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million people, or roughly the population of New York City, the law-abiding majority of whom might well have found Shakes Cooney’s continued existence a bore. But Mounted Patrolman Wilkins was there when it counted, and it was he who collared the three gentlemen who, curiously, were in the neighborhood of the deserted Tavern and Cooney’s corpse at that ungentlemanly hour.
    Their collars were attached to very important necks, and when Inspector Richard Queen of police headquarters took over he handled them, as it were, with lamb’s-wool knuckles. It was not every morning that Inspector Queen was called upon in a homicide to quiz a statesman, a financial titan, and an organization politician; and the little Inspector rose to the occasion.
    Senator Kregg responded loftily, as to a reporter from an opposition newspaper.
    Piers d’I. Millard responded remotely, as to a minority stockholder.
    The Hon. Stevens responded affably, as to a precinct worker.
    Lofty, remote, or affable, the three distinguished suspects in riding clothes agreed in their stories to the tittle of an iota. They had been out for an early canter on the bridle path. They had not addressed or seen any fourth person until the mounted policeman gathered them in. The life and death of Shakes Cooney were as nothing to them. Patrolman Wilkins’s act in detaining them had been “totalitarian”—Senator Kregg; “ill-advised”—Financier Millard; “a sucker play”—Politician Stevens.
    Delicately, Inspector Queen broached certain possibly relevant matters, viz.: In the national forest of politics, it was rumored, Senator Kregg (ex-Senator Kregg) was being measured as a great and spreading oak, of such timber as presidents are made. Financier Piers d’I. Millard was said to be the Senator’s architect, already working on the blueprints with his golden stylus. And small-souled political keyholers would have it that the Hon. Stevens was down on the plans as sales manager of the development. Under the circumstances, said the Inspector with a cough, some irreverent persons might opine that Shakes Cooney—bookie, tout, gambler, underworld slug, and clubhouse creep, with the instincts of a jay and the ethics of a grave robber—had learned of the burial place of some body or other, the exhumation of which would so befoul the Senator’s vicinity as to wither his noble aspirations on the branch. It might even be surmised, suggested Inspector Queen apologetically, that Cooney’s price for letting the body stay buried was so outrageous as to cause Someone to lose his head. Would the gentlemen care to comment?
    The Senator obliged in extended remarks, fortunately off the record, then he surged away. Prepared to totter after, Financier Millard paused long enough to ask reflectively, “And how long, did you say, Inspector Queen, you have been with the New York police department?”—and it sounded like the coup de grâce to an empire. The Hon. Stevens lingered to ooze a few lubricating drops and then he, too, was gone.
    When Ellery arrived on the scene he found his father in a good, if thoughtful, temper. The hide, remarked Inspector Queen, was pretty much cut-and-dried; the question was, To whose door had Shakes been trying to nail it? Because Shakes Cooney hadn’t been a man to take murder lying down. The evidence on the Tavern terrace showed that after his assailant fled Cooney had struggled to his hands and knees, the Tavern steak knife stuck in his butchered chest, and that he had gorily crawled—kept alive by sheer meanness, protested the Inspector—to the table which the preoccupied waiter had forgotten to clear off the night before; that the dying man had then reached to the table top and groped for a certain bowl; and that from this bowl he had plucked the object which they had found in his fist, a single lump of sugar. Then, presumably with satisfaction, Shakes had