The Scarlet Letters by Ellery Queen Page A

“Damn the phone! Hang up, Marty. The hell with whoever it is.”
    â€œBut Dirk–Hello?”
    â€œEllery, Martha.”
    â€œEllery. Hel lo , dear.”
    He wriggled at the relief in her voice.
    â€œIt’s Ellery. How are you? Why haven’t we seen you? Where are you calling from?”
    Dirk’s voice made some irritated sounds.
    â€œI don’t want to interrupt whatever you two are doing,” Ellery said. “Is Nikki around?”
    â€œNikki, it’s for you.”
    â€œI’ll take it in the dressing room, Mar.” Nikki, quick.
    â€œYes, do that!” Dirk.
    â€œDirk.” Martha was laughing. “Don’t mind him, Ellery. He’s in one of his dedicated-artist moods. All right , Dirk! Why don’t you drop in later, Ellery? He’s really dying to see you. Me, too.”
    â€œMaybe I will. If I can get away, Martha.”
    â€œHere I am,” panted Nikki. “Hang up, Mar! A girl has to have some privacy.”
    â€œBye.” Martha laughed; and he heard the click.
    â€œNikki?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIs it all right?”
    â€œYes. Dirk’s got her occupied.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œYou at the–?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd the character–?”
    â€œStill here, waiting. Dirk’s doing?”
    â€œYes. He picked tonight to want to read his book to Martha as far as he’s got. He’s really terribly enthusiastic about it, so naturally–”
    â€œSay no more. But wasn’t she ready to go out?”
    â€œUh-huh. An appointment with a set designer … she said. She phoned somebody with her back turned and left a message that Mrs. Lawrence couldn’t make it at the last moment and would call tomorrow about another ‘appointment.’”
    â€œA message he didn’t get. Okay, Nik. I was worried.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do?”
    â€œHang around here a while. Maybe I’ll drop in later.”
    â€œOh, do!”
    Ellery went back to his table.
    Something new had been added during his absence. A thin small man in a dinner jacket had his palms planted on Van Harrison’s table and was leaning over it, talking. The man had pointed ears and a Hallowe’en smile and whatever he was saying amused him greatly. But it was not amusing Van Harrison. Harrison was looking ugly and old. His long, beautiful hands were clasped about his soup bowl and his knuckles showed pale points. Ellery had the oddest conviction that what Van Harrison wanted to do, more than anything else in the world at that moment, was to pick up the bowl and jam it over the thin man’s face.
    Then the man in the dinner jacket turned his head slightly and Ellery recognized him. It was Leon Fields.
    Fields’s syndicated column, Low and Inside , was the pièce de résistance of over six hundred daily newspapers serving the appetites for gossip, rumor, and innuendo of unestimated millions of the sensation-hungry. His juiciest paragraphs were headed: LEON FIELDS MEAN TODAY , and these dished out the filets mignons of his nightly shopping excursions in the supermarkets of Broadway and café society. As a famous wit remarked to Ellery one night at the Colony, while they watched Fields tablehopping, “One hint that Leon’s in the neighborhood, and nobody goes to bed.”
    Fields had the unadmired reputation of never losing his meat once he got the scent. On the Rialto it was earnestly said that nothing had been surer than death and taxes until Leon Fields came along.
    Ellery had followed his career with clinical interest, and it had only recently dawned on him that Fields was a much-maligned character. The evidence was hidden and scattered, but it was there. Viewed without prejudice, Fields’s activities took on an almost moral blush. He never hounded the innocent; his victims were invariably guilty. Unsavory as some of his tidbits were, no one had ever been able