Queen’s Bureau of Investigation by Ellery Queen Page A

“It gives the killer of Philly Mullane.”
    The Sergeant opened his mouth.
    â€œShut up, Velie,” said Inspector Queen. “Well?”
    â€œBecause if Mullane shaved this morning,” asked Ellery, “where did he do it, Sergeant?”
    â€œOkay, I bite,” said Velie. “Where?”
    â€œWhere every man shaves, Sergeant, in the bathroom. Ever shave in the bathroom without using a towel?”
    â€œThat’s easy. What do you think I wipe my face with, the bath mat?”
    â€œAll right, Ellery, so Mullane used a towel,” said the Inspector impatiently. “So what?”
    â€œSo where is it? When you asked Velie to get one from the bathroom to sop up the ink with, Dad, he said there were no used towels in there . And there are no towels at all in the bedroom here. What did Velie bring you from the bathroom? Some unused towels. In other words, after Mullane shaved this morning, someone took the dirty towels away and replaced them with clean ones . And this is a hotel, and Mullane, who always kept the door on the chain, had obviously let someone in …”
    â€œ The chambermaid! ”
    â€œHas to be. Mullane let the chambermaid in this morning, as usual, she got to work in the bathroom—and she never did get to the bedroom, as you can see. Why? It can only be because while she was cleaning up in the bathroom Mullane got his heart attack!
    â€œIt was the chambermaid who struck Mullane on the back of the head with the hammer she’d brought in with her—waiting for a chance to use it, as she’s probably waited every morning for the last nine days.
    â€œIt was the chambermaid who read Mullane’s message and scooped the payroll money out of the hole in the floor.”
    â€œBut to have come in with a hammer—she must have planned this, she must have known who he was!”
    â€œRight, Dad. So I think you’ll find, when you catch up with her, that the homicidal chambermaid is your old friend, Pittsburgh Patience, with a few alterations in her appearance. Patience suspected all along where Mullane had hidden the money, and as soon as she was out of stir three years ago she got herself a job on the Chancellor housekeeping staff … and waited for her old pal to show up!”

EMBEZZLEMENT DEPT.
    The Myna Birds

Friends of the feathered world will have no trouble recalling the case of old Mrs. Andrus, who left a million dollars to thirty-eight myna birds. What is not generally known, even among birdlovers, is that Ellery was in that case up to his pectorals, taking wing on as pretty a flight of reasoning as his casebook attests.
    With the assistance, be it noted, of the only bird-detective on record.
    Mrs. Andrus was a lonely old lady who had outlived family and friends, and whom an aging body had condemned to a wheelchair. Her only human connections were her doctor, her lawyer, and her paid companion. But Dr. Cooke was a bloated man with a sort of decayed charm, like an overripe banana; Attorney De Rose, whom the doctor had recommended to manage Mrs. Andrus’s affairs when she became too infirm to manage them herself, was a sporty fellow with a perpetual tan and a voice that hurt the old lady’s ears; and her companion, Miss Baggott, also introduced by Dr. Cooke, was a frozen-faced female of doubtful gentility whom Mrs. Andrus tolerated only because the woman tended the birds devotedly. And so the mynas, which had begun as a hobby, became the reason for what was left of the old lady’s life.
    They were true talking mynas from southern India—pert, hoppy little creatures amusingly yellow-wattled, with iridescent black wings and bass voices. Some of them had vocabularies of almost a hundred words. Mrs. Andrus found them a great comfort—far more satisfactory companions, she thought, than Miss Baggott. Her dependents, she called them; and, quite as if they were, the old lady worried over their fate when she should be