The French Powder Mystery

37

Make Ready!

They came in one by one — furtive, curious, impassive, bored, reluctant, openly nervous. Quietly they came in, conscious of the tight police cordon, of a quivering strain in the atmosphere, of shrewd eyes that noted and calculated their least movement — conscious most of all of grim overhanging disaster, to whom and with what dire effects they did not know and could only guess.

It was nine thirty of the fateful Thursday morning. The door through which they shuffled in silence was the door marked PRIVATE: CYRUS FRENCH... They passed inside through the bare lofty anteroom, into the heavy quiet of the library, sat down in incredible camp-chairs set up martially facing the dormer-windows.

They crowded the room. In the front row sat old Cyrus French himself, a white and trembling figure. His fingers were desperately entwined in the fingers of Marion French by his side. Westley Weaver, harried face gaunted by sleeplessness, occupied the seat next to Marion’s. To French’s left was Dr. Stuart, the old man’s physician, watching his patient with a professional pantherishness. By Stuart’s side sat John Gray, dapper and birdlike, occasionally leaning over the doctor’s bulky abdomen to talk into the sick man’s ear.

In the row behind were Hortense Underhill, the housekeeper, and Doris Keaton, the maid. Both sat rigidly, whispering to each other out of the corners of their mouths, peering about with frightened eyes.

In serried ranks... Wheezing Marchbanks; the portly Zorn fingering his watch-chain; a befurred and aromatic Mrs. Zorn dispensing smiles to the grave Frenchman, Paul Lavery, who stroked his short beard; Trask, a flower in his lapel, but utterly pale, with enormous leaden rings under his eyes; the antique-dealer Vincent Carmody, a saturnine figure, uncompromising, somber, even in his chair towering above the heads of the company; mild-mannered Arnold MacKenzie, the general manager of the store; Diana Johnson, the model who had discovered Mrs. French’s dead body; the four watchmen — O’Flaherty, Bloom, Ralska, Powers...

There was little conversation. Each time the anteroom door opened people twisted about in their seats, craned, jerked their eyes back to the window again with guilty side-glances toward each other.

The conference-table had been pushed against the wall. In a row of chairs before the table sat Sergeant Thomas Velie and William Crouther, chief of the store’s detective force, talking in undertones; scowling Salvatore Fiorelli, of the Narcotic Squad, bright black eyes snapping at some inexpressible thought, his scar pulsing slowly beneath the swarthy skin; “Jimmy,” the little bald-headed operative of the Headquarters fingerprint department. At the anteroom door stood Patrolman Bush, relegated to the important post of guardian of the door. A cloud of detectives, among them Inspector Queen’s favorite operatives — Hagstrom, Flint, Ritter, Johnson, and Piggott — massed along the wall directly opposite the conference-table. At each corner of the room stood a silent officer in blue, cap in hand.

Neither Inspector Queen nor Ellery Queen had yet put in his appearance. People whispered this information to each other. They looked sidelong at the anteroom door, against which Bush’s broad back was set.

Gradually, tangibly, another silence came over the scene. Whispers trembled, wavered, ceased. Glances became more furtive, chair-twistings more frequent. Cyrus French coughed violently; he doubled up in agony. Dr. Stuart’s eyes flickered with a vague anxiety. Weaver bent far to the side when the old man’s paroxysm had passed; Marion looked startled; soon their heads were close together, touching...