“Protection!” Miss Curleigh’s devastating eyes widened. “Why, Mr. Queen. How could that be? People buy dogs for protection, not cats.”

  “I don’t mean that kind of protection,” said Ellery impatiently. “I’m referring to a compound of desire to remain alive and an incidental hatred for felines that makes them the ideal instrument toward that end. This is a truly horrifying business, Marie. From every angle. Euphemia Tarkle was afraid. Of what? Of being murdered for her money. That’s borne out amply by the letter she wrote to Morton, her nephew; and it’s bolstered by her reputed miserliness, her distrust of banks, and her dislike for her own sister. How would a cat be protection against intended murder?”

  “Poison!” cried Miss Curleigh.

  “Exactly. As a food-taster. There’s a reversion to mediœvalism for you! Are there confirming data? A-plenty. Euphemia had taken to eating alone of late; that suggests some secret activity. Then she reordered cats five, times within a short period. Why? Obviously, because each time her cat, purchased from you, had acted in his official capacity, tasted her food, and gone the way of all enslaved flesh. The cats were poisoned, poisoned by food intended for Euphemia. So she had to re-order. Final confirmation: the six feline skeletons in the incinerator.”

  “But she can’t walk,” protested Miss Curleigh. “So how could she dispose of the bodies?”

  “I fancy Mrs. Potter innocently disposed of them for her. You’ll recall that Mrs. Potter said she was often called here to take garbage to the incinerator for Euphemia when Sarah-Ann was out. The ‘garbage,’ wrapped up, I suppose, was a cat’s dead body.”

  “But why all the black, green-eyed tomcats of the same size?”

  “Self-evident. Why? Obviously, again, to fool Sarah-Ann. Because Sarah-Ann had a black tomcat of a certain size with green eyes, Euphemia purchased from you identical animals. Her only reason for this could have been, then, to fool Sarah-Ann into believing that the black tom she saw about the apartment at any given time was her own, the original one. That suggests, of course, that Euphemia used Sarah-Ann’s cat to foil the first attempt, and Sarah-Ann’s cat was the first poison-victim. When he died, Euphemia bought another from you—without her sister’s knowledge.

  “How Euphemia suspected she was slated to be poisoned, of course, at the very time in which the poisoner got busy, we’ll never know. It was probably the merest coincidence, something psychic—you never know about slightly mad old ladies.”

  “But if she was trying to fool Sarah-Ann about the cats,” whispered Miss Curleigh, aghast, “then she suspected—”

  “Precisely. She suspected her sister of trying to poison her.”

  Miss Curleigh bit her lip. “Would you mind giving me a—a cigaret? I’m—” Ellery silently complied. “It’s the most terrible thing I’ve ever heard of. Two old women, sisters, practically alone in the world, one dependent on the other for attention, the other for subsistence, living at cross-purposes—the invalid helpless to defend herself against attacks….” She shuddered. “What’s happened to those poor creatures, Mr. Queen?”

  “Well, let’s see. Euphemia is missing. We know that there were at least six attempts to poison her, all unsuccessful. It’s logical to assume that there was a seventh attempt, then, and that—since Euphemia is gone under mysterious circumstances—the seventh attempt was successful.”

  “But how can you know she’s—she’s dead?”

  “Where is she?” asked Ellery dryly. “The only other possibility is that she fled. But she’s helpless, can’t walk, can’t stir from bed without assistance. Who can assist her? Only Sarah-Ann, the very one she suspects of trying to poison her. The letter to her nephew shows that she wouldn’t turn to Sarah-Ann. So flight is out and, since she’s missing, she must be dead. Now, follow. Euphemia knew she was the target of poisoning attacks via her food, and took precautions against them; then how did the poisoner finally penetrate her defenses—the seventh cat? Well, we may assume that Euphemia made the seventh cat taste the food we found on the tray. We know that food was not poisoned, from Dr. Prouty’s report. The cat, then, didn’t die of poisoning from the food itself—confirmed by the fact that he was beaten to death. But if the cat didn’t die of poisoned food, neither did Euphemia. Yet all the indications are that she must have died of poisoning. Then there’s only one answer: she died of poisoning not in eating but in the process of eating.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Miss Curleigh intently.

  “The cutlery!” cried Ellery. “I showed you earlier this afternoon that some one other than Euphemia had handled her knife, spoon, and fork. Doesn’t this suggest that the poisoner had poisoned the cutlery on his seventh attempt? If, for example, the fork had been coated with a colorless odorless poison which dried, Euphemia would have been fooled. The cat, flung bits of food by hand—for no one feeds an animal with cutlery would live; Euphemia, eating the food with the poisoned cutlery, would die. Psychologically, too, it rings true. It stood to reason that the poisoner, after six unsuccessful attempts one way, should in desperation try a seventh with a variation. The variation worked and Euphemia, my dear, is dead.”

  “But her body—Where—”

  Ellery’s face changed as he whirled noiselessly toward the door. He stood in an attitude of tense attention for an instant and then, without a word, laid violent hands upon the petrified figure of Miss Curleigh and thrust her rudely into one of the bedroom closets, shutting the door behind her. Miss Curleigh, half-smothered by a soft sea of musty-smelling feminine garments, held her breath. She had heard that faint scratching of metal upon metal at the front door. It must be—if Mr. Queen acted so quickly—the poisoner. Why had he come back? she thought wildly. The key he was using—easy—a duplicate. Earlier when they had surprised him and he had barricaded the door, he must have entered the apartment by the roof and fire-escape window because he couldn’t use the key…some one may have been standing in the hall….

  She choked back a scream, her thoughts snapping off as if a switch had been turned. A hoarse, harsh voice—the sounds of a struggle—a crash…they were fighting!

  Miss Curleigh saw red. She flung open the door of the closet and plunged out. Ellery was on the floor in a tangle of threshing arms and legs. A hand came up with a knife….Miss Curleigh sprang and kicked in an instantaneous reflex action. Something snapped sharply, and she fell back, sickened, as the knife dropped from a broken hand.

  “Miss Curleigh—the door!” panted Ellery, pressing his knee viciously downward. Through a dim roaring in her ears Miss Curleigh heard pounding on the door, and tottered toward it. The last thing she remembered before she fainted was a weird boiling of blue-clad bodies as police poured past her to fall upon the struggling figures.

  “It’s all right now,” said a faraway voice, and Miss Curleigh opened her eyes to find Mr. Ellery Queen, cool and immaculate, stooping over her. She moved her head dazedly. The fireplace, the crossed swords on the wall…“Don’t be alarmed, Marie,” grinned Ellery; “this isn’t an abduction. You have achieved Valhalla. It’s all over, and you’re reclining on the divan in my apartment.”

  “Oh,” said Miss Curleigh, and she swung her feet unsteadily to the floor. “I—I must look a sight. What happened?”

  “We caught the bogey very satisfactorily. Now you rest, young lady, while I rustle a dish of tea—”

  “Nonsense!” said Miss Curleigh with asperity. “I want to know how you performed that miracle. Come on, now, don’t be irritating!”

  “Yours to command. Just what do you want to know?”

  “Did you know that awful creature was coming back?”

  Ellery shrugged. “It was a likely possibility. Euphemia had been poisoned, patently, for her hidden money. She must have been murdered at the very latest yesterday—you recall yesterday’s milk-bottle—perhaps the night before last. Had the murderer found the money after killing her? Then who was the prowler whom we surprised this afternoon and who made his escape out the window after barricading the door? It must have been the murderer. But if he came back after the crime, then he had not found the money when he committed the crime. Perhaps he had so much to do immediately after the commission of the crime that he had no time to search. At any rate, on his return we surprised him—probably just after he had made a mess of the bed. It was quite possible that he had still not found the money. If he had not, I knew he would come back—after all, he had committed the crime for it. So I took the chance that he would return when he thought the coast was clear, and he did. I ’phoned for police assistance while you were out seeing Dr. Prouty.”

  “Did you know who it was?”

  “Oh, yes. It was demonstrable. The first qualification of the poisoner was availability; that is, in order to make those repeated poisoning attempts, the poisoner had to be near Euphemia or near her food at least since the attempts began, which was presumably five weeks ago. The obvious suspect was her sister. Sarah-Ann had motive—hatred and possibly cupidity; and certainly opportunity, since she prepared the food herself. But Sarah-Ann I eliminated on the soundest basis in the world.

  “For who had brutally beaten to death the seventh black tomcat? Palpably, either the victim or the murderer in a general sense. But it couldn’t have been Euphemia, since the cat was killed in the bathroom and Euphemia lay paralyzed in the bedroom, unable to walk. Then it must have been the murderer who killed the cat. But if Sarah-Ann were the murderer, would she have clubbed to death a cat—she, who loved cats? Utterly inconceivable. Therefore Sarah-Ann was not the murderer.”

  “Then what—”

  “I know. What happened to Sarah-Ann?” Ellery grimaced. “Sarah-Ann, it is to be feared, went the way of the cat and her sister. It must have been the poisoner’s plan to kill Euphemia and have it appear that Sarah-Ann had killed her—the obvious suspect. Sarah-Ann, then, should be on the scene. But she isn’t. Well, her disappearance tends to show—I think the confession will bear me out—that she was accidentally a witness to the murder and was killed by the poisoner on the spot to eliminate a witness to the crime. He wouldn’t have killed her under any other circumstances.”

  “Did you find the money?”

  “Yes. Lying quite loosely,” shrugged Ellery, “between the pages of a Bible Euphemia always kept in her bed. The Poe touch, no doubt.”

  “And,” quavered Miss Curleigh, “the bodies….”

  “Surely,” drawled Ellery, “the incinerator? It would have been the most logical means of disposal. Fire is virtually all-consuming. What bones there were could have been disposed of more easily than…Well, there’s no point in being literal. You know what I mean.”

  “But that means—Who was that fiend on the floor? I never saw him before. It couldn’t have been Mr. Morton’s f-father…?”

  “No, indeed. Fiend, Miss Curleigh?” Ellery raised his eyebrows. “There’s only a thin wall between sanity and—”

  “You called me,” said Miss Curleigh, “Marie before.”

  Ellery said hastily: “No one but Sarah-Ann and Euphemia lived in the apartment, yet the poisoner had access to the invalid’s food for over a month—apparently without suspicion. Who could have had such access? Only one person: the man who had been decorating the apartment in late afternoons and evenings—around dinner-time—for over a month; the man who worked in a chemical plant and therefore, better than any one, had knowledge of and access to poisons; the man who tended the incinerator and therefore could dispose of the bones of his human victims without danger to himself. In a word,” said Ellery, “the superintendent of the building, Harry Potter.”

  The Adventure of THE MAD TEA-PARTY

  THE TALL YOUNG MAN in the dun raincoat thought that he had never seen such a downpour. It gushed out of the black sky in a roaring flood, gray-gleaming in the feeble yellow of the station lamps. The red tails of the local from Jamaica had just been drowned out in the west. It was very dark beyond the ragged blur of light surrounding the little railroad station, and unquestionably very wet. The tall young man shivered under the eaves of the platform roof and wondered what insanity had moved him to venture into the Long Island hinterland in such wretched weather. And where, damn it all, was Owen?

  He had just miserably made up his mind to seek out a booth, telephone his regrets, and take the next train back to the City, when a lowslung coupé came splashing and snuffling out of the darkness, squealed to a stop, and a man in chauffeur’s livery leaped out and dashed across the gravel for the protection of the eaves.

  “Mr. Ellery Queen?” he panted, shaking out his cap. He was a blond young man with a ruddy face and sun-squinted eyes.

  “Yes,” said Ellery with a sigh. Too late now.

  “I’m Millan, Mr. Owen’s chauffeur, sir,” said the man. “Mr. Owen’s sorry he couldn’t come down to meet you himself. Some guests—This way, Mr. Queen.”

  He picked up Ellery’s bag and the two of them ran for the coupé. Ellery collapsed against the mohair in an indigo mood. Damn Owen and his invitations! Should have known better. Mere acquaintance, when it came to that. One of J.J.’s questionable friends. People were always pushing so. Put him up on exhibition, like a trained seal. Come, come, Rollo; here’s a juicy little fish for you!…Got vicarious thrills out of listening to crime yarns. Made a man feel like a curiosity. Well, he’d be drawn and quartered if they got him to mention crime once! But then Owen had said Emmy Willowes would be there, and he’d always wanted to meet Emmy. Curious woman, Emmy, from all the reports. Daughter of some blueblood diplomat who had gone to the dogs—in this case, the stage. Stuffed shirts, her tribe, probably. Atavi! There were some people who still lived in mediœval…Hmm. Owen wanted him to see “the house.” Just taken a month ago. Ducky, he’d said. “Ducky!” The big brute…

  The coupé splashed along in the darkness, its head-lights revealing only remorseless sheets of speckled water and occasionally a tree, a house, a hedge.

  Millan cleared his throat. “Rotten weather, isn’t it, sir. Worst this spring. The rain, I mean.”

  Ah, the conversational chauffeur! thought Ellery with an inward groan. “Pity the poor sailor on a night like this,” he said piously.

  “Ha, ha,” said Millan. “Isn’t it the truth, though? You’re a little late, aren’t you, sir? That was the eleven-fifty. Mr. Owen told me this morning you were expected tonight on the nine-twenty.”

  “Detained,” murmured Ellery, wishing he were dead.

  “A case, Mr. Queen?” asked Millan eagerly, rolling his squinty eyes.

  Even he, O Lord….“No, no. My father had his annual attack of elephantiasis. Poor dad! We thought for a bad hour there that it was the end.”

  The chauffeur gaped. Then, looking puzzled, he returned his attention to the soggy pelted road. Ellery closed his eyes with a sigh of relief.

  But Millan’s was a persevering soul, for after a moment of silence he grinned—true, a trifle dubiously—and said: “Lots of excitement at Mr. Owen’s tonight, sir. You see, Master Jonathan—”

  “Ah,” said Ellery, starting a little. Master Jonathan, eh? Ellery recalled him as a stringy, hot-eyed brat in the indeterminate years between seven and ten who possessed a perfectly fiendish ingenuity for making a nuisance of himself. Master Jonathan….He shivered again, this time from apprehension. He had quite forgotten Master Jonathan.

  “Yes, sir, Jonathan’s having a birthday party tomorrow, sir—ninth, I think—and Mr. and Mrs. Owen’ve rigged up something special.” Millan grinned again, mysteriously. “Something very special, sir. It’s a secret, y’see. The kid—Master Jonathan doesn’t know about it yet. Will he be surprised!”

  “I doubt it, Millan,” groaned Ellery, and lapsed into a dismal silence which not even the chauffeur’s companionable blandishments were able to shatter.

  Richard Owen’s “ducky” house was a large rambling affair of gables and ells and colored stones and bright shutters, set at the terminal of a winding driveway flanked by soldierly trees. It blazed with light and the front door stood ajar.

  “Here we are, Mr. Queen!” cried Millan cheerfully, jumping out and holding the door open. “It’s only a hop to the porch; you won’t get wet, sir.”

  Ellery descended and obediently hopped to the porch. Millan fished his bag out of the car and bounded up the steps. “Door open ’n’ everything,” he grinned. “Guess the help are all watchin’ the show.”

  “Show?” gasped Ellery with a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach.

  Millan pushed the door wide open. “Step in, step in, Mr. Queen. I’ll go get Mr. Owen….They’re rehearsing, y’see. Couldn’t do it while Jonathan was up, so they had to wait till he’d gone to bed. It’s for tomorrow, y’see. And he was very suspicious; they had an awful time with him—”

  “I can well believe that,” mumbled Ellery. Damn Jonathan and all his tribe! He stood in a small foyer looking upon a wide brisk living room, warm and attractive. “So they’re putting on a play. Hmm….Don’t bother, Millan; I’ll just wander in and wait until they’ve finished. Who am I to clog the wheels of Drama?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Millan with a vague disappointment; and he set down the bag and touched his cap and vanished in the darkness outside. The door closed with a click curiously final, shutting out both rain and night.

  Ellery reluctantly divested himself of his drenched hat and raincoat, hung them dutifully in the foyer-closet, kicked his bag into a corner, and sauntered into the living room to warm his chilled hands at the good fire. He stood before the flames soaking in heat, only half-conscious of the voices which floated through one of the two open door ways beyond the fireplace.

  A woman’s voice was saying in odd childish tones: “No, please go on! I won’t interrupt you again. I dare say there may be one.”