Ellery stopped abruptly and stared down at his notes. No one moved. When he looked up there was a tightness about his lips that revealed an inward strain whose cause no one there could guess.
“I have now reached the point, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in a calm flat voice, “where I can go to some length in describing our elusive criminal. Would you care to hear my description?”
He looked about the room, challenging them with his eyes. Bodies rigid through excitement sagged in reaction. Every one averted his head. There was no sound from them.
“I take it that you would,” said Ellery in the same flat voice, which contained a note of amused menace. “Very well, then!”
He leaned forward, eyes glittering. “Our murderer is a man. The tactics employed in putting the shoes and hat into the closet plus the evidence of the missing blade point to this masculinity. The physical energy required in disposing of the body and the rest; the mental agility, with its recurrent traces of hard common sense; the cold-bloodedness, the unscrupulosity — all these point unerringly to a masculine figure with, if you will, a fairly heavy beard which requires daily shaving.”
They followed the movements of his lips with bated breaths.
“Our man worked alone, without accomplices. The deductions from the missing key, which I have gone into at great length, point to this.”
There was not a tremor of movement in the room.
“Our lone man is connected with the store. The removal of the body to the window downstairs and all its attendant complications, which I have also expounded at some length, prove this.”
Ellery relaxed slightly. Again he looked about the room with a little smile. He applied his handkerchief to his lips, glanced slyly at Commissioner Welles, who sat perspiring and alert in his chair; at his father, who was slumped in an attitude of weariness, one fragile hand shielding his eyes; at the motionless detectives to his left; at Velie, Crouther, “Jimmy,” and Fiorelli to his right. Then he began once more.
“On one point,” he said dryly, “we have as yet reached no definite conclusion. I refer to the nature of the business which the murderer considered so imperative as to require special attention Tuesday morning...
“Which brings me to the most absorbing subject of the five books which we discovered on this desk — that interesting mélange of paleontology, elementary music, commerce of the moyen âge, philately, and bad vaudeville jokes.”
Ellery launched into a short, graphic description of the five strange volumes, the markings, Weaver’s story of Springer’s duplicity, the revelation that the addresses were drug-distributing depots, and finally the unsuccessful raid on the house at the 98th Street address, taken from the sixth book in Weaver’s possession.
“When Springer prepared the sixth book,” continued Ellery, to his ever-tensing audience, “we can assume that he had no suspicion that the book-code was being tampered with or known to an outsider. If he had, he would not have prepared the book and left it for Mr. Weaver’s investigating fingers. So that, when Springer left the store on Monday night, followed by Mr. Weaver, he did not know that this sixth book, Modern Trends in Interior Decoration, by Lucian Tucker, was in our young amateur detective’s possession. And since Springer met and spoke to no one all evening, even when he arrived at his Bronx apartment (for we have checked up through the telephone company and found that he did not make any telephone calls when he got home), he could not therefore have known that the book-system had been tampered with until, at the very earliest, the next morning, Tuesday, when he returned to work. In other words, after the murder. If we presume that not Springer, but some one else, would have been apprised by an outsider of the discovery of the code system, we must not forget that the only method by which any one could have communicated with another about the matter from the store would be by telephoning, since he could not leave the store during the night. And we discovered that the telephone service at this store is cut off at night, with the exception of one trunk line leading to O’Flaherty’s desk; and this was not used, according to O’Flaherty’s own testimony.
“Then we are forced to conclude that it was impossible for anyone in the store Monday night and early Tuesday morning to have communicated with Springer or anyone else about the missing sixth book, which Weaver took away with him.”
Ellery forged ahead rapidly. “The fact that the system of dope distribution was disorganized the next morning, Tuesday — as it was, for the sudden abandonment of the 98th Street house on Tuesday afternoon is clear evidence — could have been due only to someone of the drug ring discovering during the night that the system was being tampered with. I repeat here the fact that Springer went ahead on Monday evening with his regular task of codifying the sixth book, showing that up to that time the ring considered their system safe. Yet by next morning they had become alarmed and fled the 98th Street rendezvous, even before catering to their addict-customers. Again, then, the logical explanation is that it was during the previous night that some one discovered something wrong.
“This discovery could have been caused only by, first, noticing the absence of the sixth book from its accustomed shelf in the Book Department Monday night after Weaver left — the last one to check out of the store; second, finding the five duplicate books on Mr. French’s desk Monday night; or third, both. We must conclude therefore that since the disorganization did take place the morning after the crime, it could have only been ordered by someone who made one or both of these discoveries Monday night; Someone — to amplify — who must have been in the store after Springer and Weaver left, and who therefore could not get out of the store or communicate with any one until at least nine o’clock Tuesday morning.”
Dawning comprehension shone from several faces before him. Ellery smiled. “I see that some of you are anticipating the inevitable conclusion... Who in the store that night was in a position to make one or both of these bibliographical discoveries? The answer is: the murderer, the man who killed Mrs. French in the room in which the five books were prominently in sight. Is there anything about the murderer’s subsequent actions which proves that he did make the discovery of the five books in the apartment? Yes, there is. The fact that the murderer removed the body to the window-room in order to give himself time next morning to attend to his ‘business’ — which until this point has been obscure...
“The deductive chain, ladies and gentlemen,” said Ellery in a curiously triumphant voice, “is too strong and perfectly welded to be anything but truth. The murderer warned the drug ring Tuesday morning.
“In other words, to add an element to our growing description — our murderer is a man, who worked alone, who is connected with the store, and who belongs to a large, well-organized drug ring.”
He paused, fingered the five books on the desk with sensitive fingers. “Furthermore, we are now in a position to add another qualifying item to the growing description of the murderer.
“For had our drug-distributing murderer been present in the French apartment before the night of the murder — and by ‘before’ I mean at any time within five weeks prior to the fatal night — he would have seen the books on the table, would have become suspicious, would have at once ordered the cessation of the book-code operations in the Book Department. And since up to the very night of the murder the book system was still in effect, it follows most gracefully that the murderer had not been in the French library for between one and five weeks before Monday night last... We have confirmation that it was the murderer again who saw those books on the desk. For in examining and later fixing the damaged book-ends, he could scarcely have missed seeing — and understanding to his horror the significance of — the five volumes...