Эллери Куин - The Devil To Pay

The information about Counselor Anatole Ruhig was the only clue she had; and, for better or worse, it had to be traced to its bitter end.

At two o’clock precisely the door of Managing Editor Fitzgerald’s office flew open and an apparition appeared, making Mr. Fitzgerald choke over a hooker of eighteen-year-old whisky which he was in the process of swallowing.

“Hi, Chief,” said the apparition, swaggering in.

“Who the hell do you think you’re impersonating,” spluttered Fitz, “a burlycue comic?”

The apparition was a tall lean young man with a clean-shaven face and features just a trifle too sharp to be handsome. But Fitzgerald was examining the costume, not the face. The young man was attired in shapeless slacks of a dingy gray hue and the loudest sport coat Fitzgerald, who had seen nearly everything, had ever laid eyes on. It was a sort of disappointed terra cotta, with wide cobalt stripes slashing through an assortment of brown plaid checks. His shoes were yellow brogues. His red-and-blue plaid socks curled around his ankles. On his head he wore a tan felt hat with the fore part of the brim sticking straight up in the air. And his eyes were covered by blue-tinted sun-glasses.

“Hilary ‘Scoop’ King, the demon of the city room,” said the apparition, leering. “Hahzit, Fitz?”

“Oh, my God,” groaned Fitz, hastily shutting his door.

“What’s the matter? Don’t I look the part?”

“You look like a hasheesh-eater’s dream of heaven,” cried Fitz. “That coat — jeeze! It must have come down to you straight from Joseph.”

“Protective coloration,” said Ellery defensively.

“Yeah — your own father wouldn’t know you in that get-up. And with the beaver gone you don’t look the same man. Only for cripe’s sake don’t go around telling anybody you work here. I’d be laughed out of the pueblo .”

The door opened a little and Val said timidly: “May I come in?”

“Sure,” said Fitz in a hearty voice, and he glared at Ellery, who hastily got off the desk.

Val slipped in, and Fitz shut the door behind her. “Don’t let the get-up scare you, Val. This is Hilary King, the man I told you about. He’s new to L.A. and he thinks the local men dress like a shopgirl’s conception of Clark Gable relaxing. King, Miss Valerie Jardin.”

“How do you do,” said Val, trying not to giggle.

“Hi,” said Ellery, removing his hat. But then he remembered that newspapermen in the movies never remove their hats, so he put it on again.

“I decided not to use a local man after all, Val,” said Fitz, “because the boys would know him and get wise to what’s going on. King’s just in from — uh — Evansville; great record out there, especially on police work.”

He bustled to his desk and Val eyed her new colleague sidewise. He looked like a perfect idiot. But then Fitz was smart, and appearances weren’t always to be trusted. She also thought she had seen the creature before, but she couldn’t decide when or where.

“Here are your credentials,” said Fitz, “and yours, too, King.”

“Does the gentleman from Evansville know what his job is?” asked Val.

“Oh, sure,” said Ellery. “Fitz told me. Keep an eye on you, give you fatherly advice. Don’t worry about me — baby.”

“How,” said Val, “are the gentleman’s morals?”

“Who, me? I’m practically sexless.”

“Not,” retorted Val, “that it would do you any good if you weren’t. I just wanted to avoid possible unpleasantness.”

“Go on, get going, both of you,” said Fitz benevolently.

“I’ll have my first story,” said Val, “ready for the rewrite desk tonight, Fitz.”

“Not in this man’s trade, you won’t,” grinned Fitz. “We’ve got a daily paper to get out. Besides, it’s all written.”

“What!”

“Now don’t fret yourself,” soothed Fitz. “You don’t have to pound out the grind stuff. I’ve got people here who can make up a better human-interest yarn out of their heads than you could out of facts. You’ll get your byline and your grand just the same.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“Part of your value to me is your name. The other part is that clue you’re battin’ about. Don’t worry about the writing, Val. Follow up that clue, and if you pick up any special slants, ’phone ’em in. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Mr. King,” said Val, eying the apparition. “For whom are you working — Fitz or me?”

“The answer to a dame,” said Mr. King, “is always yes.”

“Hey!” shouted Fitz.

“Now that you’ve learned your catechism,” said Val with a kindly smile, “come along, Mr. King, and learn something else.”

“The first thing I crave,” said Hilary “Scoop” King as they paused on the sidewalk before the Independent building, “is lunch. Have you eaten?”

“No, but we’ve got an important call to make—”

“It can wait; most everything can in this world. What would you suggest?”

Val shrugged. “If you’re a stranger here, you might like the Café in El Paseo.”

“That sounds hundreds of miles away, to the south.”

“It’s in the heart of the city,” laughed Val. “We can hoof it from here.”

Ellery politely took the outside position, noting that a black sedan was following them slowly. Val led him up Main Street through the old Plaza, pointing out the landmarks — Pico House, the Lugo mansion plastered with placards displaying red Chinese ideographs, Marchessault Street.

When she took him into El Paseo, it was like turning a corner into old Mexico. Booths ran down the middle of the street displaying black-paper cigarillos , little clay toys and holy images, queer cactus plants, candles. The very stones underfoot were alien and fascinating. Along both sides of the narrow thoroughfare were ramadas , ovens of brick and wooden tables where fat Mexican women patted an endless array of tortillas . At the end of the street there was a forge, where a man sat pounding lumps of incandescent iron into cunning Mexican objects.

Ellery was enchanted. Val indicated their destination, La Golondrina Café, with its quaint over-hanging balcony.

“What are those scarlet and yellow dishes I see the señoritas carrying about?”

They sat down at one of the sidewalk tables and Val ordered. She watched with a secret mischievousness as he bit innocently into an enchilada .

“ Muy caliente! ” he gasped, reaching for the water-jug. “Wow!”

Val laughed aloud then and felt better. She began to like him. And when they got down to the business of serious eating and he chattered on with the fluency of a retired diplomat, she liked him even more.

Before she knew it, she was talking about herself and Rhys and Pink and Winni Moon and Walter and Solly Spaeth. He asked guileless questions, but by some wizardry of dialectic the answers always had to be factual in order to be intelligible; and before long Val had told him nearly everything she knew about the case.

It was only the important events of Monday afternoon — Rhys’s alibi, Walter’s taking of Rhys’s coat, the fact that Walter had really been inside his father’s house at the time of the crime — that Valerie held back. Consequently there were gaps in her account, gaps of which her companion seemed casually aware — too casually, thought Val; and she sprang up and said they would have to be going.

Ellery paid the check and they sauntered out of El Paseo. “Now where?” he said.

“To see Ruhig.”

“Oh, Spaeth’s lawyer. What for?”

“I have reason to believe that Ruhig had an appointment with Spaeth on Monday afternoon for five or five-thirty. He told Glücke he got there after six. You won’t blab!”