Egyptian Cross Mystery (27 page)

“Naturally,” said Isham, “you didn’t want Mr. Brad to know you had returned. We understand.”

“Yes,” she whispered; her face was dyed a dull unhealthy red. “I met—him at the dock.”

“What time was it?”

“A trifle before ten-thirty.”

“You’re sure you saw and heard nothing? You didn’t meet anyone?”

“Yes.” She looked up with agony in her eyes. “Oh, don’t you think I’d have told—everything—if I
had
seen something or someone? And when—when I came back, I slipped into the house and right to my room.”

Isham was about to ask another question, when the door opened quietly and Helene Brad appeared. She stood still, looking from her mother’s torn face to the faces of the men. “What is it, Mother?” she said, her eyes steady.

Mrs. Brad buried her head in her hands and began to weep.

“So it’s come out,” whispered Helene. She closed the door, slowly. “You were too weak to keep it back.” She glanced with contempt from Vaughn to Isham and went to the sobbing woman. “Stop crying, Mother. If it’s known, it’s known; other women have tried to recapture romance and failed. God knows …”

“Let’s get through,” said Vaughn. “It’s as rotten for us as for you people. How did you and Lincoln know where your mother was that night, Miss Brad?”

Helene sat down by her mother’s side and patted the broad twitching back. “There, Mother … When Mother left me that night—well, I knew. But she didn’t know I knew. I was weak myself.” She stared at the floor. “I decided to wait for Jonah; we had both noticed—well, certain things before. When he came, I told him, and we returned home. I looked into this room; Mother was in bed, asleep. … The next morning, though, when you found the—the body …”

“She confessed to you?”

“Yes.”

“If I may ask two questions,” said Ellery soberly. The girl’s large eyes, so like her mother’s, turned on him. “When did you first suspect what was going on, Miss Brad?”

“Oh!” She shook her head, as if she were in pain. “Weeks, weeks ago.”

“Do you think your stepfather knew?” Mrs. Brad raised her head suddenly; her face was mottled with tears and rouge. “No!” she cried. “No!”

Helene whispered: “I’m sure he didn’t.”

District Attorney Isham said: “I think that’s enough,” curtly, and went to the door. “Come along.” He stepped into the hall.

Meekly Inspector Vaughn, Professor Yardley, and Ellery followed.

“A
PLETHORA OF NOTHING
,” remarked Ellery the next night, as he and Professor Yardley sat on Yardley’s lawn watching the star-pricked sky above Long Island.

“Hmm,” said the Professor. Sparks of burning tobacco fell from his pipe as he sighed. “To tell the truth, I’ve been waiting for the fireworks to begin, Queen.”

“Patience. In a way, since this is the night of our celebrated Independence Day, you might expect the scene to crackle with fireworks. … There! There’s a star-shell now!”

They were silent as they watched a long finger of brilliant light zoom into the dark sky and burst in a flash of dropping velvet colors. The single shell seemed to be a signal; instantly the entire coast of Long Island erupted, and for a space they sat and observed the celebration of the North Shore. Faintly, in the sky above the distant New York shore across the Sound, they made out answering flares, like tiny fireflies.

The Professor grunted. “I’ve heard so damned much about your pyrotechnical ability as a detective that the reality—sorry if I’m sacrilegious—lets me down. When do you commence, Queen? I mean—when does Sherlock leap to his feet and clamp the irons about the wrists of the dastardly murderer?”

Ellery stared glumly at the crazy light-patterns darting and swirling before the Big Dipper. “I’m beginning to think there won’t be a commencement—or a denouement. …”

“Doesn’t look like it.” Yardley took the pipe out of his mouth. “Don’t you think it was ill-advised to withdraw the troopers? Temple told me about it this morning; he said that the Colonel of the county forces had issued the withdrawal order. Can’t see why, myself.”

Ellery shrugged. “Why not? Obviously Krosac is after only two people—Stephen Megara and Andrew Van, or the Tvars, whichever you choose to call them. Megara has sufficient protection from his watery isolation and Vaughn’s squad, and Van is well enough guarded by his disguise.

“There are a great many elements in this second crime, Professor, which would bear discussion; in their way they’re extraordinarily enlightening. But they don’t seem to go anywhere.”

“I can’t think of any.”

“Really?” Ellery stopped to watch a hissing Roman candle. “Do you mean to say you didn’t read the full—and extremely interesting—story of the checkers?”

“Checkers, eh?” Yardley’s short beard showed dimly before the glow of his pipe bowl. “I confess nothing about Brad’s last supper, so to speak, struck me as significant.”

“Then I regain some of my lost self-esteem,” murmured Ellery. “The story was very clear. But, hang it all, while it’s more conclusive than the mere guesses Vaughn and Isham have been making …” He rose and plunged his hands into his pockets. “I wonder if you’d excuse me? I’ve got to walk off this fog in my brain.”

“Of course.” The Professor leaned back and sucked at his pipe, staring after Ellery with a curious intentness.

Ellery maundered on under the stars and the fireworks. Except for spasmodic flares, it was heavily dark; the dark of the countryside. He crossed the road between Yardley’s place and Bradwood, groping blindly, sniffing the night air, listening to the faint sounds of festive boats on the water, worrying the bones of his brain like a frustrated terrier.

Bradwood, except for a night light on the front porch—Ellery could make out, as he blundered up the driveway, two detectives smoking there—was bleak and comfortless. The trees loomed vaguely to his right, and more distantly to his left. As he passed the house one of the detectives rose and cried: “Who’s there?”

Ellery put up one hand to shut off the blinding beam of a powerful flashlight.

“Oh,” said the detective. “Excuse me, Mr. Queen.” The beam snapped off.

“Such alertness,” muttered Ellery, and walked on around the house.

He wondered now why his feet should have turned in this direction. He was approaching the little path which led to the grim totem post and the summerhouse. The effluvium of fear which emanated from the path and its goal—or perhaps it was his subconscious sensitivity to scenes of horror—gripped him, and he hastened by. The main path was black before him.

Suddenly he stopped. Not far to the right, where the tennis court lay, people were talking.

Now Ellery Queen was a gentleman, as gentlemen go, but one thing he had learned from the good Inspector, his father, who was a gentle soul in everything except his cynical familiarity with crime. And that was: “Always listen to conversations.” The old man would say: “The only evidence that’s worth a red cent, son, is the conversation of people who think they’re not being overheard. You listen at times like that and you’ll find out more than you could in a hundred quizzes at the line-up.”

So Ellery, a dutiful son, remained where he was and listened.

The voices were a man’s and a woman’s. The tones of both were familiar to his ears, but he could not hear the words. Having stooped so low, there was nothing to keep him from stooping even lower. With the stealth of an Indian he leaped from the noisy gravel onto the grass bordering the path, and began a cautious advance toward the source of the voices.

A consciousness of their owners’ identities filtered through his brain. They were Jonah Lincoln and Helene Brad.

They were seated, it seemed, at a garden table to the west side of the tennis court; Ellery dimly recalled the lay of the land. He crept up to within five feet of them and became rigid behind a tree.

“It won’t do you any good to deny it, Jonah Lincoln,” he heard Helene say in freezing tones.

“But, Helene,” said Jonah, “I’ve told you a dozen times that Romaine—”

“Bosh! He wouldn’t be so indiscreet. Only—only you, with your peculiar ideas, your—your beastly cowardice …”

“Helene!” Jonah was mortally wounded. “How can you say that? It’s true that, like Sir Galahad, I tried to lambaste him a couple, and that he knocked me cold, but I—”

“Well,” she said, “perhaps that was unjust, Jonah.” There was a silence; Ellery knew that she was struggling to keep back the tears. “I can’t say you didn’t try, of course. But you’re always—oh, interfering.”

Ellery visualized the scene as well as if he could see. The young man, he was sure, had stiffened. “Is that so?” said Jonah bitterly. “Very well, that’s all I wanted to know. Interfering, hey? Just an outsider. No right. Very well, Helene. I shan’t interfere any more. I’m going—”

“Jonah!” There was panic in her voice now. “What do you mean? I didn’t—”

“I mean what I said,” growled Jonah. “For years I’ve been just a good fellow, slaving like a dog for one man who spends all his time at sea and another who stayed home playing checkers. Well, that’s out! The damned salary isn’t worth it. I’m going to leave with Hester, by God, and I’ve told your precious Megara so! Told him this afternoon on the yacht. Let him run his own business for a change; I’m sick and tired of doing it for him.”

There was a taut little interval during which neither antagonist said a word. Ellery, behind the security of his tree, sighed. He could imagine what was coming.

He heard the soft escape of Helene’s breath, and sensed Jonah’s defensive rigidity. “After all, Joe,” she whispered, “it isn’t as if—as if you didn’t owe Father’s memory something. He—he did a lot for you, now, didn’t he?” No remark from Mr. Lincoln. “And as for Stephen … oh, you haven’t said it this time, but I’ve told you so often before that there’s nothing between us. Why should you be so—so poisonous about him?”

“I’m not being poisonous,” said Jonah with dignity.

“You are! Oh, Jonah …” Another silence, during which Ellery visualized the young lady either moving her chair closer or leaning, like Calypso, toward her victim. “I’ll tell you something I’ve never told you before!”

“Eh?” Jonah was startled. Then he said hastily: “You needn’t, Helene. I’m not at all interested—if it’s about Megara, I mean.”

“Don’t be silly, Joe. Why do you think Stephen stayed away a whole year on this last trip of his?”

“I’m sure
I
don’t know. Probably found a hula-hula girl in Hawaii whose style he liked.”

“Jonah! That’s unkind. Stephen isn’t that sort, and you know it. … I’ll tell you. It’s because he asked me to
marry
him. There! That’s why.” She paused triumphantly.

“Oh, yes? Well,” growled Jonah, “that’s one heck of a way to treat your intended bride. Go away for a year! I wish both of you lots of luck.”

“But I—I refused him!”

Ellery sighed again and crept back toward the path. The night was still bleak, as far as he was concerned. As for Mr. Lincoln and Miss Brad … Silence. Ellery rather fancied he knew what was happening.

“A
LL THE SIGNS,” SAID
Ellery to Professor Yardley two days later, on Wednesday, “tell me that justice is wagging her tail and scuttling for home.”

“Which means?”

“There are certain universal indications among balked policemen. I’ve lived with one, you know, all my life. … Inspector Vaughn is, in the modest word of the press, baffled. He can’t put his finger on anything concrete. So he becomes the aggressive defender of law, chases people, whips his men into a frenzy of useless activity, barks at his friends, ignores his colleagues, and generally acts like little Rollo in a pet.”

The Professor chuckled. “If I were you, I’d forget this case entirely. Relax and read the
Iliad.
Or something as nicely literary and heroic. You’re paddling the same canoe as Vaughn. Except that you’re more graceful about the fact that it’s sinking.”

Ellery grunted and flipped his cigarette butt into the grass.

He was chagrined; more than that, he was worried. That the case offered no logical solution to his mind did not disturb him half so much as that it seemed to have expired of inertia. Where was Krosac? For what was he waiting?

Mrs. Brad wept over her sins in the privacy of her boudoir. Jonah Lincoln, despite his threats, had returned to the offices of Brad & Megara and was continuing to distribute rugs to a rug-conscious America. Helene Brad floated about in a glow, barely touching the earth. Hester Lincoln, after a stormy session with Dr. Temple, had departed bag and baggage for New York. Dr. Temple thereafter prowled about Bradwood, pipe in mouth, his black face blacker than ever. From Oyster Island there was silence; occasionally old man Ketcham appeared, but he tended his own business as he rowed his dinghy back and forth with supplies and mail. Fox quietly continued to massage the lawns and drive the Brad cars.

Andrew Van skulked in the West Virginia hills. Stephen Megara kept to his yacht; the crew, with the exception of Captain Swift, had been paid off and sent away with Inspector Vaughn’s permission. Megara’s personal bodyguard of two detectives, who had lolled on the
Helene’s
deck—drinking, smoking, playing casino—Megara insisted on dismissing; he was perfectly capable, he said curtly, of taking care of himself. The water police, however, continued to patrol the Sound.

A cable from Scotland Yard had barely ruffled the monotony. It ran:

FURTHER INVESTIGATION PERCY AND ELIZABETH LYNN IN ENGLAND UNSUCCESSFUL SUGGEST CHECK WITH CONTINENTAL POLICE

So Inspector Vaughn acted, as Ellery said, like little Rollo in a pet, and District Attorney Isham shrewdly eased himself out of the case by the simple expedient of remaining in his office, and Ellery cooled himself in Professor Yardley’s pool, read Professor Yardley’s excellent books, and thanked his multifarious gods for a vacation—both of the body and the mind. At the same time, he kept one worried eye cocked on the big house across the road.

On Thursday morning Ellery strolled over to Bradwood and found Inspector Vaughn sitting on the porch, a handkerchief between his sunburned neck and his wilted collar, fanning himself and cursing the heat, the police force, Bradwood, the case, and himself in the same breath.