accomplice, he wouldn't have been forced to take the key at all!...
He would have carried the body downstairs, and his accomplice would
have remained in the apartment to open the door for him when he was
finished downstairs. Don't you see? The very fact that he had to take
the key shows that it was a one-man job. I might be confronted with
the objection: 'Well, it could have been two people at that, because
both might have carried the body downstairs.' To that I reply with
certainty, 'No!' because it would have involved a double risk--two
people would have been easier to detect by a watchman than one. This
crime is well thought out--the author of it would never have taken
this unnecessary chance of discovery."
Ellery stopped abruptly and stared down at his notes. No one moved.
When he looked up there was a tightness about his lips that revealed an
inward strain whose cause no one there could guess.
"I have now reached the point, ladies and gentlemen," he announced in
a calm flat voice, "where I can go to some length in describing our
elusive criminal. Would you care to hear my description?"
He looked about the room, challenging them with his eyes. Bodies rigid
through excitement sagged in reaction. Every one averted his head.
There was no sound from them.
"I take it that you would," said Ellery in the same flat voice, which
contained a note of amused menace. "Very well, then!"
He leaned forward, eyes glittering. "Our murderer is a man. The tactics
employed in putting the shoes and hat into the closet plus the evidence
of the missing blade point to this masculinity. The physical energy
required in disposing of the body and the rest; the mental agility,
with its recurrent traces of hard common sense; the cold-bloodedness,
the unscrupulosity--all these point unerringly to a masculine figure
with, if you will, a fairly heavy beard which requires daily shaving."
They followed the movements of his lips with bated breaths.
"Our man worked alone, without accomplices. The deductions from the
missing key, which I have gone into at great length, point to this."
There was not a tremor of movement in the room.
"Our lone man is connected with the store. The removal of the body to
the window downstairs and all its attendant complications, which I
have also expounded at some length, prove this."
Ellery relaxed slightly. Again he looked about the room with a little
smile. He applied his handkerchief to his lips, glanced slyly at
Commissioner Welles, who sat perspiring and alert in his chair; at his
father, who was slumped in an attitude of weariness, one fragile hand
shielding his eyes; at the motionless detectives to his left; at Velie,
Crouther, "Jimmy," and Fiorelli to his right. Then he began once more.
"On one point," he said dryly, "we have as yet reached no definite
conclusion. I refer to the nature of the business which the murderer
considered so imperative as to require special attention Tuesday
morning....
"Which brings me to the most absorbing subject of the five books which
we discovered on this desk--that interesting mélange of paleontology,
elementary music, commerce of the _moyen age_, philately, and bad
vaudeville jokes."
Ellery launched into a short, graphic description of the five strange
volumes, the markings, Weaver's story of Springer's duplicity, the
revelation that the addresses were drug-distributing depots, and
finally the unsuccessful raid on the house at the 98th Street address,
taken from the sixth book in Weaver's possession.
"When Springer prepared the sixth book," continued Ellery, to his
ever-tensing audience, "we can assume that he had no suspicion that
the book-code was being tampered with or known to an outsider. If he
had, he would not have prepared the book and left it for Mr. Weaver's
investigating fingers. So that, when Springer left the store on Monday
night, followed by Mr. Weaver, he did not know that this sixth book,
_Modern Trends in Interior Decoration_, by Lucian Tucker, was in our
young amateur detective's possession. And since Springer met and spoke
to no one all evening, even when he arrived at his Bronx apartment
(for we have checked up through the telephone company and found that
he did not make any telephone calls when he got home), he could not
therefore have known that the book-system had been tampered with until,
at the very earliest, the next morning, Tuesday, when he returned
to work. In other words, after the murder. If we presume that not
Springer, but some one else, would have been apprised by an outsider
of the discovery of the code-system, we must not forget that the only
method by which any one could have communicated with another about
the matter from the store would be by telephoning, since he could not
leave the store during the night. And we discovered that the telephone
service at this store is cut off at night, with the exception of
one trunk line leading to O'Flaherty's desk; and this was not used,
according to O'Flaherty's own testimony.
"Then we are forced to conclude that it was impossible for any one in
the store Monday night and early Tuesday morning to have communicated
with Springer or any one else about the missing sixth book, which
Weaver took away with him."
Ellery forged ahead rapidly. "The fact that the system of dope
distribution was disorganized the next morning, Tuesday--as it was, for
the sudden abandonment of the 98th Street house on Tuesday afternoon
is clear evidence--could have been due only to some one of the drug
ring discovering during the night that the system was being tampered
with. I repeat here the fact that Springer went ahead on Monday evening
with his regular task of codifying the sixth book, showing that up to
that time the ring considered their system safe. Yet by next morning
they had become alarmed and fled the 98th Street rendezvous, even
before catering to their addict-customers. Again, then, the logical
explanation is that it was during the previous night that some one
discovered something wrong.
"This discovery could have been caused only by, first, noticing the
absence of the sixth book from its accustomed shelf in the Book
Department Monday night after Weaver left--the last one to check out
of the store; second, finding the five duplicate books on Mr. French's
desk Monday night; or third, both. We must conclude therefore that,
since the disorganization did take place the morning after the crime,
it could have only been ordered by some one who made one or both of
these discoveries Monday night. Some one--to amplify--who must have
been in the store after Springer and Weaver left, and who therefore
could not get out of the store or communicate with any one until at
least nine o'clock Tuesday morning."
Dawning comprehension shone from several faces before him. Ellery
smiled. "I see that some of you are anticipating the inevitable
conclusion.... Who in the store that night was in a position to make
one or both of these bibliographical discoveries? The answer is: the
murderer, the man who killed Mrs. French in the room in which the five
books were prominently in sight. Is there anything about the murderer's
subsequent actions which proves that he _did_ make the discovery of the
five books in the apartment? Yes, there is. The fact that the murderer
removed the body to the window-room in order to give himself time next
morning to attend to his 'business'--which until this point has been
obscure....
"The deductive chain, ladies and gentlemen," said Ellery in a curiously
triumphant voice, "is too strong and perfectly welded to be anything
but truth. _The murderer warned the drug ring Tuesday morning._
"In other words, to add an element to our growing description--our
murderer is a man, who worked alone, who is connected with the store,
and who belongs to a large, well-organized drug ring."
He paused, fingered the five books on the desk with sensitive fingers.
"Furthermore, we are now in a position to add another qualifying item
to the growing description of the murderer.
"For had our drug-distributing murderer been present in the French
apartment _before_ the night of the murder--and by 'before' I mean at
any time within five weeks prior to the fatal night--he would have
seen the books on the table, would have become suspicious, would have
at once ordered the cessation of the book-code operations in the
Book Department. And since up to the very night of the murder the
book system was still in effect, it follows most gracefully that the
murderer had not been in the French library for between one and five
weeks before Monday night last.... We have confirmation that it was
the murderer again who saw those books on the desk. For in examining
and later fixing the damaged book-ends, he could scarcely have missed
seeing--and understanding to his horror the significance of--the five
volumes....
"As a matter of fact," continued Ellery swiftly, "there is no
difficulty in deducing that the murderer, upon seeing the incriminating
books on this desk, immediately stole downstairs to the Book Department
with a flashlight to determine whether the sixth book had been
tampered with also. And of course he would have found it gone--the
climax-capping discovery which would make it imperative for him to
get word to his confederates that the game was up. This is a decently
reasonable conjecture which very soon, I am happy to announce, we shall
be able to check more positively!"
And with this he stopped short, mopped his forehead with his
handkerchief, and polished the lenses of his pince-nez with absent
fingers. This time a ripple of conversation disturbed the quiet
atmosphere, beginning in a minor cadence that swelled to excited
proportions, only to cease abruptly when Ellery lifted a hand for
silence.
"To make the analysis complete," he resumed, restoring his glasses
to his nose, "I shall now become perhaps objectionably personal. For
I mean to take up, one by one, each of you and measure you by the
yardstick I have constructed in this analysis!"
Instantly the room was a babel of exclamations, expressions of anger,
resentment, bewilderment, uncomfortable self-interest. Ellery shrugged
his shoulders, turned toward Commissioner Welles. The Commissioner said
"Yes!" in a decisive tone and glared at the people assembled before
him. They subsided, muttering.
Ellery turned back to his audience with a half-smile. "Really," he
said, "I have not sprung my greatest surprise by any means. So there is
little cause for protest on the part of any one here--or should I say
nearly any one? At any rate, let's begin this fascinating little game
of elimination.
"From the first unit on my yardstick--the fact that the murderer is
a man--" he said, "we may at once absolve, even as an intellectual
exercise, Miss Marion French, Miss Bernice Carmody, and Mrs. Cornelius
Zorn.
"The second unit--that this man worked alone--is irrelevant and useless
to determine identity, so we will proceed to the third unit, which is
that the murderer, a man, is connected with this establishment. And to
the fourth, which is that the murderer has not been in this apartment
within the past five weeks.
"There is, first, Mr. Cyrus French." Ellery bowed insouciantly to the
feeble old millionaire. "Mr. French is certainly connected with this
establishment. Mr. French, further, could have committed the crime, if
you judge physical possibility a factor. I demonstrated privately not
long ago that, had Mr. French bribed the chauffeur of his host, Mr.
Whitney, to take him into the City from Great Neck on Monday night and
forget about it, he could have arrived at this apartment in sufficient
time to slip through the freight-entrance and into the apartment. He
was not seen again, except by the chauffeur, after he retired to his
room in the Whitney house at nine o'clock Monday night complaining of a
slight indisposition.
"However--" Ellery smiled at the purpling face of French--"Mr. French
has certainly been in this room within the past five weeks--every day,
in fact, for years. And if this seems inconclusive, Mr. French, rest
easy. For there is another reason, that thus far I have purposely
neglected to mention, which makes your culpability a psychological
impossibility."
French relaxed, a vague smile lifting the corners of his tremulous old
mouth. Marion squeezed his hand. "Now," said Ellery busily, "Mr. John
Gray, donor of the entangled book-ends and close friend to the French
family. You, Mr. Gray," he said gravely, directly addressing the spruce
old director, "are eliminated on a number of counts. Although you are
connected with the store in a very important capacity, and although
your absence on Tuesday morning would have been seriously noticed,
you too have been a frequent visitor to these rooms during the past
five weeks; in fact, you attended a meeting here on Friday, I believe.
And you had an alibi for Monday night which we checked up and found
stronger than even you believe. For not only does the night-man at your
hotel desk confirm your statement that you were talking with him at
eleven-forty Monday night, making it impossible for you to have entered
the store, but another person, unknown to you--a fellow-resident at the
same apartment hotel--saw you enter your suite at eleven-forty-five....
Even without this we could not seriously have entertained a thought
of your guilt, for we had no reason to believe that your friend the
night-clerk is anything but an honest man. No more reason, in fact,
than that Mr. Whitney's chauffeur, in the case of Mr. French, is
dishonest. In Mr. French's case I merely mentioned the bribe as an
eventuality, improbable but certainly within the realm of possibility."
Gray sank back with a curious sigh, dug his small hands into the
pockets of his coat. Ellery turned to red-faced, nervous Cornelius
Zorn, who was fumbling with his watch-chain. "Mr. Zorn, your alibi was
weak, and you could have, with perjured testimony on the part of Mrs.
Zorn, committed the murder. But although you are a prominent official
of the store, you too have been in this room at least once weekly for
many months. And you, too, as well as Mr. French and Mr. Gray, are
further absolved by this psychological inadmissibility of which I spoke
before.
"Mr. Marchbanks," continued Ellery, turning to the heavy-set, lowering
brother of the dead woman, "your story about the automobile trip to
Long Island and staying overnight at your house in Little Neck, unseen
by any one who might vouch for your presence, also made it physically
possible for you to have returned to the city in time to get into
the store and commit the murder. But you needn't have been so irate
yesterday--you are absolved too by this secret point of mine, besides
being eliminated, as a regular attendant here at the directorial
conferences, on the same account as Mr. Zorn.
"And Mr. Trask--" Ellery's tone hardened slightly--"although you were
drunk and rolling about the streets--" Trask's jaw dropped in vapid
astonishment--"on Monday night and Tuesday morning, you, too, are set
free by my yardstick, as well as by my as yet undivulged item."
Ellery paused, looked contemplatively at the stony, dark features
of Vincent Carmody. "Mr. Carmody. In many respects you deserve our
apologies and genuine commiserations. You were entirely eliminated from
our speculations by the fact that you are in no way connected with the
store. Had you committed the murder, despite your story of the night
trip to Connecticut, which was unsubstantiated and might have been
false, there would have been no necessity for taking the body of Mrs.
French downstairs to the window-room. Because you could have walked
out of the store at nine o'clock unrestrained by any fear that your
absence might be noticed. You did not belong in the store at all. You,
too, incidentally, are eliminated further by my charming and mysterious
little point.
"And now," continued Ellery, turning to the disturbed Gallic features
of Paul Lavery, "we come to you. Don't be afraid!" he smiled--"you
didn't commit the crime! I was so certain that I did not even bother
to ask you for a statement of your movements on Monday night. You
have been in this apartment daily for weeks. Besides, you came here
directly from France only a short time ago--it was quite beyond the
area of probability to suspect you, therefore, of being embroiled in
a gang of drug-peddlers operating with intense organization in this
city and country. And you, too, cannot very well be our murderer, since
you do not logically measure up to my last point, still withheld. And,
if I were to be minutely psychiatric, I might add that a man of your
refined and Continental intelligence would never have committed the
regrettable mistakes which got our esteemed mysterioso into trouble.
For I do believe that, out of all of us, you alone would have been
man-of-the-world enough to know how a woman puts her hat into a
hat-box, and how she stores buckled shoes in a shoe-bag....
"We have now," continued Ellery pleasantly, but there was a feverish
glitter in his eye, "narrowed the field of inquiry considerably. We
might discuss, of course, Mr. MacKenzie, the general manager, who
is an employee of the store. No, no! Mr. MacKenzie, don't rise to
protest--we've eliminated you already. Because of this last point of
ours, which is almost ready for exposition, and because you have
been in this apartment within five weeks. But any of the hundreds
of employees of the store who have _never_ been in this apartment
and whose movements Monday night are unaccounted for, might be the
murderer. We'll come to that in a moment. At this time, ladies and
gentlemen--" Ellery made a sharp sign to Patrolman Bush at the anteroom
door, who immediately bobbed his head and went out, leaving the door
open behind him--"at this time I wish to present to you a gentleman
who until now has been more or less of an unknown quantity; no less
a personage than--" there was a flurry at the outer door; it opened
and Bush entered, followed by a detective who held a white-faced man,
manacled, tightly by the elbow--"Mr. James Springer!"
Ellery retreated slightly, a grim smile on his face. The detective
escorted his prisoner to the front of the room, where two chairs were
immediately set by one of the attendant policemen. The two men sat
down, Springer holding his manacled hands limply in his lap, staring
steadfastly at the floor. He was a middle-aged man with sharp features
and grey hair; a livid bruise on his right cheek was mute evidence of a
recent scuffle.
Everybody in the room stared at him wordlessly. Old French was
speechless with rage at the sight of the employee who had betrayed him.
Weaver and Marion both laid restraining hands on his shaking arm. But
there were no words in that audience--only hot eager glances, and in
one case a frozen steady immutability....
"Mr. Springer," said Ellery quietly--yet his voice exploded like a
shell in the strained atmosphere of the room--"Mr. Springer has been
kind enough to turn State's evidence. Mr. Springer, who ran away with
the deluded thought that he might successfully evade the police, was
caught the very day he attempted to escape because we were prepared for
it. Mr. Springer's capture has been kept very quiet. Mr. Springer has
cleared up many little items of procedure which we could not possibly
have deduced.
"For example, that the murderer is his chief in the drug ring, which
even now is being scattered and pursued throughout the country. That
the murderer is the right-hand man of the eloquently termed 'master
mind' of the drug ring in this city. That Miss Bernice Carmody, who we
discovered by investigation was probably a drug addict in an advanced
stage, had come under the influence of the heroin habit, had met by
devious ways the 'master mind,' had been introduced to the code-system,
had become so dependent upon the drug that she willingly solicited
new customers from her social circle, becoming in a way therefore
almost a member of the ring. That Miss Carmody's pernicious addiction
was unsuspected by her family until, as we know, her father, Mr.
Carmody, began to suspect and told his former wife, Mrs. French, what
he suspected; and Mrs. French, observing, saw that it was true. That
Mrs. French, in her assertive way, directly accused her daughter of
addiction and finally broke down the girl's weakened will until she
confessed everything--including the name of the man connected with
the French store who was supplying her directly with her own drugs.
That Mrs. French, who we may suppose did not inform her husband of the
true state of affairs because of his violent aversion to this form
of vice, on Monday took away from Miss Carmody the newly replenished
supply of drugs which she kept in the false bottom of her specially
made lipstick. That Mrs. French further forced her daughter to make
an appointment for her with this man, this employee in her husband's
store, for Monday night at midnight, secretly, to plead with him for
her daughter--to force him, by threats of disclosing to the police
what she now knew about the drug organization, to loose his grip on
her daughter and allow the girl to be cured secretly by her mother.
That this appointment was made on Sunday through Miss Carmody. That
this man immediately reported the alarming state of affairs to his
chief, the ubiquitous 'master mind,' who in his customary cold-blooded
fashion commanded him to kill Mrs. French, who by now, in turn, was in
possession of too much vital information to be allowed to live; and
also to do away with Miss Carmody, who had proved a weak cog in the
machine and must also be disposed of. That this man, under threat of
being killed himself, laid his plans and made his appointment. That
he entered secretly through the freight-door, which as an employee
of the store he knew was open at that exact half-hour each night.
That he waited until midnight in a store lavatory and then made his
way stealthily to the apartment on the sixth floor, knocked, and was
admitted by Mrs. French, who had arrived a few minutes before. That
she stood by the desk, as we deduced, and they argued; that he was
not aware of the heroin-filled lipstick in her bag, or he would have
taken it; that without hesitation he shot and killed Mrs. French,
who bled profusely, the blood staining the book-end; that on bending
over the desk he saw the five books, and realized that some one had
been tampering with the code-system; that he saw the blue memorandum
announcing the arrival next morning at nine of Mr. Weaver and Mr.
French; that he realized he could not communicate with any one of the
ring about this latest unforeseen development, because he was unable
to get out before the next morning and could not telephone; that he
therefore decided to hide the body in the exhibition-window, which
would give him ample time next morning to slip away and warn his gang,
for if the body were left in the apartment and discovered at nine, he
would be unable for precautionary reasons to leave the building; and
finally that he disposed of the body where we found it. Also that on
his way back he stopped at the Book Department on the main floor and
confirmed his suspicion that the sixth book was also missing. That
he took Mrs. French's key back with him, having been unsuccessful in
his attempt to get Bernice Carmody's that afternoon by the ruse of
the telephone call. Finally, that he cleaned up the apartment, fixed
the book-end, 'planted' the evidence against Miss Carmody, stayed
overnight, shaved in the morning, broke the blade and took it away
with him; and slipped out shortly after nine, emerging with the early
shoppers only to reënter the building at once through the regular
Employees' Entrance, in order to be checked in officially. And that
he managed soon after to sneak off and warn his gang leader of the
discovery of the book-system...."