There Was an Old Woman [= The Quick And the Dead]

8 The Paramount Question of Opportunity

A premeditated murder is not unlike a child. First it must be conceived, second gestated; only then can it be born. These three steps in the fruition of the homicide are usually unwitnessed; when this occurs, there is a Mystery, and the function of the Detective is to go back along its blood line, for only in this way can be established the paternity of the crime — which is to say, solve the mystery.

Ellery Queen had never before been privileged to attend the delivery, as it were; and the fact that, having attended it, he knew as little about its parentage as if he had not neither irritated nor angered him, for if a murder had to be committed and could not be averted, then Ellery preferred it to be a mystery at the beginning, just so that he could dig into it and trace it backward and explain it to himself at the end.

He stood by himself, deep in thought, in the lightening morning under one of the Old Woman’s pedigreed blue spruces, watching his father and Sergeant Velie go to work. He stood by, musing, as Hesse, and Flint, and Piggott, and Johnson, and others of the Inspector’s staff arrived, as radio patrol cars gathered on the Drive outside the high wall, as the police photographer came, the fingerprint men, and Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner of New York County — petulant at having had to leave spouse, progeny, and couch so early of a summer morning. As of old, Doc Prouty and Inspector Queen set about snarling at each other over Robert Potts’s sprawled corpse, like two fierce old dogs over a bone. As always Sergeant Velie, the Great Dane, chuckled and growled between them. Eventually the body was lifted to an improvised stretcher, under the fussy superintendence of Doc Prouty; a moment later Dr. Waggoner Innis’s big sedan roared up under police motorcycle escort, and the doctor’s long legs carried him in almost eager strides after the cortege, to confer with the assistant Medical Examiner over the technical details of the homicide. The whole party disappeared into the house, leaving Inspector Queen and his son, alone, at the pedestal of the bronze Shoe.

The air was chill, and the Inspector shivered a little. “Well?” he said.

“Well,” said Ellery.

“We’d better talk fast,” said the Inspector after a pause. “The newspapers will be here soon, and we’d better figure out what to say to them. At the moment, my mind’s a blank.”

Ellery frowned over his cigaret.

“A duel,” the Inspector continued with bitterness. “I let myself be talked into a duel! And this happens. What’ll I say to the boss? What’ll I say to anybody?”

Ellery sighed and flipped his butt into the damp grass. The sun was struggling to wipe the clouds from its eye; the feeble glance that escaped flung the ugly shadow of the Shoe toward the Hudson. “Why,” complained Mr. Ellery Queen, “does the sun invariably stay hidden when you want it, and come out when it doesn’t matter any more?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I mean,” smiled Ellery, “that if the light had been better we might have been able to see something.”

“Oh. But what, Ellery? The dirty work was done during the night.”

“Yes. But — a glance, a change of expression. You never know. Little things are so important. And the light was dismal and gray, and details likewise.” And the great man sank into silence again.

The Inspector shook his head impatiently. “Light or no light, the point is: Who could have substituted a live bullet for the blank I put in Thurlow’s automatic at Headquarters last night?”

“Opportunity,” murmured Ellery. “Dat ol’ debil. Yes. In a moment, Dad. But tell me — you’ve examined the shell?”

“Of course.”

“Anything unusual about it?”

“Nope. The cartridge used was ordinary Peters ‘rustless.’ M.C. type of bullet for a .25 automatic, 2-inch barrel. Ballistics penetration of three inches, figured on the usual seven-eighths pine board. Exactly the ammunition that was in the automatic when you handed it to me at Headquarters.”

“Really?”

“Don’t get excited,” scowled the Inspector. “That ammunition can be bought any place.”

“I know, but it’s also the ammunition Thurlow used, Dad. Have you checked with Thurlow’s supply? He must have got some at Cornwall & Ritchey’s when he bought the guns yesterday.”

“I told Velie to root around.”

And indeed at this moment Sergeant Velie swung out of the house and came rocking across the lawn to the Shoe. “What kind of buggery is this, anyway?” he exploded. “Here’s a guy dead, murdered, and most of his folks don’t even seem to care. What am I saying? Care? They’re not even payin’ attention!”

“You’ll find them a rather unorthodox family, Sergeant,” said Ellery dryly. “Have you checked back on Thurlow’s ammunition?”

“I ain’t had a chance yet to look at it myself, but Little Napoleon says he bought a lot of ammunition yesterday, and the box of .25 automatic cartridges has got some missing out of it, he says. A handful. Says he’d only took out one last night — the one he put into the Colt automatic. Can’t understand what all the fuss is about, he says. ‘It was a duel, wasn’t it?’ he grouses to me. ‘All right, so my brother got laid out,’ he says. ‘So what’s the cops here for?’ he says. ‘It’s all legal and aboveboard!’” And the Sergeant shook his head and stamped back to the mansion.

“The big point is, Thurlow’s already checked back on his ammunition supply,” murmured Ellery. “Then he doesn’t know about the blanks, does he, Dad?”

“Not yet.”

“Worried. All legal and aboveboard, but — worrisome, too, Dad. I think you’d better locate Mr. Thurlow’s armory and appropriate it with dispatch. The stuff’s a menace.”

“It’s a cinch he’s cached it somewhere cute, like the squirrel he is,” growled the Inspector, “and nobody but he knows where. The boys are keeping an eye on Mr. Thurlow, so it’ll hold for a few minutes. What about this opportunity business, Ellery? Let’s go over the ground to make sure. Just what did you do last night after you left Headquarters with the Colt and S. & W.?”

“I returned to the house here immediately, slipped back into Thurlow’s bedroom, replaced the blank-loaded Colt automatic on the highboy exactly where I’d found it earlier in the evening, then I went to the twins’ room and gave Bob Potts the blank-loaded Smith & Wesson.”

“Anybody spot you entering or leaving Thurlow’s room?”

“I can’t swear, but I’m convinced no one did.”

“The twins knew about it, though, didn’t they?”

“Naturally.”

“Who else?”

“Charley Paxton and Sheila Potts. All the others had left by the time we discussed the plan to substitute blanks for the live cartridges in the two guns.”

“All right,” grunted his father, “you left the Colt right where you found it, in Thurlow’s bedroom, you gave Robert his doctored revolver, and then what?”

“I left the twins in their room and went downstairs to the library. Charley and Sheila still had Thurlow cornered down there, as I had instructed. Thurlow was in a gay mood — Sheila’d fed him some drinks in an effort to restore his sanity. He insisted on our all going out on a tear, which we did, just as we were — the four of us. We left the house in a group, from the library, cabbed downtown, and spent the entire night at Club Bongo, on East 55th Street. We didn’t get back to the Palace—”

“The what?”

“Forgive me. I’m only using the family’s own terminology. We got back here about a quarter of six this morning.”

“Was Thurlow, Paxton, or Sheila in a position to get to that Colt automatic in Thurlow’s room at any time during the night, after you left it there?”

“That’s what makes this part of it so beautiful,” declared Ellery. “No, those three were with me, within sight and touch, from the moment I stepped into the library until we got out of the cab at dawn this morning.”

“How about when you got back? What happened?”

“I left Thurlow, Charley, and Sheila on the lawn, right over there, as you saw. Thurlow’d sent me into the house to fetch his gun. I went up and—” He stopped.

“What’s the matter?” asked his father quickly.

“I just remembered,” muttered Ellery. “It seemed to me as I went up that spiral staircase to the landing that I... not exactly heard, but felt someone or something moving in the hall outside the bedrooms.”

“Yes?” said the Inspector sharply. “What? Who?”

“I don’t know. I even had the feeling it came from around the area of Thurlow’s door. But that may have been an excited imagination. I was thinking of Thurlow’s apartment.”

“Well, was it or wasn’t it, son? For the love of Peter’s pants! Did somebody come out of Thurlow’s rooms around six A.M.?”

“I can’t say yes, and I can’t say no.”

“Very helpful,” groaned the Inspector. “You got the gun and came right back down here to the lawn? No stops?”

“Exactly. And handed the gun to Thurlow. He dropped it in the right-hand outside pocket of his tweed jacket the moment I handed it to him.” The Inspector nodded; he had observed the same action. “He didn’t touch it again until he was ordered to during the duel. I had my eyes on him every second. Nor did anyone approach near enough to him to have done any funny work.”

“Right. I was watching him, too. Then the only possible time the blank could have been removed and the live cartridge substituted in the Colt was during the night — between the time you left it on Thurlow’s highboy last night and the time he sent you up there at six this morning to get it for the duel. But where does that take us? Nowhere!” The Inspector waved his spindly arms. “Anybody in this rummy’s nightmare could have sneaked into Thurlow’s room during those ten hours or so and made the switch of bullets!”

“Not anybody,” said Ellery.

“What? What’s that?”

“Not anybody. Anybody,” said Ellery patiently, “minus three.”

“Talk so that my simple mind can understand, Mr. Queen,” said the Inspector testily.

“Well, Thurlow couldn’t have sneaked into his bedroom during those hours,” murmured Mr. Queen. “Nor Charley Paxton. Nor Sheila Potts. Couldn’t possibly. Those three are eliminated beyond the least shadow of the least doubt.”

“Well, of course. I meant one of the others.”

“Yes,” mused Ellery, “here’s a case in which we can actually delimit and define the suspects. The rest of the Potts menagerie were in the house during the period of opportunity, and so any one of them could have made the switch from blank to lethal bullet. Aside from the servants, there are: the Old Woman herself, her husband Steve, that old parasite Major Gotch, Louella the ‘scientist,’ Mac the twin, and Horatio.”

“That’s the son you told me sleeps in some kind of — what did you call it, Ellery?”

“Fairy-tale cottage. Yes,” replied the great man crossly. “Yes, the Philosopher of Escapism could have done it, too, even though he sleeps in his dream cottage. Horatio could have slipped into the main house through the inner court, patio, and French doors, and slipped out again via the same route, without necessarily being seen.”

“Six likely suspects,” mumbled the Inspector. “Not so bad. Let’s see how they stand on motive. As far as the old hell-cat’s concerned...”

Ellery yawned. “Not now, Dad. I’m not Superman — I need sleep occasionally, and last night was heigh-de-ho. Ditto Sheila and Charley. Let us all sleep it off.”

“Well, you ring me here from home when you wake up.”

“When I wake up,” announced his son, “I shall be practically at my father’s elbow.”

“Now what’s that mean?”

“I’m requisitioning a bed in the Potts Palladium. And if you don’t think,” added the Inspector’s pride and joy, “that I’ll investigate it microscopically before I climb in to make sure it isn’t the bed of Procrustes...”

“Who’s that?”

“A Greek robber who occasionally whittled his victims down to size,” said Ellery with another yawn.

“You won’t need his bed to do that,” said the Inspector grimly. “I have a hunch this case’ll do it for you, my son.”

“Making any bets?” Ellery drifted off toward the house.

9 The Narrow Escape of Sergeant Velie

Ellery fell asleep like a cat and awoke like a man. As his senses unfolded he became conscious of unnatural quiet and unnatural noise. The house, which should have been filled with the sounds of people, was not; the front lawn, which had been empty, was filled with the sounds of people.

He leaped from his borrowed bed and ran to one of the windows overlooking the front lawn. The sun was high now, in a hot blue sky, and it glared down upon a swarm of men. They surrounded the Shoe, near the base of which the inspector stood at Day. There was a great deal of shouting.

Ellery threw on his clothes and raced downstairs. “Dad! What’s the trouble?” he cried, on the run.

But the Inspector was too busy to reply.

Then Ellery saw that this was not a mob, but a group of reporters and newspaper photographers engaged — if a trifle zealously — in the underpaid exercise of their duty.

“Ah, here’s the Master Mind!”

“Maybe he’s got a tongue.”

“What’s the lowdown, Hawkshaw?”

“Your old man’s all of a sudden got a stiff upper lip.”

“Say, there’s nothing lenient about the lower one, either!”

“Loosen up, you guys. What are you holding so tight?”

“What gives here at six A.M.?”

Ellery shook his head good-humoredly, pushing his way through the crowd.

The Inspector seized him. “Ellery, tell these doubting Thomases the truth, will you? They won’t believe me. Tell ’em the truth so I can be rid of ’em and get back to work — God help me!”

“Gentlemen, it’s a fact,” said Ellery Queen. The murmurs ceased.

“It’s a fact,” a reporter said at last, in a hushed voice.

“A real, live, fourteen-carat duel?”

“Right here, under the oxford?”

“Pistols at twenty paces and that kind of stuff?”

“Hey, if they wore velvet pants I’ll go out of my mind!”

“Nah, Thurlow had on that lousy old tweed suit of his—”

“And poor Bob Potts wore a beige gabardine — wasn’t that what Inspector Queen said?”

“Nuts. I’d rather it was velvet pants.”

“But, my God—”

“Listen, Jack, not even the readers of your rag’ll believe this popeyed peep show!”

“What do I give a damn whether they believe it or not? I’m paid to report what happened.”

“Me, I’m talking this over with the boss.”

“Hold it, men — here comes the Old Woman.”

She appeared from the front door and marched towards the marble steps, flanked on one side by Dr. Innis and on the other by Sergeant Thomas Velie. Each escort, in his own fashion, was pleading with her.

The reporters and cameramen deserted the Queens shamelessly. In a twinkling they had raced across the lawn and set up shop at the foot of the steps.

“Bloomin’ heroes,” said Ellery. He was squinting at the Old Woman, disturbed.

There was no sign of grief on that face; only rage. The jet snake’s eyes had not wept; they had kept the shape and color of their reptilian nature. “Get off my property!” she screamed.

Cameras were raised high; men fired questions at her.

If these intrepid explorers of the news had the wit, thought Ellery, they would shrink and flee before an old woman who accepted her young son’s bloody murder without emotion and grew hysterical over a transitory trespass on the scene of his death. Such a woman was capable of anything.

“It’s the first peep out of her today,” remarked the Inspector. “We’d better get on over there. She may blow her top any minute.”

The Queens hurried toward the house. But before they could reach the steps, Cornelia Potts blew, and blew in an unexpected manner.

One moment she was standing there like an angry pouter pigeon, glaring down at her tormentors; the next her claws had flashed into a recess in the overlapping folds of her taffeta skirt and emerged with a revolver. It was absurd, but there it was: an old lady, seventy years old, pointing a revolver at a group of men.

Somebody said: “Hey,” indignantly; then they grew very quiet.

It was a long-barreled revolver alive with blue fires in the sun. All eyes were on it.

Dr. Innis took a quick backward step. On the Old Woman’s other side, Sergeant Velie looked dazed. Ellery had seen the Sergeant disarm five thugs all by himself without excitement laying them out in a neat and silent row; but the spectacle and the problem of a septuagenarian who resembled Queen Victoria brandishing a heavy revolver evidently frustrated him.

“One of Thurlow’s mess of guns,” the Inspector said bitterly, eyes intent on the talon that was crooked about the trigger. “So she knew where Thurlow’d hid ’em after all. I swear, anyone who mixes with these crazy drooglers gets addled — even me.”

“Someone ought to stop her,” said Ellery nervously.

“Care to volunteer your services?” And since there was no answer, his father lit a stogie and began to puff on it without relish. “Mrs. Potts,” he called, “put that naughty thing down and—”

“Stand where you are!” said the Old Woman grimly to the Inspector; at which he looked surprised, for he had exhibited no least intention of moving from the spot. She turned back to the fascinated group below her. “I told you men to get off my property.” She waved the revolver shakily.

One witless enthusiast raised his camera for a furtive shot of Cornelia Potts Draws Bead on Press. There was a shot, but it came towards the camera, not from it. It was a bad shot, merely nicking one edge of the lens and ricocheting off to bury itself in the grass; but it had the magical property of causing a group of grown men to disappear from the foot of the steps and reintegrate behind the solid bronze of the Shoe some yards away.

“She’s loco,” said the Sergeant hoarsely to Dr. Innis.

“Get out!” shrieked Cornelia Potts to the men cowering behind the Shoe. “This is my family’s business and I won’t have it all over the dirty newspapers. Out!”

“Piggott, Hesse,” said the Inspector wearily. “Where in time are you men? Escort the boys from the grounds.”

Several heads peered from behind several trees, and it was seen that they were the heads of several large persons — what was more shameful, of detectives attached to Inspector Queen’s staff.

“Well, go on,” said the Inspector. “All she can do is kill you. That’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it? Get these brave men out of here!”

The detectives emerged, blushing. Whereupon Mr. Queen enjoyed the spectacle of numerous male figures scampering helter-skelter toward the front gates, their flank covered, as it were, by plain-clothes men who were running as energetically as they. Within seconds only the three at the top of the steps and the two a short way off on the grass were left to watch the fires burn blue on the barrel of the faintly smoking revolver.

“That’s the way it is,” said the Old Woman with satisfaction. “Now what are you men waiting for?” The barrel waggled again.

“Madam,” said the Inspector, taking a step.

“Stop, Inspector Queen.”

Inspector Queen stopped.

“I’ll say this now, and not again. I don’t want you. I don’t want an investigation. I don’t want police. I don’t want any outside interference. I’ll handle my son’s death in my own way, and if you don’t think I mean it—”

Ellery said respectfully: “Mrs. Potts.”

She gave him a sharp glance. “You’ve been hanging around to no good, young man. What d’ye want?”

“Do you quite realize your position?”

“My position is what I make it!”

“I’m afraid not,” said Ellery sadly. “Your position is what your impulsive son Thurlow has made it. Or rather whoever was using Thurlow as a witless fool to commit a revolting crime. You can’t get out of your position, Mrs. Potts, with revolvers, or threats, or loud tones of voice. Your position, Mrs. Potts, if you’ll reflect for a moment, dictates that you hand that revolver to Sergeant Velie, go into your house, and leave the rest to those whose business it is to catch murderers.”

Sergeant Velie, thus obliquely brought into the conversation, gave a nervous start and cleared his throat.

“Don’t move,” said Cornelia Potts sharply; and the Sergeant gave a feeble laugh and said: “Who, me, Mrs. Potts? I was just shiftin’ to the other foot.”

She backed up, grasping the revolver more firmly. “Did you hear what I said? Get out, Innis — you too!”

“Now, Mrs. Potts,” began the physician, pallidly. “Mr. Queen is quite right, you know. Besides, all this excitement is bad for your heart, very bad. I shan’t be responsible—”

“Oh, fiddlesticks,” she snapped. “My heart’s my own. I’m sick of you, Dr. Waggoner Innis, and what I’ve been thinking of to let you mess around me I can’t imagine.” Dr. Innis drew himself up. “For the last time, you men — are you going to leave, or do I have to shoot one of you to convince you I mean what I say?”

Inspector Queen said: “Velie, take that gun away from her.”

“Dad—” began Ellery.

“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Velie.

Several things happened at once. Dr. Innis stepped aside with extraordinary agility to get out of the way of Sergeant Velie, who was advancing cautiously towards the old lady; and of the old lady, who had twisted about to train her revolver on the advancing Sergeant. At the same moment Ellery darted from his station on the grass and hurled himself at the steps. Simultaneously the front door opened and eyes clustered, staring, while on the grass Inspector Queen took two kangaroo steps to the left, pulling from his pocket as he did so his large and ponderous fountain pen, and let fly.

Ellery, pen, and Cornelia Potts met at the identical instant that the revolver cracked. The fountain pen struck her hand, joggling it; Ellery struck her legs, upsetting them; and the bullet struck Sergeant Velie’s hat, causing it to dart from his head like a bird.

The revolver clanked to the porch.

Sergeant Velie pounced on it, mumbling incredulously: “She took a shot at me. She took a shot at me! Blame near got me in the head. In the head!” He gaped at Cornelia Potts as he rose, clutching the gun.

Ellery got up and brushed himself off. “Forgive me,” he said to the furious old lady, who was struggling between Inspector Queen and Dr. Innis.

“I’ll have the law on you!” she screamed.

“Let me get you inside, Mrs. Potts,” murmured Dr. Innis, twisting her arm. “Quiet you down — your heart—”

“The law on you...”

Inspector Queen smote his forehead. “She’ll have the law on us!” he roared. “Flint, Piggott, Johnson! Get this maniac into her house — come out of hiding there, you yellow-bellied traitors! She’ll have the law on us, will she? Velie!”

“Huh?” Sergeant Velie was now staring at his hat, which stared back at him with its new eye.

“Those fourteen shooting irons Thurlow bought,” the old gentleman snarled. “We’ve got three of ’em now — the two he used in the duel this morning, and this one his mother swiped. Round up those other eleven, understand me, or don’t come back to Center Street. Every last one of ’em!”

“Yes, sir,” mumbled Sergeant Velie. He shambled into the house after Dr. Innis and the fighting Old Woman, still shaking his head as one who will never understand.

10 The Mark of Cain

The wake is quite all for the living, and no man eats more heartily than the butcher.

Ellery suddenly found himself craving sustenance. He was rested by his nap, Robert Potts lay irrevocably downtown on Dr. Prouty’s autopsy table, and Mr. Queen was hungry, hungry. He beat a path to the dining room, one eye out for a servant; but the first living soul he met was Detective Flint, hurrying through the foyer toward the front door.

“Where’s the Inspector, Mr. Queen?”

“Outside. What’s wrong now, Flint?”

“Wrong!” Detective Flint mopped his face. “Inspector says ‘Flint, keep an eye on this Horatio Potts,’ he says. “The one that lives in that pink popcorn shack in the court,’ he says. ‘I don’t cotton to that billygoat,’ he says, ‘and a guy who’ll play marbles at his age’d slip a live cartridge into his brother’s rod just out of clean, boyish fun,’ he says. ‘Probably like to hear ’em pop good and loud,’ he says—”

“Spare me,” said Mr. Queen. “I’m a starving man. What’s the matter?”

“So I watch Horatio,” said Detective Flint. “I watch and I watch till my eyes are fallin’ out of my head, and what do I see?” Flint paused to mop his face again.

“Well, well?”

“His brother’s layin’ downstairs dead, see? Young guy, everything to live for — dead. Murder. House full of cops. Hot hell let loose. Does Horatio get scared?” demanded Detective Flint. “Does he go around bitin’ his nails? Does he dive into bed and pull the covers over his yap? Does he cry? Does he make with the hysterics? Does he yell he’s gonna get revenge on whoever the bloody murderin’ killer was who—”

Ellery moved off.

“Wait!” Flint hurried after him. “I’m gettin’ to it, Mr. Queen.”

“And so is starvation to me,” said Mr. Queen gently.

“But you don’t get it. What does Big Brother Horatio — cripes, what a name! — do? He sits himself down at his desk in that Valentine’s box he built himself back there in the garden and he says to me — friendly, see? ‘Sir,’ he says ‘sir, this gives me a honey of an idea for a new kiddy book,’ he says. ‘There is somethin’ uny... uny—’ ”

“Versal,” said Ellery, perking up.

“That’s it — ‘unyversal in the manly code of punk-something or other’ — I didn’t get the word, but it sounded like Spick talk — ‘and anyway,’ he says, ‘it’s always a good theme for a child’s work,’ he says, ‘so I’m gonna sit me down with your permission, sir, of course,’ he says, ‘and I’m gonna make some notes on a swashbucklin’ Stevensonian romance for boys of the early teen age,’ he says, ‘based on two brothers who fight a dool to the death,’ he says, and I’m a shyster lawyer if that big slob don’t pick up one of them chicken feathers he writes with and start in writin’ away like his life depends on it. Then he stops writin’ and looks at me. ‘Seventeenth century, of course,’ he says. And he writes again. And again he stops and looks at me. ‘You’ll find apples and preserved ginger and cookies in the cupboard, Mr. Flint,’ he says to me.” Detective Flint looked around cunningly. “Do you s’pose the wack did it to get material for a book?” he whispered. “That’s what I gotta tell Inspector Queen. It’s a theory, Mr. Queen, you can’t break down!”

“You’ll find the oldest living iconoclast out front,” sighed Mr. Queen; and he hastened on.

Sheila and Charley Paxton were seated in the dining room pecking at a salad luncheon.

“No, don’t go,” said Sheila quickly.

“I wasn’t intending to,” Ellery came in. “Not with food so near.”

“Oh, dear. Cuttins!” The long-shanked butler materialized, trembling. “Cuttins,” said Sheila in a deadly voice, “can’t decide whether to quit our service or stay, Mr. Queen. Suppose you tell him what the situation is.”

“The situation,” said Mr. Queen, impaling Cuttins on his glance, “is that this house and everyone in it are under surveillance of the police, Cuttins, and since you can’t very well skip out without a police alarm being broadcast in your honor, you’d be well advised to get me something to eat instantly.”

“Very good, sir,” muttered Cuttins; and he oozed rapidly out.

“I’m still punchy,” said Sheila vaguely. “I can’t seem to get it through my thick head that Bob’s dead. Dead. Not of pneumonia. Not hit by an automobile. Killed by a bullet from Thurlow’s gun in a duel. Such a s-silly way to die!” Sheila bent suddenly over her plate. She did not look at Charley Paxton, who sat stricken.

“Something’s happened between you two,” said Ellery keenly, glancing from one to the other.

“Sheila’s called off our engagement,” murmured Charley.

“Well,” said Ellery cheerfully, “don’t treat it like some major convulsion of nature, Charley. A girl has a right to change her mind. And you’re not the handsomest specimen roving the New York jungle.”

“It isn’t that,” said Sheila quickly. “I still—” She bit her lip.

“It isn’t?” Ellery stole a slice of bread from Charley’s bread-and-butter plate. “Then what is it, Sheila?”

Sheila did not answer.

“This is no time to split up,” cried Charley. “I’ll never understand women! Here’s a girl up to her neck in trouble. You’d think she’d want my arms around her. Instead, she pushed me away just now! Won’t let me kiss her, won’t let me share her unhappiness—”

“Every fact has a number of alternative explanations,” murmured Mr. Queen. “Maybe you had garlic for lunch yesterday, Charley.”

Sheila smiled despite herself. Then she said in despair: “There’s nothing else for me to do, I tell you.”

“Just because poor Bob was murdered,” Charley said bitterly. “I suppose if my father had died on the gallows rather than home in bed, you’d run out on me, wouldn’t you?’

“Cough up, sweetheart,” said Mr. Queen gently.

“All right, I will!” Sheila’s dimples dug hard. “Charley, I’ve always told you that the main reason I was holding off our marriage was because Mother would cut me off without a cent if we went through with it, and that that wouldn’t be fair to you. Well, I wasn’t being honest. As if I cared two cents whether Mother left me anything or not! I’d be happy with you if I had to live in a one-room shack.”

“It isn’t that?” The young lawyer was bewildered. “But then what possible reason, darling—?”

“Charley, look at us. Thurlow. Louella. Horatio—”

“Wait a minute—”

“You can’t get away from the horrid truth just by ignoring it. They’re insane, every one of them.” Sheila’s voice soared. “How do I know I haven’t got the same streak in me? How do I know?”

“But Sheila dearest, they’re not your full brothers and sisters — they’re half-brothers, Louella’s a half-sister.”

“We have the same mother.”

“But you know perfectly well that Thurlow, Louella, and Horatio inherited their — whatever they inherited — not from your mother but from their father, whose blood isn’t in you at all. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with Steve—”

“How do I know that?” asked Sheila stridently. “Look at my mother. Is she like other people?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the Old Woman but plain, ordinary cussedness. Sheila, you’re dramatizing. This childish fear of insanity—”

“I won’t marry you or anybody else until I know, Charley,” said Sheila fiercely. “And now with a murderer in the family—” She jumped up and fled.

“No, Charley,” said Ellery quickly, as with the look of a wounded deer the lawyer started after her. “Abide with me.”

“But I can’t let her go like this!”

“Yes, you can. Let Sheila alone for a while.”

“But it’s such nonsense! There’s nothing wrong with Sheila. There’s never been anything wrong with the Brents — Steve, Sheila, Bob, Mac—”

“You ought to be able to understand Sheila’s fears, Charley. She’s in a highly nervous state. Even if she weren’t a naturally high-strung girl, living here would have made her a neurotic.”

“Well, then, solve this damned case so I can take Sheila out of this asylum and pound some sense into her!”

“I’ll do my best, Charley.” Ellery looked thoughtfully over his chicken salad, which, now that the first pangs of his hunger had been assuaged, he realized with annoyance he had always detested.

When Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie bustled into the dining room, Ellery was low in his chair, smoking like a sooty flue, and Charlie was tormenting his nails.

“Shhh,” whispered Charley. “He’s thinking.”

“He is, is he?” snapped the Inspector. “Then let him think about this. Velie — set ’em down.”

There was a crash. Ellery looked up with a start Sergeant Velie had dumped an armful of revolvers and automatics on the dining-room table.

“Well, well. Thurlow’s arsenal, eh?”

“Me, I found it,” pouted Velie. “Don’t I ever get credit for nothin’?”

“A regular Pagliacci,” snarled Inspector Queen. “The fact is, son, here’s the kit and caboodle of ’em, and there’s two missing.”

“Not fourteen?” Ellery looked distressed. In some things he had the soul of a bookkeeper; a mislaid fact irked him — two drove him mad.

“Count them yourself.”

Ellery did so. There were twelve. Among them he found Thurlow’s .25 Colt automatic, Robert’s stubby S. & W. 38/32, and the long-barreled revolver with which Cornelia Potts had almost assassinated Sergeant Velie — a Harrington & Richardson .22-caliber “Trapper Model.”

“What’s Thurlow got to say?” demanded Charley.

“Can you make sense out of a pecan?” asked the Sergeant. “Thurlow says he had fourteen, and that’s what the sportin’-goods store says he bought. Also, Thurlow says nobody but himself knew where he hid the guns. So I says: ‘Then how come two are missin’? What did they do — pick themselves up and take a walk?’ So he looks at me like I’m nuts!”

“Where did he have them cached, Sergeant?” asked Ellery.

“In a false closet in his bedroom along with some boxes of ammunition he’d bought.”

“Oh, there,” said Charley Paxton disgustedly. “Then of course everybody knew. Thurlow’s been ‘hiding’ things in that false closet since the house was built. In fact, he had the closet installed. The whole household knows about it.”

“It’s a cinch the Old Woman got his Harrington & Richardson there,” said Inspector Queen, sitting down and dipping into the salad bowl for a shred of chicken. “So why not Louella, or Horatio, or anybody else? Fact is, two guns are missing, and I won’t sleep till they’re found. Guns loose in this hatchery!”

Ellery studied the armory on the table. Then he produced pad and pencil and began to write.

“Inventory,” he announced at last. “Here’s what we now have.” His memorandum listed the twelve weapons:

So what?” demanded the Inspector.

“So very little,” retorted his son, “except that each one of the guns is of different manufacture. Ought to make the check-back easier. Sergeant, phone Cornwall & Ritchey and get an exact list of the fourteen guns Thurlow purchased.”

“Piggott’s on that angle.”

“Good. Make sure you locate those two missing toys of Thurlow’s.”

“And while we’re playing detective,” put in the Inspector dryly, “we might start thinking about who had a motive to want Bob Potts six feet south. We already know who had your blasted whatchamacallit — opportunity.”

“I can’t imagine who’d want Bob out of the way,” muttered Charley. “Except Thurlow, because Robert was always picking on him. But we know Thurlow couldn’t have done it.”

“Cockeyedest case I ever saw,” grumbled the Sergeant. “Guy who fires the shot can’t be the killer. Say, this chicken salad ain’t bad.”

“Point is,” frowned Inspector Queen, “somebody wanted Robert Potts dead, so somebody had a reason. Maybe if we find the reason we’ll find the somebody, too. Any ideas, Ellery?”

Ellery shrugged. “Charley, you’re attorney to the family. What are the terms of Cornelia Potts’s will?”

Charley looked nervous. “Now wait a minute, Ellery. The Old Woman’s very much alive, and the terms of a living testator’s will are confidential between attorney and client—”

“Oh, that mullarkey,” said the Inspector disgustedly.

“Come on Ellery, we’ve got to talk to the old gal direct.”

“Better take along a bullet-proof vest!” Sergeant Velie shouted after them through the mouthful of chicken salad.

11 “Infer the Motive from the Deed”

“But only for a few minutes, Inspector Queen.” Dr. Waggoner Innis was pinch-pale, but he had recovered his stance, as it were; and here, in Cornelia Potts’s sitting room, he was very much the tall and splendid Physician-in-Ordinary.

“How is she?” inquired Ellery Queen.

“Nerves more settled, but heart’s fluttering badly and pulse could be improved. You’ve got to co-operate with me, gentlemen—”

“One side, Doctor,” said the Inspector; and they entered the Old Woman’s bedchamber.

It was a square Victorian room crowded with those gilded phantasms of love which in a more elegant day passed by the name of “art.” Everything swirled precisely in a cold paralysis of “form,” and everything was expensive and hideous. There were antimacassars on the over-stuffed petit-point chairs, and no faintest clue to the fact that a man shared this room with its aged mistress.

The bed was a piece for future archeologists. Its corners were curved, the foot forming a narrower oval than the head. There was no footboard, and the headboard was a single curved piece which extended, unbroken, although in diminishing height, along the sides. Ellery wondered what was wrong with the whole production aside from its more obvious grotesquerie. And then he saw. There were no front legs; the foot of the bed rested on the floor. And since the head stood high, supported on a single thick, tapering block of wood, the sides showed a downward slant, while the spring and mattress had been artfully manufactured to maintain a level. It was all so unbelievable that for a moment Ellery had no eyes for its occupant, but only for her couch.

Suddenly he recognized it for what it was. The bed was formed like a woman’s oxford shoe.

The Old Woman lay in it, a lace cap set on her white hair, the silk comforter resting on her plump little stomach. She was propped up on several fat pink pillows; a portable typewriter lay on her thighs; her claws were slowly seeking out keys and upon discovery striking them impatiently. She paid no attention to the four men. Her black eyes were intent on the paper in her machine.

“I told you, Mrs. Potts—” began Dr. Innis peevishly, raising his careful eyes ceilingward — and hastily lowering them, since they had encountered there the painful spectacle of two plaster cupids embracing.

“Shut up, Innis.”

They waited for her to complete her inexplicable labors.

She did so with a final peck, ripping the sheet of white paper from the typewriter; quickly she glanced over it, made a snapping movement of her jaws, like an old bitch after flies, then reached for a thick soft-leaded pencil on the bed. She scribbled her signature, picked up a number of similar typewritten white sheets near the portable, signed those; and only then looked up. “What are you men doing in my bedroom?”

“There are certain questions, Mrs. Potts—” began Inspector Queen.

“All right. I suppose I can’t be rid of you any other way. But you’ll have to wait. Charles!”

“Yes, Mrs. Potts.”

“These memos I’ve just typed. Attend to them at once.”

Charley took the sheaf of signed papers she thrust into his hands and glanced through them dutifully. At the last one his eyes widened. “You want me to sell your Potts Shoe Company stock — all of it?”

“Isn’t that what my memorandum says?” snapped the Old Woman. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mrs. Potts, but—”

“Since when must I account to you, Charles? You’re paid to follow orders. Follow ’em.”

“But I don’t get it, Mrs. Potts,” protested Charley. “You’ll lose control!”

“Will I.” Her lip curled. “My son Robert was active head of the company. His murder and the scandal, which I tried so hard just now to avoid” — her voice hardened — “will send Potts stock down. If I can’t avoid the scandal, at least I can make use of it. Selling my stock will send the price down still further. It opened at 84 this morning. When it hits 72, buy it all back.” Charley looked dazed. “Why are you standing here?” shrilled the old lady. “Did you hear what I said? Go and phone my brokers!”

Charley nodded, curtly. As he passed Ellery he muttered: “What price Mama, Mr. Q? Takes advantage of her son’s murder to make a few million boleros!” And the young lawyer stamped out.

Dr. Innis bent over the Old Woman with his stethoscope, shook his head, took her pulse, shook his head, removed her typewriter, shook his head, and finally retired to the window to look out over the front lawn, still shaking his head.

“Ready for me now, Madam?” asked the Inspector courteously.

“Yes. Don’t dawdle.”

“Don’t—!” The inspector’s hard eyes glittered. “My dear Mrs. Potts,” he exclaimed softly, “do you know that I could have you put in jail this minute on a charge of attempting homicide on an officer of the law?”

“Oh, yes,” nodded the Old Woman. “But you haven’t.”

“I haven’t! Mrs. Potts, I warn you—”

“Fiddlesticks,” she snarled. “I’m much more use to you in my own house. Don’t think you’re doing me favors, Inspector Queen. I know your kind. You’re all nosey, meddling, publicity-seeking grafters. You’re in this case for what you can get out of it.”

“Mrs. Potts!”

“Stuff. How much d’ye want to pronounce my son’s death an accident?”

Mr. Queen coughed behind his hand, watching his father with enjoyment.

But the Inspector only smiled. “You’d play a swell game of poker, Mrs. Potts. You say and do a lot of contradictory things, all to cover up the one thing you’re afraid of, that I’ll call your bluff. Let’s understand each other. I’m going to do my best to find out who murdered your son Robert. I know that’s what you want, too, only you’re full of cussedness, and you want to do it your own way. But I hold all the cards, and you know that, too. Now you can cooperate or not, as you see fit. But you won’t stop me from finding out what I want to know.”

The Old Woman glared at him. He glared back. Finally, she wriggled down under her silk comforter like a young girl, sullenly. “Talk or get out. What d’ye want to know?”

“What,” said the Inspector instantly, with no trace of triumph, “are the terms of your will?”

Ellery caught the flash from her shoe-buttony eyes, the snick of her jaws. “Oh, that. I don’t mind telling you that, if you promise not to give it to the papers.”

“That’s a promise.”

“You, young man? You’re his son, aren’t you?”

Ellery glanced at her. She glanced away to Dr. Innis. The physician’s back was like a wall.

“My will sets forth three provisions,” she stated in a flat, cold tone. “First: On my death, my estate is to be divided among my surviving children, share and share alike.”

“Yes?” prompted Inspector Queen.

“Second: My husband, Stephen Potts, gets no share at all, neither principal nor income. Cut off. Without a penny.” Her jaws snicked again. “I’ve supported him and Gotch for thirty-three years. That’s plenty.”

“Go on, Mrs. Potts.”

“Third: I am President of the Board of Directors of the Potts Shoe Company. On my death, a new President will have to be elected by the Board. That Board will consist of all my surviving children, and I specifically demand that Simon Underhill, manager of the factories, have one vote, too. I don’t know whether this last will hold up in law,” she added with the oddest trace of humor, “but I don’t imagine anyone involved will take it that far. My word’s been law in life, and I guess it’ll be law in death. That’s all, gentlemen. Get out.”

“Extraordinary woman,” murmured Ellery as they left Cornelia Potts’s apartment.

“This isn’t a case for a cop,” sighed his father. “It needs the world’s ace psychiatrist.”

Charley Paxton came running upstairs from the foyer, and the three men paused in the upper hall. “Is Innis with her?” panted Charley.

“Yes. Does he get much of a fee, Charley?” the Inspector asked curiously.

“An annual retainer. A whopper. And he earns it.”

The Inspector grunted. “She told us about her will.”

“Dad went to work on her,” chuckled Ellery. “By the way, Charley, where does she keep that will?”

“With her other important papers in her bedroom.”

“Was that typewriting exhibition a few minutes ago something new, Charley?”

“Hell, no. We once had a difference of opinion about one of her innumerable verbal ‘instructions.’ She claimed she’d told me one thing, and I darned well knew she’d told me another. We had quite a row over it, and I insisted that from then on I wanted written, signed instructions. Only time she and I’ve agreed on anything. Since then she types out her memos on that portable, and always signs them with one of those soft pencils.”

The Inspector brushed this aside. “She told us she’d cut her husband, this Stephen Brent Potts, off without a cent. Is that legal, Charley? I always thought a husband in this state came in for one third of a wife’s estate, with two thirds going to the surviving children.”

“That’s true nowadays,” nodded the attorney. “But it’s been true only since August 31, 1930. Before that date, a husband could legally be cut out of any share in his wife’s estate. And the Old Woman’s will antedates August 31, 1930, so it’s quite legal.”

“Why,” asked Ellery pointedly, “is Sheila’s father being cut off?”

Charley Paxton sighed. “You don’t understand that old she-devil, Ellery. Even though Cornelia Potts married Steve Brent, he never was and never will be a genuine Potts to her except in name.”

“A convenience, huh?” asked the Inspector dryly.

“Just about. The children are part of her, so they’re Pottses. But not Steve. You think Thurlow’s got an exaggerated respect for the Potts name? Where do you suppose he got it from? The Old Woman. She’s drummed it into him.”

“How much is the old witch worth?”

Charley grimaced. “It’s hard to say, Inspector. But on a rough guess, after inheritance taxes and so on are deducted, I’d say she’ll leave a net estate of around thirty million dollars.”

Mr. Queen gurgled.

“But that means,” gasped the Inspector, “that when Bob Potts was alive, the Old Woman’s six kids would have inherited five million apiece?”

“An obscene arithmetic,” groaned his son. “Five million dollars left to a woman like Louella!”

“Don’t forget Horatio,” said Charley. “And for that matter, Thurlow. Thurlow can buy a mess of guns for five million dollars.”

“And with Robert out of the way,” mused the Inspector, “there’s only five to split the loot, so that makes it about six million apiece. Robert’s murder was worth a million bucks cold to each of the Potts heirs!” He rubbed his hands. “Let’s see what we’ve got. Our active suspects are Cornelia, hubby Steve, Major Gotch, Louella, Horatio, and Mac...”

Ellery nodded. “The only ones who had opportunity to switch bullets.”

“All right, Cornelia first.” The Inspector grinned. “Lord knows I never thought I’d be serious about thinking a mother’d kill her own son, but anything’s possible in this family.”

Charley shook his head. “It’s true she hated Robert — she’s always hated the three children of her marriage to Steve — but murder...”

“I’m not impressed, either,” said Ellery with a frown.

“Unless she’s loco in the coco,” said the Inspector.

“I think she’s sane, Dad. Eccentric, but sane.”

“Well, theoretically she’s got a hate motive. Now how does Stephen, the husband, stack up?”

“I can’t see that Steve would have any motive at all,” protested Charley. “Since he’s cut out of the will—”

“By the way,” interrupted Ellery, “does the whole family know the terms of Cornelia’s will?”

Charley nodded. “She’s made no bones about it. I’m sure they do. Anyway, with Steve not getting a cent, he’d have nothing to gain financially by cutting down the number of heirs. So I can’t see a motive for him.”

“Let’s not overlook the fact, too,” Ellery pointed out, “that Stephen Brent Potts is a perfectly sane man, and perfectly sane men don’t murder their sons in cold blood.”

“Steve loved Bob, I think, even more than he loves Mac and Sheila. I can’t see Steve for a moment.”

“How about the old panhandler, Gotch?” demanded the Inspector.

“Nothing to gain financially by Bob’s death.”

“Unless,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “he’s in the pay of one of the others.”

The Inspector looked startled. “You’re kidding.”

Ellery smiled. “By the way, I’ve had a fantastic notion about Gotch. It gives the man a possible motive.”

“What’s that?” asked both men quickly.

“I’d rather not be explicit now. I’ve got quite accustomed myself to the timbre of this case — the operatic timbre. I can only conjecture absurdly without intellectual conviction. But Dad, I’d like to see a report on Gotch’s background.”

“I’ll send a couple of cables... Now Louella.” The Inspector stroked his chin. “Didn’t you say you heard her rant about the money she needs for her laboratory ‘experiments,’ and how Mama turned her down?”

“Seems to me an excellent motive for killing her mother,” retorted Ellery, “not Bob. But I grant that Louella gains by Bob’s death.”

“Then there’s Horatio, the Boy Who Never Grew Up—”

“Aaa, Horatio has no interest in money,” grunted Charley. “And I don’t think he’s said ten words to Bob in a year. He gains, but I can’t see Horatio as the one behind this.”

Ellery said nothing.

“And the twin brother, Maclyn?” asked the Inspector.

Charley stared. “Mac? Kill Bob? That’s ridiculous.”

“He had opportunity,” argued the Inspector.

“But what motive, Inspector?”

“Strangely enough,” said Ellery slowly, “Mac had a sounder theoretical motive to seek Bob’s death than any other.”

“How do you figure that out?” said Charley belligerently.

“Don’t get sore, Charley,” grinned Mr. Queen. “These are speculations only. Both twins were active vice-presidents of the Potts Shoe Company, weren’t they?” Charley nodded. “When the Old Woman dies — an event that, according to Dr. Innis, is imminent — who’d be most likely to take full charge of the business? The twins, of course, who seem to have been the only practical businessmen of the family.” Ellery shrugged. “I toss it out for what it’s worth. The death of his twin brother gives Mac a clear field when his mother yields the reluctant ghost.”

“You mean,” said Charley incredulously, “Mac might have been jealous enough of Bob to murder him so he could become head of the company?”

“Now that,” the Inspector snapped, “is a motive that appeals to me.”

Ellery opened his mouth to say something, but at this moment Sergeant Velie came plowing up the stairs, so he refrained.

“I give up,” said the Sergeant in disgust. “I and the boys’ve turned this joint upside down and we can’t find those two missing pieces of artillery. We even been in the Old Woman’s rooms. She gave us hail Columbia, but we stuck it out. I dunno where they are.”

“Did you check with Cornwall & Ritchey about what kind of guns those two missing ones were?” asked the Inspector.

Velie looked about cautiously, but the upper hall was deserted. “Get this. The thirteenth rod was a Colt Pocket Model Automatic — a .25 caliber—”

“But that’s precisely the type of weapon Thurlow used in the duel this morning,” Ellery said sharply.

“And the fourteenth was an S. & W. 38/32 with a two-inch barrel — a .38 caliber,” Velie nodded.

“Like the one Bob Potts carried!” The Inspector stiffened.

“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant, shaking his head lugubriously, “it’s a funny thing, but the two guns missin’ are exact duplicates of the two guns used in the duel this mornin’!”

12 The Importance of Being Dead

Mac was a puzzle. For the most part he shut himself up in the room he and Robert had shared since their birth, staring at nothing. He was not dazed; he was not grim; he was simply empty, as if the vital fluid in him had drained off. At such times as he quit his room, he wandered about the house with a restless air, as if he were looking for something. Sheila spent hours with him, talking, holding his cold hand. He would only shake his head: “Go to the old man, Sheila. He needs you. I don’t.”

“But Mac honey—”

“You don’t understand, sis.”

“No, I don’t! You’re fretting yourself into a nervous breakdown—”

“I’m not fretting myself into anything.” Mac would pat her burnished hair. “Go on to Pop, Sheila. Let me alone.”

Once Sheila, herself confused and conflicted, sprang to her feet with the cry: “Don’t you realize what’s happened? Of all the people, Mac I thought you — your own twin...”

Mac raised his blue eyes. When Sheila glimpsed the fires raging there, she burst into tears and fled.

It was true: her father needed her more than her brother. Steve Potts crept about the house more timidly than ever, stuttering apologies, getting into everyone’s way, and through it all with head cocked, as if he were listening for a distant voice. Sheila walked him in the garden, supervised his feeding, read the National Geographic to him, dialed radio programs for him, tucked him into bed. He had taken to sleeping in one of the spare rooms on the top floor; without explanation he had refused any longer to share Cornelia Potts’s regal bedchamber.

Major Gotch made overtures in a clumsy way. But for once the little man found no comfort in his bulky friend. He would shake his head at sight of the worn checker-board, squeeze his lips, squeeze and blink and, wiping his nose with an oversized handkerchief, putter off. Major Gotch spent more and more time alone in the downstairs study, raiding the cigar humidor and the liquor cabinet and brooding over the vacant board.

Then Robert Potts’s body was released by the Medical Examiner’s office, and it was buried in the earth of Manhattan, which is an odd story in itself, and after that neither his brother Maclyn nor his father Stephen listened for anything, since there is no finality more final than interment, not even death itself.

After that they listened for livelier voices — especially Mac.

Dr. Samuel Prouty, the peppery Assistant Medical Examiner, had known a unique intimacy with thousands of dead men. “A stiff is a stiff,” he would say as he sat on the abdomen of a corpse to brace himself for a rigor mortis tussle, or struck a match on the sole of a mortified foot. Nevertheless, Doc Prouty showed up in a new derby at Robert Potts’s funeral.

Inspector Queen was flabbergasted. “What are you doing here, Doc?”

“I thought you was only too glad to get rid of ’em,” exclaimed Sergeant Velie, who wore a hunted look these days. “How come you’re startin’ to follow ’em around?”

“It’s a funny thing,” said Doc Prouty bashfully. “I don’t usually go soft on a cadaver. But this boy’s sort of taken my fancy. Nice-looking youngster, and didn’t fight me one bit—”

Ellery was startled. “Didn’t fight you, Doc?”

“Well, sure. Any undertaker’ll tell you. Some corpses fight right back, and some co-operate. Most of ’em you can’t get to do a blame thing you want. But this Potts boy — he co-operated every inch of the way. I suppose you might say I took a shine to him.” Dr. Prouty blushed for the first time within memory of the oldest pensioner. “Least I could do was see him decently buried.”

Sergeant Velie backed away, muttering.

As an afterthought, Dr. Prouty said that the autopsy had revealed nothing they did not already know about the cause of Robert Potts’s death.

The other interesting element was the burial ground itself. There was a statute on the New York books which forbids interment of the dead within the confines of Manhattan. A few old city churchyards, however, predating the statute, may still inter fresh dead under certain tiresome restrictions. Usually these interments are restricted to “first families” who have owned plots from time beyond memory.

St. Praxed’s had such a yard — that sunken, cramped little cloister off Riverside Drive, a few blocks north of the Potts mansion, where scattered yellow teeth of old graves still protrude from the gums of the earth, and the rest are crypts invisible. How Cornelia Potts muscled into St. Praxed’s must ever remain a mystery. It was said that a branch of her New England family had burial rights there, and that she inherited them. Whatever mumbo jumbo the Old Woman performed, the fact was she had legal papers to prove her rights, and so her son Robert Potts was buried there.

Police reserves attended.

Charles Hunter Paxton was beginning to thin out. Mr. Ellery Queen was in an excellent position to observe the progressive attenuation, for the young man had taken to seeking refuge in the Queen apartment, which he roamed like the vanishing buffalo.

“If she’d only listen to reason, Ellery.”

“Well, she won’t, so be a man and have another drink.”

“Why not?”

“Isn’t your practice suffering these days, Charley?”

“What practice? Thurlow has no suits to be pressed, and I’m not speaking sartorially. My staff is taking care of the routine Potts work. Wrestling with tax and state problems. The hell with them. I want Sheila.”

“Have another drink.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

The two men filled the Queen apartment with smoke, Scotch bouquet, and endless chatter about the Robert Potts murder. It was maddening how few facts led anywhere. Robert was dead. Someone had stolen into his brother Thurlow’s unoccupied room during the eve of the duel and had slipped a live cartridge into Thurlow’s Colt .25, removing the blank. Probably the cartridge had been filched from one of the ammunition boxes from Thurlow’s bedroom cache; even this was uncertain, for laboratory tests had failed to educe an unarguable conclusion. What had happened to the replaced blank cartridge was any man’s guess.

“Anything,” said Charley. “Down the toilet drain, or flung into the Hudson.”

Ellery looked sour. “Has it occurred to you, Charley, to ask how it came about that somebody made a substitution of bullets at all?”

“Huh?”

“Well, as far as the household knew, that Colt automatic in Thurlow’s bedroom the night before the duel was already loaded with a live cartridge. We know it wasn’t, because I’d taken the gun downtown secretly and had Dad slip a blank into it in place of the live ammunition. We know that; how did the murderer know it? Know it he certainly did, for he subsequently stole into that room, removed the blank Dad had slipped into the magazine, and put a live shell in its place. Any ideas?”

“I can’t imagine. Unless you and Sheila and the twins and I were overheard by someone when we discussed the plan in the dining room.”

“An eavesdropper?” Ellery shrugged. “Let’s drive over to the Potts place, Charley — my head’s useless today, and Dad may have turned up something. I haven’t heard from him all day.”

They found Sheila and her father at the Shoe on the front lawn, old Steve slumped against the pedestal in an attitude of dejection, while Sheila talked fiercely to him. When she spied Ellery and Charley Paxton, she stopped talking. Her father hurriedly swiped at his red eyes.

“Well,” smiled Mr. Queen. “Out for an airing?”

“H-hello,” stuttered Steve Potts. “Anything n-new?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Potts.”

The old man’s eyes flickered for an instant. “Don’t c-call me that, please. My name is Brent.” His lips tightened. “Never should have let C–Cornelia talk me into changing it.”

“Hello,” said Sheila stiffly. Charley glared at her with the hunger of advanced malnutrition. “If you’ll excuse my father and me now—”

“Certainly,” said Ellery. “By the way, is my father in the house?”

“He left a few minutes ago to go back to Police Headquarters.”

“Sheila?” said Charley hoarsely.

“No, Charley. Go way.”

“Sheila, you’re acting like a ch-child,” said Steve Potts fretfully. “Charley, I’ve been t-trying to get Sheila to forget this s-silliness about not marrying you—”

“Thanks, Mr. Pot — Mr. Brent! Sheila, hear that? Even your own father—”

“Let’s not discuss it,” said Sheila.

“Sheila, I love you! Let me marry you and take you out of here!”

“I’m staying with Daddy.”

“I w-won’t have it!” said old Steve excitedly. “I won’t have you w-wasting your young life on me, Sheila. You marry Charley and get out of this house.”

“No, Daddy.”

Ellery sat down on the grass and plucked a blade, examining it studiously.

“No. You and Mac and I have to stick together now — we have to. I won’t ruin Charley’s life by mixing him up in our troubles. I’ve made my mind up.” Sheila whirled on Charley. “I wish Mother’d discharge you, get another lawyer, or something!”

“Sheila, you’re not going to get rid of me this way,” said young Paxton in a bitter tone. “I know you love me. That’s all I give a hoot about. I’ll stick around, I’ll hound you, I’ll climb ladders to your window, I’ll send you love letters by carrier pigeon... I won’t give up, darling.”

Sheila threw her arms around him, sobbing. “I do love you, Charley — I do, I do!”

Charles, the Unhappy, was so surprised he lost his opportunity to kiss her.

Sheila put her hands on his chest and pushed, and ran to her father and took his arm and almost dragged him off to the house.

Charley gaped.

Ellery rose from the grass, flinging the dissected blade away. “Don’t try to understand it, Charley. Now let’s scout around and see if we can’t come up with something.”

13 Thurlow Potts, Terror of the Plains

Something caught their eye, and they paused in the downstairs study doorway. There was the familiar game table in the center of the study, flanked by the two inevitable chairs; on the table lay the checkerboard; a fierce game was in progress. Major Gotch sat crouched in one of the chairs, his broad black chin on a fist, studying the board with aggressive eyes. The other chair, however, was unoccupied.

Suddenly the old pirate moved a red checker toward the center of the board. He sat back and smacked his thigh, exulting. But then he jumped from his chair, dodged round the table, and sat down in the opposite chair to fall into the same dark brown study over the board. He shook his head angrily, moved a black checker, jumped up, rounded the table again, sat down in the original chair, and with every indication of triumph jumped three black checkers, his red coming to rest with a bang on the black king row. The Major leaned back and folded his thick arms across his chest majestically.

At this point Mr. Queen coughed.

Gotch’s arms dropped as he looked around, his ruddy cheeks turning very dark. “Now, I don’t like that,” he roared. “That’s spying. That’s a sneaky Maori trick, that is. I mind mine, Mister — mind yours!”

“Sorry,” said Ellery humbly. “Come in, Charley — we may as well have a chat with Major Gotch.”

“Oh, is that you, Charley?” growled Major Gotch, mollified. “Eyes ain’t so good any more. That’s different. That’s a technical difference, that is.”

“Mr. Queen,” explained Charley mystified, “is helping to find out who killed Bob, Major.”

“Oh, that. Thurlow killed him.” The Major spat through one of the French doors onto the terrace, contemptuously.

“Thurlow merely pressed the trigger,” sighed Ellery. “There was supposed to be a blank in that Colt, Major Gotch. But there wasn’t. Someone substituted a live cartridge during the night.”

Major Gotch scraped his jaws. “Well, now,” he said. “Wondered what all the boilin’ and bubblin’ was. But Thurlow thinks he killed Bobby fair and square in that shenanigan.”

“I’m afraid Thurlow’s still a bit confused,” said Ellery sadly. “Major, did you kill Bob?”

“Me? Hell, no.” Gotch spat again, calmly. “Too old, Mister. Did my killin’ forty, forty-five year ago, round and about.” He chuckled suddenly. “We did plenty of it, Steve and me, in our day.”

“Steve?” Paxton looked skeptical.

“Well, Steve never had too much pepper for killin’, I’ll admit that. Sort of took after me, though. Looked up to me like a big brother. Many a time I saved his life from a brownskin’s knife. Never could stomach knives, Steve. Too much blood made him sick. Hankered after guns, though.”

“Uh... where did all this manslaughter take place, Major?” asked Ellery courteously.

“Nicaragua. Solomons. Java. One hitch down in Oorgawy.”

“Soldiers of fortune, eh?”

The Major shrugged. “Seems to me I told you already.”

“Didn’t you two gentlemen spend most of your early days in the South Seas and Malaysia?”

“Oh, sure. We were all over. Raised plenty of hell, Steve and me. I remember once in Batavia—”

“Yes, yes,” said Ellery hurriedly. “By the way, Major, where were you the other evening? The night before the duel?”

“Bed. Sleepin’. Charley, how about a game of checkers?”

Charley muttered something discouraging.

“And Major.” Ellery lit a cigaret scrupulously. “Have you ever been married?”

The old man’s jaw dropped. “Me? Hitched? Jipers, no.”

“Any idea who might have murdered Robert Potts?”

“Same question that old albatross was askin’ me. Nope, not a notion. I’m a man minds his own business, Tuan. Live an’ let live, that’s how I figger it. Sure you won’t play a game o’ checkers, Charley?”

Charley knocked on the tower door. Louella’s bony face appeared behind the glass-protected grille and grinned at them. She unlocked her laboratory door quickly and welcomed them into her den of retorts with a frenetic eagerness that raised lumps on Ellery’s scalp. “Come in! So glad you’ve come to visit me. The most wonderful thing’s happened! See — here—” She kept chattering as she bustled them over to her workbench and exhibited a large porcelain pan heaped with some viscid stuff of a green-gray, dead color, like sea slime. It had a peculiarly pervasive and unavoidable stench.

“What is it, Miss Potts?”

“My plastic.” Louella lowered her voice, looking about. “I think I’m very near my goal. Mr. Mulqueen — I really do. Of course, I put you on your honor not to mention this to anyone — even the police. I don’t trust police, you know. They’re all in the pay of the corporations, and armed with authority as they are, they can come in here and steal my plastic and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. I know your father is that little man, the Inspector, but Charley’s assured me you have no connection with the police department, and—”

Ellery comforted her. “But, Miss Potts, I understood that you needed more funds to carry on your work. I heard your mother refuse you the other evening—”

Louella’s dry face twisted with rage. “She’ll feel sorry!” she spat. “Oh, that’s always the way — the great unselfish ones of science have to accomplish their miracles despite every hardship and obstacle! Well, Mother’s avarice won’t stop me. Some day she’ll regret it — some day when the name of Louella Potts...”

So Louella’s tortured strivings in her smelly laboratory were run by the same dark generator that moved Cornelia Potts, and Thurlow Potts, and even Horatio Potts, to glorification and defense of the Name. The Name... Mr. Queen could wish it were lovelier.

He asked Louella several offhand questions, calculated not to alarm her. No, she had been in her laboratory, working on her plastic, the night before the duel. Yes, all night. Yes, alone.

“I like to be alone, Mr. Mulqueen,” she said, her bony face glowing. And, as if her own statement had brought in its train a whole retinue of old black moods, she lost her enthusiasm, her eagerness palled, her face grew sullen, and she said: “I’ve wasted enough time. Please. If there’s nothing else — I have my Work to do.”

“Of course, Miss Potts.” Ellery moved toward the door; Charley was already there, nibbling his fingernails. “Oh, incidentally,” said Ellery lightly, turning around, “do you keep any guns up here? We’re trying to round up all the guns in the house, Miss Potts, after that terrible accident to your brother Robert—”

“I hate guns,” said Louella, shivering.

“No bullets, either?”

“Certainly not.” Her eyes wandered to the dingy mess in the porcelain pan. “Oh, guns,” she said suddenly. “Yes, they’ve been inquiring about that. That large man — Sergeant Something-or-other — he forced his way in here and turned my laboratory upside down. I had to hide my plastic under my gown...” Her voice became vague.

They fled, depressed.

Dr. Innis was just striding out of Cornelia Potts’s apartment when the two men came down from Louella’s tower.

“Oh, Doctor. How’s Mrs. Potts?”

“Not good, not good, Mr. Queen,” said Innis fretfully. “Marked cardiac deterioration. We’re doing what we can, which isn’t much. I just administered a hypo.”

“Maybe we ought to have a consultant in, Dr. Innis,” suggested Charley.

Dr. Innis stared as if Charley had struck him. “Of course,” he said icily. “If you wish it. But Mr. Thurlow Potts has every confidence in me. I suggest you discuss it with him, and—”

“Oh, come down, Doc,” said Charley irritably. “I know you’re doing what you can. I just don’t want anyone saying we haven’t gone through the motions. How about a nurse?”

Dr. Innis was slightly appeased. “You know how she is about nurses. Goes into tantrums. I really feel it would be bad to cross her in that. That old woman in the house—”

“Bridget?”

“Yes, yes. She’s adequate.” Dr. Innis shook his head. “These heart conditions, Mr. Paxton — we know so little about the heart, there’s so little we can do. She’s an old lady, and she’s driven herself hard. Now this excitement of the past few days has dangerously weakened her, and I’m very much afraid her heart won’t hold out much longer.”

“Too bad,” said Ellery thoughtfully.

Dr. Innis glanced at him in amazement, as if it had never occurred to him that anyone could rue the possible passing of Cornelia Potts. “Yes, certainly,” the physician said. “Now if you gentlemen will excuse me — I must phone the pharmacy for some more digitalis.” He hurried off with his elegant strides.

They made their way downstairs through the foyer to the French doors leading to the terrace and court. Ellery barely glanced into the study as they passed. He knew that Major Gotch was still hopping from chair to chair, playing checkers with himself.

“Horatio?” sighed Charley Paxton.

“None other.”

“You won’t get any more out of him than you got out of Louella. Ellery, we’re wasting our time.”

“I’m beginning to think so. Dad’s been all through this, anyway, and he said he’d got exactly nowhere.” They paused in the doorway, looking out across the gardens to the multi-colored cottage. “I must have been born under a very subtle curse. I live in hope always that some rationale can be applied to even the most haphazard human set-up. This time I think I’m licked... Voici Horatio.”

The burly figure of Horatio Potts appeared from behind the little house, carrying a long ladder, his red bristles a halo in the sun. He wore filthy ducks tied about his joggled paunch with a piece of frayed rope, and tattered sandals on his broad feet. Perspiration stained his blouse darkly.

“What the devil’s he doing?”

“Watch.”

Horatio padded to the nearest tree, a patriarchal sycamore, and set the ladder against the trunk. Then he began to climb, the ladder protesting clearly all the way across the garden. He disappeared among some lower branches, his fat calves struggling upward, disembodied.

The two men waited, wondering.

Suddenly the legs began to dangle; Horatio appeared again, blowing in triumph. One hand firmly clasped the crosspiece of a kite. Carefully the fat man descended from the tree; then he ran out into the open, busily tying the broken end of the kite cord to a large ball of twine from one of his bulging pockets. In a few moments he had his kite whole again, and Messrs. Queen and Paxton stood some yards away, in a doorway, enjoying the spectacle of an elephantine red-haired man racing with whoops through the gardens to let the wind catch a Mickey Mouse kite and lift it bravely into the air above Riverside Drive, New York City, the United States of America, Planet Earth.

“But I thought you wanted—” began Charley, as Ellery turned back into the house.

“No,” growled Ellery. “It wouldn’t do any good. Leave Horatio alone with his kites and his picaresque books and his gingerbread house. He’s too immersed in the fairy tale he’s living to be of any terrestrial use in the investigation of such a grown-up everyday business of murder.

“Strangest case I’ve ever seen,” complained Ellery as they strolled back to the foyer. “Usually you get somewhere in questioning the people in an investigation. If they don’t tell the truth, at least they tell lies, which are often more revealing than truths. But in this Potts fantasy — nothing! They don’t even know what you’re talking about. Their answers sound like Esperanto. First time in my life I’ve felt completely disheartened in such an early stage.”

Now you know why I want to get Sheila out of here,” said Charley quietly.

“I certainly do.” Ellery stopped short. “Now what’s that?”

They were at the foot of the spiral staircase. Somewhere beyond the upper landing raged a bedlam of thumpings, yells and cracking furniture. There was nothing playful in these sounds. If murder was not being committed upstairs, it was at the very least assault and battery with murderous intent.

Ellery took the staircase in rejuvenated bounds: violence was an act, and acts are measurable; something had broken out into the open at last... A little way down the foyer, Major Gotch thrust a startled head out of the study. Seeing the two young men speed upstairs, and hearing the noise, the Major thundered out, tightening his belt.

Ellery followed his ears; they led him to Maclyn Potts’s room.

Mac and his eldest brother were rolling over and over on the bedroom floor, bumping into the twin beds, in the debris of the overturned and splintered night table and its lamp. Mac’s shirt was torn and there were four angry parallel gouges on his right cheek all bleeding. Thurlow’s cheeks were gory, already turning purple in splotches. Both were screaming curses as they wrestled; and each was quite simply trying to kill the other with his bare hands. Mac, being younger, hard, and quicker, was closer to his objective. Thurlow looked forlorn.

Ellery plucked the younger man from the floor and held him fast; Charley pounced on Thurlow. Thurlow’s little eyes were shooting jets of hate across the disordered bedroom through swollen blackening lids.

“You killed my brother!” shouted Mac, struggling in Ellery’s arms. “You killed him in cold blood and I’ll make you pay for it, Thurlow, if I have to go to the Chair!”

Thurlow deliberately rolled over, avoiding Charley Paxton’s frantic clutch, and scrambled to his feet. He began to paw his baggy tweeds with blind, bleeding strokes.

Sheila and her father ran in, brushing Major Gotch aside. The Major had chosen to remain a spectator.

“Mac, what’s happening?” Her eyes widened. “Did he—” Then Sheila sprang at Thurlow, and he cringed. “Did you try to kill my brother Mac, too?” she shrieked. “Did you?”

“Mac, y-your face,” stammered his father. “It’s all b-bloody!”

“His damned womanish fingernails,” panted Mac. “He doesn’t even fight like a man, Pop.” He pushed Ellery away. “I’m all right, thanks.”

Thurlow uttered a peculiar sound. Where his face was not puffed and stained, it was deadly white. His fat cheeks sucked in and out nervously; he kept trying not to lick his cracked lips. There was intense pain on his face. Slowly Thurlow took a handkerchief from his hip pocket, slowly unfolded it, grasped it by one corner and walked over to his brother. He flicked the handkerchief across Mac’s wounded cheek.

As in a dream, they heard his voice.

“You’ve insulted me for the last time, Maclyn. I’ll kill you just the way I killed Robert. This can only be wiped out in blood. Meet me at the Shoe tomorrow at dawn. I’ll get two more guns — they’ve taken all of mine. Mr. Queen, will you do me the honor of acting for me once again?”

And, before they could recover from their astonishment, Thurlow was gone.

“I’ll meet you!” Mac was roaring. “Bring your guns, Thurlow! Bring ’em, you murdering coward!”

They were holding him down forcibly-Ellery, Charley, Major Gotch. Steve Potts had dropped into a chair, to look at his writhing son without hope.

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Mac. Stop it, now. Daddy, do something. Charley... Mr. Queen, you can’t let this happen again. Oh God,” Sheila sobbed, “I’m going mad myself...”

Her terror brought Mac to his senses. He ceased struggling, shook off their arms. Then he twisted to lie prone on his bed, face in his hands.

Ellery and Charley half-carried Sheila into the hall. “That maniac — he’ll kill my Mac,” she wept. “The way he killed Bobby. You’ve got to stop Thurlow Mr. Queen. Arrest him — something!”

“Stop your hysterics, Sheila. Nothing’s going to happen. There won’t be another duel. I promise you.”

When Charley had led Sheila off, still crying, Ellery stood for a moment outside Mac’s room. Steve Potts was trying to soothe his son in an ineffectual murmur. Major Gotch’s brassy voice was raised in a reminiscence half biography and half advice, and concerned a Borneo incident in which the artful use of knee and knife had saved his younger, more valuable life.

From Mac, silence.

Ellery ran his hand desperately through his hair and hurried downstairs to telephone to his father.

14 Mac Solves the Mystery

The old woman suffered a heart attack that evening. For a few moments Ellery suspected malingering. But when Dr. Innis, hastily summoned, took over, and Ellery permitted himself an oral expression of his cynicism, without a word the physician handed him the stethoscope. What Ellery heard through those sensitive microphones banished all suspicions and gave him a respect for Dr. Innis he had not had before. If the Pasteur of Park Avenue had kept this wheezing, stopping, skipping, racing organ from ceasing to function altogether, then he was a very good man indeed.

Cornelia Potts lay gasping high on pillows. Her lips were cyanosed and her eyes, deeply socketed, in agony. With each breath she flung herself upward, as if to engulf the elusive air with her whole body.

Dr. Innis busied himself with hypodermics under Ellery’s eye. After a few minutes, seeing the Old Woman’s struggles for breath subside a little, he left on tiptoe. Outside the Old Woman’s door he found Detective Flint.

“Old Woman kick the bucket?” Flint inquired with a hopeful inflection. When Ellery shook his head, Flint shook his. “Got a message for you from the Sarge. He’s tailing Thurlow.”

“Thurlow’s left the house?” Ellery said quickly.

“A couple of minutes ago. Sergeant Velie’s hangin’ on to his tail like a tick, though.”

“I suppose Thurlow’s in quest of two more revolvers,” mused Ellery. “Let me know when he gets back, will you, Flint?” He went into Mac’s room. Major Gotch had vanished for some hole of his own in the vast building, but Stephen Potts was hovering over his son’s bed, and Sheila and Charley Paxton.

“I don’t know what you’re all hanging around me for,” Mac was saying listlessly as Ellery came in. The twin of dead Robert lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. “I’m fine. Don’t treat me as if I were a baby. I’m all right, I tell you. Pop, go to bed. Let me alone. I want to sleep.”

“Mac, you’re planning to do something foolish.” Sheila held tightly to her brother’s hand.

“He wants a duel, he’ll get a duel.”

Old Steve made washing motions with his gnarled hands.

Ellery said: “Did you people know that Mrs. Potts has had a heart attack?”

It was cruel, but informative. Perhaps not so cruel, considering the startled hope that sprang into those faces, and the slow turn of Mac’s head.

Sheila and her father ran out.

It took Charley and Ellery until past midnight to get Mac Potts to sleep. By the time they left his room and shut the door softly, Cornelia Potts not far along the hall was also in a deep sleep. They met Sheila and her father coming wearily out of the Old Woman’s apartment with Dr. Innis.

“Condition’s improved,” said the doctor briefly. “I think she’ll pull through this one. Amazing woman. But I’ll stay here for another hour or so, anyway.” He waved and returned to his patient.

Ellery sent Sheila and Stephen Potts to bed. They were both exhausted. Charley, who looked in hardly better case, commandeered a spare room, recommended that Ellery do the same, and trudged off after Sheila.

Mr. Queen was left alone in the upper hall. He spent much time there, smoking cigarets and pacing before the silent row of doors.

At 1:10 A.M. Thurlow Potts came home. Ellery heard him tottering upstairs. He dodged into the entrance to the turret staircase; Thurlow passed him, lurching. The elder Potts was toting a badly wrapped package. He meandered down the hall and finally wandered into his own rooms.

A moment later Sergeant Velie came upstairs, softly.

“Guns, Sergeant?”

“Yeah. Scared up some old bedbug in a hockshop down on West Street who sold ’em to him.” Velie kept his eye on Thurlow’s door. “Two big babies. I couldn’t go in and find out what they were or I would a lost my bedbug. They looked heavy enough to sink a sub.”

“Why so late?”

“He stopped into a row of gin mills on his way back. Got tanked to the eyeballs. For a little guy he sure can lap it up.” The Sergeant chuckled. “Mr. Thurlow Potts ain’t doin’ any dueling tonight. I can tell you that. This is one that gets slept off, brother, unless he’s been kiddin’ me.”

“Good work, Velie. Wait till he falls asleep. Then go in there and take that package away from him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ten minutes later Sergeant Velie slipped out of Thurlow’s apartment with the poorly tied package in his arms.

“Beddy-by,” grinned the Sergeant. “Flopped on his flop with his clothes on, and he’s snorin’ away like a water buffalo. What do I do now?”

“Give me the package for one thing,” replied Ellery, “and for another get some sleep. Tomorrow I think, will be a large fat day.”

Velie yawned and went downstairs. Ellery saw him stretch out in a plush chair in the foyer, tip his hat over his eyes, fold his hands on his hard stomach; heard him settle back with voluptuous sighs.

Ellery opened the package. It contained two colossal revolvers, single-action Colt.45’s, the weapon that played so important a role in the winning of the West. “Six-shooters, by thunder!” He hefted one of the formidable guns and wondered how Thurlow had ever expected to handle it: its shape and the size of its grip were adapted for big brawny hands, not the pudgy little white hands of the Thurlow Pottses of this world. Both guns were loaded.

Ellery retied the package, placing it at his feet, and curled up on the top step of the spiral staircase.

At 2:30 Dr. Innis emerged from the Old Woman’s apartment, yawning. “She’ll sleep through the night now, Mr. Queen. This last hypo injection would put an elephant to sleep. ’Night.”

“Good night, Doctor.”

“I’ll be back first thing in the morning. She’s in no danger.” Dr. Innis trudged downstairs and disappeared.

Ellery rose, clutching Thurlow’s newest arsenal, and made a noiseless tour of the floor. When he had satisfied himself that everyone was asleep, or at least in his room, he hunted up an empty bedroom on the top floor, flung himself on the bed with his arms about Thurlow’s package, and fell instantly asleep.

At six o’clock sharp, in the red-gold of a charming lawn, Thurlow Potts dashed out of the Potts Palace and paced down the steps to the Shoe. He stopped short. A delegation awaited him.

Inspector Queen, Sergeant Velie, Sheila and her father, Charles Hunter Paxton, a half-dozen plainclothes men, and Ellery Queen.

“My guns!” Thurlow saw the package in Ellery’s hands, beaming with relief. “I was so alarmed,” he said, wiping his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “But I might have known as my second you’d take care of everything, Mr. Queen.”

Mr. Queen did not reply.

“Is everything ready for the duel, gentlemen?”

Inspector Queen spat out the end of his first cheroot of the day. “There’s going to be no duel, Mr. Potts. Understand that? I’ll repeat it for your benefit. There’s going to be no duel. Your dueling days are over. And if you want to argue about it, there are plenty of judges available. Now how about it? Will you settle this fight with your brother sensibly or do I swear out a warrant for your arrest?”

Thurlow blinked.

“Ellery, get this boy Mac down here. You said last night over the phone he’d threatened to kill Thurlow. Get him down here and we’ll settle this foolishness once and for all.”

Ellery nodded and went back into the house. It was quiet; no servants stirred as yet; Dr. Innis had arrived fifteen minutes before and gone into Cornelia Potts’s room with the same heavy tread which had carried him out of the house a few hours earlier.

Ellery went to Mac’s door. It was a silent door.

“Mac?”

There was no answer. He opened the door.

Mac was lying on his back in bed, covered to the chin, a very peaceful young man. His eyes were open.

But Mr. Queen’s eyes were open, too — wide. He ran over to the bed and pulled back the cover.

Some time during the night Maclyn Potts had solved the mystery of his brother’s death. For his brother’s murderer had visited him here, and he had looked with those staring eyes upon that creature, and that creature had left behind a hard reflection of his nature — a bullet in Mac’s heart.

Ellery stood still, his heart pounding. He felt himself growing enraged. And then a coldness settled down on him. His eyes narrowed. The pillow on which Mac’s head rested showed powder burns and one bullet hole.

There were some strange marks on Mac’s face — long thin blue marks. As if the second twin had been whipped.

On the empty bed of departed Robert there stood a bowl of gold-spotted liquid. Ellery sniffed it, touched its bland surface with a cautious finger tip. It was cold chicken broth.

He looked around. The door through which he had just come... A little behind it lay a crop, a crop such as horsemen use to whip their mounts. And, near it, a small revolver with a familiar look.