“And don’t we!” Ma Blinker broke out frankly now in bosomy sobs. “I’d never have gone into the Professor’s rooms—it was another of his rules—but Dr. Barlowe said I ought to when the Professor didn’t show up, so I did, and... and—”
“Yes, Mrs. Blinker?”
“There on the rug, in front of his fireplace,” whispered the landlady, “was a great... big... stain.”
“A stain!” gasped Nikki. “A stain?”
“A bloodstain.”
Ellery raised his brows.
“I examined it myself, Mr. Queen,” said Dr. Barlowe nervously. “It’s—it’s blood, I feel certain. And it’s been on the rug for some time... We locked Chipp’s rooms up again, and I wrote to you.”
And although the September sun filled each cranny of the president’s office, it was a cold sun suddenly.
“Have you heard from Professor Chipp at all since July the first, Doctor?” asked Ellery with a frown.
Dr. Barlowe looked startled. “It’s been his habit to send a few of us cards at least once during the summer recess...” He began to rummage excitedly through a pile of mail on his desk. “I’ve been away since early June myself. This has so upset me I... Why didn’t I think of that? Ah, the trained mind... Mr. Queen, here it is!”
It was a picture postcard illustrating a mountain cascade of improbable blue surrounded by verdure of impossible green. The message and address were in a cramped and spidery script.
July 31
Am rewriting my novel. It will be a huge surprise to you all. Regards—
“His ‘novel’ again,” muttered Ellery. “Bears the postmark Slater, Arkansas, July thirty-first of this year. Dr. Barlowe, was this card written by Professor Chipp?”
“Unmistakably.”
“Doesn’t the writing seem awfully awkward to you, Ellery?” asked Nikki, in the tradition of the detectival secretary.
“Yes. As if something were wrong with his hand.”
“There is,” sniffled Ma Blinker. “Middle and forefinger missin’ to the second joint—poor, poor old man!”
“Some accident in his youth, I believe.”
Ellery rose. “May I see that stain on Chipp’s rug, please?”
A man may leave more than his blood on his hearth, he may leave his soul. The blood was there, faded brown and hard, but so was Professor Chipp, though in absentia.
The two small rooms overlooking the campus were as tidy as a barrack. Chairs were rigidly placed. The bed was a sculpture. The mantelpiece was a shopwindow display; each pipe in the rack had been reamed and polished and laid away with a mathematical hand. The papers in the pigeonholes of the old pine desk were ranged according to size. Even the missing professor’s books were disciplined: no volume on these shelves leaned carelessly, or lolled dreaming on its back! They stood in battalions, company after company, at attention. And they were ranked by author, in alphabetical order.
“Terrifying,” Ellery said; and he turned to examine a small ledger-like volume lying in the exact center of the desk’s dropleaf.
“I suppose this invasion is unavoidable,” muttered Barlowe, “but I must say I feel as if I were the tailor of Coventry! What’s in that ledger, Mr. Queen?”
“Chipp’s personal accounts. His daily outlays of cash... Ah. This year’s entries stop at the thirtieth day of June.”
“The day before he left for his cabin!”
“He’s even noted down what one postage stamp cost him...”
“That’s the old Professor,” sobbed Ma Blinker. Then she raised her fat arms and shrieked: “Heavens to Bessie, Dr. Barlowe! It’s Professor Bacon back!”
“Hi, Ma!”
Professor Bacon’s return was in the manner of a charge from third base. Having pumped the presidential hand violently, the young man immediately cried: “Just got back to the shop and found your note, Doctor. What’s this nonsense about old Chipp’s not showing up for the fall brawl?”
“It’s only too true, Bacon,” said Dr. Barlowe sadly, and he introduced the young man as a full professor of chemistry and biology, another of Ma Blinker’s boarders, and Chipp’s closest faculty friend.
“You agree with Dr. Barlowe as to the gravity of the situation?” Ellery asked him.
“Mr. Queen, if the old idiot’s not back, something’s happened to him.” And for a precarious moment Professor Bacon fought tears. “If I’d only known,” he mumbled. “But I’ve been away since the middle of June—biochemical research at Johns Hopkins. Damn it!” he roared. “This is more staggering than nuclear fission!”
“Have you heard from Chipp this summer, Professor?”
“His usual postcard. I may still have it on me... Yes!”
“Just a greeting,” said Ellery, examining it. “Dated July thirty-first and postmarked Slater, Arkansas—exactly like the card he sent Dr. Barlowe. May I keep this, Bacon?”
“By all means. Chipp not back...” And then the young man spied the brown crust on the hearthrug. He collapsed on the missing man’s bed, gaping at it.
“Ellery!”
Nikki was standing on tiptoe before Chipp’s bookshelves. Under Q stood a familiar phalanx.
“A complete set of your books!”
“Really?” But Ellery did not seem as pleased as an author making such a flattering discovery should. Rather, he eyed one of the volumes as if it were a traitor. And indeed there was a sinister air about it, for it was the only book on all the shelves—he now noted for the first time—which did not exercise the general discipline. It stood on the shelf upside down.
“Queer...” He took it down and righted it. In doing so, he opened the back cover; and his lips tightened.
“Oh, yes,” said Barlowe gloomily. “Old Chipp’s quite unreasonable about your books, Mr. Queen.”
“Only detective stories he’d buy,” muttered Professor Bacon.
“Rented the others.”
“A mystery bug, eh?” murmured Ellery. “Well, here’s one Queen title he didn’t buy.” He tapped the book in his hand.
“The Origin of Evil,” read Nikki, craning. “Rental library!”
“The Campus Book Shop. And it gives us our first confirmation of that bloodstain.”
“What do you mean?” asked Bacon quickly, jumping off the bed.
“The last library stamp indicates that Professor Chipp rented this book from The Campus Book Shop on June twenty-eight. A man as orderly as these rooms indicate, who moreover scrupulously records his purchase of a postage stamp, would scarcely trot off on a summer vacation and leave a book behind to accumulate eleven weeks’ rental-library charges.”
“Chipp? Impossible!”
“Contrary to his whole character.”
“Since the last entry in that ledger bears the date June thirtieth, and since the bloodstain is on this hearthrug,” said Ellery gravely, “I’m afraid, gentlemen, that your colleague was murdered in this room on the eve of his scheduled departure for the Ozarks. He never left this room alive.”
No one said anything for a long time.
But finally Ellery patted Ma Blinker’s frozen shoulder and said: “You didn’t actually see Professor Chipp leave your boarding house on July first, Mrs. Blinker, did you?”
“No, sir,” said the landlady stiffly. “The expressman came for his trunk that mornin’, but the Professor wasn’t here. I... thought he’d already left.”
“Tell me this, Mrs. Blinker: did Chipp have a visitor on the preceding night—the night of June thirtieth?”
A slow change came over the woman’s blotchy features.
“He surely did,” she said. “He surely did. That Weems.”