Chinese Orange Mystery (28 page)

Some one gasped. But when Ellery searched their faces he met only stubbornly furtive stares.

He smiled and took from his pocket a long manila envelope. From this envelope he took another, smaller envelope of queer foreign appearance, with an address (presumably) in Chinese and a cancelled stamp in one corner. “Messrs. Kirk and Macgowan.” The two men rose uncertainly. “We may as well call upon our two philatelists. What do you make of this?”

They came forward, reluctant but curious. Kirk took the envelope slowly, Macgowan peering over his shoulder. And then, simultaneously, they cried out and began to talk to each other excitedly in undertones.

“Well, gentlemen?” murmured Ellery. “We’re panting for enlightenment. What is it?”

The stamp on the envelope was a small rectangle of thin tough paper printed in a single color, bright orange. Within its rectangular border there was a conventionalized coiled dragon. Its denomination was five
candarins
. The printing of the stamp was crude, and the envelope itself was ragged and yellow with age. A message in Chinese—the letter—had been written on the inside of the envelope, which was of the old-fashioned type still used in Europe and elsewhere for both address and message, folding up neatly for postage.

“This,” muttered Donald, “is the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen. To a China specialist it’s a find of monumental proportions. It’s the earliest official postage stamp of China, antedating by many years the accepted first-issue design which is in the standard catalogue. It was an experimental issue of extremely small quantity and was used postally only for a few days. No copy on cover, as we call it, which is to say on the envelope—or off, for that matter—has ever been found. God, what a beauty!”

“It’s not even listed in specialized Chinese catalogues,” said Macgowan hoarsely, eying the envelope with rapacity. “It’s barely mentioned in one old stamp treatise, rather affectionately referred to by color, just as philatelists refer to the first national authorized issue of Great Britain as the One-Penny Black. Lord, it’s beautiful.”

“Would you say,” drawled Ellery, “that this is a valuable piece of property?”

“Valuable!” cried Donald. “Why, man, this should be even more valuable philatelically than the British Guiana! That is, if it’s authentic. It would have to be expertized.”

“It looks genuine,” frowned Macgowan. “The fact that it’s on cover, and the cancellation is clear, and the message is written inside …”

“How valuable would you say?”

“Oh, anything. Anything at all. These things are worth what a collector will pay at top. The Guiana’s listed at fifty thousand.” Donald’s face darkened. “If I were stable financially, I’d probably pay as much as that for it myself. It would make top price for any stamp; but, Lord, there’s nothing like this in the world!”

“Ah. Thank you, gentlemen.” Ellery returned the envelope to its manila container and tucked it into his pocket. Kirk and Macgowan slowly went back to their seats. No one said anything for a long time. “This Chinese stamp, then,” resumed Ellery at last, “may be characterized as
deus ex machina
. It brought our friend the missionary all the way from China; I daresay he had made the find in some obscure place, visualized suddenly a wealth which would keep him in luxurious comfort for the rest of his days, lost his grip on the spiritual consolations of his profession, and resigned from the mission. Inquiry in Shanghai would have informed him of the great collectors of Chinese stamps who might be in the market for such a rarity; I suppose it was there, or perhaps in Peiping—more probably Shanghai—that he learned of Mr. Donald Kirk. … And it killed the priest, too, for the murder was committed in its name.”

Ellery stopped to look thoughtfully down at the coffin-like crate at his feet. “Having identified the victim, then—except for name, which was unimportant—and come to a satisfactory conclusion about the motive (although this was also unimportant from the logical standpoint), I proceeded to consideration—the supreme consideration—of the murderer’s identity.

“For some time, comparatively speaking, this most essential point escaped me. I knew the answer was there, if only I could spot it. Then I remembered one or two apparently inexplicable phenomena of the crime which no one, including myself, had been able to interpret. An impetus was provided by a chance question of the Inspector’s. And an experiment revealed the whole thing.”

Without warning he stooped and removed the lid of the crate. Sergeant Velie silently stepped forward; and between them they raised the dummy to a sitting position in the crate.

Marcella Kirk uttered a faint shriek and shrank against Macgowan beside her. Miss Diversey gulped noisily. Miss Temple lowered her eyes. Mrs. Shane breathed a prayer and Miss Llewes looked sickish. Even the men had turned pale.

“Don’t be alarmed,” murmured Ellery, rising. “Just a pleasant fancy of mine, and a rather interesting sample of the dummy-maker’s art. Please pay the very closest attention.”

He went to the door leading to the adjoining office, opened it, vanished, and an instant later reappeared with the paper-thin Indian mat which had lain in front of the door on the office side. This he deposited carefully over the threshold, one-third in the anteroom and the other two-thirds in the office. Then he got to his feet, took from his right pocket a coil of thin tough-looking cord, and held it up for their inspection. He nodded, smiled at them, and proceeded to measure off one-third the length of the cord. He then wound the cord at that point about the protruding metal knob of the bolt on the anteroom side of the door. The cord now dangled from the knob—a short length and a long length, held to the metal protrusion by the single winding. There was no knot of any kind, as he demonstrated in pantomime. Ellery took up the short end and passed it through the crack under the door, over the mat into the office beyond. He closed the door without touching the knob. It was shut but unbolted.

They were watching him like children at a puppet-show, wide-eyed, eager, puzzled. No one spoke, and all that could be heard were the soft sounds of Ellery’s movements and the heavy uneven breathing.

Ellery continued his demonstration in the same pregnant silence. He stepped back and surveyed the two sections of bookcase which flanked the doorway. He studied them for a moment, and then sprang forward and began to tug at the case to his right as he faced the door. He pulled the case back along the right-hand wall about four feet. He returned and began to move the bookcase on the left of the doorway, as they saw it. He tugged and shoved until he had it jutting out into the room—pulled toward the door until its left side at the rear touched the hinges of the door, its right side swung outward into the room a short way, the whole bookcase forming an acute angle with the door. Then he stepped back with a nod of satisfaction.

“You will observe,” he said briskly in the silence, “that both bookcases are now exactly as we found them when the body was discovered.”

As if this were a signal, Sergeant Velie stooped and lifted the dummy out of the crate. Despite its weight he carried it as he might have borne a child. They saw now that the dummy was dressed in the dead man’s garments, and that they were on backwards. Ellery said something to the Sergeant in a low voice and Velie set the body upright on its feet. He balanced it erect, grotesquely, with one huge splayed finger.

“Let go, Sergeant,” drawled Ellery.

They stared. Velie withdrew his finger and the body collapsed, sinking vertically until it lay in a heap on the floor where an instant before it had been standing.

“The muscleless inertia of the very dead,” said Ellery cheerfully. “Good work, Sergeant. We assume that
rigor mortis
has not yet set in. Our demonstration has proved it. Now for the second stage.”

Velie lifted the dummy and Ellery went to the crate and came up with the two
Impi
spears which had been found on the body. These he thrust up the dummy’s trouser-legs and under the coat until they emerged from behind the head, their wicked blades far above the
papier-mâché
skull. Then the Sergeant carried the dummy over and propped it up in the angle made by the door and the left-hand bookcase, facing toward the right. It stood erect very stiffly, the two spearheads jutting like horns from the coat. The feet barely rested on the edge of the Indian mat.

Sergeant Velie stepped back with a hard grin on his lips.

Then Ellery proceeded about a curious business. He took the dangling end of the cord—the long end—and began carefully to wind it about the haft of the spear nearer the door, just below the blade. He wound it about the spear twice. They saw then that there was a slight slack in the length leading from the spear to the bolt of the door—a graceful dip in the suspended cord.

“Observe, please, that there is no knot or noose in the cord about the spear,” said Ellery. Then he stooped and pushed the remaining end now dangling from the spear—pushed it, as he had pushed the short end some time before—through the crack between the mat on the threshold and the bottom of the door until its end vanished into the office.

“Don’t move, any one,” snapped Ellery, rising. “Just keep your eyes on that dummy and the door.”

He reached over, grasped the knob, and gently pulled the door to him. As he pulled, the slack in the cord grew looser. When the door was sufficiently ajar, Ellery very cautiously stooped, wriggled under the cord, and squeezed through the narrow opening, disappearing from view. Then the door softly clicked back—shut but unbolted.

They watched.

For thirty seconds nothing happened.

And then the mat under the door moved. It was being jerked out of the anteroom into the office beyond the door.

It caught them completely off guard. Their mouths opened and remained open. They strained to see what was apparently a miracle. It happened so quickly that it was over almost before they could realize the significance of the process.

For with the jerk of the mat several things occurred simultaneously. The dummy trembled, began to topple, and its stiffly speared body began to slide along the top edge of the jutting bookcase in the direction of and a little outward from the door. But a split-second later something happened to correct the sideward slip. The slack in the cord from the spear to the bolt tightened and pulled the dummy back, halting it. For a moment it swayed, then started to fall rigidly forward on its face parallel with the door. The slack in the cord from the spear to the bolt diminished until the head was about a foot from the floor. At this point the cord became taut and the miracle occurred. With the tightening, the pull of the dummy’s weight exerted as the dummy fell forward
caused the bolt to slide in the same direction, from left to right as they viewed it, into the catch on the jamb!

The door was securely bolted.

And while they gaped, incredulous, they saw something else that was in itself almost as profound a miracle. They saw the short end of the cord begin to move, as if it were being pulled from the other side of the door. There was a moment of resistance at the coil about the bolt-knob, and then the cord broke at the point of resistance. Since there was no knot there, the broken piece—still attached to the spear—fell dangling to the floor between the dummy and the door. The remaining piece, whose end had been jerked, vanished under the door as it was pulled from the other side.

And then they saw the other length—the two-thirds length wound about the spear—tighten about the haft of the spear for a moment and then very smoothly begin to slide around, the dangling end which had just broken off from the knob of the bolt growing shorter and shorter as the same invisible hand pulled the two-thirds length into the office from the other side of the door. And finally the dangling end reached the haft, and glided around, and fell free, and in its turn vanished through the crack under the door. A moment later the mat which had caused the body to fall in the first place also vanished.

And the dummy lay just as the body had lain, and the door was bolted, and nothing remained but the bookcases and the spears and the position of the body to show how it was possible for a door to have been bolted from its other side.

Ellery came running back and dashed into the anteroom from the corridor. They were still glaring at the dummy and the door.

The detectives stood against the wall. The Inspector had his hand near his hip-pocket.

Some one had risen, pale as the sullen morning sky through the window, and was whispering in a cracked voice: “But I—don’t see—how you—could have known.”

“The spears told me,” said Ellery in the stupefied silence. “The spears and the position of the two bookcases flanking the doorway to the office. When I assembled the facts I saw the truth. The missionary was murdered not where we found him but in another part of the room; that was established very early by the traces of blood on the floor. So the question arose: Why had the murderer moved the body to the door? Obviously because he had a use for the body at that point. The next question was: Why had the murderer shoved the right-hand bookcase along the right-hand wall farther away from the door? The answer to that could only be: to make room in front of the right-hand wall near the door. The third question was: Why had the murderer moved the left-hand bookcase up to the hinge-side of the door and pulled the right side out into the room, making an acute angle with the door? And the answer to that puzzled me until I remembered the spears. …

“The spears were stuck through the victim’s clothes from shoes to head. They are solid wood; they made the body almost like an animal’s corpse strung on stout poles.
They stiffened the body
; they produced, in a way, artificial
rigor mortis
. A dead man falling from an upright position would crumple in sections to land in a shapeless heap. This dead man, with the spears to stiffen his limp corpse into one piece, would fall in one piece, rigidly. But the right-hand bookcase had been moved back to leave space on the right of the door. Then the dead man was intended to fall before the door, at least part of him coming to rest in that cleared space. And he was intended to fall
parallel
with the door, otherwise there would have been no necessity for clearing a space to the side of the door. What was the left-hand bookcase moved for? Why that angle, patently deliberately made? I saw then that if the dead man had been set on his feet in that angle he would, if something occurred to move his body, have had to fall roughly toward that cleared space on the other side of the doorway!