“Did you go right to bed?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you discover during the night that your husband hadn’t come up to sleep?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I did not. I slept through until morning.”
“Mrs. Wheary?”
The housekeeper sobbed: “I don’t know anything at all about this, sir, as God is my judge. I just went to bed.”
“How about you, Xavier?”
The man licked his lips before replying. When he spoke his voice was cracked. “I didn’t stir from my bedroom all night.”
“Well, I might have expected it,” sighed the Inspector. “So nobody here saw the doctor after Mr. Queen, Mrs. Xavier and I left him in the game-room last night, hey?”
They shook their heads almost eagerly.
“How about the shots? Anybody hear them?”
Blank stares.
“It must be the mountain air,” said the Inspector sarcastically. “Although at that maybe I’m a little harsh. I didn’t hear them myself.”
“These are soundproof walls,” said Dr. Holmes lifelessly. “Specially constructed — the study and laboratory. We did a lot of experimenting with animals, Inspector. The noise, you know—”
“I see. These doors down here are always unlocked, I suppose?” Mrs. Wheary and Mrs. Xavier nodded simultaneously. “Now how about the gun? Anybody here who didn’t know there was a weapon and ammunition in that little cabinet in the study?”
Miss Forrest said quickly: “I didn’t, Inspector.”
The old gentleman grunted. Ellery smoked reflectively in the study, scarcely listening.
The Inspector eyed them for a moment, then he said briefly: “That’s all for now. No,” he added in a caustic tone, “don’t move. There’s a lot more. Dr. Holmes, you stay with us; we may need you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” began Mrs. Xavier, half rising. She looked haggard and old. “Can’t we—?”
“Stay where you are, please, Madam. There are a lot of things that have to be done. One of them,” said the Inspector grimly, “is to get that hidden guest of yours, Mrs. Carreau, down for a little chin-chin.” And he began to shut the door in their gaping, stricken faces.
“And,” said Ellery gravely, “the crab. Please don’t forget the crab, dad.”
But they were too stupefied for speech.
“Now, Doctor,” continued Ellery briskly, when the door was closed, “how about rigor mortis? He looks stiff as a board to me. I’ve had some experience examining dead bodies, and this one looks remarkably well advanced.”
“Yes,” muttered Dr. Holmes. “Rigor is complete. In fact, rigor has been complete for nine hours.”
“Here, here,” frowned the Inspector. “Are you sure of that, Doctor? It doesn’t sound kosher—”
“I assure you it’s so, Inspector. You see, Dr. Xavier was—” he licked his lips — “badly diabetic.”
“Ah,” said Ellery softly. “We meet the diabetic corpse once more. Remember Mrs. Doom in the Dutch Memorial Hospital, dad? Go on, Doctor.”
“It’s quite the usual thing,” said the young Englishman with a weary shrug. “Diabetics may go into rigor as early as three minutes after death. Special blood condition, of course.”
“I remember now.” The Inspector took a pinch of snuff, inhaled deeply, sighed, and put the box away. “Well, it’s interesting but not helpful. Just park yourself on that couch, Dr. Holmes, and try to forget this business for a while... Now, El, let’s see all this queer stuff you were gabbling about.”
Ellery flung his half-smoked cigarette out the open window and went around the desk to stand beside the swivel chair in which Dr. Xavier’s body sat.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing toward the floor.
The Inspector looked; and then, with a rather startled expression, squatted on his hams and grasped the hanging right arm of the dead man. It seemed made out of steel; he had the greatest difficulty moving it. He grasped the dead hand.
The hand was clenched. Three fingers — middle finger, ring finger, and little finger — were curled tightly into the palm. Between the extended forefinger and the thumb the dead surgeon held a ragged fragment of stiff paper.
“What’s this?” muttered the Inspector, and he tried to pull the fragment from between the two dead digits. The fingers held tenaciously. Grunting, the old gentleman grasped the thumb in one hand and the forefinger in the other and exerted all his wiry strength. After a struggle he managed to loosen the grip to the extent of perhaps a sixteen of an inch. The stiff paper fluttered to the rug.
He picked it up and rose.
“Why, it’s a torn piece of card!” he exclaimed, a note of disappointment in his voice.
“So it is,” said Ellery mildly. “You sound fearfully disgruntled, dad. Needn’t be. I’ve the feeling that it’s considerably more significant than it looks.”
It was half a six of spades.
The Inspector turned it over; the back was a gaudy red design of intertwined fleurs-de-lis. He glanced at the cards on the desk; their backs were of the same design.
He looked inquiringly at Ellery, and Ellery nodded. They stepped forward and tugged at the dead man. Managing to raise him a little from the surface of the desk, they pushed the swivel chair back a few inches and lowered the body again, so that only the head rested on the edge. Virtually the entire spread of cards was revealed.
“The six of spades came from this desk,” murmured Ellery, “as you can see.” He pointed to a row of cards. Dr. Xavier had apparently been playing, before his murder, the common type of solitaire in which thirteen cards are stacked in a pile as a source from which the player may draw, and then four cards are place face up in a row, with a fifth card placed face up on a line by itself. The game was well advanced. The second card of the group of four was a ten of clubs. Beneath it, covering most of the ten, lay a nine of hearts; beneath the nine, similarly placed, lay an eight of spades; then a seven of diamonds; then a considerable space; and finally a five of diamonds.
“The six was between the seven of diamonds and the five of diamonds,” muttered the Inspector. “All right. So he picked it out of that row. I don’t see... Where’s the rest of this six of spades?” he demanded suddenly.
“On the floor behind the desk,” said Ellery. He circled the desk and stooped. When he stood up he held in his hand a crumpled ball of card. He smoothed it out and fitted it to the fragment from the dead man’s right hand. It matched perfectly, beyond the remotest possibility of duplication.
As on the fragment from the dead man’s hand, there was an oval finger smudge on the crumpled piece. It was obviously the smudge of a thumb, like the other. When the halves were fitted together the two smudges faced each other, each pointing diagonally upward to the line of tearing.
“Smudges are from his fingers when he tore the card, of course,” went on the Inspector thoughtfully. He examined the dead man’s thumbs. “Yes, they’re dirty. That damned soot, I guess, from the fire; it’s all over everything. Well, El, I see now what you mean.”
Ellery shrugged and turned to the window to stare out. Dr. Holmes was bent almost double on the black couch, holding his head between his hands.
“He was shot twice and the murderer beat it, leaving him for dead,” continued the Inspector slowly. “But he wasn’t dead. In his last conscious moments he picked that six of spades out of the solitaire game he’d been playing, deliberately tore off half the card, crumpled the other half and threw it away, and then passed out. Why the devil did he do that, now?”