Ellery Queen's Secrets of Mystery Anthology 2

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by Ellery Queen


  The peer, his monocle fixedly regarding Raffles, withdrew his hand slowly from the bell on his desk.

  “I could, I think,” Raffles said, “persuade those gentlemen, as a personal favour to me, to allow the transfer of their material to your own magazine, if you—oh, the devil! Manders and I aren’t business men. We’ve sunk more than we can afford into the magazine. If you’d care to consider acquiring its literary assets for a reasonable sum—”

  “What d’you call a reasonable sum?” snapped the peer.

  “Well, if you’d take over McWhirter’s bill to date,” Raffles said, “and—well, we’d like to get back a crumb or two of what we’ve spent. We could, of course, go to the City for finance—I have friends there—if we decide we must go on. But—”

  “It interferes with your hedonistic way of life,” Lord Pollexfen said sarcastically.

  Raffles shrugged. “I don’t know what we have left of the funds we personally put into the magazine’s bank account, Pollexfen, but if you care to pay a sum equal to the current balance, you can take over the magazine’s literary assets and all the work done so far—lock, stock, and barrel—and we’ll be free of the whole thing,” he added, with a gesture of weary disgust.

  The Press baron hesitated. But he knew our present balance could not possibly be greater than the amount of McWhirter’s bill, and he said, with abrupt decision. “Very well. I’ll do that. Naturally, I shall require your bank manager to vouch for the amount currently standing to your magazine’s credit.”

  “Won’t you take my word for it?” Raffles said coldly.

  “I’m afraid not.” The peer struck a bell on his desk. The door opened. “Call my brougham,” said the peer, with hauteur. Where’s your bank. Raffles?” In Berkeley Square.” Then let’s get the matter over and done with.”

  As, to the clip-clopping of the horse, the three of us rode in the brougham through the turmoil of the sunny streets, I knew Raffles must be inwardly raging, as I was myself. If only Lord Pollexfen had accepted Raffles’ word for what stood to the magazine’s credit, then Raffles might have named a reasonably substantial sum. As it was, we were about to be humiliated, and the Press peer’s whole attitude betrayed his awareness of the fact.

  “This is Lord Pollexfen,” Raffles told the bank manager, when we were shown into his office. “He’s acquiring the literary assets and so forth of Raffles’ Magazine, Mr. Harper, for a sum equal to the magazine account’s present balance—are you not, Pollexfen?”

  “That is the agreement,” the peer said haughtily.

  “I can tell you the balance in a trice,” said the bank manager, opening a large ledger.

  I could have told him in less than a trice. Our balance was £107.

  “At the conclusion of yesterday’s business,” said the manager, running a finger down the page, “the sum standing to the credit oi A. J. Raffles’ Magazine of Sport was precisely seven-thousand-five-hundred pounds, sixteen shillings and—”

  My knees felt weak. The room spun round me. There seemed to be long silence. Then there was a scratching sound. It was made by Lord Pollexfen’s pen. He was writing a cheque. He tore it out and threw it on the desk.

  At the door, he turned, lean and tall, his monocle glittering.

  “The name of A. J. Raffles,” he said, “will never again be mentioned in any periodical published by the Pollexfen Press.”

  The door slammed.

  A few minutes later, as Raffles and I were leaving the bank, I noticed a heavily veiled lady at the counter. Raffles gripped my arm, checking me. The lady pushed a sheaf of banknotes across the mahogany to the attentive clerk.

  “To be placed,” said the veiled lady, in a voice so low, almost furtive, as scarcely to be audible, “to the credit of A. J. Raffles’ Magazine.”

  We walked on out into the sunshine.

  That night, we took Mirabel Renny and a friend of hers called Margaret, a fine, forthright type of girl, like Mirabel herself, to dine at Frascati’s palatial restaurant in Oxford Street.

  “I’m afraid, Mirabel,” Raffles said, as the wine waiter brought champagne bottles in a silver ice-bucket to our table, “that you won’t be entirely pleased by the reason for this dinner. Perhaps we’d better admit the truth right away. The fact is, we’ve sold the magazine.”

  “Sold it?” she said incredulously.

  “For seven-thousand-five-hundred pounds,” Raffles said. “To Lord Pollexfen.”

  “Pollexfen? But—but that means—”

  “It means you’re sacked, I’m sorry to say,” Raffles admitted. “So this cheque I’m handing you is—in lieu of notice.”

  Mirabael’s fine eyes flashed. “Men!” she said. “I might have known this would happen, Margaret. The moment things get difficulty men think only of themselves. They’re selfish, through and—” She looked again at the cheque. “But—but this is for seven-thousand-six-hundred pounds!”

  “Bunny and I owed the magazine account a hundred,” Raffles explained. “I’ve already apologised to Bunny for omitting to tell him that I’ve kept in close touch with the bank all along regarding the state of the magazine’s account.”

  “The privilege of an Editor-in-Chief,” I said, a shade wryly.

  “But, of course,” said Raffles, “Bunny shares equally with me the seven-thousand-five-hundred from Pollexfen—which has nothing whatever to do with this cheque, Mirabel. This money came from other sources. What marital injustices or male insensitivities may explain this money, I just don’t know. But you need have no hesitation in using it to start a magazine of your own, Mirabel, to further the Cause you have at heart. This money came entirely from women—unknown women in this country, Mirabel—that their voice, at last, may be heard in the land.”

  She gazed at him. She blinked. Tears came into her eyes.

  They were tears of sheer, incredulous happiness, but Raffles, embarrassed by them, quickly unwired a champagne bottle. The cork popped.

  “We must admit,” he said, as he poured the bubbly fizzing into our glasses, “that we owe much to Mr. John L. Sullivan, Prince Ranjisinjhi, and those other great names who provided priceless literary material. But let’s drink now, above all, to those anonymous others, those nameless ones who so hopefully submitted,” said A. J. Raffles, raising his glass, “unsolicited contributions!”

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Though Mr. Manders’ account of the above adventure makes no mention of the fact, it may be of journalistic interest to note that Lord Pollexfen’s plans for a sports magazine excluding the name of A. J. Raffles were forestalled shortly thereafter by the appearance, from a rival publishing house, of C. B. Fry’s Magazine of Sport, which flourished in the golden years of the Edwardian heyday.

  Mr. C. B. Fry, perhaps the most famous of A. J. Raffles’ cricketing contemporaries, and also at that time holder of the world’s record for the broad jump, was ably assisted in his Editorship by young Mr. Bertram Atkey, whose later tales of the Exploits of Winnie O’Wynn, long-running in The Saturday Evening Post of the 1920’s were dramatized by the eminent actor, Mr. William Gillette, the theatre’s greatest Sherlock Holmes.

  And finally, Barry Perowne’s real name is Philip Atkey, and Philip Atkey-Barry Perowne is Bertram Atkey’s nephew.

  “Q”

  Ellery Queen

  Uncle from Australia

  All of us would like to have a rich uncle from Australia—but a rich uncle from Australia can turn out to be an altogether mixed blessing…a classic situation…with a difference…

  Detective: ELLERY QUEEN

  “How did you happen to call me, Mr. Hall?” asked Ellery. He had been annoyed at firsts because it was half-past ten and he was about to bed down with his favorite book, the dictionary, when his phone rang.

  “The security hofficer at the ‘otel ‘ere gave it to me,” said the man on the line. His salty cockney accent savored of London, but the man said he was from Australia.

  “What’s your problem?”

  It turned o
ut that Herbert Peachtree Hall was not merely from Australia, he was somebody’s uncle from Australia. Uncles from Australia were graybeard standards of the mystery story, and here was one, if not exactly in the flesh, at least in the voice. So Ellery’s ears began to itch.

  It appeared that Mr. Hall was all of three somebodies’ uncle from Australia, a niece and two nephews. A migrant from England of thirty years’ exile. Hall said he had made his pile on the nether continent, liquidated it, and was now prepared—ah, that classic tradition!—to give it all away in a will. The young niece and the two young nephews being his only kin (if he had any kith, they were apparently undeserving of his largess), and all three being New York residents. Hall had journeyed to the United States to make their acquaintance and decide which of them deserved to be his heir. Their names were Millicent, Preston, and James, and they were all Halls, being the children of his only brother, deceased.

  Ever the voice of caution, Ellery asked, “Why don’t you simply divide your estate among the three?”

  “Because I don’t want to,” said Hall, which seemed a reasonable reason. He had a horror, it seemed, of cutting up capital into bits and pieces.

  He had spent two months getting to know Millicent, Preston, and James; and this evening he had invited them to dinner to announce the great decision.

  “I told ‘em, ‘Old ‘erbert,’ I says, ‘old ‘erbert ‘as taken a fancy to one of you. No ‘ard feelings, you hunderstand, boys, but it’s Millie gets my money. I’ve signed a will naming ‘er my heir.” Preston and James had taken his pronouncement with what Hall said he considered ruddy good sportsmanship, and they had even toasted their sister Millie’s good fortune in champagne.

  But after the departure of the trio, back in his hotel room, the uncle from Australia had afterthoughts.

  “I never ‘ad trouble making money, Mr. Queen, but maybe by giving it away I’m asking for some. I’m sixty, you know, but the doctors tell me I’m fit as one of your dollars—can live another fifteen years. Suppose Millie decides she won’t wait that long?”

  “Then make another will,” said Ellery, “restoring the status quo ante.”

  “Mightn’t be fair to the girl,” protested Hall. “I ‘aven’t real grounds for suspicion, Mr. Queen. That’s why I want the services of a hinvestigator, to muck through Millie’s life, find out if she’s the sort to bash in ‘er poor rich uncle’s ‘ead. Can you come ‘ere right now, so I can tell you what I know about ‘er?”

  “Tonight? That seems hardly necessary! Won’t tomorrow morning do, Mr. Hall?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” said Herbert Peachtree Hall stubbornly, “could be too late.”

  So for some reason obscure to him—although his ears were itching like mad—Ellery decided to humor the Australian. The hour of 11 P.M. plus six minutes found him outside Hall’s suite in the midtown hotel, knocking. His knock went unanswered. Whereupon, Ellery tried the door, found it opened to his hand, and walked in.

  And there was a bone-thin little man with a white thatch and a bush tan stretched out on the carpet, face down, with a brassy-looking Oriental paperknife in his back.

  Ellery leaped for the phone, told the hotel operator to send up the house doctor and call the police, and got down on one knee beside the prone figure. He had seen an eyelid flicker.

  “Mr. Hall!” he said urgently. “Who did it? Which one?”

  The already cyanosed lips trembled. At first nothing came out, but then Ellery heard, quite distinctly, one word.

  “Hall,” the dying man whispered.

  “Hall? Which Hall? Millie? One of your nephews? Mr. Hall, you have to tell me—”

  But Mr. Hall was not telling anything more to anybody. The man from down under was down, down under, and Ellery knew he was not going to come up again, ever.

  The following day Ellery was an inquisitive audience of one in his father’s office at police headquarters. The director, was, of course, Inspector Queen; the cast were the three Halls—Millicent, Preston, and James. The banty Inspector put them through their paces peevishly.

  “All your uncle was able to get out before he died,” snapped the Inspector, “was the name Hall, which tells us it was one of you, but not which one.

  “This is an off-beat case, God help me,” the old man went on. “Murders have three ingredients—motive, means, opportunity. You three match up to them pretty remarkably. Motive? Only one of you benefits from Herbert P. Hall’s death—and that’s you. Miss Hall.”

  Millicent Hall had a large bottom, and a large face with a large nose in the middle of it. She was plain enough, Ellery concluded, to have grasped at the nettle murder in order to achieve that luscious legacy.

  “I didn’t kill him,” the girl protested.

  “So say they all. Miss Hall. Means? Well, there are no prints on the knife that did the job—because of the chasework on the handle and blade—but it’s an unusual piece, and establishing its ownership has been a cinch. Mr. Preston Hall, the knife that killed your uncle belongs to you.”

  “Belonged to me,” coughed Preston Hall, a long lean shipping clerk with the fangs of a famished ocelot. “I presented it to Uncle Herbert just last week. Father left it to me, and I thought Uncle Herbert might like to have a memento of his only brother. He actually cried when I gave it to him.”

  “I’m touched,” snarled the Inspector. “Opportunity? One of you was actually seen and identified loitering about the hotel last night after the dinner party broke up—and that was you, James Hall.”

  James Hall was a bibulous fellow, full of spirits of both sorts; he worked, when one of the spirits moved him, in the sports department of a tabloid.

  Sure it was me,” James Hall laughed. Hell, I stayed around to have a few belts, that’s all, before tootling on home. Does that mean I am the big bad slayer?”

  “This is like coming down the stretch in a three-horse race,” complained Inspector Queen. “Millicent Hall is leading on motive—though I’d like to point out that you, Preston, or you, James, could have knocked the old boy over to teach him a lesson for not leaving his money to you. Preston’s leading on means; I have only your uncorroborated word that you gave the letter knife to Herbert Hall; what I do know is that it’s yours. Though, again, even if you did give Hall the knife, you, Millie, or you, James, could have used it in that hotel room. And James, you’re leading on opportunity—though your brother or sister could have easily sneaked up to your uncle’s room without being seen. Ellery, what are you sitting there like a dummy for?”

  “I’m thinking,” said Ellery, looking thoughtful.

  “And have you thought out,” asked his father acidly, “which one of the Halls their uncle meant when he said ‘Hall’ killed him? Do you see a glimmer?”

  “Oh, more than a glimmer, dad,” Ellery said. “I see it all.”

  CHALLENGE TO THE READER

  Who killed Uncle Herbert from Australia? And how did Ellery know?

  Old ‘erbert was rights dad,” Ellery said. Millie, drooling over the prospect of all those Australian goodies, couldn’t wait for her uncle to die naturally. But she hadn’t the nerve to murder him by herself—did you, Miss Hall? So you held out the bait of a three-way split to your brothers, and they willingly joined you in the plot. Safety in numbers, and all that. Right?”

  The three Halls had grown very still indeed.

  “It’s always disastrous,” Ellery said sadly, “trying to be clever in a murder. The plan was to confuse the issue and baffle the police—one of you being tied to motive, another to the weapon, the third to opportunity. It was all calculated to water down suspicion—spread it around.”

  “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the drinking Hall, quite soberly; and his brother and sister nodded at once.

  The Inspector was troubled. “But how do you know, Ellery?”

  “Because Herbert Hall was a Cockney. He dropped his aitches; in certain key words beginning with a vowel, he also added the cockney aitch. Well, what did he
say when I asked him which one of the three had stabbed him? He said, ‘Hall.’ I didn’t realize till just now that he wasn’t saying ‘Hall’—he was adding an aitch. What he really said was ‘air—all three of them murdered him!”

  Edward D. Hoch

  Captain Leopold Gets Angry

  It started out as a nasty case—children in danger. And that kind of case always hit Captain Leopold in his gut, hit him even harder than murder…

  Captain Leopold and Lieutenant Fletcher have a new associate—Connie Trent, former undercover narcotics agent and now a member (and the best-looking one!) of the Detective Division of the Police Department…

  Detective: CAPTAIN LEOPOLD

  The children had lingered at the playground through most of the mornings enjoying the sudden July sunshine after three days of rain. The young man who paused to watch their playing might have been basking in the sun himself, enjoying a solitary stroll across the park.

  After a moment he called out to one of the nearby children. “Liz? You’re Liz Lambeth, aren’t you? I know your daddy.”

  The little blonde girl left the others and came cautiously closer. She was nine years old, with a child’s curiosity, and the man had a pleasant, friendly face. “You know my daddy?”

  “Sure. Come along. I’ll take you to him.”

  She screwed up her face uncertainly. “He’s at work!”

  “No, he isn’t. He’s parked right down the road in his truck. You want to see him, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, come with me, then. It’s just a little way.”

  He held out his hand, and after a moment the little girl took it.

  The armored car had just pulled up in front of Independent Electronics Corporation when the young man left his parked auto and walked quickly toward the entrance. He paced himself well, so that his route intercepted that of the uniformed man who was carrying a heavy white sack in one hand and a drawn revolver in the other.

 

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