“Yes.”
“During the New Year’s Eve party under examination, did you keep following the defendant out of the living room?”
“I did.”
“You were keeping an eye on him all evening?”
“Yes.”
“You watched him mix cocktails in the pantry?”
“Yes.”
“Now do you recall the last time before midnight the defendant mixed cocktails?”
“Distinctly.”
“Where did he mix them?”
“In the butler’s pantry off the kitchen.”
“Did you follow him there from the living room?”
“Yes, by way of the hall. The hall leads from the foyer to the rear of the house. He entered the kitchen and went into the pantry; I was just behind him but stopped in the hall, beside the door.”
“Did he see you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“But you were careful not to be seen?”
Mr. Queen smiled. ”I was neither careful nor careless. I just stood there beside the half-open hall door to the kitchen.”
“Did the defendant turn around to look at you?” persisted Bradford.
“No.”
“But you could see /z/m?”
“Clearly.”
“What did the defendant do?”
“He prepared some Manhattan cocktails in a mixing glass. He poured some into each of a number of clean glasses standing on a tray. He was reaching for the bottle of maraschino cherries, which had been standing on the pantry table, when there was a knock at the back door. He left the cocktails and went out into the kitchen to see who had knocked.”
“That was when Miss Lola Wright and the defendant had the conversation just testified to?”
“Yes.”
“The tray of cocktails left in the butler’s pantry were visible to you all during the period in which the defendant conversed with Lola Wright at the kitchen back door?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Carter Bradford hesitated. Then he asked flatly: “Did you see anyone go near those cocktails between the time the defendant left them in the pantry and the time he returned?”
Mr. Queen replied: “I saw no one, because there wasn’t anyone.”
“The pantry remained absolutely empty during that period? “
“Of organic life¯yes.”
Bradford could scarcely conceal his elation; he made a brave but unsuccessful effort. On the mourners’ bench inside the railing the Wrights turned stone-faced.
“Now, Mr. Smith, did you see the defendant return to the pantry after Lola Wright left?”
“I did.”
“What did he do?”
“He dropped a maraschino cherry from the bottle into each cocktail, using a small ivory pick. He picked up the tray in both hands and carefully walked through the kitchen toward the door at which I was standing. I acted casual, and we went into the living room together, where he immediately began distributing the glasses to the family and guests.”
“On his walk from the pantry to the living room with the tray, did anyone approach him except yourself?”
“No one.”
Ellery waited for the next question with equanimity. He saw the triumph gather in Bradford’s eyes.
“Mr. Smith, wasn’t there something else you saw happen in that pantry?”
“No.”
“Nothing else happened?”
“Nothing else.”
“Have you told us everything you saw?”
“Everything.”
“Didn ‘t you see the defendant drop a white powder into one of those cocktails? “
“No,” said Mr. Queen. ”I saw nothing of the sort.”
“Then on the trip from the pantry to the living room?”
“Both Mr. Haight’s hands were busy holding the tray. He dropped no foreign substance of any kind into any of the cocktails at any time during their preparation or while he carried the tray into the living room.”
And then there was an undercurrent jabber in the room, and the Wrights glanced at one another with relief while Judge Martin wiped his face and Carter Bradford sneered almost with sound.
“Perhaps you turned your head for two seconds?”
“My eyes were on that tray of cocktails continuously.”
“You didn’t look away for even a second, eh?”
“For even a second,” said Mr. Queen regretfully, as if he wished he had, just to please Mr. Bradford.
Mr. Bradford grinned at the jury¯man to man¯and at least five jurors grinned back. Sure, what could you expect? A friend of the Wrights’. And then everybody in town knew why Cart Bradford had stopped seeing Pat Wright. This Smith bird had a case on Patty Wright. So . . .
“And you didn’t see Jim Haight drop arsenic into one of those cocktails?” insisted Mr. Bradford, smiling broadly now.
“At the risk of seeming a bore,” replied Mr. Queen with courtesy, “no, I did not.” But he knew he had lost with the jury; they didn’t believe him.
He knew it, and while the Wrights didn’t know it yet, Judge Martin did; the old gentleman was beginning to sweat again. Only Jim Haight sat unmoved, unchanged, wrapped in a shroud.
“Well, then, Mr. Smith, answer this question: Did you see anyone else who had the opportunity to poison one of those cocktails?”
Mr. Queen gathered himself; but before he could reply, Bradford snapped: “In fact, did you see anyone else who did poison one of those cocktails¯anyone other than the defendant?”
“I saw no one else, but¯”
“In other words, Mr. Smith,” cried Bradford, “the defendant James Haight was not only in the best position, but he was in the only position, to poison that cocktail?”
“No,” said Mr. Smith. And then he smiled.
You asked for it, he thought, and I’m giving it to you. The only trouble is, I’m giving it to myself, too, and that’s foolishness. He sighed and wondered what his father, Inspector Queen, no doubt reading about the case in the New York papers and conjecturing who Ellery Smith was, would have to say when he discovered Mr. ”Smith’s” identity and read about this act of puerile bravado.
Carter Bradford looked blank. Then he shouted: “Are you aware that this is perjury, Smith? You just testified that no one else entered the pantry! No one approached the defendant while he was carrying the cocktails into the living room! Allow me to repeat a question or two. Did anyone approach the defendant during his walk to the living room with the tray?”
“No,” said Mr. Queen patiently.
“Did someone else enter the pantry while the defendant was talking to Lola Wright at the back door?”
“No.”
Bradford was almost speechless. ”But you just said¯! Smith, who but James Haight could have poisoned one of those cocktails, by your own testimony?”
Judge Martin was on his feet, but before he could get the word “Objection” out of his mouth, Ellery said calmly: “I could.”
There was a wholesale gasp before him and then a stricken silence. So he went on: “You see, it would have been the work often seconds for me to slip from behind the door of the hall, cross the few feet of kitchen to the pantry unobserved by Jim or Lola at the back door, drop arsenic into one of the cocktails, return the same way . . . ”
And there was Babel all over again, and Mr. Queen looked down upon the noisemakers from the highest point of his tower, smiling benignly.
He was thinking: It’s full of holes, but it’s the best a man can do on short notice with the material at hand.
* * *
Over the shouting, and Judge Newbold’s gavel, and the rush of reporters, Carter Bradford bellowed in triumph: “Well, DID you poison that cocktail, Smith? “