The Scarlet Letters (10 page)

“He fights dirty. Gave me the knee and when I doubled up beat the hell out of my face. Am I dreaming, or did somebody take pictures?”

“You're awake.”

“Who was it?”

“Some news photographer on roving assignment, I think.”

“Great,” growled Fields. “What they'll do to this.” He was silent, then he said, “What's your hatchet?”

“No hatchet.”

“I'll bet.”

“You'd lose.”

Fields grunted. “Anyway, thanks.”

“Don't mention it.”

“Know who he was?”

“Yes.”

“Who?” Fields peered again.

“V.H.”

“Give me a cigaret. I seem to have lost mine in the scuffle.”

He smoked silently, thinking. His jaw was swollen as well as his eyes; he smoked sidewise, wryly. His dinner clothes were a mess.

“Look, my friends,” said the voice from the driver's seat, “I don't mind cruising around on the clock, but would you at least give me a clue where I'm going to wind up?”

Fields said in a swift undertone, “Does he know who–?”

“I don't believe so.”

“Don't tell him. I want to play this coy tonight. I've got to clear my head. Can I trust you?”

“How should I know what you can do?”

“Okay. Tell him Park and 86th. Where are we now?”

“Third Avenue around 60th, I think.”

“Tell him.”

Ellery told the driver and dropped his voice still lower. “What's the idea? Don't you live at Essex House?”

“That's for my public. I've got a few hideouts around town under different names. I don't think I'm up to answering my phone tonight. Where I'm going, the calls are from hipsters.”

“Just what did you say to our friend,” asked Ellery with innocent curiosity, “that aroused his ire?”

The columnist grinned.

They got out at Park and 86th and stood on the corner until the taxi was out of sight.

“Now where?” asked Ellery.

“You're sticking, I see.”

“I don't give a damn where you hole up. You need first aid.”

Fields stared at him out of his one usable eye. Suddenly he said, “All right.”

They walked up Park Avenue to 88th Street and turned west. At Madison they crossed over.

“It's this one here.”

It was a small, quiet-looking apartment house between Madison and Fifth. Fields unlocked the street door and they went in. The elevator was self-service; there was no doorman.

He led the way to a rear apartment on the ground floor, used his key again. The name panel over the bell button said:
GEORGE T. JOHNSON
.

“I like ground-floor apartments,” Fields said. “You can jump out of a window in an emergency.”

The flat was furnished in surprisingly good taste. The columnist saw Ellery looking around, and he laughed. “Everybody thinks I'm a slob. But even a slob can have a soul, hm? If I told any of the wolf pack that I'm queer for Bach, they'd turn pale. I'll tell you a secret–I can't stand boogy. Makes my stomach turn over. What do you drink?”

They had a couple of quick ones and then Ellery went to work on him. An hour later, bathed, cuts cleansed, swellings down, and in pajamas and robe, Fields looked human again.

They had a couple of slow ones.

“I don't drink when I'm working,” said the columnist, “but you're company.”

“I don't, either,” said Ellery, “so I'm breaking my rule.”

Fields pretended not to understand. He talked charmingly on a dozen subjects as he kept refilling Ellery's glass.

“It won't do you any good,” said Ellery an hour later, “because while most times three drinks can put me under, I have a hollow leg when I put my mind to it. Well, maybe not quite–that sounded like a mixed metaphor. The point is, Leon, how come?”

“How come what?”

“How come you know what.”

“Let's have some Bach.”

Ellery listened to Landowska's brittle beauties for another hour. Under other circumstances he would have enjoyed it. But his head was beginning to dance and Fields's battered face was dancing with it. He yawned.

“Sleepy?” said the columnist. “Have another.” He turned off the record player and came on with the bottle.

“Enough,” said Ellery.

“Aw, come on.”

“More than enough,” said Ellery. “What are you trying to do to me?”

The columnist grinned. “What you wanted to do to me. Tell me, Ellery: What tomahawk are you polishing?”

“Let's call it a draw. Are you feeling all right?”

“Sure.”

“I'm going home.”

Fields took him to the door. “Just tell me this: Are you working on Van Harrison?”

Ellery looked at him. “Why should I be working on Van Harrison?”

“Who's asking?”

“Who's telling?”

They collapsed in each other's arms, overcome by their wit. Then Fields put his arm around Ellery and said, “You're okay, chum. So you've got something on that bastard. Maybe I know it and maybe I don't–”

“Maybe you're talking through your father's mustache, Leon.”

“Let's stop horsing around.” The columnist's chopped-up face was grim. “If I gave you some of the dirt I've got stashed away on Harrison, would it help you?”

Ellery took a long time before he answered. Then he said: “Maybe.”

“Okay, I'll think about it.”

They embraced again, and Ellery staggered out into the night.

E· F· G·

Ellery crawled out of bed on Saturday morning to find that it was almost noon and that the life of a private eye was composed of lows as well as highs. His head felt rotten clear through and he bore it gingerly from the bathroom to the kitchen. Here he found the morning newspapers neatly waiting. On the top one, the
Daily News
, his father had drawn an arrow in red crayon over the figure of a man in a full front-page photo, and he had scrawled above it: “Is this resemblance coincidental, or are you the copyright owner?”

It was the flash photo of himself slammed against the wall of the alley, with Harrison and Fields locked in combat at his feet.

Ellery poured himself a cup of bitter coffee from the pot thickening on the range, and he sat down at the kitchen table to survey the damage.

The Inspector's identification of him had been compounded of equal parts of guesswork and inside information. Nikki might do as well, but he doubted if anyone else would recognize him. The photograph was all right. His arm had come up just in time to black out the salient parts of his face. Of the two men rolling on the floor of the alley, only Leon Fields's face was visible, but it was grotesquely twisted with pain from a blow and was hardly recognizable. Harrison sprawled above him, his face turned from the camera. The story on page three was illustrated with the photo of Harrison charging up the alley in his getaway, but even this head-on shot showed the head lowered in distorting perspective. Apparently neither photograph had been clear, for both had been hastily retouched, causing further distortion. They would make little visual impression on the public.

The story was sparse. Both combatants were named in the headlines, and the time and place were stated in the boldface type of the lead paragraph, but the man who had made off with the unconscious Fields was “unidentified” and was referred to, simply, as “the Mystery Man.” Mystery Man was being sought by the police, as was the driver of the taxi. Columnist Leon Fields had not been located for a statement; by press time he had not appeared at his home or any of his known haunts, and a spot-check of the hospitals had failed to turn him up. “Fields may be hiding out with friends.” Van Harrison's telephone in Darien, Connecticut, did not answer; he had not gone to the Lambs Club: “The police are checking the midtown hotels.”

The cause of the fist fight was unknown. “A quick run-through of Fields's recent columns shows no reference to Actor Van Harrison, good or bad. Harriet Loughman, Fields's Girl Friday, refused comment, saying ‘Any statement will have to come from Mr. Fields.'”

The other newspapers carried terse news accounts of the fracas. None had any pictures, and none front-paged the story.

Ellery went into his father's bedroom with his coffee cup and the copy of the
News
and used the Inspector's direct line to Headquarters.

“I've been waiting for your call,” said Inspector Queen's acid tones. “What happened last night?”

“Who's speaking, please?”

“Your old man,” said his old man, sweetening.

“Then I'll tell you.” And Ellery gave his father an account of the previous night's events. “I haven't seen the afternoon papers. What's the latest?”

“Fields came out of hiding and issued a statement to the effect that ‘it's a tempest in a cocktail shaker.' He claims he stopped by Harrison's table, Harrison was a little tight and misunderstood something he, Fields, said; that Harrison then challenged Fields to ‘come outside,' adding a number of uncomplimentary remarks; that he, Fields, thereupon lost his temper and indicated his willingness to oblige, in the great American tradition; and so forth. He refused to say what it was that Harrison ‘misunderstood,' and he said he had no idea who the man was who put him in a cab. ‘Just a Good Samaritan,' he said. ‘I told him where to take me, he did it, I thanked him, and that's the last I saw of him.' Asked if he'd recognize the Good Samaritan if he saw him again, Fields said, ‘I doubt it. I wasn't seeing very good at the time.' Why's he protecting
you
?
”

“I don't know,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “unless he's so anxious to see Harrison take a pratfall he doesn't want to hamstring me in whatever it is he thinks I'm up to. Did they find Harrison? He wasn't fished out of the river, or anything?”

“No such luck,” said his father. “He rolled up to his house in Darien around five-thirty
A.M.
in his brand-new Caddy convertible and walked right into the arms of the reporters, who'd broken in and'd been waiting there all night lapping up his liquor and trying on his toupees.”

“Toupees?” Ellery was startled. “You mean that isn't his own hair?”

“He owns only about fifty per cent of it, I'm told. He also wears a corset. They found two spares in his bureau.”

“Heavens to Betsy.”

“In fact, if they'd found a set of store teeth and a bullet hole between his eyes I'd think we were back in the Elwell case.”

“I wonder if these personality sidelights,” mused Ellery, “are known to a certain …”

“Would depend, I should think,” said the Inspector sedately. “Women aren't as disillusioned by these things as men, anyway. Do you want his statement, or don't you?”

“His statement. To be sure.”

“It was pretty much along the lines of Leon's, except that Harrison said it was Fields who was plastered. He wouldn't let on what the fight was about, either. Dismissed it as a mere nothing–'an alcoholic afflatus,' as he put it. After he got away from the alley, he went on to say, he picked up his car at an all-night parking lot and drove around for hours ‘cooling off.' He probably spent the night in some Westchester bar, because he was thoroughly fried when he got home. He expressed his regrets at having lost his temper and ‘hoped' he hadn't roughed up Mr. Fields too much. In fact, Harrison got quite expansive with the boys. Practically had them feeling his muscle. There was a bad moment when one of the reporters was so indelicate as to suggest that maybe the weight and reach differential had something to do with his glorious victory, and it almost wound up in another brawl. But in the end Harrison said he'd be only too happy to pay for any medical expenses Mr. Fields may have had to incur, and apologize to boot.”

“Worrying about an assault rap,” chuckled Ellery. “I take it Leon isn't pressing a charge.”

“That's right. So that's the end of the Battle of the Alley.”

“Just one other thing, Dad. Did either man, or any of the news stories or off-the-record remarks, even hint at a possible woman in the case?”

“As far as I know, no.”

“Thank you,” said Ellery fervently; and he hung up just as the door buzzed.

It was Nikki. She rushed in crying, “Ellery! What happened?”

So Ellery soothed her and made her comfortable in the study while he retired to dress, and through the door of his bedroom repeated once more the saga of the previous night.

At the end Nikki said slowly, “I wonder if it wasn't about Martha.”

“I don't think so. I don't see Fields hushing up a noisy yarn like that. It's the sort of thing that's–if he'll pardon the expression–right up his alley. No, Nikki, it was something else, and I'd give a great deal to know what.”

“Why?”

“Because whatever it is, you can bank on it it's not to Harrison's credit. Leon deals in well-hung beef, with an odor. If we knew what it was, it might come in awfully handy … But tell me about Martha,” Ellery said, appearing in the doorway knotting his tie. “How did she take it? What did Dirk say?”

“She put on a marvelous act. But she almost overdid it, looking so blank at Harrison's name in the paper that Dirk had to remind her she'd met him ‘once.' She pretended such indifference that I thought Dirk gave her a queer look.” Nikki shuddered. “She must be in torture, Ellery. She doesn't dare try to call Harrison, and she must be scared witless that he'll try to call her. I noticed she kept within arm's length of the phone all morning.”

“Didn't Dirk make any comment?”

“Only that if Leon Fields had something on Harrison, he wouldn't be in Harrison's shoes for all the empty seats on Broadway.”

“How right he is. Well, you'd better keep your eye peeled for the next business envelope. Martha may beat you to it.”

This was a prophecy. On Monday morning Nikki hurried out of her room at the usual time, bound for the lobby and the mail, to find that Martha had already been downstairs for it and was shuffling the envelopes rapidly.

“Aren't you the early one this morning?” Nikki said brightly. She tried desperately to keep up with the envelopes, on the lookout for the telltale red typing.

Martha smiled and dropped the letters on the foyer table. “The usual nothing,” she said indifferently. “I'll look at them later. The coffee's making, Nikki …”

On Tuesday morning she did the same thing.

“I don't know what we'll do if she keeps this up,” Nikki said over the phone Tuesday evening. “If she gets to it first, I'll never see it.”

“Illustrating the futility of this whole damn thing,” growled Ellery. “What's the point, Nikki? So I follow them through the alphabet and back again–and then what? I've been trying to do some work of my own, and this day- and nightmare is making it impossible.”

“I'm sorry,” said Nikki frigidly. “Of course you mustn't let your work suffer. Why don't you hire a secretary?”

“I've got a secretary!”

“No, I mean it, Ellery. Forget the whole thing. It
is
an imposition–”

“Imposition my foot. It's a stupidity. I'd be far better off following Dirk. Less wear and tear, and surer results. That is, if the object is to keep him from knocking their heads together.
Is
that the object? I don't know up from down any more.”

“I want this affair stopped,” Nikki whispered. “As well as kept from Dirk. Harrison's not right for Martha, Ellery. He's no good. I've–I've asked around. Some way has to be found to bring her to her senses, and it has to be done before Dirk finds out. Maybe you'll see an opportunity to break it up–somehow, some night, when they meet. Don't you see, Ellery?”

“I see,” sighed Ellery; and in the end he agreed to trail Martha blindly on whichever days Nikki was unable to get to the mail first.

Happily for Ellery, Martha as well as Van Harrison had been thoroughly frightened by the Fields affair. Not only did Harrison refrain from sending a message for two weeks afterward, but Martha clung to hearth and husband as if they were the most desirable things in life. What those two weeks meant to her, Ellery could only imagine from Nikki's eye-witness reports. She was evidently afraid to leave the premises, since Harrison might rashly phone, as he had done before the first letter came; at the same time she must have had to fight night and day the temptation to slip out and phone him. The result was a suspension in time; and it made of Martha a pitiful ghost, drifting about the apartment with an eager-to-please smile which she put on and took off like her bedroom slippers. Dirk seemed puzzled; he kept asking her if anything was the matter. She would murmur something about having to wait while Ella Greenspan rewrote her second act, and steal away to her bedroom at the first opportunity, as if it were too dangerous to remain under Dirk's eye another moment.

What Harrison was waiting for was evidently the disappearance of
l'affaire
Alley from the newspapers. When four days passed without reference to it, the fifth letter suddenly came.

They were lucky. Martha had got the mail first, as usual, but Nikki caught a glimpse of a buff-colored business envelope with the address typed in red as Martha went into the bathroom and locked the door.

“Just try to let me know when she's getting ready to leave the apartment,” Ellery said when Nikki phoned him at noon that day. “The appointment is probably for tomorrow. But don't take any chances.”

The next morning Martha left the apartment at ten o'clock to drop in on Ella Greenspan, she said, and see how her author was coming along with the script. Nikki phoned Ellery as Martha was putting her hat on. They had a short conversation about a mislaid non-existent book of Nikki's. The moment she hung up, Ellery left.

But he was too late. When he stepped out onto the observation terrace on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building, there was no sign of either Harrison or Martha. He waited a few minutes in the lounge, and then he sought an attendant. He was careful to describe only Harrison.

“Yes, sir, the gentleman was here about fifteen minutes ago. I remember because he was joined by a lady and instead of going out to look at the view they took the elevator right down again.”

So Ellery went back home, shrugging all the way.

Nikki's subsequent report was curious. Dirk had been reminiscently fretful from the moment the door shut on Martha. He had taken to pacing and muttering to himself while he eyed the telephone. Finally, at eleven o'clock, he had seized the Manhattan telephone book, looked up a number, and dialed.

“Mrs. Greenspan? This is Dirk Lawrence. Is my wife there?”

And Martha had been there! Dirk's mood lightened by magic. They had an idiotic conversation and he hung up in high spirits to resume dictating.

“Cute,” remarked Ellery. “She knew he'd be suspicious when she left the house alone for the first time in a couple of weeks. She and Harrison must have had all of five precious minutes together. I wonder what they found to talk about.”

“I don't care,” said Nikki happily. “We've passed
E
.”

“You sound like the editor of a dictionary project,” snapped Ellery. “Let me know when you get to
F
.”

They got to
F
five days later. This time Nikki had no difficulty intercepting the letter. Martha, she said, had stopped getting up early.