“My name,” twanged the visitor, “is Abel Bendigo.”
“Bendigo!” The Inspector stared. “You’re not the Bendigo—”
“Hardly,” said Abel Bendigo with a smile. “I take it you’ve never seen his photograph. But you see what I’m up against, Inspector Queen. These security people are members of my brother’s Public Relations and Personnel Department, which is under the command of a very hard fellow named Spring. Colonel Spring — I doubt if you’ve ever heard of him. He tyrannizes us all, even my brother — or, I should say, especially my brother! And so you’re Ellery Queen,” their visitor went on without so much as a glissando. “Great pleasure, Mr. Queen. I’ve never got over feeling a bit silly about these precautions, but what can I do? Colonel Spring likes to remind me that it takes only one bullet to turn farce into tragedy... May I sit down?”
Ellery pulled the old leather chair forward, and the Inspector said, “I wish, Mr. Bendigo, you had let us know in advance—”
“The Colonel again,” murmured Abel Bendigo, sinking into the chair. “Thank you, Mr. Queen, my hat will do nicely on the floor here... So this is where all the mysteries are solved.”
“Yes,” said Ellery, “but I believe what’s bothering my father is the fact that he’s due in his office at Police Headquarters in about twelve minutes, and it’s downtown.”
“Sit down, Inspector, I want to talk to both of you.”
“I can’t, Mr. Bendigo—”
“They won’t miss you this once. I guarantee it. By the way, I see we’ve interrupted your breakfast. Yours, too, Mr. Queen—”
“Just coffee this morning,” Ellery went to the table. “Will you join us?”
From the side of the room Brown Shirt said, “Mr. Bendigo.”
Bendigo waved his slender hand humorously. “You see? Another of Colonel Spring’s rules. Finish. Please.”
Ellery refilled his father’s cup from the percolator and poured a cupful for himself. There was no point in asking this man questions; in fact, there was every point in not. So he stood by the table and sipped his coffee.
The Inspector gulped his breakfast, throwing side glances at his wristwatch in perplexity.
Abel Bendigo waited in silence, blinking. Blue Shirt and Brown Shirt were very still. The man on the landing did not move. Mrs. Fabrikant’s vacuum cleaner kept buzzing in a helpless way.
The moment the Queens set their cups down, the visitor said, “What do you gentlemen know about my brother King?”
They looked at each other.
“Got a file on him, son?” asked the Inspector.
“Yes.”
Ellery went into his study. Blue Shirt moving aside. When he came back, he was carrying a large clasp envelope. He shook it over the table and a few newspaper and magazine clippings fell out. He sat down and glanced over them.
Abel Bendigo’s prominent eyes behind the glasses blinked at Ellery’s face.
Finally Ellery looked up. “There’s nothing here that amounts to anything, Mr. Bendigo. Sunday supplement stuff, chiefly.”
“You know nothing about my brother,” murmured the slender man, “beyond what’s in those clippings?”
“Your brother is rumored to be one of the five richest men in the world — worth billions. That, I take it, is the usual exaggeration. However, the assumption may be made that he’s a man of great wealth.”
“Oh, yes?” said Abel Bendigo.
“How great makes an interesting speculation. There is in existence an industrial monster known as The Bodigen Arms Company, munitions manufacturers, with affiliates all over the globe. This company is supposed to be owned lock and stock by your brother King. I say ‘supposed to be’ because the only ‘proof’ presented in evidence of his alleged ownership is the rather amusing one that Bodigen is an anagram of Bendigo. If it should happen to be true, I salaam. During World War II a single branch of The Bodigen Arms Company — just one branch out of the dozens in existence — showed profits after taxes of some forty-two millions a year.”
“Go on,” said Abel Bendigo, blinking.
“Your brother, Mr. Bendigo, is also said to be deeply involved in worldwide oil interests, steel, copper, aluminium — all the important metals — aircraft, shipbuilding, chemicals—”
“Anything, that is,” said Inspector Queen, dabbing at his mustache, “relating to materials vital to war. I really must be getting downtown, Mr. Bendigo—”
“Not yet.” Bendigo crossed his legs suddenly. “Go on, Mr. Queen.”
“Personal data,” continued Ellery, “are almost as speculative. Your brother seems extremely shy. Little or nothing is known about his background. A photographer for a Kansas newspaper won a national spot-news photography award two years ago for snapping a picture of King Bendigo and managing to get away with an unbroken plate, although the decoy camera by which he pulled off the trick was smashed to crumbs — by these gentlemen here, for all I know. The photo shows a big man, handsome as the devil — I quote an eye-witness — at that time fifty-two years old, which makes him fifty-four today. But he looks little more than forty or so, and he carries himself — I quote again — ‘with an arrogant self-confidence usually associated with twenty.’ ‘Dressed to kill,’ it says here, and you’ll forgive me if I wonder whether the reporter was trifling libelously with the English language when he wrote it.”
King Bendigo’s brother smiled, but then the corners of his mouth dropped and snuffed the smile out.
“I have in my possession,” he said slowly, “two letters. They were addressed to my brother. They’re threat-letters.
“Now a man in my brother’s position, no matter how careful he is to avoid publicity, can hardly avoid cranks. Colonel Spring’s PRPD takes all the necessary precautions against that sort of thing as a matter of routine. These letters, however, are a different run of shad.”
Bendigo took two folded sheets of paper from his inside breast pocket. “I want you to examine these, please.”
“All right,” said Ellery, and he came over.
The Inspector rose, too. “Where are the envelopes?”
“King’s secretaries discarded them before their importance was appreciated. My brother’s staff opens all his mail for sorting and distribution — all, that is, except letters marked ‘confidential’ or under special seal. These two letters, I understand, were in the ordinary mail.”
Ellery made no move to unfold them. “Was no attempt made to recover the envelopes, Mr. Bendigo? From the waste-basket, or wherever they were tossed?”
“There are no waste-baskets at our offices. Each secretary has beside his desk a chute which leads to a central macerating machine. Discarded paper goes down the chute and is chewed to pulp. The pulp feeds automatically into an incinerator.”
“Since smoke,” murmured Ellery, “can’t be yanked out of a file?”
Abel Bendigo’s lips pursed. “We have no use, Mr. Queen, for mere accumulations.”
“Let’s see those letters, Ellery,” said the Inspector.
The two sheets of paper were identical. They were creamy single sheets, personal letter size, of a fine vellum-type stationery, unmarked by monogram or imprint. In the center of each sheet there was a single line of typewriting.
“The six-word message was the first,” said Bendigo.
The six-word message was:
You are going to be murdered—
The dash was not casual. It was impressed into the paper, as if the key had been struck at that point with force.
The message on the second sheet was almost identical with that on the first. The only difference was the addition of two words: