Ellery Queen's Champions of Mystery vol. 33 (1977)

by Ellery Queen

  Still half in the bad dream, I jumped at the knock on my door. I crept to the door, shaking, frightened.

  It was a bellboy, he handed me a small translucent florist’s box containing an orchid corsage. The note inside read: “Dinner at eight seems a good time. I will be waiting in the lobby. Francis Samuels.”

  Six o’clock now. Like an actor in a slow-motion film, merely playing a shadowy part, I began to bathe and dress.

  I wore a white dress, sheath-slim to the ankle, its slit past the knee outlined in silver, the orchid at my shoulder. At first I didn’t recognize Samuels, he looked so much like a waiter in this short white dinner jacket, his shoulders bent as though taking an order. But waiters in Kowloon are not Caucasian.

  “How beautiful. As always.” Fawning. “What a tragedy for your husband. To lose you.”

  “I lost him. He died, we were not separated.”

  “Yes, you told me.” Very gently. “But surely his loss of you was the worst pang of death. He must have wished—but let us be happy tonight. I’ve looked up what I think will be a superb restaurant, a choice of several Chinese cuisines, would you like that?”

  My neck felt stiff as I nodded. I knew what he had left unsaid: Your husband must have wished you would die along with him. Did you, Harry, did you want to kill me?

  The restaurant was shadowy, the tables separated by filigreed black and gold screens, the waiters in brocade Chinese dress. Samuels ordered. The delicate exotic food almost made me ignore his hulking presence, simply enjoy each delicious surprise. At the finish the waiter brought sizzling-hot candied lotus seeds, dipped them with chopsticks into the bowl of cracked ice, and placed fragrant servings on our dessert plates.

  “It was a lovely dinner. Thank you,” I said.

  “We can have many more.” So soft his voice, so beguiling, so insinuating.

  I tried to look at him squarely. Only my head began to hurt, it was such an effort to outstare that bland fixed gaze. “Remember, you told me yourself I’m leaving tomorrow? With all this world to move about in, it isn’t very likely we shall ever see each other again.”

  He chuckled as though I had said something adorable. “And you’re thinking, ‘not if I can help it.’ My dear, you’re so troubled and lonely. Besides being extraordinarily beautiful. You’ll not be able to make it through life alone. You need someone with strength and understanding. And with—shall we say?—quite a lot of forgiveness in his nature.”

  “I like being alone.”

  He shrugged, smiled in a humoring way. “I’ve lived in the East since I was five years old. So by this time I’m quite oriental, not much British left. Therefore I resign myself to fate. So, dear Mrs. Sanders, perhaps we’ll share many dinners. Perhaps not. If not, I shall have to accept my loss.”

  He kept his gaze on me, holding my eyes until they couldn’t leave his. He reached across the table and took my hand. “Terribly troubled,” he said.

  That stifled sensation Harry always gave me grabbed my breath, stuffed it back into my lungs, stale and poisonous, making me ill and giddy. It was agony to imagine seeing this hulking, probing stranger day after day, night after night. But worse, no longer a stranger.

  I jumped up, ran out the restaurant entrance, down the stairs. I would catch a taxi while he settled the bill. At the hotel I would complain to the management, alert the hotel detective, hang up if Samuels telephoned.

  A taxi crept toward me, held back by people scuttling back and forth across the narrow street. A big hand gripped my elbow. When the taxi came, Samuels assisted me into the car, moved in beside me.

  “You’re in no condition to go back to the hotel yet. Alone.” He leaned toward the driver. “Drive around, we would like to see the city.”

  “I’ll call the police!”

  “And what will you tell them?” Hateful voice! Gentle on the surface, but underneath coiling, ready to strike at my words. “That we had dinner in a restaurant, quite open to the public, and now are sightseeing in a public conveyance? A kidnaping? No, they’ll think it is a lovers’ quarrel, laugh, and wave us on.”

  Yes, it was silly. I knew that. All the man had said was “Terribly troubled.” Then I ran.

  “I want to go to the hotel. I must pack.”

  “This is your first visit to Kowloon, what a pity not to see it.”

  I looked out the taxi window at the people going up and down, in and out of stores, free to do what they wanted. Or were they? How many of those blurred faces really were like mine—pale and smooth, hovering like a mirage over the real face beneath. How many of those faces had a Harry who wouldn’t let them alone, who used people like Samuels all over the world to keep them prisoners forever?

  “You are very frightened, and you need help,” Samuels said. “As I told you, I’m a clinical psychologist. And I know you badly need a new security. Now, be sensible. A quirk of fate brought us together. Perhaps I’m no fonder of it than you are. It’s not completely pleasant to be attracted by a woman who’s running from a nightmare connected with another man. Even if she is beautiful. And even if she falls into my line of profession.” He patted my stiff icy hand. I drew away. Why didn’t he add: Even if she is rich? There are ways of looking it up, he could have found out.

  Neither of us spoke. Neither of us looked at the street scene sliding by. Finally he said, “Why run from your husband? He’s dead. That’s final.”

  He said he could read minds, I thought he could read minds. But it wasn’t true. Otherwise he would know Harry wasn’t final, that Harry was following me around, that there was no place I could go, Hong Kong or wherever, without Harry being there too. Making people like Samuels poke and pry and say terrible things to me.

  I sat, congealed, and willed death. Not for me. For Samuels. Perhaps if Harry saw that he couldn’t use people he would go away.

  “You’ll not die,” Samuels said. “There’s no use wishing you could die.”

  Stupid, stupid Samuels, wrong again. I never wanted to die!

  “Take me to the Golden Emperor Hotel,” I told the driver. “At once. This man is annoying me.”

  The driver turned, grinning, wheeled the taxi about.

  “Sit away from me, you—” What terrible epithet could I use to Samuels? “You bloody fake!” Maybe he wouldn’t be too oriental for that.

  Samuels’ face darkened. “Don’t be ridiculous! Of course you can go to the hotel. Americans are so hysterical.”

  I slapped his superior smile. His hand flipped up. Then he sighed, dropped his hand, settled back in the seat. “Good thing you’ve no weapon in that pretty purse. Except perhaps a nail file. Although a nail file with the wrong emotion behind it can be nasty. Well, my dear, I’ll not bother you any longer. Suppose I lost the knack of reading thoughts? You could be a widow twice over.”

  I swung the back of my hand against his mouth. My large sapphire ring cut his lip and blood spurted. One of his hands flew toward his mouth, the other toward me. But I already had the taxi door open. I leaped and fell on the curb. Someone picked me up. I pushed him aside and ran. Anywhere. The wrong way it was. But another taxi took me to the hotel to face stares in the lobby at my dirt-streaked dress, its slit ripped to my thigh.

  Early in the morning I left the hotel. There was no sign of Samuels in the lobby. I hurried to the waiting limousine, terrified he might be waiting in it. But I was alone, no one else was going to the airport.

  At the airport I sifted the milling passengers down to each individual to make sure Samuels hadn’t arrived ahead of me.

  At last I was on the plane to Osaka. No Samuels on it, his meek face camouflaging his lunging-bear back. Insinuating I had killed Harry: You could be a widow twice over. Harry had died in bed, in his own comfortable bed, with nurses around the clock, the best specialist. I even had an autopsy performed. Harry had bled to death of perforated ulcers. The nurse on duty was in the kitchen drinking coffee, she didn’t come to help him. She said his bell didn’t ring, that she thought I was with him. Try
ing to wiggle out of a tight spot, she was!

  He had bled too long. That’s all.

  Give old Harry a hug Mollybaby little old kiss for Harry.

  Harry was back.

  In the vacant seat beside me.

  I might have known I couldn’t lose him. The polite Japanese stewardess ignored him as she handed me a pillow. Of course. She couldn’t see Harry, not even I could. But I felt him there. His hand was creeping up my arm, around my shoulder.

  I didn’t scream. I know I didn’t scream. I didn’t hear myself scream, I would know, wouldn’t I? The stewardess said I screamed, but it must have been someone else. I wish she would take that oxygen mask off my face, I’m having enough trouble breathing. It’s the fog, there’s fog in this plane, everything is gray.

  I wish I could swallow my heart, it’s stuck in my throat.

  Harry’s going to kill me. I know he is. So I’ll have to stay with him forever. It’s revenge, he thinks I murdered him. “Harry, I didn’t murder you!”

  Molly you tough little rascal you watched me bleed——had me helpless in bed the nurse away kept telling me you hated me you wished I’d die——so I did Baby couldn’t deny you anything Baby.

  “I never touched you, I only sat beside you. Is it murder to sit beside a man who is dying from bleeding ulcers?”

  Huhuhuhuh trying to kid your old man—got me bleeding then you ran out of the room.

  “I took a shower, nobody can hear anything in the shower. Why didn’t you ring your bell for the nurse? The button was beside your bed.”

  Who stuffed the wad of paper in the bell button so it couldn’t ring—who picked it out while the nurse called the doctor—sure you killed old Harry.

  The Captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker of the Osaka-bound plane, first in Japanese, then in English. “If there is a doctor on board please immediately contact a stewardess. A woman in the first-class section is seriously ill and requires immediate aid. This is an emergency. If there is a doctor on board—”

  Ellery Queen

  The Little Spy

  In which Ellery is invited to join one of the most exclusive clubs in the world—The Puzzle Club—and is challenged to solve the unsolvable. . .

  Detective: ELLERY QUEEN

  The letter was written in a secretive hand on paper as thick as a pharaoh’s papyrus. Instead of a name or a crest, its engraved monogram consisted of one large, gold, ticklesome question mark.

  “My dear Mr. Queen,” Ellery read. “It is the pleasure of The Puzzle Club to invite you to our next regular meeting, which takes place at 7:30 P.M. Wednesday at the address below. Purpose: to offer you our membership test, which we believe without modesty will challenge your logical powers.

  “Ours is a very small, congenial group. There are no dues or other obligations. You will be the only outsider present. Informal dress.

  “We hope you will respond affirmatively.”

  None of Ellery’s reference books, including the telephone directory, listed a Puzzle Club. On the other hand, the signature and address made it unlikely that this was the gambit to a mugging party or badger game. So Ellery dashed off an acceptance note; and Wednesday evening found him, at 7:30 to the tick, pushing the bell of a penthouse foyer in the nobbiest reaches of Park Avenue.

  The lordly Englishman who opened the door turned out to be a butler, who took his hat and vanished; and the rumpled-looking Texan giant who greeted him was unmistakably Ellery’s correspondent and host. The big man’s name was Syres, and he was one of the ten wealthiest men in the United States.

  “On the dot,” Syres boomed. “Welcome, Mr. Queen!” He was all but grinding his muscular hands; and he rushed Ellery into a museum of massive Western furniture, studded leather, burnished woods, antique carpets, old masters, and twinkling crystal and copper. “I see you’re admiring my traditionalism. I loathe contemporary anything.” Except, Ellery thought, contemporary oil wells and the profits therefrom; but he meekly followed his host in to a living room vast enough for a hidalgo’s rancho.

  In a moment Ellery was shaking hands with the other members of The Puzzle Club. Three were present besides Syres, and not altogether to his surprise Ellery recognized each of them. The dark, tall, mustache-eyebrowed man was the celebrated criminal lawyer, Darnell, who was being mentioned frequently these days for the next opening on the Supreme Court. The trim, short, peach-cheeked one was the noted psychiatrist, Dr. Vreeland. The third was Emmy Wandermere, the poet, a wisp of a woman with shocking blue eyes and the handclasp of a man.

  Ellery gathered that The Puzzle Club was of recent origin. It had no more purpose than any other association in gamesmanship, perhaps less; and while its members were all prominently implicated in the world as it was, the Club’s bylaws, he was promptly told, forbade discussion at its monthly meetings of any subject not connected with puzzles. As the psychiatric Dr. Vreeland put it, “Other people meet regularly to play bridge. We meet to mystify each other—as man has done with riddles since prehistory—in a sort of ritual adoration of the question mark.”

  They sat him down in a roomy armchair near the man-high fireplace, and the English butler brought him a Scotch, a napkin, and a little tray of sizzling canapes.

  “And that’s all you get, Mr. Queen, until the test is over,” the oil man explained. “We don’t eat dinner until afterward.”

  “The Arabs have a proverb,” said Dr. Vreeland. “When the stomach speaks, wisdom is silent.”

  “Or as Stevenson put it,” murmured Miss Wandermere, “the sort who eat unduly must never hope for glory.”

  “You see, Queen, we want you to be at your best,” said Darnell the lawyer, staring piercingly at their victim. “Our membership rules are quite harsh. For example, application is by unanimous invitation only. Our fifth member, Dr. Arkavy, the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, who’s away at a science conference, voted by cable all the way from Moscow to invite you.”

  “You should understand, too,” said Tycoon Syres, “that if you fail to solve the puzzle we’re going to throw at you tonight, you’ll never be invited to try again.”

  “Harsh, indeed,” said Ellery, nodding. “You titillate me. How exactly is the puzzle propounded?”

  “In story form,” said the lady poet. “How else?”

  “Have I the option of asking questions?”

  “As many as you like,” said the little psychiatrist.

  “In that case,” Ellery said, “you-all may fire when ready.”

  “It happened during World War II,” the multimillionaire host began the story. “You’ll remember how hectic everything was—government departments mushrooming overnight, new bureaus scrambling to get organized, all sorts of people pulled out of the woodwork to help with the war effort, and security officers going crazy with the work load suddenly dumped on their shoulders.”

  “In a certain very important government war-bureau newly set up,” psychiatrist Vreeland said as he lit a cigar, “one of the working force taken on was a little man named Tarleton, J. Aubrey Tarleton, who came out of retirement to do his bit for Uncle Sam. J. Aubrey was an ex-civil servant with a good if undistinguished record in government service. The bureau was an essential and very sensitive one. There was no time to do more than a conventional security check, but Tarleton’s long record seemed to speak for itself.”

  “If you had seen old Mr. Tarleton,” Miss Wandermere, the poet, took up the tale, “he would have struck you as a throwback—say, someone out of the British civil service in Rudyard Kipling’s day. He had a Colonel Blimp mustache, he invariably dressed in ultra-conservative clothes of Edwardian cut, he actually wore a piped vest and spats, carried a silver-headed cane, and he was never without a boutonniere pinned to his lapel, usually a white gardenia. A spic-and-span, courtly little old gentleman out of a long-dead age.

  “His tastes were as elegantly old-fashioned,” the lady poet went on, “as his manners. For instance, Mr. Tarleton was something of a gourmet and a connoisseur of vintages. Also,
he would talk endlessly about his hobby, which was painting tiny landscapes on little ovals of ivory and ceramic—even worse, going on and on about his collection of Eighteenth Century miniatures by Richard Cosway and Ozias Humphry and other artists practically no one had ever heard of. In short, he was a good deal of a bore, and the younger people in the bureau especially vied with one another inventing new ways of avoiding him.”

  “Then something happened,” Lawyer Darnell chimed in, “that threw the spotlight on little Mr. Tarleton. It was shortly before D-Day, and the dapper old gent suddenly wangled a priority airline passage to London. And just then Intelligence received an anonymous tip that Tarleton was in the pay of the Nazis—that he was a German spy. There were thousands of such tips during the war, most of them checking out as baseless, the result of malice, or spy fever, or what-have-you. But in view of Tarleton’s access to top-secret material, and rather than take a chance at such a critical time, they yanked old Tarleton off the plane just as it was about to take off, and they gave him a going-over.”

  “This,” asserted oil man Syres gravely, “was the most thorough search in the long and honorable history of spy-catching. It took a very long time, because at first it was entirely unsuccessful. In the end, of course, they found it.”

  “The plans for the Allied invasion of Europe, no doubt,” Ellery said, smiling.

  “Exactly,” said Miss Wandermere, looking faintly disapproving. “The date cycle for D-Day, the location of the landings, the strength of the Allied forces—everything the German high command needed to smash the invasion in its tracks. There it was, to the last detail, all written down in plain uncoded English.

  “The question you’ve got to answer, Mr. Queen, is a simple one. Where did the Intelligence people find the spy-message?”

  “Or to put it the other way,” Darnell, the criminal lawyer, said, “where did Tarleton conceal the spy-message?”