Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. No. 75, April 1959, British Edition

Ellery Queen Long Shot

© 1939 by McCall Corporation

The first assignment that Ellery Queen, the real-life authors, got from Hollywood was to write a screenplay about a horse race. Now, it is an absolute fact that neither half of Queen had, up to that time, ever visited a track or placed even a $2 bet!

“One moment, dear. My favorite fly’s just walked into the parlor,” cried Paula Paris into her ashes-of-roses telephone. “Oh, Ellery, do sit down!... No, dear, you’re fishing. This one’s a grim hombre with silv’ry eyes, and I have an option on him. Call me tomorrow about the Loren excitement.”

And, the serious business of her Hollywood gossip column concluded, Miss Paris hung up and turned her lips pursily toward Mr. Queen. Ellery had cured Miss Paris of homophobia, or morbid fear of crowds, by the brilliant counter-psychology of making love to her. Alas for the best-laid plans! The patient had promptly succumbed to the cure and, what was worse, in succumbing had infected the physician.

“I do believe,” murmured the lovely patient, “that I need an extended treatment, Doctor Queen.”

So the poor fellow absently gave Miss Paris an extended treatment, after which he rubbed the lipstick from his mouth.

“No oomph,” said Miss Paris critically, holding him off and surveying his gloomy countenance. “Ellery Queen, you’re in a mess again.”

“Hollywood,” mumbled Ellery. “The land God forgot. No logic. Disorderly creation. Paula, your Hollywood is driving me c-double-o-ditto!”

“You poor imposed-upon Wimpie,” crooned Miss Paris. “Tell Paula all about the nasty old place.”

So, with Miss Paris’s soft arms about him, Ellery unburdened himself. It seemed that Magna Studios, to whom his soul was chartered, had ordered him as one of its staff writers to concoct a horse-racing plot with a fresh patina. A mystery, of course, since Ellery was supposed to know something about crime.

“With fifty writers on the lot who spend all their time — and money — following the ponies,” complained Ellery bitterly, “of course they have to pick on the one serf in their thrall who doesn’t know a fetlock from a wither. Paula, I’m a sunk scrivener.”

“You don’t know anything about racing?”

“I’m not interested in racing. I’ve never even seen a horse race,” said Ellery doggedly.

“Imagine that!” said Paula, awed. And she was silent. After a while Ellery twisted in her embrace and said in accusing despair, “Paula, you’re thinking of something.”

“The wrong tense, darling, I’ve thought of something!”

Paula told him all about old John Scott as they drove out into the green and yellow ranch country.

Scott was a vast, shapeless Caledonian with a face as craggy as his native heaths and a disposition no less dour. His inner landscape was bleak except where horses breathed and browsed; and this vulnerable spot had proved his undoing, for he had made two fortunes breeding thoroughbreds and had lost both by racing and betting on them.

“Old John’s never stood for any of the crooked dodges of the racing game,” said Paula. “He fired Weed Williams, the best jockey he ever had, and had him blackballed by every decent track in the country, so that Williams became a saddle-maker or something, just because of a peccadillo another owner would have winked at. And yet — the inconsistent old coot! — a few years later he gave Williams’s son a job, and Whitey’s going to ride Danger, John’s best horse, in the Handicap next Saturday.”

“You mean the $100,000 Santa Anita Handicap everybody’s in a dither about out here?”

“Yes. Anyway, old John’s got Danger and a scrunchy little ranch and his daughter Kathryn and practically nothing else except a stable of also-rans and breeding disappointments.”

“So far,” remarked Ellery, “it sounds like the beginning of a Class B movie.”

“Except,” sighed Paula, “that it’s not entertaining. John’s really on a spot. If Whitey doesn’t ride Danger to a win in the Handicap, it’s the end of the road for John Scott... Speaking about roads, here we are.”

They turned into a dirt road and plowed dustily toward a ramshackle ranch-house. The road was pitted, the fences dilapidated, the grassland patchy with neglect.

“With all his troubles,” grinned Ellery, “I fancy he won’t take kindly to this quest for Racing in Five Easy Lessons.”

“Meeting a full-grown man who knows nothing about racing may give the old gentleman a laugh. Lord knows he needs one.”

A Mexican cook directed them to Scott’s private track and they found him leaning his weight on a sagging rail, his small buried eyes puckering on a cloud of dust eddying along the track at the far turn. His thick fingers clutched a stop watch.

A man in high-heeled boots sat on the rail two yards away, a shotgun in his lap pointing carelessly at the head of a too well-dressed gentleman with a foreign air who was talking to the back of Scott’s shaggy head. The well-dressed man sat in a glistening roadster beside a hard-faced chauffeur.

“You got my proposition, John?” said the well-dressed man, with a toothy smile.

“Get the hell off my ranch, Santelli,” said John Scott, without turning his head.

“Sure,” said Santelli, still smiling. “You think my proposition over, hey, or maybe somethin’ happen to your nag, hey?”

They saw the old man quiver, but he did not turn; and Santelli nodded curtly to his driver. The big roadster roared away.

The dust cloud on the track rolled toward them and they saw a small, taut figure in sweater and cap perched atop a gigantic stallion, black-coated and lustrous with sweat. The horse was bounding along like a huge cat, his neck arched. He thundered magnificently by.

“2:02-4/5,” they heard Scott mutter to his stop watch. “Rosemont’s ten-furlong time for the Handicap in ’37. Not bad... Whitey!” he bellowed to the jockey, who had pulled the black stallion up. “Rub him down good!”

The jockey grinned and pranced Danger toward the adjacent stables.

The man with the shotgun drawled, “You got more company, John.”

The old man whirled, frowned deeply; his craggy face broke into a thousand wrinkles and he engulfed Paula’s slim hand in his two paws. “Paula! It’s fine to see ye. Who’s this?” he demanded, fastening his cold keen eyes on Ellery.

“Mr. Ellery Queen. But how is Katie? And Danger?”

“You saw him.” Scott gazed after the dancing horse. “Fit as a fiddle. He’ll carry the handicap weight of a hundred twenty pounds Saturday and never feel it. Did it just now with the leads on him. Paula, did ye see that murderin’ scalawag?”

“The fashion-plate who just drove away?”

“That was Santelli, and ye heard what he said might happen to Danger.” The old man stared bitterly down the road.

“Santelli!” Paula’s serene face was shocked.

“Bill, go look after the stallion.” The man with the shotgun slipped off the rail and waddled toward the stable. “Just made me an offer for my stable. Hell, the dirty thievin’ bookie owns the biggest stable west o’ the Rockies — what’s he want with my picayune outfit?”

“He owns Broomstick, the Handicap favorite, doesn’t he?” asked Paula quietly. “And Danger is figured strongly in the running, isn’t he?”

“Quoted five to one now, but track odds will shorten his price. Broomstick’s two to five,” growled Scott.

“It’s very simple, then. By buying your horse, Santelli can control the race, owning the two best horses.”

“Lassie, lassie,” sighed Scott. “I’m an old mon, and I know these thieves. Handicap purse is $100,000. And Santelli just offered me $100,000 for my stable!” Paula whistled. “It don’t wash. My whole shebang ain’t worth it. Danger’s no cinch to win. Is Santelli buyin’ up all the other horses in the race, too? — the big outfits? I tell ye it’s somethin’ else, an’ it’s rotten.” Then he shook his heavy shoulders straight. “But here I am gabbin’ about my troubles. What brings ye out here, lassie?”

“Mr. Queen here, who’s a — well, a friend of mine,” said Paula, coloring, “has to think up a horse-racing plot for a movie, and I thought you could help him. He doesn’t know a thing about racing.”

Scott stared at Ellery, who coughed apologetically. “Well, sir, I don’t know but that ye’re not a lucky mon. Ye’re welcome to the run o’ the place. Go over and talk to Whitey; he knows the racket backwards. I’ll be with ye in a few minutes.”

The old man lumbered off, and Paula and Ellery sauntered toward the stables.

“Who is this ogre Santelli?” asked Ellery with a frown.

“A gambler and bookmaker with a national hookup.” Paula shivered a little. “Poor John. I don’t like it, Ellery.”

They turned a corner of the big stable and almost bumped into a young man and a young woman in the lee of the wall, clutching each other desperately and kissing as if they were about to be torn apart for eternity.

“Pardon us,” said Paula, pulling Ellery back.

The young lady, her eyes crystal with tears, blinked at her. “Is — is that Paula Paris?” she sniffled.

“The same, Kathryn,” smiled Paula. “Mr. Queen, Miss Scott. What on earth’s the matter?”

“Everything,” cried Miss Scott tragically. “Oh, Paula, we’re in the most awful trouble!”

Her amorous companion backed bashfully off. He was a slender young man clad in grimy, odoriferous overalls. He wore spectacles floury with the chaff of oats, and there was a grease smudge on one emotional nostril.

“Miss Paris — Mr. Queen. This is Hank Halliday, my — my boyfriend,” said Kathryn.

“I see the whole plot,” said Paula sympathetically. “Papa doesn’t approve of Katie’s taking up with a stablehand, the snob!”

“Hank isn’t a stablehand,” cried Kathryn. “He’s a college graduate who—”

“Kate,” said the odoriferous young man with dignity, “let me explain, please. Miss Paris, I have a character deficiency. I am a physical coward.”

“Heavens, so am f!” said Paula.

“But a man, you see... I am particularly afraid of animals. Horses, specifically.” Mr. Halliday shuddered. “I took this — this filthy job to conquer my unreasonable fear.” Mr. Halliday’s sensitive chin hardened, “f have not yet conquered it, but when I do I shall find myself a real job. And then,” he said firmly, embracing Miss Scott’s trembling shoulders. “I shall marry Kathryn, papa or no papa."

“Oh, I hate him for being so mean!” sobbed Katie.

“And I—” began Mr. Halliday somberly.

“Hankus-Pankus!” yelled a voice from the stable. “What the hell you paid for, anyway? Come clean up this mess before I belt you one!’*

“Yes, Mr. Williams,” said Hankus-Pankus hastily, and he hurried away. His lady-love ran sobbing off toward the ranch-house.

Ellery and Miss Paris regarded each other. Then Ellery said, “I’m getting a plot, b’gosh, but it’s the wrong one.”

“Poor kids,” sighed Paula. “Well, talk to Whitey Williams and see if the divine spark ignites.”

During the next several days Ellery ambled about the Scott ranch, talking to Jockey Williams, to the bespectacled Mr. Halliday — who, he discovered, knew as little about racing as he and cared even less — to a continuously tearful Kathryn, to the guard named Bill — who slept in the stable near Danger with one hand on his shotgun — and to old John himself. He learned much about jockeys, touts, racing procedure, gear, handicaps, purses, stewards, the ways of bookmakers, famous races and horses and owners and tracks; but the divine spark perversely refused to ignite.

So on Friday at dusk, when he found himself unaccountably ignored at the Scott ranch, he glumly drove back to Hollywood.

He found Paula in her garden soothing two anguished young people. Katie Scott was still weeping and Mr. Halliday, the self-confessed craven, for once dressed in an odorless garment, was awkwardly pawing her golden hair.

“More tragedy?” said Ellery. “I should have known. I’ve just come from your father’s ranch, and there’s a pall over it.”

“Well, there should be!” cried Kathryn. “I told my father where he gets off. Treating Hank that way! I’ll never speak to him as long as I live! He’s — he’s unnatural!”

“Now Katie,” said Mr. Halliday reprovingly, “that’s no way to speak of your own father.”

“Hank Halliday, if you had one spark of manhood—!”

Mr. Halliday stiffened as if his beloved had jabbed him with the end of a live wire.

“I didn’t mean that, Hankus,” sobbed Kathryn, throwing herself into his arms. “I know you can’t help being a coward. But when he knocked you down and you didn’t even—”

Mr. Halliday worked the left side of his jaw thoughtfully. “You know, Mr. Queen, something happened to me when Mr. Scott struck me. For an instant I felt a strange — er — passion. I really believe if I’d had a revolver — and if I knew how to handle one — I might easily have committed murder then. I saw — I believe that’s the phrase — red.”

“Hank!” exclaimed Katie.

Hank sighed, the homicidal light dying out of his faded blue eyes.

“Old John,” explained Paula, winking at Ellery, “found these two cuddling again in the stable, and I suppose he thought it was setting a bad example for Danger, whose mind should be on the race tomorrow; so he fired Hank, and Katie blew up and told John off, and she’s left his home forever.”

“To discharge me is his privilege,” said Mr. Halliday coldly, “but now I owe him no loyalty whatever. I shall not bet on Danger to win the Handicap!”

“I hope the big brute loses,” sobbed Katie.

“Now Kate,” said Paula firmly, “I’ve heard enough of this nonsense. I’m going to speak to you like a Dutch aunt.”

“Mr. Halliday,” said Ellery formally, “I believe this is our cue to exit.”

“Kathryn!”

“Hank!”

Ellery and Miss Paris tore the lovers apart.

It was a little after ten o’clock when Miss Scott, no longer weeping but facially still tear-ravaged, crept out of Miss Paris’s white frame house and got into her dusty little car.

As she turned her key in the ignition lock and stepped on the starter, a bass voice from the shadows of the back seat said, “Don’t yell. Don’t make a sound. Turn your car around and keep going till I tell you to stop.”

“Eek!” screeched Miss Scott.

A big leathery hand damped over her trembling mouth.

After a few moments the car moved away.

Ellery called for Miss Paris the next day and they settled down to a snail’s pace, heading for Arcadia eastward, near which lay the beautiful Santa Anita race track.

“What happened to Lachrymose Katie last night?” demanded Ellery.

“Oh, I got her to go back to the ranch. She left me a little after ten, a very miserable girl. What did you do with Hankus-Pankus?”

“I oiled him thoroughly and then took him home. He’d hired a room in a Hollywood boarding house. He moaned on my shoulder all the way. It seems old John also kicked him in the seat of his pants, and he’s been brooding murderously over it.”

“Poor Hankus. The only honest male I’ve ever met.”

“I’m afraid of horses, too,” said Ellery hurriedly.

“Oh, you! You’re detestable. You haven’t kissed me once today.”

Only the cooling balm of Miss Paris’s lips, applied at various points along U.S. Route 66, kept Ellery’s temper from boiling over. The roads were sluggish with traffic. At the track it was even worse. It seemed as if every soul in Southern California had converged on Santa Anita at once, in every manner of conveyance, from the dusty Model T’s of dirt farmers to the shiny metal monsters of the movie stars. The magnificent stands seethed with noisy thousands, a wriggling mosaic of color and movement. The sky was blue, the sun warm, zephyrs blew, and the track was fast. A race was being run, and the sleek animals were small and fleet and sharply focused in the clear light.

“What a marvelous day for the Handicap!” cried Paula, dragging Ellery along. “Oh, there’s Bing and Bob and Rock!... Hello!... and Marilyn and Clark and Jayne..."

Despite Miss Paris’s overenthusiastic trail breaking, Ellery arrived at the track stalls in one piece. They found old John Scott watching with the intentness of a Red Indian as a stablehand kneaded Dangers velvety forelegs. There was a stony set to Scott’s gnarled face that made Paula cry, “John! Is anything wrong with Danger?”

“Danger’s all right,” said the old man curtly. “It’s Kate. We had a blowup over that Halliday boy and she ran out on me.”

“Nonsense, John. I sent her back home last night myself.”

“She was at your place? She didn’t come home.”

“She didn’t?” Paula’s little nose wrinkled.

“I guess,” growled Scott, “she’s run off with that Halliday coward. He’s not a man, the lily-livered—”

“We can’t all be heroes, John. He’s a good boy, and he loves Katie.”

The old man stared stubbornly at his stallion, and after a moment they left and made their way toward their box.

“Funny,” said Paula in a scared voice. “She couldn’t have run off with Hank — he was with you. And I’d swear she meant to go back to the ranch last night.”

“Now, Paula,” said Ellery gently. “She’s all right.”

But his eyes were thoughtful and a little perturbed.

Their box was not far from the paddock. During the preliminary races, Paula kept searching the sea of faces with her binoculars.

“Well, well,” said Ellery suddenly, and Paula became conscious of a rolling thunder from the stands about them.

“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

“Broomstick, the favorite, has been scratched,” said Ellery dryly.

“Broomstick? Santelli’s horse?” Paula stared at him, paling. “But why? Ellery, there’s something in this—”

“It seems he’s pulled a tendon and can’t run.”

“Do you think,” whispered Paula, “that Santelli had anything to do with Katie’s... not getting... home?”

“Possible,” muttered Ellery. “But I can’t seem to fit—”

“Here they come!”

The shout shook the stands. A line of regal animals began to emerge from the paddock. Paula and Ellery rose with the other restless thousands, and craned. The Handicap contestants were parading to the post.

There was High Tor, who had gone lame in the stretch at the Derby the year before and had not run a race since. This was to be his comeback; the insiders held him in a contempt which the public apparently shared, for he was quoted at 50 to 1. There was little Fighting Billy. There was Equator, prancing sedately along with Buzz Hickey up. There was Danger, glossy black, gigantic, imperial. Whitey Williams was having a difficult time controlling him and a stablehand was struggling at his bit.

Old John Scott, his big shapeless body unmistakable even at this distance, lumbered from the paddock toward his nervous stallion, apparently to soothe him.

Paula gasped. Ellery said quickly, “What is it?”

“There’s Hank Halliday in the crowd. Up there! Right above the spot where Danger’s passing. About fifty feet from John Scott. And Kathryn’s not with him!”

Ellery took the glasses from her and located Halliday.

Paula sank into her chair. “Ellery, I’ve the queerest feeling. There’s something wrong. See how pale he is...”

The powerful glasses brought Halliday to within a few inches of Ellery’s eyes. The boy’s eyeglasses were steamed over; he was shaking, as if he had a chill; and yet Ellery could see the globules of perspiration on his cheeks.

And then Ellery stiffened abruptly.

John Scott had just reached the head of Danger; his thick arm was coming up to pull the stallion’s head down. And in that instant Mr. Hankus-Pankus Halliday fumbled in his clothes; and in the next his hand appeared clasping a snub-nosed automatic. Ellery nearly cried out. For, the short barrel wavering, the automatic in Mr. Halliday’s trembling hands pointed in the general direction of John Scott; there was an explosion, and a puff of smoke blew out of the muzzle.

Miss Paris leaped to her feet, and Miss Paris did cry out.

“Why, the crazy young fool!” said Ellery dazedly.

Frightened by the shot, which apparently had gone wild, Danger reared. The other horses began to kick and dance. In a moment the place below boiled with panic-stricken thoroughbreds. Scott, clinging to Danger’s head, half turned in an immense astonishment and looked inquiringly upward. Whitey struggled desperately to control the frantic stallion.

And then Mr. Halliday shot again. And again. And a fourth time. And at some instant, in the space between those shots, the rearing horse got between John Scott and the automatic in Mr. Halliday’s shaking hand.

Danger’s four feet left the turf. Then, whinnying in agony, flanks heaving, he toppled over on his side.

“Oh, gosh; oh, gosh,” said Paula, biting her handkerchief.

“Let’s go!” shouted Ellery, and he plunged for the spot.

By the time they reached the place where Mr. Halliday had fearfully discharged his automatic, the bespectacled youth had disappeared. The people who had stood about him were still too stunned to move. Elsewhere, the stands were in pandemonium.

In the confusion, Ellery and Paula managed to slip through the inadequate track-police cordon hastily thrown about the fallen Danger and his milling rivals. They found old John on his knees beside the black stallion, his big hands steadily stroking the glossy, veined neck. Whitey, pale and bewildered-looking, had stripped off the tiny saddle, and the track veterinary was examining a bullet wound in Danger’s side, near the shoulder. A group of track officials conferred excitedly nearby.

“He saved my life,” said old John in a low voice to no one in particular. “He saved my life, poor lad.”

The veterinary looked up. “Sorry, Mr. Scott,” he said grimly. “Danger won’t run this race.”

“No, I suppose not.” Scott licked his leathery lips. “Is it — mon, is it serious?”

“Can’t tell till I dig out the bullet. We’ll have to get him out of here and into the hospital right away.”

An official said, “Tough luck, Scott. You may be sure we’ll do our best to find the scoundrel who shot your horse.”

The old man’s lips twisted. He climbed to his feet and looked down at the heaving flanks of his fallen thoroughbred. Whitey Williams trudged away with Danger’s gear, head hanging.

A moment later the loudspeaker system proclaimed that Danger, Number 5, had been scratched, and that the Handicap would be run immediately after the other contestants could be quieted and lined up at the barrier.

“All right, folks, clear out,” said a track policeman as a hospital van rushed up, followed by a hoisting truck.

“What are you doing about the man who shot this horse?” demanded Ellery, not moving.

“We’ll get him; got a good description. Move on, please.”

“Well,” said Ellery slowly, “I know who he is.”

They were ushered into the Steward’s office just as the announcement was made that High Tor, at 50 to 1, had won the Santa Anita Handicap, purse $100,000, by two and a half lengths... almost as long a shot, in one sense, as the shot which had laid poor Danger low, commented Ellery to Miss Paris.

“Halliday?” said John Scott with heavy contempt. “That yellow-livered pup tried to shoot me?”

“I couldn’t possibly be mistaken, Mr. Scott,” said Ellery.

“I saw him, too, John,” sighed Paula.

“Who is this Halliday?” demanded the chief of the track police.

Scott told him in monosyllables, relating their quarrel of the day before. “I knocked him down and kicked him. I guess the only way he could get back at me was with a gun. And Danger took the rap, poor beastie.” For the first time his voice shook.

“Well, we’ll get him; he can’t have left the park,” said the police chief grimly. “I’ve got it sealed tighter than a drum.”

“Did you know,” murmured Ellery, “that Mr. Scott’s daughter Kathryn has been missing since last night?”

Old John flushed slowly. “You think — my Kate had somethin’ to do—”

“Don’t be silly, John!” said Paula.

“At any rate,” said Ellery dryly, “her disappearance and the attack here today can’t be a coincidence. I’d advise you to start a search for Miss Scott immediately. And, by the way, send for Danger’s gear. I’d like to examine it.”

“Say, who the devil are you?” growled the chief.

Ellery told him and the chief looked properly awed. He telephoned to police headquarters, and he sent for Danger’s gear.

Whitey Williams, still in his silks, carried the high small racing saddle in and dumped it on the floor.

“John, I’m awful sorry about what happened,” he said in a low voice.

“It ain’t your fault, Whitey.”

“Ah, Williams, thank you,” said Ellery briskly. “This is the saddle Danger was wearing a few minutes ago?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Exactly as it was when you stripped it off him after the shots?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Has anyone had an opportunity to tamper with it?”

“No, sir. I been with it ever since, and no one’s come near it but me.”

Ellery nodded and knelt to examine the empty-pocketed saddle. Observing the scorched hole in the flap, his brow puckered in perplexity.

“By the way, Whitey,” he asked, “how much do you weigh?”

“Hundred and seven.”

Ellery frowned. He rose, dusted his knees, and beckoned the chief of police. They conferred in undertones. The policeman looked baffled, shrugged, then hurried out.

When he returned, a certain familiar — appearing gentleman in too-perfect clothes and a foreign air accompanied him. The gentleman looked sad.

“I hear some crackpot took a couple o’ shots at you, John,” he said sorrowfully, “and got your nag instead. Tough luck.”

There was a somewhat quizzical humor behind this ambiguous statement which brought old John’s head up in a flash of belligerence.

“You dirty, thievin’—”

“Mr. Santelli,” greeted Ellery. “When did you know that Broomstick would have to be scratched?”

“Broomstick?” Mr. Santelli looked mildly surprised at this irrelevant question. “Why, last week.”

“So that’s why you offered to buy Scott’s stable — to get control of Danger?”

“Sure.” Mr. Santelli smiled genially. “He was hot. With my nag out, he looked like a cinch.”

“Mr. Santelli, you’re what is colloquially known as a cockeyed liar.” Mr. Santelli ceased smiling. “You wanted to buy Danger not to see him win, but to see him lose!”

Mr. Santelli looked unhappy. “Who is this,” he appealed to the police chief, “Mister Wacky himself?”

“In my embryonic way,” said Ellery, “I have been making a few inquiries in the last several days and my information has it that your bookmaking organization covered a lot of Danger money when Danger’s odds stood at five to one.”

“Say, you got somethin’ there,” said Mr. Santelli, suddenly deciding to be candid.

“You covered about two hundred thousand dollars, didn’t you?”

“Wow,” said Santelli. “This guy’s got ideas, ain’t he?”

“So,” smiled Ellery, “if Danger won the Handicap you stood to drop a cool million dollars, didn’t you?”

“But it’s my old friend John some guy tried to rub out,” pointed out Mr. Santelli gently. “Go peddle your papers somewhere else, Mister Wack.”

John Scott looked bewilderedly from the gambler to Ellery. His jaw muscles were bunched and jerky.

At this moment a special officer deposited among them Mr. Hankus-Pankus Halliday, his spectacles awry on’ his nose and his collar ripped away from his prominent Adam’s apple.

John Scott sprang toward him, but Ellery caught his flailing arm in time to prevent a slaughter.

“Murderer! Scalawag! Horse killer!” roared old John. “What did ye do with my lassie?”

Mr. Halliday said gravely, “Mr. Scott, you have my sympathy.”

The old man’s mouth flew open. Mr. Halliday folded his scrawny arms with dignity, glaring at the policeman who had brought him in. “There was no necessity to manhandle me. I’m quite ready to face the — er — music. But I shall not answer any questions.”

“No gat on him, Chief,” said the policeman.

“What did you do with the automatic?” demanded the chief. No answer. “You admit you had it in for Mr. Scott and tried to kill him?” No answer. “Where is Miss Scott?”

“You see,” said Mr. Halliday stonily, “how useless it is.”

“Hankus-Pankus,” murmured Ellery, “you are superb. You don’t know where Kathryn is, do you?”

Hankus-Pankus instantly looked alarmed. “Oh, I say, Mr. Queen. Don’t make me talk. Please!”

“But you’re expecting her to join you here, aren’t you?”

Hankus paled. The policeman said, “He’s a nut. He didn’t even try to make a getaway.”

“Hank! Darling! Father!” cried Katie Scott; and, straggle-haired and dusty-faced, she burst into the office and flung herself on Mr. Halliday’s thin bosom. Then she ran to her father and clung to him, and old John’s shoulders lifted a little.

In the midst of this reunion the track veterinary bustled in and said, “Good news, Mr. Scott. I’ve extracted the bullet and, while the wound is deep, I give you my word Danger will be as good as ever when it’s healed.” And he bustled out.

Ellery, his smile broadening, said, “Well, well, a pretty comedy of errors.”

“Comedy!” growled old John. “D’ye call a murderous attempt on my life a comedy?”

“My dear Mr. Scott,” replied Ellery, “there has been no attempt on your life. The shots were not fired at you. From the very first Danger, and Danger only, was intended to be the victim of the shooting.”

“What’s this?” cried Paula.

“No, no, Whitey,” said Ellery, smiling still more broadly. “The door, I promise you, is well guarded.”

The jockey snarled. “Yah, he’s off his nut. Next thing you’ll say I plugged the nag. How could I be on Danger’s back and at the same time fifty feet away in the grandstand? A million guys saw this screwball fire those shots!”

“A difficulty,” said Ellery, “I shall be delighted to resolve. Danger, ladies and gentleman, was handicapped officially to carry one hundred and twenty pounds in the Santa Anita Handicap. This means that when his jockey, carrying the gear, stepped on the scales in the weighing ceremony just before the race, the combined weight of jockey and gear had to come to exactly one hundred and twenty pounds; or Mr. Whitey Williams would never have been allowed by the track officials to mount his horse.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” demanded the chief.

“Everything. For Mr. Williams told us a few minutes ago that he weighs only a hundred and seven pounds. Consequently the racing saddle Danger wore when he was shot must have contained various lead weights which, combined with the weight of the saddle, made up the difference between a hundred and seven pounds, Mr. Williams’s weight, and a hundred and twenty pounds, the handicap weight. Is that correct?”

“Sure. Anybody knows that.”

“Yes, yes, elementary, in Mr. Holmes’s imperishable phrase. Nevertheless,” continued Ellery, walking over and prodding with his toe the saddle Whitey Williams had fetched to the office, “when I examined this saddle there were no lead weights in its pockets. And Mr. Williams assured me no one had tampered with the saddle since he had removed it from Danger’s back. But this was impossible, since without the lead weights Mr. Williams and the saddle would have weighed less than a hundred and twenty pounds on the scales.

“And so I knew,” said Ellery, “that Williams had been weighed with a different saddle, that when he was shot Danger was wearing a different saddle, that the saddle Williams lugged away from the wounded horse was a different saddle; that he secreted it somewhere on the premises and fetched here on our request a second saddle — this one on the floor — which he had prepared beforehand with a bullet hole nicely placed in the proper spot. And the reason he did this was that obviously there was something in that first saddle he didn’t want anyone to see. And what could that have been but a special pocket containing an automatic which, in the confusion following Mr. Halliday’s first signal shot, Mr. Williams calmly discharged into Danger’s body by simply stooping over as he struggled with the frightened horse, putting his hand into the pocket, and firing while Mr. Halliday was discharging his three other futile shots fifty feet away? Mr. Halliday, you see, couldn’t be trusted to hit Danger from such a distance, because Mr. Halliday is a stranger to firearms; he might even hit Mr. Williams instead, if he hit anything. That’s why I believe Mr. Halliday was using blank cartridges and threw the automatic away.”

The jockey’s voice was strident, panicky. “You’re crazy! Special saddle. Who ever heard—”

Ellery, still smiling, went to the door, opened it, and said, “Ah, you’ve found it, I see. Let’s have it. In Danger’s stall? Clumsy, clumsy.”

He returned with a racing saddle; and Whitey cursed and then grew still. Ellery and the police chief and John Scott examined the saddle and, sure enough, there was a special pocket stitched into the flap, above the iron hoop, and in the pocket there was a snub-nosed automatic. And the bullet hole piercing the special pocket had the scorched speckled appearance of powder burns.

“But where,” muttered the chief, “does Halliday figure? I don’t get him a-tall.”

“Very few people would,” said Ellery, “because Mr. Halliday is, in his modest way, unique among bipeds.”

“Huh?”

“Why, he was Whitey’s accomplice — weren’t you, Hankus?”

Hankus pulped and said, “Yes. I mean no. I mean—”

“But I’m sure Hank wouldn’t—” Katie began to say.

“You see,” said Ellery briskly, “Whitey wanted a setup whereby he would be the last person in California to be suspected of having shot Danger. The quarrel between John Scott and Hank gave him a ready-made instrument. If he could make Hank seem to do the shooting, with Hank’s obvious motive against Mr. Scott, then nobody would suspect Whitey’s part in the affair.

“But to bend Hank to his will he had to have a hold on him. What was Mr. Halliday’s Achilles heel? Why, his passion for Katie Scott. So last night Whitey’s father, Weed Williams, I imagine — wasn’t he the jockey you chased from the American turf many years ago, Mr. Scott, and who had become a saddle-maker? — kidnapped Katie Scott, then communicated with Hankus-Pankus and told him just what to do today if he ever expected to see his beloved alive again. And Hankus-Pankus took the gun they provided him with, listened very carefully, agreed to do everything they told him to do, and promised he would not breathe a word of the truth afterward, even if he had to go to jail for his crime, because if he did, you see, something terrible would happen to his Katie.”

Mr. Halliday gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently.

“And all the time this skunk,” growled John Scott, glaring at the cowering jockey, “and his weasel of a father, they sat back and laughed at a brave mon, because they were havin’ their piddling revenge on me, ruining me!” Old John shambled like a bear toward Mr. Halliday. “And I am a shamed mon today, Hank Halliday. For that was the bravest thing I ever heard of. And even if I’ve lost my chance for the Handicap purse, through no fault of yours, and I’m a ruined maggot, here’s my hand.”

Mr. Halliday took it absently, meanwhile fumbling with his other hand in his pocket. “By the way,” he said, “who did win the Handicap, if I may ask?”

“High Tor,” said somebody in the babble.

“Really? Then I must cash this ticket,” said Mr. Halliday with a note of faint interest.

“Two thousand dollars!” gasped Paula, goggling at the ticket. “He bet two thousand dollars on High Tor at fifty to one!”

“Yes, a little nest egg my mother left me,” said Mr. Halliday. He seemed embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Scott. You made me angry when you — er — kicked me in the pants, so I didn’t bet it on Danger. And High Tor was such a beautiful name.”

“Oh, Hank,” beamed Katie.

“So now, Mr. Scott,” said Hankus-Pankus with dignity, “may I marry Katie and set you up in the racing business again?”

“Happy days!” bellowed old John, seizing his future son-in-law in a rib-cracking embrace.

“Happy days,” muttered Ellery, seizing Miss Paris and heading her for the nearest bar.

Heigh, Danger!