The Scarlet Letters

D...

“No, I don’t,’ said Ellery, steering Nikki around a mink coat holding a Scottie on a leash that was eying his leg thoughtfully. “It was done up in paper — in that lighting I couldn’t get the color — and it was about three by six, and a half-inch or so thick.”

“The booklet?” Nikki stopped to lean against the apartment house. It was a moonless night, and the river sounds were mournful. Everything floated tonight, people and sound and her thoughts.

“Wrong dimensions. What’s the matter, Nikki?”

“Oh... I feel anesthetized. Swimming around in the ether. I keep forgetting what day it is.”

“You’re drugged with tension. Nikki, you can’t keep on living like this. You’ll break down. Why not give it up as a nice try?”

“No,” said Nikki mechanically. She shook her head at a cigaret.

Ellery scowled as he lit one. He had never known this Nikki. She was as immovable as the wall she leaned against. He wondered what Martha would say — what depths of shame and remorse she might plumb — if she knew the heavy strength of Nikki’s loyalty. But he knew he could never communicate such a thing to anyone in the world, especially to Martha. It had a mysterious, insoluble quality, like a faith, blind and so able to endure in darkness. And it occurred to him suddenly that Nikki had lost her mother very early and had never known a sister.

He sighed.

“You didn’t spot anything roughly that size about the apartment, I suppose?”

“She wouldn’t leave it lying around, Ellery.”

“I’d have dismissed it as a meaningless gift, except that he looked around so peculiarly as he slipped it into his pocket. He was surreptitious about it. It wasn’t in character. Or maybe it was. With a man of Harrison’s type, you’d have to strip away a great many layers of hardened greasepaint before you got down to him... And Martha was relieved, it seemed to me. As if she’d found it a load to carry around. I don’t understand it.”

“Where did they go afterward?” asked Nikki dully. “She didn’t get home till eleven-thirty.”

“They didn’t go anywhere. They left the Chinese Rathskeller about ten o’clock and simply drove around in a taxi until he dropped her off at Lexington and 42nd. She took another cab and went straight home. Where was she supposed to be tonight?”

“At the Music Hall catching the new Stanley Kramer picture to scout an unknown young actress she was tipped off about as a possible lead for the Greenspan play.”

“That’s taking a chance,” muttered Ellery. “Suppose Dirk asks her about it? She’s getting reckless.”

“No,” said Nikki. “Because Dirk doesn’t know she saw the picture at a private showing two weeks ago.”

“Oh,” said Ellery.

Nikki said, “It’s late, Ellery. I’d better be getting back upstairs.”

They walked slowly along the pavement, and after a moment Ellery said, “About that booklet-”

“I’ve looked high and low for it, Ellery. I’ve gone through her night table, her secretary, her vanity, her bureau drawers, hatboxes, top shelf of her clothes closet — even the linen closet, the broom closet, and under her mattress. Wherever Dirk isn’t apt to run across it. And... twice I went through her bag.”

“Incredible!” exclaimed Ellery. “She must refer to it every time she gets a code message. Unless she’s memorized all the code places, which doesn’t seem likely. Have you thought of keeping an eye on her the mornings the letters come?”

“Of course, but I can hardly follow her into her bedroom when she’s shut the door, Ellery. Or into the bathroom.”

“No.” And Ellery walked in silence. Then he said, “Nikki, I’ve got to get into the apartment.”

Nikki stopped.

“It’s got to be searched till the booklet is found. Knowing in advance where they’re to meet at any given time may mean the difference between... well, it’s obviously of the greatest importance. That code book’s in the apartment somewhere — I can’t see Martha running the risk of carrying it around with her. When is the next evening you’re sure they’ll both be out of the apartment at the same time?”

“This Saturday night. They’re going to a party at the Boylands’ in Scarsdale.”

“There’s no chance of a slip?”

“They’re being picked up by Sarah and Jim Winegard — they’re all driving up in Jim’s car. That means they’re more or less at the Winegards’ mercy for transportation back. And you know Jim. He’ll be the last one to leave.”

“All right,” said Ellery. “But let’s play it smart. Tell them I’m coming up — if they don’t mind — to clear out some manuscript correspondence with you on EQMM. Then nobody can accuse me of anything but slave-driving!... Good night.”

“Good night, Ellery.”

She looked so white and forlorn in the light of the entrance side-lamps that Ellery put his arms around her and kissed her in full view of the night doorman mopping down the lobby.

Ellery walked into the Lawrence apartment at five minutes after nine Saturday night, and at exactly nine-seven he found Martha’s code book.

Nikki had admitted him to the apartment and left him in the living room while she stepped into the adjoining study to fetch her compact. She was just reaching for it in her bag beside the typewriter when Ellery appeared smiling in the doorway and holding aloft a paper-backed little book with a brightly colored laminated cover.

“Here it is,” he said.

Nikki gaped as if he had been holding up the Gutenberg Bible.

Ellery went over to Dirk’s green leather chair and settled himself with enjoyment. He began to leaf through the book.

“No,” choked Nikki. “This is too much.”

“What?” said Ellery. “Oh. Pooh. It was nothing at all.”

“Oh, wasn’t it,” said Nikki fiercely. “Where did you find it? I’ve ransacked this apartment inside out, top to bottom, I don’t know how many times!”

“Of course you did,” said Ellery in a soothing voice, “and that’s why you didn’t find it. First principles, Nik. See Poe, Edgar Allan. Specifically The Purloined Letter.”

“An obvious place?”

“Right under your nose, sweetheart. It stood to reason that, if you couldn’t find it in any of the hiding places you’d expect it to be, it must be in the one place nobody would dream of searching.”

“But where?”

“Did you ever know a better place to hide a book than the average American bookcase?”

“On the living-room bookshelves,” gasped Nikki.

“Sandwiched between a 1934 World Almanac,” nodded Ellery, “and a copy of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. In such company this little book could stand there undetected for three generations. Aren’t you going to take a look at it?”

Nikki stalked over, head high, but craning. Ellery laughed and pulled her down, and after a moment she snuggled with a sigh into a comfortable position, and they looked the little book over together.

It was a guidebook by Carl Maas, How to Know and Enjoy New York, published in 1949 by the New American Library at thirty-five cents. The cover, which was illustrated by a photographic montage of Radio City, Times Square and New York Harbor, advertised its contents: “Where to Eat,” “What to See,” “How to Avoid the Clip Joints,” and so on. It was written as a running account of the city’s geography and places of interest, and one of its convenient features was that all place-names were printed in italic or in boldface type, making them stand out from the page.

Apparently Van Harrison had found this feature convenient, too, for here and there throughout the book certain place-names had been circled in red pencil, emphasizing them doubly.

“Confirms what we suspected,” murmured Ellery. “I don’t see a single duplication of places beginning with the same letter of the alphabet. It apparently runs once from A to Z. Let’s check the B message. That ‘Sammy’s’ of Sammy’s Bowery Follies still bothers me.”

“You passed it! Page nineteen.”

“He put a red ring around ‘Bowery Follies’ and ignored the ‘Sammy’s’ preceding it! So that’s how Martha knew that was the B-place...”

“Wait, Ellery. Here’s Chinatown on the facing page, and it’s not ringed—”

“I think I spotted it back here in the Foreign Restaurants section... Yes, here, page eighty-six. Red ring around ‘Chinese Rathskeller’ and ‘45 Mott.’ Thorough performer, isn’t he? If he hadn’t ringed the Chinatown address, too, she might have gone kiting off to the uptown branch on West 51st.”

“Red,” said Nikki. “Everything in red. I keep thinking of that darned scarlet letter.”

“I’m tempted to say it’s a manifestation of Harrison’s sense of humor, but who knows? It may have a much simpler explanation. Tell you what you do, Nikki. Get over to the machine and type out this list as I give it to you. We’ll forget A, B, and C — that’s history. Make it D for whatever-it-is, and so on. I’ll give you the page numbers, too. I may want to get a copy of the book for possible future developments.”

“Carbon?”

“No. And I’ll take the original with me. It’s safer out of the apartment.”

Ellery read the ringed items off as he came to them, page by page. When he had finished, Nikki made a second list, rearranging the items on the first sheet in alphabetical order. The original draft Ellery tore to shreds and flushed down the toilet.

“Now let’s see what we have. Read them off, Nikki.”

The list Nikki read contained twenty-three items, from D through Z:

“He’s certainly playful,” said Nikki wearily. “His mother must have been frightened by a sightseeing bus.”

“It’s probably a line he’s worked out,” said Ellery. “These great lovers are like the people who hang around the casinos. They’ve always got a system to beat the wheel. You can’t deny it has its charm, Nikki.”

“It escapes me.”

“Well, it’s apparently working on Martha. It adds a note of dash to the affair, no doubt. It’s lucky he didn’t have a copy of The Third Man; he’d have had her meeting him in a sewer.” Ellery studied the list again. “I’m a lot more puzzled by something else.”

“What now?” Nikki put her arms on the desk and her head on her arms.

“Well, their next meeting, for instance.” Ellery glanced at her, but he went on as if he were concentrating on his thought. “D. Up to now they’ve met in pretty safe places-Chinatown, The Bowery; even their meeting at the A — wasn’t dangerous the way they handled it. But the Diamond Horseshoe — a nightclub — in the heart of the theatrical district where they’re both so well-known... It seems downright careless of Mr. Harrison. Any one of five hundred people might spot them there, and if it got back to Dirk... Are you all right, Nikki?”

“What?” Nikki looked up blearily.

Ellery went around the desk, put his hands under her arms, and lifted. “The meeting,” he said firmly, “is adjourned.”

“I’m all right, Ellery—”

“You’re in the last stage of exhaustion. No, I’ll put the book back before I leave.” He carried her to her room, kicked the door open, and deposited her on the floor. “Get undressed.”

“It’s not even ten o’clock—”

“Do you undress yourself, or do I do it for you?”

Nikki sank wanly onto her makeshift bed. “You would pick a time when I’m half-dead.” She yawned and shivered, hugging herself. “I suppose the next item on the agenda is to watch for the date and time of the Diamond Horseshoe meeting.”

“Never mind that. I’m going to make you some hot milk, and then you’re going to bed.”

And the Diamond Horseshoe meeting was an interesting meeting, one point of interest being that it never took place.

Nikki phoned on Sunday morning to say that Martha and Dirk had come in at five A.M. from their Scarsdale party, making so much noise that the neighbors banged shoes on the walls. Nikki, lying awake in the dark, had heard Dirk yelling drunkenly in the kitchen that he would kill with his bare hands the next man she allowed to paw her, and Martha shrieking back that she couldn’t stand it any more, nothing had happened in the world that any sane man could take exception to, and if he didn’t stop assaulting men who danced with her and turning perfectly nice house parties into waterfront free-for-alls, with the police having to be called and everything — and a lucky thing for him Hal Boyland knew that state trooper personally! — why, so help her God, she would have him committed to a mental hospital; and so on, far into the morning. They had wound up hurling crockery at each other, which terminated hostilities, since an egg cup caught Dirk on the temple and opened a streaming cut over an inch long, at which Martha fainted and Nikki crawled out of bed to tend the wounded and clean the battlefield.

“I just looked in to see if they were dead or alive,” sighed Nikki, “and Dirk’s sleeping on the floor to one side of the bed and Martha’s sleeping on the floor on the other side. I guess they had a last-gasp fight as to who would not sleep in the bed with whom, and couldn’t settle even that. If it weren’t so tragic it would be hilarious.”

Sunday was passed in a truce of silence, with Nikki the desperate mediator. On Sunday night Dirk apologized, and Martha accepted his apology; and on Monday and Tuesday Dirk resumed his old, almost obsolete, canine habits and followed her wherever she went with humility and adoration. Martha was cool, but she stuck to home, and toward evening on Tuesday she thawed.

But on Wednesday morning the next letter came. D was the code designation, and the date and time were Friday at eight-fifteen P.M.

Ellery was at one of Mr. Rose’s lonelier tables by seven-forty-five, hoping for an even break in the odds on Harrison’s table being within range. He was studying the menu with both elbows elevated when Van Harrison walked in at seven-fifty-eight and was ushered to a reserved table of even lonelier location, with the odds going crazy. Harrison sat down not a dozen feet away. Fortunately again he was in profile to Ellery, and Ellery could watch him and the approach from the entrance at the same time.

Harrison ordered a cocktail.

Women were turning to look at him. He was dressed in a suede cream-gray suit with a white carnation in the lapel; diamonds glittered at his cuffs, and he raised and lowered his cocktail glass with a ceremoniousness that did his cufflinks full justice. His tempered profile he used like a rapier, keeping it carefully poised, or flicking it this way or that ever so slightly, with a half-smile on his lips, at once kind and masterful.

Didn’t he know they were bound to be seen? Or didn’t he care?

Ellery watched the women. They were impressed and delighted. He shook his head.

Then he realized that it was eight-twenty. Martha had not yet come.

He wondered if his watch was right.

But he saw Harrison glancing at his wristwatch, too, with a frown.

Probably she was held up in traffic.

At eight-thirty-five Ellery began to doubt his traffic theory.

At eight-fifty he abandoned it.

At nine o’clock he knew Martha wasn’t coming, and that was when he began to get the uneasy feeling that perhaps Dirk was.

Harrison was annoyed. Harrison was more than annoyed — he was livid. The table was set for two, and it was apparent to his public that the empty chair was going to remain empty. Some of the women were tittering.

At nine-five the actor summoned the maître and imperiously waved away the second chair and place-setting. His gestures and expression said that a stupid mistake had been made by the management. And a waiter ran up to take his food order.

He ordered coldly, in a loud voice.

Ellery rose and sought a phone.

The receiver at the other end was snatched up halfway through the first ring.

“Hello?” It was Martha’s voice, dry, braced.

Before Ellery could answer he heard Dirk explode in the background. “Damn the phone! Hang up, Marty. The hell with whoever it is.”

“But Dirk— Hello?”

“Ellery, Martha.”

“Ellery. Hello, dear.”

He wriggled at the relief in her voice.

“It’s Ellery. How are you? Why haven’t we seen you? Where are you calling from?”

Dirk’s voice made some irritated sounds.

“I don’t want to interrupt whatever you two are doing,” Ellery said. “Is Nikki around?”

“Nikki, it’s for you.”

“I’ll take it in the dressing room, Mar.” Nikki, quick.

“Yes, do that!” Dirk.

“Dirk.” Martha was laughing. “Don’t mind him, Ellery. He’s in one of his dedicated-artist moods. All right, Dirk! Why don’t you drop in later, Ellery? He’s really dying to see you. Me, too.”

“Maybe I will. If I can get away, Martha.”

“Here I am,” panted Nikki. “Hang up, Mar! A girl has to have some privacy.”

“Bye.” Martha laughed; and he heard the click.

“Nikki?”

“Yes.”

“Is it all right?”

“Yes. Dirk’s got her occupied.”

“What happened?”

“You at the—?”

“Yes.”

“And the character—?”

“Still here, waiting. Dirk’s doing?”

“Yes. He picked tonight to want to read his book to Martha as far as he’s got. He’s really terribly enthusiastic about it, so naturally—”

“Say no more. But wasn’t she ready to go out?”

“Uh-huh. An appointment with a set designer... she said. She phoned somebody with her back turned and left a message that Mrs. Lawrence couldn’t make it at the last moment and would call tomorrow about another ‘appointment.’”

“A message he didn’t get. Okay, Nik. I was worried.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hang around here a while. Maybe I’ll drop in later.”

“Oh, do!”

Ellery went back to his table.

Something new had been added during his absence. A thin small man in a dinner jacket had his palms planted on Van Harrison’s table and was leaning over it, talking. The man had pointed ears and a Hallowe’en smile and whatever he was saying amused him greatly. But it was not amusing Van Harrison. Harrison was looking ugly and old. His long, beautiful hands were clasped about his soup bowl and his knuckles showed pale points. Ellery had the oddest conviction that what Van Harrison wanted to do, more than anything else in the world at that moment, was to pick up the bowl and jam it over the thin man’s face.

Then the man in the dinner jacket turned his head slightly and Ellery recognized him. It was Leon Fields.

Fields’s syndicated column, Low and Inside, was the pièce de résistance of over six hundred daily newspapers serving the appetites for gossip, rumor, and innuendo of unestimated millions of the sensation-hungry. His juiciest paragraphs were headed: LEON FIELDS MEAN TODAY, and these dished out the filets mignons of his nightly shopping excursions in the supermarkets of Broadway and café society. As a famous wit remarked to Ellery one night at the Colony, while they watched Fields tablehopping, “One hint that Leon’s in the neighborhood, and nobody goes to bed.”

Fields had the unadmired reputation of never losing his meat once he got the scent. On the Rialto it was earnestly said that nothing had been surer than death and taxes until Leon Fields came along.

Ellery had followed his career with clinical interest, and it had only recently dawned on him that Fields was a much-maligned character. The evidence was hidden and scattered, but it was there. Viewed without prejudice, Fields’s activities took on an almost moral blush. He never hounded the innocent; his victims were invariably guilty. Unsavory as some of his tidbits were, no one had ever been able to make him swallow his own words. When Fields printed it, there was a fact behind it somewhere. And Ellery had heard of numerous targets of other columnists whom Fields had spared because they were victims of circumstances. He was as quick to defend as to condemn, and some of his most vicious manhunts had been undertaken in the interests of the helpless and the wronged. He had once written in his column: “Last week a Certain Nobody called me a son-of-a-you-know. Thanks, pal. My mother was an underdog. What was yours?”

The possibility that Leon Fields was on the trail of Van Harrison lowered Ellery’s body-temperature with great rapidity.

He watched anxiously.

And suddenly Harrison was on his feet, fists waving. He said something to Fields, and the thin man’s smile vanished. The columnist’s hand reached for the sugar bowl. Harrison began to shove the table aside.

The floor-show was on and all eyes were on the performers. No one seemed to notice what was happening.

Ellery looked around. He could not afford to be seen by Harrison. But unless he could avert a brawl...

“Quick!” He grabbed the sleeve of the passing maître. “Break that up if you don’t want trouble!”

The startled maître got there just as Van Harrison’s arm came up with a fist at the end of it. He caught the fist, stepped between the two men, and said something very quickly. A large man in a tuxedo appeared from nowhere. In a moment the group had left the floor and two waiters were clearing Harrison’s table.

Ellery shoved a ten-dollar bill into his waiter’s hand and hurried after them.

They were in a milling huddle at the checkroom, Harrison being held ungently by the large man in the tuxedo. Ellery walked up behind Harrison and handed the girl his check and a quarter.

“Let go of me,” he heard Harrison say in a strangled baritone. “Take your hands off me.”

“Let him go,” said the columnist. “He’s harmless.”

“Okay if you say so, Mr. Fields,” said the large man.

“Just let me pay my check,” the actor raged. “If you’re not a yellow dog, you’ll be waiting for me outside.”

Fields spun on his heel and walked out.

A crowd was gathering. The large man began to disperse them.

Harrison flung a bill at the headwaiter, jammed his Homburg on his head, and strode out. His cheeks were gray and they were quivering.

Ellery followed.

The sidewalk under the marquees was deserted; plays along 46th Street had just settled down to their second acts. The columnist was waiting under the marquee of a darkened theater ten yards up the street.

Harrison broke into a run. Toward Fields.

Ellery quickened his pace, looking back over his shoulder. A knot of people had formed at the entrance of the Diamond Horseshoe, craning. As he looked, they began to move toward him in a body. Somebody across the street turned to shout something. A man wearing a camera on a leather strap appeared, stared, began to cross on a long diagonal run. A cruising cab shot by, jammed on its brakes, and backed up to the dark theater.

When Ellery turned around, Harrison and Fields had disappeared.

He lowered his head and sprinted.

“They’re in the alley.” The cab driver was leaning out. “What is it, a fight?”

“For God’s sake, don’t go away!” Ellery dashed into the alley.

They were rolling up and down in the darkness. The actor was cursing and sobbing, Fields was silent. He’s slighter and shorter than Harrison, thought Ellery, and thirty pounds lighter. He hasn’t a chance.

Ellery groped toward the commotion, shouting, “Stop it, you fools! Do you want the police in on this?”

A tangle of arms and legs jarred him, and he staggered back to bang his shoulder blades against the brick wall of the theater.

Something flashed at the head of the alley and his arm instinctively came up to protect his face. The man with the camera... There was a crowd on the sidewalk, blocking the exit. Then the darkness fell again, darker than before.

Suddenly he heard Leon Fields cry out. There was a scrambling sound, and all sound stopped.

“Where are you, damn it!” Ellery snarled. “What did you do to him?”

Harrison stumbled by, still cursing. The camera flashed again. The actor lowered his head like a bull, charged, and scattered the crowd.

A woman screamed, “Don’t let him get away!”

A man jeered, “Okay, lady. You stop him.”

Nobody came into the alley but the cameraman. Ellery heard him swearing; he had dropped his case of bulbs.

Ellery found Fields lying face down on the cement, unconscious. He felt swiftly for blood, but could locate none. He slung the little columnist over his shoulder and lumbered up the alley, keeping his head down.

“It’s all right,” he kept saying. “One side, please. Just a brawl... Cab!”

The last thing Ellery heard as the taxi shot away from the curb was the cameraman, still swearing.

“Who was that other guy, Gorgeous George?” asked the cab driver. “Is he still out?”

“He’s coming to now.”

“Too bad it was dark in the alley. I bet it was a pip. Where to, bud?”

“Just get out of Times Square.”

Leon Fields groaned. Ellery chafed his hands, slapped his cheeks.

He was thinking: Dirk doesn’t know what he accomplished tonight. If Martha had been there... He could see the tabloids clearly, and he shut his eyes. As it was, the story would break with a roar. ACTOR SLUGS FIELDS. With action pictures...

Fields said: “Who the hell are you?”

“Your fairy godmother,” said Ellery. “How’s your jaw?”

“Fields feels lousy.” The columnist tried to peer through a rapidly swelling eye. “Say, I know you. You’re Inspector Q’s little boy. Did you rescue me from the bad man?”

“I picked up the remains.”

“He fights dirty. Gave me the knee and when I doubled up beat the hell out of my face. Am I dreaming, or did somebody take pictures?”

“You’re awake.”

“Who was it?”

“Some news photographer on roving assignment, I think.”

“Great,” growled Fields. “What they’ll do to this.” He was silent, then he said, “What’s your hatchet?”

“No hatchet.”

“I’ll bet.”

“You’d lose.”

Fields grunted. “Anyway, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Know who he was?”

“Yes.”

“Who?” Fields peered again.

“V.H.”

“Give me a cigaret. I seem to have lost mine in the scuffle.”

He smoked silently, thinking. His jaw was swollen as well as his eyes; he smoked sidewise, wryly. His dinner clothes were a mess.

“Look, my friends,” said the voice from the driver’s seat, “I don’t mind cruising around on the clock, but would you at least give me a clue where I’m going to wind up?”

Fields said in a swift undertone, “Does he know who—?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Don’t tell him. I want to play this coy tonight. I’ve got to clear my head. Can I trust you?”

“How should I know what you can do?”

“Okay. Tell him Park and 86th. Where are we now?”

“Third Avenue around 60th, I think.”

“Tell him.”

Ellery told the driver and dropped his voice still lower. “What’s the idea? Don’t you live at Essex House?”

“That’s for my public. I’ve got a few hideouts around town under different names. I don’t think I’m up to answering my phone tonight. Where I’m going, the calls are from hipsters.”

“Just what did you say to our friend,” asked Ellery with innocent curiosity, “that aroused his ire?”

The columnist grinned.

They got out at Park and 86th and stood on the corner until the taxi was out of sight.

“Now where?” asked Ellery.

“You’re sticking, I see.”

“I don’t give a damn where you hole up. You need first aid.”

Fields stared at him out of his one usable eye. Suddenly he said, “All right.”

They walked up Park Avenue to 88th Street and turned west. At Madison they crossed over.

“It’s this one here.”

It was a small, quiet-looking apartment house between Madison and Fifth. Fields unlocked the street door and they went in. The elevator was self-service; there was no doorman.

He led the way to a rear apartment on the ground floor, used his key again. The name panel over the bell button said: GEORGE T. JOHNSON.

“I like ground-floor apartments,” Fields said. “You can jump out of a window in an emergency.”

The flat was furnished in surprisingly good taste. The columnist saw Ellery looking around, and he laughed. “Everybody thinks I’m a slob. But even a slob can have a soul, hm? If I told any of the wolf pack that I’m queer for Bach, they’d turn pale. I’ll tell you a secret — I can’t stand boogy. Makes my stomach turn over. What do you drink?”

They had a couple of quick ones and then Ellery went to work on him. An hour later, bathed, cuts cleansed, swellings down, and in pajamas and robe, Fields looked human again.

They had a couple of slow ones.

“I don’t drink when I’m working,” said the columnist, “but you’re company.”

“I don’t, either,” said Ellery, “so I’m breaking my rule.”

Fields pretended not to understand. He talked charmingly on a dozen subjects as he kept refilling Ellery’s glass.

“It won’t do you any good,” said Ellery an hour later, “because while most times three drinks can put me under, I have a hollow leg when I put my mind to it. Well, maybe not quite — that sounded like a mixed metaphor. The point is, Leon, how come?”

“How come what?”

“How come you know what.”

“Let’s have some Bach.”

Ellery listened to Landowska’s brittle beauties for another hour. Under other circumstances he would have enjoyed it. But his head was beginning to dance and Fields’s battered face was dancing with it. He yawned.

“Sleepy?” said the columnist. “Have another.” He turned off the record player and came on with the bottle.

“Enough,” said Ellery.

“Aw, come on.”

“More than enough,” said Ellery. “What are you trying to do to me?”

The columnist grinned. “What you wanted to do to me. Tell me, Ellery: What tomahawk are you polishing?”

“Let’s call it a draw. Are you feeling all right?”

“Sure.”

“I’m going home.”

Fields took him to the door. “Just tell me this: Are you working on Van Harrison?”

Ellery looked at him. “Why should I be working on Van Harrison?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Who’s telling?”

They collapsed in each other’s arms, overcome by their wit. Then Fields put his arm around Ellery and said, “You’re okay, chum. So you’ve got something on that bastard. Maybe I know it and maybe I don’t—”

“Maybe you’re talking through your father’s mustache, Leon.”

“Let’s stop horsing around.” The columnist’s chopped-up face was grim. “If I gave you some of the dirt I’ve got stashed away on Harrison, would it help you?”

Ellery took a long time before he answered. Then he said: “Maybe.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

They embraced again, and Ellery staggered out into the night.