The Chinese Orange Mystery

It caught them completely off guard. Their mouths opened and remained open. They strained to see what was apparently a miracle. It happened so quickly that it was over almost before they could realize the significance of the process.

For with the jerk of the mat several things occurred simultaneously. The dummy trembled, began to topple, and its stiffly speared body began to slide along the top edge of the jutting bookcase in the direction of and a little outward from the door. But a split-second later something happened to correct the sideward slip. The slack in the cord from the spear to the bolt tightened and pulled the dummy back, halting it. For a moment it swayed, then started to fall rigidly forward on its face parallel with the door. The slack in the cord from the spear to the bolt diminished until the head was about a foot from the floor. At this point the cord became taut and the miracle occurred. With the tightening, the pull of the dummy’s weight exerted as the dummy fell forward caused the bolt to slide in the same direction, from left to right as they viewed it, into the catch on the jamb!

The door was securely bolted.

And while they gaped, incredulous, they saw something else that was in itself almost as profound a miracle. They saw the short end of the cord begin to move, as if it were being pulled from the other side of the door. There was a moment of resistance at the coil about the bolt-knob, and then the cord broke at the point of resistance. Since there was no knot there, the broken piece¯still attached to the spear¯fell dangling to the floor between the dummy and the door. The remaining piece, whose end had been jerked, vanished under the door as it was pulled from the other side.

And then they saw the other length¯the two-thirds length wound about the spear¯tighten about the haft of the spear for a moment and then very smoothly begin to slide around, the dangling end which had just broken off from the knob of the bolt growing shorter and shorter as the same invisible hand pulled the two-thirds length into the office from the other side of the door. And finally the dangling end reached the haft, and glided around, and fell free, and in its turn vanished through the crack under the door. A moment later the mat which had caused the body to fall in the first place also vanished.

And the dummy lay just as the body had lain, and the door was bolted, and nothing remained but the bookcases and the spears and the position of the body to show how it was possible for a door to have been bolted from its other side.

* * *

Ellery came running back and dashed into the anteroom from the corridor. They were still glaring at the dummy and the door.

The detectives stood against the wall. The Inspector had his hand near his hip-pocket.

Some one had risen, pale as the sullen morning sky through the window, and was whispering in a cracked voice: “But I¯don’t see¯how you¯could have known.”

“The spears told me,” said Ellery in the stupefied silence. “The spears and the position of the two bookcases flanking the doorway to the office. When I assembled the facts I saw the truth. The missionary was murdered not where we found him but in another part of the room; that was established very early by the traces of blood on the floor. So the question arose: Why had the murderer moved the body to the door? Obviously because he had a use for the body at that point. The next question was: Why had the murderer shoved the right-hand bookcase along the right-hand wall farther away from the door? The answer to that could only be: to make room in front of the right-hand wall near the door. The third question was: Why had the murderer moved the left-hand bookcase up to the hinge-side of the door and pulled the right side out into the room, making an acute angle with the door? And the answer to that puzzled me until I remembered the spears . . . .