On the morning of the third day of the trial, Ellery was glumly studying a color photograph of a gaunt model in an evening gown from Sheila Grey’s Lady Dulcea collection when he was rather violently visited by the McKells, father and son.
He sat up alertly, shifting his casts to a less uncomfortable position. “Something up?”
“Last week when you were questioning my wife,” Ashton McKell said, eyes glittering, “do you remember your saying that the television set was her only contact with the outside world?”
“Yes?”
“Look at this!”
“It came,” Dane said, “in this morning’s mail.”
It was an envelope addressed to “Mrs. Ashton McKell” at the Park Avenue address. The enclosure, on the stationery of The Princess Soap Company, was signed by a Justin A. Lattimoore, Fourth Vice-President.
Ellery smiled as he read it:
My dear Mrs. McKelclass="underline"
Our Accounting Department advises me that our check in the amount of five hundred dollars ($500.00), which was posted to you more than three months ago as your prize in the Lucky Number segment of our Princess Hour TV program on the night of September 14th last, has never been cashed.
I am accordingly writing to inquire if you have received the above check. If not, or if for some reason you do not wish to cash it, will you please communicate with us at your early convenience?
“Well,” Ellery said. “This could be the straw that breaks the district attorney’s back.”
“It is,” said Dane. “It has to be!”
“Now let’s not get our hopes up too high,” his father cautioned excitedly. “What I can’t understand is why Lutetia didn’t tell us.”
“Don’t you know Mother, Dad? She just forgot, that’s all!”
“But a prize?” murmured Ellery. “A check?”
“What is money to her, or she to money?” Dane misquoted happily. “And prizes mean publicity. Her mind recoils reflexively from such things. This could be the break, Mr. Queen. It really could.”
“We’ll see. Get in touch with this Lattimoore fellow and see if you can’t get him up here. We’ve got to find out all we can about this, and right away.”
One telephone call from the eminent Ashton McKell insured the presence of Fourth Vice-President Justin A. Lattimoore in the Queen hospital room that afternoon. Lattimoore proved to be a fastidiously groomed gentleman with a face the precise shade of flesh-colored grease paint, and (Ellery was positive) with a toupee. He could not seem to decide whether to be more honored by the summons of a captain of industry than supercilious at the sight of a mere writer with two legs in a cast; in any event, he contrived to convey the impression that he was in the company of at least one peer.
“...a quarter-hour morning program for Sudsy Chippos,” Mr. Lattimoore was saying, evidently feeling that the occasion called for a recapitulation of The Princess Soap Company’s radio and television schedule, “and another quarter-hour in mid-afternoon for our Princess Belinda and Princess Anita toiletries. In other words, the A.M. show is Doctor Dolly’s Family, and the P.M. show is Life and Laurie Lewis.
“For TV last season The Princess Hour was a variety show emceed by Bo Bunson, the comedian. I will be frank, gentlemen,” Vice-President Lattimoore said handsomely. “The variety show was a bomb, or suds down the drain, as we say at the shop. Rating-wise, it reeked.
“For this season one of our ad agency’s brighter young men came up with a real doozer. We could not scrap the variety show” — Lattimoore coughed — “our Chairman of the Board has great faith in it, and thinks Bunson is the funniest man in show business — but we would add a gimmick to the format. Throughout the show — we’re on Wednesday nights in prime time, ten to eleven P.M. in the East, as you undoubtedly know — throughout the show a battery of telephone operators would call up people picked out of phone books all over the country by a process I won’t bother to describe, and ask them if they were watching The Princess Hour.
“Of course, most of them said yes, and immediately turned to our channel if they weren’t watching already. The yes-answerers were switched onto the air between numbers, Bo Bunson talked to them over the phone personally — on the air — and each one was given the chance to guess the Lucky Number for that night’s show. The Lucky Number, which could be any number between 1 and 10,000, was selected at random by an IBM machine before we went on the air, and no one, not even the emcee, knew what it was — he had it in a sealed envelope and at strategic spots during the show he exhibited the envelope and made wisecracks about it — supposed to be stimulating suspense-wise, you see.”
Ellery mumbled that he did indeed see; his tone suggested that, for purposes of the subject under discussion, he wished he were temporarily sightless. For the fraction of a moment uncertainty flickered over Mr. Lattimoore’s baby face, which looked as if he scrubbed every hour on the hour with Princess Belinda and Princess Anita soaps, and perhaps with Sudsy Chippos as well — but then the smile flashed back on with no kilowatt impaired.
“The gimmick was that everybody won. First prize was $10,000 — that was for anyone who guessed a number within 25 of the actual Lucky Number. Say the Lucky Number turned out to be 8,951. Any number picked by a contestant between 8,926 and 8,976 would be considered a bull’s-eye; if more than one contestant scored a bull’s-eye, the number closest to the Lucky Number was considered first-prize winner, the next closest getting second prize, which was $2,000. Third money went to the next closest, $1,000; fourth prize to the next closest, $500; all others got $100 consolation prizes.
“Quite an idea, wasn’t it?” glowed Mr. Lattimoore; but then the glow dimmed. “The only trouble was, it lasted a mere four weeks. Not only did B.T. consider it a flop with knobs on because, he said, it lowered the dignity of Princess products — that’s B. T. Worliss, Chairman of the Board — but there were, frankly, hrrm, legal problems, very serious ones. Having to do with the anti-lottery laws. The FCC...” Mr. Lattimoore stopped, the dread initials sticking in his throat. He cleared it. “Well, that’s the story of the ill-fated numbers game,” he said with feeble levity. “What else can I tell you gentlemen?”
“And on the telecast of September 14th,” Ellery mumbled, shading his eyes from the Lattimoore effulgence, “Mrs. McKell was one of the lucky persons telephoned?”
“That’s right. She came out fourth in our little old guessing game. Took the $500 prize.”
“And the check was never cashed.”
Ashton McKell produced a pink check. “And here it is, Mr. Queen. Lutetia simply isn’t used to handling money. She meant to send it to the Church Home, the one she does her needlework for, but she clean forgot.”
When Henry Calder Barton rose to open the defense, he wore a look in marked contrast to the expression of lofty confidence he had displayed previously. The actor was stripped away. Henry Barton had a good thing going suddenly, and he could afford to dispense with the psychology.
He went to work briskly.
“Mr. Graves, you are an assistant account executive with Newby, Fellis, Herkimer, Hinsdale and Levy, an advertising agency located on Madison Avenue? Your firm handles the Princess Soap account for television and radio?”
“Yes.”
Barton led the man skillfully through a description of how the defunct numbers game, a recent feature of The Princess Soap Company’s TV evening hour, worked.