Abel said quickly: “We usually spend an hour or two in there, Mr. Queen, starting at eleven or so. Work we can’t leave to the secretaries.”
“If Abel is away, I take his place,” said Karla.
Her husband grinned at the Queens. “All in the family. Where the big plots are hatched. I’m sure you suspect that.”
“Kane, stop making jokes. You’re not to work there tonight.”
“Oh, nonsense.”
“You are not to!”
He looked across at his wife curiously. “You’re really concerned, darling.”
“If you insist on working there tonight, I insist on working with you.”
“On that point I yield,” he chuckled, “seeing that Abel’s going to be occupied elsewhere, anyway. Now let’s have breakfast, shall we, and forget this childishness?”
The servants, who had been standing by frozen, sprang to life.
“I would like to suggest, Mr. Bendigo—” began Ellery.
“Overruled. Now see here, Queen. I appreciate your devotion to the job, but the confidential work stops for nothing, the idea of murder is ridiculous, and in that room impossible. Sit down and enjoy your breakfast. You, too, Inspector Queen.”
But the Queens remained where they were.
“Why impossible, Mr. Bendigo?” asked the Inspector.
“Because the Confidential Room was built for just that purpose. The walls, floor, and ceiling are two feet thick — solid, reinforced concrete. There isn’t a window in the place — it’s air-conditioned and there’s artificial daylight lighting in the walls. There’s only one entrance — the door. Only one door, and it’s made of safe-door steel. As a matter of fact, the whole room is a safe. So how would anyone get in to kill me?”
King attacked his soft-boiled eggs.
Max’l looked uncertain. Then he sat down and pounded the table. Two servants jumped forward, getting busy.
But Karla said uncomfortably, “The air-conditioning, Kane. Suppose someone got to that. Sending some sort of gas—”
Her husband roared with laughter. “There’s the European mind for you! All right, Karla, we’ll station guards at the air-conditioning machinery. Anything to wipe that look off your face.”
“Mr. Bendigo,” said Ellery. “Don’t you realize that the person who wrote those letters is not to be laughed away? He knows exactly where you’ll be at midnight tonight — in what amounts to the classic sealed room, guarded moreover by trusted armed men. Since he warns us, he must know that that room tonight will be absolutely impregnable. In other words, he chooses the time and place apparently worst for his plan, and he insures by his warning that even farfetched loopholes will be plugged. Doesn’t that strike you as queer, to say the least?”
“Certainly,” replied the King briskly. “Queer is the word, Queen. He’s queer as Napoleon. It just can’t be done.”
“But it can,” said Ellery.
The big man stared. “How?”
“If it were my problem, Mr. Bendigo, I’d simply get you to let me in yourself.”
He sat back, smiling. “No one ever gets into that room except a member of my family—” He stopped, the smile disappearing.
The room was very quiet. Even Max’l stopped chewing. Karla was looking intently at Ellery, a crease between her eyes.
“What do you mean?” The voice was harsh.
Ellery glanced at Judah now, across the table from him. Judah was tapping a bottle of Segonzac cognac softly with a forefinger, looking at no one.
“Your brother Abel did some investigating on his own before calling us in,” said Ellery. “We’ve compared conclusions, Mr. Bendigo. They’re the same.”
“I don’t understand. Abel, what’s all this?”
Abel’s gray face seemed to go grayer.
“Tell him, Mr. Queen.”
Ellery said: “I located the typewriter on which all the notes have been typed. I also found the notepaper; it comes from the same place as the typewriter. I nicked the lower-case o on the machine, and all o’s typed in the two notes since have shown the nicks. This checks the typewriter identification.
“As a further check, I arranged to have the room where the machine is located watched by your guards. The result was conclusive, Mr. Bendigo: During the period in which the fourth note must have been typed, only one person entered and left those rooms — the person who belonged there. Your brother Judah.”
King Bendigo turned slowly toward his small, dark brother. Their arms, on the table, almost touched. A flush began to creep over the big man’s cheeks.
Max’l was gaping from his master to Judah.
Karla said in a breathless way, “Oh, nonsense, nonsense. This is one of your cognac jokes, Judah, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
Judah’s hand as he reached for the bottle was remarkably well controlled. He began to uncork the bottle.
“No joke, my dear,” he said hollowly. “No joke.”
“You mean,” began King Bendigo incredulously. Then he began again. “Judah, you mean you wrote those notes? You’re threatening to kill me? You?”
Judah said: “Yes, O King.”
He did it well, Ellery thought, for a man who was so taut you could almost hear the tension in him. Judah raised the bottle of Segonzac high. Then he brought it quickly down to his mouth.
King watched his brother drink. His eyes shimmered with amazement. They went over Judah, the crooked nose, the droop of the bedraggled mustache, the stringy neck, the rise and fall of the Adam’s apple. But then Judah lowered the bottle and met his brother’s glance, and something passed between them that made King seem to swell.
“At midnight, eh?” he said. “Got it all figured out.”
“At midnight,” said Judah in a high voice. “At exactly midnight.”
“Judah, you’re crazy.”
“No, no, King. You are.”
The big man sat quietly enough. “So you’ve had it in for me all these years... I admit, Judah, I’d never have thought of you. Has anyone ever given a damn about you but me? Who else would put up with your alcoholic uselessness? The very fact that you’ve had all the booze you can soak up you owe to me. So you decide to kill me. Are you out of your mind completely? Is there any sense to it, Judah — or should I say Judas?” Judah’s pallor deepened. “I’m your brother, damn it! Don’t you feel anything? Gratitude? Loyalty?”
“Hatred,” said Judah.
“You hate me? Why?”
“Because you’re no good.”
“Because I’m strong,” said King Bendigo.
“Because you’re weak,” said Judah steadily, “weak where it counts.” Now, although his face was like a death mask, the eyes behind it kindled and flamed. “There is strength that is weak. The weakness of your strength, brother, is that your strength has no humanity in it.”
The big man looked at the little man with eyes dulled over now, clouded and secretive, in a sort of retreat. But his face was ruddy.
“No humanity, O King,” said Judah. “What are human beings to you? You deal in corporate commodities — metals, oil, chemicals, munitions, ships. People are so many work-hours to-you, such-and-such a rate of depreciation. You house them for the same reason you house your tools. You build hospitals for them for the same reason you build repair shops for your machines. You send their children to school for the same reason you keep your research laboratories going. Every soul on this island is card-indexed. Every soul on this island is watched — while he works, while he sleeps, while he makes love! Do you think I don’t know that no one caught in your grinder ever escapes from it? Do you think I don’t know what that devil Storm is up to in the laboratory he had you build for him? Or why Akst has disappeared? Or Fingalls, Prescott, Scaniglia, Jarcot, Blum before Akst? Or what’s going on in Installation K-14? Or,” Judah said in a very clear, high voice, “why?”