QED (17 page)

The cold little hand tried to withdraw; tenderly, Ellery held on to it. ‘“It's a big suppose, Mr. Queen. How are you going to catch them? I have no idea where they took me except that—”

“I know, you hurt all over,” crooned Ellery as Angie stopped to wince. “Except that what?”

“—that wherever it is, it's across the street from a window with a neon sign in it. The blindfold slipped once while they were slamming me around, and before they could tighten it again I saw the sign flashing on and off in the dark. One neon sign—in the whole city of New York!”

“Pretty big odds,” Inspector Queen said, showing his dentures in what he intended as a smile. “By the way, what did the sign say, Miss Lawton? Oh, and what color was it?”

“Pinkish-red. And the sign said EAT, in capital letters. How many of
those
do you suppose there are?”

“Hundreds, thousands,” Ellery said. “Though neon signs do often become defective, Angie—you don't mind if I call you Angie? Did you happen to notice any imperfections in the letters?”

“There was a break in one of them,” said Angie with a faint show of interest. “The T had an unlit gap, sort of. In the middle of the upright.”

“E-A-broken T.” Ellery beamed. “Across the street, you say. Oh, how about the drive over there? Did they drive fast?”

Angela's lip curled. “Think they'd take a chance on being stopped for a traffic violation? I paid particular attention to
that
. They didn't once exceed the speed limit. You can tell from the way it
feels
—at least, I can.”

“I'll bet you can,” said Ellery sincerely. “Though it's too bad you can't also tell us how long the drive took—”

“Oh, can't I,” snapped Angie. “I know
exactly
. The moment the car started off I began to count in my head. At one-second intervals. I'm good at that—I practice with clocks for kicks. And of course I held up the count while it stopped for lights.”

“Of course,” Ellery said; his father was speechless. “Did you—er—stop to pay any tolls?”

“No. I didn't hear a single clink.”

Ellery cleared his throat. “So you counted seconds. How many, Angie?”

“My count was 417 seconds for the trip. Allowing for error—say, seven minutes' riding time.”

Ellery brought Angie's hand, which was quite warm by this time, to his lips reverently. “God bless your little bookkeeping head. There wouldn't be anything else, Angie, would there?”

Angie frowned. “Well, yes. They had my arms tied to the sides of a chair, but I managed to scratch an X on each side with my nails. But what good is that unless you find the room?”

In the corridor Ellery chortled, “What a girl! This ought to be peach pie, dad. Maximum average speed, say, thirty miles an hour—half a mile a minute. Time in motion, seven minutes. Maximum distance, therefore, three and one-half miles—”

“In any direction,” his father pointed out dryly, “including circling back. Which means your three and a half miles could wind up in the next block.”

“I'm talking maximums, dad. So that apartment has to be
within
three and a half miles of Angie's door. Figure twenty city blocks to the mile, and that's a radius of seventy blocks.”

“In other words, anywhere between the East River and the Hudson east and west, and between—say—Houston Street and the Harlem River south and north.” The Inspector sounded unimpressed. “And if your little lady's built-in computer happened to be off, it could be anywhere on Manhattan Island. That's a clue, that is.”

“At least we know it's in Manhattan, dad—no tolls, Angie said. We also know the apartment faces a diner or cafeteria. And for that pink neon EAT sign to be visible through the apartment window, the apartment is almost certainly on a ground floor. Once we've found such an apartment, it can be positively identified by those X's Angie scratched on the chair. And that's it.”

“You make it sound so simple,” snorted the old man. “All right, Ellery, I'll put every available man on the streets to locate that diner or cafeteria. But you know what I think? I think this is a pipe dream!”

Sunday, 6:15
P
.
M
.: The Inspector proved a prophet. As the last reports straggled in at headquarters, he said kindly, “Not a single diner or cafeteria in Manhattan with a broken-T EAT sign. So now what, my son?”

“Time,” muttered Ellery, wearing a path in the Inspector's floor. “Time! The trial starts in less than sixteen hours … A neon sign with a broken letter—”

His father said, “What's the matter?”

“What's the matter?” screamed Ellery. “I'm an idiot is what's the matter! Not fit to carry that girl's penwiper! Dad, here's what you've got to do …”

Monday, 5:02
A
.
M
.: So the Inspector did it; and here the Queens stood, on a nondescript Manhattan street in a lightening hour, gazing on a plate-glass window behind which a pinkish-red neon sign flashed on and off its 24-hour-a-day message, EAT—with its T broken on the ascender exactly as Angela Lawton had described it.

And following the possible lines of sight across the street, Inspector Queen's men did indeed locate a ground-floor apartment with a view of the EAT sign; and sleeping therein they found a man with hands that smelled of lilac lotion and gun oil, and they showed him the chair with the two scratched-in X's, and the shoe rag with which Angie Lawton had been blindfolded; and this bird was invited to raise his voice in song, which after some encouragement he did, and by 5:37
A
.
M
. they had also flushed the other bird, Garlic Breath, who was unmistakable.

They drove down to the hospital for a glad-happy-joyous session with Angie; thence to the district attorney's office, where the two birds sang a duet; and it all turned out fine, except for the corrupt public servant.

Ellery had told Inspector Queen to have his men stop looking for a diner or cafeteria and instead … But let Ellery tell it himself:

“Every eating place within the limits of the prescribed area had been covered without turning up a neon sign such as Angie described. Was it possible the sign
didn't
mean what it seemed to say?—that the word was not EAT, but something else?

“According to Angie, the sign had a defective T. Suppose that was not the only defect in the sign? For instance, you're always running across neon signs with entire letters blacked out. Since it had been nighttime, Angie would only see the letters that were lit up. Suppose EAT had a letter missing!

“The likeliest place for a missing letter in E-A-T is at the beginning of the word. Run through the alphabet and you'll find that only one letter, under the circumstances, makes sense—M. So I suggested looking for a defective MEAT sign in the window of a butcher shop, which is where they found it.”

Murder Dept.: Half a Clue

Morning
. When the doctor left, Ellery ran down to the corner drugstore.

“The doctor wants dad to start on the antibiotic as soon as possible, Henry,” Ellery said to the owner of the pharmacy. “Can you fill this while I wait?”

“Sure, these come all made up,” said Henry Brubuck. “Albert, fill this for Mr. Queen right away, will you?”

The twins, Albert and Alice, who like their stepfather were registered pharmacists, were busy behind the high partition of the Prescription Department. Albert took Inspector Queen's prescription and greeted Ellery heartily; but Alice, whose eyes were on the red side, merely gave him a wan smile.

“Sorry your father's sick, Ellery.”

“It's some virus or other, Henry.”

“The neighborhood's full of viruses. And that reminds me.” The old pharmacist went over to his soda fountain and drew some water. “Forgot to take my own antibiotic dose this morning.”

Henry Brubuck dipped into his gray store jacket for a little white box. It had some yellow-and-green capsules in it; he swallowed one and returned the box to his pocket. “Druggist, heal thyself, eh, Ellery?” he chuckled. “My doctor says I'm the worst patient he has.”

“I live with an old coot, Henry, who'll give you cards and spades,” said Ellery dolefully. “Thanks, Albert. Charge it, will you?” And he hurried out.

The moment Ellery was gone, Alice set a bottle of cough mixture down on the prescription counter and said tensely, “Dad, I've got to talk to you.
Please?
”

“All right, honey,” sighed Henry Brubuck; he knew what was coming. “Take over, Albert. We won't be long.”

“Good luck, sis,” said Albert in a low voice. But his twin was already running up the stairs that led from the back room to the Brubuck apartment over the store.

Her stepfather followed patiently. A man did his best to bring up his dead wife's children, he thought, but somehow he always seemed to do the wrong thing. The twins were one problem after another; and he rarely saw his other stepson, Alvin, who was a used-car salesman, since Alvin's marriage.

“It's about Ernie again?” the old man asked his step-daughter.

“Yes, daddy,” said Alice passionately. “And please don't put me off any longer. I tell you I love Ernie. I want to marry him—”

“—but he won't marry you unless $10,000 goes along with you,” her stepfather said dryly. “Some romantic! Honey, what kind of fellow is it who makes a package deal out of a marriage proposal? What kind of life would you have with a loafer who's even been in trouble with the police?”

Alice burst into heartbroken tears. “You think I'm Elizabeth Taylor or something? I know what I look like, daddy. If you don't give Ernie that money, he'll marry Sadie Rausch. I'll
die
if he does—I'll do something—something
desperate
.”

Old Brubuck put his arm around the sobbing girl. “Don't talk like that, baby. Believe me, you're better off without him.”

Alice raised her swollen eyes. “Then you won't give me the money? That's final?”

“It's for your own good, honey. You'll meet some nice boy—”

Alice grew very quiet. Then, just as quietly, she went back downstairs. Henry Brubuck stood where he was, appalled. There had been a look on his stepdaughter's face …

Noon
. Old Brubuck was jarred out of his after-lunch nap by the eruption of the extension phone. Half asleep, he reached over from the bed and picked up the receiver just as the phone was answered in the Prescription Department downstairs.

“Brubuck's Pharmacy,” he heard Albert say.

The old man was about to hang up when a heavy voice said, “Gimme Albert Brubuck. This is the book store.”

Book store? thought Henry Brubuck, suddenly alert. Albert hadn't been inside a book store since leaving college. Had he been secretly playing the horses again? The pharmacist listened. He was right; it was Albert's bookie.

“Listen, welsher,” the bookie said. “You think I'm gonna carry you forever? You're into me for eight grand, Pill Boy, and I want my dough.
Now
.”

“Wait, wait,” Albert said; his stepfather could tell that the boy was badly frightened. “So you'll have your goons work me over, Joe. How will that get you your money? Give me just another few days, Joe. What do you say?”

“Is this another one of your runarounds?”

“Joe, I swear, I'm working on the old man.” Henry Brubuck could almost hear Albert sweat. “A few days more and I've got it made. How about it? All right, Joe?”

“Okay. But I don't get my eight grand by Friday night, kid, you start praying.”

The pharmacist waited until his stepson hung up before replacing the bedroom receiver. So he's working on me, is he? thought the old man. Poor Albert. He wasn't a bad boy—except for the horses. Henry Brubuck had settled a great many of his younger stepson's gambling debts before putting his foot down; he had had to put a stop to it.

Then what had Albert meant …?

Evening
. The old pharmacist trudged upstairs from his drugstore and stopped in his kitchen to have a look at the roast that Alice had in the oven. He could hear his other stepson, Alvin, and Alvin's wife talking in the living room. Alvin had phoned with a rather ashamed, “Hiya, pop!” to invite himself and Gloria to dinner. The old man wondered what Alvin's wife was after this time.

He found out immediately—Gloria had a penetrating voice.

“Well, then you just ask that old miser
again
, Alvin! I'm not letting you pass up this chance to buy into the car agency for a measly $15,000!”

“But pop thinks they're in trouble and are out to take me,” Alvin said feebly.

“Pop thinks! What does he know about it? Are you going back on your promise to me, Alvin Brubuck?”

“No, Gloria,” said Alvin in a harassed way. “I told you I'd ask pop again, and I will. Do you have to keep hacking away at me?”

“And you remind him that most of the money he's got is really yours and the twins'. You
make
him give you your share, or else!”

“All right, all right!” shouted Henry Brubuck's other stepson. “I'll do whatever you want! Just stop hounding me!”

The Following Night
. “I don't quite get what's bothering you, Henry,” Inspector Queen said. He was in pajamas and bathrobe, still nursing his virus, but Ellery had long since given up trying to keep him in bed. “Okay, you won't buy Alice this crumbum the poor kid's set on marrying; you won't pay off any more of Albert's gambling debts—and don't worry about that bookie's threats, I'll take care of
him;
you won't finance the partnership Alvin's wife wants because you're convinced it's a bad deal. Seems to me you're acting like a responsible parent. What's the problem?”

“The problem, I think, dad,” said Ellery, frowning, “is that Henry is afraid for his life.”