blank page, and it hasnât anything to do with illness or oversight.â He stopped suddenly. âOf course!â And he fished in his pocket and landed his cigaret lighter.
âWhat are you going to do, Ellery?â demanded Inspector Queen, alarmed. âWatch that flame!â
Ellery had doubled the diary back on its spine, leaving the blank page dangling, and he was carefully passing the flame of the lighter under the page.
âInvisible ink?â said Burke. âOh, come, Ellery.â
âConsidering her tricky mind,â Ellery said dryly, âI beg to differ.â
Still, even to Elleryâs astonishment, something began to appear on the blank page. The entry seemed to consist of a single word; try as he would with the flame, no other writing showed up.
Then they were staring at it:
f a c e
handprinted in the same spidery italic fashion, with spacing between individual letters, as in the case of the dying message, except that this f a c e was more surely written.
âAgain.â Ellery glared at it. âShe wrote that same word on December first! In her diary. Now why would she have done thatâfour weeks before she was murdered?â
âUnless she had a premonition of her death,â Burke suggested.
âShe must have had a lot more than a premonition,â Inspector Queen said irritably, âto have written it in invisible ink.â Then he threw up his hands. âWhy am I always stuck with the nut cases? Magic ink! The next thing, itâll be rabbits out of a hat!â
âVery possible,â Ellery said. âIt seems to be that kind of rabbity business.â
âIsnât it common in the States, talking about show business,â murmured Burke, âto nickname theatrical personalities? Bing Crosby, The Voice. Betty Grable, The Legs. And wasnât there a starâwhat was her name? Marie McDonaldâyou people called The Body? Has there ever been one called The Face?â
âIf there has been, I missed it,â Ellery said. âAnyway, Harry, I point out again that in both casesâthe dying message and this invisible-ink diary entryâthe word is spelled with a lowercase Æ. No, itâs nothing like that. Face â¦â Then he said, âDad.â
âWhat?â
âWas there anything unusual about Gloryâs face?â
The old man shrugged. âJust a face. They all look the same dead.â
âI think Iâd like to see this one.â
âBe my guest.â And they left Inspector Queen seated gloomily behind GeeGee Guildâs desk, beginning to leaf through the diaries.
9
In the taxicab on the way to the Morgue, Ellery said, âNow that weâre out from under the frosty eye of my father, Harry, how about telling me what you and he were putting your heads together about?â
âOh, that.â Burke seemed abstracted. âI didnât want to mention it before I checked it out with your old manââ he smiled briefly ââIâm in a strange country, remember, and one should learn the protocol of the natives. But he says itâs all right.â
The Scotsman squirmed back in the cab. âIt has to do with the case that brought me here in the first place. MissâMrs. Armandoâs original request to the Yard was to ask if they would find a certain girl, a niece of hers, Lorette Spanier. Since it wasnât either a criminal or a missing-persons case, simply a question of locating a relative whose whereabouts she didnât know, the Yard had no jurisdiction and Commissioner Vail recommended me for the job, as I told you. I made the financial arrangements with Miss Guildâdamn it all, I cannot think of her as Mrs. Armando!âwith a transatlantic phone call, and went to work.â
The background for his search, Burke explained, had been ordinary enough. Gloryâs family back in Minnesota were dead; her sole surviving