Chinese Orange Mystery (3 page)

“Why,
Mr
. Osborne!” said Miss Diversey. “I do believe you’re jealous!”

“Jealous? Me? Pshaw—”

“Well, I think he’s simply divine,” said Miss Diversey with cunning. “And it’s wonderful of you to take me to see him, Mr. Osborne. I know I’ll have the most thrilling time.”

“Thank you,” said Osborne glumly. “I meant to ask you … Well, that’s fine, that’s fine, Miss Diversey. It’s about a quarter to six now—”

“Five-forty-three,” said Miss Diversey mechanically, consulting her wrist-watch with professional swiftness. “Shall we say,” her voice lowered and became intimate, “a quarter to eight?”

“That’s fine,” breathed Osborne. Their eyes touched, and both quickly looked away. Miss Diversey felt a sudden surge of warmth beneath the starched apron. Her blunt fingers began to search her hair mechanically.

Mr. Ellery Queen was wont to point out in confidentially retrospective moments that not the least remarkable feature of the affair was the subtle manner in which the dead man’s very lack of existence impinged upon the unexciting little lives of little people. At one moment all was commonplace. Miss Diversey trifled with herself and Mr. Osborne’s heart in Kirk’s hide-away office. Donald Kirk was off somewhere. Jo Temple was dressing in a new black gown in one of the guest-rooms of the Kirk suite. Dr. Kirk’s thorny nose was buried in a Fourteenth Century rabbinical manuscript. Hubbell was in Kirk’s room laying out his master’s evening kit. Glenn Macgowan was striding fast up Broadway. Felix Berne was kissing a foreign-looking woman in his bachelor apartment in the East Sixties. Irene Llewes was regarding her very admirable nude figure in her bedroom mirror in the Chancellor.

And Mrs. Shane, who a few moments before had played Cupid, was suddenly called upon to play a new role—Prologue in The Tragedy of the Chinese Orange.

A
T PRECISELY 5:44 BY MRS.
Shane’s watch one of the elevator-doors opposite her station opened and a stoutish little man with a bland middle-aged face stepped out. There was nothing about him that excited the eye with a sensation of interest or pleasure. He was just a middle-aged creature grown to flesh, dressed in undistinguished clothing, wearing a greenish-black felt hat, a shiny black topcoat, and a woolen scarf bundled around his fat neck against the brisk Fall weather. He had pudgy hairless hands and he was carrying ordinary gray capeskin gloves. From the crown of his cheap hat to the soles of his black bull-dog shoes he was—nothing, the Invisible Man, one of the millions of mediocrities who make up the everyday wonderless world.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Shane rather sharply, measuring him accurately with a glance as she noticed his hesitancy. This was no guest of the Chancellor, with its $10-a-day rooms.

“Could you direct me to the private office of Mr. Donald Kirk?” asked the stout man timidly. His voice was soft and sugary, not unpleasant.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Shane. That explained everything. Donald Kirk’s office on the twenty-second floor was the port-of-call of many strange gentlemen. Kirk had instituted this office in the Chancellor to provide a quiet meeting-place for jewelry and philatelic dealers, and to conduct purely confidential publishing business which he did not care to air in the comparatively public surroundings of the Mandarin Press offices. As a result, Mrs. Shane was not unaccustomed to being accosted by queer people. So she snapped: “Room 2210, right there across the corridor,” and went back to her perusal of a nudist magazine cleverly concealed in the half-open top drawer of her desk.

The stout man said: “Thank you,” in his sweet voice and trudged obliquely across the corridor to the door on which Miss Diversey had rapped a few moments earlier. He made a pudgy fist and knocked on the panel.

There was an interval of silence from the room; and then Osborne’s voice, curiously choked, said: “Come in.”

The stout man beamed and opened the door. Osborne was standing by his desk, blinking and pale, while Miss Diversey stood near the door with flaming cheeks. Her right hand burned where male skin had touched it an instant before.

“Mr. Kirk?” inquired the stranger mildly.

“Mr. Kirk is out,” said Osborne with some difficulty. “What can I—”

“I believe I’ll go now,” said Miss Diversey in a rather cracked tone.

“Oh, please!” said the visitor. “I assure you I can wait. Please don’t let me interrupt—” He eyed her uniform brightly.

“I was going anyway,” murmured Miss Diversey; whereupon she fled, holding her cheek. The door banged shut.

Osborne sighed and lowered his head. “Well … What can I do for you?”

“To tell you the truth,” said the stranger, removing his hat and revealing a pinkish skull fringed with gray hair, “I was really looking for a Mr. Kirk, Mr. Donald Kirk. I want to see him very badly.”

“I’m Mr. Kirk’s assistant, James Osborne. What did you want to see Mr. Kirk about?”

The stranger hesitated.

“Does your business relate to publishing?”

He puckered his lips a little stubbornly. “My business is confidential, you see, Mr. Osborne.”

Osborne’s eyes grew steely. “I assure you I’m intrusted with all of Mr. Kirk’s confidential business. It won’t be violating any confidence—”

The stout man’s colorless eyes fixed themselves upon the album of postage stamps on Osborne’s desk. He said suddenly: “What’s that, stamps?”

“Yes. Won’t you please—”

The stout man shook his head. “No, I’ll wait. Do you expect Mr. Kirk soon?”

“I can’t say exactly. He should be back in a short time.”

“Thank you, thank you. If I may—” He started toward one of the armchairs.

“If you’ll wait in here, please,” said Osborne. He went to the second of the two doors, opening into the office, and thrust it open, disclosing a room now dark in the closing dusk. He switched on a light above a bookcase just inside to the right, revealing the room from which Miss Diversey had filched the tangerine.

“Make yourself comfortable,” said Osborne to the stout little man. “There are cigarettes and cigars in that humidor on the table; candy, magazines, fruit. I’ll let you know the moment Mr. Kirk comes in.”

“Thank you,” murmured the stranger. “Very kind of you, I’m sure. This is pleasant,” and he sat down, still bundled up to the neck, in a chair near the table. “Quite like a club,” he said, nodding in a pleased way. “
Very
nice. And all those books, too.” Three walls of the room were covered with open bookshelves, interrupted only by the doors on opposite walls and an artificial fireplace on the third, above which hung two crossed African spears behind a battered
Impi
war-shield. The fourth wall, broken up by two windows, held the reading table. Deep chairs stood before the bookcases like sentinels.

“Yes, isn’t it,” said Osborne in a dry voice, and he went back to the office, shutting the door behind him just as the stout little man sighed comfortably and reached for a magazine.

Osborne picked up the telephone on his employer’s desk and called the Kirk suite. “Hello! Hubbell.” He spoke irritably. “Mr. Kirk in?”

Hubbell’s whining English voice said: “No, sir.”

“When do you expect him back? There’s some one waiting for him here.”

“Well, sir, Mr. Kirk just ’phoned saying that he’d be late for the dinner-party and to have his clothes laid out.” Hubbell’s voice grew shrill. “That’s Mr. Kirk all over! Always doing the unexpected, if I may say so, sir. Now here he tells me he’ll be in at a quarter to seven and to set a place for ‘an unexpected guest,’ a Mr. King or Queen or somebody, and—”

“Well, set it, for heaven’s sake,” said Osborne, and hung up. He sat down, his eyes far away.

At twenty-five minutes past six the office-door opened and Glenn Macgowan hurried in. He was in dinner clothes, and he carried a hat and topcoat. He was smoking a slender cigar rather furiously and his crystal eyes were troubled.

“Still stamps, eh?” he said in his deep voice, flinging his towering length into a chair. “Old Faithful Ozzie. Where’s Don?”

Osborne, intent on his album, looked up with a start. “Oh, Mr. Macgowan! Why, I don’t know, sir. He hasn’t shown up here.”

“Damn.” The big man chewed an immaculate fingernail. “He’s as unpredictable as next year’s Derby winner. I once bet him a thousand dollars he couldn’t get to an appointment on time and, by George, I won! Seen Marcella?”

“No, sir. She rarely comes in here, you see, and I—”

“Look here, Ozzie.” Macgowan smoked nervously. There was a bigness about him that overflowed the chair. Above his broad shoulders he had a lean face and a high pale forehead. “I’ve got to see Don right away. Are you sure—?”

Osborne was astonished. “But won’t you see him this evening at dinner, sir?”

“Yes, yes, but I’ve got to see him before dinner. Sure you don’t know where he is?” said Macgowan impatiently.

“I’m sorry, sir. He left early and didn’t say where he was going.”

Macgowan frowned. “Let’s have a paper and pencil.” He scribbled hastily on the sheet Osborne hurried to provide, folded the paper, thrust it into an envelope, which he sealed, and tossed the envelope on Kirk’s desk. “You’ll see that he gets it before dinner tonight, Ozzie. It’s important—and personal.”

“Surely.” Osborne tucked the envelope into one of his pockets. “By the way, sir, there’s something I’d like to show you, if you have a moment.”

Macgowan paused at the door. “I’m in a hurry, old chap.”

“I’m sure you’ll want to see this, Mr. Macgowan.” Osborne went to a wall-safe and pulled out a large leather-bound, ledger-like volume. He carried it to his desk and opened it; it was full of mounted postage stamps.

“What’s this, something new?” asked Macgowan, with sudden interest.

“Well, here’s one item that’s new, sir.” Osborne pointed out a stamp and handed Macgowan a small magnifying glass from a litter of philatelic tools on the desk.

“Nanking issue of the dragon, eh?” muttered Macgowan, putting the glass to the green-and-rose stamp. “Something wrong with the surcharge, isn’t there? By Jove, the bottom character’s omitted!”

“That’s right, sir,” said Osborne with a vigorous nod. “That vertical surcharge ought to read
Chung Hua Ming Kuo
—if that’s the way they pronounce it—‘Middle Flowery People’s Kingdom.’ But on this stamp the last character was somehow dropped out, and the ‘Kingdom’ part’s not there. Trouble with Chinese rarities, especially the surcharges, is that you’ve got to have a good working knowledge of the ideographs to be able to spot an error. This one’s comparatively easy;
I
don’t know Chinese from Greek. But old Dr. Kirk read this for me. Interesting, eh, sir?”

“Damnably. Where did Don pick this up?”

“Auction. About three weeks ago. Delivery was held up for some reason until yesterday. I think they were checking up its authenticity.”

“He has all the luck, darn him,” grumbled Macgowan, setting down the glass. “I haven’t run across a really interesting local rarity in weeks.” He shrugged and then said in an oddly quiet voice: “Did this Nanking set Don back much, Ozzie?”

Something tightened Osborne’s lips, and his eyes grew cold. “I really couldn’t say, sir.”

Macgowan stared at him, and then suddenly slapped his thin back. “All right, all right, you loyal old coot. Don’t forget that note. You tell Don I dropped in early purposely. I’ll be back in time for dinner. Want to go downstairs and make a few calls.”

“Yes, Mr. Macgowan,” said Osborne with a smile, and returned to his desk.

It was extraordinary how events ranged themselves that evening. Everything seemed to fit, like a woman’s new gloves. There was a smoothness, an inevitability, about things. And they all swirled about the head of poor Osborne, a colorless midge working at his job.

And all the time the door to the anteroom was closed, and nothing but silence came from there.

It was exactly 6:35, for example, when the office-door opened again and brought Osborne’s head up sharply. A tall magnificent woman was consciously framed in the doorway, a smile on her red lips. Osborne climbed to his feet, more than half-annoyed.

“Oh,” said the woman, and the smile vanished. It was as if she had put it on for the ceremony of making an entrance. “Mr. Kirk isn’t here?”

“No, Miss Llewes.”

“Isn’t that disgusting!” She leaned against the open door thoughtfully, her green eyes studying the room. She was dressed in something tight and shimmering. Her bare arms protruded from beneath a short ermine wrap. There was a deep cleft between her breasts which tightened and loosened with her slow breathing. “I did want to talk to him.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Llewes,” said Osborne. To him there was something infinitely more substantial, if less delectable, in Miss Diversey. This woman was as unreal as a Garbo seen upon the silver screen. One might look, but not touch.

“Well … Thank you.” She had an unreal voice, too; low and faintly hoarse, with an undercurrent of warmth. Osborne blinked and stared, fascinated, into her green eyes. She gave him a slow smile and vanished.

The two women met outside the office-door under the vigilant gaze of Mrs. Shane, who knew, saw, and heard all. Irene Llewes’s ermine brushed the arm of the tiny woman in the black evening gown who had just come from the Kirk suite. The two women halted, frozen still by the same instantaneous surge of dislike. Mrs. Shane looked on with gleaming eyes.

They stared at each other for perhaps fifteen seconds unmoving; the tall woman, slightly inclined; the small woman, eyes raised steadily. Neither said a word. Then Miss Llewes passed on toward the transverse corridor, a glitter of the most mocking triumph in her green eyes. She walked as if it were a sensual pleasure—slowly, with a faint trace of hip-sway.

Jo Temple stared after her, her small fists clenched. There was a challenge very boldly flaunted by the undulation of Miss Llewes’s hips.

“You know I can’t match that, you cunning devil,” said Miss Temple in a silent breath. “You and your sex appeal … hussy!”

Then she shrugged, smiling, and hurried into the office.

Osborne looked up again from his work, definitely annoyed. He rose and said: “Mr. Kirk hasn’t come in yet. Miss Temple,” in a tone of resignation.