Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (59 page)

“Frankly,” sniffed Nikki,
“I’m a little disappointed.”

“Worried,” said Ellery, “would
be the word for me.”

* *
*

Inspector Queen was too
case-hardened a sinner’s nemesis to lower his guard at his most vulnerable
moment. When the 5:30 bells bonged and the crowds began struggling toward the
exits, he barked: “Men, stay at your posts. Keep watching that doll!” So all
hands were on the
qui vive
even as the store emptied. The reserves kept hustling people out. Ellery,
standing on an Information booth, spotted bottlenecks and waved his arms.

At 5:50
P.M.
the main floor was declared out of the battle zone. All stragglers had been
herded out. The only persons visible were the refugees trapped by the closing
bell on the upper floors, and these were pouring out of elevators and funneled
by a solid line of detectives and accredited store personnel to the doors. By
6:05 they were a trickle; by 6:10 even the trickle had dried up. And the
personnel itself began to disperse.

“No, men!” called Ellery
sharply from his observation post. “Stay where you are till all the store
employees are out!” The counter clerks had long since disappeared.

Sergeant Velie’s
plaintive voice called from the other side of the glass door. “I got to get
home and decorate my tree. Maestro, make with the key.”

Ellery jumped down and
hurried over to release him. Detective Piggott jeered, “Going to play Santa to
your kids tomorrow morning, Velie?” at which the Sergeant managed even through
his mask to project a four-letter word distinctly, forgetful of Miss Porter’s
presence, and stamped off toward the gentlemen’s relief station.

“Where you going, Velie?”
asked the Inspector, smiling.

“I got to get out of
these x-and-dash Santy clothes somewheres, don’t I?” came back the Sergeant’s
mask-muffled tones, and he vanished in a thunderclap of his fellow-officers’
laughter.

“Still worried, Mr. Queen?”
chuckled the Inspector.

“I don’t understand it.” Ellery
shook his head. “Well, Mr. Bondling, there’s your dauphin, untouched by human
hands.”

“Yes. Well!” Attorney
Bondling wiped his forehead happily. “I don’t profess to understand it, either,
Mr. Queen. Unless it’s simply another case of an inflated reputation...” He
clutched the Inspector suddenly. “Those men!” he whispered. “
Who
are they?”

“Relax, Mr. Bondling,” said
the Inspector good-naturedly. “It’s just the men to move the dolls back to the
bank. Wait a minute, you men! Perhaps, Mr. Bondling, we’d better see the
dauphin back to the vaults ourselves.”

“Keep those fellows back,”
said Ellery to the Headquarters men, quietly, and he followed the Inspector and
Mr. Bondling into the enclosure. They pulled two of the counters apart at one
corner and strolled over to the platform. The dauphin was winking at them in a
friendly way. They stood looking at him.

“Cute little devil,” said
the Inspector.

“Seems silly now,” beamed
Attorney Bondling. “Being so worried all day.”

“Comus must have had
some
plan,” mumbled Ellery.

“Sure,” said the
Inspector. “That old man disguise. And that purse-snatching act.”

“No, no, Dad. Something
clever. He’s always pulled something clever.”

“Well, there’s the
diamond,” said the lawyer comfortably. “He didn’t.”

“Disguise...” muttered
Ellery. “It’s always been a disguise. Santa Claus costume—he used that
once—this morning in front of the bank... Did we see a Santa Claus around here
today?”

“Just Velie,” said the
Inspector, grinning. “And I hardly think—”

“
Wait a moment, please,” said
Attorney Bondling in a very odd voice.

He was staring at the
Dauphin’s Doll.

“Wait for what, Mr.
Bondling?”

“What’s the matter?” said
Ellery, also in a very odd voice.

“But... not possible...” stammered
Bondling. He snatched the doll from its black velvet repository.
“No!”
he howled.
“This isn’t the dauphin!
It’s a fake—a copy!”

Something happened in Mr.
Queen’s head—a little
click!
like the turn of a switch. And there was light.

“
Some of you men!” he roared. “
After
Santa Claus!”

“Who, Mr. Queen?”

“What’s he talkin’ about?”

“After who, Ellery?”
gasped Inspector Queen.

“What’s the matter?”

“I dunno!”

“Don’t stand here!
Get him!”
screamed Ellery, dancing up and down. “The man I just
let out of here! The Santa who made for the men’s room!”

Detectives started
running, wildly.

“But Ellery,” said a
small voice, and Nikki found that it was her own, “that was Sergeant Velie.”

“It was
not
Velie, Nikki! When Velie ducked out just before two o’clock
to relieve himself,
Comus waylaid him!
It
was Comus who came back in Velie’s Santa Claus rig, wearing Velie’s whiskers
and mask!
Comus has been on this platform all
afternoon!”
He tore the dauphin from Attorney
Bondling’s grasp. “Copy... ! Somehow he did it, he did it.”

“But Mr. Queen,” whispered
Attorney Bondling, “his voice. He spoke
to us...
in Sergeant Velie’s
voice.”

“Yes, Ellery,” Nikki
heard herself saying.

“I told you yesterday
Comus is a great mimic, Nikki. Lieutenant Farber! Is Farber still here?”

The jewelry expert, who
had been gaping from a distance, shook his head as if to clear it and shuffled
into the enclosure.

“Lieutenant,” said Ellery
in a strangled voice. “Examine this diamond ... I mean,
is
it a diamond?”

Inspector Queen removed
his hands from his face and said froggily, “Well, Gerry?”

Lieutenant Farber
squinted once through his
loupe.
“The
hell you say. It’s strass—”

“It’s what?” said the
Inspector piteously.

“Strass, Dick—lead
glass—paste. Beautiful job of imitation—as nice as I’ve ever seen.”

“Lead me to that Santa
Claus,” whispered Inspector Queen.

But Santa Claus was being
led to him. Struggling in the grip of a dozen detectives, his red coat ripped
off, his red pants around his ankles, but his whiskery mask still on his face,
came a large shouting man.

“But I tell you,” he was
roaring, “I’m Sergeant Tom Velie! Just take the mask off—that’s all!”

“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 Yelie.

“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, hostilely.

“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.”

* * *

Deck 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.

Speech was spent. Should
a wise man utter vain knowledge and fill his belly with the east wind? He who
talks too much commits a sin, says the Talmud. He also wastes his breath; and
they had now reached the point of conservation, having exhausted the available
supply.

Item:
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.

Question:
Had Lieutenant Farber lied?

Answer:
Lieutenant Farber was (a) a man of probity, tested in a thousand fires, and (b)
he was incorruptible. To (a) and (b) Inspector Richard Queen attested
violently, swearing by the beard of his personal Prophet.

Question:
Had Lieutenant Farber been mistaken?

Answer:
Lieutenant Farber was a nationally famous police expert in the field of
precious stones. It must be presumed that he knew a real diamond from a piece
of lapidified glass.

Question:
Had it
been
Lieutenant Farber?

Answer:
By
the same beard of the identical Prophet, it had been Lieutenant Farber and no
facsimile.

Conclusion:
The diamond Lieutenant Farber had examined immediately preceding the opening of
Nash’s doors that morning had been the veritable diamond of the dauphin, the
doll had been the veritable Dauphin’s Doll, and it was this genuine article
which Ellery with his own hands had carried into the glass-enclosed fortress
and deposited between the authenticated Sergeant Velie’s verified feet.

Item:
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.

Question:
Had Sergeant Velie switched dolls, carrying the genuine dauphin concealed in
his Santa Claus suit, to be cached for future retrieval or turned over to Comus
or a confederate of Comus’s, during one of his two departures from the
enclosure?