Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Ellery Queen The Odd Man

One of the unique encounters in the short and happy history of The Puzzle Club began, as so many interesting things do, in the most ordinary way.

That is to say, 7:30 of that Wednesday evening found Ellery in the foyer of Syres’s Park Avenue penthouse aerie pressing the bell button, having the door opened for him by a butler who had obviously been inspired by Jeeves, and being conducted into the grand-scale wood-leather-and-brass-stud living room that had just as obviously been inspired by the king-sized ranchos of the Southwest where Syres had made his millions.

As usual Ellery found the membership assembled — with the exception, also as usual, of Arkavy, the biochemist whose Nobel achievement took him to so many international symposiums that Ellery had not yet laid eyes on him; indeed, he had come to think of the great scientist as yet another fiction his fellow members had dreamed up for mischievous reasons of their own. There was Syres himself, their hulking and profoundly respected host — respected not for being a multimillionaire but for having founded the club; tall sardonic Darnell of the John L. Lewis eyebrows, the criminal lawyer who was known to the American Bar, not altogether affectionately, as “the rich man’s Clarence Darrow”; the psychiatrist, Dr. Vreeland, trim and peach-cheeked, whose professional reputation was as long as his stature was short; and wickedly blue-eyed little Emmy Wandermere, who had recently won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry to — for once — unanimous approval.

It was one of the strictest rules of The Puzzle Club that no extraneous matters, not of politics or art or economics or world affairs, or even of juicy gossip, be allowed to intrude on the business at hand, which was simply (in a manner of speaking only, since that adverb was not to be found in the club’s motto) to challenge each member to solve a puzzle invented by the others, and then to repair to Charlot’s dinner table, Charlot being Syres’s chef, with a reputation as exalted in his field as that of the puzzlers in theirs. The puzzles were always in story form, told by the challengers seriatim, and they were as painstakingly planned for the battle of wits as if an empire depended on the outcome.

Tonight it was Ellery’s turn again, and after the briefest of amenities he took his place in the arena, which at The Puzzle Club meant sitting down in a hugely comfortable leather chair near the super-fireplace, with a bottle, a glass, and a little buffet of Charlot’s masterly canapés at hand and no further preliminaries whatever.

Darnell began (by prearrangement — the sequence of narrators was as carefully choreographed as a ballet).

“The puzzle this evening, Queen, is right down your alley—”

“Kindly omit the courtroom-type psychology, Counselor,” Ellery drawled, for he was feeling in extra-fine fettle this evening, “and get on with it.”

“—because it’s a cops-and-robbers story,” the lawyer went on, unperturbed, “except that in this case the cop is an undercover agent whose assignment it is to track down a dope supplier. The supplier is running a big wholesale illicit-drug operation; hundreds of pushers are getting their stuff from him, so it’s important to nail him.”

“The trouble is,” Dr. Vreeland said, feeling the knot of his tie (I wonder, Ellery thought, what his analyst made of that — it was one of the psychiatrist’s most irritating habits), “his identity is not known precisely.”

“By which I take it that it’s known imprecisely,” Ellery said. “The unknown of a known group.”

“Yes, a group of three.”

“The classic number.”

“It’s convenient, Queen.”

“That’s the chief reason it’s classic.”

“The three suspects,” oilman Syres broke in, unable to conceal a frown, for Ellery did not always comport himself with the decorum the founder thought their labors deserved, “all live in the same building. It’s a three-story house...”

“Someday,” Ellery said, peering into the future, “instead of a three-story house I shall make up a three-house story.”

“Mr. Queen!” and Emmy Wandermere let a giggle escape. “Please be serious, or you won’t be allowed to eat Charlot’s chef-d’oeuvre, which I understand is positively wild tonight.”

“I’ve lost track,” Syres grumped. “Where were we?”

“I beg everyone’s pardon,” Ellery said. “We have an undercover police officer who’s turned up three suspects, one of whom is the dope wholesaler, and all three live in a three-story house, I presume one to a floor. And these habitants are?”

“The man who occupies the ground floor,” the little poet replied, “and whose name is John A. Chandler — known in the neighborhood as Jac, from his initials — runs a modest one-man business, a radio-and-TV-repair shop, from his apartment.”

“The question is, of course,” Lawyer Darnell said, “whether the repair shop is just a front for the dope-supply operation.”

Ellery nodded. “And the occupant of the middle floor?”

“An insurance agent,” Dr. Vreeland said. “Character named Cutcliffe Kerry—”

“Named what?”

“Cutcliffe Kerry is what we decided on,” the psychiatrist said firmly, “and if you don’t care for it that’s your problem, Queen, because Cutcliffe Kerry he remains.”

“Very well,” Ellery said, “but I think I detect the aroma of fresh herring. Or am I being double-whammied? In any event, Cutcliffe Kerry sells insurance, or tries to, which means he gets to see a great many people. So the insurance thing could be a cover. And the top floor?”

“Is rented by a fellow named Fletcher, Benjamin Fletcher,” Syres said. “Fletcher is a salesman, too, but of an entirely different sort. He sells vacuum cleaners.”

“Door to door,” Ellery said. “Possible cover too. All right, Jac Chandler, radio-TV repairman; Cutcliffe Kerry, insurance agent; Ben Fletcher, vacuum-cleaner salesman; and one of them is the bad guy. What happens, Mr. Syres?”

“The undercover man has been watching the building and — isn’t the word tailing? — the three men, according to his reports to his superior at police headquarters.”

“And just after he finds out who the drug supplier is,” Darnell said mournfully, “but before he can come up with the hard evidence, he’s murdered.”

“As I suspected,” Ellery said, shaking his head. “Earning the poor fellow a departmental citation and the traditional six feet of sod. He was murdered by the dope boy, of course.”

“Of course.”

“To shut him up.”

“What else?”

“Which means he hadn’t yet reported the name of the dope supplier.”

“Well, not exactly, Mr. Queen.” Emmy Wandermere leaned forward to accept the flame of Dr. Vreeland’s gold lighter, then leaned back puffing like The Little Engine That Could on a steep grade. She was trying to curb her nicotine-and-tar intake, so she was currently smoking cigarettes made of processed lettuce. “The undercover man hadn’t reported the drug supplier’s name, true, but in the very last report before his murder he did mention a clue.”

“What kind of clue?”

“He referred to the supplier — his subsequent killer — as, and this is an exact quote, Mr. Queen, ‘the odd man of the three.’ ”

Ellery blinked.

“Your mission, Mr. Queen, if you accept it — and you’d better, or be kicked out of the club,” said Darnell in his most doom-ridden courtroom tones, “is to detect the guilty man among Chandler, Kerry, and Fletcher — the one of them who’s been selling the stuff in wholesale lots and who murdered our brave lad of the law.”

“The odd man of the three, hm?”

Ellery sat arranging his thoughts. As at all such critical stages of the game, by protocol, the strictest silence was maintained.

Finally Ellery said, “Where and how did the murder of the undercover agent take place?”

Darnell waved his manicured hand, “Frankly, Queen, we debated whether to make up a complicated background for the crime. In the end we decided it wouldn’t be fair, because the murder itself has nothing to do with the puzzle except that it took place. The details are irrelevant and immaterial.”

“Except, of course, to the victim, but that’s usually left out.” Having discharged himself of this philosophical gripe, Ellery resumed his seat, as it were, on his train of thought. “I suppose the premises were searched from roof to cellar, inside and out, by the police after the murder of their buddy?”

“You know it,” Syres said.

“I suppose, too, that no narcotics, amphetamines, barbiturates, et cetera ad nauseam, no cutting equipment, no dope paraphernalia of any kind, were found anywhere in the building?”

“Not a trace,” Dr. Vreeland said. “The guilty man disposed of it all before the police got there.”

“Did one of the men have a record?”

Miss Wandermere smiled. “Nyet.”

“Was one of them a married man and were the other two bachelors?”

“No.”

“Was it the other way round? One of them a bachelor and two married?”

“I admire the way you wriggle, Mr. Queen. The answer is still no.”

“The odd man of the three.” Ellery mused again. “Well, I see we’ll have to be lexical. By the commonest definition, odd means strange, unusual, peculiar. Was there anything strange, unusual, or peculiar in, say, the appearance of Chandler or Kerry or Fletcher?”

Dr. Vreeland, with relish: “Not a thing.”

“In a mannerism? Behavior? Speech? Gait? That sort of thing?”

Syres: “All ordinary as hell, Queen.”

“In background?”

Darnell, through a grin: “Ditto.”

“There was nothing bizarre or freakish about one of them?”

“Nothing, friend,” Emmy Wandermere murmured.

Ellery grasped his nose more like an enemy.

“Was one of them touched in the head?” he asked suddenly. “Odd in the mental sense?”

“There,” the psychiatrist said, “you tread on muddy ground, Queen. Any antisocial behavior, as in the case of habitual criminals, might of course be so characterized. However, for purposes of our story the answer is no. All three men were normal — whatever that means.”

Ellery nodded fretfully. “I could go on and on naming categories of peculiarity, but let me save us all from endangering Charlot’s peace of mind. Did the undercover man use the word odd to connote peculiar?”

The little poet looked around and received assents invisible to the Queen eye. “He did not.”

“Then that’s that. Oh, one thing. Was the report in which he fingered the supplier as being the odd man written or oral?”

“Now what kind of question is that?” the oil king demanded. “What could that have to do with anything?”

“Possibly a great deal, Mr. Syres. If it had been an oral report, there would be no way of knowing whether his word odd began with a capital O or a small o. Assume that he’d meant it to be capital O-d-d. Then Odd man might have referred to a member of the I.O.O.F., the fraternal order — the Odd Fellows. That might certainly distinguish your man from the other two.”

“It was a written report,” Darnell said hastily, “and the o of odd was a small letter.”

Everyone looked relieved. It was evident that the makers of this particular puzzle had failed to consider the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in their scheming.

“There are other odd possibilities — if you’ll forgive the pun — such as odd in the golf meaning, which is one stroke more than your opponent has played. But I won’t waste any more time on esoterica. Your undercover man meant odd in the sense of not matching, didn’t he? Of being left over?”

“Explain that, please,” Dr. Vreeland said.

“In the sense that two of the three suspects had something in common, something the third man didn’t share with them — thus making the third man ‘the odd man’ and consequently the dope supplier and murderer. Isn’t that the kind of thing your undercover agent meant by odd man?”

The psychiatrist looked cautious. “I think we may fairly say yes to that.”

“Thank you very much,” Ellery said. “Which brings me to a fascinating question: How clever are you people being? Run-of-the-game clever or clever-clever?”

“I don’t think,” Miss Wandermere said, “we quite follow. What do you mean exactly, Mr. Queen?”

“Did you intend to give me a choice of solutions? The reason I ask is that I see not one possible answer, but three.”

“Three!” Syres shook his massive head. “We had enough trouble deciding on one.”

“I for one,” Counselor Darnell stated stiffishly, “should like to hear a for-instance.”

“All right, I’ll give you one solution I doubt you had in mind, since it’s so obvious.”

“You know, Queen, you have a sadistic streak in you?” barked Dr. Vreeland. “Obvious! Which solution is obvious?”

“Why, Doctor. Take the names of two of your suspects, John A. — Jac — Chandler and Benjamin Fletcher. Oddly enough — there I go again! — those surnames have two points of similarity. ‘Chandler’ and ‘Fletcher’ both end in ‘er’ and both contain eight letters. Cutcliffe Kerry’s surname differs in both respects — no ‘er’ ending and only five letters — so Kerry becomes the odd surname of the trio. In this solution, then, Kerry the insurance man is the supplier-killer.”

“I’ll be damned,” Syres exclaimed. “How did we miss that?”

“Very simply,” Miss Wandermere said. “We didn’t see it.”

“Never mind that,” Darnell snapped. “The fact is it happened. Queen, you said you have three solutions. What’s another?”

“Give me a clue to the solution you people had in mind, since there are more than one. Some key word that indicates the drift but doesn’t give the game away. One word can do it.”

Syres, Darnell, and Dr. Vreeland jumped up and surrounded Emmy Wandermere. From the looped figures, the cocked heads, and the murderous whispers they might have been the losing team in an offensive huddle with six seconds left to play. Finally, the men resumed their seats, nudging one another.

Said little Miss Wandermere: “You asked for a clue, Mr. Queen. The clue is: clue.”

Ellery threw his head back and roared. “Right! Very clever, considering who I am and that I’m the solver of the evening.

“You hurled my specialized knowledge in my teeth, calculating that I’d be so close to it I wouldn’t see it. Sony! Two of the surnames you invented,” Ellery said with satisfaction, “are of famous detective-story writers. Chandler — in this case Raymond Chandler — was the widely acclaimed creator of Philip Marlowe. Joseph Smith Fletcher — J. S. Fletcher — produced more detective fiction than any other writer except Edgar Wallace, or so it’s said: Fletcher’s The Middle Temple Murder was publicly praised by no lesser mystery fan than the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. On the other hand, if there’s ever been a famous detective-story writer named Cutcliffe Kerry, his fame has failed to reach me. So your Mr. Kerry again becomes the odd man of the trio and the answer to the problem. Wasn’t that your solution, Miss Wandermere and gentlemen?”

They said yes in varying tones of chagrin.

Ordinarily, at this point in the evening’s proceedings, the company would have risen from their chairs and made for Syres’s magnificently gussied-up cookhouse of a dining room. But tonight no one stirred a toe, not even at the promise of the manna simmering on Charlot’s hob. Instead, Dr. Vreeland uttered a small, inquiring cough.

“You, ah, mentioned a third solution, Queen. Although I must confess—”

“Before you pronounce your mea culpa, Doctor,” Ellery said with a smile, “may I? I’ve given you people your solution. I’ve even thrown in another for good measure. Turnabout? I now challenge you. What’s the third solution?”...

Ten minutes later Ellery showed them mercy — really, he said sorrowfully, more in the interest of preserving Charlot’s chancy good will than out of natural goodness of heart.

“John A. Chandler, Cutcliffe Kerry, Benjamin Fletcher. Chandler, Kerry, and Fletcher. What do two of these have in common besides what’s already been discussed? Why, they derive from trades or occupations.”

“Chandler.” The lawyer, Darnell, looked around at the others, startled. “You know, that’s true!”

“Yes, a ship chandler deals in specified goods or equipment. If you go farther back in time you find that a chandler was someone who made or sold candles or, as in very early England, supervised the candle requirements of a household. So that’s one trade.”

“Is there another in the remaining two surnames?”

“Yes, the name Fletcher. A fletcher was — and technically still is — a maker of arrows, or a dealer in same; in the Middle Ages, by extension, although this was a rare meaning, the word was sometimes used to denote an archer. In either event, another trade or occupation.

“But the only etymological origin I’ve ever heard ascribed to the name Kerry is County Kerry, from which the Kerry blue terrier derives. And that’s not a trade, it’s a place. So with the names Chandler and Fletcher going back to occupations, and Kerry to Irish geography, your Mr. Kerry becomes once again the unpaired meaning, the odd man — a third answer to your problem.”

And Ellery rose and offered his arm gallantly to Miss Wandermere.

The poetess took it with a little shake. And as they led the way to the feast she whispered, “You know what you are, Ellery Queen? You’re an intellectual pack rat!”