Plot Summary
A schoolmaster in a tiny town in West Virginia is found on Christmas morning beheaded and crucified to a signpost in such a way that his body seems to form the letter "T". The letter "T" is scrawled in blood on the dead man's door. Ellery Queen is on the scene and notes that the letter "T" is also the shape of a "tau cross", or Egyptian cross; this seems to lead to a nearby bearded prophet whose invented religion mixes nudism and Egyptology.
The prophet's business manager is missing and suspected of the murder. Ellery cannot solve the crime with the little information he has, but six months later in Long Island, New York, a neighbour of one of his university professors is found headless and crucified to a totem pole in the same way, in the new neighbourhood of the Egyptian prophet and his followers. This corpse is clutching a red piece from a game of checkers. The third victim is a millionaire yachtsman, similarly crucified.
Many events turn on the families of the victims and their interaction with the Egyptian nudists, the game of checkers and the smoking of unusually-carved pipes, but the key clue that leads Ellery to the solution is a bottle of iodine that enables him to go on a cross-country chase and hunt down the murderer.
Read more about this topic: The Egyptian Cross Mystery
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