“But were you?”
“Guess I must ‘a’ been. I was runnin’ in and out of the office all night. Why?”
Ellery sent his thumb whistling over his shoulder. “Do you think you would have noticed any one coming out of the Spanish Cape road there across the way?”
“Oh!” Stebbins regarded them shrewdly. “So that’s the ticket. Well, sir, I guess I would of an ordinary night. My lights here are pretty bright an’ they shine right on those two stone things. But Saturday night...” He shook his head. “Rush didn’t let up till near three in the mornin’. My oil-rack’s inside, I had to keep on goin’ in to make change... Some one might have come out, sir.”
“You’re sure,” muttered Ellery, “you didn’t actually see somebody?”
Stebbins shook his head. “Can’t say one way or t’other. Might ‘a’ been.”
Ellery sighed. “Too bad. I’d more or less hoped for something definite.” He reached for his brake, thought better of it, and twisted about again. “By the way, where do the Godfrey chauffeurs get their gas and oil, Stebbins? Here?”
“Yes, sir. I carry just about the finest grade of—”
“Oh, to be sure. Many thanks, Stebbins.” He released his brake and yanked on the wheel, heading the car for the stone pylons across the road.
“Now why,” demanded the Judge as they purred along the road through the park in the cool shade, “did you ask those questions?”
Ellery shrugged. “Nothing cosmic. Too bad Stebbins didn’t notice. If he had, he would have clinched matters. We proved yesterday that the killer made his escape by the land side. Where could he have gone if he didn’t come out by this road? Unless he threw himself off the cliffs it wouldn’t be possible to get out any other way but from the main-road exit back there. Couldn’t even dodge through the park here — that high wire fence would be unscalable to any creature but a cat. Had Stebbins said no one emerged opposite his station, we should have proved more or less satisfactorily that the killer had escaped — to the house.”
“I don’t see why you even questioned it,” said the old gentleman. “You go to the most unconscionable lengths to ‘prove’ a virtual fact! Certainly now we know enough about the basic situation to make it highly improbable that this was an outside job.”
“You never know anything until you’ve proved it right.”
“Nonsense. You can’t order life mathematically,” retorted the Judge. “Most of the time you ‘know’ things without factual evidence.”
“I’m Coleridge’s ‘thought-benighted skeptic’,” said Ellery unhappily. “I question everything. Sometimes I even question the results of my own thinking. My mental life is very involved.” He sighed again.
The Judge snorted, and neither man spoke again until the Duesenberg rolled to a stop before the mansion.
Young Cort was lounging in the doorway to the patio, looking sullen. Beyond him they could see Rosa lying in a deck-chair, in an abbreviated bathing-suit, sunning herself. No one else was about.
“’Lo,” said Cort without conviction. “Any news?”
“Not yet,” murmured the Judge.
“Martial law still, eh?” A scowl darkened the young man’s brown face. “This is beginning to get on my nerves. I’m a working man, did you know that? Can’t get out of this damned place. Those detectives are all over the scenery, blast ’em. I’ll swear one of them wanted to follow me into the bathroom this morning; I could see the yearning in his eyes... There was a call for you a couple of minutes ago, Queen.”
“There was?” Ellery jumped out of the car, followed by the old gentleman. A uniformed chauffeur ran up and drove the car off. “From whom?”
“I think it was Inspector Moley on the wire... Oh, Mrs. Burleigh!” The ancient little housekeeper was passing on the balcony above. “Wasn’t that Moley calling Mr. Queen a while ago?”
“Yes, sir. He said to call right back, too, as soon as you got here, Mr. Queen.”
“Back in a jiffy,” cried Ellery, and he dashed across the patio to vanish under the Moorish archway. The Judge went slowly into the flagged court and sat down beside Rosa with a thankful groan. Young Cort rubbed his back against the stucco wall of the patio, watching with an expression of the most sulky stubbornness.
“Well?” Rosa asked in a low voice.
“Nothing, my dear.”
They sat in silence for a while, soaking up the sun. The tall powerful figure of Joseph Munn sauntered out of the house, followed a moment later by a bored detective. Munn was in bathing-trunks; his massive torso was burned a deep brown. The Judge examined the man’s face through half-closed eyes. He had never seen a face, he thought, so perfectly controlled, and with so little effort. Suddenly he was reminded of another face, seen hazily through the dusty windows of many years. There was no similarity of feature, but a startling similarity of expression. The face had belonged to a notorious criminal, a man wanted in a dozen States for rape, murder, bank-robbery, and a score of lesser crimes. The Judge had studied that face while a vitriolic district attorney excoriated its owner before a hostile jury; he had watched it when the angry verdict had come in; he had watched it while he pronounced sentence of death. It had never once changed expression... Joseph A. Munn possessed the same gift of smoothly frozen imperturbability. Not even his eyes were an index to his thoughts; they were hard and half-concealed in screwing wrinkles developed through a lifetime of peering through vast distances in the glare of a torrid sun.
“Mornin’, Judge,” said Munn in his deep voice, very pleasantly. Then he grinned for an instant. “That’s a good one. ‘Mornin’, Judge!’ Well, what’s doing, sir?”
“Very little,” murmured the old gentleman. “From the way things are going, Mr. Munn, I should say the killer has an excellent chance of remaining a free and unknown agent.”
“Too bad. I didn’t like this Marco hombre, but that’s no call for murder. Live and let live is my motto. Down where I come from they settle things in the open when they do want action.”
“The Argentine, eh?”
“And vicinity. Great country, Judge. Think I’m goin’ back there. Never thought I would, but I realize now there’s nothing in this big-city stuff. I’ll take the wife down there with me soon as I can get away. She’ll go over big,” he chuckled, “with the vaqueros.”
“Do you think Mrs. Munn would care for that sort of life?” asked the Judge in a dry tone.
The chuckle died. “Mrs. Munn,” said the big man, “is going to have a chance to learn to like it.” Then he lit a cigaret and said: “Be seein’ you. Don’t take it so hard, Miss Godfrey. No man’s worth it — to a girl like you... Well! Guess I’ll go down for a swim.” He waved his muscular hand in a friendly way and strolled toward the exit from the patio. The sun gleamed on his bronzed torso. Rosa and the Judge stared after him. He paused to say something to young Cort, who still stood sullen guard at the doorway, shrugged his big shoulders, and stepped out of the patio. The detective sauntered after him, yawning.
“He gives me the creeps,” said Rosa, wincing. “There’s something about that American Firpo that—”
Ellery came striding into the court, his heels ringing against the flags. His eyes were bright and there was unusual color in his lean cheeks. The Judge half-rose from the chair.
“Have they found—?”
“Eh? Oh, Moley called to say that he’d just had the latest report on Pitts.”
“Pitts!” exclaimed Rosa. “They’ve caught her?”
“Nothing quite so exciting. She’s vanished very expertly, that lady’s-maid of your mother’s, Miss Godfrey. But they have found the car she escaped in. Fifty miles or so north. Near the railway station in Maartens.”