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contrived to stand near Mrs. Vreeland’s stately shape.
    Velie looked at him darkly, motioned to Pepper and they walked out into the corridor. Woodruff almost trod on their heels, he followed so quickly. Every one shuffled out of the library and Pepper shut the door carefully behind him. Velie said to Woodruff, “What’s on your mind now, Woodruff?”
    They had turned to face him near the foyer door. The lawyer said in a sharp tone, “Look here. Pepper saw fit to accuse me of an error in judgment a while ago. I’m not taking any chances. I want you to search me too, Sergeant. Yourself. I wasn’t tackled in there, you know.”
    “Now, don’t take it that way, Mr. Woodruff,” said Pepper in a soothing voice. “I’m sure it isn’t—”
    “I think it’s a damned good idea,” said Velie unpleasantly. Without ceremony he gave Woodruff such a pounding, scraping and pinching as Woodruff, to judge from his expression, had hardly anticipated. And Velie went very carefully indeed through all the papers the lawyer had in his pockets. Finally, he surrendered his victim. “You’re clean, Woodruff. Come along, Pepper.”
    Outside the house they found Flint, the brawny young plainclothesman, bantering with the dwindled group of reporters, a handful clinging tenaciously to the sidewalk gate. Velie promised Flint a relief for himself and Johnson in the rear, and for the matron he had left inside, and doggedly plowed through the gate. Like a cloud of gnats the reporters swarmed about him and Pepper.
    “What’s the angle, Sarge?”
    “What’s up?”
    “Give us a break, you mug!”
    “Come on, Velie, don’t be a thick flattie all your life.”
    “How much was your cut for keeping quiet?”
    Velie shook their hands off his big shoulders; and he and Pepper took refuge in a police car waiting at the curb.
    “How’m I gonna tell the Inspector?” groaned Velie, as the car lurched forward. “He’ll crown me for this.”
    “Which Inspector?”
    “Richard Queen.” The sergeant stared morosely at the back of the chauffeur’s crimson neck. “Well, we did what we could. Left the house under a kind of siege. And I’ll send one of the boys over to look at the safe for fingerprints.”
    “Much good that’ll do.” Pepper’s brightness had dissipated ; he sat gnawing a fingernail. “The D.A.’ll probably give me hell, too. I think I’ll stick pretty close to the Khalkis house. Drop in to-morrow to see what’s doing, I will. And if those palookas in the house want to make trouble about our restricting their movements that way—”
    “Aw, nuts,” said Velie.

5 … REMAINS
    O N THURSDAY MORNING, WHICH was the seventh of October, and a singularly cheerless day, District Attorney Sampson called a council of war. It was on this day, then, that Ellery Queen was formally introduced to the perplexing riddle that eventually came to be known as “The Khalkis Case.” It was a younger and cockier Ellery * ; and, since his connection with the policing of New York City was not so firmly established at this time, he was still considered something of an interloper despite his unique position as the son of Inspector Richard Queen. Indeed, it is to be suspected that the good grey Inspector himself had good grey doubts concerning Ellery’s covenanted ability to combine pure reason with practical criminology. The few isolated cases to which Ellery had applied his still formative faculties of deduction, however, had established a precedent which accounted for his cool assumption that he too was meant to be a councilman when District Attorney Sampson sounded the tocsin.
    Truth to tell, Ellery had heard nothing whatsoever about Georg Khalkis’ death, and considerably less about the stolen will. Consequently, he disturbed the District Attorney by questions to which every one present, save Ellery himself, knew the answers. The District Attorney, not yet the tolerant colleague he was in later years to become, was distinctly irritated.