The Roman hat mystery A problem in deduction
things to pieces. Furniture, lamps, carpets—I repeat, the obvious
things. And we have tapped floors, walls and molding. It would seem
that nothing has escaped the search....”
He stopped, his eyes brightening. The Inspector threw off his look of
fatigue at once. From experience he was aware that Ellery rarely grew
excited over inconsequential things.
“And yet,” said Ellery slowly, gazing in fascination at his
father’s face, “by the Golden Roofs of Seneca, we’ve overlooked
something—actually overlooked something!”
“What!” growled Cronin. “You’re kidding.”
“Oh, but I’m not,” chuckled Ellery, lounging to his feet. “We
have examined floors and we have examined walls, but have we
examined—ceilings?”
He shot the word forth theatrically while the two men stared at him in
amazement.
“Here, what are you driving at, Ellery?” asked his father, frowning.
Ellery briskly crushed his cigarette in an ash-tray. “Just
this,” he said. “Pure reasoning has it that when you have exhausted
every possibility but one in a given equation that one, no matter
how improbable, no matter how ridiculous it may seem in the
postulation—_must be the correct one_.... A theorem analogous to the
one by which I concluded that the papers were in this apartment.”
“But, Mr. Queen, for the love of Pete—ceilings!” exploded Cronin, while
the Inspector looked guiltily at the living-room ceiling. Ellery caught
the look and laughed, shaking his head.
A—Ceiling
B—Door to Living Room
C—Mirror
D—Dressing Table
E—Damask curtains around bed, from ceiling to floor, concealing
shaded portion which represents panel containing hats.
“I’m not suggesting that we call in a plasterer to maul these lovely
middle-class ceilings,” he said. “Because I have the answer already.
What is it in these rooms somewhere that is on the ceiling?”
“The chandeliers,” muttered Cronin doubtfully, gazing upward at the
heavily bronzed fixture above their heads.
“By jinks—the canopy over the bed!” shouted the Inspector. He
jumped to his feet and ran into the bedroom. Cronin pounded hard after
him, Ellery sauntering interestedly behind.
They stopped at the foot of the bed and stared up at the canopy. Unlike
the conventional canopies of American style, this florid ornament was
not merely a large square of cloth erected on four posts, an integral
part of the bed only. The bed was so constructed that the four posts,
beginning at the four corners, stretched from floor to ceiling. The
heavy maroon-colored damask of the canopy also reached from floor to
ceiling, connected at the top by a ringed rod from which the folds of
the damask hung gracefully.
“Well, if it’s anywhere,” grunted the Inspector, dragging one of the
damask-covered bedroom chairs to the bed, “it’s up there. Here, boys,
lend a hand.”
He stood on the chair with a fine disregard for the havoc his shoes
were wreaking on the silken material. Finding upon stretching his
arms above his head that he was still many feet short of touching the
ceiling, he stepped down.
“Doesn’t look as if you could make it either, Ellery,” he muttered.
“And Field was no taller than you. There must be a ladder handy
somewhere by which Field himself got up here!”
Cronin dashed into the kitchenette at Ellery’s nod in that direction.
He was back in a moment with a six-foot stepladder. The Inspector,
mounting to the highest rung, found that his fingers were still short
of touching the rod. Ellery solved the difficulty by ordering his
father down and climbing to the top himself. Standing on the ladder he
was in a position to explore the top of the canopy.
He grasped the damask firmly and pulled. The entire fabric gave way and
fell to the sides, revealing a wooden panel about twelve inches deep—a
framework which the hangings had concealed. Ellery’s fingers swept
swiftly over the wooden relief-work of this panel. Cronin and the
Inspector were staring with varying expressions up at him. Finding
nothing that at the moment presented a possibility of entrance, Ellery
leaned forward and explored the damask directly beneath the floor of
the panel.
“Rip it down!” growled the Inspector.
Ellery jerked violently at the material and the entire canopy of damask
fell to the bed. The bare unornamented floor of the panel was revealed.
“It’s hollow,” announced Ellery, rapping his knuckles on the under-side
paneling.
“That doesn’t help much,” said Cronin. “It wouldn’t be a solid chunk,
anyway. Why don’t you try the other side of the bed, Mr. Queen?”
But Ellery, who had drawn back and was again examining the side of
the panel, exclaimed triumphantly. He had been seeking a complicated,
Machiavellian “secret door”—he found now that the secret door was
nothing more subtle than a sliding-panel. It was cleverly concealed—the
juncture of sliding and stationary panels was covered by a row of
wooden rosettes and clumsy decorations—but it was nothing that a
student of mystery lore would have hailed as a triumph of concealment.
“It begins to appear as if I were being vindicated,” Ellery chuckled
as he peered into the black recesses of the hole he had uncovered. He
thrust a long arm into the aperture. The Inspector and Cronin were
staring at him with bated breath.
“By all the pagan gods,” shouted Ellery suddenly, his lean body
quivering with excitement. “Do you remember what I told you, dad? Where
would those papers be except in—hats!”
His sleeve coated with dust, he withdrew his arm and the two men below
saw in his hand a musty silk tophat!
Cronin executed an intricate jig as Ellery dropped the hat on the
bed and dipped his arm once more into the yawning hole. In a moment he
had brought out another hat—and another—and still another! There they
lay on the bed—two silk hats and two derbies.
“Take this flashlight, son,” commanded the Inspector. “See if there’s
anything else up there.”
Ellery took the proffered electric torch and flashed its beam into the
aperture. After a moment he clambered down, shaking his head.
“That’s all,” he announced, dusting his sleeve, “but I should think it
would be enough.”
The Inspector picked up the four hats and carried them into the
living-room, where he deposited them on a sofa. The three men sat down
gravely and regarded each other.
“I’m sort of itching to see what’s what,” said Cronin finally, in a
hushed voice.
“I’m rather afraid to look,” retorted the Inspector.
“_Mene mene tekel upharsin_,” laughed Ellery. “In this case it might be
interpreted as ‘the handwriting on the panel.’ Examine on, MacDuff!”
The Inspector picked up one of the silk hats. It bore on the rich
satiny lining the chaste trademark of Browne Bros. Ripping out the
lining and finding nothing beneath, he tried to tear out the leather
sweat-band. It resisted his mightiest efforts. He borrowed Cronin’s
pocket-knife and with difficulty slashed away the band. Then he looked
up.
“This hat, Romans and countrymen,” he said pleasantly, “contains
nothing but the familiar ingredients of hat-wear. Would you care to
examine it?”
Cronin uttered a savage cry and snatched it from the Inspector’s hand.
He literally tore the hat to pieces in his rage.
“Heck!” he said disgustedly, throwing the remnants on the floor.
“Explain that to my undeveloped brain, will you, Inspector?”
Queen smiled, taking up the second silk hat and regarding it
curiously.
“You’re at a disadvantage, Tim,” he said. “We know why one of these
hats is a blank. Don’t we, Ellery?”
“Michaels,” murmured Ellery.
“Exactly—Michaels,” returned the Inspector.
“Charley Michaels!” exclaimed Cronin. “Field’s strong-arm guy, by all
that’s holy! Where does he come into this?”
“Can’t tell yet. Know anything about him?”
“Nothing except that he hung onto Field’s coat-tails pretty closely.
He’s an ex-jailbird, did you know that?”
“Yes,” replied the Inspector dreamily. “We’ll have a talk about that
phase of Mr. Michaels some other time.... But let me explain that
hat: Michaels on the evening of the murder laid out, according to his
statement, Field’s evening clothes, including a silk hat. Michaels
swore that as far as he knew Field possessed only _one_ topper. Now
if we suppose that Field used hats for concealing papers, and was
going to the Roman Theatre that night wearing a ‘loaded’ one he must
necessarily have substituted the loaded hat for the empty one which
Michaels prepared. Since he was so careful to keep only one silk hat in
the closet, he realized that Michaels, should he find a topper, would
be suspicious. So, in switching hats, he had to conceal the empty one.
What more natural than that he should put it in the place from which he
had taken the loaded hat—the panel above the bed?”
“Well, I’ll be switched!” exclaimed Cronin.
“Finally,” resumed the Inspector, “we can take it as gospel that Field,
who was devilishly careful in the matter of his headgear, intended
to restore the theatre hat to its hideaway when he got home from the
Roman. Then he would have taken out this one which you’ve just torn
up and put it back in the clothes-closet.... But let’s get on.”
He pulled down the leather inner-band of the second silk hat, which
also bore the imprint of Browne Bros. “Look at this, will you!” he
exclaimed. The two men bent over and saw on the inner surface of the
band, lettered with painful clarity in a purplish ink, the words
BENJAMIN MORGAN.
“I’ve got to pledge you to secrecy, Tim,” said the Inspector
immediately, turning to the red-haired man. “Never let on that you were
a witness to the finding of papers in any way implicating Benjamin
Morgan in this affair.”
“What do you think I am, Inspector?” growled Cronin. “I’m as dumb as an
oyster, believe me!”
“All right, then.” Queen felt the lining of the hat. There was a
distinct crackle.
“Now,” remarked Ellery calmly, “we know for the first time definitely
why the murderer _had_ to take away the hat Field wore Monday night. In
all likelihood the murderer’s name was lettered in the same way—that’s
indelible ink, you know—and the murderer couldn’t leave a hat with his
own name in it at the scene of the crime.”
“By gosh, if you only had that hat, now,” cried Cronin, “you’d know who
the murderer is!”
“I’m afraid, Tim,” replied the Inspector dryly, “that hat is gone
forever.”
He indicated a row of careful stitches at the base of the inner band,
where the lining was attached to the fabric. He ripped these stitches
swiftly and inserted his fingers between the lining and the crown.
Silently he drew out a sheaf of papers held together by a thin rubber
band.
“If I were as nasty as some people think I am,” mused Ellery,
leaning back, “I might with perfect justice say, ‘I told you so.’”
“We know when we’re licked, my son—don’t rub it in,” chortled the
Inspector. He snapped off the rubber band, glanced hastily through the
papers and with a satisfied grin deposited them in his breast pocket.
“Morgan’s, all right,” he said briefly, and attacked one of the derbies.
The inner side of the band was marked cryptically with an X. The
Inspector found a row of stitches exactly as in the silk hat. The
papers he drew out—a thicker bundle than Morgan’s—he examined
cursorily. Then he handed them to Cronin, whose fingers were trembling.
“A stroke of luck, Tim,” he said slowly. “The man you were angling for
is dead, but there are a lot of big names in this. I think you’ll find
yourself a hero one of these days.”
Cronin grasped the bundle and feverishly unfolded the papers, one by
one. “They’re here—they’re here!” he shouted. He jumped to his feet,
stuffing the sheaf into his pocket.
“I’ve got to beat it. Inspector,” he said rapidly. “There’s a load of