Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page B

partnership by Dr. Kirk toward the end of his regime, run the Press now. Don handles all the really private matters connected with The Mandarin right here.”
    “Sweet layout! Books, stamps, and bawbies. Well, Thomas what are you waiting for?”
    “Well,” said the gigantic Sergeant hastily, “Mrs. Shane told the fat little duck where to go and he went. Miss Diversey, Dr. Kirk’s nurse, was in the office with Osborne, Kirk’s assistant. She heard the little guy ask for Kirk, then she lammed. He wouldn’t tell Osborne what he wanted or anything, so Osborne showed him in here through the communicatin’ door there and left him, closin’ the door. And that’s the end of the little fat guy.”
    “You know the rest, dad,” said Ellery with a gloomy nod. “We found the door bolted when we tried it from the office side. Bolted from inside this room, as you can see.”
    The Inspector eyed the only other door, the one to the corridor, and then looked over Ellery’s shoulder. “Nothing doing on the windows,” he muttered. “Only a human fly could climb up here from that setback, and human flies aren’t murderin’ anybody this season. Not even a ledge out there. So it’s the corridor-door. Did you take a good look at that bolt, Thomas?”
    “Sure. It’s well oiled and doesn’t make any noise at all when you shove it over. No wonder Osborne didn’t hear it goin’ into place. He’s a kind of studious guy, anyway, an’ he says he was workin’ on Kirk’s stamps, so he didn’t hear anything.”
    “You’d think,” snapped the Inspector, “he’d hear all this furniture being shoved around!”
    “Pshaw, dad,” said Ellery wearily, “you know Osborne’s type as well as I do. If he was occupied doing something during the murder-period, you may be sure he was deaf, dumb, and blind. He’s as loyal to Kirk as a woman in love, and he’s fanatically devoted to Kirk’s interests.”
    “All right, all right, so it’s this hall-door,” said the Inspector. “What did you find out about the emergency stairway, Thomas?”
    “It’s at the end of the hall outside here, Inspector. Way down the corridor across from the rear of the Kirk apartment. Fact, the door to the stairway is right opposite old Kirk’s bedroom. Anybody could have come up or down the stairs, popped into the hall, sneaked down past the Kirk rooms to this door, pulled the job, and made a getaway the same way.”
    “And Mrs. Shane near the elevators couldn’t see any one in that case, hey? The cross-hall’s out of her line of vision except where the two meet?”
    “That’s right. She said anyway she didn’t see anybody in this part of the floor after the dead guy came up, except that nurse, that Miss Temple” the Sergeant consulted a notebook, “a woman by the name of Irene Llewes—both guests here—and a Mr. Glenn Macgowan, Mr. Kirk’s pal. They all went into the office, chinned with Osborne, and went out again. Macgowan took the elevator down. The Llewes woman went off toward the Kirk apartment; she didn’t go in, though, so she probably took those stairs down—her rooms are on the floor below. Miss Temple went back to the Kirk apartment—she’s a guest of Kirk’s. So did the nurse. Seems this Miss Diversey’d stopped in this anteroom before she went to the office; said it was neat as a pin. Well, that’s all, Inspector. Nobody else. So it looks like whoever pulled this job used those stairs, and never even showed up around the corner so this Shane dame could see him.”
    “That is,” said the Inspector nastily, “ if whoever pulled this job doesn’t belong in the Kirk apartment.”
    “That’s the way I figure it, too,” rumbled the Sergeant with a scowl. “And I figure the killer bolted that office-door to keep Osborne or whoever else might be in there from interruptin’ him while he was doin’ his hocus-pocus with the furniture in here.”
    “And locked the corridor-door, too, I s’pose, for the same reason,”