Ellery went behind the Bechstein and took a new bottle of Segonzac from the case on top of the pile. Judah was fumbling in his pockets. Finally he produced his pocket-knife.
“I’ll open it for you.”
Ellery took the knife from him, slit the tax stamp, and scraped the hardened seal off the bottle’s mouth. The knife had a corkscrew attachment; with it Ellery drew the cork. He placed the bottle on the desk beside the empty glass.
“I think,” he murmured, “I’ll borrow this, Judah.”
Judah followed his knife in its course to Ellery’s trouser pocket. Then he picked up the bottle.
Ellery glanced at his watch.
11.46.
At 11.53 Ellery said to Max’class="underline" “Get in front of him. I’ll be right back.”
Max’l got up and went to the desk, facing Judah seated behind it. The great back blocked Judah out.
Ellery unlocked the door, slipped outside, relocked the door from the corridor.
His father, Abel Bendigo, and the guards had not changed position.
“Still in there?”
“Still in there, son.”
“The door hasn’t been opened at all?”
“No.”
“Let’s check.”
Ellery rapped.
“But Judah...” Abel glanced across the corridor.
“Max is standing over him, the door’s locked, and the key’s in my pocket. Mr. Bendigo!” Ellery rapped again.
After a moment the lock turned over. The guards stiffened. The door opened and King Bendigo towered there. He was in his shirt sleeves. At the secretarial desk, Karla twisted about, looking toward the door a little blankly.
“Well?” snapped the big man.
“Just making sure everything’s all right, Mr. Bendigo.”
“I’m still here.” He noticed Abel. “Abel? Finish with those people so early?”
“I’ll wind it up in the morning.” Abel was tight-lipped. “Go in, King. Go back in.”
“Oh—!” The disgusted exclamation was lost in the slam of the door. The Inspector tried it. Locked.
Ellery looked at his watch again.
11.56.30.
“He’s not to open that door again until well after midnight,” he said. He ran across the hall.
When Ellery relocked Judah’s door from inside, Max’l backed away from the desk and padded to the door to set his shoulders against it.
“What did he do, Max?”
Max’l grinned.
“I drank cognac,” said Judah dreamily. He raised the snifter.
Ellery went around the desk and stood over him.
11.57.20.
“Time’s a-ticking, Judah,” he murmured. He wondered how Judah was going to handle the moment of supreme reality, when he was face to face at last with the stroke of midnight.
He kept looking down at the slight figure in the chair. In spite of himself, Ellery felt his muscles tighten.
Two minutes to midnight.
Judah glanced at the watch on his thin wrist and set the empty glass down.
And turned in his chair, looking up at Ellery.
“Will you please be good enough,” he said, “to give me my Walther?
“This?” Ellery took the little automatic out of his pocket. “I’m afraid there isn’t much you can do with it, Judah.”
Judah presented his upturned palm.
There was nothing to be read in his eyes. The light Ellery saw in them might be mockery, but he was more inclined to ascribe it to cognac. Unless...
Because he was what he was, Ellery examined the Walther, which had not left his pocket since he had removed its ammunition.
The automatic, of course, was empty. Nevertheless, Ellery examined it even more closely than before. It might be a trick gun. It might, somehow, conceal a bullet, and a pressure somewhere might discharge it. Ellery had never heard of a gun like that, but it was possible.
Not in this case, however. This was an orthodox German Walther. Ellery had handled dozens of them. It was an orthodox German Walther and it was not loaded.
He dropped the little automatic into Judah’s hand.
He could not help feeling an embarrassed pity as Judah transferred the empty gun to his right hand and took a firm grip on the stock, his forefinger curled at the trigger. Judah was intent now, making small economical movements, as if what he was about to do was of the greatest importance and required the utmost in concentration.
He pushed downward with his left hand on the desk top and got to his feet.
Ellery’s glance never left those hands.
Now Judah raised his left forearm. He stared down at the second hand of his wristwatch.
Thirty seconds.
His right hand, with the empty gun, was in plain view. There was nothing he could do with it, no sleight-of-hand, not a trick, not a bluff, not an anything. And if he could? If, by an unreasonable miracle, he could materialize a cartridge and load the gun with it with Ellery at his elbow, what could he do with it? Shoot Ellery? Hypnotize Max’l? And if he got out into the corridor, what then? A locked door of safe steel. A hallful of armed, alert men. And even then, no key.
Fifteen seconds.
What was he waiting for?
Judah raised the Walther.
Max’l moved convulsively, and Ellery almost sprang. He had to check his own reflex. Max’l uttered a growly chuckle, rather horrible to hear, and relaxed against the door again.
It was too stupid. There was nothing Judah could do with that empty little gun, nothing. Too an obscure curiosity stayed Ellery. There was nothing Judah could do, and yet he was preparing to do something. What?
Seven seconds.
Judah’s right arm came up until it was straight out before him. He was apparently taking aim at something, getting his sight set for a shot he couldn’t possibly fire. A shot he couldn’t possibly fire at a wall he couldn’t possibly penetrate.
Five seconds.
A theoretical extension of Judah’s right arm with the Walther at the end of it would make a line through the wall of his study, across the corridor, through the wall of the Confidential Room, into the approximate center of that room and — perhaps — the torso of a seated man.
Three seconds.
Judah was “aiming” at his brother King.
He was mad.
Two seconds.
Judah watched his upheld wrist.
One second.
And now, Judah?
At the tick of midnight, Judah’s finger squeezed the trigger.
Had the little Walther flamed and bucked at that instant Ellery could not have been so astounded. A gun that went off in spite of the impossibility of a gun’s going off would at the least have made reasonable the unreasonable play that went before. It would have been a physical miracle, but it would have given Judah’s actions the dignity of logic.
The little Walther, however, neither flamed nor bucked. It merely went click! and was quiet again. No roar reverberated through the room, no hole appeared in the wall, no voice cried out.
Ellery squinted at the man.
He was incredible, this Judah. He was not acting like a man who had just pulled the trigger of a gun that could not and did not go off. He was acting like a man who had seen the flame and felt the buck and heard the roar and the cry. He was acting like a man who had successfully fired a shot.
Judah lowered the Walther slowly and with great care put it down on his desk.
The he sank into the chair and reached for the bottle of Segonzac. He uncorked it slowly, slowly poured several ounces of cognac, slowly and steadily drank, the bottle still gripped in his left hand. Then he flung bottle and glass aside and, as they crashed to the floor, he put his face down on the desk and wept.
Ellery found himself going over the facts indignantly. No bullet in the gun. A wall, a corridor, then another wall two feet thick made of reinforced concrete. And a man safely beyond it. Safely. Unless... unless...