Chinese Orange Mystery Part 15

"Of course not," said Ellery soothingly. He glanced at the tiny woman, and she sighed and went to the young man and took, his hand and said something to him in a soft murmur. Ellery felt Kirk's muscles go limp. The Sergeant, scowling, opened the door and permitted the pair to leave. Staring eyes met them from the other room.

"You too, Irene," said the Inspector with curt emphasis. She shrugged and sauntered after Kirk and Jo. But there was something wary about the set of her handsome shoulder-blades, quite as if she were steeling herself against a blow from behind. Sergeant Velie followed her.

"What the devil's eating the youngster?" muttered the Inspector, staring after them.

Ellery started. "Eh? Oh-Kirk." He produced a cigaret and slowly struck a match. "Very interesting. I just caught a glimmer. The barest glimmer ... Here they are."

It was not two who came in, but three. Sergeant Velie glowered fiercely.

"This Macgowan guy wouldn't stay put," he rasped. "Shall I kick him in the pants, Inspector?"

"I shouldn't advise the attempt, Sergeant," said Ellery with an amused smile, glancing at Macgowan's formidable bulk.

"Well, if he wants to get the works," growled the Inspector, "that's his funeral. Listen, sister-"

Marcella Kirk stood slim and breathlessly quiet between her fiance and her father, who leaned heavily on her arm. The old man was shrunken within the dry bones of his gaunt frame, strangely quiescent and unlike his usual belligerent self. There was a furtive gleam in his old eyes.

Macgowan said softly: "Take it easy, Inspector. My fiancee happens to be a sensitive young lady. And I'm not sure I'd be able to stand your strong-arm stuff myself. What's on your mind besides breaking up a perfectly respectable c.o.c.ktail party?"

"That'll be enough out of you, Mr. Macgowan-"

Dr. Kirk quavered: "What have you done to Donald, d.a.m.n you?"

"He looked-" whispered Marcella.

"I'll do the asking," said Inspector Queen grimly. "Dr. Kirk, the other day you reported the return of your stolen Hebrew books. Is that correct?"

"Well?" The old scholar's voice was cracked.

"They were all returned?"

"Certainly. I told you I wanted no fuss made. I have my books back, which is the only consideration." He stroked his daughter's bare arm with his bony fingers, absently. "Why, have you discovered who-took them?"

"You bet your sweet life."

Marcella Kirk sighed. Her lips were very red against her skin.

Macgowan opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, and glanced from the face of the girl to the face of his future father-in-law. And he, too, went pale under his tan; and he bit his lip and tightened his grip on Marcella's hand.

"If I may," murmured Ellery. They stared at him, three pairs of fearful eyes. "I think we're all reasonably adult people. Miss Kirk, may I say first of all that I have nothing but admiration for you?"

She swayed suddenly, closing her eyes.

"What do you mean?" said Macgowan hoa.r.s.ely.

"Your fiancee, Macgowan, is a brave, loyal girl. I know precisely what her mental processes were. ... I had been harping on the strange backwards nature of the crime. There leaped into her mind an instant panoramic picture-her father ... you, Doctor ... poring over-" Ellery paused-"Hebrew books. A language whose prime characteristic, she knew, is its literal backwardness. And so-"

"I stole them," she said with a strangled sob. "Oh, I was afraid-"

Dr. Kirk's face altered strangely. "Marcella, my dear," he said in a soft voice. And he pressed her arm and drew himself a little straighter.

"And you forgot, Miss Kirk," Ellery went on, "that Chinese, which is represented in your father's library by many ma.n.u.scripts, is also a backwards language, so to speak. Isn't that so?"

"Chinese?" she gasped, her eyes widening.

"I thought so. Dad, there's no need to go into this thing any more fully. It's basically my fault. Perfectly understandable, Miss Kirk's reaction to my oral cogitations about the backwardness of the crime. Now that it's cleared up I think it's best we all forget it."

"But Hebrew is backwards-"

"Alas," sighed Ellery. "And a great lack. I don't know what any of it means. And am I my brother's keeper?" He grinned at Marcella and Macgowan. "Go, and sin no more."

"Oh, all right," growled the Inspector. "Let 'em out, Thomas."

The Sergeant stood aside as the three pa.s.sed by-all very quiet, and Macgowan hiding something behind his eyelids.

"While we're here," muttered the Inspector, "I might as well clean up one more thing."

"What now?" murmured Ellery.

"This bird Felix Berne. Thomas-"

"Berne?" Ellery's eyes narrowed. "What about Berne?"

"We finally got a check-up on his movements the day of the murder. There's one element ... Thomas, get Mr. Berne in here, and also that foreign-looking dame who was hanging on his arm when we came in. If my hunch is correct, she's got something to do with this."

"With what?" asked Ellery swiftly as the Sergeant tramped out.

The Inspector shrugged. "That's what I don't know."

Berne was very drunk. He lurched in, his bitter eyes inflamed and a sneer on his sharp keen features. The woman with him looked frightened. She was a tall supple brunette with a body that leaped with life. She pressed her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s against Berne's black-sleeved arm as if she were afraid to release it.

"Well?" drawled Berne, his thin lips writhing humorously. "What is it tonight-the sjambok, the bastinado, or the bed of Procrustes?"

"Good evening, Berne," murmured Ellery. "I will say that detective work is broadening. Pleasure to meet such cultured people. Sjambok, did you say? Sounds faintly African-Dutch. What is it?"

"It's a whip made out of rhinoceros hide," said Berne with the same fixed drunken smile, "and if I had you on the South African veldt, my dear Queen, I'd like nothing better than to give you a taste of it. I dislike you intensely. I don't know when I've disliked a fellow-creature more. Go to h.e.l.l. ... Well, you vest-pocket Lucifer," he snapped suddenly at Inspector Queen, "what's on your mind? Speak up, man! I haven't all night to waste answering idiotic questions."

"Idiotic questions, hey?" growled the Inspector. "One more crack like that out of you, wise guy, and I'll sick the Sergeant here on you, and what he'll do to that pan of yours I'll leave to your own imagination." He whirled on the woman. "You. What's your name?"

She pressed closer to the publisher and looked up at him with a childlike faith.

Berne drawled: "Tell him, cara mia. He looks bad, but he's harmless."

"I-am," said the woman with difficulty, "Lucrezia Rizzo." She spoke with a strong Italian accent.

"Where d'ye come from?"

"Italia. My home-it is-in Firenze."

"Florence, eh?" murmured Ellery. "For the first time I grasp the essential inspiration behind the vigor of Botticelli's women. You are very lovely, and you come from a lovely city, ma donna."

She flashed him a long low look that had nothing in common with the fear that had filled her eyes a moment before. But she said nothing, and continued to cling to Berne's arm.

"Listen, I'm in a hurry," barked Inspector Queen. "How long you been in New York, Signora?"

Again she glanced at Berne, and he nodded. "It is-a week or so, I think," she said, her sibilants soft and warm.

"Why do you ask?" drawled Berne. "Thinking of pulling Signorina Rizzo into the well-known can on a charge of murder, Inspector? And I might also point out that you either leap to conclusions or else possess a shocking ignorance of the simplest Italian. My friend Lucrezia is unmarried."

"Married or not," snarled the Inspector, "I want to know what she was doing in that bachelor apartment of yours on East Sixty-fourth Street the day of the murder!"

Ellery started slightly, but Berne did not. The publisher showed his teeth in the same fixed drunken smile. "Ah, our metropolitan police now flourish the banner of moral purity! What d'ye think she was doing? You must have a good notion or you wouldn't be asking. ... Always incomprehensible to me, this stupid habit of asking questions you know the answers to. You didn't think I'd deny it, did you?"

The Inspector's bird-like face was growing redder with every pa.s.sing instant. He glared at Berne and said: "I'm mighty interested in your movements that day, Berne, and don't think you'll pull the wool over my eyes with that gab of yours. I know that this woman came over on the Mauretania with you, and that you cabbed straight from the boat to your apartment with her. That was before noon that day. How'd you spend the rest of the day before you turned up at the Kirk layout upstairs?"

Berne continued to smile. There was a gla.s.sy calm in his inflamed eyes that fascinated Ellery. "Oh, you don't know, do you, Inspector?"

"Why, you-"

"Because obviously, if you did know," murmured Berne, "you wouldn't have put the question that way. Amusing, very amusing. Eh, cara? The naughty policeman who protects our wives and homes and civic honor doesn't know, and, simple soul that he is, apparently doesn't even suspect. Oh, perhaps I'm being faintly astigmatic; he does suspect, let us say, but he hasn't been able to find out definitely." The woman was staring up at him with bewildered, adoring eyes. It was evident that the rapid interchange of English had taxed her simple knowledge of the language. "And, putting his faith in the comfortable labyrinth of our Anglo-Saxon laws, he realizes that without evidence he is like a child without its mother, or," Berne drawled, "a lovely piece of feminine Italian flesh without a chaperon. Eh, Inspector?"

A deadly quiet settled over the room with the extinction of Berne's last word. Ellery, glancing at his father, felt uncomfortably aware of the possibilities. The old gentleman's face had turned to marble, and there was a pinched look about his little nostrils that made his face seem even smaller and harder than it was. There was danger, too, from the direction of Sergeant Velie; his huge shoulders were hunched pugilistically and he was glaring at the publisher with a candid menace that startled Ellery.

Then the moment pa.s.sed, and the Inspector said in almost a matter-of-fact voice: "Then your story is that you spent the whole day in your apartment with this woman?"

Berne, coolly indifferent to the threatening atmosphere, shrugged. "Where did you think a man would spend the day with this enchanting morsel to keep him company?"

"I'm asking you," said the Inspector quietly.

"Well, then the answer is sweetly in the affirmative." Berne smiled the old ghastly smile and said: "The inquisition is over, Inspector? I may go with lovely Lucrezia to bear me company? La politesse calls. Mustn't keep our hostess waiting, you know."

"Go on," said the Inspector. "Beat it. Beat it before I choke the ugly smile off your face with my own hands."

"Bravo" drawled Berne. "Come, my dear; it seems that we're no longer wanted." And he drew the bewildered woman closer to him and swung her gently about and steered her toward the door.

"But, Felicio," she murmured, "what-is-"

"Don't Italianate me, my dear," said Berne. "Felix to you." And then they were gone.

None of the three men said anything for some time. The Inspector remained where he was, staring expressionlessly at the door. Sergeant Velie was drawing deep breaths, as if he had been laboring under tremendous strain.

Then Ellery said gently: "Oh, come, dad. Don't let that drunken boor get the best of you. He does raise the hackles, I confess. I've felt, myself, a p.r.i.c.kling at the nape of my neck that's as old as man's enemies ... Get that look off your face, dad, please."

"He's the first man," said the Inspector deliberately, "in twenty years who has made me feel like committing murder. The other one was the bird who raped his own daughter; and at least he was crazy."

Sergeant Velie said something venomous to himself in a soft mutter.

Ellery shook his father's arm. "Now, now! I want you to do something for me, dad."

Inspector Queen turned to him with a sigh. "Well, what is it now?"

"Can you hale that Sewell woman downtown late tonight on some pretext or other? And get her maid out of the way?"

"Hmm, What for?" said the Inspector with a sudden interest.

"I have," murmured Ellery, sucking thoughtfully on a cigaret, "an idea based on that phantom glimmer I mentioned a few moments ago."

Boudoir Scene.

MR. ELLERY QUEEN, NOT having been reared in that dark quarter of the cosmopolis which breeds those whimsical Raffles who steal in and out of people's homes and manage still to preserve a certain savoir-faire, peered nervously up and down the corridor of the Chancellor's twenty-first floor. The coast being clear, his shoulders quivered once or twice beneath his bundling topcoat and he slipped a skeleton key into the keyhole of the Llewes front door. The bolt turned over with a sharp squeak and he pushed the door open.

The reception-foyer was inky black. He stood very still and listened with an intentness that made his ears ache. But the suite was quite silent.

He cursed himself for a cowardly fool and advanced boldly into the darkness toward the spot on the wall where memory told him the electric switch lay. Fumbling, he found it and pressed. The foyer sprang into being. A quick glance through the sitting-room to the door of the living-room for orientation, and he switched off the light and made for the far door. He tripped over a ha.s.sock and swore again as he flailed wildly to keep his balance. But at last he reached his goal and opened the door and stole into the living-room.

By the vague flickering light of a hotel electric sign across the canyon of the street he made out the door to the bedroom and went toward it.

The door stood ajar. He poked his head through, held his breath, heard nothing, and slipped into the room shutting the door behind him.

"Not so bad after all," he said to himself, grinning in the darkness. "Maybe I've neglected a natural talent for house-breaking. Now where the deuce is that switch?"

He groped around in the jumpy quarter-light, straining his eyes. "Ah, there you are," he grunted aloud, and extended his hand to the wall.

And his hand froze in midair. An instantaneous p.r.i.c.kle climbed up his spine. A hundred thoughts raced through his head all at once. But he did not move, did not breathe.

Some one had opened the front door. There could be no mistake. He had heard the telltale squeak of the unoiled bolt.

Then movement surged back in a wave, and his arm dropped, and he whirled on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet and sped toward a j.a.panese-silk screen which he had dimly perceived a moment before during his hunt for the switch. He reached its shelter and crouched low behind it, holding his breath.

It seemed an eternity before he heard the cautious metallic rasp of the bedroom k.n.o.b being turned. He heard a sc.r.a.ping, too, as of a shoe over the sill of the door. And then the unmistakable panting intake of a human breath. The metallic sound occurred again; the prowler had closed the door behind him.

Ellery strained his eyes through a crack between two of the leaves of the j.a.panese screen. Oddly, his nose became sensible of a faraway odor which made him think of the perfumed flesh of a woman. But then he realized that the odor had been there before the prowler, before himself; it was the odor of Irene Sewell. ... His pupils, enlarged by immersion in the darkness, began to make out a human form. It was the figure of a man, so m.u.f.fled that not even the skin of his face glimmered in the pulsating dusk of the room. The man was moving about swiftly and yet nervously, jerking his head from side to side, breathing in hoa.r.s.e gulps, almost sobbing.

And then he pounced upon a low vanity built along modern lines and began pulling drawers open with wild swoops of his arms, apparently careless of the clatter he was making.

Ellery tiptoed from behind the screen and made his way noiselessly across the thick Chinese rug to the wall near the door.

With his arm raised he said in a pleasant unhurried voice: "h.e.l.lo there," and in the same instant pressed the switch.

The prowler whirled about like a tiger, blinking and silent. In the brilliant light Ellery made out his features clearly as the upturned lapels of the man's coat dropped stiffly back.

It was Donald Kirk.