The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“Then it can only be about your father.”

Dane nodded bleakly.

“I’ve followed the case.” Ellery glanced at both of them. “But newspaper accounts leave everything to be desired. Tell me all about it.”

Dane told him everything — everything, that is, but his own attack on Sheila. When he was finished, Judy went into a detailed account of their unsuccessful search for the bar and the bartender who alone could give Ashton McKell the alibi he so desperately needed.

Ellery listened, questioned, took notes. Then he leaned back in his armchair and lost himself in thought. There was a long silence. The little noises of the hospital — the clatter of a tray, the hoarse voice of the communicator, the rattle of a dressing cart, the hum of a floor polisher... Ellery seemed asleep with his eyes open. Dane found himself wishing that he could sleep — for a hundred years, to wake up and find that recent events had receded into the harmless pages of history.

Suddenly Ellery said, “One question. It comes down to that.”

“Of course, Mr. Queen,” Judy said. “What bar was Mr. McKell in?”

“No. Strange that the question hasn’t been asked before. It’s the heart of the matter. The whole case may well center in it.” His voice dribbled away.

Just then a glorious blond nurse came in, seemed disappointed to find company present, exchanged smiles with the patient, and hurried out. Ellery, still smiling, reached for the phone, identified himself by name and room number, and gave the hospital operator the telephone number of police headquarters.

“Inspector Queen, please... Dad?... No, I’m fine. Dad, Dane McKell is with me... I know, he told me. I wish you’d do something for me. I want to see his father... Wait a minute! There’s something I must ask Mr. McKell, and you’ll have to arrange it with the D.A.’s office... Come on, Dad, you certainly can. Today is Saturday, the trial is recessed, there’s plenty of precedent... Yes, it’s important, or I wouldn’t ask you. All right?... I’ll phone you as usual tonight.”

He turned back to his visitors. “There’s something wholesome to be said about old-fashioned drag. Have some fruit, you two. Or wine? McKell, about your novel...”

An hour and a half later he was saying, “Confound it, Dane, it doesn’t matter in the slightest if the old stone quarry has fish in it or not. As long as Jerry thinks it has, it’s reason enough for him to go there. So in your third chapter...” Someone knocked on the door. “Yes?”

And there stood Ashton McKell, between two detectives, a gray-haired one and one who looked like Sugar Ray Robinson.

The fall sun through the windows fell on the elder McKell’s face, and it seemed to Dane paler and hollower even than when he had seen his father in the Tombs. There was a dream quality to the experience, standing in the sunny hospital room touching his father’s shoulder while Judy clung to his free arm murmuring, “Oh, Mr. McKell,” over and over in a litany of grief and pleasure, while the two detectives bantered with the man in the casts.

“Ellery, you damn fool,” the gray-haired one said, “getting yourself banged up like this. You look like a goalie at the Garden.”

“Floogle yourself, Piggott,” Ellery said pleasantly, “and may all four of your legs never know a splint. Zillie, what are you doing out on a daytime assignment?”

The other detective grinned and said, “It’s a fact the Inspector reserves me for the nighttime tricks, says I blend better with the dark.” His brown wrist was locked to Ashton McKell’s.

“Look, men, it’s been a lovely visit,” said Ellery. “Now would you wait in the hall?”

“Well,” said Detective Piggott cautiously.

“You know we can’t do that, Ellery,” Detective Zilgitt said. “Got no business being here at all. How did you swing it?”

“Never mind how. And Piggie, don’t give me any of your legalistic hawing. I’m being allowed to see Mr. McKell as a friend of the court. That makes me an officer of the court, which in turn makes what I have to say to him privileged.”

“In a Piggott’s eye,” said Piggott. “You going to be responsible, broken legs and all?”

“I’m responsible.”

“Well, just in case,” Zilgitt said, “we’ll be outside the door.” He unlocked the handcuffs and the detectives left the room.

Ashton McKell shook hands with Ellery. “I don’t know what you want to talk to me about, Mr. Queen, but I’m not looking a gift horse under the tail. It seems to me I’ve lived in a cell for twenty years.”

“Dane, Miss Walsh, tell Mr. McKell what you two have been up to.”

Dane did so. Ash McKell listened quietly; he seemed a little bewildered, as if at a new experience. “And Mr. Queen has one important question to ask you, Dad. That’s why you’re here.”

“From the story I’ve been told,” Ellery said, “and I assume it’s the whole story, we can take for granted that the police have searched certain places thoroughly — Miss Grey’s apartment, your apartment, Mr. McKell, your office and so on.”

Ashton McKell looked puzzled now.