The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (25 page)

The Angers restlessly eyed the lake, repelled and yet eager, searching, searching for something larger than a knife.

“Queen!” shouted a faraway voice. “Queen!”

Ellery called: “Here!” several times in a loud but weary voice, and resumed his cigarette.

Soon they heard someone thrashing toward them through the woods. In a few minutes Dr. Varrow appeared on the dead run.

“Queen,” he panted. “It—
is
—blood! Human blood!” Seeing Gramaton, he stopped, as if abashed.

Ellery nodded.

“Blood,” repeated the Angers in a loathing voice. “And Borcca's missing. And you found his cuff link on that hideous trail.” She shivered.

“Someone stabbed him to death in the studio last night,” whispered Miss Eames, “and in the struggle his blood got on the portrait.”

“And then either threw his body out the window,” said the actress, barely audible, “or he fell out during the fight. And then, whoever it was—came down and dragged the body all the way through the woods to—to this horrible place, and …”

“We could probably,” said Dr. Varrow thickly, “find the body ourselves, right here in the lake.”

Gramaton said very slowly: “We ought to send for the police.”

They all looked at Ellery, stricken by the word. But Ellery continued to smoke without saying anything.

“I don't suppose,” faltered Miss Eames finally, “you can hope to
conceal
a—murder, can you?”

Gramaton began to trudge back in the direction of his house.

“Oh, just a moment,” Ellery said, flinging his cigarette into the lake. Gramaton stopped, without turning around.

“Gramaton, you're a fool.”

“What do you mean?” growled the artist. But he still did not turn around.

“Are you the nice chap you seem to be,” demanded Ellery, “or are you what your wife and ex-wife and friends seem to think you are—a homicidal maniac?”

Gramaton wheeled then, his ugly face crimson. “All right!” he yelled. “I killed him!”

“No,” cried Mimi, half-rising from her stone. “Mark, no!”

“Pshaw,” said Ellery, “there's no need to be so vehement, Gramaton. A child could see you're protecting your wife—or think you are.” Gramaton sank onto a boulder. “That,” continued Ellery equably, “gives you a character. You don't know what to believe about your wife, but you're willing to confess to a murder you think she committed—just the same.”

“I killed him, I say,” said Gramaton sullenly.

“
Killed whom, Gramaton
?”

They all looked at him then. “Mr. Queen,” cried Mimi. “No!”

“It's no use, Mrs. Gramaton,” said Ellery. “All this would have been avoided if you'd been sensible enough to trust your husband in the first place. That's what husbands, poor saps, are for.”

“But Borcca—” began Dr. Varrow.

“Ah, yes, Borcca. Yes, indeed, we must discuss Mr. Borcca. But first we must discuss our hostess's charming back.”

“My back?” said Mimi faintly.

“What about my wife's back?” shouted Gramaton.

“Everything, or nearly,” smiled Ellery, lighting another cigarette. “Smoke? You need one badly.… You see, your wife's back is not only beautiful, Gramaton; it's eloquent, too.

“I've been in Natchitauk over a week; I've had the pleasure of observing it on several precious occasions; it's always been bared to the world, as beautiful things should be; and in fact Mrs. Gramaton told me herself that you were so proud of it you selected her clothes—with an eye, I suppose, to keeping it constantly on exhibition.”

Miss Eames made a muffled noise, and Mimi looked sick.

“This morning,” drawled Ellery, “Mrs. Gramaton suddenly appears garbed in a heavy, all-concealing gown; she wears a long, all-concealing coat; she announces she will no longer pose for your mural, in which her nude back is the central motif. This despite these facts: first, that it is an extremely hot day; second, that up to late last night I myself saw her back bare and beautiful as ever; third, that she is well aware what it must mean to you to be denied suddenly, and without explanation, the inspiration of her charms in such an ambitious artistic undertaking as the New Arts mural. Yet,” said Ellery, “she suddenly covers her back and refuses to pose. Why?”

Gramaton looked at his wife, his brow contorted.

“Shall I tell you why, Mrs. Gramaton?” said Ellery gently. “Because obviously you are
concealing
your back. Because obviously something happened between the time I left you last night and breakfast this morning that
forced
you to conceal your back. Because obviously something happened to your back last night which you don't want your husband to see, and which he would have to see if as usual you posed for him this morning. Am I right?”

Mimi Gramaton's lips moved, but she said nothing. Gramaton and the others stared at Ellery, bewildered.

“Of course I am,” smiled Ellery. “Well, I said to myself, what could have happened to your back last night? Was there any clue? There certainly was—the portrait of the fourth Lord Gramaton!”

“The portrait?” repeated Miss Eames, wrinkling her nose.

“For, mark you, last night Lord Gramaton's breast bled again. Ah, what a story! I left you in the studio, and the noble lord bled, and this morning you concealed your back.… Surely it makes sense? The bleeding picture might have been a bad joke; it might have been—forgive me—a supernatural phenomenon; but at least it
was
blood—human blood, Dr. Varrow has established. Well, human blood has to flow, and that means a wound. Whose wound? Lord Gramaton's? Pshaw! Blood is blood, and canvas doesn't wound easily.
Your
blood, Mrs. Gramaton, and
your
wound, to be sure; otherwise why were you afraid to display your back?”

“Oh Lord,” said Gramaton. “Mimi—darling—” Mimi began to weep and Gramaton buried his ugly face in his hands.

“It was easy to reconstruct what must have happened. It was in the studio; there are signs there of a tussle. You were attacked—with the palette knife, of course; we found it thrown away. You backed against the portrait, the wound in your back streaming blood: Lord Gramaton was set flush with the floor, and was life-size, so your back wound smeared Lord Gramaton's breast in just the right place, happily for the ghost story. I assumed you fainted, and Jeff—he was outside when I left, so he must have been attracted by the sounds of the struggle—found you, carried you to your room, and treated your wound and kept his mouth shut like the loyal soul he is, because you begged him to.” Mimi nodded, sobbing.

“Mimi!” Gramaton sprang to her.

“But—Borcca,” muttered Dr. Varrow. “I don't see—”

Ellery flicked ashes. “It's wonderful what the imagination is,” he grinned. “Blood—Borcca missing—plenty of motive for murder—the trail of a human body through the woods … murder! How very illogical, and how very human.”

He puffed. “I saw, of course, that Borcca must have been the attacker: the man threatened to kill Mrs. Gramaton yesterday in my hearing, and he was plainly insane with jealousy and a deep thwarted passion. What happened to Borcca? Ah, the open window. It had been shut when I saw it the night before. Now it was open. Below, in the pansy bed, the plain sign of a fallen body, two deep trenches in the soil showing where his feet must have landed.… In short, panicky, a coward, perhaps thinking he had committed murder, hearing Jeff lumbering upstairs, Borcca jumped out of Gramaton's window in a blind impulse to escape—and fell two stories.”

“But how can you know he jumped?” frowned the Angers. “How do you know—Jeff, say, didn't catch and kill him and throw his dead body out and then drag it.…”

“No,” smiled Ellery. “The dragging marks stretched out a considerable distance through these woods. In one place, as you saw, it led under some brambles so thick that I couldn't have gone through it except on my belly; yet the trail went right through, didn't it? If Borcca was dead, and his body was being dragged, how did the murderer get the body through those brambles? In fact, why should he want to? Surely he wouldn't crawl himself at that point, hauling the body after him. It would have been easier to go by an unobstructed path nearby, as we did.

“So,” said Ellery, rising and beginning to pick his way across the rocky neck, “it was evident that Borcca had
not
been dragged,
that Borcca had dragged himself
, crawling on his stomach. Therefore he was alive, and no murder had been committed at all, you see.”

Slowly they began to follow. Gramaton had his arm about Mimi, humbly, his big chin on his breast.

“But why should he crawl all that distance?” demanded Dr. Varrow. “He might crawl
to
the woods to escape being seen, but once in the woods, at night, surely he didn't have to.…”

“Exactly; he didn't have to,” said Ellery. “But he crawled nevertheless. Then he
must
have had to.… He had jumped two stories. He had landed feet first, and from the turning-in of the toemarks in the pansy bed his feet had twisted inward in landing. So, I said to myself, he must have broken his ankles. You see?”

He stopped. They stopped. Ellery had led them to the end of the path on the eastward part of the island. They could see the abandoned shack through the trees.

“A man with two broken feet—both were broken, because the trail showed two parallel shoe marks dragging, indicating that he could not use even one leg for pushing—cannot swim, without foot leverage he can hardly be conceived as rowing, and there is neither a motor-boat nor a bridge on this island. I felt sure,” he said in a low voice, “that he was therefore still on the island.”

Gramaton growled deep in his throat, like a bloodhound.

“And in view of Jeff's inability to find our Mr. Borcca this morning, it also seemed probable that he had taken refuge in that shack.” Ellery looked into Gramaton's gray eyes. “For more than twelve hours the creature has been cowering in there, in intense pain, thinking himself a murderer, waiting to be routed out for the capital punishment he believes he's earned. I imagine he's been punished enough, don't you, Gramaton?”

The big man's eyes blinked. Then, without a word, he said: “Mimi?” in a low voice, and she looked up at him and took his arm and he turned her carefully around and began to walk her back to the western end of the island.

Offshore, resting on his oars like a watchful Buddha, sat Jeff.

“You may as well go back, too,” said Ellery gently to the two women. He waved his arm at Jeff. “Dr. Varrow and I have a nasty job to—finish.”

Man Bites Dog

Anyone observing the tigerish pacings, the gnawings of lip, the contortions of brow, and the fierce melancholy which characterized the conduct of Mr. Ellery Queen, the noted sleuth, during those early October days in Hollywood, would have said reverently that the great man's intellect was once more locked in titanic struggle with the forces of evil.

“Paula,” Mr. Queen said to Paula Paris, “I'm going mad.”

“I hope,” said Miss Paris tenderly, “it's love.”

Mr. Queen paced, swathed in yards of thought. Queenly Miss Paris observed him with melting eyes. When he had first encountered her, during his investigation of the double murder of Blythe Stuart and Jack Royle, the famous motion-picture stars,
*
Miss Paris had been in the grip of a morbid psychology. She had been in a deathly terror of crowds. “Crowd phobia” the doctors called it. Mr. Queen, stirred by a nameless emotion, determined to cure the lady of her psychological affliction. The therapy, he conceived, must be both shocking and compensatory; and so he made love to her.

And lo! although Miss Paris recovered, to his horror Mr. Queen found that the cure may sometimes present a worse problem than the affliction. For the patient promptly fell in love with her healer; and the healer did not himself escape certain excruciating emotional consequences.

“Is it?” asked Miss Paris, her heart in her eyes.

“Eh?” said Mr. Queen. “What? Oh, no. I mean—it's the World Series.” He looked savage. “Don't you realize what's happening? The New York Giants and the New York Yankees are waging mortal combat to determine the baseball championship of the world, and I'm three thousand miles away!”

“Oh,” said Miss Paris. Then she said cleverly: “You poor darling.”

“Never missed a New York series before,” wailed Mr. Queen. “Driving me cuckoo. And what a battle! Greatest series ever played. Moore and DiMaggio have done miracles in the outfield. Giants have pulled a triple play. Goofy Gomez struck out fourteen men to win the first game. Hubbell's pitched a one-hit shutout. And today Dickey came up in the ninth inning with the bases loaded, two out, and the Yanks three runs behind, and slammed a homer over the right-field stands!”

“Is that good?” asked Miss Paris.

“Good!” howled Mr. Queen. “It merely sent the series into a seventh game.”

“Poor darling,” said Miss Paris again, and she picked up her telephone. When she set it down she said: “Weather's threatening in the East. Tomorrow the New York Weather Bureau expects heavy rains.”

Mr. Queen stared wildly. “You mean—”

“I mean that you're taking tonight's plane for the East. And you'll see your beloved seventh game day after tomorrow.”

“Paula, you're a genius!” Then Mr. Queen's face fell. “But the studio, tickets …
Bigre
! I'll tell the studio I'm down with elephantiasis, and I'll wire Dad to snare a box. With his pull at City Hall, he ought to—Paula, I don't know what I'd do.…”

“You might,” suggested Miss Paris, “kiss me … goodbye.”

Mr. Queen did so, absently. The he started. “Not at all! You're coming with me!”