by Ellery Queen
As for Ellery Queen, it could not be said that his spirits soared above sea level. There was no taste in anything, matter or music. He went back to a detective novel he had been composing when the case of the Old Woman and her six children had thrown it into eclipse; but the shadow was still there, hanging heavily over the puppets of his imagination and making the words seem just words. He went over the Potts case in his mind endlessly; he fell asleep to the scudding of far-fetched theories.
But the days came and went, the house on Riverside Drive gradually became just a house, the newspapers turned to fresh sensations, and it began to appear that the Potts case had already passed into criminal history, to be no more than a footnote or a paragraph in some morbid reference book of the future.
One morning, three weeks after the disclosures in Cornelia Potts's confession had officially closed the dossier on the case, Inspector Queen was about to leave for Police Headquarters—he had already grunted "Toodle-oo" to his son, who was still at breakfast—when suddenly he turned back from the door and said: "By the way, Ellery, I got a cable yesterday afternoon from the Dutch East Indies."
"Dutch East Indies?" Ellery absently looked up from his eggs.
"Batavia. The prefect or commissioner of police there, or whatever they call him. You know, in reply to my cable about Major Gotch."
"Oh," said Ellery. He set down his spoon.
"The cable says Gotch has no record down there. I thought you'd like to know.., just to clear up a point."
"No record? You mean they haven't anything on him?"
"Not a thing. Never even heard of the old windbag."
The Inspector sucked his mustache. "Doesn't mean much. All I could give them was the name and description of a man forty years older than he'd been if he'd ever been there, and what's in a name? Or else Gotch is just a liar—a lot of these old-timers are—even though he swore he'd raised Cain in the Dutch East Indies in his time."
Ellery lit a cigaret, frowning over the match. "Thanks."
The Inspector hesitated. Then he came back and sat down, tipping his hat over his eyes as if in shame. "The Potts case is a closed book and all that, son, but I've been meaning to ask you—"
"What, Dad?"
"When we were talking over motives, you said you'd figured out that this old Major had a possible motive, too. Not that it's of any importance now—"
"I also said, I believe, that it was impossibly fantastic."
"Never mind knocking yourself out," snapped his father. "What did you have in mind?"
Ellery shrugged. "Remember the day we went over to the Potts house to ask the Old Woman to use her authority to stop the killings, and found her lying dead in bed?"
"Yes?" The Inspector licked his lips.
"Remember on the way upstairs I said to Dr. Innis that there was one question I'd been meaning to ask Mrs. Potts?"
"I sure do. What was the question?"
"I was going to ask her," said Ellery deliberately, "whether she'd ever seen her first husband again."
Inspector Queen gaped. "Her first husband? You mean this Bacchus Potts?"
"Who else?"
"But he's dead."
"Dead in law, Dad. That's quite another thing from being dead in fact. It struck me at one point in the case that Bacchus Potts might be very much alive still."
"Hunh." The Inspector was silent Then he said: "That hadn't occurred to me. But you haven't answered my question. What did you have in mind when you said Major Gotch had a possible motive, too?"
"But I have answered your question, Dad."
"You . . , mean . . . Bacchus . . . Potts . . . Major Gotch—" The Inspector began to laugh, and soon he was wiping away the merry tears. "I'm glad the case is over," he choked. Another week and you'd have been measured for a restraining sheet yourself !"
"Amuse yourself," murmured his son, unruffled. "I told you it was fantastic. But on the other hand, why not? Gotch might be Potts the First."
"And I might be Richard the Second," chuckled his father.
"Fascinating speculation at the time, as I recall it," murmured Ellery. "Cornelia Potts has her husband declared dead after he's been absent seven years. She marries Steve Brent. He has a companion, 'Major Gotch.' Many years have passed since she last saw hubby number one, and the tropics change physiognomies wonderfully. Suddenly Cornelia discovers that Major Gotch is none other than Bacchus Potts! Makes her a bigamist or does it? Anyway, it's embarrassing. Situation."
"Rave on."
"And the worst of it is, 'Major Gotch' has found himself a comfortable nest. Sees no point in waving farewell. Pals with the new husband, and all that. New husband defends him. Cornelia's trapped ... That theory appealed to me, Dad, wild as it was. Charley Paxton, in telling me the story of the Old Woman's Ufe, had been vague—as well he might be!—about Cornelia's reason for permitting Gotch to live in her household. Mightn't that have been the reason? A hold Gotch had on her? That she wasn't legally married to Brent and therefore her children—her reputation—her business—?"
"Hold it," said the Inspector testily. 'Tm an idiot for listening to this fairy tale, but suppose Gotch is Potts the First What motive for murdering the twins would that give him?"
"The two husband», inseparable companions,** said Ellery dreamily, "living in the same house, playing endless checker tournaments with each other ... What? Oh, his possible motive. Well, Dad, we agreed at the time that the Potts clan may have been going through a process of liquidation, one member at a time. And who were liquidated? Sheila Brent spotted it immediately. Only the sane ones were dying. The Brents."
"So?"
"So suppose the first Potts had come back in the person of 'Major Gotch'? Mightn't he come to hate his successor, the second Potts—no matter how fast their friendship had been in the atolls of the South Seas?"
"Aaaa," said the Inspector.
"Mightn't he come to hate the three additional children Cornelia and Steve Brent brought into the world? Mightn't he resent the shares of Sheila, Bob, and Mac in what would seem to him his millions? Mightn't he reason, too, that their very existence jeopardized the security of his own children, the Three Goons—Thurlow, Louella, and Horatio? And because of all this, mightn't Bacchus Potts' 'Gotch' brood and plan and finally go over the deep end and begin to eliminate those not of his blood?—one by one?—Robert, Maclyn, then Sheila, and finally Steve Brent himself? Don't forget, Dad, if Gotch is Potts, he's insane. Potts's three children are proof enough of that."
The Inspector shook his head. "I'm glad the Old Woman's confession spared you the embarrassment of having to spout that theory!"
"The Old Woman's confession ..." echoed Ellery in a queer tone.
"What's the matter with the Old Woman's confession?" The Inspector sat up straight.
"Your tone—"
"Did I say anything was the matter with it?"
"It's my gout, Father," smiled Mr. Queen. "My gout? I must remember to take the waters."
The Inspector threw a cushion at him. "And I must remember to send that will and confession back to Paxton. We've got photostatic copies for the files, but the pay-off is that Thurlow—Thurlow!—wants the confession for 'the family records'! .. . Oh, son." The Inspector stuck his head back through the doorway, grinning. "I promise not to tell a soul about that Gotch-is-Potts theory of yours."
Ellery threw the cushion back.
For Ellery Queen the path of literature this morning was paved merely with good intentions. He scowled at his typewriter for almost an hour without pecking a word. When he finally did begin to write, he found the usual digital difficulties insuperable. He had developed a mysterious habit of shifting the position of his hands one key to the left, so that when he thought he had written the sentence: "There were bloody stripes on Lecky's right elbow," he found that it actually read—more interestingly but less comprehensibly—"Rgwew qwew vkiist areuowa ib Kwzjt&a eufgr wkviq" This he felt would place an unfair burden upon his readers; so he ripped the sheet out and essaye
d a new start. But this time he decided that there was no special point to putting bloody stripes on Lecky's right elbow, so there he was, back at the beginning. Curse all typewriters and his clumsiness with them!
Really ought to have a stenographer, he brooded. Take all this distracting mechanical work off his hands. A stenographer with honey-colored hair . . , no, red hair. Small. Perky. But sensible. Not the kind that chewed gum; no. A small warm package of goodies. Of course, purely for stenographic purposes. No reason why a writer's stenographer shouldn't also be inoffensive to the eye, was there? In fact, downright pleasant to look at? Like Sheila Brent, for instance. Sheila Brent...
Ellery was seated before his reproachful machine a half hour later, hands clasped behind his head and a self-pitying smile on his face, when the doorbell rang. He started guiltily when he saw who his caller was. "Charley!"
"Hullo," said Charley Paxton glumly. He scaled his hat across the room and dropped into the Inspector's sacred armchair. "Have you got a Scotch and soda? I'm pooped."
"Of course," said Ellery keenly. As he busied himself being host, he watched Charley out of the corner of his eyes. Mr. Paxton was looking poorly. "What's the matter? Strain of normal living proving too much for you, Charley?"
Charley grinned feebly. "It's a fact there hasn't been a murder in almost a month. Tedious!"
"Here's your drink. Why haven't I seen you since confessional?"
"Conf— Oh. That day." Charley scowled into his glass. "Hands full. Keeping the mobs of salesmen away from the Potts Palladium, as you call it. Handling a thousand legal details of the estate."
"Is it as large as you estimated?"
"Larger."
"I suppose a niggardly million or so?"
"Some pittance like that"
"How's Sheila?"
Charley did not answer for a moment. Then he raised his hollow eyes. "That's one of the reasons I came here today."
"Nothing wrong with Sheila, I hope?" Ellery said quickly.
"Wrong? No." Charley began to patrol the Queen living room.
"Oh. Things aren't going so well between you and Sheila—is that it?"
"That's putting it mildly."
"And I thought," murmured Mr. Queen, "that you'd come to invite me to the wedding."
"Wedding!" said Charley bitterly. "I'm further from the altar now than I ever was. Every time I say: 'When are we going to take the jump?' Sheila starts to cry and say she's the daughter of a two-times killer, and she won't saddle me with a murderess for a mother-in-law, even if she is dead, and a lot of similar hooey. I can't even get her to move out of that damned house. Won't leave old Steve, and Steve says he's too decrepit to start bumming again.... It's hopeless, Ellery."
"I can't understand that girl," mused Ellery.
"It's the same old madhouse, only worse, now that the Old Woman's not there to crack down. Louella's filling it with useless, expensive apparatus—I swear shell blow that place up some night!—buying on credit, and of course she's getting all she wants now that the Old Woman's dead and the trades-people know what a lulu of a fortune Louella's coming into.
"Thurlow's lording it over them all—cock of the roost, Thurlow is. Sits at the head of the table and makes with the lofty cracks to Steve and Major Gotch, and is otherwise a complete pain in the—"
"As I was saying," said Ellery, "Sheila baffles me. Her attitude strikes me as inconsistent with my conception of the whole woman. Charley, there's something wrong somewhere, and it's up to you to find out what."
"Of course there's something wrong. She won't marry me!"
"Not that, Charley. Something else ... Wish I knew ... Might make ..." Mr. Queen stopped guillotining his sentences in order to think. Then he said crisply: "As for you, my dear Gascon, my advice is to stick to it. Sheila's worth fighting for. Matter of fact," he sighed, "I'm "inclined to be envious."
Charley looked startled.
Ellery smiled sadly. "It won't come to a duel at dawn, I promise you. You're her man, Charley. But just the same—"
"I didn't say I think so. I said it's possible," said Ellery irritably. "Possible, possible! That's all I do in this blasted case—call things 'possible'! What are you shaking your head for?
"The Old Woman's signature, Ellery," said Charley in a depressed tone. "You compared it yourself with the other signatures—the one at the end of the will, the one on the large envelope. And you pronounced the signature genuine."
"There's the rub, I admit," muttered Ellery. "On the other hand, it was only a quick examination. It might be an extremely clever forgery that only the most minute study will disclose. The traps one's sense of infallibility sets! Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Mr. Queen, and start punching!"
"We've got to go over the signatures again?"
"What else?" Ellery clapped Charley on the shoulder. Then he fell into a study. "Charley. Remember when we visited the Old Woman early in the case to question her about the terms of her will? At that time, I recall, she handed you a slough of memorandums. I saw her sign them myself with the same soft pencil she apparently used always. What happened to those memos?"
"They're at the house, in that kneehole desk in the downstairs study."
"Well, those memos bear her authentic signature; that I'll swear to. Come on."
'To the house?"
"Yes. But first we'll stop at Headquarters and pick up the original of the confession, Charley. Maybe one theory in this puzzle will come out right side up!"
22 . . . Mené, Mené, Tekel, Upharsin
They found no one about but the servants, as usual. So they made directly for the library, and Ellery shut the door, rubbing his palms together, and said: 'To work. Those signed memos, please."
Charley began rummaging through the drawers of the kneehole desk. "Got the shakes," he muttered. "If it's only ... Here they are. What do we do now?"
Ellery did not reply at once. He riffled the sheaf of memorandums with an air of satisfaction. "Employ the services of a rather large ally," he said. "Nice sunny day, isn't it?"
"What?
"Silence, brother, and reap the harvest of a quiet eye,' as Wordsworth recommends."
"Seems to me you're in an awfully good humor," grumbled Charley Paxton.
"Forgive me. This is like a breath of forest air to a man who's been shut up in a dungeon for three weeks. It's hope, Charley, that's what it is."
"Hope of what? More danger for Sheila?"
"Hope of the truth," cried Ellery. He went to the nearest window. The sun, that "large ally," made the window brilliant; by contrast, the study was in gloom.
"Perfect." Ellery took the topmost memorandum of the sheaf and held it flat against the pane with his left hand. The sunshine made the white paper translucent.
"The confession, Charley. Wasn't Dad curious!"
Ellery placed the confession over the memorandum on the windowpane, shifting it about until its signature lay superimposed upon the signature of the memorandum, visible through it. Then he studied the result. "No."
The signatures were obviously written by the same hand, but minor variations in the formation and length of certain letters caused a slight blurry effect when the two signatures were compared, one upon the other.
Ellery handed the memorandum to the lawyer. "Another memo, Charley."
Charley was puzzled. "I don't understand what you're doing."
"No," said Ellery again. "Not this one, either. And the next, Mr. Paxton."
When he had exhausted the pile of memorandums, he said to Charley in an assured voice: "Would you mind handing me again that memo which instructed you to sell all the Potts Shoe Company stock and buy back at 72?"
"But you've examined it I"
"Nevertheless."
Charley located it in the heap and handed it to him. Ellery once more placed it over the confession against the window.
"Look here, Charley. What do you see?" "You mean the signatures?" "Yes."
Charley looked. And then he said in an astonished
voice: "No blurriness!"
"Exactly." Ellery took the papers down. "In other words, the Cornelia Potts signature on this stock-selling memorandum and the Cornelia Potts signature on the confession match perfectly. There are no slightest variations in the formation and size of characters. Line for line, curve for curve, the two signatures are exact duplicates. Twins, like Bob and Mac. Even the dot over the / is in the identical spot."
"And the signature on the stock-selling memo is the only memo signature that does match exactly?" asked Charley hoarsely.
"That's why I went through the entire batch—to make sure. Yes, it's the only one."
"I think I see where all this leads .. ."
"But it's so clear! No one ever writes his name in precisely the same way twice—that's a scientific fact. There are invariably minor differences in the same person's signature, and there would be if you had a million samples to compare. Charley, we've established a new fact in the Potts case!"
"One of these two signatures is a forgery."
"Yes."
"But which one?"
"Come Charley. The Old Woman signed this stock-selling memo in our presence. Therefore the memo signature must be genuine. Therefore the signature on the confession is the forgery."
"Somebody got hold of this memo, typed out that phony confession, and then traced the signature of the memo off on the bottom of the confession?"
"Only way it could have produced an identical signature; yes, Charley. The stock memo's been in the desk in this study since the day the Old Woman typed out all these instructions—"
"Yes," mumbled Charley. "After I made the various phone calls necessary that day, I put the memos in this desk, as usual...."
"So anyone in the house could have found them and used this one to trace off its signature. It was probably done just the way I've illustrated—by slapping the stock memo against the sunny windowpane, placing the typed confession over the memo, and then tracing the memo signature onto the confession by utilizing the sunlight-created translucence of both sheets."