* * *
Donald looked as if he had slept in his clothes. It was the same dowdy tweed, and it was fearfully crumpled, and his necktie was askew and his hair drooped over his eyes and his eyes were rimmed with red circles and he was badly in need of a shave. Berne’s slight figure was immaculate, but there was a faint unsteadiness in the pose of his head.
“Hello,” said Ellery, picking up his stick. “I was just going.”
“Seems to be a habit with you,” said Berne with a mirthless grin. He regarded Ellery with calm bitter eyes.
Ellery started to say something, then saw the look in Donald Kirk’s eye and refrained.
“Shut up, will you, Felix,” said Donald hoarsely, coming forward. “Glad I found you, Queen. Gives me the opportunity to apologize for father’s rotten manners last night.”
“Nonsense,” said Ellery quickly. “Not another word. I daresay I got what I deserved.”
“Each man to his own reward,” drawled Berne. “One good feature about you, Queen, at any rate.” He turned deliberately to Jo. “I stopped in, Miss Temple, to discuss the title of your book with you. It seems that Donald here has some obscene notion of aping the Buck titles and employing something like Second Cousins or Half-Brothers or The Good Grandfather. Now I?”
“Now I,” said Jo evenly, “think that you’re being despicable, Mr. Berne.”
A brown tide began to spread under Berne’s skin. “Look here, you?”
“You know perfectly well that Mr. Kirk had no such idea. And certainly it was furthest from my mind. You’ve been abominably uncivil since I met you, Mr. Berne. If it isn’t possible for you to be reasonably a gentleman, I’ll be forced to refuse to discuss my book with you at all!”
“Jo,” cried Kirk. He glared at his partner. “I can’t understand what in the name of God’s come over you, Felix!”
“Damned impertinence,” said Berne thickly.
“There’s no compulsion on the part of The Mandarin Press, you know,” continued Jo in the same even, unhurried voice, “to publish my book. I’m perfectly willing to tear up my contract, Mr. Berne. Is that what you want?”
The man stood absolutely still; only his chest rose, and the whites of his eyes showed blankly. There was something deadly and implacable in his glare; and when he spoke it was in a voice like congealed syrup. “What I want . . . If Donald chooses to publish any one barely out of diapers intellectually and with some half-baked manuscript that’s a poor imitation of a great work, it’s all right with me. That’s why The Mandarin is so close to?” He stopped. Then he said with a spitting snarl: “I’ve looked over that magnificent opus of yours, Miss Temple, having wasted a perfectly good night’s sleep to do it. And I think it stinks.”
She turned her back on him and walked to the window. Ellery stood quietly watching. Kirk’s brown hands opened and closed, and he took a step toward Berne and said in a thickened voice: “You’d better beat it, Felix. You’re drunk. I’ll settle with you at the office.”
Berne licked his lips. Ellery said: “Just a moment, gentlemen, before the physical part of the drama begins. Berne, why were you late last night?”
The publisher did not take his eyes off his partner.
“I asked you, Berne,” said Ellery, “why you were late last night.”
The man turned his dark head slowly at that, regarding Ellery with an absent, almost insulting vacuity. “Go to hell,” he said.
And it was at that moment, with Jo trembling with indignation at the window, Donald clenching his fists impotently, and Berne and Ellery measuring each other with their eyes, that a cracked old voice howled from somewhere in the bowels of the apartment: “Help! I’ve been robbed! Help!”
Ellery sped through the dining-room, past a startled Hubbell, through a pair of bedrooms into the study of Dr. Kirk. Jo and Donald ran at his heels. Berne had disappeared.
Dr. Kirk was hopping up and down in the center of his disarranged study, one hand on the back of his wheel- chair to steady himself, the other clutching at his bristly white hair. He bellowed: “You! You Queen fellow! I’ve been robbed!”
“Of what?” panted Ellery, glancing swiftly about.
“Father!” cried Donald, springing to the old man’s side. “Sit down; you’ll exhaust yourself. What’s the matter? What’s been stolen? Who robbed you?”
“My books!” roared the septuagenarian, his face purple. “My books! Oh, if I find that thieving scoundrel . . . “ He subsided suddenly with a groan in the wheel-chair.
Miss Diversey, white-faced, stole into the study from the corridor, looking frightened. She flung one quick glance at her charge’s face and flew to his side. He pushed her away with such force that she staggered and almost fell.
“Get away, you harpy,” he screamed. “I’m sick of you, you and your exercises and your precious Dr. Angini. Damn all doctors and nurses! Well, Queen, well, well, well! Don’t stand there gaping like an aborigine! Find the rascal who stole my books!”
“I’m not gaping,” said Ellery with a sour smile, “I’m waiting for calmness and reason, my dear Doctor. If you’ll turn off the violence, perhaps we can get a rational statement out of you. I assume by this time that some books of yours are missing. How do you know they’ve been stolen?”
“Detective,” snorted the old gentleman. “Imbecile! See that shelf?” He pointed a long bent forefinger at one of the built-in shelves, more than half of which was empty.
“Oh, I’ve observed that and made the complex deduction that that was the abiding-place of your precious volumes. Suppose you stop being unintelligible, Doctor, and answer my question.”
“How do I know they’ve been stolen?” groaned Dr. Kirk, swaying his craggy head from side to side like a python. “Oh, good lord preserve us from idiots! They’re gone, aren’t they?”
“Not necessarily the same thing, Doctor. When did you miss them? When did you see them last?”
“An hour ago. Immediately after my breakfast. Then I went into my bedroom to dress and have this?this female Aesculapius,” he glared at Miss Diversey, who was standing pale and subdued at the farthest wall, “pull and tug and slobber over me, and by the time I got back here a moment ago they were gone.”
“Where were you, Miss Diversey?” said Ellery sharply.
The nurse said in a tearful voice: “He?he chased me out, sir. I went to the office?I mean, to talk to some one with a little human feeling . . . “
