American Gun Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

into the pockets of their jeans. Each one, in his superstitious way, furtively fingered his charm. This was serious; they regarded Boone with troubled eyes.
    “Tough,” muttered Halliwell. “Shore is tough. Better play ’possum t’night, Dan’l. Hell, I wouldn’t even fork a circus cayuse with a busted lucky piece in my jeans!”
    Ramsey reached into his back pocket and produced a flask, which he tendered to Boone in grave sympathy.
    Benjy Miller’s purple cheek twitched. He stared across the arena at a platform built on wooden trestles, upon which a number of conventionally clad city men were busy in a clutter of peculiar apparatus.
    They were obviously motion picture photographers. Tripods, cameras, sound-boxes, electrical equipment, boxes of many sizes lay scattered on the platform, which stood ten feet above the floor of the arena. Several were unreeling thick smooth cables sheathed in rubber, which snaked from a large and complicated machine on the floor. On each piece of equipment was lettered in bold white paint the name of a famous motion picture newsreel company.
    A small slight man in dark gray stood in the dirt of the arena and directed operations; he wore a sleek black military mustache, very carefully trimmed and brushed. He paid no attention whatever to the group of picturesquely garbed Westerners some distance away across the oval.
    “All set for the long shots, Major Kirby,” yelled a man on the platform.
    The small man below said: “How are you fixed for sound, Jack?” to a man with earphones clamped about his head.
    “So-so,” grunted this man. “Going to be a picnic, Major. Listen to the damn echo!”
    “Do the best you can. It will be better when the place is full of people. …I want plenty of action, boys, and all the crazy sounds that go with this rodeo racket. There’s a special on it from the Chief’s office.”
    “Oke.”
    Major Kirby cast his very bright little eyes over the field of empty seats and naked concrete, and lit a cigar.
    “And that,” said Ellery Queen as he thoughtfully blew smoke at the ceiling, “was the wheel at rest. Now see what happened when the wheel began to whirl.”

2: The Man on Horseback
    N OT THE LEAST PIQUANT feature of the Queen ménage was its major-domo. Now this inestimable word, which with our Nordic genius for plagiarism we have appropriated from the Spanish, invariably evokes visions of regal splendor, solemnity, and above all pomposity. The true major-domo must have (besides the crushing dignity of years) a paunch, flat feet, the vivacity of dead codfish, an emperor’s stare, and a waddle which is a cross between a papal procession and the triumphal march of returning Pompey. Moreover he must possess the burnished knavishness of a Mississippi gambler, the haggling instinct of a Parisian marchandeur, and the loyalty of a hound.
    The piquancy of the Queens’ major-domo lay in that, except for loyalty, he resembled no major-domo that ever lived. Far from evoking visions of splendor, solemnity, and pomposity, sight of him called forth nothing so much as a composite picture of all the gamins that ever prowled the gutters of Metropolis. Where a paunch should have been there was a flat and muscular patch of tight little belly; his feet were as small and agile as a dancer’s; his eyes were bright twin moons; and his mode of locomotion can only be described as a light fantastic tripping in the best pixy-on-the-greens-ward manner.
    And as for his years, he was “between a man and a boy, a hobble-de-hoy, a fat, little, punchy concern of sixteen.” Except, alas for Barham! he was neither fat nor little; but on the contrary was lanky as a spider and as lean as adolescent Cassius.
    This, then, was Djuna—Djuna the Magnificent, as Ellery Queen sometimes called him; the young major-domo of the Queen household, who had early evinced a genius for cookery and a flair for new gastronomic creations which had for all time settled the domestic problem for the