The Scarlet Letters (7 page)

“But
Martha.”

“What about Martha?” said Ellery coldly. “What's so different about Martha? She's in her middle thirties, she has a husband who's making her life hell with his crazy jealousy, she has no children and no family to hold her back, and she's stagestruck. Why, Martha's duck soup for an operator like Harrison! He can give her what Dirk can't, or won't–flattery, attention, mastery, glamor. He can give her happiness, Nikki, even if it's only a cheap substitute in a hotel room.”

“But Martha's always been so level-headed. Can't she see he's a phony?”

“Who's real in this world? And maybe he's in love with her. Martha isn't so hard to take.”

Nikki was silent.

“In other words,” said Ellery after a while, “it's one hell of a mess, and I'm for getting out.”

“Not now.”

“Now is the only time. Later we may not be able to.”

“Not while it's going on.” Nikki shivered. “Not while there's a chance of Dirk's finding out.”

“I take it, then, you're for continuing to hole up at the Lawrences'.”

“Ellery, I have to.”

Ellery grunted. “Why did I ever let myself be conned into this?” He kept drumming on the cloth. Nikki watched him anxiously. “Of course, the sensible thing is a girl-to-girl talk. After all, there is the basis for it, Nikki. We came into this because Martha said Dirk was being jealous for no reason. The situation has changed. He now–fortunately still unknown to him–has the best reason in the world. She's cut the ground away from under us. If we're to continue to help her–”

“We'll have to do it in spite of her.”

Ellery threw up his hands. “Every time I make a constructive suggestion–!”

“Look, dear,” said Nikki, “I know women and you don't. If I told Martha what we know and pleaded with her to stop before something drastic happens, she'd deny the whole thing. She'd deny it because she thinks she's madly in love. Besides making up some embarrassing fairy tale to explain why she's meeting this Harrison man in hotel rooms, she'd hate me for knowing it, I'd have to leave, and that would be that.”

Ellery grumbled something.

“If Martha were ready to come clean, Ellery, she'd have walked into that hotel room a free woman instead of sneaking in like a tart. The fact is, she's decided to have an affair while maintaining the fiction that she's trying to save her marriage.”

“But that's illogical!”

“When a good woman falls, Mr. Queen, you can throw your logic down the johnny. Ellery, I'm sorry I dragged you into this. Why don't you just forget it and let me blunder along in my own way?”

“Very clever,” snarled Ellery. “All right, we try to save them in spite of themselves. And we'll wind up right where we belong, behind the nearest eight-ball!”

Nikki pressed his hand below the table. “You darling,” she said tenderly.

So after they had eaten the salad that was not on the menu, Ellery complained further: “The thing that bothers me most is that we can't plan ahead. There's nothing to plan. It's like being asked to watch for a firebug loose in an ammunition dump on a moonless night. All I can do is stumble after Martha in the dark and hope I'll be there to step on the match before everything goes boom.”

“I know, dear heart …”

“You hijack that next letter, Nik. You'll have to read it this time before Martha does–she won't be so obliging as to drop it on the kitchen floor again. It will probably be in a business envelope, too. It's a good dodge and the kind of pattern that, once established, is pretty sure to be followed.”

“But he wouldn't use the envelope of that air-conditioner company again,” objected Nikki. “That would be dangerous.”

“It would,” said Ellery, “therefore the second note will come in an altogether different envelope.”

“But how will I know which one?”

“I can't help you. You may have to steam open every business letter addressed to Martha. And, since we've agreed to play blindman's buff all around, I suppose I'd better warn you not to get caught at it, even by the maid.”

Nikki gulped. “I'll try to be careful.”

“Yes,” said Ellery without mercy. “Louis! Where's our
tetrazzini?”

Nikki called the Queen apartment late Saturday afternoon to say that she was free for the evening, if anybody was interested. Inspector Queen, who took the message, had to have it translated.

“It means she's got something,” said Ellery with excitement. “Give me that phone! Nikki, well?”

“Well, what?” said Nikki's voice. “Do we have a date, or don't we?”

“Can't talk?”

“No.”

“The apartment. Any time you can make it.”

“What's going on here?” demanded his father when Ellery hung up. “What are you two up to?”

“Nothing good,” said Ellery.

“Anything in my line?”

“Heaven forbid.”

“You'll get around to me yet,” said the Inspector cheerfully. “You always do.”

Nikki showed up a few minutes past nine, looking more dead than alive.

“Excuse us?” said Ellery politely, and he shut the study door on the Inspector, who was watching Sid Caesar in the living room. “I've got your drink ready, Nik. Kick off your shoes, lie down, and give out.”

Nikki sank back on the couch, wiggling her toes, set the highball glass untouched on the floor, and addressed the ceiling. “I am now,” she announced, “the female Jimmy Valentine of my darning and knitting circle. I don't suppose you want the technical details?”

“Correct,” said Ellery. “Results are all that interest me. And they were?”

“You have no heart.”

“This is a heartless racket, child. Well?”

“The letter came in this morning's mail,” said Nikki dreamily. “There were three business-type envelopes, but I didn't have to steam open all three. I spotted the right one at a glance.”

“You did?” Ellery was astonished. “Froehm again?”

“No. This was an ordinary long white envelope with the return address of a business firm named Humber & Kahn, Jewelers. But the address was The 45th Street Building, 547 Fifth–same as the air-conditioner outfit, please note. And– get this …”

“Oh, come on!”

“Martha's name and address were typewritten
in red again.”

Ellery stared. “Funny.”

“Stupid, I calls it. That red typing is a dead giveaway all by itself, if Dirk should happen to notice it a few times. Luckily, he almost never gets to the mail first.”

“Go on,” muttered Ellery. “What did this message say?”

“It said–in the same red-ribbon typing, by the way–'Monday comma 3
P.M
. comma
B.'”

“B?
”

“B.”

C …

Monday was a fine day for shadowing if you were an otter. The rains came and went all day, mischievously, sometimes a drizzle and at others a rattling shower that drove people off the streets. As usual in New York, at the first hint of moisture empty taxicabs became rarer than a traffic officer's smile.

Ellery spent the whole morning and part of the afternoon shivering in his raincoat under a candy-store awning across the street from a shabby apartment house in Chelsea. Martha had found a play for the fall and she was going over it with the author, a young housewife who had written it between diaper-washings and sessions over the range.

It looked like a long wait.

It was.

Martha apparently had lunch there. For noon came, and one o'clock, and one-thirty, and there was still no sign of her.

At one-forty-five Ellery began to hunt for a cab. It took him twenty minutes to capture one, and even then he almost lost it when the driver learned that he was expected to wait indefinitely around the corner with his flag down. A five-dollar bill secured his loyalty.

Martha emerged at twenty-five minutes past two, unfurling an umbrella. She hurried in her plastic overshoes toward Eighth Avenue, looking around anxiously every few steps. Ellery, keeping his head down and his collar up, followed on the opposite side of the street, trying successfully to look like a miserable man.

At that, he had a close call. A cab appeared from nowhere, discharged a passenger, engulfed Martha, and was off before Ellery could reach the corner. He had to sprint to his waiting taxi. Fortunately, Martha's cab was held up two blocks south by a red light. Ellery's driver, sensing adventure, caught up at 15th Street.

“Where's she headed, buddy?” he asked.

“Just follow her.”

“You her husband?” the driver said wisely. “I had a wife once. Take it from me, Mister, it don't pay to knock yourself out. That's the way I always figure. Give the other guy the headache. Why fight City Hall?”

“There they go, damn it!”

“Keep your pants on,” soothed the driver; and they were off again.

Martha's cab turned left on 14th Street and began the long crawl east. Ellery nibbled his nails. Traffic was heavy and visibility poor. It was raining hard again. Where was she going?

At Union Square he half-expected the cab they were following to head north. But instead it turned south into Fourth Avenue.

The secondhand bookshops swam by.

Was she going down Lafayette Street? That way lay Police Headquarters.

It seemed improbable.

At Astor Place, behind Wanamaker's, Martha's cab turned into Cooper Square and cut across to Third Avenue. It settled into a sedate southward journey under the El.

Monday, 3 P.M., B … B
for
Brooklyn
? Was she bound for the Williamsburg Bridge and the East River?

And suddenly it came to Ellery that, where Martha's cab had turned into Third Avenue to head south, Third Avenue ceased to exist. Where Third Avenue met 4th Street, it became The Bowery.

B
for
Bowery
it was.

But The Bowery ran all the way down to Chatham Square. She could hardly be peering out of her window hoping to spot Van Harrison on some unnamed street corner in the dingy gloom of the El. It had to be a specific place on The Bowery. A Bowery-Something … Bowery Mission!

It was not The Bowery Mission. It proved to be 267 Bowery, and it caught the philosopher driving Ellery's cab as much by surprise as his passenger …

Near Houston Street Martha's taxi, treacherously, made a full turn under the El. Martha jumped out, the door of a cab parked on the east side of the street popped open to receive her, and the last Ellery saw of her was a glimpse through the window of Van Harrison embracing her as their cab shot away from the curb, made a quick turn, and disappeared up a side street; By the time Ellery's driver extricated himself from a tangle of northbound traffic and duplicated the maneuver, the enemy was out of sight.

“Why didn't you tell me she was meeting him in front of Sammy's Bowery Follies?” demanded the driver in an injured tone. “Then I'd been prepared.”

“Because Sammy's Bowery Follies begins with an
S
,” snapped Ellery, “and if that's cricket it ought to be baseball. Stop at a drugstore so I can use a phone, then take me up to West 87th Street.”

“With what's on the meter already,” said the driver unhappily, “that's going to use up a good hunk of the fin.” And there was no further communion between them.

Nikki managed to get away late Monday evening, and she burst into the Queen apartment with a “Well?” that faltered at sight of the Inspector.

“It's all right, Nikki,” growled Ellery, “I've told Dad all about it. This looks like a long job. It was Sammy's Bowery Follies, Bowery and Houston, with the ‘Sammy' apparently canceled out. In short, I lost them. What time did Miss Prynne get home?”

“At the usual time. For dinner.” Nikki sank into a chair. “
B
… Bowery.”

“I think you two ought to have your heads examined,” exclaimed Inspector Queen. “Mixing up in an adultery case! Anyway it turns out, Nikki, you're going to catch the dirty end of the stick. And don't give me any taffy about friendship. In an adultery case there's no friends, just subpoenas. I've already notified my son what I think of
his
judgment. And now, if you can bear it, I'm going to bed.”

“But why Bowery Follies?” asked Nikki, when the Inspector's door had thundered. “What on earth were they doing there, Ellery?”

“Harrison's an actor. The ham instinct. It's romantic to meet on The Bowery and go scudding off in the rain. Gives that preliminary zing to the big scene. After all, there isn't much variety in hotel rooms, or what usually goes on in them under these circumstances.” Ellery packed a pipe, viciously.

“Then you think they were going …”

“I assure you Martha didn't jump into his taxi to discuss a casting problem. The last I saw, Harrison had a stranglehold on her collarbone. I leave it to you what their destination was.”

“The A— again?” asked Nikki in a small voice.

“Not the A—. I phoned Ernie at the desk. Harrison checked out Friday morning and he hasn't been back since. It was an academic call. Does it really matter what hotels they use?” Nikki did not reply. “How did our heroine act when she got home?”

“Subdued.”

“Huh!”

“And … very nice to Dirk.”

“Of course.”

“Kept talking through dinner about the play she's taken an option on. And about this Ella Greenspan, the young housewife who wrote it.”

“She also contrived to give the impression that she spent not only the morning but the entire afternoon with the precocious Mrs. Greenspan? Came directly home from Chelsea, and so on?”

“Well … yes.”

“And what's on her agenda for tonight?”

“Martha's reading Dirk the play.”

“Touching. By the way, how was Dirk?”

“Very interested. They went right into the study after dinner. That's how I was able to get away. Dirk asked me to stay and listen in, but Martha seemed to want him to herself, so … Well, I said I'd some things to buy at the drugstore. I suppose Martha's afraid of me these days.”

“I'm beginning,” remarked Ellery, “not to care a great deal for your Martha Lawrence, Nikki.”

Nikki nibbled her lip.

“But the situation does have its element of repulsive fascination. It's sort of like living in a keyhole.” Then Ellery blew an apologetic cloud of smoke and laid his pipe down. Nikki was looking so miserable that he pulled her over to him. “I'm sorry. I guess I'm not used to this kind of case. Why are you getting up?”

“No reason. I want a cigaret.”

Ellery lit one for her. She returned to her own chair.

“You hate me.”

“I hate men!”

“Now, be reasonable, Nikki. It takes two to build a love nest. I hold no brief for Harrison, but Martha's not exactly jail bait. She's old enough to be held responsible for her acts.”

“All
right
,” cried Nikki. “Can't we get back to the point? Do you want me to keep steaming open business envelopes?”

“I want you to come home. But if you won't–yes.” Ellery picked up his pipe again. “By the way, today–we may say with some justification–we've progressed.”

“In which direction?” asked Nikki bitterly.

“Exactly. But that's not what I mean. The pattern's beginning to show.

“Harrison,” said Ellery, “has apparently worked out a melodramatic but effective enough scheme for having his pigeon and eating it, too. Different meeting places each time, and then away to the day's nest. The only point of contact necessary under this layout is a time designation, place being expressed in code, and the whole luscious package enclosed in an innocuous business envelope. With Martha coming and going at all hours on legitimate business, and Dirk used to it–even though he breaks out in occasional rashes of jealousy-it's not a bad set-up at all.

“Harrison's really reduced the danger of discovery to a minimum.

“The code itself,” continued Ellery to the wall, since Nikki was looking there, too, “presents certain primitive points of interest.
A
comes first and turns out to represent the A— Hotel.
B
comes second and we find it indicates Bowery Follies. We may infer, then, that the next code letter will probably be
C
, and that
C
will stand for Carnegie Hall, or Coney Island, or somewhere in Central Park; that
D
will follow
C
and designate the
Daily News
building or Danny's Hideaway; and so on. What Harrison will do when he exhausts the alphabet, assuming he can get away with it that long,” said Ellery gravely, “heaven only knows. Probably start working backwards from Z.”

“Games,” said Nikki. “Games!”

“But now the question: How did Martha know that
A
didn't stand for the Astor, or the Art Students' League, or the American Museum of Natural History? And
B
–why not Bellevue Hospital, or the Broadway Tabernacle, or Battery Park? The
B
was unqualified, except for time; so was the
A
. How did she know?

“The answer is that the initial-letter element of the code must be part of it only. The master key of the code must specify which
A
-place of all the
A
-places in New York the letter
A
in the code is to designate. Harrison has one copy of the decoding instrument, Martha the other. When she gets a message designating
C
, she'll simply look up
C
in her copy, and she's away.”

“That first envelope,” said Nikki, “retaining the shape of some booklet!”

“Nice work,” grinned Ellery. “Have you kept looking for it?”

“Well–yes.”

“Not, I gather, with the enthusiasm its importance warrants. You see how exacting detective work is, Nikki. You've got to find that booklet. It's probably a guidebook of some sort to places of interest in New York City. With it we'll know where they'll meet
before
they meet. The advantages are self-evident.”

“Tonight,” said Nikki through her teeth, “you're talking like Professor Queen, and I don't appreciate it. I'll find the damned thing! What's that you've got there?”

“This?” Ellery looked up from a little black notebook he had taken from his breast pocket. “This is my case book.”

“Case book?”

“Times, dates, where they meet, where they go, what they do, to the best of my knowledge and belief … Who knows? It may come in handy.”

Nikki went off drooping.

While waiting for the next rendezvous, Ellery thought he might as well settle a point or two.

He spent all of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in an apparently aimless round of phone calls and visits to various Broadwayites of his acquaintance. He lunched at Sardi's and the Algonquin, had dinner at Lindy's and Toots Shor's, dropped in at 21 and the Stork, ate a midnight snack at Reuben's, and by Thursday evening he was far fuller of good food than of digestible information. He might have done better pumping the columnists, but he made broad detours whenever he spotted one. Expert of the painless exploratory technique as he was, he did not dare risk a consultation with the specialists. In fact, the newspapers these days gave him the horrors, and he scanned Winchell and Lyons and Sullivan and the rest with the fears of a man of much guiltier conscience.

The friendship of Martha Lawrence and Van Harrison was of very recent date. No one Ellery spoke to had ever seen them together, or even separately in the same place, until a few weeks before. On that occasion–Ellery's informant was Maud Ashton, an old character woman with the acquaintanceship of Elsa Maxwell and the certified circulation of
Life
–they had both attended the all-night telethon emceed by a round robin of TV comedians in the interest of the recent blood-plasma drive. Martha had been there as one of the Broadway celebrities to supervise the studio blood donations, Harrison as a personality of the theater to entertain the television audience. He had given his famous imitation of John Barrymore, and it had netted so much blood for the drive that Harrison remained for the rest of the night, assisting Mrs. Lawrence.

“They made such a handsome pair,” Miss Ashton smiled. “I wonder if her husband was at his set.”

“Why, what do you mean?” asked Ellery.

“Not a blinking thing, Ellery, curse the luck. Of course, Van's an old reprobate who'll play Sextus seven nights a week, but everybody knows little Martha Lawrence is as faithful as Lucrece, and I can't see Dirk Lawrence in the role of Tarquin, can you? Sextus … You know, considering the plot line, that's awfully cute?”