The King is Dead

3

When the dark cloths were removed, the son and the father found themselves standing with Brown Shirt and Blue Shirt beside the big ship, on a great airfield.

The mid-afternoon sun rode an intense sky, and they blinked in the backwash of glare.

Abel Bendigo was close by, talking to an undersized man. Behind the undersized man stood a squad of tall soldiers, at attention. The undersized man had prim shoulders and large hips and he was dressed in a beautiful black and gold military uniform. The black cap he wore sported a linked-globe-and-crown insignia above the visor and the legend PRPD. This officer, who was smoking a brown cigarette, turned from time to time to stare at the Queens with the friendliness of a fish. Once he shook his head as if it were all too much for him to bear. However, he bore it — whatever it was — with resignation. The Prime Minister talked on.

They faced a camouflaged administration building. Men in black and gold suits moved above in the glassed circle of the control tower. Ground crews swarmed about a dozen large hangarlike structures, also camouflaged. Planes flitted about, field ambulances raced, commissary trucks trundled; all were painted black and gold. A very large cargo ship was just taking the air.

A high wall of vegetation surrounded the field, screening off the rest of the island. The vegetation seemed semitropical and much of it had the underwater look of Caribbean flora. And Ellery had never seen a sky like this in the North Temperate Zone. They were in southern waters.

He had the queerest feeling that they were also in a foreign land. Everyone about him looked American and the airfield buildings betrayed a functional vigor inseparable from advanced American design — Frank Lloyd Wrightism at its angriest. It was the air that was alien, a steel atmosphere of discipline, of trained oneness, that was foreign to the American scene.

And then there was the flag, flapping from a mast above the control tower. It was like no flag Ellery had ever seen, a pair of linked globes in map colors surmounted by a crown of gold, and all on a black field. The flag made him uncomfortable and he looked away. His glance touched his father’s; it had just come from the flagpole, too.

They said nothing to each other because the Shirts were so attentively at their elbows, and because there was really nothing to communicate but questions and doubts which neither could satisfy.

The Prime Minister finished at last, and the hippy little man in the splendid uniform waved the squad of soldiers away. They wheeled and marched to the administration building and disappeared. Bendigo walked over with his companion. The Shirts, Ellery noted, stiffened and saluted. But it was not Abel Bendigo they saluted; it was the hippy little man.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Bendigo said, but he did not explain why. “This is the head of our Public Relations and Personnel Department, Colonel Spring. You’ll probably be seeing something of each other.”

The Queens said a word or two.

“Anything I can do, gentlemen,” said Colonel Spring, offering a limp white hand. His eyes remained fishy. His whole face was marine — greenish white and without plasticity, like the face of a drowned man.

“Isn’t the question rather, Colonel,” Ellery asked “anything we can do?”

The underwater eyes regarded him.

“I mean, your P RP D seems to lean heavily to the military side. What are our restrictions?”

“Restrictions?” murmured Colonel Spring.

“Well, you see, Colonel,” remarked Inspector Queen, “there’s never any telling where a thing like this can lead. How free are we to come and go?”

“Anywhere.” The white hand fluttered. “Within reason.”

“There are certain installations,” said Abel Bendigo, “which are out of bounds, gentlemen. If you’re stopped anywhere, you’ll understand why.”

“And you’ll be stopped,” said the Colonel with a smile. “You’re going directly to the Home Office, Mr. Abel?”

“Yes. Excuse us, Colonel.”

The little officer rather deliberately ground the butt of his cigarillo under his boot heel. Then he smiled again, touched his visor with his delicate fingers, and turned curtly away.

The Shirts instantly followed.

“Valuable man,” said the Prime Minister. “Gentlemen?”

The Queens turned. A black limousine had come up on silent treads and a footman in livery was stiffly holding the door open. To the front door was attached a gold medallion, showing two linked globes surmounted by a heavy crown.

Like a coat of arms.

The airport was on high ground, and when the car drove through the screen of vegetation the Queens had a panoramic view of half the island.

They realized at once why this island had been selected as the site of a government-in-hiding. It was shaped like a bowl with a mound in the center. The shoreline, which was the edge of the bowl, was composed of steep and heavily wooded cliffs, so that from the sea no evidence of human occupancy or construction in the interior would be visible. The mound in the middle of the bowl, where the airfields lay, was at approximately the same elevation as the wooded cliffs at the shoreline. Between the central airfields and the cliffs on the rim, the ground sloped sharply to a valley. It was in this valley, invisible from the sea, that all the building had been done.

The sight was startling. It was a large island, the valley was great, and as far as the eye could see the valley was packed with buildings. Most of them seemed industrial plants, vast smokeless factories covering many acres; but there were office buildings, too, and to the lower slopes of the hillsides clung colonies of small homes and barracklike structures which, Abel Bendigo explained, housed the workers. The small homes were occupied by minor executives. There was also, he said, a development of more spacious private dwellings on another part of the island; these were for the use of the top executives and the scientific staffs and their families.

“Families?” exclaimed the Inspector. “You mean you’ve got housewives and kids here, too?”

“Of course,” replied the Prime Minister, smiling. “We provide a normal, natural environment for our employees. We have schools, hospitals, recreation halls, athletic fields — everything you’d find in a model community in the States, although on a rather crowded scale. Space is our most serious problem.”

Ellery thought preposterously: Lebensraum.

“But food, clothing, comic books,” said Inspector Queen feebly. “Don’t tell me you produce all that!”

“No, though if we had the room we certainly would. Everything is brought in by our cargo fleets, chiefly airborne.”

“You find planes more practicable than ships?” asked Ellery.

“Well, we have a problem with our harbor facilities. We prefer to keep our shoreline as natural-looking as possible—”

“There’s the harbor now, Ellery!” said the Inspector.

“I’m sorry,” said Bendigo, suddenly austere. He leaned forward to say something to the chauffeur in a low tone. The car, which was speeding along inside the rim of woods, immediately turned off into a side road and plunged down to the valley again. But Ellery had snatched a glimpse, through a break in the vegetation, of a horseshoe-shaped bay very nearly landlocked, across the narrow neck of which rode a warship.

The chauffeur had gone slightly pale. He and the footman sat rigidly.

“We didn’t really see anything, Mr. Bendigo,” said Ellery. “Just a heavy cruiser. One of your naval vessels?”

“My brother’s yacht Bendigo,” murmured the Prime Minister.

Inspector Queen was staring down into the valley with glittering eyes. “Yacht my sacroiliac,” he snapped. “These food and other supplies, Mr. Bendigo. Do you give the stuff away or how do you handle it? What do you pay your people off in?”

“Our banks issue scrip, Inspector, accepted by Company stores as well as by individuals all over the island.”

“And when a man wants to quit, or is fired, does he take his Bendigo scrip with him?” asked Ellery.

“We have very few resignations, Mr. Queen,” said the Prime Minister. “Of course, if an employee should be discharged, his account would be settled in the currency of the country of his origin.”

“I don’t suppose your people find unions necessary?”

“Why, we have unions, Mr. Queen. All sorts of unions.”

“No strikes, however.”

“Strikes?” Bendigo was surprised. “Why should our employees strike? They’re highly paid, well housed, all their creature comforts provided, their children scientifically cared for—”

“Say.” Inspector Queen turned from the window as if the thought had just struck him. “Where do all your working people come from, Mr. Bendigo?”

“We have employment offices everywhere.”

“And recruiting offices?” murmured Ellery.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your soldiers, Mr. Bendigo. They are soldiers, aren’t they?”

“Oh, no. The uniforms are for convenience only. Our security people are not—” Abel Bendigo leaned forward, pointing. “There’s the Home Office.”

He was smiling again, and Ellery knew they would get no more information.

The Home Office looked like a rimless carriage wheel thrown carelessly into a bush. Trees and shrubbery crowded it and its roofs were thickly planted. From the air it was probably invisible.

Eight long wings radiated like spokes from a common center. The spokes, Abel Bendigo explained, housed the general offices, the hub the executive offices. The hub, four stories high, stood one story higher than the spokes, so that the domed top story of the central building predominated.

Not far away, Ellery noticed some mottled towers and pylons and the glitter of glass rising from the heart of a wood. The few elements of the structure that could be seen extended over a wide area, and he asked what it was.

“The Residence,” replied the Prime Minister. “But I’m afraid we’ll have to hurry, gentlemen. We’re far later than I’d intended.”

They followed him, alert to everything.

They entered the Home Office at the juncture of two of the spokes, through a surprisingly small door, and found themselves in a circular lobby of black marble. Corridors radiated from the perimeter in every direction. An armed guard stood at the entrance to each corridor. They could see office doors, endless lines of them, each exactly like the next.

In the center of the lobby rose a circular column of extraordinary thickness. A door was set into it at floor level, and Ellery guessed that it was an elevator shaft. Before the door was a metal booth, behind which stood three men in uniform. The collars of their tunics bore the gold initials PRPD.

Abel Bendigo walked directly to the desk of the booth. To the Queens’ astonishment, he offered his right hand to the central of the three security men. This functionary quickly took an impression of the Prime Minister’s thumb while the man to the right whisked an odd-looking card, like a section of X-ray film set in a cardboard frame, from one of a multiplicity of file drawers before him. This film was placed in a small machine on the desk, and the Prime Minister’s thumbprint was inserted in the bottom of the machine. The central man looked through an eyepiece carefully. The machine apparently superimposed on the fresh thumbprint the transparent control print on file, in such a way that any discrepancy was revealed at a glance. This was confirmed a few moments later when the Queens’ thumbprints were taken and their names recorded.

“Films of your prints will be ready in a short time,” said Bendigo, “and they will go into the control file. No one, not even my brother King, can get into any part of this building without a thumbprint checkup.”

“But these men certainly know you and your brother!” protested Inspector Queen.

“Exceptions don’t make the rule, Inspector. They break it. Will you step in, gentlemen?”

It was a self-service elevator. It shot upward, and a moment later they preceded their guide into a strange-looking reception room.

It was shaped like a wedge of pie with a bite taken out of its pointed end, the bite being formed by the section of elevator wall giving into the room. They discovered later that the whole pie represented by the floor-plan of the dome was composed of three pieces, of which the reception room was the narrowest and smallest. King Bendigo’s private office took up half the circle. The third room, for King’s staff of private secretaries, and the reception room made up the other half-circle. The elevator had three doors, one to each of the rooms.

The outside wall of the reception room was composed entirely of fluted glass bricks. There were no windows, but the air was cool and sweet.

The room was stark. There were a few functional armchairs of black leather, a low copper table six feet in diameter, a small black desk and chair, and that was all. Not a lamp — the two side walls themselves glowed — not a vase of flowers, not a picture. And no rug on the floor, which was made of some springy material in a black and gold design. There was not even the solace of a loud voice, for no receptionist received them in this queer reception room, and it was so thoroughly soundproofed that a voice could not be heard fifteen feet away.

Abel Bendigo said: “My brother is tied up just now.” How he knew this Ellery could not imagine, unless the Prime Minister had memorized his sovereign’s schedule for days in advance. “It will take—” Bendigo glanced at his wristwatch — “another twenty-three minutes. Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen. Cigarettes and cigars on the table there, and if you’d care for liquid refreshment, there’s a cabinet in that wall. And now please excuse me. I was to have sat in at this conference from the beginning. I’ll be back for you when King is free.”

There were two doors with conventional knobs in the reception room, one in each of the straight walls. Abel Bendigo slipped through the left-hand door and shut it before either man could catch a glimpse of what lay beyond.

They looked at each other.

“Alone,” said Ellery, “at last.”

“I wonder.”

“You wonder what, Dad?”

“Where it’s planted.”

“Where what’s planted?”

“The ear. Of the listening business. If this is where His Nibs keeps visitors waiting, you don’t think he’d pass up the chance to find out what’s really on their minds? Ellery, how’s this set-up strike you so far?”

“Incredible.”

The Inspector sank uneasily into one of the black armchairs.

Ellery strolled over to the elevator door. Like the one in the lobby, it had sunk into the floor on their arrival and had risen shut again. The door section fitted so cunningly into the curved shaft wall that it took him a long moment to locate the crack which outlined it.

“You’d need a nuclear can-opener to get this open.” Ellery went over to the door in the right-hand wall. “I wonder where this goes.”

“Probably an outer office.”

Ellery tried the door; it was locked. “For his forty-nine secretaries. Do they wear uniforms, too, I wonder?”

“I’m more interested in King King. What are the odds he wears ermine?”

“Nobody trusts anybody around here,” Ellery complained. He was over at the door in the left-hand wall now.

“Better not,” advised his father. “It might open.”

“No such luck.” Ellery was right; the door to King Bendigo’s office, through which they had seen Abel hurry, was fast. “Sealed in, that’s what we are. Like a couple of damned anchovies.”

The Inspector did not smile. “We’re a long way from Eighty-seventh Street, son.”

“Stiff upper.” But the quip did not amuse even its author.

Ellery surveyed the small black desk. It was of heavy metal, screwed to the floor. Its empty swivel chair, of the same metal, faced the smooth cylindrical section of the elevator.

“I wonder why the receptionist isn’t here.”

“Maybe he had to go to the men’s room.”

“I doubt if the Bendigo code recognizes hand-washing as a legitimate excuse for dereliction of duty. Besides,” Ellery tried a few drawers, “the desk is locked. No, here’s a drawer that isn’t.” It was the bottom drawer, a deep one.

His father saw him stare, then drop into the chair. “What is it?”

“Dictaphonic gadget of some sort.” Ellery was doubled over. “Of a type new to me. I wonder if...” There was a click! and a faint whirring sound. Ellery whistled softly. “Do you suppose this can be hooked up to the big boy’s office?”

The Inspector jumped out of the armchair. “Careful, son!”

“He’d want records of private talks. Too bad we won’t have the chance to lift the record of the one that’s going on in there right now—”

“—over-excited. Sit down, Mr. Minister.”

The easy male voice boomed in their ears. The Queens whirled. But, except for themselves, the reception room was empty.

“The machine,” whispered the Inspector, “Ellery, what did you touch?”

“Does double duty.” The voice had not resumed, but the whirring sound continued. “Records the sound, but the pressure of something here amplifies the sound simultaneously — Here it is! You have to keep your finger on this stud.”

The man with the easy voice was laughing. It was the laugh of a big man. It filled the room like a wind.

“—no climate for temper, Mr. Minister. Abel, help Señor Minister to a chair.”

“Yes, King.” Abel’s voice.

“Bendigo the First,” whispered the Inspector.

“Are you all right?” The easy voice was amused.

“Thank you.” This was a bubbly voice with a strong South American accent, struggling to control its fear and anger. “It is difficult to remain calm, my dear sir, when one has been abducted by brigands from one’s home in the middle of the night and spirited out of one’s country by an unlawful foreign aircraft!”

“It was necessary to have a private conversation within walls whose ears we could trust, Mr. Minister. We regret the inconvenience to you.”

“Regret! Do not trifle with me. This is kidnapping, and you may be very sure I shall make an international incident of it, with the strongest possible representations to your government!”

“My government? Just where do you think you are?” The voice was still amused, but a power-switch had been flicked on.

“I will not be intimidated!” The foreign voice was shouting now. “I know very well what you are after, Señor King Bendigo. We have access at last to the secret files of the defunct régime. The new government, which I have the great honor to serve as Minister of War, will not be so complaisant, I promise you! We shall confiscate the Guerrerra works under the powers vested in El Presidente by the National Resources Decree of the fourteenth May, and we will have no dealings with The Bodigen Arms Company or any other of your creature subsidiaries, Señor!”

Thunder smote the machine in the receptionist’s desk.

“Smacked something, His Majesty did,” whispered Inspector Queen.

“Let’s hope it wasn’t Señor Minister of War.”

“You miserable anteater—!” It was a bellow.

“Anteater?” screamed the foreign voice. “You insult, you insult! I demand to be flown back to Ciudad Zuma immediately!”

“Sit down! How much of this drivel do you think I’m going to stand—” The growl stopped. Then the powerful voice said impatiently, “Yes, Abel. What is it?”

There was a long silence.

“The sweet sotto voce of reason,” murmured Ellery. “Or Abel’s passed him a note.”

They heard King Bendigo laugh again. This time the voice said smoothly, “Forgive me for losing my temper, Señor. Believe me, I respect the position of your government even though it is hostile to our interests. But there are no viewpoints — no matter how opposing, Mr. Minister — which can’t be reconciled.”

“Impossible!” The angry voice registered several decibels fewer.

“To establish a private cordiality, Mr. Minister? Known, let us say, only to us and to you?”

“There is nothing more to be said!” But now it was merely fuming.

“Well, Abel, it looks as though we’re in for a licking.”

Abel murmured something; the words did not come through.

“Unless, Mr. Minister, you don’t quite see how... Let me ask you: Did your predecessor in the War Ministry manage to salvage his yacht in the revolution, Señor?”

“She saved the traitor’s life,” said the foreign voice stiffly. “He made his escape in her.”

“Oh, yes. You must have admired her, Señor — your enthusiasm for pleasure craft is well known. And she’s one hundred and twenty feet of sheer poetry, as my brother Judah would say. Did say.”

“She was beautiful.” The War Minister spoke in the wistful, bitter way of the lover who has lost. “Had the swine not got to her in time... But I presume on your schedule Señor King—”

“Her sister is yours.”

There was a silence.

“She’s identical in every respect, Mr. Minister, except that her designer tells me she’s even faster. And speed in a ship is a quality not to be despised, Señor, as your predecessor discovered. Who knows? The politics of your country tend to be somewhat unstable—”

“Señor, you bribe me!” the Minister of War replied indignantly. But it was not as if he were really surprised. His tone had a flinch in it. “I thank you for your gift, Señor King Bendigo, but I repudiate it with scorn. Now I wish to leave.”

“Good boy,” breathed the Inspector. “He made it.”

“After a bit of a tussle,” grinned Ellery. “Ah, there’s Abel calling time again. Conference in the box. Do they pitch to the Señor or pass him?”

“Here it comes!”

“Gift?” came the dark, rich voice. “Who said anything about a gift, Mr. Minister? I had something quite legal in mind.”

“Legal...?”

“I’m offering her for sale.”

The harassed man laughed. “At a discount of five per cent, perhaps, because we are such cordial friends, Señor? This is absurdity. I am not a wealthy man—”

“I’m sure you can afford this, Mr. Minister.”

“I am sure I cannot!”

“Don’t you have twenty-five dollars?”

There was a very long silence indeed.

“Struck him out,” said the Inspector.

“I believe, Señor Bendigo,” said the foreign voice, and for the first time it was without heat or distress, “that would make a bargain I could not afford to ignore. I shall purchase your yacht for twenty-five dollars.”

“Our agent will call on you in Ciudad Zuma next Friday, Mr. Minister, with the bill of sale and the other documents necessary for your signature. Needless to say, the other documents are equally important to the transfer of title.”

“Needless to say.” The foreign voice stopped for an instant, then went on amiably: “Love of the sea is in the blood of my family. I have a son in the Naval Ministry, Señor Bendigo, who is also an ardent yachtsman. There will be no difficulty about the other documents, none whatever, if you will sell me also the eighty-foot Atalanta IV, which has only recently, I believe, come off your ways. Possession of such a prize would make my son Cristoforo a happy young man. At the same purchase price, of course.”

“You have a nose for bargains, Mr. Minister,” said King Bendigo gently.

“I also keep them, my friend.”

“Take care of it, Abel.”

After a moment, they heard a door open and close.

“And I mean a nose,” came King Bendigo’s growl. “How good an investment is that sucker, Abel?”

“He’s the intellectual strong man of the Zuma régime.”

“He’d better stay that way! Who’s next?”

“The E-16 matter.”

“The mouth-twitcher? I thought that was settled, Abel.”

“It isn’t?

“The trouble with the world today is that it has too many little crooks running it under the delusion that they’re big crooks! All they do is shoot the cost of history higher — they don’t change the result a damn. Send him in.”

There was a lull, and Ellery mumbled, “In big stuff they send ’em in direct. I wonder if there’s another elevator to H.R.H.’s office. Bet there is.”

“Shut up!” said his father, straining.

King Bendigo was saying heartily, “Entrez, Monsieur.”

A buttered voice said something in rapid French, but then, with a foreign accent that was not French and was spread with irony, added in English: “Let us dispense with the amenities. What do you want?”

“The signed contracts, Monsieur.”

“I do not have them.”

“You promised to have them.”

“That was before you raised your prices, Monsieur Bendigo. I hold the folio of Defence in my country, not of clairvoyance.”

“Is this your personal decision?” They heard a drumming sound.

“No. Of the entire Cabinet.”

“Are you slipping, Monsieur le Ministre?”

“I have been unable to persuade my colleagues.”

“You evidently used the wrong arguments.”

“You did not provide me with the right ones. Your prices are so high that they would wreck the budget. New taxes are out of the question—”

The rich voice was frigid. “This is an annoyance. What of your word?”

The buttery voice slipped. “I must repudiate it. I have no choice. It is too risky. A contract with Bodigen Arms at such a price might unseat us. The Actionist Party—”

“Let’s be realistic, Mr. Minister,” said King Bendigo’s voice suddenly. “We know the influence you exert in the power group of your country. We admit the risks. What is your price to take them?”

“I wish to terminate this conversation. Please have me flown back.”

“Damn it all—”

Abel’s voice said something. “What, Abel?”

The brothers played another counterpoint in murmurs. Then the big voice laughed.

“Of course. But before you go, Mr. Minister, may I examine that stickpin you’re wearing?”

“This?” The European voice was surprised. “But certainly, Monsieur Bendigo. How could it interest you?”

“I’m a collector of stickpins. Yours struck my eye at once... Beautiful!”

“It is merely a reproduction in gold and enamel of our national emblem. I am happy that it strikes your fancy.”

“Mr. Minister, you know what collectors are — perfect idiots. I must have this pin for my collection.”

“I shall send you one this week. They are obtainable at numerous shops in the capital.”

“No, no, I want this one — yours, Monsieur.”

“I gladly present it to you.”

“I make it a rule never to accept gifts. Permit me to buy it from you.”

“Really, Monsieur, it is no more than a trifle—”

“Would you accept two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it?”

“Two hun—” The voice choked.

“Deposited in a New York bank under any name you designate?”

The Queens gaped at each other.

After a very long time, in a voice so low as almost to be inaudible, the Defence Minister said, “Yes... I will sell it.”

“Take care of it, Abel. Thank you for coming, Mr. Minister. I’m sure, on re-examining the situation, you’ll find some means of persuading your distinguished compatriots that no sacrifice is too great for a nation to make in this crisis in world history.”

“Monsieur has given new strength to my persuasive powers,” said the foreign voice in a tone compounded of bitterness, irony, and self-loathing; and the Queens heard it no more.

When the door opened and Abel Bendigo reappeared, Inspector Queen was in the armchair with his head thrown back and Ellery was smoking a cigarette at the glass outer wall, staring as if he could see through it, which he could not.

The Inspector rose immediately.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen. My brother can see you now.” Abel stood aside.

The Inspector went in first, Ellery followed, and Abel shut the door.

The hemispherical architecture of King Bendigo’s office had been cleverly utilized to impress. The door from the reception room was near the end of the straight wall, so that the visitor on entering the office faced, first of all, the curved glass wall at its narrowest. He naturally made a half-turn toward space, and the long diameter of the room struck him like a blow. And near the other end, behind a desk, sat King Bendigo. The approach to him looked eternal.

There was little furniture in the office. A few heavy pieces designed to fit the curve of the outer wall, several uncompromising chairs and occasional tables, and that was all. As in the reception room, there were no paintings, no sculptures, no ornamentation of any kind. Nothing distracted the eye from that big desk, or the big chair that stood behind it, or the big man who sat in the chair.

The desk was of ebony, and there was nothing on its glittering surface.

The chair was of some golden material.

It was only later that Ellery was able to notice what was set into the straight wall near the desk. It was a room-high safe door. The door, a foot thick, was partly open. On its inner surface, behind glass, was the mechanism of a time-lock.

And just inside the safe leaned a troglodyte. His powerful jaws chewed away at something — chewing gum, or candy. He was so broad that he seemed squat; yet he was taller than Ellery. His face was gorilla-like and he stared as a gorilla might stare. His stare never left the visitors’ faces. He was dressed in a gaudy black and gold uniform and he wore a beret of black leather with a gilt pompom. He looked ridiculous and deadly.

But that came later. During the endless approach to the eminence of that ebony desk, they could see nothing but the man enthroned behind it.

King Bendigo did not rise. Even seated, he was formidable. He was one of the handsomest men Ellery had ever seen, with pure dark features of an imperious cast, bold black eyes, and thick black hair with a Byronic lock. His ringless hands, resting on the desk, were finely proportioned; they looked capable of breaking a man’s back or threading a needle. He wore a business suit of exquisite cut and workmanship which draped itself impeccably at every movement of his torso.

There were deep lines in his face, but he looked no more than forty.

Ellery had the most curious sense of unreality. Every Inch a King, starring...

There were no introductions.

They were not offered chairs.

They were left standing before the desk, being inspected by those remarkable black eyes, while Abel went around the desk to murmur into his brother’s ear.

Abel’s attitude was interesting. It was all deference, but without an obsequious slant. Abel, with his lack of stature or grandeur, with his eyeglasses shining earnestly, with his body slightly inclined as he reported to his brother, was a picture of dedication.

Ellery tingled with the annoyance of something not quite grasped.

“Detectives?” They instinctively tightened before the black flash in those eyes. “So that’s where you’ve been! Abel, I’ve told you those letters are the work of a crank—”

“They’re not the work of a crank, King.” There was a quiet stubbornness in Abel’s voice that aroused Ellery’s respect. “On that point Mr. Queen agreed immediately.”

“Mister who?” The eyes made another survey.

“Queen. This gentleman is Inspector Richard Queen of the New York police department, and this is his son Ellery.”

“Ellery Queen.” The eyes became interested. “You have quite a reputation.”

Ellery said, “Thank you, Mr. Bendigo.”

“And you’re his father, eh?” The eyes turned on Inspector Queen and at once turned back to Ellery.

And that takes care of me, thought the Inspector.

“So you think there’s something in this, too, Queen.”

“I do, Mr. Bendigo, and I’d like to discuss—”

“Not with me, Queen, not with me. I think it’s a lot of damned foolishness. Play detectives all you want to, but don’t annoy me with it.” King Bendigo turned in his chair. “Who’s next, Abel?”

Abel began murmuring in the royal ear, and the royal eyes were immediately abstracted.

Ellery said: “Are you through with us, Mr. Bendigo?”

The handsome man looked up. “Yes!” he said sharply.

“Well, I’m not through with you.”

The King leaned back, frowning. Abel straightened up and his prominent eyes began to shuttle between them. The Inspector rested against a chair, folding his arms expectantly.

“Well?” said King Bendigo.

“Nothing has been said about a fee.”

The stare was degrading. “I didn’t hire you. My brother did. Talk it over with him.”

Abel said, “We’ll discuss your fee this evening, Mr. Queen—”

“I’d rather discuss it now.”

The King looked up at his Prime Minister. His Prime Minister shrugged ever so slightly. The stare went back to Ellery.

“Really?” drawled the man in the gold chair, and Ellery could have hurdled the desk and throttled him. “And what is this fee of yours, Queen?”

“My services come pretty high, Mr. Bendigo.”

“What is the fee?”

It was at this point that Ellery, to conceal the blood in his eye, glanced away, and that was when he first saw the uniformed gorilla standing inside the doorway of the safe, animal eyes fixed on him, jaws grinding away. The King’s Jester... He felt himself tighten all over, and in the next moment all the pressure of hostility and outraged pride that had been building up came to a head.

“I won’t talk total fee, since I don’t know just what the investigation entails. I want a retainer, Mr. Bendigo, balance left open.”

“How much of a retainer?”

Ellery said, “One hundred thousand dollars.”

Behind him there was a choked paternal sound.

Abel Bendigo was looking at Ellery thoughtfully.

But King Bendigo neither choked nor took stock. He merely waved and said to his brother, “Take care of it,” and then he waved at Ellery and Inspector Queen and said impatiently, “That’s all, gentlemen.”

Ellery said: “I’m not finished, Mr. Bendigo. I want my retainer in ten certified checks of ten thousand dollars each. You are to have the payees’ lines left blank, so that I can fill in the names of ten different charities.”

He knew instantly he had taken the wrong tack. Where money was concerned, this man was invulnerable. Money was a power-tool. Anyone who failed to use it as a power-tool was beneath contempt.

King Bendigo said indifferently, “Give it to him, Abel, any way he wants it. Anything, just so they stay out of my hair.” In the identical tone, without stopping, he said, “Max’l.”

The beast in the beret shot out of the safe, grimacing horribly.

Ellery dodged. The Inspector jumped out of the way like a rabbit.

King Bendigo threw his head back and roared. The wrestler was grinning.

“All right, all right, gentlemen,” said the big man, still laughing. “Go to work.”

In the elevator, Inspector Queen broke the rather sick silence.

“I picked this up from the floor on the way out, son. It was at that far wall, all the way across the office from his desk. He must have cracked it between his fingers for exercise and then tossed it away for the help to throw in the trash.”

“What is it, Dad?” Ellery’s voice shook a little.

His father opened an unsteady hand. On it lay the fragments of the stickpin they had heard King Bendigo buy from his second visitor for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.