Greek Coffin Mystery (31 page)

Ellery returned the letter, which she replaced carefully in her purse. “Yes,” he said, “I’m inclined to agree that the trail to the painting has grown excessively tangled, and that it is now more the job of professionals than of a lone—and amateur—investigator. On the other hand …” He paused thoughtfully. “It’s barely possible that I may be able to assist you soon in your apparently hopeless quest.”

“Mr. Queen!” Her eyes were shining.

“Would the Museum consent to keep you in New York if there was still a chance of recovering the Leonardo without fanfare?”

“Oh, yes! I’m sure of that, Mr. Queen! I’ll cable the Director at once.”

“Do that. And Miss Brett—” he smiled—“I shouldn’t go to the police quite yet, if I were you. Not even to my father, bless him. You may be more useful if you are still—to put it politely—under suspicion.”

Joan rose swiftly. “I should love that. Orders, Commandant?” She stood at mock-attention, right hand raised in stiff salute.

Ellery grinned. “You’re going to make an admirable
espionne,
I can see that now. Very well, Miss Joan Brett, henceforth and forever we are allies, you and I—a private
entente.”

“Cordiale,
I hope?” She sighed happily. “It will be thrilling!”

“And perhaps dangerous,” said Ellery. “Yet, despite our secret understanding, Lieutenant Brett, there are certain things it is better that I keep from you—for your own safety.” Her face fell, and he patted her hand. “Not from suspicion of you—word of honor, my dear. But you must take me on faith for the present.”

“Very well, Mr. Queen,” said Joan soberly. “I’m entirely in your hands.”

“No,” said Ellery hastily, “that’s too much of a temptation. You’re far too handsome a wench … Here, here!” He averted his head to avoid her amused stare and began to ruminate aloud. “Let’s see what course is open. Hmm. … Must have a good excuse to keep you around—I suppose every one knows your employment has ceased here. … Can’t stay in New York without a job—might be suspicious … Can’t stay here at Khalkis’ … I have it!” He caught her hands excitedly. “There’s one place where you could stay—and legitimately, so that no one’s suspicions would be aroused.”

“And where is that?”

He drew her to the bed and they sat down, heads close together. “You are familiar with all of Khalkis’ personal and business affairs, of course. There’s one gentleman who has obligingly involved himself in a mess relating to these tangled affairs. And that’s James Knox!”

“Oh, splendid,” she whispered.

“Now you see,” continued Ellery rapidly, “with Knox dabbling in this headachey business, he would welcome expert assistance. I heard just last night from Woodruff that Knox’s secretary has become ill. I’ll arrange it in such a way that Knox himself will make the offer, lulling all possible suspicions. And you’re to keep mum about this, my dear—please understand that. You’re to pretend the job is a real one by working faithfully at it—
no one:
is to know you’re not what you seem to be.”

“You needn’t have any fears on that score,” she said grimly.

“I’m sure I needn’t.” He rose and grabbed his hat and stick. “Glory to Moses! there’s work to do … Good day,
ma lieutenante!
Remain in this house until you get word from the Omnipotent Knox.”

He clucked aside Joan’s breathless words of thanks and dashed out of her room. The door closed slowly behind him. He caught himself up in the hall and fell to musing. Then, with a malicious little grin on his lips, he strode up the corridor and knocked at Alan Cheney’s door.

Alan Cheney’s bedroom resembled the ruins of a chamber caught in the heart of a Kansas twister. Things were thrown about, as if the young man had been indulging in a hurling contest with his own shadow. Cigaret butts lay about the floor where they had fallen, like little dead soldiers. Mr. Cheney’s hair looked as if it had gone through a threshing-machine, and his eyes darted about in pinkish angry pools.

He was patrolling the floor—pacing it, measuring it, eating it up with hungry strides, over and over. A very restless young man, and Ellery stood wide-eyed in the doorway after Cheney’s muttered, “Come, damn you, whoever you are!” and surveyed the debris-strewn battlefield before him.

“Well, and what do
you
want?” growled the young man, halting abruptly in his career as he saw who his visitor was.

“A word with you.” Ellery closed the door. “I seem to find you,” he continued with a grin, “in a more or less turbulent mood. But I shan’t consume a moment of your no doubt precious time. May I sit down, or is this to be a conversation conducted with all the punctilio of a duel?”

Some vestige of decency remained in young Alan, it appeared, for he mumbled: “Certainly. Do sit down. Sorry. Here, have this one,” and he swept a chairful of cigaret-stubs to the already frowsy floor.

Ellery sat down and straightway began to polish the lenses of his
pince-nez.
Alan watched him in a sort of absent irritation. “Now, Mr. Alan Cheney,” began Ellery, setting the glasses firmly on his straight nose, “to business. I’ve been pottering about tying up loose ends on this sad business of Grimshaw’s murder and your stepfather’s suicide.”

“Suicide my left eyebrow,” retorted Alan. “Wasn’t anything of the sort.”

“Indeed? So your mother suggested a few moments ago. Have you anything concrete on which you base this belief?”

“No. I suppose not. Well, it doesn’t matter. He’s dead and six feet under, and
that
can’t be rectified.” Alan threw himself on his bed. “What’s on your mind, Queen?”

Ellery smiled: “A useless question to which surely you no longer have reason to withhold the answer … Why did you run away a week and a half ago?”

Alan lay still on the bed, smoking, his eyes fixed on a battered old
assegai
hanging on the wall, “My old man’s,” he said. “Africa was his particular heaven.” Then he flung his cigaret away, jumped out of bed and resumed his mad pacing, throwing furious glances toward the north—the general direction, it should be explained, of Joan’s bedroom. “All right,” he snapped. “I’ll talk. I was a damned fool to do it in the first place. Temperamental little coquette, that’s what she is, blast her beautiful face!”

“My dear Cheney,” murmured Ellery, “what on earth are you talking about?”

“Talking about what a moon-eyed jackass I’ve been, that’s what! Listen to this, Queen, for the prize story of adolescent ‘chivalry’ of all time,” Alan said, gnashing his strong young teeth. “There I was, in love—in love, mind you!—with this, this … well, with Joan Brett. And I’d caught her snooping about this house for months, looking for something, God knows what. Never said a word about it—to her or any one else. Self-sacrificing lover, and all that sort of tripe. When the Inspector grilled her about that fellow Pepper’s story of Joan’s monkeying around with the safe the night after my uncle’s funeral … hell, I didn’t know what to think. Put two and two together—the missing will, the murdered man. It was pretty horrible … I felt that she was involved somehow in the ghastly business. So—” He fell to muttering beneath his breath.

Ellery sighed. “Ah, love. I feel the quotations creeping upon me, but perhaps I’d better not … So, Master Alan, you, the noble Sir Pelleas, disdained by the scornful Lady Ettarre, did ride away on the broad back of your white stallion, bent on the chivalrous quest …”

“Well, if you’re going to make a joke of it,” snarled Alan. “So—well, I did it, yes, I did. The damned fool thing of playing the gallant knight, as you say—ran away purposely to make it look fishy—divert suspicion to myself. Huh!” He shrugged bitterly. “And was she worth it? What’s the answer? I’m glad to spill the whole bloody story and forget it—and her.”

“And this,” murmured Ellery, rising, “this is a murder investigation. Ah, well! Until psychiatry learns to take into account all the quirks of human motive, crime detection will remain an infant science. … Thank you, Sir Alan, a thousand times, and don’t despair, I charge you. And a very good day!”

Mr. Ellery Queen perhaps an hour later sat in a chair opposite Lawyer Miles Woodruff, in that gentleman’s modest suite among the canyons of lower Broadway, puffing—this was the sign of an especial occasion—one of Lawyer Woodruff’s perfectos and making unimportant conversation. Lawyer Woodruff, in his bluff red way, it appeared, was experiencing a form of mental constipation; he was grumpy, yellow-eyed and liverish, and he spat inelegantly, from time to time, into a glittering cuspidor chastely perched on a round rubber mat by his desk; and the sum and substance of his plaint was that he had never, in all his crowded years as an attorney, encountered a testamentary situation which presented such head-splitting difficulties as the tangled business of Georg Khalkis’ estate.

“Why, Queen,” he exclaimed, “you’ve no
idea
of what’s facing us—no
idea!
Here the scrap of burnt new will turns up, and we have to establish duress or else Grimshaw’s estate will rake in the gravy of … Oh, well. Poor old Knox is mighty sorry, I’ll wager, that he consented to act as executor.”

“Knox. Yes. Having his hands full, eh?”

“Something terrible! After all, even before the exact legal status of the estate is determined, there are certain things which must be done. Itemizations galore—Khalkis left a lot of piecemeal stuff. I suppose he’ll shift it all onto my shoulders—Knox, I mean—that’s what usually happens when an executor is a man of Knox’s position.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Ellery indifferently, “now that Knox’s secretary is ill and Miss Brett is temporarily out of employment …”

Woodruff’s cigar waggled. “Miss Brett! Say, Queen, there’s an idea. Of course. She knows all about Khalkis’ affairs. I think I’ll broach it to Knox. I think
I’ll …
”

Having sowed the seeds, Ellery very shortly took his departure, smiling in great contentment to himself as he walked at a brisk pace up Broadway.

Whereupon we find Lawyer Woodruff, not two minutes after his door closed on Ellery’s broad back, engaged in conversation via telephone with Mr. James J. Knox. “I thought that now that Miss Joan Brett has nothing further to do at the Khalkis house—”

“Woodruff! A dandy suggestion! …”

The upshot of it was that Mr. James J. Knox, with a rich sigh of relief, thanked Lawyer Woodruff for his
splendid
inspiration, and had no sooner hung up than he called the number of the Khalkis house.

And, when he succeeded in getting Miss Joan Brett on the wire, and quite as if the idea had been original with
him,
he asked her to come to work the very next day … for a period of service to endure until the settlement of the estate. Mr. Knox further suggested, in view of the fact that Miss Brett was a Britisher and had no permanent residence in New York City, that she come to live in his, Knox’s, house for the duration of her service with him. …

Miss Brett demurely accepted the offer—at a stipend, it should be noted, respectably lustier than she had received from the
ci-devant
American of Greek lineage whose bones now lay peacefully in the vault of his fathers. At the same time she wondered how Mr. Ellery Queen had managed the affair.

O
N FRIDAY, OCTOBER THE
twenty-second, Mr. Ellery Queen—informally, to be sure—visited with the aristocracy. That is to say, a telephone-call from Mr. James J. Knox solicited Mr. Queen’s immediate presence at the Knox residence on a communication of possible interest. Mr. Queen was delighted, not only because he admired refined society but for less subtle reasons as well, and he proceeded with alacrity in a handsome taxicab to Riverside Drive, where at a structure of awesome proportions he alighted, paid off his suddenly obsequious cabby, and strode with dignity into the grounds of what even in a city fabled for its realty values must be considered an estate.

He was ushered, without too much ceremony, by a tall thin old flunkey into the Presence after a decent interval of waiting in a reception-room which might have been plucked bodily out of a Medici
palazzo.

The Presence, for all his flamboyant surroundings, was working at a very modern desk in his—Ellery had this on the authority of the venerable ramrod butler—in his “den.” The den was as modern as the desk. Black patent-leather walls, angular furniture, lamps out of a maniac’s dream … the very essence of modern riches at homework. And, seated primly by the Presence, notebook propped on a praiseworthy knee, was Miss Joan Brett.

Knox greeted Ellery cordially, tendered a Circassian-wood box filled with pale cigarets six inches long, waved his visibly impressed visitor into a chair which looked uncomfortable but was not, and then said, in his deceptively soft and hesitant voice: “Fine, Queen. Glad you could come so soon. Surprised to find Miss Brett here?”

“Staggered,” said Ellery gravely. Miss Brett worked her lashes and adjusted her skirt to an infinitesimal degree. “Very fortunate for Miss Brett, I’m sure.”

“No, no. I’m the lucky one. Jewel, Miss Brett is. Own secretary’s down with the mumps, or colic, or something. Unreliable—very. Miss Brett’s assisting me in personal matters as well as the Khalkis business. That Khalkis business! Well, sir, I will say it’s a pleasant relief having a good-looking young lady to look at all day. Very. Own secretary’s a lantern-jawed Scot who last smiled on his mother’s bony knee. ’Scuse me, Queen. A few details I want to clear up with Miss Brett here, and then I’ll be free. … Make out the checks for those bills that are due, Miss Brett—”

“The bills,” repeated Miss Brett submissively.

“—and the stationery you had sent up. In paying the bill for the new typewriter, don’t forget to add on the small charge for that single replacement key—and send the old machine to the Bureau of Charities—hate old machines …”

“Bureau of Charities.”

“And when you find a moment or two, order the new steel files you suggested. That’s all now.”

Joan rose and went to the other side of the room, where she sat down in the crispest secretarial fashion at a small modish desk and began to typewrite. “Now, Queen, for you … Damned annoying, these details. Illness of my regular secretary has inconvenienced me greatly.”