The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (33 page)

“Why don't you go home? Don't let this spoil your night, kid.”

Coyle set his jaw. “I'll stick around.”

The Inspector blew a police whistle.

Police came, and Phil Maguire and Paula Paris returned, and Ollie Stearn and others appeared from across the street, and the crowd thickened, and Mr. Ellery Queen crawled into the tonneau of Stearn's car.

The rear of the red limousine was a shambles. Blood stained the mohair cushions, the floor rug, which was wrinkled and scuffed. A large coat button with a scrap of fabric still clinging to it lay on one of the cushions, beside a crumpled camel's-hair coat.

Mr. Queen seized the coat. The button had been torn from it. The front of the coat, like the front of the murdered man's coat, was badly bloodstained. But the stains had a pattern. Mr. Queen laid the coat on the seat, front up, and slipped the buttons through the buttonholes. Then the bloodstains met. When he unbuttoned the coat and separated the two sides of the coat the stains separated, too, and on the side where the buttons were the blood traced a straight edge an inch outside the line of buttons.

The Inspector poked his head in. “What's that thing?”

“The murderer's coat.”

“Let's see that!”

“It won't tell you anything about its wearer. Fairly cheap coat, label's been ripped out—no identifying marks. Do you see what must have happened in here, Dad?”

“What?”

“The murder ocurred, of course, in this car. Either Brown and his killer got into the car simultaneously, or Brown was here first and then his murderer came, or the murderer was skulking in here, waiting for Brown to come. In any event, the murderer wore this coat.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because there's every sign of a fierce struggle, so fierce Brown managed to tear off one of the coat buttons of his assailant's coat. In the course of the struggle Brown was stabbed many times. His blood flowed freely. It got all over not only his own coat but the murderer's as well. From the position of the bloodstains the murderer's coat must have been buttoned at the time of the struggle, which means he wore it.”

The Inspector nodded. “Left it behind because he didn't want to be seen in a bloody coat. Ripped out all identifying marks.”

From behind the Inspector came Paula's tremulous voice. “Could that be
your
camels-hair coat, Ellery?”

Mr. Queen looked at her in an odd way. “No, Paula.”

“What's this?” demanded the Inspector.

“Ellery left his topcoat behind in Phil's car before the fight,” Paula explained. “I told him somebody would steal it, and somebody did. And now there's a camel's-hair coat—in this car.”

“It isn't mine,” said Mr. Queen patiently. “Mine has certain distinguishing characteristics which don't exist in this one—a cigarette burn at the second buttonhole, a hole in the right pocket.”

The Inspector shrugged and went away.

“Then your coat's being stolen has nothing to do with it?” Paula shivered. “Ellery, I could use a cigarette.”

Mr. Queen obliged. “On the contrary. The theft of my coat has everything to do with it.”

“But I don't understand. You just said—”

Mr. Queen held a match to Miss Paris's cigarette and stared intently at the body of Mike Brown.

Ollie Stearn's chauffeur, a hard-looking customer, twisted his cap and said: “Mike tells me after the fight he won't need me. Tells me he'll pick me up on the Grand Concourse. Said he'd drive himself.”

“Yes?”

“I was kind of—curious. I had a hot dog at the stand there and I—watched. I seen Mike come out and climb into the back—”

“Was he alone?” demanded the Inspector.

“Yeah. Just got in and sat there. A couple of drunks come along then and I couldn't see good. Only seemed to me somebody else come over and got into the car after Mike.”

“Who? Who was it? Did you see?”

The chauffeur shook his head. “I couldn't see good. I don't know. After a while I thought it ain't my business, so I walks away. But when I heard police sirens I come back.”

“The one who came after Mike Brown got in,” said Mr. Queen with a certain eagerness. “That person was wearing a coat, eh?”

“I guess so. Yeah.”

“You didn't witness anything else that occurred?” persisted Mr. Queen.

“Nope.”

“Doesn't matter, really,” muttered the great man. “Line's clear. Clear as the sun. Must be that—”

“What are you mumbling about?” demanded Miss Paris in his ear.

Mr. Queen stared. “Was I mumbling?” He shook his head.

Then a man from Headquarters came up with a dudish little fellow with frightened eyes who babbled he didn't know nothing, nothing, he didn't know nothing; and the Inspector said: “Come on, Oetjens. You were heared hooting off your mouth in that gin mill. What's the dope?”

And the little fellow said shrilly: “I don't want no trouble, no trouble. I only said—”

“Yes?”

“Mike Brown looked me up this morning,” muttered Oetjens, “and says to me, he says, ‘Hymie' he says, ‘Happy Day knows you, Happy Day takes a lot of your bets,' he says, ‘so go lay fifty grand with Happy on Coyle to win by a K.O.,' Mike says. ‘You lay that fifty grand for
me
, get it?' he says. And he says, ‘If you shoot your trap off to Happy or anyone else that you bet fifty grand for me on Coyle,' he says, ‘I'll rip your heart out and break your hands and give you the thumb,' he says, and a lot more, so I laid the fifty grand on Coyle to win by a K.O. and Happy took the bet at twelve to five, he wouldn't give no more.”

Jim Coyle growled: “I'll break your neck, damn you.”

“Wait a minute, Jim—”

“He's saying Brown took a dive!” cried the champion. “I licked Brown fair and square. I beat the hell out of him fair and square!”

“You thought you beat the hell out of him fair and square,” muttered Phil Maguire. “But he took a dive, Jim. Didn't I tell you, Inspector? Laying off that right of his—”

“It's a lie! Where's my manager? Where's Barney? They ain't going to hold up the purse on this fight!” roared Coyle. “I won it fair—I won the title fair!”

“Take it easy, Jim,” said the Inspector. “Everybody knows you were in there leveling tonight. Look here, Hymie, did Brown give you the cash to bet for him?”

“He was busted,” Oetjens cringed. “I just laid the bet on the cuff. The payoff don't come till the next day. So I knew it was okay, because with Mike himself betting on Coyle the fight was in the bag—”

“I'll cripple you, you tinhorn!” yelled young Coyle.

“Take it easy, Jim,” soothed Inspector Queen. “So you laid the fifty grand on the cuff, Hymie, and Happy covered the bet at twelve to five, and you knew it would come out all right because Mike was going to take a dive, and then you'd collect a hundred and twenty thousand dollars and give it to Mike, is that it?”

“Yeah, yeah. But that's all, I swear—”

“When did you see Happy last, Hymie?”

Oetjens looked scared and began to back away. His police escort had to shake him a little. But he shook his head stubbornly.

“Now it couldn't be,” asked the Inspector softly, “that somehow Happy got wind that you'd laid that fifty grand not for yourself, but for Mike Brown, could it? It couldn't be that Happy found out it was a dive, or suspected it?” The Inspector said sharply to a detective: “Find Happy Day.”

“I'm right here,” said a bass voice from the crowd; and the fat gambler waded through and said hotly to Inspector Queen: “So I'm the sucker, hey? I'm supposed to take the rap, hey?”

“Did you know Mike Brown was set to take a dive?”

“No!”

Phil Maguire chuckled.

And little Ollie Stearn, pale as his dead fighter, shouted: “Happy done it, Inspector! He found out, and he waited till after the fight, and when he saw Mike laying down he came out here and gave him the business! That's the way it was!”

“You lousy rat,” said the gambler. “How do I know you didn't do it yourself? He wasn't taking no dive you couldn't find out about! Maybe you stuck him up because of that fancy doll of his. Don't tell
me
. I know all about you and that Ivy broad. I know—”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said the Inspector with a satisfied smile, when there was a shriek and Ivy Brown elbowed her way through the jam and flung herself on the dead body of her husband for the benefit of the press.

And as the photographers joyously went to work, and Happy Day and Ollie Stearn eyed each other with hate, and the crowd milled around, the Inspector said happily to his son: “Not too tough. Not too tough. A wrap-up. It's Happy Day, all right, and all I've got to do is find—”

The great man smiled and said: “You're riding a dead nag.”

“Eh?”

“You're wasting your time.”

The Inspector ceased to look happy. “What am I supposed to be doing, then? You tell me. You know it all.”

“Of course I do, and of course I shall,” said Mr. Queen. “What are you to do? Find my coat.”

“Say, what
is
this about your damn coat?” growled the Inspector.

“Find my coat, and perhaps I'll find your murderer.”

It was a peculiar sort of case. First there had been the ride to the Stadium, and the conversation about how Phil Maguire didn't like Mike Brown, and then there was the ringside gossip, the preliminaries, the main event, the champion's knockout, and all the rest of—all unimportant, all stodgy little details … until Mr. Queen and Miss Paris strolled across the parking lot and found two things—or rather, lost one thing—Mr. Queen's coat—and found another—Mike Brown's body; and so there was an important murder case, all nice and shiny.

And immediately the great man began nosing about and muttering about his coat, as if an old and shabby topcoat being stolen could possibly be more important than Mike Brown lying there in the gravel of the parking space full of punctures, like an abandoned tire, and Mike's wife, full of more curves and detours than the Storm King highway, sobbing on his chest and calling upon Heaven and the New York press to witness how dearly she had loved him, poor dead gorilla.

So it appeared that Mike Brown had had a secret rendezvous with someone after the fight, because he had got rid of Ollie Stearn's chauffeur, and the appointment must have been for the interior of Ollie Stearn's red limousine. And whoever he was, he came, and got in with Mike, and there was a struggle, and he stabbed Mike almost a dozen times with something long and sharp, and then fled, leaving his camel's-hair coat behind, because with blood all over its front it would have given him away.

That brought up the matter of the weapon, and everybody began nosing about, including Mr. Queen, because it was a cinch the murderer might have dropped it in his flight. And, sure enough, a radio-car man found it in the dirt under a parked car—a long, evil-looking stiletto with no distinguishing marks whatever and no fingerprints except the fingerprints of the radio-car man. But Mr. Queen persisted in nosing even after that discovery, and finally the Inspector asked him peevishly: “What are you looking for now?”

“My coat,” explained Mr. Queen. “Do you see anyone with my coat?”

But there was hardly a man in the crowd with a coat. It was a warm night.

So finally Mr. Queen gave up his queer search and said: “I don't know what you good people are going to do, but, as for me, I'm going back to the Stadium.”

“For heaven's sake, what for?” cried Paula.

“To see if I can find my coat,” said Mr. Queen patiently.

“I told you you should have taken it with you!”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Queen. “I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I left it behind in Maguire's car. I'm glad it was stolen.”

“But why, you exasperating idiot?”

“Because now,” replied Mr. Queen with a cryptic smile, “I have to go looking for it.”

And while the morgue wagon carted Mike Brown's carcass off, Mr. Queen trudged back across the dusty parking lot and into the alley which led to the Stadium dressing rooms. And the Inspector, with a baffled look, herded everyone—with special loving care and attention for Mr. Happy Day and Mr. Ollie Stearn and Mrs. Ivy Brown—after his son. He didn't know what else to do.

And finally they were assembled in Jim Coyle's dressing room, and Ivy was weeping into more cameras, and Mr. Queen was glumly contemplating Miss Paris's red straw hat, which looked like a pot, and there was a noise at the door and they saw Barney Hawks, the new champion's manager, standing on the threshold in the company of several officials and promoters.

“What ho,” said Barney Hawks with a puzzled glance about. “You still here, champ? What goes on?”

“Plenty goes on,” said the champ savagely. “Barney, did you know Brown took a dive tonight?”

“What? What's this?” said Barney Hawks, looking around virtuously. “Who says so, the dirty liar? My boy won that title on the up and up, gentlemen! He beat Brown fair and square.”

“Brown threw the fight?” asked one of the men with Hawks, a member of the Boxing Commission. “Is there any evidence of that?”

“The hell with that,” said the Inspector politely. “Barney, Mike Brown is dead.”

Hawks began to laugh, then he stopped laughing and sputtered: “What's this? What's this? What's the gageroo? Brown dead?”

Jim Coyle waved his huge paw tiredly. “Somebody bumped him off tonight, Barney. In Stearn's car across the street.”

“Well, I'm a bum, I'm a bum,” breathed his manager, staring. “So Mike got his, hey? Well, well. Tough. Loses his title and his life. Who done it, boys?”

“Maybe you didn't know my boy was dead!” shrilled Ollie Stearn. “Yeah, you put on a swell act, Barney! Maybe you fixed it with Mike so he'd take a dive so your boy could win the title! Maybe—”