The detective hurried up with long strides. “Something and nothing,” he reported in a low voice. “I’ve checked with the ‘phone company. They’ve a record of a call last night from the Waring cottage.”
“Good!” exclaimed the Judge.
“Not so good. That’s all. No way of telling who was dialed; the dial system doesn’t show, or something. It was a local call, though.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, that’s something, I admit. It sure looks as if this big man-mountain reported back to somebody in this house. But try and prove it.” The Inspector’s jaw-muscles bunched. “But I know now what the identity of that big gent is.”
“The kidnaper?”
“I knew it would come back to me, and I’ve already checked up on him.” Moley jammed a twisted Italian cheroot into his mouth. “Get this, now — you won’t believe it. He’s a guy by the name of Captain Kidd!”
“Nonsense,” protested Ellery. “That’s stretching the probabilities to an unconscionable degree. With a patch over one eye? What’s the world coming to? Captain Kidd! I’m surprised he hasn’t a pegleg.”
“Probably the patch,” remarked the Judge in a dry tone, “suggested the name, my son.”
“Seems to be the size of it, sir,” grunted the Inspector, dribbling acrid smoke. “Talking about peglegs, Mr. Queen — one of the things Miss Godfrey told us about him was what brought him to mind. He’s got just about the biggest pair of clodhoppers this side o’ Poland. Bigger than Camera’s, they say; some of the boys down his way call him ‘Tugboat Annie’ when they want to get his goat. That scar on his neck she mentioned helped, too. Bullet-hole, I think.”
“A veritable gladiator,” murmured Ellery.
“And then some. Nobody knows his real handle. Just Captain Kidd. The patch is on the level; he had his eye poked out about ten years ago, I understand, in a fight on the waterfront with some tough little Wop.”
“Then he’s well-known in these parts?”
“Well enough,” said Moley grimly. “Lives alone in a shack on the mudflats down Barham way, and he manages to get along by hiring out as a fishing-guide. He’s got a dirty little sloop, or something. Drinks quarts of bug-juice a day and keeps pretty much to himself. Got a rep as a bad customer. He’s been a fixture on this stretch of coast for about twenty years, but nobody seems to know much about him.”
“Sloop,” said Ellery thoughtfully. “Then why did he steal Waring’s cruiser, unless it was out of sheer cussedness?”
“Faster. You can go places in that thing. And it’s got a cabin. Matter of fact, one of my men reports that he sold his sloop out to another fisherman just Wednesday. Sounds interesting.”
“Sold out,” repeated the Judge with sudden gravity.
“That’s the story. I’ve sent the alarm out all along the shore, and the Coast Guard are warned to keep their eyes open. Must be something of a dope if he expects to get away with that job he pulled last night. Somebody’s playing him heavy for a sucker. With that carcass of his he couldn’t any more disguise himself than an elephant in a one-tent circus. Mask!” The Inspector snorted. “He pinched the car, all right. Man who owns it identified it five minutes ago. It was stolen off a side-road where it was parked last night around six. About five miles from here.”
“Queer,” muttered Ellery. “And yet, at that, it isn’t as stupid as it appears on the surface. A man like your piratical Kidd might easily decide to pull one last desperate job and light out. Seems indicated by his sale of the sloop, his only means of livelihood.” He slowly lit a cigaret. “He is now in possession of a boat, as you say, that can go places. If he’s been paid off in advance he can ditch Kummer’s body miles off the coast in the ocean, where it will never be found, and head for anywhere he pleases. Even if you pick him up, where’s the well-known and frequently elusive corpus delicti? But that seems to me a remote possibility. He’s gone, I fear, for something better than good. A birdie tells me, Inspector, that you’re in for it.”
“Running out on me already?” grinned Moley. “Anyway, it’s a question whether he murdered Marco last night. By all accounts he hauled Kummer out to sea thinking he was Marco. And the guy he reported to by ‘phone probably to his surprise saw Marco after Kidd’s call, realized Kidd had messed things up and grabbed the wrong man, and bumped Marco last night himself while Kidd was attending to Kummer miles out at sea.”
“It’s possible,” pointed out the Judge, “that Kidd landed late last night somewhere along the coast and ‘phoned his employer again, you know. And he might have been instructed to return and finish the job.”
“Possible, but I’m convinced we’re investigating two murder cases, not one. With two separate killers.”
“But, Moley, they must be connected!”
“Sure, sure.” The Inspector blinked. “He’s got to land for gas some time, y’see, and then we’ll nab him. Kidd, I mean.”
“For the cruiser?” Ellery shrugged. “Despite his stupidity, he pulled off his job. I see no reason to believe that in so elementary a precaution as fuel he should have slipped up. He probably has a lot of it cached somewhere in an isolated spot. I shouldn’t rely—”
“Well, we’ll see. There’s a hell of a lot of work to be done. Haven’t had a chance even to give the house a thorough looking-over. Come along, gents. I want to show you something pretty.”
Ellery removed the cigaret from his mouth and stared hard at the detective. “Pretty?”
“It’s a pip. Something you don’t see every day, Mr. Queen — even you don’t.” There was a trace of sarcasm in Moley’s voice. “This thing ought to be right up your alley.”
“Come, come, Inspector, you’re being deliberately provoking. Pretty about whom?”
“The stiff.”
“Oh! Well,” grinned Ellery, “from all I hear he was something of an Adonis.”
“You ought to see him now,” said the Inspector grimly. “Adonis was a wall-eyed bohunk compared to him. I’ll bet a lot of gals wouldn’t mind peekin’, even if he is deader’n a mackerel. It’s the screwiest thing I’ve run across in twenty-five years of looking at dead men.”
The appalling truth was that John Marco sat, very dead, in a chair at one of the round terrace tables, slumped a little, a black stick still in his right hand and resting almost horizontally on the flagstones, his black crisp curls covered by a black fedora hat a trifle askew, a theatrical-looking black opera cloak draped about his shoulders and caught at the neck by a metal hasp and braided loop — and otherwise naked.
He was not three-quarters naked, not half-naked, not almost naked. Under the cloak he was naked as the day he had been born.
The two men gaped like bumpkins at a country fair. Then Ellery blinked and looked again, to make sure. “By God,” he said in such a tone as a connoisseur might employ in awed contemplation of a work of art. Judge Macklin merely stared, incapable of speech.
Inspector Moley stood to one side watching their astonished faces with a sort of unhappy pleasure. “How’s that for a new wrinkle, Judge?” he growled. “I’ll bet you sat on the bench hearing many a case in which the subject was an undressed woman, but an undressed man—! I don’t know what the devil this country’s coming to.”
“You’re not suggesting,” began the old gentleman with a grimace of disgust, “that some woman—”
Moley shrugged his powerful shoulders and puffed at his cheroot.
“Bilge,” said Ellery, but his tone was unconvincing. He could only stare.
Naked! Beneath the cloak the dead man wore not a scrap of clothing. The blue-white hairless torso gleamed in the morning sun, marble statuary worn smooth and pallid by time; death had left its unmistakable imprint on that firm skin. He had flat angular breasts, and the shoulders were broad and strong, tapering to a small waist. Long flanks, rigid in death, were roundly muscled. The legs were slim and unveined, like the legs of a boy; and he had almost beautiful feet.