“We couldn’t have. We must have neglected one thing.”
The Inspector mumbled, “Whatever it was... Too bad King broke the seal you put on the door. By this time it’s been removed from the room.”
“It was removed from the room before I sealed the door.”
“Now that,” cried his father, “is impossible! Not a thing was taken out — before you sealed the lock — that we didn’t search!”
“I’d have sworn, too, that we searched everything that passed out before we locked and sealed the room. But later I remembered that there was one thing we let go through that we clearly, definitely did not search.”
“We searched every human being that passed through that doorway,” said the Inspector angrily, “including the wounded man himself. We searched the hospital table he went out on. We searched Dr. Storm’s medical kit and every last article of equipment he’d brought in. Do you admit that?”
“Yes.”
“Then what are you talking about?” The Inspector waved his arms. “Nothing else went out!”
“One other thing went out. And that thing we didn’t search. Therefore it was in that thing that the gun left the room.”
“What thing!”
“The bottle of Segonzac cognac Judah took out of the filing case while we were all in the room after the shooting.”
Inspector Queen was dazed. “The gun went out hidden in a bottle of cognac? A gun? In a bottle? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? I suppose he just eased it down through the neck of the bottle — trigger guard, stock, and all! What’s the matter with you? Besides, that was a brand-new bottle. You yourself sliced off the government tax label and the wax seal and removed the cork with a corkscrew!”
“So I did,” said Ellery. “And that’s what bamboozled me, as it was planned to do. But you can wriggle from yesterday to doomsday, and the fact stands: There must have been a gun in that room, the gun must have left the room, the only thing that left the room without being searched was Judah’s bottle of cognac, therefore it was in Judah’s bottle of cognac that the gun left. If we accept that fact, as we must—”
“Accept it!” muttered his father. “How can I accept an impossibility? You weaseled out of two impossibilities only to get yourself... bottled up, God help us, in a third!”
“If you accept the fact, then the bottle as a carrier can’t be impossible, it must be possible. How can a bottle conceal a gun? Well, let’s have a look at a Segonzac bottle.” Ellery reached over again to his suitcase and brought out one of the familiar bottles. “I took this sample along on the trip to keep reminding me of my fatheadedness. Since the Segonzac bottles are uniform in shape and size, this one will serve as a model for the one Judah had stashed away in the Confidential Room.
“True, it has a conventional neck — in fact, the neck is on the slender side. So the gun couldn’t have been inserted through the mouth and neck, as you so reasonably pointed out. But it has a broad base — the Segonzac bottles are bell-shaped. And this Walther .25 that fired the shot — according to the ballistics tests — is how big? It isn’t big at all. On the contrary, it’s absurdly small. The barrel is only an inch long. The total length of the gun is scarcely four inches. Add to the bottle’s broad bottom and the tiny size of the weapon the felicitous fact that the Segonzac bottles are also a very dark green in color — so dark as to be opaque — and the impossibility melts away, leaving a simple answer.”
Ellery tossed the bottle aside. “The bottle Judah took out of the filing case in the Confidential Room that night was specially made, Dad. It had a false bottom. The false bottom must have been lined with cotton, or felt, or some other sound-deadening material. The false bottom in a bottle of opaque glass would easily conceal the Walther from our eyes, and the lining of the compartment would prevent any clink, as the bottle was held or moved, from betraying its contents to our ears. All this in a bottle with a faked government tax stamp, professionally corked and sealed, and the illusion was set.”
The Inspector said, “She shot him — he got the bottle out of the drawer... Karla and Judah were in this together!”
Ellery nodded, his eyes on the frenzied harbor scene below. “Each had a part to play, worked out in advance. Judah wrote and sent the threatening letters and with considerable histrionic talent staged and played the scene in which he solemnly aimed and fired an empty gun... a gun whose existence and whereabouts he was careful to point out to me beforehand. And in the Confidential Room, where the shooting was to take place, Karla pulled the trigger of the actual murder gun — and in her nervousness bungled the job — hid the gun in the false bottom of the prepared bottle, put the bottle back in the filing case, and then ‘fainted.’ They were accomplices, all right—”
“Just a minute,” said his father. “King was shot with Judah’s gun — the gun you took off Judah’s desk after the shooting — the gun you’re holding right now. That’s a fact proved by ballistics tests. But this gun was in Judah’s study! How could Karla have shot King with a gun that wasn’t in the Confidential Room at any time?”
“Go back to the actual shooting of King,” replied Ellery. “Karla has fired the shot at her preoccupied husband, who is wounded and unconscious before he can see who shot him. Karla then hides the murder gun in the false bottom of the bottle. After we all enter the room, Judah removes the bottle from the drawer, allows me to open it for him — daring touch, that — drinks from it — and subsequently the bottle is taken out of the room under our eyes.
“Remember, you and I stayed behind, after the others left, to make a last search for the gun which was no longer there. This gave the person who’d taken it out of the room in the bottle the opportunity to cross the corridor, enter Judah’s study, shut the door, take the murder gun out of the false bottom of the bottle, remove any remaining cartridges from the gun... and then place that gun, the one which had shot King in the other room, on Judah’s desk for us to find later! The gun which I had seen Judah pretend to fire at midnight — the always-empty gun — was then taken away. By the time you and I searched the Confidential Room for the last time, locked and sealed the door, and went to Judah’s study, the switch had long since been made. The gun I picked up from Judah’s desk was no longer the one I had seen Judah pretend to fire in that hocus-pocus at midnight — it was now the gun Karla had fired at King in the other room.”
“Identical guns...”
“In outer appearance only. It was easy enough to get hold of a pair of guns of the same make, type, and caliber and deliberately to chip similar slivers of ivory out of the inlays of both stocks. But they couldn’t fool ballistics so far as the interior mechanisms of the two guns were concerned, and they knew we’d make the lab tests. That’s why there had to be two guns that looked alike: so that a switch could be made after the shooting, putting the murder gun where the dummy gun had been and thereby completing the illusion of a single gun and consequently an impossible crime.”
“But why?” cried the Inspector. “Why did they want it to look like an impossible crime?”
“Because an impossible crime, a crime that ‘couldn’t’ have happened, even though a man was shot in the impossible process,” said Ellery dryly, “would protect the criminals from detection, or at least from prosecution. If the gun we found outside the room was demonstrably the gun that had been fired at King inside the room — when the gun that had been fired inside the room couldn’t possibly have got out! — then neither Judah outside nor Karla inside could be tagged for the job. You could suspect and theorize, but unless you could demonstrate how it was done, they were safe.”