Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “Of course, of course,” said Queen. “There’s somebody almighty clever behind this business. I suppose you didn’t even come across the suspicion of an extra hat?”

  “That, dad,” remarked Ellery, “was what I was decorating the lobby for. No—no hat.”

  “Are they all through out there?”

  “Just finished when I strolled across the street for the refreshments,” said Ellery. “There was nothing else to do but allow the angry mob in the gallery to file downstairs and out into the street. Everybody’s out now—the galleryites, the employees, the cast. . . . Queer species, actors. All night they play God and then suddenly they find themselves reduced to ordinary street clothes and the ills that flesh is heir to. By the way, Velie also searched the five people who came out of this office. Quite a motor that young lady possesses. Miss Ives-Pope and her party, I gathered. . . . Didn’t know but that you might have forgotten them,” he chuckled.

  “So we’re up a tree, eh?” muttered the Inspector. “Here’s the story, Henry.” And he gave a concise résumé of the evening’s events to Sampson, who sat silently throughout, frowning.

  “And that,” concluded Queen, after describing briefly the scenes enacted in the little office, “is that. Now, Henry, you must have something to tell us about Monte Field. We know that he was a slick article—but that’s all we do know.”

  “That would be putting it mildly,” said Sampson savagely. “I can give you almost by rote the story of his life. It looks to me as if you’re going to have a difficult time and some incident in his past might give you a clue.

  “Field first came under the scrutiny of my office during my predecessor’s régime. He was suspected of negotiating a swindle connected with the bucket-shop scandals.46 Cronin, an assistant D. A. at the time, couldn’t get a thing on him. Field had covered his operations well. All we had was the telltale story, which might or might not have been true, of a ‘stool-pigeon’ who had been kicked out of the mob. Of course, Cronin never let on to Field directly or indirectly that he was under suspicion. The affair blew over and although Cronin was a bulldog, every time he thought he had something he found that he had nothing after all. Oh, no question about it—Field was slick.

  “When I came into office, on Cronin’s fervent suggestion we began an exhaustive investigation of Field’s background. On the q. t.,47 of course. And this is what we discovered: Monte Field came of a blue-blood New England family—the kind that doesn’t brag about its Mayflower descendants. He had private tutoring as a kid, went to a swanky prep school, got through by the skin of his teeth and then was sent to Harvard by his father as a sort of last despairing gesture. He seems to have been a pretty bad egg even as a boy. Nothing criminal, but just wild. On the other hand, he must have had a grain of pride because when the blow-up came he actually shortened his name. The family name was Fielding—and he became Monte Field.”

  Queen and Ellery nodded, Ellery’s eyes introspective, Queen staring steadily at Sampson.

  “Field,” resumed Sampson, “wasn’t a total loss, understand. He had brains. He studied law brilliantly at Harvard. He seemed to have a flair for oratory that was considerably aided by his profound knowledge of legal technology. But just after his graduation, before his family could get even the bit of pleasure out of his scholastic career that should have been theirs, he was mixed up in a dirty deal with a girl. His father cut him off in jig-time. He was through—out—he’d disgraced the family name—you know the sort of thing. . . .

  “Well, this friend of ours didn’t let grief overwhelm him, evidently. He made the best of being done out of a nice little legacy, and decided to go out and make some money on his own. How he managed to get along during this period we couldn’t find out, but the next thing we hear of him is that he has formed a partnership with a fellow by the name of Cohen. One of the smoothest shysters in the business. What a partnership that was! They cleaned up a fortune between them establishing a select clientele chosen from among the biggest crooks in crookdom. Now, you know as well as I just how hard it is to ‘get’ anything on a bird who knows more about the loopholes of the law than the Supreme Court judges. They got away with everything—it was a golden era for crime. Crooks considered themselves top-notch when Cohen & Field were kind enough to defend them.

  “And then Mr. Cohen, who was the experienced man of the combination, knowing the ropes, making the ‘contacts’ with the firm’s clients, fixing the fees—and he could do that beautifully in spite of his inability to speak untainted English—Mr. Cohen, I say, met a very sad end one winter night on the North River waterfront. He was found shot through the head, and although it’s twelve years since the happy event, the murderer is still unknown. That is—unknown in the legal sense. We had grave suspicions as to his identity. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Mr. Field’s demise this evening removed the Cohen case from the register.”

  “So that’s the kind of playboy he was,” murmured Ellery. “Even in death his face is most disagreeable. Too bad I had to lose my first-edition on his account.”

  “Forget it, you bookworm,” growled his father, “Go on, Henry.”

  “Now,” said Sampson, taking the last piece of cake from the desk and munching it heartily, “now we come to a bright spot in Mr. Field’s life. For after the unfortunate decease of his partner, he seemed to turn over a new leaf. He actually went to work—real legal work—and of course he had the brains to pull it through. For a number of years he worked alone, gradually effacing the bad reputation he had built up in the profession and even gaining a little respect now and then from some of our hoity-toity legal lights.

  “This period of apparent good behavior lasted for six years. Then he met Ben Morgan—a solid man with a spotless record and a good reputation, although perhaps lacking the vital spark which makes the great lawyer. Somehow Field persuaded Morgan to join him in partnership. Then things began to hum.

  “You’ll remember that in that period some highly shady things were happening in New York. We got faint inklings of a gigantic criminal ring, composed of ‘fences,’ crooks, lawyers, and in some cases politicians. Some smashing big robberies were pulled off; bootlegging got to be a distinct art in the city environs; and a number of daring hold-ups resulting in murder put the department on its toes. But you know that as well as I do. You fellows ‘got’ some of them; but you never broke the ring, and you never reached the men higher up. And I have every reason to believe that our late friend Mr. Monte Field was the brains behind the whole business.

  “See how easy it was for a man of his talents. Under the tutelage of Cohen, his first partner, he had become thoroughly familiar with the underworld moguls. When Cohen outlived his usefulness, he was conveniently bumped off. Then Field—remember, I am working now on speculation chiefly, because the evidence is practically nil—then Field, under the cloak of a respectable legal business, absolutely above-board, quietly built up a far-flung criminal organization. How he accomplished this we have no way of knowing, of course. When he was quite ready to shoot the works, he tied up with a wellknown respectable partner, Morgan, and now secure in his legal position, began to engineer most of the big crooked deals pulled off in the last five years or so. . . .”

  “Where does Morgan come in?” asked Ellery idly.

  “I was coming to that. Morgan, we have every reason to believe, was absolutely innocent of any connection with Field’s under-cover operations. He was as straight as a die and in fact had often refused cases in which the defendant was a shady character. Their relations must have become strained when Morgan got a hint of what was going on. Whether this is so or not I don’t know—you could easily find out from Morgan himself. Anyway, they broke up. Since the dissolution, Field has operated a little more in the open, but still not a shred of tangible evidence which would count in a court of law.”

  “Pardon me for interrupting, Henry,” said Queen reflectively, “but can’t you give me a little more information on their break-up? I’d like to use it a
s a check on Morgan when I talk to him again.”

  “Oh, yes!” replied Sampson grimly. “I’m glad you reminded me. Before the last word was written in the dissolving of the partnership, the two men had a terrific blow-up which almost resulted in tragedy. At the Webster Club,48 where they were lunching, they were heard quarreling violently. The argument increased until it was necessary for the bystanders to interfere. Morgan was beside himself with rage and actually threatened Field’s life right then and there. Field, I understand, was quite calm.”

  “Did any of the witnesses get an inkling of the cause of the quarrel?” asked Queen.

  “Unfortunately, no. The thing blew over soon enough; they dissolved quietly, and that was the last anybody ever heard of it. Until, of course, to-night.”

  There was a pregnant silence when the District Attorney stopped talking. Ellery whistled a few bars of a Schubert air, while Queen frankly took a pinch of snuff with a ferocious vigor.

  “I’d say, off-hand,” murmured Ellery, looking off into space, “that Mr. Morgan is in deucedly hot water.”

  His father grunted. Sampson said seriously, “Well, that’s your affair, gentlemen. I know what my job is. Now that Field is out of the way, I’m going to have his files and records gone over with a fine-comb. If nothing else, his murder will accomplish eventually, I hope, the complete annihilation of his gang. I’ll have a man at his office in the morning.”

  “One of my men is camping there already,” remarked Queen absently. “So you think it’s Morgan, do you?” he asked Ellery, with a flash of his eyes.

  “I seem to recall making a remark a minute ago,” said Ellery calmly, “to the effect that Mr. Morgan is in hot water. I did not commit myself further. I admit that Morgan seems to be the logical man.—Except, gentlemen, for one thing,” he added.

  “The hat,” said Inspector Queen instantly.

  “No,” said Ellery, “the other hat.”

  46.“Bucket-shops” were unregulated stock brokers specializing in day traders, who purchased securities on thin margins and indulged in high volume speculations. In fact most bucket-shops did not even purchase or sell securities for customers; rather, they merely booked the supposed transactions, often made up the supposed trading history, and paid (or failed to pay) their customers out of their own pockets—exactly like a gambling establishment or bookie. There were many such “scandals,” so it is impossible without more to identify the particular bucket-shop scandal in which Fields was involved.

  47.Slang for “on the quiet.” Its first print appearance was in 1870, in the broadside ballad “The Man from Poplar.”

  48.No Webster Club is listed in Trow’s General Directory of New York City for 1922–23; however, the Webster Hotel was at 40 W. 45th St. in Manhattan, and this may well have been a dining venue there.

  CHAPTER VII

  The Queens Take Stock

  Let’s see where we stand,” continued Ellery without pausing. “Let’s consider this thing in its most elementary light.

  “These, roughly, are the facts: A man of shady character, Monte Field, probable head of a vast criminal organization, with undoubtedly a host of enemies, is found murdered in the Roman Theatre ten minutes before the end of the second act, at precisely 9: 55 o’clock. He is discovered by a man named William Pusak, a clerk of an inferior type of intelligence, who is sitting five seats away in the same row. This man, attempting to leave, pushes his way past the victim who before he dies mutters, ‘Murder! Been murdered!’ or words to that effect.

  “A policeman is called and to make sure the man is dead, secures the services of a doctor in the audience, who definitely pronounces the victim killed by some form of alcoholic poisoning. Subsequently Dr. Prouty, the Assistant Medical Examiner, confirms this statement, adding that there is only one disturbing factor—that a man would not die so soon from lethal alcohol. The question of the cause of death, therefore, we must leave for the moment, since only an autopsy can definitely determine it.

  “With a large audience to attend to, the policeman calls for help, officers of the vicinity come in to take charge and subsequently the headquarters men arrive to conduct the immediate investigation. The first important issue that arises is the question of whether the murderer had the opportunity to leave the scene of the crime between the time it was committed and the time it was discovered. Doyle, the policeman who was first on the scene, immediately ordered the manager to station guards at all exits and both alleys.

  “When I arrived, I thought of this point the very first thing and conducted a little investigation of my own. I went around to all the exits and questioned the guards. I discovered that there was a guard at every door of the auditorium during the entire second act, with two exceptions which I shall mention shortly. Now, it had been determined from the testimony of the orangeade boy, Jess Lynch, that the victim was alive not only during the intermission between Act I and Act II—when he saw and talked to Field in the alleyway—but that Field was also in apparently good health ten minutes after the raising of the curtain for Act II. This was when the boy delivered a bottle of ginger ale to Field at the seat in which he was later found dead. Inside the theatre, an usher stationed at the foot of the stairs leading to the balcony swore that no one had either gone up or come down during the second act. This eliminates the possibility that the murderer had access to the balcony.

  “The two exceptions I noted a moment ago are the two doors on the extreme left aisle, which should have been guarded but were not because the usherette, Madge O’Connell, was sitting in the audience next to her lover. This presented to my mind the possibility that the murderer might have left by one of these two doors, which were conveniently placed for an escape should the murderer have been so inclined. However, even this possibility was eliminated by the statement of the O’Connell girl, whom I hunted up after she was questioned by dad.”

  “You talked to her on the sly, did you, you scalawag?” roared Queen, glaring at Ellery.

  “I certainly did,” chuckled Ellery, “and I discovered the one important fact that seems pertinent to this phase of the investigation. O’Connell swore that before she left the doors to sit down next to Parson Johnny she stepped on the inside floor-lock that latches them top and bottom. When the commotion began the girl sprang from the Parson’s side and finding the doors locked as she had left them, unlatched them while Doyle was attempting to quiet the audience. Unless she was lying—and I don’t think she was—this proves that the murderer did not leave by these doors, since at the time the body was found they were still locked from the inside.”

  “Well, I’ll be switched!” growled Queen. “She didn’t tell me a thing about that part of it, drat her! Wait till I get my hands on her, the little snip!”

  “Please be logical, M. le Gardien de la Paix,”49 laughed Ellery. “The reason she didn’t tell you about bolting the doors was that you didn’t ask her. She felt that she was in enough of an uncomfortable position already.

  “At any rate, that statement of hers would seem to dispose of the two side-doors near the murdered man’s seat. I will admit that all sorts of possibilities enter into the problem—for example, Madge O’Connell might have been an accomplice. I mention this only as a possibility, and not even as a theory. At any rate, it seems to me that the murderer would not have run the risk of being seen leaving from side doors. Besides, a departure in so unusual a manner and at so unusual a time would have been all the more noticeable especially since few people leave during a second act. And again—the murderer could have no foreknowledge of the O’Connell girl’s dereliction in duty—if she were not an accomplice. As the crime was carefully planned—and we must admit that from all indications it was—the murderer would have discarded the side-doors as a means of escape.

  “This probe left, I felt, only one other channel of investigation. That was the main entrance. And here again we received definite testimony from the ticket-taker and the doorman outside to the effect that no one left the building during t
he second act by that route. Except, of course, the harmless orangeade boy.

  “All the exits having been guarded or locked, and the alley having been under constant surveillance from 9:35 on by Lynch. Elinor, Johnny Chase—the usher—and after him the police—these being the facts, all my questioning and checking, gentlemen,” continued Ellery in a grave tone, “lead to the inevitable conclusion that, from the time the murder was discovered and all the time thereafter while the investigation was going on, the murderer was in the theatre!”

  A silence followed Ellery’s pronouncement. “Incidentally,” he added calmly, “it occurred to me when I talked to the ushers to ask if they had seen any one leave his seat after the second act started, and they can’t recall anyone changing seats!”

  Queen idly took another pinch of snuff. “Nice work—and a very pretty piece of reasoning, my son—but nothing, after all, of a startling or conclusive nature. Granted that the murderer was in the theatre all that time—how could we possibly have laid our hands on him?”

  “He didn’t say you could,” put in Sampson, smiling. “Don’t be so sensitive, old boy; nobody’s going to report you for negligence in the performance of your duty. From all I’ve heard to-night you handled the affair well.”

  Queen grunted. “I’ll admit I’m a little peeved at myself for not following up that matter of the doors more thoroughly. But even if it were possible for the murderer to have left directly after the crime, I nevertheless would have had to pursue the inquiry as I did, on the chance that he was still in the theatre.”

  “But dad—of course!” said Ellery seriously. “You had so many things to attend to, while all I had to do was stand around and look Socratic.”

  “How about the people who have come under the eye of the investigation so far?” asked Sampson curiously.