“Oop.”
“Lost in a madhouse. Why is the furniture scattered every which way?”
“How should I know? Ellery, where are you?”
“In Bedlam. Keep your head now, Nikki, and stay where you are. Sooner or later a St. Bernard will find you and bring—”
Nikki screamed.
“Thank God,” said Ellery, shutting his eyes.
The room was full of blessed Consolidated Edison light, and various adult figures in black-cat costumes and masks were leaping and laughing and shouting: “Surpriiiiiise!” like idiot phantoms at the crisis of a delirium.
O Hallowe’en.
“Ann! Ann Trent!” Nikki was squealing. “Oh, Ann, you fool, how ever did you find me?”
“Nikki, you’re looking wonderful. Oh, but you’re famous, darling. The great E. Q.’s secretary...”
Nuts to you, sister. Even bouncier than predicted. With that lazy, hippy strut. And chic, glossy chic. Lugs her sex around like a sample case. Kind of female who would be baffled by an egg. Looks five years older than she is, Antoine notwithstanding.
“But it’s not Trent any more, Nikki—Mrs. John Crombie. Johnnnny!”
“Ann, you’re married? And didn’t invite me to the wedding!”
“Spliced in dear old Lunnon. John’s British—or was. Johnny, stop flirting with Edith Baxter and come here!”
“Ann darlin’ — this exquisite girl! Scotch or bourbon, Nikki? Scotch if you’re the careful type—but bourbon works faster.”
John Crombie, Gent. Eyes of artificial blue, slimy smile, sunlamp complexion, Olivier chin. British Club and Fox and Hounds—he posts even in a living room. He will say in a moment that he loathés Americah. Exactly. Ann Trent Crombie must have large amounts of the filthy. He despises her and patronizes her friends. He will fix me with the superior Mayfair smile and flap a limp brown hand... Quod erat demonstrandum.
“I warn you, Nikki,” Ann Crombie was saying, “I’m hitched to a man who tries to jockey every new female he meets.” Blush hard, prim Nikki. Friends grow in unforeseen directions. “Oh, Lucy! Nikki, do you remember my kid sister Lu—?”
Squeal, squeal. “Lucy Trent! This isn’t you?”
“Am I grown up, Nikki?”
“Heavens!”
“Lucy’s done all the party decorating, darling—spent the whole sordid day up here alone fixing things up. Hasn’t she done an inspired job? But then I’m so useless.”
“Ann means she wouldn’t help, Nikki. Just a lout.”
Uncertain laugh. Poor Lucy. Embarrassed by her flowering youth, trying hard to be New York... There she goes refilling a glass—emptying an ashtray—running out to the kitchen—for a tray of fresh hot pigs-in-blankets? — bong!… the unwanted and gauche hiding confusion by making herself useful. Keep away from your brother-in-law, dear; that’s an upstanding little bosom under the Black Cat’s hide.
“Oh, Ellery, do come here and meet the Baxters. Mrs. Baxter—Edith—Ellery Queen...”
What’s this? A worm who’s turned, surely! The faded-fair type, hard-used by wedlock. Very small, a bit on the spready side—she’d let herself go—but now she’s back in harness again, all curried and combed, with a triumphant lift to her pale head, like an old thoroughbred proudly prancing in a paddock she had never hoped to enter again. And that glitter of secret pleasure in her blinky brown eyes, almost malice, whenever she looked at Ann Crombie...
“Jerry Baxter, Edith’s husband. Ellery Queen.”
“Hiya, son!”
“Hi yourself, Jerry.”
Salesman, or advertising-agency man, or Broadway agent. The life of the party. Three drinks and he’s off to the races. He will be the first to fall in the apple tub, the first to pin the tail on Lucy or Nikki instead of on the donkey, the first to be sick and the first to pass out. Skitter, stagger, sweat, and whoop. Why do you whoop, Jerry Baxter?
Ellery shook hot palms, smiled with what he hoped was charm, said affably: “Yes, isn’t it?” “Haven’t we met somewhere?” “Here, here, that’s fine for now,” and things like that, wondering what he was doing in a hotel living-room festooned with apples, marshmallows, nuts, and crisscrossing crêpe-paper twists, hung with grinning pumpkins and fancy black-and-orange cardboard cats, skeletons, and witches, and choked with bourbon fumes, tobacco smoke, and Chanel No. 5. Some Chinese lanterns were reeking, the noise was maddening, and merely to cross the room required the preparations of an expedition, for the overturned furniture and other impedimenta on the floor—cunningly plotted to trap groping Black Cats on their arrival—had been left where they were.
So Ellery, highball in hand, wedged himself in a safe corner and mentally added Nikki to the Druids and the Romans.
Ellery accepted the murder game without a murmur. He knew the futility of protest. Wherever he went, people at once suggested a murder game, apparently on the theory that a busman enjoys nothing so much as a bus. And, of course, he was to be the detective.
“Well, well, let’s get started,” he said gaily, for all the traditional Hallowe’en games had been played, Nikki had slapped Jerry Baxter laughingly once and British Johnny—not laughingly—twice, the house detective had made a courtesy call, and it was obvious the delightful evening had all but run its course. He hoped Nikki would have sense enough to cut the pièce de résistance short, so that a man might go home and give his thanks to God; but no, there she was in a whispery, giggly huddle with Ann Crombie and Lucy Trent, while John Crombie rested his limp hand on her shoulder and Edith Baxter splashed some angry bourbon into her glass.
Jerry was on all fours, being a cat.
“In just a minute,” called Nikki, and she tripped through the archway—kitchen-bound, to judge from certain subsequent cutlery sounds—leaving Crombie’s hand momentarily suspended.
Edith Baxter said: “Jerry, get up off that floor and stop making a darned fool of yourself!” —furiously.
“Now we’re all set,” announced Nikki, reappearing. “Everybody around in a circle. First I’ll deal out these cards, and whoever gets the ace of spades don’t let on! — because you’re the Murderer.”
“Ooh!”
“Ann, you stop peeking.”
“Who’s peeking?”
“A tenner says I draw the fatal pasteboard,” laughed Crombie. “I’m the killer type.”
“I’m the killer type!” shouted Jerry Baxter. “Gack-gack-gack-gack!”
Ellery closed his eyes.
“Ellery! Wake up.”
“Huh?”
Nikki was shaking him. The rest of the company were lined up on the far side of the room from the archway, facing the wall. For a panicky moment he thought of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
“You go on over there with the others, smartypants. You musn’t see who the murderer is, either, so you close your eyes, too.”
“Fits in perfectly with my plans,” said Ellery, and he dutifully joined the five people at the wall.
“Spread out a little there—I don’t want anyone touching anyone else. That’s it. Eyes all shut? Good. Now I want the person who drew the ace of spades—Murderer—to step quietly away from the wall—”
“Not cricket,” came John Crombie’s annoying alto. “You’ll see who it is, dear heart.”
“Yes,” said Edith Baxter nastily. “The light’s on.”
“But I’m running this assassination! Now stop talking, eyes closed. Step out, Murderer—that’s it... quietly! No talking there at the wall! Mr. Queen is very bright and he’d get the answer in a shot just by eliminating voices—”
“Oh, come, Nikki,” said Mr. Queen modestly.