He knew the door locked automatically, but he tried it anyway.
“You men. Help me get him on to the table.” There was nothing in Dr. Storm’s voice but preoccupation. The sterilizer was going. The contents of his kit were spread out on the desk.
Under the doctor’s direction they transferred the wounded man from the chair to the hospital table. His heavy body seemed without life.
“What’s the prognosis, Doctor?”
Storm waved them away. He was preparing a hypodermic.
Ellery took the small metal chair from the secretarial desk to a corner of the room, and the Inspector led Karla to it. She went submissively. She sat down, her eyes on the still figure of her husband and Dr. Storm’s fingers. Max’l stood over Judah in the other corner of the room, on the same side. Neither man moved.
“Mrs. Bendigo,” the Inspector said. He touched her. “Mrs. Bendigo?”
She started.
“Who shot him?”
“I do not know.” Suddenly she began to cry, without lowering her face or putting her hands to it. They did nothing. After a while she stopped.
“Well, who came into the room, Mrs. Bendigo?” asked Ellery.
“No one.”
Abel was going about the room gathering up papers — from the secretarial desk, from the floor where they had been thrown by Dr. Storm in clearing the top of King’s desk. There was something pitiful about the action, a mechanical gathering up of the secrets of a man who might never put them to use... the good and faithful servant going through the motions of preserving order in a house from which all reason for order had passed away. Abel stacked the documents in precise piles, transferring them to filing cases which he opened with a key and relocked afterwards. He seemed grateful for having something to do.
“No one passed through that door, Mrs. Bendigo?” Ellery kept looking around the room, his glance baffled and tormented.
“No one, Mr. Queen.”
“Neither in nor out?”
“No one.”
“Was there a phone call?”
“No.”
“Did either you or your husband make a call?”
“No.”
“No interruptions of any kind, then.”
“Just one.”
“When was that?” Ellery’s eyes came around quickly.
“At a few minutes to midnight, Mr. Queen, when you rapped on the door.”
“Oh, yes.” Ellery was disappointed. “And that was the only interruption? You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Ellery,” said his father patiently, “we’ve gone all through that. Abel and I were outside the door—”
Ellery’s glance took up the search again. “And then what happened, Mrs. Bendigo?”
“It recalled the whole dreadful thing to me, but only for a moment.” Karla glanced at the hospital table again, quickly shut her eyes. “When Kane closed the door and returned to his desk, he immediately resumed work on his papers. I was at the other desk, going over some reports for him. My back was to the door, where the clock is, so I had no idea what time it was... that the time was so close...”
Her voice trailed. They waited.
“I had to concentrate on what I was doing. I forgot... again. The next thing I knew the clock was chiming—”
“Chiming?” Ellery’s glance went to the golden hands set into the wall above the door. “That clock?”
“Yes. It chimes the hours. I looked up and around. The chimes had just begun. The clock was striking twelve. And I remembered again.”
“What happened?” And now Ellery gave her his whole attention.
“I turned from the clock to look at Kane, wondering if the chiming of midnight would recall it to him, too.” Karla opened her eyes; she looked once more across to the man on the table, with the pudgy figure in white working over him. And she went on rapidly: “But he was immersed in what he was doing. He had dismissed the whole affair as beneath his notice. Oh, if only he had felt a little fear — just a little! Instead, he sat there behind his desk in his shirt sleeves making notes on the margin of a confidential report. Then — it happened.”
“What?”
“He was killed. Wounded.”
“How?” exclaimed the Inspector.
“One moment, Dad. The clock was still chiming, Mrs. Bendigo?”
“Yes. — How? I do not know. One instant he was sitting there writing, the next his body... jerked with great violence and he fell back in his chair. I saw a... I saw a hole, a black hole, in his breast and a red stain spreading...” Her mouth worked uselessly. “No, I am all right... if only I can be of help... I do not pretend to understand it... I rushed around my desk to the side of his, with no thought but to take him in my arms... it had happened so suddenly I had no feeling of death — merely that he needed my help... I put out my hand to touch him, and that is all I remember until Inspector Queen revived me. I must have fainted as my hand went out.”
“Listen to me carefully, Mrs. Bendigo.” Ellery leaned over her chair, his face close to hers. “I want you to think before you answer, and I want you to answer with absolute fidelity to fact. Are you listening?”
“Yes?” Her face was tilted anxiously.
“Did you hear a shot?”
“No.”
“You didn’t think first,” Ellery said gently. “You’re ill and upset, a great deal has happened in a few minutes. — Think. Think back to that moment. You are sitting, facing your husband, who is at his desk. One instant he’s writing away. The next his body jerks and falls back and a black hole and stain appear on his shirt. Obviously he was shot. Someone fired a gun at him. Wasn’t the jerk of his body accompanied by a sound? Of some sort? Maybe it wasn’t a loud report. Maybe it was a sharp crack. Even a pop. Even a metallic click. Wasn’t there a click?”
“I remember no sound at all.”
“Did you smell anything at that moment, Mrs. Bendigo? Like something burning?”
She shook her head. “If something burned at that moment, I did not smell it.”
“Smoke,” said the Inspector. “Did you see any smoke, Mrs. Bendigo?”
“Nothing.”
“But that can’t be!”
Ellery put his hand on his father’s arm. “You see, of course, that someone must have been in this room with you and your husband, Mrs. Bendigo. Must have been. Couldn’t someone have been hiding here without your knowledge?”
“But that can’t be,” said the Inspector again, testily. Ellery touched his arm again.
“I don’t see how,” said Karla vacantly. “I had just looked around at the clock, as I have told you. I would have to have seen him had he been somewhere behind me. There is no place in this room to hide, as you can see. Besides, how would someone have got in?” She shook her head. “I do not understand it. I can only tell you what happened.”
Ellery straightened. He took his father’s left hand and held his own by its side.
Their wristwatches agreed.
Both men automatically glanced up at the clock above the door.
The clock, their watches, synchronized perfectly.
So they turned back to each other in a total embarrassment of the imagination. Ellery had already told his father the fantastic story of Judah’s actions in his study.