The Four of Hearts (23 page)

Ty lunged forward again.

But somehow, by exactly what means they never knew, the pilot managed to shake them off. One moment they were all struggling on the floor and the next he was on his feet, goggles and helmet torn away from his flushed face, screaming: ‘You'll never hang
me!'

And before either of the men on the floor could get to his feet, the pilot darted to the door, wrenched it open, and flung himself out into the sky.

He bounced once on the metal wing.

His body hurtled towards the distant wrinkled face of the earth.

They watched that plummet dive with the paralysis of horror.

The tumbling figure waved frantic arms, growing smaller and smaller.

But no parachute blossomed, and the body became a shrinking mote that suddenly stopped shrinking and spread infinitesimally on the earth.

CHAPTER 21

EXCURSION INTO TIME

The field was the surface of a bubbling pot when they landed. Police were using their night-sticks. Men with cameras and men with notebooks were fighting openly to break through the cordon.

Ellery, one whisker askew, cooing over Bonnie, saw Inspector Glücke in a small army of detectives gesticulating near the hangar; and he grinned with the satisfaction of sheer survival.

‘It's all right, Bonnie,' he said. ‘It's all over now. You've got nothing more to worry about. That's right. Cry it out. It's all right.'

‘Just wait,' growled Ty. ‘Wait till I get this damned thing standing still.'

‘I'm waiting,' sobbed Bonnie. ‘Oh, Ty, I'm waiting!' And she shuddered over the palpable sight of a small leggy figure tumbling end over end through empty air, like a dead bug.

The Inspector hurried them into the hangar, out of sight of the frenzied crowd. He was red-faced and voluble, and he grinned all over as he pumped Ty's hand, and Ellery's hand, and Bonnie's hand, and listened to details, and shouted instructions, and swore it had all come in like a movie. Outside a police plane managed to find a space clear enough for a take-off; it headed north-east on the funereal mission of locating and gathering the spattered remains of the one who had sought escape and found death.

Ty seized Bonnie and began shoving through the crowd of detectives to the hangar door.

‘Here, where are you going?' demanded Ellery, grabbing his arm.

‘Taking Bonnie home. Can't you see the poor kid's ready to collapse? Here, you men, get us off this field!'

‘You wouldn't run out on me now, Bonnie?' smiled Ellery, chucking her chin. ‘Come on, square your shoulders and get set for another sky-ride.'

‘Another?' yelled Ty. ‘What now, for the love of Mike? Haven't you had enough sky-riding for one day?'

‘No,' said Ellery, ‘I have not.' He began to rip off his false whiskers, glancing inquiringly at the Inspector; and the Inspector nodded with a certain grimness, and before Ty could open his mouth to protest he and Bonnie were hurried on to the field and through lanes of police into a large transport plane drawn up on the line with its motor spitting.

‘Hey, for God's sake!' shouted a reporter. ‘Glücke! Give us a break. Glücke!'

‘Ty!'

‘Bonnie!'

But the Inspector shook his head, and followed Ty and Bonnie into the plane; and there, huddled in a pale-faced group, were several familiar faces.

They were looking at Ty and Bonnie, and Ty and Bonnie were looking at them; and Glücke hauled Ellery in and said something in a low voice to the pilot.

And then they all stared at the rushing, congested field as the plane took off and headed southeast.

And soon they were settling down on the little landing-field near Tolland Stuart's mountain mansion; and as they landed another plane, which had been following from Los Angeles, settled down after them.

Ellery, his face his own, jumped to the ground almost before the plane stopped. He waved to its oncoming pursuer, and ran over to the hangar before which the emaciated figure of Dr. Junius was waiting. The doctor's mouth was open and his eyes were glary with confusion.

Police poured out of the second plane and scattered quickly into the woods.

‘What's this?' stammered Dr. Junius, staring at the numerous figures getting out of the first plane. ‘Mr. Royle? Miss Stuart? What's happened?'

‘All in good time, Doctor,' said Ellery brusquely, taking his arm. He shouted to the others: ‘Up to the house!' and began to march the physician along.

‘But …'

‘Now, now, a little patience.'

And when they reached the house, Ellery said: ‘Where's the old fire-eater? We can't leave him out of this.'

‘Mr. Stuart? In his room, sulking with a cold. He thinks he's catching the grippe. Wait, I'll tell him –' Dr. Junius broke away and ran up the living-room steps. Ellery watched him go, smiling.

‘Upstairs,' he said cheerfully to the others. ‘The old gentleman's indisposed for a change.'

When they got upstairs they found Dr. Junius soothing the old man, who sat propped up in bed against two enormous pillows, wrapped in an Indian blanket almost to the hairline, his two bright eyes glaring out at them.

‘I thought I told you,' he began to complain, and then he spied Bonnie. ‘Oh, so you've come back, hey?' he snarled.

‘Yes, indeed,' said Ellery, ‘and with a considerable escort, as you see. I trust, Mr. Stuart, you won't be as inhospitable this time as you were the last. You see, I've got a little tale to tell, and it did seem a pity to keep it from you.'

‘Tale?' said the old man sourly.

‘The tale of an escapade just now in the California clouds. We've captured the murderer of John Royle and your daughter Blythe.'

Dr. Junius said incredulously.
‘What
?'

And the old man opened his toothless mouth, and closed it again, and then reopened it as he stared from Ellery to Inspector Glücke. His mouth remained open.

‘Yes,' said Ellery, nodding over a cigarette, ‘the worst is over, gentlemen. A very bad hombre's come to the end of the line. I shouldn't have said “captured”. He's dead, unless he learned somewhere to survive an eight-thousand foot drop from a plane with a parachute that didn't open.'

‘Dead. Oh, I see; he's dead.' Dr. Junius blinked. ‘Who was he? I can't imagine …' His eyes, bulging out of their yellow-violet sockets, began timidly to reconnoitre the room.

‘I think it would be wisest,' said Ellery, blowing a cloud of smoke, ‘to clean this sad business up in an orderly manner.

‘So I'll begin at the beginning. There were two elements in the double murder of John Royle and Blythe Stuart which pointed to our now departed friend as the only possible culprit: motive and opportunity.

‘It was in a consideration of motive that this case has been most interesting. In one way, unique. Let's see what we had to work with.

‘Neither Blythe nor Jack left an estate worth killing for, so murder for monetary gain was out. Since there were no romantic entanglements, such as jealous inamoratos of either victim – Blythe was stainless morally and all of Jack's lady-friends have been eliminated by Glücke because of alibis – then the only possible emotional motive would have had to arise out of the Royle-Stuart feud. But I have been able, as some of you know, to rule out the feud as the motive behind these crimes.

‘If the feud is eliminated, then neither Jack Royle nor Ty Royle could have been criminally involved – the feud being their only possible motive.

‘But if the feud is eliminated, we're faced with a puzzling situation. No one gained by the double murder, either materially or emotionally. In other words, a double murder was committed
apparently without motive.

‘Now this is palpably absurd. The only kind of crime which can even be conceived to lack motivation is the crime of impulse, the passion of a moment – and even this kind of crime, strictly speaking, has some deep-seated motive, even though the motive may manifest itself only in a sudden emotional eruption. But the murder of Jack and Blythe did not fall into even this classification. It was clearly a crime of great deliberation, of much planning in advance of the event – the warnings, the hamper, the frame-ups of Ty and Jack, the poison, and so on.

‘Why, then, was Blythe Stuart, against whom the crime was originally and exclusively directed, marked for death? We agree there must have been a motive in so deeply premeditated a crime. But what?

‘This raises,' said Ellery slowly, ‘one of the most extraordinary questions in my experience. The question being: How is it possible for a murder-motive to exist and yet elude the most searching analysis? It's there; we know it's there; and yet we can't see it, we can't even glimpse its ghost; it lies in pure darkness, in the vacuum of the void.

‘Well,' said Ellery, ‘maybe we can't see the motive for the simplest reason imaginable. Maybe we can't see it because it doesn't exist … yet.'

He paused, and Inspector Glücke said with an exasperation which flicked the hide from his words: ‘You just said there must be a motive, that Blythe Stuart was murdered because of that motive, that all we have to do is find that motive. And now you say we can't find the motive because it doesn't exist yet! But if it didn't exist when the murderer planned his crime, why the devil did he plan it? Do you know what you're talking about?'

‘This fascinating discussion,' drawled Ellery, ‘shows the limitations of a language. Glücke, it's so simple it's absurd. It's merely a question of
time
– I used the word “yet”, you'll recall.'

‘Time?' repeated Bonnie, bewildered.

‘Time – you know, that invisible thing made visible by your wrist watch. The background of
The Magic Mountain
and Albert Einstein's mathematical researches. Time – what time is it? have you the time? I'm having a great time.'

He laughed. ‘Look. Whatever the great intellects may call time, mankind has divided it for practical purposes into three classifications: the past, the present, and the future. All living is motivated by one, two, or all of these classifications. The business man pays a sum of money to his bank because he took a loan
in the past;
certainly his current headaches are directly attributable to a past event. I am smoking this cigarette because I have the impulse to satisfy a craving for tobacco
in the present.
But isn't the future just as important in our lives? In many ways, more important? A man scrimps to provide against the rainy day – our way of nominating the future. A woman buys a steak at the butcher's in the morning because she knows her husband will be hungry in the evening. Magna plans a football picture in May because they know that in October people will be excited about football. Future, future, future; it dictates ninety per cent of our actions.'

He said sharply: ‘In the same way, it struck me that crime – murder – is dictated by time just as inexorably as any other human activity. A man might murder his wife because she was unfaithful to him yesterday. Or a man might murder his wife if he catches her in the act of being unfaithful to him – which means the present. But mightn't a man also murder his wife because he overhears her planning to be unfaithful to him tomorrow?'

And Ellery cried: ‘So, not having found a past event to account for Blythe Stuart's murder; not having found a present event, one contemporaneous with the crime, to account for it – it struck me with force that Blythe Stuart might have been murdered
because of an event which was destined to happen in the future!'

Inspector Glücke said queerly: ‘You mean …' He did not finish. But after that he kept his gaze riveted on one person in the room with a vague curiosity that was half suspicion.

‘But what event,' Ellery went on swiftly, ‘was destined to happen in the future which could have provided a strong motive for the murder of Blythe Stuart? Of all the factors which made up Blythe Stuart – the woman, the actress, the member of a social unit we call “family” – one factor stood out. Some day … in the future … some day Blythe Stuart's father would die. And when Blythe Stuart's father died
she would inherit a large fortune.
She was not yet an heiress, but
she was destined to be.'

The old man in the bed sank deeper into his swathings, fixing his eyes bitterly on Bonnie.

And Bonnie grew paler and said: ‘But that means … If mother died,
I
would inherit.'

‘Queen, are you crazy?' cried Ty.

‘Not at all; your hands are clean, Bonnie. For after your mother's death wasn't it apparent that you, too, were marked for death? Those threatening messages? The ace of spades?

‘No,' said Ellery, ‘you were the only one who would
directly
gain by your mother's death, from the standpoint of a future inheritance. But, equally restrictive, there was only one person who would gain by the deaths of both your mother
and
you, the only one who stood in the direct line after you two women should have died.

‘And that was how I knew that the sole living relation of Tolland Stuart, once you and your mother were dead, must be the driving force behind the entire plot. That was how I knew the murderer was Lew Bascom.'

CHAPTER 22

BEGINNING OF THE END

And there was an interval in time in which the only sound was the asthmatic breathing of the old man in the bed.

And then he muttered: ‘Lew? My cousin Lew Bascom?'

And Dr. Junius kept blinking, saying nothing.

But Ellery said: ‘Yes, Mr. Stuart, your cousin Lew Bascom, who conceived and was well on his way to executing a brilliant reversal of the usual procedure in murdering to-gain-a-fortune. A strange creature, Lew. Always broke, too erratic to settle down and put his undeniable talents to a humdrum and sustained economic use, Lew planned murder as the easy way. Of course it was the hard way, but you could never have convinced a man like Lew of that.

‘Lew was no sentimentalist, and naturally he was cracked. All deliberate killers are out of plumb somewhere. But the rift in his psychological make-up did not prevent him from seeing that a man stood a much better chance of getting away with murder
if he concealed the motive.
Usually, in murders for gain through inheritance, the rich man is killed first, to ensure the passing of the estate. Then the heir or heirs are eliminated, the estate passing legally from one to the other until finally, with no one left but the last legal heir, it becomes his property. There are numerous cases on record of such crimes. But the trouble with them, as many murderers have discovered to their sorrow, is that the method leaves a plain motive trail.

‘It was too plain for Lew. If your daughter Blythe were killed while her father Tolland Stuart remained alive, he saw that the real motive for her murder would be a hopeless enigma to the police. Originally, of course, he hoped the frame-up of Jack Royle would provide an instant motive to the police. But even when he had to kill Jack and destroy the force of his own frame-up, he still felt safe; Tolland Stuart was still alive. Then he planned to kill Bonnie, and again it would seem as if Bonnie's death had been a result of the Royle-Stuart feud; the whole childish business of the card-messages had only this purpose – to lay a trail which led back to the Royles. And all the while Tolland Stuart would live, not suspecting that it was
his death
, and not the deaths of his daughter and granddaughter, that was the ultimate goal of the murderer.'

‘Oh, grandfather!' said Bonnie, and she went to him and sat down on the bed. He sank back on the pillows, exhausted.

‘He meant to kill me, then?' mumbled the old man.

‘I think not, Mr. Stuart. I think – I know – he meant to let Nature take her course. You are an old man … Well, we'll get to that in a moment.

‘Now for element two – opportunity. How had Lew Bascom committed the murders at the airport? That took a bit of figuring.'

‘That's right, too,' said Alan Clark suddenly, from his position between Sam Vix and silent, grim Jacques Butcher. ‘Lew was with you and me last Sunday, Ellery, when this fake pilot made off with the plane. So Lew couldn't possibly have been that pilot. I don't understand.'

‘True, Alan; he couldn't have been the kidnapper of the plane. I saw that, if I could clear the kidnapper of complicity in the murder, I could pin the actual poisoning by a stringent process of elimination on Lew.

‘Well, who was the kidnapper? One thing I knew beyond question, as you've just pointed out, whoever the kidnapper was, he wasn't Lew.'

‘How did you know,' asked Inspector Glücke, ‘that he mightn't have been Bascom's accomplice? That's the way I would figure it.'

‘No, he couldn't have been Lew's accomplice, either, Inspector. Paula Paris gave me the necessary information – the first of the two clues which I got through her.'

‘The Paris woman? You mean she's mixed up in this, too?'

‘Lord, no! But Paula
was
tipped off to the kidnapping before it happened by someone who phoned her from the airport – she didn't tell you that, but she told it to me. Who could have known of the kidnapping and phoned Paula
before
it took place? Only the person who planned, or was involved in the plan, to do it. But this person, in tipping off Paula,
made no secret of his identity
– she admitted that to me, although she wouldn't for ethical reasons divulge the name.

‘The interfering little snoop!' snarled Glücke. ‘I'll break her now. Suppressing evidence!'

‘Oh, no, you won't,' said Ellery. ‘Before we're finished you'll thank her, Glücke; if not for her this case would never have been solved.

‘Now, if the kidnapper had been involved in the murder as Lew's accomplice, would he have revealed his identity to a newspaperwoman, especially before the crime occurred? Absurd. And if he had been the criminal himself – not Lew – would he have revealed himself to Paula, putting himself in her power? Utterly incredible. No, indeed; his telephone call to her, his willingness to let her know who he was, indicated that he had no idea murder was about to occur, eliminated him either as the poisoner or as the poisoner's accomplice;
or even, for that matter, as a kidnapper.'

‘This gets worse and worse,' groaned Glücke. ‘Say that again?'

‘I'll get around to it,' grinned Ellery. ‘For the moment let me push along on the Lew tack. I was satisfied that the kidnapper wasn't involved in the murders in any way. That meant he didn't poison the thermos bottles.

‘If the kidnapper didn't, who did? Well, who could have? The bottles were all right when the last round of cocktails was drunk before the plane – obvious from the fact that no one who drank, and many did, suffered any ill effects. Therefore the morphine-sodium allurate mixture must have been slipped into the bottles
after
the last round was poured.

‘Exactly when? Well, it wasn't done in the plane, because we've eliminated Jack, Blythe, and the kidnapper as the possible murderers, and they were the only three who entered the plane between the last round of drinks and the take-off. Then the bottles were poisoned before the hamper was stowed away in the plane, but after the last round. But after the last round I myself sat on that hamper, and I got up only to hand it to the kidnapper when he was stowing the luggage away in the plane.

‘So you see,' murmured Ellery, ‘I arrived by sheer elimination to only one conceivable time and only one conceivable person. The bottles must have been poisoned
between the time the last round was poured and the time I sat down on the hamper.
Who suggested the last round? Lew Bascom. Who immediately after returned the bottles to the hamper? Lew Bascom. Therefore it must have been Lew Bascom who dropped the poison into the bottles, probably as he was screwing the caps back on after pouring the last round.'

The Inspector grunted a little crossly.

‘So both elements – motive and opportunity – pointed to Lew as the only possible criminal. But what proof did I have that would satisfy a court? Absolutely none. I had achieved the truth through a process of reasoning; there was no confirmatory evidence. Therefore Lew had to be caught red-handed, trapped into giving himself away. Which occurred today.'

‘But who the hell
was
the kidnapper?' asked Butch.

‘I said, you'll recall, that he wasn't even that, really. Had the kidnapper seriously intended to spirit Jack and Blythe away by force, hold them for ransom, or whatever, would he have told a newspaperwoman first? Naturally not. So I saw that it wasn't intended to be a real kidnapping at all. The wraith we were chasing had staged a
fake
kidnapping!'

‘Fake?' shouted Glücke. ‘The hell you say! After we've worn our eyes out looking for him?'

‘Of course, Inspector. For who would stage a kidnapping and inform a famous newspaper columnist about it in advance? Only someone who was interested in a news story, publicity. And who could have been interested in a publicity splash centring about Jack Royle and Blythe Stuart?' Ellery grinned. ‘Come on, Sam; talk. You're caught with the goods.'

Vix grew very pale. He gulped, his one eye rolling wildly, looking for an avenue of escape.

The Inspector gasped:
‘You?
Why, you ornery, one-eyed baboon –'

‘Peace,' sighed Ellery. ‘Who can quell the instincts of the buzzard or the dyed-in-the-wool publicity man? It was the opportunity of a lifetime, wasn't it, Sam?'

‘Yeah,' said Vix with difficulty.

‘The marriage of two world-famous figures, the gigantic splash of that airport send-off … why, if those two were thought to be kidnapped, the Magna picture Butch was going to make would get a million dollars worth of publicity.'

‘A million dollars worth of misery to me, as it turned out,' groaned Vix. ‘It was to be a surprise; I didn't even tell Butch. I figured I'd let on to Jack and Blythe once we were safely away, and then we'd hide out somewhere for a few days. They wanted a little peace and quiet, anyway … Oh, nuts. When I turned around and saw those two dead, my stomach turned over. I knew I was in the worst kind of jam. If I gave myself up and told the truth, nobody'd believe me, certainly not a one-cylinder flattie like Glücke. I could see myself tagged for a twin killing and going out by the aerial route, kicking. What could I do? I set the plane down on the first flat place I could find and took it on the lam.'

‘You,' said Inspector Glücke venomously, ‘are going up on charges. I'll give you publicity!'

‘Take it easy, Inspector,' growled Jacques Butcher. ‘Why make the studio suffer? It was a dumb stunt, but Sam can't be considered in any way responsible for what happened; if there'd been no murder there wouldn't have been any harm done. He'll take his rap in the papers, anyway; and you've got your man.'

‘Not only have you got your man,' said Ellery pleasantly, ‘but if you're a good doggie, Glücke, maybe I'll give you something else.'

‘Isn't this nightmare over yet?' Glücke threw up his hands.

‘Well, what forced Lew to change his plans?' asked Ellery. ‘What forced him to kill not only Blythe, but Jack Royle? What happened between the inauguration of his playing-card threats against Blythe and the day of the murder?

‘Only one important thing happened – Blythe buried the hatchet, gave up her long feud with Jack; in fact, announced her intention to marry him, and did so.

‘But how could Blythe's marriage have forced Lew to kill not only Blythe but the man she married? Well, what was behind his whole scheme? To get for himself the entire Stuart estate. Who were his obstacles? Blythe and Bonnie. But when Blythe married Jack Royle, then Jack Royle became an obstacle, too! For by the terms of Tolland Stuart's will half the estate went to Blythe, if living,
or to Blythe's heirs if dead;
and her heirs in that case would be her daughter Bonnie and her husband Jack. Only if Jack Royle died, too, before the estate passed would Jack cease to be an heir; living, he would inherit, but if dead his own estate would collect nothing and Bonnie, Blythe's only heir, would consequently get everything. So Lew killed Jack, too. Now he must kill Bonnie. But what happened before he got the opportunity to kill Bonnie? History repeated itself: Bonnie announced her intention to marry Ty. Therefore Ty became an obstacle in the way of Lew, for if Bonnie married Ty and Lew killed only Bonnie, Ty would get the entire estate, since according to the will if Bonnie predeceased her grandfather her portion would go to
her
heirs … or Ty, her surviving husband.

‘Therefore Lew tried to prevent the marriage because if he could scare Bonnie into not marrying Ty he would have to kill only Bonnie; whereas if she did marry Ty he would have to kill both of them; and one murder was preferable to two for obvious reasons.'

‘That's all very well,' muttered Glücke, ‘but what I can't understand is how Bascom expected to be able to control Mr. Stuart's will. How could he be sure Mr. Stuart, when he saw his daughter murdered, wouldn't write a new will which would make it impossible for Lew ever to collect a cent, murders or not?'

‘Ah,' said Ellery. ‘A good point, Glücke. In discussing that, and Mr. Bascom's good fortune, I'm forced to refer again to my invaluable friend, Paula Paris. A pearl, that woman! The very first time I met her she painted an interesting word-picture of Tolland Stuart. She told me of his hypochondria, of his pamphlets inveighing against the evils of stimulants, even unto coffee and tea; of his drinking cold water with a teaspoon, obviously because he was afraid of what cold water would do, drunk normally, to his stomach – chill it, I suppose; of his diatribes against white bread.'

‘But I don't see what that –'

‘That's quite true,' said Dr. Junius unexpectedly, clearing his throat. ‘But, I, too, fail to see the relevance –'

‘I imagine, Doctor,' said Ellery, ‘that you're due for a nasty shock. Your faith in humanity is about to be destroyed. Can you imagine Tolland Stuart being inconsistent in a matter like that?'

Dr. Junius's face looked like a yellow paste. ‘Well, now, of course –'

‘That disconcerts you, naturally. You're amazed to learn that Tolland Stuart
could
be inconsistent in his hypochondriasis?'

‘No, really, it happens. I mean I don't know what you're referring to –'

‘Well, Doctor,' said Ellery in a hard voice, ‘let me enlighten you. Friday afternoon Miss Stuart and I, as you will recall, came up here to visit her grandfather. You were away – shopping, I believe? Too bad. Because when we came upon Mr. Tolland Stuart lying in this room – yes, in this very bed – what was he doing? The man who had a horror of white bread was eating a cold meat sandwich made of white bread. The man who sipped cold water from a teaspoon because he was afraid of chilling his stomach, the man who avoided stimulants as he would the plague, that man was
gulping
down quite callously large quantities of
iced tea
!'

The old man in the bed whimpered, and Dr. Junius shrank within himself like a withering weed. As for the others, they stared in perplexity from Ellery to the old man. Only Inspector Glücke looked aware; and he gave a signal to one of his men. The detective went to the bed and motioned Bonnie away. Ty jumped forward to grasp Bonnie's arm and draw her from the bed.