Greek Coffin Mystery (41 page)

“On the other hand, if he really did have the two paintings to begin with, then the one I found is either the Leonardo or the copy, and there is no way of telling which until we find the other canvas that Knox has inevitably hidden somewhere. But whichever painting is now in the District Attorney’s possession, there is still another in Knox’s possession—provided he had the two all the time—and this other Knox cannot proffer because he has already committed himself as to its having been stolen by an outsider. My dear Sampson, if you can find that other painting somewhere on Knox’s premises, or find it elsewhere and can prove that Knox placed it there, the case against him will be even more airtight than it is now.”

Sampson, to judge from the expression on his lean face, would have liked to argue this statement; he apparently did not consider the case more airtight than a sieve. But Ellery did not permit him to voice what was in his mind; he went on without pause. “To sum up,” he said. “The murderer had to possess three major qualifications. One: he had to be able to plant the clews against Khalkis and Sloane. Two: he had to be the writer of the blackmail letters. Three: he had to be in the Knox house in order to be able to type the second letter. This third qualification includes only the servants, Miss Brett, and Knox. But the servants are eliminated on Qualification One, as I showed before. Miss Brett is eliminated on Qualification Two, as I showed before. Only Knox is left, and since Knox fits all three qualifications perfectly, he must be the murderer.”

One would not have said that Inspector Richard Queen basked in the sunshine of his son’s public triumph. When the inevitable questioning, congratulations, arguments and journalistic disturbances were over—it was notable that there were several shaking heads among the reporters—and the Queens found themselves alone within the sacrosanct walls of the Inspector’s office, the old man permitted such expression of his inner feeling to escape as had hitherto been sternly repressed; and Ellery felt the full blast of his father’s displeasure.

Not that Ellery himself, it is important to note, presented the picture of a self-satisfied young lion of the hour. On the contrary, his lean cheeks were hardened into long lines of tension, and his eyes were tired and feverish. He smoked cigaret after cigaret without enjoyment, and avoided his father’s eyes.

The old man was grousing in no uncertain terms. “By ginger,” he said, “if you weren’t my son I’d boot you out of here. Of all the wishy-washy, unsatisfying, ridiculous arguments I ever heard that performance of yours downstairs was—” He shuddered. “Ellery, mark my words. There’s going to be trouble. This is one time when my faith in you is, is—well, you’ve let me down, drat it! And Sampson—why, Henry’s no nincompoop; and when he walked out of that room I saw, plain as day, that he felt he was facing the toughest courtroom battle of his career. That case won’t stand up in court, Ellery; it just won’t. No evidence. And motive.
Motive,
damn it all! You didn’t say a word about that. Why did Knox kill Grimshaw? Sure, it’s fine to use that blasted
logic
of yours to show by mathematics or something that Knox is our man—but motive! Juries want motives, not logic.” He was spluttering all over his vest. “There’ll be hell to pay. Knox in jail with the biggest lawyers in the East to defend him—they’ll punch holes in your pretty case, my boy, till it looks like Swiss cheese. Just about as full of holes as—”

It was at this moment that Ellery stirred. All during the tirade he had sat patiently, even nodding, as if what the Inspector was saying he expected and, while he did not precisely welcome it, felt was not insurmountable. But now he sat up straight, and something like alarm flickered over his face. “As full of holes as what? What do you mean?”

“Ha!” cried the Inspector. “That gets a rise out of you, does it? Think your old man’s an idiot? Maybe Henry Sampson didn’t see it, but I saw it, by George, and if
you
didn’t see it, the more fool you!” He rapped Ellery’s knee. “Look here, Ellery Sherlock Holmes Queen. You said that you’d eliminated the servants on the count of one of ’em possibly being the murderer because they hadn’t, any of ’em, been in the Khalkis house during the period when the false clews were being planted.”

“Yes?” said Ellery slowly.

“Yes. That was fine. Great. True. I agree with you. But, my precious half-wit son,” said the old man with bitterness, “you didn’t go far enough, you see. You eliminated each of the servants as the murderer, but why couldn’t one of ’em have been
an accomplice of an outside murderer?
Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

Ellery did not reply; he sighed, and let it go at that. The Inspector dropped into his swivel-chair with a snort of discontent. “Of all the stupid omissions. … You of all people! I’m surprised at you, son. This case has addled your brain. For one of the servants could have been hired by the murderer to write the second blackmail letter on Knox’s machine, while the outside murderer was safe somewhere else! I’m not saying this is true; but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that Knox’s lawyers point that out, and then where is your whole argument which eliminates everybody until only Knox is left? Bah! Your logic is rotten.”

Ellery nodded in humble agreement. “Brilliant, dad, really brilliant. I hope—I trust that no one else thinks of it at this time.”

“Well,” said the Inspector grumpily, “I guess Henry didn’t, or he would have shot right up here and squawked his head off. That’s one consolation, anyway. … See here, El. Evidently you’ve known all along of the loophole I’ve just pointed out. Why don’t you plug it now—before it’s too late and costs me my job, and Henry’s too?”

“Why don’t I plug the hole, you ask.” Ellery shrugged, and stretched his arms far over his head. “—Lord, I’m weary! … I’ll tell you why, long-suffering ancestor. For the simple reason that—I
daren’t.”

The Inspector shook his head. “You must be going dotty,” he muttered. “What do you mean—you daren’t? Is that a reason? All right—say it’s Knox. But the case, boy, the case! Give us something more definite to work on. You know I’ll back you to the limit if you’re convinced you’re right.”

“How well I know that,” grinned Ellery. “Fatherhood is a wonderful thing. There is only one thing more wonderful, and that is motherhood. … Dad, I can’t say another serious word now. But I’ll tell you this, and you may accept it for what it’s worth, considering the unreliable source. …
The biggest thing in this unholy mess of a case has yet to happen!”

I
T WAS DURING THIS
period that a rift of serious width opened between father and son. The Inspector’s psychology is understandable: freighted down to the gunwales with worry, emotionally awash, the primitive emerged and threatened for several hours to bare its teeth at the slightest quiver of Ellery’s for the most part silent figure. The old man, sensing something wrong, unable to put his precise little finger on anything material, reacted characteristically: he stormed and ranted and made the lives of his subordinates unbearable, while all the time his wrath was directed obliquely against the bowed head of his son.

Several times that day he made as if to leave his office. It was only at such moments that Ellery lived again; and scenes of increasing irritableness were enacted between the two.

“You mustn’t leave. You must stay here. Please.”

Once the Inspector rebelled, and went away; and Ellery, who had been sitting hunched over the telephone, tense as a setter on the point, was overcome with nervousness and bit his lip until blood came. But the Inspector’s resolution was weak; and back he came, red-faced and growling, to keep the incomprehensible vigil with his son. Ellery’s face lightened at once; and he sat himself down at the telephone again, no less strained than before, but now content to devote all his faculties to the apparently herculean task of waiting, waiting. …

Telephone calls came in with monotonous regularity. From whom they were, what they signified, the Inspector did not know; but each time the buzzer sounded Ellery snatched at the instrument as if he were a man condemned to death and this the instrument of his reprieve. Each time he was disappointed; listening soberly, nodding, saying a few noncommittal words, and hanging up again.

At one time the Inspector called for Sergeant Velie; and discovered that the usually reliable sergeant had not reported to Headquarters since the previous evening; that no one knew where he was; that not even his wife could account for his absence. This was serious, and the old man’s nose lengthened and his jaw snapped in a manner that boded ill for the sergeant. But he had learned his lesson and said nothing; and Ellery, who perhaps nursed a tiny spark of resentment against his father for having doubted him, did not enlighten him. In the course of the afternoon the Inspector found it necessary to call upon various members of his staff on matters unconnected with the Grimshaw case; and to his deepening astonishment he discovered that several of these, too, among whom were numbered his most trusted men—Hagstrom, Piggott, Johnson—were also unaccountably missing.

Ellery said quietly: “Velie and the others are out on an important mission. My orders.” He could no longer bear the old man’s agony.

“Your
orders!” The Inspector barely did not utter the words aloud. His mind was shrouded in a fog of red rage. “You’re trailing somebody,” he said with an effort.

Ellery nodded; his eyes were on the telephone.

Hourly, half-hourly, cryptic telephoned reports came in to Ellery. The Inspector grasped his surging temper at last with firm hand—the danger of open revolt was now past—and waded ferociously into a sea of routine matters. The day lengthened; Ellery ordered luncheon to be sent up; they ate in silence, Ellery’s hand never far from the telephone.

At dinner they ate again in the Inspector’s office—without appetite, mechanically, in a frightened gloom. Neither man had thought to touch the light-switch; the shadows clustered thickly and the Inspector let his work go in disgust. They just sat there.

And then, behind locked doors, Ellery found his old affection, and something sparked between them, and Ellery began to speak. He spoke swiftly, certainly, as if what he said had crystallized in his mind after many hours of cold experimental thought. And as he spoke, the last vestige of the Inspector’s pique vanished, and an expression of such amazement as rarely visited that case-hardened old countenance broke through his deep face-lines. He kept muttering: “I can’t believe it. It’s impossible. How can it be?”

And, at the conclusion of Ellery’s recital, for an instant apology crept out of the Inspector’s eyes. No more than an instant; the eyes glittered, and from that moment too he watched the telephone as if it were a sentient thing.

At the normal closing-hour, the Inspector summoned his secretary and issued mysterious instructions. The secretary went away.

Within fifteen minutes the report was casually circulated through the corridors of Police Headquarters that Inspector Queen had left for the day—had gone home, in fact, to muster his strength for the battle that was imminent with James J. Knox’s lawyers.

But Inspector Queen still sat in his darkened office, waiting with Ellery at the telephone, which was now connected to the central police operator on a private line.

Outside, at the curb, a police car with two men in it had been stationed all afternoon, motor running.

Waiting, it seemed, with the same iron patience that was enforced upon the two men high in the grey stone building behind locked doors and in darkness.

It was past midnight when the call finally came.

The Queens leaped into action with muscles coiled for the kill. The telephone rang shrilly. Ellery snatched the receiver, shouted into the transmitter: “Well?”

A man’s rumbling rejoinder.

“On our way!” yelled Ellery, dropping the telephone. “The Knox house, dad!”

They dashed out of the Inspector’s office, struggling into their coats as they ran. Downstairs to the waiting automobile, Ellery’s strong voice shouting instructions, and the car, too, leaped into action … turning its black nose north and shooting uptown with its siren screaming.

But Ellery’s instructions brought them not to James Knox’s mansion on Riverside Drive. For it turned into Fifty-fourth Street—the street of the church and the Khalkis house. The siren had been choked several blocks away. The car stole on its rubber feet into the dark street, slid without noise to the curb, and Ellery and the Inspector jumped out quickly. Without hesitation they made for the shadows surrounding the basement entrance of the empty Knox house next door to Khalkis’. …

They moved like ghosts, making no sound. Sergeant Velie’s gigantic shoulders pushed up out of a black patch beneath the crumbly steps. A flashlight touched the Queens briefly, snapped off on the instant, and the sergeant whispered: “Inside. Got to work fast. Boys all around the place. Can’t get away. Quick, Chief!”

The Inspector, very calm and steady now, nodded: and Velie gently pushed the door to the basement open. He paused a moment in the basement vestibule, and from nowhere another man popped up. Silently the Queens accepted flashlights from his hand, and at a word from the Inspector, Velie and Ellery muffled them with handkerchiefs, and then the three men crept into the deserted basement. The sergeant, evidently familiar as a cat with the terrain, led the way. The small cloudy light from their torches barely lightened the darkness. Like marauding Indians they glided across the floor, past the ghostly furnace, and up the basement staircase. At the top of the steps Velie paused again; a few whispered words with another man stationed there, and then the sergeant beckoned silently and led the way from the stairs into the blackness of the lower-floor hall.

As they tiptoed into the corridor, they all halted with noiseless abruptness. Somewhere ahead there were cracks of feeble light at the top and bottom of what was evidently a door.

Ellery touched Sergeant Velie’s arm lightly. Velie turned his big head. Ellery breathed a few words. And although it was not visible, Velie grinned a deprecating grin in the darkness, his hand went to his coat pocket, and out it came grasping a revolver.