“Ironic, isn’t it?” chortled Ellery; and he exited doing a Shuffle-Off-to-Buffalo, blowing farewell kisses and almost breaking the prominent nose of Mrs. Monk, Laurel’s housekeeper, who had it pressed in absolute terror to the bedroom door.
Twenty minutes later Ellery was closeted with Lieutenant Keats at the Hollywood Division. Those who passed the closed door heard the murmur of the Queen voice, punctuated by a weird series of sounds bearing no resemblance to Keats’s usual tones.
The conference lasted well over an hour.
When the door opened, a suffering man appeared. Keats looked as if he had just picked himself up from the floor after a kick in the groin. He kept shaking his head and muttering to himself. Ellery followed him briskly. They vanished in the office of Keats’s chief.
An hour and a half later they emerged. Keats now looked convalescent, even robust.
“I still don’t believe it,” he said, “but what the hell, we’re living in a funny world.”
“How long do you think it will take, Keats?”
“Now that we know what to look for, not more than a few days. What are you going to do in the meantime?”
“Sleep and wait for the next one.”
“By that time,” grinned the detective, “maybe we’ll have a pretty good line on this inmate.”