The King is Dead (19 page)

‘No one, Mr. Queen.'

‘Neither in nor out?'

‘No one.'

‘Was there a phone call?'

‘No.'

‘Did either you or your husband make a call?'

‘No.'

‘No interruptions of any kind, then.'

‘Just one.'

‘When was that?' Ellery's eyes came around quickly.

‘At a few minutes to midnight, Mr. Queen, when you rapped on the door.'

‘Oh, yes.' Ellery was disappointed. ‘And that was the only interruption? You're sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘Ellery,' said his father patiently, ‘we've gone all through that. Abel and I were outside the door —'

Ellery's glance took up the search again. ‘And then what happened, Mrs. Bendigo?'

‘It recalled the whole dreadful thing to me, but only for a moment.' Karla glanced at the hospital table again, quickly shut her eyes. ‘When Kane closed the door and returned to his desk, he immediately resumed work on his papers. I was at the other desk, going over some reports for him. My back was to the door, where the clock is, so I had no idea what time it was … that the time was so close …'

Her voice trailed. They waited.

‘I had to concentrate on what I was doing. I forgot … again. The next thing I knew the clock was chiming —'

‘Chiming?' Ellery's glance went to the golden hands set into the wall above the door. ‘That clock?'

‘Yes. It chimes the hours. I looked up and around. The chimes had just begun. The clock was striking twelve. And I remembered again.'

‘What happened?' And now Ellery gave her his whole attention.

‘I turned from the clock to look at Kane, wondering if the chiming of midnight would recall it to him, too.' Karla opened her eyes; she looked once more across to the man on the table, with the pudgy figure in white working over him. And she went on rapidly: ‘But he was immersed in what he was doing. He had dismissed the whole affair as beneath his notice. Oh, if only he had felt a little fear — just a little! Instead, he sat there behind his desk in his shirt sleeves making notes on the margin of a confidential report. Then — it happened.'

‘What?'

‘He was killed. Wounded.'

‘How?' exclaimed the Inspector.

‘One moment, Dad. The clock was still chiming, Mrs. Bendigo?'

‘Yes. — How? I do not know. One instant he was sitting there writing, the next his body … jerked with great violence and he fell back in his chair. I saw a … I saw a hole, a black hole, in his breast and a red stain spreading …' Her mouth worked uselessly. ‘No, I am all right … if only I can be of help … I do not pretend to understand it … I rushed around my desk to the side of his, with no thought but to take him in my arms … it had happened so suddenly I had no feeling of death — merely that he needed my help … I put out my hand to touch him, and that is all I remember until Inspector Queen revived me. I must have fainted as my hand went out.'

‘Listen to me carefully, Mrs. Bendigo.' Ellery leaned over her chair, his face close to hers. ‘I want you to think before you answer, and I want you to answer with absolute fidelity to
fact
. Are you listening?'

‘Yes?' Her face was tilted anxiously.

‘Did you hear a shot?'

‘No.'

‘You didn't think first,' Ellery said gently. ‘You're ill and upset, a great deal has happened in a few minutes. — Think. Think back to that moment. You are sitting, facing your husband, who is at his desk. One instant he's writing away. The next his body jerks and falls back and a black hole and stain appear on his shirt. Obviously he was shot. Someone fired a gun at him. Wasn't the jerk of his body accompanied by a
sound
? Of
some
sort? Maybe it wasn't a loud report. Maybe it was a sharp crack. Even a pop. Even a metallic click. Wasn't there a click?'

‘I remember no sound at all.'

‘Did you smell anything at that moment, Mrs. Bendigo? Like something burning?'

She shook her head. ‘If something burned at that moment, I did not smell it.'

‘Smoke,' said the Inspector. ‘Did you see any smoke, Mrs. Bendigo?'

‘Nothing.'

‘But that can't be!'

Ellery put his hand on his father's arm. ‘You see, of course, that someone must have been in this room with you and your husband, Mrs. Bendigo.
Must
have been. Couldn't someone have been hiding here without your knowledge?'

‘But that can't be,' said the Inspector again, testily. Ellery touched his arm again.

‘I don't see how,' said Karla vacantly. ‘I had just looked around at the clock, as I have told you. I would have to have seen him had he been somewhere behind me. There is no place in this room to hide, as you can see. Besides, how would someone have got in?' She shook her head. ‘I do not understand it. I can only tell you what happened.'

Ellery straightened. He took his father's left hand and held his own by its side.

Their wristwatches agreed.

Both men automatically glanced up at the clock above the door.

The clock, their watches, synchronized perfectly.

So they turned back to each other in a total embarrassment of the imagination. Ellery had already told his father the fantastic story of Judah's actions in his study.

Karla's testimony only compounded the fantasy.

At precisely the moment Judah had aimed his empty pistol in the direction of his brother King — with two thick walls and a corridor full of men between them — and squeezed his powerless trigger … at that precise moment, in spite of men and walls and locked doors and no ammunition, King Bendigo had slumped back with a bullet in his breast!

Judah was saying, ‘I need a drink. Tell him to take his hands off me. I want a drink.'

Abel said, ‘I'll take care of him, Max.'

Max gave up his hold. Judah moved out of his corner, rubbing his arm with a grimace. Max moved after him.

‘You'll have to wait for your drink.' Ellery came over quickly. ‘You can't leave this room.'

Judah went by him. He paused before the filing cases, licking his lips, squinting, forehead tightened in thought. Then he sprang at one of the cases, and he pulled. The steel drawer gave and, with a little cry of triumph, he groped inside. His hand came out with a bottle of Segonzac. He began to fumble in his pockets.

‘I'd forgotten about that,' said Ellery dryly, ‘but apparently where your hidden treasures are concerned, Judah, you have the memory of a map.'

‘My knife! You took it!' Judah's hands twitched.

‘I'll open it for you.' Ellery produced Judah's pocket-knife. He cut the tax stamp and seal off the top of the bottle, and removed the cork with the corkscrew.

Judah seized the bottle. His Adam's apple rose and fell. A little colour began to stain his sallow cheeks.

‘That's enough now, Judah — enough!' muttered his brother Abel.

Judah lowered the bottle from his lips. His eyes were still glassy, but the glass had a sparkle. He held the bottle out. ‘Anyone for a nip?' he asked gaily.

When no one answered, he moved back to his corner and let himself slide to the floor. He took another drink on the way down and set the bottle of cognac on the floor beside him.

‘There, all tidy,' said Judah. ‘Don't let me keep you gentlemen. Go about your business.'

‘Judah.' Ellery sounded comradely. ‘Who did shoot King?'

‘I did,' said Judah. ‘You saw me do it.' He brought his knees up suddenly to wrap his thin arms about them. Hugging himself.

‘Judah!' Abel sounded ill.

‘I said I'd kill him at midnight, and I did it.' Judah rocked a little.

‘He's not dead,' said the Inspector, looking down.

Judah kept rocking. ‘A detail,' he said obscurely, waving his hand. ‘Principle's the same.' His hand fell on the bottle. He raised the bottle to his mouth again.

They turned away from him. All except Max'l, whose hands were opening and closing within inches of Judah's throat.

Judah paid no attention.

Dr. Storm said, ‘Our great man is going to live. What are bullets to the gods? Here, who wants this?'

He spoke without stopping his work, offering his hand sidewise. Inspector Queen took a wad of bloodstained cotton from the hand. On the cotton lay a bullet.

Ellery joined him quickly as Abel and Karla came timidly over to the desk and stared across at the man on the hospital table. Karla turned away at once.

‘Back, stand back,' said Dr. Storm. He was unrolling some bandages. ‘You're not sterile — none of you is. Neither am I, for that matter. The great Storm — country sawbones! Poor Lister is rotating rapidly in his grave.'

‘He's still unconscious,' said Abel softly.

‘Of course, Abel. I didn't say he could jump off the table and do a handstand. He's had a narrow squeak, this emperor of ours, and he's still a mighty sick emperor. But he'll make it, he'll make it. Constitution of Wotan. In a little while I'll have him moved down to the hospital. Get out of my way, Abel. You, too, Mr. Queen. What are
you
sniffing at?'

‘I want,' said Ellery, ‘to see his wound.'

‘Well, there it is. Haven't you ever seen a bullet wound before, or do you solve your cases in a vacuum?' The stout little doctor worked swiftly.

‘It's a real wound,' said Ellery, ‘isn't it?' He stooped and picked up the shirt. Storm had cut it from the King's body. ‘And no powder marks.'

‘Oh, move back!'

‘Perfect,' said Inspector Queen. They were staring down at the bullet on the stained cotton in his palm. ‘Not a bit deformed. Did you spot a shell anywhere, Ellery?'

‘No,' said Ellery.

‘If this came from an automatic, the shell should be here.'

‘Yes,' said Ellery, ‘but it isn't.'

The Inspector enveloped the bullet in cotton. He went over to the typewriter-desk and opened drawers until he found an unused envelope. He tucked the cotton wad into the envelope and sealed the envelope and put it into his inside breast pocket.

‘Let's get over there,' he said mildly, ‘out of the way.'

They went to an unoccupied corner. Ellery wedged himself into the corner and his father turned his back on the room.

‘But it isn't,' said the Inspector. ‘All right, master-mind, let's look at this thing like a couple of Missouri mule traders instead of two yokels billygoogling at a shell game.'

‘Go ahead,' said Ellery. ‘How does the mule shape up?'

‘It's a mule,' murmured his father, ‘not a damned mirage. Get that into your skull and keep it there. Judah says he shot King. Judah is lying through his alcoholic teeth. I don't know what his point is, or even if he has a point, but the thing's impossible. The bullet Storm extracted from King's chest didn't get there by osmosis or the mumbling of three sacred words. It was
in
King's chest and Storm took it out of King's chest — I saw him do it, and he wasn't pulling a Houdini when he did it, either. He really dug it out. That means the bullet was part of a cartridge that was fired from a gun. Whose gun? Which gun? Fired where?'

Ellery said nothing. The Inspector ran the edge of his forefinger over his moustache, savagely.

‘Not Judah's, my son. Or at least it certainly wasn't the gun in Judah's mitt at the dot of midnight across the hall in that apartment of his. That gun, according to your own story, was empty — you'd unloaded it yourself and you gave me the cartridges. Judah didn't have another cartridge — you searched his quarters a couple of times — and even if he had, you examined his Walther a few seconds before midnight and it was still empty. You didn't take your eyes off it, you say, from that second on. He pulled the trigger and there was a click. The gun didn't go off, it shot nothing. It couldn't. That takes care of Mr. Judah Bendigo. He ought to be in an asylum.'

‘Go on,' said Ellery.

‘So it was another gun that went off. Fired from where? From outside the Confidential Room? Let's see. The walls of this room are reinforced concrete two feet thick. Hole bored through beforehand? Where is it on these bare walls? I haven't spotted it and, while we'll do a thorough check, you know and I know we won't find such a hole. How could it have been bored without the guards, on duty twenty-four hours a day a few yards away, hearing it? The door? Closed and locked, and it's solid steel. No opening of any kind except the keyhole, which is far too small and narrow to fire a bullet through; besides, the interior lock mechanism would stop it. No window. No transom. No peephole. No secret passageways or secret compartments or secret anything, according to King himself. The air-conditioning and heating business running around the walls up there at the ceiling? Some sort of specially designed metal fabric, Colonel Spring said, that ‘breathes'. Look at it — solid mesh. And not a hole visible in it anywhere. Besides, a shot from up there would make an impossible angle.'

‘Your conclusion is —'

‘The only conclusion that makes sense. The shot was fired from inside this room. And who was in this room? King Bendigo and his wife — and you didn't see any powder marks on his shirt, did you?'

Ellery stared at Karla Bendigo over his father's shoulder.

‘But of course,' murmured the Inspector, ‘you've known that all along.'

‘Yes,' said Ellery. ‘But tell me: Where is the gun?'

‘In this room.'

‘Where in this room?'

‘I don't know where. But it's here.'

‘I've been over the room, Dad.'

‘Not the way it ought to be gone over,' said his father tartly. ‘Not the way it's
going
to be gone over … No, it's not
on
her. Where would she hide a gun in that gown she's wearing? Besides, when I carried her over to the chair and went to work on her in that phony faint she pulled, I made sure. I don't like to take liberties with another man's wife, but what can you do? It's here, Ellery. It's got to be. Nobody's left the room. All we have to do is find it. Let's get started.'