It began with a double celebration — the birth of the New Year and the 70th birthday of Godfrey Mumford, famous throughout the horticultural world as a breeder of chrysanthemums. But happy as the double occasion was, there were ominous, deeply disturbing overtones.

If only the others had known, they might have been forewarned... For Ellery had come back to Wrightsville — one of his spur-of-the-moment visits to the town he loved so much, to the New England town where he had experienced some of his greatest triumphs — and greatest failures; and it was no secret (especially to Chief of Police Newby) that Ellery Queen was Wrightsville’s perennial jinx. Whenever Ellery came to Wrightsville, evil came out of its lair...

The Chrysanthemum Case proved no exception. Indeed, it proved to be one of the most perplexing mysteries in Ellery’s career — a crime whose investigation made the “great detective” think he was Ellery in Blunderland; and to add the ultimate grotesquerie, the case offered the “last word” in bizarre and fantastic clues, the “last word” in baffling and frustrating “dying messages.”

A brand-new short novel never before published anywhere...

December 31, 1964

The birthday of the new year and the old man became a fact at midnight. The double anniversary was celebrated in the high-ceilinged drawing room of Godfrey Mumford’s louse in Wrightsville with certain overtones not in the tradition. Indeed, in accepting the offerings of his family and his friend, old Godfrey would have been well advised to recall the warning against gift-bearing Greeks (although there had never been a Greek in Wrightsville, at least none of Godfrey’s acquaintance; the nearest to one had been Andy Birobatyan, the florist who was of Armenian descent; Andy had shared the celebrated Mumford green thumb until the usual act of God had severed it).

The first Greek to come forward with her gift was Ellen Mumford Nash. Having gone through three American husbands, Godfrey’s daughter had just returned from England, where she was in the fifth year of a record run with number four, an Egyptologist connected with the British Museum — the prodigal daughter home for a visit, her nostrils flaring as if she smelled something unpleasant.

Nevertheless, Ellen said sweetly to her father, “Much happiness, darling. I do hope you find these useful.”

As it developed, the hope was extravagant. Her gift to him was a gold-plated cigarette case and lighter. Godfrey Mumford had given up smoking in 1952.

Christopher’s turn came next. A little less than 30 years before, Christopher had followed Ellen into the world by a little less than 30 minutes. (Their father had never allowed himself to be embittered by the fact that their birth had killed their mother, although he had had occasional reason to reflect on the poor exchange.)

Ellen, observing her twin over the champagne they were all sharing, was amused by his performance. How well he did the loving-son bit! With such talent it seemed remarkable that dear Chris had never risen above summer stock and walk-ons off Broadway. The reason, of course, was that he had never worked very hard at his chosen profession; but then he had never worked very hard at anything.

“A real swinger of a birthday, father,” Christopher was saying with passionate fondness. “And a hundred more to come.”

“I’ll settle for one at a time, son. Thanks very much.” Godfrey’s hair was gray but still vigorous; his big body tended toward gauntness now, but after 70 years he carried himself straight as a dancer. He was examining a silver-handled walking stick. “It’s really handsome.”

Christopher sidled stage right, smiling sincerely; and Godfrey set the stick aside and turned to the middle-aged woman standing by. She was small, on the dumpling side; the hands holding the gift had the stub nails and rough skin of habitual housework. Her face under the snowy hair lay quiet as a New England winter garden.

“You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, Mum,” the old man protested, “with the work you have to do around here.”

“Goodness, Godfrey, it was no trouble. I wish it could have been more.”

“I’m trying to remember the last time I had a hand-knit sweater.” Godfrey’s voice was gruff as he fingered it. “It’s just what I need to wear to the greenhouse these days. When on earth did you find the time?”

The sun came through to shine on the garden. “It’s not very elegant, Godfrey, but it will keep you warm.”

It was 28 years since Margaret Caswell had come to Wrightsville to nurse her sister Louise — Godfrey’s wife — in Louise’s fatal illness. In that time she had brought into the world a child of her own, buried her husband, become “Mum” to the three children growing up in the household — Godfrey’s two and her one — and planned (she had recently figured it out) more than 30,000 meals. Well, Godfrey Mumford had earned her devotion; he had been a second father to her child.

She sometimes felt that Godfrey loved her Joanne more than his own twins; she felt it now, in the drawing room. For Godfrey was holding in his hands a leather desk set decorated with gold-leaf chrysanthemums, and his shrewd blue eyes were glittering like January ice. The set was the gift of Joanne, who was watching him with a smile.

“You’re uncanny, Jo,” Godfrey said. “It’s taking advantage of an old man. This is beautiful.”

Jo’s smile turned to laughter. “With most men it’s supposed to be done with steak and potatoes. You’re a pushover for chrysanthemums. It’s very simple.”

“I suppose people think I’m very simple. A senile delinquent,” Godfrey said softly.

A frail little man with a heavy crop of eyebrows above very bright eyes hooted at this. He was Godfrey Mumford’s oldest friend, Wolcott Thorp, who had formerly taught anthropology at Merrimac University in Connhaven. For the past few years Thorp had been serving as curator of the Merrimac University Museum, where he had been developing his special interest, the cultural anthropology of West Africa.

“I’ll contribute to your delinquency, too,” Wolcott Thorp chuckled. “Here’s something, Godfrey, that will help you waste your declining years.”

“Why, it’s a first edition of an Eighteenth Century work on mums!” Godfrey devoured the title page. “Wolcott, this is magnificent.”

The old man clutched the tome. Only Jo Caswell sensed the weariness in his big body. To Wrightsville and the horticultural world he was the breeder of the celebrated Mumford’s Majestic Mum, a double bloom on a single stem; he was a member of the Chrysanthemum Society of America and of chrysanthemum clubs in England, France, and Japan; his correspondence with fellow breeders and aficionados encompassed the globe. To Jo he was a gentle, kind, and troubled man, and he was dear to her heart.

“I’m grateful for all these kindnesses,” Godfrey Mumford said. “It’s a pity my response has to be to give you bad news. It’s the wrong occasion, but I don’t know when I’ll have you all together under this roof again. Forgive me for what I’m about to tell you.”

His daughter Ellen had an instinct for the quality and degree of trouble. By the flare of her nostrils she had sensed that what was coming was bad news indeed.

“Father—” she began.

But her father stopped her. “Let me tell this without interruption, Ellen. It’s hard enough... When I retired in 1954, my estate was worth about five million dollars; the distribution in my will was based on that figure. Since that time, as you all know, I’ve pretty well neglected everything else in experimenting with the blending and hybridizing of mums.”

Godfrey paused, took a deep breath. “I recently found out that I’m a fool. Or maybe it was fated. Anyway, the result is the same.”

He glanced at the old book in his hands as if surprised to find it still there. Then he set it carefully on the coffee table and sat down on the crewel-fringed couch.

“I had put all my financial affairs in the hands of Truslow Addison’s law firm. Where I made my mistake was in sticking with the status quo when Tru died and his son took over the practice. I should have known better. You remember, Christopher, what a wild youngster Tru Junior was—”

“Yes,” said Christopher Mumford. “Father, you don’t mean—”

“I’m afraid so,” the old man said. “After young Tru died in that auto accident last May, the affairs of the law firm were found to be like a basket of broken eggs. You couldn’t even make an omelet of them. Some of the funds in his trust he had simply gambled away; the rest vanished because of bad business judgment, stupid speculations, investments without rhyme or reason...”

His voice trailed away, and after a while the silence was cracked by the voice of Ellen Mumford Nash. Her slim and elegant figure was stiff with outrage.

“Are you saying, father, that you’re without a shilling?”

Behind her Christopher made an abrupt move, extending his arm in, a sort of forensic gesture, as if he were trying to argue away a legal point that threatened his whole case.

“You’re joking, father. It can’t be that bad. There’s got to be something left out of so much loot.”

“Hear me out,” his father said heavily. “By liquidating assets I’ve managed to pay off all the creditors. This house and the property are mortgaged; there’s not very much equity. I have an old annuity that will let Mum and Joanne and me live here decently, but on my death the income from it stops. I’ll have to cut down my mums operation—”

Ellen broke in, bitter as the cold outside. “Damn your mums! If you’d stuck to growing seeds, the way you started, father, none of this would have happened. Left without a farthing! After all these years.”

Godfrey had gone pale at her curse; otherwise his face showed nothing. He had apparently prepared himself well for the ordeal. “Your brother was right in one respect, Ellen. There is something valuable left — something that no one’s known about. I want to show it to you.”

Mumford rose and went over to the wall behind him. He pushed aside an oil painting of a vaseful of chrysanthemums, exposing a square-doored wall safe. His silent audience heard the faint clicking — more like a swishing — of a dial. He removed something, shut the door of the safe, and came back.

Ellen’s breath came out in a whinny.

Her father’s hand was holding up a magnificent pendant.

“You’ll recall,” the old man said, “that on my retirement I took a trip to the Far East to bone up on Oriental mums. Well, while I was in Japan I managed to get my hands on this beauty. I paid nowhere near what it’s worth, although it cost me a lot of money. How could I pass this up? There are records authenticating it as a royal gift from the Emperor Komei, father of Meiji. It’s known as the Imperial Pendant.”

The gold links of the chain were exquisitely carved in the shape of tiny, intricate chrysanthemums; the pendant itself was a chrysanthemum, with an enormous diamond in the center surrounded by sixteen diamond petals. The superb gems, deep yellow in color, gathered the light in the room and cast it back in a shattering explosion.

“These stones are perfectly matched. The Emperor’s agents searched the world to find enough of these rare yellow diamonds to complete the pendant. As a group, they’re unique.”

Ellen Nash’s eyes, as hard as the gems, became slitted. She had never heard of Emperor Komei or the Imperial Pendant, but she was not invulnerable to beauty, especially when it had a high market value.

“Father, that must be worth a fortune.”

“Believe it or not, it’s been appraised at a million dollars.” There was an arpeggio of gasps; and the warmth in Godfrey Mumford’s voice expired, as if his pleasure had been chilled suddenly. “Well, you’ve seen it, so I’ll put it back in the safe.”

“For God’s sake, father,” cried Christopher, “not in a dinky little home safe! Why don’t you put it in a bank vault?”

“Because I like to take it out every once in a while and look at it, son. I’ve had it here for a long time, and no one’s stolen it yet. By the way, I’m the only one who knows the combination of the safe. I suppose I ought to leave a record of it, in case anything happens to me.”

“I should think so!” said Ellen.

Godfrey’s expression did not change. “I’ll take care of it, Ellen.”

He returned to the wall safe. When he faced them again, the painting hung in place and his hands were empty.

“So there’s what’s left of my estate,” he said. “A piece of historic jewelry worth a million dollars.” His fine face saddened now, as if he had reached the limit of self-discipline. “Wolcott, my old will included a bequest to you of a hundred thousand dollars to finance that expedition to West Africa you’ve always talked about.”

“I know, Godfrey, I know,” said Thorp.

“Now, when I die, I’m afraid your legacy will be only one-fifth that.”

Wolcott Thorp made a face. “I’m getting too old for expeditions. Do we have to talk about these things?”

He said this in a mutter, as if the whole subject were painful to him. Godfrey Mumford turned mercifully to Margaret Caswell.

“Mum, I originally planned a bequest to you and Joanne of a quarter of a million dollar trust fund. Well, I’m not going to make you suffer for my mistake after giving me half your lifetime, at least any more than I can help. The inheritance tax will cut down the pie, but my new will takes ample care of you in a revised trust. I wanted you and Jo to know that.”

He turned to Ellen and Christopher. “What’s left, of course, will go to you children share and share alike. It isn’t what I’d planned, and I know it won’t be what you expected, but you’ll have to make the best of it. I’m sorry.”

“So,” said Ellen with a little snap of her jaws, “am I.”

“Oh, shut up, Ellen,” her brother said.

And there was a silence.

It was broken by Joanne. “Well!

Shall we drink a toast to the birthday boy?” And she made for the rest of the champagne she had ordered from Dune MacLean in the Square (which was round), in High Village, leaving behind her a definitely dismal New Year’s Eve party.

“Saki,” the pseudonym of H. H. Munro, was born in Burma, raised in Devonshire, and in his late teens was taken by his father to Prance, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In his early twenties he served a stint with the Burma police, and then went to London to write. He earned a living as a newspaperman, writing political sketches, and was a foreign correspondent in the Balkans, Russia, and Paris. In his late thirties he returned to London, this time to write seriously — after his own fashion. When World War I exploded in Europe, he enlisted and proved himself an excellent soldier. He was killed in action in 1916.

His chief traits were his whimsicality, sense of humor, love of animals, Highland pride, and indifference to money. In his humorous writing he could be both flippant and deeply satirical; he became famous for his tales of sheer horror. He chose his pen-name from Omar Khayyam, and Christopher Morley once wrote of him: “The empty glass we turn down for him is the fragile, hollow-stemmed goblet meant for the dryest champagne; it is of the finest.”

Here is a Saki story about dusk — “the hour of the defeated.” It was one of Christopher Morley’s favorite Saki tales...

Norman Gortsby sat on a bench in the Park, with his back to a strip of bush-planted sward, fenced by the park railings, and the Row fronting him across a wide stretch of carriage drive. Hyde Park Corner, with its rattle and hoot of traffic, lay immediately to his right.

It was some thirty minutes past six on an early March evening, and dusk had fallen heavily over the scene — dusk mitigated by some faint moonlight and many street lamps. There was a wide emptiness over road and sidewalk, and yet there were many unconsidered figures moving silently through the half light or dotted unobtrusively on bench and chair, scarcely to be distinguished from the shadowed gloom in which they sat.

The scene pleased Gortsby and harmonized with his present mood. Dusk, to his mind, was the hour of the defeated. Men and women, who had fought and lost, who hid their fallen fortunes and dead hopes as far as possible from the scrutiny of the curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming, when their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and unhappy eyes might pass unnoticed, or, at any rate, unrecognized.

A king that is conquered must see strange looks,

So bitter a thing is the heart of man.

The wanderers in the dusk did not choose to have strange looks fasten on them, therefore they came out in this bat-fashion, taking their pleasure sadly in a pleasure-ground that had emptied of its rightful occupants. Beyond the sheltering screen of bushes and palings came a realm of brilliant lights and noisy, rushing traffic. A blazing, many-tiered stretch of windows shone through the dusk and almost dispersed it, marking the haunts of those other people, who held their own in life’s struggle, or at any rate had not had to admit failure.

So Gortsby’s imagination pictured things as he sat on his bench in the almost deserted walk. He was in the mood to count himself among the defeated. Money troubles did not press on him; had he so wished he could have strolled into the thoroughfares of light and noise, and taken his place among the jostling ranks of those who enjoyed prosperity or struggled for it.

He had failed in a more subtle ambition, and for the moment he was heart-sore and disillusioned, and not disinclined to take a certain cynical pleasure in observing and labelling his fellow wanderers as they went their ways in the dark stretches between the lamplights.

On the bench by his side sat an elderly gentleman with a drooping air of defiance that was probably the remaining vestige of self-respect in an individual who had ceased to defy successfully anybody or anything. His clothes could scarcely be called shabby — at least they passed muster in the half light — but one’s imagination could not have pictured the wearer embarking on the purchase of a half-crown box of chocolates or laying out ninepence for a carnation buttonhole.

He belonged unmistakably to that forlorn orchestra to whose piping no one dances; he was one of the world’s lamenters who induces no responsive weeping. As he rose to go, Gortsby imagined him returning to a home circle where he was snubbed and of no account, or to some bleak lodging where his ability to pay a weekly bill was the beginning and end of the interest he inspired.

His retreating figure vanished slowly into the shadows, and his place on the bench was taken almost immediately by a young man, fairly well dressed but scarcely more cheerful of mien than his predecessor. As if to emphasize the fact that the world went badly with him, the newcomer unburdened himself of an angry and very audible expletive as he flung himself into the seat.

“You don’t seem in a very good temper,” said Gortsby, judging that he was expected to take due notice of the demonstration.

The young man turned to him with a look of disarming frankness which put Gortsby instantly on his guard.

“You wouldn’t be in a good temper if you were in the fix I’m in,” the young man said. “I’ve done the silliest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Yes?” said Gortsby dispassionately.

“Came up this afternoon, meaning to stay at the Patagonian Hotel in Berkshire Square,” continued the young man. “When I got there I found it had been pulled down some weeks ago and a cinema theatre run up on the site. The taxi driver recommended me to another hotel some way off and I went there. I just sent a letter to my people, giving them the address, and then I went out to buy some soap — I’d forgotten to pack any and I hate using hotel soap.

“Then I strolled about a bit, had a drink at a bar and looked at the shops, and when I came to turn my steps back to the hotel I suddenly realized that I didn’t remember its name or even what street it was on. There’s a nice predicament for a fellow who hasn’t any friends or connections in London!

“Of course, I can wire to my people for the address, but they won’t get my letter till tomorrow; meantime, I’m without any money, came out with a couple of shillings on me, which went in buying the soap and getting the drink, and here I am, wandering about with twopence in my pocket and nowhere to go for the night.”

There was an eloquent pause after the story had been told.

“I suppose you think I’ve spun you rather an impossible yarn,” said the young man presently, with a suggestion of resentment in his voice.

“Not at all impossible,” said Gortsby judicially. “I remember doing exactly the same thing once in a foreign capital, and on that occasion there were two of us, which made it more remarkable. Luckily, we remembered that the hotel was on a sort of canal, and when we struck the canal we were able to find our way back to the hotel.”

The youth brightened at the reminiscence. “In a foreign city I wouldn’t mind so much,” he said. “One could go to one’s Consul and get the requisite help from him. Here in one’s own land one is far more derelict if one gets into a fix. Unless I can find some decent chap to swallow my story and lend me some money, I seem likely to spend the night on the Embankment. I’m glad, anyhow, that you don’t think the story outrageously improbable.”

He threw a good deal of warmth into the last remark, as though perhaps to indicate his hope that Gortsby did not fall far short of the requisite decency.

“Of course,” said Gortsby slowly, “the weak point of your story is that you can’t produce the soap.”

The young man sat forward hurriedly, felt rapidly in the pockets of his overcoat, and then jumped to his feet.

“I must have lost it,” he muttered angrily.

“To lose a hotel and a cake of soap on one afternoon suggests willful carelessness,” said Gortsby, but the young man scarcely, waited to hear the end of the remark. He flitted away down the path, his head held high, with an air of somewhat jaded jauntiness.

“It was a pity,” mused Gortsby. “The going out to get one’s own soap was the one convincing touch in the whole story, and yet it was just that little detail that brought him to grief. If he had had the brilliant forethought to provide himself with a cake of soap, wrapped and sealed with all the solicitude of the chemist’s counter, he would have been a genius in his particular line. In his particular line genius certainly consists of an infinite capacity for taking precautions.”

With that reflection Gortsby rose to go; as he did so an exclamation of concern escaped him. Lying on the ground by the side of the bench was a small oval packet, wrapped and sealed with the solicitude of a chemist’s counter. It could be nothing else but a cake of soap, and it had evidently fallen out of the youth’s overcoat pocket when he flung himself down onto the seat.

In another moment Gortsby was scudding along the dusk-shrouded path in anxious quest for a youthful figure in a light overcoat. He had nearly given up the search when he caught sight of the object of his pursuit standing irresolutely on the border of the carriage drive, evidently uncertain whether to strike out across the Park or make for the bustling pavements of Knightsbridge.

He turned round sharply with an air of defensive hostility when he found Gortsby hailing him.

“The important witness to the genuineness of your story has turned up,” said Gortsby, holding out the cake of soap. “It must have slid out of your overcoat pocket when you sat down on the seat. I saw it on the ground after you left. You must excuse my disbelief, but appearances were really rather against you, and now, as I appealed to the testimony of the soap I think I ought to abide by its verdict. If the loan of a sovereign is any good to you—”

The young man hastily removed all doubt on the subject by pocketing the coin.

“Here is my card with my address,” continued Gortsby. “Any day this week will do for returning the money, and here is the soap — don’t lose it again; it’s been a good friend to you.”

“Lucky thing your finding it,” said the youth, and then, with a catch in his voice, he blurted out a word or two of thanks and fled headlong in the direction of Knightsbridge.

“Poor boy, he nearly broke down,” said Gortsby to himself. “I don’t wonder either; the relief from his quandary must have been acute. It’s a lesson to me not to be too clever in judging only by circumstantial evidence.”

As Gortsby retraced his steps past the seat where the little drama had taken place he saw an elderly gentleman poking and peering beneath it and on all sides of it, and recognized his earlier fellow occupant.

“Have you lost anything, sir?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, a cake of soap.”

This is the 296th “first story” to be published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine... a charming story, a “gay, carefree, light-hearted” story, with wonderful touches of humor and insight...

The author, fames Powell, is a Canadian in his early thirties. Following graduation from the University of Toronto, he studied and taught in France for three years. Then he worked several years for a New York publisher and for a newspaper in the midwest. At the time he wrote his first-published story, it was a sort of breathing spell, a change of pace, from his work on a first novel.

We certainly look forward to another deeply chuckling and gently ironic story by Mr. Powell...

The old man came up the path that sloped between the benches and flowerbeds, but he stopped short of the edge of the cliff where Brown stood waiting. Instead, he sat down on a bench a few yards away, drew a folded newspaper from his coat pocket, and began to read.

Brown hesitated. His French wasn’t really that good and for a moment he couldn’t think of the verb “to follow.” When he remembered, his chin started to tremble, and throwing his cigarette over the edge he went up to the old man.

“Why are you following me? Is it good to follow people? I do not like being followed. Do you like being followed?” These were all the forms of the verb Brown could muster and rather than start over again, he stopped.

The old man, who had been listening attentively, slipped the newspaper back in his pocket and smiled. “I am afraid you are mistaken, young man. I am not following you.” His English was meticulous and the quiet conviction of his words told Brown it was the truth.

“Oh,” said Brown, and stepped back in confusion.

“Actually,” said the old man, as if to cover the other’s embarrassment, “I come here quite often. The sea is blue; the rocks are white. I have always thought that this would be the ideal place for a visitor like yourself to see our gay, carefree little principality for the first time. Regrettably that is impossible, for to come upon this prospect first, one would have to scale the cliff.”

“Maybe a good place to see San Sebastiano for the last time, then,” said Brown with a half smile.

“Ah, you are leaving us?” asked the old man sadly. “Well, I hope you have seen more of our happy, light-hearted city than the inside of the Casino.”

“I guess that was about as far as I got,” admitted Brown.

“But that is terrible, terrible,” said the old man, throwing up his hands in mock horror. “But all is not lost and if you will permit me I can still point out a few highlights from here.”

He led Brown back to the edge of the cliff. “Below us, of course, is the harbor and over there, the romantic old quarter. Its reputation is exaggerated, I assure you. Our women are not promiscuous; songs have been written about that. On the left you have our celebrated Reptile Museum founded by Prince Adalbert, an ardent herpetologist and the grandfather of our present prince. My father had many stories of the misadventures of the good Prince Adalbert who prowled the streets of San Sebastiano at all hours hunting snakes with his forked stick, returning the salutes of the policemen and chatting quietly to himself.

“And there, behind the Cathedral, you can see the roof of the Casino into which, you are perhaps aware, the citizens of the principality are not allowed to enter. That is quite appropriate. A good host does not laugh at his own jokes.”

Brown took a wrist watch out of his pocket, looked at it, and put it back.

“Am I keeping you? I hope not,” said the old man. “Actually I cannot stay much longer myself. I must see a friend off on the train — the 4:45.”

“You don’t have much time,” warned Brown.

“Enough for a bit more of our history,” said the old man, leading Brown back to the bench. “Were you aware, for example, that our mineral waters were held in high esteem as early as the days of the Romans? One might wonder why, since it is quite sulphurous and abominable. Perhaps they had more horrible diseases in classical times than we do today.

“Within the memory of my grandfather, the elderly and infirm flocked to San Sebastiano to take our waters. They sat on park benches and scowled at our pigeons; they let themselves be pushed along our promenades in wicker chairs; they pulled wry faces and sucked at our mineral waters. But we were more than a spa. We were renowned for personal sobriety and dignified compassion toward those who frequented our life-giving waters.

“Yes, believe it or not, the gay, carefree people of today’s San Sebastiano were all that. In the generation preceding the Franco-Prussian War acute depression of the liver was fashionable and our waters were highly recommended. Those were the fat years for us, years of building, and as it later turned out, of overbuilding. For with the close of the War an epidemic of disorders of the spleen swept across France and non-Germanic Europe. Less carbonated waters came into style and almost overnight our little city was as deserted and forlorn as an overgrown cemetery. Today one is at the top, tomorrow at the bottom.”

Brown’s mouth worked soundlessly. Then he said, “Life is a real double-crosser.”

“Why, that is quite philosophical for someone so young, and an American at that,” smiled the old man.

“Canadian,” said Brown.

“A Canadian, how delightful,” said the old man still smiling.

“You’re going to miss your train,” said Brown.

“I still have a bit more time,” said the old man. “Now let me see. Where were we? Ah, yes. Now, as it happened, a modest, unassuming little Casino had been established on an out-of-the-way street to accommodate the younger, faster set which frequented our little principality at the height of its popularity. A mere accommodation—”

Suddenly the old man clapped a hand to his forehead. “I have just thought of something I should have thought of before,” he said. “Perhaps you can help me. The Canadian and the American dollar are worth the same, are they not?”

Brown stared at him for a moment. “No,” he said finally.

“Then the Canadian dollar is worth more?” said the old man.

“Less,” said Brown.

“Ah, I am sorry,” said the old man. “Forgive me for dwelling on it but would you happen to know the exact—”

“The Canadian dollar is worth between 92 and 93 cents,” said the young man.

“Let us say 93,” insisted the old man graciously. He pursed his lips and calculated. “Fine. Fine,” he said. “I have just had what you would call a false alarm. But let us get back to what we were talking about. Imagine the city fathers’ surprise when at the very time the attraction of our waters declined, the revenue from the Casino showed a healthy increase, due, in part, to our abundance of economical hotels and hungry waiters.

“It soon became obvious that San Sebastiano was at a crossroads. Should we wait, sober, compassionate, with tightened belts for the prodigal elderly and infirm to return? Or should we cut a new path through the history of San Sebastiano, expand the Casino, become gay, hurdy-gurdy, and carefree?

“It was decided to have a referendum. Feelings ran high. A man walking down the street laughs with pure delight at some enchanting thing his daughter, a child of five, had said. He is jumped upon and severely beaten by a group of mineral-water supporters who believed him to be demonstrating in favor of the Casino. A crowd of Casino supporters, returning in an ugly mood from a mass rally, come upon a funeral procession in the street and interpret it as a counter-demonstration by the mineral-water faction. The ensuing clash provoked three solid days of rioting. Et cetera. Et cetera. The outcome of the referendum you know, for it is as you see us now.”

“You know, you’ve missed your friend’s train,” said Brown.

“Why, then I’ll see him off on the next,” said the old man. “As I was about to say, San Sebastiano with its expanded gambling facilities entered what has been described as its ‘laughing years.’ In 1909 an entirely new Casino, constructed in the style of the Ottoman Turk, was opened amid fireworks, balloon ascents, and a magnificent sailboat regatta.

“On the opening day Casimir Vaugirard in his tri-wing Prentis-Jenkins Hedgehog flew from Perpignan to San Sebastiano in a matter of hours. He circled the dome and minaret of the Casino dropping projectiles trailing the colors of the Vaugirards and San Sebastiano, then dipped his wings in a majestic salute to the cheering crowd and crashed into the side of this very hill.

“What might have spelled disaster for us — since tragedy was hardly the mood we hoped to associate with our little principality — became instead a supreme gesture of love when, in the cockpit, his body was found locked in the embrace of his mistress, the celebrated beauty known as Lola.

“Well, missing one train is no excuse for missing the next,” said the old man, “and a few formalities still remain. I trust what I have said will enable you to appreciate what is about to happen.”

“Formalities?” said Brown.

“May I see your passport?” said the old man. Brown stared at the outstretched hand. Nodding toward it, the old man said, “I am the police, you see. Your passport, please.” Brown handed it over.

The old man skimmed down the vital statistics, shook his head sympathetically over the photograph, then thumbed through the pages, turning the passport this way and that to read the frontier stamps.

“But I haven’t done anything wrong,” said Brown.

The old man shrugged genially and without pausing in his examination of the passport, drew an envelope from his pocket and passed it to the young man.

“Mr. Brown, here you will find one second-class railway ticket, San Sebastiano to Paris, and banknotes to the sum of fifty new francs — ten of your dollars, more or less. I would appreciate your checking to see that this is exactly as I say, for I am required to ask you to sign a receipt.”

In the midst of counting the bills, Brown stopped. “But this is crazy. I haven’t done anything.”

The old man closed the passport and handed it back. “Mr. Brown, let me say directly what both you and I know: your coming here this afternoon was for the purpose of doing away with yourself.”

“A lie — an out-and-out lie,” said Brown indignantly.

“No, it is not,” said the old man calmly. “You are not being honest with me.”

“Honest?” shouted Brown. “You’re a fine one to talk about honesty. Didn’t I ask you if you were following me and didn’t you say” — he switched into a falsetto — “I am afraid you are mistaken, young man’?”

“You are not being quite fair, Mr. Brown. Granted I did walk behind you from the Casino. But I was not following you. Except for my superiors’ primitive attitude regarding expenses, I could have come by taxi and arrived here well ahead of you.”

The old man shrugged at Brown’s look of disbelief. “Mr. Brown,” he said, “have you ever considered the possibilities of suicide open to a tourist? He does not have a gun — his intention in coming abroad is rarely to shoot himself. Our pharmacies confuse him and he does not know the name in our language for the poison he might have used with every confidence at home. He distrusts our hotel furniture, and rightly so. Will a chair that looks as though Louis XIV sat in it hold his weight as he ties a rope to the chandelier? And in what store would he buy the rope?

“No, if you think about it, Mr. Brown, there is only one way — to throw oneself from a high place. Here in San Sebastiano there is really only one spot high enough to do the job without risking half measures. And here we are.”

“Look,” said Brown with a facsimile of laughter, “you’ve really made a mistake. I came here to try my luck at the Casino and now I’m off to Florence or some place. I’m making a kind of grand tour.” The old man smiled patiently. “Look,” said Brown, “the whole trip is a reward for my graduating in dentistry from McGill University — that’s in Montreal. When the trip’s over I go back home to Drumheller, Alberta, and go into practice with my father. A guy with his future all cut out for him would be the last person to commit suicide. What I mean is, you don’t have any motive.”

The old man sighed and took a notebook from his pocket. “ ‘On August 15 last,’ ” he read, “ ‘the Eighth Bureau of the Judiciary Police’ ” — he half rose and tipped his hat — “ ‘was alerted by the local American Express office that one Brown, Norman, had that day cashed in the return portion of a first-class airplane ticket, Paris-Montreal-Calgary. Subsequent routine investigation revealed that on the preceding day the subject had checked into the Hotel de l’Avenir and the same afternoon at the Casino had lost chips amounting to $520.

“ ‘The afternoon following the subject’s visit to American Express he lost chips amounting to $450. That evening he sent the following cablegram to a Miss Annabella Brown, Drumheller, Alberta: DEAR AUNT BELLA, MONEY AND RETURN TICKET LOST IN FIRE THAT DESTROYED MY HOTEL. BEST NOT TO WORRY NORMAN SENIOR. $1000 SHOULD COVER IT NICELY. NORMY.

“ ‘August 16, subject loses chips amounting to $1000.’ Miss Brown is very prompt. ‘Subject leaves Casino and walks to the Parc de la Grande Armée’ — which is where we are now — ‘and stands in contemplation at edge of cliff, then leaves park and sends following cablegram: DEAR AUNT BELLA, HOTEL FIRE NO ACCIDENT. HAVE STUMBLED ON VAST INTERNATIONAL PLOT LINKING JAPANESE BEETLES, DISAPPEARANCE OF AMELIA EARHART, AND RADICAL CHANGES IN WEATHER THESE LAST FEW YEARS. CONFIRMS YOUR SUSPICION, WAS NOT SUNSPOTS. HAVE CONTACTED DISILLUSIONED FOREIGN AGENT. NEED $5000 AS PROOF OF MY GOOD FAITH. LET’S KEEP THIS TO OURSELVES. NORMY.

“ ‘August 17, subject’s losses: $5000. That evening sends following cablegram: DEAR AUNT BELLA, WE ARE REALLY ONTO SOMETHING. AGENT AGREES TO BE ON OUR SIDE AND SAP THEM FROM WITHIN. HE SAYS DOUBLE AGENTS GET DOUBLE PAY. SOUNDS FAIR ENOUGH. NEEDS ANOTHER $5000. MUM, DON’T FORGET, IS THE WORD, NORMY.

“ ‘August 18, subject’s losses: $5000. Sends following cablegram: DEAR AUNT BELLA, THINGS COMING TO A HEAD. NEED $5000 FOR INCIDENTAL EXPENSES — MICROFILM, INVISIBLE INK, SECRETARIAL HELP, ETC. ITEMIZED LIST TO FOLLOW. KEEP THIS UNDER YOUR HAT. NORMY.’ ”

The old man looked up from his notebook. “Might I ask you about this Miss Brown?”

“She doesn’t happen to be any of your darn business,” said Brown, through clenched teeth. The old man waited. At last Brown said, “You might say that I’m her favorite nephew. You might say that the money was her life savings.”

“I meant is she a bit — potty? Do you still say ‘potty’?” asked the old man.

“ ‘Peculiar’ might be better,” said Brown.

“I must jot that down,” said the old man, scribbling in his notebook, “And now where were we?

“ ‘August 19, by 5 P.M. subject’s winnings total $38,000; by midnight, $88,000; by closing time, $123,000. Subject returns to hotel where, in answer to inquiry, is informed that next train for Paris is at 1:47 P.M.

“ ‘August 20, subject checks out of hotel at 10:37 A.M., leaves bags at station, wanders through streets looking in store windows. Noon finds subject in front of Casino. Subject smiles as if pleasantly surprised, and with glance at wrist watch, enters Casino.’ ”

The old man closed his notebook and looked up. “By 2:30 you had lost $56,000, and by 3:30, $123,000. And here we are. I must add in conclusion that San Sabastiano for several years now has requested in the most vigorous terms that the railway provide us with a morning service to Paris. Now perhaps we had better go,” he said, preparing to rise.

“Hold on a minute,” said Brown, and he began to slap the palm of one hand with the back of the other. “I have certain rights. You can’t just put me on a train and run me out of town. Nothing you’ve said would hold up in a court of law.”

The old man settled back on the bench. “Ah, now I can understand your hostility,” he said. “Believe me there was never a question of a law having been broken. Consider for yourself how odd it would look if gay, carefree, light-hearted San Sebastiano had a law making it a crime to attempt suicide. What would people say? Why would anyone even dream of committing suicide here?”

“You mean that technically speaking,” said Brown, “I could Jump off this cliff this very moment and you could do nothing?”

The old man nodded. “It would be perfectly legal. But law is a funny thing, Mr. Brown. If some future historian, for example, were to try to understand the people of the Twentieth Century from a study of their books of law alone, would he, do you think, see them as they were, or as they feared they were, or as they hoped they might be?

“A particular case: what would this future historian of ours think of a certain law in force in San Sebastiano which says that our police must clean their revolvers daily — nothing unusual in that — but, the law continues, in a secluded yet public place in the open air? Legend has it that one Sub-Inspector Auguste Petitjean discharged his revolver as he was cleaning it while seated in his bath. The tub and walls, as it happened, were marble, and Sub-Inspector Petitjean was shot seventeen times in as many places by that single ricocheting bullet.

“By some miracle he recovered and returned to the force only to be subsequently discharged when it was discovered that he had developed a psychological block against firing his revolver — or, as another version of the story has it, against taking a bath. Whichever version is correct, the law is there nevertheless. Were you to try to jump I would be obliged to clean my revolver in public and it might accidentally discharge, the bullet striking you in the left calf. Conveniently enough, the hospital is located right next to the railway station.

“I had intended, by the way, to say before that I am sorry your train ticket is second class. By all rights it should be first class, but the authorities view the situation otherwise. You see our Eighth Bureau, dealing exclusively in cases such as yours, is organized into three divisions based on the amount of money lost by the subject — not winnings that happen to be lost again, you understand, but his own personal investment.

“The first division, headed by Inspector Guizot, deals with amounts of $5000 or less: the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. Traditionally his subjects travel third class.

“My own division, the second, deals with amounts of $5000 to $50,000. By the way, we use American dollars as a standard out of simple convenience. That was why I received quite a start a while back when I realized that in your case we were dealing in Canadian dollars. For a moment I was afraid, forgive me, that you might be in Guizot’s division. In any event, traditionally my subjects go second class.

“The third division, under Baron de Mirabelle, deals with sums in excess of $50,000. His subjects, of course, go first class.

“However, a few years ago the railways did away with third class. It was decided that Guizot’s would go second class. What else could they do? Fine, I said, but then I humbly submit that mine should go first class. But the authorities were blind to the justice of it, and de Mirabelle, though sympathetic, kept smiling in that cultured way of his.

“A very distinguished person, the Baron: always in evening dress and with a black patch, sometimes over one eye, sometimes over the other. I often tell the story of how the Baron acquired his eye patch. I like to think it makes my own subjects’ losses appear less significant.

“One day around the end of the last war a large burly soldier arrived in San Sebastiano. He had a system for roulette, as we all do, and $200,000 — the accumulated combat pay and savings of his entire regiment, which he had promised to increase a hundredfold.

“This he promptly proceeded to do. His system was based on what he called his ‘lucky lower-left bicuspid.’ He would survey the roulette table, from number to number, until his bicuspid throbbed. That number he would bet. And he would win astronomical sums, millions, night after night.

“Finally the day arrived when the Casino, short of a miracle, would open its doors for the last time. The soldier dined alone beforehand at Chez Tintin. At the end of the meal there was an altercation. The waiter accused him of overtipping. The soldier threated to ram a wad of banknotes down the waiter’s throat and moved toward him with a bobbing and weaving motion, the result, we were later to learn, of considerable experience in the ring where he was known as—”

The old man thought for a moment. “Breaker Baker, or something like that,” he said. “Politely but firmly the waiter struck him on the head with a bottle, Chateau Pommefrit, 1938. The soldier regained consciousness to find his celebrated tooth on the floor in front of him. He rushed to the Casino and with the tooth clenched in his fist, surveyed the table. Nothing happened.

“But then, as his eye passed number 14, something in his jaw throbbed faintly — his lower-right bicuspid! He bet and lost. Again the bicuspid throbbed, more insistently. He bet again and lost. And so on into the night. By closing time he was penniless and the right side of his jaw was swollen, throbbing as indiscriminately as any common-toothache.

“The next day, when the soldier tried to take his life, Baron de Mirabelle, of course, was waiting. But at the railway station the soldier grew belligerent and came at the Baron, bobbing and weaving, catching the Baron with a right cross to the eye. Finally two Travelers’ Aid people had to force the soldier onto the train. Not a moment too soon either, for at the news of his losses his regiment had mobilized and units had already reached the outskirts of San Sebastiano, thirsting for his blood. The Baron’s eye had a fine bruise for a week. He fancied himself in the eye patch and has worn it to this day.”

“Let’s get back to me,” said Brown. “What if your bullet didn’t stop me? What if I crawled to the edge and with my last breath threw myself to my death?”

“Believe me,” said the old man, “that is just not the way it is done. The suicide, above all others, wants to leave life erect, not on his hands and knees. He wants to savor that last moment. He stops to smoke a final cigarette, to gather his thoughts together into an epigram of one sort of the other, to — and this happens more frequently than you might imagine — to remove his wrist watch. Placing it where? Of course, in his pocket.

“How ‘peculiar’ we are and how lovable, eh, Mr. Brown. And here is something equally convenient for me in my work: how many turn to say, ‘Why are you following me?’? As if it should make any difference to them if I were to leap over the cliff right behind them. No, Mr. Brown, man always wants to pause a bit before spitting in life’s eye, before jumping, before becoming both the spitter and the spittle.”

Brown rested his head in his hands and without looking up, said, “I guess you win.” Then his chin began to tremble again. “I just want you to know that I can see right through you people,” he said. “You don’t give a darn if I kill myself or not as long as I don’t do it here. I can lose my aunt’s life savings in your Casino, oh, sure. But I can’t jump off your gay, carefree little cliff.” He rubbed his eyes. “Well, I say the hell with you all.”

The old man moved to put his hand on the young man’s shoulder, then thought better of it. He leaned forward. “Mr. Brown, we must all set a boundary on our compassion or we would turn our faces to the wall and not get out of bed in the morning. San Sebastiano’s humble frontiers are the limits of mine. You must forgive me if I find that quite enough. Before, when I told you something of our history, I hoped to prepare you to understand why we cannot allow you and the others to carry out your little plans. For what would be the result? A suicide rate, a per capita statistic, so misleading and grotesque that it would reflect on the whole tenor of life in light-hearted, hurdy-gurdy San Sebastiano.

“Besides, aren’t you being a bit severe. The railway ticket and the money will take you to Paris where your Embassy will arrange modest transportation home. Confess your little indiscretion. Give Aunt Bella the pleasure of forgiving her favorite nephew.”

“And what about my father,” said Brown. “Did I tell you he’s got fists like hams? Like hams!” Brown stared down at his shoes and shook his head back and forth.

After watching him for a few moments, the old man looked down at his own shoes and said in a quiet voice, “You know, Mr. Brown, soon I will be retiring and I have often thought these last few years of all the people I have taken to the train. What are they doing? How are they getting on? How many children do they have? Do they, I wonder, ever remember the day Hector Jouvet — that is to say, myself — put them on the train? I am not being sentimental. I tell you this because I want to describe for you a silly daydream of mine, solely because it might amuse you.

“In my daydream it is the day of my retirement. I enter my favorite cafe. Georges, the owner, stands behind the bar reading a newspaper. ‘Good day, Monsieur Jouvet,’ he says. ‘Would you step out back with me for a moment?’

“Puzzled, I follow him out to the back where they have the large room they rent out for banquets. Everything is dark. Suddenly the lights blaze on. I am taken aback. I am surprised. The room is filled with half-remembered faces — stockbrokers, bank tellers, church wardens, trustees of estates of widows and orphans. Across the front wall is a large banner: The Friends of Hector Jouvet. First Annual Convention.

“Amid applause and well wishes I take my place at the head table beside those special people, whoever they might be, who had gone on from their visit to San Sebastiano to positions of eminence in their own countries — a statesman, a bishop, a magnate or two, and — who knows, Mr. Brown? — perhaps even a famous dentist.

“We eat and at the end of the meal I am presented with a gold cigarette lighter. I could show you the very one in a shop window not far from where I live. It is inscribed: To our friend Hector Jouvet from The Friends of Hector Jouvet. Then in six different languages they sing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, and end by pounding on the tables.

“I stand up. I am deeply moved. I always feel this particular moment most vividly and how deeply I am moved. Then I speak. In my mind’s eye I see all this very clearly. But though my mouth is moving I cannot hear what I am saying. I only feel my own astonishment at the wisdom and simplicity of my words. They are saying everything I had wanted to say to each person in the room on his particular day. But I cannot hear the words. I can only see their faces smiling and nodding.”

The old man stopped abruptly and cleared his throat. “But of course all this nonsense takes place only in my imagination. The people I have taken to the train do not know each other. Oh, one or two might meet by chance. Perhaps in his cups, while talking of youthful indiscretions, one might mention Hector Jouvet. ‘What?’ the other might say, ‘you knew Jouvet, too?’ And they might talk of afternoons at the cliffside in San Sebastiano or even of forming a club. But it would come to nothing because they were only one or two.

“How regrettable, Mr. Brown, because I have all their names and they wouldn’t be so hard to locate — except, you understand, it would be out of place for me to take the initiative. As a matter of fact, I carry the list with me should the same idea occur to someone or other as I take him to the train. You might be interested in seeing the list, Mr. Brown. I think I have it here somewhere.”

As the old man fumbled through his pockets, he laughed nervously and said, “I don’t imagine, Mr. Brown, that you would care to be the first president of The Friends of Hector Jouvet?”

Brown looked up from his shoes. “Did I tell you my father was heavyweight champion of the Canadian Army? Did I tell you what they called him because of those big fists of his?” said the young man with a shudder. “They called him The Buster.”

The old man looked puzzled. “Buster Brown. Buster Brown,” he said thoughtfully. “But of course, of course, it was Buster Brown, not Breaker Baker. How stupid of me and how delightful! Buster Brown was the name of the soldier who gave the Baron his eye patch.”

“You mean the one who lost all those millions was my father? The one with the lucky lower-left bicuspid?” said Brown with an astonished and broadening grin.

The old man nodded. “How appropriate he should have turned to dentistry. Your father was the man who almost broke the bank at San Sebastiano. A popular song was written about him at the time. As we walk to the station I will teach it to you, if you like.”

Brown jumped to his feet. “Boy, I’ll say I would,” he said. “Even just enough to hum the tune every once in a while.”

“I’m sure that would be very useful, Mr. Brown,” smiled the old man. “Ah, it is a great day for the Eighth Bureau. First the father and now the son. And after that who knows, eh, Mr. Brown? A fine-looking young man like yourself. Well, come along or we will miss our train.”

He took Brown by the elbow and they started down the path. “Mr. Brown,” said the old man as they went, “do you recall my mentioning The Friends of Hector Jouvet? It occurs to me that if such a club were ever formed it might offer your father an honorary membership. I don’t imagine he’s being invited to many regimental reunions.”

“Of course, it was all pretty weird and sinister. Nevertheless—”

The house was an old one on an old road, miles from anywhere, but the freshly painted sign by its driveway — TOURISTS’ REST — was as reassuring as a cleric’s smile of welcome.

“Let’s,” Grace Martin said, squeezing her husband’s hand. “There’s no telling what we might find!”

Their car was already bulging with antiques collected in six states, but Tom Martin didn’t care. He had just acquired his M.A., a teaching job at a highly regarded prep school, and a beautiful bride. “Done,” he agreed without hesitation.

The warped and weathered door creaked open as they wriggled from the car. A man as old as they had expected, with a crown of white hair glowing in the dusk, limped down the rickety steps to greet them. An equally old woman, doll-dainty, smiled and nodded in the doorway.

It was the woman who escorted the newlyweds to their upstairs room. “Our name is Wiggin,” she said, “but please call me Anna. And when you’ve freshened up, do come down for tea.”

Grace Martin became enthusiastic about the massive four-poster bed while her husband irreverently bounced on it and pronounced it comfortable. They “freshened up” by lamplight and went downstairs to a dim parlor filled with antiques and the smell of age.

Anna Wiggin poured tea into fine old cups, and her husband Jasper, in reply to Grace Martin’s question, said in a cracked voice, “No, we do not collect antiques. Not really. We have just acquired these things as we needed them.

“You are only just married, you two,” Anna said with her smile. “I can always tell.”

“Five days,” Grace admitted.

“You are very young,” Jasper said.

“Not so young. I’m twenty-two. Tom is twenty-four.”

The old man moved his head up and down as if to say he had made a guess and the guess was correct. He did not say how old he and Anna were. He did remark, “I am a little older than my wife, also,” then sipped his tea and added, “You must tell Anna your birthdays. She will read your futures.”

“By our birthdays?” Grace Martin said.

“Oh, yes.”

“How can you do that, Mrs. Wiggin?”

“I can do it.” The doll-woman leaned closer, nodding and nodding. “When were you born, my dear?”

“May eleventh.”

“It won’t work, you know,” Tom Martin said with a grin. “She—” Then puzzled by the old woman’s expression, he was silent.

Jasper rose from his chair and placed his hands on his wife’s frail shoulders. Though all but transparent in the lamplight, the hands were strong and long-fingered. “Now, Anna,” he said softly, “do not be excited.”

Grace Martin sent a half-frightened glance at her husband and said, “Is there something special about that date?”

“It is Anna’s birthday also.”

“Oh, how nice! We are special, then, aren’t we?”

“Don’t go putting on airs,” Tom Martin chided. “You’re forgetting—”

“Now, darling, don’t spoil it.”

“I will get some more tea,” the old man said. “Fresh cups, too. We must have a toast.”

The others were joking about the birthday when he returned from the kitchen with a tray. Placing four full cups on the table, he sat down again. The lamplight splashed his shadow on a wall as he raised a hand and said, “To the day that gave us two such lovely ladies.”

They laughed and drank.

“You see, my dear,” the old man said to his wife, “it never fails.”

“What never fails?” Tom Martin asked.

“Only yesterday Anna was saying we would have to leave this house and find another. So few travelers use this old road any more. And even with many guests we sometimes wait years, of course.”

“Wait for what?” Tom said.

“They have to have the same birthday, you see.”

Tom nodded solemnly. It was past the old folks’ bedtime, he supposed. When you were that old, a break with custom could make the mind a bit fuzzy. “Well, of course—” He started to rise. Grace and he had had a long day too, more than three hundred miles of driving.

“Wait, please,” Jasper Wiggin said. “It is only fair that you understand.”

With a tolerant smile Tom sank down again.

“There is a mathematical master plan, you see,” the old man said. “Each day so many people are born, so many die. The plan insures a balance.”

“Really?” Tom suppressed a yawn.

“I can simplify it for you, I think, if you will pay close attention. Each date — that is to say, each eleventh of May or ninth of June or sixth of December and so forth — is a compartment in time. Now suppose a thousand people are born today, to take their place with all the thousands born on this date in previous years. If the plan were perfect, all those born today would live exactly a year longer than those born one year ago, and so on. You follow me?”

“Uh-huh,” Tom said sleepily.

“But the plan is not perfect. There is a thinning out through sickness and accidents — there has been from the beginning — and as a consequence, some of those born today will die before the expiration date, and others will live beyond it to maintain the balance.”

“Sure,” Tom mumbled.

“Each time compartment in each of the time zones is controlled this way. Life moves according to mathematics, just as the stars do.”

“Remarkable,” Tom said. Across the table his wife Grace was practically asleep. “What about the normal increase in population?”

“Oh, that’s accounted for. So are wars, plagues, and things of that sort. If we had more time, I could make it all quite clear.”

“You discovered this yourself, Mr. Wiggin?”

“Oh, no. There was a man from Europe staying with us one summer — a mathematical genius named Marek Dziok. Not in this house, of course; we have moved many times since then. Dziok had an accident — he was very old, and one night he fell down the stairs, poor man — but before he died, he took us into his confidence.”

“I see.”

“You don’t believe me?” Jasper Wiggin said. “Dziok was writing a book — a philosophy based on his mathematics. He never finished it. But I have the manuscript...” He left his chair and limped to a bookcase, from which he lifted out a thin, paper-bound sheaf of papers. “Perhaps you would like — but no, you won’t have time.” Shaking his head, he put the sheaf of pages back.

“I guess I’d better take my wife to bed,” Tom Martin said. “She’s asleep.”

“Yes, it works faster on women.”

“What works faster?”

“The powder.”

“You mean you put something—” Staring at his wife, Tom placed his hands flat on the table and pushed himself erect. It required enormous effort. “You mean—”

“You haven’t been listening, have you?” the old man complained sadly. “And I’ve tried so hard to explain. Your wife and mine share the same time compartment, don’t you see? You know yourself by now that Anna and I are much older than people get to be naturally. There’s only the one way to do it.”

“By... by killing off—”

“Precisely.”

“And you think you’re going to kill Grace?”

“It’s been nineteen years since the last one for Anna,” the old man sighed. “Hasn’t it, dear?”

The doll-woman nodded. “Jasper has been luckier. He had one eight years ago.”

“You’re crazy!” Tom Martin shouted. “Both of you, you’re crazy! Grace, wake up! We’re getting out of here!” But when he leaned across the table to shake his wife awake, his legs went limp. He collapsed onto his chair. His head fell on his hands.

After a moment he was able with terrible concentration to bring the faces of Jasper and Anna Wiggin into focus again. There was something he had to remember — something he or they had said earlier, or he should have said but hadn’t...

“It won’t hurt, you know,” the old man was saying sympathetically. “You’ll both be asleep.”

“Both... both...”

“Oh, yes. We’ll have to kill you too, of course. Otherwise you’d tell.”

“Wait,” Tom whispered. The room was filling with shadows now. “Wait...”

“But it won’t be a waste, your dying. Somebody in your compartment will benefit, you know. Somebody with your birthday.”

“Birthday,” Tom repeated. That was it — birthday. “You’re wrong about Grace — about — her — birthday.” He made a supreme effort to get the words out before it was too late. “I tried — to tell you. She wasn’t born May eleventh—”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Martin,” the old man said sadly.

“No, no, it’s true! She was born May eleventh in Manila. The Philippines. Her father taught — taught college there. Different — time — zone. Don’t you see? A whole — day — different—”

The room went dark. In the darkness, though, he thought he heard the old woman begin to weep, and was sure he heard the old man saying, “Now, now, Anna, don’t do that. There will be another one before too long.”

Then nothing...

The title of the story speaks for itself. But don’t jump to conclusions — EQMM has not changed its editorial policy... this is a most enjoyable story!

With one brown knee folded over the other like the knot in a pretzel, Professor Amos Cooney sprawled in his canvas chair, watching his wife’s knitting needles chew orange and black yarns into the scarf he’d unwrap, with cries of delight, on his 75th birthday dinner. Already, Professor Cooney observed with some trepidation, his neckpiece was six feet long and wide enough to conceal the Notre Dame backfield.

With a slight shudder he brought his mind back to the business at hand — the death of the manager of the PennyWise Supermarket. “We’ll send flowers in the name of the Club,” he said. “Mr. King often assisted me when I visited his store to buy our groceries.”

Spread out on cotton blankets and beach towels, and oiled like a school of Channel swimmers, lay the other members of the Spice Pond Swimming Club — a euphemism for what could more accurately be called the Spice Pond Nudist Camp. The newspaper which told of King’s death — one week after the $40,000 robbery during which he’d been shot — was crumpled beside Anne Anders’ elbow. “He was always so cheerful,” she mused. “He’d come bouncing into the Bank half an hour before the regular opening time, tell me how much money he wanted in each denomination, then chatter and kid with me so that I usually had to count it out three times. Probably I was the last person to see Mr. King before he was shot — except the murderers, of course. I visited him — Mr. King, I mean — at the hospital, but he never regained consciousness.”

“And now he’s dead,” Frank Ferguson said. “The police aren’t looking for thieves — now they’re looking for a pair of murderers.”

“They’ll never find ’em,” Jason Bailey, the newest member of the Nudist Camp, predicted. “Those eye masks—”

“Half masks, or dominoes,” Professor Cooney murmured.

“—made a good disguise,” Bailey continued, wagging his red beard. “The thieves were never identified, so they probably will never be caught. Darned shame, too.”

“Forty thousand bucks will take two men a long way from Pottawattamie, Indiana, in a week,” Frank Ferguson, Jr., thirteen years old, observed. “I’ll bet they don’t even know that Mr. King died today — or care.”

“They’ll find out,” Professor Cooney said, “when a policeman tells them. Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, we have a less serious matter to consider. According to Miss Toffler, our camp had an uninvited visitor this morning.”

Mary Cooney looked up from her endless scarf. “What did he look like, Tina?” she asked.

“A little man with a face like a fist, all chin and nose and forehead,” Miss Toffler said.

“When was this?” Frank Ferguson asked.

“Early.” Tina propped her sunglasses up on her forehead, revealing a pair of brown and sincere eyes. “I woke up about five thirty. This is my first day of vacation, and I didn’t want to waste a minute of sunlight. I’ve gotten pretty pale over the winter. Anyway, I went to the kitchen to fill the percolator and plug it in. Then I ran down here to the pond for an eye-opener swim. I was about halfway when I saw this fellow in khaki trousers, heavy shoes, a light jacket, and a red cap. He was skulking over by the entrance road, as if he were waiting for someone.”

“My goodness,” Anne Anders said. “Anybody should be ashamed to be wearing all those clothes on such a beautiful spring day.”

“Maybe he was,” Tina said. “The instant he saw me he took off behind the toolshed. I ran to wake up Jason and Professor Cooney, and they tried to find the man.”

“I ran all the way to the entrance gate,” Amos Cooney said, scratching at a fresh briar-scratch on his right thigh. “The electric lock hadn’t been tampered with, and the gate was closed. Meanwhile Jason searched the buildings, but there was no sign of our guest. Tell them what else you saw, Tina.”

“I swam across the pond and back,” she said. “When I stepped out onto the beach to get my towel, I looked up toward the highway and saw a flash of light — like the reflection off the lens of a telescope or a pair of binoculars. I dropped the towel and jumped right back into the pond.”

“Modest girl,” the Professor said. He drew back his feet to make way for tanned four-year-olds, the Ferguson twins, scampering by in chase of their ragged puppy. The trio splashed into the shallows of Spice Pond, yipping in fine disregard of their elders. “I would guess that our spy perched himself on the scaffolding of the billboards beside the highway, the only vantage point from which one can peer into our camp,” Cooney added.

“We can’t allow that sort of thing,” Frank Ferguson said. He was father to six of the children who shouted and jumped around them, and of a seventh held in Frances’ arms beside him. “What would happen if this spy had a camera with him, one with a telephoto lens?”

“Doom,” Jason Bailey boomed over his beard.

“My goodness,” Anne Anders whispered. Her blush slipped over her face and down her body like a pink shift. “What would Mr. Mueller, the chief cashier, say if someone showed him a picture of me dressed like this?”

“First ‘Wow!’ — then ‘You’re fired!’ ” Jason Bailey guessed. He smoothed his mustache into line with his beard, gazing up toward the trees that screened the grounds of the Spice Pond Nudist Camp (Swimming Club) from the public highway.

“I’d be out of a job faster than you can say ‘Unemployment Compensation,’ ” Frank Ferguson said. “Pictures of me and Frances and the kids romping around au naturel out here would be held incompatible with the dignity expected of the manager of the Pottawattamie office of the State Employment Service. Our legislators are pretty square.”

Professor Cooney tossed a pebble out into the pond, splashing the flailing pup. “It is deplorable that we lack the freedom our friends on the continent enjoy,” he said. “In England, Germany, Finland, nudism is no more looked down on than stamp collecting. Our problem simply proves that we have years to spend yet, educating our fellow Americans on the naturist way of life.”

“We haven’t got years, Professor,” Frances Ferguson pointed out. “Frank and I have a two-week vacation, which I’d just as soon not waste chasing off a Peeping Tom.” Her slim body, flecked with cinnamon freckles, belied her status as a seven-times mother — although the baby in her arms, whose diaper made him overdressed in this company, helped remind them.

“I say, let’s call the police,” Tina Toffler said.

“They’d only tell us to put on pants,” Jason Bailey growled. “You know how they treated folks caught wearing monokinis on Chicago beaches, those topless bathing suits? Well, they’d be even less sympathetic toward all of us in nokinis.”

“We have a trespasser,” Cooney said. “I will refer to him as Mr. Peeper.” He sprang up from his canvas chair to pace the sand in his splayed bare feet, very much the popular image of the absent-minded professor, one who’d gone directly from the shower room to the classroom. “Our problem is to utilize Mr. Peeper’s psychological moment to our advantage.”

“Psychological moment?” Anne Anders asked, wrinkling her nose. “Gee whiz, Professor, Now is the moment.”

“The phrase, my dear, refers not to time but to leverage,” Amos Cooney lectured. He turned to one side as though expecting to find a blackboard behind him, his fingers pinched as though he were holding a piece of chalk. “It is an engineering term that we scientists of the mind have borrowed. You suggest, Miss Toffler, that we call the police. I counter with the proposal that we cause Mr. Peeper, himself, to call the police.”

“Dearest, you’re getting awfully pedantic,” Mary Cooney observed, looking up from her Halloween-colored scarf.

“To be brief, then, for brevity is the soul of wit,” Cooney said, flashing a grin toward his wife, “I propose that we put on a one-act playlet for a one-man audience. No ordinary play, my friends. A murder.”

“We’ve had our murder in Pottawattamie,” Jason Bailey said. “It’s not presently a popular sport.”

“Bear with me,” Cooney said, pacing again, one finger held alongside his nose. “We have a voyeur in the billboards, a fellow spying on our innocent amusements through guilty opera glasses — or even, as Mr. Ferguson suggests, through the viewfinder of an unauthorized camera. So? So we give him a real show, a plot to shake him more deeply than even the sight of our lovely Tina, here, or Anne, or Frances, or my Mary’s maturer charms. We commit a murder for him to see and report.”

Jason Bailey leaned back on his elbows, laughing. “A murder? Who’s going to volunteer to get himself killed?”

“I will,” Frank Ferguson said. “Perhaps a clean-living young architect like you never heard of the old badger game, Jason. Here’s how it works. You come storming up to me aiming a pistol loaded with blanks, waving it and threatening to blow my head off. I back up, protesting innocence. You draw a bead and fire. I slap a handful of ketchup, held ready for that purpose, to my chest. Ka-pow! Splat! Argh! I stumble backwards, gory with tomato sauce, and fall lifeless to the sand.”

“You’ve been reading our comic books, Dad,” Junior Ferguson said.

Jason Bailey stood up and bored a toe into the sand. “You teach psychology, Professor Cooney, but I think you’re wrong if you think Mr. Peeper will be persuaded to run to the cops. He’d just run. At most, he’d phone in an anonymous tip. Why should a man admit to the Pottawattomie police that he’s been sneaking telescopic peeks at our pretty girls in their birthday suits?”

“Because of Mr. King’s murder,” Amos Cooney said. “Mr. Peeper, filled for the moment with a citizen’s urge to improve the public peace — and morals — will be driven toward us, not away.”

“We’ve got to try something,” Tina Toffler said. “Maybe the Spice Pond Swimming Club is everything it says on our membership form — The Midwest’s Oldest, Newest Nature Camp; but to outsiders, nudism means revels, Roman orgies, and wickedness. We’ve got to preserve our privacy or we’ll lose our Club.”

“My goodness,” Anne Anders said. “If I knew that photographs of me were being passed around in Pottawattomie bars and locker rooms, I’d just die! I really would. I’d have to leave home. My family would never understand — especially Daddy. I could talk till I was blue in the face about the philosophical, psychological, and physiological values of sun culture, the way Professor Cooney does, but Daddy would just blush and disown me.”

“What we should do,” Jason Bailey announced, lending his statement all the authority of his jutting chin and beard, “is to sneak up to that billboard, grab hold of Mr. Peeper, and bust him one in the mouth. Professor Cooney, you’re the Club’s president and a teacher, but you just don’t know how to handle sneaky characters.”

“I prefer,” Amos Cooney said, “finesse to fist-in-the-face.”

“Prof, the cops are busy,” Jason went on. “They’re trying to get a lead on those two guys in Lone Ranger masks who shot Mr. King. Now, do you think they’ll be amused when they come howling up here to catch another murderer and we tell ’em it was all a charade planned to trap a Peeping Tom? Just you see. They’ll order us all into ankle-length Mother Hubbards.”

“Don’t be stubborn, Jason,” Frances Ferguson said. “It can’t do any harm for you to ‘murder’ Frank, and it might solve our problem.”

“I’ll get the ketchup, Dad,” Frank Junior volunteered. He raced toward the kitchen door of the Spice Pond clubhouse, leaping across the canvas-covered rotisserie en route.

“Who’s got a gun?” Amos Cooney inquired.

“The twins’ cowboy outfits are in the back seat of our station wagon,” Frances Ferguson said.

“Do they go Bang?” Anne Anders asked.

“They go bang and they smoke and look lethal enough to concern the U.S. Disarmament Commission,” Mrs. Ferguson assured the girl. “For seven-ninety-eight, plus tax, they’d better show some action.”

Young Frank trotted back to the pond with a squeeze bottle of ketchup concealed from the Peeper in a folded dishtowel. “That’s fine,” his father said. “Now we’ll have to make certain our watcher is on post up in his billboard.”

Amos Cooney gazed over his spectacles at the three younger women. “Ladies, if you’ll saunter toward the clubhouse like pedestrian Ladies Godiva, I’m sure you’ll catch our voyeur’s eye. Frank, keep a careful watch out toward the highway. Don’t look directly at Mr. Peeper — we don’t want to frighten him off.”

Anne Anders sat quite still, her knees hunched up to her chin. “I don’t think I can do it,” she said. “Being spied on makes my flesh creep. If Mr. Peeper is so interested in naturism, why doesn’t he just join the Spice Pond Swimming Club? There’s plenty of sun for one more member.”

“Think, Miss Anders, think!” Professor Cooney said. “A person must demonstrate excellent moral character to become a member of our little society. Correct? Mr. Peeper is not a person of good moral character. Therefore, he must spy on us, condemned forever to be an outsider, a looker-in upon our gentle revels. Until—” he pinched off his spectacles and wagged them at her — “until we bring him in here and prove the wholesomeness of the nudist way, of the sunlit path to health.”

Jason Bailey grunted, still unconvinced. “I’d a lot rather ease up through the woods as I said, catch the guy, and make him eat his camera or telescope or whatever. He could put your ketchup on ’em, Frank.”

Tina Toffler tapped her sunglasses down into place on her nose. “Here we go,” she said, grabbing the reluctant Anne Anders’ arm. “Frances, give Frank the baby.” The three women walked toward the clubhouse, as tense as though children were following them with snowballs.

“He’s there!” young Frank whispered. “I saw something move — and a glint of light.”

“Good,” Professor Cooney said. He rubbed his hands together. “Thus the white mouse enters our maze.”

“Amos,” Mary Cooney observed, taking scissors to the two balls of yarn and ending her birthday scarf at last, “sometimes you act all of ten years old.”

“Practical psychology, my dear, is my passion,” the Professor said. “Mr. Bailey, if you’ll get one of those toy pistols from the Ferguson automobile, we’ll hit the boards with our little farce.”

Frank Ferguson, preparing his prop, squirted a handful of ketchup into his right palm.

“Understand,” Jason Bailey said, “I’m playing this role under protest. If your amateur theatricals turn out to be a turkey, don’t blame the man who’s playing the heavy.” He got up and walked around the canvas-covered rotisserie — a plastic bubble in which one could sunbathe in the coldest weather — toward the parking lot.

“I suggest we adjourn to the infants’ wading pool, up the hill,” Amos Cooney said. “It will serve as a stage easily visible from Mr. Peeper’s billboard balcony.”

“Theater in the round is all the rage nowadays,” Frank Ferguson remarked. He looked down into his ketchup-filled hand. “However our audience reacts,” he said, “I’m a cinch to be hit with tomato.”

“Everybody be casual,” Cooney cautioned his amateur troupe. “If the other Club members, over on the volleyball court and in the pond, don’t realize what’s going on, they’ll act even more realistically. Frank, you be especially careful not to smile.”

“I’m a Method Actor,” the victim designate said. “I’m thinking of all the things in my past that should have got me shot, and didn’t. The thought will keep me properly grim.” They walked up beside the wading pool. “Here comes my nemesis,” Ferguson said.

Approaching the water-filled rubber doughnut in which the Club’s babies dunked were Tina Toffler and Jason Bailey. Chasing Bailey was Tommy Ferguson, the right-handed twin, screaming that the red-bearded man had stolen his pistol. Pure ham all the way, Bailey held the toy gun down his right side, his face screwed up in an expression of insane anger. “One of us,” he shouted, stepping over four-year-old Linda Walters, who was up to her navel in mudpies, “has got to go!”

“No, Jason!” Tina screamed, seizing his gun hand.

“It’s too late now to stop me,” Bailey yelled. He lifted the gun. “Take that, Ferguson, you rat!”

The toy gun behaved with all the vigor that the television advertisements of it had promised. Crash! Twang-whee! Smoke curled out of the muzzle. Little Tommy danced around Bailey’s knees, crying that he wanted his gun back.

Frank Ferguson slapped his right, or ketchup, hand to his chest, leaped into the air, landed to reel about on one heel, his head back and his arms spread, then fell backward into the wading pool, narrowly missing young Miss Walters, who was washing off her mud shovel.

“Help!” Professor Cooney shouted. “Frank has been shot!”

Bill Walters, one of the nudists not in on the plot, ran up to grab Jason Bailey around the throat and shake him till the gun dropped to the ground. “You trying to give nudism a bad name?” he demanded.

“It’s just a toy, Bill, but don’t let on,” Bailey said.

“What are you nuts up to, Jason?” Walters asked.

“Trot me into the clubhouse, under the gun,” Bailey instructed him. “I’ll explain everything inside.”

“The way everybody’s acting, somebody must have spiked the breakfast coffee,” Walters said. “Okay, Bailey. March. Don’t try any tricks, or I’ll blow a hole right through your picture tube.”

His hands held high, Bailey allowed himself to be herded into the clubhouse, out of Mr. Peeper’s sight. “It’s always the man with the beard who’s cast as the villain,” he grumbled.

Frank Ferguson lay in the wading pool, only his knees visible over the rubber wall. Linda Walters peered down at him. “Big people supposed to swim in the pond,” she pointed out.

“Go away, Linda,” Ferguson muttered.

“All right.” The youngster waddled off to retrieve her bucket, then hurried into the clubhouse to catch the rest of the show.

Frank Junior trotted out with a chair on his head. “Help me, Professor Cooney,” he shouted. Together, the director of the play and young Ferguson lifted the temporary corpse onto the chair and bore it between them like a palanquin, dripping ketchup, into the clubhouse’s kitchen door.

Ferguson washed off the rest of the ketchup at the sink. “Now we’ve got to wait, sweating out the reviews,” he said.

“We wait,” Cooney agreed. He walked over to the stove, lifted the lid from a bubbling kettle, and sniffed. “Fortunately, it is nearly lunchtime, as this splendid-smelling pepperpot soup the ladies have prepared reminds me,” he said. His spectacles steamed up, so the Professor stepped back from the stove.

“It doesn’t seem right, our feeding our faces while poor Frank Ferguson’s body’s growing cold,” Tina Toffler remarked, placing a plate on the table before the corpse.

“Don’t write me off before I’ve had a second helping,” Ferguson said. “Dying is hard work. Please pass the coffee.”

A telephone jangled out on the sundeck. “The gate phone!” Cooney exulted, jumping to his feet. He’d been trying on the orange-and-black scarf for size. One end nearly tripped him as he ran to grab the phone off its cradle. “Yes?” The answer caused Cooney to muffle the mouthpiece with the tail of his scarf. “It worked!” he shouted. “This is Sergeant Rolfe calling, of the Pottawattomie Police. He wants to come in.”

“So push the gate button, Professor,” Jason Bailey suggested.

“Of course.” Cooney leaned on the button, then spoke into the phone. “Open the gate while the buzzer’s sounding, Sergeant, and please remember to close it after you.”

Frank Ferguson pushed back his plate, gulped a mouthful of coffee, and stood up. “Visitors coming!” he shouted. “Everybody get into formal dress.”

“Darn,” said one of the teen-aged boys, shoveling a last forkful into his mouth. “Ever’thin’ will get cold.” He ran with the others to the men’s locker room to put on swim trunks. The girls and women scampered to their lockers on the far side of the sundeck, to return adjusting shorts and halters that could pass muster on the most conservative public beach.

Sergeant Rolfe, tall and lean as a Texan’s notion of a Texan, stopped his sand-colored police sedan before the clubhouse. He got out to gaze around the playground above Spice Pond. Professor Cooney, wearing the ragged khaki trunks that had seen scant service during his sixty years in the naturist movement, trotted out to greet the policeman.

“Welcome to the Spice Pond Swimming Club, Sergeant,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Amos Cooney.”

“Of course you are, Professor,” Sergeant Rolfe said, shaking the old man’s hand. “I took your course in Abnormal Psychology three years ago.”

“I remember, Edward,” the Professor said. “You made good grades, too.”

“Perhaps abnormal psychology might help me understand the events of a few minutes ago,” Rolfe suggested, following Cooney into the clubhouse. “Where is the man who was so unconvincingly shot to death?”

“Up and about, able to take nourishment,” Frank Ferguson said. He introduced himself to Rolfe, then demanded, “What do you mean, so unconvincingly?”

“A man who’s been shot dead seldom leaps in an entrechat, twirls like a drunken dervish, and goes down cutting didoes like a cat on hot bricks,” the sergeant said. “In my experience, such a victim says ‘Oof!’ and collapses.”

“Perhaps I overacted a bit,” Ferguson admitted reluctantly. “I’ll bear your criticism in mind for our next production.”

“If you’d care to take lunch with us, Sergeant, I’ll explain what your informant saw, and ask a favor of you,” Amos Cooney said.

“Coffee would be welcome,” Rolfe agreed. He walked into the dining hall and allowed himself to be introduced to the few members of the Spice Pond Swimming Club he didn’t already know. Then he sat down and cuddled his hands around a coffee cup to hear Professor Cooney’s story.

“You see,” Amos Cooney began, “we’ve been bothered by a trespasser.”

“A fellow about five-feet-three, wearing highlaced boots, light brown trousers, a faded blue jacket, and a red cap,” Sergeant Rolfe specified. “Right?”

“And a face like a fist,” Tina Toffler added, speaking across the table.

“That’s my man,” Rolfe said.

“You’ve seen him?” Frank Ferguson demanded.

“Not since early this morning,” the policeman said. He savored the coffee. “What was your little demonstration out by the wading pool supposed to accomplish, Professor?”

“I told them it was silly,” Jason Bailey said.

“Our efforts have borne fruit,” Professor Cooney pointed out. “Our purpose, Edward my boy, was to motivate Mr. Peeper — the fellow in the red cap, who scurried from the camp only to perch in the billboards with binoculars — to motivate him to call the police. When you got here, Sergeant, we intended to inquire of you who had reported the supposed murder. Knowing who Mr. Peeper was, we could then persuade him to respect our privacy. I fully expected your witness to come with you, Edward.”

“You haven’t seen him?”

“I saw him about six o’clock this morning,” Tina Toffler said. “He was standing by the entrance road. When he saw me, he ran and hid.”

“His name,” Rolfe said, “is Boots MacClure. Last night he told a bartender that he had a fortune at his fingertips. The bartender told me. Bearing in mind Mr. MacClure’s arrest record, I determined to follow him to his fortune. It seemed possible that he was one of the two masked gunmen who shot Mr. King at the PennyWise Supermarket last week, and made off with forty thousand dollars. I trailed MacClure here to the camp, early this morning. He came in and he hasn’t left. Professor Cooney, with your permission, I’ll inspect the grounds. MacClure is here somewhere.”

“I’ll come along,” Jason Bailey volunteered. “In case you find the man, you may need help.”

“Glad to have you, Mr. Bailey,” Sergeant Rolfe said.

The touring policeman viewed the kids’ wading pool, went down to Spice Pond to stare into the clear water that might be hiding the wanted man’s body, walked north to the gulch where the railroad bounded the camp, and searched through the woods by the highway.

“No sign of him,” Jason Bailey said. “He probably sneaked out.”

“I think not,” the sergeant said. “Let’s look in the toolshed, and then explore your clubhouse. Boots MacClure is here, I’m certain.”

MacClure didn’t seem to be. He wasn’t hiding in the coffin-sized box where the camp’s croquet equipment was stored, or crouched by the garbage disposal unit under the sink, nor did MacClure occupy the narrow crawl space under the clubhouse. Rolfe finally stopped beside the rotisserie, covered through the spring and summer with its sheath of canvas.

“It’s the rotisserie — a plastic hood,” Amos Cooney explained. “Some of our members, wishing to retain their tans through the winter, bask in there, snug as toast.”

“It’s the only place we haven’t searched,” Rolfe said. He tugged at the tie ropes and peeled the canvas back from the plastic bubble.

Inside, lying on his face, was Mr. Boots MacClure. The camp’s best Swedish-steel carving knife protruded from his ribs.

“Keep the kids away,” Sergeant Rolfe said. He knelt to peer through the plastic. “Every minute my hunch looks righter,” he murmured. “MacClure was one of the two PennyWise thieves, he came up here to meet his partner, and possibly to collect his half of the loot. King’s death had made MacClure nervous — he wanted to get paid off so he could cut out.”

“So he got paid off and cut up,” Jason Bailey said. He stroked his beard with a thoughtful air. “Sergeant, do you think the robbery money is up here at Spice Pond?”

“I’d be surprised if it weren’t,” the policeman said. He tugged the canvas back over the rotisserie, concealing the corpse till the coroner could see it. “Let’s go inside. I’ve got to make some phone calls.”

“What a horrible thing to happen,” Amos Cooney said. “It’s a shame one of us didn’t find MacClure before he was killed.”

“One of you did,” Rolfe said. He’d phoned into town for an ambulance, the Pottawattomie Police photographer, and the coroner. “May I have some more coffee?”

“Of course,” Anne Anders said. “Too bad that liquor isn’t allowed here. Something stronger than coffee might be a comfort.”

“It’s too bad that murder isn’t also off-limits here,” Jason Bailey said. He sat down between the policeman and Amos Cooney and pushed his empty cup forward for a refill. “Who do you think did it? Who was MacClure’s partner, the person who killed him?”

“Can’t say yet,” Rolfe admitted. “The only description we have is that both men wore those oval masks over their eyes—”

“—called dominoes,” Professor Cooney insisted. “Originally the word came from the Latin dominus, or master — a fascinating etymology—”

“Amos,” Mary Cooney cautioned. “You’re being professorial at a very awkward moment.”

“An eye mask,” Sergeant Rolfe said, persisting in his error. “Why not a handkerchief over the nose and mouth?” Anne Anders filled his cup with hot coffee. “Thank you,” the policeman said.

Reaching for his cup, Rolfe bumped it with the back of his hand, slopping the steaming fluid onto the table in front of Jason Bailey who leaped up to keep from being burned. As he rose, Sergeant Rolfe plucked Bailey’s red beard. The policeman was holding the triangle of false hair by the time Jason Bailey got’ to his feet, barefaced.

Rolfe unfolded from the table and eased his pistol around toward Bailey’s middle. “A domino, as the Professor calls that sort of mask, leaves the chin bare,” he observed. “You shaved for the robbery, having prepared a false mustache and beard to glue on afterwards. Both thieves were bare-faced — therefore, bearded and mustached Jason Bailey would never even be suspected.”

The false hair now lay on the table beside Rolfe’s spilled coffee. “There’s no money here,” Jason Bailey said. Where the spirit gum had pulled free from his chin and upper lip, the skin was red and fuzzy. “MacClure was knifed by another trespasser.”

“I propose,” Amos Cooney said, “once the unfortunate Boots MacClure has been removed, to dig into the ground beneath the rotisserie. The man who hid a corpse there might have used the same safe-deposit box before.”

“You haven’t got a thing against me, Sergeant,” Jason Bailey went on, his voice shaking slightly. “Wearing a false beard is no felony.”

“The same Peeping Tom who so embarrassed Miss Toffler saw Boots MacClure run through the kitchen door,” Rolfe said. “He also saw Professor Cooney take off up the road, and another man, Jason Bailey, go into the clubhouse after MacClure. The Peeping Tom’s testimony will convict you, Bailey.”

Anne Anders was blushing again. “It was you up there in that catbird seat, wasn’t it, Sergeant Rolfe? Not MacClure? My goodness! Watching us run around in no more than a coat of tan—”

The policeman smiled. “My mind was on my work, Miss Anders,” he said. “I’ll admit, however, that I’ve never had a more delightful stakeout.”

A good cop never manages to get tough enough to keep things from getting to him, and stinging the few soft parts he has left inside...

Banning knew how it was with me, knew I couldn’t get the dead face of the Miller kid out of my mind. It was he who talked me into taking two weeks off in the spring.

I had taken my time packing; so, well after dark, I was roaring up Route 14 north out of Williamsport, my hands light and easy on the wheel of Banning’s car. Mine was in the shop and he had insisted.

There was one of those Pennsylvania fogs. It was just heavy enough so that I didn’t dare pass the car ahead of me, and was content to cruise along just far enough behind him so that his twin taillights made a red glow on the fog that tore by in shreds from the breeze of his fast travel.

It was hypnotic, driving behind the other car, and, as I drove, I thought back over the last ten years and wondered why I had become a cop. Lots of security, sure, but damn low pay. And you never manage to get tough enough to keep things from getting to you, from getting down through your thickened hide and stinging the few soft parts you had left.

I thought of the Miller kid and of the hammer murders in the shanty down by the river, and the gray, bloated look of the bodies that came out of the river. Violence. Diseases of the mind. Shifty eyes. A thousand lineups. You walk into small, dingy sitting rooms and you can smell the blood in the air and hear a woman moaning. It’s a dirty business. Thankless.

In her own way, Paula was a patron of the arts; and she was willing to prove it — in her own peculiar way...

Paula Thorpe drank three cups of coffee, slowly, without being interrupted by so much as a glance from her two breakfast companions. There they sat, the pair of them: Howard, her husband of six months, poring over Art Treasures of Ancient Syria; and his mother, a fat little mountain of a woman squeezed into a wheel chair, applying herself assiduously to the one pursuit which fully engaged her interest — eating.

Paula slammed her empty cup down into its saucer. Mother Thorpe lifted her head at the sound like a startled rabbit and hastily snatched the last blueberry muffin from the bun warmer. Howard merely shifted in his chair and murmured, without looking up, “Excellent breakfast, my dear.”

Paula sighed, gathered up a stack of dishes, and carried them out to the kitchen.

From earliest memory Paula had yearned for the company of artists. She had not been able to coax forth any noticeable talent of her own, so she had set her sights on what seemed the next best means of entry into the charmed circle — to be the guiding genius of some creative spirit.

And then, at a cocktail party last fall, she met Howard Thorpe. His gaunt, tousle-haired good looks and his habit of protracted, brooding silences made him appear a romantic figure of Byronic proportions. And when Paula learned that his field was art (he “earned his bread and butter” by teaching art at a small New England college) and that he was in New York to discuss the possible publication of a book he was working on, she could hardly be blamed for feeling that here indeed was the embodiment of the chance she’d been looking for.

They were married quietly in New York the day after Thanksgiving and set out immediately for his home in Vermont. Howard’s teaching schedule and his modest Assistant Professor’s salary precluded any honeymoon, but Paula didn’t mind in the least. She had embarked on this marriage willing, even eager, to starve in a garret (or the small college-town equivalent) for the sake of her very own struggling artist.

She had plunged with fanatical zeal into her new role. His mother’s welfare seemed a matter of prime importance with Howard, therefore it became so with Paula, too. Great plans were afoot for the celebration of the good lady’s sixty-fifth birthday which was to occur late in the spring, and Paula fell in with these plans enthusiastically, adding many small refinements of her own to make the occasion more festive.

And every clear day since the first real thaw she had dutifully pushed Mother Thorpe in her rickety wheel chair to the fat little woman’s favorite spot, the top of a steep rise which commanded an impressive view of the neat, stonewalled campus. Here, beneath the shade of an ancient elm, Paula, who didn’t trust the brake on the venerable contraption, carefully settled one wheel of the chair into a rut. Then she sat patiently while the old woman droned on and on until she finally talked herself into her morning nap.

Mother Thorpe was touched by Paula’s devotion and often in her rambling monologues she reiterated her regret that she couldn’t do more for her dear Howard and his dear wife. Howard’s father, she would explain vaguely, though a dear man, had been a bit of an eccentric and had tied up his sizeable fortune in a complicated trust fund which she herself didn’t altogether understand.

“But never you mind, dear,” went her favorite refrain as she patted Paula’s shoulder with her pudgy hand, “you shall have it all one day, and soon.”

But the days dragged into weeks and the weeks into months, and Paula found herself pinning her hopes increasingly on her mother-in-law’s words. For the harsh truth was, there was very little else to pin them on.

It had by this time become painfully clear that the perpetual frown which drew Howard’s brows down at his nose in such a devilishly attractive way was not a sign of the outrage of a gifted rebel but of a mildly fussy disposition; he was essentially a silent man for the simple reason that he had very little to say; and his teaching of art history at this small college was not a means to the end of being recognized in his field, but rather an end in itself. In short, Howard was not an artist, but a schoolmaster.

And the book? Paula had clung to this long after her other illusions about Howard were dashed. True, it was to be a scholarly text, hardly destined for a place on the bestseller lists. Still Paula had rather counted on being able to refer casually to “Howard’s book” when she wrote to her friends back in New York. But just yesterday had come a letter from the publisher informing Howard that another house was bringing out a work on substantially the same subject and therefore it would be inadvisable to go ahead with the tentatively proposed publication. So even that satisfaction was to be denied her.

“Well, dear,” said Howard, appearing at the kitchen door, “I’m off to the wars.” Paula offered her cheek for his husbandly peck — and waited. Without fail, he added, “Lovely day.” And then, as though a bright new thought had just occurred to him, “Why don’t you take Mother up to the hill this morning?”

But you know I take her every day, Paula opened her mouth to protest. Then she closed it. What was the use? He’d say the same thing tomorrow anyhow. She merely nodded silently and went on with the dishes.

Half an hour later she was trundling the old lady up the hill. She settled the chair into its accustomed place and flung herself down on the ground nearby. The view of the well-trimmed campus surrounded by its stone wall seemed to Paula like nothing so much as a neat, orderly trap. She paid even less attention than usual to her mother-in-law’s monotonous prattle, catching only, “You shall have it all one day, and soon.”

The familiar words made Paula ache with restless longing. If only “soon” could be right now. Money, she had always piously maintained, wasn’t important; and yet, when one had nothing else—

With enough money she could pry Howard out of his narrow little life; a year in Paris, then perhaps Rome; maybe they could finally live in Switzerland as so many people were doing. It just might make all the difference. There might still be some hidden spark to be struck in Howard if only he could be freed from the deadening influence of this dismal town and its suffocating college.

A gentle snoring from the wheel chair brought Paula rudely back to reality. Not a chance, she thought bitterly. The famous sixty-fifth birthday was only a week away, and the old woman, sleeping peacefully in the shade, looked fit for another fifteen years at least. Oh, it just wasn’t fair!

Paula yanked her sleep-numbed leg out from under her and extended it sharply. Her foot accidentally struck the wheel of the chair. She gasped as the chair, loosened from its place, rolled forward a few feet and came to a stop precariously near the beginning of the long downward slope.

For a few seconds Paula sat rigid, hardly able to breathe. And through it all, like an idiotically benign counterpoint, the snoring continued unbroken. The old woman apparently slept as wholeheartedly as she ate. Paula relaxed at last, exhausted from fear. What a close call!

And then, insidiously, a second thought crept into her consciousness. How easy it had been. Almost before she realized what was happening, Paula found herself sliding forward along the ground. She stretched her leg out cautiously, and with her foot gave the chair another shove. It moved only a few inches this time and then held, caught by a rut at the very edge.

Again Paula waited, her heart pounding. And again there was no sound except the snoring, and no movement from the woman in the wheel chair.

Paula rose silently. She seemed to have lost all sense of what it was she was trying to do and was filled only with a determination to accomplish it. She grasped the back of the chair with both hands. Gently she eased the front wheels and then the back ones over the obstructing spot. Then with a strong thrust she sent the chair forward.

It started down the grade slowly, then gained momentum. The fat little woman, squeezed in so tightly, didn’t even waken fully enough to cry out. There was scarcely any sound at all till the distant, splintering thud as the chair with its heavy passenger crashed into the solid stonewall...

The murder occurred right before Guy Moran Caine’s eyes and instantly it brought dire peril to the beautiful girl with whom Guy had fallen in love at first sight...

For the first time in a week Guy Moran Caine wasn’t marveling at finding himself in London. Instead, he was marveling at a young lady. She was one of a party at the next table at the Drumis Tree, a restaurant which the guidebook had rightfully told Guy he would find delightful — though it could hardly have anticipated his reasons.

The young American couldn’t have said why he found so enchanting someone he didn’t even know, but there it was. In addition to a vibrant beauty which reached him all too clearly at the next table, there was something in her smile, both warm and exciting, that made him feel he simply had to meet her.

He was not so approving of her behavior toward the good-looking young man on her left, a behavior which seemed altogether too friendly. It was no part of Guy’s rapidly forming dream that she should be in love with someone else. He observed them toast each other with the wine that the waiter had just poured — champagne, Guy thought it was. They put their heads together for a moment, and then exchanged glasses.

The girl had barely sipped hers when she gasped and stared, horrified, at her companion. He had slumped over the table, oddly inert.

As Guy watched, a little man with a goatee and a fussy manner rose from his place at the young man’s left and bent over him. He seemed to study the young man closely, then he straightened and said something in a low voice to the other three people at the table.

Guy, who was frankly straining his ears, caught the words dead, poison, and police. Then the little man gave the girl a queer look and said something that Guy couldn’t catch at all, but her color drained completely.

The others at the table — an immoderately gorgeous woman and a rather nondescript, rumpled-looking man — were staring at his beloved in a way Guy didn’t care for. They edged away from her and huddled at the other side of the table.

Guy felt his blood boil. Without stopping to think, he stormed over to the neighboring table. “Look here,” he blurted out to her, ignoring the others, “let me help. You must think I’m crazy,” he added, “but I can see there’s trouble and you need someone to stand by you.”

“Galahad and the damsel in distress,” murmured the little man in a suave voice, tinged with a foreign accent. “My dear sir, I think we can handle our own affairs without help from a total stranger,” and turning to the girl he said pointedly, “Can’t we, Melissa, my dear?”

She hesitated, then flung up her head. “No,” she said clearly and firmly. “I don’t know who he is, but it’s good of him, and perhaps some objectivity is just what we do need.”

She turned to Guy, who refrained from pointing out that objectivity was not what he was offering. “I’m awfully grateful. I’m Melissa St. Dinserd, and this” — indicating the little man with the goatee — “is my guardian, M. Druerre. Over there is Ramora Glussot, and her agent, Herr Girden. There’s been talk all week about their making a movie together — my guardian to finance it, and Ramora to star. They want... wanted—” She broke off and looked at the dead man, “They wanted him to be in it too.”

Ramora Glussot! No wonder the other woman seemed more gorgeous than life — she was the glamorous star of French films. He could only put down his initial lack of recognition to the magic of Melissa, which for Guy obscured all else.

He told Melissa his name, still ignoring the others beyond a curt nod when they were introduced, and steered her to his own table.

“What kind of friends and guardian have you?” he demanded. “It looked as if they were accusing you of murder.”

It never entered his bewitched head that she might in fact be a murderess. Even when he had been a table away, he had felt that she radiated honesty and decency, along with her other more physical qualities.

“I’d better explain,” she said, biting her entrancing lower lip. “I can’t blame them for wondering. He... the d-d-dead man — is... was — Peter Osch. He seems to have been poisoned — in the champagne, the glass smells of it — and we had just switched glasses. Besides, his glass was between him and me. No one else could have given him poison. They think I doctored my glass and then asked him to change, but actually it was he who suggested changing glasses. I don’t see how it was done, but I certainly didn’t do it.”

“Of course not,” Guy said with such heat that she stared at him, and a flush crept along her cheeks. “He must have taken it himself.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” she frowned. “He’s not the suicidal type, I’m sure. Anyhow, I used to know him rather well (Guy winced) and we talked sometimes about suicide — in the idle way one does, what methods one would or wouldn’t use. He always said poison was not for him — he knew too many instances of people who’d been pulled through.”

For some time Guy had been disturbed by the vague sensation of people hovering about them, a sensation enhanced, now that he came to think of it, by the odor of an evil-smelling pipe. This was now followed by a low but penetrating rumble that would have done credit to the foghorn of a transatlantic liner.

“Lordloveaduck,” this voice thundered, “who in blue blazes are you?”

Guy’s glance reluctantly left the girl and traveled upward. It alighted first on the companion of the speaker, a mild, stolid-looking man carrying a neat bowler. Next, his gaze went to the speaker himself, lingering in fascinated and delighted disbelief. He took in the bald head, the prominent abdomen, the disreputable suit, the whole improbably-put-together and fiercely scowling individual whom (next to Melissa, of course) he most wanted to meet in all England — and certainly at this moment most urgently needed.

“You’re Sir Marvin Rhyerlee!” he exclaimed. “My father raised me on tales of you — and I always thought he was exaggerating. (In spite of the tension, he couldn’t help smiling.) You’re the man who solves impossible problems. Well, there’s an impossible murder right here.”

“Well. Now.” The gentleman in question allowed himself to be mollified. “I’m the Old Man, all right. I’m the one they come to when they’re stuck, and laugh at the rest of the time. Even you, son, I saw it! But burn me,” he roared, his wrath returning, “what’s going on here, and why can’t I have a peaceable lunch like any peaceable citizen, without something always going wrong?”

“Peaceable” was somehow the last word Guy would have used in connection with Sir Marvin Rhyerlee, but he let it pass. Before he knew it, they were all being ushered into a private room — M. Druerre, Herr Girden, and Mlle. Glussot, as well as Melissa and himself. Sir Marvin’s luncheon companion turned out to be Inspector Starmes of the C.I.D., who promptly took charge of the investigation.

When they were comfortably settled, Guy explained to Sir Marvin and Starmes how he had become involved. A reminiscent chuckle rumbled out of Sir Marvin when Guy gave his name. “Sure, son, I remember your dad. Those were great times we had in America.”

“So he said,” Guy commented drily. “But even though I’ve barged into something that wasn’t my business, it looked to me as if this crowd was ready to pin a murder on this young lady, just like that. I ask you, sir, does she look like a murderess?”

“We-e-ell,” said Rhyerlee, “lotsa murderers don’t. Ask Starmes here. Just the same, it’s a pretty fast conclusion to jump to. I think,” he looked hard at Druerre, “we ought to hear more.”

“Of course, m’sieu, of course.” The little man with the goatee was all cooperation. “Peter Osch was my ward, as is Melissa St. Dinserd. They are not related to me, nor, for that matter, to each other — otherwise, they could not have been affianced, as they were.”

Melissa made a protesting sound, but M. Druerre continued, unheeding. “Young Osch has been in Africa for a few years, and has only been back in England a few days. Today was the great day of his life — when he came of age — and we were celebrating his birthday. But he was out of touch — we were his only acquaintances in England, and he hardly knew Mlle. Glussot and he only met Herr Girden this morning. It would not make sense for them to take his life. But the young lady here — I do not like to say it, but she is of a hot temper, and she sat next to the wine glass. I can only suppose that they had a — what do you call it? — a lover’s quarrel.”

“Steady, sir,” Starmes cut in affably. “The young lady switched drinks with the gentlemen, didn’t she? Just so. Didn’t it occur to you that perhaps someone might have been trying to poison her, and because of a romantic notion of the young man’s, the murderer got the wrong victim?”

A strangled sound came from Melissa. “Murder me!” Her voice had a queer pitch, but she spoke steadily enough. “Oh, no! But for the record,” she flashed in a different tone, “I was not engaged to him. (Guy felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest.) We once had some sort of childhood notion, but it was never definite, and we hadn’t seen each other for a long time. As you heard, he’s only been back in this country a few days. I am quite heartwhole and fancy free,” she added firmly, and Guy almost stood up and danced a jig-

“But, mademoiselle,” purred Mlle. Glussot, “he did want to marry you, did he not? Le pauvre enfant told me all about you when we met this noon, and he had such high hopes.” Her eyes were twinkling. “Do you know what he told me? That my friend had actually given him a drug that would make you fall in love with him.”

“Miss Glussot!” Starmes couldn’t contain himself. “Do you expect us to believe that?”

“Cherie, you must have misunderstood,” M. Druerre added suavely.

The famous movie star shrugged her beautiful shoulders. “That is what he said. An imaginative type — that young man.”

“It’s just possible,” said Melissa thoughtfully. “He believed in all kinds of crazy nonsense — black magic, voodoo, things like that. Give anyone a little time to win his confidence, and they could probably make him believe anything.”

“But why?” Starmes asked. “Herr Girden, you have a bizarre sense of humor.”

“Ach, nein!” came the angry protest. “I did no such thing. Ramora, where did you get such a crazy idea?”

Guy’s wits had sharpened remarkably when Melissa had said she was fancy free, and suddenly he had a brainstorm. “Look here,” he said, unaware that he was shouting, “the guilty person must be this German chap. If Miss St. Dinserd was the intended victim, Girden might have handed Osch a poison to give to her under pretense of this claptrap. He was sitting next to her — on her other side — so he might even have done it himself. Maybe,” he added wildly, “it’s a plot between the beautiful Frenchwoman and the sinister German. One of them’s lying about this love potion business — that we know.”

“Looky here, son.” Rhyerlee took Guy aside. “Girden didn’t put poison in the gal’s glass. Fact is,” he muttered, “Starmes and I had our eyes on Girden for other reasons. That’s why we were here — Starmes wanted me to get a look at him. We never took our eyes off him, and I personally can vouch for the fact that he put nothing in any drink. Besides, Starmes has had him tailed all week, and it’s true that he never met the boy until this morning.”

“Wait,” said Guy, “I’ve got it. We only have M. Druerre’s word that the poison was in the drink. Maybe it was in the food — and he poisoned the drink later to confuse the trail. Or maybe Osch took vitamins and they were doctored.”

“Say, son,” Sir Marvin boomed, “you got possibilities.”

Starmes was listening with one ear while he received a report from one of his men with the other. Dismissing his man, he said, “Clever, all right. But Osch didn’t take pills — none were found on him, nor a container. My man just told me. And besides, the food doesn’t smell of cyanide, which it looks like he died of — but the drink does. We’ll have to wait for medical and laboratory reports to be certain, but unofficially I’d stake my shirt on it that he was poisoned in the champagne. And that,” he added, “seems to wash out all the possibilities.”

Starmes turned to Marvin Rhyerlee. “Unless, sir, you can think of something?”

The sweetly polite question was not without irony, born of long and frustrating experience. The Old Man was a master at providing explanations in situations where Starmes could have sworn that no explanations were possible.

“Why, sure, son.” Rhyerlee was doing it again. “Meantersay you haven’t tumbled to it? I don’t know how you’re going to pin it on him, but here’s your man.” And he pointed M. Druerre.

“This is an outrage!” The Frenchman was furious. “Why should I kill Miss St. Dinserd?”

“Won’t wash, son.” Rhyerlee sounded tired. “You don’t hocus me with that one. It ain’t Miss St. Dinserd who’s dead. It’s Peter Osch, and that’s just who you meant it to be. As to why — I daresay you’ve been monkeying with the young man’s estate while he was too far away in Africa to know about it. Maybe that’s how you raised the money to finance a movie for this particularly expensive star. Starmes can find out easy enough. I expect you felt threatened with exposure when Osch came back and became of age to manage his own affairs.”

“Yes, you will find out,” said Druerre, who seemed suddenly to have lost a lot of his bustle. “But I couldn’t have killed my ward. I was nowhere near his glass.”

“That was the diabolically clever part,” Sir Marvin admitted. “You got the boy to commit his own murder. Mlle. Glussot’g ‘friend,’ who sold him a lot of bunkum about a love drug, was you. And you also gave Osch something to take himself, didn’t you? — ‘to be equal to the flaming love of his sweetheart.’ And of course you suggested that he switch glasses, so he could dope ’em both — so that we would get on another wrong track, if we didn’t fall for Miss St. Dinserd as the murderess. Only it wasn’t a love drug, of course. What you gave him for Miss St. Dinserd was harmless, but for himself it was poison.”

Druerre sagged, but he made a final effort. “If you are right about the method, Melissa, or even Ramora or Girden, could have done it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, son,” said Sir Marvin. “Aside from the fact that your motive sticks out a mile, the gal couldn’t have spun him that moonshine about a love potion to affect her. As for Herr Girden, he only met him this morning — so there’s no motive — and if it weren’t for Mademoiselle we’d never have known about the drug. She wouldn’t have told us if she’d killed him, and there’s no other way he could have been killed.

“And that ain’t quite all, son,” M.R. finished quietly. “That monicker of yours labels you the murderer anyhow.”

EDITORS’ NOTE: Yes, as M.R. said, M. Druerre’s monicker labels him the murderer... For once again the author, whose real name is Mrs. Norma Schier, is up to her anagrammatical tricks. Once again she has converted every proper name in the story (except London and England) into an anagram. To wit:

To Colonel March, head of the Department of Queer Complaints, comes another problem “of the impossible”: how did the £23,000 in cash disappear, vanish, evaporate in thin air?... the first in a special reprint series by one of the great masters of the “impossible crime,” the “miracle problem” — in this case, the Mystery of the Invisible Money.

Just before closing time on a Tuesday afternoon in December, a saloon car drew up before the St. James’s office of the City and Provincial Bank, and four men got out. Lights were burning inside the bank, but the day was raw and murky. Two of the newcomers went to the counter, where they accosted the cashiers with pistol muzzles cradled over their arms. The third, who wore no hat or coat, walked behind the counter, and before anybody knew what he was doing, began quietly drawing the blinds on the windows.

The fourth, who had taken a .45 caliber revolver out of his overcoat pocket, spoke with great clearness.

“You know why we’re here,” he said. “Just keep quiet and nothing will happen to you.”

One of the clerks, a youngster, laughed; and was instantly shot through the chest with a silencered gun.

The noise it made Was no louder than that of slapping two cupped palms together, a kind of thock. The clerk tumbled sideways, rattling against a desk scales, and they heard his body strike the floor. Then all noise seemed to die away under the bright, hard lights, except the sound of the newcomers’ footsteps on the marble floor.

“That’s right,” said the man who had first spoken. “Just keep quiet and nothing will happen to you.”

The thing was incredible; but it was happening. Possibly every man in the bank, now staring in various twisted positions with hands in the air, had seen it happen in a film, and had smiled at it as being confined to another continent. But with great precision the man who had drawn the blinds was now clearing out the safe, transferring what he wanted to a neat leather bag.

Outside bustled the traffic of St. James’s; passers-by saw a closed bank, and thought nothing of it. By the third minute it had become unbearable. The manager, risking it, ducked under the counter for a gun, and was shot down.

Then the leader of the gang leaned close to a young clerk named John Parrish, and said, “Thanks, kid. You’ll get your cut.”

Like four well-trained ghosts, the raiders came together and melted out into the street. Their car was away from the curb before the alarm sounded.

To the Honor Roll of Nobel Prize winners whose stories of crime and detection have appeared in EQMM — to the royal register which has included in the pages of EQMM the work of Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Sinclair Lewis, John Galsworthy, Pearl S. Buck, T. S. Eliot, William Faultier, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and William Butler Yeats — to that illustrious catalogue of contributors we now add another unexpected name — EQMM’s 11th Nobel Prize winner, Bertrand Russell.

And what a tale Bertrand Russell regales us with! Name a facet of mystery — any coruscation you can think of — and you will find it in Bertrand Russell’s story: detection and crime, mystery and suspense, adventure and adversity, danger and derring-do, plot and counterplot, clues and concatenation, damsel in distress and professor in peril, conspiracy and secrecy, investigation and international intrigue — altogether a Compleat Calendar of Skulduggery and Sleuthery, altogether a fantastic and fascinating farrago of Robert Louis Stevenson out of Prosper Merimee, with a soupçon of Shiel and — well, as we said (breathlessly), you name it!

I had occasion recently to visit my good friend, professor N, whose paper on pre-Celtic Decorative Art in Denmark raised some points that I felt needed discussing. I found him in his study, but his usually benign and yet slightly intelligent expression was marred by some strange bewilderment. The books which should have been on the arm of the chair, and which he supposed himself to be reading, were scattered in confusion on the floor. The spectacles which he imagined to be on his nose lay idle on his desk. The pipe which was usually in his mouth lay smoking in his tobacco bowl, though he seemed completely unaware of its not occupying its usual place. His mild and somewhat silly philanthropy and his usually placid gaze had somehow dropped off him. A harassed, distracted, bewildered, and horrified expression was stamped upon his features.

“Good God!” I said, “what has happened?”

“Ah,” said he, “it is my secretary, Miss X. Hitherto, I have found her level-headed, efficient, cool, and destitute of those emotions which are only too apt to distract youth. But in an ill-advised moment I allowed her to take a fortnight’s holiday from her labours on decorative art, and she, in a still more ill-advised moment, chose to spend the fortnight in Corsica. When she returned I saw at once that something had happened. ‘What did you do in Corsica?’ I asked. ‘Ah! What indeed!’ she replied.”

The secretary was not in the room at the moment, and I hoped that Professor N might enlarge a little upon the misfortune that had befallen Kim. But in this I was disappointed. Not another word, so at least he assured me, had he been able to extract from Miss X. Horror piled upon horror glared from her eyes at the mere recollection, hut nothing more specific could he discover.

I felt it my duty to the poor girl, who, so I had been given to understand, had hitherto been hard-working and conscientious, to see whether anything could be done to relieve her of the dreadful weight which depressed her spirits. I bethought me of Mrs. Menhennet, a middle-aged lady of considerable bulk, who, so I was informed by her grandchildren, had once had some pretences to beauty. Mrs. Menhennet, I knew, was the granddaughter of a Corsican bandit; in one of those unguarded moments, too frequent, alas, in that rough island, the bandit had assaulted a thoroughly respectable young lady, with the result that she had given birth, after a due interval, to the redoubtable Mr. Gorman.

Mr. Gorman, though his work took him into the City, pursued there the same kind of activities as had led to his existence. Eminent financiers trembled at his approach. Well-established bankers of unblemished reputation had ghastly visions of prison. Merchants who imported the wealth of the gorgeous East turned pale at the thought of Customs House officers at the dead of night. All of which misfortunes, it was well understood, were set in motion by the machinations of the predacious Mr. Gorman.

His daughter, Mrs. Menhennet, would have heard of any strange and unwonted disturbance in the home of her paternal grandfather. I therefore asked for an interview, which was graciously accorded. At four o’clock on a dark afternoon in November I presented myself at her tea table.

“And what,” she said, “brings you here? Do not pretend that it is my charms. The day for such pretence is past. For ten years it would have been true; for another ten I should have believed it. Now it is neither true nor do I believe it. Some other motive brings you here, and I palpitate to know what it may be.”

This approach was somewhat too direct for my taste. I find a pleasure in a helicoidal approach to my subject. I like to begin at a point remote from that at which I am aiming, or on occasion, if I begin at a point near my ultimate destination, I like to approach the actual point by a boomerang course, taking me at first away from the final mark and thereby, I hope, deceiving my auditor. But Mrs. Menhennet would permit no such finesse. Honest, downright, and straightforward, she believed in the direct approach, a characteristic which she seemed to have inherited from her Corsican grandfather. I therefore abandoned all attempt at circumlocution and came straight to the core of my curiosity.

“Mrs. Menhennet,” I said, “it has come to my knowledge that there have been in recent weeks strange doings in Corsica, doings which, as I can testify from ocular demonstration, have turned brown hairs grey and young springy steps leaden with the weariness of age. These doings, I am convinced, owing to certain rumours which have reached me, are of transcendent international importance. Whether some new Napoleon is marching to the conquest of Moscow, or some younger Columbus to the discovery of a still unknown Continent, I cannot guess. But something of this sort, I am convinced, is taking place in those wild mountains, something of the sort is being plotted secretly, darkly, dangerously, something of the sort is being concealed tortuously, ferociously, and criminally from those who rashly seek to pierce the veil. You, dear lady, I am convinced, in spite of the correctness of your tea table and the elegance of your china and the fragrance of your Lapsang Souchong, have not lost touch with the activities of your revered father. At his death, I know, you made yourself the guardian of those interests for which he stood. His father, who had ever been to him a shining light on the road towards swift success, inspired every moment of his life. Since his death, although perhaps some of your less perspicacious friends may not have pierced your very efficient disguise, you, I know, have worn his mantle. You, if anyone in this cold and dismal city, can tell me what is happening in that land of sunshine, and what plots, so dark as to cause eclipse even in the blaze of noon, are being hatched in the minds of those noble descendants of ancient greatness. Tell me, I pray you, what you know. The life of Professor N, or if not his life at least his reason, is trembling in the balance. He is, as you are well aware, a benevolent man, not fierce like you and me, but full of gentle lovingkindness. Owing to this trait in his character he cannot divest himself of responsibility for the welfare of his worthy secretary, Miss X, who returned yesterday from Corsica transformed completely from the sunny carefree girl that once she was to a lined, harassed, and weary woman weighed down by all the burdens of the world. What it was that happened to her she refuses to reveal, but if it cannot be discovered it is much to be feared that that great genius, which has already all but solved the many and intricate problems besetting the interpretation of pre-Celtic decorative art, will totter and disintegrate and fall a heap of rubble, like the old Campanile in Venice. You cannot, I am sure, be otherwise than horrified at such a prospect, and I therefore beseech you to unfold, so far as lies in your power, the dreadful secrets of your ancestral home.”

Mrs. Menhennet listened to my words in silence, and when I ceased to speak she still for a while abstained from all reply. At a certain point in my discourse the colour faded from her cheeks and she gave a great gasp. With an effort she composed herself, folded her hands, and compelled her breathing to become quiet.

“You put before me,” she said, “a dreadful dilemma. If I remain silent, Professor N, not to mention Miss X, must be deprived of reason. But if I speak...” Here she shuddered, and no further word emerged.

At this point, when I had been at a loss to imagine what the next development would be, the parlour maid appeared and mentioned that the chimney sweep, in full professional attire, was waiting at the door, as he had been engaged to sweep the chimney of the drawing room that very afternoon.

“Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “While you and I have been engaged in small talk and trivial badinage this proud man with his great duties to perform has been kept waiting at my doorstep. This will never do. For now this interview must be at an end. One last word, however. I advise you, if you are in earnest, but only if you are, to pay a visit to General Prz.”[5]

The Sherlock Holmes parody-pastiche to end all Sherlock Holmes parody-pastiches...

It was one of those glorious mornings that can happen so unexpectedly in early spring. Until now the weather had been reluctant to admit that winter was really past, and cold damp breezes had kept even the most adventurous from rambling in the park except in heavy overcoats and wool mufflers.

This morning, however, the sky was blue and the air balmy, and I considered this an excellent augury. Children swarmed round the fountain under the benevolent eye of a very large policeman, and I sat on a bench quivering in excited anticipation. At long last Sherlock Holmes was to become part of my life again! The event had been put off far too long already.

I was, I admit, somewhat apprehensive. I had been looking for my old acquaintance for some time, convinced by many little clues that the force of his great mind was at work in this new world. I had finally hit upon the idea of advertising in the agony columns of the daily newspapers, thus: SH. If you remember the days of The League, for God’s sake come to me. Watson — with a box number that would reach me.

I suspected he was aware of his own identity and I believed that such an appeal would fetch him to me. Now I had had my answer, and at any moment he would be coming along to find me on the third bench from the fountain.

I anticipated that he would be, as I was, much changed. Curiosity might have dictated that I sit at a distance, in order to observe him before he discovered me; but I was determined upon fair play, and so I was on the proper bench, and had even armed myself with a medical volume, that he might have no early doubt as to my identity.

While I waited, I carried on a desultory conversation with the immense collie who has been my companion of late, and who lay patiently beside the bench, alternately eyeing the children playing round the policeman and the path down which the figure of our visitor might be expected to appear.

He did not keep us waiting long. Nor did he hesitate perceptibly at sight of us, though the shock must have been great. I am compelled to admit that, although I had considered all possibilities in anticipating his appearance, I was for a moment disappointed in him.

He was now the direct antithesis, physically, of all he had been — ridiculously short, bustling, apple-cheeked, and very fat. Worse, he was exceedingly young, and his walk bespoke the aggressiveness he had never openly displayed in the past. Watching him approach, I groaned at the indignity of his gigantic brain being trapped in such an uninspiring physical form.

He came to my side, his eyes searching my face anxiously. “Can it be?” he asked. “Can this really be my old friend Watson?”

“Reincarnation has created an amazing change in both of us,” I admitted. “Nevertheless, I am very glad to see you again, Holmes.” We clasped hands.

“I was wondering how I should find you,” he said, “when your advertisement came to my attention. Such a simple course of action had not occurred to me. How fortunate you remembered my habit of reading the newspapers thoroughly each day.”

“Considering how much of our time together you spent with your nose buried in the news, it would seem queer indeed if I did not remember.”

He chuckled. “Ah, Watson, your sense of humor runs in the same old vein. I had a moment of fear, when I first saw you, that it would not.”

“And I was tempted to laugh aloud when I saw you. But upon closer inspection I recognize the old intelligence in your eyes, and, considering the indications I have had recently that you are continuing to operate in the old pattern, I discount any notion that you are not as dangerous as ever you were.”

“Dangerous? But surely that is an odd word to use between us?”

I decided on a bold stroke. “Not at all. Come, sir, let us throw off these disguises and face each other on the old footing. You are dangerous to me, and I am certainly dangerous to you — Professor Moriarty!”

He fell back a pace. “Really, Watson, if this is a joke—”

“It is certainly not a joke. And I am not Watson. Do you not guess the truth, even now? I am Holmes.”

“Ah, of course.” He gazed at me intently, and smiled. “I should have anticipated it. But your advertisement bespoke the good Watson so genuinely that I was taken in. I decided too easily that the bumbling doctor, could I but get into his confidence, would sooner or later lead me to you, for you would surely be looking for him. I suppose you planned it so?”

“Yes. I needed to find you. Your vast criminal organization has been too successful lately; it is being felt in too many places around the world. You had to be stopped until we could gather all the threads into our hands and destroy them. There were many paths by which I might have reached you, but time was of the essence, so I decided upon subterfuge. It has turned out excellently.” I rubbed my hands.

He was puzzled. “I really cannot see how our meeting will be of benefit to you. You have no evidence against me, or you would have used it; and now that we have met I can as easily recognize you as you can recognize me. Unless you are in disguise?” He leaned forward to examine me. “No. Even you could not be that good! And forgive me for saying it, but I see no danger in you in your present form.” He laughed.

“And yet, even as you stand there you are in the greatest danger,” I said calmly. I was determined that his amusement should not nettle me. I was not ashamed of my condition; indeed, it had certain advantages.

He looked around in some alarm. “You have men covering me with revolvers? But surely, Holmes, that would not be following your usual code of fair play?”

“No. No one offers you physical violence, my dear Professor. And yet you are in imminent danger. I give you fair warning.”

He became angry. “Of what use is a warning when I cannot perceive the cause for it? I declare, Holmes, I think you are pulling my leg. It would be best if I leave you before I lose my temper.”

“You will not find it that easy to leave,” said I.

He came closer and glowered at me. “No? And pray, why not?”

“Because of yourself — your curiosity and your temperament. You need to find out what I intend to do.”

“And what do you intend to do?” He was suddenly enraged. His apple-cheeked face turned crimson, and his fat hands closed round my arms. He shook me, and I cried out in pain. “What do you have up your sleeve, you... you female!”

In three strides the gigantic policeman was upon us and holding Moriarty firmly by the collar. My collie, who had been about to clamp his teeth into the Professor’s leg, subsided with a growl. I chuckled.

“I had in mind doing exactly what I did do — force you to forget what I now am, and attack a woman in a public park, before witnesses. You have betrayed yourself into the hands of the law. You are undone!”

He howled with rage, struggling in the indomitable grip of the policeman. “By heaven I will get my revenge for this, Holmes!”

“Perhaps,” I said negligently. “But I think that first you will go up for a suitable stretch, after I give my evidence. You will be well out of the way while we dispose of your organization. Take him away.”

“And,” I added, as the majestic arm of the law started off, “don’t be too gentle with him, my good Lestrade!”

The policeman grinned, and touched his cap. “No sir, Miss Holmes,” said he.

“Well, we are alone again.” I bent to pat my faithful collie. “There was a moment when I thought you would have the leg off him, Watson. It is good to be able to rely on your friendship once more. Although sometimes I wish... I wish you had not returned as a dog. However, I suppose it was inevitable. ‘Man’s best friend,’ and all that. Just as it was inevitable that poor Lestrade should have to pay for his sins by being a policeman all over again. I do wonder, though, what I ever did to deserve having to come back as a woman.”

Together we walked slowly out of the park.

You never can tell what O’Malley is thinking. There’s never much to work on, he says; he’s got no ideas, he says; it’ll never be solved, he says — but leave it to O’Malley, the unimaginative cop.

“A woman got murdered on the East Side,” O’Malley said. “It looks like it was a funny kind of case. She was about sixty years old and everybody in the neighborhood knew who she was, but there didn’t nobody know anything about her.

“The name they knew her by was Miss Dubois, but it turns out she had several different names. There was some addresses in her place, and they found one guy that told ’em things about her but it don’t point to why she should get killed.”

“What have you got to work on?” I inquired.

“Not much. My idea is this gets marked ‘Unsolved.’ Well, still I got to run around and look at it.”

We looked at the woman. She must have been very pretty in her youth. She had been strangled with a woman’s belt. Her clothes were of the best quality and the belt matched the dress.

“What’s this?” O’Malley asked.

He showed me some pinholes in the bosom of her slip.

“She seems to have worn a brooch,” I said.

“Yeah? On her underclothes?”

He took a pattern of the pinholes on a piece of paper.

“We’ll see the guy that told the cops them things,” he said.

The man’s name was Collingham. We found him in a small but impressive office in the Wall Street neighborhood. He was a distinguished-looking man of about fifty.

“How was it about that lady that got knocked off?” O’Malley asked.

“I’ve already told the police all I know, but I don’t mind repeating it. She was a sort of pensioner of mine. Years ago this woman was a motion-picture actress. Her screen name was Vera Cain. I worshiped her on the screen, but at that time I didn’t meet her. A few years ago I encountered her on the street. Of course, she was greatly changed, but in spite of that I recognized her and introduced myself, and I learned that she was in want.

“In memory, as you might say, of my youth, I got her address and sent her a small check. A man like myself, who has made a great deal of money, picks up a certain number of people who are dependent on him. After that, each month I sent her a small check.”

“I guess you seen her pretty often after you found out where she lived.”

“No, I never saw her except that one time on the street. She wrote me a note of thanks each month but I didn’t keep them.”

“You send her a check this month?”

“Yes, on the first, as I always did if I remembered it.”

“That check been cashed?”

“Yes, it was cashed.”

“You don’t seem to feel very bad because the dame got bumped off.”

“There’s no reason why I should. She was no longer the girl whom I remembered.”

“Okay.”

“That’s a nice fellow, O’Malley,” I remarked after we had left him.

“He talks like it.”

We went to see her home where she was killed. It was a poor neighborhood. There were pushcarts along the curb and a street filled with children; people sat on crowded doorsteps. A cop let us into her apartment. It was luxurious. The furniture was of expensive make, the bed things were lace and silk.

“Well, this is a surprise, O’Malley!” I exclaimed. “Collingham can’t have known she was well off. Why did she live in this neighborhood?”

“I guess she wanted to. How was this?” he asked the cop.

“They don’t know much. The guy came in the window.”

He showed us. A rear window had been forced open. The window opened on a court. There was a fire escape under the windows of the next apartment.

We examined the place carefully. Dresser drawers had been pulled out and the things scattered about; the cops hadn’t done that. The closets were filled with expensive clothes. In one closet there was a trunk. The police had searched it but we went through its contents. There were souvenirs from hotels and steamship lines and summer and winter resorts.

“This dame was a gay one in her time,” O’Malley remarked.

“She must have been.”

“It’s my idea it will turn out she was some kind of crook. What time did the medical guy say this dame got bumped?” he asked the cop.

“About four o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

“What become of that address book they found?”

“They got it at the station house.”

O’Malley telephoned the station house to send us the address book.

“What do you make of it so far?” I asked.

“I got no ideas.”

“I have,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“This is the kind of case,” I said, “where the police go wrong because they find too many things that might be clues. They aren’t really clues, and so they waste time on things that get them nowhere. Those things have nothing to do with her being murdered.”

“Go on — you’re doing swell. What is it that has got to do with it?”

“The way she lived and the way she dressed. In this kind of neighborhood she was simply courting robbery. Collingham had just sent her some money; whether she kept her money in her apartment or not, people around here must have believed she did. Anyway, the murderer believed it. It’s plain how he got in. He came up or down the fire escape and reached across and forced the window open and stepped from the fire escape onto the sill.”

“You’re good. Who was the guy?”

“Of course I don’t know that, but it’s plain he lives in this neighborhood. The killing took place in midafternoon when other windows were open on this court and someone may have seen him.”

“Well, we can find that out.”

We went around and asked the people whose windows opened on the court. The window directly across belonged to a photographer. He hadn’t seen anything, but he said his partner might have; the partner wasn’t there. The other people hadn’t seen anything.

When we got back to the apartment a man was there with the address book. There wasn’t much in it — a few telephone numbers and a few street numbers. O’Malley called one of the phone numbers.

“Is Freeman there?” he asked. Somebody answered. “Ain’t this the Sheffield Hotel?” he inquired.

“What is it?” I asked.

“He says it’s a meat market.” “Who’s Freeman?” I asked.

“That ain’t no guy. I just made that up to find out whose phone it was.”

He tried the other phone numbers the same way, but they all turned out to be tradesmen’s places.

“Well, nothing in that,” he said. “I guess we won’t find nothing in these addresses either.”

One of the addresses was Collingham’s. We went around to all the others. The first one turned out to be a beauty shop.

They knew Miss Dubois as a customer, but of course they had no idea who’d killed her. She was known the same way at most of the other addresses. At two places we couldn’t find anyone who’d ever heard of her. One of these places wasn’t really an address at all — the street number came in Central Park.

“Well, that ends that,” I stated.

“Why, no,” O’Malley said. “It ends them places where they knew about her, but we got two they don’t. Why would she have a number that comes in the park? I think that looks funny. I’m figuring this dead dame was a crook, and crooks got ways of writing things so that whoever finds ’em won’t read ’em right. It might be we got that kind of business here. One way is, they write the numbers backwards.”

I studied the two addresses. One said 236 Cathedral Parkway and the other one, 345 Columbus Avenue. On the same page it said “3F.” We looked up 632 Cathedral Parkway and 543 Columbus, but it got us nothing.

“There’s still another way they do,” O’Malley said. “If they write two addresses, one gives the right number but the other one gives the street.”

There was no such number as 345 Cathedral Parkway, so we tried 236 Columbus. A good-looking young man about 22 years old opened the door of apartment 3F.

“Who’re you?” O’Malley asked.

“Joe Harrill. How about yourself?”

“A cop don’t have to give a name.” O’Malley showed his shield. “We’d like to look around your place.”

“Well, go ahead.”

We searched the room, and then him, and in his pocket we found three $100 bills with pinholes through them. The holes matched the pinholes in the pattern O’Malley had taken from the dead woman’s slip.

“Well, guy,” O’Malley said, “we got you.”

“For what?”

“For knocking off Miss Dubois and robbing her of her dough.”

“I haven’t killed anybody and I never heard that name before. My aunt gave me that money.”

“Yeah? You’ll get a chance to prove that to the Inspector.”

We took him to the station house.

“This has been extraordinarily fine police work, O’Malley,” I commended him.

“Sure, it’s swell work,” he said, “except I don’t think this is the guy that done the killing.”

I was astonished. “Why, you’ve practically proved it,” I said. “You must be crazy!”

I saw O’Malley next day.

“Well, have you got the proof on Harrill?” I inquired.

“Boy, we ain’t got no proof on nobody. Most cops think Harrill was the one. That Miss Dubois had a police record but it was long ago; some old-time cops remembered her. Collingham ain’t the only guy that give her money. So we got other suspects, but we don’t know who.

“That Collingham ain’t what he looks and talks like; he ain’t rich, he’s broke. The report is he made what dough he once had dealing in counterfeit bonds, but it was never proved on him.

“Guys came to Miss Dubois’ place sometimes to see her, and some kids saw a strange guy around there the afternoon that she got killed. They can’t describe him except he was wearing a checkered suit. I don’t know if anybody could get from that fire escape into the window, so we’re going to try that out.”

We went to Miss Dubois’ apartment. Some plain-clothes cops were there and one was wearing a checkered suit. The man in the checked suit went up to the roof, while we stood in the courtyard watching him, and he came down the fire escape and tried to force the window open from the landing.

He couldn’t do it. Then a younger cop tried it and he did it all right.

“There you have it, O’Malley!” I exclaimed. “It was a young man. That shows it was Harrill.”

“Yeah, fine!” he said. “Only the laboratory says them casts they took of the toolmarks on the window frame show that the window got opened from inside. You try it that way now,” he directed the man in the checked suit.

We went inside. The cop in the checked suit forced the window open with what I thought at first was a jimmy, but I saw later that it was a steel knife sharpener. Apparently he didn’t do it right, for O’Malley made him repeat it several times.

“That’s the right way,” he told him at last.

Then another cop who had waited in the court came in.

“Okay,” he said.

We went to headquarters. After a while a cop came and gave O’Malley an envelope and O’Malley went into the Inspector’s room. He came out again and we waited and Collingham came in with a couple of cops.

“We need your help on that Dubois killing,” O’Malley told him.

“I’ll be glad to do anything I can.”

“We want you to tell us how you knocked her off.”

Collingham got white.

“You’re nutty in the head!” he declared.

“Our heads are all right. You want me to tell you how it was? You’d been paying blackmail to her, but now she tried to shake you for a bigger bunch of dough. You went there to argue with her. We got some kids seen you go in her place.

“She wouldn’t believe you when you told her you was broke and you strangled her to shut her mouth. You got a knife sharpener out of the kitchen and fixed the window to make it look like some guy had broken in, and you scattered her things around so we’d think it was a robbery.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Yeah, sure, we’re crazy. A photographer has a place across that court. What you don’t know is that the guy happened to be trying out a camera.”

He showed Collingham a photograph. Collingham gazed at it and then stared at the floor and his body seemed to be folding up.

“I’ll talk with the Inspector,” he said after a couple of minutes.

They went into the Inspector’s room. Some cops were studying the photograph and I looked at it over their shoulders. It showed the cop in the checked suit pretending to force open the window; the man’s face was in shadow but his clothes showed plainly.

“Collingham was a fool to fall for that fake picture,” I told O’Malley when he came out of the Inspector’s room.

“You can’t tell what no guy will fall for. He recognized his own checked suit.”

“His suit?” I asked. “How was all this?”

“Why, I’d think you’d guess. That Miss Dubois was one time in pictures, like Collingham said, but she was a lot of other things besides. She was a gay kid and she picked up enough on several well-off guys to ruin ’em, and then afterwards she lived on it. She lived in that neighborhood so she wouldn’t meet people that she knew in her old days.

“I guess she could have went on like that until she died, except for this young guy Harrill. She told him she was his aunt, but we can’t find out she ever had a sister or brother, and it’s my idea he is her son. However that was, she didn’t want him to know nothing about what she’d been or how she lived.

“He understood his folks was dead and he was always in school and in summer he was with other kids in camp, and the money for them things was sent through a bank. He says he never seen his aunt but twice, and the name he knew her by wasn’t none she used anywhere else.

“The second time he seen her was the day she got killed. He was through school and he had come to New York and got a room, and she came to see him and she give him some money that she unpinned from inside her clothes. She asked him what business he wanted to get in and said she’d send him the money to get started in it. She expected to get the dough from ColIingham. The rest was the way I told it just now to Collingham.”

“I don’t see yet,” I said, “how you knew Collingham was the one who killed her.”

“I didn’t till the guy admitted it. You’re kind of dumb. I only figured this dead dame was a crook, and Collingham had a reputation as another one. It looked like she had been holding him up, though he wouldn’t tell she was, so I wondered did he kill her?

“Some kids had seen a guy go to the building in a checked suit. Collingham wasn’t wearing no checked suit when we seen him, and I wondered did he own one.

“Some cops went round the neighborhood where he lived and seen all the clothes cleaners, till they found out who cleaned his clothes; and the people there said they’d cleaned and pressed that kind of suit for him. So then we had a guy from the cleaner’s go to Collingham’s and tell his wife that Collingham had telephoned ’em to press his checked suit; she give it to him.

“I didn’t have no idea about the photograph until after we got the suit, but then I figured we might try that piece of business on him. So I found a cop that looked as much like Collingham as I could and had him put on Collingham’s suit. After he’d tried getting into the window from outside, we went inside and I had ’em take that photograph. You know, I ain’t sure even yet if Collingham really fell for that photograph, or if it only made him think we had so much on him he might as well confess.”

“It was a smart trick, O’Malley.”

“Anyway it caught a fish. Maybe instead of a cop I ought to be a crook, but I figure a crook works harder than a cop, and I ain’t that fond of working.”

An unusual and beautifully written story about a problem that faced a man’s wife, mistress, mother, and brother — and how they acted and reacted...

Estrella’s first impulse had been to cancel her usual birthday re-union this year; it would be too poignant without her favorite son, Byron. But then — as she pointed out, in her bravest tremolo — an Inner Voice had spoken. They must carry on, in spite of their aching hearts and the mute pathos of the one vacant chair. Dear Byron would not want it otherwise. He who could nevermore be with them in the flesh would be with them in spirit.

There she went, stealing her daughter-in-law’s lines again. Completely shameless. After all, Byron’s widow, nut his mother, was entitled to the starring role. But Mary Ethel could afford to be big about it. “Exactly my feeling,” she said in the sincere, spontaneous tones that had come across so well in her television interview. “I’m sure Byron wouldn’t want his mother’s sixtieth birthday to pass unnoticed.”

“Fifty-ninth,” said Estrella. “I knew you’d understand, my dear.”

Then she called Tennyson, who of course questioned the advisability. As the one son left to her, he took his responsibilities seriously. “Are you sure you’re up to it, Mother? We all know how hard this has hit you, in spite of the way you’ve borne up so wonderfully. Not that I’m trying to dictate or anything, you understand — I realize you’re the best judge—”

“Then I’ll see you on the fifteenth,” said Estrella, who was sometimes circumspect about overruling Tennyson’s objections and sometimes not, depending on how busy she was. “I can’t decide about inviting Carol. What do you think?”

“Carol? Oh. Well, Mother, I hardly know what to say. I mean—”

There was a pause. Then Estrella said gently, “Yes. I think Byron would want her to be with us.”

So it was settled. They would meet, but they would miss him.

Indeed they would; indeed they did; it was their own business how and for what reasons...