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“Oh, Dick!” wept Eva, twisting and putting her arms tightly about his neck. “I didn’t understand. It’s my fault for expecting...”

“Don’t say any more. We’ll see it through, together. Just hold me — this way. Kiss me, darling.”

“Dick...”

“If you want to get married to-morrow—”

“No! Not until everything... everything—”

“All right, darling. Whatever you say. Just don’t worry.”

And a little later Eva lay still on the bed and he sat still beside her, only his fingers moving, his cool physician’s fingers stroking her temples, soothing the pulsing blood vessels, making her peaceful and sleepy. But above her tumbled hair Dr. Scott’s face was drawn and troubled.

15

“The trouble with this case,” complained Ellery to Terry Ring on Thursday afternoon, “is its unbelievable instability. It’s a bee flashing from flower to flower. You can’t keep up with it.”

“What’s the matter now?” Terry flicked the ashes off his mauve tie on its field of wine-colored shirtfront. “Damn it, there goes a burn in my tie!”

“By the way, must you wear these atrocious shirts?” They paused at the little bridge in Karen Leith’s garden. It seems to me that recently you’ve taken to sporting an almost male-bird coloration. It’s September, man, not spring!”

“You go to hell,” said Terry, flushing.

“You’ve made the wrong movie star your idol.”

“I said go to hell! What’s on your mind to-day?”

Ellery dropped a pebble into the tiny pool. “I’ve made a discovery that bothers me.”

“Yeah?”

“You knew Karen Leith, at least for a short time. And I know you’re a self-taught and dependable student of human nature. What kind of a woman would you say she was?”

“I only know what I read in the papers. Famous writer, around forty, kind of pretty if you like ‘em washed out, clever as hell and just as deep. Why?”

“My dear Terry, I want your personal reaction.”

Terry glared at the goldfish. “She was a phony.”

“What!”

“You asked for it. She was a phony. I wouldn’t have trusted her with my old lady’s store teeth. Mean streak. Tough as a floozy underneath and ambitious as hell. And no more conscience than Dutch Brenner’s mouth-piece.”

Ellery stared at him. “My worthy opponent! That’s characterization. Well, it’s true.” His grin faded. “You don’t know, I imagine, just how true it is.”

“Doc MacClure’s lucky to be rid of her. He’d have punched her in the nose in three months if they’d ever hitched up.”

“Dr. MacClure belongs to the Leslie Howard rather than the Victor McLaglen school, for all his physique. Nevertheless, it’s probably true.”

Terry said casually: “If the doc hadn’t been on a ship a thousand miles to sea when she was bopped, I’d say he did it himself.”

“There were no hydroplanes around, if that’s what you’re thinking,” chuckled Ellery. “No, I fancy I know what’s bothering the doctor. And it’s more concerned with Eva than with his deceased fiancée.” He studied the pool. “I wish I knew exactly what it is.”

“Me, too,” said Terry. He fingered his tie. “Come on, spit it out. What’s up? What did you find out?”

Ellery stared from his reverie and lit a cigaret. “Terry, do you know what Karen Leith really was? I’ll tell you. A parasite. A very special kind of pediculous monster. One of the most incredible vessels of evil God ever designed for skirts.”

“You going to talk or aren’t you?” said Terry impatiently.

“What amazes me is how she was able to concentrate on one vicious objective for years, going through what must have been agonies of continuous apprehension. It’s indecent. Only a woman could have done it — a woman as full of silence and fury as she must have been. I don’t know what’s behind it, but I can guess. I think, many years ago, she loved Floyd MacClure.”

“That’s tall guessing, my friend.”

“A love-affair crushed at its inception... yes, it might have started the ball rolling.”

“Ah, nuts,” said Terry.

But Ellery was gazing again in profound reflection at the pool. “And then there’s the crime itself. Even knowing what the Leith monster was, the crime remains an enigma.”

Terry flung himself in disgust on the grass and tipped his pearl-grey felt over his eyes. “You should have run for Congress.”

“I’ve been over those two rooms upstairs with, figuratively, a stethoscope and a selenium cell. I tested those bars on the oriel windows. They’re solid iron embedded in concrete and there’s nothing wrong with them. Immovable. Not set in false sockets. None has been recently replaced. No, no one got in or out of those windows, Terry.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I tackled the door and bolt. You found the door bolted from inside her bedroom, but it was conceivable that the bolt might have been drawn from the wrong side of the door by some mechanical contrivance.”

“Whoosh,” said Terry from under his hat. “You’ve been reading one of your own lousy detective stories.”

“Oh, don’t sneer; it’s been done. But not with this particular door. I tried with every method known to my peculiar science, and none of them worked. So mechanics was out.”

“You’ve certainly made progress, haven’t you?”

“With the doors and windows eliminated, I thought of... don’t laugh now—”

“I’m laughing already!”

“A secret panel. Well, why not?” asked Ellery defensively. “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. You don’t spit on your great-grandmother just because she’s hung around a long time? But there isn’t any panel. That room’s as solid as the walls of the Great Pyramid.”

“Closets?”

“Are just closets. I don’t know.” Ellery made a face. “It leaves you with the hollowest feeling.”

“You’re telling me,” said Terry glumly.

“I’ve thought of everything — that the crime, for instance, might have been committed through the window-bars, with the murderer somehow outside. But that doesn’t gel, either — there’s the weapon.

“It was withdrawn from Karen’s neck. It was wiped off. Even if we postulate the strained theory that Karen stood at the window, was knifed through the bars, fell, that the killer wiped off the blade and threw the knife through the bars to land on the desk... it still doesn’t gel. The body was out of position for that. And there should have been a trace of blood on the sill, on the floor directly below the sill. But the bloodstains are along the edge of that dais. She couldn’t have been stabbed from the window at that spot, unless her assailant was a gorilla.”

“Even a gorilla wouldn’t have arms that long.”

“It makes you think of Poe. It’s mad. It’s impossible.”

“Unless,” said Terry, squinting, “Eva MacClure’s a liar.”

“Yes, unless Eva MacClure’s a liar.”

Terry got to his feet with a leap. “Well, she isn’t! I’m not the prize sucker of all time, am I? I tell you she’s on the level. She told the truth. I couldn’t be wrong. I’ve been right about women too damned many times!”

“Human beings will do inconsistent things to save their skins.”

“Then you do think she killed that phony!”

Ellery did not reply for some time. A goldfish flopped back into the water, leaving circles. “There’s one other possibility,” he said suddenly. “But it’s so fantastic I scarcely credit it myself.”

“What is it? What is it?” Terry stuck his brown face forward. “The hell with how it looks. What is it?”