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

21 The Uneasiness of Heads

Now was the winter of their discontent, and that was strange, for the Potts case was solved. Wasn’t there a confession? Hadn’t the newspapers leaped upon it with venal joy? Weren’t old cuts of Landru lifted from morgues the length and breadth of the land? Didn’t the tabloids begin to serialize still again that old standby of circulation joggers, Famous Murders of Fact and Fiction? Was not Herod evoked, and Lady Macbeth?

One tabloid printed a cartoon of the Old Woman, smoking gun in hand, sons writhing at her feet, with the witty inscription: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son. (PROVERBS, XIII, 24.)” A more dignified journalist resume began with the quotation: “Innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear... P. B. SHELLEY, Queen Mab, VI).”

But Ellery Queen thought the Order of the Bloodstained Footprint should have been awarded to the wag who resurrected the old laborcapital cartoon of the Old Woman in the Shoe, with her six children tumbling out, across two of whom however he now painted large black X’s, and composed to explain it the following quatrain: —

Work was begun in the studio of a Coney Island waxworks museum on a tableau, showing Maclyn Potts lying agonized in a bed weltering in thick red stuff, while the chubby figure of his mother, clad in voluminous black garments and wearing a black shawl and bonnet tied under the chin, gloated over the corpse like some demonized little Queen Victoria.

Several eggs, coming over the wall from Riverside Drive, splashed against the Shoe the afternoon the newspapers announced the discovery of the Old Woman’s confession.

A stone broke Thurlow Potts’s bedroom window, sending him into a white-lipped oration on the Preservation of Law and Order; a charge of criminal mischief went begging only because of Thurlow’s failure to identify the miscreant.

Various detectives of Inspector Queen’s staff went home for the first time in days to visit with their children. Sergeant Velie’s wife prepared a mustard bath for his large feet and tucked him into bed full of aspirin and love.

Only in the apartment of the Queens were there signs that all was not well. Usually at the conclusion of a case Inspector Queen made jokes and ordered two-inch steaks which he devoured with the gusto of one who has labored well and merits appropriate reward. Now he scarcely ate at all, glowering when spoken to, was grumpy with Ellery, and fell back into the routine of his office without enjoyment.

As for Ellery Queen, it could not be said that his spirits soared above sea level. There was no taste in anything, matter or music. He went back to a detective novel he had been composing when the case of the Old Woman and her six children had thrown it into eclipse; but the shadow was still there, hanging heavily over the puppets of his imagination and making the words seem just words. He went over the Potts case in his mind endlessly; he fell asleep to the scudding of far-fetched theories.

But the days came and went, the house on Riverside Drive gradually became just a house, the newspapers turned to fresh sensations, and it began to appear that the Potts case had already passed into criminal history, to be no more than a footnote or a paragraph in some morbid reference book of the future.

One morning, three weeks after the disclosures in Cornelia Potts’s confession had officially closed the dossier on the case, Inspector Queen was about to leave for Police Headquarters — he had already grunted “Toodle-oo” to his son, who was still at breakfast — when suddenly he turned back from the door and said: “By the way, Ellery, I got a cable yesterday afternoon from the Dutch East Indies.”

“Dutch East Indies?” Ellery absently looked up from his eggs.

“Batavia. The prefect or commissioner of police there, or whatever they call him. You know, in reply to my cable about Major Gotch.”

“Oh,” said Ellery. He set down his spoon.

“The cable says Gotch has no record down there. I thought you’d like to know... just to clear up a point.”

“No record? You mean they haven’t anything on him?”

“Not a thing. Never even heard of the old windbag.”

The Inspector sucked his mustache. “Doesn’t mean much. All I could give them was the name and description of a man forty years older than he’d been if he’d ever been there, and what’s in a name? Or else Gotch is just a liar — a lot of these old-timers are — even though he swore he’d raised Cain in the Dutch East Indies in his time.”

Ellery lit a cigaret, frowning over the match. “Thanks.”

The Inspector hesitated. Then he came back and sat down, tipping his hat over his eyes as if in shame. “The Potts case is a closed book and all that, son, but I’ve been meaning to ask you—”

“What, Dad?”

“When we were talking over motives, you said you’d figured out that this old Major had a possible motive, too. Not that it’s of any importance now—”

“I also said, I believe, that it was impossibly fantastic.”

“Never mind knocking yourself out,” snapped his father. “What did you have in mind?”

Ellery shrugged. “Remember the day we went over to the Potts house to ask the Old Woman to use her authority to stop the killings, and found her lying dead in bed?”

“Yes?” The Inspector licked his lips.

“Remember on the way upstairs I said to Dr. Innis that there was one question I’d been meaning to ask Mrs. Potts?”

“I sure do. What was the question?”

“I was going to ask her,” said Ellery deliberately, “whether she’d ever seen her first husband again.”

Inspector Queen gaped. “Her first husband? You mean this Bacchus Potts?”

“Who else?”

“But he’s dead.”

“Dead in law, Dad. That’s quite another thing from being dead in fact. It struck me at one point in the case that Bacchus Potts might be very much alive still.”

“Hunh.” The Inspector was silent. Then he said: “That hadn’t occurred to me. But you haven’t answered my question. What did you have in mind when you said Major Gotch had a possible motive, too?”

“But I have answered your question, Dad.”

“You... mean... Bacchus... Potts... Major Gotch—” The Inspector began to laugh, and soon he was wiping away the merry tears. “I’m glad the case is over,” he choked. “Another week and you’d have been measured for a restraining sheet yourself!”

“Amuse yourself,” murmured his son, unruffled. “I told you it was fantastic. But on the other hand, why not? Gotch might be Potts the First.”

“And I might be Richard the Second,” chuckled his father.

“Fascinating speculation at the time, as I recall it,” murmured Ellery. “Cornelia Potts has her husband declared dead after he’s been absent seven years. She marries Steve Brent. He has a companion, ‘Major Gotch.’ Many years have passed since she last saw hubby number one, and the tropics change physiognomies wonderfully. Suddenly Cornelia discovers that Major Gotch is none other than Bacchus Potts! Makes her a bigamist or does it? Anyway, it’s embarrassing. Situation.”

“Rave on.”

“And the worst of it is, ‘Major Gotch’ has found himself a comfortable nest. Sees no point in waving farewell. Pals with the new husband, and all that. New husband defends him. Cornelia’s trapped... That theory appealed to me, Dad, wild as it was. Charley Paxton, in telling me the story of the Old Woman’s life, had been vague — as well he might be! — about Cornelia’s reason for permitting Gotch to live in her household. Mightn’t that have been the reason? A hold Gotch had on her? That she wasn’t legally married to Brent and therefore her children — her reputation — her business—?”

“Hold it,” said the Inspector testily. “I’m an idiot for listening to this fairy tale, but suppose Gotch is Potts the First. What motive for murdering the twins would that give him?”

“The two husbands, inseparable companions,” said Ellery dreamily, “living in the same house, playing endless checker tournaments with each other... What? Oh, his possible motive. Well, Dad, we agreed at the time that the Potts clan may have been going through a process of liquidation, one member at a time. And who were liquidated? Sheila Brent spotted it immediately. Only the sane ones were dying. The Brents.”

“So?”

“So suppose the first Potts had come back in the person of ‘Major Gotch’? Mightn’t he come to hate his successor, the second Potts — no matter how fast their friendship had been in the atolls of the South Seas?”

“Aaaa,” said the Inspector.

“Mightn’t he come to hate the three additional children Cornelia and Steve Brent brought into the world? Mightn’t he resent the shares of Sheila, Bob, and Mac in what would seem to him his millions? Mightn’t he reason, too, that their very existence jeopardized the security of his own children, the Three Goons — Thurlow, Louella, and Horatio? And because of all this, mightn’t Bacchus Potts’ ‘Gotch’ brood and plan and finally go over the deep end and begin to eliminate those not of his blood? — one by one? — Robert, Maclyn, then Sheila, and finally Steve Brent himself? Don’t forget, Dad, if Gotch is Potts, he’s insane. Potts’s three children are proof enough of that.”

The Inspector shook his head. “I’m glad the Old Woman’s confession spared you the embarrassment of having to spout that theory!”

“The Old Woman’s confession...” echoed Ellery in a queer tone.

“What’s the matter with the Old Woman’s confession?” The Inspector sat up straight.

“Did I say anything was the matter with it?”

“Your tone—”

“It’s my gout, Father,” smiled Mr. Queen. “My gout? I must remember to take the waters.”

The Inspector threw a cushion at him. “And I must remember to send that will and confession back to Paxton. We’ve got photostatic copies for the files, but the pay-off is that Thurlow — Thurlow! — wants the confession for ‘the family records’!... Oh, son.” The Inspector stuck his head back through the doorway, grinning. “I promise not to tell a soul about that Gotch-is-Potts theory of yours.”

Ellery threw the cushion back.

For Ellery Queen the path of literature this morning was paved merely with good intentions. He scowled at his typewriter for almost an hour without pecking a word. When he finally did begin to write, he found the usual digital difficulties insuperable. He had developed a mysterious habit of shifting the position of his hands one key to the left, so that when he thought he had written the sentence: “There were bloody stripes on Lecky’s right elbow,” he found that it actually read — more interestingly but less comprehensibly — “Rgwew qwew vkiist areuowa ib Kwzjt&a eufgr wkviq.” This he felt would place an unfair burden upon his readers; so he ripped the sheet out and essayed a new start. But this time he decided that there was no special point to putting bloody stripes on Lecky’s right elbow, so there he was, back at the beginning. Curse all typewriters and his clumsiness with them!

Really ought to have a stenographer, he brooded. Take all this distracting mechanical work off his hands. A stenographer with honey-colored hair... no, red hair. Small. Perky. But sensible. Not the kind that chewed gum; no. A small warm package of goodies. Of course, purely for stenographic purposes. No reason why a writer’s stenographer shouldn’t also be inoffensive to the eye, was there? In fact, downright pleasant to look at? Like Sheila Brent, for instance. Sheila Brent...

Ellery was seated before his reproachful machine a half hour later, hands clasped behind his head and a self-pitying smile on his face, when the doorbell rang. He started guiltily when he saw who his caller was. “Charley!”

“Hullo,” said Charley Paxton glumly. He scaled his hat across the room and dropped into the Inspector’s sacred armchair. “Have you got a Scotch and soda? I’m pooped.”

“Of course,” said Ellery keenly. As he busied himself being host, he watched Charley out of the corner of his eyes. Mr. Paxton was looking poorly. “What’s the matter? Strain of normal living proving too much for you, Charley?”

Charley grinned feebly. “It’s a fact there hasn’t been a murder in almost a month. Tedious!”

“Here’s your drink. Why haven’t I seen you since confessional?”

“Conf— Oh. That day.” Charley scowled into his glass. “Hands full. Keeping the mobs of salesmen away from the Potts Palladium, as you call it. Handling a thousand legal details of the estate.”

“Is it as large as you estimated?”

“Larger.”

“I suppose a niggardly million or so?”

“Some pittance like that.”

“How’s Sheila?”

Charley did not answer for a moment. Then he raised his hollow eyes. “That’s one of the reasons I came here today.”

“Nothing wrong with Sheila, I hope?” Ellery said quickly.

“Wrong? No.” Charley began to patrol the Queen living room.

“Oh. Things aren’t going so well between you and Sheila — is that it?”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“And I thought,” murmured Mr. Queen, “that you’d come to invite me to the wedding.”

“Wedding!” said Charley bitterly. “I’m further from the altar now than I ever was. Every time I say: ‘When are we going to take the jump?’ Sheila starts to cry and say she’s the daughter of a two-times killer, and she won’t saddle me with a murderess for a mother-in-law, even if she is dead, and a lot of similar hooey. I can’t even get her to move out of that damned house. Won’t leave old Steve, and Steve says he’s too decrepit to start bumming again... It’s hopeless, Ellery.”

“I can’t understand that girl,” mused Ellery.

“It’s the same old madhouse, only worse, now that the Old Woman’s not there to crack down. Louella’s filling it with useless, expensive apparatus — I swear she’ll blow that place up some night! — buying on credit, and of course she’s getting all she wants now that the Old Woman’s dead and the trades-people know what a lulu of a fortune Louella’s coming into.

“Thurlow’s lording it over them all — cock of the roost, Thurlow is. Sits at the head of the table and makes with the lofty cracks to Steve and Major Gotch, and is otherwise a complete pain in the—”

“As I was saying,” said Ellery, “Sheila baffles me. Her attitude strikes me as inconsistent with my conception of the whole woman. Charley, there’s something wrong somewhere, and it’s up to you to find out what.”

“Of course there’s something wrong. She won’t marry me!”

“Not that, Charley. Something else... Wish I knew... Might make...” Mr. Queen stopped guillotining his sentences in order to think. Then he said crisply: “As for you, my dear Gascon, my advice is to stick to it. Sheila’s worth fighting for. Matter of fact,” he sighed, “I’m inclined to be envious.”

Charley looked startled.

Ellery smiled sadly. “It won’t come to a duel at dawn, I promise you. You’re her man, Charley. But just the same—”

Charley began to laugh. “And I come here to ask your advice. John Alden stuff!” His grin faded. “Say, I’m sorry as hell, Ellery. Although as far as I can see, anybody’s got a better chance with Sheila than I have.”

“She loves you. All you have to do is be patient and understanding, now that the case is closed—”

Charley stopped pacing. “Ellery,” he said.

“What?”

“That’s another reason I came to see you today.”

“What’s another reason you came to see me today?”

Charley lowered his voice. “I don’t think the case is closed.”

Ellery Queen said “Ah,” and turned around like a dog seeking a place to settle. Instead, he freshened Charley Paxton’s drink and mixed one for himself. “Sit down, Brother Paxton, and tell Papa all about it.”

“I’ve been thinking—”

“That’s always salutary.”

“Two things still bother me. So much I can’t sleep—”

“Yes?” Ellery did not mention his own insomnia of the past three weeks.

“Remember the Old Woman’s confession?”

“I think so,” said Ellery dryly.

“Well, one statement the Old Woman made in it strikes me as pretty peculiar,” said Charley slowly.

“Which statement is that?”

“The one about the guns. She wrote she was the one who swiped the Harrington & Richardson revolver from Thurlow with which she held up the reporters the day of the first murder — the gun she almost killed Sergeant Velie with—”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then she said: ‘Later it was I who stole one of Thurlow’s other guns and hid it from the police and went with it into my son Maclyn’s bedroom in the middle of the night and shot him with it.”

“Yes?”

“ ‘One of Thurlow’s other guns’!” exclaimed Charley. “But Ellery, there were two guns missing.”

“Indeed,” said Ellery, as if he had never thought of that. “What do you make of it, Charley?”

“But don’t you see?” cried the young lawyer. “What happened to that second gun, the one that’s still missing? Where is it? Who has it? If it’s still in the house, isn’t Sheila in danger?”

“How’s that?”

“Thurlow, Louella, Horatio! Suppose one of those poppy-eaters takes it into his head to continue the Old Woman’s massacre on the Brent part of the family? Anything is possible with those three, Ellery. They hate Sheila and Steve as much as the Old Woman — maybe more. What do you think?”

“I’ve concocted more fantastic theories myself,” murmured Mr. Queen. “Go on talking, Charley. I’ve been pining to discuss the case for three weeks now, but I haven’t dared for fear I’d be disowned.”

“I’ve been bursting, too! I can’t get these thoughts out of my mind. I’ve had another — theory, suspicion, whatever you choose to call it. This one’s driving me wild.”

Ellery looked comforted. “Talk.”

“The Old Woman knew she was going to die, Ellery. She said so in her confession, didn’t she?”

“She did.”

“Suppose she thought one of her precious darlings had killed the twins! She knew she was dying, so what did she have to lose by taking the blame on herself?”

“You mean—”

“I mean,” said Charley tensely, “that maybe the Old Woman’s confession was a phony, Ellery. I mean that maybe she was covering up for one of her crazy gang — that there’s still an active killer in that house.”

Ellery swigged deeply. When he set his glass down, he said: “My dear fraternal sleuth, that was the first thought I had when we opened the envelope and read the Old Woman’s confession.”

“Then you agree it’s possible?”

“Of course it’s possible,” said Ellery slowly. “It’s even probable. I just can’t see Cornelia Potts killing those two boys. But—” He shrugged. “My doubts and yours, Charley, won’t stand up against that confession bearing Cornelia Potts’s signature... By George!” he said.

“What’s the matter?”

Ellery jumped up. “Listen to this, Charley! The Old Woman was dead an hour or so at the time we found her body. Suppose someone had gone into her bedroom during that hour she lay there dead? The door wasn’t locked. And anyone could have typed out that confession right there — on the portable which was standing conveniently by the bed!”

“You think someone, the real killer, forged that confession, Ellery?” gasped Charley. “I hadn’t thought of that!” But then he shook his head.

“I didn’t say I think so. I said it’s possible,” said Ellery irritably. “Possible, possible! That’s all I do in this blasted case — call things ‘possible’! What are you shaking your head for?”

“The Old Woman’s signature, Ellery,” said Charley in a depressed tone. “You compared it yourself with the other signatures — the one at the end of the will, the one on the large envelope. And you pronounced the signature genuine.”

“There’s the rub, I admit,” muttered Ellery. “On the other hand, it was only a quick examination. It might be an extremely clever forgery that only the most minute study will disclose. The traps one’s sense of infallibility sets! Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Mr. Queen, and start punching!”

“We’ve got to go over the signatures again?”

“What else?” Ellery clapped Charley on the shoulder. Then he fell into a study. “Charley. Remember when we visited the Old Woman early in the case to question her about the terms of her will? At that time, I recall, she handed you a slough of memorandums. I saw her sign them myself with the same soft pencil she apparently used always. What happened to those memos?”

“They’re at the house, in that kneehole desk in the downstairs study.”

“Well, those memos bear her authentic signature; that I’ll swear to. Come on.”

“To the house?”

“Yes. But first we’ll stop at Headquarters and pick up the original of the confession, Charley. Maybe one theory in this puzzle will come out right side up!”

22 Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

They found no one about but the servants, as usual. So they made directly for the library, and Ellery shut the door, rubbing his palms together, and said: “To work. Those signed memos, please.”

Charley began rummaging through the drawers of the kneehole desk. “Got the shakes,” he muttered. “If it’s only... Here they are. What do we do now?”

Ellery did not reply at once. He riffled the sheaf of memorandums with an air of satisfaction. “Employ the services of a rather large ally,” he said. “Nice sunny day, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Silence, brother, and reap ‘the harvest of a quiet eye,’ as Wordsworth recommends.”

“Seems to me you’re in an awfully good humor,” grumbled Charley Paxton.

“Forgive me. This is like a breath of forest air to a man who’s been shut up in a dungeon for three weeks. It’s hope, Charley, that’s what it is.”

“Hope of what? More danger for Sheila?”

“Hope of the truth,” cried Ellery. He went to the nearest window. The sun, that “large ally,” made the window brilliant; by contrast, the study was in gloom.

“Perfect.” Ellery took the topmost memorandum of the sheaf and held it flat against the pane with his left hand. The sunshine made the white paper translucent.

“The confession, Charley. Wasn’t Dad curious!”

Ellery placed the confession over the memorandum on the windowpane, shifting it about until its signature lay superimposed upon the signature of the memorandum, visible through it. Then he studied the result. “No.”

The signatures were obviously written by the same hand, but minor variations in the formation and length of certain letters caused a slight blurry effect when the two signatures were compared, one upon the other.

Ellery handed the memorandum to the lawyer. “Another memo, Charley.”

Charley was puzzled. “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

“No,” said Ellery again. “Not this one, either. And the next, Mr. Paxton.”

When he had exhausted the pile of memorandums, he said to Charley in an assured voice: “Would you mind handing me again that memo which instructed you to sell all the Potts Shoe Company stock and buy back at 72?”

“But you’ve examined it!”

“Nevertheless.”

Charley located it in the heap and handed it to him. Ellery once more placed it over the confession against the window.

“Look here, Charley. What do you see?”

“You mean the signatures?”

“Yes.”

Charley looked. And then he said in an astonished voice: “No blurriness!”

“Exactly.” Ellery took the papers down. “In other words, the Cornelia Potts signature on this stock-selling memorandum and the Cornelia Potts signature on the confession match perfectly. There are no slightest variations in the formation and size of characters. Line for line, curve for curve, the two signatures are exact duplicates. Twins, like Bob and Mac. Even the dot over the i is in the identical spot.”

“And the signature on the stock-selling memo is the only memo signature that does match exactly?” asked Charley hoarsely.

“That’s why I went through the entire batch — to make sure. Yes, it’s the only one.”

“I think I see where all this leads...”

“But it’s so clear! No one ever writes his name in precisely the same way twice — that’s a scientific fact. There are invariably minor differences in the same person’s signature, and there would be if you had a million samples to compare. Charley, we’ve established a new fact in the Potts case!”

“One of these two signatures is a forgery.”

“Yes.”

“But which one?”

“Come, Charley. The Old Woman signed this stock-selling memo in our presence. Therefore the memo signature must be genuine. Therefore the signature on the confession is the forgery.”

“Somebody got hold of this memo, typed out that phony confession, and then traced the signature of the memo off on the bottom of the confession?”

“Only way it could have produced an identical signature; yes, Charley. The stock memo’s been in the desk in this study since the day the Old Woman typed out all these instructions—”

“Yes,” mumbled Charley. “After I made the various phone calls necessary that day, I put the memos in this desk, as usual...”

“So anyone in the house could have found them and used this one to trace off its signature. It was probably done just the way I’ve illustrated — by slapping the stock memo against the sunny windowpane, placing the typed confession over the memo, and then tracing the memo signature onto the confession by utilizing the sunlight-created translucence of both sheets.”

“And the house is full of those soft pencils the Old Woman used—”

“And it would have been child’s play to slip into the Old Woman’s bedroom and use her portable typewriter for the typing of the ‘confession’ and that note at the bottom of the will. The whole operation was undoubtedly done between the time the Old Woman died alone in her bed and the time we all came back to the house — you, Sheila, Dad, and I — and found her body with the large sealed envelope in her hand. There was about an hour for the criminal to work in — and a few minutes would have been ample.”

Ellery went to the telephone.

“What are you going to do?”

“Bring joy to my father’s heart.” He dialed Police Headquarters.

“What?” repeated the Inspector feebly.

Ellery said it again.

“You mean,” said the old gentleman after another pause, “you mean... it’s open again?”

“What else can it mean, Dad? The confession signature is now patently a tracing job, so Cornelia Potts never wrote the confession. Therefore she didn’t confess to the murders at all. Therefore we still don’t know who killed the Potts twins. Yes, I’m afraid the case is open again.”

“I might have known,” muttered the Inspector. “All right, Velie and I will be up there right away.”

When Ellery turned from the telephone, there was Sheila, her back against the door. Charley was licking his lips.

“I heard you tell your father,” said Sheila.

“Sheila—!”

“Just a minute, Charley.” Ellery advanced across the study with outstretched hands. Hers were cold, but steady. “I think you know, Sheila, that I’ll—”

“I’m all right, thanks.” She was tightly controlled. She slipped her hands from his, and clenched them. “I’m past being shocked or surprised or sent into hysterics by anything, Ellery.”

“You sensed this all along.”

“Yes. Instinct, I guess.” Sheila even laughed. She turned to Charley Paxton, her face softening. “That’s why I refused to leave the house, darling. Don’t you see now?”

“No, I don’t see,” muttered Charley. “I don’t see anything any more!”

“Poooor Charley.”

Ellery was quite suffused in admiration.

Sheila kissed her troubled swain. “You don’t understand so many things, lambie-pie. I’ve been a coward long enough. Nobody can make me afraid any more.” Her chin tilted. “Somebody’s out for my blood, is he? Well, I won’t run away. I’ll see this through to the bitter end.”

23 The Fruit of the Tree

Now the house of Potts bore palls once more, shadows that shrank in stealth from them, like cats.

It became intolerable. They walked out onto the terrace overlooking the inner court to be rid of it. Here there was some graciousness in the flagged floor, the Moorish columns, the ivies and flowers and the view of grass and tall trees. The sun was friendly. They sat down in warm-bottomed steel chairs to wait for Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie. Sheila sat close to Charley; their hands clasped, and after a moment her head dropped, defeated, to his shoulder.

It was interesting, Ellery thought, how from the terrace one could view all the good and all the evil in this manmade scene. Directly before him, at the end of a path bordered not unpleasantly with geraniums and cockleshells, stood Horatio’s Ozzian house, a distortion of a dream, but with the piquancy of all sugar-coated fantasy. Surrounded as it was by civilized lawn and serene and healthy trees, it could not offend; in certain moods, Ellery agreed as he tried not to look at Sheila and Charley, it might even charm.

The tower of Louella was another thing. It cast its squat shadow over the gracious garden, its false turret crenelated as if against a besieging army, a flag (which Ellery noticed for the first time) whipping sullenly above the mock battlements. He watched the fluttering pennant curiously, unable to make out its design. Then the breeze straightened it for a moment, and he saw it whole. It bore a picture of a woman’s oxford, and across it the words, simply: THE POTTS SHOE.

“It isn’t even the grotesquerie,” Ellery thought to himself impatiently. “It’s the downright bad taste. This flag, the bronze Shoe on the front lawn.”

He turned to glower at it, for its gigantic toe box was visible from where he sat, the rest cut off by the angle of the house. THE PO he read, backwards. In neon tubing!

Ellery wondered how Cornelia Potts had neglected in her will to leave instructions for her tombstone. Perhaps, he thought uncharitably, the Old Woman had foreseen the reluctance of St. Praxed’s to permit erection of a Vermont marble lady’s oxford, tombstone size, within its hoary yard.

Stephen Brent and Major Gotch were raptly playing checkers under a large green table umbrella to one side of the court lawn. They had not even noticed in their absorption the appearance of Sheila, Charley Paxton, and Ellery. Birds sang ancient melodies, and Ellery closed his eyes and dozed.

“Sleeping!”

Ellery awoke with a jerk. His father stood over him, in the scowling mood of frustration. Behind him bulked Sergeant Velie, belligerent. Sheila and Charley were on their feet. On the lawn, where old Steve and the Major had been bent over their checkerboard, stood merely an umbrella table and two iron chairs.

“Are we boring you, Mr. Queen?” asked the Inspector.

Ellery jumped up. “Sorry, Dad. It was so peaceful here—”

“Peaceful!” The Inspector was red of face, and Sergeant Velie perspired freely; it was evident the two men had rushed uptown from Center Street. “I can think of other words. Blasted case busted wide-open again!”

“Now I suppose I got to start lookin’ for the missing rod all over again,” growled Sergeant Velie in his basso profundo. “I was only tellin’ the wife last night how the whole thing seemed like a bad dream—”

“Yes, yes, the gun, Sergeant,” said Ellery absently.

Velie’s anvil jaw swelled. “I searched this house, I dug up practically this whole square block — I tell you, Maestro, if you want to find that gun, go look for it yourself!”

“Stop it, Velie.” Inspector Queen sat down with a groan. “Who’s got that confession and stock memo? Hand ’em over.”

The Inspector superimposed the signatures, as Ellery had done, and held them up to the sun for a squint. “No doubt about it. They’re identical.” He jammed both papers into his pocket. “I’ll keep these. They’re evidence now.”

“Evidence against who?” grumbled Sergeant Velie, making up in scorn what he lacked in grammar.

At this moment Horatio Potts, in character, chose to enter the scene. That is to say, he appeared from the other side of his improbable dwelling, bearing the now familiar ladder. He waddled to a tall sycamore tree between his cottage and the umbrella table, set the ladder against the bole, and began to climb.

“Now what in the name of thunder is he doing?” asked Inspector Queen.

“It’s his kite again,” said Sheila grimly.

“Kite?” Ellery blinked. “Still at it, eh?”

“While you were napping here, he came out of his shack and began to fly one of ’em,” explained Charley. “It got snarled in that big tree, so I suppose he’s going after it.”

The ladder was shaking under Horatio’s weight.

“That Horatio’s going to take a mighty tumble one of these days,” said Charley critically. “If only he’d act his age—”

“Stop!” shouted Ellery Queen. They were thunderstruck. Ellery had cried out in a sort of terror, and now he was streaking across the lawn towards the sycamore with all the power of his long legs. “Stop, Horatio!” he shouted.

Horatio kept climbing.

The Inspector began to run after his son; Sergeant Velie began to run after the Inspector with a mine-not-to-reason-why expression; and so Sheila and Charley ran, too.

“Ellery, what the devil are you yelling ‘Stop!’ for?” cried the Inspector. “He’s only — climbing — a... tree!”

“Mother Goose!” Ellery roared back over his shoulder, not slackening his pace for an instant.

“What?” screamed the Inspector.

“Suppose the ladder’s been tampered with? Horatio’s big — and fat — he’d fall — ‘Humpty Dumpty — had a great — fall...’ ”

The Inspector gurgled and dug his tiny heels into the turf for traction. Ellery continued to shout at Horatio, and Horatio continued to ignore him. By the time the great man had reached the base of the sycamore, Horatio was almost invisible among the branches overhead. Ellery could hear him puffing and wheezing as he struggled to free the half-torn kite that was impaled above him. “Be careful, Mr. Potts!” Ellery yelled up.

“Ellery, are you coocoo?” panted the Inspector, coming up. Velie, Sheila, Charley were a few steps behind him. They were all frightened; but when they saw Horatio in motion in the tree, the ladder intact, and nothing amiss save the excitement on the Queen countenance, their concern changed to bewilderment.

“Mr. Potts, be careful!” Ellery roared again, craning.

“What’s that?” Horatio’s jovial face peeped redly down from between two leafy branches. “Oh, hullo there, nice people,” beamed Horatio. “Darned kite got stuck. I’ll be right down.”

“Watch your step on the way down,” implored Ellery. “Test each rung with one foot before you put your whole weight on it!”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Horatio a little crossly. “As if I’d never climbed a ladder.” And, the kite in one paw, he brought his right foot crashing down on one of the uppermost rungs.

“The fool will break his neck,” said Ellery angrily. “I don’t know why I even bother.”

“What are you babbling about?” demanded his father.

“Hey, he stopped,” said Sergeant Velie. “What’s the matter up there, Horatio?” the Sergeant called up. “Gettin’ cold feet? A great big boy like you!”

Horatio had paused in his descent to reach far over and thrust his fat hand into the foliage of a lower branch. The ladder rocked precariously, and Ellery and Velie in panic grabbed to steady it.

“Bird’s nest,” said Horatio, straightening. “Lots of fun, birds’ nests.” The kite in one hand, a starling’s nest in the other, he continued his descent, pressing against the ladder’s sides with his enormous forearms. “Just noticed it on that branch,” he said, reaching the ground. “Nothing I like better than a good old bird’s nest, gentlemen. Sets me up for the whole day.”

“Beast,” said Sheila; and she turned away from the nest clutched in his paw.

“Now, sir,” said Horatio, beaming at Ellery, “you were saying something about being careful? Careful about what?”

Ellery had taken the ladder down and, with the Inspector and Velie, was examining it rung by rung. As he looked over the last rung, his face grew very red indeed.

“I don’t see anything wrong,” said the Sergeant.

“Well.” Ellery laughed and tossed the ladder aside.

“Mother Goose — Humpty Dumpty,” snarled his father. “This case has got you, son. Better go home and call a doctor.”

“What’s the matter Horatio?” asked Charley.

Sheila turned quickly.

Horatio stood there, a large enigma, one hand plunged into the starling’s nest.

“What is it, Mr. Potts?” demanded Ellery.

“Of all things!” guffawed Horatio, recovering. “Imagine finding this in a starling’s nest.” And he withdrew his great paw. On his palm lay a small, snub-nosed automatic pistol a little patchy with bird slime. It was a Colt .25.

“But that’s the gun Bob Potts was plugged with,” said Sergeant Velie, staring.

“Don’t be a schtunk all your life, Velie!” cried Inspector Queen, grabbing for the automatic. “The murder gun’s in the Bureau files — they all are!”

“Then this,” said Ellery in a low voice, “this is the duplicate Colt .25 — the missing weapon.”

Later, when the lawn was empty, Ellery took his father by the arm and steered him to the umbrella table. “Sit down, Dad. I’ve got to think this out.”

“Think what out?” demanded the old gentleman, nevertheless seating himself. He glanced at the Colt; it was loaded with a single cartridge. “So we’ve found the missing gun. Whoever’s been pulling these jobs hid the Colt in that nest — blast that Velie for not looking in the trees! — and I suppose had the duplicate S. & W. 38/32 hidden up there, too, in preparation for the Maclyn Potts kill. But so what? The way things stand now—”

“Please, Dad.”

The Inspector sat back. Ellery sat back, too, to stare with eyes that at first saw, and later did not see, the automatic in the Inspector’s lap. And after a long time he smiled, and stretched, and said: “Oh, yes. That’s it.”

“Oh, yes, what’s it?” asked his father petulantly.

“Would you do something right away, Dad? Spread the word through the house that the finding of the last gun in that bird’s nest this afternoon has solved the case.”

“Solved the case!” The Inspector rose and the automatic fell to the grass. Mechanically he stooped to retrieve it. “Solved the case?” he repeated faintly.

“Make sure they all understand clearly that I know who murdered Cornelia’s twin sons.”

“You mean... you really do know? On the level, son?” The Inspector licked his lips.

But Ellery shook his head cryptically. “I mean I want everyone to think I do.”

24 Queen Was in the Parlor

The time: evening. The scene: the downstairs study. As Curtain rises, we see the study in artful dim light, creating full-bodied shadows on the walls of books. Most of the furniture lies within the aura of the gloom. Only in right foreground near the French doors is there illumination, and it is evident that this concentration of light has been deliberately effected. It emanates from a standing lamp which throws its rays chiefly upon a straight-backed, uncomfortable chair which stands before a leather-topped occasional table. The boundary of brightness just touches an object lying upon the table — a .25 Colt automatic spotted with bird slime and lying half out of a raped starling’s nest.

Ellery Queen leans against the lintel of one of the open French doors immediately outside the illuminated area, a little behind and to one side of the table. All the doors are open, for it is a warm evening (but we may suspect, knowing the chicanery potential of the Queen mind, that the barometer is not the sole, or even the principal reason). Ellery faces the straight-backed chair beyond the table; he also faces the door from the foyer, off left.

The terrace, which lies behind him, is in darkness. Offstage, from beyond the terrace, we hear the vibrant songs of crickets.

In the shadows of the study, well out of the light’s orbit, sit Sheila Brent and Charles Hunter Paxton, still, expectant, and baffled spectators.

Ellery looks around in a last survey of his set, nods with a self-satisfied air, and then speaks.

ELLERY (sharply): Flint! (Detective Flint pokes his head into the study from the foyer doorway.)

FLINT: Yes, sir, Mr. Queen?

ELLERY: Thurlow Potts, please. (Detective Flint withdraws. Thurlow Potts enters. The foyer door swings shut behind him; he looks back over his shoulder nervously. Then he advances into the scene, pausing uncertainly just outside the circle of lamplight. In this position the chair and the table with the gun and the bird’s nest on it are between him and Ellery. Ellery regards him coldly.)

THURLOW: Well? That detective said — (He stops. Ellery has suddenly left his position at the French window and, without speaking, comes downstage and around the table to turn and pause so that he faces Thurlow, forcing him to follow him with his eyes.)

ELLERY (sternly): Thurlow Potts!

THURLOW: Yes, Mr. Queen? Yes, sir?

ELLERY: You know what’s happened?

THURLOW: You mean my mother?

ELLERY: I mean your mother’s confession!

THURLOW: No. I mean yes. I mean I can’t understand it. Well, that’s not quite true. I don’t know quite how to say it, Mr. Queen—

ELLERY: Stop pirouetting, Mr. Potts! Do you or don’t you?

THURLOW (sullenly): I know that man — your father — told us Mother’s confession was forged. That the case is opened again. It’s very confusing. In the first place, I shot Robert to death in the duel—

ELLERY: Come, come, Mr. Potts, we’ve been all through your Dunasian career and you know perfectly well we substituted a blank cartridge for your lethal one to keep you from doing a very silly thing, and that someone managed to slip into your bedroom the night before the duel and put a live cartridge back into the automatic so that when you fired, Bob would die — as he did, Mr. Potts, as he did.

THURLOW: (touching his forehead): It’s all very confusing.

ELLERY (grimly): Is it, Mr. Potts?

THURLOW: Your tone, sir!

ELLERY: Why do you avoid looking at this table, Mr. Potts?

THURLOW: I beg your pardon?

ELLERY: This table, Mr. Potts — t-a-b-l-e. This handsome little piece just beyond the end of your nose, Mr. Potts. Why haven’t you looked at it?

THURLOW: I don’t know what you mean, and what’s more, Mr. Queen, I won’t stand here and be insulted—

ELLERY (suddenly): Sit down, Mr. Potts.

THURLOW: Uh?

ELLERY (in a soft tone): Sit down. (Thurlow hesitates, then slowly seats himself in the uncomfortable chair beside the table, knees together and pudgy hands in his lap. He blinks in the strong light of the lamp, wriggling. He still has not glanced at the weapon or the bird’s nest.) Mr. Potts!

THURLOW (sullenly): Well? Well?

ELLERY: Look at the gun, please. (Thurlow licks his lips. Slowly he turns to stare at the table. He starts perceptibly.) You recognize it?

THURLOW: No! I mean it looks just like the gun I used in my duel with Robert...

ELLERY: It is just like the gun you used in your duel with Robert, Mr. Potts. But it isn’t the same gun. It’s a duplicate, the duplicate you bought from Cornwall & Ritchey, Remember?

THURLOW (nervously): Yes. Yes, I seem to recall there were two Colt .25’s among the fourteen I purchased—

ELLERY: Indeed. (He steps forward suddenly, and Thurlow makes an instinctive backward movement. Ellery picks up the automatic from its nest, removes the magazine, bending over to let the light catch the cartridge inside. Thurlow follows his movements, fascinated. Suddenly Ellery rams the magazine back into place and tosses the automatic into the nest.) Do you know where we found this missing loaded gun of yours today, Mr. Potts?

THURLOW: In... in the sycamore tree? Yes, I’ve heard about that, Mr. Queen.

ELLERY: Why did you put it there?

THURLOW (gasping): I never did! I haven’t seen this weapon since the day I bought it with the other thirteen!

ELLERY (with a cynical smile): Really, Mr. Potts? (Then sharply.) That’s all! You may go.

(Thurlow blinks, hesitates, rises, openly surprised and upset by this peremptory dismissal. Then, without a backward glance, he hurries from the scene.)

ELLERY: Flint! Louella Potts.

And now it became evident that Mr. Queen’s scene with Thurlow Potts was a deliberate design for the scenes that followed. For when Louella Potts swept in, a violently self-assured Louella, quite altered from that sullen and sour spinster who had been under her mother’s thumb, Ellery’s script adapted itself to the unpredictable dialogue of this second character smoothly and with scarcely an emendation.

Again Ellery put the preliminary questions, again they led to the gun on the table, again he picked it up, fiddled with its magazine, displayed its cartridge, replaced the magazine, tossed the automatic back on the table, and asked the last question. “Why did you hide this loaded gun of Thurlow’s in the starling’s nest, Miss Potts?”

Louella sprang from the straight-backed chair, her saffron features convulsed. “Is it for this childish nonsense I’ve been dragged away from my important experiments? I never saw this weapon before, I didn’t put it in the nest, I know nothing about it, and I’ll ask you, Mr. Queen, to stop interfering with the progress of science!” And Louella strode out, all bones and indignation.

But Mr. Queen only smiled to Sheila and Charley Paxton and summoned Horatio Potts.

Horatio was immense in more ways than one. For purposes of this scene he had become a completely reasonable man. If the truth were known, the sudden sanity of his answers and a certain unexpected acuteness of insight into the trend of Mr. Queen’s questions rather took the spotlight away from that great man and focused it brilliantly upon his victim.

“Very interesting, sir,” said Horatio indulgently at one point. “I never did believe my mother murdered the twins. Too gory, you know. Madame Tussaud stuff. No, indeed. That confession, though. Very clever. Don’t you think so, Mr. Queen?”

Mr. Queen thought so.

“And now you know who did it all,” said Horatio at another point. “At least that’s what I heard.”

Ellery pretended to be angry at the “leak.”

“I wish you’d enlighten me,” continued the fat man, chuckling. “Sounds like good material for a book.”

“You don’t know, of course.”

“I?” Horatio was astonished.

“Come, Mr. Potts. You hid this loaded automatic in the starling’s nest, didn’t you?” And again Ellery went through the business of opening the gun, displaying its cartridge, and closing it again.

“I hid it in the nest?” repeated Horatio. “But why?”

Ellery said nothing.

“As a matter of fact,” continued Horatio reflectively, “the very idea’s silly. If I hid Thurlow’s gun in the tree and wanted it to stay hidden, would I have found it under your nose this afternoon, Mr. Queen? No, no, sir, you’re on the wrong track.”

Ellery could only wave Horatio Potts feebly out and call for Stephen Brent.

With Sheila’s father the script resumed its character. The old man was nervous, and while Ellery was gentle with him Brent’s nervousness was not allayed.

He denied with bewilderment having known anything about the gun in the tree, and left in a trot.

His stuttering had been pronounced.

Sheila began to examine Ellery with an ominous grimness. Charley had to restrain her from jumping up and running after her father.

With Major Gotch Ellery was severe. The old pirate showed his teeth at once. “I’ve taken a lot of berserker nonsense in this house, Mister,” he roared, “but you’ve no call to speak to me this way. I don’t know a cursed thing, and that’s a fact you can’t deny!”

“I thought you were well-known in the Dutch East Indies,” said Ellery, departing from the script.

Gotch snorted. “One of its notorious characters, Mister. Bloomin’ myth. Left my mark, I did.”

“They never heard of you, Major.”

He looked aghast. “Why, the muckin’ liars!”

“Ever use another name, Major?”

The man sat still. Then he said: “No.”

Ellery, lightly: “We can find out, you know.”

“Find and be damned to you!”

“Don’t have to, as it turns out. This is the last roundup, Major. Our friend the killer hasn’t much grace left. Why’d you put the gun in the bird’s nest?”

“You’re barmy,” said the Major, shaking his head; and he left as Ellery opened the automatic for the fifth time and played with the cartridge.

“Well, Mr. Queen?” asked Detective Flint from the foyer doorway. “Where do we go from here?”

“You exit quietly, Flint.”

Flint shut the foyer door with a huffy bang.

Sheila jumped out of the shadows at once. “I don’t see why you had to drag my father into this,” she said tartly. “Treating him like the others—!”

“Smoke screen, Sheila.”

“Yes?” she said suspiciously.

“I had to go through the motions of treating all the suspects equally.”

Sheila did not seem convinced. “But why?”

“I can’t imagine what you’re driving at, Ellery,” said Charley gloomily, “but whatever it is, you haven’t learned a darned thing as far as I can see.”

“Grilling Daddy!” said Sheila.

“It’s all part of a plan, part of a plan,” said Ellery cheerfully. “It hasn’t quite worked out yet—”

“Shhh,” whispered Sheila. “Someone...”

“On the terrace...” Charley whispered.

Ellery waved them back into the gloom imperiously. He himself darted out of range of the light, flattening against a wall. There was no sound but the beating of the grandfather clock. Then they heard a quick cautious step from the terrace darkness. In his shadow, Ellery crouched on the balls of his feet.

Inspector Queen stepped into the study through one of the French doors.

Ellery shook his head, chuckling. “Dad, Dad.”

The Inspector peered about the dimly lit room, trying to locate the source of his son’s voice, moving uncertainly.

“Ellery, you fox!” cried Charley, jumping forward. “Darned if I don’t get the point!”

“But Ellery, if that’s it,” cried Sheila, running forward too, “you mustn’t. It’s dangerous!”

“What is this?” demanded Inspector Queen, blinking at them. “Mustn’t do what, Ellery?”

“Nothing, nothing, Dad.” Ellery came out of his shadow quickly. “Out of the light, Dad. We’re waiting.”

“Waiting for what? All right, I spread the word and stayed out of sight, but I’m not going to wait all night—”

Ellery pulled his father into the shadows.

“I don’t like it,” grumbled the Inspector. “What’s going on here? Why were you so tense when I came in? So quiet?” And then he spied the Colt automatic in the nest on the table.

Ellery nodded.

“So that’s it,” said the Inspector slowly. “That’s why you wanted the kit and caboodle of ’em to think you knew who the killer was. It’s a trap.”

“Of course,” said Sheila breathlessly. “He’s just interviewed everybody, asking a lot of useless questions—”

“Just so he could show them this gun on the table,” said Charley, “right near the terrace!”

“Ellery, you can’t do it,” said the Inspector with finality. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Nonsense,” said the great man.

“Suppose one of them sneaked onto the terrace. You mightn’t hear him. You certainly couldn’t see him.” The Inspector went to the table. “All he’d have to do would be stick his hand in here from the terrace, grab the gun, and fire at you point-blank.”

“It’s loaded, too, Inspector!” said Sheila. “Ellery, your father’s right.”

“Of course it’s loaded,” said Charley frowning. “He went to an awful lot of trouble to show ’em it’s loaded.”

“You wouldn’t have a chance, Ellery,” said the Inspector. “You’ve set a trap, all right — they all think you know who did it and here’s a loaded gun within easy reach — you’ve set a trap, but if you think I’m going to let you use yourself as live bait—”

“I’ve taken a few precautions,” said Ellery lightly. “Come over here, the three of you.”

The Inspector followed Ellery into the heavier shadows, away from the windows. “What precautions?”

Charley and Sheila backed off from the windows, joining them. “You’d better get out of here, Sheila—”

“Just a minute, Charley,” snapped the Inspector. “What precautions, Ellery?”

Ellery grinned. “Velie’s posted outside on the terrace behind one of those Moorish pillars. He’ll nab whoever comes in before—”

“Velie?” The Inspector stared. “I just came in from the terrace and Velie didn’t see or hear me. It’s dark as a coal passer’s glove out there — he couldn’t have known it was me — so why didn’t he nab me before I stepped through the French door?”

Ellery stared back at his father. “Something’s gone wrong,” he muttered. “Velie’s in trouble. Come on!” He took two strides toward the open French door behind the occasional table, the others following. But then he stopped. On the very edge of the circle of lamplight.

A slender thing had darted in from the black terrace, a snake. But it was not a snake; it was a human arm. Even this was the impression of an instant, for it all occurred so quickly that they could only halt, Ellery included, and glare, powerless to move, unable to comprehend its nature or its purpose.

The hand was gloved, a gloved blur. It snatched the .25 automatic from the bird’s nest on the table, brought it to a level in an amazingly fluid extension of its original movement, and for the fragment of a second poised the snub nose of the weapon on a direct line with Ellery’s heart.

In that instant several things happened. Sheila screamed, clutching Charley. Ellery’s hand came up from his side, defensively. With a snarl the Inspector dived head-first at Ellery’s legs.

But one thing happened before any of the other three got fairly started... The gloved finger squeezed the trigger of the Colt and smoke and flame enveloped it. Ellery toppled to the floor.

25 The Light That Succeeded

The arm, the hand, the weapon disappeared. Only the smoke remained, hovering over the table, a little cloud. It began to drift lazily toward the lamp.

Inspector Queen, on the floor, rolled over swiftly and grasped Ellery by his jacket lapels. “Ellery. Son.”

He shook Ellery.

Sheila whispered: “Is he...? Charley!” She hid her face in Paxton’s coat.

“Inspector—” Charley paid no attention. “Ellery,” he said, and tugged.

Ellery groaned, opening his eyes.

“Ellery!” The Inspector’s voice lifted with incredulity. “Are you all right, son?”

“All right?” Ellery struggled to sit up. He shook his head. “What hit me? I remember an arm — a shot—”

“The Inspector dived for your legs,” said Sheila, dropping to her knees beside him. “Don’t move now — lie back! Charley, take a look. Help me get his jacket off—”

“Sit still now, you blinking hero,” growled Charley. “Setting traps!”

“Please,” said the Inspector. They sat back on their haunches. Ellery was still shaking his head. “Where does it hurt, son? I don’t see any blood—”

“Doesn’t hurt anywhere,” said Ellery testily.

“Out of his head,” Sheila whispered. “Do you think... possibly... internal injuries?”

“Let’s get him over to that easy-chair,” said Charley in a low voice.

The Inspector nodded, bent over again. “Now look, son. Don’t you try to do a thing. We’re going to pick you up and carry you over to that chair. It can’t be your back, because you sat up by yourself, so I think it’s safe enough to try—”

“Sheila,” whispered Charley, “call a doctor.”

Ellery looked around suddenly, as if for the first time conscious of what was going on about him. “What is this?” he snarled. “Why are you fussing over me? Get after that murdering maniac!” And he sprang to his feet.

The Inspector shrank from him, open-mouthed. “You’re not wounded?”

“Of course I’m not wounded, Dad.”

“But — that shot, son! Fired at a range of five feet!”

“A child couldn’t have missed you,” cried Sheila.

“He must have hit you, Ellery,” said Charley. “Maybe it was just a flesh wound, a scratch somewhere, but—”

Ellery lit a cigaret with slightly shaking fingers. “Do I have to do a strip-tease to convince you?” He ripped open his shirt front. Something metallic shone in the lamplight.

“A bullet-proof vest!” gasped the Inspector.

“Told you I’d taken precautions, Dad. I didn’t depend merely on Velie. This is that steel-mesh vest the Commissioner of Scotland Yard presented to you last year.” He grinned. “What the well-dressed dilettante of detection will wear.” Ellery clapped his father on the shoulder and helped the old gentleman to his feet.

The Inspector shook off Ellery’s hand, becoming gruff. “Sissy,” he growled. “Letting me knock the wind out of you. You’d never make a cop.”

“And talking about cops,” said Charley, “what happened to Sergeant Velie?”

“Velie!” exclaimed Ellery. “Knocked my brains out, too, Dad. Gangway!”

“Be careful, Ellery! Whoever that was took the gun with him!”

“Oh, that character’s made his exit from the script long ago,” snapped Ellery; and he dived through the nearest French door. “Sheila, turn the lights on out here, will you?” he called back.

Sheila ran for the foyer. A moment later the terrace was flooded with light.

“No sign of whoever it was,” panted Charley Paxton.

“Here’s the gun,” cried the Inspector. “Dropped it on the terrace just outside the study. Velie! Where are you, damn your idiot’s hide?”

“Velie!” shouted Ellery.

Detective Flint stamped out of the house by way of the foyer, his big hand on Sheila’s arm. “I caught this gal in the foyer, Inspector. Monkeying with the light switch.”

“Start looking for the Sergeant, you dumb ox,” snarled the Inspector. “Ellery sent Miss Brent!”

“Yes, sir,” said Flint startled, and at once he began to search among the empty chairs of the terrace, as if he expected Sergeant Velie to materialize in one of them.

“Here he is.” Ellery’s voice was faint. They found him at the far end of the terrace. He was kneeling by the Sergeant’s still, supine figure, slapping the big man’s cheeks without mercy. As they ran up, Velie gurgled deep in his throat and blinked his eyes open.

“Glug,” said Sergeant Velie.

“He’s still dizzy,” Inspector Queen bent over him. “Velie!”

“Huh?” The Sergeant turned glassy eyes on his superior.

“Are you all right, Sergeant?” asked Ellery Queen anxiously. “What happened?”

“Oh,” Velie groaned and sat up, feeling his head.

“What happened, Velie?” roared the Inspector.

“Take it easy, will ya? Here I am hidin’ behind one of these pillars,” rumbled Velie, “and — ouch! The roof comes down on my conk. Say,” he said excitedly, “I’m wounded. I got a lump on the back of my head!”

“Slugged from behind,” said Ellery, rising. “Sees nothing, hears nothing, knows nothing. Come along. Sergeant. It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

There was no clue to Velie’s assailant. Detective Flint had seen nothing. They agreed it was the same person who had attempted to assassinate Ellery.

“It was a good trap while you set it,” laughed Charley as they returned to the library. Then he shook his head.

“Smart,” said Ellery through his teeth. “And quick. Slippery customer. Have to use grappling hooks.” He fell into a fierce study. The Inspector examined his clothes while Sergeant Velie groped in the liquor cabinet for first aid.

“Funny,” mumbled the Inspector.

“What?” Ellery was scarcely paying attention.

“Nothing, son.”

The Inspector then examined the room under full light. The longer he searched, the more perplexed he seemed. And finally he stopped searching and said, “It’s impossible.”

“What’s impossible?” asked Sergeant Velie. He had administered two glasses of first aid and was himself again.

“What are you talking about, Dad?”

“You’re still slug-nutty from that fall you took,” said the Inspector, “or you’d know without my having to tell you. A shot was fired in this room, wasn’t it?”

“The bullet!” cried Ellery. “You can’t find it?”

“Not a sign of it. Not a mark on the walls or the furniture or, as far as I can see, the floor or ceiling. No bullet, no shell, no nothing.”

“It must be here,” said Sheila. “It was fired point-blank into the room.”

“Ricocheted off, most likely,” said Charley. “Maybe took a funny carom and flew out into the garden.”

“Maybe,” grunted the Inspector. “But where are the marks of the ricochet? Bullet doesn’t ricochet off empty space, Charley. It just isn’t here.”

“My vest!” said Ellery. “If it’s anywhere, it’s in my bullet-proof vest. Or at least some mark of it, if it bounced off.” He opened his shirt again and he and his father together examined the steel vest covering his torso. But there was no indication of a bullet’s having struck — no dent in the fabric, no powder burns, no glittering line of abrasion. Moreover, his shirt and jacket were clean and whole.

“But we heard the shot,” cried Inspector Queen. “We saw it fired. What is this, another magic trick? Another gob of Mother Goose nonsense?”

Ellery buttoned his shirt slowly. Sergeant Velie was frowning in a mighty, dutiful effort at concentration, a bottle of Irish whisky in his fist. The Inspector was glaring at the Colt which he had recovered from the terrace floor. And then Ellery chuckled. As he was buttoning the top button of his shirt. He chuckled: “Of course. Oh, of course.”

“What are you patting yourself on the back about?” demanded the Inspector peevishly.

“That confirms everything.”

“What confirms everything?”

Sergeant Velie set the whisky bottle down and began to shuffle toward the Queens, a curious look on his rocky face.

“Dad, I know who killed Robert and Maclyn Potts.”