American Gun Mystery (30 page)

Ellery sighed.

After a century the telephone bell rang in the room. Both Grants and Kit started convulsively.

“Sit still, all of you,” said the Inspector gently. “Ellery, take that call. Must be from Knowles, or Thomas.”

Ellery went to the telephone. He listened blankly for several moments, and then hung up.

“Well?” demanded the Inspector without taking his eyes from Grant’s hands.’

Grant did not move a muscle. Almost in agony his eyes were fixed on Ellery’s lips. It was quite like the scene in a courtroom, when the jury has filed in and the prisoner sits staring at the lips of the foreman for the verdict which will mean life or death.

Ellery muttered: “The Sergeant reports it’s the same automatic that killed Horne and Woody.”

Kit shuddered. Her eyes were wild with a feral emotion, and confused too, like the eyes of an animal blinded by sudden light and taut with the consciousness of danger.

“Put out your hands, Grant,” said the Inspector sharply. “I arrest you for the murder of Buck Horne and One-Arm Woody. And it’s my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you. …”

E
LLERY QUEEN,
GENT
., WAS
never an enthusiastic patron of the journalistic art. He read newspapers as infrequently as possible; the conservative ones bored him, he liked to say, and the lurid ones sickened him.

Nevertheless Monday morning found him on the sidewalk before Police Headquarters purchasing copies of four different morning sheets from a newsboy who accepted his coins with suspicious fingers.

But since there was no necessity for explaining this sudden change of habit to the newsboy, Ellery merely nodded and hurried into the big gray building.

He found Inspector Queen shouting in his battery of telephones. To this accompaniment he read the journals he had bought. The story of the capture of Wild Bill Grant was, of course this morning’s
piece de resistance.
The showman’s lined features stared at him from the front pages of the two tabloids, and less generously from the front pages of the two full-size papers. The banners variously described Grant as “fiend,” “pal-killer,” “Western bad man,” and “rodeo promoter.”

Curiously enough, Ellery read nothing beyond the headlines and prefatory paragraphs. Then he flung the papers aside, folded his hands pacifically, and regarded his father.

“Well, what’s happened this morning?” he asked cheerfully.

“Plenty. Grant’s mum—won’t talk, won’t say yes or no,” snapped the Inspector. “But we’ll break
that
down. The point is, we’ve got the gat. Knowles says there’s no question about the automatic from Grant’s room having been used in the two murders.” The Inspector paused, and something thoughtful came into his sharp eyes. “Funny,” he said slowly, “but it seemed to me Knowles was keepin’ something back. Knowles!” He shrugged. “Must be my imagination. The man’s a jewel. When do I get some explanations, darn you? The Commissioner’s been camping on my wire all morning.”

“Don’t tell me that gentleman’s interested in
reasons,
” murmured Ellery. “He’s been howling for results, hasn’t he? Well, you’ve given him results, haven’t you? You’ve delivered a murderer, F.O.B. New York, evidence clear—haven’t you? What more does he want?”

“Still,” said the Inspector, “he’s human enough to want to know how and why. And, come to think of it,” he added, eying Ellery suspiciously, “I’m a little curious myself. How’s it happen Grant leaves that gat lyin’ around loose that way? Pretty dumb for a slick killer, seems to me. Especially after the way he smuggled it out of the
Colosseum
twice under our noses. I think—”

“Don’t,” said Ellery. “Has Curly been around?”

“Hart at the Tombs called me up three times. The boy’s been making a pest of himself. Seems old man Grant won’t even see a lawyer—absolutely refuses. Can’t figure it. The boy’s frantic. And Kit—”

“Yes, what about Kit?” asked Ellery with sudden gravity.

The Inspector shrugged. “She’s been here to see me already this morning. Wants Grant prosecuted to the limit.”

“Very natural,” murmured Ellery, and seemed to find something distasteful in his cigaret.

Ellery hung about Police Headquarters all day. He wore an air of expectancy, and looked quickly up at the door every time a member of the Homicide Squad appeared to report to the Inspector. He smoked innumerable cigarets, and several times made telephone calls from a public booth in the main lobby downstairs.

He refused with a smile on three separate occasions during the afternoon to offer an explanation of the solution. He shook his head at District Attorney Sampson, three newspapermen from syndicates, and the Commissioner himself. At no time did he quite lose his head-cocked, waiting air.

But nothing out of the ordinary happened all day.

At six he and the Inspector left Headquarters and took the subway uptown.

At six-thirty they were sitting at a silent repast, and it was apparent that neither had his usually robust appetite.

At seven the doorbell rang and Ellery sprang to his feet. The visitor was Kit Horne—pale, distrait, very nervous.

“Come in,” said Ellery gently. “And sit down, Miss Horne. I’m glad you decided to come.”

“I—I scarcely know what to do or think,” she said in a low voice, as she slowly sat down in the armchair. “I don’t know where to turn. I’m completely—completely. …”

“Don’t blame you,” said the Inspector sympathetically. “It’s hard finding out the real streak in a man who’s seemed to be a friend. If I were you, though, I wouldn’t let this interfere with my feelings in—well, in other people.”

“You mean Curly?” She shook her head. “Impossible. Oh, it’s not his fault, but—”

The doorbell rang again, and Djuna jumped into the foyer. A moment later the tall figure of Curly Grant appeared in the doorway.

“What did you want me—?” he began; and saw Kit. They stared at each other wordlessly. Then she colored and half-rose. The man looked miserable, hung his head.

“No,” said Ellery in a fierce whisper, and she looked at him, startled. “I want you here. I want you here
particularly.
Don’t take it out on poor Curly. Please sit down, Miss Horne.”

She sat down.

Djuna, coached in advance, appeared with a tray. The awkward moment was bridged by the cheerful clink of ice and glasses; as if by tacit consent the talk turned to light things, and in ten minutes Ellery had them faintly smiling.

But as the minutes passed, lengthening into an hour, and then two hours, the talk languished; and even the Inspector began to grow restless. Ellery was in a fever. He was everywhere at once, speaking quickly, smiling, frowning, smoking, offering cigarets—quite as unlike the normal Ellery as it would be possible to conceive. Despite—perhaps because of—all his efforts, the gloom deepened. Each passing moment now seemed a year. Until finally even Ellery ceased his valiant efforts to disseminate cheer, and no one said anything at all.

It was “precisely at nine o’clock that the doorbell rang for the third time.

Without warning. It came in the midst of a heavy silence. It twitched the Inspector’s mustache, shocked Kit and Curly into rigidity, and raised Ellery from his chair like a yanked rope.

“No, Djuna,” he said quietly to the boy, who as usual had made for the door. “I’ll go myself. Excuse me,” and he darted into the foyer.

They heard the opening of the door. They heard a man’s deep tones. And they heard Ellery say, in a voice steady and dangerous: “Ah, come in, come in. I’ve been expecting you.”

Ellery loomed in the archway from the foyer, his face white as his linen. An instant later a tall man—taller than Ellery—appeared beside him on the sill.

There was an eternal moment, such a moment as life meets infrequently on the normal stream of time. Time for that moment gathered its energies and leaped, exploding, into the brain.

They all stared at the man in the archway, and the man in the archway stared back at them.

It was the man of the frightfully burnt cheek, the ill-clothed shambling Westerner who had vanished so mysteriously from the
Colosseum
the day before. … Benjy Miller. Under the brown skin of his unmutilated right cheek there was a deathlike pallor that matched the pallor of his worn knuckles as he clutched the jamb.

“Miller,” said the Inspector in bewilderment. “Miller,” and rose uncertainly from his chair.

Kit Horne gave vent to a formless choking sound that brought all eyes upon her. She was staring at Miller. The man in the doorway met her eyes for a brief instant, and then looked away, taking a quick step into the room. Kit bit her lip, looked from side to side, drew in her breath spasmodically, eyes filled with a terror that was beyond quelling.

“But what th’ devil—?” muttered Curly in an astonished way.

Ellery said in a barely audible voice: “Tell them.”

Miller paused a yard from the archway, his big hands clenched tightly. He licked his lips and said: “Inspector Queen, I killed—I killed—”

“What!” shouted the Inspector, springing to his feet. He flashed a furious look at Ellery. “You—What d’ye mean?
You
killed Buck Horne and Woody?”

Curly Grant swore softly to himself.

Miller’s fists unclenched, and clenched again.

Kit began quietly to sob.

And Ellery said: “He killed Woody, but he did
not
kill Buck Horne!”

The Inspector pounded the table in his fury. “By God, I’ll have the truth now if I go crazy tryin’ to get it! What’s all this foolishness? What d’ye mean—Miller killed Woody but didn’t kill Horne? The same gat was used!”

“And the same hand used it,” said Ellery wearily. “But Miller
couldn’t
have killed Buck Horne. You see, MILLER’S BUCK HORNE!”

“I
N FINE,” SAID ELLERY
Queen, “the non-essential colors vanished from our imaginary color-wheel, leaving—what? An iris of unmistakable spectrum-lines which clearly told the whole story.”

“Your obscure metaphor,” I said with some irritation, “leaves me rather more than cold. I’ll confess it’s still a deep, dark puzzle to my feeble brain. I know all the facts now, but I’ll be hanged if I can make any sense out of them.”

Ellery smiled. It was weeks after the solution of the Horne case; the reverberations had echoed off into the limbo of all forgotten crimes; the amazing and pitiful
denouement
was a thing of merely professional interest. For some reason which I could not fathom little was printed by the avid press that was comprehensible. Buck Horne had committed two murders in a remarkably clever manner; why, and a good deal of how, remained a mystery. And then there was the matter of the detective work which had led to the solution; nothing appeared in the papers concerning this, either, and I had been unable to find out why.

“What is it,” murmured Ellery, “that mystifies you?”

“The whole blasted business! But particularly how you solved the problem. And I might add,” I continued with some malice, “if you ever did solve those two minor problems you were in the dark about. For instance, what really did happen to the automatic in both crimes?”

Ellery chuckled and puffed away at his cigaret. “Oh, come now, J. J., surely you know me better than to accuse me at
this
stage in my career of faulty craftsmanship. Of course, I knew the essential answer—the interchange of personalities—only a few hours after the first body was found. …”

“What!”

“Oh, yes. It was really the result of an elementary series of deductions, and I’m astounded at the blindness of the people who worked with me.” He sighed. “Poor dad! He’s an excellent policeman, but he has no vision, no imagination. You need imagination in this business.” Then he shrugged and settled back comfortably. Djuna came in with an urn of coffee, and a platter of excellent brioches. “Suppose I begin,” said Ellery, “at the beginning.

“You see, despite the presence of thousands of persons at the scene of the crime, any one of whom might have been the criminal—and despite the unique and puzzling circumstances of the crime itself, I’m talking about the ‘Horne’ murder now—there were six facts which stood out prominently—”

“Six
facts?” I said. “That seems like a lot of facts, Ellery.”

“Yes, this case provided me with a plethora of clues, J.J. As I say, these six facts stood out prominently during the first night’s investigation as significant clues. Two of them—one physical, the other psychological—combined to tell me something that I alone knew from the very inception of the investigation. Suppose I take them up in order, drawing the inferences as I go—inferences which brick by brick built up the only possible theory that covered all the facts.”

He stared into the fire with a quizzical half-smile on his lips. “First,” he murmured, “the trouser belt around the dead man’s waist. Amazing thing, J.J. It told such a clear story! There were five buckle-holes, the second and third of which were characterized by-deep ridges in the leather running vertically across the holes—ridges left, patently, by repeated bucklings at those holes. Now Kit Horne—poor kid!—had told me that Buck had been in failing health for some time in the recent past, and in fact had lost weight. Mark that!

“Loss of weight—buckling-marks on the belt. Interesting juxtaposition of facts, eh? The significance struck me immediately. What did “Horne’s recent loss of weight mean in relation to the
two
buckle-ridges on the belt? Surely this: In normal times Horne had obviously buckled his belt at the
second
hole, as evidenced by the welt across the second hole; when later he began to lose weight he was constrained to buckle his belt at the
third
hole—that is, drawing his belt tighter as his girth lessened. Yet what did we find on the night of the murder of, presumably, Buck Horne? That the victim was wearing the belt, which fitted snugly, buckled at the
first
hole!”

He paused to ignite a fresh cigaret, and again—as I had so many times in the past—I reflected on the remarkable keenness of his perceptions. Such an unimportant little detail! I believe I remarked something to this effect.