The King is Dead (14 page)

And it occurred to him suddenly that the rhetorical question he had asked in the car after their experience at the concentration camp was being answered here and now.

Yes, there were courts on Bendigo Island. This was one of them, the highest.

The large stout man with the rubbery knees was about to be tried.

And when Immanuel Peabody began to speak, there was no doubt left. He spoke in the crisp, confident tone of the experienced prosecutor. King Bendigo listened with the aloof gravity of the supreme judge.

Peabody was outlining the charge. It had something to do with the stout man's failure to carry out certain instructions. Ellery could not follow it closely, for his thoughts were a bottleneck of jammed impressions — the handsome immobility of Bendigo, the slightly nervous fuss the lawyer's fingers made as he talked, the desperate concentration of the stout man, the glow of the glass brick walls, the powerful mastication of Max'l's jaws as he rapidly fed himself hulled nuts in the doorway of the open safe, apparently his favourite lounging place. Had Max'l been there all the time? …

Peabody became more specific. He enumerated dates, names, facts. None of them meant anything to Ellery, who was growing more and more confused. All he could gather was that something or some things the accused had done or had not done had resulted in the severance of an important secret contact somewhere in Asia, which in turn had brought about the loss of an armaments contract. At least it seemed to concern an armaments contract, although Ellery was not sure even of that; it might have involved oil, or raw materials, or ships. Whatever it was, the stout man stood accused of a major crime against the Bendigo empire: bungling.

Ellery held down an impulse to laugh.

And at last King's counsel came to the end of his argument, and he sat down and patted his papers together into a tight, neat pile. Then he leaned back, crossed his dapper legs, and stared with some interest at the stout man.

‘Anything to say?' This was evidently the King's juridical voice, cold, solemn, and above-it-all.

The stout man licked his lips and blinked rapidly, struggling with a great wish to produce sound. But then his lips sagged along the lines of his cheeks, and he lapsed into helplessness.

‘Speak up, Norton.' The voice was sharper, more personal. ‘Do you have anything to say?'

Again the stout man struggled, the sag lifting. He was no more successful this time, but his failure ended with a shrug — the weariest, most hopeless shrug Ellery had ever witnessed.

Ellery felt his father's fingers on his arm. He sank back.

King made a flicking gesture with his shapely right hand.

The stout man might have been a fly.

The guards took him out, each wrestling an arm. The knees kept buckling, and a step before the door they collapsed altogether.

The trio disappeared.

The splendid office sunned itself. There was a siesta mood over everything. No one said a word.

King Bendigo sprawled on his throne, chin thoughtful, black eyes dreamy.

King's advocate Peabody kept his legs comfortably crossed, one hand on his neat, tight pile of papers. However, his head was cocked.

The rapid-fire motion of Max'l's feeding hand had stopped. The hand was suspended before the mouth.

They were waiting. That was it.

But for what?

A laugh that would shatter this dream — wake everyone up and restore the sanity of the world?

A shot?

Nonsense, absurd …

Anyway, the walls were soundproof—

Ellery jumped.

King Bendigo had risen. Lawyer Peabody uncrossed his legs. Max'l's hand popped to his mouth, dipped for a fresh supply of hulled nuts.

It was over.

Whatever had happened, it was over.

The King was speaking graciously to the lawyer. There was a matter of a tax suit for sixty million dollars pending in the high court of some European country. Bendigo was discussing the incomes of the judges and inquiring for more information of the same personal nature.

Peabody replied busily.

At the door, waiting for his father, Ellery glanced back. The King and his Lord Advocate were seated again, their heads together. They were deep in conversation. The curved wall glowed and the long office was serene. Max was tossing nuts into the air now and balancing under them with his mouth open, like a seal.

Ellery stumbled out.

9

Wednesday night came, and there was still no word of Abel Bendigo. Peabody, whom Ellery chased for half a day, merely looked blank when asked about Abel's mission to Washington. Karla knew nothing about it.

His talk with Karla left Ellery unhappy.

‘It is a long time since I shook at every threat,' she said with a toss of her red hair. ‘I had to make up my mind early that I had married a unique personality, one who would always be the target of something.' She smiled her crooked little smile. ‘Kane is better guarded than the President of the United States. By men at least as devoted and incorruptible.'

‘Suppose,' Ellery said carefully, ‘suppose, Mrs. Bendigo, we found that your husband's life is being threatened by someone very close to him —'

‘Close to him!' Karla threw her head back and laughed. ‘Impossible. No one is really close to Kane. Not even Abel is. Not even I am.'

Ellery went away dissatisfied by this transparent sophistry. If Karla suspected anything, she was keeping it to herself.

As the night wore on and Thursday approached, Ellery's skin began to itch and he found it difficult to remain in one spot for more than a few minutes. The more nervous he became, the angrier he grew with all of them — with King, for treating the subject of his own death first with amusement, then with contempt, and finally with irritation, as at a minor but persistent infraction of some Company rule; with Abel, for dragging them into the case and then, unaccountably, staying away from them; with Karla, for being candid when candour was meaningless, and inscrutable when candour would have been helpful; with Judah, for being a man who drank brandy from morning to night and smiled vaguely when his bloodshot eye was caught … surely one of the most unsatisfying assassins in history.

The Inspector was no help. He spent most of Wednesday grumpily in his bathroom, locked away from the world of Bendigo. He was copying his sketches of the island's restricted installations, filling in details as best he could, and transcribing his notes in a minute shorthand.

The call came just as the Queens were about to go to bed Wednesday night.

‘I understand you've been asking for me, Mr. Queen.'

‘Asking for you!' It was Abel Bendigo. ‘The latest note —'

‘I've been told about it.'

‘Has there been another one? There's going to be another one —'

‘I'd rather not discuss it over the phone, Mr. Queen.'

‘But has there?'

‘I don't believe so —'

‘You don't
believe
so? Don't you realize that tomorrow is the twenty-first? And you've been away —'

‘It couldn't be helped. I'll see you in the morning.'

‘Wait! Can't we talk now? Why don't you come down here for a few minutes, Mr. Bendigo —'

‘Sorry. King and I will be up half the night on the matter that took me to Washington. In the morning, Mr. Queen.'

‘But I've found out —!'

‘Oh.' There was silence on the wire. Then Abel said, ‘And what did you find out?'

‘I thought you didn't want to discuss it over the phone.' ‘Who is it?' The twang vibrated the receiver.

‘Your brother Judah,' said Ellery brutally. ‘Does that agree with your conclusion?'

There was another silence. Finally, Abel's voice said, ‘Yes.'

‘Well, what do my father and I do now, Mr. Bendigo? Go home?'

‘No, no,' said Abel. ‘I want you to tell my brother King.' ‘Tonight?'

‘Tomorrow morning, at breakfast. I'll arrange it with Karla. You're to tell him exactly what you've found out, and how. We'll proceed from there, depending on my brother's reaction.'

‘But —'

But Ellery was left holding the receiver.

All night he tossed over the problem of Abel Bendigo's apparent diffidence, and he came with his father to the breakfast table in the private dining-room without having solved it. But as he took his seat he suddenly had the answer. Abel, a planner, could plan nothing where his brother King was concerned. King was an imponderable, a factor who would always remain unknown. In a crisis as personal as this, he might fly off in any one of a dozen directions. Or he might fold his royal wings and refuse to fly at all.
We'll proceed from there, depending on my brother's reaction …
This was probably why Abel, who had detected Judah's guilt at once, called for outside confirmation before revealing his knowledge. He could only pile up his ammunition and wait for developments to tell him which way and how much to shoot.

The King was in a sulky mood this morning. He stamped into the dining-room and glared at the Queens, not greeting them. His black eyes were underscored by his nightwork; he looked almost seedy, and Ellery suspected that this had something to do with his mood — King Bendigo was not a man to relish strangers seeing him at less than his best.

Abel was there. Max'l. And Judah.

It was Abel unquestionably who had engineered Judah's presence at breakfast — a considerable engineering feat, to judge by Judah's almost normal appearance. In spite of the early hour, the dark little assassin could sit in his chair reasonably straight-backed. His hand shook only a little. He was gulping his second cup of coffee.

And Abel was nervous. Ellery rather enjoyed that. Abel's grey schoolmaster's face was far greyer than usual. He kept touching the nosepiece of his eyeglasses, as if he felt them skidding. All his gestures were jerky and full of caution.

‘Something special about today?' King glanced darkly about, his hand arrested in the act of picking up his napkin. ‘Our troublemakers from New York — and you, Judah! How did you manage to get up so early in the morning?'

Judah's sunken eyes were on the fine hand of his brother.

The hand completed the act of picking up the napkin.

An envelope tumbled to the table.

Max'l shouted something so suddenly that Karla gripped the arms of her chair, going very white. Max'l was on his feet, glaring murderously at the envelope.

‘Who done that?' he roared, tearing the napkin from his collar. ‘Who, who?'

‘Sit down, Maxie,' King said. He was looking at the envelope thoughtfully. All his sulkiness had disappeared. Suddenly his mouth curved in a brief malicious smile. He picked the envelope up. His name was typed on it:
King Bendigo
. Nothing else. The envelope was sealed.

‘Today is Thursday, the twenty-first of June, Mr. Bendigo — that's what's special about it.' Ellery was on his feet, too. ‘May I see that, please?'

King tossed the envelope on to his brother Judah's plate.

‘Pass it to the expert, Judah. This is what he's getting paid for.'

Judah obeyed in silence.

Ellery took the envelope with care. His father hurried around the table with a knife. Ellery slit the envelope.

‘And what does this one say, Mr. Queen?' Karla's tone was too light. She was still pale.

It was the same stationery. The
o
's were nicked. Another product of Judah Bendigo's Winchester portable.

‘What does it say!' Abel's voice cracked.

‘Now, Abel,' mocked King. ‘Control yourself.'

‘It's a duplicate of the last message,' said Ellery, ‘with two differences. A single word has been added, and this time it ends not with a dash but with a period.
You are going to be murdered on Thursday, June 21, at exactly 12.00 o'clock midnight.'

‘Midnight, period,' muttered Inspector Queen. ‘That's it. There won't be any more. There's nothing more for him to say.'

‘For who to say?' bellowed Max'l, inflating his ape's chest. ‘I kill him! For who?'

King reached across Judah, seized Max'l's dried-apricot ear, and yanked. Max'l fell back into his chair with a howl. The big man laughed. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

‘Kane, let us go away today.' Karla's hand was smoothing the damask cloth. ‘Just the two of us. I know these letters are nothing, but —'

‘I can't go away, Karla. Too much to do. But I'll take a rain-check on that. Oh, come! You all look like professional pallbearers. Don't you see how funny it is?'

‘King.' Abel spoke slowly. ‘I wish you'd take this seriously. It isn't funny at all … Mr. Queen has something to tell you.'

The black eyes turned on Ellery, glittering. ‘I'm listening.'

‘I have something to ask you first, Mr. Bendigo,' Ellery did not look in Judah's direction. ‘Where would you normally be at midnight tonight?'

‘Finishing the confidential work on the day's agenda.'

‘But where?'

‘Where I always work at that hour. In the Confidential Room.'

‘That's the room with the heavy steel door, across the hall from your brother Judah's quarters?'

‘Yes.'

Abel said quickly: ‘We usually spend an hour or two in there, Mr. Queen, starting at eleven or so. Work we can't leave to the secretaries.'

‘If Abel is away, I take his place,' said Karla.

Her husband grinned at the Queens. ‘All in the family. Where the big plots are hatched. I'm sure you suspect that.'

‘Kane, stop making jokes. You're not to work there tonight.'

‘Oh, nonsense.'

‘You are not to!'

He looked across at his wife curiously. ‘You're really concerned, darling.'

‘If you insist on working there tonight, I insist on working with you.'

‘On that point I yield,' he chuckled, ‘seeing that Abel's going to be occupied elsewhere, anyway. Now let's have breakfast, shall we, and forget this childishness?'