QED (14 page)

“But tonight Tully says he wants all the money or he'll have me pinched. I didn't care about meself, I've had it, but if I wasn't around to keep an eye on Jim … I had me cleaning gloves on … I sees the knife on Tully's desk … I was in back of him …” Her old face settled, but it was hard to tell whether the lines told of remorse, resignation, or indifference. But then she said, “Now who'll be keeping me Jimmy out of trouble?”

Inspector Queen said furiously, “Maybe you, mother, maybe you. Just tell that story of yours to a jury.”

When they had taken the old lady out, Ellery nudged Henry Witter, whose mouth was open. “You still here? Don't you know there's a lady waiting for you in the hall?”

“Claire.” Henry hauled himself out of the chair.

“Oh, and you might remember,” Ellery said severely, “—I'm thinking of your little girl, Mr. Witter—that miracles do happen.”

Henry shook himself like a dog coming out of a mud hole. “You bet, Mr. Queen,” he said. “Thanks for reminding me.”

Q.B.I.: QUEEN'S BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Gambling Dept.: The Lonely Bride

Certain things should come together: for example, one shoe and another or one love bird and another. So when Ellery observed on the fourth finger of his beautiful young petitioner's left hand a circlet of entwined golden roses which had not yet lost the bright dew of the jeweler's garden, he grasped at once the missing complement: a groom, probably young and almost certainly a fool or a rascal. Only folly or worse explained a newlywed husband who left such a bloom untended.

Her name was Shelley, she confessed in the Queen apartment, she was a New Yorker from Evanston, a model by profession, and the fellow having seen her laminated in four colors on a magazine cover had pursued her with such wolfish purpose that she found herself one day in the City Clerk's office being made Mrs. Jimmy Browne. For their honeymoon they had cruised the world, madly rich in love, and lesser goods, too, for young Mr. Browne seemed bottomlessly supplied with the vulgar commodity by which lovers satisfy their appetites for giving, and he was insatiable. On their return to New York three days before, he had set her up in a princely furnished suite at L'Aiglon Towers, excused himself “for a few hours on a little business matter,” kissed her passionately, and she had not seen or heard from him since. It then occurred to Mrs. James Browne, a little tardily, that she knew nothing whatsoever about her dark, tall, handsome spouse. Accordingly, she had hunted through his things and found in his bureau drawer, rolled up in a pair of cashmere hose, two specimens of United States folding money bearing the rare portrait of Salmon P. Chase—apparently Mr. Browne's golden umbrellas against a rainy day. Mrs. Browne's $20,000 question was: Who, why, and where was her husband?

Ellery gloomily excused himself and went into his study to telephone one or two ruffians of his acquaintance. On his return he said sadly: “As I suspected. Mrs. Browne, your husband is a professional gambler known to the fraternity as The Boy Wonder. The two ten-thousand-dollar bills are undoubtedly his emergency poke—he shot the rest of his roll on your courtship and honeymoon—and he has been closeted since Tuesday in a hotel room off Times Square frantically trying to replenish the exchequer at the expense of a gent known as Big T. I'm afraid love has forced Jimmy to go out of his class. Big T is large-time and he played poker when Jimmy was playing tag.”

At this point Ellery made a mental note to find out more about Evanston; because all that Shelley said was, “Then I'd better get back. Jimmy will be needing that twenty thousand and he won't find it in his socks because I hid it in the apartment in a safer place. Thanks, Mr. Queen. I'll take care of this myself.”

And she would have done so, Ellery felt sure, had not a coal-truck driver ruled otherwise. As Ellery handed Shelley Browne into a taxi the truck careened to avoid a pedestrian and crashed into the cab. The truck driver blubbered, the cab driver raged, and the cover girl lay in a broken heap on the taxi floor. The ambulance doctor said it was concussion and possible internal injuries; he looked grim. Ellery felt a sudden gripe of responsibility; he knew Big T. So he stooped over her and he said, distinctly, “I'll follow through, Shelley. Just tell me where you hid Jimmy's nest egg.” Shelley whispered back, “In a book,” and then her
crème de violette
eyes turned over and the ambulance took her away.

Later that day Jimmy Browne stumbled from his wife's room at Floral Hospital into Ellery's embrace.

“They won't know for hours, Queen.” He was haggard, blackly boyish. “She's still unconscious.”

“And it's 3:07,” mused Ellery. Jimmy had dropped twenty-seven Gs to Big T, he had had with him only seven Gs in cash, and Big T had politely requested the balance by 6
P
.
M
. “We'd better start looking for those two ten-thousand-dollar bills.”

“Queen, she's going to die.”

“Not necessarily, but you're a sure thing. Big T lives by the code, and you know the subparagraph on welshers. Come on.”

As they trotted down the hospital corridor Jimmy promised, “Queen, if Shelley and I pull out of this I swear I'll quit the racket for good. I won't even play Bingo. So help me, I'll get a job! Where did Shelley say she hid that dough?”

“In a book.”

“Book?” Jimmy stopped. “In
our
apartment?”

“That's what she told me.”

“Why, we just took the joint. There isn't a book in it!”

To deteriorate matters, they reached the doorway of the Browne suite at L'Aiglon Towers to find Cookie Napoli's back wedged into it. Cookie Napoli was the size and shape of a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloon and his affection for sweetmeats and mayhem was legend in Manhattan's sinks.

“What's the matter, Moby Dick?” snarled Jimmy. “Doesn't Big T trust me?”

“Believe it or not,” said Cookie, probing among his massive molars for a fragment of fig newton, “I'm just waitin' for a payoff.”

“3:29,” muttered Mr. Queen; and he followed The Boy Wonder and Big T's emissary into an apartment all squares and curves and violent pastels, furnished with pieces of vast rhomboidal furniture and elegantly bespattered with art, from Picasso- and Archipenko-type abstractions to a grand piano of steel tubing.

But of literature no sign. Ellery scowled at the bookshelves. He had visualized a young wife defending herself against mental torture during those three husbandless days by buying stacks of murder mysteries or such, but apparently Shelley had not escaped by this route. The shelves were mighty and might have borne the world's weight of printed wisdom, but they were merely crammed with souvenirs. In the lunacy of their honeymoon Jimmy had lavished on his cover girl all the wealth of the tourist Indies and beyond—bazaar brassware, a teakwood Sacred Cow, a carnelian camel from Djibouti, Chinese old-men ivories, a jade Buddha, a Tibetan prayer wheel, a Grecian urn, a Tyrolean bride in metal bas-relief attached to the back of a felt-bottomed marble base, a plaster miniature of the Colosseum, a china shepherd and shepherdess from Dresden …

“Don't bother with that stuff,” cried Jimmy, crawling around inside the amphitheater of the imitation Italian fireplace. “She said a book.”

“I know what she said,” mumbled Ellery; but while Cookie devoured half a dozen ladyfingers he examined each
objet d'amour
painstakingly to convince himself that no crevice or secret recess concealed the two images of Secretary Chase.

Afterward, Ellery looked thoughtful. He removed his jacket.

At 4:06 the eminent sleuth raised a dusty nose to announce: “There is positively no book in this apartment, not so much as a memo or telephone book. And there are no ten-thousand-dollar bills, either. Still, Shelley said …” And he threw himself on the sofa and closed his eyes …

“No change yet,” said Jimmy Browne hollowly, dropping the telephone. Cookie reached into his bulging pocket and Jimmy blanched. But the flipper came out clutching a bag of coconut macaroons.

At 4:31 Ellery raised his head from the angular couch on which he labored. “I've decided,” he said, “that something is missing from this room.”

“Sure, twenty grand.
Stop munching, you cow!
”

At 4:53 the telephone screamed. Cookie almost dropped a Nabisco. It was the hospital. Mrs. Browne was still unconscious, but the prognosis was suddenly good. She would live. Jimmy promised again. “But what good will a dead husband do her? Queen, I was leveling—I'll look for that job.” Wildly he eyed the door. “Just find my dough!”

“Big T's dough, I believe,” said Cookie courteously, and when his hand emerged this time it grasped an inedible roscoe, which he began to examine with earnestness.

And then, at 5:13, Ellery sprang from his bed of pain. “I was right!”

“About what?”

“There is something missing from this room, Jimmy. Now I know where Shelley hid those bills!”

“Jimmy,” said Ellery, “certain things are inseparable. Shoes, for instance. Love birds.” He took Shelley's Tyrolean bride from the bookshelf; the marble base was heavy and he hefted it smilingly. “What was missing was this bas-relief lady's husband.
Whoever heard of a bride without a groom?
”

Jimmy stared. “Say. There
were
a pair. But where's the other one?”

Ellery hefted the little lady again and then he hurled her, straight and true, at Cookie Napoli, who was thoughtfully edging toward the door. The Tyrolean bride caught Big T's triggerman on the chin; Cookie landed on the floor, Jimmy landed on Cookie, and Ellery landed on the roscoe. “When we found Cookie outside your door we assumed he was waiting. Actually, he was leaving. But he had to brazen it out … Ah, a sack of fudge squares, and what's this in his other pocket? The missing bridegroom. Felt's loose, metal bas-relief is hollow, and I believe—yes—you'll find your ten-thousand-dollar bills inside. Cookie heard us coming and pocketed the works for future reference.”

“But she said—Shelley said—” Mr. Browne spluttered as he tore at the shell of the metal bridegroom “—Shelley said she hid it in a book.”

“Bas-relief—meaning a flat back—attached to a marble base with a felt bottom—and they come in pairs. Poor Shelley passed out before she could finish her sentence. What your wife meant to say,” said Mr. Queen, grasping the roscoe more firmly as Cookie stirred, “was ‘In a book
end
.'”

Spy Dept.: Mystery at the Library of Congress

Ellery responded to Inspector Terence Fineberg's invitation with pleasure. Fineberg, in charge of the Central Office, was one of Inspector Queen's ancient beat-buddies, and he used to slip Ellery candy bars. He detested amateur detectives, so the old mink must be desperate.

“Park it,” Inspector Fineberg said, blowing hot and cold. “You know Inspector Pete Santoria of the Narcotics Squad?”

Ellery nodded to the stone-jawed Narcotics man.

“We'll skip the protocol, Ellery,” Fineberg went on, gnashing his dentures. “Calling you in wasn't our idea. The big brass thought this case could use your screwb—your God-given talents.”

“I'm ever at the beck of the law enforcement arm,” Ellery said kindly, “especially when it's grasping at straws. You may fire when ready, Finey.”

“The buck,” Fineberg shouted to Inspector Santoria, “is yours.”

Santoria said in tooth-sucking tones, “We got a line on a new dope ring, Queen. The junk is coming in, we think, from France, and in kilo lots. New York is the distribution depot. None of the lower echelons knows any of the others except the few in immediate contact. We want the big boy on the New York end. That this gang aren't regulars is about all we know for sure.”

“Of course they're no regulars,” the Central Office head grumbled. ‘“Who ever heard of a regular dope-running crumbum who could read?”

“Read?” Ellery came to a point like a bird-dog. “Read what, Finey?”

“Books, for gossakes!”

“Don't tell me we authors are now being blamed for the narcotics traffic, too,” Ellery said coldly. “How do books come into this?”

“Using 'em as a code!” Terence Fineberg implored the ceiling to witness. “An information-passing operation is going on down in Washington that's an intermediate step between shipment and delivery. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics got on the trail of the D.C. members of the ring—two of 'em, anyway—and they're both being watched.”

“One of the two,” Inspector Santoria took it up, “is a colorless little shnook named Balcom who works for a Washington travel agency. He used to be a high school English teacher. The other—a girl named Norma Shuffing—is employed at the Library of Congress.”

“The Library's being used as the contact rendezvous?”

“Yes. Balcom's job is to pass along the information as to when, where, and how a new shipment is coming into New York. The contact to whom he has to pass the information is identified for Balcom by the Shuffing girl. They play it cool—a different contact is used every time.”

Ellery shrugged. “All you have to do is spot one as the Shuffing girl points him out to Balcom—”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Queen,” the Narcotics chief said, sounding like the Witch in
Hansel and Gretel
. “Want a go at it?”

“Just what takes place?” Ellery asked intently.

Inspector Fineberg's glance quelled Santoria. “Balcom visits the Library only when the girl is on duty—she works out of the main desk filling call slips and bringing the books onto the floor. Balcom takes either Desk One Forty-seven or, if that's occupied, the nearest one that's vacant. When Shuffing spies him she brings him some books conforming to slips filled out by her in advance. It's the titles of the books that tip him off—she never communicates with him in any other way.”