The Devil To Pay (24 page)

“It’s not only screwy,” said Ellery. “It didn’t happen.”

“Wait.” Glücke jumped down the terrace steps and stared up at the house. “It could have been dropped out of one of the upper windows!”

Ellery sighed. “Come here, Inspector.” Glücke came back. Ellery stood on the chair and fitted the fragment into the empty space. “See where this places the rip on the awning? Now look at the wall here. Do you notice this fresh nick in the stone? Curious place for a nick, isn’t it—away over the tallest man’s head? Could hardly have got there by accident, could it?”

“Well? Well?” Glücke craned with the others.

“Now observe the relative positions of the nick in the wall and the tear in the awning. About four inches apart. And the tear is slightly—not much—higher from the floor than the nick. Line up nick and tear and what have you? A sharp object with a blade width of about a half-inch which went through the awning from above and struck the wall four inches inside the awning, causing the nick. If the sword had been dropped from a window, it would have naturally come down in a vertical position. But since the line between the rip and nick is almost parallel with the terrace floor, it’s obvious that the sharp object pierced the awning almost horizontally in relation to the floor.”

He jumped down, wrapped the fragment of cloth carefully, and handed it to the Inspector, who did not seem to know what to do with it. “I don’t get this at all, King,” he complained.

“Use your head, brother. Did some one stand or lie on top of the awning and stick a sword through the awning almost where it meets the wall, just for the purpose of making a nick in the stone there?”

“That’s nonsense,” said Van Every slowly.

“Agreed; sheer nonsense. So let’s wander on. The stripes of the awning run from top to bottom; the rip is parallel with the stripes; the nick is a little lower but directly behind the rip. Therefore from what direction did the weapon come?”

“Through the air,” muttered Van Every, “from a point directly facing this terrace.”

“A rapier?” asked Ellery, raising his brows. “Through the air?”

“No,” mumbled Glücke. “That can’t be. Say—a knife! Somebody threw a knife!”

“At least,” smiled Ellery, “not the rapier. We’re in agreement that it’s absurd to suppose somebody stood on the ground out there and hurled a sword at the awning? Very well. Then it wasn’t a sword that pierced the awning. But whatever it was, it had all the characteristics of the wound in Spaeth’s chest—a sharp cutting edge about a half-inch wide and coated with the same poisonous concoction that killed him.”

“You mean,” cried Glücke, “that Spaeth wasn’t killed with that rapier at all?”

“How eloquently you put it, Inspector.” The Inspector opened his mouth wide. The others watched with a sort of horrible fascination. “Now,” said Ellery briskly, “we know one more important fact—that whatever the weapon was, it came from a point, as the District Attorney says, directly facing this terrace. What directly faces this terrace?”

“The rock garden,” said Ping eagerly.

“The pool,” said the Inspector.

“And beyond the pool?”

“The old Jardin house.”

“Or, to be precise, the terrace of the old Jardin house, which is exactly opposite this one.”

Fitzgerald came puffing around the Spaeth house. “Hey! Wait for baby! What’s happened? Did Ruhig—”

“Ah, Fitz. Glad you made it. You’re just in time for a little demonstration. Inspector, would you mind clearing the terrace?”

“Clear it?”

“C-l-e-a-r,” said Ellery sympathetically. “A five-letter word meaning get the hell out of the way. Pink, I need you.” Pink stumbled forward with that expression of bewilderment which seemed chronic with him whenever Ellery spoke. Ellery took a leather-covered pillow from a chair and propped it up against the rear wall, resting on an iron table. Then, holding the oddly shaped package in one hand, he grasped Pink’s elbow with the other and led him off the terrace, speaking earnestly. Pink ambled along, nodding. They skirted the pool and made their way toward the Jardin terrace. “Hey!” shouted Ellery across the garden. “Didn’t you hear me? Get off that terrace!”

They moved, then, leaving the terrace hurriedly. And finally they were on the ground, at the side of the house, staring out across the pool toward the two men on the opposite terrace. Ellery unwrapped the package, still talking to Pink, who was scratching his head. Ellery turned and waved them still farther to one side.

They saw Pink pick up the thing from the package with his right hand and fit something into it and draw back his left arm. There was a queer
cwang!
and something slender flashed through the air over the Jardin rock garden, over the pool, over the nearer garden, and plunked into the leather pillow on the Spaeth terrace, striking the stone wall beyond with a vicious ping.

“Creepers,” said the Inspector hoarsely.

Pink grinned as Ellery clapped him on the shoulder, and then the two of them came trotting back, Pink lugging the bow and a sheaf of arrows proudly. Ellery ran up on the terrace and tore the arrow from the pillow. “Good shot, Pink! Damn sight better than the one that hit the awning Monday afternoon.”

They scurried back to the terrace again. “An
arrow?
” said Van Every incredulously.

“It was the only possible answer. Because it was the only answer which explained why the murderer of Spaeth should have smeared the point of his weapon with poison.” Ellery lit a cigaret. “If the weapon were the rapier
in veritate
, using poison on the tip was absurd. The only purpose in poisoning the tip could have been to
make sure
Spaeth died. With the weapon an arrow, and the archer fifty yards away, the situation clarifies: while an expert archer could be pretty sure of hitting his victim at fifty yards, he couldn’t be positive of striking a vital spot. But with poison on the tip of the arrow even a superficial scratch would have caused death. No, Spaeth wasn’t killed by that rapier at all. Nor was he killed in the study. He was standing out here on the terrace and his murderer shot two poisoned arrows from the Jardin terrace across the way. The first went too high and struck the top of the awning. The second hit Spaeth squarely in the heart.”

“But how can you be sure it was an arrow?” asked Van Every stubbornly. “There’s something in what Glücke said about a knife. The killer could have been standing in the garden and thrown two knives. Such a theory would fill the bill just as satisfactorily as yours.”

“Not by a long shot. Spaeth was killed by an archer, not a knife-thrower, and I can prove it. Pink, let me have that glove. Pink stripped something leathery off his left hand. “I had quite a job hunting up a bow and arrows this afternoon,” chuckled Ellery, “but when I located ’em—lo! the salesman brought out this glove. Look at it.”

He tossed it to Glücke. It was a queer-looking glove. It had only three leather fingers—the middle three, providing no protection for the thumb and little finger. There was a strap which fastened about the wrist to hold the glove tight.

“Remember those two prints on the iron table of the Jardin terrace? A thumb and little finger. A person doesn’t usually lean on just his thumb and little finger. Miss Jardin thought the two prints indicated a two-fingered man. But when you postulate an archer, the prints can only mean that they were made by some one wearing an archer’s shooting glove, as it’s called, the leather preventing the middle fingers from leaving an impression. Somebody wearing an archer’s shooting glove was on the Jardin terrace. So the weapon must have been an arrow.”

“That’s absolutely uncanny,” muttered Walter.

“Uncanny?” roared Fitzgerald. “It’s colossal! Keep talking, King!”

“I’m afraid that from now on,” replied Ellery with a certain grimness, “my conversation may take on a deadly tone, Fitz.” There was an answering silence then of no superficial extent. “Walter.”

Walter looked intensely at him, and Val felt a great shame.

“When you entered the study Monday afternoon dressed in Jardin’s coat, you didn’t find your father stabbed to death in that room; you found him with an arrow in his chest on this terrace. There was another arrow hanging from the tear in the awning up there. You removed the arrow from your father’s body, you removed the arrow hanging from the awning. Then you dragged the body into the study and sat it down in the corner near the fireplace, where it was later found. The wristwatch had probably smashed on this stone floor when your father fell dead; you swept up the fragments and deposited them near him in the study. Is that a reasonable reconstruction?”

Walter nodded wordlessly.

“You wanted it to look as if your father had been murdered with a sword. So you needed a sword with a blade-point approximately the same size and shape as the arrowhead. The only one that matched, judging by the eye, was the Italian rapier. So you ignored all the other swords and took down the rapier from the collection hanging over the fireplace. You took the arrows away with you, and the sword too—you knew it would be missed, and that the police would assume it had been the murder weapon; you couldn’t leave it behind because you were afraid an expert comparison of the width of its blade with the width of the wound might show a discrepancy. And all the time you were doing this, the archer across the way was watching through the binoculars. He could even see what you were doing in the study, because of the glass wall.”

Walter could not tear his gaze away.

“Why did you want it to look as if your father had been murdered with a sword? For the simplest reason imaginable: because you didn’t want it known that he had been killed with an arrow! But what was so damning about an arrow? There can be only one answer. The arrows implicated some one you wanted to protect. And whom have you been trying to protect since Monday? Your future father-in-law.” Jardin’s brown face twitched. “Then those two arrows must have been identifiable as Jardin’s, and you knew it. I remembered the auction catalogue, the collection of medieval arrowheads which had been withdrawn from the sale and presented to the Museum. They were museum pieces, then; as such, undoubtedly known to collectors and therefore traceable directly to their owner, Jardin. So you took the arrows away and tried to make it look like a sword crime because you thought Jardin had killed your father. They were his arrows and he is an expert archer. Didn’t he win an archery tournament in California last spring?”

“Why should he cover up his old man’s murderer?” asked Glücke plaintively. “That doesn’t wash, King.”

“It does,” said Ellery, “if you remember that his old man ruined thousands of people, including Jardin, and that his old man’s murderer is the father of the girl he wants to marry.”

“You mean,” frowned Van Every, “that Jardin actually—”

“I’m only telling you what Walter was thinking,” said Ellery, as if that were a simple matter, “since he didn’t want to tell you himself. Well, Walter, am I right?”

“Yes,” muttered Walter; he looked dazed. “I recognized them as two arrowheads from Rhys’s collection. Of course whoever stole them had fitted them into modern shafts; but the arrowheads couldn’t be mistaken.”

“They were two identical arrowheads of polished steel,” said Rhys steadily. “Japanese, dating from the fourteenth century. Like many medieval Japanese arrowheads these had decorative designs in the steel which would have identified them as mine beyond question. Walter’s told me about it since. Whoever the maniac was, he stole them because he wanted to frame me for Spaeth’s murder.” He paused, and then said lightly: “I’d like to get my hands on his throat.”

“I couldn’t talk,” said Walter wearily, “because my story would have implicated Rhys. I didn’t know about his alibi.”

“And we didn’t talk,” cried Val, “because we knew Walter had been in this house at the time of the murder and we thought that—Oh, Walter, Mr. King knows you didn’t do it!”

“Not so fast,” growled Glücke. “How do I know this man didn’t shoot those arrows himself? Couldn’t he have been on the Jardin terrace and then dashed over to be in here when that five-thirty-five ’phone call came in?”

“He couldn’t have been,” said Ellery politely, “and he wasn’t. Let me go on. Walter left the house with the arrows and sword, followed by the archer, who attacked him just outside the grounds after Walter climbed the fence, using the Indian club as a weapon. The club, remember, came from the Jardin house, where the archer had been. It was the archer, of course, who dropped the club down the sewer.”

“Why’d he slug Walter at all?” demanded Fitz.

“Because he wanted those arrows back. Walter had spoiled his plan—his plan to murder Spaeth and frame Jardin for the crime. He wanted to retrieve the arrows, undo what Walter had done, and leave the scene of the crime as it had been before Walter changed it. But after he struck Walter, he must have found himself unable to go through with the revised scheme. Because we did find the scene as Walter left it. Obviously, then, the arrows were gone by the time he reached Walter near the sewer.”

“I’d already dropped the arrows down the sewer,” said Walter, “when he hit me.”

“So that was it! It puzzled me. But you hadn’t had time to drop the sword through, as you intended, nor Jardin’s coat. So friend archer took sword and coat, smeared both with the blood streaming out of your own head, went off, coated the sword with poison, and planted both objects in Jardin’s closet. If he couldn’t frame Jardin with arrows—you’d spoiled that—he was going to use your own little refinements and frame Jardin with the coat and sword. He knew Jardin would find the sword and handle it; and he was the one who wired headquarters with the tip to search Jardin’s apartment, so timing his tip that discovery of the sword and coat and search by the police would be almost simultaneous. Very pretty, the whole thing.”

The Inspector made a helpless gesture, like a man trying to stop an avalanche.

“His frame-up of Jardin was now complete—in a different form but still effective, even more effective. He couldn’t have counted on Frank’s identification of Walter as Jardin, it is true; but the rest he was almost positive of.” Ellery took the cigaret from his mouth and said calmly: “You asked before, Inspector, how I could be sure Walter hadn’t killed his father. There was one conclusive reason: Walter is right-handed, as he demonstrates unconsciously all the time. But the archer wasn’t. The archer was left-handed.”