Chinese Orange Mystery Part 3

"Don," said a girlish voice from the corridor. Both men swung about instantly, blocking her line of vision. She was staring in at them-a girl as tall as Kirk, with a slender immature figure and great hazel eyes. "Don, what's the trouble? I saw Ozzie running. ... What's in there? What's happened?"

Kirk said in a quick hoa.r.s.e voice: "Nothing, nothing at all, 'Cella," and jumped out into the hall and placed his hands on his sister's half-bare shoulders. "Just an accident. Go back to the apartment-"

Then she saw the dead man lying on the floor in the anteroom. The color washed out of her face and her eyes rolled over like a dying doe's. She screamed once, piercingly, and tumbled to the floor as limply as a rag-doll.

At once, as if her scream had been a signal, bedlam howled about them. Doors across the corridor flew open and spewed forth people with glaring eyes and moving mouths. Miss Diversey, her cap askew, came padding down the hall. Behind her rolled the tall, hollow-boned, emaciated figure of Dr. Hugh Kirk, his wheelchair trundling swiftly; he was collarless and coatless, and his stiff-bosomed s.h.i.+rt lay open above his gray-haired chest. The tiny black-gowned woman, Miss Temple, came flying out of nowhere to drop on her knees beside the unconscious girl. Mrs. Shane puffed around the corner screeching questions. A bellboy sped past her, looking about wildly. A small bony British-looking man in butler's panoply stared pasty-faced out of one of the Kirk doors as the others milled about the fallen girl, blundering into one another.

In the confusion Ellery, who had not stirred from the doorway, sighed and retreated, closing the door of the anteroom behind him. The sounds became live echoes. He stood guard with his back to the door, just looking at the dead man and the furniture and back at the dead man again. He made no move to touch anything.

The house doctor, a broad squat cold-eyed man, got to his feet with amazement written all over his stony face. Nye, the manager, an elegant creature in a cutaway with a gardenia in his lapel as depressed-looking as himself, was biting his lips beside Ellery at the door. Brummer, the burly house detective, sc.r.a.ped his blue jaws rather pathetically at the open window.

"Well, Doctor?" said Ellery abruptly.

The man started. "Oh, yes. You want to know, I suppose, how long he's been dead. I should say he died at about six-a little over an hour ago."

"From the effects of the blow on his head?"

"Unquestionably. The poker shattered the skull, causing instant death."

"Ah," said Ellery. "That's a most vital point, Doctor-"

"Generally is," said the doctor with a grim smile.

"Ha, ha. There's no doubt in your mind about death having been instantaneous?"

"My dear sir!"

"I beg your pardon, but we must be sure. And the bruise on his face?"

"Caused by his fall, Mr. Queen. He was dead when he struck the floor." Ellery's eyes flickered, and the physician moved toward the door. "I'll be glad, of course, to repeat my opinion to your Medical Examiner-"

"Scarcely necessary. By the way, there couldn't be a different cause of death, I suppose?"

"Nonsense," said the squat man with asperity. "I can't say without a physical examination and autopsy what other signs of violence exist, but death occurred from the effects of the cranial blow, take my word for it. All the external indications-" Something gleamed in his cold eyes. "See here, you mean that the blow on the skull may have been inflicted after death from a different cause?"

"Some such idiotic notion," muttered Ellery, "was in my mind."

"Then get it out of your mind." The physician hesitated, struggling with an ingrained professional reticence. Then he shrugged. "I'm not a detective, Mr. Queen, and this sort of thing is decidedly out of my line. But if you're looking for something odd, may I point out the condition of this man's clothing?"

"Clothing? Yes, yes, point it out, by all means. I can't say, at this stage of the game, that I should disdain the viewpoint of even a layman."

The doctor eyed him sharply. "Of course," he said in a steel-barbed rasp, "with all your experience-I've heard of you, Queen-I suppose the condition of this man's clothing and its possible significance is childishly clear. But to my infantile mind it seems rather remarkable that-he's got all his clothes on backwards!"

"Backwards?" said Nye with a groan. "Oh, good Lord."

"Didn't you notice, Mr. Nye?" rumbled Brummer, scowling. "d.a.m.nedest thing I ever saw."

"Please, gentlemen," murmured Ellery. "Specifically, Doctor?"

"His coat is on as if he'd got into it the wrong way, as if somebody held it open facing him and he wriggled into the sleeves and then b.u.t.toned himself up the back."

"Masterly! Although not necessarily an exclusive diagnosis. Go on, sir."

Brummer said peevishly: "Why in h.e.l.l should a man put his coat on backwards? It's nuts."

"A strong word, Brummer, but inept. 'Improbable' would be more to the point. Did you ever try to put your coat on backwards?"

"I don't see-" began the detective belligerently.

"Apparently not. I should explain that the improbability lies not in the donning of the coat, but in the b.u.t.toning."

"How d'ye figure that?"

"Do you think you could put your coat on backwards and b.u.t.ton it up yourself, with the b.u.t.tons studding the vertebrae along your spinal column? And the inverted, wrongly placed sleeves hampering the elevating possibilities of your arms?"

"I got you. Sure I could."

"Well, perhaps so," sighed Ellery. "Proceed, Doctor. Pardon the aside."

"You'll have to excuse me," said the doctor abruptly. "I merely wished to call your attention-"

"But I a.s.sure you, Doctor-"

"If the police want me," continued the cold-eyed man with a faint emphasis on the third word, "I shall be in my office. Good evening!" And he stumped past Ellery out of the room.

"A clear case of the frustration psychosis," said Ellery. "Fool!"

The door clicked behind the physician in a dismal silence. They regarded the corpse with varying expressions-Nye gla.s.sily, Brummer gloomily, and Ellery with a furious frown. The pervading impression of unreality persisted. Not only was the dead man's coat on backwards, but his trousers were inverted and b.u.t.toned up behind as well. As were his white madras s.h.i.+rt and vest. His narrow stiff collar similarly was turned about, clamped with a s.h.i.+ny gold collar-b.u.t.ton at the nape. His undergarments apparently exhibited the same baffling inversion. Of all his clothing only his shoes remained in the orthodox position.

His topcoat, hat, gloves, and woolen scarf lay on a chair near the table in a tumbled heap. Ellery sauntered to the chair and picked up the scarf. On one edge in the middle of the scarf were several bloodstains. A tiny stain, hardened to a crust, also existed at the back of the topcoat collar. Ellery dropped the garments with a frown and bent low, searching the floor. He could find nothing. No-yes, there was a splatter that might have been blood on the hardwood surface of the floor beyond the edge of the rug! Near the chair ... He went quickly to the far side of the room and bent over the dead man. The floor about him was clean. Ellery rose and stood back, followed by the dull glances of the two men. The dead man lay parallel with the sill of the door, roughly between the two bookcases which flanked the doorway. The case to the left, as he faced the door, had been pulled from its original position flat against the wall so that its left side touched the hinges of the door and its right side swung out into the room, the s.h.i.+fted bookcase forming an acute angle with the door. The body lay half behind it. The case to the right had been moved farther to the right.

"What do you make of it, Brummer?" asked Ellery suddenly, turning around. There was no irony in his tone.

"I tell you it's nuts," exploded Brummer. "I never seen nothin' like it in all my born days, an' I pounded a beat, Mr. Queen, when your father was a Captain in his precinct days. Whoever pulled this ought to been put in the b.o.o.by-hatch."

"Indeed?" said Ellery thoughtfully. "If not for one remarkable fact, Brummer, I should be tempted to agree. ... And the gentleman's horns? You explain those, also, by the general irrationality of the murderer?"

"Horns?"

Ellery gestured toward the two iron points protruding from beneath the dead man's coat at his back. They were the broad flat pointed blades of African spears. As the man lay face down, the outline of the hafts bulged under his clothes. Apparently the spears had been thrust up his trousers at the back of the foot, one to each leg, rammed up and out at the waist, and pushed under the reversed coat at the man's back until they emerged from the V-shaped lapels. The b.u.t.ts of the spears were flush with the dead man's rubber heels. Each weapon was at least six feet in length, and the blades gleamed high above the bald b.l.o.o.d.y skull. The spears under the tightly b.u.t.toned trousers and coat gave the dead man a curious appearance: for all the world like a slain animal which had been trussed up and slung upon two poles.

Brummer spat out the window. "Cripe! Gives you the creeps. Spears. ... Say, listen, Mr. Queen, you got to admit it's nuts."

"Please, Brummer," murmured Ellery with a wince, "spare us these repet.i.tions. The spears, I confess, are difficult. And yet I've found that nothing in this world is incapable of explanation if only one is smart enough or lucky enough to think of it. Mr. Nye, are these Impi stickers the property of the hotel? I'd no idea our better hostelries went in for primitive decoration."

"Heavens, no, Mr. Queen," said the manager quickly. "They're Mr. Kirk's."

"Stupid of me. Of course." Ellery glanced at the wall above the fireplace. The African s.h.i.+eld had been turned face to the wall. Four lines of lighter shade than the paint on the wall came out behind the inverted s.h.i.+eld like the arms of an X. The spears had undoubtedly hung there, and the murderer had wrenched them from the wall.

"If I had any doubts about the nuttiness of this bird," growled Brummer doggedly, "I'd lose 'em when I took a look at the furniture, Mr. Queen. You can't get around that, can you? Only a lunatic would 'a' tossed all this fine expensive stuff around this way. Now, what the h.e.l.l for, I ask you? Everything's c.o.c.keyed. There's no rhyme or reason to it, as the feller says."

"Brummer's right," said Nye with another groan. "This is the work of a madman."

Ellery regarded the house detective with honest admiration. "Brummer, you've placed that h.o.r.n.y finger of yours on the precise point. Rhyme and reason. Exactly." He began to pace up and down. "That's exactly it. It stuck in my craw from the moment I walked onto this fantastic scene. Rhyme!" He s.n.a.t.c.hed off his pince-nez and waved them about, as if he were trying to convince himself more than Brummer and Nye. "Rhyme! There's rhyme here that utterly defies a.n.a.lysis, that staggers the imagination. If there were no rhyme I should be pleased, very pleased. But rhyme-there's so much of it, it's so complete and so perfect, that I doubt whether there has ever been a more striking example of it in the whole history of logic!"

Nye looked bewildered. "Rhyme?" he echoed stupidly. "I don't see what you mean."

"You mean about the furniture, Mr. Queen?" asked Brummer, knitting his black brows painfully. "It just looks all-well, all messed up to me. Some nut went to a h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble to wreck this room. I don't see-"

"Oh, heavens," exclaimed Ellery, "you're blind, both of you. What do you mean, Brummer, by 'messed up'?"

"You can see, can't you? Knocked around, shoved out of place."

"Is that all? Lord! You don't see anything broken, do you? Smashed? Demolished?"

Brummer coughed. "Well, no, sir."

"Of course you don't! Because this wasn't the work of a wrecker. It was the work of some one with a cold purpose, man, with a purpose worlds removed from mere stupid destruction. Don't you see that yet, Brummer?"

The detective looked miserable. "No, sir."

Ellery sighed and replaced his gla.s.ses upon his thin nose. "In a way," he muttered half to himself, "this becomes valuable exercise. Lord knows I need ... Look here, Brummer, old fellow. Tell me what you see about the bookcases that strikes you as-ah-'messed up.'"

"Bookcases?" The house detective regarded them doubtfully. They were sectional cases of unfinished oak; the odd thing about them was that they stood, for the most part neatly, arrayed on all three walls with their closed backs facing into the room. "Why, they're turned around to face the walls, Mr. Queen."

"Admirable, Brummer. Including," Ellery frowned in a puzzled way, "the two sections flanking the doorway to the office there; although I note with baffled interest that the section to the left of the door has been pulled in front of the door and turned on an acute angle into the room for a bit. And that the one to the right has been shoved off to the right. Well! How about the rug?"

"It's been turned over, Mr. Queen."

"Precisely. You're gazing at the back. And the pictures on the walls?"

Brummer's face was brick-red now, and his reply came in a sullen mutter. "What you drivin' at, anyway?"

"Any notion, Mr. Nye?" drawled Ellery.

The manager raised his padded shoulders. "I'm afraid I'm not very good at this sort of thing, Mr. Queen," he said in a soupy voice. "All I can concentrate on right now is the terrible scandal, the notoriety, the-the-"

"Hmm. Well, Brummer, since this has turned out to be a demonstration, let me expound the gospel of Rhyme." He took out a cigaret and lit it thoughtfully. "The bookcases have been turned around to face the wall. The pictures have been turned around to face the wall. The rug on the floor has been flipped over to lie face down. The table, which has a drawer-you can see that by the two cracks at the back-has been turned around to face the wall. That grandfather clock over there has been turned around to face the wall. These very comfortable chairs have been turned around so that the backs are forward and the seats face the wall. That floor-lamp of the bridge variety has been turned around so that the shade faces the wall. The large lamp and the two table lamps have been turned upside down to rest precariously upon their shades and to wave their nude bases in the air. Turned around, turned around!" He puffed a sharp billow of smoke at the detective. "Well, Brummer, what do these make in toto? Put them all together and they spell what?"

Brummer glared, baffled.

"Rhyme, Brummer, rhyme! Rhyme of the couplet variety. There's a monotonous regularity about this rhyme that simply astounds me. Don't you see that not only have the dead man's clothes been removed and replaced on his body backwards, but that the furniture and everything else of a movable nature in this room have also been turned backwards?"

The two men gaped at him.

"By G.o.d, Mr. Queen," cried Brummer, "you've hit it on the snoot!"

"By G.o.d, Mr. Brummer," said Ellery grimly, "there's rhyme here that will write detectival history when this case is solved-if it ever is. Everything is backwards! Everything. Not just one movable object, mind you, or two or three, but everything. There's your rhyme. But how," he muttered, beginning to stride about again, "how about the reason? Why should everything have been turned backwards? What is it intended to convey, if it's intended to convey anything at all? Why, Brummer; eh?"

"I don't know," said the detective in a hushed voice. "I don't know, Mr. Queen."

Ellery paused in his stride to stare at him. Nye slumped against the door in an att.i.tude of complete befuddlement. "Nor do I, Brummer," said Ellery from behind clenched teeth, "yet."

Mr. n.o.body from Nowhere.

INSPECTOR QUEEN WAS A little bird of a man-a gray-plumed and rather aged bird with a bird's uncanny unwinking eyes and a stiff gray mustache under a small beak that might have been chiselled out of horn. He possessed, too, something of the bird's capacity for freezing into stone when the occasion called for immobility, and a quick pattering gait like the hop of a bird when action was demanded. And at those times when he stepped out of character and did not growl, he even cheeped. Large red men had been known to quail at his gentlest chirp, however, since there was something formidable about the old gentleman's very birdliness, as it were; so that the detectives under his wing feared as well as loved him.

Now they feared far more than they loved, for his chirp had a harsh crackle in it that bespoke irritation. It was all very well for the due process of a murder investigation to be under way, with his men running over the room like a pack of sniffing dogs; but the annoying puzzle of the crime that was backwards kept staring him disagreeably in the face. He felt an unaccustomed futility.

He directed operations absently, from long habit; and all the while the fingerprint detail were spraying the room, the official photographer was snapping the body and the furniture and the door, a.s.sistant Medical Examiner Prouty was kneeling beside the dead man, and the homicide men under Sergeant Velie were gathering names and statements, the old gentleman was wondering how on earth a mere cop could be expected to find plausible reasons for the shockingly implausible phenomena of this murder-case. He was too cautious to dismiss without reflection the topsy-turvy nature of the clues as purposeless vagaries of an insane mind. But what else was a man to think?

"What do you think, son?" he snapped to Ellery while his men filled the room with their clatter.

"I don't think anything yet," Ellery said impatiently. He was staring morosely at his cigaret as he leaned against the sill of the open window. "No, that's not honest. I'm thinking a host of things, most of them so abominably far-fetched that even I hesitate to go to work on them."

"Must be pretty far-fetched in that case," grunted the Inspector. "I'm going to forget all about this crazy backwards business. It's too much for my simple brain. I'll go to work the usual way-ident.i.ty, connections, motive, alibis, availability, possible witnesses."

"Good luck," murmured Ellery. "That's sensible. But if you should collar the chap who did this amazing job right now I'd still want to know what the reason for the backwards folderol is."

"You and me and the Commissioner, too," said the Inspector grimly. "Ah, Thomas. What have you got from those people?"

Sergeant Velie loomed before them. "This thing," he announced in his cavernous voice, which held a note of wonder, "is the darbs."

"Well?"

"This bird Nye, the house manager, never saw the stiff before, he says. Nor any of the clerks or hops. He wasn't stayin' at the Chancellor here, that much is sure. One of the elevator-men remembered takin' him up in his car around a quarter to six, and this fat old dame Mrs. Shane on the floor here directed him to Kirk's office. He asked for Kirk by name-Donald Kirk, he said."

"Kirk's always receiving strangers," said Ellery absently. "He uses these two rooms as an auxiliary office. He's a collector of postage stamps and precious stones, dad."

"One of them," sniffed the Inspector. "Publisher, isn't he?"

"The Mandarin Press was founded by his father-that howling old buzzard with chronic rheumatism-but the old man's been retired for years and Kirk and Felix Berne, who was taken into partners.h.i.+p by Dr. Kirk toward the end of his regime, run the Press now. Don handles all the really private matters connected with The Mandarin right here."

"Sweet layout! Books, stamps, and bawbies. Well, Thomas what are you waiting for?"

"Well," said the gigantic Sergeant hastily, "Mrs. Shane told the fat little duck where to go and he went. Miss Diversey, Dr. Kirk's nurse, was in the office with Osborne, Kirk's a.s.sistant. She heard the little guy ask for Kirk, then she lammed. He wouldn't tell Osborne what he wanted or anything, so Osborne showed him in here through the communicatin' door there and left him, closin' the door. And that's the end of the little fat guy."

"You know the rest, dad," said Ellery with a gloomy nod. "We found the door bolted when we tried it from the office side. Bolted from inside this room, as you can see."

The Inspector eyed the only other door, the one to the corridor, and then looked over Ellery's shoulder. "Nothing doing on the windows," he muttered. "Only a human fly could climb up here from that setback, and human flies aren't murderin' anybody this season. Not even a ledge out there. So it's the corridor-door. Did you take a good look at that bolt, Thomas?"

"Sure. It's well oiled and doesn't make any noise at all when you shove it over. No wonder Osborne didn't hear it goin' into place. He's a kind of studious guy, anyway, an' he says he was workin' on Kirk's stamps, so he didn't hear anything."