by Ellery Queen
“I was in my room,” she said, “until about a quarter after twelve. The police wanted to know exactly, but I couldn’t tell them. I got in late last night, and I always do exercises for an hour when I get up. About a quarter after twelve I went down to the kitchen. There were no oranges and I went out and got some. I wasn’t gone more than ten minutes. I was cooking bacon and eggs when Mr. Dell came in, and Hattie with Mr. Goodwin, and Hattie said he was going to do a piece for a magazine, and—”
“That’s far enough. Which room is yours?”
“The third floor front, above Hattie’s.”
“And the others? Their rooms?”
“Ray’s is the second floor rear—Raymond Dell’s. The rear room on my floor, the third, is Tammy Baxter’s. The one above mine, on the fourth floor, is Noel Ferris’s, and the rear one on that floor is Paul Hannah’s.”
“Did you see any of them this morning?”
“No. Not until Ray came to the kitchen this afternoon.”
“Did you hear any of them moving or speaking?”
“No.”
“Not even Mr. Ferris in the room above you?”
“No. I suppose he was up and gone before I woke up.”
“Did you hear or see anything at all that might be of significance?”
She shook her head. “The police thought I must have, when I was in the kitchen, but I didn’t.”
Wolfe’s head went left, to Raymond Dell in the red leather chair. “Mr. Dell. I know you came downstairs when Miss Annis entered the house with Mr. Goodwin shortly before one o’clock. Before that?”
“Nothing,” Dell rumbled.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. That was when I left my room for the first time. Until then I had seen no one, heard nothing, and seen nothing. I had been asleep.”
“Then how did you know there were no oranges?”
Dell’s chin jerked up. “What’s that? Oh.” He gestured. “That man Goodwin. I knew because there had been none when I went down for some in the early hours—the late hours. I don’t sleep at night; I read. I was reading Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, and when I finished it, at five o’clock perhaps, or six, I wanted oranges. I always do around that hour. Finding none, I returned to my room and finally dozed.”
“So that was customary? You rarely stir before twelve?”
“I never do.”
“And at night you read. How do you spend your afternoons?”
Dell frowned. “Could that conceivably apply?”
“Yes. Conceivably.”
“I want to be present when you apply it. That would be a revelation worthy of the Cumaean sybil. I baby-sit.”
“You what?”
“The current abhorrent term is ‘baby-sit.’ I have a friend who is a painter, by name Max Eder, who lives in an East Side tenement. His wife is dead. He has a son and daughter aged three and four, and five days a week I am their keeper for five hours, from two till seven. For a stipend. Mondays and Tuesdays I am free to roam the market if I am so inclined. You frown. To offer my talents in television dens. I am so inclined only by necessity.”
“What is Mr. Eder’s address?”
Dell shrugged, an actor’s shrug. “This approaches lunacy. However, it’s in the phone book. Three-fourteen Mission Street.”
“How long have you been—uh—performing this service for him?”
“Something over a year.”
Wolfe left him. “Mr. Hannah. Since I am now merely asking for what you have already told the police, your whereabouts today from ten thirty to one, I hope you won’t be provoked.”
“You do like hell,” Hannah blurted. “Parading my conceit, huh? I’m sticking only because I told Martha I would. I left the house a little after nine o’clock and spent a couple of hours around the West Side docks, and then I took a bus downtown and got to the Mushroom Theater a little before twelve. We start rehearsal at noon. Around two o’clock a man came and flashed a badge and said I was wanted for questioning and took me to Forty-seventh Street.”
“What were you doing around the docks?”
“I was looking and listening. In the play we’re doing, Do As Thou Wilt, I’m a longshoreman, and I want to get it right.”
“Where is the Mushroom Theater?”
“Bowie Street. Near Houston Street.”
“Do you have a leading role in the play?”
“No. Not leading.”
“How many lines have you?”
“Not many. It’s not a big part. I’m young and I’m learning.”
“How long have you been rehearsing?”
“About a month.”
“Have you appeared at that theater before?”
“Once, last fall. I had a walk-on in The Pleasure is Mine.”
“How long did it run?”
“Six weeks. Pretty good for off-Broadway.”
“Do you favor any particular spot when you visit the docks?”
“No. I just move around and look and listen.”
“Do you do that every day?”
“Hell, no.”
“How many times in the past month?”
“Only once before today. A couple of times when I got the part, in November.”
I was thinking that at least he had one of the basic qualifications for an actor. He was ready and willing to answer any and all questions about his career, with or without a dare, whether they applied or not. If Wolfe thought it would help to have the plot of Do As Thou Wilt described in detail, all he had to do was ask.
But apparently he didn’t need it. His head moved. “And you, Mr. Ferris?”
“I’m feeling a lot better,” Noel Ferris said. “When the questions they asked made me realize that I was actually suspected of murder, and I also realized that I had no alibi, it looked pretty dark. Believe me. What if the others had all been somewhere else and could prove it? So I thank you, Mr. Wolfe. I feel a lot better. As for me, I left the house a little after ten and called at four agencies. Two of them would remember I was there, but probably not the exact time. When I got hungry I went back to the house to eat. I can’t afford five-dollar lunches, and I can’t eat eight-cent ones. When I entered the house a man was at the phone telling someone that Tammy Baxter had been murdered and her body was in the parlor.”
“What kind of agencies?”
“Casting. Theater and television.”
“Do you visit them daily?”
“No. About twice a week.”
“And the other five days? How do you pass the time?”
“I don’t. It passes me. Two days, sometimes three, I make horses and kangaroos and other animals. I go to a workroom and model them and make molds. Something on the order of Cellini. I get eight dollars for a squirrel. Twenty for a giraffe.”
“Where is the workroom?”
“In the rear of a shop on First Avenue. The name of the shop is Harry’s Zoo. The name of the owner is Harry Arkazy. He has a sixteen-year old daughter as beautiful as a rosy dawn, but she lisps. Her name is Ilonka. His son’s name—”
“This is not a comedy, Mr. Ferris,” Wolfe snapped. He twisted his neck to look at the wall clock. “I engaged to act for Miss Annis only five hours ago and I haven’t arranged my mind, so my questions may be at random, but they are not frivolous.” His eyes moved to take them in. “Now that I have seen you and heard you I am better prepared, and I can consider how to proceed. I will leave it to Miss Annis to thank you—three of you—for coming.” He arose. “I expect to see you again.”
Martha was gawking at him. “But Hattie said to tell you everything we told the cops!”
He nodded. “I know. It would take all night. I’ll go to that extreme only by compulsion; and if you told them anything indicative they are hours ahead of me and I would only breathe their dust.”
Dell boomed. “You call this investigating a murder? Asking me if I had paid my room rent and how I spend my afternoons?”
It was a little odd, the four suspects coming uninvited to emp
ty the bag and being told to go almost before they got started. Noel Ferris, his lip twisted, got up and headed for the hall. Martha Kirk, getting no satisfaction from Wolfe, appealed to me: didn’t I realize that Hattie had been arrested for a murder she didn’t commit?
Paul Hannah sat and listened to us, chewing his lip, then got up and touched her arm and said they might as well go. Raymond Dell stood, lowered his chin, gazed at Wolfe half a minute, registering indignation, wheeled, and marched out. (Exit Dell, center.)
I followed Martha and Hannah to the hall, but she preferred to put on her galoshes herself. When I opened the door for them a few snowflakes danced in.
Back in the office, Wolfe was sitting again, leaning back with his eyes closed. I asked if he wanted beer, got a nod, and went to the kitchen and brought a bottle and glass, and a glass of milk for me. He opened his eyes, took in a bushel of air through his nose and let it out through his mouth, straightened up, picked up the bottle and poured.
He spoke. “Saul and Fred and Orrie. At eight in the morning in my room.”
My brows went up. Saul Panzer is the best operative south of the North Pole. His rate is ten dollars an hour and he is worth twenty. Fred Durkin’s rate is seven dollars and he is worth seven-fifty. Orrie Cather’s rate is also seven dollars and he is worth six-fifty.
“Oh.” I took a sip of milk. “Then you did get an inkling?”
“I got a conclusion: that it would be futile to go on pecking at them. Mr. Leach has been on their flanks for three weeks, and now Mr. Cramer’s army has them under siege. My only chance of priority is to surprise him from the rear.”
The foam was down to the rim of his glass, and he lifted it and drank, a healthy gulp. “It’s a forlorn chance, certainly, but it’s worth trying for want of a better. I am not familiar with the procedures of counterfeiters, but it seems unlikely that an underling would be entrusted with five hundred twenty-dollar bills. Ten thousand dollars. We know he had that large supply; and that permits the conjecture that his connection may be not with a mere go-between, but with the source. If so, the quickest way to settle it would be to locate the source.”
“Yeah. It’s barely possible that Leach has had that idea.”
“No doubt. I assume that when Miss Baxter took a room in that house her primary mission was to search the premises for counterfeiting equipment. Obviously she found none. I also assume that, as you suggested, it was known that one of the inhabitants of that house had passed counterfeit money, but it was not known which one, and they were all under surveillance—by Miss Baxter in the house and by others outside. And if I were a Secret Service agent assigned to keep an eye on Raymond Dell I would suppose that any meeting he had with a supplier of contraband would be clandestine. That is how my mind would work. The first day I followed him to an East Side tenement I would of course make inquiries, with due caution, but when he went there five days a week and I learned from Miss Baxter what he did there, my attention would be diverted.
“But I am not a Secret Service agent. My attention is drawn to that tenement house, and specifically to Max Eder, a painter. An artist. I shall send Orrie Cather there tomorrow morning to reconnoiter. Fred Durkin will go to the shop on First Avenue—by the way, I want its address. Harry’s Zoo.” He made a face, “Saul Panzer will go to the Mushroom Theater. As I said, it’s a forlorn chance, but what better can we do with tomorrow? Unless you have a suggestion?”
“I have,” I said emphatically. “I respectfully suggest that you start thinking up something for day after tomorrow.”
He grunted. He picked up his glass, took a gulp of beer, swallowed it, licked his lips, and put the glass down. “‘Forlorn’ was too strong a word,” he said. “I have an expectation that is not wholly unreasonable. Twelve hours of the time of those three men plus expenses comes to more than three hundred dollars. I don’t hazard that amount, even of a client’s money, on a pig in a poke.”
“Then you did get an inkling.”
“Certainly.”
“Fine. I hope it’s not counterfeit.” I swiveled and got the phone and dialed Saul Panzer’s number.
I was there at the beginning of the briefing session in Wolfe’s bedroom at eight o’clock Tuesday morning, but when the phone interrupted us a second time, Wolfe told me to go down to the office and take it there. The first time it was a Times reporter wanting to speak with Wolfe, and when I told him Wolfe was busy and would I do, he said no and hung up. The second call, which I took in the office, was from Lon Cohen of the Gazette, who preferred me to Wolfe any day. He wanted to know when he could send a photographer to take a picture of the dirt that Wolfe was going to feed the cops. Evidently one of the two who had carried Hattie out knew a newspaperman. Lon had other questions, naturally, but I told him the answers would have to wait until I found out what they were.
I was considering whether to rejoin the briefing session when the phone rang again. It was Nathaniel Parker. He was sorry he hadn’t been able to spring our client, but it had taken him three hours to find out where she was, and he hadn’t got to see her until midnight. He expected to have her out by noon.
At nine o’clock the trio came down. One of the reasons they are better than most is that none of them looks it. Saul Panzer, undersized and wiry, with a big nose, could be a hackie. Fred Durkin, broad and burly and bald, could be a piano mover. Orrie Cather, tall and trim and dressy, could be an automobile salesman. They stepped into the office, and Saul said they had been told to take $300 apiece in used bills. I said as I went to open the safe that even with inflation and even with janitors promoted to building superintendents, fifty bucks was the top price for one, and they would please return the change. Orrie said that if they had to buy clerks and elevator men and neighbors there wouldn’t be any change. Saul said they would each give me a ring every couple of hours or so.
When they had gone I went on with the morning chores—opening the mail, dusting the desks, filing the cards of propagation and performance records which Theodore puts on my desk every evening. That was just for my hands and eyes; my mind was busy with something else. Of all the things I do to earn my pay, from sharpening pencils to jumping a visitor before he can get his gun up, the most important is riding Wolfe, and he knows it. Sometimes it’s next to impossible to tell whether he’s working or only pretending to. That was the question that morning. If he was only stalling, if he had sent for Saul and Fred and Orrie just to keep from starting his brain going, the thing for me to do was to go up to the plant rooms and go to work on him. It was the same old problem, and the trouble was that I would have nothing to say when he narrowed his eyes at me, as he would, and inquired coldly, “What would you suggest?”
That was what my mind was on, and was still on when the doorbell rang a little after ten o’clock and I went to the hall for a look. It was Albert Leach, with his snap-brim hat down even closer to his ears than yesterday. I went and opened the door.
“Good morning,” he said, and slipped his hand inside his overcoat.
I supposed he was producing his credentials. “Don’t bother,” I said, “I recognize you.”
But it wasn’t credentials. His hand came out with a folded paper. Extending it, he said, “Order of the Federal District Court.”
I took it, unfolded it, and read it through. “You know,” I said, “this is a new experience. I can’t remember that we have ever been served with an order from a Federal court. Mr. Wolfe will be glad to add it to his collection.” I stuck it in my pocket.
“You note,” he said, “that I am empowered to search for the object specified if necessary.”
“You won’t have to. You heard me tell Cramer yesterday that I put it in the safe, and it’s still there. Come in.” I gave him room.
He had excellent manners. He entered, removed his hat, stood while I shut the door, and followed me to the office. I swung the safe door open, got a corner of the wrapping paper with my thumb and forefinger, carried it dangling, put it on my desk, and went back and broug
ht the lettuce and the string. “There you are,” I said. “I didn’t rewrap it after I lifted the prints.”
His lips tightened. “You said nothing to Inspector Cramer about lifting prints.”
“No? I thought I had. Of course that was routine after Miss Annis told us how and where she found it. You won’t find any except hers and mine. I couldn’t, and I was pretty thorough.”
“You tampered with evidence.”
“What was it evidence of—then?” My feelings were hurt. “Anyway, the prints are still there. I’ll give you a bag to carry it in, but first we’ll have to count it and I want a receipt. It’s still the property of Miss Hattie Annis.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. It was a situation. He knew that I knew that he knew that I knew it was counterfeit, and therefore we both knew that Hattie would never see it again, but he was still keeping it off the record. “I’ll make a concession,” I offered. “We’ll weigh it on the postal scale. Put it on.”
He picked it up and put it on the scale, and we looked. Just under seventeen ounces. I brought a shopping bag from the kitchen and gave it to him, got at the typewriter, and tapped out a receipt for 16-11/12 oz. of twenty-dollar bills. I was tempted to add “in good condition,” but remembered that he had warned me not to try any fancy tricks with the Secret Service. As I handed him the receipt and my pen the doorbell rang, and I stepped to the hall.
It was Inspector Cramer. I went and opened the door. He entered. I shut the door. When I turned, his hand was emerging from inside his coat with a folded paper. He handed it to me. I read it through. It wouldn’t be worth keeping as a souvenir—from the State of New York.
“You’ll notice,” he said, “that I can search for it if I have to.”
“You won’t have to. You know where it is.”
He strode to the office door and on in. I stopped on the sill. Leach, at my desk, with the shopping bag in one hand and the bills in the other, turned.
“It’s a problem,” I said. “Leach has signed a receipt for it, but I can tear it up. Why don’t you split it half and half?”