Ellery was tapping the wheel with the little gun, frowning at the activity below them. “I wonder,” he began, “if King is mobilizing—”
But his father was not listening. “Karla put the gun in the bottle, Judah took the bottle out of the drawer... I don’t seem to recall Judah’s taking that bottle out of the room. Or Karla, either. It was—”
He glanced at Ellery in bewilderment.
“It was Abel,” said Ellery absently. “Abel, who went out of character to lose his temper, grab Judah by the collar, make a hammy, emotional speech... snatch the bottle of Segonzac out of Judah’s hand, and leave the room with it. So it was Abel who crossed the corridor and switched the guns in Judah’s study. Yes, Abel was in the plot, too, Dad. And now you see why Abel brought us here and has kept us here on what seemed a trivial assignment. Our function was purely and simply to witness the ‘impossible’ crime — as representatives of the world outside — so that we could testify later to the facts which seem to clear Judah and Karla.”
16
Inspector Queen was silent.
“They were all in it,” said Ellery, still frowning at the harbor. “Judah, Karla, Abel. The wife and both brothers. Conspiring to kill the great King — an assassination in the approved historical tradition. Abel, the leader, the other two acting under his orders.”
“Yes,” said the Inspector, “it would have to be Abel who led them. Judah’s a feeler, and Karla wouldn’t be able to conceive such a plan. But Abel’s a thinker.”
Ellery nodded. “And a brilliant one. A man who’s always been run by his head. Who’s run his brother King.”
“What?” said his father.
“We had proof of that the first hour we were on the island, Dad, if we’d only had the sense to see it. Abel parked us in the reception room while he went into King’s office. We overheard what went on in there... Mr. Minister of War of the South American accent got King roaring mad; he almost wrecked a delicate deal. And then King stopped roaring to say, ‘Yes, Abel. What is it?’ and Abel either whispered to him or passed him a note. Immediately King Bendigo became a very smooth article. He handled Mr. Minister of War exactly right, and Mr. Minister of War walked out with two yachts in his pocket and the Guerrerra works belonging to Bodigen Arms was safe.
“And a few minutes later King ran into trouble again, with the very smooth Monsieur the Minister of Defense. Monsieur the Minister of Defense is a stone; he demands to be flown back. ‘What, Abel?’ says King, and after a whispered confabulation with Abel, King again pulls off a successful deal and another arms contract is saved for the Company. When Abel is silent, King blusters and blunders. When Abel whispers, King becomes the negotiator supreme.”
Ellery stared at the seething bay. “Think back to my notes, Dad. Between 1919 and 1924 Kane Bendigo — flying solo, as it were — cracks up three times. And that’s not counting his father’s old, established business, which Kane’s run into the ground in record time. Then, backed by a Wrightsville group hypnotized by his personality, he starts his first munitions plant and suddenly he’s off to the races. Did he start that business alone? Oh, no. Abel has left college to join him — Abel, at the age of twenty! And King’s ridden high, wide, and handsome ever since, and Abel’s never left his side.
“King knows what he wants. He’s always known that. But while he can set the goals, he can’t plan and execute the moves needed to reach them. It’s Abel who’s done the practical work, who’s performed industrial miracles behind the plausible, glittering façade of King. Without Abel, King would have been a man with grandiose ideas who couldn’t have run a successful newsstand. With Abel, he’s become the most powerful man in the world.”
The Inspector was shaking his head. “And still it doesn’t make sense to me, Ellery. I can see how Karla and Judah would turn on King. Karla’s a decent sort, for all her background. She found out the truth about the man she married, what a power-mad lunatic he is — maybe found out a lot about his plans we don’t know. Judah’s a disappointed artist, a man with a deep feeling about people, and he considers his brother the biggest mass-murderer in history — isn’t that what he said? And both Judah and Karla stuck on this nightmare of an island, stewing in the fumes from those damned munitions and atomic plants...
“I see those two fine. But Abel’s been an active partner in this thing for twenty-seven years, Ellery! You say yourself he’s the one who’s made it possible. You might say he plotted King’s death because of personal ambition. But I don’t see that. A man like Abel always prefers the background. He gets a kick out of pulling the wires and hiding in the shadow of his front man.
“And those notes of yours... You can’t doubt, from reading them, that Abel’s worshiped his brother Kane ever since they were boys in Wrightsville. Ever since Kane saved his life in that swimming hole when Abel was seven years old.” The Inspector shook his head again. “It doesn’t go down, Ellery. It doesn’t wash.”
“It goes down, and it washes,” said Ellery. “Just because of that life-saving incident.”
“How do you mean?” His father stared.
“Remember the day in the gym, when King found Judah’s fourth letter in one of his boxing gloves and got so irritated he slipped on the tiles at the edge of the indoor pool and fell in?”
“Yes?”
“Didn’t that strike you as awfully queer, Dad? His sinking, floundering, spluttering? His having to be pulled out of the water? The incident stuck in my mind. It bothered me.
“Then in Wrightsville,” said Ellery, “I learned the details of his athletic prowess as a youth. He was an all-round athlete, participated in almost every sport. Football. Baseball. Boxing. Wrestling. Track. Field. But never once did I run across his name in connexion with swimming.”
“But—” his father began in perplexity.
“Today I took inventory of his wardrobe. There are dozens, scores of every conceivable article of male apparel. Except one, which should have been there — judging from the quantities of everything else — by the dozen or the score, too. Yet there was not a single pair of swimming trunks, not a single bathing suit or swimming accessory.”
“That’s why you knocked him into the pool!”
“As a last check,” Ellery nodded. “And he almost drowned. He would have drowned if I hadn’t pulled him out. That’s what’s behind Abel’s motive, Dad: King can’t swim.”
“But... that silver cup awarded to ‘Kane Bendigo’ for water polo! Did you ever try playing water polo without knowing how to swim? He must be able to swim!”
“The ‘Kane Bendigo’ was re-engraved. Karla even explained that his original name was C-a-i-n and that he had changed it to K-a-n-e, and since he’d won the water-polo trophy under his original name, he’d had the cup changed to read K-a-n-e later. She specifically told us that he had told her that... Dad, we’ve seen the proof twice since we got to Bendigo Island that the man doesn’t know how to swim. So he lied to his wife about the reason for the re-engraving on that trophy. It couldn’t have been his. It had been awarded to someone else, and he’d had the name re-engraved not from Cain to Kane, but from someone else’s name to Kane!
“This man with the false hair and the false teeth and the false front has been living another lie. For forty years. Because if King can’t swim now, he couldn’t swim in 1911. Once he’s learned, no one ever forgets how to swim.