The Scarlet Letters

B...

Nikki phoned at twenty minutes after eleven Thursday morning. She was phoning, she told Ellery, to call off their “tentative lunch date.” Dirk had his plot pretty well organized and he was starting to dictate manuscript. He planned to work right through the day.

“Wonderful,” said Ellery. “Let me talk to him, Nikki.”

Dirk sounded energetic. “Hi, Ellery! I think I’ve hit pay dirt in this one. I hope you don’t mind Nikki’s breaking your date.”

“Think nothing of it. I understand you’re really on fire, Dirk.”

“Don’t hex me, son. I have to nurse these spells.” Dirk laughed.

“How true,” mourned Ellery; and he hung up and ran.

At a few minutes past noon Ellery’s cab was cruising through Beekman Place for the third time when he saw Martha Lawrence come out of the apartment house and step into a taxi waiting at the curb. She was dressed in a mousy brown suit with black accessories and a large-brimmed black hat with a thick-meshed nose veil. The hat overshadowed her face.

Martha’s cab drove west to Park Avenue and stopped before the entrance of the Marguery. She got out, paid her driver, and entered the Open Air Pavilion.

Ellery waited two minutes. Then he went in, too.

Martha was seated at a choice table with a woman. The woman was gross and dowdy, about fifty-five years old. One of her legs protruded from under the cloth; it was elephantine.

Ellery selected a table some distance away, a little behind and to the right of the two women. The distance did not bother him; he had sharp eyes.

They had cocktails. Martha had a single whisky sour, her companion three martinis, which she tossed off in rapid succession. Ellery sighed; it looked like a long lunch.

He had to be on the alert. Martha was uneasy. She kept looking around unexpectedly, as if searching for someone she knew. Ellery worked first with the menu, then with a copy of the Herald Tribune which he had picked up on his way crosstown.

It was the dowdy woman’s treat. She had a trick of leaning toward Martha, her oily lips apart, in an attitude of rapture at Martha’s every word. She was all adoration.

Selling something, Ellery decided.

She was an old hand at it, too. She did not produce her wares until the dessert, and then carelessly.

It was a thick book of typewriter paper bound in bright pink covers and held together by fancy brass pins.

As Martha riffled it and then dropped it into her black envelope bag, the woman continued to chatter away.

She was an agent peddling a playscript. Either by accident or design, Martha had managed a legitimate excuse to explain her afternoon’s absence.

At five minutes of two Martha glanced at her wristwatch, said something with a smile, and rose. Caught by surprise, the agent looked grim. But she immediately beamed again, made an eager remark, waved a meaty arm at the waiter, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table, and was scrambling after Martha in a triumph of integrated motion. She crowded Martha out and onto the sidewalk, clutching and talking all the while. Not until Martha’s cab door had slammed and the cab was rolling off did she stop talking, and then her look became grim again and she climbed wearily into another taxi.

But by that time Ellery was turning from Park Avenue into a crosstown street in Martha’s wake.

Martha’s cab discharged her at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 49th Street.

She went into Saks.

For the next hour and a half Ellery trailed her through the big store. She made numerous purchases — toilet water, stockings, lingerie, two pairs of shoes, some summer sportswear. But she made her selections without interest, almost listlessly. Ellery had the feeling that she was marking time, perhaps setting up the corroboration of a second alibi announced in advance. She took none of her purchases with her.

Before leaving the store, she paused on the main floor to buy some men’s socks and handkerchiefs. These, too, she ordered sent. Ellery contrived to pass close by when the clerk was writing in his sales book, hoping he might catch the name and address of the man for whom she was buying the socks and handkerchiefs. He was successful but untriumphant: they were to be sent, he heard Martha instruct the salesman, to “Mr. Dirk Lawrence” at the Beekman Place address on her Charga-Plate.

Ellery felt that this tactic was not worthy of such a candid person as Martha. It suggested too depressingly the veteran wool-puller.

She left Saks-Fifth Avenue at nineteen minutes to four, ignored a taxi discharging a passenger, and began to walk north.

A, then, was nearby.

Martha passed St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Best’s, Cartier’s, Georg Jensen’s.

A few minutes later she crossed Fifth Avenue and walked rapidly west.

At one minute to four, Martha went into the A—Hotel.

The A—Hotel was an old hotel with a distinguished past. Its trade was largely transient, but it had a hard core of celebrated residents which gave it a romantic flavor. It was a favorite hideaway dining and meeting place for the more literate habitués of Broadway, and it was exactly the sort of place where Martha Lawrence might be expected to go.

Ellery strolled into the lobby, wondering if he and Nikki had not misjudged Martha after all.

Martha’s back was on view at the other end of the lobby. A tall man with a very dark tan had jumped up from an overstuffed chair and was talking to her.

Ellery walked over to the newsstand and began to finger a copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

The lobby was dim after the bright afternoon sunshine and he had to squint to make out the tall man’s features. What he could distinguish under the tan seemed rather heavily handsome. Martha’s companion wore his thick blond or gray hair — in the poor light, and at that distance, Ellery could not determine which it was — with a dash. The lounge suit was beautifully draped; there was a spring aster in the lapel. The Homburg had swash.

The man was not young.

As he talked, he kept smiling.

The fellow talked with a technique. His eyes never left Martha’s upturned little face, as if he had starved for a sight of her and now could not restrain his hunger. His hand hovered about Martha’s upper arm as he talked.

There was something teasingly familiar about him — his brilliant smile, the trained slouch, the way his big shoulders filled his jacket, his air of unconquerable self-assurance. Ellery was positive he had met the man somewhere, or seen him around town.

Suddenly Martha walked off. She opened a door off the lobby and disappeared. Ellery moved a bit. It was a ladies’ room. The man’s eyes followed her all the way in.

Ellery placed a quarter and a dime down on the newsstand counter and strolled off reading the magazine. As he neared the elevators, the tall man put on his Homburg, settling it with care on his head. He arranged it at a jaunty angle. Then he walked over to the elevators, looking up at the bronze indicators over the doors. He seemed pleased with himself; his cheeks were going in and out in a soft whistle.

Ellery burrowed into the corner of a settee which faced the elevators, under a luxuriant philodendron.

It was blond hair, not gray. The temples were gray.

He was in his fifties and not making the mistake of trying to look thirty-five. A Man of Distinction, say forty-five. A model, however, not the original. The angle of his hat betrayed him.

One of the elevator doors opened. The man stepped into the elevator and said, “Six, please.” The voice was deep, richly colored, and resonant, with the merest British tinge.

The voice did it. Now the angle of the hat, the beautifully tailored suit, the aster, and the barbershop tan all fitted.

The fellow was an actor.

Legitimate theater, of course.

That’s where I’ve seen him, thought Ellery. But who is he?

Four other people got into the elevator, including a woman. There was no sign of Martha.

Ellery got up and stepped into the elevator, too. He stepped in sidewise, removing his hat as he did so. It shielded his face long enough to allow him to turn naturally and face the door. The tall man was at the rear of the elevator, his Homburg over his heart; he was humming.

Ellery got off at the fifth floor.

He ran up the emergency staircase to the sixth in time to hear the elevator door clang. He waited three seconds, then he opened the exit door and stepped out.

The main corridor was at right angles to the bank of elevators. Ellery walked past the intersection. Far down the corridor the tall man was unlocking a door.

When he heard the door close, Ellery turned back and hurried up the long corridor.

The room was 632.

He kept going to the end of the corridor, where it was met by another cross-corridor. The short corridor was empty.

Ellery waited at the intersection.

Five minutes later he heard the distant rattle of the elevator door and he stepped back out of sight. He heard the elevator door open and close.

After a moment he held his hat before his face, as if he were about to put it on, and walked rapidly across the intersection.

It was Martha.

She was hurrying up the main corridor, searching the door numbers.

Ellery remained on the other side of the cross-corridor, just out of view.

A few seconds later he heard a series of light, rapid knocks. A door opened at once.

“What held you up, darling?” An actor, all right. And a leading man, at that.

“Hurry!” Martha’s familiar voice, unfamiliarly breathless.

The door slammed.

After a moment Ellery heard the lock turn over.

He went back downstairs and waited near the desk for a couple to check in and follow a bellhop.

“Hello, Ernie.”

The desk clerk looked startled. “Mr. Queen!” he said. “I thought you’d taken your trade elsewhere. Checking in to meet a deadline?”

“Mine died some time ago,” said Ellery. “No, Ernie, I’m looking for information.”

“Oh,” said the clerk, lowering his voice. “Your alter ego, eh?” Like all old employees of the A—Hotel, he had long since absorbed its literary atmosphere. “Man-hunt?”

“Well, it’s a man,” said Ellery. “The man in six-thirty-two. What’s his name, Ernie?”

“Mr. Queen, we’re not supposed to give out—”

“Let’s say you were looking over the registration cards and began muttering to yourself?”

“Yes.” The clerk coughed and moved over to the card file hanging on the wall beside the desk. “Six-thirty-two... Checked in at one-five P.M. today...” He looked around. “You won’t care for this, Mr. Queen. He’s registered as George T. Spelvin, East Lynne, Oklahoma.”

“Typical actor’s humor. Come on, Ernie, you know who he is. You know every actor in the Lambs.”

The desk clerk straightened the pen in its holder. “You flatter me,” he murmured, “and I like it. The Westphalian is Van Harrison. What’s the lay, chief?”

“Guard your language. No, it’s nothing you can peddle to the columns, worse luck. I spotted him, thought he looked familiar, and wondered who he was. Thanks a lot.” Ellery grinned and went out.

But on the street his grin faded.

“Van Harrison.” He found himself saying it aloud.

He stopped in a Sixth Avenue drugstore to phone Nikki. Dirk Lawrence answered.

“Hi, there. How’s it coming?”

“Pretty good, pretty good.” Dirk sounded absent.

“Any chance of my borrowing my secretary for this evening, chum?”

“You’re damn decent to do this for me, Ellery. How much will you take for her contract?”

“That isn’t answering my question.”

“I guess it can be arranged, old boy — Martha and I are invited to the Le Fleurs’ for dinner, and that means black tie, a butler with palsy, and Charades in the drawing room afterward. I’m beginning to hope Martha doesn’t come home at all.”

“That’s a switch,” laughed Ellery. “Let me speak to Nikki.”

Nikki said, “And how has your day been?”

“Surprisingly surprising. How about meeting me for dinner?”

“Why, Mr. Q.”

“Make it Louis and Armand’s as close to seven as you can get away. Don’t keep me waiting too long, because I’ll be at the bar, and you know how conscientious Pompeia is.”

“No, but I know you. Three drinks and you’re the Human Fly.”

“I’m climbing no walls this night. It’s serious business, Nikki.”

Nikki said fervently, “I can hardly wait,” and hung up.

Nikki said, “Van Harrison,” as if it were the name of a loathsome disease. “What can she see in him? I thought he was dead.”

“Unkind, Nikki,” murmured Ellery. “I can testify that Mr. Harrison is no corpse. And — I’m afraid — so can Martha.”

“But he’s an old man.”

“Not so old. It wasn’t more than a dozen or so years ago that he was jamming the theaters with standees and having to fight his way out of the stage door. That profile still packs a wallop, Nikki. Terrific personality.”

“I could strangle him,” said Nikki, panting. “Martha in a hotel room! Where’d she ever meet him?”

“Broadway is a small town. Maybe he applied for a part in one of her productions. I made a few inquiries at the Lambs after I phoned and I’m told he’s seen every once in a while still trying to break down the Broadway ban on him. I don’t suppose you remember that. He went on a prolonged drunk in his last starring play for Avery Langston, and Langston had to close down at the height of a run. Harrison hasn’t had a job on Broadway since. That must have been ten or twelve years ago.”

“Then what’s he living on, his old press notices?”

“He doesn’t have to work at all. He made a fortune in his lush years, but you know actors. He still takes an occasional radio and TV job, and once in a while he gets a character part in some film. It’s probably keeping him alive. That magic voice and romantic profile of his will lure women of Martha’s age when he’s tripping over his beard.”

“But Martha.”

“What about Martha?” said Ellery coldly. “What’s so different about Martha? She’s in her middle thirties, she has a husband who’s making her life hell with his crazy jealousy, she has no children and no family to hold her back, and she’s stagestruck. Why, Martha’s duck soup for an operator like Harrison! He can give her what Dirk can’t, or won’t — flattery, attention, mastery, glamor. He can give her happiness, Nikki, even if it’s only a cheap substitute in a hotel room.”

“But Martha’s always been so level-headed. Can’t she see he’s a phony?”

“Who’s real in this world? And maybe he’s in love with her. Martha isn’t so hard to take.”

Nikki was silent.

“In other words,” said Ellery after a while, “it’s one hell of a mess, and I’m for getting out.”

“Not now.”

“Now is the only time. Later we may not be able to.”

“Not while it’s going on.” Nikki shivered. “Not while there’s a chance of Dirk’s finding out.”

“I take it, then, you’re for continuing to hole up at the Lawrences’.”

“Ellery, I have to.”

Ellery grunted. “Why did I ever let myself be conned into this?” He kept drumming on the cloth. Nikki watched him anxiously. “Of course, the sensible thing is a girl-to-girl talk. After all, there is the basis for it, Nikki. We came into this because Martha said Dirk was being jealous for no reason. The situation has changed. He now — fortunately still unknown to him — has the best reason in the world. She’s cut the ground away from under us. If we’re to continue to help her—”

“We’ll have to do it in spite of her.”

Ellery threw up his hands. “Every time I make a constructive suggestion—!”

“Look, dear,” said Nikki, “I know women and you don’t. If I told Martha what we know and pleaded with her to stop before something drastic happens, she’d deny the whole thing. She’d deny it because she thinks she’s madly in love. Besides making up some embarrassing fairy tale to explain why she’s meeting this Harrison man in hotel rooms, she’d hate me for knowing it, I’d have to leave, and that would be that.”

Ellery grumbled something.

“If Martha were ready to come clean, Ellery, she’d have walked into that hotel room a free woman instead of sneaking in like a tart. The fact is, she’s decided to have an affair while maintaining the fiction that she’s trying to save her marriage.”

“But that’s illogical!”

“When a good woman falls, Mr. Queen, you can throw your logic down the johnny. Ellery, I’m sorry I dragged you into this. Why don’t you just forget it and let me blunder along in my own way?”

“Very clever,” snarled Ellery. “All right, we try to save them in spite of themselves. And we’ll wind up right where we belong, behind the nearest eight-ball!”

Nikki pressed his hand below the table. “You darling,” she said tenderly.

So after they had eaten the salad that was not on the menu, Ellery complained further: “The thing that bothers me most is that we can’t plan ahead. There’s nothing to plan. It’s like being asked to watch for a firebug loose in an ammunition dump on a moonless night. All I can do is stumble after Martha in the dark and hope I’ll be there to step on the match before everything goes boom.”

“I know, dear heart...”

“You hijack that next letter, Nik. You’ll have to read it this time before Martha does — she won’t be so obliging as to drop it on the kitchen floor again. It will probably be in a business envelope, too. It’s a good dodge and the kind of pattern that, once established, is pretty sure to be followed.”

“But he wouldn’t use the envelope of that air-conditioner company again,” objected Nikki. “That would be dangerous.”

“It would,” said Ellery, “therefore the second note will come in an altogether different envelope.”

“But how will I know which one?”

“I can’t help you. You may have to steam open every business letter addressed to Martha. And, since we’ve agreed to play blindman’s buff all around, I suppose I’d better warn you not to get caught at it, even by the maid.”

Nikki gulped. “I’ll try to be careful.”

“Yes,” said Ellery without mercy. “Louis! Where’s our tetrazzini?”

Nikki called the Queen apartment late Saturday afternoon to say that she was free for the evening, if anybody was interested. Inspector Queen, who took the message, had to have it translated.

“It means she’s got something,” said Ellery with excitement. “Give me that phone! Nikki, well?”

“Well, what?” said Nikki’s voice. “Do we have a date, or don’t we?”

“Can’t talk?”

“No.”

“The apartment. Any time you can make it.”

“What’s going on here?” demanded his father when Ellery hung up. “What are you two up to?”

“Nothing good,” said Ellery.

“Anything in my line?”

“Heaven forbid.”

“You’ll get around to me yet,” said the Inspector cheerfully. “You always do.”

Nikki showed up a few minutes past nine, looking more dead than alive.

“Excuse us?” said Ellery politely, and he shut the study door on the Inspector, who was watching Sid Caesar in the living room. “I’ve got your drink ready, Nik. Kick off your shoes, lie down, and give out.”

Nikki sank back on the couch, wiggling her toes, set the highball glass untouched on the floor, and addressed the ceiling. “I am now,” she announced, “the female Jimmy Valentine of my darning and knitting circle. I don’t suppose you want the technical details?”

“Correct,” said Ellery. “Results are all that interest me. And they were?”

“You have no heart.”

“This is a heartless racket, child. Well?”

“The letter came in this morning’s mail,” said Nikki dreamily. “There were three business-type envelopes, but I didn’t have to steam open all three. I spotted the right one at a glance.”

“You did?” Ellery was astonished. “Froehm again?”

“No. This was an ordinary long white envelope with the return address of a business firm named Humber & Kahn, Jewelers. But the address was The 45th Street Building, 547 Fifth — same as the air-conditioner outfit, please note. And... get this...”

“Oh, come on!”

“Martha’s name and address were typewritten in red again.”

Ellery stared. “Funny.”

“Stupid, I calls it. That red typing is a dead giveaway all by itself, if Dirk should happen to notice it a few times. Luckily, he almost never gets to the mail first.”

“Go on,” muttered Ellery. “What did this message say?”

“It said — in the same red-ribbon typing, by the way — ‘Monday comma 3 P.M. comma B.’”

“B?”

“B.”