Double, Double

Monday, April 10

In the morning Rima was pitifully interrogative. It was apparent that during the night life had crept up on her. Or the Monday morning austerity of Upham House, smelling of slop suds and floor polish, had settled over her like an uneasy dew. She no longer took the future on faith. Tomorrow was a question mark; even today. How long did he expect her to remain at Mrs. Upham’s? Didn’t he realize she was running up a debt to him it would take her years to pay back? When could she go back to The Marshes? Why did she have to stay at Upham House at all? What had the redheaded bellboy meant last night when he had said that if she was expecting anybody he’d be glad to leave the side door unlocked? Where had Ellery gone after leaving her last night? (So Rima was the one who had phoned the Hollis, leaving no message.) Did he find out anything? Did he see anybody? Her feet were swollen from these shoes; when could she take her clothes off? What were his plans? Were they getting anywhere? Where were they going this morning?

“To answer omega first,” sighed Ellery, “to breakfast. I can’t talk before I’ve had my coffee.”

On the walk over to Miss Sally’s Tea Roome, he thought furiously. He had had a bad night not entirely ascribable to Manager Brooks’s Himalayan mattress. And when he had fallen asleep, it had been not Anderson but the daughter of Anderson who darkened last in his consciousness. He could not improvise with twenty-dollar bills indefinitely. Sooner or later he would have to settle the question of Rima’s immediate future.

Miss Sally’s was providentially deserted. When they were seated, Ellery said: “Rima, if you had the problem of earning your livelihood, how would you go about solving it?”

“I don’t know,” said Rima coldly.

“Well, what can you do? I mean, besides doctoring birds?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t suppose you can operate a typewriter or anything like that?”

“That’s right.”

“If worst came to worst, you might get a job as a salesgirl...?”

“And be cooped up in a stuffy store all day? I’d die.”

“How about a tutoring job? There must be children of well-to-do parents in town who’d—”

“Cooped up.”

“But you’ve got to do something!”

“Oh, your money. It’s worrying me, too. But I’ll find a way of paying you back.”

Ellery ordered breakfast.

With the coffee, the questions began again. Ellery listened glumly. Finally he said, “See here, Rima. I have only one plan and you may as well get it clear now.

“Everything else is irrelevant.

“I have reason to believe that what happened to your father is connected with a series of events that began here in Wrightsville two months or so ago. The death of Luke MacCaby. His secret partnership with John Spencer Hart. MacCaby’s bequest to Dr. Sebastian Dodd.” Rima clutched a piece of cooling toast, a little pale. “How your father fits into that picture is, I think, the major question. If it can be answered, we may be able to figure out that business of Little Prudy’s Cliff.

“I saw Chief of Police Dakin last night,” continued Ellery, “and he hasn’t any idea that your father’s fate is tied up with these other matters. So Dakin’s no help. We’re on our own.

“I can see only one way to make a start. The man who treated Luke MacCaby for years, who signed MacCaby’s death certificate, is Dr. Sebastian Dodd. The man to whom MacCaby left his unsuspected fortune is Dr. Sebastian Dodd. The man who through MacCaby’s will became in effect the business partner of John Spencer Hart is Dr. Sebastian Dodd. The man whose sudden association with the Hart-MacCaby dye works resulted in Hart’s suicide is Dr. Sebastian Dodd. Dodd seems to be the great common denominator of all the events preceding your father’s disappearance. So the first thing we’ve got to do is try to find out if Dodd was in any way involved with your father, too.”

Rima nodded wordlessly.

“I phoned the Dodd house this morning and made an appointment for 11 A.M. at the doctor’s office. He’s expected back from the hospital then and it will be before his office hours, so we’ll have some time to reconnoiter.

“I don’t know what we’ll run into. Maybe nothing. Maybe a great deal. I’ll have to develop a strategy as we go along.

“That’s where we stand, Rima. Now finish your eggs.”

But Rima said, “I see. I see,” and Ellery was startled to see tears in her eyes.

He said gruffly, “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t really come into it at all.”

That made him think again of how alone she was, which was exactly the thought he had been dodging. He found himself melting like the butter on her toast, which made him think that she wasn’t eating, and he snapped, “You eat your breakfast!” Dutifully she crunched off a piece of toast and he reached over and took her hand, so that she looked at him, surprised. “Rima, I’ve always believed in being forearmed. You do come into it. How, I haven’t any idea. But I’ve got you ready. You’re Tom Anderson’s daughter. What involved him may involve you. By your existence you assert the emotional, if not the moral, right to enter the problem. No one’s going to question your intercession but the author of your father’s fate, whatever it was; but that’s exactly what we’re aiming at. And that’s the technical reason for our visit Saturday to Lachine’s, the reason why you’ve got to keep limping around in those shoes if they kill you.

“Something may come up. We may be able to wing an opportunity. Of course, it may be dangerous. I’ve got to emphasize that. In fact, it will almost certainly be dangerous. Do you know what you really want, Rima?”

She looked down at her plate, saying in a low voice, “Daddy and I were very close. Much closer, I think, than normal people. Yes, I know what I want.” She looked up, almost with anger. “Do understand. This has all been horribly new to me. You’ve been so patient... kind... I won’t give you any more trouble. I promise, Ellery. From now on I’ll do just what you say.”

The house on the corner of Wright Street and Algonquin Avenue was suffering from all the diseases of neglected old age. Its porch, which ran around the side as well as the front, had a feeble-looking, crippled floor. Its squat wooden pillars were cracked and chipped. Its blistered brownish paint erupted in pustules, as if it had an advanced case of acne. The shingled roof sagged in places, curled up with a sort of arthritis in others; and the dormer windows of the sloping top story looked for all the world like the bulging eyes of a row of old blind men. Some shutters were broken, others missing. On its Algonquin Avenue side it elbowed a four-story remodeled apartment building in zippy blue stucco, on its Wright Street side it threatened to topple over on a one-story crate of a shop with a window full of dummy whisky bottles and placards of long-legged toothy women — the crudely painted script on the window said JACK’S PALACE BAR & GRILL.

But the old house was set well back from the street and its rejuvenating lawn was beginning to sprout new grass. There was a flagged walk, bordered by files of freshly manured earth, which meandered around to the side of the house and beyond to what was apparently a rear garden. A great elm in the center of the lawn loomed higher than the house; in summer it would shade the lawn and porch almost agreeably.

A small black-painted sign on a wrought iron standard beside the front gate announced in uncertain gilt lettering:

“It doesn’t look so bad,” said Rima doubtfully as they went up the three precarious wooden steps.

“I imagine it could have its gruesome side,” said Ellery. “At night, under an orange moon.” He pressed his thumb on an iron button marked: RING FOR DOCTOR.

The pebbled glass door was opened by a rawboned, empty-eyed female with a broom. “Which one do you want?” she said.

“Dr. Dodd, please.”

“Ain’t here yet. Office hours start noontime.”

A piercing female voice screamed, “Now Essie, who is that?”

A glint of rebellion sparked in Essie’s glassy eyes. “Body would think a body couldn’t answer a darn door,” she muttered. But then she screamed back, “They’re for Dr. Dodd, Mis’ Fowler!”

“You let ’em in, Essie,” Mis’ Fowler screamed in retort. A stout elderly woman in a white house dress appeared at the rear of the hall. She wore an earpiece and the cord was speckled with flour. “You the man called this mornin’?” she shouted.

“That’s right,” said Ellery.

“Essie, show these folks into the waitin’ room. Dr. Winship’s in there. Don’t rile him. He’s in an awful stew about Miss Pinkle.”

“But they want to see Dr. Dodd!” bawled Essie.

“It’s Dr. Winship I spoke to this morning,” put in Ellery.

“Course it is,” yelled the stout woman cheerfully. “Don’t pay Essie no mind. She’s got a surgical sponge where her brains ought to be. Essie, you get a move on!” The housekeeper disappeared.

There was a strong, baffling odor in the hall, warm, yeasty, and antiseptic. Then Ellery identified it: baking bread and Lysol.

The hall was dark, flanked with wide panels of aged walnut interspersed with panels of a wallpaper whose original design had faded beyond recognition. There was a stained-glass chandelier, and a walnut stairway which curved gracefully to the upper floors. On the midway landing there was more stained glass.

A double French door to the left, heavily curtained in ecru lace, was shut. Essie preceded them to the right and marched through a wide archway from which the doors had been removed into a waiting room. Standing about like prehistoric monsters was a congregation of hideous overstuffed furniture; on the floor was a handhooked rug so old and worn that its colors were gone. There was a door marked Dr. Dodd and there was a door marked Dr. Winship. The walls were painted a dingy green and on them hung some ancient color-prints of Western scenes by Frederic Remington. Several verses or mottoes printed artistically on imitation wood-grain cardboard dangled by tasseled cords. One of them said:

Another began:

Ellery was fascinatedly trying to make out the rest when Essie, with a leer, poked him in the ribs.

“That’s him,” she said.

A very large young man in a white office jacket looked up from the secretarial desk at which he was rather peevishly going through a disorderly heap of filing cards.

“They want to see Dr. Dodd,” said Essie, and she tramped off in triumph, holding her broom like a lance.

“Yes?” snapped the young man.

“I’m Ellery Queen, Dr. Winship.”

“Oh!” Dr. Winship scrambled to his feet, knocking his chair over backwards. His big, serious face reddened as he stooped and yanked the chair upright. “Not functioning this morning. Ever try to make sense out of the filing system of a secretary who’s always mooning about last night’s date? Damn all the Pinkles of this world! Dr. Dodd’s not back from the hospital yet, Mr. Queen.” He looked as if he would have been more at home in the dressing room of a college stadium. He came around the desk and seized Ellery’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m an admirer of yours from way back. Remember when you first came to town. ’40, wasn’t it?” His grin was as broad as his shoulders. “Won’t you and the young lady sit down?” Then his rather battered brown eyes took in “the young lady,” and they lost their fatigue.

“Miss Anderson, Dr. Winship,” said Ellery.

“How do you do,” said Miss Anderson.

“How do you do,” said Dr. Winship.

They stared at each other.

And at that moment Ellery’s idea was born. It was tiny and vague and, like most inspirations, it preceded its rationale. But even afterward Ellery found very little of a concrete nature to go on: a large, sober young man immersed in his work, showing the physical effects of long hours, insufficient sleep, a monkish life; and a pixy of a girl with a temporarily Fifth Avenue look and a naked yearning to be back among her butterflies and mosquitoes. Not much. But perhaps enough. It was necessary to revise his previous notion about deserving young poets, for — and Ellery could not have said why he was so sure of this — there was work to be done here.

“There’s a button missing from your coat,” said Rima. She pointed.

Dr. Winship looked down. “There always is.” Then he looked at her again as if she had said a wonderful thing. “You’re not from Wrightsville,” he said.

Rima laughed. Her shrill sweet bird laughter.

“You are?”

Ellery said casually, “Miss Anderson, Dr. Winship, is Tom Anderson’s daughter.”

It was too easy.

“The Town...” The young doctor bit his lip, glancing quickly at Ellery. Ellery smiled and nodded. Eagerly Winship dragged a chair forward. And Rima lowered her eyes and slipped into the seat. He remained over her, with joy. He’d hardly have believed it. Where had she been keeping herself? But he supposed the thing that had happened to her father... Did she ever get down to the hospital? She must be awfully alone these days. Loneliness wasn’t wise at her age. He ought to know! But then she was probably kept pretty busy — and by the way, what did she do with herself? Say, on weekends? Did she ever get over to Connhaven for the summer series of concerts? He found music wonderfully relaxing... did she know Fauré’s “Pavane”? Vaughan Williams’s “Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis”? The slow movement of the Schubert Quintet? He had a pitiful collection of records — couldn’t afford what he’d like — but if she’d care to spend a musical evening with him sometime...

He’s been badly bruised, thought Ellery. Hurts all over. He’d shy away from most girls. But she’s as soothing as a brook. There’s no danger in her. He wants those wounds laved.

Rima was acting remarkably coy. Answering in dovelike murmurs. Not like herself at all. She was afraid her musical education had been neglected. Unless you consider poetry to be music. Which of course it is. Did he know Lovelace? Marvell? Henry Vaughan?

Ellery listened, smiling.

But then Dr. Sebastian Dodd came in and Ellery had something else to think about.

Dr. Dodd’s appearance shocked him.

Ellery had visualized the beneficiary of Luke MacCaby’s will as a rather sad-eyed little man with a workworn body and a halo of silvery hair — a slender, almost fragile, saint at peace with himself and the universe. The man who came swiftly, almost furtively, into the waiting room and stopped in his tracks in the archway was a harried brute. His great body was powerful and grossly fleshed; had he been smaller, he would have been fat. He was all but bald and his glossy skull was stippled with liverish-looking pigment, like the spots on his big, unsteady hands. His face was startling. It was a great jowled face, its jowls shaking. The eyes were buried in pits of deeply sagging flesh, like pouches, and the pouches quivered, too. They twitched and jerked. The eyes themselves, small and overbrilliant, were never still. They kept darting from side to side like minnows. And his skin was lifeless and of a yellow color, as if some poison was sapping its vitality.

Had his voice been in tune with his appearance, Dr. Dodd would have been monstrous, a vast obscenity. But when he spoke the sounds that came out of his throat were grave and sweet and slowly given. His voice was the only part of him with beauty. It suggested what he might have been, or what perhaps he once was.

“No, no, Mr. Queen. Dr. Winship phoned me at the hospital; I was expecting you. Pretty nearly bowled me over. Been as flustered as a girl. Kenneth, you know who Mr. Queen is, don’t you?”

“What?” said Dr. Winship.

“You’ll have to forgive Dr. Winship, Mr. Queen. He’s one of these born healers of humanity — always worrying about the incidence of next year’s diseases.” Dr. Dodd chuckled, his jowls flying. “At that, he’s got a dietary theory that I think is going to make medical history. Get him to tell you sometime about the ‘metabolic personality.’ And who’d you say this very pretty little girl is?”

“Rima Anderson, Dr. Dodd.”

“Ri... Tom Anderson’s daughter?”

Rima said, “Thomas Hardy Anderson.” Distinctly.

The minnows darted about in a sort of pain. Then Dr. Dodd took Rima’s little hands in his and he said in a rumble, “I’m sorry about your father, Rima. I knew him well. He was a fine man, and now that I’ve seen you I know he didn’t waste his life. Won’t you both come into my office?”

Dr. Winship automatically followed, as if Rima led him on an invisible leash.

Dr. Dodd’s consulting room was big and oldfashioned, with an antiquated-looking oak-framed fluoroscope in one corner and an apothecary’s cubby in another. One wall was solid with dusty medical magazines and books. Through an open door Ellery saw an examining room: a stirruped examining table, a case of surgical instruments, a scale, a sterilizer.

But he noted these things by habit. His mind was busy with Dr. Dodd, and his remarkably fluid appearance, and his words, I knew him well. Poor Yorick Anderson. I think we’ve come to the right place...

“What, Doctor? Oh, yes! I’m looking into Tom Anderson’s death for Rima,” said Ellery. “Frustrating case. So little to go on. We don’t actually know that Anderson died of violence. We don’t even know that he’s dead.” And all the time Ellery was speaking he was fascinated by those two unquiet eyes in that unquiet face, and by the big hands that kept playing with things on the desk. What’s worrying him? Ellery kept thinking. Most worried man I ever saw. Whatever it is, it’s put him under enormous tension. Getting him down. No man could go on under such pressure for very long. Is it the money? “So I decided to talk to everyone who might have known him, Doctor. And since I was told you’re so well acquainted with the people of Low Village particularly...”

Dr. Dodd nodded. “Matter of fact, Mr. Queen, your coming here today to see me is something of a coincidence. I said to Kenneth only yesterday that I really ought to drop in on Chief Dakin, or call him up. I don’t know that it has a thing, to do with what happened to Tom, but it might well have, and if I hadn’t been so blamed busy, what with my patients and this diphtheria scare we’re having, and—” he grinned suddenly, rubbing his chin in a sheepish way — “and certain developments recently in my personal life, why, I’d have gone to Dakin right off. Remember my saying that to you yesterday, Kenneth?”

“Hm? Oh. Oh, yes, you did,” said Dr. Winship. “And I said you darned well ought to, and you said you’d do it first thing this morning, only I suppose you’ve forgotten, as usual.”

“Well, Shumley Purvis’s wife is pretty bad,” said Dr. Dodd apologetically. “You may have to do a tracheotomy on her. If that swelling gets any worse—”

“You don’t know that what has anything to do with what happened to Tom Anderson, Dr. Dodd?” asked Ellery.

“Beg pardon? Why, that money I gave him.”

“You gave Daddy money?” exclaimed Rima. She glanced quickly at Ellery. He gave no sign, but she said no more, looking down at her hands.

“Which money was that, Doctor?” said Ellery.

“Oh, it’s something of a yarn,” replied Dr. Dodd with a sigh. “I have a confounded meddlesome streak in me, Mr. Queen. Always interfering in people’s lives. I remember when Tom Anderson first showed up in Wrightsville — taught at the high school. It wasn’t so many years ago, Rima, was it? He was a fine-looking man, with a lot of trouble in his face. A gentleman and a scholar, I always thought. I was sorry to see him lose his grip on himself that way. An awful waste.

“Well, I’d meet him on the street every so often and ask him to stop in and see me. Finally he did. I saw right away that what was wrong with him couldn’t be diagnosed on my examining table, anyway. It was a case for a psychiatrist and we don’t have any psychiatrists in these parts. But we talked things over. Well, he got to crying and feeling penitent and I knew I wasn’t doing him any good. I knew he’d go right out and hunt up another drink.”

Unexpectedly, Rima started to cry. In silence, putting her hands to her face and shaking all over. Dr. Winship looked as if someone with a large foot had kicked him in the groin. But Dr. Dodd caught Winship’s eye and shook his head, and Ellery signaled to the big man to go on. And in a moment Rima had stopped crying and her hands were back in her lap and she was staring at them.

“Then, a short time ago,” Dr. Dodd went on, “I came into all this money through the will of Luke MacCaby—”

“—blessed be his name,” muttered Dr. Winship with an eye on Rima, and he brightened when she laughed. “But the trouble is, Dr. Dodd won’t use it for himself. All he does—”

“Now Kenneth,” said Dr. Dodd. ‘The will isn’t through probate and what I’ve been able to squeeze out of Otis Holderfield is by mercy of the Surrogate, whom I used to whale the daylights out of when we were boys playing hooky from Miss Schoonmaker’s school-house over on Piney Road... when it was a road, not a damned death trap of a garbage dump. Well, anyway, not long after the MacCaby business came out I bumped into Tom Anderson. Almost literally. I’m sorry, my dear,” said Dr. Dodd gently to Rima, “but he was sitting in the middle of Polly Street reciting poetry and I almost ran over him.”

“It’s all right, Dr. Dodd,” said Rima. Then she added, oddly: “Daddy wasn’t half as unhappy as people thought he was.”

“Well, Rima, he wasn’t leaping for joy that day,” retorted Dr. Dodd. “I got him into my jalopy and pulled over to the curb and we had a long gabfest. He started to cry again — your dad always seemed to cry when I talked to him.”

“What was he crying about, Doctor?” asked Rima very quietly.

“You.”

“Me!” She looked incredulous.

“That’s right. Said he’d been worrying a lot about you lately. That he realized he hadn’t brought you up right.” Rima was getting pale around the nostrils. “Now, my dear, I’m just telling you what he said—”

“My father brought me up very well!”

“Course he did,” said Dr. Dodd. “And look at the results. Just remarkable. But Tom seemed to feel he hadn’t prepared you for life, Rima. That if anything happened to him you’d be left all alone without a friend or a way of getting along.”

“Rima,” said Ellery.

“Yes.” Rima was angry.

“A squatter’s shack in a swamp, he said. No place for a fine girl—”

“He was playing on your sympathies, Dr. Dodd. He didn’t mean it. I knew my father.” Rima’s eyes flashed. “I don’t think anyone can understand how well we knew each other. He knew he couldn’t have kept me for five minutes if I hadn’t wanted to stay with him and The Marshes. I won’t have even Daddy spoiling what he and I had together!”

“Now maybe,” said Dr. Dodd mildly, “maybe you didn’t know your father as well as you think you did, Rima.”

“I remember my father,” said the young doctor in a low voice. “I thought I knew him, too. But the letters he sent me while I was overseas...” Then he grinned. “You listen to old Doc Dodd, Miss Anderson. He dispenses pretty sound medicine.”

“And I want to hear the end of this yarn,” said Ellery with a smile. “Won’t you go on, Dr. Dodd?”

“Well, I said it was a pretty late date for him to be talking that way, and Tom said he knew that, and he cried some more, and it went on that way for some time. But then he said something that gave me a notion.”

“What was that, Doctor?”

“He said he wished he could quit drinking. And he stopped crying when he said it. Really seemed to mean it. I asked him why he didn’t, and he said, ‘A man has to have something to work for. Or to. I’d like to rehabilitate myself. Open a little bookshop, maybe. Make a decent home for my daughter. But I’m weak, Doctor. I can’t seem to get started on it.’ Well,” said Dr. Dodd, screwing and unscrewing the cap of his ancient fountain pen, “I’d heard alcoholics talk that way before. But, as I say, he’d stopped crying. And just then Mrs. Gonzoli’s daughter’s child, ’Tita, came running up Polly Street holding something up high and screaming, ‘Look what I found! A four-leaf clover!’”

“Four-leaf clover,” said Ellery.

Dr. Dodd said slowly, “Four-leaf clover. It’s not very scientific, Mr. Queen, I know. But then I’m just an old country practitioner... Got one of my blamed sudden impulses. I said to Tom, ‘Tom, I’m not sure I believe you. But by golly I’m going to give you your chance.’ And I made a deal with him. I’d make the down payment on a new life for him. Provide the finances if he’d provide the will power and stick-to-it. Kind of a partnership. He had to give up the bottle. Not gradually. But all at once. And not touch the stuff again. I said to him, ‘Tom, you come to me one week from today. If you’re cold sober and haven’t had a drop in the meantime, I’ll give you five thousand dollars in cash. And if six months from now you’re still on the wagon, I’ll settle an annuity on your girl.’ You know, a week is a long time in the life of an alcoholic. I figured it would be a good test.”

Dr. Dodd put his left thumb into his mouth. He began to worry the nail with his teeth, producing swift uneven little clicking sounds.

“And what did he say to that, Doctor?” asked Ellery. The big man’s nails were bitten away painfully.

“Why, he didn’t say a word for a long time. Just put his hands on my arm and looked at me. He was pretty bleary-eyed and he couldn’t focus very well, but he kept trying. Then all of a sudden he said, ‘I wouldn’t want the money. Not till I’d proved something to myself.’ I said, ‘No, Tom, I want you to have it. A man has to feel solid ground under his feet.’ He kept quiet again. But he was thinking, I could see that, thinking hard. Finally he said, ‘Maybe you’re right, Doc. All right, but I won’t spend a penny of it till I’ve earned the right.’ He got out of my car on all fours and when I tried to help him he shook my hand off. So I let him do it by himself; I could see it was important to him. And then he staggered up the street.”

And Rima’s eyes were big and full of tears.

“The next time I saw him was a week later. He was among the people in my waiting room out there. Sober and looking as if he’d been having a pretty bad time. He said, ‘Doctor, if you want the proof—’ I said, ‘No, Tom, I don’t ask for proof. Just looking at you is proof enough,’ and I called up Otis Holderfield — I’d given him his instructions just in case — and told Holderfield I was sending Mr. Anderson over to his office. A man who’s had a bad time,” said Dr. Dodd apologetically, “needs little rewards like that — being called Mister, I mean. It certainly did something for Tom. I could see him sort of straighten up as he walked out... Well, about an hour later, there was Tom back in my waiting room. When I was able to see him again, he pulled an envelope out of his pocket. Didn’t say a word. I said, ‘Well, Tom, is it all there?’ and he said, ‘Yes, Doctor, it’s all there. I don’t think I believed it before. Now I do.’ And then he said something that kind of embarrassed both of us, and this time we shook hands and he walked out with his shoulders way back, like a man.

“Last time I ever saw him,” muttered Dr. Dodd. “But I kept hearing about him. He was holding to his word. Kind of made me feel there was hope for the human race. That’s why it was such a stunner when I heard about his death. And more than once it’s passed through my mind that maybe my giving him that money had something to do with what happened to him.”

And the big man in the shiny blue serge suit was silent, the floppy places on his face jerking as if they had life of their own, his thick fingers prowling around his desk.

And then he cried out. It was almost a cry of fear. Because Rima had flashed from her chair to his desk and she had snatched one of his restless paws and put it to her lips. And then, with the swiftness which always surprised Ellery, she was at the window facing the blue stucco wall of the apartment building next door, her back to them.

Dr. Dodd was on his feet. His yellow skin had turned burnt orange. He stood leaning his heavy body on his fists, apparently at a loss for what to say. Dr. Winship sat rigid. And Ellery merely sat.

Finally Dr. Dodd rumbled, “Well, Rima, that money ought to take the pressure off you, give you a start. Don’t let any sharpers take it away from you... Kenneth, I think I hear the mob gatherin’ out there. Mr. Queen, if there’s nothing else—”

Ellery said, “But Rima doesn’t have the money, Dr. Dodd.”

“Eh?”

“She knew nothing about it. She never saw it and he never mentioned it to her.”

The two doctors stared.

“May I use your phone?” And when Ellery set the telephone down, he said, “I didn’t think he had, but it’s always best to check. Dakin says he found no money in the coat on Little Prudy’s Cliff. No money at all.”

“Robbery!” exclaimed Dr. Winship.

Rima was facing them.

“Oh, no,” said Dr. Dodd. “Oh, I hope not.” He sank into his chair, the nerves and muscles doing a dervish dance. His skin was yellow again.

“Two sides to every coin,” said Ellery. “Maybe it was robbery. And on the other hand maybe it wasn’t.” He added smoothly, but with just the right touch of urgency, “Well, Rima, these good men are going to be busy in a moment and we’ve still got the problem of your immediate future to settle, so—”

Dr. Dodd had sunk into himself again, twitching and shaking, but young Dr. Winship rose nobly to the fly. “What do you mean by that, Mr. Queen?”

“Rima can’t go back to that shack in The Marshes, Dr. Winship,” said Ellery. “And to live anywhere else — I mean, to lead any sort of normal life — she’ll have to find employment somewhere. Kind of you to be interested. Come on, Rima — oh, by the way, Doctor,” said Ellery, turning back, “you wouldn’t know someone who needs an intelligent girl with a superior educational background, would you?”

“Wait a minute. There’s still some time—” Dr. Winship glanced quickly at his wristwatch. “Plenty of time! Wait just one minute, Mr. Queen. Doc!”

Dr. Dodd came back with a start. “Yes? Yes?”

“Y’know, I’ve meant to talk to you about Pinkle—”

“Miss Pinkle. Oh. Yes.”

“She’s got the case cards in such a mess it’s taken me most of the weekend and all of this morning and I’m still not through straightening them out. Pinkle’s going steady with Rafe Landsman and half the time she’s still back in Memorial Park last night, smooching on the grass. She broke my sterilizer through downright carelessness Saturday and when I bawled her out she said she wouldn’t have to take my ‘abuse’ much longer because she and Rafe were going to elope any day now and he didn’t want his wife working, or some such slop. Why, she hasn’t even showed up this morning.”

“Hasn’t showed up this morning. Oh,” said Dr. Dodd. “Lord, what are we going to do?”

“Well, I think we might give her a couple of weeks’ pay and our good wishes and give her back to Rafe. Just a second now, Mr. Queen—”

“But Kenneth,” said Dr. Dodd helplessly, “we’d have to go all through that awful business of finding a new girl—”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dr. Winship. “How about... well, how about Miss Anderson here?”

Dr. Dodd turned slowly.

“Oh,” said Rima. “Oh, I don’t know if I—” Ellery pinched her ankle as he stooped to pick up the cigaret he had dropped. Rima stopped.

“There’s certainly nothing in the job that ought to tax an intelligent girl like Miss Anderson,” said Dr. Winship carelessly. “If that Pinkle troglodyte could mangle the job... Don’t you agree, Mr. Queen?”

“Well, it’s certainly providential. But I don’t know,” said Ellery craftily. “Rima doesn’t know how to type—”

“Is that all?” cried young Winship. “You ought to see samples of Pinkle’s alleged typing. If Rima can’t do better in one lesson I’ll — I’ll kiss Pinkle’s foot! I’ll bet Miss Anderson can at least spell. And whatever help Dr. Dodd and I need with patients — I mean, preparing them for examination, working the sterilizer, and so on — why, she could learn that in no time. You know we lost our regular office nurse during this damn diphtheria outbreak in Low Village and every trained nurse in town is needed for case work, and at the hospital. So we’ve been more or less limping along here, anyway. Doc, what do you say? It would tide us over and sort of help Miss Anderson out at the same time.”

Dr. Dodd was swabbing his forehead with a soggy handkerchief. “Yes, I... Think you’d like that, Rima?” He sounded feeble.

“I don’t know, Dr. Dodd. I’ve never been cooped up in a—”

“Sooner or later you’ll have to start being cooped up, Rima,” said Ellery crossly. He felt like spanking her. “You can’t live like a butterfly indefinitely. And this is really wonderful luck, Dr. Winship’s suggestion.”

“Maybe you’re worried about the salary,” said Dr. Winship anxiously. “Pinkie’s been getting thirty a week but, Doc, I think we might stretch a point and make it thirty-five for Rima — Miss Anderson—”

“Yes, yes, Kenneth. The only thing that’s bothering me,” said Dr. Dodd painfully, “is that I promised Henry Pinkle I’d give Gloria every chance. You know she hasn’t been able to hold a job and the Pinkles need the money—”

“I tell you the nitwit is planning to elope!”

“Well... let’s talk to Gloria again, Kenneth — see if this marriage business is definite.” Dr. Dodd looked relieved, as if he had solved a difficult problem. “If it is, Rima, it would be just fine having you work with us.”

Dr. Winship looked dissatisfied.

“Fair enough,” said Ellery cheerfully. “You can let Rima know how it works out through me, Dr. Winship. I guess we can manage to hold out another day or so, eh, Rima?”

“Yes,” said Rima.

Dr. Dodd’s hands were shaking so badly that he dropped his handkerchief. “It’s all right, Kenneth. Got ’em worse than usual today! Meanwhile, child, if you need any money—”

“Thank you, Dr. Dodd.” Rima’s voice was soft. “You’ve done... enough already.”

“And Mr. Queen, if there’s anything further I can do—”

“I’ll certainly not hesitate to call on you, Doctor. Dr. Winship, it’s been a pleasure— Oh! Just one thing.” This is insanity, Ellery thought. But nothing’s gone right, anyway. “Has either of you gentlemen sent me a letter recently?”

Rima looked at him sharply. And then at the two doctors. But they were merely looking bewildered; and I can’t say I blame them, Ellery said to himself. He shook Dr. Dodd’s hand — it was unpleasantly moist — and Dr. Winship walked them out.

The waiting room was crowded. A fullblown young woman in spike-heeled shoes and a transparent peekaboo blouse was making her lips up at the desk, fretfully.

“See what I mean?” hissed Dr. Winship, and he glared all the way to the front door.

Outside, Ellery said: “And what happened to your promise in Miss Sally’s Tea Roome this morning, Rima? Wasn’t it fundamentally obvious that I wangled that offer for you? And you went ahead and spoiled it!”

“Dr. Dodd didn’t want me.”

“Oh. Sensitive, too.”

“He didn’t, Ellery.”

“You’re wrong. Dodd’s a chronic do-gooder. Whatever’s messed him up expresses itself through acts of charity and lovingkindness. More power to him. He’s genuinely worried, I think, about his promise to this Wrightsville peony’s father. But Rima, you’re on his conscience, too. We’re working in the dark, groping for a little light on a man’s death. We’ve got to take advantage of every glimmer. We can’t afford to have scruples. With a little intelligent assistance from you—” He was fuming.

“I’m sorry.” Rima was staring at the lawn, where beside the walk an old man on his knees was transplanting seedlings from a flat. “It seemed like taking advantage. Dr. Dodd was so kind to Daddy. And Dr. Winship—”

“Ah, Dr. Winship. The tone changes. I didn’t think you knew how, but apparently the art is bred in the bone. What about Dr. Winship?”

“You don’t like him.”

“I love him! But he’s still only a piece in a puzzle as far as I’m concerned. What about Dr. Winship?”

“Well, he was so nice. And I don’t know anything about office work.”

She looked so small and isolated. “Well, well,” Ellery said, “we’ll talk about it some more... That old man. Is that—?”

“That’s Harry Toyfell.”

Toyfell’s knobby hands were working swiftly in the soil. He wore a grim suit of what had once been black cloth, patched in odd places and earthstained at the knees and cuffs. A violent blue shirt. And an incredible high stiff collar with a string tie. He was long and narrow, with sucked-in cheeks and a gritty skin. His skull was a squeezed bone thinly striated with hair. Put a stovepipe hat with a ribbon around its crown on that skull, thought Ellery, and you’d have Old Bluenose in person. Strange philosopher.

“Let’s talk to him, Rima.”

“No!”

“Are you afraid of him?” he asked her gently.

“Yes!”

“Stay behind me.”

Rima followed reluctantly.

“Toyfell.”

The gardener looked around and up with a jerk. Trying to give the impression he hadn’t noticed us, thought Ellery.

“Yes, Mister?”

Ellery said sharply, “I’m a detective. Ellery Queen. Investigating the death of Tom Anderson. You were a crony of his, Toyfell. What do you know about it?”

“What do I know ’bout it?” Toyfell got to his feet in sections. “Why, Mister, I know that man is mortal and I know that death is sad. That’s what I know ’bout it. Do you know any more?” His voice was a rusty abomination. His little blue eyes shifted. “Ain’t that Rima Anderson?”

Ellery squeezed her hand.

“Hello, Mr. Toyfell,” she said quickly.

“Didn’t know ye at first in those togs. Make ye look like a real grownup young woman.” The mineral eyes stared.

Rima’s grip tightened.

“When is the last time you saw Anderson?” Ellery snapped.

“Night he disappeared. We were settin’ in Gus Olesen’s. Tom, Nick Jacquard, and me.” Toyfell kept glancing at Rima, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “On Route 16,” he said.

“All leave together, did you?”

“No, Mister. Tom left first.”

“Time?”

“’Bout 10:30. After a spell Nick, he got up and left, too. Then me.”

“Anderson was sober?”

“Hadn’t drunk a lick. ‘A ginger ale,’ he says to Gus.” The old man spat on the grass.

“Didn’t you or Jacquard ask Anderson where he was going?”

Toyfell looked at Ellery. “Want to make your own liberty secure, guard your enemy from oppression. That’s Paine. And I say to that, Amen, brother.”

“I thought Tom Anderson was your friend.”

“He was. Therefore I say, How can a man do less unto his friend?” Toyfell spat again.

Valuable philosophy, thought Ellery. Especially in a homicide investigation. “And you didn’t see him again?”

“Not in this life.” Toyfell grinned, but then Ellery saw that the old gardener was drawing his lips back over his empty gums in a grimace of genuine sadness. And he thought that many of Toyfell’s disagreeable aspects might be similarly the result of physical distortion; but he thought this for only a moment. There were those flinty eyes, and Rima holding herself in by his side.

And Ellery found himself repeating the foolish litany: “Did you send me a letter or two recently?”

The old man stared. “Now that’s a question I just don’t get, Mister.”

“To Ellery Queen. West 87th Street, New York City. Two letters.”

“Haven’t writ a letter in twenty-five years.”

“See the Record regularly, do you?”

“I see it, but I don’t read it. There’s no truth in newspapers, only facts. Do you want to argue the case?”

“Some other day,” smiled Ellery. “But Toyfell, I must say I admire you. You seem to be standing up under blows that would have knocked the starch out of a lesser man. In a short time death’s taken two employers and a friend, and here you are — still philosophizing.”

“Know thyself,” said Harry Toyfell, getting down on his knees again. “The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.”

“You’re a religious man?”

“A pagan said that, Mister. Read your Plato. But people don’t read Plato any more. Just newspapers. As for my religion, I worship God in every seed. When did you find anything in a church but cut flowers? Not that it’s any of your business, Mister.”

They left The Town Philosopher crawling about among his young plants, dealing with them tenderly. He did not look up as they left him. Not even to look at Rima Anderson.

Rima said no, she didn’t care for any lunch, thank you, she wasn’t hungry, and unless he had some special reason for wanting her she’d like to go back to the hotel and take off her shoes, she really would. Also, she was used to taking a nap in the afternoon, and so on. No, he needn’t bother to take her back, really he needn’t; she didn’t want to interfere in any way with his plans.

“I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours, Rima. Some things I want to do.” Ellery took her hand.

“At Upham House?” She withdrew it.

“Yes.”

“All right.”

He watched her swing away. Hurrying strides. He would not have been surprised if she had broken into a run.

Ellery walked up Algonquin to State and west on State to the County Court House.

Chief Dakin grabbed him. “What’s this about did I find money?” he cried.

Ellery told him.

Dakin got red. “Now that wasn’t right,” he spluttered. “Doc Dodd should have told me about that right off. Five thousand dollars! Where is it?”

Ellery tapped his teeth with a thoughtful fingernail.

“There wasn’t a brass cent in that coat. And no sign of anything on the cliff or around it.”

“He might have hidden it, Dakin. Probably did. Did you search the shack?”

“Tore it apart. Looking for anything we could find. But all we turned up was three bottles of whisky in different hiding places under the floor.”

“No money. In any amount.”

“Not a Confederate dime. But that’s it, Mr. Queen. There’s the motive and there’s the crime.” The chief of police rubbed his hands. “He had that five thousand on him and he was lured to that spot, attacked, robbed, and flung over the cliff.”

Ellery pushed his lips out.

Finally he said, “Maybe,” and rose.

“Where you goin’?”

“There’s still a byroad or two. By the way, Dakin, none of your local riffraff’s been displaying unusual riches lately, I suppose.”

“Haven’t heard of any, but I’m goin’ to get busy on that first thing.”

“Might pay to keep this under your visor for a while, Dakin.”

“I wasn’t figuring on getting up in Town Meetin’ about it. Who else knows besides Doc Dodd and Kenny Winship and you and me?”

“Rima, of course. And Otis Holderfield.”

“Well, you can take care of Rima, and Otis’s father on his mother’s side was a clam—”

“By the way, what about this fellow Holderfield? What’s his reputation in Wrightsville?”

“Otis,” said Chief Dakin with a grin, “is black and blue from pinchin’ himself. How Luke MacCaby came to pick him when he needed a lawyer nobody’s been able to figure out. For years he’s scrabbled along on accident and rent-collection cases, doing an insurance business to pay for the butter. Mysterious little guy always full of secrets and you always know most of it’s hot air. The Rotary bunch groan when they see him comin’. That is, up to the last month or so. Otis sure has blossomed. From rags to riches. Got into a big new office in the Granjon Block, smokes quarter cigars, has his shoes shined every day, calls Donald Mackenzie and J. C. Pettigrew by their first names, and Clint Fosdick told me the other day he’d seen Otis over at Marty Zilliber’s agency looking over a Buick convertible. Mostly on prospect of course — the money hasn’t started to come in yet, but they’ll be through probate any day now and when they are — why, Doc Dodd’s retained Otis to represent his legal interests and I guess Otis will be rolling in clover. But he’s a smart one, Otis is, considering his limitations. At least he doesn’t make the mistake of shootin’ off his face. We might slip this five thousand dollar deal by the Record, at that. If they haven’t got hold of it by this time...”

“The Record,” said Ellery; and he looked thoughtful as he left.

He walked slowly up State Street, past the Our Boys Memorial, past the Town Hall, into the Square.

Here he paused, facing south. One spoke away was Lower Main, and on the south corner of Lower Main the Record building stood. Ellery became aware for the first time that the Record building was not what it had been. It had been a blackish green affair of decayed woodwork with a gingerbread cornice and a stubborn look. The mordant woodwork was no more; the face of the building was now bright coral stucco and chrome, off which the sun ricocheted angrily. The old dingy sign, which had stretched across the building under the cornice, was gone, replaced by an intricate mechanism on the roof of neon tubing. The whole structure had a coltishly rejuvenated air, and it tickled his interest. He actually started across State Street.

But then he about-faced and made his way along the rim of the Square to the Wrightsville National Bank.

Scowling, he went in.

Fifteen minutes later he came out, crossed Upper Dade, passed the old Bluefield store, J. P. Simpson’s Loan Office, Dunc MacLean — Fine Liquors, the Hollis entrance, Sol Gowdy’s Men’s Shop, the Atomic War Surplus Outlet Store. At the corner of the Square and Lincoln Street, where Hallam Luck (the First) in 1927 had erected his Greek temple of finance, the Public Trust Company, Ellery stopped again.

After a moment he went into Wrightsville’s other bank.

Ellery was back on the sidewalk in twelve minutes.

He hesitated, staring vacantly across Lincoln Street at the Bon Ton, and the High Village Pharmacy and the New York Department Store beyond. The Square was lively with Monday morning commerce and he was elbowed a little.

Finally he walked back along the western arc of the Square to the Hollis Hotel.

There was one cab at the taxi stand and a man he had never seen before sat behind the wheel reading a copy of the Record.

“Cab, sir?”

“Well, I wasn’t intending to walk all the way to Slocum,” said Ellery grumpily; and he got in.

At three o’clock in the afternoon Ellery was back in Wrightsville, on the ground floor south wing of Upham House, knocking on the door of Room 17.

He knocked again.

“You Mr. Queen?”

A redhaired bellboy was at his elbow, leering.

“Yes.”

“Miss Anderson said to tell you she got clau... clau—”

“Claustrophobia?”

“Yes, sir. I had it written down but I guess I lost it. Anyway, she said to tell you she’s over in Memorial Park somewhere, holding down a tree.”

Ellery hurried back to State Street.

He found Rima deep in the park, at its hilly northern side, lying under a willow tree on the bank of Mullins Creek. Her skirt was halfway to her waist and her bare toes were wiggling in the water like little pink fish; he saw her shoes and stockings ten feet away, as if they had been flung. As he approached, a dozen birds rose from the grass about her and raced up into the willow, from which they scolded him.

“Bird talk for ‘Unclean! Unclean!’” said Ellery. “Your name should have been Avis, or at least Rara. How do you do it?”

“I just lie very still and talk softly to them. Did you have any trouble finding me?” She was all dreamy friendliness again, as she had been on the train.

“Natty Bumppo Queen?” He looked down at her. “Feeling better?”

“Oh, ever so much.” She sat up abruptly, pulling her skirt quickly over her knees. When he grinned, she laughed and jumped to her feet. “Where have you been, Ellery?”

“Here and there. Hungry?”

“No.”

“Do you eat like a bird, too? Suppose you pull those instruments of torture back on, Rima—”

“We going somewhere?”

“Calling.”

“Again? Where?” Her whole face flashed.

“The Granjon Block.”

“Oh.”

They strolled back through the park. After a while Rima’s hand slipped into his. Ellery squeezed and she smiled faintly and did not let go until they reached the American Legion Bandstand opposite the Town Hall steps and flushed two teenagers from under the latticework.

The Granjon Block was the building on the southwest corner of Washington and Slocum Streets, across Slocum from the Professional Building. Unlike the Professional Building, whose copestone said that it had been built in 1879, the Granjon Block was “new”; it was less than thirty years old and it advertised elevator service for its four stories. According to the directory in the lobby, it was tenanted chiefly by lawyers and other professional men. The legend, HOLDERFIELD, OTIS, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW... 401, glistened.

A bulky old man in a black alpaca jacket took them up in the elevator. “Aren’t you Mr. Queen?” he asked Ellery.

“That’s right. And you’re Buzz Congress. You used to be the ‘special’ at the Wrightsville National in John P. Wright’s day.”

“Recognized you right off, Mr. Queen.”

“Can’t beat a trained eye. Know if Otis Holderfield’s in his office?”

“Took him up from lunch an hour ago.”

“I hear Holderfield’s in the chips.”

“Changed man. Why, seems only yesterday he was goin’ around with a handkerchief tucked into his collar and holes in his shoes.” The old man’s tone was without irony; it was even respectful. “Nobody’d hardly talk to Otis. He’d have to hang onto their lapels. Now the same folks who’d been uppity to him come up here to shake his hand and give him their law business.” Buzz Congress wheezed — not at Otis Holderfield, it was clear, but at the folks who had been uppity. “It’s that office there, sir. With the gold letters.”

The outer office was shiny and new, the furniture was shiny and new, the law books were shiny and new, and even the secretary looked as if she had just been unpacked. Her blouse plunged steeply at the neckline, her eye was cold and wise, her figure insolent; she was what Wrightsville still terms “a hot number.” Ellery’s pre-estimate of Otis Holderfield underwent a modification. He began to feel sorry he had brought Rima.

Wrightsville’s newest legal comet zipped out of his private office. He was the newest-looking little man Ellery had ever seen — a haberdasher’s dream and a barber’s delight; he stood in an almost visible field of eau de cologne. His suit, his striped silk shirt, his handpainted silk necktie, his suède shoes, the diamond on his stubby finger — their wearer was obscured by the blaze. And a good thing, too, thought Ellery; for Holderfield was no beauty. He was built on the lines of a small keg, with womanish hips and shoulders whose meagerness was only accentuated by the sharp pads which broadened them. The top of his head was perfectly flat, a pinkish plateau covered with a sparse scrub of oily black hair; he had small cunning features, crooked teeth, and a nervous little bounce.

“Ellery Queen? The Ellery Queen from New York? Say!” Ellery’s hand was wrung by two moistly eager members. “Couldn’t believe my ears when my secretary announced you.” His secretary was looking Ellery over frankly. “Come in, come in, Mr. Queen! Can’t get the little old ham-burg out of your blood, hey? Haha! Say, I used to read about you in the Record and I remember saying to myself, ‘Now there’s a smart cookie I’d like to meet up with some day,’ and, by damn, here you are! Walking into Otis Holderfield’s private office like you owned the place. Well, sir, you do, you do. Here, take this one — that’s real leather. Should have given me a buzz, Mr. Queen. I’d have set up a lunch with some of the boys — you know, Donald and J. P.... Say! I almost didn’t see this little lady. New York stock, hey?” The little man’s left eyelid drooped and the left side of his face screwed up for a moment. “Hiya, little gal. Here, you take this chair where we galoots can both get an eyeful, haha! What did you say this cute trick’s name is, Mr. Queen?”

“Rima Anderson,” said Ellery.

Holderfield’s animation died. His little eyes narrowed and he shot a quick glance at Ellery.

“The Old Soak’s girl, hey?” he said pleasantly. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Just goes to show — never judge a book by its bookie, haha! Well, well, I suppose this visit has something to do with your father, honey, hm? Though, Mr. Queen, I don’t see...”

“I saw Dr. Dodd this morning, Holderfield.”

“You did?” He was behind his desk now, tilting his swivel chair, fingertips meeting in a juridical way. Very attentive.

“Dr. Dodd told me all about the five thousand dollars.”

“Five thousand dollars?”

“That he instructed you to get for Tom Anderson.”

“Dr. Dodd told you that, did he?”

“I’m looking for additional information.”

Otis Holderfield was silent. Then he said, smiling, “You understand, Mr. Queen, Dr. Dodd’s an important client, and the client-attorney relationship...”

“You mean you’d rather not talk about it?”

“I didn’t say that,” said the attorney with a slight sharpness.

“Dr. Dodd didn’t seem reticent.”

“He didn’t. Well, that’s fine. By the way, did Dr. Dodd tell you to come to see me, Mr. Queen?”

“No.”

The little man looked regretful. “In that case...”

“May I use your phone?”

“What?” Holderfield was alarmed. “Who you going to call?”

“Your client. You seem worried about the propriety of discussing this with me, Holderfield. I think Dr. Dodd will relieve your mind—”

“Say, don’t think about it.” Holderfield was all smiles again. “Not the least bit necessary, Mr. Queen. It’s just that Dr. Dodd’s one of my big clients and naturally an attorney... I mean, my father used to say to me, ‘Otis, two things a man has to keep buttoned if he’s going to stay out of trouble. The other one is his mouth.’ Haha! Never forgot that bit of wisdom. Though we all ignore even the best advice at times, now, don’t we, haha! Don’t mind telling you about the Anderson business, Mr. Queen — don’t mind at all. Though, as I told Dr. Dodd, I thought it was ill-advised in the first instance, and then the old barfly disappearing that way—”

“He’s dead,” said Rima.

“Now, now, little girl, we don’t know that, do we? Not as a fact. No, sir, if I were you I’d put that thought clean out of my head, little girl. That hat and coat on the cliff don’t constitute a corpus delicti and that’s my legal opinion. Won’t cost you a penny, either, haha.”

“He’s dead,” repeated Rima.

Holderfield scowled. “Well, this is a free country. But I can’t see that that kind of talk does anybody any good. I’m a great believer in facts—”

“So am I,” said Ellery. “But I believe we’re still ambling around in the realm of opinion. Why was Dodd’s gift to Tom Anderson ill-advised?”

“Well, you give an old rummy — I mean, The Old Soak hadn’t had five silver dollars to rub against one another for years — now had he, Miss Anderson? A fact’s a fact. And then... Of course, it was Dr. Dodd’s money and I’m a great believer in following through on my clients’ wishes — within reason, of course, haha! — even though in this case it meant putting myself and my client under obligation to the Surrogate. At that, I had the devil of a time...”

“In other words, Holderfield, you were against Dodd’s giving Anderson that money.”

“Yes, sir, I was.” The little man looked stern. “Sebastian Dodd’s got a heart as big as Wright County. Too darn big for his own good. Got absolutely no conception of the value of — Excuse me. What is it, Floss?”

The secretary was in the doorway, leaning. “Dave Waldo.”

“Dave? Say! Mr. Queen, this won’t take a minute. Matter of fact — Send him in, Floss. Mr. Queen, seeing you’re from New York, I’d like your reaction to this. Come in, David!”

As the lawyer bounced from his chair Ellery glanced at Rima, shaking his head slightly. Rima relaxed.

The man who hurried into the office was tiny and anxious looking. He was so small that he had to look up to Holderfield. His little narrow shoulders were curved inward, his eyes stared myopically, his skin was a clayish gray, and there were innumerable pricks in his fingers. It was no surprise to learn that he was a tailor — “Dave Waldo, runs the tailoring shop downstairs, he and his brother Jonathan. David and Jonathan — pretty good, uh? They’re twins, haha! But they certainly know how to make a suit. Wouldn’t have my clothes made anywheres else, hey, Dave?” David Waldo smiled nervously as he laid a bolt of cloth on Holderfield’s desk. “Just came from New York, Mr. Holderfield. You said you wanted to see it in the bolt, so I ran right up with it. Finest lightweight camel’s hair. Imported.” “How’s it look to you, Ellery? — y’know, Dave, this is Ellery Queen, you’ve heard of him. From New York. Going to have Dave make me up a spring top-coat. Hollywood style. You know, big shoulders, loose cut, lots of material, tie belt. Think it’ll be worth a hundred and fifty with this material?” Ellery murmured something sage about relative values, wondering where he had seen David Waldo before, and Otis Holderfield examined the cocoa-colored material critically, finally saying it would do all right — “I’ll be down for a fitting on that gabardine suit, Dave, first chance I get. Charge the oxford gray to my account, Davey-boy” — and the little tailor looked grateful and scurried out. Holderfield seemed sorry to see him go.

Ellery said abruptly, “I have one or two other things to do today, Holderfield. I’m trying to locate that five thousand.”

“Locate it?”

“It’s disappeared.”

Holderfield looked unhappy.

“It wasn’t in the coat Dakin found on Little Prudy’s Cliff. It wasn’t hidden in the Anderson house. I’ve spent part of today checking back to see if Anderson mightn’t have deposited it in a bank or hired a safe deposit box somewhere. The two Wrightsville banks have no record of either an account or a box. I’ve been to Slocum with no luck, either. There’s no bank at the Junction, or in Fidelity or Bannock, and I hardly think Anderson would have gone so far afield as Connhaven. Holderfield, have you any idea what he may have done with that five thousand dollars?”

“Think it has something to do with his disappearance, do you, Mr. Queen?”

“I don’t know whether it has or not. That’s what I’m trying to find out.

“Well, it hasn’t or I’d have advised my client long ago to tell the whole story to the police...” Holderfield was perspiring, swabbing down the flat of his head with a handrolled, Irish linen handkerchief.

“Where is that money, Holderfield?”

The little man bounced to his feet. “Dang it, it’s a nuisance!” he cried. “Don’t know why I’m placed in this position. Try to keep your client happy... Few days after Dr. Dodd phoned me and Anderson came over and I handed him the envelope with the money in it, why, Anderson came back. Came back with the envelope.”

“Here? To your office?” asked Ellery sharply.

“That’s right!”

“The same envelope?”

“Same envelope. My imprint. But sealed — double-sealed. With Scotch tape. It wasn’t sealed when I’d given it to him.”

“Then you didn’t actually see the money when he visited you for the second time?”

“No. But it was in there, all right — it had been in twenties, fifties, and hundreds and it made a whopper of an envelopeful. Besides, Anderson said so. Said he was too nervous to hide the money and too nervous to keep carrying it around, and would I hold onto it for him till he proved something to himself, or words to that effect.” Holderfield’s expression was distinctly disagreeable. “I should have had my head examined! Tried to argue with him — asked him why he didn’t put it in a bank — and he said no, if anything happened to him the money’d get all tangled up in legal red tape and he’d rather it was in a place where it could be got to without a fuss. Asked me to keep it in my office safe. Well, I was jammed up that day, had an office full of people, so I didn’t stop to think and I said I’d do it. He handed me the envelope and I noticed he’d written on it, ‘If anything happens to Thomas Hardy Anderson, this envelope is to be turned over to Nicole Jacquard.’”

“Nick Jacquard?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s the second time you say he referred to something possibly happening to him. Did you get the impression, or did he specify—?”

“Not a bit of it. It was more like a man’s making out a will. He indicates a disposition of his property just in case—”

“But why Jacquard?”

“Of all people,” said Rima. Her eyes were sad.

Holderfield shrugged. “I didn’t ask him and he didn’t say. He just said there was a letter of instructions to Jacquard included in the envelope, telling Jacquard just what to do with the contents. I thought myself it was sort of queer, his picking Jacquard, I mean, but as I say I was busy, so I put the envelope in my safe and Anderson left.” Holderfield used his handkerchief again. “Well, when his hat and coat turned up on Little Prudy’s Cliff, that certainly came under the heading of something ‘happening’ to Anderson, so I sent word to Nick Jacquard and he dropped into my office here and I gave him the envelope. I’ve got a receipt for it signed by Jacquard,” Holderfield added quickly, “so everything’s hunky-dory, as the old rubes around here say, haha!”

“May I have that receipt, please?”

“Well, now, Mr. Queen, I don’t want to seem uncooperative, but the fact is that receipt’s my only proof I gave Jacquard Anderson’s envelope—”

“Then may I see it.”

“Well, it’s in my safe and I’ve got a client coming up any second now, Mr. Queen—”

“Let it go,” said Ellery. “But everything’s not quite as hunky-dory as you’d have me believe, Holderfield. In the first place, the moment you heard about Anderson’s death—”

“Disappearance,” said Holderfield rather breathlessly.

“—you should have hotfooted it over to Dakin’s office and told Dakin the whole story—”

“Not at all, not at all,” said the lawyer. “That money involved my client. I mean, it brought him into what might have been a mess. My duty is to my client first and foremost—”

“Your duty, Holderfield, is to the law first and foremost.”

“It was my client’s place to go to the police if he saw fit, and, if he didn’t, it was my place as his attorney to back him up—”

“It was your place as his attorney to advise him to go to the police and you know it. But, aside from that, you certainly had no right to give that envelope up to Jacquard or anyone else. It was material to a suspected homicide. Anderson was dead, following a felonious assault. That’s murder—”

“You prove it!” said Holderfield triumphantly. “You prove Anderson was murdered. You prove he’s even dead! All anybody knows for a fact is that he’s disappeared. Not a particle of evidence to any other effect. I held that envelope of his as a confidential trust. I had my instructions: If anything ‘happened’ to him, I was to turn the envelope over to Nicole Jacquard. Mine not to reason why, as the poet says, hey, Mr. Queen? You can’t get around that, no, siree-bob.”

“What you wanted to do, and what you did,” said Ellery, rising, “was to get rid of that envelope just as fast as you could. Holderfield, you’re in a mess, and you know it, and I know it, and none of your pettifogging legalisms can change the fact.” Otis Holderfield was pale, but whether with fear or with anger Ellery could not decide. The man sat worrying his lower lip and turning the diamond ring on his fat finger. It seemed an excellent moment for his standard question, so Ellery went on, “And talking about envelopes, Holderfield, did you address a couple of same to me recently?”

“Me? Send you letters?”

“Yes.”

“If you got any letters on my stationery,” said Holderfield excitedly, “they were forged. I never sent you a letter in my life. And you can’t prove I did!”

“A simple negative would have served the purpose,” sighed Ellery, nodding to Rima. “Oh, by the way, Holderfield.” Ellery detained Rima in the doorway. “I’m curious about one other matter. How did Luke MacCaby come to call you in when he wanted to make a will?”

The little man bounced to his feet, purple. “And what’s the matter with me?” he shouted.

“I didn’t say anything was the matter. I just asked you a question.”

“I’ve drawn a will or two in my time!”

“I’m sure you have. But how did MacCaby happen to pick you when he wanted his drawn?”

“Mr. Queen, you’ve got no right asking me questions like that! I don’t have to take that sort of thing!”

“I seem to have stumbled on your sore toe, Holderfield—”

“And anyway, what’s MacCaby got to do with this Anderson business? I don’t get it, Mr. Queen, I don’t get it!”

“I don’t either, Holderfield, which is why I’m trying. Sorry if I’ve offended you—”

“Just because I was scraping along in this town—! All right, I was lucky. If you must know, MacCaby got my name out of the classified directory. But I had a break coming, fella! And all these wiseacres who used to look down their noses at me — why, I’ve got ’em eating out of my hand. I’m big potatoes in this hamlet now and, Brother Queen, I mean to stay that way!” Holderfield’s high color slowly faded, but some of it lingered on his cheekbones. He began to fuss with some papers on his desk, a little blindly.

“Did your father ever say anything to you about Nick Jacquard’s being his executor, so to speak, in case anything happened to him?” Ellery asked Rima when they were on Washington Street again.

“No.”

“Did Jacquard ever get in touch with you after your father disappeared?”

“No.” Rima shivered.

“Dodd to Holderfield to Jacquard,” muttered Ellery, taking Rima’s arm. “Town Saint to Town Rabbit’s-Foot to Town Thief. Fascinating gambit. Let’s go smoke out Nick Jacquard.”

They found him immediately, for Ellery said the logical place to start looking was Gus Olesen’s on Route 16 and when they took a cab to the Roadside Tavern and walked into its malty interior there was Jacquard, alone, spreading his shoulders over the bar, his battered hands closed about a glass of beer. Jacquard was a hulk, with all the hulk’s derelict nature; he may have been a trim vessel once, but brawls and hunger and liquor had left him dismantled and unfit, a huge and dirty piece of uselessness lapped by the brown waters of a drunken daydream. He was unshaved, unshorn, and unwashed and his costume was improvised from crooked bits of a once-honest workman’s wardrobe.

He spied them in the bar mirror and it seemed to Ellery Jacquard’s seaglass eyes sparkled briefly at sight of Rima, but the man did not turn on his stool, he kept guard over his beer and stared into the mirror and beyond.

Gus Olesen was not about and the bartender was a new man, for which Ellery gave thanks. He ordered a root beer for Rima and a Martini for himself, and then he set Rima down to one side of Jacquard and he took the flanking stool, so that Jacquard sat humped between them. The man stirred.

“Don’t go away, Nick,” said Rima. “My friend wants to talk to you.”

“’Allo,” said Nick Jacquard. His diction was half-slurred and difficult. “They find your old man?”

“My friend, Nick,” said Rima. “On the other side of you.”

“You got a friend?” Jacquard’s eyes shifted. “Pretty quick.”

“On this side,” said Ellery.

Jacquard turned.

“My name is Queen. Ellery Queen.”

The bloodshot eyes blinked. “Pleased to meet you. I got to go—”

“Sit down, Jacquard.”

After a moment Jacquard settled back on his stool. “What you want?”

“To talk about your old pal Tom Anderson.”

“You’re a bull,” said Jacquard heavily. “I know about you. I tell Dakin every thing I know. I got nothing to tell you.”

“Nick, you’re lying,” said Rima.

Jacquard muttered something in patois and tossed his beer down with a jerk.

Ellery tried to focus the three cronies at this very bar. Tom Anderson, Nick Jacquard, Harry Toyfell. The gentle, the dull, the sharp. Town Drunk, Town Thief, Town Philosopher. An ex-professor of English literature, an illiterate bum, an iconoclastic gardener. Tom, Nick, and Harry. Ellery wondered what bitter cement had held them together.

“Maybe you lie,” said Jacquard, cocking his shaggy head at Rima. “Maybe you pull a trick on me, hein?” He laughed, but he was alarmed, his glances caroming off the mirror toward Ellery and back to Rima, his murderous hands gripping the edge of the bar.

“No, Jacquard. We know the whole story of the envelope that lawyer, Holderfield, gave you after Tom Anderson disappeared.”

Jacquard sat still.

“Holderfield did give you an envelope, didn’t he? With your name on it in Anderson’s handwriting. A thick one, sealed with Scotch tape.”

Jacquard said nothing.

“And you gave Holderfield a receipt for it, Jacquard.”

“Then okay!” the man burst out. His little eyes were prowling now.

“What was in it?” Jacquard’s tongue came out. “Jacquard, what was in the envelope?”

“Papers.”

“Papers? What kind of papers?”

“Papers... letters. Old letters. That Tom writes one time.”

“Letters he wrote to you?” smiled Ellery.

“No. To— Yes! To me.”

“Can you read, Jacquard?”

“You’re lying, Nick,” said Rima.

“I can read better as you!” Jacquard licked his lips again. He’s furious and dull-witted, thought Ellery.

“How much money did the envelope have in it, Jacquard?”

“Money?”

“Money.”

“You crazy! There is no money in that! No money, you hear?” He waved his thick arms, getting off the stool.

“Jacquard, there were five thousand dollars in that envelope.”

“No money!” He backed away.

“And a letter of instructions from Anderson to you. What were Anderson’s instructions, Jacquard?”

“No money.” Jacquard lurched through the swinging doors, at the last with a lunge. His hoarse voice came back. “No money!” he cried, as if with each repetition his cry became more believable, to himself as well as to them.

They heard him scuffing rapidly away through the gravel.

Rima laughed. “Poor Daddy.” But her lips were trembling.

“Nature of the beast,” said Ellery reflectively. “He’s dazed with the immense, the immense good luck of it all. Five thousand dollars. To Jacquard five million wouldn’t be more. Could you hold a starving tiger from the helpless kill? He means to keep it, Rima. He’s dazed, and he’s scared, and he’s sick to his stomach, but he means to keep it. Maybe not even to spend; how could a Jacquard spend five thousand dollars? What amazes me, Rima, is not Jacquard’s childish lying and his dishonesty. It’s your father’s sublime folly.”

“Jacquard was his friend. Daddy had only two friends in the world. Besides me.” The last was said to her root beer, which she had not touched.

“Two friends. Of whom one was a thief and the other a philosopher. And he entrusts his money to the thief.”

“My father,” said Rima, “was a wonderful man.”

“The exact word,” nodded Ellery, throwing a bill down on the bar. “Possibly, Rima, he had even less faith in the honesty of the philosopher than in the crookedness of the thief. Friendship isn’t necessarily based on trust. A man who’s lonely will cling to his worst enemy... Or he might have been borrowing a leaf from the golden book of Sebastian Dodd — giving the crooked man his chance to straighten out.” Ellery said gently, “Come, Rima.”

But Rima kept staring into her glass. “Why didn’t Daddy give it to me? Didn’t he trust me?” She laughed again. “Or did he trust Nick Jacquard more?”

It was a question Ellery had been asking himself for some time. “You should know the answer to that.”

“I should, but I don’t.”

“He had to prove something to himself. For all their cronyism, Jacquard and Toyfell were outsiders to him. They didn’t touch him. They weren’t part of him. I think your father felt the necessity of doing this on his own. And then maybe he kept thinking of you as a child... Damn it, I didn’t ask Jacquard my favorite question.” When she said nothing, he said, “About those anonymous letters.”

She looked up this time. “Which anonymous letters?”

“Not that it would have told me anything. And that reminds me. How tired are you?” It was successful. She was interested once more.

“I’m not.”

“Then we’ll have our friend outside drive us back to town. Do you know a newspaper gal named Malvina Prentiss?”

“She’s the one who kept asking me things when Daddy...”

“She’s the one we’re going to see.”

The old scarified front door of the Record building was gone. In its place hung a squarish production of coral-colored plastic bossed with fat chrome studs. A circular window in the door, resembling a porthole, added a puzzling marine touch.

The homely interior was no more. You had always gone from the street directly into the Record’s business office; now you found yourself in a foyer whose walls were of coral plastic and stainless steel. In a circular well in the center of the foyer rotated a large globe of the Earth illuminated from below. Stainless steel chairs stood about and a young woman in a Vogue blouse asked your business icily from behind a stainless steel grille.

“I’d like to see one of your reporters. Malvina Prentiss.”

The ice broke. The young woman giggled. “Better not let Malvina hear you say that!”

“Say what?”

“That’s she’s a reporter. She owns this paper. Owner, publisher, Editor-in-Chief, and Lady High Muckamuck — Lady Muck, we call her for short, but don’t tell her I said so. Who’s calling, please?”

Ellery told her, feebly. The plastic, coral, chrome, steel... a lady publisher it would have to be. Inherited wealth, two trips to Paris with stopovers in London, and a secret yen to look like Rosalind Russell. Smoked cigarets in a footlong holder, gowned by Jacques Fath via an exclusive Boston shop, and loathed men. Native habitat doubtful, but almost certainly not Wrightsville. There might have been a newspaper publisher in her bloodline. Crisp would be the word for her. She must have swooped into town when she heard of the suicide of Diedrich Van Horn, former owner-publisher of the Record, and bought it out from Wolfert Van Horn to work her will on it.

A bucktoothed page in a green corduroy jacket took them in tow, leading them to a gem of a little elevator. The business office was unrecognizable, a tone poem in silver and forest green, with grim stainless-steel-edged green counters and half a dozen metal desks with silvery telephones at which sat selfconscious-looking young women in identical tailored green skirts and white blouses.

“Any second now,” Ellery mumbled to Rima, “a hidden orchestra will strike up and the members of the ensemble will leap as one into a ballet number.” To place a mere five-line ad at one of these counters would take courage.

He wondered what the incredible Miss Prentiss had done with Phinny Baker’s old press room.

The big catchall editorial room on the upper floor had always been a cheerful chaos — comfortably dirty, with mutilated rolltop desks, men sitting around in paper cuffs, spittoons on the naked floor, and behind everything a manly bedlam. Now it was a kind of industrial cloister — hushed, disapproving, cold — divided into gleaming little shells of offices in which unhappy-looking people sat toiling. Ellery could spy no one he knew. Gladys Hemmingworth, Frank Lloyd’s bustling Society Editor, had given way to a mannish female in velveteen slacks who was honking into one of the prevailing silvery telephones. There was no sign of stout Clara Peacher, who under the name of “Aunt Peachie” had written the domestic column; or of Obie Gilboon, who had covered sports for twenty-six years and whose tie was always smoldering from the droppings of his palsied bulldog pipe. And the plate on eyeshaded Woodie Wentworth’s old city desk now said freezingly, DEAN ST. A. ST. JOHN, which was certainly not a Wrights-ville-sounding name.

With a bleeding heart, Ellery followed Rima and the page through the coral door on which stern steel letters spelled out M. O. PRENTISS.

The lady publisher’s office was what he had expected, and so was the lady publisher, except more so. Here not only were the walls covered with the lecherous green plastic material, but the ceiling was cushioned, too. The steel desk was as big as a baby tank; the desk set was of sterling silver; the Venetian blinds were of aluminum. The lady herself, as anticipated, was a Rosalind Russell type, but in a superproduction by Ernst Lubitsch. She was tall, svelte, and dressed as “smart woman executive” in a business suit which would have looked merely expensive if it had not also been of a disturbing silver-sheened material. Silver seemed her passion: her fingernails were painted silver, her footlong cigaret holder (as predicted) was of silver, she wore silvery harlequin glasses which emphasized the frozen quirk of her eyebrows, and her hair was platinum-dyed. There were so many points of wonder about her that it was some time before Ellery realized that in a normal setting and costume — off the set, as it were — Malvina Prentiss was probably an attractive woman. As she was, and in Wrightsville, she was an absurdity.

She said, “Ellery Queen?” in an insolent contralto, looking him over as if he were a horse. Then she stared at Rima, and Rima blushed. “And who’s this?”

“Rima Anderson.”

Malvina Prentiss threw back her head, exhibiting a set of powerful, immaculate teeth. “What have you done to our little wood nymph, Queen? Ever see such a transformation, Spec?”

Then Ellery realized that seated beside her desk was a redhaired man in his mid-thirties who was trying not to look miserable and being thoroughly unsuccessful. Exactly the type of male claque-leader Malvina Prentiss would keep in her private employ — intelligent eyes behind hornrimmed glasses, hair parted in the middle, unpadded shoulders, a studious pallor to offset a nonexistent waistline, and a meek, almost suffering, manner. All togged out in a conservative business suit and a correct pindot tie.

The man said, “Yes, Miss Prentiss, I mean no! Miss Prentiss,” his freckled skin turning old rose; and he clutched the back of his chair, from which he had jumped, as if to hold himself up.

“Mr. Queen, Francis O’Bannon. My executive assistant. Pure Back Bay. Harvard, of course. Sound politics, fair brain, but very nearly distracted about everything, especially me. We like to have him around, though, Spec, don’t we?” The old rose deepened. She was enjoying her cruelty in a contemptuous way. “Knows a surprising lot about running a newspaper—”

“Not as much as you do, of course, Miss Prentiss.”

She glanced at O’Bannon sharply. “And that’s the truth,” she said; but then she laughed. “Well, well, Mr. Queen, and what’s a twelve-cylinder smartiepants like you doing in little Wrightsville?” She glanced surgically at Rima. “Or is it love? — or something?”

Rima said, “I don’t like you.”

Malvina Prentiss stopped smiling. “That was clever of you, darling. Who’s been teaching you the finer shades of meaning?”

“I know enough to interpret a nasty remark like that, Miss Prentiss.”

They stared at each other. Then the lady publisher shrugged. “Well, the best people don’t like me, dear, but I didn’t think it had filtered down into the lower classes quite so soon.” And she jabbed a cigaret into her holder. O’Bannon leaped for the silver lighter on her desk. “All right, Mr. Big. Come to the point.”

“To take the points one at a time,” said Ellery, “this girl has just lost her father under tragic circumstances, she’s pretty much alone in the world, and kindness would make an awfully good starting one, don’t you think, Miss Prentiss?”

“Does she have to kick me in the face?” She laughed again. O’Bannon, who had been transfixed on the point of her desk, immediately laughed too. “What’s on your mind, Mr. Queen?”

Ellery placed two envelopes before her. “Look at the contents of these, Miss Prentiss.”

After a moment the platinum-haired woman looked up. “What about them?”

“They were mailed to me in those two envelopes. Did you send them?”

“Certainly not. Spec, did you?”

O’Bannon quivered under the lash. “No — no, Miss Prentiss,” he stammered.

“We seem to have a press agent in our midst.” She frowned. “Sit down, Mr. Queen. You, too, Rima. There’s more to this than meets the eye.”

“There certainly is,” said Ellery. “For instance, note the curious juxtaposition of subject matter. The death of Luke MacCaby. His bequest to Sebastian Dodd. The suicide of John Spencer Hart. And the disappearance, with strong suspicion of murder, of Thomas Hardy Anderson.”

“The MacCaby-Dodd-Hart business is all part of the same story. The Anderson thing stands on its own. Why should anyone string them together?”

“That’s the question, Miss Prentiss, that I came up here to ask you.”

Malvina Prentiss stared at him, then at Rima, and finally at Francis O’Bannon.

“Any ideas, Spec?” she asked crisply.

O’Bannon said, “Not a glimmer,” with regret, but it seemed to Ellery the redhaired man’s interest had quickened. Ellery was sure of it when O’Bannon removed his eyeglasses and began to polish the lenses with a pinked rectangle of yellow cloth.

“Miss Prentiss, I’m convinced Anderson’s death is linked in some way with the events that preceded it. If you have any information that would confirm this, let me in on it.”

“You’re not serious?”

“You’re not withholding information?”

“Why would I withhold information in a murder case?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Miss Prentiss. Why would you?”

She smiled sweetly. “You’re fumbling, Mr. Q. The Record doesn’t withhold information, conceal evidence, or suppress news. Not this Record, Mr. Q. On the contrary. The publisher of this Record will print anything that sells more papers and attracts more advertisers.”

“Anything covers a large area, Miss Prentiss.”

“Now you’ve got it.” She might have been talking about her religion, or her lover. “When I bought this sheet from the Van Horn estate it was a typical do-gooder rag, country style. The eternal verities. Elbert Hubbard and those-men-in-the-State House. And before that Frank Lloyd, coming through the rye, the farmer’s friend. Lofty sentiments, or personals, never built a moneymaker. Of course, we have to keep it more or less at the ruben level. Folksy writing. Lots of local news and issues. But for expanding circulation give me a nice dirty adultery, a divorce suit with a motel in it, suicide of a big shot, murder of anybody. They call me Lady Muck around here! I don’t mind, I love it. Do you know what the circulation of this miserable rural rag had dropped to at the time I took it over? Twenty-eight hundred-odd! Do you know what it is today? Paid circulation?”

Without looking at him, she snapped her fingers at O’Bannon.

“Thirty-two thousand, two hundred and ninety-one,” said Francis O’Bannon.

“In a town of ten thousand. Are we magicians? In a way. We muscled into the other guys’ territory. Bannock. Slocum. Limpscot. Fyfield. Even Connhaven. We’re blanketing the southern part of the county. You ought to see our mail subscription list. And we’ve only started. Merchants who used to take a thirty-line ad in Lloyd’s and Van Horn’s day now fight for full pages. Before I’m through the Wrightsville Record’s going to be the leading newspaper in Wright County, maybe in the State. Next month I start a puzzle contest — ten thousand dollars in prizes. Not bad for a hick sheet. Of course, I have a slight edge over my yokel rivals — I have money and they don’t — O’Bannon, why don’t you stop me?”

O’Bannon mumbled something.

“Letting me show off this way. Was I awfully girlish?” Malvina Prentiss leaned far back in her chair, eying Ellery. “So you’re taking little Rima in hand,” she said. “Spec, why didn’t we play up this little beauty?”

“We did, Miss Prentiss.”

“That back-to-Nature stuff,” said the woman impatiently. “Who’s interested in a bird-girl? Unless she’s got two heads.” She looked Rima over. “Darling, where did you get those clothes? I mean, who paid for them?”

“We’re wandering,” said Ellery. “If you don’t know any more about the Anderson case than you’ve printed, Miss Prentiss—”

“What’s your hurry? Do you really think there’s real muck in the Anderson disappearance? — I mean, that ties in to MacCaby, Hart, and Dr. Dodd?” Malvina was regarding Ellery speculatively, tapping her teeth with a long silver pencil.

“What I think,” said Ellery, “isn’t for publication. Rima—”

“Why not?”

“Why not what, Miss Prentiss?”

“Why not for publication? I’d like you to go to work for the Record.”

“Oh?”

“Run of the case. Give me an exclusive on your investigation. A daily column, say. We’ll feature it. The Anderson thing needs a shot in the arm and your name would be a big asset to me right now. It’s a cinch to attract the syndicates, too. We’d need a catchy column title... Spec!” O’Bannon gave a little leap. “Get into gear. A name for Queen’s column.”

“It’s Murder,” said O’Bannon mechanically, knitting his salmony brows. “Queen’s Evidence. Queen Quiz. Queen—”

“Quits,” said Ellery.

“Oh, come,” snapped Malvina. “You’re not that good. I’m not haggling with you, Queen. You can waltz in here pretty much to your own music. You’d have the full facilities of my organization — legmen, stenos, blond or brunette, take your choice, unlimited expense account and no kicks about the bourbon. Your own office, mine if you want it. Set your own figure. I can use you and I’ll pay for you. Malvina O. Prentiss is the name — O for Opulent.”

“Ellery N. Queen is mine — N for No,” said Ellery, taking Rima by the elbow. “Thanks awfully, though,” and he guided Rima to the door. Glancing back, he caught Francis O’Bannon in an unguarded pose, gazing after him with admiration and envy.

“If you should change your celebrated mind—” the lady publisher shouted, but the rest was lost in the refined mutter of the editorial rooms.

On Lower Main again, Rima made a chest and looked around with relief.

“I know,” grinned Ellery. “I need a bath, too.”

“But does she really mean all that, Ellery? I’ve never dreamed there were people like her.”

“There aren’t, Rima. She’s an illusion. The silver motif is symbolism. She comes directly off the screen from her original habitat, which was a book. I confess it with shame — I once invented a character like Malvina myself.”

“But I’ve never read,” began Rima with a frown.

“A gap in your cultural education we’re going to bridge right now.” Ellery led her up the street to Ben Danzig’s High Village Rental Library and Sundries. “Your literary background, Miss Anderson, is incomplete without a study of the fictional prototype of specimen Malvina Prentiss... Hm. Yes. Chandler. Or Cain, or Gardner. Wait here a minute.” He went into Ben Danzig’s and came out a few minutes later flourishing a crimson-jacketed book. Rima took it wonderingly. “You read this in bed tonight. It’s not the purest example of its type — Ben’s stock seems to run more to fantasy fiction these days — but it’s virile enough to introduce you to the subject.”

“But isn’t this fantasy?”

“My dear child!” said Ellery in an injured tone. “Read the blurb. ‘Brute realism’ — here, see it?”

“All right,” said Rima doubtfully. She tucked the book under her arm.

They stood before Ben Danzig’s window, out of the way of the late afternoon crowds. A band of high school girls and boys were chattering outside Al Brown’s Ice Cream Parlor next door, making dates for Saturday night at Danceland, in Pine Grove. A few early moviegoers were lined up at the box office of the Bijou. Across the street people were dashing into the post office, Mr. Graycee was standing glumly at the door of his travel agency, J. C. Pettigrew was winding up the awning of his real estate office, girls hurried into the Lower Main Beauty Shop, and the doors of the Five-and-Dime were in continuous motion. Outside the Record building a tired-looking mob heaved as a bus placarded SLOCUM TOWNSHIP rounded the corner from the Square for its return trip.

“I can see what you like in it, Ellery,” said Rima suddenly. “I wish that...”

He knew she was thinking of her father.

“You’re dragging,” he said cheerfully, “and I don’t wonder. The Prentiss woman on top of a futile day.”

“This morning it looked...”

“And then all our shiny images faded out. Hungry, Rima?”

“Yes.”

“It’s about time. Let’s get something to eat and call it a day. Gold Gardens?”

“Oh, no. Some place not so... Not Miss Sally’s Tea Roome, either.” She was trying not to cry.

“How about the Square Grill? That little counter joint around the corner on the Square. Caters to the elk-tooth boys, coffee without saucers, and I once had a surprising steak there.”

“Oh, yes!”

As they passed the Record building again, Ellery said casually, “It’s always this way. You look and look and you find yourself with a lot of nothing for your pains. Till one day you turn a corner and there it is.” Her hand tightened on his arm. “I think tomorrow, Rima,” he said briskly, “we’ll take stock. Since the best position for seeing where you stand is on your back, we’ll have to go off somewhere—”

“Ellery!”

“—get away from town.”

“Can we?”

“Let’s see. We’ll need a few trees, a bush or two, and a couple of mossy boulders. Pine needles to lie on, if possible. Oh, and maybe a bit of bubbling water.”

“I know just the place,” cried Rima.

“Wonderful. Where?”

“I found it once when I was poking around in the hills. Nobody in Wrightsville knows about it.”

“How far away is it?”

“Not far at all. But you won’t find it on the map. It’s mine by right of discovery. I’ve even given it a name.”

“What?”

“Guess!” Rima laughed.

“Nova Rima?”

“Way off.”

“Mount Anderson?”

“Try again.

“Of course. Ytaioa.”

“That’s it!” Rima fairly flew into Mike Polaris’s Square Grill.