The Siamese Twin Mystery

“I felt as if I was going crazy. Just plain crazy. I sat there and they stood over me and nobody said anything and all the while that damned bloody shirt lay there with the light on it and I could see his face even though he was a stiff in the Morgue. So I came through. I couldn’t stand it. I felt as if I was going crazy. I confessed.”

— A. F.’s Statement to the Press While Awaiting Execution at Sing Sing Prison, November 21, 19—

Chapter XV The Ring

How long Ellery Stood there he never knew. His brain was racing madly, but his muscles refused to respond and his heart had turned to granite in his breast.

It was so much like the nightmare, he thought, a continuation of the horrid dream he had been having. Perhaps he was still dreaming... After the first lightning scrutiny of the man on the bed his head had wrenched about and he had fastened his gaze upon the supine figure of his father. Dead... His father was dead. His brain reeled before the enormity of the fact. His father was dead. The shrewd gray eyes would never twinkle again. Those thin nostrils would never more flare in anger. That old throat would never mutter and growl at petty annoyances, nor chuckle with sly humor. Those tireless little legs... His father was dead.

Then he experienced a vast impersonal surprise. Something wet was trickling down his cheeks. He was crying! Anger at himself made him shake his head violently, and suddenly he felt life and hope and strength flood warmly back into his blood. His muscles relaxed. But this time only to tense again for a spring forward.

He flung himself on his knees beside the Inspector and tore at the old man’s collar. There was a waxy paleness on his father’s face and he was breathing stertorously. Breathing! Then he was alive!

He shook the thin, small body with glad insistent hands, crying: “Dad, wake up! Dad, it’s El!” and smiling and panting and weeping like a demented man. But the Inspector’s gray, birdlike little head only wabbled a little and his eyes remained closed.

Panic-stricken again, Ellery slapped the old man’s cheeks, pinched his arm, pounded and pummeled him... And then he stopped, sniffing and raising his head. The shock had dulled his physical faculties. He realized acutely now what subconsciously he had known from his first step into the room. There was a cloying odor in the place. Yes, now that he bent closer to his father’s lips, it was stronger... The Inspector had been chloroformed.

Chloroformed! Then he had been taken off his guard, a murderer had beaten down his defenses and — committed murder again.

With the thought came calmness and a dogged resolve. He saw with bitter clarity where he had gone wrong, how essentially blind he had been. Led blandly along by his own self-assurance, he now realized that the trail, far from ending, had merely come to a bend, with a long misty prospect beyond. But this time, he told himself with gritted teeth, it would be different. The murderer’s hand had been forced. This had been not a crime of will or whim but of necessity. It had drawn the criminal against his will into the open. The corpse on the bed, what he had quickly seen in that first second’s flash...

He stooped, lifted the light figure of his father in his arms, and carried him to the armchair. Depositing him gently there, Ellery opened the old man’s shirt and shifted his body into a comfortable position. He felt beneath the shirt and nodded at the steady pound of the old man’s heart against his palm. The Inspector would be all right — just a matter of sleeping it off.

Ellery rose and went to the bed, eyes narrowed. What was to be seen he meant to see at once, before anyone else should come upon the scene.

The dead man was an unsavory sight. His chin and breast were covered with a thick greenish-brown semi-liquid, evil smelling and nauseating. Ellery’s eyes strayed to the vial on the floor and he went over and picked it up carefully. A few drops of a whitish liquid remained at the bottom. He sniffed the mouth of the vial and then with desperate decision tipped it so that a drop fell on his finger. Instantly he wiped this off and touched his tongue to the spot where the drop had fallen. He was rewarded with a quick fire on his tongue and a disagreeable sour taste. His finger tingled. A little sick, he spat into his handkerchief. The stuff was poison, undoubtedly.

He placed the vial on the night table and dropped to his knees beside the hanging head of the dead man. A swift glance into the open drawers of the table and the floor about the dead man’s right hand had told him the incredible story. The drawer was cluttered with much the same assortment of games that occupied Ellery’s own night table drawer, but the customary deck of cards was gone. They now lay scattered on the floor beside the bed.

And the object that Mark Xavier’s dead hand clutched so tightly was one of them.

Ellery removed it from the rigid fingers with difficulty. He shook his head at what he saw. He had been wrong. It was not a card; it was half a card. His glance went to the floor and he soon picked out the other half lying on top of the rest of the strewn pasteboards.

That Mark Xavier should have torn a card in two was not remarkable, he reflected quickly, considering the fact that his dead brother had shortly before set the precedent. Nor was it remarkable that the card Xavier tore was not a six of spades; for that bubble, he thought, had been forever pricked.

What did pique him was that the card was a knave of diamonds.

Now why, he said fretfully to himself, a knave of diamonds? Of all the fifty-two cards in the deck?

The fact that the torn half was in Xavier’s right hand had no helpful significance. It was where it should have been. Left-handed, the poisoned lawyer in his last moments of consciousness had reached out to the table, pulled open the drawer, fumbled until he found the deck, opened it, picked out the knave of diamonds, dropped the rest of the deck on the floor, held the card in both hands, torn it with the left, thrown away one half with the left, and died with the other half clutched in his right hand.

Ellery rooted about among the fallen pasteboards. The six of spades was there, an innocent member of the ensemble.

He rose, frowning, and picked up the vial again. Holding it close to his mouth by the lip, he breathed hard upon the glass, turning the vial around as he did so to cover the surface with his condensed breath. No marks of fingerprints appeared. The murderer, as before, had been careful.

He set the vial down on the table and went out of the room.

The corridor was empty as before, and all the doors shut.

Ellery strode down the length of the hall to the last door on his right, listened for a moment with his ear close to the panels, heard nothing, and went in. The room was dark. He heard now a man’s soft breathing across the room.

He groped for the bed, found it, felt about, and then shook the sleeper’s arm gently. The arm stiffened and he felt the man’s body jerk with alarm.

“It’s all right, Dr Holmes,” said Ellery softly. “It’s Queen.”

“Oh!” the young physician yawned with relief. “Gave me something of a turn.” He switched on the lamp on the table beside his bed. Then, when he caught sight of Ellery’s expression, his jaw dropped. “Wh-what’s the matter?” he gasped. “What’s happened? Has Xavier—?”

“Please come at once, Doctor. There’s work for you.”

“But... who—?” began the Englishman vaguely, his blue eyes liquid with alarm. Then he jumped out of bed, draped a dressing gown about his shoulders, slipped his feet into carpet slippers, and followed Ellery without another word.

Ellery reached the door of Xavier’s bedroom and stood back. He motioned Holmes to precede him. Holmes stopped short on the threshold, staring.

“Oh, good God,” he said.

“Not so very good to Xavier,” murmured Ellery. “Our cunning little playfellow with the homicidal tendencies has been at work again, you see. I wonder how dad — Let’s get inside, Doctor, before anyone hears us. I most particularly want your opinion in private.”

Dr. Holmes stumbled across the sill and Ellery followed, shutting the door quietly behind him.

“Tell me what he died of, and when.”

For the first time Dr. Holmes saw the still figure of the Inspector outstretched on the chair. His eyes widened with horror. “But, great heavens, man, your father! Did he — was he—?”

“Chloroform,” said Ellery briefly. “I want you to bring him around as soon as you can.”

“Well, then, what are you standing there for?” shouted the young man, his eyes blazing. “Get busy, can’t you? To hell with Xavier! Open those windows wide — wide as you can get them!”

Ellery blinked and then sprang to obey. Dr. Holmes bent over the Inspector, listened to his heart, pulled up his eyelids, nodded, and bounded off to the adjoining lavatory. He returned in a moment with several towels soaked in cold water.

“Get him as close to the windows as you can,” he said more calmly. “Fresh air is imperative — fresh as you can get it in this ghoulish place,” he muttered aside. “Quickly, man!” They picked the chair up between them and carried it close to the open windows. The physician bared the Inspector’s chest and slapped the sopping towels on the smooth flesh. Another he applied to the relaxed face, like a barber’s hot towel — curled all about the face but leaving the nostrils exposed.

“He seemed all right,” said Ellery anxiously. “Don’t tell me—”

“No, no, there’s nothing wrong with him. How old is he?”

“Not quite sixty.”

“Good health?”

“Hard as nails.”

“Then this won’t hurt him. If we’re to get him out of it we’ve got to adopt heroic measures. Get a couple of those pillows from the bed.”

Ellery brought the pillows, filched from the dead man, and stood waiting rather helplessly. “What now?”

Dr. Holmes glanced briefly at the bed. “Can’t put him there... Get hold of his legs. We’ll stretch him across the arms of the chair. Head lower than the rest of the body.”

They raised the old man’s body easily and turned him around. Dr. Holmes stuffed the big pillows under the Inspector’s back. The old man’s head hung over one arm.

“Legs as high as you can get them.”

Ellery circled the chair and obeyed.

“Firmly now.” The physician bent over the hanging head and grasped the old man’s jaws. He squeezed until the mouth opened, and then he reached in and pulled out the Inspector’s tongue. “There! That’s better. I could shoot him full of adrenalin, or strychnine, or some of that new stuff, alpha-lobeline, but I don’t think it will be necessary. I think he’ll come round with just a little assistance; he’s been under the influence for some time. Steady! I’m going to try artificial respiration. With an oxygen tank... Well, I haven’t any handy, so — Steady.”

He bent over the Inspector’s torso and set to work. Ellery watched stormily.

“How long will it take?”

“Depends upon how much he’s inhaled. Ah, that’s good! It won’t be long now, Queen.”

In five minutes a strangled moan came from the old man’s throat. Dr. Holmes worked steadily on. A moment later he stopped and pulled away the face towel. The Inspector’s eyes were opening dazedly, and he was licking his lips as if his mouth were dry.

“All right now,” said Dr. Holmes almost cheerfully, standing up. “He’s out of it. Well, Inspector, how do you feel?”

The first word the Inspector said was: “Lousy.”

Three minutes later he was sitting in the armchair, face buried in his hands. Aside from a mild nausea, he felt no ill effects.

“What gets me,” he muttered brokenly “is how I was tricked. That makes me responsible for that man’s death on two counts. Lord... Fell for the oldest gag. I stuck my head out, neglecting to douse the light. Naturally I was a perfect target for anyone skulking out in the dark hall. Whoever it was — was waiting for me. Knew that when I came out it could only be because Xavier was conscious and I was going for you, Doctor. So he — or she — or it, or whoever it was pressed a wet cloth over my nose and mouth and held one arm over my throat. Soaked in chloroform, I was so taken off my guard I didn’t even have a chance to make a fight of it. I didn’t go off right away but I got weak — dizzy — felt the gun drop, and then...”

“No sense in looking for the saturated cloth,” said Ellery quietly. “Whoever used it has disposed of it down a drain by this time, I suppose. Is there chloroform in the laboratory, Doctor?”

“Naturally. Lucky you’ve been eating so lightly today, Inspector. On a full stomach—” The young man shook his head and turned to the bed.

The Queens watched without speaking. In the old man’s eyes there was a sick horror. Ellery gripped his shoulder comfortingly.

“Hmm,” murmured Dr. Holmes, eying the mess on the dead man’s chin and the contorted features. “Poison, eh?” He leaned over and sniffed at the partly open mouth. “Yes, indeed.” He looked around, spied the vial on the table, and picked it up.

“I tasted it,” said Ellery wearily. “It’s sour, and it burned my tongue.”

“Good lord!” cried Holmes. “I hope you didn’t take much of it. Why, this is a deadly corrosive poison. Oxalic acid dissolved in water!”

“I was careful. I suppose that comes from the laboratory, too?”

Dr. Holmes grunted assent and turned back to the corpse again. When he straightened up his eyes were thoughtful. “He’s been dead about an hour. Mouth forced open and the oxalic poured down his throat. You can see the marks on his cheeks and jaw where the fingers gripped him. Poor chap! He died in horrible pain.”

“He could have removed that deck of cards from the drawer, I suppose, and torn one of them in two after he was poisoned and his poisoner left?”

“Yes. As for the murderer’s certainty that death would follow, I might point out that oxalic’s always fatal in one hour, sometimes a good deal less. His generally debilitated condition didn’t help.” Dr. Holmes eyed the cards on the floor curiously. “Another—?”

“Another.”

The Inspector rose and stumbled to the bed.

Ellery let himself out of the room and stood still in the corridor outside, taking stock. Someone in this house was lying on a bed of thorns, writhing under the necessity for waiting, waiting. He wondered if he had the temerity to break into each room without noise and flash a strong light suddenly upon the face of each sleeper. But the women... He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

The door opposite the spot where he stood led, he knew, to Ann Forrest’s room. He marveled silently at the apparent fact that the young woman had heard nothing of the attack upon the Inspector, the murderer’s movements and departure, and all the swishing events that had ensued. He hesitated, then crossed quickly and pressed his right ear against the door. He could hear nothing. So he gripped the knob slowly and slowly turned it until it would turn no more. Then he pushed. To his astonishment, the door held. Miss Forrest had locked herself in!

“Now why the devil did she do that?” he thought as he tiptoed down the corridor toward the next door. “Obviously, for protection. From what? The invisible hand of death?” He chuckled to himself. “How dat ol’ debil Night breeds drama! Did she have a presentiment? Did she lock the door from reasons of general caution? Tsk! I haven’t paid half enough attention to Miss Forrest.”

The room next to the young woman’s was occupied by the Carreau twins. They, at least, were coerced by no unhealthy fears. The door gave readily to his touch and he stole in and listened. Their rhythmic breathing was reassuring. He stole out again and crossed the hall.

Directly opposite the door to the twins’ room was, the door to the room to which Mrs. Wheary had assigned the gigantic fat gentleman named Smith. Ellery did not hesitate. He went in noiselessly, crept about until his fingers found the light switch on the wall near the door, riveted his eyes upon the spot in the darkness from which came an elephantine snorting, and then snapped the switch. The room sprang into being, revealing the mountainous figure of Smith sprawled on the bed, pajama coat unbuttoned and rolls of pink unhealthy-looking flesh rising and falling with the tempestuous tide of his breathing.

The man’s eyes opened instantly, frightened and yet wary. He flung up his arm more quickly than Ellery would have believed possible in a man of his ponderous size, as if he half expected a blow, a shot, something menacing and lethal.

“It’s Queen,” murmured Ellery, and the big fat arm dropped. Smith’s froggy eyes blinked in the light. “Just an amiable visit, my friend. Been sleeping soundly?”

“Huh?” The man stared stupidly.

“Come, come, rub the sleep out of your eyes and rise from the — ah — groaning pallet of your dreams.” Ellery took in the details of the room; he had never been inside it before. No, there was only one other door, open, as in Xavier’s room; and that led, as he could see, to the usual lavatory.

“What’s the big idea?” croaked Smith, sitting up. “What’s happened?”

“Another comrade has gone to join his Maker,” replied Ellery gravely. “The slaughter, you see, has become epidemic.”

The huge jaw dropped. “S-somebody else been m-m-mur—”

“Friend Xavier.” Ellery put his hand on the doorknob. “Get into a dressing gown and go next door. You’ll find the Inspector and Dr. Holmes there. See you later.”

He ducked out quickly, leaving the fat man to gape after him with tardily dawning horror.

Ellery recrossed the hall, ignoring the door next to Smith’s. That led, he knew, to an unoccupied room. He tried the door of Mrs. Carreau’s chamber. It gave way and, after a moment of indecision, he shrugged and stepped inside.

Immediately he knew he had made a mistake. No rhythmic breathing here; no breathing at all. Odd! Was it possible the gentlewoman from Washington was absent from her bed at three in the morning? But the realization of error flashed over him even as his thoughts eddied about the puzzle of her absence. She was not absent. She was sitting there, sitting at the foot of a chaise longue, holding her breath, her eyes glowing in the faintest of moonlight coming through the windows off the balcony.

His foot kicked against a piece of furniture, and she screamed... a shrill scream that raised the hair at the base of his scalp and sent prickles of ice down his spine.

“Don’t!” he whispered, stepping forward. “Mrs. Carreau! It’s Ellery Queen. For God’s sake, stop that noise.”

She had leaped from the chaise longue. When he found the switch and turned it on, he saw her crouched with her back to the farthest wall, eyes lambent with terror, hands clutching the folds of her negligee to her.

Sanity returned to her eyes. She drew the negligee more closely about her slim figure. “What are you doing in my bedroom, Mr. Queen?” she demanded.

Ellery blushed. “Ah — a very proper question. Can’t say I blame you for screaming... By the way, what are you doing up at this hour of the morning?”

She compressed her lips. “I don’t see, Mr. Queen... It was so stifling, and I couldn’t sleep. But you still haven’t—”

Ellery, feeling like a fool, frowned and turned to the door. “There! I hear the others coming to your rescue. The point is, Mrs. Carreau, I came to tell you—”

“What’s happened? Who screamed?” snapped the Inspector from the doorway. Then he stalked in, glaring from Ellery to Mrs. Carreau. The twins popped their heads in from the communicating door. Dr. Holmes and Miss Forrest, Smith, Mrs. Xavier, Bones, the housekeeper — all in various stages of undress — crowded in the corridor doorway, craning over the Inspector’s shoulder.

Ellery dabbed his damp forehead and grinned weakly. “My fault entirely. I crept into Mrs. Carreau’s room — with the most innocent intentions in the world, I assure you! — and very properly she took fright and let out that appalling feminine blast. I daresay she thought I was attempting to play lusty Tarquinius to her Lucretia.”

The hostile glances directed at him made Ellery blush again, this time in anger.

“Mr. Queen,” said Mrs. Xavier frigidly, “I must say this is the strangest conduct from a supposed gentleman!”

“Now, look here, all of you!” cried Ellery, exasperated. “You simply don’t understand. Good lord! I—”

Miss Forrest said quickly: “Of course. Let’s not be idiotic, Marie... You’re both dressed, both you and the Inspector, Mr. Queen. What — what’s the matter?”

“Time,” growled the Inspector. “As long as you’re all awake we might’s well tell you. And let’s not, as Miss Forrest says, cover up all the important facts with suspicions of my son’s morals. He’s foolish sometimes, but not that foolish. Mr. Queen was coming to tell you, Mrs. Carreau — when you screamed — that there’s been another attack.”

“Attack!”

“That’s the ticket”

“A... a murder?”

“Well, he’s mighty dead.”

Their heads moved slowly to changing inquisitorial positions, searching one another’s faces, tallying...

“Mark,” said Mrs. Xavier thickly.

“Yes, Mark.” The Inspector stared grimly about. “He was poisoned and put out of the way before he could tell what he started out to tell earlier this evening. I won’t mention the little matter of my own part in the affair, although you may be interested to learn that the same scoundrel gave me a dose of chloroform. Yes, Xavier’s gone.”

“Mark’s dead,” repeated Mrs. Xavier in the same thick dull tones, and suddenly burying her face in her hands she began to sob.

Mrs. Carreau, pale and stiff, stalked to the communicating door and put her arms about the shoulders of her sons.

There was no sleep for any of them that night. They all seemed reluctant to return to their bedrooms; and they remained huddled together with the gregarious instinct of frightened animals, starting at every night sound.

With rather savage satisfaction Ellery insisted upon escorting them, one by one, into the dead man’s bedroom for a view of the body. He watched them very closely. But if anyone was acting he could not detect the deception. They were merely a group of badly scared people. Mrs. Wheary fainted during her part of the performance and had to be revived with cold water and smelling salts. The twins, bewildered and very small boys now, were excused from participation in the test.

By the time it was over and the dead lawyer had been removed to share the refrigerator in the laboratory with his brother, an angry dawn was coming up.

The Queens stood in the death room and looked gloomily at the tumbled empty bed.

“Well, son,” said the Inspector with a sigh, “I guess we may as well give up. It’s too much for me.”

“It’s because we’re blind!’ cried Ellery, making a fist. “The evidence is all here. Xavier’s clue... Oh, hell, it just needs thinking over. And my head is spinning.”

“One thing,” said the old gentleman grumpily, “I s’pose we ought to be thankful for. He’s the last. He wasn’t mixed up in the direct motive behind his brother’s kill, I’m sure. He was done in to keep him from spilling who the murderer is. Now how the deuce did he know?”

Ellery started out of a brown study. “Yes, I suppose that’s important. How he knew... By the way, did you ever stop to speculate why Xavier framed his sister-in-law in the first place?”

“So much has happened—”

“It’s very simple. With John Xavier dead, Mrs. Xavier inherited. But Mrs. Xavier is the last of her line. No children. If anything happened to her, who’d get the estate?”

“Xavier!” exclaimed the Inspector, staring.

“Exactly. His frame-up was a clever means of getting her out of his way to a sizable fortune without soiling his own hands with blood.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” The Inspector shook his head. “And I thought—”

“What did you think?”

“That there was something between those two.” He frowned. “I couldn’t see anyone but Mark Xavier as the reason why Mrs. Xavier should be willing to take the blame for a crime she knew she didn’t commit. If she thought he did it, and she was desperately in love with him... But that doesn’t wash with his framing her.”

“Such things have happened,” said Ellery dryly. “I shouldn’t discount it merely because it sounds wrong. Passionate women in love with their brother-in-law can generally be counted upon to do unorthodox things. That female’s half cracked, anyway. But I’m not worried about that.” He went to the night table and picked up the torn half of the diamond knave which Xavier had held in his dead hand. “It’s this little jigger that disturbs me. I can understand why Xavier should have thought of leaving a card clue, even though there are pencil and paper in the same drawer from which he took the deck...”

“There are?”

“Certainly.” Ellery waved a weary hand. “But he had a precedent. With his trained legal mind — he was sharp, don’t doubt that — he saw his opportunity. You see, the name of the murderer was on his lips just before he lost consciousness. When he came to, it was still there, waiting. He remembered the cards. His mind was clear. Then the murderer came. Helpless, he was forced to swallow the oxalic acid from the vial. The cards were on his mind... Oh, it’s not the strangest thing that’s happened.”

“You don’t like it?” said the Inspector slowly.

“Eh? Nonsense!”

Ellery went to one of the windows and looked out upon the crimsoning world. The Inspector joined him in silence, putting his right hand on the window and resting his weight against it in a tired, dejected attitude.

“Fire’s a damned sight worse,” he muttered. “Cripes, my head’s like a pumpkin! It’s always at the back of my mind. Feel that blast of heat?... And then there’s the crime — the crimes. What the devil did Xavier mean by that jack of diamonds?”

Ellery half turned away from the window, his shoulders sagging. Then he stiffened and his eyes went wide. He was glaring at the Inspector’s hand on the window.

“What’s the matter now?” said the Inspector peevishly, glancing at his hand. Then he too stiffened, and for a moment both of them stared at his small delicate blue-veined hand with its loose and wrinkled skin quite as if a finger were missing.

“My ring!” gasped the Inspector. “It’s gone!”

Chapter XVI The Diamond Knave

“Now that,” said Ellery slowly, “is remarkable. When did you lose it?” Instinctively he glanced at his own hand, on which gleamed a very odd and beautiful ring, a medieval trinket which he had picked up not long before in Firenze for a few lire.

“Lose it!” The Inspector threw up his hands. “I didn’t lose it, El. I had it only last night, this morning. Why, I remember seeing it on my fourth finger about twelve-thirty, when I looked at my watch.”

“Come to think of it,” scowled Ellery, “I recall seeing it on your finger before I left you to take a nap last night, and I didn’t see it when I found you on the floor at two.” His lips tightened. “By thunder, it’s been stolen!”

“Now there,” said the Inspector sarcastically, “is a deduction. Sure it’s been stolen. Stolen by that thieving scoundrel who put me to sleep and knocked Xavier off!”

“Undoubtedly. Hold those straining horses of yours.” Ellery was pacing up and down now with furious strides. “I’m more fascinated by the theft of your ring than by anything that’s happened so far. How risky! And all for what? For a ten-dollar plain gold wedding band of the old-fashioned sinker variety that wouldn’t fetch a dollar Mex at a pawnshop!”

“Well,” said the Inspector shortly, “it’s gone. And, by God, I’ll have the eyeteeth of the so-and-so who stole it. It belonged to your mother, my son, and I wouldn’t have taken a thousand dollars for it.” He started for the door.

“Here!” cried Ellery, catching his arm. “Where are you going?”

“To search every damn one of ’em down to their skins!”

“Nonsense, dad. Look here,” said Ellery eagerly. “Don’t spoil everything. I tell you that ring is a — is the case! I don’t know why, but when I recall the previous thefts of valueless rings...”

“Well?” said the Inspector with drawn brows.

“It fits somehow. I know it does. But give me time. You won’t accomplish anything by searching people and places. The thief certainly isn’t stupid enough to have kept it on his person, and even if you turn it up in the house somewhere you won’t know who hid it. Let it ride, please. For a while, anyway.”

“Oh, very well. But I’m not forgetting it. And before we get out of this place — if we ever do — I’ll have it or know the reason why.” Had he been able to look into the near future he would not have spoken so confidently.

With the inexorable advance of the fire a deadly stillness settled down upon Arrow Head and its little band of helpless tenants. They were physically and mentally exhausted, and spiritually demoralized. Not even the menace of the bloodstained invisible creature in their midst could overshadow the greater menace that was creeping upon them from the air and the woods. There was no longer any attempt at dissimulation. The women were frankly hysterical and the men pale and worried. With the advance of day the heat became intolerable. The air was filled with drifting ashes which smudged their skins and clothes and made breathing a pain. There was no haven to which they could flee. The interior of the house was a shade less hot than the open summit, but here there was no breeze and the stillest of air. Yet few of them — the women especially — dared go alone to seek the temporary relief of the showers in their personal lavatories. They were afraid to be alone — afraid of one another, of the silence, of the fire.

Amiable conversations had died entirely. Driven to the group by their individual fears, nevertheless they sat and glared at one another with the most naked suspicion. Their nerves were stripped raw. The Inspector wrangled with Smith; Miss Forrest snapped at Dr. Holmes, who lapsed into the most stubborn of silences; Mrs. Xavier spoke sharply to the Carreau twins, who were haplessly wandering about; Mrs. Carreau flew to their defense; the two women had bitter words... It was horrible and nightmarish. With the heavy smoke eddying about them ceaselessly now, they might have been creatures in torment consigned to an eternal hell by a particularly cynical Satan.

There was no longer any flour. They ate together, bitterly and without appetite, at the communal table in the dining room, taking what nourishment they could from the eternal tinned fish. From time to time their eyes went to the Queens without hope. They all seemed to recognize, in their apathy, that if salvation was to come it would come at the hands of father and son. But the Queens ate stolidly, saying nothing for the excellent reason that there was nothing to say.

After luncheon they did not seem to know what to do. Magazines were picked up and riffled and glanced through with eyes that did not see; people wandered about; no one said anything at all. By reason of some curious development they seemed to be taking the murder of Mark Xavier more tragically than the murder of the master of the house. The tall lawyer had been a definite personality; reticent, dour, frowning, his presence had always charged the atmosphere of a room with positive electricity; and now that he was no longer among them they felt his absence so keenly that the silence was a pain.

And all the while they coughed, and their eyes smarted, and they sweltered in their clothes.

The Inspector could stand it no longer. “Now look here!” he shouted suddenly, startling them into rigidity. “This can’t keep on. We’ll all go batty. Why don’t you get along upstairs and duck under showers, or play tiddledywinks or something?” He waved his arms, red of face. “Why don’t you stop this milling about like a herd of cows with their tongues torn out? Go on, all of you! Git!”

Dr. Holmes sucked a white knuckle. “The ladies are afraid, Inspector.”

“Afraid! Afraid of what?”

“Well, of being alone.”

“Hmm. There’s somebody here who isn’t afraid of the devil out of hell.” Then the old gentleman softened. “Well, that’s understandable, I suppose. If you want to,” and his voice grew cynical again, “we’ll escort you all to your rooms, one by one.”

“Oh, don’t jest, Inspector,” said Mrs. Carreau wearily. “It — it’s just that it gets on one’s nerves.”

“Well, I think the Inspector’s perfectly right,” exclaimed Miss Forrest, dropping a six-month-old copy of Vanity Fair on the floor with a thud. “I’m going upstairs and drown myself in mountain water and I defy any — any two murdering rascals to stop me!”

“That’s the spirit,” said the Inspector with a shrewd glance at her. “And if you’ll all get yourselves into the same frame of mind, we’ll be a lot better off. This is the twentieth century, and it’s daytime, and you’ve all got eyes and ears, so what the deuce are you afraid of? Shoo, the lot of you!”

And so, after a while, the Queens were left alone.

They drifted out upon the terrace, shoulder to shoulder, a pair of sorely harassed and miserable men. The sun was high and it broiled the almost volcanic rocks outside until they shimmered in the heat. The vista was comfortless and devastating.

“Might’s well stew here as inside,” grunted the Inspector, and he sank into a chair. His face was streaming grime.

Ellery dropped beside him, groaning.

They sat there for a long time. The house inside was oppressively quiet. Ellery’s eyes had closed and his hands were loosely clasped on his chest as he lay slumped on his spine. They suffered the heat to fry their aching bones without vocal protest, sitting as still as they could.

The sun began to droop toward the west. It sank lower and lower and the two men sat still. The Inspector had drifted into a troubled doze; he sighed in his sleep convulsively from time to time.

Ellery’s eyes were closed, too, but he was not asleep. His brain had never been more alert. The problem... He had already gone over it in his mind a dozen times, probing for loopholes, striving to recall unimportant details, or details that might be important but did not seem to be. One never knew. There was something about the first murder, a matter of scientific fact, that kept bobbing to the surface of his thoughts. But each time he strove to catch and fix it, it slipped away only to submerge again. And then there was that knave of diamonds...

He sat up as if he had been shot, tingling in every fiber. The Inspector’s eyes flew open.

“What’s the matter?” he mumbled sleepily.

Ellery sprang from the chair and then stood still, listening. “I thought I heard...”

Alarmed, the old man rose. “Heard what?”

“In the living room.” Ellery started across the terrace toward the French windows on the other side.

There was a scuffling sound from the direction of the living room and the two men halted, tensed. Out of one of the French windows stepped Mrs. Wheary, red as a lobster, her hair wet and disheveled, a dust-cloth in her hand. She was breathing heavily.

She halted on catching sight of the two men and beckoned mysteriously. “Inspector Queen, Mr. Queen, sir. Would you mind coming—? There’s something very queer...”

They hurried to the nearest window and peered inside. But the room was empty.

“What’s queer?” said Ellery sharply.

The housekeeper pressed a grimy hand to her bosom. “I... I heard someone doing something, sir...”

“Come, come,” said the Inspector impatiently. “What’s up, Mrs. Wheary?”

“Well, sir,” she whispered, “not having anything to do, I mean cooking and such, and feeling a... a little nervous, I decided to try and straighten things up a bit on the ground floor. We’ve been that upset, you know, sir, what with... with...”

“Yes, yes?”

“Anyway, everything being so cindery and all, I thought I’d run over the furniture with a cloth and try to get things a little clean again.” She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the empty room. “I started in the dining room and was just about half through when I heard a funny sound from — from the living room here.”

“Sound?” Ellery frowned. “We didn’t hear anything.”

“It wasn’t very loud, sir. Just a sort of pecking — I can’t describe it. Anyway, I thought maybe someone might have come back to the living room for a magazine or something, you see, and was going to keep on when I thought: ‘Perhaps it’s — something else.’ So I tiptoed to the door and started to open it as softly as I could—”

“That was very brave, Mrs. Wheary.”

She blushed. “I guess I must have made some noise with the door, sir, because when I’d opened it a bit and peeped in... there wasn’t anything, you see. The noise must have scared — whoever — it was away, and he... she... oh, sir, I’m all mixed up!”

“You mean whoever it was heard you coming and beat it back through the hall door,” snapped the Inspector. “Well, is that all?”

“No, sir. I went in,” faltered Mrs. Wheary, “and almost the first thing I saw... I’ll show you.”

She stepped heavily back into the living room and the Queens followed with drawn brows.

She led them across the big room in the direction of the fireplace. Her fat forefingers shot up and pointed accusingly at the walnut-stained metal door of the wall cabinet in which the Inspector had placed for safekeeping the pack of playing cards found on Dr. Xavier’s desk the morning of the first murder.

There were scratches on the stout lock, and on the floor directly beneath lay a thin-edged fire tool from the fireplace.

“Someone’s been at the cabinet,” muttered the Inspector. “Well, I’ll be double-damned.”

He strode forward and examined the marks on the door with a professional eye. Ellery picked up the fire tool, regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, and then tossed it aside.

“Hunh,” grunted the Inspector. “Just like trying to pick the lock of a bank vault with a matchstick. But why the devil did he do it? There’s nothing in here but that pack of cards.”

“Very curious,” murmured Ellery. “Very curious. I suggest you open our little cache, dad, and see what’s to be seen.”

Mrs. Wheary stared at them with open mouth. “Do you think—” she began with an inquisitive gleam in her eyes.

“What we think, Mrs. Wheary, we think,” said the Inspector severely. “You did a good job in keeping your eyes and ears open, but now you’ve got to do an even better job keeping your mouth shut. D’ye understand?”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

“That’s all, then. Go back to your dusting.”

“Yes, sir.” Rather reluctantly she went away, closing the door of the dining room behind her.

“Now let’s see,” growled the old gentleman, whipping out his key wallet. He found the key to the cabinet and opened the door.

Ellery started. “I see you’ve still got that key.”

“Sure I’ve still got the key.” The Inspector stared at him.

“And that’s another very curious item. By the way, I suppose this is the only key to the cabinet?”

“Don’t worry, I checked up on that the other day.”

“I’m not worrying. Well, let’s see what’s inside.”

The Inspector pulled the door wide and they peered in. Except for the deck of cards the repository was empty, as before. And the cards lay quite where the Inspector had placed them. It was evident that the cabinet had not been opened since the old man had last turned the key in its lock.

He took out the deck and together they examined it. It was the same deck, beyond a doubt.

“Odd,” muttered Ellery. “I really can’t see why... Lord, is it possible we missed something in looking over the cards originally?”

“There’s one thing sure,” said the Inspector thoughtfully. “We were all together upstairs when I asked about a hiding-place for the cards and Mrs. Wheary told me about this cabinet and the key. She even said it was empty, I think; and it was. So they all knew I was going to put the deck here. Since there’s nothing else in the cabinet—”

“Of course. These cards are evidence. Evidence concerning Dr. Xavier’s murder. It stands to reason that only the murderer would have motive to come after them. There are two things we can derive from this incident, dad, now that I analyze it: it was the murderer who sneaked in here and tried to break into the cabinet, and the reason he did it was that there’s something about this deck which we’ve missed, apparently, and which he wanted to destroy because in some way it’s damaging. Let’s see those blasted things!”

He snatched the deck from his father’s hand and hurried to one of the small round tables. Spreading the cards out, face up, he examined each one with minute care. But there were no clear fingerprints on any of them; what marks there were were unrecognizable smudges. Then he turned them over and scrutinized the backs with as little result.

“Appalling,” he muttered. “There must be something... If it’s not a question of a positive clue, logically it must be a negative—”

“What are you talking about?”

Ellery scowled. “I’m fishing. A clue isn’t always the presence of something. Very often it’s the absence of something. Let’s see.” He shoved the cards together, patted them neatly into a pile, and then to his father’s astonishment began to count them.

“Why, that’s — that’s asinine!” snorted the Inspector.

“No doubt,” murmured Ellery, busy counting. “Forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight—” he stopped and his eyes blazed. “Do you see what I see?” he shouted. “Forty-nine, fifty — and that’s all!”

“That’s all?” echoed the Inspector blankly. “There ought to be fifty-two in a full deck. No, this ought to have fifty-one; the six of spades you took away, the torn one...”

“Yes, yes, there’s one card missing,” said Ellery impatiently. “Well, we’ll soon find out which one it is.” Rapidly he began to separate the cards into suits. When he had four piles, each devoted to a single suit, he took up the pile of clubs. They were complete from deuce to ace, he found at once; and, throwing them aside, examined the hearts. Complete. Spades — complete except for the six, and the two halves of the six reposed in the pocket of one of his suits upstairs. Diamonds...

“Well, well, well,” he said softly, staring down at the cards. “We might have known. Under our eyes all the time and we never thought of the elementary precaution of counting the cards. Provocative, eh?”

The missing card was the knave of diamonds.

Chapter XVII The Knave’s Tale

Ellery dropped the cards, strode to the French windows, drew all the drapes, hurried across the room, closed the corridor door, went to the dining-room door and made sure it was secure, switched on several lamps, and then dropped into a chair near the table.

“Squat and let’s talk this over. I begin to see many things I was blind to.” He stretched his legs and lit a cigarette, peering through the smoke at his father.

The Inspector sat down, crossed his knees, and snapped: “So do I. Thank God there’s a little daylight! Look here. Mark Xavier left the torn half of a jack of diamonds as a clue to his murderer when he himself was attacked and forcibly poisoned. And now we find that a jack of diamonds has been missing since the murder of John Xavier — missing from the deck he was handling at the time he was shot. What’s that tend to show?”

“Precisely the right tack,” said Ellery approvingly. “I should say the inevitable question arises: Is it possible that the jack of diamonds in Dr. Xavier’s deck was also a clue to Dr. Xavier’s murderer?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” retorted the Inspector. “Possible? Why, it’s the only logical answer to the whole business!”

“It would seem so; although,” sighed Ellery, “I’m wary of everything in this grotesque mélange of wickedness. I confess that it accounts perfectly for the murderer’s attempt to steal the deck from the cabinet and keep us from discovering that the knave is missing. If Murderer equals Diamond-Jack in our equation, there’s no question about it.”

“And maybe I’ve got an idea about that,” growled the old gentleman. “It’s just struck me. But let’s mull this jack business through thoroughly first. The whole thing’s shaping up beautifully. Mark Xavier left a jack of diamonds as a clue to his murderer. A jack of diamonds figures — somehow — in the previous murder of his brother because the deck coming from that previous murder has its jack of diamonds missing. Is it possible — I’ll be as Sister-Maryish as you — that the clue of a jack of diamonds was suggested to Mark as he lay dying by something he’d seen when he found his brother’s body?”

“I see,” said Ellery slowly. “You mean that when he popped into the study that night and found Dr. Xavier shot to death, he found a jack of diamonds in the doctor’s hand?”

“Right.”

“Hmm. It does check, circumstantially. At the same time, the fact that he himself left a jack of diamonds in his own encounter with the murderer might merely mean that he saw the murderer’s face and thought of the same card significance as a clue to identity as his brother had.” He shook his head. “No, that’s impossibly coincidental, especially with such an obscurity... You’re right. He left the jack of diamonds because his brother had. It was the same murderer in both cases, of course, and with his knowledge of what his brother had done he merely duplicated the clue. Yes, I think we may say that when he found John Xavier dead he also found a jack of diamonds in John Xavier’s hand. Then he switched the clue, took away the jack — substituted the six of spades from the solitaire game on the desk as a deliberate frame-up of Mrs. Xavier.”

“Now that you’re through making a speech,” grinned the Inspector, in sudden high spirits, “I’ll go on. Why’d he take the jack out of his brother’s hand and put the spade-six there? Well, we know his motive for wanting to get his sister-in-law out of the way—”

“Hold on,” murmured Ellery. “Not so fast. We’ve forgotten something. Two things. One is a confirmation — explaining why he selected a six of spades at all in the frame-up; obviously, if John’s hand already held a card, a card-clue was immediately suggested to his mind. The other is this: in switching the clue from the diamond-knave to the spade-six, why didn’t Xavier simply put the jack back where it had come from — the deck on the desk?”

“Well... It’s true that he did take the damned card away — we didn’t find it, so he must have. Why?”

“The only logical reason must be that even taking it out of his brother’s dead hand and tossing it among the scattered cards on the desk, or slipping it into the deck,” replied Ellery calmly, “would not conceal the fact that it had been used as a clue.”

“Now you’re talking in riddles again. That doesn’t make sense. How on earth could that be?”

Ellery puffed thoughtfully. “We’ve a perfect explanation. In his own case he left a jack of diamonds — torn in half.” The Inspector started. “But doesn’t that fit? He himself found only half a jack, I say, in his brother’s hand! If he’d found a torn jack, obviously he couldn’t leave it on the scene of the crime; its torn condition would immediately have called attention to it, especially since he was leaving a torn six in its place. I maintain that logically he must have found a torn jack in his brother’s hand as the only plausible explanation under the circumstances for his having taken it away. He took it away, I suppose, and destroyed it, feeling fairly certain that no one would think of counting the cards... as no one,” he added, frowning, “would have had not the murderer tried to steal the deck from the cabinet in this room.”

“Well, that’s all very good,” snapped the Inspector, “but let’s get on. I’m not questioning the ways of Providence. That was a break, my son... The point is that — the six of spades having been a frame-up on Mark Xavier’s part on his own confession — the only important thing we have left is this: in both crimes we know that the victim left a half-jack of diamonds as a clue to the murderer. The same clue, of course, means the same murderer. There’s only one queer thing in this business. By taking away the half-jack from the scene of his brother’s murder he was covering up that murderer — shifting the blame from the real murderer to Mrs. Xavier. Then in his own murder he ups and accuses the very one he’d saved from suspicion in the first case! It looks a little screwy somewhere.”

“Not at all. Mark Xavier,” said Ellery dryly, “was scarcely the self-sacrificing or Robin Hood type of scoundrel. He framed Mrs. Xavier purely out of the trite but universal gain-motive. Obviously he couldn’t leave the jack clue around. He wanted that frame-up to take. In other words, he ‘saved’ our knave of diamonds not out of loyalty or affection, but purely for financial reasons. On his own deathbed it was a different story... There’s something else, too. When you accused him of being his brother’s killer, he lost his nerve and was only too willing to blurt out the name of the real murderer — indicating two things: that essentially he had no overweening desire to protect that individual, especially when his own neck was in danger; and secondly that he himself had probably solved the problem of who was meant to be indicated by the jack! And there, incidentally, is the answer to your question about how Xavier knew who his brother’s murderer was. The half-jack of diamonds in his brother’s hand had told him.”

“That all washes,” muttered the Inspector. “And to keep him from spilling the bad news, the murderer bumped him off.” He rose and took a turn about the room. “Yes, it all gets down to that jack of diamonds. If we knew whom John and Mark had in mind when they left the half-jack, we’d have our man. If we knew...”

“We do know.”

“Hey?”

“I’ve been working the old brain cells overtime since last night and they’ve clicked on all twelve.” Ellery sighed. “Yes, if that’s all there is to it the case is solved. Sit down, dad, and let’s go into executive conference. I warn you — it’s the craziest thing you ever heard of. More fantastic than the six of spades. And it’s a solution that still needs considerable scrubbing up. Sit down, sit down!”

The Inspector sat down with celerity.

An hour later, with the black-red night glaring outside, a demoralized company were assembled in the game-room. The Inspector stood at the foyer door and ushered them in, one by one, in a very forbidding silence. They came in wearily and yet cautiously, eying his grim face with the most helpless kind of apprehensive resignation. Finding no consolation there, they sought Ellery’s face; but he was standing by the window looking out at the darkness beyond the terrace.

“Now that we’re all here,” began the Inspector in a tone as grim as his expression, “sit down and take a load off your feet. This is going to be our last get-together about the murders. We’ve been led one hell of a merry chase, I’ll tell you that, and we’re just about fed up on it. The case is solved.”

“Solved!” they gasped.

“Solved?” muttered Dr. Holmes. “You mean you know who—”

“Inspector,” said Mrs. Xavier in a low voice. “You haven’t found — the right one?”

Mrs. Carreau sat very still, and the twins glanced in some excitement at each other. The others drew in their breaths.

“Can’t you understand English?” snapped the Inspector. “I said solved. Go on El. This is your party.”

Their eyes shifted to Ellery’s back. He swung about slowly. “Mrs. Carreau,” he said with abruptness, “you’re French in origin, I believe?”

“I? French?” she repeated, bewildered.

“Yes.”

“Why — of course, Mr. Queen.”

“You know the French language thoroughly?”

She was trembling, but she made a weak attempt to laugh. “But — certainly. I was brought up on irregular verbs and Parisian slang.”

“Hmm.” Ellery came forward and stopped before one of the bridge tables. “Let me point out at once,” he said without inflection, “that what I am about to say constitutes probably the most fantastic reconstruction of a clue in the history of the so-called ‘clever’ crime. It is incredibly subtle. It’s so far removed from the ordinary realm of observation and simple deduction as to partake of something out of Alice in Wonderland. And yet — the facts are here, and we cannot ignore them. Please try to follow me closely.”

This remarkable preamble was received in the deepest silence. There was blank confusion, or so it seemed, on every face.

“You all know,” continued Ellery calmly, “that when we found Mark Xavier’s dead body we also found clutched in his hand — the correct hand, incidentally — a torn playing card. The exhibit was half a knave of diamonds; unquestionably intended to convey to our intelligences the identity of Xavier’s murderer. What you don’t know — or at least what most of you don’t know — is that when Mark Xavier entered his brother’s study the other night, discovered the body, and decided to leave a six of spades in the dead man’s fingers as a false clue to Mrs. Xavier, there was already in the dead man’s fingers an other card.”

“Another card?” gasped Miss Forrest.

“Another card. It’s unnecessary to tell you how we know this, but the fact remains that beyond a doubt Mark Xavier was compelled to wrench out of Dr. Xavier’s stiff hand... half a knave of diamonds!”

“Another one,” whispered Mrs. Carreau.

“Precisely. In other words, both dying men left half a knave of diamonds as a clue to the identity of their murderer — their common murderer, obviously, since the same clue was used. What did they mean by half a knave of diamonds?”

He searched their faces deliberately. The Inspector leaned against the wall, watching with bright eyes.

“No suggestions? It’s quite outré, as I’ve said. Well, examine it point by point. The ‘knave’ element first. A curious coincidence, but scarcely more than that. Certainly a murderer may be termed a knave, but that scarcely helps any one but the panting collector of classic understatements. The fact that ‘knave’ is commonly called ‘jack’? There is no Jack in our little company; the only one to whom it might have applied, John Xavier, having himself been the first victim. Well, then, how about the suit-symbol — the diamond? There’s no question of gems involved; the only possible connection here would be—” he paused, “the rings that seem to have been stolen. But none of these was a diamond ring. On the surface, then, no indication of what the meaning might be.” And then he whirled so unexpectedly upon Mrs. Carreau that she shrank back in her chair. “Mrs. Carreau, what does the word carreau mean in English?”

“Carreau?” Her eyes became enormous brown pools. “Why” — her eyes flickered — “it means so many things, Mr. Queen. A hassock, and a tailor’s goose, and a lozenge, and a pane of glass...”

“And a ground floor, and a certain kind of tile. Quite so.” Ellery smiled coldly. “There’s also a very significant idiom: rester sur le carreau, which may be translated to: to be killed on the spot, a singularly felicitous French version of our Chicagoese expression... all of which however we may discount as irrelevant.” He continued to eye her steadily. “But what else does carreau mean?”

Her eyes fell. “I’m afraid — I don’t know, Mr. Queen.”

“And the French so sportively inclined! Have you forgotten that in French the word ‘diamond’ as applied to playing cards is carreau?”

She was silent. Each face mirrored amazement and horror.

“But, good lord,” breathed Dr. Holmes. “That’s insane, Mr. Queen!”

Ellery shrugged without removing his fixed glance from the shrinking woman. “I’m recounting facts, not fancies, Doctor. Doesn’t it strike you as enormously significant that the fatal card is a diamond, that ‘diamond’ is carreau in French, and that we have several Carreaus in this house?”

Miss Forrest jumped from her chair and advanced with white lips upon Ellery. “I have never heard such unmitigated and cruel nonsense in my whole life, Mr. Queen! Do you realize what you’re insinuating on the basis of such — such flimsy evidence?”

“Sit down, please,” said Ellery wearily. “I realize a good deal more, I think, my loyal lady, than you do. Well, Mrs. Carreau?”

Her hands were twisting like snakes. “What do you expect me to say? All I can say is that — you’re making a terrible mistake, Mr. Queen.”

The twins leaped from the sofa. “You take that back!” cried Francis, doubling his fists. “You can’t s-say things like that about our mother!”

Julian shouted: “You’re crazy, that’s what you are!”

“Sit down, boys,” said the Inspector quietly from the wall.

They glared at Ellery, but obeyed.

“Let me continue, please,” said Ellery again in a tired voice. “I don’t relish this any more than the rest of you. The word ‘diamond’ in the card sense is, as I’ve pointed out, carreau. Is there anything in our facts which bolsters this admittedly fantastic theory that a Carreau, so to speak, was designated by John and Mark Xavier when they left the jack of diamonds as clues to their murderer? Unfortunately there is.” He waved his hand and repeated: “Unfortunately — there is.”

From the wall came the Inspector’s voice, calm and impersonal. “Which one of you boys,” he said clearly to the Siamese twins, “killed those two men?”

Mrs. Carreau sprang to her feet and bounded across the intervening space like a tigress. She stood before the speechless boys, her arms outspread, her whole body vibrating with passion. “This has gone far enough!” she cried. “I think even you stupid men must see the absurdity of accusing these — these children of murder. My sons murderers! You’re mad, both of you!”

“Absurdity?” Ellery sighed. “Please, Mrs. Carreau. You’ve evidently failed to grasp the significance of the clue. That card was not only a diamond, but a jack of diamonds. What is the appearance of the knave card? It represents two joined young men.” Her mouth came open. “Ah, I see you’re not quite so certain of its absurdity. Two joined young men — not old men, mind you, for a king would have sufficed for that — but young men. Joined! Incredible? I told you it was. But we have two joined young men in this house, and they are named Carreau, you see. What is one to think?”

She sank onto the sofa beside the boys, unable to speak. Their young mouths were working soundlessly.

“Moreover, we ask the question: why was the card torn in half in both instances, leaving — so to speak — only one of the two joined men as a clue?” Ellery continued with weary inexorability. “Obviously because the dead men intended to show that one, not both, of the Carreau twins was the murderer. How could this be? Well, if one was dominated by the other, was compelled to be present against his will because of sheer physical inability to hang back, was a mere bystander while the other committed the actual crimes... Which of you shot Dr. Xavier and poisoned Mark Xavier, boys?”

Their lips quivered; the fight had quite gone out of them. Francis whispered in a voice close to tears: “But... but we didn’t, Mr. Queen. We didn’t. Why, we... we couldn’t do... that. We just couldn’t. And why should we? Why? It’s so... Oh, don’t you see?”

Julian shuddered. His eyes were fixed on Ellery’s face with a sort of fascinated horror.

“I’ll tell you why,” said the Inspector slowly. “Dr. Xavier was experimenting with Siamese-twin animals in his laboratory. You people had some notion when you came up here that the doctor could perform a miracle, could separate the boys surgically—”

“That’s nonsense,” muttered Dr. Holmes. “I’ve never believed—”

“Exactly. You’ve never believed it could be done, Holmes. It’s never been done successfully, has it, with twins of this type? So I say that it was you who threw the monkey-wrench into the works; you went on record as not ‘believing,’ you made these people doubt the ability of Dr. Xavier. You talked to the twins, to Mrs. Carreau, about it, didn’t you?”

“Well...” The Englishman was writhing. “Perhaps I did advise them that it was a very dangerous experiment—”

“I thought so. And then something happened.” The Inspector’s eyes were bright marbles. “I don’t know what, exactly. Maybe Dr. Xavier was stubborn, or insisted on going ahead. The boys, Mrs. Carreau, got frightened. It was a murder in self-defense, in a way—”

“Oh, don’t you see how ridiculous that is?” cried Miss Forrest. “How childish? There was nothing Machiavellian about Dr. Xavier. He wasn’t the ‘mad scientist’ of the thrillers and movies. He wouldn’t have gone ahead with such an operation without the full consent of all parties concerned. Besides, what was to prevent us from just leaving? Don’t you see? It simply won’t stand examination, Inspector!” Her voice rang with triumph.

“Besides,” snapped Dr. Holmes, “there was no certainty at all about the surgery. Mrs. Carreau brought the boys up here for observation only. Even had everything been otherwise settled, an operation here would have been impossible. But then Xavier’s experiments on animals were a matter of pure research, antedating Mrs. Carreau’s arrival. I assure you that Dr. Xavier never had anything in mind concerning these lads, Inspector, other than mere theory. This is all very shockerish, Inspector.”

“Yes,” exclaimed Miss Forrest again, her eyes flashing, “and now that I come to think of it, Mr. Queen, there’s something fallacious in your reasoning. You claim that tearing the double-jack in half to achieve just one jack means the — the dead men were indicating one of two joined men. Suppose I say to you that the reason they tore the cards in half was to prevent anyone from believing that Francis and Julian did it? I mean that if they’d left just the jack, which shows two joined figures, somebody might think of the twins. By tearing the two figures apart they might have been saying: ‘Don’t think the twins did it. It’s just one unjoined person. That’s why I’m not leaving a whole card!’ ”

“Brava,” murmured Ellery. “That’s genius, Miss Forrest. But unfortunately you’re forgetting that the cards were diamonds, and that the only male Carreaus here are the twins.”

She subsided, biting her lip.

Mrs. Carreau said steadily: “The more I think of it the more convinced I am that somehow this is all a hideous mistake. Surely you don’t mean to... to arrest...” She stopped.

The Inspector, who was feeling uneasy, scratched his chin. Ellery did not reply; he had turned back to the window again. “Well,” the old man said, hesitating, “can you suggest another meaning for the card?”

“No. But—”

“You’re the detective,” said Miss Forrest with a rebirth of spirit. “I still maintain the whole argument is... is lunatic.”

The Inspector went to one of the windows and stepped out upon the terrace. After a moment Ellery followed.

“Well?” he said.

“I don’t like it.” The Inspector gnawed his mustache. “There’s a lot in what they say — not about the card business, but about that operation and all.” He groaned. “A hell of a lot. Why should one of those kids have bumped the doctor off? I tell you I don’t like it.”

“We discussed that, I believe, before we tackled them,” Ellery pointed out with a shrug.

“Yes, I know,” said the old man miserably, “but— Cripes, I don’t know what to think. The more I think the dizzier I get. Even if it’s true and one of the lads is a murderer, how the devil can we ever establish which one? If they refuse to talk—”

A gleam came into Ellery’s troubled eye. “The problem has its interesting points. Even if one of them confesses — we’ll suppose the most convenient theory — have you stopped to consider what a beautiful headache the case would give America’s prize legal talent?”

“What d’ye mean?”

“Well,” murmured Ellery, “let’s say young Francis is our man. He confesses on the stand, exonerating Julian who, it devolves, was under Francis’s thumb and was forced to stand by while Francis did the dirty work. Julian, we prove, was completely innocent in both intent and activity. So Francis is tried, convicted, and condemned to death.”

“Cripes,” groaned the Inspector.

“I see you envision the possibilities. Francis is tried, convicted, and condemned to death; and all the while poor Julian is forced to undergo extreme mental suffering, physical imprisonment, and finally the degradation of — what? Death? But he’s an innocent victim of circumstances. Surgery? Modern science — minus at least the voice of the late Dr. John S. Xavier — says that Siamese twins with a common major organ cannot be successfully disjoined; result, death to the innocent boy as well as to the guilty. So surgery is out. What then? The law says a person condemned to death shall be executed. Shall we execute? Clearly impossible without also executing an innocent individual. Shall we not execute? Clearly in defiance of the lex talionis. Ah, what a case! The irresistible force meeting the immovable barrier.” Ellery sighed. “I should really like to confront a group of smug lawyers with this problem — as neat a conflict of rights, I’ll wager, as the whole history of criminal law has to offer... Well, Inspector, what do you think would happen in your precious case?”

“Let me alone, will you?” mumbled his father. “You’re always raising the most ridiculous questions. How do I know? Am I God?... Another week of this and we’ll all be in a bughouse!”

“Another week of this,” said Ellery gloomily, looking at the frightful sky and trying to draw a breath without soiling his lungs, “and it begins to look as if we’ll all be cold cinders.”

“It does seem silly to break our heads about a matter of individual crime and guilt when we’re one step from the last furnace ourselves,” muttered the Inspector. “Let’s go back inside. We’ll have to take stock, organize, and do what we—”

“What’s that?” said Ellery sharply.

“What’s what?”

Ellery bounded off the terrace. He was down the steps in one leap and standing on the drive to stare up at the ruddy night sky. “That noise,” he said slowly. “Don’t you hear it?”

It was a faint rumbling roar and it seemed to emanate from a region of the heavens a great distance away.

“By George,” cried the Inspector, scrambling to the ground, “I believe it’s thunder!”

“After all this horrible waiting, it doesn’t seem...” Ellery’s voice trailed off in a mutter. Their faces were raised to the skies nakedly, two white blurs of hope.

They did not turn at the pound and clatter of feet on the terrace.

“What is it?” screamed Mrs. Xavier. “We heard... Is it thunder?”

“Glo-o-ory!” shrieked Miss Forrest. “If it’s thunder it’s rain!”

The rumble was growing appreciably louder. It possessed a curiously living quality, and there was something metallic in its overtones. It rattled...

“I’ve heard of such things before,” cried Dr. Holmes. “It’s an unusual meteorological phenomenon.”

“What is?” demanded Ellery, still craning at the sky.

“Under certain conditions of the atmosphere, clouds may very well form over the area of a widespread forest fire. Condensation of moisture in the updraft of air. I read somewhere that fires of this sort have actually been extinguished by the clouds they themselves generated!”

“Thank God,” quavered Mrs. Wheary.

Ellery turned suddenly. They were lined up at the rail of the terrace — a row of pale straining faces raised to the sky. On every face but one there was livid hope. Only on Mrs. Carreau’s delicate features sat horror, the horror of realization. If it were rain, if the fire were blotted out, if communication were re-established... Her grip tightened on the shoulders of her sons.

“Don’t thank Him yet, Mrs. Wheary,” said Ellery in a savage tone. “We were mistaken; it’s not thunder. Don’t you see that red light up there?”

“Not thunder?...”

“Red light?”

They squinted in the direction of his pointing arm. And they all caught sight of the rapidly moving, unwinking little pinprick of bright red against the dark wine of the heavens.

It was accompanied by the thunder, and it was headed for the summit of Arrow Mountain.

But the thunder was the sound of a motor, and the red pinprick was the night riding light of an airplane.

Chapter XVIII The Last Refuge

They sighed en masse, a horrible sigh that held the death of hope. Mrs. Wheary uttered a heart-rending moan and Bones’s voice startled them with a sudden vicious curse that hissed through the moist air like brimstone.

Then Miss Forrest cried: “It’s a plane! They’ve — they’ve come for us! They’ve news for us!”

Her cries roused them. The Inspector yelled: “Mrs. Wheary! Bones! Somebody! Put on every light in the house! The rest of you get things that’ll burn — anything — get busy! Well build a bonfire out here so he can see us!”

They tumbled over one another in their haste. Bones began to hurl the terrace chairs over the rail. Mrs. Wheary vanished through one of the French windows. The women clattered down the steps and began to carry the chairs over the gravel and rocks away from the house. Ellery scrambled into the house and emerged a few moments later with two armfuls of old newspapers, magazines, and loose papers. The twins, their personal predicament forgotten in the excitement of the present, staggered off the porch under the weight of an overstuffed chair from the now brilliantly illuminated living room. They looked like scurrying ants in the darkness...

The Inspector squatted on his thin hams and struck a match with a hand that trembled slightly. The tall pile of inflammable miscellany dwarfed his slender figure. He applied the flame to the bed of paper beneath the pile and rose hastily. They crowded around, jealous of the hot breeze that was tearing at the tiny flame. And all the while they kept their staring eyes upon the heavens.

The flame licked hungrily at the papers and with a crackle caught the makeshift kindling they had piled at the bottom of the pyre. In an instant the bed of the pyre was ablaze, and they shielded their faces and retreated from the blast of heat.

They held their breaths as they watched the red light. It was very near now, and at their altitude the roar of the airplane was deafening. Difficult as it was to estimate how far above their heads the aviator was winging, they realized that he could not be more than a few hundred feet above the summit of the mountain. And the invisible craft with its single red eye swooped nearer and nearer.

Then suddenly it was thundering overhead and — past.

In that single instant they had caught sight dimly in the upward illumination of their bonfire against the crimson sky of a small monoplane with an open cockpit.

“Oh, he’s gone past!” moaned Miss Forrest.

But then the red light dipped and swerved to take a new direction, and it came swiftly back at them in a graceful arc.

“He’s seen the fire!” shrieked Mrs. Wheary. “Praise be, he’s seen us by the fire!”

The pilot’s maneuvers were baffling. He kept circling the crest of the mountain as if he were uncertain of the terrain, as if he did not quite know what to do. And then, incredibly, the red light began to recede.

“Good God,” said Dr. Holmes hoarsely, “isn’t he going to land? Is he leaving us?”

“Land? Nonsense!” snapped Ellery, straining aloft. “How could anything but a bird land on this tormented patch of rock? He’s leveling off for a straight swoop. What do you think he’s been doing up there — playing tag? He’s been studying the ground. I think — something is primed to happen.”

Before they could catch their breaths he was hurtling toward them with a scream of rushing wind and a thunder of propeller that made their eardrums ache. Down, down he came in a daring swoop that rooted them to the ground with horrified admiration. What was the madman attempting? All their numbed brains could imagine was that he was bent on suicide.

He was only a hundred feet away now, and so low that they unconsciously ducked. His landing gear barely cleared the tops of the trees at the margin of the summit. Then like lightning he was upon them — a rushing winged thing with belching vitals and hoarsely vibrating body — and past, away. Before they could recover he was past the summit, his wing tipped already as he climbed against the bloody moon in another spiral.

But now they understood that his madness had been cold sanity, and his foolhardiness courage.

A small white object had dropped like a plummet from the cockpit, hurled by a dark overhanging human arm, to fall with a crash not twenty feet from the fire.

The Inspector was over the treacherous ground like a monkey and clutching the fallen object in a twinkling. His fingers shook as he unwrapped several sheets of paper from the stone to which it had been bound.

They huddled about him, clawing at his coat.

“What is it, Inspector?”

“What does he say?”

“Is it — over?”

“For God’s sake, tell us!”

The Inspector squinted at the typewritten lines in the leaping light of the bonfire, reading feverishly. And as he read, the lines of his gray face lengthened, and his shoulders sagged, and all the glitter of hope and life went out of his eyes.

They read their doom in his face. Their grimy wet cheeks became flaccid, with the flaccidity of the dead.

The Inspector said slowly: “Here it is.” And he read in a low dull voice:

“At least,” said Ellery with a wild and bitter laugh in the ghastly silence that followed, “he’s a newsy sort of chap, isn’t he? Oh, God.”

The Inspector, in a daze, stepped as close to the fire as he dared and waved his arms slowly, without energy. Instantly the airman still circling above straightened out again and repeated his former maneuvers. This time when he roared by above their heads a large round bundle dropped from the cockpit. He circled twice again, as if reluctant to leave, came close once more, waggled his wings in a grim salute, and then darted off into the night. None of them so much as stirred a finger until the red light vanished in the thickest darkness of the distance.

Then Mrs. Carreau sank to the ground, sobbing as if her heart would break. The twins cowered behind her, their teeth chattering.

“Well, what the hell are we waiting for?” bellowed Smith suddenly, waving his huge arms like a windmill. His eyes were staring madly from his head and rivulets of perspiration poured down his gross cheeks. “You read what that damn Sheriff wrote! Build a fire! Dig a trench! For the love of God, let’s get busy!”

“No fire,” said Ellery quietly. “The wind’s crazy up here. It might set the house ablaze.”

“Smith’s right about the trench, anyway,” panted Dr. Holmes. “We can’t just stand here like — like cattle waiting for slaughter. Bones — get those spades and picks out of the garage.”

Bones cursed vilely and darted off into the darkness.

“I guess,” said the Inspector in a stiff, unnatural voice, “that it’s the only thing to do. Dig. Dig until we smother.” He drew a deep breath and something of the old martinet returned to his bearing. “All right!” he snapped. “We dig. Everybody. Get as much of your clothing off as you decently can. Women — the boys — everybody help. We start right now and we don’t finish till we’re finished.”

“How much time have we?” whispered Mrs. Xavier.

Smith threshed off into the darkness and disappeared in the smoky woods. Dr. Holmes stripped off his jacket and necktie and hurried after Bones. Mrs. Carreau rose, no longer sobbing. Mrs. Xavier did not stir; she continued to stare after Smith.

They were whirling dervishes in a nightmare that grew steadily more fantastic.

Smith blundered back, materializing out of the smoke. “It’s not far now!” he snarled. “The fire! Just a short way below! Where the hell are those tools?”

Then Bones and Dr. Holmes came staggering out of the darkness under a load of iron implements and the nightmare began in earnest.

To give them light Mrs. Wheary, physically the weakest, kept the fire burning with fresh fuel supplied by the twins, who dragged from the house all the portable furniture they could find. A high wind had risen and swept the sparks of the bonfire about with alarming abandon. Meanwhile the Inspector had marked off the three-quarter circle rimming the timberline which was to be dug. The women were set to uprooting the dry bushes from the crevices of the stony ground; these they added to the fire from time to time as additional fuel. The smoke rose from the summit like the signal-fire of a race of gigantic Indians. They coughed and cried and toiled and sweated, and their arms became lead weights that were torture to lift. Miss Forrest, impatient in her frenzy, soon stopped tearing out brush and ran to help with the digging.

The men labored silently, conserving their breath. Their arms rose and fell, rose and fell...

When dawn broke — a turbulent smoky red dawn — they were still digging. Not fiercely now, but with the steadiness of inhuman desperation. Mrs. Wheary had collapsed by the dying fire; she lay limply on the rocks, moaning and ignored. All the men were stripped to the waist now, their bodies glistening with body oil where they were not coated with grime and soot.

No one had even cast a glance at the padded bag of food and medicines dropped by the aviator.

At two in the afternoon Mrs. Carreau collapsed. At three Mrs. Xavier. But Ann Forrest labored on, although she staggered with each feeble thrust of the spade.

Then at four-thirty the spade dropped from her nerveless fingers and she sank to the ground. “I... can’t — go on,” she gasped. “I... can’t.”

At five Smith fell and could not rise. The others toiled on.

At twenty minutes past six, after twenty hours of incredible labor, the trench was finished.

They dropped where they were, their streaming clotted skins pressed to the scarred earth in the last oblivious spasm of exhaustion. The Inspector, stretched groaning on the ground, looked like a felled dwarf, one of the toilers of Vulcan’s smithy. His eyes were sunken deep in his head and they were circled by purple rings. His mouth was open, gasping for air. His gray hair stuck wetly to his head. His fingers were bleeding.

The others were in scarcely better condition. Smith still lay where he had fallen, a mountain of quivering flesh. Ellery was a slim, long, sooty ghost. Bones was a dead man. The women were huddles of soiled, ripped garments. The twins sat on a rock, heads hanging. Dr. Holmes lay still, eyes closed, nostrils twitching; his white skin was a shambles.

They lay for more than an hour without moving.

Then the twins stirred, and croaked something to each other, and rose and tottered into the house. They returned after a long time lugging three pails of cold water, and doggedly set about reviving the victims of exhaustion.

Ellery came to with a gasp as icy water sloshed over his palpitating torso. He sat up, groaning, at first with bewilderment in his bloodshot eyes. Then memory returned, and he grinned feebly at the white faces of the twins. “To forgive — is divine, eh?” he croaked, and struggled to his feet. “How long—?” He could not go on.

“It’s half-past seven,” mumbled Francis.

“Lord.”

He stared about. Mrs. Carreau, revived, was stumbling up the steps of the porch. Bones had disappeared. The Inspector sat quietly on his haunches where he had fallen, glaring numbly at his blood-clotted hands. Mrs. Xavier was on her knees, rising. Ann Forrest and Dr. Holmes lay on their backs now, side by side, staring at the darkening sky. Smith was rumbling something evil and incoherent in the depths of his throat. Mrs. Wheary...

“Lord,” he croaked again, blinking.

The wracked word was torn out of his mouth by a sudden overwhelming blast of boiling wind. His ears were filled with a stupendous roaring. Smoke belched out of the woods.

Then he saw the fire, the vanguard of the fire. It was sucking greedily away at the trees at the margin of the summit.

It had reached them at last.

They began to run toward the house. Fear revived their glands and sent hot secretions into their blood which electrified their muscles and gave them new strength.

On the terrace they halted by silent consent and stared wildly back.

The whole cut circle of the timber’s edge had burst into flame. The crackling roar, the searing heat, sent them reeling into the house after a moment, away from that terrifying arc of pure fire which the wind was bending slowly inward in a solid sheet fifty feet high. Through the French windows of the front rooms they stared in speechless panic at the hellish world outside. The wind was rising, still rising. The sheet of flame bent lower, tenaciously. Millions of riven sparks drove upon the house. The trench, their pitiful trench... would it hold?

Smith shouted: “All for nothing. All that work. Trench... Hell, it’s funny!” and he began to shriek with hysterical laughter. “Trench,” he gasped, “trench,” and the creases of his belly swelled over his belt as he bent double, tears streaming down his dirty cheeks.

“Stop it, you ass,” said Ellery hoarsely. “Stop—” and in the midst of the sentence he broke off with a cry and darted out onto the terrace again.

The Inspector screamed: “Ellery!”

His lean figure scrambled over the rail and he began to run. Above him, before him, loomed a wall of flame. It seemed as if he meant to throw himself into the fire. His half-naked body twisted and turned as he dodged among the rocks. Then he stooped, wavered, picked something up, and came stumbling back.

His torso was dull red with the heat and his face was black. “Food,” he panted. “Mustn’t forget the sack of food.” His eyes blazed. “Well, what are you idiots waiting for? The trench is a fizzle! And that damned wind—”

They crouched before the wind, moaning with it.

“No time for anything but to get under cover,” croaked Ellery. “The house is burning in a hundred places already and we couldn’t stop it now with a brigade. A few pails of water over the gables...” He laughed himself, a demon dancing against a backdrop of fire. “The cellar — where’s the cellar, for God’s sake? Doesn’t anyone know where the cellar is? Lord, what unmitigated idiots! Talk, will you, somebody?”

“The cellar,” they chanted obediently, fixing glassy eyes on his face. They were a company of half-naked dead, dirty white Zombies in a purgatory of their own. “The cellar.”

“Behind the stairs,” gurgled Mrs. Xavier; her gown was torn away from one shoulder and her hands were bruised and blackened. “Oh, hurry, hurry.”

And then they were tumbling down the hall. Mrs. Xavier made for a thick solid door set beneath the rising stairs which led to the upper floors. They jostled one another in their frantic efforts to get through the doorway.

“Dad,” said Ellery quietly. “Come on.”

The Inspector started, wiped his white lips with a shaking hand, and followed. Ellery stumbled to the kitchen through a hall cloudy with bitter smoke; he dug madly in the closets, tossing things about. He found pans, pots, kettles. “Fill ’em up from the tap,” he directed, between hacking coughs. “Hurry. We’ll need water. Lots of it. No telling how long we’ll be...”

They struggled down the hall with their slopping burdens. At the cellar door Ellery shouted: “Holmes! Smith! Get this water down!” and without waiting they staggered back to the kitchen for more.

They made six trips, filling all the large containers they could find — tin buckets, an empty butter tub, wash basins, an old boiler and other objects as variegated and nondescript. And then, at last, Ellery stood at the top of the stairs as the Inspector tottered down into the cool cement chamber, as gloomy and dark and vast as a mountain cavern.

“Is the bag of food down there, somebody?” he croaked before he closed the thick door.

“I’ve got it, Queen,” called up Dr. Holmes.

Ellery slammed the door shut. “One of you women give me some cloth — anything.”

Ann Forrest struggled to her feet. Beside Ellery in the darkness she ripped off her dress.

“I don’t suppose I’ll — need it much longer, Mr. Queen,” she said, and her voice trembled even as she laughed.

“Ann!” cried Dr. Holmes. “Don’t! There’s the material of the bag—”

“Too late,” she said, almost gaily; but her lips quivered. “Good girl,” muttered Ellery. He grabbed the dress and began to tear it into strips. The scraps he stuffed at the bottom of the door. When he rose, he put his arm about the girl’s white shoulders and together they descended to the cement floor below.

Dr. Holmes was waiting with a filthy old khaki coat which reeked of dampness. “Dug it up here. One of Bones’s winter coats,” he said hoarsely. “Ann — I’m sorry...”

The tall girl shivered and draped the coat about her shoulders.

Ellery and Dr. Holmes bent over the sack which had been dropped by the airman and ripped it open. Protected by thick padding were bundles of medicine bottles — antiseptics, quinine, aspirin, salves, morphine; and hypodermics, adhesive tape, absorbent cotton, bandage. There were other bundles, too — sandwiches, a whole ham, loaves of bread, jars of jam, bars of chocolate, thermos bottles of hot coffee...

The two men doled out the food and for some time there was no sound but that of champing jaws and long gulps. The thermos bottles passed around from hand to hand. They ate slowly, savoring each mouthful. In each mind was the same thought: that this might be their last earthly dinner... Finally they could eat no more, and Ellery gathered the remains of the meal carefully and stowed them in the sack again. Dr. Holmes, his naked torso criss-crossed by welts and scratches, went among them quietly with the antiseptics, cleaning their wounds, taping, bandaging...

Then there was no more to be done, and he sank upon an old egg crate and buried his face in his hands.

They sat about on old packing-cases, in the coal bin, on the stone floor. A single bulb shed weak yellow light above them. Faintly they could hear the dull roar of the fire outside. It seemed nearer, much nearer.

Once they were startled by a series of booming explosions.

“The gasoline in the garage,” muttered the Inspector. “There go the cars.”

No one replied.

And once Bones rose and disappeared in the darkness. When he returned he rasped: “Cellar windows. I’ve stuffed ’em full of old metal things and flat stones.”

No one replied.

And so they sat, drooping and hopeless, too exhausted to weep or sigh or stir, staring dully at the floor... waiting for the end.

Chapter XIX The Queen’s Tale

Hours passed, how many they neither knew nor cared. In that vast dim cavern there was no night or day. The puny illumination of the feeble bulb was their sun and moon. They sat like stones and except for their uneven breathing they might have been already dead.

For Ellery it was a queer vertiginous experience. His thoughts veered from death to life, from barely glimpsed vistas of remembered fact to flitting phantoms of his aroused fancy. Pieces of the puzzle returned to annoy him. They persisted in invading his brain cells and storming his consciousness. At the same time he chuckled mirthlessly to himself at the instability and inconsistency of the human mind, which stubbornly wrestled with problems of comparative unimportance while the big things were ignored or at best evaded. What did one murderer more or less matter to a man facing his own extinction? It was illogical, infantile. He should be occupied with making his private peace with his private gods; instead he worried about trivialities.

Finally, too weak to resist, he sighed and gave himself over wholly to thoughts of the case. The others abut him receded; he closed his eyes and brooded with a weary return of his old concentrative energy.

When he opened them again after the passage of an eternity, nothing had changed. The twins still crouched at the feet of their mother. Mrs. Xavier still sat upright on a packing case, her head resting against the rough cement wall, eyes closed. Dr. Holmes and Miss Forrest still sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder, unmoving. Smith still squatted on an old box, head bowed and naked arms dangling between his Falstaffian thighs. Mrs. Wheary still lay in a heap on the coal pile, her arm flung over her eyes; and Bones still sat cross-legged beside her, as unblinking as a graven image.

Ellery shivered and stretched his arms. The Inspector, seated on a box beside him, stirred.

“Well?” mumbled the old man.

Ellery shook his head, struggled to his feet, and stumbled up the cellar stairs. They moved then and regarded him dully.

He sat down on the top step and pulled out a little of the stuffing in the crevice below the door. A puff of thick smoke made him blink and cough. He replaced the stuffing hastily and weaved his way downstairs again.

They were listening, listening to the hissing roar of the flames. It came from directly overhead now.

Mrs. Carreau was crying. The twins stirred uneasily and tightened their grip on her hands.

“Isn’t the air — getting worse?” asked Mrs. Xavier thickly.

They sniffed. It was.

Ellery squared his shoulders. “Look here,” he croaked. They looked. “We’re on the verge of a particularly unpleasant death. I don’t know what the human animal is supposed to do, how he’s supposed to act in a crisis like this, when the last hope is gone, but I know this: I for one refuse to sit still like a gagged sacrifice and pass out in silence.” He paused. “We haven’t long, you know.”

“Aw, shut up,” snarled Smith. “We’ve had enough of your damn gab.”

“I’m afraid not. You’re the type, old friend, who loses his head at the last moment and goes about bashing his brains out against the nearest wall. I’ll thank you to remember that you’ve a certain amount of sheer pride to live up to.” Smith blinked and lowered his eyes. “As a matter of fact,” continued Ellery, coughing, “now that you’ve chosen to engage in conversation, there’s a little mystery connected with your obese majesty I very earnestly desire to clear up.”

“Me?” mumbled Smith.

“Yes, yes. We’re in the last confessional, you see, and I should think you wouldn’t want to meet your slightly astigmatic Maker before making a clean breast of things.”

“Confessing what?” snapped the fat man, bridling.

Ellery eyed the others cautiously. They were sitting up now, listening and for the moment interested. “Confessing that you’re a damned blackguard.”

Smith struggled to his feet, clenching his fists. “Why, you—”

Ellery strode over to him and, placing his hand on the man’s fleshy chest, pushed. Smith collapsed with a crash on his box. “Well?” said Ellery, standing over him. “And are we to fight like wild beasts at the last, too, Smith, old chap?”

The fat man licked his lips. Then he jerked his head up and cried defiantly: “Well, and why not? We’ll all be roast meat in a little while anyway. Sure I blackmailed her.” His lips sneered. “Fat lot of good it’ll do you now, you damn meddling noseybody!”

Mrs. Carreau had stopped crying. She sat up straighter and said quietly: “He’s been blackmailing me for sixteen years.”

“Marie — don’t,” begged Miss Forrest.

She waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter now, Ann. I—”

“He knew the secret of your sons, didn’t he?” murmured Ellery.

She gasped. “How did you know?”

“That doesn’t matter now, either,” he said a little bitterly.

“He was one of the physicians in attendance at their — their birth...”

“You dirty fat hog,” growled the Inspector with a flicker of anger in his eyes. “I’d like to smash your fat face in—”

Smith cursed weakly.

“Discredited, thrown out of his profession since,” said Miss Forrest savagely. “Malpractice. Of course! He came up here, trailed us to Dr. Xavier’s, managed to see Mrs. Carreau alone—”

“Yes, yes,” sighed Ellery. “We know all the rest.” He looked up at the door above their heads. There was only one course, he knew; he must keep them interested, boiling, frightened — anything so long as they did not think of that blazing horror roaring over their heads. “I’d like to tell you a — story,” he said.

“Story?” muttered Dr. Holmes.

“The story of the most remarkable case of stupid deception I have ever encountered.” Ellery sat down on the first step; he coughed a little and his bloodshot eyes flickered. “Before I tell my little tale, isn’t there someone here who, like Smith, has a confession to make?”

There was silence. He searched their faces slowly, one by one.

“Stubborn to the last, I see. Well, then, I’ll dedicate my last — the next few moments to the job.” He massaged his bare neck and looked up at the little bulb, “I say stupid deception. The reason I say it is that the whole thing was as incredible and fantastic a plot as was ever conceived and perpetrated by an unbalanced mind. Under ordinary circumstances it shouldn’t have fooled me for an instant. As it was, it took me some time to realize how utterly far-fetched it was.”

“What was?” said Mrs. Xavier harshly.

“The ‘clues’ left in the dead hands of your husband and your brother-in-law, Mrs. Xavier,” murmured Ellery. “After a while I came to see that they were impossible. They were much too subtle to have emanated from the thoughts of dying men. Too subtle and too complicated. Their very subtlety is what made their use by the murderer stupid. They flew in the face of the normal. As a matter of fact, if not for the fortuitous appearance of myself upon the scene in all probability their intended meaning would never have been penetrated. I say this not in a spirit of egotism, but because in a way my own mind is as warped as the mind of the murderer. I have the tortuous mind. And so, fortunately, has the murderer.” He paused and sighed. “As I say, then, after a while I suspected the validity of the clues, and after another while — here, thinking — I discarded them. And in a flash I saw the whole dismal thing, the whole dismal and clever and stupid and astounding thing.”

He paused again, moving his tongue in his dry mouth. The Inspector was staring at him in bewilderment.

“What on earth are you talking about?” croaked Dr. Holmes.

“This, Doctor. Where we first went off the track was in our blind assumption that this case presented only one instance of a frame-up — Mark Xavier’s frame-up of Mrs. Xavier; in our assumption that the knave-of-diamonds clue in Dr. Xavier’s murder really had been left by Dr. Xavier.”

“You mean, El,” demanded the Inspector, “that the lawyer didn’t find a half-jack in his brother’s hand that night in the study?”

“Oh, he found the half-jack all right,” said Ellery wearily, “and that’s the crux of the matter. Mark also assumed that his brother John had left the half-jack as a clue to the murderer. It was, like ours, an utterly false assumption.”

“But how could you know that?”

“By a fact I’ve just recollected. Dr. Holmes after examining the body of his colleague stated that Dr. Xavier had been a diabetic, that because of his pathological condition rigor mortis had set in very early, in a matter of minutes rather than hours. We knew that Dr. Xavier had died at about one o’clock in the morning. Mark Xavier had found the body at two-thirty. By that time rigor had long been complete, then. Now Dr. Xavier’s right hand was clenched, holding the six of spades, when we found the body in the morning, and the left hand was spread out on the desk, flat, palm down, fingers stiff and straight. But if rigor had set in a few minutes after death, then those hands must have been in that same condition when Mark Xavier found the body an hour and a half after his brother died!”

“Well?”

“But don’t you see?” cried Ellery. “If Mark Xavier found his brother’s right hand clenched and the left hand rigidly flat, then he could not unclench the right hand or clench the left without breaking the stiff dead fingers or leaving clear signs of the enormous pressure necessary to be exerted. If he had to manipulate the dead hands, he had also to leave them as they were. There’s no question, then, but that Mark found John’s right hand clenched and left hand unclenched, as we found them. Now we know that Mark substituted the six of spades for the jack of diamonds. In what hand therefore must the jack of diamonds have been when Mark made the substitution?”

“Why, the right, the clenched hand, of course,” muttered the Inspector.

“Exactly. The jack of diamonds was in Dr. Xavier’s right hand; all Mark had to do was go through the same procedure you yourself went through, dad, when you took the six out of the dead man’s hand; that is, merely separate the stiff clenched fingers sufficiently to make the card drop out. Then he inserted the six and forced the fingers back the infinitesimal fraction of an inch into the clutching position. He simply couldn’t have found the jack in John’s left hand, for that would mean that he would have had to unclench the left hand and leave it flat against the desk — impossible without, as I say, leaving brutal signs of the act, which did not exist upon examination of the body.”

He stopped and for a moment there was only the terrifying crackle above their heads. Occasionally in the past few moments there had been a dull thud on the floor above. Now there was another... But they scarcely heard. They were in the grip again of fascinated interest.

“But what—” began Miss Forrest, rocking to and fro.

“Don’t you see it yet?” said Ellery almost cheerfully. “Dr. Xavier was right-handed. I’ve proved long ago that a right-handed man tearing a card in two would tear with his right, crumple with his right — or if he didn’t crumple, at least throw the discarded half away with his right, since it made no difference which half he retained and which he threw away, both halves being exactly the same. This would leave the automatically retained half in his left. But I’ve demonstrated that the retained half must have been in Dr. Xavier’s right when Mark found him. Therefore Dr. Xavier had never torn that card at all. Therefore someone else had torn that jack and left it in his right hand. Therefore that half-jack, meant to incriminate the twins, was also a frame-up, and the twins must be held entirely innocent of the murder of Dr. Xavier.”

They were too stupefied to smile or show relief or do anything but gape at him. It did seem a small matter, Ellery thought, with death lurking for them all, innocent and guilty, beyond the closed door above.

“Since the first frame-up,” he went on quickly, “was arranged before two-thirty, before Mark blundered upon the scene of the crime, I think we have a perfect right to assert that the first frame-up of the Carreau boys by means of the jack of diamonds had been arranged by the murderer. Unless we go into the far-fetched theory that that framer wasn’t the murderer either, that that framer came before Mark but followed the murderer; in other words, that there were two framers besides the murderer.” He shook his head. “Much too fantastic. The framer of the twins was the murderer.”

“This business about the rigor proving that it was the murderer and not Dr. Xavier who left the jack of diamonds accusing the twins,” said the Inspector dubiously, interested despite himself, “sounds a — well, a little arbitrary to me. It doesn’t sound very convincing.”

“That?” Ellery smiled in his desperate effort to take their minds off the flames. “Oh, I assure you it’s fact, not theory. I can confirm it. But before I do that I want to point out that logically another question then arose: was the murderer of Mark Xavier the same as the murderer of his brother? Despite the overwhelming probability that the same individual committed both crimes, we had no logical right to assume it. I didn’t assume it. I proved it to my own satisfaction.

“For what was the state of affairs just before Mark’s murder? The man had lapsed into unconsciousness just before he could reveal what he claimed was the name of his brother’s murderer. Dr. Holmes asserted that there was every chance the wounded man would recover consciousness in a few hours. Everyone was present to hear that assertion. Who therefore was in the greatest danger should Mark recover consciousness? Obviously, if we are to recognize the most elementary truth about cause and effect, the person who thought he was going to be unmasked by the dying man; that is, the person with the guilty conscience, Dr. Xavier’s murderer. Consequently I say that, under these special and weighty circumstances, it would be flying in the face of reason to doubt that it was John Xavier’s murderer who crept into Mark’s bedroom the other night and poisoned him to keep him forever silent. And, mind you, this is true whether Mark really knew who the murderer was or not! The mere threat was sufficient to force the murderer’s hand.”

“No quarrel with that,” muttered the Inspector.

“Actually, we have confirmation of this. Let’s suppose the alternative: that there were two murderers, that the killer of Mark was a different person from the killer of John. Would such a second killer have chosen the worst possible time to commit his crime? — worst possible, I say, since he knew that Mark was under guard by a professional detective, and armed to boot? No, the only person who would have risked this danger was someone who had to risk it; who had to kill Mark not any time, but that very night, before Mark could come back to his senses and speak up. So I say, and I don’t think there can be any logical or psychological weakness in the argument, that we are dealing with only one criminal.”

“Nobody’s questioned that. But how can you confirm your conclusion that it was the murderer, not Dr. Xavier, who left the jack of diamonds accusing the boys?”

“I was coming to that. I don’t have to confirm it, really. We’ve the murderer’s own confession that he framed the twins after killing Dr. Xavier.”

“Confession?” They all gaped with the Inspector at that.

“Of action rather than speech. I daresay most of these good folk would be astonished to learn that after Mark Xavier’s death someone tampered with the lock of the cabinet in which was secreted the deck of cards found on Dr. Xavier’s desk.”

“What?” said Dr. Holmes, astonished. “I didn’t know that.”

“We didn’t advertise it, Doctor. But after Xavier’s murder someone monkeyed with the lock of the wall cabinet in the living room. What was in the wall cabinet? The deck of cards which had come from the scene of Dr. Xavier’s murder. What was the only significant thing about the deck of cards which would, for any reason whatever, justify some one’s tampering with the lock of the cabinet? The fact that its jack of diamonds was missing. But who knew that the jack of diamonds was missing from the first deck? Only two persons: Mark Xavier and the murderer of Dr. John Xavier. But Mark Xavier was dead. Therefore the tampering was done by the murderer.

“Now what could the murderer’s motive in tampering with that cabinet have possibly been? Did he want to steal or destroy the cards? No.”

“How the devil can you say that?” growled the Inspector.

“Because everyone in the house knew there was only one key to the cabinet, that the cabinet contained only the cards, and most important that the sole key was in your possession, dad.” Ellery chuckled grimly. “How does that prove the murderer didn’t want to steal or destroy the cards? It leads to the proof. If the murderer wanted to get his claws on that deck, why didn’t he take the key from you while he had you unconscious, helpless on the floor of Mark Xavier’s bedroom? The answer is that he didn’t want the key, didn’t want to get into the cabinet, didn’t want to steal or destroy the cards!”

“All right, even if that’s so — for heaven’s sake why did he tamper with the cabinet at all if he didn’t want to get in?”

“A very pertinent question. The only possible alternative is that he merely wanted to call attention to the deck of cards. There was even a confirmation of this: his whole effort to break into a metal cabinet with a puny little fire tool showed that his intentions were directional rather than acquisitive.”

“Ill be damned,” said Smith huskily.

“No doubt. At any rate it was evident that the whole thing was a blind, a ruse, a device to call our attention to the first deck, to get us to re-examine it and discover that the jack was missing. But who could have had motive to call our attention to the missing jack? The twins, whom the missing jack accused? Had they tampered with the cabinet it could only have been with the determination to destroy the deck. I’ve just proved that the purpose of the tamperer was to call attention to the deck — the last thing in the world the twins, had they been guilty, would have wanted. Therefore the twins didn’t tamper with the lock. But I’ve also shown that the one who tampered with the lock was the murderer. Therefore, again, the twins — one or both of them — were not the murderer. Therefore, finally, the twins were framed by the murderer... which is what I set out, eons ago, to demonstrate.”

Mrs. Carreau sighed. The Carreau boys were staring at Ellery with naked worship in their eyes.

Ellery rose and began to stride about restlessly. “Who was the murderer — this framer-murderer?” he demanded in a strident, unnatural voice. “Was there any sign, any evidence, any clue that might point to the criminal’s identity? Well, there was; and I’ve just figured it out — when,” he added lightly, “it’s too late to do anything about it but pat myself on the back.”

“Then you know!” cried Miss Forrest

“Certainly I know, my dear girl.”

“Who?” croaked Bones. “Who was the damned—” He glared about, his bony fists quivering. His gaze lingered longest on Smith.

“The murderer, aside from the general insipidity of trying to create fantastic clues which in the normal course of events no one would have been able to interpret,” continued Ellery hastily, “made one extremely bad mistake.”

“Mistake?” The Inspector blinked.

“Ah, but what a mistake! Forced upon the murderer by outraged Nature — a most inevitable mistake, a mistake which resulted from an abnormality. In killing Mark and chloroforming the Inspector, this person” — he paused — “stole the Inspector’s ring.”

They stared at the old gentleman stupidly. Dr. Holmes said in a thick voice: “What — another?”

“It was a most inoffensive little ring,” said Ellery dreamily, “a plain gold wedding band worth not more than a few dollars. Yes, Doctor, another of those piquant thefts of valueless rings the story of which both you and Miss Forrest related rather reluctantly on the night of our arrival. Queer, isn’t it, that such a peculiar and seemingly irrelevant fact should have tripped the murderer up?”

“But how?” The Inspector coughed through a begrimed handkerchief which he was holding to his mouth and nose. The others were all wrinkling their noses and stirring with a new uneasiness; the air was foul.

“Well, why was the ring stolen?” cried Ellery. “Why was Miss Forrest’s, and Dr. Holmes’s? Any suggestions?”

No one replied.

“Come, come,” jeered Ellery, “lighten the last hour with a game of wits. I’m sure you can see some of the possible motives.”

His cutting voice brought their heads about again. “Well,” said Dr. Holmes in a mutter, “it couldn’t be that they were stolen for their value, Queen. You’ve pointed that out yourself.”

“Quite right.” And blessings on your quick head, Ellery thought, for keeping the ball rolling. “Nevertheless, thank you. Anyone else? Miss Forrest?”

“Why...” She licked her dry lips; her eyes were extraordinarily bright. “It couldn’t have been for — well, sentimental reasons, Mr. Queen. None of the rings had any but the most personal value, I’m sure. I mean — to the owner. Certainly none to the thief.”

“A neat way of putting it,” applauded Ellery. “You’re quite right, Miss Forrest Come, come, don’t relax! Make this interesting.”

“Could it be,” ventured Francis Carreau timidly, “that one of the rings in the house had a... well, a hidden cavity or something that contained a secret or a poison of some kind?”

“I was just thinking that,” said Julian, coughing.

“Ingenious.” Ellery grinned with difficulty. “Possible in the case of the thefts of the other rings, I suppose, but even that possibility is banished when you consider that the same person — obviously the same person — stole the Inspector’s ring, Francis. By no stretch of the imagination could you say that the thief was looking for a hidden cavity in the Inspector’s ring, Francis. Any more?”

“By God,” growled the Inspector suddenly. He rose and looked about him, a slender little Gandhi, with suspicious eyes.

“The old sleuth at last! I wondered when you’d get it, dad. You see, the theft of the Inspector’s ring shows clearly that all the thefts had no other purpose than... mere possession.”

Dr. Holmes started and began to say something. Then he shrank within himself, strangling the words and riveting his gaze on the stone floor.

“Smoke!” shrieked Mrs. Xavier, rising and glaring at the stairs.

They jumped at the word, ghastly under the yellow light. Smoke was eddying from the stuffing Ellery had inserted beneath the cellar door.

He snatched up one of the tin pails and scrambled up the steps. He dashed the contents of the pail on the smoldering material, and with a hiss the smoke vanished.

“Dad! Get that big tub of water up here. Here, I’ll help you.” Between them they got the butter tub upstairs. “Keep the door wet We’ll want to stave off the inevitable for as long...” His eyes were glittering as he bounded downstairs again. “Just a little more, friends, just a little more,” he said like a barker striving to keep the attention of a restless crowd. His last words were drowned in the splash of water as the Inspector feverishly wet down the door. “I said mere possession. Do you know what that means?”

“Oh, please,” panted someone. They were staring, horrified, at the door, all standing now.

“You’ll listen,” said Ellery savagely, “if I have to shake every one of you. Sit down.” Dazed, they obeyed. “That’s better. Now listen. The indiscriminate thefts of such concrete articles as valueless rings can mean only one thing — kleptomania. A kleptomania devoted exclusively to the stealing of rings, any kind of rings, but rings. I say that because nothing else has apparently been stolen.” They were listening again, forcing themselves to listen, forcing themselves to do anything but think of the inferno blazing over their heads. The thuds of falling debris came incessantly now, like the clump of clods on a lowered coffin. “In other words, find a kleptomaniac in this group and you’ll have the murderer of Dr. Xavier and Mark Xavier, and the framer of the boys.”

The Inspector hurried down, panting, for more water.

“So,” said Ellery with a ferocious scowl, “I propose as the last ace of my worthless life to do that very thing.” He raised his hand suddenly and began to tug at the very odd and beautiful ring on his little finger. They watched him, entranced.

He got it off after a struggle and placed it on one of the old boxes. The box he pushed gently into the center of the group.

Then he straightened up and took a few backward steps, and said no more.

Their eyes were fastened upon that small gleaming trinket as if it were salvation, instead of the symbol of a desperate trick. Even the coughing had ceased. The Inspector came down and added his eyes to the fixed battery. And no one spoke at all.

Poor fools, thought Ellery with an inward groan. “Don’t you realize what’s happening, what I’m doing?” And he kept his expression as savage as he could make it, glaring coldly about him. He wished with fierce yearning that at this moment, when their attention was wholly caught, when for the fluttering instant they turned their faces away from death, that death would come crashing and smoking upon them through a collapsed ceiling, so that their lives might be snuffed out with no warning and no pain. And he continued to glare.

They remained that way without moving during an infinite interval. The only sounds were the thuds above them, and the faint steady hissing of the flames. The chill in the cellar had long since vanished, to be replaced by an insidious stuffy heat that choked their nostrils.

And then she screamed.

Oh, blessed Lord, thought Ellery, my trick has worked. As if it matters! Why couldn’t she stick it out until the end? But then she was always a poor, weak fool impressed with her own stupid cunning.

She screamed again. “Yes, I did it! I did it, and I don’t care! I did it and I would do it over again — damn his soul, wherever he is!”

She gulped for breath and a mad glint came into her eyes. “What’s the difference?” she shrieked. “We’re all dead, anyway! Dead and in hell!” She flung her arm at the petrified figure of Mrs. Carreau, crouched over the trembling twins. “I killed — him — and Mark because he knew! He was in love with that... that...” Her voice gurgled off in an incoherent mutter. And it rose again. “She needn’t deny it. That whispering, whispering, eternal whispering—”

“No,” whispered Mrs. Carreau. “It was just about the children, I tell you. There was never anything between us—”

“It was my revenge!” cried the woman. “I made it seem as if those — those sons of hers had killed him... to make her suffer, to make her suffer as she made me suffer. But Mark spoiled the first one. When he said he knew who did it, I had to kill him...”

They let her rave. She was completely mad now; there was froth at the corners of her mouth.

“Yes, and I stole them too!” she shouted. “You thought I couldn’t stand it, putting that ring there—”

“Well, you couldn’t,” croaked Ellery.

She paid no attention. “That’s why he retired, after... He found out — about me. He tried to cure me, take me away from the world, from temptation.” Tears were falling now. “Yes, and he was succeeding, too,” she screamed, “when they came — that woman and her devil’s litter. And the rings, the rings... I don’t care! I’m glad to die — glad, do you hear? Glad!”

It was Mrs. Xavier, the old Mrs. Xavier of the smoking black eyes and heaving breast, tall and swaying in her tattered gown, her skin streaked with tears and grime.

She drew a deep, shuddering breath, looking quickly about her, and then before any of them could move, to their horror she sprang across the cleared space, bowled the petrified Inspector to one side so that he staggered to keep his balance, and scrambled up the cellar stairs with the agility of insane desperation. Before Ellery could follow her she had torn open the cellar door, stopped short, screamed once more, and then plunged through the burst of smoke directly into the flames in the corridor outside.

Ellery was after her in a flash. The smoke and fire made him reel back, coughing and choking. He called urgently, called and coughed and called again in the inferno before him. There was no reply.

And so, after a while, he pushed the door shut and crammed the fragments of Ann Forrest’s dress back in the crack at the bottom. The Inspector staggered up with more water, a stumbling automaton.

“Why,” whispered Miss Forrest with surprise, “she’s... she’s...” She laughed hysterically and flung herself into Dr. Holmes’s arms, sobbing and laughing and choking in horrible sequence.

The Queens came slowly down the stairs.

“But, El,” croaked the Inspector plaintively, like a child, “how — why — I don’t understand.” He passed his sooty hand over his forehead, wincing.

“It was there all the time,” muttered Ellery; his own eyes were dead. “John Xavier loved trinkets, had drawers full of them. But not a single ring. Why?” He licked his lips. “It could only have been, when I thought of kleptomania, because the one nearest and dearest to him — who but his wife? was the kleptomaniac. He was keeping her particular temptation away from her.”

“Mrs. Xavier!” shrilled Mrs. Wheary suddenly, rigid on the coal heap. Her body was shaking spasmodically.

Ellery sank upon the bottom step and buried his face in his hands. “The futility of the whole damned thing,” he said bitterly. “You were right from the beginning, dad — right for the wrong reasons. The extraordinary thing is that when she was accused of her husband’s murder the other day she confessed. Good God, don’t you understand? She confessed! Her confession was sincere. She wasn’t shielding anybody. She caved in, poor weak creature that she — was.” He shivered. “What an idiot I was. By demonstrating that the evidence upon which she was accused was false evidence, I cleared her and gave her the opportunity of capitalizing her exoneration, of feeding our suspicion that she was shielding somebody. How she must have laughed at me!”

“She isn’t laughing — now,” said Mrs. Carreau hoarsely.

Ellery did not hear. “But I was right about the frame-up,” he muttered. “She was framed — by Mark Xavier, as I explained. But the amazing thing about it — the most remarkable part of it all — was that Mark Xavier in framing Mrs. Xavier was unconsciously framing the real murderer! By sheer accident. Don’t you see the ghastly irony of that? Putting the noose about the neck of the guilty person when he thought her innocent! Oh, he really thought the twins guilty when he first framed her, I’m convinced of that. Maybe later on he came to suspect the truth; I think he did. Remember that day we saw him trying to get into Mrs. Xavier’s bedroom? He had realized, from her manner when she had confessed to the crime, that by accident he had framed the right one, and wanted to implicate her even more by leaving some other damaging clue. We’ll never know. It was she who left the jack of diamonds in Mark’s hand after poisoning him; he never had a chance. I never believed that — that a dying man would... could...” He stopped, his head hanging.

Then he looked up and stared at them. He tried to smile. Smith had sunk into a terrified stupor, and Mrs. Wheary was thrashing about on the coal, moaning piteously.

“Well,” he said, with an effort. “I’ve got that off my chest. I suppose now...”

He stopped again, and even as he stopped they all jumped to their feet, babbling: “What was that? What was that?”

It had been a reverberating clap, a sound that shook the house to its foundations and echoed faintly against the surrounding hills.

The Inspector was up the stairs in three bounds. He jerked open the door, shielding his eyes with his arm from the flames. He peered out and up.

He caught a glimpse of the sky — the upper floors had tumbled in long before, charred ruins. Before his feet there was the most peculiar phenomenon — a boiling of millions of little spears. From their sharp points came a steady hissing. Clouds of vapor, more evanescent than smoke, were rising all about.

He closed the door and came down the stairs with infinite care, as if every step were a prayer and a benediction. When he got to the bottom they saw that his face was whiter than paper and that there were tears in his eyes.

“What is it?” croaked Ellery.

The Inspector said brokenly: “A miracle.”

“A miracle?” Ellery gasped with stupid open mouth.

“It’s raining.”