The Player on the Other Side (29 page)

‘JHWH, Jehovah, on the cards — Yahweh, the Y, on the letters … Jehovah, Yahweh' … Inspector Queen glanced suspiciously at his son. ‘What are you trying to hand me? That Walt actually thought he was getting mail from
God
?'

‘Before sheer merriment overcomes you,' said Ellery, ‘I advise you to reread Y's letters with that thought in mind. “You know who I am.” “Have faith in me and I shall guard you and keep you.” “There is no thing I cannot do.” “I am with you wherever you go.” “For I possess all powers, and I am everywhere.” “You may not speak my name.” And so on. That constant, soothing, reassuring, intimate,
omnipotent
refrain.'

Over the old man's face came a look that was very like terror. He actually, in the flesh, shivered.

‘Think of poor little lonely, boxed-in, blank-past Walt,' said Ellery with the same wincing frown. ‘No one notices him. No one is concerned about him. No one cares enough about him to like him or even dislike him as far as he can tell. Erased as he is, he still contains within himself the faint impression of the human matrix.

‘And suddenly,' said Ellery, ‘suddenly he's noticed, he's liked, he's admired — he's even asked for
favors
! — by none other than the Lord God himself. Do you wonder that Walt did as the letters told him to do? Do you wonder that he's never been frightened, has never felt worried, by what might happen to him? That he's refused with the greatest of ease, happily, consistently, to be trapped or cajoled or browbeaten into saying that Name? How could mere mortals touch him? Walt's had it made. In the very biggest way.'

‘Four Bibles in his room,' murmured the Inspector. ‘
Four.
'

‘Yes, and they mean something rather different now, Dad, don't they? Now that we know what fits in. That time I bumped into him outside Myra's, for instance. I questioned him about Tom Archer's saying Walt had crept up on him and Ann. I asked Walt what Archer had said, and Walt said simply, “He saw me and said, ‘God.'” It wasn't exclamatory the way Walt said it; it was quite matter-of-fact. God
is
a fact to Walt; they're on the most personal terms … And then those initials of his. Coincidence? Miracle? Whatever it was in reality, in Walt's book — or maybe I ought to capitalize it — it was just another manifestation of Him Who was the Author of the letters … Meaningless in themselves, these things. But in context, a giveaway. And there I was, day after day, in the thick of it, recording and not computing.'

‘God!' said the Inspector; and it was impossible to judge how he used the word. ‘What put you onto this finally, son?'

‘Ann's dog, Beelzebub. Familiarly — Bub.'

‘Ann's
dog
?' His father gaped.

‘Yes. After Perce was arrested. When I went over to see Archer. We were kidding around about the dog, and Archer was showing Ann and me how he was teaching it to do a somersault.'

‘Hold it, hold it,' said the Inspector faintly. ‘A few seconds ago we were talking about the Old Testament.'

‘Exactly. That's it. Don't you see? I watched Archer show the dog off — lift up its front paws and flip it over backwards.
Backwards
. Something in my brain went —
snick!
clean as can be — and dropped into place. Talk about divine intervention. Something's been begging me for days to look —just look — and I'd see it. But I didn't, I didn't. Till Archer flipped the dog.'

‘Simmer down, Ellery,' muttered the old man. ‘Try to make sense, for my sake. What's with this backwards-dog business?'

‘Dog,' said Ellery. ‘Backwards.'

‘Dog, backwards,' repeated the Inspector. ‘Dog, backwards. D-o-g … g-o-d. G-o-d.' And, suddenly, his lips clamped shut.

‘God,' said Ellery, nodding. He rose and took his father's empty glass and his own over to the bar. ‘That was it. It mad me think, “God.” And the next thing I knew, I was in the Old Testament, thinking “Jehovah,” “Yahweh.” Thinking JHWH. Thinking Y.'

The Inspector was silent.

Fumbling with the ice, Ellery said, ‘Now Jehovah, Yahweh, was a member of no Trinity, was represented by no lambs, suffered no little children. He was an almighty vindictive deity. He meddled in individual lives. And He was always right because He
was
. In Genesis. Exodus. Remember Job. Think of what He did to Onan, to Lot's wife, to everybody in Noah's time.

‘And now,' said Ellery grimly, ‘imagine His intrusion into the here and now, into York Square. And let's say that you're Walt. Couldn't He have done these things as far as you, Walt, are concerned? Isn't it perfectly reasonable that He chose to choose you, Walt, as His instrument simply because He felt like it?'

Ellery handed his father the freshened highball, but the old man shook his head and set the glass down. ‘I'm still foggy on this, Ellery. I mean, what kind of mentality would conceive of pretending to be God Almighty, just to get that poor little slob Walt to do his dirty work?'

‘Dad, you haven't been following.' Ellery's eyes were quite bright. ‘No one
pretended
to be Yahweh. The writer of those letters
is
Yahweh.'

‘Oh, come on, now!' shouted the Inspector.

‘In his own mind, to the best of his own devoutest belief and conviction, Y is exactly what he says he is. Walt has no monopoly on unshakable faith.'

The old man thrashed about. ‘That's as wild a theory —'

‘It is not,' said Ellery with slow and chilling emphasis, ‘a theory, Dad. I can prove it. I'll go further. I'll take you to Him.'

‘Gosh,' said the Inspector, but the sneer had an undernote of brute anger. ‘Meet Yahweh in person. I better change into my best suit.'

‘
He's
satisfied that he's Yahweh,' said Ellery, unmoved. ‘Whether
you
think so or not is, I assure you, a matter of complete unconcern to him.'

‘I've had enough of this,' snarled his father, jumping up. ‘I don't know what's got into you, Ellery, but I'm not going to sit here all day listening to a lot of mystical — mystical
boloney
mishmash! Just tell me one thing: Who is he?'

‘I've told you,' said Ellery, positively luminous. ‘He's Yahweh.'

‘All
right
!' howled the old man. ‘There's some crazy thing you want to do — want
me
to do — I can tell by your eyes. We're going to have a fight about it. We'll wind up doing it. And you'll scare the devil into me!'

Ellery did not deny it. He folded his arms and waited.

Inspector Queen inhaled hugely. Then, in a patient — a more than patient — voice, he asked, ‘Ellery — son — what is it you want me to do?'

‘Turn Walt loose again.'

At which hell really broke loose.

There were four of them, crouched on the grimy fire escape outside Room 312 of the Hotel Altitude. Two of them were named Queen. Each of the others represented a round of the wild battle they had fought all afternoon and evening and up to this midnight moment, and which they were still fighting. The third man's presence was the result of the Inspector's last-ditch refusal to go on with any such harebrained and dangerous and disastrous scheme, because the Police Commissioner would never agree.

‘Then invite him along,' Ellery had said.

The fourth man was here as a result of the Commissioner's total objection that the D.A. wouldn't allow, it. ‘Then let's invite him, too,' the Queens had said, in one voice. To enlist co-workers of such substance had proved sound strategy; it handled every human obstacle of lesser weight, like jail wardens. Weightier obstacles were simply not informed; they could be presented with the
fait accompli
‘that you've proved your point,' the District Attorney had put it grimly, ‘or that somebody else can figure out three murders and a flubbed suicide on a fire escape.' And besides, Ellery had pointed out, there was just not room enough on the fire escape for the Mayor, too. His Honor ran to bulk.

Ellery was inspired, exalted. He planned like a Metternich, he drove like a Legree.

Walt had been released. Someone had said something to him about ‘insufficient evidence,' but he had hardly listened; release was no more than his expectation and due. He was taken to the prison hospital, given his clothes (in which &200 had been planted) and abruptly marched into a private room containing a bed containing Percival York.

Reports on this encounter could describe nothing of interest but a moment of suspended-animation stillness, Walt's specialty. Then they had led him out and turned him loose.

‘That's why it has to work,' Ellery had expounded in setting up the encounter. ‘Since we jumped him on the terrace he's been cooped up in a cell with only a Bible to read. Nobody's ever told him he failed to kill Percival York. Seeing Percival alive, his antlike mentality will perceive the unalterable necessity to finish the unfinished job. Still, he's Walt; and he won't know how to go about it. Unless and until he gets another letter. He has to have another letter. He'll get it.'

Gill, the gnomelike manager of the Hotel Altitude, had been scooped up. His false teeth chittered and his big ears jerked. He didn't want trouble. Room 312 hadn't been cleaned, it was the maid's night off. Or no, there was a paying guest in 312. Or was there? And anyway, who's going to pay for the room? Faithfully promised the personal vendetta of Inspector Richard Queen and the vacuum-cleaner scrutiny of the Department of Fire Inspection, the Board of Health, the Commissioner of Licenses and the Morals Squad, Manager Gill was suddenly anxious to co-operate.

Walt was not followed. There was no need. He was watched. He was watched in ways that would have been the envy of the city, state, federal and international security forces which had once been assigned the nerve-twitching task of providing protection to Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro during their simultaneous stay in New York City.

From the jail steps Walt had only two directions to choose between; both routes were congested with pedestrians, loungers holding up buildings, watchers from windows and watchers from cars, both parked and on the move.

Walt chose to go north. The men who had been deployed to the south were instantly redeployed, to intercept all possible random developments. Around the little handyman, as he oozed along, there was observably nothing out of the ordinary. But by his movements he unknowingly commanded the shifting and shuttling of a small army of men.

The equipment for Operation Walt was a policeman's delight. Ellery had urged the Commissioner to use a logistical maximum, cunningly justifying the whole, mad, awesome operation as not only the pursuit and capture of a vengeful deity but the equivalent of a high-level, top-secret emergency drill of the first importance. The Commissioner was charmed, and the police and citizen's radio bands soon set up an elbowing clamour of calls. Minute transistor sets relayed messages from one pedestrian to another, from the second pedestrian to a parked or moving car, from car to radio dispatch to Morse flasher and then back to pedestrian again.

Everything was collated and filtered and passed to the Commissioner's earplugs; checked and monitored and refiltered and cross-checked. Sets were pulled off emergency racks and found to contain dead batteries, or no batteries at all. Channel control crystals turned out to be mislabeled; and so on. There was not too much of this, however; and when all was in readiness everyone concerned granted that these equipment delinquencies might not have been discovered for years if not for Ellery Queen's Operation Walt. (Officially, of course, it was known as the Commissioner's Operation Walt.)

The Commissioner's dearest joy was the transistorized squealer, broadcasting on 27.215 megacycles (Band 21), fixed automatically by direction-finders on a whole echelon of mobile stations, and mounted — batteries and all, and all unbeknownst — in the heel of Walt's left shoe.

No, it could be said with confidence that they weren't about to lose John Henry Walt.

33

Checkmate

At first it seemed like much ado about very little, for Walt made no attempt to get lost; in the manner of the ant, he forged ahead as if activated by instinctive forces, without a backward or sidelong glance.

But at one point Walt turned a corner; and when the nearest watchers re-established visual contact they sensed a wariness in him, as if something had suddenly happened to alert his mechanic faculties. Now he occasionally glanced over his shoulder; he readjusted his carriage and his stride lengthened, as if to disguise himself. Had the robot become suspicious? It certainly seemed so; and the word, in various inflections, flashed hither and about, new orders were rapped, the lines tightened, reserve forces slipped in to take over from men whose recurrent faces might have caused Walt's sudden caution. The measures apparently had their effect; Walt became preoccupied, he began to hurry his movements, turned purposeful.

He went first to a chain drug store, where he purchased a cheap tablet of lined paper and some plain white envelopes.

He went next to a pawnshop (hair-raisingly, within four minutes of its closing) and came out with a second-hand portable typewriter.

He then stepped into a second drugstore and put a coin into the slot of a stamp-dispensing machine.

And at twenty minutes past the eleventh night hour he came to rest on the dissolute sidewalk in front of the Hotel Altitude.

And of all things, lit a cigarette.

He had bought a pack in the second drug store; they had wondered about that. Walt did not smoke — at least, the Queens had never seen him smoke; the detectives on the case had never noted his smoking in their reports: no one in York Square had ever mentioned his smoking; and there was no evidence in his room above the garage that he was addicted to the habit.