Inspector Queen was not amused at all. He went about from room to room antagonistically examining the grandeur into which they had been thrust; and he reserved his most hostile glare for the valet, who was patiently awaiting an opportunity to undress him. To avoid a homicide, Ellery conveyed Jones to the door.
They bathed, shaved, and dressed in fresh clothes from their suitcases, and then they waited. There was nothing else to do, for they could find no newspapers and the magnificent leather-bound books turned out to be discouraging eighteenth-century works in French and Latin. And from the windows nothing could be seen but foliage. The Inspector occupied himself for some time searching the suite for a secret transmitter, which he was positive was planted somewhere in the sitting room; but after a while he grew tired of even this diversion and began fuming.
“Damn it, what kind of runaround is this? What are we supposed to do, rot here? I’m going downstairs, Ellery!”
“Let’s wait, Dad. All this has a purpose.”
“To starve us out!”
But Ellery was frowning over a cigarette. “I wonder why we’ve been brought to the island.”
The Inspector stared.
“Abel hires us to investigate a couple of threatening letters received, he says, through the mail. The mail undoubtedly is flown here daily from the mainland by Bendigo’s planes. If those letters came through the mail, then, they emanated from the mainland. Why, then, does Abel ask us to investigate on the island?”
“Because he thinks the letters came from the island!”
“Exactly. Someone’s slipping them into the pouches or into the already sorted Residence or Home Office mail.” Ellery ground out his cigarette in a Royal Sèvres dish which was probably worth more than he had in the bank. “Which somebody? A clerk? Secretary? Footman? Guard? Factory hand? Lab worker? For anyone like that, the Prime Minister doesn’t have to make a special trip to New York, with a side visit to Washington, to engage the services of a couple of outsiders. That kind of job could be polished off by Colonel Spring’s department in about two hours flat.”
“So it gets down to... what?” Ellery looked up. “To somebody big, Dad.”
But the Inspector was shaking his head. “The bigger the game, the less likelihood that Bendigo would call in an outsider.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s right? But you just said—”
“That’s right, and that’s wrong, too. So none of it sets on the stomach. In fact,” and Ellery fumbled for another cigarette, “I’m positively bilious.”
That was when the telephone tinkled and Ellery leaped to answer it, almost knocking his father down. Abel Bendigo’s calm twang said he was terribly sorry but his brother King was being a bit difficult this evening and in Abel’s considered judgement it would be a lot smarter not to press matters at the moment. If the Queens didn’t mind dining alone...?
“Of course not, Mr. Bendigo, but we’re anxious to get going on the investigation.”
“Tomorrow will be better,” said the Yankee voice in the tones of a physician soothing a fretful patient.
“Are we to wait in these rooms for your call?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Queen. Do anything you like, go anywhere you please. I’ll find you when I want you.” Perhaps to get by the ironical implications of this statement, the Prime Minister said hurriedly, “Good night,” and hung up.
Dinner was served in their suite from warming ovens and other portable paraphernalia by a butler and three serving-men under the cadaver’s eye of a perfect official who introduced himself as the Chief Steward of the Residence and thereafter uttered not a single word.
It was like dining in a tomb, and the Queens did not enliven the occasion. They ate in silence, exactly what they could not afterward recall except that it was rich, saucy, and French, in keeping with the décor.
Then, in the same nervous silence, and because there was nothing else to do, they went to bed.
There was no note from Abel Bendigo on their plates the next morning, and the telephone failed to ring. So after breakfast Ellery proposed a tour of the Residence.
The Inspector, however, had developed a pugnacious jaw. “I’m going to see how far they’ll let me go. Where do you suppose the royal garage is?”
“Garage?”
“I’m borrowing a car.”
He went out, his jaw preceding him, and Ellery did not see him until late afternoon.
Ellery prowled about the five-armed building alone. It took him all morning to make its acquaintance. Certainly he made the acquaintance of nothing more animate, for he saw none of the Bendigo family during his tour and the servants in livery and minor officials of the household whom he ran across ignored him with suspicious unanimity.
He was stopped only once, and that was on the top floor of the central building. Here there were armed guards in uniform, and their captain was politely inflexible.
“These are the private apartments of the family, sir. No one is allowed to enter except by special permission.”
“Well, of course I shouldn’t want to blunder into anyone’s bathroom, but I was given to understand by Mr. Abel Bendigo that I could go anywhere.”
“I have received no orders to admit you to this floor, Mr. Queen.”
So Ellery meekly went back to the lowlier regions.
He looked in on the state dining-room, the grand ballroom, salons, reception rooms, trophy rooms, galleries, kitchens, wine cellars, servants’ quarters, storerooms, even closets. There was an oak-and-leather library of twenty thousand volumes, uniformly bound in black Levant morocco and stamped with the twin-globes-and-crown, which more and more took on the color of a coat-of-arms. The standardization of the books themselves, many of them rare editions raped of their original bindings, made Ellery cringe. None that he sampled showed the least sign of use.
Shortly before noon Ellery found himself in a music salon, dominated by a platform at one end large enough to accommodate a symphony orchestra. In the center of this stage glittered a concert grand piano sheathed in gold. Wondering if this splendid instrument was in tune, Ellery climbed to the platform, opened the piano, and struck middle C. An unmusical clank answered him. He struck a chord in the middle register. This time the horrid jangle that resulted impressed him as far too extreme to be accounted for by mere neglect, and he raised the top of the piano.
Six sealed bottles, identical in every respect, lay in a neat row on the strings.
He took one out with curiosity. It was bell-shaped, with a slender neck, and of very dark green glass, so dark as to be opaque. The antiqued label identified the contents as Segonzac V.S.O.P. Cognac. The heavy seal was unbroken, as were the seals of its five brothers, at which Ellery sighed. He had never had the good fortune to savor Segonzac Very Special Old Pale Cognac, for the excellent reason that Segonzac Very Special Old Pale Cognac was priced — where it could be found at all — at almost fifty dollars the bottle. He replaced the heavy glass bell on its harmonious bed and lowered the top of the grand piano with reverence.
A man who cached six bottles of cognac in a grand piano was an alcoholic. The middle Bendigo brother, Judah, had been reported by the Inspector’s military tête-à-tête as an alcoholic. It seemed a reasonable conclusion that this was Judah Bendigo’s cache. The incident also told something of the musicality of the Bendigo household, but since this was of a piece with the evidence of the library, Ellery was not surprised.