The Spanish Cape Mystery

Chapter Three The Problem of the Naked Man

Inspector Moley proved to be a grizzled veteran of the red-faced, hard-lipped, solidly built variety — the marks of the experienced man-hunter the world over who has come up from the ranks by the free use of fists, a knowledge of the faces and ways of professional criminals, and a certain cool native shrewdness. Such men are often bewildered when crime strays off the path of orthodoxy.

He listened to Rosa’s story and Earle Cort’s muttered explanation without comment, but Ellery detected the puzzlement between his brows.

“Well, Mr. Queen,” he said as the Judge helped Rosa into the police car, Cort scowling behind them in a helpless way, “this business sure looks tough. A little out of my line. I... uh... I’ve heard of you, and of course the Judge’s recommendation is plenty. Would you like to — sort of-help?”

Ellery sighed. “I was hoping... We haven’t had any sleep, Inspector, and as for food—” He eyed the open rumbleseat of the Duesenberg longingly. “However, Judge Macklin and I might make a... er... a tentative reconnaissance, as it were.” And there was something eager in his tone.

There was a county trooper on guard now at the entrance to Spanish Cape off the main road; apparently Cort’s temporary escape had evoked martial precautionary measures. The car swished through, and no one said anything at all. Rosa sat stiffly, like a woman going to her execution; her eyes were glassy. Cort tormented his fingernails by her side... At the bottle-end of the neck of rock stood another trooper. And parked motorcycles dotted the length of the sunken stone road leading into the heart of the Cape.

“That abandoned car,” began Ellery in a murmur to Inspector Moley. His eyes were brightly inquisitive.

“A couple of my men are looking her over now,” said the detective gloomily. “If there are any prints, they’ll find ’em. I’m not puttin’ too much hope on prints, though. Doesn’t sound like a professional job, for all the smooth way it went off. That big guy...” He sucked in his hard lips. “A queer one, all right. He ought to be a cinch to spot. Seems to me I’ve heard of somebody around here, anyway, that answers to some such description. It’ll come back to me in a minute.”

Ellery said nothing more. As they turned off the sunken road he could see, farther up the road they were leaving, the entrance to the beach terrace. A swarm of men buzzed there. Then they had rounded the corner and begun to climb toward the house. Its gayly tiled, careless roofs were discernible as gables from the distance.

On either side of the road lay tiny wildernesses of rock-garden, flung about with a subtle lack of plan; they gave off an aroma of mingled sweetnesses which blended pungently with the salt air. A gnarled old man whose skin was the color of the rocks worked stooped over off to the left, with an air of immutable concentration, as if not even violent death might disturb the sanctity of his labors. The whole place was a riot of blooming bushes, colored stones, and immaculate shrubs. Then the house loomed ahead — a long low Spanish structure... Ellery wondered suddenly if the old man poking about in the rock-gardens might not be Walter Godfrey himself.

“Jorum,” said Inspector Moley, noticing his frown.

“And who might Jorum be?”

“Harmless old critter potters around the place; I guess he’s about the only friend old Godfrey has in the world. Works as a kind of Good Man Friday to Godfrey’s Robinson Crusoe — drives one of the cars sometimes, acts as watchman, helps the boss with his ’tarnal gardening, and so on. The two of ’em are thick as thieves.” Inspector Moley’s shrewd eyes turned thoughtful. “Couple of things I want to do. First off that call from Hollis Waring’s cottage last night. I don’t know but what we might be able to trace it—”

“Trace a call on the dial system?” Ellery murmured. “And then, too, young Cort says he was unsuccessful in the matter of his call.”

“What young Cort says,” remarked the Inspector grimly, “don’t cut any ice with me. Though I’ve had one of the boys check up on him already, and so far he seems to have told the truth... Say, here we are. Chin up, now, Miss Godfrey. You don’t want to make your mother feel any worse than she feels already. She’s had plenty of grief today.”

Rosa smiled a mechanical smile and poked her fingers in her hair.

A cluster of frozen people occupied the inner court. About them circulated restless, hard-looking men. From the balcony peered several pairs of frightened eyes, apparently of the genus domestic. There was not the whisper of human speech. Bright-colored furniture stood about; a fountain gushed in the center of the patio; the floor was paved with cheerful flagstones — all glittering and fixed. The whole scene was unreal in the glare of the sun, something out of a crazy painting.

As Rosa jumped out of the police car a tall dark woman of statuesque figure, her eyes reddened, a handkerchief fluttering from a slender wrist, ran blindly into the driveway. The two women fell into each other’s arms.

“I’m all right, mother,” said Rosa in a low tone. “B-but David — I’m afraid—”

“Rosa, darling. Oh, thank God...”

“Now, mother—”

“We’ve been frantic about you... It’s been such a terrible, terrible day... First you and David, then J — Mr. Marco... Darling, he’s been m-murdered!”

“Mother, please. Control yourself.”

“It’s simply... Everything’s gone wrong. First it was Pitts this morning — I don’t know where she is — then you and David, then Mr. Marco...”

“I know, I know, mother. You’ve said that already.”

“But David. Is he... is he—?”

“I don’t know, mother. I don’t know.”

Ellery murmured to Inspector Moley: “Now who, Inspector, is Pitts?”

“Damned if I know. Wait a minute.” The Inspector pulled out a notebook and consulted a much-scribbled page. “Oh! She’s one of the house-maids. Mrs. Godfrey’s personal maid.”

“But Mrs. Godfrey just said that she’s gone.”

Moley shrugged. “She’s probably around somewhere. I’m not goin’ to worry about a maid right now... Just a second till I break this up. I—”

He stopped, and waited. The disheveled young man had taken up his station by the entrance of the patio, and he was glaring at Rosa in a fierce, baffled way, biting his fingernails and devouring the girl with his eyes. Now he jerked his head irritably, changed expression, and with a sullen acquiescence stepped aside.

A small stout gray man in dirty slacks shuffled through the gateway and rather helplessly took Rosa’s hand. His head was long and narrow, and tiny in comparison with his bloated little body, giving him a bottom-heavy appearance, like Humpty-Dumpty. He had no chin at all, which made his piratical nose look larger than it was. His eyes were small and hard and unwinking, almost ophidian; utterly without color and without feeling... In the ensemble he looked like an under-gardener, or a cook’s helper. Certainly there was nothing in his appearance to suggest power — except possibly the snaky eyes — or in his demeanor to suggest the builder and destroyer of fortunes. Walter Godfrey held his daughter’s hand like any parental pensioner, and ignored his wife utterly.

The chauffeur of the police car drove away and after a moment of awkward silence the three Godfreys slowly went into the patio.

“By God!” whispered Inspector Moley, snapping his fingers.

“What’s the matter?” growled Judge Macklin; the old gentleman had not taken his eyes off Godfrey.

“I’ve got it! Him, I mean. Wait till I get a couple of calls off my chest... Right, right, Joe; I’m coming. Hold those reports.” He went around the corner of the house, quickly. Then his head reappeared. “Go right in and wait for me, Judge. You, too, Mr. Queen. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” And he vanished again.

Ellery and the Judge strolled rather diffidently into the patio. “I invariably feel awed in the presence of riches,” murmured Ellery, “until I remember what Prud’hon said.”

“And what did Prud’hon say?”

“‘La propriete, c’est le vol.’” The Judge grunted. “And then I feel better. Humble as I am, I can still hold my own in the company of... er... thieves. Consequently, we may as well make ourselves at home.”

“Always the sophist! I can’t forget that there’s the smell of death in this air.

“Apparently some of these good folk can’t, either. Do you know any of them?”

“Nary a soul,” shrugged the old gentleman. “I’m afraid, judging from Godfrey’s sour expression — if that disreputable little rascal is Godfrey — we’re not too welcome.”

Rosa got out of her wicker chair rather wearily. “I’m so sorry, Judge. I’m afraid I... I’m a little upset. Mother, father, this is Judge Macklin. He’s offered to help. And this is Mr. Ellery Queen, a — a detective. I— Where is he?” she cried suddenly in a stricken voice, and she began to weep. Whether she meant David Kummer or John Marco no one knew.

The brown young man winced. He sprang forward and seized her hand. “Rosa—”

“Detective,” said Walter Godfrey, hitching his dirty slacks. “Seems to me we have plenty of those. Rosa, stop sniffling! It’s unmannerly of you. The scoundrel got what he deserved, I daresay, and I hope the benefactor of mankind who polished him off goes scot-free. If you listened to your father more often instead of to—”

“Pleasant chap,” muttered Ellery, turning away with the Judge as Stella Godfrey flashed an angry look at her husband and hurried to her daughter. “Observe our young hero. The world’s most ubiquitous swain, with an obvious weakness for tears. Can’t say I blame him in this case. And wouldn’t you say that that human barge over there is the ‘frenetic’ Mrs. Constable Rosa mentioned?”

Laura Constable, attired in an aching red morning dress, sat in a trance nearby. She did not see the two men, nor Stella Godfrey escorting Rosa into the house, nor Earle Cort biting his lip, nor Walter Godfrey staring malevolently at the detectives hovering over the patio. The woman was indecently stout even in the armor she wore beneath her gown; and her bosom was frightening.

But the size of her body was insignificant beside the magnitude of her terror. It was more than fear on the fat, lumpy, insipid, enameled face; it was pure panic. It could not be explained by the presence of the numerous police, nor even by the proximity of a dead man. Ellery studied her intently. There was an artery jumping in the skin of her fat throat, and a spasmodic nerve in her left eyelid, over bloodshot eyes. She breathed in slow, heavy, labored, almost asthmatic breaths.

“There’s a spectacle of raw nature,” said the Judge grimly. “I wonder what’s bothering her?”

“An inadequate verb... And there, I suppose, sit the Munns.”

“Towers,” murmured Judge Macklin, “of silence. An interesting collection of animals, my son.”

The woman was easily identified. Her beautiful face had been pictured in a thousand newspapers and periodicals. Emanating from the grubby soil of a mid-Western hamlet, she had flashed to a doubtful fame before she was twenty as the winner of numerous beauty contests. For a time she had modeled — there was a hard blonde loveliness in her face and figure that photographed superbly. Then she had disappeared, to turn up in Paris as the wife of a dissolute American millionaire. Two months later she had secured a lucrative divorce and a motion picture contract in Hollywood.

This episode in her career was as cursory as it was eventful. Possessing no special talent, embroiled in three successive scandals, she had quit Hollywood and returned to New York — almost at once securing another contract, this one to appear in a featured role of a Broadway revue. And here, apparently, Cecilia Ball struck her true metier; for she hurtled from one revue to another uninterruptedly and with that skyrocketing velocity of success possible only to Broadway and Balkan politics. Then she met Joseph A. Munn.

Munn was something of a character. A far-Westerner who had punched cattle in his teens for thirty dollars a month, he had joined Pershing’s punitive army in the Villista war, found himself caught up in the maelstrom of the European conflict, achieved a sergeantcy and two medals in France, and returned to the United States a penniless hero with three scraps of shrapnel in his body. That his wounds did not impair a herculean vigor was proved by his subsequent history. Almost at once he quit New York and disappeared by way of a shabby tramp-liner. For many years he remained invisible. Then suddenly he turned up in New York, a man of forty-odd, black as a mestizo, his hair as strong and curly as ever, with an air of quiet authority and a fortune of several million dollars. How he had made it no one but his banker knew; but the preponderant rumor placed the source of his wealth in revolution, cattle, and mines. He seemed intimately familiar with the South American continent.

Joe Munn came to New York with an idea that amounted to an obsession: to make up as quickly as possible for his years of hard riding, hard campaigning, and hard association with halfbreed women. It was inevitable that he should stumble over Cecilia Ball. It was in a gaudy night-club, the party was hilarious and liquorish, the music inciting; Munn got roaring drunk and flung his money about with the incredible carelessness of a maharajah. He was so big and masterful, so different from the pale men she was accustomed to, and moreover had so much more money — as was self-evident — that to Cecilia he became instantly irresistible. At noon the next day Munn awoke in a Connecticut hotel-room to find Cecilia smiling coyly by his side; there was a marriage license on the bureau.

Another man might have stormed and threatened, or consulted a lawyer, according to his nature. Joe Munn laughed and said: “All right, kid, you hooked me; but it was my own fault and I guess you’re not so hard to take. Only remember; from now on you’re Joe Munn’s wife.”

“How could I forget it, handsome?” she cooed, snuggling close.

“Oh, I’ve seen it happen,” said Munn with a grim chuckle. “This is going to be one of those closed corporations, see? I don’t give a whoop in hell what you were or who you played around with; my own past isn’t any too sweet-smelling. I’ve got scads of dough; more than any one you’ll meet can give you. And I think I can take care of myself in a clinch. You see our clinches are private, that’s all.” And he promptly proceeded to prove his point.

Cecilia Munn shivered a little, however, whenever she had cause to remember the look in his hard black eyes.

That had been some months before.

Now the Munns, husband and wife, sat side by side in the patio of Walter Godfrey’s hacienda — saying nothing, doing nothing, scarcely breathing. It was not difficult to gauge the condition of Cecilia Munn’s emotions: she was deathly pale beneath her make-up, her hands were rolled into a hard knot in her lap, and her enormous gray-green eyes were swimming with fear. Her breasts rose and fell in minute, repressed surges. She was frankly scared; as scared in her own way as Laura Constable.

Munn towered by her side, a bull of a man, his black eyes almost closed and roving under the brown lids like restless little rats, missing nothing. His big muscular hands were half-hidden in the pockets of his sport coat. His face was absolutely blank, the face of a gambler in a professional moment.

Ellery gathered the impression from some secret place in his mind that the brown Westerner’s muscles under his loose stylish clothes were gathered for lightning action. He seemed aware of — and ready for — everything.

“What in tunket are they all afraid of?” murmured Ellery to the Judge as Inspector Moley’s powerful figure emerged from a door at the far corner of the patio. “I’ve never seen a crew in greater funk.”

The old gentleman did not reply for a moment. Then he said slowly: “I’m most curious about this man who’s been murdered. I should like a look at his face. Was he afraid, too?”

Ellery’s glance flickered over the immobile figure of Joe Munn. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said softly.

The detective hurried up with long strides. “Something and nothing,” he reported in a low voice. “I’ve checked with the ‘phone company. They’ve a record of a call last night from the Waring cottage.”

“Good!” exclaimed the Judge.

“Not so good. That’s all. No way of telling who was dialed; the dial system doesn’t show, or something. It was a local call, though.”

“Ah!”

“Yes, that’s something, I admit. It sure looks as if this big man-mountain reported back to somebody in this house. But try and prove it.” The Inspector’s jaw-muscles bunched. “But I know now what the identity of that big gent is.”

“The kidnaper?”

“I knew it would come back to me, and I’ve already checked up on him.” Moley jammed a twisted Italian cheroot into his mouth. “Get this, now — you won’t believe it. He’s a guy by the name of Captain Kidd!”

“Nonsense,” protested Ellery. “That’s stretching the probabilities to an unconscionable degree. With a patch over one eye? What’s the world coming to? Captain Kidd! I’m surprised he hasn’t a pegleg.”

“Probably the patch,” remarked the Judge in a dry tone, “suggested the name, my son.”

“Seems to be the size of it, sir,” grunted the Inspector, dribbling acrid smoke. “Talking about peglegs, Mr. Queen — one of the things Miss Godfrey told us about him was what brought him to mind. He’s got just about the biggest pair of clodhoppers this side o’ Poland. Bigger than Camera’s, they say; some of the boys down his way call him ‘Tugboat Annie’ when they want to get his goat. That scar on his neck she mentioned helped, too. Bullet-hole, I think.”

“A veritable gladiator,” murmured Ellery.

“And then some. Nobody knows his real handle. Just Captain Kidd. The patch is on the level; he had his eye poked out about ten years ago, I understand, in a fight on the waterfront with some tough little Wop.”

“Then he’s well-known in these parts?”

“Well enough,” said Moley grimly. “Lives alone in a shack on the mudflats down Barham way, and he manages to get along by hiring out as a fishing-guide. He’s got a dirty little sloop, or something. Drinks quarts of bug-juice a day and keeps pretty much to himself. Got a rep as a bad customer. He’s been a fixture on this stretch of coast for about twenty years, but nobody seems to know much about him.”

“Sloop,” said Ellery thoughtfully. “Then why did he steal Waring’s cruiser, unless it was out of sheer cussedness?”

“Faster. You can go places in that thing. And it’s got a cabin. Matter of fact, one of my men reports that he sold his sloop out to another fisherman just Wednesday. Sounds interesting.”

“Sold out,” repeated the Judge with sudden gravity.

“That’s the story. I’ve sent the alarm out all along the shore, and the Coast Guard are warned to keep their eyes open. Must be something of a dope if he expects to get away with that job he pulled last night. Somebody’s playing him heavy for a sucker. With that carcass of his he couldn’t any more disguise himself than an elephant in a one-tent circus. Mask!” The Inspector snorted. “He pinched the car, all right. Man who owns it identified it five minutes ago. It was stolen off a side-road where it was parked last night around six. About five miles from here.”

“Queer,” muttered Ellery. “And yet, at that, it isn’t as stupid as it appears on the surface. A man like your piratical Kidd might easily decide to pull one last desperate job and light out. Seems indicated by his sale of the sloop, his only means of livelihood.” He slowly lit a cigaret. “He is now in possession of a boat, as you say, that can go places. If he’s been paid off in advance he can ditch Kummer’s body miles off the coast in the ocean, where it will never be found, and head for anywhere he pleases. Even if you pick him up, where’s the well-known and frequently elusive corpus delicti? But that seems to me a remote possibility. He’s gone, I fear, for something better than good. A birdie tells me, Inspector, that you’re in for it.”

“Running out on me already?” grinned Moley. “Anyway, it’s a question whether he murdered Marco last night. By all accounts he hauled Kummer out to sea thinking he was Marco. And the guy he reported to by ‘phone probably to his surprise saw Marco after Kidd’s call, realized Kidd had messed things up and grabbed the wrong man, and bumped Marco last night himself while Kidd was attending to Kummer miles out at sea.”

“It’s possible,” pointed out the Judge, “that Kidd landed late last night somewhere along the coast and ‘phoned his employer again, you know. And he might have been instructed to return and finish the job.”

“Possible, but I’m convinced we’re investigating two murder cases, not one. With two separate killers.”

“But, Moley, they must be connected!”

“Sure, sure.” The Inspector blinked. “He’s got to land for gas some time, y’see, and then we’ll nab him. Kidd, I mean.”

“For the cruiser?” Ellery shrugged. “Despite his stupidity, he pulled off his job. I see no reason to believe that in so elementary a precaution as fuel he should have slipped up. He probably has a lot of it cached somewhere in an isolated spot. I shouldn’t rely—”

“Well, we’ll see. There’s a hell of a lot of work to be done. Haven’t had a chance even to give the house a thorough looking-over. Come along, gents. I want to show you something pretty.”

Ellery removed the cigaret from his mouth and stared hard at the detective. “Pretty?”

“It’s a pip. Something you don’t see every day, Mr. Queen — even you don’t.” There was a trace of sarcasm in Moley’s voice. “This thing ought to be right up your alley.”

“Come, come, Inspector, you’re being deliberately provoking. Pretty about whom?”

“The stiff.”

“Oh! Well,” grinned Ellery, “from all I hear he was something of an Adonis.”

“You ought to see him now,” said the Inspector grimly. “Adonis was a wall-eyed bohunk compared to him. I’ll bet a lot of gals wouldn’t mind peekin’, even if he is deader’n a mackerel. It’s the screwiest thing I’ve run across in twenty-five years of looking at dead men.”

The appalling truth was that John Marco sat, very dead, in a chair at one of the round terrace tables, slumped a little, a black stick still in his right hand and resting almost horizontally on the flagstones, his black crisp curls covered by a black fedora hat a trifle askew, a theatrical-looking black opera cloak draped about his shoulders and caught at the neck by a metal hasp and braided loop — and otherwise naked.

He was not three-quarters naked, not half-naked, not almost naked. Under the cloak he was naked as the day he had been born.

The two men gaped like bumpkins at a country fair. Then Ellery blinked and looked again, to make sure. “By God,” he said in such a tone as a connoisseur might employ in awed contemplation of a work of art. Judge Macklin merely stared, incapable of speech.

Inspector Moley stood to one side watching their astonished faces with a sort of unhappy pleasure. “How’s that for a new wrinkle, Judge?” he growled. “I’ll bet you sat on the bench hearing many a case in which the subject was an undressed woman, but an undressed man—! I don’t know what the devil this country’s coming to.”

“You’re not suggesting,” began the old gentleman with a grimace of disgust, “that some woman—”

Moley shrugged his powerful shoulders and puffed at his cheroot.

“Bilge,” said Ellery, but his tone was unconvincing. He could only stare.

Naked! Beneath the cloak the dead man wore not a scrap of clothing. The blue-white hairless torso gleamed in the morning sun, marble statuary worn smooth and pallid by time; death had left its unmistakable imprint on that firm skin. He had flat angular breasts, and the shoulders were broad and strong, tapering to a small waist. Long flanks, rigid in death, were roundly muscled. The legs were slim and unveined, like the legs of a boy; and he had almost beautiful feet.

“Handsome devil,” sighed Ellery, raising his eyes to the dead man’s face.

It was a faintly Latin face, with rather full lips and the merest suggestion of aquilinity in the nose — a well-shaven, scrubbed and dangerous face, languid and strong and mocking even in death. Of the fear Judge Macklin had speculated upon there was not a trace. “This is the way he was found?”

“Just the way you see him, Mr. Queen,” said Moley, “except that the cloak wasn’t draped around and over his shoulders as it is now. It fell straight down, covering his body pretty well. We turned the flaps back ourselves and got the shock of our lives... Nuts, isn’t it? We haven’t moved him, though, an inch. Something out of a book, or a lunatic asylum... Here comes our county coroner. Hi, Blackie, shake a leg, will you?”

“Curious,” muttered Judge Macklin, shifting his lean old body aside as a thin and bony man with a tired face trudged down the terrace steps. “This gentleman, Inspector: was he in the habit of strolling about in what I confess is a very fetching nude, or was last night a special occasion? By the way, it was last night, I take it?”

“Looks like it, from the little I’ve been able to dig out so far, Judge. As for his habits, your guess is as good as mine,” said Moley sourly. “If he was, he must have given the gals around here a great big thrill. ‘Lo, Blackie. How’s this for a godly chore of a Sunday morning?”

The coroner’s jaw sagged. “Why, the fellow’s naked! Is this the way you found him?” His black bag thudded on the flags as he bent over the corpse, peering incredulously.

“For the tenth time,” said the Inspector in a weary voice, “the answer is yes. Get going, Blackie, for the love of Mike. This is a funny business all around and I want as much as you can give me on the spot, pronto.”

The three men stepped back and watched the coroner go to work. For a moment none of them said anything.

Then Ellery drawled: “You haven’t found his clothes, Inspector?”

His eyes ranged over the terrace. It was not spacious, but what it lacked in size it made up for in color and atmosphere. It invited leisure — an intimate little temple of lazy pleasure. Its open-beamed white roof permitted the rays of the sun to fall on the gay flags underfoot in a striped pattern of light and shadow that was of the very essence of summer.

A clever hand and eye had supervised the decorations; one received the dual impression of sea and Spain. There were beach umbrellas over saucy round tables in a prevailing motif of Spanish reds and yellows; sea-shell ashtrays lay about, and small brass-and-leather-bound chests of cigarets and cigars, and various sets of table games. At the head of the terrace steps, one on each side of the walk, were two huge Spanish oil jars, implanted with flowers; at the bottom, resting on the flagstones, two others. They were magnificently gigantic, something out of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment; almost as tall as a man, and voluptuously fat-bellied. Against the left-hand rock wall, nestling in the shadow of the high cliff, stood a miniature Spanish galleon on a stand (which Ellery discovered later split in two by some alchemy of ingenuity and became a very practical bar). Several pieces of superb colored statuary in marble occupied niches hewn out of the rock walls, and upon the walls themselves a capable hand had molded bas-relief sculptures of Spanish historical figures, chiefly maritime, in terra cotta and stucco. Two large searchlights, the sun glittering on their brasswork and prisms, stood sentinel on two of the opposite beams of the openwork roof. They faced straight ahead, piercing the opening between the cliff walls forming the Cove.

Upon the round table at which the naked dead man sat were writing implements — an oddly shaped inkpot, an ornate and delightful quill in a box of fine sand, and a rather elaborate repository for stationery.

“Clothes?” scowled Inspector Moley. “Not yet. That’s what makes it so screwy, Mr. Queen. You could say that a guy might come trotting down to this little pocket-sized beach at night, take off his things, and splash around in the ocean for a while to cool off, or something; but what the devil happened to his clothes? And his towel; can’t dry off at night without a towel. Don’t tell me somebody swiped his clothes while he was taking a swim, like the kids do! Anyway, that’s the way I was thinking — in dizzy circles — till I found out something.”

“He couldn’t swim, I suppose,” murmured Ellery.

“Right, right!” Vast disgust was on the red honest face. “Anyway, that swim stuff would be out. He’s wearing a cloak and holding a cane. Hell, he was even writing a letter when he was killed!”

“Now that,” said Ellery dryly, “sounds like something.” They were standing behind the still seated figure now. Marco’s dead body faced the little beach squarely, the broad cloaked back to the terrace stairs. He seemed to be brooding out over the coruscating sand, and the tiny curve of blue sea filling the mouth of the Cove. The tide was out, although even as Ellery watched there was an almost imperceptible inward creep of the water. The thirty feet or so of uncovered sand were perfectly smooth, unmarked by the slightest alien impression.

“What d’ye mean — something?” snorted Moley. “Sure it’s something. Take a look for yourself.”

Ellery poked his head over the dead man’s shoulder; the coroner, working from the side, grunted something and he stepped back again. But he had seen clearly enough the evidence of Moley’s assertion. Marco’s left hand hung straight down, near the table; directly below on the flags, the stiff fingers grotesquely pointing to it, lay a brightly colored quill pen like the one sticking in the sand-box. The nib was discolored with dried black ink. A sheet of stationery on which several lines of script appeared — a creamy sheet with a coronal crest embossed in red and gold at the top, the name Godfrey in antique lettering on the little streamer below the crest — lay on the table only a few inches away from the dead man’s body. Apparently Marco had been assaulted in the midst of writing, for the last word of his message — obviously an incomplete letter — broke off abruptly, and a thick black ink-line trailed off down the sheet, across the intervening stretch of table-top to the very edge. There was a smudge of black ink on the side of the middle finger of the dead man’s left hand, as Ellery ascertained by stooping and squinting.

“Looks genuine enough,” he remarked, straightening. “But doesn’t it strike you as odd, to say the least, that he was writing with only one hand?”

The Inspector stared, and Judge Macklin frowned. “Well, for God’s sake,” exploded Moley, “how many hands does a man need to write a letter with?”

“I think I know what Mr. Queen means,” said the Judge slowly, his fine eyes lighting up. “We don’t usually think of a man’s needing two hands to write with, but actually it’s so. One to write with, and the other to hold the sheet of paper steady.”

“Yet Marco,” drawled Ellery, nodding his approval at the old gentleman’s quick understanding, “was holding his ebony stick with his right hand, to judge from what we see here, at the same time that he wrote with his left. I say it’s... er... spinach.” He added hastily: “On the surface, on the surface only. There may be an explanation.”

The Inspector permitted himself a fleeting grin. “You don’t let anything get by, do you, Mr. Queen? Can’t say you’re wrong, though I didn’t think of it myself. But there could be an explanation. He might have had his stick lyin’ on the table next to him while he wrote. He heard a sound behind him — maybe he was tense, anyway — his left hand trailed off the page as he grabbed the stick up in his right with some quick idea of defending himself. Before he could do more than grab it he was bopped. And there you are.”

“That sounds reasonable enough.”

“It must be the answer,” went on Moley quietly, “because there just isn’t any doubt about this letter. Marco wrote it. If you think this is a phony, forget it. It isn’t.”

“You’re positive?”

“Couldn’t be more so. It was one of the first things I checked up on this morning. There are samples of his fist all over the house — he was one of those guys who like to scribble their names wherever they happen to be standing — and this stuff he wrote last night is absolutely on the level. Here, see for yourself—”

“No, no,” said Ellery hurriedly, “I’m not impugning your opinion, Inspector. I’m quite ready to take your word for the genuineness of the letter.” But then he added with a sigh: “He was left-handed?”

“I’ve checked that, too. He was.”

“Then there’s really nothing more to be said on that score. I agree it’s a puzzler all round. And no, it doesn’t seem likely that a man would sit down outdoors in nothing but an opera cloak to write a letter. He must have been wearing clothes. Er... Spanish Cape is a rather extensive chunk of God’s country, Inspector. You’re sure his clothes aren’t about?”

“I’m not sure of anything, Mr. Queen,” said Moley patiently. “But I’ve had a squad of men doing nothing but look for them ever since we got here, and they’re still missing.”

Ellery sucked his lower lip. “And that fringe of jagged rock that circles the base of these cliffs, Inspector?”

“Two minds with but a single thought. Naturally, I worked on the theory that somebody might have thrown Marco’s duds off the cliff somewhere on the Cape into the water; it’s twenty feet deep and more even at the foot of the cliffs. Don’t ask me why. But there’s nothing on the rocks, and I’ll have the boys drag as soon as I can get some apparatus out here.”

“Precisely what,” demanded the Judge, “makes both of you attach so much importance to Marco’s — for all you know — possibly non-existent attire?”

The Inspector shrugged. “I think Mr. Queen will agree with me that his clothes exist, all right, and that if they do there must have been a damn’ good reason for the killer’s having toted ’em off, or disposed of them.”

“Or,” murmured Ellery, “as friend Fluellen said so ungrammatically: ‘There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.’ I beg your pardon, Inspector. I’m sure you said it much more aptly.” Moley stared. “Say... Oh. You through, Blackie?”

“Pretty near.”

Moley picked the sheet of paper very carefully from the table and held it up for Ellery’s inspection. Judge Macklin squinted a little over Ellery’s shoulder — he had never worn glasses, and although at seventy-six his eyes were beginning to fail, he would not give in to his infirmity.

A little below and to the right of the crest was written the date and then, in a bold hand, Sunday 1 a.m. On the left there appeared, above the salutation, the legend:

Lucius Penfield, Esq.

11 Park Row

New York, N. Y.

and the salutation read: Dear Luke. The message ran:

“Things look good and rosy, and it is only a matter of days now that I will be able to make that last sweet clean—”

And that was all. From the tail of the n ran the heavy ink-line, slashing down the creamy paper like a knife.

“Now what kind of clean-up — ‘last’ clean-up — was this monkey figuring on?” asked Inspector Moley quietly. “And if that’s not something, Mr. Queen, I’m the monkey’s uncle!”

“An excellent question—” began Ellery, when an exclamation from the coroner whirled them all around.

For some time he had been regarding the corpse with a puzzled air, as if there were something about the stiff clay he could not understand. But now he had leaned over and removed the braided loop from the metal hasp on the collar of the opera cloak at the dead man’s throat, the cloak slipping off the marble shoulders, and then had placed his finger on the dead man’s chin and tilted the rigid head far up.

There was a thin deep red line in the flesh of Marco’s neck.

“Strangled!”exclaimed the Judge.

“Sure was” said the coroner, studying the wound. “Goes all around his throat. Ragged wound at the nape of the same nature; that’s where it must have been knotted. Wire, I’d say from the looks of it. But the wire isn’t here. Did you find it, Inspector?”

“Something else to look for,” groaned Moley.

“Then Marco was attacked from the rear?” demanded Ellery, twirling his pince-nez thoughtfully.

“If you mean the corpse,” said the coroner in a rather sour tone, “yes. The strangler stood behind him, slipped the wire around his neck and under the loose collar of the cloak, pulled hard, twisted the wire in a knot at the nape of the neck... It couldn’t have taken very long.” He stooped, picked up the cloak, flung it carelessly over the dead man’s body. “Well, I’m through.”

“But even so,” protested the Inspector, “there isn’t the sign of a struggle. He’d at least have twisted back in his seat, made a pass at his assailant, something! But this bird just sat here and took it and never even turned around, from what you say.”

“Didn’t let me finish,” retorted the bony man. “He was unconscious when he was strangled.”

“Unconscious!”

“Here.” The coroner lifted the cloak and uncovered Marco’s curly black hair. He parted the hair skillfully almost at the very top of the head; a livid bruise showed through on the skin of the skull. Then he let the cloak go. “He was struck squarely on top of the parietal bone with some heavy instrument, not enough to break the bone but sufficient to cause a contusion. That put him to sleep. After that it was a simple enough matter to slip the wire under his collar and strangle him.”

“But why didn’t the murderer finish the job with his bludgeon?” muttered Judge Macklin.

The coroner sniggered. “Oh, might be lots of reasons. Maybe he didn’t like messy corpses. Or maybe he brought the wire along with him and didn’t want to waste it. I don’t know, but that’s what he did.”

“Struck him with what?” demanded Ellery. “Have you found anything, Inspector?”

Moley went back to a niche in the rock wall, near one of the big Spanish jars, and picked up a small heavy bust. “He got socked by Columbus,” he drawled. “We found this thing on the floor behind the table, and I put it back in that niche there; it was the only empty one, so the bust must have come from there. This stone doesn’t take fingerprints, so there’s no use looking. At that, we swept up the floor of this terrace before we set foot on it; but we didn’t find a damned thing except a lot of sand and dirt blown up here by the wind. Awfully clean folks, these Godfreys, or maybe their servants were brought up right.” He replaced the bust.

“And no trace of the wire, eh?”

“Weren’t looking for it, but I got a report on every blessed morsel the boys’ve picked up around the premises that looked promising, and there wasn’t any wire. I suppose the killer took it away with him.”

“What time did this man die, sir?” asked Ellery abruptly.

The coroner looked surprised, and then surly, and then glanced at Inspector Moley. Moley nodded and the man said: “As closely as I can figure — which isn’t always as close as we like to pretend — he died between one and one-thirty a.m. Certainly not before one o’clock this morning. And I think a half-hour’s margin is ample.”

“He did die of strangulation?”

“I said he did, didn’t I?” snapped the coroner. “I may be a country yokel, y’understand, but I know my business. Strangled. Died practically at once. That’s all. Not another mark on his body. Want an autopsy, Moley?”

“Might as well. You never know.”

“All right, but I don’t think it’s necessary. If you’re through with him I’ll have the boys cart him away.”

“I’m through. Anything else you want to know, Mr. Queen?”

Ellery drawled: “Oh, loads of things, but I’m afraid Mr. Coroner wouldn’t be of much assistance. Before you take dead Apollo away...” He knelt on the flags suddenly and, putting his hand on the dead man’s ankle, tugged. But it was rooted to the spot as if it were part of the flagstones. He looked up.

“Rigor,” said the coroner with a sneer. “What do you want?”

“I want,” replied Ellery in a patient voice, “to look at his feet.”

“His feet? Well, there they are!”

“Inspector, if you and the coroner will raise him, chair and all, please—?”

Moley and the bony man, assisted by a policeman, lifted body and chair. Ellery inclined his head and squinted up at the naked soles of the dead man’s feet.

“Clean,” he murmured. “Quite clean. I wonder—” He took a pencil from his pocket and with difficulty inserted its length between the great and index toes. He repeated the operation on all the man’s toes, and on both feet. “Not even a grain of sand. All right, gentlemen, thank you. I’ve had enough of your precious Mr. Marco — certainly of his mortal remains.” And Ellery rose and dusted off his knees and groped absently for a cigaret and stared out to sea through the opening in the walls of the Cove.

The three men set the body down and the coroner signalled to two white-clad men lolling at the head of the terrace steps.

“Well, my son,” said a voice over Ellery’s shoulder, and he turned to find Judge Macklin quietly regarding him. “What do you think?”

Ellery shrugged. “Nothing startling. It must be that the murderer undressed him. I thought the soles of his feet might show signs that he had been walking about barefoot while alive, which in a sense might have established that he had undressed himself. But his feet are much cleaner than they would be if he had actually walked about; he certainly wasn’t on the beach there in naked feet, for there’s no sand between his toes; or for that matter in shoes, either, since there are no prints—” He halted suddenly, staring at the beach with eyes that seemed to be seeing it for the first time.

“What’s the matter?”

Before Ellery could reply a gruffly patient male voice broke into speech above their heads. They all looked up. They could see the blue-clad elbow of a policeman; he was standing on the lip of the high cliff overhead, the cliff which looked down upon the terrace and the beach from the side where the house lay.

He was saying: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but ye can’t do that. Ye’ll have to go back to the house.”

They had one glimpse of her face with its unnaturally staring eyes, as she peered over the edge of the abyss gazing fiercely at the defenseless naked body of John Marco being dumped in a crate-like basket by the two white-clad men on the terrace. The marble body had strong black welts on it, where the beams of the terrace roof cast their shadows. It looked like the body of a man lashed to death — a queer illusion that was reflected by the female face glaring down at it.

It was the fat, pale, frenzied face of Mrs. Constable.