“I have it.” Howard reached inside his tweed jacket and took out a long, very fat, plain manila envelope. And he held it out to Ellery.

  “Me?” said Ellery in a perfectly flat voice.

  Sally whispered, “Howard won’t let me go, and I don’t think he ought to go—it’ll be a great nervous strain and he might pull another amnesia attack in the middle of it. Then we’d be in the soup for fair. And besides, we’re both so well known in town, Ellery. If we were noticed…”

  “You want me to act as your intermediary tomorrow.”

  “Would you?”

  It came out in a little exhausted puff, like the last gasp of a deflating balloon. There was nothing left in her, not anger or guilt or shame or even despair.

  It hardly matters how this turns out. She’ll never be the same. It’s all over for her. From now on it’s Diedrich, first and last. And he’ll never know, and after a while she may even be happy with him after a fashion.

  And Howard, you’ve lost. You’ve lost what you don’t even know you’ve been trying to win.

  “What did I tell you?” cried Howard. “This was all for nothing, Sal. You couldn’t expect Ellery to do it. Especially Ellery. I’ll simply have to do it myself.”

  Ellery took the envelope from him. It was unsealed; there was a rubber band around it. He removed the band and looked inside. The envelope was filled with sharp new bills, five-hundred dollar bills. He glanced at Howard inquiringly.

  “The exact amount. Fifty five-hundreds.”

  “Sally, didn’t he say anything about having the money in small denominations?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “What difference does it make?” snarled Howard. “He knows we’d never try to trace the bills. Or catch him. All he’d have to do is talk.”

  “Dieds would never believe him!” She hurled it at Howard. And then she was silent again.

  Ellery put the rubber band back around the envelope.

  “Let me have it,” said Howard.

  But Ellery was stowing the envelope away. “I’ll need it tomorrow, won’t I?”

  Sally’s lips were parted. “You’ll do it?”

  “On one condition.”

  “Oh.” She braced herself. “What, Ellery?”

  “That you crack open that hamper before I starve to death.”

  Ellery solved a difficult problem in histrionics by pleading “the novel” as an excuse for not appearing at the dinner table. He had already lost the better part of a day, he explained, and if he was to honor his commitment, authors being notoriously honorable about commitments to publishers, he would have to push along. He managed to convey, by the delicate edge on his tone—he did not pronounce the words themselves—that his schedule would be further impaired by a certain nonliterary pursuit on the morrow.

  This was all deliberate; Ellery felt a desperate need for solitude. If Sally suspected his real reason, she gave no sign; as for Howard, all the way back to North Hill Drive he dozed. Sleep, Ellery recalled, was another form of death.

  Back at the cottage, with the door closed, Ellery flung himself on the ottoman before the picture window and communed with Wrightsville. Let Howard face his father; let Sally face her husband. But then he reflected that both had had plenty of practice; apparently they were good at it.

  Ellery felt especially badly about Sally’s role in this unpleasantness, and he wondered just what his feeling comprised. Largely disappointment, he decided: she had betrayed his estimate of her. He recognized that in this feeling there was a large content of pique; she had bruised his self-esteem. He had thought Sally an unusual woman; he had erred; she was simply a woman. The Sally he had thought she was might conceivably have surrendered herself in the excitement of discovering that she loved, not her husband, but another man; but the other man could not have been a Howard. (It occurred to him that the other man might have been an Ellery; but this thought he dismissed at once as illogical, unscientific, and unworthy.)

  It struck Ellery that he didn’t think much of Howard Van Horn, neurosis or no neurosis.

  Since this brought him to Howard, his thoughts turned in natural sequence to the fat envelope in his breast pocket; and this led him to consider the nature and identity of the thief-blackmailer he was to meet the next day. But wherever his brain turned, it was confronted by an unanswerable question.

  Ellery awoke to find that he had been asleep. The sky over Wrightsville was darkening; popcorn lights were jumping up in the valley below; as he turned over on the ottoman he saw windows in the main house materialize.

  He didn’t feel well. There were the tangled Van Horns, and there was his frowning briefcase. No, he didn’t feel well.

  Ellery got off the ottoman, groaning, fumbled for the switch of the desk lamp. The great acreage of the desk repelled him.

  But when he had opened the case, removed the typewriter’s shroud, flexed his fingers, rubbed his chin, reamed his ear, and gone through all the other traditional preparations the punctilio of his craft prescribed, he found that, mirabile dictu, work could be fun.

  Ellery discovered himself in that rarest of auctorial phenomena, the writing mood. His brain felt greased, his fingers mighty.

  The machine jumped, rattled, and raced.

  At some indeterminate point in timelessness a buzzer buzzed. But he ignored it, and later he realized it had stopped. The worshipful Laura, no doubt, beckoning from the kitchen of the main house. Food? No, no.

  And he worked on.

  “Mr. Queen.”

  There was an insistence in the voice which made Ellery recall that it had actually repeated his name two or three times.

  He looked around.

  The door stood open and in the doorway stood Diedrich Van Horn.

  In a flash it all came back to him: the drive north, the woods, the lake, the tale of the adulterers, the blackmailer, the envelope in his pocket.

  “May I come in?”

  Had something happened? Did Diedrich know?

  Ellery raised himself from the swivel chair stiffly, but smiling.

  “Please do.”

  “How are you tonight?”

  “Stiff.”

  Howard’s father closed the door, rather pointedly, Ellery noticed with alarm. But when he turned around, he was smiling, too.

  “I knocked for two minutes and called out to you several times, but you didn’t hear me.”

  “I’m so sorry. Won’t you sit down?”

  “I’m interrupting.”

  “I’m all gratitude, believe me!”

  Diedrich laughed. “I often wonder how you fellows manage it, this sitting on your bottom hour after hour punching out words. It would drive me crazy.”

  “What time is it, anyway, Mr. Van Horn?”

  “After eleven.”

  “My God.”

  “And you haven’t had your dinner. Laura was practically in tears. We caught her trying to reach you over the intercom and threatened to tell you she got all your books from the public library. I don’t know that Laura got the point, but she stopped trying to bother you.”

  Diedrich was nervous. He was nervous and worried. Ellery didn’t like it.

  “Sit down, sit down, Mr. Van Horn.”

  “You’re sure I’m not…?”

  “I was going to stop soon anyway.”

  “I feel like a fool,” said the big man, lowering himself into the big chair. “Telling everybody to let you alone, and then—” He stopped. Then he said abruptly, “See here, Mr. Queen, there’s something I’ve got to talk to you about.”

  Here it comes.

  “I left for the office this morning before you were up. I’d have spoken to you before I left if…Later I did phone, but Eileen told me you and Sally and Howard had gone off on a picnic. Then this evening I didn’t want to disturb you.” He took out a handkerchief and passed it over his face. “But I couldn’t go to bed without talking to you.”

  “What’s the trouble, Mr. Van Horn?”

  “About three months ago we had a burglary…”

  Ellery yearned for West Eighty-seventh Street, where adultery was only a word in the dictionary and the caged antics of nice people trapped by their relationships were confined to his filing cabinet.

  “Burglary?” said Ellery, surprised. At least he hoped it sounded surprised.

  “Yes. Some second-story man broke into my wife’s bedroom and got away with her jewel box.”

  Diedrich was sweating—a luxury, Ellery thought enviously, he could afford. He thinks I don’t know a thing about this and it’s hard for him to talk about it.

  “Not really. Was the box ever recovered?”

  Neatly put, Mr. Q. Now if I can control my own sudoriferous glands…

  “The box? Oh, the jewels. Yes, Sally’s jewels were recovered piecemeal in various pawnshops around the East—the box, of course, wasn’t. Probably thrown away. It wasn’t valuable—an old thing Sally’d picked up in her school days. It’s not that, Mr. Queen.” Diedrich swabbed himself again.

  “Well!” Ellery lit a cigaret and blew the match out briskly. “That’s the kind of burglary story I enjoy hearing, Mr. Van Horn. No harm done, and—”

  “But the thief was never found, Mr. Queen.”

  “Oh?”

  “No.” Diedrich clasped his big hands. “They were never able to lay their hands on the fellow, or even get a good idea of what he looked like.”

  Doesn’t matter what he says from now on, Ellery thought joyfully. And he seated himself in the swivel chair, feeling better than he’d felt all day.

  “Sometimes works out that way. Three months ago, Mr. Van Horn? I’ve known thieves to be caught after ten years.”

  “It’s not that, either.” The big man unclasped his hands, clasped them again. “Last night…”

  Last night?

  Ellery felt the slightest chill.

  “Last night there was another robbery.”

  Last night there was another robbery.

  “There was? But this morning no one said—”

  “I didn’t mention it to anyone, Mr. Queen.”

  Refocus. But slowly.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t tell me about this this morning, Mr. Van Horn. You should have booted me out of bed.”

  “This morning I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted you to know.” Diedrich’s skin was gray under the bronze. He kept clasping and unclasping his great hands. Suddenly he jumped up. “I’m going about this like a woman! I’ve faced unpleasant facts before.”

  Unpleasant facts.

  “I was the first one up this morning. Rather earlier than usual. I thought I wouldn’t bother Laura about breakfast, that I’d have a bite in town. I went into my study to get some contracts on my desk and…there it was.”

  “There what was?”

  “One of the French doors—they lead to the south terrace—was broken. The thief had broken the pane nearest the knob, slipped his hand through, and turned the key.”

  “The usual technique,” Ellery nodded. “What was stolen?”

  “My wall safe had been opened.”

  “I’ll have a look at it.”

  “You won’t find any signs of violence,” said Diedrich very quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The safe was opened by someone who knew the combination. I’d never even have looked inside if I hadn’t found evidence that someone had broken into the study during the night.”

  “Combinations can be worked out, Mr. Van Horn—”

  “My safe is practically burglarproof,” said Van Horn grimly. “After the June robbery I had a new one installed. It’s most unlikely that I was burglarized by a Jimmy Valentine, Mr. Queen. I tell you the thief last night knew that combination.”

  “What was stolen?” Ellery asked again.

  “I’m accustomed to keeping a large amount of cash in the safe for business reasons. The cash is missing.”

  Cash…

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Is it generally known that you keep a lot of money in your study safe, Mr. Van Horn?”

  “Not generally.” Diedrich’s lips were twisted. “Not even the help. Just my family.”

  “I see…How much was taken?”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  Ellery got up and walked around the desk to stare into the darkness over Wrightsville.

  “Who knows the safe combination?”

  “Besides myself? My brother. Howard. Sally.”

  “Well.” Ellery turned around. “You learn early in this deplorable business not to jump to conclusions, Mr. Van Horn. What happened to the broken glass?”

  “I picked up the pieces and threw them away before anyone came downstairs. The terrace floor was covered with ’em.”

  The terrace floor.

  “The terrace floor?”

  “The terrace floor.”

  Something in the way Diedrich repeated the phrase made Ellery feel very sorry for him.

  “Outside the French door, Mr. Queen. You needn’t look blank. I saw the significance of that this morning.” The big man’s voice rose. “I’m not a fool. That’s why I threw away the glass—that’s why I didn’t phone the police. To be lying outside the door, the pane had to be broken from inside. Inside the study. Inside my home, Mr. Queen. This was an inside job amateurishly made to look like an outside job. I knew that this morning.”

  Ellery came back around the desk to drop into the swivel chair and teeter, whistling softly a tune which, even had his host been able to hear it, would not have cheered him. But Diedrich was paying no attention. He was striding up and down with the angry energy of a strong man who finds nothing to vent his strength on.

  “If one of my family,” Diedrich Van Horn cried, “needed twenty-five thousand dollars so desperately, why in God’s name didn’t he come to me? They all know—they must know—that I’d never refuse them anything. Certainly not money. I don’t care what they’ve done, what trouble they’re in!”

  Ellery drummed in time to his whistle, staring out the window You’d care about this, I’m afraid.

  “I can’t understand it. I waited tonight, at the dinner table, and afterward, for one of them to give me some sign. Anything. A word, a look.”

  Then you don’t really think it’s your brother. Wolfert shares your working day. You must have seen him today at your office. You don’t think it’s Wolfert.

  “But nothing. Oh, there was a strain, I felt that, but they all seemed to share it.” Diedrich stopped pacing. “Mr. Queen,” he said in a hard voice.

  Ellery turned to face him.

  “One of them doesn’t trust me. I don’t know if you can understand how hard that hits me. If it were anything but that…I don’t know how to say it. I could talk. I could ask. I could even plead. Four times tonight I tried to bring it up. But I found I couldn’t. Something tied up my tongue. And then there was something else.”

  Ellery waited.

  “The feeling that…whichever one it was wouldn’t want anyone else to know. It must be something pretty bad. See here.” The ugly face was rock. “My job is to find out which one took that money. Not for the money—I’d gladly forget five times that amount. But I’ve got to find out which member of my family is in serious trouble. Once I know, it will be easier to find out what the trouble is. Then I’ll fix it. I don’t want to ask questions now. I don’t want…” He hesitated, then went on determinedly, “I don’t want lies. If I have the truth, I can handle it. Whatever it is. Mr. Queen, will you find out for me—confidentially?”

  Ellery said at once, “I’ll try, Mr. Van Horn, of course,” disliking the game. But Diedrich mustn’t know he knew; he simply mustn’t know. Hesitation might have made him suspicious.

  He could see his host’s relief. Diedrich dried his cheeks, his chin, his forehead, with the damp handkerchief. He even smiled a little.

  “You don’t know how I’ve dreaded this.”

  “Naturally. Tell me, Mr. Van Horn: this twenty-five thousand dollars. How was the sum composed? What denominations?”

  “They were all five-hundred dollar bills.”

  Ellery said slowly: “Fifty five-hundreds. And did you happen to keep a record of the serial numbers?”

  “The list is in my desk in the study.”

  “I’d better take it.”

  While Diedrich Van Horn opened the top drawer of his desk, Mr. Queen did his best to impersonate a detective searching for clues. He examined the French door, he looked carefully at the wall safe, he scanned the rug closely on a line between the door and the safe; he even stepped out onto the south terrace. When he returned, Diedrich handed him a piece of paper bearing a Wrightsville National Bank imprint. Ellery put it in his pocket, behind the envelope containing the twenty-five thousand dollars Howard had given him in the afternoon.

  “Anything?” Diedrich asked anxiously.

  Ellery shook his head. “I’m afraid normal procedures won’t help us in this case, Mr. Van Horn. I could send for my fingerprint kit, or borrow one from Chief Dakin—no, that wouldn’t be wise, would it? But frankly, even if your own prints haven’t messed up the prints of…I mean, finding prints wouldn’t necessarily mean anything. Not in an inside job. What’s that?”

  “What, Mr. Queen?”

  Diedrich had not yet shut the desk drawer. The lamplight touched off a glittering object in the drawer.

  “Oh, that’s mine, I bought it right after the June business.”

  Ellery picked it up. It was a Smith & Wesson .38 safety hammerless, a snubnosed revolver finished in nickel. Its five chambers were loaded. He laid it back in the drawer.

  “Nice gun.”

  “Yes.” Diedrich sounded a bit remote. “It was sold to me as the ideal weapon for ‘home defense.’ ” Ellery regretted his remark. “And speaking of the June robbery—”

  “You suspect that wasn’t an outside affair, either?”

  “What do you think, Mr. Queen?”

  It was difficult to evade this man.

  “Any specific reason for thinking so? Like the glass falling on the wrong side in last night’s business?”

  “No. At that time, of course, I had no idea…Chief Dakin told me there were no clues. If he’d had reason to suspect it was an inside job, I’m sure he’d have told me so.”