He knelt quickly by his father’s side, their bodies still shielding their movements from the eyes of the onlookers.
“Have a peep at this, dad,” he said in an undertone, offering the lipstick. The old man looked at it in a puzzled way.
“Poisoned?” he asked. “But that’s impossible — how could you tell without an analysis?”
“No, no!” exclaimed Ellery in the same low tone. “The color, dad — the color!”
The Inspector’s face lightened. He looked from the stick in Ellery’s hand to the dead woman’s lips. The fact was self-evident — the coloring on the lips had not come from the stick in Ellery’s possession. The lips were painted a light shade of red, almost pink, whereas the stick itself was a dark carmine in shade.
“Here, El — let me have that!” said the Inspector. He took the open stick and swiftly made a red mark on the dead woman’s face.
“Different, all right,” he muttered. He wiped off the smudge with a corner of the sheet. “But I don’t see—”
“There really should be another lipstick, eh?” remarked Ellery lightly, standing up.
The old man snatched at the woman’s handbag and went through it once more, hurriedly. No, there was no sign of another lipstick. He motioned to the detective Johnson.
“Find anything in the bed or the closet here, Johnson?”
“Not a thing, Chief.”
“Sure? No sign of a lipstick?”
“Nope.”
“Piggott! Hesse! Flint!” The three detectives stopped short in their search of the room and crossed to the Inspector’s side. The old man repeated his questions... Nothing. The detectives had found no alien articles in the room.
“Is Crouther here? Crouther!” The store detective hurried over.
“Been out seeing that things were moving in the store,” he announced unasked. “Everything’s shipshape — boys’ve been hustling, that’s a fact — What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“Did you see a lipstick around here when you found the body?”
“Lipstick? No, sir! Wouldn’t have touched it if I’d seen it anyway. Told everybody to leave things alone. I know that much, Inspector!”
“Mr. Lavery!” The Frenchman sauntered up. No, he had seen no sign of a lipstick. Perhaps the model—?
“Hardly! Piggott, send some one up to the infirmary and find out if this Johnson girl saw it.”
The Inspector turned back to Ellery with a frowning brow. “Now, that’s funny, isn’t it, Ellery? Could some one here have appropriated the darned thing?”
Ellery smiled. “‘Honest labor,’ as old Tom Dekker had it, ‘bears a lovely face,’ but I’m very much afraid, dad... No, your efforts in the direction of finding a lipstick thief are wasted. I could almost make a nice conjecture...”
“What do you mean, Ellery?” groaned the Inspector. “Where is it, then, if no one took it?”
“We’ll come to that in the course of inexorable time,” said Ellery imperturbably. “But examine the face of our poor clay again, dad — particularly the labial portion. See anything interesting aside from the color of the lipstick?”
“Eh?” The Inspector turned startled eyes to the corpse. He felt for his snuff-box and nervously took a generous pinch. “No, I can’t say that I— By jimmy!” He muttered beneath his breath. “The lips — unfinished...”
“Precisely.” Ellery twirled his pince-nez about his finger. “Observed the phenomenon the moment I looked at the body. What amazing juxtaposition of circumstances could have caused a handsome woman still in her prime to leave her lips only half painted?” He pursed his mouth, fell into deep thought. His eyes did not leave the dead woman’s lips, which showed the pinkish color of the lipstick on both the upper and lower lip, on the upper two dabs of unsmeared color and on the lower one a dab exactly in the center. Where the lipstick had not yet been smeared, the lips were a sickly purple — the color of unadorned death.
The Inspector passed his hand wearily across his brow just as Piggott returned.
“Well?”
“The girl fainted,” reported the detective, “just as the body fell out of the wall-bed. Never saw anything, much less a lipstick.” Inspector Queen draped the sheet over the body in baffled silence.
8
The Watcher
The door opened and Sergeant Velie entered, accompanied by a steady-eyed man dressed in black. This newcomer saluted the inspector respectfully and stood waiting.
“This is Robert Jones, Inspector,” said Velie in his deep clipped tones. “Attached to the store force, and I’ll vouch for him personally. Jones was the man called by Mr. Weaver this morning to stand outside the apartment door during the directors’ meeting.”
“How about it, Jones?” asked Inspector Queen.
“I was ordered to Mr. French’s apartment this morning at eleven,” replied the store detective. “I was told to stand guard outside and see that no one disturbed the meeting. According to my instructions...”
“And where did your instructions come from?”
“I understood that Mr. Weaver had ’phoned, sir,” replied Jones. The Inspector looked at Weaver, who nodded, and then motioned the man to continue.
“According to my instructions,” said Jones, “I strolled about outside the apartment without interrupting the meeting. I was in the sixth floor corridor near the apartment until about twelve-fifteen. At that time the door opened and Mr. French, the other directors and Mr. Weaver ran out and took the elevator, going downstairs. They all seemed excited...”
“Did you know why Mr. French, Mr. Weaver and the others ran out of the apartment that way?”
“No, sir. As I said, they seemed excited and paid no attention to me. I didn’t hear about Mrs. French being dead until one of the boys dropped by about a half-hour later with the news.”
“Did the directors close the door when they left the apartment?”
“The door closed by itself — swung shut.”
“So you didn’t enter the apartment?”
“No, sir!”
“Did any one come up to the apartment while you stood guard this morning?”
“Not a soul, Inspector. And after the directors left, there was no one except the chap I told you about, who merely spilled his story and went right down again. I’ve been on duty until five minutes ago, when Sergeant Velie had two of his own men relieve me.”
The Inspector mused. “And you’re certain no one went into the apartment, Jones? It may be quite important.”
“Dead certain, Inspector,” replied Jones clearly. “The reason I stayed on after the directors left was because I didn’t know exactly what to do under the circumstances, and I’ve always found it a safe bet to stand pat when something unusual happens.”
“Good enough, Jones!” said the Inspector. “That’s all.”
Jones saluted, went up to Crouther and asked what he was to do. The head store detective, his chest held high, detailed him to help handle the crowds in the store. And Jones departed.
9
The Watchers
The Inspector went quickly to the door and peered over the heads of the seething crowds on the main floor.
“MacKenzie! Is MacKenzie there?” he shouted.
“Right here!” came the faint bellow of the store manager’s voice. “Coming!”
Queen trotted back into the room, fumbling for his snuffbox. He eyed the directors almost roguishly; his good humor seemed for the moment to have returned. The occupants of the room, with the exception of Cyrus French, who was still plunged in a deep lethargy of grief and indifference to what was going on, had by this time shaken off some of their horror and were growing restless. Zorn stole surreptitious glances at his heavy gold watch; Marchbanks was pacing belligerently up and down the room; Trask at regular intervals averted his head and gulped down some whisky from a flash in his pocket; Gray, his face as ashen as his hair, stood in silence behind old French’s chair. Lavery was very quiet, watching with bright inquisitive eyes the least movement of the Inspector and his men. Weaver, his boyish face strained and lined, seemed to be enduring agonies. He frequently sought Ellery with pleading eyes, as if asking for help which he knew, instinctively, could not be forthcoming.