Question: Had Sergeant Velie switched dolls, carrying the genuine dauphin concealed in his Santa Claus suit, to be cached for future retrieval or turned over to Comus or a confederate of Comus’s, during one of his two departures from the enclosure?
Answer (by Sergeant Velie):•[1]
Confirmation: Some dozens of persons with police training and specific instructions, not to mention the Queens themselves, Miss Porter, and Attorney Bondling, testified unqualifiedly that Sergeant Velie had not touched the doll, at any time, all day.
Conclusion: Sergeant Velie could not have stolen, and therefore he did not steal, the Dauphin’s Doll.
Item: All those deputized to watch the doll swore that they had done so without lapse or hindrance the everlasting day; moreover, that at no time had anything touched the doll—human or mechanical—either from inside or outside the enclosure.
Question: The human vessel being frail, could those so swearing have been in error? Could their attention have wandered through weariness, boredom, et cetera?
Answer: Yes; but not all at the same time, by the laws of probability. And during the only two diversions of the danger period, Ellery himself testified that he had kept his eyes on the dauphin and that nothing whatsoever had approached or threatened it.
Item: Despite all of the foregoing, at the end of the day they had found the real dauphin gone and a worthless copy in its place.
“It’s brilliantly, unthinkably clever,” said Ellery at last. “A master illusion. For, of course, it was an illusion...”
“Witchcraft,” groaned the Inspector.
“Mass mesmerism,” suggested Nikki Porter.
“Mass bird gravel,” growled the Sergeant.
Two hours later Ellery spoke again.
“So Comus had a worthless copy of the dauphin all ready for the switch,” he muttered. “It’s a world-famous dollie, been illustrated countless times, minutely described, photographed... All ready for the switch, but how did he make it? How? How?”
“You said that,” said the Sergeant, “once or forty-two times.”
“The bells are tolling,” sighed Nikki, “but for whom? Not for us.” And indeed, while they slumped there, Time, which Seneca named father of truth, had crossed the threshold of Christmas; and Nikki looked alarmed, for as that glorious song of old came upon the midnight clear, a great light spread from Ellery’s eyes and beatified the whole contorted countenance, so that peace sat there, the peace that approximateth understanding; and he threw back that noble head and laughed with the merriment of an innocent child.
“Hey,” said Sergeant Velie, staring.
“Son,” began Inspector Queen, half-rising from his armchair; when the telephone rang.
“Beautiful!” roared Ellery. “Oh, exquisite! How did Comus make the switch, eh? Nikki—”
“From somewhere,” said Nikki, handing him the telephone receiver, “a voice is calling, and if you ask me it’s saying ‘Comus.’ Why not ask him?”
“Comus,” whispered the Inspector, shrinking.
“Comus,” echoed the Sergeant, baffled.
“Comus?” said Ellery heartily. “How nice. Hello there! Congratulations.”
“Why, thank you,” said the familiar deep and hollow voice. “I called to express my appreciation for a wonderful day’s sport and to wish you the merriest kind of Yuletide.”
“You anticipate a rather merry Christmas yourself, I take it.”
“Laeti triumphantes,” said Comus jovially.
“And the orphans?”
“They have my best wishes. But I won’t detain you, Ellery. If you’ll look at the doormat outside your apartment door, you’ll find on it—in the spirit of the season—a little gift, with the compliments of Comus. Will you remember me to Inspector Queen and Attorney Bondling?”
Ellery hung up, smiling.
On the doormat he found the true Dauphin’s Doll, intact except for a contemptible detail. The jewel in the little golden crown was missing.
“It was,” said Ellery later, over pastrami sandwiches, “a fundamentally simple problem. All great illusions are. A valuable object is placed in full view in the heart of an impenetrable enclosure, it is watched hawkishly by dozens of thoroughly screened and reliable trained persons, it is never out of their view, it is not once touched by human hand or any other agency, and yet, at the expiration of the danger period, it is gone—exchanged for a worthless copy. Wonderful. Amazing. It defies the imagination. Actually, it’s susceptible—like all magical hocus-pocus—to immediate solution if only one is able—as I was not—to ignore the wonder and stick to the fact. But then, the wonder is there for precisely that purpose: to stand in the way of the fact.
“What is the fact?” continued Ellery, helping himself to a dill pickle. “The fact is that between the time the doll was placed on the exhibit platform and the time the theft was discovered no one and no thing touched it. Therefore between the time the doll was placed on the platform and the time the theft was discovered the dauphin could not have been stolen. It follows, simply and inevitably, that the dauphin must have been stolen outside that period.
“Before the period began? No. I placed the authentic dauphin inside the enclosure with my own hands; at or about the beginning of the period, then, no hand but mine had touched the doll—not even, you’ll recall, Lieutenant Farber’s.
“Then the dauphin must have been stolen after the period closed.”
Ellery brandished half the pickle. “And who,” he demanded solemnly, “is the only one besides myself who handled that doll after the period closed and before Lieutenant Farber pronounced the diamond to be paste? The only one?”
The Inspector and the Sergeant exchanged puzzled glances, and Nikki looked blank.
“Why, Mr. Bondling,” said Nikki, “and he doesn’t count.”
“He counts very much, Nikki,” said Ellery, reaching for the mustard, “because the facts say Bondling stole the dauphin at that time.”
“Bondling!” The Inspector paled.
“I don’t get it,” complained Sergeant Velie.
“Ellery, you must be wrong,” said Nikki. “At the time Mr. Bondling grabbed the doll off the platform, the theft had already taken place. It was the worthless copy he picked up.”
“That,” said Ellery, reaching for another sandwich, “was the focal point of his illusion. How do we know it was the worthless copy he picked up? Why, he said so. Simple, eh? He said so, and like the dumb bunnies we were, we took his unsupported word as gospel.”
“That’s right!” mumbled his father. “We didn’t actually examine the doll till quite a few seconds later.”
“Exactly,” said Ellery in a munchy voice. “There was a short period of beautiful confusion, as Bondling knew there would be. I yelled to the boys to follow and grab Santa Claus—I mean, the Sergeant here. The detectives were momentarily demoralized. You, Dad, were stunned. Nikki looked as if the roof had fallen in. I essayed an excited explanation. Some detectives ran; others milled around. And while all this was happening—during those few moments when nobody was watching the genuine doll in Bondling’s hand because everyone thought it was a fake—Bondling calmly slipped it into one of his greatcoat pockets and from the other produced the worthless copy which he’d been carrying there all day. When I did turn back to him, it was the copy I grabbed from his hand. And his illusion was complete.