“I didn’t come here to talk about my novel,” Dane said.
“Then it can only be about your father.”
Dane nodded bleakly.
“I’ve followed the case.” Ellery glanced at both of them. “But newspaper accounts leave everything to be desired. Tell me all about it.”
Dane told him everything — everything, that is, but his own attack on Sheila. When he was finished, Judy went into a detailed account of their unsuccessful search for the bar and the bartender who alone could give Ashton McKell the alibi he so desperately needed.
Ellery listened, questioned, took notes. Then he leaned back in his armchair and lost himself in thought. There was a long silence. The little noises of the hospital — the clatter of a tray, the hoarse voice of the communicator, the rattle of a dressing cart, the hum of a floor polisher... Ellery seemed asleep with his eyes open. Dane found himself wishing that he could sleep — for a hundred years, to wake up and find that recent events had receded into the harmless pages of history.
Suddenly Ellery said, “One question. It comes down to that.”
“Of course, Mr. Queen,” Judy said. “What bar was Mr. McKell in?”
“No. Strange that the question hasn’t been asked before. It’s the heart of the matter. The whole case may well center in it.” His voice dribbled away.
Just then a glorious blond nurse came in, seemed disappointed to find company present, exchanged smiles with the patient, and hurried out. Ellery, still smiling, reached for the phone, identified himself by name and room number, and gave the hospital operator the telephone number of police headquarters.
“Inspector Queen, please... Dad?... No, I’m fine. Dad, Dane McKell is with me... I know, he told me. I wish you’d do something for me. I want to see his father... Wait a minute! There’s something I must ask Mr. McKell, and you’ll have to arrange it with the D.A.’s office... Come on, Dad, you certainly can. Today is Saturday, the trial is recessed, there’s plenty of precedent... Yes, it’s important, or I wouldn’t ask you. All right?... I’ll phone you as usual tonight.”
He turned back to his visitors. “There’s something wholesome to be said about old-fashioned drag. Have some fruit, you two. Or wine? McKell, about your novel...”
An hour and a half later he was saying, “Confound it, Dane, it doesn’t matter in the slightest if the old stone quarry has fish in it or not. As long as Jerry thinks it has, it’s reason enough for him to go there. So in your third chapter...” Someone knocked on the door. “Yes?”
And there stood Ashton McKell, between two detectives, a gray-haired one and one who looked like Sugar Ray Robinson.
The fall sun through the windows fell on the elder McKell’s face, and it seemed to Dane paler and hollower even than when he had seen his father in the Tombs. There was a dream quality to the experience, standing in the sunny hospital room touching his father’s shoulder while Judy clung to his free arm murmuring, “Oh, Mr. McKell,” over and over in a litany of grief and pleasure, while the two detectives bantered with the man in the casts.
“Ellery, you damn fool,” the gray-haired one said, “getting yourself banged up like this. You look like a goalie at the Garden.”
“Floogle yourself, Piggott,” Ellery said pleasantly, “and may all four of your legs never know a splint. Zillie, what are you doing out on a daytime assignment?”
The other detective grinned and said, “It’s a fact the Inspector reserves me for the nighttime tricks, says I blend better with the dark.” His brown wrist was locked to Ashton McKell’s.
“Look, men, it’s been a lovely visit,” said Ellery. “Now would you wait in the hall?”
“Well,” said Detective Piggott cautiously.
“You know we can’t do that, Ellery,” Detective Zilgitt said. “Got no business being here at all. How did you swing it?”
“Never mind how. And Piggie, don’t give me any of your legalistic hawing. I’m being allowed to see Mr. McKell as a friend of the court. That makes me an officer of the court, which in turn makes what I have to say to him privileged.”
“In a Piggott’s eye,” said Piggott. “You going to be responsible, broken legs and all?”
“I’m responsible.”
“Well, just in case,” Zilgitt said, “we’ll be outside the door.” He unlocked the handcuffs and the detectives left the room.
Ashton McKell shook hands with Ellery. “I don’t know what you want to talk to me about, Mr. Queen, but I’m not looking a gift horse under the tail. It seems to me I’ve lived in a cell for twenty years.”
“Dane, Miss Walsh, tell Mr. McKell what you two have been up to.”
Dane did so. Ash McKell listened quietly; he seemed a little bewildered, as if at a new experience. “And Mr. Queen has one important question to ask you, Dad. That’s why you’re here.”
“From the story I’ve been told,” Ellery said, “and I assume it’s the whole story, we can take for granted that the police have searched certain places thoroughly — Miss Grey’s apartment, your apartment, Mr. McKell, your office and so on.”
Ashton McKell looked puzzled now.
“And yet,” Ellery went on, “one thing has never been mentioned. It was not, after all, Ashton McKell who called each Wednesday on Sheila Grey, was it? It was Dr. Stone. Correct? That was your invariable practice?”
The prisoner nodded slowly. Dane looked chagrined.
“Ashton McKell got into the Continental, and Dr. Stone climbed out. Somewhere between the back door of the Cricket Club and that garage off Park Avenue, Ashton McKell with the assistance of the contents of a little black bag became Dr. Stone. The question I want answered — the one that nobody seems to have thought of asking — is: Mr. McKell, what happened to your little black bag?”
Dane’s father looked confused. “I’ll have to think... Does it matter, Mr. Queen?”
Ellery banged on one of his casts. “Does it matter!” he cried. “Obviously the police haven’t found it, or you can bet it would be one of the People’s exhibits at the trial right now. There hasn’t been a word about ‘Dr. Stone’ — no identification of the bag, no testimony about Dr. Stone’s weekly visits to the Grey apartment, no identification of you as Dr. Stone, no placing of the ‘doctor’ on the scene of the crime, and so on. Not only haven’t the police found the bag containing your make-up materials, they’ve never even connected you with such a bag. Seems to me it’s proved the perfect disguise. Too perfect. So I repeat: What happened to the bag?”
Ashton shook his head, sank into a chair, shading his eyes.
“Take it a step at a time,” Ellery said encouragingly. “You had it with you when you left the airport that night after getting off the plane from Washington?”
“Yes. I remember carrying it into Sheila’s — Miss Grey’s apartment. I was there such a short time. Did I...? Yes, I had it when I left. I recall shifting it from one hand to the other as I walked the streets — changing hands, because I was also carrying my overnight bag. And I had it with me in that bar. I know, because I recall setting it down on the bar stool beside me.”
“Do you remember taking it home with you, Mr. McKell?”
“I didn’t have it when I got home. I’m sure of that. Could I have left it in the bar? No... I recall picking it up as I left the bar... I wouldn’t have taken it home. Usually I kept it locked up in my room at the Cricket. But I was closer to Grand Central at the time—”
“Grand Central,” Ellery said softly.
Ashton was looking astonished. “I did say Grand Central, didn’t I? How our minds play tricks on us! That’s it, of course. I checked it at the baggage room, or whatever it’s called — the counter. When I left the bar I must have walked all the way down to Grand Central. And I didn’t remember it!”