The Scarlet Letters (6 page)

“The Froehm brochure was one of those unfolding broadsides, which fold down into a flat piece. Nothing that flat ever made these creases, Nikki. These were made by something about three eighths of an inch thick.”

“Sounds almost like a book–”

“A booklet. In fact, these dimensions suggest a twenty-five-cent reprint edition, a paperback. You saw nothing like that in Martha's hand, or on the table, while she was reading the message?”

“No. But she might have slipped it into the pocket of her robe when she opened the envelope. The robe she was wearing has big patch pockets, and they're usually full of things.”

“Are you up to a little more snoopery, Nikki?”

Nikki looked at him. “You want me to search for the booklet.”

“It would help.”

“All right,” said Nikki.

“Look for a paperback about four inches by seven, and about three eighths of an inch thick.”

“Martha's hardly likely to leave it lying around. That means I may have to go into her purse … her bureau …”

Ellery said nothing.

“I wish,” began Nikki, but she bit off the rest of it; and after a moment she said, “Do you really think it's a–it's an affair?”

“Looks like it,” said Ellery.

“Thursday, 4 P.M.
That's tomorrow afternoon.” Nikki clenched her gloved hands. “Why does she take such a foolish chance? Hasn't she had enough of Dirk's jealousy? Why doesn't she divorce him and then do what she pleases? I'd like to get my hands on that ‘A'–whoever he is!”

“A?”
said Ellery.

“The ‘
A
' that signed the message, Ellery. I've been beating my brains out trying to think of some man she knows whose first name begins with an
A
, but I can't come up with anyone but Alex Conn and Arthur Morvyn. And Alex is a fairy and Art Morvyn has been directing Broadway plays for forty years and must be seventy if he's a day. It can't be either of them.”

“The
A
isn't the initial of a name, Nikki.”

“It isn't?”

“Signatures are almost invariably dropped below the message, on a line to themselves. It's true this is a short message and the writer might have added his initial on the same line because there's so little to it. But then he'd probably have separated the
m
of
p.m.
from the
A
by a dash. You told me there was a comma after
p.m.”

“That's right.”

“Then the
A
was part of the message, not a sign-off.” Ellery shrugged. “That's confirmed by inference. The message undoubtedly refers to an appointment. There are two major elements to any meeting–the time and the place. The time is given as tomorrow at four. The likelihood, then, is that the
A
refers to the place.”

“I'm relieved,” said Nikki dryly. “I thought you were going to say it's symbolism.”

“Symbolism?”

“A nice scarlet letter
A à la
Nathaniel Hawthorne. I just don't know what to make of it, Ellery. It's so hard to see Martha in the role of Hester Prynne! She's just not the adulteress type.”

“Is there one?” inquired Ellery. “Anyway, we'll know soon enough what
A
stands for. Probably a primitive code. What you've got to do tomorrow, Nikki, is tie Dirk in knots for the whole afternoon. Keep him in that apartment if you have to make love to him. If he insists on going out, delay him on some pretext to make sure Martha gets away.”

“What are you going to do, Ellery?”

“Make like a private eye and trail Martha to
A
–wherever
A
is.”

“Suppose she leaves the house in the morning?”

“We'll have to prearrange a code of our own. Do your best to find out about when she intends to leave the apartment. Phone me forty-five minutes before. It doesn't matter what you say to me when you call. The mere fact that you're phoning will be my tipoff.”

B …

Nikki phoned at twenty minutes after eleven Thursday morning. She was phoning, she told Ellery, to call off their “tentative lunch date.” Dirk had his plot pretty well organized and he was starting to dictate manuscript. He planned to work right through the day.

“Wonderful,” said Ellery. “Let me talk to him, Nikki.”

Dirk sounded energetic. “Hi, Ellery! I think I've hit pay dirt in this one. I hope you don't mind Nikki's breaking your date.”

“Think nothing of it. I understand you're really on fire, Dirk.”

“Don't hex me, son. I have to nurse these spells.” Dirk laughed.

“How true,” mourned Ellery; and he hung up and ran.

At a few minutes past noon Ellery's cab was cruising through Beekman Place for the third time when he saw Martha Lawrence come out of the apartment house and step into a taxi waiting at the curb. She was dressed in a mousy brown suit with black accessories and a large-brimmed black hat with a thick-meshed nose veil. The hat overshadowed her face.

Martha's cab drove west to Park Avenue and stopped before the entrance of the Marguery. She got out, paid her driver, and entered the Open Air Pavilion.

Ellery waited two minutes. Then he went in, too.

Martha was seated at a choice table with a woman. The woman was gross and dowdy, about fifty-five years old. One of her legs protruded from under the cloth; it was elephantine.

Ellery selected a table some distance away, a little behind and to the right of the two women. The distance did not bother him; he had sharp eyes.

They had cocktails. Martha had a single whisky sour, her companion three martinis, which she tossed off in rapid succession. Ellery sighed; it looked like a long lunch.

He had to be on the alert. Martha was uneasy. She kept looking around unexpectedly, as if searching for someone she knew. Ellery worked first with the menu, then with a copy of the
Herald Tribune
which he had picked up on his way crosstown.

It was the dowdy woman's treat. She had a trick of leaning toward Martha, her oily lips apart, in an attitude of rapture at Martha's every word. She was all adoration.

Selling something, Ellery decided.

She was an old hand at it, too. She did not produce her wares until the dessert, and then carelessly.

It was a thick book of typewriter paper bound in bright pink covers and held together by fancy brass pins.

As Martha riffled it and then dropped it into her black envelope bag, the woman continued to chatter away.

She was an agent peddling a playscript. Either by accident or design, Martha had managed a legitimate excuse to explain her afternoon's absence.

At five minutes of two Martha glanced at her wristwatch, said something with a smile, and rose. Caught by surprise, the agent looked grim. But she immediately beamed again, made an eager remark, waved a meaty arm at the waiter, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table, and was scrambling after Martha in a triumph of integrated motion. She crowded Martha out and onto the sidewalk, clutching and talking all the while. Not until Martha's cab door had slammed and the cab was rolling off did she stop talking, and then her look became grim again and she climbed wearily into another taxi.

But by that time Ellery was turning from Park Avenue into a crosstown street in Martha's wake.

Martha's cab discharged her at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 49th Street.

She went into Saks.

For the next hour and a half Ellery trailed her through the big store. She made numerous purchases–toilet water, stockings, lingerie, two pairs of shoes, some summer sportswear. But she made her selections without interest, almost listlessly. Ellery had the feeling that she was marking time, perhaps setting up the corroboration of a second alibi announced in advance. She took none of her purchases with her.

Before leaving the store, she paused on the main floor to buy some men's socks and handkerchiefs. These, too, she ordered sent. Ellery contrived to pass close by when the clerk was writing in his sales book, hoping he might catch the name and address of the man for whom she was buying the socks and handkerchiefs. He was successful but untriumphant: they were to be sent, he heard Martha instruct the salesman, to “Mr. Dirk Lawrence” at the Beekman Place address on her Charga-Plate.

Ellery felt that this tactic was not worthy of such a candid person as Martha. It suggested too depressingly the veteran wool-puller.

She left Saks-Fifth Avenue at nineteen minutes to four, ignored a taxi discharging a passenger, and began to walk north.

A
, then, was nearby.

Martha passed St. Patrick's Cathedral, Best's, Cartier's, Georg Jensen's.

A few minutes later she crossed Fifth Avenue and walked rapidly west.

At one minute to four, Martha went into the A— Hotel.

The A— Hotel was an old hotel with a distinguished past. Its trade was largely transient, but it had a hard core of celebrated residents which gave it a romantic flavor. It was a favorite hideaway dining and meeting place for the more literate habitués of Broadway, and it was exactly the sort of place where Martha Lawrence might be expected to go.

Ellery strolled into the lobby, wondering if he and Nikki had not misjudged Martha after all.

Martha's back was on view at the other end of the lobby. A tall man with a very dark tan had jumped up from an overstuffed chair and was talking to her.

Ellery walked over to the newsstand and began to finger a copy of
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

The lobby was dim after the bright afternoon sunshine and he had to squint to make out the tall man's features. What he could distinguish under the tan seemed rather heavily handsome. Martha's companion wore his thick blond or gray hair–in the poor light, and at that distance, Ellery could not determine which it was–with a dash. The lounge suit was beautifully draped; there was a spring aster in the lapel. The Homburg had swash.

The man was not young.

As he talked, he kept smiling.

The fellow talked with a technique. His eyes never left Martha's upturned little face, as if he had starved for a sight of her and now could not restrain his hunger. His hand hovered about Martha's upper arm as he talked.

There was something teasingly familiar about him–his brilliant smile, the trained slouch, the way his big shoulders filled his jacket, his air of unconquerable self-assurance. Ellery was positive he had met the man somewhere, or seen him around town.

Suddenly Martha walked off. She opened a door off the lobby and disappeared. Ellery moved a bit. It was a ladies' room. The man's eyes followed her all the way in.

Ellery placed a quarter and a dime down on the newsstand counter and strolled off reading the magazine. As he neared the elevators, the tall man put on his Homburg, settling it with care on his head. He arranged it at a jaunty angle. Then he walked over to the elevators, looking up at the bronze indicators over the doors. He seemed pleased with himself; his cheeks were going in and out in a soft whistle.

Ellery burrowed into the corner of a settee which faced the elevators, under a luxuriant philodendron.

It was blond hair, not gray. The temples were gray.

He was in his fifties and not making the mistake of trying to look thirty-five. A Man of Distinction, say forty-five. A model, however, not the original. The angle of his hat betrayed him.

One of the elevator doors opened. The man stepped into the elevator and said, “Six, please.” The voice was deep, richly colored, and resonant, with the merest British tinge.

The voice did it. Now the angle of the hat, the beautifully tailored suit, the aster, and the barbershop tan all fitted.

The fellow was an actor.

Legitimate theater, of course.

That's where I've seen him, thought Ellery. But who is he?

Four other people got into the elevator, including a woman. There was no sign of Martha.

Ellery got up and stepped into the elevator, too. He stepped in sidewise, removing his hat as he did so. It shielded his face long enough to allow him to turn naturally and face the door. The tall man was at the rear of the elevator, his Homburg over his heart; he was humming.

Ellery got off at the fifth floor.

He ran up the emergency staircase to the sixth in time to hear the elevator door clang. He waited three seconds, then he opened the exit door and stepped out.

The main corridor was at right angles to the bank of elevators. Ellery walked past the intersection. Far down the corridor the tall man was unlocking a door.

When he heard the door close, Ellery turned back and hurried up the long corridor.

The room was 632.

He kept going to the end of the corridor, where it was met by another cross-corridor. The short corridor was empty.

Ellery waited at the intersection.

Five minutes later he heard the distant rattle of the elevator door and he stepped back out of sight. He heard the elevator door open and close.

After a moment he held his hat before his face, as if he were about to put it on, and walked rapidly across the intersection.

It was Martha.

She was hurrying up the main corridor, searching the door numbers.

Ellery remained on the other side of the cross-corridor, just out of view.

A few seconds later he heard a series of light, rapid knocks. A door opened at once.

“What held you up, darling?” An actor, all right. And a leading man, at that.

“Hurry!” Martha's familiar voice, unfamiliarly breathless.

The door slammed.

After a moment Ellery heard the lock turn over.

He went back downstairs and waited near the desk for a couple to check in and follow a bellhop.

“Hello, Ernie.”

The desk clerk looked startled. “Mr. Queen!” he said. “I thought you'd taken your trade elsewhere. Checking in to meet a deadline?”

“Mine died some time ago,” said Ellery. “No, Ernie, I'm looking for information.”

“Oh,” said the clerk, lowering his voice. “Your alter ego, eh?” Like all old employees of the A— Hotel, he had long since absorbed its literary atmosphere. “Man-hunt?”

“Well, it's a man,” said Ellery. “The man in six-thirty-two. What's his name, Ernie?”

“Mr. Queen, we're not supposed to give out–”

“Let's say you were looking over the registration cards and began muttering to yourself?”

“Yes.” The clerk coughed and moved over to the card file hanging on the wall beside the desk. “Six-thirty-two … Checked in at one-five
P.M
. today …” He looked around. “You won't care for this, Mr. Queen. He's registered as George T. Spelvin, East Lynne, Oklahoma.”

“Typical actor's humor. Come on, Ernie, you know who he is. You know every actor in the Lambs.”

The desk clerk straightened the pen in its holder. “You flatter me,” he murmured, “and I like it. The Westphalian is Van Harrison. What's the lay, chief?”

“Guard your language. No, it's nothing you can peddle to the columns, worse luck. I spotted him, thought he looked familiar, and wondered who he was. Thanks a lot.” Ellery grinned and went out.

But on the street his grin faded.

“Van Harrison.” He found himself saying it aloud.

He stopped in a Sixth Avenue drugstore to phone Nikki. Dirk Lawrence answered.

“Hi, there. How's it coming?”

“Pretty good, pretty good.” Dirk sounded absent.

“Any chance of my borrowing my secretary for this evening, chum?”

“You're damn decent to do this for me, Ellery. How much will you take for her contract?”

“That isn't answering my question.”

“I guess it can be arranged, old boy–Martha and I are invited to the Le Fleurs' for dinner, and that means black tie, a butler with palsy, and Charades in the drawing room afterward. I'm beginning to hope Martha doesn't come home at all.”

“That's a switch,” laughed Ellery. “Let me speak to Nikki.”

Nikki said, “And how has
your
day been?”

“Surprisingly surprising. How about meeting me for dinner?”

“Why, Mr. Q.”

“Make it Louis and Armand's as close to seven as you can get away. Don't keep me waiting too long, because I'll be at the bar, and you know how conscientious Pompeia is.”

“No, but I know you. Three drinks and you're the Human Fly.”

“I'm climbing no walls this night. It's serious business, Nikki.”

Nikki said fervently, “I can hardly wait,” and hung up.

Nikki said, “Van Harrison,” as if it were the name of a loathsome disease. “What can she see in him? I thought he was dead.”

“Unkind, Nikki,” murmured Ellery. “I can testify that Mr. Harrison is no corpse. And–I'm afraid–so can Martha.”

“But he's an
old man.”

“Not so old. It wasn't more than a dozen or so years ago that he was jamming the theaters with standees and having to fight his way out of the stage door. That profile still packs a wallop, Nikki. Terrific personality.”

“I could strangle him,” said Nikki, panting. “Martha in a hotel room! Where'd she ever meet him?”

“Broadway is a small town. Maybe he applied for a part in one of her productions. I made a few inquiries at the Lambs after I phoned and I'm told he's seen every once in a while still trying to break down the Broadway ban on him. I don't suppose you remember that. He went on a prolonged drunk in his last starring play for Avery Langston, and Langston had to close down at the height of a run. Harrison hasn't had a job on Broadway since. That must have been ten or twelve years ago.”

“Then what's he living on, his old press notices?”

“He doesn't have to work at all. He made a fortune in his lush years, but you know actors. He still takes an occasional radio and TV job, and once in a while he gets a character part in some film. It's probably keeping him alive. That magic voice and romantic profile of his will lure women of Martha's age when he's tripping over his beard.”