Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Ellery Queen Dead Ringer

The hush-hush man’s name was Storke, and Ellery had once before worked with him on a case involving the security of the United States. So when Storke showed up out of nowhere and said, “Scene of the crime first, the rundown later,” Ellery dropped what he was doing and reached for his hat without a question.

Storke drove him downtown, chatting pleasantly, parked on one of the meandering side streets below Park Row in a space that was magically unoccupied, and strolled Ellery over to a thin shop-front with a dusty window bearing the crabbed legend: M. Merrilees Monk, Tobacconist, Est. 1897.

Two young men who looked like Wall Street clerks on their dinner hour lounged outside, puffing on pipes. There was no sign of a police uniform.

“This must be a big one,” murmured Ellery: and he preceded Storke into the shop.

It was as aged-looking inside as out, narrow and poorly lighted, with walls of some musty dark wood, Victorian fixtures, and a gas-jet for lighting cigarettes and cigars. Everything was pungent with tobacco.

In the deeps of the little shop, near the curtained doorway to a rear room, stood a venerable wooden Indian, his original splendor bedraggled to a sprinkle of color here and there; most of him was naked pitted wood.

The Indian appeared forlorn, whereas the dead man who lay jammed between the counter and the shelves looked outraged, for he had suffered cruelly at the hands not of time hut of an assassin. His head and face resembled a jellied mash.

Curiously, his dead arms embraced a large squarish canister apparently used for the storage of pipe tobacco, for it was labeled MIX C and obviously came from a row of similar canisters on one of the upper shelves behind the cluttered counter.

“He was attacked from behind at this point,” Ellery said to Storke, indicating a stiffening puddle at the feet of the wooden Indian, “probably as he was going into the back room for something. The killer must have left him for dead: but he wasn’t dead, because this blood trail goes from the Indian all the way around and behind the counter to where he’s lying now.

“The picture is unmistakable: When the killer left, this man somehow — don’t ask me how! — managed to drag himself to that particular spot, and in spite of his frightful injuries reached up to that tobacco can and took it down from that empty space on the shelf before he died.”

“That’s the way I read it, too,” said Storke.

“May I handle the canister?”

“Everything’s been processed.”

Ellery took the canister from the dead man, who seemed disposed to resist, and pried off the lid. The canister was empty. He borrowed a powerful magnifier from the hush-hush man. After a moment he put the lens down.

“This canister never contained tobacco, Storke. Not a shred or speck is visible under the glass, even at the seams.”

Storke said nothing; and Ellery turned to the shelves. Nine canisters remained on the shelf from which the dead man had taken the mix c can. They were labeled MONK’S SPECIAL. BARTLEBY MIXTURE, SUPERBA BLEND. MIX A. MIX B (and here was the space where the MIX C can must have stood), KENTUCKY LONG CUT, VIRGINIA CRIMP, LORD CAVENDISH, and MANHATTAN MIX.

“Those nine are not empty,” said Storke, reading Ellery’s mind. “Each contains what it’s labeled.”

Ellery squatted by the corpse. It was enveloped in a knee-length tobacconist’s gown in the British fashion — a rather surprisingly muscular body of a man in his early forties with what must once have been a sandy-fringed bald pate and sharp Anglican features.

“This, I take it, was M. Merrilees Monk,” Ellery said. “Or his lineal descendant.”

“Wrong on both counts,” Storke replied bitterly. “He was one of our topflight operatives, and don’t mention him in the same breath with Monk. As far as we know, Monk’s grandfather and father were respectable tobacconists, but the incumbent is a turncoat who ran this shop as a drop for foreign agents to pick up and pass along messages, stolen material, and so on.

“We got onto Monk only recently. We put the shop under round-the-clock surveillance, but we weren’t able to spot any known enemy agent entering or leaving.

“Then we got what we thought was a break. One of our Seattle men, Hartman, turned out to be a dead ringer for this Monk rat. So we brought Hartman on from the Coast, put him through an intensive training course on Monk, then took Monk into custody in the middle of one night, substituted Hartman, and called off our outside men to leave Hartman a clear field in the shop. He knew the risk he was running.”

“And it caught up with him. Dead ringer is right.” Ellery brooded over the battered U.S. agent’s remains. “How long had he been playing the part of Monk?”

“Fifteen days. And no one turned up, Hartman was positive. He spent his spare time in the stockroom out back, microfilming the shop’s ledger, which lists the names of hundreds of Monk’s customers, each with an account number and address. Good thing he did, too, because the killer’s made off with the ledger.

“Just this morning,” Storke went on somberly, “Hartman phoned in that he’d found out two of the listed customers were foreign agents — exactly how we’ll probably never know, because he didn’t get a chance to explain. A customer walked in at that moment and he had to hang up. By the time we felt it safe to make contact with him tonight, he’d been murdered. One or both of the agents must have paid a visit to the shop as Hartman was closing up and spotted him as a ringer.”

“They probably had a signal Hartman missed.” Ellery stared at the empty tobacco canister. “Storke, why have you called me in on this?”

“You’re looking at the reason.”

“The MIX C can? It was almost certainly Monk’s repository for whatever was delivered to him to be passed along. But if it contained any spy material at the time Hartman was assaulted, Storke, his killer or killers took it and blew.”

“Exactly,” said the hush-hush man. “That means Hartman made that superhuman effort in order to take down an empty can. Why was his last act to call our attention to the can?”

“Obviously he was trying to tell you something.”

“Of course,” said Storke impatiently. “But what? That’s what we can’t figure out, Ellery, and that’s why I called you in. Any notions?”

“Yes,” said Ellery. “He was telling you who the foreign agents are.”

Storke was not given to displays of emotion, but on this occasion astonishment slackened his jaw and widened his shrewd eyes.

“Well, he hasn’t told me a damned thing,” the hush-hush man growled. “Now I suppose you’ll say he’s told you?”

“Well,” said Ellery, “yes.”

“Told you what?”

“Who the two foreign agents are.”

Ellery explained to Storke: “Two of the facts you gave me were: first, that the foreign agents are listed in Monk’s customer ledger; second, that each customer’s name in the ledger is assigned an account number.

“Hartman made his extraordinary dying effort to call your attention to the otherwise empty can labeled MIX C. MIX C — two word-elements. And there are two agents. This could be a coincidence, but it could also mean that each of the word-elements identifies one of the agents.

“Pursuing this theory, I noticed something unusual about the letters composing the words mix c that is not true about any of the phrases on the nine other labels on the shelf: every letter in mix c is also a Roman numeral.

“You take MIX. m equals 1000; IX equals 10 minus 1, or 9. mix therefore becomes the Roman numerology for 1009. I’m sure you will find, Storke, that the customer’s name listed in the ledger microfilms opposite Number 1009 is that of one of the two foreign agents.

“C is simply the Roman numeral for 100, and I think you’ll find Number 100 in the ledger is the name of the other agent.”