“Oh, sure I was. Certainly I was!”
“So you know every one who went in and came out this afternoon. Why, Frank old man, you might be able to clear this case up right now.”
“Yeah?” said Frank.
“Think, now. Who went in and out?”
Frank drew his sparse brows together. “Well, let’s see now. Let’s see. Not Mr. Spaeth. I mean—him.” He jerked a dirty thumb toward the ell where the coroner’s physician was working. “I didn’t see him all day. … You mean after the auction?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“After the auction. … Well, the crowd petered out. So did the cops. A little while later Miss Moon drove out. She came back about four o’clock. Shopping, I guess; I saw packages. Her aunt, Mrs. Moon, is away in Palm Springs. Did she come back yet?”
“No,” said Glücke, as man to man.
Frank scraped his lean chin. “Let’s see. I guess that’s all. … No, it ain’t!” Then he stopped and looked very frightened. “I mean, I guess—”
“You mean you guess what, Frank?” asked Glücke gently.
Frank darted a hungry glance at the door. Walter sat up straighter. Val held her breath. Yes? Yes?
“Well,” said Frank.
“Some one else came this afternoon!” snapped the Inspector, mask off. “Who was it?” Frank backed away. “Do you want to be held as a material witness?” thundered the Inspector.
“N-no, sir,” chattered Frank. “It was him. Around half-past five. Half-past five.”
“Who?”
Frank pointed a knobby forefinger at Rhys Jardin.
“No!” cried Val, springing out of the chair.
“Why, the man’s simply mad,” said Rhys in an astonished voice.
“Hold your horses,” said Glücke. “You’ll get your chance to talk. Are you sure it was Mr. Jardin, Frank?”
The gateman twisted a button on his coat. “I—I was sitting in the booth reading the paper… yes, I was reading the paper. I heard footsteps on the driveway, so I jumped up and ran out and there was Mr. Jardin walking up the drive toward the Spaeth house—”
“Hold it, hold it,” said Glücke. “Did you leave the gate unlocked?”
“No, sir, I did not. But Mr. Jardin had a key to the gate—everybody in
San
Susie’s
got one—so that’s how he must have got in.”
“Was there a car outside?”
“I didn’t see no car.”
“This is a joke,” began Rhys, very pale. The Inspector stared at him, and he stopped.
“By the way,” drawled Ellery, “if you came out of your warren, Frank, and saw a man walking
away
from you, how can you be so sure it was Mr. Jardin?”
“It was Mr. Jardin, all right,” said Frank stubbornly.
Glücke looked irritated. “Can’t you give me a better identification? Didn’t you see his face at all?”
“I won’t
stand
here—” cried Val.
“You’ll stand here and like it. Well, Frank?”
“I didn’t see his face,” mumbled Frank, “but I knew it was him, anyway. From his coat. From his camel’s-hair coat. I knew him.”
Walter very slowly slumped back against his chair. Val flashed a glance of pure hatred at him and Rhys sat down, jaws working, in the chair she had vacated.
“Oh, come,” said Ellery with amusement. “Every second man in Hollywood wears a camel’s-hair coat. I wear one myself. Are you sure it wasn’t I you saw, Frank? I’m about the same size as Mr. Jardin.”
Anger shone from Frank’s eyes. “But your coat ain’t torn,” he said shortly.
“Oh,” said Ellery; and the Inspector’s face cleared.
“Torn, Frank?”
“Yes, sir. This afternoon, when Mr. Jardin left after the auction, his coat caught on the handle of his car and tore. Tore a flap right down under the pocket on the right side, a big piece.”
“I thought you said,” remarked Ellery, “that you saw only the man’s back.”
“He was walkin’ slow,” muttered Frank, with a malevolent glance at his tormentor, “like he was thinking about something, and he had his hands behind his back under his coat. So that was how I saw the pocket and the rip. So I knew it was Mr. Jardin.”
“Q.E.D.,” murmured Ellery.
“I even called out to him, I said: ‘Mr. Jardin!’ in a real loud voice, but he didn’t turn around, he just kept walking. So I went back to the booth. Like he didn’t hear me.”
“I absolutely insist—” began Val in an outraged voice, when a man came in and held up something.
“Look what I found,” he said. It was a long narrow strip of tan camel’s-hair cloth tapering to a point.
“Where?” demanded Glücke, seizing it.
“On top of one of those stakes on the fence. Right over the spot where the bench was pushed.”
The Inspector examined it with avid fingers. “It was torn already,” he mumbled, “and when he climbed over the fence the torn piece caught and ripped clean away the length of the coat from the pocket down.” He turned and eyed Rhys Jardin deliberately. “Mr. Jardin,” he said in a cold voice, “where’s your camel’s-hair coat?”
The room was drowned in a silence that crushed the eardrums. By all the rules of romantic justice Walter should have jumped up and explained what had happened, how he had taken Rhys’s coat by mistake, how—But Walter sat there like a tailor’s dummy. Val saw why with acid clarity. He could not acknowledge having worn her father’s coat without admitting he had lied. He had said he never entered the grounds at all. Yet it was clear now that he
had
entered the grounds with the key he also carried, that Frank had mistaken him for Rhys Jardin because of the torn coat, and that he had gone up to his father’s house and… And what?
And
what
? Was that—Val said it to herself in a chill small voice—was that why Walter had lied? Was that why he had hidden or thrown away the telltale coat? Was that why he sat there so dumbly now, letting the police think Rhys had gone into Spaeth’s house about the time Spaeth had been skewered?
Val knew without looking at him that her father was thinking exactly the same thoughts. It would be so easy for him to say—or for her—to Glücke: “Now look here, Inspector. Walter Spaeth took that coat by mistake this afternoon, and Frank mistook him for me. I haven’t even got the coat. I don’t know where it is. Ask Walter.” But Rhys said nothing. Nothing. And as for Val, she could not have spoken now if her life depended on one little word. Oh, Walter, why don’t you explain, explain?
“So you won’t talk, eh?” said the Inspector with a wry grin. “All right, Mr. Jardin. Frank, did any one but Miss Moon and Mr. Jardin enter
Sans
Souci
after the auction today?”
“N-no, sir,” said Frank, half out of the room.
“Walewski, when you took over from Frank, was Mr. Ruhig the only one you admitted—and then you both found the dead body of Spaeth?”
“That is the truth, sir!”
Glücke waved his hand at the gateman with a certain grim weariness. “Let ’em go home,” he said to a detective. “And get that Moon woman in here.”
The thought began to pound in Val’s ears now. The more she tried to shut it out the stronger it came back.
Walter, did you murder your father?
W
INNI
M
OON
had been weeping. She paused at the door in an attitude of pure despair, a black handkerchief to her eyes. Fast work, thought Mr. Ellery Queen admiringly; in mourning already! It was Mr. Queen’s habit to observe what generally escaped other people; and so he now detached a metamorphosis in Attorney Anatole Ruhig. Mr. Ruhig, who had been taking everything in with admirably restrained impersonality, suddenly with Miss Moon’s tragic entrance became excited. He ran over to her and held her hand, whispering a sympathetic word—to her quickly suppressed astonishment, Mr. Queen also noticed; he ran back and pulled up a chair and took her shoulders—he had to reach up for them—and steered her gallantly to the chair, like an orthodox Chinese son. Then he took up his stand behind her, the picture of a man who means to defend beauty from contumely and calumny with his last breath.
Mr. Queen wondered ungraciously if Mr. Ruhig meant, now that Solly Spaeth had gone to join the choir invisible, to assume responsibility for Miss Moon’s nebulous career.
Miss Moon began to weep afresh. “All right, all right,” said Inspector Glücke hastily. “This won’t take long, and then you can cry your eyes out. Who killed Solly Spaeth?”
“I know who’d
wike
to!” cried Winni, lowering her handkerchief just long enough to glare at Rhys Jardin.
“You mean Mr. Jardin?”
At this new peril Val felt her skin tighten. That insufferable clothes-horse! But she was too steeped in more pointed miseries to do more than try to electrocute the sobbing beauty with her glance.
“Yes, I do,” said Miss Moon, turning off the tears at once. “He did nothing but quawwel and quawwel with poor, darling Solly. Nothing! Last week—”
“Winni,” said Walter in a choked voice, “shut that trap of yours—”
Now, thought Val,
now
he was talking!
“Your own father, too!” said Winni viciously. “I will not, Walter Spaeth. You know it’s twue. Last Monday morning he and Solly had a
tewwible
battle about the floods and the factowies and ev’wything! And only this morning he came over again and thweatened him—”
“Threatened him,” repeated Glücke with satisfaction.
“He said he ought to be
hanged
, he said! He said he ought to be cut up in little
pieces
, he said! He said he was a
cwook
! Then I didn’t hear any more—”
“The woman was obviously listening at the door,” said Rhys, his brown cheeks slowly turning crimson. “It’s true, Inspector, that we had a quarrel. But—”
“It’s also true,” said the Inspector dryly, “that you quarrelled because Spaeth caused the collapse of Ohippi.”
“Yes,” said Rhys, “and ruined me, but—”
“You lost everything, eh, Mr. Jardin?”
“Yes!”
“Solly made you a poor man, while he cleaned up a fortune.”
“But he ruined thousands of others, too!”
“What’s this ape trying to do, Rhys,” yelled a familiar voice, “hang this killing on you?” And Pink bounced into the room, his red hair bristling.
“Oh, Pink,” cried Val, and she fell into his arms.
“It’s all right,” said Rhys wearily to a panting detective.
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“Listen, you,” snarled Pink to Glücke, “I don’t give a damn if you eat bombs for breakfast. If you say Rhys Jardin pulled this job you’re just a dumb, one-cylinder, cock-eyed heel of a liar!” He patted Val’s hair clumsily. “I would have come sooner, only I didn’t know till I got here. Mibs told me where you went.”
“All right, Pink,” said Rhys in a low voice, and Pink stopped talking. Inspector Glücke regarded him speculatively for a moment. Then he shrugged.
“You’re a sportsman, aren’t you, Mr. Jardin?”
“If you’ll make your point—”
“You’ve won golf championships, you’re a crack pistol shot, you beat this man Pink in the California Archery Tournament last spring, you’ve raced your yacht against the best. You see, I know all about you.”
“Please come to the point,” said Rhys coldly.
“You fence, too, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Glücke nodded. “It isn’t generally known, but you’re also one of the best amateur swordsmen in the United States.”
“I see,” said Rhys slowly.
“He even twied to teach Solly!” shrilled Miss Moon. “He was always twying to make him exercise!”
The Inspector beamed. “Is that so?” he said. And he turned and pointedly looked up at the puce-colored wall above the fireplace. A collection of old weapons hung there, decorative pieces—two silver-butted dueling pistols, a long-barreled eighteenth-century rifle, an arquebus, a group of poinards and dirks and stilettos, a dozen or more time-blackened swords: rapiers, sabers, scimitars, jeweled court-swords. High above the rest lay a heavy channeled blade such as were carried by mounted men-at-arms in the thirteenth century. It lay on the wall obliquely. A thin light streak in the puce paint crossed the medieval piece in the opposite direction, as if at one time another sword had hung there.
“It’s gone!” squealed Winni, pointing at the streak.
“Uh-huh,” said Glücke.
“But it was there at only four o’cwock!”
“Was that when you saw Spaeth last, Miss Moon?”
“Yes, when I came back fwom shopping. …”
“Is it polite to inquire,” murmured Mr. Queen, “what the beauteous Miss Moon was doing between four o’clock and the time Mr. Spaeth was murdered?”
“I was in my boudoir twying on new gowns!” cried Miss Moon indignantly. “How dare you!”
“And you didn’t hear anything, Miss Moon?”
Ruhig glared. “If you’ll tell me what right—”
“Listen, Queen,” snarled Glücke. “You’ll do me a big favor if you keep your nose out of this!”
“Sorry,” said Ellery.
Glücke blew a little, shaking himself. “Now,” he said in a calmer tone. “Let’s see what that sticker was.” He went to the fireplace with the air of a stage magician about to demonstrate his most baffling trick, and set a chair before it. He stepped up on the chair, craning, and loudly read the legend on a small bronze plaque set into the wall below the streak in the paint. “‘Cup-hilted Italian rapier, seventeenth century,’” he announced. And he stepped down with an air of triumph. No one said anything. Rhys sat quietly, his muscular hands resting without movement on his knees. “The fact is, ladies and gentlemen,” said the Inspector, facing them, “that Solly Spaeth was stabbed to death and an Italian rapier is missing. We’ve pretty well established that it’s gone. It isn’t in this house and so far my men haven’t found it on the grounds. Stab-wound—sword missing. It looks as if Solly’s killer took the rapier down from the wall, backed Solly into that corner there, gave him the works, and beat it with the sword.”
In the stillness Mr. Queen’s voice could clearly be heard. “That,” he complained, “is precisely the trouble.”
Inspector Glücke slowly passed his hand over his face. “Listen, you—” Then he turned on Jardin and snapped: “You weren’t by any chance trying to teach Solly a few tricks with that sword this afternoon, were you?”
Rhys smiled his brief, charming smile; and Val was so proud of him she could have wept. And Walter, the beast, just sat there! “Figure it out for yourself,” said the Inspector amiably. “Frank says you were the only outsider to enter
Sans
Souci
late this afternoon. We have the missing piece from your coat in substantiation, and we’ll have the coat very shortly, I promise you.”