The Chinese Orange Mystery

“Very good. I want the all-over weight to be identical with the victim’s. He’ll have to do a clever job. See if he can’t approximate the same weight of limbs, torso, and head. Especially the head. That’s most important. Think he can do it?”

“Might. He’ll probably have to get Prouty’s help in the weights.”

“Be sure to tell him to keep the dummy flexible¯”

“What d’ye mean?”

“I mean I don’t want it in one stiff straight piece. Whatever he uses for the weighting-iron, lead¯should not run in a single piece from head to foot. Let him use separate weights for the feet, the legs, the torso, the arms, and the head. In that way we’ll have a dummy which in virtually every particular will be a facsimile of the dead man’s body. That’s vital, dad.”

“I guess he can string ‘em together with wire or something,” muttered the Inspector, “which’ll bend. Anything else?”

Ellery chewed his lower lip. “Yes. Have the dummy dressed in the dead man’s clothes. That’s the theatre in me coming out.”

“Put on backwards?”

“Good heavens, yes I The dummy should look precisely like our little corpse.”

“Say,” snapped the Inspector, “don’t tell me you’re going to pull one of those old psychological gags of confronting the suspects with what seems to be the corpse risen from the dead! By thunder, El, that’s¯”

“Now that,” said Ellery sadly, “is the most unkindest cut of all. Have you really such a low estimate of my mentality? Of course I haven’t any such notion. This is an experiment in the name of science, dear father. No hocus-pocus about it. The theatre I referred to was an afterthought. Understood?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I guess so. Where d’ye want the thing?”

“Have it sent up here, to the apartment. I have work for it.”

The Inspector sighed. “All right. All right. But sometimes I think that all that thinking you say you do has gone to your head. Ha, ha!” And with a sad chuckle he hung up.

Ellery smiled, stretched, yawned, wandered into the bedroom, flung himself on his bed, and fell asleep within sixty seconds.

* * *

The dummy was delivered by Sergeant Velie at 9:30 that night.

“Ah!” cried Ellery, seizing the end of the long heavy crate. “Lord, that’s heavy! What’s in this, a gravestone?”

“Well, the Inspector said it was supposed to weigh as much as the stiff, Mr. Queen,” said the Sergeant. “All right, bud,” and he nodded to the man who had helped him carry the crate upstairs. The man touched his cap and went away. “Here. Let’s dig him out of that.”

They set to work and under Djuna’s awestruck eyes removed something that might have been a man. It was swathed in brown paper like an Egyptian mummy. Ellery stripped the wrappings away and gasped in astonishment. The dummy slipped out of his arms and promptly proceeded to crumple section by section in a heap on the living-room rug, quite like a dead man.

“Lord, it’s-it’s her For there, smiling up at them, was the unctuous face of the stout little man.

“Papeer mashay,” exclaimed the Sergeant, gazing proudly at the dummy. ‘This guy Rosenzweig knows his onions. Reconstructed that there face from the photos and did one swell job with his paints and brushes. Look at that hair!”

“I’m looking,” murmured Ellery, fascinated. It was, as the Sergeant had said, a most artistic job. The pink smooth skull with its fringe of gray hair was quite lifelike. Even the crushed blackish area where the brass poker had struck was there, and the jelly-like radiations of dried blood.

“Look,” whispered Djuna, stretching his thin neck. “He’s got his pants on backwards. An’ his coat V everything!”

“Quite in order. Well!” Ellery breathed deeply. “Rosenzweig, my friend, I salute you. I’m certainly in the debt of that genius, whoever he is. Couldn’t have conceived a more perfect dummy for my purposes. Here. Let’s get him¯”

“Gonna throw a scare into them?” growled Velie, stooping and tugging at the dummy’s shoulders.

“No, no, Velie; nothing so crude as that. Let’s sit him in that chair near the bedroom door. There. That’s the idea . . . . Now, Sergeant.” He straightened, flushed a little, and stared into the giant’s hard eyes. The Sergeant scratched his chin and looked suspicious.

“You want me to do somethin’,” he said accusingly, “somethin’ you don’t want no one to know about.”

“Exactly. Now¯”

“Not even the Inspector, I bet.”

“Oh,” said Ellery airily, “why not surprise him? He doesn’t get much fun out of life, Velie.” He took the giant’s arm and steered him into the foyer. Djuna, a little hurt, stalked back to his kitchen. He kept his sharp ears cocked, however, and he could hear Ellery murmur earnest words and at least once an explosive exclamation from the mountainous Sergeant. The Sergeant, it appeared, was stupefied. Then there was the slam of the front door and Ellery was back, smiling and rubbing his hands.

“Djuna!”

Before the name was out of his mouth Djuna was at his side, panting and eager as a charger.

“You gonna do somepin’?”