“We conclude then, Mr. Van Horn, that when Howard broke the Commandment against stealing, it was because events forced him to; and it was you who created those events for precisely that purpose.”

  Diedrich rolled his chair forward into the light and he smiled.

  He smiled and showed his teeth and he said with energy, almost with good humor: “I’ve been listening to this remarkable speech of yours, Mr. Queen, with what amounts to awe. So clever, so complicated!” He laughed. “But it’s getting to be too much of a good thing, don’t you agree? You’re making me out some sort of god. God Himself! I created this, I created that—I was ‘sure’ Howard would do this, I ‘knew’ Howard would do that…Aren’t you giving me far too much credit, Mr. Queen, for…what would you call it?”

  “Omniscience?”

  “Yes. How could I or anyone else be sure of anything?”

  “You couldn’t always be sure,” said Ellery quietly. “Nor was it essential always to be sure. Your plan was flexible; you had lots of latitude.

  “But throughout this infernal business, Mr. Van Horn, you planned and acted from a profound and detailed understanding of what made Howard and Sally tick. You didn’t misjudge their characters as they misjudged yours. You were as familiar with the innermost operation of their minds as with your own. Consistently you could, and you did, predict with great accuracy what they would feel, what they would think, and what they would do. You’d had thirty years or so to study Howard, and you knew Sally from the time she was nine, was it? Through all those years of correspondence when, as Sally said, she told you things about herself most girls would hesitate to tell their mothers; and in Sally’s case, your knowledge of her was climaxed by the intimate relationship of marriage. In your own way, Mr. Van Horn, you’re a master psychologist. It’s a pity you didn’t apply your talents more constructively.”

  “Somehow,” said Diedrich with a grim smile, “that doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

  “On the other hand, you didn’t have to be right each time. If Howard and Sally didn’t jump in quite the right direction you intended when you jerked the string, because of a lapse in judgment, or an imponderable you couldn’t have been aware of, or because of some accident you couldn’t have foreseen, you simply had to set into motion another string, actuate another series of events; and sooner or later, Howard would do what you wanted him to do.

  “But as it turned out, you were remarkably accurate in your judgments. You provided exactly the right stimuli, exerted exactly the right pressure at the right places, and Howard and Sally moved exactly as you wanted them to move.

  “And, I might add,” said Ellery in a very low voice, “not merely Howard and Sally.”

  7

  “GO ON,” SAID DIEDRICH Van Horn, after a while.

  Ellery looked up, startled. “I beg your pardon.

  “So far, then, in my analysis you’ve imposed three crimes on Howard and forced him to commit a fourth.

  “Which event produced my conclusion that Howard had broken the Commandments enjoining: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy and Honor thy father and thy mother? His trip in the dark hours one Sunday morning to Fidelity Cemetery to desecrate the graves of the two people you had told him were his parents.

  “I must confess,” said Ellery, “that when I reached this point in my reconstruction earlier this evening I was held up. It was quite impossible, with all your shrewd evaluation of Howard, to have been able to count on Howard’s desecrating the Ways’ graves—and out of the question that you should have been able to count on Howard’s doing so on a Sunday. The whole structure of my argument was in danger of collapsing. But then I saw what the answer must be.

  “Since you couldn’t count on Howard’s making that trip, since you couldn’t force Howard to make that trip, you could make it for him.

  “The more I thought about this, the more convinced I became that that was what happened. Not once had I caught a glimpse of Howard’s face, or heard his voice. I saw Howard’s car, I saw a man about Howard’s size wearing Howard’s coat and hat, I saw this man use a sculptor’s mallet and chisel…In view of the fact that your plan called for Howard to make that trip, and you couldn’t possibly have made Howard make it, someone else must have been acting the part of Howard that night; and since it was your plan, and you and Howard are of a size, that someone else must have been you.

  “A reconstruction was then simple. Suppose that on that Saturday night, quite late, and after the rest of us had got out of the way, you dropped into Howard’s studio, or bedroom, for a nightcap. Father and son stuff, Mr. Van Horn. And suppose you handed Howard a drink containing a drug, a drug in a dose sufficient to make him sleep all night, if he was undisturbed. When Howard dropped off, you put on yourself his distinctive and readily identifiable wide-brimmed Stetson and long trench coat, his socks, his shoes, and his trousers. And you left Howard sleeping in his room or studio and went quietly downstairs and outside and to the garage. You put Sally’s keys in the ignition lock of her convertible—for my benefit. You got into Howard’s roadster. And you drove around to the front, deliberately racing the engine. That was to attract my attention, of course, from the guest house. To make certain, you just as deliberately stalled the car under the porte-cochere…to make certain, and to give me time to dress, if I were undressed. Or perhaps you’d scouted me before taking the car out and had seen me dozing on the porch of the guest house; and the engine stall was to give me time to get a coat. And when you saw me begin to run across the garden, you drove off.

  “Mr. Van Horn, you played me that night the way a veteran sportsman plays a tarpon. Your timing throughout was superbly delicate. You didn’t make the mistake of making it too easy for me. You gave me just enough line to delude me into thinking I was giving you a run for your money. And, if I’d lost you, you’d have seen to it that I picked up your trail again.

  “The rain helped, but even if it hadn’t rained you were still safe; it was a dark night, and that you could have known in advance. In any event, you knew I wouldn’t come too close or try to stop you.

  You knew I’d be positive you were Howard and that my function was not to interfere but to observe.

  “And at the graves of the Ways you attacked the headstone, using a mallet and chisel you’d taken from Howard’s studio.

  “What happened after that illustrates the impeccability of your judgment of people and situations—a talent, by the way, that undoubtedly accounts for your success in business.

  “You left and drove home. You knew I wouldn’t follow you at once. You knew I’d examine the headstone after the attack, to check up on it. You knew that when I returned to North Hill Drive the odds were greatly in favor of my changing my wet clothing before going up to see if Howard was back. Yes, you were taking a chance on that; but the calculated risk is part of every careful plan, and the risk was not great. I’d probably not want to leave a trail of mud in the main house which might require explanations the next day—even if I didn’t mind risking pneumonia.

  “While I was changing in the guest house, you were putting the finishing touches to your master-illusion on the top floor of the house here. You took off Howard’s soaked socks and mud-caked shoes and put them on Howard’s feet. You took off Howard’s wet, muddy trousers and pulled them over Howard’s legs. You took off Howard’s trench coat and sat Howard up and put his arms through the sleeves and drew the coat around him and buttoned it. Howard’s sopping hat you placed on the pillow beside him. And then, calmly, you went to bed.”

  Ellery said: “You must have calculated that it was even possible I wouldn’t come to Howard’s room until morning. But whether immediately or after the lapse of several hours, I was sure to come to Howard’s room to check up on him. And so I’d find Howard in what would inevitably seem to me to be one of his typical amnesic stupors, fully dressed in the wet and muddy clothing which had made the nasty trip to the cemetery.

  “Yes, Mr. Van Horn, it was you who committed the two crimes of breaking the Sabbath and dishonoring Howard’s ‘parents,’ doing it in such a way as to fool me into believing the Commandment-breaker had been Howard.”

  8

  AND DIEDRICH SAID AGAIN, “Go on, Mr. Queen.”

  “Oh, I will,” said Ellery. And he said: “And now I come to perhaps the most spectacular example of your psychological shrewdness.

  “I blithely proved last year that Howard had broken the Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, when I pointed out that Howard had denied having given me the necklace to pawn. That was true, of course; he had given me the necklace to pawn, and he lied when he said he hadn’t.

  “But here again it was you who, by manipulating events and accurately estimating Howard, placed Howard in the position where, being what he was, he had to lie!

  “In your role of blackmailer, Mr. Van Horn, you demanded a second payment of twenty-five thousand dollars—virtually on the heels of the first demand, which had been paid. Obviously, you did this to exert the maximum pressure at the weakest point. For where could Sally and Howard get another twenty-five thousand dollars? There was no more of your cash lying conveniently around to be stolen. You knew they had nowhere to borrow the money, even if they dared leave such a trail. There was only one thing between them which might yield such a large sum: Sally’s necklace. It was virtually a certainty, then, that one or the other of them would think of Sally’s necklace as the means of satisfying the blackmailer’s second demand.

  “More than that. You knew I had acted as Sally’s go-between in the first negotiations with the blackmailer, so it was a better-than-fair guess that I’d act in the same capacity in their attempt to raise the second payment. And if I didn’t, you were no doubt ready with another scheme in which I’d have to permit myself to become involved and which would accomplish the same end: Howard’s denial of me.

  “But I did consent to act, and I acted. And the stage was set for your crowning psychological performance.

  “For no sooner had I pawned the necklace and deposited the money in the Wrightsville railroad station, as instructed, than you struck.

  “This time your tool was your brother Wolfert, Mr. Van Horn. Just as you knew Sally and Howard, so you knew Wolfert. What did Wolfert say? That you had told him you ‘hoped’ the Museum Committee wouldn’t ‘make a fuss’ about your donation! To have expressed such a ‘hope’ to Wolfert, jealous, bitter, and malicious as he is, was to invite him to thwart that hope. Wolfert actually chortled, ‘I was the one who put them up to it.’ I remember his saying it at the breakfast table that morning. But Wolfert was only partially right. He was only the instrument—your instrument. You played on him, Mr. Van Horn, as you played on your wife and your son. To make you squirm, as he thought, Wolfert prodded the Committee to give you a testimonial dinner, a full-dress affair of the kind he knew you loathed. But this was precisely what you wanted him to do. Because it gave you the natural and innocent excuse for asking Sally to wear her diamond necklace—which you knew she no longer had.

  “And so Sally would have to reveal that the necklace was gone. Would she tell the truth? Oh, no. To have told the truth Sally would have had to expose the whole mess of the blackmail, and its reason for being. You knew Sally would die rather than disclose that; you knew Howard would kill her before he let her disclose it. Again, it was a reasonable assumption that they’d invent some story to explain the necklace’s being gone. Burglary was in the air; Howard had stolen the cash and made an attempt to make it look like an outside thief s work; theft of the necklace in another “burglary’ was indicated.

  “And when Sally phoned you at your office to say that the necklace had been ‘stolen’ from the safe, you knew your calculations had been accurate and you exerted the last pressure: You called in Chief of Police Dakin.

  “From that point, nothing could go wrong. Dakin would locate the necklace in Simpson’s pawnshop, Sally and Howard would be confronted with the necklace, I would be identified by Simpson as the man who had pawned it, in sheer self-defense I’d have to reveal that Howard had asked me to pawn it—and Howard, to keep the story of his adultery with Sally from coming out, would deny it—would bear false witness,” said Ellery, “against a particularly witless neighbor.”

  And Ellery said: “Nine crimes against the Sinaitic decalogue, only two committed by Howard as a free uninfluenced agent, the other seven imposed by you upon Howard as your dupe or actually perpetrated by you physically in the guise of Howard.

  “Nine crimes, and when I recognized the grand pattern and so foresaw the inevitable tenth crime, Mr. Van Horn, you were prepared for me, your stage was fully set for your climax.

  “Because it was murder you were leading up to, Mr. Van Horn,” said Ellery, “double murder to satisfy your cold fury for revenge…the murder of your wife for having been unfaithful to you, the murder of your adopted son for having stolen your wife’s affections. I include Howard among your murder victims, Mr. Van Horn, because whether he died by legal execution for a murder he didn’t commit or by his own hand because he thought he had committed it, his death was murder just the same—and you were his murderer as surely as if your big hands choked his life out. As, in fact, they had choked the life out of Sally.”

  9

  DIEDRICH’S CHIN HAD SUNK to his breast again, and again his eyes were closed. And, in the wheel chair, he appeared again to be asleep.

  But Ellery continued: “When I telephoned you that night to warn you that your life was in danger, Mr. Van Horn, you knew your great moment had come at last. If you had any doubts, they were dispelled when I said it would take me forty or forty-five minutes to get back here. Nothing could have been better suited to your purpose. Forty or forty-five minutes were ample for what you had to do.

  “I think, Mr. Van Horn, that you intended to kill Sally that night whether I discovered the Ten Commandments pattern or not. If I didn’t discover it before Sally’s murder, I could hardly have avoided discovering it afterward, with the evidence you manufactured. And if the very worst happened, and I stupidly failed to discover and name the pattern, no doubt you were prepared for that, too: Simply by revealing the pattern yourself, or making some subtle suggestion to me which would finally open my eyes. God knows you left little or nothing to chance. You’d kept throwing ‘tens’ at me all through the case—even going to the exquisite trouble of using Room 1010 for the blackmail rendezvous at the Hollis and Room 10 as the depository of the four letters at Upham House and designating Locker 10 at Wrightsville station for the second twenty-five thousand dollars!

  “The time I allowed you, as I said, was ample. Wolfert wasn’t home—or was it at your suggestion, Mr. Van Horn, that your brother suddenly found he had urgent and important work at the office so late at night? Your mother would probably not leave her room or, if she did, you could easily have handled her. Laura and Eileen were asleep—Wrightsville domestics retire early. So there was little or no danger of interruption. In the phrase which has served similar purposes since it was first used in 1590, Mr. Van Horn—the coast was clear.

  “So while I was risking my silly neck speeding back to Wrightsville in the interests of your ‘safety,’ you calmly went up to Howard’s quarters, again had a nightcap with him, again drugged him. Then you went down to the second floor and you asked Sally to come to your bedroom and you strangled her there and placed her body in your bed. And then you went back upstairs and planted four of Sally’s hairs in Howard’s hand and with a tweezer inserted minute shreds of bloody tissue from Sally’s throat under Howard’s fingernails. And then you returned to the study here, locked yourself in as I had instructed, and simply waited for my arrival.

  “The thing was done. The final brush stroke on a classic canvas. All that remained were a few more lies, another demonstration of your histrionic ability—no great matter for a man of your extraordinary imagination and gifts. As a matter of fact, you outdid yourself that night. Your lies to me, particularly the one about Sally’s insisting on waiting up for you in your bedroom to tell you ‘something important’—with the implication that she intended to confess her adultery—were nothing short of inspired. And the way you led me around to the discovery that Sally was waiting in your bedroom was sheer genius.

  “And I was completely taken in, Mr. Van Horn,” said Ellery dully, “taken in on all ten counts. You set up the victim for me and I, Ellery Queen, little tin god of cerebration, furnished the coup de grâce. My ‘brilliant’ deductions, plus the indubitable evidence of Sally’s hair and the shreds of her flesh in Howard’s hand, left no loophole for Howard…or for me.

  “Because the truth is,” said Ellery slowly, “I implemented your heroic frame-up of Howard, Mr. Van Horn. Without me it couldn’t have been the perfect thing it was. So I helped you kill Howard, you see. I was your little-tin-god-accessory before, during, and after the fact.”

  Now Diedrich’s great head came up, and his eyes opened, and his loosely fleshed hand made a gesture of impatience.

  “You accuse me of this enormous crime,” he said with a certain liveliness, “and I must admit—as you put it, it sounds pretty plausible. But—just in the interests of truth, you know—it strikes me your argument fails to take into account the one thing that destroys it.”

  “Does it?” said Ellery. “Mr. Van Horn, I’d be overjoyed to hear it. I’ve never before in my life made an analysis I’m more anxious to tear down.”

  “Well, then Mr. Queen, relax,” said Diedrich with almost the old boom in his voice. There was a slight flush in his desiccated cheeks as he trundled the wheel chair closer to the desk. “You say Howard didn’t kill my wife—although, of course, the boy did, thinking he was killing me. But if Howard was innocent, Mr. Queen, when you charged him with murder why didn’t he deny it? That’s what an innocent man would have done. And then what does he do? He takes his own life! Don’t you see? It doesn’t wash. Howard was guilty, all right. The poor boy knew you had him with the goods; he couldn’t deny it. And when he committed suicide he admitted his guilt.”