The Chinese Orange Mystery

Inspector Queen, in whose hands¯since he was in charge of the murder-investigation¯the threads of identification refused to assemble, clung to his task with the tenacity of a leech. He refused to concede failure even after the regular channels were drained: the publicized photographs of the dead man, the descriptions and pleas sent to police officials of other cities, the tireless check-up with the records of the Identification Bureau, the unceasing search by plainclothesmen for the last trail of the dead man, the pumping of underworld informers on the theory that the victim might have had criminal affiliations.

The Inspector gritted his teeth and flung more men into the search. The reports of¯Nothing. No Trace. Unknown Here. No Fingerprints¯continued to pour in. All lines of investigation ended in a cul-de-sac. The blank wall of mystery leered down, apparently insurmountable.

The Missing Persons Bureau, experts in searches of this kind, formed the inevitable theory. Since all the routine investigations had met with no success, it was not untenable, they said, that the victim was not a New Yorker at all; indeed, perhaps not even an American.

Inspector Queen had shaken his head. “I’m ready to try anything,” he said to the weary-eyed official in charge of the Bureau, “but I tell you it’s not that. There’s something awfully screwy about this business . . . . He may have been a foreigner as you claim, but I doubt it, John. He didn’t look foreign. And the people who spoke to him before he died¯this woman Mrs. Shane and this man Osborne, and even that nurse on duty at the Kirk place who heard him say a few words¯they all insist that he didn’t have a foreign accent of any kind, just a funny sort o’ soft voice. And that was probably just a speech defect, or a habit.” Then he set his little jaw. “However, it won’t hurt to try; so go to it, John.”

And so the enormous task of notifying the police departments of all the major cities of the world, which had been begun tentatively before, was pushed ahead with thoroughness and despatch. Full description and fingerprints were forwarded, with due emphasis on the soft-voice characteristic. The dead man’s photograph was exhibited to employees of air lines, of Atlantic Ocean liners, of coast steamers, of railroads. And the reports came bouncing back with the hopeless inevitability of a rubber ball: No Identification. Man Unknown. No Recollection of Appearance on This Line. Nothing.

* * *

It was three days after Miss Temple’s confession of ownership of the Foochow stamp that Inspector Queen growled to Ellery: “It may be that we’re up against a situation that hits us on the snoot every once in a while. I’ve found from experience that periodically these transportation people go into a fit of the doldrums¯if doldrums have fits¯and can’t remember anything further back than their last yawn. Because we’ve met with failure along this angle so far doesn’t mean that bird¯damn his soul!¯didn’t use a liner, or a train, or a ‘plane. Darn it all, he must have got to New York some way!”

“If he got to New York at all,” said Ellery. “I mean-if he hasn’t been in New York all the time.”

“There are a lot of W in this business, my son. I’m not claiming anything. May’ve been born and brought up in the city here and never left the Bronx once, for all I know. Or this may have been his first visit to New York. But I’m betting he wasn’t a New Yorker.”

“Probably not,” drawled Ellery. “I just made the point to get it on the record. I think you’re right, myself.”

“Oh, you do?” snapped the Inspector. “When you use that tone of voice I get suspicious. Come on¯what d’ye know?”

“Nothing that you don’t know,” laughed Ellery. “I’ve told you every little thing that’s happened so far when you weren’t around. Can’t I agree with you once in a while without being jumped like a horse thief?”

The Inspector tapped his snuff-box absently, and for some time there was no sound but the shrill whistle of the uniformed officer two floors below who was addicted to The Sidewalks of New York out of loyalty to the administration. Ellery stared gloomily through the bars on his father’s office-window.

And then something brought his eyes around, and he gaped at his father, who was glaring at him with the mania of discovery. As he watched, the old gentleman leaped out of his swivel-chair and almost fell over trying to press one of his push-buttons.

“Of course!” he cried in a strangled voice. “What a dope, what a dope I am . . . . Billy,” he howled at the deskman who ran in, “is Thomas out there?” The deskman vanished and a moment later Sergeant Velie barged in.

The Inspector inhaled snuff, muttering to himself. “Sure, sure, that’s the ticket . . . . ‘Lo, Thomas. Why didn’t I think of it before? Sit down.”

“What is this?” demanded Ellery. “What’s the brainstorm?”