The Finishing Stroke (15 page)

He stared and stared at the pencil-markings. ‘That's certainly a water symbol.'

‘That thing under it looks like a pair of pliers,' Dr. Dark protested. ‘What do pliers have to do with anything?'

‘Not pliers, Doctor. Don't you see? An extremely simplified drawing of a fish with a flowing tail. Water and fish, as announced. Water and fish …'

Most of them sat up late, seeking the dubious cheer of their host's champagne copiously while WJZ pursued the New Year to the Golden Gate. Then Ellen volunteered to cook up a mess of scrambled eggs and chicken livers, after which – somehow – Ellery found himself in a Stygian niche somewhere with two soft arms around his neck and a pair of perfumed lips on his and a voice, which was certainly Ellen's, murmuring ‘Happy New Year', which was undeniably pleasant, even exciting, but – Ellery recalled thinking – advanced nothing.

It was almost 5 am before he fell into the chair in his bedroom and fumbled for his diary. In spite of the enveloping haze, Ellery managed to complete the entry for December 31st. His last paragraph had a desperate tone:

The pictures when they occur are crude, crude …
Crude
. Could they be meant to appear primitive? Cave drawings? American Indian? … Hieroglyphics! Could that be the key? If so, they're ideographic. They do resemble Egyptian ideographs, especially this last pair of symbols … But so what, so what? What do the damned things
mean
? I mean, I know what they stand for – water, fish – but what does
that
mean?

10 Eighth Night:
Wednesday, January 1, 1930

In Which John Receives the Gift of a Head, Ellery Pursues a Phantom, and Inspector Queen Comes New Year Calling at an Odd Hour

It could not be said that Mr. Queen greeted the dawn of 1930 with hope. For one thing, when he opened his eyes it was five minutes of one on Wednesday afternoon. For another, when he tottered to the window to gaze upon the bright new world he found it universally grey, with clouds as thick as the inside of his head, the air with a sludgy quality, and rain the obvious fate of the day. ‘Ring out the false, ring in the true,' Lord Tennyson had written, but Ellery doubted that the bells clanging in his skull foretokened any such millennium.

The shrinking snow looked like a pall.

When he slunk downstairs, he found further cause for depression. Ellen was waiting for him armed with aspirin, a tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce concoction, and a pot of coffee, and that was good; but the glow in her cheeks and the light in her eyes were not good, not good at all. He tried very hard to remember what had happened after the kiss in the dark niche, but a fog overlay the night. She
clung
to him this afternoon. As if …

Ellery shuddered and gulped another cup of coffee.

Ellen crooned, ‘Poor dear,' and the way she held on to him when they went into the living room had him Fighting panic.

The room was strewn with the bodies of the survivors, trying apathetically to read their newspapers. Ellery reached pointedly for an unused one, hoping that the lovely parasite for whom he had become a host would sense his wish to suffer alone. Not so. She clung intimately as she steered him to a piece of furniture he recognized with a start as a love seat. They sank into it, inseparable.

‘Read your paper, darling,' the parasite said softly in his ear. ‘I'll just sit here and … look at you.'

He read with desperation. New York police had made 19 liquor raids during the New Year's Eve gaieties. Mayor Jimmy Walker was being sworn in today for his second hilarious term. General Smuts of South Africa had arrived on his first United States visit and told reporters that the horrors of modern war would undoubtedly outlaw it … He read on, blindly.

The arrival of Rusty and John from a tramp outdoors rescued him. Ellery jumped up, said rapidly. ‘Excuse me, Ellen, I've been wanting to talk to John, be seeing you –' and made his escape.

‘Ave, Caesar,' Rusty hailed him. ‘You could do lots worse.'

‘What?' Ellery asked stupidly.

‘Ellen's a lovely girl.'

‘Yes. Well. Good morning, you two. How are the heads?'

‘Which one?' Rusty said.

‘Mine is still with me,' John grinned, ‘though for an anxious moment this morning I didn't think it would make it.'

‘At least you had an excuse.'

‘A what?' John said.

‘I refer to the Embarrassing Incident of the Mews,' Ellery said hollowly.

‘Of the
what
?'

‘That business in the stable yesterday, John. The big smooch scene.'

John grinned. ‘Who was the lucky man?'

‘Oh?' Ellery glanced at Rusty.

She was pale today. ‘It doesn't matter, Ellery. Anyway, it was silly. The best thing to do is forget it.'

‘Forget what, for heaven's sake?' John demanded.

Ellery looked at him. He was about to say something when Valentina drifted into the room like Lady Macbeth. Rusty murmured, ‘ 'Scuse us, Ellery, we need coffee like
mad
,' and virtually ran John into the dining room.

Ellery would have smiled grimly, except that the mere thought made him wince.

Happily, the Rose Bowl game was being broadcast by WEAF. Listening to Graham McNamee's running account of the Southern California 47–14 victory over Pitt – arguing afterward that it did not compare for thrills with last year's Rose Bowl game, when Roy Riegels, California's centre and captain-elect, retrieved a Georgia Tech fumble and incredibly took off for his own goal line, to give the Southerners an 8–7 victory – got them through what was left of the day, and by the time they had consumed Mrs. Janssen's dinner the evening was well along.

Ellen was still clinging to Ellery. ‘I wonder who's going to find the box tonight,' she said as they made for the living room.

Behind them Marius said, ‘Who cares?' and pushed by. They saw the light come on in the music room and heard Marius lift the lid of the grand piano. The lid immediately crashed. Marius ran in brandishing a small Christmas package done up in red and green metallic paper, with gilt ribbon and a Santa Claus tag.

‘In the piano, by God!' Marius yelled.

Ellery took the package from him. The familiar ‘John Sebastian' inscription had been typed on the tag.

‘Don't open it,' John snarled. ‘I don't want to see it.'

‘John.'

Rusty went to him quickly. She pulled him down into a chair and stroked his forehead as if he were a child.

‘Same typewriter,' Ellery said. Then he shrugged and tore the wrappings from the package.

The white card in the box said:

John was rigid on the edge of the chair,

Ellery removed the red tissue paper from the object in the box. It was the head of a rag doll, apparently severed from the body with a scissors. The original face had been obliterated by white paint, and on the white paint had been painted in black two features: a single closed eye at the upper left and, centred toward the bottom, a slash of hard straight line, evidently intended to represent a closed mouth.

Ellery looked from the doll's head to the back of the white card, but it was blank.

Then John said, ‘A warning I will die,' and sprang from the chair. Rusty put her fingers to her mouth. ‘All
right
,' John said. ‘I can't treat this any longer as if it's a rotten gag, or the vapourings of a sick mind, or whatever the hell it is. I can't go on with the rest of you pretending this is a holiday get-together of congenial people – going through the social motions, eating, chatting, playing games, listening to the radio, sleeping . . . as if nothing out of the way was happening. I'm fed up. Who's after me? What do you want?
What have I done?
'

And that brought Ellery up against the massive wall that had thwarted him from the beginning. Knowing now what he knew about John, it was still beyond the bounds of credence that this should be a performance, a demonstration feigned for the occasion. John was
afraid.
He was almost out of his mind with fear. He could not possibly be behind the gift boxes. He knew nothing about them.

John ran out. They heard the pound of his shoes on the stairs. They heard him snatch open a door, slam it … lock it.

One by one they got out of their chairs and muttered or mumbled something and crept upstairs to seek safety in their rooms. The sound of keys turning over in locks became the sinister rattle of musketry.

When Ellery finished writing in his diary he looked at his watch and saw that it was still only a little past 10.30. The house was as still as if the hour were four in the morning.

Perversely, New Year's Eve head notwithstanding, he did not feel sleepy. He began to pace his floor.

He had never in his life wanted so much to solve a problem. It had nothing to do with the murder. The little old man on the library rug seemed far away. That was a sane aberration, anyway. Sooner or later the mysterious victim would be identified, sooner or later his identification would unlock the puzzle of who had driven the Etruscan dagger into his back.

But these boxes, with their fantastic contents. That was a puzzle for fools … or madmen … or someone like himself who had been born with the tapeworm of curiosity, driving him in perpetual hunger toward answers. That was what had steered him across the orchestra floor of the Roman Theatre through the labyrinth of the Monte Field case. Or had that been a fluke … a ‘Roman' candle, he thought with irony, bursting for one brilliant moment and then dying forever?

He refused to believe it.

There's an answer here, he thought, something ties these objects together, something no doubt enormously simple. All he had to do was see it.

Ellery sat down and seized his head.

So far, eight nightly boxes. Making four to go, if there was any logic in this at all. No point in trying to anticipate the nature of
those
… Eight boxes, containing all told 13 objects. 14, if you counted the palm on which the ‘spot' had been drawn – the palm as differentiated from the hand of which it was really a part. But ‘palm' had been emphasized by the typist with the spacing-out device … Say 14, then. Eight – 14. Was there a mathematical relationship? If so, it was obscurer than Egyptian hieroglyphics before Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone … Hieroglyphics ! Ellery actually bolted up. But then he lay back and closed his eyes.

Assume the number so far as 14 … An ox. A house. A camel. A door. A window. A nail. A fence. A hand. A palm. A whip. Water. A fish, An eye – a
closed
eye. A mouth – a
closed
mouth … See no evil, speak no evil? That left out the ear. Or was the ear coming?

Three are animals, if you lump the fish with the ox and the camel. Five relate to a house. Four are parts of a body-specifically, of a human body. Leaving whip and water, which fit nowhere. Animals, house, parts of body, water and whip …

He tried various combinations. Ox and whip went together. Yes, but where did they lead? Nowhere … Camel. Camel and eye.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
That might be John, who would soon be rich enough. A warning? ‘Don't take your patrimony, or you'll find yourself sizzling in Hell'? Then why not say so! … House, window. ‘People who live in glass houses …' That was interesting; that had possibilities. The secret in John's past? ‘Don't blackmail me and I won't blackmail you.'? … Nail. ‘For want of a nail the battle was lost …'

After a while Ellery gave up. It was a problem for Einstein, he thought – Albert
or
Izzy; both specialized in cracking cases with dreadful contents.

He looked at the bed; it did not invite him.

I'll read awhile, he thought. I'll get a book from the library and read myself to sleep.

He had not yet undressed. He let himself out into the dim corridor and crept downstairs. The living room was dark except for the glow of the fireplace embers, and he snapped on his pencil flashlight. But he snapped it off at once. There was a light in the library. Had Felton forgotten to turn it off? Or –?

Ellery's skin tightened. He crossed the room softly.

Someone was in the library, a motionless Figure with slack legs under a dressing gown and one chillingly limp hand draped over the arm of the leather wingchair.

Ellery peered.

It was John.

John, sitting there under the reading lamp as if …
A warning you will
die.

Ellery leaped into the library and stopped short. He almost cried out in relief. There was a book in John's lap; he was breathing, slowly and quietly. Restless, he had probably had the same impulse as Ellery. He had come downstairs for something to read and had fallen asleep over the book.

Ellery stooped to shake John awake. But then, stopped by a diffidence he did not attempt to analyze, he straightened without touching the sleeping man and tiptoed to the nearest shelf. It displayed some new and recent books, among them one entitled
How Like a God
by someone named Rex Stout, published by Vanguard. It was a first novel, Ellery recalled, and the
New York Herald Tribune
review of it had said something about its ploughing ‘straight, deep furrows through the black soil in which Gabriele D'Annunzio and D. H. Lawrence staked out claims.' Ellery decided to investigate this literary nova; he took the Stout book from the shelf and quietly went out.

After the light in the library the darkness in the living room was profound, and it took him some time to make his way to the hall. Here the glow from the upper hall helped him, and he ran upstairs lightly, book under his arm. Reaching the landing, he turned into the corridor – and froze.

John was walking up the hall toward his bedroom.

There was no mistaking him, even with his back turned and in the feeble light. It was John, and he had
not
passed Ellery on the stairs, and yet – again – he had reached the upper hall first!

Ellery called out sharply, ‘John?'

John did not turn around. John did not stop. The instant he heard Ellery's voice, John ran.

Ellery said grimly, ‘Okay, Brother Jonathan,' and he ran, too.

John ran past his bedroom door. He dashed to the end of the corridor, turned right, and vanished.

Ellery put his head down and ran faster.

The chase that followed was a bruising experience in all ways. It took place in hellish darkness through the unused wings of the house, in and out of unoccupied but cluttered rooms, and in silence except for the pad of toes and the occasional assaults of furniture on various parts of the Queen anatomy. By the time he remembered to use his pencil flashlight he was one all-inclusive ache, he had lost his quarry, and he was thoroughly disgusted with himself.