Chapter XV
The Ring
How long Ellery Stood there he never knew. His brain was racing madly, but his muscles refused to respond and his heart had turned to granite in his breast.
It was so much like the nightmare, he thought, a continuation of the horrid dream he had been having. Perhaps he was still dreaming... After the first lightning scrutiny of the man on the bed his head had wrenched about and he had fastened his gaze upon the supine figure of his father. Dead... His father was dead. His brain reeled before the enormity of the fact. His father was dead. The shrewd gray eyes would never twinkle again. Those thin nostrils would never more flare in anger. That old throat would never mutter and growl at petty annoyances, nor chuckle with sly humor. Those tireless little legs... His father was dead.
Then he experienced a vast impersonal surprise. Something wet was trickling down his cheeks. He was crying! Anger at himself made him shake his head violently, and suddenly he felt life and hope and strength flood warmly back into his blood. His muscles relaxed. But this time only to tense again for a spring forward.
He flung himself on his knees beside the Inspector and tore at the old man’s collar. There was a waxy paleness on his father’s face and he was breathing stertorously. Breathing! Then he was alive!
He shook the thin, small body with glad insistent hands, crying: “Dad, wake up! Dad, it’s El!” and smiling and panting and weeping like a demented man. But the Inspector’s gray, birdlike little head only wabbled a little and his eyes remained closed.
Panic-stricken again, Ellery slapped the old man’s cheeks, pinched his arm, pounded and pummeled him... And then he stopped, sniffing and raising his head. The shock had dulled his physical faculties. He realized acutely now what subconsciously he had known from his first step into the room. There was a cloying odor in the place. Yes, now that he bent closer to his father’s lips, it was stronger... The Inspector had been chloroformed.
Chloroformed! Then he had been taken off his guard, a murderer had beaten down his defenses and — committed murder again.
With the thought came calmness and a dogged resolve. He saw with bitter clarity where he had gone wrong, how essentially blind he had been. Led blandly along by his own self-assurance, he now realized that the trail, far from ending, had merely come to a bend, with a long misty prospect beyond. But this time, he told himself with gritted teeth, it would be different. The murderer’s hand had been forced. This had been not a crime of will or whim but of necessity. It had drawn the criminal against his will into the open. The corpse on the bed, what he had quickly seen in that first second’s flash...
He stooped, lifted the light figure of his father in his arms, and carried him to the armchair. Depositing him gently there, Ellery opened the old man’s shirt and shifted his body into a comfortable position. He felt beneath the shirt and nodded at the steady pound of the old man’s heart against his palm. The Inspector would be all right — just a matter of sleeping it off.
Ellery rose and went to the bed, eyes narrowed. What was to be seen he meant to see at once, before anyone else should come upon the scene.
The dead man was an unsavory sight. His chin and breast were covered with a thick greenish-brown semi-liquid, evil smelling and nauseating. Ellery’s eyes strayed to the vial on the floor and he went over and picked it up carefully. A few drops of a whitish liquid remained at the bottom. He sniffed the mouth of the vial and then with desperate decision tipped it so that a drop fell on his finger. Instantly he wiped this off and touched his tongue to the spot where the drop had fallen. He was rewarded with a quick fire on his tongue and a disagreeable sour taste. His finger tingled. A little sick, he spat into his handkerchief. The stuff was poison, undoubtedly.
He placed the vial on the night table and dropped to his knees beside the hanging head of the dead man. A swift glance into the open drawers of the table and the floor about the dead man’s right hand had told him the incredible story. The drawer was cluttered with much the same assortment of games that occupied Ellery’s own night table drawer, but the customary deck of cards was gone. They now lay scattered on the floor beside the bed.
And the object that Mark Xavier’s dead hand clutched so tightly was one of them.
Ellery removed it from the rigid fingers with difficulty. He shook his head at what he saw. He had been wrong. It was not a card; it was half a card. His glance went to the floor and he soon picked out the other half lying on top of the rest of the strewn pasteboards.
That Mark Xavier should have torn a card in two was not remarkable, he reflected quickly, considering the fact that his dead brother had shortly before set the precedent. Nor was it remarkable that the card Xavier tore was not a six of spades; for that bubble, he thought, had been forever pricked.
What did pique him was that the card was a knave of diamonds.
Now why, he said fretfully to himself, a knave of diamonds? Of all the fifty-two cards in the deck?
The fact that the torn half was in Xavier’s right hand had no helpful significance. It was where it should have been. Left-handed, the poisoned lawyer in his last moments of consciousness had reached out to the table, pulled open the drawer, fumbled until he found the deck, opened it, picked out the knave of diamonds, dropped the rest of the deck on the floor, held the card in both hands, torn it with the left, thrown away one half with the left, and died with the other half clutched in his right hand.
Ellery rooted about among the fallen pasteboards. The six of spades was there, an innocent member of the ensemble.
He rose, frowning, and picked up the vial again. Holding it close to his mouth by the lip, he breathed hard upon the glass, turning the vial around as he did so to cover the surface with his condensed breath. No marks of fingerprints appeared. The murderer, as before, had been careful.
He set the vial down on the table and went out of the room.
The corridor was empty as before, and all the doors shut.
Ellery strode down the length of the hall to the last door on his right, listened for a moment with his ear close to the panels, heard nothing, and went in. The room was dark. He heard now a man’s soft breathing across the room.
He groped for the bed, found it, felt about, and then shook the sleeper’s arm gently. The arm stiffened and he felt the man’s body jerk with alarm.
“It’s all right, Dr Holmes,” said Ellery softly. “It’s Queen.”
“Oh!” the young physician yawned with relief. “Gave me something of a turn.” He switched on the lamp on the table beside his bed. Then, when he caught sight of Ellery’s expression, his jaw dropped. “Wh-what’s the matter?” he gasped. “What’s happened? Has Xavier—?”
“Please come at once, Doctor. There’s work for you.”
“But... who—?” began the Englishman vaguely, his blue eyes liquid with alarm. Then he jumped out of bed, draped a dressing gown about his shoulders, slipped his feet into carpet slippers, and followed Ellery without another word.
Ellery reached the door of Xavier’s bedroom and stood back. He motioned Holmes to precede him. Holmes stopped short on the threshold, staring.
“Oh, good God,” he said.
“Not so very good to Xavier,” murmured Ellery. “Our cunning little playfellow with the homicidal tendencies has been at work again, you see. I wonder how dad — Let’s get inside, Doctor, before anyone hears us. I most particularly want your opinion in private.”
Dr. Holmes stumbled across the sill and Ellery followed, shutting the door quietly behind him.