Inspector Queen’s Own Case

“Sure you can’t,” Finner said instantly. “Believe me, I’m no hard-hearted Hannah. I got three of my own. But what about him?”

She sat there clutching her baby and looking trapped.

“The important thing in a case like this is to forget yourself. Look,” the fat man said earnestly, “every time you catch yourself thinking of just you, stop and think what all this means to this fine little fella. Do it right now. What would it mean to him if you goofed off now?”

“Well, what?” she said in a hard voice.

“Being raised in a trunk, is what. With cigar smoke and stinking booze fumes to fill his little lungs instead of God’s wonderful fresh air,” the fat man said, “that’s what. You want to raise a kid that way?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” the girl said. “I’d never do it like that! I’d get him a good nurse—”

“I can see you been thinking about it,” A. Burt Finner nodded approvingly, “even though we got an ironclad agreement. Okay, you get him a good nurse. So who’d be his mother, you or this nurse? You’d be slaving day and night to pay her salary and buy certified milk and all, and it’s her he’d love, not you. So what’s the percentage?”

The girl shut her eyes.

“So that’s out. So there he is, back in the trunk. So who’d baptize him, some hotel clerk in Kansas City? Who’d he play with, some rubberlips trumpet player on the junk? What would he teethe on, beer openers and old cigar butts? And,” the fat man said softly, “would he toddle around from table to table calling every visiting Elk from Dayton daddy?”

“You bastard,” the girl said.

“Exactly my point,” the fat man said.

“I could get married!”

He was driving along a side street on the West Side, just passing an empty space at one of the kerbs. He stopped, shifted, and backed the Chevrolet halfway in.

“Congratulations,” Finner said. “Do I know this Mr. Schlemihl who’s going to take another guy’s wild oat and call him sonny-boy?”

“Let me out, you fat creep!”

The fat man smiled. “There’s the door.”

She backed out, her eyes blazing.

He waited.

Not until her shoulders sagged did he know that he had won. She reached back in and laid the bundle carefully on the seat beside him and just as carefully shut the door.

“Goodbye,” she whispered to the bundle.

Finner wiped the sweat off his face. He took a bulky unmarked envelope from his inside pocket and reached over the baby.

“Here’s the balance of your money,” he said.

She looked up in a blind way. Then she snatched the envelope and hurled it at him. It struck his bald head and burst, showering bills all over the seat and floor.

She turned and ran.

“Nice to have met you,” the fat man said kindly. He gathered up the scattered bills and stuffed them in his wallet.

He looked up and down the street. It was empty. He bent over the baby, undid the blanket, examined it. He found a department-store label on the beribboned lawn nightgown, ripped it off, and put the label in his pocket. He found another label on the tiny undershirt and removed that, too. Then he looked the sleeping infant over. Finally, he rewrapped it in the blue blanket and replaced it beside him.

Then he examined the contents of the rubberized bag. When he was satisfied he rezipped it.

“Well, bubba, it’s off to a long life and a damn dull one,” he said to the bundle on the seat. “You’d have had a hell of a lot more fun with her.”

He glanced at his wristwatch, nodded briskly, and drove on toward the West Side highway.

On the highway, driving at a law-abiding thirty, with an occasional friendly glance at the bundle, A. Burt Finner began to whistle.

Soon his whistle changed to song.

He sang, “Ahhhhh, sweet mys-tery of life and love I found youuuuuuuuu...”

The Chevrolet left the Hutchinson River Parkway between Pelham and New Rochelle. It turned into a deserted lane and pulled up behind a limousine with Connecticut plates that was parked there, waiting.

Alton K. Humffrey sprang out of the limousine. He said something to the chauffeur and the nurse, and hurried over to the Chevrolet.

“Here he is,” Finner beamed.

Humffrey stared in at the blue blanket. Then without a word he opened the Chevrolet door.

“Time,” Finner said.

“What?”

“There’s the little matter of the scratch,” the fat man smiled. “Remember, Mr. Humffrey? Balance C.O.D.?”

The millionaire shook his head impatiently. He handed over a bulky unmarked envelope, like the one Finner had offered the girl in the suède suit. Finner opened the envelope and took out the money and counted it.

“He’s all yours,” Finner said, nodding.

Humffrey lifted the bundle out of the car gingerly. Finner handed out the rubberized bag, and the long thin man took that, too.

“You’ll find the formula typed on a blank slip of paper in the bag,” the fat man said, “along with enough bottles and diapers to get you started.”

Humffrey looked at him.

“Something wrong?” Finner asked. “Did I forget something?”

“The birth certificate and the papers,” Humffrey said grimly.

“I told you, Mr. Humffrey. I’ll mail them to you as soon as they’re ready.”