“Further, Horne was undoubtedly an ambidextrous marksman; that is, he fired — judging from the identically worn muzzles, sights, and butts — equally often with either hand; and inferentially, then, equally well. This habit of Buck’s using a specific weapon for each of his two hands was later confirmed by a small point; I had Lieutenant Knowles weigh the two guns and found that one was some two ounces lighter than the other. Apparently then each was perfectly balanced to the strength, grip, and ‘feel’ of the particular hand in which he habitually held it.
“Now then, to return to the important discrepancy. The murdered man was gripping with his right hand the weapon Buck Horne always gripped with his left. It struck me immediately that Horne would never have wielded that gun with the wrong hand. And—”
“But suppose,” I objected, “that by accident he had taken the left-hand gun with him that night to the Colosseum?”
“It wouldn’t have made a particle of difference to my deductions. By every dictate of habit, weight, feel, he would have recognized it the instant he picked it up as his left-hand gun, would have automatically placed it in his left holster, and would have performed with it gripped in his left hand. Remember, there was no compulsion for him to use his right hand that night while he fired blank cartridges into the air; he was merely holding the reins with his left, or waving his hat at one point; either hand would have served for the normal little activities it was called upon to engage in.
“So! Since the dead man had gripped Horne’s left-hand, gun with his right hand, had even used the right holster, when Horne would have gripped the weapon in his left hand and used the left holster — here was startling confirmation that it wasn’t Buck Horne at all who was murdered that night!”
He paused to sip some coffee. How simple — as he said — it was when he explained it!
“I now,” continued Ellery serenely, “had two perfectly interlocking, or complementary, reasons for questioning the identity of the victim; and while either one, alone, might have formed the basis for no more than a strong presumption, the combination of both removed all doubt from my mind. The dead man was not Buck Horne. Squirm as much as I might at the odd conclusion, I was compelled to accept it.
“But since it was not Buck Horne’s body which had tumbled to the tanbark that night, I said to myself: In the name of a merciful God, whose body was it? Well, as I’ve already suggested, it was obviously the body of someone whose physique, with the scarcely perceptible exception of a larger waist-line, was similar to Horne’s; someone who looked amazingly like Horne in features, who could ride and shoot expertly, and who probably could approximate the timbre of Buck’s voice. As for this last point, I might say here that the voice did not play an important role that night; for the supposed Buck Horne arrived late for the performance; merely waved a greeting to Grant, as Grant himself related, went at once to his dressing room, and appeared shortly thereafter on the field astride Rawhide. Probably then he never actually spoke to anyone at all; or if he did, it was a monosyllable.”
“So far,” I agreed, “it’s clear, Ellery. But, as I said, some things stick in my craw. For instance, I know from having read the newspapers the actual identity of the man who was murdered in that first crime; but how the dickens could you have worked it out so early in the case?”
“There,” murmured Ellery, snuggling more deeply into the armchair, “you touch on a sore spot. I didn’t know. I didn’t know exactly. But I knew generally enough to advance my theory to a solution. Let me go on, and you’ll see.
“I naturally asked myself: Who could this man — this dead man — be who so closely resembled Buck Horne in face and figure? My instinctive thought was a twin brother; but Miss Horne and Grant both asserted that Buck had no blood-kin of any kind alive. Then in mulling over Horne’s background the answer came to me in a flash. It was a perfect development of the man’s history, a perfect and indeed inevitable explanation of the resemblance between Buck Horne, ex-movie star, and an unknown man. For Buck had been an actor who specialized in outdoor roles, roles that called for all sorts of strenuous activity and at times even feats of acrobatics — as anyone who has seen Western movie heroes leap from windows into saddles, hurtle horses over cliffs — the usual folderol — knows. But what do motion picture companies resort to when their stars cannot perform these daredevil stunts — or, more pertinently, how do producers avert the physical hazards, the risks to life and limb, to a Western star — after all valuable property? It’s a common practice with which everyone today is familiar through the so-called ‘fan’ magazines and newspaper exploitation. They use doubles.”
I gasped, and Ellery chuckled again. “Shut your mouth, J.J. — you look disagreeably like a fish out of water... What on earth strikes you as so amazing about that? It was a perfectly logical line of reasoning. It matched the facts superbly. Producers use doubles for more reckless feats of daring; these doubles are selected primarily for two qualifications. First, in physique they must resemble the stars they impersonate. Second, they must be able not only to accomplish the feats of which the stars are capable, but to do even more, since it’s they who perform the really perilous stunts. In a Western-star situation, the double would undoubtedly be a good horseman, a roper, perhaps even a marksman. Now, facial resemblance is not absolutely essential in most cases, for the particular shots of action can be so filmed that the double’s face is not caught by the camera; but there are notable instances of doubles who can not only do what the stars can do, but who look amazingly like the stars as well... Yes, the more I thought about it the more positive I was that the man murdered in the arena was Buck Horne’s old movie double. As a matter of confirmation I wired a confidential source in Los Angeles to find out from the studio whether there had been such a double. I received a reply a few days later; I had been right.[5] There had been such a double, but the studio had not been in touch with him since Buck’s last picture some three or four years before and had no idea where the man might be found. The man’s name, which the wire supplied, was obviously a screen name, and of no use to me. But even had I not checked with Hollywood I should have been morally certain that the theory of a movie double was the correct solution of the victim’s identity.”
5
Mr. Queen emphasizes this point once more. The inspiration to wire Hollywood was a direct result of his thinking; so that he was justified in his Challenge in stating that the wires were confirmatory, not essential.
— J. J. McC.