Queens Full (13 page)

“Only you didn't make it, Herb,” said Chief Dakin in his sternly sorrowful way. “I've had lawyers from the State's Attorney's office working on this behind your back since Thursday night. They've already turned up enough to show that the estate's worth four million easy. And of course we just took that onionskin will back from the Court of Probate and handed it over to experts. Why, Herb, you left a fingerprint
under
some of the tracing.” The old chief shook his head. “And when we opened your safe deposit box by court order yesterday, we even found the original of Bella's new will. Now why in the world did you save that, Herb? I guess it ain't so easy to change the honest habits of a lifetime even when you turn crook.”

The droplets dripping from the lawyer's clothes began to scatter in their fall.

Amy turned away to look at the pond.

“Finally,” Ellery said, “those two attempts on Amy's life. I knew you'd killed Bella, Wentworth; but I was only assuming you'd dosed Amy's prune juice and fired the shot at her from the attic window in order to cast further suspicion on the Livingstons. If my assumption was correct, your attempts on Amy were deliberate phonies. If my assumption was correct, you didn't want her to die—in fact, you'd go a long way to preserve her life, because if Amy were murdered within days of Bella's murder it would be bound to bring that traced will back under close scrutiny.

“So,” said Ellery, “I got Amy to stage that little drowning scene this morning to see what you would do. And you did it, Wentworth—you nearly drowned yourself in your anxiety to keep her alive. By the way, Amy can swim like a dolphin.”

“And I think that's about it, Herb,” said Chief Dakin after a while, “except,” he added, “for the disagreeable part.”

They sat in a communion of silence while Herbert Wentworth stumbled off through the woods followed by the comments of the birds and the sad clump of Dakin's shoes.

“Poor Mr. Wentworth,” Amy said at last.

“Poor Mr. Queen,” mumbled Ellery. “What in heaven's name am I going to say to those three back at the house, Amy? They've taken a pretty rough beating.”

“Oh, I don't think they'll mind,” Amy said. “I mean, after
I've
talked to them. You see, I've been thinking …”

“Not again,” Ellery said in some dismay.

“No, really. How could I possibly spend more than one-fourth of the income from four million dollars?” Amy put her palms down on the landing behind her and threw her blond head back to the sun. “Isn't it a lovely day?”

Ellery looked down into her brown, brown eyes.

“Lovely,” he said.

DIAMONDS IN PARADISE

Maybe Lili Minx used to be the girl of your dreams, too. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Lili caused more insomnia in her day than all the midnight maatjes herring consumed on Broadway and 51st Street on all the opening nights put together since Jenny Lind raised the gulls off the roof of Castle Garden.

It wasn't just Lili's face and figure, either, although she could have drifted out on a bare apron before a two-bit vaudeville flat and stood there for two hours and twenty minutes merely looking at you, and you'd have headed for your herring, shouting, “Smash hit!” It wasn't even her voice, which made every other set of female pipes on Broadway sound like something ground out of a box with a monkey on it. It was the way she had of making every male within eyeshot feel that he was alone with her in a dreamboat.

Of course, it was a trick, and you can't run up an inside report on the magician by a study of his act; ask the seven dreamboat captains she divorced.

The truth was, La Minx was a mixed-up kid with a lot of wonderful equipment that, practically speaking, didn't mean a thing. She put in a great deal of paid-up couch time trying to find out what made her run, but who cared? It was enough for every man but her ex-husbands and her analyst to watch her walk onstage—and, at that, her analyst was by no means a sure thing.

One of Lili's problems was diamonds. She was hipped on diamonds.

It wasn't avarice. Lili could drop fifty grand at the roulette wheel and stroll away yawning. But the mislaying of a single chip from her hoard of diamonds sent her into hysterics; even off the record her press agent swore that she checked her inventory every night before going to bed.

In the beginning Lili Minx's collection was the natural target of every creep out of the jug. But after a few of them tangled with her, Lili was declared out of bounds. She once spent $23,000 in private-detective fees tracking down a panicky jewel thief who had been unlucky enough to succeed in lifting a diamond ring of hers worth fifteen hundred; she caught him, got her ring back, and then vamped the judge into hurling the book at him. The light-fingered lads passed the word that it was a surer thing putting the snatch on the gold in the President's teeth than trying to get away with the lousiest bauble in Lili's jewel box. When it came to her diamonds, Lil could have told Javert things about the sewers of Paris he never knew.

But there are always operators who can't resist the glitter made by a buzz-saw; and this is the story of one such.

It happened in Paradise Gardens, Lili's favorite gambling hell. Paradise Gardens enjoyed a brief glory in the days when New York was wide open, club doors had peepholes for dramatic effect, and everything went, usually with great speed. The Paradise masqueraded behind a frowzy old brownstone front in the East Fifties off Fifth Avenue.

Inside, the azure ceiling twinkled with stars and well-developed angels, you sat among tropical flowers under papiermâché trees with apples tied to their branches, and your food and potables were served by show-girl type waitresses wearing imitation fig leaves. But if you were known to be able to write expensive checks with no bounce, you could go upstairs. Upstairs there was no mullarkey about Gardens or Edens, just nice business decor to set off the green baize-covered tables at which the management permitted you to lose large sums of money.

Lili Minx was between husbands, and on this particular evening she was alone. She floated in, pale-perfect in white velvet and ermine—remote as the Pleiades and appetizing as a charlotte russe. On each little ear burned a cold green fire, La Minx's only jewelry tonight. They were the famous Mumtaz green diamond earrings, once the property of Shah Jahan's favorite sultana, which had been clipped to Lili's lobes by the quivering hands of an Iraqi millionaire under the delusion that he was about to enjoy an Arabian Nights entertainment. Lili prized them at least as highly as the ears to which they were attached.

Everything stopped as Lili paused in the archway for her moment of tribute; then play was resumed, and Lili bought a stack of thousand-dollar chips at the cashier's cage and went to the roulette table.

An hour later her second stack was in the croupier's bank. Lili laughed and drifted off toward the ladies' lounge, her slender fingers to her forehead delicately. No one spoke to her.

The chic French maid in the lounge came forward swiftly. “Madame has the headache?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps some aspirin and a cold compress?”

“Please.”

Lili lay down on a chaise longue and closed her eyes. It was bad tonight, very bad. The cold touch of the wrapped icebag on her forehead felt delicious; she smiled her thanks. The maid, deftly and in sympathetic silence, adjusted the pillow under her head. It was quiet in the lounge, and Lili slipped off into her own world of dreams.

She awoke a few minutes later, her headache almost gone. Lili put the icebag aside and rose from the chaise. The maid had discreetly vanished.

La Minx went to a vanity and sat down to fix her hair …

At that exact moment the gambling rooms of Paradise Gardens went berserk. Women shrieked, their escorts skittered about like trapped mice, the housemen struggled with their wheels and faro and crap layouts, and the massive door gave way under the axheads of police.

“Hold it, everybody!” A small elderly man with a gray mustache hopped nimbly onto a crap table and held up his arms for silence. “I'm Inspector Queen of police headquarters on special gambling detail. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a raid. Don't waste your time trying to get away; every exit is covered. Now if you'll all please line up along the walls while the officers go to work—”

And that was when Lili Minx burst from the ladies' lounge, looking like one of the Furies and screaming, “My diamond earrings!
I've been robbed!
”

No one was surprised that what had begun as a gambling raid should turn immediately into a robbery investigation—no one, that is, who knew the Minx. She swept everything before her like a natural force. Dazzled by the lightning in those heavenly eyes, bowing to the hurricane in that golden-trumpeting voice, Inspector Queen did her bidding as eagerly as Moses on the Mount. She had often enough disturbed his dreams, too.

As the axes rose and fell and the equipment splintered, the Inspector crooned. “Now don't you worry your pretty little head, Miss Minx, we'll find your earrings—”

“You're moddang right you will!” stormed Lili. “And that moddang maid, too! She's the only one touched me! I want her
scrotched!
”

“She can't get away, Miss Minx,” the old fire-eater beamed, patting the lovely little hand. “We've had the Paradise surrounded for an hour getting set for this jump, and not one soul's left the premises. So she has to be here. Well, Velie?” he barked as the big sergeant came loping out of the ladies' lounge feeling his tie furtively. “Where is that moddang maid?”

“Right here, Inspector.” Sergeant Velie, looking at Lili like a lovelorn Newfoundland, dumped into the Inspector's arms a maid's uniform, a starched cap and apron, a pair of high-heeled shoes, two sheer stockings, and a brunette wig. “I found them in the lounge broom closet.”

Lili glared at the wig. “What does this mean?”

“Why, it's Harry the Actor,” said the Inspector, pleased. “A clever little skunk at female impersonation, Miss Minx—he's made his finest hauls as a French maid. So Harry's pulled it on you, has he? You just wait here, my dear.” And the old gent began to march along the line-up at the wall like a wiry little Fate, followed by La Minx, who took orders from no one where her jewels were concerned.

“And here he is,” said the Inspector cheerily, stopping before a slender man with the build of a jockey and boyish cheeks that were very pale at the moment. “Tough luck, Harry—the raid, I mean. Suppose we try this on for size, shall we?” and Inspector Queen clapped the brunette wig on the small man's head.

“That'sssss … the one,” hissed Lili Minx; and the little thief turned a shade paler, which the Inspector would have said was impossible. The actress stepped up to Harry so that they stood chest to chest, and she looked deep into his eyes. “You give me back my diamond earrings, you exanzebious thus-and-so, or I'll tear off your …” Lili went into considerable detail, chiefly anatomical.

“Get her away from me,” quavered Harry the Actor in his girlish treble, trying to burrow into the wall.

“Search him, Velie,” said Inspector Queen hastily.

In the manager's office a half hour later, with the window drapes drawn, Harry the Actor stood shivering in a September Morn attitude, peeled to the buff. On the manager's desk lay everything taken from his person: a wallet containing several hundred dollars, a pocketful of change, a ballpoint pen, a racing form, a pair of battered old dice, a pack of cigarets and a booklet of matches, a vial of French perfume, a lipstick, a compact, a handkerchief smeared with make-up, and a box of Kis-Mee, the Magic Breath Sweetener. Everything in parts had been disassembled. The cigarets had been shredded. The little thief's clothing had been gone over seam by seam. His shoes had been tapped for hidden compartments. His mouth and hair had been carefully probed. Various indignities had been visited upon his person, and not only upon it. Even the abandoned maid's outfit had been examined.

The green diamond earrings were not found.

The Inspector growled, “All right, Houdini. Get dressed.”

And all the while, from the other side of the manager's door, La Minx's delicious voice could be heard, promising Harry the Actor what was in store for him when
she
got her hands on him.

It drove the poor man at last to a desperate performance. In the act of restoring his belongings to his pockets, he suddenly vaulted over the desk, stiff-armed the policeman before the window, and leaped through the drapes like a mountain goat. It was an unlucky night for Harry all around. The railing of the fire escape was rotten with rust. His momentum took him into space, carrying the railing with him. They heard the railing land on the concrete of the back yard three stories below, then the soggy thud that was Harry.

The officers posted in the yard were shaking their heads over the little thief when Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie dropped off the fire escape, followed—incredibly—by Lili Minx.

If Harry the Actor had had any hope of cheating his karma, one glazed look at the furious beauty glaring down at him destroyed it. Either way he was a goner, and he knew it.

“Harry,” said Inspector Queen, tapping the livid cheek gently, “you're checking out, and you'd better speak up if you want a fair shake Upstairs. Where did you stash 'em?”

Harry's eyes rolled; his tongue appeared. It quivered a little. Then he said thickly, “Diamonds … in … Paradise …”

“In the Paradise
what
, Harry?
Where?
”

But Harry had had it.

Ellery always said that if it wasn't his greatest case, it certainly was his shortest.

He first learned about it when the Inspector staggered home at breakfast time. Ellery got some coffee into him and extracted the baffling details.

“And I tell you, son,” croaked his father, “we went back into that joint and tore it apart. It was rotten luck, Harry's dying before he could tell us exactly where in the Paradise Gardens he'd hidden Lili's diamonds. They had to be in the building somewhere, either in something or on someone. We still hadn't let anyone go from the raid; and we not only took the Paradise apart bit by bit, we body-searched every mother's son and daughter on the premises, thinking Harry might have passed the earrings on to an accomplice. Well, we didn't find them.” Inspector Queen sounded as if he were going to cry. “I don't know what I'll say to that sweet child.”