The Scarlet Letters

Z...

At a few minutes before ten on Monday morning, Ellery stood at bay in Judge Levy’s chambers off the courtroom. Before him sat the judge, the prosecutor, and Dirk’s attorney.

“I’m given to understand, Mr. Queen,” said Judge Levy, “that you have something of importance to impart before court convenes this morning.”

“What is it?” asked Darrell Irons coldly. He did not care for the introduction of something of importance at a time when he was expecting a quick wrap-up and a quicker favorable verdict.

The State merely looked receptive.

Ellery chose his words. “There is the possibility of new evidence in the case, Your Honor. If this new evidence can be found, it will have a significant bearing on the trial. Would it be possible for you to declare a recess of... say...” — he tried to read the judge’s expression, failed, and decided in favor of conservatism — “twenty-four hours?”

“New evidence?” frowned Irons. “Of what, Queen?”

“Yes, Mr. Queen,” asked the judge, “what is the nature of this evidence?”

“I’d prefer not to say.”

“My dear sir,” exclaimed Judge Levy, “you can’t expect me to recess a murder trial on your mere say-so.”

“I have no choice,” said Ellery quickly. “It’s the sort of thing no legal mind would swallow for a moment without the evidence to wash it down. I’m not even sure evidence sufficient to bring into court exists. I can only plead my qualifications and experience in these matters. I give you my word, Judge Levy, there is no trick involved, I have no ax to grind, I’m acting for no one, and I’m aiming toward nothing but simple justice. All I ask is one day.”

Irons shook his head, smiling, as if in all his years at the bar he had never heard such a childish request.

“Of course,” began the State, “Mr. Queen does have unique standing, Sam—”

The judge rose. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t delay the trial on any such basis. If you’re ready, gentlemen?”

Ellery touched the prosecutor’s sleeve and he lingered a moment.

“What the devil do you have, Queen?” he asked in a low voice.

Ellery shrugged. “Right now, nothing but a web spun in thin air. What are the chances of the trial’s going to the jury today?”

“Not very good, I should say. It depends principally on Irons at this point. He seems determined to convict Van Harrison of multiple adultery.”

Ellery looked relieved. “Then would you cooperate to this extent? I’d appreciate your doing two things for me: Have one of the exhibits in the case submitted to a lab for analysis, and lend me for a few hours’ study all the records of Harrison’s various bank accounts.”

“I suppose it could be done with the Court’s permission and under the proper supervision,” said the State doubtfully. “Which exhibit?”

Ellery told him.

The prosecutor looked puzzled. “Why that one?”

“I’d rather not say now. If what I suspect is demonstrably true, you’ll hear plenty before the day is out.”

“I’m being paged. I may not be able to get to Judge Levy on this before the noon recess... Coming!” He dashed into the courtroom.

But he spoke to the jurist immediately. Judge Levy conferred with Irons, who threw up his hands and glanced heavenward. Ellery hurried out after the exhibit.

An officer took him to an empty courtroom. Ellery spread out the records of Harrison’s bank accounts on the bench and set to work. The exhibit he had asked for was already on its way to the laboratory.

Forty-five minutes later he looked up. “Officer, do you know Miss Porter by sight — Nikki Porter, one of the witnesses in this case?”

“Redheaded babe? Yes, sir,” said the officer enthusiastically. Ellery scribbled on a scratch pad, tore off the sheet. “Would you take this note to her and ask her to write the answer below? She’s in the courtroom.”

“I’m not supposed to leave these things—”

“I’ll guard them with my life. I have a far greater interest in them just now than the State of Connecticut. Hurry, officer, will you?”

When the policeman returned, Ellery read Nikki’s scribble, and he nodded with satisfaction. “I’ll be right back, officer.”

He found a phone booth and put in a call to his father at New York Police Headquarters.

“Oh, Ellery. Is it all over?” asked the Inspector.

“Not yet. Look, Dad, can you arrange for permission to examine a certain account at the Equity Savings Bank, Fifth Avenue branch?”

“What’s up, son?”

“I haven’t time to explain. Can you do it yourself? I can leave here and meet you in two hours, with luck.”

“Get on your wagon.”

Ellery sped back to the empty room. “I’ve got to drive down to New York, officer. You can take these back to the courtroom.”

When Ellery returned to the county courthouse, it was late afternoon. He dashed to a phone booth and called the laboratory to which the other exhibit had been sent.

“There’s no question about that?”

“No, Mr. Queen. A minimum of four years, most likely five.”

“Thank you!”

Ellery hurried up to the courtroom, glancing confidently at his watch.

The corridor was thronged. People milled, talking noisily.

“Ellery?”

“Nikki! What’s all this? Session over for the day?”

“Don’t you know? Haven’t you been here?”

“Obviously not,” said Ellery, a frost settling over his bones. “What’s happened?”

“The case just went to the jury.”

“No!”

“For some reason,” said Nikki, eying him curiously, “Mr. Irons rested for the defense shortly before noon. After the noon recess, they had a short recross-examination and went right into the summations. The jury went out about fifteen minutes ago. Where you going?”

“To see Judge Levy!”

Ellery faced the judge, the prosecutor, and a poker-faced defense counsel in the judge’s chambers. Nikki sat in a corner, searching Ellery’s face.

“I’m not going to waste time in recriminations, Mr. Irons,” Ellery began rapidly. “You pulled a fast one in the interests of your client. But from what I know about you, you’re concerned with justice as well as doing a smart legal job.

“About the feeling of the State’s Attorney’s office and you, Judge Levy, I have no doubts.

“So we all want to see justice done. The only question is: Is there time? For all I know, with the jury already out, it may be too late. No... please. We haven’t time to go into the legal technicalities.

“Listen to me. Very carefully.”

Ellery leaned over the judge’s desk. “I’ve spent the day trying to find proof of a theory that came to me late yesterday. As I said this morning, it’s a theory I couldn’t expect anyone of legal training to accept without the corroboration of evidence. I’ve found that evidence. It puts an entirely new construction on this case.

“The theory hinges on a proper interpretation of Van Harrison’s dying message to me, which everyone has ignored so far because it seemed meaningless.

“The truth is, it had the most pertinent meaning.

“I myself have held three different views about what Harrison wrote on that wall in his own blood.

“The first was that the letters XY constituted the complete message he intended to convey to me. This one I finally discarded, for the simple reason that no explanation offered itself. As XY, the message bore no significant relevance to the situation, its background, or its climax.

“My second view necessarily jumped off from the failure of the first. If XY meant nothing, then perhaps the message wasn’t complete. Harrison died just as he finished the short left-hand crosspiece of the Y. Suppose he had intended to go on?”

The three men looked startled.

“If that was so, what could he have meant to add? He’d written an X, and he’d written a Y. It seemed to me that the only logical extension of X and Y was Z. Was this message to have been XYZ? But just as X and Y individually led nowhere, so with Z. And they meant nothing in combination, as XYZ. I was stumped again.”

“Wait, wait,” said Judge Levy. “I’ve never been very quick at puzzles. Do you mean that if Harrison had finished his message, the element he meant to add would not have been Z, but something else?”

“That’s right, Your Honor. The failure of Z forced me to an entirely different speculation.”

“And you know, Mr. Queen, what Harrison intended to add?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Just a moment,” said the State.

He jumped up and went to the door. He came back hurriedly.

“Nothing from the jury room yet. Go on, Queen!”

Darrell Irons shifted in his chair.

“May I borrow a soft pencil and a sheet of paper, Judge?” asked Ellery.

The judge produced them. Ellery bent over the desk.

“I’ll repeat the demonstration I gave on the stand. This is exactly the way Harrison scrawled his message. First he drew a diagonal, from upper right to lower left, like this.”

Ellery drew a line:

“Then, starting at upper left, he drew a crossing diagonal, like this.

“His third stroke duplicated his first stroke, but a little beyond the X he had already drawn.

“And finally, beginning again at upper left, as in the second stroke of the first X, Harrison drew a short diagonal which just touched the long diagonal, like this.

“At this point, he died,” said Ellery. “Now, gentlemen, there is more than one way in which Harrison could have left his message unfinished. I learned that at the Bronx Zoo yesterday. I saw a park workman start painting a letter of the alphabet on a sign. The letter was the G of ZOOLOGICAL. But it started to rain while he was doing it, and so he stopped, leaving the G uncompleted. And it didn’t look like a G at all; it looked like a C, because he never got to add the crossbar... Suppose,” said Ellery, “suppose it was the last stroke — the short one — which Harrison didn’t live long enough to finish?”

With a frown, Judge Levy began: “You mean—”

“I mean, Your Honor: Suppose Harrison meant to carry that last stroke all the way down? As, in fact, he had done in the case of the second stroke of the first X, Then the letter following the X would not have been Y, but...”

And Ellery completed the stroke.

“X,” exclaimed the State. “Another one. Not XY, but XX.”

Irons kept staring at the paper. As he stared, his great gray brows drew slowly together.

“XX,” repeated the judge. “I can’t see, Mr. Queen, that you’ve advanced an iota. It’s the new evidence you claim to have turned up that I’m interested in. Would you get on to that?”

Ellery came back from the door. The jury was still out.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’m getting to it step by step because there’s a road to the truth and the evidence lies at the end of it. Let me put it this way: What else is an X, Your Honor, besides being a letter of the alphabet?”

“A Roman numeral. Signifying ten.”

“Then XX — two X’s — in this interpretation would signify twenty. Does the number twenty suggest a connection with any phase of this case?”

“Not to me,” said His Honor. He changed his position in his leather swivel chair, glancing impatiently at the clock.

“Twenty?” The State shook his head.

Defense counsel leaned back and lit a cigar. He devoted himself with concentration to the removal of the band and the clipping of the tip.

“Then if as a Roman numeral the two X’s get us nowhere,” continued Ellery, “we must look for still another interpretation. What else is an X?”

“Mathematical sign,” snapped the judge. “Multiplication symbol.”

“Then XX would be two multiplication signs? Obviously that means nothing. Is there still another meaning for the symbol X?”

“A cross,” cried the State. “Two X’s, two crosses—”

“In other words, gentlemen,” nodded Ellery, leaning forward across the desk, “Van Harrison, physically unable to talk; realizing he had no time to write out a message, reduced what he wanted me to know to its most economical form. He began to shape the common sign of the double-cross. Harrison was trying to tell me, with his expiring strength, that he had been double-crossed.”

The silence lasted for some time.

Then Darrell Irons crossed his fine legs and blew a cloud of smoke. “Double-crossed, Queen? How can that possibly have a bearing on the case?”

“I think you’ve known the answer to that, Mr. Irons,” said Ellery, “for some minutes now. Harrison had just fallen with three bullets in him, mortally wounded. I had witnessed the shooting, and he knew it. Knowing it, he tried to tell me that he had been double-crossed. What could he have meant but that the shooting I had just witnessed was not what it seemed? That, in being shot, he had been double-crossed?”

“I don’t understand,” said Judge Levy fretfully. “I really don’t.”

“I think Mr. Irons does,” said Ellery. “For why should Harrison have characterized his killing as a double-cross? A double-cross means a broken agreement. Logically, then, Harrison had had specific assurances that no such thing would ever happen. He had been promised that he ran no danger of reprisal, and that promise had been broken. Who could have made such a promise and broken it? Only one person — the man who had fired the shots, the presumably deceived husband. In other words, Van Harrison and Dirk Lawrence had been working together. The whole case is not what it has seemed to be — that of the unfaithful wife and the deceived husband. With the husband and the lover confederates, with the husband aiding and abetting the affair — it was the wife who was deceived. Martha Lawrence, gentlemen, was framed — framed by her own husband.”

Nikki got up. She looked ill.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said in a faint voice.

The men rose mechanically. When the door closed, they sat down the same way.

“Proof,” said Judge Levy. “Proof!”

“I’ll get to it,” Ellery promised. “Just let me work my way down the road without interruption — is that jury still out?”

“Yes, yes. Go on!”

“Once you accept the premise that the husband was behind the affair, that the wife was framed by him, with the lover his accomplice, every aspect of the case changes. If it is, no longer a genuine love affair, then Martha Lawrence did not give money to Van Harrison as other women had given it to him, out of sexual gratitude, as free gifts. She must have given him the money because she was forced to. When a woman is forced to give money to a man, whatever the man’s lever may be, you can be sure the word ‘blackmail’ is stamped on it. Harrison blackmailed Martha Lawrence into giving him frequent and very large sums.

“But Harrison was the tool of Dirk Lawrence. Was it Lawrence’s motive, then, to use Harrison as an instrument of blackmail? Yes, but only incidentally. Because what did Dirk Lawrence eventually do? He killed Van Harrison and he tried to kill Martha Lawrence. If Martha should die, Lawrence as her husband comes into her considerable fortune. That’s why I characterize the blackmail part of the plot, which Lawrence assigned to Harrison, as only incidental to Lawrence’s greater plan — a plan that Harrison, of course, knew nothing about.

“It was big money Lawrence was after, and he worked out a ruthless scheme to get it. Whatever his early feelings for Martha were, he must have tired of her and come to detest his marriage. On top of this, he failed miserably to make a financial success of his writing career. So there he was, tied to a woman he didn’t want but who had the money he did want. Freedom and security were Lawrence’s objectives — how could he get both? And then he saw the way.”

Irons examined the tip of his cigar; it had gone out. “By attempting to murder her, Mr. Queen? If freedom and security were my client’s objectives, as you say, I’d hardly recommend his method as a means of getting them.”

“Nor would I, Mr. Irons.” said Ellery, “but let’s not anticipate. Your client is full of surprises. May I go on, before that jury comes in?”

And Ellery continued even more rapidly: “A year or so ago Dirk Lawrence began to evince an abnormal jealousy — it was an obsession, almost a phobia. Let’s integrate it. Since nothing in this case so far has turned out what it seemed — since the deceived husband was in reality the scheming killer — we must question everything he did. Was his jealousy genuine, or was it not? The answer must be that it was not, for a man suffering from a genuine complex of jealousy would hardly conspire to entangle his wife in an affair with another man!

“The jealousy attacks were faked.

“But if we regard Lawrence’s jealousy attacks as faked, then his whole plan spreads before us in all its naked ugliness.

“He would pretend to be a jealous husband, establishing himself as ridden by morbid fears of his wife’s ‘infidelity.’ He would carefully develop this pretense over a great many months, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and inducing an attitude of acceptance on the part of his and his wife’s friends — with particular attention to Miss Porter and myself. Then he would unleash his accomplice to drag Martha into the appearance of a clandestine affair. This would be built up, by the accomplice at Lawrence’s direction, with the romantic trappings of the classic adultery — a ‘code,’ a book as the code-key, secret meetings all over town, with occasional ‘lapses’ of discretion on the part of the ‘lover’ so that they could be seen in public; and so on. Finally, the poor obsessed husband would be vindicated. He would actually overhear a telephone conversation naming an immediate rendezvous at the other man’s house. He would rush out in pursuit. He would surprise his wife and the other man in the other man’s bedroom... and, snatching up the other man’s gun in the shock and frenzy of the ‘discovery,’ he would kill them both — before witnesses, for he knew that Harrison’s man was there, and he knew that Nikki Porter was a spy in his own household and that I was in the case nose-down, hot on his trail.

“Yes, Mr. Irons, your client figured out a way to commit murder for profit and live to have his profit, too. For what has your defense been? Lawrence’s defense? The unwritten law, Mr. Irons — the law that’s not on the statute books but has nevertheless freed every defendant who was ever able to plead it under the facts!

“You, I, Judge Levy, the State’s Attorney here — and Dirk Lawrence — all know that the tradition of the unwritten law in this country and all over the Western world has been to free the wronged victim of the adultery. Juries just don’t convict husbands of murder who have caught their wives in adulterous relationships with other men before witnesses — as you so rightly pointed out to this jury, Mr. Irons. Your very real confidence as to the outcome of this case — up to a few minutes ago — is eloquent testimony to that fact. It’s a confidence, I’m sure, your client shares at this moment.

“Oh, yes, Dirk Lawrence was taking a chance. It was a gamble. But a very good gamble. His own father had committed the same kind of murder and had been found not guilty! — undoubtedly the source of Dirk’s inspiration. The record was all in his favor, and if it was a gamble, look at the stakes he was gambling for. A fortune of millions. Many a man has run the risk of the electric chair or scaffold or gas chamber for a great deal less.”

And at this moment the court attendant knocked on Judge Levy’s door, and he said, “Excuse me, Your Honor. The jury’s reached a verdict. They’re getting ready to come out.”

“Don’t open that door again,” thundered the judge, “until I call you!”

The State’s Attorney got up, sat down. He lit a cigaret nervously.

Darrell Irons got up, but he did not sit down again. He went to the window to look out at Bridgeport, the fireless cigar clenched in his teeth.

“Too late.” Ellery was saying. “Too damn late! It’s a not-guilty finding, of course. They couldn’t reach any other decision on the basis of the evidence presented to them. Congratulations, Mr. Irons! Once that jury gives its verdict, Lawrence can thumb his nose at the pack of us and the universe thrown in. Under the rule of double jeopardy, he’ll have got away with premeditated, cold-blooded murder!”

“No,” said Irons, without turning.

“No,” said Judge Levy. “Not yet, Mr. Queen. Under the law, regardless of what the jury has decided in the jury room, there is no verdict until the presiding judge instructs the clerk of the court to ask the jury for it. This case isn’t closed by a long shot. And it won’t be closed until after I take my place on the bench out there.”

“But I thought—”

“Never mind what you thought, Mr. Queen. I want that proof you promised. The evidence you said would be acceptable to the court.”

Ellery inhaled. “Yes, sir! I’ve had only a few hours to dig, but even in that short time I was able to unearth two heretofore unproduced facts which support my theory and lift it from speculation to the realm of evidence.

“The first is legally not so important as the second, but it proves my original thesis that Martha Lawrence was not in love with Van Harrison and that her affair with Harrison was a frame-up engineered by the defendant.

“At my request, the prosecutor sent out one of the exhibits in the case to a laboratory for analysis. The exhibit, you’ll recall, was the bundle of love letters found in Harrison’s bedroom desk and presumed to have been written by Martha to Harrison. The analysis I requested the lab to make was an ink analysis.

“The reason I requested an ink analysis of the letters was that some odd facts had struck me. There were no envelopes to any of the letters, and none bore a date — only days of the week were named. Also, none of the salutations specifically named Harrison; the letters merely began, ‘My dearest,’ ‘Darling,’ and so on. In other words, from the letters themselves, there was no evidence that they dated from Martha’s friendship with Harrison, or that they had been written to Harrison. He was presumed to have been the addressee because the letters were found on his premises.

“I phoned the laboratory just before I stepped into this room.

“Their report was that the ink on those letters is at least four, probably five, years old.

“Martha Lawrence met Van Harrison for the first time no earlier than a few months ago. This was brought out during the trial. It can undoubtedly be further corroborated.

“Therefore Mrs. Lawrence could not possibly have written those letters to Van Harrison. How, then, did they get into the drawer of Harrison’s bedroom desk? And even more important, why were they there at all? These are inescapable questions.

“Were they there for blackmail purposes? But passionate letters from a married woman to a lover have no value for blackmail purposes unless they bear dates, name names, and can be connected incontrovertibly with the individual involved. The publication of those letters as they stand would not connect them with Van Harrison — or with any other man exclusively — and any threat to publish them would therefore be an empty one.

“But if they didn’t serve a blackmail purpose for Harrison, what purpose could they have served? A sentimental one? They were not even written to him.

“The more you puzzle over these letters,” said Ellery, “the clearer it becomes that the only purpose they were meant to serve was the purpose they did serve — that is, to be found, to be presumed to have been written to Harrison, to furnish additional documentation to the appearance of an ordinary illicit affair between Harrison and Martha Lawrence.

“There is confirmation of this. When I visited Harrison’s house that night to warn him away from Martha, a very convenient telephone call took him out of the house for half an hour or so, leaving me on the premises alone, as I testified. On analysis, if Harrison had been conducting a genuine amour with a woman married to a jealous husband, the last thing in the world he would have done was to leave an interested party on the premises — a known investigator — giving him a clear field to search for and find such ‘damaging’ evidence of the affair! Knowing I was coming, Harrison had evidently ordered Martha to phone him, so that he would have an excuse for leaving the house that would in turn allow me to find the evidence I subsequently testified to in court.

“Then where did Harrison get those letters? They could only have come from the man to whom they had been originally written. Martha Lawrence — and this can be proved in court — had only one love affair prior to her meeting with Harrison and within the past four or five years — the age of the ink — and that was with her husband. She told me herself she had written many love letters to Dirk during their courtship. If the facts can be established to the satisfaction of the Court — and I believe they can — then the conclusion is plain: The letters found in Harrison’s possession came from Dirk Lawrence — Dirk Lawrence gave them to Harrison. The presumption must be that Lawrence did so for the express purpose that they subsequently served, since there is no other reasonable explanation. Lawrence destroyed the telltale envelopes, and he made a careful selection of those letters only in which no date appeared, no name in the salutation, and no reference in the text which would give the show away.

“The provable facts about the letters, then, with the reasonable presumptions arising from them, confirm my theory that Martha Lawrence was framed by Dirk Lawrence.

“The second thing I was able to dig out today,” Ellery went on, hardly pausing for breath, “is damning, and on its weight alone I would rest my case.

“It was brought out during the trial that Van Harrison’s substantial deposits in his savings accounts coincided perfectly with Martha Lawrence’s withdrawals from her accounts. But until today no one — and I don’t except myself — thought of checking Harrison’s withdrawals.

“First let me expand my theory a bit. I had postulated a deal between Lawrence and Harrison, under the terms of which Harrison was to embroil Lawrence’s wife in the appearance of an adulterous relationship. While the novelty of this situation must have appealed to Harrison’s sardonic make-up, he would hardly have entered into such an agreement purely for the sake of its novelty. It was dangerous, illegal, and if it ever came out he would find himself behind bars. To run such a risk, Harrison could only have been tempted by the prospect of money, a great deal of money. Lawrence, then, must have offered him a considerable monetary inducement.

“Lawrence also had to offer Harrison a plausible reason to explain his own position in the deal. Harrison was no fool; and even if he were, he’d have to have been an absolute idiot not to question Lawrence’s motives before agreeing to such an unusual proposal.

“What sort of motive could Lawrence have dreamed up to explain why he was doing this? The simplest possible, the one most likely to convince Harrison — in fact, Lawrence’s real motive, if in abbreviated and twisted form. That is, Lawrence must have told Harrison that he, too, was in it for the money he could get out of it. He must have proved to Harrison that Martha’s fortune was all in her name, he must have said that she refused to give him any substantial part of it, that he needed money desperately, and that the only way he could get any of it was to blackmail her through a third party. Harrison was to blackmail Martha Lawrence through a means which Lawrence would put in Harrison’s hand, and Harrison and Lawrence would split what Harrison got out of her.

“I arrived, then, at a theoretical conclusion that Harrison had been paying some of the blackmail money he got from Martha Lawrence over to Dirk Lawrence. A kick-back. A rake-off. Could I prove it?

“I proved it, gentlemen,” said Ellery grimly, “by checking Harrison’s withdrawals from his various accounts. I went over those accounts and made notes of his withdrawals. I saw that each time Harrison deposited a substantial sum, he withdrew within a day or so exactly half of that deposit.

“I then went to Dirk Lawrence’s bank and checked Lawrence’s deposits. They show that, within a day or so of Van Harrison’s withdrawals, Dirk Lawrence deposited the identical sums in his personal account.

“The identical nature and synchronization of Harrison’s withdrawals and Lawrence’s deposits can’t possibly be dismissed as coincidences. There are too many of them — the same amounts, on dates consistently within a day or so of each other.

“If that doesn’t prove to the satisfaction of this or any other court and jury that Lawrence and Harrison were confederates; that Lawrence was not the innocent husband in an ordinary case of adultery; that he was a secret, third party to the affair, unknown to the wife; that therefore his shooting of Harrison and Martha Lawrence was done not to avenge his honor but to shut Harrison’s mouth and gain Martha’s fortune — if that doesn’t prove it, gentlemen, I’ll make a public apology to Dirk Lawrence in that courtroom and take an oath never to stick my nose into another case.

“Here are my notes on Harrison’s withdrawals; the original bank records from which they come are on exhibit in the courtroom. Here are my notes on Lawrence’s matching deposits; they come from the records of the Equity Savings Bank of New York, Fifth Avenue branch, where I got them this afternoon.”

The judge, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney bent over the papers Ellery had laid on the desk.

Five minutes later, the judge and the prosecutor resumed their seats in silence, and in silence Darrell Irons went back to his window.

Ellery waited.

He was painfully conscious that the jury was waiting, too, beyond the judge’s door.

And Dirk...

“There are some features of this case I still don’t comprehend,” murmured Judge Levy at last. “I understand how Lawrence could talk Harrison into collaborating on a blackmail plot, but what reason did he give Harrison for simultaneously making it look like an adultery case? Lawrence could scarcely tell Harrison that the adultery was necessary so that he, Lawrence, could murder his wife — and Harrison! — and get off on the plea of the unwritten law. Yet he must have given Harrison some reason that Harrison found plausible. What is the answer to that, Mr. Queen?”

Ellery shrugged. “Lawrence’s obvious line was to tell Harrison that his ultimate goal was a divorce. They would milk Martha out of as much as they could through blackmail, and meanwhile Harrison would be laying the groundwork for a future divorce action to be brought by Lawrence on the charge of adultery, with Harrison the co-respondent.

“This completely explains Harrison’s cooperation... the trail he deliberately laid for me at Lawrence’s instructions or even direction — because undoubtedly Lawrence knew from the beginning what Miss Porter and I were about, and used us very cleverly to further his greater scheme, just as he used Harrison. And Harrison made a very good job of it. He nominated as the very first rendezvous a hotel room. He embraced and kissed Martha whenever he knew or suspected I was watching. He brought her to his home and made her go up to his bedroom with him repeatedly, so that his houseman might later be able to testify to the fact — although Harrison hardly foresaw that Tama would testify to the fact at a murder trial in which he himself was the murderee! He willingly planted some of Martha’s personal effects — clothing which of course Dirk Lawrence provided — in one of his bedroom closets, to be found by me and any other party interested in getting evidence for a divorce action. Harrison even went so far as to tell me, in so many words, that he was sleeping with Martha Lawrence. It was a lie, of course, since he could only have been an object of horror to her, but a lie he quite cheerfully told in laying the groundwork for Lawrence of what Harrison never doubted would be a divorce action... Yes, Van Harrison was Dirk Lawrence’s willing dupe; and the great irony is that after manipulating his puppets with skill and bringing his plot cleverly and successfully up to its climax, Lawrence flubbed it. His aim wavered, and he failed to kill Martha. He’d done it all for nothing.”

The men were silent.

Then Judge Levy said, “I’m still puzzled, Mr. Queen. After all, Mrs. Lawrence did go to a hotel with that man, she did visit his home and repeatedly retire to his bedroom with him, she did suffer him to embrace her in public, and so forth. How did Harrison make Mrs. Lawrence acquiesce to this appearance of an affair? What was the nature of the weapon Lawrence put into Harrison’s hand that compelled Mrs. Lawrence’s obedience to his orders?”

Ellery shrugged. “Dirk Lawrence was the only man Martha ever loved. As often happens to a woman who finds her only love relatively late — she was over thirty when she met and married Lawrence — it was for her the epic passion. Whatever the weapon was, then, it was probably aimed at her love for Lawrence. The weapon must have implicated Lawrence in some very serious way, must have seemed to aim an extreme threat to him.

“The most extreme threat, of course, would have been a threat against Lawrence’s life. Suppose Martha thought that by playing Harrison’s game she was saving her beloved’s life?”

“A crime he’d committed!” said the judge.

“The extreme crime,” nodded Ellery. “Why not? Murder. But not necessarily a murder he had committed, Your Honor. All that was required was for Martha to believe he had committed a murder. This man is capable of anything, even of concocting a phony murder rap against himself! — an easily exposed phony, of course, so that his safety couldn’t be threatened by, say, Harrison’s suddenly turning against him; but a phony convincing enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the woman who loved him.

“I think Lawrence gave Harrison some false document or other, prepared by himself, which seemed to prove that Lawrence had murdered someone, and I think Harrison showed this document to Martha and told her that unless she paid him blackmail he would turn it over to the police and send her precious husband to the chair. Something Martha once told me and Miss Porter bolsters this theory. Not long before they met, while Lawrence worked for a publishing house, he became intimate with a girl who was also employed there. The girl, Martha told us, committed suicide.

“Lawrence might well have adapted this incident from his past to the needs of his plan. He might have manufactured evidence to indicate, not that the girl committed suicide, but that to get rid of her he had murdered her.

“And Martha — poor Martha — didn’t dare let on even to Lawrence... especially to Lawrence!... what she was mixed up in, for fear of some ‘reckless’ action on his part which might bring the whole thing out in the open and seal his fate. And, very likely, the clever Mr. Lawrence — whose ability to concoct fictional murder plots is now brought into revealing focus — undoubtedly got that document back after it had served its vicious purpose. He’d hardly have permitted Harrison to hold on to it, to be found in Harrison’s effects after the shooting. So unless Lawrence confesses this part of it, or Martha survives to tell her story, the exact nature of the blackmail weapon Lawrence manufactured for Harrison’s use may never be established.”

“But what reason did Harrison give Mrs. Lawrence,” asked the judge, “for these adulterous-looking assignations? It seems to me she’d have suspected a frame-up from Harrison’s conduct.”

“I doubt it. Harrison had the best blind in the world for his behavior. He was known as a great lover. It would not have seemed so strange to Martha that, in addition to making her pay him blackmail, Harrison should also try to make time with her. She was probably too busy fighting him off to probe too deeply into his real motive. It would not surprise me, in fact, if Harrison developed a genuine interest in the chase; the situation would have appealed to his cynical make-up. Or, for that matter, if Dirk Lawrence knew it.”

And Ellery stopped thoughtfully.

And then he said, “And I think, Your Honor, that’s all of it.”

Darrell Irons turned from the window.

“Judge Levy.” he said, “I wish it explicitly understood that I agreed to defend this case in good faith and because I believed in the validity of my client’s injury. I don’t any longer hold to that belief. I withdraw from the defense.”

And at a later time the members of another jury filed back into the courtroom from the jury room, and they took their seats, and a man at a table gripped the arms of his chair and looked from face to face in the jury box as if he were trying to discover a well-kept secret; and another judge nodded to the clerk of the court; and the courtroom was still.

And the clerk of the court turned to face the jury box, and he said in a clear voice: “Will the foreman of the jury please rise?”

And a man in the first seat of the first row of the jury box rose.

And the clerk of the court said: “Has the jury arrived at a verdict?”

And the foreman of the jury replied: “We have.”

And the clerk asked: “How does the jury find?”

And the foreman of the jury turned to look Dirk Lawrence full in the face, and he said with considerable distinctness: “We find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.”

And in a little room adjoining the courtroom a pale woman rose and said with a sigh to the man and the girl beside her, “Please take me home.”