Ellery Queen - 1963 - The Player on the Other Side by Ellery Queen

Author:Ellery Queen [Queen, Ellery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-15T12:12:21+00:00

Inspector Queen stared across at him. But all Ellery said when he rose to freshen their drinks was: “Maybe there is.”

* * *

Thought Ellery: The prod, the goad, the phrase that gigs, is; I know all about it.

“I know all about it,” he said ominously; and Tom Archer, hunched behind the barricade of the late Robert York’s desk in the dim speckless-ness of the late Robert York’s study, started violently.

Archer swallowed, his young Adam’s apple jumping like an ambushed cat. “All about what?” It failed to come out with the scandalized virtue he was aiming for.

“Well, let’s see,” Ellery said in his most obliging drawl. “When Robert York sent Walt to fetch you that night, he was a very angry man.”

“What night?”

“The night,” Ellery said sonorously, “of the Seebecks.” And it worked!—for Archer bit his lip, and one hand on the desk kneaded the other hand on the desk until he caught sight of what they were doing and clenched them into silence.

“Well?” Ellery barked, when he estimated that the young man had stewed in his own juice just long enough.

“Oh, damn,” muttered Archer, looking up at last; and he gave a wry grin. “What would you have done if I’d told you about it right off?”

“Hauled you downtown,” Ellery said promptly. “Want to go now?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Better give me the whole story, then.”

“You said you knew it.”

Ellery, who had dropped into the Morris chair across from the desk, climbed to his feet. “Let’s go, Archer.”

Archer clawed at his scalp. “Oh, hell! I’m sorry, Mr. Queen. I’ve been out of my mind with worry about this thing. I knew you’d find out sooner or later. But I just couldn’t bring myself to come clean. It looks . . . well, I don’t have to tell you how it looks.”

“Yes, you do.”

Blindly Archer took one of Robert York’s tissues from the right-hand drawer and dried his face. “I take it you’ve been to Jenks & Donahue.” Ellery grunted the kind of grunt that universally means whatever worried people are afraid it might mean.

“Robert York said those Seebecks were worthless reprints,” Archer muttered, “and I got sore. Because I was equally positive the stamps were not reprints. Well, as you now know, I took them down to Jenks & Donahue and had them put through the wringer, everything—black light, horizontal beam, colorimeter, watermark, and gum analysis—and found out what Mr. York had been able to tell with the naked eye! He had a feel for stamps that was uncanny. Of course, he’d been right and I’d been wrong. The stamps were Seebeck reprints.” He looked at Ellery pleadingly. “What could I do? What on earth else could I do?”

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