The Four Johns by Ellery Queen

new idea. “Everything seems O.K.”
    â€œYou’re a lucky guy, mister.”
    Mervyn was suddenly anxious to depart. He backed out of the stall, swung around and drove out into the blaze of the afternoon sun.
    He went by old remembered routes around the downtown area and through a pleasant residential district of poplar trees, picture windows and green lawns. He passed within three blocks of the junior high school, where at this hour his mother would be conducting the school orchestra (in which Mervyn as a thin-faced, big-eyed urchin had played first violin). At the outskirts of town, in a neighborhood of small frame cottages, drooping trees and dusty gardens, he turned into a rutted dirt road, drove another two blocks and pulled over to the shady side of an abandoned packing shed.
    For a moment Mervyn sat motionless. Then he checked the ashtray: empty. He opend the door, looked under the seat. Nothing but a pencil, several bobby pins, a few curls of dust. In the jump seat, nothing.
    He took a deep breath; the car almost certainly had been taken by someone who knew the idiosyncrasies of the ignition system. He investigated the glove compartment. He found road maps, a pair of broken sunglasses, a road flare, a pair of rusty pliers, two paper clips, three hairpins, a pack of facial tissues, a beer-can opener, and the key he used’ for locking the trunk.
    He went around the car and unlocked the trunk. At once he recognized the twisted thing in the sky-blue skirt and jacket. He realized now that he had expected to find it.
    For five seconds, while the galaxy receded, he stared at the body of Mary Hazelwood. The knees were folded almost daintily; even in violent death Mary Hazelwood could be nothing but graceful. The distorted face peered sightlessly forward. Wisps of hair curled flirtatiously over the pale cheek.
    Mervyn lowered the lid of the trunk with infinite care. He turned the key in the lock and, impelled by some primitive impulse, stooped for a handful of sand, powdery and dry, which he worked between his fingers.
    He looked up the street, down the street. Three or four sun-bleached cottages. A black panel truck crossing a far intersection.
    Mervyn climbed gingerly back into the car. He reached for the steering wheel, hesitated as if the black ebonite had become infected. But then he gripped the wheel. Queasiness was a luxury he could not now afford. Henceforth he must be unemotionally decisive and ruthless.

CHAPTER 4
    Above all, he must not panic.
    He shivered as he thought how easy it would be to do something foolish. His first impulse on finding the body, for instance, had been to tumble it out on the ground and drive away at top speed.… He looked down at his hands on the wheel. The knuckles shone white.
    He forced himself to relax; he could do anything—anything—if he had to. But what?
    His first thought was to report to the police. His stomach flopped like a fish. To do that would involve him up to his neck. The car was his. Madera was his old home town. He had unsuccessfully wooed Mary. And his alibi for the night of her disappearance was nonexistent. It was not as if Mary Hazelwood were nondescript or drab. Mary Hazelwood was beautiful, a girl men fruitlessly pursued—the kind that often wound up as the central figure in a crime of passion.
    Who killed Mary Hazelwood? the newspapers would ask. And they would mention his name in as close proximity to the question as they dared. Should the police fail to establish the guilt of someone else, his name would enter the conversation whenever the case was brought up. It was even conceivable that he might be openly accused. How could he prove he was not guilty? Outside the courts the burden of proof was on the accused.
    Inevitably would come the appointment with Professor Burton. In his mustard tweeds, Professor Burton resembled an irascible old Airedale. He would rise when Mervyn entered, motion toward a straight-backed chair, sit down