“Well, well,” Doyle said. He stood in the bathroom doorway, fully dressed. The sound of the water, still running in the tub, came from behind him. And he, too, was holding a gun, quite steadily, pointed at Hartman. “I had a feeling you’d snoop if you had the chance.”
Hartman drew a deep breath. He spoke in a loud, very clear voice. “So you’re the Bradford murderer,” he said.
Doyle’s mouth smiled, but the eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles were cold. “It won’t work, Hartman,” he said.
“I knew it,” Hartman said, “when I saw you unhook that fish. I knew it when you pulled up that anchor. I knew it when you kept probing and probing to find out who I was. I knew it the way you reacted to my telling you about the brooch.”
“It won’t work, Hartman,” Doyle said.
“How do you explain these pictures of Nancy Bradford in your bureau drawer?”
“They came from Nancy Bradford’s apartment.” Then Doyle asked, still smiling, “The murderer had to destroy even the symbols of Nancy Bradford. You must have hated her like hell, Hartman!”
“It was you who hated her,” Hartman said. “Even after you’d murdered her you had to go on destroying everything that reminded you of her.” His voice was loud, like an attorney addressing a courtroom.
“You ought to know,” Doyle said. “You ought to know how the murderer felt. You even told me, Hartman. Some men would think of a turn down as treachery, you said.”
“It was you, Doyle. You’ve been staying around here because you’d lost the brooch. You didn’t know whether it had been found or not. No one knew that but the police.”
“That’s right, Hartman. No one knew but the police. You were fishing when you brought it up. You wanted to know if it had been found. You were trying to find out from me because you’d decided that maybe I was a cop looking for you. Well, you were right. I was looking for you.”
Hartman laughed. “I’ll bet you were,” he said.
“The pretense that you weren’t strong enough to lift the anchor. Your pretended squeamishness when I yanked that hook out of the bass’s mouth. I did that on purpose — just to see how you’d behave. You’re a good actor, Hartman.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Hartman said. “You’d better drop that gun.”
“You’ve been in the radio and theater business, Hartman. You knew how easy it would be to fool the doorman at Nancy Bradford’s apartment. You made yourself noticeable going in and unnoticeable coming out.”
“Drop that gun,” Hartman said.
Doyle laughed. “Stop kidding,” he said. “It won’t work, Hartman.” He took a step forward.
Suddenly thunder shook the room — the thunder of two guns fired almost simultaneously. The two men stood there, swaying, pulling the triggers of the two guns. Slowly Hartman slumped to his knees, a bewildered, frightened look on his face. The smoking gun fell out of his hand and he pitched forward on his face.
Doyle leaned against the door jamb. There were bright red stains spreading on the front of his white shirt. He coughed — a wet, choking cough.
There were excited voices in the hall outside and the sound of running feet. The door burst open and the clerk and the hotel porter, in a blue uniform, burst into the room. They stopped just inside the door staring at the man on the floor — and at Doyle.
Doyle coughed. “He was the Bradford murderer,” he said. He coughed again. “I’d been looking for him — special assignment.”
The porter crossed the room and knelt beside Hartman. Presently he stood up. His face was very pale. “Dead,” he said. He looked at Doyle. “You look as though you were pretty badly hurt,” he said. “You better lie down on the bed while we get you a doctor.” He walked over to Doyle.
“I... I feel a little sick at my stomach,” Doyle said, smiling weakly.
The porter reached him. Then suddenly the porter’s left hand knocked the gun from Doyle’s flabby fingers and his right smashed squarely against Doyle’s mouth in a pile-driving punch. Doyle staggered back and fell on the bathroom floor.
“Special assignment!” the porter shouted. “Special assignment for murder — you crazy killer!” He turned to the hotel clerk. From his pocket he took a small leather folder and opened it, disclosing a police badge. “There’s your Bradford murderer,” he said, pointing at Doyle. “Hartman was a homicide man. We worked as a team.” His voice was bitter. “Why wasn’t I around when they came in? He might have passed the tip to me. I might have saved him.” He looked down at Hartman’s body. “Poor guy! He was always scared as hell on a job like this — but he never flinched — never took a backward step.”
The clerk’s eyes moved from the body of Hartman to the still figure of Doyle.
“Why... why did he k-kill Nancy Bradford?” It was almost a whisper.
“He was her first husband,” the homicide man said. “A paranoid killer. She’s been hiding from him — changed her name — remarried. Then he showed up — seemed all right — wanted to see his child. She thought he was cured — everything all right. Then—”
“Maybe... maybe I b-better get a d-doctor for him,” the clerk said.
“Let the... let him die,” the homicide man said, grimly. “It’ll save the state a lot of dough.”
About the Story: The most interesting anecdote we can relate about Hugh Pentecost’s prize-winning story concerns its title. When the story first reached your Editor, it had a note attached in which the author admitted that he himself was not too happy with his original title — “Darling, It’s Me!” We shared Mr. Pentecost’s doubt: the original title not only seemed too emotional but it did not communicate to the reader the underlying motif of the story. Perfect titles are often extremely elusive; they’re there — hidden in the story — but sometimes they are as hard to find as the proverbial needle in a bottle of hay. It happens to the best of stories and to the best of writers: for example, it has been told that W. Somerset Maugham did not hit upon his magnificent title, OF HUMAN BONDAGE, until long after he had finished correcting galley-proofs of the book.
Anyway, Mr. Pentecost and your Editor went to work looking for the “needle.” Every week or so we would call each other on the phone and discuss fresh possibilities. We both agreed that the title should project instantly the basic idea of the story. As you now know, the story revolves around two men, and as the tale progresses, the reader becomes increasingly aware that one man is the murderer and the other man is the detective. The question is: Which is which? At various points in the story you decide you know; then, with consummate cleverness, Mr. Pentecost twists the very fact which made up your mind one way into making you think exactly the opposite.
We weighed such titles as “Seesaw” and “Shuttlecock.” Somehow, while both words described the essential plot device, they merely approximated it, and neither of us would compromise for a so-so title. We agreed that “Point Counter Point” was almost perfect, but we were reluctant to use a title already made famous by Aldous Huxley. The same reason, in principle, ruled out another faultless title — “A Case of Identity,” Conan Doyle’s inspiration for one of the best-known Sherlock Holmes stories.
So we let our perplexity simmer.
Then one day your Editor got a strange feeling: hadn’t this precise situation happened once before? Not just a titular road-block — but hadn’t this identical problem given us insomnia long ago? Then we remembered. Yes, we had been faced with exactly the same quandary back in 1937. At that time we had been seeking a title for our first anthology. You will recall that the first Ellery Queen anthology was based on the idea of changing the names of famous sleuths and challenging the reader to identify the great fictional detectives from such internal evidence as their appearance and habits, their speech peculiarities, their manhunting methods, and other personal idiosyncrasies. Wasn’t this another classic instance of homicide history repeating itself?