The Finishing Stroke (17 page)

12 Tenth Night:
Friday, January 3, 1930

In Which the Pale Rider Comes a Cropper, the One-Eyed Doll Grows a New Tooth, and a Baffled Sleuth Touches Bottom

Friday morning a hostile spirit was abroad in the house. Scarcely anyone was on terms of civility with anyone else. Befuddlement and lethargy had undergone a chemical change. Now everyone flashed anger, toyed with Mrs. Janssen's food, prowled the premises either singly or in resentful pairs, and made it nakedly evident that he wished for nothing so much as escape. Sergeant Devoe had his hands full.

The coldness between John and Rusty was colder. It was not thawed by the actions of Valentina and Marius. They kept up a barrage of malicious remarks, ostensibly addressed to each other but hitting their true mark each time. The sniping finally drove John out of the house.

Furious, Rusty followed him.

‘Don't you see what those two are up to? Darling, what's happened to us? We can't let them spoil everything. John, what's come over you!'

But John was saddling the pinto mare, deaf.

‘Don't go riding this morning. With all this slush the trail will be dangerous.'

‘I'll be fine. I just want to get away.'

‘From me.'

‘
Not
from you, Rusty. It's just that I feel like being alone. What's wrong with this damn girth!'

‘I thought the idea of being engaged to be married was
not
to feel alone,' Rusty said, knowing this was madness yet unable to stop. ‘Or is that what you're trying to convey to me?'

‘Oh, for God's sake.' John leaped into the saddle, yanked the mare's head around, bent double, and kicked. The mare shot out of the stable like a rocket.

With her hand to her mouth, blinking back the frustrated tears, Rusty watched him gallop across the mushy snow and disappear in the woods.

Panic seized her.

Fumbling, she saddled the gelding and rode out after him.

The woods trail was even worse than she had feared. Patches of snow and soft mud alternated with icy spots where the sun did not penetrate. The gelding picked his way primly, snorting his displeasure. Rusty's heart hammered. If John tried to run the mare at full gallop on this treacherous trail … She prodded the Morgan into a trot, straining to see ahead. Once he slipped and almost threw her. She hung on, trying to tell herself that the mare was surer-footed than the gelding, that John was an expert horseman …

She found him around a bend in the trail. He had been tossed clear and was lying in deep snow under a fir tree, face down. The mare had slipped and fallen – Rusty saw the telltale wallow in the snow – but apparently she was all right, for there was no sign of her.

‘John?'

He lay still and pale. Rusty scrambled off her horse and flung herself at him. He can't be dead, she told herself. He
mustn't
be.

‘John!' She shook him fiercely. ‘Oh, thank God …'

He was alive, but unconscious.

‘Darling, wake up.' She kissed him, patted his cheek.

John's eyes remained shut.

Rusty's relief drained out. He's hurt, she thought. He's hurt badly. I mustn't move him. I might …

Dr. Dark!

Rusty breathed a prayer, jumped into the saddle, sawed the gelding about on the narrow trail, and raced back to the house.

John's accident cleared the air. Ellery returned from the stable to find him holding court on the divan, with everyone chattering cheerfully. Rusty was caressing his head and smiling, and Dr. Dark was just shutting his medical bag. The only sign of injury was the bandage on John's right wrist and hand.

‘The patient will live, I see,' Ellery said.

‘The damn fool, you mean,' John grumbled. ‘It was my own fault. I don't know what all the fuss is about.'

‘It certainly was,' Dr. Dark snapped. ‘You're lucky to have got away with a mere sprained wrist.'

‘You're sure no bones are broken, Sam?' Craig asked anxiously. ‘No concussion?'

‘I could run him over to the hospital if it would make you feel better, Arthur, but it really isn't necessary.'

‘Of course not,' John said. ‘Relax, Arthur. Where've you been, Ellery? Not that I deserve your sympathy, but you might have hung around to see if I'd broken my neck.'

‘I'd have been tempted to break it myself.' Ellery filled his pipe. ‘Why, Sergeant Devoe and I went looking for the mare.'

‘She's hurt?' John exclaimed.

‘Fit as Blue Larkspur and full of beans. We found her in her stall, devouring hay.' Ellery blew out the match and dropped it gently into an ashtray. ‘Tell me, John. How did the accident happen?'

‘I was running her hard, she slipped, and I took a header. That's all I remember until Dr. Sam brought me to.'

‘Nothing happened on the trail to pull her up suddenly, make her shy?'

‘No.' John looked puzzled. ‘Not that I remember. Why?'

‘Mr. Queen.' John's guardian was disturbed. ‘You aren't suggesting –?'

‘I'm suggesting, Mr. Craig,' Ellery said dryly, ‘that this is no time to take an accident to John at its face value. That's why Devoe and I looked the mare over. She might just possibly have had a shoe tampered with. I'm happy to report that she hadn't. It wasn't likely, since no one could have known that John was going horseback-riding this morning, or that he'd take the mare instead of the gelding, his usual mount. Still, in view of what's been going on, I'm not ruling out anything simply because it's unlikely.'

Shadows crawled back over the party.

At Dr. Dark's insistence, John spent the rest of the day on his back. Since he balked at being put to bed, he occupied the divan in the living room all afternoon, becoming the vortex of small eddies of activity.

Today the subject uppermost in all minds insisted on surfacing. They discussed endlessly the meanings of the gifts. Ellery listened in silence, on the alert more for nuances of tone than for content. But he could detect nothing significant.

Throughout the day the question kept running through his head: What will the gift be tonight?

The answer to the corollary question: Who's going to find it? Ellery dismissed as foregone. If the pattern persisted – and, meaningless as the pattern was, it seemed consistent – the finder would be Rusty. Whoever was centrally involved with John on any given day turned out to be the finder of the gift that night. This had been true at least since Sunday, the fifth night. On that day he, Ellery, had been surprised by John in John's room; that night he, Ellery, found the gift. On Monday John had had his blackmailing talk with Dan Z. Freeman; on Monday night Freeman found the sixth gift. On Tuesday Val Warren declared her passion to John in the stable; on Tuesday night it was she who found the seventh gift. Wednesday had been an exception: it was Marius who had found the eighth gift in the grand piano, although nothing special had happened during the day between him and John. But yesterday, after the literary blackmail in Roland Payn's bedroom, it was Payn who had found the ninth gift.

Ellery shrugged. He was not disposed to place too much importance on these juxtapositions. They were obviously not coincidences, but on the other hand the individual episodes of each day could not have been foreseen by the gift-giver. Whoever he was, he was simply taking advantage of events as they occurred. With so many people in the party, wandering upstairs and down and out of doors at all hours, it was no feat to snoop and keep informed as to what was going on. This phase of the mysterious donor's activities was apparently byplay, a derisive part of whatever deadlier game he was playing. And that he was playing it with Ellery rather than with John or anyone else, Ellery was becoming more and more positive.

Far more pressing, Ellery felt, were the questions: Who is the dead man and how does he fit in with the other pieces of the puzzle? How explain the brain-numbing fact that John must have an identical twin secreted in the house-when according to Sergeant Velie's information the twin had beyond question died at the age of two weeks? And finally, and always: What did the nightly gifts signify?

As Ellery had foreseen, Rusty found the tenth gift. She ran up to her room after dinner to fetch an extra blanket to tuck around John on the divan, and she came running back pale as the blanket, clutching the latest of the dread boxes.

‘On my bed. Will somebody p-please take it?'

It was of a different shape from its nine predecessors – a flat square box of the kind used by linen shops for packing handkerchiefs.

It was unique in another way, also. For when Ellery took off the box top, he found nothing inside but a white card.

‘No gift.' Ellen said, staring.

‘That's a switch.' John actually looked relieved. ‘Maybe even the lackbrain behind this nonsense is beginning to realize his joke's laid an egg.'

‘I'm not so sure, John.' Ellery read the typewritten message aloud:

John managed a grin. ‘Lovely sentiment. Don't look so tragic, Rusty. I'm through letting this get me down, I really am. I could never stand lame verse, anyway.'

No one was fooled.

‘No gift,' Olivette Brown shrilled. ‘I must say that's weird. What can it mean?'

‘Maybe he's run out of ideas,' Dr. Dark suggested.

‘Or couldn't get hold of a head?' Marius said.

‘I don't find that remark particularly amusing, Carlo,' Payn said coldly. ‘In fact, there's damned little about you that amuses me.'

‘Oh, be quiet, both of you.' Valentina said. ‘What do you make of it, Ellery? Why no gift tonight?'

‘There is a gift tonight.' Ellery tapped the card. ‘ “The head predicting you'd be dead.” There was such a head, remember? “A warning you will die”? The head with “one closed eye” and “mouth shut tight”?'

‘The rag doll on New Year's night!' Ellen cried.

Ellery nodded. He went to the cabinet in which he had been storing the gifts. He examined the lock, nodded again, and then without attempting to use the key he pulled on the knob. The cabinet door opened.

‘Lock forced, probably during the small hours last night. Full of surprises, isn't he? … Yes, it's here,' Ellery said grimly, ‘though in amended condition.'

To the closed eye and slash of mouth on the white paint covering the doll's face had been added a third feature. It was a single short vertical line a bit to the right of the ‘mouth's' centre, projecting upwards from the mouth line. Crude as it was, its meaning was unmistakable. It represented a tooth – a grinning sort of tooth snaggling out of a mean sort of mouth under a leering sort of eye.

They had to help John to bed.

That night in his bedroom young Mr. Queen drained the bitter cup to its lees. It was no mere matter of the piling of obscurity upon confusion, or the fact that the current tally of 17 items over ten nights made another meaningless sum.

It was the taste of derision.

There could no longer be any question of who was being derided. John Sebastian might be the target of the threats, but ‘Mr. Sleuth' was the target of the taunts.

He's leading me around by the nose, Ellery thought savagely, and each night he gives it a tweak. And all I can do is submit to being led around and tweaked. He knows me, damn him! He knows I won't give up, that I'll stick it out to the end. And he isn't the least concerned about what I may come up with. He's leading me to a conclusion …

For an instant the odd thought flashed in Ellery's head:
a conclusion he wants me to reach.

But then it was lost in the vaster questions: And when I've reached it, what then? What happens then?

He saw only one gain in the debits of the night. To have forced the lock of the cabinet the forcer must have been one of the people in the house. With Sergeant Devoe on duty all day, and his relief on duty all night, no outsider could have managed it.

But that was small consolation. He had known that all along.

Ellery stared into the darkness of the bedroom until it began to turn grey. Then, exhausted, he fell asleep.

13 Eleventh Night:
Saturday, January 4, 1930

In Which Dr. Dark Gives John Some Unmedical Advice, and with the Sign of the Cross the Little House Is Finished
–
or Is It!

Overnight the weather turned cold. It proved tonic. Even John managed a smile or two over Rusty's mother-clucking at breakfast; with his right hand
hors de combat
he had to have help, and Rusty swarmed over him like a hen. No one mentioned last night's sinister gift of the ‘tooth,' or what fresh devilment might be expected tonight. At least part of the improved atmosphere, Ellery thought, was ascribable to the feeling that the gifts had almost run their course. This was the morning of the eleventh day of the holiday; and with the end only thirty-six hours away, everyone seemed to feel that even Lieutenant Luria would prove reasonable.

‘If he doesn't,' Roland Payn said grimly, ‘I'm going to start handing out legal advice – gratis.'

‘Oh, it isn't so bad,' Marius Carlo said. ‘Because of it, I get to miss another Damrosch broadcast tonight.' And he gave the lethal warning that anyone tuning in WEAF at nine o'clock would have the choice of weapons at dawn Sunday morning.

The humour was heavy, but as Mr. Gardiner murmured to Dan Z. Freeman, at least it had the merit of clarity.

So the day began well, and since Valentina and Marius had apparently agreed to pull in their horns the spirit of bonhomie promised to continue. Ellen was so encouraged that she got together with Mrs. Janssen and Felton and organized a wiener roast. They picnic-lunched in a clearing deep in the woods around a beautiful fire, carbonizing frankfurters, turning hamburgers into leather, frizzing onions, picking exploded potatoes out of the ashes, consuming quarts of bitter coffee and having a wonderful time.

Not even Lieutenant Luria's visit in the afternoon spoiled the day. He brought himself up to date on the messages and gifts, but not as if they mattered; he went through the motions of another round of interrogations; and in the end he announced that, barring unexpected developments, the party would be permitted to disperse Monday or Tuesday. A cheer went up.

Ellery remarked to Luria aside: ‘You've struck something.'

The trooper hesitated a fraction of a second in applying flame to his cigarette. ‘What makes you say that, Queen?'

‘I was weaned on gun oil and cut my first molars on a nightstick. What have you found out?'

‘Well – something.'

‘About the dead man?'

‘We're not sure yet.'

‘Who was he?' Ellery asked eagerly.

‘When we're sure I'll let you know.'

‘Anything else?'

Luria shook his head. ‘I don't know that the identification is going to get us anywhere after all. There are certain possibilities if the little guy is who we think he is, but …' He shrugged. ‘Hell, you can't make an arrest on possibilities. There's no evidence of any kind to connect anyone here directly with the murder.'

‘Then you're serious about letting them go?'

‘What else can I do?' Luria regarded Ellery through the cigarette smoke. ‘Make any sense yet out of those messages and boxes?'

‘No,' Ellery said briefly.

‘Still think they're connected with the murder?'

‘Yes. I mean – I don't really know, but I think so.'

‘If you ever find out give me a buzz.' Lieutenant Luria uttered a soft, rich curse. ‘It would be my luck to hit a screwball case.'

‘And mine,' Ellery muttered, ‘And mine!'

Dr. Dark knocked on the bedroom door. ‘John?'

‘Who is it?'

‘Sam Dark. May I come in?'

‘Sure.'

The fat man opened the door and walked in. John was lying on his bed and Rusty was seated beside it, an open book in her lap.

‘Cheers,' the doctor said. ‘How's my patient behaving?'

‘Not too badly for such a nasty character,' Rusty said. ‘Beefed, but took his nap, and he's been lying here listening to
Dodsworth,
although not without snide comments.'

‘Lewis couldn't write his way out of a paper bag,' John snorted. ‘He and Dreiser!'

‘
Dodsworth
? Oh, his new one,' Dr. Dark said. ‘I haven't got to it yet. I don't know, John, I thought his
Arrowsmith
was pretty good. How's the carpus?'

‘Painful, thank you. What are you practising these days, Dr. Sam, bootleg medicine? Clapping me into bed for a sprained wrist!

‘I let you go to the picnic, didn't I? Anyway, you're not in bed for the wrist. Concussion can be tricky.' The fat doctor glanced at Rusty. ‘My dear, I wonder if you'd mind –?'

Rusty rose. ‘I'll be back, darling.'

‘For crying out loud,' John complained. ‘I don't blush when my wrist is exposed.'

‘The doctor-patient relationship is sacred.' Dr. Dark winked at Rusty. ‘This won't take long.'

‘I hope he's sweeter-tempered with you than he's been with me.' Rusty kissed John lightly under the Byronic curl and left.

‘Okay, Dr. Sam, make it snappy. Hey!' John sat up in bed. ‘What are you locking the door for? What kind of examination are you going to give me, anyway?'

Dr. Dark set his vast back against the door. The twinkle was gone. ‘John, I want to talk to you.'

John stared. Then he lay back on the pillow and looked resignedly at the ceiling. ‘Man to man stuff, hm?'

‘Anything wrong with that?' The fat man came over to the bed. He stood there looking down at the young poet.

‘I guess it's better than man to boy.' John rolled his head idly. ‘You and Arthur have a tendency to forget that I'm not a Katzen- jammer Kid any more. “Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” That's from
Twelfth Night
, Sir Leech – speaking of twelves, which God forbid. It's later than you think.'

‘Yes,' Dr. Dark said. ‘Exactly. You might remember that.'

John looked at him. ‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘John.' The fat man hesitated. ‘I've known you from infancy. I've helped you grow up, in a way. I suppose I've always thought of myself as a sort of uncle to you. Are you sure you know what you're doing?'

‘You mean about marrying Rusty?' John grinned. ‘I told you back in the early part of November, the night I told Arthur, that's a consummation I can be devout about.'

‘I don't mean that and you know it. John, look at me. No, in the eye.'

‘The eye test for virtue?' John grinned. ‘I thought that went out with the chastity belt. You mean like this?'

Dr. Dark said heavily, ‘John, I know what you've been up to with Mr. Freeman and Mr. Payn.'

‘Do you, now.' There was no perturbation in John's voice, only surprise and annoyance. ‘And just what is it I'm supposed to be up to with Freeman and Payn?'

‘I don't believe it's necessary for me to spell it out, John. I tell you I know.'

John examined the ceiling again. ‘So they're talking. I've misjudged them.'

‘They've told me nothing.'

‘Then where did you hear this
conte drôlatique
?'

‘Does that matter?'

‘It may,' John said calmly. ‘How fast has this canard spread? How many others know about it?'

‘I don't know,' Dr. Dark said. ‘Only a few, I think. That's not the point. The point is, John, you're riding for a fall just as surely as you rode to one yesterday.'

‘Dr. Sam –' John began.

‘I know, you could tell me to mind my business and you'd be within your rights. I hope you're not going to.'

John was silent.

‘I wish I were a sermon preacher. A doctor rarely has time to say things roundabout. John, I don't know why you're doing this, but – don't. Don't start out in life by trying to push people around. People like Freeman and Payn, who've made their way in spite of their weaknesses, won't allow themselves to be pushed. You haven't lived long enough to find that out. They'll push back. Have you considered that?'

‘Dr. Sam,' John said, ‘I don't know what in hell you're talking about. Are you going to examine my wrist or aren't you?'

Dr. Samson Dark looked down at John for a long moment. Then he walked over to the door, unlocked it, and quietly left.

When Dr. Dark strode back into the living room that night after having left to go to bed only a few minutes before, Ellery did not have to look around to see the Christmas package in his hand.

‘I just found this on my bureau.'

As Ellery took the package, he wondered what role the physician had played during the day to earn the dubious nightly honour. But the doctor's fleshy lips were clamped together, and Ellery knew it would be useless to question him.

He took the package to the refectory table and in silence removed the green and red wrappings. There was the usual Santa tag with the typewritten ‘John Sebastian'. He noted automatically that the same typewriter was still being used.

The white box was one of the smallest of the series. The typewritten card, however, displayed one of the longer verses:

The reverse of the card was blank.

The ‘gift' was a little signpost. It consisted of a wooden upright stained brown, to the top of which a tiny brass bracket had been tacked. From the bracket hung a little oblong wooden ‘sign' with jagged ends, in the rustic mode, also brown-stained. On the sign was painted a crude red
X.

‘Well, this makes a tidy little nest out of it,' John said. ‘Do you suppose it's complete now, or will there be a mailbox tomorrow night?'

‘I say it's complete,' Mrs. Brown hissed. ‘Don't ask me why.
I feel
it.'

‘I say it's spinach,' said Marius Carlo, ‘and I say to hell with it. John, how about pouring me one for the Ostermoor?'

‘
X
,' Mr. Gardiner said thoughtfully. ‘The Greek letter
chi,
initial letter of
Christos.
The symbol of Christ, as in Xmas.'

Ellery looked up. ‘You know, I hadn't thought of that, Mr. Gardiner. But I don't believe that's what was meant. “A sign of the ghost,” the message says.'

‘The Holy Ghost?' Dan Freeman suggested.

‘Blasphemy,' the Episcopal minister muttered. ‘This entire thing is an abomination.'

‘No,' Ellery said to Freeman.

‘Then what ghost?' Rusty cried.

‘In the Era of Jackass Brandy, Hijack and the Concrete Kimono,' Ellery said, ‘X usually marks the spot, and the ghost that results over a slab in the nearest morgue. This is about as subtle as a Chicago shakedown.'

‘Lovely,' John said. ‘What it all adds up to is that I'm to be killed in the house.'

‘Don't
say
things like that, John!' Rusty screamed. Arthur Craig went to her, glaring at his ward.

‘You're all wrong, Mr. Queen,' Olivette Brown said passionately. ‘ “A sign of the ghost” refers to the
sender
. And the ghost's sign is
X
, the unknown. Someone who has crossed over is trying to make contact with John. There are ghosts who either have no identity or have lost it, and they're doomed to be chained to the world of matter until they find it …'

She went on and on, while the others listened with exasperation.

Ellery did not listen at all. He was thinking: 19 individual ‘gifts' now in 11 boxes. Tomorrow night the twelfth – and last – box.

What would that make the final tally?