The Greek Coffin Mystery

Chapter 23. Yarns

It began innocently enough, on Tuesday, October the nineteenth, a little before noon.

How Mrs. Sloane had contrived to elude the keen eyes of her tormentors she did not explain, but the fact remained that, unescorted and unpursued, she appeared at Police Headquarters―dressed, to be sure, in unostentatious black and lightly veiled―asking in a timid voice if she might see Inspector Richard Queen on a matter of importance. Inspector Richard Queen, it appeared, would have preferred to isolate the lady on the isles of her sorrow, but being a gentleman and something of a fatalist in feminine matters, he resigned himself to the inevitable and consented to see her.

The Inspector was alone when she was brought in―a slight frail middle-aged woman with eyes burning fiercely even through their filmy covering. He handed her into a chair after murmuring a few words of practised sympathy, and stood by his desk waiting―as if by standing he might subtly suggest to her that the life of a detective-inspector was a busy one indeed and she would be serving her city well to come directly to the point.

She did so, disconcertingly. Speaking in a voice tinged by the merest hysteria, she said: “My husband was not a murderer, Inspector.”

The Inspector sighed. “But the facts, Mrs. Sloane.”

She was prone to ignore, it seemed, those precious facts. “I’ve told reporters all week,” she cried, ‘that Gilbert was an innocent man. I want justice, do you hear, Inspector? The scandal will follow me―all of us―my son―to the grave!”

“But, my dear lady, your husband took justice into his own hands. Please remember that his suicide was practically a confession of guilt.”

“Suicide!” she said scornfully; she snatched at her veil with an impatient hand and her eyes blazed at him. “Are you all blind? Suicide!” Tears blurred her voice. “My poor Gilbert was murdered, and no one―no one . . . “ She began to sob.

It was very distressing, and the Inspector stared out of his window uncomfortably. “That’s a statement which calls for proof, Mrs. Sloane. Have you any?”

She jumped out of the chair. “A woman doesn’t need proof,” she cried. “Proof! Of course I haven’t any. But what of it? I know―”

“My dear Mrs. Sloane,” said the Inspector dryly, ‘that’s where the law and womenfolk differ. I’m sorry, but if you can’t offer new evidence pointing directly to someone else as the murderer of Albert Grimshaw, my hands are tied. The case is closed on our records.”

She left without a word.

* * *

Now surely this short, unhappy, sterile incident was on the surface no matter of great moment. And yet it was to set in motion an entirely new and related series of events. The case would in all probability―Ellery has maintained this with conviction for many years―have remained a dead issue in the burdened police archives had not the Inspector, shrewdly gauging his son’s sour expression at the dinner table that evening, recounted the incident of Mrs. Sloane’s visit over the coffee-cups―in the pathetic paternal hope that news, any news, would sweeten that grim un-happy face.

To his astonishment―for it had been after all a forlorn hope―the ruse worked perfectly. Ellery became interested at once. The restless lines vanished, to be replaced by others characteristically thoughtful. “So she thinks Sloane was murdered, too,” he said with faint surprise. “Interesting.”

“Isn’t it?” The Inspector winked at skinny Djuna, who had grasped his mug in two thin hands and was staring with large black gypsy eyes over its rim at Ellery. “Interesting how women’s minds work. Won’t be convinced. Like you, by heaven.” He chuckled, but his eyes awaited a responsive twinkle.

It failed to appear. Ellery said quietly: “I think you’re taking this thing much too flippantly, dad. I’ve lolled about too long, sucking my thumbs and sulking like a child. I’m going to get busy.”

The Inspector was alarmed. “What are you going to do―rake up the old coals, El? Why don’t you let well enough alone?”

“The attitude of laissez faire,” remarked Ellery, “has operated much to the detriment of others than the French, and in other fields than physiocratic economics. Do I sound didactic? I’m afraid many a poor devil is buried in the unhallowed soil of a homicide’s grave who has no more right to be known to posterity as a murderer than you or I.”

“Talk sense, son,” said the old man uneasily. “You’re still convinced, against all reason, that Sloane was innocent?”

“Not precisely. I don’t say that in so many words.” Ellery tapped a cigarette against a fingernail. “I do say this: Many elements of this case which you, Sampson, Pepper, the Commissioner and God knows how many others consider irrelevant and unimportant remain unexplained. I mean to pursue them just so long as there is the feeblest hope of satisfying my admittedly vague convictions.”

“Anything clear in your mind?” asked the Inspector shrewdly. “Got any notions of who did do it, since you suspect Sloane didn’t?”

“I haven’t the shadow of an idea who might be behind these little excursions into crime.” Ellery expelled a gloomy lungful of smoke. “But one thing I’m as certain of as that all’s wrong with the world. And that is that Gilbert Sloane did not kill Albert Grimshaw―or himself.”

* * *

It was bravado, but bravado with stern intent. The next morning, after a fitful night, Ellery betook himself immediately after breakfast to East Fifty-fourth Street. The Khalkis house was shuttered―unguarded outwardly, but as lifeless as a tomb. He mounted the steps and rang the bell. The vestibule door did not open; instead he heard a grouchy, most unbutlerlike voice grunt: “Who is it?” It required patience and much conversation to induce the owner of the voice to unlatch the door. It did not open so much as it twitched aside a bit; and through the crack Ellery saw the pink cranium and harassed eyes of Weekes. After that, there was no difficulty; and Ellery did not even smile as Weekes pulled the door quickly open, thrust his rosy skull out in a hasty reconnaissance of Fifty-fourth Street, as hastily shut the door behind Ellery, and after latching it led the way to the drawing-room.

Mrs. Sloane, it appeared, was barricaded in her rooms upstairs. The name of Queen, Weekes coughingly reported a few moments later, had flushed the widow’s face, caused her eyes to flash, and brought bitter invective to her lips. Weekes was sorry, but Mrs. Sloane―cough!―could not, should not, or would not see Mr. Queen.

Mr. Queen, however, was not to be denied. He thanked Weekes gravely and instead of turning south in the corridor, in which direction lay exit, he turned north and made for the staircase leading to the upper floor. Weekes looked shocked and wrung his hands.

Ellery’s plan for gaining admittance was simplicity itself. He knocked on the Sloane door and when the widow’s harsh, “Who is it now?” grated in his ears, said: “Someone who doesn’t believe Gilbert Sloane was a murderer.” Her response was immediate. The door flew open and Mrs. Sloane stood there, breathing fast, searching the face of this Delphic oracle with hungry eyes. When she saw who her visitor was, however, the hunger changed into hate. “It’s a trick!” she said angrily. “I don’t want to see any of you fools!”

“Mrs. Sloane*” said Ellery gently, “you’re doing me grave injustice. It wasn’t a trick, and I believe what I said.”

The hatred drained away, and in its place appeared cold speculation. She was silent as she studied him. Then the coldness melted, she sighed, held the door wide, and said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Queen. I’m a―a little upset. Do come in.”

Ellery did not sit down. He placed his hat and stick on the desk―Sloane’s fateful humidor was still there―and said: “Let’s come to the point, Mrs. Sloane. Evidently you want to help. Certainly you possess the greatest animus for desiring to clear your husband’s name.”

“God, yes, Mr. Queen.”

“Very well, then. We’ll get nowhere with evasions. I am going to comb every crevice of this case, see what’s lurking in each dark unexplored cranny. I want your confidence, Mrs. Sloane.”

“You mean . . . “

“I mean,” said Ellery firmly, “I want you to tell me why you visited Albert Grimshaw at the Benedict several weeks ago.”

She hugged her thoughts to her breast then, and Ellery waited without too much hope. But when she looked up, he saw that he had won the first skirmish. “I’ll tell you everything,” she said simply. “And I pray to God it may help you . . . Mr. Queen, I was telling the truth in a way when I said that time that I didn’t go to the Benedict to see Albert Grimshaw.” Ellery nodded encouragingly. “I didn’t know where I was going. For you see,” she paused and stared at the floor, “I was following my husband all that evening . . . “

The story came out slowly. For many months before the death of her brother Georg, Mrs. Sloane had suspected that her husband was conducting a clandestine affair with Mrs. Vreeland, whose bold beauty and tempting proximity in the house, coupled with Jan Vreeland’s long absences and Sloane’s self-centered susceptibility, made the affair almost inevitable. Mrs. Sloane, nursing the worm of jealousy in her breast, could find nothing material with which to feed it. Unable to verify her suspicions she had kept silent, deliberately pretending to be ignorant of what she sensed was going on. But always she kept her eyes open for signs and her ears alert for sounds of possible assignations.

For weeks Sloane had made it a habit to return to the Khalkis house at late hours. He gave varying excuses―a rigorous diet for the worm. Unable to endure the gnawing agony, Mrs. Sloane had succumbed to her canker for verification. On Thursday evening, the thirtieth of September, she had followed her husband; he had offered an obviously mythical “conference” as a pretext for leaving the Khalkis house some time after dinner.

Sloane’s movements had been apparently aimless; certainly there was no conference; and of contacts that entire evening there were none until ten o’clock. Then he had turned off Broadway and made for the shabby exterior of the Hotel Benedict. She had pursued him into the lobby, the worm whispering that here was to be enacted the Gethsemane of her marital life; that Sloane, acting in a strange and furtive manner, was about to meet Mrs. Vreeland in some dingy room at the Hotel Benedict for purposes to which Mrs. Sloane shut her mind with horror. She had seen him go to the desk and speak to the clerk; whereupon, in the same peculiar manner, he went on to the elevator. She had managed to overhear, while Sloane was conversing with the clerk, the words: “Room 314”. Consequently, she approached the desk, certain that Room 314 was to be the scene of the assignation, and demanded the room adjoining. This action was born of impulse; nothing tangible was in her mind, except perhaps some wild notion of eavesdropping on the guilty pair and bursting in upon them when they were locked in each other’s lustful arms.

The woman’s eyes were burning with the recollection of those heated moments, and Ellery gently fed her regurgitated passions. What had she done? Her face flamed; she had gone directly to the room she had rented and paid for, Room 316, had pressed her ear to the wall . . . But she could hear nothing: the masonry of the Hotel Benedict, if nothing else, was aristocratic. Baffled, trembling, she had leaned against the silent wall, almost weeping; when suddenly she heard the door of the next room open. She had flown to her own door and opened it cautiously. Just in time to see the object of her suspicions, her husband, leave Room 314 and stride down the corridor to the elevator . . . . She did not know what to make of it. She left the room stealthily and ran down the three flights of emergency stairs to the lobby. She caught sight of Sloane hurrying out. She followed him; to her astonishment he headed for the Khalkis house. When she arrived there herself, she discovered by an adroit question directed at Mrs. Simms that Mrs. Vreeland had been home all evening. For the night, at least, then she knew that Sloane had been innocent of adultery. No, she did not remember what time it was when Sloane emerged from Room 314. She did not remember any times.

That, it seemed, was all.

She challenged him anxiously with her eyes, as if to ask whether this recital had furnished a clue, any clue . . . .

Ellery was thoughtful. “While you were in Room 316, Mrs. Sloane, did you hear anyone else enter Room 314?”

“No. I saw Gilbert enter, then leave, and I followed him away at once. I’m sure that if anyone had opened or closed that door while I was in the next room I should have heard.”

“I see. That’s helpful, Mrs. Sloane. And since you’ve been so completely candid, tell me one thing more: did you telephone your husband from this house last Monday evening, the night of his death?”

“I did not, as I told Sergeant Velie when he questioned me that same night. I know I’m suspected of having warned my husband, but I didn’t, Mr. Queen, I didn’t―I hadn’t any idea that the police intended to arrest him.”

Ellery studied her face; she seemed sincere enough. “You will recall that that evening, as my father, Mr. Pepper and I left the study downstairs, we saw you hurrying down the corridor to the drawing-room. Please pardon this question, Mrs. Sloane, but I must know―did you listen at the study door before we came out?”

She flushed darkly. “I may be―oh, vile in many other respects, Mr. Queen, and perhaps my conduct in connexion with my husband doesn’t bear this out . . . but I swear I didn’t eavesdrop.”

“Can you suggest someone who might have eavesdropped.”

Spite crept into her voice. “Yes, I can! Mrs. Vreeland. She―she was close enough to Gilbert, close enough . . . “

“But that doesn’t follow from her action in relating to us that evening the story of having seen Mr. Sloane go into the graveyard,” said Ellery gently. “She seems to have been more inclined to malice than to defence of a lover.”

She sighed uncertainly. “Perhaps I’m wrong . . . I didn’t know that Mrs. Vreeland had told you anything that night, you see; I learned about that only after my husband’s death, and then it was from the newspapers.”

“One last question, Mrs. Sloane. Did Mr. Sloane ever tell you that he had a brother?”

She shook her head. “He never so much as suggested it. In fact, he was always reticent about his family. He had told me about his father and mother―they seemed nice enough people in a middle-class sort of way―but never about a brother. I was always under the impression that he had been an only child, and that he was the last of his family.”

Ellery picked up his hat and stick, said: “Be patient, Mrs. Sloane, and above all say nothing about these things to anyone,” smiled and quickly left the room.

* * *

From Weekes downstairs Ellery received a bit of news which momentarily staggered him.

Dr. Wardes was gone.

Ellery gnawed at his leash. This looked like something! But Weekes was a barren source of information. It seemed that, with the publicity following the solution of the Grimshaw case, Dr. Wardes had retired into his hard British shell, beginning to cast about for escape from this brilliantly illuminated household. The police ban having been lifted with the suicide of Sloane, he had commandeered his luggage, hastily taken leave of his hostess―who was, it appeared, in no mood for the proprieties―expressed his regrets and departed with dispatch for regions unknown. He had left on Friday last, and Weekes was certain no one in the house knew where he had gone.

“And Miss Joan Brett, too―” Weekes added.

Ellery paled. “What about Miss Joan Brett? Has she gone, too? For heaven’s sake, man, find your tongue!”

Weekes found it. “No, sir, no indeed, she hasn’t gone yet, but I venture to say, sir, that she’s going to go, if you get my meaning, sir. She―”

“Weekes,” said Ellery savagely, ‘speak English. What’s up?”

“Miss Brett is preparing to leave, sir,” said Weekes with a polite little cough. “Her employment, it’s terminated, so to speak. And Mrs. Sloane―” he looked pained―”Mrs. Sloane, she informed Miss Brett that her services would not be required any longer. So―”

“Where is she now?”

“In her room upstairs, sir. Packing, I believe. First door to your right from the head of the stairs . . . .”

But Ellery was off like the wind, coat tails flying. He took the steps three at a time. As he reached the upper landing, however, he halted in his tracks. There were voices; and, unless his ears deceived him, one of the voices emanated from the larynx of Miss Joan Brett. So, unabashed, he stood still, stick clutched in his hand, head cocked a little toward the right . . . and was rewarded with hearing a man’s voice, thickened with what is popularly known as passion, cry: “Joan! Dearest! I love―”

“Tippling,” came Joan’s voice, frigidly―not the voice of a young woman listening to a gentleman’s avowal of undying affection.

“No! Joan, don’t make a joke of it. I’m deadly serious. I love you, love you, darling. Really, I―”

There were certain noises indicative of scuffle. Presumably the owner of the masculine voice was pressing his suit physically. A little outraged gasp, quite distinct, then a sharp smack! at which even Ellery, outside the range of Miss Brett’s vigorous arm, winced.

Silence. The two combatants, Ellery felt certain, were now staring at each other with hostility, perhaps circling each other in that feline manner which human beings adopt under the surge of the choleric passions. He listened placidly and grinned when he heard the man murmur: “You shouldn’t have done that, Joan. I didn’t mean to frighten you―”

“Frighten me? Heavens! I assure you I wasn’t the least bit frightened,” came Joan’s voice, dripping with amused hauteur.

“Well, damn it all!” cried the man with exasperation, “is that a way to receive a fellow’s proposal of marriage? By―” Another gasp. “How dare you swear at me, you―you oaf!” cried Joan. “I should horsewhip you. Oh, I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. Leave my room at once!”

Ellery shrank against his wall. A bitter strangled roar of rage, the violent sound of a door being torn open, a slam which shook the house―and Ellery peeped around the corner in time to see a wildly gesticulating Mr. Alan Cheney thunder up the corridor, fists clenched and head jerking up and down . . . .

When Mr. Alan Cheney had disappeared into his own room, agitating the old house for the second time with the vehemence with which he shut his door, Mr. Ellery Queen complacently adjusted his necktie and without hesitation went to the door of Miss Joan Brett’s room. He raised his stick and knocked, gently. Silence. He knocked again. He heard then a most unmannerly sniffle, a choked sob and Joan’s voice: “Don’t you dare come in here again, you―you―you . . . “

Ellery said: “It’s Ellery Queen, Miss Brett,” in the most unruffled voice in the world, as if a maiden’s sobs were fitting reply to a visitor’s knock. The sniffles ceased instantly. Ellery waited with patience. Then a very small voice: “Do come in, Mr. Queen. The―the door is open,” and he pushed the door in and entered.

Miss Joan Brett, he found, was standing by her bed, a white-knuckled little hand grasping a damp handkerchief, two geometrically round dabs of colour in her cheeks. About the pleasant room, on the floor, chairs, the bed itself, were strewn feminine garments of various descriptions. Two portmanteaux lay open on chairs, and a small steamer-trunk yawned on the floor. On the dressing-table, Ellery noticed without seeming to do so a framed photograph―lying face down, as if it had hastily been upset.

Now Ellery was―when he wanted to be―a most diplomatic young man. The occasion seemed to call for finesse and a conversational myopia. Whereupon he smiled in a rather vacuous fashion and said: “What was that you said when I first knocked, Miss Brett? I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Oh!”―a very small oh it was, too. Joan indicated a chair and sat down herself in another. “It―I often talk to myself. Silly habit, isn’t it?”

“Not at all,” said Ellery heartily, sitting down. “Not at all. Some of our best people are addicted to the habit. It’s supposed to mean that the ego conversationalist has money in the bank. Have you money in the bank, Miss Brett?”

She smiled weakly at that. “Not so very much, and besides I’m having it transferred, you know . . . . “ The colour had left her cheeks, and she sighed a little. “I’m leaving the United States, Mr. Queen.”

“So Weekes told me. We shall be desolated, Miss Brett.”

“La!” She laughed aloud. “You speak like a Frenchman, Mr. Queen.” She reached to the bed and snared her purse. “This box of mine―my luggage . . . How depressing sea-journeys are.” Her hand emerged from the purse with a sheaf of steamship tickets. “Is this a professional call? I’m really leaving, Mr. Queen. Here are the visible evidences of my intention to take passage. You’re not going to tell me that I mayn’t go?”

“I? Horrors, no! And do you want to go, Miss Brett?”

“At the moment,” she said, with a savage champing of her small teeth, “I want to go very much indeed.”

Ellery became obtuse. “I see. This business of murders and suicides―naturally depressing . . . . Well, I shan’t keep you a moment. The object of my visit is the very opposite of sinister.” He regarded her gravely. “As you know, the case is closed. Nevertheless, there are a few points, obscure and probably unimportant, which my tenacious mind persists in worrying . . . . Miss Brett, just what was your mission that night when Pepper saw you prowling about the study downstairs?”

She weighed him quietly with her cool blue eyes. “You weren’t impressed with my explanation, then . . . Have a cigarette, Mr. Queen.” He refused, and she touched a match to one for herself with steady fingers. “Very well, sir―Absconding Secretary Tells All, as your tabloids would have it. I shall confess, and I dare say you’re in for a whopping surprise, Mr. Queen.”

“I haven’t the remotest doubt about that.”

“Prepare yourself.” She took a deep breath, and the smoke dribbled out of her lovely mouth like punctuation marks as she talked. “You see before you, Mr. Queen, a lady-sleuth.”

“No!”

“Mais oui. I am an employee of the Victoria Museum of London―not the Yard, sir, no, not that. That would be too much. Merely the Museum, Mr. Queen.”

“Well, I’ll be drawn, quartered, eviscerated, and boiled in oil,” murmured Ellery. “You speak in riddles. The Victoria Museum, eh? My dear, this is such news as detectives dream of. Elucidate.”

Joan tapped ashes from her cigarette. “The story is quite melodramatic. While I applied to Georg Khalkis for employment, I was a paid investigator for the Victoria Museum. I was operating along a trail which led to Khal-kis―a confused bit of information which seemed to indicate that he was mixed up, probably as the receiver, in the theft of a painting from the Museum―”

The grin faded from Ellery’s lips. “A painting by whom, Miss Brett?”

She shrugged. “A mere detail. It was valuable enough―a genuine Leonardo Da Vinci―a masterpiece discovered not long ago by one of the Museum’s field-workers―a detail from some fresco or other on which Leonardo worked in Florence during the first decade of the sixteenth century. This seems to have been an oils canvas Leonardo executed after the original fresco project was abandoned: “Detail from the Battle of the Standard”, it’s catalogued”

“Such luck,” murmured Ellery. “Go on, Miss Brett. You have my passionate attention. In what way was Khalkis involved?”

She sighed. “Except that we thought he might have been the receiver, as I said, it wasn’t very clear. More of a “hunch”, as you Americans persist in saying, than the result of definite information. But let me begin in the proper place.

“My recommendations to Khalkis were genuine enough―Sir Arthur Ewing, who gave me the character, is quite the legitimate toff―one of the directors of the Victoria as well as a famous London art-dealer; he naturally was in the secret, and the character was the least of it. I have done investigatory work of this nature for the Museum before, but never in this country; chiefly on the Continent. The directors demanded absolute secrecy―I was to work under cover, you see, trace the painting and attempt to locate it. Meanwhile, the theft was kept from public knowledge by a series of ‘restoration” announcements.”

“I begin to see.”

“You have keen eyesight then, Mr. Queen,” said Joan severely. “Will you allow me to proceed with my story, or won’t you? . . . All the time I spent in this house as Mr. Khalkis’s secretary, I endeavoured to find a clue to the whereabouts of the Leonardo; but I have never been able to find the tiniest lead to it, either from his papers or conversation. I was really becoming discouraged, despite the fact that our information seemed authentic.

“Which brings me to Mr. Albert Grimshaw. Now the painting had originally been stolen by one of the Museum attendants, a man who called himself Graham and whose real name we later discovered was Albert Grimshaw. The first hope, the first tangible indication that I was on the scent came when the man Grimshaw presented himself at the front door on the evening of September thirtieth. I saw at once, from descriptions with which I was provided, that this man was the thieving Graham who had disappeared from England without a trace and who had never been found in the five years which had elapsed from the time of the theft.”

“Oh, excellent!”

“Quite. I endeavoured to listen at the study door, but I could hear nothing of his conversation with Mr. Khalkis. Nor did I learn anything the next evening, when Grimshaw appeared with the unknown man―the man whose face I could not see. To complicate matters―” her face darkened―”Mr. Alan Cheney chose that moment to lurch into the house in a disgustingly bibulous condition, and by the time I had attended to him the two men had gone. But of one thing I was certain―that somewhere between Grimshaw and Khalkis lay the secret of the Leonardo’s hiding-place.”

“I take it, then, that your search in the study was inspired by a hope that there might be some new record among Khalkis’s effects―a new clue to the painting’s whereabouts?”

“Exactly. But that search, like the others, was unsuccessful. You see, from time to time I had personally ransacked the house, the shop, and the galleries; and I was certain that the Leonardo was not concealed anywhere about the Khalkis premises. On the other hand, this unknown who accompanied Grimshaw appeared to me to be someone interested―the secrecy, Mr. Khalkis’s nervous manner―interested, as I say, in the painting. I’m positive that this unknown is a vital clue to the fate of the Leonardo.”

“And you were never able to discover the identity of this man?”

She smashed her cigarette flat in an ashtray. “No.” Then she regarded Ellery suspiciously. “Why―do you know who he is?”

Ellery did not reply. His eyes were abstracted. “And now a feeble question, Miss Brett . . . Why, if matters came to a head so dramatically, are you returning to your bailiwick?”

“For the very good reason that the case has become too unwieldy for me.” She rummaged in her purse and produced a letter bearing a London postmark. She handed it to Ellery, and he read it without comment; it was on the stationary of the Victoria Museum and was signed by the Director. “You see, I have kept London informed of my progress―or rather, my lack of progress. This note is in reply to my last report concerning the unknown man. You can see for yourself that we are at an impasse. The Museum writes that since the original inquiry by cable from Inspector Queen some time ago a considerable correspondence has sprung up―I suppose you know that―between the Director and the New York police. Of course, at first they didn’t know whether to answer or not, as it would have meant relating the whole story.

This letter authorizes me, as you can see, to confide in the New York police and use my own discretion about future activity.” She sighed. “My own discretion dictates the distinct conviction that the case is now beyond my humble capacities; I was about to call on the Inspector, relate my story, and then return to London.”

Ellery returned the letter, which she replaced carefully in her purse. “Yes,” he said, “I’m inclined to agree that the trail to the painting has grown excessively tangled, and that it is now more the job of professionals than of a lone―and amateur―investigator. On the other hand . . . “ He paused thoughtfully. “It’s barely possible that I may be able to assist you soon in your apparently hopeless quest.”

“Mr. Queen!” Her eyes were shining.

“Would the Museum consent to keep you in New York if there was still a chance of recovering the Leonardo without fanfare?”

“Oh, yes! I’m sure of that, Mr. Queen! I’ll cable the Director at once.”

“Do that. And Miss Brett―” he smiled―”I shouldn’t go to the police quite yet, if I were you. Not even to my father, bless him. You may be more useful if you are still―to put it politely―under suspicion.”

Joan rose swiftly. “I should love that. Orders, Commandant?” She stood at mock-attention, right hand raised in stiff salute.

Ellery grinned. “You’re going to make an admirable es-pionne, I can see that now. Very well, Miss Joan Brett, henceforth and forever we are allies, you and I―a private entente

“Cordiale, I hope?” She sighed happily. “It will be thrilling!”

“And perhaps dangerous,” said Ellery. “Yet, despite our secret understanding, Lieutenant Brett, there are certain things it is better that I keep from you―for your own safety.” Her face fell, and he patted her hand. “Not from suspicion of you―word of honour, my dear. But you must take me on faith for the present.”

“Very well, Mr. Queen,” said Joan soberly. “I’m entirely in your hands.”

“No,” said Ellery hastily, ‘that’s too much of a temptation. You’re far too handsome a wench . . . Here, here!” He averted his head to avoid her amused stare and began to ruminate aloud. “Let’s see what course is open. Hmm . . . . Must have a good excuse to keep you around―I suppose everyone knows your employment has ceased here . . . . Can’t stay in New York without a job―might be suspicious . . . Can’t stay here at Khalkis’s . . . I have it!” He caught her hands excitedly. “There’s one place where you could stay―and legitimaely, so that no one’s suspicions would be aroused.”

“And where is that?”

He drew her to the bed and they sat down, heads close together. “You are familiar with all of Khalkis’s personal and business affairs, of course. There’s one gentleman who has obligingly involved himself in a mess relating to these tangled affairs. And that’s James Knox!”

“Oh, splendid,” she whispered.

“Now you see,” continued Ellery rapidly, “with Knox dabbling in this headachey business, he would welcome expert assistance. I heard just last night from Woodruff that Knox’s secretary has become ill. I’ll arrange it in such a way that Knox himself will make the offer, lulling all possible suspicions. And you’re to keep mum about this, my dear―please understand that. You’re to pretend the job is a real one by working faithfully at it―no one is to know you’re not what you seem to be.”

“You needn’t have any fears on that score,” she said grimly.

“I’m sure I needn’t.” He rose and grabbed his hat and stick. “Glory to Moses! there’s work to do . . . Good day, ma lieutenante! Remain in this house until you get word from the Omnipotent Knox.”

He clucked aside Joan’s breathless words of thanks and dashed out of her room. The door closed slowly behind him. He caught himself up in the hall and fell to musing. Then, with a malicious little grin on his lips, he strode up the corridor and knocked at Alan Cheney’s door.

* * *

Alan Cheney’s bedroom resembled the ruins of a chamber caught in the heart of a Kansas twister. Things were thrown about, as if the young man had been indulging in a hurling contest with his own shadow. Cigarette butts lay about the floor where they had fallen, like little dead soldiers. Mr. Cheney’s hair looked as if it had gone through a threshing-machine, and his eyes darted about in pinkish angry pools.

He was patrolling the floor―pacing it, measuring it, eating it up with hungry strides, over and over. A very restless young man, and Ellery stood wide-eyed in the doorway after Cheney’s muttered, “Come, damn you, whoever you are!” and surveyed the debris-strewn battlefield before him.

“Well, and what do you want?” growled the young man, halting abruptly in his career as he saw who his visitor was.

“A word with you.” Ellery closed the door. “I seem to find you,” he continued with a grin, “in a more or less turbulent mood. But I shan’t consume a moment of your no doubt precious time. May I sit down, or is this to be a conversation conducted with all the punctilio of a duel?”

Some vestige of decency remained in young Alan, it appeared, for he mumbled: “Certainly. Do sit down. Sorry. Here, have this one,” and he swept a chairful of cigarette-stubs to the already frowsy floor.

Ellery sat down and straightway began to polish the lenses of his pince-nez. Alan watched him in a sort of absent irritation. “Now, Mr. Alan Cheney,” began Ellery, setting the glasses firmly on his straight nose, ‘to business. I’ve been pottering about tying up loose ends on this sad business of Grimshaw’s murder and your step-father’s suicide.”

“Suicide my left eyebrow,” retorted Alan. “Wasn’t anything of the sort.”

“Indeed? So your mother suggested a few moments ago. Have you anything concrete on which to base this belief?”

“No. I suppose not. Well, it doesn’t matter. He’s dead and six feet under, and that can’t be rectified.” Alan threw himself on his bed. “What’s on your mind, Queen?”

Ellery smiled: “A useless question to which surely you no longer have reason to withhold the answer . . . Why did you run away a week and a half ago?”

Alan lay still on the bed, smoking, his eyes fixed on a battered old assegai hanging on the wall. “My old man’s,” he said. “Africa was his particular heaven.” Tlten he flung his cigarette away, jumped out of bed and resumed his mad pacing, throwing furious glances toward the north―the general direction, it should be explained, of Joan’s bedroom. “All right,” he snapped. “I’ll talk. I was a damned fool to do it in the first place. Temperamental little coquette, that’s what she is, blast her beautiful face!”

“My dear Cheney,” murmured Ellery, “what on earth are you talking about?”

“Talking about what a moon-eyed jackass I’ve been, that’s what! Listen to this, Queen, for the prize story of adolescent “chivalry” of all time,” Alan said, gnashing his strong young teeth. “There I was, in love―in love, mind you!―with this, this . . . well, with Joan Brett. And I’d caught her snooping about this house for months, looking for something, God knows what. Never said a word about it―to her or anyone else. Self-sacrificing lover, and all that sort of tripe. When the Inspector grilled her about that fellow Pepper’s story of Joan’s monkeying around with the safe the night after my uncle’s funeral . . . hell, I didn’t know what to think. Put two and two together―the missing will, the murdered man. It was pretty horrible . . . I felt that she was involved somehow in the ghastly business. So―” He fell to muttering beneath his breath.

Ellery sighed. “Ah, love. I feel the quotations creeping upon me, but perhaps I’d better not . . . So, Master Alan, you, the noble Sir Pelleas, disdained by the scornful Lady Ettarre, did ride away on the broad back of your white stallion, bent on the chivalrous quest . . . “

“Well, if you’re going to make a joke of it,” snarled Alan. “So―well, I did it, yes, I did. The damned fool thing of playing the gallant knight, as you say―ran away purposely to make it look fishy―divert suspicion to myself. Huh!” He shrugged bitterly. “And was she worth it? What’s the answer? I’m glad to spill the bloody story and forget it―and her.”

“And this,” murmured Ellery, rising, ‘this is a murder investigation. Ah, well! Until psychiatry learns to take into account all the quirks of human motive, crime detection will remain an infant science . . . . Thank you, Sir Alan, a thousand times, and don’t despair, I charge you. And a very good day!”

* * *

Mr. Ellery Queen perhaps an hour later sat in a chair opposite Lawyer Miles Woodruff, in that gentleman’s modest suite among the canyons of lower Broadway, puffing―this was the sign of an especial occasion―one of Lawyer Woodruff’s perfectos and making unimportant conversation. Lawyer Woodruff, in his bluff red way, it appeared, was experiencing a form of mental constipation; he was grumpy, yellow-eyed and liverish, and he spat inelegantly, from time to time, into a glittering cuspidor chastely perched on a round rubber mat by his desk; and the sum and substance of his plaint was that he had never, in all his crowded years as an attorney, encountered a testamentary situation which presented such head-splitting difficulties as the tangled business of Georg Khalkis’s estate.

“Why, Queen,” he exclaimed, “you’ve no idea of what’s facing us―no idea! Here the scrap of burnt new will turns up, and we have to establish duress or else Grimshaw’s estate will rake in the gravy of . . . Oh, well. Poor old Knox is mighty sorry, I’ll wager, that he consented to act as executor.*

“Knox. Yes. Having his hands full, eh?”

“Something terrible! After all, even before the exact legal status of the estate is determined, there are certain things which must be done. Itemizations galore―Khalkis left a lot of piecemeal stuff. I suppose he’ll shift it all on to my shoulders―Knox, I mean―that’s what usually happens when an executor is a man of Knox’s position.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Ellery indifferently, “now that Knox’s secretary is ill and Miss Brett is temporarily out of employment . . . “

Woodruff’s cigar waggled. “Miss Brett! Say, Queen, there’s an idea. Of course. She knows all about Khalkis’s affairs. I think I’ll broach it to Knox. I think I’ll ..

Having sowed the seeds, Ellery very shortly took his departure, smiling in great contentment to himself as he walked at a brisk pace up Broadway.

Whereupon we find Lawyer Woodruff, not two minutes after his door closed on Ellery’s broad back, engaged in conversation via telephone with Mr. James J. Knox. “I thought that now that Miss Joan Brett has nothing further to do at the Khalkis house―”

“Woodruff! A dandy suggestion! . . . “

The upshot of it was that Mr. James J. Knox, with a rich sigh of relief, thanked Lawyer Woodruff for his splendid inspiration, and had no sooner hung up than he called the number of the Khalkis house.

And, when he succeeded in getting Miss Joan Brett on the wire, and quite as if the idea had been original with him, he asked her to come to work the very next day . . . for a period of service to endure until the settlement of the estate. Mr. Knox further suggested, in view of the fact that Miss Brett was a Britisher and had no permanent residence in New York City, that she come to live in his, Knox’s, house for the duration of her service with him . . . .

Miss Brett demurely accepted the offer―at a stipend, it should be noted, respectably lustier than she had received from the ci-devant American of Greek lineage whose bones now lay peacefully in the vault of his fathers. At the same time she wondered how Mr. Ellery Queen had managed the affair.