The King is Dead (15 page)

The servants, who had been standing by frozen, sprang to life.

‘I would like to suggest, Mr. Bendigo —' began Ellery.

‘Overruled. Now see here, Queen. I appreciate your devotion to the job, but the confidential work stops for nothing, the idea of murder is ridiculous, and in that room impossible. Sit down and enjoy your breakfast. You, too, Inspector Queen.'

But the Queens remained where they were.

‘Why impossible, Mr. Bendigo?' asked the Inspector.

‘Because the Confidential Room was built for just that purpose. The walls, floor, and ceiling are two feet thick — solid, reinforced concrete. There isn't a window in the place — it's air-conditioned and there's artificial daylight lighting in the walls. There's only one entrance — the door. Only one door, and it's made of safe-door steel. As a matter of fact, the whole room is a safe. So how would anyone get in to kill me?'

King attacked his soft-boiled eggs.

Max'l looked uncertain. Then he sat down and pounded the table. Two servants jumped forward, getting busy.

But Karla said uncomfortably, ‘The air-conditioning, Kane. Suppose someone got to that. Sending some sort of gas —'

Her husband roared with laughter. ‘There's the European mind for you! All right, Karla, we'll station guards at the air-conditioning machinery. Anything to wipe that look off your face.'

‘Mr. Bendigo,' said Ellery. ‘Don't you realize that the person who wrote those letters is not to be laughed away? He knows exactly where you'll be at midnight tonight — in what amounts to the classic sealed room, guarded moreover by trusted armed men. Since he warns us, he must know that that room tonight will be absolutely impregnable. In other words, he chooses the time and place apparently worst for his plan, and he insures by his warning that even farfetched loopholes will be plugged. Doesn't that strike you as queer, to say the least?'

‘Certainly,' replied the King briskly. ‘Queer is the word, Queen. He's queer as Napoleon. It just can't be done.'

‘But it can,' said Ellery.

The big man stared. ‘How?'

‘If it were my problem, Mr. Bendigo, I'd simply get you to let me in yourself.'

He sat back, smiling. ‘No one ever gets into that room except a member of my family —' He stopped, the smile disappearing.

The room was very quiet. Even Max'l stopped chewing. Karla was looking intently at Ellery, a crease between her eyes.

‘What do you mean?' The voice was harsh.

Ellery glanced at Judah now, across the table from him. Judah was tapping a bottle of Segonzac cognac softly with a forefinger, looking at no one.

‘Your brother Abel did some investigating on his own before calling us in,' said Ellery. ‘We've compared conclusions, Mr. Bendigo. They're the same.'

‘I don't understand. Abel, what's all this?'

Abel's grey face seemed to go greyer.

‘Tell him, Mr. Queen.'

Ellery said: ‘I located the typewriter on which all the notes have been typed. I also found the notepaper; it comes from the same place as the typewriter. I nicked the lower-case
o
on the machine, and all
o
's typed in the two notes since have shown the nicks. This checks the typewriter identification.

‘As a further check, I arranged to have the room where the machine is located watched by your guards. The result was conclusive, Mr. Bendigo: During the period in which the fourth note must have been typed, only one person entered and left those rooms — the person who belonged there. Your brother Judah.'

King Bendigo turned slowly toward his small, dark brother. Their arms, on the table, almost touched. A flush began to creep over the big man's cheeks.

Max'l was gaping from his master to Judah.

Karla said in a breathless way, ‘Oh, nonsense, nonsense. This is one of your cognac jokes, Judah, isn't it? Isn't it?'

Judah's hand as he reached for the bottle was remarkably well controlled. He began to uncork the bottle.

‘No joke, my dear,' he said hollowly. ‘No joke.'

‘You mean,' began King Bendigo incredulously. Then he began again. ‘Judah, you mean you wrote those notes? You're threatening to kill me?
You?
'

Judah said: ‘Yes, O King.'

He did it well, Ellery thought, for a man who was so taut you could almost hear the tension in him. Judah raised the bottle of Segonzac high. Then he brought it quickly down to his mouth.

King watched his brother drink. His eyes shimmered with amazement. They went over Judah, the crooked nose, the droop of the bedraggled moustache, the stringy neck, the rise and fall of the Adam's apple. But then Judah lowered the bottle and met his brother's glance, and something passed between them that made King seem to swell.

‘At midnight, eh?' he said. ‘Got it all figured out.'

‘At midnight,' said Judah in a high voice. ‘At exactly midnight.'

‘Judah, you're crazy.'

‘No, no, King. You are.'

The big man sat quietly enough. ‘So you've had it in for me all these years … I admit, Judah, I'd never have thought of you. Has anyone ever given a damn about you but me? Who else would put up with your alcoholic uselessness? The very fact that you've had all the booze you can soak up you owe to me. So you decide to kill me. Are you out of your mind completely? Is there any sense to it, Judah — or should I say Judas?' Judah's pallor deepened. ‘I'm your brother, damn it! Don't you feel anything? Gratitude? Loyalty?'

‘Hatred,' said Judah.

‘You
hate
me? Why?'

‘Because you're no good.'

‘Because I'm strong,' said King Bendigo.

‘Because you're weak,' said Judah steadily, ‘weak where it counts.' Now, although his face was like a death mask, the eyes behind it kindled and flamed. ‘There is strength that is weak. The weakness of your strength, brother, is that your strength has no humanity in it.'

The big man looked at the little man with eyes dulled over now, clouded and secretive, in a sort of retreat. But his face was ruddy.

‘No humanity, O King,' said Judah. ‘What are human beings to you? You deal in corporate commodities — metals, oil, chemicals, munitions, ships. People are so many work-hours to-you, such-and-such a rate of depreciation. You house them for the same reason you house your tools. You build hospitals for them for the same reason you build repair shops for your machines. You send their children to school for the same reason you keep your research laboratories going. Every soul on this island is card-indexed. Every soul on this island is watched — while he works, while he sleeps, while he makes love! Do you think I don't know that no one caught in your grinder ever escapes from it? Do you think I don't know what that devil Storm is up to in the laboratory he had you build for him? Or why Akst has disappeared? Or Fingalls, Prescott, Scaniglia, Jarcot, Blum before Akst? Or what's going on in Installation K-14? Or,' Judah said in a very clear, high voice, ‘why?'

Now the flush was leaving the handsome man's face, and the face was settling into grim, contemptuous lines.

‘The dignity of the individual, the right to make choices, to exist as a free man — that's been done away with in your empire as a matter of business policy. All the old laws protecting the individual have been scrapped. There's no law you recognize, King, except your own. And in carrying out your laws you're judge, jury, and firing squad. And what kind of laws are they that you create, administer, and execute? Laws to perpetuate your own power.'

‘It's such a small island,' said King Bendigo in a murmur.

‘It covers the planet,' retorted his scrawny brother. ‘You needn't act the amused potentate for the benefit of the Queens. That kind of remark is an insult to their intelligence as well as mine. Your power extends in every direction, King. Just as you're cynical about the sovereignty of individuals, you're cynical about the sovereignty of nations. You corrupt prime ministers, overthrow governments, finance political pirates, all in the day's work. All to feed orders to your munitions plants —'

‘Ah, I wondered when we'd get to that,' said his brother. ‘The unholy munitions magnate, the international spider — Antichrist with a bomb in each hand. Isn't that the next indictment, Judah?'

Judah made thin fists on the cloth. ‘You're a plausible rascal, King. You always have been. The twist of truth, the intricate lie, the woolpulling trick — you're a past master of that difficult technique. But it doesn't befog the issue. Your sin isn't that you manufacture munitions. In the world we live in, munitions are unfortunately necessary, and someone has to manufacture them. But to you the implements of war are not a necessary evil, made for the protection of a decent society trying to survive in a wolves' world. They're a means of getting astronomical profits and the power that goes with them.'

‘The next indictment,' said his brother with a show of gravity, ‘is usually that I create wars.'

‘No, you don't create wars, King,' said Judah Bendigo. ‘Wars are created by forces far beyond your power, or the power of a thousand men like you. What you do, King, is take advantage of the conditions that create wars. You stoke them, blow on them, help them go up in flame. If a country's torn by dissension, you see to it that the dissension breaks out into open revolt; if two powers, or two groups of powers, are at odds, your agents sabotage the negotiations and work for a shooting war. It doesn't matter to you which side is
right;
right and wrong have no meaning in your dictionary except as they represent conflicts, which mean war, which mean profits. That's where your responsibility lies, King. It's as far as one man's responsibility can go. It's too far!'

Judah's fists danced as he leaned toward his brother. ‘You're a murderer, King. I don't mean merely the murders you've committed on this island, or the murders your thugs have committed here and there throughout the world in your execution of some policy or deal of the moment. I mean the murders, brother, of which historians keep a statistical record. I mean the war murders, brother. The murders arising out of the misunderstandings and tensions and social and economic stresses which you encourage into wars. You know what you are, King? You're the greatest mass-murderer in history. Oh, yes, I know how melodramatic it sounds, and how you're enjoying my helplessness to keep it from sounding so! But the truth is that millions of human beings have died on battlefields which would never have been except for you. The truth is that millions upon millions of other human beings have been made slaves, stripped of the last rag of their pride and dignity, thrown naked into your furnaces and on your bone piles!'

‘Not mine, Judah, not mine,' said his brother.

‘Yours! And you're not through, King. You've hardly begun. Do you think I'm blind merely because I'm drunk? Do you think I'm deaf just because I shut my ears to your factory whistles? Do you think I don't know what you're planning in those night sessions in your Confidential Room? Too far, King, you go too far.'

Judah stopped, his lips quivering. King deliberately edged the bottle of Segonzac closer to him. Judah wet his lips.

‘Dangerous talk, Judah,' said King gently. ‘When did you join the Party?'

Judah mumbled: ‘The smear. How could I be a member of the Party when I believe in the dignity of man?'

‘You're against them, Judah?'

‘Against them, and against you. You're both cut from the same bolt. The same rotten bolt. Any means to the end. And what end? Nobody knows. But a man can guess!'

‘That's typically muddled thinking, Judah. You can't be against them and against me, too. I'm their worst enemy. I'm preparing the West to fight them —'

‘That's what you said the last time. And it was true, too. And it's true now. But a twisted truth that turns out to be no truth at all. You're preparing the West to fight them, not for the reason that they're a menace to the free world, but because they happen to be the current antagonist. Ten years from now you'll be preparing the West — or the East, or the North, or the South, or all of them put together! — to fight something or someone-else. Maybe the little men from Mars, King! Unless you're stopped in time.'

‘And who's going to stop me?' murmured King Bendigo. ‘Not you, Judah.'

‘Me! Tonight at midnight I'm going to kill you, King. You'll never see tomorrow, and tomorrow the world will be a better place to live in.'

King Bendigo burst into laughter. He threw back his handsome head and laughed until the spasm caused him to double up. He put his fists on the table's edge and heaved to his feet. There were actually tears in his eyes.

Judah's chair went over. He scrambled around the corner of the table and sprang at his brother's throat. His hands slipped. He beat with his thin fists on that massive chest. And as his little blows drummed away, he screamed with hate and outrage. For a moment King was surprised; his laughter stopped, his eyes widened. But then he only laughed harder. He made no attempt to defend himself. Judah's fists kept bouncing off him like rubber balls from a brick wall.

Then Max'l was there. With one hand he plucked the shrieking, flailing little man from his master and thrust Judah high in the air, holding him up like a toy. Judah dangled, gagging. The gagging sounds made Max'l grin. He shook Judah as if the little man were made of rags, shook him until his face turned blue and his eyes popped and his tongue stuck out of his mouth.

Karla whimpered and put her hands to her face.

‘It's all right, darling,' wheezed her husband. ‘Really it is. Judah doesn't mind punishment. He loves it. Always did. Gets a real kick out of a beating — don't you, Judah?'

Max'l flung the little man halfway across the dining-room. Judah struck a wall, thudded to the floor, and lay still.