“On the other hand we must not permit personal considerations to befog the greater issue. Please attend carefully―you, Mr. Knox; you, dad; you, Sampson; you Pepper. If I slip anywhere, catch me up.
“I have been the dupe of an astute criminal who, giving me credit for a laborious mentality, has deliberately concocted such false clues for my edification as I would seize upon in the construction of a “clever” solution―that is, a solution which tended to reveal Khalkis as the murderer. Since we know that for a period of several days after Khalkis’s death there was only one dirty tea-cup, the fixing of the three tea-cups must have been a “plant” left by the murderer. The criminal deliberately used only the water from Khalkis’s full but untouched tea-cup in his process of dirtying the two clean cups, and then poured the tea-water out somewhere, leaving the original water-content of the percolator to provide me with the basis for a false deduction. Miss Brett’s story establishing the time when she saw the cups in their original condition completely absolves Khalkis from having himself left the three-dirty-cups false clue; for at the time Miss Brett saw the cups in their original condition Khalkis was already dead and buried. There is only one person who had the motive for planting such a false clue, and that is the murderer himself―the person who was furnishing me with a made-to-order suspect leading away from himself.
“Now,” continued Ellery in the same bleak voice, ‘the clue which tended to show that Khalkis was not blind . . . The criminal must have taken advantage of a fortuitous circumstance; he discovered or knew what Khalkis’s schedule called for, and he found the packet from Barrett’s on the foyer-table, probably at the same general time when he fixed the tea-cups, and, taking advantage of the discrepancy in the colours, put the packet in the highboy drawer in Khalkis’s bedroom to make sure I would find it there and use it as part of my deductive framework. The question arises: Was Khalkis really blind, despite the “plant”, or was he not? How much did the criminal know? I’ll leave this last consideration for the moment.
“One thing, however, is important. The criminal could not have so arranged matters that Khalkis wore the wrong tie the Saturday morning of his death. The whole chain of reasoning on which I based the deduction that Khalkis had regained his sight is fallacious somewhere, provided we work on the theory now that Khalkis really was blind, although it is still possible that he was not . . . “
“Possible but not probable,” commented Sampson, ‘since, as you pointed out, why did he keep quiet if he suddenly regained his sight?”
“That’s perfectly right, Sampson. It would seem that Khalkis was blind. So my logic was wrong. How account, then, for the fact that Khalkis knew he was wearing a red tie, and yet was blind? Is it possible that Demmy, Sloane or Miss Brett did tell Khalkis he was wearing a red tie? This would explain the facts; on the other hand, if all told the truth, the explanation is still floating about somewhere. If we cannot discover a satisfactory alternative explanation, we shall be forced to conclude that one of the three lied in his or her testimony.”
“That Brett girl,” growled the Inspector, “isn’t my idea of a reliable witness.”
“We’ll get nowhere with unsupported inspirations, dad.” Ellery shook his head. “Unless we are to confess the inadequacy of reasoning, which I am loath to do . . . I have been going over the possibilities mentally during Mr. Knox’s recital. I see now that my original logic overlooked one possibility―a possibility rather amazing, if true. For there is one way in which Khalkis could have known he wore a red tie without having been told and without having been able to see the colour . . . . Easy enough to prove or disprove. Excuse me a moment.”
Ellery went to the telephone and put in a call to the Khalkis house; they watched him in silence. This was somehow, they felt, a test. “Mrs. Sloane . . . . Mrs. Sloane? This is Ellery Queen. Is Mr. Demetrios Khalkis there? . . . Excellent. Please have him come to Police Headquarters in Center Street at once―to Inspector Queen’s office . . . Yes, I understand. Very well, have Weekes bring him, then . . . Mrs. Sloane. Tell your cousin to bring with him one of your brother’s green ties. This is important . . . . No, please don’t tell Weekes what Demmy is bringing. Thank you.”
He joggled the receiver and spoke to the central police operator. “Please locate Trikkala, the Greek interpreter, and have him come to Inspector Queen’s office.”
“I don’t quite see―” began Sampson.
“Please,” Ellery lit another cigarette with steady fingers. “Let me continue. Where do we stand? Here―the entire solution, it must be plain now, with Khalkis as the murderer, collapses. For the solution was based on two points: one, that Khalkis really wasn’t blind and, two, that only two people were in the study last Friday night. The second Mr. Knox and Miss Brett have already exploded; I have every reason to believe that I shall be able to explode the first myself in a few moments. In other words, provided we can demonstrate that Khalkis was really blind that night, we no longer have any more reason for suspecting Khalkis of Grimshaw’s murder than anyone else. In fact, we can eliminate Khalkis as a suspect; the only one who had reason to leave the false clues was the murderer; the clues were left after Khalkis’s death; and moreover were designed to make Khalkis appear as the criminal. So, Khalkis at least was innocent of Grimshaw’s murder.
“Now, from Mr. Knox’s story, it is evident that Grimshaw was murdered for a motive connected with the stolen Leonardo―not a far cry from my former inference,” continued Ellery. “One thing that tends to bear out this stolen-painting motive is: that when Grimshaw was found in the coffin, the promissory note which Khalkis had given him, as Mr. Knox related, was missing from his wallet and clothes―obviously appropriated by his murderer at the time he strangled Grimshaw. The murderer would then be able to hold this promissory note over Khalkis’s head, for remember that Grimshaw was killed before Khalkis died. When Khalkis died unexpectedly, however, the note became virtually valueless to the murderer; for such a document presented for payment to anyone but Khalkis himself, now dead, would be so suspicious as to cause an investigation necessarily perilous to the murderer. When he stole the promissory note from Grimshaw, then, the murderer did it on the basis of Khalkis’s remaining alive. In a way, Khalkis by dying did his rightful heirs a good turn, saving his dwindling estate the considerable sum of half a million dollars.
“But an even more important fact arises.” Ellery paused and looked about the office. The door to the Inspector’s room was shut; he crossed over, opened it, peered about, closed it again and returned. “This is so important,” he explained bitterly, ‘that I don’t want even a clerk to hear it.
“Attend. The only person, as I said a moment ago, who had reason to divert guilt on to the head of the dead man, Khalkis, was naturally the murderer. Whereupon there are two characteristics which the murderer must possess: one, to have been able to plant the false tea-cup clue, the murderer must have had access to the Khalkis house after the funeral, between Tuesday afternoon when Miss Brett saw the two clean cups and Friday when we found the three dirty cups; two, the whole deception of the dirty tea-cups, to make it appear that only two people were involved, absolutely depended―mark this point―absolutely depended on Mr. Knox’s remaining silent about the fact that he was the third man, the fact obviously that there was a third man at all.