Ellery sprang forward. A smaller easel near the large one supported a picture. It was a cheap “processed” oil painting, a commercial copy of Rembrandt’s famous self-portrait group, The Artist and His Wife. Rembrandt himself sat in the foreground, and his wife stood in the background. The canvas on the large easel was a half-finished replica of this painting. Both figures had been completely sketched in by Dr. Arlen and brush work begun: the lusty smiling mustached artist in his gayly plumed hat, his left arm about the waist of his Dutch-garbed wife. And on the woman’s chin there was painted a beard.

  Ellery gaped from the processed picture to Dr. Aden’s copy. But the one showed a woman’s smooth chin, and the other—the doctor’s—a squarish, expertly stroked black beard. And yet it had been daubed in hastily, as if the old painter had been working against time.

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed Ellery, glaring. “That’s insane!”

  “Think so?, said Murch blandly. “Me, I don’t know. I’ve got a notion about it.” He growled at Miss Krutch: “Beat it,” and she fled from the studio, her long legs twinkling.

  Ellery shook his head dazedly and sank into a chair, fumbling for a cigaret. “That’s a new wrinkle to me, Captain. First time I’ve ever encountered in a homicide an example of the beard-and-mustache school of art—you’ve seen the pencilled hair on the faces of men and women in billboard advertisements? It’s—” And then his eyes narrowed as something leaped into them and he said abruptly: “Is Miss Agatha Shaw’s boy—that Peter—in the house?”

  Murch, smiling secretly as if he were enjoying a huge jest, went to the hallway door and roared something. Ellery got out of the chair and ran across the room and returned with one of the smocks, which he flung over the dead man’s body.

  A small boy with frightened yet inquisitive eyes came slowly into the room, followed by one of the most remarkable creatures Ellery had ever seen. This apparition was a large stout woman of perhaps sixty, with lined rugged features—so heavy they were almost wattled—painted, bedaubed, and varnished with an astounding cosmetic technique. Her lips, gross as they were, were shaped by rouge into a perfect and obscene Cupid’s-bow; her eyebrows had been tweezed to incredible thinness; round rosy spots punctuated her sagging cheeks; and the whole rough heavy skin was floury with white powder.

  But her costume was even more amazing than her face. For she was rigged out in Victorian style—a tight-waisted garment, almost bustle-hipped, full wide skirts that reached to her thick ankles, a deep and shiny bosom, and an elaborate boned lace choker-collar….And then Ellery remembered that, since this must be Edythe Shaw Royce, there was at least a partial explanation for her eccentric appearance: she was an old woman, she came from England, and she was no doubt still basking in the vanished glow of her girlhood theatrical days.

  “Mrs. Royce,” said Murch mockingly, “and Peter.”

  “How d’ye do,” muttered Ellery, tearing his eyes away. “Uh—Peter.”

  The boy, a sharp-featured and skinny little creature, sucked his dirty forefinger and stared.

  “Peter!” said Mrs. Royce severely. Her voice was quite in tune with her appearance: deep and husky and slightly cracked. Even her hair, Ellery noted with a wince, was nostalgic—a precise deep brown, frankly dyed. Here was one female, at least, who did not mean to yield to old age without a determined struggle, he thought. “‘He’s frightened. Peter!”

  “Ma’am,” mumbled Peter, still staring.

  “Peter,” said Ellery, “look at that picture.” Peter did so, reluctantly. “Did you put that beard on the face of the lady in the picture, Peter?”

  Peter shrank against Mrs. Royce’s voluminous skirts. “N-no!”

  “Curious, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Royce cheerfully. “I was remarking about that to Captain Burch—Murch only this morning. I’m sure Peter wouldn’t have drawn the beard on that one. He’d learned his lesson, hadn’t you, Peter?” Ellery remarked with alarm that the extraordinary woman kept screwing her right eyebrow up and drawing it deeply down, as if there were something in her eye that bothered her.

  “Ah,” said Ellery. “Lesson?”

  “You see,” went on Mrs. Royce, continuing her ocular gymnastics with unconscious vigor, “it was only yesterday that Peter’s mother caught him drawing a beard with chalk on one of Dr. Arlen’s paintings in Peter’s bedroom. Dr. Arlen gave him a round hiding, I’m afraid, and himself removed the chalk-marks. Dear Agatha was so angry with poor Dr. Arlen. So you didn’t do it, did you, Peter?”

  “Naw,” said Peter, who had become fascinated by the bulging smock on the floor.

  “Dr. Arlen, eh?” muttered Ellery. “Thank you,” and he began to pace up and down as Mrs. Royce took Peter by the arm and firmly removed him from the studio. A formidable lady, he thought, with her vigorous room-shaking tread. And he recalled that she wore flat-heeled shoes and had, from the ugly swelling of the leather, great bunions.

  “Come on,” said Murch suddenly, going to the door.

  “Where?”

  “Downstairs.” The detective signalled a trooper to guard the studio and led the way. “I want to show you,” he said as they made for the main part of the house, “the reason for the beard on that dame-in-the-picture’s jaw.”

  “Indeed?” murmured Ellery, and said nothing more. Murch paused in the doorway of a pale Colonial living-room and jerked his head.

  Ellery looked in. A hollow-chested, cadaverous man in baggy tweeds sat slumped in a Cogswell chair staring at an empty glass in his hand, which was shaking. His eyes were yellow-balled and shot with blood, and his loose skin was a web of red veins.

  “That,” said Murch contemptuously and yet with a certain triumph, “is Mr. John Shaw.”

  Ellery noted that Shaw possessed the same heavy features, the same fat lips and rock-hewn nose, as the wonderful Mrs. Royce, his cousin; and for that matter, as the dour and annoyed-looking old pirate in the portrait over the fireplace who was presumably his father.

  And Ellery also noted that on Mr. John Shaw’s unsteady chin there was a bedraggled, pointed beard.

  Mr. Mason, a bit greenish about the jowels, was waiting for them in a sombre reception-room. “Well?” he asked in a whisper, like a supplicant before the Cumæan Sibyl.

  “Captain Murch,” murmured Ellery, “has a theory.”

  The detective scowled. “Plain as day. It’s John Shaw. It’s my hunch Dr. Arlen painted that beard as a clue to his killer. The only one around here with a beard is Shaw. It ain’t evidence, I admit, but it’s something to work on. And believe you me,” he said with a snap of his brown teeth, “I’m going to work on it!”

  “John,” said Mason slowly. “He certainly had motive. And yet I find it difficult to…” His shrewd eyes flickered. “Beard? What beard?”

  “There’s a beard painted on the chin of a female face upstairs,” drawled Ellery, “the face being on a Rembrandt Arlen was copying at the time he was murdered. That the good doctor painted the beard himself is quite evident. It’s expertly stroked, done in black oils, and in his death hand there’s still the brush tipped with black oils. There isn’t any one else in the house who paints, is there?”

  “No,” said Mason uncomfortably.

  “Voilà.”

  “But even if Arlen did such a—a mad thing,” objected the lawyer, “how do you know it was just before he was attacked?”

  “Aw,” growled Murch, “when the hell else would it be?”

  “Now, now, Captain,” murmured Ellery, “let’s be scientific. There’s a perfectly good answer to your question, Mr. Mason. First, we all agree that Dr. Arlen couldn’t have painted the beard after he was attacked; he died instantly. Therefore he must have painted it before he was attacked. The question is: How long before? Well, why did Arlen paint the beard at all?”

  “Murch says as a clue to his murderer,” muttered Mason. “But such a—a fantastic legacy to the police! It looks deucedly odd.”

  “What’s odd about it?”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” exploded Mason, “if he wanted to leave a clue to his murderer, why didn’t he write the murderer’s name on the canvas? He had the brush in his hand…”

  “Precisely,” murmured Ellery. “A very good question, Mr. Mason. Well, why didn’t he? If he was alone—that is, if he was anticipating his murder—he certainly would have left us a written record of his concrete suspicions. The fact that he left no such record shows that he didn’t anticipate his murder before the appearance of his murderer. Therefore he painted the beard while his murderer was present. But now we find an explanation for the painted beard as a clue. With his murderer present, he couldn’t paint the name; the murderer would have noticed it and destroyed it. Arlen was forced, then, to adopt a subtle means: leave a clue that would escape his killer’s attention. Since he was painting at the time, he used a painter’s means. Even if his murderer noticed it, he probably ascribed it to Arlen’s nervousness; although the chances are he didn’t notice it.”

  Murch stirred. “Say, listen—”

  “But a beard on a woman’s face,” groaned the lawyer. “I tell you—”

  “Oh,” said Ellery dreamily, “Dr. Arlen had a precedent.”

  “Precedent?”

  “Yes; we’ve found, Captain Murch and I, that young Peter in his divine innocence had chalked a beard and mustache on one of Dr. Arlen’s daubs which hangs in Peter’s bedroom. This was only yesterday. Dr. Arlen whaled the tar out of him for this horrible crime vers l’art, no doubt justifiably. But Peter’s beard-scrawl must have stuck in the doctor’s mind; threshing about wildly in his mind while his murderer talked to him, or threatened him, the beard business popped out at him. Apparently he felt that it told a story, because he used it. And there, of course, is the rub.”

  “I still say it’s all perfectly asinine,” grunted Mason.

  “Not asinine,” said Ellery. “Interesting. He painted a beard on the chin of Rembrandt’s wife. Why Rembrandt’s wife, in the name of all that’s wonderful?—a woman dead more than two centuries! These Shaws aren’t remote descendants…”

  “Nuts,” said Murch distinctly.

  “Nuts,” said Ellery, “is a satisfactory word under the circumstances, Captain. Then a grim jest? Hardly. But if it wasn’t Dr. Arlen’s grisly notion of a joke, what under heaven was it? What did Arlen mean to convey?”

  “If it wasn’t so ridiculous,” muttered the lawyer, “I’d say he was pointing to—Peter.”

  “Nuts and double-nuts,” said Murch, “begging your pardon, Mr. Mason. The kid’s the only one, I guess, that’s got a real alibi. It seems his mother’s nervous about him and she always keeps his door locked from the outside. I found it that way myself this morning. And he couldn’t have got out through the window.”

  “Well, well,” sighed Mason, “I’m sure I’m all at sea. John, eh….What do you think, Mr. Queen?”

  “Much as I loathe argument,” said Ellery, “I can’t agree with Brother Murch.”

  “Oh, yeah?” jeered Murch. “I suppose you’ve got reasons?”

  “I suppose,” said Ellery, “I have; not the least impressive of which is the dissimilar shapes of the real and painted beards.”

  The detective glowered. “Well, if he didn’t mean John Shaw by it, what the hell did he mean?”

  Ellery shrugged. “If we knew that, my dear Captain, we should know everything.”

  “Well,” snarled Murch, “I think it’s spinach, and I’m going to haul Mr. John Shaw down to county headquarters and pump the old bastard till I find it’s spinach.”

  “I shouldn’t do that, Murch,” said Ellery quickly. “If only for—”

  “I know my duty,” said the detective with a black look, and he stamped out of the reception-room.

  John Shaw, who was quietly drunk, did not even protest when Murch shoved him into the squad car. Followed by the county morgue-truck bearing Dr. Arlen’s body, Murch vanished with his prey.

  Ellery took a hungry turn about the room, frowning. The lawyer sat in a crouch, gnawing his fingernails. And again the room, and the house, and the very air were charged with silence, an ominous silence.

  “Look here,” said Ellery sharply, “there’s something in this business you haven’t told me yet, Mr. Mason.”

  The lawyer jumped, and then sank back biting his lips. “He’s such a worrisome creature,” said a cheerful voice from the doorway and they both turned, startled, to find Mrs. Royce beaming in at them. She came in with the stride of a grenadier, her bosom joggling. And she sat down by Mason’s side and with daintiness lifted her capacious skirts with both hands a bit above each fat knee. “I know what’s troubling you, Mr. Mason!” The lawyer cleared his throat hastily. “I assure you—”

  “Nonsense! I’ve excellent eyes. Mason, you haven’t introduced this nice young man.” Mason mumbled something placative. “Queen, is it? Charmed, Mr. Queen. First sample of reasonably attractive American I’ve seen since my arrival. I can appreciate a handsome man; I was on the London stage for many years. And really,” she thundered in her formidable baritone, “I wasn’t so ill-looking myself!”

  “I’m sure of that,” murmured Ellery. “But what—”

  “Mason’s afraid for me,” said Mrs. Royce with a girlish simper. “A most conscientious barrister! He’s simply petrified with fear that whoever did for poor Dr. Arlen will select me as his next victim. And I tell him now, as I told him a few moments ago when you were upstairs with that dreadful Murch person, that for one thing I shan’t be such an easy victim—” Ellery could well believe that—“and for another I don’t believe either John or Agatha, which is what’s in Mason’s mind—don’t deny it, Mason!—was responsible for Dr. Arlen’s death.”

  “I never—” began the lawyer feebly.

  “Hmm,” said Ellery. “What’s your theory, Mrs. Royce?”

  “Some one out of Arlen’s past,” boomed the lady with a click of her jaws as a punctuation mark. “I understand he came here twenty years ago under most mysterious circumstances. He may have murdered somebody, and that somebody’s brother or some one has returned to avenge—”

  “Ingenious,” grinned Ellery. “As tenable as Murch’s, Mr. Mason.”

  The lady sniffed. “He’ll release Cousin John soon enough,” she said complacently. “John’s stupid enough under ordinary circumstances, you know, but when he’s drunk—! There’s no evidence, is there? A cigaret, if you please, Mr. Queen.”

  Ellery hastened to offer his case. Mrs. Royce selected a cigaret with a vast paw, smiled roguishly as Ellery held a match, and then withdrew the cigaret and blew smoke, crossing her legs as she did so. She smoked almost in the Russian fashion, cupping her hand about the cigaret instead of holding it between two fingers. A remarkable woman! “Why are you so afraid for Mrs. Royce?” he drawled.

  “Well—” Mason hesitated, torn between discretion and desire. “There may have been a double motive for killing Dr. Arlen, you see. That is,” he added hurriedly, “if Agatha or John had anything to do—”

  “Double motive?”

  “One, of course, is the conversion of the hundred thousand to Mrs. Shaw’s stepchildren, as I told you. The other…Well, there is a proviso in connection with the bequest to Dr. Arlen. In return for offering him a home and income for the rest of his life, he was to continue to attend to the medical needs of the family, you see, with special attention to Mrs. Royce.”

  “Poor Aunt Maria,” said Mrs. Royce with a tidal sigh. “She must have been a dear, dear person.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow, Mr. Mason.”

  “I’ve a copy of the will in my pocket.” The lawyer fished for a crackling document. “Here it is. ‘And in particular to conduct monthly medical examinations of my niece, Edith Shaw—or more frequently if Dr. Arlen should deem it necessary—to insure her continued good health; a provision, (mark this, Queen!) ‘a provision I am sure my stepchildren will appreciate.’ ”

  “A cynical addendum,” nodded Ellery, blinking a little. “Mrs. Shaw placed on her trusted leech the responsibility for keeping you healthy, Mrs. Royce, suspecting that her dearly beloved stepchildren might be tempted to—er—tamper with your life. But why should they?”

  For the first time something like terror invaded Mrs. Royce’s massive face. She set her jaw and said, a trifle tremulously: “N-nonsense. I can’t believe—Do you think it’s possible they’ve already tr—”

  “You don’t feel ill, Mrs. Royce?” cried Mason, alarmed.

  Under the heavy coating of powder her coarse skin was muddily pale. “No, I—Dr. Arlen was supposed to examine me for the first time tomorrow. Oh, if it’s…The food—”

  “Poison was tried three months ago,” quavered the lawyer. “On Mrs. Shaw, Queen, as I told you. Good God. Mrs. Royce, you’ll have to be careful!”

  “Come, come,” snapped Ellery. “What’s the point? Why should the Shaws want to poison Mrs. Royce, Mason?”

  “Because,” said Mason in a trembling voice, “in the event of Mrs. Royce’s demise her estate is to revert to the original estate; which would automatically mean to John and Agatha.” He mopped his brow.

  Ellery heaved himself out of the chair and took another hungry turn about the sombre room. Mrs. Royce’s right eyebrow suddenly began to go up and down with nervousness.

  “This needs thinking over,” he said abruptly; and there was something queer in his eyes that made both of them stare at him with uneasiness. “I’ll stay the night, Mr. Mason, if Mrs. Royce has no objection.”

  “Do,” whispered Mrs. Royce in a tremble; and this time she was afraid, very plainly afraid. And over the room settled an impalpable dust, like a distant sign of approaching villainy. “Do you think they’ll actually try…?”

  “It is entirely,” said Ellery dryly, “within the realm of possibility.”

  The day passed in a timeless haze. Unaccountably, no one came; the telephone was silent; and there was no word from Murch, so that John Shaw’s fate remained obscure. Mason sat in a miserable heap on the front porch, a cigar cold in his mouth, rocking himself like a weazened old doll. Mrs. Royce retired, subdued, to her quarters. Peter was off somewhere in the gardens tormenting a dog; occasionally Miss Krutch’s tearful voice reprimanded him ineffectually.