Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

Said one of the agents, “There’s no entrapment, Mr. Fox. You came here to get certain jewels. They’re all here. Even without the doctored tape, we have your own admission and that of Mr. Cupp that they were unwittingly smuggled in for you by these boys. So long as we don’t touch a phone, we have a right to record anything on the premises with the written consent of the owners, tenants, or inhabitants thereof.”

“All this was recorded too?” said Mr. Fox.

“Yes,” said Mort. “Got an excellent record, and all sorts of witnesses that it wasn’t doctored, rectified, spliced, and rerecorded like the other one. So I’m pretty sure it will stand up in court.”

Mr. Fox moaned.

Mr. Cupp hit him on the jaw with a powerful right fist “What a lawyer!” he said. He held out his hands, wrists together, to the customs agents. He tried to smile as the handcuffs clicked home. “Do you think maybe I’ll draw Atlanta again?” he said. “I always did easy time there. Is this a big enough rap for Atlanta?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said the agent.

The agent turned to Jerry and Mort. “You boys went to a lot of unnecessary trouble. We knew when these jewels were stolen in France and we knew when friend Cupp came into possession of them. We knew he was in Mexico, and we knew he’d try to bring them across to peddle them here. All you had to do was bring the jewels to us and tell your story! You’ll probably split a nice reward on this, but why do it the hard way?”

“It’s kind of difficult to explain,” said Jerry. “You see, we both put off our term papers all year, planning to do them during Easter vacation. Then we got this chance to go to Mazatlán for some surfing, and we were really up against it when we got back! This gives us our themes and our bachelor’s degrees, see?”

Jerry’s paper was titled, Use of Electronic Recording Tape and Substituted Dialogue in Simulated or Re-Created News Events — A Suggested Dramatic Technique. Mort’s was called, Rectifying Induction-Coil Signals by Various Methods, Including Magnetic Resonator and High and Low Frequency Tonal Separations. In addition to splitting a $10,000 reward, both boys got A-Plus.

It really happened in 1947 when those who could, flocked to the Riviera — the older ones to repair their war-torn lives, and the young to find the gaiety they’d been cheated of...

The cabdriver said, “There y’are.” He looked at me with curiosity.

I got out, paid him, walked up the two steps, opened the door, and paused. I was still trying to get my breath, control the terrible thumping inside me. Also, I was confused by the look of the place. The sign outside said, “Police Station” but I had never seen anything less like one. It came to me, however, that I never had seen the interior of a police station; my ideas had been formed by the world of fiction. Maybe in reality all police stations looked like this small bare room with its one table and few straight chairs.

The single person in the room was elderly, bespectacled, shirt-sleeved. He was sitting at the table, reading a newspaper. He lowered the newspaper, lowered the eye-glasses by a deft contraction of his nose, and raised his eyebrows. All three motions were fractional — admirably energy-saving, if I had been in the mood to admire.

I accepted the raised eyebrows as a question and replied to them, “I want to report a murder. I think. A something.” My state of shock was great, but an awareness filtered through that my phraseology was not very convincing.

The man — a cop, I supposed — said, “Body?”

“No. That is — no. There never was one. Not exactly. I mean, if you’ll let me—”

“We don’t usually have murders without bodies. Not in this town. But then, we don’t usually have murders. Come to think of it, never have had. But we’re very small. Still growing.”

“This is not funny.”

“Have I laughed? Your name?”

I opened my mouth to protest the waste of time and then realized that we had finally got down to a recognized formula. I welcomed normality. “William Dentelle.” He raised the eyebrows and I spelled it.

He took a big black-covered book out of the table drawer and by sliding down on his spine, found a ballpoint pen in the drawer’s extreme rear. He opened the book toward its middle and wrote down my name. His handwriting was flowing, more outgoing than the man himself seemed.

“Age?”

“Forty.”

“Business?”

“I am a salesman employed by the Simpson-Bluet Manufacturing Company.”

“They make heavy machinery? Largely mining machinery?”

I nodded.

“Here to see the people at the mining works, huh?”

I nodded.

“Staying at the Benntown Hotel?”

There was no place else. I nodded.

“Arrived when?”

“This afternoon. Five o’clock. My appointment at the works is for eight tomorrow morning.”

“The five twelve from Pittsburgh.” It wasn’t a question. “So you’ve been here two hours and you’re a witness to a murder.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t. Didn’t say much. Want to start somewhere? I mean, like telling me who’s dead?”

“Well, of course. But... it was fifteen years ago.”

He put down his pen, took off the drooping eyeglasses, folded the newspaper, and leaned forward to rest on his folded arms. I noticed then that a uniform jacket was hanging on the chair behind him. He was a captain. He said, “So you don’t want me to rush anywhere? We — you and I — are not going off with a clatter of hooves to see justice done?”

“Yes, I think we should do just that. But I’ll have to explain.”

He looked at me for quite a long time — perhaps a minute, but it seemed like a long time. He had clear brown eyes, exceptionally clear for his age, which was probably more than the sixty or so I had estimated at first. He also had all his hair, a nice cap of heavy whiteness. It occurred to me that he spoke with no trace of the accent of the region, although the residents of small hamlets in that corner of Pennsylvania were often almost incomprehensible.

He said, “I am the Chief of Police of this town. It is my duty to see that — ah — justice is done. One way to do my job properly is to save my energy by not wasting it on nuts. I don’t apologize for my choice of words, because I haven’t called you a nut — yet. Truth is, you don’t look like one, but you sure sound like one. Other hand, the Simpson-Bluet people probably don’t employ nuts. Usually. Got anything to prove that you are William Dentelle, and that William Dentelle is employed by Simpson-Bluet?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Sure.”

I began disgorging more papers than I had realized I carried: driver’s license, business cards, a hospitalization card that had been in an inner flap of my wallet for at least five years, a Social Security card from beneath it. Two credit cards. I looked up at him, but he showed no signs of surfeit. So I produced three letters from my jacket’s inner pocket. They were all addressed to me at Simpson-Bluet; they all had to do with business orders.

I stopped.

He went through each item with care, returning them one at a time. He checked the driver’s license, flicking glances at me as he read “color of eyes, height, and date of birth.” He reopened the black book and entered my home address in it. He then gave each of the business letters his careful attention, and returned them.

He said, “All right, Mr. Dentelle. I’ve had my dinner. You want to tell me a story, is that it?”

“That’s it exactly,” I said gratefully. “It’s long and it’s confused and if you’ll just—”