Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 835 & 836, March/April 2011

McLove lit a cigarette. “Billy Calm is gone, all right, but he’s not down there. He vanished somewhere between the twenty-first floor and the street.”

“What?”

W.T. Knox joined them, helping a pale but steady Margaret Mason by the arm. “She’ll be all right,” he said. “It was the shock.”

McLove reached out his hand to her. “Tell us exactly what happened. Every word of it.”

“Well...” she hesitated and then sat down. Behind her, Hamilton and Shirley Taggert were deep in animated conversation, and Jason Greene had appeared from somewhere with a policeman in tow.

“You were at the desk,” McLove began, helping her. “And I came out of the directors’ room and went into Billy’s office. Then what?”

“Well, Mr. Calm came in, and as he passed my desk he mumbled something. I didn’t catch it, and I asked him what was the matter. He seemed awfully upset about something. Anyway, he passed my desk and went into the directors’ room. He was just closing the door when you came out, and you know the rest.”

McLove nodded. He knew the rest, which was nothing but the shattered window and the vanished man. “Well, the body’s not down there,” he told them again. “It’s not anywhere. Billy Calm dived through that window and flew away.”

Shirley passed Hamilton a telephone she had just answered. “Yes?” He listened a moment and then hung up. “The news about Billy went out over the stock ticker. Jupiter Steel is selling off fast. It’s already down three points.”

“Goodbye merger,” Knox said, and though his face was grim his voice was not.

A detective arrived on the scene to join the police officer. Quickly summoned workmen were tacking cardboard over the smashed windows, carefully removing some of the jagged splinters of glass from the bottom of the frame. Things were settling down a little, and the police were beginning to ask questions.

“Mr. McLove, you’re in charge of security for the company?”

“That’s right.”

“Why was it necessary to have a security man sit in on directors’ meetings?”

“Some nut tried to kill Billy Calm awhile back. He was still nervous. Private elevator and all.”

“What was the nut’s name?”

“Raimey, I think. Something like that. Don’t know where he is now.”

“And who was usually present at these meetings? I see eight chairs in there.”

“Calm, and three vice-presidents: Greene, Knox, and Hamilton. Also Calm’s secretary, Miss Taggert, and Miss Mason, who kept the minutes of the meeting. The seventh chair is mine, and the eighth one is kept for Mr. Black, who never comes down for the meetings anymore.”

“There was resentment between Calm and Black?”

“A bit. You trying to make a mystery out of this?”

The detective shrugged. “Looks like pretty much of a mystery already.”

And McLove had to admit that it did.

He spent an hour with the police, both upstairs and down in the street. When they finally left just before noon, he went looking for Margaret Mason. She was back at her desk, surprisingly, looking as if nothing in the world had happened.

“How about lunch?” he said. “Maybe a martini would calm your nerves.”

“I’m all right now, thanks. The offer sounds good, but you’ve got a date.” She passed him an inter-office memo. It was signed by William T. Knox, and it requested McLove’s presence in his office at noon.

“I suppose I have to tell them what I know.”

“Which is?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All I know is a dozen different things that couldn’t have happened to Calm. I’ll try to get out of there as soon as I can. Will you wait for me? Till one, anyway?” he asked.

“Sure. Good luck.”

He returned her smile, then went down the long hallway to Knox’s office. It wasn’t surprising to find Hamilton and Greene already there, and he settled down in the remaining chair feeling himself the center of attention.

“Well?” Knox asked. “Where is he?”

“Gentlemen, I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“He’s dead, of course.” Jason Greene spoke up.

“Probably,” McLove agreed. “But where’s the body?”

Hamilton rubbed his fingers together in a nervous gesture. “That’s what we have to find out. My phone has been ringing for an hour. The brokers are going wild, to say nothing of Pittsburgh!”

McLove nodded. “I gather the merger stands or falls on Billy Calm.”

“Right! If he’s dead, it’s dead.”

Jason Greene spoke again. “Billy Calm was a great man, and I’d be the last person in the world to try to sink the merger for which he worked so hard. But he’s dead, all right. And there’s just one place the body could have gone.”

“Where’s that?” Knox asked.

“It landed on a passing truck or something like that, of course.”

Hamilton’s eyes widened. “Sure!” he remarked sarcastically.

But McLove reluctantly shook his head. “That was the first thought the police had. We checked it out and it couldn’t have happened. This building is set back from the street; it has to be, on account of this sheer glass wall. I doubt if a falling body could hit the street, and even if it did, the traffic lane on this side is torn up for repairs. And there’s been a policeman on duty there all morning. The body didn’t land on the sidewalk or the street, and no truck or car passed anywhere near enough.”

W. T. Knox blinked and ran a hand through his thinning, but still wavy, hair. “If he didn’t go down, where did he go? Up?”

“Maybe he never jumped,” Hamilton suggested. “Maybe Margaret made the whole thing up.”

McLove wondered at his words, wondered if Margaret had been objecting to some of his jokes again. “You forget that I was out there with her. I saw her face when that window smashed. The best actress in the world couldn’t have faked that expression. Besides, I saw him go in — or at least I saw the door closing after him. It couldn’t close by itself.”

“And the room was empty when you two entered it a moment later,” Knox said. “Therefore Billy must have gone through the window. We have to face the fact. He couldn’t have been hiding under the table.”

“If he didn’t go down,” Sam Hamilton said, “he went up! By a rope to the roof or another window.”

But once more McLove shook his head. “You’re forgetting that none of the windows can be opened. And it’s a long way up to the roof. The people checked it, though. They found nothing but an unmarked sea of melting snow and slush. Not a footprint, just a few pigeon tracks.”

Jason Greene frowned across the desk. “But he didn’t go down, up, or sideways, and he didn’t stay in the room.”

McLove wondered if he should tell them his idea, or wait until later. He decided now was as good a time as any. “Suppose he did jump, and something caught him on the way down. Suppose he’s hanging there now, hidden by the fog.”

“A flagpole? Something like that?”

“But there aren’t any,” Knox protested. “There’s nothing but a smooth glass wall.”

“There’s one thing,” McLove reminded them, looking at their expectant faces. “The thing they use to wash the windows.”

Jason Greene walked to the window. “We can find out easily enough. The sun has just about burned the fog away.”

They couldn’t see from that side of the building, so they rode down in the elevator to the street. As quickly as it had come, the fog seemed to have vanished, leaving a clear and sparkling sky with a brilliant sun seeking out the last remnants of the previous day’s snow. The four of them stood in the street, in the midst of digging equipment abandoned for the lunch hour, and stared up at the great glass side of the Jupiter Steel Building.