The Chinese Orange Mystery

The man stood absolutely still; only his chest rose, and the whites of his eyes showed blankly. There was something deadly and implacable in his glare; and when he spoke it was in a voice like congealed syrup. “What I want . . . If Donald chooses to publish any one barely out of diapers intellectually and with some half-baked manuscript that’s a poor imitation of a great work, it’s all right with me. That’s why The Mandarin is so close to¯” He stopped. Then he said with a spitting snarl: “I’ve looked over that magnificent opus of yours, Miss Temple, having wasted a perfectly good night’s sleep to do it. And I think it stinks.”

She turned her back on him and walked to the window. Ellery stood quietly watching. Kirk’s brown hands opened and closed, and he took a step toward Berne and said in a thickened voice: “You’d better beat it, Felix. You’re drunk. I’ll settle with you at the office.”

Berne licked his lips. Ellery said: “Just a moment, gentlemen, before the physical part of the drama begins. Berne, why were you late last night?”

The publisher did not take his eyes off his partner.

“I asked you, Berne,” said Ellery, “why you were late last night.”

The man turned his dark head slowly at that, regarding Ellery with an absent, almost insulting vacuity. “Go to hell,” he said.

And it was at that moment, with Jo trembling with indignation at the window, Donald clenching his fists impotently, and Berne and Ellery measuring each other with their eyes, that a cracked old voice howled from somewhere in the bowels of the apartment: “Help! I’ve been robbed! Help!”

Ellery sped through the dining-room, past a startled Hubbell, through a pair of bedrooms into the study of Dr. Kirk. Jo and Donald ran at his heels. Berne had disappeared.

Dr. Kirk was hopping up and down in the center of his disarranged study, one hand on the back of his wheel-chair to steady himself, the other clutching at his bristly white hair. He bellowed: “You! You Queen fellow! I’ve been robbed!”

“Of what?” panted Ellery, glancing swiftly about.

“Father!” cried Donald, springing to the old man’s side. “Sit down; you’ll exhaust yourself. What’s the matter? What’s been stolen? Who robbed you?”

“My books!” roared the septuagenarian, his face purple. “My books! Oh, if I find that thieving scoundrel . . . “ He subsided suddenly with a groan in the wheel-chair.

Miss Diversey, white-faced, stole into the study from the corridor, looking frightened. She flung one quick glance at her charge’s face and flew to his side. He pushed her away with such force that she staggered and almost fell.

“Get away, you harpy,” he screamed. “I’m sick of you, you and your exercises and your precious Dr. Angini. Damn all doctors and nurses! Well, Queen, well, well, well! Don’t stand there gaping like an aborigine! Find the rascal who stole my books!”

“I’m not gaping,” said Ellery with a sour smile, “I’m waiting for calmness and reason, my dear Doctor. If you’ll turn off the violence, perhaps we can get a rational statement out of you. I assume by this time that some books of yours are missing. How do you know they’ve been stolen?”

“Detective,” snorted the old gentleman. “Imbecile! See that shelf?” He pointed a long bent forefinger at one of the built-in shelves, more than half of which was empty.

“Oh, I’ve observed that and made the complex deduction that that was the abiding-place of your precious volumes. Suppose you stop being unintelligible, Doctor, and answer my question.”

“How do I know they’ve been stolen?” groaned Dr. Kirk, swaying his craggy head from side to side like a python. “Oh, good lord preserve us from idiots! They’re gone, aren’t they?”

“Not necessarily the same thing, Doctor. When did you miss them? When did you see them last?”

“An hour ago. Immediately after my breakfast. Then I went into my bedroom to dress and have this¯this female Aesculapius,” he glared at Miss Diversey, who was standing pale and subdued at the farthest wall, “pull and tug and slobber over me, and by the time I got back here a moment ago they were gone.”

“Where were you, Miss Diversey?” said Ellery sharply.

The nurse said in a tearful voice: “He¯he chased me out, sir. I went to the office¯I mean, to talk to some one with a little human feeling . . . “

“I see. Doctor, didn’t you hear anything going on in this room while you dressed next door?”

“Hear? Hear? No, nothing!”

“He’s a little deaf,” muttered Donald Kirk. “And rather sensitive about it.”

“Stop that confounded whispering, Donald! Well, well, Queen?”

Ellery shrugged. “I’ve never laid claim to pretensions of clairvoyance, Dr. Kirk. Just what books have been taken?”

“My Pentateuchal commentaries!”

“Your what?”

“Ignoramus,” growled the old gentleman. “Hebrew books, idiot, Hebrew books! I’ve devoted the last five years of my life to a research into the rabbinical writings on the theory that¯”

“Hebrew books,” said Ellery slowly. “You mean books written in Hebrew?”

“Well, of course, of course!”

“And nothing else?”