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“Of course,” he said in a steel-barbed rasp, “with all your experience—I’ve heard of you, Queen—I suppose the condition of this man’s clothing and its possible significance is childishly clear. But to my infantile mind it seems rather remarkable that— he’s got all his clothes on backwards !”
    “Backwards?” said Nye with a groan. “Oh, good Lord.”
    “Didn’t you notice, Mr. Nye?” rumbled Brummer, scowling. “Damnedest thing I ever saw.”
    “Please, gentlemen,” murmured Ellery. “Specifically, Doctor?”
    “His coat is on as if he’d got into it the wrong way, as if somebody held it open facing him and he wriggled into the sleeves and then buttoned himself up the back.”
    “Masterly! Although not necessarily an exclusive diagnosis. Go on, sir.”
    Brummer said peevishly: “Why in hell should a man put his coat on backwards? It’s nuts.”
    “A strong word, Brummer, but inept. ‘Improbable’ would be more to the point. Did you ever try to put your coat on backwards?”
    “I don’t see—” began the detective belligerently.
    “Apparently not. I should explain that the improbability lies not in the donning of the coat, but in the buttoning.”
    “How d’ye figure that?”
    “Do you think you could put your coat on backwards and button it up yourself, with the buttons studding the vertebrae along your spinal column? And the inverted, wrongly placed sleeves hampering the elevating possibilities of your arms?”
    “I got you. Sure I could.”
    “Well, perhaps so,” sighed Ellery. “Proceed, Doctor. Pardon the aside.”
    “You’ll have to excuse me,” said the doctor abruptly. “I merely wished to call your attention—”
    “But I assure you, Doctor—”
    “If the police want me,” continued the cold-eyed man with a faint emphasis on the third word, “I shall be in my office. Good evening!” And he stumped past Ellery out of the room.
    “A clear case of the frustration psychosis,” said Ellery. “Fool!”
    The door clicked behind the physician in a dismal silence. They regarded the corpse with varying expressions—Nye glassily, Brummer gloomily, and Ellery with a furious frown. The pervading impression of unreality persisted. Not only was the dead man’s coat on backwards, but his trousers were inverted and buttoned up behind as well. As were his white madras shirt and vest. His narrow stiff collar similarly was turned about, clamped with a shiny gold collar-button at the nape. His undergarments apparently exhibited the same baffling inversion. Of all his clothing only his shoes remained in the orthodox position.
    His topcoat, hat, gloves, and woolen scarf lay on a chair near the table in a tumbled heap. Ellery sauntered to the chair and picked up the scarf. On one edge in the middle of the scarf were several bloodstains. A tiny stain, hardened to a crust, also existed at the back of the topcoat collar. Ellery dropped the garments with a frown and bent low, searching the floor. He could find nothing. No—yes, there was a splatter that might have been blood on the hardwood surface of the floor beyond the edge of the rug! Near the chair … He went quickly to the far side of the room and bent over the dead man. The floor about him was clean. Ellery rose and stood back, followed by the dull glances of the two men. The dead man lay parallel with the sill of the door, roughly between the two bookcases which flanked the doorway. The case to the left, as he faced the door, had been pulled from its original position flat against the wall so that its left side touched the hinges of the door and its right side swung out into the room, the shifted bookcase forming an acute angle with the door. The body lay half behind it. The case to the right had been moved farther to the right.
    “What do you make of it, Brummer?” asked Ellery suddenly, turning around. There was no irony in his tone.
    “I tell you it’s nuts,” exploded Brummer. “I never seen nothin’ like it in