Egyptian Cross Mystery (17 page)

“By the same token,” retorted Ellery,
“faciunt nae intelligendo, ut nihil intelligant
… by too much knowledge they bring it about that they know nothing. That’s not personally intended, of course—”

“Of course not,” replied Yardley with gravity. “And Terence didn’t mean it either, eh? … At any rate, I thought you were bending over backwards in an effort to interpret the facts Egyptologically. You were always prone to romanticize, as I recall, even in the classroom. Once, when we were discussing the source of the Atlantean legend as it was transmitted by Plato, Herodotus, and—”

“If I may interrupt the learned gentleman,” said Ellery a little testily, “I’m trying to shoulder my way out of a lot of mud, and you’re befouling the terrain with irrelevant classicism. Excuse me. … If Krosac by lopping off the heads of his victims and strewing T signs about the scenes of his crimes meant to leave the symbol of a cross, it certainly was not an
ankh
cross and could only have been the
tau
cross. And since there seems to be little if any significance to the existence of the
tau
cross in Pharaonic Egypt, the probabilities are that Krosac had no such thought in mind, despite the fact that he was associated with a madman whose obsession was things religious in the Egyptological sense. … Confirmation? Yes. Thomas Brad was hung on a totem pole—pardon, post. Another religious symbol worlds removed from hieraticism. Further confirmation—if Krosac meant an
ankh
cross he would have left the heads rather than removed them. … So we have cast doubt upon the Egyptian theory, we have no evidence for the American totem theory except the single fortuitous fact of Brad’s place of crucifixion—and that was apparently chosen because of its T-shaped significance rather than any religious significance—and we cannot persist in the cruciform theory at all … the
tau
cross in the Christian creed—since decapitation as far as I know has never played a part in the murder of martyrs …
Ergo,
we abandon all religious theories—”

“Your credo,” chuckled the Professor, “seems to be like the religion of Rabelais—a great Perhaps.”

“—and revert to what was leaning against my nose from the beginning,” concluded Ellery with a rueful smile.

“What’s that?”

“The fact that T probably means T, and not a damned thing else. T in its alphabetical sense. T, T …” Suddenly he stopped, and the Professor studied him curiously. Ellery was staring at the pool with eyes that saw nothing so innocent as blue water and sunlight.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Yardley.

“Is it possible?” muttered Ellery. “No … too pat. And nothing to confirm it. Once before it occurred to me—” His voice trailed off; he had not even heard Yardley’s question. The Professor sighed and picked up his pipe again. Neither man said anything for a long time.

They were sitting that way, two nearly naked figures in the peaceful patio, when an old Negress pattered in with a disgusted look on her shiny black face.

“Mistuh Ya’dley,” she said in a soft complaining voice, “some un’s jest breakin’ th’ do’ down tryin’ to git in hyah.”

“Eh?” The Professor started and shook off his reverie. “Who is it?”

“Dat ’Spectuh man. He’s awful stewy, seems like, suh.”

“All right, Nanny. Send him in.”

Vaughn burst in upon them a moment later waving a small piece of paper; his face was congested with excitement. “Queen!” he shouted. “Great news!”

Ellery shifted about with abstracted eyes. “Eh? Oh, hello, Inspector. What’s this news of yours?”

“Read this.” The Inspector hurled the piece of paper on the marble floor and sank to the edge of the pool, panting like an expectant trespasser in a
seraglio.

Ellery and the Professor looked at each other, and then together at the paper. It was a radiogram from the Island of Jamaica.

MADE PORT HERE TODAY HEARD OF BRADS DEATH SAILING NEW YORK AT ONCE.

The message was signed:
Stephen Megara.

“J’ai découvert comme Officier Judiciaire

Principale près le Parquet de

Bruxelles que l’opération du cerveau

criminel est dirigée par motifs souvent

incompréhensibles au citoyen qui

observe la loi.”

—
FÉLIX BROUWAGE

S
TEPHEN MEGARA’S YACHT
HELENE
made a record run from Jamaica north through the peppered islands of the Bahamas, but near New Providence Island she developed serious engine trouble and her master, Captain Swift, was constrained to put her into the port of Nassau for repairs. It was several days before she was able to stand out to sea again.

So it was not until the first of July, eight days after Inspector Vaughn’s receipt of Megara’s radiogram, that the
Helene
hove into sight of the Long Island coast. Arrangements had been made with the Port authorities to expedite Megara’s clearing through New York Harbor, and the
Helene
after a brief delay steamed into Long Island Sound, accompanied by a police boat and a flock of small craft hired by enterprising newspapermen who were kept off the
Helene’s
holystoned decks only with the greatest difficulty.

Eight days … Eight days of singularly halcyon uneventfulness. With the exception of the funeral. And even that was a quiet affair. Brad had been interred in a Long Island cemetery without pomp or untoward circumstance; and Mrs. Brad, it was observed by the gentlemen of the press, bore the ordeal with remarkable fortitude. Even her daughter, no blood-relation of the deceased, was more affected by the interment than the widow.

The search for Velja Krosac had assumed the proportions of a national manhunt. His description had been sent to police headquarters and Sheriffs’ offices throughout the United States and to all port officers; he was being watched for by the police of the forty-eight States, Canada, and Mexico. Despite the widening of the seine, however, no Montenegrin fish was caught; the man had disappeared as effectually as if he had flown off the Earth into space. Of Kling, too, not a trace.

The chauffeur, Fox, was still under guard in his hut; not formally arrested, to be sure, but as effectively a prisoner as if he had been behind the bars of Sing Sing. Quietly the inquiry spread about him; but by the time of Megara’s arrival no identification of his fingerprints had been made in any of the Eastern rogues’ galleries. The Inspector, doggedly, sent copies of the fingerprints farther west. Fox himself maintained his iron silence. He did not complain at his unofficial confinement, but there was a desperate glint in his eye, and the Inspector grimly doubled the guard. It was part of Vaughn’s genius to ignore the man completely, except for the silent guards; Fox was not questioned or bullied; he was left strictly alone. Despite this strain on his nerves, however, the man did not break. He sat quietly in his hut, day after day, barely touching the food relayed to him from the kitchen of Mrs. Baxter, barely moving, barely breathing.

Everything was ready on Friday, the first of July, when the
Helene
pushed her way up Long Island Sound and through the western narrows of Ketcham’s Cove, anchoring in the deep waters between Oyster Island and the mainland. Bradwood’s landing dock was black with people—detectives, police, troopers. They watched the slow maneuvers of the yacht. It was a gleaming white, low-slung and rakish craft. In the magnifying morning air the neat glitter of her brasswork and the tiny moving figures on her deck were clearly visible. Little boats swayed around her narrow belly.

Inspector Vaughn, District Attorney Isham, Ellery Queen, and Professor Yardley stood on the dock, silently waiting. A launch put out overside, smacked into the waters of the Cove. Several figures could be seen descending the iron staircase and stepping into the launch. Immediately a police boat got under way and the launch followed submissively. They made for the landing. The crowd stirred. …

Stephen Megara was a tall, sun-blackened man of powerful physique, with a black mustache and a nose which, from its appearance, had been irremediably battered in a brawl. He was altogether a vital and somehow sinister figure. His leap from the launch to the dock was quick, sure, lithe; all his movements were decisive. Here, Ellery felt as he studied him with keen interest, was the man of action; a richly different person from the paunchy, overfed and prematurely old man that must have been Thomas Brad.

“I’m Stephen Megara,” he said abruptly in English, touched by an Etonian accent. “Quite a reception committee. Helene!” He singled her out of the crowd—the chief actors, standing timidly in the background—Helene, her mother, Jonah, Dr. Temple … Megara took Helene’s hands, ignoring the others, and looked with fierce tenderness into her eyes. She flushed and withdrew her hands slowly. Megara smiled a brief, mustache-raising smile, murmured something into Mrs. Brad’s frozen ear, nodded curtly to Dr. Temple, and turned back. “So Tom’s been murdered? I’m at the service of any one who cares to introduce himself.”

The District Attorney grunted: “Indeed?” and said: “I’m Isham, D.A. of the County. This is Inspector Vaughn of the Nassau County detective bureau. Mr. Ellery Queen, special investigator. Professor Yardley, a new neighbor of yours.”

Megara shook hands perfunctorily. Then he turned and crooked a dark finger at a hard-faced, frosty old man in blue uniform who had accompanied him in the launch. “Captain Swift, my skipper,” said Megara. Swift had champing jaws and eyes like the lenses of a telescope—clear as crystal in a face as weatherbeaten as the wandering Jew’s.

“’Meetcha,” said Captain Swift to no one in particular, and put his left hand to his cap. Three fingers were missing, Ellery observed. And when they all, by tacit consent, stirred and began to move off the dock toward the path leading to the house, Ellery saw that the sailing master walked with the roll of the deepwater man.

“Too bad I didn’t get word before this,” said Megara swiftly to Isham, as they strode along. The Brads, Lincoln, Dr. Temple walked behind with expressionless faces. “I’ve been lolloping about the high seas for months; you don’t get news that way. It’s been a blow, learning about Tom.” Nevertheless, as he said it, it did not seem like a blow; he discussed the murder of his partner as unemotionally as he might discuss the purchase of a new shipment of rugs.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Megara,” said Inspector Vaughn. “Who to your knowledge might have had motive for killing Mr. Brad?”

“Hmm,” said Megara. He twisted his head for an instant to look back at Mrs. Brad, at Helene. “Rather not answer at the moment. Let me know exactly what’s happened.”

Isham opened his mouth to reply, when Ellery asked in a soft voice: “Have you ever heard of a man called Andrew Van?”

For the fraction of a second Megara’s rhythmic stride broke, but his face was inscrutable as he forged on. “Andrew Van, eh? What has he to do with this?”

“Then you know him!” cried Isham.

“He was murdered under circumstances similar to those surrounding the death of your partner, Mr. Megara,” said Ellery.

“Van murdered, too!” Something of the yachtsman’s poise dropped away from him, there was a flicker of uneasiness in his bold eyes.

“Head cut off, and body crucified in the form of a T,” Ellery went on in a matter-of-fact way.

Megara stopped short this time, and the whole cavalcade behind him stopped as well. His face went violet under its mask of sunburn. “T!” he muttered. “Why—Let’s get into the house, gentlemen.”

He shivered as he said this, and his shoulders sagged; his mahogany complexion was ghastly. He looked suddenly years older.

“Can you explain the T’s?” demanded Ellery eagerly.

“I have an idea …” Megara clicked his teeth together, and strode on.

They negotiated the rest of the distance to the house in silence.

Stallings opened the front door, and at once his bland face broke into a welcoming smile. “Mr. Megara! I’m happy to welc—”

Megara brushed by him without a glance. He made for the drawing room, followed by the others, and there began to pace the floor with long strides. He seemed to be turning something over in his mind. Mrs. Brad glided up to him and placed her pudgy hand on his arm.

“Stephen … if you could only clear up this terrible—”

“Stephen, you
know!”
cried Helene.

“If you know, Megara, for God’s sake spill it and end this rotten suspense!” said Lincoln hoarsely. “It’s been a nightmare for all of us.”

Megara sighed and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Keep cool. Sit down, Captain. Sorry to bring you into a scurvy thing like this.” Captain Swift blinked and did not sit down; he seemed uncomfortable, and edged nearer the door. “Gentlemen,” said Megara abruptly, “I believe I know who murdered my—who murdered Brad.”

“You do, eh?” said Vaughn with no excitement.

“Who?” cried Isham.

Megara threw back his wide shoulders. “A man named Velja Krosac. Krosac … No doubt about it in my mind. T, you say? If it means what I think it means, he’s the only man in this world who could have left it. T, eh? In a way, it’s a living sign that … Tell me just what happened. In the murder of Van as well as of Brad.”

Vaughn looked at Isham, and Isham nodded. Whereupon the Inspector launched into a terse summary of all that had occurred in both crimes, beginning with the discovery by Old Pete and Michael Orkins of the schoolmaster’s body at the crossroads of the Arroyo pike and the New Cumberland-Pughtown highway. When Vaughn related the garageman Croker’s testimony concerning the limping man who had hired Croker to drive him to the crossroads, Megara nodded slowly, and said: “That’s the man, that’s the man,” as if he were banishing his last doubt. The story concluded, Megara smiled without humor.

“I have it straight now.” He had recovered his poise; there were purpose and courage in his posture. “Now tell me just what you found in the summerhouse. There’s something a little queer …”

“But Mr. Megara,” protested Isham, “I can’t see—”