The Twelve Crimes of Christmas (26 page)

“It’s a pleasure,” growled Detective Hagstrom,
trying to break their prisoner’s arm, “we’re reservin’ for the inspector.”

“Hold him, boys,” whispered the inspector. He
struck like a cobra. His hand came away with Santa’s face.

And there, indeed, was Sergeant Velie.

“Why, it’s Velie,” said the inspector
wonderingly.

“I only told you that a thousand times,” said
the sergeant, folding his great hairy arms across his great hairy chest. “Now,
who’s the so-and-so who tried to bust my arm?” Then he said, “My pants!” and as
Miss Porter turned delicately away, Detective Hagstrom humbly stooped and
raised Sergeant Velie’s pants.

“Never mind that,” said a cold, remote voice.

It was the master, himself.

“Yeah?” said Sergeant Velie.

“Velie, weren’t you attacked when you went to
the men’s room just before two?”

“Do I look like the attackable type?”

“You did go to lunch?—in person?”

“And a lousy lunch it was.”

“It was
you
up here among the dolls all afternoon?”

“Nobody else, Maestro. Now, my friends, I want
action. Fast patter. What’s this all about? Before,” said Sergeant Velie
softly, “I lose my temper.”

While divers headquarters orators delivered
impromptu periods before the silent sergeant, Inspector Richard Queen spoke.

“Ellery. Son. How in the name of the second sin
did he do it?”

“Pa,” replied the master, “you got me.”

D
ECK
THE HALL
with boughs of holly,
but not if your name is Queen on the evening of a certain December
twenty-fourth. If your name is Queen on that lamentable evening you are seated
in the living room of a New York apartment uttering no falalas but staring
miserably into a somber fire. And you have company. The guest list is short but
select. It numbers two, a Miss Porter and a Sergeant Velie, and they are no
comfort.

No, no ancient Yuletide carol is being trolled;
only the silence sings.

Wail in your crypt, Cytherea Ypson; all was for
nought; your little dauphin’s treasure lies not in the empty coffers of the
orphans but in the hot clutch of one who took his evil inspiration from a
long-crumbled specialist in vanishments.

Fact:
Lieutenant Geronimo Farber of police headquarters had examined the diamond in
the genuine dauphin’s crown a matter of seconds before it was conveyed to its
sanctuary in the enclosure. Lieutenant Farber had pronounced the diamond a
diamond, and not merely a diamond, but a diamond worth in his opinion over one
hundred thousand dollars.

Fact:
It was this genuine diamond and this genuine Dauphin’s Doll which Ellery with
his own hands had carried into the glass-enclosed fortress and deposited
between the authenticated Sergeant Velie’s verified feet.

Fact:
All day—specifically, between the moment the dauphin had been deposited in his
niche until the moment he was discovered to be a fraud; that is, during the
total period in which a theft-and-substitution was even theoretically
possible—no person whatsoever, male or female, adult or child, had set foot
within the enclosure except Sergeant Thomas Velie, alias Santa Claus; and some
dozens of persons with police training and specific instructions, not to
mention the Queens themselves, Miss Porter, and Attorney Bondling, testified
unqualifiedly that Sergeant Velie had not touched the doll, at any time, all
day.

Fact:
All those deputized to watch the doll swore that they had done so without lapse
or hindrance the everlasting day; moreover, that at no time had anything
touched the doll—human or mechanical—either from inside or outside the
enclosure.

Fact:
Despite all the foregoing, at the end of the day they had found the real
dauphin gone and a worthless copy in its place.

“It’s brilliantly, unthinkably clever,” said
Ellery at last “A master illusion. For, of course, it
was
an illusion….”

“Witchcraft,” groaned the inspector.

“Mass mesmerism,” suggested Nikki Porter.

“Mass bird gravel,” growled the sergeant.

Two hours later Ellery spoke again.

“So Comus had a worthless copy of the dauphin
all ready for the switch,” he muttered. “It’s a world famous dollie, been
illustrated countless times, minutely described, photographed…. All ready for
the switch, but how did he make it? How? How?”

“You said that,” said the sergeant, “once or
forty-two times.”

“The bells are tolling,” sighed Nikki, “but for
whom? Not for us.” And indeed, while they slumped there, Time, which Seneca
named father of truth, had crossed the threshold of Christmas; and Nikki looked
alarmed, for as that glorious song of old came upon the midnight clear, a great
light spread from Ellery’s eyes and beatified the whole contorted countenance,
so that peace sat there, the peace that approximated understanding; and he
threw back that noble head and laughed with the merriment of an innocent child.

“Hey,” said Sergeant Velie, staring.

“Son,” began Inspector Queen, half-rising from
his armchair; when the telephone rang.

“Beautiful!” roared Ellery. “Oh, exquisite! How
did Comus make the switch, eh? Nikki—”

“From somewhere,” said Nikki, handing him the
telephone receiver, “a voice is calling, and if you ask me it’s saying ‘Comus.’
Why not ask him?”

“Comus,” whispered the inspector, shrinking.

“Comus,” echoed the sergeant, baffled.

“Comus?” said Ellery heartily. “How nice. Hello
there! Congratulations.”

“Why, thank you,” said the familiar deep and
hollow voice. “I called to express my appreciation for a wonderful day’s sport
and to wish you the merriest kind of Yule tide.”

“You anticipate a rather merry Christmas yourself,
I take it.”

“Laeti triumphantes,”
said Comus jovially.

“And the orphans?”

“They have my best wishes. But I won’t detain
you, Ellery. If you’ll look at the doormat outside your apartment door, you’ll
find, on it—in the spirit of the season—a little gift, with the compliments of
Comus. Will you remember me to Inspector Queen and to Attorney Bondling?”

Ellery hung up, smiling.

On the doormat he found the true Dauphin’s Doll,
intact except for a contemptible detail. The jewel in the little golden crown
was missing.

“I
T
WAS
,” said Ellery later, over
pastrami sandwiches, “a fundamentally simple problem. All great illusions are.
A valuable object is placed in full view in the heart of an impenetrable
enclosure, it is watched hawkishly by dozens of thoroughly screened and reliable
trained persons, it is never out of their view, it is not once touched by human
hand or any other agency, and yet, at the expiration of the danger period, it
is gone—exchanged for a worthless copy. Wonderful. Amazing. It defies the
imagination. Actually, it’s susceptible—like all magical hocus-pocus—to
immediate solution if only one is able—as I was not—to ignore the wonder and stick
to the fact. But then, the wonder is there for precisely that purpose: to stand
in the way of the fact.

“What is the fact?” continued Ellery, helping
himself to a dill pickle. “The fact is that between the time the doll was
placed on the exhibit platform and the time the theft was discovered no one and
no thing touched it. Therefore between the time the doll was placed on the platform
and the time the theft was discovered
the dauphin could not have been stolen.
It follows, simply and inevitably, that the dauphin must have been stolen
outside that period.

“Before the period began? No. I placed the
authentic dauphin inside the enclosure with my own hands; at or about the
beginning of the period, then, no hand but mine had touched the doll—not even,
you’ll recall, Lieutenant Farber’s. Then the dauphin must have been stolen
after the period closed.”

Ellery brandished half the pickle. “And who,”
he demanded solemnly, “is the only one besides myself who handled that doll
after the period closed and before Lieutenant Farber pronounced the diamond to
be paste?
The
only one?”

The inspector and the sergeant exchanged
puzzled glances, and Nikki looked blank.

“Why, Mr. Bondling,” said Nikki, “and he doesn’t
count.”

“He counts very much, Nikki,” said Ellery,
reaching for the mustard, “because the facts say Bondling stole the dauphin at
that time.”

“Bondling!” The inspector paled.

“I don’t get it,” complained Sergeant Velie.

“Ellery, you must be wrong,” said Nikki. “At
the time Mr. Bondling grabbed the doll off the platform, the theft had already
taken place. It was the worthless copy he picked up.”

“That,” said Ellery, reaching for another sandwich,
“was the focal point of his illusion. How do we know it was the worthless copy
he picked up? Why, he said so. Simple, eh? He said so, and like the dumb
bunnies we were, we took his unsupported word as gospel.”

“That’s right!” mumbled his father. “We didn’t
actually examine the doll till quite a few seconds later.”

“Exactly,” said Ellery in a munchy voice. “There
was a short period of beautiful confusion, as Bondling knew there would be. I
yelled to the boys to follow and grab Santa Claus—I mean the sergeant, here.
The detectives were momentarily demoralized. You, Dad, were stunned. Nikki
looked as if the roof had fallen in. I essayed an excited explanation. Some
detectives ran; others milled around. And while all this was happening—during
those few moments when nobody was watching the genuine doll in Bondling’s hand
because everyone thought it was a fake—Bondling calmly slipped it into one of
his greatcoat pockets and from the other produced the worthless copy which he’d
been carrying there all day. When I did turn back to him, it was the copy I
grabbed from his hand. And his illusion was complete.

“I know,” said Ellery dryly, “it’s rather on
the let-down side. That’s why illusionists guard their professional secrets so
closely; knowledge is disenchantment. No doubt the incredulous amazement
aroused in his periwigged London audience by Comus the French conjuror’s
dematerialization of his wife from the top of a table would have suffered the
same fate if he’d revealed the trap door through which she had dropped. A good
trick, like a good woman, is best in the dark. Sergeant, have another pastrami.”

“Seems like funny chow to be eating early
Christmas morning,” said the sergeant, reaching. Then he stopped. Then he said,
“Bondling,” and shook his head.

“Now that we know it was Bondling,” said the inspector,
who had recovered a little, “it’s a cinch to get that diamond back. He hasn’t
had time to dispose of it yet. I’ll just give downtown a buzz—”

“Wait. Dad” said Ellery.

“Wait for what?”

“Whom are you going to sic the hounds on?”

“What?”

“You’re going to call headquarters, get a
warrant, and so on. Who’s your man?”

The inspector felt his head. “Why… Bondling,
didn’t you say?”

“It might be wise,” said Ellery, thoughtfully
searching with his tongue for a pickle seed, “to specify his alias.”

“Alias?” said Nikki. “Does he have one?”

“What alias, son?”

“Comus.”

“Comus!”

“Comus?”

“Oh, come off it,” said Nikki, pouring herself
a shot of coffee, straight, for she was in training for the inspector’s
Christmas dinner. “How could Bondling be Comus when Bondling was with us all
day?—and Comus kept making disguised appearances all over the place…that Santa
who gave me the note in front of the bank—the old man who kidnapped Lance
Morganstern—the fat man with the mustache who snatched Mrs. Rafferty’s purse.”