She murmured: “No one.”
Ellery’s head shot round, his eyes fastening on Grant. But Grant only nodded, heavily.
“You mean except for yourself he had no family?”
“Not a single living relative, Mr. Queen.”
Ellery frowned. “Well, perhaps you don’t know, Miss Horne. But you must know, Mr. Grant. Is that true?”
“Right as rain. Except fer Kit, Buck was alone in the world. Left an orphan at six — brought up by an uncle who owned the ranch next to my father’s in Wyoming. My ole man an’ Buck’s uncle used the same range fer their stock.” Grant’s voice was agony. “I... I never thought ole Buck’s cashin’ in his checks would get me this way. But hell... His uncle kicked in, an’ that was the end. Buck was the last of the Homes — one o’ the oldest families in the Northwest.”
During this exposition Mr. Ellery Queen’s features might have been observed changing expression with the lightning facility of a chameleon changing color; why Grant’s explanation should have disturbed him was obscure. But disturbed he was, although after a moment he made an effort and erased all emotion from his face. The Inspector studied him with a faint puzzlement; the old man kept quite still now, content to see what esoteric idea might be buzzing about in his son’s brain, if indeed there was anything to be seen. But Ellery’s shoulders twitched, and a small grin lit on his lips.
“How many riders did you announce as following Horne on that last sad processional of his, Mr. Grant?” he murmured.
The showman started out of a reverie. “Hey? Riders? Forty.”
“But there were forty-one, you know.”
“Forty. I ought to know. I pay ’em.”
At this Inspector Queen’s eyes narrowed. “When you said forty in the arena a while ago,” he snapped, “you were speaking in round numbers, weren’t you?”
Grant flushed darkly. “Round numbers nothin’. What is this? I said forty, an’ I meant forty — not forty-one or thirty-nine or a hundred an’ sixty!”
The Queens regarded each other with sparkling eyes. Then the old man scowled. “You — uh — you couldn’t have made a mistake in counting, could you, son?”
“I was really an excellent mathematician in school,” said Ellery, “and I don’t think the problem of counting to forty-one would have taxed my numerative ability. On the other had, est giebt Menschen die gar nicht inert) weil sie sich nichts Vemünftiges vorsetzen, or words to that effect. However, since I’ve always posed as a rational animal... Suppose we put this little problem to the test.”
He strode toward the door.
“Where you going?” demanded the Inspector, as the others stared.
“Like all martyrs — into the arena.”
“But what the dickens for?”
“To count the noses of the survivors.”
They trooped back, through the little door by which they had entered the subterranean chamber, into the full glare of the Colosseum’s tabernacle. There was a distinct quality of weariness in the mass noises now; detectives yawned all about; and the group of cowboys and cowgirls in the arena itself sprawled on the tanbark in varying attitudes of dejection and indifference.
“Now then,” said Ellery briskly as they trotted toward the group, “suppose you count ’em yourself, Mr. Grant. Perhaps I’m crazy.”
Grant growled something under his breath and, glaring at his costumed employees, strode about among them counting audibly. Most of them were sitting, heads sunken on their breasts; the old showman walked through a mushroom forest of large soft hats.
Then he came back, and all the amazement and bewilderment and pain which had struggled for mastery in his features since Buck Horne had crashed dead to the floor of the arena had vanished. His formidable jaw waved below grim lips like a banner. “I’ll be a double-distilled son of a horse-whippin’ so-an’-so if there ain’t forty-one, the way Mr. Queen said!” he bellowed to the Inspector.
“You count that ugly little runt, Boone?” asked the old man quickly.
“Dan’l? No. He wasn’t among ’em. There’s forty-one without Dan’l.” Brown faces had lifted now; they were staring at him curiously. He whirled about, and somehow without theatricalism his right arm perched on his right hip, holding his coat back and displaying his empty holster; he seemed himself to realize that the holster was empty, for he dropped his arm on the instant, scowling. Then he roared: “You mangy waddies! The gals too! Up on yer hin’ legs an’ let me get a good look at yore ugly maps!”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then Ellery’s grin faded. It really seemed for a moment that Mr. Wild Bill Grant of Wyoming and environs would have a small-sized revolution on his hands. One immense cowboy — Mr. Shorty Downs, an ordinarily jovial gentleman — took a long step forward and growled: “Would ya mind sayin’ that again, Mr. Grant? I don’t think I heard jest right the first time.” And he doubled a fist like a bludgeon.
Grant glared into his eyes. “Shorty, you close yore trap an’ pay attention! The rest o’ you — stand up! There’s one too many among ya, an’ I’m on the warpath till I find the dirty murderer!”
They fell silent at that, the growls dying away; very quickly they got to their feet, men and women, and looked casually around at each other. Grant plunged into their midst, muttering to himself: “Hawes. Halliwell. Jones. Ramsey. Miller. Bluege. Annie. Stryker. Mendoza. Lu... Ah!”
In the thick of the group he came to rest for an instant, after a single explosive sight. And then his cruel arm shot out and clamped powerfully about the shoulder of a man in cowboy costume.
He came swiftly out, dragging his captive as he might have dragged a trussed calf. The man was pale and drawn, with thin features shadowed in the purples and browns of dissipation — not at all a specimen of the Great Outdoors. He was wincing with the agony of Grant’s grip, but there was something scornful in his very intelligent little eyes.
Wild Bill dumped him without ceremony into the dirt before Inspector Queen, and stood spread-legged over him, spitting and grumbling like a grizzly bear.
“This here one!” he roared when he had at last found his voice. “Inspect’r, this maverick’s not a member of my show!”
5: Gentleman of the Press
The captive picked himself out of the dirt, brushed specks of detritus from his glittering costume very carefully, and then poked Wild Bill Grant expertly in the pit of the stomach. Wild Bill said: “Out!” very loudly and doubled up in pain. Curly sprang forward like a spring released and aimed a hard brown first at the man’s mouth. The man ducked, grinned without humor, and stepped behind the Inspector. A free-for-all was averted only by the intervention of Sergeant Velie, who clamped Curly’s arms negligently behind the straight young back and gripped the captive’s neck in his other hand without effort, so that they glared at each other across the Sergeant’s impossible chest like two children. There was, as might have been expected, a surge of cowboys toward them.
The Inspector said in a snarclass="underline" “Back, the pack of you, or I’ll run you all in.” They stopped. “Now, Thomas, quit gagging this feller. I want him alive, not dead.” Obediently Sergeant Velie released his hold on both men. They shook themselves rather sheepishly. Ellery, who for reasons of his own was watching Grant, saw his leathery complexion assume a saffron tinge that was like the hue of death.
The captive produced a cigaret and lighted it coolly. “And that, Mister Tarzan,” he said in a high-pitched, gatling-gun voice to the silent showman, “will teach you to keep your dirty hands off a poor hard-working member of the Fourth Estate.”