When the hard earth had been loosened, they cast aside the picks and attacked the soil with their spades. Both wore old overalls over their clothes.

  “Now I know,” muttered Ellery, resting a moment by the mounting pile of earth beside the grave, “what it feels like to be a ghoul. Father, I’m thankful you’re along. I’m cursed with too much imagination.”

  “There is nothing to be afraid of, my son,” said the old priest in a little bitter murmur. “These are only dead men.”

  Ellery shivered. Scott growled: “Let’s get goin’!”

  And so at last their spades struck hollowly upon wood.

  How they managed it Ellery never clearly remembered. It was titans’ work, and long before it was finished he was drenched with perspiration which stung like icicles under the cold fingers of the wind. He felt disembodied, a phantom in a nightmare. Scott labored in isolated silence, performing prodigies, while Ellery panted beside him and Father Anthony looked somberly on. And then Ellery realized that he was hauling upon two ropes on one side of the pit, and that old Scott was pulling on their other ends opposite him. Something long and black-clotted and heavy came precariously up from the depths, swaying as if it had life. One last heave, and it thumped over the side, to Ellery’s horror overturning. He sank to the ground, squatting on his hams and fumbling for a cigaret.

  “I—need—a—breather,” he muttered, and puffed desperately. Scott leaned calmly on his spade. Only Father Anthony went to the pine box, and tugged until it righted itself, and with slow tender hands began to pry off the lid.

  Ellery watched the old man, fascinated; and then he sprang to his feet, hurled his cigaret away, cursed himself beneath his breath, and snatched the pick from the priest’s hands. A single powerful wrench, the lid screeched up….

  Scott set his muscular mouth and stepped, forward. He pulled canvas gloves on his hands. Then he bent over the dead man. Father Anthony stepped back, closing his tired eyes. And Ellery feverishly unwrapped the bulky bundle he had carried all the way from Jasmine Street, disclosing a huge tripod-camera borrowed surreptitiously from the editor of the Corsica Call. He fumbled with something.

  “Is it there?” he croaked. “Mr. Scott, is it there?”

  The burly man said clearly: “Mr. Queen, it’s there.”

  “Only one?”

  “Only one.”

  “Turn him over.” And, after a while, Ellery said: “Is it there?”

  And Scott said: “Yes.”

  “Only one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where I said it would be?”

  “Yes.”

  And Ellery raised something high above his head, directing the eye of the camera with his other hand upon what lay in the mud-coated coffin and made a convulsive fist, and something blue as witchfire flashed to the accompaniment of a reverberating boom, lighting up the hillside momentarily like a flare in purgatory.

  And Ellery paused in his labors and leaned on his spade and said: “Let me tell you a story.” Michael Scott worked on relentlessly, his broad back writhing with his exertions. Father Anthony sat on the rewrapped camera-bundle and cupped his old face in his hands.

  “Let me tell you,” said Ellery tonelessly, “a story of remarkable cleverness that was thwarted by…There is a God, Father.

  “When I discovered that the highboy in McGovern’s room was out of its customary position, apparently moved to its new place some time within the general period of the murder, I saw that it was possible the murderer himself had so moved it. If he had, there must have been a reason for the action. I pushed aside the highboy and found on the wall behind it a foot or so from the wainscoting a small circular impression in the plaster. This dent and the highboy before it were in a direct line with two objects: the cane-chair facing the door in which McGovern had presumably been sitting when he was shot, and the doorway where the murderer must have been standing when he squeezed the trigger. Coincidence? It did not seem likely.

  “I saw at once that the dent was just such a dent as might have been made by a bullet—a spent bullet, since the depression was so shallow. It was also evident that since the murderer must have been standing, and the victim sitting—being shot through the heart besides—then the dent on the wall several yards behind the chair would appear, if it was caused by a bullet fired by the murderer, just about where I found it, the line of fire being generally downward.”

  The clods thumped and bumped on the box.

  “Now it was also evident,” said Ellery in a strange voice, gripping the spade, “that had the spent bullet been one which had passed through McGovern’s body there should be a hole in the cane-meshed back of McGovern’s chair. I examined the chair; there was no bullet-hole. Then it was possible the bullet which had made the dent in the wall had not passed through McGovern’s body but had gone wild; in other words, that two shots had been fired that stormy, noisy night, the one which lodged in the body and the one which caused the dent. But no mention had been made of second bullet having been found in the room, despite unanimous testimony that the room had been thoroughly searched. I myself inspected every inch of that floor without success. But if a second bullet was not there, then it must have, been taken away by the murderer at the same time he moved the highboy over to conceal the dent the bullet had made.” He paused and gloomily eyed the filling grave. “But why should the murderer take away one bullet and leave the vital one to be found—the one in the victim’s body? It did not make sense. On the other hand, its alternative did make sense. That there never had been two bullets at all; that only one bullet had been fired.”

  The hillside quivered in shadow as the witches danced.

  “I worked,” continued Ellery wearily, “on this theory. If only one bullet had been fired, then it was that bullet which had killed McGovern, piercing his heart and emerging from his back, penetrating the cane of the chair-back, and winging on across the room to strike the wall where I found the dent; falling, spent, to the floor below. Then why didn’t McGovern’s chair show a bullet-hole? It could only be because it was not McGovern’s chair. The murderer had done one thing to conceal the fact that the bullet had emerged from the body: he had moved the highboy. Why not another? So he must have exchanged chairs. All your rooms, Mr. Scott, are identically furnished; he dragged McGovern’s chair to his own room and brought his own chair to replace McGovern’s. All my deductions up to this point would be demonstrated correct if I could find a cane-backed chair with a hole in its back—a hole where a hole should be, just at the place where a bullet would penetrate if it had gone through the heart of some one sitting in the chair. And find it I did—in the room of some one in your house, Mr. Scott.”

  The ugly raw earth was level with the hillside now; only a little heap was left. Father Anthony watched his friend with veiled and anguished eyes; and for an instant the black cloud draped the moon and they were in darkness.

  “Why,” muttered Ellery, “should the murderer want to conceal the fact that a spent bullet existed? There could be only one reason: he did not wish the bullet found and examined. But a bullet was found and examined.” The cloud edged off angrily, and the moon glowered at them again. “Then the bullet which was found must have been the wrong one!”

  At last it was done: the mound loomed, round and dark and smooth, in the moonlight. Father Anthony absently reached for the small wooden grave-marker and thrust it into the mound. Michael Scott rose to his full height, wiping his brow.

  “The wrong bullet?” he said hoarsely.

  “The wrong bullet. For what did that bullet’s being found accomplish? It directly involved Roger Bowen as the murderer; it was a bullet demonstrably from Bowen’s .38 automatic. But if it was the wrong bullet, then Bowen was being framed by some one who, unable by reason of Bowen’s nightly vigilance to get hold of Bowen’s automatic, but possessing a spent bullet which had already been fired from Bowen’s automatic, was able after the murder to switch Bowen’s—as it were—innocent bullet for the one actually used to kill McGovern!” Ellery’s voice rose stridently. “The bullet from the murderer’s gun wouldn’t show the telltale bore-markings of Bowen’s gun, naturally. Had the murderer left his own bullet to be found, tests would have shown that it didn’t come from Bowen’s .38 and would have instantly defeated the frame-up. So the murderer had to take away the real, the lethal, bullet, conceal the dent in the wall, change cane-back chairs.”

  “But why,” demanded Scott in a strangled growl, “didn’t the damn’ fool leave the chair there and let the dent be found? Why didn’t he just take away his own bullet and drop Bowen’s on the floor in its place? That would have been the easiest thing to do. And then he wouldn’t have had to cover up the fact that the slug had gone clear through the body.”

  “A good question,” said Ellery softly. “Why, indeed? If he didn’t do it that way, then it must have been that he couldn’t do it that way. He didn’t have on him at the time of the murder the spent bullet he had stolen from Bowen; he’d left it somewhere where he couldn’t get it on the spur of the moment.”

  “Then he didn’t expect the bullet would go clear through the body,” cried Scott, waving his huge arms so that their shadows slashed across McGovern’s ugly grave. “And he must have expected to be able to substitute Bowen’s bullet for the real slug afterwards, after the killing, after the police examination, after…”

  “That’s it,” murmured Ellery, “exactly. That—” He stopped. A ghost in diaphanous white garments was floating up the hillside toward them, skimming the dark earth. Father Anthony rose, and he looked taller than a man should look. Ellery gripped his spade.

  But Michael Scott called harshly: “Iris! What—”

  She flung herself wildly at Ellery. “Mr. Queen!” she gasped. “They’re—they’re coming! They found out—some one saw you and father and Father Anthony come this way with the spades….Pringle came for Sam Dodd….I ran—”

  “Thank you, Iris,” said Ellery gently. “Among your other virtues you number courage, too.” But he made no move to go.

  “Let’s roll,” muttered Michael Scott. “I don’t want—”

  “Is it a crime,” murmured Ellery, “to seek communion with the blessed dead? No, I wait.”

  Two dots appeared, became dancing dolls, loomed larger, scrambled frantically up the slope. The first was large and fat, and something winked dully in his hand. Behind him struggled a small white-faced man.

  “Michael!” snarled Chief Pringle, waving his revolver. “Father! You, there, Queen! What the hell d’ye call this? Are ye all out of your minds? Diggin’ up graves!”

  “Thank God,” panted the coroner. “We’re not too late. They haven’t dug—” He eyed the mound, the tools gratefully. “Mr. Queen, you know it’s against the law to—”

  “Chief Pringle,” said Ellery regretfully, stepping forward and fixing the coroner with his gray eyes, “you will arrest this man for the deliberate murder of McGovern and the frame-up of Roger Bowen.”

  The porch was in purple shadow; the moon had long since set and Corsica was asleep; only Iris’s white gown glimmered a little, and Michael Scott’s pipe glowed fretfully.

  “Sam Dodd,” he mumbled. “Why, I’ve known Sam Dodd—”

  “Oh, Father!” moaned Iris, and groped for the hand of Father Anthony in the rocker beside her.

  “It had to be Dodd, you know,” said Ellery wearily; his feet were on the railing. “You put your finger on the precise point, Mr. Scott, when you said that the murderer must have expected to be able to make the substitution later, and that he hadn’t expected that the bullet he fired would pass clear through McGovern’s body. For who could have switched bullets had the bullet remained in McGovern’s body, as the murderer expected it to remain before he fired? Only Dodd, the coroner, who makes the autopsy which is mandatory in a murder. Who could have continued to keep unknown the fact that the bullet had passed through McGovern’s body? Only Dodd, the undertaker, who prepared the body for burial. Who actually stated that the bullet was in the body? Only Dodd, who performed the autopsy; if he were innocent why should he have lied? Who introduced Bowen’s bullet in evidence? Only Dodd, who claimed to have recovered it from the heart of the dead man.” Iris sobbed a little. “Were there confirmations? Plenty. Dodd lived in this house, and therefore he had access to McGovern’s room that night. Dodd ‘found’ the body; therefore he could have done everything that was necessary without interference. Dodd as coroner set the time of death; he could have said it was a little later than it actually was to cover up the time he consumed in moving the highboy and switching chairs. Dodd by his own admission had often gone out rabbit-hunting with Roger Bowen; therefore he could easily have secured a spent bullet from Bowen’s automatic, a bullet which Bowen had fired but which had missed its target. Dodd, being a coroner, was professionally minded; it took a professional mind to think of bore-marks. Dodd, being a coroner, was ballistically minded and had a microscope to check bore-marks….Then I had proofs. It was in Dodd’s room I found the cane-chair with the hole in its back. And, most important, I knew that if McGovern’s body on exhumation showed one bullet-wound in the chest and one exit-hole in the back, then I had complete proof that Dodd had lied in his official report and that my whole chain of reasoning was correct. We dug up the body and there was the exit-hole. My photographs will send Dodd to the chair.”

  “And God, my son?” said Father Anthony quietly from the darkness.

  Ellery sighed. “I prefer to think that it was some such Agency that made the bullet Dodd fired completely pierce McGovern’s body. Had it lodged in McGovern’s heart, as Dodd had every reason to expect it would, there would have been no dent in the wall, no hole in the chair, and therefore no reason to exhume the body. Dodd would have produced Bowen’s bullet after autopsy, claiming it was the one he ‘dug out,’ as he did claim, and Bowen would have been a very unlucky young man.”

  “But Sam Dodd!” cried Iris, hiding her face in her hands. “I’ve known him so long, since I was a little girl. He’s always been so quiet, so gentle, so—so…”

  Ellery rose and his shoes creaked on the black porch. He bent over the glimmer of her and cupped her chin in his hand and stared down with the most whimsical yearning into her all-but-invisible face. “Beauty like yours, my dear, is a dangerous gift. Your gentle Sam Dodd killed McGovern to rid himself of one rival and framed Roger Bowen for the murder to rid himself of the other, you see.”

  “Rival?” gasped Iris.

  “Rival, hell!” growled Scott.

  “Your eyes, my son,” whispered Father Anthony, “are good.”

  “Hope springs not only eternal but lethal,” said Ellery softly. “Sam Dodd loves you.”

  The Adventure of THE TEAKWOOD CASE

  THE WOODY, LEATHERY, HOMELY living room of the Queens’ apartment on West Eighty-seventh Street in New York City had seen queerer visitors than Mr. Seaman Carter, but surely none quite so ill at ease.

  “Really, Mr. Carter,” said Ellery Queen with amusement, stretching his long legs nearer the fireplace, “you’ve been wretchedly misinformed. I’m not a detective at all, you know. My father is the sleuth of this family! Officially I’ve no more right to investigate a crime than you have.”

  “But that’s exactly the point, Mr. Queen!” wheezed Carter with a vast rolling of his porphyry eyes. “We don’t want the police. We want unofficial advice. We want you, Mr. Queen, to clear up these devilish robberies sub rosa—ahem!—so to speak; or I shouldn’t have come. The Gothic Arms can’t afford the notoriety, my dear, dear Mr. Queen. We’re an exclusive development catering to the best people—”

  “Pshaw, Mr. Carter,” said Ellery between lazy puffs of the inevitable cigaret, “go to the police. You’ve had five robberies in as many months. All of jewels, all filched from different tenants on different floors. And now this latest theft two days ago—a diamond necklace from the bedroom wall-safe of a Mrs. Mallorie, an invalid and one of your oldest tenants….”

  “Mrs. Mallorie!” Carter shuddered with the sinuous ripplings of an octopus in motion. “She’s an old woman. She went into hysterics—a terrible person, Mr. Queen. Insists on calling in the police, informing the insurance company….We’re at our wits’ end.”

  “It seems to me,” said Ellery, fixing his sharp eyes on the man’s lumpy cheeks, which were quivering, “that you’ll be in the devil of a sweet mess, Mr. Carter, if you don’t get official help at once. You’re making an extraordinary fuss about very small potatoes.”

  The telephone-bell rang and Djuna, the Queens’ boy-of-all-work, slipped into the bedroom to answer it. He popped his small gypsy head out of the doorway almost at once. “For you, Mr. Ellery. Dad Queen is on the wire and he’s hopping.”

  “Excuse me,” said Ellery, abruptly, and went into the bedroom.

  When he came out all amusement had fled from his lean features. He had divested his tall body of the battered old dressing-gown and was fully attired for the street.

  “You’ll be interested to learn, no doubt,” he said in a flat voice, “that once more fact has outdone fiction, Mr. Carter. I’ve been treated to the spectacle of an amazing coincidence. On which floor did you say Mrs. Mallorie’s apartment lies?”

  Mr. Seaman Carter shook like the damp flanks of a grumbling volcano; his little eyes became glassy. “My God!” he screeched, dragging himself to his feet. “What happened now? Mrs. Mallorie occupies Apartment F on the sixteenth floor!”

  “I’m delighted to hear it. Well, Mr. Carter, your laudable effort to smother legitimate news has failed, and you have enlisted my poor services. Except that we are en route to the scene of a crime more serious than theft. My father, Inspector Queen, informs me that a man in Apartment H on the sixteenth floor of the Gothic Arms has been found foully done in. In a word, he’s been murdered.”

  An express elevator took Ellery and the Superintendent to the sixteenth floor. They emerged on the west corridor of the building. A central corridor bisected the hall in which they found themselves, and at its end could be seen the bronze doors of the elevator on the east corridor. Carter, his globular carcass trembling like gelatinous ooze, led the way toward the right. They came to a door before which stood a whistling detective. The door, marked with a gilded H, was closed. Carter opened it and they went in.