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“Don, what’s the trouble? I saw Ozzie running. … What’s in there? What’s happened?”
    Kirk said in a quick hoarse voice: “Nothing, nothing at all, ’Cella,” and jumped out into the hall and placed his hands on his sister’s half-bare shoulders. “Just an accident. Go back to the apartment—”
    Then she saw the dead man lying on the floor in the anteroom. The color washed out of her face and her eyes rolled over like a dying doe’s. She screamed once, piercingly, and tumbled to the floor as limply as a rag-doll.
    At once, as if her scream had been a signal, bedlam howled about them. Doors across the corridor flew open and spewed forth people with glaring eyes and moving mouths. Miss Diversey, her cap askew, came padding down the hall. Behind her rolled the tall, hollow-boned, emaciated figure of Dr. Hugh Kirk, his wheelchair trundling swiftly; he was collarless and coatless, and his stiff-bosomed shirt lay open above his gray-haired chest. The tiny black-gowned woman, Miss Temple, came flying out of nowhere to drop on her knees beside the unconscious girl. Mrs. Shane puffed around the corner screeching questions. A bellboy sped past her, looking about wildly. A small bony British-looking man in butler’s panoply stared pasty-faced out of one of the Kirk doors as the others milled about the fallen girl, blundering into one another.
    In the confusion Ellery, who had not stirred from the doorway, sighed and retreated, closing the door of the anteroom behind him. The sounds became live echoes. He stood guard with his back to the door, just looking at the dead man and the furniture and back at the dead man again. He made no move to touch anything.
    The house doctor, a broad squat cold-eyed man, got to his feet with amazement written all over his stony face. Nye, the manager, an elegant creature in a cutaway with a gardenia in his lapel as depressed-looking as himself, was biting his lips beside Ellery at the door. Brummer, the burly house detective, scraped his blue jaws rather pathetically at the open window.
    “Well, Doctor?” said Ellery abruptly.
    The man started. “Oh, yes. You want to know, I suppose, how long he’s been dead. I should say he died at about six—a little over an hour ago.”
    “From the effects of the blow on his head?”
    “Unquestionably. The poker shattered the skull, causing instant death.”
    “Ah,” said Ellery. “That’s a most vital point, Doctor—”
    “Generally is,” said the doctor with a grim smile.
    “Ha, ha. There’s no doubt in your mind about death having been instantaneous?”
    “My dear sir!”
    “I beg your pardon, but we must be sure. And the bruise on his face?”
    “Caused by his fall, Mr. Queen. He was dead when he struck the floor.” Ellery’s eyes flickered, and the physician moved toward the door. “I’ll be glad, of course, to repeat my opinion to your Medical Examiner—”
    “Scarcely necessary. By the way, there couldn’t be a different cause of death, I suppose?”
    “Nonsense,” said the squat man with asperity. “I can’t say without a physical examination and autopsy what other signs of violence exist, but death occurred from the effects of the cranial blow, take my word for it. All the external indications—” Something gleamed in his cold eyes. “See here, you mean that the blow on the skull may have been inflicted after death from a different cause?”
    “Some such idiotic notion,” muttered Ellery, “was in my mind.”
    “Then get it out of your mind.” The physician hesitated, struggling with an ingrained professional reticence. Then he shrugged. “I’m not a detective, Mr. Queen, and this sort of thing is decidedly out of my line. But if you’re looking for something odd, may I point out the condition of this man’s clothing?”
    “Clothing? Yes, yes, point it out, by all means. I can’t say, at this stage of the game, that I should disdain the viewpoint of even a layman.”
    The doctor eyed him sharply.