Stephen Barr - Best of the best detective stories - 25th anniversary collection

One thread (or at most two) in the gorgeous tapestry we have woven for the instruction of our readers remains yet untied. This is the question of what happened to Tosci and his Project Supervisor after the release from brief confinement on unpressed charges of assault.

It is unquestionably true that their pictures were in all the papers. It is equally true, and equally unquestionable, that the Mafia frowns on publicity for those connected with its far-flung operations. Rumors that the two men were fitted for concrete space-shoes and subsequently invited to participate in skindiving operations south of Ambrose Light, no matter how persistent, cannot be confirmed.

Mr. Alexander Borjia, businessman and art connoisseur, questioned by a Congressional investigating committee, said (or at any rate, read from a prepared statement): “My only information about the so-called Mafia comes from having heard that it is sometimes mentioned in the Sunday supplements of sensation-seeking newspapers. I do not read these myself, being unable to approve of the desecration of the Lord’s Day which their publication and distribution necessarily involve. Nor can I subscribe to the emphasis such journals place upon crime and similar sordid subjects, which cannot but have an unfortunate effect upon our basically clean-living American youth.”

It was at or about this point that Senator S. Robert E. Lee (“Sourbelly Sam”) Sorby (D., Old Catawba), chose to light up his famous double-bowl corncob pipe, of which it has been said that the voters of his native state sent him to Washington because they could not stand the smell of it at home. Mr. Borjia (evidently as unimpressed as the Old Catawba voters by Senator Sorby’s statement that the mixture was made according to a formula invented by the Indians after whom the State was named) — Mr. Borjia coughed, gagged, gasped, turned white, green, red; and after leveling an imaginary telescope consisting of his own loosely rolled fists, proceeded (in a strange, guttural, and heavily accented voice quite unlike his own) to describe what was even then going on in the secret chambers of the Mafia in such wealth of detail as to make it abundantly clear to the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative branches of the Goverment (as well as to himself, when with bulging eyes he subsequently read the transcripts of his own “confession”) that he must never be allowed outside any of the Federal caravanserais in which he has subsequently and successively been entertained.

And there let us leave him.

Copyright 1945 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.; reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Lenniger Literary Agency, Inc., 437 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

Copyright by Hearst Magazines, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of A. A. Milne.

Copyright 1947 by the American Mercury, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

Copyright 1948 by the United Newspapers Magazine Corp. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

Copyright 1949 by The American Mercury, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine .

Copyright 1950 by Stanley Ellin. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Copyright 1951 by Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Copyright 1952 by the Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Copyright 1953 by Mercury Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine .

Copyright 1954 by Flying Eagle Publications. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

Copyright® 1955 by The Curtis Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Copyright© 1956 by Flying Eagle Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

Copyright© 1958 by Charles Mergendahl, reprinted by permission of the Harold Matson Company, Inc.

First published in This Week Magazine . Copyright © 1958 by Hugh Pentecost. Reprinted by permission of Brandt & Brandt.

Copyright © I960 by Talmage Powell. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

Copyright© 1961 by H. S. D. Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents. Larry Sternig and Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

Copyright © 1961 by Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Copyright © 1963 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of The Borden Deal Family Trust (Borden Deal, Trustee).

Copyright© 1964 by Robert Twohy. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine . Reprinted by permission of the author.

Copyright © 1965 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Copyright© 1966 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Copyright © 1966 by Michael Gilbert. First published in the U.S. in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine . Reprinted by permission of John Cushman Associates, Inc.

Copyright © 1969 by Elaine Slater. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the author.