The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (17 page)

“Natural soapstone,” said Gallant; his expression was still worried. “You know, that smooth and slippery mineral that's used so much in the Orient—steatite, technically. It's a talc. Jito imports hundreds of gadgets made out of it.”

“Oh, this doorstop was something from his curio establishment?”

“No. It was sent to the old man four or five months ago as a gift by some friend traveling in Japan.”

“A white man?” asked Ellery suddenly.

They all looked blank. Then Cooper said with an uneasy smile: “I don't believe Mr. Kagiwa ever mentioned his name, or said anything about him, Mr. Queen.”

“I see,” said Ellery, and he smoked for a moment in silence. “Sent, eh? By express?” Cooper nodded. “You're a man of method, Mr. Cooper?”

The secretary looked surprised. “I beg your pardon?”

“Obviously, obviously. Secretaries have a deplorable habit of saving things. May I see that express receipt, please? Evidence is always better than testimony, as any lawyer will tell you. The receipt may provide us with a clue—sender's name may indicate …”

“Oh,” said Cooper. “So that's your notion? I'm sorry, Mr. Queen. There was no sender's name on the receipt. I remember very clearly.”

Ellery looked pained. He blew out a curtain of smoke, communing with his thoughts in its folds. When he spoke again it was with abruptness, as if he had decided to take a plunge. “How many dragons are there on this doorstop, Mr. Cooper?”

“Idolatry,” repeated Miss Letitia venomously.

Miss Merrivel paled a little. “You think—”

“Five,” said Cooper. “The bottom face, of course, is blank. Five dragons, Mr. Queen.”

“Pity it isn't seven,” said Ellery without smiling. “The mystic number.” And he rose and took a turn about the room, smoking and frowning in the sweet heavy air at the coils of a golden monster embroidered on a silk wall-hanging. Miss Merrivel shivered suddenly and moved closer to the tall thin-faced young man. “Tell me,” continued Ellery with a snap of his teeth, turning on his heel and squinting at them through the smoke haze. “Is your little Jito Kagiwa a Christian?”

Only Miss Letitia was not startled; that woman would have outstared Beelzebub himself. “Lord preserve us!” she cried in a shrill voice. “That devil?”

“Now why,” asked Ellery patiently, “do you persist in calling your brother-in-law a devil, Miss Gallant?”

She set her metallic lips and glared. Miss Merrivel said in a warm tone: “He is not. He's a nice kind old gentleman. He may not be a Christian, Mr. Queen, but he isn't a heathen, either. He doesn't believe in anything like that. He's often said so.”

“Then he certainly isn't a heathen, strictly speaking,” murmured Ellery. “A heathen, you know, is a person belonging to a nation or race neither Christian, Jewish, nor Mohammedan who has not abandoned the original creed of his people.”

Miss Letitia looked baffled. But then she shrilled triumphantly: “He is, too! I've often heard him talk of some outlandish belief called—called …”

“Shinto,” muttered Cooper. “It's not true, Merry, that Mr. Kagiwa doesn't believe in anything. He believes in the essential goodness of mankind, in each man's conscience being his best guide. That's the moral essence of Shinto, isn't it, Mr. Queen?”

“Is it?” murmured Ellery in an absent way. “I suppose so. Most interesting. He wasn't a cultist? Shinto is rather primitive, you know.”

“Idolater,” said Miss Letitia nastily, like a phonograph needle caught in one groove.

They looked uneasily about them. On the study desk there was a fat-bellied little idol of shiny black obsidian. In a corner stood a squat and powerful suit of Samurai armor. The silk of the dragon rippled a little on the wall under the push of the sea breeze coming in through the open window.

“He didn't belong to some ancient secret Japanese society?” persisted Ellery. “Has he had much correspondence from the East? Has he received slant-eyed visitors? Did he seem afraid of anything?”

His voice died away, and the dragon stirred again wickedly, and the Samurai looked on with his sightless, enigmatic, invisible face. The sickly-sweet odor seemed to grow stronger, filling their heads with dizzying, horrid fancies. They looked at Ellery mutely and helplessly, caught in the grip of vague primeval fears.

“And was this doorstop
solid
soapstone?” murmured Ellery, gazing out the window at the heaving Sound. Everything heaved and swayed; the house itself seemed afloat in an endless ocean, bobbing to the breathing of the sea. He waited for their reply, but none came. Big Bill Gallant shuffled his feet; he looked even more worried than before. “It couldn't have been, you know,” continued Ellery thoughtfully, answering his own question. He wondered what they were thinking.

“What makes you say that, Mr. Queen?” asked Miss Merrivel in a subdued voice.

“Common sense. The piece being valueless from a practical standpoint, why was it stolen last night? For sentimental reasons? The only one for whom it might have possessed such an attachment is Mr. Kagiwa, and I scarcely think he would have struck you over the head, Miss Merrivel, to retrieve his own property if he merely had a fondness for it.” Aunt and nephew looked startled. “Oh, you didn't know that, of course. Yes, we had a case of simple but painful assault here last night. Gave Miss Merrivel quite a headache. The bump is, take my word for it, a thing of singular beauty.… Did the doorstop possess an esoteric meaning? Was it a symbol of something, a sign, a portent, a
warning
?” Again the breeze stirred the dragon, and they shuddered; the hatred had vanished from Miss Letitia's mad eyes, to be replaced by the naked fear of a small and malicious soul trapped in the filthy den of its own malice at last.

“It—” began Cooper, shaking his head. Then he licked his dry lips and said: “This is the twentieth century, Mr. Queen.”

“So it is,” said Ellery, nodding, “wherefore we shall confine ourselves to sane and demonstrable matters. The practical alternative is that, since the doorstop
was
taken, it was valuable to the taker. But not, obviously, for itself alone. Deduction: It
contained
something valuable. That's why I said it couldn't have been a solid chunk of soapstone.”

“That's the most—” said Gallant; his shoulders hunched, and he stopped and stared at Ellery in a fascinated way.

“I beg your pardon?” said Ellery softly.

“Nothing. I was just thinking—”

“That I had shot straight to the mark, Mr. Gallant?”

The big man dropped his gaze and flushed; and he began to pace up and down with his hands loosely behind his back, the worried expression more evident than ever. Miss Merrivel bit her lip and sank into the nearest chair. Cooper looked restive, and Letitia Gallant's stiff clothing made rustling little sounds, like furtive animals in underbrush at night. Then Gallant stopped pacing and said in a rush: “I suppose I may as well come out with it. Yes, you guessed it, Queen, you guessed it.” Ellery looked pained. “The doorstop isn't solid. There's a hollow space inside.”

“Ah! And what did it contain, Mr. Gallant?”

“Fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.”

It is proverbial that money works miracles. In Jito Kagiwa's study it lived up to its reputation.

The dragon died. The Samurai became an empty shell of crumbling leather and metal. The house ceased rocking and stood firmly on its foundation. The very air freshened and crept into its normal niche and was noticed no more. Money talked in familiar accents and before the logic of its speech the specter of dread, creeping things vanished in a snuffed instant. They sighed with relief in unison and their eyes cleared again with that peculiar blankness which passes for sanity in the social world. There had been mere money in the doorstop! Miss Merrivel giggled a little.

“Fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills,” nodded Mr. Ellery Queen, looking both envious and disappointed in the same instant. “That's an indecent number of hundred-dollar bills, Mr. Gallant. Elucidate.”

Bill Gallant elucidated—rapidly, his expression vastly comforted, as if a great weight had been lifted from his mind. Old Kagiwa's business, there was no concealing it longer, was on the verge of bankruptcy. But against his stepson's advice old Kagiwa, with the serene, silent, and unconquerable will of his race, had refused to alter his lifelong business policies. Only when ruin stared him in the eyes did his resolution waver, and then it was too late to do more than salvage the battered wreck.

“He did it on the q.t.,” said Gallant, shrugging, “and the first I knew about it was the other day when he called me into this room, locked the door, picked up the doorstop—he'd left it on the floor all the time!—unscrewed one of the dragons.… Came out like a plug. He told me he'd found the secret cavity in the doorstop by accident right after he received it. Nothing in it, he said, and went into some long-winded explanation about the probable origin of the piece. It hadn't been a doorstop originally, of course—don't suppose the Japanese have such things. Well … there was the money, in a tight wad, which he'd stowed away in the hole. I told him he was a fool to leave it lying around that way, but he said no one knew except him and me. Naturally—” He flushed.

“I see now,” said Ellery mildly, “why you were reluctant to tell me about it. It looks bad for you, obviously.”

The big young man spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “I didn't steal the damned thing, but who'd believe me?” He sat down, fumbling for a cigarette.

“There's one thing in your favor,” murmured Ellery. “Or at least I suppose there is. Are you his heir?”

Gallant looked up wildly. “Yes!”

“Yes, he is,” said Cooper in a slow, almost reluctant, voice. “I witnessed the old man's will myself.”

“Tut, tut. Much ado about nothing. You naturally wouldn't steal what belongs to you anyway. Buck up, Mr. Gallant; you're safe enough.” Ellery sighed and began to button up his coat. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, my interest in the case, I fear, is dissipated. I had foreseen something
outré
.…” He smiled and picked up his hat. “This is a matter for the police, after all. Of course, I'll help if I can, but it's been my experience that local officers prefer to work alone. And really, there's nothing more that I can do.”

“But what do you think happened?” asked Miss Merrivel in hushed stones. “Do you think poor Mr. Kagiwa—”

“I'm not a psychologist, Miss Merrivel. Even a psychologist, as a matter of fact, might be baffled by the inner workings of an Oriental's mind. Your policeman doesn't worry about such subtle matters, and I don't doubt the local men will clear this business up in short order. Good day.”

Miss Letitia sniffed and swept by Ellery with a disdainful swish of her skirts. Miss Merrivel wearily followed, tugging at her hat. Cooper went to the telephone and Gallant frowned out of the window at the Sound.

“Headquarters?” said Cooper, clearing his throat. “I want to speak to the Chief.”

A little of the old heavy-scented, alien silence crept back as they waited.

“One moment,” said Ellery from the doorway. “One moment, please.” The men turned, surprised. Ellery was smiling apologetically. “I've just discovered something. The human mind is a fearful thing. I've been criminally negligent, gentlemen. There's still another possibility.”

“Hold the wire, hold the wire,” said Cooper. “Possibility?”

Ellery waved an airy hand. “I may be wrong,” he admitted handsomely. “Can either of you gentlemen direct me to an almanac?”

“Almanac?” repeated Gallant, bewildered. “Why, certainly. I don't—There's one on the library table, Queen. Here, I'll get it for you.” He disappeared into the adjoining room and returned a moment later with a fat paperbacked volume.

Ellery seized it and riffled pages, humming. Cooper and Gallant exchanged glances; and then Cooper shrugged and hung up.

“Ah,” said Ellery, dropping his aria like a hot coal. “Ah. Hmm. Well, well. Mind over matter. The pen is mightier … I may be wrong,” he said quietly, closing the book and taking off his coat, “but the odds are now superbly against it. Useful things, almanacs … Mr. Cooper,” he said in a new voice, “let me see that express receipt.”

The metallic quality of the tone brought them both up, stiffening. The secretary got to his feet, his face suffused with blood. “Look here,” he growled, “are you insinuating that I've lied to you?”

“Tut, tut,” said Ellery. “The receipt, Mr. Cooper, quickly.”

Bill Gallant said uneasily: “Of course, Cooper. Do as Mr. Queen says. But I don't see what possible value there can be.…”

“Value is in the mind, Mr. Gallant. The hand may be quicker than the eye, but the brain is quicker than both of them.”

Cooper glared, but he pulled open a drawer of the carved desk and began to rummage about. Finally he came up with a sheaf of motley papers and went through them with reluctance until he found a small yellow slip.

“Here,” he said, scowling. “Damned impertinence,
I
think.”

“It's not a question,” said Ellery gently, “of what
you
think, Mr. Cooper.” He picked up the slip and scanned the yellow paper with the painful scrupulosity of an archologist. It was an ordinary express receipt, describing the contents of the package delivered, the date, the sending point, charges, and similar information. The name of the sender was missing. The package had been shipped by a Nippon Yusen Kaisha steamer from Yokohama, Japan, had been picked up in San Francisco by the express company, and forwarded to its consignee, Jito Kagiwa, at his Westchester address. Shipping and expressage charges had been prepaid in Yokohama, it appeared, on the basis of the 44-pound weight of the doorstop, which was sketchily described as being of soapstone, 6 by 6 by 12 inches in dimensions, and decorated with dragons in bas-relief.