Ellery Queen's Double Dozen Read online

  NOVELS BY ELLERY QUEEN

  The Roman Hat Mystery

  The French Powder Mystery

  The Dutch Shoe Mystery

  The Greek Coffin Mystery

  The Egyptian Cross Mystery

  The American Gun Mystery

  The Siamese Twin Mystery

  The Chinese Orange Mystery

  The Spanish Cape Mystery

  Halfway House

  The Door Between

  The Devil To Pay

  The Four of Hearts

  The Dragon’s Teeth

  Calamity Town

  There Was an Old Woman

  The Murderer Is a Fox

  Ten Days’ Wonder

  Cat of Many Tails

  Double, Double

  The Origin of Evil

  The King Is Dead

  The Scarlet Letters

  The Glass Village

  Inspector Queen’s Own Case (November Song)

  The Finishing Stroke

  The Player on the Other Side

  And On the Eighth Day

  BOOKS OF SHORT STORIES BY ELLERY QUEEN

  The Adventures of Ellery Queen

  The New Adventures of Ellery Queen

  The Casebook of Ellery Queen

  Calendar of Crime

  Q.B.I.: Queen’s Bureau of Investigation

  TRUE CRIME BY ELLERY QUEEN

  Ellery Queen’s International Case Book

  EDITED BY ELLERY QUEEN

  Challenge to the Reader

  101 Years’ Entertainment

  Sporting Blood

  The Female of the Species

  The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes

  Rogues’ Gallery

  Best Stories from EQMM

  To the Queen’s Taste

  The Queen’s Awards, 1946-1953

  Murder by Experts

  20th Century Detective Stories

  Ellery Queen’s Awards, 1954-1957

  The Literature of Crime

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Annuals: 13th-16th

  Ellery Queen’s Anthologies: 1960-1967

  The Quintessence of Queen (Edited by Anthony Boucher)

  To Be Read Before Midnight (17th Mystery Annual)

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Mix #18

  Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen (19th Mystery Annual)

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (24th Year)

  CRITICAL WORKS BY ELLERY QUEEN

  The Detective Short Story (A Bibliography)

  Queen’s Quorum

  In the Queens’ Parlor

  UNDER THE PSEUDONYM OF BARNABY ROSS

  The Tragedy of X

  The Tragedy of Y

  The Tragedy of Z

  Drury Lane’s Last Case

  ELLERY

  QUEEN’S

  DOUBLE

  DOZEN

  24 Stories from

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  Edited by

  ELLERY QUEEN

  RANDOM HOUSE

  NEW YORK

  FIRST PRINTING

  © Copyright, 1962, 1963, 1964, by Davis Publications, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada Limited.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 46-8129

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Editors hereby make grateful acknowledgment to the following authors and authors’ representatives for giving permission to reprint the material in this volume:

  L. E. Behney for Three Tales From Home.

  Lurton Blassingame for Hearing Is Believing by John Reese.

  Brandt & Brandt for In the Middle of Nowhere by Hugh Pentecost.

  Curtis Brown, Ltd. for Flint’s Diamonds by Victor Canning, © Victor Canning 1963; and The Crime of Ezechiele Coen by Stanley Ellin; and The Future of the Service by Michael Gilbert, © Michael Gilbert 1962; and The Color of Truth by Roy Vickers.

  Samuel French, Inc. for L As in Loot by Lawrence Treat.

  Edward D. Hoch for I’d Know You Anywhere.

  Littauer & Wilkinson for Funny the Way Things Work Out by John D. MacDonald.

  The Sterling Lord Agency for The Persian Bedspread by Gerald Kersh, © 1963 by Gerald Kersh.

  Helen McCloy for Number Ten Q Street.

  Mcintosh & Otis, Inc. for A Sense of Dynasty by Holly Roth.

  Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc. for Mrs. Dearly’s Special Day by Fletcher Flora; and Death Scene by Helen Nielsen.

  Robert P. Mills for A Funeral for Patrolman Cameron by Norman Daniels; and Blood Money by Avram Davidson; and A Paper for Mr. Wurley by William O’Farrell.

  Harold Ober Associates, Inc. for Foreign Agent (The Analytic Agent) by George Sumner Albee.

  Fred A. Rodewald & J. F. Peirce for The Man Who Was a Station Wagon.

  Rogers Terrill Literary Agency for Tough Cop by Borden Deal.

  James M. Ullman for The Happy Days Club.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Novels by Ellery Queen

  Title Page

  Copyright

  JOHN D. MacDONALD

  Funny the Way Things Work Out

  JAMES M. ULLMAN

  The Happy Days Club

  L. E. BEHNEY

  Three Tales From Home

  MICHAEL GILBERT

  The Future of the Service

  GEORGE SUMNER ALBEE

  Foreign Agent

  HELEN NIELSEN

  Death Scene

  ROY VICKERS

  The Color of Truth

  BORDEN DEAL

  Tough Cop

  FLETCHER FLORA

  Mrs. Dearly’s Special Day

  AVRAM DAVIDSON

  Blood Money

  WILLIAM O’FARRELL

  A Paper for Mr. Wurley

  NORMAN DANIELS

  A Funeral for Patrolman Cameron

  HUGH PENTECOST

  In the Middle of Nowhere

  VICTOR CANNING

  Flint’s Diamonds

  HELEN McCLOY

  Number Ten Q Street

  JOHN REESE

  Hearing Is Believing

  HOLLY ROTH

  A Sense of Dynasty

  EDWARD D. HOCH

  I’d Know You Anywhere

  GERALD KERSH

  The Persian Bedspread

  FRED A. RODEWALD & J. F. PEIRCE

  The Man Who Was a Station Wagon

  LAWRENCE TREAT

  L As in Loot

  STANLEY ELLIN

  The Crime of Ezechiele Coen

  About the Editor

  ELLERY

  QUEEN’S

  DOUBLE

  DOZEN

  19th Mystery Annual

  JOHN D. MacDONALD

  Funny the Way Things Work Out

  Sheriff Wade Illigan said, “To get any good out of a Purdley woman, you’ve got to be meaner than she is.” And the Sheriff didn’t think Will Garlan was that mean a man. . .

  The range of all his pleasures and satisfaction had narrowed in these past years until there were only the smallest things left like trimming the big pepper hedge, standing on the stepladder before the sun got too high, working the clippers with a slow oiled snick, and making the top of the big hedge flat as a table. He could make the trimming last a long time, pausing to look out across the inlet where the tide ran smooth, where mullet leaped near the green-black shade of the mangrove islands. Afterward he would rake up the cuttings, load them in the old tin wheelbarrow, and take them out to the pile beyond the shed. He was a big mild man in his middle sixties, his body thickened and slow, his face deeply lined. The fringe of white hair and his pale-blue eyes were in striking contrast to the deep tropic tan. He wore a faded sports shirt and shapeless denim pants. It was a still May morning, full of the first heat of a new summer. He braced himself on the ladder and started working the clippers.

  He heard Sue coming toward him across the back yard, coming from the rear of the house. He could hear her, and he guessed the folks in the trailer park could hear her, and the men fishing in the skiffs on the far side of the inlet could hear her.

  “Will!” she squalled. “Will Garlan!” After years of experimentation she had learned to pitch her voice at exactly that shrill and penetrating level which he found most distasteful. It made him hunch his shoulders, as though some angry sharp-beaked bird were diving at his head.

  He laid the clippers on top of the hedge and turned slowly, careful of his balance, to watch his wife striding toward him, her thin face dull-red with anger, her features pinched into an ugliness of hate. She was a lean woman, forty-five years old. She wore frayed yellow shorts, too large for her, and a grimy white halter. She had fierce gray eyes and a sallowness the sun never touched. Her black hair looked lifeless in the morning sunlight.

  She stopped abruptly ten feet from the stepladder. “I tole you and I tole you a hundred times maybe,” she yelled, “don’t you never leave this stinkin’ smelly thing in the bedroom, you hear?”

  She held a shaking hand out, showing him the pipe he had left by accident on his night table.

  “Sue, honey,” he said humbly, “I guess I just forgot. . .”

  “Forgot! You damn ol’ man, you oughta be put away some place, the way you getting weak in the head. And this is the last time you get it back. Next time I plunk it right out in the bay, hear?”

  As
he started to say something, she drew her wiry arm back and hurled the pipe at him with startling force. He tried to duck but it struck him painfully under the left eye. He nearly lost his balance, but saved himself by grasping the top of the ladder. Through the immediate prism of his tears he saw her stalking back toward the house.

  Suddenly he imagined himself grasping the wooden handles of the clippers, hurling it at her, saw it turn once, slowly, glinting in the sun, and chunk into her naked sallow back, points first, exactly between the bony ridges of her shoulder blades. . .He felt sweaty and cold in the sunlight. The screen door slammed.

  When his vision cleared he got down from the ladder and started looking for the pipe. He looked for a long time. He finally saw it in the pepper hedge. When he reached in for it, the movement of the branches dislodged it and the pipe fell to the ground.

  He squatted and picked it up. The grain of the bowl was a dark cherry-red. It had an even cake and a sweet taste, and smoked dry. He oiled the bowl on the side of his nose, burnished it on the faded shirt, put it in his pocket.

  He climbed the ladder again and began to clip the tall hedge. Within five minutes he knew it was no good. The pleasure was gone too, like all the others. The thing that he had to do came back into his mind. For a long time it had been some thing he would think of in the middle of the night while Sue lay nearby, her breath a rasping, nasal metronome.

  Lately it had begun to occur to him during the day. And now, quite suddenly, he knew the day had come.

  He left the hedge half done. He put the ladder and the clippers in the shed. He got into the old gray sedan and man aged to back it out to the road before Sue came running out of the house.

  “Where you goin’?” she yelled. “Where you goin’, Will Garlan, damn you?”

  He did not answer. He started up. She ran in front of the car to stop him, but he drove directly toward her, not fast. She scrambled back out of the way. He got a glimpse of her face, insane with fury, and heard her incoherent yelpings as he headed toward town.

  Center Street stretched wide and sleepy under the heat of May, the parked cars glinting, the few shoppers moving slowly under the awning shade. He parked diagonally across from the Palm County Court House and walked around to the far side, squinting against the glare.

  At the high desk a deputy told him that Sheriff Wade Illigan would be back in a few minutes. He sat on a scarred bench and waited. He felt very sleepy. He wondered if the sleepiness was a reaction to the decision he had made. He felt as if he would like to find a bed in some cool place and sleep for a week.

  He jumped and opened his eyes when Sheriff Illigan said, “Hey, Will. How you?”

  He stood up slowly and said, “Wade, I got to talk to you. You busy? It may take some time.”

  Illigan looked at his watch. “I got nothing till noon, and that’s an hour. That time enough?”

  “I think that’s time enough, Wade.”

  They went into Illigan’s big cluttered corner office. The Sheriff closed the door. Will Garlan sat in a corner of the deep leather couch. Illigan sat behind his desk, tilted back, and crossed his tough old legs across a corner of the desk.

  “You know, Will, we’ve done no fishing together in one hell of a while. Way over a year.”

  “And we aren’t likely to ever go fishing together again, Wade.”

  Illigan raised grizzled eyebrows. “How so?”

  Will Garlan took his pipe out and studied the grain. “Lately I keep thinking how it would be to kill Sue.”

  “No law against thinking.”

  “It’s a thing I might do. I get a kind of blind feeling, Wade. My ears roar. I could get like that and. . .hurt her. So I want to fix it so I can’t. That’s why I came in. I think I hate her. That’s a terrible thing, I guess.”

  After a reflective pause Illigan said, “I’ll talk straight, Will. Anybody that knows you two can understand hating that woman. She’s plain mean. All those Purdleys have always been mean as snakes. When you married her she was a beautiful girl, and on a girl like that it somehow looks more like high spirits than ugly spirits. When the looks are gone, you can see what it is, plain and clear. Sue hasn’t got a friend in Palm County, and that’s for sure. I’d say this, Will. If you’d been raised here, you wouldn’t have married a Purdley no matter if she did make a fellow’s mouth run dry a hundred yards off. But nobody knew you good enough to warn you, and I guess you wouldn’t have listened anyhow.”

  “I wouldn’t have listened.”

  “What I say, Will, you should just pack up and get out. You got good years left, and it just isn’t worth it living nestled up to a buzz-saw woman like that making every day miserable.”

  “You make it sound easy, but it wouldn’t be easy. I can’t do it that way. I’ve got to do it my way.”

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “Wade, just what do you know about me?”

  “Know about you? You moved down here from the north about. . .let me see. . .”

  “Twenty-four years ago last month. I was forty-one years old. What did folks find out about me?”

  “Found out you were a well-educated man, and you’d done well in some kind of business ’way up north, and then your wife died and it kind of took the heart out of you, so you retired early, with enough to live on if you took it easy. And there was something about your health being shaky.”

  “I had to let folks think that so they wouldn’t think it strange a man that age doing nothing at all.”

  “Well, you bought a couple acres of land out there at the inlet, and you built that house all by yourself, learning as you went along, and it must have been a little over a year after you moved down you married Sue Purdley, a girl twenty years younger, a girl been in several kinds of trouble around here, enough so folks figured she made herself a pretty good deal.”

  “She was the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” Garlan said. “They all got looks when they’re young enough,” Illigan said. “If she hadn’t hooked you, Will, about the only thing left for her would have been some cracker boy from back in the sloughs to keep her swole up with kids, barefoot, and beat the tar out of her every Saturday night.”

  “If we could have had children, maybe it would have. . .”

  “It wouldn’t have been a bit different. To get any good out of a Purdley woman, you’ve got to be meaner than she is, and you’re just too gentle a man, Will.”

  “Know anything else about me?”

  Illigan shook his head. “Guess not. You live quiet. You’re a good man to go fishing with. You keep your house and grounds up nice. What is there I should know?”

  “I’m a methodical man, Wade. I plan things carefully. I never thought I’d be telling anybody this. I feel scared to tell you now, but I don’t know why, because the life I have isn’t worth living, and that isn’t the way I planned it. Way back in 1935 I started planning it all out. And in 1938, ten days before I arrived here, I walked out of a bank in Michigan with a hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars.”

  Illigan’s feet thumped hard against the floor as he came erect in his chair. “You what!”

  Will Garlan stared out the window, his face placid. “I studied the mistakes all the other ones make. They go to foreign places where they stand out like a sore thumb. Or they get to spending too much. Or they have to talk to somebody about it. One thing I decided. You have to have a new identity all ready and waiting. I came down alone in 1937 and got that identity sort of started down here, so it was ready and waiting when I came down. My name isn’t Will Garlan, naturally. But I’ve used it so long it feels like it was. The name I started with feels strange in my mind now. J. Allan Welch. The J was for Jerome. People called me Al. They looked for J. Allan Welch for a long time. Maybe they’re still looking. Probably the bonding company still is, anyhow. I guess it was a shock to them.”

  “Do you know what the hell you’re saying, man?”

  “I was the Assistant Cashier. There was one little flaw in the way the worn-out money was handled, when we sacked it up to send it back to the Federal Reserve Bank for credit. Everybody checked everybody else, but there was one little flaw, and after I found it, I got them used to seeing me with a big box.

  “I used to order stuff to be sent express and pick it up on my lunch hour so I’d have a box around, wrapped in brown paper, tied with cord. Then I made a box. It looked solid and tied, but you could pull one end open—it was on a spring. When it was shut, the cord matched. I had the cord glued on. I cut newspaper into stacks the size of wrapped money and I had it in that box. The other tricky part was the seal on the heavy canvas sack. I figured a way to fix the sack so it would look sealed when it wasn’t.