The Greek Coffin Mystery

Chapter 34. Nucleus

“There’s no earthly reason, Mr. Cheney,” said Ellery, Svhy you shouldn’t be treated to a proper explanation―you, of course, and―” But the bell rang then, and Ellery stopped as Djuna ran to the door. Miss Joan Brett appeared at the door of the living-room.

Miss Joan Brett seemed as astonished to see Mr. Alan Cheney as Mr. Alan Cheney was to see Miss Joan Brett. Alan rose and gripped the tortured walnut of the Queens’ excellent Windsor chair; and Joan clutched the jamb as if she suddenly needed something to lean on.

This was, thought Ellery Queen as he rose from the sofa on which he had been lying, his left shoulder swathed in bandages―this was the proper ending . . . . He was a little pale, and for the first time in weeks wore an expression of serenity. The trio who rose with him―a strangely abashed father; a District Attorney from whose eyes the horrified amazement of the previous night had not yet fled; a wan and plucky nabob, Mr. James J. Knox, none the worse, it appeared, for his brief incarceration―these gentlemen bowed deeply and received no answering smile from the young lady in the doorway, who seemed mesmerized by f the equally frozen young man hanging on to his chair.

Then her blue eyes wavered, and they sought the smiling ones of Ellery. “I thought . . . You asked me―”

Ellery went to her side, took her arm possessively, and piloted her to a deep chair into which she sank with a faltering embarrassment. “You thought―I asked you to . . . What, Miss Brett?”

She caught sight of his left shoulder. “You’ve been hurt!” she cried.

“To which,” said Ellery, “I reply in the accepted words of the shiny hero, “A mere nothing. A scratch.” Sit down, Mr. Cheney!”

Mr. Cheney sat down.

“Come on!” said Sampson impatiently. “I don’t know about the others, but you certainly owe me an explanation, Ellery.”

Ellery draped himself over his sofa again and managed with one hand to light a cigarette. “Now we’re comfy,” he said. He caught the eye of James Knox, and they both smiled at some secret jest. “Explanation . . . . Of course.”

Ellery began to speak. And while his words crackled through the next half-hour like an accompaniment of popping corn, Alan and Joan sat with folded hands and did not once look at each other.

“The fourth solution―there were four, you know,” began Ellery: ‘the Khalkis solution, in which Mr. Pepper led me about by the nose; the Sloane solution, which we might term a deadlock between Pepper and me, since I didn’t believe in it although I couldn’t support my disbelief until Suiza came along with his story; the Knox solution, in which I led Mr. Pepper about by the nose―so far a tie, you will observe; and the Pepper solution, which was the proper one―the fourth, I say, and final solution which has amazed all of you but actually is as plain as the good strong sunlight which poor old Pepper will never see again . . . .” He was silent for a moment. “Certainly the revelation of an apparently reputable young man, an Assistant District Attorney, as the prime mover in a series of crimes engineered with profound imagination and supreme insouciance must be confounding if you don’t know how and why he did it. Yet Mr. Pepper was snared by my old and remorseless ally, Logic, the logos of the Greeks and the bane, I trust, of many plotters to come.”

Ellery flicked his ashes all over young Djuna’s spotless rug. “Now, I confess that until the events which centred on Mr. Knox’s broad acreage on the Drive―the blackmail letters and the theft of the painting―until these events I had not the slightest inkling of where the guilt lay. In other words, had Pepper stopped with the murder of Sloane, he should have gone free. But, in this as in other less celebrated crimes, the criminal fell victim to his own cupidity. And he wove with his own fingers the web in which he was finally ensnared.

“Consequently, since the series of events in the Knox house on the Drive was the salient one, let me begin there. You will recall that yesterday morning I summed up the major qualifications of the murderer; and it is necessary to repeat those qualifications now. 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 type the second blackmail letter.”

Ellery smiled. “Now, this last qualification, as I expanded it yesterday morning, was misleading―deliberately so for reasons which will be evident later. My astute sire pointed out privately to me just where I was “wrong” after that charming little pseudo-explanation I gave at Police Headquarters. For I purposely chose, from the phrase: “in the Knox house,” to mean a member of the Knox household, whereas obviously “in the Knox house” is a much more comprehensive term. For “in the Knox house” means anyone, whether of the Knox household or not. In other words, the typist of the second letter did not necessarily have to be one of the regular occupants of the house; he might merely have been an outsider who gained access to the Knox house. Please bear this in mind.

“We begin, therefore, from this thesis: that the second letter, from the surrounding circumstances, must have been written by someone who was in the house at the time of the writing; and this someone was the murderer. But my intelligent sire pointed out that this wasn’t necessarily true, either; why, he asked, couldn’t the writer of the note have been an accomplice of the murderer, who was hired by the murderer perhaps to write the letter while the murderer himself stayed away from the Knox house? This would mean, of course, that the murderer couldn’t gain legitimate access to the Knox house, or else he would type the letter himself . . . . That was a subtle question, and a perfectly proper one―which I deliberately avoided taking up yesterday morning because it didn’t suit my purpose, which was to trap Pepper.

“Very well! If we can prove now that the murderer couldn’t have had an accomplice in the Knox house, it would mean that the murderer himself typed the second letter and was in Mr. Knox’s den when he did so.

“To prove, however, that there was no accomplice in the case, we first have to establish the innocence of Mr. Knox himself, otherwise the logical problem is insoluble.”

Ellery expelled cigarette-smoke lazily. “Mr. Knox’s innocence is most simply established. Is this a surprise to you? Yet it is ridiculously apparent. It is established by means of a fact in the possession of only three people in the world: Mr. Knox, Miss Brett, and myself. Consequently, Pepper―as you will see―being ignorant of this essential fact, made his first slip in the chain of plots and counterplots.

“The fact is this: during the period when Gilbert Sloane was considered generally the murderer, Mr. Knox voluntarily―mark that―informed me, in Miss Brett’s presence, that on the night he and Grimshaw visited Khalkis, Khalkis had borrowed a thousand-dollar bill from him―Knox―to give to Grimshaw as a sort of advance blackmail payment; that he, Knox, had seen Grimshaw tuck this bill, folded, into the back of his watch-case, and that Grimshaw had left the house with this bill still in his watch. Mr. Knox and I went at once to Headquarters and found the bill still there―the very same bill, because I checked up at once and discovered that it had been issued, as Mr. Knox had said, to him on the day he had mentioned. Now, the very fact that this thousand-dollar bill was traceable to Mr. Knox, which he knew better than anyone, meant that if Mr. Knox had killed Grimshaw, he would have used every means in his power to keep that bill from falling into the hands of the police. Certainly it would have been simple for him, had he strangled Grimshaw, to have removed the bill from Grimshaw’s watch then and there, since he knew that Grimshaw had it, and precisely where. Even had he been connected with the murderer in a remoter capacity―as an accomplice―he would have seen to it that the bill was removed from the watch-case, since the watch was in the possession of the murderer for quite some time.

“But the bill was still in that watch when we looked into its case at Police Headquarters! Now, if Mr. Knox had been the murderer, why hadn’t he removed the bill, as I said a moment ago? In fact, why had he, aside from not having removed the bill, actually come to me of his own free will and told me that the bill was there―when I, in common with the other representative of the law, did not even dream of the bill’s existence? You see, his action was so wholly at variance with what he would have done had he been the murderer or the accomplice that I was compelled to say at that time: “Well, no matter where the guilt lies, it certainly isn’t in the direction of James Knox.”

“Thank God for that,” said Knox huskily.

“But observe,” continued Ellery, “where this conclusion, which at the time meant so little to me, being a negative finding, led. For only the murderer, or his possible accomplice if there was one, could have written the blackmail letters―since they had been typed on the halves of the promissory note. Since Mr. Knox was not the murderer or accomplice, he couldn’t have typed the letters, despite the fact that they were written on his own distinctive machine, as I pointed out yesterday by the pound-sign deductions. Therefore―and this was rather startling―the person who typed the second letter used Mr. Knox’s machine deliberately! But for what purpose? Only so that, by leaving the clue of the mistyped 3 and the suggestion of the pound-symbol―which naturally now had been left on purpose―only that by so doing, I say, a trail would be left to Mr. Knox’s machine and it would therefore appear that Mr. Knox wrote the letter and was the murderer. Another frame-up, then―the third, the first two of which had been unsuccessfully directed against Georg Khalkis and Gilbert Sloane.”

Ellery frowned thoughtfully. “We now ascend into more acute reasoning. For see! It must be evident that the real criminal, in framing James Knox for the murders and the potential theft, considered James Knox a possibility in the minds of the police! It would be folly to make James Knox appear the criminal if the real murderer knew the police would not accept James Knox as the criminal. Therefore the real murderer could not have known the thousand-dollar-bill story. For had he known it, he would never have framed Mr. Knox. At this point, then, one person could certainly be eliminated as a mathematical possibility, on top of the fact that she was an accredited investigator of the Victoria Museum―which fact, of course, did not necessarily absolve her from suspicion, although it was a tenable presumption of innocence. That was this beautiful young lady, whose blushes I observe are continually deepening―Miss Brett; for she was present when Mr. Knox told me about the thousand-dollar bill, and if she had been the murderer or even the murderer’s accomplice, she would not have framed Mr. Knox or permitted the murderer to frame him.”

Joan sat up staight at this; then she grinned weakly and sank back. Alan Cheny blinked. He was studying the rug at his feet as if it were some precious sample of weaving worthy of a young antiquarian’s strict scrutiny.

“Therefore―a plethora of therefores,” continued Ellery, “of the people who could have typed the second letter, I had eliminated both Mr. Knox and Miss Brett, either as murderer or accomplice in each instance.

“Now, would the only other members of the official household―the servants―have among their number the murderer himself? No, because not one of the servants could physically have planted the false clues against Khalkis and Sloane in the Khalkis house―a carefully kept list of all people who visited the Khalkis house does not anywhere reveal any of Mr. Knox’s servants. On the other hand, could one of Mr. Knox’s servants have been an accomplice of an outside murderer, being utilized merely because he had access to the Knox typewriter?”

Ellery smiled. “No, as I can prove. The fact that Mr. Knox’s typewriter was employed in the frame-up against him indicates that the use of his typewriter was intended by the murderer from the beginning; for the only concrete evidence the murderer intended to leave against Mr. Knox was that the second letter would be found to have been written on Mr. Knox’s machine; this was the kernel of the frame-up plot. (Please note that even if the plotter did not know in advance the specific manner in which he would incriminate Mr. Knox, he at least was intending to use some peculiarity of the typewriter.) Well, then, it certainly would have been to the murderer’s obvious advantage, since he was framing Mr. Knox by means of his typewriter, to have typed both letters on that machine. Yet only the second was typed on that machine―the first having been written on an Underwood outside of Mr. Knox’s house, Mr. Knox’s Remington being the only machine in his house . . . . If therefore the murderer did not use Mr. Knox’s Remington for the typing of the first letter, it clearly indicates that he did not have access to Mr. Knox’s machine for the typing of the first letter. But all the servants did have access to Mr. Knox’s machine for the typing of the first letter―they all had been with him, in fact, a minimum of five years. Therefore, one of them could not have been an accomplish of the murderer, or the murder would have had him type the first letter on the Knox machine.

“But this has eliminated either as murderer or accomplice Mr. Knox, Miss Brett, and all the servants of the household! But how is this possible, since the second letter was written from the Knox house?”

Ellery flung his cigarette into the fire. “We know now that the writer, though somehow in Mr. Knox’s den to have written the second letter, was not in Mr. Knox’s den―or house―when he wrote the first letter―otherwise he would have used the machine for the first letter also. We know too that no outsider was admitted to the Knox house after the receipt of the first letter―that is, no outsider except one person. Now, while it’s true that anyone could have written the first letter from outside, only one person could have written the second―the only one who gained access to the house before the receipt of the second letter. And now another point became clear. For why, I asked myself all the time, had that first letter been necessary at all? It was garrulous, and it seemed to serve little purpose. Blackmailers generally make their strike the first time they write―they don’t indulge in long-winded, pleasantly cocky correspondence; they don’t establish their position as blackmailers in one letter, and then wait for a second to demand money. The explanation here was psychologically perfect; that first letter was essential to the murderer; it served some purpose. What purpose? Why, to get him access to the Knox house! Why did he want access to the Knox house? To be in a position to type the second letter from Knox’s machine! Everything matched . . . .

“Now who was the only one who gained access to the house between the receipt of the first letter and the receipt of the second? And strange as it seemed, incredible, extraordinary as I found it, I couldn’t blink the fact that this visitor was our own colleague, our fellow-investigator―in short, Assistant District Attorney Pepper, who had spent several days there (and, as we instantly recall, at his own suggestion) for the ostensible purpose of waiting for the second letter!

“Clever! It was devilishly ingenious.

“My first reaction was natural―I could not bring myself to believe it. It seemed impossible. But staggering as this revelation was to me, particularly since it was the first time I had even considered Pepper a possibility,” continued Ellery, ‘the course was clear. I could not reject a suspect―now no longer a suspect, but from logic the criminal―merely because imagination refused to credit the result of reason. I was forced to check. I went over the whole case from the beginning to see if, and how, Pepper matched the facts.

“Well, Pepper himself had identified Grimshaw as a man he had defended five years before; naturally, as the criminal, he would do this to forestall cleverly the possible chance discovery of this former connexion between him and the victim after he had had the opportunity of recognizing the victim and had refrained from doing so. A small point, and not at all conclusive, but significant nevertheless. In all likelihood this connexion began at least five years ago in a lawyer-client relationship, with Grimshaw coming to Pepper after he stole the painting from the Victoria Museum, asking him perhaps to keep an eye on things while he, Grimshaw, was in prison, and during the period when the painting, still unpaid for, was in Khalkis’s possession. As soon as Grimshaw was released from prison, he naturally would have gone to Khalkis to collect. Undoubtedly it was Pepper who was the man behind the scenes, behind all the events that followed, keeping himself always unidentified and in the background. This business of Grimshaw and Pepper being connected may possibly be clarified by Jordan, Pepper’s former law-partner, although Jordan is probably an entirely innocent man.”

“We’re looking him up,” said Sampson. “He’s a reputable attorney.”

“No doubt,” said Ellery dryly. “Pepper wouldn’t ally himself openly with a crook―not Pepper . . . . But we are looking for confirmation. How does the matter of motive emerge in a consideration of Pepper as Grimshaw’s strangler? . . .

“After the meeting of Grimshaw, Mr. Knox and Khalkis that Friday night, and after Grimshaw received the promissory note payable to bearer, Mr. Knox left with Grimshaw, went away, and meanwhile Grimshaw remained standing before the house. Why? Possibly to meet his confederate―a not fanciful conclusion from Grimshaw’s own statements about his ‘single partner”. Pepper, then, must have been waiting for Grimshaw in the vicinity. They must have withdrawn into the shadows and Grimshaw must have told Pepper everything that had transpired in the house. Pepper, realizing that he no longer needed Grimshaw, that Grimshaw was even a danger to him, that with Grimshaw out of the way he could collect from Mr. Knox without having to divide the spoils―must then have decided to kill his partner. The promissory note would have provided an additional motive, for, made out to bearer, and with Khalkis still alive, remember, it represented a potential half-million dollars to the holder of it; and there too was Mr. James J. Knox still in the background as another source of blackmail later on. Undoubtedly Pepper killed Grimshaw either in the shadows of the basement entrance to the empty Knox house next door, or in the basement itself, for which he must already have provided himself with a duplicate key. At any rate, having Grimshaw’s dead body in the basement, he searched the corpse, appropriated the promissory note and Grimshaw’s watch (with the notion perhaps of using it later somewhere as a plant), and the five thousand dollars Sloane had bribed Grimshaw with the night before to get out of the city. At the time he choked Grimshaw to death, he must have had some plan in mind for the disposal of the body; or perhaps he intended to leave it permanently in the basement. But when the next morning Khalkis unexpectedly died, Pepper must have realized instantly that here was an unexampled opportunity to bury Grimshaw’s body in Khalkis’s coffin. He then played in luck; for on the day of Khalkis’s burial, Woodruff himself called the District Attorney’s office for assistance, and Pepper asked―you mentioned that yourself, Sampson, once when you were chiding Pepper about being too interested in Miss Brett―to be put in charge of the will-search. Here, then, was another psychological indication to Mr. Pepper.

“Now, having perfect access to the Khalkis premises, he saw how simple matters would be for him. On the Wednesday night after the funeral, he took Grimshaw’s body out of the empty Knox basement, where he had crammed it in the old trunk, carried the body through the dark court into the darker graveyard, dug up the earth above the vault, opened the horizontal door of the vault, leaped in and opened Khalkis’s coffin―and immediately found the will in the steel box; until then it is probable that he himself did not know where the will had gone. Knowing that the will might come in handy later for the purpose of blackmailing still another figure in the tragedy, Sloane―Sloane being the only one who had motive for the theft of the will in the first place and its insertion in the coffin before the funeral―Pepper then must have appropriated the will, another potential instrument of blackmail. He crammed Grimshaw’s body into the coffin, put back the lid of the coffin, climbed out, dropped the door of the vault, refilled the shallow pit, took away what tools he had used plus the will and the steel box, and left the graveyard. Incidentally, here is another tiny confirmation of the Pepper solution. For Pepper himself told us that it was on this night―Wednesday night, in the wee hours―that he saw Miss Brett on her marauding expedition in the study. Then Pepper by his own admission was up late that night; and it is not far-fetched to assume that he went through the ghastly business of the burial after Miss Brett left the study.

“Now we can fit in Mrs. Vreeland’s story of having seen Sloane entering the graveyard that night. Sloane must have become aware of suspicious activity on Pepper’s part in the house, followed him, seen everything Pepper did―including the burial of the body and the appropriation of the will―and realized that Pepper was a murderer . . . of whom, however, at that time, in the darkness, Sloane probably did not know.”

Joan shuddered. “That―that nice young man. It’s incredible.”

Ellery said severely, “This should teach you a stern lesson, Miss Brett. Stick to those you’re sure of . . . . Where was I? Yes! Now, Pepper felt perfectly safe; the body was buried, and no one would have any reason to look for it. But when the next day I announced the possibility of the will having been slipped into the coffin and suggested a disinterment, Pepper must have thought very rapidly indeed. He could not now prevent the murder from being discovered without going back to the graveyard and taking the body out again; in this case he would have the problem of disposing of it all over again; a risky business all around. On the other hand, he might be able to make capital of the discovery of the murder. So, having the run of the Khalkis house, he left clues about which would point to the dead man―Khalkis, I mean―as the murderer. He had had a sample of my particular brand of reasoning, and deliberately toyed with me―leaving not obvious clues but subtle ones which he felt sure I would see. There were two reasons why he probably selected Khalkis as the ‘murderer”: the first, it would be just such a solution as would appeal to my imagination; second, Khalkis was dead and could not deny anything that Pepper suggested by his plants. And, to make it perfect―if the solution were accepted, no one alive would suffer; for remember that Pepper was not a habitual murderer, hardened to killings.

“Now, as I pointed out in the beginning, Pepper could not have planted those false clues against Khalkis unless he knew that Mr. Knox, possessing the stolen painting, must perforce keep quiet and not admit having been the third man that night―part of Pepper’s false trail to Khalkis being the fact that only two men were involved in the negotiations at the house that night. But, to have known that Mr. Knox possessed the painting, he must have been Grimshaw’s partner, as shown many times before; must therefore have been the unknown who accompanied Grimshaw to his hotel room the night of the multiplicity of visitors.

“When Miss Brett inadvertently burst the Khalkis bubble by recalling and pointing out the discrepancy in the teacups, Pepper must have felt very badly. But at the same time he would have assured himself that it was no fault of his plotting―there had always been the off-chance that someone would notice the condition of the cups before he had had the opportunity to tinker with them. On the other hand, when Mr. Knox unexpectedly told his story, revealing himself as the third man, Pepper realized that all his work was undone, and moreover that I now knew the clues to have been deliberate falsifications left to be found. So Pepper, in the admirable position of knowing at all times everything / knew―how he must have chuckled to himself when I was being smug, oratorical and, in a word, myself!―Pepper decided then and there to make capital of his unique position by arranging succeeding events to bear out my own expressed theories. Khalkis being dead, the promissory note he held, Pepper knew, was valueless to him. What other source of revenue was open? He could not blackmail Mr. Knox with regard to possession of the painting, because Mr. Knox had unexpectedly balked him by telling his story to the police. True, Mr. Knox had said the painting was comparatively valueless, a copy, but Pepper chose not to believe that, feeling that Mr. Knox was merely cleverly covering himself up―as indeed you were, sir; there Pepper shrewdly guessed that you were lying.”

Knox grunted; he seemed too pained to speak.

“In any event,” Ellery went on blandly, ‘the only source of revenue left to Pepper was eventually to steal the Leonardo from Mr. Knox; he felt sure Mr. Knox had the Leonardo, not the copy. But to do this he had to have a clear field; the police were everywhere, looking for the murderer.

“Which brings us to the Sloane affair. Why did Pepper choose Sloane as the second straw-man? We have facts and inferences enough to answer that question now. Indeed, I touched on it some time ago to you, dad―remember that night?” The old man nodded in silence. “For if Sloane saw Pepper in the graveyard and knew now that here was the murderer of Grimshaw, Sloane possessed knowledge of Pepper’s guilt. But how could Pepper have known that Sloane knew? Well, Sloane had seen Pepper take the will out of the coffin; even if he didn’t actually see it he could infer it later from the fact that the will and box were gone when the coffin was opened at the disinterment. Sloane wanted that will destroyed; he must have gone to Pepper, accused him of murder, and demanded the will as the price of silence. Pepper, faced with the terrible menace to his own safety, must have bargained with Sloane: he would keep the will as a weapon to insure Sloane’s silence. But inwardly he would plan to be rid of Sloane, the only living witness against him.

“So Pepper arranged the ‘suicide” of Sloane to make it appear that Sloane had been the murderer of Grimshaw. Sloane fitted all the motives nicely; and with the burnt will in the basement, the basement key in Sloane’s room, and Grimshaw’s watch in Sloane’s wallsafe, Pepper laid a beautiful trail of evidence against his victim. Incidentally, dad, your man Ritter was not at fault for having ‘missed” seeing the will-fragment in the furnace of the empty Knox house. Because when Ritter searched, the scrap wasn’t there! Pepper burnt the will later, carefully leaving the Khalkis handwritten name of Albert Grimshaw unsigned, and put the ashes and the scrap in the furnace some time after Ritter’s little investigation . . . . As for Sloane’s revolver being used for the killing of Sloane, undoubtedly Pepper secured it from the Sloane rooms in the Khalkis house at the time he planted the key in the humidor.

“So he had to kill Sloane to keep him from talking. At the same time he knew the police would ask: “Why did Sloane commit suicide?” The obvious reason would be that Sloane knew he was to be arrested on the basis of the clues which had been found. Pepper asked himself: How could Sloane know this, presumably, in a police explanation? Well, he might be warned. All this, you understand, is Pepper’s probable reasoning. How leave a trace to the presumable fact that Sloane had been warned? Ah, the simplicity of it! Which brings us to the mysterious telephone call which we established had emanated from the Khalkis house the evening of Sloane’s ‘suicide”.

“Do you remember that?―the basis on which we believed Sloane had been tipped off of our intentions? And remember that Pepper, in our presence, began to dial Woodruff on the telephone to make an appointment for the purpose of authenticating the burnt will-fragment? Pepper remarked, as he hung up after a moment, that the line was busy; a moment later he dialled again and this time actually spoke to Woodruff’s valet. Well, the first time he merely dialled the number of the Khalkis Galleries! Knowing the call could be traced, it was perfect for his plans; when Sloane answered Pepper merely disconnected by replacing his receiver without saying a word. Sloane must have been a much puzzled man. But this was enough to establish a call from the house to the Galleries; and particularly clever since it was done under our very eyes, the dial-instrument permitting him to connect with the Galleries without asking for the number aloud. Another little psychological confirmation of Pepper’s guilt, then, since no one, particularly those who had reason to warn Sloane, would admit having put in the call.

“Pepper immediately got out of the Khalkis house, presumably to hunt up Woodruff and substantiate the will-scrap. But before going to Woodruff’s he stopped in at the Galleries―Sloane probably admitted him―and killed Sloane, merely rearranging a few details to make the thing look like suicide. The incident of the closed door which ultimately exploded the Sloane-suicide plot was not an error on Pepper’s part; he didn’t know that the bullet had gone clear through Sloane’s head and out the open doorway; Sloane fell on the side of his face from which the bullet had emerged, and naturally Pepper did not handle Sloane’s body more than was necessary, if he handled it at all. No sound came from the bullet’s striking in the main room outside, because it hit a thick rug on the wall. And so, a victim of circumstances, Pepper did the logical thing when he left―almost the instinctive thing for a murderer to do: he closed the door. And thereby inadvertently upset his own applecart.

“For almost two weeks the Sloane theory was accepted-―the murderer seemingly had seen the jig was up and had committed suicide. Pepper felt that he now had a clear field for the theft of the painting from Mr. Knox; his plan must have been, now that the police had their murderer nicely filed away, to steal the painting from Mr. Knox in such a way as to make it appear, not that Mr. Knox was the murderer, but that he had stolen the Leonardo from himself in order not to have to return it to the Museum. But when Suiza came forward and gave evidence which pricked the Sloane-suicide theory, and this fact was made public, Pepper knew that the police still sought a murderer. Why not make Mr. Knox out to be not only the thief of his own painting but the Grimshaw-Sloane murderer as well? Where Pepper’s plan went awry―and not through any fault of his―was that he had every reason to believe Mr. Knox a theoretical possibility as the murderer. That would have been so―although the business of motive was a hard nut to crack―had Mr. Knox not come to me with his story of the thousand-dollar bill at a time when I had no reason to repeat the story even to my father―since in that period the Sloane theory was the accepted one. So Pepper went blithely ahead framing Mr. Knox for the murders and the theft, not knowing that at last I had him cornered―although I didn’t know it was he at the time. The moment Mr. Knox was framed with the second letter, however, I, knowing him to be innocent, spotted the second letter as a frame-up and deduced, as I’ve already shown, that Pepper himself was the culprit.”

“Here, son,” growled the Inspector, speaking for the first time. “Have a drink. Your throat is dry. How’s the shoulder?”

“Middling . . . . Now you can see why that first blackmail letter had to be written from the outside, and furthermore how the answer points again to Pepper. Pepper could not gain legitimate access to Mr. Knox’s house for a period long enough to discover where the painting was hidden and to write the second letter; but by sending the first letter he got himself posted in the house as an investigator. Please remember that this was at his own suggestion to you, Sampson; another little gram on the scales of Pepper’s guilt.

“Sending the second letter from Mr. Knox’s own typewriter was the penultimate step in Pepper’s frame-up. The ultimate step, of course, was the theft of the painting itself. During the period when he was posted in the house,

Pepper searched for it. He had no inkling, naturally, of the existence of two paintings. He found the sliding panel in the gallery-wall, stole the painting, smuggled it out of the house, and secreted it in the empty Knox house on Fifty-fourth Street―an ingenious hiding-place! Then he proceeded to send the second blackmail letter. From his standpoint the plot was complete―all he had to do now was to sit back righteously as one of Mr. Sampson’s alert guardians of the law, help pin the guilt on Mr. Knox as writer of the letter if perchance I failed to catch the significance of the pound-sign; and eventually, after everything had blown over, to cash in on the painting either through a not-too-scrupulous collector or a “fence”.”

“How about that burglar-alarm business?” asked James Knox. “Just what was the idea?”

“Oh that! You see, after he himself stole the painting,” replied Ellery, “and then wrote the letter, he tampered with your burglar-alarm system. He expected that we would go to the rendezvous in the Times Building, and then come back empty-handed. We should then have realized, he planned, that we had been tricked, that the purpose of the letter was to lure us away from the house while the painting was being stolen. Now, that was to be the obvious explanation; but when we should have pinned the guilt to you, Mr. Knox, we would have said: “See! Knox tampered with his own burglar-alarm to make us think the painting was stolen to-night by an outsider. When actually it was never stolen at all.” A complex plan which requires assiduous concentration for complete comprehension. But it illustrates the remarkably subtle quality of Pepper’s thinking processes.”

“That’s all clear enough, I think,” said the District Attorney suddenly; he had been following the course of Ellery’s explanation like a terrier. “But what I want to know is about that business of the two paintings―why you arrested Mr. Knox here―all of that.”

For the first time a grin spread over Knox’s rugged features; and Ellery laughed aloud. “We were continually reminding Mr. Knox to be “a good sport”; how good a sport he turned out is the answer to your question, Sampson. I should have told you that the entire rigmarole about the “legend” of two authentically old paintings being differentiated only by a distinction in flesh-tints―all pure bombast and melodrama. On the afternoon of the arrival of the second blackmail letter, I knew everything by deduction―Pepper’s plot, his guilt, his intent. But I was in a peculiar position: I had no shred of evidence with which you mieht convict him if he were immediately accused and arrested; and furthermore that precious painting was in his possession somewhere. If we exposed him, the painting would probably never be found; and it was my duty to see that the Leonardo was restored to its rightful owners, the Victoria Museum. On the other hand, if I could trap Pepper into such a position that he would be caught red-handed with the stolen Leonardo, his mere possession of it would serve as evidence for conviction, and would, moreover, secure the painting!”

“Do you mean to say that that stuff about the flesh-tints and all that was made up?” demanded Sampson.

“Yes, Sampson―my own private little plot, in which I played with Mr. Pepper as he had played with me. I took Mr. Knox into my confidence, told him everything―how and by whom he was being framed. He then told me that after he had bought the original Leonardo from Khalkis, he had had a copy made, confessing that his intention had been to return this copy to the Museum if the police pressure became too strong, with the story that this was the one he had bought from Khalkis. It would of course in this event be recognized at once by experts as a rank copy―but Mr. Knox’s story would be unassailable and he would probably go scot-free. In other words, whereas Mr. Knox had the copy in the dummy radiator-coil, the original was in the panel, and Pepper had stolen that original. But this gave me an idea―an idea which was to utilize a little truth and a great deal of romancing.”

Ellery’s eyes danced at the recollection. “I told Mr. Knox that I was going to arrest him―purely for Pepper’s benefit―accuse him, outline the case against him, do all the things necessary to convince Pepper that his frame-up against Mr. Knox had been completely successful. Now, if I do say so, Mr. Knox reacted splendidly; he wanted his little revenge on Pepper anyway for attempting to involve him; he wanted to compensate for his own originally illicit intention to palm off a copy on the Museum; so he agreed to play the victim for me. We called in Toby Johns―this was all Friday afternoon―and together concocted a story which I felt sure would force Pepper’s hand. A dictaphone record of this entire conversation, by the way, in which all the details of the fabricated plot were discussed openly, was made in the event we failed to make Pepper snatch the bait . . . just to provide evidence that the Knox arrest was not intended seriously, but was part of a greater plot to trap the real murderer.

“Now, look at the position Pepper was in when he heard the expert’s beautifully phrased cock-and-bull story, interspersed with resounding historical references and contemporary Italian art-names, about the “legend” of the “fine distinction” between the two paintings―all of it, naturally, pure bilgewater. There has never been more than one old oils of this precise subject―and that is the Leonardo original; there never was a legend; there never was a “contemporary” copy―Mr. Knox’s was a modern daub made in New York and recognizable as such by anyone familiar with art; all this was my own contribution to the fascinating little counter-plot . . . . Now Pepper learned from Johns’ dignified lips that the only way he could determine which was the Leonardo and which the “contemporary copy” was by actually placing the two side by side! Pepper must have said to himself what I wanted him to say: “Well, I have no way of knowing which one I own; the real one or the copy. I can’t take Knox’s word for anything. So I’ll have to put the two of them together―fast, because the one we have here, which will probably be kept in the D.A.’s files, won’t be here long.” He would think that if he did put them together and, after determining which was the Leonardo, returned the copy to the files, he was in no danger―not even the expert himself, by his own admission, could tell which was which if they weren’t together!

“It was really a stroke of genius,” murmured Ellery, “and I congratulate myself upon it. What―no applause? . . . Naturally, if we had been dealing with a man of art, an aesthete, a painter, or even a dilettante, I should never have risked Johns telling this ridiculous story; but Pepper, I knew, was the veriest layman, and he had no reason but to swallow the story whole, particularly since everything else seemed genuine―Knox’s arrest, imprisonment, the blazoned newspaper stories, the notification of Scotland Yard―oh, precious! I knew that neither you, Sampson, nor you, dad, would see through the fish-story, because, with all respect for your individual capacities as man-hunters, you know as little about art as Djuna here. The only one of whom I had reason to be fearful was Miss Brett―and I had told her that afternoon enough about the plot so that she showed the proper surprise and horror when Mr. Knox was “arrested”. Incidentally, I must congratulate myself on still another score―my acting; wasn’t I the deceptive little devil, though?* Ellery grinned. “I see my talent isn’t appreciated . . . . At any rate, with nothing to lose and apparently everything to gain, Pepper just couldn’t resist placing those two paintings side by side for a bare five minutes’ comparison . . . . Precisely as I foresaw.

“At the time I accused Mr. Knox in his own house, I already had Sergeant Velie―a very reluctant officer, I will confess, since he is so attached to my father that even the thought of treason makes his huge carcass tremble―searching Pepper’s apartment and office on the remote chance that he had secreted the painting in one of the two places. Of course, it wasn’t in either, but I had to be certain. Friday night I saw to it that Pepper was given the painting to take down to the D.A.’s office, where it would be available to him at any time. He naturally lay doggo that night and all day yesterday; but, as you all know now, last night he smuggled the painting out of the official files and proceeded to his hiding-place in the empty Knox house, where we nabbed him with the two―the original and the worthless copy. Of course, Sergeant Velie and his men had been on Pepper’s trail all day, like bloodhounds; and I was getting frequent reports about Pepper’s movements, since we didn’t know where he had the Leonardo concealed.

“The fact that he shot for my heart”―Ellery tenderly patted his shoulder―”and fortunately for posterity merely winged me, proves, I think, that in that agonizing instant of discovery Pepper recognized at last that I had turned the tables.

“And that, I believe, spells finis.”

They sighed and stirred. Djuna appeared, as if by pre-arrangement, with tea-things. For a few moments the case was forgotten in chatter―in which neither Miss Joan Brett nor Mr. Alan Cheney, it will be noted, took part―and then Sampson said: “I’ve got something that will bear clarification, Ellery. You’ve gone to heaps of trouble in your analysis of the events surrounding the blackmail letters to take into account the possibility of an accomplice. Splendid! But―” he stabbed at the air triumphantly with his forefinger in the approved prosecutor-manner―”how about your original analysis? Remember you said that the first characteristic of the letter-writer was that in order to have planted the false clues against Khalkis in the Khalkis house he must have been the murderer?”

“Yes,” said Ellery, blinking thoughtfully.

“But you didn’t say anything about the possibility that it might have been an accomplice of the murderer who planted those clues! How could you assume it was the murderer and discard even the possibility of an accomplice?”

“Don’t excite yourself, Sampson. The explanation is really self-evident. Grimshaw himself had said he had only one partner―right? We showed from other things that this partner had killed Grimshaw―right? Then I said that, the partner having killed Grimshaw, he had the greatest motive for trying to pin the guilt on someone else, in that first case Khalkis―so, I said, the murderer planted the false clues. You ask me why there isn’t the logical possibility that an accomplice planted the false clues? For the simple reason that, in killing Grimshaw, the murderer was deliberately getting rid of an accomplice. Would he kill an accomplice and then turn right around and take another one for the purpose of laying a false trail? In addition, the planting of the Khalkis clues was a wholly voluntary action on the part of the plotter. In other words, he had the world to choose from in selecting an “acceptable” murderer. Then he would certainly choose the most expedient. Having got rid of one accomplice, the taking of another would be a clumsy and unsatisfactory expedient. Therefore, giving the clever criminal credit for his cleverness, I maintained that he had planted the false clues himself.”

“All right, all right,” said Sampson, throwing up his hands.

“How about Mrs. Vreeland, Ellery?” asked the Inspector curiously. “I thought that she and Sloane were lovers. That doesn’t jibe with her story to us about seeing Sloane in the graveyard that night.”

Ellery waved another cigarette. “A detail. From Mrs. Sloane’s description of her visit to the Benedict, trailing Sloane, it was evident that Sloane and Mrs. Vreeland had been conducting an affaire de cceur. But I think you will find that, as soon as Sloane realized that the only way he’d ever inherit the Khalkis Galleries would be through his wife, he decided to cast off his paramour and devote himself thereafter to the cultivation of his wife’s good graces. Naturally, Mrs. Vreeland being what she is―and a spurned lady-love at that―reacted in the usual way and attempted to hurt Sloane as much as possible.”

Alan Cheney woke up suddenly. Out of a clear sky―he sedulously avoided looking at Joan―he asked: “And how about this Dr. Wardes, Queen? Where the devil is he? Why did he skip out? Where does he fit into the case, if he fits in at all?”

Joan Brett was examining her hands with interest.

“I think,” said Ellery with a shrug, ‘that Miss Brett could answer that question. I’ve had a suspicion all along . . . . Eh, Miss Brett?”

Joan looked up and smiled very sweetly―although she did not look in Alan’s direction. “Dr. Wardes was my confederate. Really! And one of Scotland Yard’s cleverest investigators.”

This was, one felt, excellent news to Mr. Alan Cheney; he coughed his surprise and studied the rug more carefully than before. “You see,” continued Joan, still smiling sweetly, “I didn’t say anything about him to you, Mr. Queen, because he himself forbade me to. He had disappeared to trail the Leonardo out of official sight and interference―he was quite disgusted with the way things had gone.”

“Then of course you wangled him into the Khalkis house by design?” asked Ellery.

“Yes. When I saw I was beyond my depth, I wrote of my helplessness to the Museum, and they went to Scotland Yard, who until then had been ignorant of the theft―the directors were very keen to keep the affair quiet. Dr. Wardes actually has a medical licence and has acted as a physician on cases before.”

“He did visit Grimshaw that night in the Benedict, didn’t he?” asked the District Attorney.

“Certainly. That night I was unable to follow Grimshaw myself; but I passed the word along to Dr. Wardes, and he followed the man, saw him join an unidentifiable man . . . “

“Pepper, of course,” murmured Ellery.

“ . . . and dallied about the lobby of the hotel when Grimshaw and this Pepper person took the lift. He saw Sloane go up, and Mrs. Sloane, and Odell―and finally he went up himself, although he did not enter Grimshaw’s room, merely reconnoitred about. He saw them all leave, excepting the first man. Naturally, he couldn’t tell you these things without disclosing his identity, and he was unwilling to do that . . . . Discovering nothing, Dr. Wardes returned to the Khalkis house. The night after, when Grimshaw and Mr. Knox called―although we didn’t know it was Mr. Knox then―Dr. Wardes was unfortunately out with Mrs. Vreeland, whose acquaintance he was cultivating on a―a―what shall I say?―a hunch!”

“Where’s he now, I wonder?” said Alan Cheney indifferently, addressing the design on the rug.

“I do believe,” said Joan to the smoke-filled air, ‘that Dr. Wardes is now on the high seas, homeward bound.”

“Ah,” said Alan, as if that were a highly satisfactory reply.

* * *

When Knox and Sampson had gone, the Inspector sighed, took Joan’s hand in a fatherly way, patted Alan’s shoulder, and departed on some errand of his own―presumably to face a horde of hungry journalists and, what was even more agreeable, some very superior superiors who had experienced a marked deflation of spirits with the lightning zigzags of the Grimshaw-Sloane-Pepper case.

Left alone with his guests, Ellery began to pay scrupulous attention to the dressings of his wounded shoulder. He was a most ungentlemanly host; Joan and Alan, in fact, rose and rather stiffly attempted to take their leave.

“What! You’re not going already?” Ellery exclaimed mercifully, at last. He crawled off the sofa and smiled idiotically at them; Joan’s ivory nostrils were quivering ever so slightly, and Alan was now engaged in tracing a complex pattern with one scuffing toe on the rug in which he had been so completely absorbed for an hour. “Well! Don’t go just yet. Wait. I have something that you especially will be interested in, Miss Brett.”

Ellery hurried mysteriously out of the living-room. No word was spoken during his absence; they stood like two belligerent babies, furtively looking each other over. They sighed together as Ellery emerged from the bedroom, a large roll of canvas tucked under his right arm.

“This,” he said to Joan with gravity, “is the thingamajig that has caused all the fuss. We no longer require the sadly abused Leonardo―Pepper being dead, there will be no trial . . . .”

“You’re not―you’re not giving it to―” Joan began slowly. Alan Cheney stared.

“Precisely. You’re going back to London, aren’t you? So allow me to offer you the honour you’ve earned, Lieutenant Brett―the privilege of taking the Leonardo back to the Museum yourself.”

“Oh!” Her rosy mouth framed the ellipse, a little tremulously; and it did not seem with too much enthusiasm. She accepted the roll of canvas and passed it from her right hand to her left and back again, quite as if she did not know exactly what to do with it―this hoary daub over which three men had lost their lives.

Ellery went to a sideboard and produced a bottle. It was a brown old bottle with a nice wink and gleam to it; he spoke in a low voice to Djuna and that priceless supernumerary bustled into his kitchen, to return shortly with siphon and soda and other implements of the bibulous art. “A Scotch-and-soda, Miss Brett?” asked Ellery gaily.

“Oh, no!”

“Perhaps a cocktail?”

“You’re very kind, but I don’t indulge, Mr. Queen.” Confusion had been superseded; Miss Brett was her old frosty self again, for no logical reason apparent to the less subtle male eye.

Alan Cheney was regarding the bottle thirstily. Ellery busied himself with glasses and things. Soon he had an amber effervescent fluid bubbling in a tall glass; and he offered it to Alan with the air of one man of the world to another.

“Really excellent,” murmured Ellery. “I know you have a fancy for these things . . . What, you―?” Ellery managed to exhibit an enormous astonishment.

For Mr. Alan Cheney, under the judiciously stern eye of Miss Joan Brett―Mr. Alan Cheney, the confirmed toper―was actually refusing this aromatic concoction! “No,” he muttered doggedly. “No, thanks, Queen. I’ve quit the stuff. Can’t tempt me.”

A ray of warm light seemed to touch the features of Miss Joan Brett; one with a poor sense of word-values might say that she was beaming; the truth was that the frost melted magically away, and again for no logical reason she blushed, and looked down at the floor, and her toe too began a scuffing movement; and the Leonardo, which was catalogued at one million dollars, began to slip from under her arm, ignored as completely as if it had been a gaudy calendar.

“Pshaw!” said Ellery. “And I thought―Well!” He shrugged with unconvincing disappointment. “You know, Miss Brett,” he said, ‘this is quite like one of those old stock-company melodramas. Hero leaps to the upper deck of the water-wagon―turns over a new leaf at the end of the third act, and all that sort of thing. In fact, I hear that Mr. Cheney has consented to supervise the business end of his mother’s now considerable estate―eh, Cheney?” Alan nodded breathlessly. “And he’ll probably manage the Khalkis Galleries too when this legal flurry blows over.”

He babbled on. And then he stopped, because neither of his guests was listening. Joan had turned on shocking impulse to Alan; intelligence―or whatever it is called―bridged the gap between their eyes, and Joan blushed again and turned to Ellery, who was regarding them ruefully. “I don’t think,” said Joan, ‘that I shall be going back to London after all. It’s―It was nice of you . . . .”

And Ellery, when the door had closed upon them, surveyed the prostrate canvas on his floor―to which it had slipped from Miss Joan Brett’s soft underarm―and sighed, and under the slightly disapproving gaze of young Djuna, who even at that tender age exhibited stern evidences of teetotalism, sipped his Scotch-and-soda all by himself . . . a not unpleasant ritual, if one should judge by the oxlike contentment which spread over his lean face.

The End