Greek Coffin Mystery (22 page)

Pepper produced a typewritten sheet of paper. Ellery scanned it quickly. “I see he’s brought it up to date.” The list included those visitors to the house mentioned in the list the Queens had seen on Thursday, the day before the disinterment, plus the additional names of all persons who had visited the house from that time until the investigation directly after the disinterment. This addendum included all members of the Khalkis household and the following: Nacio Suiza, Miles Woodruff, James J. Knox, Dr. Duncan Frost, Honeywell, the Reverend Elder, Mrs. Susan Morse; and several old clients of the dead man besides the Robert Petrie and Mrs. Duke already listed—one Reuben Goldberg, one Mrs. Timothy Walker, one Robert Acton. Several employees of the Khalkis Galleries had also called at the house: Simon Broecken, Jenny Bohm, Parker Insull. The list was concluded with the names of a number of accredited newspaper reporters.

Ellery returned the paper to Pepper. “Everybody in the city seems to have visited the place. … Mr. Knox, you’ll be certain to keep the entire story of the Leonardo and your possession of it a secret?”

“Shan’t breathe a word,” said Knox.

“And you’ll keep alert, sir—report to the Inspector any new circumstance the instant it develops?”

“Glad to.” Knox rose; Pepper hastened to help him on with his coat. “Working with Woodruff,” said Knox as he struggled into the coat. “Retained him to take care of the legal details of the estate. All messy, with Khalkis apparently intestate. Hope that new will doesn’t turn up anywhere—Woodruff says it will complicate matters. Got permission of Mrs. Sloane, as nearest of kin, to allow me to assume the job of administrator if the new will isn’t found.”

“Damn that stolen will,” said Sampson pettishly. “Although I do think we have sufficient grounds to base a plea of duress. We’d probably be able to break it after a hell of a fuss. Wonder if Grimshaw had any kin?”

Knox grunted, waved his hand, and was gone. Sampson and Pepper rose, and they looked at each other. “I see what you’re thinking, Chief,” said Pepper softly. “You think Knox’s story about the painting he has not being a Leonardo—is just a story, eh?”

“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised,” confessed Sampson.

“Nor I,” snapped the Inspector. “Big bug or no big bug, he’s playing with fire.”

“Quite likely,” agreed Ellery, “although not particularly important as far as I’m concerned. But the man is a notoriously rabid collector, and he evidently means to keep that painting at all costs.”

“Well,” sighed the old man, “it’s a rotten mess.” Sampson and Pepper nodded to Ellery, and left the office. The Inspector followed them, headed for a conference with police reporters.

They left Ellery alone—an idle young man with a busy brain. He consumed cigaret after cigaret, wincing repeatedly at some memory. When the Inspector returned, alone, Ellery was contemplating his shoes with an absent frown.

“Spilled it,” growled the old man, sinking into his chair.

“Told the boys the Khalkis solution and then Joan Brett’s testimony that upset the old apple-cart. It’ll be all over the city in a few hours, and then our friend the murderer ought to be getting busy.”

He barked into his communicator, and a moment later his secretary hurried in. The Inspector dictated a cablegram to be marked
Confidential,
addressed to the director of the Victoria Museum in London. The secretary went away.

“Well, we’ll see,” said the old man judiciously, his hand straying to his snuff-box. “Find out where we stand on this painting business. Just talked it over with Sampson outside. We can’t drop it on Knox’s say-so. …” He studied his silent son quizzically. “Come now, El, snap out of it. The world hasn’t come to an end. What if your Khalkis solution was a flop? Forget it.”

Ellery looked up slowly. “Forget it? Not for a long time, dad.” He clenched one fist and regarded it blankly. “If this affair has taught me one thing above all others, it’s taught me this—and if ever you catch me breaking this pledge put a bullet through my conk: Never again will I advance a solution of any case in which I may be interested until I have tenoned into the whole every single element of the crime, explained every particle of a loose end.”
*

The Inspector looked concerned. “Come now, boy—”

“When I think of what a fool I’ve made of myself—what a swollen, unmitigated, egotistical jackass of a fool …”

“I think your solution, false as it was, was darned brilliant,” said the Inspector defensively.

Ellery did not reply. He began to polish the lenses of his
pince-nez,
staring bitterly at the wall above his father’s head.

*
This goes far to explain a situation concerning which much conjecture and even criticism has arisen. It has been remarked that, from Ellery’s method as shown in the three novels already given to the public, he has always seemed inconsiderate of his father’s feelings, tightly suppressing what he knew or had reasoned concerning a crime until the last gasp of the solution. When it is recalled that this vow of Ellery’s came in a case preceding those others already published, his strange conduct is understandable.—J. J. McC.

T
HE PROVERBIAL ARM STRETCHED
forth and plucked young Mr. Alan Cheney out of limbo into the light of day. To be exact, its fingers descended upon him out of the darkness above a Buffalo flying-field on the night of Sunday, October the tenth, as he was about to step unsteadily into the cabin of a Chicago airplane. The fingers, attached to the hand of Detective Hagstrom—an American gentleman with latent centuries of exploratory Norse blood in his veins—were very sure, and they saw to it that young Mr. Alan Cheney, bleared and sodden and surly and exceedingly drunk, was deposited on the next Pullman express bound across the State for New York City.

The Queens, apprised by telegram of the capture after a Sunday in which hymns were conspicuously absent and gloom seemed the order of the day, were on hand early Monday morning in the Inspector’s office to welcome the homecoming recalcitrant and his justly jubilant captor. District Attorney Sampson and Assistant District Attorney Pepper joined the reception committee. The atmosphere of that fragment of Center Street was gay indeed.

“Well, Mr. Alan Cheney,” began the Inspector genially, as young Alan, seedier and surlier than ever now that his tipple had worn off, flung himself into a chair, “what have you got to say for yourself?”

Alan’s voice was hoarse through cracked lips. “I refuse to talk.”

Sampson snapped: “You realize what your flight implies, Cheney?”

“My flight?” His eyes were sullen.

“Oh, then it wasn’t flight. Just a jaunt—a little holiday, eh, young man?” The Inspector chuckled. “Well, well,” he said suddenly, with that change of front so characteristic of him, “this isn’t a joke and we aren’t kids. You ran away. Why?”

Young Alan folded his arms across his chest and stared defiantly at the floor.

“It wasn’t—” the Inspector groped in the top drawer of his desk—“it wasn’t because you were
afraid
to stay, was it?” His hand emerged from the drawer flourishing the scribbled note Sergeant Velie had found in Joan Brett’s bedroom.

Alan paled all at once and he glared at the slip of paper as if it were an animate enemy. “Where on earth did you get that?” he whispered.

“Gets a rise out of you, does it? We found it under Miss Brett’s mattress, if you’d like to know!”

“She—she didn’t burn it … ?”

“She did not. Cut the comedy, son. Are you going to talk or do we have to apply a little pressure?”

Alan blinked rapidly. “What’s happened?”

The Inspector turned to the others.
“He
wants information, the whelp!”

“Miss Brett … Is she—all right?”

“She’s all right
now.”

“What do you mean?” Alan leaped from his chair. “You haven’t—?”

“Haven’t what?”

He shook his head and sat down again, pressing his knuckles wearily into his eyes.

“Q.” Sampson tossed his head. The Inspector cast a peculiar glance at the young man’s disheveled hair and joined the District Attorney in a corner. “If he refuses to talk,” said Sampson in a low voice, “we can’t very well hang on to him. We might hold him on a technical charge, but I can’t see that it will do us any good. After all, we haven’t a thing on him.”

“True. But there’s one thing I want to satisfy myself about before we let this cub slip through our fingers again.” The old man went to the door. “Thomas!”

Sergeant Velie appeared, bestriding the sill like a Colossus. “Want him now?”

“Yes. Get him in here.”

Velie barged out. A moment later he returned escorting the slight figure of Bell, the night-clerk at the Hotel Benedict. Alan Cheney sat very still, concealing his uneasiness beneath a mask of stubborn silence; his eyes leaped to Bell as if anxious to come to grips with something tangible.

The Inspector jerked his thumb at the victim. “Bell, do you recognize this man as one of Albert Grimshaw’s visitors a week ago Thursday night?”

Bell examined the grim figure of the boy scrupulously. Alan met his eye in a sort of defiant bewilderment. Then Bell shook his head with energy. “No, sir. He wasn’t one of ’em. Never saw the gentleman before.”

The Inspector grunted his disgust; and Alan, ignorant of the meaning of the inspection but sensible of its failure, sank back with a sigh of relief. “All right, Bell. Wait outside.” Bell retreated hastily, and Sergeant Velie set his back against the door. “Well, Cheney, still refuse to explain your little skip-out?”

Alan moistened his lips. “I want to see my lawyer.”

The Inspector threw up his hands. “Heavens, how many times I’ve heard
that!
And who is your lawyer, Cheney?”

“Why—Miles Woodruff.”

“Family mouth-piece, hey?” said the Inspector nastily. “Well, it isn’t necessary.” The Inspector plumped himself into his chair and consulted his snuff-box. “We’re going to let you go, young man,” he said, gesturing with the old brown box as if he begrudged the necessity of releasing his prisoner. Alan’s features lightened by magic. “You may go home. But,” and the old man leaned forward, “I can promise you this. One more monkeyshine like the one you pulled Saturday, my boy, and I’ll put you behind the bars if I have to go to the Commissioner to do it. Understand?”

“Yes,” muttered Alan.

“Furthermore,” continued the Inspector, “I make no bones about telling you that you’re going to be watched. Every move. So it won’t do you any good to try a skip again, because there’ll be a man on your fanny every second of the time you’re out of the Khalkis house. Hagstrom!” The detective jumped. “Take Mr. Cheney home. Stay in the Khalkis house with him. Don’t bother him. But stick to him like a brother every time he leaves the place.”

“I got you. Come on, Mr. Cheney.” Hagstrom grinned and grasped the young man’s arm. Alan rose with alacrity, shook off the detective’s grip, squared his shoulders in sorry defiance, and stalked out of the room with Hagstrom at his elbow.

Now it will be observed that Ellery Queen had not so much as uttered a syllable during this scene. He had examined his perfect fingernail’s, held his
pince-nez
up to the light as if he had never seen it before, sighed several times, consumed several cigarets, and generally composed himself as if he were wearied to tears. The only flicker of interest he had exhibited was when Cheney had been confronted with Bell; but the flicker died away as soon as Bell failed to identify him.

Ellery pricked up his ears when Pepper said, as the door closed behind Cheney and Hagstrom: “Seems to me, Chief, he’s getting away with murder.”

Sampson said quietly: “And what does that massive brain of yours think we have on him, Pepper?”

“Well, he ran away, didn’t he?”

“How true! But are you going to be able to convince a jury that a man is a criminal merely because he runs away?”

“It’s been done,” said Pepper stubbornly.

“Tommyrot,” snapped the Inspector. “Not a shred of evidence, and well you ought to know it, Pepper. He’ll keep. If there’s anything fishy about that young man, we’ll find it. … Thomas, what’s on
your
mind? You seem bursting with news.”

In truth, Sergeant Velie had been turning from one to another, opening his mouth and closing it again as he failed to find a crevice in the conversation. Now he drew a Brobdingnagian breath and said: “I’ve got two of ’em outside!”

“Two of whom?”

“The dame Grimshaw scrapped with in Barney Schick’s dive, and her husband.”

“No!” The Inspector drew himself up sharply. “That’s good news, Thomas. How’d you find her?”

“Traced her through Grimshaw’s record,” rumbled Velie. “She’s a certain Lily Morrison—ran around with Grimshaw in the old days. Got married while Grimshaw was in stir.”

“Get Barney Schick.”

“Got him waiting, too.”

“Great. Bring ’em all in.”

Velie tramped out and the Inspector settled back expectantly in his swivel-chair. The sergeant returned in a moment with the red-faced speakeasy proprietor, whom the Inspector commanded to silence as Velie at once departed by another door. Velie returned shortly with a man and a woman.

They came in hesitantly. The woman was a veritable
Brünnehilde,
large and blonde and Amazonian. The man was a fitting mate—a grizzled giant in his forties with an Irish nose and hard black eyes.

Velie said: “Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah Odell, Inspector.”

The Inspector indicated chairs, and they sat down stiffly. The old man began to fuss with some papers on his desk—a purely mechanistic exhibition performed for its effect. They were properly impressed, and their eyes ceased twitching about the office and concentrated on the old man’s thin hands.

“Now, Mrs. Odell,” began the Inspector, “please don’t be frightened; this is just a formality. D’ye know Albert Grimshaw?”

Their eyes touched, and hers drew away. “Why—you mean the man that was found choked to death in that coffin?” she asked. She possessed a throaty voice at the base of which something constantly churned. Ellery felt his own throat ache.

“Yes. Know him?”

“I—No, I don’t. Only through the newspapers.”