The Player on the Other Side (7 page)

You will stop just long enough to be certain — be absolutely certain — that your watch corresponds to his mantel clock, to the second. If anyone is about, pass on through and check it later in the day.

Under no circumstances overlook this detail — it is vital to my plan and to your glorious future.

At 7:20 make your way back quietly up to the tower. If you are seen and questioned either going up or coming down, say that you are going for your pruning shears.

At 7:31 o'clock you are to count the stone blocks on the north edge of the parapet, Number 1 being the first one to the right of the concrete coping at the corner.

At 7:33 you are to be in position with your hands on the 7th block. You will find the concrete cap cracked and the mortar cleaned away all around this block.

Precisely at 7:34 you are to push the block as hard as you can, so that it falls off the tower.

You will then quietly pick up your shears and, without hurrying, you will return by way of the kitchen and the garage corridor to the garage.

Place the shears on their hook as you go in, pick up the socket wrench from the bench, go round to the right side of Percival York's Ryan sports car, lie down on the mechanic's dolly you will find ready for you, roll under the car and begin to drain the oil from the crankcase.

Ignore any sounds or voices you may hear unless and until you are called. If you are called, wait until you are called twice before answering. Then and thereafter you are to know nothing about the tower, the stone or anything else connected with these orders. Stand firm, volunteer nothing and, above all, be yourself.

Be yourself, My Dear Walt. Be yourself, for by so doing you please me in my choice. Watch yourself being yourself, and share with me my pride in you, and recognize, as I have recognized, how infallibly I have chosen.

No one — no one at all — could do what you have done. No one will ever do what you will do. To qualify for that, a man would have to be you — and only you can be that. Be yourself, My Dear Walt.

Have you asked yourself why I call you, with these capital letters, My Dear Walt? — why I have not done so before, and whether there is some special meaning to it?

I assure you there is, and I promise you I shall make this revelation in my next writing. And that will be after you have performed this service for me — for us.

Dispose of this letter as you have the others.

Y

8

Self-Block

The time came (yet again) when Inspector Richard Queen of New York City police Headquarters had had altogether and finally
enough —
up to here and brimming over. He recognized the signs. From long practice he knew how to contain what could be contained and how to sluice off the rest silently. But he knew also that when frustrated fatherhood reached the floodline, it would crest and overflow because of one extra drop — without warning, with a roar.

That time came one evening when, having let himself into the Queen apartment, the Inspector found no Ellery to greet him with a smile (or a frown) and/or a tingling highball to wash away the back-tooth grit of Centre Street.

The old man felt an almost audible
pop!
of disappointment. He kicked the foyer door to with his heel and put away his keys, frosted head, and sparrow face cocked to listen; for the next most welcome thing, queerly enough, would be to find himself alone at this hour — meaning that Ellery had found something outside himself to interest and occupy him. The rattle of newsprint from Ellery's study ended that, and Level Two of anticipation went the way of the first.

Level Three was the wishful-thinking one, belonging as it did to the dream-of-glory family — of warty frogs turning into genuine handsome princes, of six-cent stock certificates suddenly quoted at &785. Anticipation on this third level, as it applied to Ellery's current plight, would have the voice of his typewriter soaring out of this world (away from Centre Street, or a private case, or an item in the newspaper) … high, high out of this world into the interplanetary spaces of Pure Mind … the voice bespeaking a new idea, a new twist, an Original. A sealed-room answer, perhaps, which no one had thought of before. A murderer with motive as deviously obscure as his logic was brilliantly clear to the all-seeing Ellery in the tale. Or the story might be The One, the ultimate case, the book for the books, satisfying on all counts to all critics, to the author himself — and, of course, to the Inspector. For Level Three was a split level, whose impossible creation would bring joy even to an old man who knew how impossible it was.

But … listening to the inhabited silence, smelling the bitterness of coffee too long warming in the pot and of air blue-fogged by too much tobacco in a room dead-still with failure, Inspector Queen felt the bottom go out of his Level Three and the silly disappointment invade his shoulders, which it bowed.

The old gentleman crossed his living room to the son's study doorway and stood there looking in at the long limp ingrown figure at the desk — slumping as it had slumped yesterday, and the day (and week) before, and as it would likely slump tomorrow, at that mute, reproachful typewriter. Then Ellery turned his silvery eyes (tarnished now) from the newspaper, his head not moving, his spine remaining slack and hopeless, and in a voice as warm as ever (but tired as ever, too) said, ‘Hello, Dad. Anything happen downtown today?' And this was simply another way of saying, Because nothing happened up here today … as usual.

Anything happen? the Inspector thought. Oh, yes. A 183-ticket scofflaw happened. A bakery-truck driver allowed his eleven-year-old son to watch him blow off the mother's head with a 12-gauge shotgun;
that
happened. And two good officers were in critical condition, beaten up by what looked like the total population of the slum block in which they were picking up a pusher; there's a human-interest problem for you. And then there was the mysterious case of the teenager, a little girl really, who had already found out so much about life that she drank an incredible quantity of gasoline and was being rushed to the hospital when the ambulance struck a taxicab, killing both drivers, the taxi fare, the intern — everybody involved but the terrified kid, who would survive. And the thirty-year man the Inspector had known since the days when the police stables had dirt floors and smelled of honest horse instead of carbolic acid — a Captain now —
he
was caught today with his hand in the till; and what would you do with that, my son?

‘Nothing,' the old man said to his son.

‘Rats,' Ellery said. ‘I was hoping …'

This was the interchange, spoken and unspoken, this was the moment when the Inspector's containment could contain no more and the sluice spilled over, not silently.

‘Well, what do you know,' Inspector Queen said in a loud voice. ‘You were
hoping
,' and the sluice-gate opened and out it poured, in a snarling rush. ‘You were hoping I'd bring you a present, little boy? Some nice chewy chocolate-covered goodie hot off Centre Street?'

Ellery took his feet down and swung about to look. An unbelievable pugnacity in his father's stance, weight shifted forward not quite to the balls of the feet, heels not quite raised …

‘Hey,' Ellery said, jumping up.

‘So you
can
get off your backside! What did you do all day?'

Ellery said, ‘I —'

‘What else did you use that typewriter for besides something to lean your elbows on?'

Ellery said again, ‘I —'

‘How many cups of coffee did you drink today? How many packs of lung-buster did you smoke? Do you know how this room stinks? Ever hear of opening a window? It looks like one of those test chambers at Air Pollution Control in here! What's got into you, Ellery?'

‘Well,' Ellery began. ‘I —'

‘Do you know I used to look forward to coming home at night? Just what do you think you're doing, anyway? Waiting for me to bring you home a story?'

Ellery said, ‘Wow,' and chuckled. ‘That's pretty good, Dad. For a moment there I thought you were serious.'

‘
Serious?
' the Inspector hissed. He crumpled his topcoat and flung it across the room, at the same time charging up to the other side of Ellery's desk and leaning so far over with his chin stuck out that Ellery could see every aspen hair in his gray brush mustache. ‘I'll tell you how serious I am, Mr. Queen! I — want — you — the hell out of here!'

‘What?' Ellery said feebly.

‘Get out!
Go
somewhere,
do
something! You say you're a writer? Okay! Imagine something a living human being would do — anything at all! — and then just go out and pretend you're it And pretty soon, Ellery, or so help me I'll have you embalmed!'

With which the waters of parental anxiety fell off to a trickle, and the Inspector went over and retrieved his coat and stumped out of Ellery's study, muttering to himself. All of this Ellery watched with the round eyes and parted lips of an adenoidal idiot; and then he rubbed his unshaven cheeks and sat down again, looking intelligent.

So it was that (yet again) Inspector Richard Queen of police headquarters found himself, topcoat over his arm, keys in hand, standing in the doorway to his son's study, peering through the old blue fog at Ellery's recumbent length and bristling cheeks, chest at low tide, barely rising and falling. He seemed to be asleep.

The Inspector sighed. For him another working day had passed; for Ellery … ‘Still slaving away, son?' the old man said. There was even a sort of laughter in it.

But from this point everything was different.

Ellery's eyelids flew open, he sprang from his chair, he darted around the desk, he cried, ‘Dad, I've got it!'

The old man stepped back a pace, as if what his son had got might be contagious, ‘You have?'

Ellery followed him up, poking at him with a long, torn forefinger. ‘You were right the other night, Dad, but you were wrong, too. And I was wrong on all counts. I thought I had to wait for something to happen before I could write. Occupational blindness. All I had to do was figure out
why
I couldn't write. And I figured it out today!'

‘You did?' the Inspector said cautiously.

‘My trouble,' Ellery chortled, snatching his father's hat off, grabbing his topcoat, tossing them both over his shoulder, forcing the old man down into the overstuffed chair near the fireplace, ‘my trouble is that I have a contemporary mind. That's all, Dad. That's absolutely all that's been wrong!'

‘It is?'

‘Certainly! I've always had a contemporary mind. I mean I've always written about the case I was working on at the time, or the one that was bothering you downtown — something
real
, in the here and now. But the times change, my old one,' Ellery went on, striding up and down, rubbing his palms together like a Boy Scout making fire, kicking the rug, flinging himself onto the sofa, springing up again and darting to the study to pick up the Inspector's coat and hat, ‘and the more the times change the
faster
they change. Did you know that? Hah? Ellery's law? Hell, they change so fast between one book and the next — what am I saying? between one day and the next? — that you don't even see it happen. Get my point, Dad? Do I convey anything to you?'

‘No,' said his father.

‘Well, look?' cried Ellery. ‘What's happening to elevator operators?'

‘What?' said his father. ‘Who?'

‘Elevator operators. I'll tell you what's happening to them. They're
disappearing
, that's what — automated out of existence. Take the theater. Can you recognize a play any more? Ten-second scenes. Speeches consisting entirely of nouns and adjectives — no verbs. Actors moving scenery, and stagehands acting. Some of the cast in the audience. No curtain. No footlights. No
anything
of yesterday's theater. Everything's different, unexpected, purposely mystifying — not mystifying like a puzzle to be solved, but mystifying long after you're home in bed wondering what it was all about — and
meant
to be that way. My God, take this coat.' Ellery whisked and twirled the Inspector's topcoat about, looking for the label. ‘Here! Dacron and orlon mixture with a nylon lining. This is coal, water and air you're wearing, Dad — I'll bet you thought it came from a sheep!' Ellery laugh-roared with the wonder of it, hurling the topcoat and hat across the living room into the foyer. ‘No, no, stay where you are, Dad — I'll mix 'em!'

‘What?' croaked the Inspector.

‘The drinks.' Ellery scudded into the kitchen. The Inspector leaned back warily, keeping one eye open. He came upright to the alert when Ellery rushed back past him to the bar in the corner. ‘Yes, sir, that's what's been wrong with me, the contemporary mind,' said Ellery briskly, snatching the stainless-steel ice mallet from its niche and striking his thumb smartly with it. ‘Damn.' He aimed more carefully at the canvas-wrapped ice cubes. ‘Look. I don't want to sound mystic or anything, Dad, but sometimes I used to get the feeling I was a kind of natural counterpoise —'

‘A what?'

‘Well, that I existed because a certain kind of criminal existed. That I did what
I
did because he did what
he
did. He was' — Ellery probed finely — ‘he was the player on the other side.'

‘Other side.' The Inspector wet his lips as he watched Ellery's hands at the bar.

‘Yes. Well, that's it. I haven't been able to write any more because the player on the other side doesn't exist any more.' He squinted at the small print on the bitters bottle. ‘The times have outdated him — swept him away, and me with him. I mean the old me. See what I mean?'

‘Come
on
,' the Inspector said.

‘Right away, Dad. Because, you see, you constituted authorities have come up with just too much wizardry — a speck of dust, and you know the murderer's height, weight, prep school and breeding habits. Police science today specializes in making the unusual usual — instant communications, electronic bugs, consulting head-doctors, non-criminal fingerprint files …' He brought his father the long-awaited drink, which the knurled fingers seized greedily and conveyed mouthward with a snort of almost passion. ‘Why, even the TV writers, for all the hoke and hooey they shovel out, deal in dosimeters and polygraphs and other miracles of the lab, and sometimes they even use 'em right.' Ellery fell back on the sofa, waved his glass. ‘So what chance does little-old-the-likes-of-me have, with my old-fashioned wonders? There's no wonderment left in the real world any longer. Or rather, everything is so wonderful the wonder's gone out of it. I can't out-think a solid-state binary computer; I can't outplay an electronic chess opponent — it'll beat me every time. Skoal.'