“That was Sergeant Velie of my staff,” he said slowly. “He has just returned from Philadelphia. His news removes the last doubt. From what he tells me it appears I’m wrong about Esther’s motive in confessing to a crime she didn’t commit. That’s just one more detail to be cleared up. She can’t have been shielding her daughter, because to do that she had to know Karen Leith was dead. And she couldn’t have known Karen Leith was dead. That reference to ‘saving my sister’s life’ must have meant something else.”
“What has Velie found out?” asked Ellery harshly.
“That Esther Leith MacClure was dead forty-eight hours before her body was found! She committed suicide
last
Saturday
night
. And Karen Leith wasn’t murdered until Monday afternoon. So that makes your mother, Miss MacClure, doubly innocent – and you as guilty as hell!”
Eva with staring eyes and a wild cry jumped from the couch and rushed past Ritter into the hall. They heard her clattering down the stairs; they heard the bang of the front door mingled with her sobbing breaths before they could move a muscle.
“Eva,” groaned Dr. MacClure, and he sank on to the couch.
The Inspector shouted, and Ritter, his mouth open, stirred himself. But somehow before he could get through the doorway there was Terry Ring in his way. And as they collided Ritter fell heavily, roaring with astonishment.
“I’ll get her for you, pop,” said Terry Ring in a hard flat voice: and Inspector Queen stared at the .38 automatic in Terry’s hand and remained where he was; and Ritter, sprawled on the floor, chose immobility, too. “I’ll find her. I always did want to be a cop,” said Terry grimly; and before they knew it, he was gone after Eva, and the door, with its key on the sitting-room side, was closed in their faces.
Then the most surprising thing of all occurred. They had all forgotten little Kinumé. Little Kinumé went quietly to the door – so quietly they could only gape – turned the key in the lock, pattered across the room, and under Inspector Queen’s nose tossed the key through the iron bars of the sitting-room window out into the garden.
“Damn!” screamed Inspector Queen, finding his tongue again. He danced up and down, brandishing his fists over Ritter’s outstretched neck. “I’ll give them what for! I’ll show “em! This is a conspiracy, a – a … Lunkhead! Fool! Shoemaker!” He yanked at Ritter’s collar. “Break down that door!”
Ritter scrambled to his feet and began futilely to lunge at the stout panels.
“Escape, will they? Run, will they? They’ve hanged themselves!” The old man scuttled for the bedroom door.
“What are you going to do?” asked Dr. MacClure, staring.
“Have a warrant made out,” shouted the Inspector, “charging ’em with murder and accessory murder – that’s what!”
Mr. Ellery Queen rang the bell of his own apartment. And after some time Djuna opened the door, looking frightened.
“It’s all right,” said Ellery, walking briskly into his living-room; but there was no one there. “Djuna, lock the front door. I say,” he called out irritably, “it’s all right, you maniacs!”
Terry Ring stuck his head out of Ellery’s bedroom. “Well, don’t call out the reserves. Come on, kid.”
Eva crept out of the bedroom and dropped into the over-stuffed chair, to crouch in one corner of it with her arms crossed over her chest, as if she were chilly. Terry looked at the revolver in his hand, flushed, and stowed it away.
“Now,” said Ellery, scaling his hat aside, “what in tunket’s name was the brilliant idea, Eva? Have you gone out of your mind?” Eva looked miserable. “Running away! And you, Terry. I thought you had more sense.” He lit a cigaret in disgust.
“So did I,” said Terry bitterly. “At least, I used to have. Give me a fag, will you? I’ve been handing her hell.”
Ellery offered his case. “You pulled a gun on my father!”
“I did not. It just came out of my pocket and that fool Ritter got in my way. Well, what could I do? She’s absolutely the most helpless female I’ve ever seen. She doesn’t know
anything
. I couldn’t leave her alone. They’d have picked her up on the first street corner.”
“I’ve made a mess of everything,” said Eva hollowly. “How is daddy? I – I didn’t think of him when I ran.”
“I’ve sent him home. How do you think he is?” Ellery scowled at her. “Broken up, of course. He took Kinumé with him. The old lady’s got more spunk than any of us.”
She looked at him. “What shall I do?”
“If I had any more sense than you two I’d say give yourself up,” snapped Ellery. “But I’ve been afflicted with the same mental disease. Of course you realize this can’t go on. Sooner or later you’ll be found.”
“She’s in the safest place in New York,” drawled Terry, flinging himself on the divan and smoking at the ceiling. “Imagine pop’s face when he finds out where she’s been!”
“You have the most perverted sense of humor. Imagine his face when he finds out I’ve connived at it!”
“Terry’s told me,” said Eva limply. “How you gave him your own key at Fung’s. I don’t know why you two men are so kind –”
“Yeah,” said Terry. “What are you yowling about? Using this place as a hideout was
your
idea.”
“Well, suppose it was! It’s all so damned silly.” Ellery glared at his cigaret. “You’d think this girl was the first to be a suspect in a murder case. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m disgusted with myself.”
“I told you,” said Terry. “She’s got the queerest way of making sane men go screwy. I don’t understand it myself.”
“Sometimes I think –” Eva hid her face. “Sometimes I think I really did kill Karen – in a bad dream, not knowing, not –”
Ellery paced restlessly. “This kind of talk won’t help. We can’t shut out reality any more. We’re face to face with it at last. At the most you have a few hours of freedom, and after that – it’s behind the bars.”
“I’m ready to give myself up now,” whispered Eva. “When he – he said those things something made me run. You always run away from what frightens you. Call him, Mr. Queen.”
“Shut up,” growled Terry from the divan. “You can’t back out now – now you’ve got to stick it out. Maybe something will happen.”
“A miracle?” Eva smiled humorlessly. “I’ve made a mess of everything. Everybody I touch is touched by … Like Mother. Like my Mother.” She paused, and then said suddenly: “It’s like a curse. Does that sound absurd? But I’ve got you into trouble, Terry, and I’ve given daddy only heartache, and made Mr. Queen lie to his father, and –”
“Shut up!” yelled Terry. He got off the divan and began to follow Ellery around the room. Djuna watched them, bewildered, from a crack in the kitchen doorway. The two men circled each other blindly, like men in a fog.
“There’s no use keeping quiet any more,” mumbled Terry. “She’s in your hands, Queen – so am I, as far as that goes. It’s all balled up. I guess I haven’t exactly covered myself with glory. It’s …”
Eva closed her eyes and lay back against the chair.
“Look,” said Terry. “Karen Leith got in touch with me a week ago Thursday. She told me about Eva’s mother – only she didn’t call her that. Just something about a friend staying with her, who was a little sick in the head, and that this friend had taken it on the lam during a ‘spell,’and she was afraid the poor thing would come to some harm, and wouldn’t I please find her without any publicity and bring her back. It sounded cockeyed, after I got the description – it seems the blonde woman had ducked out during the night without being spotted. I scouted around; I was suspicious. I don’t like funny cases. I even got into that attic without the Leith woman knowing. I saw enough to tell me that something was pretty much off-color. But I took the case – she insisted she didn’t want the police in on it – and got to work.”
Ellery stopped pacing. He sat down and sucked on his cigaret. Eva lay in the big chair watching the brown man’s every move.
“Well, it wasn’t hard.” Terry flung his butt into the dead fireplace. “I got on her trail – traced her via the Penn. R.R. – right into Philadelphia. I tried O”Dell there, at Headquarters, but they didn’t know anything. Anyway, it was detail after that – a taxi driver – you know the technique. I kept reporting to Karen by phone, not telling her how hot I was. Wanted to find out what it was all about. I’d already made it my business to size up the layout – who the Leith woman was, about Doc MacClure, about Eva – but none of it made sense.
“On Monday morning I found her. In that rooming-house. I got into the house, into her room without that old she-weasel of a landlady seeing me. I found her dead of poison.” He glanced at Eva, and away. “I’m sorry, kid.”
Eva felt that she could never experience an emotion again. She was dry and empty inside, like a sun-baked gourd.
“I saw right away she’d poisoned herself, and that she’d been dead a couple of days. I didn’t see the suicide note, because I didn’t touch anything. I began to figure. Should I tell the Leith woman or not? Should I tip off the police? Finally I decided to go back to New York and have it out with Karen – see what she said. The whole thing struck me as funny as hell. So I went back without telling anybody Esther was dead. The landlady must have found her late Monday night by accident. Let’s have another butt.”
Ellery gave him one in silence.
“I got back to New York late Monday afternoon. I already knew Karen had an appointment with a Headquarters detective for five o”clock, because she’d told me so Sunday over the ’phone, when she fired me. So I figured she must be pretty scared about that blonde woman if she was willing to go to the police after saying she didn’t want “em. I ’phoned from the drugstore on University Place, and there was no answer. I figured I knew something nobody else knew, and if there was anything hot on the fire, I wanted my hunk of it.” He muttered apologetically: “You know how it is in my business.”
“And no one answered,” mused Ellery. “In other words, Karen Leith died without learning that her sister was dead?”
“I guess so. Well, I beat it up to the house and found Eva.” Terry scowled again. “After I helped the kid, I was on the spot. I knew Esther couldn’t have pulled the Leith job, because I knew she was dead before Karen was. At the same time, I wanted to give the kid here all the time there was. That body in Philadelphia was my ace in the hole. If I saw the kid in a bad jam, I was going to see to it that the proper identification was made … Anyway, I played for time, and here we are at the deadline. Your old man’s finding out about that attic door spoiled everything.”
“And that’s all, Terry? You’re sure that’s all?”
Terry looked him in the eye. “I’m on the square now, Queen. That’s all I know, so help me.”
“Oh, Terry,” said Eva; and he went to her and looked down at her and she looked up at him. And then he stooped and put his arms around her in an awkward, embarrassed way, and she clung to him.
Ellery sat and smoked furiously.
Fifteen minutes later Ellery looked up. “Eva.” She turned her head vaguely from Terry’s arms. Ellery sprang to his feet. “While you were lying on the couch in the sitting-room – before you discovered your aunt’s body – didn’t you hear a sound coming from the bedroom?”
“Your father asked me that Monday. No, I didn’t.”
“You’re sure?” he said mechanically. “Think, Eva. Any movement, the sound of a scuffle, an outcry, a scrap of talk?”
Eva drew her brows together. Movement, scuffle …
“There may be a clue there,” muttered Ellery. “There’s a piece missing. If I could get my hands on it … Think, Eva!”
The oddest thing was ringing in her head – a harsh sound that baffled description, some sonic curiosity trembling on the verge of remembrance. What was it? What was it? While she was reading the book …
“I know!” she cried. “The bird!”
Terry mumbled: “The bird?”
“That bird! It squawked!”
“Oh, lord,” said Ellery; his fingers, putting the cigaret to his mouth, were shaking slightly. “The Loo-choo jay!”
“It’s just coming back to me. I even remember now thinking what an awful voice it had – so inhuman and annoying.”
“The Loo-choo jay,” repeated Ellery in a wondering voice. “So that’s it!”
“What?” asked Terry swiftly. “What is it?” Eva and he sat up straight, staring at Ellery.
“The key to this whole business,” said Ellery, pacing and smoking like a madman. “If it’s only possible! Didn’t you say – one of you; I don’t recall which – that the cage was empty when you entered the bedroom just after the crime?”
“Sure it was empty,” began Terry, and then he stopped to look puzzled. “Say, how could Eva have heard the bird squawk if the damned thing wasn’t there?” He seized Eva by the shoulders. “Or was it? Was it in the bedroom when you went in? It wasn’t when I got there!”
Eva wrinkled her forehead. “I’m sure it wasn’t. I’d remember if it had been flying about, or if it flew out. And now that I think of it, I’m sure it wasn’t in the cage. No, it wasn’t there.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“Of course,” said Ellery half-aloud, “it’s possible the bird wasn’t actually in the room. It may have been outside, and Eva heard it from … Wait a minute.”
He ran to the bedroom. “Eva! What’s your home ’phone number?” Eva gave it to him. They heard him seize the telephone, give the number. “Hello! … Oh. Well, let me speak to Dr. MacClure.”
Eva and Terry were in the doorway, watching, puzzled, but aware of a tightness in the atmosphere that seemed to be strangling uncertainty and squeezing out hope.
“Dr. MacClure! This is Ellery Queen.”
“Have you found her, Queen?” asked the doctor hoarsely.
“Are you alone?”
“With Venetia, my colored woman. And Kinumé. Well?”
“Yes. She’s at my apartment. Safe for the moment.”
“Thank God!”
Ellery said eagerly: “Let me speak to –”
But Dr. MacClure said in an agitated voice: “Just a second. There’s the doorbell. If I don’t return in a few moments, hang up. It may be your father or one of his men. Queen – take care of Eva!”
Ellery waited, drumming on the telephone table. In the doorway Terry and Eva crept closer together.
“It’s all right,” said Dr. MacClure with relief. “It was only that O”Mara girl. The Inspector let her go and she’s come up here for the money I promised her.”