Egyptian Cross Mystery (14 page)

“Sure was.”

“Good,” exclaimed Isham, rubbing his hands. “We’ll trace it and get hold of the slip Krosac must have made out in whatever post office he sent it from. It will bear his signature, and that’ll be plenty.”

“I’m afraid,” drawled Ellery, “that if Mr. Velja Krosac, our esteemed and slippery quarry, is as canny as his activity to date indicates, you’ll find the money-order application made out by friend Harakht. There were no samples of Krosac’s handwriting to be found in the Van investigation, remember.”

“Did this man Krosac appear in person on March first?” asked the District Attorney.

“Noss’r. Nob’dy o’ that name ever did come, but the ol’ banshee back yonder—Har—Harakht’s his name?—he come, an’ the feller who come with him, Romaine, they paid over th’ balance o’ the rent in cash an’ took occup’ncy.”

By mutual consent Vaughn and Isham dropped the Krosac line of inquiry. Obviously this old character could contribute nothing more in that direction. The Inspector slipped the letter into his pocket, and began to ask questions concerning the Brad-Harakht quarrel. He discovered that from the beginning, when it was evident that the cult was really a colony of nudists, Brad had come to the Island personally to voice the joint objection of the mainland community. Harakht, it appeared, had been impervious to cajolery or threats; and Romaine had bared his teeth. Brad, in desperation, had offered to reimburse them many times over; he had named a preposterous sum for their lease.

“Who signed the lease, incidentally?” asked Isham.

“The ol’ polecat,” replied Ketcham.

Harakht and Romaine had refused Brad’s offer. Then Brad had threatened legal action on the ground that the two men were maintaining a public nuisance. Romaine had retorted that they were harming no one, that the Island was off the public highways, that for the duration of their lease it virtually belonged to them. Whereupon Brad had endeavored to persuade Ketcham to oust them by legal action on the same ground.

“But they weren’t hurtin’ me an’ Mrs. Ketcham none,” said the old man. “Mr. Brad offered to give me a thousand dollars ef I’d do it. No, sir, says I, not ol’ man Ketcham; no lawsuits fer ol’ man Ketcham.”

The last quarrel, and the most violent, had taken place just three days before, continued Ketcham—on Sunday. Brad had sailed across the waters of the Cove like Troy-bound Menelaus, had met Stryker in the woods, and they had had a fierce battle of words, in the course of which the little brown-bearded man went into a frenzy. “Thought he’d throw a fit, I did,” remarked Ketcham placidly. “This feller Romaine—pow’rful brute, he is—he mixes in an’ orders Mr. Brad offen the Island. Me, I’m watchin’ from the woods; none o’ my business, ’twa’nt. So Mr. Brad, he won’t go, an’ Romaine, he grabs Mr. Brad by th’ neck an’ he says: ‘Now, git, damn ye, or I’ll wallop the everlastin’ daylights outa ye till yer own mother wouldn’t know ye!’ an’ Mr. Brad, he gits, yellin’ that he’d git even with ’em ef it took every cent he had.”

Isham rubbed his hands again. “Good man, Mr. Ketcham. Wish there were more like you around here. Tell me—did any one else from the mainland ever have a run-in with Harakht and Romaine?”

“Betcha.” Old Ketcham looked gratified, and smiled cunningly. “That feller Jonah Lincoln—lives at Bradwood. Had a fist fight with Romaine last week, right here on this Island.” He smacked his leathery lips. “Man, that
was
a battle! Reg’lar champeenship shindy. Lincoln, he’d come over to git his sister Hester, who’d jest arrived.”

“Well, well?”

Old Ketcham waxed eloquent; his eyes sparkled. “Nice figger, that gal. She went an’ tore off her clothes, durned ef she didn’t, right in front o’ the two of ’em! She was that mad at her brother fer interferin’. Said he’d sat on ’er an’ ruled ’er life since she was a mite, an’ she could do what she dum’ pleased now. … I tell ye, that was
somethin’.
I was lookin’ through the trees. …”

“Ketcham, you o’ he-bull!” shrieked the feminine voice from the interior of the cabin. “Y’oughta feel ’shamed o’ yr’self!”

“Mm,” said Ketcham, sobering. “Anyways, when Lincoln hears his sister won’t go back, an’ sees ’er standin’ there nekkid as the day she was born, right there, mind ye, in front o’ Romaine—an’ didn’t he like it!—he hauls off an’ cracks Romaine one, an’ they had their little tussle. Lincoln, he took a pow’rful beatin’, but he’s game, he is—took it like a man. Romaine threw ’im smack into th’ Cove, by thunder. Pow’rful feller, Romaine.”

There was nothing more to be learned from the garrulous old man. They returned to the launch. Professor Yardley was quietly smoking, and Dr. Temple was pacing up and down the deck, his purple face stormy.

“Learn anything?” inquired Yardley mildly.

“A little.”

They were all thoughtful as the launch spluttered and swung about for the mainland.

T
HE AFTERNOON LENGTHENED. DISTRICT
Attorney Isham departed. Inspector Vaughn issued orders and received reports in an unending—and inconsequential—stream. Oyster Island was quiet. Mrs. Brad was closeted in her bedroom; ill, it was reported, and her daughter Helene was attending her. Jonah Lincoln paced the grounds restlessly. Troopers and detectives yawned all over Bradwood. Reporters came and went, and the evening air was thick with flashlight powder.

Ellery, not a little weary, followed Professor Yardley across the main road, through a gate in a high stone fence, up a gravel walk to Yardley’s house. Both men were subdued and wrapped in their own thoughts.

Evening came, and then a black night unilluminated by any star. Oyster Island as the darkness fell seemed to sink into the Sound.

By tacit consent neither Ellery nor his host discussed the odd problem with which they were grappling. They talked of old and pleasanter things—university days, the crusty old Chancellor, Ellery’s maiden excursions into criminal investigation, Yardley’s placid career in the years since they had parted. At eleven o’clock Ellery girded his loins in a pair of seersucker pajamas, grinned, and went to sleep. The Professor smoked serenely in his study for an hour, wrote several letters, and then retired.

It was nearly midnight when there was a stir on the porch of Dr. Temple’s stone house, and the physician, attired in black trousers, black sweater, and black moccasins, extinguished his pipe and stepped noiselessly off the porch to disappear among the dark trees between his house and the eastern boundary of Bradwood.

The countryside, except for the singsong rasping of crickets, seemed asleep.

Against the black background of the woods and shrubbery he was invisible—a stealthy blob of nothing unbetrayed even by the color of his skin. A few feet from the side of the easterly road he froze behind the shelter of a tree. Someone was pounding along the road, coming in his direction. From the dim silhouette Dr. Temple made out the figure of a uniformed county trooper, evidently on patrol. The trooper passed on, moving toward Ketcham’s Cove.

When the guard’s footsteps were no longer audible, Dr. Temple ran lightly across the road to the cover of the Bradwood trees and began to work his soundless way westward. It took him half an hour to cross Bradwood proper without arousing the suspicions of the occasional dark figures strolling about. Past the summerhouse and the totem post, past the high wire screen which marked off a tennis court, past the main house and the central walk to the Bradwood landing, past Fox’s little cabin to the westerly road separating Bradwood from the Lynn estate.

Here, his wiry body tense, Dr. Temple redoubled his caution, slipping among the trees of the Lynn woods like a wraith until the dark bulk of the house loomed ahead. He had approached it from the front; now he groped his way to the north side, where the trees grew thick almost to the house itself.

There was a light burning in the window nearest him, not five feet from where he crouched behind the trunk of an old sycamore. The blind was completely drawn.

He could hear shuffling footsteps from the room—a bedroom. Once the fat shadow of Mrs. Lynn crossed the window shade. Dr. Temple crept on hands and knees, feeling every inch of the ground before him, until he lay directly beneath the window.

Almost at once he heard the sound of a closing door, and Mrs. Lynn’s high-pitched voice, shriller than usual, say: “Percy!
Did you bury it?”

Dr. Temple gritted his teeth, the perspiration poured down his cheeks. But he made no sound.

“Yes, yes. For heaven’s sake, Beth, don’t talk so loudly!” The voice of Percy Lynn was strained. “The bally place is alive with bobbies!”

Footsteps near the window; Dr. Temple hugged the base of the wall, holding his breath. The shade slid up, and Lynn peered out. Then the sound of the shade being drawn again.

“Where?” whispered Elizabeth Lynn.

Dr. Temple tightened all his muscles, strained his ears with an effort that made him tremble. But try as he might, he could not catch the words of Lynn’s whispered reply. …

Then—“They’ll never find it,” said Lynn in a more normal tone. “We’re safe enough if we lie doggo.”

“But Dr. Temple—I’m frightened, Percy!”

Lynn swore grimly. “I remember, all right. It was in Budapest after the war. The Bundelein affair … Damn his eyes! It’s the same man, I’d take my oath.”

“He hasn’t said anything,” whispered Mrs. Lynn. “Perhaps he’s forgotten.”

“Not he! Last week, at the Brads … he kept watching me. Careful, Beth. We’re in deuced deep water—”

The light blinked out; a bedspring creaked; the voices sank to an indistinguishable murmur.

Dr. Temple crouched there for a long time; but he heard no further sound. The Lynns had retired.

He rose to his full height, listened intently for a few seconds, and then stole back into the woods. A shadow gliding from tree to tree … As he crept through the woods which fringed the semicircle of Ketcham’s Cove, he could hear the lapping of the water against the Bradwood landing.

And then once more he froze behind a tree; faint voices were coming from the general direction of the landing. He crept with infinite caution closer to the shoreline. Suddenly the black waters gurgled almost at his feet. He strained his eyes: ten feet offshore, a short distance from the murky dock, a rowboat swayed. Two dim figures were visible, seated in the middle of the boat. A man and a woman. The woman’s arms were about the man, and she was pleading with him passionately.

“Why are you so cold? Take me to the Island. We’ll be safer there—under the trees. …”

The man’s voice, low and guarded: “You’re acting like a fool. It’s dangerous, I tell you. Tonight of all nights! Are you crazy? Somebody will miss you, and there’ll be hell to pay. I told you we should keep apart, at least until this blows over!”

The woman tore her arms from the man’s neck; she cried in a desperate soprano: “I knew it! You don’t love me any more. Oh, it’s—”

He clapped his palm over her mouth, whispering fiercely: “Shut up! There are troopers around!”

She relaxed in his arms. Then she pushed him away with both hands and slowly sat up. “No. You shan’t have her. I’ll see to that.”

The man was silent. He picked up an oar and poled the boat to shore. The woman rose, and he pushed her roughly out of the boat. Hastily he shoved off and began to row—toward Oyster Island.

The moon came up, then, and Dr. Temple saw that the man rowing away was Paul Romaine.

And the woman standing white-faced and quivering on the shore was Mrs. Brad. Dr. Temple scowled and vanished among the trees.

W
HEN ELLERY WALKED UP
the gravel path of Bradwood the next morning he saw District Attorney Isham’s car parked in the driveway. There was a grim expectancy in the faces of the detectives standing about. With a suspicion that something of importance was occurring, he hurried up the steps of the colonial porch and into the house.

He brushed by a pale Stallings and made for the drawing room. There he found a wolfishly grinning Isham and a most menacing Inspector Vaughn confronting Fox, the gardener-chauffeur. Fox was standing before Isham, a silent figure, his hands tightly clenched; only his eyes betrayed his perturbation. Mrs. Brad, Helene, and Jonah Lincoln were at one side, like the Three Fates.

“Come in, Mr. Queen,” said Isham pleasantly. “You’re just in time. Fox, you’re caught with the goods. Why not speak up?”

Ellery advanced softly into the room. Fox did not stir. Even his lips were taut. “I don’t understand,” he said, but it was apparent that he did understand, and that he was bracing himself for a blow.

Vaughn bared his teeth. “Stop stalling. You visited Patsy Malone Tuesday night—the night Brad was murdered!”

“The night,” added Isham with meaning, “that you dropped Stallings and Mrs. Baxter off at the Roxy. At eight o’clock, Fox.”

Fox stood like stone. His lips turned white.

“Well?” snarled the Inspector. “What have you got to say for yourself, you mug? Why should an innocent chauffeur visit the mob headquarters of a New York gangster?

Fox blinked once; but he did not reply.

“Won’t talk, eh?” The Inspector went to the door. “Mike, bring that inking pad here!”

A plainclothesman appeared at once carrying an inking pad and paper. Fox uttered a strangled cry and lunged forward toward the door. The plainclothesman dropped pad and paper and grasped Fox’s arms, and the Inspector secured a vicious hold on the man’s legs and brought him, struggling fiercely, to the floor. Overpowered, he ceased his struggles and permitted Vaughn to yank him to his feet unresisting.

Helene Brad looked on with horrified eyes. Mrs. Brad seemed unmoved. Lincoln rose and turned his back.

“Take his prints,” said the Inspector grimly. The plainclothesman gripped Fox’s right hand, pressed the fingers to the pad and then expertly to the paper; he repeated the procedure with the left hand. Fox wore a look of agony.

“Check those right away.” The fingerprint man hurried off. “Now, Fox, my lad—if that’s your name, which I know damned well it isn’t—suppose you get a little sense into you and answer my questions. Why did you pay a visit to Malone?”

No answer.