Calendar of Crime

The Adventure of The Three R’s

Hail Missouri! Which is North and also South, upland and river-bottom, mountain, plain, factory, and farm. Hail Missouri! For MacArthur’s corncob and Pershing’s noble mule. Hail! For Hannibal and Mark Twain, for Excelsior Springs and Jesse James, for Barlowe and... Barlowe? Barlowe is the site of Barlowe College.

Barlowe College is the last place in Missouri you would go to (Missouri, which yields to no State in the historic redness of its soil) if you yearned for a lesson in the fine art of murder. In fact, the subject being introduced, it is the rare Show Me Stater who will not say, with an informative wink, that Barlowe is the last place in Missouri, and leave all the rest unsaid. But this is a smokeroom witticism, whose origin is as murky as the waters of the Big Muddy. It may well first have been uttered by the alumnus of some Missouri university whose attitude toward learning is steeped in the traditional embalming fluid—whereas, at little Barlowe, learning leaps: Jove and jive thunder in duet, profound sociological lessons are drawn from “Li’l Abner” and “Terry and the Pirates,” and in the seminars of the Philosophy Department you are almost certain to find faith, as a matter of pedagogic policy, paired with Hope.

Scratch a great work and find a great workman.

Dr. Isaiah St. Joseph A. Barlowe, pressed for vital statistics, once remarked that while he was old enough to have been a Founder, still he was not so old as to have calcified over a mound of English ivy. But the good man jested; he is as perennial as a sundial. “Even a cynic,” Dr. Barlowe has said, “likes his grain of salt.” And the truth is, in the garden where he labors, there is no death and a great deal of healthy laughter.

One might string his academic honors after him, like dutiful beads; one might recount the extraordinary tale of how, in the manner of Uther Pendragon, Dr. Barlowe bewitched some dumfounded Missourians and took a whole series of substantial buildings out of their pockets; one might produce a volume on the subject of his acolytes alone, who have sped his humanistic gospel into the far corners of the land. Alas, this far more rewarding reportage must await the service of one who has, at the very least, a thousand pages at his disposal. Here there is space merely to record that the liveliness of Barlowe’s alarming approach to scholarship is totally the inspiration of Dr. Isaiah St. Joseph A. Barlowe.

Those who would instruct at Barlowe must pass a rather unusual entrance examination. The examination is conducted in camera, and its nature is as sacredly undisclosable as the Thirty-Third Rite; nevertheless, leaks have occurred, and it may be significant that in its course Dr. Barlowe employs a 16-millimeter motion-picture projector, a radio, a portable phonograph, one copy each of The Bible, The Farmer’s Almanac, and The Complete Sherlock Holmes; and the latest issue of The Congressional Record — among others. During examinations the voices of Donald Duck and Young Widder Brown have been reported; and so on. It is all very puzzling, but perhaps not unconnected with the fact that visitors often cannot distinguish who are Barlowe students and who are Barlowe professors. Certainly a beard at Barlowe is no index of dignity; even the elderly among the faculty extrude a zest more commonly associated with the fuzzy-chinned undergraduate.

So laughter and not harumphery is rampant upon the Gold and the Puce; and, if corpses dance macabre, it is only upon the dissection tables of Bio III, where the attitude toward extinction is roguishly empirical.

Then imagine—if you can—the impact upon Barlowe, not of epic murder as sung by the master troubadours of Classics I; not of romantic murder (Abbot, Anthony to Zangwill, Israel) beckoning from the rental shelves of The Campus Book Shop; but of murder loud and harsh.

Murder, as young Professor Bacon of the Biochemistry Department might say, with a stink.

The letter from Dr. Barlowe struck Ellery as remarkably woeful.

“One of my faculty has disappeared,” wrote the president of Barlowe College, “and I cannot express to you, Mr. Queen, the extent of my apprehension. In short, I fear the worst.

“I am aware of your busy itinerary, but if you are at all informed regarding the institution to which I have devoted my life, you will grasp the full horror of our dilemma. We feel we have erected something here too precious to be befouled by the nastiness of the age; on the other hand, there are humane—not to mention legal—considerations. If, as I suspect, Professor Chipp has met with foul play, it occurred to me that we might investigate sub rosa and at least present the not altogether friendly world with un mystère accompli. In this way, much anguish may be spared us all.

“Can I prevail upon you to come to Barlowe quietly, and at once? I feel confident I speak for our Trustees when I say we shall have no difficulty about the coarser aspects of the association.”

The letter was handwritten, in a hasty and nervous script which seemed to suggest guilty glances over the presidential shoulder.

It was all so at variance with what Ellery had heard about Dr. Isaiah St. Joseph A. Barlowe and his learned vaudeville show that he scribbled a note to Inspector Queen and ran. Nikki, clutching her invaluable notebook, ran with him.

Barlowe, Missouri, lay torpid in the warm September sunshine. And the distant Ozarks seemed to be peering at Barlowe inquisitively.

“Do you suppose it’s got out, Ellery?” asked Nikki sotto voce as a sluggish hack trundled them through the slumbering town. “It’s all so still. Not like a college town at all.”

“Barlowe is still in its etesian phase,” replied Ellery pedantically. “The fall term doesn’t begin for another ten days.”

“You always make things so darned uninteresting!”

They were whisked into Dr. Barlowe’s sanctum.

“You’ll forgive my not meeting you at the station,” muttered the educator as he quickly shut the door. He was a lean gray-thatched man with an Italianate face and lively black eyes whose present preoccupation did not altogether extinguish the lurking twinkle. Missouri’s Petrarch, thought Ellery with a chuckle. As for Nikki, it was love at first sight. “Softly, softly—that must be our watchword.”

“Just who is Professor Chipp, Dr. Barlowe?”

“American Lit. You haven’t heard of Chipp’s seminar on Poe? He’s an authority—it’s one of our more popular items.”

“Poe,” exclaimed Nikki. “Ellery, that should give you a personal interest in the case.”

“Leverett Chisholm Chipp,” nodded Ellery, remembering. “Monographs in The Review on the Poe prose. Enthusiasm and scholarship. That Chipp...”

“He’s been a Barlowe appendage for thirty years,” said the doctor unhappily. “We really couldn’t go on without him.”

“When was Professor Chipp last seen?”

Dr. Barlowe snatched his telephone. “Millie, send Ma Blinker in now... Ma runs the boarding house on the campus where old Chipp’s had rooms ever since he came to Barlowe to teach, Mr. Queen. Ah! Ma! Come in. And shut the door!”

Ma Blinker was a brawny old Missourian who looked as if she had been summoned to the council chamber from her Friday’s batch of apple pies. But it was a landlady’s eye she turned on the visitors from New York—an eye which did not surrender until Dr. Barlowe uttered a cryptic reassurance, whereupon it softened and became moist.

“He’s an old love, the Professor is,” she said brokenly. “Regular? Ye could set your watch by that man.”

“I take it,” murmured Ellery, “Chipp’s regularity is germane?”

Dr. Barlowe nodded. “Now, Ma, you’re carrying on. And you with the blood of pioneers! Tell Mr. Queen all about it.”

“The Professor,” gulped Ma Blinker, “he owns a log cabin up in the Ozarks, ’cross the Arkansas line. Every year he leaves Barlowe first of July to spend his summer vacation in the cabin. First of July, like clockwork.”

“Alone, Mrs. Blinker?”

“Yes, sir. Does all his writin’ up there, he does.”

“Literary textbooks,” explained Barlowe. “Although summer before last, to my astonishment, Chipp informed me he was beginning a novel.”

“First of July he leaves for the cabin, and one day after Labor Day he’s back in Barlowe gettin’ ready for the fall term.”

“One day after Labor Day, Mr. Queen. Year in, year out. Unfailingly.”

“And here ’tis the thirteenth of September and he ain’t showed up in town!”

“Day after Labor Day... Ten days overdue.”

“All this fuss,” asked Nikki, “over a measly ten days?”

“Miss Porter, Chipp’s being ten days late is as unlikely as—as my being Mrs. Hudson in disguise! Unlikelier. I was so concerned, Mr. Queen, I telephoned the Slater, Arkansas, authorities to send someone up to Chipp’s cabin.”

“Then he didn’t simply linger there past his usual date?”

“I can’t impress upon you too strongly the inflexibility of Chipp’s habit-pattern. He did not. The Slater man found no sign of Chipp but his trunk.”

“But I gathered from your letter, Doctor, that you had a more specific reason for suspecting—”

“And don’t we!” Ma Blinker broke out frankly now in bosomy sobs. “I’d never have gone into the Professor’s rooms—it was another of his rules—but Dr. Barlowe said I ought to when the Professor didn’t show up, so I did, and... and—”

“Yes, Mrs. Blinker?”

“There on the rug, in front of his fireplace,” whispered the landlady, “was a great... big... stain.”

“A stain!” gasped Nikki. “A stain?”

“A bloodstain.”

Ellery raised his brows.

“I examined it myself, Mr. Queen,” said Dr. Barlowe nervously. “It’s—it’s blood, I feel certain. And it’s been on the rug for some time... We locked Chipp’s rooms up again, and I wrote to you.”

And although the September sun filled each cranny of the president’s office, it was a cold sun suddenly.

“Have you heard from Professor Chipp at all since July the first, Doctor?” asked Ellery with a frown.

Dr. Barlowe looked startled. “It’s been his habit to send a few of us cards at least once during the summer recess...” He began to rummage excitedly through a pile of mail on his desk. “I’ve been away since early June myself. This has so upset me I... Why didn’t I think of that? Ah, the trained mind... Mr. Queen, here it is!”

It was a picture postcard illustrating a mountain cascade of improbable blue surrounded by verdure of impossible green. The message and address were in a cramped and spidery script.

“His ‘novel’ again,” muttered Ellery. “Bears the postmark Slater, Arkansas, July thirty-first of this year. Dr. Barlowe, was this card written by Professor Chipp?”

“Unmistakably.”

“Doesn’t the writing seem awfully awkward to you, Ellery?” asked Nikki, in the tradition of the detectival secretary.

“Yes. As if something were wrong with his hand.”

“There is,” sniffled Ma Blinker. “Middle and forefinger missin’ to the second joint—poor, poor old man!”

“Some accident in his youth, I believe.”

Ellery rose. “May I see that stain on Chipp’s rug, please?”

A man may leave more than his blood on his hearth, he may leave his soul. The blood was there, faded brown and hard, but so was Professor Chipp, though in absentia.

The two small rooms overlooking the campus were as tidy as a barrack. Chairs were rigidly placed. The bed was a sculpture. The mantelpiece was a shopwindow display; each pipe in the rack had been reamed and polished and laid away with a mathematical hand. The papers in the pigeonholes of the old pine desk were ranged according to size. Even the missing professor’s books were disciplined: no volume on these shelves leaned carelessly, or lolled dreaming on its back! They stood in battalions, company after company, at attention. And they were ranked by author, in alphabetical order.

“Terrifying,” Ellery said; and he turned to examine a small ledger-like volume lying in the exact center of the desk’s dropleaf.

“I suppose this invasion is unavoidable,” muttered Barlowe, “but I must say I feel as if I were the tailor of Coventry! What’s in that ledger, Mr. Queen?”

“Chipp’s personal accounts. His daily outlays of cash... Ah. This year’s entries stop at the thirtieth day of June.”

“The day before he left for his cabin!”

“He’s even noted down what one postage stamp cost him...”

“That’s the old Professor,” sobbed Ma Blinker. Then she raised her fat arms and shrieked: “Heavens to Bessie, Dr. Barlowe! It’s Professor Bacon back!”

“Hi, Ma!”

Professor Bacon’s return was in the manner of a charge from third base. Having pumped the presidential hand violently, the young man immediately cried: “Just got back to the shop and found your note, Doctor. What’s this nonsense about old Chipp’s not showing up for the fall brawl?”

“It’s only too true, Bacon,” said Dr. Barlowe sadly, and he introduced the young man as a full professor of chemistry and biology, another of Ma Blinker’s boarders, and Chipp’s closest faculty friend.

“You agree with Dr. Barlowe as to the gravity of the situation?” Ellery asked him.

“Mr. Queen, if the old idiot’s not back, something’s happened to him.” And for a precarious moment Professor Bacon fought tears. “If I’d only known,” he mumbled. “But I’ve been away since the middle of June—biochemical research at Johns Hopkins. Damn it!” he roared. “This is more staggering than nuclear fission!”

“Have you heard from Chipp this summer, Professor?”

“His usual postcard. I may still have it on me... Yes!”

“Just a greeting,” said Ellery, examining it. “Dated July thirty-first and postmarked Slater, Arkansas—exactly like the card he sent Dr. Barlowe. May I keep this, Bacon?”

“By all means. Chipp not back...” And then the young man spied the brown crust on the hearthrug. He collapsed on the missing man’s bed, gaping at it.

“Ellery!”

Nikki was standing on tiptoe before Chipp’s bookshelves. Under Q stood a familiar phalanx.

“A complete set of your books!”

“Really?” But Ellery did not seem as pleased as an author making such a flattering discovery should. Rather, he eyed one of the volumes as if it were a traitor. And indeed there was a sinister air about it, for it was the only book on all the shelves—he now noted for the first time—which did not exercise the general discipline. It stood on the shelf upside down.

“Queer...” He took it down and righted it. In doing so, he opened the back cover; and his lips tightened.

“Oh, yes,” said Barlowe gloomily. “Old Chipp’s quite unreasonable about your books, Mr. Queen.”

“Only detective stories he’d buy,” muttered Professor Bacon.

“Rented the others.”

“A mystery bug, eh?” murmured Ellery. “Well, here’s one Queen title he didn’t buy.” He tapped the book in his hand.

“The Origin of Evil,” read Nikki, craning. “Rental library!”

“The Campus Book Shop. And it gives us our first confirmation of that bloodstain.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bacon quickly, jumping off the bed.

“The last library stamp indicates that Professor Chipp rented this book from The Campus Book Shop on June twenty-eight. A man as orderly as these rooms indicate, who moreover scrupulously records his purchase of a postage stamp, would scarcely trot off on a summer vacation and leave a book behind to accumulate eleven weeks’ rental-library charges.”

“Chipp? Impossible!”

“Contrary to his whole character.”

“Since the last entry in that ledger bears the date June thirtieth, and since the bloodstain is on this hearthrug,” said Ellery gravely, “I’m afraid, gentlemen, that your colleague was murdered in this room on the eve of his scheduled departure for the Ozarks. He never left this room alive.”

No one said anything for a long time.

But finally Ellery patted Ma Blinker’s frozen shoulder and said: “You didn’t actually see Professor Chipp leave your boarding house on July first, Mrs. Blinker, did you?”

“No, sir,” said the landlady stiffly. “The expressman came for his trunk that mornin’, but the Professor wasn’t here. I... thought he’d already left.”

“Tell me this, Mrs. Blinker: did Chipp have a visitor on the preceding night—the night of June thirtieth?”

A slow change came over the woman’s blotchy features.

“He surely did,” she said. “He surely did. That Weems.”

“Weems?” Dr. Barlowe said quickly. “Oh, no! I mean...”

“Weems,” said Nikki. “Ellery, didn’t you notice that name on The Campus Book Shop as we drove by?”

Ellery said nothing.

Young Bacon muttered: “Revolting idea. But then... Weems and old Chipp were always at each other’s throats.”

“Weems is the only other one I’ve discussed Chipp’s nonappearance with,” said the college president wildly. “He seemed so concerned!”

“A common interest in Poe,” said Professor Bacon fiercely.

“Indeed,” smiled Ellery. “We begin to discern a certain unity of plot elements, don’t we? If you’ll excuse us for a little while, gentlemen, Miss Porter and I will have a chat with Mr. Weems.”

But Mr. Weems turned out to be a bustly, bald little Missouri countryman, with shrewdly-humored eyes and the prevailing jocular manner, the most unmurderous-looking character imaginable. And he presided over a shop so satisfyingly full of books, so aromatic with the odors of printery and bindery, and he did so with such a naked bibliophilic tenderness, that Nikki—for one—instantly dismissed him as a suspect.

Yep, Mr. Queen’d been given to understand correctly that he, Claude Weems, had visited old Chipp’s rooms at Ma Blinker’s on the night of June thirty last; and, yep, he’d left the old chucklehead in the best of health; and, no, he hadn’t laid eyes on him since that evenin’. He’d shut up shop for the summer and left Barlowe on July fifteenth for his annual walking tour cross-country; didn’t get back till a couple of days ago to open up for fall.

“Doc Barlowe’s fussin’ too much about old Chipp’s not turnin’ up,” said little Mr. Weems, beaming. “Now I grant you he’s never done it before, and all that, but he’s gettin’ old, Chipp is. Never can tell what a man’ll do when he passes a certain age.”

Nikki looked relieved, but Ellery did not.

“May I ask what you dropped in to see Chipp about on the evening of June thirtieth, Mr. Weems?”

“To say goodbye. And then I’d heard tell the old varmint’d just made a great book find—”

“Book find! Chipp had ‘found’ a book?”

Mr. Weems looked around and lowered his voice. “I heard he’d picked up a first edition of Poe’s Tamerlane for a few dollars from some fool who didn’t know its worth. You a collector, Mr. Queen?”

“A Tamerlane first!” exclaimed Ellery.

“Is that good, Ellery?” asked Nikki with the candor of ignorance.

“Good! A Tamerlane first, Nikki, is worth at least $25,000!”

Weems chuckled. “Know the market, I see. Yes, sir, bein’ the biggest booster old Edgar Allan ever had west of the Mississip’, I wanted to see that copy bad, awful bad. Chipp showed it to me, crowin’ like a cock in a roostful. Lucky dog,” he said without audible rancor. “’Twas the real article, all right.”

Nikki could see Ellery tucking this fact into one of the innumerable cubbyholes of his mind—the one marked For Future Consideration. So she was not surprised when he changed the subject abruptly.

“Did Professor Chipp ever mention to you, Weems, that he was engaged in writing a novel?”

“Sure did. I told ye he was gettin’ old.”

“I suppose he also told you the kind of novel it was?”

“Dunno as he did.” Mr. Weems looked about as if for some goal for his spittle, but then, with his indignation, he swallowed it.

“Seems likely, seems likely,” mumbled Ellery, staring at the rental-library section where murder frolicked.

“What seems likely, Ellery?” demanded Nikki.

“Considering that Chipp was a mystery fan, and the fact that he wrote Dr. Barlowe his novel would be a ‘huge surprise,’ it’s my conclusion, Nikki, the old fellow was writing a whodunit.”

“No! A Professor of Literature?”

“Say,” exclaimed Mr. Weems. “I think you’re right.”

“Oh?”

“Prof Chipp asked me—in April, it was—to find out if a certain title’s ever been used on a detective story!”

“Ah. And what was the title he mentioned, Weems?”

“The Mystery of the Three R’s.”

“Three R’s... Three R’s?” cried Ellery. “But that’s incredible! Nikki—back to the Administration Building!”

“Suppose he was,” said Professor Bacon violently. “Readin’! ’Ritin’! ’Rithmetic! Abracadabra and Rubadubdub. What of it?”

“Perhaps nothing, Bacon,” scowled Ellery, hugging his pipe. “And yet... see here. We found a clue pointing to the strong probability that Chipp never left his rooms at Ma Blinker’s alive last June thirtieth. What was that clue? The fact that Chipp failed to return his rented copy of my novel to Weems’s lending library. Novel... book... reading, gentlemen! The first of the traditional Three R’s.”

“Rot!” bellowed the professor, and he began to bite his fingernails.

“I don’t blame you,” shrugged Ellery. “But has it occurred to you that there is also a writing clue?”

At this Nikki went over to the enemy.

“Ellery, are you sure the sun...?”

“Those postcards Chipp wrote, Nikki.”

Three glances crossed stealthily.

“But I fail to see the connection, Mr. Queen,” said Dr. Barlowe soothingly. “How are those ordinary postcards a clue?”

“And besides,” snorted Bacon, “how could Chipp have been bumped off on June thirtieth and have mailed the cards a full month later, on July thirty-first?”

“If you’ll examine the date Chipp wrote on the cards,” said Ellery evenly, “you’ll find that the 3 of July 31 is crowded between the y of July and the 1 of 31. If that isn’t a clue, I never saw one.”

And Ellery, who was as thin-skinned as the next artist, went on rather tartly to reconstruct the events of the fateful evening of June the thirtieth.

“Chipp wrote those cards in his rooms that night, dating them a day ahead—July first—probably intending to mail them from Slater, Arkansas, the next day on his way to the log cabin—”

“It’s true Chipp loathed correspondence,” muttered Dr. Barlowe.

“Got his duty cards out of the way before his vacation even began—the old sinner!” mumbled young Bacon.

“Someone then murdered him in his rooms, appropriated the cards, stuffed the body into Chipp’s trunk—”

“Which was picked up by the expressman next morning and shipped to the cabin?” cried Nikki.

And again the little chill wind cut through the office.

“But the postmarks, Mr. Queen,” said Barlowe stiffly. “The postmarks also say July thirty-first.”

“The murderer merely waited a month before mailing them at the Slater, Arkansas, post-office.”

“But why?” growled Bacon. “You weave beautiful rugs, man—but what do they mean?”

“Obviously it was all done, Professor Bacon,” said Ellery, “to leave the impression that on July thirty-first Professor Chipp was still alive... to keep the world from learning that he was really murdered on the night of June thirtieth. And that, of course, is significant.” He sprang to his feet. “We must examine the Professor’s cabin—most particularly, his trunk!”

It was a little trunk—but then, as Dr. Barlowe pointed out in a very queer voice, Professor Chipp had been a little man.

Outdoors, the Ozarks were shutting up shop for the summer, stripping the faint-hearted trees and busily daubing hillsides; but in the cabin there was no beauty—only dust, and an odor of dampness... and something else.

The little steamer trunk stood just inside the cabin doorway.

They stared at it.

“Well, well,” said Bacon finally. “Miss Porter’s outside—what are we waiting for?”

And so they knocked off the rusted lock and raised the lid—and found the trunk empty.

Perhaps not quite empty: the interior held a pale, dead-looking mass of crumbly stuff.

Ellery glanced up at Professor Bacon.

“Quicklime,” muttered the chemistry teacher.

“Quicklime!” choked the president. “But the body. Where’s the body?”

Nikki’s scream, augmented a dozen times by the encircling hills, answered Dr. Barlowe’s question most unpleasantly.

She had been wandering about the clearing, dreading to catch the first cry of discovery from the cabin, when she came upon a little cairn of stones. And she had sat down upon it.

But the loose rocks gave way, and Miss Porter found herself sitting on Professor Chipp—or, rather, on what was left of Professor Chipp. For Professor Chipp had gone the way of all flesh—which is to say, he was merely bones, and very dry bones, at that.

But that it was the skeleton of Leverett Chisholm Chipp could not be questioned: the medius and index finger of the right skeletal hand were missing to the second joint. And that Leverett Chisholm Chipp had been most foully used was also evident: the top of the skull revealed a deep and ragged chasm, the result of what could only have been a tremendous blow.

Whereupon the old pedagogue and the young took flight, joining Miss Porter, who was quietly being ill on the other side of the cabin; and Mr. Queen found himself alone with Professor Chipp.

Later, Ellery went over the log cabin with a disagreeable sense of anticipation. There was no sensible reason for believing that the cabin held further secrets; but sense is not all, and the already-chilling air held a whiff of fatality.

He found it in a cupboard, in a green steel box, beside a rusty can of moldering tobacco.

It was a stapled pile of neat papers, curled by damp, but otherwise intact.

The top sheet, in a cramped, spidery hand, said:

The discovery of Professor Chipp’s detective story may be said to mark the climax of the case. That the old man had been battered to death in his rooms on the night of June thirtieth; that his corpse had been shipped from Barlowe, Missouri, to the Arkansas cabin in his own trunk, packed in quicklime to avert detection en route; that the murderer had then at his leisure made his way to the cabin, removed the body from the trunk, and buried it under a heap of stones—these were mere facts, dry as the Professor’s bones. They did not possess the aroma of the grotesque—the bouffe — which rose like a delicious mist from the pages of that incredible manuscript.

Not that Professor Chipp’s venture into detective fiction revealed a new master, to tower above the busy little figures of his fellow-toilers in this curious vineyard and vie for cloudspace only with Poe and Doyle and Chesterton. To the contrary. The Mystery of the Three R’s by L. C. Chipp, was a labored exercise in familiar elements, distinguished chiefly for its enthusiasm.

No, it was not the murdered professor’s manuscript which was remarkable; the remarkable thing was the manner in which life had imitated it.

It was a shaken group that gathered in Chipp’s rooms the morning after the return from the Arkansas cabin. Ellery had called the meeting, and he had invited Mr. Weems of The Campus Book Shop to participate—who, upon hearing the ghastly news, stopped beaming, clamped his Missouri jaws shut, and began to gaze furtively at the door.

Ellery’s own jaws were unshaven, and his eyes were red.

“I’ve passed the better part of the night,” he began abruptly, “reading through Chipp’s manuscript. And I must report an amazing—an almost unbelievable—thing.

“The crime in Chipp’s detective story takes place in and about a small Missouri college called... Barleigh College.”

“Barleigh,” muttered the president of Barlowe.

“Moreover, the victim in Chipp’s yarn is a methodical old professor of American Literature.”

Nikki looked puzzled. “You mean that Professor Chipp—?”

“Took off on himself, Nikki—exactly.”

“What’s so incredible about that?” demanded young Bacon. “Art imitating life—”

“Considering the fact that Chipp plotted his story long before the events of this summer, Professor Bacon, it’s rather a case of life imitating art. Suppose I tell you that the methodical old professor of American Literature in Chipp’s story owns a cabin in the Ozarks where his body is found?”

“Even that?” squeaked Mr. Weems.

“And more, Weems. The suspects in the story are the President of Barleigh College, whose name is given as Dr. Isaac St. Anthony E. Barleigh; a local bookshop owner named Claudius Deems; a gay young professor of chemistry known as Macon; and, most extraordinary of all, the three main clues in Chipp’s detective story revolve about—are called — ‘Readin’,’ ‘’Ritin’,’ and ‘’Rithmetic’!”

And the icy little wind blew once more.

“You mean,” exclaimed Dr. Barlowe, “the crime we’re investigating—Chipp’s own death—is an exact counterpart of the fictional crime Chipp invented in his manuscript?”

“Down to the last character, Doctor.”

“But Ellery,” said Nikki, “how can that possibly be?”

“Obviously, Chipp’s killer managed to get hold of the old fellow’s manuscript, read it, and with hellish humor proceeded to copy in real life—actually to duplicate—the crime Chipp had created in fiction!” Ellery began to lunge about the little room, his usually neat hair disordered and a rather wild look on his face. “Everything’s the same: the book that wasn’t returned to the lending library—the ‘readin’’ clue; the picture postcards bearing forged dates—the ‘’ritin’’ clue—”

“And the ‘’rithmetic clue, Mr. Queen?” asked Barlowe in a quavering voice.

“In the story, Doctor, the victim has found a first edition of Poe’s Tamerlane, worth $25,000.”

Little Weems cried: “That’s ‘’rithmetic,’ all right!” and then bit his lip.

“And how,” asked Professor Bacon thickly, “how is the book integrated into Chipp’s yarn, Mr. Queen?”

“It furnishes the motive for the crime. The killer steals the victim’s authentic Tamerlane — substituting for it a facsimile copy which is virtually worthless.”

“But if everything else is duplicated...” began Dr. Barlowe in a mutter.

“Then that must be the motive for Professor Chipp’s own murder!” cried Nikki.

“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?” Ellery glanced sharply at the proprietor of The Campus Book Shop. “Weems, where is the first edition of Tamerlane you told me Chipp showed you on the night of June thirtieth?”

“Why... why... why, reckon it’s on his shelves here somewheres, Mr. Queen. Under P, for Poe...”

And there it was. Under P, for Poe.

And when Ellery took it down and turned its pages, he smiled. For the first time since they had found the skeleton under the cairn, he smiled.

“Well, Weems,” he said affably, “you’re a Poe expert. Is this an authentic Tamerlane first?”

“Why... why... why, must be. ’Twas when old Chipp showed it to me that night—”

“Really? Suppose you re-examine it—now.”

But they all knew the answer before Weems spoke.

“It ain’t,” he said feebly. “It’s a facsim’le copy. Worth about $5.”

“The Tamerlane — stolen,” whispered Dr. Barlowe.

“So once again,” murmured Ellery, “we find duplication. I think that’s all. Or should I say, it’s too much?”

And he lit a cigaret and seated himself in one of Professor Chipp’s chairs, puffing contentedly.

“All!” exclaimed Dr. Barlowe. “I confess, Mr. Queen, you’ve—you’ve baffled me no end in this investigation. All? It’s barely begun! Who has done all this?”

“Wait,” said Bacon slowly. “It may be, Doctor, we don’t need Queen’s eminent services at that. If the rest has followed Chipp’s plot so faithfully, why not the most important plot element of all?”

“That’s true, Ellery,” said Nikki with shining eyes. “Who is the murderer in Professor Chipp’s detective story?”

Ellery glanced at the cowering little figure of Claude Weems.

“The character,” he replied cheerfully, “whom Chipp had named Claudius Deems.”

The muscular young professor snarled and he sprang.

“In your enthusiasm, Bacon,” murmured Ellery, without stirring from his chair, “don’t throttle him. After all, he’s such a little fellow, and you’re so large—and powerful.”

“Kill old Chipp, would you!” growled Professor Bacon; but his grip relaxed a little.

“Mr. Weems,” said Nikki, looking displeased. “Of course! The murderer forged the dates on the postcards so he wouldn’t know the crime had been committed on June thirtieth. And who’d have reason to falsify the true date of the crime? The one man who’d visited Professor Chipp that night!”

“The damned beast could easily have got quicklime,” said Bacon, shaking Weems like a rabbit, “by stealing it from the Chemistry Department after everyone’d left the college for the summer.”

“Yes!” said Nikki. “Remember Weems himself told us he didn’t leave Barlowe until July fifteenth?”

“I do, indeed. And Weems’s motive, Nikki?”

“Why, to steal Chipp’s Tamerlane.”

“I’m afraid that’s so,” groaned Barlowe. “Weems as a bookseller could easily have got hold of a cheap facsimile to substitute for the authentic first edition.”

“And he said he’d gone on a walking tour, didn’t he?” Nikki added, warming to her own logic. “Well, I’ll bet he ‘walked’ into that Arkansas post-office, Ellery, on July thirty-first, to mail those postcards!”

Weems found his voice.

“Why, now, listen here, little lady, I didn’t kill old Chipp—” he began in the most unconvincing tones imaginable.

They all eyed him with savage scorn—all, that is, but Ellery.

“Very true, Weems,” said Ellery, nodding. “You most certainly did not.”

“He didn’t...” began Dr. Barlowe, blinking.

“I... didn’t?” gasped Weems, which seemed to Nikki a remarkable thing for him to have said.

“No, although I’m afraid I’ve been led very cleverly to believe that you did, Weems.”

“See here, Mr. Queen,” said Barlowe’s president in a terrible voice. “Precisely what do you mean?”

“And how do you know he didn’t?” shouted Bacon. “I told you, Doctor—this fellow’s grossly overrated. The next thing you’ll tell us is that Chipp hasn’t been murdered at all!”

“Exactly,” said Ellery. “Therefore Weems couldn’t have murdered him.”

“Ellery—” moaned Nikki.

“Your syllogism seems a bit perverted, Mr. Queen,” said Dr. Barlowe severely.

“Yes!” snarled Bacon. “What about the evidence—?”

“Very well,” said Ellery briskly, “let’s consider the evidence. Let’s consider the evidence of the skeleton we found near Chipp’s cabin.”

“Those dry bones? What about ’em?”

“Just that, Professor—they’re so very dry. Bacon, you’re a biologist as well as a chemist. Under normal conditions, how long does it take for the soft parts of a body to decompose completely?”

“How long...?” The young man moistened his lips. “Muscles, stomach, liver—from three to four years. But—”

“And for decomposition of the fibrous tissues, the ligaments?”

“Oh, five years or so more. But—”

“And yet,” sighed Ellery, “that desiccated skeleton was supposed to be the remains of a man who’d been alive a mere eleven weeks before. And not merely that—I now appeal to your chemical knowledge, Professor. Just what is the effect of quicklime on human flesh and bones?”

“Well... it’s pulverulent. Would dry out a body—”

“Would quicklime destroy the tissues?”

“Er... no.”

“It would tend to preserve them?”

“Er... yes.”

“Therefore the skeleton we found couldn’t possibly have been the mortal remains of Professor Chipp.”

“But the right hand, Ellery,” cried Nikki. “The missing fingers—just like Professor Chipp’s—”

“I shouldn’t think,” said Ellery dryly, “snapping a couple of dry bones off a man dead eight or ten years would present much of a problem.”

“Eight or ten years...”

“Surely, Nikki, it suggests the tenant of some outraged grave... or, considering the facts at our disposal, the far likelier theory that it came from a laboratory closet in the Biology Department of Barlowe College.” And Professor Bacon cringed before Ellery’s accusing glance, which softened suddenly in laughter. “Now, really, gentlemen. Hasn’t this hoax gone far enough?”

“Hoax, Mr. Queen?” choked the president of Barlowe with feeble indignation.

“Come, come, Doctor,” chuckled Ellery, “the game’s up. Let me review the fantastic facts. What is this case? A detective story come to life. Bizarre—fascinating—to be sure. But really, Doctor, so utterly unconvincing!

“How conveniently all the clues in Chipp’s manuscript found reflections in reality! The lending-library book, so long overdue—in the story, in the crime. The postcards written in advance—in the story, in the crime. The Tamerlane facsimile right here on Chipp’s shelf—exactly as the manuscript has it. It would seem as if Chipp collaborated in his own murder.”

“Collab—I can’t make hide nor hair of this, Mr. Queen,” began little Mr. Weems in a crafty wail.

“Now, now, Weems, as the bookseller-Poe-crony you were the key figure in the plot! Although I must confess, Dr. Barlowe, you played your role magnificently, too—and, Professor Bacon, you missed a career in the theater; you really did. The only innocent, I daresay, is Ma Blinker—and to you, gentlemen, I gladly leave the trial of facing that doughty lady when she finds out how her honest grief has been exploited in the interest of commerce.”

“Commerce?” whimpered Nikki, who by now was holding her pretty head to keep it from flying off.

“Of course, Nikki. I was invited to Barlowe to follow an elaborate trail of carefully-placed ‘clues’ in order to reach the conclusion that Claude Weems had ‘murdered’ Professor Chipp. When I announced Weems’s ‘guilt,’ the hoax was supposed to blow up in my face. Old Prof Chipp would pop out of his hiding place grinning from ear to silly ear.”

“Pop out... You mean,” gasped Nikki, “you mean Professor Chipp is alive?”

“Only conclusion that makes sense, Nikki. And then,” Ellery went on, glaring at the three cowering men, “imagine the headlines. ‘Famous Sleuth Tricked By Hoax—Pins Whodunit On Harmless Prof.’ Commerce? I’ll say! Chipp’s Mystery of the Three R’s, launched by such splendid publicity, would be swallowed by a publisher as the whale swallowed Jonah—and there we’d have... presumably... a sensational bestseller.

“The whole thing, Nikki, was a conspiracy hatched by the president of Barlowe, his two favorite professors, and their good friend the campus bookseller—a conspiracy to put old Chipp’s first detective story over with a bang!”

And now the little wind blew warm, bringing the blood of shame to six male cheeks.

“Mr. Queen—” began the president hoarsely.

“Mr. Queen—” began the bio-chemistry professor hoarsely.

“Mr. Queen—” began the bookseller hoarsely.

“Come, come, gentlemen!” cried Ellery. “All is not lost! We’ll go through with the plot! I make only One condition. Where the devil is Chipp? I want to shake the old scoundrel’s hand!”

Barlowe is an unusual college.