The Chinese Orange Mystery

Berne drawled: “Tell him, cara mia. He looks bad, but he’s harmless.”

“I?am,” said the woman with difficulty, “Lucrezia Rizzo.” She spoke with a strong Italian accent.

“Where d’ye come from?”

“Italia. My home?it is?in Firenze.”

“Florence, eh?” murmured Ellery. “For the first time I grasp the essential inspiration behind the vigor of Botticelli’s women. You are very lovely, and you come from a lovely city, ma donna.”

She flashed him a long low look that had nothing in common with the fear that had filled her eyes a moment before. But she said nothing, and continued to cling to Berne’s arm.

“Listen, I’m in a hurry,” barked Inspector Queen. “How long you been in New York, Signora?”

Again she glanced at Beme, and he nodded. “It is?a week or so, I think,” she said, her sibilants soft and warm.

“Why do you ask?” drawled Berne. “Thinking of pulling Signorina Rizzo into the well-known can on a charge of murder, Inspector? And I might also point out that you either leap to conclusions or else possess a shocking ignorance of the simplest Italian. My friend Lucrezia is unmarried.”

“Married or not,” snarled the Inspector, “I want to know what she was doing in that bachelor apartment of yours on East Sixty-fourth Street the day of the murder!”

Ellery started slightly, but Berne did not. The publisher showed his teeth in the same fixed drunken smile. “Ah, our metropolitan police now flourish the banner of moral purity! What d’ye think she was doing? You must have a good notion or you wouldn’t be asking . . . . Always incomprehensible to me, this stupid habit of asking questions you know the answers to. You didn’t think I’d deny it, did you?”

The Inspector’s bird-like face was growing redder with every passing instant. He glared at Berne and said: “I’m mighty interested in your movements that day, Berne, and don’t think you’ll pull the wool over my eyes with that gab of yours. I know that this woman came over on the Mauretania with you, and that you cabbed straight from the boat to your apartment with her. That was before noon that day. How’d you spend the rest of the day before you turned up at the Kirk layout upstairs?”

Berne continued to smile. There was a glassy calm in his inflamed eyes that fascinated Ellery. “Oh, you don’t know, do you, Inspector?”

“Why, you?”

“Because obviously, if you did know,” murmured Berne, “you wouldn’t have put the question that way. Amusing, very amusing. Eh, card? The naughty policeman who protects our wives and homes and civic honor doesn’t know, and, simple soul that he is, apparently doesn’t even suspect. Oh, perhaps I’m being faintly astigmatic; he does suspect, let us say, but he hasn’t been able to find out definitely.” The woman was staring up at him with bewildered, adoring eyes. It was evident that the rapid interchange of English had taxed her simple knowledge of the language. “And, putting his faith in the comfortable labyrinth of our Anglo-Saxon laws, he realizes that without evidence he is like a child without its mother, or,” Berne drawled, “a lovely piece of feminine Italian flesh without a chaperon. Eh, Inspector?”

A deadly quiet settled over the room with the extinction of Berne’s last word. Ellery, glancing at his father, felt uncomfortably aware of the possibilities. The old gentleman’s face had turned to marble, and there was a pinched look about his little nostrils that made his face seem even smaller and harder than it was. There was danger, too, from the direction of Sergeant Velie; his huge shoulders were hunched pugilistically and he was glaring at the publisher with a candid menace that startled Ellery.

Then the moment passed, and the Inspector said in almost a matter-of-fact voice: “Then your story is that you spent the whole day in your apartment with this woman?”

Berne, coolly indifferent to the threatening atmosphere, shrugged. “Where did you think a man would spend the day with this enchanting morsel to keep him company?”

“I’m asking you,” said the Inspector quietly.

“Well, then, the answer is sweetly in the affirmative.” Berne smiled the old ghastly smile and said: “The inquisition is over, Inspector? I may go with lovely Lucrezia to bear me company? La politesse calls. Mustn’t keep our hostess waiting, you know.”

“Go on,” said the Inspector. “Beat it. Beat it before I choke the ugly smile off your face with my own hands.”

“

“Bravo,” drawled Berne. “Come, my dear; it seems that we’re no longer wanted.” And he drew the bewildered woman closer to him and swung her gently about and steered her toward the door.

“But, Felicio,” she murmured, “what?is?”

“Don’t Italianate me, my dear,” said Berne. “Felix to you.” And then they were gone.

None of the three men said anything for some time. The Inspector remained where he was, staring expressionlessly at the door. Sergeant Velie was drawing deep breaths, as if he had been laboring under tremendous strain.

Then Ellery said gently: “Oh, come, dad. Don’t let that drunken boor get the best of you. He does raise the hackles, I confess. I’ve felt, myself, a prickling at the nape of my neck that’s as old as man’s enemies . . . Get that look off your face, dad, please.”

“He’s the first man,” said the Inspector deliberately, “in twenty years who has made me feel like committing murder. The other one was the bird who raped his own daughter; and at least he was crazy.”

Sergeant Velie said something venomous to himself in a soft mutter.

Ellery shook his father’s arm. “Now, now! I want you to do something for me, dad.”

Inspector Queen turned to him with a sigh. “Well, what is it now?”

“Can you hale that Sewell woman downtown late tonight on some pretext or other? And get her maid out of the way?”

“Hmm. What for?” said the Inspector with a sudden interest.

“I have,” murmured Ellery, sucking thoughtfully on a cigaret, “an idea based on that phantom glimmer I mentioned a few moments ago.”

Chapter 13. BOUDOIR SCENE

Mr. Ellery Queen, not having been reared in that dark quarter of the cosmopolis which breeds those whimsical Raffles who steal in and out of people’s homes and manage still to preserve a certain savoir-faire, peered nervously up and down the corridor of the Chancellor’s twenty-first floor. The coast being clear, his shoulders quivered once or twice beneath his bundling topcoat and he slipped a skeleton key into the keyhole of the Llewes front door. The bolt turned over with a sharp squeak and he pushed the door open.

The reception-foyer was inky black. He stood very still and listened with an intentness that made his ears ache. But the suite was quite silent.

He cursed himself for a cowardly fool and advanced boldly into the darkness toward the spot on the wall where memory told him the electric switch lay. Fumbling, he found it and pressed. The foyer sprang into being. A quick glance through the sitting-room to the door of the living-room for orientation, and he switched off the light and made for the far door. He tripped over a hassock and swore again as he flailed wildly to keep his balance. But at last he reached his goal and opened the door and stole into the living-room.

By the vague flickering light of a hotel electric sign across the canyon of the street he made out the door to the bedroom and went toward it.

The door stood ajar. He poked his head through, held his breath, heard nothing, and slipped into the room shutting the door behind him.

“Not so bad after all,” he said to himself, grinning in the darkness. “Maybe I’ve neglected a natural talent for house-breaking. Now where the deuce is that switch?”

He groped around in the jumpy quarter-light, straining his eyes. “Ah, there you are,” he grunted aloud, and extended his hand to the wall.

And his hand froze in midair. An instantaneous prickle climbed up his spine. A hundred thoughts raced