The French Powder Mystery — 37

Make Ready!

    They came in one by one—furtive, curious, impassive, bored, reluctant, openly nervous. Quietly they came in, conscious of the tight police cordon, of a quivering strain in the atmosphere, of shrewd eyes that noted and calculated their least movement—conscious most of all of grim over-hanging disaster, to whom and with what dire effects they did not know and could only guess.
    It was nine-thirty of the fateful Thursday morning. The door through which they shuffled in silence was the door marked PRIVATE: CYRUS FRENCH.... They passed inside through the bare lofty anteroom, into the heavy quiet of the library, sat down in incredible camp-chairs set up martially facing the dormer-windows.
    They crowded the room. In the front row sat old Cyrus French himself, a white and trembling figure. His fingers were desperately entwined in the fingers of Marion French by his side. Westley Weaver, harried face gaunted by sleeplessness, occupied the seat next to Marion's. To French's left was Dr. Stuart, the old man's physician, watching his patient with a professional pantherishness. By Stuart's side sat John Gray, dapper and bird-like, occasionally leaning over the doctor's bulky abdomen to talk into the sick man's ear.
    In the row behind were Hortense Underhill, the housekeeper, and Doris Keaton, the maid. Both sat rigidly, whispering to each other out of the corners of their mouths, peering about with frightened eyes.
    In serried ranks.... Wheezing Marchbanks; the portly Zorn fingering his watch-chain; a befurred and aromatic Mrs. Zorn dispensing smiles to the grave Frenchman, Paul Lavery, who stroked his short beard; Trask, a flower in his lapel, but utterly pale, with enormous leaden rings under his eyes; the antique-dealer Vincent Carmody, a saturnine figure, uncompromising, somber, even in his chair towering above the heads of the company; mild-mannered Arnold MacKenzie, the general manager of the store; Diana Johnson, the Negress who had discovered Mrs. French's dead body; the four watchmen—O'Flaherty, Bloom, Ralska, Powers....
    There was little conversation. Each time the anteroom door opened people twisted about in their seats, craned, jerked their eyes back to the window again with guilty side-glances toward each other.
    The conference table had been pushed against the wall. In a row of chairs before the table sat Sergeant Thomas Velie and William Crouther, chief of the store's detective force, talking in undertones; scowling Salvatore Fiorelli, of the Narcotic Squad, bright black eyes snapping at some inexpressible thought, his scar pulsing slowly beneath the swarthy skin; "Jimmy," the little bald-headed operative of the Headquarters fingerprint department. At the anteroom door stood Patrolman Bush, relegated to the important post of guardian of the door. A cloud of detectives, among them Inspector Queen's favorite operatives—Hagstrom, Flint, Ritter, Johnson, and Piggott—massed along the wall directly opposite the conference table. At each corner of the room stood a silent officer in blue, cap in hand.
    Neither Inspector Queen nor Ellery Queen had yet put in his appearance. People whispered this information to each other. They looked sidelong at the anteroom door, against which Bush's broad back was set.
    Gradually, tangibly, another silence came over the scene. Whispers trembled, wavered, ceased. Glances became more furtive, chair-twistings more frequent. Cyrus French coughed violently; he doubled up in agony. Dr. Stuart's eyes flickered with a vague anxiety. Weaver bent far to the side when the old man's paroxysm had passed; Marion looked startled; soon their heads were close together, touching....
    Crouther scraped his hand over his face. "What the hell is holdin' up the works, Sergeant?" Velie shook his head gloomily. "What's it all about?"
    "Got me."
    Crouther shrugged.
    The silence thickened. Every one grew still as stone.... The silence grew more embarrassing with each passing moment—a silence that swelled, breathed, became alive....
    Then Sergeant Velie did a strange thing. His spatulate forefinger, resting on his knee, tapped three distinct times, in rhythm. Not even Crouther caught the signal, and Crouther was at Velie's side. But the officer on guard, who had been watching the Sergeant's hand for minutes, immediately sprang into motion. All eyes flashed instantly upon him, grasping at this sign of life, of happening with a pitiful eagerness.... The policeman went to the desk, which was shrouded by a light tarpaulin, and bending far over carefully removed the covering. He stepped back, folded the tarpaulin neatly, retreated to his corner....
    But he was already forgotten. As if the sheer rays of a searchlight had been trained upon the desk, every one in the room eyed the objects revealed with a fascination drawn from the deepest crevices of his being.
    They were many, and heterogeneous. Ranged in orderly rows along the glass top, each with a small labeled card before it, were the gold lipstick marked W.M.F., which Ellery had found on the bedroom dressing-table; the silver-chased lipstick with the C monogram from the dead woman's bag in the exhibition-window; six keys with gold discs—the keys to the apartment, five of which bore the initials of Cyrus French, Winifred Marchbanks French, Marion French, Bernice Carmody, Westley Weaver, and the sixth the word Master; the two carved onyx book-ends, lying with a small jar of white powder and a camel's-hair brush between them; the five strange volumes which Ellery had found on French's desk; the shaving-set from the lavatory cabinet; two ashtrays filled with cigaret-stubs—one set much shorter in length than the other; the gauzy scarf initialed M.F., taken from the neck of the victim; a board on which were tacked the cards from the cardroom table, laid out exactly as they had first appeared to the police; the slip of blue memorandum paper which was checked off at Cyrus French's typewritten name; the blue hat and the walking shoes from the bedroom closet which Hortense Underhill and Doris Keaton had identified as having been worn by Bernice Carmody the day she disappeared; and a black .38 Colt revolver, with the two now rusty-looking splatters of metal which had been the lethal bullets lying near the muzzle.
    Quite by itself, prominently in view of the audience, lay a pair of dull, steely manacles—a symbol and a portent of what was to come....
    And there they reposed, the silent clues garnered during the investigation frankly open to the gaze of the uneasy guests of Ellery Queen. Again they stared, whispered.
    But this time they had not long to wait. A slight commotion in the corridor outside became plainly audible in the library. Sergeant Velie lumbered to his feet and went quickly to the anteroom door, motioning Patrolman Bush aside. He disappeared, the door swinging shut behind him.
    Now the door became the focal point of those half-angry, bewildered eyes—that door behind which the deep murmur of several voices kept up a short mysterious litany.... And as if it had been cut cleanly by a knife, the voices broke off and an instant of silence fell before the knob of the door was rattled, the door was pushed inward, and eight men stepped into the room.