I think of it before? Sit down.”
“What is this?” demanded Ellery. “What’s the brainstorm?”
The Inspector ignored him elaborately and sat down at his desk, chuckling and rubbing his hands. “How you doin’ on the stamp and jewelry lead, Thomas?”
“Not so good,” rumbled the Sergeant lugubriously.
“Nothing, hey?”
“Not a smell. They don’t know him, any of ‘em. I’m sure of that now.”
“Curious,” murmured Ellery, frowning. “There’s something else that baffles me.”
“Go baffle a buffalo,” said the Inspector jovially. “This is hot. Listen, Thomas. Did you get the last full report on the hotels?”
“Sure. He wasn’t registered at any hotel in the city. Dead sure now.”
“Hmm. Well, listen here, Thomas, my boy. And you too, son, if you aren’t too busy with those grand bafflements of yours. Let’s say the little guy wasn’t a New Yorker. We’re all convinced of that?”
“I think he comes from Mars or some place,” grumbled Velie.
“I’m not convinced,” drawled Ellery, “but it’s probably so.”
“All right. If he wasn’t a New Yorker?and the signs all point to the fact that he didn’t come from any of the suburbs, because we’ve checked all that?then what’s the situation?” The Inspector leaned forward. “Then he comes from some outlying spot. American or foreign, but at least outlying. Right so far?”
“Dismally so,” said Ellery, nevertheless watching his father intently. “A/ors?”
“A lor’ yourself,” retorted the Inspector, in rare good-humor. He tapped his desk with a little click of his fingernail. “A lor*, my son, he was a visitor to New York. A lor’, my son, he must have had baggagel”
Ellery’s eyes widened. The Sergeant’s mouth fell open. Then Ellery sprang from the chair. “Dad, that’s positively brilliant; that’s genius! How on earth could such a simple conclusion have escaped me? Of course! You’re perfectly right. Baggage . . . . I bow this proud head in shame. It takes experienced brains, these things. Baggage!”
“Sounds like a good hunch, Inspector,” said the Sergeant thoughtfully, stroking his mastodonic jaw.
“You see?” The Inspector spread his hands, grinning. “Nothing to it. Nothing up my sleeve but muscle and hair. I’d bet right now . . . “ Then his face fell. “Well, maybe we’d better not count any chickens. The point is he didn’t register at a hotel anywhere. And when he walked out of the elevator on the twenty-second floor of the Chancellor he wasn’t carrying anything. Yet he must have had baggage. So what?”
“So he must ‘a’ checked it somewhere,” muttered the Sergeant.
“So you’re damned right, Thomas. Here’s what I want you to do, Car-nera, me lad. Put every available man?get the Missing Persons to lend a hand?on a canvass of all the checkrooms in the city, right from the Battery to Vanderveer Park. Everything?hotels, terminals, department stores; the whole shooting-match. Don’t forget the air-fields, by the way; see that Cur-tiss Field, Roosevelt, Floyd Bennett?all of ‘em are covered. And the Customs House. Get a line on everything that was checked on the afternoon of the murder and that’s still uncalled for. And keep in touch with me every hour.”
The Sergeant grinned and took himself off.
“Smart,” said Ellery, lighting a cigaret. “Intuition tells me that you’ve finally got your talons into something, Inspector dear.”
“Well,” sighed the old gentleman, “if that fails I’ll be about ready to give up, El. It does beat?”
The deskman came in and flipped an envelope on the Inspector’s desk.
“What’s that?” demanded Ellery, cigaret suspended in air.
The Inspector seized the envelope. “Ah. Answer from the Yard to my cable!” He read the message quickly and then tossed it to Ellery. “Well,” he said in a quieter tone, “seems you were right, El. Seems you were right.”
“About what?”
“That woman.”
“Indeed!” Ellery reached for the cablegram.
“How’d you guess?”
Ellery grinned, a little woefully. “I never guess; you know that. It was that backwards business, you see.”
“Backwards!”
“Of course,” sighed Ellery. “It struck me the woman was off- color somewhere; that’s why I suggested asking Scotland Yard about a possible dossier. But the name?” He shrugged. “When I wrote the name Sewell down on that piece of paper for you, it was because I’d applied the backwards test to the name of Llewes?inevitable, I suppose, my mind being the tortuous organ it is. And then it was too much to ask that Llewes should be Sewell backwards without its also being the woman’s alias, you see.”
Ellery scanned the cable swiftly. It ran: irene sewell british confidence woman well known to us and continental police not wanted present stop special weakness for jewels works alone has used name llewes in past kindest personal regards trench inspector scotland yard
“Special weakness for jewels,” murmured Ellery, putting down the cable. “And there’s such an alluring honeypot in the Kirk direction . . . . Have you been able to find out anything about her, dad?”
“Some. She came from England a couple of months ago and put up at the Chancellor in great style.”
“Alone?”
“Except for a maid?Cockney. Looks funny to me. Anyway, Irene struck up an acquaintance with Donald Kirk?don’t know just how she managed it, but she did it in short order?and they got pretty chummy. She posed as a sort of globe-trotter who’d had plenty of experiences in queer places?”
“Scarcely a pose, I should judge from Trench’s cable.”
“I guess not,” said the Inspector grimly. “Anyway, the gag seems to have been that she had had a lot of experiences that were just crying to be put into print?travel stuff in faraway places, reminiscences of pretty famous people?she’d spent a lot of time in Geneva, for instance?something like that. So she was thinking of writing a book about it all. Well, you know these young publishers. Kirk’s got a sound head on his shoulders and all that, from what I hear, but this dame is beautiful and she has a smooth line, and?well, I guess he fell for it.”
“Or her,” suggested Ellery.
“It’s a toss-up which one. I’d say not, judging from the googoo eyes he’s been making at this Temple girl.”
“But Jo Temple unfortunately came after Miss Llewes,” murmured Ellery. “By that time, perhaps, the damage?if there is any?was done. Go on; you excite me strangely.”
“Anyway, they began to talk this ‘book’ over. Kirk began to have ‘conferences’ with her at odd hours.”
