The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (22 page)

Ellery paused over a cigarette. “And so I came to the conclusion,” he drawled, puffing smoke, “that
the light must have emanated from the victim himself
.”

“But no!” gasped Monsieur Duval. “No man would so foolish be—”

“Not consciously, of course. But he might have provided light unconsciously. I looked over the very dead Dr. Hardy. He wore dark clothing. There was no watch which might possess radial hands. He had no smoking implements on his person; a nonsmoker, obviously. No matches or lighter, then. And no flashlight. Nothing of a luminous nature which might explain how the killer saw where to aim. That is,” he murmured, “nothing but one last possibility.”

“What—”

“Will you gentlemen please put the lantern and your flashes out?”

For a moment there was uncomprehending inaction; and then lights began to snap off, until finally the room was steeped in the same thick palpable darkness that had existed when Ellery had stumbled into it. “Keep your places, please,” said Ellery curtly. “Don't move, anyone.”

There was no sound at first except the quick breaths of rigid people. The glow of Ellery's cigarette died, snuffed out. Then there was a slight rustling and a sharp click. And before their astonished eyes a roughly rectangular blob of light no larger than a domino, misty and nacreous, began to move across the room. It sailed in a straight line, like a homing pigeon, and then another blob detached itself from the first and touched something, and lo! there was still a third blob of light.

“Demonstrating,” came Ellery's cool voice, “the miracle of how Nature provides for her most wayward children. Phosphorus, of course. Phosphorus in the form of paint. If, for example, the murderer had contrived to daub the back of the victim's coat before the victim entered The House of Darkness—perhaps in the press of a crowd—he insured himself sufficient light for his crime. In a totally black place he had only to search for the phosphorescent patch. Then four shots in the thick of it from a distance of twelve feet—no great shakes to a good marksman—the bullet holes obliterate most of the light patch, any bit that remains is doused in gushing blood … and the murderer's safe all around.… Yes, yes, very clever.
No, you don't
!”

The third blob of light jerked into violent motion, lunging forward, disappearing, appearing, making progress toward the green-arrowed door.… There was a crash and a clatter, the sounds of a furious struggle. Lights flicked madly on, whipping across one another. They illuminated an area on the floor in which Ellery lay entwined with a man who fought in desperate silence. Beside them lay the paint box, open.

Captain Ziegler jumped in and rapped the man over the head with his billy. He dropped back with a groan, unconscious. It was the artist, Adams.

“But how did you know it was Adams?” demanded Ziegler a few moments later, when some semblance of order had been restored. Adams lay on the floor, manacled; the others crowded around, relief on some faces, fright on others.

“By a curious fact,” panted Ellery, brushing himself off. “Djuna, stop pawing me! I'm quite all right.… You yourself told me, Captain, that when you found Adams blundering around in the dark he was complaining that he wanted to get out but couldn't find the exit. (Naturally he would!) He said that he knew he should follow the green lights, but when he did he only got deeper into the labyrinth of rooms. But how could that have been if he
had
followed the green lights? Any one of them would have taken him directly into the straight, monkeyshineless corridor leading to the exit. Then he
hadn't
followed the green lights. Since he could have no reason to lie about it, it must simply have meant, I reasoned, that he
thought
he had been following the green lights but had been following the red lights instead, since he continued to blunder from room to room.”

“But how—”

“Very simple. Color blindness. He's afflicted with the common type of color blindness in which the subject confuses red and green. Unquestionably he didn't know that he had such an affliction; many color-blind persons don't. He had expected to make his escape quickly, before the body was found, depending on the green light he had previously heard the barker mention to insure his getaway.

“But that's not the important point. The important point is that
he claimed to be an artist
. Now, it's almost impossible for an artist to work in color and still be color blind. The fact that he had found himself trapped, misled by the red lights, proved that he was not conscious of his red-green affliction. But I examined his landscape and seascapes in the paint box and found them quite orthodox. I knew, then, that they weren't his; that he was masquerading, that he was not an artist at all. But if he was masquerading, he became a vital suspect!

“Then, when I put that together with the final deduction about the source of light, I had the whole answer in a flash. Phosphorus paint—paint box. And he had directly preceded Hardy into the House.… The rest was pure theatre. He felt that he wasn't running any risk with the phosphorus, for whoever would examine the paint box would naturally open it
in the light
, where the luminous quality of the chemical would be invisible. And there you are.”

“Then my husband—” began Mrs. Clarke in a strangled voice, staring down at the unconscious murderer.

“But the motive, my friend,” protested Monsieur Duval, wiping his forehead. “The motive! A man does not kill for nothing. Why—”

“The motive?” Ellery shrugged. “You already know the motive, Duval. In fact, you know—” He stopped and knelt suddenly by the bearded man. His hand flashed out and came away—with the beard. Mrs. Clarke screamed and staggered back. “He even changed his voice. This, I'm afraid, is your vanishing Mr. Clarke!”

The Adventure of the Bleeding Portrait

Natchitauk is the sort of place where the Gramatons and Eameses and Angerses of this world may be found when the barns are freshly red and the rambler roses begin to sprinkle the winding roadside fences. In summer its careless hills seethe with large children who paint vistas and rattle typewriters under trees and mumble unperfected lines to the rafters of a naked backstage. These colonials prefer rum to rye, and applejack to rum; and most of them are famous and charming and great talkers.

Mr. Ellery Queen, who was visiting Natchitauk at Pearl Angers' invitation to taste her scones and witness her
Candida
, had hardly more than shucked his coat and seated himself on the porch with an applejack highball when the great lady told him the story of how Mark Gramaton met his Mimi.

It seems that Gramaton had been splashing away at a watercolor of the East River from a point high above Manhattan when a dark young woman appeared on a roof below him, spread a Navajo blanket, removed her clothes, and lay down to sun herself.

The East River fluttered fifteen stories to the street.

And after a while Gramaton bellowed down: “You! You woman, there!”

Mimi sat up, scared. There was Gramaton straining over the parapet, his thick blond hair in tufts and his ugly face the color of an infuriated persimmon.

“Turn over!” roared Gramaton in a terrible voice. “I'm finished with that side!”

Ellery laughed. “He sounds amusing.”

“But that's not the point of the story,” protested the Angers. “For when Mimi spied the paintbrush in his hand she did meekly turn over. And when Gramaton saw her dark back under the sun—well, he divorced his wife, who was a sensible woman, and married the girl.”

“Ah, impulsive, too.”

“You don't know Mark! He's a frustrated Botticelli. To him Mimi is beauty incarnate.” It appeared, too, that no Collatinus had a more faithful Lucrece. At least four unsuccessful Tarquins of the Natchitauk aristocracy were—if not publicly prepared—at least privately in a position to attest Mimi's probity. “Besides, they're essentially gentlemen,” said the actress, “and Gramaton is such a large and muscular man.”

“Gramaton,” said Ellery. “That's an odd name.”

“English. His father was a yachtsman who clung barnaclelike to the tail of a long line of lords, and his mother's epidermis was so incrusted with tradition that she considered Queen Anne's death without surviving issue a major calamity to the realm, inasmuch as it ended the Stuart succession. At least, that's what Mark says!” The Angers sighed emotionally.

“Wasn't he a little hard on his first wife?” asked Ellery, who was inclined to be strait-laced.

“Oh, not really! She knew she couldn't hold him, and besides she had her own career to think of. They're still friends.”

The next evening, taking his seat in the Natchitauk Playhouse, Ellery found himself staring at the loveliest female back within his critical memory. No silkworm spun, nor oyster strained, that dared aspire to that perfect flesh. The nude dark glowing skin quite obliterated the stage and Miss Angers and Mr. Shaw's aged dialogue.

When the lights came on Ellery awoke from his rhapsodizing to find that the seat in front of him had been vacated; and he rose with a purpose. Shoulders like that enter a man's life only once.

On the sidewalk he spied Emilie Eames, the novelist.

“Look,” said Ellery. “I was introduced to you once at a party. How are you, and all that. Miss Eames, you know everybody in America, don't you?”

“All except a family named Radewicz,” replied Miss Eames.

“I didn't see her face, curse it. But she has hazel shoulders, a tawny, toasty, nutty sort of back that … You
must
know her!”

“That,” said Miss Eames reflectively, “would be Mimi.”

“Mimi!” Ellery became glum.

“Well, come along. We'll find her where the cummerbunds are thickest.”

And there was Mimi in the lounge, surrounded by seven speechless young men. Against the red plush of the chair, with her lacquered hair, child's eyes, and soft tight backless gown, she looked like a Polynesian queen. And she was altogether beautiful.

“Out of the way, you cads.” Miss Eames dispersed the courtiers. “Mimi darling, here's somebody named Queen. Mrs. Gramaton.”

“Gramaton,” groaned Ellery. “My
bête blonde
.”

“And this,” added Miss Eames through her teeth, “is the foul fiend. Its name is Borcca.”

It seemed a curious introduction. Ellery shook hands with Mr. Borcca, wondering if a smile or a cough were called for. Mr. Borcca was a sallow swordblade of a man with an antique Venetian face, looking as if he needed only a pitchfork.

Mr. Borcca smiled, showing a row of sharp vulpine teeth. “Miss Eames is my indefatigable admirer.”

Miss Eames turned her back on him. “Queen has fallen in love with you, darling.”

“How nice.” Mimi looked down modestly. “And do you know my husband, Mr. Queen?”

“Ouch,” said Ellery.

“My dear sir, it is not of the slightest use,” said Mr. Borcca, showing his teeth again. “Mrs. Gramaton is that
rara avis
, a beautiful lady who cannot be dissuaded from adoring her husband.”

The beautiful lady's beautiful back arched.

“Go away,” said Miss Eames coldly. “You annoy me.” Mr. Borcca did not seem to mind; he bowed as if at a compliment and Mrs. Gramaton sat very still.

Candida
was a success; the Angers was radiant; Ellery soaked in the sun and rambled over the countryside and consumed mountains of brook trout and scones; and several times he saw Mimi Gramaton, so the week passed pleasantly.

The second time he saw her he was sprawled on the Angers jetty, fishing in the lake for dreams. One came, fortunately escaping his hook—she bobbed up under the line, wet and seal brown and clad in something shimmery, scant, and adhesive.

Mimi laughed at him, twisted, coiled against the jetty, and shot off toward the large island in the middle of the lake. A fat hairy-chested man fishing from a rowboat she hailed joyously; he grinned back at her; and she streaked on, her bare back incandescent under the sun.

And then, as if she had swum into a net, she stopped. Ellery saw her jerk; tread water, blink through wet lashes at the island.

Mr. Borcca stood on the island's beach, leaning upon a curiously shaped walking stick.

Mimi dived. When she reappeared she was swimming on a tangent, headed for the cove at the eastern tip of the island. Mr. Borcca started to walk toward the eastern tip of the island. Mimi stopped again.… After a moment, with a visible resignation, she swam slowly for the beach again. When she emerged dripping from the lake, Mr. Borcca was before her. He merely stood still, and she went by him as if he were invisible. He followed her eagerly up the path into the woods.

“Who,” demanded Ellery that evening, “is this Borcca?”

“Oh, you've met him?” The Angers paused. “One of Mark Gramaton's pets. A political refugee—he's been vague about it. Gramaton collects such people the way old ladies collect cats.… Borcca is—rather terrifying. Let's not talk about him.”

The next day, at Emilie Eames's place, Ellery saw Mimi again. She wore linen shorts and a gay halter, and she had just finished three sets of tennis with a wiry gray man, Dr. Varrow, the local leech. She sauntered off the court, laughing, waved to Ellery and Miss Eames, who were lying on the lawn, and began to stroll toward the lake swinging her racket.

Suddenly she began to run. Ellery sat up.

She ran desperately. She cut across a cloverfield. She dropped her racket and did not stop to pick it up.

There was Mr. Borcca following her flight with rapid strides along the edge of the woods, his curiously-shaped stick under his arm.

“It strikes me,” said Ellery slowly, “that
someone
ought to teach that fellow—”

“Please lie down again,” said Miss Eames.

Dr. Varrow came off the court swabbing his neck, and stopped short. He saw Mimi running; he saw Mr. Borcca striding. Dr. Varrow's mouth tightened and he followed. Ellery got to his feet.