man in evening clothes who wore
There was nothing about Kirk to suggest the young millionaire man-about-town, owner of The Mandarin Press, socially one of New York’s most desirable young bachelors. He was dressed in a dowdy tweed suit; his topcoat was unpressed; there was an ink-smudge on one of his thin nostrils; his shoulders drooped; and his hat was a shapeless felt crushed into one of his topcoat pockets. He looked harassed as no young millionaire is popularly supposed to look, and he was smoking a pipe which made Mrs. Shane sniff with disdain.
“Evening, Mrs. Shane. Come along, Queen. Lucky I bumped into you downstairs. Mind if I step into my office for a moment? Be with you in a jiffy.”
“Not at all,” drawled Mr. Ellery Queen. “I’m just a cog in the machine. Yours to command. What’s it all about, anyway, Kirk, old fellow?”
But Kirk was dashing into the office. Ellery sauntered after and leaned against the jamb.
Osborne’s frown changed magically to a smile. “Mr. Kirkl Thank heaven you’ve come back. I’m almost crazy. It’s been the busiest afternoon?”
“Detained, Ozzie.” Kirk dashed to his desk, shuffled through a heap of opened letters. “Anything important? Oh, excuse me. Queen, meet Jimmy Osborne, my right hand. Mr. Ellery Queen, Ozzie.”
“How do you do, Mr. Queen . . . . Well, I don’t know, Mr. Kirk. Only a few minutes ago Miss Llewes stopped in?”
“Irene?” The papers slipped from Kirk’s fingers. “And what did
Osborne shrugged. “She didn’t say. Nothing special. Then Miss Temple was in, too.”
“Oh, she was?”
“Yes. She just said she’d like to talk to you before dinner.”
Kirk frowned. “All right, Ozzie. Anything else? Be with you in a second, Queen.”
“Take your time.”
Osborne scratched his sandy head. “Oh, yes! Mr. Macgowan was in about twenty minutes or so ago.”
“Glenn?” Kirk seemed genuinely surprised. “You mean he dropped in early for dinner, I suppose.”
“No, sir. He said he wanted to see you about something urgent. In fact, he left a note for you with me.” Osborne dug the envelope out of his pocket.
“ ‘Scuse me, Queen. I can’t imagine?” Kirk tore open the envelope and pulled the paper out. He unfolded it quickly and devoured the message with his eyes. And as he read the most extraordinary expression came over his face. It disappeared as swiftly as it had come. He frowned and crushed the paper into a ball, stuffing it into his lefthand jacket pocket.
“Anything wrong, Kirk?” drawled Ellery.
“Eh? Oh, no, no. Just something?” He did not finish. “All right, Ozzie. Close up shop and go home.”
“Yes, sir. I almost forgot. Mr. Berne telephoned a few minutes ago and said he’d be a little late. Detained, he said.”
“Late for his own party,” said Kirk with a wry grin. “That’s Felix all over. All right, Ozzie. Come along, Queen. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
They were in the corridor when they were stopped by an exclamation from Osborne. Kirk poked his head back. “What’s the matter, for goodness’ sake?”
Osborne looked embarrassed. “I’m frightfully sorry. Just slipped my mind. There’s a man been waiting in the anteroom there for the Lord knows how long, Mr. Kirk. Came about an hour ago, in fact. He wouldn’t tell me who he was or what he wanted, so I stuck him in there to wait.”
“Who is he?” asked Kirk impatiently. Ellery strolled back into the room with his friend.
Osborne threw up his hands. “Don’t know. Never saw him before. He’s certainly never been in this office on business. Tight as they make them. Very confidential matter, he said.”
“What’s his name? Damn it all, I can’t stop to chin now. Who is he?”
“He didn’t say.”
Kirk gnawed his sunburned upper lip for a moment. Then he sighed. “Well, I’ll get rid of him in a moment. Sorry, Queen, old man. Why don’t you go into the apartment??”
Ellery grinned. “No hurry. Besides, I’m hopelessly shy. I’ll wait.”
“There’s always somebody wanting to see me,” grumbled Kirk, going to the office-door which led to the anteroom, in the wide crack at the bottom of which a line of light was visible. “If it isn’t about books, it’s about stamps, and if it isn’t about stamps, it’s about gems . . . . What’s this, Ozzie? Door locked?” He looked around impatiently; the door did not budge.
“Locked?” said Osborne blankly. “That can’t be, Mr. Kirk.”
“Well, it is. The fool, whoever he is, must have bolted it from the other side.”
Osborne hurried forward and tried the door. “That’s funny,” he muttered. “You know yourself, Mr. Kirk, I never keep that door bolted. Why, there isn’t even a key to it. Just the bolt on the anteroom side . . . . Why in the world should he have bolted it, I wonder?”
“Anything valuable in there, Kirk?” drawled Ellery, coming forward.
Kirk started. “Valuable? You think?”
“It sounds remarkably like a case of common burglary.”
“Burglary!” cried Osborne. “But there’s nothing in there that’s valu?”
“Let’s have a peep.” Ellery flung his topcoat, hat, and stick on a nearby chair and knelt before the door on a paper-thin Indian mat. He closed one eye and peered through the unobstructed keyhole. Then he rose, very quickly. “Is this the only door into that room?”
“No, sir. There’s another from the other corridor, the one around the corner opposite Mr. Kirk’s suite. Is there anything wrong?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Ellery with a frown. “Certainly there’s something deucedly odd . . . . Come along, Kirk. This will bear investigation.”
The three men hastened out of the office, to the astonishment of Mrs. Shane, and darted down the corridor. They turned the corner and ran to the left, stopping at the first door across the hall from the Kirk suite, the door Miss Diversey had used more than an hour earlier.
Ellery grasped the knob and turned. It moved, and he pushed; the door was unlocked. It swung inward slowly.
* * *
Ellery stood still, impaled by shock. Over his shoulder the faces of Donald Kirk and James Osborne worked spasmodically.
Then Kirk said in a flat shrinking voice: “Good God, Queen.”
The room looked as if some giant hand had plucked it bodily from the building, shaken it like a dice-cup, and flung it back. At first glance it seemed in a state of utter confusion. All the furniture had been moved. There was something wrong with the pictures on the wall. The rug looked odd. The chairs, the table, everything . . . .
The goggling human eye could not encompass more than a certain degree of destruction in one transfixed glimpse. There was primarily an impression of ruthless havoc, of furious dismantlement. But the impression was ephemeral; it could not withstand the single dreadful reality.
Their eyes were dragged to something lying across the room on the floor before the bolted door leading to the office.
It was the stiff body of the stout middle-aged man, his bald skull no longer pink but white spattered with carmine, streaks of caked jelly radiating from a blackish depression at the top. He was lying face down, his short fat arms crumpled under him. Two unbelievable iron things, like horns, stuck out from under his coat at the back of his neck.
Chapter 3. THE TOPSY-TURVY MURDER
“Dead?” whispered Kirk.
Ellery stirred. “Well, what do
