The Finishing Stroke (16 page)

He hurried back downstairs, using his flash recklessly. The library was dark. He switched the light on. The wingchair was empty.

Ellery ran back upstairs and without hesitation threw open the door of John's bedroom and walked in.

John was standing there naked, in the act of putting a leg into his pyjama trousers.

They stared at each other.

‘Well, if it isn't Second-Story Pete,' John said, completing the thrust of the leg. ‘I should have locked my door again. What's the pitch now?'

‘I thought you'd gone to bed.'

‘I'll confess all. I did, but I couldn't sleep. So I went down to the library and read a while. Dozed off and just came to. What are you panting about?'

‘Who's panting?' Ellery grinned; and he went back to his room, leaving John one leg in, one leg out, scowling.

The truth was, Ellery was panting like a puma. And the truth also was – he thought, still grinning – that John's breathing was as unlaboured as an infant's with a bellyful of his mother's milk.

At the stealthy knock on his door, Ellery slipped his arm back into his coat sleeve and said, ‘Yes?'

‘It's me. Open up, Mr. Queen.'

Ellery opened the door. ‘I thought you'd gone long ago, Sergeant.'

‘My relief just came.' Sergeant Devoe lowered his voice. ‘It's a break you haven't undressed yet. Come on.'

‘Come on where?'

‘Outside. You've got visitors.'

‘Visitors?'

‘They think it's better if they don't come in. They're waiting in the car.'

‘Who's waiting in what car, Sergeant?'

The sergeant, however, was already striding down the hall. Ellery shut his door and, baffled, followed.

Devoe and his relief, a young trooper named Cooksey, were conferring on the porch in low tones and paying no attention to the driveway.

Ellery stepped off the porch, peering. The car was standing there in the darkness without lights and with its motor off, a powerful sedan.

He said, ‘Yes? Who is that?'

A crackling voice said, ‘Happy New Year,' and a bass one beside it said, ‘Ditto.'

‘Dad – Velie!' Ellery ran over and yanked the rear door of the squad car open and slid in. ‘What are you two doing up here at this time of night?'

‘Rubbernecking is all,' Inspector Queen said. ‘And Velie came along because he doesn't think I can be trusted at a wheel.'

‘You can't,' Sergeant Velie said briefly.

‘At midnight,' Ellery said. ‘In the open.'

‘I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your ritzy friends,' his father said.

‘This is one snazz of a dump, the little I can make out,' the sergeant said. ‘How's the other half live, Maestro?'

‘Cut the comedy,' Ellery said. ‘Oh, and Happy New Year to
you.
Now what did you two find out about John's birth?'

‘Okay, Thomas,' the Inspector said. ‘That'll be one buck. Fork over.'

‘Wait a minute, will you?' Sergeant Velie grumbled. ‘I knew it was a sucker bet the minute I let you con me into it.'

There was the chink of coins, some rustling, and then the Inspector said, ‘Seeing that you legged it, Velie, you tell him.'

‘Well, I scouted around Mount Kidron and Rye,' Sergeant Velie began, ‘and what with this and that, and putting a couple twos together hither and yon, I pieced the story out. The auto accident occurred during a blizzard, on the Boston Post Road, outskirts of Mount Kidron, on the night of January the five, Nineteen-O-Five, right outside the house of a local medic name of Hall, Cornelius F. Hall. There was a Mrs. Hall, too, the doc's wife.'

‘Time,' Ellery said. ‘This Dr. and Mrs. Hall. How long had they been in Mount Kidron? Where did they hail from?'

‘No info,' the sergeant said. ‘All I got on Hall was that he had a kind of poor practice and he and his wife just about made out. Anyway, Sebastian, who didn't seem to be hurt much at the time, though he died less than a week later of a head injury from the accident, somehow got Mrs. Sebastian into the Hall's house and Dr. Hall went to work on her. She was in the eighth month or something and the accident brought on labour. She gave birth right there that night – well, January sixth. It was after midnight.'

‘And now,' Inspector Queen said, ‘get set for a surprise.'

‘I'd be surprised if you surprised me,' Ellery said. ‘I know your surprise. It's what made me ask you to dig into this in the first place. John wasn't the only Sebastian child born that night, was he? Mrs. Sebastian gave birth to twins, didn't she? Identical twin boys?'

‘Listen to him,' Sergeant Velie said with disgust. ‘If you already knew, Maestro, how come you had me chasing my tail all over Westchester County?'

‘I didn't know, Velie, I hypothesized. Having observed certain curiosa of incident and behaviour, I applied Queen's Law of the Displacement of Material Bodies, which states that not even a poet can be in two places at the same time. Then there's Queen's Law of Questionable Amnesias, which concludes that when a young man loses his memory about a specific incident that occurred only the day before, while recalling the other events of that day – and this occurs on two separate occasions – why, Sergeant, the amnesia just ain't, and the incident must be considered to have happened to someone else. All this, incidentally, was corroborated by Queen's Law of the Rising Eyebrow. Under this valuable law, when a man has hanging in his closets and lying in his bureau drawers exact duplicates of everything he wears, from a back-bow Burgundy hat to a pair of pearl-button spats, and he ascribes this odd state of affairs to the fact that he's “hard on clothes” and thus buys two of everything – under this law, as I say, the eyebrow rises and stays there.'

‘What's he talking about, Inspector?' the sergeant demanded.

‘Search me,' Inspector Queen said. ‘Though if I get a vague kind of drift from this dribble, son, you're in for a surprise just the same.'

‘What?' Ellery said.

‘Let's string the genius along for a while, Velie. Give him the buildup first.'

‘Yes,
sir
,' Sergeant Velie said with a smack of his whale-like lips. ‘You see, Maestro, when I find out there's a second kid born that same night I says to myself, What happened to this other kid? That's a logical question, ain't it?'

‘It certainly is,' Ellery snapped, ‘the logical answer to which is as follows: Since the second son's birth was never made public, and John Sebastian Senior apparently never acknowledged his existence, said second son must have been brought up by strangers, probably under a different name, and most likely unaware of his origin, at least for many years. There's a good deal about this second son we may never find out – especially the reason why his father refused to acknowledge him – but you've confirmed what I deduced, and that's all I care about at the moment. There's an identical twin of John's in existence, and has been for twenty-five years less some five days.'

‘Through, Mr. Queen?' his father asked.

‘Of course. What more is there?'

‘Oh, a mere detail,' the Inspector murmured. ‘Give it to him, Velie.'

Sergeant Velie chuckled. ‘The twin son died on January the twenty, Nineteen-O-Five, at the age of fourteen days.'

‘
No
!' Ellery cried.

‘Yes,' Sergeant Velie said.

‘
Impossible
!'

‘Maestro, I can prove it to you both ways from the ace.'

‘
You made a mistake
!'

‘Is that nice?' the sergeant growled. ‘Guys get their teeth shoved down their throat for cracks like that. When I say this kid – the twin – died at the age of two weeks, brother,
he died.
Get me?'

‘You can't possibly be sure,' Ellery said wildly. ‘Why, that would be – that wouldn't be tolerable! It would upset the universe! Produce this so-called proof of yours, Velie, and I guarantee, sound unheard, to punch forty-two holes in it!'

‘Oh, yeah? It's true that about nine years ago the Mount Kidron town hall burned to the ground with all its files, so that I couldn't find any official records of the kid's birth, but –'

‘Aha!' Ellery said. ‘And oho!'

‘
But
,' Sergeant Velie continued, unperturbed, ‘I've got living testimony. And my informants say that the folks who had custody of John Sebastian Senior's twin son after the first kid, your John, was taken up to Rye were the Halls – that's right, the delivering doctor and his wife. The thing is, they could only hang on to him two weeks. He got pneumonia and kicked off. Hall called in another Mount Kidron doctor, who's still in practice there, a Dr. Harold G. Martin. Dr. Martin remembers making out the death certificate. I've got his affidavit. Martin also remembers Hall telling him the whole story, seeing that the twin had died. About the kid's having been born right after the first one in his house two weeks before to a Mr. and Mrs. John Sebastian of Rye, and that Sebastian had
given
him the baby because during the second delivery the guy's wife died and he blamed this second kid for it, or something as screwy as that, and didn't want any part of him. That head injury must have made him wacky.'

‘So even that's explained,' Inspector Queen said.

‘That's Number One,' the sergeant continued with satisfaction. ‘Number Two: I located the undertaker who buried this kid for the Halls. Hall told him the same story. Number Three: the minister who read the funeral service over the coffin is still living in Mount Kidron, retired. He took me over to the church and had the church records hauled out for me, and there it was in white and black: “Second Sebastian Son, aged two weeks, died January 20, 1905.” I took a photostat of it, knowing my customer. Want to see it?'

‘I don't understand any of this,' Ellery said weakly.

‘And fourthly,' his father said, ‘Velie located the child's grave in Mount Kidron Cemetery. There's a cheap little headstone that just says: “Sebastian-Hall. Born Jan. 6, 1905 – Died Jan. 20, 1905. Rest in Peace.” We could probably get an exhumation order, but beyond establishing that the bones are those of a two-week-old child I don't see what it would accomplish. We have plenty of affidavits to prove the twin was born and that two weeks later he was dead. You sound sick, son. Is this very bad news?'

‘The worst,' Ellery groaned. ‘It's gibberish. It can't be. The Halls, Sergeant – what became of them?'

‘They pulled freight around the middle of Nineteen-O-Six and nobody in Mount Kidron's seen or heard from them since. I couldn't find anybody who knows where they moved to. There's no record of such a move on the books of any local moving company, so they probably used an out-of-town van.'

Ellery was silent. Then he said. ‘Thanks a lot, Velie.'

‘Want to talk about it?' his father asked gently.

‘I wouldn't know what to say. This was one phase of this cross-eyed case I was sure I had the answer to. Now …' Ellery was silent again. Then he said, ‘Well, it's my headache. Thanks, Dad. Take it easy going back, Velie. Good night.'

He got out of the squad car and groped his way to the porch like an old man.

11 Ninth Night:
Thursday, January 2, 1930

In Which the Mystery of John Sebastian Darkens, Mr. Queen Despairs, and to the Growing Menagerie Is Added Another Denizen

There are tides in the affairs of young men which, taken at the ebb, lead on to folly. It is no exaggeration to say that as Ellery thrashed in his bed through the interminable night and the rain-grey daylight hours of the following morning, his thoughts were not full of wisdom. He was to encounter and surmount many difficulties in the course of his career; but he was young then, the Case of the Curious Christmas Packages was only his second investigation – really his first independent one – and it seemed to him the end of his world had come. There should be two John Sebastians; every fact in logic cried out for two John Sebastians; he had settled in his mind that there were two John Sebastians; and now it appeared that there was only one John Sebastian after all. If John II existed, it was as a cherub in heaven and a two-week-old skeleton on earth, interred for almost twenty-five years. These were facts, too. When fact met fact head on, what happened? Chaos.

Thus young Mr. Queen's despair. In his despair he thought many foolish thoughts, which twenty-seven years later he was to recall with burning blush.

He crawled out of bed at noon, wishing woefully that he had never heard of crime, John Sebastian or, for that matter, Christmas.

When he got downstairs, he found Lieutenant Luria on a quarterdeck quelling a mutiny. It was the second of January, Mr. Payn, the attorney, was saying with a ferment in his mellifluous voice, he had many large affairs to attend to, and he wished to return to the city post-haste. Lieutenant Luria said he was sorry, but that could not be. Dr. Sam Dark protested that he must return to his practice of medicine, that he had promised to release his covering fellow-practitioners on January 2nd, this was January 2nd, and you must be reasonable, Lieutenant Luria. Lieutenant Luria said he was doing his job as he saw it, and please don't make it any tougher on me or yourselves. Mr. Freeman, the book publisher; Marius Carlo, the refugee from Professor Damrosch's orchestra; Miss Valentina Warren of the theatre; Miss Ellen Craig of Wellesley – all pleaded their causes with varying degrees of heat and emotion, and all met Lieutenant Luria's tight-lipped rebuff. The dead man was still unidentified, he said, the area of investigation was now being widened to embrace the continental United States, and he would be loath to slap on a blanket warrant holding them all as material witnesses to a homicide, but he would do that very thing, ladies and gentlemen, if you force me to. This elicited from Mr. Payn, the lawyer, a tirade of legalisms which tried the lieutenant's temper; and the whole conference broke up into fragments of excited talk which, when the débris settled, found Lieutenant Luria gone and all parties still there.

Lunch was a stony affair. There was no longer even a pretence of sociability. Rusty and John had apparently fallen out again, and from the green glances Rusty shot at Valentina and the red glares John directed toward Marius, Ellery gathered that the delicate problems of the quadrangle were still very much with them. After lunch Dan Z. Freeman retired to a corner like a squirrel with a nut and frankly read a manuscript which had been delivered to him from the city by messenger. Olivette Brown, muttering, pored like a witch over an astrological chart. Roland Payn paced tigerishly up and down. Dr. Dark and Arthur Craig, engaged in two-handed pinochle, kept slapping cards down with vicious little splats. The Reverend Mr. Gardiner, after touring the premises with a distressed expression, murmured something about a headache and retreated mendaciously to his room. Ellen asked Ellery to go walking with her in the rain, received a blank stare, and stamped off in deep dudgeon.

In the end Ellery followed the clergyman's example, went upstairs, locked his door, and sat down in a reclining chair. But not to doze. Instead, he clutched his temples and thought and thought and thought.

Ellery came to himself with a start. The room was almost dark. He felt stiff and chilled. He had thought himself in to a coma. He supposed he should be grateful to the voices …

Voices! He shook himself alert. It was the voices that had brought him back to the dismal world of reality. They were apparently coming from the next room.

That's the trouble with these old houses, Ellery thought, with their time-riddled walls. Sneeze – or worse – and the whole place knows it.

Men's voices. Who had the adjoining bedroom?

Payn.

Payn!

Ellery scrambled to his feet, reached for a straight chair, set it noiselessly down at the communicating door, stepped onto the seat, breathed a prayer that the hinges would not creak, and with swift fingers let down the transom. The creak was outrageous. But apparently the owners of the voices were too preoccupied with their conversation to notice.

Payn's voice.

And John Sebastian's.

Ellery eavesdropped without shame.

‘You loathsome little pup,' Roland Payn was saying. ‘You haven't the scruple of a ward-heeler. Trying to blackmail me!'

‘Calling me names won't get you anywhere, Payn,' John's voice said. ‘The fact is – if you'll pardon the expression – I've got you with your pants down. I know the address. I know the name of the babe. She's nothing but a prostitute, and you're one of her preferred customers.'

‘Prove it,' Payn said curtly.

‘That's what I like. The legal mind. Cuts right to the belly of the matter. You want proof? Here.'

‘What's this?' The lawyer's voice sounded choked.

‘Photostats of a little red book. It's Dolly's blue-chip list, the cream of her clientele. Dates, names, fees per session. Even some amusing comments. Like this one: “This Rollie Payn is sure one athlete. What does he think I am, a one-gal harem?” '

‘Enough,' Payn's voice said hoarsely. ‘Where did you get this?'

‘From Dolly,' John's voice said. ‘I bought it. That is, the original. Don't worry, Rollie, I've got it locked away in a safe place. I wouldn't want to see photos of this splashed all over the New York papers. Imagine what the
Graphic
would do with it! Probably paste up one of their famous composographs, showing you and Dolly in a tender moment. I'm afraid it would just about ruin that stuffed-shirt practice of yours.'

Payn was silent. Then his voice said, ‘All right. How much?'

‘Money? Not a dime.'

‘I don't understand.'

John laughed. ‘Man does not live by bread alone. Anyway, I have a whole bakeryful.' He said abruptly, ‘You have a son, Payn. His name is Wendell Payn, he's one of the shining lights of the Princeton English faculty, and he's considered the coming man in the field of poetry criticism. A word from young Professor Payn –'

‘You,' Roland Payn said in a wondering way, ‘are a maniac, I'm absolutely convinced. You seriously suggest that I influence my son to write a favourable review of your piddling little book of verse?'

‘Not merely favourable, Mr. Payn. Enthusiastic.'

‘It's evident that your prying into my private life didn't include an investigation of my son's character. Wendell would no more consider writing a dishonest criticism than he would consider breaking into the Princeton bursar's safe. He just wouldn't do it.'

‘Not even to save his saintly father from disgrace? You know, Mr. Payn, publication of that little red book might even result in your disbarment.'

‘It's out of the question! I can't ask him!'

‘That's your problem, isn't it?' Ellery heard the rattle of a doorknob. ‘There's plenty of time. At my suggestion Dan Freeman sent a copy of my book to your son, with a personal note, for review. You have until the next poetry issue of the
Saturday Review
goes to press. I'll be looking forward to it. Yes, Mr. Payn? You were about to say?'

The attorney's voice came through the transom all breath and distortion. ‘Nothing,' he said. ‘Nothing.'

Ellery heard Payn's door open and close, both softly, and the stealthy sound of John Sebastian's steps down the hall.

He also heard a violent metallic clash, as if a man had hurled himself on to a bed.

Ellery found himself shaking.

This was not John. This could not be John, even the worst of him. The John Ellery knew was not like this. The John Rusty Brown had fallen in love with was another man entirely.

And yet he was John. He could be no one else.

He was. And he wasn't.

It was not to be borne.

And that evening it was Roland Payn who found the ninth Christmas box. He had gone upstairs directly after dinner, saying that he had some letters to write. Down he came two minutes later, his handsome face exercised, his white hair indignant, carrying the gay little package as if he had picked it up in a Chinese rice field. He dropped it on the refectory table, took out a handkerchief, wiped his hands pointedly, and then went back upstairs without a word.

Without a word Ellery reached for it.

‘John Sebastian,' the Santa Claus card said.

In the same typewriting.

The white card in the box had four typewritten lines tonight:

The object in the red tissue paper was a stuffed animal, a raffish little monkey made of felt-like cloth. He was quite fetching. Under circumstances he might have evoked squeals from the women and grins from the men. As it was, they all stared at him as if he were about to sprout horns and recite the Lord's Prayer backwards.

Ellery turned the card over. It was blank.

‘Any suggestions?'

‘Yes!' John shouted. ‘Burn the whole unmentionable mess!'

From his corner Dan Freeman chuckled. ‘There's an old Yiddish saying, John, that I commend to you. Literally translated, it goes: Somebody else's backside is good to spank.' He rose, smiling. ‘I don't know but that I'm beginning to enjoy this.'

Ellery paced his room that night with the iron desperation of Edmond Dantès in the dungeon of the Chateau d'If.

The animal motif again. An ox. A camel. A fish. And now a monkey. And the message for the first time introduced the concept ‘zoo', as if to call attention to the animals of the collection.

So he concentrated on the four animal gifts.

Ox. Camel. Fish. Monkey.

Bovine. Ruminant. Aquatic. Primate.

Horns. Humps. Fins. Hands.

He shook his head impatiently.

The materials from which they were made?

Ox – wood. Camel – metal and enamel. Fish – living tissue. Monkey – cloth. When he found himself adding, Queen – marble-head, he snatched his diary and tried to lose himself in recording history.

But the word ‘clue' in the evening's verse kept beating in his head. It was the first time the word had been used in the messages. As if the writer were growing impatient with his dullness, making things plainer …
My
dullness? Ellery thought. Why do I assume it's I he's baiting? The gifts are addressed to John.

Still, he had the queerest conviction that Queen, not Sebastian, was the target of the sender's taunts.

Fifteen individual gifts in nine nights.

‘Clues.'

Clues to what? To what?