The King is Dead

16

Inspector Queen was silent.

“They were all in it,” said Ellery, still frowning at the harbor. “Judah, Karla, Abel. The wife and both brothers. Conspiring to kill the great King — an assassination in the approved historical tradition. Abel, the leader, the other two acting under his orders.”

“Yes,” said the Inspector, “it would have to be Abel who led them. Judah’s a feeler, and Karla wouldn’t be able to conceive such a plan. But Abel’s a thinker.”

Ellery nodded. “And a brilliant one. A man who’s always been run by his head. Who’s run his brother King.”

“What?” said his father.

“We had proof of that the first hour we were on the island, Dad, if we’d only had the sense to see it. Abel parked us in the reception room while he went into King’s office. We overheard what went on in there... Mr. Minister of War of the South American accent got King roaring mad; he almost wrecked a delicate deal. And then King stopped roaring to say, ‘Yes, Abel. What is it?’ and Abel either whispered to him or passed him a note. Immediately King Bendigo became a very smooth article. He handled Mr. Minister of War exactly right, and Mr. Minister of War walked out with two yachts in his pocket and the Guerrerra works belonging to Bodigen Arms was safe.

“And a few minutes later King ran into trouble again, with the very smooth Monsieur the Minister of Defense. Monsieur the Minister of Defense is a stone; he demands to be flown back. ‘What, Abel?’ says King, and after a whispered confabulation with Abel, King again pulls off a successful deal and another arms contract is saved for the Company. When Abel is silent, King blusters and blunders. When Abel whispers, King becomes the negotiator supreme.”

Ellery stared at the seething bay. “Think back to my notes, Dad. Between 1919 and 1924 Kane Bendigo — flying solo, as it were — cracks up three times. And that’s not counting his father’s old, established business, which Kane’s run into the ground in record time. Then, backed by a Wrightsville group hypnotized by his personality, he starts his first munitions plant and suddenly he’s off to the races. Did he start that business alone? Oh, no. Abel has left college to join him — Abel, at the age of twenty! And King’s ridden high, wide, and handsome ever since, and Abel’s never left his side.

“King knows what he wants. He’s always known that. But while he can set the goals, he can’t plan and execute the moves needed to reach them. It’s Abel who’s done the practical work, who’s performed industrial miracles behind the plausible, glittering façade of King. Without Abel, King would have been a man with grandiose ideas who couldn’t have run a successful newsstand. With Abel, he’s become the most powerful man in the world.”

The Inspector was shaking his head. “And still it doesn’t make sense to me, Ellery. I can see how Karla and Judah would turn on King. Karla’s a decent sort, for all her background. She found out the truth about the man she married, what a power-mad lunatic he is — maybe found out a lot about his plans we don’t know. Judah’s a disappointed artist, a man with a deep feeling about people, and he considers his brother the biggest mass-murderer in history — isn’t that what he said? And both Judah and Karla stuck on this nightmare of an island, stewing in the fumes from those damned munitions and atomic plants...

“I see those two fine. But Abel’s been an active partner in this thing for twenty-seven years, Ellery! You say yourself he’s the one who’s made it possible. You might say he plotted King’s death because of personal ambition. But I don’t see that. A man like Abel always prefers the background. He gets a kick out of pulling the wires and hiding in the shadow of his front man.

“And those notes of yours... You can’t doubt, from reading them, that Abel’s worshiped his brother Kane ever since they were boys in Wrightsville. Ever since Kane saved his life in that swimming hole when Abel was seven years old.” The Inspector shook his head again. “It doesn’t go down, Ellery. It doesn’t wash.”

“It goes down, and it washes,” said Ellery. “Just because of that life-saving incident.”

“How do you mean?” His father stared.

“Remember the day in the gym, when King found Judah’s fourth letter in one of his boxing gloves and got so irritated he slipped on the tiles at the edge of the indoor pool and fell in?”

“Yes?”

“Didn’t that strike you as awfully queer, Dad? His sinking, floundering, spluttering? His having to be pulled out of the water? The incident stuck in my mind. It bothered me.

“Then in Wrightsville,” said Ellery, “I learned the details of his athletic prowess as a youth. He was an all-round athlete, participated in almost every sport. Football. Baseball. Boxing. Wrestling. Track. Field. But never once did I run across his name in connexion with swimming.”

“But—” his father began in perplexity.

“Today I took inventory of his wardrobe. There are dozens, scores of every conceivable article of male apparel. Except one, which should have been there — judging from the quantities of everything else — by the dozen or the score, too. Yet there was not a single pair of swimming trunks, not a single bathing suit or swimming accessory.”

“That’s why you knocked him into the pool!”

“As a last check,” Ellery nodded. “And he almost drowned. He would have drowned if I hadn’t pulled him out. That’s what’s behind Abel’s motive, Dad: King can’t swim.”

“But... that silver cup awarded to ‘Kane Bendigo’ for water polo! Did you ever try playing water polo without knowing how to swim? He must be able to swim!”

“The ‘Kane Bendigo’ was re-engraved. Karla even explained that his original name was C-a-i-n and that he had changed it to K-a-n-e, and since he’d won the water-polo trophy under his original name, he’d had the cup changed to read K-a-n-e later. She specifically told us that he had told her that... Dad, we’ve seen the proof twice since we got to Bendigo Island that the man doesn’t know how to swim. So he lied to his wife about the reason for the re-engraving on that trophy. It couldn’t have been his. It had been awarded to someone else, and he’d had the name re-engraved not from Cain to Kane, but from someone else’s name to Kane!

“This man with the false hair and the false teeth and the false front has been living another lie. For forty years. Because if King can’t swim now, he couldn’t swim in 1911. Once he’s learned, no one ever forgets how to swim.

“Then it wasn’t King who jumped into that mountain stream and saved seven-year-old Abel from drowning that day in the hills above Wrightsville. Who could it have been? Only the three brothers were involved, and Abel was the victim. So it could only have been Judah who rescued Abel. We know Judah can swim — we saw him do it in the indoor pool the day King accidentally fell in.”

“Judah saved Abel’s life,” said the Inspector softly, “and King took the credit.”

Ellery nodded over the flame of a match. He puffed and tossed the match out his window. “There’s the explanation in a phrase. The record shows that, even as a boy of fourteen, Kane had a domineering, unscrupulous character. Because Judah was a timid, sensitive boy, younger and physically weaker, and could be bullied into keeping his mouth shut, Kane deliberately stole the credit for Abel’s rescue from Judah. Accepted a medal for it — even made an amazing little speech about it, you’ll recall, saying, modestly that he didn’t really ‘deserve’ the medal, ‘anybody’ would have done the same! And Kane — as King — has taken the credit, stolen the spotlight, been the big shot ever since. In everything. That single incident, way back in 1911 in what was then one-horse Wrightsville, illuminates each of the three Bendigo brothers.

“Take King. Deep inside, he’s afraid. He must have been, he must still be, deathly afraid of the water — a boy who excelled in so many different sports and yet didn’t participate in one of the commonest sports of all, swimming, must have had a powerful psychological reason for not learning... He knows the truth about himself. He knows he’s no hero, that in reality he’s an inferior human being. But once that incident occurred, once he publicly proclaimed himself a hero as a swimmer — and probably his fear of water was what prompted him to do it — then he shaped his whole future development. He had to repress that sickening truth, in himself as well as to the world, and in order to do so he developed an enormously aggressive personality. Eventually his aggressiveness turned into grandiose channels, and with Abel’s implementation of his megalomaniac goals he’s become the incredible power he is today.”

“And Abel,” muttered the Inspector, “Abel’s been paying back his debt of gratitude.”

“Exactly. Abel was unconscious when he was pulled out; he didn’t see who rescued him. He was a young child, and of course he believed the story his big brother-hero told. So Abel has come through these past forty years believing he owes his life to King. And so devoting his life to his savior.

“And Judah,” said Ellery, “Judah was cuffed and cowed into keeping his mouth shut — Judah, who had reached the age of twelve scarred by the weight of his Judas cross and the cruelty of his schoolmates, not to mention that of his father. Judah couldn’t fight his husky big brother. Judah didn’t dare tell the truth. Judah could only watch the credit that belonged to him showered on the unscrupulous bully who had stolen it. There could be only one place for Judah to go, and that was still further into his shell. To complicate matters — the evidence is in these notes — Judah’s always been something of a masochist. Deep down he enjoyed his martyr’s role...

“There could be only one port for a man like that — and that’s where Judah has landed. At the business end of a bottle. He drinks for the reason most alcoholics drink. It’s a way of enduring his unhappiness.”

“I wonder how Abel found out...”

“The wonder isn’t so much that he found out as that it’s taken him so long. It seems incredible that Abel could have lived and worked by King’s side for so many years and remained ignorant of such a simple fact as his brother’s not knowing how to swim. But it’s not as incredible as it seems. Abel’s had a blind spot on the subject. From the age of seven he’s known — impressed into his brain by a traumatic experience of great force — that King could swim. And King threw up a clever smoke screen. What did Karla tell us? That except for a bit of wrestling and boxing with Max, King never takes any exercise. They’ve led unbelievably crowded lives, and Abel himself is hardly the sports-loving type.”

“Then Abel found out—”

“Or Judah, more than usually drunk, told him,” nodded Ellery. “Then all Abel would have to do was manufacture a test, as I did today... and everything would curdle in Abel. Instantly. To worship your brother for forty years, to dedicate your life to him, and suddenly to find that you’ve been worshiping a fraud — worse, a cheat... It would be a devastating experience. If Abel’s worship of King had blinded him to King’s faults, this knowledge would clear his eyes in a flash.

“So Abel drew up a new set of plans. The first plans of which his brother King had no knowledge.”

Ellery fell silent, and for some time they sat without speaking, continuing to watch what was going on below them. The launches streaked back and forth, the ships loaded, the cars and trucks continued to stream down from the cliffs, vessels plunged out to sea, planes landed empty and took off full...

“What the devil is he up to?” Ellery said at last. “Dad, this looks like a wholesale evacuation of the island.”

“I wonder where he is...”

“Who?”

“His Majesty. Do you suppose he’s alone?”

“Why?”

“If he is,” said the Inspector, “he’s not exactly safe.”

“He’s safe,” said Ellery gloomily. “You saw Max go after him. He hasn’t let King out of his sight since the night of the attempt. They’d have to kill Max first.”

“Well?” said the Inspector.

Ellery stared at him. Then he snapped on the ignition and kicked the starter.