Egyptian Cross Mystery (36 page)

“And now,” shouted Ellery, to the grinning young man outside the booth, “lead me to a plane!”

“Where are you going?” asked the young man.

“Chicago.”

At 10:25 the monoplane circled the Chicago field, brilliantly illuminated throughout its length and breadth. Ellery, craning before the glass window, could make out the sprawled buildings, the hangars, the landing field, a line of machines, and the scurrying figures of people. These details blurred in the swoop of the landing—his pilot had been energized by the offer of a premium for speed—and by the time he regained his breath and the proper stomachic balance they were very near the ground, hurtling toward the line. He closed his eyes, and felt the wheels of the monoplane bump on the ground; the nature of the sensation changed, and he opened his eyes to see that they were taxiing along the cement in a swift glide.

He rose rather uncertainly and fumbled with his tie. The end … The motor uttered a final triumphant roar, and the machine’s motion stopped. The pilot twisted his head and yelled: “Here we are, Mr. Queen! Did the best I could.”

“Excellent,” said Ellery with a grimace, and staggered to the door. There was such a thing as obeying orders too well. … Someone opened the door from the outside, and he dropped onto the field. For a moment he blinked in the strong glare at a group of men ten feet away, watching him.

He blinked again. There was the tall, pseudo-saturnine figure of Professor Yardley, his beard almost horizontal in a grin; the strong beefy figure of Chicago’s police commissioner, whom Ellery recalled from that initial trip to the Windy City which he had taken with his father seven months before, and which had resulted in his investigation of the Arroyo murder; several indeterminate figures, whom he took to be detectives; and … who was that? That small man in the neat gray suit, with the neat gray fedora, and the neat gray gloves—that little chap with the old face and the cocked head … ?

“Dad!” he cried, springing forward and seizing Inspector Richard Queen’s gloved hands. “How in the name of all that’s holy did you get here?”

“’Lo, son,” said Inspector Queen dryly. He grinned. “You’re one hell of a detective if you can’t figure it out. Your friend Hardy, of the Zanesville police, telephoned me in New York after you called him, and I told him you were my son. Just wanted to check up on you, he said. I put two and two together, decided it was the end of your case, figured your man would head either for Chicago or St. Louis, left New York by plane at two, landed fifteen minutes ago, and here I am.

Ellery threw his arm about his father’s spare shoulders. “You’re the eternal wonder, the modern Colossus of Rhodes. By the good Lord, Dad, I
am
glad to see you. It’s a caution how you old fellows get around. … Hullo, Professor!”

Yardley’s eyes twinkled as they shook hands. “I suppose I’m included in the septuagenarian classification? Your father and I have had a hearty talk about you, young man, and he thinks you’ve got something up your sleeve.”

“Ah,” said Ellery, sobering. “He does, does he? How d’ye do, Commissioner? Thanks a thousand times for your quick acceptance of my nasty telephone manner. I was in the devil of a hurry. … Well, sir, what’s the situation?”

They an walked slowly across the field to the terminal. The Commissioner said: “It looks great, Mr. Queen. Your man arrived by plane at five minutes to nine—we barely got our detectives here in time. He doesn’t suspect a thing.”

“I was just twenty minutes late,” sighed the Professor. “I was never so frightened in my life as when I hauled my creaking old bones out of the ship and a detective grasped my arm. ‘Yardley?’ he said in a stern voice. Well, my boy, I—”

“Hmm, yes,” said Ellery. “Where is—er—Krosac now, Commissioner?”

“He took his sweet time getting off the field, and at five after nine he got into a taxi and was driven to a third-rate hotel in the Loop—the Rockford. He didn’t know it,” added the Commissioner grimly, “but he had an escort of four police cars all the way. He’s there now, in his room.”

“He can’t get away?” asked Ellery anxiously.

“Mr. Queen!” said the Commissioner in an offended voice.

The Inspector chuckled. “Incidentally, I understand that Vaughn and Isham of Nassau County are trailing you, son. Aren’t you going to wait for them?”

Ellery stopped short. “Heavens, I forgot about them! Commissioner, will you be kind enough to detail some one as an escort for Inspector Vaughn and District Attorney Isham as soon as they arrive? They’re only an hour or so behind me. Have them taken to the Rockford Hotel. It would be a shame to cut them out of the last act!”

But District Attorney Isham and Inspector Vaughn were considerably less than an hour behind Ellery. They descended out of the dark sky upon the Chicago airport at precisely eleven o’clock, were met by several detectives, and were escorted to the Loop in police cars.

The reunion of the pilgrims was slightly hilarious. They met in a private suite at the Rockford which was thick with detectives. Ellery was stretched out on the bed, coat off, blissfully resting. Inspector Queen and the Commissioner were conversing in a corner of the room. Professor Yardley was washing the accumulated grime of several states off his face and hands in the lavatory. … They looked around, two journey-battered gentlemen with bleary eyes.

“Well?” growled Vaughn. “Is this the end, or do we keep on chasing our tails to Alaska? What is this guy—a marathon runner?”

“This,” chuckled Ellery, “is truly the end, Inspector. Sit down, and you too, Mr. Isham. Rest your weary bones. We have all night. Mr. Krosac can’t get away. How about a snack?”

There were introductions, steaming food, remarkably hot coffee, laughter and speculation. Through it all Ellery remained quiet, his thoughts on something far distant. Occasionally a detective would report. Once word came that the gentleman in Room 643—he had registered as John Chase, Indianapolis—had just telephoned the clerk to make a reservation for him on the morning transcontinental to San Francisco. This was delicately discussed; it was evident that Mr. Chase, or Mr. Krosac, was planning to leave American shores for an extended tour through the Orient, for it was not reasonable that he would stop in San Francisco.

“By the way,” said Ellery lazily, at a few minutes to midnight, “just whom do you think, Professor, we’ll turn up when we burst in on Mr. John Chase of Indianapolis, Room 643?”

The old Inspector regarded his son quizzically. Yardley stared. “Why, Velja Krosac, of course.”

“Indeed,” said Ellery, blowing a smoke ring.

The Professor started. “What do you mean? By Krosac I refer, naturally, to the man born with that name, but who’s probably known to us by a different one.”

“Indeed,” said Ellery again. He rose and stretched his arms. “I do think, gentlemen, it’s time we brought Mr.—Krosac, shall I say?—to earth. Is everything ready, Commissioner?”

“Just waiting for the word, Mr. Queen.”

“One minute,” said Inspector Vaughn. He looked wrathfully at Ellery. “Do you mean to say you
know
the real identity of the man in 643?”

“Of course! I’m really astonished, Inspector, at your lack of perspicacity. Wasn’t it plain enough?”

“Plain? What was plain?”

Ellery sighed. “Never mind. But I daresay you’re in for a whopping surprise. Shall we go?
En avant!”

Five minutes later the corridors on the sixth floor of the Rockford Hotel resembled the parade ground of an army encampment. There were police and plainclothesmen everywhere. The floor above and the floor below were impassable. The elevators had been shut down, very quietly indeed. Room 643 had only one exit—the corridor door.

A small and frightened bellboy had been pressed into service. He stood before the door, encircled by the group—Ellery, his father, Vaughn, Isham, the Commissioner, Yardley—awaiting the word of command. Ellery looked around; there was no sound except the sound of breathing. Then he nodded grimly to the boy.

The boy gulped and advanced to the door. Two detectives with drawn revolvers stood flat against the panels. One of them knocked briskly. There was no reply; the room, as they could tell from the transom, was in darkness and its occupant probably asleep.

The detective knocked again. This time there was a faint sound from behind the door, and the creaking of bedsprings. A man’s deep voice called out sharply: “Who’s there?”

The bellboy gulped again and cried: “Service, Mr. Chase!”

“What—” They heard the man snort, and the bed creaked again. “I didn’t call for service. What do you want, anyway?” The door opened and a man’s tousled head stuck out. …

Of all the incidents that followed—the instant pounce of the two plainclothesmen, the scrambling away of the bellboy, the struggle on the floor, halfway across the threshold—Ellery remembered only one picture. It was in that split second during which no one moved, during which the man took in the scene in the corridor—the waiting officials, the detectives, the uniforms, the faces of Ellery Queen and District Attorney Isham and Inspector Vaughn. The expression of utter stupefaction that was stamped on that white face. The flared nostrils. The distended eyes. The bandage on the wrist of the hand which gripped the jamb. …

“Why, it’s—it’s—” Professor Yardley wet his lips twice, and could not find the words.

“It’s as I knew it would be,” drawled Ellery, as he watched the fierce struggle on the floor. “I knew it as soon as I had examined the shack in the hills.”

They managed to subdue Mr. John Chase, of Room 643. A slight dribble of saliva ran from a corner of his mouth. His eyes were wholly mad now.

They were the eyes of the schoolmaster of Arroyo—Andrew Van.

“I
’M STUMPED. I’M ABSOLUTELY
stumped,” snapped Inspector Vaughn. “I can’t get it through my head how a solution was possible from the facts. I’m stumped, Mr. Queen, and you’ll have to convince me that it wasn’t just guesswork.”

“A Queen,” said Ellery severely, “never guesses.”

It was Thursday, and they were seated in a drawing room compartment of the Twentieth Century Limited en route to New York. Yardley and Ellery and Inspector Queen and Isham and Vaughn. A tired but not unhappy party. Their faces betrayed the strain of the nerve-racking experience they had been through—all except, of course, Inspector Queen, who seemed to be enjoying himself in his quiet way.

“You’re not the first,” chuckled the old man to Vaughn. “I’ve never known it to fail. Every time he solves a humdinger somebody wants to know how it was done and says it was guesswork. I’ll be damned if I know myself how he does it most of the time, even after he explains.”

“It’s pure mystery to me,” confessed Isham.

Professor Yardley seemed nettled at the challenge to his intellect. “I’m not an untutored individual,” he growled, as Ellery grinned, “but I’ll hang as high as Haman if I can see how logic applied in this case. It’s been a welter of inconsistencies and contradictions from beginning to end.”

“Wrong,” drawled Ellery. “It was a welter of inconsistencies and contradictions from the beginning to the fourth murder. At that point it became clear as crystal, all the mud decanting off. You see,” he said, knitting his brows, “all along I felt that if I could grasp just one tiny piece and place it in the key position, all the other pieces—so scrambled and illogical in appearance—would take comprehensible shape. That piece was supplied in the West Virginia shack.”

“So you said last night,” grunted the Professor. “And I still can’t see how—”

“Naturally not. You never examined the hut.”

“I did,” snarled Vaughn, “and if you can show me what solved the damned thing—”

“Ah, a challenge. Certainly.” Ellery blew smoke at the low ceiling of the compartment. “Let me go back a bit. Up to the murder in Arroyo Tuesday night, I knew little enough. The first murder in Arroyo was altogether a mystery until Andrew Van himself appeared. He said at that time that his servant Kling had been killed by mistake, that a man named Velja Krosac with blood-motive had been the murderer of this Kling. Thomas Brad, Van’s brother, was murdered. Stephen Megara, Van’s brother, was murdered. Megara had confirmed the story of Krosac, as had the official investigators in Yugoslavia. It all seemed clear enough in its general purport—a monomaniac whose brain had been addled by a lifelong unsatisfied vengeance was running amok among the killers of his father and uncles. When we discovered that the Tvars had also robbed Krosac of his inheritance, an additional motive bolstered the theory.

“I’ve explained to Professor Yardley that there were two definite conclusions to be drawn from the circumstances surrounding the death of Brad. One was that Brad’s murderer was well-known to him; the other that Brad’s murderer did not limp. Is that correct, Professor?” Yardley nodded, and Ellery quickly summarized his reasoning based on the disposition of the checkers and the other facts known to Vaughn and Isham.

“But these conclusions got me nowhere. We had already assumed the possibility of both without conclusive reasoning. The fact that I proved them was therefore of little value. So until I found the body in the shack my only explanation for the queer details of the first three murders was Krosac’s insanity and obsession with a peculiar T phobia—the severing of the heads, the scrawling of the T’s, the very odd T significances surrounding all three crimes.”

Ellery smiled reminiscently and regarded his cigarette with affection. “The astonishing part of it was that very early in the investigation—in fact, seven months ago when I looked upon the first horrible corpse in the Weirton courthouse—a thought struck me which, had I followed it through, might well have terminated the case then and there. It was an alternative explanation for the scattered T’s. It was just a groping thought, the result of my discipline in logic. But it seemed so remote a possibility that I discarded it; and continued to discard it when nothing occurred thereafter to give it the slightest factual support. But it kept persisting …”

“What was that?” asked the Professor with interest. “You recall when we discussed the Egyptian—”

“Ah, let that go,” said Ellery hastily. “I’ll come to it in a moment. Let me first go over the details of the fourth murder.” Rapidly he drew a word-picture of the physical scene that had met his eye when he stepped over the threshold of the barricaded hut just the day before. Yardley and Inspector Queen listened with drawn brows, concentrating on the problem; but when Ellery had finished they regarded each other blankly.