Ellery Queen's Secrets of Mystery Anthology 2

by Ellery Queen

  The girl opened her mouth, as though about to rebut her own solicitor’s statement, but the young lawyer continued hastily, to forestall her.

  “No doubt in a pathetic attempt to emulate her brothers’ athletic prowess,” he said, “my client has acquired. Your Honour, a taste and aptitude for outdoor pastimes—golf, croquet, tennis, archery, horseback-riding, to name but a few. Taking advantage of these admittedly hoydenish proclivities of my client, the elder persons at the Ladies’ Hostel prevailed upon her to be the instrument of yesterday’s lamentable demonstration at Lord’s Cricket Ground—a demonstration which she now deeply regrets.”

  I saw the girl’s hands, lightly sun-tanned, clench hard on the rail of the dock. Again she opened her mouth, but her solicitor hastened on.

  “If Your Honour pleases,” he said, “any actual damage to the turf at Lord’s, the immemorial headquarters of our summer game, would have been viewed with repugnance by my client, with her sporting inclinations, however little they may become her in other respects. Indeed, as Inspector Harrigan has stated in evidence, the bomb-casing could not possibly have been fragmented by the detonation of its contents, consisting as these did merely of small fireworks—Chinese crackers or squibs.”

  This was news to Raffles and myself, who had arrived while the hearing was in progress, and we exchanged a surprised glance.

  “In view of the fact. Your Honour,” pleaded the solicitor, “that the bomb was designed only as a means of attracting attention, and that my client now bitterly regrets the incident, I ask Your Honour to exercise leniency in this case.”

  The magistrate, after addressing some stern remarks to the defendant in the dock, said, “The fine will be ten guineas, with two guineas costs. Next case!”

  “Come on, Bunny,” said Raffles.

  To my astonishment, he sought out the functionary who collected fines and paid the girl’s fine. As he returned his wallet to his pocket. Miss Mirabel Renny and her attendant solicitor came to the desk, and the functionary, indicating Raffles, said that the fine had been paid.

  Though Raffles was now wearing an immaculate town suit, with a pearl in his cravat, the girl immediately recognized him.

  “Why, you’re the man who was batting at Lord’s when I—” She broke off. Her fine eyes flashed. “How dare you,” she said hotly, “presume to pay my fine! I’m not in need of charity from men!”

  “No charity is involved,” Raffles assured her. “The amount will be deducted from your first month’s salary.”

  “Salary?” she exclaimed. “What d’you mean? What are you talking about?”

  “The post of Contributing Editor on a magazine now in the fruitful planning stage,” said Raffles. “If such a post, with the opportunity it provides for the dissemination of opinion, should happen to appeal to you. Miss Renny—”

  No question about it. She jumped at it. And, as the next few weeks proved, Raffles, could not have made a happier choice of young sportswoman to help in carrying out the editorial policy on which he had decided.

  As he exclaimed to Mirabel Renny and myself, before he went off to join cricketing house parties at some of the stately homes of the country, “Sport is in the English blood—which biologically, as far as I know, is no different in women from what it is in men. So we want to produce a well-balanced magazine which will equitably represent the interests and views of those of both sexes who have a taste for active pastimes.”

  Mirabel’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. She threw herself heart and soul into executing the role he assigned to her. She was a dynamo of activity. Our office in the Pollexfen Press Building looked out on Covent Garden, from which rose the clip-clopping hoofbeats of the horses drawing tumbrils ablaze with flowers, while market porters bustled about with tall, round towers of fruit-baskets balanced on their heads in the sunshine.

  We were untroubled by Lord Pollexfen, as Raffles had insisted on full editorial control. Raffles himself was active in the background on our behalf and, thanks to his influence, marvellous literary material came in, for merely token fees, from some of the greatest names in the world of sport.

  What with this, and with Mirabel’s aptitude and energy, my own task in putting together our first issue was far from onerous. Usually, at about noon, I would suggest that I take her to lunch, for she looked charming in the blue skirt and white shirtwaist, crisp and businesslike, which she wore to the office. But it was rarely that she would leave her work.

  “You go ahead, Mr. Manders,” she said. “I shall just have a sandwich and a cigarette.”

  She made out that she smoked Sullivans, like Raffles, but I knew this was just a gesture of emancipation, as cigarettes made her cough. But I would leave her to it and saunter across the Strand, bustling with hansoms in the sunshine, for a leisurely lunch and a few rubbers of whist at my club in the Adelphi, dropping back to the office at about four o’clock for a last supervisory look round before returning to my Mount Street flat to take a tub and dress for dinner. It was not a bad life, the editorial life.

  I sent Raffles a card, care of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, whose guest he was while playing cricket there, to let him know when the foundry proofs, the final proofs of our first issue fully made-up, were due from the printers, the McWhirter Printing & Engraving Company, in Long Acre. He turned up, looking tanned and fit, the same morning as the proofs arrived and was very pleased with them.

  “A great job. Bunny! You and Mirabel have done wonders. Our first issue’s a corker. It’ll open a new era in sporting journalism.”

  There was a knock on the door. Lord Pollexfen strode in.

  “Ah, good morning. Raffles,” he said. “Good morning, Manders. Mr. McWhirter, the Master Printer, tells me he’s delivered your foundry proofs. I’d like a look at them before deciding how many thousands of copies to venture on as a printing order.”

  Raffles handed him the proofs, and I offered him a sherry-and-bitters, which Raffles and I were drinking as a mid-morning refreshment. The peer shook his head, pushed his silk hat to the back of it, and, still standing, screwed his monocle into his eye to examine the proofs.

  “A splendid Contents page, gentlemen,” he said. “Such names! John L. Sullivan—Lord Lonsdale of the Lonsdale Belts—Sir Harry Preston on the subject of Tod Sloan, the great jockey—Vardon on golf—Prince Ranjisinjhi on tiger-shooting! Excellent! Outstanding!”

  “We owe those contributions to our Editor,” I said, indicating Raffles, who was sitting on the edge of my desk, swinging a leg idly.

  “I foresaw something of this, of course, when I approached him,” said the Press baron. “I knew what I was doing. I always do.” He turned the pages. His smile faded. “What’s this? What are these interpolated effusions by women?”

  “Those are articles,” Raffles said, “obtained by our Contributing Editor from various eminent ladies with active tastes.”

  “But good God, man! John L. Sullivan’s article on boxing followed by some female whining about the exclusion of her sex from witnessing the bouts staged at the National Sporting Club? This is monstrously out of place, Raffles!”

  “I’m sorry to hear you say that, Pollexfen,” said Raffles.

  “And here again—the great Harry Vardon on golf immediately followed by some woman bleating about the need for a more socially acceptable kind of garment as a first step to eradicating the insult to her sex in their being obliged to drive off more favoured tees than the men. What provocative nonsense! What does the idiotic woman mean—‘a more socially acceptable kind of garment’?”

  “It’s shown there in the illustrations,” Raffles said. “One illustration depicts the hampering effect on the golf swing of ankle-length skirt and petticoats in a high wind. The contrasting illustration shows the healthful freedom, both physical and psychological, provided by a garment, a form of trousering, specially designed by our own Contributing Editor.”

  “This disgraceful illustration,” the peer said angrily, “appears to have been posed for by
that young woman in the other office. I’ve seen her before somewhere. Isn’t she the one who threw the bomb at Lord’s?”

  “Indeed yes,” said Raffles. “Our Contributing Editor.”

  Lord Pollexfen threw the proof down on my desk. “I will not publish a magazine polluted through and through with this kind of subversive stuff. It’s entirely contrary to the policy of the Pollexfen Press, which is to keep women contented in their homes. I’m deeply disappointed. Raffles. This issue will have to be remade, omitting the offensive material. And call that young woman in. I intend to dismiss her instantly.”

  “I’m sorry, Pollexfen,” Raffles said quietly. “I engaged Miss Renny. As a matter of principle, I will neither dismiss her nor alter one word of this first issue of my magazine.”

  “Then, by God, you must look elsewhere for a publisher!”

  “In that case, Manders and I will publish the magazine from our own resources. Shall we not, Bunny?”

  “Certainly, Raffles,” I said, wondering uneasily what resources he was talking about, as we both were overdrawn at the bank.

  “I warn you,” said the Press peer, glaring haughtily through his monocle. “A. J. Raffles is not the only name to conjure with on the sports horizon. I shall seek a superior name for my sports magazine—and use the entire financial resources of the Pollexfen Press to crush any amateurish attempt at a rival publication.”

  “That is your privilege,” Raffles said courteously.

  “I also decline,” barked the peer, “to be responsible for expenses incurred to date, including McWhirter’s bill, and I shall require vacant possession of this office by six p.m. today.”

  He stalked out, slamming the door.

  Raffles chuckled. “In chivalric terms. Bunny, there goes a male rampant, mounted on a prejudice, in a field ensanguined. Of course, this was inevitable.”

  “You expected it?” I said, astonished.

  “I counted on it. Bunny.” He offered me a cigarette from his case. “Well, now, first things first. We’re without premises. We’re overdrawn at the bank, but the manager’s a cricketer and a good friend. He won’t mind our using the bank as an accommodation address. Got a pencil handy? Take down this announcement.”

  Lighting my cigarette and his own, he paced thoughtfully.

  “‘Owing,’” he dictated, “‘to the refusal of the original publisher to permit the expression of female opinion, and therefore withdrawing financial support, prospective contributors to A. J. Raffles’ Magazine, which hopes soon to publish under less prejudiced auspices, are notified that unsolicited contributions should be submitted to The Editor, Raffles’ Magazine, care of County and Confidential Bank, Berkeley Square, London, accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for return if unsuitable.’ That’s the conventional wording, I think. Bunny?”

  “Well, more or less,” I said.

  “Good,” said Raffles. “Run it in the Personal columns of all evening and daily newspapers till further notice. Now, another thing: as eligible bachelors, we both get plenty of invitations to dine out—”

  “You in the best houses,” I said, “myself at the second best.”

  Comparisons are invidious,” said Raffles. Accept all the invitations you get. I shall do the same. And we owe no duty to Pollexfen, so there’s no need to make it a secret, in mixed company, that we’ve parted from him, and the reason for it, and are trying to get out the magazine by using our private means. Now, let’s call Mirabel in and see if she’s prepared to stand by us in this crisis.”

  One flash from Mirabel’s eyes, when she heard that we were now to go it alone, made it plain where she stood. So, for better or worse, I rented a bleak little office for us just off Drury Lane.

  Money being tight, I was glad enough to dine out frequently, and it seemed to me, when I recounted our trouble with Lord Pollexfen, that the mirth of the men at the table was offensively raucous, but that some of the ladies looked at me sympathetically as they withdrew to the drawing-room and whatever ladies talk about there, and left us men to our port.

  My leg was pulled unmercifully by some of these hearties, but my real worry was the Master Printer, Mr. McWhirter. We were in a galling position. We had a fine magazine made up and ready to print, but there was not a hope of a single copy coming off the presses of that canny Scotsman until his bill for services to date was paid.

  “We shall have to call on somebody. Bunny,” Raffles said.

  “Who, for instance?” I asked gloomily.

  “A certain barrister who’s a member of one of my clubs. Bunny. His name’s Sir Geoffrey Cullimore, K.C. He’s a blustering brute who makes at least fifty thousand a year by reducing men to jelly in the witness-box, and women to tears.”

  “Then what’s the use of calling on a man like that?” I said.

  Raffles gave me a wicked look. “His wife has a valuable necklace, Bunny.”

  My heart lurched.

  The Cullimore mansion was in Eaton Square, and Raffles, masked, shinned up the porch pillar to pay his call, by way of the window of the master bedroom, at two a.m. on a moonless night. I myself waited below on the porch ready to reel out, in evening-dress and opera hat, and, enacting the role of a gentleman who had dined too extensively, confuse with maudlin inquiries the bobby on the beat if he should make an inopportune appearance.

  Fortunately, he did not show up at all, and when Raffles rejoined me, removing his mask, he had the necklace-case in his pocket.

  “It’s locked,” he told me. “I’ll pick the lock at Kern’s place.”

  Ivor Kern, the fence we did business with, a young-old man with a perpetual, cynical half-smile, had an antique shop in King’s Road, which was not far off. Under the flaring gaslight in Kern’s cluttered sitting-room over the shop. Raffles picked the lock of the necklace case and threw it open.

  It was empty.

  Raffles was as shocked as I was, but Kern’s smirk widened.

  “Emmeline Cullimore,” he said, reading the name embossed on the leather necklace-case. “Well, as it happens, I can tell you where that necklace is. It’s just across the road in the very secure safe of a pawnbroker friend of mine.”

  “How d’you know?” Raffles said grimly.

  “Because jewellery offered to him in pledge,” Kern said, “he usually brings over to me for an expert valuation before making an advance. A lady wanted to pledge a necklace with him this morning. She wore a veil and said her name was Doris Stevens, but he recognized her because she lives nearby, in Eaton Square. She was Lady Cullimore. I valued the necklace at two-thousand-and-seventy pounds. He gives ten per cent of value on pledges, so he let her have two-hundred-and-seven pounds on it. Bad luck. Raffles—you can’t win every time.”

  We parted in silence, I to my flat in Mount Street, Raffles to his set of rooms in The Albany, just off Piccadilly.

  To my surprise, he showed up at the office in Drury Lane next morning, and seemed to be in very good spirits.

  “I have news for you. Bunny,” he said, as he poured himself a sherry-and-bitters. “I dropped in at the bank on my way here. Yesterday afternoon, just before closing-time, a lady made a deposit to the credit of A. J. Raffles’ Magazine. She wore a veil, and signed the paying-in slip in the name of Doris Stevens. It was a cash deposit, in five-pound notes, with two sovereigns, of exactly two-hundred-and-seven pounds.”

  “Good God!” I said. “What d’you make of this. Raffles?”

  His grey eyes danced. “One wonders, Bunny.” He took out his wallet. “I cashed a cheque for a hundred for incidental expenses—to keep our announcement running in the Personal columns, and to pay Mirabel’s salary, and so on, with a little ready money for ourselves. We shan’t need much, as we’re dining out so frequently nowadays.”

  I accepted my share, and was glad of it. But the McWhirter problem remained. He was badgering for his bill to be paid, and it obviously was quite useless to offer him, on account, the mere £107 remaining to the magazine’s credit, and expect him to pr
int thousands of copies of our first issue on the strength of it.

  I pointed this out to Raffles one morning about a week after the curious incident of the veiled lady.

  He nodded regretfully. “We’re stymied, Bunny. The only thing we can do is go and see Lord Pollexfen. It’s no use prevaricating. We must be realistic. Come on, let’s go and take our medicine.”

  “A damned bitter draught,” I said, as we put on our hats and walked round to Covent Garden, ablaze with the flower-barrows in the lovely sunshine. “If he does agree to take over the magazine again, it’ll be on his conditions—no female opinion, Mirabel to be sacked.”

  Significantly, we were kept waiting for some time in the ante-chamber of the Pollexfen Press Building before we were admitted to Lord Pollexfen’s sanctum, which was almost as large as the Long Room at Lord’s.

  The peer, without rising from his massive desk or inviting us to be seated, screwed his monocle into his eye.

  “Well?” he said haughtily.

  “I hear rumours in Fleet Street,” Raffles said, “that you’re going ahead with your plans for a sports magazine.”

  “I informed you of my intention of doing so. I’ve found a suitable name for its bannerhead. What I say I will do. Raffles, I do.”

  “Frankly, Pollexfen,” Raffles said, “we’ve run into certain difficulties—McWhirter and one thing and another. We’ve found the business side of producing a magazine a considerable encroachment on our time and—candidly—on our personal resources.”

  “I warned you,” the peer said coldly. “Publishing is not for amateurs. If you’re here to seek a return to our former relationship, I’m not interested. My alternative plans are afoot. Now—”

  “You expressed some interest,” Raffles said quickly, “in the literary material I obtained from personal acquaintances—Mr. John L. Sullivan—Prince Ranjisinjhi—”