“Including this one?” rasped the Inspector.
“Yes, Dad.”
Dr. Cazalis began to drum again. “I take it you don’t mean consistency of methods — the cords, strangling—”
“No. I mean elements common to the seven victims. I’m convinced they signify a plan of some sort, but what it arises from, what its nature is, where it’s going... Ellery’s eyes clouded.
“Sounds interesting.” Dr. Cazalis was studying Ellery surgically. “If you’re right, Mr. Queen, I’m wrong.”
“We may both be right. I have the feeling we are. ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.’” They laughed together. “Dad, I’d emphatically recommend that Dr. Cazalis’s suggestion be followed up, and right away.”
“We’re breaking every rule in the book,” groaned his father. “Doctor, would you consider taking full charge?”
“I? Of the psychiatric end?”
“That’s right.”
Dr. Cazalis’s fingers stopped exercising. But they remained, as it were, available.
“This is going to be as big a selling as a medical job. It won’t work unless every doctor in the field co-operates. With you heading that phase of the investigation — with your reputation and professional connections, Doctor — it’s a guarantee of thorough coverage I don’t think we’d get another way. As a matter of fact,” said the Inspector thoughtfully, “it wouldn’t be a bad arrangement for other reasons. The Mayor’s already appointed my son special investigator. We’re covering the official end. With you in charge of a medical inquiry, it would give us a three-pronged offensive. Maybe,” said the Inspector, exhibiting his denture, “maybe we’d even turn up a little something.”
He said abruptly, “I’d have to get confirmation of this downtown, Dr. Cazalis, but something tells me the Mayor and the Commissioner will be very happy about the whole thing. Pending an okay, can I tell them you’re available?”
The psychiatrist threw up his hands. “What was that line from a movie I once saw? ‘Bilked by my own chicanery!’ All right, Inspector, I’m hooked. What’s the procedure?”
“Where are you going to be later today?”
“Depends on how Della and Zach behave themselves. Either here or at home, Inspector. This morning I’m going to try to get a few hours’ sleep.”
“Try?” Ellery stretched, rising. “In my case it won’t be the least problem.”
“Sleeping is always a problem with me. I’m a chronic insomniac — a symptom which is generally part of the clinical picture,” said the psychiatrist with a smile, “of dementia, general paresis, and so on, but don’t tell my patients. I keep well supplied with sleeping pills.”
“I’ll phone you this afternoon, Dr. Cazalis.”
Cazalis nodded to the Inspector and strolled out.
The Queens were silent. The men working on the terrace were beginning to drift away. Sergeant Velie was crossing the terrace in the sun.
“What do you think?” asked the Inspector suddenly.
“Think? About what, Dad?”
“Cazalis.”
“Oh. — Very solid citizen.”
“Yes, isn’t he.”
“Nothing doing,” said Sergeant Velie. “No sign of a damn thing, Inspector. He got in by that penthouse elevator, all right.”
“The only thing is,” mumbled the Inspector, “I wish he’d stop those figure exercise of his. Makes me nervous. — Oh, Velie. Knock off and get some shuteye.”
“What about those newspaper guys?”
“They’ve probably ganged up on Dr. Cazalis. Run interference for him and tell them I’ll be right there. With my own pet line of double talk.”
The sergeant nodded and clumped off, yawning.
“How about you, Dad?”
“I’ll have to go downtown first. You going home now?”
“If I can get away in one piece.”
“Wait in the hall closet. I’ll decoy ’em into the living room here and then you can make the break.”
They parted rather awkwardly.
When Ellery woke up he found his father perched on the edge of the bed, looking at him.
“Dad. What time is it?”
“Past 5.”
Ellery stretched. “Just pull in?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anything new in crime?”
“P.m. shows nothing so far. The cord’s a washout. It’s the other six continued.”
“How’s the atmosphere? Safe?”
“I wouldn’t say so.” Inspector Queen hugged himself as if he were cold. “They’re really laying into this one. Every line into Headquarters and City Hall jammed. The papers have taken the gloves off and they’re yelping for blood. Whatever good the announcement of your appointment did has gone up the flue with the murder of the Richardson girl. When I walked into the Mayor’s office with the Commissioner this morning to confer on the Cazalis thing His Honor practically kissed me. Phoned Cazalis then and there. First thing he said over the phone was, ‘Dr. Cazalis, when can you hold a press conference?’”
“Cazalis going to do it?”
“He’s doing it right this minute. And going on the air tonight.”
“I must be a great disappointment to His Honor.” Ellery laughed. “Now hit the sack or you’ll be a candidate for a medical conference yourself.”
The Inspector failed to move.
“There’s something else?”
“Ellery.” The old man pulled up his left leg and began slowly to untie his shoelace. “There’s been some nasty talk downtown. I wouldn’t ask you this except that if I’m to keep taking it on the chin I’ve got to know what round it is.”
“Ask me what?”
“I want you to tell me what you’ve spotted.” He began on the other shoe. “For my own information, you understand,” he explained to the shoe. “Or let me put it another way. If I’m to keep singeing my pants I want to know what the hell I’m sitting on.”
It was a kind of declaration of independence, conceived in grievance and delivered for just cause.
Ellery looked unhappy.
He reached for a cigaret and an ashtray and lay back with the tray balanced on his chest.
“All right,” he said. “From your standpoint I’m a disloyal dispenser of nothing and from your standpoint I suppose I am. Now let’s see whether what I’ve been holding out on you could prove of the slightest utility to you, me, the Mayor, the Commissioner, or the shade of Poe.
“One: Archibald Dudley Abernethy was 44 years old. Violette Smith was 42 years old. Rian O’Reilly was 40 years old. Monica McKell was 37 years old. Simone Phillips was 35 years old. Beatrice Willikins was 32 years old. Lenore Richardson was 25 years old. 44, 42, 40, 37, 35, 32, 25.”
The Inspector was staring.
“Each victim’s been younger than the victim preceding. That’s why I was so positive Dr. Cazalis couldn’t have been Number 7; he’s older than any of them. To have been seventh on the list he’d have to have been under 32, the sixth victim’s age... that is, if there was a descending-age pattern. And it turned out that Number 7, the Richardson girl, was 25, and I was right. There is a descending-age pattern. Mathematically irregular differences, but they’re always younger, younger.”
The old man gripped his right shoe. “We didn’t see that. Nobody saw it.”
“Well, it’s one of those exasperating little fragments of sense in a jumble. Like the hidden-face puzzles. You look and look, and suddenly there it is. But what does it mean? It’s sense, all right, but what sense? It springs from a cause, but what cause? It can’t conceivably be the result of coincidence; not seven! And yet the longer you examine it, the less it seems to signify. Can you think of a single satisfactory reason why anyone should go to the trouble of killing successively younger people — who haven’t the faintest connection with one another? I can’t.”