Beau began to say something in a strangled voice, but the Inspector put up his hand.
“Have you any proof, Captain, that what you say is true?”
Captain Angus smiled. He drew an envelope bulging with snapshots from his breast pocket and threw it on the desk. “I thought these might come in handy,” he said. “I’m sort of a camera bug.”
The District Attorney seized the envelope and began to look through the photographs. There were dozens of them, large snapshots taken with a sharp, excellent lens.
In many De Carlos appeared beside another man, taller, thinner than De Carlos, completely bald, with twisted and crippled hands. All the photographs had been taken on shipboard, as the backgrounds indicated.
“That,” said Captain Angus with a sly look at Beau, “was Cadmus Cole.”
Ellery grabbed the photographs. Beau took one look and then, the back of his neck furnace-red, stalked off to a corner... the corner opposite the one where Kerrie sat.
“That’s enough for me,” snapped the Inspector. He made a sign to the detective and matron. Beau looked frightened — the first time Mr. Queen had ever seen such a look on his partner’s face. His shoulders sagging, he averted his eyes.
With Vi clinging to her, Kerrie was marched away, and soon only Captain Angus, the San Francisco man De Carlos, Beau, and Ellery were left.
“You’ll excuse me, too,” said Edmund De Carlos, slapping his wig on his skull. “Captain, you’re my guest while in New York — don’t forget.” He stamped to the door. Then he turned and with a malevolent grin said: “And thank you, gentlemen, for the shave.”
But Beau sprang like a cat, forestalling him. “No, you don’t,” he snarled. “You stay!”
He turned, surprised. Mr. Queen had suddenly begun to laugh. He laughed so hard that he doubled up, clutching his abdomen as he sank into the swivel-chair behind his desk.
Part Six
XX. Mr. Queen Explains a Logical Fallacy
“You’re both mad,” exclaimed Mr. Edmund De Carlos. “Get out of my way.”
“What?” said Beau blankly, watching Ellery.
“If you don’t let me go, I’ll have you arrested!”
Captain Angus scraped his lean jaws, concealing a smile. “This looks like a private fight. So if you gentlemen will excuse me—”
Mr. Queen wiped his streaming eyes. “Please be good enough to remain, Captain,” he gasped. He began to laugh again.
“What’s so funny about what?” growled Beau. “Anybody would think what happened here tonight’s a joke!”
“It is. Oh, it is, Beau. A great joke, and it’s on me.” Mr. Queen sighed and wiped his eyes once more. “I’d appreciate your remaining too, Mr. De Carlos.”
“I don’t see why I should!”
“Because I ask you to,” said Mr. Queen, smiling. He stared at De Carlos. De Carlos clicked his plate agitatedly. “Sit down, gentlemen, sit down. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t discuss this fiasco like civilized people. Drink?”
Captain Angus brightened. “Now, that’s different.”
Ellery produced a fresh bottle of Scotch and several glasses from a desk-drawer. The Captain flung his coat and hat aside, drew up a chair, and accepted a glass companionably.
“You, too, Mr. De Carlos,” said Mr. Queen. “Oh, forget it, man! Mistakes will happen in the best-regulated detective agencies.”
He smiled so disarmingly, and the bottle gave off such a warmly inviting glow under the lamps, that Mr. De Carlos, although surlily, sat down and accepted a glass, too.
“Beau?”
“Don’t I look as if I could use one?” Beau asked disgustedly.
“On that basis, you ought to appropriate the bottle. Gentlemen, a’ toast! To Logic — never sell her short!” Mr. Queen drank and then beamed at them all.
“Where do we go from here?” grunted Beau. “There’s Kerrie back in stir, and we’re as far from an answer as we ever were.”
“Not quite.” Mr. Queen leaned back and surveyed them with bright eyes. “Not quite, Beau. This little experience has taught me a lesson: Always trust the dictates of pure reason. The little voice warned me, and I was very rude. Ignored him. Completely. Shame on me.”
De Carlos suddenly helped himself to another glassful, which he tossed down with a jerk.
“I told you, Beau,” continued Mr. Queen, his eyes on De Carlos, “that there was one discrepancy in the array of facts at our disposal which bothered me. But the identification of poor old De Carlos here as Cadmus Cole seemed so indisputable that it made me commit the unforgivable sin... the sanctioning of a showdown before the case was complete to the last comma. It embarrassed Mr. De Carlos, it embarrassed me, and as for Inspector Queen, my doting parent,” he grimaced, “wait until he gets me alone within the four walls of our loving home. Did you see his expression as he left?”
“I saw it,” groaned Beau. “But, Ellery, how in God’s name could we have been wrong? I still don’t see—”
“We based our conclusion that De Carlos was really Cole on three points: his possession of Cole’s fountain-pen; his perfect resemblance to the man who visited us in this office three months ago, once you eliminated the false teeth, wig, glasses, and beard; and the crusher — the incontrovertible fact that the handwriting of both persons was identical.”
“Do you really, need me?” muttered De Carlos. “I’d prefer—”
“Another drink, Mr. De Carlos?” asked Mr. Queen, glancing at him; and De Carlos reached quickly for the bottle again. “Now the first point, the fountain-pen, was the least decisive of the three... a leading, or build-up, point. And yet it was in this point that the discrepancy lay.”
“What discrepancy?” howled Beau.
“Why, the fact that those peculiar markings on the cap of the pen could only have been made by teeth. Of course, you saw that, Beau? Those arced patterns of dents? Those deep nicks in the hard rubber composition? It was obvious that the markings were impressed into the cap by some one who was in the habit of chewing on the end of his fountain-pen.”
“Why, sure,” said Beau. “So what?”
“The man who used the pen that day in our office was presumably the owner of the pen, and the owner of the pen was unquestionably in the habit of chewing on it. And yet the man who used the pen that day, the man who called himself Cadmus Cole, didn’t have a tooth in his mouth!
“And that was the discrepancy, for I asked myself, not once but dozens of times, and finally wound up by ignoring the question: How can a toothless man make teeth-marks on the cap of a fountain-pen?”
Captain Angus poured another drink for himself; but at the sight of De Carlos’s face he suddenly offered the glass to the bald man. De Carlos accepted it and drank with a sort of desperation; and the Captain’s cold eyes grew colder.
“But De Carlos wears false teeth,” protested Beau. “Couldn’t those marks have been made by false teeth as well as by real teeth?”
“As a matter of fact,” retorted Mr. Queen, “they couldn’t have been — not by Mr. De Carlos’s false teeth, at any rate.”