The Roman Hat Mystery

“Just what I figured,” returned Queen. “Field has been losing steadily on the stock market — and not chicken feed, either. Velie’s just run a little tip to earth which makes Field out as a frequent visitor to the racetrack, where he’s also dropped plenty. For a shrewd man, he certainly was an easy mark for the wiseacres. Anyway, that explains his having so little cash in his personal account. And more than that — it probably also explains more conclusively the item of ‘50,000’ on the program we found. That meant money, and the money it referred to was in some way connected, I’m sure, with the person he was to meet at the theatre.

“Now, I think that we can pretty well conclude that Field knew his murderer rather intimately. For one thing, he accepted a drink obviously without suspicion, or at least question; for another, the meeting seems to have been definitely arranged for purposes of concealment — why, else, if that is not so, was the theatre chosen for the meeting at all?”

“All right. Let me ask you the same question,” interposed Ellery, puckering his lips. “Why should a theatre be chosen as a meeting place to transact a secret and undoubtedly nefarious business? Wouldn’t a park be more secret? Wouldn’t a hotel lobby have its advantages? Answer that.”

“Unfortunately, my son,” said the Inspector mildly, “Mr. Field could have had no definite knowledge that he was going to be murdered. As far as he was concerned, all he was going to do was to take care of his part of the transaction. As a matter of fact, Field himself might have chosen the theatre as the place of meeting. Perhaps he wanted to establish an alibi for something. There’s no way of telling yet just what he wanted to do. As for the hotel lobby — certainly he would run a grave risk of being seen. He might have been unwilling, further, to risk himself in such a lonely place as a park. And, lastly, he may have had some particular reason for not wanting to be seen in the company of the second party. Remember — the ticket stubs we found showed that the other person did not come into the theatre at the same time as Field. But this is all fruitless conjecture—”

Ellery smiled in a thoughtful manner, but said nothing. He was thinking to himself that the old man had not completely satisfied the objection, and that this was a strange thing in a man of Inspector Queen’s direct habits of thought...

But Queen was continuing. “Very well. We must always bear in mind the further possibility that the person with whom Field transacted his business was not his murderer. Of course, this is merely a possibility. The crime seems to have been too well planned for that. But if this is so, then we must look for two people in the audience Monday night who were directly connected with Field’s death.”

“Morgan?” asked Ellery idly.

The Inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps. Why didn’t he tell us about it when we spoke to him yesterday afternoon? He confessed everything else. Well, maybe because he felt that a confession of having paid blackmail to the murdered man, together with the fact that he was found in the theatre, would be too damning a bit of circumstantial evidence.”

“Look at it this way,” said Ellery. “Here we find a man dead who has written on his program the number ‘50,000,’ obviously referring to dollars. We know from what both Sampson and Cronin have told us about Field that he was a man of unscrupulous and probably criminal character. Further, we know from Morgan that he was also a blackmailer. I think, therefore, we can deduce safely that he went to the Roman Theatre on Monday night to collect or arrange for the payment of $50,000 in blackmail from some person unknown. Right so far?”

“Go ahead,” grunted the Inspector noncommittally.

“Very well,” continued Ellery. “If we conclude that the person blackmailed that night and the murderer were one and the same, we need look no further for a motive. There’s the motive ready made — to choke off the blackmailing Field. If, however, we proceed on the assumption that the murderer and the person blackmailed were not the same, but two entirely different individuals, then we must still scrabble about looking for a motive for the crime. My personal opinion is that this is unnecessary — that the murderer and the blackmailed person are one. What do you think?”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, Ellery,” said the Inspector. “I merely mentioned the other possibility — did not state my own conviction. Let us proceed, for the time being, then, on the assumption that Field’s blackmail victim and his murderer were the same...

“Now — I want to clear up the matter of the missing tickets.”

“Ah — the missing tickets,” murmured Ellery. “I was wondering what you made of that.”