They walked down the corridor and waited for the key to be brought. A guard was already stationed at the door of the Confidential Room.
“You have the other two keys, Dad, haven’t you?”
The Inspector nodded. Ellery handed him the third key. The Inspector tucked it carefully away in one of his trouser pockets.
“We’d better get some sleep.”
The Inspector started for the elevator. But then he stopped, looking back. “Aren’t you coming?”
Ellery was standing where his father had left him. There was a queer expression on his face.
“Now what?” snarled the Inspector, stamping back.
“That bullet Storm extracted from King’s chest,” Ellery said slowly. “What caliber would you say it is?”
“Small. Probably .25.”
“Yes,” said Ellery. “And Judah’s gun is a .25.”
“Oh, come on to bed.” The Inspector turned away.
But Ellery seized him by the arm. “I know it’s insane,” he cried.
“Ellery—” began his father.
“I’m going to check.”
“Damn it!” The Inspector stamped after him.
There was a guard at Judah’s door, too. He saluted as the Queens came up.
“Who put you here?” grunted the Inspector.
“Mr. Abel Bendigo, sir. Personal orders.”
“Judah Bendigo’s in his rooms?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ellery went in. The Inspector went past him to the door of Judah’s bedroom. The room vibrated with snores. The Inspector switched on the lights. Judah was lying on his back, mouth open. The room reeked; he had been sick.
The Inspector turned the lights off and shut the door.
“Got it?”
Ellery had his hand over the little Walther. It was on the desk, where he had tossed it after Judah’s exhibition of murder-by-magic at midnight.
“Now what? What are you staring at?”
Ellery pointed with his other hand.
On the rug, behind Judah’s desk, lay a cartridge shell.
The Inspector pounced on it. Out of his pocket he brought one of the unexploded cartridges Ellery had taken from Judah’s Walther before midnight and handed over for safekeeping.
“It’s a shell from the same make and caliber of cartridge. The same.”
“He didn’t fire it,” Ellery said. “It never went off. No shell came out when he went through that hocus-pocus. The gun was empty, I tell you. It’s a trick, part of the same trick.”
“Let’s see that gun!”
Ellery handed it to his father. The Inspector examined the German automatic with its ivory-inlaid stock and the triangular nick in the corner of the base. He shook his head.
“It’s sheer lunacy,” said Ellery, “but do you know what you and I are going to do before we go to bed?”
The Inspector nodded numbly.
They left the room without words, the Inspector carrying the gun, Ellery carrying the shell. Once the Inspector tapped his breast pocket, where the bulge was of the envelope containing the cotton-wrapped bullet from King Bendigo’s body.
At the guard station Ellery said to the officer in charge, “I want a fast car with a driver. Get your ballistics man, whoever and wherever he is, out of bed and have him meet Inspector Queen and me at the ballistics lab, wherever that is, in ten minutes!”
They never did learn the name of the ballistics man. And they could never afterward recall what he looked like. The very laboratory in which they passed through the final episode of the nightmare remained a watery blur to them. Once during the next hour and a half the Inspector remarked that it was the finest ballistics laboratory he had ever seen. Later, he denied having said it, on the ground that he hadn’t really seen anything. Ellery could not argue the point, as the machinery of his memory seemed to have stopped operating, as well as all his other long-functioning equipment.
The shock was too great. They hovered over the ballistics man, watching him work over the shell and the bullet and the little Walther — firing comparison shots, washing, ammoniating, magnifying — watching him angrily, jealously, hopefully, guarding against a trick, anticipating more magic, smoking like expectant fathers, even laughing at the absurdity of their own antics.
The shock was too great.
They saw the results themselves. It was not necessary for the ballistics man to point out what he pointed out, nevertheless, in the most technical detail — firing-pin marks, extractor and ejector traces, marks from the breech block. This was all about the shell they had picked up from the floor of Judah’s study. And they studied the near-fatal bullet and the test bullet in the comparison microscope, eying the fused images of the two bullets unbelievingly. They insisted on photographic corroboration and the ballistics man produced it in “rolled photographs” showing the whole circumference of the bullet on a single plate. They peered and compared and discussed and argued, and when it was all over they faced the paralyzing conclusion:
The bullet Dr. Storm had dug out of King Bendigo’s chest had been fired from the gun Judah Bendigo had aimed emptily at his brother with two impenetrable walls and a lot of air space crowded with hard-muscled, men in the way.
It was impossible.
Yet it was a fact.
12
July came — the first, the Fourth.
There was a ceremony of sorts before the Home Office, with the American flag raised beside the black Bendigo standard and a short speech by Abel Bendigo. But this was for the benefit of the Honorable James Walbridge Monahew, unofficial representative of the United States to The Bodigen Company — a courtesy such as the sovereign power extends to a friendly government. Present were Cleets of Great Britain and Cassebeer of France. There was a cocktail party afterwards in the Board Room, which neither Ellery nor his father was invited to attend. They learned later that several toasts were drunk — to the health of the absent King Bendigo, the President of the United States, the King of England, and the President of the Republic of France, in that order.
Bendigo was still confined to the hospital wing at the Residence, under twenty-four-hour guard. Ambiguous bulletins posted by Dr. Storm gave the impression of a rapid recovery. By July fifth the patient was reported sitting up. Still, no visitors were permitted except his wife and his brother Abel. Max’l was not classified as a visitor; he never left the sickroom, feeding there three times a day and bedding down on a cot within arm’s reach of his divinity.
Karla spent most of her days in the hospital. The Queens saw little of her except at dinner, when she would chat in a strained, preoccupied way about everything but the subject uppermost in their minds. Abel they saw rarely; with the King helpless in bed, the Prime Minister was a busy man.
Judah was the surprise. For the first week after the attempted assassination he was confined to his quarters under guard, and the six cases of Segonzac cognac behind his Bechstein grand were removed at Abel Bendigo’s order. But Judah kept mellow. His apartment was searched repeatedly, and a bottle or two were found occasionally in a rather obvious hiding-place; the guards suspected him of trying to keep them happy. The chief source of his supply they never located. For a few days it was a game which Judah showed every evidence of enjoying in his sardonic fashion. After his confinement was lifted and he was given freedom of the Residence, with the exception of the hospital wing, all attempts to keep him sober were abandoned. It would have taken a general of logistics commanding an army corps of Carrie Nations to track down half his secret caches.
The Queens wondered grimly about Judah’s release, and they spent several days seeking an explanation. Finally they succeeded in ambushing Abel. It was late one night, as he entered the Residence bound for bed.