And found the key to the code.
He found it by accident, merely because he was in the dead man’s room and it occurred to him that no one had disturbed it since the elder Royle’s death. There was even a soiled towel, with the stains of makeup on it, lying on the make-up table beside a new-looking portable typewriter.
So Ellery poked about while Ty lay down on the couch and stared stonily at the oyster-white ceiling; and almost the first thing Ellery found in the table drawer was a creased and crumpled sheet of ordinary yellow paper, 8 ½ by 11 inches in size, one side blank and the other well-filled with typewritten words.
And Ellery took one look at the capitalized, underscored heading: meaning of the cards, and let out a whoop that brought Ty to his feet.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“I’ve found it!” yelled Ellery. “Of all the colossal breaks. The cards! All typed out. Thanks, kind Fates. Yes, here’s the whole thing... Wait a minute. Is it possible—”
Ty frowned over the sheet. Ellery whipped the cover off the portable typewriter, rummaged until he found a sheet of blank stationery, pushed it under the carriage, and began rapidly to type, referring to the crumpled yellow paper from time to time. And as he typed, the gladness went out of his face, and it became dark with thought.
He got up, replaced the cover of the typewriter, put the papers carefully into his pocket, picked up the machine, and said in a flat voice: “Come along, Ty.”
They found Bonnie and the Boy Wonder in each other’s arms, Bonnie’s face still stormy and Butch looking wildly happy. Lew sat grinning at them both, like a benevolent satyr.
“We come bearing news,” said Ellery. “Unhand her, Butch. This requires confabulation.”
“Whassa matter?” asked Lew suspiciously.
“Plenty. I don’t know whether you know it or not, Butch, but Ty and Bonnie do. Blythe for some time before last Sunday had been receiving anonymous messages.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Butch slowly.
“What kind?” frowned Lew. “Threats?”
“Plain envelopes addressed in block letters by obviously a post-office pen, mailed in Hollywood, and containing nothing but playing-cards.” He took out his wallet and tossed over a small bundle of envelopes bound by an elastic. Butch and Lew examined them incredulously.
“Horseshoe Club,” muttered Lew.
“But what do they mean?” demanded Butch. “Bonnie, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think they were important.”
“I’m more to blame. I’ve been carrying these things around in my pocket and didn’t once think of them after Sunday. But just now,” said Ellery, “I found the key to those cards.”
He laid down on Butcher’s desk the yellow sheet. Lew and Butch and Bonnie read it with blank faces.
“I don’t understand,” murmured Bonnie. “It looks like some kind of fortune-telling.”
“It told a remarkably grim fortune,” drawled Ellery. “This — you might call it a codex — tells what each card sent through the mail means.” He picked up the envelopes. “The first envelope Blythe received was mailed on the eleventh of this month and delivered on the twelfth. That was nine days ago, or five days before the murders. And what was in the envelope? Two playing-cards — the knave and seven of spades.”
Automatically they craned at the yellow sheet. The meaning assigned to both the knave and seven of spades was: “An Enemy.”
“Two enemies, then,” said Ellery. “Just as if some one had written: ‘Watch yourself. We’re both after you.’”
“Two — enemies?” said Bonnie damply. There was horror in her eyes as she glanced, as if against her will, at Ty’s pale face. “Two!”
“The second envelope arrived on Friday the fifteenth. And it contained two cards also — the ten of spades and the two of clubs. And what do they mean?”
“‘Great Trouble,’” muttered Ty. “That’s the spade ten. And ‘In Two Days or Two Weeks’ on the deuce of clubs.”
“Two days,” cried Bonnie. “Friday the fifteenth — and mother was murdered on Sunday the seventeenth!”
“And on Sunday the seventeenth, at the field,” continued Ellery, “I saw Clotilde deliver the third envelope. I picked it up after your mother, Bonnie, threw it away. It was this — the eight of spades, torn in half. If you’ll refer to that note at the bottom of the sheet, you’ll see that the meaning is intended to become reversed when a card is torn in half. Consequently the message becomes — only a few minutes before the plane is hijacked and the murder occurs: ‘Threatened Danger Will not Be Warded Off!’”
“This,” said Butcher pallidly, “is the most childish nonsense I’ve ever heard of. It’s completely incredible.”
“Yet here it is.” Ellery shrugged. “And just now Bonnie gave me the last message — the nine of clubs enclosed, meaning: ‘Last Warning.’ That seems the most incredible nonsense of all, Butch, since this ‘warning’ was sent to Blythe two days after her death.”
The Boy Wonder looked angry. “It was bad enough before, but this... Damn it, how can you credit such stuff? But if we must... it does look as if whoever mailed this last letter didn’t know Blythe was dead, doesn’t it? And since all the letters were obviously the work of the same person, I can’t see the relevance of any of it.”
“It’s ridiculous,” jeered Lew. “Plain nut stuff.” Nevertheless he asked: “Say, where’d you find this sheet?”
“In Jack Royle’s dressing-room.” Ellery took the cover off the portable typewriter. “And what’s more, if you’ll examine this sample of typewriting I just made on this machine and compare it with the typing on the yellow sheet, you’ll find that the small h’s and r’s, for instance, have identically broken serifs. Identically broken,” he repeated with a sudden thoughtful note; and he seized a paperweight sunglass on Butcher’s desk and examined the keys in question. Freshly filed! But he put the glass down and merely said: “There’s no doubt about it. This code-sheet was typed on Jack Royle’s typewriter. It was your dad’s, Ty?”
Ty said: “Yes. Yes, of course,” and turned away.
“Jack?” repeated Butch in a dazed voice.
Lew snarled: “Aw, go on. What would Jack want to play games for?” but the snarl was somehow unconvincing. He glanced uneasily at Bonnie.
Bonnie said huskily: “On Jack Royle’s typewriter... You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely. Those broken keys are as good as fingerprints.”
“Ty Royle, did you hear that?” asked Bonnie of his back, her eyes flashing. “Did you?”
“What do you want?” muttered Ty, without turning.
“What do I want?” screamed Bonnie. “I want you to turn around and look me in the face! Your father typed that sheet — your father sent those notes with the cards in them to mother — your father killed my mother!”
He turned then, defensively, his face sullen. “You’re hysterical or you’d know that’s a stupid, silly accusation.”
“Is it?” cried Bonnie. “I knew there was something funny about his repentance, about proposing marriage to mother after so many years of hating her. Now I know he was lying all the time, playing a game — yes, Lew, but a horrible one! — covering himself up against the time when he expected to — to murder her. The engagement, the wedding, it was all a trap! He hired somebody to pretend to kidnap them and then poisoned my mother with his own foul hands!”
“And himself, too, I suppose?” said Ty savagely.
“Yes, because when he realized what an awful thing he’d done he had the first decent impulse of his life and put an end to it!”