“The way you killed your father, Dr. Haggard?” asked Nikki.
Tracy Haggard smiled. “Shows how insidious Mark’s little propaganda scheme is.” He shrugged and disappeared in the black hall.
The Inspector and Nikki were staring into the darkness when Ellery said abruptly, “You and Nikki go to bed.”
“What are you going to do?” asked his father.
“Stay down here,” said Ellery, rolling the historic dice between his palms, “until I throw a natural.”
Malvina Haggard screamed on and off for the remainder of the night, and the angry voices of the brothers raised in bitter argument penetrated to the Gun Room, but from that room there was no sound but the sound of rattling bones, as if the bimillennial ghost of the gambling emperor himself had returned to dice with Ellery. And finally, at the first smudge of the cold and streaming dawn, the sound stopped, and Ellery came upstairs and methodically roused the household, inviting them all—even the demented woman—to join him on the scene of the old crime. Something in his manner quieted Malvina, and she drifted downstairs with the others docilely.
They took places about the desk in the dusty Gun Room, Mark viciously alive, Malvina somnolent, the doctor suspended watchfully, and Nikki and Inspector Queen trying to contain their excitement.
“The case,” announced Ellery, “is solved.”
Mark laughed.
“Damn you, Mark!” That was his brother.
Malvina began to croon a wailing tune, smiling.
“I’ve been throwing these ruby dice for hours,” continued Ellery, “with the most surprising result.” He shook the dice briskly in his cupped right hand and rolled them out on the desk.
“Nine,” said Tracy Haggard. “What’s surprising about that?”
“Not merely nine, Dr. Haggard. A 3 and a 6.”
“Well, that’s nine!”
“Temper, Tracy,” laughed Mark. Ellery rolled again.
“Eleven. Remarkable!”
“Not merely eleven, Dr. Haggard—a 5 and a 6.” And Ellery rolled a third time. “And there’s seven—a 1 and a 6. Never fails.”
“What never fails?” asked Nikki.
“The 6, my pet. I’ve made several hundred rolls while you were tossing around upstairs, and while one of these dice behaves with self-respecting variability, the other comes up 6 every time.”
“Crooked! Loaded!” said Inspector Queen. “Who’d you say these dice used to belong to?”
“According to Mark, to Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula, Emperor of Rome from 37 to 41 A.D. And it may well be true, because Caligula was one of history’s most distinguished dicing cheats.”
“And what does all this mean to you, Ellery?” asked Mark Haggard softly.
“Your father left these dice as a clue to the one of you who shot him. There are two dice, there were two .38 revolvers. Theory: The dice were meant by your father to refer to those two revolvers. But we now find that one of these dice is ‘loaded’ — your word, Dad—while the other is not. Conclusion: Jim Haggard meant to convey the message that the murderer loaded one of these revolvers.”
“Wonderful,” said Mark Haggard.
“Ridiculous,” said Tracy Haggard. “Of course he loaded one of them! But which one?”
Malvina Haggard kept smiling and crooning her little tune, keeping time with her sharp white fingers.
“The loaded die,” explained Ellery, “always turns up at the number 6, and one of the revolvers comes from a gunrack numbered 6. It seems obvious that the revolver associated with the number 6 was the one the murderer ‘loaded’... in other words, the one he chose to fire the fatal bullet into Jim Haggard.”
“And a fat lot of good that does you,” sneered Tracy Haggard. “How can knowing which of the two .38s killed Dad possibly tell you which one of us murdered him?”
“In which direction in relation to the door,” inquired Ellery, “is rack number 6 located?”
“The rack to the left of the doorway,” the Inspector said slowly. “To the left...”
“Killer opens door, to his right is a rack with a .38, to his left a rack with a .38. We now know he chose the .38 from the lefthand rack. What kind of person, when he has a choice of either side, automatically chooses an object to his left side? Why, a lefthanded person, of course. And that pins the murder on...” Ellery stopped.
“Just marvelous,” gloated the Inspector. “How this boy of mine comes through! Eh, Nikki?”
“Every time!” said Nikki worshipfully.
“And that pins the job on which one, son?” The old gentleman rubbed his palms together.
“It was supposed to pin the crime on Malvina,” said Ellery, “who held the candle prominently aloft in her left hand when she greeted us—as commented upon by Miss Nikki Porter, aloud—whereas the brothers conscientiously demonstrated by various actions during the night that they’re both righthanded. Unfortunately, gentlemen and ladies, I’m going to prove a disappointment to you. Aside from a number of tremendous, not to say laughable, improbabilities in the plot, there was one enormous flaw.”
“Plot? Flaw?” spluttered Inspector Queen.
The brothers glared. Even Malvina’s clouded intelligence seemed shocked to clarity by Ellery’s tone.
“I was told,” murmured Ellery, “that the ruby dice were a gift to Jim Haggard on the occasion of Mr. and Mrs. Haggard’s ruby wedding anniversary—”
“Sure they were, Ellery,” said the Inspector. “You saw the inscription in the case yourself!”
“And you told me, Dad, that you’d been best man at your old friend Jim Haggard’s wedding forty years ago. You even mentioned the date — 1911.”
“Yes, but I don’t see,” began his father doubtfully.
“You don’t? How long ago was Jim Haggard murdered?”
“Ten years ago, Ellery,” said Nikki. “That’s what they said.”
“Married forty years ago, died ten years ago—so Jim Haggard could have been married no longer than thirty years at the time of his death. But ruby weddings commemorate which anniversary? Don’t strain yourselves—ruby wedding is the fortieth. I must therefore inquire,” said Ellery politely, “how Mr. and Mrs. Haggard could have been presented with gifts commemorating forty years of marriage if when Mr. Haggard died he’d only been married thirty years. No answer being forthcoming, I must conclude the the error in mathematics lies in the figures surrounding Mr. Haggard’s ‘death’; and this is confirmed by the dice, which these two innocent eyes saw in their gold case, dear children, proving that your parents celebrated an anniversary this very year. So I’m delighted to announce—as if you didn’t know it—that your parents are very much alive, my friends, and that the whole thing has been a hoax! You lied, Mark. You lied, Tracy. And Malvina, your performance as Ophelia completely vindicates Mark’s judgment that you had a promising career on the stage.
“And you, my worthy father.” Inspector Queen started. “You ought to apply for an Equity card yourself! Didn’t you tell me emotionally that you attended Jim Haggard’s funeral ten years ago? So you’re one of this gang, too... and so are you, Nikki, with your screams and your squeals and the dramatic way in which you pointed out for my benefit the crucial fact that Malvina is lefthanded.”
There was a vast silence in Jim Haggard’s Gun Room.
“All cooked up,” said Ellery cheerfully. “The wild night ride, the prevailing lunacy, the lights that atmospherically failed, the carefully deposited dust in the Gun Room, and all the rest of it—cooked up by my own father, in collusion with his precious pals, the Haggard family! Object: Apparently to lead me to deduce, from the herrings strewn across the trail, that Malvina killed her father. Then Jim Haggard could pop out of whatever closet he’s skulking in with dear Cora and show me up for the gullible fathead I presumably am. My own father! Not to mention my faithful amanuensis. Reason totters and whimpers: Why? I restored her to her throne when I remembered the date.”