Free QED by Ellery Queen Page B

robbed.”
    The terrible mass of boy and girl eyes followed him to her desk. In his nose was the pungent smell of ink, glue, paper, chalk, musty wardrobe closets; surrounding him were discolored walls, peeling paint, tarnished fixtures, warped window poles, and mutilated desks.
    â€œRobbed in my own classroom,” Miss Carpenter choked.
    He laid his coat and hat gently on her desk. “A practical joke?” He smiled at the class.
    â€œHardly. They didn’t know you were coming.” They had betrayed her, the sick shock in her voice said. “Class, this is Ellery Queen. I don’t have to tell you who Mr. Queen is, and how honored we are to have him visit us.” There was a gasp, a buzz, a spatter of applause. “Mr. Queen was kind enough to come here today as a special treat to give us a talk on crime. I didn’t know he was going to walk in on one.”
    The spatter stopped dead.
    â€œYou’re sure there has been a crime, Miss Carpenter?”
    â€œAn envelope with seven one-dollar bills in it was stolen, and from the way it happened the thief can only be someone in this room.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that.”
    He deliberately looked them over, wondering which of the forty-one pairs of eyes staring back at his belonged to Joey Buell, Howard Ruffo, and David Strager. He should have asked Louise Carpenter to describe them. Now it was too late.
    Or was it?
    It seemed to Ellery that three of the twenty-odd boy faces were rather too elaborately blank. One of them was set on husky shoulders; this boy was blond, handsome, and dead-white about the nostrils. The second was a sharp-nosed, jet-haired boy with Mediterranean coloring who was perfectly still except for his fingers, and they kept turning a pencil over and over almost ritually. The third, thin and red-haired, showed no life anywhere except in a frightened artery in his temple.
    Ellery made up his mind.
    â€œWell, if it’s a real live crime,” he said, turning to Louise, “I don’t imagine anyone wants to hear me ramble on about crimes that are dead and buried. In fact, I think it would be more interesting if I gave the class a demonstration of how a crime is actually solved. What do you think, Miss Carpenter?”
    Understanding leaped into her eyes, along with hope.
    â€œI think,” she said grimly, “it would be lots more interesting.”
    â€œSuppose we begin by finding out about the seven dollars. They were yours, Miss Carpenter?”
    â€œOne dollar was mine. Miss McDoud, an English teacher, is being married next month. A group of us are chipping in to buy her a wedding present, with me as banker. All this week teachers have been dropping in to leave their dollars in an envelope I’ve had on my desk. This morning—”
    â€œThat’s fine for background, Miss Carpenter. Suppose we hear testimony from the class.” Ellery surveyed them, and there was a ripple of tittering. Suddenly he pointed to a little lipsticked girl with an Italian haircut. “Would you like to tell us what happened this morning?”
    â€œI don’t know anything about the money!”
    â€œChicken.” A boy’s jeering voice.
    â€œThe boy who said that.” Ellery kept his tone friendly. It was one of the three he had spotted, the husky blond one. “What’s your name?”
    â€œDavid Strager.” His sneer said, You don’t scare me . But his nostrils remained dead-white. He was the boy Miss Carpenter had said worked after school as a stock boy at the Hi-Kwality Supermarket on Amsterdam Avenue.
    â€œAll right, Dave. You tell us about this morning.”
    The boy glanced scornfully at the girl with the Italian haircut. “We all knew the money was in the envelope. This morning before the bell rings Mrs. Morrell comes in with her buck and Miss Carpenter puts it with the other money and lays the envelope on her desk. So afterward the bell rings, Mrs.