The Greek Coffin Mystery

Chapter 32. Elleryana

Surprised? District Attorney Sampson professed not to be. He maintained all of that hectic night that he had had a lurking suspicion of Knox from the beginning. On the other hand, his immediate thirst for elucidation was significant. Why? How? He even looked worried. Evidence―where was the evidence? His busy brain was already marshalling the prosecutor’s case . . . and was heckled by the disturbing conviction that here was a sturdy nut indeed to crack.

The Inspector said nothing. He was relieved, but he persisted in stealing furtive glances at his son’s uncommunicative profile. The shock of the revelation, Knox’s instant and sickening physical collapse and then his almost miraculous recovery, Joan Brett’s gasp of unbelieving horror . . . .

Ellery dominated the stage without an excess of exultation. He refused with mulish shakings of the head to explain while Inspector Queen summoned aid from Headquarters and James J. Knox was led quietly away. No, he would say nothing that night; to-morrow morning . . . yes, perhaps to-morrow morning.

On Saturday morning, then, the sixth of November, the actors in this intricate drama foregathered. Ellery had insisted that it was no more than just to explain not only to officialdom but to those harassed persons connected with the Khalkis case―and, of course, to the clamorous gentlemen of the press. The Saturday morning papers ran bulging headlines announcing the great man’s arrest; it was rumoured that a personal inquiry from some dignitary close to the President had been addressed to the Mayor of New York City―which was probably true, for the Mayor kept his wires humming all morning, demanding an explanation of the Commissioner, who knew less than he; of District Attorney Sampson, who was gradually becoming frantic; of Inspector Queen, who shook his weary old head and merely said to all official interrogators: “Wait.” The painting from Knox’s radiator-coil had been put in Pepper’s charge for custody by the District Attorney’s office until the trial; Scotland Yard had been notified that the painting would be required as evidence in the legal battle which loomed, but that it would be forwarded with due precautions as soon as a jury of his peers decided Mr. James J. Knox’s fate.

Inspector Queen’s office was far too small to contain the swollen assemblage of potential critics insisted upon as an audience by Ellery. A select group of reporters, the Queens, Sampson, Pepper, Cronin, Mrs. Sloane, Joan Brett, Alan Cheney, the Vreelands, Nacio Suiza, Woodruff―and in a most unobtrusive manner of entrance the Police Commissioner, the Deputy Chief Inspector and a very uneasy gentleman who kept running his finger under his collar and was identified as the Mayor’s closest political friend―were consequently grouped in a large room at Police Headquarters especially set aside for the meeting. Ellery, it appeared, was to preside―a most unorthodox proceeding, and one at which Sampson chafed and the Mayor’s representative looked bleak and the Police Commissioner scowled.

But Ellery was not to be ruffled. The room had a dais, and on this dais he stood―like a schoolmaster about to address a classroom of staring children; there was a blackboard behind him!―very erect and dignified, his pince-nez freshly polished. At the rear of the chamber Assistant District Attorney Cronin whispered to Sampson: “Henry, old boy, this’d better be good. Knox has retained the Spring-arn outfit, and what they won’t do to a lousy case I shudder to think!” Sampson said nothing; there was nothing to say.

Ellery began quietly, outlining in swift prose all the facts and deductions of former analyses for the benefit of those who were unfamiliar with the internal mechanism of the case thus far. After explaining the incidents surrounding the arrival of the blackmail letters, he paused and moistened his dry lips; drawing a deep breath, he plunged into the heart of his new argument.

“The only individual who could have sent the blackmail letters,” he said, “was someone who knew that James Knox had in his possession the stolen painting, as I’ve just pointed out. The fact that James Knox had in his possession the stolen painting was fortunately kept a secret. Now, who besides the investigating party―ourselves―knew this? Two persons, and two persons only: one, Grimshaw’s partner, who by former analyses has been proved the murderer of Grimshaw and Sloane, who furthermore knew that Knox had the painting by virtue of his partnership with Grimshaw and by virtue of Grimshaw’s own admission that this partner, and this partner only, knew the whole story; and the second, of course, was Knox himself, something that none of us considered at the time.

“Very well. Now the fact that the blackmail letters were typed on halves of the promissory note absolutely proved that the sender of the letters was the murderer of Grimshaw and Sloane―that is, Grimshaw’s partner―for the murderer was the only one who could have possessed the promissory note taken from Grimshaw’s body. Please bear this in mind; it is an important block in the logical structure.

“Further. What do we find on examination of the typewritten blackmail notes themselves? Well, the first blackmail note was typed on an Underwood machine, the same machine used by the murderer to send the anonymous letter, incidentally, which revealed Sloane to be Grimshaw’s brother. The second blackmail note was typed on a Remington. In the typing of this second note was the salient clue. For the typist had made a mistake on the figure 3 in the group-figure $30,000; and from the error it was apparent that the upper-register character of the 3-key was not the usual standard-keyboard character. Let me show you graphically how the figures $30,000 appeared in the note itself, and that will help to explain the point I am making.”

He turned and rapidly chalked on the blackboard the following symbol:

“Now please observe,” said Ellery, turning about, ‘that the typist’s error consisted in not entirely releasing the shift-key after depressing the dollar-sign character, with the result that the following key which he depressed―that on which the 3 appears―left a broken, split impression on the paper. Naturally, the typist backspaced and retyped the 3, but that is not important; what is important is that the split impressions of the 3-key remained. Now what happens when this common typing error is made―the error of not completely releasing the shift, or capital, key when you want to strike a lower-register letter? Simply this: the space where the lower-register letter is intended to be remains blank; a little above this blank space you get the imprint of the lower portion of the upper character; a little below this blank space you get the imprint of the upper portion of the lower character. You can see the effect from the rough scrawl I’ve made on the blackboard. Is that clear so far?”

There was a general bobbing of heads.

“Splendid. Suppose we think for a moment about the key on which the figure 3 appears on all standard-keyboard typewriters,” continued Ellery. “Naturally, I refer to American typewriters. What have we? The figure 3 on the lower register, and the symbol of “number” on the upper register. Let me show you.” He turned to the blackboard again and chalked the following symbol: #. “Simple, eh?” he said, turning back. “But I want you to note that the error in the second blackmail letter does noi indicate a standard-keyboard, at least to the extent of that single 3-key. For where the decapitated symbol above the backspaced 3 should be the lower half of this “number” sign, it is―as you can see on the board―nothing of the kind! On the contrary, it’s a very queer symbol indeed―a little loop at the left and a curved line going to the right, leading from the loop.”

He had his audience as surely as if they were chained to him. He leaned forward. “Obviously, then, as I said before, the Remington typewriter on which this second blackmail note was typed had a peculiar symbol above its 3 where the usual sign for “number”

“―he jerked his head toward the # on the blackboard―’should be. Obviously, too, this loop-and-curve mark is merely the lower half of some complete symbol. What can the upper half be? What is the general shape of the whole?” He straightened quietly. “Think about it for a moment. Look at that chalk-mark above the 3 I’ve scribbled on the blackboard.”

He waited. They strained their eyes. But no one answered. “It’s really most conclusive,” said Ellery at last. “I’m amazed that none of you―reporters especially―catch it. I say that that loop-and-curve can be the lower half of only one symbol in the world which might conceivably be placed on a typewriter―and that is the sign which resembles a script capital “L” with a horizontal dash running across its ascender . . . in other words, the symbol for the English pound-sterling!”

There was a little murmur of wonderment and appreciation. “Very well, then. We had only to look for a Remington typewriter―an American machine, of course―which had on the upper register of the 3-key the symbol for the English pound. Compute the mathematical probabilities of an American Remington typewriter having just such an alien sign on precisely that one key―I believe you’ll find it to run in the millions. In other words, if we could find a typewriter with such a symbol on just such a key, I would have every mathematical and logical right to maintain that there was the typewriter used in typing the second blackmail note.”

Ellery gestured largely. “This preliminary explanation is essential to a comprehension of what is to follow. Please attend closely. I discovered, while talking to James Knox during the period when Sloane was still considered a suicide and before the receipt of the first blackmail letter, that Knox had in his possession a new typewriter on which one key had been replaced. I learned this accidentally when I visited Knox and he was instructing Miss Brett to make out a cheque to pay a bill for a new typewriter. He cautioned her to be sure to add on the small charge for the single replacement key. Further, from Miss Brett I discovered in the same approximate period that this machine was a Remington―she mentioned that specifically; and I learned that it was the only typewriter in the house, the old one Knox having in my presence instructed Miss Brett to send to the Bureau of Charities. Miss Brett began to type a memorandum of some serial-numbers for me; she stopped short, threw away the sheet, and exclaimed: “111 have to write out the word “number”.” The emphasis, of course, is mine. And although at that time it meant nothing to me, I nevertheless had the basis for knowing that Knox’s Remington, the only machine in the house, had no symbol for “number”―otherwise why did Miss Brett have to write out the word “number”?―and that on this machine one key had been replaced. Now, since there was one key replaced on this new typewriter, and since the number-sign was missing, it must by strict logic have been the number-sign key, on which the 3 is the lower-register character, that had been replaced! Elementary logic. Now, I had to discover only one further fact, and my argument would be complete; if, on this replaced key, I found an English-pound symbol above the 3, where the “number” sign should be, then I could say with perfect justification that this Remington typewriter was probably the one which had been employed in typing the second blackmail note. Naturally, I had only to glance at the machine’s keyboard to settle this point after the receipt of the second blackmail letter. Yes, the symbol was there. In fact, District Attorney Sampson, Assistant District Attorney Pepper, and Inspector Queen will recall that, had they known what to look for, they should have seen this without actually looking at the typewriter itself; for at the time Inspector Queen wrote out a cablegram to Scotland Yard in Knox’s den, one of the words in his message contained the figures for “hundred and fifty thousand pounds”, and when Miss Brett had copied the Inspector’s pencilled message on the typewriter, lo and behold! she had used not the word “pounds’ but the symbol of the script capital “L” with the horizontal cross-bar! Even if I had never seen the machine itself, the mere fact that Miss Brett was able to type a pound-sign in the cable, coupled with the other facts in my possession, would have made the deduction inevitable . . . . The proof, as mathematically certain as any inferential proof could be, stared me in the face: the machine used to type the second blackmail letter had been Mr. James J. Knox’s.”

The reporters were sitting in the front row; their notes grew like Alice in Wonderland. No sound was audible except heavy breathing and the scraping of pencils. Ellery ground a cigarette beneath his sole with a bland disregard of Headquarters regulations and the ordinary proprieties. “Eh bien * he said pleasantly, “nous faisons des progres. For we know that from the time he received the first blackmail letter Knox permitted no visitors of any description in his house, not even Mr. Woodruff, his temporary attorney. This means that the only persons who could have used Knox’s machine in the typing of the second note were: Knox himself, Miss Brett, and the menial members of Knox’s household. Now, because the letters had both been written on halves of the promissory note―which in turn could only have been in the possession of the murderer―this means that one of the above mentioned group was the murderer.”

Ellery forged ahead so rapidly that a slight movement from the rear of the room―really, it should be noted, from the seat in which Inspector Richard Queen was crouched―went unnoticed, and a grim smile lifted Ellery’s lips at this deliberate stifling of a possible criticism. “Let us eliminate,” he said quickly. “Let us take the last category first. Was the writer possibly one of the servants? No; for none of the servants had been in the Khalkis house during the period of the first investigations―accurate lists were kept by one of the District Attorney’s men―and therefore none of the servants could have planted the false clues against Khalkis and later Sloane; an essential characteristic, this planting business, of the murderer.”

Again an irritable movement from the rear, and again Ellery’s instant resumption of his remarks. “Could it have been Miss Brett?―you’ll forgive me, Miss Brett,” Ellery said with an apologetic grin, “for bringing you into this argument, but logic is no respecter of the gallantries . . . . No, it couldn’t have been Miss Brett, for while she was in the Khalkis house during the period when the false clues were planted, on the other hand she couldn’t have been Grimshaw’s partner, another necessary qualification of the murderer. How do we know that she couldn’t have been Grimshaw’s partner, aside from the obvious grotesquerie of the thought? Very simply.” He paused, sought Joan’s eyes, found something in them consoling, and continued rapidly: “Miss Brett confessed to me that she has been for some time, and is now, an operative of the Victoria Museum.” Whatever he was about to say was drowned in a wave of excited exclamations. For a moment the meeting seemed doomed to eruption; but Ellery rapped on the blackboard, quite like a schoolmaster, and the hubbub died away. He went on without looking at Sampson, Pepper, or his father, all of whom were regarding him with mingled expressions of reproach and anger. “As I began to say, Miss Brett confessed to me that she was employed by the Victoria Museum as an under-cover operative, and gained access to the Khalkis household originally for the sole purpose of tracing the stolen Leonardo. Now Miss Brett told me this after Sloane’s apparent suicide and before the arrival of the first blackmail letter. At this time she showed me some steamship tickets―she had purchased passage back to England. Why? Because she felt that she had lost the trail to the painting, and was no longer needed on a detective hunt which had become too involved for her. What did this purchase of passage out of the country mean? Obviously, that she did not know where the painting then was―otherwise she would have remained in New York; her very intention to return to London was proof of her lack of knowledge. Yet what was the prime characteristic of our murderer? That he did know where the painting was!―in Knox’s possession, to be exact. In other words, Miss Brett couldn’t have written the second blackmail note―or the first either, for that matter, since both were written by the same person.

“Very well. If Miss Brett and the servants are eliminated as suspects, then only Knox himself is left as the writer of the second letter, and therefore as Grimshaw’s partner and murderer.

“How does this check? Knox satisfies the characteristics of the murderer: he was in the Khalkis house during the period when the false clues were planted against Khalkis, for one thing. On the other hand, to digress a moment, why did Knox come forward and explode his own false clues by confessing that he was the third man―after he had gone to all the trouble of making it appear that there wasn’t a third man? For a very good reason: Miss Brett had already exploded the theory of the third man by her tea-cup story in his presence . . . so he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by seeming to come to the assistance of the investigation―a daring move to support his pretended innocence. He also fits into the mould of the Sloane case: he could have been the person who accompanied Grimshaw into the Hotel Benedict and in this way learned that Sloane and Grimshaw were brothers, whereupon he sent the anonymous letter to us as a jog toward framing Sloane; as the murderer, moreover, he possessed the will he took from Khalkis’s coffin and could therefore have planted it in the basement of his empty piece of property next door and put a duplicate key in Sloane’s humidor; and, finally, as the murderer he would possess Grimshaw’s watch and could have placed it in the safe behind Sloane after killing his second victim in the Khalkis Galleries.

“Why, however, did he write letters to himself and trump up a seeming theft of his own painting? For an excellent reason: the Sloane suicide had been publicly discredited, and he knew the police were still seeking a murderer. Also he was being pressed to return the Leonardo―and by writing the letters to himself he made it appear that the murderer, still at large, and whoever he was, was at least not Knox, and that some outsider had written the letters―for of course he would never have written the letters at all had he thought they would be traced back to his own typewriter.

“Now, in stealing the painting from himself he furthered the illusion by making it appear that this fictitious outsider had deliberately lured the police from the house in order to steal the painting; he tampered with his own burglar-alarm in advance and expected, no doubt, after we should have returned from the Times Building empty-handed, that this tampered burglar-alarm would prove to us that the painting had been stolen while we were away on the vain hunt. It was a clever plan; for the stealing of the painting eliminated his obligation to return it to the Museum, while he secretly retained it thereafter, safe on all counts.”

Ellery smiled toward the rear of the room. “I see the honourable District Attorney biting his lips with vexation and worry. My dear Sampson, it is evident that you are anticipating the argument of Mr. Knox’s lawyers. For undoubtedly his battery of legal lights will attempt to show, by producing samples of Knox’s own customary typewriting style, that these differ from the style exhibited in the two blackmail notes which you will charge he wrote to himself. Don’t worry about it: it will be evident to any jury that Knox would deliberately alter his habitual typewriting style―spacing, punctuation, the heaviness with which he strikes certain letters, and so on―in typing these blackmail notes to strengthen the illusion of their having been typed by someone other than himself . . . .

“As to the paintings themselves. There are two possibilities: that Knox had both to begin with, as he claims, or that he had only one―the one he purchased from Khalkis. If he had only one, then he lied about it being stolen, because I found one in his house after he claimed it was stolen. And when he saw that I had found it, he hurriedly utilized the history of the two paintings to make us believe that he had had two all the time, and that the one we found was the copy, the original having been taken by this mythical thief. By this means, it is true, he sacrificed the painting, but saved his own skin―or so he thought.

“On the other hand, if he really did have the two paintings to begin with, then the one I found is either the Leonardo or the copy, and there is no way of telling which until we find the other canvas that Knox has inevitably hidden somewhere. But whichever painting is now in the District Attorney’s possession, there is still another in Knox’s possession―provided he had the two all the time―and this other Knox cannot proffer because he has already committed himself as to its having been stolen by an outsider. My dear Sampson, if you can find that other painting somewhere on Knox’s premises, or find it elsewhere and can prove that Knox placed it there, the case against him will be even more airtight than it is now.”

Sampson, to judge from the expression on his lean face, would have liked to argue this statement; he apparently did not consider the case more airtight than a sieve. But Ellery did not permit him to voice what was in his mind; he went on without pause. To sum up,” he said. “The murderer had to possess three major qualifications. One: he had to be able to plant the clues against Khalkis and Sloane. Two: he had to be the writer of the blackmail letters. Three: he had to be in the Knox house in order to be able to type the second letter. This third qualification includes only the servants, Miss Brett, and Knox. But the servants are eliminated on Qualification One, as I showed you. Miss Brett is eliminated on Qualification Two, as I showed before. Only Knox is left, and since Knox fits all three qualifications perfectly, he must be the murderer.”

* * *

One would not have said that Inspector Richard Queen basked in the sunshine of his son’s public triumph. When the inevitable questioning, congratulations, arguments, and journalistic disturbances were over―it was notable that there were several shaking heads among the reporters―and the Queens found themselves alone within the sacrosanct walls of the Inspector’s office, the old man permitted such expression of his inner feeling to escape as had hitherto been sternly repressed; and Ellery felt the full blast of his father’s displeasure.

Not that Ellery himself, it is important to note, presented the picture of a self-satisfied young lion of the hour. On the contrary, his lean cheeks were hardened into long lines of tension, and his eyes were tired and feverish. He smoked cigarette after cigarette without enjoyment, and avoided his father’s eyes.

The old man was grousing in no uncertain terms. “By ginger,” he said, “if you weren’t my son I’d boot you out of here. Of all the wishy-washy, unsatisfying, ridiculous arguments I ever heard that performance of yours downstairs was―” He shuddered. “Ellery, mark my words. There’s going to be trouble. This is one time when my faith in you is, is―well, you’ve let me down, drat it! And Sampson―why, Henry’s no nincompoop; and when he walked out of that room I saw, plain as day, that he felt he was facing the toughest courtroom battle of his career. That case won’t stand up in court, Ellery; it just won’t. No evidence. And motive. Motive, damn it all! You didn’t say a word about that. Why did Knox kill Grimshaw? Sure, it’s fine to use that blasted logic of yours to show by mathematics or something that Knox is our man―but motive! Juries want motives, not logic.” He was spluttering all over his vest. There’ll be hell to pay. Knox in gaol with the biggest lawyers in the East to defend him―they’ll punch holes in your pretty case, my boy, till it looks like Swiss cheese. Just about as full of holes as―”

It was at this moment that Ellery stirred. All during the tirade he had sat patiently, even nodding, as if what the Inspector was saying he expected and, while he did not precisely welcome it, felt it was not insurmountable. But now he sat up straight, and something like alarm flickered over his face. “As full of holes as what? What do you mean?”

“Ha!” cried the Inspector. “That gets a rise out of you, does it? Think your old man’s an idiot? Maybe Henry Sampson didn’t see it, but I saw it, by George, and if you didn’t see it, the more fool you!” He rapped Ellery’s knee. “Look here, Ellery Sherlock Holmes Queen. You said that you’d eliminated the servants on the count of one of “em possibly being the murderer because they hadn’t, any of “em, been in the Khalkis house during the period when the false clues were being planted.”

“Yes?” said Ellery slowly.

“Yes. That was fine. Great. True. I agree with you. But, my precious half-wit son,” said the old man with bitterness, “you didn’t go far enough, you see. You eliminated each of the servants as the murderer, but why couldn’t one of “em have been an accomplice of art outside murderer? Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

Ellery did not reply; he sighed, and let it go at that. The Inspector dropped into his swivel-chair with a snort of discontent. “Of all the stupid omissions . . . . You of all people! I’m surprised at you, son. This case has addled your brain. For one of the servants could have been hired by the murderer to write the second blackmail letter on Knox’s machine, while the outside murderer was safe somewhere else! I’m not saying this is true; but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that Knox’s lawyers point that out, and then where is your whole argument which eliminates everybody until only Knox is left? Bah! Your logic is rotten.”

Ellery nodded in humble agreement. “Brilliant, dad, really brilliant. I hope―I trust that no one else thinks of it at this time.”

“Well,” said the Inspector grumpily, “I guess Henry didn’t, or he would have shot right up here and squawked his head off. That’s one consolation, anyway . . . . See here, El. Evidently you’ve known all along of the loophole I’ve just pointed out. Why don’t you plug it now―before it’s too late and costs me my job, and Henry’s too?”

“Why don’t I plug the hole, you ask.” Ellery shrugged, and stretched his arms far over his head. “―Lord, I’m weary! . . . I’ll tell you why, long-suffering ancestor. For the simple reason that―I daren’t.”

The Inspector shook his head. “You must be going dotty,” he muttered. “What do you mean―you daren’t? Is that a reason? All right―say it’s Knox. But the case, boy, the case! Give us something more definite to work on. You know I’ll back you to the limit if you’re convinced you’re right.”

“How well I know that,” grinned Ellery. “Fatherhood is a wonderful thing. There is only one thing more wonderful, and that is motherhood . . . . Dad, I can’t say another serious word now. But I’ll tell you this, and you may accept it for what it’s worth, considering the unreliable source . . . . The biggest thing in this unholy mess of a case has yet to happen!”