The man’s eyes opened instantly, frightened and yet wary. He flung up his arm more quickly than Ellery would have believed possible in a man of his ponderous size, as if he half expected a blow, a shot, something menacing and lethal.
“It’s Queen,” murmured Ellery, and the big fat arm dropped. Smith’s froggy eyes blinked in the light. “Just an amiable visit, my friend. Been sleeping soundly?”
“Huh?” The man stared stupidly.
“Come, come, rub the sleep out of your eyes and rise from the — ah — groaning pallet of your dreams.” Ellery took in the details of the room; he had never been inside it before. No, there was only one other door, open, as in Xavier’s room; and that led, as he could see, to the usual lavatory.
“What’s the big idea?” croaked Smith, sitting up. “What’s happened?”
“Another comrade has gone to join his Maker,” replied Ellery gravely. “The slaughter, you see, has become epidemic.”
The huge jaw dropped. “S-somebody else been m-m-mur—”
“Friend Xavier.” Ellery put his hand on the doorknob. “Get into a dressing gown and go next door. You’ll find the Inspector and Dr. Holmes there. See you later.”
He ducked out quickly, leaving the fat man to gape after him with tardily dawning horror.
Ellery recrossed the hall, ignoring the door next to Smith’s. That led, he knew, to an unoccupied room. He tried the door of Mrs. Carreau’s chamber. It gave way and, after a moment of indecision, he shrugged and stepped inside.
Immediately he knew he had made a mistake. No rhythmic breathing here; no breathing at all. Odd! Was it possible the gentlewoman from Washington was absent from her bed at three in the morning? But the realization of error flashed over him even as his thoughts eddied about the puzzle of her absence. She was not absent. She was sitting there, sitting at the foot of a chaise longue, holding her breath, her eyes glowing in the faintest of moonlight coming through the windows off the balcony.
His foot kicked against a piece of furniture, and she screamed... a shrill scream that raised the hair at the base of his scalp and sent prickles of ice down his spine.
“Don’t!” he whispered, stepping forward. “Mrs. Carreau! It’s Ellery Queen. For God’s sake, stop that noise.”
She had leaped from the chaise longue. When he found the switch and turned it on, he saw her crouched with her back to the farthest wall, eyes lambent with terror, hands clutching the folds of her negligee to her.
Sanity returned to her eyes. She drew the negligee more closely about her slim figure. “What are you doing in my bedroom, Mr. Queen?” she demanded.
Ellery blushed. “Ah — a very proper question. Can’t say I blame you for screaming... By the way, what are you doing up at this hour of the morning?”
She compressed her lips. “I don’t see, Mr. Queen... It was so stifling, and I couldn’t sleep. But you still haven’t—”
Ellery, feeling like a fool, frowned and turned to the door. “There! I hear the others coming to your rescue. The point is, Mrs. Carreau, I came to tell you—”
“What’s happened? Who screamed?” snapped the Inspector from the doorway. Then he stalked in, glaring from Ellery to Mrs. Carreau. The twins popped their heads in from the communicating door. Dr. Holmes and Miss Forrest, Smith, Mrs. Xavier, Bones, the housekeeper — all in various stages of undress — crowded in the corridor doorway, craning over the Inspector’s shoulder.
Ellery dabbed his damp forehead and grinned weakly. “My fault entirely. I crept into Mrs. Carreau’s room — with the most innocent intentions in the world, I assure you! — and very properly she took fright and let out that appalling feminine blast. I daresay she thought I was attempting to play lusty Tarquinius to her Lucretia.”
The hostile glances directed at him made Ellery blush again, this time in anger.
“Mr. Queen,” said Mrs. Xavier frigidly, “I must say this is the strangest conduct from a supposed gentleman!”
“Now, look here, all of you!” cried Ellery, exasperated. “You simply don’t understand. Good lord! I—”
Miss Forrest said quickly: “Of course. Let’s not be idiotic, Marie... You’re both dressed, both you and the Inspector, Mr. Queen. What — what’s the matter?”
“Time,” growled the Inspector. “As long as you’re all awake we might’s well tell you. And let’s not, as Miss Forrest says, cover up all the important facts with suspicions of my son’s morals. He’s foolish sometimes, but not that foolish. Mr. Queen was coming to tell you, Mrs. Carreau — when you screamed — that there’s been another attack.”
“Attack!”
“That’s the ticket”
“A... a murder?”
“Well, he’s mighty dead.”
Their heads moved slowly to changing inquisitorial positions, searching one another’s faces, tallying...
“Mark,” said Mrs. Xavier thickly.
“Yes, Mark.” The Inspector stared grimly about. “He was poisoned and put out of the way before he could tell what he started out to tell earlier this evening. I won’t mention the little matter of my own part in the affair, although you may be interested to learn that the same scoundrel gave me a dose of chloroform. Yes, Xavier’s gone.”
“Mark’s dead,” repeated Mrs. Xavier in the same thick dull tones, and suddenly burying her face in her hands she began to sob.
Mrs. Carreau, pale and stiff, stalked to the communicating door and put her arms about the shoulders of her sons.
There was no sleep for any of them that night. They all seemed reluctant to return to their bedrooms; and they remained huddled together with the gregarious instinct of frightened animals, starting at every night sound.
With rather savage satisfaction Ellery insisted upon escorting them, one by one, into the dead man’s bedroom for a view of the body. He watched them very closely. But if anyone was acting he could not detect the deception. They were merely a group of badly scared people. Mrs. Wheary fainted during her part of the performance and had to be revived with cold water and smelling salts. The twins, bewildered and very small boys now, were excused from participation in the test.
By the time it was over and the dead lawyer had been removed to share the refrigerator in the laboratory with his brother, an angry dawn was coming up.
The Queens stood in the death room and looked gloomily at the tumbled empty bed.
“Well, son,” said the Inspector with a sigh, “I guess we may as well give up. It’s too much for me.”
“It’s because we’re blind!’ cried Ellery, making a fist. “The evidence is all here. Xavier’s clue... Oh, hell, it just needs thinking over. And my head is spinning.”
“One thing,” said the old gentleman grumpily, “I s’pose we ought to be thankful for. He’s the last. He wasn’t mixed up in the direct motive behind his brother’s kill, I’m sure. He was done in to keep him from spilling who the murderer is. Now how the deuce did he know?”
Ellery started out of a brown study. “Yes, I suppose that’s important. How he knew... By the way, did you ever stop to speculate why Xavier framed his sister-in-law in the first place?”
“So much has happened—”