Chapter XIII — Queen to Queen (1)

    Djuna had just cleared the table of the dinner-dishes and was serving coffee to the two Queens at six-thirty that evening when the outer doorbell rang. The little man-of-all-work straightened his tie, pulled down his jacket (while the Inspector and Ellery eyed him in twinkling amusement), and marched gravely into the foyer. He was back in a moment bearing a silver tray upon which lay two calling-cards. The Inspector picked them up with beetling brows.
    “Such ceremony, Djuna!” he murmured. “Well, well! So ‘Doc’ Prouty’s bringing a visitor. Show ’em in, you imp!”
    Djuna marched back and returned with the Chief Assistant Medical Examiner and a tall, thin, emaciated man, entirely bald and wearing a closely clipped beard. Queen and Ellery rose.
    “I’ve been expecting to hear from you, Doc!” Queen grinned, shaking hands with Prouty. “And if I’m not mistaken, here’s Professor Jones himself! Welcome to our castle, Doctor.” The thin man bowed.
    “This is my son and keeper of my conscience, Doctor,” Queen added, presenting Ellery. “Ellery—Dr. Thaddeus Jones.”
    Dr. Jones offered a large limp hand. “So you’re the chap Queen and Sampson keep prattling about!” he boomed. “Certainly happy to meet you, sir.”
    “I’ve been fairly itching to be introduced to New York City’s Paracelsus and eminent Toxicologist,” smiled Ellery. “The honor of rattling the City’s skeletons is all yours.” He shuddered elaborately and indicated some chairs. The four men sat down.
    “Join us in some coffee, gentlemen,” urged Queen, and shouted to Djuna, whose bright eyes were visible from behind the kitchenette door. “Djuna! You rascal! Coffee for four!” Djuna grinned and disappeared, to pop out a moment later like a jack-in-the-box, bearing four cups of steaming coffee.
    Prouty, who resembled the popular conception of Mephistopheles, whipped from his pocket one of his black, dangerous-looking cigars and began to puff away furiously.
    “This chitter-chatter may be all right for you men of leisure,” he said briskly, between puffs, “but I’ve been working like a beaver all day analyzing the contents of a lady’s stomach, and I want to get home for some sleep.”
    “Hear, hear!” murmured Ellery, “I gather from your soliciting the aid of Professor Jones that you met with some obstruction in your analysis of Mr. Field’s corporeal remains. Lay on, Æsculapius!”
    “I’ll lay on,” returned Prouty grimly. “You’re right—I met with a violent obstruction. I’ve had some little experience, if you’ll pardon the professional modesty, in examining the innards of deceased ladies and gentlemen, but I’ll confess I never saw ’em in such a mess as this chap Field’s. Seriously, Jones will attest to the truth of that. His œsophagus, for example, and the entire tracheal tract looked as if some one had taken a blow-torch and played it gently over his insides.”
    “What was it—couldn’t have been bichloride of mercury, could it, Doc?” asked Ellery, who prided himself on a complete ignorance of the exact sciences.
    “Hardly,” growled Prouty. “But let me tell you what happened. I analyzed for every poison on the calendar, and although this one had familiar petroleum components I couldn’t place it exactly. Yes, sir—I was stumped good and proper. And to let you in on a secret—the Medical Examiner himself, who thought I was pie-eyed from overwork, made a stab at it with his own fine Italian hand. The net result in his case, my boys, was zero. And the M.E.’s not exactly a novice either when it comes to chemical analysis. So we surrendered the problem to our fountain-head of learning. Let him spout his own story.”
    Dr. Thaddeus Jones cleared his throat forbiddingly. “Thank you, my friend, for a most dramatic introduction,” he said in his deep lumbering voice. “Yes, Inspector, the remains were turned over to me, and in all seriousness, I want to say here and now that my discovery was the most startling the Toxicologist’s office has made in fifteen years!”
    “My, my!” murmured Queen, taking a pinch of snuff. “I’m beginning to respect the mentality of our friend the murderer. So many things point to the unusual lately! And what did you find, Doctor?”
    “I took it for granted that Prouty and the Medical Examiner had done the preliminaries very well,” began Dr. Jones, crossing his bony knees. “They generally do. And so, before doing anything else, I analyzed for the obscure poisons. Obscure, that is to say, from the standpoint of the criminal user. To show you how minutely I searched—I even thought of that favorite stand-by of our friends the fiction-writers: curare, the South American toxin which makes the grade in four out of five detective stories. But even that sadly abused member of the toxic family disappointed me....”
    Ellery leaned back and laughed. “If you’re referring in a mildly satirical way to my profession, Dr. Jones, let me inform you that I have never used curare in any of my novels.”
    The toxicologist’s eyes twinkled. “So you’re one of them, too, eh? Queen, old man,” he added dolorously, turning to the Inspector, who was thoughtfully chewing on a piece of French pastry, “allow me to offer you my condolences.... At any rate, gentlemen, let me explain that in the case of rare poisons we can generally come to a definite conclusion without much trouble—that is, rare poisons that are in the pharmacopœia. Of course, there are any number of rare poisons of which we have no knowledge whatever—Eastern drugs particularly.
    “Well, to make a long story short, I found myself faced with the unpleasant conclusion that I was up a tree.” Dr. Jones chuckled in reminiscence. “It wasn’t a pleasant conclusion. The poison I analyzed had certain properties which were vaguely familiar, as Prouty has said, and others which didn’t jibe at all. I spent most of yesterday evening mulling over my retorts and test-tubes, and late last night I suddenly got the answer.”
    Ellery and Queen sat up straight and Dr. Prouty relaxed in his chair with a sigh, reaching for a second cup of coffee. The toxicologist uncrossed his legs, his voice booming more terrifyingly than ever.
    “The poison that killed your victim, Inspector, is known as tetra ethyl lead!”
    To a scientist this announcement, in Dr. Jones’ profoundest tones, might have carried a dramatic quality. To the Inspector it meant less than nothing. As for Ellery, he murmured, “Sounds like a mythological monster to me!”
    Dr. Jones went on, smiling. “So it hasn’t impressed you much, eh? But let me tell you a little about tetra ethyl lead. It is almost colorless—to be more exact, it resembles chloroform in physical appearance. Point number one. Point number two—it has an odor—faint, to be sure—but distinctly like that of ether. Point number three—it is fearfully potent. So potent—but let me illustrate just what this devilishly powerful chemical substance will do to living tissue.”
    By this time the toxicologist had gained the entire attention of his audience.
    “I took a healthy rabbit, of the sort we use for experiment, and painted—just painted, mind you—the tender area behind the creature’s ear with an undiluted dose of the stuff. Remember, this was not an internal injection. It was merely a painting of the skin. It would have to be absorbed through the dermis before it reached the blood-stream. I watched the rabbit for an hour—and after that I didn’t have to watch him any more. He was as dead as any dead rabbit I ever saw.”
    “That doesn’t seem so powerful to me, Doctor,” protested the Inspector.
    “It doesn’t, eh? Well, take my word for it that it’s extraordinary. For a mere daubing of whole, healthy skin—I tell you, I was astounded. If the skin had an incision of some sort, or if the poison were administered internally, that would be a different story. You can imagine, therefore, what happened to Field’s insides when he swallowed the stuff—and he swallowed plenty!”
    Ellery’s brow was wrinkled in thought. He began to polish the lenses of his pince-nez.
    “And that isn’t all,” resumed Dr. Jones. “As far as I know—and I have been in the service of the city for God knows how many years, and I’ve not kept uninformed about the progress of my science in other parts of the world, either—as far as I know, tetra ethyl lead has never before been used for criminal purposes!”
    The Inspector drew up, startled. “That’s saying something, Doctor!” he muttered. “Are you sure?”
    “Positive. That’s why I’m so keenly interested.”
    “Just how long would it take for this poison to kill a man, Doctor?” asked Ellery slowly.
    Dr. Jones grimaced. “That’s something I can’t answer definitely, for the very good reason that to my knowledge no human being has ever died of its effects before. But I can make a fairly good guess. I can’t conceive of Field having lived more than from fifteen to twenty minutes at the utmost after having taken the poison internally.”
    The silence that followed was broken by a cough from Queen. “On the other hand, Doctor, this very strangeness of the poison should make it fairly easy to trace. What, would you say, is its commonest source? Where does it come from? How would I go about getting it if I wanted some for a criminal purpose and didn’t want to leave a trail?”
    A gaunt smile lit up the features of the toxicologist. “The job of tracing this stuff, Inspector,” he said fervently, “I’ll leave to you. You can have it. Tetra ethyl lead, as far as I’ve been able to determine—remember, it is almost entirely new to us—occurs most commonly in certain petroleum products. I tinkered around quite a bit before I found the easiest way of making it in quantity. You’ll never guess how it’s done. It can be extracted from common, ordinary, everyday gasoline!”
    The two Queens exclaimed under their breaths. “Gasoline!” cried the Inspector. “Why—how on earth could a man trace that?”
    “That’s the point,” answered the toxicologist. “I could go to the corner gas-station, fill up the tank of my car, run it home, extract some of the gasoline from the tank, go into my laboratory and distill the tetra ethyl lead in remarkably little time with remarkably little effort!”
    “Doesn’t that imply, Doctor,” put in Ellery hopefully, “that the murderer of Field had some laboratory experience—knew something about chemical analysis, and all that sort of rot?”
    “No, it doesn’t. Any man with a home-brew ‘still’ in his house could distill that poison without leaving a trace. The beauty of the process is that the tetra ethyl lead in the gasoline has a higher boiling-point than any other of the fluid’s constituents. All you have to do is distill everything out up to a certain temperature, and what’s left is this poison.”
    The Inspector took a pinch of snuff with trembling fingers. “All I can say is—I take my hat off to the murderer,” he muttered. “Tell me—Doctor—wouldn’t a man have to know quite a bit about toxicology to possess such knowledge? How could he ever know this without some special interest—and therefore training—in the subject?”
    Dr. Jones snorted. “Inspector, I’m surprised at you. Your question is already answered.”
    “How? What do you mean?”
    “Haven’t I just told you how to do it? And if you heard about the poison from a toxicologist, couldn’t you make some provided you had the ‘still’? You would require no knowledge except the boiling-point of tetra ethyl lead. Get along with you, Queen! You haven’t a chance in the world of tracing the murderer through the poison. In all probability he overheard a conversation between two toxicologists, or even between two medical men who had heard about the stuff. The rest was easy. I’m not saying this is so. The man might be a chemist, at that. But I’m concerned only in giving you the possibilities.”
    “I suppose it was administered in whiskey, eh, Doctor?” asked Queen abstractedly.
    “No doubt about it,” returned the toxicologist. “The stomach showed a large whiskey content. Certainly, it would be an easy way for the murderer to slip it over on his victim. With the whiskey you get nowadays, most of it smells etherized, anyway. And besides, Field probably had it down before he realized anything was wrong—if he did at all.”
    “Wouldn’t he taste the stuff?” asked Ellery wearily.
    “I’ve never tasted it, young man, so I can’t say definitely,” answered Dr. Jones, a trifle tartly. “But I doubt whether he would—sufficiently to alarm him, at any rate. Once he had it down it wouldn’t make any difference.”
    Queen turned to Prouty, whose cigar had gone out. He had fallen into a hearty doze. “Say, Doc!”
    Prouty opened his eyes sleepily. “Where are my slippers—I can’t ever seem to find my slippers, damn it!”
    Despite the tension of the moment, there was a spontaneous roar of amusement at the expense of the Assistant Medical Examiner. When he had come to with sufficient thoroughness to understand what he had said, he joined the chuckling group and said, “Just goes to prove that I’d better be going home, Queen. What did you want to know?”
    “Tell me,” said Queen, still shaking, “what did you get from your analysis of the whiskey?”
    “Oh!” Prouty sobered instantly. “The whiskey in the flask was as fine as any I’ve ever tested—and I’ve been doing nothing but testing booze for years now. It was the poison in the liquor on his breath that made me think at first that Field had drunk rotten booze. The Scotch and rye that you sent me in bottles from Field’s apartment were also of the very highest quality. Probably the flask’s contents came from the same place as the bottled stuff. In fact, I should say that both samples were imported goods. I haven’t come across domestic liquor of that calibre ever since the War—that is, except for the pre-War stuff that was stored away.... And I suppose Velie communicated my report to you that the ginger ale is okay.”
    Queen nodded. “Well, that seems to settle it,” he said heavily. “It looks as if we’re up against a blank wall on this tetra ethyl lead business. But just to make sure, Doc—work along with the professor here and try to locate a possible leak somewhere in the distribution of the poison. You fellows know more about that than anybody I could put on the case. It’s just a stab in the dark and probably nothing will come of it.”
    “There’s no question about it,” murmured Ellery. “A novelist should stick to his last.”
    “I think,” remarked Ellery eagerly, after the two doctors had gone, “that I’ll amble down to my bookseller for that Falconer.” He rose and began a hasty search for his coat.
    “Here!” bellowed the Inspector, pulling him down into a chair. “Nothing doing. That blasted book of yours won’t run away. I want you to sit here and keep my headache company.”
    Ellery nestled into the leather cushions with a sigh. “Just when I get to feeling that all investigations into the foibles of the human mind are useless and a waste of time, my worthy sire puts the onus of thought upon me again. Heigh-ho! What’s on the menu?”
    “I’m not putting any onus on you at all,” growled Queen. “And stop using such big words. I’m dizzy enough. What I want you to do is help me go over this confounded mess of a case and see—well, what we can see.”
    “I might have suspected it,” said Ellery. “Where do I start?”
    “You don’t,” grunted his father. “I’m doing the talking to-night and you’re going to listen. And you might make a few notes, too.
    “Let’s begin with Field. I think, in the first place, that we can take it for granted our friend went to the Roman Theatre Monday night not for pleasure but for business. Right?”
    “No doubt about it in my mind,” said Ellery. “What did Velie report about Field’s movements Monday?”
    “Field got to his office at 9:30—his usual morning arrival-hour. He worked until noon. He had no personal visitors all day. At twelve o’clock he lunched at the Webster Club alone, and at 1:30 returned to his office. He worked steadily until 4:00—and seems to have gone straight home, as the doorman and elevator-man both testify he arrived at the apartment about 4:30. Velie could get no further data except that Michaels arrived at 5:00 and left at 6:00. Field left at 7:30, dressed as we found him. I have a list of the clients whom he saw during the day, but it doesn’t tell much.”
    “How about the reason for his small bank account?” asked Ellery.
    “Just what I figured,” returned Queen. “Field has been losing steadily on the stock market—and not chicken feed, either. Velie’s just run a little tip to earth which makes Field out as a frequent visitor to the racetrack, where he’s also dropped plenty. For a shrewd man, he certainly was an easy-mark for the wiseacres. Anyway, that explains his having so little cash in his personal account. And more than that—it probably also explains more conclusively the item of ‘50,000’ on the program we found. That meant money, and the money it referred to was in some way connected, I’m sure, with the person he was to meet at the theatre.
    “Now, I think that we can pretty well conclude that Field knew his murderer rather intimately. For one thing, he accepted a drink obviously without suspicion, or at least question; for another, the meeting seems to have been definitely arranged for purposes of concealment—why, else, if that is not so, was the theatre chosen for the meeting at all?”
    “All right. Let me ask you the same question,” interposed Ellery, puckering his lips. “Why should a theatre be chosen as a meeting-place to transact a secret and undoubtedly nefarious business? Wouldn’t a park be more secret? Wouldn’t a hotel lobby have its advantages? Answer that.”
    “Unfortunately, my son,” said the Inspector mildly, “Mr. Field could have had no definite knowledge that he was going to be murdered. As far as he was concerned, all he was going to do was to take care of his part of the transaction. As a matter of fact, Field himself might have chosen the theatre as the place of meeting. Perhaps he wanted to establish an alibi for something. There’s no way of telling yet just what he wanted to do. As for the hotel lobby—certainly he would run a grave risk of being seen. He might have been unwilling, further, to risk himself in such a lonely place as a park. And, lastly, he may have had some particular reason for not wanting to be seen in the company of the second party. Remember—the ticket-stubs we found showed that the other person did not come into the theatre at the same time as Field. But this is all fruitless conjecture—”
    Ellery smiled in a thoughtful manner, but said nothing. He was thinking to himself that the old man had not completely satisfied the objection, and that this was a strange thing in a man of Inspector Queen’s direct habits of thought....
    But Queen was continuing. “Very well. We must always bear in mind the further possibility that the person with whom Field transacted his business was not his murderer. Of course, this is merely a possibility. The crime seems to have been too well planned for that. But if this is so, then we must look for two people in the audience Monday night who were directly connected with Field’s death.”
    “Morgan?” asked Ellery idly.
    The Inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps. Why didn’t he tell us about it when we spoke to him yesterday afternoon? He confessed everything else. Well, maybe because he felt that a confession of having paid blackmail to the murdered man, together with the fact that he was found in the theatre, would be too damning a bit of circumstantial evidence.”