Free Queen’s Bureau of Investigation by Ellery Queen

office. I shan’t feel very happy about going back.… Well! Gentlemen, wish me luck.”
    â€œLuck,” said the Queens in sober unison.
    They recalled the bitter twist in Burke’s smile the next time they saw him, which was in his hotel room the following morning. A chambermaid had found him. He had been seated slackly in the armchair beside the neatly made bed, a bullet hole in his powder-burned right temple. He had been dead since the night before. No shot had been heard; it was an ultramodern hotel, with soundproof walls. The gun lying on the carpet below his right hand had already been checked in the police laboratory against the slug dug out of his head by the medical examiner.
    The room was the picture of peace. A gladstone bag was spread on the luggage rack, undisturbed. The night table held Burke’s pipe and tobacco pouch and a dogeared copy of Shakespeare’s plays with Burke’s signature on the flyleaf. A dispatch case initialed L. B . lay, open and empty, on the bed.
    â€œPoor Burke,” muttered Inspector Queen. He handed Ellery a sheet of hotel stationery. “Found on the writing table. It has a couple of his fingerprints on it, and it’s his handwriting—we’ve checked.”
    The script was even and unhurried, as if the brain directing the hand that had written it had reached a decision:
    â€œ Mine honor is my life; both grow in one;
    Take honor from me, and my life is done. ”
    â€”L ESTER B URKE
    â€œEpitaph by Shakespeare,” murmured Ellery. “What went wrong, Dad?”
    â€œApparently his man came last night with the letters, as agreed, but while Burke checked them over—probably turning away slightly—the rat sapped him; Doc says there’s a slight contusion toward the back of Burke’s head. Then the doublecrosser took the money and the letters, and skipped. Guess he figures those highborn pash notes are good for at least one more transatlantic squeeze when the heat dies down, and meanwhile he’s got some fifty-odd grand to tide him over. And when poor old Burke came to and realized what he’d let happen—and all it meant—he couldn’t face the disgrace and committed suicide.”
    â€œThere’s no doubt it is suicide?”
    â€œYou name it. Bullet fired in contact with Burke’s temple, angle of entry checks for a righthanded man, slug from Burke’s own gun found in the body, Burke’s prints on the stock. Suicide note in Burke’s authenticated handwriting. Letters not here. Money taken. It’s suicide, all right—the only question is which one of those three cuties crossed Burke up and drove him to it … Ackley, Chase, or Benson.”
    Benson, a gray-haired, dapper little man with a Florida tan, was located in a barbershop on Park Row having his nails manicured. The confidence man looked like a Wall Street broker or a corporation executive. He seemed annoyed.
    â€œDon’t know what you’re talking about, Inspector,” Benson snapped. “I can account for every second of my time all day yesterday until well after midnight. I was up in Westchester looking over some property with two associates of mine, we had dinner and spent the evening discussing the deal at the home of one of them in White Plains, and the other one drove me back to my apartment in town—dropped me off a few minutes past one A.M. Their names? Certainly!”
    Benson’s associates turned out to be two confidence men with slightly lesser reputations. However, they corroborated Benson’s story, which was all Inspector Queen was interested in at the moment.
    Chase was located in a midtown hotel at the tail end of an all-night poker game—a big, soft-spoken rancher type of man, whose drawl and slow movements ingeniously drew attention from the smooth lightning of his long white hands. No pigeon was being plucked; Chase’s companions were professional