Эллери Куин - Dutch Shoe Mystery

He stood hopefully by the table, attempting to catch Ellery’s eye.

Ellery stopped short, a look of utter amazement spreading over his face. The surprise vanished; his face assumed a grave, even apprehensive, expression.

In a slightly quavering voice he asked, “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

Djuna’s eyes popped. “Why — Mr. Ellery — it’s me!”

“What!” Ellery retreated a step. “Get out,” he whispered hoarsely. “You’re fooling me... Djuna — that’s not really you? ”

“Sure it’s me!” cried Djuna in triumph. He whipped off the mustache and beard.

“I’ll be eternally switched!” murmured Ellery, and the laughter which had been lurking in his eyes sparkled clear. “Come here, imp!”

He sat down in the Inspector’s big armchair and drew the boy to him. “Djuna,” he said solemnly, “the case is quite solved. All but one thing.”

“Shucks.”

“I echo that delightful sentiment — shucks.” Ellery’s frown crept back. “I could put my hand on the criminal today — the one and only person who could have committed both murders. I have a perfect, an airtight case. But that one stubborn little point...” He was talking to himself more than to Djuna. “One little point. Peculiarly enough, it doesn’t affect the capture in the slightest, and yet I won’t know everything until I learn the answer to...” His voice trailed off startlingly as he sat up with half-closed eyes, pushing Djuna from him.

“By heaven,” he said quietly. “I’ve got it.”

He leaped from the chair and vanished within the bedroom. Djuna followed him quickly.

Ellery tore the telephone from the night-table and rapped a number into the instrument...

“Pete Harper!... Pete. Listen carefully... Don’t ask questions. Just listen.

“Pete, if you’ll do what I ask now I promise you a bigger story than the one you got the other day... You heard me! Pencil and paper ready? And for the love of your eternal soul, don’t breathe a word of this to any one. Any one, do you hear? It’s not for publication until I say so.

“Now, I want you to go down to the...”

At this point in the story of THE DUTCH SHOE MYSTERY, according to a precedent I created in the first of my detective novels several years ago, I inject a Challenge to the Reader... maintaining with perfect sincerity that the reader is now in possession of all the pertinent facts essential to the correct solution of the Doorn and Janney murders...

By the exercise of strict logic and irrefutable deductions from given data, it should be simple for the reader to name at this point the murderer of Abigail Doorn and Dr. Francis Janney. I say simple advisedly. Actually it is not simple; the deductions are natural, but they require sharp and unflagging thought.

Remember that knowledge of the article which the author extracted from the cabinet in the Anteroom, and of the information which the author gave to Harper over the telephone in the preceding chapter is not necessary to the solution... although if you have correctly followed the logic you may deduce what the article was, and with less certainty, what the information was.

To avoid any charge of unfairness I submit the following refutation: that I myself deduced the answer before going to the cabinet and before telephoning Harper.

Friday, January —

Inspector Richard Queen

No. — 87th Street

New York

DEAR INSPECTOR QUEEN:

I am writing this at the special request of Mr. Ellery Queen, with whom I conversed this morning over the telephone.

Mr. Queen advised me that he was entirely familiar with certain personal secrets whose facts were not in possession of the police until he learned of them from Dr. John Minchen, of the Dutch Memorial Hospital, yesterday.

Since the secret is out, there is no longer any reason for silence or evasion on my part, and I take this opportunity to clarify such points of the Dunning-Fuller story as may still be unexplained or unclear.

Before I proceed, however, allow me to take the liberty of reminding you of Mr. Ellery Queen’s personal assurance to me this morning. He said that every precaution would be taken to keep the story of Hulda Doorn’s true parentage out of the papers and even, if it were possible, out of your police files.

The documents which were ordered destroyed by Mrs. Doorn’s will were in substance a personal diary kept by my client during the years surrounding the events herein described, and taken up again some five years ago, from which time it was religiously kept.

Mr. Queen shrewdly guessed that I had exceeded my legal authority on Monday when, instead of destroying the envelope without breaking its seals, as legal ethics demanded, I had opened it and read its contents.

Inspector Queen, I have been practicing law for a long time now and I have faithfully, I think, upheld the integrity of my father’s business reputation; especially in the case of Mrs. Doorn, a friend as well as a client, and always to her very best interests. If Mrs. Doorn had died a natural death I should never have breached my legal trust. But her murder, combined with the fact that I was — and am now — engaged to be married to Miss Doorn with the full consent of her deceased foster-mother, so that I am really a member of the Doorn family — forced me to open the envelope and investigate its contents. If I had turned it over to the police before opening it, personal facts absolutely unrelated to the murder would have come out. So I opened it myself, assuming the position of a member of the family rather than its attorney, with the mental reservation that if anything in the documents seemed to relate to the crime I would place them in your hands.