QED (24 page)

“A logic I can't dispute,” murmured Ellery. “And that thing was?”

Darnell grinned. “What the anticipation of the President's visit here tonight suggested to you when we asked for an impromptu puzzle. Their names.”

“You named the movie star Valetta Van Buren,” said Syres. “
Van Buren
—
the name of a President of the United States
.”

“Then Playboy John Thrushbottom Taylor the Third,” said the psychiatrist. “You buried that one, Queen! But of course Taylor is the name of a President of the United States, too—Zachary Taylor.”

“And the Wall Street man, A. Palmer Harrison,” the lawyer said. “Harrison—William Henry. Also Benjamin.”

“And professional football player Biff Wilson.” Miss Wandermere twinkled. “That ‘Biff' was masterly, Mr. Queen. But—of course, Wilson, for Woodrow Wilson.”

“And that leaves one character whose name,” said the oil man, “bears no cross-reference to a President's name—Leonardo Price. So Price, the Pop Art painter, murdered Valetta. You almost had me fooled, Queen. Taylor, Van Buren, Harrison! That was tricky, picking the more obscure Presidents.”

“You could hardly expect me to name one of my characters Eisenhower,” Ellery grinned. “Which reminds me.” He raised his brandy snifter. “Here's to our absent President—and may he turn out to be the next member of The Puzzle Club!”

HISTORICAL DETECTIVE STORY

Abraham Lincoln's Clue

Fourscore and eighteen years ago, Abraham Lincoln brought forth (in this account) a new notion, conceived in secrecy and dedicated to the proposition that even an Honest Abe may borrow a leaf from Edgar A. Poe
.

It is altogether fitting and proper that Mr. Lincoln's venture into the detective story should come to its final resting place in the files of a man named Queen. For all his life Ellery has consecrated Father Abraham as the noblest projection of the American dream; and, insofar as it has been within his poor power to add or detract, he has given full measure of devotion, testing whether that notion, or any notion so conceived and so dedicated, deserve to endure
.

Ellery's service in running the Lincoln clue to earth is one the world has little noted nor, perhaps, will long remember. That he shall not have served in vain, this account:

The case began on the outskirts of an upstate-New York city with the dreadful name of Eulalia, behind the flaking shutters of a fat and curlicued house with architectural dandruff, recalling for all the world some blowsy ex-Bloomer Girl from the Gay Nineties of its origin.

The owner, a formerly wealthy man named DiCampo, possessed a grandeur not shared by his property, although it was no less fallen into ruin. His falcon's face, more Florentine than Victorian, was—like the house—ravaged by time and the inclemencies of fortune; but haughtily so, and indeed DiCampo wore his scurfy purple velvet house jacket like the prince he was entitled to call himself, but did not. He was proud, and stubborn, and useless; and he had a lovely daughter named Bianca, who taught at a Eulalia grade school and, through marvels of economy, supported them both.

How Lorenzo San Marco Borghese-Ruffo DiCampo came to this decayed estate is no concern of ours. The presence there this day of a man named Harbidger and a man named Tungston, however, is to the point: they had come, Harbidger from Chicago, Tungston from Philadelphia, to buy something each wanted very much, and DiCampo had summoned them in order to sell it. The two visitors were collectors, Harbidger's passion being Lincoln, Tungston's Poe.

The Lincoln collector, an elderly man who looked like a migrant fruit picker, had plucked his fruits well: Harbidger was worth about $40,000,000, every dollar of which was at the beck of his mania for Lincolniana. Tungston, who was almost as rich, had the aging body of a poet and the eyes of a starving panther, armament that had served him well in the wars of Poeana.

“I must say, Mr. DiCampo,” remarked Harbidger, “that your letter surprised me.” He paused to savor the wine his host had poured from an ancient and honorable bottle (DiCampo had filled it with California claret before their arrival). “May I ask what has finally induced you to offer the book and document for sale?”

“To quote Lincoln in another context, Mr. Harbidger,” said DiCampo with a shrug of his wasted shoulders, “‘the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.' In short, a hungry man sells his blood.”

“Only if it's of the right type,” said old Tungston, unmoved. “You've made that book and document less accessible to collectors and historians, DiCampo, than the gold in Fort Knox. Have you got them here? I'd like to examine them.”

“No other hand will ever touch them except by right of ownership,” Lorenzo DiCampo replied bitterly. He had taken a miser's glee in his lucky finds, vowing never to part with them; now forced by his need to sell them, he was like a suspicion-caked old prospector who, stumbling at last on pay dirt, draws cryptic maps to keep the world from stealing the secret of its location. “As I informed you gentlemen, I represent the book as bearing the signatures of Poe and Lincoln, and the document as being in Lincoln's hand; I am offering them with the customary proviso that they are returnable if they should prove to be not as represented; and if this does not satisfy you,” and the old prince actually rose, “let us terminate our business here and now.”

“Sit down, sit down, Mr. DiCampo,” Harbidger said.

“No one is questioning your integrity,” snapped old Tungston. “It's just that I'm not used to buying sight unseen. If there's a money-back guarantee, we'll do it your way.”

Lorenzo DiCampo reseated himself stiffly. “Very well, gentlemen. Then I take it you are both prepared to buy?”

“Oh, yes!” said Harbidger. “What is your price?”

“Oh, no,” said DiCampo. “What is your bid?”

The Lincoln collector cleared his throat, which was full of slaver. “If the book and document are as represented, Mr. DiCampo, you might hope to get from a dealer or realize at auction—oh—$50,000. I offer you $55,000.”

“$56,000,” said Tungston.

“$57,000,” said Harbidger.

“$58,000,” said Tungston.

“$59,000,” said Harbidger.

Tungston showed his fangs. “$60,000,” he said.

Harbidger fell silent, and DiCampo waited. He did not expect miracles. To these men, five times $60,000 was of less moment than the undistinguished wine they were smacking their lips over; but they were veterans of many a hard auction-room campaign, and a collector's victory tastes very nearly as sweet for the price as for the prize.

So the impoverished prince was not surprised when the Lincoln collector suddenly said, “Would you be good enough to allow Mr. Tungston and me to talk privately for a moment?”

DiCampo rose and strolled out of the room, to gaze somberly through a cracked window at the jungle growth that had once been his Italian formal gardens.

It was the Poe collector who summoned him back. “Harbidger has convinced me that for the two of us to try to outbid each other would simply run the price up out of all reason. We're going to make you a sporting proposition.”

“I've proposed to Mr. Tungston, and he has agreed,” nodded Harbidger, “that our bid for the book and document be $65,000. Each of us is prepared to pay that sum, and not a penny more.”

“So that is how the screws are turned,” said DiCampo, smiling. “But I do not understand. If each of you makes the identical bid, which of you gets the book and document?”

“Ah,” grinned the Poe man, “that's where the sporting proposition comes in.”

“You see, Mr. DiCampo,” said the Lincoln man, “we are going to leave that decision to you.”

Even the old prince, who had seen more than his share of the astonishing, was astonished. He looked at the two rich men really for the first time. “I must confess,” he murmured, “that your compact is an amusement. Permit me?” He sank into thought while the two collectors sat expectantly. When the old man looked up he was smiling like a fox. “The very thing, gentlemen! From the typewritten copies of the document I sent you, you both know that Lincoln himself left a clue to a theoretical hiding place for the book which he never explained. Some time ago I arrived at a possible solution to the President's little mystery. I propose to hide the book and document in accordance with it.”

“You mean whichever of us figures out your interpretation of the Lincoln clue and finds the book and document where you will hide them, Mr. DiCampo, gets both for the agreed price?”

“That is it exactly.”

The Lincoln collector looked dubious. “I don't know …”

“Oh, come, Harbidger,” said Tungston, eyes glittering. “A deal is a deal. We accept, DiCampo! Now what?”

“You gentlemen will of course have to give me a little time. Shall we say three days?”

Ellery let himself into the Queen apartment, tossed his suitcase aside, and set about opening windows. He had been out of town for a week on a case, and Inspector Queen was in Atlantic City attending a police convention.

Breathable air having been restored, Ellery sat down to the week's accumulation of mail. One envelope made him pause. It had come by air-mail special delivery, it was postmarked four days earlier, and in the lower left corner, in red, flamed the word
URGENT
. The printed return address on the flap said:
L.S.M.B.-R. DiCampo, Post Office Box 69, Southern District, Eulalia, N.Y
. The initials of the name had been crossed out and “Bianca” written above them.

The enclosure, in a large agitated female hand on inexpensive notepaper, said:

Dear Mr. Queen,

The most important detective book in the world has disappeared. Will you please find it for me?

Phone me on arrival at the Eulalia RR station or airport and I will pick you up.

Bianca DiCampo

A yellow envelope then caught his eye. It was a telegram, dated the previous day:

WHY HAVE I NOT HEARD FROM YOU STOP AM IN DESPERATE NEED YOUR SERVICES

BIANCA DICAMPO

He had no sooner finished reading the telegram than the telephone on his desk trilled. It was a long-distance call.

“Mr. Queen?” throbbed a contralto voice. “Thank heaven I've finally got through to you! I've been calling all day—”

“I've been away,” said Ellery, “and you would be Miss Bianca DiCampo of Eulalia. In two words, Miss DiCampo: Why me?”

“In two words, Mr. Queen: Abraham Lincoln.”

Ellery was startled. “You plead a persuasive case,” he chuckled. “It's true, I'm an incurable Lincoln addict. How did you find out? Well, never mind. Your letter refers to a book, Miss DiCampo. Which book?”

The husky voice told him, and certain other provocative things as well. “So will you come, Mr. Queen?”

“Tonight if I could! Suppose I drive up first thing in the morning. I ought to make Eulalia by noon. Harbidger and Tungston are still around, I take it?”

“Oh, yes. They're staying at a motel downtown.”

“Would you ask them to be there?”

The moment he hung up Ellery leaped to his bookshelves. He snatched out his volume of
Murder for Pleasure
, the historical work on detective stories by his good friend Howard Haycraft, and found what he was looking for on page 26:

And … young William Dean Howells thought it significant praise to assert of a nominee for President of the United States:

The bent of his mind is mathematical and metaphysical, and he is therefore pleased with the absolute and logical method of Poe's tales and sketches, in which the problem of mystery is given, and wrought out into everyday facts by processes of cunning analysis. It is said that he suffers no year to pass without a perusal of this author.

Abraham Lincoln subsequently confirmed this statement, which appeared in his little-known “campaign biography” by Howells in 1860 … The instance is chiefly notable, of course, for its revelation of a little-suspected affinity between two great Americans …

Very early the next morning Ellery gathered some papers from his files, stuffed them into his briefcase, scribbled a note for his father, and ran for his car, Eulalia-bound.

He was enchanted by the DiCampo house, which looked like something out of Poe by Charles Addams; and, for other reasons, by Bianca, who turned out to be a genetic product supreme of northern Italy, with titian hair and Mediterranean blue eyes and a figure that needed only some solid steaks to qualify her for Miss Universe competition. Also, she was in deep mourning; so her conquest of the Queen heart was immediate and complete.

“He died of a cerebral hemorrhage, Mr. Queen,” Bianca said, dabbing at her absurd little nose. “In the middle of the second night after his session with Mr. Harbidger and Mr. Tungston.”

So Lorenzo San Marco Borghese-Ruffo DiCampo was unexpectedly dead, bequeathing the lovely Bianca near-destitution and a mystery.

“The only things of value father really left me are that book and the Lincoln document. The $65,000 they now represent would pay off father's debts and give me a fresh start. But I can't find them, Mr. Queen, and neither can Mr. Harbidger and Mr. Tungston—who'll be here soon, by the way. Father hid the two things, as he told them he would; but where? We've ransacked the place.”

“Tell me more about the book, Miss DiCampo.”

“As I said over the phone, it's called
The Gift: 1845
. The Christmas annual that contained the earliest appearance of Edgar Allan Poe's
The Purloined Letter
.”

“Published in Philadelphia by Carey & Hart? Bound in red?” At Bianca's nod Ellery said, “You understand that an ordinary copy of
The Gift: 1845
isn't worth more than about $50. What makes your father's copy unique is that double autograph you mentioned.”