The Murderer is a Fox (3 page)

It hasn't changed much, he
thought as he roamed about High Village. Some new stores; a busy new
City Parking Lot abutting Jezreel Lane, behind the Post Office and
the Five-and-Dime; Andy Birobatyan's Florist Shop in the Professional
Building adjoining the Kelton on Washington Street wore a
different-colored paint; Dr. Emil Poffenberger's dental offices had
disappeared; the Hollis Hotel displayed a new marquee, very elegant;

in store windows on Lower
Main and along Upper Whistling Avenue hung banners boasting one or
two or three blue stars. But behind the plate-glass front of the
Wrightsville Record,
where Lower Main fed into the Square,
Ellery could spy old Phinny Baker shining up the presses, as of yore;
Al Brown was serving New York College Ices in the ice-cream parlor
next to Louie Cahan's Bijou to boys and girls of Wrightsville High,
as if he had never stopped; and in the Square, which was round,
Founder Jezreel Wright still brooded over the stone horse trough, his
nose and arms decorated with bird-droppings and his verdigrised back
set against John F. Wright's Wrightsville National Bank on the
northern arc of the Square—adjoining the grounds of the
red-brick Town Hall, where State Street began.

It was very like the
Wrightsville Ellery had known; it must be, he perceived, very like
the Wrightsville Jessica Fox had known.

Ellery strolled up State
Street under the venerable trees. He passed Town Hall and glanced
across the street to the Carnegie Library: Was Miss Aikin still
enthroned there, he wondered, behind the stuffed eagle and the
moth-eaten owl? And then he reached the "new" county
courthouse. It did not look so new now: the granite was dingy and the
bronze letters over the Doric columns were in need of polishing, the
broad flat steps were a little down at the heel. But the bars on the
top-floor windows, where the County Jail was, looked the same; and
for an imaginative moment Ellery almost saw Jim Haight's tortured
face glaring down at him from one of them.

Prosecutor Hendrix was
definitely cool.

"Sure, we're
provincial,' said the Wright County Prosecutor severely. "We
don't like outsiders muscling into our town and shaking us up, Mr.
Queen. I'm an outspoken man. Bayard Fox got a fair trial twelve years
ago; the case is practically ancient history. Where's the point?"

"There's a bit more at
stake, Mr. Hendrix, than the provincialism of Wrightsville—or
even Bayard Fox."

"What?"

In confidence, Ellery told
him.

"Well." Hendrix
pursed his Yankee lips. "I must say it's a darned funny kind of
therapy." He did not bother to disguise his hostility.

"Captain Davy Fox,"
Ellery pointed out slyly, "is currently Wrightsville's proudest
possession."

"Yes. Of course."
Hendrix looked uncomfortable. "I'm sorry to hear about his
condition. But this is the wildest jump in the dark, Mr. Queen. Your
investigation won't do the boy anything but harm, because it'll only
raise his hopes and you can't help but disappoint him.

"Bayard Fox murdered
his wife twelve years ago, and that's all there is to it. You're
wasting your time." He did not add "and mine," but
that was what his tone implied.

It had begun to be an
annoying refrain, and Ellery scowled. "By the way, Mr. Hendrix,
who was Prosecutor of Wright County during the Fox trial?"

“Tom Garback.â€

So the prowler was in a
maid's room, or a study. And now he was not flashing the light
intermittently; he kept it on as he searched through drawers.

Ellery made his way down the
hall on the balls of his stockinged feet. The house had stood
unheated during twelve winters, and dampness had warped the floors-he
recalled how badly they had creaked during the day. So he was doubly
careful, testing each board before putting his full weight upon it,
inching his way down the hall toward the source of that faint light.

When he was three-quarters
toward his goal, a loud sound came from the unidentified room. It was
a splintery snap of a sound, like the cracking of wood. And
immediately the sound of another drawer jerked open. And then a hiss,
which might have been the intake of a triumphant breath.

The light vanished, leaving
blackest blackness.

Ellery wasted no time
bemoaning his luck. He negotiated the remaining distance in two long
strides, risking a protesting board. But he reached the invisible
doorway without having stepped on one. At once he raised his arms
high and grasped both jambs, his body squarely in the middle of the
open doorway.

Now, he thought grimly, let
Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Prowler come out. The intruder can't possibly
know I'm here. There's no reason for him—or her—to leave
by a window of this room. The only sound I made was in the living
room, and it wasn't heard, because the search continued afterward.
And my breathing is inaudible, unless the creature in that room has
the ears of a fox—

Ellery barely had time to
complete the thought.

The front of his head seemed
to rip away.

As the pain flashed through
his brain and down into his body, as he felt his knees sag and his
arms drop from the jambs, his falling left arm passed before his
eyes. And he saw his wrist watch with the hands standing at 3:26.

Saw the time in the darkness
and realized that what he could see was also visible to another.

He had forgotten that his
watch had radial hands. His arm had been on the jamb, outstretched,
his cuff had fallen away exposing his wrist, and the man or woman in
the room had spied the luminous dial. He always wore his watch with
the face turned inward.

Serves you right, his brain
was saying as he went down.

A reflex caused him to twist
his head far to one side. Another blow struck the side of his head, a
third his shoulder.

And then he felt no further
sensations, not even the foot that trampled on his hand in the dark.
Nor did he hear the clatter of his assailant's escape up the hall.

Ellery opened his eyes in
the middle of a firmament gone crazy with suns and comets, all
different-colored and all in violent motion. For a while he had the
feeling that he was floating in black space, surrounded by the
galaxy.

But then he realized that he
was lying across the sill of the still-unidentified room in Bayard
Fox's house, in the same darkness.

He blinked the colored spots
away as he struggled to sit up. Returning consciousness made him
aware of his head and shoulder and hand. The top of his head was
burning, his left shoulder was boiling with pain, and his left hand
felt crippled.

Sitting on the floor, he
shook his head slowly, trying to clear it, fumbling meanwhile for a
packet of matches in his jacket pocket.

But he could not find it, so
he peered blearily at his wrist watch. After a moment he was able to
focus sufficiently to make out the time.

It was 3:44.

Out eighteen minutes!

Groaning, he rolled over,
got to his knees, and finally, clutching at the nearer jamb, pulled
himself to his feet.

No point in being careful
now, he thought wryly.

The mysterious prowler had
long since gone.

Should have had the
electricity turned on for the investigation, he thought as he
stumbled up the hall.

He blundered across the
living room and dropped out the still-open window. His head was
rocking with pain, as were his shoulder and hand. He plodded across
the Bayard Fox lawn toward Talbot's house, fighting nausea.

It was quiet and dark and
hot outside.

Nothing seemed different.

On Talbot's porch Ellery
paused. Talbot's house seemed still asleep.

After a while Ellery went
in.

The telephone was in the
downstairs hall, near the front door, on a skimpy little table.

Ellery sat down slowly in
the tiny telephone-table chair. A night-light burned on the wall, and
by its yellow rays he could examine himself. His left hand was
swollen and discolored; there was a trace of dried blood across the
puffed knuckles. In the mirror above the table he could glimpse his
forehead. At the hairline an area the size and shape of a lead sinker
rose nobly. The tissue there was bloated and purplish. In one place
the

lump was cracked in a
blood-line. At the side of his head another lump rose.

His shoulder throbbed.

But Ellery stared at his
injuries in a vast excitement. They tell a story! he thought. An
impossible, wonderful story.

He felt like laughing aloud.

He took the phone carefully,
dialed the operator.

"Get me Chief of Police
Dakin at his home," he said, his lips to the mouthpiece. "This
is urgent."

"Shall I call you back,
sir?"

"I'll hold on."

At the fourth buzz Dakin's
voice, calmly reassuring, answered.

This is Queen."

"What's the matter, Mr.
Queen?"

"Never mind. Come right
over to the Bayard Fox house."

"Sure."

"Quietly."

"Sure."

Ellery hung up. He felt his
shoulder, winced, and glanced up the stairs.

The house was still.

Painfully he went upstairs,
blessing the padded stair-carpeting. Along the upper hall he sought a
certain door, but before he knocked he paused to listen.

Nothing.

He knocked, softly.

He heard the smothered
wheeze as Detective Howie awoke, the sleepy grunt of Bayard Fox, a
groaning of old bedsprings, and in a few moments Howie unlocked the
door.

"Yeah?" The
Prosecutor's man looked startled.

"Let me in, Howie."

Ellery quietly shut the
door. Howie had snapped on the bedlight, and Bayard Fox was up on his
elbow, his thin white hair standing all over his head, staring.

"For heaven's sake, Mr.
Queen," gasped Davy's father, "what's happened to
you?
"

"Please keep your voice
down."

The detective croaked: "You
look like you run into something, friend." Howie was in
one-piece underwear, fatter and unlovelier than ever. He, too, was
staring at Ellery's head.

"I haven't much time,"
snapped Ellery. "Howie, has Bayard Fox left this room tonight?"

"Huh?"

"Shut your silly mouth
and concentrate, Howie. Is there any way your prisoner could have got
out of this room tonight without your knowing?"

The stupid expression on the
fat detective's face vanished in a savage grin. He trod heavily over
to the double bed and ripped the topsheet away.

"What do
you
think?" he screeked.

I don't believe you'd be
grinning, my friend, thought Ellery, if you knew the significance of
your little mean triumph. Not you.

A short length of picture
wire was securely twisted about Bayard Fox's left big toe.

"I'm a light sleeper,"
leered Detective Howie. "But when I'm on a job like this I don't
take chances. No, sir. The other end winds around my ankle. Every
time he moves I wake up, but then I go to sleep again."

"I could get out of it
if I wanted to," said Bayard Fox with a little spat of hatred.

'Try it sometime, Fox."

"Suppose he could. It's
possible," argued Ellery, his eyes bright.

"It ain't."

"But suppose it was."

"I keep the door
locked."

"Doors can be
unlocked."

"Not without a key. I
got the key on a chain around my wrist." Detective Howie showed
his bad teeth in another grin. "I mean not amatchoors like Foxy
here."

"Then there's the
window" objected Ellery.

'Take a look at it, friend."

Ellery crossed the room. The
lower part of the window was open about six inches. Ellery tried to
raise it. It would not budge. Curious, he investigated further. By an
ingenious system of homemade wedges, the window had been rendered
immovable.

"He could get it open,"
chuckled Detective Howie, "enough to wriggle out, maybe, but not
without workin' on it for a long time, Queen, and not without me
hearin' him . . . Makes it stuffy in here," he said slyly, "but
I guess if I can stand it, he can."

"You're a careful
operative," drawled Ellery.

"You said it."

"Suppose he hit you on
the skull, Howie. Then it wouldn't matter how much noise he made, or
how long he took getting out."

The fat lips drew back in a
snarl. "Well, he didn't hit me on the skull and he better not
try. . . . Say!" Howie's little eyes grew round.
"You
were hit on the skull tonight!"

"Now you're getting
it," said Ellery. "Then you're prepared to swear, in court
if necessary, that Bayard Fox didn't leave this room tonight?"

Detective Howie nodded, his
grin gone.

"Get dressed, Howie.
Put the light out. Open the door. And listen. I don't want anyone
leaving this house for the next couple of hours. You might sit out in
the hall, at the top of the stairs. Then nobody could slip down—or
up—in the dark."

The fat man nodded again,
dumbly.

"What's happened, Mr.
Queen?" asked Bayard Fox in a quiet voice.

"I don't know, Bayard,"
said Ellery, "but I have an idea that—whatever it was—it's
a very good thing for you."

It was ten minutes past four
by Ellery's watch when the plain black sedan Chief Dakin ran slipped
up the Hill and stopped before Bayard Fox's house.

Dakin came softly up the
walk and Ellery rose from the bottom step of the small porch to greet
him.

"Bring a flash, Dakin?"

"A big electric torch."

"Let's go in."

They spoke in low tones.

When they got inside, Chief
Dakin unlocking the front door with the key he had appropriated
during the day from Emily Fox, the Chief switched on his torch.

"Jeeps!â€

"You seem worried, Mr.
Hendrix," remarked Ellery.