The French Powder Mystery — 36 · The Last Episode

The French Powder Mystery — 36

"The Time Has Come ..."

    The Queens had dinner in silence. Djuna served in silence, and in silence cleared the table afterward. The Inspector dipped into the browned interior of his snuff-box and Ellery held communion with first a cigaret, then a pipe, then a cigaret again. In all this time no word was spoken. It was a silence of sympathy, not infrequent in the Queen household.
    Finally Ellery sighed and stared into the fireplace. But it was the Inspector who spoke first.
    "As far as I am concerned," he said with a grim disappointment, "this day has been entirely wasted."
    Ellery raised his eyebrows. "Dad, dad, you grow more irascible with every passing day.... If I didn't know how upset and overworked you've been of late, I'd be annoyed with you."
    "At my obtuseness?" demanded the Inspector, twinkling.
    "No, at the lapse of your usual mental vigor." Ellery twisted his head and grinned at his father. "Do you mean to say that to-day's incidents have meant nothing to you?"
    "The raid flat, Springer skipped, nothing tangible from the alibis of these people—I can't see any cause for celebration," retorted the Inspector.
    "Well, well!" Ellery frowned. "Perhaps I'm over-sanguine.... But the whole thing is so clear!"
    He sprang to his feet and began to rummage in his desk. He produced his voluminous sheets of notes and thumbed rapidly through them under the Inspector's wearied and bewildered eyes. Then he slapped them back into their receptacle.
    "It's all over," he announced, "all over but the shouting and—the proof. I have all the threads—or rather, all the threads which lead inexorably to the murderer of Mrs. French. They don't make solid proof, such as is demanded by our venerable courts of law and our prosecuting system. What would you do in a case like that, dad?"
    The Inspector wrinkled his nose in self-disgust. "I take it that what's been a hopeless maze to me has been a clear thoroughfare to you. That rankles, son! I have raised up a Frankenstein to haunt my old age ..." Then he chuckled and laid a slightly infirm hand on Ellery's knee.
    "Good lad," he said. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
    "Shucks." Ellery blushed. "You've gone sentimental, too, dad ..." Their fingers met covertly. "Now, look here, Inspector! You've got to help me to a decision!"
    "Yes, yes ..." Queen dropped back, embarrassed. "You've got a case, an explanation and no proof. What to do.... Bluff, my son. Bluff as if you'd raised the pot before the draw on a pair of fours and then found real opposition staring at you. Raise again!"
    Ellery looked thoughtful. "I've been tottering on the edge.... Christmas!" His eyes brightened with a sudden thought. "How stupid I've been!" he cried at once. "I've a beautiful card up my sleeve and I've forgotten all about it! Bluff? We'll just about sweep our slippery friend off our slippery friend's feet!"
    He yanked the telephone toward him, hesitated, then turned it over to the Inspector, who was regarding him with gloomy fondness.
    "Here's a list," he said, scribbling on a piece of paper, "of some people of importance. Will you blow the conch, dad, while I begin a memorization of these pesky notes?"
    "The time is—" asked the Inspector submissively.
    "To-morrow morning at nine-thirty," replied Ellery. "And you might call the D.A. and tell him to close in on our friend Springer."
    "Springer!" cried the Inspector.
    "Springer," replied Ellery. And thereafter there was silence, broken periodically by the voice of the Inspector on the telephone.
    PARENTHESIS AND CHALLENGE
    I have often found it a stimulating exercise in my own reading of murder fiction to pause at that point in the story immediately preceding the solution, and to try by a logical analysis to determine for myself the identity of the criminal.... Because I believe that numerous gourmets of this species of fictional delicacy are as interested in the reasoning as in the reading, I submit in the proper spirit of sportsmanship an amiable challenge to the reader.... Without reading the concluding pages, Reader—Who killed Mrs. French?... There is a great tendency among detective-story lovers to endeavor to "guess" the criminal by submitting to the play of a blind instinct. A certain amount of this is inevitable, I will admit, but the application of logic and common sense is the important thing, the source of the greater enjoyment.... Whereupon I state without reservation that the reader is at this stage in the recounting of The French Powder Mystery fully cognizant of all the facts pertinent to the discovery of the criminal; and that a sufficiently diligent study of what has gone before should educe a clear understanding of what is to come. A rivederci!
    E. Q.

The Last Episode

    "Forty years in the service of the SÛRETÉ, one might hazard, would dull the edge of one's zest for the hunt. Thank the good Lord, this is not so! at least in my own case, which has been as full of interest, I dare say, as the next.... There was the admirable Henri Tencqueville, who cut his throat before my very eyes when we cornered him in his Montmartre hideaway ... and Petit Charlot, who shot two of my faithful lads to death and bit off a piece of the good Sergeant Mousson's nose in the mêlée before he was subdued.... Ah, well! I grow tender in reminiscence, but ... I would make the point that even to-day, old and enfeebled as I am, I would not give up the thrill of that final coup de main, that last stage of the chase when the quarry, panting and desperate, has his back to the wall—no, not for all the everlasting delights of the Turkish heaven!..."
    —From The Memoirs of a Prefect,
    By Auguste Brillon.