Steve put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “You told me what I wanted to know,” he said. “She was Betsey Blake, wasn’t she?”
“I ain’t saying. And you don’t have to say anything either, when the cops come. I mean, Steve, have a heart — what good can it do now? You don’t know anything about it, that’s all you tell ’em. I’ve got five grand I can bring over here tomorrow morning. Five grand in cash that says you don’t know anything. Hell, ten grand. And a job at the studio—”
“So she was Betsey Blake,” Steve murmured. “And she just walked out of your place and fell off the cliff.”
“Those things happen, you know how it is, a drunk dame and her foot slips. It was an accident, I swear it was! All right, if you must know, I was with her — I didn’t want to tell you that part. I was with her, I was going to drive her home, and then she let go of my arm and stumbled off.”
“There’ll be footprints in the sand,” Steve said. “And they’ll check anyway, they always do. They’ll find out who she really is, and they’ll investigate from start to finish. They’ll go all the way back—”
Jimmy Powers wilted. Steve had to hold him up.
“I never figured,” he said. “Sure, they’ll go all the way back.”
“You shouldn’t have killed her.”
“Don’t say that, Stevie!”
“It’s true, isn’t it? You did kill her. You knew she was Betsey Blake, but you killed her anyway, because you thought she’d queer your big deal.”
Jimmy didn’t answer. Instead he hit out at Steve, and Steve twisted and brought up his arm. Jimmy sagged. Steve held him there, listening for the sound of a siren in the distance.
“Fifty grand,” Jimmy whispered. “I told you I had it coming. Fifty grand, all in cash. Nobody’d ever know.”
Steve sighed. “When I heard about the money I was ready to kick myself,” he said. “I thought I was a sucker because I didn’t have your kind of guts. But now I know what it means to have them. It means you don’t stop at anything, not even killing.”
“You don’t understand,” Jimmy whimpered. “I wanted to live it up, I wanted my chance to be a big shot. She never gave it to me while she was alive, and when she disappeared I thought my big break had finally come. But what’s the use now? Like you say, they’ll find out sooner or later. I ought to have doped it out. I couldn’t get away with it. And now it’ll kill the legend, too.”
“Never mind the legend,” Steve said. “You killed a woman.” The sirens were close now; he could hear the tires squealing to a halt. “I guess I don’t understand at that,” Steve said. “I don’t understand your breed of rat at all. Call yourself a big-shot publicity man, do you? Why, you’d murder your own mother for a story.”
Jimmy Powers gave him a funny look as the cops came in. “That’s right,” he whispered. “How’d you guess?”
Ellery Queen
Object Lesson[2]
The third of Ellery’s battles with contemporary problems: the lack of schoolrooms — and how overcrowded classes may contribute to juvenile delinquency... One of the most important cases in Ellery’s career.
Ellery hurried down west 92nd Street toward the main entrance of Henry Hudson High School stealing guilty glances at his watch. Miss Carpenter had been crisply specific about place, date, and time: her home room, 109; Friday morning, April 22nd; first period (“Bell at 8:40, Mr. Queen”). Miss Carpenter, who had come to him with an unusual request, had struck him as the sort of dedicated young person who would not take kindly to a hitch in her crusade.
Ellery broke into an undignified lope.
The project for which she had enlisted his aid was formidable even for a crusading young teacher of Social Studies on the 9th Grade Junior High level. For two months merchants of the neighborhood had been reporting stores broken into by a teen-age gang. Beyond establishing that the crimes were the work of the same boys, who were probably students at Henry Hudson High School, the police had got nowhere.
Miss Carpenter, walking home from a movie late the previous Monday night, had seen three boys dive out of a smashed bakery window and vanish into an alley. She had recognized them as Howard Ruffo, David Strager, and Joey Buell, all 15-year-old homeroom students of hers. The juvenile crime problem was solved.
But not for Miss Carpenter. Instead of going to the police, Miss Carpenter had gone to Ellery, who lived on West 87th Street and was a hero to the youth of the neighborhood. Howard, David, and Joey were not hardened delinquents, she had told him, and she could not see their arrest, trial, and imprisonment as the solution to anything. True, they had substituted gang loyalty for the love and security they were denied in their unhappy slum homes, but boys who worked at after-school jobs and turned every cent in at home were hardly beyond recall, were they? And she had told him just where each boy worked, and at what.
“They’re only patterning their behavior after criminals because they think criminals are strong, successful, and glamorous,” Miss Carpenter had said; and what she would like him to do was visit her class and, under the pretext of giving a talk on the subject of Notorious Criminals I Have Known, paint such a picture of weak, ratting, empty, and violently ending criminality that David and Joey and Howard would see the error of their ways.
It had seemed to Ellery that this placed a rather hefty burden on his oratorical powers. Did Miss Carpenter have her principal’s permission for this project?
No, Miss Carpenter had replied bravely, she did not have Mr. Hinsdale’s permission, and she might very well lose her job when he heard about it. “But I’m not going to be the one who gives those boys the first shove toward reform school and maybe eventually the electric chair!” And besides, what did Mr. Queen have to lose but an hour of his time?
So Mr. Queen had feebly said yes, he would come; and here he was, at the door of the determined young woman’s classroom... seven minutes late.
Ellery braced himself and opened the door.
The moment he set foot in the room he knew he had walked in on a catastrophe.
Louise Carpenter stood tensely straight at her desk, her pretty face almost as white as the envelope she was clutching. And she was glaring at a mass of boy and girl faces so blankly, so furtively quiet that the silence sizzled.
The first thing she said to him was, “I’ve been robbed.”
The terrible mass of boy and girl eyes followed him to her desk. In his nose was the pungent smell of ink, glue, paper, chalk, musty wardrobe closets; surrounding him were discolored walls, peeling paint, tarnished fixtures, warped window poles, and mutilated desks.
“Robbed in my own classroom,” Miss Carpenter choked.
He laid his coat and hat gently on her desk. “A practical joke?” He smiled at the class.
“Hardly. They didn’t know you were coming.” They had betrayed her, the sick shock in her voice said. “Class, this is Ellery Queen. I don’t have to tell you who Mr. Queen is, and how honored we are to have him visit us.” There was a gasp, a buzz, a spatter of applause. “Mr. Queen was kind enough to come here today as a special treat to give us a talk on crime. I didn’t know he was going to walk in on one.”
2
© 1955 by United Newspapers Magazine Corp.; originally titled “The Blackboard Gangsters”