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Queens. An orphan, picked up by Inspector Queen during the lonely years when Ellery was at college, Djuna came to the Queens a beaten little creature with no surname, a swarthy skin, and a fluid cunning which was undoubtedly a heritage from Romany ancestors.
    In time he ruled the household, and with no light hand.
    Now, so strange is fate, had there been no Djuna there might have been no mystery—at least insofar as Ellery Queen was concerned. It was Djuna’s gypsy hand which innocently moved the pieces that brought Ellery to the Colosseum. To understand how this came about it is necessary to reflect on the universal character of youth. Djuna at sixteen was all boy. Under Ellery’s subtle guidance he had pushed his dark heritage into a locked closet of his brain and expanded; he became a refined gamin, which is paradoxically the essence of all so-called “well-bred” boyhood; he belonged to clubs, and played baseball, and handball, and basketball, and he patronized the movies with an enthusiastic passion which more often than not taxed his generous allowance. Had he lived a generation earlier he should have appeased his rabid appetite for adventure by devouring Nick Carter, Horatio Alger, and Altsheler. As it was, he made his gods out of living people—the heroes of the silver screen; and particularly those heroes who dressed in chaps and Stetsons, rode horses, flung lassos, and were “fast on the draw, pardner!”
    The connection is surely apparent. When the press-agent of Wild Bill Grant’s Rodeo caused the New York newspapers to erupt with a rash of hot red stories about its history, purpose, aims, attractions, stars, ad nau s eam, he was playing directly to that wide unseen audience which makes its appearance in public only when the circus conies to town, and then fills the big tent with treble screams, the crackle of peanut-shells, and the gusty wonder of childhood. From the moment Djuna’s burning black eyes alighted on the advertisement of the opening, the Queens knew no peace. He must see with his own eyes this fabulous creature, this (reverently whispered) Buck Horne. He must see the cowboys. He must see the “buckin’ broncs.” He must see the stars. He must see everything.
    And so, with no premonition of what was to come, Inspector Richard Queen—that little bird of a man who had guided the Homicide Squad for more years than he cared to recall—telephoned Tony Mars, with whom he had a speaking acquaintance; and it was arranged without Djuna’s foreknowledge that the Queens should survey the gladiatorial ruckus from Mars’s own box at the Colosseum on opening night.
    Tugging on the leash of Djuna’s impatience, Inspector Queen and Ellery were constrained to “go early; come on! ” Consequently, they were the first of the Mars party to arrive for the performance. Mars’s box was on the south side of the arena near the eastern curve of the oval. The Colosseum was already half full; and hundreds were streaming without cessation into the building. The Queens sat back in plush-covered chairs; but Djuna’s sharp chin was thrust over the rail, and his eyes smoked as they hungrily engulfed the broad terrain below, where workmen were still packing the hard earth of the arena’s core, and the cameramen on Major Kirby’s platform were still busy with their apparatus. He barely noticed the entrance of the great Tony Mars, a fresh derby on his poll and a fresh cigar clenched by his brown teeth.
    “Glad to see you again, Inspector. Oh, Mr. Queen!” He sat down, his small eyes roving about the vast scene as if he felt the necessity of keeping a vigilant eye on all details at once. “Well, it’s a new thrill for old Broadway, hey?”
    The Inspector took snuff. “I’d say,” he remarked benevolently, “for Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, Westchester, and every place but Broadway.”
    “Judging by the provincial manners of your audience, Mr. Mars,” grinned Ellery. For the vendors were already busy