The Best of Ellery Queen by Francis M Nevins Jr Martin H Greenberg

Author:Francis M Nevins Jr, Martin H Greenberg [Francis M Nevins Jr, Martin H Greenberg]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

And finally they were assembled in Jim Coyle’s dressing room, and Ivy was weeping into more cameras, and Mr. Queen was glumly contemplating Miss Paris’s red straw hat, which looked like a pot, and there was a noise at the door and they saw Barney Hawks, the new champion’s manager, standing on the threshold in the company of several officials and promoters.

“What ho,” said Barney Hawks with a puzzled glance about. “You still here, champ? What goes on?”

“Plenty goes on,” said the champ savagely. “Barney, did you know Brown took a dive tonight?”

“What? What’s this?” said Barney Hawks, looking around virtuously. “Who says so, the dirty liar? My boy won that title on the up and up, gentlemen! He beat Brown fair and square.”

“Brown threw the fight?” asked one of the men with Hawks, a member of the Boxing Commission. “Is there any evidence of that?”

“The hell with that,” said the Inspector politely. “Barney, Mike Brown is dead.”

Hawks began to laugh, then he stopped laughing and sputtered: “What’s this? What’s this? What’s the gageroo? Brown dead?”

Jim Coyle waved his huge paw tiredly. “Somebody bumped him off tonight, Barney. In Stearn’s car across the street.”

“Well, I’m a bum, I’m a bum,” breathed his manager, staring. “So Mike got his, hey? Well, well. Tough. Loses his title and his life. Who done it, boys?”

“Maybe you didn’t know my boy was dead!” shrilled Ollie Stearn. “Yeah, you put on a swell act, Barney! Maybe you fixed it with Mike so he’d take a dive so your boy could win the title! Maybe—”

“There’s been another crime committed here tonight,” said a mild voice, and they all looked wonderingly around to find Mr. Ellery Queen advancing toward Mr. Hawks.

“Hey?” said Coyle’s manager, staring stupidly at him.

“My coat was stolen.”

“Hey?” Hawks kept gaping.

“And, unless my eyes deceive me, as the phrase goes,” continued the great man, stopping before Barney Hawks, “I’ve found it again.”

“Hey?”

“On your arm.” And Mr. Queen gently removed from Mr. Hawks’s arm a shabby camel’s-hair topcoat, and unfolded it, and examined it. “Yes. My very own.”

Barney Hawks turned green in the silence.

Something sharpened in Mr. Queen’s silver eyes, and he bent over the camel’s-hair coat again. He spread out the sleeves and examined the armhole seams. They had burst. As had the seam at the back of the coat. He looked up and at Mr. Hawks reproachfully.

“The least you might have done,” he said, “is to have returned my property in the same condition in which I left it.”

“Your coat?” said Barney Hawks damply. Then he shouted: “What the hell is this? That’s my coat! My camel’s-hair coat!”

“No,” Mr. Queen dissented respectfully, “I can prove this to be mine. You see, it has a telltale cigarette burn at the second buttonhole, and a hole in the right-hand pocket.”

“But—I found it where I left it! It was here all the time! I took it out of here after the fight and went up to the office to talk to these gentlemen and I’ve been—” The manager stopped, and his complexion faded from green to white.

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