And before either of the men on the floor could get to his feet, the pilot darted to the door, wrenched it open, and flung himself out into the sky.
He bounced once on the metal wing.
His body hurtled toward the distant wrinkled face of the earth.
They watched that plummet dive with the paralysis of horror.
The tumbling figure waved frantic arms, growing smaller and smaller.
But no parachute blossomed, and the body became a shrinking mote that suddenly stopped shrinking and spread infinitesimally on the earth.
Chapter 21
Excursion into Time
The field was the surface of a bubbling pot when they landed. Police were using their night-sticks. Men with cameras and men with notebooks were fighting openly to break through the cordon.
Ellery, one whisker askew, cooing over Bonnie, saw Inspector Glücke in a small army of detectives gesticulating near the hangar; and he grinned with the satisfaction of sheer survival.
“It’s all right, Bonnie,” he said. “It’s all over now. You’ve got nothing more to worry about. That’s right. Cry it out. It’s all right.”
“Just wait,” growled Ty. “Wait till I get this damned thing standing still.”
“I’m waiting,” sobbed Bonnie. “Oh, Ty, I’m waiting!” And she shuddered over the palpable sight of a small leggy figure tumbling end over end through empty air, like a dead bug.
The Inspector hurried them into the hangar, out of sight of the frenzied crowd. He was red-faced and voluble, and he grinned all over as he pumped Ty’s hand, and Ellery’s hand, and Bonnie’s hand, and listened to details, and shouted instructions, and swore it had all come in like a movie. Outside a police plane managed to find a space clear enough for a take-off; it headed northeast on the funereal mission of locating and gathering the splattered remains of the one who had sought escape and found death.
Ty seized Bonnie and began shoving through the crowd of detectives to the hangar door.
“Here, where are you going?” demanded Ellery, grabbing his arm.
“Taking Bonnie home. Can’t you see the poor kid’s ready to collapse? Here, you men, get us off this field!”
“You wouldn’t run out on me now, Bonnie?” smiled Ellery, chucking her chin. “Come on, square your shoulders and get set for another sky-ride.”
“Another?” yelled Ty. “What now, for the love of Mike? Haven’t you had enough sky-riding for one day?”
“No,” said Ellery, “I have not.” He began to rip off his false whiskers, glancing inquiringly at the Inspector; and the Inspector nodded with a certain grimness, and before Ty could open his mouth to protest he and Bonnie were hurried onto the field and through lanes of police into a large transport plane drawn up on the line with its motor spitting.
“Hey, for God’s sake!” shouted a reporter. “Glücke! Give us a break. Glücke!”
“Ty!”
“Bonnie!”
But the Inspector shook his head, and followed Ty and Bonnie into the plane; and there, huddled in a pale-faced group, were several familiar faces.
They were looking at Ty and Bonnie, and Ty and Bonnie were looking at them; and Glücke hauled Ellery in and said something in a low voice to the pilot.
And then they all stared at the rushing, congested field as the plane took off and headed southeast.
And soon they were settling down on the little landing-field near Tolland Stuart’s mountain mansion; and as they landed another plane, which had been following from Los Angeles, settled down after them.
Ellery, his face his own, jumped to the ground almost before the plane stopped. He waved to its oncoming pursuer, and ran over to the hangar before which the emaciated figure of Dr. Junius was waiting. The doctor’s mouth was open and his eyes were glary with confusion.
Police poured out of the second plane and scattered quickly into the woods.
“What’s this?” stammered Dr. Junius, staring at the numerous figures getting out of the first plane. “Mr. Royle? Miss Stuart? What’s happened?”
“All in good time, Doctor,” said Ellery brusquely, taking his arm. He shouted to the others: “Up to the house!” and began to march the physician along.
“But...”
“Now, now, a little patience.”
And when they reached the house, Ellery said: “Where’s the old fire-eater? We can’t leave him out of this.”
“Mr. Stuart? In his room, sulking with a cold. He thinks he’s catching the grippe. Wait, I’ll tell him—” Dr. Junius broke away and ran up the living-room steps. Ellery watched him go, smiling.
“Upstairs,” he said cheerfully to the others. “The old gentleman’s indisposed for a change.”
When they got upstairs they found Dr. Junius soothing the old man, who sat propped up in bed against two enormous pillows, wrapped in an Indian blanket almost to the hairline, his two bright eyes glaring out at them.
“I thought I told you,” he began to complain, and then he spied Bonnie. “Oh, so you’ve come back, hey?” he snarled.
“Yes, indeed,” said Ellery, “and with a considerable escort, as you see. I trust, Mr. Stuart, you won’t be as inhospitable this time as you were the last. You see, I’ve got a little tale to tell, and it did seem a pity to keep it from you.”
“Tale?” said the old man sourly.
“The tale of an escapade just now in the California clouds. We’ve captured the murderer of John Royle and your daughter Blythe.”
Dr. Junius said incredulously: “What?”
And the old man opened his toothless mouth, and closed it again, and then reopened it as he stared from Ellery to Inspector Glücke. His mouth remained open.
“Yes,” said Ellery, nodding over a cigaret, “the worst is over, gentlemen. A very bad hombre’s come to the end of the line. I shouldn’t have said ‘captured.’ He’s dead, unless he learned somewhere to survive an eight-thousand-foot drop from a plane with a parachute that didn’t open.”
“Dead. Oh, I see; he’s dead.” Dr. Junius blinked. “Who was he? I can’t imagine...” His eyes, bulging out of their yellow-violet sockets, began timidly to reconnoitre the room.
“I think it would be wisest,” said Ellery, blowing a cloud of smoke, “to clean this sad business up in an orderly manner.”
“So I’ll begin at the beginning. There were two elements in the double murder of John Royle and Blythe Stuart which pointed to our now departed friend as the only possible culprit: motive and opportunity.
“It was in a consideration of motive that this case has been most interesting. In one way, unique. Let’s see what we had to work with.
“Neither Blythe nor Jack left an estate worth killing for, so murder for monetary gain was out. Since there were no romantic entanglements, such as jealous inamoratos of either victim — Blythe was stainless morally and all of Jack’s lady-friends have been eliminated by Glücke because of alibis — then the only possible emotional motive would have had to arise out of the Royle-Stuart feud. But I have been able, as some of you know, to rule out the feud as the motive behind these crimes.
“If the feud is eliminated, then neither Jack Royle nor Ty Royle could have been criminally involved — the feud being their only possible motive.
“But if the feud is eliminated, we’re faced with a puzzling situation. No one gained by the double murder, either materially or emotionally. In other words, a double murder was committed apparently without motive.
“Now this is palpably absurd. The only kind of crime which can even be conceived to lack motivation is the crime of impulse, the passion of a moment — and even this kind of crime, strictly speaking, has some deep-seated motive, even though the motive may manifest itself only in a sudden emotional eruption. But the murder of Jack and Blythe did not fall into even this classification. It was clearly a crime of great deliberation, of much planning in advance of the event — the warnings, the hamper, the frame-ups of Ty and Jack, the poison, and so on.