The Dutch Shoe Mystery

The Police Commissioner, who had been hastily informed of the new development, was following closely in an official automobile. He was biting his fingernails in desperation — fuming with rage and worry...

The rushing cavalcade ground to a stop with a squeal of brakes. The cars disgorged their impatient occupants, who ran up the stone steps to the front entrance of the Hospital. The Commissioner panted to the Inspector: “As much as your job and mine are worth, Queen, if this thing isn’t settled. Now. To-day. God... what a mess!”

A policeman opened the big door.

If the Hospital had been upset after the murder of Abigail Doorn it was now, after the murder of Dr. Janney, completely disrupted. All professional activity seemed to have come to a standstill. No white-garbed nurse, no doctor was in evidence. Even Isaac Cobb, the doorman, was missing from his post. But plainclothesmen and bluecoats overran the corridors; the floor in the vicinity of the entrance especially was alive with them.

The elevator-door gaped wide; it was unattended. The Waiting Room was shut tight. The office-doors were also closed; behind them, segregated by the police, was the numbed office force.

And a buzzing sound of detectives surrounded the dosed door upon which was lettered: DR. FRANCIS JANNEY.

The throng melted away as the Inspector, the Police Commissioner, Sergeant Velie and Sampson strode through. The Inspector entered the dead man’s quiet office. Swanson followed with lagging steps, his face pale and working. Velie shut the door softly behind him.

In the bare expanse of that room there was only one object for which their eyes instantly sought And there it was — the figure of Dr. Janney sprawled in the careless attitude of death over his littered desk... The surgeon had been seated in his swivel-chair when death overtook him; now the upper part of his body lay loosely on the desk-top, grey head resting on a crooked left arm, right arm stretched on the glass, a pen still clutched between the fingers.

Seated on plain varnished chairs at the left side of the office were Ellery, Pete Harper, Dr. Minchen and James Paradise, the Hospital superintendent. Of the four, only Ellery and Harper faced the dead man; Minchen and Paradise both were half-turned toward the door, and both were visibly trembling.

Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner, was standing near the desk. His black bag lay closed on the floor; he was putting on his overcoat and whistling a cheerless tune.

No one uttered a word of greeting or comment. It was as if, to a man, they found nothing adequate verbally to express their astonishment, their surprise, their horror in the face of this unexpected, inexplicable catastrophe. Swanson leaned weakly against the door; after one quick fascinated look in the direction of the carved cold figure in the corner he kept his head sedulously averted. The Inspector, the Commissioner and Sampson stood shoulder to shoulder and stared about the death-room.

It was square. There was one door, by which they had entered; there was one window. The door led from the South Corridor and was obliquely across from the main entrance. The window, at the rear left of the room, was wide, overlooking a long open-air inner court. To the left of the door stood a small stenographer’s desk, with a typewriter upon it. On the left wall were the four chairs on which Ellery and his companions sat. The dead man’s big desk was at the right-hand farther corner, set at an angle and facing outward to the front left corner. Except for the swivel-chair in which Janney’s body rested there was nothing behind the desk. The right-hand wall served as a background for one large leather chair and a heavily filled bookcase.

And except for four steel-engraved portraits of bewhiskered surgeons on the walls and an imitation-marble linoleum on the floor, the room held nothing else...

“Well, Doc, what’s the verdict?” demanded the Commissioner harshly.

Dr. Prouty fumbled with a dead cigar. “It’s the same story, Commissioner. Murder by strangulation!”

Ellery bent over, resting his elbow on his knee and grasping his jaw with searching fingers. His eyes were abstracted, almost pained.