Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

“But I haven’t got them!” yelled Crewde. “I handed them to Behrein — they were his — and he gave me the five thousand I’d lent her.”

“O-o-oh!” said Rason. It was a long-drawn sound that held a world of meaning.

“What’s the good of saying ‘oh,’ ” raged Crewde. “You’re a pack of fools, that’s what you are,” he added, after he had replaced the receiver.

On the next morning Jabez Crewde received a letter from Fidelity Dove’s solicitor, Sir Frank Wrawton, demanding the immediate return of the pearls or their value in cash, which had been estimated by competent and unassailable experts at fifty thousand pounds.

By eleven o’clock Jabez Crewde had learned that Sir Frank Wrawton was empowered merely to give him a receipt for pearls or the cash equivalent.

By twelve o’clock he was at Fidelity’s house in Bayswater.

He was received by Fidelity in the morning-room.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” he shouted at Fidelity, “and I can see what’s happened. That Behrein, as he calls himself, is a confederate of yours. You two are in it together. I’ll show you the whole bag o’ tricks. You bought those pearls — they were genuine. Then you borrowed five thousand from me, and paid back five thousand five hundred. You dropped that five hundred. Then your confederate dropped another five thousand in getting the pearls from me. That’s five thousand five hundred you’ve dropped — and for that outlay you’ve landed me with a liability for fifty thousand pounds. Why, you probably had those pearls hidden away an hour after Behrein left me, and you’ll sell them again quietly later on—”

“Have you also been thinking, Mr. Crewde, how you are going to establish this terribly slanderous theory in a court of law?” asked Fidelity, nun-like and serene.

“Bah! The lawyers are robbers, like the police—”

“And the hospitals?” asked Fidelity.

Crewde looked very nearly startled.

“They call you the meanest man in Europe, Mr. Crewde,” said Fidelity. “I alone have maintained that that is a slander. I want you to prove my words. You owe me fifty thousand pounds. To dispute my claim would merely mean the loss of another thousand pounds or so in lawyers’ expenses. It is a pleasure to wring money from a mean man, but it is no pleasure if the man be not mean. The Grey Friars Hospital requires twenty thousand pounds, I understand.”

“Eh?” grunted Crewde. “I don’t get you. D’you want me to give them twenty thousand? What if I do?”

“If you will write a check for twenty thousand pounds to the Grey Friars Hospital,” said Fidelity, “I will withdraw one-fifth of my claim against you. Twenty thousand to the Grey Friars Hospital, twenty thousand to myself — and I will give you a receipt for fifty thousand pounds.”

“That’s close on fifteen thousand pounds clear profit to yourself,” said Crewde, a ghastly pallor spreading over his face.

“You may phrase it so,” said Fidelity. “Or you may say that I am offering you ten thousand pounds to remove from London the reproach of harbouring the meanest man in Europe... Ah, I see you have no fountain-pen. I beg you to use mine.”

P. Moran, Deductor by Percival Wilde

P. Moran, correspondence-school sleuth, 1944 model, is another old friend. His first appearance in our September 1943 issue met with instant and unanimous approval. Even before you asked us to, we had already persuaded Percival Wilde to have Pete cut another caper and apply his marvelous deductive talents to the defeat of crime.

P. Moran is indeed a rare bird — the comic sleuth. Only a small coterie of these droll detectives, these farcical ferrets, these humorous Holmeses, these burlesque bloodhounds, these ludicrous Lecoqs — only a handful have laughed their way into our plethoric literature of crime. Until Mr. Wilde created P. Moran for EQMM, the best of them included Ellis Parker Butler’s Philo Gubb, Sir Basil Thomson’s Mr. Pepper, and W. A. Darlington’s Mr. Gronk. Now — well, our vote goes to “gorjous” Pete, who, in the great tradition, plays a criminous fiddle when the occasion demands.

* * *