The Chinese Orange Mystery

The door across the corridor caught his attention, and he sighed. It did seem like a century ago that he had opened that door and found a room turned topsy-turvy and a dead man in inverted clothing. Struck by a sudden thought, he crossed the hall and tried the door. But it was locked.

He shrugged and was about to turn the corner and proceed toward the elevators when a movment far down the corridor caused him to jump like a startled kangaroo around the corner and stand still without breathing. He took off his hat and peered cautiously out.

A woman had appeared from the fire-escape stairway beyond and to the other side of the door to Dr. Kirk’s study; and she was acting very queerly indeed.

In her arms there was a bulky bundle wrapped in brown paper¯a heavy bundle, to judge from the labored progress she made. She was trying to tread softly, and there was no question of the nervousness that animated her, since she kept jerking her head from side to side like a wary animal. It was very odd to see a tall young woman in a modish fur-trimmed suit and a rakish toque and trim gloves staggering under the weight of a badly wrapped bundle of that size. There was something almost humorous about it.

But Ellery did not smile. He watched with a breath-suspended concentration, tingling in every nerve. “Lord,” he thought, “what luck!”

The woman turned her head to look his way, and Ellery dodged back out of sight. When he looked again she was fumbling with the knob of Dr. Kirk’s door in a sort of desperate haste. Then it swung open and she vanished inside the room.

Ellery sped down the corridor like the wind, topcoat-tails flying. But he made no noise and reached the door without incident. He looked up and down the hall; it was deserted. Dr. Kirk was presumably not in the apartment; he was probably being wheeled about the roof of the Chancellor by Miss Diversey for his morning constitutional, grumbling and cursing in his usual ill-temper . . . . Ellery knelt and peered through the keyhole. He could see the woman moving quickly about the study, but the view was too narrow for panoramic observation.

He scrambled up the corridor to the next door, which he remembered led to Dr. Kirk’s bedroom. If the irascible old gentleman was out . . . He tried the door; it was unlocked, and he stole into the room. He flew to the door at his right, which led to another bedroom, and bolted it; and then he hurried to the closed door leading to the study. It took him many seconds to turn the knob and open the door to a crack without making any noise.

The woman was almost finished. The brown wrapping-paper lay on the floor. With feverish haste she was placing the contents of the bundle¯huge heavy books¯on the shelf from which Dr. Kirk’s Hebrew books had been stolen.

* * *

When she was gone, crushing the brown paper into a ball and carrying it with her, Ellery stepped calmly into the study.

The books which the woman had just put upon the shelf were, as he had suspected, all volumes of Hebrew commentaries. Unquestionably they were the books which had been stolen from the old scholar.

Ellery quietly retraced his steps, unbolted the farther door of the bedroom, went out by the bedroom door, and slipped down the corridor just as he heard the foyer door of the Kirk suite slam.

He stood very still in the elevator all the way down to the lobby, his brow creased in many corrugations of thought.

It was perfectly amazing. Of all developments! Another incomprehensible thread in the fabric of the most puzzling mystery he had ever faced . . . . And then something sparked in his brain and he grew very thoughtful indeed. Yes, it was possible . . . . A theory which covered the facts; at least on the surface . . . . If that was the case, there was another¯

He shook his head impatiently. It would bear thinking about.

For the woman had been Marcella Kirk.

Chapter 11. UNKNOWN QUANTITIES

Perhaps the most precise development in the science of policing is the uncanny ability of the modern detective to trace the movements and establish the identities of so-called unknown persons. Since he is not infallible his score is imperfect; but his percentage of successes is remarkably high, considering the minotaur’s maze of difficulties. The whole complicated mechanism of the police chain hums along on oiled bearings.

And yet, in the case of the mysterious little man who was murdered in the Hotel Chancellor, the police encountered no success whatever. Even in instances of the normal failures something is found¯a clue, a trace, a wisp of connection, some last movement which has left its imprint on a casual mind. But here there was nothing but the darkness of space. It was as if the little man had dropped to earth from another planet, accompanied by the chill mysteries of the void.