Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “Well, by ginger, if you know now, let’s get a move on!” cried Cronin, springing from his chair.

  The Inspector tapped the red-haired man’s knee gently and pointed to the seat. “Sit down, Tim,” he advised. “Ellery is merely indulging in his favorite game of ratiocination. He doesn’t know where the papers are any more than you do. He’s guessing. . . . In detective literature,” he added with a sad smile, “they call it the ‘art of deduction.’”

  “I should say,” murmured Ellery, emitting a cloud of smoke, “that I am being challenged once more. Nevertheless, although I haven’t been back to Field’s rooms I intend, with Inspector Queen’s kind permission, to return there and find the slippery documents.”

  “In the matter of these papers—” began the old man, when he was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Djuna admitted Sergeant Velie, who was accompanied by a small, furtive young man so ill at ease as to be trembling. The Inspector sprang to his feet and intercepted them before they could enter the living-room. Cronin stared as Queen said. “This the fellow, Thomas?” and the big detective answered with grim levity, “Large as life, Inspector.”

  “Think you could burgle an apartment without being caught, do you?” inquired the Inspector genially, taking the newcomer by the arm. “You’re just the man I want.”

  The furtive young man seemed overcome by a species of terrified palsy. “Say, Inspector, yer not takin’ me fer a ride, are ya?” he stammered.

  The Inspector smiled reassuringly and led him out into the foyer. They held a whispered and one-sided conversation, with the stranger grunting assents at every second word uttered by the old man. Cronin and Ellery in the living-room caught the flash of a small sheet of paper as it passed from the Inspector’s hand into the clutching paw of the young man.

  Queen returned, stepping spryly. “All right, Thomas. You take care of the other arrangements and see that our friend here gets into no trouble. . . . Now, gentlemen—”

  Velie made his adieu monosyllabically and led the frightened stranger from the apartment.

  The Inspector sat down. “Before we go over to Field’s rooms, boys,” he said thoughtfully, “I want to make certain things plain. In the first place, from what Benjamin Morgan has told us, Field’s business was law but his great source of income—blackmail. Did you know that, Tim? Monte Field sucked dozens of prominent men dry, in all likelihood to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, Tim, we’re convinced that the motive behind Field’s murder was connected with this phase of his undercover activities. There is no doubt but that he was killed by somebody who was being taken in for huge sums of hush-money and could stand the gaff no longer.

  “You know as well as I, Tim, that blackmail depends largely for its ugly life on the possession of incriminating documents by the blackmailer. That’s why we’re so sure that there are hidden papers about somewhere—and Ellery here maintains that they’re in Field’s rooms. Well, we’ll see. If eventually we find those papers, the documents you’ve been hunting so long will probably come to light also, as Ellery pointed out a moment ago.”

  He paused reflectively. “I can’t tell you, Tim, how badly I want to get my hands on those confounded documents of Field’s. They mean a good deal to me. They’d clear up a lot of questions about which we’re still in the dark. . . .”

  “Well, then, let’s get going!” cried Cronin, leaping from his chair. “Do you realize, Inspector, that I’ve worked for years on Field’s tail for this one purpose? It will be the happiest day of my life. . . . Inspector—come on!”

  Neither Ellery nor his father, however, seemed to be in haste. They retired to the bedroom to dress while Cronin fretted in the living-room. If Cronin had not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts he would have noticed that the light spirits which had suffused the Queens when he arrived were now scattered into black gloom. The Inspector particularly seemed out of sorts, irritable and for once slow to push the investigation into an inevitable channel.

  Eventually the Queens appeared fully dressed. The three men descended to the street. As they climbed into a taxicab Ellery sighed.

  “Afraid you’re going to be shown up, son?” muttered the old man, his nose buried in the folds of his topcoat.

  “I’m not thinking of that,” returned Ellery. “It’s something else. . . . The papers will be found, never fear.”

  “I hope to Christmas you’re right!” breathed Cronin fervently, and it was the last word spoken until the taxicab growled to a stop before the lofty apartment-house on 75th Street.

  The three men took the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped out into the quiet corridor. The Inspector peered about quickly, then punched the doorbell of the Field apartment. There was no answer, although they could hear the vague rustling of someone behind the door. Suddenly it swished open to reveal a red-faced policeman whose hand hovered uneasily in the region of his hip-pocket.

  “Don’t be scared, man—we won’t bite you!” growled the Inspector, who was completely out of temper for no reason that Cronin, nervous and springy as a racing-colt, could fathom.

  The uniformed man saluted. “Didn’t know but it might be someone snoopin’ around, Inspector,” he said feebly.

  The three men walked into the foyer, the slim, white hand of the old man pushing the door violently shut.

  “Anything been happening around here?” snapped Queen, striding to the entrance to the livingroom and looking inside.

  “Not a thing, sir,” said the policeman. “I’m on four-hour shifts with Cassidy as relief and once in a while Detective Ritter drops in to see if everything is all right.”

  “Oh, he does, does he?” The old man turned back. “Anybody try to get into the place?”

  “Not while I was here, Inspector—nor Cassidy neither,” responded the policeman nervously. “And we’ve been alternating ever since Tuesday morning. There hasn’t been a soul near these rooms except Ritter.”

  “Park out here in the foyer for the next couple of hours, officer,” commanded the Inspector. “Get yourself a chair and take a snooze if you want to—but if anybody should start monkeying with the door tip us off pronto.”

  The policeman dragged a chair from the living-room into the foyer, sat down with his back against the front door, folded his arms and unashamedly closed his eyes.

  The three men took in the scene with gloomy eyes. The foyer was small but crowded with oddments of furniture and decoration. A bookcase filled with unused-appearing volumes; a small table on which perched a “modernistic” lamp and some carved ivory ash-trays; two Empire chairs; a peculiar piece of furniture which seemed half sideboard and half secretary; and a number of cushions and rugs were scattered about. The Inspector stood regarding this melange wryly.

  “Here, son—I guess the best way for us to tackle the search is for the three of us to go through everything piece by piece, one checking up on the other. I’m not very hopeful about it. I’ll tell you that.”

  “The gentleman of the Wailing Wall,”84 groaned Ellery. “Grief is writ and large on his noble visage. You and I, Cronin—we’re not such pessimists, are we?”

  Cronin growled, “I’d say—less talk and more action, with all the respects in the world for these little family ructions.”

  Ellery stared at him with admiration. “You’re almost insectivorous in your determination, man. More like an army ant than a human being. And poor Field’s lying in the morgue, too. . . . Allons, enfants!”85

  They set to work under the nodding head of the policeman. They worked silently for the most part. Ellery’s face reflected a calm expectancy; the Inspector’s a doleful irritation; Cronin’s a savage indomitability. Book after book was extracted from the case and carefully inspected—leaves shaken out—covers examined minutely—backboards pinched and pierced. There were over two hundred books and the thorough search took a long time. Ellery, after a period of activity, seemed inclined to allow his father and Cronin to do the heavier work of inspection while he de
voted his attention more and more to the titles of the volumes. At one point he uttered a delighted exclamation and held up to the light a thin, cheaply bound book. Cronin leaped forward immediately, his eyes blazing. The Inspector looked up with a flicker of interest. But Ellery had merely discovered another volume on handwriting analysis.

  The old man stared at his son in silent curiosity, his lips puckered thoughtfully. Cronin turned back to the bookcase with a groan. Ellery, however, riffling the pages rapidly cried out again. The two men craned over his shoulder. On the margins of several pages were some penciled notations. The words spelled names: “Henry Jones,” “John Smith,” George Brown.” They were repeated many times on the margins of the page, as if the writer were practicing different styles of penmanship.

  “Didn’t Field have the most adolescent yen for scribbling?” asked Ellery, staring fascinatedly at the penciled names.

  “As usual you have something up your sleeve, my son,” remarked the Inspector wearily . . . I see what you mean, but I don’t see that it helps us any. Except for—By jinks, that’s an idea!”

  He bent forward and attacked the search once more, his body vibrant with fresh interest. Ellery, smiling, joined him. Cronin stared uncomprehendingly at both.

  “Suppose you let me in on this thing, folks,” he said in an aggrieved voice.

  The Inspector straightened up. “Ellery’s hit on something that, if it’s true, is a bit of luck for us and reveals still another sidelight on Field’s character. The black-hearted rascal! See here, Tim—if a man’s an inveterate blackmailer and you find continual evidence that he has been practicing handwriting from textbooks on the subject, what conclusion would you draw?”

  “You mean that he’s a forger, too?” frowned Cronin. “I never suspected that in spite of all these years of hounding him.”

  “Not merely a forger, Cronin,” laughed Ellery. “I don’t think you will find Monte Field has penned somebody else’s name to a check, or anything of that sort. He was too wily a bird to make such a grievous error. What he probably did do was secure original and incriminating documents referring to a certain individual, make copies of them and sell the copies back to the owner, retaining the originals for further use!”

  “And in that case, Tim,” added the Inspector portentously, “if we find this gold mine of papers somewhere about—which I greatly doubt—we’ll also find, as like as not, the original or originals of the papers for which Monte Field was murdered!”

  The red-haired Assistant District Attorney pulled a long face at his two companions. “Seems like a lot of ‘if’s’,” he said finally, shaking his head.

  They resumed the search in growing silence.

  Nothing was concealed in the foyer. After an hour of steady, back-breaking work they were forced reluctantly to that conclusion. Not a square inch was left unexamined. The interior of the lamp and of the bookcase; the slender, thin-topped table; the secretary, inside and outside; the cushions; even the walls tapped carefully by the Inspector, who by now was aroused to a high pitch of excitement, suppressed but remarkable in his tight lips and color-touched cheeks.

  They attacked the living-room. Their first port-of-call was the big clothes-closet inside the room directly off the foyer. Again the Inspector and Ellery went through the topcoats, overcoats and capes hanging on the rack. Nothing. On the shelf above were the four hats they had examined on Tuesday morning: the old Panama, the derby and the two fedoras. Still nothing. Cronin bumped down on his knees to peer savagely into the darker recesses of the closet, tapping the wall, searching for signs of tampered woodwork. And still nothing. With the aid of a chair the Inspector poked into the corners of the area above the shelf. He climbed down, shaking his head.

  “Forget the closet, boys,” he muttered. They descended upon the room proper.

  The large carved desk which Hagstrom and Piggott had rifled three days before invited their scrutiny. Inside was the pile of papers, canceled bills and letters they had offered for the old man’s inspection. Old Queen actually peered through these torn and ragged sheets as if they might conceal messages in invisible ink. He shrugged his shoulders and threw them down.

  “Darned if I’m not growing romantic in my old age,” he growled. “The influence of a fiction-writing rascal of a son.”

  He picked up the miscellaneous articles he himself had found on Tuesday in the pockets of the closet coats. Ellery was scowling now; Cronin was beginning to wear a forlorn, philosophical expression; the old man shuffled abstractedly among the keys, old letters, wallet, and then turned away.

  “Nothing in the desk,” he announced wearily. “I doubt if that clever limb of Satan would have selected anything as obvious as a desk for a hiding-place.”

  “He would if he’d read Edgar Allan Poe,” murmured Ellery.86 “Let’s get on. Sure there is no secret drawer here?” he asked Cronin. The red head was shaken sadly but emphatically.

  They probed and poked about in the furniture, under the carpets and lamps, in book-ends, curtain-rods. With each successive failure the apparent hopelessness of the search was reflected in their faces. When they had finished with the living-room it looked as if it had innocently fallen in the path of a hurricane—a bare and comfortless satisfaction.

  “Nothing left but the bedroom, kitchenette and lavatory,” said the Inspector to Cronin; and the three men went into the room which Mrs. Angela Russo had occupied Monday night.

  Field’s bedroom was distinctly feminine in its accoutrements—a characteristic which Ellery ascribed to the influence of the charming Greenwich Villager. Again they scoured the premises, not an inch of space eluding their vigilant eyes and questing hands; and again there seemed nothing to do but admit failure. They took apart the bedding and examined the spring of the bed; they put it together again and attacked the clothes-closet. Every suit was mauled and crushed by their insistent fingers—bathrobes, dressing-gowns, shoes, cravats. Cronin halfheartedly repeated his examination of the walls and moldings. They lifted rugs and picked up chairs; shook out the pages of the telephone book in the bedside telephone-table. The Inspector even lifted the metal disk which fitted around the steam-pipe at the floor, because it was loose and seemed to present possibilities.

  From the bedroom they went into the kitchenette. It was so crowded with kitchen furnishings that they could barely move about. A large cabinet was rifled; Cronin’s exasperated fingers dipped angrily into the flour- and sugar-bins. The stove, the dish-closet, the pan-closet—even the single marble washtub in a corner—was methodically gone over. On the floor to one side stood the half-empty case of liquor bottles. Cronin cast longing glances in this direction, only to look guiltily away as the Inspector glared at him.

  “And now—the bathroom,” murmured Ellery. In an ominous silence they trooped into the tiled lavatory. Three minutes later they came out, still silently, and went into the living-room where they disposed themselves in chairs. The Inspector drew out his snuff-box and took a vicious pinch; Cronin and Ellery lit cigarettes.

  “I should say, my son,” said the Inspector in sepulchral tones after a painful interval broken only by the snores of the policeman in the foyer, “I should say that the deductive method which has brought fame and fortune to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his legions has gone awry. Mind you, I’m not scolding. . . .” But he slouched into the fastnesses of the chair.

  Ellery stroked his smooth jaw with nervous fingers. “I seem to have made something of an ass of myself,” he confessed. “And yet those papers are here somewhere. Isn’t that a silly notion to have? But logic bears me out. When ten is the whole and two plus three plus four are discarded, only one is left. . . . Pardon me for being old-fashioned. I insist the papers are here.”

  Cronin grunted and expelled a huge mouthful of smoke.

  “Your objection sustained,” murmured Ellery, leaning back. “Let’s go over the ground again. No, no!” he explained hastily, as Cronin’s face lengthened in dismay—“I mean orally . . . Mr. Field’s apartment c
onsists of a foyer, a living-room, a kitchenette, a bedroom and a lavatory. We have fruitlessly examined a foyer, a living-room, a kitchenette, a bedroom and a lavatory. Euclid would regretfully force a conclusion here. . . .” He mused. “How have we examined these rooms?” he asked suddenly. “We have gone over the obvious things, pulled the obvious things to pieces. Furniture, lamps, carpets—I repeat, the obvious things. And we have tapped floors, walls and moldings. It would seem that nothing has escaped the search. . . .”

  He stopped, his eyes brightening. The Inspector threw off his look of fatigue at once. From experience he was aware that Ellery rarely grew excited over inconsequential things.

  “And yet,” said Ellery slowly, gazing in fascination at his father’s face, “by the Golden Roofs of Seneca,87 we’ve overlooked something—actually overlooked something!”

  “What!” growled Cronin. “You’re kidding.”

  “Oh, but I’m not,” chuckled Ellery, lounging to his feet. “We have examined floors and we have examined walls, but have we examined—ceilings?”

  He shot the word forth theatrically while the two men stared at him in amazement.

  “Here, what are you driving at, Ellery?” asked his father, frowning.

  Ellery briskly crushed his cigarette in an ash-tray. “Just this,” he said. “Pure reasoning has it that when you have exhausted every possibility but one in a given equation that one, no matter how impossible, no matter how ridiculous it may seem in the postulation—must be the correct one. . . .88 A theorem analogous to the one by which I concluded that the papers were in this apartment.”

  “But, Mr. Queen, for the love of Pete—ceilings!” exploded Cronin, while the Inspector looked guiltily at the living-room ceiling. Ellery caught the look and laughed, shaking his head.

  Diagram of Monty Field’s bedroom.

  “I’m not suggesting that we call in a plasterer to maul these lovely middle-class ceilings,” he said. “Because I have the answer already. What is it in these rooms somewhere that is on the ceiling?”