Dutch Shoe Mystery (13 page)

“No. I left Hulda in that Waiting Room across the hall. I was nervous. I walked about. Nobody stopped me. I walked, and walked, and then”—a cunning look crept into her eyes—“then I came back to Hulda.”

“And you didn’t speak with any one?”

She looked up slowly. “I sought information. I looked for a doctor. Dr. Janney. Dr. Dunning. The young Dr. Minchen. I found only Dr. Dunning, in his office. He reassured me, and I went away.”

Ellery murmured, “Check!” and began to stride up and down before her. He seemed to be revolving something in his mind. Sarah Fuller sat stolidly and waited.

When he spoke, it was with a crackle of menace in his voice. He whirled upon her. “Why didn’t you transmit Dr. Janney’s telephone message last night to Miss Doorn about administering the insulin injection?”

“I was ill myself yesterday. I was in bed most of the day. The message came and I took it. But by the time Hulda returned I was asleep.”

“Why didn’t you tell her in the morning?”

“I forgot.”

Ellery leaned over her, stared into her eyes. “You realize, don’t you, that by your unfortunate lapse of memory, you are morally responsible for Mrs. Doorn’s death?”

“Why—what—?”

“If you had given Miss Doorn Dr. Janney’s message, she would have administered the insulin to Mrs. Doorn, Mrs. Doorn would not have fallen into the coma this morning, and consequently would not have been placed on an operating-table to lie at the mercy of a murderer. Well?”

Her glance did not waver. “His will be done. …”

Ellery straightened, murmured, “You quote Scripture nicely. … Miss Fuller,
why was Mrs. Doorn afraid of you?”

She drew in her breath sharply. Then she smiled an odd smile, compressed her lips and sank back against the chair. There was something eerie in her bitter old face. And her eyes were still hard and icy and, somehow, unearthly.

Ellery retreated. “Dismissed!”

She rose, arranged her garments with a shy movement and, without a glance or a word, floated from the room. At a sign from the Inspector the detective named Hesse followed. The Inspector took a short and irritable turn about the room. Ellery mused deeply where he stood.

A black-jowled man in a rakish derby hat strolled into the Anteroom, past Velie. He was chewing a dead, foul-smelling cigar. He tossed a black physician’s bag onto the wheel-table and stood rocking on his heels, surveying the gloomy little group quizzically.

“Hi there!” he said at last, spitting a piece of tobacco on the tiled floor. “Don’t I get any attention? Where’s the funeral?”

“Oh, hello, Doc.” The Inspector absently shook hands. “Ellery, say hello to Prouty.” Ellery dutifully nodded. “The body is in the morgue now, Doc,” said the old man. “They’ve just carted it down into the basement.”

“Well, I’ll be on my way, then,” said Prouty. He strode to the elevator-door. “This it?” Velie pressed a button and they heard the elevator grind upward. “By the way, Inspector,” said Prouty, opening the door, “the Medical Examiner may come into this thing himself. Doesn’t seem to trust his assistant.” He chuckled. “So old Abby’s got it at last, eh? Well, she’s not the first, and she won’t be the last. Keep smiling!” He disappeared into the car and the elevator again clanked its way to the floor below.

Sampson rose and stretched hugely. “A-a-ah!” He yawned, scratched, his fine head. “I’m absolutely stumped, Q.” The Inspector nodded dolefully. “And that crazy old loon simply muddled things worse than ever. …” Sampson looked shrewdly at Ellery. “What do you make of it, son?”

“Precious little.” Ellery fished a cigarette from his capacious side-pocket and fingered it tenderly. He looked up. “Oh, I’ve managed to deduce a few things—interesting things at that.” He grinned. “There’s the faintest glimmer of light away down deep in my consciousness, but I’d scarcely call it a complete and satisfactory solution. The clothes, you know …”

“Aside from a few obvious facts …” began the District Attorney.

“Oh, they’re not
obvious,”
said Ellery gravely. “Those shoes, for example—most illuminating.”

Red-headed Timothy Cronin snorted. “And what do you get out of them? I must be thick. I can’t see a darned thing.”

“Well,” said the District Attorney tentatively, “the person who originally owned them was a good few inches taller than Dr. Janney. …”

“Ellery commented on that before you came. And a fat lot of good it does us,” said the Inspector dryly. “We’ll send out a general alarm for the theft of the clothing, but I can tell you right now it will be like looking for the needle in the haystack. … Attend to that, will you, Thomas?” He turned to the giant. “And start with this Hospital; we might get a break right here.”

Velie discussed details with Johnson and Flint, and they departed. “Not much there,” boomed the sergeant “But if there is a trail, the boys will get it.”

Ellery was smoking, inhaling deeply. “That woman …” he murmured. “The religious mania is significant. Something has unbalanced her. A very real hatred existed between her and the dead woman. Motive? Cause?” He shrugged. “She’s most fascinating. And if her blessed Jehovah is with us, we’ll cry ‘Selah!’ at the proper time, no doubt.”

“This man Janney,” began Sampson, stroking his jaw, “darned if we haven’t enough, Q., to—”

Whatever the District Attorney meant to say was lost in the hubbub of Harper’s return to the Anteroom. He kicked the corridor door open and made a triumphant entrance, bearing a huge paper bag in his arms.

“The white-haired boy returns with
FOOD!”
he shouted. “Dig in, fellers. You too, Velie—you old Colossus. Doubt if we’ve enough to fill
your
craw …Here’s coffee, and sweet ham, and pickles and cream cheese and Christ knows what else. …”

They munched sandwiches and sipped coffee in silence. Harper eyed them keenly and said nothing further. It was only when the elevator-door reopened and Dr. Prouty, looking gloomy, emerged that they again began to talk.

“Well, Doc?” Sampson paused in the act of biting into a ham sandwich.

“Strangled, all right.” Prouty dropped his bag and unceremoniously helped himself from the stack of sandwiches on the wheel-table. His teeth clicked fiercely on the bread and he sighed. “Hell,” he mumbled, between mouthfuls, “that was an easy kill. One twist of the wire and the poor old lady was through. Snuffed out like a candle. … This Janney guy. Quite a surgeon.” He peered at the Inspector shrewdly. “Too bad he didn’t get the chance to operate. Bad rupture of the gall bladder. Diabetic, too, I gathered. … No; the original verdict was quite correct. Autopsy’s almost unnecessary. Hypo marks all over her arm. Stringy muscles. Must have had quite a job with the intravenous injections this morning. …”

He chattered on. The conversation became general. Speculations and conjectures swirled about Ellery Queen as he ate. He tilted his chair against a wall and gazed at the ceiling, his lean jaws masticating powerfully.

The Inspector daintily wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Well,” he grumbled, “there’s darned little left except this man Kneisel. Suppose he’s outside, burning up like the rest of ’em. All right with you, son?”

Ellery waved his hand vaguely. But suddenly his eyes narrowed and his chair-legs banged on the floor. “There’s an idea,” he said. Then he chuckled. “Stupid of me to overlook that!” His auditors looked blankly at each other. Ellery got to his feet excitedly. “Now that you mention it, let’s have a look-see at our friend the Austrian scientist. You know, this mysterious Paracelsus of ours may prove interesting. … Always charmed by alchemists, anyway. And there’s a faint voice—the voice of one crying in the wilderness …” he smiled “—to quote the triply blessed authority of Luke, John and patriarchal Isaiah. …”

He ran to the Amphitheater door.

“Kneisel! Is Dr. Kneisel in here?” he cried.

D
R. PROUTY BRUSHED A
few vagrant crumbs from his lap, rose, inserted his forefinger into the ample orifice of his mouth, probed delicately for a remnant of his sandwich, discovered it, spat it forth in triumph, and finally picked up his black bag.

“Be goin’,” he announced. “G’bye.” He tramped through the corridor door, whistling tunelessly as he searched his pocket for a cigar.

Unsmiling, Ellery Queen stepped back into the Anteroom to allow Moritz Kneisel to enter from the Amphitheater.

In Inspector Queen’s instantly formed although unspoken judgment, Moritz Kneisel joined that classification of human subjects to which the old man referred simply as “a card.” Individually, the characteristics of the scientist were not startling; it was only when they were viewed as links in a single personality that they gave that impression of
grotesquerie.
That he was small, that he was swarthy and dark and Central European-looking, that he wore a frayed and tatterdemalion little black beard, that his eyes were as deep and soft as a woman’s—these things were common enough. Yet, by some alchemy of nature, they blended to make Moritz Kneisel quite the most unusual character the Queens had yet encountered in their investigation of Abigail Doorn’s murder.

His fingers were bleached, brown-spotted, blotched with chemical stains and burns. The tip of his left index-finger was crushed-looking and raw. His professional gown appeared as if it had withstood a chemical deluge; it was literally covered with ragged color-splotches which in many spots had eaten away the linen. Even the cuffs of his white duck trousers and the tips of his canvas shoes were splattered.

Ellery, regarding him out of half-closed eyes, meaningly put the door to and pointed to a chair.

“Sit down, Dr. Kneisel.”

The scientist obeyed in complete silence. He radiated an aura of self-absorption that was disconcerting. He did not meet the impersonal stares of Inspector Queen, the District Attorney, Cronin, Velie; and it was remarkable that they understood at once the cause of his aloofness. He was not afraid, or wary, or evasive; he was simply deaf and blind to his surroundings.

He sat in a world of his own, a queer little figure out of a pseudo-scientific tale of lofty adventure among the stars.

Ellery took his stand solidly before Kneisel, boring him through and through with his eyes. After a strained interval the scientist seemed to sense the force of Ellery’s scrutiny; his eyes lifted and cleared.

“I am so sorry,” he said in a clipped, precise English that carried in its accents the merest suggestion of an alien tongue. “You want to question me, of course. I have just heard outside that Mrs. Doorn has been strangled.”

Ellery relaxed and sat down. “So late, Doctor? Mrs. Doorn has been dead for hours.”

Kneisel slapped the back of his neck absently. “I am something of a recluse here. In my laboratory there is a separate world. The scientific spirit. …”

“Well,” said Ellery conversationally, crossing his legs, “I’ve always maintained that science is another form of Nihilism. … You don’t seem overcome by shock at the news, Doctor.”

Kneisel’s soft eyes became suffused with a queer surprise. “My dear sir!” he protested. “Death is hardly a cause for emotion in the scientist. I am interested in the fatality, naturally, but not to the point of sentimentality. After all—” He shrugged, and a whimsical smile appeared on his lips. “We’re above the bourgeois attitude toward death, aren’t we?
‘Requiescat in pace,’
and all that sort of thing. I should much rather quote the Spaniard’s cynical epigram—‘She is good and honored who is dead and buried.’”

Ellery’s brows rose instantly, much as the tail of a setter jerks to the horizontal in the perfect point. An animated humor, a light of anticipation, leaped into his eyes.

He said warmly, “I salute your erudition, Dr. Kneisel. You know, when the Coachman, Death, takes on his new and unwilling passenger, he sometimes, discharges another in order to balance the load. … I refer, of course, to the vulgar institution of
post-mortem
bequests. There was something interesting about Abigail Doorn’s first will, Doctor. …

“May I complement your quotation with another?—‘He who waits for a dead man’s shoes is in danger of going barefoot.’ That,” he said, “is, curiously enough, from the Danish.”

Kneisel replied in a grave and pleasant voice, “And from the French, too, I believe. A great many aphorisms have common roots.”

Ellery laughed happily; he nodded with open admiration. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I shall make a point of checking up on you. Now—” The Inspector chuckled.

“You no doubt wish to know,” said Kneisel with the utmost urbanity, “where and how I spent my morning. …”

“If you will.”

“I arrived at the Hospital at 7:00
A.M.,
my usual hour,” explained Kneisel, folding his hands peacefully in his lap. “I went to my laboratory after changing into these clothes in the general dress-rooms in the basement.

“The laboratory is on this floor, diagonally across the corridor from the northwest corner of the Amphitheater. But I am sure you already know this. …”

“Mais certainement!”
murmured Ellery.

“I locked myself in and I was there until your man summoned me some time ago. I proceeded at once to the theater, according to your request, and there discovered for the first time that Mrs. Doorn had been murdered during the morning.”

He paused, holding himself uncannily still. Ellery’s glittering watchfulness did not waver.

When Kneisel continued, it was with serene emphasis. “No one disturbed me this morning. To phrase it differently, I was alone in my laboratory without interruption from a few moments after 7:00 until a short time ago. Without interruption—and without witnesses. Not even Dr. Janney appeared in my work-shop, probably because of Mrs. Doorn’s accident and his other work which accumulated as a result of it. And Dr. Janney invariably visits the laboratory every morning. … I believe,” he concluded thoughtfully, “that is all.”

Ellery continued to transfix him with his stare. Inspector Queen, watching them both unwinkingly, was forced to make the grudging inner admission that, despite Ellery’s outward
savoir faire,
he had never appeared more discomposed.