To
M. B. W.
WITH GRATITUDE
In one of his earliest cases, Ellery Queen confronts a murder in blue blood
America’s master of deduction, Ellery Queen, has made his name by combining dazzling feats of pure reason with the old-fashioned legwork that comes with being the son of a New York cop. Before he became the nation’s most famous sleuth, he was just an untested talent - a bookworm who thought he might put his genius to work solving crimes. Young Queen made his bones on the Khalkis case.
The scion of a famous New York art-dealing family, Georg Khalkis has spent several years housebound with blindness - a misery he is relieved of when a heart attack knocks him dead on the library floor. After the funeral, his will vanishes, and an exhaustive search of home, churchyard, crypt, and mourners reveals nothing. Baffled, the police turn to a headstrong young genius named Ellery Queen. During this case, Queen develops his deductive method - and swings dramatically between failure and success.
Review quote:
“A new Ellery Queen book has always been something to look forward to for many years now.” - Agatha Christie
“Ellery Queen is the American detective story.” - Anthony Boucher, author of Nine Times Nine
“A great way to visit Moscow without having to live there.” - San Jose Mercury News
Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty-two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age “fair play” mystery.
Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen’s first appearance came in 1928, when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who uses his spare time to assist his police inspector uncle in solving baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee’s death.
CHARACTERS
GEORG KHALKIS art dealer
GILBERT SLOANE manager, Khalkis Galleries
DELPHINA SLOANE Khalkis’ sister
ALAN CHENEY son of Delphina Sloane
DEMMY Khalkis’ cousin
JOAN BRETT Khalkis’ secretary
JAN VREELAND Khalkis’ traveling representative
LUCY VREELAND Vreeland’s wife
NACIO SUIZA director of Khalkis’ art-gallery
ALBERT GRIMSHAW ex-convict
DR. WARDES English eye-specialist
MILES WOODRUFF Khalkis’ attorney
JAMES J. KNOX millionaire art-connoisseur
DR. DUNCAN FROST Khalkis’ personal physician
MRS. SUSAN MORSE a neighbor
JEREMIAH ODELL plumbing contractor
LILY ODELL Odell’s wife
REV. JOHN HENRY ELDER SEXTON
HONEYWELL WEEKES Khalkis’ butler
MRS. SIMMS Khalkis’ housekeeper
PEPPER Assistant District Attorney
SAMPSON District Attorney
COHALAN D. A. detective
DR. SAMUEL PROUTY Assistant Medical Examiner
EDMUND CREWE architectural expert
UNA LAMBERT handwriting expert
“JIMMY” fingerprint expert
TRIKKALA Greek interpreter
FLINT, HESSE, JOHNSON, PIGGOTT, HAGSTROM, RITTER staff detectives
THOMAS VELIE detective sergeant
DJUNA
INSPECTOR RICHARD QUEEN
ELLERY QUEEN
I FIND THE TASK of prefacing The Greek Coffin Mystery one of especial interest, since its publication was preceded by an extraordinary reluctance on the part of Mr. Ellery Queen to permit its publication at all.
Mr. Queen’s readers will perhaps recall, from Forewords in previous Queen novels, that it was sheerest accident which caused these authentic memoirs of Inspector Richard Queen’s son to be recast in the mold of fiction and given to the public—and then only after the Queens had retired to Italy to rest, as they say, on their laurels. But after I was able to persuade my friend to permit publication of the first one,* the initial Queen affair to be put between covers, things went very smoothly indeed and we found no difficulty in cajoling this sometimes difficult young man into further fictionizations of his adventures during his father’s Inspectorship in the Detective Bureau of the New York Police Department.
Why, then, you ask, Mr. Queen’s reluctance with regard to publication of the Khalkis case-history? For an interesting duality of reasons. In the first place, the Khalkis case occurred early in his career as unofficial investigator under the cloak of the Inspector’s authority; Ellery had not yet at that time fully crystallized his famous analytico-deductive method. In the second place—and this I am sure is the more powerful reason of the two—Mr. Ellery Queen until the very last suffered a thoroughly humiliating beating in the Khalkis case. No man, however modest—and Ellery Queen, I think he will be the first to agree, is far from that—cares to flaunt his failures to the world. He was put to shame publicly, and the wound has left its mark. “No,” he said positively, “I don’t relish the notion of castigating myself all over again, even in print.”
It was not until we pointed out to him—his publishers and I—that far from being his worst failure, the Khalkis case (published under the present title of The Greek Coffin Mystery) was his greatest success, that Mr. Queen began to waver—a human reaction which I am glad to point out to those cynical souls who have accused Ellery Queen of being something less than human. … Finally, he threw up his hands and gave in.
It is my earnest belief that it was the amazing barriers of the Khalkis case that set Ellery’s feet in the path that was to lead him to such brilliant victories later. Before this case was done, he had been tried by fire, and …
But it would be rude to spoil your enjoyment. You may take the word of one who knows the details of every single affair to which—I trust he will forgive my amicable enthusiasm—he applied the singing keenness of his brain, that The Greek Coffin Mystery from many angles is Ellery Queen’s most distinguished adventure.
Happy hunting!
J. J. McC.
* The Roman Hat Mystery, Frederick A. Stokes Company, publisher (1929).
FLOOR PLAN OF KHALKIS HOUSE
A—KHALKIS’ LIBRARY
B—KHALKIS’ BEDROOM
C—DEMMY’S BEDROOM
D—KITCHEN
E—STAIRS TO 2ND FLOOR
F—DINING ROOM
G—DRAWING ROOM
H—FOYER
J—SERVANTS’ ROOMS
K—BATHROOMS
L—VREELANDS’ ROOM
M—SLOANES’ ROOMS
N—JOAN BRETT’S ROOM
O—DR. WARDES’ ROOM
P—CHENEY’S ROOM
Q—SECOND GUEST ROOM
ATTIC NOT DIVIDED INTO ROOMS
“IN SCIENCE, IN HISTORY, in psychology, in all manner of pursuits which require an application of thought to the appearance of phenomena, things are very often not what they seem. Lowell, the illustrious American thinker, said: ‘A wise scepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.’ I think precisely the same theorem can be laid down for the student of criminology. …
“The human mind is a fearful and tortuous thing. When any part of it is warped—even if it be so lightly that all the instruments of modern psychiatry cannot detect the warping—the result is apt to be confounding. Who can describe a motive? A passion? A mental process?
“My advice, the gruff dictum of one who has been dipping his hands into the unpredictable vapours of the brain for more years than he cares to recall, is this: Use your eyes, use the little grey cells God has given you, but be ever wary. There is pattern but no logic in criminality. It is your task to cohere confusion, to bring order out of chaos.”
—Closing Address by PROF. FLORENZ BACHMANN to Class in Applied Criminology at University of Munich (1920)
FROM THE VERY BEGINNING the Khalkis case struck a somber note. It began, as was peculiarly harmonious in the light of what was to come, with the death of an old man. The death of this old man wove its way, like a contrapuntal melody, through all the intricate measures of the death march that followed, in which the mournful strain of innocent mortality was conspicuously absent. In the end it swelled into a crescendo of orchestral guilt, a macabre dirge whose echoes rang in the ears of New York long after the last evil note had died away.
It goes without saying that when Georg Khalkis died of heart failure no one, least of all Ellery Queen, suspected that this was the opening motif in a symphony of murder. Indeed, it is to be doubted that Ellery Queen even knew that Georg Khalkis had died until the fact was forcibly brought to his attention three days after the blind old man’s clay had been consigned, in a most proper manner, to what every one had reason to believe was its last resting-place.
What the newspapers failed to make capital of in the first announcement of Khalkis’ death—an obituary tribute which Ellery, a violent non-reader of the public prints, did not catch—was the interesting location of the man’s grave. It gave a curious sidelight on old New Yorkana. Khalkis’ drooping brownstone at 11 East Fifty-fourth Street was situated next to the tradition-mellowed church which fronts Fifth Avenue and consumes half the area of the block between Fifth and Madison Avenues, flanked on the north by Fifty-fifth Street and on the south by Fifty-fourth Street. Between the Khalkis house and the church itself was the church graveyard, one of the oldest private cemeteries in the city. It was in this graveyard that the bones of the dead man were to be interred. The Khalkis family, for almost two hundred years parishioners of this church, were not affected by that article of the Sanitary Code which forbids burial in the heart of the city. Their right to lie in the shadow of Fifth Avenue’s skyscrapers was established by their traditional ownership of one of the subterranean vaults in the church graveyard—vaults not visible to passersby, since their adits were sunken three feet below the surface, leaving the sod of the graveyard unmarred by tombstones.
The funeral was quiet, tearless and private. The dead man, embalmed and rigged out in evening clothes, was laid in a large black lustrous coffin, resting on a bier in the drawing-room on the first floor of the Khalkis house. Services were conducted by the Reverend John Henry Elder, pastor of the adjoining church—that Reverend Elder, it should be noted, whose sermons and practical diatribes were given respectful space in the metropolitan press. There was no excitement, and except for a characteristic swooning entered upon with vigor by Mrs. Simms, the dead man’s Housekeeper, no hysteria.
Yet, as Joan Brett later remarked, there was something wrong. Something that may be attributed, we may suspect, to that superior quality of feminine intuition which, medical men are prone to say, is sheer nonsense. Nevertheless she described it, in her straight-browed and whimsical English fashion, as “a tightness in the air.” Who caused the tightness, what individual or individuals were responsible for the tension—if indeed it existed—she could not or would not say. Everything, on the contrary, seemed to go off smoothly and with just the proper touch of intimate, unexploited grief. When the simple services were concluded, for example, the members of the family and the scattering of friends and employees present filed past the coffin, took their last farewell of the dead clay, and returned decorously to their places. Faded Delphina wept, but she wept in the aristocratic manner—a tear, a dab, a sigh. Demetrios, whom no one would dream of addressing by any other name than Demmy, stared his vacant idiot’s stare and seemed fascinated by his cousin’s cold placid face in the coffin. Gilbert Sloane patted his wife’s pudgy hand. Alan Cheney, his face a little flushed, had jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket and was scowling at empty air. Nacio Suiza, director of the Khalkis art-gallery, correct to the last detail of funereal attire, stood very languidly in a corner. Woodruff, the dead man’s attorney, honked his nose. It was all very natural and innocuous. Then the undertaker, a worried-looking, bankerish sort of man by the name of Sturgess, manipulated his puppets and the coffin-lid was quickly fastened down. Nothing remained but the sordid business of organizing the last procession. Alan, Demmy, Sloane and Suiza took their places by the bier, and after the customary confusion had subsided, hoisted the coffin to their shoulders, passed the critical scrutiny of Undertaker Sturgess, the Reverend Elder murmured a prayer, and the cortège walked firmly out of the house.
Now Joan Brett, as Ellery Queen was later to appreciate, was a very canny young lady. If she had felt a “tightness in the air,” a tightness in the air there was. But where—from what direction? It was so difficult to pin it to—some one. It might have proceeded from bearded Dr. Wardes, who with Mrs. Vreeland made up the rear of the procession. It might have proceeded from the pall-bearers, or from those who came directly after, with Joan. It might, in point of fact, have proceeded from the house itself, arising from just such a simple matter as Mrs. Simms wailing in her bed, or Weekes the butler rubbing his jaw foolishly in the dead man’s study.
Certainly it does not seem to have thrust barriers in the way of expedition. The cortège made its way, not through the front door to Fifty-fourth Street, but through the back door into the long garden-court serving as a little private lane for the six residences on Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Streets, which enclosed it. They turned to the left and marched through the gate on the west side of the court, and they were in the graveyard. Passersby and curiosity-seekers, attracted like flies to Fifty-fourth Street, probably felt cheated; which was precisely the reason that the private route to the graveyard had been selected. They clung to the spike-topped fence, peering into the little cemetery through the iron bars; there were reporters among them, and cameramen, and every one was curiously silent. The actors in the tragedy paid no attention to their audience. As they wound across the bare sod, another little company faced them, surrounding a rectangular cavity in the grass and a mathematically upturned heap of earth. Two gravediggers—Sturgess’ assistants—were there, and Honeywell, the church sexton; and by herself, a little old lady wearing a preposterously outmoded black bonnet and wiping her bright rheumy eyes. The tightness, if we are to give credence to Joan Brett’s intuition, persisted.
Yet what followed was as innocent as what had gone before. The customary ritualistic preparations; a grave-digger leaning far forward and grasping the handle of a rusty old iron door imbedded horizontally in the earth; a slight rush of dead air; the coffin gently lowered into the old brick-lined crypt beneath; a milling of workmen, some low hurried words, the shifting of the coffin slowly to one side out of sight, where it nudged its way into one of the many niches of the underground vault; the iron door clanging to, the earth and sod replaced above it. … And somehow, Joan Brett was positive when she later told of her impressions of that moment, somehow the tightness in the air vanished.
VANISHED, THAT IS TO say, until a brief few moments after the funeral party, retracing its route through the garden-court, returned to the house.
Then it materialized again, accompanied by such a horde of ghastly events as made its source very clear indeed much later.
The first warning of what was to come was sounded by Miles Woodruff, the dead man’s attorney. The picture seems to be etching-sharp at this point. The Reverend Elder had returned to the Khalkis house to offer consolation, trailing in his wake the dapper, clerical and annoyingly fidgety figure of Sexton Honeywell. The little old lady with the bright rheumy eyes who had met the cortège in the graveyard had expectantly joined the returning procession and was now in the drawing-room, inspecting the barren bier with a hypercritical air, while Undertaker Sturgess and his assistants busied themselves removing the grisly signs of their labor. No one had asked the little old lady in; no one now took cognizance of her presence except perhaps imbecile Demmy, who was eying her with a faintly intelligent dislike. The others had taken chairs, or were wandering listlessly about; there was little conversation; no one except the undertaker and his assistants seemed to know what to do.
Miles Woodruff, as restless as the others, seeking to bridge the ugly post-burial gap, had sauntered into the dead man’s library quite without purpose, as he said later. Weekes, the butler, clambered to his feet in some confusion; he had been nodding a bit, it appears. Woodruff waved his hand and, still aimlessly, occupied with dismal thoughts, strolled across the room to the stretch of wall between two bookcases where Khalkis’ wall-safe was imbedded. Woodruff has stoutly maintained that his act in twirling the dial of the safe and selecting the combination which caused the heavy round little door to swing open was wholly mechanical. Certainly, he averred later, he had not intended to look for it, let alone find it missing. Why, he had seen it, actually handled it only five minutes before the funeral party left the house! However, the fact remains that Woodruff did discover, whether by accident or design, that it was gone, and the steel box too—a discovery which sounded the warning-note that, quite like The House That Jack Built, caused the tightness to reappear that led to all the dire events that followed.
Woodruff’s reaction to its disappearance was characteristic. He whirled on Weekes, who must have thought the man had gone insane, and shouted, “Did you touch this safe?” in a terrible voice. Weekes stammered a denial and Woodruff puffed and blew. He was hot on a chase, the goal of which he could not even vaguely see.
“How long have you been sitting here?”
“Ever since the funeral party left the house to go to the graveyard, sir.”
“Did any one come into this room while you were sitting here?”
“Not a living soul, sir.” Weekes was frightened now; the ring of cotton-white hair at the back of his pink scalp, puffing over his ears, quivered with earnestness. In the eyes of stuffy old Weekes there was something terrifying in Woodruff’s lord-and-master pose. Woodruff, it is to be feared, took advantage of his bulk, his red face and crackling voice to browbeat the old man almost to tears. “You were asleep!” he thundered. “You were dozing when I walked in here!”
Weekes mumbled in a soupy voice, “Just nodding, sir, really, sir, just nodding, sir. I wasn’t asleep for an instant. I heard you the instant you came in, didn’t I, sir?”
“Well …” Woodruff was mollified. “I guess you did as that. Ask Mr. Sloane and Mr. Cheney to come in here at once.”
Woodruff was standing before the safe in a Messianic attitude when the two men came in, looking puzzled. He challenged them silently, with his best witness-baiting manner. He noticed at once that something was wrong with Sloane; precisely what he could not make out. As for Alan, the boy was scowling as usual, and when he moved nearer to Woodruff the lawyer caught the pungent odor of whisky on his breath. Woodruff spared no language in his peroration. He chopped at them savagely, pointed to the open safe, eyed each of them with heavy suspicion. Sloane shook his leonine head; he was a powerful man in the prime of life, elegantly attired in the height of foppish fashion. Alan said nothing—shrugged his spare shoulders indifferently.
“All right,” said Woodruff. “It’s all right with me. But I’m going to get to the bottom of this, gentlemen. Right now.”
Woodruff appears to have been in his glory. He had every one in the house peremptorily summoned to the study. Amazing as it may seem, it is true that within four minutes of the time the funeral party returned to the Khalkis house, Woodruff had them all on the carpet—all, including even Undertaker Sturgess and his assistants!—and had the dubious satisfaction of hearing them, to the last man and woman, deny having taken anything out of the safe, or even having gone to the safe that day at all.
It was at this dramatic and slightly ludicrous moment that Joan Brett and Alan Cheney were struck by the same thought. Both plunged for the doorway, colliding, boiling out of the room into the hall, flying down the hall to the foyer. Woodruff, with a hoarse shout, lunged after them, suspecting he knew not what. Alan and Joan assisted each other in unlocking the foyer door, scrambled through the vestibule to the unlocked street-door, flung it open and faced a mildly astonished throng in the street, Woodruff hurrying after them. Joan called out in her clear contralto, “Has any one come into this house in the past half-hour?” Alan shouted, “Anybody?” and Woodruff found himself echoing the word. A hardy young man, one of a group of reporters draped over the latched gate on the sidewalk, distinctly said, “No!”, another reporter drawled, “What’s up, Doc? Why the hell don’t you let us inside?—we won’t touch nothin’,” and there was a little scattering of applause from the onlookers in the street. Joan blushed, as was natural, and her hand strayed to her auburn hair, patting it for no apparent reason into place. Alan cried, “Did anybody come out?” and there was a thunderous chorus of “No!” Woodruff coughed, his self-assurance shaken by this public spectacle, irritably herded the young couple back into the house, and carefully locked the doors behind him—both of them, this time.
But Woodruff was not the type of man whose self-assurance can be permanently shaken. He recaptured it immediately upon reentering the library, where the others sat and stood about looking faintly expectant. He rapped questions at them, pouncing on one after the other, and almost snarled with disappointment when he discovered that most of the household knew the combination of the safe.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Somebody here is trying to pull a fast one. Somebody’s lying. But we’ll find out soon enough, soon enough, I’ll promise you that.” He prowled back and forth before them. “I can be as smart as the rest of you. It’s my duty—my duty, you understand,” and everybody nodded, like a battery of dolls, “to search every soul in this house. Right now. At once,” and everybody stopped nodding. “Oh, I know some one here doesn’t like the idea. Do you think I like it? But I’m going to do it anyway. It was stolen right under my nose. My nose.” At this point, despite the seriousness of the situation, Joan Brett giggled; Woodruff’s nose did cover a generous strip of territory.
Nacio Suiza, the immaculate, smiled slightly. “Oh, come now, Woodruff. Isn’t this a bit melodramatic? There’s probably a very simple explanation for the whole thing. You’re dramatizing it.”
“You think so, Suiza, you think so?” Woodruff transferred his glare from Joan to Suiza. “I see you don’t like the idea of a personal search. Why?”
Suiza chuckled. “Am I on trial, Woodruff? Get a hold on yourself, man. You’re acting like a chicken with its head cut off. Perhaps,” he said pointedly, “perhaps you were mistaken when you thought you saw the box in the safe five minutes before the funeral.”
“Mistaken? You think so? You’ll find I wasn’t mistaken when one of you turns out a thief!”
“At any rate,” remarked Suiza, showing his white teeth, “I won’t stand for this high-handed procedure. Try—just try—to search me, old man.”
At this point the inevitable occurred; Woodruff completely lost his temper. He raged, and raved, and shook his heavy fist under Suiza’s sharp cold nose, and spluttered, “By God, I’ll show you! By heaven, I’ll show you what high-handed is!” and concluded by doing what he should have done in the very beginning—he clutched at one of the two telephones on the dead man’s desk, feverishly dialed a number, stuttered at an unseen inquisitor, and replaced the instrument with a bang, saying to Suiza with malevolent finality, “We’ll see whether you’ll be searched or not, my good fellow. Everybody in this house, by order of District Attorney Sampson, is not to stir a foot from the premises until somebody from his office gets here!”
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY PEPPER was a personable young man. Matters proceeded very smoothly indeed from the moment he stepped into the Khalkis house a half-hour after Woodruff’s telephone call. He possessed the gift of making people talk, for he knew the value of flattery—a talent that Woodruff, a poor trial-lawyer, had never acquired. To Woodruff’s surprise, even he himself felt better after a short talk with Pepper. Nobody minded in the least the presence of a moon-faced, cigar-smoking individual who had accompanied Pepper—a detective named Cohalan attached to the District Attorney’s office; for Cohalan, on Pepper’s warning, merely stood in the doorway to the study and smoked his black weed in complete, self-effacing silence.
Woodruff hurried husky Pepper into a corner and the story of the funeral tumbled out. “Now here’s the situation, Pepper. Five minutes before the funeral procession was formed here in the house I went into Khalkis’ bedroom”—he pointed vaguely to another door leading out of the library—“got hold of Khalkis’ key to his steel box, came back in here, opened the safe, opened the steel box, and there it was, staring me in the face. Now then—”
“There what was?”
“Didn’t I tell you? I must be excited.” Pepper did not say that this was self-evident, and Woodruff swabbed his perspiring face. “Khalkis’ new will! The new one, mind you! No question about the fact that it was the new will in the steel box; I picked it up and there was my own seal on the thing. I put it back into the box, locked the box, locked the safe, left the room. …”
“Just a moment, Mr. Woodruff.” From policy Pepper always addressed men from whom he desired information as “Mister.” “Did any one else have a key to the box?”
“Absolutely not, Pepper, absolutely not! That key is the only one to the box, as Khalkis told me himself not long ago; and I found it in Khalkis’ clothes in his bedroom, and after I locked the box and the safe, I put the key into my own pocket. On my own key-ring, in fact. Still have it.” Woodruff fumbled in his hip-pocket and produced a key-wallet; his fingers were trembling as he selected a small key, detached it, and handed it to Pepper. “I’ll swear that it’s been in my pocket all the time. Why, nobody could have stolen it from me!” Pepper nodded gravely. “There was hardly any time. Right after I left the library, the business of the procession came up, and then we had the funeral. When I got back instinct or something, I guess, made me come in here again, open the safe—and, by God, the box with the will in it was gone!”
Pepper clucked sympathetically. “Any idea who took it?”
“Idea?” Woodruff glared about the room. “I’ve got plenty of ideas, but no proof! Now get this, Pepper. Here’s the situation. Number one: every one who was in the house at the time I saw the will in the box is still here; nobody permanently left the house. Number two: all those in the funeral party left the house in a group, went in a group through the court to the graveyard, were accounted for all the time they were there, and had no contact with outsiders except the handful of people they met at the grave. Number three: when the original party returned to the house, even these outsiders returned with them, and they’re also still here.”
Pepper’s eyes were gleaming. “Damned interesting setup. In other words, if some one of the original party had stolen the will, and passed it to one of these outsiders, it will do him no good, because a search of the outsiders will disclose it if it wasn’t hidden somewhere along the route or in the graveyard. Very interesting, Mr. Woodruff. Now who were these outsiders, as you call them?”
Woodruff pointed to the little old lady in the antiquated black bonnet. “There’s one of them. A Mrs. Susan Morse, crazy old loon who lives in one of the six houses surrounding the court. She’s a neighbor.” Pepper nodded, and Woodruff pointed out the sexton, standing trembling behind Reverend Elder. “Then there was Honeywell, the shrinking little fellow—sexton of the church next door; and those two workingmen next to him, the gravediggers, are employees of that fellow over there—Sturgess the undertaker. Now, point number four: while we were in the graveyard, no one entered the house or went out—I established that from some reporters who’ve been hanging about outside. And I myself locked the doors after that, so no one has been able to go out or come in since.”
“You’re making it tougher, Mr. Woodruff,” said Pepper, when an angry voice exploded behind them, and he turned to find young Alan Cheney, more flushed than ever, brandishing a forefinger at Woodruff.
“Who’s this?” asked Pepper.
Alan was crying, “Look here, Off’cer, don’t believe him. He didn’t ask the reporters! Joan Brett did—Miss Brett over here did. Di’n’t you, Joanie?”
Joan had what might be termed the basis for a chilly expression—a tall slender English body, a haughty chin, a pair of very clear blue eyes and a nose susceptible of tilting movement. She looked through young Cheney in the general direction of Pepper and said with icy, chiming distinctness, “You’re potted again, Mr. Cheney. And please don’t call me ‘Joanie’. I detest it.”
Alan stared blearily at an interesting shoulder. Woodruff said to Pepper, “He’s drunk again, you see—that’s Alan Cheney, Khalkis’ nephew, and—”
Pepper said, “Excuse me,” and walked after Joan. She faced him a little defiantly. “Was it you who thought of asking the reporters, Miss Brett?”
“Indeed it was!” Then two little pink spots appeared in her cheeks. “Of course, Mr. Cheney thought of it, too; we went together, and Mr. Woodruff followed us. It’s remarkable that that drunken young sot had the manliness to give a lady credit for …”
“Yes, of course.” Pepper smiled—he had a winning smile with the fair sex. “And you are, Miss Brett—?”
“I was Mr. Khalkis’ secretary.”
“Thank you so much.” Pepper returned to a wilted Woodruff. “Now, Mr. Woodruff, you were going to tell me—”
“Just going over the whole ground for you, Pepper, that’s all.” Woodruff cleared his throat. “I was going to say that the only two people in the house during the funeral were Mrs. Simms, the housekeeper, who collapsed at Khalkis’ death and has been confined to her room ever since; and the butler Weekes. Now Weekes—this is the unbelievable part of it—Weekes was in the library all the time we were gone. And he swears that no one came in. He had the safe under observation all the time.”
“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Pepper briskly. “If Weekes is to be believed, we can now begin to limit the probable time of the theft a bit. It must have occurred during the five minutes between the time you looked at the will and the time the funeral party left the house. Sounds simple enough.”
“Simple?” Woodruff was not quite certain.
“Sure. Cohalan, come here.” The detective slouched across the room, followed by eyes that were chiefly blank. “Get this. We’re looking for a stolen will. It must be in one of four places. It’s either hidden in the house here; or it’s on the person of some one now in the house; or it’s been dropped somewhere along the private court route; or it will be found in the graveyard itself. We’ll eliminate them one by one. Hold up a sec while I get the Chief on the wire.”
He dialed the number of the District Attorney’s office, spoke briefly to District Attorney Sampson, and returned rubbing his hands. “The D.A. is sending police assistance. After all, we’re investigating a felony. Mr. Woodruff, you’re appointed a committee of one to hold all persons in this room while Cohalan and I go over the courtyard and graveyard. One moment, please, everybody!” They gaped at him: a stupefaction of indecision, of mystery, of bewilderment had crept over them. “Mr. Woodruff is going to stay here in charge and you’ll please cooperate with him. Don’t leave this room, any one.” He and Cohalan strode out of the room.
Fifteen minutes later they returned, empty-handed, to find four newcomers in the library. They were Sergeant Thomas Velie, black-browed giant attached to Inspector Queen’s staff; two of Velie’s men, Flint and Johnson; and a broad and ample police matron. Pepper and Velie held earnest colloquy in a corner, Velie noncommittal and cold as usual, while the others sat apathetically waiting.
“Covered the court and graveyard, have you?” growled Velie.
“Yes, but it might be a good idea if you and your men go over the ground again,” said Pepper. “Just to make sure.”
Velie rumbled something to his two men, and Flint and Johnson went away. Velie, Pepper and Cohalan began a systematic search of the house. They launched the search from the room they were in, Khalkis’ study, and worked through to the dead man’s bedroom and bathroom, and Demmy’s bedroom beyond. They returned and Velie, without explanation, went over the study again. He ferreted about in the safe, in the drawers of the dead man’s desk on which the telephones stood, through the books and bookshelves lining the walls. … Nothing escaped his attention, not even a small taboret standing in an alcove, on which were a percolator and various tea-things; with utter gravity Velie removed the tight lid of the percolator and peered inside. Grunting, he led the way out of the library into the hall, from which they spread to search the drawing-room, the dining-room, and the kitchens, closets and pantry to the rear. The sergeant examined with particular care the dismantled trappings furnished for the funeral by Undertaker Sturgess; but he discovered nothing. They mounted the stairs and swept through the bedrooms like Visigoths, avoiding only Mrs. Simms’ sanctuary; then they climbed to the attic and raised clouds of dust rummaging through old bureaus and trunks.
“Cohalan,” said Velie, “tackle the basement.” Cohalan sucked sadly at his cigar, which had gone out, and trudged downstairs.
“Well, Sergeant,” said Pepper as the two men leaned, puffing, against a bare attic wall, “it looks as if we’ll have to do the dirty work at that. Damn it, I didn’t want to have to search those people.”
“After this muck,” said Velie, looking down at his dusty fingers, “that’ll be a real pleasure.”
They went downstairs. Flint and Johnson joined them. “Any luck, boys?” growled Velie.
Johnson, a small drab-looking creature with dirty-grey hair, stroked his nose and said, “Nothing doin’. To make it worse, we got hold of a wench—maid or somethin’—in a house on the other side of the court. Said she was watchin’ the funeral through a back window, and she’s been snoopin’ there ever since. Well, Sarge, this jane says that with the exception of two men—Mr. Pepper and Cohalan, I guess—nobody’s come out of the back of this house since the funeral party returned from the graveyard. Nobody’s come out of the back of any house on the court.”
“How about the graveyard itself?”
“No luck there either,” said Flint. “Gang of newspaper leg-men’ve been hanging around outside the iron fence on the Fifty-fourth Street side of the graveyard. They say there hasn’t been a damn soul in the graveyard since the funeral.”
“Well, Cohalan?”
Cohalan had succeeded in relighting his cigar, and he wore a happier expression. He shook his moon-face vigorously. Velie muttered, “Well, I don’t see what there is to laugh about, you dumb ox,” and strode into the center of the room. He raised his head and, quite like a parade-sergeant, roared, “’Tention!”
They sat up, brightening, some of the weariness fleeing their faces. Alan Cheney crouched in a corner, head between his hands, rocking himself gently. Mrs. Sloane had long since dabbed away the last decorous tear; even Reverend Elder wore an expectant expression. Joan Brett stared at Sergeant Velie with anxious eyes.
“Now get this,” said Velie in a hard voice. “I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, y’understand, but there’s a job to be done and I’m going to do it. I’m going to have every one in this house searched—down to the skin, if necessary. That will that was stolen can be in only one place—on the person of somebody right here. If you’re wise, you’ll take it like sports. Cohalan, Flint, Johnson—tackle the men. Matron,” he turned to the brawny policewoman, “you take the ladies into the drawing-room, close the doors and get busy. And don’t forget! If you don’t find it on one of ’em, tackle the housekeeper and her room upstairs.”
The study erupted in little conversations, assorted comments, half-hearted protests. Woodruff twiddled his thumbs before the desk and eyed Nacio Suiza benevolently; Suiza thereupon grinned and offered himself to Cohalan as the first victim. The women straggled out of the room; and Velie snatched one of the telephones. “Police Headquarters … Gimme Johnny … Johnny? Get Edmund Crewe down to Eleven East Fifty-fourth right away. Rush job. Snap into it.” He leaned against the desk and watched frostily, Pepper and Woodruff by his side, as the three detectives took the men one by one and explored each male body with a thoroughness and impersonality that was shameless. Velie moved suddenly; Reverend Elder, quite uncomplaining, was due to be the next victim. “Reverend … Here, Flint, none o’ that! I’ll waive a search in your case, Reverend.”
“You will do nothing of the kind, Sergeant,” replied the minister. “According to your lights I am as much a possibility as any of the others.” He smiled as he saw the indecision on Velie’s hard face. “Very well. I’ll search myself, Sergeant, in your presence.” Velie’s scruple at laying irreverent hands on the cloth did not prevent him from watching with keen eyes as the pastor turned out all his pockets, loosened his clothes and forced Flint to pass his hands over his body.
The matron trudged back with a laconic grunt of negation. The women—Mrs. Sloane, Mrs. Morse, Mrs. Vreeland and Joan—were all flushed; they avoided the eyes of the men. “The fat dame upstairs—housekeeper?—she’s okay too,” said the matron.
There was silence. Velie and Pepper faced each other gloomily; Velie, confronted by an impossibility, was growing angry and Pepper, behind his bright inquisitive eyes, was thinking hard. “There’s something screwy somewhere,” said Velie in an ugly voice. “You’re dead sure, matron?”
The woman merely sniffed.
Pepper grasped Velie’s coat-lapel. “Look here, Sergeant,” he said softly. “There’s something vitally wrong here, as you say, but we can’t butt our heads against a stone wall. It’s possible that there’s a secret closet or something in the house that we didn’t find. Crewe, your architectural expert, will certainly locate it if it exists. After all, we’ve done the best we can, all we can. And we can’t keep these people here forever, especially those who don’t live in the house. …”
Velie scuffed the rug viciously. “Hell, the Inspector’ll murder me for this.”
Things happened swiftly. He stepped back, and Pepper politely suggested that the outsiders were free to leave, while those who lived, in the house were not to quit the premises without official permission and without being searched thoroughly each time. Velie crooked his finger at the matron and Flint, who was a muscular young man, and led the way out into the hall and to the foyer, where he grimly took his stand by the front door. Mrs. Morse uttered a little squeal of terror as she shuffled toward him. “Search this lady again, matron,” growled Velie. … The Reverend Elder he favored with a bleak smile; but Honeywell the sexton he examined himself. Meanwhile Flint was again searching Undertaker Sturgess, his two assistants, and a bored Nacio Suiza.
As in all former searches, the result was empty air.
Velie stamped back to the library after the outsiders left, stationing Flint on guard outside the house, where he could watch both the front door and the front basement door below the stone steps. Johnson he dispatched to the back door at the top of a flight of wooden steps leading down into the court; Cohalan he sent to the rear door level with the court, which led out of the rear of the basement. Pepper was engaged in earnest conversation with Joan Brett. Cheney, a much chastened young man, rumpled his hair and scowled at Pepper’s back. Velie swung a horny finger at Woodruff.
EDMUND CREWE WAS SO perfectly the picture of the absent-minded professor that Joan Brett only with difficulty repressed an alarming impulse to laugh aloud in his horsy lugubrious face, pinched nose and lusterless eyes. Mr. Crewe, however, began to speak, and the impulse died aborning.
“Owner of the house?” His voice was like a wireless spark, pungent and crackling.
“He’s the guy that kicked off,” said Velie.
“Perhaps,” said Joan, a little abashed, “I can be of service.”
“How old’s the house?”
“Why, I—I don’t know.”
“Step aside, then. Who does?”
Mrs. Sloane blew her nose daintily in a tiny scrap of lace. “It’s—oh, eighty years old if it’s a day.”
“It’s been remodeled,” said Alan eagerly. “Sure. Remodeled. Loads of times. Uncle told me.”
“Not specific enough.” Crewe was annoyed. “Are the plans still in existence?”
They looked doubtfully at each other.
“Well,” snapped Crewe, “does anybody know anything?”
No one, it seemed, knew anything. That is, until Joan, pursing two excellent lips, murmured, “Oh, wait a moment. Is it blueprints and things you want?”
“Come, come, young woman. Where are they?”
“I think …” said Joan thoughtfully. She nodded like a very pretty bird and went to the dead man’s desk. Pepper chuckled appreciatively when she rummaged through the lowest drawer and emerged finally with a battered old cardboard filing-case bursting with yellowed papers. “An old paid-bill file,” she said. “I think …” She thought clearly, for in no time at all she found a white slip of paper with a folded set of blueprints pinned to it. “Is this what you want?”
Crewe snatched the sheaf from her hand, stalked to the desk and proceeded to burrow his pinched nose into the blueprints. He nodded from time to time, then suddenly rose and without explanation left the room, the plans in his hand.
Apathy settled again, like a palling mist.
“Something you ought to know, Pepper.” Velie drew Pepper aside and grasped Woodruff’s arm with what he considered gentleness. Woodruff whitened. “Now, listen, Mr. Woodruff. The will’s been grabbed off by somebody. There’s got to be a reason. You say it was a new will. Well, who lost what by it?”
“Well—”
“On the other hand,” said Pepper thoughtfully, “I can’t see that the situation, aside from its criminal implications, is very serious. We can always establish intention of testator from your office copy of the new will, Mr. Woodruff.”
“The hell you can,” said Woodruff. He snorted. “The hell you can. Listen.” He drew them closer to him, looking around cautiously. “We can’t establish the old man’s intention! That’s the funny part of it. Now get this. Khalkis’ old will was in force up to last Friday morning. The provisions of the old will were simple: Gilbert Sloane was to inherit the Khalkis Galleries, which includes the art-and-curio business as well as the private art-gallery. There were two trust-funds mentioned—one for Khalkis’ nephew Cheney and one for his cousin Demmy, that half-witted yokel over there. The house and personal effects were bequeathed to his sister, Mrs. Sloane. Then there were the usual things—cash bequests to Mrs. Simms and Weekes, to various employees, a detailed disposition of art-objects to museums and so on.”
“Who was named executor?” asked Pepper.
“James J. Knox.”
Pepper whistled and Velie looked bored. “You mean Knox the multi-millionaire? The art-bug?”
“That’s the one. He was Khalkis’ best customer, and I would say something of a friend, too, considering the fact that Khalkis named him executor of his estate.”
“One hell of a friend,” said Velie. “Why wasn’t he at the funeral to-day?”
“My dear Sergeant,” said Woodruff, opening his eyes, “don’t you read the papers? Mr. Knox is a somebody. He was notified of Khalkis’ death and intended to come to the funeral, but at the last minute he was called to Washington. This morning, in fact. Papers said it was at the personal request of the President—something to do with Federal finance.”
“When’s he get back?” demanded Velie truculently.
“No one seems to know.”
“Well, that’s unimportant,” said Pepper. “Now how about the new will?”
“The new will. Yes.” Woodruff looked very cunning. “And here is the mysterious part of it. Last Thursday night, about midnight, I got a telephone call from Khalkis. He told me to bring him on Friday morning—the next morning—the complete draft of a new will. Now get this: the new will was to be an exact duplicate of the existent will except for one change: I was to omit the name of Gilbert Sloane as beneficiary of the Khalkis Galleries and leave the space blank for the insertion of a new name.”
“Sloane, eh?” Pepper and Velie studied the man surreptitiously. He was standing like a pouter pigeon behind Mrs. Sloane’s chair staring glassily into space, and one of his hands was trembling. “Go on, Mr. Woodruff.”
“Well, I had the new will drawn up first thing Friday morning and chased over here with it considerably before noon. I found Khalkis alone. He was always a pretty rocky sort of codger—cold and hard and businesslike as you please—but that morning he was upset about something. Anyway, he made it plain right away that nobody, not even your humble servant, was to know the name of the new beneficiary of his Galleries. I fixed up the will in front of him so that he’d fill in the blank space conveniently—he made me cross over and stand on the other side of the room, mind you!—and then he scribbled a name, I suppose, in the space. He blotted it himself, closed the page quickly, had Miss Brett, Weekes and Mrs. Simms witness his signature, signed the will, sealed it with my assistance, and put it into the small steel box he kept in his safe, locking the box and the safe himself. And there you are—not a soul but Khalkis himself knew who the new beneficiary was!”
They chewed upon that. Then Pepper asked: “Who knew the provisions of the old will?”
“Everybody. It was common gossip about the house. Khalkis himself didn’t make any bones about it. As for the new will, Khalkis hadn’t specifically made a point of keeping quiet about the fact that he was making a new testament, and I didn’t see any reason to hush it up. Naturally, the three witnesses knew it, and I suppose they spread the word around the house.”
“The Sloane guy know it?” rasped Velie.
Woodruff nodded. “I should say he did! In fact, that afternoon he called at my office—evidently he’d already heard that Khalkis had signed a new will—and wanted to know if the change affected him in any way. Well, I told him that somebody was taking his place, who exactly nobody knew but Khalkis himself, and he—”
Pepper’s eyes flashed. “Damn it all, Mr. Woodruff, you had no right to do that!”
Woodruff said weakly: “Well, now, Pepper, maybe it wasn’t the … But you see, I figured that maybe Mrs. Sloane was the new beneficiary, and in that case Sloane would get the Galleries through her, so he wouldn’t be losing anything anyway.”
“Oh, come now,” said Pepper with a snap in his voice, “it was an unethical thing to do. Ill-advised. Well, no use crying over spilt milk. When you looked at the new will in the box five minutes before the funeral, did you find out then who the new beneficiary was?”
“No. I didn’t mean to open the will until after the funeral.”
“You’re sure it was the authentic document?”
“Positive.”
“Did the new will have a revocation clause?”
“It did.”
“What’s that?” growled Velie suspiciously. “What’s that mean?”