Fields looked away from the ring then, and at Ellery. The slender little columnist’s eyes had no humanity in them. They were the eyes of a department-store dummy.
“I’m listening,” said Ellery softly.
But Fields seemed unable to get down to cases. He was being driven by a wind of irresistible force and unknown origin. “Don’t make the mistake of underrating Harrison,” he said, and suddenly Ellery knew that Fields was not speaking from hearsay. “He shoots for the moon. Money is his object, and he finds it where it is — way up there. You won’t believe the women he’s had. And he’s never been in trouble, never been found out, there isn’t another newspaperman in the world knows a damn thing about any of this.”
“Incredible,” murmured Ellery.
“He even makes them like it when he walks out, which is usually when the doughing gets tough or there’s danger of fireworks from the mister. A dream-boat who passed through their lives. They always knew it was too good to be true, so what have they got to kick about when he slaps their fannies and says so-long? They’ve got their memories. I told you he’s big-time. Not one of those women has ever squawked.”
“Then how did you find out, Leon?”
“Do I ask you where you find your plots?” The columnist’s thin lip curled. “But I will tell you how come I’ve never given him the treatment.”
“I’ve been wondering about that.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s like this: If I’d ever printed the name — or even hinted at the identity — of so much as one of those women, he’d have named them all.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me,” said Fields simply. “That makes me a reuben, what? How come Leon Fields takes that kind of horse puff? In fact, why shouldn’t Leon Fields print all those juicy names himself? Fair question, and it deserves a fair answer. The answer is this. I was, am, and always will be in love with one of those women, and I’ll scrub Harrison’s back in that ring down there before I’ll let him ruin her life.”
Fields’s hand groped and disappeared inside his coat. “Queen, I’m hung up. I could spoil his racket tomorrow morning in one column and incidentally put half a dozen saps on his trail who’d break every bone in his body, starting with his famous profile. But he’s got me stymied. I can’t talk, I can’t hint, I can’t even breathe. I’ve even got a vested interest in protecting him. Not long ago I actually covered up for him so a pal of mine, another newspaper guy, would stop nosing around. All I can do is needle the slob when I see him, and I’ve even got to be careful about that. That night at Rose’s...” His lips compressed, and he was silent.
A roar filled the Garden as the challenger climbed through the ropes.
In a sort of reaction, the columnist’s hand came out of his coat with violence, and Ellery saw in it a plain white unmarked envelope.
“This thing has burned a hole in my pocket for a long time. I’ve reached my limit. I can’t take it any more.
“I don’t know what you can do with this, Queen, but I’m going to tell you what you can’t do with it. You can’t let it out of your hands. You can’t let anybody read it — anybody. You can’t repeat its contents. You can’t do a damn thing with it that might wind up in its being printed.”
“That kind of ties me in knots, Leon.”
“That’s right,” nodded Fields, “but not as tight as me. That’s where there may be a glimmer. I don’t say there is. The chances are there isn’t.” He still held on to the envelope. “There’s just one possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“You can try something with this I never could, because you’re not me and Harrison hasn’t got his knee in your crotch. You can go to these women one by one and see if you can’t get one of them to break down, to expose him for the cheap, woman-chiseling he-whore he is. Personally, I don’t think you stand a chance. And, what’s more, you’ve got to play this thousand-to-one shot so that I’m kept out of it. It isn’t enough for Harrison to get his. He’s got to get his and not know where he’s getting it from. If the attack comes from one of the women, and he can only trace it back to you, if he can trace it at all, then it’s okay.
“If you want this on those conditions, it’s yours.”
Ellery put his hand out. Fields looked at him. Then he dropped the envelope into Ellery’s hand and rose.
“Don’t even phone me,” he said, and he turned to go.
“One question, Leon.”
“Yeah?”
“Have you any idea who’s playing Juliet these days?”
There was another, and louder, roar, and in the ring far below the champion made his appearance.
“Are you kidding?” said Leon Fields; and he skipped down the runway.
O· P· Q· R·
A new champion was crowned that night, but Ellery was not present at the coronation. He emerged from the Garden just as the gong inside whanged for round one and he got into a cab and went home.
He kept his hand on the envelope and the envelope in his pocket all the way.
He put on the lights and made sure the apartment door was locked and he sat down in the living room without bothering to take his hat off. He opened the envelope very carefully, and he took out what was in it.
It was a sheet of cheap yellow typewriter paper. There was nothing on the sheet but eight typewritten names. The names were all of women, and each name was followed by a date.
He read the list through three times. It was incredible. Of a piece with the incredibility of all the smart, cold-sighted, all-seeing newspapermen who knew nothing about any of this.
They were eight of the most prominent women in New York. Their likenesses were standard inclusions in the fifty-cent magazines. Their names regularly decorated the letterheads of charity fund drives. They were invariably photographed in their ermines and sables and diamond tiaras at the opening of the Metropolitan Opera season. The Horse Show could not go on without them. They owned estates in Newport and Palm Beach and the Basses-Pyrénées. The combined wealth of their husbands and their families could be reckoned not in millions but in hundreds of millions.
And to each of these women, Van Harrison had peddled romance in a private sale.
Ellery thought of what the publication of these eight names in the pertinent context of paid love would mean, and he winced. It would make the dirtiest splash in the history of New York society. Not that he held New York society in special esteem, but it had always seemed to Ellery that the great beauty of the American way was that, under it, even society people had rights. Children would be involved, and teenagers in finishing schools, and innocent relatives on their yachts and at their hundred per cent white Protestant American clubs. Not to mention husbands.
He wondered which of the eight was the woman who, by merely existing, had tied the hands of Leon Fields. Then he knew that for a silly speculation. The answer was: None. There had been nine Juliets in Van Harrison’s personal stock company, and Fields had protected the ninth even from Ellery by the simple expedient of leaving her out. A gap in the dates was confirmation.
When Inspector Queen, still wild-eyed, came home from the theater where he had viewed the championship fight on the television pipeline, he found Ellery already in bed, reading manuscripts.
“What a fight,” the Inspector said, bouncing and sparring. “How’d you like it, son? Talk about Dempsey-Tunney or the second Louis-Schmeling slaughter! Ever see anything like this brawl?”
“Who won?” asked Ellery, glancing up from the page. And he felt under his pillow for the dozenth time since he had got into bed, to make sure the yellow paper was still there.