Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 47, No. 4. Whole No. 269, April 1966

Allen Kim Lang Murder in a Nudist Camp

The title of the story speaks for itself. But don’t jump to conclusions — EQMM has not changed its editorial policy... this is a most enjoyable story!

With one brown knee folded over the other like the knot in a pretzel, Professor Amos Cooney sprawled in his canvas chair, watching his wife’s knitting needles chew orange and black yarns into the scarf he’d unwrap, with cries of delight, on his 75th birthday dinner. Already, Professor Cooney observed with some trepidation, his neckpiece was six feet long and wide enough to conceal the Notre Dame backfield.

With a slight shudder he brought his mind back to the business at hand — the death of the manager of the PennyWise Supermarket. “We’ll send flowers in the name of the Club,” he said. “Mr. King often assisted me when I visited his store to buy our groceries.”

Spread out on cotton blankets and beach towels, and oiled like a school of Channel swimmers, lay the other members of the Spice Pond Swimming Club — a euphemism for what could more accurately be called the Spice Pond Nudist Camp. The newspaper which told of King’s death — one week after the $40,000 robbery during which he’d been shot — was crumpled beside Anne Anders’ elbow. “He was always so cheerful,” she mused. “He’d come bouncing into the Bank half an hour before the regular opening time, tell me how much money he wanted in each denomination, then chatter and kid with me so that I usually had to count it out three times. Probably I was the last person to see Mr. King before he was shot — except the murderers, of course. I visited him — Mr. King, I mean — at the hospital, but he never regained consciousness.”

“And now he’s dead,” Frank Ferguson said. “The police aren’t looking for thieves — now they’re looking for a pair of murderers.”

“They’ll never find ’em,” Jason Bailey, the newest member of the Nudist Camp, predicted. “Those eye masks—”

“Half masks, or dominoes,” Professor Cooney murmured.

“—made a good disguise,” Bailey continued, wagging his red beard. “The thieves were never identified, so they probably will never be caught. Darned shame, too.”

“Forty thousand bucks will take two men a long way from Pottawattamie, Indiana, in a week,” Frank Ferguson, Jr., thirteen years old, observed. “I’ll bet they don’t even know that Mr. King died today — or care.”

“They’ll find out,” Professor Cooney said, “when a policeman tells them. Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, we have a less serious matter to consider. According to Miss Toffler, our camp had an uninvited visitor this morning.”

Mary Cooney looked up from her endless scarf. “What did he look like, Tina?” she asked.

“A little man with a face like a fist, all chin and nose and forehead,” Miss Toffler said.

“When was this?” Frank Ferguson asked.

“Early.” Tina propped her sunglasses up on her forehead, revealing a pair of brown and sincere eyes. “I woke up about five thirty. This is my first day of vacation, and I didn’t want to waste a minute of sunlight. I’ve gotten pretty pale over the winter. Anyway, I went to the kitchen to fill the percolator and plug it in. Then I ran down here to the pond for an eye-opener swim. I was about halfway when I saw this fellow in khaki trousers, heavy shoes, a light jacket, and a red cap. He was skulking over by the entrance road, as if he were waiting for someone.”

“My goodness,” Anne Anders said. “Anybody should be ashamed to be wearing all those clothes on such a beautiful spring day.”

“Maybe he was,” Tina said. “The instant he saw me he took off behind the toolshed. I ran to wake up Jason and Professor Cooney, and they tried to find the man.”

“I ran all the way to the entrance gate,” Amos Cooney said, scratching at a fresh briar-scratch on his right thigh. “The electric lock hadn’t been tampered with, and the gate was closed. Meanwhile Jason searched the buildings, but there was no sign of our guest. Tell them what else you saw, Tina.”

“I swam across the pond and back,” she said. “When I stepped out onto the beach to get my towel, I looked up toward the highway and saw a flash of light — like the reflection off the lens of a telescope or a pair of binoculars. I dropped the towel and jumped right back into the pond.”

“Modest girl,” the Professor said. He drew back his feet to make way for tanned four-year-olds, the Ferguson twins, scampering by in chase of their ragged puppy. The trio splashed into the shallows of Spice Pond, yipping in fine disregard of their elders. “I would guess that our spy perched himself on the scaffolding of the billboards beside the highway, the only vantage point from which one can peer into our camp,” Cooney added.

“We can’t allow that sort of thing,” Frank Ferguson said. He was father to six of the children who shouted and jumped around them, and of a seventh held in Frances’ arms beside him. “What would happen if this spy had a camera with him, one with a telephoto lens?”

“Doom,” Jason Bailey boomed over his beard.

“My goodness,” Anne Anders whispered. Her blush slipped over her face and down her body like a pink shift. “What would Mr. Mueller, the chief cashier, say if someone showed him a picture of me dressed like this?”

“First ‘Wow!’ — then ‘You’re fired!’ ” Jason Bailey guessed. He smoothed his mustache into line with his beard, gazing up toward the trees that screened the grounds of the Spice Pond Nudist Camp (Swimming Club) from the public highway.

“I’d be out of a job faster than you can say ‘Unemployment Compensation,’ ” Frank Ferguson said. “Pictures of me and Frances and the kids romping around au naturel out here would be held incompatible with the dignity expected of the manager of the Pottawattamie office of the State Employment Service. Our legislators are pretty square.”

Professor Cooney tossed a pebble out into the pond, splashing the flailing pup. “It is deplorable that we lack the freedom our friends on the continent enjoy,” he said. “In England, Germany, Finland, nudism is no more looked down on than stamp collecting. Our problem simply proves that we have years to spend yet, educating our fellow Americans on the naturist way of life.”

“We haven’t got years, Professor,” Frances Ferguson pointed out. “Frank and I have a two-week vacation, which I’d just as soon not waste chasing off a Peeping Tom.” Her slim body, flecked with cinnamon freckles, belied her status as a seven-times mother — although the baby in her arms, whose diaper made him overdressed in this company, helped remind them.

“I say, let’s call the police,” Tina Toffler said.

“They’d only tell us to put on pants,” Jason Bailey growled. “You know how they treated folks caught wearing monokinis on Chicago beaches, those topless bathing suits? Well, they’d be even less sympathetic toward all of us in nokinis.”

“We have a trespasser,” Cooney said. “I will refer to him as Mr. Peeper.” He sprang up from his canvas chair to pace the sand in his splayed bare feet, very much the popular image of the absent-minded professor, one who’d gone directly from the shower room to the classroom. “Our problem is to utilize Mr. Peeper’s psychological moment to our advantage.”

“Psychological moment?” Anne Anders asked, wrinkling her nose. “Gee whiz, Professor, Now is the moment.”

“The phrase, my dear, refers not to time but to leverage,” Amos Cooney lectured. He turned to one side as though expecting to find a blackboard behind him, his fingers pinched as though he were holding a piece of chalk. “It is an engineering term that we scientists of the mind have borrowed. You suggest, Miss Toffler, that we call the police. I counter with the proposal that we cause Mr. Peeper, himself, to call the police.”

“Dearest, you’re getting awfully pedantic,” Mary Cooney observed, looking up from her Halloween-colored scarf.

“To be brief, then, for brevity is the soul of wit,” Cooney said, flashing a grin toward his wife, “I propose that we put on a one-act playlet for a one-man audience. No ordinary play, my friends. A murder.”

“We’ve had our murder in Pottawattamie,” Jason Bailey said. “It’s not presently a popular sport.”

“Bear with me,” Cooney said, pacing again, one finger held alongside his nose. “We have a voyeur in the billboards, a fellow spying on our innocent amusements through guilty opera glasses — or even, as Mr. Ferguson suggests, through the viewfinder of an unauthorized camera. So? So we give him a real show, a plot to shake him more deeply than even the sight of our lovely Tina, here, or Anne, or Frances, or my Mary’s maturer charms. We commit a murder for him to see and report.”

Jason Bailey leaned back on his elbows, laughing. “A murder? Who’s going to volunteer to get himself killed?”

“I will,” Frank Ferguson said. “Perhaps a clean-living young architect like you never heard of the old badger game, Jason. Here’s how it works. You come storming up to me aiming a pistol loaded with blanks, waving it and threatening to blow my head off. I back up, protesting innocence. You draw a bead and fire. I slap a handful of ketchup, held ready for that purpose, to my chest. Ka-pow! Splat! Argh! I stumble backwards, gory with tomato sauce, and fall lifeless to the sand.”

“You’ve been reading our comic books, Dad,” Junior Ferguson said.

Jason Bailey stood up and bored a toe into the sand. “You teach psychology, Professor Cooney, but I think you’re wrong if you think Mr. Peeper will be persuaded to run to the cops. He’d just run. At most, he’d phone in an anonymous tip. Why should a man admit to the Pottawattomie police that he’s been sneaking telescopic peeks at our pretty girls in their birthday suits?”

“Because of Mr. King’s murder,” Amos Cooney said. “Mr. Peeper, filled for the moment with a citizen’s urge to improve the public peace — and morals — will be driven toward us, not away.”

“We’ve got to try something,” Tina Toffler said. “Maybe the Spice Pond Swimming Club is everything it says on our membership form — The Midwest’s Oldest, Newest Nature Camp; but to outsiders, nudism means revels, Roman orgies, and wickedness. We’ve got to preserve our privacy or we’ll lose our Club.”

“My goodness,” Anne Anders said. “If I knew that photographs of me were being passed around in Pottawattomie bars and locker rooms, I’d just die! I really would. I’d have to leave home. My family would never understand — especially Daddy. I could talk till I was blue in the face about the philosophical, psychological, and physiological values of sun culture, the way Professor Cooney does, but Daddy would just blush and disown me.”

“What we should do,” Jason Bailey announced, lending his statement all the authority of his jutting chin and beard, “is to sneak up to that billboard, grab hold of Mr. Peeper, and bust him one in the mouth. Professor Cooney, you’re the Club’s president and a teacher, but you just don’t know how to handle sneaky characters.”

“I prefer,” Amos Cooney said, “finesse to fist-in-the-face.”

“Prof, the cops are busy,” Jason went on. “They’re trying to get a lead on those two guys in Lone Ranger masks who shot Mr. King. Now, do you think they’ll be amused when they come howling up here to catch another murderer and we tell ’em it was all a charade planned to trap a Peeping Tom? Just you see. They’ll order us all into ankle-length Mother Hubbards.”

“Don’t be stubborn, Jason,” Frances Ferguson said. “It can’t do any harm for you to ‘murder’ Frank, and it might solve our problem.”

“I’ll get the ketchup, Dad,” Frank Junior volunteered. He raced toward the kitchen door of the Spice Pond clubhouse, leaping across the canvas-covered rotisserie en route.

“Who’s got a gun?” Amos Cooney inquired.

“The twins’ cowboy outfits are in the back seat of our station wagon,” Frances Ferguson said.

“Do they go Bang?” Anne Anders asked.

“They go bang and they smoke and look lethal enough to concern the U.S. Disarmament Commission,” Mrs. Ferguson assured the girl. “For seven-ninety-eight, plus tax, they’d better show some action.”

Young Frank trotted back to the pond with a squeeze bottle of ketchup concealed from the Peeper in a folded dishtowel. “That’s fine,” his father said. “Now we’ll have to make certain our watcher is on post up in his billboard.”

Amos Cooney gazed over his spectacles at the three younger women. “Ladies, if you’ll saunter toward the clubhouse like pedestrian Ladies Godiva, I’m sure you’ll catch our voyeur’s eye. Frank, keep a careful watch out toward the highway. Don’t look directly at Mr. Peeper — we don’t want to frighten him off.”

Anne Anders sat quite still, her knees hunched up to her chin. “I don’t think I can do it,” she said. “Being spied on makes my flesh creep. If Mr. Peeper is so interested in naturism, why doesn’t he just join the Spice Pond Swimming Club? There’s plenty of sun for one more member.”

“Think, Miss Anders, think!” Professor Cooney said. “A person must demonstrate excellent moral character to become a member of our little society. Correct? Mr. Peeper is not a person of good moral character. Therefore, he must spy on us, condemned forever to be an outsider, a looker-in upon our gentle revels. Until—” he pinched off his spectacles and wagged them at her — “until we bring him in here and prove the wholesomeness of the nudist way, of the sunlit path to health.”

Jason Bailey grunted, still unconvinced. “I’d a lot rather ease up through the woods as I said, catch the guy, and make him eat his camera or telescope or whatever. He could put your ketchup on ’em, Frank.”

Tina Toffler tapped her sunglasses down into place on her nose. “Here we go,” she said, grabbing the reluctant Anne Anders’ arm. “Frances, give Frank the baby.” The three women walked toward the clubhouse, as tense as though children were following them with snowballs.

“He’s there!” young Frank whispered. “I saw something move — and a glint of light.”

“Good,” Professor Cooney said. He rubbed his hands together. “Thus the white mouse enters our maze.”

“Amos,” Mary Cooney observed, taking scissors to the two balls of yarn and ending her birthday scarf at last, “sometimes you act all of ten years old.”

“Practical psychology, my dear, is my passion,” the Professor said. “Mr. Bailey, if you’ll get one of those toy pistols from the Ferguson automobile, we’ll hit the boards with our little farce.”

Frank Ferguson, preparing his prop, squirted a handful of ketchup into his right palm.

“Understand,” Jason Bailey said, “I’m playing this role under protest. If your amateur theatricals turn out to be a turkey, don’t blame the man who’s playing the heavy.” He got up and walked around the canvas-covered rotisserie — a plastic bubble in which one could sunbathe in the coldest weather — toward the parking lot.

“I suggest we adjourn to the infants’ wading pool, up the hill,” Amos Cooney said. “It will serve as a stage easily visible from Mr. Peeper’s billboard balcony.”

“Theater in the round is all the rage nowadays,” Frank Ferguson remarked. He looked down into his ketchup-filled hand. “However our audience reacts,” he said, “I’m a cinch to be hit with tomato.”

“Everybody be casual,” Cooney cautioned his amateur troupe. “If the other Club members, over on the volleyball court and in the pond, don’t realize what’s going on, they’ll act even more realistically. Frank, you be especially careful not to smile.”

“I’m a Method Actor,” the victim designate said. “I’m thinking of all the things in my past that should have got me shot, and didn’t. The thought will keep me properly grim.” They walked up beside the wading pool. “Here comes my nemesis,” Ferguson said.

Approaching the water-filled rubber doughnut in which the Club’s babies dunked were Tina Toffler and Jason Bailey. Chasing Bailey was Tommy Ferguson, the right-handed twin, screaming that the red-bearded man had stolen his pistol. Pure ham all the way, Bailey held the toy gun down his right side, his face screwed up in an expression of insane anger. “One of us,” he shouted, stepping over four-year-old Linda Walters, who was up to her navel in mudpies, “has got to go!”

“No, Jason!” Tina screamed, seizing his gun hand.

“It’s too late now to stop me,” Bailey yelled. He lifted the gun. “Take that, Ferguson, you rat!”

The toy gun behaved with all the vigor that the television advertisements of it had promised. Crash! Twang-whee! Smoke curled out of the muzzle. Little Tommy danced around Bailey’s knees, crying that he wanted his gun back.

Frank Ferguson slapped his right, or ketchup, hand to his chest, leaped into the air, landed to reel about on one heel, his head back and his arms spread, then fell backward into the wading pool, narrowly missing young Miss Walters, who was washing off her mud shovel.

“Help!” Professor Cooney shouted. “Frank has been shot!”

Bill Walters, one of the nudists not in on the plot, ran up to grab Jason Bailey around the throat and shake him till the gun dropped to the ground. “You trying to give nudism a bad name?” he demanded.

“It’s just a toy, Bill, but don’t let on,” Bailey said.

“What are you nuts up to, Jason?” Walters asked.

“Trot me into the clubhouse, under the gun,” Bailey instructed him. “I’ll explain everything inside.”

“The way everybody’s acting, somebody must have spiked the breakfast coffee,” Walters said. “Okay, Bailey. March. Don’t try any tricks, or I’ll blow a hole right through your picture tube.”

His hands held high, Bailey allowed himself to be herded into the clubhouse, out of Mr. Peeper’s sight. “It’s always the man with the beard who’s cast as the villain,” he grumbled.

Frank Ferguson lay in the wading pool, only his knees visible over the rubber wall. Linda Walters peered down at him. “Big people supposed to swim in the pond,” she pointed out.

“Go away, Linda,” Ferguson muttered.

“All right.” The youngster waddled off to retrieve her bucket, then hurried into the clubhouse to catch the rest of the show.

Frank Junior trotted out with a chair on his head. “Help me, Professor Cooney,” he shouted. Together, the director of the play and young Ferguson lifted the temporary corpse onto the chair and bore it between them like a palanquin, dripping ketchup, into the clubhouse’s kitchen door.

Ferguson washed off the rest of the ketchup at the sink. “Now we’ve got to wait, sweating out the reviews,” he said.

“We wait,” Cooney agreed. He walked over to the stove, lifted the lid from a bubbling kettle, and sniffed. “Fortunately, it is nearly lunchtime, as this splendid-smelling pepperpot soup the ladies have prepared reminds me,” he said. His spectacles steamed up, so the Professor stepped back from the stove.

“It doesn’t seem right, our feeding our faces while poor Frank Ferguson’s body’s growing cold,” Tina Toffler remarked, placing a plate on the table before the corpse.

“Don’t write me off before I’ve had a second helping,” Ferguson said. “Dying is hard work. Please pass the coffee.”

A telephone jangled out on the sundeck. “The gate phone!” Cooney exulted, jumping to his feet. He’d been trying on the orange-and-black scarf for size. One end nearly tripped him as he ran to grab the phone off its cradle. “Yes?” The answer caused Cooney to muffle the mouthpiece with the tail of his scarf. “It worked!” he shouted. “This is Sergeant Rolfe calling, of the Pottawattomie Police. He wants to come in.”

“So push the gate button, Professor,” Jason Bailey suggested.

“Of course.” Cooney leaned on the button, then spoke into the phone. “Open the gate while the buzzer’s sounding, Sergeant, and please remember to close it after you.”

Frank Ferguson pushed back his plate, gulped a mouthful of coffee, and stood up. “Visitors coming!” he shouted. “Everybody get into formal dress.”

“Darn,” said one of the teen-aged boys, shoveling a last forkful into his mouth. “Ever’thin’ will get cold.” He ran with the others to the men’s locker room to put on swim trunks. The girls and women scampered to their lockers on the far side of the sundeck, to return adjusting shorts and halters that could pass muster on the most conservative public beach.

Sergeant Rolfe, tall and lean as a Texan’s notion of a Texan, stopped his sand-colored police sedan before the clubhouse. He got out to gaze around the playground above Spice Pond. Professor Cooney, wearing the ragged khaki trunks that had seen scant service during his sixty years in the naturist movement, trotted out to greet the policeman.

“Welcome to the Spice Pond Swimming Club, Sergeant,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Amos Cooney.”

“Of course you are, Professor,” Sergeant Rolfe said, shaking the old man’s hand. “I took your course in Abnormal Psychology three years ago.”

“I remember, Edward,” the Professor said. “You made good grades, too.”

“Perhaps abnormal psychology might help me understand the events of a few minutes ago,” Rolfe suggested, following Cooney into the clubhouse. “Where is the man who was so unconvincingly shot to death?”

“Up and about, able to take nourishment,” Frank Ferguson said. He introduced himself to Rolfe, then demanded, “What do you mean, so unconvincingly?”

“A man who’s been shot dead seldom leaps in an entrechat, twirls like a drunken dervish, and goes down cutting didoes like a cat on hot bricks,” the sergeant said. “In my experience, such a victim says ‘Oof!’ and collapses.”

“Perhaps I overacted a bit,” Ferguson admitted reluctantly. “I’ll bear your criticism in mind for our next production.”

“If you’d care to take lunch with us, Sergeant, I’ll explain what your informant saw, and ask a favor of you,” Amos Cooney said.

“Coffee would be welcome,” Rolfe agreed. He walked into the dining hall and allowed himself to be introduced to the few members of the Spice Pond Swimming Club he didn’t already know. Then he sat down and cuddled his hands around a coffee cup to hear Professor Cooney’s story.

“You see,” Amos Cooney began, “we’ve been bothered by a trespasser.”

“A fellow about five-feet-three, wearing highlaced boots, light brown trousers, a faded blue jacket, and a red cap,” Sergeant Rolfe specified. “Right?”

“And a face like a fist,” Tina Toffler added, speaking across the table.

“That’s my man,” Rolfe said.

“You’ve seen him?” Frank Ferguson demanded.

“Not since early this morning,” the policeman said. He savored the coffee. “What was your little demonstration out by the wading pool supposed to accomplish, Professor?”

“I told them it was silly,” Jason Bailey said.

“Our efforts have borne fruit,” Professor Cooney pointed out. “Our purpose, Edward my boy, was to motivate Mr. Peeper — the fellow in the red cap, who scurried from the camp only to perch in the billboards with binoculars — to motivate him to call the police. When you got here, Sergeant, we intended to inquire of you who had reported the supposed murder. Knowing who Mr. Peeper was, we could then persuade him to respect our privacy. I fully expected your witness to come with you, Edward.”

“You haven’t seen him?”

“I saw him about six o’clock this morning,” Tina Toffler said. “He was standing by the entrance road. When he saw me, he ran and hid.”

“His name,” Rolfe said, “is Boots MacClure. Last night he told a bartender that he had a fortune at his fingertips. The bartender told me. Bearing in mind Mr. MacClure’s arrest record, I determined to follow him to his fortune. It seemed possible that he was one of the two masked gunmen who shot Mr. King at the PennyWise Supermarket last week, and made off with forty thousand dollars. I trailed MacClure here to the camp, early this morning. He came in and he hasn’t left. Professor Cooney, with your permission, I’ll inspect the grounds. MacClure is here somewhere.”

“I’ll come along,” Jason Bailey volunteered. “In case you find the man, you may need help.”

“Glad to have you, Mr. Bailey,” Sergeant Rolfe said.

The touring policeman viewed the kids’ wading pool, went down to Spice Pond to stare into the clear water that might be hiding the wanted man’s body, walked north to the gulch where the railroad bounded the camp, and searched through the woods by the highway.

“No sign of him,” Jason Bailey said. “He probably sneaked out.”

“I think not,” the sergeant said. “Let’s look in the toolshed, and then explore your clubhouse. Boots MacClure is here, I’m certain.”

MacClure didn’t seem to be. He wasn’t hiding in the coffin-sized box where the camp’s croquet equipment was stored, or crouched by the garbage disposal unit under the sink, nor did MacClure occupy the narrow crawl space under the clubhouse. Rolfe finally stopped beside the rotisserie, covered through the spring and summer with its sheath of canvas.

“It’s the rotisserie — a plastic hood,” Amos Cooney explained. “Some of our members, wishing to retain their tans through the winter, bask in there, snug as toast.”

“It’s the only place we haven’t searched,” Rolfe said. He tugged at the tie ropes and peeled the canvas back from the plastic bubble.

Inside, lying on his face, was Mr. Boots MacClure. The camp’s best Swedish-steel carving knife protruded from his ribs.

“Keep the kids away,” Sergeant Rolfe said. He knelt to peer through the plastic. “Every minute my hunch looks righter,” he murmured. “MacClure was one of the two PennyWise thieves, he came up here to meet his partner, and possibly to collect his half of the loot. King’s death had made MacClure nervous — he wanted to get paid off so he could cut out.”

“So he got paid off and cut up,” Jason Bailey said. He stroked his beard with a thoughtful air. “Sergeant, do you think the robbery money is up here at Spice Pond?”

“I’d be surprised if it weren’t,” the policeman said. He tugged the canvas back over the rotisserie, concealing the corpse till the coroner could see it. “Let’s go inside. I’ve got to make some phone calls.”

“What a horrible thing to happen,” Amos Cooney said. “It’s a shame one of us didn’t find MacClure before he was killed.”

“One of you did,” Rolfe said. He’d phoned into town for an ambulance, the Pottawattomie Police photographer, and the coroner. “May I have some more coffee?”

“Of course,” Anne Anders said. “Too bad that liquor isn’t allowed here. Something stronger than coffee might be a comfort.”

“It’s too bad that murder isn’t also off-limits here,” Jason Bailey said. He sat down between the policeman and Amos Cooney and pushed his empty cup forward for a refill. “Who do you think did it? Who was MacClure’s partner, the person who killed him?”

“Can’t say yet,” Rolfe admitted. “The only description we have is that both men wore those oval masks over their eyes—”

“—called dominoes,” Professor Cooney insisted. “Originally the word came from the Latin dominus, or master — a fascinating etymology—”

“Amos,” Mary Cooney cautioned. “You’re being professorial at a very awkward moment.”

“An eye mask,” Sergeant Rolfe said, persisting in his error. “Why not a handkerchief over the nose and mouth?” Anne Anders filled his cup with hot coffee. “Thank you,” the policeman said.

Reaching for his cup, Rolfe bumped it with the back of his hand, slopping the steaming fluid onto the table in front of Jason Bailey who leaped up to keep from being burned. As he rose, Sergeant Rolfe plucked Bailey’s red beard. The policeman was holding the triangle of false hair by the time Jason Bailey got’ to his feet, barefaced.

Rolfe unfolded from the table and eased his pistol around toward Bailey’s middle. “A domino, as the Professor calls that sort of mask, leaves the chin bare,” he observed. “You shaved for the robbery, having prepared a false mustache and beard to glue on afterwards. Both thieves were bare-faced — therefore, bearded and mustached Jason Bailey would never even be suspected.”

The false hair now lay on the table beside Rolfe’s spilled coffee. “There’s no money here,” Jason Bailey said. Where the spirit gum had pulled free from his chin and upper lip, the skin was red and fuzzy. “MacClure was knifed by another trespasser.”

“I propose,” Amos Cooney said, “once the unfortunate Boots MacClure has been removed, to dig into the ground beneath the rotisserie. The man who hid a corpse there might have used the same safe-deposit box before.”

“You haven’t got a thing against me, Sergeant,” Jason Bailey went on, his voice shaking slightly. “Wearing a false beard is no felony.”

“The same Peeping Tom who so embarrassed Miss Toffler saw Boots MacClure run through the kitchen door,” Rolfe said. “He also saw Professor Cooney take off up the road, and another man, Jason Bailey, go into the clubhouse after MacClure. The Peeping Tom’s testimony will convict you, Bailey.”

Anne Anders was blushing again. “It was you up there in that catbird seat, wasn’t it, Sergeant Rolfe? Not MacClure? My goodness! Watching us run around in no more than a coat of tan—”

The policeman smiled. “My mind was on my work, Miss Anders,” he said. “I’ll admit, however, that I’ve never had a more delightful stakeout.”