by Ellery Queen
He reached in, found a case full of white cigarettes ringed in black, and passed her one. “Is the house brand any good?” he asked. “I used to smoke American cigarettes all the time, but I managed to give them up.”
“They’re free and available,” she said, lighting one. “Something like Felix Bollinger himself.”
“You were going to talk about the conference,” he reminded her.
“Yes, the conference, a gathering of do-gooders trying to change the world. But the world cannot be changed, can it?”
“That all depends. You’re not archeologists, then?”
“No. Although the Russian, Rusanov, knew enough about it to fake a few lectures after Fanger and Miss Gaad turned up. No, Mr. Rand, in truth we’re nothing more than peace activists. Our five nations—America, France, Britain, China, Russia—are the only ones who have perfected nuclear weapons.”
“Of course! I should have realized that!”
“We are meeting here—with funds provided by peace groups and ban-the-bomb committees in our homelands—to work out some coordinated effort. As you can see, we’re no young hippies but sincere middle-class idealists.”
“But why only the five of you? And why out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“A larger meeting would have attracted the press—which would have been especially dangerous for Dr. Tao and Ivan when they returned home. We heard of this place, just being built, and it seemed perfect for our purpose.”
“Do you remember who actually suggested it?”
She blushed prettily. “As a matter of fact, I did. I’d met Felix Bollinger in Paris last year, and—”
“I understand,” Rand said. “You sent out some sort of announcement to the press to cover yourselves, and Cairo University believed it.”
“Exactly.”
“Which one of you did Fanger recognize?”
She looked blank. “He didn’t admit to knowing any of us.”
“All right,” Rand said with a sigh. “Thanks for the information.”
He left and went in search of Leila Gaad.
He found her finally in her room—the last place he thought of looking. The orange walls and draped assaulted his eyes, but she seemed to enjoy the decor. “I think I’ve found our murderer,” she announced. “And I’ve also found a concealed communication for you to ponder.”
“I thought this was going to be one case without it. First tell me who the killer is.”
“The American—Northgate! I found this pair of shoes in the rubbish by the incinerator. See—orange paint on the bottom! And they’re American-made shoes!”
“Hardly conclusive evidence. But interesting. What about the concealed communication?”
She held a little notebook aloft triumphantly. “I went back to Professor Fanger’s room and found this among his things. He was always writing in it, and I thought it might give us a clue. Look here—on the very last page, in his handwriting. Invite to room, confirm tritan.”
“Tritan? What’s that?”
“Well, he spelled it wrongs, I guess, but Triton is a mythological creature having the body of a man and the tail of a fish—sort of male version of a mermaid. That would imply a good swimmer, wouldn’t it? And seeing them all around the pool, I can tell you Northgate is the best swimmer of the lot.”
“Fanger was going to confirm this in his room? How—by flooding the place?”
“Well…” She paused uncertainly. “What else could it mean?”
Rand didn’t answer. Instead he said, “Come on. Let’s go see Northgate.”
The American answered the door with sleepy eyes and a growling voice. “Don’t you know it’s the middle of the night?” Rand held out the shoes for him to see, and he fell silent.
“Going to let us in?”
“All right,” he said grudgingly, stepping aside.
“There are your shoes, aren’t they?”
There was little point in denying it. “Yes, they’re mine.”
“And you were in the room after Fanger was murdered?”
“I was there, but I didn’t kill him. He was already dead. He’d invited me up for a nightcap. The door was unlocked and when I went in I found him dead and the room a terrible mess. I was afraid I’d be implicated so I left, but I discovered later I’d stepped in some orange paint. When you got us all out by the pool to search for paint spots I panicked and threw the shoes away.”
Rand tended to believe him. The real murderer would have done a better job of disposing of the incriminating shoes. “All right,” he said. “Now let’s talk about the conference. Jeanne Bisset had already told me its real purpose—to work for nuclear disarmament in your five nations. Did Fanger have any idea of this?”
“I think he was onto something,” the American admitted. “That’s why he wanted to see me. He wanted to ask me about one of the others in the group—someone he thought he knew.”
“Which one?”
“He was dead before he could tell me.”
“What damage could a spy do at this conference?” Rand asked.
Northgate thought about it. “Not very much. I suppose if he was in the pay of the Russians or Chinese he could report the names of Rusanov and Dr. Tao to their governments, but that would be about all.”
“I may have more questions for you later,” Rand said.
“He was probably killed by one of the Arab employees,” Northgate suggested as Rand and Leila headed for the door.
Back downstairs, Leila said, “Maybe he’s right. Maybe it was just a robbery killing.”
“Then why go to such lengths with the paint and the other things? There was a reason for it, and the only sane reason had to be to hide the killer’s identity.”
Leila took out one of her orange cigarettes. “Splashing paint around a hotel room to hide a killer’s identity? How?”
“That’s what I don’t know.” He produced the dead man’s notebook again and stared at the final message: Invite to room, confirm tritan. It wasn’t Triton misspelled. A professor at Cairo University wouldn’t make a mistake like that.
His eyes wandered to Leila’s cigarette, and suddenly he knew.
Dr. Wayne Evans opened the door for them. His hair and beard were neatly in place, and it was obvious he hadn’t been sleeping. “Well, what’s this?” he asked. “More investigation?”
“The final one, Dr. Evans,” Rand said, glancing about the blue suite. “You killed Professor Fanger.”
“Oh, come now!” Evans glanced at Leila to see if she believed it.
“You killed him because he recognized you as a spy he used to deal with. He invited you to his suite to confirm it, and when he confronted you with it there was a struggle and you killed him. I suppose it was the beard that made him uncertain of your identity at first.”
“Is this any way to talk to a fellow countryman. Rand? I’m here on an important mission.”
“I can guess your mission—to sabotage this conference.”
Evans took a step backward. He seemed to be weighing the possibilities. “You think I killed him and messed up the room like that?”
“Yes. The room was painted like a rainbow, and strewn with towels and things from the next building. But just a little while ago I remembered there were cigarettes strewn on that floor too, next to the broken ceramic box they were in. There were no cigarettes stored in the next building. I think while you were struggling with Fanger he ripped your pocket. The cigarettes from your suite tumbled out, just as the table was overturned and his own cigarette box smashed. Your cigarettes and his cigarettes mingled on the floor. And that was the reason for the entire thing—the reason the room had to be splashed with paint and all the rest of it. To hide the presence of those blue cigarettes.”
Dr. Wayne Evans snorted. “A likely story! I could have just picked up the blue ones, you know.”
“But you couldn’t have,” Rand said. “Because you’re color-blind.”
That was when Evans moved. He grabbed Leila and h
ad her before Rand could react.
The knife in his hand had appeared as if by magic, pressed against her throat. “All right, Rand,” he said very quietly. “Out of my way or the girl dies. Another killing won’t matter to me.”
Rand cursed himself for being caught off guards cursed himself again for having Leila there in the first place.
“Rand,” she gasped as the blade of the knife pressed harder against her flesh.
“All right,” he said. “Let her go.”
“Call Bollinger. Tell him I want a car with a full petrol tank and an extra emergency can. I want it out in front in ten minutes or the girl dies.”
Rand obeyed, speaking in clipped tones to the manager. When he’d hung up, Evans backed against the door, still holding Leila. “Can’t we talk about this?” Rand suggested. “I didn’t come to this place looking for you. It was only chance—what happened, I mean.”
How’d you know I am color-blind?”
“Fanger left a notation in his notebook. Invite to room, confirm tritan. He was simply abbreviating tritanopia—a vision defect in which the retina fails to respond to the colors blue and yellow. It’s not as common as red-green blindness, and when Fanger thought he recognized you he knew he could confirm it by having you up to his yellow room. By a quirk of fate you’d been placed in the blue suite yourself. And when you dropped the cigarettes during the struggle, you had only two choices—pick up all the cigarettes, blue and yellow alike, or leave them all and somehow disguise their presence.”
“Make it short,” Evans said. “I’m leaving in three minutes.”
“If you took all the cigarettes you risked having them found on you before you could dispose of them. Even if you flushed them down the toilet, a problem remained. Fanger was a known nonsmoker. The broken cigarette box would call attention to the missing cigarettes, and the police would wonder why the killer took them away. If your color blindness became known, someone might even guess the truth. But splashing the room with paint, using every color you could find, not only camouflaged the cigarettes but also directed attention, in a very subtle manner, away from a colorblind person.”
Evans reached behind him to open the door. “You’re too smart. Rand.”
“Not really. Once I suspected your color blindness, I remembered your momentary confusion on those rainbow-colored paths yesterday, when you started down the blue path to the pool and then changed your mind and took the yellow one to the lounge. Of course both colors only looked gray to your eyes.”
Walk backward,” Evans told Leila. You’re coming with me.”
“Who paid you to spy on the conference?” Rand asked. “What country?”
“Country?” Evans snorted. “I worked for countries when Fanger knew me. Now I work where the real money is.”
He moved down the hall, dragging Leila with him, and Rand followed. Felix Bollinger was standing by the door, holding it open, the perfect manager directing a departing guest to his waiting car.
“Out of my way,” Evans told him.
“I hope your stay was a pleasant one,” Bollinger said. Then he brought a gun from behind his back and shot Evans once in the head…
Leila Gaad downed a stiff shot of Scotch and said to Rand, “You would have let him go, just to save me! I must say that wasn’t very professional of you.”
“I have my weaknesses,” Rand admitted.
Felix Bollinger downed his own drink and reached again for the bottle he’d supplied. “A terrible opening for my resort. The home office won’t be pleased.”
“Who was paying Evans?” Leila asked. And paying him for what?”
We’ll have to check on him,” Rand said. But I suppose there are various pressures in today’s world against disarmament. In America sometimes they’re called things like the military-industrial complex. In other nations they have other names. But they have money, and perhaps they’re taking over where some of the governments leave off. When we find out who was paying Evans, it might well be a company building rockets in America, or submarines in Russia, or fighter planes in France.”
“Is there no place left to escape?” Leila asked.
And Felix Bollinger supplied the answer. “No, my dear, there is not. Not even here, at the End of the Rainbow.”
“Q”