“Go on. Open it.” Helen pointed at the refrigerator.
“Mad!” Archie flung open the refrigerator door. “There! See!” he said smugly. “Two shrunken bananas, a cup of yogurt, and half a salami. But no secret formula!”
“She certainly had poor dietary habits,” Helen mused. She inspected the salami. “And she wasn’t kosher, either,” she added disapprovingly. “Go on. Open the door to the freezer compartment.”
“Insane!” Archie opened the freezer door. “One TV dinner and four trays of ice cubes,” he announced. “But no secret formula.”
“Don’t be such a smartypants. Take out the ice trays.”
“Idiotic!” Archie removed the ice trays. “Nothing but ice coating the back," he sneered.
“A housekeeper she wasn't. How long since she defrosted, I wouldn’t want to guess.” Helen rummaged through a kitchen drawer and came up with an icepick.
“Chip it away,” she instructed Archie.
“Lunacy!” He stabbed at the ice with the pick and ducked his head as the small chips began flying. “Imbecility!” he muttered as he continued. “Sheer, unadulterated nuttiness! I don’t know why I--”
“There. Helen Steinberg’s voice was a clarion call of triumph “See! There it is!”
“Well, I’ll be damned!" Archie's jaw dropped open as he did indeed discern a packet of papers outlined deep behind the ice-wall. He recovered himself and resumed stabbing furiously at the hard-frozen area.
“Don’t do that!” Helen Steinberg stopped him. “You want to rip them to shreds? We have to defrost the refrigerator.” She turned a dial on the side of the freezer compartment and motioned to Archie to follow her out of the kitchen.
“What now?” he asked as they re-entered the bedroom.
“Look out! ” she screamed.
Archie swung around just in time to see a burly figure springing at him behind the door. Almost casually, Archie held up the icepick to meet the flying form. His attacker impaled himself and crashed to the floor with the icepick sticking out of his heart.
Dead eyes stared back at Archie as he looked at the face. They belonged to one of the hoodlums he had tied up in the foyer before. Archie picked up the revolver still clutched in the Russian’s hands and went to check on the second hoodlum’s whereabouts.
He needn’t have worried. The second gunsel was still trussed up in the closet in the foyer. The first one had managed to cut his bonds against a jagged piece of metal on the radiator to which Archie had bound him. The frayed tie still dangled from it. But evidently he'd been in such a hurry to attack Archie that he hadn’t stopped to free his buddy. Archie closed the closet door and returned to Helen Steinberg.
“I think the refrigerator is defrosted enough by now to get the papers,” she told him. "Let’s go see.”
They went into the kitchen. Archie looked into the freezer compartment. Helen peered over his shoulder. “If you chip very carefully at it now," she told him, “I think you can get it loose.” She handed him the icepick which she had removed from the chest of the latest co se.
They both had their heads in the refrigerator a few minutes later when two new voices sounded from the entry to the kitchen. “He’s at the fridge,” the first voice said.
“What’s he doing there?” the second voice wondered.
“Fixing himself a snack, I guess.”
“Oh? Well, I guess killing four people would work up an appetite.”
Archie bumped his head on the refrigerator door-frame as he turned around. When the stars cleared in front of his eyes he found himself looking at the inspector and Patrolman Angelo Valenti. Both were pointing their guns at him as if they meant business.
“How did you get here?” Archie wondered.
“It was Valenti s hunch,” the inspector admitted.
“Simple deduction,” Valenti admitted modestly. “Plus the fact that I persuaded Vito to give us a little info.” He made a fist, waved it at Archie, and grinned. “You’re a regular one-man crime wave, ain’t you?” he added. “I make it one attempted rape and five murders so far.”
“It's hard to figure,” the inspector sighed. “A kid like you, could be clean-cut-looking if you got a haircut, comes from a good background, plenty of money, respectable parents—I don’t know! I just can’t figure what makes you kids act the way you do today.”
“Now wait a min!" Archie said. “Wait just a cotton-pickin’ min! In the first place, I didn’t try to rape anybody. I hate to put you down, Valenti, but the fact is that your fiancee was more than willing.”
“It doesn’t matter," the inspector told him as Valenti glared. “We don’t even have to bother with a sexual assault charge. Not with five murders going for us, we don’t.”
“But I didn’t kill them!” Archie protested.
“You killed one of them,” Helen Steinberg reminded him helpfully. “The last one. Remember?"
“I did not!” Archie was indignant. “He deliberately threw himself on an icepick I just happened to be holding.”
“A clear case of suicide,” the inspector said sarcastically. “And how about the Chinese gentleman? Who killed him?”
“The Russian,” Archie insisted. “The other man lying there.”
“We’ve got the gun we think did that one,” Valenti reminded the inspector. “Found it lying on the dresser inside. Looks like the right caliber for the holes in the Chinese.”
“Well then. if you’re right,” the inspector said smoothly, “Mr. Jones here has nothing to worry about. If the gun matches up, it’ll probably have the killer’s prints on it. And of course those prints won’t be Mr. Jones’s because he didn’t kill him.”
“But my prints are on the gun,” Archie remembered. “I just picked it up before to check on the hood in the closet."
“What hood? What closet?” the inspector wanted to know. Archie told him. “Better go have a look,” he instructed Valenti.
“But I didn’t kill the Chinese even if my prints are on the gun,” Archie insisted. “The Russian killed him.”
“That’s true,” Helen Steinberg insisted. “I saw the Russian kill him. I was a witness.”
“And I suppose the Chinese killed the Russian,” the inspector said wearily.
“That’s‘right,” Archie and Helen chimed in together. “Assuming you're telling the truth,” the inspector pointed out, “that still doesn’t clear you where the dead girl is concerned. You still could have killed her.”
“No, I didn’t!” Archie said.
“No, he didn’t,” Helen echoed. “The Russian killed her. He confessed it to us. I heard him."
“So you’re just an innocent victim of circumstances,” the inspector growled at Archie. “But what about Beaumarchais? We know you killed him."
“You know wrong. The Russian killed him, too.”
“That’s right,” Helen confirmed. “He did. I -”
“I know. You heard him confess it.” The inspector looked disgusted as he took the words out of her mouth.
“It’s all perfectly clear to me except for a couple of minor details,” Archie said. “And it’ll be clear to you too after I explain it," he added to the inspector as Valenti came back into the room. “But the first thing you should do right now is get in touch with Strom Huntley of the CIA so he can come up here and take charge of these papers. Believe me when I say they’re a matter of vital national security.”
“It just so happens that this Huntley character is downstairs,” Valenti said. “He’s been tagging along with us and insisting that he have a chance to talk to you before we shot you down. We kept telling him it was kind of impractical in the case of a hardened killer like you since we’d most likely have to shoot first and ask questions later, but he insisted.”
“Get him up here,” the inspector told Valenti.
The policeman called out the window to one of the cops waiting in the street. “He’s on his way,” he informed the inspector after a moment.