The Chinese Orange Mystery

Mr. Nobody 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, Assistant 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 — identity, 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 partnership 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 assistant. 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.”

“You’d think,” snapped the Inspector, “he’d hear all this furniture being shoved around!”

“Pshaw, dad,” said Ellery wearily, “you know Osborne’s type as well as I do. If he was occupied doing something during the murder-period, you may be sure he was deaf, dumb, and blind. He’s as loyal to Kirk as a woman in love, and he’s fanatically devoted to Kirk’s interests.”

“All right, all right, so it’s this hall-door,” said the Inspector. “What did you find out about the emergency stairway, Thomas?”

“It’s at the end of the hall outside here, Inspector. Way down the corridor across from the rear of the Kirk apartment. Fact, the door to the stairway is right opposite old Kirk’s bedroom. Anybody could have come up or down the stairs, popped into the hall, sneaked down past the Kirk rooms to this door, pulled the job, and made a getaway the same way.”

“And Mrs. Shane near the elevators couldn’t see any one in that case, hey? The cross-hall’s out of her line of vision except where the two meet?”

“That’s right. She said anyway she didn’t see anybody in this part of the floor after the dead guy came up, except that nurse, that Miss Temple” the Sergeant consulted a notebook, “a woman by the name of Irene Llewes — both guests here — and a Mr. Glenn Macgowan, Mr. Kirk’s pal. They all went into the office, chinned with Osborne, and went out again. Macgowan took the elevator down. The Llewes woman went off toward the Kirk apartment; she didn’t go in, though, so she probably took those stairs down — her rooms are on the floor below. Miss Temple went back to the Kirk apartment — she’s a guest of Kirk’s. So did the nurse. Seems this Miss Diversey’d stopped in this anteroom before she went to the office; said it was neat as a pin. Well, that’s all, Inspector. Nobody else. So it looks like whoever pulled this job used those stairs, and never even showed up around the corner so this Shane dame could see him.”

“That is,” said the Inspector nastily, “if whoever pulled this job doesn’t belong in the Kirk apartment.”

“That’s the way I figure it, too,” rumbled the Sergeant with a scowl. “And I figure the killer bolted that office-door to keep Osborne or whoever else might be in there from interruptin’ him while he was doin’ his hocus-pocus with the furniture in here.”

“And locked the corridor-door, too, I s’pose, for the same reason,” nodded the Inspector, “although we’ll probably never know. When he was through he went out that way, leaving the door closed but unlocked, the way it was found. Didn’t bother to unbolt that door to the office. Maybe he figured it would give him more time for the getaway. Well!” He sighed. “Anything else?”

Ellery puffed at his sixth cigaret. He was listening very intently for all his air of abstraction. His eyes he kept riveted on the kneeling figure of Dr. Prouty, the Assistant Medical Examiner, busy with the dead man.

“Yes, sir. Osborne and Mrs. Shane told me about the others comin’ in and out. Mrs. Shane also backed up Osborne when he said that from the time the little guy came until Mr. Kirk and Mr. Queen arrived he — that’s Ozzie, they call him — didn’t leave the office even once. So—”

“Yes, yes,” murmured Ellery. “It’s quite obvious that the murderer had to come in and leave the anteroom through that corridor-door.” There was something impatient in his tone. “Now how about the man’s identity, Velie? Surely there’s something there? I scarcely touched the man’s clothing.”

“Ha,” said Sergeant Velie in his volcanic basso, “there’s something else that’s screwy about this crime, Mr. Queen.”

“Eh?” said Ellery, staring.

“What’s this, Thomas?”

“No identification.”

“What!”

“Nothin’ in the pockets, Mr. Queen. Not a scrap of anything. Just some lint, like the stuff that always accumulates in a guy’s pockets. They’re goin’ to analyze but it won’t do ’em any good. No tobacco spillings — he evidently didn’t smoke. Just nothin’.”

“Rifled, by George,” murmured Ellery. “Odd! I wonder—”

“I’m going to have a look at those duds,” growled the Inspector, lunging forward. “The labels—”

Sergeant Velie’s girder-like arm stopped him. “No use, Inspector,” he said sympathetically. “There ain’t any.” The Inspector glared. “I’m tellin’ you! They’ve all been cut out.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

Ellery said thoughtfully: “Odder still. I’m beginning to feel a vast respect for our friend the basher. Thorough, isn’t he? Velie, do you mean to say that there’s nothing, nothing at all? How about the underwear?”

“Plain two-piece. No lead there. Labels gone.”

“Shoes?”

“All the numbers are scratched out and inked in with some of that indelible ink from the desk there — India ink.”

“Amazing! Collar?”

“Same. Couldn’t possibly tell the laundry-marks. Same on the shirt, too.” Velie’s gargantuan shoulders twitched. “It’s the darbs, like I was telling you, Mr. Queen. Never saw anything like it.”

“Every effort, unquestionably, to keep the victim’s identity untraceable,” muttered Ellery. “And there’s a sticker. Why, in the name of an illogical God? Rips out the labels, inks out identifiable marks on laundry and shoes, removes all contents of the man’s pockets—”

“If there were any,” grunted the old gentleman.

“Amended. All the clothing is cheap and seems new. Might be a lead there... Ho! What’s this?”

They looked at him, startled. He had snatched off his glasses and was staring incredulously at the dead man. “His necktie — it’s gone!”

“Oh, that,” shrugged Velie. “Sure. We saw that. Didn’t you?”

“No. I hadn’t noticed it before. That should be important, vitally important!”

“Sure looks it,” said the Inspector, frowning. “With the necktie missing, then the fool or genius or maniac or whatever he is that pulled this job took it away with him. Now why the devil did he do that?”

“You can search me,” said the Sergeant blankly. “I think it’s just screwy, the whole thing. Gimme a good clean simple mob kill!”

“No, no,” said Ellery in an irritable tone, “that’s not the tack at all, Velie. It’s not crazy; it’s clever. It has meaning. Why did he take the tie away? There’s a question.” He mumbled furiously to himself. “Obviously, because even with its label torn out — to reduce it to its most advantageous terms — it must still have been identifiable! Traceable.”

“But how could that be?” snorted the Inspector. “That doesn’t make sense. How could you trace a cheap tie?”

“Maybe it was made out of a special kind of goods,” suggested the Sergeant hopefully, “that would be easy to trace back.”

“Special kind? That would make it an expensive one.” The Inspector shook his head. “You couldn’t imagine that fat little grampus with his cheap get-up wearing an expensive tie. No, it’s not that.” He threw up his hands. “Well, I don’t know what to make of it. It’s got me sunk... Well, Hesse?”

A detective grunted something and the old gentleman pattered off. When the Inspector returned he was excited.

“Say, he wasn’t smashed near the door at all!” he exclaimed. “We’ve found blood on the floor near that chair.” He thumbed the chair near the table against the wall. “He must have been struck down near the chair.”

“Ah, so you’ve seen that, have you?” drawled Ellery. “Interesting, I must say. Then what the deuce is he doing near the office-door behind that shifted bookcase?”

“The devil!” snarled the old gentleman. “This is getting crazier by the second. Let’s see what Doc Prouty has to say.”

Dr. Prouty was rising and brushing off his knees. His cloth hat was perched at a rakish angle on his bald head, and faint perspiration gleamed on his forehead. The Inspector sprang over to engage him in furious conversation. Sergeant Velie drifted off to talk to a detective stationed at the corridor-door.

Ellery straightened from the sill, his brow puckered like the skin of a gnome. He stood still for a long time. Then he rapped his right temple with a baffled fist and sauntered toward his father and the doctor. Midway he stopped, very suddenly. Something bright had caught his eye. Scattered pieces of brightness on the table... He went to the table. The bowl of fruit, like everything else on the unpolished wood, had been turned upside down. Beside the bowl lay the ragged fragments of the rind of a tangerine, and a few dry pips. Vaguely he recalled seeing them before... He lifted away the overturned bowl and studied the exposed fruits. Pears, apples, grapes...

Without turning he said: “Sergeant.” Velie came lumbering back. “Didn’t you say that the nurse, Miss Diversey, had testified to entering this room a few minutes before the arrival of the — the devil! the dead man?”

“Why, sure.”

“Fetch her like a good chap. No noise about it want to ask her something.”

“Sure, Mr. Queen.”

Ellery waited quietly. When Sergeant Velie returned a moment later he had in tow the tall nurse, her face quite pale. She kept her eyes averted from the corpse.

“Here she is, Mr. Queen.”

“Ah, Miss Diversey.” Ellery turned. “You were in this room, I understand, at about five-thirty this evening?”

“Yes, sir,” she said nervously.

“Did you notice this fruit-bowl, by any chance?”

Something startled leaped into her eyes. “Fruit? Why — yes, sir. In fact, I–I helped myself to a piece.”

“Splendid!” smiled Ellery. “That’s better luck than I could have hoped for. And did you notice the tangerines particularly?”

“Tangerines?” She was frightened now. “I–I ate one.”

“Oh.” Disappointment showed plainly on his face. “Then these fragments of rind are from the tangerine you ate?” He indicated the peelings.

Miss Diversey stared at them. “Oh, no, sir. I threw mine, pits and all, out that open window there.”

“Ah!” Disappointment vanished to be replaced by eagerness. “Did you notice how many tangerines were left after you had taken one?”

“Yes, sir. Two.”

“That’s all, Miss Diversey,” murmured Ellery. “You’ve been most helpful. All right, Sergeant.”

Velie grinned vaguely and led the nurse away.

Ellery turned back to stare with remarkable interest at the cluster of whole fruits on the table. There was only one tangerine.