Sheila’s eyes grew wider; she began to tremble.
“So now we have a much more reasonable answer to how Thurlow knew about the blank. Charley, his master, told him. Paxton waited for me or someone else to suggest the ruse, and when none of us did, he jumped in himself with the suggestion. He had to, for he’d already told Thurlow that was what was going to happen — he’d see to it.
“All along this fine, smart young lawyer who had missed a brilliant career in criminal law set traps — in particular for me. If I fell into them — excellent. But if I hadn’t seen the significance of the two pairs of Colt and Smith & Wessons, if I hadn’t worked out Thurlow’s motive, if I hadn’t deduced just how Thurlow switched the guns before our eyes on the lawn that morning — if I hadn’t seen through all these things, you may be sure Mr. Charles Hunter Paxton would have managed to suggest the ‘truth’ to me.
“Think. How closely Paxton clung to me! How often he was there to put in a word, a suggestion, to lead me along the path of speculation he had planned for me to take! I, too, have been a pawn of Counsellor Paxton’s from the beginning, thinking exactly what he wanted me to think, eking out enough of the truth, point by point, to pin it on Thurlow and so accomplish the final objective of the Paxton campaign — the elimination of Thurlow.”
“You can’t be serious,” said Charley. “You can’t really believe—”
“And that isn’t all. When he needed proof against Thurlow — when you specifically asked for it, Dad — who told us about the tailor and the double pocket in Thurlow’s tweed jacket?”
“Mr. Paxton.”
“And when Thurlow came tearing into the study from the terrace, whom did he attack — me? The man who had worked out the solution? Oh, no. He jumped for Charley’s throat, mouthing frenzied threats to kill. Isn’t it obvious that Thurlow went mad of rage because he had just heard Charley double-cross him? The man who had planned the crimes and no doubt promised to protect Thurlow — now giving the vital evidence that would convict him! Luckily for Counsellor Paxton, Thurlow’s last link to sanity snapped at that point, or we should have heard him pour out the whole story of Paxton’s complicity. But even this was a small risk for Paxton to take, although from the ideal standpoint it was the weakest part of his plot... that Thurlow would blab. But Paxton must have thought: ‘Who’d believe the ravings of a man already well established as a lunatic in face of the incontrovertible evidence against him?’ ”
“Poor Thurlow,” whispered Sheila. And for the first time since the truth had come from Ellery’s lips she turned and regarded the man she had been about to marry. She regarded him with such loathing that Steve Brent quickly put his hand on her arm.
“Yes, poor Thurlow,” said Ellery grimly. “We broke him before his time — although no matter what had happened, Thurlow would have come to the same end — a barred cell and white-coated attendants... It’s Sheila I was most concerned about. Seeing the truth, I had to stop this wedding.”
And now Sheila turned to look upon Ellery, and he flushed slightly under her gaze.
“Of course, that’s it,” said Charley Paxton, clearing his throat. His hand came up in a spontaneous little gesture. “You see what’s happened, Inspector, don’t you? This son of yours — he’s in love with Sheila himself — he practically admitted as much to me not long ago—”
“Shut up,” said the Inspector.
“He’s trying to frame me so he can have her himself—”
“I said shut up, Paxton.”
“Sheila, you certainly don’t believe these malicious lies?”
Sheila turned her back on him.
“Anything you say—” began the Inspector.
“Oh, don’t lecture me!” snarled Charley Paxton. “I know the law.” And now he actually smiled. “Stringing a lot of pretty words together is one thing, Mr. Queen. Proving them in court’s another.”
“The old story,” growled the Inspector.
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Queen, returning smile for smile. “Quite the new story. There’s your proof, Dad — the forged stock memorandum and the Old Woman’s confession.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I told you he’s talking through his hat,” snapped Paxton. He shrugged and turned to the clear window of the chapel. “Dr. Crittenden will be getting impatient, waiting in the vestry,” he remarked, without turning. “Sheila, you can’t give me up on this man’s unsupported word. He’s bluffing, because as I said—”
“Bluffing, Paxton?” cried Ellery. “Then let me disabuse that clever mind of yours. I’ll clear up a few untouched points first.
“If no one had interfered with this chap’s original plans, Dad, Paxton would have got away with the whole scheme. But someone did interfere, the last man in the world Paxton had dreamed would interfere — his own creature, Thurlow.”
Charley Paxton’s back twitched, and was still.
“Thurlow did things — and then one other did things — which Mr. Paxton in his omniscience hadn’t anticipated and therefore couldn’t prepare counter-measures against. And it was this interference by others that forced our clever gentleman to make his only serious mistake.”
“Keep talking,” said Charley’s voice. But it was a choked voice. “You always were good in the gab department.”
“The first interference wasn’t serious,” Ellery went on, paying no attention to the interruption. “Thurlow, flushed with his success in getting away with the murder of his brother Robert, began to think of himself — dangerous, Mr. Paxton, dangerous, but then your egocentric type of mind is so blind that it overlooks the obvious in its labor toward the subtle.
“Thurlow began to think. And instead of following his master’s instructions in the second murder, he was so tickled with himself that he decided to add a touch or two of his own.
“In reconstructing what happened, we can ascribe these things to Thurlow because they are the kind of fantastic nonsense an addled brain like Thurlow’s would conceive and are precisely not the things a cold and practical brain like Paxton’s would conceive.”
“What are you referring to?” The Inspector’s pistol was pointed at Paxton’s back.
“Thurlow shot Mac Potts in his bed in the middle of the night,” replied Ellery with a curl and a twist to his tone that snapped Paxton’s head up as if he had been touched with a live wire. “Shot him, whipped him with his riding crop, and left a bowl of chicken broth near by. Why? Deliberately to make the murder look like a Mother Goose crime. How sad!” said Mr. Queen mockingly. “How sad for master-minding Mr. Paxton. Upset the orderly creation, you see...”
“I d-don’t understand that,” stuttered Steve Brent. His arm was about Sheila’s shoulders; she was clinging to him.
“Well, sir,” retorted Ellery in a cheerful way, “all your late wife’s first brood have been fed Mother Goose nonsense ever since she was first dubbed the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. Mother Goose squatted on your rooftree, as it were, Mr. Brent, and her shadow was heavy and inescapable. Thurlow must have said to himself, in the ecstasy following his first successful homicide: ‘I’m safe, but a little more safety can’t do any harm. No one even suspects me for the murder of Robert in the duel. If the police and this fellow Queen see these Mother Goose clues — the whipping, the broth — they’ll think of my brother Horatio, the Boy Who Never Grew Up. They’ll certainly never think of me!”
“It was precisely the murky sort of smoke screen a psychopathic personality like Thurlow’s would send up. But it had a far greater significance for Paxton than for us. For it warped Charley’s plot, which had been planned on a straight, if long, line. Charley Paxton didn’t want suspicion directed toward Horatio. Charley Paxton wanted suspicion directed toward, and to land plumb and squarely upon, chubby little Thurlow. How annoyed you must have been, Charley! But I’ll hand it to you: the foolishness being done, you took the wisest course — did nothing, hoping the authorities wouldn’t recognize, or would be thrown off the scent by, the Mother Goose rigmarole. When I spotted it, you could only hope I’d dismiss it and get back on the Thurlow spoor.”