As of the time of this writing Janwillem van de Wetering has written six novels about the Amsterdam police, featuring Detective Adjutant Grijpstra and Detective Sergeant de Gier. The novels have been highly praised by critics, have sold to eleven foreign publishers, have been serialized and selected by book clubs; a motion picture is now in production in Holland, with the prospect of an American movie soon.

Mr. van de Wetering was born in The Netherlands in 1931. The German bombing of Rotterdam and the subsequent five years of military occupation strongly influenced his early thinking. After graduation from a business college he traveled extensively — Africa, South America, Australia, Japan. He studied philosophy in London and became a disciple of a Zen master in Kyoto, Japan, later writing two books on Zen.

In 1965 he returned to The Netherlands where he became an active member of the Special Constabulary of the Amsterdam Municipal Police (so he knows at first-hand what he’s writing about). He and his family at present live in the United States.

Now, meet for the first time in a short story (but not for the last time, we hope) the most famous pair of detectives in the Criminal Investigation Department (also called the Murder Brigade) of the Municipal Police of Amsterdam — Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier, two of the most human sleuths you have ever encountered in print. The crime they investigate on Easter Day is a fascinating double mystery — “a dead man dangling from a branch in the forest” and “a lady poisoned, presumably by a chocolate Easter egg”...

The siren of the tiny dented Volkswagen shrieked forlornly between the naked trees of the Amsterdam Forest, the city’s largest park, set on its southern edge: several square miles of willows, poplars, and wild growing alders, surrounding ponds and lining paths. The paths were restricted to pedestrians and cyclists, but the Volkswagen had ignored the many No Entry signs, quite legally for the vehicle belonged to the Municipal Police and more especially to its Criminal Investigation Department, or the Murder Brigade. Even so it looked lost and its howl seemed defensive.

It was Easter Sunday and it rained, and the car’s two occupants, Detective Adjutant Grijpstra and Detective Sergeant de Gier, sat hunched in their overcoats, watching the squeaky rusted wipers trying to deal with the steady drizzle. The car should have been junked some years before, but the adjutant had lost the form that would have done away with his aging transport, lost it on purpose and with the sergeant’s consent. They had grown fond of the Volkswagen, of its shabbiness and its ability to melt away in traffic.

But they weren’t fond of the car now. The heater didn’t work, it was cold, and it was early. Not yet nine o’clock on a Sunday is early, especially when the Sunday is Easter. Technically they were both off-duty, but they had been telephoned out of warm beds by Headquarters’ radio room. A dead man dangling from a branch in the forest; please, would they care to have a look at the dead man?

Grijpstra’s stubby index finger silenced the siren. They had followed several miles of winding paths so far and hadn’t come across anything alive except tall blue herons, fishing in the ponds and moats and flapping away slowly when the car came too close for their comfort.

“You know who reported the corpse? I wasn’t awake when the radio room talked to me.”

De Gier had been smoking silently. His handsome head with the perfect curls turned obediently to face his superior. “Yes, a gentleman jogger. He said he jogged right into the body’s feet. Gave him a start. He ran all the way to the nearest telephone booth, phoned headquarters, then headquarters phoned us, and that’s why we are here, I suppose. I am a little asleep myself — we are here, aren’t we?”

They could hear another siren, and another. Two limousines came roaring toward the Volkswagen, and Grijpstra cursed and made the little car turn off the path and slide into a soggy lawn; they could feel its wheel sink into the mud.

The limousines stopped and men poured out of them; the men pushed the Volkswagen back on the path.

“Morning, Adjutant, morning, Sergeant. Where is the corpse?”

“Shouldn’t you know too?”

“No, Adjutant,” several men said simultaneously, “but we thought maybe you know. All we know is that the corpse is in the Amsterdam Forest and that this is the Amsterdam Forest.”

Grijpstra addressed the sergeant. “You know?”

De Gier’s well modulated baritone chanted the instructions. “Turn right after the big pond, right again, then left. Or the other way round. I think I have it right, we should be close.”

The three cars drove about for a few minutes more until they were waved down by a man dressed in what seemed to be long blue underwear. The jogger ran ahead, bouncing energetically, and led them to their destination. The men from the limousines brought out their boxes and suitcases, then cameras clicked and a videorecorder hummed. The corpse hung on and the two detectives watched it hang.

“Neat,” Grijpstra said, “very neat. Don’t you think it is neat?”

The sergeant grunted.

“Here. Brought a folding campstool and some nice new rope, made a perfect noose, slipped it around his neck, kicked the stool. Anything suspicious, gentlemen?”

The men from the limousines said there was not. They had found footprints — the prints of the corpse’s boots. There were no other prints, except the jogger’s. The jogger’s statement was taken, he was thanked and sent on his sporting way. A police ambulance arrived and the corpse was cut loose, examined by doctor and detectives, and carried off. The detectives saluted the corpse quietly by inclining their heads.

“In his sixties,” the sergeant said, “well dressed in old but expensive clothes. Clean shirt. Tie. Short gray beard, clipped. Man who took care of himself. A faint smell of liquor — he must have had a few to give him courage. Absolutely nothing in his pockets. I looked in the collar of his shirt — no laundry mark. He went to some trouble to be nameless. Maybe something will turn up when they strip him at the mortuary; we should phone in an hour’s time.”

Grijpstra looked hopeful. “Suicide?”

“I would think so. Came here by himself, no traces of anybody else. No signs of a struggle. The man knew what he wanted to do, and did it, all by himself. But he didn’t leave a note; that wasn’t very thoughtful.”

“Right,” Grijpstra said, “time for breakfast, Sergeant! We’ll have it at the airport — that’s close and convenient. We can show our police cards and get through the customs’ barrier; the restaurant on the far side is better than the coffee shop on the near side.”

De Gier activated the radio when they got back to the car.

“Male corpse, balding but with short gray beard. Dentures. Blue eyes. Sixty-odd years old. Three-piece blue suit, elegant dark gray overcoat, no hat. No identification.”

“Thank you,” the radio said.

“Looks very much like suicide. Do you have any missing persons of that description in your files?”

“No, not so far.”

“We’ll be off for breakfast and will call in again on our way back.”

“Echrem,” the radio said sadly, “there’s something else. Sorry.”

De Gier stared at a duck waddling across the path and trailing seven furry ducklings. He began to mumble. Adjutant Grijpstra mumbled with him. The mumbled four-letter words interspersed with mild curses formed a background for the radio’s well articulated message. They were given an address on the other side of the city. “The lady was poisoned, presumably by a chocolate Easter egg. The ambulance that answered the distress call just radioed in. They are taking her to hospital. The ambulance driver thought the poison was either parathion, something used in agriculture, or arsenic. His assistant is pumping out the patient’s stomach. She is in a bad way but not dead yet.”

Grijpstra grabbed the microphone from de Gier’s limp hand. “So if the lady is on her way to hospital who is left in the house you want us to go to?”

“Her husband, man by the name of Moozen, a lawyer, I believe.”

“What hospital is Mrs. Moozen being taken to?”

“The Wilhelmina.”

“And you have no one else on call? Sergeant de Gier and I are supposed to be off-duty for Easter, you know!”

“No,” the radio’s female voice said, “no, Adjutant. We never have much crime on Easter day, especially not in the morning. There are only two detectives on duty and they are out on a case too — some boys have derailed a streetcar with matches.”

“Right,” Grijpstra said coldly, “we are on our way.”

The old Volkswagen made an effort to jump away, protesting feebly. De Gier was still muttering but had stopped cursing. “Streetcar? Matches?”

“Yes. They take an empty cartridge, fill it with matchheads, then close the open end with a hammer. Very simple. All you have to do is insert the cartridge into the streetcar’s rail and when the old tram comes clanging along, the sudden impact makes the cartridge explode. If you use two or three cartridges the explosion may be strong enough to lift the wheel out of the rail. Didn’t you ever try that? I used to do it as a boy. The only problem was to get the cartridges. We had to sneak around on the rifle range with the chance of getting shot at.”

“No,” de Gier said. “Pity. Never thought of it, and it sounds like a good game.”

He looked out of the window. The car had left the park and was racing toward the city’s center through long empty avenues. There was no life in the huge apartment buildings lining the old city — nobody had bothered to get up yet. Ten o’clock and the citizenry wasn’t even considering the possibility of slouching into the kitchen for a first cup of coffee.

But one man had bothered to get up early and had strolled into the park, carrying his folding chair and a piece of rope to break off the painful course of his life, once and for all. An elderly man in good but old clothes. De Gier saw the man’s beard again, a nicely cared-for growth. The police doctor had said that he hadn’t been dead long. A man alone in the night that would have led him to Easter, a man by himself in a deserted park, testing the strength of his rope, fitting his head into the noose, kicking the campstool.

“Bah!” he said aloud.

Grijpstra had steered the car through a red light and was turning the wheel.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Just bah.”

“Bah is right,” Grijpstra said.

They found the house, a bungalow, on the luxurious extreme north side of the city. Spring was trying to revive the small lawn and a magnolia tree was in hesitant bloom. Bright yellow crocuses set off the path. Grijpstra looked at the crocuses. He didn’t seem pleased.

“Crocuses,” de Gier said, “very nice. Jolly little flowers.”

“No. Unimaginative plants, manufactured, not grown. Computer plants. They make the bulbs in a machine and program them to look stupid. Go ahead, Sergeant, press the bell.”

“Really?” the sergeant asked.

Grijpstra’s jowls sagged. “Yes. They are like mass-manufactured cheese, tasteless; cheese is probably made with the same machines.”

“Cheese,” de Gier said moistly, “there’s nothing wrong with cheese either, apart from not having any right now. Breakfast has slipped by, you know.” He glanced at his watch.

They read the nameplate while the bell rang. H. F. Moozen, Attorney at Law. The door opened. A man in a housecoat made out of brightly striped towel material said good morning. The detectives showed their identifications. The man nodded and stepped back. A pleasant man, still young, 30 years or a bit more. The ideal model for an ad in a ladies’ magazine. A background man, showing off a modern house, or a mini-car, or expensive furniture. The sort of man ladies would like to have around. Quiet, secure, mildly good-looking. Not a passionate man, but lawyers seldom are. Lawyers practise detachment; they identify with their clients, but only up to a point.

“You won’t take long, I hope,” Mr. Moozen said. “I wanted to go with the ambulance, but the driver said you were on the way, and that I wouldn’t be of any help if I stayed with my wife.”

“Was your wife conscious when she left here, sir?”

“Barely. She couldn’t speak.”

“She ate an egg, a chocolate egg?”

“Yes. I don’t care for chocolate myself. It was a gift, we thought, from friends. I had to let the dog out early this morning, an hour ago, and there was an Easter bunny sitting on the path. He held an egg wrapped up in silver paper. I took him in, woke up my wife, and showed the bunny to her, and she took the egg and ate it, then became ill. I telephoned for the ambulance and they came almost immediately. I would like to go to the hospital now.”

“Come in our car, sir. Can I see the bunny?”

Mr. Moozen took off the housecoat and put on a jacket. He opened the door leading to the kitchen and a small dog jumped around the detectives, yapping greetings. The bunny stood on the kitchen counter; it was almost a foot high. Grijpstra tapped its back with his knuckles; it sounded solid.

“Hey,” de Gier said. He turned the bunny around and showed it to Grijpstra.

“Brwah!” Grijpstra said.

The rabbit’s toothless mouth gaped. The beast’s eyes were close together and deeply sunk into the skull. Its ears stood up aggressively. The bunny leered at them, its torso crouched; the paws that had held the deadly egg seemed ready to punch.

“It’s roaring,” de Gier said. “See? A roaring rabbit. Easter bunnies are supposed to smile.”

“Shall we go?” Mr. Moozen asked.

They used the siren and the trip to the hospital didn’t take ten minutes. The city was still quiet. But there proved to be no hurry. An energetic bright young nurse led them to a waiting room. Mrs. Moozen was being worked on; her condition was still critical. The nurse would let them know if there was any change.

“Can we smoke?” Grijpstra asked.

“If you must.” The nurse smiled coldly, appraised de Gier’s tall wide-shouldered body with a possessive feminist glance, swung her hips, and turned to the door.

“Any coffee?”

“There’s a machine in the hall. Don’t smoke in the hall, please.”

There were several posters in the waiting room. A picture of a cigarette pointing to a skull with crossed bones. A picture of a happy child biting into an apple. A picture of a drunken driver (bubbles surrounding his head proved he was drunk) followed by an ambulance. The caption read: “Not if you have an accident, but when you have an accident.”

De Gier fetched coffee and Grijpstra offered cigars. Mr. Moozen said he didn’t smoke.

“Well,” Grijpstra said patiently and puffed out a ragged dark cloud, “now who would want to poison your wife, sir? Has there been any recent trouble in her life?”

The question hung in the small white room while Moozen thought. The detectives waited. De Gier stared at the floor, Grijpstra observed the ceiling. A full minute passed.

“Yes,” Mr. Moozen said, “some trouble. With me. We contemplated a divorce.”

“I see.”

“But then we decided to stay together. The trouble passed.”

“Any particular reason why you considered a divorce, sir?”

“My wife had a lover.” Mr. Moozen’s words were clipped and precise.

“Had,” de Gier said. “The affair came to an end?”

“Yes. We had some problems with our central heating, something the mechanics couldn’t fix. An engineer came out and my wife fell in love with him. She told me — she doesn’t like to be secretive. They met each other in motels for a while.”

“You were upset?”

“Yes. It was a serious affair. The engineer’s wife is a mental patient; he divorced her and was awarded custody of his two children. I thought he was looking for a new wife. My wife has no children of her own — we have been married some six years and would like to have children. My wife and the engineer seemed well matched. I waited a month and then told her to make up her mind — either him or me, not both, I couldn’t stand it.”

“And she chose you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the engineer?”

A vague pained smile floated briefly on Moozen’s face. “Not personally. We did meet once and discussed central heating systems. Any further contact with him was through my wife.”

“And when did all this happen, sir?”

“Recently. She only made her decision a week ago. I don’t think she has met him since. She told me it was all over.”

“His name and address, please, sir.”

De Gier closed his notebook and got up. “Shall we go, Adjutant?”

Grijpstra sighed and got up too. They shook hands with Moozen and wished him luck. Grijpstra stopped at the desk. The nurse wasn’t helpful, but Grijpstra insisted and de Gier smiled and eventually they were taken to a doctor who accompanied them to the next floor. Mrs. Moozen seemed comfortable. Her arms were stretched out on the blanket. The face was calm. The detectives were led out of the room again.

“Bad,” the doctor said, “parathion is a strong poison. Her stomach is ripped to shreds. We’ll have to operate and remove part of it, but I think she will live. The silly woman ate the whole egg, a normal-sized egg. Perhaps she was still too sleepy to notice the taste.”

“Her husband is downstairs. Perhaps you should call him up, especially if you think she will live.” Grijpstra sounded concerned. He probably was, de Gier thought. He felt concerned himself. The woman was beautiful, with a finely curved nose, very thin in the bridge, and large eyes and a soft and sensitive mouth. He looked at her long delicate hands.

“Husbands,” the doctor said. “Prime suspects in my experience. Husbands are supposed to love their wives, but usually they don’t. It’s the same the other way round. Marriage seems to breed violence — it’s one of the impossible situations we humans have to put up with.”

Grijpstra’s pale blue eyes twinkled. “Are you married, Doctor?”

The doctor grinned back. “Very. Oh, yes.”

“A long time?”

“Long enough.”

Grijpstra’s grin faded. “So am I. Too long. But poison is nasty. Thank you, Doctor.”

There wasn’t much conversation in the car when they drove to the engineer’s address. The city’s streets had filled up. People were stirring about on the sidewalks and cars crowded each other, honking occasionally. The engineer lived in a block of apartments, and Grijpstra switched off the engine and lit another small black cigar.

“A family drama. What do you think, Sergeant?”

“I don’t think. But that rabbit was most extraordinary. Not bought in a shop. A specially made rabbit, and well made, not by an amateur.”

“Are we looking for a sculptor? Some arty person? Would Mr. Moozen or the engineer be an artist in his spare time? How does one make a chocolate rabbit, anyway?”

De Gier tried to stretch, but didn’t succeed in his cramped quarters. He yawned instead. “You make a mold, I suppose, out of plaster of Paris or something, and then you pour hot chocolate into the mold and wait for it to harden. That rabbit was solid chocolate, several kilos of it. Our artistic friend went to a lot of trouble.”

“A baker? A pastry man?”

“Or an engineer — engineers design forms sometimes, I believe. Let’s meet this lover man.”

The engineer was a small nimble man with a shock of black hair and dark lively eyes, a nervous man, nervous in a pleasant childlike manner. De Gier remembered that Mrs. Moozen was a small woman too. They were ushered into a four-room apartment. They had to be careful not to step on a large number of toys, spread about evenly. Two little boys played on the floor; the eldest ran out of the room to fetch his Easter present to show it to the uncles. It was a basketful of eggs, homemade, out of chocolate. The other boy came to show his basket, identical but a size smaller.

“My sister and I made them last night,” the engineer said. “She came to live here after my wife left and she looks after the kids, but she is spending the Easter weekend with my parents in the country. We couldn’t go because Tom here had measles, hadn’t you, Tom?”

“Yes,” Tom said. “Big measles. Little Klaas here hasn’t had them yet.”

Klaas looked sorry. Grijpstra took a plastic truck off a chair and sat down heavily after having looked at the engineer who waved him on. “Please, make yourself at home.” De Gier had found himself a chair too and was rolling a cigarette. The engineer provided coffee and shooed the children into another room.

“Any trouble?”

“Yes,” Grijpstra said. “I am afraid we usually bring trouble. A Mrs. Moozen has been taken to hospital. An attempt was made on her life. I believe you are acquainted with Mrs. Moozen?”

“Ann,” the engineer said. “My God! Is she all right?”

De Gier had stopped rolling his cigarette. He was watching the man carefully; his large brown eyes gleamed, but not with pleasure or anticipation. The sergeant felt sorrow, a feeling that often accompanied his intrusions into the private lives of his fellow citizens. He shifted and the automatic pistol in his shoulder holster nuzzled into his armpit. He impatiently pushed the weapon back. This was no time to be reminded that he carried death with him, legal death.

“What happened?” the engineer was asking. “Did anybody hurt her?”

“A question,” Grijpstra said gently. “A question first, sir. You said your sister and you were making chocolate Easter eggs last night. Did you happen to make any bunnies too?”

The engineer sucked noisily on his cigarette. Grijpstra repeated his question.

“Bunnies? Yes, or no. We tried, but it was too much for us. The eggs were easy — my sister is good at that. We have a pudding form for a bunny, but all we could manage was a pudding. It is still in the kitchen, a surprise for the kids later on today. Chocolate pudding — they like it.”

“Can we see the kitchen, please?”

The engineer didn’t get up. “My God,” he said again, “so she was poisoned, was she? How horrible! Where is she now?”

“In the hospital, sir.”

“Bad?”

Grijpstra nodded. “The doctor said she will live. Some sort of pesticide was mixed into chocolate, which she ate.”

The engineer got up; he seemed dazed. They found the kitchen. Leftover chocolate mix was still on the counter. Grijpstra brought out an envelope and scooped some of the hardened chips into it.

“Do you know that Ann and I had an affair?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Were you told that she finished the affair, that she decided to stay with her husband?”

“Yes, sir.”

The engineer was tidying up the counter mechanically. “I see. So I could be a suspect. Tried to get at her out of spite or something. But I am not a spiteful man. You wouldn’t know that. I don’t mind being a suspect, but I would like to see Ann. She is in the hospital, you said. What hospital?”

“The Wilhelmina, sir.”

“Can’t leave the kids here, can I? Maybe the neighbors will take them for an hour or so... yes. I’ll go and see Ann. This is terrible.”

Grijpstra marched to the front door with de Gier trailing behind him. “Don’t move from the house today if you please, sir, not until we telephone or come again. We’ll try and be as quick as we can.”

“Nice chap,” de Gier said when the car found its parking place in the vast courtyard of headquarters. “That engineer, I mean. I rather liked Mr. Moozen too, and Mrs. Moozen is a lovely lady. Now what?”

“Go back to the Moozen house, Sergeant, and get a sample of the roaring bunny. Bring it to the laboratory together with this envelope. If they check we have a heavy point against the engineer.”

De Gier restarted the engine. “Maybe he is not so nice, eh? He could have driven his wife crazy and now he tries to murder his girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend. Lovely Ann Moozen who dared to stand him up. Could be, do you think so?”

Grijpstra leaned his bulk against the car and addressed his words to the emptiness of the yard. “No. But that could be the obvious solution. He was distressed, genuinely distressed, I would say. If he hadn’t been and if he hadn’t had those kids in the house, I might have brought him in for further questioning.”

“And Mr. Moozen?”

“Could be. Maybe he didn’t find the bunny on the garden path; maybe he put it there, or maybe he had it ready in the cupboard and brought it to his wandering wife. He is a lawyer — lawyers can be devious at times. True?”

De Gier said, “Yes, yes, yes...” and kept on saying so until Grijpstra squeezed the elbow sticking out of the car’s window. “You are saying yes, but you don’t sound convinced.”

“I thought Moozen was suffering too.”

“Murderers usually suffer, don’t they?”

De Gier started his “Yes, yes,” and Grijpstra marched off.

They met an hour later, in the canteen in headquarters. They munched rolls stuffed with sliced liver and roast beef and muttered diligently at each other.

“So it is the same chocolate?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean much. One of the lab’s assistants has a father who owns a pastry shop. He said that there are only three mixes on the market and our stuff is the most popular make. No, not much of a clue there.”

“So?”

“We may have a full case on our hands. We should go back to Mr. Moozen, I think, and find out about friends and relatives. Perhaps his wife had other lovers, or jealous lady friends.”

“Why her?”

Grijpstra munched on. “Hmm?”

“Why her?” de Gier repeated. “Why not him?”

Grijpstra swallowed. “Him? What about him?”

De Gier reached for the plate, but Grijpstra restrained the sergeant’s hand. “Wait, you are hard to understand when you have your mouth full. What about him?”

De Gier looked at the roll. Grijpstra picked it up and ate it.

“Him,” de Gier said unhappily. “He found the bunny on the garden path, the ferocious bunny holding the pernicious egg. A gift, how nice. But he doesn’t eat chocolate, so he runs inside and shows the gift to his wife and his wife grabs the egg and eats it. She may have thought he was giving it to her, she was still half asleep. Maybe she noticed the taste, but she ate on to please her husband. She became ill at once and he telephoned for an ambulance. Now, if he had wanted to kill her he might have waited an hour or so, to give the poison a chance to do its job. But he grabbed his phone, fortunately. What I am trying to say is, the egg may have been intended for him, from an enemy who didn’t even know Moozen had a wife, who didn’t care about killing the wife.”

“Ah,” Grijpstra said, and swallowed the last of the roll. “Could be. We’ll ask Mr. Moozen about his enemies. But not just now. There is the dead man we found in the park — a message came in while you were away. A missing person has been reported and the description fits our corpse. According to the radio room a woman phoned to say that a man who is renting a room in her house has been behaving strangely lately and has now disappeared. She traced him to the corner bar where he spent last evening, until two A.M. when they closed.

“He was a little drunk according to the barkeeper, but not blind drunk. She always takes him tea in the morning, but this morning he wasn’t there and the bed was still made. But she does think he’s been home, for she heard the front door at a little after two A.M., opening and closing twice. He probably fetched the rope and his campstool then.”

“And the man was fairly old and has a short gray beard?”

“Right.”

“So we go and see the landlady. I’ll get a photograph — they took dozens this morning and they should be developed by now. Was anything found in his clothes?”

“Nothing.” Grijpstra looked guiltily at the empty plate. “Want another roll?”

“You ate it.”

“That’s true, and the canteen is out of rolls; we got the last batch. Never mind, Sergeant. Let’s go out and do some work. Work will take your mind off food.”

“That’s him,” the landlady with the plastic curlers said. Her glasses had slipped to the tip of her blunt nose while she studied the photograph. “Oh, how horrible! His tongue is sticking out. Poor Mr. Marchant, is he dead?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“For shame, and such a nice gentleman. He has been staying here for nearly five years now and he was always so polite.”

Grijpstra tried to look away from the glaring pink curlers, pointing at his forehead from the woman’s thinning hair.

“Did he have any troubles, ma’am? Anything that may have led him to take his own life?”

The curlers bobbed frantically. “Yes. Money troubles. Nothing to pay the taxman with. He always paid the rent, but he hadn’t been paying his taxes. And his business wasn’t doing well. He has a shop in the next street; he makes things — ornaments he calls them, out of brass. But there was some trouble with the neighbors. Too much noise, and something about the zoning too; this is a residential area now, they say. The neighbors wanted him to move, but he had nowhere to move to, and he was getting nasty letters, lawyers’ letters. He would have had to close down, and he had to make money to pay the taxman. It was driving him crazy. I could hear him walk around in his room at night, round and round until I had to switch off my hearing aid.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“He was alone,” the woman said and shuffled with them to the door. “All alone, like me. And he was always so nice.” She was crying.

“Happy Easter,” de Gier said, and opened the Volkswagen’s door for the adjutant.

“The same to you. Back to Mr. Moozen again — we are driving about this morning. I could use some coffee again. Maybe Mr. Moozen will oblige.”

“He won’t be so happy either. We aren’t making anybody happy today,” the sergeant said and tried to put the Volkswagen into first gear. The gear slipped and the car took off in second.

They found Mr. Moozen in his garden. It had begun to rain again, but the lawyer didn’t seem to notice that he was getting wet. He was staring at the bright yellow crocuses, touching them with his foot. He had trampled a few of them into the grass.

“How is your wife, sir?”

“Conscious and in pain. The doctors think they can save her, but she will have to be on a stringent diet for years and she’ll be very weak for months. I won’t have her back for a while.”

Grijpstra coughed. “We visited your wife’s, ah, previous lover, sir.” The word “previous” came out awkwardly and he coughed again to take away the bad taste.

“Did you arrest him?”

“No, sir.”

“Any strong reasons to suspect the man?”

“Are you a criminal lawyer, sir?”

Moozen kicked the last surviving crocus, turned on his heels, and led his visitors into the house. “No, I specialize in civil cases. Sometimes I do divorces, but I don’t have enough experience to point a finger in this personal case. Divorce is a messy business, but with a little tact and patience reason usually prevails. To try and poison somebody is unreasonable behavior. I can’t visualize Ann provoking that type of action — she is a gentle woman, sensuous but gentle. If she did break her relationship with the engineer she would have done it diplomatically.”

“He seemed upset, sir, genuinely upset.”

“Quite. I had hoped as much. So where are we now?”

“With you, sir. Do you have any enemies? Anybody who hated you so badly that he wanted you to die a grotesque death, handed to you by a roaring rabbit? You did find the rabbit on the garden path this morning, didn’t you, sir?”

Moozen pointed. “Yes, out there, sitting in between the crocuses, leering, and as you say, roaring. Giving me the egg.”

“Now, which demented mind might have thought of shaping that apparition, sir? Are you dealing with any particularly unpleasant cases at this moment? Any cases that have a badly twisted undercurrent? Is anyone blaming you for something bad that is happening to them?”

Moozen brushed his hair with both hands. “No. I am working on a bad case having to do with a truckdriver who got involved in a complicated accident; his truck caught fire and it was loaded with expensive cargo. Both his legs were crushed. His firm is suing the firm that owned the other truck. A lot of money in claims is involved and the parties are becoming impatient, with me mostly. The case is dragging on and on. But if they kill me the case will become even more complicated, with no hope of settlement in sight.”

“Anything else, sir?”

“The usual. I collect bad debts, so sometimes I have to get nasty. I write threatening letters, sometimes I telephone people or even visit them. I act tough — it’s got to be done in my profession. Usually they pay but they don’t like me for bothering them.”

“Any pastry shops?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Pastry shops,” Grijpstra said, “people who make and sell confectionery. That rabbit was a work of art in a way, made by a professional. Are you suing anybody who would have the ability to create the roaring rabbit?”

“Ornaments!” de Gier shouted. His shout tore at the quiet room. Moozen and Grijpstra looked up, startled.

“Ornaments! Brass ornaments. Ornaments are made from molds. We’ve got to check his shop.”

“Whose shop?” Grijpstra frowned irritably. “Keep your voice down, Sergeant. What shop? What ornaments?”

“Marchant!” de Gier shouted. “Marchant’s shop.”

“Marchant?” Moozen was shouting too. “Where did you get that name? Emil Marchant?”

Grijpstra’s cigar fell on the carpet. He tried to pick it up and it burned his hand, sparks finding their way into the carpet’s strands. He stamped them out roughly.

“You know a Mr. Marchant, sir?” de Gier asked quietly.

“No, I haven’t met him. But I have written several letters to a man named Emil Marchant. On behalf of clients who are hindered by the noise he makes in his shop. He works with brass, and it isn’t only the noise but there seems to be a stink as well. My clients want him to move out and are prepared to take him to court if necessary. Mr. Marchant telephoned me a few times, pleading for mercy. He said he owed money to the tax department and wanted time to make the money, that he would move out later; but my clients have lost patience. I didn’t give in to him — in fact, I just pushed harder. He will have to go to court next week and he is sure to lose out.”

“Do you know what line of business he is in, sir?”

“Doorknobs, I believe, and knockers for doors, in the shape of lions’ heads — that sort of thing. And weathervanes. He told me on the phone. All handmade. He is a craftsman.”

Grijpstra got up. “We’ll be on our way, sir. We found Mr. Marchant this morning, dead, hanging from a tree in the Amsterdam Forest. He probably hanged himself around seven A.M., and at some time before he must have delivered the rabbit and its egg. According to his landlady he has been behaving strangely lately. He must have blamed you for his troubles and tried to take his revenge. He didn’t mean to kill your wife, he meant to kill you. He didn’t know that you don’t eat chocolate and he probably didn’t even know you were married. We’ll check further and make a report. The rabbit’s mold is probably still in his shop, and if not we’ll find traces of the chocolate. We’ll have the rabbit checked for fingerprints. It won’t be difficult to come up with irrefutable proof. If we do, we’ll let you know, sir, a little later today. I am very sorry all this has happened.”

“Nothing ever happens in Amsterdam,” de Gier said as he yanked the door of the Volkswagen open, “and when it does it all fits in immediately.”

But Grijpstra didn’t agree.

“We would never have solved the case, or rather I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t thought of the rabbit as an ornament.”

“No, Grijpstra, we would have found Marchant’s name in Moozen’s files.”

The adjutant shook his heavy grizzled head. “No, we wouldn’t have checked the files. If he had kept on saying that he wasn’t working on any bad cases I wouldn’t have pursued that line of thought. I’d have reverted to trying to find an enemy of his wife. We might have worked for weeks and called in all sorts of help and wasted everybody’s time. You are clever, Sergeant.”

De Gier was studying a redheaded girl waiting for a streetcar.

“Am I?”

“Yes. But not as clever as I am,” Grijpstra said and grinned. “You work for me. I personally selected you as my assistant. You are a tool in my expert hands.”

De Gier winked at the redheaded girl and the girl smiled back. The traffic had jammed up ahead and the car was blocked. De Gier opened his door.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

“It’s a holiday, Adjutant, and you can drive this wreck for a change. I am going home. That girl is waiting for a streetcar that goes to my side of the city. Maybe she hasn’t had lunch yet. I am going to invite her to go to a Chinese restaurant.”

“But we have reports to make, and we’ve got to check out Marchant’s shop; it’ll be locked, we have to find the key in his room, and we have to telephone the engineer to let him off the hook.”

“I am taking the streetcar,” de Gier said. “You do all that. You ate my roll.”

Charlie rides again! — the overweight, overage, but never over-eager counterespionage agent is assigned another tough and ticklish problem — and expected to work another miracle...

Streaks of falling gray rain slanted across the silhouette of Sydney Harbour Bridge and when the taxi decanted me under the shelter of the porte-cochere canopy my poplin suit was still steamy from the dash at the airport. I carried my traveling bag inside the high-rise, found my way to the elevators, and rode one up to the ninth floor.

The door had frosted glass and a legend: Australamerica Travel & Shipping Agency Ltd — New York, Los Angeles, Sydney.

The girl at the reception desk sent me down a sterile hall. I could hear typewriters and Telexes in the warren of partitioned cubicles.

The conference room had wrap-around plate glass; it was a corner suite. The view of the stormy city was striking.

Two men awaited me. The ashtray was a litter of butts and the styrofoam coffee cups had nothing left in them but smeared brown stains. Young Leonard Myers hurried like an officious bellboy to relieve me of the B-4 bag. “I hope you’ve got a spare suit in here. You’re drenched. How was the flight? Bill, I guess you know Charlie Dark?”

“Only by reputation.” The tall man came to shake my hand. “Good to meet you, Charlie. I’m Bill Jaeger, chief of station down here.”

When the amenities were out of the way and we’d sent out for sandwiches I settled my amplitude into a wooden armchair at the table. It was a bit of a squeeze. “Now, what’s the flap?”

Myers said, “Didn’t Rice brief you?”

“No.”

“That figures,” Jaeger said. “I may be stepping out of line but it baffles me how Rice keeps his job.”

I let it lie. It wouldn’t have been useful to explain to Jaeger that Rice keeps his job only because of me. Either Jaeger would refuse to believe it or he’d resent my conceit.

“The flap,” Myers said, “goes by the names of Beth Hilley and Iwan Stenback. They purport to be journalists.”

Jaeger made a face. “Underground press. They’re tearing our station to pieces.”

“Systematically,” Myers said. “Causing a great deal of embarrassment for both the Australians and us.” Then a wan smile. “You and I were sent in to get rid of them for Bill. Actually that’s not quite accurate. You were sent to get rid of them. I was sent to hold your coat.” With his collegiate good looks Myers was the picture of earnest innocence but I’d known him a while — sometimes he was astonishingly naive but he was brighter than he seemed: a quick study. One day he’d be in charge of a department.

A girl brought us a tray of sandwiches and rattled something at Jaeger in ’Stryne — I didn’t get but one word in four; the accent was more impenetrable than Cockney. Jaeger said, “I’ll have to call them back later.” The girl smiled, nodded, and departed, legs swishing; Myers’ eyes followed her until she was gone.

Jaeger was one of those lanky Gary Cooperish people who seem to have flexible bones rather than joints. I knew him as he knew me: by reputation. Easygoing but efficient — a good station chief, reliable, but not the sort you’d want running a vital station in a danger zone. He was a good diplomat and knew how to avoid ruffling feathers; he was the kind of executive you assigned to a friendly country rather than a potential enemy.

He said, “Iwan Stenback publishes a weekly rag called Sydney Exposed. Part soft-core porn, part yellow gossip and cheap scandal, part health food recipes and diagrams for Yoga positions, part radical-left editorializing. Until recently it didn’t have much of a circulation — mostly just freaks. Very youth-oriented. Always just skirting the libel and obscenity laws. Then a couple of months ago Stenback hired a hot new reporter by the name of Beth Hilley. Since then the circulation’s shot up like a Titan missile because the rag announced in a page-one box under Hilley’s byline that they were going to start naming and identifying American C.I.A. spies who were working undercover in Australia.”

Myers said, “It’s happened before, of course. In Greece that time, and—”

I cut him off. “Have they made good on the threat?”

Jaeger said in his dry way, “So far they’ve named seven of our people.”

“Accurately?”

“Yes.”

I decided I liked him. He didn’t make apologies; he didn’t waffle. He looked like a cowboy and talked with a prairie twang, but I suspected there was nothing wrong with his brain.

I said, “Where’d they get the names?”

“We think one or two of our people may have been indiscreet. They aren’t all paragons, the people we buy information from. And in a country like this they’re not scared into secrecy — they don’t need to worry about jackboots in the hall at midnight. In some ways it’s harder to run a secure intelligence network in a free country than it is in a dictatorship.”

“You’ve made efforts to plug the leaks?”

“Yes, sure. I think I know how it may have happened. I’m told Beth Hilley’s attractive — seductive as hell.”

“You’ve never seen her?”

“No. Not many people have, evidently. I’m sure she goes under a variety of cover identities. After all, if her face were known, people wouldn’t talk to her.”

“Is ‘Beth Hilley’ a pen-name?”

“No.” Jaeger deferred to Myers.

“Born in Australia but schooled in England and Switzerland.” Myers was reading from his notebook. “Beth Hilley’s her real name. She’s twenty-seven. The Berne file suggests she may have had contact with members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. In any case she returned to Australia a year ago with a head full of radical revolutionary anti-capitalist theory.”

Jaeger said, “Typical immature anti-establishment Anti-American notions. Australia already has a socialist government but that doesn’t seem to satisfy these idiots. They want blood. Preferably blue. It doesn’t seem to penetrate their thick heads that this capitalist free-enterprise system they hate so much has graduated more people out of poverty than any other system in history.”

“Still,” I said, wanting to get him off his political stump, “for an idiot she seems to have done a capable professional espionage job against us.”

“Every week,” Myers said, “the name of another of our agents appears in Sydney Exposed. They promise to keep doing it until they’ve named every last American spy in Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea.”

“Can they make good on the threat?”

Jaeger smiled. “We don’t know. But they’ve done it so far.”

Myers said, “We’re working with the Australians on this — they don’t like it any better than we do. It embarrasses them as much as it does us. After all, the Australian government knows we’re here. But they can’t be seen to infringe the freedom of the press, and obviously Washington can’t be seen to bully the press of an independent nation. It’s got to be handled in such a way that it doesn’t look like official repression. That’s why you’re here, Charlie. To think of something clever.”

“At least Rice hasn’t lost faith in my ability to work miracles,” I remarked. I brooded at Myers, then at Jaeger. They seemed to be waiting for me to provide an instantaneous solution to their difficulty. “My problem,” I confessed, “is a deep-down fanaticism in behalf of absolute freedom of the press. Wherever censorship begins, that’s where tyranny begins.”

“I agree,” said Jaeger, “but the Australian press tends to be a bit lurid anyway, and this particular rag goes far beyond the limits of responsible journalism.”

That was putting it diplomatically. The real issue was the fact that Sydney Exposed was blowing the covers off our agents. When you expose an agent you render him inoperable. The newspaper was systematically closing down our network. Given the premise that the survival of nations depends on the accuracy of their intelligence, we had no choice but to stop publication of these revelations. Yet I could not bring myself to think in terms of strong-arm methods. There has to be a difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

I said, “Has anyone tried to reason with them?”

Jaeger said, “I had a talk with Stenback. He listened politely, then laughed in my face.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Sort of a guru type. Brown scraggly beard shot with gray. Wears his hair in a ponytail. Myers has the official details.”

Myers turned a page in his notebook. “Thirty-four years old. Born in Sweden. Was a lieutenant in the Swedish army — a crack shot, by the way. Emigrated here five years ago. Naturalized Australian citizen. Background reports indicate he used to hang out with American Vietnam draft dodgers in Sweden. Earlier his father was a quisling in Norway during the War, which may explain why Stenback grew up with a chip on his shoulder. Before he came down here he worked a while as a legman on a few of the cheap London tabloids, publishing cheap filthy innuendoes about prominent Members of Parliament and the like. Digging up dirt seems to be his mission in life — the worse it smells the better he likes it.” Myers closed the notebook. “Rice would prefer it if you arranged a fatal accident for them, Charlie.”

“I don’t much care what he prefers. I don’t kill people, it’s not my style. Any fool can kill people.”

“Maybe this time you haven’t got a choice. How else can you stop them publishing this stuff?”

A sensitive and poignant story by a new writer (this is her third story in EQMM) who is making great strides toward fulfilling her talent...

Now that I am an adult I realize that few things in my life remained constant. People disappeared and never came back. There were the two small brothers who nestled for a little while in the crib my father had built for Jeff and me and then went away, leaving only two marble lambs in the graveyard as evidence that they had ever been here. And there was the little sister who never made the trip from the hospital in town to our house on the farm. Another marble lamb.

Only the cardinals always returned. In early spring, when the snow still covered the earth, the small red birds came from their winter home in the corn crib at the end of the field to perch on the upper branches of the juniper tree at our front door. It was my mother who first showed me the cardinals in the spring when I was three or four. The red bodies flashing among the close-growing branches of juniper, bits of twig or string dangling from their beaks, were magic to the eyes of a child.

As I grew older I waited eagerly for the return of the birds, the male resplendent in his scarlet coat, his olive-gray and buff mate toiling patiently by his side. When the loose-knit nest was finally assembled, the female disappeared inside, nursing the pale blue and lavender speckled eggs, while her mate took over the task of bringing her the seeds and insects she needed to sustain life.

When the eggs hatched, the busy parents would flit about feeding their offspring and keeping a watchful eye out for any enemies that threatened their happy family. Even the nest-threatening bluejay fled in fear from the cardinals’ wrath.

We would get up before dawn on the great day when the baby birds, their down partially replaced with straggly feathers, would perch trembling on the end of a branch of the juniper tree. The father would take his station on a branch of the crab apple tree by the gate and start his encouraging call, “Good-cheer-cheer-cheer. Good-cheer-cheer-cheer.”

The-dove-colored mother would follow with anxious cries the maiden flight of her offspring, and if, as so often happened, the young fledgling wearied in his flight and fell to the ground short of his destination, she would swoop down beside him and keep an anxious watch until, rested and confident, the young bird clumsily launched himself and attained the crab apple tree where his father kept watch.

The cardinals always came back. Every spring, before we were even aware that spring was coming, the cardinals were busily building their nest in the juniper tree.

They came back the spring that Mother returned empty-armed from the hospital and the promised little sister went to join my two brothers on the hill. Mother and I watched the birds’ mating dance, the flight of their young, but without our old excitement or joy. As the heat of summer came on, Mother seemed to wilt, as the blossoms of the crab apple tree wilted and fell from the tree. When the tree bore its tempting inedible fruit Mother drooped further, as though reminded of her own barrenness.

Then in the fall she bought a set of encyclopedias from a young man who came to the door. She seemed to recover after that and her face took on a new glow. It was like the birth of a new year rather than the dying season of an old one. I had not realized that buying a set of encyclopedias was such a complex thing, but it seemed to involve a lot of negotiation. Every week the salesman came back to discuss some new aspect of the books he was selling.

Knowing that I would be bored by their long discussions, Mother always sent me out to play. Sometimes I went to the orchard behind the house to climb in the branches of the old trees there; sometimes I went out to the oat fields to watch my father and older brother, Jeff, busy with the threshing. More often I just sat on the front steps and watched the cardinals caring for their second family of the year and listened to the sounds coming through the open door.

Then, for the only times that fateful year, I would hear my mother’s laughter, and sometimes much later, her gentle crying and the salesman’s soft murmuring voice comforting her. Often they would leave the house, my mother carrying an old blanket that we used for picnics in the orchard. The salesman would raise the heavy iron door that lay at ground level over the cellar in the house yard. Then I wouldn’t be able to hear their talking.

The old root cellar in the yard was used to store home-canned goods and garden produce in the time of my grandparents. My parents had installed a deep-freeze and pantry shelves in our house basement, so now the outdoor cellar stood empty except for some cans of food and water that Daddy kept there in case of a tornado. We hadn’t needed to use the cellar for so many years that I had almost forgotten what it looked like inside. I do remember that it was completely underground and you had to go down a flight of earthen stairs to get to it. It had only two doors, a heavy wooden door that sealed off the cellar itself and another door of iron that lay flat on the ground and closed off the stairs.

It was on one of the days that they had gone to the cellar that my mother disappeared. I watched them from the front steps and then after a while I went back to the orchard to play. I saw my father come back from the field and go into the house and then a little later Jeff came back and took the milk pails that had been drying in the sun and went out to the barn. I wandered down to the barn and stroked the nose of the Jersey cow that was my special favorite while Jeff did the milking. When we went up to the house it was suppertime and Mother was gone.

She didn’t come home that night. The cold winter passed into spring and my father had notified the sheriff, but still there was no word about my mother or the encyclopedia salesman. That spring the cardinals came back and Daddy packed up the clothes that Mother had left behind and took them into town to the Salvation Army store.

On the day the cardinals were first trying to teach their babies to fly, Jeff went down into the old cellar to replace the water bottles for the summer storm season. I was standing at the top of the stairs when I heard him give a strangled cry. He came running up the stairs, very white in the face, and was sick all over the ground. He slammed down the iron door before he ran into the house to the phone, but just before the door shut I got a whiff of the terrible odor that had probably made Jeff so sick.

That afternoon there were people all over the place. First the state police car came with two men in it, and then more police cars. Daddy hugged me for a minute and then went away in the first car. The other policemen stayed until a red and white ambulance came. The ambulance men went down into the cellar and came back carrying two stretchers covered with blankets. Soon everyone left but the county sheriff. Then Grandma came out from town and the sheriff left too.

Grandma put her big suitcase in Mother and Daddy’s room. She explained that she would stay with us until Daddy came back.

That summer the cardinals’ first family flew away and they raised their second. But Daddy didn’t come back. In the fall Jeff had to hire some men to help with the harvest because at 17 he couldn’t handle the work alone. Daddy still hadn’t come back.

Then one afternoon in November I wandered into the kitchen to see what had come in the mail and found Grandma and Jeff sitting at the table. Jeff was looking very stiff-faced, like the time he had had to bury our old collie dog when she got hit by a car, and Grandma was crying quietly. The newspaper the mailman had brought had slipped to the floor. I just got a glimpse of the headline. “Lights Dim Briefly in State Capital.”

Grandma saw me and grabbed the paper. Jeff sat me down at the table and explained that there had been a change and Daddy wasn’t coming back any more.

That winter Grandma brought the rest of her things from town and moved in to stay. In the spring we watched the cardinals together. That fall, after the cardinals deserted the juniper tree for the corn crib, Jeff left too. He went up north to the agricultural college.

He came home at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas, but during the times in between Grandma and I were pretty much alone. I guess it was a lot of work for an old woman, even with the hired help and nice neighbors.

After Christmas vacation, when Jeff had gone back to college, Grandma started talking about moving into her house in town and renting out the farm, at least until Jeff was through college. I knew that if we left it would be forever. Jeff was transferring to the State University and planning on studying law after he graduated. When that happened he would probably sell the farm.

I wandered around the orchard and out to the barn to the cows that had become my responsibility now that Jeff was gone. I would miss all this if we moved. But most of all I would miss the cardinals when they came in the spring. I knew I couldn’t leave the cardinals.

That night, when Grandma went down to the basement to get some ice cream out of the freezer, I shut the basement door and slid the sturdy bolt into its catch. That way, no matter how much she pounded, the bolt would hold and Grandma couldn’t get out. I didn’t mean to keep her there that long. Just until the cardinals returned.

It was like that day I had sat on the steps to the old cellar and listened to the salesman and my mother laughing together. Then they had stopped laughing and started talking about going away together and never coming back. It was hard to push that big wooden door closed and then lift the heavy iron bar into place in the brackets on either side of the frame. But I was determined and could do lots of things people never imagined I could, just looking at how small I was.

I didn’t mean to keep them there so long either, just until they changed their minds. But there never seemed any good time when I could get Daddy alone and tell him where Mother was.

I like it here in this place. The people are more dependable. If they go away it is just for a little while for something called treatment. Then they always come back. There aren’t any bars on the windows, just a heavy screen mesh.

I write stories about growing up on a farm. In my stories Mother and Daddy and Jeff and I are all together and nobody ever goes away.

I like it here, but there are times when I wish I could leave. Jeff is married now and has a family, so they don’t have room in their house for me. Jeff and his wife come to see me sometimes, on visiting days. Sometimes they bring the children but this makes Jeff nervous for some reason. Jeff has sold the farm to strangers, so I couldn’t go back there. I don’t really want to anyway. It’s just now, while the snow still covers the ground but there is the least hint of spring in the air, that I would like to go back and see if the cardinals have returned.

Peter Lovesey is well known on the mystery scene as a specialist in historical detective stories (a division of the genre in which the late John Dickson Carr was a master). Mr. Lovesey’s first book, WOBBLE TO DEATH (1970), won the Macmillan-Panther First Crime Novel Competition, and introduced Sergeant Cribb and his assistant, Constable Thackeray, two authentic police-officers of the Victorian era who have since appeared in seven other novels.

Mr. Lovesey’s first story in EQMM is not a tale of historical detection, although the story has its roots, its beginnings, in 1840. But the action takes place today — a persistent investigation by Inspector Gent of the C.I.D. Why did the mysterious tenant want that particular flat and be willing to wait nearly a year for it to become vacant? Join Inspector Gent in ferreting out the secret behind the locked door, the unusual secret of the room above the tobacconist’s shop...

Sometimes when the shop was quiet Braid would look up at the ceiling and give a thought to the locked room overhead. He was mildly curious, no more. If the police had not taken an interest he would never have done anything about it.

The Inspector appeared one Wednesday soon after eleven, stepping in from Leadenhall Street with enough confidence about him to show he was no tourist. Neither was he in business; it is one of the City’s most solemn conventions that between ten and four nobody is seen on the streets in a coat. This one was a brown imitation-leather coat, categorically not City at any hour.

Gaunt and pale, a band of black hair trained across his head to combat baldness, the Inspector stood back from the counter, not interested in buying cigarettes, waiting rather, one hand in a pocket of the coat, the other fingering his woolen tie, while the last genuine customer named his brand and took his change.

When the door was shut he came a step closer and told Braid, “I won’t take up much of your time. Detective Inspector Gent, C.I.D.” The hand that had been in the pocket now exhibited a card. “Routine inquiry. You are Frank Russell Braid, the proprietor of this shop?”

Braid nodded, and moistened his lips. He was perturbed at hearing his name articulated in full like that, as if he were in court. He had never been in trouble with the police, had never done a thing he was ashamed of. Twenty-seven years he had served the public loyally over this counter. He had not received a single complaint he could recollect, or made one. From the small turnover he achieved he had always paid whatever taxes the government imposed.

Some of his customers — bankers, brokers, accountants — made fortunes and talked openly of tax dodges. That was not Frank Braid’s way. He believed in fate. If it was decreed that he should one day be rich, it would happen. Meanwhile he would continue to retail cigarettes and tobacco honestly and without regret.

“I believe you also own the rooms upstairs, sir?”

“Yes.”

“There is a tenant, I understand.”

So Messiter had been up to something. Braid clicked his tongue, thankful that the suspicion was not directed his way, yet irritated at being taken in. From the beginning Messiter had made a good impression. The year of his tenancy had seemed to confirm it. An educated man, decently dressed, interesting to talk to, and completely reliable with the rent. This was a kick in the teeth.

“His name, sir?”

“Messiter.” With deliberation Braid added, “Norman Henry Messiter.”

“How long has Mr. Messiter been a lodger here?”

“ ‘Lodger’ isn’t the word. He uses the rooms as a business address. He lives in Putney. He started paying rent in September last year. That would be thirteen months, wouldn’t it?”

It was obvious from the Inspector’s face that this was familiar information. “Is he upstairs this morning, sir?”

“No. I don’t see a lot of Mr. Messiter. He calls on Tuesdays and Fridays to collect the mail.”

“Business correspondence?”

“I expect so. I don’t examine it.”

“But you know what line Mr. Messiter is in?” It might have been drugs from the way the Inspector put the question.

“He deals in postage stamps.”

“It’s a stamp shop upstairs?”

“No. It’s all done by correspondence. This is simply the address he uses when he writes to other dealers.”

“Odd,” the Inspector commented. “I mean, going to the expense of renting rooms when he could just as easily carry on the business from home.”

Braid would not be drawn. He would answer legitimate questions, but he was not going to volunteer opinions. He busied himself tearing open a carton of cigarettes.

“So it’s purely for business?” the Inspector resumed. “Nothing happens up there?”

That started Braid’s mind racing. Nothing happens...? What did they suspect? Orgies? Blue films?

“It’s an unfurnished flat,” he said. “Kitchen, bathroom, and living room. It isn’t used.”

At that the Inspector rubbed his hands. “Good. In that case you can show me over the place without intruding on anyone’s privacy.”

It meant closing for a while, but most of his morning regulars had been in by then.

“Thirteen months ago you first met Mr. Messiter,” the Inspector remarked on the stairs.

Strictly it was untrue. As it was not put as a question, Braid made no response.

“Handsome set of banisters, these, Mr. Braid. Individually carved, are they?”

“The building is at least two hundred years old,” Braid told him, grateful for the distraction. “You wouldn’t think so to look at it from Leadenhall Street. You see, the front has been modernized. I wouldn’t mind an old-fashioned front if I were selling silk hats or umbrellas, but cigarettes—”

“Need a more contemporary display,” the Inspector cut in as if he had heard enough. “Was it thirteen months ago you first met Mr. Messiter?”

Clearly this had some bearing on the police inquiry. It was no use prevaricating. “In point of fact, no. More like two years.” As the Inspector’s eyebrows peaked in interest, Braid launched into a rapid explanation. “It was purely in connection with the flat. He came in here one day and asked if it was available. Just like that, without even looking over the place. At the time I had a young French couple as tenants. I liked them and I had no intention of asking them to leave. Besides, I know the law. You can’t do that sort of thing. I told Mr. Messiter. He said he liked the location so much that he would wait till they moved out, and to show good faith he was ready to pay the first month’s rent as a deposit.”

“Without even seeing inside?”

“It must seem difficult to credit, but that was how it was,” said Braid. “I didn’t take the deposit, of course. Candidly, I didn’t expect to see him again. In my line of business you sometimes get people coming in off the street simply to make mischief. Well, the upshot was that he did come back — repeatedly. I must have seen the fellow once a fortnight for the next eleven months. I won’t say I understood him any better, but at least I knew he was serious. So when the French people eventually went back to Marseilles, Mr. Messiter took over the flat.” By now they were standing on the bare boards of the landing. “The accommodation is unfurnished,” he said in explanation. “I don’t know what you hope to find.”

If Inspector Gent knew, he was not saying. He glanced through the open door of the bathroom. The place had the smell of disuse.

He reverted to his theme. “Strange behavior, waiting all that time for a flat he doesn’t use.” He stepped into the kitchen and tried a tap. Water the color of weak tea spattered out. “No furniture about,” he went on. “You must have thought it was odd, his not bringing in furniture.”

Braid made no comment. He was waiting by the door of the locked room. This, he knew, was where the interrogation would begin in earnest.

“What’s this — the living room?” the Inspector asked. He came to Braid’s side and tried the door. “Locked. May I have the key, Mr. Braid?”

“That isn’t possible, I’m afraid. Mr. Messiter changed the lock. We — er — came to an agreement.”

The Inspector seemed unsurprised. “Paid some more on the rent, did he? I wonder why.” He knelt by the door. “Strong lock. Chubb mortice. No good trying to open that with a piece of wire. How did he justify it, Mr. Braid?”

“He said it was for security.”

“It’s secure, all right.” Casually, the Inspector asked, “When did you last see Mr. Messiter?”

“Tuesday.” Braid’s stomach lurched. “You don’t suspect he is—”

“Dead in there? No, sir. Messiter is alive, no doubt of that. Active, I would say.” He grinned in a way Braid found disturbing. “But I wouldn’t care to force this without a warrant. I’ll be arranging that. I’ll be back.” He started downstairs.

“Wait,” said Braid, going after him. “As the landlord, I think I have the right to know what you suspect is locked in that room.”

“Nothing dangerous or detrimental to health, sir,” the Inspector told him without turning his head. “That’s all you need to know. You trusted Messiter enough to let him install his own lock, so with respect you’re in no position to complain about rights.”

After the Inspector had left, Braid was glad he had not been stung into a response he regretted; but he was angry, and his anger refused to be subdued through the rest of the morning and afternoon. It veered between the Inspector, Messiter, and himself. He recognized now his mistake in agreeing to a new lock, but to be rebuked like a gullible idiot was unjust. Messiter’s request had seemed innocent enough at the time.

Well, to be truthful, it had crossed Braid’s mind that what was planned could be an occasional afternoon up there with a girl, but he had no objection to that if it was discreet. He was not narrow-minded. In its two centuries of existence the room must have seen some passion. But crime was quite another thing, not to be countenanced.

He had trusted Messiter, been impressed by his sincerity. The man had seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the flat, its old-world charm, the high corniced ceilings, the solid doors. To wait, as he had, nearly a year for the French people to leave had seemed a commitment, an assurance of good faith.

It was mean and despicable. Whatever was locked in that room had attracted the interest of the police. Messiter must have known this was a possibility when he took the rooms. He had cynically and deliberately put at risk the reputation of the shop. Customers were quick to pick up the taint of scandal. When this got into the papers, years of goodwill and painstaking service would go down the drain.

That afternoon, when Braid’s eyes turned to the ceiling, he was not merely curious about the locked room. He was asking questions. Angry, urgent questions.

By six, when he closed, the thing had taken a grip on his mind. He had persuaded himself he had a right to know the extent of Messiter’s deceit. Dammit, the room belonged to Braid. He would not sleep without knowing what was behind that locked door.

And he had thought of a way of doing it.

In the back was a wooden ladder about nine feet long. Years before, when the shop was a glover’s, it had been used to reach the high shelves behind the counter. Modern shop design kept everything in easy reach. Where gloves had once been stacked in white boxes were displays of Marlboro country and the pure gold of Benson and Hedges. One morning in the summer he had taken the ladder outside the shop to investigate the working of the awning, which was jammed. Standing several rungs from the top he had been able to touch the ledge below the window of the locked room.

The evening exodus was over, consigning Leadenhall Street to surrealistic silence, when Braid propped the ladder against the shopfront. The black marble and dark-tinted glass of banks and insurance buildings glinted funereally in the streetlights, only the brighter windows of the Bull’s Head at the Aldgate end indicating, as he began to climb, that life was there. If anyone chanced to pass that way and challenge him, he told himself, he would inform them with justification that the premises were his own and he was simply having trouble with a lock.

He stepped onto the ledge and drew himself level with the window, which was of the sash type. By using a screwdriver he succeeded in slipping aside the iron catch. The lower section was difficult to move, but once he had got it started it slid easily upward. He climbed inside and took out a flashlight.

The room was empty.

Literally empty. No furniture, no curtains, no carpet. Bare floorboards, ceiling, and walls with paper peeled away in several places.

Uncomprehending, he beamed the flashlight over the floorboards. They had not been disturbed in months. He examined the skirting board, the plaster cornice, and the window sill. He could not see how anything could be hidden here. The police were probably mistaken about Messiter. And so was he. With a sense of shame he climbed out of the window and drew it down.

On Friday, Messiter came in about eleven as usual, relaxed, indistinguishable in dress from the stockbrokers and bankers: dark suit, old boys’ tie, shoes gleaming. With a smile he peeled a note from his wallet and bought his box of five Imperial Panatellas, a ritual that from the beginning had signaled goodwill toward his landlord. Braid sometimes wondered if he actually smoked them. He did not carry conviction as a smoker of cigars. He was a quiet man, functioning best in private conversations. Forty-seven by his own admission, he looked ten years younger, dark-haired with brown eyes that moistened when he spoke of things that moved him.

“Any letters for me, Mr. Braid?”

“Five or six.” Braid took them from the shelf behind him. “How is business?”

“No reason to complain,” Messiter said, smiling. “My work is my hobby, and there aren’t many lucky enough to say that. And how is the world of tobacco? Don’t tell me. You’ll always do a good trade here, Mr. Braid. All the pressures — you can see it in their faces. They need the weed and always will.” Mildly he inquired, “Nobody called this week asking for me, I suppose?”

Braid had not intended saying anything, but Messiter’s manner disarmed him. That and the shame he felt at the suspicions he had harbored impelled him to say, “Actually there was a caller. I had a detective in here — when was it? — Wednesday — asking about you. It was obviously a ridiculous mistake.”

He described Inspector Gent’s visit without mentioning his own investigation afterward with the ladder. “Makes you wonder what the police are up to these days,” he concluded. “I believe we’re all on the computer at Scotland Yard now. This sort of thing is bound to happen.”

“You trust me, Mr. Braid. I appreciate that,” Messiter said, his eyes starting to glisten. “You took me on trust from the beginning.”

“I’m sure you aren’t stacking stolen goods upstairs, if that’s what you mean,” Braid told him with sincerity.

“But the Inspector was not so sure?”

“He said something about a search warrant. Probably by now he has realized his mistake. I don’t expect to see him again.”

“I wonder what brought him here,” Messiter said, almost to himself.

“I wouldn’t bother about it. It’s a computer error.”

“I don’t believe so. What did he say about the lock I fitted on the door, Mr. Braid?”

“Oh, at the time he seemed to think it was quite sinister.” He grinned. “Don’t worry — it doesn’t bother me at all. You consulted me about it and you pay a pound extra a week for it, so who am I to complain? What you keep in there — if anything — is your business.” He chuckled in a way intended to reassure. “That detective carried on as if you had a fortune hidden away in there.”

“Oh, but I have.”

Braid felt a pulse throb in his temple.

“It’s high time I told you,” said Messiter serenely. “I suppose I should apologize for not saying anything before. Not that there’s anything criminal, believe me. Actually it’s a rather remarkable story. I’m a philatelist, as you know. People smile at that and I don’t blame them. Whatever name you give it, stamp collecting is a hobby for kids. In the business we’re a little sensitive on the matter. We dignify it with its own technology — dies and watermarks and so forth — but I’ve always suspected this is partly to convince ourselves that the whole thing is serious and important.

“Well, it occurred to me four or five years ago that there was a marvelous way of justifying stamp collecting to myself and that was by writing a book about stamps. You must have heard of Rowland Hill, the fellow who started the whole thing off?”

“The Penny Post?”

Messiter nodded. “1840 — the world’s first postage stamps, the One-Penny Black and the Twopence Blue. My idea was not to write a biography of Hill — that’s been done several times over by cleverer writers than I am — but to analyze the way his idea caught on. The response of the Victorian public was absolutely phenomenal, you know. It’s all in the newspapers of the period. I went to the Newspaper Library at Colindale to do my research. I spent weeks over it.”

Messiter’s voice conveyed not fatigue at the memory, but excitement. “There was so much to read. Reports of Parliament. Letters to the Editor. Special articles describing the collection and delivery of the mail.” He paused, pointing a finger at Braid. “You’re wondering what this has to do with the room upstairs. I’ll tell you. Whether it was providence or pure good luck I wouldn’t care to say, but one afternoon in that Newspaper Library I turned up The Times for a day in May 1841, and my eye was caught — riveted, I should say — by an announcement in the Personal Column on the front page.”

Messiter’s hand went to his pocket and withdrew his wallet. From it he took a folded piece of paper. “This is what I saw.”

Braid took it from him, a photostat of what was unquestionably a column of old newspaper type. The significant words had been scored round in ballpoint.

Braid made the connection instantly. His throat went dry. He read it again. And again.

“You understand?” said Messiter. “It’s a stamp man’s dream — a room literally papered with Penny Blacks!”

“But this was—”

“1841. Right. More than a century ago. Have you ever looked through a really old newspaper? It’s quite astonishing how easy it is to get caught up in the immediacy of the events. When I read that announcement, I could see that dressing room vividly in my imagination — chintz curtains, gas brackets, brass bedstead, washstand and mirror. I could see Miss E. D. with her paste pot and brush assiduously covering the wall with stamps.

“It was such an exciting idea that it came as a jolt to realize that it all had happened so long ago that Miss E. D. must have died about the turn of the century. And what of her dressing room? That, surely, must have gone, if not in the Blitz, then in the wholesale rebuilding of the City. My impression of Leadenhall Street was that the banks and insurance companies had lined it from end to end with gleaming office buildings five stories high. Even if by some miracle the shop that had been Butt’s the Glover’s had survived, and Miss E. D.’s room had been over the shop, common sense told me that those stamps must long since have been stripped from the walls.”

He paused and lighted a cigar. Braid waited, his heart pounding.

“Yet there was a possibility, remote but tantalizing and irresistible, that someone years ago redecorated the room by papering over the stamps. Any decorator will tell you they sometimes find layer on layer of wallpaper. Imagine peeling back the layers to find thousands of Penny Blacks and Twopence Blues unknown to the world of philately! These days the commonest ones are catalogued at ten pounds or so, but find some rarities — inverted watermarks, special cancellations — and you could be up to five hundred pounds a stamp. Maybe a thousand pounds. Mr. Braid, I don’t exaggerate when I tell you the value of such a room could run to half a million pounds. Half a million for what that young lady in her innocence called worthless little articles’!”

As if he read the thought, Messiter said, “It was my discovery. I went to a lot of trouble. Eventually I found the Post Office Directory for 1845 in the British Library. The list of residents in Leadenhall Street included a glover by the name of Butt.”

“So you got the number of this shop?” Messiter nodded. “And when you came to Leadenhall Street, here it was, practically the last pre-Victorian building this side of Lloyd’s?”

Messiter drew on his cigar, scrutinizing Braid.

“All those stamps,” Braid whispered. “Twenty-seven years I’ve owned this shop and the flat without knowing that in the room upstairs was a fortune. It took you to tell me that.”

“Don’t get the idea it was easy for me,” Messiter pointed out. “Remember I waited practically a year for those French people to move out. That was a test of character, believe me, not knowing what I would find when I took possession.”

Strangely, Braid felt less resentment toward Messiter than the young Victorian woman who had lived in this building, his building, and devised a pastime so sensational in its consequence that his own walls mocked him.

Messiter leaned companionably across the counter. “Don’t look so shattered, chum. I’m not the rat you take me for. Why do you think I’m telling you this?”

Braid shrugged. “I really couldn’t say.”

“Think about it. As your tenant, I did nothing underhanded. When I took the flat, didn’t I raise the matter of redecoration? You said I was free to go ahead whenever I wished. I admit you didn’t know then that the walls were covered in Penny Blacks, but I wasn’t certain myself till I peeled back the old layers of paper. What a moment that was!”

He paused, savoring the recollection. “I’ve had a great year thanks to those stamps. In fact, I’ve set myself up for some time to come. Best of all, I had the unique experience of finding that room.” He flicked ash from the cigar. “I estimate there are still upwards of twenty thousand stamps up there, Mr. Braid. In all justice, they belong to you.”

Braid stared in amazement.

“I’m serious,” Messiter went on. “I’ve made enough to buy a place in the country and write my book. The research is finished. That’s been my plan for years, to earn some time, and I’ve done it. I want no more.”

Frowning, Braid said, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Is it because of the police? You said there was nothing dishonest.”

“And I meant it, but you are right, Mr. Braid. I am a little shaken to hear of your visit from the Inspector.”

“What do you mean?”

Messiter asked obliquely, “When you read your newspaper, do you ever bother with the financial pages?”

Braid gave him a long look. Messiter held his stare.

“If it really has any bearing on this, the answer is no. I don’t have much interest in the stock market. Nor any capital to invest,” he added.

“Just as well in these uncertain times,” Messiter commented. “Blue-chip investments have been hard to find these last few years. That’s why people have been putting their money into other things. Art, for instance. A fine work of art holds its value in real terms even in a fluctuating economy. So do jewelry and antiques. And old postage stamps, Mr. Braid. Lately a lot of money has been invested in old stamps.”

“That I can understand.”

“Then you must also understand that information such as this” — he put his hand on the photostat between them — “is capable of causing flutters of alarm. Over the last year or so I have sold to dealers a number of early English stamps unknown to the market. These people are not fools. Before they buy a valuable stamp, they like to know the history of its ownership. I have had to tell them my story and show them the story in Times. That’s all right. Generally they need no more convincing. But do you understand the difficulty? It’s the prospect of twenty thousand Penny Blacks and Twopence Blues unknown to the stamp world shortly coming onto the market. Can you imagine the effect?”

“I suppose it will reduce the value of those stamps people already own.”

“Precisely. The rarities will not be so rare. Rumors begin, and it isn’t long before there is a panic and stamp prices tumble.”

“Which is when the sharks move in,” said Braid. “I see it now. The police probably suspect the whole thing is a fraud.”

Messiter gave a nod.

“But you and I know it isn’t a fraud,” Braid went on. “We can show them the room. I still don’t understand why you are giving it up.”

“I told you the reason. I always planned to write my book. And there is something else. It’s right to warn you that there is sure to be publicity over this. Newspapers, television — this is the kind of story they relish, the unknown Victorian girl, the stamps undiscovered for over a century. Mr. Braid, I value my privacy. I don’t care for my name being printed in the newspapers. It will happen, I’m sure, but I don’t intend to be around when it does. That’s why I am telling nobody where I am going. After the whole thing has blown over, I’ll send you a forwarding address, if you would be so kind—”

“Of course, but—”

A customer came in, one of the regulars. Braid gave him a nod and wished he had gone to the kiosk up the street.

Messiter picked up the conversation. “Was it a month’s notice we agreed? I’ll see that my bank settles the rent.” He took the keys of the flat from his pocket and put them on the counter with the photostat. “For you. I won’t need these again.” Putting a hand on Braid’s arm, he added, “Some time we must meet and have a drink to Miss E. D.’s memory.”

He turned and left the shop and the customer asked for 20 Rothmans. Braid lifted his hand in a belated salute through the shop window and returned to his business. More customers came in. Fridays were always busy with people collecting their cigarettes for the weekend. He was thankful for the activity. It compelled him to adjust by degrees and accept that he was now a rich man. Unlike Messiter, he would not object to the story getting into the press. Some of these customers who had used the shop for years and scarcely acknowledged him as a human being would choke on their toast and marmalade when they saw his name one morning in The Times.

It satisfied him most to recover what he owned. When Messiter had disclosed the secret of the building, it was as if the 27 years of Braid’s tenure were obliterated. The place was full of Miss E. D. That young lady — she would always be young — had in effect asserted her prior claim. He had doubted if he would ever again believe the building was truly his own. But now that her “whimsical project” had been ceded to him, he was going to take pleasure in dismantling the design, stamp by stamp, steadily accumulating a fortune Miss E. D. had never supposed would accrue. Vengeful it might be, but it would exorcise her from the building that belonged to him.

Ten minutes before closing time Inspector Gent entered the shop. As before, he waited for the last customer to leave.

“Sorry to disturb you again, sir. I have that warrant now.”

“You won’t need it,” Braid cheerfully told him. “I have the key. Mr. Messiter was here this morning.” He started to recount the conversation.

“Then I suppose he took out his cutting from Times,” put in the Inspector.

“You know about that?”

“Do I?” he said caustically. “The man has been round just about every stamp shop north of Birmingham telling the tale of that young woman and the Penny Blacks on her dressing-room wall.” Braid frowned. “There’s nothing dishonest in that. The story really did appear in The Times, didn’t it?”

“It did, sir. We checked. And this is the address mentioned.” The Inspector eyed him expressionlessly. “The trouble is that the Penny Blacks our friend Messiter has been selling in the north aren’t off any dressing-room wall. He buys them from a dealer in London, common specimens, about ten pounds each one. Then he works on them.”

“Works on them? What do you mean?”

“Penny Blacks are valued according to the plates they were printed from, sir. There are distinctive markings on each of the plates, most particularly in the shape of the guide letters that appear in the comers. The stamps Messiter has been selling are doctored to make them appear rare. He buys a common Plate 6 stamp in London, touches up the guide letters, and sells it to a Manchester dealer as a Plate 11 stamp for seventy-five pounds. As it’s catalogued at more than twice that, the dealer thinks he has a bargain. Messiter picks his victims carefully: generally they aren’t specialists in early English stamps, but almost any dealer is ready to look at a Penny Black in case it’s a rare one.”

Braid shook his head. “I don’t understand this at all. Why should Messiter have needed to resort to forgery? There are twenty thousand stamps upstairs.”

“Have you seen them?”

“No, but the newspaper story—”

“That fools everyone, sir.”

“You said it was genuine.”

“It is. And the idea of a roomful of Penny Blacks excites people’s imagination. They want to believe it. That’s the secret of all the best confidence tricks. Now why do you suppose Messiter had a mortice lock fitted on that room? You thought it was because the contents were worth a fortune? Has it occurred to you as a possibility that he didn’t want anyone to know there was nothing there?”

Braid’s dream disintegrated.

“It stands to reason, doesn’t it,” the Inspector went on, “that the stamps were stripped off the wall generations ago? When Messiter found empty walls, he couldn’t abandon the idea. It had taken a grip on him. That young woman who thought of papering her wall with stamps could never have supposed she would be responsible over a century later for turning a man to crime.”

The Inspector held out his hand. “If I could have that key, sir, I’d like to see the room for myself.”

Braid followed the Inspector upstairs and watched him unlock the door. They entered the room.

“I don’t mind admitting I have a sneaking admiration for Messiter,” the Inspector said. “Imagine the poor beggar coming in here at last after going to all the trouble he did to find the place. Look, you can see where he peeled back the wallpaper layer by layer” — gripping a furl of paper, he drew it casually aside — “to find absolutely—” He stopped. “My God!”

The stamps were there, neatly pasted in rows.

Braid said nothing, but the blood slowly drained from his face.

Miss E. D.’s scheme of interior decoration had been more ambitious than anyone expected. She had diligently inked over every stamp with red, purple, or green ink — to form an intricate mosaic of colors. Originally Penny Blacks or Twopence Blues, Plate 6 or Plate 11, they were now as she had described them in The Times — “worthless little articles.”

“He felt a return of the old terror” and then “the old terror and guilt vanished... He was a professional again...”

For nine years his work had compelled him to take short flights to cities he had never seen before, but the queasy feeling in his stomach every time he was in the air refused to go away, and once in a while he would wonder if he was in the right business. That Sunday afternoon in mid-February he played in luck. Eastern’s flight from New York to Atlanta was smooth as kitten fur, no choppy air, no sudden dips or jolts, no circling above the destination like a lost soul. The whisperjet touched down at 3:27 P.M. Plenty of time. The cathedral service didn’t begin till 5:45.

He strolled unhurriedly up the long corridor to the terminal entrance. Casual, keep it casual. He browsed through the paperbacks at the magazine stand, then relaxed as best he could in a seat in the main lounge. The thought of a cocktail in the airport bar tempted him but he resisted. Not professional. At 3:50 he took the escalator to the lower level and purchased a round-trip ticket on the limousine. A cab would have given him more privacy and a chance to unwind before work, but the risk wasn’t worth it.

Again he played in luck. Just enough passengers boarded the limo so that he blended in satisfactorily. He doubted that they would remember a thing about him. As directed, he gave the Riviera Hyatt as his destination.

The springlike mildness of the day was tonic after the New York chill. He congratulated himself on not wearing an overcoat for the trip and tried to shut down his mind and nerves as the car whisked north on Interstate 85 through light traffic. Sounds and images of his boyhood echoed inside him. Snatches of antiphon and response from the Mass. Phrases from the Baltimore catechism the nuns had made everyone memorize. High pre-adolescent voices singing the O salutaris hostia, and the other Benediction hymn, Tantum ergo sacramentum. The sweet heavy odor of incense wafting from the half darkness of the altar. It had been 17 years since he had set foot in a church, and he almost dreaded to visit the cathedral this afternoon, but the mission had fallen to him and O salutaris hostia someone had to do it.

When the limo set him down in the Hyatt parking lot he crossed to the other side of Peachtree Road, as directed, and waited at the MARTA stop for the bus marked “23 Oglethorpe.” He stood in the glory of the afternoon and savored the gentle breeze and thought about the girl’s face, resurrecting her image in his mind’s eye, conjuring up her features from the photographs he had been sent and focusing mentally on them until he was satisfied he would know her as soon as he saw her.

The wait was longer than he’d been told; the bus must be off schedule. When it finally drew up at the stop and he paid the fare and took a rear seat, he shot a glance at his wristwatch and knew he would not be in time for the beginning of the service, for the procession of the choir up the aisle of the cathedral to the altar. He had wanted very much to arrive early. There was always the chance that she could have got sick, or that some other reason would keep her from taking part in the evening’s service. If the timing had been better he could have watched the choir in procession and made sure she was among them. He felt unease return to his stomach. The faulty timing was unavoidable, as it had been on his last mission, but he might be blamed anyway.

Impatiently he read off the cross-street signs, resisting the impulse to sneak glances at his watch every few moments. The landmarks he’d been told to watch for slid past the bus window, first the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center, then two churches next to one another a few blocks farther on. And then he saw it, across Peachtree from the adjacent churches and one block beyond them. St. Philip’s Cathedral. As directed, he stayed on the MARTA bus for three more blocks, then got off and walked back. Quickly.

Massive in tan stone, the cathedral stood on a small hill, surrounded by the warm blue of the sky. He strode up the paved pathway to the entrance doors and let himself in. As he adjusted his sight to the dimness of the vestibule an usher offered him a leaflet. Above a red-tinted artist’s rendition of the building the heading THE CATHEDRAL OF SAINT PHILIP IN THE CITY OF ATLANTA was printed in Gothic script, and then in larger ornate letters THE OFFICE OF SOLEMN EVENSONG. He smiled vacantly, folded and pocketed the brochure, and passed into the cathedral proper, down the long aisle to an empty pew.

The service had already begun. Behind the ornately carved altar he could make out tiny violet-robed figures. Their voices rose, filling the church with the sounds of a hymn he didn’t remember. Maybe it was part of the new liturgy; he had been away from church for so many years, and a lot of things seemed to have changed. The altar cloths and the priest’s vestments were rich violet, the Lenten color of his youth. The awesome stained-glass windows, the red-padded kneeling benches brought back memories of Sunday morning Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows.

He felt a return of the old terror, the sense that he was under judgment, that those open vaulting spaces high overhead were full of invisible all-seeing powers. He tried to concentrate his thoughts on the distant altar, on the loveliness of the voices lifted in sacred song, and wondered if the woman he had come for was really in the choir.

But his mind fought back, kept driving him backward in time to his youth. The catechism questions. Who made the world? God made the world. The indoctrination in the dogmas of the One True Faith. The gagging fear they instilled in him, that in a lightning flash of divine vengeance he would die suddenly and alone and in a state of mortal sin, and would suffer unbearable torments in hell, forever and ever and ever... The long-forgotten terror was so vivid he almost rushed out of the cathedral. Give me the children, and they are mine for life. One of the Popes had said that. Or was it Lenin, or Napoleon? Maybe all three of them had said it.

There were no more than 30 worshippers scattered through the cathedral, and he made himself watch them so that he would know when to stand or sit or kneel, following the others’ lead a split second later. Prayers and psalms were sung, there was a reading from the Old Testament, then another hymn and a reading from the Gospels and the recitation of the Creed which he found he still remembered word for word. The rite kept sweeping him back in time, so that he might almost have forgotten what he had come here to do. He flexed his powerful tapered fingers in preparation and waited.

And at last the ceremony ended. The violet-robed choir emerged from behind the altar in recessional, still singing, gliding back up the aisle to the rear of the cathedral. Ahead of the double file of choristers a priest marched, holding a tall gold crucifix aloft. He saw the worshippers in the pews in front of him bow their heads as the cross passed them, and he bowed too but kept his eyes open, concentrating on the faces of the singers as they went by. Not that one, not the next one — there, there she was, the tall one with the light brown hair and the harlequin-framed glasses. She moved up the aisle as if in a trance, eyes fixed on the open hymnal in her hands as she sang.

When the last of the choir had glided out of sight the worshipers slowly began to file out of their pews. He hung back until all but a few stragglers had left. Then he retreated up the aisle to the empty hush of the vestibule and waited. The choir room was somewhere in the basement, he had been told. They would deposit their robes in a closet until next Sunday and say their goodbyes and separate, each person leaving by whatever exit was nearest to his or her car. The girl he had come for would return up the staircase to the vestibule and leave through the main doors. That was what he had been told and he had to accept it. He paced the vestibule in silent discomfort and wished it didn’t have to be done in a church.

And then, when he removed the brochure from his pocket and studied it more closely and realized that all the time he had been in an Episcopal not a Catholic cathedral and hadn’t known it, he almost laughed aloud, and the old terror and guilt vanished in an instant. He was a professional again.

Footsteps tapped sharply, rising, and he positioned himself beside the doorway at the head of the stairs. She walked past him without looking behind her. She wore blue jeans and a blue denim jacket and high reddish-brown boots. “Miss Smith?” he said softly. “May Smith?”

She swung around. The two of them were alone in the dim empty vestibule. “Yes?” Her eyes widened slightly behind the harlequin-framed glasses. She was the one all right. It was a shame she was so beautiful.

“Company,” he said. “Please take me to your car.”

She did not turn pale or show any sign of fear. She didn’t even blink. It was as if she had known what to expect, or maybe she just didn’t care any more. “This way,” she said, and led him along a branch corridor to an unobtrusive exit door, then through four interconnected parking lots that sloped down the far side of the hill. He flexed his fingers as he walked beside her in the softly falling twilight, and wondered absently why she had parked so far away.

A dark green sedan stood alone at the rear of the remotest lot, glistening in the last of the light. “You drive,” he said. She unlocked the front passenger door and slid across the seat. He entered after her, looked at her with a sort of envy as she sat stoically behind the wheel. None of the others had been so calm, and he wondered how she managed it. “Drive,” he instructed her. “I’ll give directions as we go.”

“No,” said a deep quiet voice from the rear seat. He felt the cold kiss of steel on his neck. “Company,” the voice continued, and something inside him shriveled to dust. “Don’t turn around, brother, just relax. Miss Smith, your part is completed. Leave the ignition key in the lock and walk home. The car will be thoroughly cleaned and you’ll find it in front of your apartment in the morning.”

“Thank you,” she said, and let herself out the driver’s door and shut it gently but firmly behind her.

He was alone now in the sudden darkness with the voice of the unseen. Alone, and knowing in the pit of his soul that if he was lucky, if it all was a myth, in a minute or less than a minute, after the sudden awful pain, he would feel nothing, nothing, ever again.

“Are you allowed to tell me why?” he asked.

“The last one,” the unseen told him. “You missed connections and didn’t do the job. You were sent on this one to be the recipient, not the agent. You weren’t forgiven.”

“My God, that wasn’t my fault!” he almost screamed. “I couldn’t help—”

“Not forgiven,” the voice repeated solemnly.

As the fingers of the unseen one in the back seat squeezed tight around his neck, and the pain and blackness closed in, he tried desperately to remember the words of the Act of Contrition.

Martin H. Ehrengraf, the criminal lawyer (and we do mean criminal lawyer), was not particularly choosy about his clients. He didn’t have to be. Every single Ehrengraf client was innocent — that was the invariable presumption. But there was one kind of client Ehrengraf would move heaven and earth to defend — a poet, especially a penniless poet. Penniless? Does that strike you as odd for Ehrengraf? Well, no. The fee, you understand, was never a problem with Ehrengraf — he saw to that...

William Telliford gave his head a tentative scratch, in part because it itched, in part out of puzzlement. It itched because he had been unable to wash his lank brown hair during the four days he’d thus far spent in jail. He was puzzled because this dapper little man before him was proposing to get him out of jail.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “The court appointed an attorney for me. A younger man — I think he said his name was Trabner. You’re not associated with him or anything, are you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Your name is—”

“Martin Ehrengraf.”

“Well, I appreciate your coming to see me, Mr. Ehrengraf, but I’ve already got a lawyer, this Mr. Trabner, and—”

“Are you satisfied with Mr. Trabner?”

Telliford lowered his eyes, focusing his gaze on the little lawyer’s shoes, a pair of highly polished black wing tips. “I suppose he’s all right,” he said slowly.

“But?”

“But he doesn’t believe I’m innocent. I mean, he seems to take it for granted I’m guilty and the best thing I can do is plead guilty to manslaughter or something. He’s talking in terms of making some kind of deal with the District Attorney, like it’s a foregone conclusion that I have to go to prison and the only question is for how long.”

“Then you’ve answered my question,” Ehrengraf said, a smile flickering on his thin lips. “You’re unsatisfied with your lawyer. The court has appointed him. It remains for you to disappoint him, as it were, and to engage me in his stead. You have the right to do this, you know.”

“But I don’t have the money. Trabner was going to defend me for free, which is about as much as I can afford. I don’t know what kind of fees you charge for something like this but I’ll bet they’re substantial. That suit of yours didn’t come from the Salvation Army.”

Ehrengraf beamed. His suit, charcoal-gray flannel with a nipped-in waist, had been made for him by a most exclusive tailor. His shirt was pink, with a button-down collar. His vest was a tattersall check, red and black on a cream background, and his tie showed half-inch stripes of red and charcoal-gray. “My fees are on the high side,” he said. “To undertake your defense I would ordinarily set a fee of eighty thousand dollars.”

“Eighty dollars would strain my budget,” William Telliford said. “Eighty thousand — well, it might take me ten years to earn that much.”

“But I propose to defend you free of charge, sir.”

William Telliford stared, not least because he could not recall the last time anyone had called him sir. He was, it must be said, a rather unprepossessing young man, tending to slouch and sprawl. His jeans needed patching at the knees. His plaid flannel shirt needed washing and ironing. His chukka boots needed soles and heels, and his socks needed to be replaced altogether.

“But—”

“But why?”

Telliford nodded.

“Because you are a poet,” said Martin Ehrengraf.

Meet one of the earliest “investigators of mysterious events, usually of a criminal nature”... a charming story — and if we say another word, your pleasure will be diluted...

In Hamelin Town, in Brunswick, by famous Hanover City, on the banks of the river Weser, it was another grim day at City Hall. The Mayor and the Corporation were sitting around in their ceremonial robes looking and feeling guilty, and rightly so.

“I blame you,” one of the Corporation said to the Mayor. “All he wanted was one thousand guilders to get rid of the rats. So we make a deal, he delivers, and then you try to offer him fifty.”

“Easy to be wise after the fact,” the Mayor said. “But I had to consider the safety of this administration. If we’d given that long tall drink of water the thousand, there’d have been nothing left in the kitty to meet the town payroll. So we’d have our semi-annual outcry, then in come the auditors after which you and I, gentlemen, would have to find new jobs.”

Nobody had an answer to this, so silence came in through the open windows and filled the chamber. It was a heavy silence in Hamelin these days with the kids all gone. The Mayor tongued his back teeth for a while and then said, “I admit we’re in deep trouble. Remember when the people came in a body to see us after the rats got out of hand? Remember what they said to us?”

One of the Corporation closed his eyes and intoned, “To think we buy gowns lined with ermine for dolts that can’t or won’t determine what’s best to rid us of our vermin.”

“Right,” the Mayor said. “So you can imagine how poetic they’ll be when we run for re-election.”

They were thinking of adjourning the meeting in despair when they heard a sound of footsteps in the hall followed by a sharp rap at the chamber door. The Corporation shaped themselves up into a circle of reasonably alert figures around the table and the Mayor said, “Come in!”

The man who opened the door and entered the room was bent almost double and walked with the aid of a stick. His eyes were heavy-lidded and his cheeks and chin were covered with an unkempt gray beard. The Corporation detested him on sight because he was a walking advertisement for the only future they could anticipate.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Mr. Mayor,” the old man said, “I have heard of the calamity that has overtaken your town. And I have come to bail you out. For a price.”

“What are you talking about? Who are you?”

“I am an investigator of mysterious events, usually of a criminal nature. I sell my services to individuals and to groups for a fee. In effect, you may hire my eyes — privately.”

“Never heard of such a thing. We have a sheriff who deals with crime.”

“I am the only one in my profession at this time,” the stranger said. “Some day I expect there will be many.”

A Corporation member said, “You claim you can help us? How?”

“By solving the mystery of this fellow who calls himself the Pied Piper.”

“What mystery? It’s all perfectly clear. He came and played the flute and all the rats followed him and drowned in the river. Then he led the children away and into a cavern that opened in the side of Koppelberg Hill.”

“I know all that,” the old man said. He squinted at the Mayor. “By the way, I shall require payment in advance.”

“Payment? How much, and what for? My colleague is right. There is no mystery to be solved; the Piper did what he did.”

“My fee is ten guilders a day, plus expenses.” He held out a cupped hand at the end of a remarkably long arm.

“It’s little enough,” the Mayor said, and the Treasurer took ten guilders from petty cash.

With the money in his purse, the stranger said, “You say this Piper did what he did. But did he? I find the whole story unbelievable and I would say, gentlemen, that you have been conned.”

“Conned?”

“Had a confidence trick played on you. Been fooled, duped, gulled. I mean a man walks along your High Street playing a piccolo or whatever and gets a lot of wild rats to follow him? And then he does the same thing and all the children come storming out and march after him into the side of a mountain? I don’t believe a word of it.”

“When you say it like that, it does sound absurd,” the Mayor admitted.

“Patently. So let’s try to put together a more acceptable hypothesis.” The old man lowered his crooked body onto a vacant chair and balanced both hands on the end of his stick. With his grizzled chin hovering above his fists he said, “First the rats. My guess is they were not wild rats at all. They were trained by this trickster — possibly a man with some circus experience — trained to come running in answer to a particular series of notes on the flute or whatever. He brought them here and released them from cages. Then, after they had made pests of themselves, it was easy for him to lure them away.”

One of the Corporation said, “But there were so many of them. They fought the dogs, and killed the cats, and bit the babies in the cradles, and ate the cheeses out of the vats, and licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles, split open the—”

“I know, I know,” said the stranger. “I put all that down to hysterical exaggeration.”

“True,” said the Mayor. “I myself never saw more than half a dozen rats at one time. Go on.”

“So we come to the disappearing children. He could not have trained them to respond to his music the way the rats did. So he could only have enlisted their cooperation.”

“What do you mean?”

“My theory is this: he sat down with a few of the older boys and girls, the leaders, and he explained to them that he had a place — a deserted house perhaps — where they could go and dance and eat and stay up late — do all the things you good people forbid them to do at home. A place without lessons, without parental authority. All they had to do was pretend they were under a spell and follow him. Naturally they agreed.”

A thoughtful silence ensued. Then the Treasurer said, “But what about the opening in the hill? How did he manage that?”

The old man smiled behind his beard. “Think a minute. Who saw the hill open and the children march inside? The lame boy who was left behind. His testimony was accepted. But I smell an accomplice.”

“Then let’s find the boy,” the Mayor thundered, “and question him.”

“My idea precisely,” said the stranger. “That’s why I took the trouble of bringing him with me. If one of you will open the door—”

With the boy in the room, balancing on his home-made crutch, the inquisition began. It did not last long. At first the lad was silent but soon, with tears in his eyes and head hanging, he confessed that the Pied Piper had paid him to tell the story of the cavern opening and closing in Koppelberg Hill. In actual fact, the party marched into a wooded area beyond the town and boarded a number of horse-drawn wagons. Where they went then, he had no idea.

The chamber was now a babble of sound. The children were not gone forever! They had been spirited away, kidnaped by a vindictive scoundrel and a very bad flute player. Their hiding place had only to be located for the story to end happily.

“We’ll organize a search party,” the Treasurer said. “They can’t have gone far.”

“One moment,” said the old man. “I suggest you leave this to me. No telling what might happen if you go blundering about. He has your children, after all.”

“He’s right,” the Mayor said. “So far he’s figured out the scheme very well. Let the stranger continue.”

“Thank you. I’ll take the lame boy with me and we’ll start from where he saw them last.”

They left the chamber together, two misshapen figures, old and young, crutch and walking stick scraping the boards of floor and stairs. When they were gone, the Mayor said, “Quite good value, that. Only ten guilders for the day and he’s practically solved the case already.”

“Ten plus expenses,” the Treasurer said. “I’ll have a close look at his meal vouchers in case he tries to feed the boy.”

Impressed with the stranger’s uncanny wisdom, the Corporation members were further surprised when he reported back that afternoon. The meeting had to be reconvened and when the Mayor gaveled for order at four o’clock, they faced an old man with a grim countenance. He seemed unable to speak.

“Did you find them?” prompted the Mayor.

“Yes.”

“Then where are they?”

“I have sworn not to tell. And for the safety of the children I will not break my oath.”

“But what—?”

“Let me tell you, this Pied Piper is a more devious and dangerous character than you have any idea. He has taken your children, not to the pleasure garden he promised, but to a large deserted building some miles from here. There he and a colleague have bound them all hand and foot. And now he threatens to set fire to the building and burn them all to death!”

Cries of fear and anger filled the chamber. The Mayor shouted above the clamor. “But why? Is he insane?”

“Not at all. He is a clear-eyed businessman with his mind set on profit. He said to tell you this, that you would understand.”

The Mayor shook off the insult. “Where is the profit in such a mad scheme?”

“You must hand me fifteen hundred guilders — the original sum agreed upon plus half. I will deliver it to the hideaway and, on receipt of the ransom, the Pied Piper will release the children.”

“But this is an outrage,” the Mayor said. “Mass kidnaping, making victims of an entire society — I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“Nor have I,” said the stranger. Then he added quietly, “But now that it has been perpetrated once, I suspect the world will hear of it again.”

There was a brief but heated discussion. Then the decision was taken that the money should be paid. Hamelin had suffered enough — they wanted peace and quiet, they wanted conditions back to normal.

So the old stranger took the purse containing 1500 guilders and left the town by way of the road past Koppelberg Hill. It was as he entered the wooded area beyond the town that he straightened up, threw away his stick, and began walking with a vigorous stride, tearing off the false gray beard as he went. The lame boy met him in a clearing.

“Did you get the money?”

“Yes, indeed. Have you the package I left with you?”

The boy handed over a parcel; the man unwrapped it and took out a long coat, half of yellow and half of red. He put this on, saying, “I was getting tired of looking drab.” The parcel also contained a yellow and red scarf with a flute attached to it. The Pied Piper slung this around his neck, and holding the instrument to his lips, blew a cascade of notes.

The lame boy did an awkward, crab-like pirouette. “Your playing is pure magic,” he said, and they both laughed. Then the lad asked, “Where will you go now?”

“Down the road,” the Piper said simply. “And I think you’d better come with me.”

The boy’s eyes lit up. “Could I?”

“You must. You were the Piper’s accomplice. It would go badly for you back in Hamelin after this.”

“Let’s go then.” But the boy paused. “What about the children? How will you get them to go home?”

“We’ll stop first at the old house. They’ve had their fill of partying by now I expect. Besides, I’ll tell them I’m sending in no more food. When the goodies run out, they’ll go home. They’ve nowhere else to go.”

Then they made off together, the tall musician adjusting his pace to that of the crippled boy. At the edge of the wood the Pied Piper picked up the boy, held him against one shoulder, and they covered the ground swiftly. “It grieves me,” the Piper said, “that the problem of your leg is beyond my money and my wits. We live in the wrong time for that sort of magic.”

“I don’t mind it so much now,” the boy said, “if I’m to be allowed to travel with you.”

That night they slept at an inn. They shared a bed in one of the finer rooms, for the piper had money with which to pay. When the boy awoke in the dark, crying because he had dreamed of huge hairy creatures with angry eyes and hungry mouths, his new friend comforted him. “The rats in Hamelin were the Mayor and his cronies. You’re free of them now. You and I are going on to have fun and new adventures.”

Then the Pied Piper took up his flute and played very softly until the boy fell asleep.

The Black Widowers grill a high-school principal with one of the most interesting postprandial problems ever presented to this remarkable club and to its discreet and unobtrusive waiter, Henry the Infallible. Who said the art of conversation was dead? Not when it involves juvenile delinquency, a letter containing an impenetrable (except to Henry) message, and a $5 grudge bet...

“I think,” said Mario Gonzalo, “that I know Henry’s secret — how he gets the answer when we don’t.” He nodded in the direction of the waiter, who was quietly serving the drinks that were prelude to the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers.

James Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said, “I’ve known it all along. He’s smarter than we are.”

“Sure,” said Gonzalo, flicking tobacco ash from the sleeve of his velvet jacket and helping himself to some Brie on a cracker; “but being smarter isn’t enough.”

“Being dumber isn’t enough, either,” broke in Emmanuel Rubin, glowering through his thick-lensed glasses, “so what good will the secret do you, Mario?”

“Being really dumb,” said Gonzalo coolly, “is to be afraid to listen for fear of learning something. So I suppose you’re not interested, Manny.”

“What, and miss a good laugh?” said Rubin. “Go ahead, Mario.”

Geoffrey Avalon, having accepted his drink from Henry, approached and said, “A good laugh about what?”

“About Mario’s idea as to how Henry manages to come up with solutions,” said Rubin. “Henry, you can listen, too. Mario knows your secret.”

Henry smiled discreetly. “I have made no secret of what I do. The gentlemen of the Black Widowers analyze the problems carefully, remove all the useless adornments, and leave a plain picture for me to describe.”

“Not at all,” said Gonzalo, “not at all. You must say that to throw us off. The secret is — irrelevance!”

There was a short pause. Then Rubin’s scanty beard bristled and he said in high-pitched disbelief, “Is that what I’m supposed to listen to so that I can learn something?”

“Sure,” said Gonzalo. “We’re all of us reasoning men — even you sometimes, Manny — and we try to solve any little puzzle presented to us by catching at all the relevant angles. But if it were the relevant matters that mattered, so to speak, there’d be no puzzle. Anyone would then see the answer. It’s Henry’s trick of seeing the irrelevant that gives him the answer.”

Drake said, “This is a contradiction in terms, Mario. Something that is irrelevant has nothing to do—”

Gonzalo interposed patiently, “Something that seems irrelevant but isn’t. We see that it seems irrelevant; Henry sees that it really isn’t irrelevant. Right, Henry?”

Henry’s unlined face showed no expression beyond a general benevolence. “It is certainly an interesting suggestion,” he said.

Avalon drew his formidable eyebrows together. “It is surely more than that, Mario. Henry sees what we do not, because he looks clearly at life while the rest of us do not have his direct and simple honesty and are not capable of doing so. Even if you were to see what Henry does, you would not get the answer.”

Gonzalo said, “I bet I can. Five dollars says that if there’s a puzzle today, I’ll use Henry’s technique and get the answer before he does.”

“You’re on,” said Rubin at once.

“Good,” said Mario. “Jeff, you hold the stakes. But remember, no bet if there’s no problem.”

Drake said, “Oh, there’ll be a problem. Personally, I think we’re each of us deliberately choosing our guests just for their problems.”

“And yet perhaps not this time,” said Avalon, “since the guest has not arrived — nor tonight’s host, either, unless the steps on the stairs— No, it’s Tom.”

Thomas Trumbull’s white and crisply waved hair made its appearance, followed quickly by the rest of his body as he mounted the stairs.

He said, “If you’re worried about the host’s whereabouts, Jeff, Roger Halsted’s just arrived downstairs with a stranger who, I presume, is our guest for tonight. I raced ahead since I am a dying man who needs a dr— Ah, thank you, Henry.”

As has happened so often in the past, we are giving you two “first stories” by the same author in the same issue. Russell Martin, of Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada, submitted two stories simultaneously, and we couldn’t choose between them — so here are first stories numbers 513 and 514, back to back.

The most interesting fact in Mr. Martins dossier is his age. He was born in Montreal in 1961 — which made him only 17 when he sent in his two stories. At the time of this writing he is a student at John Abbott College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec. His “major” hobbies include reading omnivorously, trying to perfect his command of French, and “living life to the fullest extent possible — there is nothing like it for getting ideas for stories.”

“Courtesy Call” is a dying-message detective story — “a kind of a crazy” case...

When you’re the Detective Lieutenant in charge of the Homicide Squad of a fair-sized city, and you only get a few weeks off each year, you try to make every day count toward forgetting your job. But when the town you’re passing through on the way to this year’s resort has a Chief of Police who is an old friend, you feel obliged to talk shop for a few hours more, anyway.

Art Nye’s town doesn’t have many major crimes committed in it, so I felt no qualms about disturbing him during working hours. But he wasn’t in his office when I arrived at his station house; the desk sergeant said he was in the interrogation room.

If Art was busy, I had no intention of disturbing him. I could just leave word I had called and come back some other time. But as it happened, Art came into the sergeant’s room just as I was about to leave.

“Hello there, Nye.”

It took him a few seconds. “Fall! Ev Fall, of all people!” There was some back-pounding.

“I was going to drop by to chew the fat, Art, but I’m told you’re busy, so—”

“Uh — wait a minute, Ev. I may need some help on this.”

“ ‘This’?”

“A murder case. You’re still on your city’s Homicide Squad?”

“In charge of it.”

“Oh! Congratulations! Maybe that’s even better.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first homicide we’ve had in town since that barroom brawl nine years ago, and there was no mystery in that one, just lots of gore. Maybe I need some big-city expertise on this one — it’s a nasty case, and kind of a crazy one.”

“Well, Art, if you need my help, I’ll be glad to give it.” I wasn’t sure I was so keen on this, but there I was.

“Thanks. Let’s go into my office. I’ll tell you about it there.”

When he had sat down at his desk and lit a cigar, he resumed. “Did I ever mention the Reardons to you, Ev?”

“Reardons?”

“Rich family. Live here in town. Old man owned the dye works a few miles off.”

“I don’t think you have. I presume they’re part of the town nobility—”

“Yup.”

“Look rather down on other people—”

“Right.”

“And now they’ve come a big cropper because they’ve got trouble — trouble that involves the police.”

“You know it. The trouble, to be exact, is murder. Old Julian Reardon was stabbed to death a couple of days ago. Julian was the owner of the dye works.”

“Got any idea who did it?”

“I’ve narrowed it down to three people. Julian left a will leaving all his estate — quite a sum — to be equally distributed among his three children.”

“You suspect them?”

“No, I don’t. Because they’re dead.”

“Oh. You think they were killed too?”

“No, no. They all died years ago, and the deaths were either the result of disease or accident. Point’s this: Julian had a clause in his will leaving the money that would go to each child to that child’s children, if the child predeceased him.”

“And there are three grandchildren?”

“One from each of the two sons and one daughter. Jack Reardon, Peggy Reardon, and Abby Freed. All in their early twenties. Three nicer young people you couldn’t meet. But from what I’ve found out, they could all use some spare cash about now. And nobody else with a motive was anywhere near the house when the old man was killed. And the crime looks like the work of a person Julian trusted: whoever killed him was allowed in, and had a cup of coffee with the victim before doing the dirty work. That points to one of the grandchildren — they were about the only people in town Julian could be said to trust.”

“And there are no clues?”

“Killer left no fingerprints, no suspect has an alibi. All we have is this.” Art took a Xerox copy out of his pocket with an abstracted air. “Julian was filling out a few forms when his murderer came to call. After he was stabbed, and presumably after the killer left, he managed to drag himself across the room to where he’d put down the forms, and before he died he picked up his pen and scrawled out—”

“A dying message!”

He looked a trifle displeased. “Yes. And here it is.” He gave me the copy. At the bottom of the sheet, printed crudely over a printed form, were two capital letters:

“Em ay,” I said. “In caps.”

“Which may or may not mean anything,” Chief Nye grunted. “From what we’ve seen of his papers, Julian always printed in block capitals.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “MA, eh? I suppose you’ve thought of the obvious connections.”

“I have. But maybe you can think of an interpretation that didn’t occur to me. Any suggestions?”

“Any of the suspects have a Master of Arts degree?”

“I don’t think any of ’em has cracked open a book since high school, Ev,” Art informed me.

“Any of ’em in Massachusetts lately? Or work for the phone company?”

“Phone company?” my friend asked, puzzled.

“Ma Bell?”

“Oh! No, they all work at local businesses — when they feel like working, which they don’t have to do. And they don’t travel.”

“Either female suspect have a baby lately?”

“No. And Julian’s mother,” he added, “died in ’47.”

“Thorough, aren’t you?” There was a pause. “This fancy stuff doesn’t ring true. If the old man wanted to name his killer, wouldn’t he just print the killer’s name?” I started to mutter. “Wait! What are their middle names?”

“Not that they ever use them, but Jack’s middle name is William, Peggy’s is Sharon, and Abby’s is Elizabeth.”

“Nothing there. I — hmm. Did the old man have any nicknames for them?”

“Not a formal old boy like Julian Reardon. They were about the only people he didn’t call ‘Mr.’ or ‘Miss,’ and them he called by their full names.”

“Too bad. Any of them have a hobby, or a habit, or something along those lines, beginning with MA?”

“Ev, I have gone through every word beginning with MA in the dictionary. There isn’t one that has a special relationship with any of the three suspects.”

“And yet he wrote MA...” I trailed off into muttering again. Suddenly a bomb went off inside my head — or perhaps it would be more correct to say a flare, illuminating everything in one bright flash. “Yes!” I said involuntarily.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, that’s it. That has to be it. Art, I know who killed Julian Reardon!”

Art looked at me skeptically. “Well?” he said.

“Your problem, Art,” I began pedantically, “was that you were too close to the people in the case to see things properly. I take it you knew old Reardon fairly well?”

“Fairly.”

“Well enough, at least, to call him and his grandchildren by their first names.”

“Look, Ev, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I can assure you that I’m not letting personal feelings interfere with my role in a murder investigation.”

“That’s not my point. So close, in fact, that you call the three suspects by their nicknames.”

“Everybody does.”

“But Julian Reardon didn’t! That was a good point I made a minute ago about how Reardon wouldn’t indulge in fancy word games if he wanted to name his killer. He would just write down the killer’s name.

“So if Jack Reardon had done it, the old man would have written JA. If Abby Freed had, he would have written AB. Name or nickname, the message would start with the same letters.

“But — what about Peggy Reardon? If you wrote her nickname, you’d start with PE — but if you’d called her by her full name all her life, you would write down the first letters of her full name. And Peggy, as you know, is the diminutive of Margaret — MA.”

I leaned back in my chair and looked smugly at Art Nye. His mouth and eyes were slightly open.

“How the hell did I miss that?” he asked.

“By being too close to the target,” I answered.

Russell Martin’s second first story is about a bureau chief in retirement who is just vegetating — until his successor needs help...

Old Pollard had finished with the supper dishes and was sitting down to watch Walter Cronkite when somebody buzzed his apartment from downstairs. He raised his white eyebrows when he heard the caller’s voice, but asked him to come up.

Two minutes later young Knowles was doffing his coat. Knowles, with his masculine good looks and Young-Man-Succeeding-in-Business manner. Knowles, the man Pollard thought of whenever he heard the word “brash.” Knowles, Pollard’s successor as chief of a certain secret government bureau — and in the older man’s opinion, an incompetent young twerp. And just now, Knowles, with his apparently inextinguishable optimism and brisk manner completely gone, twisting his hands, in a fit of nervousness.

“Just let me put your coat in the closet,” Pollard said. “There. Have a seat on the couch. Go ahead, young man — it’s not electrified! Now, let me sit down in my chair. Aaah.

“So. Mr. Knowles. I didn’t expect ever to see you again after my retirement party. Are you here to keep an old man company? Or is there something you need?”

Knowles cleared his throat. “Mr. Pollard,” he began, “it’s six months since I took over as chief of the bureau. Since then, I — well, I like to think that I’ve had things pretty well under control. We’ve been able to handle whatever’s come up — and things have been quiet lately. But now—” He broke off.

“Let me guess,” Pollard said, trying hard to keep the delight out of his voice. “Something has happened that’s too much for you.” He let a note of sternness creep in. “And you want the old man’s advice.”

Knowles nodded unhappily. “That’s it, sir. I wouldn’t ordinarily come to you like this, because—”

“Because you’d rather die than admit that there are some things beyond you by going to your predecessor for help?”

“Oh, no, sir, not that at all. I just thought that after all your years at the bureau, you wouldn’t want us to disturb you once you’d finally retired—”

“Disturb me?” Pollard roared. “Disturb me? Let’s get something straight, Knowles. In the half year since that damned farewell party, since I holed up permanently in this tiny apartment, I have been going stir-crazy! Living on my pension, sitting here watching TV, reading books, and generally vegetating — and the only break in the monotony is a visit every Saturday from my daughter and two runny-nosed grandchildren. Disturb me? This visit tonight may just save my sanity! At least you bring back a memory of the way it used to be at the bureau, before I reached their damned retirement age...” He trailed off.

“Well, then, sir — since you seem willing to help us” — Pollard snorted — “I’ll have to warn you that what I’m about to say is to be kept absolutely, Class-A, top-secret—”

“I wish,” Pollard said acidly, “that the current chief of the bureau would realize that the former chief of the bureau is probably even more conversant with security rules than he himself.” A sudden thought leaped into Pollard’s mind. “Hey, wait a minute! You’re not violating any regulations by telling me about this, are you?”

“No, sir! I have the permission of — uh — the people upstairs to come to you. And,” he added, “I’m putting you in no danger, either. I’ve made sure that there are no tails on me tonight, so your life is in no jeopardy because I’ve come here.”

Pollard ignored this last. “Well, since everything is quite clear and understood, get on with it. Even an old man like me doesn’t have unlimited time.”

Knowles cleared his throat again, and began, “A couple of weeks ago a double agent of ours was found in his apartment, with his throat cut. The police have dismissed it as a burglary that got ugly, and we were happy to let them — but the bureau is sure that the other side found him out and killed him.

“Georg — the double agent — had reported to us several days before his death that he was on to something big — a cell of enemy agents planted here for the purpose of passing on clandestine communications. He claimed to have made contact with part of the cell, and to have learned of the existence of a list of the cell members’ names and addresses.

“A list like that would be invaluable to us, and we told Georg to get it. After some hard bargaining he agreed.

“Well, to keep the story down to essentials, Georg got careless. Or the cell members, or their superiors, found him out some other way. In any event, one morning while George was encoding a report to us, he was murdered in his apartment.

“The report he was making out at the time of his death stated that he expected to get a copy of the list from a contact in the cell the next day. The assassins took the original message, and the coded version he was writing, when they left.”

“Then how do you know what he was going to tell you?”

“His typewriter was one of those jobs that use cartridge ribbons, and the one he had in it at the time was a one-time version — that is, after you strike a letter, that space of the ribbon is used up permanently. The killers didn’t take the ribbon cartridge, so we got the message from it. We reproduced Georg’s words from the letter impressions, thus.” Knowles took a sheet of paper from his pocket. The message read:

Pollard read it over several times. “No spacing, of course — it wouldn’t show up on the ribbon... easy to make out, though.” Then he looked up. “Did Georg always use capitals?”

The younger man shrugged. “The code he was using did, so he probably felt more comfortable with them here, too.”

“L-a-n-d-s giving it to me... was Lands the name of his contact in the cell?”

Knowles looked agonized. “We don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. You see, Georg never told us who his contact was. If he had, we’d have picked him up after we discovered the murder. But he did say that it was someone connected with the apartment building where he lived — but not a tenant.”

“So look into them all.”

“We did. We’ve managed to narrow it down to four possibilities whose pasts and recent activities make it possible for them to have been Georg’s contact in the cell.”

“All right, pick up all four and question them until the real contact breaks.”

“We can’t. There was a big fuss raised over leakage of secret material to people outside the bureau, and since then we’ve been wary of giving away things in the course of questioning an innocent suspect.”

“And that’s where I come in, eh? You need to know who Georg’s contact was, but you can’t figure it out.”

“That’s it, sir,” said Knowles with obvious reluctance. “None of the four has dropped out of sight, or made any changes in their routines, so we guess the cell people think they’re safe. But they may yet decide to play it cautious and pull the man out. Time could be of the essence.”

“All right, all right. Tell me about your four suspects.”

“Well, sir, the landlord lives in one of the apartments in the building; it’s a very luxurious place” — Knowles seemed about to add, “unlike this one,” but changed his mind — “and in some ways, he’s our prime suspect. All four had equal opportunity to carry on the activities of the group members — you’ll understand that I’m reluctant to go into details — but the ‘land’ reference in Georg’s message might be construed as pointing to him — as the landlord.”

“It says ‘lands,’ to be precise,” Pollard pointed out.

“But if it’s short for ‘land is’—”

“Then it should have an apostrophe, right? There are no other errors of English in the message. How was Georg’s English?”

“Perfect.”

“Just so.” Pollard nibbled a nail. “Perhaps he meant ‘lands’ as the plural of ‘land.’ Was the landlord the sole owner of the place?”

“Yes. And Henley — that’s his name, Marvin Henley — lives alone, too.”

“Hmm. Other suspects?”

“There’s also the day doorman, Lester Gill. He seems to be completely clean, a perfectly ordinary man, but so do the others. On the other hand, Gill is an absolute cipher — lives alone, no family, and apparently no friends—”

“Which probably isn’t important, one way or the other,” Pollard broke in. “You persist in wasting time on irrelevancies! And the other two?”

“Another man who works as a doorman, Stanley Fitch. He works evenings—”

“And?”

“Otis Avery, the building superintendent,” Knowles finished lamely.

“The landlord, the super, and two doormen,” Pollard said, and leaned back. “Excellent. And all four men had an equal opportunity to carry on whatever activities the cell member indulged in?”

“Yes, sir. We have reports on their activities since a short time after the murder of Georg, but no one has been eliminated so far.”

“I have an idea our friend won’t be fingered that way,” Pollard said. “I can’t get my mind off that word ‘lands.’ It doesn’t make sense. Maybe there’s another meaning in it somewhere. Any of the four have any connection with land, or real estate in general, apart from Henley’s obvious connection?”

“We looked into it. No, they don’t.”

“Lands. Lands. I don’t suppose a Land camera comes into the affair anywhere—”

“No.”

“Just an idea... Is there any possibility that the message was a fake?”

“Fake?”

“Yes, fake. That Georg’s killers not only stole the plain and coded versions of the message, but also the ribbon cartridge he had used, and substituted one with a message carefully designed to frustrate you because it was partly incomprehensible?”

Knowles shook his head. “We doubt that, sir. For several reasons. First of all, we have no record of the other side ever pulling that kind of stunt before. It just isn’t their style. Second, that one-time cartridge was the only cartridge Georg had in his possession, from what we’ve found by searching his apartment. If the killers did fake the message, it means that they brought another cartridge with them to the apartment. Most unlikely.

“Third, if someone did intend to fake a message, why invent such a cryptic one? All they’d have to do is accuse an innocent person of being the cell member; that would point us in exactly the wrong direction long enough to get their real man — Henley, Gill, Fitch, or Avery — into hiding. As it is, all they’ve done is keep our suspicions on all four possibilities. No, sir, we think Georg really did write the message.”

Pollard was impressed. Perhaps he’d been hasty in his judgment of Knowles. He was showing the kind of sense his job called for.

“In that case, Knowles,” Pollard said, “I’ll be happy to tell you whom to pick up for questioning.”

Knowles was speechless.

“What threw you, and me for a while,” Pollard went on, “was the ‘lands’ part of the message. It was our major stumbling block — but when you interpret it properly it’s also the solution to the problem.

“No possible meaning of the word ‘lands’ seemed to have any application here. When I learned that, I began to wonder if Georg wasn’t trying to tell us something else.”

“Something else? But—”

“Don’t interrupt! Remember, you reconstructed the message from the typewriter ribbon, imagining where the spaces — which don’t show up on the ribbon — go. When you got to l-a-n-d-s, the five letters you didn’t understand, you assumed they formed one word. But they don’t have to.

“Respace it. L-a-n-d-s. Is there a word in those five letters?”

Knowles mulled it over. “L-a-n... a-n-d... and!”

“A-n-d. And. If we assume that and is part of what Georg was trying to say, what of l and s?

“L — and — S. L and S. Has this any possible meaning? Review the names of the suspects — Lester Gill has a name beginning with L, and Stanley Fitch has one beginning with S.”

Knowles’s mouth was open. “The doormen? Both of them?”

“Why not? No reason to think that there couldn’t be two cell members where there could be one. And you’ll notice that Georg used their first initials in naming them. Don’t you usually call the doorman of your apartment building by his given name?”

The younger man’s expression had turned to one of satisfaction. “Makes sense,” he murmured. “More than any of the other ideas.” He stood up. “Mr. Pollard, I have to go now — there’s work to be done.” He held out his hand. “Thank you. I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

“I’m quite sure of that, young man,” Pollard said.

This is the 515th “first story” to be published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine... “As some day it may happen that a victim must be found, I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list.” — from Koko’s Song in The Mikado (Gilbert and Sullivan)...

The author, Gina Haldane, formerly an actress, is now vice president of a video systems company, and “writing is an alternative to the pressures of owning a small business.” She is “interested in all sorts of things, from the conventional (sewing, design) to the more controversial (human liberation). Above all, I am addicted to reading and have inadvertently committed nineteen cereal boxes to memory!”...

1 doz eggs

1 lb butter

(I remember when we were first married how Bob loved my omelets)

1 gal milk

1 lg box Whoopie Wheetsies

(I wish the kids wouldn’t believe all that junk on television. They keep begging me to get them this, get them that)

1 bottle Kalm-Tabs (for stress)

1 six-pack Macho beer

(which will be gone by the end of Sunday s football game. Bob’ll be dozing in front of the TV, wearing that old undershirt)

1 head lettuce

2 tomatoes

3 lbs hamburger

(I remember when Bob said, “Steak and caviar, baby — marry me and it’ll be steak and caviar all the way!” And now we can barely afford hamburgers)

1 pkg Sweetums disposable diapers

3 jars Bitsie-Bites baby food

(maybe if we hadn’t had three kids in three years, maybe then)

1 box Storm detergent

1 floor mop

(or maybe if Bob had let me keep my job instead of being a broken-down housewife, I could have had a career)

1 Calorie-Counter’s Meals for One

1 doz cans Lo-Lo Kola

(I don’t know why I try to lose weight. I’ll bet she would be eating all the time if her husband was seeing another woman)

1 bunch asparagus

(I bet they think I don’t even know about their affair! Well, if they think I’m going to let them get away with it)

1 box rat poison

(damn them!)

Barbara Williamson’s first story, “The Thing Waiting Outside,” appeared in the December 1977 issue of EQMM. We called it “a story of dark and terrifying implications.” Her second story offers more darkness and terror, but of an entirely different sort. There is the dream that keeps coming back, and the thing in her hand, and the puzzle that must be solved... a subtly written story, with fine imaginative touches...

Three months before Ruth’s twelfth birthday her father married again.

There was a garden wedding and Ruth wore a yellow dress with long full sleeves and carried a bouquet of late roses.

During the ceremony the bride was fidgety and the groom had trouble with the sun in his eyes, but Ruth stood very still and did not take her eyes from the minister’s face.

Later, when her father’s friends told her how pretty she looked — “Just like a Renoir!” one gushy matron proclaimed — Ruth smiled shyly, but said nothing.

No one was surprised. It was well known among her acquaintances that Ruth was a quiet child who enjoyed playing alone and reading her books behind closed doors.

At the reception she ate a small piece of cake and tasted her first champagne. She didn’t like it very much, but was too polite to say so.

Just before her father and his new wife left, they came to her to say goodbye. Her father kissed her and his wife, a plumpish blonde with stiff sculptured hair, gave her a hug.

“Now you’re my little girl too,” she whispered into Ruth’s ear. And you, Ruth thought, are my very own Wicked Stepmother and I shall hate you as long as I live.

Then she put her lips against the perfumed cheek close to her own.

“How sweet!” everyone said.

While her father and his wife were away on their honeymoon, Ruth stayed at the home of a classmate.

Every third day a postcard came for her. Ocean scenes with golden sands and blue water. Once there was a sunset with a lone palm tree black against the vivid sky.

“That’s pretty,” said the classmate, whose name was Patricia. Ruth thought her stupid, but at least she didn’t giggle like some of the other girls.

“Yes,” Ruth said.

The card was signed “Mother and Daddy,” but the fussy, curly handwriting was not her father’s.

When she was alone, Ruth tore each card into bits and flushed them down the drain.

That night she had the dream.

It was not a new dream. From time to time, as long as she could remember, the same house blossomed in her sleep. A silent place of higgledy-piggledy rooms with many doors and windows. There was bright sun outside and the rooms were filled with the airless, heavy heat of summer.

In the dream she was alone, walking from room to room, but always with the feeling that just beyond a certain wall or just beyond the next door was the person she was looking for. She also knew she must move with stealth so as not to be seen or heard.

Her breath came quickly. Not from fear, but from something close to exultation and a sense of purpose.

And always she held something in her hand.

What it was, she did not know. She could only feel it there, tight in her hand. Something hard and a little heavy. Something vital to her mission.

The dream always ended the same way. She was climbing the stairs, slowly, lightly, with the thing in her hand held close against her side. She climbed and climbed, but never reached the top of the stairs, and the dream dissolved around her in a red, shifting haze.

But the night the postcard came, there was a difference in the dream. Just as she started up the stairs, breathing the hot, sulfurous air, she looked down and understood at last why she could not see the thing she held in her hand. It was hidden in the folds of her long skirt. The kind of skirt that had not been worn for many years. And she knew that she was not a child, but a tall grown woman. She could almost feel the contours of her body and the strange lines of her face.

This time the dream did not fade. She was dragged from it by busy hands and a voice whispering in her ear.

“Wake up, Ruth! Wake up.”

Pushing the hands away with a strength not her own, she said, “That’s not my name.”

She opened her eyes to see Patricia’s impassive moon face close to her own.

It was almost morning. The windows were pale with light and the shadows in the room were turning gray.

“You were talking in your sleep,” Patricia said. “I think you were having a scary dream.”

Ruth didn’t say anything. She felt an urge to reach out and smack that stupid blank face. To keep from doing so she turned over and buried her face in the pillow. She could still feel the house in the dream. It was just out of sight in her mind, hiding from her.

After a minute Patricia padded back to her own bed.

The room grew brighter and colors began to appear. A blue lampshade. Pink ballet prints on the wall.

Ruth turned over. “What did I say?”

Patricia lifted her head. Her short hair frizzed over her ears. “What?”

“What did I say in my sleep?”

“Oh.” Patricia flopped back down and the bed squeaked. “Nothing that made much sense. Something about blood.” Then she yawned and turned over to finish her sleep.

Dorothy A. Collins’ first story, “Found on the Cookbook Shelf,” appeared in the October 1978 issue of EQMM. Since her first sale and her debut in print she has been working hard, and her second published story shows much more confidence with the form and a much more imaginative approach to plot. Carry on, Dorothy Collins, let nothing impede your progress...

Uncle Avery wrote Gothic mysteries. I thought they were dreadful things, but the public gobbled them up like hamburgers, and he made a fortune out of them. Unhappily, success soured him, because it wasn’t the kind of success he really wanted. But the money kept rolling in, so he kept churning out his tales of maidens-in-distress, and growing meaner and more embittered every year.

I was his housekeeper-and-secretary. He’d offered me the job when my husband died, and I grabbed it like a lifeline. He was my father’s brother, and outside of a few scattered cousins I was his only relative. Naturally I had great expectations, and I thought that besides latching onto a job I really needed, and a good one at that, I could reinforce my position by taking good care of him. And at first it wasn’t too bad.

He was just starting his fifteenth Avis Crystal bestseller at that time, and was still enjoying the fruits of his pedestrian labors, which included a mansion on ten acres of lush woodland, a couple of expensive cars, a cook, and a gardener. So all around it was a nice setup for me. I kept the house running smoothly, typed up his rough drafts, handled his correspondence, and encouraged him to write the G.A.N. But Great American Novels are written by great American writers, and I found out pretty quickly that Avery Curtis wasn’t one of those and never would be. And after a few more years he apparently came to the same conclusion, because his disposition, none too pleasant to begin with, took a turn for the worse, and he started to drink heavily.

I took the brunt of his ill-nature, and it wasn’t long before I stopped merely tolerating him and began to actively loathe him. And to wish him dead. Not at some indefinite when-the-time-comes date, but soon. Very soon.

I knew I was his sole beneficiary, because over the past years, when he’d come to depend heavily on me, he used the inheritance bait as a lever to keep me with him. But at 68, in spite of his excessive drinking and smoking, he was in good physical shape, and I could see the years stretching ahead, with me getting older and Uncle Avery getting meaner, and any way you looked at it, it was an ugly picture.

So when I came into his study one afternoon and found that short paragraph on top of the other typed sheets of yellow copy paper, the idea started forming with the gathering momentum of an avalanche.

Because, you see, that paragraph of Gothic prose was a perfect suicide note. Absolutely perfect.

And the conditions were perfect, too. I glanced over at Uncle Avery, snoring loudly on the couch, off on another of his monumental benders. He was out for the count. And Mrs. Herman, the cook, was off for the day. Uncle Avery and I were alone in the house.

First of all, although my fingerprints were all over the place, I realized I couldn’t superimpose them over his. So I went into the kitchen and got a pair of thin plastic utility gloves.

Then I went back and re-read the paragraph:

As I said, absolutely perfect, especially considering Uncle Avery’s situation and state of mind, which I’d be sure to reveal in full. I looked at the sheets underneath and saw that it was supposed to be stream of consciousness — the heroine mooning about her trouble and turmoil — and wondered why he’d taken it out of the machine with the page unfinished. Probably to crush it and throw it away, except that the need for a drink intervened. Well, I’d roll it back in, first making sure to destroy the preceding few pages so there’d be no continuity to give anything away. Fortunately he didn’t number the rough-draft pages, which used to annoy me, but now it worked in my favor.

Of course they might suspect that I’d typed the note myself, but only his fingerprints would be on the keys and on the paper, and I was pretty sure there was some way they could tell about different styles of typing — pressure and touch, or some such thing. So that was all right.

I went upstairs and got his vial of sleeping capsules. I had no idea how many would constitute a lethal dose, but I knew they were deadly in combination with alcohol, and he was sodden right now. I emptied all ten of them into a large glass, filled it halfway with Scotch, stirred it until the powder was dissolved, and added ice. I tasted it with a teaspoon and spat it out into the sink. It didn’t taste of anything but straight Scotch. I made a drink for myself, put both glasses on a tray with some ice and the Scotch bottle, and carried it into the study.

I set down the tray and brought the phone over to the couch.

“Uncle Avery.” I shook his shoulder. “ Avery. Telephone. Ed Grimes.”

He came awake slowly — surly, befuddled, and belligerent.

“Telephone,” I shouted. “Ed Grimes — your agent.” I held out the receiver.

“Hell with’m,” he muttered. “Call’m back.”

Well, that was easier than telling him Grimes would get tired of waiting and hang up. I replaced the receiver and helped him to a sitting position.

“I made us drinks,” I said. “We’ll be eating in half an hour.” I handed him the glass.

“My God, I’m thirsty.”

I watched as he drained the glass. And then, unaccountably, I started to go to pieces. I did it, I thought, my heart pounding. It’s done. He’s finished. I needed a drink badly now, and I reached for my glass, my hand shaking so badly that I had trouble getting it to my mouth.

Uncle Avery didn’t notice.

“Make me another one, like a good girl,” he mumbled.

But I wanted that glass the way it was, with the dregs of the powder in it. So I said, “All right, but let’s get you comfortable first.” I heaved him back into a lying position, and within a few moments he was snoring again. I wanted another drink myself, but I knew I had to keep my head clear. I put on the plastic gloves and wiped off his glass and pressed his fingers around it several times. I did the same with the vial of sleeping pills, and put both of them on the floor next to the couch. I rolled the “suicide note” into the typewriter and peeled off the top five pages of the manuscript draft for burning.

And that was it. I couldn’t think of anything else — couldn’t think at all, at that point. So I burned the papers, flushed the ashes down the sink, and dragged myself upstairs. Not to sleep, but to lie awake and watch the clock and wonder feverishly if I’d overlooked anything.

Julian Symons is one of the finest writers of crime and detective stories, both long and short, in our time. So you can imagine our delight when Mr. Symons advised us that he had written a new series of four contemporary short stories. You will find the stories different in theme, background, and storyline, but alike in reflecting Mr. Symons’ approach to the modern mystery story, alike in revealing Mr. Symons’ writer’s-eye-and-mind, with characterization as important in the scheme of things as suspense and the sequence of events.

“Waiting for Mr. McGregor” will appear in an anthology titled verdict of thirteen, edited by Julian Symons, to be published by Faber & Faber in the United Kingdom and by Harper & Row in the United States.

Now, meet Hilary Engels Mannering and his BPB — his Beatrix Potter Brigade — and attend one of the strangest trials by jury on unofficial record...

Even in these egalitarian English days nannies are still to be seen in Kensington Gardens, pushing ahead of them the four-wheeled vehicles that house the children of the rich. On a windy day in April a dozen perambulators were moving slowly in the direction of the Round Pond, most of them in pairs. The nannies all wore uniforms. Their charges were visible only as well-wrapped bundles, some of them waving gloved fists into the air.

The parade was watched by more people than usual. A blond young man sat on a bench reading a newspaper. A pretty girl at the other end of the bench looked idly into vacancy. A rough-looking character pushed a broom along a path in a desultory way. The next bench held a man in black jacket, striped trousers, and bowler hat, reading the Financial Times, a man of nondescript appearance with his mouth slightly open, and a tramp-like figure who was feeding pigeons with crumbs from a paper bag. Twenty yards away another young man leaned against a lamppost.

A pram with a crest on its side approached the bench where the blond young man sat. The nanny wore a neat cap and a blue striped uniform. Her baby could be seen moving about and a wail came from it, but its face was hidden by the pram hood. The pram approached the bench where the man in the black jacket sat.

The blond young man dropped his newspaper. The group moved into action. The young man and the girl, the three people at the next bench, the man beside the lamppost, and the man pushing the broom, took from their pockets masks which they fitted over their faces. The masks were of animals. The blond young man was a rabbit, the girl a pig, the others a squirrel, a rat, another pig, a cat, and a frog.

The masks were fitted in a moment, and the animal seven converged on the pram with the crest on its side. Half a dozen people nearby stood and gaped, and so did other nannies. Were they all rehearsing a scene for a film, with cameras hidden in the bushes? In any case English reticence forbade interference, and they merely watched or turned away their heads. The nanny beside the pram uttered a well-bred muted scream and fled. The child in the pram cried lustily.

The blond young man was the first beside the pram, with the girl just after him. He pushed down the hood, pulled back the covers, and recoiled at what he saw. The roaring baby in the pram was of the right age and looked of the right sex. There was just one thing wrong. The baby was coal-black.

The young man looked at the baby disbelievingly for a moment, then shouted at the rest of them, “It’s a plant. Get away, fast!”

The words came distorted through the mask, but their sense was clear enough, and they followed accepted procedure, scattering in three directions and tearing off the masks as they went. Pick-up cars were waiting for them at different spots in the Bayswater Road, and they reached them without misadventure except for the tramp, who found himself confronted by an elderly man brandishing an umbrella.

“I saw what you were doing, sir. You were frightening that poor—”

The tramp swung a loaded cosh against the side of his head. The elderly man collapsed.

The baby went on roaring. The nanny came back to him. When he saw her he stopped roaring and began to chuckle.

Somebody blew a police whistle, much too late. The cars all got away without trouble.

“What happened?” asked the driver of the car containing the blond young man and the pretty girl.

“It was a plant,” he said angrily. “A bloody plant.”

Nick Velvet, the unique thief — and in a sense, the unique detective. As a thief, Nick steals only the valueless, the worthless — “never money or jewels or art treasures” — and for a minimum fee of $20,000 (inflation has not yet reared its ugly head). But to be a successful thief it is usually necessary for Nick to solve a mystery, thus becoming a detective with a unique purpose — a detective whose aim is not to mend the law but to break it.

In his newest caper-case Nick is hired to steal a copy of yesterday’s newspaper — and usually there is nothing so dead (worthless) as yesterday’s newspaper. But then there was the mystery to solve: why should a copy of yesterday’s newspaper be worth $20,000?...

Nick Velvet slid a stack of chips across the green felt of the roulette table on the top floor of London’s Playboy Club and waited for the wheel to be spun by a pert blonde girl with long legs and perfect teeth.

“So much, Nicky?” Gloria asked cautiously at his side.

“I’ve a hunch black is due to come up.”

But as the girl spun the wheel, Nick’s attention was distracted by a stout man on his right. The man thrust something into his hand and when Nick looked down he saw it was a check drawn on a London bank in an amount approximately equal to twenty thousand American dollars. It was payable to Nick Velvet and signed by someone named Felix Poland. “That’s better than a calling card,” Nick commented.

“I thought so,” the man said with a smile. His eyes were deep and alert, though the wrinkles around them hinted at an age past 50. “You see my name there. May we talk business?”

“It would be a pleasure, Mr. Poland.”

Gloria was tugging at his sleeve. “Nicky, we won!”

“Great! Scoop up the money and keep playing. I have to go chat with this man.” He slipped the check into his wallet and followed Felix Poland to a lounge area at the end of the room.

It was only eight o’clock, but Nick already knew it would be a profitable evening.