They finally penetrated to the scene of the murder. The library, Inspector Queen said, was in the same condition as when Peter Ennis had found the dead man, except for what had necessarily been disturbed in the police workover. Chairs were overturned, lamps lay broken on the floor, the rack of fire tools at the fireplace sprawled on the hearthstone; even the debris of the antique taboret lay where it had collapsed. And while Julio Importunato’s body was no longer there, its surrogate remained-the ghostly outline of his torso and head chalked on the bloodied desk.
“That’s where the shoeprint was?” Ellery pointed with his toe to an erratic hole some two feet in diameter in the cobalt blue Indian rug. The piece had been cut out of the rug near one of the front corners of the desk.
Inspector Queen nodded. “For the D.A.’s office.” He added, “Hopefully.”
“That’s the name of this game. Is Ennis here?”
The Inspector nodded to the patrolman on duty and the patrolman opened a door at the far end of the library. Two men came in. The man who appeared first could not have been Ennis in any event; he strolled, in no hurry, the captain of a ship, unquestioned master of his decks. Peter Ennis followed with quick small steps, in a sort of choreography, the very model of the subordinate; the small steps shrank his natural advantage of height over his employer to their real proportions.
“This is Mr. Importuna,” the younger man announced. “Mr. Nino Importuna.” He possessed a surprising high tenor voice, incongruous in a man of his size and virile blond appearance.
No one acknowledged the fanfare; Ennis took one step back, flushing.
Importuna stopped before his murdered brother’s desk, surveying the dried blood, the bits of tissue, the chalked outline. Whatever he felt, he did not allow it to show.
“This is the first time I’ve seen”-his right hand with its four fingers described a vague oval-”this. They wouldn’t let me in before.”
“You shouldn’t be here now, Mr. Importuna,” Inspector Queen said. “I’d rather have spared you this.”
“Kind but not necessary,” the multimillionaire said. His voice sounded deep and dry, with a faint echo of remorse, like an abandoned well. “Italian
“Why do you say ‘in cold blood,’ Mr. Importuna?” Ellery asked.
The adversary eyes turned Ellery’s way. They took his measure. “Who are you? You’re not a policeman.”
“My son Ellery,” the Inspector said, quickly. “He has a professional interest in homicide, Mr. Importuna, though his profession isn’t police work. He writes about it.”
“Oh? My brother Julio becomes your raw material, Mr. Queen?”
“Not for profit,” Ellery said. “We have the feeling this is a difficult case, Mr. Importuna. I’m helping out. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“You understand Italian?”
“A very little. Why in cold blood?”
“One stroke of the weapon, I understand. Directed with great force and precision. That is not the work of anger or blind hatred. If my brother had been attacked in passion, there would have been not one blow but many.”
“You should be a detective, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery said. “You’ve just made a most important observation.”
Nino Importuna shrugged. “By the way, gentlemen, I apologize for the failure of my wife to make an appearance. Mrs. Importuna was very fond of Julio. His murder has so affected her I’ve had to forbid her to set foot in his apartment.”
“We’ll have to talk to her, of course,” Inspector Queen said. “But there’s no hurry, Mr. Importuna. At your wife’s convenience.”
“Thank you. I understand you want to question my secretary again? Mr. Ennis here?”
“My son wants to.”
“Peter, tell Mr. Queen whatever he wants to know.”
The heavyset man retreated to the nearest wall. There was a chair nearby, but he leaned against the wall. His womanish mouth was compressed. He kept his eyes on Ennis.
“I suppose,” Peter Ennis said to Ellery, “you want me to repeat my story-I mean how I came to find-”
“No,” Ellery said.
“No?”
“No, I’d like you to tell me what your impressions were, Mr. Ennis, when you got over the first shock of finding Mr. Importunato murdered.”
“I’m afraid,” the blond secretary stammered, “I’m afraid I don’t exactly understand what you… “
Ellery smiled at him. “I don’t blame you for being confused. I’m not quite sure myself what I’m groping for. Let’s try this: Was there anything about the room at that time that struck you, well, as different from usual? I understand you’re familiar with all three apartments. Sometimes on entering familiar surroundings we get an uneasy feeling, a sense of disturbance, because something is out of place, or missing, or even added.”
“Of course, the overturned things, this broken stuff-”
“Aside from those, Mr. Ennis.”
“Well… “
“One moment.”
To Inspector Queen’s eye Ellery was at the old point, like the bird dog he often resembled. He was almost quivering, he stood so still. He was concentrating his attention on something in the rug, about halfway between the end of the desk jutting into the room and the rear wall.
Suddenly he ran over to it, dropped to one knee, and studied it at close range. Then he scuttled over to a point well behind the desk, near the base of the rear wall, and intently examined something there. Whereupon he sprang to his feet, ran around to the front of the desk, got down on all fours, and peered underneath at a point about one- third the desk’s length from the side wall.
This time when he rose he beckoned the patrolman.
“Would you help me, please?”
He directed the officer to lift the desk at its front corner, the corner nearest the side wall. “Just an inch or so. A little higher. That’s it. Hold it a moment.” He peered closely at the rug directly below the corner leg. “Fine. Now over here.”
He had the patrolman repeat the procedure at each of the other corners of the desk. His examination at the rear corner beside the side wall took a little longer.
Finally he nodded to the patrolman and rose.
“Well?” There was no expectation of surprise in the Inspector’s voice.
Ellery glanced over at Ennis and Importuna. His father replied with the slightest nod. Ellery promptly returned to his original point of survey. “If you’ll examine the rug here,” he said, “you’ll see a circular depression in it, of the same diameter as the end of one of these desk legs, but on a spot where no desk leg stands. On the other hand, if you raise the nearest corner of the desk and examine the rug where a leg
“Over here”-and Ellery proceeded to his second point of examination, behind the desk and almost at the base of the rear wall-”exactly the same phenomenon: a very deep depression where no desk leg now stands but where obviously one did stand for a long time. And where a corresponding leg actually does stand, there’s a much shallower depression.
“Go around to the front of the desk, a short way from the side wall, and partway under the desk you’ll see another deep depression, whereas the rug under the nearest leg to it shows the shallower depression, too.
“And if you examine the rug under the rear leg nearest the side wall, you discover the most interesting phenomenon of all: not a shallow depression, as where the other three legs now stand, but one even deeper than the other deep impressions! As if, in fact, that leg had been used as a pivot.
“The only possible conclusion,” Ellery said, “is that the desk was moved-shifted from where it usually stood to where it stands now. And, judging from the shallowness of the depressions under the legs in their present position, it was shifted very recently.”
“So?” the Inspector said in the same unmoved way.
“So let’s use the deep depressions as guides-Officer, would you mind grabbing hold of the end of the desk here?-and, pivoting the desk on that rear leg at the side wall, let’s set it down exactly on the deep depressions-no,
