Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (60 page)

Answer (by Sergeant
Velie): Deleted. Editor

Confirmation:
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.

Conclusion:
Sergeant Velie could not have stolen, and therefore he did not steal, the
Dauphin’s Doll.

Item:
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.

Question:
The human vessel being frail, could those so swearing have been in error? Could
their attention have wandered through weariness, boredom,
et cetera?

Answer:
Yes; but not all at the same time, by the laws of probability. And during the
only two diversions of the danger period, Ellery himself testified that he had
kept his eyes on the dauphin and that nothing whatsoever had approached or
threatened it.

Item:
Despite all of 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 approximateth
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 Yuletide.”

“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 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.

* * *

“It 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 dogs 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?”

“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.”

“Yeah,” said the
Sergeant. “How?”

“These illusions die hard,”
said Ellery. “Wasn’t it Comus who phoned a few minutes ago to rag me about the
theft? Wasn’t it Comus who said he’d left the stolen dauphin—minus the
diamond—on our doormat? Therefore Comus is Bondling.”

“I told you Comus never
does anything without a good reason,” said Ellery. “Why did ‘Comus’ announce to
‘Bondling’ that he was
going
to steal the Dauphin’s Doll? Bondling told us that—putting the finger on his
alter ego
—because he wanted us to believe he
and Comus were separate individuals. He wanted us to watch for
Comus
and take
Bondling
for granted. In tactical execution of this strategy, Bondling provided us with
three ‘Comus’-appearances during the day—obviously, confederates.”

“Yes,” said Ellery, “I
think, Dad, you’ll find on backtracking that the great thief you’ve been trying
to catch for five years has been a respectable estate attorney on Park Row all
the time, shedding his quiddities and his quillets at night in favor of the
soft shoe and the dark lantern. And now he’ll have to exchange them all for a
number and a grilled door. Well, well, it couldn’t have happened at a more
appropriate season; there’s an old English proverb that says the Devil makes
his Christmas pie of lawyers’ tongues. Nikki, pass the pastrami.”

Fanny Stevenson did not
care much for
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
.
She considered it a reworking of “Markheim,” an earlier story she liked better.
She eventually changed her mind, but the lady had a point.