by Ellery Queen
He would not soon forget the look of pure joy on Ellen Murakami’s face.
“Tomorrow you must come to the station and make a statement.” Ohara almost smiled as he thought of the impact Onami would have on the department.
A short time and many bows later Ohara left the modest house where a modern-day Samurai stood protectively by his promised bride. As he drove away, his mind was undisturbed by the least ripple of doubt. Someday he would tell Ojiisan the story. Ohara felt he had a right to know.
“Q”
Ellery Queen
The Halloween Mystery
The square-cut envelope was a creation of orange ink on black notepaper; by which Ellery instantly divined its horrid authorship.
Behind it leered a bouncy hostess, all teeth and enthusiastic ideas, who spent large sums of some embarrassed man’s money to build a better mousetrap.
Having too often been one of the mice, he was grateful that the envelope was addressed to Miss Nikki Porter.
“But why to me at your apartment?” wondered Nikki, turning the black envelope over and finding nothing.
“Studied insult,” Ellery assured her. “One of those acid-sweet women who destroy an honest girl’s reputation at a stroke. Don’t even open it. Hurl it into the fire and let’s get on with the work.”
So Nikki opened it and drew out an enclosure cut in the shape of a cat.
“I am a master of metaphor,” muttered Ellery.
“What?” said Nikki, unfolding the feline.
“It doesn’t matter. But if you insist on playing the mouse, go ahead and read it.”
The truth was, he was a little curious himself.
“Fellow Spook,” began Nikki, frowning.
“Read no more. The hideous details are already clear—”
“Oh, shut up,” said Nikki. “There is a secret meeting of The Charmed Circle of Black Cats in Suite 1313, Hotel Chancellor, New York City, Oct. 31.”
“Of course,” said Ellery glumly. “That follows logically.”
“You must come in full costume as a Black Cat, including domino mask. Time your arrival for 9:05 P.M. promptly. Till the Witching Hour. Signed—G. Host. How darling!”
“No clue to the criminal?”
“No. I don’t recognize the handwriting.”
“Of course you’re not going.”
“Of course I am!”
“Having performed my moral duty as friend, protector, and employer. I now suggest you put the foul thing away and get back to our typewriter.”
“What’s more,” said Nikki. “you’re going, too.”
Ellery smiled his Number Three smile—the toothy one. “Am I?” he said.
“There’s a postscript on the cat’s—on the reverse side. Be sure to drag your boss-cat along, also costumed.”
Ellery could see himself as a sort of overgrown Puss-in-Boots plying the sjambok over a houseful of bounding tabbies all swilling Scotch. The vision was exhausting.
“I decline with the usual thanks.”
“You’re a stuffed shirt.”
“I’m an intelligent man.”
“You don’t know how to have fun.”
“These brawls inevitably wind up with someone’s husband taking a poke at a tall, dark, handsome stranger.”
“Coward.”
“Heavens. I wasn’t referring to myself!”
Whence it is obvious he had already lost the engagement.
Ellery stood before a door on the thirteenth floor of the Hotel Chancellor, cursing the Druids.
For it was Saman at whose mossy feet must be laid the origins of our recurrent October silliness. True, the lighting of ceremonial bonfires in a Gaelic glade must have seemed natural and proper at the time, and a Gaelic grove fitting rendezvous for an annual convention of ghosts and witches: but the responsibility of even pagan deities must surely be held to extend beyond temporal bounds, and the Druid lord of death should have foreseen that a bonfire would be out of place in a Manhattan hotel suite, not to mention disembodied souls, however wicked.
Then Ellery recalled that Pomona, goddess of fruits, had contributed nuts and apples to the burgeoning Halloween legend, and he cursed the Romans, too.
There had been Inspector Queen at home, who had intolerably chosen to ignore the whole thing: the taxi driver, who had asked amiably: “Fraternity initiation?”; the dread chorus of miaows during the long, long trek across the Chancellor lobby: and, finally, the reeking wag in the elevator who had tried to swing Ellery around by his tail, puss-pussying as he did so.
Cried Ellery out of the agony of his mortification: “Never, never, never again will I—”
“Stop grousing and look at this,” said Nikki, peering through her domino mask.
“What is it? I can’t see through this damned thing.”
“A sign on the door. If You Are a Black Cat, Walk In!!!!! With five exclamation points.”
“All right, all right,” Ellery grumbled. “Let’s go in and get it over with.”
And, of course, when they opened the unlocked door of 1313, Darkness.
And Silence.
“Now what do we do?” giggled Nikki, and jumped at the snick of the door behind them.
“I’ll tell you now what,” said Ellery enthusiastically. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
But Nikki was already a yard away, black in blackness.
“Wait! Give me your hand. Nikki.”
“Mister Queen. That’s not my hand.”
“Beg your pardon,” muttered Ellery. “We seem to be trapped in a hallway.”
“There’s a red light down there! Must be at the end of the hall—eee!”
“Think of the soup this would make for the starving.” Ellery disentangled her from the embrace of a number of articulated bones.
“Ellery! I don’t think that’s funny at all.”
“I don’t think any of this is funny.”
They groped toward the red light. It was not so much a light as a rosy shade of darkness which faintly blushed above a small plinth of the raven variety. The woman’s cornered the Black Paper Market, Ellery thought disagreeably as he read the runes of yellow fire on the plinth: TURN LEFT!!!!!!!
“And into, I take it,” he growled, “the great unknown.” And, indeed, having explored to the left, his hand encountered outer space; whereupon, intrepidly, and with a large yearning to master the mystery and come to grips with its diabolical authoress, Ellery plunged through the invisible archway, Nikki bravely clinging to his tail.
“Ouch!”
“What’s the matter?” gasped Nikki.
“Bumped into a chair. Skinned my shin. What would a chair be doing—?”
“Pooooor Ellery,” said Nikki, laughing. “Did the dreat bid mad hurt his—Ow!”
“Blast this—Ooo!”
“Ellery, where are you? Ouch!”
“Ow, my foot,” bellowed Ellery from somewhere. “What is this—a tank trap? Floor cluttered with pillows, hassocks—”
“Something cold and wet over here. Feels like an ice bucket. . .Owwwww!” There was a wild clatter of metal, a soggy crash, and silence again.
“Nikki! What happened?”
“I fell over a rack of fire tongs, I think.” Nikki’s voice came clearly from floor level. “Yes. Fire tongs.”
“Of all the stupid, childish, unfunny—”
“Oop.”
“Lost in a madhouse. Why is the furniture scattered every which way?”
“How should I know? Ellery, where are you?”
“In Bedlam. Keep your head now, Nikki, and stay where you are. Sooner or later a St. Bernard will find you and bring—”
Nikki screamed.
“Thank God,” said Ellery, shutting his eyes.
The room was full of blessed Consolidated Edison light, and various adult figures in black-cat costumes and masks were leaping and laughing and shouting: “Surpriiiiiise!” like idiot phantoms at the crisis of a delirium.
O Halloween.
“Ann! Ann Trent!” Nikki was squealing. “Oh, Ann, you fool, however did you find me?”
“Nikki, you’re looking wonderful. Oh, but you’re famous, darling. The great E.Q.’s secretary. . .”
Nuts to you, sister. Even bouncier than predicted. With that lazy, hippy strut. And chic, glossy chic. Lugs her sex around like a sample case. The kind of female who would be baffled by an egg. And looks a good five years older than she is, Antoine and others notwithstanding.
“But it’s not Trent any more, Nikki—it’s Mrs. John Crombie. Johnnnny!”
“Ann, you’re married? And didn’t invite me to the wedding!”
“Spliced in dear old Lunnon. John’s British—or was. Johnny, stop flirting with Edith Baxter and come here!”
“Ann darlin’—this exquisite girl! Scotch or bourbon, Nikki? Scotch if you’re the careful type—but bourbon works faster.”
John Crombie, Gent. Eyes of artificial blue, sunlamp complexion, Olivier chin. British Club and Fox and Hounds—he posts even in a living room. He will say in a moment that he loathes Americah. Exactly. Ann Trent Crombie must have large amounts of the filthy. He despises her and patronizes her friends. He will fix me with the superior Mayfair smile and flap a limp brown hand. . .Quod erat demonstrandum.
“I warn you, Nikki,” Ann Crombie was saying, “I’m hitched to a man who tries to jockey every new female he meets.” Blush hard, prim Nikki. Friends grow in unforeseen directions. “Oh, Lucy! Nikki, do you remember my kid sister Lu—?”
Squeal, squeal.
“Lucy Trent! This isn’t you?”
“Am I grown up, Nikki?”
“Heavens!”
“Lucy’s done all the party decorating, darling—spent the whole solid day up here alone fixing things up. Hasn’t she done an inspired job? But then I’m so useless.”
“Ann means she wouldn’t help, Nikki.”
Uncertain laugh. Poor Lucy. Embarrassed by her flowering youth, trying hard to be New York. . .There she goes, refilling a glass—emptying an ashtray—running out to the kitchen—for a tray of fresh hot pigs-in-blankets?. . .the unwanted and gauche hiding confusion by making herself useful. Keep away from your brother-in-law, dear; that’s an attractive little body under the Black Cat’s skin.
“Oh, Ellery, do come here and meet the Baxters. Mrs. Baxter—Edith—Ellery Queen. . .”
What’s this? A worm who’s turned, surely! The faded-fair type, hard-used by wedlock. Very small, a bit on the spready side—she’d let herself go—but now she’s back in harness again, all curried and combed, with a triumphant lift to her pale head, like an old thoroughbred proudly prancing in a paddock she had never hoped to enter again. And that glitter of secret pleasure in her blinky brown eyes, almost malice, whenever she looked at Ann Crombie. . .
“Jerry Baxter, Edith’s husband. Ellery Queen.”
“Hiya, son!”
“Hi yourself, Jerry.”
Salesman, or advertising-agency man, or Broadway agent. The life of the party. Three drinks and he’s off to the races. He will be the first to fall in the apple tub, the first to pin the tail on Lucy or Nikki instead of on the donkey, the first to be sick and the first to pass out. Skitter, stagger, sweat, and whoop. Why do you whoop, Jerry Baxter?
Ellery shook hot palms, smiled with what he hoped was charm, said affably, “Yes, isn’t it?” “Haven’t we met somewhere?” and things like that, wondering what he was doing in a hotel living room festooned with apples, marshmallows, nuts, and criss-crossing crepe-paper twists, hung with grinning pumpkins and fancy black-and-orange cardboard cats, skeletons, and witches, and choked with bourbon fumes, tobacco smoke, and Chanel No. 5.
The noise was maddening, and merely to cross the room required the preparations of an expedition, for the overturned furniture and other impedimenta on the floor—cunningly plotted to trap the groping Black Cats on their arrival—had been left where they were.
So Ellery, highball in hand, wedged himself in a safe corner and mentally added Nikki to the Druids and the Romans.
Ellery accepted the murder game without a murmur. He knew the futility of protest. Wherever he went, people at once suggested a murder game, apparently on the theory that a busman enjoys nothing so much as a bus. And, of course, he was to be the detective.
“Well, well, let’s get started,” he said gaily, for all the traditional Halloween games had been played, Nikki had slapped Jerry Baxter laughingly once and British Johnny—not laughingly—twice, the house detective had made a courtesy call, and it was obvious the delightful evening had all but run its course.
He hoped Nikki would have sense enough to cut the piece de resistance short, so that a man might go home and give his thanks to God; but no, there she was in a whispery, giggly huddle with Ann Crombie and Lucy Trent, while John Crombie rested his limp hand on Nikki’s shoulder and Edith Baxter splashed some angry bourbon into her glass.
Jerry was on all fours, being a cat.
“In just a minute,” called Nikki, and she tripped through the archway—kitchen-bound, to judge from certain subsequent cutlery sounds—leaving Crombie’s hand momentarily suspended.
Edith Baxter said, “Jerry, get up off that floor and stop making a darned fool of yourself!”—furiously.
“Now we’re all set,” announced Nikki, reappearing. “Everybody around in a circle. First I’ll deal out these cards, and whoever gets the ace of spades don’t let on!—because you’re the Murderer.”
“Ooh!”
“Ann, you stop peeking.”
“Who’s peeking?”
“A tenner says I draw the fatal pasteboard,” laughed Crombie. “I’m the killer type.”
“I’m the killer type!” shouted Jerry Baxter. “Gack-gack-gack-gack!”
Ellery closed his eyes.
“Ellery! Wake up.”
“Huh?”
Nikki was shaking him. The rest of the company were lined up on the far side of the room from the archway, facing the wall. For a panicky moment he thought of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
“You go on over there with the others, smartypants. You mustn’t see who the murderer is, either, so you close your eyes, too.”
“Fits in perfectly with my plans,” said Ellery, and he dutifully joined the five people at the wall.
“Spread out a little there—I don’t want anyone touching anyone else. That’s it. Eyes all shut? Good. Now I want the person who drew the ace of spades—Murderer—to step quietly away from the wall—”
“Not cricket,” came John Crombie’s annoying alto. “You’ll see who it is, dear heart.”
“Yes,” said Edith Baxter nastily. “The light’s on.”
“But I’m running this assassination! Now stop talking, eyes closed. Step out, Murderer—that’s it. . .quietly! No talking there at the wall! Mr. Queen is very bright and he’d get the answer in a shot just by eliminating voices—”
“Oh, come, Nikki,” said Mr. Queen modestly.
“Now, Murderer, here’s what you do. On the kitchen table you’ll find a full-face mask, a flashlight, and a bread knife. Wait! Don’t start for the kitchen yet—go when I switch off the light in here; that will be your signal to start. When you get to the kitchen, put on the mask, take the flashlight and knife, steal back into this room, and—pick a victim!”
“Oooh.”
“Ahhhh!”
“Ee!”
Mr. Queen banged his forehead lightly against the wall. How long, O Lord?
“Now remember, Murderer,” cried Nikki, “you pick anyone you want—except, of course, Ellery. He has to live long enough to solve the crime.”
If you don’t hurry, my love, I’ll be dead of natural causes.
“It’ll be dark, Murderer, except for your flash, so even I won’t know what victim you pick—”
“May the detective inquire the exact purpose of the knife?” asked the detective wearily of the wall. “Its utility in this divertissement escapes me.”
“Oh, the knife�
��s just a prop, goopy—atmosphere. Murderer, you tap your victim on the shoulder. Victim, whoever feels the tap, turn around and let Murderer lead you out of the living room to the kitchen.”
“The kitchen, I take it, is the scene of the crime,” said Mr. Queen gloomily.
“Uh-huh. And Victim, as soon as Murderer gets you into the kitchen, scream like all fury as if you’re being stabbed. Make it realistic! Everybody set? Ready?. . .All right, Murderer, soon’s I turn this light off go to the kitchen, get the mask and stuff, come back, and pick your victim. Here goes!”
Click! went the light switch. Being a man who checked his facts, Ellery automatically cheated and opened one eye. Dark, as advertised. He shut the eye, and then jumped.
“Stop!” Nikki had shrieked.
“What, what?” asked Ellery excitedly.
“Oh, I’m not talking to you, Ellery. Murderer, I forgot something! Where are you? Oh, never mind. Remember, after you’ve supposedly stabbed your victim in the kitchen, come back to this room and quickly take your former place against the wall. Don’t make a sound; don’t touch anyone. I want the room to be as quiet as it is this minute. Use the flash to help you see your way back, but as soon as you reach the wall turn the flash off and throw flash and mask into the middle of the living room—thus, darling, getting rid of the evidence. Do you see? But, of course, you can’t. Now even though it’s dark, people, keep your eyes shut. All right, Murderer—get set—go!”
Ellery dozed. . .
It seemed a mere instant later that he heard Nikki’s voice saying with incredible energy, “Murderer’s tapping a victim—careful with that flashlight, Murderer!—we mustn’t tempt our Detective too much. All right, Victim? Now let Murderer lead you to your doom. . .the rest of you keep your eyes closed. . .don’t turn ar. . .”
Ellery dozed again. . .
He awoke with a start at a man’s scream.
“Here! What—”
“Ellery Queen, you asleep again? That was Victim being carved up in the kitchen. Now. . .yes!. . .here’s Murderer’s flash back. . .that’s it, to the wall quietly. . .now flash off!—fine!—toss it and your mask away. . .Boom. Tossed. Are you turned around, face to the wall, Murderer, like everybody else? Everybody ready? Llllllights!”