Chapter XVII in Which More Hats Grow (1)

    “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.