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examined everything on the top shelves.”
    But all Ellery said was, “We’ll see.”
    Sergeant Velie lumbered back with a library-type ladder of ivory-decorated blackwood, with plastic-covered risers that had been scratched and scored by heavy official shoes. Ellery said, “Sergeant, would you get that pedestal out of the way?” and when Velie had moved the Watusi warrior to one side, Ellery set the ladder down where the pedestal had been standing and mounted to the top step. His hair nearly brushed the ceiling. “The loudspeaker,” he explained. “I noticed that the inset of the speaker in the bedroom was screwed into the frame, whereas this one has hinges and a winged nut to hold it closed. Didn’t your crew look up here, dad?”
    For once the Inspector had nothing to say, although he glanced at Sergeant Velie, who paled.
    â€œI say!” Harry Burke said. “You have a pair of eyes, Ellery. I missed it completely.”
    Ellery spun the nut parallel to the frame and began to pry at the inset of the loudspeaker. He got a purchase, and the inset swung out on its almost invisible hinges. “Well,” Ellery said, pleased. His arm disappeared in the opening. “Just the sort of gimmicky hiding place a puzzle addict like GeeGee would think of.” His arm reappeared; he flourished a metal box of the safe-deposit type. “Here you are, dad. I’ll be very much surprised if what you’re looking for isn’t in these boxes.”

8
    There were six identical metal boxes in the hiding place, none of them locked; each was crammed with diaries, manuscripts, and other papers. In one of the boxes lay a kraft paper envelope sealed with wax, with the typed inscription: “My Will. To Be Opened by My Attorney, William Maloney Wasser.” This envelope the Queens set aside, hunting through the boxes for the current diary.
    Ellery found it, and opened it at once to the December entries. The last entry was under the date of Tuesday, December 29, “11:15 P.M .,” the night before Glory Guild Armando’s murder. The Inspector pronounced a salty word. She had evidently not got round to penning an entry for the day of the night she was shot; this was confirmed, as Ellery pointed out, by their having found the diary in her loudspeaker cache rather than on her desk.
    All the entries were written with a fine-line pen in a tiny, precise script. A peculiarity of the dead woman’s chirography was that the script looked more like italic letter-printing than ordinary writing. The individual letters were not only slanted but unjoined, as in the word f a c e of her dying message, which Ellery also pointed out. There was very little spacing between lines, so that with the separation of the letters of individual words on the one hand, and the closeness of the lines on the other, the whole effect was at once scattered and crowded-looking. It made for difficult reading.
    They skimmed through the diary from the earliest entries, page after page, and found an omission. Except for the pages date-printed December 30 —the day of her death—and December 31 , the only page not written on at all was the page for December 1.
    â€œDecember first blank,” muttered Ellery. “Now why didn’t she write an entry for that day?”
    â€œWhy? Why?” the Inspector said, annoyed.
    â€œDid anything unusual happen on December first?” asked Burke. “I mean generally?”
    â€œNot that I recall,” the Inspector said. “Anyway, why would that have stopped her? Unless she was sick or something.”
    â€œInveterate diary writers don’t let sickness stand in their way,” Ellery said. “They almost always go back afterward and fill in. Besides, as far as I can tell”—he riffled the pages of several of the other diaries—“she kept a daily account faithfully for years. No, there’s a reason for this