“No, indeed. I mean — I’ve seen Mr. Royle in Hollywood at times and Miss Blythe Stuart used to come here... But I haven’t seen her for several years.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Ten years. Mr. Stuart hired me to take care of him. At a very nice yearly retainer, I must say, and my own practice wasn’t terribly—”
“Where’d you come from? I didn’t hear you say.”
“Buenavista, Colorado.”
“Police record?”
Dr. Junius drew himself up. “My dear sir!”
Glücke looked him over. “No harm done,” he said mildly. The doctor stepped back, wiping his face. “Now here’s what we’ve found. You were right, Queen, about the cause of death. The coroner of Riverside County flew up there with his sheriff, examined the bodies—”
Bonnie grew pale again. Butcher said sharply: “Dr. Junius is right. We ought to clear out of here and get these kids home. You can talk to them tomorrow.”
“It’s all right,” said Bonnie in a low voice. “I’m all right, Butch.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” growled Ty, “the sooner you get started the better I’ll like it. Do you think I could sleep and eat and laugh and work while my father’s murderer is breathing free air somewhere?”
The Inspector went on, quite as if nobody had spoken: “Well, as I was saying, preliminary examination showed they both died of very large doses of morphine.”
“In the thermos bottles?” asked Ellery.
“Yes. The drinks were loaded with the stuff. The Doc couldn’t be sure without a chemical analysis, but he says there must easily have been five grains to each cocktail drink. I’m having Bronson, our chemist, analyze what’s left in the bottles as soon as he can lay his hands on them.”
“But I don’t understand,” frowned Bonnie. “We all drank from the bottles just before the take-off. Why weren’t we poisoned, too?”
“If you weren’t, it’s because the drinks were okay at that time. Does anybody remember exactly what happened to that hamper?”
“I do,” said Ellery. “I was shoved about by the crowd and was forced to sit down on the hamper immediately after the last round, when the bottles were put back. And I had my eye on that hamper every instant between the time the bottles were stowed away and the time I sat down on the hamper.”
“That’s a break. Did you sit on the hamper till this disguised pilot hijacked the plane?”
“Better than that,” said Ellery wryly. “I actually got up and handed it to him with my own hands as he got into the plane.”
“So that means the drinks were poisoned inside. We’ve got a clear line there.” Glücke looked pleased. “He swiped the plane, poisoned the drinks in the plane as he was stowing away the hamper, took off, waited for Jack and Blythe to drink — stuff’s practically tasteless, the coroner said, in booze — and when they passed out he just set the plane down on that plateau and beat it. No fuss, no bother, no trouble at all. Damned neat, and damned cold-blooded.”
The pilot’s predicted storm broke. A thousand demons howled, and the wind lashed at the butte, pounding the old house, banging shutters and rattling windows. Suddenly lightning crashed about the exposed mountain-top and thunder roared.
Nobody spoke. Dr. Junius shambled forward to throw another log on the fire.
The thunder rolled and rolled as if it would never stop. Ellery listened uneasily. It seemed to him that he had detected the faintest undertone in the thunder. He glanced about, but none of his companions seemed conscious of it.
The thunder ceased for a moment, and Glücke said: “We’ve got the whole State looking for that pilot. It’s only a question of time before we catch up with the guy.”
“But this rain,” cried Ty. “It will wipe out his trail from the plateau!”
“I know, I know, Mr. Royle,” said Glücke soothingly. “Don’t fret yourself. We’ll collar him. Now I want you young people to tell me something about your parents. There must be a clue somewhere in their background.”
Ellery took his hat and coat from the chair near the front door where he had dropped them and, unobserved, slipped down the hallway to the kitchen and out the kitchen door into the open.
The trees about the side of the house were bent over in the gale, and a downpour that seemed solid rather than liquid drenched him the instant he set foot on the spongy earth. Nevertheless he lowered his head to the wind, clutching his hat, and aided by an occasional lightning-flash fought his way toward the distant glow of the landing-field.
He stumbled onto the field and stopped, gasping for breath. A commercial plane, apparently the one which had conveyed Glücke to Tolland Stuart’s mountain home, strained within the hangar beside the small stubby ship; the hangar doors stood open to the wind.
Ellery shook his head impatiently, straining to see the length of the field in the badly flickering arc-lights. But the field was empty of life.
He waited for the next flash of lightning and then eagerly searched the tossing skies overhead. But if there was anything up there, it was lost in the swollen black clouds.
So it had been his imagination after all. He could have sworn he had heard the motors of an airplane through the thunder. He retraced his steps.
And then, just as he was about to break from under the trees in a dash back to the house, he saw a man.
The man was crouching in the lee of the house, to the rear, a black hunched-over figure. The friendly lightning blazed again, and Ellery saw him raise his head.
It was an old face with a ragged growth of gray beard and mustache, a deeply engraved skin, and slack blubbering lips; and it was the face of one who looks upon death, or worse. Ellery was struck by that expression of pure, stripped terror. It was as if the old man had suddenly found himself cornered against an unscalable wall by a horde of the ghastliest denizens of his worst nightmare.
In the aftermath of darkness Ellery barely made out the stooped figure creeping miserably along the side of the house to vanish somewhere behind it.
The rain hissed down, and Ellery stood still, oblivious to it, staring into the darkness. What was Mr. Tolland Stuart doing out in the storm raging about his mountain retreat at a moment when he was supposed to be shivering behind the barred door of his bedroom?
Why, indeed, only a few hours after the murder of his only child in an airplane, should he be crawling about his estate with a flyer’s helmet stuck ludicrously on his head?
Ellery found the Inspector straddle-legged across the fire. He was saying: “Not much help... Oh, Queen.”
Ellery dashed the rain from his hat and spread his coat before the flames. “I thought I heard something on the landing-field.”
“Another plane?” groaned Dr. Junius.
“It was my imagination.”
Glücke frowned. “Well, we’re not getting anywhere. Then aside from this down-and-outer Park you mention, Mr. Royle, you’d say your father had no enemies?”
“None I know of.”
“I’d quite forgotten that little flare-up at the Horseshoe Club a couple of weeks ago,” said Ellery slowly.
“Nothing to it. The man was just peeved about being found out. It’s not going to be as easy as all that.”
“The man’s cracked,” said Ty shortly. “A crackpot will do anything.”
“Well, we’ll check up on him. Only if he’s the one, why did he kill Miss Stuart’s mother as well as your father? He couldn’t have had anything against her!”
“He could have held her responsible for the whole situation,” snapped Ty. “An irrational man would react that way.”
“Maybe.” Glücke looked at his fingernails. “By the way. It seems to me there’s been a lot of talk about your two families sort of — well, not getting along.”