Call for a Corpse by Larry Kent

Author:Larry Kent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cia, russian spies, double agents, piccadilly publishing, don haring, larry kent, hard boiled crime novel, book 655, crime fiction ebook, golden age detetcive
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter 5 … the gadget …

It was only a few minutes after five when I drove away from the clubhouse. I headed for the New York Thruway entrance a few miles away but I hadn’t gone a mile when a black Cadillac drew alongside my Corvette. Behind the tinted glass of the rear door I saw Queen’s round face. Paul was at the wheel in a chauffeur’s peaked cap.

Queen made a motion with his pudgy hand and I nodded. The Cadillac moved ahead and turned into my lane. I followed. We by-passed the Thruway and took the Sawmill River Parkway. Ten minutes later we were rolling over the winding drive that led to the Tremoyne mansion. The Cadillac went around the side of the building. I braked behind it, got out.

Paul gave me a narrow-eyed look as he opened the rear door of the Cadillac. I smiled, threw him a one-finger salute and his eyes all but disappeared. Then Queen stepped out of the car with a grunt and a little bounce.

He blinked his blue eyes at me. “The sun agrees with you, Mr. Kent. You have some good color in your face. If you’ll come with me ...”

I followed him behind the house, along a flagstone path, then into the back of a glass-house. Moist heat and the cloying odor of cymbidiums hit me.

“Well,” I said.

“My orchids,” Queen said proudly. “What do you think, Mr. Kent?”

There were hundreds—no, thousands—of cymbidiums in full bloom. They grew on large rocks that must have presented a transport problem, and thick artificial trees. I went close to one of the latter, touched it.

“Plaster of Paris and cement,” Queen said. “I’ve done my best to provide a natural environment.”

I felt sweat trickle down my neck, unbuttoned my collar.

“I keep the temperature at a constant 85 degrees. It seems much warmer because of the moisture machines. These are rain forest orchids.”

“Cymbidiums,” I said.

Queen smiled tightly. “Yes, if you wish to be precise in your classification.”

He moved along a narrow boardwalk and I followed. There were white blooms, pink, yellow, one with a greenish tinge. Suddenly Queen stopped. He pointed a pudgy finger upward. At the roof of an inverted V formed by a slab of rock and a cement tree trunk was a large bloom of white cymbidiums.

“The prize of my collection,” Queen said. “Look closely.”

For a moment I thought it was a trick of light and shadow, then I saw that each cymbidium had streaks of black through the white, giving a striped effect.

“At the moment I have merely a curiosity,” Queen said. “But eventually I hope to develop the first black orchid.”

“You’ll have to live a long, long time.”

“Ah! You know something about orchids.”

“A friend of mine grows them commercially. Through him I learned that it takes seven years from bulb to bloom.”

“That’s right.”

“Were these grown in this hothouse—from bulb to bloom?”

“Yes. You seem puzzled, Mr. Kent.”

“I was just wondering. If you left the State Department only a few years ago ...”

“It’s quite simple.

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