Queen's Ransom, page 71
They had managed to get into Metropol Hall and had found downstairs seats well to the front of the auditorium.
“When the stampede started, Stella and I tried to hold on to each other, but the damn cattle tore us apart. The last I saw of her she was being carried off in a crowd of lunatics, screaming something at me. But I couldn’t hear. I never saw her alive again.”
Whithacker had been lucky, suffering no more than a torn pocket and some pummeling.
“I crowded with a few other people in a doorway across from the Hall to keep out of harm’s way. When the worst was over I started searching for Stella. I couldn’t find her among the dead or injured at the Hall so I began looking along Eighth Avenue, the side streets, Broadway. I wandered around all night.”
Whithacker was asked why he had not telephoned to the Petrucchis; the family had been up all night frantic over Stella’s failure to come home. They had not known about her appointment with him.
“That’s the reason. They didn’t know about me. Stella said it was better that way. She said they were strict Catholics and it would only cause a ruckus if they found out she was going around with a non-Catholic. She didn’t mind her father’s cousin Ignazio knowing about us, she said, because Mr. Ferriquancchi is anti-Papist and nobody in the Petrucchi family has anything to do with him anyway.”
At 7:30 A.M. Whithacker had returned to Metropol Hall for another checkup, intending to telephone the Petrucchis “despite their religious scruples” if this last effort to locate Stella failed.
At his first question he was seized by the police.
“I must have passed the entrance to that alley a dozen times during the night,” Howard Whithacker said. “But it was dark, and how was I to know Stella was laid out in there?”
Whithacker was held “for further questioning.”
“No,” Inspector Richard Queen told reporters, “we have absolutely nothing on him. But we want to check his story, and so on.” The “and so on” was taken by the press—correctly—to refer both to related matters in the recent past and to a certain interesting wildness of eye, manner, and speech in Stella Petrucchi’s friend.
There was no medical evidence of rape or attempted rape.
The girl’s purse was missing; but it was found later, its contents intact, in the debris of the Hall. A gold religious medal on a fine chain about her neck had not been touched.
The strangling cord was of the familiar tussah silk, dyed salmon-pink. It had been knotted at the nape exactly as in the previous cases. Laboratory examination of the cord turned up nothing of significance.
It seemed clear that Stella Petrucchi had taken refuge in the alley after being hurled into the street with the rest of the Metropol audience. But whether the Cat had been waiting for her in the alley, or had entered with her, or had followed her in, there was no way of telling.
The probability was that she had suspected nothing until the clutch of the silk. She might well have entered the alley at the Cat’s invitation, assuming he caught up with her and offered to “protect” her from harm at the hands of the mob.
As usual, he had left no trail.
It was past noon when Ellery pulled himself up the stairs to find the door of the Queen apartment unlocked. Wondering, he went in; and the first thing he saw on entering his bedroom was a torn nylon stocking dangling from the seat of his ladder back chair. Over one of the chair posts was hooked a white brassiere.
He bent over his bed and shook her.
Her eyes popped open.
“You’re all right.”
Celeste shuddered. “Don’t ever do that again! For a split century I thought it was the Cat.”
“Is Jimmy…?”
“Jimmy’s all right, too.”
Ellery found himself sitting on the edge of his bed; the back of his neck throbbed again. “I’ve often dreamed about this situation,” he said, rubbing it.
“What situation?” She stretched her long legs stiff under the sheet, moaning, “Oh, I ache.”
“I know,” said Ellery. “This all happened in a Peter Arno drawing.”
“What?” said Celeste sleepily. “Is it still today?”
Her black hair coursed over his pillow in sweet poetic streams. “But exhaustion,” Ellery explained, “is the enemy of poetry.”
“What? You look kind of dilapidated. Are you all right?”
“I will be once I get the hang of sleeping again.”
“I am sorry!” Celeste clutched the sheet to her and sat up quickly. “I wasn’t really awake. Er, I’m not… I mean, I didn’t want to poke around in your bureau…”
“You cad,” said a stern voice. “Would you boot out an unclothed maiden?”
“Jimmy!” said Celeste happily.
Jimmy McKell was in the bedroom doorway, one arm about a large, mysterious-looking paper sack.
“Well,” said Ellery. “The McKell. Indestructible, I see.”
“I see you made it, too, Ellery.”
They grinned at each other. Jimmy was wearing one of Ellery’s most cherished sports jackets, which was too small for him, and Ellery’s newest tie.
“Mine were torn clean off me,” explained Jimmy. “How you feeling, woman?”
“Like September Morn at an American Legion convention. Would you two step into the next room?”
In the living room Jimmy scowled. “You look beat, old-timer. What’s with the Petrucchi girl?”
“Oh, you know about that.”
“Heard it on your radio this morning.” Jimmy set the sack down.
“What’s in that bag?”
“Some hardtack and pemmican. Your larder’d run dry. Have you eaten anything, bud?”
“No.”
“Neither have we. Hey, Celeste!” Jimmy shouted. “Never mind making with the clothes. Rustle us some breakfast!”
Celeste laughed from Ellery’s bathroom.
“You two seem awfully gay,” remarked Ellery, feeling for the armchair.
“Funny how it hits you.” Jimmy laughed, too. “You get mixed up in something like last night’s fandango and all of a sudden everything drops into the slot. Even stupidity. I thought I’d seen everything in the Pacific, but I hadn’t. The war was murder, all right, but Organized. You wear a uniform and you carry a gun and you take great big orders and somebody cooks your chow and you kill or get killed, all according to the book. But last night… tooth and claw. Man stripped to the bloody bones. Disintegration of the tribe. Every fellow-cannibal your enemy. It’s good to be alive, that’s all.”
“Hello, Celeste,” said Ellery.
Her clothes were macerated and although she had evidently brushed them and applied, pins to secret parts, they looked like hardening lava. Her legs were rowdy: she carried her stockings.
“I don’t suppose you’d have an old pair of nylons around, Mr. Queen?”
“No,” said Ellery gravely. “My father, you know.”
“Oh, dear. Well! I’ll fix you men something in a jiffy,” and Celeste went into the kitchen with the sack.
“Superior, hey?” Jimmy stared at the swinging door. “You’ll note, Brother Queen, that the lady made no apology for her appearance. Definitely superior.”
“How’d you two manage to keep together last night?” asked Ellery, closing his eyes.
“Now don’t cork off on us, Ellery.” Jimmy began setting the dropleaf table.
“Why, the fact is we didn’t.”
“Oh?” said Ellery, opening one eye.
“We lost each other right after I got to her. She doesn’t remember how she got out, and neither do I. We kept hunting for each other all night. I found her around 5 A.M. sitting on the steps of Polyclinic Hospital, bawling.”
Ellery closed the eye.
“How do you like your bacon, Mr. Queen?” called Celeste.
Jimmy said, “Are you there?” and Ellery mumbled something. “Curly and wet, he says!—What, Ellery?”
“The last word,” said Ellery, “was ‘bawling.’”
“Her eyes out. I tell you, I was touched. Anyway, we had some coffee at an allnight joint and then we went looking for you. But you’d disappeared. We thought you’d probably got out all right and gone home, so we came up here. Nobody home, so I said to Celeste, ‘He won’t mind,’ and I climbed up the fire escape. For an eye, Ellery, you’re very careless about your windows.”
“Go on,” said Ellery, when Jimmy stopped.
“I don’t know if I can explain it. Why we came, I mean. I don’t think Celeste and I said two dozen words to each other after we clutched this morning. I think we both realized your position for the first time and we wanted to tell you we’ve been a couple of firstclass schlemihls and didn’t quite know how to do it,” Jimmy straightened a spoon. “This thing is awfully gross,” he said to the spoon. “The war all over again. In another form. The individual doesn’t mean a damn. Human dignity gets flushed down the drain. You have to get up to your elbow in muck to hold on to it. I didn’t see that till last night, Ellery.”
“Neither did I.” Celeste was in the kitchen doorway with a piece of toast in one hand and a buttery knife in the other. Ellery thought, Piggott and Johnson lost them last night; they must have. “You were right, Mr. Queen. After what we saw last night you were right.”
“About what, Celeste?”
“About suspecting Jimmy and me. Jimmy and me or anybody.”
“I guess what we wanted to hear you say was ‘Come back, all is forgiven,’” grinned Jimmy. But then he began on the cutlery again.
“So you waited here for me.”
“When we heard the news we knew what was keeping you. I made Celeste set into your bed—she was dead on her feet—and I parked on the sofa in here. Anything to connect the Petrucchi girl with the others?”
“No.”
“What about this cornhusker-poet character? What’s his name?”
“Whithacker?” Ellery shrugged. “Dr. Cazalis seems interested in him and they’re going to examine him carefully.”
“I’m one hell of a newspaperman.” Jimmy banged a spoon down. “All right, I’ll say it. Do you want us back?”
“I don’t have anything for you to do, Jimmy.”
“For me!” cried Celeste.
“Or for you.”
“You don’t want us back.”
“I do. But I have no work for you.” Ellery got up, groping for a cigaret. But his hands dropped. “I don’t know where to turn. That’s the truth. I’m absolutely hung up.”
Jimmy and Celeste looked swiftly at each other. Then Jimmy said, “You’re also absolutely pooped. What you need is to slice a herring with Morpheus. Hey, Celeste! The coffee!”
Ellery awoke to the sound of a loud voice. He switched on the night light.
8:12
The voice was driving. Ellery crawled out of bed, pulled on his robe and slippers, and hurried to the living room.
The voice was the radio’s. His father was lying back in the armchair. Jimmy and Celeste crouched on the sofa in a nest of newspapers.
“You two still here?”
Jimmy grunted. His long chin was nuzzling his chest and Celeste kept rubbing her drawnup bare leg in a reassuring way.
The Inspector was all bones and gray wilt.
“Dad—”
“Listen.”
“—reported tonight,” said the voice. “A third-rail short circuit on the BMT subway at Canal Street caused a panic and forty-six persons were treated for injuries. Trains out of Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station are running from ninety minutes to two hours behind schedule. The parkways out of the City are a solid double line of cars as far north as Greenwich and White Plains. Traffic is clogged for a large area around the Manhattan approaches to the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and the George Washington Bridge. Nassau County authorities report that traffic conditions on the major Long Island parkways are out of control. New Jersey, Connecticut, and upstate New York police report—”
Ellery snapped the radio off.
“What is it?” he asked wildly. “War?” His glance flew to the windows, as if he expected to see a flaming sky.
“New York’s turned Malay,” said Jimmy with a laugh.
“The amok. They’ll have to rewrite the psychology books.” He began to get up, but Celeste pulled him back.
“Fighting? Panic?”
“That Metropol Hall business last night was just the beginning, Ellery.” The Inspector was fighting something, nausea or rage. “It snapped a vital part. Started a sort of chain reaction. Or maybe it was the Petrucchi murder on top of the panic and riot—that was bad timing. Anyway, it’s all over the City. Been spreading all day.”
“They’re running,” said Celeste. “Everybody’s running.”
“Running where?”
“Nobody seems to know. Just running.”
“It’s the Black Death all over again,” said Jimmy McKell. “Didn’t you know? We’re back in the Middle Ages. New York is now the pesthole of the Western Hemisphere, Ellery. In two weeks you’ll be able to shoot hyenas in Macy’s basement.”
“Shut up, McKell.” The old man’s head rolled on the back of his chair. “There’s a lot of disorder, son, a lot. Looting, holdups… It’s been particularly bad on Fifth Avenue, 86th around Lexington, 125th, upper Broadway, and around Maiden Lane downtown. And traffic accidents, hundreds of traffic accidents. I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in New York.”
Ellery went to one of the windows. The street was empty. A fire engine screamed somewhere. The sky glowed to the southwest.
“And they say,” began Celeste.
“Who says?” Jimmy laughed again. “Well, that’s the point, my friends, whereupon today I’m proud to be one of the capillaries in the circulation system of organized opinion. We’ve really swung it this time, comrades.” He kicked a drooping newspaper. “Responsible journalism! And the blessed radio—”
“Jimmy,” said Celeste.
“Well, old Rip’s got to hear the news, hasn’t he? He’s slept through history, Miss Phillips. Did you know, sir, that there’s a citywide quarantine? It’s a fact. Or is it? That all schools will be shut down indefinitely—O happy day? That Father Knickerbocker’s chickens are to be evacuated to camps outside the metropolitan area? That all flights from La Guardia, Newark, and Idlewild have been nixed? That the Cat’s made of extremely green cheese?”
Ellery was silent.
“Also,” said Jimmy McKell, “Beldame Rumor hath it that the Mayor’s been attacked by the Cat, that the FBI’s taken over Police Headquarters, that the Stock Exchange positively will not open its doors tomorrow—and that’s a fact, seeing that tomorrow’s Saturday.” Jimmy unfolded himself. “Ellery, I went downtown this afternoon. The shop is a madhouse. Everybody’s busy as little beavers denying rumors and believing every new one that comes in. I stopped on my way back to see if Mother and Father are maintaining their equilibrium and do you know what? I saw a Park Avenue doorman get hysterics. Brother, that’s the end of the world.” He swiped his nose back-handedly, glaring. “It’s enough to make you cancel your membership in the human race. Come on, let’s all get drunk.”
“And the Cat?” Ellery asked his father.
“No news.”
“Whithacker?”
“Cazalis and the psychiatrists have been working on him all day. Still are, far as I know. But they’re not doing any backbends. And we didn’t find a thing in his West 4th Street flop.”
“Do I have to do it all by myself?” demanded Jimmy, pouring Scotch. “None for you, Celeste.”
“Inspector, what’s going to happen now?”
“I don’t know,” said the Inspector, “and what’s more, Miss Phillips, I don’t think I give an Irish damn.” He got up. “Ellery, if Headquarters calls, I’ve gone to bed.”
The old man shuffled out.
“Here’s to the Cat,” said Jimmy, lofting his glass. “May his giblets wither.”
“If you’re going to start toping, Jimmy,” said Celeste, “I’m going home. I’m going home anyway.”
“Right. To mine.”
“Yours?”
“You can’t stay up in that foul nest of underprivilege alone. And you may as well meet Father now and get it over with. Mother, of course, will be nightingale soup.”
“It’s sweet of you, Jimmy,” Celeste was all olive-pink. “But just impossible.”
“You can sleep in Queen’s bed but you can’t sleep in mine! What is this?”
She laughed, but she was angry. “It’s been the ghastliest and most wonderful twenty-four hours of my life, darling. Don’t spoil it.”
“Spoil it! Why, you proletarian snob!”
“I can’t let your parents think I’m some dead-end kid to be taken in off the streets.”
“You are a snob.”
“Jimmy.” Ellery turned from the fireplace. “Is it the Cat you’re worrying about?”
“Always. But this time the rabbits, too. It’s a breed that bites.”
“You can stop worrying about the Cat, at any rate. Celeste is safe.”
Celeste looked bewildered.
Jimmy said, “The hell you say.”
“For that matter, so are you.” Ellery explained the diminishing-age pattern of the murders. When he had finished he packed a pipe and lit it, watching them, and all the time they stood peering at him as if he were performing a minor miracle.
“And nobody saw that,” muttered Jimmy. “Nobody.”
“But what does it mean?” Celeste cried.
“I don’t know. But Stella Petrucchi was 22; and you and Jimmy being older than that, the Cat’s passed your age groups by.” Just relief, he thought, wondering why he was disappointed.
“May I print that, Ellery?” Jimmy’s face fell. “I forgot. Noblesse oblige.”
“Well, I think,” said Celeste defiantly, “that people ought to be told, Mr. Queen. Especially now, when they’re so frightened.”
