“You’re cockeyed,” said Terry. “But I’ll tell you one thing, seeing as there’s no witness. I did make that call. So what? Anything wrong with that?”
“Ah,” said Ellery — a little luxury of triumph he was immediately sorry for, since his companion turned sullen again. “Well, as long as I’m theorizing... Terry, I don’t believe our friend the blonde woman was in that house at all last weekend. What do you say to that?”
The brown man jumped up. “You’ve got inside information!” he cried. “What the hell d’ye think you’re doing — pumping me when you know!”
“Then it’s true.”
Terry’s excitement dissipated. He stared down at Ellery, made a mock motion — hitting himself lightly in the jaw with his own fist — and shrugged. “A sucker again. You’re slicker than I thought you were.”
“That is praise,” grinned Ellery. “I see it all now. The blonde woman escaped from the attic. Her escape terrified Karen Leith — why, I confess I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.”
“You’re good at that, all right,” said Terry gloomily.
“She hired you as a private investigator to trace the woman. You took the case. She became impatient. Apparently she felt it imperative to have the woman located. When you called her to make a negative report, she fired you and told you she was turning to the regular police, gave you the details. That riled you. You decided to horn in.”
“Warm,” conceded Terry, kicking the gravel.
“Did she tell you the name of the blonde, or that she had lived in the attic?”
“No, I found that out by myself. She just said it was someone she was interested in and gave me a description.”
“No name?”
“No. Said she’d probably use a phony.”
“How did you find out about the attic?”
“What do you want — all my trade secrets?”
“So you couldn’t find the woman?”
Terry Ring rose and deliberately sauntered up the path. Ellery watched him intently. He stooped and picked up a rock from the border of the path, weighing it in his hand. Then he wheeled and came back.
“I’ll give it to you straight, Queen. I don’t trust you.”
“Why did you help Eva MacClure? What difference would it have made to you if that door had remained bolted and the police arrested Eva as the only possible killer of Karen Leith? Eh?” Terry Ring looked at the rock in his hand. “Is it possible that you have made a deal with someone else in the meantime? That you were double-crossing Karen Leith about the blonde woman?”
For an instant Ellery felt the breath of danger whistle by his ears. The brown fist about the rock tightened, and it occurred to him uncomfortably how easy it would be to brain a man with that innocent-appearing excrement of Nature. Then Terry whirled and raised his arm and let fly. The rock went like a baseball to the top of the garden wall at the side, struck a branch hanging over from a tree in the next garden, and disappeared with a faint series of thuds.
“You can talk your damned head off,” he panted. “I’m not answering any of your lousy questions.”
Ellery was staring, however, wide-eyed at the branch which hung dolefully now, broken, from the tree. “Good lord,” he said. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“Do what on purpose?”
“Aim at that branch?”
“Oh, that.” Terry shrugged. “Sure.”
“Heavens, man, it’s a good forty feet!”
“I’ve done better,” said Terry indifferently. “I aimed at the tip leaf, but I only hit the third one.”
“And with an oval stone,” murmured Ellery. “Do you know, Terry, that gives me an idea?”
“I once pitched for the Reds... What idea?” His head came up abruptly.
Ellery looked up. He looked up at a barred window on the second storey of the house, a window whose panes, one behind the other, had been shattered Monday afternoon by a stone.
Terry growled: “You know I was up there with the girl when that rock broke the window Monday. So what the hell are you—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” said Ellery impatiently. “Terry, find a rock about the same size and shape as the one that broke that window. Even smaller, if you can.”
Terry shook his head and began scouting about the garden. “Say! Here’s a bunch of ’em!”
Ellery came on the run. And there they were — a number of smooth ovals almost perfectly matched, as far as he could judge the same size as the stone now lying on the floor of Karen Leith’s bedroom. They hem-stitched the border of the path. In one place there was a gap among the evenly spaced rocks, and an oval depression in the soft earth.
“So it came from here.”
“Looks like it.”
Ellery picked two of them up. “Take a few.” And as Terry stooped he walked back to the bench and looked up again at the barred, broken window. “Well,” he said after a pause, “here goes,” and he twirled his arm and threw the stone.
It struck two feet to the left of the barred window, crashing against the wall and falling back into the garden.
“It’s not so easy at that,” he muttered, while Terry watched frowning. “Off-centre, hard to get a grip. Umph!”
He threw the second one. This time it landed a foot below the barred window. A startled head peered through the bars protecting the sitting-room window.
“Hey!” yelled Detective Ritter. “What the hell you guys doin’ down there?” Then he recognized Ellery. “Oh, I didn’t know it was you, Mr. Queen. What’s the matter?”
“A rather unsuccessful experiment in the interests of pure science,” said Ellery disgustedly. “Don’t mind the noise, Ritter. And watch your noodle. We may pull a miracle.”
The detective hastily withdrew his head from view. From the lower windows Kinumé and the O’Mara girl were watching again, fascinated and frightened.
“You try,” urged Ellery. “You’ve been a professional pitcher, haven’t you? You can hit specified leaves on trees from a distance of forty feet, can’t you? Try to break that window up there — the one next to the broken one.”
“How do you expect me to get the stone past those bars?” demanded Terry, glancing up at the oriel windows.
“The very point. That’s your problem. You’re an expert. Proceed.”
Terry stripped off his coat, loosened his lemon-yellow necktie, flipped his hat on the bench, and hefted one of the oval rocks. He squinted up at the right-hand oriel window, shifted position, settled his feet securely in the gravel, wound up his arm, and let fly. The rock clanged against two iron bars and thudded back into the garden.
“Again,” said Ellery judicially.
Terry tried again. This time he gripped the stone differently. But the window remained intact; only an iron bar protested.
“Not bad,” said Ellery. “Once more, my gifted friend.”
For the third time the stone dropped back, leaving the window unbroken; a fourth time, a fifth...
“Hell!” said Terry disgustedly. “It just can’t be done.”
“And yet,” said Ellery in a thoughtful tone, “it was.”
Terry retrieved his coat. “No one can tell me that someone aimed to throw one of those rocks through those bars. I wouldn’t even have tried it if you hadn’t told me to. There can’t be more than a half-inch or so clearance on each side of the rock when it gets smack between two bars.”