“All of that, Ellery. I’m glad you’re here, for more than one reason, El. “It’s a little comforting,” said Weaver in a low voice. “This... this thing...”
Ellery’s smile faded. “The tragedy, eh, Westley? Tell me — how do you figure in it? You didn’t kill the lady, by any chance?” His tone was jocular, but behind it was a certain anxiety which his father, ears cocked, found a little strange.
“Ellery!” Weaver’s eyes met his straightforwardly. “That isn’t even funny.” Then the look of misery crept in again. “It’s awful, El. Just awful. You haven’t any idea how awful it is...”
Ellery patted Weaver’s arm lightly, removed his pince-nez with an absent motion. “I’ll get it all in a moment, Westley. I’ll hold tête-à-tête conversation with you later. Hang on, won’t you? I see my father signaling me frantically. Chin up, Wes!” He moved away, again smiling. Weaver’s eyes held a glimmer of hope as he dropped back against the wall.
The Inspector murmured to his son for a moment. Ellery made a low-voiced reply. Then Ellery strode over to the farther side of the bed and stood over Prouty, watching the medical examiner as he worked swiftly over the body.
The Inspector turned to the assembled crowd in the room. “A little quiet now, please,” he said. A thick curtain of silence dropped over the room.
6
Testimony
The inspector stepped forward.
“It will be necessary for every one to wait here,” he began sententiously, “while we make some elementary but essential investigations. Let me say at once, to forestall any claims of special privilege that may be made, that this is undoubtedly a case of murder. In cases of murder, the most serious charge that can be brought against an individual, the law is no respecter either of persons or institutions. A woman is dead of violence. Somebody killed her. That somebody may be miles away at this moment, or in this room now. You can understand, gentlemen” — and his tired eyes considered the five directors especially — “that the sooner we get down to business, the better. Too much time has been lost already.”
He went abruptly to the door, opened it, and called in a penetrating voice: “Piggott! Hesse! Hagstrom! Flint! Johnson! Ritter!”
Six detectives strolled into the room. Ritter, a burly man, closed the door behind him.
“Hagstrom, your book.” The detective whipped out a small notebook and a pencil.
“Piggott, Hesse, Flint — the room!” He added something in a low tone. The three detectives grinned and dispersed to different portions of the room; They began a slow, methodical search of furniture, floors, walls.
“Johnson — the bed!” One of the two remaining men went directly to the wall-bed and began to examine its contents.
“Ritter — stand by.” The Inspector slipped his hands into a coat pocket and withdrew his brown old snuff-box. He filled his nostrils with aromatic snuff, inhaled deeply and restored the box to his pocket.
“Now!” he said, and glared about the room at his thoroughly cowed audience. Ellery met his eye for an instant and smiled slightly. “Now! You, there!” He pointed an accusing finger at the model, who was staring at him with wide eyes, her skin pale with fright.
“Yes,” she quavered, tottering to her feet.
“Your name?” snapped Queen.
“Di-Diana Johnson, sir,” she whispered, gazing at him in scared fascination.
“Diana Johnson, eh?” The Inspector took a step forward, leveled his finger at her. “Why did you open this bed at twelve-fifteen today?”
“I, I had to,” she faltered. “That was—”
Lavery waver his arm hesitantly at the Inspector. “I can explain that—”
“Sir!”
Lavery colored, then smiled cynically. “Go on, Miss Johnson.”
“Well, sir, that was the regular time for the exhibition. I always come out into this room a few minutes before twelve and get ready.” The words tumbled out. “And then, when I’d just got through showing this contraption” — she indicated the divan, which seemed a combination of sofa, bed, and bookcase — “I go to the wall, push the button, and then that — that dead woman fell out right at my feet...” She shuddered and drew a deep breath, glancing at the detective Hagstrom, who was busily taking down her words in shorthand.
“You had no idea the body was inside when you pressed the button, Miss Johnson?” demanded the Inspector.
The model’s eyes flew wide open.
“No sir! I wouldn’t have touched that bed for a thousand dollars if I’d known that.” The uniformed nurse giggled nervously. She sobered instantly as the Inspector stared in her direction.
“Very well. That’s all.” He turned to Hagstrom. “Got every word?” The detective nodded, maintaining a severe silence as the old man winked fleetingly at him. Inspector Queen turned back to the group. “Nurse, take Diana Johnson to your hospital upstairs and keep her there until I give the word!”
The model stumbled in her eagerness to leave the window-room. The nurse followed somewhat sulkily behind.
The Inspector had Patrolman Bush summoned. The policeman saluted, answered a few questions about what had occurred on the sidewalk at the moment the body fell, and subsequently inside the window-room, and was commissioned to go back to his post on Fifth Avenue.
“Crouther!” The store detective was standing by the side of Ellery and Dr. Prouty. He now slouched forward and stared boldly at Queen. “You’re the head store detective?”
“Yes, Inspector.” He shuffled his feet and grinned, displaying tobacco-stained teeth.
“Sergeant Velie tells me that he instructed you to scatter your men through the main floor soon after the body was discovered. Have you attended to that?”
“Yes, sir. Got a squad of half-dozen store detectives workin’ outside, and put every available ‘spotter’ on the job, too,” replied Crouther promptly. “But they haven’t turned up anybody suspicious yet.”
“Could hardly expect it.” The Inspector took another pinch of snuff. “Tell me just what you found when you came in here.”
“Well, Inspector, the first I knew about the murder was when one of my detectives ’phoned me upstairs in my office that something had happened outside on the sidewalk — riot or something. I came down right away and as I passed this window I heard Mr. Lavery yell for me. I ran in, saw the body layin’ here, and the girl fainting on the floor. Bush, the officer on the beat, came in right after me. I told ’em nothing ought to be touched until the Headquarters men got here, and then got right after the mobs outside, and generally kept an eye on everything until Sergeant Velie got here. I followed his orders after that, that’s a fact. I—”
“Here, here, Crouther, that’s plenty,” said the Inspector. “Don’t leave, I may be able to use you later. Short-handed enough as it is, the Lord knows. A department store!” He muttered under his breath and turned to Dr. Prouty.
“Doc! Ready for me yet?”
The kneeling police doctor nodded. “Just about, Inspector. Want me to shoot the works right here?” He seemed tacitly to question the wisdom of imparting his information before a group of laymen.
“Might as well,” grunted Queen. “It can’t be very enlightening.”
“Don’t know about that.” Prouty stood up with a groan, took a firmer grip on the black cigar between his teeth.
“Woman was killed by two bullets,” he said deliberately, “both from a Colt .38 revolver. Probably from the same gun — hard to tell exactly without putting them under the microscope.” He held up two encarmined blobs of metal, blunted completely out of shape. The Inspector took them, turned them over in his fingers, and in silence handed them to Ellery, who immediately bent over them with a curious eagerness.