“Thanks a heap! How do I do that? It’s apparently one of those lovely deceptive ones that only appears to be a simple case. Therefore… “
The “Yes?” came out of the Inspector’s birdy face like an impatient twitter.
“I’ve suddenly come down with a recurrence of my old enteric fever. You know, dad, the aftermath of the jezail bullet that grazed my subclavian artery and shattered my shoulder at the battle of Maiwand?”
“Shattered your shoulder?” his father cried. “What bullet grazed your artery? At which battle?”
“I’ll consequently have to notify my publisher that there will be a slight delay in the delivery of my next book. After all, what difference can it make to anyone there? It’s probably wandering around somewhere on their schedule, hopelessly lost. Nobody in the publishing profession pays any attention whatever to a mystery writer except when banking the profits from his mean endeavors. We’re the ditchdiggers of literature.”
“Ellery, I don’t want to be the cause of-”
“You’ve already said that. Of course you do, or you’d have swallowed a few mouthfuls of Fabby’s well-meant swill and crept into bed without my being aware you’d even come home. And why not? There are heavyweight VIPs involved, the crunch is on downtown, you’re not getting any younger, and did I ever leave you in the lurch? Now let’s get to it.”
“You really want to, son?”
“I thought I’d just said so.”
A beautiful change came over Inspector Queen. The relief map of his face turned into a map of relief.
“In that case,” he cried, “you get your jacket!”
Ellery rose to oblige. “Where to?”
“Lab.”
A sergeant, Joe Voytershack, one of the Technical Services Bureau’s most reliable men, was/ on overtime duty tonight, by which Ellery gauged the importance of the case in the eyes of the budget-conscious brass. Sergeant Voytershack was studying a button under his loupe. The button was of gold, and a clump of navy blue threads protruded from it.
“What’s the problem, Joe?” Inspector Queen asked. “I thought you’d finished with the button.”
“I had.”
“Then why are you examining it again?”
“Because,” Sergeant Voytershack said sourly, “I’m goddam unhappy about it. Because I don’t like this button. Because I don’t like it from
“Ellery wants a look.”
“Hello, Joe,” Ellery said.
“Be my guest.” The sergeant handed him the loupe and the button.
Ellery peered.
“I thought, dad, you said this button was torn off during a struggle.”
“Did I say that?”
“Not exactly. But I naturally assumed-”
“I think you’re going to find out, my son,” Inspector Queen said, “that in this case assumptions are kind of risky. What I said was that there were indications of a violent struggle, which there are, and that we found a gold button on the scene, which we did. I didn’t say one necessarily had to do with the other. Just for ducks, Ellery: What do you see?”
“I see a clump of threads of identical length, with very sharp, clean ends. If the button had been yanked off during a struggle-that is, by hand-the lengths of the threads would vary and the ends, instead of being sharp and clean, would be ragged. This button was snipped off whatever it was attached to by a sharp-edged instrument, a scissors or knife, more likely a scissors.”
“Right,” said Sergeant Voytershack.
“Right,” said Inspector Queen.
“Was it found in the dead man’s hand?”
“It was found on the dead man’s floor.”
Ellery shrugged. “Not that it would change the picture if you’d found it in his hand. The fact is, someone cut this button off something belonging to Marco Importunato. Since it was found on the scene of the murder, the indicated conclusion is that it was planted there for the benefit of you gents of the fuzz. Somebody doesn’t care for Brother Marco, either.”
“Yes, sir, you just hit a couple of nails,” his father said. “Turning what looked at first like a nice clean clue against Marco into a dirty frame-up of Marco. See? Simple into not so simple.”
Ellery scowled. He picked the button up by its rim and turned it over. The relief design on its face formed a conventional frame of crossed anchors and hawsers, with the initials
He set the button down and turned to the technical man. “Was a cast made from the shoeprint, sergeant? I’d like to see it.”
Voytershack shook his grizzled head. “Didn’t the Inspector describe it to you?”
“Didn’t tell him a bloody thing about it,” the old man said. “I don’t want to influence his impressions.”
The sergeant handed Ellery a number of photographs. They were largely close-ups, from various angles, of the same object, which was lying on what appeared to be a short-piled rug.
“What is that material the shoeprint shows up on?” Ellery asked. “Looks like ashes.”
“It is ashes,” Voytershack said.
“What kind?”
“Cigar.”
There was a great deal of it. In one picture, taken at slightly longer range, a large glass ashtray in what seemed to be an ebony holder was visible on the rug a foot or so from the ash deposit. The ashtray lay face down.
“Whose cigars?” Ellery asked. “Do you have a make on that?”
“They’re from the same cigars the boys found in a humidor on the murdered guy’s desk,” the sergeant said. “Prime Cuban. The finest.”
“The tray must have been piled pretty high to have dumped this much ash when it overturned.”
“They all claim Julio was a cigar chain-smoker,” Inspector Queen said. “And the maid hadn’t yet cleaned up his library this morning from yesterday.”
“So presumably the tray was knocked off the desk in the struggle?”
“That’s the way it figures. Joe’ll show you the series of photos of the room. Chairs and lamps knocked over, a 200-year old Chinese vase smashed to bits, a rack of fire tools upset-one of them, a hefty three-foot trident-type poker, was the murder weapon-an antique taboret squashed to kindling wood where somebody must have fallen on it-as I told you back home, a donnybrook. What do you make of the shoeprint, Ellery?”
“Man’s right shoe, smallish size-I’d estimate no more than an eight, could even be a seven. The sole is rippled. Might be of crepe. Certainly a sports shoe of some type. Also, diagonally down the length of the sole there’s something that looks like a deep cut in the crepe. It’s definitely not part of the design of the sole. The cut crosses four consecutive ripples of the crepe at an acute angle. Dad, this should have made identification a kindergarten exercise. That is, if you found the shoe.”
“Oh, it was, and we did,” the Inspector said. “The shoe-a yachting shoe, by the way, and crepe-soled, as you say-was found on the 9th floor of 99 East, in a shoe rack of the east apartment’s dressing room adjoining the master bedroom. Size about 71/oC. Fits the imprint in the ashes like a glove. And with a cut in the sole positioned exactly as in the ashes, crossing the same four ripples at the same angle.”
“Marco Importunato’s apartment. His shoe.”
“Marco’s apartment, his shoe. Right.”
“Joe, do you have the shoe here?”
Sergeant Voytershack produced it. It was a common navy blue sports oxford with the characteristic thick crepe
