The Three Students

The membership of The Puzzle Club numbered six (one of whom, Arkavy, the Nobel biochemist, was almost never free to attend a meeting), making it—as far as Ellery knew—the world's most exclusive society.

Its only agenda was to solve mysteries made up by the members and then, regardless of outcome, to slaver, sample and gorge at the feast prepared by the master chef of their host and the founder of the club, Syres, the oil multimillionaire. Members look turns playing problem solver, and this evening the rotation had come round to Ellery again.

Having been duly installed in the "problem chair" in Syres' wide-open-spaces-style penthouse salon, Ellery tilted the bottle at his elbow and then settled back with his glass to face the music and its composers.

Little Emmy Wandermere, the Pulitzer Prize poet, had been designated to conduct the overture. "The scene is the office of the president of a university," she began, "the office being situated on the ground floor of the administration building. President Xavier——"

"X," Ellery said instantly. "Significant?"

"You're a quick starter," the poet said. "In this discipline, Mr. Queen, significance lies in the ear of the listener. I should like to go on. President Xavier has one child, a grown son——"

"Who is, of course, a student at the university."

"Who happens to be nothing of the sort. The son is a high school dropout who is immersed in yoga and Zen."

"His name?"

"Ah, his name. All right, Mr. Queen, having consulted my instant muse, she tells me that the son was christened Xenophon, President Xavier having taken his doctorate in Greek history. Now, Xenophon Xavier has just become engaged to be married——"

"To a student?"

"You seem to have students on the brain. Not to a student, no. She's a topless exotic dancer Xenophon met through his guru. May I suggest you listen, Mr. Queen? The boy's father—and if you want to know President Xavier's Christian name, too, by the way, it's Saint Francis—has undertaken to provide the engagement ring. He's just come from visiting his safe-deposit box, in fact. The first thing President Xavier does on entering his office is to place the ring on his desk. It's a very valuable ring, of course, a family heirloom."

"Is there any other kind?" Ellery asked mercilessly. "Whereupon, enter suspects."

Syres nodded. "A delegation of three students who represent three dissident groups at the university."

"One," said Darnell, the lawyer, "a law student named Adams."

"Two," said Vreeland, the psychiatrist, "a medical student named Barnes."

"And three," said poet Wandermere, "a literature major named Carver."

"Adams, Barnes and Carver," Ellery said. "A, B and C. We're certainly relying on basics tonight. But proceed."

"Adams, the law student, demands that the football team's star pass receiver, who's been expelled from the school after a secret hearing," said lawyer Darnell, "be reinstated on the ground that he was the victim of a star-chamber proceeding and had been denied due process."

"The university expelled its star receiver?" Ellery shook his head. "This is obviously a fantasy."

"Derision, Queen, will get you nowhere," Dr. Vreeland said severely. "As for Barnes, like all med students, he's sex mad, and he's there to demand that the curfew restrictions for coeds visiting the boys' dorms be lifted entirely."

"And young Carver is there," Miss Wandermere said, "to demand a separate and autonomous black-culture department staffed entirely by blacks."

"There's a lively discussion, President Xavier promises to take the three demands under advisement and the students exit." Syres held up his saddlelike hand. "Not yet, Queen! Xavier then goes to lunch, locking the only door of his office. He's away, oh, twenty minutes——"

"A fast eater," Ellery murmured.

"When he unlocks the door on his return, he notices two things. The first——"

"Is that the ring, which with fortuitous forgetfulness he'd left on his desk," Ellery said promptly, "is gone."

"Yes," Darnell said, "and the second is a folded slip of paper lying on the floor near the desk."

"Which says?"

"Which says," and Dr. Vreeland showed his formidable teeth like a playful wolf, "in unidentifiable block lettering—are you paying attention, Queen?"

"Which says," Emmy Wandermere said, "as follows: 'On old Olympus' towering top / A Finn and German viewed a hop.' Terrible verse. I can thankfully say, Mr. Queen, I'm not responsible for it."

Ellery mumbled, "Would you mind repeating that?"

The challengers exchanged congratulatory smirks. Miss Wandermere cheerfully repeated the doggerel.

"Nonsense verse." Ellery was still mumbling. "Or...." He stopped and shook his head like a fighter shaking off a stiff jab. "Let's hack away the underbrush first. Was the door tampered with?"

"I'll make it simple for you," Syres said in kind tones. "Entry was by the window, which had been forced. No prints. No clues."

"I take it that during their visit to Xavier's office, Adams, Barnes and Carver had the ring in plain view?"

"Right there on the desk," Dr. Vreeland said. "They all saw it."

"Who else knew the ring was in the office?"

"No one."

"Not even his son, Xenophon?"

"Not even his son, Xenophon."

"Nor his prospective daughter-in-law?"

"That's right."

"Was the ring visible from the window?"

"It was not," said Miss Wandermere. "It was lying behind a bust of——"

"Xanthippe, I know. Was there an open transom above the door?"

"No transom at all."

"A fireplace?"

"No fireplace."

"And you wouldn't insult me by a secret passage. Well, then, the thief has to have been one of the three students. Which is the conclusion I assume you wanted me to reach."

"True," Darnell said. "So far."

"And Xavier is positive the paper with the verse wasn't on the floor when he left for lunch?"

Glances were exchanged once more. "We hadn't thought of that possibility," the oilman confessed. "No, it wasn't there when Xavier left the office."

"So the thief must have dropped it."

"Accidentally, Queen," the lawyer said. "It was later learned that the thief took a handkerchief out of his pocket to wrap around his hand—he didn't want to leave fingerprints—and as he did so, the paper fell out of his pocket."

"He made off with the ring," the poet said, "without noticing that he'd left the verse behind."

"So you don't have to ask any further questions," the psychiatrist said. "Tough one, Queen, isn't it? We were absolutely determined to stump you. And by the superegos of Freud, Jung and Adler, friends, I believe we've done it!"

"Give a fellow a chance, will you?" Ellery growled. " 'On old Olympus' towering top / A Finn and German viewed a hop.'"

"We've got him on the run, all right," the oil king chortled. "Usual one-hour time limit, Queen. Mustn't keep old Chariot's dinner waiting. What is it?"

Emmy Wandermere: "Oh, no!"

Dr. Vreeland: "Impossible!"

Darnell, incredulously: "You've got it?"

"Well, I'll tell you," Ellery said with unruffling brow, a vision of peace. "Yes."

"'On old Olympus' towering top / A Finn and German viewed a hop,' " Ellery said. "As verse, it's gibberish. That made me dig into my gibberish pile, which is eighty feet higher than Mount Everest. My curse is that I never forget anything, no matter how useless.

"Having recognized the verse, I knew the thief couldn't have been Adams, the law student, nor the lit major—much as you tried to make Carver your red (or should I say black?) herring.

" 'On Old Olympus' Towering Top," etc., is a traditional mnemonic aid for remembering the names of the twelve cranial nerves. The O of On, for instance, stands for olfactory—the olfactory nerve; the O of Old stands for the optic nerve; and so on. The verse is used in medical schools by students. The paper, therefore, dropped from the pocket of Barnes, the med student, making him the thief of the ring."

"I could have sworn on my plaque of Hippocrates that you'd fall flat on your face when I suggested this one," Dr. Vreeland said glumly.

"Queen erat demonstrandum," Emmy Wandermere murmured. "And now, gentlemen, shall we render unto Chariot?"