Free The King is Dead by Ellery Queen Page B

one of the world’s most famous nuclear physicists. And he thought, too, that in trying to gloss over the nature of Dr. Akst’s work on Bendigo Island Immanuel Peabody had only succeeded in calling attention to it. For the rest of the evening Akst made a point of effacing himself and, playing the game, Ellery ignored him.
    Karla Bendigo did not refer to him again.
    Dinner was sumptuous and interminable. They dined in the adjoining room, a place of suffocating grandeur, and they were served by an army corps of servants. The courses and wines came in a steady parade, many of the delicacies blue-flamed in chafing dishes, so that the whole incredible feast was like a torchlight procession in a medieval festival.
    Immanuel Peabody kept pace, with fat and deadly little Dr. Storm not far behind, Peabody telling with the utmost cheerfulness gruesome stories of criminal lore, with Dr. Storm’s surgically bawdy. To these last, Max’l was the most appreciative listener; he winked, leered, and guffawed between gulletfuls, missing nothing. Max’l wore his napkin frankly under his chin and he ate with both elbows guarding his plate; he removed one of them only to batter Ellery’s ribs at a particularly gusty witticism of Dr. Storm’s.
    To the Queens’ disappointment, neither had been placed beside King or Karla Bendigo. The Inspector was trapped between the loquacious lawyer and the wicked little Surgeon-General, while Ellery sat diagonally across the table between the taciturn physicist, Akst, and Max’l — the father being talked to death, the son given Coventry on one side and a beating on the other. The arrangement was deliberate; nothing here, Ellery knew, happened by chance.
    Since most of the lawyer’s and the physician’s conversation was directed toward the Queens, they found little opportunity to talk to the Bendigos. Karla murmured to Abel at her end of the field-long table, occasionally sending a word or a crooked little smile their way, as if in apology. At the other end sat King, listening. Once, turning suddenly, Ellery found their host’s black eyes fixed on him with amusement. He tried after that to cultivate at least an appearance of patience.
    It was a queer banquet, full of tense and mysterious undercurrents, and not the least of them swirled about Judah Bendigo. The slender little man slumped to the left of his brother King, ignoring Max’l’s feeding antics — Max’l sat between Judah and Ellery — ignoring Storm’s sallies and Peabody’s forensic yarns, ignoring his food … giving all his attention to the bottle of Segonzac cognac beside his plate. No servant touched that bottle, Ellery observed; Judah refilled his own glass. He drank steadily but slowly throughout the evening, for the most part looking across the table at a point in space above Immanuel Peabody’s head. His only recognition of the menu was to drink two cups of black coffee toward the end, and even then he laced them with brandy. The first cup emptied his bottle, and a servant quickly uncorked a fresh bottle and set it beside him.
    The dinner took three hours; and when at exactly 10.45 p.m. King Bendigo made an almost unnoticeable gesture and Peabody brought his story to an end within ten seconds, Ellery could have collapsed in gratitude. Across the table his father sat perspiring and pale, as if he had exhausted himself in a desperate struggle.
    The rich voice said to the Queens, ‘Gentlemen, I must ask you to excuse Abel and me. We have work to do tonight. I regret the necessity, as I’d looked forward to hearing some stories of your adventures.’ Then why the devil, thought Ellery, did you order Peabody and Storm to monopolize the conversation? ‘However, Mrs. Bendigo will entertain you.’
    He did not wait for Karla’s murmured, ‘I will be so happy to, darling,’ but pushed his chair back and rose. Abel, Dr. Storm, Peabody, and