The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (15 page)

“But where's this container, or can?” asked the Lieutenant.

“Oh, safely hidden away,” said Ellery dryly. “Very safely.”

“You hid it? But why?”

Ellery smoked peacefully for a moment. “You know, there's a fat-bellied little god who watches over such as me. Last night we played a murder game. To make it realistic, and to illustrate a point, I took everyone's fingerprints with the aid of that handy little kit I carry about. I neglected to destroy the exhibits. This afternoon, before our treasure hunt, I found the container in the gun here—naturally, having reasoned out the hiding place, I went straight to it for confirmation. And what do you think I found on the can? Fingerprints!” Ellery grimaced. “Disappointing, isn't it? But then our clever thief was so sure of himself he never dreamed anyone would uncover his cache before the gun was fired. And so he was careless. It was child's play, of course, to compare the prints on the can with the master sets from last night's game.” He paused. “
Well
?” he said.

There was silence for as long as one can hold a breath; and in the silence they heard the flapping of the flag overhead.

Then, his hands unclenching, Harkness said lightly: “You've got me, pal.”

“Ah,” said Ellery. “So good of you, Mr. Harkness.”

They stood about the gun at sunset, and old Magruder yanked the cord, and the gun roared as the flag came down, and Major-General Barrett and Lieutenant Fiske stood rigidly at attention. The report echoed and reechoed, filling the air with hollow thunder.

“Look at the creature,” gurgled Mrs. Nixon a moment later, leaning over the parapet and staring down. “He looks like a bug running around in circles.”

They joined her silently. The Hudson below was a steel mirror reflecting the last copper rays of the sun. Except for a small boat with an outboard motor the river was free of craft; and the man was hurling his boat this way and that in puzzled parabolas, scanning the surface of the river anxiously. Suddenly he looked up and saw the faces watching him; and with ludicrous haste frantically swept his boat about and shot it for the opposite shore.

“I still don't understand,” complained Mrs. Nixon, “why you called the law off that person, Mr. Queen. He's a criminal, isn't he?”

Ellery sighed. “Only in intent. And then it was Miss Barrett's idea, not mine. I can't say I'm sorry. While I hold no brief for Harkness and his accomplice, who's probably some poor devil seduced by our dashing friend into doing the work of disposal, I'm rather relieved Miss Barrett hasn't been vindictive. Harkness has been touched and spoiled by the life he leads; it's really not his fault. When you spend half your life in jungles, the civilized moralities lose their edge. He needed the money, and so he took the pearls.”

“He's punished enough,” said Leonie gently. “Almost as much as if we'd turned him over to the police instead of sending him packing. He's through socially. And since I've my pearls back—”

“Interesting problem,” said Ellery dreamily. “I suppose you all saw the significance of the treasure hunt?”

Lieutenant Fiske looked blank. “I guess I'm thick.
I
don't.”

“Pshaw! At the time I suggested the game I had no ulterior motive. But when the reports came in, and I deduced that the pearls were in the sunset gun, I saw a way to use the game to trap the thief.” He smiled at Leonie, who grinned back. “Miss Barrett was my accomplice. I asked her privately to start brilliantly—in order to lull suspicion—and slow up as she went along. The mere use of the gun had made me suspect Harkness, who knows guns; I wanted to test him.

“Well, Harkness came through. As Miss Barrett slowed up he forged ahead; and he displayed cleverness in detecting the clue of the ‘greenwood' tree. He displayed acute observation in spotting the clue of the cigarette. Two rather difficult clues, mind you. Then, at the easiest of all, he becomes puzzled! He didn't ‘know' what was meant by the cannon's mouth! Even Mrs. Nixon—forgive me—spotted that one. Why had Harkness been reluctant to go to the gun? It could only have been because he knew what was in it.”

“But it all seems so unnecessary,” objected the Lieutenant. “If you had the fingerprints, the case was solved. Why the rigmarole?”

Ellery flipped his butt over the parapet. “My boy,” he said, “have you ever played poker?”

“Of course I have.”

Leonie cried: “You fox! Don't tell me—”

“Bluff,” said Ellery sadly. “Sheer bluff. There
weren't
any fingerprints on the can.”

The Adventure of the Hollow Dragon

Miss merrivel always said (she said) that the Lord took care of everything, and she affirmed it now with undiminished faith, although she was careful to add in her vigorous contralto that it didn't hurt to help Him out if you could.

“And can you?” asked Mr. Ellery Queen a trifle rebelliously, for he was a notorious heretic, besides having been excavated from his bed without ceremony by Djuna at an obscene hour to lend ear to Miss Merrivel's curiously inexplicable tale. Morpheus still beckoned plaintively, and if this robust and bountiful young woman—she was as healthy-looking and overflowing as a cornucopia—had come only to preach Ellery firmly intended to send her about her business and return to bed.

“Can I?” echoed Miss Merrivel grimly. “
Can
I!” and she took off her hat. Aside from a certain rakish improbability in the hat's design, which looked like a soup plate, Ellery could see nothing remarkable in it; and he blinked wearily at her. “Look at this!”

She lowered her head, and for a horrified instant Ellery thought she was praying. But then her long brisk fingers came up and parted the reddish hair about her left temple, and he saw a lump beneath the titian strands that was the shape and size of a pigeon's egg and the color of spoiled meat.

“How on earth,” he cried, sitting up straight, “did you acquire
that
awful thing?”

Miss Merrivel winced stoically as she patted her hair down and replaced the soup plate. “I don't know.”

“You don't know!”

“It's not so bad now,” said Miss Merrivel, crossing her long legs and lighting a cigarette. “The headache's almost gone. Cold applications and pressure … you know the technique? I sat up half the night trying to bring the swelling down. You should have seen it at one o'clock this morning! It looked as if someone had put a bicycle pump in my mouth and forgotten to stop pumping.”

Ellery scratched his chin. “There's no error, I trust? I'm—er—not a physician, you know.…”

“What I need,” snapped Miss Merrivel, “is a detective.”

“But how in mercy's name—”

The broad shoulders under the tweeds shrugged. “It's not important, Mr. Queen. I mean my being struck on the head. I'm a brawny wench, as you can see, and I haven't been a trained nurse for six years without gathering a choice assortment of scratches and bruises on my lily-white body. I once had a patient who took the greatest delight in kicking my shins.” She sighed; a curious gleam came into her eye and her lips compressed a little. “It's something else, you see. Something—funny.”

A little silence swept over the Queens' living room and out the window, and Ellery was annoyed to feel his skin crawling. There was something in the depths of Miss Merrivel's voice that suggested a hollow moaning out of a catacomb.

“Funny?” he repeated, reaching for the solace of his cigarette case.

“Queer. Prickly. You feel it in that house. I'm not a nervous woman, Mr. Queen, but I declare if I weren't ashamed of myself I'd have quit my job weeks ago.” Looking into her calm eyes, Ellery fancied it would go hard with any ordinary ghost who had the temerity to mix with her.

“You're not taking this circuitous method of informing me,” he said lightly, “that the house in which you're currently employed is haunted?”

She sniffed. “Haunted! I don't believe in that nonsense, Mr. Queen. You're pulling my leg—”

“My dear Miss Merrivel, what a charming thought!”

“Besides, who ever heard of a ghost raising bumps on people's heads?”

“An excellent point.”

“It's something different,” continued Miss Merrivel thoughtfully. “I can't quite describe it. It's just as if something were going to happen, and you waited and waited without knowing where it would strike—or, for that matter, what it would be.”

“Apparently the uncertainty has been removed,” remarked Ellery dryly, glancing at the soup plate. “Or do you mean that what you anticipated
wasn't
an assault on yourself?”

Miss Merrivel's calm eyes opened wide. “But, Mr. Queen, no one has assaulted me!”

“I beg your pardon?” Ellery said in a feeble voice.

“I mean to say I
was
assaulted, but I'm sure not intentionally. I just happened to get in the way.”

“Of what?” asked Ellery wearily, closing his eyes.

“I don't know. That's the horrible part of it.”

Ellery pressed his fingers delicately to his temples, groaning. “Now, now, Miss Merrivel, suppose we organize? I confess to a vast bewilderment. Just why are you here? Has a crime been committed—”

“Well, you see,” cried Miss Merrivel with animation, “Mr. Kagiwa is such an odd little man, so helpless and everything. I do feel sorry for the poor old creature. And when they stole that fiendish little doorstop of his with the tangled-up animal on it … Well, it was enough to make anyone suspicious, don't you think?” And she paused to dab her lips with a handkerchief that smelled robustly of disinfectant, smiling triumphantly as she did so, as if her extraordinary speech explained everything.

Ellery puffed four times on his cigarette before trusting himself to speak. “Did I understand you to say
doorstop
?”

“Certainly. You know, one of those thingamabobs you put on the floor to keep a door open.”

“Yes, yes. Stolen, you say?”

“Well, it's gone. And it was there before they hit me on the head last night; I saw it myself, right by the study door, as innocent as you please. Nobody ever paid much attention to it, and—”

“Incredible,” sighed Ellery. “A doorstop. Pretty taste in petit larceny, I must say! Er—animal? I believe you mentioned something about its being ‘tangled up'? I'm afraid I don't visualize the beast from your epithet, Miss Merrivel.”

“Snaky sort of monster. They're all over the house. Dragons, I suppose you'd call them. Although
I've
never heard of anyone actually seeing them, except in
delirium tremens
.”

“I begin,” said Ellery with a reflective nod, “to see. This old gentleman, Kagiwa—I take it he's your present patient?”

“That's right,” said Miss Merrivel brightly, nodding at this acute insight. “A chronic renal case. Dr. Sutter of Polyclinic took out one of Mr. Kagiwa's kidneys a couple of months ago, and the poor man is just convalescing. He's quite old, you see, and it's a marvel he's alive to tell the tale. Surgery was risky, but Dr. Sutter had to—”

“Spare the technical details, Miss Merrivel. I believe I understand. Of course, your uni-kidneyed convalescent is Japanese?”

“Yes. My first.”

“You say that,” remarked Ellery with a chuckle, “like a young female after her initial venture into maternity.… Well, Miss Merrivel, your Japanese and your unstable doorstop and that bump on your charming noddle interest me hugely. If you'll be kind enough to wait, I'll throw some clothes on and go a-questing with you. And on the way you can tell me all about it in something like sane sequence.”

In Ellery's ugly but voracious Duesenberg, Miss Merrivel watched the city miles devoured, drew a powerful breath, and plunged into her narrative. She had been recommended by Dr. Sutter to nurse Mr. Jito Kagiwa, the aged Japanese gentleman, back to health on his Westchester estate. From the moment she had set foot in the house—which from Miss Merrivel's description was a lovely old non-Nipponese place that rambled over several acres and at the rear projected on stone piles into the waters of the Sound—she had been oppressed by the most annoying and tantalizing feeling of apprehension. She could not put her finger on the source. It might have come from the manner in which the outwardly Colonial house was furnished: inside it was like an Oriental museum, she said, full of queer alien furniture and pottery and pictures and things.

“It even smells foreign,” she explained with a handsome frown. “That sticky-sweet smell …”

“The effluvium of sheer age?” murmured Ellery; he was occupied between driving at his customary breakneck speed and listening intently. “We seem up to our respective ears in intangibles, Miss Merrivel. Or perhaps it's merely incense?”

Miss Merrivel did not know. She was slightly psychic, she explained; that might account for her sensitivity to impressions. Then again, she continued, it might have been merely the
people
. Although the Lord Himself knew, she said piously, they were nice enough on the surface; all but Letitia Gallant. Mr. Kagiwa was an extremely wealthy importer of Oriental curios; he had lived in the United States for over forty years and was quite Americanized. So much so that he had actually married an American divorcee who had subsequently died, bequeathing her Oriental widower a host of fragrant memories, a big blond footballish son, and a vinegary and hard-bitten spinster sister. Bill, Mr. Kagiwa's stepson, who retained his dead mother's maiden name of Gallant, was very fond of his ancient little Oriental stepfather and for the past several years, according to Miss Merrivel, had practically run the old Japanese's business for him.

As for Letitia Gallant, Bill's aunt, she made life miserable for everyone, openly bewailing the cruel fate which had thrown her on “the tender mercies of the heathen,” as she expressed it, and treating her gentle benefactor with a contempt and sharp-tongued scorn which, said Miss Merrivel with a snap of her strong teeth, were “little short of scandalous.”