QED (11 page)

“Yes. By cab? No, says the doorman. On foot? No, because if he'd walked or even run from as close by as the corner of Madison he'd have been soaked in that downpour, whereas the doorman said his trench coat and hat were no wetter than mine when I got here—and I had to make only two jumps from my car to get under the canopy. Conclusion?
Trench Coat came in a car, and he parked almost as close to the canopy as I did
.”

His father made a strangled sound.

“Now, the nearest parked cars are those four between the Athenia's canopy and the next building—my car, the two behind mine, and the M.D.'s, double-parked beside the one behind mine. Well, which of the four was Trench Coat's? Not mine, of course, or the car mine replaced—the people who drove off in that one came from the building across the street; what's more, they drove away before Trench Coat left the Athenia.

“So Trench Coat's car must be one of the other three. Which one?

“Let's see. Trench Coat made his escape just as I was going up to Modesta's apartment. You'd expect him to jump into his car—one of those three—and drive off. Did he? No—when I rushed downstairs after finding Modesta shot, all three cars were still parked. Why didn't he take his car for his getaway?
Obviously, because he couldn't
. His car must be the one behind mine, the middle one of the three at the curb—the one that's boxed in by the doctor's car!”

The Inspector sounded punchy. “So that's why you moved your jalopy away … to give him room to get his car out when he thinks the coast is clear.”

“That's the idea,” said Ellery.

“Now all you have to do,” said the Sergeant, not without bitterness, “is tell us who you see in your crystal ball.”

“Why, So-and-So,” replied Ellery, naming a name; and at their exclamations he grinned. “At least, I'm ninety-nine percent sure.”

At four-fifteen
A
.
M
. a furtive figure skulked suddenly past the Athenia, darted into the designated car, and fought cattishly but in vain to shake off Sergeant Velie's paralyzing clutch.

It was, as Ellery had predicted, So-and-So.

By the time they booked their catch downtown and sat in on the confession, the city was driving to work. They crawled uptown in Ellery's car to the hospital.

It was while Inspector Queen went off to inquire about Modesta that Sergeant Velie seemed to come out of a fog. “Can I be
that
stupid, Ellery? I still don't see how—”

“Console yourself,” soothed Ellery. “The doorman and I saw Trench Coat; you didn't. When he hurried past us at the stairway door, I was bothered by something in his appearance. Later I realized what it had been: he'd had his double-breasted coat buttoned down the
left
side. It's women who are left-side buttoners; men are the reverse. So I knew Trench Coat was a woman dressed as a man. Which woman? Van Olde's a widower, Kid Catt's a bachelor, and neither has any entangling alliances. But Jock Shanville's married, so his wife was an odds-on bet. As she told us, she eavesdropped on Modesta's call, heard that she was through as Mrs. Shanville, and proceeded—with the help of her theatrical training—to do something about it.”

The Sergeant was still shaking his head when the Inspector came back, all smiles. Modesta would live—although she'd have to have new evening gowns designed—and she had satisfactorily fingered Pearline Shanville as the jealous witch who had ruined her décolletage.

Then they shuffled blearily out to Ellery's car and he found a ticket on it for parking in a restricted hospital zone.

No Place to Live

When they entered the flat they were after someone else altogether. But in one of the rooms off the center hall they found a man with half his head blown off, and over him a pretty blonde with a cheap new wedding band on her left hand holding the cannon.

Sergeant Velie took the gun from her by the barrel delicately, and Inspector Queen looked at her ring and said to her, “And you're Mrs.—?”

“Graham,” the girl said. “June Graham.”

Ellery caught June Graham as she fell.

Twenty-four hours earlier Brock was on his unmade bed doping the next day's fourth race when his landlord came to call.

Brock went out and opened the apartment door. He had a broken nose and he was dressed in pink and brown.

“If it ain't Mr. Finger,” Brock said, surprised. “You come to investigate my cockroaches personally?”

Mr. Finger stepped into Brock's flat in ominous silence. Brock hustled him into the dirty bedroom and shut the door.

“What's on your mind?” Brock said.

“Rent.” Mr. Finger was small and fat and wore a big ruby on his right hand. He owned eight apartment houses on the upper West Side. “
Their
rent, Mr. Brock.”

Brock followed the line of his landlord's fat thumb and it told him the whole sad story. “So Jerky talked,” Brock said.

“If you're meaning my super, yeah,” Mr. Finger said in a chilling voice. “Look, Brock, you been behind my back renting out three of your five rooms. This is against the law.”

“You don't mean it,” Brock said.

Mr. Finger began ticking off invisible subtenants. “Mrs. Wodjeska, no husband, two kids, cleans offices at night—some subtenant! A no-good that calls himself Smith. Smith, ha! A G.I. and his wife name of Graham, just back from the service. Brock, those six didn't sign no lease with Harvey Finger.”

“Let's talk this over,” Brock said, showing his gold-capped teeth.

“So we're talking, ain't we?” the landlord said. “Twenty-five dollars a week per room you're charging. That's a monthly income to you of around three twenty-five. My super you smear forty a month. Me you pay the frozen rent of eighty-five. I didn't even graduate public school, Mr. Brock, but even I can figure your net profit on my apartment is two hundred bucks a month. So tell me one reason why I shouldn't report you to the State Temporary Rent Commission?”

“Aw, get smart,” Brock said. “So I'm dispossessed. So they let you sign on a new tenant at a great big twelve dollars and seventy-five cents more a month, and you'll maybe have to redecorate, fix the plumbing, check the wiring, and God knows. Mr. Finger, what's the percentage?”

Mr. Finger said softly, “Fifty-fifty.”

Brock got him, all right. “Robber!”

“Can names hurt me?” The landlord shrugged. “It's one hundred a month extra from you, or you're out on your ear.”

“Fifty. Not a nickel more!”

“Hundred.”

“Seventy-five—”

“I'm a one-price landlord,” Mr. Finger said, not without humor. “Is it pay, Mr. Brock, or on your way, Mr. Brock?”

Brock kicked the armchair. It was his own chair, so Mr. Finger waited unperturbed.

“The goats ain't been running for me,” Brock growled. “I got to have time to scrape it up.”

“Scrape fast,” Mr. Finger said, smiling. He turned at the door. “You got till eight o'clock tomorrow night.”

“Big deal,” Brock said bitterly.

He waited till the fat little man was gone and then he stalked up the hall and shoved Mrs. Wodjeska's door open. Mrs. Wodjeska was in bed being fed some soup by a little girl while another little girl applied cold compresses to her mother's head. When the two little girls saw who it was they stopped what they were doing and ran to hide behind the lopsided sofa.

“Can't you ever knock?” the woman said hoarsely.

Brock scowled. “You still sick?”

“It's the virus.” Mrs. Wodjeska pulled the covers up to her chin. “What do you want?”

“My rent.”

“I'll pay you next week.”

“Listen, you, I been kidded by experts. What's the score?”

“Tomorrow I'm promised a job. Will you please go? You're scaring my children.”

“Now I scare kids!” Brock said in an injured tone. “Look, Mrs. Social Register, I need this rent, see? You pay up by tomorrow night or bed your kids down on the sidewalk. This ain't the Salvation Army!”

Brock was figuring other angles when Hank Graham, the lanky ex-G.I., burst in on him.

“Okay, Brock,” Graham said, glaring. “Where is it?”

Graham was twenty pounds lighter than Brock, but something in the thrust of his jaw made Brock step behind the armchair.

“Where is what?” Brock asked cautiously.

“My money!” Hank Graham said. “And don't play dumb with me, buddy. I want the three thousand dollars you swiped from my room, and I want it now.”

“Hold it, hold it,” Brock murmured. “You got three grand?”

“Savings. I brought it back from Germany last month and got married on the strength of it. Nobody knew about that money, Brock, not even my wife. I was keeping it for a down payment on a house in Jersey as a surprise to Juney. All of a sudden it's gone from where I hid it in my room, and you're the only one with a duplicate key to the lock!”

“First I hear of it,” Brock said absently.

Young Graham advanced on the chair. “Give, you crook, or I call the police.”

“Keep your shirt on, General. I didn't take your three grand. But I got a pretty good idea who did.”

“And who would that be?”

“My experience is you check first and make with the names later,” Brock said. “Look, Graham, yell copper and you may never see a cent. But give me time and I think I can get it back for you.”

Hank Graham looked him over.

“Tomorrow night,” he said grimly. “Then it's either my money back or you'll explain in a police station.”

Through a crack in his door Brock watched the ex-G.I. trudge back to his room. Pretty June Graham was waiting in their doorway. She was in a clinging negligee and Brock automatically inventoried her curves. He saw her ask her husband something in a puzzled way, and Graham's forced smile; then they went into their room and locked the door.

Brock waited.

He stole up the hall and scratched on the last door.

“Open up, Smith,” he said in a soft voice. “It's Brock.”

He grinned when he heard the chain rattle. Installing a chain latch had been Smith's own idea.

Smith glanced swiftly down the hall before he motioned Brock into his room and relatched the door. Smith was a dark skinny man with holes for eyes.

“What do
you
want?” He had a nasty voice.

“Graham's three grand.”

“What, what?” Smith said excitedly.

Brock reached down to fix Smith's egg-stained tie. “I know I didn't take it, and it wasn't the Wodjeska number—what crook scrubs floors for a living? So that leaves you, Smitty. No three-buck lock would keep
you
out of the Grahams' room.”

“You're on the junk,” Smith jeered, trying to back off. “I don't know nothing about no three grand—”

Brock pulled Smith's tie tight, using both hands. Smith's eyes bugged and he began to turn blue, legs jerking.

“You little punk,” Brock smiled, “how long do you think it took me to spot you?—a guy who don't stick his nose out from one day to another except for a couple minutes at night sometimes. You're Ratsy Johnson, Frank Pompo's fingerman. Inspector Queen's been looking for you since early summer to testify in the case he got up against Pompo for the D.A., and so's Pompo to see that you don't. Do you shell out Graham's three grand or do I tip off Queen
and
Pompo where you're hiding out?”

Johnson pointed frantically to his throat. Brock loosened his hold a little.

“I'll make a deal,” the fugitive gasped.

“With what?”

“With a frame, that's with what! Brock, without moola I'll chance the D.A. I'm down to shoe buttons. You hog this bundle and I'll surrender to the law and say you fixed it for me to hide out in your place! See?”

Brock thought. Then he let go.

“Okay, I'll chisel the kid into settling for one grand of his dough, and I'll give you five C's for your end.”

Ratsy Johnson fingered his neck. “We split even up, see?”

“You're a hard man,” Brock mourned. “Where's the take?”

Johnson produced a cheap cigaret case. From it he extracted a stained king-size cigaret and peeled the paper down. The gap revealed a tuft of tobacco on one end, a filter at the other, and a green paper tube between. He unrolled the tube and it became three one-thousand-dollar bills. Brock snatched them, then looked down at his fingers. The oily stain on the cigaret paper was also on the outer bill.

“What do you smoke, fuel oil?” Brock wrapped the bills in a silk handkerchief and tucked it all carefully away.

Johnson clawed at him. “Give me mine, you chiseler!”

Brock's big hand chopped down and Johnson fell like a clubbed fish. “What's the uproar, Ratsy? You get yours when I con Graham into the deal. Maybe he won't play.”

“Okay, okay,” the fugitive sniveled from the floor. “But you double-cross me, Brock, and so help me—”

Brock went out grinning.

That was a Tuesday night.

On Wednesday one of Sergeant Velie's regular stoolies had passed the word that Ratsy Johnson was holed up in Apartment 4-A of a tenement on the West Side. Velie had had the house staked out since Wednesday afternoon, waiting for Johnson to show. He was not known to be armed but he was considered dangerous and the street seemed a safer place to take him. Detectives were planted on the roof, the fourth floor, and in the lobby. Because of the importance of the arrest Inspector Queen showed up to take personal charge, and Ellery tagged along.

At 8:30
P
.
M
. the Inspector decided not to wait any longer and they had entered Apartment 4-A to find not only Ratsy Johnson but the body of Charlie the Chiseler Brock. Brock had been shot with a .45 automatic at close quarters through one of his pillows, used by his killer to muffle the report. His body was still warm.