The Siamese Twin Mystery (21 page)

“Well?” he muttered, licking his lips.

“Just a moment,” came the Inspector’s dry impersonal voice from behind. “Stay where you are, Xavier. El, come here.”

Ellery went to his father’s side and they conversed in an earnest undertone for some minutes. Finally Ellery nodded and turned back to the company.

“I must announce after proper consultation a most successful set of tests,” he said cheerfully. “Mr. Xavier, you might sit down at the table here. This may take a few minutes.” The lawyer sank into the bridge chair, still clutching the piece of pasteboard. “Good. Now listen carefully, all of you.”

It was an unnecessary injunction; they were sitting forward, enthralled spectators at a gripping play.

“If you will recall my little lecture in legerdemain not long ago,” continued Ellery, taking off his pince-nez and polishing the lenses, “no doubt you remember that I demonstrated several things of importance. I demonstrated for one thing that since Dr. Xavier was right-handed the piece of card we found in his right hand was wrongly placed; that had he torn the card the fragment would have remained in his left hand, since his right hand would have done all the work of tearing, crumpling, and throwing away. I concluded from this, too, that since the card was in the wrong hand Dr. Xavier had not torn the card; consequently, it was not he who left a ‘clue’ to the identity of the murderer. The card pointed to Mrs. Xavier as the murderer. But if the victim had not left the clue, then the clue is not authentic, is not evidence, and in effect becomes merely the inspired machination of one who attempted to frame Mrs. Xavier for the murder of her husband, trying to make it appear that he had accused her by this fantastic method. Who, I said in conclusion, could that one be—who but the murderer himself! You recall?”

They recalled. The evidence of their fascinated eyes answered.

“The problem resolved itself, then, into this: Find the person who
really
tore that six of spades in half, and we should have our murderer.”

Mr. Smith astonished them all, including the Queens, by rumbling at this point in a mocking
basso profundo:
“That’s a good trick—if you can do it.”

“My dear Mr. Smith,” murmured Ellery, “it has been done!”

Mr. Smith shut his mouth very abruptly.

“Yes,” continued Ellery with a dreamy survey of the ceiling, “there was a nice clue pointing to the murderer’s identity, you know. It was before my eyes for so long that I blush now to think, of my blindness. But I suppose one can’t see everything.” He lit a cigaret deliberately. “However, it is now very clearly seen indeed. The clue, needless to say, is on the card—the torn card, the torn
half
of the card crumpled by the murderer and thrown to the floor near the dead body of Dr. Xavier. What is the clue? Well, he must thank the fire for its existence. The finger smudge on the card, caused by the universal soot.”

“The smudge,” muttered Xavier.

“Precisely. Now how was the smudge placed? How had the murderer torn the card? How does anyone tear a card? Well, you demonstrated one of the two methods a moment ago Mr. Xavier; I’ve been doing it for hours now, and I think we may say that in tearing a card in half one of two methods is used. The more common method is to place the tips of the thumbs together on the edge to be torn, so that the thumbtips meet and the thumbs are at an acute angle to each other; the other fingers are on the other side of the card. Now we tear—with our thumbs fortunately sooty. What happens? The pressure of the thumbs in tearing—or rather of one thumb in holding the card firm and the other in exerting the pull or push—leaves oval thumb-marks: one in the upper right-hand corner of the left half, which is to say the print of the left thumb; the other in the upper left-hand corner of the right half, which is to say the print of the right thumb. In designating right and left I am imagining, of course, that I am holding the card squarely before me and that what I call the left-half of the card is on
my
left, you see.” He puffed thoughtfully for a moment. “The other method is virtually the same as the first, except that the thumbs at the top of the card point diagonally
downward
toward each other, rather than diagonally upward. The oval thumbmarks remain in the same corners I have just described, except of course that they point down toward each other, not up. In any event, the effect—the effect I am about to describe—is substantially the same. What have we?”

They were hanging intently on every word.

“Well,” drawled Ellery, “let’s re-examine the crumpled half found on the floor of Dr. Xavier’s study. Let’s smooth it out, turn it around so that the thumb print is at the top. Why at the top? Because everyone tears from the top down, not from the bottom up. That’s why I said the second method doesn’t substantially differ in effect from the first. The thumbprint, despite the difference in angle, is still relatively in the same corner of the card, and it’s the thumbprint of the same hand. Now, holding the smoothed piece in the position it must have taken when the card was torn, what do we see?” He puffed again. “That the torn edge of the card is on the
right,
that the thumbprint is pointing diagonally upwards toward the upper
right-hand
corner or, to express it in other words, that it was the
left
thumb which left its smudge there, and consequently the left hand which held that torn and crumpled half of the card!”

“You mean,” whispered Miss Forrest, “that a left-handed person—”

“You’re sharp, Miss Forrest,” smiled Ellery. “That’s exactly what I do mean. The murderer’s left hand had held that half. The murderer, then had crumpled that half in his left hand and thrown it away with his left hand. The left hand, then,
did all the work. Ergo,
as you say, the murderer of Dr. Xavier and the framer of Mrs. Xavier was left-handed.” He paused briefly to study their puzzled faces. “The problem resolved itself, therefore, into discovering which of you ladies and gentlemen, if any, was left-handed.” The puzzlement vanished, to be replaced by alarm. “That was the purpose of our slightly grotesque tests tonight.”

“A trick,” said Dr. Holmes indignantly.

“But an extremely essential one, Doctor. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t so much a test to acquire knowledge as a little research into the psychology of guilt. I knew before we conducted the tests who was right-handed and who was not, purely from recollected observations. I knew, too, from the same source that none of you is ambidextrous. Now there were three people whom we’ve neglected to test tonight: Mrs. Xavier and the Carreau boys.” The twins started. “But Mrs. Xavier, aside from the fact that she was framed and would scarcely have framed herself, is also right-handed, as I’ve had occasion to note many times. As for the twins, preposterous as even the theoretical notion of their guilt is, Francis on the right is naturally right-handed, as I’ve also observed; and Julian on the left, who is left-handed, has his left arm broken and in a cast, making digital manipulation impossible. And,” he added dryly, “since I’m thorough in all things, I’ve proved to my own satisfaction that the only way the lads could have achieved the effect of those thumbprints under the circumstances would have been by crossing their adjoining hands and tearing—a procedure so pointless that it need not be considered. … Well, now!” His eyes glittered. “Who among the rest of you is left-handed? Do you recall what you did tonight, all of you?”

They stirred uneasily biting their lips, frowning.

“Ill tell you what you did,” continued Ellery softly. “Miss Forrest, you picked up the revolver and attempted to discharge it with you right hand. Mr. Smith, you held the revolver in your left hand. But polished it clean with your right. Dr. Holmes, you conducted your mock-examination of my theoretically dead body, I am happy to report, with your right hand almost exclusively. Mrs. Wheary, you snapped the switch with your right hand, and you, Bones, struck a match with your right hand. Mrs. Carreau held the deck of cards in her left hand and dealt with the right—”

“Hold up,” grunted the Inspector, coming forward again. “We’ve got just what we want now. I might explain that Mr. Queen conducted these experiments for my benefit, to prove who was right-handed and who wasn’t. I hadn’t noticed before.” He produced a pencil and paper from one of his pockets and suddenly slapped them down upon the bridge table before the astonished lawyer. “Here, Xavier, I want you to act as our recording secretary. This is a little memorandum to the Sheriff of Osquewa, Winslowe Reid—if and when he gets here.” He continued irritably without pausing: “Come, come, man, don’t sit there dreaming. Write, will you?”

It was all so neat and smooth and noiselessly efficient. The whole psychological effect had been calculated to the last nice detail The irritability of the Inspector, impersonally directed at his head, caused Xavier to snatch up the pencil, his lips working, and poise it above the sheet.

“Write this now,” growled the Inspector, pacing up and down. “ ‘My brother, Dr. John S. Xavier—’ ” the lawyer wrote quickly, with brutal jabs of the pencil, his face pale as death—“ ‘murdered in his study on the ground floor of
Arrow Head,
his residence situated on Arrow Mountain in Tuckesas County, fifteen miles from the nearest seat of jurisdiction, Osquewa, met his death by shooting at the hand of—’ ” the Inspector paused, and the pencil in Mark Xavier’s left hand trembled, “ ‘at the hand of
myself
!’ Now sign your name, damn you!”

For a suspended moment, an interval without duration, there was utter silence. They sat forward in their chairs bleakly, without movement, struck dumb.

The pencil dropped from Xavier’s fingers and his shoulders humped with an instinctive defensive contraction of his muscles. His bloodshot eyes were glassy. Then before any of them could stir he was out of the chair, a coordinated organism of terrified nerves and unmanned flesh. The table turned over as he leaped. He bounced the few steps to the French window nearest the table and crashed out upon the terrace.

The Inspector woke up. “Stop!” he shouted. “Stop, I tell you! Or I’ll stop you with a bullet!”

But Xavier did not stop. He scrambled over the terrace rail, landing with a crunching thud on the gravel below. His figure began to fade out as he receded farther from the light shining from the gameroom.

They rose in unison, without moving from their places, and craned out into the darkness, mesmerized. Ellery stood very still, cigaret checked an inch before his lips.

The Inspector uttered a curious sigh, reached into his hip pocket, drew out his service revolver, snapped the safety catch off, leaned against the side of one of the tall windows, aimed at the ghostly dodging figure, and deliberately fired.

T
HEY WERE ALL TO
carry the ghastly memory of that fantastic scene for the remainder of their lives. Themselves turned to stone, the gray little old gentleman leaning against the window, revolver, incredibly in hand, the snort of flame and smoke, the crashing report, the staggering of the almost invisible man running for cover … and then his single scream, sharp and unpleasant as a harpy’s, ending in a thick bubbling gurgle as abruptly as it had begun.

Xavier vanished.

The Inspector adjusted the safety catch, stowed the weapon in his hip pocket, brushed his lips with the same deadly hand in a queer gesture, and then trotted out onto the terrace. He clambered over the rail and with difficulty lowered himself to the ground below.

Ellery awoke, then, and darted out of the room. He vaulted the terrace rail and sped past his father into the darkness.

Their movement broke the spell. In the gameroom Mrs. Carreau swayed and steadied herself on Francis’s shoulder. Miss Forrest, wholly colorless, uttered a choked little cry and sprang forward at the same time that Dr. Holmes, with a gasp, urged his leaden legs toward the window. Mrs. Xavier sank into her chair, her nostrils fluttering. The twins remained rooted to the floor, stricken.

They found the crumpled figure of Xavier on the rocks outside, prone and still. Ellery was on his knees, feeling for the man’s heart.

“Is he—he—?” panted Miss Forrest, stumbling up.

Ellery looked up at his father, who was staring down. “He’s still alive,” he said tonelessly, “and there’s blood on the tips of my fingers.” Then he got slowly to his feet and examined his hands in the quarter light.

“Take care of him, Doc,” said the Inspector quietly.

Dr. Holmes was on his knees, fingers probing. He looked up almost at once. “Can’t do anything here. You must have touched his back, Queen, because that’s where he’s wounded. He’s still conscious, I think. Help me, please, quickly.”

The man on the ground groaned once and from his lips came another bubbling gurgle. His limbs twitched spasmodically. The three men raised him gently and carried him up the steps of the porch, across the terrace and into the gameroom. Miss Forrest followed hastily, with one sick glance over her shoulder into the darkness.

In silence they deposited the wounded man on a sofa near the piano, face down. In the full light of the room his broad back became the focal point of their eyes. A little to the right below the shoulder blade there was a dark round hole raggedly circled by a dark red stain.

His eyes on the stain, Dr. Holmes was stripping his coat off. As he rolled up his sleeves he murmured: “Mr. Queen. My surgical kit on one of the tables in the laboratory. Mrs. Wheary, a large pan of hot water at once, please. The ladies had better go away.”

“I can help,” said Miss Forrest swiftly. “I’ve been a nurse—Doctor.”

“Very well. The others please go. Inspector, have you a knife?”

Mrs. Wheary blundered from the room and Ellery went out of the doorway leading into the cross-hall, opened the corridor door to the laboratory, stumbled about until he found the switch, and immediately saw upon one of the laboratory tables a small black bag with the initials
P. H.
lettered upon it. He avoided looking in the direction of the refrigerator. Snatching up the bag he ran back to the gameroom.

None of them had moved, despite Dr. Holmes’s admonition. They seemed fascinated by the physician’s deft fingers, the low groans of Xavier. Dr. Holmes was ripping the lawyer’s coat up the back with the keen blade of the Inspector’s penknife. When he had severed the coat he slit the wounded man’s shirt and undershirt, revealing the naked bullethole.