The French Powder Mystery

1 “The Queens Were in the Parlor”

They sat about the old walnut table in the Queen apartment — five oddly assorted individuals. There was District Attorney Henry Sampson, a slender man with bright eyes. Beside Sampson glowered Salvatore Fiorelli, head of the Narcotic Squad, a burly Italian with a long black scar on his right cheek. Red-haired Timothy Cronin, Sampson’s assistant, was there. And Inspector Richard Queen and Ellery Queen sat shoulder to shoulder with vastly differing facial expressions. The old man sulked, bit the end of his mustache. Ellery stared vacantly at Fiorelli’s cicatrix.

The calendar on the desk nearby read Tuesday, May the twenty-fourth, 19—. A mild spring breeze fluttered the window draperies.

The Inspector glared about the board. “What did Welles ever do? I’d like to know, Henry!”

“Come now, Q, Scott Welles isn’t a bad scout.”

“Rides to hounds, shoots a 91 on the course, and that makes him eligible for the police commissionership, doesn’t it? Of course, of course! And the unnecessary work he piles on us...”

“It isn’t so bad as that,” said Sampson. “He’s done some useful things, in all fairness. Flood Relief Committee, social work... A man who has been so active in non-political fields can’t be a total loss, Q.”

The Inspector snorted. “How long has he been in office? No, don’t tell me — let me guess. Two days... Well, here’s what he’s done to us in two days. Get your teeth into this.

“Number one — reorganized the Missing Persons Bureau. And why poor Parsons got the gate I don’t know... Number two — scrambled seven precinct-captains so thoroughly that they need road maps to get back to familiar territory. Why? You tell me... Number three — shifted the make-up of Traffic B, C, and D. Number four — reduced a square two dozen second-grade detectives to pounding beats. Any reason? Certainly! Somebody whose grand-uncle’s niece knows the Governor’s fourth secretary is out for blood... Number five — raked over the Police School and changed the rules. And I know he has his eagle eye on my pet Homicide Squad...”

“You’ll burst a blood-vessel,” said Cronin.

“You haven’t heard anything yet,” said the Inspector grimly. “Every first-grade detective must now make out a daily report — in line of duty, mind you — a daily personal report direct to the Commissioners office!”

“Well,” grinned Cronin, “he’s welcome to read ’em all. Half those babies can’t spell homicide.”

“Read them nothing, Tim. Do you think he’d waste his time? Not by your Aunt Martha. No, sir! He sends them into my office by his shiny little secretary, Theodore B. B. St. Johns, with a polite message: ‘The Commissioner’s respects to Inspector Richard Queen, and the Commissioner would be obliged for an opinion within the hour on the veracity of the attached reports.’ And there I am, sweating marbles to keep my head clear for this narcotic investigation — there I am putting my mark on a flock of flatfoot reports.” The Inspector dug viciously into his snuff-box.

“You ain’t spilled half of it, Queen,” growled Fiorelli. “What’s this wall-eyed walrus, this pussy-footing specimen of a ‘civvie’ do but sneak in on my department, sniff around among the boys, hook a can of opium on the sly, and send it down to Jimmy for — guess what — fingerprints! Fingerprints, by God! As if Jimmy could find the print of a dope-peddler after a dozen of the gang had had their paws on the can. Besides, we had the prints already! But no, he didn’t stop for explanations. And then Stern searched high and low for the can and came runnin’ to me with some crazy story that the guy we’re lookin’ for’d walked himself straight into Headquarters and snitched a pot of opium!” Fiorelli spread his huge hands mutely, stuck a stunted black cheroot into his mouth.

It was at this moment that Ellery picked up a little volume with torn covers from the table and began to read.

Sampson’s grin faded. “All joking aside, though, if we don’t gain ground soon on the drug ring we’ll all be in a mess. Welles shouldn’t have forced our hand and stirred up the White test case now. Looks as if this gang—” He shook his head dubiously.

“That’s what riles me,” complained the Inspector. “Here I am, just getting the feel of Pete Slavin’s mob, and I have to spend a whole day down in Court testifying.”

There was silence, broken after a moment by Cronin. “How did you come out on O’Shaughnessy in the Kingsley Arms murder?” he asked curiously. “Has he come clean?”

“Last night,” said the Inspector. “We had to sweat him a little, but he saw we had the goods on him and came through.” The harsh lines around his mouth softened. “Nice piece of work Ellery did there. When you stop to think that we were on the case a whole day without a glimmer of proof that O’Shaughnessy killed Herrin, although we were sure he’d done it — along comes my son, spends ten minutes on the scene, and comes out with enough proof to burn the murderer.”

“Another miracle, eh?” chuckled Sampson. “What’s the inside story, Q?” They glanced toward Ellery, but he was hunched in his chair, assiduously reading.

“As simple as rolling off a log,” said Queen proudly. “It generally is when he explains it. — Djuna, more coffee. Will you, son?”

An agile little figure popped out of the kitchenette, grinned, bobbed his dark head, and disappeared. Djuna was Inspector Queen’s valet, man-of-all-work, cook, chambermaid, and unofficially the mascot of the Detective Bureau. He emerged with a percolator and refilled the cups on the table. Ellery grasped his with a questioning hand and began to sip, his eyes riveted on the book.

“Simple’s hardly the word,” resumed the Inspector. “Jimmy had sprinkled that whole room with fingerprint powder and found nothing but Herrin’s own prints — and Herrin was deader than a mackerel. The boys all took a whack at suggesting different places to sprinkle — it was quite a game while it lasted...” He slapped the table. “Then Ellery marched in. I reviewed the case for him and showed him what we’d found. You remember we spotted Herrin’s footprints in the crumbled plaster on the dining-room floor. We were mighty puzzled about that, because from the circumstances of the crime it was impossible for Herrin to have been in that dining-room. And that’s where superior mentality, I suppose you’d call it, turned the trick. Ellery said: ‘Are you certain those are Herrin’s footprints?’ I told him they were, beyond a doubt. When I told him why, he agreed — yet it was impossible for Herrin to have been in that room. And there lay the prints, giving us the lie. ‘Very well,’ says this precious son o’ mine, ‘maybe he wasn’t in the room, after all.’ ‘But Ellery — the prints!’ I objected. ‘I have a notion,’ he says, and goes into the bedroom.

“Well,” sighed the Inspector, “he certainly did have a notion. In the bedroom he looked over the shoes on Herrin’s dead feet, took them off, got some of the print powder from Jimmy, called for the copy of O’Shaughnessy’s fingerprints, sprinkled the shoes — and sure enough, there was a beautiful thumb impression! He matched it with the file print, and it proved to be O’Shaughnessy’s... You see, we’d looked in every place in that apartment for fingerprints except the one place where they were — on the dead body itself. Who’d ever think of looking for the murderer’s sign on his victim’s shoes?”

“Unlikely place,” grunted the Italian. “How’d it figure?”

“Ellery reasoned that if Herrin wasn’t in that room and his shoes were, it simply meant that somebody else wore or planted Herrin’s shoes there. Infantile, isn’t it? But it had to be thought of.” The old man bore down on Ellery’s bowed head with unconvincing irritability. “Ellery, what on earth are you reading? You’re hardly an attentive host, son.”

“That’s one time a layman’s familiarity with fingerprints came in handy,” grinned Sampson.

“Ellery!”

Ellery looked up excitedly. He waved his book in triumph, and began to recite to the amazed group at the table: “If they went to sleep with the sandals on, the thong worked into the feet and the sandals were frozen fast to them. This was partly due to the fact that, since their old sandals had failed, they wore untanned brogans made of newly flayed ox-hides.[2] Do you know, dad, that gives me a splendid idea?” His face beamed as he reached for a pencil.

Inspector Queen swung to his feet, grumbling. “You can’t get anything out of him when he’s in that mood... Come along, Henry — you going, Fiorelli? — let’s get down to City Hall.”

2 “The Kings Were in the Counting-House”

It was eleven o’clock when Inspector Queen left his apartment on West 87th Street in the company of Sampson, Cronin and Fiorelli, bound for the Criminal Courts Building.

At precisely the same moment, some miles to the south, a man stood quietly at the library dormer-window of a private apartment. The apartment was situated on the sixth floor of French’s, the Fifth Avenue department store. The man at the window was Cyrus French, chief stock-holder of French’s and president of its Board of Directors.

French was watching the swirling traffic at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 39th Street with unseeing eyes. He was a dour-visaged man of sixty-five, stocky, corpulent, iron-grey. He was dressed in a dark business suit. A white flower gleamed on his lapel.

He said: “I hope you made it clear that the meeting was for this morning at eleven, Westley,” and turned sharply to eye a man seated beside a glass-topped desk before the window.

Westley Weaver nodded. He was a fresh-faced young man, clean-shaven and alert, in the early thirties.

“Quite clear,” he replied pleasantly. He looked up from a stenographic notebook in which he had been writing. “As a matter of fact, here is a carbon copy of the memorandum I typed yesterday afternoon. I left one copy for each director, besides this one which you found on the desk this morning.” He indicated a slip of blue-tinted paper lying beside the desk telephone. Except for five books standing between cylindrical onyx book-ends at the extreme right of the desk, a telephone, and the memorandum, the glass top was bare. “I followed up the memos to the directors with telephone calls about a half-hour ago. They all promised to be here on time.”

French grunted and turned again to look down upon the maze of morning traffic. Hands clasped behind his back, he began to dictate store business in his slightly grating voice.

They were interrupted five minutes later by a knock on the outer door, beyond an anteroom. French irritably called, “Come!” and there was the sound of a hand fumbling with the invisible knob. French said, “Oh, yes, the door’s shut, of course; open it, Westley.”

Weaver went quickly through the anteroom and flung open the heavy door. He admitted a weazened little old man who showed pale gums in a grin, and with an amazing celerity for a man of his years tripped into the room.

“Never seem to remember that locked door of yours, Cyrus,” he piped, shaking hands with Westley and French. “Am I the first?”

“That you are, John,” said French with a vague smile. “The others should be here any moment now.”

Weaver offered the old man a chair. “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Gray?”

Gray’s seventy years sat lightly on his thin shoulders. He had a birdlike head covered with thin white hair. His face was the indeterminate color of parchment; it was constantly wreathed in smiles which lifted his white mustache above thin red lips. He wore a wing collar and an ascot tie.

He accepted the chair and sat down with a preposterously lithe movement.

“How was your trip, Cyrus?” he asked. “Did you find Whitney amenable?”

“Quite, quite!” returned French, resuming his pacing. “In fact, I should say that if we officially come to a complete agreement this morning, we can consummate the merger in less than a month.”

“Fine! Good stroke of business!” John Gray rubbed his hands in a curious gesture; they rasped together.

There was a second knock at the door. Weaver again went into the anteroom.

“Mr. Trask and Mr. Marchbanks,” he announced. “And if I’m not mistaken, there comes Mr. Zorn from the elevator.” Two men passed into the room, and a moment later a third; whereupon Weaver hurried back to his chair by the desk. The door swung shut with a click.

The newcomers shook hand all around and dropped into chairs at a long conference table in the middle of the room. They made a peculiar group. Trask — A. Melville Trask in the Social Register — fell into a habitually drooping attitude, sprawling in his chair and playing idly with a pencil on the table before him. His associates paid little attention to him. Hubert Marchbanks sat down heavily. He was a fleshy man of forty-five, florid and clumsy-handed. At regular intervals his loud voice broke in an asthmatic wheeze. Cornelius Zorn regarded his fellow directors from behind old-fashioned gold-rimmed eyeglasses. His head was bald and square, his fingers were thick, and he wore a reddish mustache. His short figure completely filled the chair. He looked startlingly like a prosperous butcher.

French took a seat at the head of the table and regarded the others solemnly.

“Gentlemen — this is a meeting which will go down in the history of department store merchandising.” He paused, cleared his throat. “Westley, will you see that a man is posted at the door so that we may continue absolutely undisturbed?”

“Yes, sir.” Weaver picked up the telephone on the desk and said. “Mr. Crouther’s office, please.” A moment later he said, “Crouther? Who? Oh, yes... Never mind looking for him; you can take care of it. Send one of the store detectives up to the door of Mr. French’s private apartment. He is to see that no one disturbs Mr. French while the Board meeting is going on... He is not to interrupt us — merely station himself at the door... Whom will you send?... Oh! Jones? Good enough. Tell Crouther about it when he comes in... Oh, he’s been in since nine? Well, tell him for me when you see him; I’m very busy just now.” He hung up and returned quickly to a chair at French’s right. He snatched his pencil and poised it over his notebook.

The five directors were poring over a sheaf of papers. French sat staring at the blue May sky outside while they familiarized themselves with the details of the documents, his heavy hands restless on the table top.

Suddenly he turned to Weaver and said in an undertone, “I’d almost forgotten, Westley. Get the house on the wire. Let’s see — it’s eleven-fifteen. They should be up by this time. Mrs. French may be anxious about me — I haven’t communicated with her since I left for Great Neck yesterday.”

Weaver gave the number of the French house to the operator, and a moment later spoke incisively into the mouthpiece.

“Hortense? Is Mrs. French up yet?... Well, is Marion there, then? Or Bernice?... Very well, let me speak with Marion...”

He shifted his body away from French, who was talking in a low tone to old John Gray. Weaver’s eyes were bright and his face suddenly flushed.

“Hello, hello! Marion?” he breathed into the telephone. “This is Wes. I’m sorry — you know — I’m calling from the apartment — your father would like to speak to you...”

A woman’s low voice answered. “Westley dear! I understand... Oh, I’m so sorry, darling, but if Father’s there we can’t talk very long. You love me? Say it!”

“Oh, but I can’t,” whispered Weaver fiercely, his back rigid and formal. But his face, turned away from French, was eloquent.

“I know you can’t, silly boy.” The girl laughed. “I just said it to make you wriggle. But you do, don’t you?” She laughed again.

“Yes. Yes. Oh, YES!”

“Then let me talk to Father, darling.”

Weaver cleared his throat hastily and turned to French.

“Here’s Marion at last, sir,” he said, handing the instrument to the old man. “Hortense Underhill says that neither Mrs. French nor Bernice has come down yet.”

French hurriedly took the telephone from Weavers hands. “Marion, this is Father. I’ve just arrived from Great Neck and I’m feeling fine. Everything all right?... What’s the matter? You seem a little tired... All right, dear. I merely wanted to let you know that I’m back safely. You might tell Mother for me — I’ll be too busy to call again this morning. Good-bye, dear.”

He returned to his chair, looked gravely around at the Board, and said, “Now gentlemen, since you’ve had a few moments to become familiar with the figures I thrashed out with Whitney, let’s get to work.” He brandished a forefinger.

At eleven forty-five the telephone bell jangled, interrupting a heated discussion between French and Zorn. Weaver’s hand leaped to the instrument.

“Hello, hello! Mr. French is very busy just now... Is that you, Hortense? What is it?... Just a moment.” He turned to French. “Pardon me, sir — Hortense Underhill is on the wire and she seems disturbed about something. Will you talk to her or call back?”

French glared at Zorn, who was fiercely dabbing away the perspiration on his thick neck, and snatched the telephone from Weaver.

“Well, what is it?”

A quavering feminine voice answered. “Mr. French, something dreadful’s happened. I can’t find Mrs. French or Miss Bernice!”

“Eh? What’s that you say? What’s the matter? Where are they?”

“I don’t know, sir. They hadn’t rung for the maids all morning, and I went up to see if anything was wrong a few minutes ago. You’ll... you’ll never believe it, sir — I can’t understand—”

“Well!”

“Their beds aren’t touched. I don’t think they slept home last night.”

French’s voice rose in anger. “You silly woman — is that why you’re interrupting my Board meeting? It was raining last night and they probably stayed overnight somewhere with friends.”

“But Mr. French — they would have called, or—”

“Please, Hortense! Go back to your housework. I’ll look into this later.” He slammed the receiver on the hook.

“Foolishness...” he muttered. Then he shrugged his shoulders. He turned to Zorn again, palms on the table. “Now what’s that? Do you mean to tell me that you’d stand in the way of this merger just because of a paltry few thousands? Let me tell you something, Zorn...”

3 “Humpty-Dumpty Had a Great Fall”

French’s occupied a square block in the heart of the mid-town section of New York, on Fifth Avenue. On the borderline between the more fashionable upper avenue and the office-building district farther downtown, it catered to a mixed patronage of wealth and penury. At the noon hour its broad aisles and six floors were crowded with shop girls and stenographers; in mid-afternoon the tone of its clientele improved perceptibly. It boasted at once therefore the lowest prices, the most modern models, the widest assortment of saleable articles, in New York. As a result of this compromise between attractive prices and exclusive merchandise it was the most popular department store in the city. From nine o’clock in the morning until five-thirty in the evening French’s was thronged with shoppers, the sidewalks surrounding the marble structure and its many wings almost impassable.

Cyrus French, pioneer department store owner, assisted by his associate Board, exerted the full financial strength of his powerful organization to make French’s — an institution of two generations of French ownership — the show place of the city. In those days, long before the artistic movement had been communicated in the United States to the more practical articles of use and wear, French’s had already made contact with its European representatives and held public exhibitions of art objects, art furniture, and kindred modernistic ware. These exhibits attracted huge crowds to the store. One of its main windows fronting Fifth Avenue was devoted to exhibits of periodically imported articles. This window became the focal point for the eyes of all New York. Curious throngs constantly besieged its sheathing of plate glass.

On the morning of Tuesday the twenty-fourth of May, at three minutes of the noon hour, the heavy impaneled door to this window opened and a model in black dress, white apron and white cap entered. She sauntered about the window, seemed to appraise its contents, and then stood stiffly at attention, as if awaiting a predetermined moment to begin her mysterious work.

The contents of the window were arranged to illustrate a combination living-room and bedroom, of an ultra-modern design created by Paul Lavery, of Paris, according to a placard in a corner. This card acknowledged Lavery’s authorship of the articles on exhibition, and called attention to “lectures on the fifth floor by M. Lavery.” The rear wall, into which the one door opened by which the model had entered, was unrelieved by ornament and tinted a pastel green. On this wall hung a huge Venetian mirror, unframed, its edges cut in an irregular design. Against the wall stood a long narrow table, exhibiting an unpainted grain highly waxed. On the table stood a squat prismatic lamp, made of a clouded glass procurable at that period only from a unique modern art-objects factory in Austria. Odd pieces — chairs, end-tables, bookcases, a divan, all of unorthodox construction, peculiar and daring in conception — stood about the gleaming floor of the window-room. The side walls served as background for several pieces of miscellaneous utility.

The lighting fixtures in the ceiling and on the side walls were all of the “concealed” variety rapidly gaining vogue on the Continent.

At the stroke of noon the model, who had remained motionless since her entrance into the room, stirred into activity. By this time a viscid mass of people had gathered outside the window on the sidewalk, awaiting the model’s demonstration with hungry eyes and restless shoulders.

Setting down a metal rack on which were hung a number of simply lettered placards, the model picked up a long ivory wand and, pointing to the legend on the first placard, proceeded solemnly to one of the pieces on the east wall and began a pantomimic demonstration of its construction and properties.

The fifth placard — by this time the crowd had doubled in size and overflowed from the sidewalk — bore the words:

Pointing to the words once more, for emphasis, the model sedately walked to the west wall, indicated with a flourish a small ivory button set in a nacreous panel, and touched the button with one long finger.

Before pressing it, she looked out once more on the jostling, expectant crowd before the window. Necks craned eagerly to see the marvel about to be revealed.

What they saw was a marvel indeed — so unexpected, so horrible, so grotesque that at the instant of its occurrence faces froze into masks of stunned incredulity. It was like a moment snatched out of an unbelievable nightmare... For, as the model pushed the ivory button, a section of the wall slid outward and downward with a swift noiseless movement, two small wooden legs unfolded and shot out of the forepart of the bedstead, the bed settled to a horizontal position — and the body of a woman, pale-faced, crumpled, distorted, her clothes bloody in two places, fell from the silken sheet to the floor at the model’s feet.

It was twelve-fifteen exactly.

4 “All the King’s Horses”

The model uttered one horrified shriek, so piercing that it was distinctly audible through the heavy glass window, rolled her eyes wildly, and fell fainting at the side of the body.

The spectators outside still presented a tableau — they were stricken into silence, petrified with fright. Then a woman on the sidewalk, her face pressed immovably to the glass, screamed. Immobility became frenzy, silence a dull un-punctuated roar. The crowd surged away from the window, pushing madly backward, stampeding in terror. A child fell and was trampled in the crush. A police whistle blew, and a bluecoat ran shouting through the crowd, using his club freely. He seemed bewildered by the uproar — he had not yet seen the two still figures in the exhibition-window.

Suddenly the door in the window burst open and a lean man wearing a short pointed beard and a monocle ran into the room. His staring eyes took in the two motionless figures on the shining floor, traveled jerkily to the milling crowd outside and the policeman swinging his club, and returned with dazed disbelief to the floor. With a soundless oath he sprang forward, grasped a heavy silk cord in a corner near the plate-glass window, and pulled. A translucent curtain fell immediately, shutting off the view of the frantic people in the street.

The bearded man knelt at the side of the model, felt her pulse, hesitantly touched the skin of the other woman, rose and ran back to the door. A growing crowd of salesgirls and shoppers was collecting on the main floor of the department store, just outside the window. Three men — floorwalkers — rushed through as if to enter.

The man in the window spoke sharply: “You — get the head store detective at once — no, never mind — here he comes — Mr. Crouther! Mr. Crouther! This way! Here!”

A heavy-set, abroad-shouldered man with a mottled complexion shoved his way, cursing, through the crowd. He had just reached the entrance of the window when the policeman who had dispersed the crowd on the sidewalk ran up and dashed after him into the window. The three men disappeared, the bluecoat slamming the door shut behind them.

The bearded man stood aside. “There’s been a terrible accident, Crouther... Glad you’re here, officer... My God, what an affair!”

The head store detective pounded across the room and glared down at the two women. “What happened to the girl, Mr. Lavery?” he bellowed at the bearded man.

“Fainted, I suppose!”

“Here, Crouther, let me take a look,” said the policeman, unceremoniously pushing Lavery aside. He bent over the body of the woman who had tumbled from the bed.

Crouther cleared his throat importantly. “Listen here, Bush. This is no time to make an examination. We oughtn’t to touch a thing until Headquarters is notified. Mr. Lavery and me — we’ll stand guard here while you use the ’phone. Go ahead now, Bush, don’t be an egg!”

The policeman stood undecidedly for a moment, scratched his head, and finally left the room with hurried steps.

“This is one sweet mess,” growled Crouther. “What happened here, Mr. Lavery? Who the hell is this woman?”

Lavery started nervously and plucked at his beard with long thin fingers. “Why, don’t you know? But of course not... Good Heavens, Crouther, what are we to do?”

Crouther frowned. “Now don’t go getting yourself all excited Mr. Lavery.” This is a police job, pure and simple. Lucky I was on the scene so quick. We gotta wait for the detail from Headquarters, Just take it easy now—”

Lavery regarded the store detective coldly. “I’m perfectly all right, Mr. Crouther,” he said. “I suggest—” he weighted the word with authority — “that you immediately marshal your store forces to keep order on the main floor. Make it appear as if nothing out of the way has happened. Call Mr. MacKenzie. Send somebody to notify Mr. French and the Board of Directors. I understand they’re having a meeting upstairs. This is — an affair of a grave nature — graver than you know. Go now!”

Crouther looked at Lavery rebelliously, shook his head, and made for the door. As he opened it a small dark man with a physician’s bag stepped into the room. He glanced quickly around and without a word crossed to the side of the two bodies.

He favored the model with a scant glance and a feeling of the pulse. He spoke without looking up.

“Here — Mr. Lavery, is it? — you’ll have to help — get one of the men outside to give you a hand — the model has merely fainted — get her a glass of water and put her on that divan there — send somebody for one of the nurses from the infirmary...”

Lavery nodded. He went to the door and looked out over the whispering crowd on the floor.

“Mr. MacKenzie! Here, please!”

A middle-aged man with a pleasant Scotch face hurried up and into the room. “Help me, please,” said Lavery.

The doctor busied himself over the body of the other woman. His movements concealed her face. Lavery and MacKenzie picked up the reviving form of the model and carried her to the divan. A floorwalker outside was dispatched for a glass of water and reappeared in a twinkling. The model gulped, groaned.

The doctor looked up gravely. “This woman is dead,” he announced. “Has been for quite a while. What’s more, she’s been shot. Got it in the heart. Looks like murder, Mr. Lavery!”

“Nom du chien!” muttered Lavery. His face was sickly white.

MacKenzie scurried across the room to look down at the huddled corpse. He fell back with a cry. “Good God! It’s Mrs. French!”

5 “And All the King’s Men”

The window-door opened quickly and two men stepped in. One, a tall lanky individual smoking a blackish cigar, stopped short, peered about him, and then, catching sight of the body, immediately advanced to the farther side of the wall bed, on the floor by which lay the dead woman. He favored the little physician with a keen glance, nodded and without further ado dropped to his knees. After a moment he looked up.

“The store doctor, are you?”

The physician nodded nervously. “Yes, I’ve made a superficial examination. She’s dead. I—”

“I can see that,” said the newcomer. “I’m Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner. Stand by, doctor.” Again he bent over the body, opening his bag with one hand.

The second of the two men who had arrived was an iron-jawed giant. He had stopped at the door, softly prodding it shut behind him. Now his eyes flickered over the frozen faces of Lavery, MacKenzie and the store doctor. His own face was cold and harsh and expressionless.

It was not until Dr. Prouty began his examination that this man vitalized into action. He took a purposeful step forward toward MacKenzie, but stopped suddenly as the door shivered under a violent pounding.

“Come in!” he said sharply, standing between the door and the bed, so that the body was hidden from the newcomers.

The door was flung aside. A small army of men surged forward. The tall man blocked their path.

“Just a moment,” he said slowly. “We can’t have so many people in here. Who are you?”

Cyrus French, flushed and choleric, snapped: “I am the owner of this establishment, and these gentlemen all have a right to be here. They are the Board of Directors — this is Mr. Crouther, our head store detective — stand aside, please.”

The tall man did not move. “Mr. French, eh? Board of Directors?... Hello, Crouther... Who is this?” He pointed to Westley Weaver, who hovered about the edge of the group, a trifle pale.

“Mr. Weaver, my secretary,” said French impatiently. “Who are you, sir, What’s happened here? Let me pass.”

“I see.” The tall man reflected a moment, hesitated, then said firmly, “I’m Sergeant Velie of the Homicide Squad. Sorry, Mr. French, but you’ll have to abide by my orders here. Come in, but don’t touch anything and let me give the orders.” He stepped aside. He seemed to be waiting for something with unwearying patience.

Lavery ran forward, his eyes distended as he saw Cyrus French stride toward the bed. He intercepted the old man, grasped his lapel.

“Mr. French — please do not look — just now...”

French petulantly brushed him aside. “Let me be, Lavery! What is this — a conspiracy? Ordered about in my own store!” He proceeded to the bed, and Lavery fell back, a resigned look on his mobile face. Suddenly, as if struck by a thought, he took John Gray aside, speaking in the director’s ear. Gray paled, stood transfixed to the spot, then with an indistinct cry he leaped to French’s side.

He was just in time. The store owner had bent curiously over Dr. Prouty’s shoulder, taken one look at the woman on the floor, and collapsed without a sound. Gray caught him as he sank. Lavery sprang forward and assisted in carrying the old man’s limp body to a chair on the other side of the room.

A nurse in white cap and gown had slipped into the room and was ministering to the hysterical model on the divan. She went quickly over to French, slipped a vial under his nose, and instructed Lavery to chafe his hands. Gray paced nervously up and down, muttering to himself. The store doctor hurried over to help the nurse.

The directors and, the secretary, huddled together in a horror-struck group, moved hesitantly toward the body. Weaver and Marchbanks cried out together at seeing the woman’s face. Zorn bit his lip and turned away. Trask averted his face in horror. Then, in the same mechanical motion, they moved slowly backward to a corner, glancing helplessly at each other.

Velie crooked a huge finger at Crouther. “What have you done?”

The store detective grinned. “Taken care of all the details, don’t you worry. I’ve got all my men scrambled on the main floor and they’ve scattered the mob. Got everything well in hand. Trust Bill Crouther for that, Sergeant! Won’t be much for you guys to do, that’s a fact.”

Velie grunted. “Well, here’s something for you to do while we’re waiting. Get a big stretch of the main floor roped off right around this section, and keep everybody away. It’s a little late now, I suppose, to close the doors. Wouldn’t do much good. Whoever did this job is miles away from here by now. Get going, Crouther!”

The store detective nodded, turned away, turned back. “Say, Sergeant — know just who the woman on the floor is? Might help us right now.”

“Yes?” Velie smiled frostily. “Can’t see how. But it doesn’t take much to figure it out. It’s French’s wife. Blast it, this is a great place for a murder!”

“No!” Crouther’s jaw dropped. “French’s wife, hey? The big cheese himself... Well, well!” He stole a glance at the slack figure of French and a moment later his voice resounded through the window as he roared instructions outside.

Silence in the window-room. The group in the corner had not moved. The model and French had both been revived — the woman’s eyes rolling wildly as she clung to the starched skirt of the nurse, French’s face a pasty white as he half-lay in the chair listening to Gray’s low-voiced words of sympathy. Gray himself seemed drained of his queer vitality.

Velie beckoned to MacKenzie, who hovered nervously at Prouty’s shoulder.

“You’re MacKenzie, the store manager?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“It’s time to get a move on, Mr. MacKenzie.” Velie eyed him coldly. “Get a hold on yourself. Somebody’s got to keep his wits about him. This is part of your job.” The store manager squared his shoulders. “Now listen. This is important and it’s got to be done thoroughly.” He lowered his voice. “No employees to leave the building — item number one, and I’m holding you responsible for its execution. Number two, check up on all employees who are not at their posts. Number three, make out a list of all employees absent from the store to-day, with the reasons for their absence. Hop to it!”

MacKenzie mumbled submissively, shuffled away.

Velie took Lavery, who stood talking to Weaver, to one side.

“You seem to have some authority here. May I ask who you are?”

“My name is Paul Lavery, and I am exhibiting the modern furniture on display upstairs on the fifth floor. This room is a sample of my exhibition.”

“I see. Well, you’ve kept your head, Mr. Lavery. The dead woman is Mrs. French?”

Lavery averted his eyes. “Yes, Sergeant. It was quite a shock to all of us, no doubt. How in God’s name did she ever get—” He stopped abruptly, worried his lip.

“Did she ever get here, you meant to say?” finished Velie grimly. “Well now, that’s a question, isn’t it? I— Just a moment, Mr. Lavery!”

He turned on his heel and walked swiftly to the door to greet a group of new arrivals.

“Morning, Inspector. Morning, Mr. Queen! Glad you’ve come, sir. You’ll find things in a rotten mess.” He stepped aside and waved a large hand at the room and its assorted occupants “Pretty, eh, sir? More like a wake than the scene of a crime!” It was a long speech for Velie.

Inspector Richard Queen — small, pert, like a white-thatched bird — followed the circuit of Velie’s hand with his eyes.

“My goodness!” he exclaimed in annoyance. “How did so many people get into this room? I’m surprised at you Thomas.”

“Inspector.” Queen paused at Velie’s deep voice. “I thought it might—” his voice became inaudible as he murmured a few words in the Inspector’s ear.

“Yes, yes, I see, Thomas.” The Inspector patted his arm. “Tell me soon. Let’s have a peep at the body.”

He trotted across the room and slipped to the far side of the wall-bed. Prouty, his hands busy on the corpse, nodded in greeting.

“Murder,” he said. “No sign of the revolver.”

The Inspector peered intently into the ghastly face of the dead woman, ran his eye over the disarranged clothing.

“Well, well have the boys look a little later. Keep going, Doc.” He sighed and returned to Velie at the other side of the room.

“Now let’s have it, Thomas. From the beginning.” His little eyes roved judiciously about the men in the room as Velie rapidly outlined in an undertone the events of the past half-hour... Outside a body of plainclothes men and a scattering of uniformed policemen could be seen. The patrolman, Bush, was among them.

Ellery Queen shut the door and leaned against it. He was tall and sparely built, with athletic hands, taper-fingered. He wore immaculate grey tweeds and carried a stick and a light coat. On his thin nose perched a pince-nez. Above it rose a forehead of wide proportions, white and untroubled. His hair was smoothly black. From the pocket of the coat protruded a small volume in faded covers.

He looked curiously at each person in the room — curiously and slowly, as if he enjoyed his scrutiny. The characteristics of each individual as his eyes passed from one to another he seemed to store away in a corner of his brain. His examination was almost visibly digestive. Yet it was not entirely concentrated, for he listened intently to each word of Velie’s recital to the Inspector. Suddenly his eyes, in their panoramic course, met those of Westley Weaver, who stood miserably in a corner leaning against the wall.

Into the eyes of each leaped instant recognition. They started forward simultaneously, hands outstretched.

“Ellery Queen. Thank God!”

“By the Seven Virgins of Theophilus — Westley Weaver!” They wrung each other’s hands with undisguised pleasure. Inspector Queen glanced their way, quizzically; then he turned back to hear the last of Velie’s rumbled comments.

“It’s awfully good seeing your classic features again, Ellery,” murmured Weaver. His face dropped back into strained lines. “Are you — is that the Inspector?”

“In the indefatigable flesh, Westley,” said Ellery. “The pater himself, with his nose to the scent. — But tell me things, boy. It’s— O Tempes! — isn’t it five or six years since we last met?”

“All of that, Ellery. I’m glad you’re here, for more than one reason, El. “It’s a little comforting,” said Weaver in a low voice. “This... this thing...”

Ellery’s smile faded. “The tragedy, eh, Westley? Tell me — how do you figure in it? You didn’t kill the lady, by any chance?” His tone was jocular, but behind it was a certain anxiety which his father, ears cocked, found a little strange.

“Ellery!” Weaver’s eyes met his straightforwardly. “That isn’t even funny.” Then the look of misery crept in again. “It’s awful, El. Just awful. You haven’t any idea how awful it is...”

Ellery patted Weaver’s arm lightly, removed his pince-nez with an absent motion. “I’ll get it all in a moment, Westley. I’ll hold tête-à-tête conversation with you later. Hang on, won’t you? I see my father signaling me frantically. Chin up, Wes!” He moved away, again smiling. Weaver’s eyes held a glimmer of hope as he dropped back against the wall.

The Inspector murmured to his son for a moment. Ellery made a low-voiced reply. Then Ellery strode over to the farther side of the bed and stood over Prouty, watching the medical examiner as he worked swiftly over the body.

The Inspector turned to the assembled crowd in the room. “A little quiet now, please,” he said. A thick curtain of silence dropped over the room.

6 Testimony

The inspector stepped forward.

“It will be necessary for every one to wait here,” he began sententiously, “while we make some elementary but essential investigations. Let me say at once, to forestall any claims of special privilege that may be made, that this is undoubtedly a case of murder. In cases of murder, the most serious charge that can be brought against an individual, the law is no respecter either of persons or institutions. A woman is dead of violence. Somebody killed her. That somebody may be miles away at this moment, or in this room now. You can understand, gentlemen” — and his tired eyes considered the five directors especially — “that the sooner we get down to business, the better. Too much time has been lost already.”

He went abruptly to the door, opened it, and called in a penetrating voice: “Piggott! Hesse! Hagstrom! Flint! Johnson! Ritter!”

Six detectives strolled into the room. Ritter, a burly man, closed the door behind him.

“Hagstrom, your book.” The detective whipped out a small notebook and a pencil.

“Piggott, Hesse, Flint — the room!” He added something in a low tone. The three detectives grinned and dispersed to different portions of the room; They began a slow, methodical search of furniture, floors, walls.

“Johnson — the bed!” One of the two remaining men went directly to the wall-bed and began to examine its contents.

“Ritter — stand by.” The Inspector slipped his hands into a coat pocket and withdrew his brown old snuff-box. He filled his nostrils with aromatic snuff, inhaled deeply and restored the box to his pocket.

“Now!” he said, and glared about the room at his thoroughly cowed audience. Ellery met his eye for an instant and smiled slightly. “Now! You, there!” He pointed an accusing finger at the model, who was staring at him with wide eyes, her skin pale with fright.

“Yes,” she quavered, tottering to her feet.

“Your name?” snapped Queen.

“Di-Diana Johnson, sir,” she whispered, gazing at him in scared fascination.

“Diana Johnson, eh?” The Inspector took a step forward, leveled his finger at her. “Why did you open this bed at twelve-fifteen today?”

“I, I had to,” she faltered. “That was—”

Lavery waver his arm hesitantly at the Inspector. “I can explain that—”

“Sir!”

Lavery colored, then smiled cynically. “Go on, Miss Johnson.”

“Well, sir, that was the regular time for the exhibition. I always come out into this room a few minutes before twelve and get ready.” The words tumbled out. “And then, when I’d just got through showing this contraption” — she indicated the divan, which seemed a combination of sofa, bed, and bookcase — “I go to the wall, push the button, and then that — that dead woman fell out right at my feet...” She shuddered and drew a deep breath, glancing at the detective Hagstrom, who was busily taking down her words in shorthand.

“You had no idea the body was inside when you pressed the button, Miss Johnson?” demanded the Inspector.

The model’s eyes flew wide open.

“No sir! I wouldn’t have touched that bed for a thousand dollars if I’d known that.” The uniformed nurse giggled nervously. She sobered instantly as the Inspector stared in her direction.

“Very well. That’s all.” He turned to Hagstrom. “Got every word?” The detective nodded, maintaining a severe silence as the old man winked fleetingly at him. Inspector Queen turned back to the group. “Nurse, take Diana Johnson to your hospital upstairs and keep her there until I give the word!”

The model stumbled in her eagerness to leave the window-room. The nurse followed somewhat sulkily behind.

The Inspector had Patrolman Bush summoned. The policeman saluted, answered a few questions about what had occurred on the sidewalk at the moment the body fell, and subsequently inside the window-room, and was commissioned to go back to his post on Fifth Avenue.

“Crouther!” The store detective was standing by the side of Ellery and Dr. Prouty. He now slouched forward and stared boldly at Queen. “You’re the head store detective?”

“Yes, Inspector.” He shuffled his feet and grinned, displaying tobacco-stained teeth.

“Sergeant Velie tells me that he instructed you to scatter your men through the main floor soon after the body was discovered. Have you attended to that?”

“Yes, sir. Got a squad of half-dozen store detectives workin’ outside, and put every available ‘spotter’ on the job, too,” replied Crouther promptly. “But they haven’t turned up anybody suspicious yet.”

“Could hardly expect it.” The Inspector took another pinch of snuff. “Tell me just what you found when you came in here.”

“Well, Inspector, the first I knew about the murder was when one of my detectives ’phoned me upstairs in my office that something had happened outside on the sidewalk — riot or something. I came down right away and as I passed this window I heard Mr. Lavery yell for me. I ran in, saw the body layin’ here, and the girl fainting on the floor. Bush, the officer on the beat, came in right after me. I told ’em nothing ought to be touched until the Headquarters men got here, and then got right after the mobs outside, and generally kept an eye on everything until Sergeant Velie got here. I followed his orders after that, that’s a fact. I—”

“Here, here, Crouther, that’s plenty,” said the Inspector. “Don’t leave, I may be able to use you later. Short-handed enough as it is, the Lord knows. A department store!” He muttered under his breath and turned to Dr. Prouty.

“Doc! Ready for me yet?”

The kneeling police doctor nodded. “Just about, Inspector. Want me to shoot the works right here?” He seemed tacitly to question the wisdom of imparting his information before a group of laymen.

“Might as well,” grunted Queen. “It can’t be very enlightening.”

“Don’t know about that.” Prouty stood up with a groan, took a firmer grip on the black cigar between his teeth.

“Woman was killed by two bullets,” he said deliberately, “both from a Colt .38 revolver. Probably from the same gun — hard to tell exactly without putting them under the microscope.” He held up two encarmined blobs of metal, blunted completely out of shape. The Inspector took them, turned them over in his fingers, and in silence handed them to Ellery, who immediately bent over them with a curious eagerness.

Prouty stared dreamily down at the body, plunging his hands into his pockets. “One bullet,” he continued, “entered the body directly in the center of the cardiac region. Nice jagged pericardial wound, Inspector. Smashed the sternum bone, pierced the pericardial septum, which is the membrane separating the pericardium from the main body cavity, then took the logical course through — first the fibrous layer of the pericardium, then the serous inner layer, and finally the anterior tip of the heart, where the great vessels are. Spilled quite a bit of the yellow pericardial fluid, too. Bullet entered the body at an angle and it’s left a fearful wound...”

“Then death was instantaneous?” asked Ellery. “The second bullet was unnecessary?”

“Quite,” said Prouty dryly. “Death would be instantaneous from either wound. As a matter of fact, the second bullet — maybe it’s not the second, though, I can’t tell of course which hit her first — bullet number two made a better job of it than even bullet number one. Because it penetrated the precordia, which is the region a little below the heart and above the abdomen. This is also a ragged wound, and since the precordial sector takes in muscles and blood-vessels of major importance, it’s as vital a spot as the heart itself...” Prouty stopped suddenly. His eyes strayed almost with irritation to the dead woman on the floor.

“Was the revolver fired close to the body?” put in the Inspector.

“No powder stains, Inspector,” said Prouty, still regarding the corpse with a frown.

“Were both bullets fired from the same spot?” asked Ellery.

“Hard to say. The lateral angles are similar, indicating that whoever fired both bullets stood to the right of the woman. But the downward course of the bullets disturbs me. They’re too much alike.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Ellery, leaning forward.

“Well,” growled Prouty, biting on his cigar, “if the woman were in exactly the same position when both shots were fired — assuming that both shots were fired almost simultaneously, of course — there should be a greater downward angle to the precordial wound than to the pericardial. Because the precordia is located below the heart, and the gun would have to be aimed lower... Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say these things at all. There are any number of explanations, I suppose, for that difference in angle. Ought to have Ken Knowles look over the bullets and the wounds, though.”

“He’ll get his chance,” said the Inspector with a sigh. “Is that all, Doc?”

Ellery looked up from another scrutiny of the two bullets. “How long has she been dead?”

Prouty replied promptly: “About twelve hours, I should say. I’ll be able to fix the time of death more accurately after the autopsy. But she certainly died no earlier than midnight and probably no later than two in the morning.”

“Through now?” asked Inspector Queen patiently.

“Yes. But there’s one thing that has me a little...” Prouty set his jaw. “There’s something queer here, Inspector. From what I know of precordial wounds I can’t believe that this one should have bled so little. You’ve noticed, I suppose, that the clothing above both wounds is stiff with coagulated blood, but not so much of it as you might expect. At least as a medical man might expect.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen plenty of precordial wounds,” said Prouty calmly, “and they’re messy, Inspector. Bleed like hell. In fact, especially in this case, where the hole is blasted pretty large, due to the angle, there should be pools and pools of it. The pericardial would bleed freely, but not profusely. But the other — I say, there’s something queer here, and I thought I’d call it to your attention.”

Ellery shot his father a warning glance as the old man opened his mouth to reply. The Inspector clamped his lips together and dismissed Prouty with a nod. Ellery returned the two bullets to Prouty, who put them carefully into his bag.

The police doctor unhurriedly covered the body with a sheet from the hanging bed and departed, his last words a promise to hurry the morgue wagon.

“Is the store physician here?” Queen asked.

The small dark doctor stepped uncertainly forward from a corner. His teeth gleamed as he said, “Yes, sir?”

“Have you anything to add to Dr. Prouty’s analysis, Doctor?” questioned Queen, with disarming gentleness.

“Not a thing, not a thing, sir,” said the store physician, looking uneasily at Prouty’s retreating figure. “A precise if somewhat sketchy diagnosis. The bullets entered—”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Inspector Queen turned his back on the little physician and beckoned imperiously to the store detective.

“Crouther,” he asked in a low tone, “who’s your head nightwatchman?”

“O’Flaherty — Peter O’Flaherty, Inspector.”

“How many watchmen are on duty here at night?”

“Four. O’Flaherty tends the night-door on the 39th Street side, Ralska and Powers do the rounds, and Bloom is on duty at the 39th Street night freight-entrance.”

“Thanks.” The Inspector turned to Detective Ritter. “Get hold of this man MacKenzie, the store manager, find the home address of O’Flaherty, Ralska, Powers and Bloom, and get ’em down here as fast as a cab will carry them. Scoot!” Ritter lumbered away.

Ellery suddenly straightened, adjusted his pince-nez more firmly on his nose, and strode over to his father. They held a whispered colloquy for a moment, whereupon Ellery quietly retreated to his vantage-point near the bed and the Inspector crooked his finger at Westley Weaver.

“Mr. Weaver,” he asked, “I take it that you are Mr. French’s confidential secretary?”

“Yes, sir,” responded Weaver warily.

The Inspector glanced sidewise at Cyrus French, huddled exhausted in the chair. John Gray’s small white hand was solicitously patting French’s arm. “I’d rather not bother Mr. French at this time with questions. — You were with him all morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. French was not aware of Mrs. French’s presence in the store?”

“No, sir!” The response was immediate and sharp. Weaver regarded Queen with suspicious eyes.

“Were you?”

“I? No, sir!”

“Hmmm!” The Inspector’s chin sank on his chest, and he communed with himself for an instant. Suddenly his finger shot toward the group of directors on the other side of the room. “How about you gentlemen? Any of you know that Mrs. French was here — this morning or last night?”

There was a chorus of horrified noes. Cornelius Zorn’s face grew red. He began to protest angrily.

“Please!” The Inspector’s tone flung them back to silence. “Mr. Weaver. How is it that all these gentlemen are present in the store this morning? They’re not here every day, are they?”

Weaver’s frank face lightened, as if from relief. “All of our directors are active in the management of the store, Inspector. They’re here every day, if only for an hour or so. As for this morning, there was a directors’ meeting in Mr. French’s private apartment upstairs.”

“Eh?” Queen seemed pleased as well as startled. “A private apartment upstairs, you say? On what floor?”

“The sixth — that’s the top floor of the store.”

Ellery stirred into life. Again he crossed the floor, again he whispered to his father, and again the old man nodded.

“Mr. Weaver,” continued the Inspector, a note of eagerness in his voice, “how long were you and the Board in Mr. French’s private apartment this morning?”

Weaver seemed surprised at the question. “Why, all morning, Inspector. I arrived at about eight-thirty, Mr. French at about nine, and the other directors at a little past eleven.”

“I see.” The Inspector mused. “Did you leave the apartment at any time during the morning?”

“No, sir.” The reply was snapped back at him.

“And the others — Mr. French, the directors?” pressed the Inspector patiently.

“No, sir! We were all there until one of the store detectives notified us that an accident had occurred here. And I must say, sir—”

“Westley, Westley...” murmured Ellery chidingly, and Weaver turned to him with startled eyes. They fell before the meaning glance of Ellery, and Weaver bit his lip nervously. He did not finish what he had begun to say.

“Now, sir.” The Inspector seemed to be enjoying himself in a tired way — utterly disregarding the bewildered eyes of the many people in the room. “Now, sir! Be very careful. At what time did this notification come?”

“At twelve-twenty-five,” replied Weaver in a calmer tone.

“Very well. — Every one then left the apartment?” Weaver nodded. “Did you lock the door?”

“The door closed after us, Inspector.”

“And the apartment remained that way, unguarded?”

“Not at all,” said Weaver promptly. “At the beginning of the conference this morning, at Mr. French’s suggestion, I got one of the store detectives to stand guard outside the apartment door. He is probably still there, because his orders were specific. In fact, I remember seeing him lounging about outside when we all rushed out to see what was the matter down here.”

“Very good!” beamed the old man. “A store detective you say? Reliable?”

“Absolutely, Inspector,” said Crouther, from his corner. “Sergeant Velie knows him, too. Jones is his name — an ex-policeman — used to be on a beat with Velie.” The Inspector looked at the Sergeant inquiringly; he nodded in confirmation.

“Thomas,” said Queen with one hand digging into his side pocket for a pinch of snuff, “see to it, will you? See if this Jones fellow is still there, if he’s been there all the time, if he’s seen anything, if any one tried to get into the apartment since Mr. French, Mr. Weaver and the other gentlemen left. And take one of the boys along to relieve him — to relieve him, you understand?”

Velie grunted stonily and tramped out of the window-room. As he left, a policeman entered, saluted Inspector Queen and reported, “There’s a ’phone call out there in the leather-goods department for a Mr. Westley Weaver, Inspector.”

“What’s that? Call?” The Inspector turned on Weaver, who stood miserably in a corner.

Weaver straightened. “Probably from Krafft of the Comptroller’s office,” he said. “I was to give him a report this morning, and the meeting and everything that happened afterward drove it out of my mind... May I leave?”

Queen hesitated, his glance flickering toward Ellery, who was absently fingering his pince-nez. Ellery gave a slight nod.

“Go head,” the Inspector growled to Weaver. “But come right back.”

Weaver followed the policeman to the leather-goods counter directly facing the door of the window-room. A clerk eagerly handed the telephone to him.

“Hello — Krafft? This is Weaver speaking. I’m sorry about that report— Who? Oh.”

A curious change came over his face as he heard Marion French’s voice over the wire. He lowered his voice immediately and bent over the instrument. The policeman, lounging behind him, surreptitiously shuffled closer, trying to catch the conversation.

“Why, what’s the matter, dear?” asked Marion, a note of anxiety in her voice. “Is anything wrong? I tried to get you at the apartment, but there was no answer. The operator had to search for you... I thought father had a directors’ meeting this morning.”

“Marion!” Weaver’s voice was insistent. “I really can’t stop to explain now. Something’s happened, dearest — something so...” He stopped, seemed to be wrestling mentally with some problem. His lips tightened. “Sweetheart, will you do something for me?”

“But, Wes dear,” came the girl’s anxious voice, “whatever is the matter? Has anything happened to father?”

“No... no.” Weaver hunched desperately over the telephone. “Be my own honey and don’t ask questions now... Where are you now?”

“Why, at home, dear. But, Wes, what is the trouble?” There was a frightened catch in her voice. “Has it anything to do with Winifred or Bernice? They’re not at home, Wes — haven’t been all night...” Then she laughed a little. “But there! I shan’t worry you, dearest. I’ll take a cab and be down in fifteen minutes.”

“I knew you would.” Weaver almost sobbed in a tense relief. “Whatever happens, sweet, I love you, I love you, do you understand?”

“Westley! You silly boy — you’ve frightened me out of my wits. Good-by now — I’ll be downtown in a jiffy.” There was a tender little sound through the receiver — it might have been a kiss — and Weaver hung up with a sigh.

The policeman jumped back as Weaver turned — jumped back with a broad grin. Weaver flushed furiously, started to speak, then shook his head.

“There’s a young lady coming down here, officer,” he said swiftly. “She’ll be here in about a quarter of an hour. Won’t you please let me know the moment she gets here? She’s Miss Marion French. I’ll be in the window.”

The bluecoat lost his grin. “Well now,” he said slowly, scraping his jaw, “I just don’t know about that. Guess you’ll have to tell the Inspector about it. I haven’t the authority.”

He marched Weaver back into the window-room against the young man’s protests at the heavy hand on his arm.

“Inspector,” he said respectfully, still grasping Weaver’s arm, “this feller wants me to let him know when a certain young lady by the name of Miss Marion French gets here.”

Queen looked up in surprise, a surprise that deepened rapidly into brusqueness. “Was that telephone call from your Mr. Krafft?” he asked Weaver.

Before Weaver could speak, the policeman interposed: “Not by a long sight, sir. ’Twas a lady, and I think he called her ‘Marion.’”

“Look here, Inspector!” said Weaver hotly, shaking off the bluecoat’s hand. “This is asinine. I thought the call was from Mr. Krafft, but it was Miss French — Mr. French’s daughter. A — a semi-business call. And I took the liberty of asking her to come down here immediately. That’s all. Is that a crime? As for letting me know when she arrives — I naturally want to spare her the shock of walking into this place and seeing her step-mother’s dead body on the floor.”

The Inspector took a pinch of snuff, glancing mildly from Weaver to Ellery. “I see. I see. I’m sorry, Mr. Weaver... That’s right, isn’t it, officer?” he snapped, whirling on the bluecoat.

“Yes, sir! Heard it all plain as day. He’s telling the truth.”

“And mighty fortunate for him he is,” grumbled the Inspector. “Stand back, Mr. Weaver. We’ll attend to the young lady when she arrives... Now then!” he cried, rubbing his hands, “Mr. French!”

The old man looked up in bleary bewilderment, his eyes blank and staring.

“Mr. French, is there anything you would like to say that might clear up some of this mystery?”

“I... I... I... beg — your — pardon?” stammered French, raising his head with an effort from the back-cushion of the chair. He seemed stricken by his wife’s death to the point of imbecility.

Queen regarded him with pity, looked into the eyes of John Gray, whose face was threatening, muttered, “Never mind,” and squared his shoulders. “Ellery, my son, how about a careful look-see at the body?” He peered at Ellery from beneath overhung brows.

Ellery stirred. “Lookers-on,” he said clearly, “see more than players. And if you think that quotation is inept, dad, you don’t know your son’s favorite author, Anonymous. Play on!”

7 The Corpse

Inspector Queen moved over to the other side of the room, where the body lay between the bed and the window. Waving aside the detective Johnson, who was rummaging among the bedclothes, the old man knelt on the floor beside the dead woman. He removed the white sheet. Ellery bent over his father’s shoulder, his gaze detached but characteristically panoramic.

The body lay in an oddly crumpled position, the left arm outstretched, the right slightly crooked beneath the back. The head was in profile, a brown toque-style hat pushed pathetically over one eye. Mrs. French had been a small slender woman, with delicate hands and feet. The eyes were fixed in a sort of bewildered glare, wide open. The mouth drooled; a thin trickle of blood, now dark and dry, streaked the chin.

The clothes were simple and severe, but rich in quality, as might be expected from a woman of Mrs. French’s age and position. There was a light brown cloth coat, trimmed at the collar and cuffs with brown fox; a dark tan dress of a jersey material, with a breast and waist design of orange and brown; brown silk stockings and a pair of uncompromising brown walking shoes.

The Inspector looked up.

“Notice the mud on her shoes, El?” he asked sotto voce.

Ellery nodded. “Doesn’t take a heap of perspicacity,” he remarked. “It rained all day yesterday; remember the downpour last night? No wonder the poor lady wet her patrician feet. As a matter of fact, you can see traces of the wet even on the trimming of the toque. — Yes, dad, Mrs. French was out in the rain yesterday. Not very important.”

“Why not?” the old man asked, his hands softly moving aside the collar of the coat.

“Because she probably wet her shoes and hat in crossing the sidewalk to the store,” retorted Ellery. “What of it?”

The Inspector did not reply. His seeking hand plunged suddenly beneath the coat-collar and reappeared with a filmy, color-clouded scarf.

“Here’s something,” he said, turning the gauzelike material over in his hands. “Must have slipped down inside the coat when she tumbled out of bed.” An exclamation escaped him. On the corner of the scarf was a silk-embroidered monogram. Ellery leaned farther forward over his father’s shoulder.

“M. F.,” he said. He straightened up, frowning, saying nothing.

The Inspector turned his head toward the group of directors at the other side of the room. They were huddled together, watching his every gesture. At his movement they stared guiltily and averted their heads.

“What was Mrs. French’s first name?” Queen questioned the group; and as if each one had been addressed individually, there was an instant chorus of “Winifred!”

“Winifred, eh?” muttered the old man, letting his eyes return fleetingly to the body. Then he fixed Weaver with his gray eyes.

“Winifred, eh?” he repeated. Weaver bobbed his head mechanically. He seemed horrified at the wisp of silk in the Inspector’s hand. “Winifred what? Any middle name or initials?”

“Winifred — Winifred Marchbanks French,” stammered the secretary.

The Inspector nodded curtly. Rising, he strode over to Cyrus French, who was watching him with dull uncomprehending eyes.

“Mr. French—” Queen shook the millionaire’s shoulder gently — “Mr. French, is this your wife’s scarf?” He held the scarf up before French’s eyes. “Do you understand me, sir? Is this scarf Mrs. French’s?”

“Eh? I–Let me see it!” The old man snatched it in a sort of frenzy from the Inspector’s hand. He bent over it avidly, pulled it smooth, examined the monogram with feverish fingers — and slumped back in his chair.

“Is it, Mr. French?” pursued the Inspector, taking the scarf from him.

“No.” It was a flat, colorless, indifferent negative.

The Inspector turned toward the silent group. “Can any one here identify this scarf?” He held it high. There was no answer. The Inspector repeated his question, glaring at each one individually. Of them all, only Westley Weaver averted his glance.

“So! Weaver, eh? No nonsense, now, young man!” snapped Queen, grasping the secretary by the arm. “What do the letters M. F. stand for — Marion French?”

The young man gulped, sent an agonizing glance toward Ellery, who returned the glance commiseratingly, looked at old Cyrus French, who was mumbling to himself...

“You can’t believe she had anything to do — to do with it!” cried Weaver, shaking his arm free. “It’s absurd — crazy!.. You can’t believe she had anything to do with this, Inspector. She’s too fine, too young, too—”

“Marion French.” The Inspector turned toward John Gray. “Mr. French’s daughter, I believe Mr. Weaver said before?”

Gray nodded sullenly. Cyrus French suddenly attempted to leap from his chair. He uttered a hoarse cry. “My God, no! Not Marion! Not Marion!” His eyes blazed as Gray and Marchbanks, the directors nearest the old man, jumped to support his quivering body. The spasm lasted for a brief moment; he collapsed into his chair.

Inspector Queen returned without a word to his examination of the dead woman. Ellery had been a silent witness of the little drama, his sharp eyes flitting from face to face as it unfolded. Now he sent a glance of reassurance at Weaver, who was leaning abjectly against a table, and then stooped to pick up an object from the floor which was almost hidden by the dead woman’s tumbled skirt.

It was a small handbag of dark brown suède, monogrammed with the initials W. M. F. Ellery sat down on the edge of the bed and turned the bag over in his hands. Curiously he lifted the flap and began to spread the contents of the bag on the mattress. He removed a small change-purse, a gold vanity-case, a lace handkerchief, a gold card-case, all monogrammed W. M. F., and finally a silver-chased lipstick.

The Inspector looked up. “What’s that you have there?” he asked sharply.

“Bag of the deceased,” murmured Ellery. “Would you care to examine it?”

“Would I—” The Inspector glared at his son in mock heat. “Ellery, sometimes you try me beyond patience!”

Ellery handed it over with a smile. The old man examined the bag minutely. He pawed over the articles on the bed and gave up in disgust.

“Nothing there that I can see,” he snorted. “And I’m—”

“No?” Ellery’s tone was provocative.

“What do you mean?” asked his father with a change of tone, looking back at the contents of the bag. “Purse, vanity, hanky, card-case, lipstick — what’s interesting there?”

Ellery faced about squarely so that his back hid the articles on the bed from the observation of the others. He picked up the lipstick with care and offered it to his father. The old man took it cautiously, suspiciously. Suddenly an exclamation escaped him.

“Exactly — C,” murmured Ellery. “What do you make of it?”

The lipstick was large and deep. On the cap was a chastely engraved initial, C. The Inspector peered at it in some astonishment and made as if to question the men in the room. But Ellery halted him with a warning gesture and took the lipstick from his father’s fingers. He unscrewed the initialed cap and twisted the body of the stick until a half-inch of red paste was visible above the orifice. His eyes shifted toward the dead woman’s face. They brightened at what they saw.

He knelt quickly by his father’s side, their bodies still shielding their movements from the eyes of the onlookers.

“Have a peep at this, dad,” he said in an undertone, offering the lipstick. The old man looked at it in a puzzled way.

“Poisoned?” he asked. “But that’s impossible — how could you tell without an analysis?”

“No, no!” exclaimed Ellery in the same low tone. “The color, dad — the color!”

The Inspector’s face lightened. He looked from the stick in Ellery’s hand to the dead woman’s lips. The fact was self-evident — the coloring on the lips had not come from the stick in Ellery’s possession. The lips were painted a light shade of red, almost pink, whereas the stick itself was a dark carmine in shade.

“Here, El — let me have that!” said the Inspector. He took the open stick and swiftly made a red mark on the dead woman’s face.

“Different, all right,” he muttered. He wiped off the smudge with a corner of the sheet. “But I don’t see—”

“There really should be another lipstick, eh?” remarked Ellery lightly, standing up.

The old man snatched at the woman’s handbag and went through it once more, hurriedly. No, there was no sign of another lipstick. He motioned to the detective Johnson.

“Find anything in the bed or the closet here, Johnson?”

“Not a thing, Chief.”

“Sure? No sign of a lipstick?”

“Nope.”

“Piggott! Hesse! Flint!” The three detectives stopped short in their search of the room and crossed to the Inspector’s side. The old man repeated his questions... Nothing. The detectives had found no alien articles in the room.

“Is Crouther here? Crouther!” The store detective hurried over.

“Been out seeing that things were moving in the store,” he announced unasked. “Everything’s shipshape — boys’ve been hustling, that’s a fact — What can I do for you, Inspector?”

“Did you see a lipstick around here when you found the body?”

“Lipstick? No, sir! Wouldn’t have touched it if I’d seen it anyway. Told everybody to leave things alone. I know that much, Inspector!”

“Mr. Lavery!” The Frenchman sauntered up. No, he had seen no sign of a lipstick. Perhaps the model—?

“Hardly! Piggott, send some one up to the infirmary and find out if this Johnson girl saw it.”

The Inspector turned back to Ellery with a frowning brow. “Now, that’s funny, isn’t it, Ellery? Could some one here have appropriated the darned thing?”

Ellery smiled. “‘Honest labor,’ as old Tom Dekker had it, ‘bears a lovely face,’ but I’m very much afraid, dad... No, your efforts in the direction of finding a lipstick thief are wasted. I could almost make a nice conjecture...”

“What do you mean, Ellery?” groaned the Inspector. “Where is it, then, if no one took it?”

“We’ll come to that in the course of inexorable time,” said Ellery imperturbably. “But examine the face of our poor clay again, dad — particularly the labial portion. See anything interesting aside from the color of the lipstick?”

“Eh?” The Inspector turned startled eyes to the corpse. He felt for his snuff-box and nervously took a generous pinch. “No, I can’t say that I— By jimmy!” He muttered beneath his breath. “The lips — unfinished...”

“Precisely.” Ellery twirled his pince-nez about his finger. “Observed the phenomenon the moment I looked at the body. What amazing juxtaposition of circumstances could have caused a handsome woman still in her prime to leave her lips only half painted?” He pursed his mouth, fell into deep thought. His eyes did not leave the dead woman’s lips, which showed the pinkish color of the lipstick on both the upper and lower lip, on the upper two dabs of unsmeared color and on the lower one a dab exactly in the center. Where the lipstick had not yet been smeared, the lips were a sickly purple — the color of unadorned death.

The Inspector passed his hand wearily across his brow just as Piggott returned.

“Well?”

“The girl fainted,” reported the detective, “just as the body fell out of the wall-bed. Never saw anything, much less a lipstick.” Inspector Queen draped the sheet over the body in baffled silence.

8 The Watcher

The door opened and Sergeant Velie entered, accompanied by a steady-eyed man dressed in black. This newcomer saluted the inspector respectfully and stood waiting.

“This is Robert Jones, Inspector,” said Velie in his deep clipped tones. “Attached to the store force, and I’ll vouch for him personally. Jones was the man called by Mr. Weaver this morning to stand outside the apartment door during the directors’ meeting.”

“How about it, Jones?” asked Inspector Queen.

“I was ordered to Mr. French’s apartment this morning at eleven,” replied the store detective. “I was told to stand guard outside and see that no one disturbed the meeting. According to my instructions...”

“And where did your instructions come from?”

“I understood that Mr. Weaver had ’phoned, sir,” replied Jones. The Inspector looked at Weaver, who nodded, and then motioned the man to continue.

“According to my instructions,” said Jones, “I strolled about outside the apartment without interrupting the meeting. I was in the sixth floor corridor near the apartment until about twelve-fifteen. At that time the door opened and Mr. French, the other directors and Mr. Weaver ran out and took the elevator, going downstairs. They all seemed excited...”

“Did you know why Mr. French, Mr. Weaver and the others ran out of the apartment that way?”

“No, sir. As I said, they seemed excited and paid no attention to me. I didn’t hear about Mrs. French being dead until one of the boys dropped by about a half-hour later with the news.”

“Did the directors close the door when they left the apartment?”

“The door closed by itself — swung shut.”

“So you didn’t enter the apartment?”

“No, sir!”

“Did any one come up to the apartment while you stood guard this morning?”

“Not a soul, Inspector. And after the directors left, there was no one except the chap I told you about, who merely spilled his story and went right down again. I’ve been on duty until five minutes ago, when Sergeant Velie had two of his own men relieve me.”

The Inspector mused. “And you’re certain no one went into the apartment, Jones? It may be quite important.”

“Dead certain, Inspector,” replied Jones clearly. “The reason I stayed on after the directors left was because I didn’t know exactly what to do under the circumstances, and I’ve always found it a safe bet to stand pat when something unusual happens.”

“Good enough, Jones!” said the Inspector. “That’s all.”

Jones saluted, went up to Crouther and asked what he was to do. The head store detective, his chest held high, detailed him to help handle the crowds in the store. And Jones departed.

9 The Watchers

The Inspector went quickly to the door and peered over the heads of the seething crowds on the main floor.

“MacKenzie! Is MacKenzie there?” he shouted.

“Right here!” came the faint bellow of the store manager’s voice. “Coming!”

Queen trotted back into the room, fumbling for his snuffbox. He eyed the directors almost roguishly; his good humor seemed for the moment to have returned. The occupants of the room, with the exception of Cyrus French, who was still plunged in a deep lethargy of grief and indifference to what was going on, had by this time shaken off some of their horror and were growing restless. Zorn stole surreptitious glances at his heavy gold watch; Marchbanks was pacing belligerently up and down the room; Trask at regular intervals averted his head and gulped down some whisky from a flash in his pocket; Gray, his face as ashen as his hair, stood in silence behind old French’s chair. Lavery was very quiet, watching with bright inquisitive eyes the least movement of the Inspector and his men. Weaver, his boyish face strained and lined, seemed to be enduring agonies. He frequently sought Ellery with pleading eyes, as if asking for help which he knew, instinctively, could not be forthcoming.

“I must ask you to have patience for a short time longer, gentlemen,” said the Inspector, smoothing his mustache with the back of his small hand. “We have a few things more to do here — and then we’ll see... Ah! You’re MacKenzie, I take it? Are those the watchmen? Bring ’em in, man!”

The middle-aged Scotchman had entered the window-room, herding before him four oldish men with frightened faces and fidgety hands. Ritter made up the rear.

“Yes, Inspector. By the way, I’m having the employees checked up, as Sergeant Velie instructed me to.” MacKenzie waved the four men forward. They shuffled a step farther into the room, reluctantly.

“Who’s the head nightwatchman among you?” demanded the Inspector.

A corpulent old man with fleshy features and placid eyes stepped forward, touching his forehead.

“I am, sor — Peter O’Flaherty’s me name.”

“Were you on duty last night, O’Flaherty?”

“Yes, sor. That I was.”

“What time did you go on?”

“Me reg’lar hour, sor,” said the watchman, “Ha’past five. It’s O’Shane I relieve at th’ desk in the night-office on th’ 39th Street side. These boys here” — he indicated the two men behind him with a fat and calloused forefinger — “they come on with me. They was with me last night, reg’lar.”

“I see.” The Inspector paused. “O’Flaherty, do you know what has happened?”

“Yes, sor. I’ve been told. And a shame it is, sor,” responded O’Flaherty soberly. He stole a glance at the limp figure of Cyrus French, then jerked his head back toward the Inspector as if he had committed an indiscretion. His cronies followed his gaze, and looked forward again in exactly the same manner.

“Did you know Mrs. French by sight?” asked the Inspector, his keen little eyes studying the old man.

“I did, sor,” replied O’Flaherty. “She used to come to th’ store sometimes after closing when Mr. French was still here.”

“Often?”

“No, sor, Not so very. But I knowed her right enough, sor.”

“Hmmm.” Inspector Queen relaxed. “Now, O’Flaherty, answer carefully — and truthfully. As truthfully as if you were on the witness-stand. — Did you see Mrs. French last night?”

Silence had fallen in the room — a silence pregnant with beating hearts and racing pulses. All eyes were on the broad mottled face of the old watchman. He licked his lips, seemed to reflect, squared his shoulders.

“Yes, sor,” he said, with a little hiss.

“At what time?”

“’Twas just eleven-forty-five, sor,” replied O’Flaherty. “Y’see, there ain’t but one night entrance to th’ store after hours. All th’ other doors and exits are ironed up. That one door is on 39th Street, th’ Employees’ Entrance. There ain’t no way but that t’get in or out o’ the buildin’. I—”

Ellery moved suddenly, and everybody turned toward him. He smiled deprecatingly at O’Flaherty. “Sorry, dad, but I’ve just thought of something... O’Flaherty, do I understand you to say that there is only one way into the store after hours — the Employees’ Entrance?”

O’Flaherty champed his blue old jaws reflectively. “Why, yes, sor,” he said. “And what’s wrong about that?”

“Very little,” smiled Ellery, “except that I believe there is a night freight-entrance on the 39th Street side as well...”

“Oh, that!” snorted the old watchman. “Tain’t hardly an entrance, sor. Mostly always shut. So, as I was sayin’—”

Ellery lifted a slender hand. “One moment, O’Flaherty. You say, ‘Mostly always shut.’ Just what do you mean by that?”

“Well,” replied O’Flaherty, scratching his poll, “it’s shut down tighter’n a drum all night exceptin’ between eleven o’clock and eleven-thirty. So it don’t hardly count.”

“That’s your point of view,” said Ellery argumentatively. “I thought there must be a good reason for having a special nightwatchman at the spot all night. Who is he?”

“That’s Bloom over here,” said O’Flaherty. “Bloom, step out, man, and let the gentlemen look ye over.”

Bloom, a sturdy middle-aged man with reddish, graying hair, stepped uncertainly forward. “That’s me,” he said. “Nothin’ wrong in my freight department last night, if that’s what you wanna know...”

“No?” Ellery eyed him keenly. “Exactly why is the freight-entrance opened between eleven and eleven-thirty?”

“Fer the delivery of groceries an’ meats an’ such,” answered Bloom. “Big turn-over every day in the store restaurant, and then there’s the Employees’ Restaurant too. Get supplies fresh every night.”

“Who is the trucker?” interrupted the Inspector.

“Buckley & Green. Same driver an’ unloader every night sir.”

“I see,” said the Inspector. “Get it down, Hagstrom, and make a note to question the men on the truck... Anything else, Ellery?”

“Yes.” Ellery turned once more to the red-haired nightwatchman. “Tell us just what happens every night when the Buckley & Green truck arrives.”

“Well, I go on duty at ten,” said Bloom. “At eleven every night the truck rolls up and Johnny Salvatore, the driver, rings the night bell outside the freight door...”

“Is the freight door kept locked after five-thirty?”

MacKenzie, the store manager, interrupted. “Yes, sir. It’s automatically locked at closing-time. Never opened till the truck comes up at eleven.”

“Go on, Bloom.”

“When Johnny rings, I unlock the door — it’s sheet iron — and roll ’er up. Then the truck drives inside, an’ Marino, the unloader, unpacks the stuff and stores it, while Johnny and myself check it over in my booth near the door. That’s all. When they’re through, they take the truck out, I unroll the door, and lock it, and just stay there all night.”

Ellery pondered. “Does the door remain open while the truck is being unloaded?”

“Sure,” said Bloom. “It’s only for a half an hour, and besides, nobody could hardly get in without one of us seeing ’em.”

“You’re sure of that?” asked Ellery sharply. “Positive? Swear to it, man?”

Bloom hesitated. “Well, I don’t hardly see how anybody could,” he said lamely. “Marino’s out there unloading, and Johnny and me in the booth right by the door...”

“How many electric lights are there in this freight room?” demanded Ellery.

Bloom looked bewildered. “Why, there’s one big light right over where the truck is, and then there’s a small one in my booth. Johnny keeps his headlights on, too.”

“How big is this freight room?”

“Oh, about seventy-five foot deep by fifty wide. Store emergency trucks are parked there for the night, too.”

“How far from your booth does the truck unload?”

“Oh, way in, near the back, where there’s a chute from the kitchen.”

“And one light in all that black expanse,” murmured Ellery. “The booth is enclosed, I suppose?”

“Just a glass window facing the inside of the room.”

Ellery played with his pince-nez. “Bloom, if I told you to swear that nobody could get into that freight room, past the entrance, without your seeing him, would you do it?”

Bloom smiled in a sickly fashion. “Well sir,” he said, “I don’t know as I would.”

“Did you see anybody get in last night while the door was open and you and Salvatore were in the booth checking over the goods?”

“No, sir!”

“But somebody might have got in?”

“I... I guess so...”

“One question more,” said Ellery genially. “These deliveries are made every night, without fail, and at exactly the same hour?”

“Yes, sir. Been that way as long as I can remember.”

“Another, if you’ll pardon me. Did you lock that freight door last night promptly at eleven-thirty?”

“To the dot.”

“Were you at that door all night?”

“Yes, sir. On my chair, right by the door.”

“No disturbance? Didn’t hear or see anything suspicious?”

“No, sir.”

“If — any one — tried — to — get — out — of — the — building — by — that — door,” said Ellery with startling emphasis, “you would have heard and seen him?”

“Sure thing, sir,” said Bloom weakly, glancing with despair at MacKenzie.

“Very well, then,” drawled Ellery, waving his arm negligently toward Bloom, “the inquisition may proceed, Inspector.” And he stepped back, making furious notes in his book.

The Inspector, who had been listening with a gradually clarifying expression on his face, sighed and said to O’Flaherty, “You were saying that Mrs. French came into the building at eleven-forty-five, O’Flaherty. Let’s have the rest of it.”

The head nightwatchman wiped his brow with a slightly shaking hand and a dubious glance in Ellery’s direction. Then he took up the thread of his story. “Well, I sits at th’ night-desk all night — never gets up, while Ralska and Powers here does the rounds every hour. That’s me job, sor — an’ besides I check out all those who put in overtime, like th’ executive people, and such. Yes, sor. I—”

“Easy, O’Flaherty,” said the Inspector, with interest. “Tell us just exactly what happened when Mrs. French arrived. You’re sure it was eleven-forty-five?”

“Yes, sor. I looked at th’ time-clock next th’ desk, ’cause I gotta put down all arrivals on me time-sheet...”

“Oh, the time-sheet?” muttered Queen. “Mr. MacKenzie, will you please see that I get last night’s time-sheet at once? Even before the report on the employees.” MacKenzie nodded and left. “All right, O’Flaherty. Go on.”

“Well, sor, through the night-door acrost th’ hall I sees a taxi roll up and Mrs. French she steps out. She pays th’ driver and knocks. I sees who ’tis and opens quick. She gives me a cheery good-evenin’, and asks if Mr. Cyrus French was still in th’ buildin’. I says no, ma’am, Mr. Cyrus French’d left just as I came on duty this afternoon, as he had, sor, carryin’ a brief-case. She thanks me, stops to think a bit, then she says she’ll go up to Mr. French’s private apartment anyway, and starts to walk out o’ th’ office toward the private elevator that’s only used to go up to th’ apartment. I says to her, I says, Kin I get one o’ the boys to run th’ elevator up for her an’ open th’ apartment door? She says no thanks, right polite, sor, and rummages in her bag for a minute, as if to see she’s got her key. Yes, she had it — she fishes it out o’ her bag and shows it to me. Then she—”

“Just a moment, O’Flaherty.” The Inspector seemed perturbed: “You say she had a key to the apartment? How is that, do you know?”

“Well, sor, there’re only a certain number o’ keys to Mr. French’s apartment, sor,” answered O’Flaherty, more comfortably. “S’far as I know, Mr. Cyrus French has one, Mrs. French had one, Miss Marion has one, Miss Bernice has one — me workin’ here for seventeen years, I knows th’ fam’ly right well, sor — Mr. Weaver has one, and there’s one master-key in th’ desk in my office all th’ time. That’s half a dozen altogether, sor. Th’ master-key is in case a key is needed in an emergency.”

“You say Mrs. French showed you her key before she left your office, O’Flaherty? How do you know it was the key to the apartment?” asked the Inspector.

“Easy enough, sor. Y’see, each key — they’re special Yales, sor — each key has a little gold dingus on it with th’ initials o’ the person it belongs to. Th’ key Mrs. French showed me had that on. Besides, I know th’ looks o’ that key: it was the right one, all right.”

“One second, O’Flaherty.” The Inspector turned to Weaver. “Have you your apartment-key on you, Weaver? Let me have it, please?”

Weaver extracted a leather key-case from his vest-pocket and handed it to Queen. Among a number of different keys was one with a small gold disk fused into the tiny hole at the top. On this disc were engraved the initials, W. W. The Inspector looked up at O’Flaherty.

“A key like this?”

“Just th’ same, sor,” said O’Flaherty, “exceptin’ th’ initials.”

“Very well.” Queen returned the key-case to Weaver. “Now, O’Flaherty, before you continue, tell me this — where do you keep your master-key to the apartment?”

“Right in a special drawer in th’ desk, sor. It’s there all the time, day and night.”

“Was it in its place last night?”

“Yes, sor. I always looks for it special. It was there — the right key, no mistake, sor. It’s got a tab on it too, with th’ word ‘Master’ on it.”

“O’Flaherty,” asked the Inspector quietly, “were you at your desk all night? Did you leave your office at all?”

“No, sor!” answered the old watchman emphatically. “From th’ minute I got there, at five-thirty, I didn’t leave th’ office until I was relieved this mornin’ by O’Shane at eight-thirty. I got longer hours than him ’cause he’s got more to do on his shift, with checkin’ in employees and all. And as for leavin’ the desk, I brings me own feed from homes, even hot coffee in a thermos bottle. No, sor, I was on th’ watch all night.”

“I see.” Queen shook his head as if to clear the mists of weariness and motioned the watchman to continue with his story.

“Well, sor,” said O’Flaherty, “when Mrs. French left me office, I got up out o’ me chair, went into the hall, and watched her. She went to th’ elevator, opened th’ door an’ went in. That’s the last I saw o’ her, sor. When I saw she didn’t come down I though nothin’ of it, ’cause a number o’ times Mrs. French has stayed overnight in Mr. French’s apartment upstairs. I thought she’d done th’ same this night. So that’s all I know, sor.”

Ellery stirred. He lifted the dead woman’s handbag from the bed and dangled it before the watchman’s eyes.

“O’Flaherty,” he asked in a drawling voice, “have you ever seen this before?”

The watchman replied, “Yes, sor! That’s th’ bag Mrs. French was carryin’ last night.”

“The bag, then,” pursued Ellery softly, “from which she took her gold-topped key?”

The watchman seemed puzzled. “Why, yes, sor.” Ellery seemed satisfied and dropped back to whisper in his father’s ear. The Inspector frowned, then nodded. He turned to Crouther.

“Crouther, will you please get the master-key in the office on the 39th Street side.” Crouther grunted cheerfully and departed. “Now then.” The Inspector picked up the gauzy scarf initialed M. F. which he had found on the dead body. “O’Flaherty, do you recall Mrs. French’s having worn this last night? Think carefully.”

O’Flaherty took the wisp of silk in his horny fat fingers and turned it over and over, his forehead wrinkled. “Well, sor,” he said finally, in a hesitant tone, “I can’t rightly say. Seemed to me for a minute as if I’d seen Mrs. French wear it, and then again seemed as if I hadn’t. No, I couldn’t rightly say. No, sor,” and he returned it to the Inspector with a gesture of helplessness.

“You’re not sure?” The Inspector dropped the scarf back on the bed. “Everything seem all right last night? No alarms?”

“No, sor. O’ course you know th’ store’s wired against burglars. Quiet as a church last night. S’far as I know, nothin’ happened out o’ th’ way.”

Queen said to Sergeant Velie: “Thomas, call up the alarm central office and find out if they’ve a report on last night. Probably not, or we’d have heard from them by this time.” Velie left, silently as usual.

“O’Flaherty, did you see any one else enter the building last night except Mrs. French? At any time during the night?” continued the Inspector.

“No, sor, absolutely not. Not a soul.” O’Flaherty seemed anxious to make this point clear, after his defection concerning the scarf.

“Ah there, MacKenzie! Let me have the time-sheet, please.” Queen took from the store manager, who had just returned, a long scroll of ruled paper. He looked it over hurriedly. Something seemed to catch his eye.

“I see by your sheet, O’Flaherty,” he said, “that Mr. Weaver and a Mr. Springer were the last to leave the store yesterday evening? Did you make these notations?”

“Yes, sor. Mr. Springer went out about a quarter to seven, and Mr. Weaver a few minutes after.”

“Is that right, Weaver?” demanded the Inspector, turning to the secretary.

“Yes,” replied Weaver in a colorless tone. “I stayed a little later last night to prepare some papers for Mr. French to-day; I believe I shaved... I left a little before seven.”

“Who is this Springer?”

“Oh, James Springer is the head of our Book Department, Inspector,” put in mild-mannered MacKenzie. “Often stays late. A very conscientious man, sir.”

“Yes, yes, Now — you men!” The Inspector pointed to the two watchmen who had not yet spoken. “Anything to say? Anything to add to O’Flaherty’s story? One at a time... Your name?”

One of the watchmen cleared his throat nervously. “George Powers, Inspector. No, sir, I got nothin’ to say.”

“Everything all right when you went your rounds? Do you cover this part of the store?”

“Yes, sir, everythin’ was okay on my rounds. No, sir, I don’t cover the main floor. That’s Ralska’s job, here.”

“Ralska, eh? What’s your first name, Ralska?” demanded the Inspector.

The third watchman expelled his breath noisily. “Hermann, sir. Hermann Ralska. I think—”

“You think, eh?” Queen turned. “Hagstrom, you’re taking this down, of course?”

“Yep, Chief,” grinned the detective, his pencil busy in his notebook.

“Now, Ralska, you were about to think something, no doubt very important,” snarled the Inspector. His temper seemed frayed and raw once more. “What was it?”

Ralska held himself stiffly. “I thought I heard somethin’ funny last night on the main floor.”

“Oh, you did! Where, exactly?”

“Right about here — outside this window-room.”

“No!” Inspector Queen grew very quiet. “Outside this window-room. Very good, Ralska. What was it?”

The watchman seemed to take heart at Queen’s calmer tone. “It was just about one o’clock in the morning. Maybe a few minutes earlier. I was in the part of the store near the Fift’ Avenue and 39t’ Street side. This here window faces Fift’ Avenue, past the night-office, so it’s a good distance away. I heard a queer kind o’ noise. Can’t make up my mind what it was. Might ‘a’ been some one movin’ around, might ‘a’ been a footstep, might ‘a’ been a door closin’ — just don’t know. Anyway, I wasn’t suspicious or anything — you get so you hear noises that never happened on a night job like this... But I went over in that direction and couldn’t see anything wrong, so I thought it must be my imagination. Even tried a couple of the window doors. But they were all locked. Tried this one, too. So I stopped in to have a word with Flaherty here, and went on ahead, with my rounds. That’s all.”

“Oh!” Inspector Queen seemed disappointed. “So you’re not certain of where the noise came from — if there was a noise?”

“Well,” responded Ralska carefully, “if it was anythin’ at all it came from this section o’ the floor near these big street-window displays.”

“Nothing else all night?”

“No, sir.”

“All right, that’s all for you four men. You may go back home and catch up on your sleep. Be back here tonight for work as usual.”

“Yes, sir: yes, sir,” The watchmen backed out of the window-room and disappeared.

The Inspector, brandishing the time-sheet in his hand, addressed the store manager. “MacKenzie, have you given this sheet any study?”

The Scotchman replied, “Yes, Inspector — thought you might be interested and looked it over on the way.”

“Fine! MacKenzie, what’s the verdict? Was every employee of the store checked out regularly yesterday?” Queen’s face was composed, indifferent.

MacKenzie did not hesitate. “As you can see, we have a simple check-out system — by departments... I can certainly assert that every employee who was in the store yesterday checked out.”

“Does that include executives and gentlemen like the Board of Directors?”

“Yes, sir — there are their names in the proper places.”

“Very well — thank you,” said the Inspector thoughtfully. “Please don’t forget that list of absentees, MacKenzie.”

Velie and Crouther at this point reentered the room together. Crouther handed the Inspector a key, an exact replica of the one in Weaver’s possession, marked “Master” on its gold disk as O’Flaherty had averred. The detective-sergeant relayed a negative report from the burglar-alarm company. Nothing unusual had occurred during the night.

The Inspector turned again to MacKenzie. “How reliable is this O’Flaherty?”

“True-blue. Would give his life for Mr. French, Inspector,” returned MacKenzie warmly. “He’s the oldest employee of the store — knew Mr. French in the old days.”

“That’s a fact,” echoed Crouther, as if anxious to have his opinion considered as well.

“It has just occurred to me...” Inspector Queen faced MacKenzie inquiringly. “Just how private is Mr. French’s apartment? Who has access to it besides the French family and Mr. Weaver?”

Mackenzie scraped his jaw slowly. “Hardly any one else, Inspector,” he replied. “Of course, the Board of Directors meet in Mr. French’s apartment periodically for conferences and other business matters; but the only keys to it are in the possession of the people O’Flaherty has mentioned. As a matter of fact, it’s almost peculiar how little we people know about Mr. French’s apartment. In all my association with the store, and it’s a matter of ten years or so, I can’t recall having been in the apartment more than half a dozen times. I was thinking that only last week, when Mr. French summoned me there for some special instructions regarding the store. As for other employees — well, Mr. French has always been adamant in the matter of his privacy. Aside from O’Flaherty opening the door for the cleaning-woman three times a week, and letting her out just before he goes off duty, there’s not an employee of the store who has access or occasion to visit the apartment.”

“I see, I see. The apartment — we seem to be going back to that apartment,” muttered the Inspector. “Well! There seems to be very little left here... Ellery, what do you think?”

Ellery swung his pince-nez with unaccustomed vigor as he regarded his father. There was a troubled glint in the depths of his eyes.

“Think? Think?” He smiled fretfully. “My ratiocinative machinery has been chiefly occupied in the last half-hour or so with a stubborn little problem.” He bit his lip.

“Problem? What problem?” growled his father affectionately. “I haven’t had a moment to think clearly, and you talk of problems!”

“The problem,” enunciated Ellery distinctly but not loudly enough to be heard by the others, “of why Mrs. French’s key to her husband’s apartment is missing.”

10 Marion

“Not much of a problem,” said Inspector Queen. “There is no particular reason for expecting to find the key — here. Besides, I can’t see that it’s of much importance.”

“Alors — well let it go at that,” said Ellery, smiling. “I am always worried by omissions.” He dropped back, searching his vest-pocket for a cigaret-case. His father eyed him sharply. Ellery rarely smoked.

A policeman pushed open the window-door at this moment and lumbered over to the Inspector. “Young lady outside giving the name of Marion French. Says she wants Mr. Weaver,” he whispered hoarsely. “Scared to death at the mobs and the cops. One o’ the floorwalkers is with her. What’ll I do, Inspector?”

The Inspector’s eyes narrowed. He shot a glance at Weaver. The secretary seemed to sense the import of the message, although he had not heard the whispered words; for he stepped forward at once.

“I beg your pardon, Inspector,” he said eagerly, “but if that’s Miss French I’d like your permission to go to her at once and—”

“Amazing intuition!” cried the Inspector suddenly, his white face creasing into smiles. “Yes, I think I–Come along, Mr. Weaver. You shall introduce me to Mr. French’s daughter.” He turned sharply to Velie. “Carry on for a moment, Thomas. No one is to leave. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Preceded by a revitalized Weaver, he trotted out of the window-room.

Weaver broke into a run as they stepped out onto the main floor. The center of a little crowd of detectives and policemen, a young girl stood stiffly, her face drained of color, eyes wild with a nameless fear. As she caught sight of Weaver, a tremulous cry escaped her and she swayed forward weakly.

“Westley! What is the matter? These policemen — detectives—” Her arms stretched out. In full sight of the grinning police and the Inspector, Weaver and the girl embraced.

“Sweetheart! You must get hold of yourself...” Weaver whispered desperately into the girl’s ear as she clung to him.

“Wes — tell me. Who is it? Not?” She drew away from him with horror in her eyes. “Not — Winifred?”

She read the answer in his eyes even before he nodded.

The Inspector obtruded his elastic little figure between them. “Mr. Weaver,” he smiled, “may I have the pleasure...?”

“Oh, yes... yes!” Weaver stepped quickly backward, releasing the girl. He seemed astonished at the interruption, as if he had forgotten momentarily the place, the circumstances, the time... “Marion dear, may I present Inspector Richard Queen. Inspector — Miss French.”

Queen took the proffered little hand and bowed. Marion murmured a perfunctory pleasance, while her large grey eyes widened in stricken interest at this tiny middle-aged gentleman with the clean white mustache who bent over her hand.

“You’re investigating — a crime, Inspector Queen?” she faltered, shrinking from him, clutching at Weaver’s hand.

“Unfortunately, Miss French,” said the Inspector. “I’m genuinely grieved that you’ve had such an unpleasant reception — more than I can say...” Weaver glared at him in bewildered wrath. The old Machiavelli! He had known all along what would happen!.. The Inspector proceeded in a gentle tone. “It’s your stepmother, my dear — shockingly murdered. Terrible! Terrible!” He clucked his tongue like a solicitous old hen.

“Murdered!” The girl grew very still. The hand in Weaver’s twitched once, and was limp. For the instant both Weaver and the Inspector thought she would faint, and involuntarily moved forward to her aid. She staggered back. “No — thank you,” she whispered. “My God — Winifred! And she and Bernice were away — all night...”

The Inspector stiffened. Then his hand fumbled for his snuff-box. “Bernice, I believe you said, Miss French?” he said. “The watchman mentioned that name before, too... A sister, perhaps, my dear?” he asked ingratiatingly.

“Oh... what have I— Oh, Wes dear, take me away, take me away!” She buried her face in the folds of Weaver’s coat.

Weaver said, above her head, “A perfectly natural remark, Inspector. The housekeeper, Hortense Underhill, called Mr. French this morning during the conference to report that neither Mrs. French nor Bernice, her daughter, had slept at home... You see, of course, that Marion — Miss French...”

“Yes, yes, naturally.” Queen smiled, touched the girl’s arm. She started convulsively. “If you’ll come this way, Miss French—? Please be brave. There is something I want you — to see.”

He waited. Weaver gave him an outraged glance, but pressed the girl’s arm encouragingly and led her, stumbling, toward the window. The Inspector followed, beckoning to one of the detectives nearby, who immediately took his place outside the window-door after the trio entered the room.

There was a little rustle of excitement as Weaver helped the girl into the room. Even old French, shaking as if with ague, showed a light of reason in his eyes as he spied her.

“Marion, my dear!” he cried in a terrible voice.

She broke away from Weaver and fell on her knees before her father’s chair. No one spoke. The men looked uneasily away. Father and daughter clung to each other...

For the first time since he had come into the chamber of death, Marchbanks, brother of the dead woman, spoke.

“This — is — hellish,” he said, savagely and slowly, glaring out of bloodshot eyes at the trim figure of the Inspector. Ellery, in his corner, crooked his body slightly forward, “I’m — getting — out — of — this.”

The Inspector signaled to Velie. The burly sergeant stumped across the floor and towered above Marchbanks, saying nothing, his arms hanging loosely by his sides. Marchbanks, large and corpulent, shrank before the huge detective. He flushed, muttered beneath his breath, stepped back.

“Now,” said the Inspector equably, “Miss French, may I trouble you to answer a few questions?”

“Oh, I say, Inspector,” protested Weaver, despite Ellery’s warning flick of the finger, “do you think it absolutely necessary to—”

“I’m quite ready, sir,” came the quiet voice of the girl, and she rose to her feet, her eyes a trifle red, but clearly composed. Her father had slumped back in his chair. He had forgotten her already. She smiled wanly at Weaver, who sent her an ardent glance across the room. But she kept her head averted from the sheeted corpse in the corner by the bed.

“Miss French,” snapped the Inspector, flicking the gauzy scarf from the dead woman’s clothes before her eyes, “is this your scarf?”

She whitened. “Yes. How does it come here?”

“That,” said the Inspector dispassionately, “is what I should like to know. Can you explain its presence?”

The girl’s eyes flashed, but she spoke calmly enough. “No, sir, I cannot.”

“Miss French,” went on the Inspector after a stiffing pause, “your scarf was found around Mrs. French’s neck, under her coat-collar. Does that convey anything to you — perhaps suggest an explanation?”

“She was wearing it?” Marion gasped. “I... I can’t understand it. She... she never did that before.” She glanced helplessly at Weaver, shifted her gaze and met Ellery’s eyes.

They looked at each other for a startled moment Ellery saw a slender girl with smoky hair and deep grey eyes. There was an unaccented cleanliness about the lines of her young body that made him feel pleased for Weaver’s sake. She gave the impression of straightforwardness and strength of will — honest eyes, firm lips, small strong hands, a pleasingly cleft chin and a good straight nose. Ellery smiled.

Marion saw a tall athletic man with a suggestion of nascent vigor, startlingly intellectual about the forehead and lips, cool and quiet and composed. He looked thirty, but was younger. There was a hint of Bond Street about his clothes. His long thin fingers clasped a little book and he regarded her out of pince-nez eyeglasses... Then she blushed slightly and her eyes wavered away toward the Inspector.

“When did you last see this scarf, Miss French?” went on the old man.

“Oh, I—” Her tone changed; she took command of herself. “I seem to remember wearing it yesterday,” she said slowly.

“Yesterday? Very interesting, Miss French. Do you recall just where—?”

“I left the house directly after luncheon,” she said, “wearing the scarf under this coat I met a friend at Carnegie Hall and we spent the afternoon at a recital — Pasternak the pianist. We parted after the recital and I took a bus down to the store. I do seem to remember wearing the scarf all day...” Her brow wrinkled prettily. “I don’t remember having it, however, when I returned home.”

“You say you came to the store, Miss French?” interrupted the Inspector politely. “For any special reason?”

“Why — not particularly. I did think I might still catch father. I knew he was leaving for Great Neck, but I didn’t know exactly when, and—”

The Inspector held up a ridiculously tiny white hand. “Just a moment Miss French. You say your father went to Great Neck yesterday?”

“Why, yes. I understood he was to go out there for business. There’s — there’s nothing wrong — about that is there, sir?” She bit her lip.

“No, no — positively no!” said the Inspector, smiling. He turned to Weaver. “Why didn’t you tell me that Mr. French took a little trip yesterday, Mr. Weaver?”

“You didn’t ask me,” retorted Weaver.

The Inspector started, then chuckled. “One on me,” he said. “It’s true enough. When did he return and why did he go?”

Weaver looked compassionately at the limp, oblivious figure of his employer. “He went early yesterday afternoon to confer with Farnham Whitney on Whitney’s estate. A matter of merger, Inspector — the meeting this morning discussed just that. Mr. French told me that he was driven into the city early this morning by Whitney’s chauffeur — arrived at the store at nine o’clock. Anything else?”

“Not just now.” Queen turned to Marion. “Your pardon, my dear, for the interruption... Now where specifically did you go when you came to the store?”

“To my father’s apartment on the sixth floor.”

“Indeed?” muttered the Inspector. “And why, may I ask, did you go to your father’s apartment?”

“I usually go there when I’m at the store, which isn’t often,” exclaimed Marion. “Besides, I was told that Mr. Weaver was there, working, and I thought it might be nice — to pay him a little visit...” She eyed her father apprehensively, but he was insensible to words.

“You went there directly on entering the store? And left immediately from the apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible,” insinuated the Inspector very gently, “that you may have dropped your scarf in the apartment, Miss French?”

She did not reply immediately. Weaver tried frantically to catch her eye, moving his lips, framing the word “No!” She shook her head.

“Quite possible, Inspector,” she said quietly.

“I see.” The Inspector beamed. “Now, when did you see Mrs. French last?”

“At dinner last night. I had an appointment for the evening and left almost immediately.”

“Did Mrs. French seem herself? Notice anything unusual, abnormal in her speech or actions?”

“Well... She did seem worried about Bernice,” Marion said slowly.

“Ah!” Queen rubbed his hands together. “Then I infer that your — stepsister, is it? — was not at home for dinner?”

“No,” replied Marion after a hesitating silence. “Winifred — my stepmother told me that Bernice had gone out and would not be home for dinner. But she seemed worried nevertheless.”

“She gave no indication of a reason for this worry?”

“None whatever.”

“What is your step-sister’s name? Is it French?”

“No, Inspector. She retains her father’s name of Carmody,” murmured Marion.

“I see. I see.” The Inspector stood plunged in thought. John Gray shifted impatiently, whispered a word to Cornelius Zorn, who shook his head sadly and leaned resignedly against the back of French’s chair. Queen paid no attention to them. He looked up at Marion. Her passive, tired little figure drooped.

“One question more for the moment, Miss French,” he said, “and you may rest... Can you suggest, from anything that you know of Mrs. French’s background of affairs, or from anything that transpired recently — last night, yesterday, perhaps — can you suggest,” he repeated, “a possible explanation for this crime? It’s murder, of course,” he continued hastily, before she could reply, “and I know you are naturally chary of answering. Take your time — think carefully over everything that has occurred lately...” He stopped. “Now, Miss French, can you tell me anything I might wish to hear?”

There was naked silence in the room — a raw pulsing quiet that beat invisibly against the atmosphere. Ellery heard quick breaths drawn, saw bodies tense, eyes sharpen, hand twitch as, to a man, the occupants of the room with the exception of Cyrus French leaned forward, watching Marion French as she stood there, facing them.

But she said, “No,” very matter-of-factly, and the Inspector’s eyes flickered. Everybody relaxed. Someone sighed. Ellery noted that it was Zorn. Trask lit a cigarette nervously and let the fire die. Marchbanks sat frozen to his chair. Weaver made a little movement of despair...

“Then that will be all, Miss French,” returned Inspector Queen, in a tone as casual as the girl’s had been. He seemed pleasantly absorbed in a contemplation of Lavery’s formal cravat. “Please,” he added, just as pleasantly, “do not leave the room... Mr. Lavery, may I have your ear for the moment?”

Marion dropped back and Weaver sprang to her side, dragging a chair with him. She sank into it with a little smile, shading her eyes with a nerveless hand. The other snuggled secretly into Weaver’s eager grasp... Ellery watched them for a moment, then turned his sharp eyes on Lavery.

The Frenchman bowed, waited, fingers riffling his short beard.

11 Loose Ends

“As I understand it, Mr. Lavery, you are responsible for this exhibition of modernistic house-furnishings?” Inspector Queen’s voice took a fresh note.

“That is correct.”

“How long has this exhibition been going on?”

“About a month, I should say.”

“Your main exhibition rooms are where?”

“On the fifth floor.” Lavery spread his fingers. “You see, this is more or less of a pioneer project in New York, Inspector. I was invited to exhibit some of my creations to the American public by Mr. French and his Board, who are very much in sympathy with the movement. Most of the purely enterprising details of the present exhibition emanate from Mr. French, allow me to add.”

“Just what do you mean?”

Lavery showed his teeth in a smile. “The matter of these window-exhibits, for example. That was wholly Mr. French’s idea, and I do suppose it has resulted in much advertising for the establishment. Certainly the crowds have flocked from the sidewalk outside to the fifth-floor exhibition rooms in such numbers that we have had to call in special ushers to handle them.”

“I see.” The Inspector nodded politely. “So these window-exhibits were Mr. French’s idea? Yes, yes — you have just told me that... How long has this particular window been dressed so, Mr. Lavery?”

“This is the — let me see — the end of the second week of the living-room-bedroom exhibit,” answered Lavery, stroking his short modish beard again. “The fourteenth day, to be exact. Tomorrow we were to have changed the room’s contents, removed them to make way for a model dining-room.”

“Oh, the windows are changed bi-weekly? Then this is the second room you have exhibited?”

“Quite so. The first was a full bedroom.”

Queen mused openly. His eyes drooped with weariness; blackish pouches stood out beneath. He took a short turn up and down the room, halting once more before Lavery.

“It seems to me,” he said, more to himself than to Lavery, “that this unfortunate accident and its attendant circumstances dovetail too fortuitously... However! Mr. Lavery, is this window-exhibit held at the same time each day?”

Lavery stared. “Yes... yes, certainly.”

“At exactly the same time each day, Mr. Lavery?” pursued the Inspector.

“Oh, yes!” said Lavery. “The model has entered this window at noon of each day ever since the institution of the exhibit.”

“Very good!” The Inspector seemed pleased again. “Now, Mr. Lavery — in the month that these demonstrations have taken place, has there ever to your knowledge been one day on which the time-schedule was not adhered to?”

“No,” said Lavery with positiveness. “And I am in a position to know, sir. It has been my habit to stand on the main floor behind the window-room during the model demonstration every day. My lecture upstairs is not scheduled until three-thirty of the afternoon, you see.”

The Inspector raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you lecture, too, Mr. Lavery?”

“But of course!” cried Lavery. “I have been told,” he added gravely, “that my description of the work of the Viennese Hoffman has created something of a stir among the monde artistique.”

“Indeed!” smiled the Inspector. “One question more, Mr. Lavery, and then I think we will have finished with you for the present. — This exhibition as a whole is not entirely a spontaneous thing? I mean,” he added, “steps have been taken to make the public aware both of your window-demonstrations and of your lectures upstairs?”

“Assuredly. The publicity and advertising have been planned most carefully,” rejoined Lavery. “We have circularized all the art-schools and allied organizations. The charge-accounts, I understand, have likewise been covered by personal letters from the management. The bulk of the public attention, however, has been secured by means of newspaper advertisements. Of course you have seen those?”

“Well, I rarely read department store ads,” the Inspector replied hastily. “And I suppose you have received all sorts of publicity?”

“Yes... yes, indeed,” and Lavery again flashed his white teeth. “If you would condescend to examine my scrapbooks—”

“Hardly necessary, Mr. Lavery, and thank you for your patience. That’s all.”

“A moment, please. — May I?” Ellery had stepped forward, smiling. The Inspector glanced at him, waved his hand briefly, as if to say, “Your witness!” and retreated to the bed, where he sat down with a sigh.

Lavery had turned in his tracks and now stood stroking his beard, his eyes politely questioning.

Ellery did not speak for a moment. He twirled his pince-nez, looked up suddenly. “I am quite interested in your work, Mr. Lavery,” he said with a disarming grimace. “Although I fear my esthetic studies have not exhausted the field of modern interior decoration. As a matter of fact, was much interested the other day in your lecture on Bruno Paul...”

“So you attended my impromptu classes upstairs, sir?” exclaimed Lavery, flushing with pleasure. “Perhaps I was a trifle enthusiastic about Paul — I know him quite well, you see...”

“Indeed!” Ellery looked at the floor. “I take it that you have been in America before, Mr. Lavery — your English is quite untouched by Gallicism.”

“Well, I have traveled more or less extensively,” admitted Lavery. “This is my fifth visit to the States — Mr. Queen, is it?”

“I’m sorry!” said Ellery. “I’m Inspector Queen’s unruly scion... Mr. Lavery, how many demonstrations a day are given in this window?”

“Just one.” Lavery raised his black brows.

“How long does each demonstration take?”

“Thirty-two minutes exactly.”

“Interesting,” murmured Ellery. “By the way, is this room kept open at all times?”

“Not at all. There are some very valuable pieces in this room. It is kept locked except when it is being used for demonstration purposes.”

“Of course! That was stupid of me,” smiled Ellery. “You have a key, naturally?”

“A number of keys exist, Mr. Queen,” answered Lavery. “The idea of the lock is more to prevent transient trespassing during the day than to keep out possible night-prowlers. It is presumed that after hours, in an establishment as well guarded as this — provided with modern burglar alarms, guards, and so on — the room would be safe enough against burglary.”

“If you will pardon me for interrupting,” came the mild voice of MacKenzie, the store manager, “I am in a better position to clear up the question of the keys than Mr. Lavery.”

“Delighted to have you,” said Ellery quickly, but he began once more to twirl his pince-nez. The Inspector, seated on the bed, preserved a watchful silence.

“We have a number of duplicate keys,” explained MacKenzie, “to each of the windows. In this particular instance Mr. Lavery has one, Diana Johnson the demonstrator has one (which she leaves at the Employees’ Office desk when she leaves for the day), the floorwalker on this section of the main floor and the store detectives each have one, and there is a complete set of duplicates kept in the general offices on the mezzanine floor. I am afraid very many people could have secured a key.”

Ellery did not seem perturbed. He walked suddenly to the door, opened it, peered out over the main floor for a moment, and returned.

“Mr. MacKenzie, will you please summon that clerk at the leather-goods counter opposite this window?”

MacKenzie departed, returning shortly with a short, stout, middle-aged man. He was white-faced and nervous.

“Were you on duty all this morning?” inquired Ellery kindly. The man jerked his head in the affirmative. “And yesterday afternoon?” Another jerk. “Did you leave your post at any time this morning or yesterday afternoon?”

The clerk found his voice. “Oh, no, sir!”

“Very well!” Ellery spoke softly. “Did you at any time during yesterday afternoon or this morning notice any one entering or leaving this window-room?”

“No, sir.” The man’s tone was assured. “I’ve been on duty all the time; I couldn’t help but notice if any one had used this room, sir. I haven’t been very busy,” he added, with an apologetic side-glance at MacKenzie.

“Thank you.” The clerk left with eager steps.

“Well!” Ellery sighed. “We seem to be progressing, and yet nothing takes definite shape...” Shrugging his shoulders, he turned once more to Lavery.

“Mr. Lavery, are these windows illuminated after dark?”

“No, Mr. Queen. The shades are drawn after every demonstration, and they are kept drawn until the following day.”

“Then,” and Ellery emphasized the word, “then I take it that these lighting-fixtures are dummies?”

Eyes long since dulled by waiting and wretchedness expectantly followed the direction of Ellery’s arm. He was pointing toward the oddly cut, clouded-glass wall lights. The eyes all turned, too, to observe the numerous queerly shaped lamps about the room.

For answer Lavery strode to the rear wall and, after a moment’s manipulation, removed one of the modernistic fixtures. The socket which should have held an electric bulb was empty.

“We have no use for lights here,” he said, “so we have not installed them.” With a swift movement he restored the fixture to its place on the wall.

Ellery took a decisive step forward. But then he shook his head, retreated, turned to the Inspector.

“Henceforth, or at least for the present, I shall be silent,” he said smiling, “and latinically pass for a philosopher.”

12 Out the Window...

A policeman pushed his way into the room, looked about as if to catch the eye of authority, was summoned peremptorily by old Queen, mumbled a few words, and departed almost as quickly as he had come.

The Inspector immediately took John Gray aside and whispered in the little director’s ear. Gray nodded and went to the side of Cyrus French, who was staring blankly into space, muttering to himself. With the aid of Weaver and Zorn, Gray managed to twist French’s chair around so that the old man’s back was to the body. French noticed nothing. The store physician took his pulse professionally. Marion’s hand was at her throat; she stood up quickly and leaned against the back of her father’s chair.

Then the door opened and two white-garbed men with visored caps entered, bearing a stretcher between them. They saluted the Inspector, who jerked his thumb toward the sheeted corpse.

Ellery had withdrawn into the far corner of the room beyond the bed to hold communion with his pince-nez. He frowned at it, tapped it on the back of his hand, threw his lightcoat on the bed and sat down, taking his head between his hands. Finally, as if he had come to either an impasse or a conclusion, he produced from the pocket of his coat the volume it contained, and began to scribble hurriedly on the fly-leaf. He paid not the slightest attention to the two police doctors stooped over the dead woman.

Nor did he protest when he was unceremoniously moved by a silent, nervous man who had entered immediately behind the stretcher bearers, and who was now engaged with the help of an assistant in photographing the dead woman, her position on the floor, the bed, the handbag and other articles connected with the victim. Ellery’s eyes followed the police photographer, but abstractedly.

Suddenly he snapped his little book back into his pocket and waited thoughtfully until he caught his father’s eye.

“Lord, son,” said the Inspector, coming over, “I’m tired. And worried. And apprehensive.”

“Apprehensive? Come, now — don’t fall into that silly frame of mind, dad. Why should you be apprehensive? This case is coming along, coming along...”

“Oh, you’ve probably caught the murderer and hidden him in your vest-pocket,” growled the old man. “I’m not worried about the murderer, I’m worried about Welles.”

“Sorry!” Ellery moved closer. “Don’t let Welles rile you, dad; I don’t think he’s as bad as you’ve painted him. And while he’s merely heckling you, I’ll be working undercover — grasp the idea?”

“It’s not half bad at that,” said the Inspector. “My gosh! He’s liable to walk in here any minute now, El! I never thought of that! By this time he has a telephoned report and — Yes! What is it?”

A bluecoat tramped in with a message and left.

The Inspector groaned. “Word’s just come that Welles is on his way here — now we’ll have arrests, interviews, grillings, reporters running over the place, and merry—”

Ellery’s air of raillery vanished. He grasped his father’s arm and guided him swiftly to an angle in the wall.

“If that’s the case, dad, let me tell you what is in my mind — quickly.” He looked around; they were fairly unobserved. He lowered his voice. “Have you reached any definite conclusions yet? I’d like to have your reactions before I tell you mine.”

“Well—” the old man peered about him cautiously, then cupped his mouth in his small hands — “between you and me, son, there’s something queer about the whole business. As far as details are concerned, I’m a little hazy — if you’re clearer than I, it’s probably because you have had something of the advantage of an observer. But as to the crime itself — the possible motive — the story behind it — I have the inescapable feeling that the murder of Mrs. French is not half so important to us as what may have necessitated the murder...” Ellery nodded thoughtful. “I have no doubt that this is a carefully planned murder. Despite the weirdness of the place, the apparent sloppiness of the crime, there is amazingly little to go on.”

“What about Marion French’s scarf?” asked Ellery.

“Fiddlesticks!” said the Inspector contemptuously. “Can’t see that it means anything intelligible. In all probability she left it somewhere about and Mrs. French picked it up... But I’ll bet a cookie that the Commissioner grabs it.”

“I think you’re wrong there,” commented Ellery. “He’ll be afraid to tackle French. Don’t lose sight of French’s power as head of the Anti-Vice Society... No, dad, for the present Welles will keep his hands off Marion French.”

“Well, what have you concluded, Ellery?”

Ellery produced his small volume and turned to the flyleaf on which he had scribbled a few moments before. He looked up. “I hadn’t thought about the remote nuances of the crime, dad,” he said. “Although, now that you’ve brought it up, it seems to me that you are probably correct about the far-reaching significance of the motive as opposed to the crime itself... No, I’ve been chiefly occupied until now with more direct affairs. I have four interesting little puzzlers to elucidate. Listen carefully.

“First, and probably most important,” he began, referring to his notes, “there is the puzzle of Mrs. French’s key. We have a fair sequence of incident. The nightwatchman, O’Flaherty, observes the victim at about eleven-fifty last night with the gold-disked apartment key in her possession. She is lost sight of until twelve-fifteen to-day, when she is found dead — still in the store, but with the key missing from the scene of the crime. The question arises, then: Why is the key missing? It seems on the face of it a pure matter of discovery, doesn’t it? Yet — regard the possibilities. It is plausible enough at this time to suspect that the key’s disappearance is connected with the crime, more directly with the murderer. A murderer disappears, a key disappears. It is not difficult to imagine that they disappeared together. Now, if this is so — and for the present let us assume that it is so — why did the murderer take the key? Obviously, we can’t answer that question — yet. But... we now know that the murderer has in his possession a key to a certain apartment — French’s private apartment on the sixth floor.”

“That’s so,” muttered the Inspector. “I’m glad you suggested sending one of the boys to watch that apartment this morning.”

“I had that thought,” said Ellery. “But something else disturbs me. I can’t help asking myself: Doesn’t the absence of the key perhaps indicate that the body was brought to this window from some other place?”

“I can’t see that at all,” objected the Inspector. “Can’t see that it has anything to do with it.”

“Let’s not quarrel about it,” murmured Ellery. “I can see one very, very interesting possibility that makes my question logical and the item of Marion French’s scarf seems to point the same way. I think that I’ll be able to check up soon on the facts — which will put me in a position to prove more definitely what I’ve just postulated... Let me get on to point number two.

“The natural thought one has on finding the body in this window is that the crime was committed here. Of course! Usually, one would not even stop to question it.”

“It seemed funny to me, though,” said the Inspector, frowning.

“Ah! It did, eh? Perhaps I can crystallize your suspicion a bit later,” said Ellery brightly. “We enter, we see a body, we say: Crime was committed here. But then we stop to observe. We are told by Prouty that the woman has been dead some twelve hours. The body is found a bit after noon. That would make it a short time after midnight when Mrs. French died. In other words, when the crime was committed. Observe that in any case the crime was committed in dead of night. What is the appearance of this window at such a time — of this whole section of the building? Total darkness!”

“And—?” put in the Inspector dryly.

“You don’t seem to take my dramatics very seriously,” laughed Ellery. “Total darkness, I repeat. Yet we are supposing that this window is the scene of the crime. We prowl about the window, ask ourselves: Are there lights in here? If there are, that’s the end of it. With the door closed, and these heavy drapes on the street side, light would be unobserved outside the window-room. We investigate and find — no, no lights. Plenty of lamps, plenty of sockets — no bulbs. I doubt, indeed, if the lamps are even wired. So — we suddenly visualize a crime in total darkness. What... you don’t like that idea? Neither do I!”

“There are such things as flashlights, you know,” objected Queen.

“So there are. That occurred to me. Then I asked myself: If there was a crime here, there was some logically necessary antecedent action. A crime presupposes a meeting, a probable quarrel, a murder, and in this case, disposal of the body in a very queer and inconvenient place — a wall-bed... And all in the rays of a flashlight! As redoubtable Cyrano would remark: No, I thank you!”

“Might have carried bulbs with him, of course,” muttered the Inspector, then their eyes met and they both laughed at once.

Ellery grew serious. “Well, let’s leave the little matter of illumination for the present. You’ll admit it reeks slightly of improbability?

“And now to that exceedingly fascinating little thingamajig,” he continued, “the lipstick engraved with the letter C. That’s my point number three. In many ways, it’s of extreme significance. The immediate conclusion is that Lipstick marked C does not belong to Mrs. French, whose initials, engraved on three other articles in her bag, are W. M. F. Now, Lipstick marked C is of a noticeably darker shade than the paint on the dead woman’s lips. Which not only corroborates the premise that Lipstick marked C is not Mrs. French’s, but also that there is another lipstick extant somewhere which did belong to Mrs. French. Follow? Now where is that lipstick? It is not in this window anywhere. Therefore it is somewhere else. Did the murderer take it, along with the key? That seems silly. Ah... but haven’t we a clue. Of course! for observe...” he paused, “the dead woman’s lips. Half-finished! And of a lighter shade. What does this mean? Undoubtedly that Mrs. French was interrupted while she was dabbing at her lips with her own lipstick now missing.”

“Why interrupted?” demanded the Inspector.

“Have you ever seen a woman who began to paint her lips leave them half-painted? It just isn’t done. It must have been an interruption which prevented those lips from being entirely daubed. And a violent interruption, I’ll wager; nothing short of an unprecedentedly odd occurrence would stop a woman from smearing that last red blob on the right place.”

“The murder!” exclaimed the Inspector with a queer light in his eye.

Ellery smiled. “Perhaps. — But do you grasp the implication, dad? If she was interrupted by the murder or the incidents immediately preceding the murder, and the lipstick is not in this window—”

“Of course, of course!” exclaimed the old man. He sobered. “It’s true, though, that the lipstick might have been taken by the murderer for purposes of his own.”

“On the other hand,” returned Ellery, “if it was not taken by the murderer, then it is still somewhere in or about the building. You might institute a search through six floors of this dry goods mortuary.”

“Oh, impossible! But I suppose we’ll have to have a try at it later.”

“Perhaps it won’t be necessary in about fifteen minutes,” said Ellery. “At any rate, a genuinely interesting question comes up: To whom does the C lipstick belong, if it is not Mrs. French’s? You might look into that, dad. I have an idea that the answer to that question will bring complications — à la Scott Welles...”

At mention of the Police Commissioner’s name the Inspector’s features lengthened. “You’d better finish what you began, Ellery; he’ll be here any minute now.”

“And so I shall.” Ellery removed his pince-nez and twirled it recklessly in the air. “Before we proceed to point number four, bear in mind that you’re cherchez-ing two feminine accessories — la lipstick de Madame, et sa clef...

“To point number four, then,” continued Ellery with a faraway gleam in his eye. “For point number four we must credit the habitually sharpened perceptions of our grossly underpaid and revered medico, Sam Prouty. He thought it strange that wounds of the nature of Mrs. French’s should have bled so little. At least, there was little trace of blood on her body and clothes... By the way, there was also a smear of dried blood on the palm of her left hand — you noticed it, of course?”

“Saw it, all right,” muttered the Inspector. “Probably clapped her hand to one of the wounds at the moment she was shot, and then—”

“And then,” finished Ellery, “her hand dropped in death and the divine ichor, which by all the laws of physics, according to friend Sam, should have gushed forth, did — what? I should say,” he remarked seriously after a pause, “that it obeyed the immutable laws of that exact science and did gush forth freely...”

“I see what you mean...” murmured the old man.

“It gushed forth freely — but not in this window. In other words, we must look for an interesting combination of elements to explain away the phenomenon of two bloody revolver-wounds being practically bloodless on the discovery of the body...

“Let me sum up the indications to this point,” Ellery continued swiftly. “To my mind the absence of Mrs. French’s apartment key; the absence of normal illuminating-facilities in this window; the absence of Mrs. French’s rightful lipstick, which she must have had almost directly before her death, since her lips are only half-painted; the absence of blood from two logically bloody wounds; the presence of Marion French’s scarf; and another item of a more general but none the less convincing nature — all converge into one conclusion.”

“And that is that the murder was not committed in this window,” said the Inspector, taking snuff with a steady hand.

“Exactly.”

“Just what do you mean by still another item which points toward that conclusion, Ellery?”

“Has it struck you at all,” answered Ellery slowly, “what an utterly preposterous setting this window-room is for the crime of murder?”

“I did think of it, as I mentioned before, but—”

“You’ve been too plunged into detail to get a psychological slant on this affair. Think of the privacy, the secrecy, the conveniences, that a fully planned murder requires. Here — what did the murderer have? An unlit, periodically patrolled window. Dangerous from start to finish. In the heart of the main floor, where the nucleus of the nightwatchman’s staff is located. Not fifty feet from the constantly present head nightwatchman’s office. Why? No, dad it’s perfectly silly! It was the first thought I had when I came in here.”

“True enough,” muttered the Inspector. “Yet — if it didn’t take place here why transport the body here at all after the murder, if that is what was done? If seems to me that almost as much danger, if not more, existed in that event as in the first...”

Ellery frowned. “That had occurred to me, of course... There is an explanation; there must be. I begin to see the manipulation of a fine Italian hand...”

“At any rate,” broke in the Inspector with a slight impatience, “so much is clear to me after your analysis: this window is certainly not the scene of the crime. I think I see — yes, of course it’s as plain as day — the apartment upstairs!”

“Oh, that!” Ellery said absently. “Naturally. Wouldn’t make sense otherwise. The key, a logical place for the lipstick, privacy, illumination... yes, yes, the sixth floor apartment by all means. It’s my next stop...”

“And it’s positively depressing, El!” exclaimed the Inspector, as if struck by a thought. “Imagine! That apartment has been used by five people incessantly since eight-thirty this morning when Weaver arrived. Nobody noticed anything up there, so evidently traces of the crime were removed from the apartment before that time. Goodness — if only...”

“Now don’t be bothering your poor grey head with fancy!” laughed Ellery, suddenly restored to good humor. “Of course the traces of the crime have been removed. The top layer, so to speak. Perhaps even the middle layer. But away down deep, underneath, we may find who — knows? Yes, that’s my next stop.”

“I can’t help worrying about the reason this window was used at all,” frowned the Inspector. “Unless it’s that time element...”

“Heavens! You’re becoming positively a genius, dad!” chuckled Ellery affectionately. “I’ve just got over solving that little problem for myself. Why was the body placed in the window? Let’s apply unfailing logos...

“There are two possibilities, either or both of which may be correct. First: to keep attention away from the real scene of the crime, which is undoubtedly the apartment. Second, and more logically, to prevent the body from being discovered before noon. The dead certainty of the daily demonstration time — which you have reasoned, of course, was common knowledge to all New York — tenons much too snugly.”

“But why, Ellery?” objected Inspector Queen. “Why delay the body’s discovery until noon?”

“If only we knew that!” murmured Ellery, with a shrug. “But in a general way it seems reasonable that if the murderer left the body to be discovered — and he knew it with certainty — at twelve-fifteen, then he had something to do before noon which the discovery of the body prematurely would have made dangerous or impossible. Do you follow me?”

“But what on earth—”

“Yes, what on earth,” replied Ellery sadly. “What did the murderer have to do on the morning of the crime? I don’t know.”

“We’re just stumbling in the dark Ellery,” said the Inspector with a faint groan. “Just staggering from premise to conclusion without a ray of light anywhere... For example, why couldn’t the murderer have done what he had to do last night, in the building? There are telephones, you know, if he had to communicate with some one...”

“Are there? But — we’ll have to check up on that later.”

“I’ll do that right away—”

“Just a second, dad,” interrupted Ellery. “Why not send Velie out to that private elevator to look for traces of blood?”

The Inspector stared at him, made a fist. “Goodness! How stupidly I’ve managed things!” he cried. “Of course! Thomas!”

Velie stalked across the room, received an inaudible instruction, and immediately left.

“I should have thought of that before,” growled the Inspector, turning back to Ellery. “Naturally, if the murder was committed in the apartment, the body had to be brought down here from the sixth floor.”

“Probably find nothing” commented Ellery. “I’d pick the staircase, myself... But look here, dad. I want you to do something for me. — Welles will be here any moment now. To all intents and purposes this window is the scene of the crime. He’ll want to hear all the testimony all over again, anyway. Keep him down here — give me an hour upstairs alone with Wes Weaver, won’t you? I must see that apartment at once. Nobody has been in it since the meeting broke up — it’s been watched all the time — there must be something there... Will you?”

The Inspector wrung his hands helplessly. “Of course son — anything you say. You can certainly tackle it with a fresher mind than I can. I’ll keep Welles down here. Want to examine that Employees’ Entrance office, the freight room, and that whole section of the main floor, anyway... But why are you taking Weaver?” His voice sank lower. “Ellery — aren’t you playing a dangerous game?”

“Why, dad!” Ellery’s eyes opened wide in honest astonishment. “What do you mean? If you’ve any suspicion of poor Wes, disabuse your mind of it right now. Wes and I were bunkies at school; remember that summer during which I stayed with a chum in Maine? That was Westley’s father’s place. I know the poor boy as well as I know you. Father’s a clergyman, mother’s a saint. Background clean, life’s always been an open book. No secrets, no past...”

“But you don’t know what he’s bumped into in the city here, Ellery” objected the Inspector. “You haven’t seen him for years.”

“Look here, dad,” said Ellery gravely. “You’ve never made a mistake following my judgment, have you? Follow it now. Weaver’s as innocent of this crime as a lamb. His nervousness is plainly connected with Marion French... There! The photographer wants to talk to you.”

They turned back to the group. Inspector Queen spoke to the police photographer for a few moments. Then dismissing the man, he resolutely beckoned the Scotch store manager.

“Mr. MacKenzie, tell me—” he asked abruptly, “what is the condition of your telephone service after shopping hours?”

MacKenzie said: “All ’phones except on one trunk line are cut off at six o’clock. That line is connected with O’Flaherty’s desk at the night exit. If there are any incoming calls, he takes them. Otherwise there is no telephone service at night.”

“I see by O’Flaherty’s time-sheet and report-sheet that there were no incoming or outgoing calls last night,” remarked the Inspector, consulting the chart.

“You can rely on O’Flaherty, Inspector.”

“Well,” pursued Queen, “suppose some department is working overtime? ’Phone service kept open?”

“Yes,” replied MacKenzie. “But only on written request of the head of the department. — I should add that we have very little of that sort of thing here, sir. Mr. French has always insisted that the closing hour be kept more or less strictly. Of course, there are exceptions every once in a while. If there is no record on O’Flaherty’s chart of such a request, you may be sure no lines were open last night.”

“Not even in Mr. French’s private apartment?”

“Not even in Mr. French’s apartment,” returned the store manager. “Unless Mr. French or Mr. Weaver instructs the head operator to the contrary.”

The Inspector turned questioningly to Weaver, and Weaver shook his head in an emphatic negative.

“One thing more, Mr. MacKenzie. Are you aware of the last time before yesterday that Mrs. French visited the store?”

“I believe it was a week ago Monday, Inspector,” replied MacKenzie after some hesitation. “Yes I’m fairly certain. She came in to speak to me about some imported dress material.”

“And she did not appear at the store after that?” Inspector Queen looked around at the other occupants of the room. There was no answer.

At this moment Velie reëntered. He whispered to his superior and stepped back. The Inspector turned to Ellery. “Nothing in the elevator — not a sign of blood.”

A policeman stepped into the window-room and made for the Inspector.

“The Commissioner’s here, Inspector.”

“I’ll be right out,” said the Inspector wearily. As he left the room, Ellery gave him a meaning glance. He nodded slightly.

When he returned a few moments later, escorting the portly, pompous figure of Commissioner Scott Welles and a small army of detectives and deputies, Ellery and Westley Weaver had vanished. And Marion French sat in her chair, clutching her father’s hand, watching the window-door as if with Weaver had gone some of her heart and courage.