Эллери Куин: Dutch Shoe Mystery

Heads bobbed in unison. Ellery lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the Inspector’s desk.

“I knew, then, that the lace had torn while the criminal was dressing in his impostor’s clothing, just before the murder.

“But where did this lead?” Ellery smiled reminiscently. “Not very far at the time. So I tucked it away in a corner of my brain and tackled the most curious problem of the adhesive tape itself.

“I asked myself this question: What two complementary groups of the most general nature could be said to have committed the murder? Any number of arbitrary genera might have been set up.” Ellery chuckled. “As for instance — smokers and non-smokers, Wets and Drys, Caucasians and Negroes. Any irrelevant and ludicrous divisions like these.

“Seriously, however. Since we were considering a murder in a hospital, the answer naturally fell into the following elementary, relevant classification: that is, the murder was committed either by an unprofessionally minded person or by a professionally minded person. Surely a pertinent generalization.

“Let me define my terms. By ‘professionally minded persons’ I meant persons with trained or acquired knowledge of hospitals and medical routine — knowledge in its least detailed sense.

“Very well! I considered the possibilities in the light of the fact that adhesive tape was used to repair the shoelace. I reached a conclusion — that the impostor-murderer was a professionally minded person.

“How did I attain this mental resolution? Well, the shoelace break was an accident — an accident that, as I’ve shown, couldn’t have been foreseen. In other words, the impostor had no inkling, in the period before he donned the prepared surgical clothing prior to the murder, that one of his shoelaces was going to snap as he put on the shoes. Therefore he could not have provided against such a contingency. Therefore whatever he did to repair such a break in an emergency was unplanned and quite instinctive under the pressure of haste. But the impostor in this emergency used adhesive to mend his broken lace! I ask you: Would an unprofessionally minded person — in the sense I postulated a moment ago — carry adhesive tape about with him? No. Would an unprofessionally minded person even think of carrying such a professional article about with him? No. Not carrying it about with him, would an unprofessionally minded person think of looking for adhesive if he needed something to repair a break? No.

“So THAT,” and Ellery tapped the desk with his forefinger, “the fact that adhesive was thought of, the fact that adhesive was used in the emergency, indicated clearly some one on terms of familiarity with such an article. In other words, a professionally minded person.

“To digress for the merest moment. This classification must be held to include not only nurses, doctors and internes, but also non-medical persons so accustomed to hospital routine that for all logical purposes they fall into the professionally minded class.

“But if a piece of adhesive tape could have presented itself — thereby suggesting its use — to the impostor at the very instant he discovered his need of an article of repair, all my reasoning would be invalidated. For such accessibility would have permitted any one, professionally minded or not, to have taken advantage of the lucky availability of the tape. In other words, if the impostor saw a piece of adhesive lying before his eyes at the moment his lace snapped, his use of the tape to mend the lace would have indicated, not instinct or a professional cast of mind, but merely a taking advantage of a circumstance which forced itself on his attention.

“Fortunately for the strict progression of my argument, however,” continued Ellery as he puffed at his cigarette steadily, “I had learned from a talk and little inspection tour with Dr. Minchen even before the murder that the Dutch Memorial Hospital has most rigid rules about medical supplies — of which adhesive is necessarily an adjunct. Supplies are kept in special cabinets. They are not scattered about on tables or in easily penetrated supply rooms. They’re quite out of sight — and ken — of the uninitiate. Only a Hospital employee or some one accepted in the same sense would know where to lay hands on the adhesive on the split-minute notice necessitated by the murderer’s time-schedule. The adhesive wasn’t under the impostor’s eye; he had to know where to get it before he could use it.

“To put it more directly — not only was my conclusion about a professionally minded criminal substantiated, but I was now able to limit my first generalization even further: that is, my criminal was a professionally minded person connected with the Dutch Memorial Hospital!

“I had hurdled a high obstacle, therefore. I knew quite a bit from my deductive attack upon the facts about the impostor-murderer. Let me sum up once more, so that my reasoning may be utterly crystal in your minds: The murderer, to have thought of and used the adhesive, must have been professionally minded. The murderer, to have known where to procure the adhesive on a moment’s notice, must have been connected in some way with, not just any hospital, but the Dutch Memorial Hospital itself.”

Ellery lit another cigarette. “It narrowed the field, but not to the limit of satisfaction. For from these conclusions I could not exclude such people as Edith Dunning, Hulda Doorn, Moritz Kneisel, Sarah Fuller, Gatekeeper Isaac Cobb, Superintendent James Paradise, elevator-men, mop-women — all of whom were regularly on the Hospital premises and knew its layout and regulations, either as employees or as constant visitors with special privileges. So they had to be classed for my purpose with the Dutch Memorial’s medical personnel as professionally minded persons.

“But that wasn’t all. The shoes were bearers of still another tale. In examining them, we encountered a most unusual phenomenon — the tongues in both were found pressed against the upper insides of the toe-box, quite flatly. What could be the explanation of this?

“The shoes had been used by the impostor — the adhesive showed that. The murderer’s feet had been inside. And yet the tongues were — as they were!

“Have you ever put on your shoes when the tongue was pushed back by your toes as you slipped your feet in? It happens to every one occasionally. You knew the difference at once, didn’t you? You couldn’t help but feel that the tongues were out of position... Well, certainly the impostor didn’t put on those shoes, no matter how much of a sweat he was in, and deliberately leave the tongues to crush his toes. Then the impostor was unaware of what happened to the tongues, or was not made uncomfortable as he put the shoes on...

“But how in God’s name was this possible? Only by one explanation: the impostor’s feet were considerably smaller than the shoes he was putting on — the shoes we later found in the booth. But the shoes we found were ridiculously small themselves — they were size 6! Do you realize what this means? Size 6 is quite the smallest ordinary man’s size in shoes. What sort of masculine monstrosity in the adult stage could have worn those shoes? A Chinese whose honored sire had mistaken him for a girl-child and stunted his infant feet? After all, the man whose feet could have slipped into those shoes, pushing the tongues back, without feeling the difference, must have been the user of much smaller shoes! Size 4 or 5? There’s no such size in men’s shoes!

“So the analysis resolved itself into this: the only kind of feet which would have been so much smaller as to permit the tongues to be pressed back without discomfort or inconvenience would be — one, the feet of a child (palpably ridiculous from the testified height of the impostor); two, the feet of an unnaturally small man (untenable for the same reason); and three, the feet of a medium-sized woman!”