“No, miss,” the man was saying. “Not on September 14th or any other night.”

  Dane moved toward her; she turned around and they almost collided.

  “Judy!”

  It was Judith Walsh, his father’s secretary. He had seen nothing of Judy since the fateful night; he had supposed that in his father’s trouble she was holding down the fort at the McKell offices.

  “Dane, what are you doing here?”

  “The same thing you are, apparently. Trying to prove Dad’s alibi.” He took her to a booth and ordered beers.

  “How long have you been at this?” he asked her.

  “Seems like ten years,” she said disconsolately. “I simply didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t just do nothing.”

  Dane nodded; he knew something - not much - of the story behind her devotion to his father. The elder McKell had given Judith Walsh her first and only job, at a time when she could see for herself nothing but the fate of most girls from her economic class - a hasty and overfertile marriage, and a life of drudgery. She had made herself indispensable to Ashton, and he had repaid her handsomely.

  “Look, Judy, we’re both pulling on the same oar,” Dane said. “Why don’t we hook up? What places have you covered?”

  “I have a list.”

  “So have I. Between the two of us, we ought to turn it up.” Judy set down her half-finished beer. “We’re wasting time, Dane.

  Let’s get back on it.”

  They kept going by day and by night; after a while, in a sort of sleep-walking daze. The photographs became cracked and dog-eared.

  It was bitterly interesting to see how the news of the indictment handed down by the grand jury affected people Dane knew. A girl who had been in pursuit of him since the spring, phoning him several times a week, vanished from the face of the earth. Friends these days were always hurrying somewhere, unable to chat for more than a minute or two. On the other hand, old Colonel Adolphus Phillipse, Lutetia’s cousin, appeared at the McKell apartment for the first time since the funeral of Lutetia’s grandmother’s sister - pausing en route just long enough to whale away at a cameraman with his walking stick - and announced that he had pawned his mother’s jewelry, offering the proceeds, $10,000, as a reward leading to the arrest and conviction of what he termed “the real culprit.” He was persuaded with difficulty that his generosity was not needed.

  By November 1st, Dane and Judy were worn out, stumped. The only thing they did not doubt was the truth of Ashton McKell’s story. As Dane said, “If for no other reason than that, if he’d made the story up, he could hardly have helped inventing a better one!”

  And on November 1st, in a crowded courtroom, Judge Edgar Suarez presiding, the trial of Ashton McKell began. It was a Tuesday.

  * * *

  On Wednesday, after another night’s fruitless search, not concluded until the bars closed, Dane insisted on taking Judy home to her West End Avenue apartment. Her eyes were deeply stamped with fatigue. Outside her building he said, “You swallow a sleeping pill, missie, and hit the sack.”

  “No,” Judy said. “I want to check off the places we covered tonight against the list of licenses I have upstairs. To make sure we didn’t skip one.”

  She swayed, and he caught her. “Here! I’d better come up and help you tick them off. Then you’re going to bed.”

  He had never been in her apartment before. It was tailored but feminine, with some creditable pieces of bric-a-brac, and an impressive hi-fi set backed up by a formidable collection of recordings.

  “All my money goes into it,” Judy laughed, noticing his respectful eyebrows. “I’m a frustrated musician, I guess. How are you on music?”

  “Long-haired,” said Dane.

  “Wonderful! Maybe we can spend an evening listening to a whole nightful of music. I mean when this is, well, over.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I have some simply marvelous old 78s. Do you know the prewar Beethoven symphonies recorded by Felix Weingartner and the Vienna Philharmonic? In my opinion they’re still the definitive performances…

  “ They checked their list of the evening. In the area they had covered, not one place that sold liquor over a bar had been passed by. “There,” Judy said, putting down her pencil. “That’s done. Funny, I don’t feel as tired -”

  Dane took her in his arms, kissed her mouth. After one gasp of surprise, she returned the pressure.

  Later, he told himself it had been inevitable. The attraction between them - how old was it? It seemed to him now that it dated from their first sight of each other, years before. He had always been drawn to a certain quality of sweet cleanliness about her, dainty and uncomplicated and altogether feminine.

  Why hadn’t he realized it sooner? And where now was his passion for Sheila Grey? Already her memory was a vestigial relic of the past. Was he so shallow, or had his love for Sheila been no love at all?

  But just as suddenly as he had begun making love to Judy, he stopped, pushed her aside, and hurried from her apartment. She was more puzzled than hurt, more tired than puzzled. As she sank into sleep the thought drifted through her head: He feels guilty about being happy while his father is in a mess, that’s why. Dane was such a strange man…

  They established a routine. During the day they attended the trial; the evening and night were dedicated to the hunt for the elusive bar and the invisible bartender. They took their hasty meals together. Judy was aware of a restraint on Dane’s part - a hint of wariness, a drawing away. And yet there were times when he seemed to recapture something of those few minutes in her apartment that night. But these were mere glimpses into what had already become a misty remembrance of things past. It was almost as if she had dreamed the whole episode.

  A chill invaded the city. The tang of hot chestnut smoke hung about Manhattan street corners, the city’s equivalent of suburbia’s burning leaves. Through streets fashionable and down - at-heel, clean and dirty, through areas of high-rent apartments and melting-pot neighborhoods and garbage-littered slums, they pressed their search. And still die search went unrewarded.

  The trial approached its climax. Few defendants against a charge of murder had had so distinguished a group of character witnesses as paraded to the stand to testify to the probity and non-lethal nature of Ashton McKell. But Dane knew, and Judith Walsh knew, and Richard M. Heaton knew, and most of all Robert O’Brien knew - the highly capable criminal lawyer associated with Heaton for the defense - for how little all this counted. The district attorney had only to paraphrase the prosecution’s words in the Richard Savage case of long ago (“Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a much greater man than you or I; that he wears much finer clothes than you or I; and that he has much more money in his pocket than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; but is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that he should therefore kill you or me, gentlemen of the jury?”) for everyone to see how very little all the fine words by all the fine people added up to.

  “What are my father’s chances?” Dane asked O’Brien. And O’Brien looked him in the eye and said, “Very poor indeed.” Had his answer been anything else, Dane would not have believed him.

  Judy wept. “There has to be something else we can do,” she wailed,

  “before it’s too late. Couldn’t you hire a private detective, Dane?”

  “To do what?” His laugh was more of a bark. “Show them anything out of the ordinary and they’re afraid to touch it. Oh, it wouldn’t be hard to find one who’d take the money, but… “ And just then something slipped to the surface of his mind.

  It was the name of a man he had met once at a literary cocktail party in the Algonquin. A man v/ho wrote detective stories for a living, and for a hobby… there were some impressive, if incredible, stories in circulation about his hobby. And wasn’t his father connected with the New York police?

  “By God!” Dane exclaimed. “His father is that old man I talked to at police headquarters!”

  “Whose father?” Judy asked, puzzled.

  “I know just the fellow!”

  So they went to look for Ellery Queen.

  * * *

  They found Ellery in the private pavilion of the Swedish-Norwegian Hospital in Murray Hill.

  “We squareheads are very adept at patching up ski accident cases,” genial Dr. Johanneson had said, patting the casts in which Ellery was immobilized.

  “You ought to be,” Ellery growled, “you invented the damned things.

  And don’t look so pleased with yourself. I’ll have you know the Queens were breaking their bones in civilized ways when your barbarian ancestors were still chiseling runes in the forests of Gothland!” It was a pleasant enough room, the walls painted a tonic yellow-sand.

  Ellery regarded his two young visitors quizzically. “This just isn’t my year,” he complained. “I’d gone up to Wrightsville to get in some early skiing. It was my luck that a movie outfit was shooting winter scenes in the Mahoganies and the director, a man I know, wheedled me into the act.

  The crew had rigged a camera on a bobsled, the bobsled broke loose, and next thing I knew, as I came downslope the sled and I had an argument.

  You know, I don’t so much mind the leg that was broken by the sled. It’s the one my own skis broke that bugs me! How’s your latest novel coming along, McKell? - I seem to recall you were planning one when we met” - this last in a different tone.

  Ellery sat enthroned in an armchair, both legs in their bulky casts stretched out before him, resting on a hassock. Each morning he was hoisted out of bed, and each evening he was hoisted back in. Books, magazines, tobacco, fruit, writing materials, a bottle of wine, the telephone, were within reach. There was even a remote-control device for the television set.

  “I didn’t come here to talk about my novel,” Dane said.

  “Then it can only be about your father.”

  Dane nodded bleakly.

  “I’ve followed the case.” Ellery glanced at both of them. “But newspaper accounts leave everything to be desired. Tell me all about it.” Dane told him everything - everything, that is, but his own attack on Sheila. When he was finished, Judy went into a detailed account of their unsuccessful search for the bar and the bartender who alone could give Ashton McKell the alibi he so desperately needed.

  Ellery listened, questioned, took notes. Then he leaned back in his armchair and lost himself in thought. There was a long silence. The little noises of the hospital - the clatter of a tray, the hoarse voice of the communicator, the rattle of a dressing cart, the hum of a floor polisher…

  Ellery seemed asleep with his eyes open. Dane found himself wishing that he could sleep - for a hundred years, to wake up and find that recent events had receded into the harmless pages of history.

  Suddenly Ellery said, “One question. It comes down to that.”

  “Of course, Mr. Queen,” Judy said. “What bar was Mr. McKell in?”

  “No. Strange that the question hasn’t been asked before. It’s the heart of the matter. The whole case may well center in it.” His voice dribbled away.

  Just then a glorious blond nurse came in, seemed disappointed to find company present, exchanged smiles with the patient, and hurried out.

  Ellery, still smiling, reached for the phone, identified himself by name and room number, and gave the hospital operator the telephone number of police headquarters.

  “Inspector Queen, please… Dad?… No, I’m fine. Dad, Dane McKell is with me… I know, he told me. I wish you’d do something for me. I want to see his father… Wait a minute! There’s something I must ask Mr. McKell, and you’ll have to arrange it with the D.A.’s office…

  Come on, Dad, you certainly can. Today is Saturday, the trial is recessed, there’s plenty of precedent… Yes, it’s important, or I wouldn’t ask you.

  All right?… I’ll phone you as usual tonight.” He turned back to his visitors. “There’s something wholesome to be said about old-fashioned drag. Have some fruit, you two. Or wine?

  McKell, about your novel… “

  An hour and a half later he was saying, “Confound it, Dane, it doesn’t matter in the slightest if the old stone quarry has fish in it or not. As long as Jerry thinks it has, it’s reason enough for him to go there. So in your third chapter… “ Someone knocked on the door. “Yes?” And there stood Ashton McKell, between two detectives, a gray-haired one and one who looked like Sugar Ray Robinson.

  * * *

  The fall sun through the windows fell on the elder McKell’s face, and it seemed to Dane paler and hollower even than when he had seen his father in the Tombs. There was a dream quality to the experience, standing in the sunny hospital room touching his father’s shoulder while Judy clung to his free arm murmuring, “Oh, Mr. McKell,” over and over in a litany of grief and pleasure, while the two detectives bantered with the man in the casts.

  “Ellery, you damn fool,” the gray-haired one said, “getting yourself banged up like this. You look like a goalie at the Garden.”

  “Floogle yourself, Piggott,” Ellery said pleasantly, “and may all four of your legs never know a splint. Zillie, what are you doing out on a daytime assignment?”

  The other detective grinned and said, “It’s a fact the Inspector reserves me for the nighttime tricks, says I blend better with the dark.” His brown wrist was locked to Ashton McKell’s.

  “Look, men, it’s been a lovely visit,” said Ellery. “Now would you wait in the hall?”

  “Well,” said Detective Piggott cautiously.

  “You know we can’t do that, Ellery,” Detective Zilgitt said. “Got no business being here at all. How did you swing it?”

  “Never mind how. And Piggie, don’t give me any of your legalistic hawing. I’m being allowed to see Mr. McKell as a friend of the court.

  That makes me an officer of the court, which in turn makes what I have to say to him privileged.”

  “In a Piggott’s eye,” said Piggott. “You going to be responsible, broken legs and all?”

  “I’m responsible.”

  “Well, just in case,” Zilgitt said, “we’ll be outside the door.” He unlocked the handcuffs and the detectives left the room.

  Ashton McKell shook hands with Ellery. “I don’t know what you want to talk to me about, Mr. Queen, but I’m not looking a gift horse under the tail. It seems to me I’ve lived in a cell for twenty years.”

  “Dane, Miss Walsh, tell Mr. McKell what you two have been up to.” Dane did so. Ash McKell listened quietly; he seemed a little bewildered, as if at a new experience. “And Mr. Queen has one important question to ask you, Dad. That’s why you’re here.”

  “From the story I’ve been told,” Ellery said, “and I assume it’s the whole story, we can take for granted that the police have searched certain places thoroughly - Miss Grey’s apartment, your apartment, Mr. McKell, your office and so on.”

  Ashton McKell looked puzzled now.

  “And yet,” Ellery went on, “one thing has never been mentioned. It was not, after all, Ashton McKell who called each Wednesday on Sheila Grey, was it? It was Dr. Stone. Correct? That was your invariable practice?”

  The prisoner nodded slowly. Dane looked chagrined.

  “Ashton McKell got into the Continental, and Dr. Stone climbed out.

  Somewhere between the back door of the Cricket Club and that garage off Park Avenue, Ashton McKell with the assistance of the contents of a little black bag became Dr. Stone. The question I want answered - the one that nobody seems to have thought of asking - is: Mr. McKell, what happened to your little black bag?”

  Dane’s father looked confused. “I’ll have to think… Does it matter, Mr. Queen?”

  Ellery banged on one of his casts. “Does it matter!” he cried. “Obviously the police haven’t found it, or you can bet it would be one of the People’s exhibits at the trial right now. There hasn’t been a word about

  ‘Dr. Stone’ - no identification of the bag, no testimony about Dr. Stone’s weekly visits to the Grey apartment, no identification of you as Dr. Stone, no placing of the ‘doctor’ on the scene of the crime, and so on. Not only haven’t the police found the bag containing your make-up materials, they’ve never even connected you with such a bag. Seems to me it’s proved the perfect disguise. Too perfect. So I repeat: What happened to the bag?”

  Ashton shook his head, sank into a chair, shading his eyes.

  “Take it a step at a time,” Ellery said encouragingly. “You had it with you when you left the airport that night after getting off the plane from Washington?”

  “Yes. I remember carrying it into Sheila’s - Miss Grey’s apartment. I was there such a short time. Did I… ? Yes, I had it when I left. I recall shifting it from one hand to the other as I walked the streets - changing hands, because I was also carrying my overnight bag. And I had it with me in that bar. I know, because I recall setting it down on the bar stool beside me.“Do you remember taking it home with you, Mr. McKell?”

  “I didn’t have it when I got home. I’m sure of that. Could I have left it in the bar? No… I recall picking it up as I left the bar… I wouldn’t have taken it home. Usually I kept it locked up in my room at the Cricket. But I was closer to Grand Central at the time -”

  “Grand Central,” Ellery said softly.

  Ashton was looking astonished. “I did say Grand Central, didn’t I?

  How our minds play tricks on us! That’s it, of course. I checked it at the baggage room, or whatever it’s called - the counter. When I left the bar I must have walked all the way down to Grand Central. And I didn’t remember it!”

  “Where is the baggage check, Mr. McKell?”

  ‘Probably still in the suit I wore the night I got home.” Dane said slowly, “Then how is it the police didn’t find it when they searched your things?”

  “Never mind that now, Dane,” Ellery said briskly. “Get on this phone and call your mother. Have her look for it at once.” It was the senior maid, old Margaret, who answered.