Ty seized the envelope. It was addressed in a washed-out blue ink, and the writing — block-letters crudely penned — was scratchy.
“But it’s addressed to Blythe Stuart,” said Ty, puzzled. “And from the postmark it was mailed in Hollywood last night, the nineteenth. That’s two days after her death! It doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s why,” said Bonnie tensely, “I think it is important. Maybe when we add up all the things that don’t make sense, we’ll have something that does.”
Ty took out what lay in the envelope and stared at it. “And this is all there was?”
“I told you it was mad.”
The only thing in the envelope was a playing-card with a golden horseshoe engraved on its blue back.
The card was the nine of clubs.
Chapter 10
Freedom of the Press
Whether it was because of the story in the paper or because banishing indecision meant seeing Paula Paris again, Mr. Ellery Queen concluded a three-day struggle with himself by driving on Thursday morning to the white house in the hills.
And there, in one of the waiting-rooms intently conning Paula’s Seeing Stars column in the previous Sunday’s night-edition of the Monday morning paper, sat Inspector Glücke. When he saw Ellery he quickly stuffed the paper into his pocket.
“Are you one of Miss Paris’s doting public, too?” asked Ellery, trying to conceal his own copy of the same edition.
“Hullo, Queen.” Then the Inspector growled: “What’s the use of beating around the bush? I see you’ve spotted that column. Darned funny, I call it.”
“Not at all! Some mistake, no doubt.”
“Sure, that’s why you’re here, no doubt. This dame’s got some tall explaining to do. Give me the runaround since Monday, will she? I’ll break her damned neck!”
“Please,” said Ellery frigidly. “Miss Paris is a lady. Don’t speak of her as if she were one of your policewomen.”
“So she’s hooked you, too,” snarled Glücke. “Listen, Queen, this isn’t the first time I’ve locked horns with her. Whenever she comes up with something important and I ask her — in a nice way, mind you — to come down to HQ for a chin, I get the same old baloney about her not being able to leave this house, this crowd phobia of hers—”
“I’ll thank you,” snapped Ellery, “to stop insulting her.”
“I’ve subpoenaed her from Dan to Beersheba time after time and she always wriggles out, blast her. Doctor’s affidavits — God knows what! I’ll show her up for a phony some day, mark my words. Crowd phobia!”
“Meanwhile,” said Ellery nastily, “the mountain again approaches Mohammed. By the way, what’s doing?”
“No trace of that pilot yet. But it’s only a question of time. My own hunch is he cached a plane somewhere near that plateau, maybe on the plateau itself. Then when he grounded Ty’s plane he simply walked over to his own ship and flew off. You don’t leave much of a trail in thin air.”
“Hmm. I see Dr. Polk has confirmed my guess as to the cause of death officially.”
“Autopsy showed an almost equal amount of morphine, a little over five grains, in each body. That means, Doc says, that a hell of a lot of morphine was dropped into those thermos bottles. Also some stuff Bronson calls sodium allurate, a new barbiturate compound — puts you rockababy.”
“No wonder there was no struggle,” muttered Ellery.
“Polk says the morphine and sodium allurate would put ’em to sleep in less than five minutes. While they were sleeping that terrific dose of morphine began to get in its licks, and they must have died in less than a half-hour.”
“I suppose Jack went first, and Blythe thought he was merely dozing. The soporific performed an important function. You see that? While the first victim, whichever it was, was apparently asleep although really dying or dead the second one, unsuspicious because of that sleeping appearance of the other, would drink from the other thermos bottle. The allurate was a precaution — just in case they didn’t both drink at the same time. Damned clever.”
“Clever or not, it did the trick. Death by respiratory paralysis Polk calls it. The hell of it is we can’t trace the stuff. Sodium allurate’s now available in any drug store, and you know what a cinch it is to lay your hands on morphine.”
“Anything new?”
“Well,” said Glücke bashfully, “I’m not saying — much. I tried tracing the sender of that hamper, but no dice; we found the place it came from, but the order was mailed in and they threw away the letter. Phony name, of course. The plane’s sterile; the only fingerprints are Jack’s and Blythe’s and Ty’s — this guy must have worn gloves throughout. On the other hand...”
“Yes? You’re eating my heart out.”
“Well, we sort of got a line on Jack’s lady-friends. I swear he was a man, that billy-goat! Got a couple of interesting leads.” The Inspector chuckled. “From the way the gals in this town are running for cover you’d think—”
“I’m not in the mood for love,” said Ellery somberly. “How about this man Park? Not a word about him in the news.”
“Oh, he’s dead.”
“What!”
“Committed suicide. It’ll be in tonight’s papers. We found his duds intact in the cheap flophouse in Hollywood where he bedded down, with a note saying he was dying anyway, he was no good to his wife and crippled boy back East, who are on relief, he hadn’t earned enough to keep his own body and soul together for years, and so he was throwing himself to the tuna.”
“Oh,” said Ellery. “Then you didn’t find his body?”
“Listen, my large-brained friend,” grinned Glücke. “If you think that suicide note is a phony, forget it. We verified the handwriting. For another thing, we’ve definitely established the old guy couldn’t fly a plane.”
Ellery shrugged. “By the way, do something for me after you get through boiling Miss Paris in oil.”
“What?” demanded the Inspector suspiciously.
“Put a night-and-day tail on Bonnie.”
“Bonnie Stuart? What the hell for?”
“Blamed if I know. It must be my Psyche sniffing.” Then he added quite without humor: “Don’t neglect that, Glücke. It may be of the essence, as our French friends say.”
Just then one of Paula Paris’s secretaries said with an impish smile: “Will you come in now, Inspector?”
When Inspector Glücke emerged from Paula’s drawing-room he looked positively murderous.
“You like that dame in there, don’t you?” he panted.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ellery, alarmed.
“If you do, get her to talk. Sock her, kiss her, do anything — but find out where she picked up that story!”
“So she won’t talk, eh?” murmured Ellery.
“No, and if she doesn’t I’ll drag her out of this house by that pretty gray streak in her hair and lock her up, crowd phobia or no crowd phobia! I’ll book her on a charge of... of criminal conspiracy! Hold her as a material witness!”
“Here, calm down. You wouldn’t try to coerce the press in this era of constitutional sensitivity, would you? Remember the lamentable case of that newspaperman Hoover.”
“I’m warning you!” yelled Glücke, and he stamped out.
“All right, Mr. Queen,” said the secretary.
Ellery entered the holy of holies soberly. He found Paula finishing an apple and looking lovely, serene, and reproachful.
“You, too?” She laughed and indicated a chair. “Don’t look so tragic, Mr. Queen. Sit down and tell me why you’ve neglected me so shamefully.”