Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World

by Ellery Queen

  “Dropped out. Saw the light and made it to the end of the tunnel. I’m a free man, duckie.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a scrimshander.”

  “A what?”

  “A bone-ivory artist. I do scrimshaw engravings. You’ve probably seen my work in the shop windows around town.”

  Eric’s studio, high under the eaves in the vintage whaler’s house that looked more New Englandish than tropical, revealed its owner’s compulsion for orderly neatness.

  She had never liked him much. He and Briggs had got along all right, but she’d always found Eric an unpleasant sort. It wasn’t that he was boorish; hardly anything like that. But she thought him pretentious and totally insincere. He’d always had that air of arrogant self-assurance. And the polish was all on the surface; he had the right manners but once you got to know him a little you realized he had no real understanding of courtesy or compassion. Those qualities were meaningless to people like Eric. She’d always thought him self-absorbed and egotistical to the point of solipsism; she’d felt he had cultivated Briggs’s friendship simply because Eric felt Briggs could help him advance in the department.

  Eric had been good at toadying up to anyone who could help him learn the arts of politics and ambition. Eric had always been very actorish: he wasn’t real—everything was a role, a part, a performance: everything Eric did was done with his audience in mind. If you couldn’t be any help to him he could, without a second thought, cut you dead.

  He wasn’t really handsome. He had a small round head and ordinary features. But he’d always kept himself trim and he’d always been a natty dresser. And the beard sharpened his face, made it longer, added polish to his appearance. Back on the mainland, she remembered, he’d tended to favor three-piece suits.

  Eric’s studio was spartan, dominated by a scrubbed-clean workbench under the dormer window’s north light. An array of carving tools filled a wooden rack, each tool seated in its proper niche, and there were four tidy wooden bins containing pieces of white bone of graduated sizes. Antique inkwells and jars were arranged beside a tray of paintbrushes and other slender implements. In three glass display cases, each overhung by a museum light, lay examples of Eric’s art. One piece, especially striking, was a large ivory cribbage board in the shape of a Polynesian outrigger canoe with intricate black-and-white scenes engraved upon its faceted surfaces.

  “That’s a sort of frieze,” Eric explained. “If you follow those little scenes around the board, they illustrate the whole mythology of the Polynesian emigration that led to the original settlement of Hawaii a thousand years ago. I’m negotiating to sell it to the museum over in Honolulu.”

  “It must be pretty lucrative, this stuff.”

  “It can be. Do you know anything about scrimshaw?”

  “No,” she said, and she didn’t particularly care to; but Eric had paid for the bottle and was pouring a drink for her, and she was desperate for company—anyone’s, even Eric’s—and so she stayed and pretended interest.

  “It’s a genuine American folk art. It was originated in the early 1800s by the Yankee whalers who came out to the Pacific with endless time on their hands on shipboard. They got into the habit of scrimshanding to pass the time. The early stuff was crude, of course, but pretty quickly some of them started doing quite sophisticated workmanship. They used sail needles to carve the fine lines of the engraving and then they’d trace India ink or lampblack into the carvings for contrast. About the only materials they had were whalebone and whales’ teeth, so that’s what they carved at first.

  “The art became very popular for a while, about a century ago, and there was a period when scrimshanding became a profession in its own right. That was when they ran short of whalebone and teeth and started illustrating elephant ivory and other white bone materials. Then it all went out of fashion. But it’s been coming back into favor the past few years. We’ve got several scrimshanders here now. The main problem today, of course, is the scarcity of ivory.”

  At intervals Brenda sipped his whiskey and vocalized sounds indicative of her attentiveness to his monologue. Mainly she was thinking morosely of the pointlessness of it all. Was Eric going to ask her to stay the night? If he did, would she accept? In either case, did it matter?

  Watching her with bemused eyes, Eric went on, “The Endangered Species laws have made it impossible for us to obtain whalebone or elephant ivory in any quantities any more. It’s a real problem.”

  “You seem to have a fair supply in those bins there.”

  “Well, some of us have been buying mastodon ivory and other fossilized bones from the Eskimos—they dig for it in the tundra up in Alaska. But that stuffs in short supply too, and the price has gone through the ceiling.”

  Eric took her glass and filled it from the bottle, extracting ice cubes from the half-size fridge under the workbench. She rolled the cold glass against her forehead and returned to the wicker chair, balancing herself with care. Eric smiled with the appearance of sympathy and pushed a little box across the bench. It was the size of a matchbox. The lid fit snugly. Etched into its ivory surface was a drawing of a humpback whale.

  “Like it?”

  “It’s lovely.” She tried to summon enthusiasm in her voice.

  “It’s nearly the real thing,” he said. “Not real ivory, of course, but real bone at least. We’ve been experimenting with chemical processes to bleach and harden it.”

  She studied the tiny box and suddenly looked away. Something about it had put her in mind of little Geoff’s casket.

  “The bones of most animals are too rough and porous,” Eric was saying. “They tend to decompose, of course, being organic. But we’ve had some success with chemical hardening agents. Still, there aren’t many types of bone that are suitable. Of course, there are some people who’re willing to make do with vegetable ivory or hard plastics, but those really aren’t acceptable if you care about the artistry of the thing. The phony stuff has no grain, and anybody with a good eye can always tell.”

  She was thinking she really had to pull herself together. You couldn’t get by indefinitely on self-pity and the liquid largess of old acquaintances, met by chance, whom you didn’t even like. She’d reached a point-of-no-return: the end of this week her room rent would be due again and she had no money to cover it; the time to make up her mind was now, right now, because either she got a job or she’d end up like that whiskered wino begging for pennies and eating out of refuse bins.

  Eric went on prattling about his silly hobby or whatever it was: something about the larger bones of primates—thigh bone, collarbone. “Young enough to be in good health of course—bone grows uselessly brittle as we get older. . .” But she wasn’t really listening; she stood beside the workbench looking out through the dormer window at the dozens of boats in the anchorage, wondering if she could face walking into one of the tourist dives and begging for a job waiting on tables.

  The drink had made her unsteady. She returned to the chair, resolving to explore the town first thing in the morning in search of employment. She had to snap out of it. It was time to come back to life and perhaps these beautiful islands were the place to do it: the proper setting for the resurrection of a jaded soul.

  Eric’s voice paused interrogatively and it made her look up. “What? Sorry.”

  “These two here,” Eric said. She looked down at the two etched pendants. He said, “Can you tell the difference?”

  “They look pretty much the same to me.”

  “There, see that? That one, on the left, that’s a piece of whale’s tooth. This other one’s ordinary bone, chemically hardened and bleached to the consistency and color of true ivory. It’s got the proper grain, everything.”

  “Fine.” She set the glass down and endeavored to smile pleasantly. “That’s fine, Eric. Thank you so much for the drinks. I’d better go now—” She aimed herself woozily toward the door.

  “No need to rush off, is there? Here, have one more and then
we’ll get a bite to eat. There’s a terrific little place back on the inland side of town.”

  “Thanks, really, but—”

  “I won’t take no for an answer, duckie. How often do we see each other, after all? Come on—look, I’m sorry, I’ve been boring you to tears with all this talk about scrimshaw and dead bones, and we haven’t said a word yet about the really important things.”

  “What important things?”

  “Well, what are we going to do about you, duckie? You seem to have a crucial problem with your life right now and I think, if you let me, maybe I can help sort it out. Sometimes all it takes is the counsel of a sympathetic old friend, you know.”

  By then the drink had been poured and she saw no plausible reason to refuse it. She settled back in the cane chair. Eric’s smile was avuncular. “What are friends for, after all? Relax a while, duckie. You know, when I first came out here I felt a lot the way you’re feeling. I guess in a way I was lucky not to’ve been as good a scholar as you and Briggs were. I got through the Ph.D. program by the skin of my teeth but it wasn’t enough. I applied for teaching jobs all over the country, you know. Not one nibble.”

  Then the quick smile flashed behind the neat beard. “I ran away, you see—as far as I could get without a passport. These islands are full of losers like you and me, you know. Scratch any charter-boat skipper in that marina and you’ll find a bankrupt or a failed writer who couldn’t get his epic novel published.”

  Then he lifted his glass in a gesture of toast. “But it’s possible to find an antidote for our failure, you see. Sometimes it may take a certain, ruthlessness, of course—a willingness to suspend the stupid values we were brought up on. So-called civilized principles are the enemies of any true individualist—you have to learn that or you’re doomed to be a loser for all time. The kings and robber barons we’ve honored throughout history—none of them was the kind to let himself be pushed around by the imbecilic bureaucratic whims of college deans or tenure systems.

  “Establishments and institutions and laws are designed by winners to keep losers in their place, that’s all. You’re only free when you learn there’s no reason to play the game by their rules. Hell, duckie, the fun of life only comes when you discover how to make your own rules and laugh at the fools around you. Look—consider your own situation. Is there any single living soul right now who truly gives a damn whether you, Brenda Briggs, are alive or dead?”

  Put that starkly it made her gape. Eric leaned forward, brandishing his glass as if it were a searchlight aimed at her face. “Well?”

  “No. Nobody,” she murmured reluctantly.

  “There you are, then.” He seemed to relax; he leaned back. “There’s not a soul you need to please or impress or support, right? If you went right up Front Street here and walked into the Bank of Hawaii and robbed the place of a fortune and got killed making your escape, you’d be hurting no one but yourself. Am I right, duckie?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then why not give it a try?”

  “Give what a try?”

  “Robbing a bank. Kidnaping a rich infant. Hijacking a yacht. Stealing a million in diamonds. Whatever you feel like, duckie—whatever appeals to you. Why not? What have you got to lose?”

  She twisted her mouth into an uneven smile. “You remind me of the sophomoric sophistry we used to spout when we were undergraduates. Existentialism and nihilism galore.” She put her glass down. “Well, I guess not, Eric. I don’t think I’ll start robbing banks just yet.”

  “And why not?”

  “Maybe I’m just not gaited that way.”

  “Morality? Is that it? What’s morality ever done for vow?”

  She steadied herself with a hand against the workbench, set her feet with care, and turned toward the door. “It’s a drink too late for morbid philosophical dialectics. Thanks for the booze, though. I’ll see you. . .”

  “You’d better sit down, duckie. You’re a little unsteady there.”

  “No, I—”

  “Sit down.” The words came out in a harsher voice. “The door’s locked anyway, duckie—you’re not going anywhere.”

  She scowled, befuddled. “What?”

  He showed her the key; then he put it away in his pocket. She looked blankly at the door, the keyhole, and—again—his face. It had gone hard; the polite mask was gone.

  “I wish you’d taken the bait,” he said. “Around here all they ever talk about is sunsets and surfing and the size of the marlin some fool caught. At least you’ve got a bigger vocabulary than that. I really wish you’d jumped at it, duckie. It would have made things easier. But you didn’t, so that’s that.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  She stumbled to the door then—and heard Eric’s quiet laughter when she tried the knob.

  She put her back to the door. Her head swam. “I don’t understand. . .”

  “It’s the ivory, duckie. The best material is fresh human bone. The consistency, the hardness—it takes a fine polish if it’s young and healthy enough. . .”

  She stared at him and the understanding seeped into her slowly and she said, “That’s where the wino went.”

  “Well, I have to pick and choose, don’t I? I mean, I can’t very well use people whose absence would be noticed.”

  She flattened herself against the door. She was beginning to pass out; she tried to fight it but she couldn’t; in the distance, fading, she heard Eric say, “You’ll make fine bones, duckie. Absolutely first-rate scrimshaw.”

  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.

  North America

  UNITED STATES

  Jordan

  Childs

  Adams

  Suter

  Ellin

  Clements Jordan

  Mr. Sweeney’s Day

  This was the 534th “first story” published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. . .an exceptional debut in print. . .

  The author, Clements Jordan, is a retired English teacher. Her age’? “Plenty plus.” She is “an avid walker and adores traveling.” At a moment’s notice she will “go anywhere—to Europe, to the mountains, to the seashore, or to the corner mailbox.” From the age of nine she has been “fascinated by words,” but since teaching days her “creativity has consisted mainly of notes written in the margins of students’ themes”. . .

  I think I was about ten when I found the puzzle in a magazine. It was a page-size summer landscape. There was a huge tree with a profusion of leaves and intricately etched bark. At its foot was a variety of flowers and grass, and close by a rippling brook. Overhead was a blue sky interspersed with puffy clouds. The caption at the top of the page asked: “How many faces can you find?”

  At first I thought there must be a mistake. How could there be faces in a picture that had no people or animals? I was about to turn the page when—I don’t know how it happened, whether I turned my head or shifted the magazine—dozens of faces suddenly popped into my amazed view. The leaves on the trees outlined faces; the etched bark limned profiles; on the ground I saw more faces peeping out from among the flowers; still others could be tracked in the ripples of the brook and among the clouds. Delighted, I began to look at the page from every angle. I was absorbed until my mother interrupted me by calling me to help her.

  Meals, chores, and school intervened so that it was the next afternoon before I could get back to the puzzle. I had thought about it a lot and anticipated the joy of being surprised again. I’d planned to hold the page up and at first see nothing. Then I would tilt the page and move it just a little, then a little more, until suddenly again all those faces would flash out at me.

  But this didn’t happen. I found that after you saw a thing, it was impossible to turn back time and not see it. There could be only one first time.

  I ca
n’t turn back Mr. Sweeney. Never again will it be that hot summer day when I was five, standing on the strip at the bottom of the fence with my feet between the palings so that I could better see the people and cars passing on the road. Now and then a neighbor in a car waved or someone walking to the store spoke to me. Then a flivver stopped by our gate and Mr. Sweeney stepped out of it into my daddy-craving heart.

  How did he look? Let me see. Remember, I was only five. After knowing him a couple of years, I came to realize he was not tall. He didn’t have much hair in front, but I remember his eyes. How many adults see children? They pat their heads, or chuck their chins, or even kiss them, but do they really take a good look at them? Mr. Sweeney looked at me. He reached out and put his hand on my arm and stepped back the length of his own arm and looked at me from head to toe. His eyes glowed. He reached down and picked me up and carried me up the path to the house, his hand warmly gripping my thigh. And all the time he was saying the dearest things.

  “Where did a little sweetheart like you come from?”

  “I came to live here.”

  “How nice. For a long time?”

  “All the time.”

  “How did we get that lucky?”—giving me an extra squeeze.

  “My mama works. I’m going to stay here with grandpa and grandma.” My father had been dead for six months. My mother had decided to remain in the city and work there.

  We were on the porch then and he put me down to knock on the door. But I, feeling I had known him for a long time, took his hand and led him inside, calling my grandmother. He kept hold of my hand while he talked to her. With country hospitality she invited him into the kitchen for coffee and pie. I learned that he was our paper delivery man. He put our paper into the mailbox on the road early each morning and once a month he came into the house to collect money for it.