The little steamer trunk stood just inside the cabin doorway.
They stared at it.
“Well, well,” said Bacon finally. “Miss Porter’s outside—what are we waiting for?”
And so they knocked off the rusted lock and raised the lid—and found the trunk empty.
Perhaps not quite empty: the interior held a pale, dead-looking mass of crumbly stuff.
Ellery glanced up at Professor Bacon.
“Quicklime,” muttered the chemistry teacher.
“Quicklime!” choked the president. “But the body. Where’s the body?”
Nikki’s scream, augmented a dozen times by the encircling hills, answered Dr. Barlowe’s question most unpleasantly.
She had been wandering about the clearing, dreading to catch the first cry of discovery from the cabin, when she came upon a little cairn of stones. And she had sat down upon it.
But the loose rocks gave way, and Miss Porter found herself sitting on Professor Chipp—or, rather, on what was left of Professor Chipp. For Professor Chipp had gone the way of all flesh—which is to say, he was merely bones, and very dry bones, at that.
But that it was the skeleton of Leverett Chisholm Chipp could not be questioned: the medius and index finger of the right skeletal hand were missing to the second joint. And that Leverett Chisholm Chipp had been most foully used was also evident: the top of the skull revealed a deep and ragged chasm, the result of what could only have been a tremendous blow.
Whereupon the old pedagogue and the young took flight, joining Miss Porter, who was quietly being ill on the other side of the cabin; and Mr. Queen found himself alone with Professor Chipp.
Later, Ellery went over the log cabin with a disagreeable sense of anticipation. There was no sensible reason for believing that the cabin held further secrets; but sense is not all, and the already-chilling air held a whiff of fatality.
He found it in a cupboard, in a green steel box, beside a rusty can of moldering tobacco.
It was a stapled pile of neat papers, curled by damp, but otherwise intact.
The top sheet, in a cramped, spidery hand, said:
The discovery of Professor Chipp’s detective story may be said to mark the climax of the case. That the old man had been battered to death in his rooms on the night of June thirtieth; that his corpse had been shipped from Barlowe, Missouri, to the Arkansas cabin in his own trunk, packed in quicklime to avert detection en route; that the murderer had then at his leisure made his way to the cabin, removed the body from the trunk, and buried it under a heap of stones—these were mere facts, dry as the Professor’s bones. They did not possess the aroma of the grotesque—the bouffe — which rose like a delicious mist from the pages of that incredible manuscript.
Not that Professor Chipp’s venture into detective fiction revealed a new master, to tower above the busy little figures of his fellow-toilers in this curious vineyard and vie for cloudspace only with Poe and Doyle and Chesterton. To the contrary. The Mystery of the Three R’s by L. C. Chipp, was a labored exercise in familiar elements, distinguished chiefly for its enthusiasm.
No, it was not the murdered professor’s manuscript which was remarkable; the remarkable thing was the manner in which life had imitated it.
It was a shaken group that gathered in Chipp’s rooms the morning after the return from the Arkansas cabin. Ellery had called the meeting, and he had invited Mr. Weems of The Campus Book Shop to participate—who, upon hearing the ghastly news, stopped beaming, clamped his Missouri jaws shut, and began to gaze furtively at the door.
Ellery’s own jaws were unshaven, and his eyes were red.
“I’ve passed the better part of the night,” he began abruptly, “reading through Chipp’s manuscript. And I must report an amazing—an almost unbelievable—thing.
“The crime in Chipp’s detective story takes place in and about a small Missouri college called... Barleigh College.”
“Barleigh,” muttered the president of Barlowe.
“Moreover, the victim in Chipp’s yarn is a methodical old professor of American Literature.”
Nikki looked puzzled. “You mean that Professor Chipp—?”
“Took off on himself, Nikki—exactly.”
“What’s so incredible about that?” demanded young Bacon. “Art imitating life—”
“Considering the fact that Chipp plotted his story long before the events of this summer, Professor Bacon, it’s rather a case of life imitating art. Suppose I tell you that the methodical old professor of American Literature in Chipp’s story owns a cabin in the Ozarks where his body is found?”
“Even that?” squeaked Mr. Weems.
“And more, Weems. The suspects in the story are the President of Barleigh College, whose name is given as Dr. Isaac St. Anthony E. Barleigh; a local bookshop owner named Claudius Deems; a gay young professor of chemistry known as Macon; and, most extraordinary of all, the three main clues in Chipp’s detective story revolve about—are called — ‘Readin’,’ ‘’Ritin’,’ and ‘’Rithmetic’!”
And the icy little wind blew once more.
“You mean,” exclaimed Dr. Barlowe, “the crime we’re investigating—Chipp’s own death—is an exact counterpart of the fictional crime Chipp invented in his manuscript?”
“Down to the last character, Doctor.”
“But Ellery,” said Nikki, “how can that possibly be?”
“Obviously, Chipp’s killer managed to get hold of the old fellow’s manuscript, read it, and with hellish humor proceeded to copy in real life—actually to duplicate—the crime Chipp had created in fiction!” Ellery began to lunge about the little room, his usually neat hair disordered and a rather wild look on his face. “Everything’s the same: the book that wasn’t returned to the lending library—the ‘readin’’ clue; the picture postcards bearing forged dates—the ‘’ritin’’ clue—”
“And the ‘’rithmetic clue, Mr. Queen?” asked Barlowe in a quavering voice.
“In the story, Doctor, the victim has found a first edition of Poe’s Tamerlane, worth $25,000.”
Little Weems cried: “That’s ‘’rithmetic,’ all right!” and then bit his lip.
“And how,” asked Professor Bacon thickly, “how is the book integrated into Chipp’s yarn, Mr. Queen?”
“It furnishes the motive for the crime. The killer steals the victim’s authentic Tamerlane — substituting for it a facsimile copy which is virtually worthless.”
“But if everything else is duplicated...” began Dr. Barlowe in a mutter.
“Then that must be the motive for Professor Chipp’s own murder!” cried Nikki.
“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?” Ellery glanced sharply at the proprietor of The Campus Book Shop. “Weems, where is the first edition of Tamerlane you told me Chipp showed you on the night of June thirtieth?”
“Why... why... why, reckon it’s on his shelves here somewheres, Mr. Queen. Under P, for Poe...”
And there it was. Under P, for Poe.
And when Ellery took it down and turned its pages, he smiled. For the first time since they had found the skeleton under the cairn, he smiled.
“Well, Weems,” he said affably, “you’re a Poe expert. Is this an authentic Tamerlane first?”
“Why... why... why, must be. ’Twas when old Chipp showed it to me that night—”
“Really? Suppose you re-examine it—now.”