The Fourth Side of the Triangle (21 page)

“So Dane McKell is being blackmailed,” said Inspector Queen, “and I'm not to ask any questions about it. Is that it, Ellery?”

“That's it,” and his son beamed.

“Well, you just forget it. I don't buy blind pigs in pokes, or whatever the blasted saying is. Even from you.”

“Dad, have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Thousands of times,” the Inspector replied, “thousands.”

“Name one.”

“Sure. There was the time—”

“Never mind,” Ellery said. “Dad, listen to me this once, will you? If I weren't laid up I wouldn't even bother you with it. It's merely a case of laying a trap for a blackmailer.”

“What's Dane being blackmailed about?” demanded the old gentleman.

“I can't tell you now.”

“It's in connection with the Grey case, of course.”

“I tell you I can't. You'll know the whole story later. Don't you trust me any longer?”

“I don't trust myself these days,” the Inspector said with gloom. “The D.A. and I have practically stopped talking to each other. I've never
seen
such a case.”

“You want to settle it?”

“Of course I want to settle it!”

“Then do it my way, Dad.”

“
You're
blackmailing
me!
”

“Right,” Ellery said cheerfully. “Then it's a deal? You post your men at the main post office, have them watch the General Delivery window. The postal authorities will co-operate. They'll give your men the tip-off when the fellow shows up—”

“And suppose they make a mistake?” the old man asked sourly. “And suppose the city is sued for false arrest, with me in the middle of it? How do I defend myself for ordering an arrest without having seen the evidence that a crime may have been committed? What do I do, refer them to you? Nothing doing, Ellery.”

But Ellery had an answer for everything this morning. A security guard from the McKell organization, one of the scores employed to watch the McKell warehouses, docks, factories, and other buildings, could be assigned to watch the post office along with the regular police. When the trap was sprung, this privately employed guard would make a citizen's arrest, with the police staying out of it. If the arrest were resisted, the police could then step in, restrain and compel—their duty at any time—with impunity.

Inspector Queen listened in silence. He was sorely, sorely tempted. The Grey case had been his headache since the discovery of the body; it was turning into a migraine. If it was true, as Ellery had hinted, that the blackmailer in question might turn out to be the slayer of Sheila Grey, one Richard Queen was off the hook. He might even get a departmental citation out of it.

In the end the old man yielded, as Ellery had known he would.

So on the next day the lobby of the great post office behind Pennsylvania Station was sprinkled with plainclothesmen and detectives from Inspector Queen's command, along with Ash-ton McKell's private guard. The postal authorities had agreed to co-operate. The package containing $2,000 in $20 bills (instructions of “Mr. I. M. Ecks,” to the contrary notwithstanding,
not
unmarked) had been made up, mailed, had arrived, was waiting to be picked up.

The trap was baited and laid.

It was never sprung.

No one showed up to claim the package.

Whether the blackmailer had spotted the police waiting to arrest him, or he had been scared away by his own guilty imaginings, there was no way of telling; the fact was, the bait lay beyond the General Delivery window, unnibbled.

So passed December 28th.

On the morning of December 29th …

The real fireworks had occurred late the night before, in the hospital room of one Ellery Queen. The Inspector had barged in long after visiting hours, angrily flushed, triumphant, and loaded for bear.

“I don't care a curse what your rules are,” he had assured the indignant night nurse, flourishing his inspector's shield under her nose. “And don't any of you Florence Nightingales dare interrupt us even if you hear me strangling your patient, which he bloody well deserves!” And he secured the door with the back of a chair.

Ellery was reading in bed.

“Dad?” He peered into the gloom. “You got him?”

“Listen, sonny-boy,” Inspector Queen said, hauling a chair over and snatching the book out of Ellery's hand, “I'll tell you what I've got. I've got heartburn and a bellyful, mostly of you. You can't tell me the basis of the blackmail, hey? The hell you can't! You don't have to. I'm wise to the whole smelly business now. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, keeping a thing like that from your own father—”

“What,” asked Ellery in an injured tone, “is this remarkable performance all about?”

“I'll tell you what it's about!”

“Keep your voice down, Dad. This is a hospital.”

“It's about your precious Dane McKell! You know what happened this evening?”

“That's what I've been trying, unsuccessfully so far, to find out.”

“What happened is that we received a Special Delivery envelope at headquarters is what
happened
. Full of interesting stuff, yes, sir. All kinds of reference material. Most fascinating of the bunch was a letter addressed to the police, in Sheila Grey's handwriting, that she wrote the night she was knocked off. How do you like those apples?”

“Oh,” said his son.

“And ooh and ah! You knew all about it, didn't you? But not a word about it to me. Your own father. In charge of the damn case. Not a
word
. I have to find out about it from an anonymous donor.”

“Dad,” said his son.

“Don't Dad me! All right, I know what you're going to say. This stuff came from the blackmailer—”

“And how,” Ellery asked placatingly, “did he get it?”

“How should I know? I don't care! The point is, he got it, and he sent it to us, and now
I've
got it, and those McKells are going to rue the day! Especially that—that Hamlet-pussed pal of yours, Dane!”

“Whoa, slow down,” the son said. “You're not as young as you used to be. Give this to me in something like intelligible sequence, will you, Inspector?”

“Glad to oblige,” chortled his father. “Here's the way we dope it. First of all this blackmailer, who calls himself I. M. Ecks, doesn't show—probably spotted the trap. He knows he can't hope to collect a penny any more. So he sends the blackmail material to us—out of revenge, disappointment, malice; it doesn't matter why. It's no good to him. But it's just what the doctor ordered for us.

“So. We now shift gears in the Grey case, and for the first time—armed with
real
evidence—we're on the right track. We were wrong about the parents, but there's no mistake this time. This Dane is
it
. The third McKell turns out to be the right one. And there'll be no acquittal in
his
trial.”

“You're still not telling me anything,” Ellery said fretfully. “What have you got besides the Grey letter? You realize that all the letter does is establish that Sheila Grey was still alive when Dane left her—”

“Oh, it establishes a lot more than that, my son. But let's not pick over picayunes. Let's tackle this scientifically. You want science?”

“I want science.”

“I'll give you science. How's this? We've got a witness, a
reliable
witness, who saw your Dane come
back
to the penthouse.”

Ellery was quiet.

“No reaction?” chomped the old man. “That tells me you knew about that, too. Thank God I raised you to be a rotten liar. Ellery, I don't understand. Withholding information like that! How did you find out?”

“I didn't say I found out anything.”

“Come
on
, son.”

“All right,” Ellery said suddenly. “Dane told me. Himself. Would he have done that if he had anything to be afraid of?”

“Sure he would,” said the Inspector. “If he was very smart. If he figured it would come out sooner or later anyway. Well, if you know that, you know he took the elevator right up there. Want to know what time? Or do you know it? Don't bother. It was 10:19, my son, when he stepped into that elevator—10:19
P.M
. and going
up—four minutes
before she stopped that bullet, Dane McKell was zooming up to the penthouse! My witness watched the elevator dial swing right up there from the lobby, no stops.”

“I suppose it was the doorman.”

“You suppose correctly. We had a tough time prying the truth out of John Leslie tonight, but we cracked him. For some reason that escapes me he feels loyalty to the McKells. Well, we knocked it out of him. I'm not taking anybody's crud in this case any more. I've
had
it.”

“Did he tell you anything else?”

“Yes, he told us something else. He told us that Dane McKell's been visiting that penthouse with great regularity. That's one your friend almost slipped over on us. With his old man involved with Sheila, we never pictured the son was, too. We did a quick check tonight, enough to tell us he'd been running around with her in a way that means only one thing. So there's the motive. He was having an affair with her, but this lady's affairs seem to have been jumpy transactions—the man was here today and gone tomorrow. She must have given your friend Dane the old gate and he wouldn't or couldn't take it. So blam! first he starts to strangle her, has second thoughts, leaves, then comes back in about a half hour and lets her have it with the gun his mother thoughtfully loaded with live ammo.”

“And the blackmailer?” Ellery asked, not strongly.

“I know all about the blackmailer. You'll say he had to have been on the premises about the same time in order to have got his mitts on the letter. Right. I agree. How about
at
the same time?”

“What do you mean?” Ellery asked, puzzled.

“I mean Dane McKell hooked that letter after he whopped Sheila with the blaster. That this whole business of blackmail is so much happy dust he's flung into our eyes!”

“No,” Ellery said. “No, that would have been pure idiocy. That would mean
he
sent you the original of the letter. To accomplish what? His own arrest for murder, when before that you didn't even suspect him? You'll have to do better than that, Dad.”

“Maybe he felt the collar tightening around his neck.
I
don't know. Anyway, it's not our worry, it's his. You know, my son? We've got a case, and this one is going to stick.”

So on the morning of December 29th Sergeant Velie and the speechless Detective Mack, herded by Inspector Queen in person, visited the apartment of the three McKells while they were at breakfast (it always seemed to come, Dane afterward thought, at breakfast) and Ashton McKell said frigidly, “Don't you people know any other family in this city? What is it this time?”; and Inspector Queen showed his dentures in a feral grin and said, “I have a warrant for the arrest of Dane McKell.”

IV The Fourth Side

·

DANE

The grand jury, the arraignment, the bail—it was beginning to feel like a well-used merry-go-round; as Dane said, “Here we go again.”

Some uniformed policemen in the corridor were discussing him as if he were not present, or were made of wood.

“Think he'll beat it, too?”

“Well, the D.A.'s got two strikes against him now, the father and mother. One more whiff and he's out. He can't afford to strike out.”

“Nah, the son will beat it the way his daddy and ma did. I'll bet money on it.”

“They've got the dough to do it.”

“I don't think so. Not this time. This time he can paper the hot seat with his money.”

Dane passed on, not comforted.

Part of the carrousel by now was the council of war in the hospital room, with Ellery dourly presiding. The medical conferees had decided at the last moment to keep him in the hospital an extra few days until he became accustomed to crutches. He was not comforted, either.

He had accepted the contract, so to speak, but he was not exactly bursting with confidence. This time he was profoundly certain that the same
modus
which had saved Dane's parents would not work. There could be no alibi for Dane. At the critical moment, where Ashton had been in an identifiable bar, talking to an identifiable bartender; where Lutetia had been talking over the telephone on a coast-to-coast TV hook-up … by his own admission Dane was virtually on the scene of the shooting, standing before the penthouse apartment door, separated from slayer and slain by the thickness of the door panel. And in that tiny penthouse elevator foyer he had been standing alone and unobserved—indeed, unobservable, for there were no windows in the foyer. Consequently, there could be no witness to his allegation that he had simply stood there for a few moments and then left without entering the apartment.

No, this time they would have to do what they should have done from the outset, Ellery said.

“I'd have done it if I'd been on my toes and feet,” he told Dane, Ashton McKell, and Judy. “The only way to get Dane off—the only sure way—is to find Sheila's killer.

“If we had been able to do that when you were under indictment, Mr. McKell, we would have been spared all that followed, including Mrs. McKell's ordeal, and now Dane's. Well, we couldn't; I'll stop bemoaning it and get down to cases.”

Ellery shifted his aching legs to an equally uncomfortable position. “Up to now we've been working from the outside in, trying to prove why the accused couldn't have done it—the negative approach. This time we've got to work from the inside out. Positively. Agreed?”

They followed, they nodded, they agreed. But without spirit. They all felt fagged. Judy Walsh's eyes were a chronic swollen red; crying had become part of her life, like brushing her teeth. She sat clinging to Dane's arm as if she were pulling him back from the edge of a cliff.