Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

When it came my turn to stand up, I found it not so good. My twisted ankle didn’t like to support its share of my hundred-and-eighty-some pounds. Putting most of my weight on the other leg, I turned my flashlight on the prisoner.

“Hello, Flippo!” I exclaimed.

“Hello!” he said without joy in the recognition.

He was a roly-poly Italian youth of twenty-three or — four. I had helped send him to San Quentin four years ago for his part in a payroll stick-up. He had been out on parole for several months now.

“The prison board isn’t going to like this,” I told him.

“You got me wrong,” he pleaded. “I ain’t been doing a thing. I was up here to see some friends. And when this thing busted loose I had to hide, because I got a record, and if I’m picked up I’ll be railroaded for it. And now you got me, and you think I’m in on it!”

“You’re a mind reader,” I assured him, and asked the general: “Where can we pack this bird away for a while, under lock and key?”

“In my house there is a lumber-room with a strong door and not a window.”

“That’ll do it. March, Flippo!”

General Pleshskev collared the youth, while I limped along behind them, examining Flippo’s gun, which was loaded except for the one shot he had fired at me, and reloading my own.

We had caught our prisoner on the Russian’s grounds, so we didn’t have far to go.

The general knocked on the door and called out something in his language. Bolts clicked and grated, and the door was swung open by a heavily mustached Russian servant. Behind him the princess and a stalwart older woman stood.

We went in while the general was telling his household about the capture, and took the captive up to the lumber-room. I frisked him for his pocketknife and matches — he had nothing else that could help him get out — locked him in and braced the door solidly with a length of board. Then we went downstairs again.

“You are injured!” the princess, seeing me limp across the floor, cried.

“Only a twisted ankle,” I said. “But it does bother me some. Is there any adhesive tape around?”

“Yes,” and she spoke to the mustached servant, who went out of the room and presently returned, carrying rolls of gauze and tape and a basin of steaming water.

“If you’ll sit down,” the princess said, taking these things from the servant.

But I shook my head and reached for the adhesive tape.

“I want cold water, because I’ve got to go out in the wet again. If you’ll show me the bathroom, I can fix myself up in no time.”

We had to argue about that, but I finally got to the bathroom, where I ran cold water on my foot and ankle, and strapped it with adhesive tape, as tight as I could without stopping the circulation altogether. Getting my wet shoe on again was a job, but when I was through I had two firm legs under me, even if one of them did hurt some.

When I rejoined the others I noticed that the sound of firing no longer came up the hill, and that the patter of rain was lighter, and a grey streak of coming daylight showed under a drawn blind.

I was buttoning my slicker when the knocker rang on the front door. Russian words came through, and the young Russian I had met on the beach came in.

“Aleksandr, you’re—” the stalwart older woman screamed, when she saw the blood on his cheek, and fainted.

He paid no attention to her at all, as if he was used to having her faint.

“They’ve gone in the boat,” he told me while the girl and two men servants gathered up the woman and laid her on an ottoman.

“How many?” I asked.

“I counted ten, and I don’t think I missed more than one or two, if any.”

“The men I sent down there couldn’t stop them?”

He shrugged.

“What would you? It takes a strong stomach to face a machine gun. Your men had been cleared out of the buildings almost before they arrived.”

The woman who had fainted had revived by now and was pouring anxious questions in Russian at the lad. The princess was getting into her blue cape. The woman stopped questioning the lad and asked her something.

“It’s all over,” the princess said. “I am going to view the ruins.”

That suggestion appealed to everybody. Five minutes later all of us, including the servants, were on our way downhill. Behind us, around us, in front of us, were other people going downhill, hurrying along in the drizzle that was very gentle now, their faces tired and excited in the bleak morning light.

Halfway down, a woman ran out of a cross-path and began to tell me something. I recognized her as one of Hendrixson’s maids.

I caught some of her words.

“Presents gone... Mr. Brophy murdered... Oliver...”

“I’ll be down later,” I told the others, and set out after the maid.

She was running back to the Hendrixson house. I couldn’t run, couldn’t even walk fast. She and Hendrixson and more of his servants were standing on the front porch when I arrived.

“They killed Oliver and Brophy,” the old man said.

“How?”