Queen’s Bureau of Investigation (2 page)

“
Molto, molto
,” said Dr. Santelli. “Her tummy rejects. All to go out!” And later, the doctor called Mrs. Alfredo and Ellery in, and he said, “Lucia.
Cara
. Open the eye.”

“Mama,” quavered Lucia.

“'
Bina
,” wept Mama.

But Ellery set Mama firmly to one side. “Lucia, the Met needs you—believe me! You're never to do such a foolish thing again. Anyway, you won't have to, because now I know which one of Mama's boarders has been trying to blackmail her, and I think I can assure you that he won't try it again.”

And later Ellery said to the silent man holding the suitcase, “My clients will press no charge so long as you're smart enough to keep their secret. I might add, before you go, that you're far too careless to make a successful blackmailer.”

“Careless?” said the man with the suitcase, sullenly.

“Oh, criminally. Mrs. Alfredo and Lucia never have told anyone about the illegal union. So the blackmailer must have learned about it from the bigamist himself. But since Alfred was an Englishman who lived—and died—in England, the great likelihood was that the blackmailer was English, too, you see.

“You've tried hard to conceal it, but in the excitement of this morning's events you slipped. Only an Englishman would have called a rectangular transom a ‘fanlight,' chocolates ‘sweets,' and a can of poison a ‘tin.' So if you're ever tempted to stray from your bookselling to try a scoundrelly stunt like this again—watch your language, Mr. Arnold!”

FIX DEPT.

A Matter of Seconds

You don't have to be a fight expert to recall what happened in the ring that wild night the Champ fought Billy (the Kid) Bolo. Fans are still talking about how it put Wickiup, Colorado, on the map. But the odds are you've never heard how close that fight came to not being fought.

You remember how Wickiup got the match in the first place. The deputation from the Wickiup Chamber of Commerce, headed by millionaire cattleman Sam Pugh, trooped into the promoter's New York office, plunked down a seating plan of the new Wickiup Natural Amphitheater—capacity 75,000—and a satchel containing a guarantee of $250,000 cash money, and flew back home with a contract for what turned out to be—figuring the TV, radio, and movie take—the first million-dollar gate west of Chicago in the history of boxing.

It promised to be a real whingding, too, well worth any sport's investment. Both fighters were rough, tough and indestructible, their orthodox style carrying no surprises except in the sudden-death department. Anything could happen from a one-round knockout to a hospital bed for two.

The Champ trained at the Wickiup Country Club and Billy the Kid at the big Pugh ranch, and days before the fight every hotel, motel, trailer camp and tepee within three hundred miles was hanging out the
No Vacancy
sign. Wickiup became the Eldorado of every fight fan, sportswriter, gambler and grifter between Key West and Puget Sound who could scare up a grubstake.

Ellery was in Wickiup to see the contest as the guest of old Sam Pugh, who owed him something for a reason that's another story.

The fight was scheduled for 8
P.M.
Mountain Time, to make the 10
P.M.
TV date for the Eastern fans. Ellery first heard that something was wrong exactly an hour and a half before ringtime.

He was hanging around the Comanche Bar of the Redman Hotel, waiting for his host to pick him up for the drive out to the Amphitheater, when he was paged by a bellboy.

“Mr. Queen? Mr. Pugh wants you to come up to Suite 101. Urgent.”

The cattleman himself answered Ellery's knock. His purple-sage complexion looked moldy. “Come in, son!”

In the suite Ellery found the State Boxing Commissioner, nine leading citizens of Wickiup, and Tootsie Cogan, Billy the Kid's bald little manager. Tootsie was crying, and the other gentlemen looked half inclined to join him.

“What's the matter?” asked Ellery.

“The Kid,” growled Sam Pugh, “has been kidnaped.”

“Snatched,” wept Cogan. “At three o'clock I feed him a rare steak at Mr. Pugh's ranch and I make him lay down for a snooze. I run over for a last-minute yak with Chick Kraus, the Champ's manager, about the rules, and while I'm gone—”

“Four masked men with guns snatched the kid,” said the cattleman. “We've been negotiating with them by phone ever since. They want a hundred thousand dollars' ransom.”

“Or no fight,” snarled the Boxing Commissioner. “Eastern gangsters!”

“It'll ruin us,” groaned one of the local elite. “The businessmen of this town put up a quarter of a million guarantee. Not to mention the lawsuits—”

“I think I get the picture, gentlemen,” said Ellery. “With the fight less than ninety minutes off, there's no time to climb a high horse. I take it you're paying?”

“We've managed to raise the cash among us,” said the old cattleman, nodding toward a bloated briefcase on the table, “and, Ellery, we've told 'em that you're going to deliver it. Will you?”

“You know I will, Sam,” said Ellery. “Maybe I can get a line on them at the same time—”

“No, you'll put the whammy on it!” shrieked the Kid's manager. “Just get my boy back, in shape to climb in that ring!”

“You couldn't, anyway. They're not showing their dirty faces,” rasped Sam Pugh. “They've named a neutral party, too, and he's agreed to act for them.”

“What you might call a matter of seconds, eh? Who is he, Sam?”

“Know Sime Jackman, the newspaperman?”

“The dean of West Coast sportswriters? By reputation only; it's tops. Maybe if Jackman and I work together—”

“Sime's had to promise he'd keep his mouth shut,” said the Boxing Commissioner, “and in the forty years I've known him, damn it, he's never broken his word. Forget the sleuthing, Mr. Queen. Just see that Billy Bolo gets back in time.”

“All right,” sighed Ellery. “Sam, what can I do?”

“At seven o'clock sharp,” said the cattleman, “you're to be in Sime Jackman's room at the Western Hotel—Room 442. Jackman will then notify the kidnapers some way that you're there with the ransom, and Billy Bolo will be released. They've promised that the Kid will walk into this room by seven-fifteen, unharmed and ready to climb into the ring, if we keep our word.”

“How do you know they'll keep theirs?”

“You're not to leave the money with Jackman till I phone you, in his room, that the Kid's back safe.”

“Then you'd better give me a password, Sam—voices can be imitated. In my ear … if you gentlemen don't mind?”

A stocky man with white hair and keen blue eyes opened the door of Room 442 in the Western Hotel at Ellery's rap.

“You're Queen, I take it. Come on in. I'm Sime Jackman.”

Ellery looked around while the newspaperman shut the door. On the telephone table stood a battered portable typewriter and a bottle of Scotch. There was no one else in the room.

“I think,” said Ellery, “I'd like some identification.”

The whitehaired man stared. Then he grinned and fished in his pockets. “Driver's license—press card—you'll find my name engraved on the back of this presentation watch from the National Sportswriters' Association—”

“I'm sold.” Ellery opened the briefcase and dumped its contents on the bed. The money was in $1,000 bundles, marked on the bank wrappers—tens, twenties, and fifties. “Are you going to take the time to count it?”

“Hell, no. I want to see that fight tonight!” The sportswriter went to the window.

“I was told you'd immediately notify the kidnapers—”

“That's what I'm doing.” Jackman raised and lowered the windowshade rapidly several times. “You don't think those lice gave me any phone numbers, do you? This is the signal I was told to give—they must have a man watching my window. I suppose he'll phone them it's okay. Well, that's that.”

“Have you actually seen any of them?” Ellery asked.

“Have a heart, Queen,” grinned the newspaperman. “I gave my word I wouldn't answer any questions. Well, now all we can do is wait for Sam Pugh's phone call. How about a drink?”

“I'll take a raincheck.” Ellery sat down on the bed beside the ransom money. “What's the
modus operandi
, Jackman? How do you get the money to them?”

But the whitehaired man merely poured himself a drink. “Ought to be a pretty good scrap,” he murmured.

“You win,” said Ellery ruefully. “Yes, it should. How do you rate Bolo's chances? After all this, his nerves will be shot higher than Pike's Peak.”

“The Kid? He was born without any. And when he gets mad, the way he must be right now—”

“Then you think he's got a chance to take the Champ?”

“If those punks didn't sap him, I make it the Kid by a K.O.”

“You're the expert. You figure he's got the punch to put a bull like the Champ away?”

“Did you see the Kid's last fight?” smiled the sportswriter. “Artie Starr's nobody's setup. Yet Bolo hit him three right hooks so fast and murderous the second and third exploded on Starr's chin while he was still on his way to the canvas. It took his handlers ten minutes to bring him to—”

The phone made them both jump.

“They must have had the Kid around the corner!” Ellery said.

“You better answer it.”

Ellery raced to the phone. “Queen speaking. Who is this?”

“It's me—Sam!” roared Sam Pugh's voice. “Listen, son—”

“Hold it. What's the password?”

“Oh! Solar plexus.” Ellery nodded, relieved. “The Kid's back, Ellery,” the cattleman exulted, “and he's all riled up and r'arin' to go. Release the money. See you at ringside!” His phone clicked.

“Okay?” smiled the whitehaired man.

“Yes,” Ellery smiled back, “so now I can let you have it.” And, swinging the telephone receiver, Ellery clubbed him neatly above the left ear. He was over at the clothes closet yanking the door open even before the whitehaired man bounced on the carpet. “So it
was
the closet he parked you in,” Ellery said cheerfully to the trussed, gagged figure on the closet floor. “Well, we'll have you out of these ropes in a jiffy, Mr. Jackman, and then we'll settle the hash of this doublecrossing road agent!”

While the real Sime Jackman stood guard over the prostrate man, Ellery stuffed the money back into the briefcase. “Hijacker?” asked the newspaperman without rancor.

“No, indeed,” said Ellery. “He couldn't have been a hijacker, because the gang released the Kid after this man gave the signal. So I knew he was one of them. When they told you I was to be the contact man, you said something about you and me not knowing each other, didn't you? I thought so. That's what gave this operator his big idea. He'd put you on ice, and when I handed him the ransom thinking he was you, he'd run out on his pals.”

“But how,” demanded the sportswriter, “did you know he wasn't me?”

“He said in the Bolo-Starr fight the Kid flattened Starr with three right hooks. You could hardly have become the dean of West Coast sportswriters and a national fight expert, Jackman, without learning that in the lexicon of boxing there's no such blow as a right hook for a fighter with the orthodox stance. The righthand equivalent of a left hook in a righthanded fighter is a right cross.”

“Why, the palooka,” scowled the newspaperman, taking a fresh grip on the unconscious gangster's gun as the man stirred. “But about this ransom, Queen. I don't know what to do. After all, the rest of the gang did keep their word and return the Kid. Do I keep mine and deliver the dough to them, or does this bum's doublecross take me off the hook?”

“Hm. Nice problem in ethics.” Ellery glanced at his watch and frowned. “We'll miss the fight unless we hurry! Tell you what, Sime.”

“What?”

“We'll pass the buck—or should I say bucks?—to a higher authority.” Ellery grinned and picked up the bruised phone. “Desk? Two reliable cops for immediate guard duty, please, and meanwhile get me the nearest office of the FBI—rush!”

IMPOSSIBLE CRIME DEPT.

The Three Widows

To the normal palate the taste of murder is unpleasant. But Ellery is an epicure in these matters and certain of his cases, he deposes, possess a flavor which lingers on the tongue. Among these dangerous delicacies he places high the Case of the Three Widows.

Two of the widows were sisters: Penelope, to whom money was nothing, and Lyra, to whom it was everything, consequently each required large amounts of it. Both having buried thriftless husbands at an early age, they returned to the Murray Hill manse of their father with what everyone suspected was relief, for old Theodore Hood was generously provided with the coin of the republic and he had always been indulgent with his daughters. Shortly after Penelope and Lyra repossessed their maiden beds, however, Theodore Hood took a second wife, a cathedral-like lady of great force of character. Alarmed, the sisters gave battle, which their stepmother grimly joined. Old Theodore, caught in their crossfire, yearned only for peace. Eventually he found it, leaving a household inhabited by widows exclusively.

One evening not long after their father's death Penelope the plump and Lyra the lean were summoned by a servant to the drawing room of the Hood pile. They found waiting for them Mr. Strake, the family lawyer.

Mr. Strake's commonest utterance fell like a sentence from the lips of a judge; but tonight, when he pronounced “Will you be seated, ladies,” his tone was so ominous that the crime was obviously a hanging one. The ladies exchanged glances and declined.

In a few moments the tall doors squealed into the Victorian walls and Sarah Hood came in feebly on the arm of Dr. Benedict, the family physician.