Egyptian Cross Mystery (11 page)

All right, Mrs. Baxter. … The elderly housekeeper retreated hastily and the Inspector swore with fluency.

Ellery looked on, preoccupied with a spot at the base of a fingernail at odd moments. The name Andrew Van kept swimming about in the channels of his brain.

“Come on,” said Isham. “Let’s talk to that chauffeur, Fox.”

He strode out of the house with Vaughn, and Ellery ambled after, sniffing the June roses and wondering when his colleagues would stop chasing their tails and embark for that very interesting patch of earth and trees in the Sound, Oyster Island.

Isham led the way around the left wing of the main house, along a narrow gravel path which very soon entered a carefully wild grove. A short walk, and they emerged from under the trees to a clearing in the center of which stood a pleasant little cabin built of shaven logs. A county trooper lounged conspicuously in the sun before the hut.

Isham knocked on the stout door, and a man’s deep voice said: “Come on in.”

When they entered, he was on his feet, planted like an oak, fists doubled, his face curiously mottled with spots of pallor. He was a tall straight man, thin and tough as a bamboo shoot. When he saw who his visitors were, his fists unclenched, his shoulders sagged, and he groped for the back of the homemade chair before which he was standing.

“Fox,” said Isham peremptorily, “I didn’t get much of an opportunity this morning to talk to you.”

“No, sir,” said Fox. The pallor, Ellery saw with a little sensation of surprise, was not temporary; it was the man’s natural complexion.

“We know how you found the body,” contributed the District Attorney, dropping into the only other chair in the hut.

“Yes, sir,” muttered Fox. “It was an awful exp—”

“What we want to know now,” said Isham without inflection, “is why you left Stallings and Mrs. Baxter last night, where you went, and when you got home.”

Curiously, the man did not blanch or cringe; the expression on his mottled features did not change. “I just drove around town,” he said. “I got back to Bradwood a little before midnight.”

Inspector Vaughn came forward deliberately and clamped his hand on Fox’s limp arm. “Look here,” he said, almost pleasantly. “We’re not trying to hurt you, or frame you, you understand. If you’re on the level, we’ll let you alone.”

“I’m on the level,” said Fox. Ellery thought he detected traces of culture in the man’s pronunciation and intonations. He watched him with growing interest.

“All right,” said Vaughn. “That’s fine. Now forget all that bunk about just driving around town. Give it to us straight. Where did you go?”

“I’m giving it to you straight,” replied Fox in a dead, even voice. “I drove around Fifth Avenue and through the Park and on Riverside Drive for a long time. It was nice out, and I enjoyed the air.”

The Inspector dropped his arm suddenly and grinned at Isham. “He enjoyed the air. Why didn’t you call for Stallings and Mrs. Baxter after they got out of the movie?”

Fox’s broad shoulders twitched in the suspicion of a shrug. “No one told me to.”

Isham looked at Vaughn, and Vaughn looked at Isham. Ellery, however, looked at Fox; and he was surprised to see the man’s eyes—it seemed impossible—fill with tears.

“Okay,” said Isham finally. “If that’s your story, you’re stuck with it, and God help you if we find out otherwise. How long have you worked here?”

“Since the first of the year, sir.”

“References?”

“Yes, sir.” Silently he turned and went to an old sideboard. He fumbled in a drawer and brought out a clean, carefully preserved envelope.

The District Attorney ripped it open, glanced over the letter inside, and handed it to Vaughn. The Inspector read it more carefully, then, flipping it on the table, inexplicably strode out of the hut.

“Seems all right,” said Isham, rising. “By the way, you, Stallings, and Mrs. Baxter are the only people employed here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Fox without raising his eyes. He picked up his references and kept turning the envelope and paper over between his fingers.

“Er—Fox,” said Ellery. “When you got home last night, did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“No, sir.”

“You stay put,” said Isham, and left the hut. Outside, Inspector Vaughn joined him, and Ellery paused in the doorway. Fox, inside, had not moved.

“He’s lying in his teeth about last night,” said Vaughn loudly; Fox could not help but hear. “We’ll check up right away.”

Ellery winced. There was something ruthless about the tactics of both men, and he could not forget the tears in Fox’s eyes.

In silence they cut over toward the west. Fox’s hut was not far from the waters of Ketcham’s Cove, and they could see the sunny glint of blue through the trees as they stumbled along. A short distance from the hut they struck a narrow road, unfenced.

“Brad’s property,” grunted Isham. “He wouldn’t fence it. The house those Lynn people rented must he over in that stretch beyond the road.”

They crossed the road and at once plunged into cathedral woods. It was five minutes before Vaughn found the footpath which led through the dense underbrush toward the west. Shortly after the path widened, the woods grew sparser, and they saw a low rambling stone house set in the heart of the trees. A man and a woman were sitting on the open porch. The man rose rather hastily as the figures of the three visitors came into view.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lynn?” said the District Attorney, as they paused at the foot of the porch.

“In the flesh,” said the man. “I’m Percy Lynn. My wife here … You gentlemen are from Bradwood?”

Lynn was a tall, dark, sharp-featured Englishman with close-cropped oily hair and shrewd eyes. Elizabeth Lynn was blonde and fat; the smile on her face seemed fixed there.

Isham nodded, and Lynn said: “Well … Won’t you come up?”

“It’s all right,” said Inspector Vaughn pleasantly. “We won’t stay but a minute. Heard the news?”

The Englishman nodded soberly; his wife’s smile, however, did not fade. “Shocking, really,” said Lynn. “The first we knew about it was when I walked down to the road and bumped into a bobby. He told me about the tragedy.”

“Naturally,” said Mrs. Lynn in a shrill voice, “we wouldn’t dream of going over
then.”

“No, naturally not,” agreed her husband.

There was a little silence, in which Isham and Vaughn conversed in the language of the eyes. The Lynns remained motionless; there was a pipe in the tall man’s hand, and a little curl of smoke rose without trembling into his face.

He gestured with the pipe suddenly. “Come now,” he said, “I realize perfectly well how deuced awkward it is, gentlemen. You’re the police, I presume?”

“That’s right,” said Isham. He seemed content to permit Lynn to make all the advances, and Vaughn remained in the background. As for Ellery, he was fascinated by that awful smile on the woman’s face. Then he grinned himself; he knew now why it was so rigid. Mrs. Lynn had false teeth.

“You’ll want to see our passports, I fancy,” Lynn went on in a grave voice. “Check up on the neighbors and friends, and all that sort of thing. Eh?”

The passports proved in order.

“I fancy too you’ll want to know just how we come—Mrs. Lynn and I—to be living here …” began the Englishman when Isham returned the passports.

“We’ve heard all that from Miss Brad,” said Isham. He moved up two steps suddenly, and the Lynns stiffened. “Where were you people last night?”

Lynn cleared his throat noisily. “Ah—yes. Of course. As a matter of fact, we were in the city. …”

“New York?”

“Quite so. We went into town for dinner and to see a play—crumby sort of thing.”

“What time did you get back here?”

Mrs. Lynn shrilled unexpectedly: “Oh, we didn’t. We spent the night at a hotel. It was much too late to—”

“What hotel?” asked the Inspector.

“The Roosevelt.”

Isham grinned. “Say, how late was it, anyway?”

“Oh, past midnight,” replied the Englishman. “We had a snack after the play, and—”

“That’s fine,” said the Inspector. “Know many people around here?”

They shook their heads together. “Scarcely any one,” said Lynn. “Except the Brads and that very interesting chap, Professor Yardley, and Dr. Temple. That’s all, really.”

Ellery smiled ingratiatingly. “Have either of you by any chance ever visited Oyster Island?”

The Englishman smiled briefly in return. “Blank there, old chap. Nudism is nothing new to us. We had our fill of it in Germany.”

“Besides,” put in Mrs. Lynn, “the people on that island—” She shuddered delicately. “I quite agreed with poor Mr. Brad that they should be ejected.”

“Hmm,” said Isham. “Any explanation to offer for the tragedy?”

“We’re quite at a loss, sir. Quite. Fearful thing, though. Savage.” Lynn tchk-tchked. “Sort of thing that gives your splendid country a black eye on the Continent.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Isham dryly. “Thanks … Come along.”

K
ETCHAM’S COVE WAS A
rough semicircle torn out of the shore of Thomas Brad’s estate. In the center of the arc of beach bobbed a large slip, to which several motorboats and a launch lay moored. Ellery, who had returned with his two companions to the westward road and followed it toward the water, found himself standing on a smaller slip several hundred yards from the main moorings. Across the water, not a mile away, sprawled Oyster Island. Its shoreline looked as if the Island had been wrenched bodily out of the mainland, becoming slightly distended in the process. Ellery could not see the other side of the Island, but he judged that its contour had inspired its name.

Oyster Island, set like a green gem in the turquoise background of Long Island Sound, was so far as any outward appearance indicated a primeval tangle of forest. The trees and wild shrubs ran almost to the water’s edge. No … there
was
a small landing dock. By straining his eyes he could make out its gray rickety outline. But there was no other man-made structure in sight.

Isham strode out on the slip and yelled: “Hi!” to a police launch idly cruising back and forth between the mainland and Oyster Island. Through the little strait to the west Ellery saw the stern of another police launch; it was patrolling close to shore, he realized, as it disappeared behind the Island.

The first launch shot landward and made fast to the slip.

“Well, here goes,” said Vaughn in a rather tense voice, as he stepped into the launch. “Come on, Mr. Queen. This may be the end.”

Ellery and Isham jumped in, and the launch swerved widely as it headed directly for the center of the oyster.

They knifed across the Cove. Gradually they got a clearer view of the Island and the mainland. Not far from the slip at which they had embarked, they now saw, lay a similar slip to the west—evidently for the use of the Lynns. A rowboat, moored to one of the bitts, bleached there in the sun. At a corresponding point eastward across the Cove a replica of the Lynns’ slip was visible.

“Dr. Temple lives off there, doesn’t he?” asked Ellery.

“Yes. That must be his landing place.” The eastern slip was empty of craft.

The launch sheared the water. As they drew nearer the little dock on Oyster Island, its details leaped into view. They sat silently watching it grow.

Suddenly Inspector Vaughn sprang to his feet, his face suffused with excitement, and yelled: “Something’s happening over there!”

They stared at the dock. The figure of a man, carrying a struggling, faintly screaming woman in his arms, had dashed out of the brush, leaped heavily into a tiny outboard motorboat which they now saw was tied to the western side of the dock, dumped the woman unceremoniously on the bow thwart, turned the engine over, and with a rush drove the boat away from the dock, heading directly for the oncoming police launch. The woman, as if stunned, lay still; they could see the man’s dark face as he turned quickly to look back at the Island.

Not ten seconds after the escape—if indeed it was an escape—an astonishing apparition burst out of the woods, following the same path the runaways had taken.

It was a nude man. A tall, wide, brown and heavily muscled fellow, with a mane of black hair tossing with the wind of his passage. Tarzan, thought Ellery; he was half-prepared to see the trunk of Tarzan’s elephantine and improbable companion appear from the brush behind him. But where was the loin skin? … They could make out his curse of disappointment as he stopped short on the dock, glaring after the departing boat. He stood there for a moment, ropy arms hanging loosely, utterly unconscious of his nakedness. He had eyes only for the outboard, and the man in the boat was looking back tensely, apparently unaware of what lay in the path of his craft.

Then, so suddenly that Ellery blinked, the nude man vanished. He had executed a swift dive from the edge of the dock, cleaving the water like a harpoon. He reappeared almost at once and broke into a fast, distance-eating crawl, heading for the runaways.

“The damned fool!” exclaimed Isham. “Does he expect to overhaul a motorboat?”

“The motorboat’s stopped,” observed Ellery dryly.

Isham, startled, looked sharply at the outboard. It lay dead in the water a hundred yards offshore; and its pilot was working frantically over the trailing motor.

“Hit ’er up!” shouted Inspector Vaughn to the police pilot. “That guy’s got murder in his eyes!”

The launch roared, and its siren let out a deep-throated whine that raised echoes behind the Island. As if for the first time conscious of the launch’s presence, the man in the boat and the man in the water froze to search out the source of the warning. The swimmer, treading water, stared for an instant, then shook a cascade from his hair savagely and dived. He reappeared a moment later in another fast crawl, but this time he was retreating to the Island as if all the devils out of hell were in his wake.

The girl on the thwart sat up and stared. The man dropped into the sternsheets limply and waved his hand to the launch.

They pulled alongside just as the naked man leaped out of the water to shore. Without looking back he tore into the protection of the woods, and disappeared.