The King is Dead

9

Wednesday night came, and there was still no word of Abel Bendigo. Peabody, whom Ellery chased for half a day, merely looked blank when asked about Abel’s mission to Washington. Karla knew nothing about it.

His talk with Karla left Ellery unhappy.

“It is a long time since I shook at every threat,” she said with a toss of her red hair. “I had to make up my mind early that I had married a unique personality, one who would always be the target of something.” She smiled her crooked little smile. “Kane is better guarded than the President of the United States. By men at least as devoted and incorruptible.”

“Suppose,” Ellery said carefully, “suppose, Mrs. Bendigo, we found that your husband’s life is being threatened by someone very close to him—”

“Close to him!” Karla threw her head back and laughed. “Impossible. No one is really close to Kane. Not even Abel is. Not even I am.”

Ellery went away dissatisfied by this transparent sophistry. If Karla suspected anything, she was keeping it to herself.

As the night wore on and Thursday approached, Ellery’s skin began to itch and he found it difficult to remain in one spot for more than a few minutes. The more nervous he became, the angrier he grew with all of them — with King, for treating the subject of his own death first with amusement, then with contempt, and finally with irritation, as at a minor but persistent infraction of some Company rule; with Abel, for dragging them into the case and then, unaccountably, staying away from them; with Karla, for being candid when candor was meaningless, and inscrutable when candor would have been helpful; with Judah, for being a man who drank brandy from morning to night and smiled vaguely when his bloodshot eye was caught... surely one of the most unsatisfying assassins in history.

The Inspector was no help. He spent most of Wednesday grumpily in his bathroom, locked away from the world of Bendigo. He was copying his sketches of the island’s restricted installations, filling in details as best he could, and transcribing his notes in a minute shorthand.

The call came just as the Queens were about to go to bed Wednesday night.

“I understand you’ve been asking for me, Mr. Queen.”

“Asking for you!” It was Abel Bendigo. “The latest note—”

“I’ve been told about it.”

“Has there been another one? There’s going to be another one—”

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone, Mr. Queen.”

“But has there?”

“I don’t believe so—”

“You don’t believe so? Don’t you realize that tomorrow is the twenty-first? And you’ve been away—”

“It couldn’t be helped. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Wait! Can’t we talk now? Why don’t you come down here for a few minutes, Mr. Bendigo—”

“Sorry. King and I will be up half the night on the matter that took me to Washington. In the morning, Mr. Queen.”

“But I’ve found out—!”

“Oh.” There was silence on the wire. Then Abel said, “And what did you find out?”

“I thought you didn’t want to discuss it over the phone.” “Who is it?” The twang vibrated the receiver.

“Your brother Judah,” said Ellery brutally. “Does that agree with your conclusion?”

There was another silence. Finally, Abel’s voice said, “Yes.”

“Well, what do my father and I do now, Mr. Bendigo? Go home?”

“No, no,” said Abel. “I want you to tell my brother King.” “Tonight?”

“Tomorrow morning, at breakfast. I’ll arrange it with Karla. You’re to tell him exactly what you’ve found out, and how. We’ll proceed from there, depending on my brother’s reaction.”

“But—”

But Ellery was left holding the receiver.

All night he tossed over the problem of Abel Bendigo’s apparent diffidence, and he came with his father to the breakfast table in the private dining-room without having solved it. But as he took his seat he suddenly had the answer. Abel, a planner, could plan nothing where his brother King was concerned. King was an imponderable, a factor who would always remain unknown. In a crisis as personal as this, he might fly off in any one of a dozen directions. Or he might fold his royal wings and refuse to fly at all. We’ll proceed from there, depending on my brother’s reaction... This was probably why Abel, who had detected Judah’s guilt at once, called for outside confirmation before revealing his knowledge. He could only pile up his ammunition and wait for developments to tell him which way and how much to shoot.

The King was in a sulky mood this morning. He stamped into the dining-room and glared at the Queens, not greeting them. His black eyes were underscored by his nightwork; he looked almost seedy, and Ellery suspected that this had something to do with his mood — King Bendigo was not a man to relish strangers seeing him at less than his best.

Abel was there. Max’l. And Judah.

It was Abel unquestionably who had engineered Judah’s presence at breakfast — a considerable engineering feat, to judge by Judah’s almost normal appearance. In spite of the early hour, the dark little assassin could sit in his chair reasonably straight-backed. His hand shook only a little. He was gulping his second cup of coffee.

And Abel was nervous. Ellery rather enjoyed that. Abel’s gray schoolmaster’s face was far grayer than usual. He kept touching the nosepiece of his eyeglasses, as if he felt them skidding. All his gestures were jerky and full of caution.

“Something special about today?” King glanced darkly about, his hand arrested in the act of picking up his napkin. “Our troublemakers from New York — and you, Judah! How did you manage to get up so early in the morning?”

Judah’s sunken eyes were on the fine hand of his brother.

The hand completed the act of picking up the napkin.

An envelope tumbled to the table.

Max’l shouted something so suddenly that Karla gripped the arms of her chair, going very white. Max’l was on his feet, glaring murderously at the envelope.

“Who done that?” he roared, tearing the napkin from his collar. “Who, who?”

“Sit down, Maxie,” King said. He was looking at the envelope thoughtfully. All his sulkiness had disappeared. Suddenly his mouth curved in a brief malicious smile. He picked the envelope up. His name was typed on it: King Bendigo. Nothing else. The envelope was sealed.

“Today is Thursday, the twenty-first of June, Mr. Bendigo — that’s what’s special about it.” Ellery was on his feet, too. “May I see that, please?”

King tossed the envelope on to his brother Judah’s plate.

“Pass it to the expert, Judah. This is what he’s getting paid for.”

Judah obeyed in silence.

Ellery took the envelope with care. His father hurried around the table with a knife. Ellery slit the envelope.

“And what does this one say, Mr. Queen?” Karla’s tone was too light. She was still pale.

It was the same stationery. The o’s were nicked. Another product of Judah Bendigo’s Winchester portable.

“What does it say!” Abel’s voice cracked.

“Now, Abel,” mocked King. “Control yourself.”

“It’s a duplicate of the last message,” said Ellery, “with two differences. A single word has been added, and this time it ends not with a dash but with a period. You are going to be murdered on Thursday, June 21, at exactly 12.00 o’clock midnight.”

“Midnight, period,” muttered Inspector Queen. “That’s it. There won’t be any more. There’s nothing more for him to say.”

“For who to say?” bellowed Max’l, inflating his ape’s chest. “I kill him! For who?”

King reached across Judah, seized Max’l’s dried-apricot ear, and yanked. Max’l fell back into his chair with a howl. The big man laughed. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Kane, let us go away today.” Karla’s hand was smoothing the damask cloth. “Just the two of us. I know these letters are nothing, but—”

“I can’t go away, Karla. Too much to do. But I’ll take a rain-check on that. Oh, come! You all look like professional pallbearers. Don’t you see how funny it is?”

“King.” Abel spoke slowly. “I wish you’d take this seriously. It isn’t funny at all... Mr. Queen has something to tell you.”

The black eyes turned on Ellery, glittering. “I’m listening.”

“I have something to ask you first, Mr. Bendigo,” Ellery did not look in Judah’s direction. “Where would you normally be at midnight tonight?”

“Finishing the confidential work on the day’s agenda.”

“But where?”

“Where I always work at that hour. In the Confidential Room.”

“That’s the room with the heavy steel door, across the hall from your brother Judah’s quarters?”

“Yes.”

Abel said quickly: “We usually spend an hour or two in there, Mr. Queen, starting at eleven or so. Work we can’t leave to the secretaries.”

“If Abel is away, I take his place,” said Karla.

Her husband grinned at the Queens. “All in the family. Where the big plots are hatched. I’m sure you suspect that.”

“Kane, stop making jokes. You’re not to work there tonight.”

“Oh, nonsense.”

“You are not to!”

He looked across at his wife curiously. “You’re really concerned, darling.”

“If you insist on working there tonight, I insist on working with you.”

“On that point I yield,” he chuckled, “seeing that Abel’s going to be occupied elsewhere, anyway. Now let’s have breakfast, shall we, and forget this childishness?”

The servants, who had been standing by frozen, sprang to life.

“I would like to suggest, Mr. Bendigo—” began Ellery.

“Overruled. Now see here, Queen. I appreciate your devotion to the job, but the confidential work stops for nothing, the idea of murder is ridiculous, and in that room impossible. Sit down and enjoy your breakfast. You, too, Inspector Queen.”

But the Queens remained where they were.

“Why impossible, Mr. Bendigo?” asked the Inspector.

“Because the Confidential Room was built for just that purpose. The walls, floor, and ceiling are two feet thick — solid, reinforced concrete. There isn’t a window in the place — it’s air-conditioned and there’s artificial daylight lighting in the walls. There’s only one entrance — the door. Only one door, and it’s made of safe-door steel. As a matter of fact, the whole room is a safe. So how would anyone get in to kill me?”

King attacked his soft-boiled eggs.

Max’l looked uncertain. Then he sat down and pounded the table. Two servants jumped forward, getting busy.

But Karla said uncomfortably, “The air-conditioning, Kane. Suppose someone got to that. Sending some sort of gas—”

Her husband roared with laughter. “There’s the European mind for you! All right, Karla, we’ll station guards at the air-conditioning machinery. Anything to wipe that look off your face.”

“Mr. Bendigo,” said Ellery. “Don’t you realize that the person who wrote those letters is not to be laughed away? He knows exactly where you’ll be at midnight tonight — in what amounts to the classic sealed room, guarded moreover by trusted armed men. Since he warns us, he must know that that room tonight will be absolutely impregnable. In other words, he chooses the time and place apparently worst for his plan, and he insures by his warning that even farfetched loopholes will be plugged. Doesn’t that strike you as queer, to say the least?”

“Certainly,” replied the King briskly. “Queer is the word, Queen. He’s queer as Napoleon. It just can’t be done.”

“But it can,” said Ellery.

The big man stared. “How?”

“If it were my problem, Mr. Bendigo, I’d simply get you to let me in yourself.”

He sat back, smiling. “No one ever gets into that room except a member of my family—” He stopped, the smile disappearing.

The room was very quiet. Even Max’l stopped chewing. Karla was looking intently at Ellery, a crease between her eyes.

“What do you mean?” The voice was harsh.

Ellery glanced at Judah now, across the table from him. Judah was tapping a bottle of Segonzac cognac softly with a forefinger, looking at no one.

“Your brother Abel did some investigating on his own before calling us in,” said Ellery. “We’ve compared conclusions, Mr. Bendigo. They’re the same.”

“I don’t understand. Abel, what’s all this?”

Abel’s gray face seemed to go grayer.

“Tell him, Mr. Queen.”

Ellery said: “I located the typewriter on which all the notes have been typed. I also found the notepaper; it comes from the same place as the typewriter. I nicked the lower-case o on the machine, and all o’s typed in the two notes since have shown the nicks. This checks the typewriter identification.

“As a further check, I arranged to have the room where the machine is located watched by your guards. The result was conclusive, Mr. Bendigo: During the period in which the fourth note must have been typed, only one person entered and left those rooms — the person who belonged there. Your brother Judah.”

King Bendigo turned slowly toward his small, dark brother. Their arms, on the table, almost touched. A flush began to creep over the big man’s cheeks.

Max’l was gaping from his master to Judah.

Karla said in a breathless way, “Oh, nonsense, nonsense. This is one of your cognac jokes, Judah, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

Judah’s hand as he reached for the bottle was remarkably well controlled. He began to uncork the bottle.

“No joke, my dear,” he said hollowly. “No joke.”

“You mean,” began King Bendigo incredulously. Then he began again. “Judah, you mean you wrote those notes? You’re threatening to kill me? You?”

Judah said: “Yes, O King.”

He did it well, Ellery thought, for a man who was so taut you could almost hear the tension in him. Judah raised the bottle of Segonzac high. Then he brought it quickly down to his mouth.

King watched his brother drink. His eyes shimmered with amazement. They went over Judah, the crooked nose, the droop of the bedraggled mustache, the stringy neck, the rise and fall of the Adam’s apple. But then Judah lowered the bottle and met his brother’s glance, and something passed between them that made King seem to swell.

“At midnight, eh?” he said. “Got it all figured out.”

“At midnight,” said Judah in a high voice. “At exactly midnight.”

“Judah, you’re crazy.”

“No, no, King. You are.”

The big man sat quietly enough. “So you’ve had it in for me all these years... I admit, Judah, I’d never have thought of you. Has anyone ever given a damn about you but me? Who else would put up with your alcoholic uselessness? The very fact that you’ve had all the booze you can soak up you owe to me. So you decide to kill me. Are you out of your mind completely? Is there any sense to it, Judah — or should I say Judas?” Judah’s pallor deepened. “I’m your brother, damn it! Don’t you feel anything? Gratitude? Loyalty?”

“Hatred,” said Judah.

“You hate me? Why?”

“Because you’re no good.”

“Because I’m strong,” said King Bendigo.

“Because you’re weak,” said Judah steadily, “weak where it counts.” Now, although his face was like a death mask, the eyes behind it kindled and flamed. “There is strength that is weak. The weakness of your strength, brother, is that your strength has no humanity in it.”

The big man looked at the little man with eyes dulled over now, clouded and secretive, in a sort of retreat. But his face was ruddy.

“No humanity, O King,” said Judah. “What are human beings to you? You deal in corporate commodities — metals, oil, chemicals, munitions, ships. People are so many work-hours to-you, such-and-such a rate of depreciation. You house them for the same reason you house your tools. You build hospitals for them for the same reason you build repair shops for your machines. You send their children to school for the same reason you keep your research laboratories going. Every soul on this island is card-indexed. Every soul on this island is watched — while he works, while he sleeps, while he makes love! Do you think I don’t know that no one caught in your grinder ever escapes from it? Do you think I don’t know what that devil Storm is up to in the laboratory he had you build for him? Or why Akst has disappeared? Or Fingalls, Prescott, Scaniglia, Jarcot, Blum before Akst? Or what’s going on in Installation K-14? Or,” Judah said in a very clear, high voice, “why?”

Now the flush was leaving the handsome man’s face, and the face was settling into grim, contemptuous lines.

“The dignity of the individual, the right to make choices, to exist as a free man — that’s been done away with in your empire as a matter of business policy. All the old laws protecting the individual have been scrapped. There’s no law you recognize, King, except your own. And in carrying out your laws you’re judge, jury, and firing squad. And what kind of laws are they that you create, administer, and execute? Laws to perpetuate your own power.”

“It’s such a small island,” said King Bendigo in a murmur.

“It covers the planet,” retorted his scrawny brother. “You needn’t act the amused potentate for the benefit of the Queens. That kind of remark is an insult to their intelligence as well as mine. Your power extends in every direction, King. Just as you’re cynical about the sovereignty of individuals, you’re cynical about the sovereignty of nations. You corrupt prime ministers, overthrow governments, finance political pirates, all in the day’s work. All to feed orders to your munitions plants—”

“Ah, I wondered when we’d get to that,” said his brother. “The unholy munitions magnate, the international spider — Antichrist with a bomb in each hand. Isn’t that the next indictment, Judah?”

Judah made thin fists on the cloth. “You’re a plausible rascal, King. You always have been. The twist of truth, the intricate lie, the wool-pulling trick — you’re a past master of that difficult technique. But it doesn’t befog the issue. Your sin isn’t that you manufacture munitions. In the world we live in, munitions are unfortunately necessary, and someone has to manufacture them. But to you the implements of war are not a necessary evil, made for the protection of a decent society trying to survive in a wolves’ world. They’re a means of getting astronomical profits and the power that goes with them.”

“The next indictment,” said his brother with a show of gravity, “is usually that I create wars.”

“No, you don’t create wars, King,” said Judah Bendigo. “Wars are created by forces far beyond your power, or the power of a thousand men like you. What you do, King, is take advantage of the conditions that create wars. You stoke them, blow on them, help them go up in flame. If a country’s torn by dissension, you see to it that the dissension breaks out into open revolt; if two powers, or two groups of powers, are at odds, your agents sabotage the negotiations and work for a shooting war. It doesn’t matter to you which side is right; right and wrong have no meaning in your dictionary except as they represent conflicts, which mean war, which mean profits. That’s where your responsibility lies, King. It’s as far as one man’s responsibility can go. It’s too far!”

Judah’s fists danced as he leaned toward his brother. “You’re a murderer, King. I don’t mean merely the murders you’ve committed on this island, or the murders your thugs have committed here and there throughout the world in your execution of some policy or deal of the moment. I mean the murders, brother, of which historians keep a statistical record. I mean the war murders, brother. The murders arising out of the misunderstandings and tensions and social and economic stresses which you encourage into wars. You know what you are, King? You’re the greatest mass-murderer in history. Oh, yes, I know how melodramatic it sounds, and how you’re enjoying my helplessness to keep it from sounding so! But the truth is that millions of human beings have died on battlefields which would never have been except for you. The truth is that millions upon millions of other human beings have been made slaves, stripped of the last rag of their pride and dignity, thrown naked into your furnaces and on your bone piles!”

“Not mine, Judah, not mine,” said his brother.

“Yours! And you’re not through, King. You’ve hardly begun. Do you think I’m blind merely because I’m drunk? Do you think I’m deaf just because I shut my ears to your factory whistles? Do you think I don’t know what you’re planning in those night sessions in your Confidential Room? Too far, King, you go too far.”

Judah stopped, his lips quivering. King deliberately edged the bottle of Segonzac closer to him. Judah wet his lips.

“Dangerous talk, Judah,” said King gently. “When did you join the Party?”

Judah mumbled: “The smear. How could I be a member of the Party when I believe in the dignity of man?”

“You’re against them, Judah?”

“Against them, and against you. You’re both cut from the same bolt. The same rotten bolt. Any means to the end. And what end? Nobody knows. But a man can guess!”

“That’s typically muddled thinking, Judah. You can’t be against them and against me, too. I’m their worst enemy. I’m preparing the West to fight them—”

“That’s what you said the last time. And it was true, too. And it’s true now. But a twisted truth that turns out to be no truth at all. You’re preparing the West to fight them, not for the reason that they’re a menace to the free world, but because they happen to be the current antagonist. Ten years from now you’ll be preparing the West — or the East, or the North, or the South, or all of them put together! — to fight something or someone-else. Maybe the little men from Mars, King! Unless you’re stopped in time.”

“And who’s going to stop me?” murmured King Bendigo. “Not you, Judah.”

“Me! Tonight at midnight I’m going to kill you, King. You’ll never see tomorrow, and tomorrow the world will be a better place to live in.”

King Bendigo burst into laughter. He threw back his handsome head and laughed until the spasm caused him to double up. He put his fists on the table’s edge and heaved to his feet. There were actually tears in his eyes.

Judah’s chair went over. He scrambled around the corner of the table and sprang at his brother’s throat. His hands slipped. He beat with his thin fists on that massive chest. And as his little blows drummed away, he screamed with hate and outrage. For a moment King was surprised; his laughter stopped, his eyes widened. But then he only laughed harder. He made no attempt to defend himself. Judah’s fists kept bouncing off him like rubber balls from a brick wall.

Then Max’l was there. With one hand he plucked the shrieking, flailing little man from his master and thrust Judah high in the air, holding him up like a toy. Judah dangled, gagging. The gagging sounds made Max’l grin. He shook Judah as if the little man were made of rags, shook him until his face turned blue and his eyes popped and his tongue stuck out of his mouth.

Karla whimpered and put her hands to her face.

“It’s all right, darling,” wheezed her husband. “Really it is. Judah doesn’t mind punishment. He loves it. Always did. Gets a real kick out of a beating — don’t you, Judah?”

Max’l flung the little man halfway across the dining-room. Judah struck a wall, thudded to the floor, and lay still.

“Don’t you worry,” Max’l said, grinning at his master. “I take care of him. After I eat.”

And he sat down and seized his fork.

“Don’t be more idiotic than nature made you, Max. When the time comes — midnight, did he say? — he’ll be blind drunk and about as deadly as an angleworm.” King glanced at the heap in the corner. “That’s the trouble with democracy, Queen. You’re one of the intellectual, liberal, democratic world, aren’t you? You never get anywhere. You stick your chin out and happily ask for another crack on the jaw. You poison yourselves into a coma with fancy talk, the way Judah poisons himself with alcohol. All you do is jabber, jabber, jabber while history shoots past you into the future.”

“I think we had a little something to do with the orbit of history, Mr. Bendigo,” Ellery found himself saying, “not so very long ago.”

“You mean I did,” chuckled the King, lowering himself into his chair again.

The servants leaped forward as he picked up his napkin. But he waved them away.

“And you, Maxie. You leave Judah alone,” he said severely. “He’s had a strenuous morning. Max.”

The gorilla had leaped from his chair. Judah was stirring. There was blood on Judah’s face.

“Sit down.”

The gorilla sat down.

“Here, Judah, let me help you—” began Inspector Queen.

Judah raised a hand. Something in the way he did it stopped the Inspector in his tracks.

Judah’s brothers looked on, Abel gray as evening, King with no flicker of pity.

Judah crept out of the dining-room. They watched him go. His right leg took a long time getting out of the room. But finally it, too, disappeared.

“Karla, my dear,” said King briskly. “Karla!”

“Yes. Yes, Kane.”

“I’ll be at the Home Office all day and most of the evening — I’ll have dinner there. You meet me at eleven at the Confidential Room.”

“You mean to work tonight, Kane? In spite of—?” Karla stopped.

“Certainly, darling.”

“But Judah — his threats—”

“He won’t lift a pinkie when the time comes. Believe me, Karla. I know Judah... Yes, Queen? You were going to say something?”

Ellery cleared his throat. “I think, Mr. Bendigo, you tend to underestimate the intellectual, liberal democrat when aroused. I don’t know why I say this — it’s certainly nothing to me whether you live or die—”

“Or maybe it is,” said King Bendigo, smiling.

Ellery stared at him. “All right, maybe it is. Maybe after what I’ve seen here I’d greet the news of your death with cheers. But not this way, Mr. Bendigo. I’m an anti-murder man from way back — was indoctrinated from childhood by the Bible and I happen to believe in democracy. They both teach the ethics of the means, Mr. Bendigo. And murder is the wrong means—”

“You’d like to see me die, but you’ll lay down your life to protect mine from violence.” King laughed. “That’s what’s wrong with you people! Could anything be more hopelessly asinine?”

“You really believe that?”

“Certainly.”

“Then it would be a waste of your valuable time to discuss it.” And Ellery went on in the same painful way, “What I have been trying to say is that your brother Judah not only wants to kill you, Mr. Bendigo, he’s made plans about it. So he must have some weapon in mind. Prepared. Does he own a gun?”

“Oh, yes. Pretty good shot, too, even when scuppered. Judah practises sometimes for hours at a time. On a range target, of course,” the big man said dryly. “Nothing alive, you understand. Makes him sick. Judah couldn’t kill a mouse — he’s often said so. Don’t be concerned about me, Queen—”

“I’m not. I’m concerned about Judah.”

The black eyes narrowed. “I don’t get that.”

Ellery said slowly, “If he gets blood on his hands, he’s lost.”

“Why, you’re nothing but a psalm-singer,” King said impatiently. “You’re through here. I’ll have you flown out this morning.”

“No!” Abel jumped up. He was still shaken. “No, King. I want the Queens here. You’re not to send them away—”

“Abel, I’m getting tired of this!”

“I know you,” shouted Abel. “You’ll put a gun in his hand and dare him to shoot! King, I know Judah, too. You’re under-estimating him. Let the Queens stay. At least till tomorrow morning.”

“Let Spring handle it.”

“Not Spring, no. King, you’ve got to let me handle this my way!”

His brother scowled. But then he shrugged and said, “All right, I suppose I can put up with these long-faced democrats another day. Anything to stop this gabble! Now get out, the lot of you, and let me finish my breakfast.”