Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #097v018 (1951-12)

His first bow by J. W. Wells

“His First Bow” by J. W. Wells (“a dealer in magic and spells”) is one of the seven “first stories” which won special awards in EQMM’s Sixth Annual Contest. It is a quiet, persuasive story, written by a true aficionado — a devotee of detective fiction in general and of Sherlock Holmes in particular. It introduces Adam Lake, a bibliophilic bloodhound, about whom, we are confident, you will hear more in the future... The author did his undergraduate work at Harvard, majoring in English literature, but writing only the usual sort of college themes. Perhaps the keenest creative stimulation the author experienced came from a single semester’s course m writing which he look under Kenneth Payson Kemp-ton. Thereafter, “Mr. Wells” went into graduate studies in theology and philosophy. He is now an Episcopal minister, teaching in a theological seminary, is married and has three children. His favorite “interruptions” (to use his own word) arc bibliographical research and planning a cabin for his family on an island in a lake in Wisconsin.

“Mr. Wells” calls our attention to a curious reverse-parallel. He reminds us that Dorothy L. Sayers began with detective fiction and proceeded to theology. Will “Mr. Wells” continue to pursue the opposite course?

You will have noticed that except for the first reference we have always put the author’s name in quotes. “J. W. Wells” is obviously a pseudonym. Since the author writes an occasional article or sermon, he can be said to have a professional writing identity in the field of theology. Hence, his desire to have his fiction appear under a pen-name. Not that, “Mr. Wells” hastens to assure us, he is even remotely ashamed to be associated with detective stories; quite the contrary — most of his colleagues read ’tecs and would, “Mr. Wells” is sure, admire him more for a rattling good mystery yarn than for the most learned treatise in a technical journal.

So be it.

Miss Tilley, the assistant cataloguer, came quickly across to Adam Lake’s desk and spoke rather hurriedly. Her words were clipped.

“There’s a policeman to see you,” she said.

Miss Tilley was not pretty, and in Adam’s opinion not very bright either, but she wore beautiful clothes. Her blue dress matched perfectly the deep blue of the illuminated capitals on the manuscript that lay before him.

“You don’t say. Send him in, please. I suppose he’s in a hurry, if he’s a policeman.” Cobalt blue, cerulean, lapis lazuli. Policeman blue; the men in blue. Thin blue line. No, that was red.

Adam looked up from his musings and saw that his visitor was standing before him. Not a tall man, and not in uniform, blue or otherwise. Rather a professional-looking man, in a brown tweed suit that fitted his plumpness well. He looked across Adam’s littered desk with a round, expressionless face, and Adam noted that his eyes were a clear blue — too light, however, for cobalt; rather more like a calamine blue.

The eyes stared at Adam with some-thing like astonishment, and Adam returned to earth.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Sorry to keep you standing there. Do sit down. I’m getting absent-minded. Comes from being called on by professors. We don’t have the police here every day. Quite a surprise. I didn’t know the police ever needed a library.”

He pulled over one of the broad colonial chairs with the Courtney shield stenciled on the back and straightened up to find himself looking into a small leather case in the policeman’s outstretched hand. He took it and examined it with interest, while its owner settled himself in the chair.

“Good clear type,” said Adam, examining the case with professional interest. “Nicely set up. Lieutenant Charles Ames. Not a good picture of you, Lieutenant. Let’s see, who got this up: there it is, Connelly. Well, I suppose it’s not meant to be a work of art.” He handed the case back, and came back to his chair. “Now, here, Lieutenant, is some good printing. Just look at this. Now what would you say, was this done by hand, or is it printed?” He carefully lifted the small piece of vellum from his desk and held it out for Lieutenant Ames to see and admire.

“Well, now,” said the lieutenant, speaking hurriedly, “I guess I’d better leave the books to you, Mr. Lake. Mr. Stanton, the District Attorney, sent me down to see you. Said you could offer some expert assistance to the Department on a case we’re working on.”

“Stanton. Of course, I remember Stanton. Haven’t seen him since college days. Saw in the Alumni Bulletin that he is District Attorney. I’m surprised that he remembered me.”

“I guess he reads the same paper, Mr. Lake. He said you were the man to see. What the Director of the Courtney Library doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing, he said.”

“Happy to serve,” said Adam. “No, I’ll make it stronger than that. I’d be delighted to see the police at work. We always say, you know, that our work here in the library is important, and yet we are probably just a little secluded here.”

“Well, now,” said the lieutenant, “there’s nothing official in this. Just a little advice, you know.” He paused, and Adam had time to feel the difference between being official and not being official.

“This ease has to do with a bookseller,” the lieutenant continued. “He was killed last night in his store. His name was Mark Willoughby. Did you know him, by any chance?”

“Mark Willoughby. The name is certainly familiar. Perhaps I’ve seen his catalogues. What was the store called?”

“Nothing unusual. Just ‘Willoughby’s Books.’ The store is on 75th, just off the Avenue. Only the best books, like rare books and expensive bindings. Willoughby was found there this morning by his assistant, a girl named Clark. Now the murder we can take care of ourselves, but there’s also a matter that has to do with a book — one book in particular, maybe more. And we’ll run into the people who deal with books — wealthy customers and collectors. That’s what we want you for. I want you along to look around, and listen in, and watch for things we wouldn’t notice.”

“Fine,” said Adam. “I’ll keep my eyes open, and my cars as well.”

“Then that’s settled.” The lieutenant stood up. “I’m afraid we’ll have to start at once, if it’s convenient.” His voice seemed to suggest that it would, without question, be convenient. Adam put a paperweight on a pile of notes and stood up, resolutely setting the problem of the manuscript aside. The large ornamented letter on the page stared at him like a reproachful eye.

They went out of the office together and passed Miss Tilley’s desk. She looked up at Adam and her face told him that the Tilley mind had achieved a theory: Mr. Lake was being taken away by that policeman. Adam was always ready to go along with a theory.

“Get word to my poor wife,” he said.

Miss Tilley was reaching for her telephone as they went on past, and Adam rather regretted that he could not stay to watch.

Adam Lake, as Miss Tilley well knew in her less troubled moments, was a bachelor.

Travel through the streets of New York by taxi can be slow enough to prevent marriages and push tired businessmen over the edge of sanity. Adam, however, rather liked the time it provided for thought and meditation. Travel through the streets of New York as arranged by Lieutenant Ames was designed to prevent murder and pursue criminals, and left little time for meditation. They arrived at the corner of 75th Street before Adam had quite accustomed himself to passing violently through red lights.

Willoughby’s Books was carefully noncommercial. Set back somewhat from the neighboring residences, it presented a neat window in a curved bay, now empty of exhibits, yet to Adam’s first glance decorative in a subdued way by reason of polished mahogany paneling. Discreet and even scholarly in normal times, it had now quite obviously passed into the public domain. Two radio cars were parked before its door; several patrolmen were in evidence; and the inevitable crowd of curious bystanders, looking not very innocent, were standing by.

Hoping that he looked like the expert witness in plainclothes that indeed he was, Adam followed Lieutenant Ames down the two steps to the door of the shop. Once inside, he looked about with interest, for this, murder or not, was the world of books, and, as such, his own. The shop consisted essentially of one long room. It might well have been the library of a large home, for the furnishings were limited to the books, shelved to the high ceiling, and an occasional leather chair, table and lamp, for comfortable browsing. Adam wondered why he had never heard of the place; surely no customer, whatever his mood, could resist either the deep chairs for prolonged dipping into items of the stock, or the tall ladder inviting explorations into upper and darker corners.

Lieutenant Ames, having walked steadily into the depths of the shop, now waited for Adam in front of a fireplace that divided the left-hand wall. The room was rather dark, but Adam, approaching, could see clearly the portrait that hung over the mantel, done of an elderly gentleman in the Sargent manner, with the subject’s head, sprouting mutton-chop whiskers, appearing rather yellow against a dark canvas. And standing beneath the portrait, somewhat behind Lieutenant Ames, was a girl.

She was young; about twenty, Adam judged. Dressed as she was in dark brown, she would have been almost invisible in that dark room that took its predominant tone from old bindings and rubbed mahogany — invisible, or at least unnoticed, were it not for the intense pallor of her face, startlingly white below dark hair. It was a Nineteenth-Century face, a Rosetti face, and Adam was reminded at once of a sheaf of proofs for a book at that very moment on his desk. And reminded of something else, for he was certain that he had seen her, or her picture, somewhere recently — and then realized with surprise that a strong family resemblance linked the portrait above the fireplace to the girl standing below it.

Lieutenant Ames, in his straightforward way, introduced Adam.

“Miss Clark,” he said, “this is Mr. Lake, who is assisting us in the investigation of Mr. Willoughby’s death.”

The girl nodded, and attempted a smile, and Adam saw that she was terrified; her hands were clenched together like fused metal.

“Miss Clark,” explained the lieutenant, “was Mr. Willoughby’s assistant. She was the one who found him this morning in his office. Now I think, Miss Clark, that it would be better for you to wait for us back there until I have shown Mr. Lake the store.”

The girl turned and walked off at once to the back of the room, opened a door there, and walked a little unsteadily on into the room where Mark Willoughby had been killed. It took, Adam supposed, a certain courage to do that, even now in the light of day, with the police at hand, and Adam revised his first opinion of the girl; she was probably of sterner stuff than the Nineteenth-Century heroines she resembled. But then, weren’t women deceptively weak in appearance, even the poisoners and axe murderesses?

Lieutenant Ames, to Adam’s gratification, now volunteered some information.

“She found him this morning, about eight-thirty. He wasn’t very pretty. He’d been hit on the back of the head and had fallen over his desk blotter, and the back of his head, his neck, his suit, and the floor, were one nice mess. She was able to use the desk telephone to call us, and then made it as far as the fireplace here before she passed out. She’s been in a daze ever since. We couldn’t get much out of her downtown.”

Here he paused and looked at Adam thoughtfully, and Adam could see that there was something else, something about the girl which the lieutenant hesitated to tell.

“She looks like old mutton-chops,” said Adam, finally, after enduring the silence as long as he could.

“Well,” said the lieutenant, “that’s reasonable. He’s her grandfather. Willoughby got most of the Clark collection of books. It gave him his start in the store, in fact. Clark’s son — the girl’s father, that is — sold the collection to Willoughby to keep himself in old brandy, and then died, leaving the girl without a cent — or any other relatives, for that matter. Willoughby took her in, gave her a job, and in general became a second father to her. All this about three years ago. Willoughby, by the way, is — or was — a bachelor. Age 55.”

“I don’t seem to remember Clark as a book collector. What subjects did he collect?”

“Well, now, perhaps you can tell from the store, here. Although I suppose most of the original collection has been sold. Not that it matters. It’s a more recent book that interests us, one he just bought.”

“And what was that?”

The lieutenant’s round face moved enough to permit a slight smile to appear.

“See if you can guess. You’re an expert. The book was having a fiftieth anniversary, and Willoughby was going to exhibit it. Pretty well-known book. At least, everybody’s heard of its hero.”

Adam felt that he must not let the world of letters down. What book would have been published fifty years ago — that would be, 1938 minus fifty — 1888? Gay nineties, almost. Horse cars. Gas lights.

He had it.

A page in a catalogue arose before his mind’s eye, and an article featured in Publishers’ Weekly.

“Sherlock Holmes!” he said. “The first book edition of the first Sherlock Holmes story — A Study in Scarlet!”

The lieutenant suddenly beamed; his smile spread wide with satisfaction and approval. Adam felt that he had passed his examinations and would receive his degree.

“Willoughby had just been able to buy a copy. He was going to exhibit it as a study in scarlet. This, by the way, is all information received from Miss Clark. He planned a scene, using his display window as a sort of stage, in which the book would be placed dead center on a large piece of green velvet. The book is kept in a leather case, and he had that bound in scarlet.”

“Rather noticeable, I should think.”

“That wasn’t all. He rigged up a red spotlight to flood the window with nothing but deep red light.”

“A study in scarlet — I see what you mean.”

“There were to be some other items in the window. On one side, a Sherlock Holmes cap and an old clay pipe. On the other side, near the door, a knife and a pistol. Here, I’ll show you.”

Lieutenant Ames led Adam to the front of the store and opened the small door at the end of the display window.

“The gun and the green velvet backdrop arc down at the lab. The gun was right here, beside the door. Anyone could reach in and pick it up. And someone did. Picked it up, struck Willoughby with it, and then put it back. It got blood on the velvet cloth.”

“And then he stole the book. It would be worth something, you know.”

“No. That’s an odd thing, but he didn’t take the book. In fact, nothing else was touched. I’ve got the book in Willoughby’s vault. I want you to look at it.”

“So robbery was not the motive?”

“No,” said Lieutenant Ames, thoughtfully staring into the empty window, “not robbery. Someone just wanted Willoughby dead, and saw his chance.”

“Pretty hard to trace him if he was a transient customer.”

“Well, we think it wasn’t a customer — at least, not simply a stranger dropping in. Miss Clark helped Willoughby arrange the exhibit last night, and left him here alone, with the shop closed. Closed and locked. He might have let in a stranger, but more likely, at that hour, someone he knew — it was sometime after ten, from what she said.”

Lieutenant Ames became silent again, and Adam let him take his time.

“Another thing,” the lieutenant said, suddenly. “The book might have done it.”

“Done it?” Adam felt confused.

“Attracted someone. Maybe a Sherlock Holmes fan. Mr. Stanton says they are a special group, almost fanatical. Well, that may be a crazy idea, but it’s an idea, and we try not to overlook any idea, however crazy. You can help us there. If the book is all right, all present and accounted for, then it probably wasn’t a Holmes fan.”

Adam rejected an attractive image of an avid Holmes fan, killing the proprietor to get a closer glimpse of a bibliographical treasure.

“No material clues,” he asked, “like fingerprints or cigar ashes? Or don’t the modern criminals approve of those sentimental things?”

“Nothing definite. Prints on the gun, very blurred. Probably both Willoughby’s and Miss Clark’s. The lab is working on it. Willoughby was killed by a series of light blows. It could have been a woman who did it.”

For some reason this brought home to Adam the tragic side of the affair. As an expert, poring over books, he could talk about murder with gusto, but here a man had been killed, and not a character in Chapter Two...

“I’d like to look at the book now,” he said.

Lieutenant Ames led the way to the office. Grandfather Clark’s eyes watched them as they walked past the fireplace, following them as the eyes of some pictures will, and his granddaughter’s eyes met Adam’s as they came in at the office door. Had she inherited, together with the old man’s features, his acquisitive greed, and a little of her father’s moral weakness?

Mark Willoughby’s office was not large. A vertical file, several chairs, and a desk filled it comfortably. One corner of the room was built as a vault, and before the door of this Lieutenant Ames hesitated briefly, and glanced at Miss Clark. Whatever he had on his mind, however, he apparently decided not to divulge.

When the lieutenant brought out the brilliant leather case, Adam took it eagerly over to the desk. Good leather work, done by a careful hand, and the color, although bright, was not in bad taste. He slid out the book itself, and whistled silently in absolute awe. It was a superb copy, with front and back wrappers intact — indeed, the most immaculate copy he had ever seen or heard of. He whistled again, this time aloud, and reported his findings enthusiastically to Lieutenant Ames.

“Then that’s settled. Now, in the vault are about fifty books, probably the most valuable of the stock. Better look them over. Mr. Stanton wanted a general idea of Willoughby’s business and interests. Then, of course, there’s the rest of the books out in the main room.”

At that moment they were interrupted. For what proved to be so momentous an interruption it began quietly enough. A patrolman put his head in at the office door.

“We have that Mr. Bellows here to see you. Lieutenant,” he said.

“Good.” Lieutenant Ames seemed pleased. He turned to Adam. “I want you to be in on this. Bellows is the man who sold Willoughby the Slier-lock Holmes book.” He nodded to the patrolman. “Send him in here.”

Miss Clark got up from the chair at the desk and stepped back against the wall.

“Miss Clark,” said the lieutenant, “just wait for us in the other room, if you please.”

There was no time. A small man, dressed in formal morning attire, and carrying a cane, gloves, and a black Homburg in a hand that shook slightly, stood in the doorway.

Mr. Bellows was not only small, he was delicate and dainty. His little face was precisely divided by a rather thin nose, and his pale eyes were watery. A mass of white hair, waved by more than nature if Adam was any judge, and bushy white eyebrows, added a touch of drama, or perhaps of melodrama, to his appearance.

Mr. Bellows paused.

“Come in, Mr. Bellows,” said the lieutenant.

But Mr. Bellows, framed in the doorway as by a proscenium arch, had too good a sense of theatre to leave the center of the stage.

“How excellent!” he exclaimed, sweeping hat, gloves, and slick in a gesture that nearly took Adam in the pit of the stomach. “How fine! The stern voice of duty pulling at the oar of justice, tipping the scales through storm and sleet! The Law! Gentlemen, I give you The Law! Why, sir,” he declaimed, swinging around to include in his audience a gaping patrolman, “without these denizens of the constabulary, alert from dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn, what would our poor lives be?” He leaned forward, and prodded Adam carefully in the chest. “Dead where we stand, sir, dead where we stand.”

He stepped into the room, and a look of poorly simulated solemnity came over his face. His back to the vault, he stared down at the desk.

“Like poor Mark,” he said. “Like poor Mark.”

Fascinated though he was by Mr. Bellows, Adam saw out of the corner of his eye the uniformed patrolman enter the room, close the door, and stand with his back against it. And with that simple action something of the atmosphere of the music hall was dispelled, and the plain, paneled walls of the office again enclosed a place where death had been real. Even Mr. Bellows became silent, and Miss Clark in her corner stood rigid, her eyes closed, while the lieutenant waited, and everything seemed to wait for him.

“Now, Mr. Bellows,” said the lieutenant, finally, “may we ask you a question or two about Mr. Willoughby?”

“A question or two? A hundred.” Mr. Bellows placed his hat upside down on the desk, dropped his gloves into it, and leaned elegantly on his cane.

“You sold Mr. Willoughby a first edition of A Study in Scarlet?”

Mr. Bellows bowed.

“When was this?”

“I brought it to him yesterday, just before the noon hour.”

“And where did you get it, Mr. Bellows?”

Mr. Bellows opened his eyes very wide.

“But, sir,” he protested, “such a question! It is not done. Not done at all. Oh, no, no, no!”

To Adam’s surprise, Lieutenant Ames turned an inquiring eye in his direction, and this Adam took to be an opportunity for the expert to come forward.

“You were acting as an agent for someone who wishes to remain anonymous?” he asked.

“Quite so,” said Mr. Bellows, with a delighted smile, appearing to notice Adam for the first time.

“But you gave it to Mr. Willoughby yourself,” added the lieutenant.

“With my own hands.” A startled look came over Mr. Bellows’ face. “Don’t tell me it is gone! Stolen! The criminal who killed poor Mark has... He paused; the lieutenant was slowly shaking his head.

“It is here, Mr. Bellows. Can you identify this?” The lieutenant picked up the scarlet case from the desk and slipped out the book itself.

If Mr. Bellows had seemed theatrical before, he now presented a full circus of attitudes at the sight of the first book edition of the first story about Sherlock Holmes. He represented devotion, ecstasy, and a discreet amount of covetousness, in that order.

“That,” said Mr. Bellows, “is The Book.”

“Good.” The lieutenant replaced the book in its case. “And what were your relations with Mr. Willoughby?”

“We had been — friends — for years.” As he hesitated over the word, Mr. Bellows seemed to Adam to change costumes, becoming the man of precision, the careful historian. “He had purchased many volumes from me. We were, in truth, rival collectors. Yes, you may say,” he continued, rubbing his chin with the ivory handle of his cane, “that we were fellow searchers down the byways of the world of books, pausing at the same springs of learning...”

“Now, about yesterday,” interposed the lieutenant, his round face turning slightly pink. “You brought the book here. You gave it to Mr. Willoughby personally. Everything was as usual.”

Mr. Bellows greeted each statement with a dignified bow.

“Mr. Willoughby then put the book in his vault?”

“Not at all. He met me at the front of the store and we came here, to the office. There, on the desk, we unwrapped it and looked at it together for a moment, savoring its rich, ah, significance.” Adam could tell how close he had come to calling it “flavor.”

“And then he put it in the display window?”

“Not while I was here. The window was not fully prepared. So I left him with it in his hands, and went my ways.”

“And what were your ways for the rest of the clay, Mr. Bellows?” Mr. Bellows raised his white eyebrows and smiled.

“The alibi, of course,” he said, and laughed silently. “Now I can tell you with some accuracy. In general, of course. I had lunch alone. After lunch I went to the Parke-Bernet Galleries for the Humphry sale, for the afternoon. Then, home to dress, and dinner with the Sellingtons. They’re at the Plaza. And so to bed.”

“That would be about what time?”

“Time? I have a poor sense of time. Living as I do among my books I fear I have a wretched awareness of the passing hour. Sometime between ten and eleven, I should think.”

“Did Mr. Willoughby tell you anything that you think would be of help to us? About the book, perhaps, or his plans for it?”

“Not a thing. Except, of course, that it would be set on velvet, alone, like a precious jewel, a ruby gleaming against the black of the cloth, with a light directing upon it the color of blood.”

“And no one was about at the time who aroused your interest or suspicion?”

And now Mr. Bellows’ mannerisms seemed to fall away, and for a few seconds a perfectly sincere feeling showed on his face, and it was not pleasant.

“Yes,” he said, his voice harsh, “there was someone. Someone who knew Mr. Willoughby rather too well. Someone who had a hand in his affairs, who wanted to ruin him, who hated him. Someone who answered the telephone at this desk late last night when I called Mark from my home.”

Mr. Bellows swung his cane up in a slow are and leveled it at the stiff figure of Miss Clark.

“Ask her your questions, constable,” he said, his voice rising. “Ask her what she knows about the death of Mark Willoughby last night!”

He held the cane in mid-air, and the little group transfixed. Adam did not dare to look, and could not help but look, at Miss Clark. He could not tell what thoughts might be moving in that motionless head, behind her pale and classic features, now like cold marble.

Miss Clark, her back literally against the wall, gave a deep sigh and looked full at the lieutenant.

“I wondered when he would get to that,” she said, in a shaking voice.

Lieutenant Ames, who had been staring at Mr. Bellows with angry astonishment in every feature, now turned to the girl.

“Just a minute,” he said. He turned back to Mr. Bellows. “You phoned here last night? At what time?”

Mr. Bellows lifted his shoulders.

“Time? As I have said, time means so little to me. Nearly eleven, I suppose. Yes, quite late.”

“And why did you phone?”

“I wanted to ask Mark about the window. I must confess that the whole idea intrigued me. I wondered how it looked at night, with the spotlight bringing out the full brilliance of the blood-red ease. A perfect symbol, a perfect setting for the mood of the book.”

“And Miss Clark answered the phone?”

“Yes. I never spoke to Mark at all. Miss Clark said he was — engaged.” Mr. Bellows paused on the word, and his little smile became a sneer.

Lieutenant Ames glanced at the girl.

“Is that correct?”

“Yes,” she said. “Mr. Willoughby was in the window at that moment. I mean, standing right in it, getting the red spotlight so that it was focused exactly on the leather case. He sent me to answer the telephone and to say that he could not be disturbed.”

“And what time was that?”

“About ten, I think. We were working to get everything set up before we left, and we were just finishing.”

“When did you leave?”

“Almost at once. Mr. Willoughby sent me home. He said he had some office work to do.”

“And then?”

“I went home.”

And that, thought Adam, would seem to be that. Yet it was clear that to Mr. Bellows it was only the beginning. He clucked his tongue, and looked hopefully at Lieutenant Ames. But the lieutenant was overtaken again by one of his silences, and when he spoke it was to Mr. Bellows.

“Now what about this matter of Miss Clark’s attitude toward Mr. Willoughby?”

“Ah, yes.” Mr. Bellows coughed slightly, and lowered his voice. “I should hesitate to mention this, but these are after all extraordinary circumstances. It is a rather delicate matter. A young, attractive girl, living by herself, working for a much older man who is, if I may say so, too easily smitten — or was. Yes, dear me, was. Rather impulsive, poor Mark. You can understand what I mean, perhaps? It was evident. Oh, yes, it was evident. And she did not return his interest. Did not reciprocate at all, so far as I know. He was quite a bit older, of course. It was rather difficult for her.”

Adam had an unpleasant vision of the dark store, on a quiet side street, late at night, with a fatherly man making his attentions “evident.”

Lieutenant Ames nodded quietly.

“Thank you. If you have nothing more to tell us we will not keep you any longer.”

Mr. Bellows let his eyes flick briefly to Miss Clark and then back to the lieutenant. He bowed to the lieutenant and to Adam, passed Miss Clark as if she were not there, and walked quickly to the door. The patrolman, opening it for him, stared down frankly at the little figure as it strutted by.

The door was closed, and Lieutenant Ames turned to Miss Clark.

“Now, Miss Clark,” he said, “there are several things I want to know.”

It was as if a final stage in the proceedings had been reached.

“First of all,” continued the lieutenant, in a businesslike way, “how many keys are there to the store?”

“Just two.”

“You carried one, and Mr. Willoughby the other?”

“Yes.”

“Now about this display. How much of the work did you do?”

“Just about all. We talked it over, and I suggested some of the ideas for it. Mr. Willoughby sent me out to get the things. When I had everything ready, Mr. Willoughby brought the book and case out and put them in place, and adjusted the lighting.”

“That was in the evening?”

“Yes, the last thing of all, before I left. He was anxious to have it bathed in a deep red light — like blood.”

Like blood. The words hung in the air, and her eyes widened with a quick fear. The lieutenant waited, and Adam was prompted to interfere.

“Do you know very much about the book itself?” he asked.

She turned to Adam with relief.

“Oh, yes, of course,” she said. “When I heard that Mr. Willoughby had bought it, I got a copy from the library and read it.”

“What’s the story about? I haven’t read it for years, and I can’t remember the plot at all.”

“Well, it’s about revenge,” she began, and stopped. She looked at Adam with an expression of sheer astonishment, of comprehension. Now what has she remembered, what have I suggested, he wondered. But the lieutenant had questions of his own to ask.

“What about this matter of Mr. Willoughby’s attentions toward you. Was Mr. Bellows right?”

She nodded, only half-attending.

“He was always that way,” she admitted. “Not only to me. But Mr. Bellows made it sound worse than it was.”

But her voice was not convincing, and Adam could see that she knew it. It was then that the telephone on Mark Willoughby’s desk rang and the lieutenant answered it quickly, as if he had been waiting for it.

“Yes?” he said. “Speaking.” He waited and listened. “Good,” he said. “We’ll come right down.”

He put down the telephone and turned to Adam.

“This is your chance to look over the rest of the books,” he said. “But I don’t think we’ll have to know much about them. I think we have all we need, now.”

He nodded to Miss Clark.

“Get your coat,” he said. “We’re going down to the District Attorney’s office. He wants to ask you some questions.”

Later that day Adam could still be surprised at the simple and final way the scene had ended. She had gone at once, the police with her, without a word, as if there were nothing more to say. Lieutenant Ames stopped to speak to Adam as he left.

“They have verified the fingerprints,” he said. “Had some trouble finding them on the old gun, getting them clear. But her prints are there, and only hers. Don’t spend any more time here than you want to; I’ll be in touch with you later.”

Adam browsed through the Willoughby stock for no more than two hours, finding nothing to surprise him, and returned to the library. But his mind was not on his work, and at dinner, alone in the small restaurant near the library, his mine was not on his food. He found himself experimenting with his spoon to see how clear a fingerprint he could leave; would it wipe off? Would a second one blur the first? He was unable to remember whether fingerprints were no longer bothered with by the police, or whether, on the contrary, the science had been greatly improved. Could they hang a person on the evidence of fingerprints alone?

After dinner he went back to the library. An interesting monograph on the illustrations for various editions of Paradise Lost lay before him. He looked at woodcuts of Satan tempting the woman and the woman tempting the man, and then he noticed, as if he had never known it before, that the man’s name was Adam, and he threw the pamphlet into the wastebasket.

It was ten o’clock.

Adam went out and got a taxi. It traveled through the streets of New York slowly enough to push a tired librarian over the edge of sanity, and his meditations were not religious. At 75th Street he got out, paid his fare, and walked down the street toward Willoughby’s Books.

As he came opposite the shop, he could see from across the street that Sherlock Holmes had returned. The window display was reassembled, and the red leather case burned like a coal under the red spotlight. Adam crossed the street and gazed with interest at the display. In the center, Mark Willoughby’s red leather case, with the copy of A Study in Scarlet beside it. Against the black of the velvet the case gleamed, as the incredible Bellows had said, like a jewel.

Now, as Adam watched, a remarkable thing happened. His taxi, moved by the inscrutable impulses that sometimes activate taxis, drove part way up 75th Street and then turned around, defying various city ordinances. For two seconds or less its headlights shone straight into the window of Willoughby’s Books, flooding it with bright light. And in that light the red leather case, the knife, the hat, the pipe, were seen to lie upon a piece of green velvet. Then, its maneuver completed, the taxi disappeared and the window was dark.

The window was dark — and now the velvet was black.

Green headlights? Nonsense. But the cloth had become green under their light.

Then memory returned.

“A piece of green velvet,” the lieutenant had said. Adam was positive. And he was positive of something else.

Someone had stood, at night, looking into the window which Miss Clark and Mr. Willoughby had finished arranging; had stood there after all lights but the red spotlight had been put out, and the window glowed in red, set back in that dark, quiet street. Someone who had not seen the velvet cloth before and did not know it was green. Someone who was known to Mark Willoughby, who would be admitted late at night, who could slip the gun into a gloved hand, who could follow Willoughby into his office where the gloved hand became a hand of iron and struck, and struck again.

Someone whose only mistake was to tell the truth as he saw it.

Miss Tilley, the assistant cataloguer, came quickly across to Adam Lake’s desk, and spoke hurriedly.

“There’s a policeman to see you,” she said.

“Send him right in.” It was a red dress today. Very suitable, Adam thought.

Lieutenant Ames came in and greeted Adam with his usual composure.

“It was easy, after we got started,” he said. “He had been on bad terms with Willoughby for a long time. And in debt. Rapidly becoming the seedy failure, all front and talk. Well, he had to sell something, and Willoughby would take nothing but the Sherlock Holmes book. His most prized possession. It touched off something crazy in the old man; he had to come back to see it displayed, and the sight of it in the exhibit really pushed him over the brink. But I don’t see how you remembered about the color.”

“Trivial detail,” said Adam. “That’s what the bystander always notices. I remembered that you had called the cloth green. When Bellows called it black, he was talking about jewels, and they are usually set on black, so it passed quite naturally.”

“But how did you know that any color but red turns black under pure red light?”

“Ah, that, now, was interesting. We were going to photograph an illuminated manuscript, and I took it to the photographer to be done. Chap had the red safe-light on, and I noticed that all the colors of the illuminated initials with the exception of the red ones turned black under the red light. The photographer explained it to me.”

“It was good work,” said Lieutenant Ames, with quiet approval; to Adam, it was like an honorary degree. “Of course, the book itself probably interested you more than anything else. Too bad it was of no help at all.”

“It could have been, though,” said Adam, with a smile. “It could have suggested one of Sherlock Holmes’s most famous remarks.”

“What was that?”

“I’ll paraphrase it. ‘I call to your attention the peculiar behavior of the cloth in the night.’ ”

“But the cloth did nothing in the night,” said the lieutenant, falling unconsciously into the proper response.

“That was the peculiar behavior,” said Adam, delighted. “Oh, well, it almost fits. It’s as close as lesser mortals can hope to come.”