The Chinese Orange Mystery

“This bird Felix Berne. Thomas¯”

“Berne?” Ellery’s eyes narrowed. “What about Berne?”

“We finally got a check-up on his movements the day of the murder. There’s one element . . . Thomas, get Mr. Berne in here, and also that foreign-looking dame who was hanging on his arm when we came in. If my hunch is correct, she’s got something to do with this.”

‘With what?” asked Ellery swiftly as the Sergeant tramped out.

The Inspector shrugged. “That’s what I don’t know.”

* * *

Berne was very drunk. He lurched in, his bitter eyes inflamed and a sneer on his sharp keen features. The woman with him looked frightened. She was a tall supple brunette with a body that leaped with life. She pressed her full breasts against Berne’s black-sleeved arm as if she were afraid to release it.

“Well?” drawled Berne, his thin lips writhing humorously. “What is it tonight¯the sjambok, the bastinado, or the bed of Procrustes?”

“Good evening, Berne,” murmured Ellery. “I will say that detective work is broadening. Pleasure to meet such cultured people. Sjambok, did you say? Sounds faintly African-Dutch. What is it?”

“It’s a whip made out of rhinoceros hide,” said Berne with the same fixed drunken smile, “and if I had you on the South African \eldty my dear Queen, I’d like nothing better than to give you a taste of it. I dislike you intensely. I don’t know when I’ve disliked a fellow-creature more. Go to hell . . . . Well, you vest-pocket Lucifer,” he snapped suddenly at Inspector Queen, “what’s on your mind? Speak up, man! I haven’t all night to waste answering idiotic questions.”

“Idiotic questions, hey?” growled the Inspector. “One more crack like that out of you, wise guy, and I’ll sick the Sergeant here on you, and what he’ll do to that pan of yours I’ll leave to your own imagination.” He whirled on the woman. “You. What’s your name?”

She pressed closer to the publisher and looked up at him with a childlike faith.

Berne drawled: “Tell him, cara mia. He looks bad, but he’s harmless.”

“I¯am,” said the woman with difficulty, “Lucrezia Rizzo.” She spoke with a strong Italian accent.

“Where d’ye come from?”

“Italia. My home¯it is¯in Firenze.”

“Florence, eh?” murmured Ellery. “For the first time I grasp the essential inspiration behind the vigor of Botticelli’s women. You are very lovely, and you come from a lovely city, ma donna.”

She flashed him a long low look that had nothing in common with the fear that had filled her eyes a moment before. But she said nothing, and continued to cling to Berne’s arm.

“Listen, I’m in a hurry,” barked Inspector Queen. “How long you been in New York, Signora?”

Again she glanced at Beme, and he nodded. “It is¯a week or so, I think,” she said, her sibilants soft and warm.

“Why do you ask?” drawled Berne. “Thinking of pulling Signorina Rizzo into the well-known can on a charge of murder, Inspector? And I might also point out that you either leap to conclusions or else possess a shocking ignorance of the simplest Italian. My friend Lucrezia is unmarried.”

“Married or not,” snarled the Inspector, “I want to know what she was doing in that bachelor apartment of yours on East Sixty-fourth Street the day of the murder!”

Ellery started slightly, but Berne did not. The publisher showed his teeth in the same fixed drunken smile. “Ah, our metropolitan police now flourish the banner of moral purity! What d’ye think she was doing? You must have a good notion or you wouldn’t be asking . . . . Always incomprehensible to me, this stupid habit of asking questions you know the answers to. You didn’t think I’d deny it, did you?”

The Inspector’s bird-like face was growing redder with every passing instant. He glared at Berne and said: “I’m mighty interested in your movements that day, Berne, and don’t think you’ll pull the wool over my eyes with that gab of yours. I know that this woman came over on the Mauretania with you, and that you cabbed straight from the boat to your apartment with her. That was before noon that day. How’d you spend the rest of the day before you turned up at the Kirk layout upstairs?”

Berne continued to smile. There was a glassy calm in his inflamed eyes that fascinated Ellery. “Oh, you don’t know, do you, Inspector?”

“Why, you¯”