Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994

“No, I just do what I’m paid for.”

By six-thirty cars were beginning to arrive in the parking lot. Though they still had ninety minutes before show time, Gloria suggested they start back to the riverboat. Nick left them to ready things for the show while he made his way up to the ship’s bridge. Since the Cajan Queen never left its dock, there was no need to have crew members on the bridge. It was unoccupied now as Nick entered and checked on the clock. He saw at once that it would be a simple task to push it ahead by twenty-nine minutes, changing the other clocks as well.

By the time he heard the slight sound of the opening door behind him, it was too late to hide. He turned and looked into the cold gray eyes of Abe Roster, holding a 9-mm automatic pistol in his hand. “The silent alarm system works quite well on my ship, Mr. Nicholas. Please raise your hands.”

Nick Velvet smiled. “Put away the gun, Abe. I’m about to perform the greatest trick you’ve ever seen. I’m about to save your life.”

The curtains parted to a recorded drum roll exactly at eight o’clock. Working the lighting panel, Dominick Powell spoke the announcement into his microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Cajan Queen is proud to present — Nicholas the Great!”

Nick stepped forward and doffed his top hat, pulling from it endless bouquets of flowers, throwing his white gloves in the air where they became a pair of doves, tapping his cane on the stage to give birth to a momentary fountain. The audience gasped and applauded. He had them, for the moment. The girls appeared behind him, two on either side.

After a few words of greeting, Nick told the men and women in the seats before him, “Because time is the enemy, time is a liar, and time is out of joint, I will ask my lovely assistants to pass among you and collect all watches, clocks, hourglasses, and timepieces. You will be given a claim check for them and they will be returned, though perhaps not in the condition they are now.”

The audience stirred uncertainly, but Nick was pleased to see that most of those in the front row parted with their timepieces. The assistants in their glittery costumes worked with charm and precision, as if they’d been doing it like that for months. When they delivered the four cloth bags to the stage and placed them in a pile at Nick’s feet, he knew the trick was going to work. One of the assistants brought him a heavy sledgehammer and he proceeded to whack each of the bags several times. The crunch of smashing metal could be heard over the gasps of the audience. For the first time Nick spotted Lieutenant Weston in the second-to-last row, watching him intently. He gave the bags a final kick and resumed the rest of his act.

He ran through a few card tricks, seated on the edge of the stage, then tried the linking rings. When one of them got away from him and clattered onto the stage he had a joke for the occasion. The audience loved it. Finally, when he’d exhausted all his tricks and patter, he glanced into the wings. Gloria gave him a thumbs-up sign. Two of the spangled girls rolled out a large pie. With a recorded fanfare Nick produced a sword and cut across the top of it. They pulled out a bag identical with the ones still on stage and Nick opened it, feigning surprise as he removed a wristwatch with a tag stuck to it.

“Number thirty-two!” he called out. A man came up to claim the watch, which was indeed his. The audience broke into cheers and the rest of the watches were quickly returned to their owners.

Nick bowed and left the stage, then returned with his four assistants for a final curtain call. He received a hug from Gloria as he hurried backstage. “It was perfect, Nicky! You’ve got a new career.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t last long among real magicians. Come on, let’s mingle with the customers and try to change any slow watches we discover.”

He heard a woman leaving the auditorium say to her husband, “My watch is a half-hour slower than yours.” Gloria immediately moved in and insisted it was nine o’clock, right on the dot. The woman asked someone else and received the same answer. She shrugged and reset it. “I’ve never known it to lose time like that before.”

Nick moved among the players in the casino, watching the blackjack tables and the roulette wheels, looking for something, somewhere. About an hour later, Charlie Weston joined him. “How’d you do that trick with the watches? I had my eyes on those bags every minute. They never left the stage.”

“It’s a trade secret,” Nick answered with a smile.

“The clock out by the reception area is a half-hour fast.”

“Twenty-nine minutes fast, to be exact.”

“How’d you manage it, Nick?”

“For what you’re paying, you get results. Explanations cost extra.”

“I thought your show was an audition for Abe Roster, but he didn’t come in to watch it.”

“We had a talk earlier.”

That seemed to surprise the detective. “You did? What about?”

“Stick around till midnight and I’ll tell you.”

Weston glanced at his watch. “It’s not even ten yet.”

“You’re slow, Lieutenant. It’s ten twenty-four to be exact. You’d better reset your watch.”

“Yeah. Sure.” But he did it.

“What about the rest of my money?”

“Meet me on the dock at midnight, when the place closes. You’ll have it then. I’ll be in a red Olds at this end of the parking lot.”

Nick spent the next ninety minutes searching through the ship, but it was a useless task. There were too many places to hide something, and too many security guards likely to pounce on him if they found him outside the public areas. He would have to confront Charlie Weston, even if it meant losing the balance of his money.

He made sure Gloria and the girls were off the Cajan Queen by eleven forty-five. “Pay them off,” he told Gloria, “but make sure they don’t go back on board. You either. Go over to the rental car and wait for me there. If for some reason I don’t join you by twelve-fifteen, drive back to the hotel and I’ll meet you there later.”

“Nicky, what is all this? What’s going to happen to the ship?”

“Later,” he told her.

Nick strolled along the front row of cars until he spotted the red Olds. Lieutenant Weston was already inside behind the wheel and he motioned for Nick to get in next to him. It was just before midnight by Nick’s new improved time, and people were starting to leave the ship. He didn’t worry about what they’d think when the clocks in their cars revealed a discrepancy of twenty-nine minutes.

“All right,” Weston said when Nick was in the car. “Here’s the rest of your money.” People were streaming down the gangplank now.

“I need some information from you,” Nick said, starting to reach for the envelope.

“What information?”

“Where is the bomb hidden?”

Charlie Weston snorted, then squinted at Nick through half-closed eyes, the lights from the riverboat playing across his face. “What bomb? What’re you talking about?”

“Do I have to explain it, Charlie? You had money to spend on luring me down here, money to pay me to steal those twenty-nine minutes. That’s more money than any police lieutenant earns, if he’s honest. I’ve heard how Billy Burdeck controls gambling along the Gulf Coast. You don’t get that big unless you pay people off, including cops. You’re on Burdeck’s payroll, aren’t you? But tonight he’s trying something that even you couldn’t stomach. You couldn’t go to your superiors without admitting your own involvement so you got the idea of luring me to New Orleans and hiring me.”

Weston scratched his nose. “Keep talking,” he said grimly.

“You hired me to steal twenty-nine minutes from the customers and employees of the Cajan Queen. I had to ask myself why. What would it accomplish? Well, I was told that the management allows fifteen minutes after closing to empty the ship of passengers, and another ten minutes for the employees to depart after delivering the money to the cashiers. Naturally I was thinking about a robbery, but why would that upset you so much and get you to put up your own money to safeguard these people? Certainly a robbery, even a violent one, wouldn’t be likely to harm more than a handful of people. Yet by emptying the ship twenty-nine minutes early you seemed to be worried about almost everyone on board. That’s when it dawned on me. It wasn’t going to be a midnight robbery but a midnight bomb — something strong enough to destroy the Cajan Queen and most of the people on it. I asked myself if that made sense. Was there any reason why Billy Burdeck would want the bomb to go off at midnight rather than four in the morning or two in the afternoon? Yes, a very good reason. Abe Roster was always on board at midnight to total up the night’s receipts.”