Queen's Ransom, page 23
Despite the preoccupation of his father, Ellery, relaxed in the chair which three nights before had held the dead body of Monte Field, was able to sit still and enjoy the exceedingly mellow melodrama. The fine rich voice of James Peale, ushered onto the stage by a series of climactic incidents, rang out and thrilled him with its commanding art. Eve Ellis’s utter absorption in her role was apparent—at the moment she was conversing in low throbbing tones with Stephen Barry, whose handsome face and pleasant voice were evoking admiring comment from a young girl seated directly to the Inspector’s right. Hilda Orange was huddled in a corner, dressed flamboyantly as befitted her stage character. The old “character-man” pottered aimlessly about the stage. Ellery leaned toward his father.
“It’s a well-cast production,” he whispered. “Watch that Orange woman!”
The play stuttered and crackled on. With a crashing symphony of words and noise the first act came to an end. The Inspector consulted his watch as the lights snapped on. It was 9:05.
He rose and Ellery followed him lazily. Madge O’Connell, pretending not to notice them, pushed open the heavy iron doors across the aisle and the audience began to file out into the dimly lit alleyway. The two Queens sauntered out among the others.
A uniformed boy standing behind a neat stand covered with paper cups was crying his wares in a subdued, “refined” voice. It was Jess Lynch, the boy who had testified in the matter of Monte Field’s request for ginger ale.
Ellery strolled behind the iron door—there was a cramped space between the door and the brick wall. He noticed that the wall of the building flanking the other side of the alley was easily six stories high and unbroken. The Inspector bought an orangedrink from the boy. Jess Lynch recognized him with a start and Inspector Queen greeted the boy pleasantly.
People were standing in small groups, their attitudes betokening a strange interest in their surroundings. The Inspector heard a woman remark, in a fearful, fascinated voice, “They say he was standing right out here Monday night, buying an orangedrink!”
The warning bell soon clanged inside the theatre, and those who had come outside for a breath of air hurried back into the orchestra. Before he sat down, the Inspector glanced over across the rear of the auditorium to the foot of the staircase leading to the balcony. A stalwart, uniformed young man stood alertly on the first step.
The second act exploded into being. The audience swayed and gasped in the approved fashion while the dramatic fireworks were shot off on the stage. The Queens seemed suddenly to have become absorbed in the action. Father and son leaned forward, bodies taut, eyes intent. Ellery consulted his watch at 9:30—and the two Queens settled back again while the play rumbled on.
At 9:50 exactly they rose, took their hats and coats and slipped out of the LL row into the clear space behind the orchestra. A number of people were standing—at which the Inspector smiled and blessed the power of the press beneath his breath. The white-faced usherette, Madge O’Connell, was leaning stiffly against a pillar, staring unseeingly ahead.
The Queens, espying Manager Panzer in the doorway of his office beaming deligntedly at the crowded auditorium, made their way towards him. The Inspector motioned him inside and rapidly stepped into the little anteroom, Ellery close behind. The smile faded from Panzer’s face.
“I hope you’ve had a profitable evening?” he asked nervously.
“Profitable evening? Well—it depends upon what you mean by the word.” The old man gestured briefly and led the way through the second door into Panzer’s private office.
“Look here, Panzer,” he said, pacing up and down in some excitement, “have you a plan of the orchestra handy which shows each seat, numbered, and all the exits?”
Panzer stared. “I think so. Just a moment.” He fumbled in a filing cabinet, rummaged among some folders and finally brought out a large map of the theatre separated into two sections—one for the orchestra and the other for the balcony.
The Inspector brushed the second away impatiently as he and Ellery bent over the orchestra plan.* They studied it for a moment. Queen looked up at Panzer, who was shifting from one foot to another on the rug, evidently at a loss to know what would be required of him next.
“May I have this map, Panzer?” asked the Inspector shortly. “I’ll return it unharmed in a few days.”
“Certainly, certainly!” said Panzer. “Is there anything else I can do for you now, Inspector? … I want to thank you for your consideration in the matter of publicity, sir—Gordon Davis is extremely pleased at the ‘house’ tonight. He asked me to relay his thanks.”
“Not at all—not at all,” grumbled the Inspector, folding the map and putting it in his breast pocket. “It was coming to you—what’s right is right…. And now, Ellery—if you’ll come along…. Good night, Panzer. Not a word about this, remember!”
The two Queens slipped out of Panzer’s office while he was babbling his reassurances of silence.
They crossed the rear of the orchestra once more, in the direction of the extreme left aisle. The Inspector beckoned curtly to Madge O’Connell.
“Yes,” she breathed, her face chalky.
“Just open those doors wide enough to let us through, O’Connell, and forget all about it afterward. Understand?” said the Inspector grimly.
She mumbled under her breath as she pushed open one of the big iron doors opposite the LL row. With a last warning shake of the head the Inspector slipped through, Ellery following—and the door came softly back into place again.
At 11 o’clock, as the wide exits were disgorging their first flocks of theatre-goers after the final curtain, Richard and Ellery Queen re-entered the Roman Theatre through the main door.
* The plan illustrated in the frontispiece and drawn by Ellery Queen was designed from Manager Panzer’s map.—THE EDITOR
17
In Which More Hats Grow
“SIT DOWN, Tim—have a cup of coffee?”
Timothy Cronin, a keen-eyed man of medium height thatched plentifully with fire-red hair, seated himself in one of the Queens’ comfortable chairs and accepted the Inspector’s invitation in some embarrassment.
It was Friday morning and the Inspector and Ellery, garbed romantically in colorful dressing gowns, were in high spirits. They had retired the night before at an uncommonly early hour—for them; they had slept the sleep of the just; now Djuna had a pot of steaming coffee, of a variety which he blended himself, ready on the table; and indubitably all seemed right with the world.
Cronin had stalked into the cheery Queen quarters at an ungodly hour—disheveled, morose and unashamedly cursing. Not even the mild protests of the Inspector were able to stem the tide of profanity which streamed from his lips; and as for Ellery, he listened to the lawyer’s language with an air of grave enjoyment, as an amateur harkens to a professional.
Then Cronin awoke to his environment, and blushed, and was invited to sit down, and stared at the unbending back of Djuna as that nimble man-of-affairs busied himself with the light appurtenances of the morning meal.
“I don’t suppose you’re in a mood to apologize for your shocking language, Tim Cronin, me lad,” chided the Inspector, folding his hands Buddhalike over his stomach. “Do I have to inquire the reason for the bad temper?”
“Not much, you don’t,” growled Cronin, shifting his feet savagely on the rug. “You ought to be able to guess. I’m up against a blank wall in the matter of Field’s papers. Blast his black soul!”
“It’s blasted, Tim—it’s blasted, never fear,” said Queen sorrowfully. “Poor Field is probably roasting his toes over a sizzling little coalfire in Hell just now—and chortling to himself over your profanity. Exactly what is the situation—how do things stand?”
Cronin grasped the cup Djuna had set before him and drained its scalding contents in a gulp. “Stand?” he cried, banging down the cup. “They don’t stand—they’re nil, nit, not! By Christopher, if I don’t get my hands on some documentary evidence soon I’ll go batty! Why, Inspector—Stoates and I ransacked that swell office of Field’s until I don’t think there’s a rat in the walls who dares show his head outside a ten-foot hole—and there’s nothing. Nothing! Man—it’s inconceivable. I’d stake my reputation that somewhere—the Lord alone knows where—Field’s papers are hidden, just begging somebody to come along and carry them away.”
“You seem possessed of a phobia on the subject of hidden papers, Cronin,” remarked Ellery mildly. “One would think we are living in the days of Charles the First. There’s no such thing as hidden papers. You merely have to know where to look.”
Cronin grinned impertinently. “That’s very good of you, Mr. Queen. Suppose you suggest the place Mr. Monte Field selected to hide his papers.”
Ellery lit a cigarette. “All right. I accept the challenge to combat…. You say—and I don’t doubt your word in the least—that the documents you suppose to be in existence are not in Field’s office…. By the way, what makes you so sure that Field kept papers which would incriminate him in this vast clique of gangsters you told us about?”
“He must have,” retorted Cronin. “Queer logic, but it works…. My information absolutely establishes the fact that Field had correspondence and written plans connecting him with men higher up in gangdom whom we’re constantly trying to ‘get’ and whom we haven’t been able to touch so far. You’ll have to take my word for it; it’s too complicated a story to go into here. But you mark my words, Mr. Queen—Field had papers that he couldn’t afford to destroy. Those are the papers I’m looking for.”
“Granted,” said Ellery in a rhetorical tone. “I merely wished to make certain of the facts. Let me repeat, then, these papers are not in his office. We must therefore look for them farther afield. For example, they might be secreted in a safety-deposit vault.”
“But, El,” objected the Inspector, who had listened to the interplay between Cronin and Ellery in amusement, “didn’t I tell you this morning that Thomas had run that lead to earth? Field did not have a box in a safety-deposit vault. That is established. He had no general delivery or private post-office box either—under his real name or any other name.
“Thomas has also investigated Field’s club affiliations and discovered that the lawyer had no residence, permanent or temporary, besides the flat on 75th Street. Furthermore, in all Thomas’ scouting around, he found not the slightest indication of a possible hiding place. He thought that Field might have left the papers in a parcel or bag in the keeping of a shopkeeper, or something of the sort. But there wasn’t a trace…. Velie’s a good man in these matters, Ellery. You can bet your bottom dollar that hypothesis of yours is false.”
“I was making a point for Cronin’s benefit,” retorted Ellery. He spread his fingers on the table elaborately and winked. “You see, we must narrow the field of search to the point where we can definitely say: ‘It must be here.’ The office, the safety-deposit vault, the post-office boxes have been ruled out. Yet we know that Field could not afford to keep these documents in a place difficult of access. I cannot vouch for the papers you’re seeking, Cronin; but it’s different with the papers we’re seeking. No, Field had them somewhere near at hand…. And, to go a step further, it’s reasonable to assume that he would have kept all his important secret papers in the same hiding place.”
Cronin scratched his head and nodded.
“We shall now apply the elementary precepts, gentlemen.” Ellery paused as if to emphasize his next statement. “Since we have narrowed our area of inquiry to the exclusion of all possible hiding places save one—the papers must be in that one hiding place…. Nothing to that.”
“Now that I pause to consider,” interpolated the Inspector, his good humor suddenly dissipated into gloom, “perhaps we weren’t as careful in that place as we might have been.”
“I’m as certain we’re on the right track,” said Ellery firmly, “as that today is Friday and there will be fish suppers in thirty million homes tonight.”
Cronin was looking puzzled. “I don’t quite get it, Mr. Queen. What do you mean when you say there’s only one possible hiding place left?”
“Field’s apartment, Cronin,” replied Ellery imperturbably. “The papers are there.”
“But I was discussing the case with the D. A. only yesterday,” objected Cronin, “and he said you’d already ransacked Field’s apartment and found nothing.”
“True—true enough,” said Ellery. “We searched Field’s apartment and found nothing. The trouble was, Cronin, that we didn’t look in the right place.”
“Well, by ginger, if you know now, let’s get a move on!” cried Cronin, springing from his chair.
The Inspector tapped the red-haired man’s knee gently and pointed to the seat. “Sit down, Tim,” he advised. “Ellery is merely indulging in his favorite game of ratiocination. He doesn’t know where the papers are any more than you do. He’s guessing…. In detective literature,” he added with a sad smile, “they call it the ‘art of deduction.’”
“I should say,” murmured Ellery, emitting a cloud of smoke, “that I am being challenged once more. Nevertheless, although I haven’t been back to Field’s rooms I intend, with Inspector Queen’s kind permission, to return there and find the slippery documents.”
“In the matter of these papers—” began the old man, when he was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Djuna admitted Sergeant Velie, who was accompanied by a small, furtive young man so ill at ease as to be trembling. The Inspector sprang to his feet and intercepted them before they could enter the living room. Cronin stared as Queen said. “This the fellow, Thomas?” and the big detective answered with grim levity, “Large as life, Inspector.”
“Think you could burgle an apartment without being caught, do you?” inquired the Inspector genially, taking the newcomer by the arm. “You’re just the man I want.”
The furtive young man seemed overcome by a species of terrified palsy. “Say, Inspector, yer not takin’ me fer a ride, are ya?” he stammered.
The Inspector smiled reassuringly and led him out into the foyer. They held a whispered and one-sided conversation, with the stranger grunting assents at every second word uttered by the old man. Cronin and Ellery in the living room caught the flash of a small sheet of paper as it passed from the Inspector’s hand into the clutching paw of the young man.
Queen returned, stepping spryly. “All right, Thomas. You take care of the other arrangements and see that our friend here gets into no trouble…. Now, gentlemen—”
Velie made his adieu monosyllabically and led the frightened stranger from the apartment.
The Inspector sat down. “Before we go over to Field’s rooms, boys,” he said thoughtfully, “I want to make certain things plain. In the first place, from what Benjamin Morgan has told us, Field’s business was law but his great source of income—blackmail. Did you know that, Tim? Monte Field sucked dozens of prominent men dry, in all likelihood to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, Tim, we’re convinced that the motive behind Field’s murder was connected with this phase of his undercover activities. There is no doubt but that he was killed by somebody who was being taken in for huge sums of hush-money and could stand the gaff no longer.
“You know as well as I, Tim, that blackmail depends largely for its ugly life on the possession of incriminating documents by the blackmailer. That’s why we’re so sure that there are hidden papers about somewhere—and Ellery here maintains that they’re in Field’s rooms. Well, we’ll see. If eventually we find those papers, the documents you’ve been hunting so long will probably come to light also, as Ellery pointed out a moment ago.”
He paused reflectively. “I can’t tell you, Tim, how badly I want to get my hands on those confounded documents of Field’s. They mean a good deal to me. They’d clear up a lot of questions about which we’re still in the dark….”
“Well, then, let’s get going!” cried Cronin, leaping from his chair. “Do you realize, Inspector, that I’ve worked for years on Field’s tail for this one purpose? It will be the happiest day of my life…. Inspector—come on!”
Neither Ellery nor his father, however, seemed to be in haste. They retired to the bedroom to dress while Cronin fretted in the living room. If Cronin had not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts he would have noticed that the light spirits which had suffused the Queens when he arrived were now scattered into black gloom. The Inspector particularly seemed out of sorts, irritable and for once slow to push the investigation into an inevitable channel.
Eventually the Queens appeared fully dressed. The three men descended to the street. As they climbed into a taxicab Ellery sighed.
“Afraid you’re going to be shown up, son?” muttered the old man, his nose buried in the folds of his topcoat.
“I’m not thinking of that,” returned Ellery. “It’s something else…. The papers will be found, never fear.”
“I hope to Christmas you’re right!” breathed Cronin fervently, and it was the last word spoken until the taxicab ground to a stop before the lofty apartment house on 75th Street.
The three men took the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped out into the quiet corridor. The Inspector peered about quickly, then punched the doorbell of the Field apartment. There was no answer, although they could hear the vague rustling of someone behind the door. Suddenly it swished open to reveal a red-faced policeman whose hand hovered uneasily in the region of his hip pocket.
“Don’t be scared, man—we won’t bite you!” growled the Inspector, who was completely out of temper for no reason that Cronin, nervous and springy as a racing colt, could fathom.
The uniformed man saluted. “Didn’t know but it might be someone snoopin’ around, Inspector,” he said feebly.
