The Chinese Orange Mystery

In another metaphor Daniel Webster once said that mind is the great lever of all things; that human thought is the process by which human ends are alternately answered. But a lever suggests action, which inevitably suggests reaction; and Webster points out by indirection that the entire process is one of alternation, of fluctuation between a period of inertia and a period of activity.

Now Mr. Ellery Queen, who labored habitually within the confines of his skull, had long since found in his researches that this was a universal law, and that to achieve intellectual light it was mandatory that he struggle through a phase of intellectual darkness. The problem of the queer little dead man was a singular example in his experience. For days on end his brain wrestled through a slippery fog, groping for signposts; willing, even eager, but impotent. And suddenly there was the light staring coldly into his puckered eyes.

He wasted no time or breath on gratitude to the Wielder of the Cosmic Balance. The reaction had come. The light was there. But the light was still obscured by the whipping tails of the fog. The fog must be dissipated, and it could be dissipated by only one process¯concentration.

And so, being a logical man, he concentrated.

* * *

Ellery spent the rest of that momentous day draped in his favorite dressing-gown, a fetid garment redolent of old nicotine and haphazardly studded with tiny brown-edged holes, the visible signs of thousands of long-perished cigaret sparks. He lounged on the nape of his neck before a fire in the living-room, his toes toasting cosily, eying the ceiling with bright distant eyes and automatically flinging cigaret-butts into the flames as they burned down to his finger tips. There was no pose in this; for one thing, there was no one to pose for, since the Inspector was sulkily occupied with another case at Headquarters and Djuna was seated somewhere in the musty darkness of a motion picture theatre following the hectic fortunes of one of his innumerable bow-legged heroes. For another, Ellery was not thinking of himself.

It was curious, for instance, that occasionally he screwed his eyes downward a little to study the long crossed swords hanging above the fireplace. They were aged relics of his father’s past¯a gift to the Inspector from a German friend harking back to student days in Heidelberg. Certainly they could have no connection with the case in hand. And yet he studied them long and earnestly; although it is to be confessed that to his transfiguring eyes they assumed the menacing shape of Impi spears, broad-bladed and wicked.

Then the period of inspection passed, and he snuggled deeper into the chair and gave himself up wholly to disembodied thought.

* * *

At four in the afternoon he sighed, roused himself, creaked out of the chair, flung another cigaret into the fire, and went to the telephone.

“Dad?” he croaked when Inspector Queen answered. “Ellery. I want you to do something for me.”

“Where are you?” snapped the Inspector.

“Home. I¯”

“What the devil are you doing?”

. “Thinking. Look here¯”

“About what? I thought you’d settled the whole business in your mind.” The Inspector sounded faintly bitter.

“Now, now,” said Ellery in a weary voice, “don’t be that way. I didn’t mean to offend you, you sensitive old coot. I really have been working. Anything new, by the way?”

“Not a blessed thing. Well, what is it? I’m busy. Some tramp was shot up on Forty-fifth Street and I’ve got my hands full.”

Ellery gazed dreamily at the wall above the fireplace. “Have you any connections with some reliable theatrical costumer who can be trusted to do a confidential job and keep his mouth shut?”

“Costum¯1 What’s up now, for cripe’s sake?”

“An experiment in the interests of justice. Well, have you?”

“I suppose I can rustle one,” grumbled the Inspector. “You and your experiments! Johnny Rosenzweig over on Forty-ninth once did a job for me. I guess you can rely on him. What’s the dope?”

“I want a dummy.”

“A what?”

“A dummy. Not the human kind,” chuckled Ellery. “A stuffed shirt, inarticulate, will do. Here, I’m confusing you. Get this Rosenzweig friend of yours to make up a dummy of the same general size and height as the murdered man.”

“Now I know you’ve gone nuts,” complained the Inspector. “You sure this is for the case? Or are you workin’ on some far-fetched, crazy detective-story idea for a book? If it’s that, El, I can’t take time off to bother¯”

“No, no, I assure you this will prove a stepping-stone toward the high place in which New York justice sits enthroned. Can you get him to work fast?”

“I s’pose so. Just a dummy the size and height of the dead man, hey?” The old gentleman sounded sarcastic. “Anything else? How about a little bridge-work? Or some artistic modelling on the nose?”

“No, seriously. There is something else. You’ve got the weight of the dead man, haven’t you?”

“Sure. It’s in Doc Prouty’s report.”