Egyptian Cross Mystery (28 page)

“Nothing, Inspector?”

“Not a damned thing!”

Helene Brad came out of the house, cool as a spring cloud in her white organdie dress. She murmured a good morning and, descending the steps, turned into the westerly path.

“I’ve just been giving the old oil to the newspapermen,” growled Vaughn. “Progress. Improvement. This case’ll die of improvements, Mr. Queen. Where the hell is Krosac?”

“A rhetorical question.” Ellery frowned over his cigarette. “Frankly, I’m puzzled. Has he given up? It doesn’t seem possible. A madman never gives up. Then why is he marking time? Waiting for us to retreat, to give up the case as a bad job?”

“You tell
me.”
Vaughn muttered to himself, and then added, “I’ll stay here, by God, till Doomsday.”

They lapsed into silence. In the garden circled by the driveway moved the tall figure of Fox, clad in corduroys, accompanied by the rattle of a lawn mower.

The Inspector sat up suddenly and Ellery, smoking with his eyes half-shut, started. The rattle had stopped. Fox was standing as still as a scouting brave, head cocked toward the west. Then he dropped the mower and broke into a run, vaulting a bed of flowers. He ran toward the west.

They jumped up, and the Inspector shouted: “Fox! What’s the matter?”

The man did not halt his leaping strides. He gestured toward the trees and yelled something which they could not make out.

Then they heard it. A faint scream. It came from somewhere on the Lynn estate.

“Helene Brad!” cried Vaughn. “Come on.”

When they burst into the clearing before the Lynn house they found Fox before them, kneeling on the grass and holding on his knee the head of a recumbent man. Helene, her face as white as her frock, stood over them clutching her breast.

“What’s happened?” panted Vaughn. “Why, it’s Temple!”

“He—I thought he was dead,” quavered Helene.

Dr. Temple lay limply, eyes closed, his dark face ashen. There was a deep welt on his forehead.

“Bad knock, Inspector,” said Fox gravely. “I can’t bring him to.”

“Let’s get him into the house,” snapped the Inspector. “Fox, you phone for a doctor. Here, Mr. Queen, help me lift him.”

Fox sprang to his feet and hurried up the stone steps of the Lynn house. Ellery and Vaughn raised the still figure gently and followed.

They entered a charming living room—a living room which once had been charming, but which now looked as if vandals had swept through it. Two chairs were overturned, the drawers of a secretary protruded from their slots, a clock had been upset and its glass smashed. … Helene hurried away as they deposited the unconscious man on a settee, and returned a moment later with a basin of water.

Fox was telephoning frantically. “Can’t get Dr. Marsh, the nearest doctor,” he said. “I’ll try—”

“Wait a minute,” said Vaughn. “I think he’s coming to.”

Helene bathed Dr. Temple’s forehead, dripped water between his lips. He groaned, and his eyes fluttered; he groaned again, his arms quivered, and he made a weak attempt to sit up.

He gasped: “I—”

“Don’t try to talk yet,” said Helene softly. “Just lie down and rest a moment.” Dr. Temple slumped back and closed his eyes, sighing.

“Well,” said the Inspector, “this is a nice how-d’ye-do. Where the devil are the Lynns?”

“From the appearance of this room,” said Ellery dryly, “I should say they’ve skipped.”

Vaughn strode through the doorway into the next room. Ellery stood and watched Helene stroke Dr. Temple’s cheeks; he heard the Inspector stalking about the rest of the house. Fox went to the front door and hesitated there.

Vaughn came back. He went to the telephone and called the Brad house. “Stallings? Inspector Vaughn. Get one of my men to the phone right away. … Bill? Listen. The Lynns have taken it on the lam. You’ve got their description. Charge—assault and battery. Get busy. I’ll give you more facts later.”

He jiggled the hook. “Get me District Attorney Isham’s office in Mineola. … Isham? Vaughn. Start the ball rolling. Lynns skipped out.”

He hung up and strode over to the settee. Dr. Temple opened his eyes and grinned feebly. “All right, now, Temple?”

“Gad, what a whack! I’m lucky he didn’t crack my skull.”

Helene said: “I walked over here to pay a morning visit to the Lynns.” Her voice trembled. “I really can’t understand it. When I got here I saw Dr. Temple lying on the ground.”

“What time is it?” asked the physician, sitting up with a start.

“Ten-thirty.”

He sank back. “Out for two and a half hours. It doesn’t seem possible. I remember coming to a long time ago, and I crawled toward the house—tried to, anyway. But I must have fainted.”

As Inspector Vaughn went to the telephone again to transmit this item to his lieutenant, Ellery said: “You crawled? Then you weren’t struck at the spot at which we found you?”

“I don’t know where you found me,” groaned Temple, “but if you ask that question—no. It’s a long story.” He waited until Vaughn hung up. “For certain reasons I suspected the Lynns weren’t all they pretended to be. I suspected it the moment I laid eyes on them. Two weeks ago Wednesday night I came up here in the dark and heard them talk. What they said made me believe I was right. Lynn had just come back from burying something. …”

“Burying something!” yelled Vaughn. Ellery’s brows contracted; he looked at the Inspector, and the same thought was behind both men’s eyes. “My God, Temple, why didn’t you tell us this at that time? Do you realize what it was he must have buried?”

“Realize?” Temple stared, and then groaned again as pain stabbed across his bruised forehead. “Why, of course. Do you know, too?”

“Do we know! The head, Brad’s head!”

Dr. Temple’s eyes were mirrors of astonishment. “The head,” he repeated slowly. “I never thought of that … No, I thought it was something else.”

Ellery said swiftly: “What?”

“It was a few years after the war. I’d been released from the Austrian internment camp and was knocking about Europe, getting the feel of free legs again. In Budapest … well, I became acquainted with a certain couple. We were stopping at the same hotel. One of the guests, a German jeweler named Bundelein, was found trussed up in his room, and a valuable consignment of jewels which he was taking back to Berlin was missing. He accused the couple; they had disappeared. … When I saw the Lynns here, I was almost positive they were the same people. Their name at that time was Truxton—Mr. and Mrs. Percy Truxton. … Gad, my head. From the alterations Lynn made in my vision, I could almost qualify as a telescope capable of seeing stars of the fifteenth magnitude!”

“I can’t believe it,” murmured Helene. “Such nice people! They were lovely to me in Rome. Cultured, apparently wealthy, pleasant …”

“If it’s true,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “that the Lynns are what Dr. Temple accuses them of being, then they had good reason to be nice to you, Miss Brad. It would have been child’s play for them to look you up and discover you were the daughter of an American millionaire. And then, if they had pulled a job in Europe …”

“Combine business and pleasure,” snapped the Inspector. “I guess you’re right, Doc. They must have buried some loot. What happened this morning?”

Dr. Temple smiled thinly. “This morning? I’ve been snooping around here at odd times for the past two weeks. … This morning I came over, certain at last that I knew where the stuff was buried, for I’d been searching for it. I went directly to the spot and had begun to dig when I looked up to find the man in front of me. Then the whole world fell on my head and that was the last I knew. I suppose Lynn, or Truxton, or whatever his name is, spied me, realized the game was up, knocked me out, dug up the loot, and beat it with his wife.”

Dr. Temple insisted he was able to walk. With Fox supporting him he staggered out of the house and into the woods, the others following. They found, only thirty feet in the woods, a gaping hole in the grassy earth. It was roughly a foot square.

“No wonder Scotland Yard couldn’t trace ’em,” remarked Vaughn as they made their way back to Bradwood. “Phony names … I’ve got a nice juicy bone to pick with you, Temple. Why in hell didn’t you come to me with your story?”

“Because I was a fool,” said the physician glumly. “I wanted the full glory of the revelation. And then I wasn’t sure—didn’t feel like accusing possibly innocent people. I’d hate to see them get away!”

“No fear of that. We’ll have ’em under lock and key tonight.”

But, as it turned out, Inspector Vaughn was oversanguine. Night came, and the Lynns were still at liberty. No trace whatever was found of them, or of a couple answering to their description.

“Must have split up and disguised themselves,” growled Vaughn. He sent a cable to police offices in Paris, Berlin, Budapest, and Vienna.

Friday came and went, and still no news from the farflung draggers seeking the escaped English couple. Their descriptions were posted, with copies of their passport photographs, on a thousand bulletin boards in sheriffs’ offices and police headquarters throughout the country. The Canadian and Mexican borders were closely watched. But the Lynns proved once again the difficulty of plucking two ants out of the enormous nest of metropolitan America.

“Must have had a hideaway all fixed up for just such an emergency,” said Inspector Vaughn disconsolately. “But we’re bound to get ’em after a while. They can’t hide out forever.”

On Saturday morning three cables arrived from abroad. One was from the Prefect of Police in Paris:

PAIR AS DESCRIBED WANTED BY PARIS POLICE FOR ASSAULT AND ROBBERY IN 1925 KNOWN HERE AS MISTER AND MRS. PERCY STRANG

The second came from Budapest:

A PERCY TRUXTON AND WIFE WANTED BY BUDAPEST POLICE FOR JEWEL THEFT SINCE 1920 FIT YOUR DESCRIPTION

The third, and most informative, came from Vienna:

PAIR ANSWERING DESCRIPTION KNOWN HERE AS PERCY AND BETH ANNIXTER WANTED FOR SWINDLING FRENCH TOURIST OUT OF FIFTY THOUSAND FRANCS AND THEFT OF VALUABLE JEWELRY IN SPRING OF LAST YEAR IF SUCH PAIR HELD BY AMERICAN POLICE DESIRE IMMEDIATE EXTRADITION BOOTY NEVER RECOVERED

“There followed a detailed description of the stolen jewels.

“There’s going to be a sweet international tangle when we lay hands on ’em,” muttered the Inspector as he, Ellery, and Professor Yardley sat on the Bradwood porch. “Wanted by France, Hungary, and Austria.”

“Perhaps the World Court will call a special session,” remarked Ellery.

The Professor made a face. “Sometimes you annoy me. Why can’t you be precise? It’s the Permanent Court of International Justice, and such a session would be termed ‘extraordinary,’ not special.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Ellery, rolling his eyes.

“Guess Budapest has first sock,” said Vaughn. “Nineteen-twenty.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” ventured the Professor, “if Scotland Yard wants them, too.”

“Not likely. They’re a thorough bunch. If they didn’t recognize the description, you can bet your last bib that there’s no criminal record against them in London.”

“If they really are British,” said Ellery, “they’d have kept away from England. Although the man might very well have been Central European in origin. An Oxford accent is one of the most easily acquired of elegances.”

“One thing is sure,” said the Inspector. “That swag they buried was the ice and the dough from the Vienna job. I’ll send the alarm out to the Jewelers’ Association and the regular channels. But it’s a waste of time. It isn’t likely they’re well enough acquainted with American fences; and they won’t dare go near legitimate dealers unless they’re short of cash.”

“I wonder,” murmured Ellery with a faraway look in his eyes, “why your correspondent in Yugoslavia hasn’t answered?”

There was an excellent reason, it turned out later in the day, for the tardiness of Inspector Vaughn’s Yugoslavian colleague. They were examining reports on the progress of the Lynn search as they came in by telegraph and telephone every few minutes.

A detective galloped up waving an envelope. “Cable, Chief!”

“Ah,” said Vaughn, snatching the message, “now we’ll know.”

But the cable, which came from Belgrade, capital of Yugoslavia, sent by the Minister of Police, merely said:

EXCUSE DELAY REPORT ON TVAR BROTHERS AND VELJA KROSAC DUE TO OFFICIAL DISAPPEARANCE OF MONTENEGRO AS SEPARATE NATION MONTENEGRIN RECORDS DIFFICULT TO LOCATE ESPECIALLY OF TWENTY YEARS AGO NO QUESTION AS TO AUTHENTICITY OF BOTH FAMILIES HOWEVER AND EXISTENCE OF BLOOD FEUD OUR AGENTS WORKING ON CASE AND WILL CABLE REPORT OF SUCCESS OR FAILURE WITHIN FORTNIGHT

S
UNDAY, MONDAY … IT WAS
remarkable how little was accomplished, how tiny was the store of genuine facts they had been able to save from the wreckage of the murders. The Inspector, Ellery felt sure, would succumb to apoplexy as the ubiquitous British evaders of the law continued at large. And always the same question arose to plague their dreary conferences, their desperate discussions of ways and means: Where was Krosac? Or, if in his amazing way he was one of the chief actors in the drama, who was he and why did he delay? His vengeance was incomplete; that he had been swayed by fear of apprehension or the constant presence of the police from attempting the lives of the two remaining Tvar brothers was incredible, considering the nature of his crimes.

“Our defense of Andreja,” said Ellery sadly on Monday evening to the Professor, “has been too perfect. The only explanation I can offer for Krosac’s continued inactivity is that he still doesn’t know where—and in what guise—Van is. We’ve fooled him—”

“And ourselves,” remarked Yardley. “I’m becoming the least bit bored, Queen. If this is the exciting life of a man-hunter, I’m content to track down the source of a historical fact for the rest of my sedentary days. I invite you to join me. You’ll find it infinitely more turbulent than this. Did I ever tell you how Boussard, the French army officer, found that famous basaltic stele in Lower Egypt which has meant so much to Egyptologists—the Rosetta Stone? And how for thirty-two years, until Champollion came along to decipher its triple message of the reign of Ptolemy V, it remained—?”