Read Online The Tragedy of Z by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online Page B

you’ll excus eme, Inspector, and you, my dear,” he continued, turning to me and beaming, “John and I will talk this thing over. Terrible thing, as I say. May have an important bearing on the political situation.…” Still babbling, he drew the young district attorney aside; and for some minutes they stood with their heads together conversing in an earnest undertone. I noticed that Hume did most of the talking, and the old politician’s head wagged very sharply from time to time, and he kept his remarkable eyes on his young protégé’s face.… My opinion of this young political knight-in-armor underwent a change. It had struck me before, and it struck me now with even greater force, that the death of Senator Fawcett was a stroke of incalculable good fortune for Hume, Cotton, and the party they represented. It was bound, with its implication of revelations about the murdered man’s true character, to insure the election of the reform candidate. No one the Fawcett party might put up for Senator in the confusion following this catastrophe could possibly live down in the eyes of the electorate this crushing blow to their prestige.
    And then I caught a signal from father, and went quickly to his side. The discovery …
    I should have known, and I said bitterly to myself: “Patience Thumm, you’re a prime damned fool!” when I saw what was occupying father.
    He was on his knees before the fireplace behind the desk, studying something with considerable interest. A detective was saying something in a low voice, and a man with a camera was busy to one side photographing the interior of the fireplace. A blue light flashed, and there was a muffled explosion; the room filled with smoke. The photographer motioned father aside and took another picture of something on the edge of the rug abutting the fireplace, directly before the grate in the middle. I looked, and saw that it was a neatly imprinted outline of the toe of a man’s left shoe. Ashes had untidily scattered from the fireplace a little out into the room; a man had inadvertently stepped into them.… The photographer grunted, and began to pack away his apparatus; I gathered that this was his last chore, for someone had mentioned that photographs of other parts of the room and the dead man had been taken before our arrival.
    The object of father’s interest, however, was not the toe-print on the rug, but something in the grate itself. It looked innocent enough—a considerably blurred but distinguished footprint impressed in a little layer of lightcolored ashes which lay, quite observably separated, atop an older and darker mass of ashes, evidently the residue of the evening’s fire.
    â€œWhat d’ye think of that, Patty?” exclaimed father as I craned over his shoulder. “What’s it look like to you?”
    â€œThe print of a man’s right shoe.”
    â€œCorrect,” said father, and rose. “And something else. See the difference in shade between that top layer of ashes in which the print was made, and the bottom layer? Different stuff was burned, kid. Burned not long ago, and stamped on. Now who the devil burned it, and what the devil was it he burned?”
    I had my ideas, but I said nothing.
    â€œNow, this other print, the toeprint,” muttered father, looking down at the rug. “Makes the layout pretty clear. He stood right smack before the fireplace, got his left foot in the ashes on the rug, and then he set fire to something in the grate and stamped on it with his right foot.… Okay?” he growled to the photographer, and the man nodded. Father knelt again and began digging cautiously among the light-colored ashes. “Ha!” he cried, straightening up in triumph; he was holding a tiny scrap of paper.
    It was heavy creamy paper, undoubtedly part of what had been freshly burned. Father tore off an infinitesimal part, and applied a match to it. The