The French Powder Mystery
- Автор: Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Серия: Ellery Queen #2
- Год: 1930
- Язык: английский
- Год: Frederick A. Stokes
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The French Powder Mystery». Краткое содержание книги:
“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.
The Second Episode
“As for the word CLUE, we are indebted for its genesis to mythology... Clue has descended etymologically from CLEW (in common with many other words of similar endings; i.e., TREW, BLEW, etc.)... being a literal Old English translation of the Greek word for thread, directly traceable to the legend of Theseus and Ariadne and the ball of cord she gave him with which to grope his way out of the Labyrinth after killing the Minotaur... A clue in the detectival sense may be of an intangible as well as a tangible nature; it may be a state of mind as well as a state of fact; or it may derive from the absence of a relevant object as well as from the presence of an irrelevant one... But always, whatever its nature, a clue is the thread which guides the crime investigator through the labyrinth of nonessential data into the light of complete comprehension...”
— From WILLIAM O. GREEN’S Introduction to ARS CRIMINALIS by John Strang
13
At the Apartment: The Bedroom
Ellery and Westley Weaver picked their way unnoticed through the throngs on the main floor. At the rear of the store, Weaver indicated around the bend of the wall a small grilled door. A policeman stood guard with his back to the ironwork.
“That’s the private elevator, Ellery.”
Ellery exhibited a special police pass signed in Inspector Queen’s punctilious hand. The policeman touched his cap and opened the grilled door.
Ellery noted the staircase door around the corner, then entered the elevator. He closed the door carefully, touched the button marked 6, and the elevator began to ascend. They stood in silence, Weaver’s lip creased under his teeth.
The elevator was finished in bronze and ebony, with an inlaid composition-rubber floor. It was spotlessly clean. On the further wall was a low divan-like seat covered with black velvet. Ellery adjusted his pince-nez and looked about him with interest. He bent over to examine more closely the velvet seat, craned his neck at a suspicious darkening in an angle of the wall.
“Might have known Velie would overlook nothing,” he thought.
The elevator clicked to a stop. The door opened automatically and they stepped out into a wide, deserted corridor. At one end of the corridor was a high window. Almost directly opposite the elevator exit was an unpaneled door of heavy mahogany. A neat small tablet, with the words:
was affixed to this door.
COPY
To: Mr. French
Mr. Gray
Mr. Marchbanks
Mr. Trask
Mr. Zorn
Mr. Weaver
Monday, May 23, 19—
A special meeting of the Board of Directors is hereby called for the morning of Tuesday, May the twenty-fourth, at eleven o’clock, in the Conference Room. Do not fail to attend. Details of the Whitney-French negotiations will be discussed. It is hoped that a final decision may he reached officially at that time, your presence is imperative.
Mr. Weaver is to meet Mr. French in the Conference Room at nine a.m. promptly to prepare the notes for final directorial discussion.
(Signed) Cyrus French,
(Per) Westley Weaver, Sec’y.
A detective in plain clothes indolently leaned against the frame. He seemed to recognize Ellery at once, for he greeted him and stepped aside.
“Going in, Mr. Queen?” he asked.
“Righto!” said Ellery, cheerfully. “Be a good man and stick it outside here while we’re sniffing around the apartment. If you see any one — with authority — coming, rap on the door. If it’s just anybody, shoo ’im away. Understand?”
The detective nodded.
Ellery turned to Weaver. “Let’s have your key, Wes,” he said in a natural tone. Without a word Weaver handed him the key-case which Inspector Queen had examined in the window not long before.
Ellery selected the gold-disked key and inserted it in the keyhole. He turned and the tumbler slipped back noiselessly. He pushed open the bulky door.
He seemed surprised at its rigid weight, for he stepped back, taking his hand from the door, and it immediately swung shut. He tried the knob. The door was again locked.
“Stupid of me,” he muttered, as he again unlocked the door with the key. He waved Weaver inside the apartment before him, and then allowed the door to swing shut once more.
“Special spring lock,” commented Weaver. “Why are you surprised, Ellery? It’s to insure absolute privacy. The Old Man’s rather a bug on that.”
“The door can’t be opened from the outside without a key, then?” asked Ellery. “There’s no way of fixing the bolt so that the door is temporarily unlocked?”
“The door is always as stubborn as that,” said Weaver, with a fleeting grin. “Although I can’t see what difference it makes.”
“Perhaps all the difference in the universe,” said Ellery, knitting his brows. Then he shrugged his shoulders and looked about him.
They stood in a small, almost bare anteroom with a cunningly converted skylight roof... A Persian rug on the floor, a long leather-upholstered bench flanked with standing ashtrays against the wall opposite the door... To the left was a single chair and a little magazine rack. And that was all.
The fourth wall was cut through for another door, smaller and not so formidable-looking.
“Not especially prepossessing,” remarked Ellery. “Is this the usual taste of our multimillionaires?”
Weaver seemed to have recovered something of his natural buoyancy, now that he and Ellery were alone. “Don’t misjudge the Old Man,” he said hastily. “He’s really a regular old duck, and knows a plain room from a fancy one. But he keeps this anteroom for the purpose of herding together the people who come to see him on business of the Anti-Vice League. This is a sort of waiting-room. Although, to tell the truth, it hasn’t been used much. You know, French has an enormous suite of offices further uptown for Anti-Vice League affairs; most of that business is transacted there. I suppose, though, he couldn’t resist the thought of entertaining some of his cronies here when he had the place designed.”