“You sent six warnings, including the masterly one of having your tuna salad poisoned so that you could eat some, fall sick, and so call attention to your ‘fish’ clue. After six warnings you undoubtedly felt you had thoroughly fooled us as to the real source of the crime. On the other hand, you recognized the danger of stopping even at six with yourself still alive. We might begin to wonder why ― in your case ― ‘Adam’ had given up. Murderers have been caught on a great deal less.
“You saw that, for perfect safety, you had to give us a convincing end to the whole business.
“The ideal, of course, was for us to ‘catch’ ‘Adam.’
“A lesser man, Priam, wouldn’t have wasted ten seconds wrestling with the problem of producing a man dead twenty-five years and handing his living body over to the police. But you didn’t abandon the problem merely because it seemed impossible to solve. There’s a lot of Napoleon in you.
“And you solved it.
“Your solution was tied up with another unhappy necessity of the case. To carry out your elaborate plot against Hill and yourself, you needed help. You have the use of your brain unimpaired, and the use of your hands and eyes and ears in a limited area, but these weren’t enough. Your plans demanded the use of legs, too, and yours are useless. You couldn’t possibly, by yourself, procure a beagle, poison it, deliver it and the note to Hill’s doorstep; get cardboard boxes and string from the dime store, a dead lamprey from God knows where, poison, frogs, and so on. It’s true that the little silver box must have been left here, or dropped, by Laurel; that the arsenic undoubtedly came from the can of Deth-on-Ratz in your cellar; that the tree frogs were collected in these very foothills; that the green alligator wallet must have been suggested by your wife’s possession of a handbag of the same material and from the same shop; that you found the worthless stock from Mrs. Priam’s first husband’s estate in some box or trunk stored in this house; that to leave the bird clue you chose a book from your own library. Whenever possible you procured what you needed from as close by as you could manage, probably because in this way you felt you could control them better. But even for the things in and from this house, you needed a substitute for your legs.
“Who found and used these things at your direction?
“Alfred Wallace could. Secretary, nurse, companion, orderly, handyman... with you all day, on call all night... you could hardly have used anyone else. If for no other reason than that Wallace couldn’t possibly have been kept ignorant of what was going on. Using Wallace turned a liability into an asset.
“Whether Wallace was your accomplice willingly because you paid him well, or under duress because you had something on him,” said Ellery, looking down at the mound under the blanket, “is a question only you can answer now, Priam. I suppose it doesn’t really matter any more. However you managed it, you persuaded Alfred to serve as your legs and as extensions of your eyes and hands. You gave Alfred his orders and he carried them out.
“Now you no longer needed Alfred. And perhaps ― as other murderers have found out ― tools like Alfred have a way of turning two-edged. Wallace was the only one who knew you were the god of the machine, Priam. No matter what you had on him ― if anything ― Wallace alive was a continuous danger to your safety and peace of mind.