Queen’s Bureau of Investigation (6 page)

“Who?” demanded the Inspector.

“We ruled out all the reasonable interpretations of sugar,” said Ellery, “leaving us where we started—with a lump of sugar in Cooney's clutch as a clue to his killer. Since the fancy stuff is out, suppose we take a lump of sugar in a man's hand to mean just that: a lump of sugar in a man's hand. Why does a man carry a lump of sugar with him?”

“I give up,” said the Inspector promptly. “Why?”

“Why?” said Ellery. “Why, to feed it to a horse.”

“Feed it to a—” The old gentleman was silent. Then he said, “So that's why you wanted to know their riding history. But Ellery, that theory fizzled. None of the three is what you'd call a horseman, so none of the three would be likely to have a lump of sugar on him.”

“Absolutely correct,” said Ellery. “So Shakes was indicating a fourth suspect, only I didn't see it then. Cooney was a bookie and a gambler. You'll probably find that this fellow was over his noggin in Cooney's book, couldn't pay off, and took the impulsive way out—”

“Wait, hold it!” howled his father. “
Fourth
suspect? What fourth suspect?”

“Why, the fourth man on the bridle path that morning. And he
would
be likely to carry a lump of sugar for his horse.”

“
Mounted Patrolman Wilkins!
”

OPEN FILE DEPT.

Cold Money

The hotel chancellor in midtown New York is not likely to forget the two visits of Mr. Philly Mullane. The first time Mullane registered at the Chancellor, under the name of Winston F. Parker, an alert house detective spotted him and, under the personal direction of Inspector Richard Queen, Philly was carried out of Room 913, struggling and in bracelets, to be tried, convicted, and sentenced to ten years for a Manhattan payroll robbery. The second time—ten years later—he was carried out neither struggling nor manacled, inasmuch as he was dead.

The case really began on a blacktop county road east of Route 7 in the Berkshire foothills, when Mullane sapped his pal Mikie the Waiter over the left ear and tossed him out of their getaway car, thereby increasing the split from thirds to halves. Mullane was an even better mathematician than that. Five miles farther north, he administered the same treatment to Pittsburgh Patience, which left him sole proprietor of their $62,000 haul. Mikie and Patience were picked up by Connecticut state police; the Waiter was speechless with rage, which could not be said of Patience, a lady of inspired vocabulary. Three weeks later Philly Mullane was smoked out of the Chancellor room where he had been skulking. The payroll was absent—in those three weeks the $62,000 had vanished. He had not blown the money in, for the checkback showed that he had made for the New York hotel immediately on ditching his confederates.

Question: Where had Mullane stashed the loot?

Everyone wanted to know. In the case of Pittsburgh Patience and Mikie the Waiter, their thirst for information had to go unsatisfied; they drew ten-year sentences, too. As for the police, for all their success in locating the stolen banknotes, they might as well have gone up the river with Mullane and his steaming ex-associates.

They tried everything on Mullane, including a planted cell-mate. But Mullane wasn't talking, even in his sleep.

The closest they came was in the sixth year of Philly's stretch. In July of that year, in the exercise yard, Philly let out a yell that he had been stabbed, and he collapsed. The weapon which had stabbed him was the greatest killer of all, and when he regained consciousness in the infirmary the prison doctor named it for him. It was his heart.

“My pumper?” Mullane said incredulously. “Me?” And then he looked scared, and he said in a weak voice, “I want to see the Warden.”

The Warden came at once; he was a kindly man who wished his rough flock well, but he had been waiting for this moment for over five years. “Yes, Mullane?” the Warden said.

“About that sixty-two grand,” whispered Philly.

“Yes, Mullane?” the Warden said.

“I never been a boy scout, God knows—”

“Yes, He does,” said the Warden.

“That's what I mean, Warden. I mean, I figure I can't take it with me, and maybe I can cut down on that book He's keeping on me upstairs. I guess I better tell you where I stashed that dough. The doc tells me I'm going to die—”

But the prison doctor was young and full of Truth and other ideals, and he interrupted indignantly, “ I said
eventually
. Not now, Mullane! You may not get another attack for years.”

“Oh?” said Philly in a remarkably strong voice. “Then what am I worried about?” And he grinned at the Warden and turned his face to the wall.

The Warden could have kicked both of them.

So everybody settled back to more waiting.

What they were waiting for was Mullane's release. They had plenty of time—the law, Patience, the Waiter, and Mullane most of all. Having behaved themselves as guests of the state, Patience and Mikie got out in something over seven years, and they went their respective ways. Mullane's silence stuck him for the limit.

The day he was released the Warden said to him, “Mullane, you'll never get away with that money. And even if you should, nobody ever gets anything out of money that doesn't belong to him.”

“I figure I've earned it, Warden,” said Philly Mullane with a crooked smile. “At that, it only comes to a measly sixty-two hundred a year.”

“What about your heart?”

“Ah, that doc was from hunger.”

Of course, they put a twenty-four hour tail on him. And they lost him. Two headquarters detectives were demoted because of it. When he was found ten days later he had been dead about fifteen minutes.

A long memory and a smart bit of skull work on the part of one of the Hotel Chancellor's house dicks, Blauvelt, were responsible for the quick discovery of the body. Blauvelt had been on a two-week vacation. When he returned to duty, the hotel staff was yakking about a guest named Worth who had checked in nine days before and had not left his room since. The only ones who had seen him were the room service people—he had all his meals served in his room—the chambermaid, and a few bellboys. They reported that he kept his door not only locked day and night, but on the chain. The room was 913, and a desk clerk recalled that Worth had insisted on that room and no other.

“I only came on the job this morning, so I haven't been able to get a look at him,” Blauvelt said over the phone to police headquarters, “but from what they tell me, except for a change in the color of his hair and a couple inches in height, which could be elevators, he answers the description. Inspector, if this Worth ain't Philly Mullane hiding out I'll get me a job in the Sanitation Department.”

“Nice going, Blauvelt. We'll be right over.” Inspector Queen hung up and said admiringly, “Same hotel, same room. You've got to hand it to him—” But then he stopped.

“Exactly,” said Ellery, who had been listening on the extension. He remembered the case as one of his father's pet bogies. “It's too smart. Unless that's where he hid the money in the first place.”

“But Ellery, that room at the Chancellor was searched when we grabbed Mullane off ten years ago!”

“Not the super de luxe type search I recommend in such cases,” mourned Ellery. “Remember how cleverly Mullane led you to believe he'd buried the money during his getaway? He had you digging up half the cornfields in Connecticut! Dad, it's been in that room at the Chancellor all this time.”

So they went up to the Chancellor with Sergeant Velie and a couple of precinct men and Blauvelt unlocked the door of 913 with his passkey. The door was off the chain, the reason for which became immediately clear when they saw that Mullane had been murdered.

The precinct men went scurrying, and Sergeant Velie got busy on the phone.

Mullane was in a chair at the writing desk in a corner of the bedroom, his face and arms on the desk. He had been cracked on the back of the head with some heavy object which a quick examination told them was not there. From the contusion, the Inspector guessed it had been a hammer.

“But this wound doesn't look as if the blow was hard enough to have caused death,” frowned Ellery.

“Mullane's ticker went bad in prison,” said his father. “Bad heart, hard blow—curtains.”

Ellery looked around. The room had not yet been made up for the day and it was in some disorder. He began to amble, mumbling to himself. “Wouldn't have hidden it in a piece of furniture—they're moved around in hotels all the time.… In
nothing
removable … Walls and ceiling tinted plaster—would mean replastering, duplicating the tint … too risky …” He got down on all fours and began crawling about.

The Inspector was at the desk. “Blauvelt. Help me sit him up.”

The body was still warm and the house detective had to hold on to keep it from collapsing. Mullane's dressing gown sleeves and collar were a mess of wet blue ink. He had been writing a note of some kind and in falling forward had upset the ink bottle.

The Inspector stiffened. He looked around for a towel, but there was none in the bedroom.

“Velie, get some used towels from the bathroom. Maybe we can sop up enough of this wet ink to make out what Mullane was writing!”

“No used towels in here,” called the Sergeant from the bathroom.

“Then get clean ones, you dimwit!”

Velie came out with some unused towels, and Inspector Queen went to work on the note. He worked for five minutes, delicately. But all he could show for it were three shaky words:
Money hidden in
… The rest was blotted beyond recall.

“Why would he write where the dough was stashed?” wondered Blauvelt, continuing to embrace Mullane.

“Because after he got up this morning,” snapped the Inspector, “he must have felt a heart attack coming on. When he got his attack in prison, he almost spilled to the Warden. This time it probably scared him so much he sat right down and wrote the hiding place of the money. Then he slumped forward, unconscious or dying. Killer got in—maybe thought he was dozing—finished him off, read the note before the ink soaked all the way in—”

“And found the loot,” said Ellery, from under the bed. “It's gone, Dad.”

So Blauvelt let Mullane go and they all got down on their faces and saw the neat hole in the floor, under the rug, with an artistically fitted removable board, where the payroll had lain for ten years. The hole was empty.

When they got to their feet, Ellery was no longer with them. He was stooping over what was left of Mullane.

“Ellery, what are you
doing?
” exclaimed Inspector Queen.

Even Sergeant Velie looked repelled. Ellery was running his palm over the dead man's cheeks with tenderness.

“Nice,” he said.

“
Nice!
”

“Nice smooth shave he took this morning. You can still see traces of talc.”

Blauvelt's mouth was open.

“You want to learn something, Blauvelt?” said Sergeant Velie with a nudge that doubled the house detective up. “Now it gives a great big deduction.”

“Certainly does,” grinned Ellery. “It gives the killer of Philly Mullane.”

The Sergeant opened his mouth.

“Shut up, Velie,” said Inspector Queen. “Well?”

“Because if Mullane shaved this morning,” asked Ellery, “where did he do it, Sergeant?”

“Okay, I bite,” said Velie. “Where?”

“Where every man shaves, Sergeant, in the bathroom. Ever shave in the bathroom without using a towel?”

“That's easy. What do you think I wipe my face with, the bath mat?”

“All right, Ellery, so Mullane used a towel,” said the Inspector impatiently. “So what?”

“So where is it? When you asked Velie to get one from the bathroom to sop up the ink with, Dad, he said
there were no used towels in there
. And there are no towels at all in the bedroom here. What did Velie bring you from the bathroom? Some
unused
towels. In other words, after Mullane shaved this morning,
someone took the dirty towels away and replaced them with clean ones
. And this is a hotel, and Mullane, who always kept the door on the chain, had obviously let someone in …”

“
The chambermaid!
”

“Has to be. Mullane let the chambermaid in this morning, as usual, she got to work in the bathroom—and she never did get to the bedroom, as you can see. Why? It can only be because while she was cleaning up in the bathroom Mullane got his heart attack!

“It was the chambermaid who struck Mullane on the back of the head with the hammer she'd brought in with her—waiting for a chance to use it, as she's probably waited every morning for the last nine days.

“It was the chambermaid who read Mullane's message and scooped the payroll money out of the hole in the floor.”

“But to have come in with a hammer—she must have planned this, she must have known who he was!”

“Right, Dad. So I think you'll find, when you catch up with her, that the homicidal chambermaid is your old friend, Pittsburgh Patience, with a few alterations in her appearance. Patience suspected all along where Mullane had hidden the money, and as soon as she was out of stir three years ago she got herself a job on the Chancellor housekeeping staff … and waited for her old pal to show up!”

EMBEZZLEMENT DEPT.

The Myna Birds

Friends of the feathered world will have no trouble recalling the case of old Mrs. Andrus, who left a million dollars to thirty-eight myna birds. What is not generally known, even among birdlovers, is that Ellery was in that case up to his pectorals, taking wing on as pretty a flight of reasoning as his casebook attests.

With the assistance, be it noted, of the only bird-detective on record.

Mrs. Andrus was a lonely old lady who had outlived family and friends, and whom an aging body had condemned to a wheelchair. Her only human connections were her doctor, her lawyer, and her paid companion. But Dr. Cooke was a bloated man with a sort of decayed charm, like an overripe banana; Attorney De Rose, whom the doctor had recommended to manage Mrs. Andrus's affairs when she became too infirm to manage them herself, was a sporty fellow with a perpetual tan and a voice that hurt the old lady's ears; and her companion, Miss Baggott, also introduced by Dr. Cooke, was a frozen-faced female of doubtful gentility whom Mrs. Andrus tolerated only because the woman tended the birds devotedly. And so the mynas, which had begun as a hobby, became the reason for what was left of the old lady's life.