The Scarlet Letters by Ellery Queen Page B

gave the old cleaning woman the bill, raised his hat, and went away.
    The third letter came the following Wednesday. It was camouflaged in the envelope of a firm of accountants on the tenth floor of The 45th Street Building, the address on the envelope and the message on the sheet of plain white paper inside had again been typed with a red ribbon, and the message was:
    Thursday, 8:30 P.M ., C
    This triumph of reasoning consoled Ellery until the following night, when he trailed Martha downtown on almost the identical route of ten days before. But this time her cab penetrated deeper south into The Bowery, passed the Canal Street entrance to Manhattan Bridge, and turned into the narrow Asiatic world of Mott Street.
    It drew up at Number 45, and Martha disappeared in the Chinese Rathskeller.
    So C stood for Chinatown and/or Chinese Rathskeller, and there was no longer any reason to doubt the orthodox sequence or application of the alphabet in Harrison’s code.
    It seemed like a meaty discovery until it was examined. On dissection it proved nutritious in appearance only. It advanced nothing.
    Ellery felt sad as he went into the restaurant after an automatic interval and maneuvered himself to a table far enough away from Martha and Harrison to see without being seen. It all seemed so futile. What was he doing in Chinatown, spying on two people who were headed for the front pages of the tabloids? As he sourly consumed his lot-fon-kare-ngow-yuk– which had turned out to be beef, peppers, and tomatoes–he kept his eye on the lovers from a sense of duty only, conscious that he was not even aware of what he was being dutiful to.
    And then he saw something that caused his gloomy ruminations to stop dead.
    He had thought they were holding hands across the table. But when the waiter appeared with a trayful of steaming bowls, their hands parted company and Ellery saw that Harrison’s had hold of something Martha’s had slipped into it.
    It was a small package, and the actor, after looking around, put it into his pocket.

D …
    â€œNo, I don’t,’ said Ellery, steering Nikki around a mink coat holding a Scottie on a leash that was eying his leg thoughtfully. “It was done up in paper–in that lighting I couldn’t get the color–and it was about three by six , and a half-inch or so thick.”
    â€œThe booklet?” Nikki stopped to lean against the apartment house. It was a moonless night, and the river sounds were mournful. Everything floated tonight, people and sound and her thoughts.
    â€œWrong dimensions. What’s the matter, Nikki?”
    â€œOh … I feel anesthetized. Swimming around in the ether. I keep forgetting what day it is.”
    â€œYou’re drugged with tension. Nikki, you can’t keep on living like this. You’ll break down. Why not give it up as a nice try?”
    â€œNo,” said Nikki mechanically. She shook her head at a cigaret.
    Ellery scowled as he lit one. He had never known this Nikki. She was as immovable as the wall she leaned against. He wondered what Martha would say–what depths of shame and remorse she might plumb–if she knew the heavy strength of Nikki’s loyalty. But he knew he could never communicate such a thing to anyone in the world, especially to Martha. It had a mysterious, insoluble quality, like a faith, blind and so able to endure in darkness. And it occurred to him suddenly that Nikki had lost her mother very early and had never known a sister.
    He sighed.
    â€œYou didn’t spot anything roughly that size about the apartment, I suppose?”
    â€œShe wouldn’t leave it lying around, Ellery.”
    â€œI’d have dismissed it as a meaningless gift, except that he looked around so peculiarly as he slipped it into his pocket. He was surreptitious about it. It wasn’t in character. Or maybe it was. With a man of Harrison’s type, you’d have to strip away a great many layers of