Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World

by Ellery Queen

  The bus dropped him in the High Road. He reached the corner of his street.

  The gold-and-silver Rolls was there, standing in front of his house.

  He walked down the street toward it, feeling the terror of a man in a nightmare. Was Cutler immortal, that he should be able to get up from the desk and drive down here? Had he imagined the red spot, had his shots gone astray? He knew only that he must find out the truth.

  When he reached the car it was locked and empty. He opened his front door. The house was silent.

  The house was silent and he was silent, as he moved up the stairs delicately on tiptoe. He opened the door of the bedroom.

  Phyllis was in bed. With her was the young chauffeur Meech. A cigar, one of his master’s cigars, was stubbed out in an ashtray.

  Harold stared at them for a long moment of agony. Then, as they started up, he said words incomprehensible to them, words from the ritual of school. “A boiler fails in everything he tries. . .I am a boiler.”

  He shut the door, went into the bathroom, took out the revolver, and placed the tiny muzzle in his mouth. Then he pulled the trigger.

  In this final action the boiler succeeded at last.

  EDITORIAL POSTSCRIPT

  The story you have just read was nominated by MWA (Mystery Writers of America) as one of the five best new mystery short stories published in American magazines and books during 1979.

  Frits Remar

  The Photo

  This story, written by a Danish author new to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and probably new to the American public, won second prize in a crime short-story contest run by a Norwegian weekly called “A—Magazine” and sponsored by The Riverton Club of Norway, the Swedish Crime Novel Academy, and the Poe Club of Denmark.

  The author, Frits Remar, is a former advertising man, in his early forties, blond, married, has two children, is “recently a teetotaler,” and lives in a small community north of Copenhagen. In 1972, one of his books won the prize as the best Danish crime novel of that year.

  Mr. Remar’s prizewinning short story tells of two young men of the Danish navy who have been assigned to patrol-guard duty on the eastern shore of Greenland. The area is so sparsely populated that they rarely meet another person on their 2,000-mile trip, which takes about three months from the base to almost the North Pole and back. Patrol-guarding can be a lonely and dangerous business. . .

  Kurt has behaved strangely this last fortnight. That is, in the daytime there hasn’t been any trouble. As usual we have been working by turns, making the usual observations, keeping the log, and so on. But in the night when we had camped and eaten, he would crawl into his sleeping bag, slip a photo out of his pocket, and stare at it, sighing and groaning.

  Generally we would chat for a couple of hours, have a game of cards or chess, or try and tune in on some music station on our shortwave radio before going to sleep. But there hasn’t been anything like that these past two weeks.

  He thinks I haven’t noticed. He mumbles something about being dead-tired and wanting to turn in early. And then, when I have picked up a book and pretend to be reading it, he will take the photo out of the pocket of his shirt and start his adoration.

  It’s the photograph of a girl, of course. There’s nothing unnatural about that. I too have a girl waiting for me at home. But I didn’t know that Kurt had a girl. At any rate, he never spoke about one, and now that we have been here for almost one year, there isn’t much we don’t know about each other.

  I have started fearing that he has what we call “the polar tantrum.” As far as I know, there have only been a few cases of that up here. And light attacks have been cured by a sensible talk and 12 or 14 hours of sleep after an injection.

  I have tried to talk sense to Kurt, but each time it has come to nothing. He has just been grunting or nodding yes or no. I have begun wondering if we should stay over for a couple of days and nights in our next camp, after tomorrow’s march.

  But how I shall persuade Kurt to accept an injection voluntarily, I don’t know. And I don’t think I shall be able to give him one forcibly. We are of the same size and strength and have been through the same training of hand-to-hand fighting. So if I start struggling with him inside the tent, it will only take a couple of minutes before everything is broken.

  And that won’t do. It will be at least two months before we get back to the base, so in order to survive we need every bit of our equipment.

  And outside the tent it’s no good, either. If I can’t get behind him and take him by surprise, I may as well forget it, and the chances of catching him off guard are very small. During such a long trip as ours everything becomes routine, so if I do anything unexpected he will grow suspicious immediately.

  The only possibility is to try while he is asleep, for I don’t think I alone can persuade him. It would be something quite different, of course, if we were at the base. In the first place, the others would be there to hold him, and then there’s the boss who far better than I would be able to bring him to his senses.

  Until tomorrow I shall consider it thoroughly, and if he then turns in right after we eat our meal and feed the dogs, I’ll stay awake till I’m sure he’s asleep. Then I’ll knock him out with a blow on the head so that he’ll be unconscious when I insert the needle.

  For, even if I give him a double dose, it will take about 15 minutes for the drug to work, and in that quarter of an hour we would have enough time to tear the tent apart.

  I cast a sidelong glance at him over the book, which I had in my hands. He lay with his back to me and had stopped sighing. He drew a deep and regular breath. Apparently he was asleep. Should I try it tonight instead? No, this camp isn’t good for more than one night’s stay. We are too exposed if a storm should arise, and that is something you can never be sure about in these latitudes.

  The place we are to reach by tomorrow is a much better site. There we can pitch the tent properly, sheltered by rocks protruding above the ice cap. So we would manage even if it should blow great guns from the north.

  Yes, it’ll have to wait till tomorrow.

  I laid the book aside, then said good night to my girl. She smiled back at me, her red lips slightly apart, the expression in her eyes at once loving and seductive, her black hair showering about her head and shoulders.

  The photo of my girl had become badly creased after having been so long in my breast pocket and having been taken out and put back so many times.

  When we return to the base I am going to write and ask her to send me a new one. After all, I will be staying up here for another six months. But it will have to be a print exactly like this one, for it is in this pose that I always see her when closing my eyes.

  I put the photograph back in my pocket, checked the stove, and turned the kerosene lamp down to low flame before crawling into my bag and falling asleep.

  Kurt behaved normally next morning. We had breakfast, fed the dogs, took down the tent, and packed our sled. There was the usual shouting while we hitched up the dogs and got going.

  But he didn’t fool me. He had the tantrum—of that I was fully convinced—and I was going to give him the injection tonight so that he could become his old self again. Not only for his sake, for mine too.

  Once the tantrum was ablaze, he would be completely unbearable and it would be impracticable to be together for another two months. It had to be nipped in the bud—I could not wait any longer.

  We worked our way swiftly across the ice one kilometer offshore. The ice lay unbroken for miles in front of us, and by noon we could dimly see the inland formation of rocks, where we had planned to camp that night.

  The afternoon went by uneventfully, but at about four o’clock, when we had started pulling in toward land, something went wrong.

  An arctic fox suddenly jumped up about 50 yards in front of our sled. The baas started howling and went for it. The other dogs were yelping as well, and in a very few seconds the sled raced off across the ice toward the rocks, and w
e had totally lost control of the dogs and the sled.

  In order to regain warmth I had been running slowly beside the sled after my rest interval, and very soon I was hundreds of yards behind it. Kurt lay clinging to the equipment in order not to fall off the sled, as it swayed from side to side or jumped high up into the air, jolting against outcroppings and out of holes in the far more uneven ground here along the coast.

  The hue and cry ended abruptly. The arctic fox disappeared among the rocks, and the sled turned round after colliding with a big boulder. Kurt was hurled into the air and landed heavily on a granite knoll. The lines of the dogs were hopelessly tangled, and the dogs were howling at the top of their lungs, both from disappointment in the interrupted hunt and from the pain of the jerk that had stopped them.

  But the dogs would have to wait. So would all the equipment lying scattered about. First I had to attend to Kurt.

  He lay unconscious. I took off his fur hood. He was bleeding from a large wound in the back of his head, but as far as I could see, he hadn’t fractured his skull. He must have had a tremendous concussion, however. He was breathing faintly, his pulse slow and irregular.

  I groped with my hands along his body on the outside of his clothes to find out if he had broken any bones. When I touched his right thigh just above the knee, he whimpered though still unconscious.

  A femoral fracture! Damn!

  I cut along the trouser leg to see if it was a compound fracture. It wasn’t, but there was no doubt about it being a fracture. The big dark swollen bump on the inside of his leg just above the knee spoke its own silent but distinct language.

  I put him as comfortably as possible in the snow by the side of the boulder and started rummaging for our medicine chest in the mess around the sled. Finding it, I stuck a couple of blankets under my arm and hurried back to him.

  First of all I had to secure him against shock or treat him if he’d already had one. When I examined him again, he was breathing more faintly than before, his pulse almost imperceptible and extremely irregular, his face pale and covered with cold sweat, and no doubt his body temperature had lowered.

  I wrapped him up in the blankets, so that he wouldn’t cool too much before I could get the tent pitched and the stove lit. Then I gave him half a liter of blood plasma, and presently his breathing became deeper and his pulse more rapid and regular.

  Next I attended to the wound in the back of his head. It was large, but not too deep. Carefully I dabbed away the dried-up blood, considered for a moment if I should shave off his hair, but gave up the thought, sprinkled on sulfa powder, and affixed a large piece of adhesive plaster.

  Now that he wasn’t going to die, I could begin pitching the tent. It took more time than usual. First, I was alone, and second, all the equipment was scattered. But at last I had the tent pitched and got the stove going, so that I could get Kurt inside. It was hard dragging him through the snow, and I was glad he was unconscious, for it must have hurt him like hell. In fact, he groaned constantly even though he didn’t wake up.

  During the next hour I was very busy. I put splints on his leg. I was very careful to make the fracture surfaces fit together, but I didn’t know if I had succeeded. Then I gathered the rest of our equipment. I cursed when I discovered that our radio had been smashed. Now we couldn’t get in touch with the base. Then I packed the sled with those things we didn’t need immediately. And finally I took care of the dogs before re-entering the tent.

  It had become tolerably warm in there, and Kurt had got some color back in his cheeks and was now breathing quite normally. And his pulse was stronger.

  I didn’t care that he was still unconscious, for I had given him an injection before starting to work on his leg. I couldn’t help thinking of yesterday’s plan to catch him off guard during his sleep to give him an injection to rid him of his tantrum. Now destiny had interfered and done my job. In fact, it had forced me to give him the injection that was to ease his overtaxed mind for those ten or twelve hours necessary to bring him out of his polar tantrum.

  I prepared some food and wondered if I should have waited to give him the injection till I had squeezed some beef tea into him, but it was too late for that now. It wouldn’t harm him not having anything to eat during the next twenty hours, which it was going to take at the most. We had had a solid lunch, and I figured he would wake up around four or five in the morning.

  After dinner I started playing solitaire. I examined him every once in a while, felt his pulse, but he was sound asleep, and there was no further danger. And then curiosity began pulling at me.

  The last time I had examined him, one of my hands happened to rest on his breast pocket, and I had felt the photograph rustling under my palm.

  For a long time I sat staring out into the air, but curiosity won.

  I unbuttoned his breast pocket, took out the photo, and had the shock of my life.

  The girl smiled back at me, her red lips slightly apart, the expression in her eyes at once loving and seductive, her black hair showering about her head and shoulders.

  It was my girl.

  Rage and jealousy gushed through me, and for a moment I could see nothing. I fell heavily on my bed, crumpling the photo into a small hard pellet.

  My girl and Kurt. A photo exactly like the one I had. How could that possibly have come about? She had never betrayed anything. I hadn’t had the slightest suspicion she was in love with anyone but me. And, as I told you, Kurt had never talked about any girl.

  No, this had not happened.

  If Kurt disappeared, if Kurt died, she would quickly forget all about him. And I would never mention a single word about my knowing that he, too, had had a print of her picture.

  For this had not happened at all.

  I went outside the tent and found a big stone. I tested its weight in my hand. Yes, it would do.

  Then I re-entered the tent, tore the adhesive plaster off the wound, and hammered the stone against his head. He died without regaining consciousness.

  I stood for a long time breathing heavily before going outside to throw the stone far away into the darkness.

  There, now it had not happened.

  I bandaged the wound in his head, covered him with the blanket, and quietly lay down to sleep after saying good night to my girl.

  Now she was mine again.

  All mine.

  Next morning I strapped him firmly to the sled and started on the trip home.

  About 500 kilometers of patrolling remained to be done, but I was sure that the boss of the Sirius Sled Patrol here in Greenland and of the Naval Command at home in Denmark was not going to wink at that under these circumstances.

  One month and a thousand kilometers later I was back at the base.

  I made my report calmly, and the boss approved of my line of action. In fact, he commended me for having accomplished the return safely and making all the necessary observations on my way.

  Mumbling words of sympathy, my buddies patted my shoulders.

  There was a lot of mail waiting for me—among other things, a letter from my girl. So as soon as I could get away, I went to my room.

  First I opened the letter from my girl. There was another photograph in it—the same pose. So, in my last letter, I must apparently have asked her for a new one.

  She smiled at me. Her red lips were slightly apart, the expression in her eyes loving and seductive, her black hair showering about her head and shoulders.

  Only obliquely did my eye catch what was printed in large black type below the photograph.

  Nine out often movie stars use STAR.

  Ruby Delany, too, uses STAR in her daily facial treatment, because STAR contains. . .

  Now she was mine again.

  All mine.

  Janwillem van de Wetering

  The Deadly Egg

  As of the time of this writing, Janwillem van de Wetering has written eight novels about the Amsterdam police, featuring Detective Adjutant Grijpstra and Detective Sergeant de
Gier. The novels have been highly praised by critics, have sold to eleven foreign publishers, and have been serialized and selected by book clubs.

  Mr. van de Wetering was born in The Netherlands in 1931. The German bombing of Rotterdam and the subsequent five years of military occupation strongly influenced his early thinking. After graduation from a business college he traveled extensively—Africa, South America, Australia, Japan. He studied philosophy in London and became a disciple of a Zen master in Kyoto, Japan, later writing two books on Zen.

  In 1965, he returned to The Netherlands where he became an active member of the Special Constabulary of the Amsterdam Municipal Police (so he knows at first-hand what he’s writing about). He and his family live at present in the United States.

  Now, meet for the first time in a short story the most famous pair of detectives in the Criminal Investigation Department (also called the Murder Brigade) of the Municipal Police of Amsterdam—Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier, two of the most human sleuths you have ever encountered in print. The crime they investigate on Easter Day is a fascinating double mystery—“a dead man dangling from a branch in the forest” and “a lady poisoned, presumably by a chocolate Easter egg”. . .

  The siren of the tiny dented Volkswagen shrieked forlornly between the naked trees of the Amsterdam Forest, the city’s largest park, set on its southern edge: several square miles of willows, poplars, and wild growing alders, surrounding ponds and lining paths. The paths were restricted to pedestrians and cyclists, but the Volkswagen had ignored the many No Entry signs, quite legally, for the vehicle belonged to the Municipal Police and more especially to its Criminal Investigation Department, or the Murder Brigade. Even so it looked lost and its howl seemed defensive.

  It was Easter Sunday and it rained, and the car’s two occupants, Detective Adjutant Grijpstra and Detective Sergeant de Gier, sat hunched in their overcoats, watching the squeaky rusted wipers trying to deal with the steady drizzle. The car should have been junked some years before, but the adjutant had lost the form that would have done away with his aging transport, lost it on purpose and with the sergeant’s consent. They had grown fond of the Volkswagen, of its shabbiness and its ability to melt away in traffic.