Read an Excerpt
The Player on the Other Side
By Ellery Queen MysteriousPress.com
Copyright © 1963 Ellery Queen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2002-2
CHAPTER 1
Y's Gambit
He had written:
Dear Walt:
You know who I am.
You do not know that you know.
You shall.
I write this to let you know that I know who you really are. I know the skill of your hands. I know the quality of your obedience. I know where you come from and what you are doing. I know what you think. I know what you want. I know your great destiny.
I like you.
Y
Walt knelt with the sun on his back and the hard sharp bronze letters imprinting his knees, TH on the left knee, RK on the right. He watched his hands, whose skill was known — was known! — to someone else. (Who?) ... Watched his hands trimming the grass around the bronze plaque.
Three left fingers pressed the shorn blades gently away while the finger and thumb felt out the shallow, narrow channel; and deftly, how deftly, the right hand wielded the turf hook, making a margin clean as a moon. Did anyone know that Walt had made the turf hook himself? — Would anyone admire its right-hand bevel below, it's left-hand bevel above? Who would applaud the creation — who but the creator? And wasn't that enough?
It had been enough. Walt shifted gingerly from the toothed serifs of the memorial plaque and set his knees carefully under IN LIVING MEMORY, with the small OF between them. It had been enough just knowing he was doing his job perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that in the York matrix of four strange castles and a private park he existed like an invisible mend.
It may be that Walt had numbly wished to be known and noticed; he could not recall such a wish, but he must have wished it. For years he had been contained and content within his own quiet excellence, patient as a pupa. But now ...
'... I know who you really are. I like you.'
It was troubling.
Had Walt ever read Bernard Shaw (he had not), he might have been pleased with the line, 'When you have learned something, my dear, it often feels at first as if you had lost something.' It would have given flesh to this queer unsettled feeling, together with the comfort that he was not alone in feeling it. He had not truly known how desperate his need had been to have someone say to him, I like you.
Only now that it was said, he did not know what to do with it.
A shadow crossed his clever hands. Walt did not look up. There was no necessity. To look up would have been to see Robert York — black homburg, suit hard and gray as iron, waistcoat like an old mint coin, blank gray cravat — wearing his morning face below the rimless glasses, a face drum-tight as an empty bed in a barracks.
'Good morning, Walt,' said Robert York correctly.
'Morning, Mr. Robert.' It was (as always if the encounter took place just here) seven minutes before ten o'clock.
York Square must never have had a youth; its little formal tapestry of a private park, its grizzled guardian corners of little castles, each with its watchful tower, surely looked old and out of place and time even when the masons laid down their trowels. And what York Square was in stone, Robert York was in the flesh. Imagine him a child if you could, and still you saw only a dwindled Robert York as he stood, in black homburg and iron-gray, with a gray cravat above an antique waistcoat (and spats before May 15th), the unrimmed glasses making him eyeless in the morning sun on his drum-skin face. Compelling Robert York to live in one of York Square's four castles was like compelling a man to be a biped; commanding that he uphold the York tradition was like commanding that the grass in the little park grow green. They were all alike — he, the park, the castles, York Square — punctilious, outmoded, predictable. Neatly Walt worked on the grassy borders of the plaque as, neatly and to the dot, Robert York took his morning stroll about the park.
Walt trimmed the grass along the right side of the bronze. Not all the Yorks were like that, of course.
Miss Myra.
Miss Myra was younger than Robert, which made her forty-four. She had a secret, unmentioned by the other Yorks. Easily remarked by anyone who got close enough to see the twitching lip-corner, the gentle unfocused eyes. She had also a secretary-companion, a kind and lovely girl named Ann Drew, who was walking with her now on the far side of the little park. Ann Drew provided an arm under Miss Myra's, guided at the same time she supported the older woman, taking slow synchronizing strides to Miss Myra's quick small uncertain ones.
Miss Myra held one of the girl's hands tightly in both of hers, and every ten steps or so she smiled a sort of 'I did it!' smile, and Ann Drew cooed little acknowledgments into her ear. As much as he liked anyone, Walt liked these two, Miss Myra and the girl. The girl was kind in a special way; when you spoke to her, she seemed to stop thinking of whatever she had been thinking and listened to you altogether. No one else ever did that, Walt was sure. And Miss Myra York — she was, oh, harmless, and it didn't really matter that she was ill.
Walt watched the pair for a moment. He did not wave. He never waved, or passed the time of day, or nodded or did anything of that sort.
He bent to his work again, deftly trimming the turf around the imbedded plaque. When he was finished, and the crumbs of earth were swept and scattered, he stepped back to look.
IN LIVING MEMORY OF NATHANIEL YORK, JR. Born April 20, 1924
And I, thought Walt, and I ...
'Walt?'
He was startled, but there was that about him which made it impossible to show what he felt, an instant and utter reflex of stillness to counteract all outward evidence of surprise, fear, anything. Walt turned woodenly. Emily York had come up behind him.
The Yorks were alike only in that no York was like any other York. Emily York was younger than Myra and looked older. She was square and sturdy-backed, with a salt friz of thinning hair, bulby blue eyes, a militant mouth and hardworking hands. Compelled like her cousins to live in a castle, Emily recorded a permanent protest against such trumpery by taking as her own the smallest of the maids' rooms and decorating it with all the elaboration of a Trappist cell. She insisted upon living on what she earned, which was no more than most social workers on the fourth-floor-walk-up level earned, and a good deal less than some. Where the other Yorks employed help — Robert a secretary-assistant, Myra a companion, Percival a sleep-out housekeeper whom he shared with Robert — Emily took pride in her ability to do for herself. Having to fix things, however, defeated her; she was about as mechanically inclined as a tuberose.
'Very nice, Walt,' approved Miss Emily, nodding at the manicured plaque. 'You do take care of this place as if it were your own.'
Walt nodded back his total agreement to this.
'My garbage can,' said Miss Emily. 'It doesn't quite close. I have to pile three World Almanacs and a dictionary on the lid to hold it down. So then of course I have to lift them off each time I step on the little you-know thing.'
'Yes, Miss Emily.'
'It should close tight, you know. Flies?'
'Yes, Miss Emily.'
'And germs.' Miss Emily paused. 'If I could fix it myself, Walt, I certainly would.'
Walt put his hand in his trousers pocket and grasped his pass-keys. 'Yes, Miss Emily.'
'Well,' said Emily York. 'Thank you, Walt.'
Without expression, he watched her walk briskly toward the nearest subway entrance. Then in his delicate way he gathered up his tools and went to fix Miss Emily's step-on garbage can.
He had written:
Dear Walt:
You have been so much alone, you do not always know the good you do, how good it is. Nor the fine things, how fine they are. I know (do you?) that you have never said 'Sir' to any man. I know about you that 'good enough' is never good enough, and that you put as much care into fixing a garbage can as another might into setting a jewel.
Are such excellence and care too good for the jobs you must do? No, because you could not do any job another way. Should you be doing some other job? Yes, you should. And you shall.
You have been patient for a long time. You are right to have been so patient. You know (don't you?), and I know, that your destiny holds great things for you, that you are about to play a role of great importance, to begin at last your larger and more glorious life.
Men do not make their destinies, men fulfill them. The course is set for you, but you must travel it, you must be obedient. (But you already are; it is part of your splendid nature.)
A great trust will shortly be placed in your hands. You will accept it. You will carry it out. For what you are about to do, the world will be a better place. This I assure you.
Since my first letter three days ago I have watched you carefully. Every minute I become more pleased that I chose you for my instrument. I will write again soon, with exact instructions for the first of the great tasks which I have planned for you.
Meanwhile, let no one know that your destiny has come to you, and so be sure to destroy this and all other letters from me. Do this, and you shall please.
Y
Like the other, the letter was written on ordinary school notepaper, with faint blue horizontal lines. It was flawlessly typed, undated and without a return address. It had arrived in a plain envelope, inscribed simply:
WALT
York Square
New York, N.Y.
CHAPTER 2
Positions
'How's yours?' young Ann Drew asked.
Young Tom Archer shrugged. He had serious dark eyes and a dark serious voice, and a warm way about him. 'Happy when he thinks of his Boscawen, sad when he thinks of his phony two-penoe.' He laughed. 'And how's yours?'
'She doesn't change,' said the girl; and 'Whatever are you talking about? What's a Boscawen? What's a penoe?'
'A Boscawen,' said Tom Archer loftily, 'is a provisional postage stamp issued in 1846 by the postmaster of Boscawen, New Hampshire. It's dull blue, and it says on it "paid five cents," but it's worth enough to pay your salary and probably some of mine for the next year. And Sir Robert of York owns one.'
'And he's happy about it. He ought to be! What's the one he's sad about, the penoe something?'
Archer laughed. He had good teeth to laugh by; in this last-of-spring twilight they glowed like the loom of foggy lights. 'The so-called "penoe" is a blue 1848 stamp from the island of Mauritius, of two-pence denomination, showing the head of Queen Victoria. An error was not caught in one of the engraver's plates, and the word "pence" was spelled with an o instead of a c. A number of printings of the error were made that year, in slightly differing shades of blue and on different thicknesses and shades of paper. They're all valuable — especially good copies — but the most valuable is the earliest impression, which is a sort of indigo-blue on thick yellowish paper. Worth more than the Boscawen.'
'Do go on,' said young Ann, successfully sounding fascinated.
'I had no intention of stopping,' said young Archer. 'Well, a couple of years ago Robert of York was hot on the trail of one of the earliest penoes, and sure enough he caught up with it. It was an especially fine copy, it was authenticated six ways from sundown and he paid through the nose for it. And then — it's much too long a story — it developed that he'd been sold a beautiful forgery. He wasn't the only one fooled — a lot of reputable people were embarrassed. Of course he got his money back, but he didn't want his money back — he wanted a genuine, fine-to-superb earliest-impression penoe. He still does.'
'Why?'
'Why?' Archer repeated severely. 'Because everybody has an impossible dream, even people with umptyeleven million dollars hanging over them ready to drop. What Sir Robert wants is one each of the world's ten most valuable postage stamps. He has six. Of course, he'll never get them all.'
'Why not?'
'Because one of them is the rarest stamp in the world, the famous British Guiana Number 13, and Mr. York isn't likely to get his hot little paws on that baby — there's only one copy extant.'
'My, you know so much,' Miss Drew breathed.
'No, I don't,' said Mr. Archer with extreme candor, although his teeth glowed again. 'Mr. York, now: say what you like about that funny little guy, he knows. He really does. All I have is a sticky mind, and after hanging around the likes of him for nearly two years some of what he knows has stuck.'
'Is that what you always wanted to be,' Miss Drew asked innocently, 'a sticky-minded hang-arounder of an expert philatelist?'
'Aha,' said Archer. 'Looking for the keystone of Archer, eh?'
'Oh, dear. I didn't mean —'
'You did mean, and don't deny it. And don't apologize, either. It's honest, normal curiosity, and if there's anything York Square can use more of it's something normal. Two years ago I was only too eager to be paid to hang around anybody who knew anything. I was one of those perennial school kids. Went from college to postgrad work, got my master's, then started on a doctorate.'
'I didn't know that,' the girl said.
'I don't advertise it because I didn't get it, and I probably never will. As I was girding myself for the Ph.D., the Army — bless it — reached out and nabbed me.'
'Bless the Army?' she asked, for he had said it without rancor or irony.
'On two counts,' Tom Archer responded. 'One: those old jokes about brain surgeons being assigned to drive tanks are rapidly becoming just that — old jokes. The Army really does make an effort nowadays to find out what you're good for and at. When they came to screen me, I just wouldn't go through the meshes. Classification: Useless.' He laughed. 'Really. Pure academic background, philosophy major of a kind they couldn't even use in Public Relations or Intelligence. If not for the Army I might never have found that out. I might have gone on and on taking p.g. and extension courses for the rest of my pedantic life.'
'And blessing number two?'
'The Army taught me how Classification Useless can get along. Do what you're told, no more and no less, never volunteer, and the Army takes care of you in every possible way, without letting reality come in contact with you.
'And as with the Army,' Philosopher Archer went on, 'so with capital L-i-f-e. The perennial schoolboy who pursues degree after degree as ends in themselves is living in the same dream-world.'
'But he hasn't the Army to feed him,' Ann Drew pointed out.
'I had an uncle who left me an income. It wasn't enough to eat well on, but it kept me from rooting in garbage cans, and as for the rest — well, I just kept getting those fellowships.'
'Well,' she said.
'So there you are. I mean, there I am. Learned I was useless, learned that a school is an army, and that they're both unbroken eggs. And the yolk is on me.'
'Oh, dear,' said the girl.
'And now you'll be saying to yourself that becoming secretary, assistant and philatelic clerk to a Robert York isn't functioning in the real world, either.'
'I suppose I will. Yes, I will.'
'The difference,' said Tom Archer, 'is that now I know it. B.A. — Before the Army — I didn't.'
'But if now you know it,' murmured Ann Drew, '— I shouldn't ask this, but you brought it up — why don't you go out and function in the world?'
'I probably will, and sooner than I think. I could teach — I don't want to, but I could. There's a school out West where you learn to run power shovels — I might do that. I don't know. The right thing will come along. This has been fascinating,' the young man said suddenly. 'I talk too much. Now let's talk about you.'
'No.'
'No?'
'It ... wouldn't be fascinating,' Ann Drew said.
'Let's try. You've been here about five months taking care of poor old Myra York —'
'Who's pretty happy in spite of your adjectives.'
He tilted his head. 'I thought we'd agreed it's best to live in the real world?'
'Not for Myra York it isn't,' said Ann Drew.
'Clever,' said Tom Archer. 'Oh, clever. I want to talk about you and you deftly switch the conversation to someone else. All right, I'll talk about you all by myself. You're stacked. You're intelligent. You're very pretty. You were discovered somewhere, somehow, by our social-conscious, welfare-type York, Miss Emily. Which makes you some sort of waif.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Player on the Other Side by Ellery Queen. Copyright © 1963 Ellery Queen. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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