Drury Lane’s Last Case

2 The 17 Schoolteachers

The intelligentsia proved to be a group of assorted ladies and gentlemen, none of whom was under forty; they were predominantly female, with an awkward scattering of dry and dusty males; and they sat along a festive breakfast board in the main dining-room of the Park Hill twittering and chirping like a flock of sparrows on the first leafy bough of spring.

It was late morning and except for the teachers’ party the dining-room was empty. The maître d’hôtel indicated the ladies and gentlemen with a negligent thumb. Inspector Thumm, unawed, stamped into the salle à manger (the Park Hill had Gallic pretensions in addition to its French cuisine) and plowed his way through the underbrush of gleaming idle tables followed by a faintly giggling Patience.

At the Inspector’s formidable approach the twittering wavered suddenly, peeped a little, and then stopped altogether. A host of startled eyes — the glass-protected mournful eyes of tutorship — swung like a trained battery to observe the intruders. The Inspector’s visage had never been one to inspire sweet trust in the hearts of little children and shy, self-conscious adults; it was big and red and hard and massively bony, and its well-smashed proboscis added a slightly sinister note.

“You the schoolteachers from Indiana?” growled Thumm.

A tremor of apprehension shivered down the board; elderly maiden ladies groped for their bosoms and the men began to lick their dignified lips.

A fat-faced man of fifty, painfully dressed — apparently the Beau Brummel and spokesman of the group — scraped his chair back from the head of the table and half-stood up, twisting about and clutching the back of the chair. He was quite pale.

“Yes?” he quavered.

“I’m Inspector Thumm,” said Thumm in the same savage growl; and for a moment Patience, half-hidden behind her father’s broad back, thought there would be a general swooning of females.

“Police!” gasped the spokesman. “Police! What have we done?”

The Inspector swallowed a grin. If the fat gentleman chose to leap to the conclusion that “Inspector” was synonymous with “police,” so much the better. “That’s what I’m here to find out,” said the Inspector sternly. “You all present and accounted for?”

The man’s eyes wavered down the table dazedly; they returned, round and large, to the Inspector’s forbidding face. “Why — uh, yes, certainly.”

“Nobody missing?”

“Missing?” echoed the spokesman blankly. “Of course not. Why should there be?”

Necks strained back and forth; two ladies with gaunt scarified features uttered horrified little noises.

“Just askin’,” said the Inspector. His cold eyes swept up and down the board, beheading glances like a scythe. “You people took a little joy-ride in a Rivoli bus yesterday afternoon?”

“That’s right, sir. Yes, indeed!”

“You all went along?”

“Oh, yes!”

“You all came back?”

The obese gentleman sank into his chair, as if overwhelmed by the suddenness with which tragedy had struck. “I... I think so,” he whispered piteously. “Mr. F-Frick, didn’t we all come back?” Thus appealed to, a thin little man with a high starched collar and watery brown eyes gripped the cloth with a start, looked all about as if for consolation, and mumbled: “Yes. Yes, Mr. Onderdonk. We did indeed.”

“Now, now,” said the Inspector. “Come, boys, you’re shieldin’ somebody. Who’s missing?”

“It’s barely possible,” murmured Patience in the appalled and palpitating silence which instantly fell, “that these good people are telling the truth, father.”

Thumm winked in ferocious prohibition at his daughter, but she smiled sweetly and continued: “You see, father, I’ve been counting them.”

“Well?” he snapped, and ran his eye swiftly down the table.

“There are seventeen.”

“What the devil have we run into?” muttered the Inspector, forgetting momentarily his role of ogre as he verified this startling intelligence. “Fisher said nineteen... Here, you,” he bellowed in the spokesman’s ear, “were you always seventeen?”

Mr. Onderdonk could only nod, although he swallowed bravely.

“Hey, waiter!” roared Thumm across the dining-room to the maître d’hôtel. The maître d’hôtel looked up, startled, from a menu he was studying. “Come here, you!”

The maître d’hôtel stiffened. He eyed the Inspector with disfavor. Then he stalked over like an annoyed grenadier.

“Yes?” he said with a musical hiss.

“Look this bunch over.” The maître d’hôtel complied with a bored inclination of his elegant head. “Is this the whole party?”

“Mais, oui, m’sieu.”

“Talk United States,” said the Inspector disagreeably. “Seventeen right?”

“Seventeen is the precise number, m’sieu’.”

“They’ve been seventeen since they checked in?”

“Ha,” said the maître d’hôtel, lifting a sleek eyebrow. “Un gendarme. I think I shall summon here the manager.”

“Answer my question, you idiot!”

“Seventeen,” said the maître d’hôtel firmly. He turned to the quaking ladies and gentlemen about the no longer festive board. “Compose yourselves, mesdames. I assure you this is a trifle, a nothing; something of a surety mistaken.” Mesdames and messieurs uttered little cautious sighs of relief. He faced Inspector Thumm with the brave dignity of a weary shepherd feeling the responsibility of his duty. “Please to be very brief, m’sieu’. This is most indecorous. We cannot permit our guests—”

“Listen, Lafayette!” howled Thumm, beside himself with rage, as he gripped the impeccable lapel of the maître d’hôtel. “How long have these people been stoppin’ here?”

The maître d’hôtel’s body gave an outraged little wriggle, and then froze with horror. The ladies of the party paled, and the gentlemen rose nervously and whispered to one another. Patience’s pert little face went through a series of contortions.

“S-since Friday,” said the maître d’hôtel with a gulp.

“That’s better,” grunted the Inspector, releasing the crushed lapel. “Beat it, you.”

The maître d’hôtel fled.

“Now let’s talk this over,” continued the ogre, dropping into the spokesman’s vacated chair. “Take a seat, Patty; this looks like an all-day job. God, what slugs! Here, you, did you count your people when you got into the bus yesterday noon?”

The spokesman, thus perilously addressed, said with haste: “No, sir, I did not. I’m really sorry— You see, we didn’t think — I can’t understand—”

“All right, all right,” said the Inspector in a gentler tone. “I’m not going to bite you. I’m just looking for information. I’ll tell you what I want to know. You people say there are seventeen in your party. You were seventeen when you left Bohunkus, or wherever you come from; you were seventeen when you landed in New York; you were seventeen when you checked into this dump; you’ve been seventeen on your jaunts around the city. Right so far?”

There was a unanimous nodding of heads, executed with rapidity.

“That is,” continued Thumm thoughtfully, “up to noon yesterday. You’d chartered a bus to take you around. You went over to the Forty-Fourth Street and Broadway terminal of the Rivoli company, and you got into your bus. Were you seventeen on the way to the terminal?”

“I... I don’t know,” said the spokesman helplessly. “I really don’t.”

“All right, then. But one thing is sure. When that bus started out there were nineteen people in it. How do you account for that?”

“Nineteen!” exclaimed a stout middle-aged lady with pince-nez glasses. “Well, I noticed— I wondered what that man was doing there!”

“What man?” snapped the Inspector; and Patience dropped the spoon she had been toying with and sat very still, watching the mingled triumph and perplexity on the stout lady’s face.

“What man, Miss Ruddy?” echoed the spokesman, frowning.

“Why, the man in that outlandish blue hat! Didn’t any of you notice him? Martha, I believe I mentioned him to you before the bus started. Don’t you remember?”

The bony virgin named Martha gasped: “Yes, that’s right!”

Patience and the Inspector looked at each other. It was true, then. George Fisher’s story had been based on verifiable facts.

“Do you recall, Miss... er... Ruddy,” asked Patience with a winning smile “other details of this man’s appearance?”

Miss Ruddy beamed. “Indeed I do! He was middle-aged, and he had an enormous moustache. Just like Chester Conklin’s, in the movies.” She blushed. “The comedian, you know. Except that it was grey.”

“And when Lavinia — Miss Ruddy pointed him out to me,” added the raw-boned lady named Martha excitedly, “I saw that he was tall and thin, too!”

“Anybody else notice him?” demanded the Inspector.

There were blank looks.

“And didn’t it occur to you ladies,” continued Thumm sarcastically, “that a man you didn’t know had no right being in your privately chartered bus?”

“Oh, it did,” faltered Miss Ruddy, “but I didn’t know what to do. I thought he might have had something to do with the bus company, you see.”

The Inspector rolled his eyes ceilingward. “Did you notice this bird on the return trip?”

“No,” said Miss Ruddy in a trembling voice. “No, I looked especially. But he wasn’t with us.”

“Fine. Now we’re getting somewhere. But,” said the Inspector with a grim smile, “that only makes eighteen. And we know there were nineteen of you yesterday in that bus. Come on now, folks, think hard. I’m sure somebody here must have noticed the nineteenth person.”

“I believe,” murmured Patience, “that that charming lady at the end of the table remembers something. I’ve seen a speech trembling on her lips for the past two minutes.”

The charming lady gulped. “I... I was only going to say,” she quavered, “that I did notice somebody else who — who didn’t belong. Not the man in the blue hat. A different man—”

“Oh, a man, hey?” said the Inspector quickly. “What did he look like, madam?”

“He... he...” And she stopped. “I think he was tall.”

“Oh!” gasped an Amazonian woman with a wart on her nose. “Miss Starbuck, that’s wrong!”

The charming lady sniffed. “Perhaps it is, but I saw him and—”

“Why, I noticed him, too!” cried the Amazon. “And I’m sure he was rather stocky!”

Light dawned in several pairs of eyes. “I remember now,” volunteered a chubby, gentleman with a bald head. “Yes, indeed. I’m positive he was small and thin and... er... fortyish.”

“Nonsense!” said the Amazon sharply. “You’ve always had a notoriously poor memory, Mr. Scott. I distinctly recall—”

“Now that I come to think of it,” ventured a little old lady timidly, “I believe I saw him, too. He was a tall, stout young man—”

“Time, time,” said the Inspector wearily. “We’ll never get anywhere this way. It’s pretty evident none of you knows what this nineteenth bird looked like. But do any of you remember if he made the return trip to the bus terminal with you?”

“I do,” said Miss Starbuck instantly. “I’m positive he came back with us. He got off just in front of me. After that I didn’t see him any more.” And the charming lady glared at the Amazon as if daring her to contradict that statement.

But no one did. Inspector Thumm scraped his jaw in noisy meditativeness. “All right,” he said finally. “At least we know where we stand. Suppose I delegate you — what’s your name again—?”

“Onderdonk. Luther Onderdonk,” said the spokesman eagerly.

“Suppose I delegate you, Mr. Onderdonk, to keep in touch with me for your party in case anything turns up. For instance, if any of you should see either of the two men who were on the bus with you yesterday, tell Mr. Onderdonk and he’ll call me at my office.” He dropped his card on the cloth and the spokesman picked it up with cautious fingers. “Keep your eyes open, all of you.”

“You’ll be acting as detectives,” said Patience brightly. “I’m sure it will prove the most exciting part of your stay in New York.”

The seventeen Indiana schoolteachers beamed as one.

“Yeah, but don’t go messin’ around,” growled the Inspector. “Just sit tight and watch. How long you staying in the city?”

“We were scheduled to leave for home,” said Mr. Onderdonk with an apologetic cough, “on Friday.”

“Week’s vacation, hey? Well, before you check out here, be sure and give me a ring, anyway.”

“I shall most certainly do that, Inspector Thumm,” said Mr. Onderdonk earnestly. “I really shall.”

The Inspector stamped out of the Park Hill’s salle à manger followed meekly by Patience, scowled fiercely at a pale and deflated maître d’hôtel in the foyer, and led the way through the lobby to the Plaza.

Patience’s meekness vanished. “I think you’re horrid, father — frightening those people that way. The poor things were scared half to death. They’re like a group of children.”

Unexpectedly, the Inspector chuckled. He winked at an ancient cabby drowsing at the curb above a patient old nag. “Technique, kid, technique! With a woman it’s just a matter of turning on the big baby lamps and smiling. But when a man wants something he’s got to holler louder and make worse faces than the next guy, or else he doesn’t get anywhere. I’ve always felt sorry for the little skinny guys.”

“How about Napoleon?” said Patience, linking her arm with her father’s.

“Don’t tell me he didn’t have a loud voice! Listen, sweetheart, I’ve got those poor old schoolmarms eatin’ out of my hand.”

“You’ll be bitten one of these days,” predicted Patience darkly.

The Inspector grinned. “Hey, taxi!”