The French Powder Mystery

37 Make Ready!

They came in one by one — furtive, curious, impassive, bored, reluctant, openly nervous. Quietly they came in, conscious of the tight police cordon, of a quivering strain in the atmosphere, of shrewd eyes that noted and calculated their least movement — conscious most of all of grim overhanging disaster, to whom and with what dire effects they did not know and could only guess.

It was nine thirty of the fateful Thursday morning. The door through which they shuffled in silence was the door marked PRIVATE: CYRUS FRENCH... They passed inside through the bare lofty anteroom, into the heavy quiet of the library, sat down in incredible camp-chairs set up martially facing the dormer-windows.

They crowded the room. In the front row sat old Cyrus French himself, a white and trembling figure. His fingers were desperately entwined in the fingers of Marion French by his side. Westley Weaver, harried face gaunted by sleeplessness, occupied the seat next to Marion’s. To French’s left was Dr. Stuart, the old man’s physician, watching his patient with a professional pantherishness. By Stuart’s side sat John Gray, dapper and birdlike, occasionally leaning over the doctor’s bulky abdomen to talk into the sick man’s ear.

In the row behind were Hortense Underhill, the housekeeper, and Doris Keaton, the maid. Both sat rigidly, whispering to each other out of the corners of their mouths, peering about with frightened eyes.

In serried ranks... Wheezing Marchbanks; the portly Zorn fingering his watch-chain; a befurred and aromatic Mrs. Zorn dispensing smiles to the grave Frenchman, Paul Lavery, who stroked his short beard; Trask, a flower in his lapel, but utterly pale, with enormous leaden rings under his eyes; the antique-dealer Vincent Carmody, a saturnine figure, uncompromising, somber, even in his chair towering above the heads of the company; mild-mannered Arnold MacKenzie, the general manager of the store; Diana Johnson, the model who had discovered Mrs. French’s dead body; the four watchmen — O’Flaherty, Bloom, Ralska, Powers...

There was little conversation. Each time the anteroom door opened people twisted about in their seats, craned, jerked their eyes back to the window again with guilty side-glances toward each other.

The conference-table had been pushed against the wall. In a row of chairs before the table sat Sergeant Thomas Velie and William Crouther, chief of the store’s detective force, talking in undertones; scowling Salvatore Fiorelli, of the Narcotic Squad, bright black eyes snapping at some inexpressible thought, his scar pulsing slowly beneath the swarthy skin; “Jimmy,” the little bald-headed operative of the Headquarters fingerprint department. At the anteroom door stood Patrolman Bush, relegated to the important post of guardian of the door. A cloud of detectives, among them Inspector Queen’s favorite operatives — Hagstrom, Flint, Ritter, Johnson, and Piggott — massed along the wall directly opposite the conference-table. At each corner of the room stood a silent officer in blue, cap in hand.

Neither Inspector Queen nor Ellery Queen had yet put in his appearance. People whispered this information to each other. They looked sidelong at the anteroom door, against which Bush’s broad back was set.

Gradually, tangibly, another silence came over the scene. Whispers trembled, wavered, ceased. Glances became more furtive, chair-twistings more frequent. Cyrus French coughed violently; he doubled up in agony. Dr. Stuart’s eyes flickered with a vague anxiety. Weaver bent far to the side when the old man’s paroxysm had passed; Marion looked startled; soon their heads were close together, touching...

Crouther scraped his hand over his face. “What the hell is holdin’ up the works, Sergeant?” Velie shook his head gloomily. “What’s it all about?”

“Got me.”

Crouther shrugged.

The silence thickened. Every one grew still as stone... The silence grew more embarrassing with each passing moment — a silence that swelled, breathed, became alive...

Then Sergeant Velie did a strange thing. His spatulate forefinger, resting on his knee, tapped three distinct times, in rhythm. Not even Crouther caught the signal, and Crouther was at Velie’s side. But the officer on guard, who had been watching the Sergeant’s hand for minutes, immediately sprang into motion. All eyes flashed instantly upon him, grasping at this sign of life, of happening with a pitiful eagerness... The policeman went to the desk, which was shrouded by a light tarpaulin, and bending far over carefully removed the covering. He stepped back, folded the tarpaulin neatly, retreated to his corner...

But he was already forgotten. As if the sheer rays of a searchlight had been trained upon the desk, every one in the room eyed the objects revealed with a fascination drawn from the deepest crevices of his being.

They were many, and heterogeneous. Ranging in orderly rows along the glass top, each with a small labeled card before it, were the gold lipstick marked W. M. F., which Ellery had found on the bedroom dressing-table; the silver-chased lipstick with the C monogram from the dead woman’s bag in the exhibition-window; five keys with gold discs — the keys to the apartment, four of which bore the initials of Cyrus French, Marion French, Bernice Carmody, Westley Weaver, and the fifth the word Master; the two carved onyx book-ends, lying with a small jar of white powder and a camel’s-hair brush between them; the five strange volumes which Ellery had found on French’s desk; the shaving-set from the lavatory cabinet; two ashtrays filled with cigaret stubs — one set much shorter in length than the others, the gauzy scarf initialed M. F., taken from the neck of the victim; a board on which were tacked the cards from the cardroom table, laid out exactly as they had first appeared to the police; the slip of blue memorandum paper which was checked off at Cyrus French’s typewritten name; the blue hat and the walking shoes from the bedroom closet which Hortense Underhill and Doris Keaton had identified as having been worn by Bernice Carmody the day she disappeared; and a black .38 Colt revolver, with the two now rusty-looking splatters of metal which had been the lethal bullets lying near the muzzle.

Quite by itself, prominently in view of the audience, lay a pair of dull, steely manacles — a symbol and a portent of what was to come...

And there they reposed, the silent clues garnered during the investigation frankly open to the gaze of the uneasy guests of Ellery Queen. Again they stared, whispered.

But this time they had not long to wait. A slight commotion in the corridor outside became plainly audible in the library. Sergeant Velie lumbered to his feet and went quickly to the anteroom door, motioning Patrolman Bush aside. He disappeared, the door swinging shut behind him. Now the door became the focal point of those half-angry, bewildered eyes — that door behind which the deep murmur of several voices kept up a short mysterious litany... And as if it had been cut cleanly by a knife, the voices broke off and an instant of silence fell before the knob of the door was rattled, the door was pushed inward, and eight men stepped into the room.

38 The End of All Things

It had been Ellery Queen’s hand on the knob — a subtly changed young man with drawn features and a sharpened glance that swept the room once and then returned to the anteroom.

“Before me, Commissioner,” he murmured, holding the door wide. Commissioner Scott Welles grunted, pushed his heavy body into view. Three tight-lipped men in plain clothes — his bodyguard — flanked him as he crossed the room toward the desk.

Next to appear in full sight of the assembled company was a strangely altered Inspector Richard Queen, holding himself rigidly erect. He was pale. He followed the police commissioner in silence.

After Queen came District Attorney Henry Sampson and his assistant, the red-haired Timothy Cronin. They were whispering to each other, paying no attention to the occupants of the room.

Velie, making up the rear, carefully closed the anteroom door, flipped Bush back to his post with a curt finger, and dropped into his chair beside Crouther. The store detective looked up at him inquiringly; Velie said nothing and settled his big body. Both men turned to watch the newcomers.

There was a little flurry of conversation as Ellery Queen and his companions stood near the desk at the head of the room. Inspector Queen indicated one of the leather-padded conference chairs immediately to the right and a little behind the desk, as the seat to be occupied by the Commissioner. Welles seemed a sadder and wiser man — he sat down without a word, his eyes on Ellery’s quiet figure before the desk.

The three guards disposed themselves with the other detectives at the side of the room.

Inspector Queen himself sat down in a big chair to the left of the desk, with Cronin at his side. The District Attorney dropped into a chair next to the Commissioner. Desk in the center, its varied articles beckoning attention. On either side two chairs with official occupants. And dominating the scene...

The stage was set.

Ellery Queen cynically examined the room and its occupants once more, expressed himself as satisfied at the Commissioner’s brusque question. Ellery stepped behind the desk and stood with his back to the dormer-windows. His head was lowered, his eyes on the desk-top. His hand strayed to the glass, hovered over the book-ends, played with the jar of white powder... He smiled, straightened, raised his head, removed his pince-nez glasses, looked calmly at his hushed audience, waited... Not until there was absolute silence did he speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Prosy beginning! Yet something vaguely eerie shivered through the air; it was a simultaneous sigh from many breasts.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Sixty hours ago Mrs. Winifred French was shot to death in this building. Forty-eight hours ago her body was found. This morning we have assembled at a private Waterloo to name her murderer.” Ellery had spoken quietly; now he paused for the slightest instant...

But after that sigh en masse even breaths seemed to be drawn with care. No one spoke; no one whispered. They merely sat and waited.

A cutting edge slipped into the tone of Ellery’s voice. “Very well! A few preliminary explanations are required. Commissioner Welles—” he turned slightly toward Welles, “it is with your permission that I conduct this unofficial inquest?”

Welles nodded once.

“Then let me explain,” continued Ellery, turning back to his auditors, “that I am merely taking the place of Inspector Queen, who is unable to take charge because of a minor throat ailment which makes long speaking difficult and painful. Correct, sir?” He bowed very solemnly in the direction of his father. The Inspector grew even paler than before, nodded wordlessly. “Further,” Ellery went on, “if I shall at any time use the personal ‘I’ in my discourse this morning, you are to understand that it is merely for convenience — that in reality I shall be describing the investigatory processes of Inspector Queen himself.”

He halted abruptly, threw a challenging glance about the room, met nothing but wide eyes and ears, and plunged at once into an analysis of the French murder case.

“I shall take you through our investigation of this crime, ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a sharp decisive tone, “step by step, deduction by deduction, observation by observation, until I arrive at what is an inevitable conclusion. Hagstrom, you are taking this down?”

Eyes followed the direction of Ellery’s glance. At the side of the room where the detectives were congregated, Detective Hagstrom was seated, pencil poised above a stenographic notebook. Hagstrom bobbed his head.

“What transpires here this morning,” explained Ellery pleasantly, “will become part of the official dossier of the case. Enough of asides!” He cleared his throat.

“Mrs. Winifred Marchbanks French was discovered dead — killed by two bullets, one in the heart and one in the precordial region below the heart — on Tuesday at fifteen minutes or so past noon. When Inspector Queen arrived upon the scene he noted several facts which led him to believe that” — he paused — “the exhibition-window on the main floor was not in effect the place where the crime was committed.”

The room was deathly still. Fascination, fear, aversion, grief — the gamut of emotions played upon those intent white faces. Ellery Queen went on, rapidly.

“There were five component elements in this initial investigation,” he said, “that pointed to the conclusion that the murder was not committed in the window.

“The first was the fact that, while on Monday night Mrs. French had in her possession her personal key to this apartment, the key was missing from her person and effects Tuesday morning, on the discovery of her dead body. O’Flaherty, the head nightwatchman, testified that she had the key at eleven-fifty Monday night when she left his cubbyhole to take the elevator upstairs. Yet it was gone. Search of the store and premises left the key still unfound. What was the inference? That the key and the crime were in some way connected. How? Well, the key appertained to the apartment. If it was missing, wasn’t there an indication that the apartment also entered into the crime somewhere? At least there was enough suspicion to be gleaned from the missing key to warrant a belief that the apartment might have been the scene of the crime.”

Ellery paused; his lips twitched with fleeting amusement at the frowning faces before him.

“Captious reasoning? I see the disbelief on your faces. Yet bear it in mind. The fact of the key’s being missing meant nothing of itself — but when it was added to the four other facts of which I shall speak, it took on significance indeed.”

He swung back into his main narrative.

“The second element was a grotesque and even amusing one — you will see, incidentally, that the detection of crime is not built upon weighty salient factors, but upon just such incongruities as I shall have occasion to mention this morning... I refer to the fact that the crime must have been committed a short time after midnight. This was simply calculated from Dr. Prouty’s report — Dr. Prouty is the Assistant Medical Examiner — that Mrs. French had been dead some twelve hours when she was found.

“If Mrs. French had been shot to death in the window-room at a little past midnight, ladies and gentlemen,” continued Ellery, with a twinkle in his eye, “her murderer must have committed his crime either in total darkness or by the feeble illumination of a pocket-torch! For there were no lighting fixtures that worked in the room — in fact, no bulbs — and the room was not even wired. Yet we were forced to suppose that the murderer met his victim, talked with her, perhaps quarreled with her, then shot her unerringly in two vital spots, disposed of her body in the wall-bed, cleaned up the blood-stains and what not — all in a room at best illuminated by a flashlight! No, it was not reasonable. Wherefore Inspector Queen, quite logically, I believe, concluded that the crime was not committed in the exhibition-window.”

There was a little rustle of excitement Ellery smiled, continued.

“This, however, was not the only reason for his belief. There was a third point. And that was the lipstick — the long, silver-chased lipstick — monogrammed C, found in Mrs. French’s handbag by her body. That this lipstick obviously was not Mrs. French’s I shall not discuss at this point. The pertinent factor was that it contained lip-rouge of a decidedly darker shade of red than the lip-rouge on the dead woman’s lips. But this meant that Mrs. French’s own lipstick — with which she daubed the lighter rouge on her lips — should be somewhere about. But it was not! Where could it be? Perhaps the murderer took it? That sounded rather nonsensical. The most plausible explanation seemed to be that the missing lipstick was somewhere else in the building... Why somewhere else in the building? — why not at Mrs. French’s home, or at least outside the store?

“For this very good reason. That Mrs. French’s lips — her dead mute lips — which were painted with the lighter shade of red, indicated that she had not completed her application of the rouge! There were two dabs on either side of her upper lip, and another small dab in the center of her lower lip. The rouge had not been smeared — it had patently been applied with a finger and left that way...” Ellery turned toward Marion French. He said gently, “How do you apply your lip-rouge, Miss French?”

The girl whispered: “Just as you described, Mr. Queen. Three pats, one on each side of the upper lip and one in the center of the lower lip.”

“Thank you.” Ellery smiled. “We had, then, visible evidence of a case where a woman began to paint her lips and did not complete the operation. But this was unnatural, remarkable. There are very few things that will keep a woman from finishing this delicate task. Very, very few! One of them might be a violent interruption of some kind. A violent interruption? But there was murder committed! Was that the interruption?”

He changed his tone, forged ahead. “It seemed likely. But in any case, those lips had not been painted in the window-room. Where was the lipstick? That we found it later in the apartment was merely confirmation...

“Point number four was physiological. Dr. Prouty was puzzled by the fact that there was so little blood on the corpse. Both wounds — one particularly — should have bled considerably. The precordial region contains many blood-vessels and muscles which would have been badly torn by the passage of the bullet, which left a ragged wound. Where was the blood? Had the murderer cleaned it up? But in the dark, or semi-darkness, he could not possibly have removed all traces of the copious blood-flow from those wounds. Whereupon we were compelled once more to conclude that that blood had flowed — somewhere else. Which meant that Mrs. French had been shot somewhere else than in the window-room.

“And the fifth point was a psychological one which I fear” — he smiled sadly — “would not carry much weight in a court of law. Nevertheless to me it was quite overwhelming in its indication. For the mind rebelled at the thought that the window-room was the scene of the crime. It was preposterous, dangerous, asinine from the point of view of a potential murderer. A meeting and a murder connote secrecy, privacy — any number of exact requirements. The window-room afforded none of these. The room is not fifty feet away from the head nightwatchman’s office. That area is well-patrolled at periodic intervals. Revolver-shots had to be fired — and none was heard. No! Both Inspector Queen and myself felt — for the five reasons I have given you, no single one of which was conclusive, but which were collectively significant — that the crime was not committed in the window-room.”

Ellery paused. His audience was following the story with eager, panting concentration. Commissioner Welles regarded Ellery with a new light in his small eyes. The Inspector was sunk deeply in thought.

“If not the window,” continued Ellery, “where then? The key pointed to the apartment — the required privacy, illumination, a logical place for the use of lipstick — certainly the apartment seemed the best possibility. So Inspector Queen, relying upon my discretion and discernment, since he himself could not leave the window-room where the preliminary investigation was still going on, asked me to go to the apartment and see what I could see. Which I did, with interesting results...

“The first thing I found in the apartment was Mrs. French’s own lipstick, lying on the bedroom dressing-table.” Ellery picked up the gold lipstick from the desk and held it up for a moment. “This lipstick proved at once, of course, that Mrs. French had been in the apartment on Monday night. The fact that it was lying under the curved edge of a mother-of-pearl tray on the dressing-table and was quite hidden, showed that it had probably been overlooked by the murderer. In fact, the murderer had no reason even to look for it, because he did not apparently observe that the lipstick in Mrs. French’s bag and the coloring on her lips were not identical.” Ellery replaced the glittering metal case on the desk.

“Now, I found the lipstick on the dressing-table. What did this mean? It seemed rather plain that Mrs. French had been using the stick at that dressing-table inside when she was interrupted. But the fact that the lipstick was still there on the table when I found it pointed, it seemed to me, to the fact that Mrs. French was not shot in the bedroom. What was the interruption, then? Obviously, either a knock on the outer door or the noise of the murderer entering the apartment. It was not the latter, for the murderer had no key to the apartment, as I shall soon prove. Then it must have been a knock at the door. Then, too, Mrs. French must have been expecting it, for it so disturbed her, or it was so important to her, that she immediately put down her lipstick, neglecting to complete the daubing of her lips, and hurried through the library and into the anteroom to admit her nocturnal visitor. Presumably she opened the door, the visitor entered, and they went into the library where Mrs. French stood behind the desk and the visitor stood to the right, facing her — that is, Mrs. French stood where I am standing now and the murderer stood about where Detective Hagstrom is sitting at this moment.

“How do I know this?” went on Ellery rapidly. “Very simply. On examining the library, I discovered that these book-ends, which lay on the desk” — he lifted the two onyx book-ends carefully and exhibited them — “had been tampered with. The green felt sheathing of one of them was lighter in shade than its mate. Mr. Weaver volunteered the information that the book-ends were only two months old, having been presented to Mr. French by Mr. Gray on the occasion of Mr. French’s last birthday, and that he had observed them at that time in perfect condition, with the felts exactly alike in color. Furthermore, the book-ends had never left the room, or in fact the desk itself. Apparently, then, the change of felt had occurred the night before. And that was proved when, on examining the felt under a powerful glass, I noted some scattered grains of a white powder stuck in the glue-line where felt and onyx met!

“The glue was still a trifle viscid,” said Ellery, “showing that it had been very recently applied. The grains, on examination, by myself cursorily and on analysis by the official fingerprint expert, proved to be ordinary fingerprint powder, such as is used by the police. But the use of fingerprint powder predicated a crime. There were no fingerprints on the onyx. That meant the fingerprints had been removed. Why the powder, then? Obviously, first to sprinkle the surface in order to bring out what fingerprints might be there, and second to remove the ones found. So much was evident.

“But the larger question arose — why were these book-ends handled at all?” Ellery smiled. “It was an important question, and its answer told an important story. Well, we now knew that they were handled in order to change the felt on one of them. But why had that felt been changed?”

His eyes challenged them mischievously. “There was only one logical answer. To hide or remove a trace of the crime. But what could such a trace be — one that would necessitate carefully ripping off a whole felt, running down to some department in the store which stocks felts and baizes (with what risk you may imagine!), bringing back the felt and some glue, and finally pasting the new protector on the book-end? It must be a damaging trace indeed. The most damaging trace of a crime which I can conceive is — blood. And that was the answer.

“For Dr. Prouty had stated positively that much blood had flowed. Then I had found the exact spot where Mrs. French’s heart-blood had poured out of her body! I proceeded to reconstruct that incident. The book-ends were on the far edge of the desk, opposite the place where I am now standing. The blood must have come, then, from a position similar to mine at this moment. If we suppose that Mrs. French had been shot as she stood here, the first bullet striking above the abdomen in the precordial region, then the blood spurted out directly on the glass top of the desk and trickled across to the book-end, soaking it in gore. Whereupon she must have collapsed in the chair, falling forward just as the second bullet, fired from the same” spot, hit her directly in the heart. This also bled a little. Only one book-end was affected — the one nearer the center of the table. It was so bloody that the murderer was compelled to remove the felt altogether and substitute a new one. Why he felt compelled to hide this trace of the crime I shall go into later. As for the different shade of the new felt — it is an optical fact that colors are more difficult to distinguish truly by artificial light than by daylight. At night, no doubt, the two shades of green seemed identical. With the aid of the sun I immediately detected the difference...

“You see now how we concluded exactly where Mrs. French was when she was murdered. As for the position of her assailant, it was determined from the angle of the wounds themselves, which were pointing to the left and quite ragged, indicating that the murderer stood rather sharply to the right.”

Ellery paused, patting his lips with a handkerchief. “I have strayed a little from the main line of my exposition,” he said, “because it was necessary to convince you that I now had genuine proof that the murder had been committed in the apartment. Until the discovery of the tampered book-ends I could not be sure, despite the fact that I found these cards and cigaret stubs” — he displayed them briefly — “in the cardroom next door.”

He put down the board on which the cards were tacked. “We found the cards lying on the table there arranged in such a manner as to indicate immediately that a game of Russian banque had been interrupted. Mr. Weaver testified that the cardroom had been tidy the evening before, that the cards had not been there. That meant, of course, that someone had used them during the night. Mr. Weaver further attested to the fact that of all the French family and their friends and acquaintances, Mrs. French and her daughter Bernice Carmody were the only ones addicted to the game of banque — that in fact it was well known in many quarters how passionately devoted to it they were.

“The cigaret stubs in the ashtray on the table bore the brand-name La Duchesse — again identified by Mr. Weaver as Miss Carmody’s brand. It was scented with her favorite odeur, violet.

“It seemed, then, that Mrs. French and Miss Carmody had both been in the apartment Monday night, that Miss Carmody had smoked her usual cigarets, and that they had played a game of their beloved banque.

“In the bedroom closet we found a hat and a pair of shoes identified by Miss Underhill, the French housekeeper, and Miss Keaton, a maid in the French employ, as having been worn by Miss Carmody on Monday, the day of the murder, when she left the house and was not seen again. Another hat and another pair of shoes were missing from the closet, seeming to indicate that the girl had changed the damp ones she was wearing for the dry ones that were missing.

“So much for that.” Ellery paused and looked about him, eyes glittering strangely. There was not the slightest sound from his audience. They seemed mesmerized, intent only on watching the slowly rising structure of damning evidence.

“To make an all-important point... Now that I knew that the apartment was the scene of the crime, the question inevitably arose: Why was the body removed to the window downstairs? What purpose did it serve? For it must have served some purpose — we saw too many signs of cunning, coordinated scheming to believe that the murderer was an arrant lunatic, doing things for no reason at all.

“The first alternative was that the body was removed to make it appear that the apartment was not the scene of the murder. But this did not follow from the facts, for if the murderer wished to remove all traces of the crime from the apartment, why did he not also remove the banque game, the cigaret stubs, the shoes and the hat? True, if the body were not discovered or the murder not suspected, the finding of these articles would indicate no crime. But the murderer could not hope to conceal the body forever. Some day, somehow, it would be found, the apartment gone over, and the cards, cigarets and other things would point to the apartment as the place where the murder was committed.

“So, it was evident that the body was removed for another reason entirely. What could that be? The answer came after thought — to delay the discovery of the body. How was this arrived at? Simple mental arithmetic. The exhibition was held every single day at noon sharp. This was an unvarying rule. The window was not entered until noon. These facts were common knowledge. If the body were hidden in that wall-bed the murderer had absolute assurance that it would not be discovered before twelve-fifteen. There was the good sharp reason ready made for us — the only gleam of light in the whole muddle, which was complicated by such questions as why the window was used at all when it had so many obvious disadvantages, and so on. So we had no doubt that the murderer took the trouble of carrying the body down six flights of stairs and into the exhibition-room because he knew that the body would not be found all the next morning.

“Logically, then, the question followed: Why did the murderer desire to delay the discovery of the body? Think it over and you will see that there can be only one convincing reason — because he had to do something on Tuesday morning which the discovery of the body would have rendered dangerous or even impossible!”

They were hanging on his words now breathlessly.

“How could this be?” asked Ellery, his eyes sparkling. “Let’s shift to a new tack for the moment... No matter how the murderer entered the store, he must have stayed all night. He had three ways to enter, but no way to get out unobserved. He could have hidden in the store during the day; he could have come in after hours by the Employees’ Entrance; or he could have slipped into the building by the freight-door at eleven o’clock at night while the commissary truck was unloading the food supplies for the next day. The chances were that this last was the method used, for O’Flaherty had seen no one enter by his door, and coming in at eleven at night was better for the murderer’s purpose than having to stay in the store from five-thirty until midnight.

“But how to get out? O’Flaherty reports no one left by his door; all other exits were locked and bolted; and the freight-door on 39th Street was closed at eleven-thirty, fifteen minutes before Mrs. French even arrived at the store and a half-hour before she was murdered. So the criminal had no recourse but to stay in the store all night. Then he could not escape until nine the next morning, when the doors were opened to the public. At that time he could walk out of the store as if he were an early customer.

“But here another factor entered. If he could walk out of the store at nine, a free man, why couldn’t he also attend to whatever business he had without the rigmarole of taking the body to the window in order to secure a delay? The point is that he did transfer the body. Then he couldn’t walk out of the store at nine, a free man. He needed that delay. He had to stay in the store even after nine!”

Simultaneously there came a short gasp from different quarters of the room. Ellery looked around quickly, as if anxious to determine exactly who had been shocked into astonishment and perhaps fear.

“I see that several of you catch the inference on the wing,” he said, smiling. “There could be only one reason to explain why our murderer had to stay in the store even after nine — and that is that he was connected with the store!”

This time incredulity, suspicion, dread were written on all those plastic faces. Every one drew unconsciously away from his neighbor, as if suddenly aware of the many persons which this last indictment might implicate.

“Yes, that is where we arrived finally,” continued Ellery in an unemotional voice. “If our mysterious criminal were an employee of the store or connected with the store in some official or even unofficial capacity, his absence on the discovery of a murder would certainly be noted. He could not afford to have his absence, which was evidently of paramount importance, noted. He was in a difficult position. The memorandum note” — he exhibited the blue slip on the desk before him — “left on this desk by Mr. Weaver overnight told the murderer that both Mr. Weaver and Mr. French would be in the apartment at nine o’clock the next morning. If he left the body in the apartment, the murder would be discovered at nine, the hue and cry raised, and he would never get his chance to slip out of the store and attend to his secret business. And even telephone calls might be watched. So he had to make sure the body was not discovered until he had time to slip away, or even telephone (for this would be untraceable if there was no reason to check calls). The only method which he knew would surely delay the discovery of the body was to hide it in the window-room. Which he did, and quite successfully.

“By this time we were able to clear up finally that minor point of how the murderer entered the building. We had the Monday time-chart. Our murderer must be, we said, an employee of the store or in some way connected with it. Yet the time-chart showed that every one had checked out regularly before or at five-thirty. Then the murderer must have entered the building by the freight-door, as the only means left.

“One other point, while we are on the subject of the murderer’s desire to delay the discovery of the body... It occurred to me, as no doubt it has occurred to you, that our mysterious criminal ran uncommon risks and embarked on numerous voyages of complication when he began to clean up the mess after his crime. For example — that he carried the body downstairs. But that is explained by the fact that he had to have time in the morning to attend to this vague business, an item, incidentally, which we have not as yet explained. Also — why did he go to the trouble of securing a new felt, carefully mopping up the blood, and so on? Again this is answered by the need for time in the morning, and the fact that if a bloody book-end were found by Mr. Weaver, let us say, at nine o’clock a crime would be suspected at once and undoubtedly the criminal’s chance of getting his business done would be seriously jeopardized. Evidently then, what he had to do was of the most pressing importance — so pressing that he could not run the risk of the crime’s even being suspected before that business was attended to...”

Ellery paused and referred to a sheaf of paper which he took from his breast-pocket. “We must leave for the moment our general conclusion that the person we are seeking is connected officially or semi-officially with this establishment,” he said at last. “Please bear that statement in mind while I veer off into another lane of speculation entirely...

“I brought to your attention a few moments ago four concrete evidences of the presence of Miss Bernice Carmody in this apartment on Monday night. These were, in the order in which we found them, the game of banque exclusively indulged in by Miss Carmody and her mother; the La Duchesse cigarets, violet-scented, known to be Miss Carmody’s special brand; Miss Carmody’s hat, which she was observed wearing on Monday afternoon when she disappeared from sight; and her shoes, which fit the same description.

“Now I shall show you that, far from proving that Miss Carmody was present here on Monday night, they prove exactly the contrary,” continued Ellery briskly. “The banque game contributes nothing to our little refutation; the cards lay there in a legitimate array, and we must leave them for the present.

“The cigarets, however, present a more illuminating view of my contention. These” — he held up one of the ashtrays on the exhibit-table — “these cigaret stubs were found on the table in the cardroom.” He lifted one of the stubs from the tray and held it high. “As you can see, this cigaret has been almost entirely consumed — in fact, only the small strip which bears the brand imprint is left. Without exception, each of the ten or twelve cigarets in this ashtray have been uniformly smoked to the same tiny stub.

“On the other hand, in Miss Carmody’s bedroom at the French house, we found these stubs.” He exhibited the second ashtray, picking out one of the cigarets from its cluttered, dusty depths to show to his audience. “You will observe that in the case of this stub, the cigaret, also a La Duchesse of course, has been little more than one-quarter consumed — Miss Carmody evidently having taken only five or six puffs before crushing the remainder in the tray. Every stub in this tray from Miss Carmody’s bedroom has been similarly treated.

“In other words,” he said with a bare smile, “we find the amusing phenomenon of two sets of cigarets, both presumably smoked by the same person, exhibiting distinctly opposite physical remains. On investigating, we discovered that Miss Carmody, for reasons soon to be clarified, is extremely nervous — so much so that none of those persons who know her best can recall any occasion on which she has not smoked her favorite cigarets in exactly this wasteful, convulsive manner.

“What is the inference?” A perceptible pause. “Merely that Miss Carmody did not smoke the cigarets we found on the cardroom table; that they were smoked or prepared by someone else who did not know Miss Carmody’s unvarying method of throwing away cigarets one-quarter consumed...

“Now, as for the shoes and hat,” Ellery said without allowing his auditors time in which to digest this latest pronouncement, “we found further signs of a tampering hand. The appearance of things is that Miss Carmody was here Monday night, having been wet by the rain of the afternoon and evening, and that before leaving the apartment she changed her soaked hat and shoes, putting on others from the small stock of her clothing already in the bedroom closet. But we discover that the hat had been inserted in a hat-box with its brim to the bottom. And that the shoes had been stuck into the shoe-bag with their heels projecting from the pocket.

“In testing the habituary nature of such a procedure, we considered that an overwhelming percentage of women put their hats away in hat-boxes with the crowns to the bottom and the brims to the top; also that when shoes have large buckles, as this pair has, they are put away with the heels inside, so that the buckles will not catch on the material of the bag. Yet both articles denoted this peculiar ignorance of feminine custom. Here the inference is also obvious — Miss Carmody did not put away those shoes and the hat; a man did. For it is the masculine custom to put hats away with the brim downward; and a man would not grasp the significance of the buckle. All the shoes in the rack had the heels showing, because none happened to have buckles; whoever put Miss Carmody’s shoes in the rack automatically followed suit, which a woman would not have done.

“Now these points, taken by and of themselves, are, I will confess, rather weak and inconclusive. But when you put the three together, the evidence is too strong to be overlooked — it was not Miss Carmody who smoked the cigarets and put away shoes and hat, but someone else — a man.”

Ellery cleared away a huskiness in his throat. His tone was barbed with earnestness, despite a growing hoarseness. “There is another item of considerable interest in this last connection,” he continued. “In examining the lavatory inside, Mr. Weaver and I ran across an intriguing theft. A safety-razor blade of Mr. Weaver’s, which he had used after five-thirty Monday afternoon and had cleaned and restored to the case because it was his last blade and he knew he would have to shave in the morning — this blade, I say, was missing on Tuesday morning. Mr. Weaver, who was busy Monday night and consequently forgot to put in a new supply of blades, came to the apartment Tuesday morning early — at eight-thirty, in fact, because he had to clear up some business and reports before the arrival of Mr. French at nine. He intended to shave in the apartment. The blade, which he had put away only the late afternoon before, was gone. Mr. French, let me explain does not keep a razor, never shaving himself.

“Now why was the blade gone? Of course, it was plain that the blade must have been used Monday night or early Tuesday morning before Mr. Weaver arrived here. Who could have used it? One of two people — Mrs. French or her murderer. Mrs. French could have used it as a cutting instrument of some sort; or her murderer could have used it.

“Of the two alternatives, surely the second is more tenable. Remember that the criminal was constrained by circumstances to pass the night in the store. Where could he stay with most safety? Certainly in the apartment itself! He could not roam about the dark floors, or even hide among them with as great a margin of safety as in the apartment — not with the watchmen prowling about all night! Now — we find a blade used. It suggests normally the process of shaving. Well, why not? We know that the murderer had to make an appearance in the morning as an employee or official of the store. Why shouldn’t he shave while he was temporarily occupying the apartment? It predicates a cold-blooded personality, but that is an argument for rather than an argument against it. Why is the blade missing? Evidently something happened to it. What could have happened to it? Did it break? Why not! The blade had been used a few times; it was brittle. A little extra force in screwing the parts of the razor together, and the blade might easily have snapped. Let us suppose that this happened. Why didn’t the murderer merely leave the broken blade? Because the murderer is a canny scoundrel and in his own way an excellent psychologist. If a broken blade remains it is more likely to be recalled that it was not broken at a former date than to take it for granted that the blade was broken at that former date. If the blade is missing there is no incentive to suspicion or memory. An altered object is a more vigorous mental stimulant than a missing one. At least, that is what I should have thought if I had been in the murderer’s place; and in effect I believe the person who planned this affair did the correct thing in taking away the blade — correct according to his lights. The proof is that Mr. Weaver thought little or nothing of the missing blade until I probed it out of him; and then it was only because I brought to the investigation an unprejudiced, impersonal observation.”

Ellery grinned a little. “I have been working on presumptions and more or less feeble deductions, as you can see; yet if you put together all the scattered, flimsy facts which I have outlined in the past ten minutes, I think you will see that common sense simply cries out that the blade was used for shaving, that it was broken, and that it was taken away. We find no evidence that the blade might have been used for anything but its legitimate purpose; and this only strengthens the contention. Let me leave this line of thought temporarily and go to another, altogether different, and in its way one of the most significant in the entire investigation.”

There was a surreptitious rustling of bodies in hard chairs, a quick intake of breath. The eyes on Ellery did not waver.

“It may come to you,” he said in a quiet, merciless voice, “that more than one person could have been implicated in this affair; that, perhaps, if Miss Carmody did not put away her shoes and hat — disregarding the damning evidence of the cigarets — she still might have been present; for another — a man — could have disposed of the shoes and hat while she stood by or did something else. I shall disprove that with the most gratifying expedition.”

He put his palms flat on the desk, leaned slightly forward. “Who, ladies and gentlemen, had rightful access to this apartment? Answer: The five possessors of the keys. That is — Mr. French, Mrs. French, Miss Carmody, Miss Marion French, and Mr. Weaver. The master key in O’Flaherty’s desk was closely guarded, and no one could have got it without either his knowledge or the knowledge of the day man, O’Shane. And no such knowledge exists, which makes it plain that the master key in no way enters our calculations.

“Of the six keys in esse, as it were, we are now able to account for five. Mrs. French’s is missing. All the others are absolutely accounted for as having been exclusively in the possession of their owners. Mrs. French’s key has been sought for by the combined cunning of the detective force. It is still missing. In other words, it is not on these premises, despite the fact that O’Flaherty positively avers that Mrs. French had it in her possession when she entered the store Monday night.

“I told you at the beginning of this impromptu demonstration that the murderer probably took that key. Now I tell you not only that he took it, but that he had to take it.

“We have one confirmation in fact that the criminal wanted a key. On Monday afternoon, some time after Miss Carmody left the French house furtively, Miss Underhill, the housekeeper, received a telephone call. The caller claimed to be Miss Carmody. The caller asked Miss Underhill to have Miss Carmody’s key to the apartment ready, that a messenger would be sent for it at once. Yet only the very same morning, Miss Carmody had told Miss Underhill that she had lost her key, she thought, and asked Miss Underhill to secure one of the other keys and make a duplicate for her!

“Miss Underhill doubts that the caller was Miss Carmody. She is ready to swear that someone stood by the telephone at the other end and prompted the caller’s reply when Miss Underhill reminded the caller about the lost key and the morning instructions. The caller then hung up in some confusion...

“What is the inference? Surely that the caller was not Miss Carmody, but a hireling or accomplice of the murderer, who prompted the call in order to secure a key to the apartment!”

Ellery drew a long breath. “I leave you for the moment to your own cogitations on the interesting inflections this incident raises... Now let me conduct you through a logical maze to another conclusion — the one with which I began this branch of my thesis.

“Why did the murderer want a key? Obviously, to secure a means of access to the apartment. He could not get in except through the agency of a second person who possessed a key, if he had not one himself. Presumably he expected to be admitted to the apartment by Mrs. French, but in the careful planning of the crime the possession of a key for himself might conceivably be important, and this explains the call and the projected ‘messenger.’ But to the case in point!

“The criminal killed Mrs. French in the apartment. Now that he had a corpse and knew that he must take it down into the window-room, for the various reasons I have given, he pulled up with a sudden thought. He knew that the door to the apartment had a spring lock that snapped shut. He had no key, having failed in his effort to get hold of Bernice Carmody’s. He must carry the body out of the apartment. Yet he had much to do in the apartment afterward — clean up the evidences of blood, ‘plant’ the shoes and hat, the banque game and cigarets. As a matter of fact, even if he cleaned up the room and ‘planted’ the false evidence before he took the body down, he still needed means of reentry into the apartment. He had to pussyfoot through the store for the felt, the glue, and other paraphernalia needed to fix the book-ends. How was he to get back into the apartment? He also meant to sleep in the apartment, apparently — again, how was he to get back? You see, whether he took the body downstairs before or after he cleaned up, he still needed a means of reentry to the apartment...

“His first thought must have been to insert something between the door and the floor to keep the springed door from clicking shut. But what about the watchmen? He must have thought: ‘The watchmen make rounds through this corridor by the hour. They will be sure to notice a partly open door and investigate.’ No, the door had to be closed. But... a thought! Mrs. French had a key, her own key — the one by which she herself entered the apartment. He would use that. We can picture him opening her bag while she lay, bleeding and dead, across the desk, finding the key, putting it into his own pocket, picking up the corpse and leaving the apartment, now certain of a means of reentering it when he was through with his grisly task.

“But” — and Ellery smiled grimly — “he had to bring the key back upstairs with him, obviously, to get into the apartment again. Therefore we didn’t find it on the body. True, he might have gone upstairs, done his cleaning up, and then taken the key downstairs again. But — of course that’s inane — how would be get back again? Besides, the danger he would encounter — taking still another chance of being detected on the main floor getting into the window... It was dangerous enough the first time, but that was inescapable. No, he probably figured that the best thing he could do would be to pocket the key and dispose of it when he left the building in the morning. True, he might have left it in the apartment, on the card-table for example. But the fact that it isn’t in the apartment shows that he took it away with him — he had two alternatives and chose one of them.

“We find then—” Ellery paused for the merest instant — “that our criminal committed the murder without accomplices.

“I see doubt on some faces. But surely it is quite clear. If he had an accomplice, he wouldn’t have been forced to take the key at all!.. He would have carried the body downstairs, and his accomplice would have remained in the apartment to open the door for him when he was finished downstairs. Don’t you see? The very fact that he had to take the key shows that it was a one-man job. I might be confronted with the objection: ‘Well, it could have been two people at that, because both might have carried the body downstairs.’ To that I reply with certainty, ‘No!’ because it would have involved a double risk — two people would have been easier to detect by a watchman than one. This crime is well thought out — the author of it would never have taken this unnecessary chance of discovery.”

Ellery stopped abruptly and stared down at his notes. No one moved. When he looked up there was a tightness about his lips that revealed an inward strain whose cause no one there could guess.

“I have now reached the point, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in a calm flat voice, “where I can go to some length in describing our elusive criminal. Would you care to hear my description?”

He looked about the room, challenging them with his eyes. Bodies rigid through excitement sagged in reaction. Every one averted his head. There was no sound from them.

“I take it that you would,” said Ellery in the same flat voice, which contained a note of amused menace. “Very well, then!”

He leaned forward, eyes glittering. “Our murderer is a man. The tactics employed in putting the shoes and hat into the closet plus the evidence of the missing blade point to this masculinity. The physical energy required in disposing of the body and the rest; the mental agility, with its recurrent traces of hard common sense; the cold-bloodedness, the unscrupulosity — all these point unerringly to a masculine figure with, if you will, a fairly heavy beard which requires daily shaving.”

They followed the movements of his lips with bated breaths.

“Our man worked alone, without accomplices. The deductions from the missing key, which I have gone into at great length, point to this.”

There was not a tremor of movement in the room.

“Our lone man is connected with the store. The removal of the body to the window downstairs and all its attendant complications, which I have also expounded at some length, prove this.”

Ellery relaxed slightly. Again he looked about the room with a little smile. He applied his handkerchief to his lips, glanced slyly at Commissioner Welles, who sat perspiring and alert in his chair; at his father, who was slumped in an attitude of weariness, one fragile hand shielding his eyes; at the motionless detectives to his left; at Velie, Crouther, “Jimmy,” and Fiorelli to his right. Then he began once more.

“On one point,” he said dryly, “we have as yet reached no definite conclusion. I refer to the nature of the business which the murderer considered so imperative as to require special attention Tuesday morning...

“Which brings me to the most absorbing subject of the five books which we discovered on this desk — that interesting mélange of paleontology, elementary music, commerce of the moyen âge, philately, and bad vaudeville jokes.”

Ellery launched into a short, graphic description of the five strange volumes, the markings, Weaver’s story of Springer’s duplicity, the revelation that the addresses were drug-distributing depots, and finally the unsuccessful raid on the house at the 98th Street address, taken from the sixth book in Weaver’s possession.

“When Springer prepared the sixth book,” continued Ellery, to his ever-tensing audience, “we can assume that he had no suspicion that the book-code was being tampered with or known to an outsider. If he had, he would not have prepared the book and left it for Mr. Weaver’s investigating fingers. So that, when Springer left the store on Monday night, followed by Mr. Weaver, he did not know that this sixth book, Modern Trends in Interior Decoration, by Lucian Tucker, was in our young amateur detective’s possession. And since Springer met and spoke to no one all evening, even when he arrived at his Bronx apartment (for we have checked up through the telephone company and found that he did not make any telephone calls when he got home), he could not therefore have known that the book-system had been tampered with until, at the very earliest, the next morning, Tuesday, when he returned to work. In other words, after the murder. If we presume that not Springer, but some one else, would have been apprised by an outsider of the discovery of the code system, we must not forget that the only method by which any one could have communicated with another about the matter from the store would be by telephoning, since he could not leave the store during the night. And we discovered that the telephone service at this store is cut off at night, with the exception of one trunk line leading to O’Flaherty’s desk; and this was not used, according to O’Flaherty’s own testimony.

“Then we are forced to conclude that it was impossible for anyone in the store Monday night and early Tuesday morning to have communicated with Springer or anyone else about the missing sixth book, which Weaver took away with him.”

Ellery forged ahead rapidly. “The fact that the system of dope distribution was disorganized the next morning, Tuesday — as it was, for the sudden abandonment of the 98th Street house on Tuesday afternoon is clear evidence — could have been due only to someone of the drug ring discovering during the night that the system was being tampered with. I repeat here the fact that Springer went ahead on Monday evening with his regular task of codifying the sixth book, showing that up to that time the ring considered their system safe. Yet by next morning they had become alarmed and fled the 98th Street rendezvous, even before catering to their addict-customers. Again, then, the logical explanation is that it was during the previous night that some one discovered something wrong.

“This discovery could have been caused only by, first, noticing the absence of the sixth book from its accustomed shelf in the Book Department Monday night after Weaver left — the last one to check out of the store; second, finding the five duplicate books on Mr. French’s desk Monday night; or third, both. We must conclude therefore that since the disorganization did take place the morning after the crime, it could have only been ordered by someone who made one or both of these discoveries Monday night; Someone — to amplify — who must have been in the store after Springer and Weaver left, and who therefore could not get out of the store or communicate with any one until at least nine o’clock Tuesday morning.”

Dawning comprehension shone from several faces before him. Ellery smiled. “I see that some of you are anticipating the inevitable conclusion... Who in the store that night was in a position to make one or both of these bibliographical discoveries? The answer is: the murderer, the man who killed Mrs. French in the room in which the five books were prominently in sight. Is there anything about the murderer’s subsequent actions which proves that he did make the discovery of the five books in the apartment? Yes, there is. The fact that the murderer removed the body to the window-room in order to give himself time next morning to attend to his ‘business’ — which until this point has been obscure...

“The deductive chain, ladies and gentlemen,” said Ellery in a curiously triumphant voice, “is too strong and perfectly welded to be anything but truth. The murderer warned the drug ring Tuesday morning.

“In other words, to add an element to our growing description — our murderer is a man, who worked alone, who is connected with the store, and who belongs to a large, well-organized drug ring.”

He paused, fingered the five books on the desk with sensitive fingers. “Furthermore, we are now in a position to add another qualifying item to the growing description of the murderer.

“For had our drug-distributing murderer been present in the French apartment before the night of the murder — and by ‘before’ I mean at any time within five weeks prior to the fatal night — he would have seen the books on the table, would have become suspicious, would have at once ordered the cessation of the book-code operations in the Book Department. And since up to the very night of the murder the book system was still in effect, it follows most gracefully that the murderer had not been in the French library for between one and five weeks before Monday night last... We have confirmation that it was the murderer again who saw those books on the desk. For in examining and later fixing the damaged book-ends, he could scarcely have missed seeing — and understanding to his horror the significance of — the five volumes...

“As a matter of fact,” continued Ellery swiftly, “there is no difficulty in deducing that the murderer, upon seeing the incriminating books on this desk, immediately stole downstairs to the Book Department with a flashlight to determine whether the sixth book had been tampered with also. And of course he would have found it gone — the climax-capping discovery which would make it imperative for him to get word to his confederates that the game was up. This is a decently reasonable conjecture which very soon, I am happy to announce, we shall be able to check more positively!”

And with this he stopped short, mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, and polished the lenses of his pince-nez with absent fingers. This time a ripple of conversation disturbed the quiet atmosphere, beginning in a minor cadence that swelled to excited proportions, only to cease abruptly when Ellery lifted a hand for silence.

“To make the analysis complete,” he resumed, restoring his glasses to his nose, “I shall now become perhaps objectionably personal. For I mean to take up, one by one, each of you and measure you by the yardstick I have constructed in this analysis!”

Instantly the room was a babel of exclamations, expressions of anger, resentment, bewilderment, uncomfortable self-interest. Ellery shrugged his shoulders, turned toward Commissioner Welles. The Commissioner said “Yes!” in a decisive tone and glared at the people assembled before him. They subsided, muttering.

Ellery turned back to his audience with a half-smile. “Really,” he said, “I have not sprung my greatest surprise by any means. So there is little cause for protest on the part of any one here — or should I say nearly anyone? At any rate, let’s begin this fascinating little game of elimination.

“From the first unit on my yardstick — the fact that the murderer is a man—” he said, “we may at once absolve, even as an intellectual exercise, Miss Marion French, Miss Bernice Carmody, and Mrs. Cornelius Zorn.

“The second unit — that this man worked alone — is irrelevant and useless to determine identity, so we will proceed to the third unit, which is that the murderer, a man, is connected with this establishment. And to the fourth, which is that the murderer has not been in this apartment within the past five weeks.

“There is, first, Mr. Cyrus French.” Ellery bowed insouciantly to the feeble old millionaire. “Mr. French is certainly connected with this establishment. Mr. French, further, could have committed the crime, if you judge physical possibility a factor. I demonstrated privately not long ago that, had Mr. French bribed the chauffeur of his host, Mr. Whitney, to take him into the city from Great Neck on Monday night and forget about it, he could have arrived at this apartment in sufficient time to slip through the freight-entrance and into the apartment. He was not seen again, except by the chauffeur, after he retired to his room in the Whitney house at nine o’clock Monday night complaining of a slight indisposition.

“However—” Ellery smiled at the purpling face of French — “Mr. French has certainly been in this room within the past five weeks — every day, in fact, for years. And if this seems inconclusive, Mr. French, rest easy. For there is another reason, that thus far I have purposely neglected to mention, which makes your culpability a psychological impossibility.”

French relaxed, a vague smile lifting the corners of his tremulous old mouth. Marion squeezed his hand. “Now,” said Ellery busily, “Mr. John Gray, donor of the entangled book-ends and close friend to the French family. You, Mr. Gray,” he said gravely, directly addressing the spruce old director, “are eliminated on a number of counts. Although you are connected with the store in a very important capacity, and although your absence on Tuesday morning would have been seriously noticed, you too have been a frequent visitor to these rooms during the past five weeks; in fact, you attended a meeting here on Friday, I believe. And you had an alibi for Monday night which we checked up and found stronger than even you believe. For not only does the night-man at your hotel desk confirm your statement that you were talking with him at eleven-forty Monday night, making it impossible for you to have entered the store, but another person, unknown to you — a fellow-resident at the same apartment hotel — saw you enter your suite at eleven-forty-five... Even without this we could not seriously have entertained a thought of your guilt, for we had no reason to believe that your friend the night-clerk is anything but an honest man. No more reason, in fact, than that Mr. Whitney’s chauffeur, in the case of Mr. French, is dishonest. In Mr. French’s case I merely mentioned the bribe as an eventuality, improbable but certainly within the realm of possibility.”

Gray sank back with a curious sigh, dug his small hands into the pockets of his coat. Ellery turned to red-faced, nervous Cornelius Zorn, who was fumbling with his watch-chain. “Mr. Zorn, your alibi was weak, and you could have, with perjured testimony on the part of Mrs. Zorn, committed the murder. But although you are a prominent official of the store, you too have been in this room at least once weekly for many months. And you, too, as well as Mr. French and Mr. Gray, are further absolved by this psychological inadmissibility of which I spoke before.

“Mr. Marchbanks,” continued Ellery, turning to the heavy-set, lowering brother of the dead woman, “your story about the automobile trip to Long Island and staying over-night at your house in Little Neck, unseen by any one who might vouch for your presence, also made it physically possible for you to have returned to the city in time to get into the store and commit the murder. But you needn’t have been so irate yesterday — you are absolved too by this secret point of mine, besides being eliminated, as a regular attendant here at the directorial conferences, on the same account as Mr. Zorn.

“And Mr. Trask—” Ellery’s tone, hardened slightly — “although you were drunk and rolling about the streets—” Trask’s jaw dropped in vapid astonishment — “on Monday night and Tuesday morning, you, too, are set free by my yardstick, as well as by my as yet undivulged item.”

Ellery paused, looked contemplatively at the stony, dark features of Vincent Carmody. “Mr. Carmody. In many respects you deserve our apologies and genuine commiserations. You were entirely eliminated from our speculations by the fact that you are in no way connected with the store. Had you committed the murder, despite your story of the night trip to Connecticut, which was unsubstantiated and might have been false, there would have been no necessity for taking the body of Mrs. French downstairs to the window-room. Because you could have walked out of the store at nine o’clock unrestrained by any fear that your absence might be noticed. You did not belong in the store at all.

You, too, incidentally, are eliminated further by my charming and mysterious little point.

“And now,” continued Ellery, turning to the disturbed Gallic features of Paul Lavery, “we come to you. Don’t be afraid!” he smiled — “you didn’t commit the crime! I was so certain that I did not even bother to ask you for a statement of your movements on Monday night. You have been in this apartment daily for weeks. Besides, you came here directly from France only a short time ago — it was quite beyond the area of probability to suspect you, therefore, of being embroiled in a gang of drug-peddlers, operating with intense organization in this city and country. And you, too, cannot very well be our murderer, since you do not logically measure up to my last point, still withheld. And, if I were to be minutely psychiatric, I might add that a man of your refined and Continental intelligence would never have committed the regrettable mistakes which got our esteemed mysterioso into trouble. For I do believe that, out of all of us, you alone would have been man-of-the-world enough to know how a woman puts her hat into a hat-box, and how she stores buckled shoes in a shoe-bag...

“We have now,” continued Ellery pleasantly, but there was a feverish glitter in his eye, “narrowed the field of inquiry considerably. We might discuss, of course, Mr. MacKenzie, the general manager, who is an employee of the store. No, no! Mr. MacKenzie, don’t rise to protest — we’ve eliminated you already. Because of this last point of ours, which is almost ready for exposition, and because you have been in this apartment within five weeks. But any of the hundreds of employees of the store who have never been in this apartment and whose movements Monday night are unaccounted for, might be the murderer. We’ll come to that in a moment. At this time, ladies and gentlemen—” Ellery made a sharp sign to Patrolman Bush at the anteroom door, who immediately bobbed his head and went out, leaving the door open behind him — “at this time I wish to present to you a gentleman who until now has been more or less of an unknown quantity; no less a personage than—” there was a flurry at the outer door; it opened and Bush entered, followed by a detective who held a white-faced man, manacled, tightly by the elbow — “Mr. James Springer!”

Ellery retreated slightly, a grim smile on his face. The detective escorted his prisoner to the front of the room, where two chairs were immediately set by one of the attendant policemen. The two men sat down, Springer holding his manacled hands limply in his lap, staring steadfastly at the floor. He was a middle-aged man with sharp features and grey hair; a livid bruise on his right cheek was mute evidence of a recent scuffle.

Everybody in the room stared at him wordlessly. Old French was speechless with rage at the sight of the employee who had betrayed him. Weaver and Marion both laid restraining hands on his shaking arm. But there were no words in that audience — only hot eager glances, and in one case a frozen steady immutability...

“Mr. Springer,” said Ellery quietly — yet his voice exploded like a shell in the strained atmosphere of the room — “Mr. Springer has been kind enough to turn State’s evidence. Mr. Springer, who ran away with the deluded thought that he might successfully evade the police, was caught the very day he attempted to escape because we were prepared for it. Mr. Springer has cleared up many little items of procedure which we could not possibly have deduced.

“For example, that the murderer is his chief in the drug ring, which even now is being scattered and pursued throughout the country. That the murderer is the right-hand man of the eloquently termed ‘master mind’ of the drug ring in this city. That Miss Bernice Carmody, who we discovered by investigation was probably a drug addict in an advanced stage, had come under the influence of the heroin habit, had met by devious ways the ‘master mind,’ had been introduced to the code-system, had become so dependent upon the drug that she willingly solicited new customers from her social circle, becoming in a way therefore almost a member of the ring. That Miss Carmody’s pernicious addiction was unsuspected by her family until, as we know, her father, Mr. Carmody, began to suspect and told his former wife, Mrs. French, what he suspected; and Mrs. French, observing, saw that it was true. That Mrs. French, in her assertive way, directly accused her daughter of addiction and finally broke down the girl’s weakened will until she confessed everything — including the name of the man connected with the French store who was supplying her directly with her own drugs. That Mrs. French, who we may suppose did not inform her husband of the true state of affairs because of his violent aversion to this form of vice, on Monday took away from Miss Carmody the newly replenished supply of drugs which she kept in the false bottom of her specially made lipstick. That Mrs. French further forced her daughter to make an appointment for her with this man, this employee in her husband’s store, for Monday night at midnight, secretly, to plead with him for her daughter — to force him, by threats of disclosing to the police what she now knew about the drug organization, to loose his grip on her daughter and allow the girl to be cured secretly by her mother. That this appointment was made on Sunday through Miss Carmody. That this man immediately reported the alarming state of affairs to his chief, the ubiquitous ‘master mind,’ who in his customary cold-blooded fashion commanded him to kill Mrs. French, who by now, in turn, was in possession of too much vital information to be allowed to live; and also to do away with Miss Carmody, who had proved a weak cog in the machine and must also be disposed of. That this man, under threat of being killed himself, laid his plans and made his appointment. That he entered secretly through the freight-door, which as an employee of the store he knew was open at that exact half-hour each night. That he waited until midnight in a store lavatory and then made his way stealthily to the apartment on the sixth floor, knocked, and was admitted by Mrs. French, who had arrived a few minutes before. That she stood by the desk, as we deduced, and they argued; that he was not aware of the heroin-filled lipstick in her bag, or he would have taken it; that without hesitation he shot and killed Mrs. French, who bled profusely, the blood staining the book-end; that on bending over the desk he saw the five books, and realized that someone had been tampering with the code-system; that he saw the blue memorandum announcing the arrival next morning at nine of Mr. Weaver and Mr. French; that he realized he could not communicate with anyone of the ring about this latest unforeseen development, because he was unable to get out before the next morning and could not telephone; that he therefore decided to hide the body in the exhibition-window, which would give him ample time next morning to slip away and warn his gang, for if the body were left in the apartment and discovered at nine, he would be unable for precautionary reasons to leave the building; and finally that he disposed of the body where we found it. Also that on his way back he stopped at the Book Department on the main floor and confirmed his suspicion that the sixth book was also missing. That he took Mrs. French’s key back with him, having been unsuccessful in his attempt to get Bernice Carmody’s that afternoon by the ruse of the telephone call. Finally, that he cleaned up the apartment, fixed the book-end, ‘planted’ the evidence against Miss Carmody, stayed overnight, shaved in the morning, broke the blade and took it away with him; and slipped out shortly after nine, emerging with the early shoppers only to reenter the building at once through the regular Employees’ Entrance, in order to be checked in officially. And that he managed soon after to sneak off and warn his gang leader of the discovery of the book-system...”

Ellery cleared his throat, went on relentlessly. “Mr. Springer was also kind enough to clear up the matter of Miss Carmody’s abduction. With the action of Mrs. French on Sunday of taking away her store of the drug, the girl became desperate and got in touch with the murderer. This fitted in with his plans — he told her to come to a rendezvous in the lower part of the city for a new supply. She went on Monday afternoon and was promptly abducted, being taken by confederates to a Brooklyn hide-away and murdered. Her clothes were confiscated and brought back to our murderer, who had as yet committed no capital crime. These clothes the murderer brought with him to the apartment Monday night — the hat and shoes, tied up innocently in a small parcel, but wet a trifle with rain to make the deception perfect.

“There is only one thing more to explain before proceeding to the much-wished-for dénouement... And that is the reason for ‘planting’ the banque game, cigarets, shoes and hat to make it appear as if Bernice herself had been implicated in the crime. And this, too, was outlined — under protest — by Mr. Springer, who has been just a cog — an important cog, perhaps — in the vicious wheel...

“The murderer left evidences of Miss Carmody’s presence because she had necessarily vanished. Since she had been murdered and would be missing, there was a logical reason for connecting the two events — the disappearance of the girl and the murder of her mother. It would seem perhaps as if the girl had committed the crime. Since this was untrue, the murderer felt that it might confuse the police and put them off the real track. The murderer did not really hope that the deception would be successful for long — it was merely another red herring drawn across the trail, and anything which would lead the scent away from him in another direction he felt was desirable. And the actual ‘framing’ required little enough trouble and work. The cigarets he secured from Xanthos’, Miss Carmody’s tobacconist, since she had once told him where he secured her private supply. The banque he knew about from Miss Carmody, also. The rest was child’s play...”

They were sitting on the edge of the hard camp-chairs now, straining forward to catch every syllable. Occasionally they looked at each other in a puzzled manner, as if unable to see clearly to the end of the analysis. Ellery brought them back to attention with his next words.

“Springer!” The name cracked out sharply. The prisoner started, paled, looked up furtively. His eyes fell at once to the carpet he had been studiously observing. “Springer, have I given your story faithfully and completely?”

The man’s eyes fluttered in a sudden agony, rolled in their sockets, wildly seeking a face in the swaying crowd before him. When he spoke, it was in a husky monotone, barely audible to those avid ears.

“Yes.”

“Very well, then!” exclaimed Ellery, leaning forward, his tone keenly triumphant. “I have still to expatiate upon that unspoken point which I termed mysterious a few moments ago...

“You will recall that I spoke of the book-ends and the few grains of powder stuck in the glue between the onyx and the new felt. That powder was ordinary fingerprint powder.

“From the moment that I was certain of the nature of the powder, the veils dissipated before my eyes and I sensed the truth. We thought at first, ladies and gentlemen,” he continued, “that the use of fingerprint powder by the criminal indicated a very superior sort of murderer — a super-criminal, in fact. One who would use the implements of the police’s own trade — it was a natural thought...

“But” — and the word lashed into them with deadly emphasis — “there was another inference to be drawn — an inference which in a fell swoop eliminated all suspects but one...” His eyes flashed fire; the hoarseness disappeared from his voice. He leaned forward carefully, over the desk with its litter of clues, holding them with the magnetism of his personality. “All suspects — but one...” he repeated slowly.

After a pregnant moment he said; “That one is the man who was employed by this store; who had not been in this room for at least five weeks; who attempted to put us off the track of himself by getting an accomplice without a record to give false information about the ‘movements’ of Bernice Carmody, who was already dead, in fact; who at the same time was clever enough to say, when he saw that we believed Miss Carmody to have been ‘framed,’ that he thought so, too, despite the fact that he himself had done the framing; who was present — the only suspect to be present, by the way — when the full story of the codified books and the culpability of Springer was told, and who took the very first opportunity of warning Springer to flee, realizing that, with Springer caught, he himself was in serious danger; who, most important of all, was the only personality connected with this investigation to whom the use of fingerprint powder was natural and thoroughly logical...”

He stopped abruptly, eyes fixed with interest, expectancy, the eagerness of the chase, upon one corner of the room.

“Watch him, Velie!” he cried suddenly, in a piercing voice.

Before they could turn, before they could grasp the significance of the scene enacted before them so swiftly and vitally, there came the sounds of a short violent struggle, a bull-like bellow of rage, the hoarse panting of breaths, and finally one sharp stupendous deafening report...

Ellery stood limply, wearily in his fixed position at the desk. He did not move while they rushed concertedly from all sides of the room to the quiet spot where the body of a man lay, already stiff in death, in a pool of blood.

It was Inspector Queen who reached that contorted body first, by a lightning leap; who knelt quickly on the carpet, motioning aside the red-faced, heaving figure of Sergeant Velie; who turned the convulsed corpse of the suicide over; who muttered in words inaudible even to the nearest spectator:

“No legal evidence — and the bluff worked!.. Thank God for a son...”

The face was the face of the head store detective, William Crouther.