The Roman hat mystery 18Part 1 · In Which More Hats Grow
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Roman hat mystery 18
Part 1 · In Which More Hats Grow
QueenEnglish
“Sit down, Tim—have a cup of coffee?”
Timothy Cronin, a keen-eyed man of medium height thatched plentifully with fire-red hair, seated himself in one of the Queens’ comfortable chairs and accepted the Inspector’s invitation in some embarrassment.
It was Friday morning and the Inspector and Ellery, garbed romantically in colorful dressing-gowns, were in high spirits. They had retired the night before at an uncommonly early hour—for them; they had slept the sleep of the just; now Djuna had a pot of steaming coffee, of a variety which he blended himself, ready on the table; and indubitably all seemed right with the world.
Cronin had stalked into the cheery Queen quarters at an ungodly hour—disheveled, morose and unashamedly cursing. Not even the mild protests of the Inspector were able to stem the tide of profanity which streamed from his lips; and as for Ellery, he listened to the lawyer’s language with an air of grave enjoyment, as an amateur harkens to a professional.
Then Cronin awoke to his environment, and blushed, and was invited to sit down, and stared at the unbending back of Djuna as that nimble man-of-affairs busied himself with the light appurtenances of the morning meal.
“I don’t suppose you’re in a mood to apologize for your shocking language, Tim Cronin, me lad,” chided the Inspector, folding his hands Buddha-like over his stomach. “Do I have to inquire the reason for the bad temper?”
“Not much, you don’t,” growled Cronin, shifting his feet savagely on the rug. “You ought to be able to guess. I’m up against a blank wall in the matter of Field’s papers. Blast his black soul!”
“It’s blasted, Tim—it’s blasted, never fear,” said Queen sorrowfully. “Poor Field is probably roasting his toes over a sizzling little coal-fire in Hell just now—and chortling to himself over your profanity. Exactly what is the situation—how do things stand?”
Cronin grasped the cup Djuna had set before him and drained its scalding contents in a gulp. “Stand?” he cried, banging down the cup. “They don’t stand—they’re nil, nit, not! By Christopher, if I don’t get my hands on some documentary evidence soon I’ll go batty! Why, Inspector—Stoates and I ransacked that swell office of Field’s until I don’t think there’s a rat in the walls who dares show his head outside a ten-foot hole—and there’s nothing. Nothing! Man—it’s inconceivable. I’d stake my reputation that somewhere—the Lord alone knows where—Field’s papers are hidden, just begging somebody to come along and carry them away.”
“You seem possessed of a phobia on the subject of hidden papers, Cronin,” remarked Ellery mildly. “One would think we are living in the days of Charles the First. There’s no such thing as hidden papers. You merely have to know where to look.”
Cronin grinned impertinently. “That’s very good of you, Mr. Queen. Suppose you suggest the place Mr. Monte Field selected to hide his papers.”
Ellery lit a cigarette. “All right. I accept the challenge to combat.... You say—and I don’t doubt your word in the least—that the documents you suppose to be in existence are not in Field’s office.... By the way, what makes you so sure that Field kept papers which would incriminate him in this vast clique of gangsters you told us about?”
“He must have,” retorted Cronin. “Queer logic, but it works.... My information absolutely establishes the fact that Field had correspondence and written plans connecting him with men higher up in gangdom whom we’re constantly trying to ‘get’ and whom we haven’t been able to touch so far. You’ll have to take my word for it; it’s too complicated a story to go into here. But you mark my words, Mr. Queen—Field had papers that he couldn’t afford to destroy. Those are the papers I’m looking for.”
“Granted,” said Ellery in a rhetorical tone. “I merely wished to make certain of the facts. Let me repeat, then, these papers are not in his office. We must therefore look for them farther afield. For example, they might be secreted in a safety-deposit vault.”
“But, El,” objected the Inspector, who had listened to the interplay between Cronin and Ellery in amusement, “didn’t I tell you this morning that Thomas had run that lead to earth? Field did not have a box in a safety-deposit vault. That is established. He had no general delivery or private post-office box either—under his real name or any other name.
“Thomas has also investigated Field’s club affiliations and discovered that the lawyer had no residence, permanent or temporary, besides the flat on 75th Street. Furthermore, in all Thomas’s scouting around, he found not the slightest indication of a possible hiding-place. He thought that Field might have left the papers in a parcel or bag in the keeping of a shopkeeper, or something of the sort. But there wasn’t a trace.... Velie’s a good man in these matters, Ellery. You can bet your bottom dollar that hypothesis of yours is false.”
“I was making a point for Cronin’s benefit,” retorted Ellery. He spread his fingers on the table elaborately and winked. “You see, we must narrow the field of search to the point where we can definitely say: ‘It must be here.’ The office, the safety-deposit vault, the post-office boxes have been ruled out. Yet we know that Field could not afford to keep these documents in a place difficult of access. I cannot vouch for the papers you’re seeking, Cronin; but it’s different with the papers we’re seeking. No; Field had them somewhere near at hand.... And, to go a step further, it’s reasonable to assume that he would have kept all his important secret papers in the same hiding-place.”
Cronin scratched his head and nodded.
“We shall now apply the elementary precepts, gentlemen.” Ellery paused as if to emphasize his next statement. “Since we have narrowed our area of inquiry to the exclusion of all possible hiding-places save one—the papers must be in that one hiding-place.... Nothing to that.”
“Now that I pause to consider,” interpolated the Inspector, his good humor suddenly dissipated into gloom, “perhaps we weren’t as careful in that place as we might have been.”
“I’m as certain we’re on the right track,” said Ellery firmly, “as that to-day is Friday and there will be fish suppers in thirty million homes to-night.”
Cronin was looking puzzled. “I don’t quite get it, Mr. Queen. What do you mean when you say there’s only one possible hiding-place left?”
“Field’s apartment, Cronin,” replied Ellery imperturbably. “The papers are there.”
“But I was discussing the case with the D.A. only yesterday,” objected Cronin, “and he said you’d already ransacked Field’s apartment and found nothing.”
“True—true enough,” said Ellery. “We searched Field’s apartment and found nothing. The trouble was, Cronin, that we didn’t look in the right place.”
“Well, by ginger, if you know now, let’s get a move on!” cried Cronin, springing from his chair.
The Inspector tapped the red-haired man’s knee gently and pointed to the seat. “Sit down, Tim,” he advised. “Ellery is merely indulging in his favorite game of ratiocination. He doesn’t know where the papers are any more than you do. He’s guessing.... In detective literature,” he added with a sad smile, “they call it the ‘art of deduction.’”
“I should say,” murmured Ellery, emitting a cloud of smoke, “that I am being challenged once more. Nevertheless, although I haven’t been back to Field’s rooms I intend, with Inspector Queen’s kind permission, to return there and find the slippery documents.”
“In the matter of these papers—” began the old man, when he was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Djuna admitted Sergeant Velie, who was accompanied by a small, furtive young man so ill at ease as to be trembling. The Inspector sprang to his feet and intercepted them before they could enter the living-room. Cronin stared as Queen said, “This the fellow, Thomas?” and the big detective answered with grim levity, “Large as life, Inspector.”
“Think you could burgle an apartment without being caught, do you?” inquired the Inspector genially, taking the newcomer by the arm. “You’re just the man I want.”
The furtive young man seemed overcome by a species of terrified palsy. “Say, Inspector, yer not takin’ me fer a ride, are ya?” he stammered.
The Inspector smiled reassuringly and led him out into the foyer. They held a whispered and one-sided conversation, with the stranger grunting assents at every second word uttered by the old man. Cronin and Ellery in the living-room caught the flash of a small sheet of paper as it passed from the Inspector’s hand into the clutching paw of the young man.
Queen returned, stepping spryly. “All right, Thomas. You take care of the other arrangements and see that our friend here gets into no trouble.... Now, gentlemen—”
Velie made his adieu monosyllabically and led the frightened stranger from the apartment.
The Inspector sat down. “Before we go over to Field’s rooms, boys,” he said thoughtfully, “I want to make certain things plain. In the first place, from what Benjamin Morgan has told us, Field’s business was law but his great source of income—blackmail. Did you know that, Tim? Monte Field sucked dozens of prominent men dry, in all likelihood to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, Tim, we’re convinced that the motive behind Field’s murder was connected with this phase of his under-cover activities. There is no doubt but that he was killed by somebody who was being taken in for huge sums of hush-money and could stand the gaff no longer.
“You know as well as I, Tim, that blackmail depends largely for its ugly life on the possession of incriminating documents by the blackmailer. That’s why we’re so sure that there are hidden papers about somewhere—and Ellery here maintains that they’re in Field’s rooms. Well, we’ll see. If eventually we find those papers, the documents you’ve been hunting so long will probably come to light also, as Ellery pointed out a moment ago.”
He paused reflectively. “I can’t tell you, Tim, how badly I want to get my hands on those confounded documents of Field’s. They mean a good deal to me. They’d clear up a lot of questions about which we’re still in the dark....”
“Well, then, let’s get going!” cried Cronin, leaping from his chair. “Do you realize, Inspector, that I’ve worked for years on Field’s tail for this one purpose? It will be the happiest day of my life.... Inspector—come on!”
Neither Ellery nor his father, however, seemed to be in haste. They retired to the bedroom to dress while Cronin fretted in the living-room. If Cronin had not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts he would have noticed that the light spirits which had suffused the Queens when he arrived were now scattered into black gloom. The Inspector particularly seemed out of sorts, irritable and for once slow to push the investigation into an inevitable channel.
Eventually the Queens appeared fully dressed. The three men descended to the street. As they climbed into a taxicab Ellery sighed.
“Afraid you’re going to be shown up, son?” muttered the old man, his nose buried in the folds of his topcoat.
“I’m not thinking of that,” returned Ellery. “It’s something else.... The papers will be found, never fear.”
“I hope to Christmas you’re right!” breathed Cronin fervently, and it was the last word spoken until the taxicab ground to a stop before the lofty apartment-house on 75th Street.
The three men took the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped out into the quiet corridor. The Inspector peered about quickly, then punched the doorbell of the Field apartment. There was no answer, although they could hear the vague rustling of someone behind the door. Suddenly it swished open to reveal a red-faced policeman whose hand hovered uneasily in the region of his hip-pocket.
“Don’t be scared, man—we won’t bite you!” growled the Inspector, who was completely out of temper for no reason that Cronin, nervous and springy as a racing-colt, could fathom.
The uniformed man saluted. “Didn’t know but it might be someone snoopin’ around, Inspector,” he said feebly.
The three men walked into the foyer, the slim, white hand of the old man pushing the door violently shut.
“Anything been happening around here?” snapped Queen, striding to the entrance to the living-room and looking inside.
“Not a thing, sir,” said the policeman. “I’m on four-hour shifts with Cassidy as relief and once in a while Detective Ritter drops in to see if everything is all right.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” The old man turned back. “Anybody try to get into the place?”
“Not while I was here, Inspector—nor Cassidy neither,” responded the policeman nervously. “And we’ve been alternating ever since Tuesday morning. There hasn’t been a soul near these rooms except Ritter.”
“Park out here in the foyer for the next couple of hours, officer,” commanded the Inspector. “Get yourself a chair and take a snooze if you want to—but if anybody should start monkeying with the door tip us off pronto.”
The policeman dragged a chair from the living-room into the foyer, sat down with his back against the front door, folded his arms and unashamedly closed his eyes.
The three men took in the scene with gloomy eyes. The foyer was small but crowded with oddments of furniture and decoration. A bookcase filled with unused-appearing volumes; a small table on which perched a “modernistic” lamp and some carved ivory ash-trays; two Empire chairs; a peculiar piece of furniture which seemed half sideboard and half secretary; and a number of cushions and rugs were scattered about. The Inspector stood regarding this melange wryly.
“Here, son—I guess the best way for us to tackle the search is for the three of us to go through everything piece by piece, one checking up on the other. I’m not very hopeful about it, I’ll tell you that.”
“The gentleman of the Wailing Wall,” groaned Ellery. “Grief is writ fine and large on his noble visage. You and I, Cronin—we’re not such pessimists, are we?”
Cronin growled, “I’d say—less talk and more action, with all the respect in the world for these little family ructions.”
Ellery stared at him with admiration. “You’re almost insectivorous in your determination, man. More like an army-ant than a human being. And poor Field’s lying in the morgue, too.... Allons, enfants!”
They set to work under the nodding head of the policeman. They worked silently for the most part. Ellery’s face reflected a calm expectancy; the Inspector’s a doleful irritation; Cronin’s a savage indomitability. Book after book was extracted from the case and carefully inspected—leaves shaken out—covers examined minutely—backboards pinched and pierced. There were over two hundred books and the thorough search took a long time. Ellery, after a period of activity, seemed inclined to allow his father and Cronin to do the heavier work of inspection while he devoted his attention more and more to the titles of the volumes. At one point he uttered a delighted exclamation and held up to the light a thin, cheaply bound book. Cronin leaped forward immediately, his eyes blazing. The Inspector looked up with a flicker of interest. But Ellery had merely discovered another volume on handwriting analysis.
The old man stared at his son in silent curiosity, his lips puckered thoughtfully. Cronin turned back to the bookcase with a groan. Ellery, however, riffling the pages rapidly, cried out again. The two men craned over his shoulder. On the margins of several pages were some penciled notations. The words spelled names: “Henry Jones,” “John Smith,” “George Brown.” They were repeated many times on the margins of the page, as if the writer were practicing different styles of penmanship.
“Didn’t Field have the most adolescent yen for scribbling?” asked Ellery, staring fascinatedly at the penciled names.
“As usual you have something up your sleeve, my son,” remarked the Inspector wearily. “I see what you mean, but I don’t see that it helps us any. Except for—By jinks, that’s an idea!”
He bent forward and attacked the search once more, his body vibrant with fresh interest. Ellery, smiling, joined him. Cronin stared uncomprehendingly at both.
“Suppose you let me in on this thing, folks,” he said in an aggrieved voice.
The Inspector straightened up. “Ellery’s hit on something that, if it’s true, is a bit of luck for us and reveals still another sidelight on Field’s character. The black-hearted rascal! See here, Tim—if a man’s an inveterate blackmailer and you find continual evidence that he has been practicing handwriting from textbooks on the subject, what conclusion would you draw?”
“You mean that he’s a forger, too?” frowned Cronin. “I never suspected that in spite of all these years of hounding him.”
“Not merely a forger, Cronin,” laughed Ellery. “I don’t think you will find Monte Field has penned somebody else’s name to a check, or anything of that sort. He was too wily a bird to make such a grievous error. What he probably did do was secure original and incriminating documents referring to a certain individual, make copies of them and sell the copies back to the owner, retaining the originals for further use!”
“And in that case, Tim,” added the Inspector portentuously, “if we find this gold mine of papers somewhere about—which I greatly doubt—we’ll also find, as like as not, the original or originals of the papers for which Monte Field was murdered!”
The red-haired Assistant District Attorney pulled a long face at his two companions. “Seems like a lot of ‘if’s,’” he said finally, shaking his head.
They resumed the search in growing silence.
Nothing was concealed in the foyer. After an hour of steady, back-breaking work they were forced reluctantly to that conclusion. Not a square inch was left unexamined. The interior of the lamp and of the bookcase; the slender, thin-topped table; the secretary, inside and outside; the cushions; even the walls were tapped carefully by the Inspector, who by now was aroused to a high pitch of excitement, suppressed but remarkable in his tight lips and color-touched cheeks.
They attacked the living-room. Their first port-of-call was the big clothes-closet inside the room directly off the foyer. Again the Inspector and Ellery went through the topcoats, overcoats and capes hanging on the rack. Nothing. On the shelf above were the four hats they had examined on Tuesday morning: the old Panama, the derby and the two fedoras. Still nothing. Cronin bumped down on his knees to peer savagely into the darker recesses of the closet, tapping the wall, searching for signs of tampered woodwork. And still nothing. With the aid of a chair the Inspector poked into the corners of the area above the shelf. He climbed down, shaking his head.
“Forget the closet, boys,” he muttered. They descended upon the room proper.
The large carved desk which Hagstrom and Piggott had rifled three days before invited their scrutiny. Inside was the pile of papers, canceled bills and letters they had offered for the old man’s inspection. Old Queen actually peered through these torn and ragged sheets as if they might conceal messages in invisible ink. He shrugged his shoulders and threw them down.
“Darned if I’m not growing romantic in my old age,” he growled. “The influence of a fiction-writing rascal of a son.”
He picked up the miscellaneous articles he himself had found on Tuesday in the pockets of the closet coats. Ellery was scowling now; Cronin was beginning to wear a forlorn, philosophical expression; the old man shuffled abstractedly among the keys, old letters, wallets and then turned away.
“Nothing in the desk,” he announced wearily. “I doubt if that clever limb of Satan would have selected anything as obvious as a desk for a hiding-place.”
“He would if he’d read his Edgar Allan Poe,” murmured Ellery. “Let’s get on. Sure there is no secret drawer here?” he asked Cronin. The red head was shaken sadly but emphatically.
They probed and poked about in the furniture, under the carpets and lamps, in book-ends, curtain-rods. With each successive failure the apparent hopelessness of the search was reflected in their faces. When they had finished with the living-room it looked as if it had innocently fallen into the path of a hurricane—a bare and comfortless satisfaction.
“Nothing left but the bedroom, kitchenette and lavatory,” said the Inspector to Cronin; and the three men went into the room which Mrs. Angela Russo had occupied Monday night.
Field’s bedroom was distinctly feminine in its accoutrements—a characteristic which Ellery ascribed to the influence of the charming Greenwich Villager. Again they scoured the premises, not an inch of space eluding their vigilant eyes and questing hands; and again there seemed nothing to do but admit failure. They took apart the bedding and examined the spring of the bed; they put it together again and attacked the clothes-closet. Every suit was mauled and crushed by their insistent fingers—bathrobes, dressing-gowns, shoes, cravats. Cronin half-heartedly repeated his examination of the walls and moldings. They lifted rugs and picked up chairs; shook out the pages of the telephone book in the bedside telephone-table. The Inspector even lifted the metal disk which fitted around the steam-pipe at the floor, because it was loose and seemed to present possibilities.
From the bedroom they went into the kitchenette. It was so crowded with kitchen furnishings that they could barely move about. A large cabinet was rifled; Cronin’s exasperated fingers dipped angrily into the flour- and sugar-bins. The stove, the dish-closet, the pan-closet—even the single marble washtub in a corner—was methodically gone over. On the floor to one side stood the half-empty case of liquor bottles. Cronin cast longing glances in this direction, only to look guiltily away as the Inspector glared at him.
“And now—the bathroom,” murmured Ellery. In an ominous silence they trooped into the tiled lavatory. Three minutes later they came out, still silently, and went into the living-room where they disposed themselves in chairs. The Inspector drew out his snuff-box and took a vicious pinch; Cronin and Ellery lit cigarettes.
“I should say, my son,” said the Inspector in sepulchral tones after a painful interval broken only by the snores of the policeman in the foyer, “I should say that the deductive method which has brought fame and fortune to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his legions has gone awry. Mind you, I’m not scolding....” But he slouched into the fastnesses of the chair.
Ellery stroked his smooth jaw with nervous fingers. “I seem to have made something of an ass of myself,” he confessed. “And yet those papers are here somewhere. Isn’t that a silly notion to have? But logic bears me out. When ten is the whole and two plus three plus four are discarded, only one is left.... Pardon me for being old-fashioned. I insist the papers are here.”
Cronin grunted and expelled a huge mouthful of smoke.
“Your objection sustained,” murmured Ellery, leaning back. “Let’s go over the ground again. No, no!” he explained hastily, as Cronin’s face lengthened in dismay—“I mean orally.... Mr. Field’s apartment consists of a foyer, a living-room, a kitchenette, a bedroom and a lavatory. We have fruitlessly examined a foyer, a living-room, a kitchenette, a bedroom and a lavatory. Euclid would regretfully force a conclusion here....” He mused. “How have we examined these rooms?” he asked suddenly. “We have gone over the obvious things, pulled the obvious things to pieces. Furniture, lamps, carpets—I repeat, the obvious things. And we have tapped floors, walls and molding. It would seem that nothing has escaped the search....”
He stopped, his eyes brightening. The Inspector threw off his look of fatigue at once. From experience he was aware that Ellery rarely grew excited over inconsequential things.
“And yet,” said Ellery slowly, gazing in fascination at his father’s face, “by the Golden Roofs of Seneca, we’ve overlooked something—actually overlooked something!”
“What!” growled Cronin. “You’re kidding.”
“Oh, but I’m not,” chuckled Ellery, lounging to his feet. “We have examined floors and we have examined walls, but have we examined—ceilings?”
He shot the word forth theatrically while the two men stared at him in amazement.
“Here, what are you driving at, Ellery?” asked his father, frowning.
Ellery briskly crushed his cigarette in an ash-tray. “Just this,” he said. “Pure reasoning has it that when you have exhausted every possibility but one in a given equation that one, no matter how improbable, no matter how ridiculous it may seem in the postulation—must be the correct one.... A theorem analogous to the one by which I concluded that the papers were in this apartment.”
“But, Mr. Queen, for the love of Pete—ceilings!” exploded Cronin, while the Inspector looked guiltily at the living-room ceiling. Ellery caught the look and laughed, shaking his head.
A—Ceiling
B—Door to Living Room
C—Mirror
D—Dressing Table
E—Damask curtains around bed, from ceiling to floor, concealing shaded portion which represents panel containing hats.
“I’m not suggesting that we call in a plasterer to maul these lovely middle-class ceilings,” he said. “Because I have the answer already. What is it in these rooms somewhere that is on the ceiling?”
“The chandeliers,” muttered Cronin doubtfully, gazing upward at the heavily bronzed fixture above their heads.
“By jinks—the canopy over the bed!” shouted the Inspector. He jumped to his feet and ran into the bedroom. Cronin pounded hard after him, Ellery sauntering interestedly behind.
They stopped at the foot of the bed and stared up at the canopy. Unlike the conventional canopies of American style, this florid ornament was not merely a large square of cloth erected on four posts, an integral part of the bed only. The bed was so constructed that the four posts, beginning at the four corners, stretched from floor to ceiling. The heavy maroon-colored damask of the canopy also reached from floor to ceiling, connected at the top by a ringed rod from which the folds of the damask hung gracefully.
“Well, if it’s anywhere,” grunted the Inspector, dragging one of the damask-covered bedroom chairs to the bed, “it’s up there. Here, boys, lend a hand.”
He stood on the chair with a fine disregard for the havoc his shoes were wreaking on the silken material. Finding upon stretching his arms above his head that he was still many feet short of touching the ceiling, he stepped down.
“Doesn’t look as if you could make it either, Ellery,” he muttered. “And Field was no taller than you. There must be a ladder handy somewhere by which Field himself got up here!”
Cronin dashed into the kitchenette at Ellery’s nod in that direction. He was back in a moment with a six-foot stepladder. The Inspector, mounting to the highest rung, found that his fingers were still short of touching the rod. Ellery solved the difficulty by ordering his father down and climbing to the top himself. Standing on the ladder he was in a position to explore the top of the canopy.
He grasped the damask firmly and pulled. The entire fabric gave way and fell to the sides, revealing a wooden panel about twelve inches deep—a framework which the hangings had concealed. Ellery’s fingers swept swiftly over the wooden relief-work of this panel. Cronin and the Inspector were staring with varying expressions up at him. Finding nothing that at the moment presented a possibility of entrance, Ellery leaned forward and explored the damask directly beneath the floor of the panel.
“Rip it down!” growled the Inspector.
Ellery jerked violently at the material and the entire canopy of damask fell to the bed. The bare unornamented floor of the panel was revealed.
“It’s hollow,” announced Ellery, rapping his knuckles on the under-side paneling.
“That doesn’t help much,” said Cronin. “It wouldn’t be a solid chunk, anyway. Why don’t you try the other side of the bed, Mr. Queen?”
But Ellery, who had drawn back and was again examining the side of the panel, exclaimed triumphantly. He had been seeking a complicated, Machiavellian “secret door”—he found now that the secret door was nothing more subtle than a sliding-panel. It was cleverly concealed—the juncture of sliding and stationary panels was covered by a row of wooden rosettes and clumsy decorations—but it was nothing that a student of mystery lore would have hailed as a triumph of concealment.
“It begins to appear as if I were being vindicated,” Ellery chuckled as he peered into the black recesses of the hole he had uncovered. He thrust a long arm into the aperture. The Inspector and Cronin were staring at him with bated breath.
“By all the pagan gods,” shouted Ellery suddenly, his lean body quivering with excitement. “Do you remember what I told you, dad? Where would those papers be except in—hats!”
His sleeve coated with dust, he withdrew his arm and the two men below saw in his hand a musty silk tophat!
Cronin executed an intricate jig as Ellery dropped the hat on the bed and dipped his arm once more into the yawning hole. In a moment he had brought out another hat—and another—and still another! There they lay on the bed—two silk hats and two derbies.
“Take this flashlight, son,” commanded the Inspector. “See if there’s anything else up there.”
Ellery took the proffered electric torch and flashed its beam into the aperture. After a moment he clambered down, shaking his head.
“That’s all,” he announced, dusting his sleeve, “but I should think it would be enough.”
The Inspector picked up the four hats and carried them into the living-room, where he deposited them on a sofa. The three men sat down gravely and regarded each other.
“I’m sort of itching to see what’s what,” said Cronin finally, in a hushed voice.
“I’m rather afraid to look,” retorted the Inspector.
“Mene mene tekel upharsin,” laughed Ellery. “In this case it might be interpreted as ‘the handwriting on the panel.’ Examine on, MacDuff!”
The Inspector picked up one of the silk hats. It bore on the rich satiny lining the chaste trademark of Browne Bros. Ripping out the lining and finding nothing beneath, he tried to tear out the leather sweat-band. It resisted his mightiest efforts. He borrowed Cronin’s pocket-knife and with difficulty slashed away the band. Then he looked up.
“This hat, Romans and countrymen,” he said pleasantly, “contains nothing but the familiar ingredients of hat-wear. Would you care to examine it?”
Cronin uttered a savage cry and snatched it from the Inspector’s hand. He literally tore the hat to pieces in his rage.
“Heck!” he said disgustedly, throwing the remnants on the floor. “Explain that to my undeveloped brain, will you, Inspector?”
Queen smiled, taking up the second silk hat and regarding it curiously.
“You’re at a disadvantage, Tim,” he said. “We know why one of these hats is a blank. Don’t we, Ellery?”
“Michaels,” murmured Ellery.
“Exactly—Michaels,” returned the Inspector.
“Charley Michaels!” exclaimed Cronin. “Field’s strong-arm guy, by all that’s holy! Where does he come into this?”
“Can’t tell yet. Know anything about him?”
“Nothing except that he hung onto Field’s coat-tails pretty closely. He’s an ex-jailbird, did you know that?”
“Yes,” replied the Inspector dreamily. “We’ll have a talk about that phase of Mr. Michaels some other time.... But let me explain that hat: Michaels on the evening of the murder laid out, according to his statement, Field’s evening clothes, including a silk hat. Michaels swore that as far as he knew Field possessed only one topper. Now if we suppose that Field used hats for concealing papers, and was going to the Roman Theatre that night wearing a ‘loaded’ one he must necessarily have substituted the loaded hat for the empty one which Michaels prepared. Since he was so careful to keep only one silk hat in the closet, he realized that Michaels, should he find a topper, would be suspicious. So, in switching hats, he had to conceal the empty one. What more natural than that he should put it in the place from which he had taken the loaded hat—the panel above the bed?”
“Well, I’ll be switched!” exclaimed Cronin.
“Finally,” resumed the Inspector, “we can take it as gospel that Field, who was devilishly careful in the matter of his headgear, intended to restore the theatre hat to its hideaway when he got home from the Roman. Then he would have taken out this one which you’ve just torn up and put it back in the clothes-closet.... But let’s get on.”
He pulled down the leather inner-band of the second silk hat, which also bore the imprint of Browne Bros. “Look at this, will you!” he exclaimed. The two men bent over and saw on the inner surface of the band, lettered with painful clarity in a purplish ink, the words BENJAMIN MORGAN.
“I’ve got to pledge you to secrecy, Tim,” said the Inspector immediately, turning to the red-haired man. “Never let on that you were a witness to the finding of papers in any way implicating Benjamin Morgan in this affair.”
“What do you think I am, Inspector?” growled Cronin. “I’m as dumb as an oyster, believe me!”
“All right, then.” Queen felt the lining of the hat. There was a distinct crackle.
“Now,” remarked Ellery calmly, “we know for the first time definitely why the murderer had to take away the hat Field wore Monday night. In all likelihood the murderer’s name was lettered in the same way—that’s indelible ink, you know—and the murderer couldn’t leave a hat with his own name in it at the scene of the crime.”
“By gosh, if you only had that hat, now,” cried Cronin, “you’d know who the murderer is!”
“I’m afraid, Tim,” replied the Inspector dryly, “that hat is gone forever.”
He indicated a row of careful stitches at the base of the inner band, where the lining was attached to the fabric. He ripped these stitches swiftly and inserted his fingers between the lining and the crown. Silently he drew out a sheaf of papers held together by a thin rubber band.
“If I were as nasty as some people think I am,” mused Ellery, leaning back, “I might with perfect justice say, ‘I told you so.’”
“We know when we’re licked, my son—don’t rub it in,” chortled the Inspector. He snapped off the rubber band, glanced hastily through the papers and with a satisfied grin deposited them in his breast pocket.
“Morgan’s, all right,” he said briefly, and attacked one of the derbies.
The inner side of the band was marked cryptically with an X. The Inspector found a row of stitches exactly as in the silk hat. The papers he drew out—a thicker bundle than Morgan’s—he examined cursorily. Then he handed them to Cronin, whose fingers were trembling.
“A stroke of luck, Tim,” he said slowly. “The man you were angling for is dead, but there are a lot of big names in this. I think you’ll find yourself a hero one of these days.”
Cronin grasped the bundle and feverishly unfolded the papers, one by one. “They’re here—they’re here!” he shouted. He jumped to his feet, stuffing the sheaf into his pocket.
“I’ve got to beat it. Inspector,” he said rapidly. “There’s a load of work to do at last—and besides, what you find in that fourth hat is none of my business. I can’t thank you and Mr. Queen enough! So long!”
He dashed from the room, and a moment later the snores of the policeman in the foyer came to an abrupt end. The outer door banged shut.
Ellery and the Inspector looked at each other.
“I don’t know what good this stuff is going to do us,” grumbled the old man, fumbling with the inner band of the last hat, a derby. “We’ve found things and deduced things and run rings around our imaginations—well....” He sighed as he held the band up to the light.
