“Well, Thomas?” the old man asked impatiently. “What’s the answer?”
“Getting it now.” Velie spoke briefly to someone, nodded ponderously several times, and finally hung up. He jammed his hands into his pockets and said quietly: “Flew the coop, Chief. Cleaned out his bank account this morning at nine o’clock.”
“By God,” said the Inspector. Delphina Sloane slipped out of her chair, hesitated, looked about wildly and sat down again when Gilbert Sloane touched her arm. “Any details?”
“He had forty-two hundred in his account. Closed it, took the money in small bills. Carried a small suitcase; looked new. Gave no explanation.”
The Inspector went to the door. “Hagstrom!” A detective with Scandinavian features trotted up―he was jumpy, on the quivering alert. “Alan Cheney’s gone. Withdrew forty-two hundred dollars from the Mercantile National at nine this morning. Find him. Find out where he spent the night, as a starter. Get a warrant and take it along with you. Camp on his trail. Take help. He may try to get out of the State. Make tracks, Hagstrom.”
Hagstrom disappeared, and Velie followed him quickly.
The Inspector confronted them again; this time there was no benevolence in his glance as he pointed to Joan Brett. “You’ve had a hand in most everything so far, Miss Brett. Do you know anything about young Cheney’s runout?”
“Nothing, Inspector.” Her voice was low.
“Well―anybody!” snarled the old man. “Why did he skip? What’s behind all this?”
Questions. Steel-tipped words. Hidden wounds that bled internally . . . . And the minutes ticked by.
Delphina Sloane was sobbing. “Surely―Inspector―you aren’t―you can’t be thinking of . . . My Alan’s a child, Inspector. Oh, he can’t be―! There’s something wrong, Inspector! Something wrong!”
“You said a mouthful there, Mrs. Sloane,” said the Inspector with a ghastly grin. He wheeled―Sergeant Velie stood, like Nemesis, in the doorway. “What’s up, Thomas?”
Velie extended his gargantuan arm. In his hand there was a small sheet of note-paper. The Inspector snatched it from him. “What’s this?” Ellery and Pepper moved forward quickly; the three men read the few hurriedly scribbled lines on the sheet. The Inspector looked at Velie; Velie stalked over, and they went into a corner. The old man asked a single question, and Velie replied laconically. They came back to the centre of the room.
“Let me read you something, ladies and gentlemen.” They strained forward, breathing hard. The Inspector said: “I hold in my hand a message Sergeant Velie has just found in this house. It is signed by Alan Cheney.” He raised the paper and began to read, slowly, and distinctly. “The message reads: “I am going away. Perhaps forever. Under the circumstances―Oh, what’s the use? Everything is all in a tangle, and I just can’t say what . . . . Good-bye. I shouldn’t be writing this at all. It’s dangerous for you. Please―for your own sake―burn this. Alan.”
Mrs. Sloane half-rose from her chair, her face saffron, screamed once, and fainted. Sloane caught her limp body as she sagged forward. The room burst into sound―cries, exclamations. The Inspector watched it all with calmness, quiet as a cat.
They managed, finally, to revive the woman. Then the Inspector went up to her and, very smoothly, slipped the paper under the woman’s tear-swollen eyes. “Is this your son’s handwriting, Mrs. Sloane?”
Her mouth was hideously wide. “Yes. Poor Alan. Poor Alan. Yes.”
The Inspector’s voice said clearly: “Sergeant Velie, where did you find this note?”
Velie growled, “Upstairs in one of the bedrooms. It was stuck under a mattress.”
“And whose bedroom was it?”
“Miss Brett’s.”
It was too much―too much for everybody. Joan closed her eyes to shut out the hostile stares, the unspoken accusation, the Inspector’s expressionless triumph.
“Well, Miss Brett?” That was all he said.
She opened her eyes, then, and he saw that they were filled with tears. “I―found it this morning. It had been slipped under the door of my room.”
“Why didn’t you report it at once?”
No reply.
“Why didn’t you tell me about it when we discovered Cheney’s absence?”
Silence.
“More important―what did Alan Cheney mean when he wrote: “It’s dangerous for you” ?”
Whereupon the floodgates that are an anatomical adjunct of womankind’s delicate structure opened with a rush, and Miss Joan Brett dissolved in those pearly tears before noted. She sat shaking, sobbing, gasping, sniffling―as forlorn a young lady as Manhattan emcompassed that sunshiny October morning. It was a spectacle so naked that it embarrassed the others. Mrs. Simms, after an instinctive step toward the girl, feebly retreated. Dr. Wardes looked, for once, violently angry; brown lightnings flashed from his eyes as he glared at the Inspector. Ellery was shaking his head in disapproval. Only the Inspector remained unmoved.
“Well, Miss Brett?”
For answer she sprang from her chair, still not looking at them, one arm shielding her eyes, and ran blindly from the room. They heard her stumbling up the stairs.
“Sergeant Velie,” said the Inspector coldly, “you’ll see that Miss Brett’s movements are carefully watched from this moment on.”
Ellery touched his father’s arm. The old man peered at him slyly. Ellery murmured, so that the others could not hear, “My dear, respected, even venerated father, you are probably the world’s most competent policeman―but as a psychologist . . . .” He shook his head sadly.
Chapter 15. Maze
Now it will be seen that, while Ellery Queen until October the ninth was little more than a wraith haunting the fringes of the Khalkis case, that memorable Saturday afternoon found him, through the mercurial chemistry of his unpredictable nature, plunged very solidly into the heart of the problem―no longer an observer, now a prime mover.
The time was ripe for revelations; the stage was so faultlessly set that he could not resist the temptation to leap into the spotlight. It will be remembered always that this was a younger Ellery than has heretofore been encountered―an Ellery with a cosmic egotism that is commonly associated with sophomores. Life was sweet, there was a knotty problem to solve, a tortuous maze to stride confidently through, and, to add a pinch of drama, a very superior sort of District Attorney to bait.
It began, as so many portentous events have since begun, in the inviolacy of Inspector Queen’s office in Center Street. Sampson was there, thrashing about like a suspicious tiger; Pepper was there, looking very thoughtful; the Inspector was there, slumped in his chair, seething fires in his grey old eyes and his lips as tight as a purse’s mouth. Who could resist, indeed? Especially since, in the midst of an aimless Sampsonian summation of the case, Inspector Queen’s secretary scurried in, out of breath with excitement, to announce that Mr. James J. Knox, the James J. Knox―possessor of more millions than it was decent for any man to amass―Knox the banker, Knox the Wall Street king, Knox the-friend-of-the-President―was outside demanding to see Inspector Richard Queen. Resistance after that would have been superhuman.
Knox was really a legend. He used his millions and the power which accompanied them to keep himself out of, rather than in, the public eye. It was his name, not himself, that people knew. It was only human, therefore, for Messieurs the Queens, Sampson, and Pepper to rise as one man when Knox was ushered into the office, and to exhibit more deference and fluster than the strict conventions of democracy prescribe. The great man shook their hands limply and sat down without being asked.
He was the drying hulk of a giant―nearly sixty at this time and visibly drained of his fabulous physical vigour. The hair of his head, brows, and moustache was completely white; the trap of his mouth was a little slack now; only his marbly grey eyes were young.