QED (10 page)

Richard Van Olde II, however, was a quite different temptation. Van Olde was a soft-spoken tyrant of position and wealth. Modesta Ryan was the first woman he had wanted since the death of his wife a dozen years before, and he meant to have her. He was a man of instant, irrevocable decisions, and he offered Modesta marriage from the first, courting her tirelessly. There was something about his lashless eyes and noiseless personality that made her shiver like an inexperienced girl.

Jock Shanville fitted her like a glove, young Catt excited her, Van Olde fascinated her.

Which should she accept?

The phone rang just as Ellery was stooping to unlace his shoes.

“It's for you,” Inspector Queen called from the other bedroom.

“At a quarter to twelve?” Ellery used the extension. “Yes?”

“Ellery? Modesta Ryan …”

“Modesta.” Ellery fingered his tie automatically. He had known her for years, and each time he heard her voice was like the first time. Tonight the throaty tones had a throb in them, subdued and off-beat. “What's wrong?”

“Ellery, I'm in trouble,” she whispered. “Can you come right over to my apartment? Please.”

“Of course. But what kind of trouble?”

“I can't talk. I'm not alone—”

“This marriage business?”

“Yes, I decided today. Gave the other two their walking papers. But hurry!”

“Modesta, wait. Just tell me who's with you—”

But the phone went dead. Ellery grabbed his raincoat and ran.

The streets were empty rivers, and he roared east toward Central Park leaving a wake like a power launch. He was through the park transverse and across Fifth and Madison Avenues in a matter of minutes. Sixty seconds later he was sloshing around the corner of Park Avenue into a one-way westbound street in the East Eighties, peering through his streaming windshield for a parking space.

As far down the street as he could see, the curbs were jammed with cars bumper to bumper.

Ellery cruised, trying to control his temper. You could never find a parking space in New York, least of all when you were in a hurry. And when it rained—

The Athenia Apartments was on the northeast corner, just off Madison Avenue. Between the corner and the Athenia's canopy he sighted empty curb and he stepped on the gas. But when he got there he saw a No Parking sign; it was a crosstown bus stop. Wouldn't you know! Back into Madison Avenue he drove, and he circumnavigated the block, ready to settle for a dozen feet of curb anywhere. But the curbs were all occupied. He turned into Modesta's street again, worried and furious.

God knows what's happening up there, he thought angrily. He was tempted to park at the bus stop; but a family respect for the law, and the prospect of squatting half a day in Traffic Court, dissuaded him.

No miracle had happened. There was still no place to park on Modesta's street. Groaning, Ellery turned up Madison Avenue again.

“This is my last time on this merry-go-round,” he promised himself grittily. “Modesta must think I'm coming by pack mule. I'll double-park.”

The last time around he had noticed one car illegally parked. At the curb between the Athenia's canopy and the entrance of the next building stood three cars in a row, and a fourth was double-parked by the side of the middle one. The double-parked car bore an MD license plate.

Again Ellery drove up the block from Park Avenue toward Madison. He was about to pull in behind the doctor's car when two young couples dashed out of the apartment house on the southeast corner, splashed toward the Athenia's canopy, and jumped into the first of the three parked cars.

“Hurray,” Ellery said sourly; and when his rescuers pulled away he shot around the double-parked car and backed like a fireman into the vacated space nearest the canopy.

Five minutes past midnight! He had lost ten minutes finding a space. And he'd been lucky at that.

Ellery was under the Athenia's canopy in two jumps. He ran into the lobby, swishing the water off his hat. The lobby was dark. Basement flooded, probably, shorting the power mains.

“Doorman?” he shouted into the darkness.

“Comin'.” A flashlight snapped on and bobbed quickly toward him. “Who'd you want to see, sir?”

“Miss Ryan, penthouse. Elevator out?”

“Uh-huh.” The doorman seemed dubious. “It's pretty late. The house phone's not working, either.”

“I'm expected,” said Ellery. “Where's the stairway? Speak up!”

The doorman stared, then mumbled, “This way.”

The man shuffled toward the rear of the lobby, past the dead switchboard, directing his light behind him for Ellery. As they reached the emergency door it opened and a male figure hurried past them and vanished in the darkness. Ellery caught one glimpse of the figure as it scuttled by—stooped over, so that his height and age were impossible to guess, wearing a double-breasted tan trench coat buttoned up the left side to the chin, and a tan Stetson pulled well down over his face.

Something about the man bothered Ellery, but he had no time to analyze.

He ran up marble stairs endlessly, praying that the battery of his pencil-flashlight would hold out. When he reached the penthouse landing eleven flights up he was seeing phosphorescent confetti in the darkness. Breathing hard, he swept his light about, located the pushbutton near the service door, and leaned on it. He heard a buzz inside the apartment, but nothing else.

He tried the door. It was unlocked.

Ellery stepped into Modesta Ryan's country-style kitchen. A candle-glass was wavering eerily on the fireplace mantel; a bed of briquets had burned to embers.

“Modesta?”

He stepped through the swinging door into her dining room, feeling his scalp tickle. A candlestick on the sideboard illuminated the room fitfully. The hall beyond was dark.

“
Modesta?
”

He groped along the passage, playing his flash, no longer calling. He kept telling himself as the shadows parted in his path that Modesta was quite capable of an elaborate joke, picking a night like this for atmosphere.

For a moment, as he stepped into her living room, he was sure of it. Two seven-branched candelabra blazed, and in the focus of their flames, in an exquisite negligee, lay Modesta's lovely body. She was crumpled on the Italian-tile floor beside her mother-of-pearl grand piano. On the breast of her negligee there was an illusion of a bullet wound and blood … Ellery knelt. The stuff staining her breast looked exactly like ketchup.

But it was not. And the silk was scorched around a very real hole.

He hunted for her pulse. There it was!—but it was flickering like the candles. She was barely alive.

Ellery ran to the phone more out of habit than conviction. To his surprise it was working. He made two calls—one for an emergency ambulance, the other to his father; and then he tore through the apartment to the service door and began leaping down the eleven flights like a mountain goat.

If she dies, he was thinking, those parked cars around here ought to be tagged as accessories. The ten minutes he had lost looking for a parking space might have saved what was left of Modesta Ryan's life.

He plunged out under the canopy, followed by the astonished doorman. Nothing had changed. The cloudburst continued to swab down the streets. The same three cars were lined up between the Athenia's entrance and the adjoining building, his own foremost; the same doctor's car was still double-parked beside the middle car of the three, boxing it in.

Of course the man in the trench coat was gone.

“Then this is the way it went, Wladeczki?” Inspector Queen said to the doorman in the light of the police torches. “You were on duty since four
P
.
M
., due to go off at midnight, but you stayed on because the storm held up your relief man. You didn't leave this lobby at any time. Nobody could have sneaked past you. All right.

“Miss Ryan came home from rehearsal in a taxi about seven
P
.
M
. She was alone. About eight her maid left for the night. Between eight and a few minutes past eleven only five people entered or left the building. They are all longtime tenants. At eleven-thirty Mr. Trench Coat walks into the lobby. Five minutes later an M.D. on emergency call to an old lady tenant—who's very sick in 4-G—drives up and complains to you he can't find space for his car. You let the doctor double-park—”

“And he's still up in 4-G,” said Sergeant Velie. “The other five, the tenants, alibi okay, too.”

“Now about Mr. Trench Coat. He didn't come by cab, you say. You don't get a real good look at him by your flash, the way he has his hat pulled down and his collar turned up. He talks in a croaky whisper, as if he has a bad cold. He says he has an appointment with Miss Modesta Ryan, you tell him he'll have to walk up to the penthouse, he goes up the stairway, and that's the last you see of him till a few minutes past midnight when he ducks out the stairway door under your nose—and the nose,” added the Inspector gently, “of the eminent Mr. Queen here.”

Ellery gave his father a wan look. “Did you notice,” he asked the doorman, “how wet his trench coat and hat were when he first came into the lobby?”

“No wetter than yours was, Mr. Queen,” said the doorman. “Got my name spelled right, Sergeant?”

“Time will tell,” said the Sergeant. “Hey, Goldie. Well?”

Detective Goldberg came in, shaking himself like a dog. He had found Modesta Ryan's maid asleep in her Harlem flat, he reported; the maid knew nothing except that on Miss Ryan's arrival home she had made three phone calls—one to Kid Catt, one to Mr. Shanville, and the last to Mr. Van Olde. But the maid hadn't listened to the conversations, so she couldn't say which ones Miss Ryan had given the heave and which one she'd made the happy man.

“Any report from the hospital yet?” muttered the Inspector.

“She's this way that way,” said Sergeant Velie.

“But did she talk?”

“She's got all she can do to keep on breathing, Inspector. She's still unconscious.”

“Then we do it the hard way,” said the old man gloomily. “It's a cinch Trench Coat was one of Modesta's two rejects. He didn't waste any time, did he? As soon as those three are brought in, have 'em taken up to the penthouse. Coming, Ellery?”

His son sighed. “If I could have found a place to park as soon as I got here …”

Hollow laughter followed him to the stairway door.

At twenty minutes after two the Inspector finished with the last of the three interrogations. He found Ellery in Modesta Ryan's living room staring reproachfully at her phone.

“Any luck?”

“I've called every columnist in town, all her close friends. She just didn't tell anybody.”

The old man grunted. He stuck his head into the hall. “Get those cuties in here.”

Shanville made his entrance with a rather set smile. The disheveled blond hair was all dagger points, and with the slight upcurve of his lips he looked Satanic.

“What now?” he asked. “The rack?”

About Kid Catt there was a look of astounded suffering, as if he had just been knocked down. His powerful frame sagged into a chair and his black eyes stared dully at the chalkmarks on the tiles near the piano.

“Who did it?” the fighter mumbled. “Just tell me which one of these two did it.”

“Underplay, Kid,” said the actor pleasantly. “This is a professional audience.”

The black eyes looked at him. “Lay off, actor,” the Kid said.

“Or else?” smiled Shanville.

“I'm leaving,” said Richard Van Olde II abruptly.

The tycoon was very angry. His naturally pale skin was almost green, the lashless eyes murderous.

“Just another few minutes, Mr. Van Olde,” said Inspector Queen.

“A very few, please. Then I either walk out of here unmolested or I telephone my attorneys and the Commissioner.”

“Yes,
sir
. Now, gentlemen, each of you wanted to marry Miss Ryan—bad. And each of you got a phone call from her tonight. One she told she'd finally decided to marry. Two—the other two—she brushed. One of those two promptly came here tonight and shot her.

“You think you've got us stymied,” the Inspector went on, showing his dentures. “Each man was found home in bed. And while we have the bullet—probably from a .38—search of your respective premises has failed to turn up the gun. Or the trench coat or Stetson. On top of that, each claims
he
was the man Modesta told over the phone she was accepting! Two of those claims are lies, of course, to take the heat off.

“Gentlemen, I have news for you,” said Inspector Queen softly. “Thrown-away guns, coats, and hats have a way of turning up. And you've got no alibis for the time of the shooting. You were home in bed, say all of you, but none of you can prove it, not even you, Shanville, because you occupy a separate bedroom and weren't even heard coming home—”

“Dad.”

The Inspector looked around, surprised. Ellery was on his feet, the picture of wry hopelessness.

“I don't see any point to going any further with this now, do you? Let's call it a night. These gentlemen won't run away, and we can all use some sleep.”

The old man blinked.

“All right,” he said.

But when the three had gone, he growled to his son, “And what's the big plot, Master Mind?”

“It's simple enough,” Ellery said as they crouched near the glass outer doors of the lobby. It was after three, the rain had stopped, and the chrome on the dark cars outside winked damply in the street lights. “We're waiting for our friend to come back.”

“Come
back?
” said Sergeant Velie. “What is he, goofed?”

“Case of necessity, Velie,” murmured Ellery. “Consider. How did Trench Coat get to the Athenia—?”

“
Get
here?”