The Chinese Orange Mystery

There was a suspicion of purple on the face . . . . Ellery touched the dead chin with his fingers and tilted the head. Yes, there was a purplish patch of bruise on the left cheek and the left side of the nose and mouth. He had fallen like a stone to receive the hard kiss of the floor on that side of his face.

Ellery rose and silently retreated to his former position inside the doorway. “It’s a question of perspective,” he said to himself, never taking his eyes from the dead man. “You can’t see much close up. I wonder¯” A fresh surge of astonishment flooded his brain. In all the years that he had seen dead men in the fixed surroundings of violence he had never witnessed anything so remarkable as this dead man and the things that had been done to him and to his last resting-place. There was something uncanny about the whole thing, uncanny and horrifying. The sane mind shrank from acceptance. It was unholy, blasphemous . . . .

How long they stood there, the three of them, none of them knew. The corridor at their backs was very quiet. Only occasionally they heard the clang of the elevator-door and the cheerful voice of Mrs. Shane. From the street twenty-two stories below came the whispering sounds of traffic, wafted past the blowing curtains of one of the windows. For a weird moment the thought struck them simultaneously that the little man was not dead but merely taking a humorous rest on the floor, having selected his odd position and the extraordinary disruption of his surroundings out of some inscrutable whim. The thought was born of the benevolent smile on the dead man’s fat lips, for his face was turned toward them. Then the impression faded, and Ellery cleared his throat noisily, as if to grasp something real, if only a sound.

“Kirk, have you ever seen this fellow before?”

The tall young man’s breath whistled through his nostrils behind Ellery’s back. “Queen, I swear I’ve never seen him before. You’ve got to believe me!” He clutched Ellery’s arm with a muscular convulsiveness. “Queen! It’s a ghastly mistake, I tell you. Strangers are always coming to see me. I never saw¯”

“Tc/i,” murmured Ellery, “get a stranglehold on your nerves, Kirk.” Without turning he patted Kirk’s rigid fingers. “Osborne.”

Osborne said with difficulty: “I can vouch for that, Mr. Queen. He’s never been here before. He was a total stranger to us. Mr. Kirk doesn’t know¯”

“Yes, yes, Osborne. With all the other appalling things about this crime, I can well believe . . . “ He tore his eyes from the prone figure and swung about, a businesslike note springing into his voice. “Osborne, go back to your office and ‘phone down for the physician, the manager, and the house detective. Then call the police. Get Centre Street; speak to Inspector Richard Queen. Tell him I’m on the scene and to hurry over at once.”

“Yes, sir,” quavered Osborne, and slipped away.

“Now, close that door, Kirk. We don’t want any one to see¯”

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

Kirk said in a quick hoarse voice: “Nothing, nothing at all, ‘Cella,” and jumped out into the hall and placed his hands on his sister’s half-bare shoulders. “Just an accident. Go back to the apartment¯”

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

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

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

* * *