Эллери Куин - The Devil's Cook

“How do you do that without a mirror?” Fanny said. “It looks hard.”

“It’s easy,” Jay said. “What do you want, Fanny? I’m in a hurry.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I have a Saturday morning class.”

“Oh, then Terry got home all right last night.”

“Your concern is commendable, but your assumption is wrong. Terry didn’t get home last night, or this morning either.”

“Well, are you just going off calmly to meet a ridiculous class when your wife is missing and unaccounted for?”

“Exactly. What alternative would you suggest?”

“Did you call the hospitals last night?”

“I did. As I predicted, quite needlessly.”

“If she were my wife, I’d call the police this instant.”

“If you were and did, Terry would have your scalp. Believe me, the last thing Terry would want is the police messing around in this. How can I make you understand, Fanny? I don’t want to appear churlish, but I’d appreciate it if you would stay out of my personal affairs.”

“Oh, all right. I know when I’m not wanted.”

“I’m sorry. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to finish dressing.”

He shut the door quietly in Fanny’s face; and Fanny, ignored at one door and rejected at the other, climbed upstairs to her own apartment and had a third cup of the coffee. She felt by no means deflated. If Terry was Jay’s business, Ben was hers, and she was not prepared to relinquish her rights in the old devil so long as there was even a suggestion of his involvement. Or the least hope of rescuing him from his delinquency. On second thought, it was probably just as well, everything considered, to delay notifying the police.

The Personal was what made things so confused. If Ben was involved, the Personal made no sense. Besides being too devious for Ben’s tastes, it was susceptible to detection and correct interpretation, and thereby risky. And why the ‘O.’ instead of ‘B.’, inasmuch as ‘T.M.’ was used instead of something deceptive? It made no sense whatever. Could it be, as Jay insisted, that the Personal was just a coincidence? It would surely be enlightening, Fanny thought, to know who had placed it in the paper.

The thought became instantly a resolution to find out. It would give her something to do while Farley snored and Jay taught his class. Something constructive might come of it, although Fan had reservations. It did not do to expect too much, she had learned, because it only increased your disappointment when you got too little — or nothing.

She was not sure that newspapers divulged the identity of users of their Personal columns. They might consider it confidential information like doctors and lawyers and the clergy. There was no point in speculating about it, however. She could learn by trying, and that was what she was going to do.

The Personal had appeared in The Journal , the only paper in town with considerable circulation. Fanny happened to know where its offices and plant were located, for she passed the building every day going to work on the bus. She put on hat and coat and gloves and went down to the bus stop on the corner and caught a bus going downtown.

At the Journal building, Fan was directed to Classified Ads. She found it without difficulty. Behind a high counter, a breasty woman asked her crisply, in a voice that defied her to do so, if she wished to place an ad.

“I don’t wish to place one,” said Fanny, “but I’d like to find out the name of someone who did.”

“Wasn’t the name published with the ad? Can you tell me the kind of ad it was?”

“It appeared in the Personal column of the Thursday evening edition.”

The woman’s expression immediately said that she had just been asked to commit treason.

“I’m sorry . The identity of Personal placers is not revealed.”

“It’s important.”

“No, no. It’s quite impossible.”

“Well,” said Fanny, stretching the facts to fit the occasion, “it is probable that whoever inserted that ad is some kind of criminal. Well, I suppose you’re honor bound to protect him.”

“There is no certainty that we know the identity of the party. We often don’t in Personals, you know.” It was now evident in the woman’s face that rules and curiosity were at odds. “Do you have a copy of the newspaper with you?”

“No, I don’t, but I can quote the ad.”

Fanny quoted it verbatim, having a retentive memory. It was apparent at once that the woman remembered it. It was equally apparent, from the way honor rose above curiosity, that honor had won a cheap victory.

“I remember the item very well,” the woman said. “It came in the mail with cash payment enclosed. I know because it came to my desk, and I arranged myself for its publication. I haven’t, of course, the least idea who sent it. Sorry I can’t help you.”

When Fan left the Journal building, it was approaching noon and seemed a long time from her boiled egg. She decided to lunch downtown. But first she spent half an hour in, a department store resisting the temptation to buy several items she did not need. Then she went to the café in a hotel where the blue-plate special was corned beef and cabbage and little boiled potatoes sprinkled with parsley. After lunching on this, with just one martini beforehand to whet her appetite, she caught another bus and returned to The Cornish Arms.

From the vestibule she walked directly back to Farley’s door and began to knock on it loudly, convinced that it was high time Farley was getting up if he hadn’t already done so. As it turned out he had, but only recently, for he was, although dressed, still disheveled and surly. He glared at Fanny with animosity.

“Stop that damn banging!” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The order to stop banging was ex post facto , since it had necessarily stopped when he pulled the door away from her fist. So Fanny, ignoring it, slipped past into the room and turned to face him with disapproval.

“I think I’m doing things that need doing, that’s what I think. While you have been sleeping and Jay has been off doing inconsequential things, I have been busy trying to discover what’s become of Terry. How do you expect to accomplish anything by lying in bed?”

Farley fell into a chair and finger-combed his tousled hair with a temperate despair. His glare had diminished in animosity.

“Which means,” he said, “that you have been making a pest of yourself again. Fan, why don’t you have the common decency to mind your own business? What, precisely, have you been up to now?”

“I’ve been downtown to the newspaper office to see if I could find out who placed the Personal, but I couldn’t They have some kind of rule against telling. They didn’t know, anyhow, because the Personal was sent in the mail. My efforts went for nothing.”

“Serves you right. Maybe now you will butt out and stay out. Did you inquire before you left if Terry had come back or not?”

“I’m not as addle-headed as you seem to think, Farley. I asked Jay.”

“What did Jay say?”

“He said Terry hadn’t returned.”

“Did he also suggest that you quit meddling?”

“Well, yes, he did, as a matter of fact.”

“Good! I recommend that you comply.”

“You’re as bad as Jay, Farley, and that’s the truth. Neither of you is willing to take any action whatever in this matter. If you ask me, it’s not natural for a husband to be so indifferent to the unexplained absence of his wife.”

“Jay’s not indifferent. He’s stoic. He has become inured by constant repetition.”

“I don’t care a hang what you call it, it’s not natural. And, as I recall, you were kind of disturbed yourself in the beginning. What suddenly happened to make you change, I’d like to know?”