Dutch Shoe Mystery (14 page)

The old man scowled loyally. He began to feel the stirrings of a vague but tempestuous anger.

Ellery smiled. “Perfect, Dr. Kneisel. And since you seem to know exactly what I intend to question you about, suppose you answer my next query without my asking it at all!”

Kneisel stroked his frumpy beard speculatively. “Not such a difficult problem, Mr.—Queen, I think? … You would like to know the nature of the research Dr. Janney and I have been conducting. Am I right?”

“You are.”

“The advantages of a scientific mental training are innumerable, you see,” commented Kneisel, good-humoredly. Facing each other and smiling with evident pleasure, the two men seemed like old friends. … “Very well. Dr. Janney and I have for two and a half years—but no; it will be two years and seven months next Friday—been working on the development of a metallic alloy.”

Ellery replied with perfect gravity, “Your intellectual clairvoyance, Doctor, has not been sufficiently
clair
—if I may commit the sin of solecism in a highly modified form. … I want to know much more than that. I want to know what the exact nature of this alloy is. I want to know how much money has been expended in experiment. I want to know something of your background, and something of the circumstances under which you and Dr. Janney formed this heroic scientific coalition. I want to know why Mrs. Doorn decided to discontinue her contributions toward the furtherance of your work. …” He paused, twisted his mouth wryly. “I also want to know who killed Mrs. Doorn, but that, I suppose …”

“Oh, it is not a futile question, sir—not at all,” replied Kneisel with a faint smile. “My scientific training has taught me that all the analyst really requires for the solution of a problem is, first, the painstaking assembly of all the phenomena; second, exhaustive patience; and third, the ability to comprehend the whole problem with a fresh and unbiased imagination. … But that is not answering your questions.

“The exact nature of our alloy? I fear,” he said courteously, “that I must refuse to divulge it. In the first place, knowledge of this phenomena in the array of facts would not help you to a solution of the crime. In the second place, our work is a secret between Dr. Janney and me alone. … I can say this, however: when we have completed our task to our satisfaction, we will have produced an alloy which will wipe steel off the face of the earth!”

In silence the District Attorney and his assistant exchanged glances, then turned back to regard the bearded little scientist with newly appraising eyes.

Ellery chuckled. “I won’t press you,” he said. “If you can replace steel commercially with a cheaper and superior alloy, you and Dr. Janney will become millionaires over night.”

“Exactly. That is the reason for the strongly built laboratory, the reënforced walls, the safe-doors, and all of the rest of our extraordinary precautions against curiosity or theft. I might say,” Kneisel continued with a trace of pride, “that our finished product will be considerably lighter, more tensile, more malleable, more durable and just as strong, besides being appreciably less expensive to manufacture.”

“You haven’t by any chance stumbled on the Philosophers’ Stone, have you?” murmured Ellery, with a perfect gravity.

Kneisel’s veiled gaze sharpened. “Do I look like a charlatan, Mr. Queen?” he asked simply. “Certainly Dr. Janney’s open faith in me and cooperation with me is a guarantee of my scientific integrity.

“I tell you,” and his voice rose slightly, “that we have perfected the building-material of the future! It will revolutionize the science of aeronautics. It will solve one of the big problems confronting the astrophysicists—an incredibly light metal building-material with the strength of steel. Man will bridge space, conquer the solar system. This alloy will be utilized in everything from pins and fountain-pens to super-skyscrapers. … And,” he concluded, “it is almost an accomplished fact.”

There was a little silence. The words themselves seemed, in retrospect, utterly extravagant. And yet something in the sober matter-of-fact air of the little savant made them poignant possibilities.

Ellery seemed less impressed than the others. “I should heartily dislike placing myself in the same category with those myopic scoffers who martyrized Galileo and sneered at Pasteur, but as one analyst to another—I should like to be shown. Or words to that effect … The cost so far, Dr. Kneisel?”

“I do not know exactly, although I believe it is well over eighty thousand dollars. Dr. Janney attends to the finances.”

“Naïve little experiment,” murmured Ellery. “So simple. … Well, sir, chromium, nickel, aluminum, carbon, molybdenum—surely these ores can’t possibly total such a huge sum unless you order the stuff by the carload. No, Doctor, you’ll have to enlighten me further.”

Kneisel permitted himself a discreet smile. “I see you are not unfamiliar with the experimental ores. You might have mentioned molybdenite, wulfenite, scheelite, molybdite and a few others from which the essential molybdenum is extracted. But I shan’t even admit that I am using molybdenum. I have tackled the problem from an entirely unorthodox angle. …

“As to cost, however, you have overlooked some essential items. I refer to the installation of the laboratory, and the purchase of apparatus. Have you any idea of the cost of a special ventilation system, of smelting furnaces, of refining equipment—of turbines, electrolytic apparatus, cathode tubes and the like?”

“My apologies. I’m the veriest layman. Your background, Doctor?”

“Munich in Germany, the Sorbonne in France, M.I.T. in the States. Special laboratory and research work under Jublik of Vienna and the elder Charcot in Paris. Three years at the United States Bureau of Standards in the Department of Metallurgy, after I had obtained my American citizenship. Five years with one of the largest steel-manufacturing companies on the American continent. Interspersed with independent researches during which the idea I am now working on slowly germinated.”

“How did you and Janney meet?”

“We were brought together by a scientific colleague who was slightly in my confidence. I was poor. I required the aid of a man who could secure finances for my experiments as well as assist me in the technical end. And above all a man whom I could trust. … Dr. Janney met all my requirements. He became enthusiastic. The rest you can infer.”

Ellery stirred lightly. “Why did Mrs. Doorn decide to stop financing your project?”

A thin white vertical line appeared between Kneisel’s eyes. “She was tired. Two weeks ago she summoned Dr. Janney and me to her home. The six months’ duration of our experiments, which we had originally promised, had stretched to two and a half years and we were still not finished. She had lost interest, she said. In perfect amiability she informed us of this, and nothing we could say would move her to change her decision.

“We left dispiritedly. There was still some money left. We decided to discontinue only when our money was used up, and until then work as if nothing had happened, without stint. In the meantime Dr. Janney would attempt to raise funds elsewhere.”

District Attorney Sampson cleared his throat with a brisk rasp. “When she told you this, did she also tell you that her lawyer was drawing up a new will?”

“Yes.”

Inspector Queen tapped the scientist’s knee. “To your knowledge,
was
this new will drawn up and signed?”

Kneisel shrugged. “I do not know. I sincerely hope not. It will simplify matters if the first will is still in force.”

Ellery said softly, “And aren’t you curious to know whether the second will was signed?”

“I never allow mundane considerations to interfere with my work.” Kneisel stroked his beard calmly. “I am something of a philosopher as well as a metallurgist. What will be, will be.”

Ellery unslung his length from the chair and got wearily to his feet. “You’re too good to be true, Doctor, really.” He ran his hand through his hair and stared down at Kneisel.

“Thank you, Mr. Queen.”

“And yet I feel that you’re not quite so unemotional as you pretend to be. For example!” Ellery loomed over the little man, resting his hand familiarly on the back of the chair. “I feel sure that, if a cardiometer were to be attached to your scientific carcass at this moment, Doctor, it would register an accelerated pulse-percussion at the following statement: Abigail Doorn was murdered
before
she could sign the second will. …”

“On the contrary, Mr. Queen.” Kneisel’s white teeth glistened in his swarthy face. “I am not at all surprised, since both your method and your motive are so obvious. In fact, I feel morally certain that the innuendo is unworthy of your intellect. … Is that all, sir?”

Ellery straightened suddenly. “No. Are you aware of the fact that Dr. Janney is slated for a personal slice of Mrs. Doorn’s estate?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then you may go.”

Kneisel slipped out of his chair and bowed to Ellery with continental grace. He turned to salute the Inspector, the District Attorney, Cronin and Velie, then imperturbably walked out of the Anteroom.

“And there,” groaned Ellery, sinking into the vacated chair, “but for the grace of God goes Ellery Queen … who, incidentally, confesses to having met his match.”

“Oh, tosh!” The Inspector sneezed on a pinch of snuff and irritably jumped up. “The man’s a human test-tube.”

“He’s a fish,” grunted Sampson.

Harper, the newspaperman, had been huddled in a chair at a far corner of the room, his hat pulled low over his eyes. Not once during the examination of Dr. Kneisel had he uttered a sound or shifted his gaze from the face of the scientist.

Now he rose and sauntered across the room. Ellery looked up and they regarded each other in silence.

“Well, old boy,” said Harper finally, “I think you’ve got a hot tip. You don’t mind my mixing metaphors?” He grinned. “A hot tip on a human iceberg.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, Pete.” Ellery smiled wanly as he stretched his legs. “Evidently you haven’t glossed over the scientific fact that eight-ninths of most icebergs are completely submerged. …”

S
ERGEANT VELIE’S BULKY ARM
rested against the door-jamb as he conversed earnestly with an invisible henchman in the corridor.

Ellery Queen was sitting in a sort of concentrative stupor, communing, from the dark expression on his face, with bitter and unfruitful thoughts.

Huddled together, arms about each other, Inspector Queen, the District Attorney and Timothy Cronin were engaged in a summary discussion of the complex features of the case.

Only Pete Harper, head drooped on his breast, feet entwined about the rungs of his chair, seemed entirely at peace with himself and the world.

This was the vacuous and still-life scene upon which a corps of police photographers and fingerprint experts noisily intruded a few moments later.

The room suddenly filled with officials.

Sampson and Cronin took their overcoats and hats from the chair on which they had been loosely thrown, and stood aside.

The chief photographer muttered some excuse about “another job” and without further conversation the men from headquarters went to work.

They invaded the Amphitheater as well as the Anteroom and Anæsthesia Room; they thronged about the operating-table; two men used the Anteroom lift to descend into the basement for a series of photographs of the dead woman and her wound. Blue-white flashes and muffled explosions punctuated the bedlam all through the main floor of the Hospital. The acrid odor of flashlight powder mingled with the sharp medicinal odor of the halls and rooms in an overpowering stench.

Ellery, chained by his thoughts, Prometheus-like, to the Caucasus of his chair, sat in the vortex of the confusion, barely conscious of sights, sounds and smells. …

The Inspector sent a bluecoat off with a word, and almost immediately the officer returned with a youngish, sandy-haired man of serious mien.

“Here he is, Chief.”

“You’re James Paradise, Superintendent of the Hospital?” demanded the Inspector.

The white-garbed man nodded, gulping. His eyes were liquid, giving him a dreamy, tearful look. The tip of his nose was unnaturally bulbous, the nostrils angular and almost without normal convolutions. He had huge red ears.

The elfin face was not unprepossessing. The man seemed too simple to be insincere, too frightened to be untruthful.

“M-m-my wife …” he began to stutter. He was deathly pale, except for the flaming shells of his ears.

“Hey? What’s that?” growled the Inspector.

The Superintendent managed a sickly grin. “My wife Charlotte,” he whispered. “She’s always having visions. She
told
me this morning that she’d had a warning during the night—an inner voice—that said, plain as fate, ‘There’s going to be trouble to-day!’ Isn’t that funny? We—”

“Very funny, certainly.” The Inspector looked annoyed. “See here, Paradise, you helped us a lot this morning and you don’t seem as dumb as you look. We’re busy and I want quick answers to quick questions.

“Your private office is directly opposite the East Corridor, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Were you in your office all morning?”

“Yes, sir. I’m busiest mornings. I didn’t leave my desk until Dr. Minchen came running—”

“I know. I understand that your chair and desk face your office door obliquely. Was the door open at any time during the morning?”

“Well—half-open.”

“Can you see—did you see—the telephone-booth through the half-open door?”

“No, sir.”

“Too bad, too bad,” muttered the Inspector. He bit his mustache vexatiously. “Well, then—did a doctor pass your line of vision between 10:30 and 10:45?”

Paradise scratched the bulb of his nose reflectively. “I—don’t—know. I was so busy. …” His eyes filled with tears. The Inspector retreated in embarrassment, “And doctors keep passing up and down the corridors all day. …”

“Oh, very well. Don’t cry, man, for heaven’s sake!” The old man turned away. “Thomas! All the doors manned? Everything all right so far—no attempts to break out?”

“Nothing stirring, Inspector. And the boys are on their toes,” rumbled the giant. He glowered at the shrinking figure of the Superintendent.