The Devil To Pay (9 page)

“I’d like to see it myself,” said Rhys lightly.

“You’ve admitted to at least two quarrels with the dead man, one only this morning.”

“You left something out,” said Jardin with another smile. “After our tiff in this room this morning, I saw Spaeth again. He walked over to my house—I mean the one I vacated today.” Val started; she had not known that. “We had another little chat in my gymnasium, as a result of which I walked out on him.”

“Thanks for the tip,” said Glücke. “You’d better begin to think about keeping such facts to yourself. Got that, Phil? Well, you had a nice strong motive, too, Jardin—he ruined you and, from what I hear, he wouldn’t do what you asked, which was to put his profits back in Ohippi and salvage the business. And last, you’re a swordsman, and a sword was used to polish him off. You may even have got him off guard by pretending to show him some kind of fencing maneuver.”

“And what was he doing,” said Rhys, “parrying with his arm?”

They looked across the room at each other. “Tell you what, Jardin,” said the Inspector. “You sign a full confession, and I’ll get Van Every to guarantee a lesser plea. We could easily make it self-defense.”

“How nice,” smiled Rhys. “At that, I could almost take my chances with a jury, couldn’t I? They’d probably thank me for having rid the world of a menace.”

“Sure, sure! What do you say, Mr. Jardin?”

“Pop—” cried Val.

“I say I’m innocent, and you may go to hell.”

Glücke eyed him again. “Suit yourself,” he said shortly, and turned away. “Oh, Doc. You finished?”

Dr. Polk was visible now, rolling down the sleeves of his coat. The detectives were strung out around the room; and Val, looking out of one eye, saw that the heap in the corner near the fireplace was covered with newspapers. “Pending autopsy findings,” said Dr. Polk abruptly, “you may assume the following: The wound was made by a sharp-pointed instrument, the point at surface terminus of entry being roughly a half-inch wide. It just missed the heart. I should say it was made by the missing rapier, although I’d like to see the thing before making a positive statement.”

“How about the time of death?” demanded Glücke.

“Checks with the watch.”

Mr. Ellery Queen stirred restlessly. “The watch?”

“Yes,” said the Inspector with impatience, “his arm banged against the wall as he sank to a sitting position in that corner, because we found his wrist-watch smashed and the pieces of shattered crystal on the floor beside him. The hands stopped at 5.32.”

Rhys Jardin chuckled. Even Glücke seemed surprised at the pure happiness of it. It bothered him, for he kept eying Jardin sidewise. But Valerie knew why her father laughed. A wave of such relief swept over her that for an instant she tasted salt in her mouth. She felt like laughing hysterically herself. Solomon Spaeth had been murdered at 5.32. But at 5.32 Rhys Jardin had been entering the self-service elevator at the
La
Salle
with Val, on his way from their apartment to the lobby downstairs to wait for Walter. 5.32. … Val’s inner laughter died in a burst of panic. Rhys was all right now—nothing could touch him now, with an alibi like that. But Walter. … It was different in Walter’s case. At 5.35, with Rhys in full view of Mibs Austin in the
La
Salle
lobby, Val had telephoned Walter and Mibs had spoken to Walter and even recognized his voice. If Inspector Glücke should question the little blonde telephone operator, if she should tell him about that call, where Walter was, fix the time… Val caught a blurry glimpse of Walter’s face as he turned away to stare out the side windows into the blackness of the grounds. There was such agony on his face that she was ready to forgive anything just to be able to take him in her arms. He had remembered the call, too. Walter, she cried silently, why did you lie? What are you hiding?

A tall man bustled in lugging a kit. “Bronson!” said Dr. Polk, the wrinkles on his forehead vanishing. “Glad you’re here. I want you to have a look at this.”

The Bureau Chemist hurried with the coroner’s physician to the ell beside the fireplace. The detectives closed in. “Go on home,” said the Inspector bruskly to Walter. “I’ll talk to you again in the morning. Unless you want to stay here?”

“No,” said Walter, without moving. “No, I don’t.” Then he very quickly got out of the chair and groped for his hat and made for the corridor, stumbling once over a fold in the rug. He did not look at the Jardins.

“You can go, too—Miss Moon, Mr. Ruhig. And you, there, whatever your name is.”

But Pink said: “How about taking a jump in the lake?”

“Can’t—can’t my father and I leave, Inspector?” asked Val, staring at the doorway through which Walter had fled. Then she closed her eyes, because Mr. Ruhig was piloting the exquisite Miss Moon deferentially through the same doorway, somehow spoiling the view.

“No,” said Glücke curtly.

Val sighed. The Inspector strode over to the group near the fireplace and Mr. Queen, unable to restrain his curiosity, hurried after him and peered over his shoulder to see what was going on. Solly Spaeth was uncovered again. The Chemist knelt over him intently studying the brownish mouth of the stab-wound. Twice he lowered his long nose to the wound and sniffed. Then he slowly shook his head, looking up at Dr. Polk. “It’s molasses, all right,” he said in a wondering voice.

“That’s what I thought,” replied Dr. Polk. “And it’s not only at the mouth of the wound, but seems to coat the sides for some way in.”

“Molasses,” repeated the Inspector. “That’s a hell of a note. … Say, stop shoving me!”

Ellery rubbed his bearded cheeks. “Sorry, Inspector. Molasses? That’s exciting. Did I hear you say, Doctor, the point just missed the heart?”

The doctor regarded him with curiosity. “Yes.”

Ellery shouldered Glücke out of the way and pushed through the group until he was standing directly over the dead man. “Was the stab-wound serious enough to have caused death?”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” growled the Inspector.

“Undoubtedly, but I’ve a faint notion things aren’t quite as they seem. Well, Doctor?”

“Hard to say,” frowned the coroner’s physician. “There wasn’t much bleeding. Given an hour or so, he probably would have bled to death—that is, without medical attention. It certainly is queer.”

“So queer,” said Ellery, “that I’d have Mr. Bronson analyze the molasses.”

“What for?” snarled Glücke.

“The molasses and its physical disposition in the wound,” murmured Ellery, “suggest that it must have been smeared on the point of the blade that made the wound. Why smear molasses on a cutting edge? Well, molasses is viscid. It could be constructed as the ‘binder’ of another substance.”

“I see, I see,” muttered Dr. Polk. “I hadn’t thought of it just that way, but certain indications—”

“What is this?” demanded the Inspector irritably.

“It’s only a suggestion, respectful and all that,” said Ellery with a placative smile, “but if you’ll have Mr. Bronson test that molasses for poison—some poisonous substance that comes in solid rather than liquid form—I think you’ll find something.”

“Poison,” muttered Glücke. He stroked his nose and glanced fretfully at Ellery out of the corner of his eye.

The Chemist carefully scraped a scum of molasses from the wound and deposited it on a slide. Then he opened his kit and went to work. Molasses. Poison. Val closed her eyes. “Potassium cyanide,” announced Bronson at last. “I’m pretty sure. Of course, I’ll have to get back to my lab before I can make it official.”

“Cyanide!” exclaimed Dr. Polk. “That’s it.”

“Comes in powder form, of course—white crystals,” said the Chemist. “It was thoroughly mixed into the molasses—a good deal of it, I’d say.”

“Paralyzes certain enzymes essential to cellular metabolism,” muttered the doctor. “Death within a few minutes. He’d have died before complete absorption, so the tissues through which the blade passed ought to reveal traces of the poison in autopsy.” He shrugged at the dead man’s gray-fringed bald spot. “Well, it was a painless death, anyway.”

“Isn’t any one going to congratulate me?” sighed Ellery.

Glücke glared at him and turned his back. “We’ll have to get busy on that cyanide,” he snapped.

“I’m afraid you won’t be very successful,” said Bronson, packing his kit. “It’s too common—used commercially in dozens of ways—film manufacture, cleaning fluids, God knows what else. And you can buy it at any drug store.”

“Nuts,” said the Inspector, plainly disappointed. “Well, all right, Doc, get him out of here. Let’s have your report the first thing in the morning, if you can make it.”

Ellery backed off as the detectives milled about and Dr. Polk superintended the removal of the body. He seemed worried about something. “Oh, Dr. Polk,” he said as the coroner’s physician was about to follow Solly’s remains through the doorway. “Does the condition of the body confirm the time of death as indicated by the wrist-watch?”

“Yes. The man died of cyanide poisoning, not of stabbing, and within a very short time after the blow. From the local conditions in this room and the state of the corpse, calculating roughly, he figures to have passed out around 5.30. And the watch says 5.32, which ought to be close enough for any one. … Smart work, Mr. Queen. Detective, eh?”

“Enough of one,” sighed Ellery, “to detect traces of hostility in the official atmosphere. Thanks, Doctor.” And he watched Dr. Polk and Bronson depart.

“May we go now, Inspector?” asked Val again, examining the freckle on her left ring-finger. There had been something unpleasant about Solly’s quiet contour under the morgue sheet, and there was a vast desire within her to go somewhere and consume sherry frappés.

“When I’m through with you. Here,” roared Glücke, “what are you doing now, damn it?”

Ellery had dragged a chair over to the fireplace and was engaged in standing on it while he made mysterious movements with his body. He looked, in fact, as if he meant to emulate Dracula and climb the fireplace wall. “I’m trying,” he said in a friendly tone, stepping down, “to find the answer to three questions.”

“Listen, Queen—”

“First, why did your murderer employ that particular sword for his crime?”

“How the hell should I know? Look—”

“Why,” continued Ellery, going close to the fireplace and raising his arm to the wall above it, “why didn’t he take down this needle-bladed French dueling sword?”

“I don’t know,” barked Glücke, “and what’s more I don’t give a damn. If you’ll be kind enough—”

Ellery pointed. “See where that dustmark on the wall is—where the missing rapier hung. Now, no man could possibly have reached that rapier without standing on something. But why haul a chair over here to reach a cup-hilted Italian rapier of the seventeenth century when you have merely to stand on the floor and extend your arm and reach a nineteenth-century French dueling-sword which will do the work equally well?”

“That’s an odd note in an unpremeditated crime,” said Rhys Jardin, interested despite his preoccupation.

“Who asked you?” said the Inspector, exasperated.

“And who says it was unpremeditated?” said Ellery. “No, indeed, Mr. Jardin. Either the murderer took down the rapier and coated its tip with his molasses-and-cyanide concoction just before the crime; or else he had coated the point
some
time
before
the
crime
—prepared it, as it were. But in either event he had to mix the poison with the molasses before he killed Solly, which certainly rules out a crime of impulse.”

The tips of Inspector Glücke’s ears were burning by this time. “I’m not in the habit of running a forum,” he said in a strangled voice, “on a case I’m investigating. So you’ll all be good enough—”

“You smell from herring,” said Pink, who had formed a violent dislike for Glücke.

“And then,” said Ellery hastily, as if he might not be able to get it out before the catastrophe, “there’s my second question. Which is: Why did he smear the sword with poison at all?”

“Why?” shouted Glücke, throwing up his arms. “What the hell is this—Quiz Night? To make sure he died, that’s why!”

“Isn’t that a little like the man who wears not only suspenders but a belt, too?” asked Ellery earnestly. “Don’t you think you could kill a man very efficiently with merely a naked blade?”

Inspector Glücke had long since regretted his weakness in allowing the bearded young man to linger on the scene. The man was clearly one of those smart-aleck, theorizing amateurs whom Glücke had always despised. Moreover, he asked embarrassing questions before subordinates. Also, by sheer luck he might stumble on a solution and thus rob a hard-working professional of the prey, the publicity, and the departmental rewards of sensational success. All in all, a nuisance. So the Inspector blew up. “I’m not going to have my investigation disrupted by a guy who writes
detective
stories!” he bellowed. “Your old man has taken it because he’s got to live with you. But you’re three thousand miles away from Centre Street, and I don’t give a hoot in hell
what
you think about my case!”

Ellery stiffened. “Am I to understand that you’d like me better at a distance?”

“Understand your left tonsil! Scram!”

“I never thought I’d live to see the day,” murmured Ellery, nettled but trying to preserve an Emily Postian
savoir
faire
. “That’s Hollywood hospitality for you!”

“Mac, get this nosey lunatic out of here!”

“Desist, Mac. I’ll go quietly.” Ellery went over to the Jardins and said in a loud voice: “The man’s an idiot. And he’s quite capable of having you in the clink before you’re an hour older, Mr. Jardin.”

“Sorry you’re leaving us,” sighed Rhys. “I must say I prefer your company to his.”

“Thanks for the first kind word Hollywood has bestowed. Miss Jardin, goodbye…. I’d advise both of you to talk as economically as possible. In fact, get a lawyer.”

Inspector Glücke glared at him. Ellery went sedately to the door. “Not, however,” he added with a grimace, “Mr. Ruhig.”

“Will you get out, you pest?” roared the Inspector.

“Oh, yes, Inspector,” said Ellery. “I almost forgot to mention my third point. You remember I said there were three bothersome questions?” Mac approached grimly. “Now, now, Mac, I must warn you that I’ve just taken up ju-jitsu. The point is this, Inspector: Granting that your eccentric criminal stood on a chair to get a sword for which he had a much handier substitute, granting that he smeared the sword with poison when a good jab by a child could have dispatched Mr. Spaeth just as efficiently—granting all that, why in heaven’s name did he take the sword away with him after the crime?”