It was twenty minutes to ten when Ellery slammed his brake on before the watchman’s house opposite the Marine Terminal. Bill Angell was sitting on the running-board of his Pontiac, head between his hands, staring at the damp road. A knot of curious men thronged the doorway of the house. The two men gazed briefly into each other’s eyes. “It’s rotten,” choked Bill. “Rotten!”
“I know, Bill, I know. You’ve called the police?”
“They’ll be coming along soon. I–I’ve called Lucy, too.” A spark of desperation glittered in Bill’s eyes. “She’s not home.”
“Where is she?”
“I’d forgotten. She’s always downtown seeing a movie on Saturday nights when Joe... when he’s away. No answer. I’ve sent a wire telling her to come, that Joe’d had an... accident. The wire will get there before she will. We — there’s no sense in not facing facts. Is there?”
“Certainly not, Bill.”
Bill took his hands out of his pockets and looked at them. Then he raised his head to the black sky. It was the night of the new moon, and only the stars were visible, small and brilliant after their wash in the rain. “Let’s go,” he said grimly, and they climbed into the Pontiac. He turned his car around and retraced its trail south.
“Slowly,” said Ellery after a moment. His eyes were on the shimmering cones of the headlights. “Tell me all you know.”
Bill told him. At mention of the woman in the Cadillac roadster, Ellery glanced at his companion’s face. It was dark and dangerous.
“Veiled woman,” murmured Ellery. “That was fortunate, Bill; I mean poor Wilson’s living long enough to tell you. Was this woman wearing a veil?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t over her face when she passed me. But she might have slipped it up over her hat. I don’t know... When Joe — when he died I went out to the car, backed it out of the side-lane into the road, and drove to the Terminal. Then I called you. That’s all.”
The shack loomed ahead. Bill began wearily to turn the wheel. “No!” said Ellery sharply. “Stop here. Have you a flashlight?”
“In the door-pocket.”
Ellery got out of the Pontiac and nosed the flash about. In a few sweeps of the beam he fixed the scene indelibly in his mind; the silent shack, the muddy lane leading to the side, the semicircular drive before the front door, the weed-grown segments of ground bordering the drives. He turned the light on the mud of the side-lane, crouching a little. So far as he could see there were no man-made marks in the soggy earth except tire tracks, of which there seemed to be several sets. He scrutinized these closely for a moment and then returned to the Pontiac. “Bill! We’ll walk from here.”
“Yes.”
“Or better still, turn your car about to block the road. We don’t want anyone running cars up these drives. I don’t see any footprints in the mud here, and that may be important. The tire marks which already exist should naturally be preserved. The rain this afternoon was an act of God... Bill! Are you listening?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
Ellery said gently, “Then do as I say.” He ran forward to the point where the semicircular drive began. He stopped at the edge of Lamberton Road, careful not to set foot on the driveway. There were ruts in the mushy earth in which were clearly stamped the treads of tires. He eyed them for a moment and strode back.
“I was right. Bill, perhaps you had better remain out here and guard the drives. Warn the police when they come. Don’t let anyone walk on either driveway; they can reach the house by skirting them and walking on those weedy borders... Bill!”
“I’m all right, Ellery,” muttered Bill. He was fumbling with a cigaret and shivering. “I understand.”
As he stood in the middle of the main road leaning against his car, there was something in his eyes that made Ellery turn away. Then, on impulse, he turned back. Bill smiled; a ghastly smile. Ellery patted his shoulder rather helplessly and, raising his flashlight, hurried back to the dirt lane. He vaulted over to the weeds on the river side, played the flash, and made his way cautiously toward the side door of the shack.
Fifteen feet from the porch, he stopped; the weeds ended there, and between the last clump and the porch was bare earth. He gave the old Packard to the side only a passing glance; it was ground around and beyond it that held his attention. For some time he swept the flash about and with a vaguely sensed satisfaction convinced himself that no human foot had trodden anywhere within range. Then he set his own feet down in the muck.
The wooden porch was tiny, a square platform of rotting boards raised a few inches from the mud. For the moment he ignored the half open side door and the quiet leg which he could see protruding from beyond the round table inside; instead, he crossed to the farther edge of the porch and stabbed the ground with his torch. His brows went up. A narrow path led from the porch toward the river. In the mud of this walk there were two sets of male footprints, one going and one coming. Those which pointed toward the porch were for the most part superimposed upon those which pointed toward the river. Even on superficial examination it was evident that they were all impressions of the same feet.
Ellery sent the beam dancing down the path. It led straight to a small, staggering structure perched on the very edge of the Delaware River, some forty feet away. This second shack was even more woebegone in appearance than the house. “Garage or boathouse,” he thought, peering at it. Then he quickly snapped off his flash and stepped to the threshold of the shack; for a roaring sound was growing on Lamberton Road, coming from Trenton, and it sounded like a high-powered motor car.
His panoramic survey of the room was hasty; but Mr. Ellery Queen had a genius for rapid and accurate observation, and he missed nothing in that first glance... The carpet was a curious note in this seedy hoveclass="underline" it was well-worn but of superb quality — silky, deep-piled, without design, and a warm fawn in color. It had no borders and had obviously been cut to fit a room of larger size, for it was doubled under where the floor met the walls.
“Made for some woman’s modern bedroom, I’ll wager,” muttered Ellery. “What the devil is it doing here?” Then, noting that the rug was spotless, he scraped the soles of his muddy shoes on the sill of the side door — someone else had done the same thing before him, he saw — and gingerly walked into the room.
Joseph Wilson’s eyes were still open and twisted sidewise; but now they had the appearance of steamed glass. His breast had bled copiously; the shirt was saturated; but the nature of the wound was evident enough: there was a thin incision over the heart in the very vortex of the blood-welter, a wound which could only have been inflicted by a narrow-bladed cutting instrument. The approaching motor was thunderous now.
He swiftly examined the table, illuminated by the cheap lamp. A chipped crockery plate lay in the glow, its surface covered with the burnt stubs of many small yellow paper matches; otherwise it was perfectly clean. Near the plate lay a bronze-hafted paper-knife, its long wicked blade bathed to the hilt in dry blood. Something was impaled on the point — a tiny truncated cone of some indeterminate substance, for its surface was concealed under a layer of soot. Whatever it was, it had been thoroughly charred by fire. His eyes went back to the dead man.
There was something about Wilson’s contorted face, he realized with a sensation of annoyance, that had piqued him from the very first glance. Disregarding the distortion of death, it was a rather striking face, crisp-featured and interesting and in a subtle way handsome. Wilson had been in the prime of life — between thirty-five and forty, Ellery judged. The forehead was high and mild, the mouth almost feminine, the nose short, the chin faintly cleft. The curly chestnut hair at the temples was thin, but it was vigorous still. What it was that bothered him Ellery could not decide. Perhaps it was the overcast of delicate intelligence, a certain refinement, the mark of good blood...