“The murderer left evidences of Miss Carmody’s presence because she had necessarily vanished. Since she had been murdered and would be missing, there was a logical reason for connecting the two events — the disappearance of the girl and the murder of her mother. It would seem perhaps as if the girl had committed the crime. Since this was untrue, the murderer felt that it might confuse the police and put them off the real track. The murderer did not really hope that the deception would be successful for long — it was merely another red herring drawn across the trail, and anything which would lead the scent away from him in another direction he felt was desirable. And the actual ‘framing’ required little enough trouble and work. The cigarets he secured from Xanthos’, Miss Carmody’s tobacconist, since she had once told him where he secured her private supply. The banque he knew about from Miss Carmody, also. The rest was child’s play...”
They were sitting on the edge of the hard camp-chairs now, straining forward to catch every syllable. Occasionally they looked at each other in a puzzled manner, as if unable to see clearly to the end of the analysis. Ellery brought them back to attention with his next words.
“Springer!” The name cracked out sharply. The prisoner started, paled, looked up furtively. His eyes fell at once to the carpet he had been studiously observing. “Springer, have I given your story faithfully and completely?”
The man’s eyes fluttered in a sudden agony, rolled in their sockets, wildly seeking a face in the swaying crowd before him. When he spoke, it was in a husky monotone, barely audible to those avid ears.
“Yes.”
“Very well, then!” exclaimed Ellery, leaning forward, his tone keenly triumphant. “I have still to expatiate upon that unspoken point which I termed mysterious a few moments ago...
“You will recall that I spoke of the book-ends and the few grains of powder stuck in the glue between the onyx and the new felt. That powder was ordinary fingerprint powder.
“From the moment that I was certain of the nature of the powder, the veils dissipated before my eyes and I sensed the truth. We thought at first, ladies and gentlemen,” he continued, “that the use of fingerprint powder by the criminal indicated a very superior sort of murderer — a super-criminal, in fact. One who would use the implements of the police’s own trade — it was a natural thought...
“But” — and the word lashed into them with deadly emphasis — “there was another inference to be drawn — an inference which in a fell swoop eliminated all suspects but one...” His eyes flashed fire; the hoarseness disappeared from his voice. He leaned forward carefully, over the desk with its litter of clues, holding them with the magnetism of his personality. “All suspects — but one...” he repeated slowly.
After a pregnant moment he said; “That one is the man who was employed by this store; who had not been in this room for at least five weeks; who attempted to put us off the track of himself by getting an accomplice without a record to give false information about the ‘movements’ of Bernice Carmody, who was already dead, in fact; who at the same time was clever enough to say, when he saw that we believed Miss Carmody to have been ‘framed,’ that he thought so, too, despite the fact that he himself had done the framing; who was present — the only suspect to be present, by the way — when the full story of the codified books and the culpability of Springer was told, and who took the very first opportunity of warning Springer to flee, realizing that, with Springer caught, he himself was in serious danger; who, most important of all, was the only personality connected with this investigation to whom the use of fingerprint powder was natural and thoroughly logical...”
He stopped abruptly, eyes fixed with interest, expectancy, the eagerness of the chase, upon one corner of the room.
“Watch him, Velie!” he cried suddenly, in a piercing voice.
Before they could turn, before they could grasp the significance of the scene enacted before them so swiftly and vitally, there came the sounds of a short violent struggle, a bull-like bellow of rage, the hoarse panting of breaths, and finally one sharp stupendous deafening report...
Ellery stood limply, wearily in his fixed position at the desk. He did not move while they rushed concertedly from all sides of the room to the quiet spot where the body of a man lay, already stiff in death, in a pool of blood.
It was Inspector Queen who reached that contorted body first, by a lightning leap; who knelt quickly on the carpet, motioning aside the red-faced, heaving figure of Sergeant Velie; who turned the convulsed corpse of the suicide over; who muttered in words inaudible even to the nearest spectator:
“No legal evidence — and the bluff worked!.. Thank God for a son...”
The face was the face of the head store detective, William Crouther.