The Egyptian Cross Mystery
- Автор: Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Серия: Ellery Queen #5
- Год: 1932
- Язык: английский
- Год: Frederick A. Stokes Company
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The Egyptian Cross Mystery». Краткое содержание книги:
“Well,” continued Inspector Vaughn, “he took hold of himself and ran back to the house. Usual stuff — roused the household. Nobody touched anything. Lincoln, who’s a nervous but levelheaded fellow, took charge until we came.”
“And who is Lincoln?” asked Ellery pleasantly.
“General Manager of Brad’s business. Brad & Megara, you know,” explained Isham, “the big rug importers. Lincoln lives here. Brad liked him a lot, I understand.”
“An embryonic rug magnate, eh? And Megara — does he live here, too?”
Isham shrugged. “When he’s not traveling. He’s off on a cruise somewhere; he’s been away for months. Brad was the active partner.”
“I take it, then, that Mr. Megara, the traveler, was responsible for the totem pole — or post, in deference to the Professor. Not that it matters.”
A cold little man sauntered up the path toward them, carrying a black bag.
“Here’s Doc Rumsen,” said Isham with a sigh of relief. “Medical Examiner of Nassau County. Hi, Doc, take a look at this!”
“I’m looking,” said Dr. Rumsen in a nasty tone. “What is this — the Chicago stockyards?”
Ellery scrutinized the body. It seemed very stiff. Dr. Rumsen looked up at it professionally, sniffed, and said: “Well, get it down, get it down. Do you expect me to climb the pole and examine it up there?”
Inspector Vaughn motioned to two detectives, and they jumped forward unclasping knives. One of them disappeared in the summerhouse, returning a moment later with a rustic chair. He placed it beside the totem post, climbed to the seat, and raised his knife.
“Want me to cut it, Chief?” he asked before bringing the blade down on the lashings of the right arm. “Maybe you’d rather have the rope in one piece. I think I can untie the knot.”
“You cut it,” said the Inspector sharply. “I want to take a look at that knot. Might be a clue there.”
Others came forward, and the depressing business of taking the body down was accomplished in silence.
“By the way,” remarked Ellery, as they stood about watching the proceedings, “how did the murderer manage to get the body up there, and then lash the wrist to the wings nine feet above ground?”
“The same way the detective’s doing it now,” replied the District Attorney dryly. “We found a blood-stained chair, like the one he’s using, in the summerhouse. Either there were two of ’em, or the fellow who pulled this job was a husky. Must have been quite a job heaving a dead body up to that position, even with a chair.”
“You found the chair where?” asked Ellery thoughtfully. “In the summerhouse?”
“Yes. He must have put it back there after he was through with it. There are plenty of other things in the summerhouse, Mr. Queen, that’ll bear looking into.”
“There’s something else that might interest you,” said Inspector Vaughn, as the body was finally freed from its lashings and deposited on the grass. “This.”
He took a small circular red object from his pocket and handed it to Ellery. It was a red wooden checker.
“Hmm,” said Ellery. “Prosaic enough. Where did you find this, Inspector?”
“In the gravel of the clearing here,” replied Vaughn. “A few feet from the right side of the pole.”
“What makes you think it’s important?” Ellery turned the piece over in his fingers.
Vaughn smiled. This is the way we found it. It hasn’t lain here very long, for one thing, as you can see by its condition. And on that clean gray gravel a red object would stand out like a sore thumb. These grounds are gone over by Fox with a finecomb each day; it’s not likely, then, that it was here in the daytime — Fox says it wasn’t, anyway. I’d say offhand that it has something to do with the events of last night; in the darkness it wouldn’t be seen.”
“Excellent, Inspector!” smiled Ellery. “A man after my own heart.” He returned the checker just as Dr. Rumsen ripped out a string of lurid oaths wholly unprofessional.
“What’s the matter?” asked Isham, hurrying over. “Did you find something?”
“The queerest damn’ thing I ever saw,” snapped the Medical Examiner. “Look at this.”
The corpse of Thomas Brad lay outstretched on the grass a few feet from the totem post like a fallen marble statue. It was so unnaturally rigid that Ellery, out of his own sad but thorough experience, realized that rigor mortis had not yet left the body. As it sprawled there, arms still outflung, it bore except for the paunch and clothes a marked resemblance to the body of Andrew Van as Ellery had seen it in Weirton six months before; and both of them, he reflected without satisfaction, were human figures hacked into the shape of a T... He shook his head and stooped with the others to see what had disturbed Dr. Rumsen so.
The physician had raised the right hand of the dead man; he was pointing to the blue dead palm. In the center, neatly printed as if by a die, there was a circular red stain, its outline only faintly irregular.
“Now what on earth d’ye call that?” grumbled Dr. Rumsen. “It isn’t blood. Looks more like paint, or dye. But I’ll be damned if I can see any reason for it.”
“It seems,” said Ellery slowly, “that your prediction is coming true, Inspector. The checker — the right side of the pole — the right hand of the dead man...”
“By God, yes!” cried Inspector Vaughn. He produced the checker again and placed it on the stain in the dead palm. It fitted, and he rose with a mingled look of triumph and puzzlement. “But what the devil?”
District Attorney Isham shook his head. “I don’t think it’s important. You haven’t seen Brad’s library yet, Vaughn, so you don’t know. But there’s the remains of a checker game there. You’ll find out more about it when we go into the house. Brad for some reason had a checker in his hand at the time he was killed, and the murderer didn’t know it. It fell out of his hand about the time he was being strung up, that’s all.”
“Then the crime was committed in the house?” asked Ellery.
“Oh, no. In the summerhouse here. Plenty of evidence for that. No, I think the explanation of the checker is simplicity itself. It looks like a defective piece, and probably the perspiration and heat of Brad’s hand made the color run.”
They left Dr. Rumsen exploring the inhuman figure on the grass, surrounded by silent officers, and made for the summerhouse. It was only a few steps from the totem post. Ellery looked up and around before stepping through the low entrance.
“No electrical fixtures outside, I see. I wonder—”
“Murderer must have used a flashlight. That is, if this thing really did take place,” said the Inspector, “in the dark, Doc Rumsen will clear that up for us when he tells us how long Brad’s been dead.”
The trooper at the entrance saluted and stood aside. They went in.
It was small and circular, constructed of rough tree boughs and limbs in the artificially rustic manner. It had a peaked thatched roof and half-walls, the upper halves composed of green lattice. Inside were a hewn table and two chairs, one of them smeared with blood.
“Not much doubt of it, I’d say,” said District Attorney Isham with a feeble grunt, pointing to the floor.
In the center of the floor there was a large thick stain, brownish-red in hue.
Professor Yardley for the first time showed nervousness. “Why — that isn’t human blood — that ghastly large mess of it?”
“It certainly is,” replied Vaughn grimly. “And the only thing that will explain why there’s so much of it is that Brad’s head was cut off right on this floor.”