The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “I agree with the last honorable member,” said Tinling. “Such a coincidence as that similarity of costume is too remarkable not to be suspicious. Looks like a plot of some sort. But there’s nothing to throw any light on his motive.”

  “Let’s have another drink,” said Gawtrey. “What are we going to do this evening?”

  “I am going to the Fifth Avenue to see Saki,” said Allardice. “Your talk about her has aroused my curiosity. I saw some oriental dancers at the Paris Exhibition a while ago, and I’d like to see how she compares with them.”

  The evening papers had just been brought in, and I had picked up one of them. A paragraph headed “Illness of the Persian Dancer” caught my eye.

  “She won’t appear this evening,” said I. “It says: ‘Mlle. Saki was so unfortunate as to sprain her ankle yesterday while alighting from her carriage. While the injury is not regarded as serious, it will prevent her from dancing this evening. Tickets purchased in advance will be accepted for later dates.’ ”

  “Nothing in the paper about Greaves?” asked Tinling.

  “Seems not.”

  Soon after we broke up, and drifted away in various directions, somewhat preoccupied with speculations about Greaves.

  The next morning, however, the papers were full of the story, and though no light was thrown upon the manner of Greaves’s disappearance, certain facts of interest were mentioned. On the very day before his disappearance, it appears, he had executed a deed conveying the bulk of his large property to Sophie Baddely. This deed was not a will, but a deed of gift simply. Its provisions went into effect immediately, and, in view of what had occurred, one could not help suspecting that Greaves had prepared it as part of a predetermined scheme of action, whether of suicide or something else. And here there was a coincidence that drew my attention. The “indisposition” of Mlle. Saki corresponded very nearly with the disappearance of Greaves. She had not returned to the theater since the evening of that occurrence, and it was now stated that her absence might be prolonged for a week. I knew from Guise, the most intimate friend that Greaves had, that the latter had been several times to see Saki dance, and that he had betrayed rather marked interest in her performance. Mr. Baddely had said that his intending son-in-law was capable of strange escapades; was it possible, then, that he and the too-fascinating Persian had eloped together—he having first salved his conscience by bestowing his wealth upon the woman he was abandoning? Moreover, Tinling, having made inquiries at the theater, brought news that there was now no prospect of Saki’s returning at all; on the contrary, her agent had paid a heavy forfeit, and she had departed none knew whither. The sprained ankle was obviously a fiction. Of course, the manner in which Greaves had effected his exit was no less than ever a mystery. A conceivable motive had been suggested, that was all.

  The establishment known as Six Cent Sam’s extends clear through the narrow block in which it stands, and has an entrance in the street on the other side, a fact not generally known. For the rear face of the eating house is a pawnshop, kept, as the sign board indicates, by one Samuel Jonathan, who is, in fact, no other than Six Cent Sam himself; and to the initiated there is a passageway leading out of the pawnshop into the eating house. I am of the initiated; and as I was passing down this passage on the day after the scene at the club, I met Sam—or Mr. Jonathan—and he said:

  “Turn back, sir; I’ve something to say to you.”

  I followed him into the office of the pawnshop, where we sat down.

  “One way or another,” began Sam, “I hear a good deal of what’s going on. Pawnshops and eating houses bring news. Now, there’s young Greaves, for instance.”

  I became interested at once. Sam is always interesting.

  “When last seen,” continued the latter, “had on gray Mackintosh and soft hat. Could you identify them? Look at these,” and from a shelf he drew out just such an English-made garment as Guise had described to us, with the hat to match.

  “He’s been here, then?” I asked.

  Sam shook his head, and went on in his terse, deep-toned way. “A fellow came here yesterday with a carbuncle on his nose, and a game eye. Had these duds under his arm; wanted to sell ’em. How did he come by ’em? Gent had given ’em to him. How and why? Oh, quite a yarn. Gent met him on street doing sandwich act for Fifth Avenue Theatre. Pursuant to bargain then and there made, and instructions given, met him again next day, same place. Another gent along. Disturbance on street; other man’s attention distracted; garments exchanged inside ten seconds. Gent, in sandwiches, marches down street after other sandwiches; no one ever thinks of looking at face of sandwich, only the announcement on board. Thus gent became invisible, and has so remained.”

  So this was the simple but ingenious solution of the puzzle.

  “And where is Greaves now, and what did he do it for?” I asked.

  Sam looked me straight in the face with his powerful eyes.

  “Where’s Saki?” he replied.

  “So they’re together after all?” said I, rather vain of my insight.

  “Guess not; but they ought to be.”

  That was a queer thing to say, and I stared at Sam without answering.

  “Newspapers say he gave a pot of money to Miss Baddely,” resumed the latter. “Proud, independent girl, father poor. She will be beholden to nobody, not even Greaves. Wanted to support herself. Greaves objects; quarrel. Now, if Greaves were to make away with himself, after deeding property to her, she would naturally give up her scheme of earning her own living. Do you see how the cat is going to jump?”

  “You think Greaves has committed suicide?”

  Sam gave me a reproachful glance. “Wasn’t I asking to bring him and Saki together? Do you know either of the ladies?”

  “Either of them?”

  “Well, do you know Saki?” said Sam, a trifle impatiently.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Nor Miss Baddely?”

  “I haven’t that pleasure.”

  “I’ll introduce you to both of them. We’ll go now. Great friends; always together.”

  “Who? Miss Baddely and Saki?”

  “The same.”

  “What are we to do there?”

  “I want ’em to settle which of ’em’s to marry Greaves.”

  “Is Greaves in love with both of them?”

  “That’s his fix, precisely.”

  “And they with him?”

  “That’s what I’m figuring on.”

  “And you expect them to agree which of them—”

  “We have to hurry,” remarked Sam, rising. “Let me get into a clean shirt, and we’re off.” He stepped into a side room as he spoke, and shut the door.

  I did not know what to make of it, but I knew enough of Sam to know that he, who knew everything and everybody, from a pawnshop habitué to a wealthy club man, was not acting in the dark. In a few minutes he reappeared, in the garb of a well-to-do man-about-town. Silk hat, Prince Albert coat, striped trousers, white scarf, yellow gloves, and silver-headed umbrella. Not a finer gentleman in the city.

  “We’ll look up Mlle. Saki first,” he said, as we sallied forth together. “Do you speak Persian fluently? Never mind, she speaks as good English as you or I do, and is a very intelligent woman.”

  To us, awaiting her in a tasteful but simple sitting room up-town, entered the famous Persian dancer. She was a handsome brunette, with superb black eyes and hair. Her figure and bearing were all grace and elegance. She was plainly dressed, and looked, as Sam had said, very intelligent.

  “Now, Mademoiselle,” said Sam, after the greetings were over, “I have called as your manager, to learn what you want to do. You may speak freely before this gentleman.”

  “Tell me first what has become of him?” she replied, in a slightly tremulous voice. “I can never forgive myself. Is he—”

  “He is a pig-headed donkey, if you must have my opinion,” returned Sam. “And he’s as well as such a monster deserves to be. Now, shall we
temporize with him, or shall we keep on our course and let him go to—” Sam’s finger at this juncture was pointing downward.

  “Temporize with him? I’ll go down on my knees to him if he will but give me the chance. He was right from the beginning, and I was wrong. I saw that almost from the first—long before this terrible thing happened. But for my miserable obstinacy, I’d have given it up then. I had no conception what the life was till I had tried it. It was an awful lesson. I shall never forget it. I feel as if I had actually done all the bad things every one seemed to suspect me of. And yet, when I was looking forward to it, it all appeared good and right. I thought I would elevate and ennoble my art. But the world is hard.”

  “Well, it is unless we take it the right way,” said Sam. “The best way to find out is to make experiments. I helped you to do that, and you’re the better for it, because you now know what you would never have believed if it had been told you. Some girls go through life believing all they are told, good or bad, but you’re not that sort. You can do other things just as clever as dancing, and not so open to remarks. For one thing, you can make a man happy, and bring up his children.”

  Mlle. Saki blushed, and tears stood in her eyes.

  “It’s too late to think of that now,” she said. “He must despise me and hate me; he couldn’t help it.”

  “Pooh! Besides, there are other men in the world as good as he, and a great deal better.”

  “You know that is not so,” exclaimed Mlle. Saki, with a naïve indignation that was enchanting. “I should like to see him again, though, just once,” she added, “to tell him how sorry and ashamed I am, and to ask his forgiveness.”

  “I guess it would be more politic for you to forgive him,” said Sam, with a smile. “However, we’ll see what can be done,” and thereupon we took our leave.

  It was a mysterious affair altogether, and has never been cleared up to this day. As everybody knows, Greaves is married, but he married Miss Sophie Baddely. Mlle. Saki was never again heard of. It is the impression among the general public that she returned to Paris. Be that as it may, I saw Mrs. Greaves driving out in the park the other day with her husband, and remarked that the lady bore a striking resemblance to the Persian dancer. Guise and Tinling, however, have never spoken of any likeness. No doubt, she must have looked very different in her Persian costume from what she did in the plain American dress that she wore when I saw her.

  THE HOUSE OF HAUNTS

  IN WHAT REMAINS one of the most brilliant marketing decisions of all time, the two Brooklyn cousins who collaborated under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, Frederic Dannay (born Daniel Nathan) (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (born Manford Lepofsky) (1905–1971), also named their detective Ellery Queen. They reasoned that if readers forgot the name of the author, or the name of the character, they might remember the other. It worked, as Ellery Queen is counted among the handful of best-known names in the history of mystery fiction.

  Lee was a full collaborator on the fiction created as Ellery Queen, but Dannay on his own was also one of the most important figures in the mystery world. He founded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1941, and it remains, more than seventy years later, the most significant periodical in the genre. He also formed one of the first great collections of detective fiction first editions, the rare contents leading to reprinted stories in the magazines and anthologies he edited, which are among the best ever produced, most notably 101 Years’ Entertainment (1941), which gets my vote as the greatest mystery anthology ever published. He also produced such landmark reference books as Queen’s Quorum (1951), a listing and appreciation of the 106 (later expanded to 125) most important short-story collections in the genre, and The Detective Short Story (1942), a bibliography of all the collections Dannay had identified up to the publication date. More than a dozen movies were based on Queen books. There were several radio and television shows as well as comics; it was not far-fetched to describe the ubiquitous Ellery Queen in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as the personification of the American detective story.

  “The House of Haunts” was first published in the November 1935 issue of Detective Story; it was retitled “The Lamp of God” when it was collected in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (New York, Stokes, 1940). It was also published in 1951 as a single story by Dell in its short-lived ten-cent series.

  ELLERY QUEEN

  The Black House

  IF A STORY BEGAN: “Once upon a time in a house cowering in wilderness there lived an old and hermetical creature named Mayhew, a crazy man who had buried two wives and lived a life of death; and this house was known as The Black House”—if a story began in this fashion, it would strike no one as especially remarkable. There are people like that who live in houses like that, and very often mysteries materialize like ectoplasm about their wild-eyed heads.

  Now, however disorderly Mr. Ellery Queen may be by habit, mentally he is an orderly person. His neckties and shoes might be strewn about his bedroom helter-skelter, but inside his skull hums a perfectly oiled machine, functioning as neatly and inexorably as the planetary system. So if there was a mystery about one Sylvester Mayhew, deceased, and his buried wives and gloomy dwelling, you may be sure the Queen brain would seize upon it and worry it and pick it apart and get it all laid out in neat and shiny rows. Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo-jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth, and one and one made two—always—and that’s all there was that.

  Of course, Macbeth had said that stones have been known to move and trees to speak; but, pshaw! for these literary fancies. In this day and age, with its Cominterns, its wars of peace, its fasces, and its rocketry experiments? Nonsense! The truth is, Mr. Queen would have said, there is something about the harsh, cruel world we live in that’s very rough on miracles. Miracles just don’t happen anymore, unless they are miracles of stupidity or miracles of national avarice. Everyone with a grain of intelligence knows that.

  “Oh, yes,” Mr. Queen would have said; “there are yogis, voodoos, fakirs, shamans, and other tricksters from the effete East and primitive Africa, but nobody pays any attention to such pitiful monkeyshines—I mean, nobody with sense. This is a reasonable world and everything that happens in it must have a reasonable explanation.”

  You couldn’t expect a sane person to believe, for example, that a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood, veritable human being could suddenly stoop, grab his shoelaces, and fly away. Or that a water-buffalo could change into a golden-haired little boy before your eyes. Or that a man dead one hundred and thirty-seven years could push aside his tombstone, step out of his grave, yawn, and then sing three verses of “Mademoiselle from Armentières.” Or even, for that matter, that a stone could move or a tree speak—yea, though it were in the language of Atlantis or Mu.

  Or … could you?

  The tale of Sylvester Mayhew’s house is a strange tale. When what happened happened, proper minds tottered on their foundations and porcelain beliefs threatened to shiver into shards. Before the whole fantastic and incomprehensible business was done, God Himself came into it. Yes, God came into the story of Sylvester Mayhew’s house, and that is what makes it quite the most remarkable adventure in which Mr. Ellery Queen, that lean and indefatigable agnostic, has ever become involved.…

  The early mysteries in the Mayhew case were trivial—mysteries merely because certain pertinent facts were lacking; pleasantly provocative mysteries, but scarcely savorous of the supernatural.

  Ellery was sprawled on the hearthrug before the hissing fire that raw January morning, debating with himself whether it was more desirable to brave the slippery streets and biting wind on a trip to Centre Street in quest of amusement, or to remain where he was in idleness but comfort, when the telephone rang.

  It was Thorne on the wire. Ellery, who never thought of Thorne without perforce visualizing a human monolith—a long-limbed, gray-thatched male figure with marbled cheeks and agate eyes, the whole man coated
with a veneer of ebony, was rather startled. Thorne was excited; every crack and blur in his voice spoke eloquently of emotion. It was the first time, to Ellery’s recollection, that Thorne had betrayed the least evidence of human feeling.

  “What’s the matter?” Ellery demanded. “Nothing’s wrong with Ann, I hope?” Ann was Thorne’s wife.

  “No, no.” Thorne spoke hoarsely and rapidly, as if he had been running.

  “Where the deuce have you been? I saw Ann only yesterday and she said she hadn’t heard from you for almost a week. Of course, your wife’s used to your preoccupation with those interminable legal affairs, but an absence of six days—”

  “Listen to me, Queen, and don’t hold me up. I must have your help. Can you meet me at Pier 54 in half an hour? That’s North River.”

  “Of course.”

  Thorne mumbled something that sounded absurdly like: “Thank God!” and hurried on: “Pack a bag. For a couple of days. And a revolver. Especially a revolver, Queen.”

  “I see,” said Ellery, not seeing at all.

  “I’m meeting the Cunarder Coronia. Docking this morning. I’m with a man by the name of Reinach, Dr. Reinach. You’re my colleague; get that? Act stern and omnipotent. Don’t be friendly. Don’t ask him—or me—questions. And don’t allow yourself to be pumped. Understood?”

  “Understood,” said Ellery, “but not exactly clear. Anything else?”

  “Call Ann for me. Give her my love and tell her I shan’t be home for days yet, but that you’re with me and that I’m all right. And ask her to telephone my office and explain matters to Crawford.”

  “Do you mean to say that not even your partner knows what you’ve been doing?”

  But Thorne had hung up.

  Ellery replaced the receiver, frowning. It was stranger than strange. Thorne had always been a solid citizen, a successful attorney who led an impeccable private life and whose legal practice was dry and unexciting. To find old Thorne entangled in a web of mystery …