The Tragedy of Z by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online

informed me that a full, unused pad should contain exactly one hundred sheets.
    I replaced the pad on the blotter in the precise position in which I had found it, my heart thumping against my chest like a dog’s tail on the floor. I wondered if, in testing and confirming this theory of mine, I had not stumbled upon something of overwhelming importance. At the moment, true, it seemed to lead nowhere. Yet as a clue it brought certain inescapable possibilties to mind.…
    I felt father’s touch on my shoulder. “Snoopin’, Patty?” he asked gruffly, but his eyes shot to the pad I had just put down, and narrowed with speculation. Hume looked at me with cursory interest, smiled slightly, and turned away. I thought: “So that’s it, Mr. Hume! Patronizing!” and resolved to jolt him out of his complacence at the very first opportunity.
    â€œNow let’s have a look at that bit of nonsense, Kenyon,” he said briskly. “I want to see what Inspector Thumm thinks of it.”
    Kenyon grunted and dug his hand into his pocket. He brought out a very curious object.
    It looked like a part of a toy. A toy box. It was made of cheap wood; soft wood, like pine. It had been stained a rusty, mottled black, and had little crude metal staples on its corners for decoration; quite as if it were meant to be a replica of a trunk, and the metal staples represented the brass pieces which protect the corners. And yet I could not feel that it was meant to represent a trunk; it was more like a box, a chest, in miniature. It stood not more than three inches high.
    But the arresting feature of this object was that it was only part of a miniature chest. For the right side of the piece had been neatly and cleanly sawed through, and what Kenyon held in his grimy, black-nailed fingers was only two inches wide. I made a rapid calculation. Roughly, the whole chest should be, in proportion to its height, some six inches wide. This was two: it represented, therefore, one-third of the whole piece.
    â€œPut that in your pipe and smoke it,” said Kenyon nastily to father. “What’s the big-city bull got to say about this, huh?”
    â€œWhere’d you find it?”
    â€œOn the desk there, standin’ up, large as life, when we busted in here. Behind the pad, facin’ the stiff.”
    â€œQueer, all right,” muttered father; and took it from Kenyon’s fingers for a closer examination.
    The lid—or rather that portion of the lid which remained lying upon the portion of chest left after the rest had been sawed away—was attached to the body of the chest by a single tiny hinge. There was nothing inside; the interior of the chest had not been stained, and its virgin woody surface was not even dirty.
    And on the front of the piece that father held, carefully painted in gilt letters over the rusty black stain, were two characters: H-E.
    â€œNow, what the devil does that mean?” Father looked at me blankly. “Who’s ‘he’?”
    â€œCryptic, isn’t it?” smiled Hume, with the air of a man who poses a merely pleasant little problem.
    â€œOf course,” I said thoughtfully, “it probably doesn’t mean ‘he’ at all.”
    â€œAnd what makes you say that, Miss Thumm?”
    â€œI should think, Mr. Hume,” I said in my most sugary voice, “that a man of your perceptions would see the possibilities in the well-known flash. A mere woman, you know——”
    â€œI can’t believe this is important,” said Hume abruptly, his smile quite smothered. “Nor does Kenyon think so. At the same time, we don’t want to overlook a possible clue. What do you think, Inspector?”
    â€œMy daughter,” said father, “called the turn. It may be just part of a word—the first two letters, and in that case it wouldn’t mean ‘he.’ Or it’s the first word of a short sentence.
    Kenyon made a