“So this is the dump where he got it, eh?” muttered young Jones, staring at the floor beyond the table with his blood-streaked eyes.
“Shut up, Burke,” said Finch irritably. Senator Frueh’s hand paused in its restless stroking of his beard, then resumed with a queer energy. Andrea sat in the armchair Lucy Wilson had occupied on the night of the murder. She was very still and seemed asleep. Bill’s head swiveled from side to side carelessly; there was a febrile flush on his tan cheeks.
The front door opened, and they started again, but it was only Ellery, lugging a large suitcase. He shut the door and turned. “Ella Amity,” he murmured. “Well, well, Ella. Where did you come from?” He seemed in a strange and secret way disturbed.
“A birdie whispered to me today,” the red-headed woman said lightly. “Told me something was going to pop around here. So here I am. I think you’re a heel for not letting me know.”
“How did you get here?”
“Walked. Good for the figure. Don’t worry, darling, I’ve nothing up my sleeve, and my record’s clean. I’ve been out back mooning at the river. Or is it sunning? Well, no matter. What’s going on here?”
“Keep quiet and perhaps you’ll find out.” Ellery went abruptly to the table, slung the suitcase on it. “Bill. I want you to run into town for me on an errand.”
Bill growled: “What—”
But Ellery pounced on him and spoke for some time in an urgent sotto voce. Bill nodded. Then, with a glance about that was oddly savage, Bill shoved the door open and disappeared. Ellery, who seemed especially solicitous about the door, closed it again. Without a word he went back to the table, opened the suitcase, began pulling things out of it. They were realistic stage properties, the actual articles removed by Chief De Jong from the scene of the crime after the initial investigation. As he worked in silence, they heard the sound of a motor outside. The curtains had been drawn at the windows, so they could not see what was going on, but they knew it was Bill Angell leaving for Trenton on his mysterious errand, and they glanced uneasily at one another. Bill seemed to be having difficulty in getting started. His car made a good deal of noise as he raced the engine. The racket was so loud that when Ellery began to speak they had to lean forward to hear. By this time they were grateful for the light of the lamp; darkness had fallen unexpectedly outside.
“There,” said Ellery, depositing the last article in its proper place and returning to the table to stand tall and motionless in the lamp’s radiance. “The stage is set. You will observe that Gimball’s clothes are now back on the wall-rack; that the wrapped package containing his birthday gift of a desk-set to Bill Angell is again on the mantel above the fireplace; that the clean, empty plate is once more on the table near the lamp. The only thing that’s missing is the body of the victim. But that, I feel sure, will be supplied by your own imaginations.”
He flicked one hand over his shoulder. Their eyes went obediently to the spot on the floor indicated, and although it was still a bare patch of fawn rug, it was dreadfully easy to visualize the sprawled body that was no longer lying there.
“Now let me retrace for you,” continued Ellery in a brisk tone, his eyes glittering in the lamplight, “the antecedent events of that day, June the first. A recapitulation will help you understand what happened subsequently. I’ve compiled a timetable which may not be completely accurate, but it gives the relative times involved closely enough to serve our purpose.”
Senator Frueh tried to interrupt, but he had to pause and lick his dry lips first. “Whatever that purpose is. I think this is the most preposterous—”
“The gentleman from Eighty-seventh Street,” said Ellery, “has the floor, Senator. I will be grateful for your absolute silence, as well as the silence of everyone else here. You will have unfettered opportunity later to talk to your hearts’ content.”
“Keep quiet, Simon,” said Jasper Borden out of the side of his mouth.
“Thank you, Mr. Borden.” Ellery waved a finger. “Observe. This is the afternoon of Saturday, June first. It is raining outside — raining hard. The rain is lashing at the windows. There is no one here. It is still light, the lamp is unlit, the package is not on the mantelpiece. The doors are closed.”
Someone drew a tremulous breath. Ellery went on in a swift, merciless voice. “It is five o’clock. Joseph Kent Gimball is in New York, at his office. He has come in from Philadelphia in the old Packard, probably not stopping here on his way in, otherwise he would have left the Packard here and taken his Lincoln to New York. The fact that the Packard was found parked in the side driveway indicates that that was the last car he used.
“Now. He has already sent two telegrams, one to Bill Angell, one to Andrea, both worded identically and asking the addressees to meet him in this place at nine tonight and giving minute instructions about how to find it. In the afternoon he has supplemented his telegram to Bill by telephoning Bill at his Philadelphia office, again urging him to be present at the rendezvous tonight.
“What does he do at five? He leaves his office, goes down to where he has parked the Packard near his New York office, and drives off to the Holland Tunnel bound for Trenton. In the car he has the dummy sample-case of his Wilson personality and the wrapped birthday gift he has purchased in Wanamaker’s Philadelphia yesterday intended for his brother-in-law. He reaches this shack at seven o’clock, runs up the side drive. It is still raining. A little later the rain stops. Meanwhile, the rain has washed away all traces of former footprints and tire marks, leaving, as it were, virgin ground.”
Senator Frueh muttered something that sounded like “tiresome old wives’ tale,” but promptly stopped as the old millionaire glared at him.
“Pipe down, Senator,” snapped Ella Amity. “This isn’t Congress, you know. Go on, Ellery. You fascinate me.”
“Gimball is in this room,” said Ellery coolly, as if there had been no interruption. “He wanders about, puts the gift on the mantel, pauses at the window to scan the sky. He sees the sky has cleared. It is still early; he is restless, worried; he needs something to take his mind off the ordeal of confession to come. So he goes out by the side door and trudges down the path to the boathouse, leaving his footprints in the hardening mud. He hauls out his sailboat and scuds off down the Delaware to quiet his nerves. It is seven-fifteen.”
They were sitting forward gripping the arms of their chairs, those who sat, and those who stood clutched the backs of the chairs. “To this point I have described what probably occured,” Ellery went on, “because the description concerned itself with a man dead and buried. But now we come to the living. Andrea, I shall need your assistance. It is eight o’clock. You have just driven up to the shack and parked the Cadillac roadster you borrowed from Mr. Jones, parked it in the main driveway facing toward Camden. Will you re-enact what you did?”
Andrea rose without a word and went to the door. She was pale now with a cold pallor that made her fresh young face ghastly. “Shall I... go outside?”
“No, no. You’ve just opened the door, let us say. Pretend that it’s open.”
“The lamp,” she whispered, “was off.”
Ellery moved. The room went black. From the darkness his voice came, disembodied, sending a chill up their spines. “It was not so dark as this. There was still some light outdoors. Go on, Andrea!”
They heard her moving slowly forward toward the table. “I–I looked in. The room was empty. Of course, I could see, although it was getting dark here. I went to the table and switched on the lamp — this way.”
The light clicked on; they saw her standing by the table, face averted, hand on the chain under the cheap shade. Then her hand fell. She stepped back, looked around at the fireplace, the clothes-rack, the dingy crumbling walls. She glanced at her wrist. Then she turned and went to the door again. “That’s all I did — then,” she said, again in a whisper.