The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (21 page)

Monsieur Duval started, his pallor deeper than before in the sword-thrusts of light crossing his face. “There is not an electrical wire or fixture in the entire structure. Excepting for the assembly room, Mr. Queen.”

“How about the arrows pointing the way? They're visible.”

“A chemical. I am desolated by this—”

“Naturally; murder's rarely an occasion for hilarity. But this Stygian pit of yours complicates matters. What do you think, Captain?”

“Looks open and shut to
me
. I don't know how he got away, but this Clarke's the killer. We'll find him and sweat it out of him. He shot the doctor from the spot where you found the gun layin'”—Ellery frowned—“and then dragged the body to the door of the preceding room and set it up against the door to give him time for his getaway. Blood trail tells that. The shots were lost in the noise of this damn' place. He must have figured on that.”

“Hmm. That's all very well, except for the manner of Clarke's disappearance … if it
was
Clarke.” Ellery sucked his fingernail, revolving Ziegler's analysis in his mind. There was one thing wrong.… “Ah, the coroner's finished. Well, Doctor?”

The small quiet man rose from his knees in the light of the lantern. The six against the wall were incredibly still. “Simple enough. Four bullets within an area of inches. Two of them pierced the heart from behind. Good shooting, Mr. Queen.”

Ellery blinked. “Good shooting,” he repeated. “Yes, very good shooting indeed, Doctor. How long has he been dead?”

“About an hour. He died instantly, by the way.”

“That means,” muttered Ellery, “that he must have been shot only a few minutes before I found him. His body was still warm.” He looked intently at the empurpled dead face. “But you're wrong, Captain Ziegler, about the position of the killer when he fired the shots. He couldn't have stood so far away from Dr. Hardy. In fact, as I see it, he must have been very close to Hardy. There are powder marks on the dead man's body of course, Doctor?”

The county coroner looked puzzled. “Powder marks? Why, no. Of course not. Not a trace of burned powder. Captain Ziegler's right.”

Ellery said in a strangled voice: “No powder marks? Why, that's impossible! You're positive? There
must
be powder marks!”

The coroner and Captain Ziegler exchanged glances. “As something of an expert in these matters, Mr. Queen,” said the little man icily, “let me assure you that the victim was shot from a distance of at least twelve feet, probably a foot or two more.”

The most remarkable expression came over Ellery's face. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, blinked once more, and then took out a cigarette and lit it, puffing slowly. “Twelve feet. No powder marks,” he said in a hushed voice. “Well, well. Now, that's downright amazing. That's a lesson in the illogicalities that would interest Professor Dewey himself. I can't believe it. Simply can't.”

The coroner eyed him hostilely. “I'm a reasonably intelligent man, Mr. Queen, but you're talking nonsense as far as I'm concerned.”

“What's on your mind?” demanded Captain Ziegler.

“Don't
you
know, either?” Then Ellery said abstractedly: “Let's have a peep at the contents of his clothes, please.”

The detective jerked his head toward a pile of miscellaneous articles on the floor. Ellery went down on his haunches, indifferent to his staring audience. When he rose he was mumbling to himself almost with petulance. He had not found what he was seeking, what logic told him should be there. There were not even smoking materials of any kind. And there was no watch; he even examined the dead man's wrists for marks.

He strode about the room, nose lowered, searching the floor with an absorption that was oblivious to the puzzled looks directed at him. The flashlight in his hand was a darting, probing finger.

“But we've searched this room!” exploded Captain Ziegler. “What in the name of heaven are you looking for, Mr. Queen?”

“Something,” murmured Ellery grimly, “that must be here if there's any sanity in this world. Let's see what your men have scraped together from the floors of all the rooms, Captain.”

“But they didn't find anything!”

“I'm not talking of things that would strike a detective as possibly ‘important.' I'm referring to trivia: a scrap of paper, a sliver of wood—anything.”

A broad-shouldered man said respectfully: “I looked myself, Mr. Queen. There wasn't even dust.”

“
S'il vous plaît
,” said Monsieur Duval nervously. “Of that we have taken care with ingenuity. There is here both a ventilation system and another, a vacuum system, which sucks in the dust and keeps
la maison des t
é
n
è
bres
of a cleanliness immaculate.”

“Vacuum!” exclaimed Ellery. “A sucking process … It's possible! Is this vacuum machine in operation all the time, Duval?”

“But no, my friend. Only in the night, when The House of Darkness is empty and—how do you say?—inoperative. But that is why your
gendarmes
found nothing, not even the dust.”

“Foiled,” muttered Ellery whimsically, but his eyes were grave. “The machine doesn't operate in the daytime. So that's out. Captain, forgive my persistence. But
everything's
been searched? The assembly room downstairs, too? Someone here might have—”

Captain Ziegler's face was stormy. “I can't figure you out. How many times do I have to say it? The man on duty in the cellar says no one even popped in there and went back during the period of the murder. So what?”

“Well, then,” sighed Ellery, “I'll have to ask you to search each of these people, Captain.” There was a note of desperation in his voice.

Mr. Ellery Queen's frown was a thing of beauty when he put down the last personal possession of the six prisoners. He had picked them apart to the accompaniment of a chorus of protests, chiefly from the artist Adams and Miss Reis. But he had not found what should have been there. He rose from his squatting position on the floor and silently indicated that the articles might be returned to their owners.

“
Parbleu
!” cried Monsieur Duval suddenly. “I do not know what is it for which you seek, my friend; but it is possible that it has been secretly placed upon the person of one of us,
n'est-ce pas
? If it is of a nature damaging, that would be—”

Ellery looked up with a faint interest. “Good for you, Duval. I hadn't thought of that.”

“We shall see,” said Monsieur Duval excitedly, beginning to turn out his pockets, “if the brain of Dieudonné Duval is not capable …
Voici
! Will you please examine, Mr. Queen?”

Ellery looked over the collection of odds and ends briefly. “No dice. That was generous, Duval.” He began to poke about in his own pockets.

Djuna announced proudly: “I've got everything
I
ought to.”

“Well, Mr. Queen?” asked Ziegler impatiently.

Ellery waved an absent hand. “I'm through, Captain.… Wait!” He stood still, eyes lost in space. “Wait here. It's still possible—” Without explanation he plunged through the doorway marked with the green arrow, found himself in a narrow passageway as black as the rooms leading off from it, and flashed his light about. Then he ran back to the extreme end of the corridor and began a worm's progress, scrutinizing each inch of the corridor floor as if his life depended upon his thoroughness. Twice he turned corners, and at last he found himself at a dead end confronted by a door marked
EXIT: ASSEMBLY ROOM
. He pushed the door in and blinked at the lights of the cellar. A policeman touched his cap to him; the attendant skeleton looked scared.

“Not even a bit of wax, or a few crumbs of broken glass, or a burned matchstick,” he muttered. A thought struck him. “Here, officer, open this door in the grating for me, will you?”

The policeman unlocked a small door in the grating and Ellery stepped through to the larger division of the room. He made at once for the rack on the wall, in the compartments of which were the things the prisoners—and he himself—had checked before plunging into the main body of the House. He inspected these minutely. When he came to the artist's box he opened it, glanced at the paints and brushes and palette and three small daubs—a landscape and two seascapes—which were quite orthodox and uninspired, closed it.…

He paced up and down under the dusty light of the bulbs, frowning fiercely. Minutes passed. The House of Darkness was silent, as if in tribute to its unexpected dead. The policeman gaped.

Suddenly Ellery halted and the frown faded, to be replaced by a grim smile. “Yes, yes, that's it,” he muttered. “Why didn't I think of it before? Officer! Take all this truck back to the scene of the crime. I'll carry this small table back with me. We've all the paraphernalia, and in the darkness we should be able to conduct a very thrilling séance!”

When he knocked on the door of the octagonal room from the corridor, it was opened by Captain Ziegler himself.

“You back?” growled the detective. “We're just ready to scram. Stiff's crated—”

“Not for a few moments yet, I trust,” said Ellery smoothly, motioning the burdened policeman to precede him. “I've a little speech to make.”

“Speech!”

“A speech fraught with subtleties and cleverness, my dear Captain. Duval, this will delight your Gallic soul. Ladies and gentlemen, you will please remain in your places. That's right, officer; on the table. Now, gentlemen, if you will kindly focus the rays of your flashes upon me and the table, we can begin our demonstration.”

The room was very still. The body of Dr. Anselm Hardy lay in a wickerwork basket, brown-covered, invisible. Ellery presided like a swami in the center of the room, the nucleus of thin beams. Only the glitter of eyes was reflected back to him from the walls.

He rested one hand on the small table, cluttered with the belongings of the prisoners. “
Alors, mesdames et messieurs
, we begin. We begin with the extraordinary fact that the scene of this crime is significant for one thing above all: its darkness. Now, that's a little out of the usual run. It suggests certain disturbing nuances before you think it out. This is literally a house of darkness. A man has been murdered in one of its unholy chambers. In the house itself—excluding, of course, the victim, myself, and my panting young charge—we find six persons presumably devoting themselves to enjoyment of Monsieur Duval's satanic creation. No one during the period of the crime was observed to emerge from the only possible exit, if we are to take the word of the structure's own architect, Monsieur Duval. It is inevitable, then, that one of these six is the killer of Dr. Hardy.”

There was a mass rustle, a rising sigh, which died almost as soon as it was born.

“Now observe,” continued Ellery dreamily, “what pranks fate plays. In this tragedy of darkness, the cast includes at least three characters associated with darkness. I refer to Mr. Reis, who is blind; and to Mr. Juju Jones and his escort, who are Negroes. Isn't that significant? Doesn't it mean something to you?”

Juju Jones groaned: “Ah di'n't do it, Mistuh Queen.”

Ellery said: “Moreover, Mr. Reis has a possible motive; the victim treated his eyes, and in the course of this treatment Mr. Reis became blind. And Mrs. Clarke offered us a jealous husband. Two motives, then. So far, so good.… But all this tells us nothing vital about the crime itself.”

“Well,” demanded Ziegler harshly, “what does?”

“The darkness, Captain, the darkness,” replied Ellery in gentle accents. “I seem to have been the only one who was disturbed by that darkness.” A brisk note sprang into his voice. “This room is totally black. There is no electricity, no lamp, no lantern, no gas, no candle, no window, in its equipment. Its three doors open onto places as dark as itself. The green and red lights above the doors are nonluminous, radiate no light visible to the human eye beyond the arrows themselves.…
And yet, in this blackest of black rooms, someone was able at a distance of at least twelve feet to place four bullets within an area of inches in this invisible victim's back
!”

Someone gasped. Captain Ziegler muttered: “By damn …”

“How?” asked Ellery softly. “Those shots were accurate. They couldn't have been accidents—not four of them. I had assumed in the beginning that there must be powder burns on the dead man's coat, that the killer must have stood directly behind Dr. Hardy, touching him, even holding him steady, jamming the muzzle of the revolver into his back and firing. But the coroner said no! It seemed impossible. In a totally dark room? At twelve feet? The killer couldn't have hit Hardy by ear alone, listening to movements, footsteps; the shots were too accurately placed for that theory. Besides, the target must have been moving, however slowly. I couldn't understand it. The only possible answer was that
the murderer had light to see by
. And yet there was no light.”

Matthew Reis said musically: “Very clever, sir.”

“Elementary, rather, Mr. Reis. There was no light in the room itself.… Now, thanks to Monsieur Duval's vacuum-suction system, there is never any débris in this place. That meant that if we found something it might belong to one of the suspects. But the police had searched minutely and found literally nothing. I myself fine-combed this room looking for a flashlight, a burned match, a wax taper—anything that might have indicated the light by which the murderer shot Dr. Hardy. Since I had analyzed the facts, I knew what to look for, as would anyone who had analyzed them. When I found nothing in the nature of a light-giver, I was flabbergasted.

“I examined the contents of the pockets of our six suspects; still no clue to the source of the light. A single matchstick would have helped, although I realized that that would hardly have been the means employed; for this had been a trap laid in advance. The murderer had apparently enticed his victim to The House of Darkness. He had planned the murder to take place here. Undoubtedly he had visited it before, seen its complete lack of lighting facilities. He therefore would have planned in advance to provide means of illumination. He scarcely would have relied on matches; certainly he would have preferred a flashlight. But there was nothing, nothing, not even the improbable burned match. If it was not on his person, had he thrown it away? But where? It has not been found. Nowhere in the rooms or corridor.”