Adventures of Ellery Queen by Ellery Queen

Author:Ellery Queen [Queen, Ellery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-8944-0
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2012-12-25T17:38:00+00:00

The Adventure of THE TEAKWOOD CASE

THE WOODY, LEATHERY, HOMELY living room of the Queens’ apartment on West Eighty-seventh Street in New York City had seen queerer visitors than Mr. Seaman Carter, but surely none quite so ill at ease.

“Really, Mr. Carter,” said Ellery Queen with amusement, stretching his long legs nearer the fireplace, “you’ve been wretchedly misinformed. I’m not a detective at all, you know. My father is the sleuth of this family! Officially I’ve no more right to investigate a crime than you have.”

“But that’s exactly the point, Mr. Queen!” wheezed Carter with a vast rolling of his porphyry eyes. “We don’t want the police. We want unofficial advice. We want you, Mr. Queen, to clear up these devilish robberies sub rosa—ahem!—so to speak; or I shouldn’t have come. The Gothic Arms can’t afford the notoriety, my dear, dear Mr. Queen. We’re an exclusive development catering to the best people—”

“Pshaw, Mr. Carter,” said Ellery between lazy puffs of the inevitable cigaret, “go to the police. You’ve had five robberies in as many months. All of jewels, all filched from different tenants on different floors. And now this latest theft two days ago—a diamond necklace from the bedroom wall-safe of a Mrs. Mallorie, an invalid and one of your oldest tenants….”

“Mrs. Mallorie!” Carter shuddered with the sinuous ripplings of an octopus in motion. “She’s an old woman. She went into hysterics—a terrible person, Mr. Queen. Insists on calling in the police, informing the insurance company….We’re at our wits’ end.”

“It seems to me,” said Ellery, fixing his sharp eyes on the man’s lumpy cheeks, which were quivering, “that you’ll be in the devil of a sweet mess, Mr. Carter, if you don’t get official help at once. You’re making an extraordinary fuss about very small potatoes.”

The telephone-bell rang and Djuna, the Queens’ boy-of-all-work, slipped into the bedroom to answer it. He popped his small gypsy head out of the doorway almost at once. “For you, Mr. Ellery. Dad Queen is on the wire and he’s hopping.”

“Excuse me,” said Ellery, abruptly, and went into the bedroom.

When he came out all amusement had fled from his lean features. He had divested his tall body of the battered old dressing-gown and was fully attired for the street.

“You’ll be interested to learn, no doubt,” he said in a flat voice, “that once more fact has outdone fiction, Mr. Carter. I’ve been treated to the spectacle of an amazing coincidence. On which floor did you say Mrs. Mallorie’s apartment lies?”

Mr. Seaman Carter shook like the damp flanks of a grumbling volcano; his little eyes became glassy. “My God!” he screeched, dragging himself to his feet. “What happened now? Mrs. Mallorie occupies Apartment F on the sixteenth floor!”

“I’m delighted to hear it. Well, Mr. Carter, your laudable effort to smother legitimate news has failed, and you have enlisted my poor services. Except that we are en route to the scene of a crime more serious than theft. My father, Inspector Queen, informs me that a man in Apartment H on the sixteenth floor of the Gothic Arms has been found foully done in.

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