Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 114, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 697 & 698, September/October 1999

The Circle of Ink by Edward D. Hoch

©1999 by Edward D. Hoch

The university is a perfect setting for an Ellery Queen story, for the Harvard-educated sleuth has been heard to quote Latin and Greek and is well versed in the classics. Unlike the other Queen stories in this issue, this pastiche brings in two characters necessary to complete our portrait of the Queen world: Inspector Richard Queen, Ellery’s father, and the rough-spoken Sergeant Velie. The plot of this miniature novel has conscious parallels to certain of the real Queen novels.

It had been decades since Ellery Queen lectured on Applied Criminology at a university, and the changes that time had wrought were immediately obvious, even to his nonacademic eye. Classroom dress had become so casual, for students and instructors alike, that he dared not venture into those august halls in anything like the English tweeds he’d worn a generation earlier. Yet the tools of learning that his audience of undergraduates possessed were anything but casual. There were tape recorders and laptop computers ready to capture every word and impression he might scatter across the vast lecture hall.

On this Tuesday in early May the subject was “The Detective Story,” part of a seminar on modern writing in which he’d agreed to participate. The task, urged on him by Associate Professor Virgil Meadler, was not all that onerous, consisting of a single hour’s lecture followed by a question period. Ellery was amused to note that even in a college classroom someone still asked him where writers got their ideas, and he mentioned it to Professor Meadler while they chatted at the conclusion of the session.

“I know,” Meadler said. “They all want to be writers and they think there’s some secret formula to it.” He was a tall, handsome man in his early thirties, wearing rimless glasses that blended well with his angular face. When he’d first called Ellery to invite him to the seminar he admitted to having read only one Queen novel. “But my mother is a great fan of yours,” he’d quickly added.

“Well,” Ellery told him now, “I think the session went well. A few of them even had books for me to sign afterward.”

“It went splendidly! I only wish all of our guest lecturers were as good as you.”

As he parted from Meadler in the lecture hall, he was aware of a tall, attractive young woman heading down the aisle in his direction. One more book to sign, he guessed, and greeted her with a pleasant smile.

“Mr. Queen?” she asked, producing a tape recorder from her voluminous purse. “I’m Pia Straton, coanchor of Channel Three News.”

“And you want to ask me where I get my ideas,” Ellery murmured.

She tossed her curly brown hair as if rejecting the idea. “I want to ask you if you’re here at the university to help your father investigate the murder of Professor Androvney.”

He was taken off guard by her question. “What’s that?”

“You are the son of Inspector Richard Queen, are you not?”

“I haven’t spoken to Dad all week. We lead separate lives. I don’t know anything about a murder.”

She seemed about to pursue it, but a young man carrying a television camera on his shoulder had appeared in the lecture-hall doorway. “Pia, it looks like they’re leaving!”

“I’m coming!” She snapped off the tape recorder and bolted up the aisle without even a goodbye. Ellery stared after her until she disappeared from view, then strode up the aisle himself.

On his way out to the parking lot he came upon Professor Meadler deep in conversation with an older, white-haired man. They broke off their talk as he approached, and Meadler held out his arm. “Ellery, I want you to meet our Dean of Arts and Letters, Professor Charles Cracken, our foremost authority on Dante. Charles, this is Ellery Queen. I was just telling you what a fine lecture he gave.”

The man shook hands with Ellery. “Ah, yes, Mr. Queen. I have enjoyed your books.”

“Thank you.”

Virgil Meadler smiled. “He needs something to read besides that old fourteenth-century literature he teaches.” It seemed like a continuation of some friendly ribbing from the past.

“I hope my books help you to relax,” Ellery said. His eyes had gone to the other side of the parking lot where he could see a group of students surrounding some police cars and a windowless white van he recognized as the morgue wagon. “A reporter was just asking me if I knew anything about a murder. Have you had some trouble here?”

Dean Cracken’s face turned serious. “One of our associate professors was found shot to death in his office. We’re trying not to comment about it until we know the facts. Unfortunately, someone tipped off the news people.”

“I’ve found it’s very difficult to keep murder quiet.”

“We don’t know the circumstances,” Meadler told him. “Professor Androvney was a troubled man with many problems. He may have shot himself.”

Professor Cracken shook his head sadly. “The man had great potential. I was hoping one day he would replace me as dean.”

Ellery caught sight of his father getting into one of the unmarked cars. He decided he’d have to call him that evening.

“Dad, how’ve you been?”

Richard Queen’s voice was raspy, as if he might be getting a spring cold. “Can’t complain, Ellery. Doing well for an old man. I heard you were at the university today.”

“I saw you at a distance. What’s this about some professor being shot?”

“That’s the least of it,” he replied with a sigh. “Can you come over tonight?”

“Sure, I’ll be there right after dinner.”

“Come now. You know how Jesse loves to feed you.”

Jesse Sherwood had been a brisk and buxom nurse approaching fifty when Richard Queen took a bride for the second time in his life. Ellery was both surprised and delighted by the event, especially when he observed his father’s renewed vigor and joy of living. There was no more talk of full retirement from the NYPD, though he had worked out an arrangement allowing more time for them to travel.

Ellery arrived at his father’s place on the stroke of six and was surprised to find them both in front of the television set watching the Channel Three Nightly News. He recognized Pia Straton’s curly brown hair on the screen immediately. “Channel Three News has learned through reliable sources in the police department that the murder of Professor Androvney in his office at the university today may be linked to four other shooting deaths on the Upper West Side during the past few weeks. Police refuse to speculate that this is the work of a serial killer, but Ellery Queen, the noted author and amateur detective, was observed on the campus this afternoon.”

“Is this true?” Ellery asked. “There’ve been four previous killings?”

Inspector Queen looked grim. “We were hoping to keep it quiet until there was some sort of lead. You remember what happened with the Cat stranglings some years back. The whole town went wild.”

“There’ll be no keeping it a secret now, not with the media on it. Show me what you’ve got, Dad.”

He pulled over the fancy leather briefcase Ellery had given him for his sixtieth birthday and removed a stack of files. “These are my own copies,” he explained. “The originals are in the office. I knew this damned briefcase would come in handy for something.” The briefcase had led to a lot of kidding from Sergeant Velie and others, and Inspector Queen stopped carrying it. Ellery had reluctantly agreed that he’d never been the briefcase type.

“There are four cases?” Ellery asked, staring at the folders on the coffee table. Jesse had gone off to the kitchen.

“Four before today, Ellery. Take a look.”

The first one chronologically was Mavis O’Toole, a call girl with a lengthy arrest record. The police figured she’d been gunned down by her pimp or some rival. It had happened nearly a month ago, on Tuesday, April sixth, two days after Easter. Eight days later a middle-class butcher named Frank Otter had been killed as he emerged from a Broadway steak house.

Ellery studied the morgue shot of the corpulent man. “He liked to eat.”

“That he did,” the old man agreed.

“How do you know it was the same killer?”

“Two things. The same gun, a twenty-two-caliber target pistol, was used in both killings. Since no one heard a shot outside the steak house, it’s probably equipped with a silencer. No shots were heard in the other killings either.”

“The markings on the bullets match?”

Inspector Queen nodded. “I know what you’re going to say, Ellery. A twenty-two target pistol with a silencer is a favorite weapon for a mob hit. But Frank Otter had no mob connections we can find.”

“Mistaken identity?”

“That’s always a possibility.”

“What about the other two?”

His father opened the next folder. “Sidney James, a landlord known locally as the Miser of Morningside Heights. He was shot while jogging in Morningside Park. That was two weeks ago today. Then, last Friday, a second woman was killed. Laura Autumn, president of the Autumn Agency, a small marketing firm. She was shot as she was entering her apartment building on Cathedral Parkway, around the corner from St. John the Divine. She had a bag of groceries from the Morningside Shopping Mall nearby. Until we got a match on the bullets we thought she’d been shot by one of several employees she’d fired last week after an angry outburst in the office.”

“Dad, you said two things proved these were the work of one killer. What’s the other thing, besides the gun?”

“There was a small red circle on the back of each victim’s left hand. It was done in ink, probably by a rubber stamp.”

Then Jesse was calling them for dinner.

In the morning the killings were front-page news, and Ellery found them the lead story on the television news as well. There were even photographs of the three male and two female victims. The stories revealed that they’d all been shot with the same gun, but made no mention of the ink circle on the back of their hands. One of the tabloids had provided a map of the Upper West Side with each crime scene marked with a convenient X. It showed that the killings formed a rough circle with the university at the center.

Perhaps that was all the killer intended. Perhaps the murders would stop now.

But Ellery wasn’t betting on it. Just before noon he took the subway up to Morningside Heights.

The neighborhood had always been an area in transition, for as long as Ellery could remember. Old brick apartment houses from the ’twenties and earlier now served as off-campus housing for undergraduates, and an abandoned armory had been turned into the Morningside Shopping Mall. As he was approaching this solid-looking structure, a familiar figure came hurrying out, past the food vendors that surrounded the entrance. He realized it was Virgil Meadler, his host at the university the previous day. The professor, carrying no obvious purchases, headed in the opposite direction and Ellery decided to take a look at Manhattan’s version of a shopping mall.

His first impression was of a welter of signs proclaiming everything from Flowers and Plants for Your Terrace Gardens to Supplies for the Student and Home Office. There was even one that read Your Parking Free Next-Door if You Make a Purchase! The mammoth armory had been converted into a warren of small and medium-sized shops serving just about any need. A fortuneteller announced her trade with a neatly lettered sign: Madame Beatrice — Reader Advisor — No Appointment Necessary. A bald man in a turtleneck sweater was just leaving as Ellery strolled by. Further along he found a sporting-goods store that sold .22-caliber target pistols. He looked them over for several minutes and inquired about buying one but was told he needed a permit to purchase a handgun in New York state, even for target practice. He’d known that, of course, but he was just testing the market. “I got to obey the laws,” the clerk told him. “Too bad these goons selling guns on every street corner don’t have to.”

On his way back to the entrance, Ellery saw a tall, slender woman standing in the open doorway of the fortuneteller’s shop, by a beaded curtain. She had long gray hair and was probably close to sixty. He noticed her watching him and strolled over. “Would you like a free reading?” she asked, extending a deck of cards.

Ellery smiled. “I thought fortunetellers used crystal balls.”

“I have one if you’d prefer,” she answered. “Made of the finest Waterford.”

He knew she was playing with him then and he followed her inside. “Aren’t fortunetellers unusual in Manhattan these days?” he said.

“There are hundreds of us if you know where to look. I’ve been doing it for over thirty years. Check the phone book sometime.” She’d seated herself behind a small, plain table and placed the cards there. Behind her, a dark velvet drape hid the wall of the shop, and a few pillows were scattered on the floor.

“I suppose I don’t get out as much as I should,” Ellery murmured. “What do you want me to do, pick a card and you’ll tell me its meaning?”

Madame Beatrice smiled wisely. “Oh, I’m certain you know the meaning of all the cards, Mr. Queen. You wrote a mystery novel about it once.”

He was momentarily at a loss for words. This woman had not only recognized him but remembered a novel he’d written decades earlier. He recovered enough to ask, “Is my face that well known in these parts, or are you a mind reader as well as a fortuneteller?”

She pulled aside the velvet drape to reveal bookshelves lined with modem novels, predominantly mysteries. He recognized at least a dozen of his titles among them. “On slow days I do lots of reading,” she admitted. “You’ve always been one of my favorites, and your photo is on the jackets. I have to hide them from my clients, though. They would expect me to be reading something far more esoteric.”

“You’d make a fine detective,” Ellery told her. “You probably encounter all classes of people.”

“I do indeed,” Madame Beatrice told him. She seemed to hesitate and then went on. “My last client, not ten minutes ago, is a violent man awaiting sentencing for assaulting a taxi driver. He wondered if the cards could indicate the length of his prison stay.”

Ellery remembered the bald man in the turtleneck. “I imagined your customers to be young girls wondering when they’d marry.”

The fortuneteller snorted. “More likely young girls wondering if they are with child, although those have fallen off with the popularity of home pregnancy tests.”

He nodded, a smile playing about his lips. “Much more accurate than a deck of cards.” He started to leave. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Madame Beatrice.”

“Will you sign one of your books before you go?”

“Certainly.” He took out a pen. “Whichever one you’d like.”

“I suppose it should be the one about the cards,” she decided, taking down The Four of Hearts.

As he left the converted armory and started across the street he became aware of a cluster of police cars, not unlike those he’d seen at the university the previous day. They were by the entrance to a ramp garage next to the armory. “Ellery!” a familiar voice called out, and he saw his father waving to him.

He hurried over to join the old man. “What is it, Dad? Not another—”

“Dead man in a car, shot in the head. We may have another one. I’m on my way up now to take a look.” His face was grim. “Come along.”

Inspector Queen moved up the ramp to the second level with remarkable speed for a man his age, and Ellery had to hurry to keep pace. Sergeant Velie and an assistant medical examiner were already on the scene, along with police technicians and the garage manager. The body was slumped over the steering wheel of a blue compact car, and a bullet wound in the left temple was obvious.

“Looks like a twenty-two caliber again,” Velie said, with a nod toward Ellery.

“The circle on his hand?” Inspector Queen asked.

“It’s there.”

The assistant medical examiner moved out of the way, and Ellery got his first look at the body. He recognized the bald man in the turtleneck, Madame Beatrice’s last customer. “I just saw this man in the mall!”

“His driver’s license says his name is Warren Cashmere. The dashboard computer came up with an arrest record for a few assaults.”

“I didn’t know his name, Dad, but I just saw him next-door, coming out of the fortuneteller’s.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Maybe forty, forty-five minutes.”

The medical examiner looked up and nodded. “Sounds about right. He hasn’t been dead long.”

“Woman parked next to him reported the body,” Sergeant Velie said. “The driver’s window was open. Someone walked up to the car and shot him.”

“Not someone he feared,” Ellery observed, “or he wouldn’t have rolled down the window. People don’t usually park their cars with the windows open.” He leaned over for a closer look and saw the little red circle stamped on the back of the victim’s left hand.

“What does that damned circle mean?” his father asked.

“Some sort of organization? There’s an old Edgar Wallace novel called The Crimson Circle—”

But the garage manager, a stout black man named Martin King, had a more prosaic explanation. “The mall customers can get stamped like that when they buy something. I give ’em free parking.”

Inspector Queen was unhappy. Too many things were happening too fast. “That Channel Three woman, Pia Straton, has been on my neck,” he grumbled.

“Mine too,” Ellery agreed. The body had been removed and they were leaving the ramp garage. “You’ll want to have Velie question the mall’s fortuneteller, Madame Beatrice. She told me the victim was awaiting sentencing for assaulting a taxi driver. He came in to find out how long he’d be locked up.”

The inspector grunted. “He won’t have to worry about that now.” As they parted he said, “Let’s set up a meeting at my office tomorrow morning. Meantime I’ll try to find out how many of the victims had a connection with the Morningside Shopping Mall.”

“I can help on that, Dad,” Ellery volunteered. “I’ll talk to Professor Androvney’s friends at the university.”

“Good.”

Ellery found Virgil Meadler in his little office on the second floor of the Arts and Letters building, staring out the partly opened window at some sort of demonstration on the quadrangle. “What is it?” Ellery asked. “Graduation fever?”

“Nothing so ordinary. For its last event of the academic year, the student council invited Uncle Sam Tusker to speak here Friday afternoon.”

Ellery remembered reading something about it in the papers months ago. Uncle Sam Tusker, a former government employee, had been charged with treason the previous year for selling certain classified information to unnamed Middle Eastern countries. A man of benevolent appearance with white hair and an Uncle Sam goatee, he’d pleaded he was merely trying to fulfill the somewhat ambiguous instructions he’d received. A jury believed him, and he was acquitted of the treason charge, causing an uproar in the press. Now he was speaking at college campuses, ostensibly to pay off his legal expenses. Protesters believed he was spreading an anti-American message.

“Not a very pleasant ending to a week that’s already seen a campus murder,” Ellery observed.

“What can we do?” Meadler asked with a shrug. “The university has always been a forum for dissent, and after all, the man was acquitted by a jury.” He shuffled some papers on his desk. “Now what brings you here, Ellery? I have to tell you my students are still talking about your entertaining lecture yesterday. They learned a great deal from it.”

“I’m glad of that. Actually, there’s been another murder.”

“Another since yesterday?”

“Afraid so. This morning, in the parking garage adjoining the Morningside Shopping Mall. I’m helping my father with the investigation and I wanted to ask you a bit more about Professor Androvney. Did he have any enemies on campus?”

“Not really. There are always some disgruntled students around. He was a heretic of a sort, always going against prevailing opinion on just about any subject. That irritated some of the students. But then, I suppose you can find one or two such people among the faculty on any campus.”

“Did he spend much time at the Morningside Shopping Mall?”

Virgil Meadler snorted. “Androvney hated the place! He’d never go near it. He thought the old armory should have been converted into an arts center.”

“That’s odd,” Ellery said. His father was leaning now toward a theory that the ink circle on the victims’ hands was not left by the killer but was merely a sign the victims had recently shopped at Morningside.

“Have you been to the mall?” the professor asked.

Ellery smiled. “Just this morning. I had a nice chat with your mother.”

“My—” The surprise was evident on his face.

“Madame Beatrice is your mother, isn’t she?”

“She told you?”

“She didn’t have to. I saw you coming out of the mall earlier today, without any packages. You’d told me your mother was a fan of my books, and when I met Madame Beatrice she showed me her Queen collection. You were there visiting her this morning, weren’t you?”

He seemed annoyed at Ellery’s discovery. “I’m certainly not ashamed of what my mother does. She raised me as a single parent and saw to it that I had every scholarship opportunity. I owe all this to her,” he said with a wave of his arm. “She comes to see me occasionally and I stop by to see her. But I don’t want a situation where my students start pestering her to predict what marks I’ll give them. She runs her own operation, and I’m the first to admit she’s something of a con artist. Her little table has a hidden drawer so she can vanish or produce cards pretty much on demand. She gives customers the readings she thinks they want. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it’s best that we lead separate lives as much as possible.”

“I understand perfectly. She’s a most pleasant woman. She’s become involved in this only because the latest victim visited her for a reading just before he was killed.” Ellery filled him in on the details. “There seems to be a connection between the mall and some of the victims.” He didn’t elaborate about the inked circles found on their hands.

“Is there any common link between these people?” Meadler asked.

“None that we’ve found. We have a call girl, a butcher, a landlord, a marketing executive, a literature professor, and now a petty criminal. Nothing in common except they all lived or worked in this general area.”

“I suppose victims of serial killers don’t usually have much in common, unless the crimes are sexual in nature.”

Ellery leaned back in his chair. “The term serial killer is popular these days, but it shouldn’t be confused with series killers, ones who kill a certain number of people with a goal in mind. A serial killer usually keeps on until he’s caught. A series killer will stop after achieving his goal.”

“I don’t see where there’s much difference. They’re both insane.”

“But in the case of a series killer the insanity has been twisted into a pattern the killer can see. If you find the pattern, you find the killer.”

“You sound as if you’ve had experience with this.”

“A little,” Ellery admitted. “One time—”

There was a knock on the door and Dean Cracken poked his head in. “Sorry, Virgil. I was next door in my office and I didn’t know you were occupied.”

Ellery stood up. “I was just leaving.”

“No, no, sit down! As a matter of fact, I wanted to speak with you too, Mr. Queen. My wife just phoned from home to say there’s been another killing. She saw it on the news.” He’d come all the way into the office and set his bulging briefcase on the floor. It reminded Ellery of the one he’d given his father as a Christmas gift. “Is that true?”

“I’m afraid so,” Ellery acknowledged. He quickly described the killing at the mall, leaving out mention of Madame Beatrice.

“Will this thing never end?” Dean Cracken asked.

“Mr. Queen thinks it’ll end if we can discover the pattern behind it,” Meadler told him.

“Pattern?”

“I don’t believe the killings are random,” Ellery said. “There’s a pattern, and the killer wants us to find it. Otherwise, why use a weapon that can be so easily identified? Most series killers use a knife or some form of strangulation. They rarely commit a string of killings using the same handgun.”

“Do you think it’s someone on campus?”

“On campus or at the mall or in the neighborhood. That’s all I can say with some certainty.”

The dean shook his head sadly and then turned to Professor Meadler. “Virgil, my other problem is that I traditionally introduce the student council’s final speaker of the year. It’s going to be very difficult for me to say anything good about Uncle Sam Tusker. I was wondering if you had any suggestions.”

The demonstration out on the quadrangle had grown noisy again, as if to punctuate the dean’s request. Meadler closed the window and said, only half humorously, “Tell them he’s your favorite traitor and let it go at that.”

“You’re no help. Can you imagine the gall of the man, billing himself as Uncle Sam when he was just acquitted of treason! I’ve been here thirty-five years and this is the first traitor we’ve ever invited to speak at the university. And I have to write up some remarks welcoming him!”

“Keep your briefcase handy in case the demonstrators start throwing eggs. It makes an effective shield.”

“Don’t worry, I will. My wife calls it my security blanket. Someday I’ll even look inside it. I think I still have lecture notes in there from last semester.”

“If you’re really worried,” Ellery suggested, “you could have the audience pass through a metal detector on the way in.”

“I hope we haven’t come to that,” Dean Cracken answered sourly.

After he’d left, Ellery asked, “Does he always carry the briefcase?”

“Usually he forgets it and leaves it in the lecture hall or his office. One of the students has to retrieve it for him.”

“He must be nearing retirement age.”

Meadler nodded. “Two more years. Androvney was in line to head up Arts and Letters until he got himself killed. Now I don’t know who’ll get it.”

“Start campaigning,” Ellery said with a wink.

Pia Straton was waiting for him at his apartment downtown. “Mr. Queen,” she called out, running up to him.

He glanced around. “Where’s your camera today?”

“It’s just me. I want to talk about these killings, off the record.”

Ellery hesitated only a moment. “All right, come on up. But it’s strictly off the record.”

He led her to the fifth floor and unlocked the door to his apartment overlooking the East River. “What a view!” she exclaimed. “You can see all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“It lifts my spirits,” he admitted. “I suppose you’re here because of the latest killing.” They sat down opposite each other.

“That’s number six, right? And the first time there’ve been two in two days.”

“Correct.”

“What does it mean?”

“Off the record? We may be heading toward a climax, if only we can work out the pattern in time to avoid it.”

“Pattern? Then you don’t think these are random killings?”

“No, there’s a pattern. It just starts in the wrong place.”

He could see the anticipation in her eyes. “Can you make that a bit clearer to me, Mr. Queen? Ellery?”

“I’m afraid not. What I’ve got is only the beginning of an idea, and I may be entirely wrong.”

“Is there any way I can help?”

He thought about that. “Do you know this man Uncle Sam Tusker?”

“I interviewed him once after his acquittal.”

“He’s speaking at the university Friday afternoon. I’d like to meet with him before his speech.”

She nodded. “I could arrange that. But how can Tusker be connected with the killings?”

“I didn’t say he was,” Ellery told her. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

At ten o’clock the following morning he was in his father’s familiar office at One Police Plaza. Sergeant Velie was there too, along with two other detectives assigned to the case. “We have forty men and women in all working on it,” Inspector Queen said, “and I have authorization to double that if need be. We need to crack this thing, Ellery. Do you have anything for us?”

“Some vague ideas, nothing I can put into words yet.”

Against one wall of the office was a large blackboard on which had been placed photographs of the six victims. Each was numbered, beginning with the call girl, Mavis O’Toole. “We’ve definitely placed her at the shopping mall,” the old man said. “She was well known in the neighborhood. The next two, Frank Otter and Sidney James, also shopped there.”

Ellery nodded. “And Laura Autumn. She was carrying a bag from the mall when she was shot. But we’ve got problems with number five. I understand Professor Androvney hated the place and wouldn’t go near it.”

“Do we know how long this circle of ink lasts after it’s stamped on the customers’ hands?” the inspector asked.

“It wears off in a day,” Velie answered, “sooner with one or two vigorous washings.”

There was a phone call from the medical examiner’s office and Velie took it. He listened for a moment and then passed the phone to Ellery’s dad. “You’d better take this. It’s important.”

Richard Queen swore only on rare occasions, but this was one of them. He hung up and said, to no one in particular, “There’s another one.”

“Just this morning, Dad?”

The old man shook his head. “Friday, April second. Four days before Mavis O’Toole. I guess that shoots our theories all to hell.”

“How do they know—?”

“The victim was a Korean convenience-store owner named Kim Hwan, up on Amsterdam Avenue. He was shot once in the chest that evening and robbery appeared to be the motive, although nothing was taken. Someone in the lab just remembered the murder weapon was a twenty-two and compared the bullet to the ones in our recent killings. It matched.”

“The red circle, Dad?” Ellery asked anxiously.

“There was no red circle. Nobody noticed one and nothing shows on the morgue photos.”

They all stared silently at the blackboard.

Finally, Ellery got up and went to the board. He erased the numbers by each photograph and wrote in 1. Kim Hwan. Then he numbered the others in their proper order. “So we have seven victims instead of six.”

“What does it mean, Ellery?”

“Do we have any record of Kim Hwan’s funeral?”

“Funeral? How can that possibly matter?”

“It might, Dad.” He turned to Sergeant Velie. “We need details of the funeral service.”

“You got it, Ellery.” He went off to check the records.

“You’re on the trail of something,” his father said. “I know that pensive expression.”

“It’s so wild I hate to put it into words, at least not quite yet.”

The inspector sent the other two detectives off to bolster their patrols of the Morningside Heights neighborhood. When they were alone, he asked, “Will there be more killings?”

“Not if we can stop them. Not if I can beat the killer to his eighth victim.”

Sergeant Velie returned, looking smug. “That was easy. His widow says he was a Buddhist back in the old country, but he never practiced it here. There was no religious service, and the body was cremated.”

“Does that answer your question, Ellery?”

Suddenly it clicked into place, not everything, but an important part. “Come on, Dad! Velie, where’s your car? We have to get up to that shopping mall before there’s another killing.”

“Who—?”

“A fortuneteller named Madame Beatrice. Come on!”

Ellery phoned the woman and warned her to be on her guard. “We’re on the way up there,” he said.

Velie used his siren all the way up Broadway, while Ellery’s father called for additional support. They reached the mall seconds before two squad cars, and Ellery was already on the pavement, leading the way. Shoppers gawked and cleared a path for them. Ellery had Madame Beatrice’s shop in sight when they heard the single shot. Velie and the inspector had their guns drawn as they burst through the beaded curtain. Madame Beatrice was on the floor behind her little table, bleeding from a wound in her side.

“That way,” she gasped, pointing toward a fire exit in the rear of the shop. “He went that way.”

Ellery and Velie were through the door in an instant, down an enclosed corridor that led to an outside fire door. The panic bar had a spot of blood on it, which Ellery pointed out to the sergeant as they went through. Then they were outside, next to the ramp garage, and the door had swung shut behind them.

“Well have to go back around and in the front,” Ellery said. “Get your men to search the garage.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anyone suspicious. He’ll still have the gun on him. And probably traces of blood. He hasn’t finished yet.”

Ellery ran around to the front of the mall, where police were holding back a panicked crowd. “What is it?” Pia Straton yelled, rushing forward with her cameraman.

“You’re always on the scene, aren’t you?”

“It’s my job. What happened?”

“Another shooting. You’ll get details later.” Then he pushed his way through to the fortuneteller’s shop.

His father and one of the officers were on their knees beside the woman while the officer tried to stanch the flow of blood from her side. “Ambulance is on the way,” the old man told him. “She’s trying to talk.”

Ellery knelt beside her. “It’s Ellery Queen, Madame Beatrice.”

“I know. I’m not dead yet.”

“You’re going to be all right. Do you know who shot you?”

“He pulled down a ski mask as he entered. I saw the gun and ducked as he fired. He came at me again and I tried to fight him off. He should have my blood on him.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get him.” The ambulance crew arrived and Ellery had time for only one more question. “Did he try to put a circle on the back of your hand, maybe with a rubber stamp?”

“I don’t know. God, this hurts! Give me something for the pain.”

Ellery and his father stood up, turning her over to the ambulance attendants. Inspector Queen spoke in a low voice. “The bullet went through her dress and the fleshy part of her side, then out again. We’re trying to find where it hit.”

Madame Beatrice had been reading when the killer entered, and the drapes in front of her bookcase were partly open. It was Velie who found the bullet, embedded in the spine of The Innocence of Father Brown. The lab people took it, along with the smear of blood from the fire-exit door.

“What do they say about her?” Ellery asked his father.

“She’ll pull through, despite the loss of blood.”

“Have someone phone the university and tell Professor Virgil Meadler about it, Dad.”

“Why him?”

“She’s his mother.”

Friday was one of those warm May mornings in New York when dark clouds move across the sky threatening momentary downpours. Ellery purposely avoided reading the papers as he hurried through breakfast. That afternoon Uncle Sam Tusker would be speaking at the university, and Pia Straton had promised him a meeting before that. She’d called earlier to confirm their appointment and promised to pick him up at his building.

He paused only to call his father at Headquarters. “Dad, what’s the news this morning?”

“Madame Beatrice, or Beatrice Meadler to use her proper name, is coming along fine. Her son’s been up to see her. She may be released from the hospital tomorrow or Sunday. The lab boys verified that it was her blood on the fire-exit door all right, and they also verified that the bullet came from the same gun that killed seven people so far. It’s madness, Ellery. The man’s going to keep on killing until he’s stopped.”

“The end is in sight, Dad.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, Ellery asked, “Do you have a guard on Madame Beatrice?”

“Of course.”

“She should be safe, but the person we’re dealing with isn’t completely rational.”

“You can say that again! Where will you be if I need you?”

“At the university, for Uncle Sam Tusker’s speech.”

“That traitor!”

“Exactly, Dad. Here’s what we have to do. Can Velie be at the university in twenty minutes...?”

Pia Straton was waiting for him downstairs in the Channel 3 van. He got in and she cut over to Broadway, following the route he’d taken to the mall the previous day. “I hope you realize I’m doing you a big favor with this Uncle Sam business, Ellery, and I expect a big favor in return.”

“What would that be?”

“I want an exclusive when you crack the case.”

He smiled. “If I crack it, Pia, I promise you’ll be there.”

Though it was not yet one, a crowd was already forming for the afternoon’s talk. “Classes are about over,” Pia explained as she found a parking space. “Next week is graduation.” She hustled Ellery through a side door of the university theater and up the stairs to a private lounge where Virgil Meadler and a few others were waiting with the acquitted traitor. Ellery was relieved to see Sergeant Velie among them.

Uncle Sam Tusker was true to his press reports. A slender man in his sixties with white hair and a goatee, he did indeed resemble the traditional image of Uncle Sam. Ellery found it a bit disheartening that such a man might be preaching treason against his country. They shook hands as Pia introduced them, and Uncle Sam said, “I’ve heard a great deal about you, Mr. Queen. Something of an amateur detective, aren’t you?”

“At times, when I’m not writing,” Ellery admitted. “That’s why I asked Pia to bring me here.”

Uncle Sam smiled. “You can’t be investigating me!”

Ellery glanced around the room and lowered his voice a bit. “My investigation has nothing to do with your politics, or with the charges brought against you. I have to tell you an attempt may be made to kill you today.”

The smile became a laugh. “You know how many times my life’s been threatened? I take that in stride. I’ll tell you something, Mr. Queen. If you’re alive you have to rile the passions of the people. I want them to rise up against the government or against myself, it doesn’t matter which. The sound of shooting is better than the sound of silence.”

“—the sound of—”

The door swung open and Dean Charles Cracken strode in, carrying his bulging briefcase.

Ellery knew. He knew it all now. It was madness, but he’d found the real pattern at last.

Virgil Meadler was introducing Tusker to the dean. “This is our Dean of Arts and Letters, Professor Charles Cracken. He’ll make the opening remarks.”

Dean Cracken was unbuckling his briefcase. “Perhaps you’d like to see what I’m going to say about you, Mr. Tusker.”

Now, Ellery said: Stop him, Velie! But the words were frozen in his throat.

“—what I’m going to say about you, Mr. Tusker.”

Stop him, Velie!

“Stop him, Velie! There’s a gun in his briefcase!”

Dean Cracken looked up, startled, as Velie lunged at him, knocking the briefcase from his hands. It fell to the floor, spewing its contents, and there among them was the .22-caliber target pistol with its silenced barrel.

It was later that afternoon, after the excitement had passed, when Ellery, Inspector Queen, Sergeant Velie, and Pia Straton arrived at Madame Beatrice’s hospital room. “How are you today?” Ellery asked.

“Can’t complain,” the fortuneteller told him. She was propped up in the hospital bed with two pillows behind her. “What’s all this about?”

“We arrested the man who shot you. He was taken into custody this afternoon at the university.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Dean Cracken,” Ellery told her.

“Dean—”

“It seems he killed seven people over the past several weeks. You would have been eighth and Uncle Sam Tusker would have been ninth. That was the pattern.”

“I guess you’d better explain it,” she said, looking from Ellery to Inspector Queen.

“It’s madness, of course, but series murders always are. Only a madman would kill nine people so they would fit into the nine circles of Dante’s Hell.”

Pia Straton, who’d been a silent observer until now, gave a little gasp and turned on her tape recorder. She’d wanted to bring a camera too, but Ellery had ruled that out. Inspector Queen said, “You’d better explain your reasoning, Ellery.”

“Gladly. I learned the first time I ever met Dean Cracken that he was the university’s foremost authority on Dante. He taught Dante, he knew Dante and The Divine Comedy better than anyone else. I became aware early on that the victims of these killings seemed to all have some character flaw — a call girl, an overweight butcher, a miserly landlord, a wrathful woman who fired her employees, a professor said to be a heretic, and a violent man facing a prison sentence for assaulting a taxi driver. They were almost the seven deadly sins, but not quite.”

“But the nine circles of Dante’s Hell, Ellery?” the old man asked. “I still need convincing.”

“So did I, but it came with your discovery of an earlier killing, the true first in the series. A Korean shopkeeper, born a Buddhist but practicing no religion when he died. He was bound for Dante’s first circle. Translations of The Divine Comedy vary, but generally it goes more or less like this. In the first circle is limbo, for the virtuous heathens. The second circle is reserved for the lustful and lascivious, the third for the gluttons, the fourth for the miserly, the fifth for the wrathful, the sixth for the heretics, the seventh for the violent.”

“Which brings you to me,” Madame Beatrice said.

Ellery nodded. “The eighth circle, reserved for liars, fortunetellers, thieves, and others. As soon as I knew the pattern, I guessed you’d be the next victim.”

“And Uncle Sam Tusker?” Velie asked.

“The ninth circle, the very bottom of Dante’s Hell, is reserved for traitors.”

Even Pia Straton seemed spellbound by the enormity of it. “Has Dean Cracken confessed?”

“Not yet,” Inspector Queen replied. “But we tested the gun in his briefcase this afternoon. It fired all seven of the fatal shots, and the bullet that wounded Madame Beatrice.”

“Thank God it’s over,” the fortuneteller said with a sigh.

“Can I call this in to the station?” Pia Straton asked, anxious to catch the five o’clock local news.

“You can if you want,” Ellery said. “But you may prefer to wait a few moments. You see, after all my clever reasoning, connecting Dean Cracken to these killings because he was the Dante expert, I overlooked two things. The first was the circle of red ink on the back of the victims’ hands. It was missing from Kim Hwan’s hand, but appeared on all the others until Madame Beatrice, where we interrupted the crime during its commission. What it told me was that the circle was a mere happenstance, not part of the original plan at all. Victims two through five had the circle simply because they’d received free parking at the shopping mall’s ramp garage. When the killer realized this, it became a perfect way to tie Professor Androvney’s killing in with the others, even though he never went to the mall”

His father’s voice was solemn. “It still could be Cracken. What’s the second thing you overlooked?”

“A fat man, a heathen, a miser, a fortuneteller, a traitor, might all be known in the community. But how would Cracken have known that Warren Cashmere was awaiting sentence for an act of violence? The pattern had to be completed today, remember, with the killing of Uncle Sam Tusker. How could he have known of Cashmere’s crime and just where he’d be on Wednesday?”

“He might have known the man, read about it in the papers.”

“No, Dad, it’s not likely. There was something else too, something that revealed the truth to me yesterday. I played along today, knowing Tusker wouldn’t be killed, just to see how far it would go.”

Pia’s finger was on the tape recorder button. “What are you saying?”

“That Dean Charles Cracken is innocent. He killed no one. The killer is lying here before us. Isn’t that right, Madame Beatrice?”

Her eyes shifted to each of their faces in turn. “Why, that’s impossible,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m the only one who couldn’t have killed them. You’re forgetting, Ellery, that you saw Warren Cashmere leaving my shop. And you were with me at the time he was killed.”

“As I discovered yesterday, the back of your shop leads to a fire door that exits right next to the ramp garage where he was shot. You’d already stamped his hand with the circle when he paid you for reading his fortune, so you knew he was parked in the garage. You propped open the fire door, went into the garage, and shot him with your silenced target pistol, while I was looking at pistols in the mall’s sporting-goods store. It would have taken you less than five minutes. When you saw me walking by, seconds after your return, you recognized me from my book-jacket photos and enticed me in for a perfect alibi. Perhaps you’d persuaded your son to invite me to the university in the first place. You wanted me to follow your false trail to Cracken.”

“But I was shot myself, by that gun in the dean’s briefcase.”

“That was the one mistake you made, and I almost didn’t catch it. As my dad and Velie and I entered the mall yesterday and hurried toward your shop, we all heard a single shot as the supposed killer fired and hit you in the side. It was Uncle Sam today, in one of his crazed statements, who told me the sound of shooting is better than the sound of silence. But it wasn’t true with you. We heard the shot when we shouldn’t have, because all the crimes were committed with a silenced pistol! You couldn’t shoot yourself with the real murder weapon because it was already hidden among the papers in the dean’s bulging briefcase. You couldn’t plant it there later because you knew you’d be in the hospital. As the gun dealer told me, it’s easy to buy a weapon on any street corner up here, but it’s not so easy if you need a silencer. Sometime late Wednesday or early Thursday you got into the dean’s office and hid the real murder weapon in his briefcase. If anyone saw you, it would have been explained as a visit to see your son Virgil in the next office. You’d previously fired a shot from the real gun into the spine of one of your books, where we’d recover it. Yesterday you pricked your finger and left a drop of your blood on that exit door, then took a second twenty-two-caliber target pistol, fired it through your dress and a roll of flesh in your side, and screamed for help. The second gun went into a secret drawer in your desk that your son mentioned to me, and the bullet that wounded you probably went into a pillow. I’d called to say we were on the way, so you fired the shot when you heard the approaching siren.”

His father was shaking his head. “I can see it, Ellery, but I still can’t believe it.”

“Then think about this. Why would the killer wear a ski mask when he intended to kill his victim? The mask could only serve as evidence against him. Also, why were so many of the victims customers of the mall? Why did the killer use a gun, easily linked to the killings if found, rather than a knife or other weapon? And why did the killer add Professor Androvney to the list even though he didn’t frequent the mall?”

“Why, Ellery?”

“She lied about the ski mask, of course, and many of the victims after the first one were her own customers. She used the gun for two reasons: so she could stay safely out of reach of her stronger victims, and so the killings could be linked through the matching bullets. As for Androvney, he had to be killed because he was in line to be Dean of Arts and Letters, a position she wanted for her son.”

Madame Beatrice started to rise from her bed. “You’re a devil, damn you!”

“With Androvney dead and Dean Cracken arrested, if not convicted, in the killings, her son Virgil became a likely candidate for the position.”

“She did it all for her son?”

“I think only half for her son. Cracken had been at the university for thirty-five years, remember, and she’d been telling fortunes about that long. I think Cracken was her lover all those years ago, and the father Virgil Meadler never knew he had.”

“Now that’s guesswork, Ellery.”

“Is it, Dad? Cracken was a Dante expert, perhaps obsessed with the subject. Wouldn’t he be naturally attracted to a young woman named Beatrice, the name Dante gave to his own ideal of womanhood in The Divine Comedy? And if their union brought forth a son, wouldn’t Beatrice have named him Virgil, after the Roman poet who guided Dante through the circles of Hell?”

She was staring at them now with eyes that seemed suddenly blank. “You mean I did it all for nothing? All this planning, all these killings? For nothing?”

“Does Dean Cracken know Meadler is his son?” Ellery asked quietly.

“I never told him, but he may have suspected. He was so obsessed with Dante that I wanted it to be like this. None of the people I killed were worthwhile anyway. They all deserve their places in Dante’s Hell. I deserve it too.” And then she was silent.

Ellery turned to Pia Straton. “You can phone in your story now,” he said.

On the way out of the hospital he came upon Virgil Meadler on his way in. “Ellery,” the professor asked, “how’s my mother today?”