The Chinese Orange Mystery

The Inspector sank back, utterly overwhelmed. “All right, I give up. When you start lying to me¯”

“But I’m not lying,” said Ellery in a hurt voice. “I really don’t know. Oh, I might hazard a guess, but . . . . That doesn’t say, however,” he went on, his lips compressing, “that I won’t know. I’ve a remarkable start; simply unbelievable. I must find the answer now. It would be unthinkable that after this¯”

“According to what you say,” said the Inspector bitterly, “you don’t know any of the really important things. I thought you had something.”

“But I have,” said Ellery in a patient tone.

“Well, what the devil did those two African spears sticking up the dead man’s backside mean, then?” The Inspector half-rose from his chair, shocked by the look on Ellery’s face. “For the love of Mike! What’s the matter now?”

“The spears,” muttered Ellery, staring blindly at his father. “The spears.”

“But¯”

“Now I do know how . . . .”

“I know, but¯”

Ellery’s face came alive. His cheeks screwed up, and his eyes blazed, and his lips trembled. Then he howled like a maniac: “Eureka! That’s the answer! Those blessed spears!”

And with a whoop he dashed out of the office, leaving a dazed and collapsed Inspector behind.

Challenge to the Reader Somewhere along the trail, during the creation of my past novels, I lost a good idea. Those kindly persons who¯it seems ages ago¯discovered that there was a gentleman named Queen writing detective stories and who continued to read that worthy’s works will recall that in the early books I made a point of injecting at a strategic place in each book a challenge to the reader.

Well, something happened. I don’t know precisely what. But I remember that after one novel was completed and set up and the galleys corrected some one at the publisher’s¯a discerning soul indeed¯called my attention to the fact that the usual challenge was missing. It seems that I had forgotten to write one. I supplied the deficiency hastily, rather abashed, and it was stuck into the offending volume at the last moment. Then conscience pricked me and I engaged in a little research. I found that I had forgotten the challenge in the book before that, too. longa dies non sedavit vulnera mentis, either, believe me.

Now my publisher is very firm about the integrity of the Queen books, and so I give you . . . the challenge. It’s really a simple matter. I maintain that at this point in your reading of the Chinese orange mystery you have all the facts in your possession essential to a clear solution of the mystery. You should be able, here, now,henceforward., to solve the puzzle of the murder of the nameless little man in Donald Kirk’s anteroom. Everything is there; no essential clue or fact is missing. Can you put them all together and¯not make them spell “mother,” to be sure¯by a process of logical reasoning arrive at the one and only possible solution?

Ellery Queen.

Chapter 16. THE EXPERIMENT

The human brain is a curious instrument. It is remarkably like the sea, possessing deeps and shallows¯cold dark profundities and sunny crests. It has its breakers dashing in to shore, and its sullen backwashes. Swift currents race beneath a surface ruffled by minor winds. And there is a constant pulsing rhythm in it very like the tides. For it possesses periods of ebb, when all inspiration recedes into the blind spumy distance; and periods of flow, > when strong thoughts come hurtling in, resistless and supreme.