Read Online The King is Dead by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online Page B

gymnasium, four around the hundred-foot indoor swimming pool. Ellery found them in the billiard room and the bowling alley. He found them in the card-room. And on one of the terraces, where he lunched in solitude, Ellery felt the flagstone under his left foot give and, on investigating, stared down at another of the bell-shaped bottles nestling in a scooped-out hole beneath the flag.
    In the afternoon he toured the vicinity of the Residence. Wherever he went he turned up the dark green evidence of Judah Bendigo’s ingenuity. The outdoor swimming pool, cleverly constructed to resemble a natural pond, was good for eight bottles, and Ellery could not be sure he had found them all. He did not bother with the stables — there were too many grooms about — but he took an Arab mare out on the bridle path and he made it a point to probe tree hollows and investigate overhead tree crotches, with rewarding results. Another artificial stream, this one stocked with game fish, was a disappointment; but Ellery suspected that if he had worn hip-boots he could have waded in any direction through the broken water and found a bottle wedged between the nearest rocks.
    â€˜And I didn’t begin to find them all,’ he told his father that evening, in their sitting-room. ‘Judah must carry a map around with him, X marking the spots. There’s a man who likes his brandy.’
    â€˜You might have lifted a couple of bottles,’ grumbled the Inspector. ‘I’ve had a miserable day.’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜Oh, I putt-putted around the island. Isn’t that what a tourist is supposed to do?’ And while he said this, in a tone of lifelessness, the Inspector rather remarkably took a roll of papers from an inner pocket and waved them at his son.
    â€˜I will admit,’ said his son, eyeing the papers, ‘this enforced vacation is beginning to bore me, too.’ He leaned forward and took the papers. ‘When do you suppose our investigation begins?’
    â€˜Never, from the look of things.’
    â€˜What’s the island like, Dad?’ Ellery unrolled several of the papers noiselessly. Each showed a hasty sketch of an industrial plant. Others were rough detail maps.
    â€˜It’s no different from any highly industrialized area in the States. Factories, homes, schools, roads, trucks, planes, people …’ The Inspector pointed at the papers vigorously.
    Ellery nodded. ‘What kind of factories?’
    â€˜Munitions mostly, I guess. Hell, I don’t know. A lot of places had Restricted signs on ’em with armed guards and electrified fences and the rest of the claptrap. Couldn’t get near ’em.’
    There was one series of sketches of rather queer-looking plants, a scale-frame indicating enormous size.
    â€˜Meet anybody interesting?’ Ellery pointed to the peculiar sketches and looked inquiring.
    â€˜Just Colonel Spring’s lads. The working people seem an unfriendly lot. Or they’re shy of strangers. Wouldn’t give me the time of day.’ The Inspector’s reply to the silent part of their conversation was a shrug and a shake of the head. Ellery studied the sketches with a frown.
    â€˜Well, son, I guess I’ll take me a bath in that marble lake they gave me to splash around in.’ The Inspector rose and took his notes back.
    â€˜I could use one myself.’
    His father tucked the papers away in his clothes, and Ellery knew that unless a body search were made, the sketches would not leave their hiding place this side of Washington, D.C.
    That night they passed through the gold curtain.
    The feat was accomplished by means of a piece of paper. At six o’clock a footman with over-developed calves delivered a velvety purplish envelope, regally square, and backed out with the kind of bow the Inspector had never seen outside a British period movie. The bow indicated that it was hardly necessary to open the envelope. But they