The French Powder Mystery — 3 · The French Powder Mystery — 4

The French Powder Mystery — 3

"Humpty-Dumpty Had a Great Fall"

    French's occupied a square block in the heart of the mid-town section of New York, on Fifth Avenue. On the borderline between the more fashionable upper avenue and the office-building district farther downtown, it catered to a mixed patronage of wealth and penury. At the noon hour its broad aisles and six floors were crowded with shop girls and stenographers; in mid-afternoon the tone of its clientele improved perceptibly. It boasted at once therefore the lowest prices, the most modern models, the widest assortment of saleable articles, in New York. As a result of this compromise between attractive prices and exclusive merchandise it was the most popular department store in the city. From nine o'clock in the morning until five-thirty in the evening French's was thronged with shoppers, the sidewalks surrounding the marble structure and its many wings almost impassable.
    Cyrus French, pioneer department store owner, assisted by his associate Board, exerted the full financial strength of his powerful organization to make French's—an institution of two generations of French ownership—the show place of the city. In those days, long before the artistic movement had been communicated in the United States to the more practical articles of use and wear, French's had already made contact with its European representatives and held public exhibitions of art objects, art furniture, and kindred modernistic ware. These exhibits attracted huge crowds to the store. One of its main windows fronting Fifth Avenue was devoted to exhibits of periodically imported articles. This window became the focal point for the eyes of all New York. Curious throngs constantly besieged its sheathing of plate glass.
    On the morning of Tuesday the twenty-fourth of May, at three minutes of the noon hour, the heavy unpaneled door to this window opened and a Negress in black dress, white apron and white cap entered. She sauntered about the window, seemed to appraise its contents, and then stood stiffly at attention, as if awaiting a predetermined moment to begin her mysterious work.
    The contents of the window were arranged to illustrate a combination living-room and bedroom, of an ultra-modern design created by Paul Lavery, of Paris, according to a placard in a corner. This card acknowledged Lavery's authorship of the articles on exhibition, and called attention to "lectures on the fifth floor by M. Lavery." The rear wall, into which the one door opened by which the Negress had entered, was unrelieved by ornament and tinted a pastelle green. On this wall hung a huge Venetian mirror, unframed, its edges cut in an irregular design. Against the wall stood a long narrow table, exhibiting an unpainted grain highly waxed. On the table stood a squat prismatic lamp, made of a clouded glass procurable at that period only from a unique modern art-objects factory in Austria. Odd pieces—chairs, end-tables, bookcases, a divan, all of unorthodox construction, peculiar and daring in conception—stood about the gleaming floor of the window-room. The side walls served as background for several pieces of miscellaneous utility.
    The lighting fixtures in the ceiling and on the side walls were all of the "concealed" variety rapidly gaining vogue on the Continent.
    At the stroke of noon the Negress, who had remained motionless since her entrance into the room, stirred into activity. By this time a viscid mass of people had gathered outside the window on the sidewalk, awaiting the Negress's demonstration with hungry eyes and restless shoulders.
    Setting down a metal rack on which were hung a number of simply lettered placards, the Negress picked up a long ivory wand and, pointing to the legend on the first placard, proceeded solemnly to one of the pieces on the east wall and began a pantomimic demonstration of its construction and properties.
    The fifth placard—by this time the crowd had doubled in size and overflowed from the sidewalk—bore the words:
    Wall-Bed
    This Article of Furniture
    Is Concealed in the West
    Wall and Is Operated Electrically
    by a Push-Button.
    It is of Special Design,
    Created by M. Paul Lavery,
    and Is the Only One of Its
    Kind in This Country.
    Pointing to the words once more, for emphasis, the Negress sedately walked to the west wall, indicated with a flourish a small ivory button set in a nacreous panel, and touched the button with one long black finger.
    Before pressing it, she looked out once more on the jostling, expectant crowd before the window. Necks craned eagerly to see the marvel about to be revealed.
    What they saw was a marvel indeed—so unexpected, so horrible, so grotesque that at the instant of its occurrence faces froze into masks of stunned incredulity. It was like a moment snatched out of an unbelievable nightmare.... For, as the Negress pushed the ivory button, a section of the wall slid outward and downward with a swift noiseless movement, two small wooden legs unfolded and shot out of the forepart of the bedstead, the bed settled to a horizontal position—and the body of a woman, pale-faced, crumpled, distorted, her clothes bloody in two places, fell from the silken sheet to the floor at the Negress's feet.
    It was twelve-fifteen exactly.

The French Powder Mystery — 4

"All the King's Horses"

    The Negress uttered one horrified shriek, so piercing that it was distinctly audible through the heavy glass window, rolled her eyes wildly, and fell fainting at the side of the body.
    The spectators outside still presented a tableau—they were stricken into silence, petrified with fright. Then a woman on the sidewalk, her face pressed immovably to the glass, screamed. Immobility became frenzy, silence a dull unpunctuated roar. The crowd surged away from the window, pushing madly backward, stampeding in terror. A child fell and was trampled in the crush. A police whistle blew, and a bluecoat ran shouting through the crowd, using his club freely. He seemed bewildered by the uproar—he had not yet seen the two still figures in the exhibition-window.
    Suddenly the door in the window burst open and a lean man wearing a short pointed beard and a monocle ran into the room. His staring eyes took in the two motionless figures on the shining floor, traveled jerkily to the milling crowd outside and the policeman swinging his club, and returned with dazed disbelief to the floor. With a soundless oath he sprang forward, grasped a heavy silk cord in a corner near the plate-glass window, and pulled. A translucent curtain fell immediately, shutting off the view of the frantic people in the street.
    The bearded man knelt at the side of the Negress, felt her pulse, hesitantly touched the skin of the other woman, rose and ran back to the door. A growing crowd of sales-girls and shoppers was collecting on the main floor of the department store, just outside the window. Three men—floorwalkers—rushed through as if to enter.
    The man in the window spoke sharply: "You—get the head store detective at once—no, never mind—here he comes—Mr. Crouther! Mr. Crouther! This way! Here!"
    A heavy-set, broad-shouldered man with a mottled complexion shoved his way, cursing, through the crowd. He had just reached the entrance of the window when the policeman who had dispersed the crowd on the sidewalk ran up and dashed after him into the window. The three men disappeared, the bluecoat slamming the door shut behind them.
    The bearded man stood aside. "There's been a terrible accident, Crouther.... Glad you're here, officer.... My God, what an affair!"
    The head store detective pounded across the room and glared down at the two women. "What happened to the coon, Mr. Lav-ery?" he bellowed at the bearded man.
    "Fainted, I suppose!"
    "Here, Crouther, let me take a look," said the policeman, unceremoniously pushing Lavery aside. He bent over the body of the woman who had tumbled from the bed.
    Crouther cleared his throat importantly. "Listen here, Bush. This is no time to make an examination. We oughtn't to touch a thing until Headquarters is notified. Mr. Lav-ery and me—we'll stand guard here while you use the 'phone. Go ahead now, Bush, don't be an egg!"
    The policeman stood undecidedly for a moment, scratched his head, and finally left the room with hurried steps.
    "This is one sweet mess," growled Crouther. "What happened here, Mr. Lav-ery? Who in hell is this woman?"
    Lavery started nervously and plucked at his beard with long thin fingers. "Why, don't you know? But of course not.... Good Heavens, Crouther, what are we to do?"
    Crouther frowned. "Now don't go getting yourself all excited, Mr. Lav-ery. This is a police job, pure and simple. Lucky I was on the scene so quick. We gotta wait for the detail from Headquarters. Just take it easy now—"
    Lavery regarded the store detective coldly. "I'm perfectly all right, Mr. Crouther," he said. "I suggest—" he weighted the word with authority—"that you immediately marshal your store forces to keep order on the main floor. Make it appear as if nothing out of the way has happened. Call Mr. MacKenzie. Send somebody to notify Mr. French and the Board of Directors. I understand they're having a meeting upstairs. This is—an affair of a grave nature—graver than you know. Go now!"
    Crouther looked at Lavery rebelliously, shook his head, and made for the door. As he opened it a small dark man with a physician's bag stepped into the room. He glanced quickly around and without a word crossed to the side of the two bodies.
    He favored the Negress with a scant glance and a feeling of the pulse. He spoke without looking up.
    "Here—Mr. Lavery, is it?—you'll have to help—get one of the men outside to give you a hand—the Negress has merely fainted—get her a glass of water and put her on that divan there—send somebody for one of the nurses from the infirmary...."
    Lavery nodded. He went to the door and looked out over the whispering crowd on the floor.
    "Mr. MacKenzie! Here, please!"
    A middle-aged man with a pleasant Scotch face hurried up and into the room. "Help me, please," said Lavery.
    The doctor busied himself over the body of the other woman. His movements concealed her face. Lavery and MacKenzie picked up the reviving form of the Negress and carried her to the divan. A floorwalker outside was dispatched for a glass of water and reappeared in a twinkling. The Negress gulped, groaned.
    The doctor looked up gravely. "This woman is dead," he announced. "Has been for quite a while. What's more, she's been shot. Got it in the heart. Looks like murder, Mr. Lavery!"
    "Nom du chien!" muttered Lavery. His face was sickly white.
    MacKenzie scurried across the room to look down at the huddled corpse. He fell back with a cry.
    "Good God! It's Mrs. French!"