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

26 The Identity of the Sparrow

“You really know?” said Inspector Queen. “It’s not guesswork?”

“I really know,” said Ellery with wonder, as if he were surprised himself at the simplicity of it all.

“But how can you?” cried Sheila. “What’s happened so suddenly that tells you?”

“Who cares what’s happened?” said Charley Paxton grimly. “I want to know who it is!”

“Me, too,” said Sergeant Velie, feeling his head. “Put the ringer on him once for all, Maestro, so we can stop shadow-boxin’ and get in there and punch.”

Inspector Queen was regarding his eminent son with suspicion. “Ellery, is this another ‘trap’ of yours?”

Ellery sighed, and sat down in the straight-backed chair to lean forward with his elbows on his knees. “It rather reminds me,” he began, “of Mother Goose—”

“Oh, my gosh,” groaned the Sergeant.

“Who killed Robert and Maclyn? ‘I’, said the Sparrow,” murmured Mr. Queen, unabashed. “Wonderful how those jingles which were originally political and social satires keep cropping up in this case. I don’t know if the Cock Robin thing was one of those, but I do know the identity of the Sparrow. Except, Charley, that I can’t tell you the ‘who’ without first telling you the ‘how.’ You wouldn’t believe me otherwise.”

“Tell it any way you please,” begged Sheila. “But tell it, Ellery!”

Ellery lit a cigaret slowly. “Thurlow bought fourteen guns when he launched his dueling career. Fourteen... Sergeant, how many of those did you manage to round up?”

Velie started. “Who, me? Twelve.”

“Yes. Specifically, the two used in the duel with Bob Potts, the one the Old Woman stole from Thurlow’s hoard in that false closet of his, and the nine you found there afterwards, Sergeant. Twelve in all. Twelve out of the fourteen we knew Thurlow had purchased from the small-arms department of Cornwall & Ritchey. So two were missing.”

Ellery looked about absently for an ashtray. Sheila jumped up and brought him one. He smiled at her, and she ran back to her chair. “Two were missing,” he resumed, “and subsequently we discovered which two. They were exact duplicates in manufacture and type of the two guns Thurlow had produced for his duel with Bob: a .25-caliber Colt Pocket Model automatic, and a Smith & Wesson number known as the S. & W. 38/32 revolver, with a 2-inch barrel.

“That struck me as a curious fact. For what were the first twelve weapons?” Ellery took his inventory from his wallet. “A Colt .25 automatic, Pocket Model; a Smith & Wesson .38 — the .38/32 revolver with 2-inch barrel; a Harrington & Richardson .22, Trapper Model; an Iver Johnson .32 Special, safety hammerless automatic; a Schmeisser .25 automatic, safety Pocket Model; a Stevens .22 Long Rifle, single-shot Target pistol; an I. J. Champion .22 Target single action; a Stoeger Luger, 7.65 millimeter, refinished; a New Model Mauser of 7.63 millimeter caliber with a ten-shot magazine; a High Standard hammerless automatic Short, 22 caliber; a Browning 1912 of 9-millimeter caliber; and an Ortgies of 6.35-millimeter caliber.”

Ellery tucked away his memorandum. “I even remarked at the time that every one of the twelve guns listed was of different manufacture. I might have added what was evident from the list itself: that not only were the twelve utterly different in manufacture, but they were as nearly varied in caliber and type as one could reasonably gather in a gun shop.

“Yet the thirteenth and fourteenth weapons — the two missing ones — were exact duplicates of the first two on the list; not merely similar, but identical.” Ellery stared at them. “In other words, there were two pairs of guns in the fourteen items Thurlow bought at Cornwall & Ritchey’s. Why? Why two Colt .25 automatics of the Pocket Model type, whose overall length is only four and a half inches, as we pointed out at the time? Why two S. & W. 38/32’s, whose overall length is only six and one-quarter inches? Hardly dueling pistols, by the way! — although of course they could serve that purpose. There were much larger and longer pistols in Thurlow’s arsenal for such romantic bravura as a duel at dawn. Why those, and such little fellows, too?”

“Coincidence?” asked Sheila.

“It might have been coincidence,” admitted Ellery. “But the weight of logic was against it, Sheila. Because what happened? In giving Bob his choice of weapons at the dinner table the evening before the duel, Thurlow didn’t offer Bob one of a pair of guns — one of the pair of Colt .25 automatics we know he had at that time, or one of the pair of Smith & Wessons — which would have been the natural thing to do in a duel. No, Thurlow offered Bob his choice of two quite dissimilar weapons. Coincidence? Hardly. I could only say to myself: There must have been some purpose, some motive, some plan behind this.”

“But what?” Inspector Queen frowned.

“Well, Dad, what was the effect of Bob’s choosing one of the two dissimilar guns Thurlow offered him? This: that no matter which weapon Bob chose — whether he chose the Colt automatic or the Smith & Wesson revolver — Thurlow was left not with one gun for himself, but a pair.”

“A pair!” exclaimed Charley. “Of course! Since Bob picked the Smith & Wesson, Thurlow was left with two identical Colts!”

“And it would have been the same if Bob had selected the Colt,” nodded Ellery. “Thurlow couldn’t lose, you see — he had to be left with a pair of identical weapons. The question was: What was the advantage to Thurlow in this? I couldn’t answer it then; but I can now!”

“Wait a minute, son,” said the Inspector irritably. “I don’t see what difference it would have made if Thurlow’d been left with a dozen identical guns.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because Thurlow couldn’t have murdered Bob Potts, that’s why not. From the time you left that Colt .25 in Thurlow’s bedroom with a blank in it till you handed Thurlow that same gun the next morning at the duel, Thurlow couldn’t possibly have touched it. You said so yourself!”

“That’s right, Maestro,” said Sergeant Velie. “He never could of got into his bedroom during the night to take the blank out and put the live bullet in the gun — he was with Miss Brent and Charley Paxton, and later you, all the time.”

“Either here in the study with us,” nodded Charley, “or in Club Bongo, where all four of us went that night after you came downstairs from putting the blank-loaded gun in Thurlow’s room, Ellery.”

“Not only that,” added Inspector Queen, “but you told me yourself, Ellery, that the only ones who positively did not have opportunity to switch bullets in that gun in Thurlow’s room were Charley, Miss Brent, and Thurlow.”

“From the facts, Maestro,” chided the Sergeant. “From the facts.”

Ellery smiled sadly. “How you all belabor the ‘facts’! Although I shouldn’t cast the first stone — I did a bit of belaboring myself. I agree: Thurlow could not have replaced the blank cartridge with the live one in that Colt I left on his highboy.”

“Then what are you talking about?” expostulated his father.

“Just this,” said Ellery crisply. “Thurlow murdered his brother Bob deliberately nevertheless.”

“Huh?” Sergeant Velie reamed his right ear doubtfully.

“Thurlow murdered—” Sheila stopped.

“But Ellery,” protested Charley Paxton, “you just got through admitting—”

“That Thurlow couldn’t have replaced the blank with the live cartridge, Charley? So I did. And I still do. But don’t you people see that by having two identical guns, Thurlow not only prepared a colossal alibi for himself but pulled off a seemingly impossible murder, too? Look!” Ellery jumped up, grinding out his cigaret. “We all assumed that the killer replaced the blank in the Colt with a live bullet; we all assumed that this was the only possible way in which Bob Potts could have been murdered. But suppose that blank had never been replaced?”

They gaped at him.

“Suppose the blank-loaded Colt was not used in the duel at all, but the other Colt was used — the duplicate Colt?”

At that the Inspector groaned and clapped his palms to his gray head in an agony of realization.

“Very fundamental,” said Mr. Queen, lighting a fresh cigaret. “Thurlow didn’t use the Colt .25 we’d put the blank cartridge in. He simply used the other Colt .25, loaded with a live bullet. The attack on me a few minutes ago proved this — proves that Thurlow switched the two Colt .25’s just before his duel with Bob, switched them right under our noses. How does the attempt on my life in this room prove this?

“Well, ever since Bob’s death, the Colt that killed him the one we know had a live bullet in it because it killed him, the Colt that Thurlow aimed at him — has been in your possession, Dad, as the murder weapon, the vital piece of evidence. Today Horatio Potts found the duplicate Colt .25 in the sycamore tree on the estate. A few minutes ago that duplicate Colt was fired at me at point — blank range. Yet there was no mark on me, no bullet hole, no abrasion on my steel vest, no powder burn; and no bullet or bullet hole or sign of ricochet anywhere in this room. Only possible explanation: That duplicate Colt fired at me tonight was loaded with a blank cartridge. But we’d loaded a Colt .25 with a blank cartridge for Thurlow to use in his duel with Robert!

“Conclusion: The weapon fired at me tonight was that first gun, the gun that had been on Thurlow’s highboy the whole night before the duel, the gun I’d run up to fetch for him, the gun I’d handed him at dawn and which he immediately put, you’ll recall, into the right-hand pocket of his tweed jacket... The gun he did not take out of that pocket a few moments later! Yes, Thurlow switched guns on us under our eyes; and how he did it becomes childishly apparent once you recognize the basic fact that he did switch guns. The fact that, having two guns, he had no need to switch bullets was the strongest and wiliest part of Thurlow’s plan. It made it possible for him to create an unassailable alibi. He must have eavesdropped and overheard our plan to replace the live bullet with a blank in the only Colt .25 we knew at the time he possessed. But he knew he had a duplicate Colt. So why not let us go through with our plan to draw the death out of the first Colt, give himself that powerful alibi, and still manage to kill Robert? Moreover, under such circumstances that he’d seem the witless tool of some mysterious other person?

“Thurlow snatched his opportunity. Sheila, he permitted you to get him ‘out of the way.’ Charley, he welcomed your joining him and Sheila here in the study later. And he must have been beside himself with delight when I came down, too, to join the party. Then what did he do? If you’ll recall, it was Thurlow who suggested going to Club Bongo; it was Thurlow who managed things so that we stayed out all night and didn’t get back until it was time for the duel — whereupon it could never be said that he’d had opportunity to switch bullets in that gun in his room at any time after I placed the blank-loaded weapon there. How were we to know that all the previous evening, all that night at Club Bongo, all the early morning coming back to the grounds, Thurlow had the duplicate Colt .25, loaded with a lethal bullet, in his right-hand pocket?

“And now observe how cunning he is. We get back, and he sends me upstairs to his room to fetch the blank-loaded Colt, under the ‘artless’ pretense that I’m his second! For it must not be said afterwards that Thurlow Potts for even two minutes was alone with that gun...

“I fetched the gun, playing the dupe, handed it to Thurlow in sight of numerous witnesses, and he slipped it at once into his coat pocket.

“The dueling silliness began. Thurlow took a Colt .25 from that pocket. How were we to know that it was not the same weapon, loaded with a blank? How were we to know that the Colt he took out of that pocket was a duplicate of the one I had just handed him, a weapon identical in shape and size and appearance, and that the one just handed him was still in his pocket? And remained there?”

Inspector Queen groaned. “Who’d ever think to search the nut? We didn’t even know at the time that there were duplicate Colt .25’s!”

“No, we did not. And Thurlow knew we didn’t. He was running no risks. Later, he simply disposed of the first Colt — hid it in that starling’s nest in the sycamore tree, the blank cartridge still in it.”

“And then, of course,” muttered the Inspector, “he pulled that second challenge — to Mac — as a fake and a cover-up. By that time we were sure to pass his part in the killing off as irresponsible craziness. So he murders Mac in an ordinary way during the night, while we’re expecting a duel in the morning. Clever is right.”

“But why’d he kill the twins?” demanded Sergeant Velie.

Sheila said: “Because he hated them,” and began to cry.

“Stop it, darling,” said Charley, putting his arms about her. “Or I’ll take you out of here.”

“It’s just that it’s the same old story — hate, insanity—” Sheila sobbed.

“Not at all,” said Mr. Queen dryly. She looked up quickly; they were all startled. “There’s no insanity in Thurlow’s murder plan, believe me. It was cold, brutal, logical, criminal ruthlessness.”

“Now how do you figure that?” demanded Paxton.

“Yes, what in time did he gain by killing the twins?” echoed the Inspector.

“What did he gain?” Ellery nodded. “Very pointed question, Dad. Let’s explore it a bit. But first let’s state an interesting fact: This is not a case of one murder; it’s a case of two. ALL RIGHT. Who gained most by the deaths of both Bob and Mac?”

They were silent.

“Thurlow, and only Thurlow,” Ellery answered himself. “Let me show you why I say that.

“What would have happened if Bob and Mac had not been murdered? When the Old Woman died, there’d automatically be an election to determine the new President of the Board of Directors of the Potts Shoe Company. Seven people would have the right to vote in that election, as everyone knew from her will, which we were told was a matter of common knowledge in the household for years.

“With Robert and Maclyn alive, one of them would necessarily have been nominated to take full charge of the huge shoe enterprise. This was brought out at the actual election the day after the Old Woman’s death; you said it yourself, Sheila, rather bitterly.” Sheila nodded in a puzzled way. “Now suppose the twins had not been murdered? Suppose at your mother’s death, Sheila, the twins were still alive? One of them would have been nominated, and he would have been sure of the following votes: his own, his twin’s, Sheila’s, and Mr. Underhill’s. Neither Louella nor Horatio had the desire or capacity to head the business. Thurlow, then, would have been the opposing candidate. Now, who would have voted for Thurlow?

“Well, who did vote for Thurlow — in the election that was held? Louella, Horatio and Thurlow himself. In other words, had the twins remained alive, one of them would have been elected over Thurlow by a vote of four to three”

“That’s it,” said Charley softly.

“By a plurality of one,” exclaimed Velie.

“Thurlow would have lost...” mused the Inspector.

“Yes, Thurlow would have lost by a vote of four to three,” murmured Ellery. “Knowing Thurlow’s sensitivity, what wouldn’t this have meant to him! Deflated, ‘disgraced’ in his own eyes, forced to take a back seat to the two younger men when all his adult life he had been waiting for his mother to die so that he could reign supreme in the family! Yes, defeat in the election would have been the supreme insult of Thurlow’s life. And not only that. He knew that as soon as his mother passed on, Sheila and the twins and their father intended to take back Steve’s real name, Brent. This meant that the Potts business might eventually lose even its name. At best, it would be in the hands of those whom Thurlow had always considered outsiders — not true Pottses.

“Knowing to what lengths Thurlow has gone in the past to avenge fancied insults and ridicule where the name of Potts was concerned, it’s easy to believe that his intensely concentrated ego dictated a plan whereby he would seize control of the business on his mother’s hourly expected death (page Dr. Innis) and avert the ‘catastrophe’ of seeing the Potts name possibly lost to a grieving posterity. And what was the only way he could accomplish this? The only way? By eliminating the two brothers who stood in his path, the two who not alone controlled two vital votes but who, both of them, were logical candidates to head the firm on the Old Woman’s death.

“And so — Bob and Mac died by Thurlow’s hand, and in the election, instead of losing by a vote of four to three, he won by a vote of three to two. Oh, no,” said Mr. Queen, shaking his head, “there was no madness in Thurlow when he hatched this little mess of eggs. Or should I say the crime was sane if the criminal was not... Granted Thurlow’s obsession with the name of Potts, everything he planned and executed afterwards was severely logical.”

“Yes,” said Sheila slowly. “I was stupid not to have seen it. Louella, Horatio — why should they care? All they’ve ever asked was to be let alone. But Thurlow — he’s been a frustrated little shadow of my mother all his life.”

“What do you think, Dad,” asked Ellery, “of my Sparrow?”

“I buy it, son,” the Inspector said simply. “But there’s one little detail you haven’t supplied.”

“What’s that?”

“Proof. Proof that District Attorney Sampson’ll cock an eye at,” continued the Inspector, “and say: ‘Dick, we’ve got a case for the courts.’ ”

And there fell upon them the long silence.

“You’ll have to dig up the proof yourself, Dad,” said Ellery at last, uncoiling his long legs. “All I can do is supply the truth.”

“Yeah. The trouble is,” said Sergeant Velie, dryly, “they ought to fix up a new set o’ laws for you, Maestro. The kind of case you make out — it puts the finger on murderers but it don’t put ’em where they can get a hot foot in the seat.”

Ellery shrugged. “Not my province, Sergeant. Ordinarily at this stage I’d say to hell with it and go home to my orphaned typewriter. But I must admit—” his eye wandered to Sheila Brent — “in this case I’d feel better seeing Thurlow safely behind bars before I retire, like his sister Louella, to my ivory tower.”

“Wait,” said Charley Paxton. He was shaking his head. “I think I can supply one important fact that’ll tie Thurlow up to at least one of the murders — Bob’s. I’m a fool!”

“Two-times killer isn’t any the less dead for being burned for only one,” said the Inspector. “What have you got, Charley?”

“I should have told you long ago, Inspector, only it didn’t mean anything to me till Ellery just explained about the duplicate guns. Some time ago — you’ll be able to check the exact date — Thurlow asked me the name of my tailor.”

“Your tailor!” Ellery’s brows rose. “Never a dull moment. What about it, Charley?”

“I gave it to him, assuming he wanted to order a suit. Next thing I knew, I got a bill from the tailor — I still have it somewhere, and that’s evidence for the D.A. — charging me for repairs made on ‘a tweed suit jacket’”

“Tweed?”

“I never wear tweeds, so I knew there was a mistake. Then I remembered Thurlow’s quizzing me about my tailor. So I asked Thurlow about the tweed jacket my tailor’d billed me for and he said, yes, it must have been his jacket the man meant, because he’d had my tailor make some repairs on it and hadn’t received a bill. So Thurlow asked me to pay for the repairs and said he’d reimburse me. He did, too,” added Charley grimly, “in cash, the cagey devil!”

“Repairs,” exclaimed Ellery softly. “What kind of repairs, Charley, did Thurlow say?”

“No, Thurlow didn’t say,” retorted the lawyer. “But I smelled a little mouse, I can’t tell you why. I asked my tailor when I paid the bill. And he said Mr. Potts had asked him to change the right-hand outside pocket of the tweed jacket into a double pocket—”

“Double pocket!” The Inspector leaped to his feet.

“With a partition lining between.”

“Charley, that’s it,” whispered Sheila.

“Double pocket,” grinned the Sergeant, “double guns, double bye Mr. Potts!”

“If that won’t establish premeditation, I don’t know what will,” said the Inspector, rubbing his hands briskly. “Charley, I thank you.”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Ellery. “I should have seen it myself. Of course he’d have to take the precaution of preventing a mix-up in the two guns during the short time he had them both in the same pocket. But with a double pocket, he could put the live-loaded Colt in one half — say the half at the front of the pocket — and the Colt with the blank in the half at the back. That made it easy to locate the live-loaded Colt with his fingers when the time came to withdraw the gun for the duel.”

“Better get hold of that coat immediately, Inspector,” advised Charley. “Thurlow thinks he’s safe, so he’s done nothing about it. But if he suspects you’re looking for evidence, he’ll burn the coat and you’ll never have a case for Sampson.”

A dark figure flung itself through one of the French doors off the terrace and stumbled into the study.

It was Thurlow Potts.

One glimpse of his contorted features was proof enough that Thurlow had overheard every word of the analysis by which Ellery Queen had relegated him to the Death House, and of the testimony of Charley Paxton’s which was to provide the switch.

For the second time that evening they were paralyzed by the inhuman quickness of Thurlow’s appearance. This was a Sparrow possessed of demons. Before any of them could stir, he had flung himself at Charley Paxton’s throat.

“I’ll kill you for telling them about that pocket,” Thurlow shouted, digging his fingers into Charley’s flesh. The young lawyer, taken completely by surprise, had not even had time or presence to rise from his seat; the force of Thurlow’s assault had sent him hurtling over backward, and his head had struck the floor with a soggy thud. Thurlow’s fingers dug deeper. “I’ll kill you,” he kept screaming. “That pocket. I’ll kill you.”

“He’s unconscious,” Sheila was shrieking. “He hit his head. Thurlow, stop it! Stop, you dirty butcher — stop!”

The Queens, father and son, and Sergeant Velie hit the little man simultaneously from three directions. Velie scooped up Thurlow’s legs, which instantly began kicking. Ellery grabbed one arm and yanked, and the Inspector the other. Even so, they found it difficult to pluck him from Paxton’s throat. It was only by main force that Ellery was able to tear those stubby, suddenly iron fingers away.

Then they had him loose, and Sheila dropped hysterically by Charley’s side to chafe his swollen neck, where the bite of Thurlow’s fingers was deep and clear.

Sergeant Velie got Thurlow’s throat from behind in the crook of his arm, but the little man kept kicking viciously even as his eyes bugged from his head. They were red, wild eyes. “I’ll kill him,” he kept screaming. “I killed the twins, and I’ll kill Paxton, too, and I’ll kill, I’ll kill, kill...”

And suddenly he went soft all over, like a rag doll. His head draped itself over the Sergeant’s arm. His legs stopped kicking.

“On the davenport,” said Inspector Queen curtly. “Miss Brent, is Charley all right?”

“I think so, Inspector! He’s coming to. Charley, Charley darling...”

Velie picked up the little man and carried him to the studio couch. He did not drop Thurlow; he laid him down carefully almost tenderly.

“Cunning as they come,” grunted the Inspector. “Well, son, you heard him say he did it. So you’re right, and we’ve got plenty of witnesses, and Thurlow’s a gone rattlesnake.”

Ellery brushed himself off. “Yes, Dad, premeditated purchase of two pairs of guns, premeditated manufacture of a double pocket, premeditated build-up of a perfect alibi, a clear motive — I think you’ve got a case for the District Attorney.”

“He won’t need it,” said Sergeant Velie. There was something so sharply strange in Velie’s tone that they looked at him in inquiry. He jerked his big jaw in the direction of the man on the couch.

Thurlow Potts lay quiet, with a stare at right angles to sanity. There was nothing in his eyes now, nothing. They were lifeless marbles. The face was putty natted into vertical lines. He was staring up at Sergeant Velie without resentment or hatred, without pain — without recognition.

“Velie, call Bellevue,” said Inspector Queen soberly.

Ave atque vale, Thurlow, thought Ellery Queen as he looked down at that stricken flesh of the Old Woman’s flesh. For you there will be no arrest, no arraignment, no Grand Jury, no trial, no conviction, no electric chair. For you there will be a cell and bars, and green fields to watch with eyes that see crookedly, and jailers in starched white uniforms.

27 The Beginning of the End

It cannot be stated that Ellery Queen was satisfied to the point of exaltation with his role in the Potts murder case.

Heretofore, Ellery’s pursuit of truth in the hunt of human chicanery had been attended by a sort of saddle irritation which magically disappeared when the hunter returned to his hearth. But now, a week after Thurlow Potts had confessed his crime and lapsed into burbling insanity, Ellery’s intellectual seat still smarted.

He wondered at himself, thinking over the horrid fantasy of the past week. That he had succeeded, there could be no question. Thurlow Potts had murdered Robert Potts with his own hand. Thurlow Potts had murdered Maclyn Potts similarly. Logic had triumphed, the miscreant had confessed, the case was closed. Where, then, had he failed?

King James had said to the fly, “Have I three kingdoms and thou must needs fly into my eye?”

What was the nature of the fly?

And suddenly, at breakfast with his father that morning, he saw that there were two flies, as it were, in his eye. One was Thurlow Potts himself. Thurlow was still a conundrum, logic and confession notwithstanding. Mr. Queen was uncomfortably aware that he had never known the true nature of Thurlow, and that he still did not know it. The man had been too rich a mixture of sense and nonsense, a mixture too thoroughly mixed. But the recipe for Thurlow was preponderantly madness, and for some reason this annoyed Mr. Queen no end. The man had been mostly mad, and his crime had been mostly sane; perhaps this was the source of the smart. And yet there could be no doubt whatever that Thurlow had murdered his twin brothers, knowing exactly what he was doing.

Ellery gave it up.

The other fly was equally obvious, and equally pestiferous. It had dimples, and its name was Sheila. At this point, Ellery quickly resumed the attack on his breakfast under his father’s inquiring eye. Sometimes it is wiser, he thought, not to probe too deeply into certain branches of entomology.

By coincidence Sheila and Charley Paxton dropped into the Queen apartment before that uneasy breakfast was concluded; and it must be said that Mr. Queen rose heroically to the occasion, the more so since the young couple had come to announce their approaching marriage.

“The best of everything,” he said bravely, pressing their hands.

“If ever two snooks deserved happiness in this world,” said the Inspector, shaking his head, “it’s you two. When’s it coming off?”

“Tomorrow,” said Sheila. She was radiant.

“Tomorrow!” Mr. Queen blinked.

Charley was plainly embarrassed. “I told Sheila you’d probably be pretty busy catching up on your book,” he mumbled. “But you know how women are.”

“Indeed I do, and I’d never have forgiven you if you’d taken any such silly excuse for not dropping in.”

“There, you see, dear?” said Sheila.

Charley grinned feebly.

“Tomorrow,” smiled Inspector Queen. “That’s as fine a day as any.”

“Then we’re going on a honeymoon,” said Sheila, hugging Charley’s arm, “and when we get back — work, and peace.”

“Work?” said Ellery. “Oh, of course. The business.”

“Yes. Mr. Underhill’s going to manage the production end — he’s far and away the best man for it, and of course the office staff will keep on as before.”

“How about the executive set-up?” asked the Inspector curiously. “With Thurlow out of circulation—”

“Well, we’ve tried to get Sheila’s father to change his mind about taking an active part in the business,” said Charley, “but Steve just won’t. Says he’s too old and wants only to live the rest of his life out playing checkers with that old scalawag Gotch. So that sort of leaves it up to Sheila. Of course, Louella and Horatio are out of the question, and now that Thurlow’s gone, they’ll do as Sheila says.”

“We’ve had a long talk with Louella and Horatio,” said Sheila, “and they’ve agreed to accept incomes and not stand in the way of the reorganization. They’ll live on at the old house on the Drive. But Daddy and Major Gotch are taking an apartment, and of course Charley and I will take our own place, too.” She shivered the least bit. “I can’t wait to get out of the house.”

“Amen,” said Charley in a low voice.

Ellery smiled. “Then from now on I’m going to have to address you as Madam President, Sheila?”

“Looks that way,” retorted Sheila. “Actually, I’ll be President only for the record. With Mr. Underhill handling production and Charley the business end — he insists on it — I won’t have anything to do but clip coupons.”

“What a life,” groaned the Inspector.

“And of course,” said Sheila in an altered tone, gazing at the floor, “of course, Ellery, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for everything you’ve done for us—”

“Spare me,” pleaded Ellery.

“And Sheila and I sort of thought,” said Charley, “that we’d be even more grateful if you sort of finished the job—”

“Beg pardon?”

“What’s the matter with you two?” laughed Sheila. “Charley, can’t you even extend a simple invitation? Ellery, Charley would like you to be best man tomorrow, and — well, I think you know how thrilled I’d be.”

“On one condition.”

Charley looked relieved, “Anything!”

“Don’t be so rash, Charley. I’d like to kiss the bride.” That’ll hold you, brother! thought Mr. Queen uncharitably.

“Sure,” said Charley with a weak grin. “Help yourself.”

Mr. Queen did so, liberally.

Now this was strange, that even in the peace of the church, with Dr. Crittenden smilingly holding his Book open before him, and Sheila standing before him straight and still and tense to the left, her father a little behind and to one side of her, and Charley Paxton standing just as solemnly to the right, Ellery behind him... even here, even now, the flies buzzed about Ellery’s eye.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company...”

Inspector Queen stood behind Ellery. With his father’s quiet breathing in his ear, the son was suddenly seized with an irrelevance, so unpredictable is the human mind in its crises of desperation. He slipped his hand into his coat pocket to feel for the ring of which he was honored custodian, and also to finger absently the three documents that lay there. The Inspector had given them to Ellery that morning.

“Give them back to Charley for his files, or hold them for him,” the Inspector had said. “Lord knows I can’t get rid of ’em fast enough.”

One was the Old Woman’s will. His fingers knew that by the thickness of the wrapper. The Old Woman...

“... to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted of God...”

The Old Woman’s confession. Her notepaper. Only one left, anyhow, so it must be. He found it outside his pocket, in his hand. Now how did that happen? Ellery thought innocently. He glanced down at it.

“... and therefore is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly...”

Forged confession. Never written by the Old Woman. That signature — traced off in the same soft pencil... Ellery found himself turning the closely typed sheet over. It was perfectly clean. Not a pencil mark, not the sign of an erasure.

“... but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly and in the fear of God.”

Something clicked in the Queen brain. Swiftly he took the slip of flimsy from his pocket, the stock memorandum from which he had decided — how long ago it seemed! — the signature of Cornelia Potts had been traced onto the “confession.”

He turned it over. On the back of the memorandum he now noticed, for the first time, the faint but clean pencil impression in reverse of the words “Cornelia Potts.”

He shifted his position so that he might hold the memorandum up to a ruffle of sunlight skirting Charley’s arm. The pencil impression on the reverse of the memorandum lay directly over the signature on the face, with no slightest blurring.

“Into this holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined.”

Ellery turned, groped for his father’s arm.

Inspector Queen looked at him blankly. Then, scanning Ellery’s face, he leaned forward and whispered: “Ellery! Don’t you feel well? What’s the matter?”

Ellery wet his lips.

“If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him speak now—”

“Damn it!” blurted Ellery.

Dr. Crittenden almost dropped the Book.

Ellery’s face was convulsed. He was pale and in a rage, the two documents in his hand rustling like rumors. Later, he said he did not remember having blasphemed. “Stop,” he said a little hoarsely. “Stop the wedding.”

28 The End of the Beginning

Inspector Queen whispered: “El, are you crazy? This is a wedding!”

They’ll never believe me, thought Ellery painfully. Why did I get mixed up in this fandango? “Please forgive me,” he said to Dr. Crittenden, whose expression of amazement had turned to severity. “Believe me, Doctor, I’d never have done this if I hadn’t considered it imperative.”

“I’m sure, Mr. Queen,” replied the pastor coldly, “I can’t understand how anything could be more important than a solemnization of marriage between two worthy young people.”

“What’s happened? What’s the matter, Ellery?” cried Charley. “Dr. Crittenden, please — would you be kind enough to leave us alone for five minutes with Mr. Queen?”

Sheila was looking fixedly at Ellery. “Yes, Doctor, please.”

“B-but Sheila,” began her father. Sheila took old Steve’s arm and took him aside, whispering to him.

Dr. Crittenden looked appalled. Then he left the chapel with agitated steps to retire to his vestry.

“Well?” said Sheila, when the vestry door had closed. Her tone was arctic.

“Please understand. This can’t wait. You two can always be married; but this can’t wait.”

“What can’t wait, Ellery?” demanded Charley.

“The undoing of the untruth.” Ellery cleared his throat; it seemed full of frogs and bulrushes. “The telling of the truth. I don’t see it clearly yet, but something’s wrong—”

His father was stern. “What are you talking about? This isn’t like you, son.”

“I’m not like myself — nothing is as it should be.” Ellery shook his head as he had shaken it that night on the floor of the Potts study after Thurlow had shot at him. “We’ve made a mistake, that’s all. I’ve made a mistake. One thing I do see: the case is still unsolved.’’

Sheila gave voice to a little whimper, so tired, so without hope, that Ellery almost decided to say he had slipped a gear somewhere and that this was all, all a delusion of a brain fallen ill. Almost; not quite.

“You mean Thurlow Potts is not our man?” cried the Inspector. “But that can’t be, Ellery. He admitted it. You heard him admit the killings!”

“No, no, that’s not it,” muttered Ellery. “Thurlow did commit those murders — it was his hand that took the lives of Bob and Mac Potts.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“There’s someone else, Dad. Someone behind Thurlow.”

“Behind Thurlow?” repeated his father stupidly.

“Yes, Dad. Thurlow was merely the hand. Thurlow pulled the triggers. But he pulled them at the dictation, and according to the plan, of a brain, a boss — the real murderer!”

Major Gotch retreated into a corner of the chapel, like a cautious bear, and it was curious that thenceforth he kept his old puff eyes fixed upon the pale blinking eyes of his crony, Stephen Brent.

“Let me analyze this dreary, distressing business aloud,” continued Ellery wearily. “I’ll work it out step by step, Dad, as I see it now. If I’m wrong, call Bellevue. If I’m right—” He avoided looking at the others. Throughout most of what followed, he kept addressing his father, as if they had been alone with only the quiet walls of the chapel to keep them company.

“Remember how I proved the Old Woman’s signature on that typewritten confession we found on her body was a forgery? I placed the stock memorandum against a windowpane; I placed the confession over the stock memorandum; and I worked the confession about on the memo until the signature of the one lay directly over the signature of the other. Like this.” Ellery went to a clear sunny window of the chapel and with the two documents illustrated his thesis.

“Since both signatures were identical in every curve and line,” he went on, “I concluded — and correctly — that one of the signatures had been traced off the other. No one ever writes his name exactly the same way twice.”

“Well?” The Inspector was inching toward the chapel door.

“Now since the stock memo was handed to Charley Paxton in our presence by the Old Woman herself — in fact, we saw her sign it — we had every right to assume that the signature on the memorandum was genuine, and that therefore the signature on the confession had been traced from it and was the forgery.

“But see how blind I was.” Ellery rapped the knuckles of his free hand against the superimposed documents his other hand held plastered against the window. “When a signature is traced off by using light through a windowpane, in what position must the genuine signature be in relation to the one that’s to be traced from it?”

“You’ve got to put the document being forged above the genuine signature, of course,” replied the Inspector. He was looking around, restlessly.

“Or in other words, first you lay down on the window-pane the genuine signature, then you place the document to be forged over it. Or to put it still another way, it’s the genuine document that lies against the glass, and the fake document that lies against the genuine one. Therefore,” said Ellery, stepping back from the window, “if the signature on the confession was the traced one, as we believed, then the confession must have been lying upon the stock memo, and the stock memo must have been lying against the windowpane. Is that clear so far?”

“Sure. But what of it?”

“Just a minute, Dad. Now, all the Old Woman’s signatures were written with a heavy, soft leaded pencil.” The Inspector looked puzzled by this irrelevance.

“Such pencils leave impressions so thick and soft that when they are pressed on and written over, as would have to be done in the tracing of a signature written by one of them, they necessarily act like a sheet of carbon paper. That is, when two sheets are pressed together, one on top of the other, and a soft-pencil signature on the bottom sheet is traced onto the top sheet, the very act of tracing, the very pressure exerted by the tracing agent, will produce a faint pencil impression on the back of the top sheet, because it’s that back surface on the top sheet which is in direct contact with the soft lead of the original signature on the bottom sheet. Is that clear?”

“Go on.”

“I’ve already shown that, in order to have been a forgery, the confession must have been the top sheet of the two. But if the confession was the top sheet, there should be a faint pencil impression of Cornelia Potts’s signature (in reverse, of course, as if seen in a mirror) on the back of the confession sheet.”

“Is there?”

Ellery walked over to his father, who by this time was standing, alert, against the chapel door. “Look Dad.”

The Inspector looked, quickly. The reverse side of the confession was clean, without smudge.

“That’s what I saw a few moments ago, for the first time. There is not the slightest trace of a pencil mark on the back of this confession. Of course, there could have been such an impression and for some reason it might have been erased; but if you examine the surface sheet carefully, you’ll find no signs of erasure, either. On the other hand, look at the back of the stock memorandum! Here” — Ellery held it up — “here is the clear, if light, impression of the signature ‘Cornelia Potts’ on the back of the memo, in reverse. And if you’ll hold it up to the light, Dad, you’ll see — as I saw — that the reverse impression of the signature lies directly behind the signature on the face of the memo, proving that the impression was made at the same time as the forgery.

“What does all this mean?” Ellery tapped the stock memorandum sharply. “It means that the stock memo was the top sheet of the two employed in the forgery. It means that the confession was the bottom sheet, lying flat against the windowpane.

“But if the confession was the bottom sheet, then it was the signature on the confession which was being used as a guide and it was the signature on the stock memo which was traced from it!

“But if the signature on the confession was being used as a guide then that signature was the genuine one, and the one on the stock memo was the forgery. Or, to put it in a capsule,” said Mr. Queen grimly, “the Old Woman’s confession was not a forgery as we believed, but was actually written and signed by her own hand.”

“But El,” spluttered the Inspector, “that would make the Old Woman the killer in this case!”

“One would think so,” said his son. “But strangely enough, while Cornelia Potts actually wrote that confession of guilt, and signed it, she did not murder her two sons, nor could she have been the person behind Thurlow who used Thurlow as a tool in the commission of the murders.”

“How can you know that?” asked the Inspector in despair.

“For one thing, Dad, we now know that there never was a substitution of bullets in that first Colt .25 — we know that there was a substitution of guns. Yet in her confession the Old Woman wrote—” Ellery consulted the confession hastily — “the following: ‘It was I who substituted a lethal bullet for the blank cartridge the police had put into Thurlow’s weapon.’ But no bullet was substituted! In other words, the Old Woman thought the same thing we thought at the time — that a substitution of bullets had been made. So she didn’t even know how the first murder was really committed! How, then, could she have been in any way involved in it?

“And look at this.” Ellery waved the confession again. “‘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,’ and so on. Stop and think, Dad: Cornelia Potts couldn’t have done that, either! Dr. Innis told me, just before he left the Old Woman’s bedside that night — shortly before Mac was shot to death — that he had given the Old Woman a sedative by hypodermic injection which would keep her asleep all night.

“No, the Old Woman didn’t have a thing to do with the murder of the twins, even though she wrote out a confession of guilt and signed it with her own hand. So apparently, knowing she was about to die and had nothing more to lose in this life, she wrote out a false confession to protect whichever whelp of her first litter was guilty. She was a wonderfully shrewd woman, that old lady; I shouldn’t be surprised that she suspected it was Thurlow, her pet. By confessing on her deathbed, she believed the case would be officially closed and, with its close, Thurlow would be safe.”

The Inspector nodded slowly. “That makes sense. But if it wasn’t the Old Woman who was masterminding Thurlow, who was it, son?”

“Obviously, the person who made us believe the signature on the confession was false when it wasn’t. And, by the way, that was a very clever piece of business. It was necessary to make us think the confession was false, for reasons I’ll go into in a moment. In order to accomplish that, what did our criminal require? A signature which would be identical with the signature on the confession. No true signature of Cornelia’s could possibly be identical with the confession signature, so our criminal had to manufacture one. In doing so, he could only use for tracing purposes the confession signature itself. He chose the stock memo he knew we remembered having seen the Old Woman sign, typed off its message exactly on similar paper, destroyed the genuine memo, and then traced the confession signature onto the spurious stock memo. Very clever indeed.”

“But who was it, Ellery?” The Inspector glared about. They were all so quiet one would have thought them in the grip of a paralyzing gas.

“We can get to that only obliquely, Dad. Having established that the real criminal, the brains behind Thurlow, wanted us to believe the Old Woman’s confession a forgery, the inevitable question is: Why?

“The reason must be evident. It could only be because he did not want us to accept the Old Woman as the killer, he did not want the case closed — he wanted someone other than Cornelia Potts to be arrested and convicted for the murder of the twins.

“When I proved the case against Thurlow, I thought the series of crimes had come to an end. Well, I was wrong. One more puppet in the play had to be eliminated — Thurlow himself.” The Inspector looked befogged. “Yes, Dad, Thurlow was a victim, too. Oh, this is as fancy a plot as any that ever came out of Hollywood. It’s not double murder, it’s triple murder. First Bob, then Mac — and now Thurlow. For, as we know now, Thurlow was the instrument of the crime, and his being caught doesn’t solve it. There’s still the person behind him. Then since we see that the criminal wanted someone other than Cornelia to be caught and tried and convicted for the murders, and we’ve actually pinned it on Thurlow — isn’t it clear that Thurlow’s capture, too, was part of the criminal’s plan?”

The Inspector blinked. “You mean — he wanted to get not only the twins, but Thurlow, whom he used to kill ’em, out of the way?”

“Exactly. And here’s why I say that. Ask the question: Who benefits most by the elimination of the twins and Thurlow? Can you answer that?”

“Well,” muttered the Inspector, “the twins were killed for control of the Potts Shoe Company — as a result of their murder. Thurlow became President and got control...”

“But with Thurlow out of the way as well, who has control now?”

“Sheila.”

It was not the Inspector’s voice which answered Ellery.

It was Stephen Brent’s.

Stephen Brent was staring at his daughter with the feeble error of a parent who sees his child, for the first time, as others see her.

29 The End of the End

“Yes, Sheila,” said Ellery Queen, in the saddest voice imaginable.

And now he looked at her, with remorse, and with pity, and with something else that was neither. Sheila was glaring from her father to Ellery in a jerky arc, her lips parted and her breath jerky, too.

Major Gotch made a little whimpering noise in his corner.

Charley was glaring, too — glaring at Ellery, his hands beginning to curl into fists. “Idiot!” he shouted, lunging forward. “The Potts craziness has gone to your head!”

“Charley, cut it out,” said Inspector Queen in a tired voice.

Charley stopped impotently. It was plain that he dared not glance at Sheila; he dared not. And Sheila simply stood there, her head jerking to and fro.

The Inspector asked quietly: “You mean this girl with the dimples is the brains behind this nasty business? She used Thurlow as a tool? She’s the real killer?” He shook his head. “Charley’s right, Ellery. You’ve gone haywire.”

And then Ellery said an odd thing. He said: “Thank you, Dad. For Sheila.” And at this they were still with wonder again.

“Because, from the facts, it couldn’t be Sheila,” Ellery went on in a faraway voice. “All Sheila wants to be is... somebody’s wife.”

“Somebody’s wife?” Charley Paxton’s head started the pendulum now — from Ellery Queen to Sheila, from Sheila to Ellery.

Mr. Queen looked full upon Mr. Paxton. “This was all planned by the man who missed a brilliant career in criminal law — you told me that yourself, Dad, that very first morning in the Courthouse. The man whose every effort has been to get Sheila to marry him. The man who knew that, married to Sheila and with her twin brothers and Thurlow out of the way, he could control the rich Potts enterprises. That’s what was behind your ‘insistence,’ as Sheila said only yesterday, Charley, on ‘running the business’ in the reorganization, while she sat back to be your figurehead — wasn’t it?”

Charley’s skin turned claret.

“Don’t you see?” Ellery avoided Sheila’s eyes. “Charley Paxton planned every move, every countermove. Charley Paxton played on Thurlow’s susceptible mind, on Thurlow’s psychopathic obsession with the honor and name of Potts. Charley Paxton convinced Thurlow that he had to murder the twins to protect himself, the business, and the family name. Charley Paxton planned every step of the crime for Thurlow — showed him how to commit two daring murders with safety, planned the scene before the Courthouse, the purchase of the fourteen guns, the duel — everything, no doubt rehearsing Thurlow patiently. A furiously vacillating brain like Thurlow’s might have conceived murder, but Thurlow scarcely possessed the cunning and the application necessary to have planned and carried it out as these subtle crimes were planned and carried out. Only a sane mind could have planned these crimes. And that was why I was dissatisfied with Thurlow as the criminal even though all the evidence indicated that his hands and his person had performed the physical acts required to pull the crimes off... No, no, Charley, I can assure you you wouldn’t stand a chance. Just stand still and refrain from unnecessary movements.”

The Inspector took a small police pistol from his shoulder holster and released its safety mechanism.

Ellery continued in a murmur: “You’ll recall I conjectured that Thurlow had found out by eavesdropping that we intended to substitute a blank cartridge for the live one in the first Colt automatic. But now perceive. Who suggested the device of substituting a blank? Whose plan was it? Charley Paxton’s.”

Sheila’s eyes grew wider; she began to tremble.

“So now we have a much more reasonable answer to how Thurlow knew about the blank. Charley, his master, told him. Paxton waited for me or someone else to suggest the ruse, and when none of us did, he jumped in himself with the suggestion. He had to, for he’d already told Thurlow that was what was going to happen — he’d see to it.

“All along this fine, smart young lawyer who had missed a brilliant career in criminal law set traps — in particular for me. If I fell into them — excellent. But if I hadn’t seen the significance of the two pairs of Colt and Smith & Wessons, if I hadn’t worked out Thurlow’s motive, if I hadn’t deduced just how Thurlow switched the guns before our eyes on the lawn that morning — if I hadn’t seen through all these things, you may be sure Mr. Charles Hunter Paxton would have managed to suggest the ‘truth’ to me.

“Think. How closely Paxton clung to me! How often he was there to put in a word, a suggestion, to lead me along the path of speculation he had planned for me to take! I, too, have been a pawn of Counsellor Paxton’s from the beginning, thinking exactly what he wanted me to think, eking out enough of the truth, point by point, to pin it on Thurlow and so accomplish the final objective of the Paxton campaign — the elimination of Thurlow.”

“You can’t be serious,” said Charley. “You can’t really believe—”

“And that isn’t all. When he needed proof against Thurlow — when you specifically asked for it, Dad — who told us about the tailor and the double pocket in Thurlow’s tweed jacket?”

“Mr. Paxton.”

“And when Thurlow came tearing into the study from the terrace, whom did he attack — me? The man who had worked out the solution? Oh, no. He jumped for Charley’s throat, mouthing frenzied threats to kill. Isn’t it obvious that Thurlow went mad of rage because he had just heard Charley double-cross him? The man who had planned the crimes and no doubt promised to protect Thurlow — now giving the vital evidence that would convict him! Luckily for Counsellor Paxton, Thurlow’s last link to sanity snapped at that point, or we should have heard him pour out the whole story of Paxton’s complicity. But even this was a small risk for Paxton to take, although from the ideal standpoint it was the weakest part of his plot... that Thurlow would blab. But Paxton must have thought: ‘Who’d believe the ravings of a man already well established as a lunatic in face of the incontrovertible evidence against him?’ ”

“Poor Thurlow,” whispered Sheila. And for the first time since the truth had come from Ellery’s lips she turned and regarded the man she had been about to marry. She regarded him with such loathing that Steve Brent quickly put his hand on her arm.

“Yes, poor Thurlow,” said Ellery grimly. “We broke him before his time — although no matter what had happened, Thurlow would have come to the same end — a barred cell and white-coated attendants... It’s Sheila I was most concerned about. Seeing the truth, I had to stop this wedding.”

And now Sheila turned to look upon Ellery, and he flushed slightly under her gaze.

“Of course, that’s it,” said Charley Paxton, clearing his throat. His hand came up in a spontaneous little gesture. “You see what’s happened, Inspector, don’t you? This son of yours — he’s in love with Sheila himself — he practically admitted as much to me not long ago—”

“Shut up,” said the Inspector.

“He’s trying to frame me so he can have her himself—”

“I said shut up, Paxton.”

“Sheila, you certainly don’t believe these malicious lies?”

Sheila turned her back on him.

“Anything you say—” began the Inspector.

“Oh, don’t lecture me!” snarled Charley Paxton. “I know the law.” And now he actually smiled. “Stringing a lot of pretty words together is one thing, Mr. Queen. Proving them in court’s another.”

“The old story,” growled the Inspector.

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Queen, returning smile for smile. “Quite the new story. There’s your proof, Dad — the forged stock memorandum and the Old Woman’s confession.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I told you he’s talking through his hat,” snapped Paxton. He shrugged and turned to the clear window of the chapel. “Dr. Crittenden will be getting impatient, waiting in the vestry,” he remarked, without turning. “Sheila, you can’t give me up on this man’s unsupported word. He’s bluffing, because as I said—”

“Bluffing, Paxton?” cried Ellery. “Then let me disabuse that clever mind of yours. I’ll clear up a few untouched points first.

“If no one had interfered with this chap’s original plans, Dad, Paxton would have got away with the whole scheme. But someone did interfere, the last man in the world Paxton had dreamed would interfere — his own creature, Thurlow.”

Charley Paxton’s back twitched, and was still.

“Thurlow did things — and then one other did things — which Mr. Paxton in his omniscience hadn’t anticipated and therefore couldn’t prepare counter-measures against. And it was this interference by others that forced our clever gentleman to make his only serious mistake.”

“Keep talking,” said Charley’s voice. But it was a choked voice. “You always were good in the gab department.”

“The first interference wasn’t serious,” Ellery went on, paying no attention to the interruption. “Thurlow, flushed with his success in getting away with the murder of his brother Robert, began to think of himself — dangerous, Mr. Paxton, dangerous, but then your egocentric type of mind is so blind that it overlooks the obvious in its labor toward the subtle.

“Thurlow began to think. And instead of following his master’s instructions in the second murder, he was so tickled with himself that he decided to add a touch or two of his own.

“In reconstructing what happened, we can ascribe these things to Thurlow because they are the kind of fantastic nonsense an addled brain like Thurlow’s would conceive and are precisely not the things a cold and practical brain like Paxton’s would conceive.”

“What are you referring to?” The Inspector’s pistol was pointed at Paxton’s back.

“Thurlow shot Mac Potts in his bed in the middle of the night,” replied Ellery with a curl and a twist to his tone that snapped Paxton’s head up as if he had been touched with a live wire. “Shot him, whipped him with his riding crop, and left a bowl of chicken broth near by. Why? Deliberately to make the murder look like a Mother Goose crime. How sad!” said Mr. Queen mockingly. “How sad for master-minding Mr. Paxton. Upset the orderly creation, you see...”

“I d-don’t understand that,” stuttered Steve Brent. His arm was about Sheila’s shoulders; she was clinging to him.

“Well, sir,” retorted Ellery in a cheerful way, “all your late wife’s first brood have been fed Mother Goose nonsense ever since she was first dubbed the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. Mother Goose squatted on your rooftree, as it were, Mr. Brent, and her shadow was heavy and inescapable. Thurlow must have said to himself, in the ecstasy following his first successful homicide: ‘I’m safe, but a little more safety can’t do any harm. No one even suspects me for the murder of Robert in the duel. If the police and this fellow Queen see these Mother Goose clues — the whipping, the broth — they’ll think of my brother Horatio, the Boy Who Never Grew Up. They’ll certainly never think of me!”

“It was precisely the murky sort of smoke screen a psychopathic personality like Thurlow’s would send up. But it had a far greater significance for Paxton than for us. For it warped Charley’s plot, which had been planned on a straight, if long, line. Charley Paxton didn’t want suspicion directed toward Horatio. Charley Paxton wanted suspicion directed toward, and to land plumb and squarely upon, chubby little Thurlow. How annoyed you must have been, Charley! But I’ll hand it to you: the foolishness being done, you took the wisest course — did nothing, hoping the authorities wouldn’t recognize, or would be thrown off the scent by, the Mother Goose rigmarole. When I spotted it, you could only hope I’d dismiss it and get back on the Thurlow spoor.”

“You said something about proof,” said Paxton in crisp tones.

“Mmm. In good time, Charley. You’re a patient animal, as you’ve proved.

“The next unanticipated interference came from what must have been a shocking source, Charley — the Old Woman. And here’s where we hang you... no, burn you, to use the more accurate vernacular of the State of New York.

“What did the Old Woman do? She wrote out a confession of guilt, which was untrue. Most unreasonable of her, Charley; that was a blow to your plans. So serious a blow that it forced you into activities which you couldn’t control, which controlled you. Oh, you made the most of your material, I’ll give you that. You were ingenious and versatile, you overlooked no bet — but that false confession of Cornelia Potts’s controlled you, Charley, and what it made you do is going to make you pay for your crimes by due process of law.”

“Talk,” sneered Paxton. But then he added: “And what did it make me do, Mr. Queen?”

“It made you say to yourself: ‘If the police believe that meddling Old Woman’s confession, my whole scheme is shot. They won’t pin it on Thurlow, and Thurlow will take the reins of the Potts enterprises, and I’ll never get to control them through Sheila.’ Very straight thinking, Charley; and quite true, too. So you had to do something, or give up all hope of eating the great big enormous pie you’d set your appetite on.”

“Get on with it!” snarled Mr. Paxton.

“You were clever. But cleverness is not wisdom, as Euripides said a couple of thousand years ago: you’d have been better advised to be wiser and less clever, Charley.”

“How long do I have to listen to this drivel?”

“You couldn’t destroy the large sealed envelope containing the Old Woman’s will and smaller envelope with the confession in it, for the absurd reason—”

“That we all saw the envelope in the dead woman’s hand,” snapped the Inspector. “Go on, son!”

“Nor could you destroy the confession itself—”

“Because,” said the Inspector, “the Old Woman had typed at the bottom of the will a paragraph saying that in the smaller sealed envelope was a paper which would tell us who’d murdered the twins.”

“Nor could you destroy the will which contained that paragraph—”

“Because we knew it existed and after I gave it to you to hold till the formal reading,” snapped the Inspector, “you were responsible for it, Paxton!”

“Nor could you substitute another revelation” Ellery’s monotone persisted, “for if you had, the revelation to further your plans could only accuse Thurlow, and no one would believe that the Old Woman, on her deathbed, would accuse her favorite son of murder — she, who had shielded him from the consequences of his aberrations all his life.

“No, indeed,” continued the great man, “you were trapped by the trap of circumstance, Charley. You did the only possible thing: you tried to make us believe the Old Woman’s confession was untrue. The simplest way to do that was to make it appear a forgery. If we could be led to believe it was a forgery then logically we’d conclude the Old Woman had not been the killer at all, we would continue the investigation, and eventually, following the trail you were so carefully laying down, we would arrive at Thurlow.”

And now Charles Hunter Paxton turned from the window and stood black and stormy against it, rocking a little on the balls of his feet and glaring at the revolver in the Inspector’s hand which was aimed steadily at his belly.

“I referred a few moments ago,” said Ellery amiably, “to the only serious mistake you made, Charley my boy — the mistake that gives the D.A. his evidence and will bring your career to a fitting climax.

“What was your mistake? You had to prove the Old Woman’s confession a forgery. To accomplish this, two series of actions on your part were mandatory.

“One: You had to get hold of some document which the authorities knew of their own knowledge had been signed by Cornelia Potts. You remembered the stock memorandum, the signing and discussing of which had taken place before our eyes and ears. That would serve admirably, so you decided to get the original stock memo—”

“Sure!” said the Inspector. “It was in that kneehole desk in the Potts library Paxton always used for business.”

“Yes. You had to get hold of it, Charley, prepare an exact duplicate on the Old Woman’s portable, and then you had to trace onto the duplicate memo the signature at the bottom of the Old Woman’s confession.”

“Just a minute, Ellery.” The Inspector seemed troubled. “Since the original stock memo was in this fellow’s desk in the library, anybody in the house could have got to it. It doesn’t necessarily pin anything on Paxton.”

“How true,” said Paxton.

“Yes, Dad,” said Ellery patiently, “but what was the second thing Professor Moriarty had to do? He had to get hold of the confession in order to trace its signature onto the faked stock memo. And who had access to the Old Woman’s confession? One person. Of all the people in the world, one person only. And that’s how I know Charles Hunter Paxton forged the stock memorandum. That’s why I say there’s evidence to convict him.”

“Only Paxton had possession of Cornelia’s confession?” muttered the Inspector.

“It’s a tight little question of knowledge and opportunity,” smiled his son. “All capable of confirmation. First, the confession in its envelope lay in the larger sealed envelope which also contained the will. When we found that large sealed envelope in Cornelia’s hand, not only didn’t we know that it contained a confession, we couldn’t have known. It was just a large sealed envelope with the words on it: Last Will and Testament, and signed Cornelia Potts.

“Second step: You, Dad, hand that large sealed envelope, contents thought to be only a will, to Mr. Paxton. The envelope is still sealed; it hasn’t been opened or tampered with. You hand it to him in that bedroom, over the still warm corpse of old Cornelia, only a few minutes after we found it in her dead hand. And you ask Mr. Paxton to hold that large sealed envelope containing what we can only think is the dead woman’s will — to hold it until the formal reading after the funeral.”

Mr. Paxton began to breathe quickly, and the Inspector’s weapon waved a little.

“Third: At the formal reading Mr. Paxton produces the large sealed envelope. It is opened, we discover the confession as well as the will... and from that instant you, the officer in charge of the case, Dad, take possession of that confession as important new evidence in the case. It becomes part of an official file.

“Now we know,” said Ellery with a cold smile, “we can prove, that some time before the opening of that envelope at the formal reading of the will, the envelope had been secretly opened by someone, because we have proved that the Cornelia Potts signature on the confession had been used as a guide to forge a signature on the fake stock memorandum, and it couldn’t possibly have been done after it got into your possession, Dad, and the police files. When, then specifically, could that envelope have been opened? Only in the interim between the finding of it in the dead woman’s hand and the opening of it before us all in the library for purposes of the will reading. Who could have done it in that interim? Only the person who had possession of the large sealed envelope.

“Who had possession of the large sealed envelope during that interim? Only one person: Charles Hunter Paxton. Mr. Paxton, who when you originally handed him the envelope at the dead woman’s bedside, Dad, couldn’t contain his curiosity and at the first opportunity steamed it open, found the will, found the note at the bottom of the will, found the smaller sealed envelope purporting to contain a revelation of the murderer’s identity — who naturally steamed that envelope open, read the Old Woman’s confession, realized that he couldn’t destroy it, saw that he could only make it seem a forgery, and thereupon went through all the motions necessary to achieve that end; and when he had forged the stock memo, he resealed the small envelope with the confession in it, resealed the large envelope with the small envelope and will in it, and then produced the sealed large envelope at the formal reading, as if its contents had never been disturbed at all.” Mr. Queen’s voice became a whip. “You’re a fool, Paxton, to think you could get away with any such involved stupidity!”

For a moment Inspector Queen thought the young lawyer would spring at Ellery’s throat. But then Paxton’s shoulders seemed to collapse, and he dropped into a chair to cover his face with his hands. “I’m tired. It’s true. Everything he said is true. I’m glad it’s over. I’m tired of being clever.”

Mr. Queen thought this last remark might very well be added to the distinguished list of native American epitaphs.

30 There Was a Young Woman

“Say, Maestro,” said Sergeant Velie the next day, stretching his legs halfway across the Queen living room, “I always seem to miss the third act. Why didn’t you send me an Annie Oakley?”

“Because I didn’t know myself,” grinned Ellery. The lines of anxiety had disappeared from his lean face and he seemed passably pleased with himself.

“Seems to me,” chuckled the Inspector, “you didn’t know a whole lot of things, my son.”

“True, how true,” mourned Ellery.

“When you really take a look at it, your proof was pretty much a matter of slats, cardboard, and spit.”

“Mmm,” said Mr. Queen. “Well, yes. But remember, I was working it out extempore. I’d no chance to prepare my attack; I couldn’t let that wedding proceed; I had to do what I could on the spot, working my way from point to point.”

“What a man,” said Sergeant Velie. “He works his way from point to point. Sort of like a mountain goat, huh?”

“But I had certain advantages, too. Charley was caught off guard in the middle of his wedding — at a time when he thought he’d pulled the whole thing off and had got away with it.”

“And now he’s chewing his fingernails off in the hoosegow,” said the Sergeant. “Such a life.”

“Circumstantial evidence,” persisted the Inspector.

“But very strong circumstantial evidence, Dad. That last point — about the possession of the sealed envelope — powerful. It was my silver bullet. And it caught Charley Paxton dead center. Yes, he cracked and confessed. But I knew he would. No man can stand up under a confident attack at a time when he’s unprepared, after a long period of strain. Charley’s the intellectual type of killer, the type that will always crack under blows an ordinary desperado wouldn’t even feel.”

“Yes, sir,” nodded Sergeant Velie, “here yesterday, in the hoosegow today. It makes you think.”

“It makes me think I’ve never been so happy to see the end of a case,” yawned the Inspector. “What a case!”

“You haven’t quite seen the end of it,” suggested his son respectfully.

“Huh?” The Inspector bounced to his feet. “Don’t tell me you just realized you’ve made another mistake!”

“In a way, yes,” mused Ellery. But his eyes were twinkling. “Sheila Brent phoned me. She’s on her way over.”

“What for?” Inspector Queen stuck his little jaw out. But then he shook his head. “Still got a hangover, I guess. Poor girl’s taken a bad beating. What’s she want, Ellery?”

“I don’t know. But I know what I want.”

“What?”

“To help her. I don’t know just why—”

“Aha,” said his father. “Velie, let’s get out of here.”

“And why not?” The Sergeant rose, stretching. “I’ll tell you what you can do for Miss Brent Maestro. You can help her spend some of those millions of bucks.” And the Sergeant left, grumbling that the policeman’s lot is not a lucrative one.

“I don’t think, Velie,” Mr. Queen called after him, “that that’s quite what the doctor ordered for Miss Brent.”

And he sat musing on various therapeutic matters until his doorbell rang.

“It’s good to see you minus a hunted look,” said Ellery. “I’d begun to be afraid it was permanent.”

But Sheila was not looking too well. She was pale and her dimples spiritless this morning. “Thanks. Could you give a woman a drink of something wet and cold?”

“For a dry and thirsty day — certainly.” And Ellery promptly set about mixing something wet and cold. He was nervous, and Sheila remarked it.

“I hope I’m not getting in your hair,” she sighed. “I seem to have been hanging onto you — in a way — since... Oh. Thanks, Mr. Queen.”

“Ellery.”

He watched her sip the frosty drink and thought how pleasant it might be to repeat the service ad infinitum.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what I had to do yesterday, Sheila—”

“Sorry!” She set down the drink. “And here I’ve been so grateful—”

“You weren’t too shocked?” he asked anxiously. “You see, I had no time to warn you—”

“I understand.”

“Naturally I couldn’t let you go through with it.”

“Naturally.” She even smiled. “If that isn’t just like a man. Save a woman from—” she shuddered — “from the most horrible kind of mistake... and apologize for it!”

“Well, but I thought—”

“Well, but you’re a love,” said Sheila queerly. “And I can never thank you enough. That’s why I asked if I might drop in. I had to tell you in person.”

“Don’t say another word about it,” said Ellery in a nettled tone. “I don’t know why you should thank me. I must be associated in your mind almost entirely with nastinesses, and clues, and policemen, and brutal revelations—”

“Oh, don’t be an idiot!” cried Sheila. And then she said, blushing: “I’m sorry, Mr. Queen.”

“Ellery.” Ellery felt vastly pleased. “Sheila, why don’t you start a new life?”

She stared. “If you aren’t the suddenest man!”

“Well, I mean — you ought to leave that nest of blubbering imbeciles on Riverside Drive, put yourself into a new and cheerful environment, get a real interest in life—”

“Of course you’re right.” Sheila frowned. “And I’m certainly going to get out into the world and try to forget everything I ever... I’ve found that having money doesn’t solve anything important. I’ve always wanted to do something useful, but Mother wouldn’t let me. If I could only find work of some sort — work I’d enjoy doing...”

“Ah,” said Mr. Queen. “That brings up an important question, Miss Brent.” He fingered his ear. “Would you — uh — consider that I come under the heading of enjoyable occupations?”

“You?” Sheila looked blank.

“How would you like to come to work for me?” Ellery added hastily: “On a salary, of course. That’s understood. I’m not trying to take advantage of your millions.”

“Work for you?” Sheila propped one elbow on her knee and put her fist under her chin and stared at him thoughtfully. “Tell me more, Mr. Queen.”

“You’re not offended? Wonderful woman!” Ellery beamed. “Sheila, forget the past. Break every tie you’ve ever had. Except with your father, of course. But even in that case I think you should live alone. Change everything. Surroundings, way of living, clothes, habits. Pretend you’ve been born all over again.”

Sheila’s eyes had begun to sparkle. But then they clouded over. “Listens good, Ellery, but it’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible.”

But Sheila shook her head. “You forget I’m a marked woman. I’m Sheila Potts, or Sheila Brent — it doesn’t matter; they know both names.” They as she uttered the word sounded ugly. “I’d only mess your life up with a lot of notoriety, and I’d never be allowed to forget who I was... who my mother was... my half brother Thurlow... o the man I almost married...”

“Nonsense.”

She looked curious. “But it’s true.”

“It’s true only if you let it be true. There’s a perfectly simple way of making it not true.”

“How?” she cried. “Anything — tell me how! You don’t know how I’ve wanted to lose myself in crowds and crowds of ordinary, decent, sane people... How Ellery?”

“Change your name,” said Ellery calmly. “And with it your life. If Mr. Queen, the scrivener of detective stories, suddenly hires a secretary named Susie McGargle, a nice young woman from, say, Kansas City—”

“Secretary,” whispered Sheila. “Oh, yes! But...” Her voice became lifeless again. “It’s out of the question. You’re a dear to make the offer, but I’m not equipped, I don’t know how to type, I can’t take shorthand—”

“You can learn. That’s what secretarial schools are for.”

“Yes... I suppose...”

“And I think you’ll find me an understanding employer.”

“But I’d be a liability for such a long time!”

“Six weeks,” said Ellery reflectively. “Two months at the outside — to become as efficient a stenographer as ever drew a pothook or made a typewriter sing for its supper. I give you two months, no more.”

“Do you think I... really could?”

“Shucks.”

Almost rapturously, Sheila said: “If I could... a new life... It would be fun with you! If you really meant it—”

“I really mean it,” said Mr. Queen simply.

“Then I’ll do it!” She jumped from the sofa. “By golly, I’ll do it!” In her excitement she began to race up and down, flying from place to place. “Is this where you work? Is it hard? Doesn’t anyone ever clean this desk? That’s a terrible photo of you. Light’s bad in here. Where’s your typewriter? Maybe I could start today. I mean, the school... Oh, gosh, a new life, a new name, working with Ellery Queen... A new name,” she said damply. “But I don’t like Susie McGargle.”

“That,” said Ellery, watching her skim about with a delight that surprised him, “that was a low inspiration of the moment, chosen merely for illustration.”

“How you talk!” Sheila laughed and for the first time in a long time Mr. Queen thought how delicious can be a woman’s laughter. “Well, then, what’s my name going to be? It’s your idea — you baptize me.”

Ellery closed his eyes. “Name... Pretty problem. Pretty problem for a pretty subject. Red hair, dimples...” He sat up, beaming. “D’ye know, here’s a remarkable coincidence!”

“What, Ellery?”

“The heroine of my new book has red hair and dimples!”

“Really? What’s her name? Whatever it is — even if it’s Grimalkin — or Pollywog — I’ll take it for my own!”

“You will?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” said Ellery, grinning. “It’s a darned sweet name, if I do say so as shouldn’t.”

“What is it?”

Mr. Queen told her.

“Nicky?” Sheila looked doubtful.

“Spelled N-i-k-k-i.”

“Nikki! Oh, wonderful, wonderful. That’s a beautiful name. Nikki... Mr. Queen, I buy it!”

“As for a last name,” murmured that gentleman, “I can’t give you my heroine’s... it’s Dempsey... perfectly good name, but inappropriate for you, somehow. Let me see. What would go well with ‘Nikki’ and you?”

“Nikki... Nikki Jones? Nikki Brown? Nikki Green—”

“Heavens no. No poetry. Nikki Keats? Nikki Lowell? Nikki Fowler?... Fowler. E-r ending. Er. Yes, that would be good. An er ending in a two-syllable name. Parker. Farmer. Porter... Porter! Nikki Porter!” Ellery sprang to his feet. “That’s it,” he cried. “Nikki Porter.”

“Yes,” said Nikki Porter, all soft and tender and merry and grateful at once. “Yes, Mr. Queen.”

“Ellery to you, Miss Porter,” beamed Mr. Queen.

“Nikki to you... Ellery.”