Ellery Queen's Secrets of Mystery Anthology 2

by Ellery Queen

  Some of the nursemaids still sat beside their prams. The gardener was sweeping one of the walks. No one in the Square seemed to have noticed the scream he had heard. Or had he heard it? And was the sound human or animal? Perhaps one of the older children playing in the distance? The sound was not repeated.

  George raised his eyes to the windows of Mrs. Heatherington’s flat. Apparently the window cleaner had finished and gone on to his next job. One of the windows had been left open and the curtains had not been drawn together.

  He took out his watch and checked the time. 4:27.

  Mrs. Heatherington would have telephoned for a cab and left for Victoria Station long before this. Strange he hadn’t noticed her departure. He remembered the scene from other years. Luggage brought down by the cabbie. Last of all, the small wicker hamper containing the Pekinese. He wondered if the old lady had forgotten to shut that window and close the curtains in the flurry of her departure.

  He saw that he had finished all but a dozen or so pages of the Simenon. The puzzle in the detective novel was nearly solved.

  …Maigret was moving quickly now. Each of the clues which had seemed so innocent before, had become ominous as the great French detective linked them together.

  “Pardon me, sir.”

  George looked up from his book to see the gardener with a large bouquet of yellow roses in his hand.

  “Told Mrs. Heatherington I’d have these for her. Fresh cut. So they’d last still she got to Hove.”

  “They’re very beautiful.”

  “Said she’d get them before she took off. But I never seen her go.”

  “Didn’t notice her leave, myself. I was reading.”

  “Guess I’ll take them home to the Missus. S’prise the old girl.” Purdy held the bouquet in front of him, carefully, as he started back up the walk.

  George reopened the Simenon. As he read on, something seemed to shadow the final pages of the book. The printed words faded together and his thoughts wandered.

  Why had Mrs. Heatherington forgotten the bouquet of roses?

  And why hadn’t she shut that window before she left on her holiday? And closed those curtains?

  …Maigret had crossed the street and was climbing the stairs to the floor where the murder had taken place.

  There had been no fingerprints in the Clarkson apartment because the murderer had, obviously, worn gloves.

  It was a dog that had screamed. George was certain of it now.

  Could it have been Mrs. Heatherington’s dog? Why would the Pekinese make such a sound? It seldom even barked. Of course there were other dogs in the mansions around Knights wood Square.

  …Maigret was now standing in the dark hall, outside the murder apartment, listening at the door.

  Too bad Mrs. Clarkson had not owned a dog. Might have saved her life.

  George glanced across to the curtained windows of the Clarkson flat again.

  Those dirty windows. Disgraceful.

  Dirty windows!

  George whirled to look again at Mrs. Heatherington’s windows. Something wrong there!

  The open window had been completely washed. All its panes sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. And the window next to it reflected blue sky in every rectangle of gleaming glass. But the other two windows were still dull with grime.

  Half the windows of Mrs. Heatherington’s flat had not been cleaned—

  Why?

  Had Willie Hoskins seen something inside Mrs. Heatherington’s living room? Something that had stopped him in the middle of his job?

  And why the devil hadn’t the old lady shut that window and closed those curtains before she left to catch her train?

  Why had she gone off without that bouquet of roses the gardener had cut for her?

  Yellow roses.

  Something else yellow—

  The window cleaner’s gloves! That was it! Willie Hoskins always wore yellow rubber gloves.

  No fingerprints.

  Why had the Pekinese screamed?

  What possible reason—

  “Murder!” The terrible word exploded from his throat. “Murder!” He was on his feet, pointing up at Mrs. Heatherington’s open window.

  Everyone in Knights wood Square had turned to stare. Purdy was running toward him across the grass.

  “Up there! Mrs. Heatherington! Hurry, man! Get the police!”

  The gardener, without pausing to ask questions, raced toward the nearest gate, at the southern end of the Square.

  George Drayton collapsed onto his leather cushion, exhausted and out of breath. All he would ever be able to remember of the next hours would be a blur of strangers.

  Arrival of the first policeman.

  Cars screeching to a stop.

  Dark-suited men hurrying to Mrs. Heatherington’s flat.

  The ambulance.

  A clutter of curious people gathering on the sidewalk.

  White-uniformed figures carrying something down the steps.

  His bench surrounded. The dark-suited men. Polite questions. How did he know what had happened? What had he seen? Had he heard something? The dog? Questions ran together until they gave him a headache.

  He finally managed to get home to the quiet of his flat where he stretched out gratefully on the sofa in his study…

  Mrs. Higby wakened him. “You’re a hero! Saved the old lady’s life, you did! They say another hour an’ she’d have been a goner. Just like her dog. Poor little beast. His head bashed in—”

  “Mrs. Heatherington? Is she—”

  “In hospital. They had to operate. But she’s goin’ to be fine. I just talked to Mrs. Price, her char, and the police told her. They say the old lady’s money was stolen. What she took out of the bank for her holiday. Afraid your supper’s goin’ to be late this evenin’.”

  The telephone rang.

  Mrs. Higby hurried to snatch it from the desk. “Mr. Drayton’s residence…What is it, love? What’s happened now?…Fancy that!” She turned to pass on her information. “It’s me chum, Mrs. Price. They’ve caught Willie Hoskins! Drunk in a Chelsea pub. The old lady’s money still in his pocket.” He eyes widened as she spoke into the phone again. “He didn’t! Well, I never.”

  She turned back toward the sofa. “He’s confessed to killin’ Mrs. Clarkson last year. I always said he was a rascal.”

  George Drayton smiled. He had solved the Clarkson case. And he had done it without moving from his bench in Knightswood Square.

  …Just like Inspector Maigret.

  James M. Ullman

  Operation Bonaparte

  Another adventure of the two industrial investigators, Michael Dane James and Ted Bennett—this time, a “classic” case of an embezzling and absconding financier, hiding out in Rio with $8,000,000 of the stockholders’ money…

  Detectives: MICHAEL DANE JAMES and TED BENNETT

  Ted Bennett nodded to the receptionist, deposited a two-suiter in a corner, and strode unannounced into the office of Michael Dane James, business and industrial espionage consultant.

  James, a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man of medium height, looked up with a scowl. He settled his horn-rimmed glasses on his pug nose and demanded, “What are you doing back in New York? You’re supposed to be on assignment in Rio, finding out where Lou Orloff is hiding the eight million he stole.”

  “I left hurriedly,” Bennett explained. He pulled up a chair and lit a cigarette. “Anyhow, I didn’t see much point in sticking around.”

  “You didn’t? Well, I do. That stockholders’ committee is paying us good money to investigate Orloff’s finances.” James rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair and sighed. “Not that the information will help them much. Once a thief like Orloff gets himself and his loot out of the country, the cause is lost. Those poor investors who paid thirty dollars a share for Orloff’s stock in its heyday will be lucky to get one cent on a dollar. But Sam Powell, the attorney for the committee, is a good friend of mine. What little help we can give him, I want to give h
im.”

  Bennett, a tall, lean man in his late thirties, said positively, “Mickey, I spent two weeks nosing around in Rio. And believe me, we won’t learn anything more about Orloff’s finances down there than we know now.”

  “Sure we will, Ted. He’s living in a lavish villa, keeping to himself and making only rare public appearances, just as he did in the the States—before his corporate house of cards started tumbling, before the stockholders learned he was looting their company like a bank robber going through a vault, exchanging the company’s assets for stock in a pyramid of worthless holding companies under his control, and then selling the assets and stashing the money nobody-knows-where. But a man like Orloff—he won’t allow those stolen millions to he idle. He’s probably putting it all into South American real estate, or making a down payment on a fleet of tankers.”

  Bennett shook his head. “Orloff is not doing any of those things. His tangible assets in Brazil consist of one villa and one Mercedes-Benz automobile. Less than a hundred thousand dollars in value at the very most.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because,” Bennett said, gazing blandly at the ceiling, “the man who has been dodging reporters and living in luxury in Rio for the last five weeks—that man is not Lou Orloff…”

  Thoughtfully Sam Powell chewed on a cigar. A large, bearish man, he peered out of his Manhattan penthouse window. Then he turned back to James and Bennett. “Well,” he drawled, “that is a poser.”

  “It sure is,” James agreed. “While everyone snooped around the mystery man living in conspicuous seclusion in Rio, the real Orloff had five weeks to bury himself in some other part of the world.”

  “He’s taking quite a risk,” Powell said. “The impersonation was sure to be discovered sooner or later. And that imposter might talk.”

  “I don’t think,” Bennett interrupted, “the imposter knows Orloff’s true whereabouts any more than we do. The false Orloff gets two thousand dollars deposited to his account in a Rio bank on the first of every month. The money is sent from a numbered account in a Swiss bank. That’s his living allowance—and two thousand a month can go a long, long way in Brazil, especially when you’re occupying a villa that’s already paid for.”

  “How did you find him out?” Powell asked.

  “I began to suspect,” Bennett said, “when, despite all the checks I made, I couldn’t find that he owned anything of value in Brazil except the house and the car. Supposedly, he’d stolen eight million dollars from your company. Where was it? Moreover, he made no apparent attempt to communicate, by mail, telephone, or any other means, with anyone in any other part of the world. And unlike the real Orloff, who spent most of his time cooking up new swindles, this Orloff seemed mostly concerned with sitting around his swimming pool and drinking rum. He’s accompanied by the real Orloff’s secretary, incidentally, a Miss Irene Conover, a stony-faced old girl who turned up with him in Rio and no doubt keeps cluing him in on how the real Orloff behaved.”

  “Ted,” James put in, “bribed a servant to steal a glass from the supposed Orloff. He took the fingerprints from the glass and compared them with the real Orloff’s. They didn’t match.”

  “If that man isn’t Orloff,” Powell speculated, “then who is he?”

  “We already know that,” James replied. “Before coming to see you, we ran the false Orloff’s prints through the machinery we employ in industrial security investigations. The false Orloff’s prints were on file because he’d been in the Army. His name is Herb Vann. Vann was a second-rate actor before the war. After the war he tried to make a go of it as a master of ceremonies in night clubs. He stuck with that for twelve years, without any significant success, and finally quit. He became a traveling salesman, based in Worcester, Massachusetts, handling a line of men’s wear. A little more than five weeks ago—a few days after the real Orloff disappeared from New York—Vann disappeared from New England. He’d quit his job and told his employers and friends he was moving to the West Coast.”

  “He maintained his bank account, though,” Bennett said. “Only now it’s a lot heftier than it ever was before. The day he dropped out of sights he added twenty thousand dollars to the few hundred then in the account.”

  “Vann,” James said, “did meet the real Orloff several times. We learned that from a talk with Vann’s former booking agent. Vann bore such a decided physical resemblance to Orloff that a number of Orloff’s acquaintances, who caught Vann’s act, brought the actor to Orloff’s attention. Orloff went to see Vann’s act and was so impressed with the resemblance that once or twice he hired Vann to perform at parties, imitating Orloff himself. Orloff got a big kick out of it.”

  “It seems,” Powell mused, “we have a problem. We three know that Lou Orloff, who is under a number of State and Federal indictments for frauds and who stole eight million dollars from the stockholders I represent, is not hiding in South America, as the rest of the world believes. If we transmit this knowledge to the authorities, the deception will be exposed, as it should be. But if we do that, the real Orloff, wherever he is, will be doubly on his guard. If he—and any part of our eight million dollars—is still in the United States, he might move the money out of the country immediately. What little chance we’d have of recovering any of the money would be lost.”

  James glanced at Bennett. Then he said, “Give us a chance to crack this one, Sam. Let Orloff go on thinking for another few weeks that the impersonation is still undetected. We’d like nothing better than to nail a thief of Orloff’s proportions.”

  “But where on earth,” Powell asked, “would you start looking for Orloff? Because by now, he could be anywhere on earth.”

  “Right here in New York,” James said, “where the real Orloff was last known to be. That’s one place we’ll begin. Another is Worcester, Massachusetts, where the actor now playing the role of Orloff was last heard of under his own name.”

  “All right,” Powell said slowly. “If you think there’s a chance…”

  “There’s a chance,” James replied. “I’ll go to Worcester, and start tracking Herb Vann. And Ted will start dogging Orloff. I’d do that myself—only one of the people to be checked is Orloff’s mistress. And since Ted is a bachelor and I have a wife and family out in Scarsdale, I think Ted should get that assignment.”

  Patricia Doyle added a jigger of vermouth to the pitcher and stirred. She filled two cocktail glasses and handed one to Bennett.

  “Cheers,” she said. She sipped and walked to a chair and sat down. Dark-haired and still under thirty, she wore a decorous blue afternoon dress.

  “This stockholder’s committee you’re working for,” she said. “Do you really think you can recover any of the money Lou stole?”

  “Right now,” Bennett conceded, “the prospects don’t look good.”

  “I don’t imagine they do. Lou was a very thorough man. When I look back, I can see now that he was planning this all along. He bought the villa in Rio, you know, more than a year ago. I was with him. He asked me not to mention the purchase to anyone. He said the stockholders might get the wrong idea. Actually, he was afraid they’d get the right idea.”

  “Miss Doyle,” Bennett said, “we’d appreciate your cooperation…”

  The woman chuckled. “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Bennett. Between you and me, the last few months I was just someone Lou dragged around with him, as a sort of decoration. Frankly, I wanted to leave him a long time ago, but he wouldn’t let me. Oh, I’m a big girl, and when Lou persuaded me to become what the newspapers call his ‘companion.’ I went into the deal with my eyes wide open. I thought: ‘Here’s a high-powered business-man, and if you play your cards right, maybe you can persuade him to marry you.’ Well, I soon found out how wrong that notion was. First, Lou Orloff wasn’t marrying anyone, and second, I learned he wasn’t a high-powered businessman. He was a high-powered crook. After just three months with him I concluded he’d wind up either an exile, which he is now, or a convict. It was inevita
ble.”

  She sipped again at her martini.

  “I stuck with him,” she went on, “because he solved a lot of my problems—like paying the rent and buying the groceries. He wasn’t lavish.

  “Actually, he was stingy. But he had to buy me furs and jewelry because it was part of his act—the wealthy, confident, man-of-the-world. He wasn’t really confident, though. He was always scared someone was going to rob him. He figured everyone was as big a crook as he was. He didn’t trust anyone, not even me. I remember once, we were driving through a desert in Arizona and something went wrong with the car. Lou was furious. Not because we were stuck alone out there in the desert, with the temperature more than a hundred and snakes crawling over the highway, but because he was sure, absolutely sure, that when a trooper found us and radioed for a tow trucks the operator of the tow truck was going to pad the bill.”

  She put her glass down, and lit a cigarette.

  “It’s hard to explain. I hated him because he was cruel, a cheat, and so suspicious of others that he belonged in a mental hospital. But on the other hand—well, I’ve got to admit it, I had to admire him. He started with nothing—not a thin dime. He spent his early years as a roustabout in the Louisiana and Texas oil fields. He was a huge man, very tough and very strong. He worked out every morning with bar bells. And physically, he was fearless. He earned a lot of medals during the war, you know—I saw the bullet scars. He was a raider out in the Pacific islands, operating behind the enemy Hues. And one time he got shot full of bullets, stood up, and killed eleven Japanese with an automatic rifle. They gave him a Silver Star for that.”

  “The reason I’m here,” Bennett said, “is to see if we can trace Orloff’s exact movements between New York and Rio. So we can get some sort of lead to the eight million dollars.”

  Patricia Doyle shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. His secretary, Irene Conover, handled those details. And Lou never trusted her much, either.” She paused. “I can guarantee you one things though.”