“Hm,” said Ellery. “But what did Pierre’s killer have to know in order to strike so quickly tonight? Two things: That Pierre had slipped me a packet of dope by mistake this evening; and that I was intending to have Pierre pulled in tonight.”
“But Ellery,” said Nikki with a frown, “nobody knew about either of those things except you, me, and the Inspector...”
“Interesting?”
“I don’t get it,” growled his father. “The killer knew Pierre was going to be picked up even before Velie reached Fouchet’s. He must have, because he beat Velie to it. But if only the three of us knew—”
“Exactly—then how did the killer find out?”
“I give up,” said the Inspector promptly. He had discovered many years before that this was, after all, the best way.
But Nikki was young. “Someone overheard you talking it over with me and the Inspector?”
“Well, let’s see. Nikki. We discussed it with Dad in our apartment when we got back from Mrs. Carey’s...”
“But nobody could have overheard there,” said the Inspector.
“Then Ellery, you and I must have been overheard before we got to the apartment.”
“Good enough, Nikki. And the only place you and I discussed the case—the only place we could have discussed it...”
“Ellery!”
“We opened the packet in the cab on our way over to Henry Street here,” nodded Ellery, “and we discussed its contents quite openly—in the cab. In fact,” he added dryly, “if you’ll recall, Nikki, our conversational cab driver joined our discussion with enthusiasm.”
“The cab driver, by joe,” said Inspector Queen softly.
“Whom we had picked up just outside Fouchet’s, Dad, where he was parked. It fits.”
“The same cab driver,” Ellery went on glumly, “who took us back uptown from here, Nikki—remember? And it was on that uptown trip that I told you I was going to have Dad arrest Pierre tonight... Yes, the cab driver, and only the cab driver—the only outsider who could have overheard the two statements which would make the boss dope peddler kill his pusher quickly to prevent an arrest, a police grilling, and an almost certain revelation of the boss’s identity.”
“Works a cab,” muttered the Inspector. “Cute dodge. Parks outside his headquarters. Probably hacks his customers to Fouchet’s and collects beforehand. Let Pierre pass the white stuff afterward. Probably carted them away.” He looked up, beaming. “Great work, son! I’ll nail that hack so blasted fast—”
“You’ll nail whom, Dad?” asked Ellery, still glum.
“The cab driver!”
“But who is the cab driver?”
Ellery is not proud of this incident.
“You’re asking me?” howled his father.
Nikki was biting her lovely nails. “Ellery. I didn’t even notice—”
“Ha, ha,” said Ellery. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Do you mean to say,” said Inspector Queen in a terrible voice, “that my son didn’t read a hack police-identity card?”
“Er...”
“It’s the LAW!”
“It’s Thanksgiving Eve, Dad,” muttered Ellery. “Squanto—the Pilgrims—the Iroquois heritage of Mother Carey—”
“Stop driveling! Can’t you give me a description?”
“Er...”
“No description,” whispered his father. It was really the end of all things.
“Inspector, nobody looks at a cab driver,” said Nikki brightly. “You know. A cab driver? He... he’s just there.”
“The invisible man,” said Ellery hopefully. “Chesterton?”
“Oh, so you do remember his name!”
“No, no, Dad—”
“I’d know his voice,” said Nikki. “If I ever heard it again.”
“We’d have to catch him first, and if we caught him we’d hardly need his voice!”
“Maybe he’ll come cruising back around Fouchet’s.”
The Inspector ejaculated one laughing bark.
“Fine thing. Know who did it—and might’s well not know. Listen to me, you detective. You’re going over to the Hack License Bureau with me, and you’re going to look over the photo of every last cab jockey in—”
“Wait. Wait!”
Ellery flung himself at Mother Carey’s vacated chair. He sat on the bias, chin propped on the heel of his hand, knitting his brows, unknitting them, knitting them again until Nikki thought there was something wrong with his eyes. Then he shifted and repeated the process in the opposite direction. His father watched him with great suspicion. This was not Ellery tonight; it was someone else. All these gyrations...
Ellery leaped to his feet, kicking the chair over. “I’ve got it! We’ve got him!”
“How? What?”
“Nikki.” Ellery’s tone was mysterious, dramatic—let’s face it, thought the old gentleman: corny. “Remember when we lugged the stuff from the cab up to Mother Carey’s kitchen here? The cab driver helped us up — carried this bottle of wine.”
“Huh?” gaped the Inspector. Then he cried: “No, no, Nikki, don’t touch it!” And he chortled over the bottle of California wine. “Prints. That’s it, son—that’s my boy! We’ll just take this little old bottle of grape back to Headquarters, bring out the fingerprints, compare the prints on it with the file sets at the Hack Bureau—”
“Oh, yeah?” said the cab driver.
He was standing in the open doorway, there was a dirty handkerchief tied around his face below the eyes and his cap was pulled low, and he was pointing a Police Positive midway between father and son.
“I thought you were up to somethin’ when you all came back here from Fouchet’s,” he sneered. “And then leavin’ this door open so I could hear the whole thing. You—the old guy. Hand me that bottle of wine.”
“You’re not very bright,” said Ellery wearily. “All right, Sergeant, shoot it out of his hand.”
And Ellery embraced his father and his secretary and fell to Mother Carey’s spotless floor with them as Sergeant Velie stepped into the doorway behind the cab driver and very carefully shot the gun out of the invisible man’s hand.
“Happy Thanksgivin’, sucker,” said the Sergeant.
The Adventure of The Dauphin’s Doll
There is a law among story-tellers, originally passed by Editors at the cries (they say) of their constituents, which states that stories about Christmas shall have children in them. This Christmas story is no exception; indeed, misopedists will complain that we have overdone it. And we confess in advance that this is also a story about Dolls, and that Santa Claus comes into it, and even a Thief; though as to this last, whoever he was—and that was one of the questions—he was certainly not Barabbas, even parabolically.
Another section of the statute governing Christmas stories provides that they shall incline toward Sweetness and Light. The first arises, of course, from the orphans and the never-souring savor of the annual Miracle; as for Light, it will be provided at the end, as usual, by that luminous prodigy, Ellery Queen. The reader of gloomier temper will also find a large measure of Darkness, in the person and works of one who, at least in Inspector Queen’s harassed view, was surely the winged Prince of that region. His name, by the way, was not Satan, it was Comus; and this is paradox enow, since the original Comus, as everyone knows, was the god of festive joy and mirth, emotions not commonly associated with the Underworld. As Ellery struggled to embrace his phantom foe, he puzzled over this non sequitur in vain; in vain, that is, until Nikki Porter, no scorner of the obvious, suggested that he might seek the answer where any ordinary mortal would go at once. And there, to the great man’s mortification, it was indeed to be found: On page 262b of Volume 6, Coleb to Damasci, of the 175th Anniversary edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A French conjuror of that name—Comus—performing in London in the year 1789 caused his wife to vanish from the top of a table—the very first time, it appeared, that this feat, uxorial or otherwise, had been accomplished without the aid of mirrors. To track his dark adversary’s nom de nuit to its historic lair gave Ellery his only glint of satisfaction until that blessed moment when light burst all around him and exorcised the darkness, Prince and all.