“The desk clerk,” Merlini was saying, “has been murdered!”
I sat up instantly, fully awake. “Wh-wh — what!”
“Well,” Merlini laughed, his words having had their intended effect, “either that or the service furnished by the Hotel Chesterfield is lamentably lax. We weren’t called at seven. It’s nearly nine, and I’m expecting a busy day. Come, stir yourself.”
Merlini’s powers of divination were not operating with their accustomed accuracy. His prediction of a busy day was far short of the mark. It turned out to be an incredibly hectic day filled with an army of incidents whose advancing shock troops, in the person of Stuart Towne, met us as we left the room a few minutes later. We encountered him in the hall, clad in pajamas and carrying soap and towel. He greeted us pleasantly and with some surprise.
“Hello,” he said. “Staying on for more circus?”
“Yes,” Merlini answered, “I think so. There were parts of last night’s performance that we missed.”
If Towne appreciated the double-entendre he didn’t admit it. “Good. I’ll see you on the lot, then.”
He disappeared into the bathroom and Merlini, as the door closed behind him, scowled at it. Then quickly he took a notebook from his pocket, tore out a sheet, held it against the wall, and rapidly drew on it in pencil these characters:
He hurried with it to the bathroom door and knocked.
“Yes?” Towne’s voice asked.
“Sorry to bother you now,” Merlini said, “but something extremely odd happened last night. It’s just occurred to me that you might be able to explain it.”
Towne unlocked the door and stepped part way out, shaving brush in hand. “Something odd?” he asked.
“Yes. And in your line. Do you think the Hotel Chesterfield could possibly harbor a nest of international spies?” Merlini’s voice was completely serious.
Towne looked vaguely alarmed. He frowned, glanced sharply across at me, and then grinned. “Sure,” he said. “In a Hitchcock movie, but this isn’t that. Or is it? What do you mean?”
“I suspect that most detective-story writers,” Merlini went on, “like their literary ancestor, Poe, have some interest in codes and ciphers. Do you?”
Towne’s slow nod was puzzled. “Yes, I’ve looked into the subject a bit. I know Yardley’s book. But—” His eye caught the slip of paper Merlini held out.
“Some person unknown,” Merlini explained, serious as an owl, “shoved this note under our door last night. It looks distinctly ominous, and I don’t know whether it’s a warning, a threat, a pictographic description of the Army’s newest bomber, or a joke. In any case, it seems to have been delivered at the wrong door. It’s quite incomprehensible. Can you shed any light?”
Towne scowled at the penciled characters, turned the paper over to examine its blank obverse side, hesitated, apparently still not quite convinced of Merlini’s seriousness, and then studied the inscription again.
I waited almost breathlessly. His hesitation was highly suspicious. I knew what three of those symbols meant, and I was very sure that Towne knew, too. I didn’t know why Merlini had set this little trap; but it looked as if he was going to make a catch. Towne was so close to putting his foot in it that I almost uttered an involuntary: Careful!
Then he spoke — and the trap clicked.
“No,” he said doubtfully, “I can’t rattle off a translation for you offhand. It must be a joke of some sort, but I’d like to have a try at it. May I have a copy?”
“You can have the original,” Merlini said. “You’re probably quite right about the joke. I’m incurably romantic. I’ll inquire downstairs if there’s a boy about the place. Age fifteen. One who’s been reading The Goldbug. We’ll see you later, then. If you do make anything of it, let us know.”
Towne nodded, and we left him standing in the doorway, frowning intently at the paper, his puzzled air, I was certain now, completely false.
“His acting,” I told Merlini once we were out of ear shot down the stairs, “is amateurish. But why does he pretend not to know those last three signs, the common proofreader’s symbols for delete, insert quotes, and period? And why did you suspect he might react that way? And what are those other characters?”
“Hobo hieroglyphics,” Merlini answered. “The first means Tough on tramps. Bad dog; the second, Follow this street; and the third is an English criminal sign signifying A buyer of stolen goods lives here. The dot within the circle, the proofreader’s manner of indicating the insertion of a period, is also a hobo mark that means You can count on a thirty-day jolt for vagrancy in this town!”
“Um,” I said. “The intriguing reactions of Mr. Towne. They become more cryptic by the minute. Last night he pretended to know nothing about pickpocket language. Now he won’t admit knowing anything about hobo graphic signs — or, what’s even more amazing — proofreader’s symbols. Yet, knowing them, he must suspect that the note is a phony and that you were trying to test him. But he denies all knowledge just the same. Why? It’s almost as if he were trying to make us regard him with deep suspicion. I don’t get it.”
Merlini looked pained. “Ross, your before-breakfast logic is something to behold. Pythagoras, Hegel, Kant, Descartes, Spinoza, and some others must be whirling like electric dynamos in their graves. I’m reminded of Isadore Cohen, traveling salesman for Cohen, Cohen and Cohen, cloaks and suits. He met a bitter business rival on the train. ‘Ver are you goink?’ he asked. The rival replied politely, ‘Buffalo.’ Isadore grew angry. ‘Buffalo!’ he growled disgustedly. ‘You tell me Buffalo so that I think you’re goink to Schenectady, ven I know it’s Buffalo you’re goink to all the time. Vy do you lie to me that way, Jacob?’”
“Does that little parable,” I asked, surprised, “mean that our author, bank-robber friend—”
“Hist,” Merlini warned, “the desk clerk.”
That gentleman came hastily through the door beyond the desk, his shirt tail inadequately tucked in behind, his fingers fumbling sleepily at a wrinkled tie. Seeing us, he apologized nervously.
“Just coming up to call you. I’m afraid I slept right through my alarm. Four times I got into bed last night, and then something happened. I got up when you arrived. After that another gentleman checked in, and at two this morning when the plumbing in Room 33 sprung a leak, Mr. Goudge, the cream-separator salesman in the room below, was nearly drowned, and—”
Merlini cut in on this tale of woe. “You’re the day and the night clerk, as well?”
The harried man nodded. “Day clerk, night clerk, general manager, bellboy, and some other things. Twenty-four hours a day. Of course most nights we don’t get any business after that 10:40 train, but last night with the circus here and all—”
“The gentleman who checked in after we did.” Merlini was examining the register. “Is he still here?”
“Oh, Lord! And he wanted to be called at six!” The desk clerk scuttled from behind his enclosure and started for the stairs.
“Wait,” Merlini stopped him. “According to the register you put him in Room 26—down the hall from us. This looks like his key with some money here on the desk.”
“Oh.” The clerk looked at the objects. “He must have gone.”
I took a quick look at the register. The name signed beneath ours in a large hasty scrawl was Keith Atterbury’s.
Merlini ignored the look I gave him, calmly tore two dollar bills several times across, neatly folded the pieces, and handed them to the clerk. I turned and followed him out as the clerk started to protest, then stopped, having found that the bills, unfolded, were fully restored.