----
Tale of Two Shoes
"There are only two detectives for whom I have felt, in my own capacity as hunter-of-men, any deeply underlying sympathy . . . transcending racial idiosyncrasies and overleaping barriers of space and time. . . . These two, strangely enough, present the weird contrast of unreality, of fantasm and fact. One has achieved luminous fame between the boards of books; the other as kin to a veritable policeman. . . . I refer, of course, to those imperishables---Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, London, and Mr. Ellery Queen of West 87th Street, New York City."
---from 30 Years on the Trail
---by Dr. Max Pejchar*
*Ed. Note: Viennese police-consultant.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. OPERATION
INSPECTOR RICHARD QUEEN'S alter ego, which was in startling contrast with his ordinarily spry and practical old manner, often prompted him to utter didactic remarks on the general subject of criminology. These professorial dicta were habitually addressed to his son and partner-in-crime-detection, Ellery Queen, in moments when they browsed before their living-room fire, alone except for the slippery shadow of Djuna, the wraith-like gypsy lad who served their domestic needs.
"The first five minutes are the most important," the old man would say severely, "remember that." It was his favorite theme. "The first five minutes can save you a heap of trouble."
And Ellery, reared from boyhood on a diet of detectival advice, would grunt and suck his pipe and stare into the fire, wondering how often a detective was fortunate enough to be on the scene of a crime within three hundred seconds of its commission.
Here he would put his doubt into words, and the old man would nod sadly and agree---yes, it wasn't very often that such luck came one's way. By the time the investigator reached the scene the trail was cold, very cold. Then one did what one could to atone for the unsympathetic tardiness of fate. Djuna, hand me my stuff! . . .
Ellery Queen was no more the fatalist than he was the determinist, or pragmatist, or realist. His sole compromise with isms and ologies was an implicit belief in the gospel of the intellect, which has assumed many names and many endings through the history of thought. Here he swung wide of the fundamental professionalism of Inspector Queen. He despised the institution of police informers as beneath the dignity of original thinking; he pooh-poohed police methods of detection with their clumsy limitations---the limitations of any rule plagued organization. "I'm one with Kant at least to this extent," he liked to say, "that pure reason is the highest good of the human hodge-podge. For what one mind can conceive another mind can fathom . . ."
This was his philosophy in its simplest terms. He was very near to abandoning his faith during the investigation of Abigail Doorn's murder. Perhaps for the first time in his sharply uncompromising intellectual career, doubt assailed him. Not doubt of his philosophy, which had proved itself many times over in former cases, but doubt of his mental capacity to unravel what another mind had conceived. Of course he was an egoist---"bobbing my head vigorously with Descartes and Fichte," he used to remark . . . but for once in the extraordinary labyrinth of events surrounding the Doorn case he had overlooked fate, that troublesome trespasser on the private property of self-determination.
----