The King is Dead (20 page)

‘All right,' said Ellery, pushing away from his corner. ‘Let's.'

He said it without the least conviction.

They searched the room three times. The third time they divided it into sections and went at it by the inch. They got the key to the filing cases from Abel and they examined every drawer. They cleared each one, case by case, of suspicion of concealing a secret compartment. They went through every cubic inch of the interior of both desks, and they went over the desk legs and frames for hollow spaces. They climbed to the tops of the filing cases and fingered every inch of the walls. Ellery set the metal chair on the cases and went over the metallic frieze at the ceiling, following it all around the room. He examined the clock with special care. They determined the immovability of the cases, which were permanently attached to the walls. They took the two desk chairs apart. They dismantled the telephone. They probed the typewriter. They even examined the hospital table with the unconscious man on it, the sterilizer, Dr. Storm's medical bag, and the other equipment that had been brought in after midnight.

There was no gun. There was no shell.

‘It's on one of them,' said the Inspector through his denture. He raised his voice. ‘We're going to do a body-search. On everybody. I'm sorry, Mrs. Bendigo, but that includes you, too. And the first thing I'm going to ask you to do is take your hair down … You can console yourself with the thought that I'm an old man who thinks life's greatest thrill is that first cup of coffee in the morning. Unless you people would like to call us off — here and now?'

Abel Bendigo said quietly, ‘I want to know about this. Start with me, Inspector.'

The Inspector searched Abel, Karla, and Max. Ellery searched Judah, Dr. Storm, and the man on the table. Ellery spent a great deal of time over the man on the table. He even contemplated the possibility of the bandages on that big torso as a place of concealment. But that possibility was an impossibility; a glance told him that. Dr. Storm hovered over him like an angry bantam.

‘Careful! Oh, you idiot — No! If he dies, my fine fellow, you're a murderer. What do I care about somebody's gun!'

The gun was on none of them. Neither was the shell. Any shell.

The Inspector was bewildered. Ellery was grim. Neither said anything.

Abel began to pace.

Karla stood by the hospital table, her make-up smeared, her hair tangled, just touching her husband's marble hand. Once she stroked his hair. Judah squatted in his corner sipping cognac peacefully; his glassy eyes were dull again. Max'l's great shoulders had developed a droop.

Dr. Storm prepared another hypodermic.

The Queens stood by, watching.

Abel was working up to something. He kept glaring at Judah as he paced, apparently struggling with unfamiliar emotions and losing the struggle. Finally he lost control.

He sprang forward and seized Judah by the collar. The attack was unexpected, and Judah came up like a cork, clutching his bottle frantically. His teeth were gleaming, and for a horrible moment Ellery thought he was laughing.

‘You drunken maniac,' Abel whispered. ‘How did you do it? I know that brain of yours — that diseased, dissatisfied brain! We were always too ordinary for you. You always hated us. Why didn't you try to kill me, too? How did you do it!'

Judah put the bottle to his lips, eyes popping from the pressure on his neck. Abel snatched the bottle from him. ‘You're not drinking any more tonight — ever, if I can help it! Did you really think you were going to be allowed to get away with this? What do you suppose King will do when he gets on his feet again?'

Judah glugged. His brother hurled him back against the cases. Judah slid to the floor and looked up.

He
was
laughing.

They searched everyone again before each left the room. Dr. Storm. King Bendigo, still unconscious on the table. Judah, lurching and grinning to himself. Max'l. Karla. Abel …

The Inspector did the searching and Ellery passed them out. One by one, so that there was no possibility of a trick. The Inspector also made a final search of the equipment that went out.

There was no gun. No shell.

‘I don't understand it,' said Abel, the last to leave. ‘And I've got to find out. My brother will want to know … I give you gentlemen full power. I'm telling Colonel Spring that in anything connected with this business he and his entire security force are under your orders.' He glanced at the bottle in his hand, and his lips thinned. ‘Don't worry about Judah. I'll see that he gets no further opportunity to do anyone any harm.'

He strode out, and Ellery made sure the door was locked.

Then he turned around. ‘Inspector Queen, I presume …'

‘Very funny,' said his father bitterly. ‘Now what?'

‘Now we
really
search,' said Ellery.

Forty-five minutes later they faced each other across King Bendigo's desk.

‘It's not here,' said Ellery.

‘Impossible,' said his father. ‘Impossible!'

‘How was King shot? From outside this room?'

‘Impossible!”

‘From inside this room?'

‘Impossible!'

‘Impossible,' nodded Ellery. ‘Impossible from outside and impossible from inside — there's positively no gun in this room.'

The Inspector was silent.

After a moment, Ellery said: ‘Ourselves.'

‘What?'

‘Search yourself, Dad!'

They searched themselves.

They searched each other.

No gun. No shell.

Ellery raised his right foot and deliberately kicked King Bendigo's desk. ‘Let's get out of here!'

They slammed the door of the Confidential Room and Ellery tried it for the last time.

It was locked.

There was no sign of Colonel Spring. Colonel Spring evidently preferred to transfer his authority
in absentia
.

‘Captain!'

The captain of the guards hurried up. ‘Yes, sir.'

‘I want some sealing wax and a candle.'

‘Yes, sir.'

When they were brought, Ellery lit the candle, melted some of the wax, and smeared it thickly over the keyhole of the steel door. He waited a moment. Then he pressed his signet ring into the wax directly over the keyhole.

‘Put a guard before this door day and night on three-hour tricks. That seal isn't to be touched. If I find the seal broken —'

‘Yes, sir!'

‘I believe there's a reserve key to the Confidential Room kept at the guard station up here? I want it.'

They walked down the corridor and waited for the key to be brought. A guard was already stationed at the door of the Confidential Room.

‘You have the other two keys, Dad, haven't you?'

The Inspector nodded. Ellery handed him the third key. The Inspector tucked it carefully away in one of his trouser pockets.

‘We'd better get some sleep.'

The Inspector started for the elevator. But then he stopped, looking back. ‘Aren't you coming?'

Ellery was standing where his father had left him. There was a queer expression on his face.

‘Now what?' snarled the Inspector, stamping back.

‘That bullet Storm extracted from King's chest,' Ellery said slowly. ‘What calibre would you say it is?'

‘Small. Probably .25.'

‘Yes,' said Ellery. ‘And Judah's gun is a .25.'

‘Oh, come on to bed.' The Inspector turned away.

But Ellery seized him by the arm. ‘I know it's insane,' he cried.

‘Ellery—' began his father.

‘I'm going to check.'

‘Damn it!'
The Inspector stamped after him.

There was a guard at Judah's door, too. He saluted as the Queens came up.

‘Who put you here?' grunted the Inspector.

‘Mr. Abel Bendigo, sir. Personal orders.'

‘Judah Bendigo's in his rooms?'

‘Yes, sir.'

Ellery went in. The Inspector went past him to the door of Judah's bedroom. The room vibrated with snores. The Inspector switched on the lights. Judah was lying on his back, mouth open. The room reeked; he had been sick.

The Inspector turned the lights off and shut the door.

‘Got it?'

Ellery had his hand over the little Walther. It was on the desk, where he had tossed it after Judah's exhibition of murder-by-magic at midnight.

‘Now what? What are you staring at?'

Ellery pointed with his other hand.

On the rug, behind Judah's desk, lay a cartridge shell.

The Inspector pounced on it. Out of his pocket he brought one of the unexploded cartridges Ellery had taken from Judah's Walther before midnight and handed over for safekeeping.

‘It's a shell from the same make and calibre of cartridge. The same.'

‘He didn't fire it,' Ellery said. ‘It never went off. No shell came out when he went through that hocus-pocus. The gun was empty, I tell you. It's a trick, part of the same trick.'

‘Let's see that gun!'

Ellery handed it to his father. The Inspector examined the German automatic with its ivory-inlaid stock and the triangular nick in the corner of the base. He shook his head.

‘It's sheer lunacy,' said Ellery, ‘but do you know what you and I are going to do before we go to bed?'

The Inspector nodded numbly.

They left the room without words, the Inspector carrying the gun, Ellery carrying the shell. Once the Inspector tapped his breast pocket, where the bulge was of the envelope containing the cotton-wrapped bullet from King Bendigo's body.

At the guard station Ellery said to the officer in charge, ‘I want a fast car with a driver. Get your ballistics man, whoever and wherever he is, out of bed and have him meet Inspector Queen and me at the ballistics lab, wherever that is, in ten minutes!'

They never did learn the name of the ballistics man. And they could never afterward recall what he looked like. The very laboratory in which they passed through the final episode of the nightmare remained a watery blur to them. Once during the next hour and a half the Inspector remarked that it was the finest ballistics laboratory he had ever seen. Later, he denied having said it, on the ground that he hadn't really seen anything. Ellery could not argue the point, as the machinery of his memory seemed to have stopped operating, as well as all his other long-functioning equipment.

The shock was too great. They hovered over the ballistics man, watching him work over the shell and the bullet and the little Walther — firing comparison shots, washing, ammoniating, magnifying — watching him angrily, jealously, hopefully, guarding against a trick, anticipating more magic, smoking like expectant fathers, even laughing at the absurdity of their own antics.

The shock was too great.

They saw the results themselves. It was not necessary for the ballistics man to point out what he pointed out, nevertheless, in the most technical detail — firing-pin marks, extractor and ejector traces, marks from the breech block. This was all about the shell they had picked up from the floor of Judah's study. And they studied the near-fatal bullet and the test bullet in the comparison microscope, eyeing the fused images of the two bullets unbelievingly. They insisted on photographic corroboration and the ballistics man produced it in ‘rolled photographs' showing the whole circumference of the bullet on a single plate. They peered and compared and discussed and argued, and when it was all over they faced the paralysing conclusion:

The bullet Dr. Storm had dug out of King Bendigo's chest had been fired from the gun Judah Bendigo had aimed emptily at his brother with two impenetrable walls and a lot of air space crowded with hard-muscled, men in the way
.

It was impossible.

Yet it was a fact.

12

July came — the first, the Fourth.

There was a ceremony of sorts before the Home Office, with the American flag raised beside the black Bendigo standard and a short speech by Abel Bendigo. But this was for the benefit of the Honourable James Walbridge Monahew, unofficial representative of the United States to The Bodigen Company — a courtesy such as the sovereign power extends to a friendly government. Present were Cleets of Great Britain and Cassebeer of France. There was a cocktail party afterwards in the Board Room, which neither Ellery nor his father was invited to attend. They learned later that several toasts were drunk — to the health of the absent King Bendigo, the President of the United States, the King of England, and the President of the Republic of France, in that order.

Bendigo was still confined to the hospital wing at the Residence, under twenty-four-hour guard. Ambiguous bulletins posted by Dr. Storm gave the impression of a rapid recovery. By July fifth the patient was reported sitting up. Still, no visitors were permitted except his wife and his brother Abel. Max'l was not classified as a visitor; he never left the sickroom, feeding there three times a day and bedding down on a cot within arm's reach of his divinity.

Karla spent most of her days in the hospital. The Queens saw little of her except at dinner, when she would chat in a strained, preoccupied way about everything but the subject uppermost in their minds. Abel they saw rarely; with the King helpless in bed, the Prime Minister was a busy man.

Judah was the surprise. For the first week after the attempted assassination he was confined to his quarters under guard, and the six cases of Segonzac cognac behind his Bechstein grand were removed at Abel Bendigo's order. But Judah kept mellow. His apartment was searched repeatedly, and a bottle or two were found occasionally in a rather obvious hiding-place; the guards suspected him of trying to keep them happy. The chief source of his supply they never located. For a few days it was a game which Judah showed every evidence of enjoying in his sardonic fashion. After his confinement was lifted and he was given freedom of the Residence, with the exception of the hospital wing, all attempts to keep him sober were abandoned. It would have taken a general of logistics commanding an army corps of Carrie Nations to track down half his secret caches.