The Dutch Shoe Mystery
- Автор: Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Серия: Ellery Queen #3
- Год: 1931
- Язык: английский
- Год: Frederick A. Stokes
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The Dutch Shoe Mystery». Краткое содержание книги:
Sampson rose and stretched hugely. “A-a-ah!” He yawned, scratched, his fine head. “I’m absolutely stumped, Q.” The Inspector nodded dolefully. “And that crazy old loon simply muddled things worse than ever...” Sampson looked shrewdly at Ellery. “What do you make of it, son?”
“Precious little.” Ellery fished a cigarette from his capacious side-pocket and fingered it tenderly. He looked up. “Oh, I’ve managed to deduce a few things — interesting things at that.” He grinned. “There’s the faintest glimmer of light away down deep in my consciousness, but I’d scarcely call it a complete and satisfactory solution. The clothes, you know...”
“Aside from a few obvious facts...” began the District Attorney.
“Oh, they’re not obvious,” said Ellery gravely. “Those shoes, for example — most illuminating.”
Red-headed Timothy Cronin snorted. “And what do you get out of them? I must be thick. I can’t see a darned thing.”
“Well,” said the District Attorney tentatively, “the person who originally owned them was a good few inches taller than Dr. Janney...”
“Ellery commented on that before you came. And a fat lot of good it does us,” said the Inspector dryly. “We’ll send out a general alarm for the theft of the clothing, but I can tell you right now it will be like looking for the needle in the haystack... Attend to that, will you, Thomas?” He turned to the giant. “And start with this Hospital; we might get a break right here.”
Velie discussed details with Johnson and Flint, and they departed. “Not much there,” boomed the sergeant “But if there is a trail, the boys will get it.”
Ellery was smoking, inhaling deeply. “That woman...” he murmured. “The religious mania is significant. Something has unbalanced her. A very real hatred existed between her and the dead woman. Motive? Cause?” He shrugged. “She’s most fascinating. And if her blessed Jehovah is with us, we’ll cry ‘Selah!’ at the proper time, no doubt.”
“This man Janney,” began Sampson, stroking his jaw, “darned if we haven’t enough, Q., to—”
Whatever the District Attorney meant to say was lost in the hubbub of Harper’s return to the Anteroom. He kicked the corridor door open and made a triumphant entrance, bearing a huge paper bag in his arms.
“The white-haired boy returns with FOOD!” he shouted. “Dig in, fellers. You too, Velie — you old Colossus. Doubt if we’ve enough to fill your craw... Here’s coffee, and sweet ham, and pickles and cream cheese and Christ knows what else...”
They munched sandwiches and sipped coffee in silence. Harper eyed them keenly and said nothing further. It was only when the elevator-door reopened and Dr. Prouty, looking gloomy, emerged that they again began to talk.
“Well, Doc?” Sampson paused in the act of biting into a ham sandwich.
“Strangled, all right.” Prouty dropped his bag and unceremoniously helped himself from the stack of sandwiches on the wheel-table. His teeth clicked fiercely on the bread and he sighed. “Hell,” he mumbled, between mouthfuls, “that was an easy kill. One twist of the wire and the poor old lady was through. Snuffed out like a candle... This Janney guy. Quite a surgeon.” He peered at the Inspector shrewdly. “Too bad he didn’t get the chance to operate. Bad rupture of the gall bladder. Diabetic, too, I gathered... No; the original verdict was quite correct. Autopsy’s almost unnecessary. Hypo marks all over her arm. Stringy muscles. Must have had quite a job with the intravenous injections this morning...”
He chattered on. The conversation became general. Speculations and conjectures swirled about Ellery Queen as he ate. He tilted his chair against a wall and gazed at the ceiling, his lean jaws masticating powerfully.
The Inspector daintily wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Well,” he grumbled, “there’s darned little left except this man Kneisel. Suppose he’s outside, burning up like the rest of ’em. All right with you, son?”
Ellery waved his hand vaguely. But suddenly his eyes narrowed and his chair-legs banged on the floor. “There’s an idea,” he said. Then he chuckled. “Stupid of me to overlook that!” His auditors looked blankly at each other. Ellery got to his feet excitedly. “Now that you mention it, let’s have a look-see at our friend the Austrian scientist. You know, this mysterious Paracelsus of ours may prove interesting... Always charmed by alchemists, anyway. And there’s a faint voice — the voice of one crying in the wilderness...” he smiled “—to quote the triply blessed authority of Luke, John and patriarchal Isaiah...”
He ran to the Amphitheater door.
“Kneisel! Is Dr. Kneisel in here?” he cried.
Chapter Twelve
Experimentation
Dr. Prouty brushed a few vagrant crumbs from his lap, rose, inserted his forefinger into the ample orifice of his mouth, probed delicately for a remnant of his sandwich, discovered it, spat it forth in triumph, and finally picked up his black bag.
“Be goin’,” he announced. “G’bye.” He tramped through the corridor door, whistling tunelessly as he searched his pocket for a cigar.
Unsmiling, Ellery Queen stepped back into the Anteroom to allow Moritz Kneisel to enter from the Amphitheater.
In Inspector Queen’s instantly formed although unspoken judgment, Moritz Kneisel joined that classification of human subjects to which the old man referred simply as “a card.” Individually, the characteristics of the scientist were not startling; it was only when they were viewed as links in a single personality that they gave that impression of grotesquerie. That he was small, that he was swarthy and dark and Central European-looking, that he wore a frayed and tatterdemalion little black beard, that his eyes were as deep and soft as a woman’s — these things were common enough. Yet, by some alchemy of nature, they blended to make Moritz Kneisel quite the most unusual character the Queens had yet encountered in their investigation of Abigail Doorn’s murder.
His fingers were bleached, brown-spotted, blotched with chemical stains and burns. The tip of his left index-finger was crushed-looking and raw. His professional gown appeared as if it had withstood a chemical deluge; it was literally covered with ragged color-splotches which in many spots had eaten away the linen. Even the cuffs of his white duck trousers and the tips of his canvas shoes were splattered.
Ellery, regarding him out of half-closed eyes, meaningly put the door to and pointed to a chair.
“Sit down, Dr. Kneisel.”
The scientist obeyed in complete silence. He radiated an aura of self-absorption that was disconcerting. He did not meet the impersonal stares of Inspector Queen, the District Attorney, Cronin, Velie; and it was remarkable that they understood at once the cause of his aloofness. He was not afraid, or wary, or evasive; he was simply deaf and blind to his surroundings.
He sat in a world of his own, a queer little figure out of a pseudo-scientific tale of lofty adventure among the stars.
Ellery took his stand solidly before Kneisel, boring him through and through with his eyes. After a strained interval the scientist seemed to sense the force of Ellery’s scrutiny; his eyes lifted and cleared.
“I am so sorry,” he said in a clipped, precise English that carried in its accents the merest suggestion of an alien tongue. “You want to question me, of course. I have just heard outside that Mrs. Doorn has been strangled.”