Эллери Куин - The Egyptian Cross Mystery

“Outside the hut, the footprints. You examined them carefully?”

Vaughn and Isham nodded.

“Then you must have seen at once the patent fact that only two people were involved in that murder. There were two sets of prints — one ingoing, the other outgoing; from the shape and size of the tracks both sets had been made by the same shoes. It was possible to fix roughly the time the tracks had been made. The rain had stopped in Arroyo at about eleven o’clock the previous night. It had been a heavy rain. Had the prints been made before the rain stopped they would, in their exposed position, have been completely washed out and obliterated. Then they were made certainly at eleven or later. The condition of the body crucified to the wall of the hut at the time I saw it showed me that the victim was dead about fourteen hours — had died, in other words, at about eleven o’clock the night before. The prints — the only prints, incidentally — were made therefore at approximately the time of the murder.”

Ellery stuck a fresh cigarette into his mouth. “What did the prints reveal? That only one person had walked into and out of the hut during the approximate period of the murder. There was only one entrance or exit — the door; the single window being effectively barred with barbed wire.”

Ellery applied a match to his cigarette and puffed thoughtfully. “It was elementary, then. There was a victim and there was a murderer. We had found the victim. Then it was the murderer whose tracks were impressed on the wet earth before the shack. The tracks showed a limping man — so far, so good.

“Now, on the stone floor of the hut there were several most illuminating objects. Exhibit Number One was a bloody and iodine-stained coil of bandage which from its shape and circumference could only have been wound about a wrist. Nearby lay a partially used roll of bandage.”

Again Isham and Vaughn nodded, and the Professor said: “So that’s it! I wondered about the wrist.”

“Exhibit Number Two: a large blue-glass bottle of iodine, its cork a few feet away on the floor. The bottle was opaque, and it had no label.

“The question immediately confronted me: On whose wrist had that bandage been wound? There were two people involved: victim and murderer. Then it came from one or the other. If the victim had worn the bandage, then one of his wrists would show a wound. I examined the wrists of the corpse — both unmarked. Conclusion: the murderer had cut one of his own wrists. By inference when he had wielded the ax on the victim’s body, or possibly during a struggle before the victim was killed.

“If the murderer had cut his wrist, it was he then who had used iodine and bandage. The fact that he had cut off the bandage later was irrelevant — the wound must have bled profusely, as the bandage indicated, and he merely changed dressings before leaving the hut.”

Ellery brandished the smoking cigarette. “But observe what a significant fact has been brought out! For if the murderer used the iodine, what have we? It should be child’s play now. Don’t you see it yet, any of you?”

They tried very hard, from their scowls and finger-gnawings and looks of deep concentration; but in the end they shook their heads.

Ellery sank back. “I suppose it’s one of those things. To me it seems extraordinarily clear. What were the two characteristics of the iodine-bottle, peculiar to that bottle itself, which the murderer had left on the floor? First: it was of opaque blue glass. Second: it bore no label.

“Then how did the murderer know it contained iodine?”

Professor Yardley’s jaw dropped, and he smote his forehead in a manner amusingly reminiscent of District Attorney Sampson, that admirable prosecutor associated with Ellery and Inspector Queen in so many of their metropolitan cases. “Oh, what an idiot I am!” he groaned. “Of course, of course!”

Vaughn wore a look of immense surprise. “It’s so damned simple,” he said in a wondering tone, as if he could not understand how it had escaped his observation.

Ellery shrugged. “These things generally are. You see, therefore, the line of reasoning. The murderer couldn’t have known it was iodine from the bottle itself, since there was no label and the blue color and opacity of the glass disguised the hue of its contents. Then he could have known its contents only in one of two alternative ways: either by being familiar with the contents of the bottle from previous experience, or by uncorking it and investigating.

“Now you will recall that there were two blank spaces on the medicine-supply shelf above ‘Old Pete’s’ homely little lavatory. It was apparent at once that those two blank spaces had held the two objects on the floor — the bottle of iodine and the roll of bandage — both of which would normally stand on a medicine shelf. In other words the murderer, having wounded himself, was constrained to apply to the medicine shelf for bandage and iodine.”

Ellery grinned. “But how odd! What else was on the shelf? Surely you recollect that, among miscellaneous and innocuous articles, there were two bottles which the murderer might have taken down for use in his extremity — one of iodine and one of mercurochrome, both plainly labeled? Why, then, should he uncork the unlabeled, opaque bottle in a search for an antiseptic when there were two clearly marked bottles of antiseptic in full view? Actually, there can be no reason; no man, a stranger to that hut, with time at a premium, would explore a bottle whose contents were unpredictable when what he wanted was right before his eyes all the time.

“Then the first of my two possibilities must apply: the murderer must have been familiar with the large opaque unlabeled bottle, must have known in advance that it contained iodine! But who could have such knowledge?” Ellery sighed. “And there it was. From the circumstances and Van’s own story of the isolation of his hideaway, only one person could have had such knowledge — the owner of the hut.”

“I told you so,” said Inspector Queen excitedly, as he reached for his ancient brown snuff box.

“We have shown that only two people were involved — murderer and victim — and that it was the murderer who cut his wrist and used the iodine. So if the owner of the hut, Andreja Tvar, alias Andrew Van, alias Old Pete, was the only one who could have known in advance that the mysterious bottle contained iodine, then it was Andrew Van whose wrist was cut, and the poor fellow crucified to the wall was not Andrew Van, but had been murdered by Andrew Van.”

He lapsed into silence. Inspector Vaughn stirred uneasily, and District Attorney Isham said: “Yes, but how about the preceding murders? You said last night after we took Van in custody that the whole thing was clear to you from beginning to end as soon as you investigated the last murder. I can’t see, even granting the argument about Van as the culprit in the last murder, how you can logically prove him to have been the murderer in the preceding crimes.”

“My dear Isham,” said Ellery, raising his eyebrows, “surely from here it’s an open-and-shut case? Just a matter of analysis and common sense. Where did I stand at that point? I knew then that the missing man, the man who had left the limp-footprints, the murderer, was Andrew Van himself. But that he was the murderer was not sufficient. I could visualize a situation in which Van might have murdered a marauding Krosac, for example, purely in self-defense; in which case he could not under any circumstance be considered the murderer of the other three. But one fact stood out: Andrew Van had killed somebody and left the corpse of that somebody in his hut dressed in the rags of Old Pete; which is to say, dressed as himself. Then here was deception! I knew then that the problem would be relatively simple. Who had been murdered in this last butchery?