And on the Eighth Day (19 page)

The ends of the thread on the button were not raggedly torn, as they would have been had they been ripped away in a struggle. Instead, under the lens they showed up sharp and clean. They had been severed from the garment with a knife or scissors.

He turned the button over. The lens immediately showed him another proof of his carelessness—criminal carelessness, he told himself bitterly. There was a fresh-looking little gash where the oxidized surface of the soft metal had suffered a recent scratch, as if a sharp-edged instrument had slipped while cutting the thread.

My God, Ellery said to himself wildly, I investigate what I think is a primitive crime in a primitive setting of primitive people, and I find a sophisticated
frame-up
! The button was deliberately cut from the Teacher’s robe! The button was deliberately planted in the dead man’s hand!

But thank God it was not too late.

Ellery sprang from the pallet and began to dress. He must be thorough now, careful not to underestimate his adversary. The Teacher’s life was at stake. The Teacher, who was prepared to sacrifice his life rather than expose the evil—the really evil—sinner in his flock.

By some magic Ellery’s brain was now clear. His first morning in Quenan leaped from his memory to awareness: the Teacher in the storehouse, exchanging his broken pocketknife for a new one …

Ellery blew out the candles, and seizing the flashlight he made his way through the little settlement in the cold sweetness of the night. The wind was rushing through the trees. There was no light behind any window, but Ellery was certain that vigil, in the darkness, was being kept throughout the town.

At the Holy Congregation House he hesitated. He was excused from having to ring the bell and await admittance; why did he always hesitate? Perhaps because I am so fallible, he thought; and he went in.

He groped through the meeting hall to the Teacher’s chamber. The light from the lamp over the sanquetum door, making the interior of the patriarch’s room just visible, touched the old man’s serene face, his open eyes. He was stretched out on his pallet in the middle of the room, hands behind his head, gazing up at the ceiling as through a window … as if he saw clearly the great stars wheeling and blazing in the black heavens.

He did not move or speak when Ellery came in. He knows I’m here, Ellery thought, and he’s not surprised. Has he been expecting me?

There were pegs symmetrically spaced on either side of the door, and from one of them hung the Teacher’s outer garment. Ignoring the old man on the bed, Ellery searched the robe for hidden pockets. He found the side slits, and in the depths of one of them he found what he was looking for.

It was the Teacher’s knife, the new one he had procured in the storehouse under Ellery’s eyes—in a wooden sheath, bone-handled, the sheath and knife held together by a leather thong. He switched on his flashlight and slipped the knife out of the sheath and examined the blade closely.

And there it was—a nick on the cutting edge, near the point. And caught in the nick was a tiny sliver of metal, the same soft metal of the button.

Not only had the button been deliberately severed from the Teacher’s robe, it had been severed by the Teacher’s knife!

And Ellery raised his eyes to that long quiet body, but there was no sign in it of perturbation, or even concern. The old man continued to stare through the ceiling, although he knew well enough what Ellery had done and seen.

Ellery softly left the Teacher’s room and the holy house and made his way back through the wind and the
weedit
,
weedit
of the frogs to his quarters. And there he picked up the hammer and re-examined it. One item of planted evidence he had already exposed—the button. Was it possible that the hammer, too, showed evidence of the frame-up of the Teacher?

In this shifted frame of reference, it seemed to him now that the hammer seemed too new-looking—rather, too unused-looking—to have justified the Teacher’s reference to it, during Ellery’s talk with him after the discovery of the Storesman’s body, as “the hammer from my tool chest.”

He dipped a corner of the toweling provided him into the ewer of water and carefully rubbed away the bloodstains on the striking surface of the hammer. He had been right. There were no abrasions or scratches on the metal of the head. This hammer had never been used for hammering nails or any other ordinary purpose. Was it possible that there had been an exchange of hammers? But if this was a new hammer it had most likely come from the storehouse. Then perhaps the Teacher’s …

Once again Ellery made his way through the dark lanes of the hamlet, this time to the supply building. He needed no key; it was secured against marauding animals by an inside latch, and to release it he had merely to put his hand through a hole in the door made for the purpose.

It seemed to him that already the storehouse was filled with the effluvium of neglect. They had better elect another Storesman soon, he thought, or this place will begin to smell like a grave. He had to make an effort to pull his mind back to his mission.

Flashing his light among the bins and barrels and shelves, he finally located the compartment where the hammers were stored.

There were only three. Using a handkerchief, he examined them. Two were clearly new; one showed definite signs of use.

Is this used one the real murder weapon? Ellery asked himself. If so, someone had switched hammers after the crime—cleansed this one of Storicai’s blood, placed it with the new ones in the storehouse, taken one of the new ones, dipped it in the still-wet blood of the victim, and then set it beside the body.

But why? How did the exchange of hammers compound the frame-up of the Teacher (who had certainly, at some point, become aware of the frame-up)? Why? Why?

And the question rang over and over in Ellery’s head until he was sick with it …

He returned to his quarters carrying both hammers, thinking of samurai wearing two swords to signify their rank; of fighting priests in the Dark Ages, forbidden to use swords, going into battle against the heathen and laying about them with the
martels-de-fer,
the great fighting mallets; and of other strange and useless things.

Once more he opened his fingerprint kit and set to work. And tested the hammer he had taken from the storehouse, and found fingerprints. The fingerprints of two people, as he expected. And, in dread, he compared them with his master set of fifteen.

And when he saw whose prints they were, the disjointed pieces of the truth fell into place, and sickened him.

For the second time that night, Ellery entered the patriarch’s room. Nothing had changed. The old man was still unmoving, still untroubled. Had he placed himself in a kind of mystical trance? But the first assertion Ellery made (with such difficulty!) the Teacher answered at once. And their interchange began to form a sort of litany, as if an act of worship were being performed in that bare dim chamber.

“It was you, Teacher, who cut the button off your robe with your knife and placed the button in the dead man’s hand.”

“Yea.”

“It was you who took the killing hammer to the storehouse and cleansed it, and left it there, and brought back another hammer, and stained its head in the Storesman’s blood, and placed it beside the body.”

“Yea.”

“You deliberately left a trail by way of the Potter and the Weaver which could lead only to yourself.”

“Yea.”

“You wished me to find evidence against you and against no other.”

“Yea.”

And Ellery, holding his voice down with all his strength, asked, “Why, Teacher, in heaven’s name, why?”

“For thus it is written,” said the Teacher.

“ ‘It is written, it is written!’ Where are all these things written?”

It seemed to him the old man’s beard lifted a little in a smile. “It is written in the book which was lost; or it is written in a book yet to be; or it may be written in the book which is Earth itself and all who dwell upon it, and in which all things were, and are, and will be written.”

“Let us rather speak of what I can understand, Teacher,” Ellery cried. “It is now clear to me that you
wished
to be accused of the Storesman’s murder—that you wished to stand trial—that you
wished
to be declared guilty. Is that not so?”

And the old man calmly replied, “I am guilty.”

“
But not of striking the blow that slew the man!
”

And the old man was silent. And then he sighed, and he said, “Nay, not of striking the blow.”

“Then you are shielding him who actually struck it!”

And again the Teacher did not reply at once, and again he sighed, and again he finally said, “It is so, Elroï.”

“So you know who slew Storicai?”

The majestic head nodded. “It is written that thus it would come to pass.”

“I do not know about that, Teacher. I do know that on the true weapon, the hammer that actually crushed out Storicai’s life, I found the fingerprints of the slayer. They are the fingerprints of—shall I say the name?”

“Said or unsaid, the Wor’d is sure.”

“That does not say it. Therefore I must. Storicai was killed by the Successor.”

Now for the first time the patriarch shifted his eyes to Ellery’s face. “Elroï,” he said, “before your coming here I knew nothing of fingerprints. But this I knew—that the Successor had handled the hammer. And I was afraid that, in some mysterious way beyond my knowledge, it could be shown that it was he indeed who had struck with the hammer, and that therefore it would be safer for the boy if that hammer were not found by the body. So I cleansed it and in its place set one which had been in my hand but not in his. Alas. I should have known that deceit is always undone.”

Not always, old man, Ellery said; but not aloud.

Aloud he said: “Am I right, then, in what I have only now come to believe, Teacher? You returned from the Slave’s house to this holy house just in time to see the killing of Storicai at twenty minutes past four—in time to see, but too late to prevent. You saw Storicai and the Successor struggling by the long table. You saw the Successor snatch the hammer and deal two blows—”

The Teacher said faintly, “It was as you say.”

“From this it follows that the Successor was not locked in the scriptorium at the time of the slaying.” And wonder touched Ellery’s voice. “Did you not tell me that he was?”

The Teacher said, “Think, Elroï, think.”

“All right, I will go back, step by step. You told me you had locked the Successor in the scriptorium at two o’clock because you found him dallying in the doorway of the holy house with thoughts of a young woman, instead of being at his studies. You locked him in and retained the only key. That is the truth.”

“Yea.”

“But you also told me that just after the killing of Storicai in the meeting room you unlocked the door of the scriptorium, released the Successor, and sent him out to find me.
Un
locked the scriptorium door
after
the slaying of the Storesman. That is the truth.”

“Yea.”

“But I ask myself: How is that possible? For the Successor to have been in the meeting room and to have killed Storicai, the door to the scriptorium must have been unlocked before the murder; yet you told me you unlocked it after the murder … Ah, I see. You wished it believed that the Successor sat helpless behind a locked door between two o’clock and some time after four-twenty—to furnish the young man with an alibi that would make it impossible to suspect him of the slaying.

“Yes, I see. Just before three o’clock when you left the Holy Congregation House to visit the Slave, you unlocked the door of the scriptorium and reminded the Successor about repairing the table leg. And this time you left the scriptorium door unlocked.”

The Teacher closed his eyes. “It is so.”

“I did not ask you of this, therefore you did not tell me of it.”

The Teacher nodded.

“But you knew I would ask other questions, and you could answer those questions only with the truth. So, Teacher, the first thing you did after realizing that Storicai was dead—just after four-twenty—was to send the Successor back into the scriptorium and lock him in—for the second time. This you did so that you could tell me truthfully that just after four-twenty you unlocked the scriptorium door, released the Successor, and sent him out to seek me. By thus telling me the truth in part only, did you protect the Successor from the consequences of his guilt and point the finger of the slaying to yourself alone.”

And the Teacher said, “All that you say, Elroï, is so.”

Ellery began to pace the room, his irregular footsteps echoing his troubled thoughts. “I have been wondering why you should have done this, Teacher, and I am confused. Can it truly be that you, the shepherd of the clock, are willing to give up your life that the little fox with bloodstained paws should live?”

The Teacher began to speak; but he held his tongue in time, and many moments passed Finally he said in a firm voice, “Truly,” and then added in a voice not so firm, “but only in part.”

Only in part
…? Mystified, Ellery waited for the old man to explain his meaning. But the Teacher’s silence was unbroken.

“Teacher,” said Ellery wearily, facing him. “Teacher, surely there is another way? Surely you need not die? For the Successor need not die if the whole truth be told. Surely, if he were to be put on trial, the Crownsil would be merciful. For Storicai
did
commit three great sins. He
was
caught in the act of committing them by the Successor. What the Successor did was the impulsive action of a young man with a young man’s lack of control. He was outraged at Storicai’s sacrilege, and he seized the first object at hand, the prayer jar, and struck blindly.

“And when Storicai recovered from the blow and ran after the Successor, surely he intended the boy bodily harm?—for a man who would profane the holy house and contemplate sacrilegious acts would have no hesitation in attempting murder to keep his crimes from becoming known. So that when the boy, fighting for his life, managed to get hold of the hammer on the table and struck out with it, surely he was not a slayer at heart? In the world from which I come such a man-slayer would be defended in the court of law by the plea of self-defense, which, if successful, results in the slayer’s being declared not guilty of slaying, and so is released. Surely the Crownsil will understand?”