“Conference?” he asked. His voice was unexpectedly soft―a deceptive voice, low-pitched, and hesitant.
“Ah―yes, yes,” said Sampson hastily. “We’ve been discussing the Khalkis case. A very sad affair, Mr. Knox.”
“Yes.” Knox looked squarely at the Inspector. “Progress?”
“Some.” Inspector Queen was unhappy. “It’s all mixed up, Mr. Knox. A great many threads to untangle. I can’t say we see daylight yet.”
This was the moment. The moment, perhaps, which a still younger Ellery may have envisioned in his day-dreams―the baffled representatives of the law, the presence of mighty personality . . . . “You’re being modest, dad,” said Ellery Queen. Nothing more at the moment. Just the gently chiding tone, the little gesture of deprecation, the precise quarter-smile. “You’re being modest, dad,” as if the Inspector knew what he was talking about.
Inspector Queen sat very quietly indeed, and Sampson’s lips parted. The great one looked from Ellery to his father with judicious inquiry. Pepper was staring open-mouthed.
“You see, Mr. Knox,” Ellery went on in the same humble tone―oh, it was perfect! he thought; “you see, sir, while some odds and ends are still strewn about the landscape, my father neglects to say that the main body of the case has taken definitely solid shape.”
“Don’t quite understand,” said Knox encouragingly.
“Ellery,” began the Inspector, in a tremulous voice . . .
“It seems clear enough, Mr. Knox,” said Ellery with whimsical sadness. Heavens, what a moment! he thought. “The case is solved.”
It is at such instants snatched out of the racing mill-stream of time that egotists achieve their noblest riches. Ellery was magnificent―he studied the changing expression on the faces of the Inspector, Sampson, Pepper like a scientist watching an unfamiliar but anticipated test-tube reaction. Knox, of course, grasped nothing of the by-play. He was merely interested.
“The murderer of Grimshaw―” choked the District Attorney.
“Who is he, Mr. Queen?” asked Knox mildly.
Ellery sighed and lit a cigarette before replying. It would never do to hurry the denouement. This must be cherished to the last precious moment. Then he allowed the words to trickle through a cloud of smoke. “Georg Khalkis,” he said.
District Attorney Sampson confessed long afterward that, had James J. Knox not been present during this drama, he would have picked up one of the telephones on the Inspector’s desk and hurled it at Ellery’s head. He did not believe. He could not believe. A dead man―a man, moreover, blind before he had died―as the murderer! It defied all the laws of credibility. It was more than that―the smug vapourings of a clown, the chimera of a heated brain, the . . . Sampson, it will be noted, felt very strongly about it.
Restrained, however, by the Presence, he merely shifted in his chair, looking ill, his busy brain already wrestling with the problem of covering up this statement of utter lunacy.
Knox spoke first, because Knox required no emotional recovery. Ellery’s pronunciamiento made him blink, it is true, but an instant after he said, in his soft voice, “Khalkis . . . . Now, I wonder.”
The Inspector then found his tongue. “I think,” he said, licking his old red lips quickly, “I think we owe Mr. Knox an explanation―eh, son?” His tone belied his glance; his glance was furious.
Ellery leaped from his chair. “We certainly do,” he said heartily. “Especially since Mr. Knox is personally interested in the case.” He perched on the edge of the Inspector’s desk. “Really a unique problem, this one,” he said. “It has some positively inspired points:
“Please attend. There were two principal clues: the first revolving about the necktie Georg Khalkis was wearing on the morning of his collapse from heart-failure; the second concerning the percolator and tea-cups in Khalkis’s study.”
Knox looked slightly blank. Ellery said: “I beg your pardon, Mr. Knox. Of course you’re unfamiliar with these things,” and rapidly outlined the facts surrounding the investigation. When Knox nodded his comprehension, Ellery continued. “Now let me explain what we were able to glean from this business of Khalkis’s neckties.” He was careful to pluralize himself; Ellery, although this had been questioned by malicious persons, possessed a strong family pride. “On Saturday morning a week ago, the morning of Khalkis’s death, you will observe that Khalkis’s imbecile valet Demmy prepared his cousin’s raiment, by his own testimony, according to schedule. It was to be expected, therefore, that Khalkis should have been wearing the precise items of clothing specified in the regular Saturday schedule. Refer to the Saturday schedule, and what do you find? You find that, among other articles, Khalkis should have been wearing a green moire necktie.
“So far, so good. Demmy, concluding his morning ritual of assisting his cousin to dress, or at least of laying out the scheduled clothing, leaves at nine o’clock. Fifteen minutes elapse, an interval during which Khalkis, fully attired, is alone in his study. At nine-fifteen Gilbert Sloane enters to confer with Khalkis about the day’s projects. And what do we find? We find, according to Sloane’s testimony―not emphasized, of course, but there nevertheless―that at nine-fifteen Khalkis is wearing a red tie.”
He had his audience now; his feeling of satisfaction manifested itself in a bawdy chuckle. “An interesting situation, eh? Now, if Demmy told the truth, we are confronted with a curious discrepancy which pules for explanation. If Demmy told the truth―and his mental condition obviates mendaciousness―Khalkis therefore must have been wearing the scheduled, or green, tie at nine o’clock, the time Demmy left him.
“How explain the discrepancy, then? Well, this is the inevitable explanation: in the fifteen-minute period in which he was alone, Khalkis, for some reason we shall probably never know, went into his bedroom and changed his tie, discarding the green one given him by Demmy for one of the red ties hanging on the rack in his bedroom wardrobe.
“Now we also know from Sloane’s testimony that, during his confabulation with Khalkis some time after nine-fifteen that morning, Khalkis fingered the tie he was wearing―which Sloane had already noticed, on originally entering the room, to be red―and said, in these exact words: “Before you leave remind me to call Barrett’s and order some new ties like the one I’m wearing .”” His eyes were bright. “The verbal italicization is mine. Now observe. Just as Miss Brett was leaving Khalkis’s study much later, she heard Khalkis call the number of Barrett’s, his haberdasher. Barrett’s, as a check-up later established, delivered―according to the testimony of the clerk who spoke to Khalkis―exactly what Khalkis ordered. But what was it that Khalkis had ordered? Obviously, what had been delivered. But what had been delivered? Six red ties!”
Ellery leaned forward, pounding the desk. “To sum up: Khalkis, to have said he was going to order neckties like the one he was wearing, and then to have ordered red ties, must therefore have known that he was wearing a red tie. Fundamental. In other words, Khalkis knew the colour of the necktie that was draped around his neck at the time Sloane conferred with him.
“But how could he, a blind man, have known the colour, since it was not the colour called for by the Saturday schedule? Well, he might have been told the colour by someone. But by whom? Only three people saw him that morning before he put in the call to Barrett’s―Demmy, who dressed him according to schedule; Sloane, whose word-for-word conversation concerning the ties did not once refer to them by colour; and Joan Brett, whose one reference to the ties that morning, addressed to Khalkis, also omitted mention of its colour.