o’clock. It has not been challenged by anyone, through two trials, and we can accept it as a fact, that the shot the precinct officer heard over the phone was the shot that killed Sheila Grey; and the time of the shot, the officer noted officially, was 10:23 P.M. According to the medical examiner’s finding, she died instantly. The conclusion has to be that she wrote the letter about Dane, intended for the police, between a few minutes past ten — your departure, Mr. McKell — and 10:23.”

“We’ve been all through that,” said Dane impatiently.

“We may have to go through it a great many more times before you’re out of the woods, Dane,” Ellery said dryly. “Now, then. The first officers on the scene, the radio car men, arrived at the penthouse within minutes of the fatal shot. From their arrival forward, the police were in charge of the premises. Yet, in spite of the police search, which we have a right to assume was thorough, especially in view of the sensational nature of Sheila’s letter, the letter was not found. Conclusion: the letter was no longer there. Further conclusion: it had been taken from the premises before the arrival of the police. Still further conclusion: since we know it came into possession of the blackmailer, the weight of the evidence is on the side of the blackmailer’s having found it. He found it, he photographed it, he still has it.

“How did the blackmailer come to find it?”

Ellery shrugged. “Who was the one person we know was in the penthouse between the time Sheila finished writing the letter and the time the police got there? Her murderer. Unless we are willing to credit the theory that between the departure of the murderer — which could not have been before 10:23 — and the arrival of the police a mere handful of minutes later, still another person — the blackmailer — came on the scene, searched it, found the Grey letter, and left without being detected by anyone, including the police... unless, as I say, we are willing to credit a theory so far-fetched, only one conclusion is permissible: the murderer of Sheila and the finder of the letter — that is, the blackmailer — are one and the same.

“If we can lay our hands on this mysterious blackmailer, then, Mr. Ecks,” Ellery said softly, “we’ll have caught the killer of Sheila Grey. That job is too much for amateurs. We’ll need professional help, and that means my father.”

“You can’t do that, Mr. Queen!” cried Judy.

“I agree with Judy. It would mean revealing the contents of Sheila’s letter.” Ashton McKell shook his head. “And that would plunge my son deep into the case, Mr. Queen.”

“All I intend to tell my father,” Ellery said, “is that Dane is being blackmailed, not the basis for it. Leave Inspector Richard Queen to an expert, won’t you? I know how to handle him; I’ve had enough practice! Agreed? Dane?”

Dane was quiet. Then he threw up his hands. “I’m ready to be guided by whatever you say, Mr. Queen.”

Judy Walsh came away from the hospital meeting in a sweet euphoria. How poor Dane must have suffered! How unreasonably, blindly female she had been! But from now on... ah, things would be different between them. She was so very sure her love, her compassion, her active assistance, would help him overcome the frightening problem of his rages. If necessary, she would get him to seek psychiatric help. And then, with the homicidal blackmailer caught and eliminated from their lives, the case would be closed forever, Sheila Grey would become an ebbing if always unpleasant memory, they would find peace, would carve out new lives for themselves... in short, they would live happily ever after.

“So Dane McKell is being blackmailed,” said Inspector Queen, “and I’m not to ask any questions about it. Is that it, Ellery?”

“That’s it,” and his son beamed.

“Well, you just forget it. I don’t buy blind pigs in pokes, or whatever the blasted saying is. Even from you.”

“Dad, have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Thousands of times,” the Inspector replied, “thousands.”

“Name one.”

“Sure. There was the time—”

“Never mind,” Ellery said. “Dad, listen to me this once, will you? If I weren’t laid up I wouldn’t even bother you with it. It’s merely a case of laying a trap for a blackmailer.”

“What’s Dane being blackmailed about?” demanded the old gentleman.

“I can’t tell you now.”

“It’s in connection with the Grey case, of course.”

“I tell you I can’t. You’ll know the whole story later. Don’t you trust me any longer?”

“I don’t trust myself these days,” the Inspector said with gloom. “The D.A. and I have practically stopped talking to each other. I’ve never seen such a case.”

“You want to settle it?”

“Of course I want to settle it!”

“Then do it my way, Dad.”

“You’re blackmailing me!”

“Right,” Ellery said cheerfully. “Then it’s a deal? You post your men at the main post office, have them watch the General Delivery window. The postal authorities will co-operate. They’ll give your men the tip-off when the fellow shows up—”

“And suppose they make a mistake?” the old man asked sourly. “And suppose the city is sued for false arrest, with me in the middle of it? How do I defend myself for ordering an arrest without having seen the evidence that a crime may have been committed? What do I do, refer them to you? Nothing doing, Ellery.”

But Ellery had an answer for everything this morning. A security guard from the McKell organization, one of the scores employed to watch the McKell warehouses, docks, factories, and other buildings, could be assigned to watch the post office along with the regular police. When the trap was sprung, this privately employed guard would make a citizen’s arrest, with the police staying out of it. If the arrest were resisted, the police could then step in, restrain and compel — their duty at any time — with impunity.

Inspector Queen listened in silence. He was sorely, sorely tempted. The Grey case had been his headache since the discovery of the body; it was turning into a migraine. If it was true, as Ellery had hinted, that the blackmailer in question might turn out to be the slayer of Sheila Grey, one Richard Queen was off the hook. He might even get a departmental citation out of it.

In the end the old man yielded, as Ellery had known he would.

So on the next day the lobby of the great post office behind Pennsylvania Station was sprinkled with plainclothesmen and detectives from Inspector Queen’s command, along with Ash-ton McKell’s private guard. The postal authorities had agreed to co-operate. The package containing $2,000 in $20 bills (instructions of “Mr. I. M. Ecks,” to the contrary notwithstanding, not unmarked) had been made up, mailed, had arrived, was waiting to be picked up.

The trap was baited and laid.

It was never sprung.

No one showed up to claim the package.

Whether the blackmailer had spotted the police waiting to arrest him, or he had been scared away by his own guilty imaginings, there was no way of telling; the fact was, the bait lay beyond the General Delivery window, unnibbled.

So passed December 28th.

On the morning of December 29th...

The real fireworks had occurred late the night before, in the hospital room of one Ellery Queen. The Inspector had barged in long after visiting hours, angrily flushed, triumphant, and loaded for bear.

“I don’t care a curse what your rules are,” he had assured the indignant night nurse, flourishing his inspector’s shield under her nose. “And don’t any of you Florence Nightingales dare interrupt us even if you hear me strangling your patient, which he bloody well deserves!” And he secured the door with the back of a chair.

Ellery was reading in bed.

“Dad?” He peered into the gloom. “You got him?”

“Listen, sonny-boy,” Inspector Queen said, hauling a chair over and snatching the book out of Ellery’s hand, “I’ll tell you what I’ve got. I’ve got heartburn and a bellyful, mostly of you. You can’t tell me the basis of the blackmail, hey? The hell you can’t! You don’t have to. I’m wise to the whole smelly business now. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, keeping a thing like that from your own father—”

“What,” asked Ellery in an injured tone, “is this remarkable performance all about?”

“I’ll tell you what it’s about!”

“Keep your voice down, Dad. This is a hospital.”

“It’s about your precious Dane McKell! You know what happened this evening?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully so far, to find out.”

“What happened is that we received a Special Delivery envelope at headquarters is what happened. Full of interesting stuff, yes, sir. All kinds of reference material. Most fascinating of the bunch was a letter addressed to the police, in Sheila Grey’s handwriting, that she wrote the night she was knocked off. How do you like those apples?”

“Oh,” said his son.

“And ooh and ah! You knew all about it, didn’t you? But not a word about it to me. Your own father. In charge of the damn case. Not a word. I have to find out about it from an anonymous donor.”

“Dad,” said his son.

“Don’t Dad me! All right, I know what you’re going to say. This stuff came from the blackmailer—”

“And how,” Ellery asked placatingly, “did he get it?”

“How should I know? I don’t care! The point is, he got it, and he sent it to us, and now I’ve got it, and those McKells are going to rue the day! Especially that — that Hamlet-pussed pal of yours, Dane!”

“Whoa, slow down,” the son said. “You’re not as young as you used to be. Give this to me in something like intelligible sequence, will you, Inspector?”

“Glad to oblige,” chortled his father. “Here’s the way we dope it. First of all this blackmailer, who calls himself I. M. Ecks, doesn’t show — probably spotted the trap. He knows he can’t hope to collect a penny any more. So he sends the blackmail material to us — out of revenge, disappointment, malice; it doesn’t matter why. It’s no good to him. But it’s just what the doctor ordered for us.

“So. We now shift gears in the Grey case, and for the first time — armed with real evidence — we’re on the right track. We were wrong about the parents, but there’s no mistake this time. This Dane is it. The third McKell turns out to be the right one. And there’ll be no acquittal in his trial.”

“You’re still not telling me anything,” Ellery said fretfully. “What have you got besides the Grey letter? You realize that all the letter does is establish that Sheila Grey was still alive when Dane left her—”

“Oh, it establishes a lot more than that, my son. But let’s not pick over picayunes. Let’s tackle this scientifically. You want science?”

“I want science.”

“I’ll give you science. How’s this? We’ve got a witness, a reliable witness, who saw your Dane come back to the penthouse.”

Ellery was quiet.

“No reaction?” chomped the old man. “That tells me you knew about that, too. Thank God I raised you to be a rotten liar. Ellery, I don’t understand. Withholding information like that! How did you find out?”

“I didn’t say I found out anything.”

“Come on, son.”

“All right,” Ellery said suddenly. “Dane told me. Himself. Would he have done that if he had anything to be afraid of?”

“Sure he would,” said the Inspector. “If he was very smart. If he figured it would come out sooner or later anyway. Well, if you know that, you know he took the elevator right up there. Want to know what time? Or do you know it? Don’t bother. It was 10:19, my son, when he stepped into that elevator — 10:19 P.M. and going up — four minutes before she stopped that bullet, Dane McKell was zooming up to the penthouse! My witness watched the elevator dial swing right up there from the lobby, no stops.”

“I suppose it was the doorman.”

“You suppose correctly. We had a tough time prying the truth out of John Leslie tonight, but we cracked him. For some reason that escapes me he feels loyalty to the McKells. Well, we knocked it out of him. I’m not taking anybody’s crud in this case any more. I’ve had it.”

“Did he tell you anything else?”

“Yes, he told us something else. He told us that Dane McKell’s been visiting that penthouse with great regularity. That’s one your friend almost slipped over on us. With his old man involved with Sheila, we never pictured the son was, too. We did a quick check tonight, enough to tell us he’d been running around with her in a way that means only one thing. So there’s the motive. He was having an affair with her, but this lady’s affairs seem to have been jumpy transactions — the man was here today and gone tomorrow. She must have given your friend Dane the old gate and he wouldn’t or couldn’t take it. So blam! first he starts to strangle her, has second thoughts, leaves, then comes back in about a half hour and lets her have it with the gun his mother thoughtfully loaded with live ammo.”

“And the blackmailer?” Ellery asked, not strongly.

“I know all about the blackmailer. You’ll say he had to have been on the premises about the same time in order to have got his mitts on the letter. Right. I agree. How about at the same time?”

“What do you mean?” Ellery asked, puzzled.

“I mean Dane McKell hooked that letter after he whopped Sheila with the blaster. That this whole business of blackmail is so much happy dust he’s flung into our eyes!”

“No,” Ellery said. “No, that would have been pure idiocy. That would mean he sent you the original of the letter. To accomplish what? His own arrest for murder, when before that you didn’t even suspect him? You’ll have to do better than that, Dad.”

“Maybe he felt the collar tightening around his neck. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not our worry, it’s his. You know, my son? We’ve got a case, and this one is going to stick.”

So on the morning of December 29th Sergeant Velie and the speechless Detective Mack, herded by Inspector Queen in person, visited the apartment of the three McKells while they were at breakfast (it always seemed to come, Dane afterward thought, at breakfast) and Ashton McKell said frigidly, “Don’t you people know any other family in this city? What is it this time?”; and Inspector Queen showed his dentures in a feral grin and said, “I have a warrant for the arrest of Dane McKell.”