ABIGAIL DOORN, DR. FRANCIS Janney. …
Two murders now instead of one.
Inspector Queen was sunk in a black slough of reflection as the heavy police car, commandeered outside the District Attorney’s office, dashed uptown to the Dutch Memorial Hospital. … Janney murdered! It was incredible. … On the other hand, this second one might be easier to solve—might lead to a solution of the first, in fact. … Or maybe the two killings had nothing to do with each other. … But then it’s impossible, anyway, for a murder to have been committed in a building full of police and detectives without some trace, some clew, some witness, some. … District Attorney Sampson and a thoroughly unnerved Swanson huddled to left and right of the old man.
The Police Commissioner, who had been hastily informed of the new development, was following closely in an official automobile. He was biting his fingernails in desperation—fuming with rage and worry. …
The rushing cavalcade ground to a stop with a squeal of brakes. The cars disgorged their impatient occupants, who ran up the stone steps to the front entrance of the Hospital. The Commissioner panted to the Inspector: “As much as your job and mine are worth, Queen, if this thing isn’t settled. Now. To-day. God … what a mess!”
A policeman opened the big door.
If the Hospital had been upset after the murder of Abigail Doorn it was now, after the murder of Dr. Janney, completely disrupted. All professional activity seemed to have come to a standstill. No white-garbed nurse, no doctor was in evidence. Even Isaac Cobb, the doorman, was missing from his post. But plainclothesmen and bluecoats overran the corridors; the floor in the vicinity of the entrance especially was alive with them.
The elevator-door gaped wide; it was unattended. The Waiting Room was shut tight. The office-doors were also closed; behind them, segregated by the police, was the numbed office force.
And a buzzing sound of detectives surrounded the dosed door upon which was lettered: DR. FRANCIS JANNEY.
The throng melted away as the Inspector, the Police Commissioner, Sergeant Velie and Sampson strode through. The Inspector entered the dead man’s quiet office. Swanson followed with lagging steps, his face pale and working. Velie shut the door softly behind him.
In the bare expanse of that room there was only one object for which their eyes instantly sought And there it was—the figure of Dr. Janney sprawled in the careless attitude of death over his littered desk. … The surgeon had been seated in his swivel-chair when death overtook him; now the upper part of his body lay loosely on the desk-top, grey head resting on a crooked left arm, right arm stretched on the glass, a pen still clutched between the fingers.
Seated on plain varnished chairs at the left side of the office were Ellery, Pete Harper, Dr. Minchen and James Paradise, the Hospital superintendent. Of the four, only Ellery and Harper faced the dead man; Minchen and Paradise both were half-turned toward the door, and both were visibly trembling.
Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner, was standing near the desk. His black bag lay closed on the floor; he was putting on his overcoat and whistling a cheerless tune.
No one uttered a word of greeting or comment. It was as if, to a man, they found nothing adequate verbally to express their astonishment, their surprise, their horror in the face of this unexpected, inexplicable catastrophe. Swanson leaned weakly against the door; after one quick fascinated look in the direction of the carved cold figure in the corner he kept his head sedulously averted. The Inspector, the Commissioner and Sampson stood shoulder to shoulder and stared about the death-room.
It was square. There was one door, by which they had entered; there was one window. The door led from the South Corridor and was obliquely across from the main entrance. The window, at the rear left of the room, was wide, overlooking a long open-air inner court. To the left of the door stood a small stenographer’s desk, with a typewriter upon it. On the left wall were the four chairs on which Ellery and his companions sat. The dead man’s big desk was at the right-hand farther corner, set at an angle and facing outward to the front left corner. Except for the swivel-chair in which Janney’s body rested there was nothing behind the desk. The right-hand wall served as a background for one large leather chair and a heavily filled bookcase.
And except for four steel-engraved portraits of bewhiskered surgeons on the walls and an imitation-marble linoleum on the floor, the room held nothing else. …
“Well, Doc, what’s the verdict?” demanded the Commissioner harshly.
Dr. Prouty fumbled with a dead cigar. “It’s the same story, Commissioner. Murder by strangulation!”
Ellery bent over, resting his elbow on his knee and grasping his jaw with searching fingers. His eyes were abstracted, almost pained.
“Wire, like in the last one?” asked the Inspector.
“Yep. You can see for yourself.”
Queen stepped slowly toward the desk, accompanied by Sampson and the Commissioner. Gazing down at the grey head of the dead man they saw a dark thick clot. Both the Inspector and the Commissioner looked up quickly.
“He was hit on the head before he was strangled,” volunteered Dr. Prouty. “By some heavy blunt instrument—it’s hard to say what. There’s a contusion back there, directly over the cerebellar region.”
“Put him to sleep so he wouldn’t cry out when he was choked,” muttered the Inspector. “That tap is at the back of the head, Doc. How do you figure he was sitting when he was hit? Couldn’t have been taking a nap or something, could he, so that the blow might have been struck while the assailant stood in front of the desk? Because if he was sitting up it looks as if whoever hit him stood behind him.”
Ellery’s eyes glittered, but he said nothing.
“You’ve got it, Inspector.” Prouty’s lips writhed comically about his cold cigar. “Whoever hit him did stand behind the desk. You see, he wasn’t lying forward this way when we found him. He was sitting back in the chair—here, let me show you. …” He stepped back and wriggled between the corner of the desk and the wall, to get behind the desk. Gently, but with complete unconcern, he lifted the dead man by the shoulders until the body perched upright in the swivel-chair, head slumped forward on the chest.
“That’s the way he was, wasn’t it?” demanded Prouty. “Hey, Mr. Queen?”
Ellery started, smiled mechanically. “Oh! Oh, yes. Quite.”
“Here. You can see the wire now.” Prouty lifted the head carefully. About the neck was a thin bloody line. The wire was so deeply imbedded in the dead flesh as to be almost invisible. Behind the neck the two ends of the wire were twisted into one strand, exactly as in the case of Abigail Doorn.
The Inspector straightened. “This is the way it goes, then. He was sitting here, somebody came in, got behind him, hit him over the head and then strangled him. Right?”
“That’s it.” Prouty shrugged, picked up the bag. “One thing I’ll take my oath on. That smack on the head couldn’t have been delivered from anywhere except behind the desk. … Well, I’ll be off. Photographers have been here already, Inspector, and so have the fingerprint boys. Loads of prints all over the place, especially on this glass-top, I understand, but I guess most of ’em come from the fingers of Janney and that steno or assistant of his.”
The Assistant Medical Examiner jammed his hat on his head, took a fresh grip with his teeth on the battered cigar, and stumped out of the office.
They stared down at the dead man again. “Dr. Minchen, this wound on the head couldn’t have caused death, could it?”
Minchen gulped. His eyelids were red, his eyes bloodshot. “No,” he said in a low voice. “Prouty’s right. Just stunned him, that’s all. He died—he died of strangulation, Inspector, absolutely.”
They bent over the wire. “Looks like the same kind,” mused Queen. “Thomas, first chance you get, I want you to check up on that.” The giant nodded.
The body was still upright in the chair, as Prouty had left it. The Commissioner muttered something to himself as he carefully studied the face. It was devoid of horror, surprise, or fear. A characteristic blue tinge had crept under the swollen skin, but the features were calm—almost peaceful. The eyes were closed.
“Noticed it too, sir?” said Ellery suddenly, from his chair. “Doesn’t appear like the face of a man violently attacked and murdered, does it?”
The Commissioner faced about, regarding Ellery shrewdly. “Just what I was thinking, young man. You’re Queen’s son, aren’t you?—Strange is the word for it.”
“Exactly.” Ellery sprang from his chair and crossed to the desk to look reflectively at Janney’s face. “And the blunt instrument that Prouty talked about—that’s gone. Murderer must have taken it away. … Notice what Janney was doing when he went West?”
He pointed to the pen in the dead man’s fingers, then to a sheet of white paper on the glass directly at the spot where the hand would rest if the body were leaning forward. The paper was half-covered with close, painstaking script; Janney had obviously stopped writing in the middle of a sentence, for the last word on the page ended with a convulsive jerk in a smear of ink.
“Working on his book when the blow came,” murmured Ellery. “That’s elementary. He and Dr. Minchen here, you know, have been collaborating on a technical work called Congenital Allergy.”
“What time did he die?” asked Sampson thoughtfully.
“Prouty puts it between 10:00 and 10:05, and John Minchen agrees.”
“Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” snapped the Inspector. “Thomas, have the body removed to the morgue downstairs. Don’t forget to go through his clothes thoroughly. And then come back—I want you. Sit down, Commissioner. You, too, Henry … Swanson!”
The ex-surgeon started. His eyes were staring. “I—can’t I go now?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Yes,” said the Inspector gently. “We shan’t be needing you for a while. Thomas, send some one back to Port Chester with Mr. Swanson.”
Velie herded Swanson out of the door. He shuffled from the room without a word or a backward look; he seemed dazed, frightened.
Ellery swiftly roved the room. The Commissioner seated himself with a grunt and commenced a low-voiced conversation with the Inspector and Sampson. Paradise was still huddled in his chair, shaken. Minchen said nothing—merely stared at the bright linoleum.
Ellery stopped before him, looked down quizzically. “What are you looking at—the new linoleum?”
“What?” Minchen licked his dry lips, attempted to smile. “Oh. … How do you know it’s new?”
“Rather obvious, John. Is it?”
“Yes. All these private offices were recovered just a few weeks ago. …”
Ellery resumed his pacing.
The door opened again. Two internes entered with a stretcher. They were both white-faced, brusque in their movements.
As they were lifting the dead body from the chair Ellery paused at the window, frowned, and then looked back at the desk, which was laterally across the room. His eyes narrowed, and he strolled over to stand near the working internes.
As they deposited Janney’s limp form on the stretcher, Ellery wheeled and said sharply—every one looked up startled—“Do you know, there really ought to be a window behind this desk!”
They stared. Inspector Queen said, “What’s buzzing about inside your head now, son?”
Minchen laughed mirthlessly. “Is it getting you, too? Why, there’s never been a window there, Ellery.”
Ellery wagged his head. “An architectural omission that bothers me. … It’s really too bad that poor old Janney didn’t remember the motto on Plato’s ring. How did it read? ‘It is easier to prevent ill habits than to break them. …’”