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

I says, “Were you ever a pastry-cook?”

He says, “Yep.”

“Where?”

“In the prison they got at Columbia, Missouri.”

And I says, “John Doe, the game is up. I arrest you as the mysterious murderer of the wealthy millionaire, Richard Roe. Come to Headquarters with me.”

He tries to get away when the Amenia Concert Orchestra comes, and Sheriff Vince Dudley, who plays the piano, starts to put him in his car, but I tap him on the nose with his own automatic, and that is how his nose comes to be broken.

TELEGRAM.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, UNITED PRESS, INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK, N. Y.

PETER MORAN WHO FOILED DARING HOLDUP AT HOME OF WEALTHY MILLIONAIRE R. B. McRAE COMMA SURREY COMMA CONNECTICUT AND ARRESTED JOE COSTELLO ALIAS JOE CASTELLI ALIAS JOE COSTANZE ALIAS JOE CASTRUCCIO SINGLE HYPHEN HANDED IS A STUDENT AT ACME INTERNATIONAL DETECTIVE CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL COMMA SOUTH KINGSTON COMMA NEW YORK STOP PROSPECTUS AND LITERATURE FREE ON REQUEST STOP RATES REASONABLE STOP EARN WHILE YOU LEARN STOP NOW IS THE TIME TO STUDY THIS FASCINATING AND UNCROWDED PROFESSION.

CHIEF INSPECTOR, ACME INTERNATIONAL DETECTIVE CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL.

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

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

Well, you certainly stirred up things with those telegrams. This is Friday and the reporters keep coming but the boss says, “Peter, there has already been too much publicity,” so I tell them “I am not giving out any more interviews,” though I cannot stop them from printing the flashlight pictures they took of me and me and the boss and me and Mr. & Mrs. Cutler and me and Mr. & Mrs. Grimshaw and me and Sheriff Vince Dudley and the rest of the Amenia Concert Orchestra and me and Joe Costello.

But I will tell you what I told the reporters from the New York Mirror and the New York News and the New York Herald and the New York Post etc. because you may not read any of those papers especially if you have a paper in South Kingston where the school is.

After Sheriff Vince Dudley and the boss and a couple of others had collected the evidence, I deducted for them and they just stood there, listening and nodding every now and then and wishing they knew how to deduct themselves.

That redhead Anna bell read about the dance Mr. & Mrs. McRae were going to give in a paper they have in Poughkeepsie, where she was laying low with her boy-friend Joe Costello who has a red groove on the underside of his jaw because he was hanged in Texas only the rope broke. So they came to Surrey and that redhead Annabell got a job where she could size up things and she told Joe it would be a pipe. They figured a good time for the hold-up would be ten-fifteen P. M. in the evening, and Joe would have brought his machine-gun right in with him only Annabell met him and said he would not need it because she saw me driving away and she deducted I was running out on the party and I would be gone for hours. So Joe left the machine-gun outside in the car which he says he now regrets. He has had a lot of experience and he thought the automatic would be enough, and it would have been only I came back when I was not expected and sizing up the situation instantly he acted with brilliant decisiveness like it said in the New York Sun. The value of the loot which Costello’s confederate had already collected was in excess of $100,000, and consisted of cash, watches, rings, and jewelry, like it said in the Chicago Tribune. The thug had planned to make his getaway unmolested, hence had severed the telephone wires leading to Broker R. B. McRae’s palatial mansion (photo on Page 1), a fact which was not discovered until Sheriff Vincent Dudley, being in Connecticut, hence out of his own bailiwick, tried to summon the State Police and found the instrument was dead, like it said in the New York Mirror. The telegraph office is in Lakeville and when they get a telegram for Surrey they phone it here but they couldn’t do that Sunday night after Joe cut the wires, so it didn’t come till Monday and you would have saved money if you had just written me a letter.