Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “The chandeliers,” muttered Cronin doubtfully, gazing upward at the heavily bronzed fixture above their heads.

  “By jinks—the canopy over the bed!” shouted the Inspector. He jumped to his feet and ran into the bedroom. Cronin pounded hard after him, Ellery sauntering interestedly behind.

  They stopped at the foot of the bed and stared up at the canopy. Unlike the conventional canopies of American style, this florid ornament was not merely a large square of cloth erected on four posts, an integral part of the bed only. The bed was so constructed that the four posts, beginning at the four corners, stretched from floor to ceiling. The heavy maroon-colored damask of the canopy also reached from floor to ceiling, connected at the top by a ringed rod from which the folds of the damask hung gracefully.

  “Well, if it’s anywhere,” grunted the Inspector, dragging one of the damask-covered bedroom chairs to the bed, “it’s up there. Here, boys, lend a hand.”

  He stood on the chair with a fine disregard for the havoc his shoes were wreaking on the silken material. Finding upon stretching his arms above his head that he was still many feet short of touching the ceiling, he stepped down.

  “Doesn’t look as if you could make it either, Ellery,” he muttered. “And Field was no taller than you. There must be a ladder handy somewhere by which Field himself got up here!”

  Cronin dashed into the kitchenette at Ellery’s nod in that direction. He was back in a moment with a six-foot stepladder. The Inspector, mounting to the highest rung, found that his fingers were still short of touching the rod. Ellery solved the difficulty by ordering his father down and climbing to the top himself. Standing on the ladder he was in a position to explore the top of the canopy.

  He grasped the damask firmly and pulled. The entire fabric gave way and fell to the sides, revealing a wooden panel about twelve inches deep—a framework which the hangings had concealed. Ellery’s fingers swept swiftly over the wooden relief-work of this panel. Cronin and the Inspector were staring with varying expressions up at him. Finding nothing that at the moment presented a possibility of entrance, Ellery leaned forward and explored the damask directly beneath the floor of the panel.

  “Rip it down!” growled the Inspector.

  Ellery jerked violently at the material and the entire canopy of damask fell to the bed. The bare unornamented floor of the panel was revealed.

  “It’s hollow,” announced Ellery, rapping his knuckles on the under-side paneling.

  “That doesn’t help much,” said Cronin. “It wouldn’t be a solid chunk, anyway. Why don’t you try the other side of the bed, Mr. Queen?”

  But Ellery, who had drawn back and was again examining the side of the panel, exclaimed triumphantly. He had been seeking a complicated, Machiavellian “secret door”—he found now that the secret door was nothing more subtle than a sliding-panel. It was cleverly concealed—the juncture of sliding and stationary panels was covered by a row of wooden rosettes and clumsy decorations—but it was nothing that a student of mystery lore would have hailed as a triumph of concealment.

  “It begins to appear as if I were being vindicated,” Ellery chuckled as he peered into the black recesses of the hole he had uncovered. He thrust a long arm into the aperture. The Inspector and Cronin were staring at him with bated breath.

  “By all the pagan gods,” shouted Ellery suddenly, his lean body quivering with excitement. “Do you remember what I told you, dad? Where would those papers be except in—hats!”

  His sleeve coated with dust, he withdrew his arm and the two men below saw in his hand a musty silk tophat!

  Cronin executed an intricate jig as Ellery dropped the hat on the bed and dipped his arm once more into the yawning hole. In a moment he had brought out another hat—and another—and still another! There they lay on the bed—two silk hats and two derbies.

  “Take this flashlight, son,” commanded the Inspector. “See if there’s anything else up there.”

  Ellery took the proffered electric torch and flashed its beam into the aperture. After a moment he clambered down, shaking his head.

  “That’s all,” he announced, dusting his sleeve, “but I should think it would be enough.”

  The Inspector picked up the four hats and carried them into the living-room, where he deposited them on a sofa. The three men sat down gravely and regarded each other.

  “I’m sort of itching to see what’s what,” said Cronin finally, in a hushed voice.

  “I’m rather afraid to look,” retorted the Inspector.

  “Mene mene tekel upharsin,”89 laughed Ellery. “In this case it might be interpreted as ‘the handwriting on the panel.’ Examine on, Macduff!”90

  The Inspector picked up one of the silk hats. It bore on the rich satiny lining the chaste trademark of Browne Bros. Ripping out the lining and finding nothing beneath, he tried to tear out the leather sweat-band. It resisted his mightiest efforts. He borrowed Cronin’s pocket-knife and with difficulty slashed away the band. Then he looked up.

  “This hat, Romans and countrymen,”91 he said pleasantly, “contains nothing but the familiar ingredients of hat-wear. Would you care to examine it?”

  Cronin uttered a savage cry and snatched it from the Inspector’s hand. He literally tore the hat to pieces in his rage.

  “Heck!” he said disgustedly, throwing the remnants on the floor. “Explain that to my undeveloped brain, will you, Inspector?”

  Queen smiled, taking up the second silk hat and regarding it curiously.

  “You’re at a disadvantage, Tim,” he said. “We know why one of these hats is a blank. Don’t we, Ellery?”

  “Michaels,” murmured Ellery.

  “Exactly—Michaels,” returned the Inspector.

  “Charley Michaels!” exclaimed Cronin. “Field’s strong-arm guy, by all that’s holy! Where docs he come into this?”

  “Can’t tell yet. Know anything about him?”

  “Nothing except that he hung onto Field’s coat-tails pretty closely. He’s an ex-jailbird, did you know that?”

  “Yes,” replied the Inspector dreamily. “We’ll have a talk about that phase of Mr. Michaels some other time. . . . But let me explain that hat: Michaels on the evening of the murder laid out, according to his statement, Field’s evening clothes, including a silk hat. Michaels swore that as far as he knew Field possessed only one topper. Now if we suppose that Field used hats for concealing papers, and was going to the Roman Theatre that night wearing a ‘loaded’ one he must necessarily have substituted the loaded hat for the empty one which Michaels prepared. Since he was so careful to keep only one silk hat in the closet, he realized that Michaels, should he find a topper, would be suspicious. So, in switching hats, he had to conceal the empty one. What more natural than that he should put it in the place from which he had taken the loaded hat—the panel above the bed?”

  “Well, I’ll be switched!” exclaimed Cronin.

  “Finally.” resumed the Inspector, “We can take it as gospel that Field, who was devilishly careful in the matter of his headgear, intended to restore the theatre hat to its hideaway when he got home from the Roman. Then he would have taken out this one which you’ve just torn up and put it back in the clothes-closet. . . .92 But let’s get on.”

  He pulled down the leather inner-band of the second silk hat, which also bore the imprint of Browne Bros. “Look at this, will you!” he exclaimed. The two men bent over and saw on the inner surface of the band, lettered with painful clarity in a purplish ink, the words BENJAMIN MORGAN.93

  “I’ve got to pledge you to secrecy, Tim,” said the Inspector immediately, turning to the red-haired man. “Never let on that you were a witness to the finding of papers in any way implicating Benjamin Morgan in this affair.”

  “What do you think I am, Inspector?” growled Cronin. “I’m as dumb as an oyster, believe me!”

  “All right, then.”‘ Queen felt the lining of the hat. There was a distinct crackle.

  “Now,” remarked Eller
y calmly, “we know for the first time definitely why the murderer had to take away the hat Field wore Monday night. In all likelihood the murderer’s name was lettered in the same way—that’s indelible ink, you know—and the murderer couldn’t leave a hat with his own name in it at the scene of the crime.”

  “By gosh, if you only had that hat, now,” cried Cronin, “you’d know who the murderer is!”

  “I’m afraid, Tim,” replied the Inspector dryly, “that hat is gone forever.”

  He indicated a row of careful stitches at the base of the inner band, where the lining was attached to the fabric. He ripped these stitches swiftly and inserted his fingers between the lining and the crown. Silently he drew out a sheaf of papers held together by a thin rubber band.

  “If I were as nasty as some people think I am,” mused Ellery, leaning back, “I might with perfect justice say, ‘I told you so.’”

  “We know when we’re licked, my son—don’t rub it in,” chortled the Inspector. He snapped off the rubber band, glanced hastily through the papers and with a satisfied grin deposited them in his breast pocket.

  “Morgan’s, all right,” he said briefly, and attacked one of the derbies.

  The inner side of the band was marked cryptically with an X. The Inspector found a row of stitches exactly as in the silk hat. The papers he drew out—a thicker bundle than Morgan’s—he examined cursorily. Then he handed them to Cronin, whose fingers were trembling.

  “A stroke of luck, Tim,” he said slowly. “The man you were angling for is dead, but there are a lot of big names in this. I think you’ll find yourself a hero one of these days.”

  Cronin grasped the bundle and feverishly unfolded the papers, one by one. “They’re here—they’re here!” he shouted. He jumped to his feet, stuffing the sheaf into his pocket.

  “I’ve got to beat it, Inspector,” he said rapidly. “There’s a load of work to do at last—and besides, what you find in that fourth hat is none of my business. I can’t thank you and Mr. Queen enough! So long!”

  He dashed from the room, and a moment later the snores of the policeman in the foyer came to an abrupt end. The outer door banged shut.

  Ellery and the Inspector looked at each other.

  “I don’t know what good this stuff is going to do us,” grumbled the old man, fumbling with the inner band of the last hat, a derby. “We’ve found things and deduced things and run rings around our imaginations—well. . . .” He sighed as he held the band up to the light.

  It was marked: MISC.

  84.The Wailing Wall, the Western Wall in the old city of Jerusalem, is a place where traditionally Jews have mourned the destruction of the Temple by the Romans.

  85.The French national anthem, “Le Marsellaise,” begins with the line, “Allons enfants de la Patrie (Arise, children of the fatherland).”

  86.Ellery refers to “The Purloined Letter,” an 1844 story of Poe’s featuring the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, in which the titular purloined letter is found hidden in plain sight.

  87.Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a Roman philosopher and dramatist who lived around the time of Jesus, is often cited as the source of the maxim, “Golden roofs break men’s rest.”

  88.Compare Sherlock Holmes on the subject: “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” (The Sign of Four, 1890). Holmes repeated versions of the maxim in numerous tales.

  89.Ellery refers to the Biblical episode recorded in Daniel 5, in which this phrase appears, written on the wall by a mysterious hand—the source of the proverbial handwriting on the wall.

  90.“Lay on, Macduff” is a phrase from the final scene of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, often misquoted as “Lead on, Macduff,” Act V, Scene 8.

  91.“Friends, Romans, countrymen” is the first line of a speech by Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2.

  92.There would, of course, have been no reason to do so if the hat Fields wore to the theater was identical to the hat normally kept in the closet. Returning the hat he wore to its hiding-place would have been necessary, however, if it were a different style from that normally kept in the closet (which is certainly possible if it were purchased at a different time than the “closeted” hat), and we learn shortly another reason why the switch would have been made (though this detail was not yet known to the Inspector).

  The odds of the first hat seized being the “blank” were only one-in-four, but having the first be empty made for greater drama—perhaps an embellishment of the narrator’s?

  93.And so Morgan is exonerated—clearly he was not the person Field planned to meet at the theater.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Stalemate

  At Friday noon, while Inspector Queen, Ellery and Timothy Cronin were deep in their search of Monte Field’s rooms, Sergeant Velie, sombre and unmoved as usual, walked slowly up 87th Street from Broadway, mounted the brownstone steps of the house in which the Queens lived and rang the bell. Djuna’s cheery voice bade him ascend, which the good Sergeant did with gravity.

  “Inspector’s not home!” announced Djuna pertly, his slim body completely hidden behind an enormous housewife’s apron. Odorous traces of an onion-covered steak pervaded the air.

  “Get on with you, you imp!” growled Velie. He took, from his inner breast pocket a bulky envelope sealed, and handed it to Djuna. “Give this to the Inspector when he comes home. Forget, and I’ll dip you into the East River.”

  “You and who else?” breathed Djuna, with a remarkable twitching of his lips. Then he added decorously, “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, then.” Velie deliberately turned about and descended to the street, where his broad back was visible in formidable proportions to the grinning Djuna from the fourthstory window.

  When, at a little before six, the two Queens trudged wearily into their rooms, the alert eyes of the Inspector pounced upon the official envelope where it lay on his plate.

  He tore off a corner of the envelope and pulled out a number of typewritten sheets on the stationery of the Detective Bureau.

  “Well, well!” he muttered to Ellery, who was lazily pulling off his topcoat. “The clans are gathering. . . .”94

  Sinking into an armchair, his hat forgotten on his head, his coat still buttoned, he set about reading the reports aloud.

  The first slip read:

  REPORT OF RELEASE

  28 September 192-

  John Cazzanelli, alias Parson Johnny, alias John the Wop, alias Peter Dominick, released from custody to-day on parole.

  Under-cover investigation of J. C.’s complicity in the robbery of the Bonomo Silk Mills (June 2, 192-) not successful. We are searching for “Dinky” Morehouse, police informer, who has disappeared from usual haunts, for further information.

  Release effected under advice of District Attorney Sampson. J. C. under surveillance and is available at any time.

  T. V.

  The second report which the Inspector picked up, laying aside the advices concerning Parson Johnny with a frown, read as follows:

  REPORT ON WILLIAM PUSAK

  September 28, 192-

  Investigation of the history of William Pusak reveals the following:

  32 years old; born in Brooklyn, N.Y., of naturalized parents; unmarried; regular habits; socially inclined; has “dates” three or four nights a week; religious. Is bookkeeper at Stein & Ranch, clothing merchants, 1076 Broadway. Does not gamble or drink. No evil companions. Only vice seems fondness for girls.

  Activities since Monday night normal. No letters sent, no money withdrawn from bank, hours fairly regular. No suspicious movements of any kind.

  Girl, Esther Jablow; seems Pusak’s “steadiest.” Has seen E. J. twice since Monday—Tuesday at lunch, Wednesday evening. Went to movies and Chinese restaurant Wednesday evening.

  Operative No. 4 (OK’d: T. V.)

  The Inspector grunted as he threw the sheet aside. The third report was headed:

>   REPORT ON MADGE O’CONNELL

  To Friday, Sept. 28, ‘2-

  O’Connell, lives at 1436-10th Avenue. Tenement, 4th floor. No lather. Idle after Monday night, due to shutting down of Roman Theatre. Left theatre Monday night at general release of public. Went home, but stopped in drug-store corner 8th Avenue and 48th Street to telephone. Unable to trace call. Overheard reference to Parson Johnny in ’phone conversation. Seemed excited.

  Tuesday did not leave house until 1 o’clock. No attempt to get in touch with Parson Johnny at Tombs.95

  Went around theatre employment agencies looking for usherette position after finding out Roman Theatre was closed indefinitely.

  Nothing new Wednesday all day or Thursday. Returned to work at Roman Thursday night after call from manager. No attempt see or communicate with Parson Johnny. No incoming calls, no visitors, no mail. Seemed suspicious—think she is “wise” to tailing.

  Operative No. 11

  OK’d: T. V.

  “Hmph!” muttered the Inspector as he picked up the next sheet of paper. “Let’s see what this one says. . . .”

  REPORT ON FRANCES IVES-POPE

  September 28, 192-

  F. I.-P. left Roman Theatre Monday night directly after release from Manager’s Office by lnspector Queen. Examined with other departing members of audience at main door. Left in company of Eve Ellis, Stephen Barry, Hilda Orange, of the cast. Took taxi to Ives-Pope house on Riverside Drove. Taken out in half-unconscious condition. Three actors left home soon after.

  Tuesday she did not leave house. Learned from a gardener she was laid up in bed all day. Learned she received many calls during day.

  Did not appear formally until Wednesday morning at interview in house with Inspector Queen. After interview, left house in company of Stephen Barry, Eve Ellis, James Peale, her brother Stanford. Ives-Pope limousine drove party out into Westchester. Outing revived F. Evening stayed at home with Stephen Barry. Bridge-party on.