Murder Most Merry

MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS – Anthony Boucher

That was why the Benson jewel robbery was solved—because Aram Melekian was too much for Mr. Quilter’s temper.

His almost invisible eyebrows soared, and the scalp of his close-cropped head twitched angrily. “Damme!” said Mr. Quilter. and in that mild and archaic oath there was more compressed fury than in paragraphs of uncensored profanity. “So you, sir, are the untrammeled creative artist, and I am a drudging, hampering hack!”

Aram Melekian tilted his hat a trifle more jauntily. “That’s the size of it, brother. And if you hamper this untrammeled opus any more. Metropolis Pictures is going to be suing its youngest genius for breach of contract.”

Mr. Quilter rose to his full lean height. “I’ve seen them come and go,” he announced; “and there hasn’t been a one of them, sir, who failed to learn something from me. What is so creative about pouring out the full vigor of your young life? The creative task is mine, molding that vigor, shaping it to some end.”

“Go play with your blue pencil,” Melekian suggested. “I’ve got a dream coming on.”

“Because I have never produced anything myself, you young men jeer at me. You never see that your successful screen plays are more my effort than your inspiration.” Mr. Quilter’s thin frame was aquiver.

“Then what do you need us for?”

“What—Damme, sir, what indeed? Ha!” said Mr. Quilter loudly. “I’ll show you. I’ll pick the first man off the street that has life and a story in him. What more do you contribute? And through me he’ll turn out a job that will sell. If I do this, sir, then will you consent to the revisions I’ve asked of you?”

“Go lay an egg,” said Aram Melekian. “And I’ve no doubt you will.”

Mr. Quilter stalked out of the studio with high dreams. He saw the horny-handed son of toil out of whom he had coaxed a masterpiece signing a contract with F. X. He saw a discomfited Armenian genius in the background busily devouring his own words. He saw himself freed of his own sense of frustration, proving at last that his was the significant part of writing.

He felt a bumping shock and the squealing of brakes. The next thing he saw was the asphalt paving.

Mr. Quilter rose to his feet undecided whether to curse the driver for knocking him down or bless him for stopping so miraculously short of danger. The young man in the brown suit was so disarmingly concerned that the latter choice was inevitable.

“I’m awfully sorry,” the young man blurted. “Are you hurt? It’s this bad wing of mine. I guess.” His left arm was in a sling.

“Nothing at all, sir. My fault. I was preoccupied...”

They stood awkwardly for a moment, each striving for a phrase that was not mere politeness. Then they both spoke at once.

“You came out of that studio,” the young man said. “Do you” (his tone was awed) “do you work there?”

And Mr. Quilter had spotted a sheaf of eight and a half by eleven paper protruding from the young man’s pocket. “Are you a writer, sir? Is that a manuscript?”

The young man shuffled and came near blushing. “Naw. I’m not a writer. I’m a policeman. But I’m going to be a writer. This is a story I was trying to tell about what happened to me— But are you a writer? In there?”

Mr. Quilter’s eyes were aglow under their invisible brows. “I, sir,” he announced proudly, “am what makes writers tick. Are you interested?”

He was also, he might have added, what makes detectives tick. But he did not know that yet.

The Christmas trees were lighting up in front yards and in windows as Officer Tom Smith turned his rickety Model A onto the side street where Mr. Quilter lived. Hollywood is full of these quiet streets, where ordinary people live and move and have their being, and are happy or unhappy as chance wills, but both in a normal and unspectacular way. This is really Hollywood— the Hollywood that patronizes the twenty-cent fourth-run houses and crowds the stores on the Boulevard on Dollar Day.

To Mr. Quilter, saturated at the studio with the other Hollywood, this was always a relief. Kids were playing ball in the evening sun, radios were tuning in to Amos and Andy, and from the small houses came either the smell of cooking or the clatter of dish-washing.

And the Christmas trees, he knew, had been decorated not for the benefit of the photographers from the fan magazines, but because the children liked them and they looked warm and friendly from the street.

“Gosh, Mr. Quilter,” Tom Smith was saying, “this is sure a swell break for me. You know, I’m a good copper. But to be honest I don’t know as I’m very bright. And that’s why I want to write, because maybe that way I can train myself to be and then I won’t be a plain patrolman all my life. And besides, this writing, it kind of itches-like inside you.”

“Cacoëthes scribencli.” observed Mr. Quilter, not unkindly. “You see, sir, you have hit, in your fumbling way. on one of the classic expressions for your condition.”

“Now that’s what I mean. You know what I mean even when I don’t say it. Between us, Mr. Quilter...”

Mr. Quilter, his long thin legs outdistancing even the policeman’s, led the way into his bungalow and on down the hall to a room which at first glance contained nothing but thousands of books. Mr. Quilter waved at them. “Here, sir, is assembled every helpful fact that mortal need know. But I cannot breathe life into these dry bones. Books are not written from books. But I can provide bones, and correctly articulated, for the life which you, sir— But here is a chair. And a reading lamp. Now, sir, let me hear your story.”

Tom Smith shifted uncomfortably on the chair. “The trouble is,” he confessed. “it hasn’t got an ending.”

Mr. Quilter beamed. “When I have heard it, I shall demonstrate to you. sir, the one ending it inevitably must have.”

“I sure hope you will, because it’s got to have and I promised her it would have and— You know Beverly Benson?”

“Why. yes. I entered the industry at the beginning of talkies. She was still somewhat in evidence. But why... ?”

“I was only a kid when she made Sable Sin and Orchids at Breakfast and all the rest, and I thought she was something pretty marvelous. There was a girl in our high school was supposed to look like her. and I used to think, Gee, if I could ever see the real Beverly Benson!’ And last night I did.”

“Hm. And this story, sir. is the result?”

“Yeah. And this too.” He smiled wryly and indicated his wounded arm. “But I better read you the story.” He cleared his throat loudly. “The Red and Green Mystery,” he declaimed. “By Arden Van Arden.”

“A pseudonym, sir?”

“Well, I sort of thought... Tom Smith—that doesn’t sound like a writer.”

“Arden Van Arden. sir, doesn’t sound like anything. But go on.”

And Officer Tom Smith began his narrative:

THE RED AND GREEN MYSTERY

by ARDEN VAN ARDEN

It was a screwy party for the police to bust in on. Not that it was a raid or anything like that. God knows I’ve run into some bughouse parties that way, but I’m assigned to the jewelry squad now under Lieutenant Michaels, and when this call came in he took three other guys and me and we shot out to the big house in Laurel Canyon.

I wasn’t paying much attention to where we were going and I wouldn’t have known the place anyway, but I knew her, all right. She was standing in the doorway waiting for us. For just a minute it stumped me who she was, but then I knew. It was the eyes mostly. She’d changed a lot since Sable Sin, but you still couldn’t miss the Beverly Benson eyes. The rest of her had got older (not older exactly either—you might maybe say richer) but the eyes were still the same. She had red hair. They didn’t have technicolor when she was in pictures and I hadn’t even known what color her hair was. It struck me funny seeing her like that—the way I’d been nuts about her when I was a kid and not even knowing what color her hair was.

She had on a funny dress—a little-girl kind of thing with a short skirt with flounces, I guess you call them. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t make it. Not until I saw the mask that was lying in the hall, and then I knew. She was dressed like Minnie Mouse. It turned out later they all were—not like Minnie Mouse, but like all the characters in the cartoons. It was that kind of a party— a Disney Christmas party. There were studio drawings all over the walls, and there were little figures of extinct animals and winged ponies holding the lights on the Christmas tree.

She came right to the point. I could see Michaels liked that; some of these women throw a big act and it’s an hour before you know what’s been stolen. “It’s my emeralds and rubies,” she said. “They’re gone. There are some other pieces missing too, but I don’t so much care about them. The emeralds and the rubies are the important thing. You’ve got to find them.”

“Necklaces?” Michaels asked.

“A necklace.”

“Of emeralds and rubies?” Michaels knows his jewelry. His old man is in the business and tried to bring him up in it. but he joined the force. He knows a thing or two just the same, and his left eyebrow does tricks when he hears or sees something that isn’t kosher. It was doing tricks now.

“I know that may sound strange, Lieutenant, but this is no time for discussing the esthetics of jewelry. It struck me once that it would be exciting to have red and green in one necklace, and I had it made. They’re perfectly cut and matched, and it could never be duplicated.”

Michaels didn’t look happy. “You could drape it on a Christmas tree,” he said. But Beverly Benson’s Christmas tree was a cold white with the little animals holding blue lights.

Those Benson eyes were generally lovely and melting. Now they flashed. “Lieutenant, I summoned you to find my jewelry, not to criticize my taste. If I wanted a cultural opinion, I should hardly consult the police.”

“You could do worse.” Michaels said. “Now tell us all about it.”

She took us into the library. The other men Michaels sent off to guard the exits, even if there wasn’t much chance of the thief still sticking around. The Lieutenant told me once, when we were off duty. “Tom,” he said, “you’re the most useful man in my detail. Some of the others can think, and some of them can act; but there’s not a damned one of them can just stand there and look so much like the Law.” He’s a little guy himself and kind of on the smooth and dapper side; so he keeps me with him to back him up, just standing there.

There wasn’t much to what she told us. Just that she was giving this Disney Christmas party, like I said, and it was going along fine. Then late in the evening, when almost everybody had gone home, they got to talking about jewelry. She didn’t know who started the talk that way, but there they were. And she told them about the emeralds and rubies.

“Then Fig—Philip Newton, you know—the photographer who does all those marvelous sand dunes and magnolia blossoms and things—” (her voice went all sort of tender when she mentioned him. and I could see Michaels taking it all in) “Fig said he didn’t believe it. He felt the same way you do. Lieutenant, and I’m sure I can’t see why. ‘It’s unworthy of you, darling, ‘ he said. So I laughed and tried to tell him they were really beautiful—for they are, you know—and when he went on scoffing I said. ‘All right, then, I’ll show you. ‘ So I went into the little dressing room where I keep my jewel box, and they weren’t there. And that’s all I know.”

Then Michaels settled down to questions. When had she last seen the necklace? Was the lock forced? Had there been any prowlers around? What else was missing? And suchlike.

Beverly Benson answered impatiently, like she expected us to just go out there like that and grab the thief and say, “Here you are, lady.” She had shown the necklace to another guest early in the party—he’d gone home long ago. but she gave us the name and address to check. No, the lock hadn’t been forced. They hadn’t seen anything suspicious, either. There were some small things missing, too—a couple of diamond rings, a star sapphire pendant, a pair of pearl earrings—but those didn’t worry her so much. It was the emerald and ruby necklace that she wanted.

That left eyebrow went to work while Michaels thought about what she’d said. “If the lock wasn’t forced, that lets out a chance prowler. It was somebody who knew you. who’d had a chance to lift your key or take an impression of it. Where’d you keep it?”

“The key? In my handbag usually. Tonight it was in a box on my dressing table.”

Michaels sort of groaned. “And women wonder why jewels get stolen! Smith, get Ferguson and have him go over the box for prints. In the meantime, Miss Benson, give me a list of all your guests tonight. We’ll take up the servants later. I’m warning you now it’s a ten-to-one chance you’ll ever see your Christmas tree ornament again unless a fence sings; but we’ll do what we can. Then I’ll deliver my famous little lecture on safes, and we’ll pray for the future.”

When I’d seen Ferguson, I waited for Michaels in the room where the guests were. There were only five left, and I didn’t know who they were yet. They’d all taken off their masks; but they still had on their cartoon costumes. It felt screwy to sit there among them and think: This is serious, this is a felony, and look at those bright funny costumes.

Donald Duck was sitting by himself, with one hand resting on his long-billed mask while the other made steady grabs for the cigarette box beside him. His face looked familiar; I thought maybe I’d seen him in bits.

Three of them sat in a group: Mickey Mouse. Snow White, and Dopey. Snow White looked about fourteen at first, and it took you a while to realize she was a woman and a swell one at that. She was a little brunette, slender and cool-looking—a simple real kind of person that didn’t seem to belong in a Hollywood crowd. Mickey Mouse was a hefty blond guy about as tall as I am and built like a tackle that could hold any line; but his face didn’t go with his body. It was shrewd-like, and what they call sensitive. Dopey looked just that—a nice guy and not too bright.

Then over in another corner was a Little Pig. I don’t know do they have names, but this was the one that wears a sailor suit and plays the fiddle. He had bushy hair sticking out from under the sailor cap and long skillful-looking hands stretched in front of him. The fiddle was beside him, but he didn’t touch it. He was passed out—dead to the world, close as I could judge.

He and Donald were silent, but the group of three talked a little.

“I guess it didn’t work,” Dopey said.

“You couldn’t help that, Harvey.” Snow White’s voice was just like I expected—not like Snow White’s in the picture, but deep and smooth, like a stream that’s running in the shade with moss on its banks. “Even an agent can’t cast people.”

“You’re a swell guy, Madison,” Mickey Mouse said. “You tried, and thanks. But if it’s no go, hell, it’s just no go. It’s up to her.”

“Miss Benson is surely more valuable to your career.” The running stream was ice cold.

Now maybe I haven’t got anything else that’d make me a good detective, but I do have curiosity, and here’s where I saw a way to satisfy it. I spoke to all of them and I said, “I’d better take down some information while we’re waiting for the Lieutenant.” I started on Donald Duck. “Name?”

“Daniel Wappingham.” The voice was English. I could tell that much. I don’t have such a good ear for stuff like that, but I thought maybe it wasn’t the best English.

“Occupation?”

“Actor.”

And I took down the address and the rest of it. Then I turned to the drunk and shook him. He woke up part way but he didn’t hear what I was saying. He just threw his head back and said loudly. “Waltzes! Ha!” and went under again. His voice was guttural—some kind of German, I guessed. I let it go at that and went over to the three.

Dopey’s name was Harvey Madison; occupation, actor’s representative— tenpercenter to you. Mickey Mouse was Philip Newton; occupation, photographer. (That was the guy Beverly Benson mentioned, the one she sounded that-away about.) And Snow White was Jane Newton.

“Any relation?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” she said, so soft I could hardly hear her.

“Mrs. Newton,” Mickey Mouse stated, “was once my wife.” And the silence was so strong you could taste it.

I got it then. The two of them sitting there, remembering all the little things of their life together, being close to each other and yet somehow held apart. And on Christmas, too. when you remember things. There was still something between them even if they didn’t admit it themselves. But Beverly Benson seemed to have a piece of the man. and where did Dopey fit in?

It sort of worried me. They looked like swell people—people that belonged together. But it was my job to worry about the necklace and not about people’s troubles. I was glad Michaels came in just then.

He was being polite at the moment, explaining to Beverly Benson how Ferguson hadn’t got anywhere with the prints and how the jewels were probably miles away by now. “But we’ll do what we can,” he said. “We’ll talk to these people and find out what’s possible. I doubt, however, if you’ll ever see that necklace again. It was insured, of course. Miss Benson?”

“Of course. So were the other things, and with them I don’t mind. But this necklace I couldn’t conceivably duplicate. Lieutenant.”

Just then Michael’s eye lit on Donald Duck, and the eyebrow did tricks worth putting in a cartoon. “We’ll take you one by one,” he said. “You with the tail-feathers, we’ll start with you. Come along, Smith.”

Donald Duck grabbed a fresh cigarette, thought a minute, then reached out again for a handful. He whistled off key and followed us into the library.

“I gave all the material to your stooge here, Lieutenant,” he began. “Name, Wappingham. Occupation, actor. Address—”

Michaels was getting so polite it had me bothered. “You won’t mind, sir,” he purred, “if I suggest a few corrections in your statement?”

Donald looked worried. “Don’t you think I know my own name?”

“Possibly. But would you mind if I altered the statement to read: Name, Alfred Higgins. Occupation, jewel thief—conceivably reformed?”

The Duck wasn’t so bad hit as you might have thought. He let out a pretty fair laugh and said, “So the fat’s in the fire at last. But I’m glad you concede the possibility of my having reformed.”

“The possibility, yes.” Michaels underlined the word. “You admit you’re Higgins?”

“Why not? You can’t blame me for not telling you right off; it wouldn’t look good when somebody had just been up to my old tricks. But now that you know— And by the way. Lieutenant, just how do you know?”

“Some bright boy at Scotland Yard spotted you in an American picture. Sent your description and record out to us just in case you ever took up your career again.”

“Considerate of him, wasn’t it?”

But Michaels wasn’t in a mood for bright chatter any longer. We got down to work. We stripped that duck costume off the actor and left him shivering while we went over it inch by inch. He didn’t like it much.

At last Michaels let him get dressed again. “You came in your car?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going home in a taxi. We could hold you on suspicion, but I’d sooner play it this way.”

“Now I understand,” Donald said, “what they mean by the high-handed American police procedure.” And he went back into the other room with us.

All the same that was a smart move of Michaels’. It meant that Wappingham-Higgins-Duck would either have to give up all hope of the jewels (he certainly didn’t have them on him) or lead us straight to them, because of course I knew a tail would follow that taxi and camp on his doorstep all next week if need be.

Donald Duck said goodnight to his hostess and nodded to the other guests. Then he picked up his mask.

“Just a minute,” Michaels said. “Let’s have a look at that.”

“At this?” he asked innocent-like and backed toward the French window. Then he was standing there with an automatic in his hand. It was little but damned nasty-looking. I never thought what a good holster that long bill would make.

“Stay where you are, gentlemen,” he said calmly. “I’m leaving undisturbed, if you don’t mind.”

The room was frozen still. Beverly Benson and Snow White let out little gasps of terror. The drunk was still dead to the world. The other two men looked at us and did nothing. It was Donald’s round.

Or would’ve been if I hadn’t played football in high school. It was a crazy chance, but I took it. I was the closest to him, only his eyes were on Michaels. It was a good flying tackle and it brought him to the ground in a heap consisting mostly of me. The mask smashed as we rolled over on it and I saw bright glitters pouring out.

Ferguson and O’Hara were there by now. One of them picked up his gun and the other snapped on the handcuffs. I got to my feet and turned to Michaels and Beverly Benson. They began to say things both at once about what a swell thing I’d done and then I keeled over.

When I came to I was on a couch in a little dark room. I learned later it was the dressing room where the necklace had been stolen. Somebody was bathing my arm and sobbing.

I sort of half sat up and said, “Where am I?” I always thought it was just in stories people said that, but it was the first thing popped into my mind.

“You’re all right.” a cool voice told me. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

“And I didn’t feel a thing.... You mean he winged me?”

“I guess that’s what you call it. When I told the Lieutenant I was a nurse he said I could fix you up and they wouldn’t need the ambulance. You’re all right now.” Her voice was shaky in the dark, but I knew it was Snow White.

“Well, anyways, that broke the case pretty quick.”

“But it didn’t.” And she explained: Donald had been up to his old tricks, all right; but what he had hidden in his bill was the diamonds and the sapphire and the pearl earrings, only no emerald and ruby necklace. Beverly Benson was wild, and Michaels and our men were combing the house from top to bottom to see where he’d stashed it.

“There,” she said. She finished the story and the bandaging at the same time. “Can you stand up all right now?”

I was still kind of punchy. Nothing else could excuse me for what I said next. But she was so sweet and tender and good I wanted to say something nice, so like a dumb jerk I up and said, “You’d make some man a grand wife.”

That was what got her. She just went to pieces—dissolved, you might say. I’m not used to tears on the shoulder of my uniform, but what could I do? I didn’t try to say anything—just patted her back and let her talk. And I learned all about it.

How she’d married Philip Newton back in ‘29 when he was a promising young architect and she was an heiress just out of finishing school. How the fortune she was heiress to went fooey like all the others and her father took the quick way out. How the architect business went all to hell with no building going on and just when things were worst she had a baby. And then how Philip started drinking, and finally— Well, anyways, there it was.

They’d both pulled themselves together now. She was making enough as a nurse to keep the kid (she was too proud to take alimony), and Philip was doing fine in this arty photographic line he’d taken up. A Newton photograph was The Thing to Have in the smart Hollywood set. But they couldn’t come together again, not while he was such a success. If she went to him, he’d think she was begging; if he came to her, she’d think he was being noble. And Beverly Benson had set her cap for him.

Then this agent Harvey Madison (that’s Dopey), who had known them both when, decided to try and fix things. He brought Snow White to this party: neither of them knew the other would be here. And it was a party and it was Christmas, and some of their happiest memories were Christmases together. I guess that’s pretty much true of everybody. So she felt everything all over again, only—

“You don’t know what it’s done for me to tell you this. Please don’t feel hurt; but in that uniform and everything you don’t seem quite like a person. I can talk and feel free. And this has been hurting me all night and I had to say it.”

I wanted to take the two of them and knock their heads together; only first off I had to find that emerald and ruby necklace. It isn’t my job to heal broken hearts. I was feeling O. K. now, so we went back to the others.

Only they weren’t there. There wasn’t anybody in the room but only the drunk. I guessed where Mickey and Dopey were: stripped and being searched.

“Who’s that?” I asked Snow White.

She looked at the Little Pig. “Poor fellow. He’s been going through torture tonight too. That’s Bela Strauss.”

“Bella’s a woman’s name.”

“He’s part Hungarian.” (I guess that might explain anything. ) “He comes from Vienna. They brought him out here to write music for pictures because his name is Strauss. But he’s a very serious composer—you know, like...” and she said some tongue twisters that didn’t mean anything to me. “They think because his name is Strauss he can write all sorts of pretty dance tunes, and they won’t let him write anything else. It’s made him all twisted and unhappy, and he drinks too much.”

“I can see that.” I walked over and shook him. The sailor cap fell off. He stirred and looked up at me. I think it was the uniform that got him. He sat up sharp and said something in I guess German. Then he thought around a while and found some words in English.

“Why are you here? Why the police?” It came out in little one-syllable lumps, like he had to hunt hard for each sound. I told him. I tried to make it simple, but that wasn’t easy. Snow White knew a little German, so she helped.

“Ach!” he sighed. “And I through it all slept!”

“That’s one word for it,” I said.

But this thief of jewels—him I have seen.” It was a sweet job to get it out of him. but it boiled down to this: Where he passed out was on that same couch where they took me—right in the dressing-room. He came to once when he heard somebody in there, and he saw the person take something out of a box. Something red and green.

“Who was it?”

“The face, you understand, I do not see it. But the costume, yes. I see that clear. It was Mikki Maus.” It sounded funny to hear something as American as Mickey Mouse in an accent like that.

It took Snow White a couple of seconds to realize who wore the Mickey Mouse outfit. Then she said “Philip” and fainted.

Officer Tom Smith laid down his manuscript. “That’s all, Mr. Quilter.”

“All. sir?”

“When Michaels came in, I told him. He figured Newton must’ve got away with the necklace and then the English crook made his try later and got the other stuff. They didn’t find the necklace anywhere: but he must’ve pulled a fast one and stashed it away some place. With direct evidence like that, what can you do? They’re holding him.”

“And you chose, sir, not to end your story on that note of finality?”

“I couldn’t, Mr. Quilter. I... I like that girl who was Snow White. I want to see the two of them together again and I’d sooner he was innocent. And besides, when we were leaving. Beverly Benson caught me alone. She said. ‘I can’t talk to your Lieutenant. He is not sympathetic. But you... ‘ “ Tom Smith almost blushed. “So she went on about how certain she was that Newton was innocent and begged me to help her prove it. So I promised.”

“Hm,” said Mr. Quilter. “Your problem, sir, is simple. You have good human values there in your story. Now we must round them out properly. And the solution is simple. We have two women in love with the hero, one highly sympathetic and the other less so; for the spectacle of a passée actress pursuing a new celebrity is not a pleasant one. This less sympathetic woman, to please the audience, must redeem herself with a gesture of self-immolation to secure the hero’s happiness with the heroine. Therefore, sir, let her confess to the robbery.”

“Confess to the... But Mr. Quilter, that makes a different story out of it. I’m trying to write as close as I can to what happened. And I promised—”

“Damme, sir, it’s obvious. She did steal the necklace herself. She hasn’t worked for years. She must need money. You mentioned insurance. The necklace was probably pawned long ago, and now she is trying to collect.”

“But that won’t work. It really was stolen. Somebody saw it earlier in the evening, and the search didn’t locate it. And believe me, that squad knows how to search.”

“Fiddle-faddle, sir.” Mr. Quilter’s close-cropped scalp was beginning to twitch. “What was seen must have been a paste imitation. She could dissolve that readily in acid and dispose of it down the plumbing. And Wappingham’s presence makes her plot doubly sure; she knew him for what he was, and invited him as a scapegoat.”

Tom Smith squirmed. “I’d almost think you were right, Mr. Quilter. Only Bela Strauss did see Newton take the necklace.”

Mr. Quilter laughed. “If that is all that perturbs you...” He rose to his feet. “Come with me, sir. One of my neighbors is a Viennese writer now acting as a reader in German for Metropolis. He is also new in this country; his cultural background is identical with Strauss’s. Come. But first we must step down to the corner drugstore and purchase what I believe is termed a comic book.”

Mr. Quilter, his eyes agleam, hardly apologized for their intrusion into the home of the Viennese writer. He simply pointed at a picture in the comic book and demanded, “Tell me, sir. What character is that?”

The bemused Viennese smiled. “Why, that is Mikki Maus.”

Mr. Quilter’s finger rested on a pert little drawing of Minnie.

Philip Newton sat in the cold jail cell, but he was oblivious of the cold. He was holding his wife’s hands through the bars and she was saying, “I could come to you now, dear, where I couldn’t before. Then you might have thought it was just because you were successful, but now I can tell you how much I love you and need you—need you even when you’re in disgrace....”

They were kissing through the bars when Michaels came with the good news. “She’s admitted it, all right. It was just the way Smith reconstructed it. She’d destroyed the paste replica and was trying to use us to pull off an insurance frame. She cracked when we had Strauss point out a picture of what he called ‘Mikki Maus. ‘ So you’re free again, Newton. How’s that for a Christmas present?”

“I’ve got a better one. officer. We’re getting married again.”

“You wouldn’t need a new wedding ring, would you?” Michaels asked with filial devotion. “Michaels, Fifth between Spring and Broadway—fine stock.”

Mr. Quilter laid down the final draft of Tom Smith’s story, complete now with ending, and fixed the officer with a reproachful gaze. “You omitted, sir, the explanation of why such a misunderstanding should arise.”

Tom Smith shifted uncomfortably. “I’m afraid, Mr. Quilter. I couldn’t remember all that straight.”

“It is simple. The noun Maus in German is of feminine gender. Therefore a Mikki Maus is a female. The male, naturally, is a Mikki Mäserich. I recall a delightful Viennese song of some seasons ago, which we once employed as background music, wherein the singer declares that he and his beloved will be forever paired, ‘wie die Mikki Mikki Mikki Mikki Mikki Maus und der Mikki Mäserich.‘ “

“Gosh.” said Tom Smith. “You know a lot of things.”

Mr. Quilter allowed himself to beam. “Between us, sir, there should be little that we do not know.”

“We sure make a swell team as a detective.”

The beam faded. “As a detective? Damme, sir, do you think I cared about your robbery? I simply explained the inevitable denouement to this story.”

“But she didn’t confess and make a gesture. Michaels had to prove it on

her.”

“All the better, sir. That makes her mysterious and deep. A Bette Davis role. I think we will first try for a magazine sale on this. Studios are more impressed by matter already in print. Then I shall show it to F. X., and we shall watch the squirmings of that genius Aram Melekian.”

Tom Smith looked out the window, frowning. They made a team, all right; but which way? He still itched to write, but the promotion Michaels had promised him sounded good, too. Were he and this strange lean old man a team for writing or for detection?

The friendly red and green lights of the neighborhood Christmas trees seemed an equally good omen either way.