Egyptian Cross Mystery (6 page)

“Bradwood this way?” yelled Ellery.

“Yeah, but you ain’t goin’ there,” replied the trooper grimly. “Turn around, mister, and step on it.”

“Inspector Vaughn and District Attorney Isham are expecting me,” said Ellery with a grin.

“Oh! You’re Mr. Queen? Sorry, sir. Go ahead.”

Vindicated and triumphant, Ellery shot forward and five minutes later drew up in the highway between two estates—one, from the cluster of official cars in its driveway, obviously Bradwood, where the murder had been committed; the other, by inference, since it was across the road, the dwelling of his friend and former instructor, Professor Yardley.

The Professor himself, a tall, rangy, ugly man bearing a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, hurried forward and grasped Ellery’s hand as he jumped out of the Duesenberg.

“Queen! It’s good seeing you again.”

“And you, Professor. Lord, it’s been years! What are you doing here on Long Island? Last I heard of you, you were still living on the campus, torturing sophomores.”

The Professor grinned in his short black beard. “I rented that Taj Mahal across the road”—Ellery turned and saw spires and a Byzantine dome peeping above the trees where Professor Yardley’s thumb pointed—“from a crazy friend of mine. He built that atrocity himself when he was bitten by the Oriental bug. He’s gone on a prowl through Asia Minor, and I’m working here this summer. I wanted a little quiet to do my long-deferred opus on Sources of the Atlantean Legend. You recall the Platonic references?”

“I recall,” smiled Ellery, “Bacon’s
New Atlantis,
but then my interests were always literary rather than scientific.”

Yardley grunted. “The same fresh youngster, I see. … Quiet! Well, this is what I ran into.”

“How on earth did you happen to think of me?”

They strode along the cluttered driveway of Bradwood toward a large colonial house, its vast pillars gleaming in the noon sun.

“The long arm of coincidence,” said the Professor dryly. “I’ve followed your career with interest, naturally. And since I’m always fascinated by your exploits, I read quite avidly the accounts five or six months ago of that extraordinary murder in West Virginia.”

Ellery took in the scene before replying. Bradwood was meticulously landscaped, the estate of a wealthy man. “I might have known nothing would escape the eyes that have examined thousands of papyri and stelai. So you read that highly romanticized version of my little sojourn in Arroyo?”

“I did. And your highly romanticized lack of accomplishment.” The Professor chuckled. “At the same time, I was gratified by your application of the fundamental I tried to drive into your stubborn head—always go to the source. Egyptian cross, my boy? I’m afraid your sense of theater strangled the purely scientific truth. … Well, here we are.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Ellery with an anxious frown. “The
tau
cross was certainly a primitive Egyptian—”

“I’ll discuss it with you later. I suppose you want to meet Isham. He’s been kind enough to let me potter around.”

District Attorney Isham of Nassau County, a stubby man of middle age with watery blue eyes and a horseshoe fringe of gray on his head, was standing on the steps of the long colonial porch engaged in heated conversation with a tall powerful man in civilian clothes.

“Er—Mr. Isham,” said Professor Yardley. “Here’s my protégé, Ellery Queen.”

The two men turned quickly. “Oh, yes,” said Isham, as if he were thinking of other things. “Glad you came, Mr. Queen. I don’t know what you can do to help, but—” He shrugged. “Meet Inspector Vaughn of the Nassau County police.”

Ellery shook hands with both of them. “You’ll permit me to wander about? I promise not to get under your feet.”

Inspector Vaughn displayed brown teeth. “We need somebody to get under our feet. We’re just standing still, Mr. Queen. Like to see the main exhibit?”

“I suppose it’s customary. Come along, Professor.”

The four men descended the steps of the porch and began to walk along a gravel path around the eastern ell of the house. Ellery experienced a sense of the vastness of the estate. The main house, he now saw, was situated halfway between the private highway where he had left his Duesenberg and the waters of a cove, whose sun-painted ripples were visible from the elevation of the main house. This body of water, District Attorney Isham explained, was a tributary of Long Island Sound; it was called Ketcham’s Cove. Beyond the waters of the Cove could be seen the woody silhouette of a small island. Oyster Island, remarked the Professor; housing as queer a collection of …

Ellery looked at him inquiringly, but Isham said: “We’ll get to that,” testily, and Yardley shrugged and refrained from further interruption.

The gravel walk led gradually away from the house, and massed trees enclosed them not thirty feet from the colonial structure. A hundred feet farther, and they came suddenly upon a clearing, in the center of which stood a grotesque object.

They stopped short, and ceased talking, as people do in the presence of violent death. Around the object were county troopers and detectives, but Ellery had eyes only for the object itself.

It was a thick carved post nine feet high which once, to judge from what remained, had been garishly colored, but now was faded and stained and battered, as if it had gone through centuries of weathering. The carving, a conglomeration of gargoyle masks and hybrid animal symbols, culminated at the top in the crudely hewn figure of an eagle with lowered beak and outstretched wings. The wings were rather flat, and Ellery was struck at once with the fact that the post with its outflung wings at the top was very like a capital T.

The decapitated body of a man hung on the post, arms lashed to the wings with heavy rope, legs similarly lashed to the upright about three feet from the earth. The sharp wooden beak of the eagle hovered an inch above the bloody hole where the man’s head had been. There was something pathetic as well as horrible in the hideous sight; the mutilated corpse emanated a helplessness, the pitiful impotence of a beheaded rag doll.

“Well,” said Ellery with a shaky giggle, “quite a sight, eh?”

“Shocking,” muttered Isham. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It makes your blood curdle.” He shivered. “Come on; let’s get this over with.”

They drew nearer the post. Ellery noticed that some yards away, in the clearing, there was a small thatched summer-house, in the entrance to which a trooper stood. Then he returned his attention to the corpse. It was that of a middle-aged man; there was a heavy paunch, and the hands were gnarled and old. The body was clothed in gray flannel trousers and a silk shirt open at the neck, white shoes, white socks, and a velveteen smoking jacket. From neck to toes the body was a gory mess, as if it had been washed in a vat of blood.

“A totem pole, isn’t it?” Ellery asked Professor Yardley, as they passed beneath the body.

“Totem post,” said Yardley severely. “Much the preferred term … Yes. I’m not an authority on totemism, but this relic is either very primitive North American, or a clever fake. I’ve never seen one quite like it. The eagle would signify Eagle Clan.”

“I suppose the body has been identified?”

“Sure,” said Inspector Vaughn. “You’re looking at all that’s left of Thomas Brad, owner of Bradwood, millionaire rug importer.”

“But the body hasn’t been cut down,” said Ellery patiently. “So how can you be certain?”

District Attorney Isham looked startled. “Oh, it’s Brad’s, all right. Clothing checked up, and you couldn’t very well disguise that belly, could you?”

“I suppose not. Who discovered the body?”

Inspector Vaughn told the story. “It was found at half-past seven this morning by one of Brad’s servants, a sort of combination chauffeur and gardener, chap by the name of Fox. Fox lives in a hut on the other side of the house, in the woods; and when he came up to the main building this morning as usual to get the car—garage is at the back of the house—for Jonah Lincoln, one of the people who live here, he found that Lincoln wasn’t ready and went around this end to look at some of the flowers. Anyway, this is what he ran up against. Gave him quite a turn, he says.”

“I imagine it would,” remarked Professor Yardley, who betrayed a surprising lack of squeamishness himself; he was examining the totem post and its grisly burden with thoughtful impersonality, as if it were a rare historic object.

“Well,” continued Inspector Vaughn, “he took hold of himself and ran back to the house. Usual stuff—roused the household. Nobody touched anything. Lincoln, who’s a nervous but levelheaded fellow, took charge until we came.”

“And who is Lincoln?” asked Ellery pleasantly.

“General Manager of Brad’s business. Brad & Megara, you know,” explained Isham, “the big rug importers. Lincoln lives here. Brad liked him a lot, I understand.”

“An embryonic rug magnate, eh? And Megara—does he live here, too?”

Isham shrugged. “When he’s not traveling. He’s off on a cruise somewhere; he’s been away for months. Brad was the active partner.”

“I take it, then, that Mr. Megara, the traveler, was responsible for the totem pole—or post, in deference to the Professor. Not that it matters.”

A cold little man sauntered up the path toward them, carrying a black bag.

“Here’s Doc Rumsen,” said Isham with a sigh of relief. “Medical Examiner of Nassau County. Hi, Doc, take a look at this!”

“I’m looking,” said Dr. Rumsen in a nasty tone. “What is this—the Chicago stockyards?”

Ellery scrutinized the body. It seemed very stiff. Dr. Rumsen looked up at it professionally, sniffed, and said: “Well, get it down, get it down. Do you expect me to climb the pole and examine it up there?”

Inspector Vaughn motioned to two detectives, and they jumped forward unclasping knives. One of them disappeared in the summerhouse, returning a moment later with a rustic chair. He placed it beside the totem post, climbed to the seat, and raised his knife.

“Want me to cut it, Chief?” he asked before bringing the blade down on the lashings of the right arm. “Maybe you’d rather have the rope in one piece. I think I can untie the knot.”

“You cut it,” said the Inspector sharply. “I want to take a look at that knot. Might be a clue there.”

Others came forward, and the depressing business of taking the body down was accomplished in silence.

“By the way,” remarked Ellery, as they stood about watching the proceedings, “how did the murderer manage to get the body up there, and then lash the wrist to the wings nine feet above ground?”

“The same way the detective’s doing it now,” replied the District Attorney dryly. “We found a blood-stained chair, like the one he’s using, in the summerhouse. Either there were two of ’em, or the fellow who pulled this job was a husky. Must have been quite a job heaving a dead body up to that position, even with a chair.”

“You found the chair where?” asked Ellery thoughtfully. “In the summerhouse?”

“Yes. He must have put it back there after he was through with it. There are plenty of other things in the summerhouse, Mr. Queen, that’ll bear looking into.”

“There’s something else that might interest you,” said Inspector Vaughn, as the body was finally freed from its lashings and deposited on the grass. “This.”

He took a small circular red object from his pocket and handed it to Ellery. It was a red wooden checker.

“Hmm,” said Ellery. “Prosaic enough. Where did you find this, Inspector?”

“In the gravel of the clearing here,” replied Vaughn. “A few feet from the right side of the pole.”

“What makes you think it’s important?” Ellery turned the piece over in his fingers.

Vaughn smiled. This is the way we found it. It hasn’t lain here very long, for one thing, as you can see by its condition. And on that clean gray gravel a red object would stand out like a sore thumb. These grounds are gone over by Fox with a finecomb each day; it’s not likely, then, that it was here in the daytime—Fox says it wasn’t, anyway. I’d say offhand that it has something to do with the events of last night; in the darkness it wouldn’t be seen.”

“Excellent, Inspector!” smiled Ellery. “A man after my own heart.” He returned the checker just as Dr. Rumsen ripped out a string of lurid oaths wholly unprofessional.

“What’s the matter?” asked Isham, hurrying over. “Did you find something?”

“The queerest damn’ thing
I
ever saw,” snapped the Medical Examiner. “Look at this.”

The corpse of Thomas Brad lay outstretched on the grass a few feet from the totem post like a fallen marble statue. It was so unnaturally rigid that Ellery, out of his own sad but thorough experience, realized that
rigor mortis
had not yet left the body. As it sprawled there, arms still outflung, it bore except for the paunch and clothes a marked resemblance to the body of Andrew Van as Ellery had seen it in Weirton six months before; and both of them, he reflected without satisfaction, were human figures hacked into the shape of a T. … He shook his head and stooped with the others to see what had disturbed Dr. Rumsen so.

The physician had raised the right hand of the dead man; he was pointing to the blue dead palm. In the center, neatly printed as if by a die, there was a circular red stain, its outline only faintly irregular.

“Now what on earth d’ye call that?” grumbled Dr. Rumsen. “It isn’t blood. Looks more like paint, or dye. But I’ll be damned if I can see any reason for it.”

“It seems,” said Ellery slowly, “that your prediction is coming true, Inspector. The checker—the right side of the pole—the right hand of the dead man. …”

“By God, yes!” cried Inspector Vaughn. He produced the checker again and placed it on the stain in the dead palm. It fitted, and he rose with a mingled look of triumph and puzzlement. “But what the devil?”

District Attorney Isham shook his head. “I don’t think it’s important. You haven’t seen Brad’s library yet, Vaughn, so you don’t know. But there’s the remains of a checker game there. You’ll find out more about it when we go into the house. Brad for some reason had a checker in his hand at the time he was killed, and the murderer didn’t know it. It fell out of his hand about the time he was being strung up, that’s all.”