The Siamese Twin Mystery (25 page)

“There are?”

“Certainly.” Ellery waved a weary hand. “But he had a precedent. With his trained legal mind—he was sharp, don’t doubt that—he saw his opportunity. You see, the name of the murderer was on his lips just before he lost consciousness. When he came to, it was still there, waiting. He remembered the cards. His mind was clear. Then the murderer came. Helpless, he was forced to swallow the oxalic acid from the vial. The cards were on his mind. … Oh, it’s not the strangest thing that’s happened.”

“You don’t like it?” said the Inspector slowly.

“Eh? Nonsense!”

Ellery went to one of the windows and looked out upon the crimsoning world. The Inspector joined him in silence, putting his right hand on the window and resting his weight against it in a tired, dejected attitude.

“Fire’s a damned sight worse,” he muttered. “Cripes, my head’s like a pumpkin! It’s always at the back of my mind. Feel that blast of heat? … And then there’s the crime—the crimes. What the devil
did
Xavier mean by that jack of diamonds?”

Ellery half turned away from the window, his shoulders sagging. Then he stiffened and his eyes went wide. He was glaring at the Inspector’s hand on the window.

“What’s the matter now?” said the Inspector peevishly, glancing at his hand. Then he too stiffened, and for a moment both of them stared at his small delicate blue-veined hand with its loose and wrinkled skin quite as if a finger were missing.

“My ring!” gasped the Inspector. “It’s gone!”

“N
OW THAT,” SAID ELLERY
slowly, “
is
remarkable. When did you lose it?” Instinctively he glanced at his own hand, on which gleamed a very odd and beautiful ring, a medieval trinket which he had picked up not long before in Firenze for a few lire.

“Lose it!” The Inspector threw up his hands. “I didn’t lose it, El. I had it only last night, this morning. Why, I remember seeing it on my fourth finger about twelve-thirty, when I looked at my watch.”

“Come to think of it,” scowled Ellery, “I recall seeing it on your finger before I left you to take a nap last night, and I
didn’t
see it when I found you on the floor at two.” His lips tightened. “By thunder, it’s been stolen!”

“Now there,” said the Inspector sarcastically, “is a deduction. Sure it’s been stolen. Stolen by that thieving scoundrel who put me to sleep and knocked Xavier off!”

“Undoubtedly. Hold those straining horses of yours.” Ellery was pacing up and down now with furious strides. “I’m more fascinated by the theft of your ring than by anything that’s happened so far. How risky! And all for what? For a ten-dollar plain gold wedding band of the old-fashioned sinker variety that wouldn’t fetch a dollar Mex at a pawnshop!”

“Well,” said the Inspector shortly, “it’s gone. And, by God, I’ll have the eyeteeth of the so-and-so who stole it. It belonged to your mother, my son, and I wouldn’t have taken a thousand dollars for it.” He started for the door.

“Here!” cried Ellery, catching his arm. “Where are you going?”

“To search every damn one of ’em down to their skins!”

“Nonsense, dad. Look here,” said Ellery eagerly. “Don’t spoil everything. I tell you that ring is a—is the
case
! I don’t know why, but when I recall the previous thefts of valueless rings …”

“Well?” said the Inspector with drawn brows.

“It fits somehow. I know it does. But give me time. You won’t accomplish anything by searching people and places. The thief certainly isn’t stupid enough to have kept it on his person, and even if you turn it up in the house somewhere you won’t know who hid it. Let it ride, please. For a while, anyway.”

“Oh, very well. But I’m not forgetting it. And before we get out of this place—if we ever do—I’ll have it or know the reason why.” Had he been able to look into the near future he would not have spoken so confidently.

With the inexorable advance of the fire a deadly stillness settled down upon
Arrow Head
and its little band of helpless tenants. They were physically and mentally exhausted, and spiritually demoralized. Not even the menace of the bloodstained invisible creature in their midst could overshadow the greater menace that was creeping upon them from the air and the woods. There was no longer any attempt at dissimulation. The women were frankly hysterical and the men pale and worried. With the advance of day the heat became intolerable. The air was filled with drifting ashes which smudged their skins and clothes and made breathing a pain. There was no haven to which they could flee. The interior of the house was a shade less hot than the open summit, but here there was no breeze and the stillest of air. Yet few of them—the women especially—dared go alone to seek the temporary relief of the showers in their personal lavatories. They were afraid to be alone—afraid of one another, of the silence, of the fire.

Amiable conversations had died entirely. Driven to the group by their individual fears, nevertheless they sat and glared at one another with the most naked suspicion. Their nerves were stripped raw. The Inspector wrangled with Smith; Miss Forrest snapped at Dr. Holmes, who lapsed into the most stubborn of silences; Mrs. Xavier spoke sharply to the Carreau twins, who were haplessly wandering about; Mrs. Carreau flew to their defense; the two women had bitter words. … It was horrible and nightmarish. With the heavy smoke eddying about them ceaselessly now, they might have been creatures in torment consigned to an eternal hell by a particularly cynical Satan.

There was no longer any flour. They ate together, bitterly and without appetite, at the communal table in the dining room, taking what nourishment they could from the eternal tinned fish. From time to time their eyes went to the Queens without hope. They all seemed to recognize, in their apathy, that if salvation was to come it would come at the hands of father and son. But the Queens ate stolidly, saying nothing for the excellent reason that there was nothing to say.

After luncheon they did not seem to know what to do. Magazines were picked up and riffled and glanced through with eyes that did not see; people wandered about; no one said anything at all. By reason of some curious development they seemed to be taking the murder of Mark Xavier more tragically than the murder of the master of the house. The tall lawyer had been a definite personality; reticent, dour, frowning, his presence had always charged the atmosphere of a room with positive electricity; and now that he was no longer among them they felt his absence so keenly that the silence was a pain.

And all the while they coughed, and their eyes smarted, and they sweltered in their clothes.

The Inspector could stand it no longer. “Now look here!” he shouted suddenly, startling them into rigidity. “This can’t keep on. We’ll all go batty. Why don’t you get along upstairs and duck under showers, or play tiddledy-winks or something?” He waved his arms, red of face. “Why don’t you stop this milling about like a herd of cows with their tongues torn out? Go on, all of you! Git!”

Dr. Holmes sucked a white knuckle. “The ladies are afraid, Inspector.”

“Afraid! Afraid of what?”

“Well, of being alone.”

“Hmm. There’s somebody here who isn’t afraid of the devil out of hell.” Then the old gentleman softened. “Well, that’s understandable, I suppose. If you want to,” and his voice grew cynical again, “we’ll escort you all to your rooms, one by one.”

“Oh, don’t jest, Inspector,” said Mrs. Carreau wearily. “It—it’s just that it gets on one’s nerves.”

“Well, I think the Inspector’s perfectly right,” exclaimed Miss Forrest, dropping a six-month-old copy of
Vanity Fair
on the floor with a thud. “
I’m
going upstairs and drown myself in mountain water and I defy any—any
two
murdering rascals to stop me!”

“That’s the spirit,” said the Inspector with a shrewd glance at her. “And if you’ll all get yourselves into the same frame of mind, we’ll be a lot better off. This is the twentieth century, and it’s daytime, and you’ve all got eyes and ears, so what the deuce are you afraid of? Shoo, the lot of you!”

And so, after a while, the Queens were left alone.

They drifted out upon the terrace, shoulder to shoulder, a pair of sorely harassed and miserable men. The sun was high and it broiled the almost volcanic rocks outside until they shimmered in the heat. The vista was comfortless and devastating.

“Might’s well stew here as inside,” grunted the Inspector, and he sank into a chair. His face was streaming grime.

Ellery dropped beside him, groaning.

They sat there for a long time. The house inside was oppressively quiet. Ellery’s eyes had closed and his hands were loosely clasped on his chest as he lay slumped on his spine. They suffered the heat to fry their aching bones without vocal protest, sitting as still as they could.

The sun began to droop toward the west. It sank lower and lower and the two men sat still. The Inspector had drifted into a troubled doze; he sighed in his sleep convulsively from time to time.

Ellery’s eyes were closed, too, but he was not asleep. His brain had never been more alert. The problem. … He had already gone over it in his mind a dozen times, probing for loopholes, striving to recall unimportant details, or details that might be important but did not seem to be. One never knew. There was something about the first
murder,
a matter of scientific fact, that kept bobbing to the surface of his thoughts. But each time he strove to catch and fix it, it slipped away only to submerge again. And then there was that knave of diamonds. …

He sat up as if he had been shot, tingling in every fiber. The Inspector’s eyes flew open.

“What’s the matter?” he mumbled sleepily.

Ellery sprang from the chair and then stood still, listening. “I thought I heard …”

Alarmed, the old man rose. “Heard what?”

“In the living room.” Ellery started across the terrace toward the French windows on the other side.

There was a scuffling sound from the direction of the living room and the two men halted, tensed. Out of one of the French windows stepped Mrs. Wheary, red as a lobster, her hair wet and disheveled, a dustcloth in her hand. She was breathing heavily.

She halted on catching sight of the two men and beckoned mysteriously. “Inspector Queen, Mr. Queen, sir. Would you mind coming—? There’s something very queer …”

They hurried to the nearest window and peered inside. But the room was empty.

“What’s queer?” said Ellery sharply.

The housekeeper pressed a grimy hand to her bosom. “I—I heard someone doing something, sir. …”

“Come, come,” said the Inspector impatiently. “What’s up, Mrs. Wheary?”

“Well, sir,” she whispered, “not having anything to do, I mean cooking and such, and feeling a—a little nervous, I decided to try and straighten things up a bit on the ground floor. We’ve been that upset, you know, sir, what with—with …”

“Yes, yes?”

“Anyway, everything being so cindery and all, I thought I’d run over the furniture with a cloth and try to get things a little clean again.” She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the empty room. “I started in the dining room and was just about half through when I heard a funny sound from—from the living room here.”

“Sound?” Ellery frowned. “We didn’t hear anything.”

“It wasn’t very loud, sir. Just a sort of pecking—I can’t describe it. Anyway, I thought maybe someone might have come back to the living room for a magazine or something, you see, and was going to keep on when I thought: ‘Perhaps it’s—something
else
.’ So I tiptoed to the door and started to open it as softly as I could—”

“That was very brave, Mrs. Wheary.”

She blushed. “I guess I must have made some noise with the door, sir, because when I’d opened it a bit and peeped in … there wasn’t anything, you see. The noise must have scared—whoever—it was away, and he—she—oh, sir, I’m all mixed up!”

“You mean whoever it was heard you coming and beat it back through the hall door,” snapped the Inspector. “Well, is that all?”

“No, sir. I went in,” faltered Mrs. Wheary, “and almost the first thing I saw … I’ll show you.”

She stepped heavily back into the living room and the Queens followed with drawn brows.

She led them across the big room in the direction of the fireplace. Her fat forefingers shot up and pointed accusingly at the walnut-stained metal door of the wall cabinet in which the Inspector had placed for safekeeping the pack of playing cards found on Dr. Xavier’s desk the morning of the first murder.

There were scratches on the stout lock, and on the floor directly beneath lay a thin-edged fire tool from the fireplace.

“Someone’s been at the cabinet,” muttered the Inspector. “Well, I’ll be double-damned.”

He strode forward and examined the marks on the door with a professional eye. Ellery picked up the fire tool, regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, and then tossed it aside.

“Hunh,” grunted the Inspector. “Just like trying to pick the lock of a bank vault with a matchstick. But why the devil did he do it? There’s nothing in here but that pack of cards.”

“Very curious,” murmured Ellery. “
Very
curious. I suggest you open our little cache, dad, and see what’s to be seen.”

Mrs. Wheary stared at them with open mouth. “Do you think—” she began with an inquisitive gleam in her eyes.

“What we think, Mrs. Wheary, we think,” said the Inspector severely. “You did a good job in keeping your eyes and ears open, but now you’ve got to do an even better job keeping your mouth shut. D’ye understand?”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

“That’s all, then. Go back to your dusting.”

“Yes, sir.” Rather reluctantly she went away, closing the door of the dining room behind her.

“Now let’s see,” growled the old gentleman, whipping out his key wallet. He found the key to the cabinet and opened the door.

Ellery started. “I see you’ve still got that key.”

“Sure I’ve still got the key.” The Inspector stared at him.

“And that’s another very curious item. By the way, I suppose this is the only key to the cabinet?”