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

She is flirting with him like nobody’s business, and he comes slouching up to the car. She says, “Hello, mister. We want to ask you some questions. Was you ever a slaughterhouse employee?”

He says, “Yep.”

“Do you do your own sewing?”

He says, “Yep.”

“Do you play the violin?”

He says, “Yep.”

“That’s all we wanted to know,” She jerks her thumb at me. “Pete here, who’s chauffeur down at the McRae’s, could deduct all of them things about you when you was twenty foot off because he’s a trained detective. He’s taking a correspondence course in detecting.”

He comes right up close and I can see the bad teeth and the thick lips and the red groove under his jaw plainer than ever, and he says, “Yep?”

Annabell says, “Yep. Well, good by, mister. I certainly enjoyed your conversation.”

I figured that was a good time to step on the gas, having put Annabell in her place, and she cuddled up under my arm friendly like and did not let out another chirp all the way home. Then she gives a big sigh, and says, “What a man! What a man!” and she wasn’t talking about the slaughterhouse employee, you can bet.

P.S. I could not find gorjous in the dictionery so you are right but everybody knows that word and why should I stop using it just because the man who wrote the dictionery is a back number? Where’s he been living, that is what I would like to know, and what would he do if he saw a gorjous blond and deducted maybe she used to be a redhead once but she sat in the sun and it bleached her hair?

From: Chief Inspector, Acme International Detective Correspondence School, South Kingston, New York.

To: Operative P. Moran, c/o Mr. R. B. McRae, Surrey, Conn.

I can only mark you 30 % on your lesson, which is bad. It does not require a trained detective to “deduct Mr. Heasey, the fishman, is a fish-man,” or “Tom Saunders, the tinsmith, is a tinsmith.” Read the lesson again and then see if you cannot find another tinsmith you do not know already or another fishman you do not know already, and confirm your deduction by supplementary observations.

Your deduction that the stranger was a slaughterhouse employee who plays the violin is ridiculous. Slaughterhouse employees do not play violins as supplementary observations would have told you.

“Morter” is spelled “mortar.”

J. J. O’B.

From: Operative P, Moran, c/o Mr. R. B. McRae, Surrey, Conn.

To: Chief Inspector, Acme International Detective Correspondence School, South Kingston, N. Y.

What’s the difference if it is “morter” or “mortar?” It was egg, like I wrote.

Well, I cannot find another tinsmith in Surrey because this is a little village and if there were two tinsmiths one of them would starve to death and I cannot find another fishman here for the same reason unless he ate his own fish. And on Thursday evening I saw Jim Estabrook, the plumber, sitting in the garden back of his house and he had a book of poetry in his lap which he was reading to his little daughter Minerva even though Lesson Five says plumbers do not read poetry or something is wrong somewhere, and I kept my distance from the churches on the way home because it Says in the same lesson clergymen will not be studying the racetrack results and I didn’t want to catch any of them at it. But I observed the slaughterhouse employee again and this is how it happened:

We are still working hard getting ready for that big dance Sunday night which is the night after tomorrow night and it seems like every five minutes we run out of something like miniature electric lights for the green and yellow lanterns in the garden or coat hangers for the cloak room where Annabell is going to check coats or more wax for the floor which I waxed until you can see your face in it or music stands for the Amenia Concert Orchestra though I told the missus there is not one of them that can read notes and they just make up the music as they go along. Friday afternoon, which was today, Mrs. McRae says, “Peter, drive to Lakeville quick and get that dress I left to be dry cleaned and if it isn’t ready stand over the man until he gives it to you, goodness gracious I expect to wear it Sunday night.”

I says, “Excuse me, Mrs. McRae, is that sensual driving?”

She says, “No, I guess it isn’t, but you can stop in at the drug store and buy me a dozen aspirin tablets and then everything will be all right just like the people who are coming to the dance will stop in at the post-office to get their mail first even though it is Sunday and they know the post-office will not be open.”

So I says, “Yes, Mrs. McRae,” and I picked up that redhead Annabell who sneaked out the back door when I gave her the high sign and we went in the coop.