He turned immediately back. For Ellery was growling, “If that’s the case, it’s obvious who killed Ericsson.”
And Ellery produced a cigaret and a lighter and went to work on them, and then he said, “It all goes back to what I dug up this morning. And what did I dig up? An old chest, some old coins, a great number of unmounted gems, and some empty gem settings. Nikki, you saw the empty settings. Of which materials were they made?”
“Gold, silver, platinum—”
“Platinum,” said Ellery, and he waved his cigaret gently. “The metal platinum wasn’t introduced into Europe until about 1750 — over fifty years after Kidd supposedly buried the chestful of jewels on this island. It’s even worse than that: Platinum wasn’t used for jewel settings until the year 1900, at which time Kidd had been dead a hundred and ninety-nine years.
“A phony, gentleman. A plant. The whole thing.
“The ‘treasure’ I unearthed this morning was buried in that sand very recently, I’m afraid. It has no more connection with William Kidd or any other seventeenth century pirate than the loose change in my pocket. Oh, it was meant to be taken for a treasure Kidd buried—the chest is authentically old, and some old coins were strewn among the jewels. But the jewels, as proved by those platinum settings, are modern.
“Why should modern jewels be buried on an island in the guise of old pirate treasure? Well, suppose they were stolen property. As stolen property, they’d have to be disposed of through fences for a small proportion of their value. But as buried treasure they could be disposed of openly at market prices. Very clever.
“Eric Ericsson, gentlemen, suspected that Anthony Hobbes-Watkins and his ‘father,’ Colonel Hobbes-Watkins—who’s probably not his father at all—were not what they seemed. He was tragically right—they’re a pair of European jewel thieves and, from the size of their accumulations, they must hold some sort of record for prowess in their exacting profession.
“They were cooling off in the Bahamas, wondering how best to turn their loot into cash, when Eric Ericsson and his niece stopped over at New Providence Island for a visit. Hearing the purely mythical yarn about how Kidd had buried treasure on Ericsson’s Island two hundred and fifty years ago—treasure that had never been found—these worthies got a remarkably ingenious idea. They would plant the jewels in a real old chest—the Bahamas were the headquarters of the buccaneers and are full of pirate relics; they would salt the stolen jewels with a few authentic old coins; and they would bury the chest on Ericsson’s Island, to be ‘discovered’ by them at a later date. The plan revolved about Inga’s infatuation for this fellow here; he pretended to reciprocate her love and he married her. As Ericsson’s sole heir, Inga would inherit his entire estate, which included this island, when Ericsson died. And as Inga’s husband, Tony Hobbes-Watkins would control it all, and when Inga died—an early and untimely death, eh, gentlemen? — our friends would be in the rosy clear... I’m sorry, Inga, but it seems to be a day for crushing blows.”
Inga sat pallid and blank, her hand clutching Nikki’s.
“If you’re trying to pin Ericsson’s murder on me—” began the younger man in a swift and nasal voice.
But the Colonel said harshly, “Be quiet.”
“Oh, that?” said Ellery. “Let’s see. We know that Ericsson’s bullet struck his murderer. Yet none of his four possible murderers exhibits a wound. Obviously, the bullet buried itself in a part of the murderer which couldn’t be wounded—” Ellery smiled — “which couldn’t be wounded because it’s not flesh and blood. Only one of you four fits that curious specification. The one who uses a wooden leg to compensate for his — Stop him!”
And when they had subdued the struggling caretaker and dug Eric Ericsson’s bullet out of the pegleg, the police captain—who was glassy-eyed—said, “Then these two men here, Mr. Queen... they weren’t in on Ericsson’s murder...?”
“The whole plot, Captain, was geared to Ericsson’s murder,” said Ellery with a shrug, “though I’m afraid Long John rather jumped the gun.
“Don’t you see that they were all in the plot together? How could our friend the Colonel, when he left the Bahamas after the wedding to smuggle the jewels into the States and get it to Ericsson’s Island before the others sailed up to join him—how, I say, could the Colonel have planted the chest on the island unless the caretaker was taken into the gang? Also, the stage had to be set for the ‘discovery’ of the treasure: a hole bored through the tower room wall to sight on the chosen spot, the wallpaper doctored to implement the mythical clue of ‘the needle’s eye,’ and so on—none of it possible unless Long John were declared in. He was, I suppose, to be paid off when Ericsson was disposed of and they got control, through Inga, of the estate and the island.
“What these gentry didn’t figure on was the stupidity and avarice of Long John. They’re far too clever operators to have planned to kill Ericsson the very night the treasure was located. Even if that had been their plan, they’d hardly have devised such a crude and obvious murder—especially with a trained investigator on the island. An ‘accident’ would have been more their style. At their leisure, under selected conditions... like a storm, say, and an overturned boat... perhaps even with Inga a victim of the same accident, in that way gaining their objective in one stroke and with no danger to themselves.
“But Long John is simple-minded and, as Ericsson told me, a miser. He just couldn’t wait. He heard me leave in the dark, realized my purpose, saw the dawn coming up, and hurried to the tower room to spy on me. He watched me dig the jewels up, probably saw them sparkling in the sun. When Ericsson surprised him in the tower at that very moment, all he could see were those jewels and his share of them when Ericsson should be killed. So Long John killed him—then and there. Speeding up the great day...
“Haste makes waste, eh, Colonel? And Tony, I regret to inform you that I’m going to take your wife to the best lawyer in New York and see what can be done about an immediate annulment.
“And now, gentlemen, if you’ll remove these pirates,” said Ellery to the officers, but looking soberly at Inga, “Nikki and I have some holes to refill.”
The Adventure of The Three R’s
Hail Missouri! Which is North and also South, upland and river-bottom, mountain, plain, factory, and farm. Hail Missouri! For MacArthur’s corncob and Pershing’s noble mule. Hail! For Hannibal and Mark Twain, for Excelsior Springs and Jesse James, for Barlowe and... Barlowe? Barlowe is the site of Barlowe College.
Barlowe College is the last place in Missouri you would go to (Missouri, which yields to no State in the historic redness of its soil) if you yearned for a lesson in the fine art of murder. In fact, the subject being introduced, it is the rare Show Me Stater who will not say, with an informative wink, that Barlowe is the last place in Missouri, and leave all the rest unsaid. But this is a smokeroom witticism, whose origin is as murky as the waters of the Big Muddy. It may well first have been uttered by the alumnus of some Missouri university whose attitude toward learning is steeped in the traditional embalming fluid—whereas, at little Barlowe, learning leaps: Jove and jive thunder in duet, profound sociological lessons are drawn from “Li’l Abner” and “Terry and the Pirates,” and in the seminars of the Philosophy Department you are almost certain to find faith, as a matter of pedagogic policy, paired with Hope.
Scratch a great work and find a great workman.
Dr. Isaiah St. Joseph A. Barlowe, pressed for vital statistics, once remarked that while he was old enough to have been a Founder, still he was not so old as to have calcified over a mound of English ivy. But the good man jested; he is as perennial as a sundial. “Even a cynic,” Dr. Barlowe has said, “likes his grain of salt.” And the truth is, in the garden where he labors, there is no death and a great deal of healthy laughter.