Ellery Queen's Champions of Mystery vol. 33 (1977) Read online

  Ellery Queen’s

  Champions of Mystery

  Edited by Ellery Queen

  It’s a mystery lover’s dream: 17 engrossing works by some of the greatest names in detective fiction. Here are two short novels, two novelettes, and 13 unforgettable short stories, from celebrated writers like Ross Macdonald, Georges Simenon, and John Dickson Carr.

  Each of their contributions was handpicked by Grand Master award winner Ellery Queen from outstanding issues of America’s mystery showcase, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Reprinted here are Rex Stout’s Counterfeit for Murder; Hugh Pentecost’s Volcano of the Mind; Ellery Queen’s The Little Spy; Christianna Brand’s Such a Nice Man; and other scintillating tales.

  It all adds up to hours of mystery-reading pleasure. Lovers of the genre could scarcely ask for more.

  Ellery Queen is the pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and the late Manfred Bennington Lee, whose long and prolific collaboration produced many novels, with total sales of more than 150 million copies worldwide. Among these are The Door Between, A Fine and Private Place, Cop Out, The Spanish Tape Mystery, and numerous anthologies of stories from the immensely popular Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Winner of many distinguished awards for fiction, including five Edgars and the Grand Master award, Ellery Queen popularized the dramatic mystery on both radio and television.

  Jacket design by One Plus One Graphics

  Volume 33

  Ellery Queen’s

  Champions of Mystery

  Edited by

  “Ellery Queen”

  G.K. HALL & CO

  Boston, Massachusetts

  1987

  Copyright © 1977 by Davis Publications, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in Large Print by arrangement with Davis Publications, Inc.

  G.K. Hall Large Print Book Series.

  Set in 16 pt Plantin.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Champion of mystery.

  Ellery Queen’s champion of mystery.

  (G. K. Hall’s large print book series)

  Reprint. Originally published: New York, N.Y.

  Dial Press, c1977.

  Originally published as part of the series Ellery Queen’s anthology.

  1. Detective and mystery stories, American.

  2. Detective and mystery stories, English. 3. Large

  type books. I. Queen, Ellery. II. Title.

  [PS648.D4C44 1987] 813’.0872‘08 86-26996

  ISBN 0-8161-4108-8

  COPYRIGHT NOTICES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made for permission to reprint the following:

  Counterfeit for Murder by Rex Stout; copyright © 1961 by Rex Stout; reprinted by permission of the author.

  Such a Nice Man by Christianna Brand; copyright © 1972 by Christianna Brand; reprinted by permission of Brandt & Brandt.

  Invitation to a Murder by Josh Pachter; copyright © 1972 by Josh Pachter; reprinted by permission of the author.

  No Time to Lose by David Ely; copyright © 1971 by David Ely; reprinted by permission of International Creative Management.

  The House in Goblin Wood by John Dickson Carr; copyright © 1947 by The American Mercury, Inc., renewed; reprinted by permission of the author.

  The House of the Shrill Whispers by Jon L. Breen; copyright © 1972 by Jon L. Breen; reprinted by permission of the author.

  Golden Tuesday by Celia Fremlin; copyright © 1972 by Celia Fremlin; reprinted by permission of the author.

  Wynken, Blynken, and Nod by William Brittain; © 1972 by William Brittain; reprinted by permission of the author.

  Hunting Season by Jerrold Phaon; copyright © 1972 by Jerrold Phaon; reprinted by permission of the author.

  Inspector Maigret Thinks by Georges Simenon; copyright © 1961 by Georges Simenon; reprinted by permission of the author.

  Volcano in the Mind by Hugh Pentecost; copyright © 1947 by Judson Philips, copyright renewed 1975 by Judson Philips; reprinted by permission of Brandt & Brandt.

  The Last Sassetta by Haskell Barkin; copyright © 1972 by Haskell Barkin; reprinted by permission of Robert P. Mills, Ltd.

  The Theft of the Satin Jury by Edward D. Hoch; © 1971 by Edward D. Hoch; reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Murderer by Joel Townsley Rogers; copyright © 1946 by the Curtis Publishing Company, renewed; reprinted by permission of the author.

  Hong Kong or Wherever by Florence V. Mayberry; © 1972 by Florence V. Mayberry; reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Little Spy by Ellery Queen; copyright © 1964, 1968 by Ellery Queen; reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Missing Sister Case by Ross Macdonald; copyright © 1953 by Kenneth Millar; reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.

  CONTENTS

  2 Short Novels

  REX STOUT

  Counterfeit for Murder

  HUGH PENTECOST

  Volcano in the Mind

  2 Novelets

  JOHN DICKSON CARR

  The House in Goblin Wood

  ROSS MACDONALD

  The Missing Sister Case

  13 Short Stories

  CHRISTIANNA BRAND

  Such a Nice Man

  JOSH PACHTER

  Invitation to a Murder

  DAVID ELY

  No Time To Lose

  JON L. BREEN

  The House of the Shrill Whispers

  CELIA FREMLIN

  Golden Tuesday

  WILLIAM BRITTAIN

  Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

  JERROLD PHAON

  Hunting Season

  GEORGES SIMENON

  Inspector Maigret Thinks

  HASKELL BARKIN

  The Last Sassetta

  EDWARD D. HOCH

  The Theft of the Satin Jury

  JOEL TOWNSLEY ROGERS

  The Murderer

  FLORENCE V. MAYBERRY

  Hong Kong or Wherever

  ELLERY QUEEN

  The Little Spy

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Description

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Copyright Notices and Acknowledgments

  Contents

  Editor’s Note

  REX STOUT

  Counterfeit for Murder

  CHRISTIANNA BRAND

  Such a Nice Man

  JOSH PACHTER

  Invitation to a Murder

  DAVID ELY

  No Time To Lose

  CARTER DICKSON (JOHN DICKSON CARR)

  The House in Goblin Wood

  JON L. BREEN

  The House of the Shrill Whispers

  CELIA FREMLIN

  Golden Tuesday

  WILLIAM BRITTAIN

  Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

  JERROLD PHAON

  Hunting Season

  GEORGES SIMENON

  Inspector Maigret Thinks

  HUGH PENTECOST

  Volcano in the Mind

  HASKELL BARKIN

  The Last Sassetta

  EDWARD D. HOCH

  The Theft of the Satin Jury

  JOEL TOWNSLEY ROGERS

  The Murderer

  FLORENCE V. MAYBERRY

  Hong Kong or Wherever

  ELLERY QUEEN

  The Little Spy

  ROSS MACDONALD

  The Missing Sister Case

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  Dear Reader:

  Famous men and women have their Hall of Fame. Baseball, football, and other sports have their Halls of Fame. Why not the mystery story and its creators? (For years, we ha
ve been urging Mystery Writers of America, Inc. to establish a Hall of Fame and to gather and display books, photographs, plaques, awards, scrolls, and personal mementoes of the Great Ones in the field; we offered to donate, among personal items, the little leather-bound pocket notebook in which Jacques Futrelle jotted down plot ideas for his stories about Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, better known as The Thinking Machine.)

  Many of the contributors to this series of anthologies, including all the Grandmasters, would qualify for niches and pedestals, and many more would deserve serious considerations. Who would deny Hall of Fame status to Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Emile Gaboriau, Anna Katharine Green, A. Conan Doyle, Israel Zangwill, E. W. Hornung, Maurice Leblanc, R. Austin Freeman, G. K. Chesterton—to mention only the first ten “old masters” who come to mind. Champions all—champions who would win nomination and election on the first ballot.

  The detectives, official and amateur, in this volume are not only champions of mystery, they are champions of truth and justice, of law and order, of the underdog and the innocent. Perhaps that is the most cogent reason for their enduring popularity. Some are already enshrined in the “Valhalla of the immortals”—in that Big Club Room or Squad Room in the Sky. Some of the detectives in this anthology are true folk heroes of our time—Nero Wolfe, Inspector Maigret, Lew Archer, Sir Henry Merrivale, Ellery Queen, Nick Velvet. And as “all mankind love a lover,” so the whole world loves a champion.

  In this collection, Number 33 of the series, we offer you 2 short novels, 2 novelets, and 13 short stories, and with one exception, none of these exciting and memorable tales has ever appeared in any of the 79 anthologies previously edited by

  ELLERY QUEEN

  Ellery Queen’s

  Champions

  of Mystery

  Rex Stout

  Counterfeit for Murder

  It started simply enough: a salty (and peppery) old character, the landlady of a theatrical roominghouse, comes to Nero Wolfe with a mysterious package; and then there’s Tammy Baxter, a going-to-be actress—but learn about her for yourself. . .

  Archie Goodwin was stumped. Nero Wolfe was almost stumped. But leave it to Nero: he had an “inkling,” a “surmise,” a “faint intimation.” He told Inspector Cramer that he also “had a stroke of luck.” But Nero’s “luck” is not where he finds it—it’s where he looks for it. Nero knew how to “invite” luck, and where “to send the invitation”. . .

  Detective: NERO WOLFE

  My rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it. But when I looked through the one-way glass panel of the front door and saw her out on the stoop, my basic feelings about the opposite sex were hurt. Granting that women can’t stay young and beautiful forever, that the years are bound to show, at least they don’t have to let their gray hair straggle over their ears or wear a coat with a button missing or forget to wash their face, and this specimen was guilty on all three counts. So, as she put a finger to the button and the door bell rang, I opened the door and told her, “I don’t want any, thanks. Try next door.” I admit it was rude.

  “You would have once, Buster,” she said. “Thirty years ago I was a real treat.”

  That didn’t help matters any. I have conceded that the years are bound to show.

  “I want to see Nero Wolfe,” she said. “Do I walk right through you?”

  “There are difficulties,” I told her. “One, I’m bigger than you are. Two, Mr. Wolfe can be seen only by appointment. And three, he won’t be available until eleven o’clock. That’s more than an hour from now.”

  “All right, I’ll come in and wait. I’m half froze. Are you nailed down?”

  A notion struck me. Wolfe believes, or claims he does, that any time I talk him into seeing a female would-be client he knows exactly what to expect if and when he sees her, and this would show him how wrong he was.

  “Your name, please?” I asked her.

  “My name’s Annis. Hattie Annis.”

  “What do you want to see Mr. Wolfe about?”

  “I’ll tell him when I see him. If my tongue’s not froze.”

  “You’ll have to tell me, Mrs. Annis. My name—”

  “Miss Annis.”

  “Okay. My name is Archie Goodwin.”

  “I know it is. If you’re thinking I don’t look like I can pay Nero Wolfe, there’ll be a reward and I’ll split it with him. If I took it to the cops they’d do the splitting. I wouldn’t trust a cop if he was naked as a baby.”

  “What will the reward be for?”

  “For what I’ve got here.” She patted her black leather handbag, the worse for wear, with a hand in a gray woolen glove.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll tell Nero Wolfe. Look, Buster, I’m no Eskimo. Let the lady in.”

  That wasn’t feasible. I had been in the hall with my hat and overcoat and gloves on, on my way for a morning walk crosstown to the bank to deposit a check for $7417.65 in Wolfe’s account, when I had seen her through the one-way glass panel aiming her finger at the bell button. Letting her in and leaving her in the office while I took my walk was out of the question. The other inhabitants of that old brownstone on West 35th Street, the property of Nero Wolfe except for the furniture and other items in my bedroom, were around but they were busy. Fritz Brenner, the chef and housekeeper, was in the kitchen making chestnut soup. Wolfe was up in the plant rooms on the roof for his two-hour morning session with the orchids, and of course Theodore Horstmann was with him.

  I wasn’t rude about it. I told her there were several places nearby where she could spend the hour and thaw out—Sam’s Diner at the corner of Tenth Avenue, or the drug store at the corner of Ninth, or Tony’s tailor shop where she could have a button sewed on her coat and charge it to me. She didn’t push. I said if she came back at a quarter past eleven I might have persuaded Wolfe to see her, and she turned to go, and then turned back, opened the black leather handbag, and took out a package wrapped in brown paper with a string around it.

  “Keep this for me, Buster,” she said. “Some nosey cop might take it on himself. Come on, it won’t bite. And don’t open it. Can I trust you not to open it?”

  I took it because I liked her. She had fine instincts and no sense at all. She had refused to tell me what was in it, and was leaving it with me and telling me not to open it—my idea of a true woman if only she would comb her hair and wash her face and sew a button on. So I took it, and told her I would expect her at a quarter past eleven, and she went.

  When I had seen her descend the seven steps to the sidewalk and turn left, toward Tenth Avenue, I shut the door from the inside and took a look at the package. It was rectangular, some six inches long and three wide, and a couple of inches thick. I put it to my ear and held my breath, and heard nothing. But you never know what science will do next, and there were at least three dozen people in the metropolitan area who had it in for Wolfe, not to mention a few who didn’t care much for me, so instead of taking it to the office, to my desk or the safe, I went to the front room and stashed it under the couch. If you ask if I untied the string and unwrapped the paper for a look, your instincts are not as fine as they should be. Anyhow, I had gloves on.

  Also there had been nothing doing for more than a week, since we had cleaned up the Brigham forgery case, and my mind needed exercise as much as my legs and lungs, so walking crosstown and back I figured out what was in the package. After discarding a dozen guesses that didn’t appeal to me I decided it was the Hope diamond. The one that had been sent to Washington was a phony. I was still working on various details, such as Hattie Annis’ real name and station and how she had got hold of it, on the last stretch approaching the old brownstone, and therefore got nearly to the stoop before I saw that it was occupied.

  Perched on the top step was exactly the kind of female Wolfe expects to see when I talk him into seeing one. The right age, the right face, the right legs—what showed of them below the edge of her fur coat. The coat was not mink or sable. As I
started to mount she got up.

  “Well,” she said. “A grand idea, this outdoor waiting room, but there ought to be magazines.”

  I reached her level. The top of her fuzzy little turban was even with my nose. “I suppose you rang?” I asked.

  “I did. And was told through a crack that Mr. Wolfe was engaged and Mr. Goodwin was out. Mr. Goodwin, I presume?”

  “Right.” I had my key ring out. “I’ll bring some magazines. Which ones do you like?”

  “Let’s go in and look them over.”

  Wolfe wouldn’t be down for more than half an hour, and it would be interesting to know what she was selling, so I used the key on the door and swung it open. When I had disposed of my hat and coat on the hall rack I ushered her to the office, moved one of the yellow chairs up for her, and went to my desk and sat.

  “We have no vacancies at the moment,” I said, “but you can leave your number. Don’t call us, we’ll call—”

  “That’s pretty corny,” she said. She had thrown her coat open to drape it over the back of the chair, revealing other personal details that went fine with the face and legs.

  “Okay,” I conceded. “It’s your turn.”

  “My name is Tammy Baxter. Short for Tamiris. I haven’t decided yet which one to use on a theater program when the time comes. What do you think, Tammy or Tamiris?”

  “It would depend on the part. If it’s the lead in a musical, Tammy. If it packs some weight, O’Neill for instance, Tamiris.”

  “It’s more apt to be a girl at one of the tables in the night-club scene. The one who jumps up and says, ‘Come on, Bill, let’s get out of here.’ That’s her big line.” She fluttered a gloved hand. “Oh, well. What do you care? Why don’t you ask me what I want?”

  “I’m putting it off because I may not have it.”

  “That’s nice. I like that. That’s a good line, only you threw it away. There should be a pause after ‘off.’ ‘I’m putting it off. . .because I may not have it.’ Try it again.”