“Quit clowning,” growled Beau. He flung himself at the leather sofa and scowled at the ceiling. “Poor Kerrie.”
“I’m not clowning.”
Beau swung his legs to the floor. “You mean you really think there’s a chance to crack this hazel-nut?”
“I do.”
“But it’s more of a mess now than before!”
“Darkest before the dawn, every cloud has a silver lining, and so on,” murmured Mr. Queen. “There are heaps of new facts. Heaps. Selection is what we need, Beau — selection, arrangement, and synthesis. Everything’s here. I feel it. Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Mr. Rummell rudely. “The only thing I feel is sore. If there were only some one I could punch in the nose! And with Kerrie back in the can, eating her heart out...” He seized the bottle of Scotch and said with a glower: “Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and think!”
XXI. The Fruits of Cerebration
Mr. Queen made certain preparations for his engagement with ratiocination.
He opened a fresh package of cigarets and lined the twenty white tubules up on the desk before him, so that they resembled the rails of a picket fence. He filled a water goblet with what was left of the Scotch and set it conveniently at his elbow. Mr. Rummell, sizing up the situation, vanished. He returned ten minutes later bearing another quart of Scotch and a tall carton of coffee.
Mr. Queen barely acknowledged this thoughtfulness. He removed his jacket, laid it neatly on a chair, loosened his necktie, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves.
Then, with the goblet in one hand and a cigaret in the other, he seated himself in the swivel-chair, set his feet upon the desk, and began.
Beau lay down on the sofa and thought desperately.
At one-thirty a.m. the silence was riven by a peculiar series of noises. Mr. Queen started out of deep thought. But it was only Mr. Rummell, on the sofa, snoring.
“Beau.”
The snores persisted. Mr. Queen rose, filled a glass with coffee, went to the sofa, and nudged Mr. Rummell.
“Huh? What? Well, I was listening—” began Mr. Rummell contentiously, his eyes struggling to open.
“Strange,” croaked Mr. Queen. “I wasn’t saying anything. Here, drink this coffee.”
Beau rumpled his hair, yawning. “Ought to be ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of myself. How’s it coming?” He drank.
“There are one or two points,” observed Mr. Queen, “that still elude me. Otherwise, on marche. I beg your pardon. I always break out in a foreign language at this time of the night. Do you think you can keep awake long enough to answer a few questions?”
“Shoot.”
“It’s an odd situation,” said Mr. Queen, beginning a circumambient patrol of the office. “First time in my experience I’ve had to rely completely on the senses of another person. Complicates matters. You were in this from the beginning, and I was on the outside trying to look in. I’ve the feeling that the master-key to this case is hidden in an out-of-the-way place — a chance remark, some innocuous event...”
“I’ll help all I can,” said Beau dispiritedly. “I fell asleep when my limited brain couldn’t hold any more. I’ve shot my bolt, kid. It’s up to you now.”
Mr. Queen sighed. “I’m duly impressed by the responsibility. Now I’m going over the case from the start. At every point where I omit something that actually happened, or where something occurred which you forgot to mention, sing out. Supply the missing link. I don’t care how trivial it is. In fact, the more trivial the better.”
“Go ahead.”
The inquisition began. Mr. Queen kept it up mercilessly, until Beau’s lids drooped again and he had to fight with himself to keep awake.
Suddenly Mr. Queen displayed a ferocious exultancy. He waved Beau back to the sofa and began to race up and down, mumbling to himself excitedly.
“That’s it. That’s it!” He scurried around the desk and sat down. Seizing a pencil, he began to scribble feverishly, setting down facts in order, like a mathematician working out a problem in calculus. Beau lay, exhausted, on the sofa.
“Beau!”
“Well?” Beau sat up.
“I’ve got it.” And Mr. Queen, having delivered this epic intelligence with the utmost calm, the stranger for its having been preceded by such fury, set the pencil down and began to tear up his notes. He tore them into tiny fragments, heaped them in an ashtray, and set fire to the heap. He did not speak again until the scraps were ashes.
Beau searched his partner’s face anxiously. What he saw there seemed to satisfy him, for he jumped off the sofa and exclaimed: “Damned if I don’t think you have! When do I go to work?”
“Instantly.” Mr. Queen sat back beaming. “We have a chance, Beau, an excellent chance. You’ve got to work fast, though. And cautiously.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I know who killed the Bloomer woman. Logically it can be only one person. I’ve ironed out all the discrepancies, and there can’t be the least doubt of the guilt of the person I have in mind.”
“Who is it?” asked Beau grimly.
“Wait, wait; don’t begrudge me my brief hour of triumph.” And Mr. Queen said in a dreamful voice: “Our friend made two mistakes, one of which, I’m afraid, will prove fatal. We can capitalize those mistakes if we jump right in. Any way I look at it — and I’ve looked at it every way — there are three pieces of evidence which we should be able to produce to make the guilt of Ann Bloomer’s murderer stand up in court.”
“Three pieces of evidence?” Beau shook his head. “Either I’m a moron and you’re a genius, or I’m normally intelligent and you’re talking through your hat.”
Mr. Queen chuckled. “Two of them are waiting for us — all we have to do is extend our hands at the proper time and they’re ours. The third...” He rose abruptly. “The third is tough. It’s the vital proof, and the hardest to find.”
“What’s it look like and where is it?”
“I know what it looks like — roughly,” said Mr. Queen with a faint smile. “As for where it is, however, I haven’t the foggiest notion.”
“Then how did you figure out its existence in the first place?” demanded Beau, exasperated.
“Very simply. It must exist. Every consideration of logic cries out its existence. Every fact in the case demands that it exist. It’s your job to locate it, and you have until noon tomorrow to do it!”
“I don’t know what the devil you’re jawing about,” said Beau with impatience, “but tell me what it is, and I’m off.”
Mr. Queen told him. And as he spoke, Mr. Rummell’s black eyes glittered with wonder.
“Holy smoke!” he breathed. “Holy smoke.”
Mr. Queen basked in this eloquent atmosphere of admiration.
“Though how in the world you figured it out—”
“Nothing up my sleeve,” said Mr. Queen airily. “The little gray cells, as M. Poirot is wont to remark. At any rate, there’s no time for explanations now. You’ve got to burn up the wires, rouse people from their beds — what time is it? three o’clock! — cut through several miles of red tape, grease a number of dry and itching palms, gather a crew of assistants... in short, get that evidence by noon!”
Beau grabbed the telephone.
As for Mr. Queen, he stretched out on the sofa with a grunt of pure sensuality and was fast asleep before Beau had finished dialing the first number.
Mr. Queen awoke to find the sun poking at his eyelids and, to judge from its taste, a piece of old flannel mouldering in his mouth.