The Roman Hat Mystery

“It is not so complicated as it seems at first hearing,” returned the Inspector. “Remember that Barry is an exceptionally clever young man and above all an excellent actor. No one but an accomplished actor could have carried off such a plan. The procedure was simple, after all; his hardest job was to keep to his time schedule. If he was seen by any one he was disguised. The only dangerous part of his scheme was the getaway — when he walked down the aisle and went backstage through the box stagedoor. The aisle he took care of by keeping an eye out for the usher while he sat next to Field. He had known beforehand, of course, that the ushers, due to the nature of the play, kept their stations more or less faithfully, but he counted on his disguise and hypodermic to help him through any emergency that might arise. However, Madge O’Connell was lax in her duty and so even this was in his favor. He told me last night, not without a certain pride, that he had prepared for every contingency... As for the stagedoor, he knew from experience that at that period in the play’s progress practically every one was on the stage. The technical men were busy at their stations, too... Remember that he planned the crime knowing in advance the exact conditions under which he would have to operate. And if there was an element of danger, of uncertainty — well, it was all a risky business, wasn’t it? — he asked me last night, smiling; and I had to admire him for his philosophy if for nothing else.”

The Inspector shifted restlessly. “This makes clear, I hope, just how Barry did the job. As for our investigation... With the hat deductions made and our knowledge of the murderer’s identity, we still had no inkling of the exact circumstances behind the crime. If you’ve been keeping in mind the material evidence which we had collected on Thursday night, you will see that we had nothing at all with which to work. The best thing we could hope for was that somewhere among the papers for which all of us were looking was a clue which would tie up to Barry. Even that would not be enough, but... So the next step,” said the Inspector, after a sigh, “was the discovery of the papers in Field’s neat hiding place at the top of the bed canopy in his apartment. This was Ellery’s work from start to finish. We had found out that Field had no safety-deposit box, no post-office box, no outside residence, no friendly neighbor or tradesman, and that the documents were not in his office. By a process of elimination Ellery insisted that they must be somewhere in Field’s rooms. You know how this search ended — an ingenious bit of pure reasoning on Ellery’s part We found Morgan’s papers; we found Cronin’s stuff relating to the gang activities — and by the way, Tim, I’m going to be keenly alive to what happens when we start on the big clean-up — and we found finally a wad of miscellaneous papers. Among these were Michaels’ and Barry’s... You’ll remember, Tim, that Ellery, from the handwriting analysis business, deducted that possibly we would find the originals of Barry’s papers — and so we did.

“Michaels’ case was interesting. That time he went to Elmira on the ‘petty larceny’ charge, it was through Field’s clever manipulations with the law. But Field had the goods on Michaels and filed the documentary evidence of the man’s real guilt away in his favorite hiding place, in the event that he might wish to use it at some future date. A very saving person, this Field... When Michaels was released from prison Field used him unscrupulously for his dirty work, holding the threat of those papers over the man’s head.”

“Now Michaels had been on the lookout for a long time. He wanted the papers badly, as you may imagine. At every opportunity he searched the apartment for them. And when he didn’t find them time after time, he became desperate. I don’t doubt that Field, in his devilishly sardonic way, enjoyed the knowledge that Michaels was ransacking the place day after day... On Monday night Michaels did what he said he did — went home and to bed. But early Tuesday morning, when he read the papers and learned that Field had been killed, he realized that the jig was up. He had to make one last search for the papers — if he didn’t find them, the police might and he would be in hot water. So he risked running into the police net when he returned to Field’s rooms Tuesday morning. The story about the check was nonsense, of course.”