“So we must have been moved, body and baggage, to this twin White House during the time we retired the first night and the time we awoke the next morning. We, Miss Mayhew’s chromo on the mantel, the holes in our doors where locks had been, even the fragments of a brandy decanter which had been shattered the night before in a cleverly staged scene against the brick wall of the fireplace at the original house... all, all transferred to the twin house to further the illusion that we were still in the original house the next morning.”
“Drivel,” said Dr. Reinach, smiling. “Such pure drivel that it smacks of fantasmagoria.”
“It was beautiful,” said Ellery. “A beautiful plan. It had symmetry, the polish of great art. And it made a beautiful chain of reasoning, too, once I was set properly at the right link. For what followed? Since we had been transferred without our knowledge during the night, it must have been while we were unconscious. I recalled the two drinks Thorne and I had had, and the fuzzy tongue and head that resulted the next morning. Mildly drugged, then; and the drinks had been mixed the night before by Dr. Reinach’s own hand. Doctor — drugs; very simple.” The fat man shrugged with amusement, glancing sidewise at the stocky man in blue. But the stocky man in blue wore a hard, unchanging mask.
“But Dr. Reinach alone?” murmured Ellery. “Oh, no, impossible. One man could never have accomplished all that was necessary in the scant few hours available... fix Thome’s car, carry us and our clothes and bags from the one White House to its duplicate — by machine — put Thome’s car out of commission again, put us to bed again, arrange our clothing identically, transfer the chromo, the fragments of the cut-glass decanter in the fireplace, perhaps even a few knickknacks and ornaments not duplicated in the second White House, and so on. A prodigious job, even if most of the preparatory work had been done before our arrival. Obviously the work of a whole group. Of accomplices. Who but everyone in the house? With the possible exception of Mrs. Fell, who in her condition could be swayed easily enough, with no clear perception of what was occurring.”
Ellery’s eyes gleamed. “And so I accuse you all — including young Mr. Keith, who has wisely taken himself off — of having aided in the plot whereby you would prevent the rightful heiress of Sylvester Mayhew’s fortune from taking possession of the house in which it was hidden.”
Dr. Reinach coughed politely, flapping his paws together like a great seal. “Terribly interesting, Queen, terribly. I don’t know when I’ve been more captivated by sheer fiction. On the other hand, there are certain personal allusions in your story which, much as I admire their ingenuity, cannot fail to provoke me.” He turned to the stocky man in blue.
“Certainly, Captain,” he chuckled, “you don’t credit this incredible story? I believe Mr. Queen has gone a little mad from sheer shock.”
“Unworthy of you, Doctor,” sighed Ellery. “The proof of what I say lies in the very fact that we are here, at this moment.”
“You’ll have to explain that,” said the police chief, who seemed out of his depth.
“I mean that we are now in the original White House. I led you back here, didn’t I? And I can lead you back to the twin White House, for now I know the basis of the illusion. After our departure this evening, incidentally, all these people returned to this house. The other White House had served its purpose and they no longer needed it.
“As for the geographical trick involved, it struck me that this side-road we’re on makes a steady curve for miles. Both driveways lead off this same road, one some six miles farther up the road; although, because of the curve, which is like a number 9, the road makes a wide sweep and virtually doubles back on itself, so that as the crow flies the two settlements are only a mile or so apart, although by the curving road they are six miles apart.
“When Dr. Reinach drove Thorne and Miss Mayhew and me out here the day the Coronia docked, he deliberately passed the almost imperceptible drive leading to the substitute house and went on until he reached this one, the original. We didn’t notice the first driveway.
“Thome’s car was put out of commission deliberately to prevent his driving. The driver of a car will observe landmarks when his passengers notice little or nothing. Keith even met Thorne on both Thome’s previous visits to Mayhew — ostensibly ‘to lead the way,’ actually to prevent Thorne from familiarizing himself with the road. And it was Dr. Reinach who drove the three of us here that first day. They permitted me to drive away tonight for what they hoped was a one-way trip because we started from the substitute house — of the two, the one on the road nearer to town. We couldn’t possibly, then, pass the tell-tale second drive and become suspicious. And they knew the relatively shorter drive would not impress our consciousness.”
“But even granting all that, Mr. Queen,” said the policeman, “I don’t see what these people expected to accomplish. They couldn’t hope to keep you folks fooled forever.”
“True,” cried Ellery, “but don’t forget that by the time we caught on to the various tricks involved they hoped to have laid hands on Mayhew’s fortune and disappeared with it. Don’t you see that the whole illusion was planned to give them time? Time to dismantle the Black House without interference, raze it to the ground if necessary, to find that hidden hoard of gold? I don’t doubt that if you examine the house next door you’ll find it a shambles and a hollow shell. That’s why Reinach and Keith kept disappearing. They were taking turns at the Black House, picking it apart, stone by stone, in a frantic search for the cache, while we were occupied in the duplicate White House with an apparently supernatural phenomenon. That’s why someone — probably the worthy doctor here — slipped out of the house behind your back, Thorne, and struck me over the head when I rashly attempted to follow Keith’s tracks in the snow. I could not be permitted to reach the original settlement, for if I did the whole preposterous illusion would be revealed.”
“How about that gold?” growled Thorne.
“For all I know,” said Ellery with a shrug, “they’ve found it and salted it away again.”
“Oh, but we didn’t,” whimpered Mrs. Reinach, squirming in her chair. “Herbert, I told you not to—”
“Idiot,” said the fat man. “Stupid swine.” She jerked as if he had struck her.
“If you hadn’t found the loot,” said the police chief to Dr. Reinach brusquely, “why did you let these people go tonight?”
Dr. Reinach compressed his blubbery lips; he raised his glass and drank quickly.
“I think I can answer that,” said Ellery in a gloomy tone. “In many ways it’s the most remarkable element of the whole puzzle. Certainly it’s the grimmest and least excusable. The other illusion was child’s play compared to it. For it involves two apparently irreconcilable elements — Alice Mayhew and a murder.”
“A murder!” exclaimed the policeman, stiffening.
“Me?” said Alice in bewilderment.
Ellery lit a cigarette and flourished it at the policeman. “When Alice Mayhew came here that first afternoon, she went into the Black House with us. In her father’s bedroom she ran across an old chromo — I see it’s not here, so it’s still in the other White House — portraying her long-dead mother as a girl. Alice Mayhew fell on the chromo like a Chinese refugee on a bowl of rice. She had only one picture of her mother, she explained, and that a poor one. She treasured this unexpected discovery so much that she took it with her, then and there, to the White House — this house. And she placed it on the mantel over the fireplace here in a prominent position.”