At five minutes of two Martha glanced at her wristwatch, said something with a smile, and rose. Caught by surprise, the agent looked grim. But she immediately beamed again, made an eager remark, waved a meaty arm at the waiter, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table, and was scrambling after Martha in a triumph of integrated motion. She crowded Martha out and onto the sidewalk, clutching and talking all the while. Not until Martha’s cab door had slammed and the cab was rolling off did she stop talking, and then her look became grim again and she climbed wearily into another taxi.
But by that time Ellery was turning from Park Avenue into a crosstown street in Martha’s wake.
Martha’s cab discharged her at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 49th Street.
She went into Saks.
For the next hour and a half Ellery trailed her through the big store. She made numerous purchases — toilet water, stockings, lingerie, two pairs of shoes, some summer sportswear. But she made her selections without interest, almost listlessly. Ellery had the feeling that she was marking time, perhaps setting up the corroboration of a second alibi announced in advance. She took none of her purchases with her.
Before leaving the store, she paused on the main floor to buy some men’s socks and handkerchiefs. These, too, she ordered sent. Ellery contrived to pass close by when the clerk was writing in his sales book, hoping he might catch the name and address of the man for whom she was buying the socks and handkerchiefs. He was successful but untriumphant: they were to be sent, he heard Martha instruct the salesman, to “Mr. Dirk Lawrence” at the Beekman Place address on her Charga-Plate.
Ellery felt that this tactic was not worthy of such a candid person as Martha. It suggested too depressingly the veteran wool-puller.
She left Saks-Fifth Avenue at nineteen minutes to four, ignored a taxi discharging a passenger, and began to walk north.
A, then, was nearby.
Martha passed St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Best’s, Cartier’s, Georg Jensen’s.
A few minutes later she crossed Fifth Avenue and walked rapidly west.
At one minute to four, Martha went into the A—Hotel.
The A—Hotel was an old hotel with a distinguished past. Its trade was largely transient, but it had a hard core of celebrated residents which gave it a romantic flavor. It was a favorite hideaway dining and meeting place for the more literate habitués of Broadway, and it was exactly the sort of place where Martha Lawrence might be expected to go.
Ellery strolled into the lobby, wondering if he and Nikki had not misjudged Martha after all.
Martha’s back was on view at the other end of the lobby. A tall man with a very dark tan had jumped up from an overstuffed chair and was talking to her.
Ellery walked over to the newsstand and began to finger a copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
The lobby was dim after the bright afternoon sunshine and he had to squint to make out the tall man’s features. What he could distinguish under the tan seemed rather heavily handsome. Martha’s companion wore his thick blond or gray hair — in the poor light, and at that distance, Ellery could not determine which it was — with a dash. The lounge suit was beautifully draped; there was a spring aster in the lapel. The Homburg had swash.
The man was not young.
As he talked, he kept smiling.
The fellow talked with a technique. His eyes never left Martha’s upturned little face, as if he had starved for a sight of her and now could not restrain his hunger. His hand hovered about Martha’s upper arm as he talked.
There was something teasingly familiar about him — his brilliant smile, the trained slouch, the way his big shoulders filled his jacket, his air of unconquerable self-assurance. Ellery was positive he had met the man somewhere, or seen him around town.
Suddenly Martha walked off. She opened a door off the lobby and disappeared. Ellery moved a bit. It was a ladies’ room. The man’s eyes followed her all the way in.
Ellery placed a quarter and a dime down on the newsstand counter and strolled off reading the magazine. As he neared the elevators, the tall man put on his Homburg, settling it with care on his head. He arranged it at a jaunty angle. Then he walked over to the elevators, looking up at the bronze indicators over the doors. He seemed pleased with himself; his cheeks were going in and out in a soft whistle.
Ellery burrowed into the corner of a settee which faced the elevators, under a luxuriant philodendron.
It was blond hair, not gray. The temples were gray.
He was in his fifties and not making the mistake of trying to look thirty-five. A Man of Distinction, say forty-five. A model, however, not the original. The angle of his hat betrayed him.
One of the elevator doors opened. The man stepped into the elevator and said, “Six, please.” The voice was deep, richly colored, and resonant, with the merest British tinge.
The voice did it. Now the angle of the hat, the beautifully tailored suit, the aster, and the barbershop tan all fitted.
The fellow was an actor.
Legitimate theater, of course.
That’s where I’ve seen him, thought Ellery. But who is he?
Four other people got into the elevator, including a woman. There was no sign of Martha.
Ellery got up and stepped into the elevator, too. He stepped in sidewise, removing his hat as he did so. It shielded his face long enough to allow him to turn naturally and face the door. The tall man was at the rear of the elevator, his Homburg over his heart; he was humming.
Ellery got off at the fifth floor.
He ran up the emergency staircase to the sixth in time to hear the elevator door clang. He waited three seconds, then he opened the exit door and stepped out.
The main corridor was at right angles to the bank of elevators. Ellery walked past the intersection. Far down the corridor the tall man was unlocking a door.
When he heard the door close, Ellery turned back and hurried up the long corridor.
The room was 632.
He kept going to the end of the corridor, where it was met by another cross-corridor. The short corridor was empty.
Ellery waited at the intersection.
Five minutes later he heard the distant rattle of the elevator door and he stepped back out of sight. He heard the elevator door open and close.
After a moment he held his hat before his face, as if he were about to put it on, and walked rapidly across the intersection.
It was Martha.
She was hurrying up the main corridor, searching the door numbers.
Ellery remained on the other side of the cross-corridor, just out of view.
A few seconds later he heard a series of light, rapid knocks. A door opened at once.
“What held you up, darling?” An actor, all right. And a leading man, at that.
“Hurry!” Martha’s familiar voice, unfamiliarly breathless.
The door slammed.
After a moment Ellery heard the lock turn over.
He went back downstairs and waited near the desk for a couple to check in and follow a bellhop.
“Hello, Ernie.”
The desk clerk looked startled. “Mr. Queen!” he said. “I thought you’d taken your trade elsewhere. Checking in to meet a deadline?”
“Mine died some time ago,” said Ellery. “No, Ernie, I’m looking for information.”
“Oh,” said the clerk, lowering his voice. “Your alter ego, eh?” Like all old employees of the A—Hotel, he had long since absorbed its literary atmosphere. “Man-hunt?”
“Well, it’s a man,” said Ellery. “The man in six-thirty-two. What’s his name, Ernie?”
“Mr. Queen, we’re not supposed to give out—”