Margery Allingham - Ellery Queen’s Anthology. 1960

“What if he took it from here and had it in his pocket when he stole the car and drove up Broadway? And in the excitement of his misadventure he failed to notice that it had dropped from his pocket and was on the seat of the car? And Wallen found it there, took it, and saw the name and address on it?... You have sent for the equipment and Wallen’s prints, Mr. Stebbins? Then we—”

“Oh! I remember!” Janet cried. She was pointing a finger. “You remember, Jimmie? This morning I was standing here, and you came by with a hot towel, and you had that magazine — the one sticking out of the mailing-wrapper — and you tossed it under there. That’s why you must have been the one to hit me, because I asked if you had been steaming it, and you said—”

Jimmie leaped. I thought his prey was Janet, and in spite of everything I was willing to save her life, but Wolfe and the chair were in my way and cost me a fifth of a second. And it wasn’t Janet he was after; it was the magazine — the copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He went for it in a hurtling dive, and got his hands on it, but then the three dicks, not to mention Cramer and Purley, were on his neck.

Janet didn’t make a sound. I suppose she was considering what to say to the reporters.

“Confound it,” Wolfe grumbled savagely behind me. “My barber.”

Anyhow, that haircut was done.

As stubborn as Cramer was, he never did learn why Wolfe went to get a haircut that day.

He learned plenty about Jimmie Kirk. Kirk was wanted as a bail jumper, under another name, in Wheeling, West Virginia, on an old charge as a car stealer, with various fancy complications such as slugging a respected citizen who had surprised him in the act. Apparently, he had gone straight in New York for a couple of years and then had hooked up with a car-stealing ring. Unquestionably, he had been fortified with liquids that Monday evening. Driving a stolen car while drunk is a risky operation, especially with a stolen magazine in your pocket...

As for Carl and Tina, I took a strong position on them Tuesday evening in the office.

“You know very well what will happen,” I told Wolfe. “Some day, maybe next week, maybe next year, they’ll be confronted and they’ll be in trouble. Being in trouble, they will come to me, because Carl likes me and because I rescued them—”

Wolfe snorted. “ You did!”

“Yes, sir. I had already noticed that magazine there several times, and it just happened to catch your eye. Anyhow, I am secretly infatuated with Tina, so I’ll try to help them and will get my finger caught, and you’ll have to butt in again because you can’t get along without me. It will go on like that year after year. Why not try to do something about it now? There are people in Washington you know — for instance, Carpenter. He might be able to help Tina and Carl. It will cost a measly buck for a phone call, and I can get that from the fifty they have earmarked for us. I have Carpenter’s home number, and I might as well get him now.”

No comment.

I put my hand on the phone. “Person to person, huh?”

Wolfe grunted. “I got my naturalization papers twenty-four years ago.”

“I wasn’t discussing you. You’ve caught it from Janet,” I said coldly, and then lifted the phone and dialed.