Queen’s Bureau of Investigation (13 page)

MAGIC DEPT.

Snowball in July

At playful moments Diamond Jim Grady liked to refer to himself as a magician, a claim no one disputed—least of all the police. Grady's specialty was jewel robbery at gunpoint, a branch of felonious vaudeville which he had elevated to an art form. His heists were miracles of advance information, timing, teamwork, and deception. And once he got his hands on the loot it vanished with the speed of light, to be seen no more in the shape the manufacturing jeweler had wrought.

Grady's most spectacular trick was keeping himself and his fellow artists out of jail. He would drill his small company without mercy in the wisdom of keeping their mugs covered, their mitts gloved, and their traps shut while on stage. There was rarely a slip in his performances; when one occurred, the slipping assistant disappeared. As Diamond Jim reasonably pointed out, “What witness can identify a slob that ain't here?”

Grady might have gone on forever collecting other people's pretties and driving the law and insurance companies mad, but he pulled one trick too many.

In explanation it is necessary to peep into Diamond Jim's love life. Lizbet had been his big moment for two years and ten months—a slim eyestopper as golden and glittery as any choice piece in his collection. Now in underworld society a romantic attachment of almost three years' duration is equivalent to an epic passion, and Lizbet may be forgiven the folly of having developed delusions of permanence. Unfortunately, that was not all she developed; include an appetite for pizza pies and French ice cream, and along with it her figure. So when one night Grady's bloated eye cased the dainty anatomy of Maybellene, pivot girl of the Club Swahili line, that was all for Lizbet.

One of Grady's staff, a lovelorn lapidary who could grind an ax as well as a diamond, tipped Lizbet the bad news from a phone booth in the Swahili men's room even as Diamond Jim prepared toothily to escort Maybellene home.

Lizbet was revolted at the perfidy of man. She also realized that unless she lammed with great rapidity her life was not worth the crummiest bangle on the junk counter of the nearest Five-and-Dime. She knew far, far too many of Diamond Jim's professional secrets; she even knew where a couple of bodies—of ex-slobs—were buried.

So Lizbet took barely the time to grab an old summer mink and a fistful of unaltered mementoes from Grady's latest personal appearance before she did an impromptu vanishing act of her own.

Immediately Lizbet became the most popular girl in town. Everybody wanted her, especially the police and Grady. The smart money, doping past performances strictly, was on Grady, but this time the smart money took a pratfall. Lizbet was not in town at all. She was in Canada, where—according to every Royal Northwest movie Lizbet had ever seen—the Mounties were large and incorruptible and a girl could think without worrying about stopping a shiv with her back. Having thought, Lizbet slung the summer mink about her plump shoulders, taxied to the nearest police station, and demanded protection and immunity in exchange for a pledge to take the witness stand back home and talk herself, if need be, into lockjaw.

And she insisted on being ushered into a cell while Montreal got in touch with New York.

The long distance negotiations took twenty-four hours. Just long enough for the news to leak out and inundate the front pages of the New York newspapers.

“So now Grady knows where she is,” fumed Inspector Queen. He was on special assignment in charge of the case. “He'll go for her sure. She told Piggott and Hesse when they flew up to Montreal that she can even drape a first-degree murder rap around Grady's fat neck.”

“Me,” said Sergeant Velie gloomily, “I wouldn't give a plugged horse car token for that broad's chances of getting back to New York with a whole hide.”

“What is he, a jet pilot?” asked Ellery. “Fly her down.”

“She won't fly, has a fear of heights,” snapped his father. “It's on the level, Ellery. Lizbet's the only girl friend Grady ever had who turned down a penthouse.”

“Train or car, then,” said Ellery. “What's the hassle?”

“A train he'd make hash out of,” said Sergeant Velie, “and a car he'd hijack some truck to run off the road into a nice thousand-foot hole.”

“You're romancing.”

“Maestro, you don't know Grady!”

“Then you're tackling this hind end to,” said Ellery negligently. “Dad, have Grady and his gang picked up on some charge and locked in a cell. By the time they're sprung this woman can be safe on ice somewhere in Manhattan.”

“On ice is where she'll wind up,” said Sergeant Velie. “And speaking of ice, who's for a bucket of Thomas Collins?”

When Ellery found that Diamond Jim had anticipated interference and disappeared with his entire company, including Maybellene, a respectful glint came into his eye.

“Let's pull a trick or two of our own. Grady will assume that you'll get Lizbet to New York as quickly as possible. He knows she won't fly and that you wouldn't risk the long trip by car. So he'll figure she'll be brought down by rail. Since the fastest way by rail is a through express, it's the crack Montreal train he'll be gunning for. Does he know Piggott and Hesse by sight?”

“Let's say he does,” said Inspector Queen, perking up notwithstanding the heat, “and I see what you mean. I'll fly Johnson and Goldberg up there along with a policewoman of Lizbet's build and general appearance. Piggott and Hesse take the policewoman onto the Special, heavily veiled, while Goldie and Johnson hustle Lizbet onto a slow train—”

“You think this Houdini plays with potsies?” demanded Sergeant Velie. “You got to do better than that, my masters.”

“Oh, come, Sergeant, he's only flesh and blood,” said Ellery soothingly. “Anyway, we're going to do better than that. To befuddle him completely, somewhere along the route we'll have her taken off and complete the trip by automobile. In fact, Dad, we'll take her off ourselves. Feel better, Velie?”

But the Sergeant shook his head. “You don't know Grady.”

So Detectives Goldberg and Johnson and an ex-chorus girl named Policewoman Bruusgaard flew to Montreal, and at the zero hour Detectives Piggott and Hesse ostentatiously spirited Policewoman Bruusgaard—veiled and sweltering in Lizbet's mink—into a drawing room on the Canadian Limited. Thirty minutes after the Limited rolled out of the terminal Detectives Johnson and Goldberg, attired as North Country backwoodsmen and lugging battered suitcases, swaggered behind Lizbet into the smoking car of a sooty, suffocating all-coach local-express entitled laughingly in the timetables The Snowball. Lizbet was in dowdy clothes, her coiffure was now blue-black, and her streaming face—scrubbed clean of heavy makeup—seemed a sucker's bet to fool even Grady, so many wrinkles and crow's-feet showed.

And the game was en route.

For on a sizzling hot morning in July two unmarked squad cars set out from Center Street, Manhattan, for upstate New York. In one rode the Queens and Sergeant Velie, in the other six large detectives.

The Sergeant drove lugubriously. “It won't work,” he predicted. “He operates practically by radar. And he can spot and grease an itchy palm from nine miles up. I tell you Grady's got this up his sleeve right now.”

“You croak like a witch doctor with bellyache,” remarked Inspector Queen, squirming in his damp clothes. “Just remember, Velie, if we don't get to Wapaug with time to spare—”

Wapaug was a whistlestop on the C. & N. Y. Railroad. It consisted of several simmering coal piles, a straggly single street, and a roasted-looking cubby of a station. The two cars drove up to the brown little building and the Inspector and Ellery went inside. No one was in the hotbox of a waiting room but an elderly man wearing sleeve garters and an eyeshade who was poking viciously at the innards of a paralyzed electric fan.

“What's with The Snowball?”

“Number 113? On time, mister.”

“And she's due—?”

“10:18.”

“Three minutes,” said Ellery. “Let's go.”

The cars had drawn up close, one to each end of the platform. Two of the six detectives were leaning exhaustedly against an empty handtruck. Otherwise, the baked platform was deserted.

They all squinted north.

10:18 came.

10:18 went.

At 10:20 they were still squinting north.

The stationmaster was in the doorway now, also squinting north.

“Hey!” rasped Inspector Queen, swatting a mosquito. “Where was that train on time? In Vermont?”

“At Grove Junction.” The stationmaster peered up the tracks, which looked as if they had just come out of a blast furnace. “Where the yards and roundhouse are. It's the all-train stop two stations north.”

“Train 113 stops at the next station north, too, doesn't she? Marmion? Did you get a report on her from Marmion?”

“I was just gonna check, mister.”

They followed him back into the hotbox and the elderly man put on his slippery headphones and got busy with the telegraph key. “Marmion stationmaster says she pulled in and out on time. Left Marmion 10:12.”

“On time at Marmion,” said Ellery, “and it's only a six-minute run from Marmion to Wapaug—” He wiped his neck.

“Funny,” fretted his father. It was now 10:22. “How could she lose four minutes on a six-minute run? Even on this railroad?”

“Somethin's wrong,” said the stationmaster, blowing the sweat off his eyeshade band. He turned suddenly to his key.

The Queens returned to the platform to stare up the local track toward Marmion. After a moment Ellery hurried back into the waiting room.

“Stationmaster, could she have switched to the express track at Marmion and gone right through Wapaug without stopping?” He knew the answer in advance, since they had driven along the railroad for miles in their approach to Wapaug; but his brains were frying.

“Nothin's gone through southbound on these tracks since 7:38 this mornin'.”

Ellery hurried out again, fingering his collar. His father was sprinting up the platform toward the squad car. The two detectives had already rejoined their mates in the other car and it was roaring up the highway, headed north.

“Come on!” shouted Inspector Queen. Ellery barely made it before Sergeant Velie sent the car rocketing toward the road. “Somehow Grady got onto the trick—a smear, a leak at headquarters! He's waylaid The Snowball between here and Marmion—wrecked it!”

They kept watching the ties. The automobile road paralleled the railroad at a distance of barely twenty feet, with nothing between but gravel.

And there was no sign of a passenger train, in motion or standing still, wrecked or whole. Or of a freight, or even a handcar. Headed south—or, for that matter, headed north.

They almost zoomed through Marmion before they realized that they had covered the entire distance between the two stations. The other car was parked below the weathered eaves of an even smaller shed than the one at Wapaug. As they shot back in reverse, four of the detectives burst out of the little station.

“She left Marmion at 10:12, all right, Inspector!” yelled one. “Stationmaster says we're crazy. We must have missed it!”

The two cars rocked about and raced back toward Wapaug.

Inspector Queen glared at the rails flashing alongside. “Missed it? A whole passenger train? Velie, slow down—!”

“That Grady,” moaned Sergeant Velie.

Ellery devoured a knuckle and said nothing. He kept staring at the glittering rails. They winked back, jeering. It was remarkable how straight this stretch of track between Marmion and Wapaug was, how uncluttered by scenery. Not a tree or building beside the right of way. No water anywhere, not so much as a rain puddle. No curves, no grades; no siding, spur line, tunnel, bridge. Not a gully, gorge, or ravine. And no sign of wreckage … The rails stretched, perfect and unburdened, along the hellish floor of the valley. For all the concealment or trickery possible, they might have been a series of parallel lines drawn with a ruler on a sheet of blank paper.

And there was Wapaug's roasted little station again.

And no Snowball.

The Inspector's voice cracked. “She pulls into Grove Junction on time. She gets to Marmion on time. She pulls out of Marmion on time. But she doesn't show up at Wapaug. Then she's got to be between Marmion and Wapaug! What's wrong with that?” He challenged them, hopefully, to find something wrong with it.

Sergeant Velie accepted. “Only one thing,” he said in a hollow voice. “She ain't.”

That did it. “I suppose Grady's palmed it!” screamed his superior. “That train's between Marmion and Wapaug somewhere, and I'm going to find it or—or buy me a ouija board!”

So back they went to Marmion, driving along the railroad at ten miles per hour. And then they turned around and crept Wapaugward again, to shufflle into the waiting room and look piteously at the stationmaster. But that railroad man was sitting in his private oven mopping his chafed forehead and blinking at the shimmering valley through his north window.

And no one said a word for some time.

When the word came, everyone leaped. “Stationmaster!” said Ellery. “Get your Marmion man on that key again. Find out if, after leaving Marmion at 10:12,
The Snowball didn't turn back.
”

“Back?” The elderly man brightened. “Sure!” He seized his telegraph key.

“That's it, Ellery!” cried Inspector Queen. “She left Marmion southbound all right, but then she backed up north
past
Marmion again for a repair, and I'll bet she's in the Grove Junction yards or roundhouse right now!”

“Grove Junction says,” whispered the stationmaster, “that she ain't in their yards or roundhouse and never was—just went through on time. And Marmion says 113 pulled out southbound and she didn't come back.”