In the extreme left aisle Inspector Queen reached into his topcoat pocket, carefully extracted a brown carved snuff-box and took a pinch with every evidence of enjoyment.
“That’s more like it, Thomas,” he chuckled. “You know how fussy I am about noises. . . . Who is the poor chap on the floor—do you know?”
Velie shook his head. “I haven’t even touched the body, Inspector,” he said. “I got here just a few minutes before you did. A man on the 47th Street beat called me up from his box and reported Doyle’s whistle. Doyle seems to have been doing things, sir. . . . His lieutenant reports favorably on his record.”
“Ah,” said the Inspector, “ah, yes. Doyle. Come here, Doyle.”
The policeman stepped forward and saluted.
“Just what,” went on the little grey man, leaning comfortably against a seat-back, “just what happened here, Doyle?”
“All I know about it, Inspector,” began Doyle, “is that a couple of minutes before the end of the second act this man”—he pointed to Pusak, who stood wretchedly in a corner—“came running up to me where I was standin’ in the back, watchin’ the show, and he says, ‘A man’s been murdered, officer! . . . A man’s murdered!’ He was blubberin’ like a baby and I thought he was pie-eyed.19 But I stepped mighty quick and came over here—the place was dark and there was a lot of shootin’ and screamin’ on the stage—and I took a look at the feller on the floor. I didn’t move him, but I felt his heart and there wasn’t anything to feel. To make sure he was croaked I asked for a doctor and a gent by the name of Stuttgard answered my call. . . .”
Inspector Queen stood pertly, his head cocked on a side like a parrot’s. “That’s excellent,” he said. “Excellent, Doyle. I’ll question Dr. Stuttgard later. Then what happened?” he went on.
“Then,” continued the policeman, “then I got the usherette on this aisle to beat it back to the manager’s office for Panzer. Louis Panzer—that’s the manager right over there . . .”
Queen regarded Panzer, who was standing a few feet to the rear talking to Neilson, and nodded. “That’s Panzer, you say. All right, all right. . . . Ellery! You got my message?”
He darted forward, brushing aside Panzer, who fell back apologetically, and clapped the shoulder of a tall young man who had slipped through the main door and was slowly looking about the scene. The old man passed his aim through the younger man’s.
“Haven’t inconvenienced you any, son? What bookstore did you haunt to-night? Ellery, I’m mighty glad you’re here!”
He dipped into his pocket, again extracted the snuff-box, sniffed deeply—so deeply that he sneezed—and looked up into his son’s face.
“As a matter of fact,” said Ellery Queen, his eyes restlessly roving, “I can’t return the compliment. You just lured me away from a perfect book-lover’s paradise. I was at the point of getting the dealer to let me have a priceless Falconer first-edition,20 intending to borrow the money from you at headquarters. I telephoned—and here I am. A Falconer—Oh, well. To-morrow will do, I suppose.”
The Inspector chuckled. “Now if you told me you were picking up an old snuff-box I might be interested. As it is—trot along. Looks as if we have some work to-night.”
They walked toward the little knot of men on the left, the old man’s hand grasping his son’s coat-sleeve. Ellery Queen towered six inches above his father’s head. There was a square cut to his shoulders and an agreeable swing to his body as he walked. He was dressed in oxford grey and carried a light stick. On his nose perched what seemed an incongruous note in so athletic a man—a rimless pince-nez.21 But the brow above, the long delicate lines of the face, the bright eyes were those of a man of thought rather than action.
They joined the group at the body. Ellery was greeted respectfully by Velie. He bent over the seat, glanced earnestly at the dead man, and stepped back.
“Go on, Doyle,” said the Inspector briskly. “You looked at the body, detained the man who found it, got the manager. . . . Then what?”
“Panzer at my orders closed all the doors at once and saw that no one either came in or went out,” answered Doyle. “There was a lot of fuss here with the audience, but nothing else happened.”
“Right, right!” said the Inspector, feeling for his snuff-box. “You did a mighty good job. Now—That gentleman there.”
He gestured in the direction of the trembling little man in the corner, who stepped forward hesitantly, licked his lips, looked about him with a helpless expression, and then stood silent.
“What’s your name?” asked the Inspector, in a kindly tone.
“Pusak—William Pusak,” said the man. “I’m a bookkeeper, sir. I was just—”
“One at a time, Pusak. Where were you sitting?”
Pusak pointed eagerly to the sixth seat from the aisle, in the last row. A frightened young girl in the fifth seat sat staring in their direction.
“I see.” said the Inspector. “Is that young lady with you?”
“Yes, sir—yes, sir. That’s my fiancée, sir. Her name is Esther—Esther Jablow. . . .”
A little to the rear a detective was scribbling in a notebook. Ellery stood behind his father, glancing from one exit to another. He began to draw a diagram on the fly-leaf of a small book he had taken from his topcoat pocket.
The Inspector scrutinized the girl, who immediately averted her eyes. “Now, Pusak, I want you to tell me just what happened.”
“I—I didn’t do a thing out of the way, sir.”
Inspector Queen patted his arm. “Nobody is accusing you of anything, Pusak. All I want is your story of what happened. Take your time—tell it your own way. . . .”
Pusak gave him a curious glance. Then he moistened his lips and began. “Well, I was sitting there in that seat with my—with Miss Jablow—and we were enjoying the show pretty much. The second act was kind of exciting—there was a lot of shooting and yelling on the stage—and then I got up and started to go out the row to the aisle. This aisle—here.” He pointed nervously to the spot of carpet on which he was standing. Queen nodded, his face benign.
“I had to push past my—Miss Jablow, and there wasn’t anybody except one man between her and the aisle. That’s why I went that way. I didn’t sort of like to”—he hesitated apologetically—“to bother people going out that way in the middle of the most exciting part . . .”
“That was very decent of you, Pusak,” said the Inspector, smiling.
“Yes, sir. So I walked down the row, feeling my way, because it was pretty dark in the theatre, and then I came to—to this man.” He shuddered, and continued more rapidly. “He was sitting in a funny way, I thought. His knees were touching the seat in front of him and I couldn’t get past. I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and tried again, but his knees hadn’t moved an inch. I didn’t know what to do, sir—I’m not nervy, like some fellows, and I was going to turn around and go back when all of a sudden I felt the man’s body slip to the floor—I was still pressed up close to him. Of course, I got kind of scared—it was only natural. . . .”
“I should say,” said the Inspector, with concern. “It must have given you quite a turn. Then what happened?”
“Well, sir. . . . Then, before I realized what was happening, he fell clean out of his seat and his head bumped against my legs. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t call for help—I don’t know why, but I couldn’t somehow—and I just naturally bent over him, thinking he was drunk or sick or something, and meant to lift him up. I hadn’t figured on what I’d do after that . . .”
“I know just how you felt, Pusak. Go on.”
“Then it happened—the thing I told this policeman about. I’d just got hold of his head when I felt his hand come up and grab mine, just like he was trying awfully hard to get a grip on something, and he moaned. It was so low I could hardly hear it, but sort of horrible. I can’t quite describe it exactly. . . .”
“Now, we’re getting on,” said the Inspector. “And?”
“And then
he talked. It wasn’t really talking—it was more like a gurgle, as if he was choking. He said a few words that I didn’t catch at all, but I realized that this was something different from just being sick or drunk, so I bent even lower and listened hard. I heard him gasp, ‘It’s murder . . . Been murdered . . .’ or something like that. . . .”
“So he said, ‘It’s murder,’ eh?” The Inspector regarded Pusak with severity. “Well, now. That must have given you a shock, Pusak.” He snapped suddenly, “Are you certain this man said ‘murder’?”
“That’s what I heard, sir. I’ve got good hearing,” said Pusak doggedly.
“Well!” Queen relaxed, smiling again. “Of course. I just wanted to make sure. Then what did you do?”
“Then I felt him squirm a little and all of a sudden go limp in my arms. I was afraid he’d died and I don’t know how—but next thing I knew I was in the back telling it all to the policeman—this policeman here.” He pointed to Doyle, who rocked on his heels impersonally.
“And that’s all?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That’s all I know about it,” said Pusak, with a sigh of relief.
Queen grasped him by the coat front and barked, “That isn’t all, Pusak. You forgot to tell us why you left your seat in the first place!” He glared into the little man’s eyes.
Pusak coughed, teetered back and forth a moment, as if uncertain of his next words, then leaned forward and whispered into the Inspector’s astonished ear.
“Oh!” Queen’s lips twitched in the suspicion of a smile,22 but he said gravely, “I see, Pusak. Thank you very much for your help. Everything is all right now—you may go back to your seat and leave with the others later on.” He waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. Pusak, with a sickly glance at the dead man on the floor, crept around the rear wall of the last row and reappeared by the girl’s side. She immediately engaged him in a whispered but animated conversation.
As the Inspector with a little smile turned to Velie, Ellery made a slight movement of impatience, opened his mouth to speak, appeared to reconsider, and finally moved quietly backwards, disappearing from view.
“Well, Thomas,” sighed the Inspector, “let’s have a look at this chap.”
He bent nimbly over the dead man, on his knees in the space between the last row and the row directly before it. Despite the brilliant sparkle of light from the fixtures overhead, the cramped space near the floor was dark. Velie produced a flashlight and stooped over the Inspector, keeping its bright beam on the corpse, shifting it as the Inspector’s hands roved about. Queen silently pointed to an ugly ragged brown stain on the otherwise immaculate shirt-front.
“Blood?” grunted Velie.
The Inspector sniffed the shirt cautiously. “Nothing more dangerous than whisky,” he retorted.
He ran his hands swiftly over the body, feeling over the heart and at the neck, where the collar was loosened. He looked up at Velie.
“Looks like a poisoning case, all right, Thomas. Get hold of this Dr. Stuttgard for me, will you? I’d like to have his professional opinion before Prouty gets here.”
Velie snapped an order and a moment later a medium-sized man in evening clothes, olive-skinned and wearing a thin black mustache, came up behind a detective.
“Here he is, Inspector,” said Velie.
“Ah, yes.” Queen looked up from his examination. “How do you do, Doctor? I am informed that you examined the body almost immediately after it was discovered. I see no obvious sign of death—what is your opinion?”
“My examination was necessarily a cursory one,” said Dr. Stuttgard carefully, his fingers brushing a phantom speck from his satin lapel. “In the semi-dark and under these conditions I could not at first discern any abnormal sign of death. From the construction of the facial muscles I thought that it was a simple case of heart failure, but on closer examination I noticed that blueness of the face—it’s quite clear in this light, isn’t it? That combined with the alcoholic odor from the mouth seems to point to some form of alcoholic poisoning. Of one thing I can assure you—this man did not die of a gunshot wound or a stab. I naturally made sure of that at once. I even examined his neck—you see I loosened the collar—to make sure it was not strangulation.”
“I see.” The Inspector smiled, “Thank you very much, Doctor. Oh, by the way,” he added, as Dr. Stuttgard with a muttered word turned aside, “do you think this man might have died from the effects of wood alcohol?”23
Dr. Stuttgard answered promptly. “Impossible,” he said. “It was something much more powerful and quick-acting.”
“Could you put a name to the exact poison which killed this man?”
The olive-skinned physician hesitated. Then he said stiffly, “I am very sorry, Inspector; you cannot reasonably expect me to be more precise. Under the circumstances . . .” His voice trailed off, and he backed away.
Queen chuckled as he bent again to his grim task.
The dead man sprawled on the floor was not a pleasant sight. The Inspector gently lifted the clenched hand and stared hard at the contorted face. Then he looked under the seat. There was nothing there. However, a black silk-lined cape hung carelessly over the back of the chair. He emptied all of the pockets of both dress-suit and cape, his hands diving in and out of the clothing. He extracted a few letters and papers from the inside breast pocket, delved into the vest pockets and trouser-pockets, heaping his discoveries in two piles—one containing papers and letters, the other coins, keys, and miscellaneous material. A silver flask initialed “M. F.” he found in one of the hip-pockets. He handled the flask gingerly, holding it by the neck, and scanning the gleaming surface as if for fingerprints.24 Shaking his head, he wrapped the flask with infinite care in a clean handkerchief, and placed it aside.
A ticket stub colored blue and bearing the inscription “LL32 Left,” he secreted in his own vest pocket.
Without pausing to examine any of the other objects individually, he ran his hands over the lining of the vest and coat, and made a rapid pass over the trouser-legs. Then, as he fingered the coat-tail pocket, he exclaimed in a low tone, “Well, well, Thomas—here’s a pretty find!” as he extracted a woman’s evening bag, small, compact and glittering with rhinestones.
He turned it over in his hands reflectively, then snapped it open, glanced through it and took out a number of feminine accessories. In a small compartment, nestling beside a lipstick, he found a tiny card-case. After a moment, he replaced all the contents and put the bag in his own pocket.
The Inspector picked up the papers from the floor and swiftly glanced through them. He frowned as he came to the last one—a letterhead.
“Ever hear of Monte Field, Thomas?” he asked, looking up.
Velie tightened his lips. “I’ll say I have. One of the crookedest lawyers in town.”
The Inspector looked grave. “Well, Thomas, this is Mr. Monte Field—what’s left of him.” Velie grunted.
“Where the average police system falls down,” came Ellery’s voice over his father’s shoulder, “is in its ruthless tracking down of gentlemen who dispose of such fungus as Mr. Monte Field.”
The Inspector straightened, dusted his knees carefully, took a pinch of snuff, and said, “Ellery, my boy, you’ll never make a policeman. I didn’t know you knew Field.”
“I wasn’t exactly on terms of intimacy with the gentleman,” said Ellery. “But I remember having met him at the Pantheon Club,25 and from what I heard at the time I don’t wonder somebody has removed him from our midst.”
“Let’s discuss the demerits of Mr. Field at a more propitious time,” said the Inspector gravely. “I happen to know quite a bit about him, and none of it is pleasant.”
He wheeled and was about to walk away when Ellery, gazing curiously at the dead body and the seat, drawled, “Has anything been removed, dad—anything at all?”
Inspector Queen turned his head. “And why do you ask that bright question, young man?”
“‘Because,” returned Elle
ry, with a grimace, “unless my eyesight fails me, the chap’s tophat is not under the seat, on the floor beside him, or anywhere in the general vicinity.”
“So you noticed that too, did you, Ellery?” said the Inspector grimly. “It’s the first thing I saw when I bent down to examine him—or rather the first thing I didn’t see.” The Inspector seemed to lose his geniality as he spoke. His brow wrinkled and his grey mustache bristled fiercely. He shrugged his shoulders. “And no hat-check in his clothes, either. Flint!”
A husky young man in plain clothes hurried forward.
“Flint, suppose you exercise those young muscles of yours by getting down on your hands and knees and hunting for a tophat. It ought to be somewhere around here.”
“Right, Inspector,” said Flint cheerfully, and he began a methodical search of the indicated area.
“Velie,” said Queen, in a businesslike tone, “suppose you find Ritter and Hesse and—no, those two will do—for me, will you?” Velie walked away.
“Hagstrom!” shouted the Inspector to another detective standing by.
“Yes, Chief.”
“Get busy with this stuff”—he pointed to the two small piles of articles he had taken from Field’s pockets and which lay on the floor—“and be sure to put them safely away in my own bags.”
As Hagstrom knelt by the body, Ellery quietly bent over and opened the coat. He immediately jotted a memorandum on the fly-leaf of the book in which he had drawn a diagram some time before. He muttered to himself, patting the volume, “And it’s a Stendhause private edition, too!”26
Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s Page 65