The King is Dead

8

What followed was intolerable. For what followed was nothing at all. All the next day Abel did not return to the island. Karla could not see them — she was reported ill, nothing of importance, but Dr. Storm was keeping her in bed. King Bendigo returned to the Home Office and, as if to make up for the day he had lost, remained there until far into the night, working with Peabody. The Queens saw Judah two or three times; he waved amiably but managed to keep out of their way. They had long since discussed the advisability of tackling Judah on their own initiative, without waiting for Abel, but they decided against this.

There was literally nothing to do.

So they wandered over the island.

“Maybe,” remarked the Inspector, “I can add to my little bundle of notes and sketches.”

Even the Shirts had disappeared. At least, no block was put in their path and no one, so far as they could make out, trailed them.

On the second day after the incident of the boxing glove, they were exploring a part of the island neither had seen before. There were no factories or workers’ homes here. It was a barren place, an area of sand dunes and leathery scrub, with the blue glass of the sea rolling in to smash into splinters against the cliff walls. This was one of the spit ends of the island, exposed to the sea on three sides, and it had probably been left in its natural state because of the difficulty of effective camouflage.

“But not entirely,” said Ellery. “If you’ll look up there — where the thick stuff starts growing — you’ll see something that looks like the biggest leaning birch tree you ever saw. Only it’s a sixteen-inch gun.”

“Who’d want this Godforsaken place, anyway?” snarled his father. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

The Inspector was a little ahead, to one side of a dune, and when Ellery joined him with a stride the stride stopped short.

The cliff wall crumbled at their feet to make a steep but negotiable path down to the beach. Between the shoreline and the base of the cliff there was a concrete building. It was not a large building, and its few iron-barred windows were so small that it looked like a fort in miniature. Palm trees had been planted about the structure, which was streaked and slashed with green and dun-colored paint. From the sea it was probably indistinguishable from its background.

Around the entire area rose a twelve-foot metal fence topped with barbed wire.

Ellery pointed to some camouflaged cables. “Electrified.”

There was a little blistery bulb of a lookout on top of the building, with a narrow embrasure through which machine-gun muzzles protruded. Uniformed men, heavily armed, patrolled the enclosure.

“Soldiers of the Kingdom of Bendigo,” said Ellery through his teeth. “They must get lonely way out here. Maybe they’ll loosen up to a kind word.”

Ellery scrambled down the path, the Inspector at his heels. Bits of shale flew from under their feet. The sun was hot.

As they reached the base of the cliff they came upon a small Residence car. There was a key in its ignition lock, but the car was empty. They looked around. There was no beach road. They had had to leave their car up on the cliff some distance away, where the road ended.

“Now how the dickens did this car get down here?”

“A tunnel.” Ellery pointed. “Plugged up — see the camouflaged door? It must lead up through the rock and join the main road somewhere back there. Cliff doors, God help us! I tell you, Dad, these people never grew beyond the age of eight.”

“They’re little hellers, though,” said his father dryly.

“Halt!”

The gate was locked. Just inside were two soldiers armed with sub-machine-guns. The guns were trained on the Queens’ bellies through the gate. Between the soldiers loomed an officer with a sun-black face and eyes the color and warmth of oyster shell.

A little to one side, smoking a brown cigarette, stood Colonel Spring.

“Good morning,” said Ellery to Colonel Spring.

The Colonel smoked.

“What do you want?” The officer had a harsh, mechanical voice.

“Nothing especially. Just rubbernecking — Major, is it? I’m still not familiar with your insignia system.” Maybe Spring didn’t like to interfere in the routine duties of his subordinates. He was standing there as if he had never seen them before. “May we come in, Colonel, and look around?”

Colonel Spring smoked.

“Your passes!” rapped the officer.

“What is this place, anyway?” muttered the Inspector.

All right, Colonel, if that’s your game... “Yes, what are you boys playing at way out here, Major?”

“Your passes!” There was no humor in that robot voice.

The Queens stopped smiling.

“We don’t have any passes,” said Ellery carefully. “Colonel Spring can tell you who we are.”

“I know who you are. Your pass.”

“We have King and Abel Bendigo’s personal permission to go anywhere on the island. Hasn’t the word come down?”

“Produce it!”

“Produce what?” Ellery was growing angry. “I’ve told you. Your King said we could go anywhere we pleased.”

“In this place you must produce a written pass signed by Colonel Spring. This is forbidden ground. If you have no pass, leave at once. Do you have a pass?”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said the Inspector.

Ellery deliberately looked the Colonel over. The hippy, elegant little man in the uniform might have been watching the antics of a cageful of trained fleas. “All right, Colonel, here we are and there you are. Inspector Queen and I want a pass. Make one out.”

The little Colonel smiled. “Certainly, Mr. Queen. But then you’ll have to have it counter-signed by King Bendigo or Abel Bendigo. Those are the rules. Apply to my office in the usual way. Good morning.” He poised the smoldering brown butt of his cigarette delicately, dropped it, and ground it with the heel of his boot into the shaly sand.

“Come on, son,” said Inspector Queen.

Four things happened almost simultaneously.

The only visible door of the concrete building opened and the chubby figure of Dr. Storm appeared, carrying a medical bag; behind him towered an enormous guard.

Ellery snatched a pair of binoculars from his pocket, clapped them to his eyes, and trained them on one of the barred windows of the building.

Colonel Spring stiffened and said something to the officer in a sharp voice.

The officer jumped forward, shouting to the lookout in the blister. Apparently the current charging the fence was operated from the tower. The officer seized the gate and unlocked it.

“Arrest these men,” said Colonel Spring.

The binoculars were tom from Ellery’s grasp by the officer and the next moment the Queens were in the grip of the two armed soldiers.

They were dragged into the enclosure.

“For... the love of...” The Inspector choked. One of the soldiers had an easy hold on the Inspector’s necktie. The old gentleman slowly grew purple.

A cool small voice kept saying to Ellery, This is ridiculous, it’s something you’re reading in a book, as his fist kept cracking against flesh and faces stared into his and blue sky and blue sea and white sand and green palms whirled and pain jolted him from every direction and finally exploded in his middle and he found himself prone on the sand with his nose grinding into some shale and a crushing weight on his back.

And then he was lifted clear and smashed to his feet and things came back a little. His father stood nearby, deathly pale, brushing himself off with blind puny strokes. The door of the concrete building was closed again. Dr. Storm, looking like a portly old penguin in his black suit and white shirt, was talking cheerfully to Colonel Spring.

They were ringed with armed soldiers.

Nobody looked menacing.

Nobody even scowled.

Part of the job. All in the day’s work... Ellery found himself doubled up, clutching his groin.

Colonel Spring was smoking another brown cigarette, head lowered, listening with a frown to Dr. Storm.

“My rules aren’t made to be broken, Doctor.”

Dr. Storm kept talking cheerfully.

The men holding him up kept holding. Ellery felt grateful. His father was still brushing himself futilely. A Bendigo plane streaked by deep in the sky.

“All right,” Colonel Spring shrugged.

He said something to the officer, turned on his heel, and walked over to the building. The door opened instantly. He stepped inside. The door crashed.

“You may leave now, gentlemen.”

Ellery looked up. It was Dr. Storm, smiling.

“May...!” He heard a strangled voice, sounding nothing like his own.

“I know, I know,” said the Surgeon-General of Bendigo Island. “Your male ego is offended—”

“Offended!” gurgled Ellery. He kept digging his fists into his groin. “I want an explanation. I want an apology. I want this man alone in a room with me. I want something!”

“You won’t get it,” said Dr. Storm. “You’re lucky I happened to be here. And if you’ll take my advice, Mr. Queen, you’ll never come here again.” And the fat little doctor waved, went through the gate, climbed into the empty car, backed around, and drove into the hole in the cliff.

A moment later there was no hole, just cliff.

“Outside,” said the officer’s thumb. His oyster eyes had not changed expression.

Ellery felt swollen fists at the ends of his arms.

“Come on, son,” said his father urgently. “Do you think you can make it back to our car?”

Ellery did not start the car. The pain was going away from his groin, but his nose burned where the shale had cut it and his body ached in a dozen places.

The Inspector sat limply, hands in his lap, staring at the peaceful sea.

They sat there, without a word, for a long time.

Then his father said, “Who was it you spotted in that building?”

“Dr. Akst.” His tongue tasted bitter.

“Akst? The big blond young physicist?”

“Yes.”

“Can that be Akst’s hush-hush lab? Where he fiddles around with his atoms? That would explain the electrified fence, the guards—”

“It’s too small a building for physical research. Anyway, Akst had his hands up to the bars. They were manacled.”

“Manacled!”

“He’s a prisoner.” Ellery stared at his overstuffed hands. “I wondered why we hadn’t seen him around. He’s been tapped for out.”

“Oh, come on,” said the Inspector vehemently. “That’s a bit thick even for this hellhole. After all—”

“After all what? That enclosure is Bendigo Island’s version of Dachau. Who’s to tell His Mightiness the King what he can or can’t do? He’s squatting on this island in the ocean, absolute monarch of it and everyone on it.”

“But Akst — a man like Akst—”

“Disappears. Or false reports are cleverly broadcast. That wouldn’t be a problem, Dad.”

“But why?”

“Lèse-majesté. Treason to the Crown. Or he’s found that what he’s been working on sticks in even his scientific craw. Who knows why? Probably Akst’s loyalty came under suspicion. He was investigated, or he’s in the process of being investigated. Or he’s refused to go on, and this is a little persuasive treatment. Meanwhile, he’s in chains in the King’s private concentration camp... Are there courts on Bendigo Island, I wonder?”

The Inspector patched up Ellery’s wounds, gave him a hot bath, and made him lie down. Ellery did not sleep. It was impossible to sleep.

Inspector Queen paced and paced. They had a nameless need to remain together. Had his father gone into the next room, Ellery would have followed.

At last he jumped out of bed and dressed in fresh clothes.

“How about lunch, son?”

“No.”

“Where you going?”

But Ellery was already limping up the corridor. The Inspector hurried after him.

When they got to the Home Office, Ellery marched up to the desk with the air of a man who is prepared to slash and broadaxe a path to his objective.

“Open that elevator door. I want to see this King of yours!”

The central of the three security men said, “Yes, sir.”

Thirty seconds later, the muscular receptionist was holding the door of the big office open.

“Interrupting me seems your only strong point, Queen,” said the powerful voice at the other end of the room. “Well, come in.”

The receptionist closed the door behind them softly.

King Bendigo was seated behind his desk. In a chair by his side sat Immanuel Peabody, immersed in some papers. A man they had never seen — a large stout man with flabby cheeks — stood facing them. The large stout man was standing between two armed soldiers.

Bendigo seemed calm and relaxed, one hand on the desk. As Ellery and his father approached, the handsome man lazily moved a finger and the soldiers stepped to one side, yanking the stout man with them.

“Mr. Bendigo—” began Ellery.

“Is this what you came for?” said the King, smiling.

His other hand appeared. In it was Ellery’s pair of binoculars.

Ellery stared at him across the ebony desk. The black eyes were sparkling. Bendigo clearly had been expecting him. He wanted some entertainment, and what would entertain him best, Ellery saw suddenly, was the outraged fury of a helpless man.

The only defense was a feeble one. Having no choice, Ellery used it. He reached across the desk, took his binoculars from the arrogant fingers, and turned on his heel with a matching arrogance.

“Just a moment, Queen.”

He felt calm. He would never lose his temper with this man again.

“When you were given carte blanche we thought you, as a man of intelligence, would understand that it was only relative. This is the original tight little isle; we like to keep our secrets. You’re a guest here. We don’t expect our guests to go snooping in our closets.”

“Especially,” said Ellery, “those with the skeletons in them?”

“Put it that way if you like. By the way, do you have a camera — any photographic equipment?”

“No.”

“Do you, Inspector Queen?”

“No.”

“Well, just in case. Cameras are not permitted on Bendigo Island. They are confiscated and smashed, and the film burned, whenever and wherever found. There are also certain... forfeits involved. That’s all, gentlemen.”

He turned toward Peabody.

“Mr. Bendigo.”

Bendigo looked back sharply. “Yes?”

“As long as we’re going down the Mosaic tables,” said Ellery, “I think I ought to tell you that my father and I have guns with us. Are guns on your contraband list, too?”

Bendigo laughed. “No, Queen. We’re very fond of guns here. You may have all the guns you can carry.” His lips thinned until they almost disappeared. “But no cameras,” he said.

Again their glances crossed.

And this time Ellery was able to smile.

“We understand, Your Highness,” he said gravely.

“Wait!” King Bendigo sat taller on his throne. At the note in his voice Immanuel Peabody, for the first time, looked up from his papers. “I don’t believe you do understand, Queen,” Bendigo said slowly. “No, I don’t believe you do... Sit down and watch what you interrupted. Over there!”

His thumb stabbed toward two chairs at the curved wall.

Ellery felt a twitch of alarm. The drawl had been unpleasantly without inflexion. It reminded him of the voice of the robot officer behind the electrified fence. He was vaguely sorry now that he had come. To conceal his apprehension, he went abruptly to one of the chairs. The Inspector was already at the other, looking gray.

They sat down, tense without knowing quite why.

“You may go ahead now,” said Bendigo curtly to Peabody. Peabody rose. His master leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. It was theatrical, but it failed to give the reassurance of play-acting. For in another moment Bendigo had opened his eyes and turned them on the large stout man between the two soldiers. And what glittered in the black arctic depths of those eyes made the Queens look at the large stout man really for the first time.

His knees sagged, as if his body were too heavy for his legs. His flabby cheeks were pale and wet, although air conditioning made the office very pleasant. He kept screwing up his eyes, as if he were having trouble focusing; occasionally, he would blink. His whole appearance was that of an exhausted man who feels he must pay the closest attention to the proceedings. Ellery had seen men look like that who were defendants in murder cases.

And it occurred to him suddenly that the rhetorical question he had asked in the car after their experience at the concentration camp was being answered here and now.

Yes, there were courts on Bendigo Island. This was one of them, the highest.

The large stout man with the rubbery knees was about to be tried.

And when Immanuel Peabody began to speak, there was no doubt left. He spoke in the crisp, confident tone of the experienced prosecutor. King Bendigo listened with the aloof gravity of the supreme judge.

Peabody was outlining the charge. It had something to do with the stout man’s failure to carry out certain instructions. Ellery could not follow it closely, for his thoughts were a bottleneck of jammed impressions — the handsome immobility of Bendigo, the slightly nervous fuss the lawyer’s fingers made as he talked, the desperate concentration of the stout man, the glow of the glass brick walls, the powerful mastication of Max’l’s jaws as he rapidly fed himself hulled nuts in the doorway of the open safe, apparently his favorite lounging place. Had Max’l been there all the time?...

Peabody became more specific. He enumerated dates, names, facts. None of them meant anything to Ellery, who was growing more and more confused. All he could gather was that something or some things the accused had done or had not done had resulted in the severance of an important secret contact somewhere in Asia, which in turn had brought about the loss of an armaments contract. At least it seemed to concern an armaments contract, although Ellery was not sure even of that; it might have involved oil, or raw materials, or ships. Whatever it was, the stout man stood accused of a major crime against the Bendigo empire: bungling.

Ellery held down an impulse to laugh.

And at last King’s counsel came to the end of his argument, and he sat down and patted his papers together into a tight, neat pile. Then he leaned back, crossed his dapper legs, and stared with some interest at the stout man.

“Anything to say?” This was evidently the King’s juridical voice, cold, solemn, and above-it-all.

The stout man licked his lips and blinked rapidly, struggling with a great wish to produce sound. But then his lips sagged along the lines of his cheeks, and he lapsed into helplessness.

“Speak up, Norton.” The voice was sharper, more personal. “Do you have anything to say?”

Again the stout man struggled, the sag lifting. He was no more successful this time, but his failure ended with a shrug — the weariest, most hopeless shrug Ellery had ever witnessed.

Ellery felt his father’s fingers on his arm. He sank back.

King made a flicking gesture with his shapely right hand.

The stout man might have been a fly.

The guards took him out, each wrestling an arm. The knees kept buckling, and a step before the door they collapsed altogether.

The trio disappeared.

The splendid office sunned itself. There was a siesta mood over everything. No one said a word.

King Bendigo sprawled on his throne, chin thoughtful, black eyes dreamy.

King’s advocate Peabody kept his legs comfortably crossed, one hand on his neat, tight pile of papers. However, his head was cocked.

The rapid-fire motion of Max’l’s feeding hand had stopped. The hand was suspended before the mouth.

They were waiting. That was it.

But for what?

A laugh that would shatter this dream — wake everyone up and restore the sanity of the world?

A shot?

Nonsense, absurd...

Anyway, the walls were soundproof—

Ellery jumped.

King Bendigo had risen. Lawyer Peabody uncrossed his legs. Max’l’s hand popped to his mouth, dipped for a fresh supply of hulled nuts.

It was over.

Whatever had happened, it was over.

The King was speaking graciously to the lawyer. There was a matter of a tax suit for sixty million dollars pending in the high court of some European country. Bendigo was discussing the incomes of the judges and inquiring for more information of the same personal nature.

Peabody replied busily.

At the door, waiting for his father, Ellery glanced back. The King and his Lord Advocate were seated again, their heads together. They were deep in conversation. The curved wall glowed and the long office was serene. Max was tossing nuts into the air now and balancing under them with his mouth open, like a seal.

Ellery stumbled out.