The Tragedy of Z (31 page)

It seemed a pretty scheme. But Aaron Dow was not executed for the murder of Senator Fawcett; he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In a way this pleased Magnus; he might be able to use the man again. He waited. For some time he had been aware of the prison underground system inaugurated by the ingenious Tabb for smuggling messages in and out; Magnus said nothing about this, bided his time. Eventually the opportunity arose. He watched the messages, and then one day intercepted a note in Father Muir's breviary from Dr. Fawcett to Dow. Without Tabb's knowledge he read it, learned of the plans for Dow's escape, saw another remarkable opportunity; but the escape being planned for Wednesday, and on Wednesday night his presence as officiating officer being demanded at the Scalzi execution, Magnus wrote a false note to Dow appointing Thursday—when he himself would be free—as the day for escape. On the back of the original Fawcett note which he had intercepted he block-lettered a message from Dow and sent it surreptitiously to Fawcett to explain away the discrepancy of Dow's not attempting to escape on Wednesday. As is the case in most crimes of this nature, he became more and more involved with every effort to further his plans. This note caught him, although at the time he sent it it seemed a safe thing to do.

There is little else. I remember we were all seated on Father Muir's porch the following day, and Elihu Clay asked why Warden Magnus had opened the letter on Senator Fawcett's desk which was addressed to himself and annotated: “Algonquin Promotions.”

The old gentleman sighed. “An interesting question. You remember in my analysis last night I suggested there was a provocative explanation. I think I know why Magnus did it. You see, in my general analysis, I saw that the opening of the letter by anyone in the prison would be understandable. Anyone, that is,
but the Warden,
for the letter was addressed to him and certainly ‘Algonquin Promotions' could not possibly affect his own position. So when my further analysis pointed inevitably to Magnus, I asked myself why he had opened that envelope. Because he thought it might contain a
different
message from the one suggested by the note on the envelope! The Senator in the prison interview had hinted to Magnus of Dow's hold on him. The note, thought Magnus, might have contained a reference to this interview, might therefore implicate him if such a reference fell into the hands of the police. His reasoning process was faulty, of course, but at the time he was in an aggravated emotional state and could not think clearly. At any rate, the true explanation didn't invalidate the general theorem laid down.”

“Who,” demanded father, “sent the second section of chest to Ira Fawcett and the third to Fanny Kaiser? Dow couldn't have managed it. That's been bothering me.”

“And me,” I said ruefully.

“I fancy I know the gentleman behind that,” smiled Drury Lane. “Our friend Mark Currier, the attorney. We'll never be certain, but Dow when he was awaiting trial must have asked him at certain intervals to send the two remaining pieces of chest; I suppose Dow had cached them with letters beforehand in a general-delivery postoffice box, or something of the sort. Currier strikes me as being none too scrupulous, and it may have occurred to him that if he could back the blackmail story he might himself make some money on the transaction. But please don't quote me.”

“Wasn't it,” suggested Father Muir timidly, “a wee bit dangerous allowing poor Aaron Dow to go to the brink of eternity before exonerating him?”

The old gentleman's smile vanished. “It had to be done, Father. Remember, I had no concrete evidence of any kind by which I might pin Magnus down in a court of law. It was necessary to take him by surprise under unusual emotional conditions. I timed my analysis and planned the setting and tension of the scene to a nicety; witness the result. When he saw the inevitability of the argument, in the excitement of the moment his nerve broke and he attempted—foolishly, blindly, as I had hoped—to escape. Escape! Poor fellow.” He was silent for a moment. “His confession followed. Had we adopted the usual procedure, Magnus might have had time to compose himself, think things out, cannily deny the whole business; and without evidence we should have had a hard, if not impossible, time attempting to convict him of the crimes.”

So many things happened. John Hume was elected State Senator from Tilden County. Elihu Clay found his marble business a little less prosperous, but more honest. Fanny Kaiser is serving a long sentence in a Federal penitentiary.…

It occurs to me that I have said nothing of what happened to Aaron Dow, the cause of all this trouble, the innocent victim of a desperate man's schemes. I have, I fear, deliberately held back from telling about poor Dow. It was—well, it was retribution for his cheap little life, I suppose, and a notice from Fate that, innocent of these murders or not, he was a useless member of society.

At any rate, at the conclusion of Mr. Lane's recital, and when Warden Magnus had been subdued, the old gentleman turned quickly, his eyes concerned, to the poor devil sitting in the electric chair. But when he attempted to lift Dow out of that nightmarish implement of legal torture, we saw that the man was sitting very still and even smiling a little.

For Dow was dead, you see, and the doctors said he had died of heart-failure. I was in terror for weeks about this; had we killed him after all by the excitement? I shall never really know; although his health-chart in the prison records showed that he had had a weak heart even on admittance to Algonquin twelve years before.

One thing more.

It was that next day, some time before Mr. Lane's supplementary explanations, that young Jeremy hooked my arm in his and took me walking down the road. He planned it nicely, I will say that for him; I was a little unstrung from the events of the night before, and perhaps not quite so self-controlled as I might have been under different circumstances.

At any rate, Jeremy took my hand rather tentatively and, to make this very long story exceedingly short, asked me in a whisky-tenorish sort of voice to become Mrs. Jeremy Clay.

Such a nice boy! I looked at his curly hair and barndoor shoulders, and thought that it was very sweet and comforting to know that
someone
thought enough of you to want to marry you; and his big frame and healthy young body were a tribute to the cause of vegetarianism, and
that
was all right, because even such sensible people as Mr. Bernard Shaw believe in it—although I myself enjoy a smoky wood-fire steak on occasions.… But then there was that business of throwing explosives about his father's quarries, and that was distinctly not all right, because I was rather appalled at the thought of having to live out my life wondering whether my husband would come back from work in the evening in one piece or in little scattered pieces, like a picture-puzzle. Of course, he wouldn't
always
be doing that.…

I was looking for excuses, to be sure. Not that I didn't really adore Jeremy. And, from the fiction standpoint, it would be nice to be able to say at the end, as the hero and heroine touch breasts under the setting sun: “Oh, Jeremy darling—I will, I will!”

But I took his hand, and stood on tiptoes to kiss the cleft in his chin, and said: “Oh, Jeremy darling—no.”

Very sweetly, you understand. He was too fine to hurt. But marriage was not for Patience Thumm. I was a serious young woman, I said, and dimly I saw ahead a few years, and visualized myself in starched collar and sensible shoes at the right hand of that wonderful old man who had shown me the way—hallelujah!—and I would become his feminine counterpart, and together we would solve all the crimes in creation.… Silly, wasn't it?

And yet, I tell you, if it were not for father—who is dear but uninspirational—I would change my name to something distinctly neat and not gaudy, like Miss Druria Lane. I feel
that
way about brains.

Concerning Ellery Queen

Murder will out, and so will a mystery. After many years of secrecy, the black mask that concealed the identity of Ellery Queen, author, was dropped, revealing—two men! Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee are cousins who seemed headed for conventional business careers until they read an announcement of a detective story prize contest. In a light-hearted moment they entered, and in a surprised and happy one discovered that they had won. With the publication of that first book,
The Roman Hat Mystery,
this remarkably successful collaboration began.

The team works in a businesslike fashion, adhering to regular schedules at home, and meeting regularly in a barren office whose only spot of interest is a bullet-proof window. (Sorry to disappoint you, but the window was installed by the former tenant, a jeweler.) The businesslike approach is not the only ingredient in their recipe for success. Dannay and Lee still get an enormous amount of fun out of their writing—imagine being the very first to solve a whodunit!

Ellery Queen, the detective, whom the authors refer to in private conversation as The Great Man, has achieved the reputation of being the logical successor to Sherlock Holmes. And the stories built around him have gained their wide popularity through what Howard Haycraft, in his book
Murder for Pleasure
(to which we are indebted for many of the above facts), calls “the absolutely logical, fair-play method of deduction,” a quality that has marked these author's work from the beginning.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Drury Lane Mysteries

1

The Man in the Blue Hat

On the twenty-eighth of May, which was a Tuesday, Miss Patience Thumm, whose office hours were elastic, entered the ante-room of the Thumm Detective Agency at a few minutes to ten, smiled cheerily at the sad, moon-eyed Miss Brodie, the agency's official stenographer, and burst into the inner sanctum to find her father listening intently to the heavy earnest tones of a visitor.

“Ah, Patty,” said the Inspector. “Glad you came so early. This is Mr. George Fisher and he's got an interesting little story. My daughter, Fisher. Sort of her father's keeper,” he chuckled. “The brains of this outfit, so you'd better spill it to her.”

The visitor scraped his chair back and rose awkwardly, fumbling with his cap. It was a peaked cap with a soft crown; a small enamelled plate above the peak said: “Rivoli Bus Co.” He was a tall, broad, pleasant-looking young man with unholy red hair; a smart uniform of blue-grey fitted his bulky figure snugly; his chest was bisected obliquely by a black strap which met his broad belt at the waist; and his stout calves were encased in leather.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Thumm,” he mumbled. “Ain't much of a case——”

“Do sit down, Mr. Fisher,” said Patience with the smile she reserved exclusively for good-looking young clients. “What's the trouble?”

“Well, I was just givin' the Inspector an earful,” said Fisher, his own ears reddening. “Don't know if it's anything, y'see. But it might be. This bird Donoghue's my pal, see, and——”

“Whoa,” said the Inspector. “We'd better start at the beginning, Fisher. Fisher drives one of those big sightseeing buses that park around Times Square, Patty. Rivoli Bus Company. He's worried about a friend of his; and the reason he's come to see us is because this friend, fellow by the name of Donoghue, often mentioned my name to him. Donoghue's an ex-cop; I seem to remember him as a nice husky old boy, good record on the force.”

“Is Donoghue employed by your company, too?” Patience asked, inwardly sighing at the prosaic beginning of the story.

“No, ma'am. He retired from the force about five years ago an' took a job as special guard at that museum on Fifth an' Sixty-Fifth—the Britannic.” Patience nodded; the Britannic Museum was a small but highly esteemed institution for the preservation and exhibition of old English manuscripts and books. She had visited it several times in the company of Mr. Drury Lane, who was one of its patrons. “Donoghue an' my old man were together in harness, see, an' I've known him all my life, ma'am.”

“And something's happened to him?”

Fisher fumbled with his cap. “He's—ma'am, he's disappeared!”

“Ah,” said Patience. “Well, father, that seems to be more in
your
line. When a staid and respectable gentleman of past middle age vanishes it's generally a woman, isn't it?”

“Oh, no, ma'am,” said the bus-driver, “not Donoghue!”

“Have you notified the Missing Persons Bureau?”

“No, ma'am. I—I didn't know if I'd ought to. Old Donoghue would be sorer'n a pup if I raised a fuss for no good reason. Y'see, Miss Thumm,” said Fisher earnestly, “it may be nothin'. I don't know. But it looked damned funny to me.”

“And it is funny,” said the Inspector. “Queer set-up, Pat. Go ahead and tell Miss Thumm what you told me, Fisher.”

Fisher told a strange tale. A party of school-teachers from Indianapolis, in New York on a combined group vacation and educational tour, had chartered one of the Rivoli Bus Company's mammoth machines to conduct them about the city on an itinerary arranged in advance of their visit. Fisher had been told off to drive the party about the city on the previous day, Monday. They had embarked promptly at noon from the company's starting-point, Forty-Fourth Street off Broadway. The last destination on the day's itinerary had been the Britannic Museum. The museum was not on the bus company's regular sightseeing route for obvious reasons: it was a distinctly “highbrow joint,” remarked Fisher without rancour, and most sightseers were content with viewing Chinatown, the Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (from its classic exterior), Radio City, the East Side, and Grant's Tomb. However, the party of visiting schoolteachers was not composed of the usual sightseers; they were teachers of Fine Arts and English in the hinterland and, in Fisher's unadmiring proletarian phrase, were “a bunch of highbrows.” Inspection of the famous Britannic Museum had long been contemplated by the visiting æsthetes as one of the features of their New York tour. At first it had seemed as if they would be doomed to disappointment; for the museum for several weeks past had been closed pending extensive repairs and alterations of the interior, and indeed was not scheduled to be reopened to the public for at least two months to come. But finally the curator and the Board of Directors of the Britannic had granted special permission for the party to visit the museum during its restricted stay in the city.