The King is Dead

11

The first thing Ellery did had nothing to do with miracles at all. He turned to Abel Bendigo and said, “Do you want Colonel Spring in on this?”

He was barring the doorway, arms and legs spread. Unbelieving eyes stared over his shoulders into the room.

“Mr. Bendigo.” He tapped Abel’s arm and repeated the question.

“No. My God, no.” Abel came to life. “Don’t let the guards in! Just—”

Ellery pulled Abel in. He pulled Judah in; Max’l came along as if he were on the end of a line. He pulled his father in.

He shut the door in the faces of the guards.

He tried the door. Locked. Automatically.

Ellery went over to the man in the chair. Inspector Queen dropped on his knees beside Karla. The brothers remained near the door, almost touching. Judah looked exhausted; he leaned against a filing case. Abel kept mumbling something to himself. Max’l was stunned; there was no ferocity left in him. His breathing deposited flecks of spittle on his lips. He kept staring at the quiet figure in the chair with awe.

The Inspector looked up. “She didn’t get it.”

“What is it?”

“A faint, I guess. I can’t find any wound or contusion.”

Ellery reached for the telephone on King Bendigo’s desk. When the operator answered, he said, “Dr. Storm. Emergency.”

The Inspector glanced from Ellery to the body in the chair. Then he lifted Karla very carefully and carried her over to the secretarial chair behind the typewriter-desk and laid her over the chair face down. He took off his coat and wrapped it about her. He raised her legs, keeping her head low.

“Dr. Storm?” said Ellery. “This is Queen. King Bendigo has been shot. Serious chest wound, near the heart. He’s not dead. Bring everything you’ll need — you may not be able to move him for a while.” He hung up.

“Not dead?” Abel took a step forward.

“Please don’t touch him, Mr. Bendigo. We can’t do a thing until Dr. Storm gets here.”

Abel’s face was pocked with perspiration. He kept swallowing and glancing at his brother Judah.

Where before Judah had seemed spent, as at a task executed at great physical cost, now — with the news that he had not killed successfully after all — he was dazed. His eyes mirrored some shock Ellery could not quite make out. Ellery was in no mental condition to draw a bead on subtleties, but he had the feeling that Judah had shot his bolt.

“Max.” Ellery touched the massive arm. “Watch Judah.”

Max’l wiped his lips on his sleeve. He turned to Judah. His head sank into his shoulders and he took a step toward the dark man.

“No, Max, no,” Ellery said patiently. “You’re not to touch him. Just make sure he doesn’t go near King.”

Karla moaned, rolling her head. The Inspector began to slap her cheeks. After a moment he sat her up.

She did not cry. The blood, which had rushed to her head, receded swiftly, leaving her face whiter than before. She stared across the desks at the slumped figure.

“He’s not dead, Mrs. Bendigo,” said the Inspector. “We’re waiting for Dr. Storm. Relax, now. Take deep breaths.”

What he said apparently had no meaning for her. The man in the chair looked dead.

The door was pounded. Ellery, on his hands and knees peering under the big metal desk, sprang to his feet and raced to the door.

“I’ll open it!” he said to Abel Bendigo. “Keep away, please.”

He opened the door. Dr. Storm rushed by him. The corridor was crowded with guards and people of the Residence staff. A hospital emergency table was pushed through the doorway by a white-coated man, and a portable sterilizer was wheeled up by another. But Ellery refused to allow the attendants to cross the threshold. Other things were handed in; the Inspector took them while Ellery stood guard. Elbowing his way through the jam came Colonel Spring. He shouted, “Wait, don’t shut that door!” Ellery said to Abel Bendigo over his shoulder, “You’d better tell him yourself.” From behind Ellery, Abel shook his head at the charging Colonel. “No one else, Colonel, no one else.” Ellery shut the door in Spring’s set green face.

He knew the door locked automatically, but he tried it anyway.

“You men. Help me get him on to the table.” There was nothing in Dr. Storm’s voice but preoccupation. The sterilizer was going. The contents of his kit were spread out on the desk.

Under the doctor’s direction they transferred the wounded man from the chair to the hospital table. His heavy body seemed without life.

“What’s the prognosis, Doctor?”

Storm waved them away. He was preparing a hypodermic.

Ellery took the small metal chair from the secretarial desk to a corner of the room, and the Inspector led Karla to it. She went submissively. She sat down, her eyes on the still figure of her husband and Dr. Storm’s fingers. Max’l stood over Judah in the other corner of the room, on the same side. Neither man moved.

“Mrs. Bendigo,” the Inspector said. He touched her. “Mrs. Bendigo?”

She started.

“Who shot him?”

“I do not know.” Suddenly she began to cry, without lowering her face or putting her hands to it. They did nothing. After a while she stopped.

“Well, who came into the room, Mrs. Bendigo?” asked Ellery.

“No one.”

Abel was going about the room gathering up papers — from the secretarial desk, from the floor where they had been thrown by Dr. Storm in clearing the top of King’s desk. There was something pitiful about the action, a mechanical gathering up of the secrets of a man who might never put them to use... the good and faithful servant going through the motions of preserving order in a house from which all reason for order had passed away. Abel stacked the documents in precise piles, transferring them to filing cases which he opened with a key and relocked afterwards. He seemed grateful for having something to do.

“No one passed through that door, Mrs. Bendigo?” Ellery kept looking around the room, his glance baffled and tormented.

“No one, Mr. Queen.”

“Neither in nor out?”

“No one.”

“Was there a phone call?”

“No.”

“Did either you or your husband make a call?”

“No.”

“No interruptions of any kind, then.”

“Just one.”

“When was that?” Ellery’s eyes came around quickly.

“At a few minutes to midnight, Mr. Queen, when you rapped on the door.”

“Oh, yes.” Ellery was disappointed. “And that was the only interruption? You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Ellery,” said his father patiently, “we’ve gone all through that. Abel and I were outside the door—”

Ellery’s glance took up the search again. “And then what happened, Mrs. Bendigo?”

“It recalled the whole dreadful thing to me, but only for a moment.” Karla glanced at the hospital table again, quickly shut her eyes. “When Kane closed the door and returned to his desk, he immediately resumed work on his papers. I was at the other desk, going over some reports for him. My back was to the door, where the clock is, so I had no idea what time it was... that the time was so close...”

Her voice trailed. They waited.

“I had to concentrate on what I was doing. I forgot... again. The next thing I knew the clock was chiming—”

“Chiming?” Ellery’s glance went to the golden hands set into the wall above the door. “That clock?”

“Yes. It chimes the hours. I looked up and around. The chimes had just begun. The clock was striking twelve. And I remembered again.”

“What happened?” And now Ellery gave her his whole attention.

“I turned from the clock to look at Kane, wondering if the chiming of midnight would recall it to him, too.” Karla opened her eyes; she looked once more across to the man on the table, with the pudgy figure in white working over him. And she went on rapidly: “But he was immersed in what he was doing. He had dismissed the whole affair as beneath his notice. Oh, if only he had felt a little fear — just a little! Instead, he sat there behind his desk in his shirt sleeves making notes on the margin of a confidential report. Then — it happened.”

“What?”

“He was killed. Wounded.”

“How?” exclaimed the Inspector.

“One moment, Dad. The clock was still chiming, Mrs. Bendigo?”

“Yes. — How? I do not know. One instant he was sitting there writing, the next his body... jerked with great violence and he fell back in his chair. I saw a... I saw a hole, a black hole, in his breast and a red stain spreading...” Her mouth worked uselessly. “No, I am all right... if only I can be of help... I do not pretend to understand it... I rushed around my desk to the side of his, with no thought but to take him in my arms... it had happened so suddenly I had no feeling of death — merely that he needed my help... I put out my hand to touch him, and that is all I remember until Inspector Queen revived me. I must have fainted as my hand went out.”

“Listen to me carefully, Mrs. Bendigo.” Ellery leaned over her chair, his face close to hers. “I want you to think before you answer, and I want you to answer with absolute fidelity to fact. Are you listening?”

“Yes?” Her face was tilted anxiously.

“Did you hear a shot?”

“No.”

“You didn’t think first,” Ellery said gently. “You’re ill and upset, a great deal has happened in a few minutes. — Think. Think back to that moment. You are sitting, facing your husband, who is at his desk. One instant he’s writing away. The next his body jerks and falls back and a black hole and stain appear on his shirt. Obviously he was shot. Someone fired a gun at him. Wasn’t the jerk of his body accompanied by a sound? Of some sort? Maybe it wasn’t a loud report. Maybe it was a sharp crack. Even a pop. Even a metallic click. Wasn’t there a click?”

“I remember no sound at all.”

“Did you smell anything at that moment, Mrs. Bendigo? Like something burning?”

She shook her head. “If something burned at that moment, I did not smell it.”

“Smoke,” said the Inspector. “Did you see any smoke, Mrs. Bendigo?”

“Nothing.”

“But that can’t be!”

Ellery put his hand on his father’s arm. “You see, of course, that someone must have been in this room with you and your husband, Mrs. Bendigo. Must have been. Couldn’t someone have been hiding here without your knowledge?”

“But that can’t be,” said the Inspector again, testily. Ellery touched his arm again.

“I don’t see how,” said Karla vacantly. “I had just looked around at the clock, as I have told you. I would have to have seen him had he been somewhere behind me. There is no place in this room to hide, as you can see. Besides, how would someone have got in?” She shook her head. “I do not understand it. I can only tell you what happened.”

Ellery straightened. He took his father’s left hand and held his own by its side.

Their wristwatches agreed.

Both men automatically glanced up at the clock above the door.

The clock, their watches, synchronized perfectly.

So they turned back to each other in a total embarrassment of the imagination. Ellery had already told his father the fantastic story of Judah’s actions in his study.

Karla’s testimony only compounded the fantasy.

At precisely the moment Judah had aimed his empty pistol in the direction of his brother King — with two thick walls and a corridor full of men between them — and squeezed his powerless trigger... at that precise moment, in spite of men and walls and locked doors and no ammunition, King Bendigo had slumped back with a bullet in his breast!

Judah was saying, “I need a drink. Tell him to take his hands off me. I want a drink.”

Abel said, “I’ll take care of him, Max.”

Max gave up his hold. Judah moved out of his corner, rubbing his arm with a grimace. Max moved after him.

“You’ll have to wait for your drink.” Ellery came over quickly. “You can’t leave this room.”

Judah went by him. He paused before the filing cases, licking his lips, squinting, forehead tightened in thought. Then he sprang at one of the cases, and he pulled. The steel drawer gave and, with a little cry of triumph, he groped inside. His hand came out with a bottle of Segonzac. He began to fumble in his pockets.

“I’d forgotten about that,” said Ellery dryly, “but apparently where your hidden treasures are concerned, Judah, you have the memory of a map.”

“My knife! You took it!” Judah’s hands twitched.

“I’ll open it for you.” Ellery produced Judah’s pocket-knife. He cut the tax stamp and seal off the top of the bottle, and removed the cork with the corkscrew.

Judah seized the bottle. His Adam’s apple rose and fell. A little color began to stain his sallow cheeks.

“That’s enough now, Judah — enough!” muttered his brother Abel.

Judah lowered the bottle from his lips. His eyes were still glassy, but the glass had a sparkle. He held the bottle out. “Anyone for a nip?” he asked gaily.

When no one answered, he moved back to his corner and let himself slide to the floor. He took another drink on the way down and set the bottle of cognac on the floor beside him.

“There, all tidy,” said Judah. “Don’t let me keep you gentlemen. Go about your business.”

“Judah.” Ellery sounded comradely. “Who did shoot King?”

“I did,” said Judah. “You saw me do it.” He brought his knees up suddenly to wrap his thin arms about them. Hugging himself.

“Judah!” Abel sounded ill.

“I said I’d kill him at midnight, and I did it.” Judah rocked a little.

“He’s not dead,” said the Inspector, looking down.

Judah kept rocking. “A detail,” he said obscurely, waving his hand. “Principle’s the same.” His hand fell on the bottle. He raised the bottle to his mouth again.

They turned away from him. All except Max’l, whose hands were opening and closing within inches of Judah’s throat.

Judah paid no attention.

Dr. Storm said, “Our great man is going to live. What are bullets to the gods? Here, who wants this?”

He spoke without stopping his work, offering his hand sidewise. Inspector Queen took a wad of bloodstained cotton from the hand. On the cotton lay a bullet.

Ellery joined him quickly as Abel and Karla came timidly over to the desk and stared across at the man on the hospital table. Karla turned away at once.

“Back, stand back,” said Dr. Storm. He was unrolling some bandages. “You’re not sterile — none of you is. Neither am I, for that matter. The great Storm — country sawbones! Poor Lister is rotating rapidly in his grave.”

“He’s still unconscious,” said Abel softly.

“Of course, Abel. I didn’t say he could jump off the table and do a handstand. He’s had a narrow squeak, this emperor of ours, and he’s still a mighty sick emperor. But he’ll make it, he’ll make it. Constitution of Wotan. In a little while I’ll have him moved down to the hospital. Get out of my way, Abel. You, too, Mr. Queen. What are you sniffing at?”

“I want,” said Ellery, “to see his wound.”

“Well, there it is. Haven’t you ever seen a bullet wound before, or do you solve your cases in a vacuum?” The stout little doctor worked swiftly.

“It’s a real wound,” said Ellery, “isn’t it?” He stooped and picked up the shirt. Storm had cut it from the King’s body. “And no powder marks.”

“Oh, move back!”

“Perfect,” said Inspector Queen. They were staring down at the bullet on the stained cotton in his palm. “Not a bit deformed. Did you spot a shell anywhere, Ellery?”

“No,” said Ellery.

“If this came from an automatic, the shell should be here.”

“Yes,” said Ellery, “but it isn’t.”

The Inspector enveloped the bullet in cotton. He went over to the typewriter-desk and opened drawers until he found an unused envelope. He tucked the cotton wad into the envelope and sealed the envelope and put it into his inside breast pocket.

“Let’s get over there,” he said mildly, “out of the way.”

They went to an unoccupied corner. Ellery wedged himself into the corner and his father turned his back on the room.

“But it isn’t,” said the Inspector. “All right, master-mind, let’s look at this thing like a couple of Missouri mule traders instead of two yokels billygoogling at a shell game.”

“Go ahead,” said Ellery. “How does the mule shape up?”

“It’s a mule,” murmured his father, “not a damned mirage. Get that into your skull and keep it there. Judah says he shot King. Judah is lying through his alcoholic teeth. I don’t know what his point is, or even if he has a point, but the thing’s impossible. The bullet Storm extracted from King’s chest didn’t get there by osmosis or the mumbling of three sacred words. It was in King’s chest and Storm took it out of King’s chest — I saw him do it, and he wasn’t pulling a Houdini when he did it, either. He really dug it out. That means the bullet was part of a cartridge that was fired from a gun. Whose gun? Which gun? Fired where?”

Ellery said nothing. The Inspector ran the edge of his forefinger over his mustache, savagely.

“Not Judah’s, my son. Or at least it certainly wasn’t the gun in Judah’s mitt at the dot of midnight across the hall in that apartment of his. That gun, according to your own story, was empty — you’d unloaded it yourself and you gave me the cartridges. Judah didn’t have another cartridge — you searched his quarters a couple of times — and even if he had, you examined his Walther a few seconds before midnight and it was still empty. You didn’t take your eyes off it, you say, from that second on. He pulled the trigger and there was a click. The gun didn’t go off, it shot nothing. It couldn’t. That takes care of Mr. Judah Bendigo. He ought to be in an asylum.”

“Go on,” said Ellery.

“So it was another gun that went off. Fired from where? From outside the Confidential Room? Let’s see. The walls of this room are reinforced concrete two feet thick. Hole bored through beforehand? Where is it on these bare walls? I haven’t spotted it and, while we’ll do a thorough check, you know and I know we won’t find such a hole. How could it have been bored without the guards, on duty twenty-four hours a day a few yards away, hearing it? The door? Closed and locked, and it’s solid steel. No opening of any kind except the keyhole, which is far too small and narrow to fire a bullet through; besides, the interior lock mechanism would stop it. No window. No transom. No peephole. No secret passageways or secret compartments or secret anything, according to King himself. The air-conditioning and heating business running around the walls up there at the ceiling? Some sort of specially designed metal fabric, Colonel Spring said, that ‘breathes’. Look at it — solid mesh. And not a hole visible in it anywhere. Besides, a shot from up there would make an impossible angle.”

“Your conclusion is—”

“The only conclusion that makes sense. The shot was fired from inside this room. And who was in this room? King Bendigo and his wife — and you didn’t see any powder marks on his shirt, did you?”

Ellery stared at Karla Bendigo over his father’s shoulder.

“But of course,” murmured the Inspector, “you’ve known that all along.”

“Yes,” said Ellery. “But tell me: Where is the gun?”

“In this room.”

“Where in this room?”

“I don’t know where. But it’s here.”

“I’ve been over the room, Dad.”

“Not the way it ought to be gone over,” said his father tartly. “Not the way it’s going to be gone over... No, it’s not on her. Where would she hide a gun in that gown she’s wearing? Besides, when I carried her over to the chair and went to work on her in that phony faint she pulled, I made sure. I don’t like to take liberties with another man’s wife, but what can you do? It’s here, Ellery. It’s got to be. Nobody’s left the room. All we have to do is find it. Let’s get started.”

“All right,” said Ellery, pushing away from his corner. “Let’s.”

He said it without the least conviction.

They searched the room three times. The third time they divided it into sections and went at it by the inch. They got the key to the filing cases from Abel and they examined every drawer. They cleared each one, case by case, of suspicion of concealing a secret compartment. They went through every cubic inch of the interior of both desks, and they went over the desk legs and frames for hollow spaces. They climbed to the tops of the filing cases and fingered every inch of the walls. Ellery set the metal chair on the cases and went over the metallic frieze at the ceiling, following it all around the room. He examined the clock with special care. They determined the immovability of the cases, which were permanently attached to the walls. They took the two desk chairs apart. They dismantled the telephone. They probed the typewriter. They even examined the hospital table with the unconscious man on it, the sterilizer, Dr. Storm’s medical bag, and the other equipment that had been brought in after midnight.

There was no gun. There was no shell.

“It’s on one of them,” said the Inspector through his denture. He raised his voice. “We’re going to do a body-search. On everybody. I’m sorry, Mrs. Bendigo, but that includes you, too. And the first thing I’m going to ask you to do is take your hair down... You can console yourself with the thought that I’m an old man who thinks life’s greatest thrill is that first cup of coffee in the morning. Unless you people would like to call us off — here and now?”

Abel Bendigo said quietly, “I want to know about this. Start with me, Inspector.”

The Inspector searched Abel, Karla, and Max. Ellery searched Judah, Dr. Storm, and the man on the table. Ellery spent a great deal of time over the man on the table. He even contemplated the possibility of the bandages on that big torso as a place of concealment. But that possibility was an impossibility; a glance told him that. Dr. Storm hovered over him like an angry bantam.

“Careful! Oh, you idiot— No! If he dies, my fine fellow, you’re a murderer. What do I care about somebody’s gun!”

The gun was on none of them. Neither was the shell. Any shell.

The Inspector was bewildered. Ellery was grim. Neither said anything.

Abel began to pace.

Karla stood by the hospital table, her make-up smeared, her hair tangled, just touching her husband’s marble hand. Once she stroked his hair. Judah squatted in his corner sipping cognac peacefully; his glassy eyes were dull again. Max’l’s great shoulders had developed a droop.

Dr. Storm prepared another hypodermic.

The Queens stood by, watching.

Abel was working up to something. He kept glaring at Judah as he paced, apparently struggling with unfamiliar emotions and losing the struggle. Finally he lost control.

He sprang forward and seized Judah by the collar. The attack was unexpected, and Judah came up like a cork, clutching his bottle frantically. His teeth were gleaming, and for a horrible moment Ellery thought he was laughing.

“You drunken maniac,” Abel whispered. “How did you do it? I know that brain of yours — that diseased, dissatisfied brain! We were always too ordinary for you. You always hated us. Why didn’t you try to kill me, too? How did you do it!”

Judah put the bottle to his lips, eyes popping from the pressure on his neck. Abel snatched the bottle from him. “You’re not drinking any more tonight — ever, if I can help it! Did you really think you were going to be allowed to get away with this? What do you suppose King will do when he gets on his feet again?”

Judah glugged. His brother hurled him back against the cases. Judah slid to the floor and looked up.

He was laughing.

They searched everyone again before each left the room. Dr. Storm. King Bendigo, still unconscious on the table. Judah, lurching and grinning to himself. Max’l. Karla. Abel...

The Inspector did the searching and Ellery passed them out. One by one, so that there was no possibility of a trick. The Inspector also made a final search of the equipment that went out.

There was no gun. No shell.

“I don’t understand it,” said Abel, the last to leave. “And I’ve got to find out. My brother will want to know... I give you gentlemen full power. I’m telling Colonel Spring that in anything connected with this business he and his entire security force are under your orders.” He glanced at the bottle in his hand, and his lips thinned. “Don’t worry about Judah. I’ll see that he gets no further opportunity to do anyone any harm.”

He strode out, and Ellery made sure the door was locked.

Then he turned around. “Inspector Queen, I presume...”

“Very funny,” said his father bitterly. “Now what?”

“Now we really search,” said Ellery.

Forty-five minutes later they faced each other across King Bendigo’s desk.

“It’s not here,” said Ellery.

“Impossible,” said his father. “Impossible!”

“How was King shot? From outside this room?”

“Impossible!”

“From inside this room?”

“Impossible!”

“Impossible,” nodded Ellery. “Impossible from outside and impossible from inside — there’s positively no gun in this room.”

The Inspector was silent.

After a moment, Ellery said: “Ourselves.”

“What?”

“Search yourself, Dad!”

They searched themselves.

They searched each other.

No gun. No shell.

Ellery raised his right foot and deliberately kicked King Bendigo’s desk. “Let’s get out of here!”

They slammed the door of the Confidential Room and Ellery tried it for the last time.

It was locked.

There was no sign of Colonel Spring. Colonel Spring evidently preferred to transfer his authority in absentia.

“Captain!”

The captain of the guards hurried up. “Yes, sir.”

“I want some sealing wax and a candle.”

“Yes, sir.”

When they were brought, Ellery lit the candle, melted some of the wax, and smeared it thickly over the keyhole of the steel door. He waited a moment. Then he pressed his signet ring into the wax directly over the keyhole.

“Put a guard before this door day and night on three-hour tricks. That seal isn’t to be touched. If I find the seal broken—”

“Yes, sir!”

“I believe there’s a reserve key to the Confidential Room kept at the guard station up here? I want it.”

They walked down the corridor and waited for the key to be brought. A guard was already stationed at the door of the Confidential Room.

“You have the other two keys, Dad, haven’t you?”

The Inspector nodded. Ellery handed him the third key. The Inspector tucked it carefully away in one of his trouser pockets.

“We’d better get some sleep.”

The Inspector started for the elevator. But then he stopped, looking back. “Aren’t you coming?”

Ellery was standing where his father had left him. There was a queer expression on his face.

“Now what?” snarled the Inspector, stamping back.

“That bullet Storm extracted from King’s chest,” Ellery said slowly. “What caliber would you say it is?”

“Small. Probably .25.”

“Yes,” said Ellery. “And Judah’s gun is a .25.”

“Oh, come on to bed.” The Inspector turned away.

But Ellery seized him by the arm. “I know it’s insane,” he cried.

“Ellery—” began his father.

“I’m going to check.”

“Damn it!” The Inspector stamped after him.

There was a guard at Judah’s door, too. He saluted as the Queens came up.

“Who put you here?” grunted the Inspector.

“Mr. Abel Bendigo, sir. Personal orders.”

“Judah Bendigo’s in his rooms?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ellery went in. The Inspector went past him to the door of Judah’s bedroom. The room vibrated with snores. The Inspector switched on the lights. Judah was lying on his back, mouth open. The room reeked; he had been sick.

The Inspector turned the lights off and shut the door.

“Got it?”

Ellery had his hand over the little Walther. It was on the desk, where he had tossed it after Judah’s exhibition of murder-by-magic at midnight.

“Now what? What are you staring at?”

Ellery pointed with his other hand.

On the rug, behind Judah’s desk, lay a cartridge shell.

The Inspector pounced on it. Out of his pocket he brought one of the unexploded cartridges Ellery had taken from Judah’s Walther before midnight and handed over for safekeeping.

“It’s a shell from the same make and caliber of cartridge. The same.”

“He didn’t fire it,” Ellery said. “It never went off. No shell came out when he went through that hocus-pocus. The gun was empty, I tell you. It’s a trick, part of the same trick.”

“Let’s see that gun!”

Ellery handed it to his father. The Inspector examined the German automatic with its ivory-inlaid stock and the triangular nick in the corner of the base. He shook his head.

“It’s sheer lunacy,” said Ellery, “but do you know what you and I are going to do before we go to bed?”

The Inspector nodded numbly.

They left the room without words, the Inspector carrying the gun, Ellery carrying the shell. Once the Inspector tapped his breast pocket, where the bulge was of the envelope containing the cotton-wrapped bullet from King Bendigo’s body.

At the guard station Ellery said to the officer in charge, “I want a fast car with a driver. Get your ballistics man, whoever and wherever he is, out of bed and have him meet Inspector Queen and me at the ballistics lab, wherever that is, in ten minutes!”

They never did learn the name of the ballistics man. And they could never afterward recall what he looked like. The very laboratory in which they passed through the final episode of the nightmare remained a watery blur to them. Once during the next hour and a half the Inspector remarked that it was the finest ballistics laboratory he had ever seen. Later, he denied having said it, on the ground that he hadn’t really seen anything. Ellery could not argue the point, as the machinery of his memory seemed to have stopped operating, as well as all his other long-functioning equipment.

The shock was too great. They hovered over the ballistics man, watching him work over the shell and the bullet and the little Walther — firing comparison shots, washing, ammoniating, magnifying — watching him angrily, jealously, hopefully, guarding against a trick, anticipating more magic, smoking like expectant fathers, even laughing at the absurdity of their own antics.

The shock was too great.

They saw the results themselves. It was not necessary for the ballistics man to point out what he pointed out, nevertheless, in the most technical detail — firing-pin marks, extractor and ejector traces, marks from the breech block. This was all about the shell they had picked up from the floor of Judah’s study. And they studied the near-fatal bullet and the test bullet in the comparison microscope, eying the fused images of the two bullets unbelievingly. They insisted on photographic corroboration and the ballistics man produced it in “rolled photographs” showing the whole circumference of the bullet on a single plate. They peered and compared and discussed and argued, and when it was all over they faced the paralyzing conclusion:

The bullet Dr. Storm had dug out of King Bendigo’s chest had been fired from the gun Judah Bendigo had aimed emptily at his brother with two impenetrable walls and a lot of air space crowded with hard-muscled, men in the way.

It was impossible.

Yet it was a fact.