Queen’s Bureau of Investigation (12 page)

“Through the
window?
” muttered the Inspector. “But son, the window's locked on the inside!”

“As I say,” said Ellery, “Grooss inched along the ledge to
the window of the office next door
, an office which he undoubtedly rented long ago for just such a purpose. From the next-door office, carrying his loot, he let himself out up the corridor into the crowd. Then he must have tried to leave the building, but when he saw that police were posted at every exit and that he couldn't get out without being searched, he had to think of something else.

“He saw right away that his big problem was to hide the money until the heat was off and he could sneak it away. Where could he hide it? Obviously, in the prepared office next door, the office he was renting, unknown to anyone, under another name. But for the money to be safe in that office, we mustn't suspect that the office had any connection with Theodore F. Grooss. How could he keep us away from there? Well, he'd got to it by way of this window … and at the time he climbed out of this window onto the ledge he obviously had left the window unlocked. If he could
lock
the window, he figured we'd never think of it as his means of escape. So Grooss came back
here
, to his private office, locked the window on the inside—”

“Wait, wait,” groaned the Inspector. “What d'ye mean he came back
here?
To do that he'd have had to pass you and me in that anteroom—”

“Exactly,” said Ellery.

“But the only one who passed the two of us in the anteroom was … Crocker …”

“Yes, Crocker,” said Ellery. “Crocker walked into this office from the anteroom, ostensibly to send Grooss out to us—but actually to lock the window. Crocker, my friends, is Theodore F. Grooss without the body padding, with the bald wig and mustache and the high coloring and the cotton mouth wads removed—and a quick change of clothes which he's had planted all along in the hideaway office next door—”

Ellery went on to explain that the people's money and Grooss's discarded disguise would be found in the office next door, but nobody heard him, since the Inspector had already darted through the crowd and the crowd, with a whoop, ran after him through the anteroom into the corridor. The thin little man between Sergeant Velie's legs made a sudden vicious gesture and the Sergeant toppled, doubled up. Crocker-Grooss dashed through the anteroom pursued by Ellery's roar.

The little man stopped in the doorway, and this time there was no blood in his face at all. For the people had turned and at sight of him, as one man, they fell silent and opened their arms.

BURIED TREASURE DEPT.

Miser's Gold

It is doubtful if the chronicler of Baghdad-on-the-Subway ever produced a more wonderful entertainment than the tale of Uncle Malachi. The atmosphere is rich and twisted, the subject likewise, and the story full of sentiment and irony. It even has a surprise ending.

Uncle Malachi was born, he lived, and he died under the rusty shadows of the Third Avenue El. Because he was a pawnbroker and owned the rickety, peeling old building in which he worked and lived, he was said to be Wealthy. Because he was an old crosspatch who distrusted banks and lived like a mouse, he was said to be a Miser. And since his one notable passion was the collecting of books—not rare books, or first editions, or books in perfect condition, but any books in any condition—he was said to be Queer.

It was all true—he was rich, he was a miser, and he was, queer; but there was more to it than that. His riches came from selling real estate—Manhattan real estate—which his great-grandfather had bought; he was a miser, because all pawnbrokers are born accumulators; and his queerness lay not in collecting books but in reading them.

Books swarmed like honey bees over his pawnshop and living quarters upstairs, which consisted of two impossibly cluttered cubbyholes. Here under jackets of dust could be found the collected works of such as Dumas, Scott, Cooper, Dickens, Poe, Stevenson, Kipling, Conrad, Twain, O. Henry, Doyle, Wells, Jack London—wholesale reading in low-cost lots; and Malachi devoted every moment he could spare from his shop to peering through wavering gaslight at the written treasures of the world. As he aged and eyesight withered, the tempo of his reading increased; for old Malachi had set himself the fine labor of reading every famous book ever printed, beginning with the more exciting ones. A magnificent lunacy, which went with his spidery mind and mystifying sense of humor—he was always grinning, chuckling, or laughing, although no one ever knew what the joke was.

Uncle Malachi's clients were fond of saying that the old miser had no heart, which was a slander. He had a heart—as Dr. Ben Bernard, whose shingle drooped two doors up the street, was prepared to testify—one of the worst hearts, Dr. Ben said, in his experience, a valvular monstrosity and black as the devil's. But Uncle Malachi only cackled, “You're a fool, Doctor!” Dr. Ben retorted with a sigh that if he were not a fool he would not be practicing medicine on Third Avenue, and he continued to treat the old pawnbroker as if his monthly bills were honored.

As for Eve Warren, she came into Uncle Malachi's life the way most people did. Eve was struggling to keep her little greeting-card shop and circulating library across the street from the hot clutches of her creditors, so she became one of Malachi's clients. When his eyes failed, she felt a stern duty; there were few enough booklovers in the world. So she began dropping in on him after closing her shop, and she would read to him. At first he was suspicious; but when he saw that she was a fool like Dr. Ben, old Malachi grinned, and after that he would even offer her with antique ceremony a cup of strong hot water which he alleged was tea.

Uncle Malachi's black heart cut its last caper one evening while Eve was reading
Treasure Island
to him. She looked up from Black Dog's wound and Dr. Livesey's lancet to find the pawnbroker on the floor, his head between two heaps of books, eyes popping and face blue-twisted.

“Lawyer … witnesses … will …”

Frankie Pagluighi, who was serving his first clerkship in a Murray Hill law office, was holding forth on the stoop next door to a group of neighbors on the latest Supreme Court decision; Eve screamed to him what was wanted and raced up the street to Dr. Ben's. By the time she and the young doctor got back, Uncle Malachi's head was resting on a red buckram set of Richard Harding Davis, and Attorney Pagluighi was kneeling by his side, writing frantically.

“… all my property, real and personal … including my hidden cash … equally between the only human beings … who have ever shown me Christian charity …”

Dr. Ben looked up at Eve and shook his head sadly.

“… Eve Warren and Dr. Ben Bernard.”

“Oh!” said Eve; and then she burst into tears.

Grocer Swendssen, Patrolman Pat Curlihy, and Joe Littman of the drygoods store signed as witnesses, and then Frankie Pagluighi bent over the gasping man and said loudly, “This hidden cash you specify. How much does it amount to?” Old Malachi worked his blue lips, but nothing came out. “Five thousand? Ten thousand?”

“Four million.” He managed a whisper. “In ten-thousand-dollar bills.”

“Million.” The young lawyer swallowed. “Four
million?
Dollars? Where? Where is it? Where did you hide it? Mr. Malachi!”

Uncle Malachi tried to speak.

“
Is it in this building?
”

“Yes,” said the old man in a suddenly clear voice. “Yes. It's in—”

But then he came to attention and looked far beyond them, and after a while Dr. Ben said he was dead.

Ellery came into the case not only because puzzles were his caviar, but also because it was clear as an aspic that his two callers were hopelessly gone on each other. Love and buried treasure—who could resist such a dish?

“You're sure it's really four million dollars and not four hundred figments of the old man's imagination, Dr. Bernard?”

But Dr. Ben reassured him. In the pawnshop safe had been found a ledger listing the serial numbers of the ten-thousand-dollar bills, which various banks had confirmed. And Eve said Uncle Malachi had often made slyly mysterious remarks to her about his “cache of cash”—he was fond of puns and tricks, she said—defying anyone to find it, even though he had hidden it “on the premises.” And the fact was she and Dr. Ben had gone over the little building from basement to roof, inside and out, and had found nothing but cobwebs and vermin. It was not a total loss, Eve admitted with a blush, for they had become engaged while digging up the cellar, under the sponsorship of an indignant rat which had sent her howling into Dr. Ben's arms.

“Well, well, we'll see about this,” said Ellery delightedly; and he went right back to Third Avenue with them.

Sixteen hours later he sank into Uncle Malachi's only chair, a betasseled red-plush refugee from some Victorian town house, and nibbled his thumb. Eve perched disconsolately on Uncle Malachi's bed, and Dr. Ben sat on a pile of books, wedged between The Works of Bret Harte and The Complete Novels of Wilkie Collins. And the gas jet flamed and danced.

“It isn't as if,” said Ellery about an hour later, “it isn't as if you could hide four hundred banknotes in a … unless …”

“Unless he separated them. One here, one there,” said Dr. Ben helpfully. “Four hundred different hiding places.”

Eve shook her head. “No, Ben. From hints he dropped to me, I'm sure he put them in one place, in a roll.”

“Hints,” said Ellery. “Hints, Miss Warren?”

“Oh, I don't know—cryptic remarks. About clues and things—”

“Clues!”

“Clues,” gasped Eve guiltily. “Oh, dear!”

“He left a
clue?
”

“Think, Eve!” implored Dr. Ben.

“It was right in this room. I was reading to him—”

“Reading what?” Ellery asked sharply.

“Something by Poe.… Oh, yes,
The Purloined Letter
. And Uncle Malachi laughed, and he said—”

“His exact words, if you can recall them!”

“He said, ‘Clever rascal, that Dupin. The most obvious place, eh? Very good! Fact is, there's a clue to my hiding place, Evie, and it's in this very room—the clue, I mean,
not
the money.' And he held his sides laughing. ‘In the most obvious place imaginable!' He laughed so hard I thought he'd have a heart attack.”

“Clue in the most obvious place in this room … Books. He must have meant in one of these thousands of books. But which one!” Ellery stared at Eve. Then he sprang from the chair. “Puns and tricks, you'd said. Of course.…” And he began hunting wildly among the mountains and valleys of books, toppling volumes like a landslide. “But he's
got
to be here.… Why, Doctor. You're sitting on him!”

Dr. Ben leaped from the Uniform Edition on which he had been seated as if it had suddenly wiggled.

Ellery dropped to his knees, shuffling through the various books of the set. “Ah!” And he sat down on the floor with one of the volumes, clutching it like a roc's egg. First he explored the binding with the tip of his nose. Then he went through the book page by page. Finally he turned back to one of the front pages and read it to himself, mumbling.

When he looked up, Eve and Dr. Ben cried in one voice, “Well?”

“I'm going to ask some questions. Kindly refrain from hilarity and answer as if your future depended on it—which it does.” Ellery consulted the page. “Is there a potted palm anywhere in or about the premises?”

“Potted palm?” said Dr. Ben feebly.

“No,” said Eve, glaring at her beloved.

“No potted palm. How about a room with a skylight?”

“Skylight …”

“
No.
”

“In that art stuff downstairs—ceramics, statuettes, vases—do you recall any object in the shape, or illustrated with the picture of, a dog? A yellow dog?”

“Now there's a blue horse,” began Dr. Ben, “with a chipped—”

“No, Mr. Queen!”

“Bows and arrows? Archery target? Picture or statue of an archer? Or a statue of Cupid? Or a door painted green?”

“
Ben
. Not one of those things, Mr. Queen!”

“Clocks,” murmured Ellery, glancing again at the book.

“Say,” said Dr. Ben. “Dozens of 'em!”

“And I've examined them all,” said Ellery, “and none of them conceals the hoard. That being the case,” Ellery got to his feet, smiling, “and Uncle Malachi having been fond of his little joke, only one possibility remains.”

“What?” asked Uncle Malachi's heirs in a united voice.

“Swiping a leaf from Malachi's rule-of-the-obvious,” continued Ellery, “in which of these thousands of books could his clue be hidden? Well, what was the nature of his treasure? Four million dollars. Four million—book. And among these standard sets is the complete works of O. Henry. And one of O. Henry's most famous books is entitled …
The Four Million.
” Ellery waved the volume. “I found nothing foreign in the book. Then the clue was in its contents. Obvious development: see Contents Page. And the titles of the various stories?
Tobin's Palm
—so I asked about a potted palm.
The Skylight Room
—but no skylight.
Memoirs of a Yellow Dog
—no yellow dog.
Mammon and the Archer
—
The Green Door—The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock:
all fizzled. Only one other possibility among the stories, so that must be Malachi's clue to the hiding place of the cash.
Between Rounds.
”

“
Between Rounds
,” said Dr. Ben, biting his nails. “How the deuce does that tell you anything? Malachi wasn't a prizefighter, or a—”

“But he was,” said Ellery, smiling, “a punster and high priest of the obscurely obvious. Rounds … A round is anything that's circular or spherical in shape. What in a pawnshop—in any and every pawnship—is spherical and large enough to conceal four hundred banknotes?” Eve gasped and ran to the front window. From its rusty arm, which pointed accusingly at the Third Avenue El, hung the ancient emblem of Uncle Malachi's profession. “If you'll find me some tools, Doctor, we'll open those three gilt balls!”