Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

The Alibi by “Pat Hand”

“Pat Hand” wrote your Editor that pending the birth of another Careful Jones exploit, he had dashed off a short-short about twenty cents’ worth of cannel coal and how it played a strange role in a murder case. Here is a peep into Bagdad-on-the-Hudson’s eternal “human comedy” — Second Ave. vs. Park Ave., with Nick Sforzak carrying on the O. Henry tradition.

His name was Nick Sforzak and he did business in a twelve-by-twelve cellar under the least appetizing looking butcher shop in all Manhattan. Nick’s line was coal, firewood and ice, purveyed in small quantities and at a minute profit. He was short and chunky and the expression on his face made one think of a lost dog.

His favorite customer was Miss Martie Allen, who was young and redheaded and pretty but who, in spite of these desirable assets, was finding it hard to make a place for herself in show business. She did not hold this spot in his esteem because her business was profitable to him. Her purchases, in fact, were always small and more often than not had to be put on the cuff. It was because she was usually at home when Nick made his deliveries, being at liberty so much, and was always ready to talk to him as though he were really a human being. She called him Keed and would ask him if he thought Shicklegruber could keep the lid on much longer. She would say things like: “Keed, I’m going to set you up in business with a shop and a truck of your own when He crashes through with a platinum circlet, which ought to be any day now,” or “Lissen, if he doesn’t get down to cases soon, you and I will run away and set ourselves up in business together in Philly or Dog Lake, Kan., or some such place.”

Nick always went away chuckling. It helped a lot, for most of his customers were like Mr. Cyrus Hubbard Cleve in the next block. Mr. Cleve had been a small executive once in a large corporation and he kept saying that if the Mayor would forget about blackouts and establish compulsory municipal baths for coal merchants, it would be a better thing for the city.

One morning Nick delivered a small order of cannel coal to Martie Allen and saw that her eyes were redder even than her hair. Her one room, without bath, was littered with newspapers telling about the murder the night before of Ramsay Hames III in his Park Avenue apartment. Ramsay Hames III, she explained, had been he and it was certain his intentions could never have been honest, for the papers made it clear he had been putting his chips down on a lot of numbers. One of them had rewarded his failure to produce a platinum circlet by shooting him through the head.

“He had me kidded to the ears, Nick,” she said, with a gulp. “I don’t think life’s so hot, do you?”

She had been at liberty a much longer time than usual, but she insisted on paying him from a purse containing three one-dollar bills and eighty cents in silver. He went away feeling very sorry for her.

Two days later he felt still more sorry for her. Her name had been dragged into the case. The day after that he felt very sorry for her indeed. Detectives had taken Martie Allen away in a taxi and had booked her on a charge of murder.

Nick did not read Manhattanese very well, but he worked through the newspapers with two bulging eyes and a dirty thumb, and his heart nearly stopped with fright when he found what a strong case the police had on Martie Allen. It seemed she had visited Ramsay Hames III on the evening of the murder and had taken part in an argument which had disturbed the people in the next apartment. She claimed she had left by eight-thirty, which would have made everything all right, the doctors having fixed the time of the killing at nine-thirty or shortly thereafter. Unfortunately she could not remember what she did on leaving, except that she went home, and the doorman of Hames’s Park Avenue apartment-house was sure it was nine-thirty when she left. As no — other clues had been found, it looked very bad even to Nick.

Nick did a lot of worrying about her. He also worried about his business which seemed to be falling off some. It could not fall off much, being so small to begin with. A week or so after Martie’s arrest he met Mr. Cyrus Hubbard Cleve on the street and stopped him to ask why he had not been receiving any more orders.

“Sforzak,” said Mr. Cleve, frowning in his minor executive manner, “the last business I put your way was a rush order for kindling wood. I did not get it until noon the next day. That’s why I am no longer a customer of yours.”

Nick prided himself on being prompt and businesslike in his dealings. He checked over his records to find why he had been slow in delivering the last Cleve order. It took a lot of thumbing of sheets to arrive at the reason. He had gone first, he found, to Martie Allen’s apartment and had learned there about the murder, after which he had been so disturbed over the blighting of her romance he had bought a paper of his own and had read it through. This had made him late in his deliveries. He was wondering how he could square himself with Mr. Cleve when his eye happened to go back to the sheet containing the order.

Twenty minutes later the district police station was disrupted by the entrance of a highly excited Nick with Mr. Cyrus Hubbard Cleve in tow. Mr. Cleve, collarless and in carpet slippers, did not seem to know what it was all about.

“She’s not guilty, Mr. Officer, she’s not guilty!” Nick kept repeating. He was waving a dirty sheet of foolscap in the air.

“Lissen,” said the sergeant, shoving him back from the desk. “Who’s not guilty? And who in hell are you?”

“I am Nick Sforzak, merchant, Second Avenue. Mr. Officer, see, I have system. I keep sheets at door so customers can write down orders when I’m not there. Mr. Cleve, who is prominent citizen, will swear he write his order down at quarter to nine.”

“So what?” demanded the law impatiently.

“So this, Mr. Officer. It was night of Mr. Hames’s murder. Officer, please, I close always nine o’clock sharp. I swear to that. So order after Mr. Cleve’s was written on sheet between quarter to nine and nine sharp. Can be no mistake. Here, see, plain as day.”

The sergeant, beginning to feel that he might have his hands on something after all, took the sheet and studied the last two entries. He read first what the retired executive had written in his neat Spencerian hand:

The entry beneath was in a large and sprawling hand: