The Twelve Crimes of Christmas (24 page)

“A call from an old friend,” announced a deep
and hollowish male voice. “Comus.”

“Well,” said Ellery. “Hello again.”

“Did Mr. Bondling,” asked the voice jovially, “persuade
you to ‘prevent’ me from stealing the Dauphin’s Doll in Nash’s tomorrow?”

“So you know Bondling’s been here.”

“No miracle involved, Queen. I followed him.
Are you taking the case?”

“See here, Comus,” said Ellery. “Under ordinary
circumstances I’d welcome the sporting chance to put you where you belong. But
these circumstances are not ordinary. That doll represents the major asset of a
future fund for orphaned children. I’d rather we didn’t play catch with it.
Comus, what do you say we call this one off?”

“Shall we say,” asked the voice gently, “Nash’s
Department Store—tomorrow?”

T
HUS
THE EARLY
morning of December twenty-fourth finds Messrs. Queen and Bondling, and Nikki
Porter, huddled on the iron sidewalk of Forty-third Street, before the
holly-decked windows of the Life Bank & Trust Company, just outside a
double line of armed guards. The guards form a channel between the bank
entrance and an armored truck, down which Cytherea Ypson’s Dollection flows
swiftly. And all about gapes New York, stamping callously on the aged, icy face
of the street, against the uncharitable Christmas wind.

Now is the winter of his discontent, and Mr.
Queen curses.

“I don’t know what you’re beefing about,” moans
Miss Porter. “You and Mr. Bondling are bundled up like Yukon prospectors. Look
at
me.”

“It’s that rat-hearted public relations tripe
from Nash’s,” says Mr. Queen murderously. “They all swore themselves to
secrecy, Brother Rat included. Honor! Spirit of Christmas!”

“It was all over the radio last night,”
whimpers Mr. Bondling. “And in this morning’s papers.”

“I’ll cut his creep’s heart out. Here! Velie,
keep those people away!”

Sergeant Velie says good-naturedly from the
doorway of the bank, “You jerks stand back.” Little does the Sergeant know the
fate in store for him.

“Armored trucks,” says Miss Porter bluishly. “Shotguns.”

“Nikki, Comus made a point of informing us in
advance that he meant to steal the Dauphin’s Doll in Nash’s Department Store.
It would be just like him to have said that in order to make it easier to steal
the doll en route.”

“Why don’t they hurry?” shivers Mr. Bondling. “Ah!”
Inspector Queen appears suddenly in the doorway. His hands clasp treasure. “Oh!”
cries Nikki. New York whistles.

It is magnificence, an affront to democracy.
But street mobs, like children, are royalists at heart.

New York whistles, and Sergeant Thomas Velie
steps menacingly before Inspector Queen, Police Positive drawn, and Inspector
Queen dashes across the sidewalk, between the bristling lines of guards.

Queen the Younger vanishes, to materialize an
instant later at the door of the armored truck.

“It’s just immorally, hideously beautiful, Mr.
Bondling,” breathes Miss Porter, sparkly-eyed.

Mr. Bondling cranes, thinly.

E
NTER
Santa Claus, with bell.

Santa.
Oyez, oyez. Peace, good will. Is that the
dollie the radio’s been yappin’ about, folks?

Mr. B.
Scram.

Miss
P.
Why, Mr. Bondling.

Mr. B.
Well, he’s got no business here. Stand back,
er, Santa. Back!

Santa.
What eateth you, my lean and angry friend?
Have you no compassion at this season of the year?

Mr. B.
Oh… Here!
(Clink.)
Now will you
kindly…?

Santa.
Mighty pretty dollie. Where they takin’ it,
girlie?

Miss
P.
Over to Nash’s, Santa.

Mr. B.
You asked for it. Officer!!!

Santa.
(Hurriedly)
Little present for you, girlie. Compliments of old Santy. Merry, merry.

Miss
P.
For me?? (
E
XIT
Santa, rapidly, with bell.)
Really, Mr. Bondling, was it necessary
to…
?

Mr. B.
Opium for the masses! What did that flatulent
faker hand you, Miss Porter? What’s in that unmentionable envelope?

Miss
P.
I’m sure I don’t know, but
isn’t it the most touching idea? Why, it’s addressed to
Ellery.
Oh! Elleryyyyyy!

Mr. B.
(E
XIT
excitedly
) Where
is he? You—! Officer! Where did that baby-deceiver disappear to? A Santa Claus…!

Mr.
Q. (Entering on the run)
Yes? Nikki, what is it?
What’s happened?

Miss
P.
A man
dressed as Santa Claus just handed me
this envelope. It’s
addressed to you.

Mr.
Q.
Note?
(He snatches it, withdraws a miserable slice of paper from it on which is
block-lettered in pencil a message which he reads aloud with considerable
expression.)
“Dear Ellery, Don’t you trust me? I said I’d steal the
Dauphin in Nash’s emporium today, and that’s exactly where I’m going to do it.
Yours—” Signed…

Miss
P. (Craning)
“Comus.” That Santa?

Mr.
Q. (Sets his manly lips. An icy wind blows)

E
VEN
THE MASTER
had
to acknowledge that their defenses against Comus were ingenious.

From the Display Department of Nash’s they had
requisitioned four miter-jointed counters of uniform length. These they had
fitted together, and in the center of the hollow square thus formed they had
erected a platform six feet high. On the counters, in plastic tiers, stretched
the long lines of Miss Ypson’s babies. Atop the platform, dominant, stood a
great chair of handcarved oak, filched from the Swedish Modern section of the
Fine Furniture Department; and on this Valhalla-like throne, a huge and rosy
rotundity, sat Sergeant Thomas Velie, of police headquarters, morosely grateful
for the anonymity endowed by the scarlet suit and the jolly mask and whiskers
of his appointed role.

Nor was this all. At a distance of six feet
outside the counters shimmered a surrounding rampart of plate glass, borrowed
in its various elements from
The Glass Home of the Future
display on the sixth-floor rear, and assembled to shape an eight-foot wall
quoined with chrome, its glistening surfaces flawless except at one point,
where a thick glass door had been installed. But the edges fitted intimately,
and there was a formidable lock in the door, the key to which lay buried in Mr.
Queen’s right trouser pocket.

It was 8:54
A
.
M
. The Queens, Nikki Porter, and Attorney
Bondling stood among store officials and an army of plainclothesmen on Nash’s
main floor, surveying the product of their labors.

“I think that about does it,” muttered
Inspector Queen at last. “Men! Positions around the glass partition.”

Twenty-four assorted gendarmes in mufti jostled
one another. They took marked places about the wall, facing it and grinning up
at Sergeant Velie. Sergeant Velie, from his throne, glared back.

“Hagstrom and Piggott—the door.”

Two detectives detached themselves from a group
of reserves. As they marched to the glass door, Mr. Bondling plucked at the
inspector’s overcoat sleeve. “Can all these men be trusted, Inspector Queen?”
he whispered. “I mean, this fellow Comus—”

“Mr. Bondling,” replied the old gentleman
coldly, “you do your job and let me do mine.”

“But—”

“Picked men, Mr. Bondling! I picked
’em
myself.”

“Yes, yes, Inspector. I merely thought I’d—”

“Lieutenant Farber.”

A little man with watery eyes stepped forward.

“Mr. Bondling, this is Lieutenant Geronimo
Farber, headquarters jewelry expert. Ellery?”

Ellery took the Dauphin’s Doll from his
greatcoat pocket, but he said, “If you don’t mind, Dad, I’ll keep holding on to
it.”

Somebody said, “Wow,” and then there was
silence.

“Lieutenant, this doll in my son’s hand is the
famous Dauphin’s Doll with the diamond crown that—”

“Don’t touch it, Lieutenant, please,” said
Ellery. “I’d rather nobody touched it.”

“The doll,” continued the inspector, “has just
been brought here from a bank vault which it ought never to have left, and Mr.
Bondling, who’s handling the Ypson estate, claims it’s the genuine article.
Lieutenant, examine the diamond and give us your opinion.”

Lieutenant Farber produced a loupe. Ellery held
the dauphin securely, and Farber did not touch it.

Finally, the expert said: “I can’t pass an
opinion about the doll itself, of course, but the diamond’s a beauty. Easily
worth a hundred thousand dollars at the present state of the market—maybe more.
Looks like a very strong setting, by the way.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Okay, son,” said the
inspector. “Go into your waltz.”

Clutching the dauphin, Ellery strode over to
the glass gate and unlocked it.

“This fellow Farber,” whispered Attorney
Bondling in the inspector’s hairy ear. “Inspector, are you absolutely sure he’s—?”

“He’s really Lieutenant Farber?” The inspector
controlled himself. “Mr. Bondling, I’ve known Gerry Farber for eighteen years.
Calm yourself.”

Ellery was crawling perilously over the nearest
counter. Then, bearing the dauphin aloft, he hurried across the floor of the
enclosure to the platform.

Sergeant Velie whined, “Maestro, how in hell am
I going to sit here all day without washin’ my hands?”

But Mr. Queen merely stooped and lifted from
the floor a heavy little structure faced with black velvet consisting of a
floor and a backdrop, with a two-armed chromium support. This object he placed
on the platform directly between Sergeant Velie’s massive legs.

Carefully, he stood the Dauphin’s Doll in the
velvet niche. Then he clambered back across the counter, went through the glass
door, locked it with the key, and turned to examine his handiwork.

Proudly the prince’s plaything stood, the jewel
in his little golden crown darting “on pale electric streams” under the concentrated
tide of a dozen of the most powerful floodlights in the possession of the great
store.

“Velie,” said Inspector Queen, “you’re not to
touch that doll. Don’t lay a finger on it.”

The Sergeant said, “Gaaaaa.”

“You men on duty. Don’t worry about the crowds.
Your job is to keep watching that doll. You’re not to take your eyes off it all
day. Mr. Bondling, are you satisfied?” Mr. Bondling seemed about to say
something, but then he hastily nodded. “Ellery?”

The great man smiled. “The only way he can get
that bawbie,” he said, “is by spells and incantations. Raise the portcullis!”

T
HEN
BEGAN THE
interminable day,
dies irae,
the last shopping day before Christmas. This
is traditionally the day of the inert, the procrastinating, the undecided, and
the forgetful, sucked at last into the mercantile machine by the perpetual pump
of Time. If there is peace upon earth, it descends only afterward; and at no
time, on the part of anyone embroiled, is there good will toward men. As Miss
Porter expresses it, a cat fight in a bird cage would be more Christian.