The Egyptian Cross Mystery

Ellery maundered on under the stars and the fireworks. Except for spasmodic flares, it was heavily dark; the dark of the countryside. He crossed the road between Yardley’s place and Bradwood, groping blindly, sniffing the night air, listening to the faint sounds of festive boats on the water, worrying the bones of his brain like a frustrated terrier.

Bradwood, except for a night light on the front porch — Ellery could make out, as he blundered up the driveway, two detectives smoking there — was bleak and comfortless. The trees loomed vaguely to his right, and more distantly to his left. As he passed the house one of the detectives rose and cried: “Who’s there?”

Ellery put up one hand to shut off the blinding beam of a powerful flashlight.

“Oh,” said the detective. “Excuse me, Mr. Queen.” The beam snapped off.

“Such alertness,” muttered Ellery, and walked on around the house.

He wondered now why his feet should have turned in this direction. He was approaching the little path which led to the grim totem post and the summerhouse. The effluvium of fear which emanated from the path and its goal — or perhaps it was his subconscious sensitivity to scenes of horror — gripped him, and he hastened by. The main path was black before him.

Suddenly he stopped. Not far to the right, where the tennis court lay, people were talking.

Now Ellery Queen was a gentleman, as gentlemen go, but one thing he had learned from the good Inspector, his father, who was a gentle soul in everything except his cynical familiarity with crime. And that was: “Always listen to conversations.” The old man would say: “The only evidence that’s worth a red cent, son, is the conversation of people who think they’re not being overheard. You listen at times like that and you’ll find out more than you could in a hundred quizzes at the line-up.”

So Ellery, a dutiful son, remained where he was and listened.

The voices were a man’s and a woman’s. The tones of both were familiar to his ears, but he could not hear the words. Having stooped so low, there was nothing to keep him from stooping even lower. With the stealth of an Indian he leaped from the noisy gravel onto the grass bordering the path, and began a cautious advance toward the source of the voices.

A consciousness of their owners’ identities filtered through his brain. They were Jonah Lincoln and Helene Brad.

They were seated, it seemed, at a garden table to the west side of the tennis court; Ellery dimly recalled the lay of the land. He crept up to within five feet of them and became rigid behind a tree.

“It won’t do you any good to deny it, Jonah Lincoln,” he heard Helene say in freezing tones.

“But, Helene,” said Jonah, “I’ve told you a dozen times that Romaine—”

“Bosh! He wouldn’t be so indiscreet. Only — only you, with your peculiar ideas, your — your beastly cowardice...”

“Helene!” Jonah was mortally wounded. “How can you say that? It’s true that, like Sir Galahad, I tried to lambaste him a couple, and that he knocked me cold, but I—”

“Well,” she said, “perhaps that was unjust, Jonah.” There was a silence; Ellery knew that she was struggling to keep back the tears. “I can’t say you didn’t try, of course. But you’re always — oh, interfering.”