The Finishing Stroke (11 page)

Baffled, the entire party trooped in. Luria stood alertly at one side of the hall as Arthur Craig and John Sebastian and their guests filed by and went upstairs. Luria remained in the hall.

A few minutes later Sergeant Devoe returned with the three domestics. The lieutenant repeated his instructions, adding, ‘You go on up with these folks, Sergeant, and bring them back down.'

Even Felton's imperturbability was shaken. The three preceded the sergeant up the stairs nervously.

Ellery's silver eyes glittered. ‘I get it now.'

‘Whatever you think you've got, hang on to it.'

Dr. Dark was the first to come hurrying down. ‘I don't know what's going on here,' he panted, ‘but I'm listening to that football game. One side, gentlemen.'

‘Hold it a minute,' the lieutenant said. The bulk of the Alderwood doctor quivered to a halt at the foot of the staircase. ‘Mind if I slap you around a little? It won't hurt.' He was smiling.

‘A body search?' Dr. Dark asked curtly. ‘What for?'

‘You don't really mind, do you, sir?' Luria was still smiling.

The doctor's sandy mane bristled. But then his little eyes twinkled. ‘Why should I mind? You go ahead, son.'

When he was finished, Luria said politely, ‘Thanks, Doc. Now please go into the living room and stay there. Turn on the radio, do what you want, only don't step out of that room.'

Dr. Dark made directly for the Stromberg-Carlson. He turned the dial to the C B S wave-length, adjusted the volume control, lit a long cigar, and leaned back in an armchair beaming at the voice of Ted Husing.

John was the next to appear, and after him, one by one, the others descended the stairs. One by one Luria stopped them. The men all submitted to a body search; the ladies Luria was content to scrutinize closely, merely asking permission to open their handbags. Each was sent straight to the living room with a repetition of the request not to leave it.

When Sergeant Devoe reappeared with Mrs. Janssen, Mabel and Felton, the lieutenant said reassuringly, ‘Don't be jittery, girls, nobody's going to snatch you baldheaded. Go ahead into your kitchen, Mrs. Janssen, and get going with your dinner. You work right along with Mrs. Janssen, Mabel, don't you?'

‘And how,' the Irish girl said. ‘I have to peel the potatoes, set the table –'

‘In the dining room? Not tonight, Mabel.' Luria pursed his leathery lips. ‘Mrs. Janssen, what's on your menu for tonight?'

‘Ham and cold cuts, potato salad –'

‘Perfect. You'll prepare it buffet – to be eaten in the living room.'

‘Mr. Craig will want me to serve cocktails and canapés before dinner,' Felton said.

‘That's okay. You three can have the run of the kitchen, butler's pantry and dining room. You, Felton, will also serve in the living room. But make sure to come in by way of the dining room and go back the same way. Sergeant, you're accountable for every movement of these three people.'

Sergeant Devoe said with amusement, ‘Yes, sir.' He escorted the trio up the hall, held the door to the butler's pantry open for them, and followed them in. Luria hesitated. Then he hooked the door shut from the hall side and went quickly into the living room.

They were standing about whispering. All except Dr. Dark, who was concentrating on Ted Husing.

Arthur Craig said stiffishly, ‘Lieutenant, I'd appreciate an explanation now, if you please.'

‘Yes, sir, if the doctor will turn the radio off. The game won't start for a few minutes yet, Doc.' The fat man glared, but he reached out and shut the machine off.

Lieutenant Luria drew the brown velvet ceiling-to-floor drapes securely across the living room archway. Then he turned around, a chunky Figure against the brown backdrop.

‘It's simple,' the lieutenant said. ‘I've got a murder to crack, a toughie I can't get to first base on till the murderee is identified. Meantime, there's this tricky business of the anonymous Christmas present to Mr. Sebastian nightly.

‘I don't know what's behind that monkey business, or how it ties in to the murder, or even if it has a connexion with the murder at all. So here's what I've done today.

‘I got you all away from the house early this afternoon, even the servants. All but Mr. Queen, but he didn't get preferred treatment. I'm not leaving him out of my calculations just because his old man is a high police officer.'

You certainly are not, Ellery thought with a grin.

‘While you were all away from the house, Mr. Craig,' Lieutenant Luria continued, ‘I took the liberty of searching the main living quarters downstairs here. By the way, I came prepared with a search warrant in case you felt like getting technical. If you'd like to see it, sir …'

Craig waved him on testily.

‘Each of the presents addressed to Mr. Sebastian the past three nights has been left somewhere on this main floor.' Luria said with a smile, ‘My purpose today was to satisfy myself that the fourth box – tonight's gift –
hadn't already been planted to be found
.'

‘Damned clever of you, Lieutenant,' John said rather coldly.

‘Common sense. When you all got back to the house I sent you directly upstairs, and kept an eye on you till you'd got up there. In that way I made sure no one planted the box down here
on the way up
. And when you came back down, I searched the men and looked the ladies over before sending you into this room. So I'm satisfied that nobody brought a box
downstairs with him.
In other words, as of this moment, I'm ready to testify under oath that this downstairs floor is clean. There's no box here. And since we're all going to stay right here in this living room till midnight' – there was a corporate groan – ‘why, this now-you-see-him-now-you-don't Santa Claus you've been telling me about has the run of the house. We ought to find out all sorts of interesting things from what does or doesn't happen. Right, Queen?'

Seven hours turned out to be a long time for over a dozen people to be shut up in a room without hope of escape, even a room as spacious as Arthur Craig's manorial hall. The siege began in an atmosphere of strain that thickened detectably as the evening ground on. It quite spoiled Dr. Dark's football game. He kept alternating between silencing the ladies and gluing his large ear to the loudspeaker. When Stanford repeated its 1928 triumph over Army, defeating the Cadets by a score of 34–13, the good doctor scarcely savoured his victory. He was too put out with the talkers. He could not even summon a just retort when Roland Payn pointed out that – Army defeat or no – the fabulous Mr. ‘Red' Cagle had acquitted himself with valedictory brilliance, having made both Army touchdowns and thus accounted for all his team's scoring.

Emotions were not soothed when a pale Felton was passed through the dining room doorway by Sergeant Devoe, bearing the unmistakable paraphernalia for a buffet dinner. Craig half rose, then sank back mute. There was a high-pitched comment (from Olivette Brown) that ‘This has gone quite far enough, Mr. Craig, wouldn't you say?', and scattered mumblings (notably from Dr. Dark, who said that he had never chosen to learn the vaudeville knack of balancing a plateful of food on his knee and he did not intend at his age to begin). But for the most part there was little protest, only a tightening of the tension. They ate their dinner with no conversation at all. Luria was courteous and watchful throughout. His own chair stood squarely before the velvet drapes masking the archway, and he did not leave it for a moment.

After dinner there was a general quiet toping. Marius Carlo got drunk in a businesslike way and fell asleep, his spasmodic snores not improving morale. Some desultory bridge was played; Rusty located a jazz band on the radio and persuaded John to dance with her, and then with Valentina and Ellen (Ellery remaining in his corner, blind to Ellen's signals); and late in the evening, out of desperation, the company agreed at Valentina's urging to play charades. This enabled the leggy blonde girl to display both her legs and her unchallenged histrionic abilities, but it did little for anyone but Roland Payn, whose distinguished glance did not lift once above Valentina's fashionably high hemline. Finally, at eleven o'clock, they abandoned the game to tune in the news. This evoked hollow laughter. President Hoover's Commission on Law Enforcement and Observance was ready to report to Congress, the newscaster announced in sincere tones, looking ‘with confidence' toward a more adequate enforcement of the Prohibition law; one of Dutch Schultz's bonded trucks had been hijacked on New York's East Side, and on Chicago's North Side two well-stapled corpses, who had been worked over by a ‘typewriter' in a carbon copy of the St Valentine's Day massacre, were scraped up from an alley and filed away as memoranda of the Bugsy Moran-Scarface Al Capone ‘alky' feud; and Police Commissioner Whalen of New York City had come out with a positive solution of Manhattan's traffic problem by advocating an end to all parking in the business districts.

After the news they sat around soddenly, waiting for midnight.

When it came, with the muffled bonging of the grandfather clock on the upstairs landing, heads were scarcely lifted.

‘I'm very tired, Lieutenant,' Mr. Gardiner said with a sigh.‘May I retire now?'

‘Just a minute, Reverend!' Luria had jumped to his feet. He strode over to the dining room door. ‘Devoe!'

The sergeant stuck his head into the living room.

‘Get those three in here.' When Mrs. Janssen, Mabel, and Felton had dragged themselves in, Luria snapped, ‘You stay in here with all these folks, Devoe. Nobody's to move!' and, running back to the archway, he plunged through the velvet drapes and disappeared.

The house was still.

‘The witching hour,' Freeman said suddenly, and laughed. The laugh almost raised an echo.

They stood and sat there for a long ten minutes in total silence. Then the drapes parted, revealing Lieutenant Luria. He took a pack of Melachrinos from his pocket slowly, slowly extracted one, slowly lit it.

‘End of experiment,' he said.

‘What's that supposed to mean?' John croaked.

Luria said deliberately, ‘There's no Christmas box tonight. Anywhere downstairs – or, for that matter, on the porch. And do you know why, ladies and gentlemen? Because whoever's been leaving them nightly to be found
couldn't
leave a fourth box tonight. And who couldn't leave a fourth box tonight? Why, any of you people in this room.

‘May I say that I never did believe in your Santa Claus? Now I know there's no Santa Claus. Or if there is, or was, he didn't have a thing to do with these gifts. The one who's been dropping presents all over the place is one of you. Now how about letting us all in on the joke? What do you say?'

But no one said anything.

Oddly, Lieutenant Luria lost his temper. ‘All right, play your kid games!' he snarled, waving his arms. ‘From now on I'm concentrating on the murder in this case. I'll leave the fancy stuff, Queen, to you.'

‘But, Lieutenant,' Ellery began, wondering how he was going to point out with sufficient delicacy the large holes visible in Luria's experimental fabric.

But the lieutenant barked, ‘Good night!' and stalked out of the house.

‘I hear my relief. Night,' Sergeant Devoe said with a discreet cough, and he followed Luria out.

No one moved until the sounds of the two police cars racing down the drive became soft with distance.

Then they all went wearily up to bed. At least, they thought they were bound for bed. But with doors opening and closing along the upper halls, John – who had been one of the first upstairs – came running out of his bedroom laughing like a demon.

‘No box tonight,' he said. ‘
I just found this on my bed
!'

He was holding aloft a little Christmas package in red and green metallic paper, bound by gilt ribbon. On the familiar Santa Claus tag was typewritten the familiar ‘John Sebastian'.

John had to be sedated. Dr. Dark remained with him until he fell asleep.

When he went downstairs the doctor found the company assembled around the new box, which Ellery had opened.

‘How's John, Doctor?' Rusty asked in a subdued way.

‘It's just nerves, my dear. He's always been highstrung, and this mystery stuff is beginning to get him.' Dr. Dark reached frankly for the Scotch decanter. ‘Well, what's the leprechaun handed out tonight, Queen?'

Ellery held up a miniature wooden picket fence, painted white. ‘It's a perfect fit around the house, Doctor.'

‘And the message?'

Ellery handed him a white card. It contained four neatly typed lines:

‘Not even decent doggerel,' the doctor muttered, and he held out the card.

‘No, this time there are markings on the reverse side again. Make anything of them, Doctor?'

The fat man turned the card over quickly, staring.