The Roman hat mystery A problem in deduction
hands roved about. Queen silently pointed to an ugly ragged brown
stain on the otherwise immaculate shirt-front.
“Blood?” grunted Velie.
The Inspector sniffed the shirt cautiously. “Nothing more dangerous
than whisky,” he retorted.
He ran his hands swiftly over the body, feeling over the heart and at
the neck, where the collar was loosened. He looked up at Velie.
“Looks like a poisoning case, all right, Thomas. Get hold of this Dr.
Stuttgard for me, will you? I’d like to have his professional opinion
before Prouty gets here.”
Velie snapped an order and a moment later a medium-sized man in evening
clothes, olive-skinned and wearing a thin black mustache, came up
behind a detective.
“Here he is, Inspector,” said Velie.
“Ah, yes.” Queen looked up from his examination. “How do you do,
Doctor? I am informed that you examined the body almost immediately
after it was discovered. I see no obvious sign of death—what is your
opinion?”
“My examination was necessarily a cursory one,” said Dr. Stuttgard
carefully, his fingers brushing a phantom speck from his satin lapel.
“In the semi-dark and under these conditions I could not at first
discern any abnormal sign of death. From the constriction of the facial
muscles I thought that it was a simple case of heart failure, but on
closer examination I noticed that blueness of the face—it’s quite clear
in this light, isn’t it? That combined with the alcoholic odor from the
mouth seems to point to some form of alcoholic poisoning. Of one thing
I can assure you—this man did not die of a gunshot wound or a stab. I
naturally made sure of that at once. I even examined his neck—you see I
loosened the collar—to make sure it was not strangulation.”
“I see.” The Inspector smiled. “Thank you very much, Doctor. Oh,
by the way,” he added, as Dr. Stuttgard with a muttered word turned
aside, “do you think this man might have died from the effects of wood
alcohol?”
Dr. Stuttgard answered promptly. “Impossible,” he said. “It was
something much more powerful and quick-acting.”
“Could you put a name to the exact poison which killed this man?”
The olive-skinned physician hesitated. Then he said stiffly, “I am very
sorry, Inspector; you cannot reasonably expect me to be more precise.
Under the circumstances....” His voice trailed off, and he backed away.
Queen chuckled as he bent again to his grim task.
The dead man sprawled on the floor was not a pleasant sight. The
Inspector gently lifted the clenched hand and stared hard at the
contorted face. Then he looked under the seat. There was nothing there.
However, a black silk-lined cape hung carelessly over the back of the
chair. He emptied all of the pockets of both dress-suit and cape, his
hands diving in and out of the clothing. He extracted a few letters and
papers from the inside breast pocket, delved into the vest pockets and
trouser-pockets, heaping his discoveries in two piles—one containing
papers and letters, the other coins, keys, and miscellaneous material.
A silver flask initialed “M. F.” he found in one of the hip-pockets. He
handled the flask gingerly, holding it by the neck, and scanning the
gleaming surface as if for fingerprints. Shaking his head, he wrapped
the flask with infinite care in a clean handkerchief, and placed it
aside.
A ticket stub colored blue and bearing the inscription “LL32 Left,” he
secreted in his own vest pocket.
Without pausing to examine any of the other objects individually, he
ran his hands over the lining of the vest and coat, and made a rapid
pass over the trouser-legs. Then, as he fingered the coat-tail
pocket, he exclaimed in a low tone, “Well, well, Thomas—here’s a pretty
find!” as he extracted a woman’s evening bag, small, compact and
glittering with rhinestones.
He turned it over in his hands reflectively, then snapped it open,
glanced through it and took out a number of feminine accessories.
In a small compartment, nestling beside a lipstick, he found a tiny
card-case. After a moment, he replaced all the contents and put the bag
in his own pocket.
The Inspector picked up the papers from the floor and swiftly glanced
through them. He frowned as he came to the last one—a letterhead.
“Ever hear of Monte Field, Thomas?” he asked, looking up.
Velie tightened his lips. “I’ll say I have. One of the crookedest
lawyers in town.”
The Inspector looked grave. “Well, Thomas, this is Mr. Monte
Field—what’s left of him.” Velie grunted.
“Where the average police system falls down,” came Ellery’s voice over
his father’s shoulder, “is in its ruthless tracking down of gentlemen
who dispose of such fungus as Mr. Monte Field.”
The Inspector straightened, dusted his knees carefully, took a pinch
of snuff, and said, “Ellery, my boy, you’ll never make a policeman. I
didn’t know you knew Field.”
“I wasn’t exactly on terms of intimacy with the gentleman,” said
Ellery. “But I remember having met him at the Pantheon Club, and from
what I heard at the time I don’t wonder somebody has removed him from
our midst.”
“Let’s discuss the demerits of Mr. Field at a more propitious time,”
said the Inspector gravely. “I happen to know quite a bit about him,
and none of it is pleasant.”
He wheeled and was about to walk away when Ellery, gazing curiously
at the dead body and the seat, drawled, “Has anything been removed,
dad—anything at all?”
Inspector Queen turned his head. “And why do you ask that bright
question, young man?”
“Because,” returned Ellery, with a grimace, “unless my eyesight fails
me, the chap’s tophat is not under the seat, on the floor beside him,
or anywhere in the general vicinity.”
“So you noticed that too, did you, Ellery?” said the Inspector grimly.
“It’s the first thing I saw when I bent down to examine him—or rather
the first thing I didn’t see.” The Inspector seemed to lose his
geniality as he spoke. His brow wrinkled and his grey mustache bristled
fiercely. He shrugged his shoulders. “And no hat-check in his clothes,
either.... Flint!”
A husky young man in plain clothes hurried forward.
“Flint, suppose you exercise those young muscles of yours by getting
down on your hands and knees and hunting for a tophat. It ought to be
somewhere around here.”
“Right, Inspector,” said Flint cheerfully, and he began a methodical
search of the indicated area.
“Velie,” said Queen, in a businesslike tone, “suppose you find Ritter
and Hesse and—no, those two will do—for me, will you?” Velie walked
away.
“Hagstrom!” shouted the Inspector to another detective standing by.
“Yes, Chief.”
“Get busy with this stuff”—he pointed to the two small piles of
articles he had taken from Field’s pockets and which lay on the
floor—“and be sure to put them safely away in my own bags.”
As Hagstrom knelt by the body, Ellery quietly bent over and opened the
coat. He immediately jotted a memorandum on the fly-leaf of the book in
which he had drawn a diagram some time before. He muttered to himself,
patting the volume, “And it’s a Stendhause private edition, too!”
Velie returned with Ritter and Hesse at his heels. The Inspector said
sharply, “Ritter, go to this man’s apartment. His name is Monte Field,
he was an attorney, and he lived at 113 West 75th Street. Stick around
until you’re relieved. If any one shows up, nab him.”
Ritter, touching his hat, mumbled, “Yes, Inspector,” and turned away.
“Now, Hesse, my lad,” continued the Inspector to the other detective,
“hurry down to 51 Chambers Street, this man’s office, and wait there
until you hear from me. Get inside if you can, otherwise park outside
the door all night.”
“Right, Inspector.” Hesse disappeared.
Queen turned about and chuckled as he saw Ellery, broad shoulders bent
over, examining the dead man.
“Don’t trust your father, eh, Ellery?” the Inspector chided. “What are
you snooping for?”
Ellery smiled, straightening up. “I’m merely curious, that’s all,”
he said. “There are certain things about this unsavory corpse that
interest me hugely. For example, have you taken the man’s head
measurement?” He held up a piece of string, which he had slipped from
a wrapped book in his coat pocket, and offered it for his father’s
inspection.
The Inspector took it, scowled and summoned a policeman from the rear
of the theatre. He issued a low-voiced order, the string exchanged
hands and the policeman departed.
“Inspector.”
Queen looked up. Hagstrom stood by his elbow, eyes gleaming.
“I found this pushed way back under Field’s seat when I picked up the
papers. It was against the back wall.”
He held up a dark-green bottle, of the kind used by ginger-ale
manufacturers. A gaudy label read, “Paley’s Extra Dry Ginger Ale.” The
bottle was half-empty.
“Well, Hagstrom, you’ve got something up your sleeve. Out with it!” the
Inspector said curtly.
“Yes, sir! When I found this bottle under the dead man’s seat, I knew
that he had probably used it to-night. There was no matinee to-day
and the cleaning-women go over the place every twenty-four hours. It
wouldn’t have been there unless this man, or somebody connected with
him, had used it and put it there to-night. I thought, ‘Maybe this
is a clue,’ so I dug up the refreshment boy who had this section of
the theatre and I asked him to sell me a bottle of ginger ale. He
said”—Hagstrom smiled—“he said they don’t sell ginger ale in this
theatre!”
“You used your head that time, Hagstrom,” said the Inspector
approvingly. “Get hold of the boy and bring him here.”
As Hagstrom left, a stout little man in slightly disarranged evening
clothes bustled up, a policeman doggedly holding his arm. The Inspector
sighed.
“Are you in charge of this affair, sir?” stormed the little man,
drawing himself up to five feet two inches of perspiring flesh.
“I am,” said Queen gravely.
“Then I want you to know,” burst out the newcomer—“here, you, let go of
my arm, do you hear?—I want you to know, sir....”
“Detach yourself from the gentleman’s arm, officer,” said the
Inspector, with deepening gravity.
“... that I consider this entire affair the most vicious outrage! I
have been sitting here with my wife and daughter since the interruption
to the play for almost an hour, and your officers refuse to allow
us even to stand up. It’s a damnable outrage, sir! Do you think you
can keep this entire audience waiting at your leisure? I’ve been
watching you—don’t think I haven’t. You’ve been dawdling around while
we sat and suffered. I want you to know, sir—I want you to know!—that
unless you permit my party to leave at once, I shall get in touch with
my very good friend District Attorney Sampson and lodge a personal
complaint against you!”
Inspector Queen gazed distastefully into the empurpled face of the
stout little man. He sighed and said with a note of sternness, “My
dear man, has it occurred to you that at this moment, while you stand
beefing about a little thing like being detained an hour or so, a
person who has committed murder may be in this very audience—perhaps
sitting next to your wife and daughter? He is just as anxious as you
are to get away. If you wish to make a complaint to the District
Attorney, your very good friend, you may do so after you leave this
theatre. Meanwhile, I’ll trouble you to return to your seat and be
patient until you are permitted to go.... I hope I make myself clear.”
A titter arose from some spectators nearby, who seemed to be enjoying
the little man’s discomfiture. He flounced away, with the policeman
stolidly following. The Inspector, muttering, “Jackass!” turned to
Velie.
“Take Panzer with you to the box-office and see if you can find
complete tickets for these numbers.” He bent over the last row and the
row before it, scribbling the numbers LL30 Left, LL28 Left, LL26 Left,