The Roman Hat Mystery

The Queens’ apartment on West 87th Street was a man’s domicile from the pipe-rack over the hearth to the shining sabers on the wall. They lived on the top floor of a three-family brownstone house, a relic of late Victorian times. You walked up the heavily carpeted stairs through seemingly endless halls of dismal rectitude. When you were quite convinced that only mummified souls could inhabit such a dreary place, you came upon the huge oaken door marked, “The Queens” — a motto lettered neatly and framed. Then Djuna grinned at you from behind a crack and you entered a new world.

More than one individual, exalted in his own little niche, had willingly climbed the uninviting staircases to find sanctuary in this haven. More than one card bearing a famous name had been blithely carried by Djuna through the foyer into the living room.

The foyer was Ellery’s inspiration, if the truth were told. It was so small and so narrow that its walls appeared unnaturally towering. With a humorous severity one wall had been completely covered by a tapestry depicting the chase — a most appropriate appurtenance to this medieval chamber. Both Queens detested it heartily, preserving it only because it had been presented to them with regal gratitude by the Duke of—, the impulsive gentleman whose son Richard Queen had saved from a noisome scandal, the details of which have never been made public. Beneath the tapestry stood a heavy mission table, displaying a parchment lamp and a pair of bronze bookends bounding a three-volume set of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment.

Two mission chairs and a small rug completed the foyer.

When you walked through this oppressive place, always gloomy and almost always hideous, you were ready for anything except the perfect cheeriness of the large room beyond. This study in contrast was Ellery’s private jest, for if it were not for him the old man would long since have thrown the foyer and its furnishings into some dark limbo.

The living room was lined on three sides with a bristling and leathern-reeking series of bookcases, rising tier upon tier to the high ceiling. On the fourth wall was a huge natural fireplace, with a solid oak beam as a mantel and gleaming ironwork spacing the grate. Above the fireplace were the famous crossed sabers, a gift from the old fencing master of Nuremberg with whom Richard had lived in his younger days during his studies in Germany. Lamps winked and gleamed all over the great sprawling room; easy-chairs, armchairs, low divans, footstools, bright-colored leather cushions were everywhere. In a word, it was the most comfortable room two intellectual gentlemen of luxurious tastes could devise for their living quarters. And where such a place might after a time have become stale through sheer variety, the bustling person of Djuna, man-of-work, general factotum, errand boy, valet and mascot prevented such a dénouement.

Djuna had been picked up by Richard Queen during the period of Ellery’s studies at college, when the old man was very much alone. This cheerful young man, nineteen years old, an orphan for as long as he could remember, ecstatically unaware of the necessity for a surname — slim and small, nervous and joyous, bubbling over with spirit and yet as quiet as a mouse when the occasion demanded — this Djuna, then, worshipped old Richard in much the same fashion as the ancient Alaskans bowed down to their totem-poles. Between him and Ellery, too, there was a shy kinship which rarely found expression except in the boy’s passionate service. He slept in a small room beyond the bedroom used by father and son and, according to Richard’s own chuckling expression, “could hear a flea singing to its mate in the middle of the night.”

On the morning after the eventful night of Monte Field’s murder, Djuna was laying the cloth for breakfast when the telephone rang. The boy, accustomed to early morning calls, lifted the receiver:

“This is Inspector Queen’s man Djuna talking. Who is calling, please?”

“Oh, it is, is it?” growled a bass voice over the wire. “Well, you son of a gypsy policeman, wake the Inspector for me and be quick about it!”

“Inspector Queen may not be disturbed, sir, unless his man Djuna knows who’s calling.” Djuna, who knew Sergeant Velie’s voice especially well, grinned and stuck his tongue in his cheek.

A slim hand firmly grasped Djuna’s neck and propelled him halfway across the room. The Inspector, fully dressed, his nostrils quivering appreciatively with his morning’s first ration of snuff, said into the mouthpiece, “Don’t mind Djuna, Thomas. What’s up? This is Queen talking.”

“Oh, that you, Inspector? I wouldn’t have buzzed you so early in the morning except that Ritter just phoned from Monte Field’s apartment. Got an interesting report,” rumbled Velie.

“Well, well!” chuckled the Inspector. “So our friend Ritter’s bagged someone, eh? Who is it, Thomas?”