Nino Importuna shrugged. “By the way, gentlemen, I apologize for the failure of my wife to make an appearance. Mrs. Importuna was very fond of Julio. His murder has so affected her I’ve had to forbid her to set foot in his apartment.”
“We’ll have to talk to her, of course,” Inspector Queen said. “But there’s no hurry, Mr. Importuna. At your wife’s convenience.”
“Thank you. I understand you want to question my secretary again? Mr. Ennis here?”
“My son wants to.”
“Peter, tell Mr. Queen whatever he wants to know.”
The heavyset man retreated to the nearest wall. There was a chair nearby, but he leaned against the wall. His womanish mouth was compressed. He kept his eyes on Ennis.
“I suppose,” Peter Ennis said to Ellery, “you want me to repeat my story-I mean how I came to find-”
“No,” Ellery said.
“No?”
“No, I’d like you to tell me what your impressions were, Mr. Ennis, when you got over the first shock of finding Mr. Importunato murdered.”
“I’m afraid,” the blond secretary stammered, “I’m afraid I don’t exactly understand what you… “
Ellery smiled at him. “I don’t blame you for being confused. I’m not quite sure myself what I’m groping for. Let’s try this: Was there anything about the room at that time that struck you, well, as different from usual? I understand you’re familiar with all three apartments. Sometimes on entering familiar surroundings we get an uneasy feeling, a sense of disturbance, because something is out of place, or missing, or even added.”
“Of course, the overturned things, this broken stuff-”
“Aside from those, Mr. Ennis.”
“Well… “
“One moment.”
To Inspector Queen’s eye Ellery was at the old point, like the bird dog he often resembled. He was almost quivering, he stood so still. He was concentrating his attention on something in the rug, about halfway between the end of the desk jutting into the room and the rear wall.
Suddenly he ran over to it, dropped to one knee, and studied it at close range. Then he scuttled over to a point well behind the desk, near the base of the rear wall, and intently examined something there. Whereupon he sprang to his feet, ran around to the front of the desk, got down on all fours, and peered underneath at a point about one-third the desk’s length from the side wall.
This time when he rose he beckoned the patrolman.
“Would you help me, please?”
He directed the officer to lift the desk at its front corner, the corner nearest the side wall. “Just an inch or so. A little higher. That’s it. Hold it a moment.” He peered closely at the rug directly below the corner leg. “Fine. Now over here.”
He had the patrolman repeat the procedure at each of the other corners of the desk. His examination at the rear corner beside the side wall took a little longer.
Finally he nodded to the patrolman and rose.
“Well?” There was no expectation of surprise in the Inspector’s voice.
Ellery glanced over at Ennis and Importuna. His father replied with the slightest nod. Ellery promptly returned to his original point of survey. “If you’ll examine the rug here,” he said, “you’ll see a circular depression in it, of the same diameter as the end of one of these desk legs, but on a spot where no desk leg stands. On the other hand, if you raise the nearest corner of the desk and examine the rug where a leg is standing, you find a curious thing: the depression there is not nearly as deep as the one where no leg stands.
“Over here”-and Ellery proceeded to his second point of examination, behind the desk and almost at the base of the rear wall-”exactly the same phenomenon: a very deep depression where no desk leg now stands but where obviously one did stand for a long time. And where a corresponding leg actually does stand, there’s a much shallower depression.
“Go around to the front of the desk, a short way from the side wall, and partway under the desk you’ll see another deep depression, whereas the rug under the nearest leg to it shows the shallower depression, too.
“And if you examine the rug under the rear leg nearest the side wall, you discover the most interesting phenomenon of alclass="underline" not a shallow depression, as where the other three legs now stand, but one even deeper than the other deep impressions! As if, in fact, that leg had been used as a pivot.
“The only possible conclusion,” Ellery said, “is that the desk was moved-shifted from where it usually stood to where it stands now. And, judging from the shallowness of the depressions under the legs in their present position, it was shifted very recently.”
“So?” the Inspector said in the same unmoved way.
“So let’s use the deep depressions as guides-Officer, would you mind grabbing hold of the end of the desk here?-and, pivoting the desk on that rear leg at the side wall, let’s set it down exactly on the deep depressions-no, a bit more, Officer; that’s it-and we’ve got the desk back to where it customarily stands… catercornered, as you see, with the swivel chair virtually boxed in in what’s now a triangular space behind the desk. Leaving hardly enough room at either end for anyone to get behind it. In fact, it must have been a tight squeeze for Mr. Importunato, with his bulk, when he wanted to sit down there. Isn’t that so, Mr. Ennis?”
Peter Ennis’s embarrassment was embarrassing. “I really don’t know what to say, Mr. Queen. Of course this is the way the desk’s always stood. I can’t imagine why I didn’t notice it had been shifted about from the catercornered position. Unless it was because of the shock… “
“That may well be it,” Ellery said pleasantly. “And you, Mr. Importuna? Apparently the shift has escaped you, too.”
“Mr. Importuna rarely comes down here-” Ennis began quickly.
“I can talk for myself, Peter,” Nino Importuna said, and the younger man flushed again. “I did notice the desk had been moved, Mr. Queen. The moment I walked in here. But I thought the police had moved it during their first investigation.” The eyes were illegible. “Does it make a difference? Do you see a meaning in it?”
“Every difference makes a difference,” Ellery said. “And yes, I see a meaning in it, Mr. Importuna. Like the button and the shoeprint-”
“Button? Shoeprint?” The multimillionaire stared. “Which button? Whose shoeprint? No one has told me-”
The Inspector enlightened him with a remarkable lack of reticence. The old man’s eyes were equally difficult to read.
“The button and the shoeprint were plants to incriminate your brother Marco, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery explained. “The shifting of Julio’s desk appears to have had a similar motivation. Marco is left-handed. From the position of the desk when Julio’s body was found-parallel to the rear wall-and judging from which side of Julio’s head received the blow, could the blow have been struck by a left-handed man? Yes, it could. So again we have an indication of Marco’s guilt. Or at least no incompatibility with the concept.
“But now we know that the placement of the desk was also a plant. Because what happens when the desk is returned to its usual position, to the catercornered position in which it actually stood when the blow was struck? In this position it would have been impossible for a left-handed blow to have been delivered to the side of Julio’s head on which we find the killing wound, as the merest consideration shows. There simply isn’t enough room to swing the poker and hit that side of the head. The killer must have realized this and, in order to make the supposition of a left-handed blow possible, he had to shift the desk.
“So now,” Ellery said, “not only is the button suspect, not only is the shoeprint suspect, but the left-handedness is suspect, too. In short, all the evidence against Marco is suspect. Which will come as a great relief to Marco, I’m sure, but leaves us without a lead.”