QED (23 page)

“Thorough,” said Ellery dryly. “Well.” He reflected. “Was he tattooed with some design that looked innocuous but actually concealed a hidden message?”

“In the naked state,” Miss Wandermere assured him, “old Mr. Tarleton was as pinkly unmarred as a healthy six-month fetus.”

“And I take it the usual fluoroscope and X-ray examinations were made without turning the message up in the old spy's interior?”

“You take it correctly, Mr. Queen.”

“His mustache!” Ellery said. “Under it.”

“Ingenious mind, this fellow,” Lawyer Darnell said admiringly. “You mean Tarleton wrote the message on his upper lip and then grew a mustache over it? Well, Intelligence thought of that. They shaved off his mustache and found nothing underneath but lip.”

“Interesting.” Ellery was pulling on his nose, a sure sign of deep cerebration. “Let's tackle objects that might conceal the message. If I hit one that's relevant, stop me … Watch, wrist or pocket type? Ring? Hearing aid? Hairpiece? Glass eye? Contact lenses? The shafts of eyeglasses? False teeth? False finger or toe? Any prosthetic device at all?”

“Heavens, you'll have the old traitor made up of bits and pieces, Mr. Queen,” laughed the lady poet. “No to all your suggestions.”

“Keyring? Card case? Cufflinks? Tie clasp? Belt? Suspenders? Pipe? Tobacco pouch? Cigarets? Cigaret case? Snuffbox? Pillbox?” Ellery went on and on, until he ran out of ideas. To each suggestion they shook their heads.

There was silence. The members of The Puzzle Club glanced at one another significantly.

“Buttons,” Ellery said, of a sudden. “Hollowed-out buttons! No? … Ah, I've forgotten something!”

“What's that?” asked Darnell curiously.

“His silver-headed cane!”

But they all shook their heads, smiling. And there was silence again.

“Well, I've eliminated everything you've told me about the old boy, and lots more. Or have I?”

“To that question, Mr. Queen,” said Syres, smiling even more broadly, “you'll have to provide your own answer. Fascinating problem, isn't it?”

“And damned smart Intelligence people,” Ellery mourned. “Final question: What if there's more than one answer, and I hit one you haven't thought of?”

There was incredulous hilarity.

“In that case,” the lady poet said, “we'd probably elect you president of the Club.”

“Now, Mr. Queen,” said Syres, “you may retire to my study to think, or take a walk down Park Avenue, or spend your time any way you please while chewing on the puzzle. Unfortunately, we can't let you have more than an hour. My chef Charlot's dinner won't be edible after nine o'clock. Which is your pleasure?”

“Inasmuch as all this ratiocination has made me hungry,” Ellery said, grinning back, “I think I'll answer your puzzle right now.”

“The clue,” Ellery chuckled in the attentive silence, “stemmed from old Tarleton's hobby—his painting of miniatures. It naturally suggested that he had written the spy message in miniature—in lettering so small it could be read only through a strong magnifying glass. That much was obvious.

“The question, of course, was: On which object Tarleton carried on his person was the miniaturized spy message inscribed?

“I just questioned whether I had covered everything about the old spy that you people had mentioned in your description of him. Of course I had not. I eliminated every possible object on Tarleton's person
but one
. The message must therefore have been written in miniature on that one object.

“Old Tarleton was in the tradition of the very select few who have been able to inscribe the Gettysburg Address or the Lord's Prayer on an object no bigger than an oversized period.

“
He wrote the spy message on the head of the pin that secured the flower to his lapel
.”

“Miss Wandermere and gentlemen,” said the tycoon heartily, “I give you the newest member of The Puzzle Club!”

The President Regrets

The Puzzle Club is a congeries of very important people drawn together by unimportant purpose but common passion—to wit, to mystify one another. Their pleasure, in short, is puzzles.

Application is by invitation only, and membership must be won, the applicant having to submit to the Ordeal by Puzzle. If he survives the test, it earns him automatic admission.

Shortly after Ellery became The Puzzle Club's sixth regular member, it was proposed and unanimously voted to invite the President of the United States to apply for membership.

This was no frivolous motion; the members took their puzzles seriously, and the President was known to be a devotee of mysteries in all lawful forms. Besides, the Club's Founder and First Member, multimillionaire oil man Syres, had been buddy-buddy with the occupant of the White House since their youthful days as riggers in the Texas oilfields.

The invitation went to Washington, and rather to Ellery's surprise the President promptly accepted the challenge. In deference to affairs of state, he was urged to designate his own date, which he did; but when Ellery arrived at Syres's Park Avenue penthouse on the appointed evening to find the membership assembled, he was greeted with gloomy news. The President regretted that he could not make it after all. A Secret Service man, just departed, had brought the message that a new crisis in the Middle East had caused a last-minute cancellation of the President's flight to New York.

“What shall we do now?” asked Darnell, the famous criminal lawyer.

“There's no point in wasting the puzzle we've prepared for the President,” said Dr. Vreeland, the well-known psychiatrist. “Let's save it for whenever he can get here.”

“It's too bad Dr. Arkavy is still attending that symposium in Moscow,” said wispy little Emmy Wandermere, the poet. Dr. Arkavy was the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist. “He has such a fertile mind, he can always come up with something on the spur of the moment.”

“Maybe our newest member can help us out,” said their Texan host. “What do you say, Queen? You must have a hundred problems at your fingers' ends, from your long experience as a writer and a detective.”

“Let me think.” Ellery cogitated. Then he chuckled. “All right. Give me a few minutes to work out the details …” It took him far less. “I'm ready. I suggest we engage in some collective improvisation, to begin with. Since this is going to be a murder mystery, we will obviously require a victim. Any suggestions?”

“A woman, of course,” the lady poet said at once.

“Reeking of glamour,” said the psychiatrist.

“That,” said the criminal lawyer, “would seem to call for a Hollywood movie star.”

“Good enough,” Ellery said. “And a glamour girl of the screen calls for a glamourous name. Let's call her … oh, Valetta Van Buren. Agreed?”

“Valetta Van Buren.” Miss Wandermere considered. “Yes. She personifies sex in her roles—a smoky witch with enormous cold, full-moon eyes. Does that follow, Mr. Queen?”

“Perfectly. Well, Valetta is in New York to attend the première of her latest picture and to do the circuit of TV appearances in promotion of it,” Ellery went on. “But this hasn't proved an ordinary publicity tour. In fact, Valetta has had a frightening experience. It so shook her up that she wrote me an agitated letter about it which, by the magic of coincidence, I received just this morning.”

“In which,” Dr. Vreeland pressed, “she said—”

“That during this New York visit she permitted herself to be squired about town by four men—”

“Who are all, naturally, in love with her?” asked the lady poet.

“You guessed it, Miss Wandermere. She identified the four in her letter. One is that notorious man-about-town and playboy, John Thrushbottom Taylor the Third—and if you haven't heard of Mr. Taylor, it's because I just made him up. The second is that wolf—in both senses—of Wall Street, named … well, let's call him A. Palmer Harrison. The third, of course, is the latest rage among society Pop Art painters, Leonardo Price. And the last of the quartet is—let's see—Biff Wilson, the professional football player.”

“A likely story,” grinned Oil Man Syres.

“Now.” Ellery made a professional bridge of his fingers. “Having named the four men for me, Valetta went on to say that yesterday all four proposed marriage to her—each of them, on the same day. Unhappily, our ineffable Valetta felt nothing for any of them—nothing permanent, at any rate. She rejected all four impartially. It was a busy day for Miss Van Buren, and she would have enjoyed it except for one thing.”

“One of them,” said the criminal lawyer, “turned ugly.”

“Exactly, Darnell. Valetta wrote me that three of them took their turndowns with approximate grace. But the fourth flew into a homicidal rage and threatened to kill her. She was terrified that he would try to carry out his threat and asked me to get in touch with her at once. She felt reluctant to go to the police, she wrote, because of the bad publicity it would bring her.”

“What happened then?” asked Syres.

“I phoned, of course,” Ellery replied, “as soon as I finished reading her letter. Would you believe it? I was too late. She was murdered last night, a short time after she must have mailed the letter. So the screen has lost its sexiest pot, and millions of red-blooded Americans at this very moment are mourning the sheer waste of it all.”

“How,” asked Darnell, “was the foul deed done?”

“I could tell you,” Ellery said, “that she was done in by a Tasmanian yoyo, but I won't be unfair—the nature of the weapon is irrelevant. However, I will say this, to avoid complications: Valetta
was
murdered by the suitor who threatened her life.”

“And is that all?” asked the tycoon.

“No, I've saved the kicker for last, Mr. Syres. Valetta's letter gave me one clue. In writing about the four men, she said that she'd noticed
she had something in common with three of the four
, and that the fourth was the one who had threatened her.”

“Oh,” said Dr. Vreeland. “Then all we have to establish is the nature of the common denominator. The three sharing it with Valetta would be innocent. By elimination, therefore, the one left over has to be the guilty man.”

Ellery nodded. “And now—if my initiation at the last meeting was a criterion—the floor is open. Any questions?”

“I take it,” the lady poet murmured, “that we may disregard the obvious possibilities of connection—that Valetta and three of the men were of the same age, or had the same color hair, or the same religious affiliation, or came from the same town or state, or attended the same college, or were investors or board members in the same corporation—that sort of thing?”

Ellery laughed. “Yes, you may disregard those.” “Social position?” the multimillionaire ventured. “Three of the men you described—Playboy John Something Taylor, Wall Street man A. Palmer Harrison, Pop Art Painter Price—did they all come from high society? That probably wouldn't be true of the pro football player, What's-His-Name.”

“It just happened,” Ellery mourned, “that Pop Art Painter Price was born in a Greenwich Village pad. And Valetta, of course, hailed from the slums of Chicago.”

They pondered.

“Had three of the four men ever served with Valetta,” asked Darnell suddenly, “on the same jury?”

“No.”

“On a TV panel show?” asked the poet quickly.

“No, Miss Wandermere.”

“Don't tell me,” said Dr. Vreeland, smiling, “that Valetta Van Buren and three of her suitors at one juncture in their lives shared the same psychiatrist's couch?”

“That's a good solution, Doctor. But it's not the solution I have in mind.”

“Politics,” the oil man said. “Valetta and three of the suitors are registered in the same party.”

“My information, Mr. Syres,” said Ellery, “is that Valetta was an incorrigible Democrat, the playboy and the Wall Street men are conservative Republicans, and Price and Biff Wilson never voted in their lives.”

Miss Wandermere suddenly said, “It isn't anything like that. Am I right, Mr. Queen, in assuming that all the relevant facts were given to us in the body of your story?”

“I wondered when someone was going to ask that.” Ellery chuckled. “That's exactly so, Miss Wandermere. There's really no need to ask questions at all.”

“Then I for one need more time,” said the tycoon. “What about the rest of you?” At their abstracted nods their host rose. “I suggest we make an exception tonight and eat Charlot's exquisite dinner before we crack Queen's puzzle.”

Miss Wandermere's shocking blue eyes sparkled with enlightenment during Chariot's
moussaline de saumon
. Darnell's mustache-sized brows lifted with elation over the
suprêmes de volaille aux huîtres
. Dr. Vreeland uttered his self-congratulatory exclamation at the serving of the
selle de veau à l'Orientale
. And their host, Syres, achieved sweet victory over his
charlotte Chantilly
. But no one uttered a word until they were seated about the drawing room again over espresso and brandy.

“I detect from this and that,” Ellery said, “that none of you encountered any real difficulty with my little puzzle.”

“It's too bad the President had to miss this,” Syres roared. “It was made to order, Queen, for his type of mind! Are you all quite ready?”

There was a universal nod.

“In that case,” Ellery said, with resignation, “which of Valetta's four swains murdered her?”

“Females first, always,” said Dr. Vreeland with a gallant nod to Miss Wandermere.

“The key to the answer,” said the lady poet promptly, “consists in the fact, Mr. Queen, that you really told us just one thing about Valetta
and
her four suitors. It follows that whatever she and three of the four men had in common must relate to that thing.”