“I can’t see—” began the broker in a stubborn little mutter, “why you have, to bring my friends into it—”

  Sergeant Velie gripped his elbow, and he winced. Ellery shook his head disapprovingly at the man-mountain. “And now, Mr. Pike, I think we may return to Martin Orr’s shop. Or, as the Sergeant might fastidiously phrase it, the scene of the crime….Very interesting. Very interesting. It almost compensates for an empty belly.”

  “You got something?” whispered Sergeant Velie hoarsely as Pike preceded them into a taxicab downstairs.

  “Cyclops,” said Ellery, “all God’s chillun got something. But I got everything.”

  Sergeant Velie disappeared somewhere en route to the curio shop, and Arnold Pike’s spirits lifted at once. Ellery eyed him quizzically. “One thing, Mr. Pike,” he said as the taxicab turned into Fifth Avenue, “before we disembark. How long have you six men been acquainted?”

  The broker sighed. “It’s complicated. My only friend of considerable duration is Leo; Gurney, you know. Known each other for fifteen years. But then Orr and the Duke have been friends since 1918, I understand, and of course Stan Oxman and Orr have known each other—knew each other—for many years. I met Vincent about a year ago through my business affiliations and introduced him into our little clique.”

  “Had you yourself and the others—Oxman, Orr, Paul—been acquainted before this time two years ago?”

  Pike looked puzzled. “I don’t see…Why, no. I met Oxman and the Duke a year and a half ago through Orr.”

  “And that,” murmured Ellery, “is so perfect that I don’t care if I never have breakfast. Here we are, Mr. Pike.”

  They found a glum group awaiting their return—nothing had changed, except that Orr’s body had disappeared, Dr. Prouty was gone, and some attempt at sweeping up the glass fragments of the domed clock had been made. The Inspector was in a fever of impatience, demanded to know where Sergeant Velie was, what Ellery had sought in Pike’s apartment….Ellery whispered something to him, and the old man looked startled. Then he dipped his fingers into his brown snuff-box and partook with grim relish.

  The regal expatriate cleared his bull throat. “You have mystery re-solved?” he rumbled. “Yuss?”

  “Your Highness,” said Ellery gravely, “I have indeed mystery re-solved.” He whirled and clapped his palms together; they jumped. “Attention, please! Piggott,” he said to a detective, “stand at that door and don’t let any one in but Sergeant Velie.”

  The detective nodded. Ellery studied the faces about him. If one of them was apprehensive, he had ample control of his physiognomy. They all seemed merely interested, now that the first shock of the tragedy had passed them by. Mrs. Orr clung to Mingo’s fragile hand; her eyes did not once leave Ellery’s face. The fat little jeweler, the journalist, the two Wall Street men, the Russian ex-duke…

  “An absorbing affair,” grinned Ellery, “and quite elementary, despite its points of interest. Follow me closely.” He went over to the counter and picked up the purple amethyst which had been clutched in the dead man’s hand. He looked at it and smiled. Then he glanced at the other object on the counter—the round-based clock, with the fragments of its glass dome protruding from the circular groove.

  “Consider the situation. Martin Orr, brutally beaten about the head, manages in a last desperate living action to crawl to the jewel-case on the counter, pick out this gem, then go to the stone pedestal and pull the glass-domed clock from it. Whereupon, his mysterious mission accomplished, he dies.

  “Why should a dying man engage in such a baffling procedure? There can be only one general explanation. He knows his assailant and is endeavoring to leave clues to his assailant’s identity.” At this point the Inspector nodded, and Ellery grinned again behind the curling smoke of his cigaret. “But such clues! Why? Well, what would you expect a dying man to do if he wished to leave behind him the name of his murderer? The answer is obvious: he would write it. But on Orr’s body we find no paper, pen, or pencil; and no paper in the immediate vicinity. Where else might he secure writing materials? Well, you will observe that Martin Orr was assaulted at a spot twenty-five feet from the door of the back room. The distance, Orr must have felt, was too great for his failing strength. Then Orr couldn’t write the name of his murderer except by the somewhat fantastic method of dipping his finger into his own blood and using the floor as a slate. Such an expedient probably didn’t occur to him.

  “He must have reasoned, with rapidity, life ebbing out of him at every breath. Then—he crawled to the case, broke the glass, took out the amethyst. Then—he crawled to the pedestal and dragged off the glass-domed clock. Then—he died. So the amethyst and the clock were Martin Orr’s bequest to the police. You can almost hear him say: ‘Don’t fail me. This is clear, simple, easy. Punish my murderer.’ ”

  Mrs. Orr gasped, but the expression on her wrinkled face did not alter. Mingo began to sniffle. The others waited in total silence.

  “The clock first,” said Ellery lazily. “The first thing one thinks of in connection with a timepiece is time. Was Orr trying, then, by dragging the clock off the pedestal, to smash the works and, stopping the clock, so fix the time of his murder? Offhand a possibility, it is true; but if this was his purpose, it failed, because the clock didn’t stop running after all. While this circumstance does not invalidate the time-interpretation, further consideration of the whole problem does. For you five gentlemen had left Orr in a body. The time of the assault could not possibly be so checked against your return to your several residences as to point inescapably to one of you as the murderer. Orr must have realized this, if he thought of it at all; in other words, there wouldn’t be any particular point to such a purpose on Orr’s part.

  “And there is still another—and more conclusive—consideration that invalidates the time-interpretation; and that is, that Orr crawled past a table full of running clocks to get to this glass-domed one. If it had been time he was intending to indicate, he could have preserved his energies by stopping at this table and pulling down one of the many clocks upon it. But no—he deliberately passed that table to get to the glass-domed clock. So it wasn’t time.

  “Very well. Now, since the glass-domed clock is the only one of its “kind in the shop, it must have been not time in the general sense but this particular timepiece in the specific sense by which Martin Orr was motivated. But what could this particular timepiece possibly indicate? In itself, as Mr. Mingo has informed me, it has no personal connotation with any one connected with Orr. The idea that Orr was leaving a clue to a clock-maker is unsound; none of you gentlemen follows that delightful craft, and certainly Mr. Oxman, the jeweler, could not have been indicated, when so many things in the gem-case would have served.”

  Oxman began to perspire; he fixed his eyes on the jewel in Ellery’s hand.

  “Then it wasn’t a professional meaning from the clock, as a clock,” continued Ellery equably, “that Orr was trying to convey. But what is there about this particular clock which is different from the other clocks in the shop?” Ellery shot his forefinger forward. “This particular clock has a glass dome over it!” He straightened slowly. “Can any of you gentlemen think of a fairly common object almost perfectly suggested by a glass-domed clock?”

  No one answered, but Vincent and Pike began to lick their lips. “I see signs of intelligence,” said Ellery. “Let me be more specific. What is it—I feel like Sam Lloyd!—that has a base, a glass dome, and ticking machinery inside the dome?” Still no answer. “Well,” said Ellery, “I suppose I should have expected reticence. Of course, it’s a stock-ticker!”

  They stared at him, and then all eyes turned to examine the whitening faces of J. D. Vincent and Arnold Pike. “Yes,” said Ellery, “you may well gaze upon the countenances of the Messieurs Vincent and Pike. For they are the only two of our little cast who are connected with stock-tickers: Mr. Vincent is a Wall Street operator, Mr. Pike is a broker.” Quietly two detectives left a wall and approached the two men.

  “Whereupon,” said Ellery, “we lay aside the glass-domed clock and take up this very fascinating little bauble in my hand.” He held up the amethyst. “A purple amethyst—there are bluish violet ones, you know. What could this purple amethyst have signified to Martin Orr’s frantic brain? The obvious thing is that it is a jewel. Mr. Oxman looked disturbed a moment ago; you needn’t be, sir. The jewelry significance of this amethyst is eliminated on two counts. The first is that the tray on which the amethysts lie is in a corner at the rear of the shattered case. It was necessary for Orr to reach far into the case. If it was a jewel he sought, why didn’t he pick any one of the stones nearer to his palsied hand? For any single one of them would connote ‘jeweler.’ But no; Orr went to the excruciating trouble of ignoring what was close at hand—as in the business of the clock—and deliberately selected something from an inconvenient place. Then the amethyst did not signify a jeweler, but something else.

  “The second is this, Mr. Oxman: certainly Orr knew that the stock-ticker clue would not fix guilt on one person; for two of his cronies are connected with stocks. On the other hand, did Orr have two assailants, rather than one? Not likely. For if by the amethyst he meant to connote you, Mr. Oxman, and by the glass-domed clock he meant to connote either Mr. Pike or Mr. Vincent, he was still leaving a wabbly trail; for we still would not know whether Mr. Pike or Mr. Vincent was meant. Did he have three assailants, then? You see, we are already in the realm of fantasy. No, the major probability is that, since the glass-domed clock cut the possibilities down to two persons, the amethyst was meant to single out one of those two.

  “How does the amethyst pin one of these gentlemen down? What significance besides the obvious one of jewelry does the amethyst suggest? Well, it is a rich purple in color. Ah, but one of your coterie fits here: His Highness the ex-Duke is certainly one born to the royal purple, even if it is an ex-ducal purple, as it were….”

  The soldierly Russian growled: “I am not Highness. You know nothing of royal address!” His dark face became suffused with blood, and he broke into a volley of guttural Russian.

  Ellery grinned. “Don’t excite yourself—Your Grace, is it? You weren’t meant. For if we postulate you, we again drag in a third person and leave unsettled the question of which Wall Street man Orr meant to accuse; we’re no better off than before. Avaunt, royalty!

  “Other possible significances? Yes. There is a species of humming-bird for instance, known as the amethyst. Out! We have no aviarists here. For another thing, the amethyst was connected with ancient Hebrew ritual—an Orientalist told me this once—breastplate decoration of the high-priest, or some such thing. Obviously inapplicable here. No, there is only one other possible application.” Ellery turned to the stocky gambler. “Mr. Vincent, what is your birthdate?” Vincent stammered: “November s-second.”

  “Splendid. That eliminates you.” Ellery stopped abruptly. There was a stir at the door and Sergeant Velie barged in with a very grim face. Ellery smiled. “Well, Sergeant, was my hunch about motive correct?”

  Velie said: “And how. He forged Orr’s signature to a big check. Money-trouble, all right. Orr hushed the matter up, paid, and said he’d collect from the forger. The banker doesn’t even know who the forger is.”

  “Congratulations are in order, Sergeant. Our murderer evidently wished to evade repayment. Murders have been committed for less vital reasons.” Ellery flourished his pince-nez. “I said, Mr. Vincent, that you are eliminated. Eliminated because the only other significance of the amethyst left to us is that it is a birth-stone. But the November birth-stone is a topaz. On the other hand, Mr. Pike has just celebrated a birthday which…”

  And with these words, as Pike gagged and the others broke into excited gabble, Ellery made a little sign to Sergeant Velie, and himself leaped forward. But it was not Arnold Pike who found himself in the crushing grip of Velie and staring into Ellery’s amused eyes. It was the newspaper man, Leo Gurney.

  “As I said,” explained Ellery later, in the privacy of the Queens’ living-room and after his belly had been comfortably filled with food, “this has been a ridiculously elementary problem.” The Inspector toasted his stockinged feet before the fire, and grunted. Sergeant Velie scratched his head. “You don’t think so?

  “But look. It was evident, when I decided what the clues of the clock and the amethyst were intended to convey, that Arnold Pike was the man meant to be indicated. For what is the month of which the amethyst is the birth-stone? February—in both the Polish and Jewish birth-stone systems, the two almost universally recognized. Of the two men indicated by the clock-clue, Vincent was eliminated because his birth-stone is a topaz. Was Pike’s birthday then in February? Seemingly not, for he celebrated it—this year, 1926—in March! March first, observe. What could this mean? Only one thing: since Pike was the sole remaining possibility, then his birthday was in February, but on the twenty-ninth, on Leap Day, as it’s called, and 1926 not being a Leap Year, Pike chose to celebrate his birthday on the day on which it would ordinarily fall, March first.

  “But this meant that Martin Orr, to have left the amethyst, must have known Pike’s birthday to be in February, since he seemingly left the February birth-stone as a clue. Yet what did I find on the card accompanying Orr’s gift of carpet-slippers to Pike last week? ‘May we all be together on as pleasant a March first to celebrate your hundredth anniversary.’ But if Pike is fifty years old in 1926, he was born in 1876—a Leap Year—and his hundredth anniversary would be 1976, also a Leap Year. They wouldn’t celebrate Pike’s birthday on his hundredth anniversary on March first! Then Orr didn’t know Pike’s real birthday was February twenty-ninth, or he would have said so on the card. He thought it was March.

  “But the person who left the amethyst sign did know Pike’s birth-month was February, since he left February’s birth-stone. We’ve just established that Martin Orr didn’t know Pike’s birth-month was February, but thought it was March. Therefore Martin Orr was not the one who selected the amethyst.

  “Any confirmation? Yes. The birthstone for March in the Polish system is the bloodstone; in the Jewish it’s the jasper. But both these stones were nearer a groping hand than the amethysts, which lay in a tray at the back of the case. In other words, whoever selected the amethyst deliberately ignored the March stones in favor of the February stone, and therefore knew that Pike was born in February, not in March. But had Orr selected a stone, it would have been bloodstone or jasper, since he believed Pike was born in March. Orr eliminated again.

  “But if Orr did not select the amethyst, as I’ve shown, then what have we? Palpably, a frame-up. Some one arranged matters to make us believe that Orr himself had selected the amethyst and smashed the clock. You can see the murderer dragging poor old Orr’s dead body around, leaving the blood-trail on purpose….”

  Ellery sighed. “I never did believe Orr left those signs. It was all too pat, too slick, too weirdly unreal. It is conceivable that a dying man will leave one clue to his murderer’s identity, but two….” Ellery shook his head.

  “If Orr didn’t leave the clues, who did? Obviously the murderer. But the clues deliberately led to Arnold Pike. Then Pike couldn’t be the murderer, for certainly he would not leave a trail to himself had he killed Orr.

  “Who else? Well, one thing stood out. Whoever killed Orr, framed Pike, and really selected that amethyst, knew Pike’s birthday to be in February. Orr and Pike we have eliminated. Vincent didn’t know Pike’s birthday was in February, as witness his inscription on the silver cup. Nor did our friend the ex-Duke, who also wrote ‘March the first,’ on his card. Oxman didn’t—he said they’d celebrate Pike’s sixtieth birthday on March first, 1936—a Leap Year, observe, when Pike’s birthday would be celebrated on February twenty-ninth….Don’t forget that we may accept these cards’ evidence as valid; the cards were sent before the crime, and the crime would have no connection in the murderer’s mind with Pike’s five birthday-cards. The flaw in the murderer’s plot was that he assumed—a natural error—that Orr and perhaps the others, too, knew Pike’s birthday really fell on Leap Day. And he never did see the cards which proved the others didn’t know, because Pike himself told us that after the party Monday night he did not see any of the others until last night, the night of the murder.”

  “I’ll be fried in lard,” muttered Sergeant Velie, shaking his head.

  “No doubt,” grinned Ellery. “But we’ve left some one out. How about Leo Gurney, the newspaper feature-writer? His stick o’ doggerel said that Pike wouldn’t reach the age of twenty-one for another nine and a half years. Interesting? Yes, and damning. For this means he considered facetiously that Pike was at the time of writing eleven and a half years old. But how is this possible, even in humorous verse? It’s possible only if Gurney knew that Pike’s birthday falls on February twenty-ninth, which occurs only once in four years! Fifty divided by four is twelve and a half. But since the year 1900 for some reason I’ve never been able to discover, was not a Leap Year, Gurney was right, and actually Pike had celebrated only ‘eleven and a half’ birthdays.”

  And Ellery drawled: “Being the only one who knew Pike’s birthday to be in February, then Gurney was the only one who could have selected the amethyst. Then Gurney arranged matters to make it seem that Orr was accusing Pike. Then Gurney was the murderer of Orr….

  “Simple? As a child’s sum!”

  The Adventure of THE SEVEN BLACK CATS

  THE TINKLY BELL QUAVERED over the door of Miss Curleigh’s Pet Shoppe on Amsterdam Avenue, and Mr. Ellery Queen wrinkled his nose and went in. The instant he crossed the threshold he was thankful it was not a large nose, and that he had taken the elementary precaution of wrinkling it. The extent and variety of the little shop’s odors would not have shamed the New York Zoological Park itself. And yet it housed only creatures, he was amazed to find, of the puniest proportions; who, upon the micrometrically split second of his entrance, set up such a chorus of howls, yelps, snarls, yawps, grunts, squeaks, caterwauls, croaks, screeches, chirrups, hisses, and growls that it was a miracle the roof did not come down.