The Chinese Orange Mystery

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 hassock 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 prickle 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 balls of his feet and sped toward a Japanese-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 knob being turned. He heard a scraping, 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 Japanese 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 muffled 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 hoarse 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: “Hello 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.

They measured each other for an eon, as if they could not tear their eyes away, as if they could not believe what their eyes saw. They were both shocked into silence by surprise.

“Well, well,” said Ellery at last, drawing a grateful breath and advancing toward the tall motionless young man. “You do get about, don’t you, Kirk? And what’s the meaning of this horribly trite nocturnal visit?”

Donald relaxed completely all of a sudden, as if he could not bear the tension an instant longer. He sank into a nearby white plush chair and with trembling fingers pulled out a cigaret-case and lit a cigaret.

“Well,” he said with a short despairing laugh, “here I am. Caught red-handed, Queen — and by you, of all people.”

“Fate,” murmured Ellery. “And a kind fate for you, my careening young bucko. A more vigorous operative might have — what’s the phrase? ah, yes — plugged you first and asked questions afterward. Fortunately, having a sensitive stomach, I don’t carry firearms... Fearfully bad habit, Kirk, prowling about ladies’ bedrooms at this time of night. Get you into trouble.”

And Ellery seated himself comfortably on a zibeline chaise-longue opposite the plush chair and produced his own cigaret-case and selected a cigaret with dreamy abstraction and lit it.

They smoked thoughtfully and in silence for some time, regarding each other without once lowering their eyes.

Then Ellery swallowed a mouthful of smoke and said: “I suffer a bit from insomnia, too. What do you do for it, old boy?”

Kirk sighed. “Go on. Say it.”

Ellery drawled: “Care to talk?”

The young man forced a grin. “Curiously enough, I’m not in a conversational mood at the moment.”

“Curiously enough, I am. Peaceful atmosphere, two intelligent young men alone, smoking — perfect background for small talk, Kirk. I’ve always said — a most original observation, of course — that what America needs is not so much a good five-cent cigar as the civilizing influence of inconsequential conversation. Don’t you want to be civilized, you heathen?”

The publisher let smoke dribble out of his nostrils. Then he leaned forward suddenly, elbows on his knees. “You’re playing with me, Queen. What d’ye want?”

“I might ask you,” said Ellery dryly, “substantially the same question.”

“Don’t get you.”

“Well, since I must be specific: What were you looking for so strenuously in Miss Irene Sewell’s vanity a few moments ago?”

“I won’t tell you, and that’s final,” snapped Kirk with a defiant flare of his pinched nostrils.

“Pity,” murmured Ellery. “I seem to have lost all power of persuasion.” And there was a long and pregnant silence.

“I suppose,” muttered Donald at last, studying the rug, “you’ll turn me in.”

“I?” said Ellery with elaborate astonishment. “My dear Kirk, you grieve me. I’m not — er — official, you see. Who am I to go about making people unhappy?”

The cigaret burned down to Kirk’s fingertips and he crushed the fire out between his fingers unconsciously. “You mean,” he said slowly, “you’ll pass it up? Won’t tell any one about it, Queen?”

“I had some such thought,” drawled Ellery.

“By George, that’s white of you!” Kirk sprang to his feet, a revitalized man. “Damned decent, Queen. I–I don’t know quite how to thank you.”

“I do.”

“Oh,” said the young man in a different voice, and he sat down again.

“Look here, you dithering fool,” said Ellery cheerfully, flipping his cigaret-butt out one of the open windows. “Don’t you think you’ve tortured yourself with that secret of yours just about to a sufficiency? You’re essentially honest, Kirk; haven’t either the flair or the technique for intrigue. Why can’t you get it through that stubborn young skull of yours that the biggest mistake you’ve made in this miserable business was in not confiding in me?”

“I know it,” muttered Donald.

“Then you’ve come to your senses at last? You’ll tell me?”

Kirk raised haggard eyes. “No.”

“But why not, man, for God’s sake?”

The young man rose and began to pace the rug with hungry strides. “Because I can’t. Because—” the words came reluctantly — “because it’s not my secret, Queen.”

“Oh, that,” said Ellery quietly. “That’s scarcely news to me, old chap.”

Kirk stopped short. “Just what... You know?” There was a deep sounding of pain and tragic despair in his voice.

Ellery shrugged. “If it had been your secret you would have come out with it long ago. Kirk, my lad, no man would stand by and permit the woman he loves to get a horribly distorted impression about him without taking the obvious defensive measures — unless his tongue was paralyzed by the necessity of protecting some one else.”

“Then you don’t know,” murmured Kirk.

“Protecting some one else.” Ellery looked sympathetic. “I’d scarcely be worth my salt as an observer of human beings if I couldn’t perceive that the one you’re protecting is — your sister Marcella.”

“Good God, Queen—”

“I was right, then. Marcella, eh?... Does she know what threatens her, Kirk?”

“No!”

“I thought not. And you’re saving her from it. Perhaps from herself. Stout fellow, Kirk. Knight-in-shining-armor business. I’d no idea lads like you still paced the earth. I suppose Kingsley was right when he said that the age of chivalry is never past so long as there’s a wrong left ‘unredressed.’ And that, of course, is what attracts the female of the species. Your tiny Jo is apparently no exception... No, no, Kirk, don’t clench your fists; I’m not poking fun at you. I mean it. You’re adamant in your refusal, I suppose?”

The veins at Donald’s temple were angry knots. Perspiration materialized on his forehead. But he choked: “No,” and said at once: “I mean — yes!” and tossed his head about like a restless horse, chafing at the rein of circumstances.

“And still I’m morally certain you were going to tell Papa Queen all about it on the night of the murder. Then we found the body and you pulled in your horns. You were going to ask my advice, weren’t you, Kirk?”

“Yes, but not about — this. About this Llewes — Sewell — woman...”

“Ah, then the secret that concerns your sister has nothing to do with your charming Irene?” asked Ellery quickly.

“No, no, I didn’t say that. Oh, good God, Queen, don’t make it so hard for me. I just can’t say any more.”

Ellery rose and went to the open window to stare out inscrutably over the flickering dark canyon below. Then he turned and said lightly: “Since we’ve reached the climax of our little bout of dialectic, I suggest we get out of here before the mistress of this boudoir returns with excursions and alarums. Ready, Kirk?”

“I’m ready,” said Kirk in a muffled voice.

Ellery held the door open for him and then switched off the light. In the darkness they went through the apartment to the front door and passed out into the corridor. There was no one about. They stood still for a moment.

Then Donald Kirk said: “Well, good night,” in the dreariest of tones and trudged off down the corridor toward the stairs without once looking back.

Ellery watched his drooping shoulders until they vanished.

He turned in a seemingly aimless motion and peered sharply out of the corner of his eyes at the turn of the corridor behind him. There had been... But there was nothing to be seen.

For five long minutes Ellery waited without stirring from the spot. No one turned up, no one even looked his way from the far length of the corridor. He strained his ears and kept his eyes open... But the corridor was as still as a cathedral.

And so, this time without hesitation, he inserted his skeleton key in the lock of the door and swiftly reentered the Llewes suite.

But even in the isolation of the darkness there he was troubled. He had seen some one, he felt sure. And, from the tininess of the ankles, that some one who had watched them emerge from the apartment had been Jo Temple.