Calendar of Crime

The Adventure of The Ides of Michael Magoon

It was passed in the third session of the 65th Congress and approved as of 6:55 P.M. on the twenty-fourth of February, 1919, and its title is Public—No. 254 [H.R. 12863].

Nor is there anything alarming in its subtitle, which happens to be An Act To provide revenue, and for other purposes. The fifth word may raise a few scattered goose pimples, but hardly more.

It is necessary to read on.

Nothing will be clear until you come upon the phrase, “on or before the fifteenth day of March.”

Then everything will be clear, clear as the clap of the tocsin. There is only one calamity which befalls America, urbs et suburbs, on or before the fifteenth day of March, and that is the income tax.

Before going on to Michael Magoon and his unusual tax problem, it is tempting to take a short detour into the statutes, which concern not Mike alone but very nearly all of us. There was income-tax legislation before the Revenue Act of 1918, and there has been income-tax legislation since, but Public—No. 254 [H.R. 12863] bears a curious distinction. It was the first income-tax law which pronounced the annual Judgment Day to be March the fifteenth. Its predecessors designated March the first.

Why the change in dates?

There is a reason, of course, and it is not the reason your tax expert, for all his awful knowledge, can give you.

Someone—perhaps it was Mr. Secretary of the Treasury, or a Gentleman from Indiana or Ohio, or even some lowlier lackey of the People with a finger in the legislative pie—someone with a frightening lack of humor remembered great Caesar and the bloody daggers. Someone remembered the signs and the portents and the gathering crimson thunderheads over the full Capitoline moon. He may even have recalled that postridie idus., the day following the Ides, was held by the ancient Romans to be unlucky.

And who among us, after rendering unto Caesar, will deny on any given March the sixteenth that the Romans were right?

The whole thing was certainly unlucky for Magoon.

Mike was what the fancy boys like to call a private “op,” or “eye.” These fascinating terms inevitably materialize a slim-hipped, narrow-eyed, cigaret-dragging character in a Finchley custom-drape, a Sulka tie and a $35 Dobbs, who is greased death on the draw, kills five thugs and one mastermind on every case, is as irresistible with dames as a fox in a hen-coop, carries a self-refillable flask of Scottish dew on the other hip, and speaks, when he speaks at all, in insolent monosyllables—something out of Chandler by Bogart.

Alas. Mike Magoon was a sagging 63 with a 48 waist, very large flat feet, and blinky brown eyes covered by tortoiseshell glasses, which gave him an air of groping astonishment. He wore Adam hats, suits from Barney’s, and shoes by W. L. Douglas. And he neither smoked nor drank—asthma barred the one and, as for the other, his good wife had the nasal infallibility of a beagle. He had never manhandled a lady client in his life; not that he lacked a libido, but he cherished his license more. And in the sudden-death department, he had discharged his Police Positive exactly twice since resigning from the Force four years before, and one of those times he was cleaning his pistol on the fire escape when a neighbor’s pride and joy whanged his shooting hand with a well-directed B.B. shot.

No cases came Mike’s way involving mysterious fat men with inscrutable eyes, or Maltese falcons, or gangster chieftains in luxurious penthouses. For the most part he spent his time trailing thirtyish ladies for suspicious husbands or putting the grab on shop clerks allergic to the boss’s till. On those Saturday nights when he was not working, he took his wife to the movies. On Sundays, after church, there was always The Little Ukraine on Fordham Road—Mike was mad about shashlik and borscht with sour cream. And on Wednesday nights, bingo.

The first three years Mike was a private eye he operated out of his three-room Bronx flat to cut the overhead, picking up what cases he could through tips from old friends in brass buttons. Then he and Mrs. Magoon decided that a front and a midtown telephone number might pay for more bingo games, so Mike sublet one room of a four-office suite in a 42nd Street office building, sharing the premises with a public stenographer, a commercial artist, and a little bald man with a gold tooth who had four phones which were always ringing. A week after Michael Magoon, Confidential Investigations had sprouted in gilt on his pebbled-glass door, Mike opened it to admit Mrs. Clementa Van Dome, the kind of client the Magoons of this world lie awake nights praying for: the client who pays an annual retainer for continuous services rendered. It was a klep case in which—but more of Mrs. Van Dome anon.

Three times since that gold-letter day the Ides of Martius came and went, and Caesar was satisfied. And then came the fourth time.

The fourth time it was Mike who went, hurrying as fast as his asthma and flat feet would permit, to the Queen apartment.

A detective consulting a detective struck Nikki’s funnybone. And poor Mike’s manner as he looked around at the Queen walls somehow made it even funnier.

But the best was still to come.

“Ellery,” said Mike, blushing, “I have been robbed.”

“Robbed,” said Ellery with a straight face. “Robbed of what, Mike?”

“My income tax return.”

Nikki excused herself heroically. When she came back, Ellery was putting his handkerchief away.

“Forgive me, Mike,” he was saying. “My old pleurisy. Did you say your tax return has been stolen?”

“That’s what I said, and you’re healthy as a horse,” said Mike Magoon doggedly. “Oh, I don’t blame you for goin’ into hysterics. But it ain’t funny, McGee. Today’s the fourteenth of March. How am I gonna make the March fifteenth deadline?”

“Well, your—hrm! — return can’t be terribly complicated, Michael,” said Ellery gravely. “Get another blank and fill it in, and so on.”

“With what, I ask you!”

“With what?”

“You gotta have data!”

“Well, certainly. Don’t you have data?”

“No!”

“But—”

“Listen, Ellery. All my papers and records—everything I was usin’ to make out my return—it’s all been swiped!”

“Oh.”

“It was in this brief case, the whole business. It’d take me weeks to round up duplicates of my records! Meanwhile what do I say to the Collector of Internal Revenue?” And Mike, because he was an old stable-mate of Inspector Queen’s and had known Ellery when he was a cigar in the Inspector’s pocket, added: “Wise guy?”

“Ellery, that is a nuisance,” said Nikki, glancing over at the table to make sure that her own records and return were still there.

“Records and all... Where were the contents of your brief case stolen from, Mike?”

“My office. You been up there, Ellery—you know there’s three other tenants—”

“And you all use a common reception room,” Ellery nodded. “Were you in your office at the time, Mike?”

“Yes. Well, no—not exactly. Look. I better tell you the whole thing, just the way it happened. It’s got me loopin’.”

It had happened around six P.M. the previous day. Mike had been working on his tax return. Just before six he had decided to give up the struggle for the day. He had collected his canceled checks, memoranda, receipted bills and so on and had put them, together with his return, into his brief case.

“I’d just put on my overcoat,” said Mike, “when Mrs. Carson—she’s the public steno who leases the suite and rents out the offices—Mrs. Carson comes runnin’ into my office yellin’ there’s a fire in the reception room. So I run out there and, sure enough, the settee’s on fire. Somebody’d dropped a match into a wastepaper basket right next to it, and it blazed up and the settee caught fire. Well, it wasn’t much—I put it out in five minutes—then I go back to my office, pick up my hat and brief case, and amble on home.”

“And of course,” sighed Ellery, “when you got home you opened your brief case and your return and records were gone.”

“With the wind,” said Michael Magoon bitterly. “Cleaned out and a newspaper stuffed inside instead.”

“Could the transfer have been made, Mike, en route from your office to your home?”

“Impossible. I walked over from the office to the garage where I park my car, with the brief case under my arm. Then I drove home, the case next to me on the car seat.”

“You’re sure this is the same brief case?”

“Oh, sure. It’s an old one. It’s my case, all right.”

“Then it wasn’t a wholesale substitution,” said Ellery thoughtfully. “Someone opened your case on your office desk, removed its contents, substituted a newspaper, and closed the case again, all while you were putting out the fire in the reception room.”

“It must have been that Mrs. Carson,” said Nikki, wondering how the obvious could have escaped even such a pedestrian sleuth as Mike Magoon.

“How about it, Mike?” asked Ellery.

“Not a chance. She ran out in front of me and stayed with me in the reception room, runnin’ back and forth from the water-cooler to the settee with a vase she keeps on her desk. Didn’t leave my sight for a second.”

“Who else was in the suite, Mike?”

“The two other tenants. One of ’em’s a commercial artist named Vince, Leonardo Vince, a screwball if I ever saw one. The other’s a little crumb calls himself Ziggy, Jack Ziggy. He thinks I don’t know it, but he’s a bookie.”

“Didn’t Vince and Ziggy run out of their offices when you and Mrs. Carson tackled the fire?”

“Sure. But they didn’t help put it out—just stood around givin’ advice. I didn’t pay any attention to either of ’em.”

“Then it’s possible one of them—?”

“It’s possible. But I can’t be sure. Anyway, I drove right back down to the office again last night, thinkin’ maybe I’d left my tax stuff on my desk or somethin’—”

“But of course it wasn’t there.”

“I didn’t sleep last night,” said Mike miserably, “and if I could have slept, the old lady’s jawin’ would have kept me awake.”

“Have you been to the office this morning, Mike?”

“No. I came right down here, Ellery.”

“Well.” Ellery rose and began to fill his pipe. “A very unusual problem, Mike.”

“Huh?”

“Unusual!” said Nikki. “All right, Mr. Queen, I’ll bite. What’s unusual about it?”

“Why should someone steal a man’s income-tax return—the return of a man like Mike? To find out what Mike’s income was last year? With all respect to your industry, Michael, that could hardly interest anyone; and more to the point, if that was what the thief was after, he wouldn’t have to steal the return—a quick look would tell him what he wanted to know.”

“Then why,” asked Nikki, “did he steal it?”

“That,” replied Ellery, “is what makes the problem interesting. Mike.” He eyed Mike sternly. “Have you been up to anything illegal?”

“Illegal!”

Ellery chuckled. “Routine question, Michael. Of course, if you were finagling, you’d hardly report it to Uncle Sam. No.” Ellery puffed on his pipe. “The only thing that makes sense is the source of your income.”

“I don’t get it,” complained the eye.

“Now, now. After all, Mike, you’re a private dick. Your own shingle advertises the confidential nature of your work. Tell me: Which paper or papers in your brief case referred to a client or case in which secrecy is of the essence?”

Mike looked doubtful. “Well, all my cases are what you might call confidential—”

“Mike, I’m willing to bet your tax against mine that you have at least one client who’s extremely wealthy, who came to you under a pledge of absolute secrecy... and whose records, or a record of whose case, were in your brief case yesterday.”

“Mrs. Van Dome,” said Magoon, gaping.

“Mrs. Van Dome,” said Ellery briskly. “Sounds as if I’ve hit the jack-pot, Mike. Nikki—notes!”

And Michael Magoon told the story of his very best client, Mrs. Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome.

Mrs. Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome, had she been either a Van Swicken or a Van Dome, would have occupied a position of high altitude on the social pyramid. Being both a Van Swicken and a Van Dome, she reigned alone at the very apex, surrounded by the stratosphere and God. She was so far out of sight of mere earthlings that Nikki, who was Ellery’s Almanach de Gotha, had never heard of her, whereas Ellery had. She considered Park Avenue gauche, and the D.A.R. upstarts. A Van Swicken had helped build Fort Amsterdam in ye Manhatas, and a Van Dome had led the trek to Gowanus Bay nine years before he became restless and moved on to establish a settlement which was named Breuckelen. The measure of Mrs. Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome’s social standing was that she was invited to all the most exclusive functions in New York and never went to any. She herself gave one party each year; her guest-list was more carefully scrutinized than the personnel at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and only those were invited whose forefathers had settled in the New World before 1651 and whose fortunes had not been tainted by trade for at least six generations.

Mrs. Van Dome was a widow, and she had one child, a daughter.

“You ought to see this Margreta,” said Mike Magoon. “Skinny as a pretzel-stick, pimples all over her map, forty-five if she’s a day, and she’s a poetess.”

“A what?” said Nikki.

“She writes poetry,” said Mike firmly.

“Under the name of Hollandia,” nodded Ellery. “Brutal stuff. I take it, Mike, mama consulted you about Margreta?”

“That’s it.”

“Just because she writes bad poetry?” said Nikki.

“Because she’s a klep, Miss Porter.”

Nikki looked excited. “What’s that? It sounds—”

“Relax, Nikki,” said Ellery. “Mike means a kleptomaniac. It all begins to be too, too clear, Michael. Stop me if I’m wrong. If there’s one thing Mrs. Van Dome fears, it’s scandal. The unlovely Margreta does not merely commit the crime of writing bad poetry, she also develops a yearning to take things belonging to other people. There have been polite complaints, perhaps, discreetly made to mama. Mama pays, but begins to worry. Margreta shows no signs of reform. The habit grows. It will soon be in the papers. Mama comes to a relatively unknown private detective—no doubt after checking your personal reputation, Mike, with your old pals at Headquarters—and puts Margreta into your hands on a one-hundred-percent hush-hush basis.”

“That’s it, that’s it,” said Mike. “My job is to protect Margreta from arrest and publicity. I trail her whenever she hits the street. When I see her take somethin’, I quietly pay for it after she drifts on. Mrs. Van Dome gives me an expense account—which, believe me, she looks over with an eagle eye! I get an annual retainer—not a heck of a lot, but it’s good steady dough.”

“And among your income tax records,” nodded Ellery, “were the various accounts, receipted bills, et cetera, pertaining to the misadventures of Margreta.”

“Somebody,” cried Nikki, “trailed Mr. Magoon or something, saw what was going on, then stole his income tax records to...” Nikki stopped. “To what?”

“To make use of them,” said Ellery dryly. “Obviously.”

“Blackmail!” roared Mike, jumping up as if he had just been given the hot-foot. “By cripes, Ellery, with those receipted bills, and correspondence, and stuff—whoever it was could blackmail old lady Van Dome till she was... black in the face! She’d pay anything to keep that yarn from gettin’ out! That’s it!”

“Somebody,” said Nikki. “Who’s somebody?”

Mike sat down.

But Ellery, knocking his pipe out on the fire screen, said: “Mrs. Carson.”

“Mrs. Carson?” said Mike, blinking.

“But Ellery, Mr. Magoon says she couldn’t possibly—”

“Nikki. A fire starts in a wastebasket which ignites an office settee which sends Mrs. Carson running into Mike’s office yelling for him to... what? Run out—with her. Mike does so. And Mrs. Carson sticks with him.” Ellery shrugged. “By the same token, Mike sticks with Mrs. Carson... while Mrs. Garson’s accomplice slips into Mike’s office and, having no time to winnow the Van Dome papers from the rest, lifts the entire contents of Mike’s brief case, puts a newspaper stuffing in their place, and slips out. Mike,” said Ellery, setting his pipe into the mantel-piece rack, “let’s go down to your office and give that public stenographer a little dictation.”

So Collector of Internal Revenue v. Magoon was a simple business after all.

Only, it wasn’t.

When they opened Mrs. Carson’s door they found Mrs. Carson taking dictation from a higher Authority.

“Feeling better now?” asked Ellery, drinking the rest of the bourbon in the paper cup.

“Oh, Ellery,” moaned Nikki. “That dead woman.”

“Is a dead woman.”

“But a dead woman without a face!”

“I should think you’d be used to that sort of thing by now, Nikki.”

“I suppose that’s why you finished my drink.”

“I was thirsty,” said Ellery with dignity; and he strolled through Mrs. Carson’s doorway waging a heroic battle with his stomach.

They were standing around the typewriter desk staring down at Mrs. Carson’s ruins. Nobody was saying anything.

“Oh, Ellery.”

“Dad.”

“Six inches,” said Inspector Queen in a wondering voice. “The rod was fired not more than six inches from her pan.”

“There’s no question but that it’s Mrs. Carson?”

“It’s her, all right.” Mike was slugging it out, too.

“Mrs.,” said Ellery, looking at her left hand. “Where’s Mr.?”

“In Montefiore Cemetery,” said Mike, still swallowing powerfully. “He kicked off six years ago, she told me.”

“How old was she, Mike?” Funny how hard it was to tell a woman’s age when her face was not there for reference.

“I’d have said around thirty-six, thirty-eight.”

“Ever mention a boy friend?” asked the Inspector.

“Nope. And she never seemed to have a date, Inspector. Always workin’ in here late.”

“Michael, Michael,” said Inspector Queen. “That’s why she worked in here late. Only she wasn’t working. Not at a typewriter, anyway.”

Through the greenish overcast, Mike looked puzzled.

The old gentleman said impatiently: “We know she decoyed you with that fire she set herself; we know somebody lifted the Van Dome stuff from your brief case during the fire. And who was here at the time? The other two tenants. So one of them was the Carson woman’s accomplice. Does it fit? Sure, Mike. When she was ‘working late,’ she was playing hoopla with either Leonardo Vince or Jack Ziggy right here in the office.”

“But then,” muttered Mike Magoon, “who plugged her last night? You mean Vince, or Ziggy...?”

The Inspector nodded.

“But why, Inspector!”

“Michael, Michael.”

“The double-cross, Dad?” asked Ellery, not skeptically—just asking.

“What else? She helps him swipe the documents he can blackmail Mrs. Van Dome with, so then he rubs the girl friend out. He’s got it all to himself, and no blabbermouth to worry about besides. Ellery, why are you looking as if you smell something?”

“He must be very stupid,” said Ellery.

“Sure,” said his father cheerfully. “They’re only smart in the fairy tales you write. Now if this were one of your mystery plots, Ellery, you know who’d be the criminal?”

“Mike,” said Ellery.

“Me!” Mike immediately looked guilty.

“Sure, Mike,” chuckled the Inspector. “By the way, what time was it when you got back here last night? Your return trip, Mike—when you came back to see if you’d left your papers behind?”

“So that’s it,” growled Mike. “Listen here, Inspector...!”

“Oh, don’t be an ass, Mike,” said Ellery irritably. “What time was it? Was she alive? Was her light on? What?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure. Must have been a quarter of eight or so. She was workin’ in her office here. I says Mrs. Carson did you find any papers of mine around from my brief case and she says no Mr. Magoon I didn’t. I says where’s Ziggy and that nut artist and she says oh they went home long ago. So I says good night and goes back home myself.”

“How did she seem to you at the time, Mike?”

“Okay.”

“Not nervous?”

“Hell, I don’t know. She was always nervous.”

“Well.” The Inspector scratched his head. “The best Doc Prouty can give us is that she was killed between seven and nine last night. The cleaning woman’s no help—she was through giving the offices a lick and a promise by seven o’clock, she says, and she says Mrs. Carson was here alone. So, Mike, if you left her alive near eight, then she was bopped between eight and nine.”

“By one of these two characters,” said Sergeant Velie from the doorway.

The first man was a tall, frayed, decaying-looking fellow with prehensile dirty fingers and half-slices of lemon under his eyes. The second was a little bald-headed man with a very gold tooth. Their eyes bugged at the thing lolling on the typewriter and they both back-pedaled fast. But Sergeant Velie was leaning in the doorway, licking a cigar.

The tall man went over to the window and opened it and stuck his face out into the cold March airstream. The small man went over to Mrs. Carson’s wastebasket and bent over, almost embracing it.

“How can you stand it? How can you stand it?” the tall man kept saying.

“Arrrgh,” said the little man.

“That’s Vince the artist,” said Mike. “That’s Jack Ziggy the bookie,” said Mike.

“I didn’t kill her,” said the tall man. “I’m an artist. I’m interested in life. I couldn’t kill a spider crawling up my leg. Ask anybody. Don’t think you’ll make me say I did it. Cut pieces out of me—” Leonardo Vince was getting worked up, blood in his musty face again.

“You’ve made your point, Vince,” said the Inspector mildly. “I suppose, Ziggy, you didn’t kill her either.”

The little bald man raised his head to reply, but then he stooped quickly again and repeated: “Arrrgh.”

Sergeant Velie drawled: “Inspector.”

“Huh?” The old gentleman did not glance at him.

“The night man here says Vince and Ziggy both came back to the buildin’ last night. He can’t remember the exact times but he says they came separate, and they came between eight and nine.”

Mrs. Carson was a pall, definitely. Even Sergeant Velie sucked on his cigar with more enjoyment when she floated out of the office between two Welfare men.

Leonardo Vince shut the window, shivering, and the little bookmaker straightened up with the wastebasket, glancing around apologetically. The Inspector nodded to a detective and Jack Ziggy went out holding the basket high and wide.

“Cobalt blue,” said the Inspector to the artist. “You were saying...?”

“You can’t make it out red or ocher or any damned thing but what I say it was,” said Vince wearily. “It was cobalt blue. Go into my office and see if you can find the tube. You can’t. It’s not there. I took it home last night. That’s why I came back. I may serve commerce during the day, and damn the shriveled souls of all agency men!—but my nights are dedicated to Art, gentlemen, with a capital and profitless A. I got home, had a bite, went to my easel, and found I had no cobalt blue which I happened to need for a purpose which would be far above your vulgar understanding. The supply stores were closed. I returned to the office here for a tube of—”

“Cobalt blue,” said the Inspector, nodding. He stared at Vince hard. Vince stared back, with hate. “And Mrs. Carson was—?”

“Am I supposed to contradict myself?” asked the artist bitterly. “But how could I? A child could repeat this story ad infinitum. I didn’t even see Mrs. Carson. There was a light on in her office but the door was shut. Don’t bother to ask the next question. It was about eight-fifteen. No, the homunculus wasn’t here—I refer to the creature who calls himself Ziggy—at least, I didn’t see him. And I have no idea if the woman was alive or dead; I heard not a whisper from her office. And lastly, I am a woman-hater. Now what do I do—say it all over again?”

On the heels of this remarkable soliloquy came the homunculus, with the detective but without the wastebasket.

“And me,” whined Ziggy, “me, I don’t know—”

“Nuttin.”

“—nuttin. But from nuttin.”

“You had a couple of parties to ring up,” prompted Inspector Queen politely, “and—?”

“Yeah. Private calls, see? Confidentially, some of my clients owe me some back dough and they been tryin’ to sucker me, so I come back at eight-thirty to use my own phone, see? More private, like. And I don’t remember a thing, not a thing. No light, no Mrs. Carson, no nuttin. I don’t remember nuttin. I don’t see nobody, I don’t hear nobody—”

“Oh, hell,” said the Inspector. “Ellery, have you got anything?”

“I see no reason,” said Ellery absently, “to hold these two men any longer.”

His father frowned.

“You’ve established no connection between these fellows and Mrs. Carson, beyond a common tenancy. The woman was obviously killed by someone else. Get them out of here, Dad—I’m sicker of them than you are.”

When Leonardo Vince and Jack Ziggy were gone, the old gentleman said: “All right, Master Mind. What’s the great big plot?”

“And why’d you warn us not to say anything about Mike’s income tax stuff on Mrs. Van Dome bein’ swiped?” demanded Sergeant Velie.

“Suppose,” said Ellery, “suppose thief-killer-potential-blackmailer is in desperate need of ready cash.” He looked at them.

“He wouldn’t dare,” breathed his father. “Not now.”

“Maestro, he’s hot!”

“He doesn’t know we’ve made the least connection between the theft of Mike’s records and the murder of Mrs. Carson.”

Inspector Queen trotted around the office, pulling at his mustache.

Then he stopped and said: “Mike, phone that Mrs. Van Dome. I want to talk to her.”

The next morning, when Ellery hung up, he said to his audience: “It’s a curious experience, speaking to Mrs. Van Dome. Didn’t you find it so yesterday, Dad?”

“Never mind how I found that snooty, upstaging, cop-hating old battle-ax,” grunted the Inspector. “What did she just say, Ellery?”

“Like a dream-trip through outer space. It leaves you with an exhilarating memory of indescribable grandeurs and only the vaguest sense of reality. Mike, does she really exist?”

“Never mind the fancy stuff,” growled Magoon. “What did she say?”

“She received the note in the first mail this morning.”

“Really, Ellery,” said Nikki, “your omniscience is disgusting.”

“I better ankle over there,” said Sergeant Velie, “see Her Nibs, get the note, and arrange for—”

“You will not be received,” said Ellery dreamily. “Mrs. Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome has just passed a Law. It is to the effect that if she wants to pay blackmail, she’ll pay blackmail, and if the City of New York sends so much as one policeman or detective to the rendezvous, she’ll sue said City for a large number of millions.”

“You mean—” cried the Inspector.

“She’s afraid that you’d scare off the blackmailer, Dad. Then he’d give the full and documented story of Margreta’s little vice to the newspapers. To prevent that, she’s ready to pay ten thousand dollars, and so on. She was quite nasty about it in an imperial sort of way.”

“So our hands are tied,” groaned the Inspector. “If only we knew what was in that note!”

“Oh, that. I have it here on my pad, word for word.”

“She read it to you?”

“It seems that I,” said Ellery, “am a gentleman—of a lower order, to be sure—but still... Oh, you heard my line. Here’s the note: ‘Mrs. Van Dome. I have the proof your daughter is a crook. Be in the south Waiting Room at Penn Station at eight P.M. tonight. Bring ten thousand dollars in nothing bigger than twenties. Wear a black hat with a purple nose-veil. Wrap the dough in red paper, hold it under your left arm. Don’t tell police. If there’s any sign of gumshoes or cops tonight I’ll see to it every paper in town gets the lowdown—with photostats—on how your daughter’s been lifting stuff from New York department stores for years. Be smart. Play ball. I mean business.’ No signature.”

“It sounds like that gold-tooth man,” said Nikki, but doubtfully.

“I think it’s Vince,” said Mike excitedly.

“Might be either,” grunted the Inspector. “Ziggy being extra-careful about his English, or Vince being purposely sloppy. Good work, son. Well be there and—”

“Oh, no, you won’t.”

“You think I won’t?”

“City. Suit.”

His father ground the inspectorial jaws.

“Besides,” said Ellery, “I gave Mrs. Van D. my word as a gentleman that no policeman or city detective would be at the rendezvous tonight.”

“Ellery,” groaned his father.

“On the other hand, I’m not a policeman or city detective, am I? Nor is Mike. And certainly Nikki isn’t.”

“Ellery!”

“Mike, you don’t look pleased.”

“Pleased! Today is March the fifteenth,” said Mike through his teeth, “the rat won’t show till eight P.M. — the deadline for income-tax returns is midnight—and he says I don’t look pleased.”

“Why, Michael,” said Ellery soothingly. “That gives us all of four hours.”

“To collar this skunk, find out where he’s hid my tax stuff, get ’em, finish workin’ out my return, and have it in the mail—all between eight and twelve!”

“Cinch,” said Ellery. “Michael, my boy, it’s as good as in the bag—the mail bag—right now.”

Prophecy is a perilous art.

At twelve minutes of eight o’clock on the evening of March fifteenth a large stout woman wearing a black hat and a purple nose-veil, carrying a fat parcel wrapped in red paper under her left arm, appeared suddenly in the entrance to the south Waiting Room at Pennsylvania Station.

Mrs. Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome surveyed her fellow Americans. There was an expression of excitement on those remote features. So these were the People, it said. One gathered that this was at least as great an adventure.

The People stared back, rather uneasily. The steamfitter jaw bunched, and Mrs. Van Dome swept regally to the nearest bench. A Negro soldier moved over to make room for her. On the other side a young mother was struggling to diaper a kicking, screaming infant. Mrs. Van Dome was seen to take a long, deep breath. Then she sat down, and she sat rigidly. She grew red in the face.

She was trying not to breathe.

At twelve minutes of ten she was still seated there. By now her neighbors were an old man without a tie who was carrying a paper bag, and a girl in a mink coat and no hat who was smoking a cigaret.

The three watchers crossed glances over their newspapers.

“All this excitement,” muttered Nikki, “is killing me—” she stirred tenderly — “and you know where.”

“He couldn’t have spotted us,” mumbled Mike. “Ellery, he couldn’t have.”

“It’s unlikely,” said Ellery. “Unless he was here at six o’clock and saw us enter the Station. If he wasn’t, it’s even unlikelier because, from where we’re sitting, we’re invisible unless you come into the Waiting Room, or at least stand in the entrance. That’s why I picked this spot.”

“But then we’d have seen him,” winced Nikki.

“Exactly.” Ellery rose. “We’ve either been gulled, or he got cold feet at the last moment.”

“But what about Mrs. Van Dome?” asked Nikki.

“Let her stay here inhaling the odors of America,” said Ellery. “Do her good. Come on.”

“My income tax,” groaned Mike Magoon.

And the first people they saw when they entered Inspector Queen’s anteroom at Police Headquarters were Leonardo Vince and Jack Ziggy.

“Ellery—” cried Nikki; but then she saw the Inspector’s face, and she stopped.

“Ah, here’s a man who’ll be interested in your yarn, Mr. Vince,” said the Inspector genially. “Ellery, guess what. — Oh, by the way, son. Did you have a good dinner?”

“Disappointing.”

“You can’t always tell from those fancy menus, can you? As I was saying. At seven-thirty this evening Mr. Vince marches into Headquarters here. Mr. Vince, tell my son what you told me.”

“I was home painting,” said Leonardo Vince wearily. “About a quarter of seven my phone rang. It was Western Union. They read me a telegram. It said: ‘Want to commission daughter’s portrait. Am leaving town tonight but will have few minutes discuss it with you before train time. Meet me eight tonight south Waiting Room Penn Station. Will be wearing black hat and purple nose-veil and carrying red parcel.’”

“Signed,” said Inspector Queen, “‘Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome.’”

“Have you—?” began Ellery.

“Sure, Maestro,” said Sergeant Velie. “That’s the copy I myself got from the telegraph office this evenin’ when I checked. The message was phoned in to a midtown station in the middle of the afternoon. They can’t tell us who phoned it in. They had instructions to deliver the wire to the addressee at a quarter of seven tonight.”

Then Ellery turned to the artist and asked pleasantly: “Well, why didn’t you keep the appointment, Mr. Vince?”

The artist bared his woody-looking teeth. “Oh, no,” he grinned. “Not little Leonardo. You develop an animal instinct for danger when you’ve been hunted in this world as long as I have. Riches descend on me the very same day I become a suspect in a murder case? Ha, ha! I came straight to Inspector Queen.”

“And he’s been here,” said Inspector Queen dryly, “ever since.”

“Can’t get him out of the office,” complained the Sergeant.

“It’s such a nice, safe office,” said Leonardo Vince.

“And Mr. Jack Ziggy?” asked Ellery suddenly.

The little bookmaker started. Then he said: “It’s a frame. I don’t know—”

“Nuttin,” said the Inspector. “Mr. Jack Ziggy, Ellery, was picked up at seven-thirty this evening in a routine raid on a big bookie joint on 34th Street and Eighth Avenue.”

“When the boys found out who they had,” said Velie, “they brought him right here.” He looked baleful.

“Where he’s been keeping Mr. Vince company. Velie, stay here and entertain these gentlemen. We’re going into my office.”

“My income tax,” muttered Mike Magoon.

“The way I see it,” said the Inspector comfortably, putting his feet up on his desk, “is that this is pretty smart stuff. Vince is our baby. He’s a cutie. He knows we’ve connected the theft and the murder. Or he suspects we have, maybe because we haven’t handled Mike as a suspect, too. He decides to play it safe.”

“Sends that letter to Mrs. Van Dome,” said Nikki, “making the appointment at Penn Station—then today he wires himself to keep it!”

“And of course, promptly comes hotfooting it down to me with it instead,” nodded the Inspector. “Effect? He’s an innocent man being framed for theft, intended extortion, murder—the book.”

“But then,” protested Mike, “how’s he ever figure to blackmail Mrs. Van Dome? I thought that was the whole idea!”

“I said he’s a cutie, Mike,” replied the Inspector. “He weighs relative values. Decides his original hunch was a bad mistake and this is his way of covering up while he backs out. How does it sound to you, Ellery?”

“Admissible, but rather on the involved side, don’t you think?” Ellery scowled. “There’s an alternate theory which is much simpler. Mr. Jack Ziggy. Mr. Ziggy, too, develops chilled feet. Mr. Ziggy therefore decides to give us a fall guy. Writes the note to Mrs. Van Dome, sends the wire to Leonardo Vince.”

“Maybe he even heard a rumor about that raid,” cried Nikki, “and purposely went to that bookie place to be picked up before the eight o’clock meeting tonight at Penn Station! With Vince meeting Mrs. Van Dome, and himself arrested on a minor charge—”

“What’s wrong with that, Dad?”

“Not a thing,” snarled his father. “Two theories. Why couldn’t there be just one?”

“My income tax,” moaned Mike. “Ain’t anybody interested in my income tax? Look at the time!”

“Oh, there are more than two theories, Dad,” said Ellery absently. “I can think of at least two others—either of which would satisfy my plot appetite considerably more. The trouble is—” But then Ellery stopped. He was staring at his father’s feet.

“What’s the matter?” said the Inspector, sighting along his legs. “Hole in my shoe?”

“That brief case you’ve got your feet on,” said Ellery.

“What?”

“That’s mine,” said Mike. “You remember, Ellery, the one I brought when I came to you.”

“We took it from Mike after we got down to the offices,” said the Inspector. “Here, Mike, we’re through with it.”

“Wait a minute, Mike,” said Ellery. “You know, come to think of it, I never did examine this brief case while you were at the apartment, and finding Mrs. Carson dead at the office as soon as we got there... Dad, may I have that?”

“Sure. But it won’t tell you anything.”

“Is this the newspaper that the thief stuffed into it?” asked Ellery, drawing out a rather crumpled copy of the New York Times.

“Lemme see,” said Mike. “Yeah. I remember that tear just over the T.”

“You’re sure, Mike.”

“Sure I’m sure!”

“What are you looking so eagle-eyed about?’ sniffed Nikki, peering over Ellery’s shoulder. “It’s just a copy of yesterday’s New York Times.”

“And there isn’t an identifiable fingerprint on it,” said the Inspector.

“So now tell us you’ve made a great big blinding deduction.”

Ellery opened his mouth, but something else opened simultaneously—the door to Inspector Queen’s anteroom. Sergeant Velie stood there.

“Her Highness,” said the Sergeant, “is back from the front—madder’n hell.”

“Ah, Mrs. Van Dome!” said Ellery, jumping to his feet. “Come in, come in—you’re just in time.”

“I imagine, Mike,” said Ellery, “that your original plan didn’t include the concept of an accomplice at all.”

“What’s that?” said Mike. “What did you say, Ellery?”

“When you set fire to the reception-room settee, it was in a less involved plot. You would smell smoke, you would come running out of your office raising an outcry, Ziggy and Vince and—yes—Mrs. Carson would dash out of their offices to see what was the matter, you would put the fire out yourself, and meanwhile any of the three—yes, including Mrs. Carson—might have been the ‘thief’ who slipped into your office and stole the Van Dome kleptomania-case records. You would have given us three red herrings instead of two—a more nourishing diet.”

“What are you talkin’ about, Ellery!”

“But something went wrong. In fact, Mike, the most interesting part of your plot to extort money from Mrs. Van Dome is that it never really got started. Something went wrong at the outset. Since Mrs. Carson is the one you murdered, it takes no great intellect to infer that it was Mrs. Carson who threw the monkeywrench. What was it, Mike? Did Mrs. Carson accidentally see you set the fire with your own hands?”

Mike sat very straight in the honored chair beside the Inspector’s desk. But then, all at once, he sagged.

“Yes. She saw you do it, Mike. But you didn’t know that till you came back to the office that evening ostensibly to ‘see’ if you hadn’t left your tax records there by mistake. You found Mrs. Carson there alone, you asked her about the tax records... and she told you she had seen you set the fire. Did she also perceive dimly that you had taken your own property? I think so, Mike. I think Mrs. Carson accused you of sculduggery, and I think it was then and there that you gave up all thought of bleeding Mrs. Van Dome of considerably more than she was paying you to protect her daughter’s name. You took out your gun and shot Mrs. Carson to death. Very stupid, Mike. Lost your head. But that’s the way it is with honest men who go wrong. You’d have been better off to let Mrs. Carson talk. The worst that would have happened is that you might lose your license—you had still not committed any crime! And even if you had already tried to extort, would Mrs. Van Dome have prosecuted? No, indeed. Your very plot in its origin—setting up a straw man who ‘stole’ your tax records and so got into the position of being able to blackmail Mrs. Van Dome—was predicated on Mrs. Van Dome’s willingness to do anything rather than let the story of her daughter’s kleptomania come out.

“All this must have been obvious to you—and still you shot Mrs. Carson. Mike, Mike.”

The Inspector was sitting there with his mouth open.

“The rest,” said Ellery, scowling, “followed logically. Having killed, you then had to direct attention away from yourself. You’d already made a beginning with the fire. The killing made it look as if Mrs. Carson had been murdered by an ‘accomplice.’ The ‘accomplice’ was what you had to work with. And you worked it to death, winding up with a frame of Leonardo Vince—who was supposed to take the rap for you, but—so unpredictable are plots, Mike—who refused to fall into the trap. That was another bad mistake, Mike—picking Mr. Vince. But you made a mistake that was even worse.”

The Inspector tried twice to speak, nothing coming out but a bray and a croak. The third time he made it. “But Ellery, this is all speculation! You haven’t deduced anything. It’s guesswork!”

This was the most repulsive word in the Queen lexicon.

“Wrong, Dad. There’s a clue which, taken at the source, leads on to the logical conclusion. This newspaper.” Ellery waved the New York Times from Mike’s brief case.

Even Mike looked curious at that. Out of the stupor into which he had fallen he roused himself to blink and lick his lips and glance uneasily at the paper.

“Nikki,” said Ellery, “what day is today?”

Nikki jumped. “Day? Why, March fifteenth.”

“And what is the date on this newspaper?”

“Why, you saw it yourself. And I remarked on it. Yesterday’s paper, I said.”

“Yesterday’s. Then it’s the New York Times of March fourteenth. When did Mike come to consult me?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“The morning of March fourteenth. When, according to Mike’s story, had the theft of his income-tax records taken place—the fire, the theft, the substitution of a newspaper for the records in his brief case?”

“Why, the evening before that.”

“March thirteenth. And what did Mike say?” cried Ellery. “That the fire and substitution of newspaper for records had taken place around six P.M. — six P.M. on March thirteenth! How could a New York Times dated March fourteenth have been put into Mike Magoon’s brief case at six P.M. on March thirteenth? It couldn’t have been. Not possibly. No New York Times comes out that early the previous day! So Mike Magoon lied. The substitution hadn’t been made the previous day at all—it had been made on the morning of the fourteenth—just before Mike came to see me... obviously by Mike himself. Then Mike’s whole story collapses, and all I had to do was re-examine the known facts in the light of Mike’s duplicity.” Ellery glanced at the clock. “There’s still time to send your tax return to Uncle Sam, Mike,” he said, “although I’m afraid you’ll have to change your address.”