The King is Dead

15

They walked through the great hall of the Residence to the courtyard. There was a disturbing clatter and buzz all about. It seemed to come from everywhere. Servants and minor flunkies bustled about, doors banged, guards ran here and there. Outside, where they had left the Residence car, there was a traffic jam. An armed PRPD man was trying to untangle it; he was shouting for help. Finally the tangle was unsnarled and vehicles began to move through the gates. There were a great many trucks. On the road outside other trucks and cars struggled toward the Residence, bumper to bumper.

The Inspector stuck his head out of the car window. “Look at the sky!”

It was alive with aircraft. They were all big ones — transports, trimotored passenger planes. Curiously, as many seemed to be coming in as taking off. The island shook under their thunder.

“What’s happening!”

“Maybe the King has declared himself a war,” said Ellery inching the car forward. “This has all the earmarks of a mobilization which has been thoroughly worked out in advance, with everything ready to roll at the touch of a button.”

“The way he’s feeling right now, he couldn’t declare a dividend. Turn off this road if you want to get somewhere. This is worse than the Merritt Parkway on Labor Day.”

Just past the belt of woods surrounding the Residence, Ellery found a side lane, scarcely wider than a bridle path, which was free of traffic. He swung into it. A truck driver shouted enviously after him.

“I think this comes out near the cliffs somewhere,” said the Inspector. “Near the harbor.”

“Sounds like just the place for a quiet talk.”

A few minutes later they were parked on the edge of the cliffs. The harbor lay below them.

The sight confounded them. The bay was clogged with ships of all lengths and tonnages. The cruiser Bendigo had withdrawn from the neck of the bay; it was anchored some distance at sea, near a light cruiser which the Queens had not seen before. Launches darted and skipped about loaded with passengers. The turrets of several big submarines were surfacing. The docks were piled high with crated goods; they were being loaded at a furious tempo into the holds. The roads leading down from the interior of the island looked like ant trails. And from the entire harbor area rose a confused roar that increased in volume with each moment.

“Whatever they’re doing,” said the Inspector wonderingly, “they sure had everything ready. What’s come over this place? Did you have anything to do with this?”

“No,” said Ellery slowly. “No, I don’t see how I could have.” He shook his head. “Well, do you want to see what I brought back from Wrightsville?”

“Brought back?”

Ellery reached over to the back seat of the car. He opened the suitcase he had carried off the plane that morning. A bulky manila envelope lay on his haberdashery. He took this and sat back.

“This is what I was doing in Wrightsville,” he said unclasping the envelope. “You’d better read it. To the end.”

It was a thick manuscript, and the Inspector took it with a glance at the harbor. But he read slowly, without looking up.

While his father read, Ellery watched the harbor. A fleet of seaplanes had landed in the bay to add to the mess. They were taking on passengers. Before the Inspector had finished they took off, making their runs along the narrow channel cleared by a squad of fast launches, evidently of the harbor traffic police.

When the Inspector had put down the last page, he stared incredulously at the frantic activity below them. “I hadn’t realized the extent of his power... I suppose,” he said suddenly, “this is all on the level?”

“Every word of it, Dad.”

“It’s hard for a schmo like me to believe. It’s too... colossal. But, son.” The Inspector eyed the manuscript Ellery was stuffing back into the envelope. “You said—”

“I know what I said,” Ellery interrupted fiercely. He tossed the envelope behind him. “And I say it again. What’s been happening on this island in purgatory is all in that envelope. Not the details, not the little techniques of circumstances and plot! But the backgrounds, the reasons.”

Ellery took Judah’s little Walther out of his pocket. He pointed it absently through the windshield at the heavy cruiser. And pulled the trigger. The Inspector ducked. But nothing happened. The gun was empty after all.

“Take the problem of Judah’s miracle,” Ellery said. “It was really no problem at all. What made it a problem was not its impossibility, but the positions of the people involved in it. Those were the impossibilities — until you knew the story that began in 1897, the story that exposed the people for what they were and are... the story that’s in the envelope. Then the people were no longer impossibilities and the human problem — the big problem — was solved.”

The Inspector said nothing. He did not understand, but he knew that soon he would. It had happened a hundred times before, in just this way. Still, for the hundredth time, he wondered.

“The physical aspects of Judah’s miracle first,” Ellery said, toying with the Walther. “It was such a very simple miracle. A man points an empty gun at a solid wall, and two rooms away, across a corridor filled with men, with another and even thicker wall intervening, another man slumps back with a bullet in his breast.

“An empty gun can’t shoot a bullet. But even if it could, no bullet could have entered the other room from outside. So Judah didn’t shoot King. No one shot King—” the Inspector started “—from outside the Confidential Room. It was materially impossible. But King was shot while in that room. I’d seen him, with my own eyes, unwounded, only three and a half minutes before the shot. So had you. We’d seen him close that door, automatically causing it to lock, and you yourself swore that the door was not opened again until we went in together after midnight. And that was the only way in or out of the room. Conclusion: King was shot from inside the room. He must have been. There’s no other possibility.”

“Except,” remarked his father, “that that was impossible, too.”

“There’s no other possibility,” repeated Ellery. “Therefore the appearance of impossibility is an illusion. He was shot from inside the room. That being the fact, only one person could have shot him. There were only two persons in that room, and there is no possibility from the circumstances that there could have been more than two, less than two, or two different ones. The two persons who entered that room, who remained in that room, and whom we found in that room were King and Karla. King could not possibly have shot himself; there were no powder marks on his shirt. Therefore Karla shot him.”

The Inspector said, “But Karla had no gun.”

“Another illusion. Why did we assume that Karla had no gun? Because we couldn’t find one. But Karla did shoot him. Therefore our search was at fault. Karla must have had a gun, and since it couldn’t possibly have left the room by the time we entered it to find King unconscious from his wound, then it was still in the room when we entered.”

“And the door was immediately shut,” retorted his father, “and no one was allowed to leave while we searched, and we searched everything and everyone there, and before anyone was passed out through the door we made another body search, and before anything was passed out through the door we searched it, too, and still we didn’t find the gun. Now that’s really an impossibility, Ellery. That’s what hung me up. If the gun had to be in that room, why didn’t we find it?”

“Because we didn’t look in the place where it was hidden.”

“We looked in everything!”

“We couldn’t have. We must have neglected one thing.”

The Inspector mumbled, “Whatever it was... Too bad King broke the seal you put on the door. By this time it’s been removed from the room.”

“It was removed from the room before I sealed the door.”

“Now that,” cried his father, “is impossible! Not a thing was taken out — before you sealed the lock — that we didn’t search!”

“I’d have sworn, too, that we searched everything that passed out before we locked and sealed the room. But later I remembered that there was one thing we let go through that we clearly, definitely did not search.”

“We searched every human being that passed through that doorway,” said the Inspector angrily, “including the wounded man himself. We searched the hospital table he went out on. We searched Dr. Storm’s medical kit and every last article of equipment he’d brought in. Do you admit that?”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you talking about?” The Inspector waved his arms. “Nothing else went out!”

“One other thing went out. And that thing we didn’t search. Therefore it was in that thing that the gun left the room.”

“What thing!”

“The bottle of Segonzac cognac Judah took out of the filing case while we were all in the room after the shooting.”

Inspector Queen was dazed. “The gun went out hidden in a bottle of cognac? A gun? In a bottle? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? I suppose he just eased it down through the neck of the bottle — trigger guard, stock, and all! What’s the matter with you? Besides, that was a brand-new bottle. You yourself sliced off the government tax label and the wax seal and removed the cork with a corkscrew!”

“So I did,” said Ellery. “And that’s what bamboozled me, as it was planned to do. But you can wriggle from yesterday to doomsday, and the fact stands: There must have been a gun in that room, the gun must have left the room, the only thing that left the room without being searched was Judah’s bottle of cognac, therefore it was in Judah’s bottle of cognac that the gun left. If we accept that fact, as we must—”

“Accept it!” muttered his father. “How can I accept an impossibility? You weaseled out of two impossibilities only to get yourself... bottled up, God help us, in a third!”

“If you accept the fact, then the bottle as a carrier can’t be impossible, it must be possible. How can a bottle conceal a gun? Well, let’s have a look at a Segonzac bottle.” Ellery reached over again to his suitcase and brought out one of the familiar bottles. “I took this sample along on the trip to keep reminding me of my fatheadedness. Since the Segonzac bottles are uniform in shape and size, this one will serve as a model for the one Judah had stashed away in the Confidential Room.

“True, it has a conventional neck — in fact, the neck is on the slender side. So the gun couldn’t have been inserted through the mouth and neck, as you so reasonably pointed out. But it has a broad base — the Segonzac bottles are bell-shaped. And this Walther .25 that fired the shot — according to the ballistics tests — is how big? It isn’t big at all. On the contrary, it’s absurdly small. The barrel is only an inch long. The total length of the gun is scarcely four inches. Add to the bottle’s broad bottom and the tiny size of the weapon the felicitous fact that the Segonzac bottles are also a very dark green in color — so dark as to be opaque — and the impossibility melts away, leaving a simple answer.”

Ellery tossed the bottle aside. “The bottle Judah took out of the filing case in the Confidential Room that night was specially made, Dad. It had a false bottom. The false bottom must have been lined with cotton, or felt, or some other sound-deadening material. The false bottom in a bottle of opaque glass would easily conceal the Walther from our eyes, and the lining of the compartment would prevent any clink, as the bottle was held or moved, from betraying its contents to our ears. All this in a bottle with a faked government tax stamp, professionally corked and sealed, and the illusion was set.”

The Inspector said, “She shot him — he got the bottle out of the drawer... Karla and Judah were in this together!”

Ellery nodded, his eyes on the frenzied harbor scene below. “Each had a part to play, worked out in advance. Judah wrote and sent the threatening letters and with considerable histrionic talent staged and played the scene in which he solemnly aimed and fired an empty gun... a gun whose existence and whereabouts he was careful to point out to me beforehand. And in the Confidential Room, where the shooting was to take place, Karla pulled the trigger of the actual murder gun — and in her nervousness bungled the job — hid the gun in the false bottom of the prepared bottle, put the bottle back in the filing case, and then ‘fainted.’ They were accomplices, all right—”

“Just a minute,” said his father. “King was shot with Judah’s gun — the gun you took off Judah’s desk after the shooting — the gun you’re holding right now. That’s a fact proved by ballistics tests. But this gun was in Judah’s study! How could Karla have shot King with a gun that wasn’t in the Confidential Room at any time?”

“Go back to the actual shooting of King,” replied Ellery. “Karla has fired the shot at her preoccupied husband, who is wounded and unconscious before he can see who shot him. Karla then hides the murder gun in the false bottom of the bottle. After we all enter the room, Judah removes the bottle from the drawer, allows me to open it for him — daring touch, that — drinks from it — and subsequently the bottle is taken out of the room under our eyes.

“Remember, you and I stayed behind, after the others left, to make a last search for the gun which was no longer there. This gave the person who’d taken it out of the room in the bottle the opportunity to cross the corridor, enter Judah’s study, shut the door, take the murder gun out of the false bottom of the bottle, remove any remaining cartridges from the gun... and then place that gun, the one which had shot King in the other room, on Judah’s desk for us to find later! The gun which I had seen Judah pretend to fire at midnight — the always-empty gun — was then taken away. By the time you and I searched the Confidential Room for the last time, locked and sealed the door, and went to Judah’s study, the switch had long since been made. The gun I picked up from Judah’s desk was no longer the one I had seen Judah pretend to fire in that hocus-pocus at midnight — it was now the gun Karla had fired at King in the other room.”

“Identical guns...”

“In outer appearance only. It was easy enough to get hold of a pair of guns of the same make, type, and caliber and deliberately to chip similar slivers of ivory out of the inlays of both stocks. But they couldn’t fool ballistics so far as the interior mechanisms of the two guns were concerned, and they knew we’d make the lab tests. That’s why there had to be two guns that looked alike: so that a switch could be made after the shooting, putting the murder gun where the dummy gun had been and thereby completing the illusion of a single gun and consequently an impossible crime.”

“But why?” cried the Inspector. “Why did they want it to look like an impossible crime?”

“Because an impossible crime, a crime that ‘couldn’t’ have happened, even though a man was shot in the impossible process,” said Ellery dryly, “would protect the criminals from detection, or at least from prosecution. If the gun we found outside the room was demonstrably the gun that had been fired at King inside the room — when the gun that had been fired inside the room couldn’t possibly have got out! — then neither Judah outside nor Karla inside could be tagged for the job. You could suspect and theorize, but unless you could demonstrate how it was done, they were safe.”

Ellery was tapping the wheel with the little gun, frowning at the activity below them. “I wonder,” he began, “if King is mobilizing—”

But his father was not listening. “Karla put the gun in the bottle, Judah took the bottle out of the drawer... I don’t seem to recall Judah’s taking that bottle out of the room. Or Karla, either. It was—”

He glanced at Ellery in bewilderment.

“It was Abel,” said Ellery absently. “Abel, who went out of character to lose his temper, grab Judah by the collar, make a hammy, emotional speech... snatch the bottle of Segonzac out of Judah’s hand, and leave the room with it. So it was Abel who crossed the corridor and switched the guns in Judah’s study. Yes, Abel was in the plot, too, Dad. And now you see why Abel brought us here and has kept us here on what seemed a trivial assignment. Our function was purely and simply to witness the ‘impossible’ crime — as representatives of the world outside — so that we could testify later to the facts which seem to clear Judah and Karla.”