Эрл Гарднер - The Vanishing Corpse

Lieutenant Sylvester advised Zoom of what had been discovered from a hasty search of the girl’s bedchamber. The bed had not been slept in. Her clothes were scattered about. Bureau drawers had been hurriedly ransacked. The girl was missing. It became more apparent than ever that the girl who had made such a mysterious appearance within the dark alley between the wharves was Mildred Kroom, but what she was doing there was an unanswered question.

The officers made a hasty check of the other occupants of the house. There were the Japanese servant, Hashinto Shinahara, an assistant, Oscar Rabb, and Philip Buntler, an old friend. Harrison Stanwood was a collector of rare gems, paintings and curios. He wrote articles from time to time. The articles were authoritative and compiled after the most exhaustive research.

The officer ordered the household to be aroused.

Phil Buntler was fully clothed. His drab eyes were preoccupied with thought, but there was no trace of sleep in them. He said he had been sitting up, reading an interesting work on rare pottery.

His mind seemed still wrapped in the contents of the book. He frowned when he learned of the reason for his being summoned into the drawing room. His comment on the wild pranks of the present generation was scathing, unsympathetic.

Oscar Rabb was a young man, nervously alert, attentive, but with a washed-out personality. He seemed a yes man who would agree to anything.

The Japanese servant showed his teeth through lips that smiled, and regarded the visitors through black eyes that were unsmiling.

Harrison Stanwood did not answer the knocks on his bedroom door. The Japanese servant made the report. The officers went up to investigate. They found the bedroom empty, nor were there any signs that it had been occupied that evening.

Questioning elicited the fact that Stanwood sometimes worked late in his study, poring over books and tabulating facts. The study was on the ground floor, but a short distance from the library.

The men moved toward it in a knot. It seemed that some unspoken thought actuated them with a common purpose, gave to their quest some pall of impending disaster.

It was Charles Wetler, walking rapidly in advance, with nervous, jerky strides, who tried the study door. It was locked.

“Oh, Mr. Stanwood!” he called.

Silence.

“Got an extra key?” asked Lieutenant Sylvester.

The men stared at each other vacantly.

“Can do,” said the Japanese, producing a key from his pocket.

The police officer looked at him in suspicious appraisal for a moment, then fitted the key to the lock. The bolt clicked. They crowded together, each one anxious to peer over the threshold, then they fell back.

The room showed that there had been considerable commotion in it. There were books on the floor, drawers had been pulled from tables. The safe was open and the papers and contents had been thrown on the floor. There was a dark red pool of a gruesome character in the center of the table.

It reflected the lights as in a dulled, red mirror.

There was no sign of Harrison Stanwood.

Phil Buntler grunted, staring with his preoccupied eyes at the red blotch on the table.

“Murder,” he said.

Lieutenant Sylvester turned to the knot of men.

“Get out,” he snapped, “and stay out. We’ll send for you as we want you. Joe, you and Jerry see that these men don’t separate. Take them in the library and keep ’em there.

“Pete, you and Tom better come in and help me check things over.”

Sidney Zoom strode back to the library.

He paced the floor with long, nervous strides. From time to time he lit a cigarette, inhaled fiercely. His head was thrust forward, his eyes gleamingly alert. They were the seeing eyes of a hawk, black pinpoints in the center of twin chunks of cold ice. Unwinking, he stared at the floor as he paced the room.

The others huddled into a group, seemingly wishing the protection of human companionship to guard them against the black mystery of the house. From time to time they talked in low, cautious tones. The detectives listened attentively to every word and that air of concentrated listening had its effect. Conversation died to a dribble, then faded away entirely.

A door slammed.

Steps pounded down the corridor.

Lieutenant Sylvester stared grimly into the room. His eyes were dark and smoldering. He spoke savagely.

“A nice mess,” he said. “There’s a typewritten note in that room threatening Stanwood with abduction if he doesn’t pay twenty thousand dollars. The note claims he will be drugged and removed.’

“And there’s the will, lying right out on top where we’d be sure to see it. That will leaves half of the fortune to Mildred Kroom. The other half goes to his employees with a share to his dear friend, Philip Buntler.

“That makes everyone here a possible beneficiary and gives everyone a possible motive. What do you say to that, eh?”

The men looked at each other, each trying to read the other’s expression.

“Murdered!” blurted Oscar Rabb.

“They can’t prove a murder unless they find the body,” said Phil Buntler, speaking almost dreamily. “They’ve got to find a corpus delicti .”

Lieutenant Sylvester crossed the room, thrust his face close to the scientist and snarled, “Is that so! You seem to have been reading up on the law of murders!”

But Buntler was unconcerned. He nodded casually.

“Happened to read a detective story a few days ago that mentioned the point. I asked a lawyer friend about it, just out of curiosity. He said it was so. No corpse, no murder, no murder, no conviction. That’s the law.”

Lieutenant Sylvester retained his menacing manner.

“Well, my friend, that crack is quite likely to send you to the chair.”

Buntler wrinkled his eyebrows. His washed-out eyes seemed to widen and gain something of a sparkle.

“Me?”

The officer’s answer was like the crack of a whiplash.

“Yes, you!”

The scientist inquired in a mild tone, as though the accusation failed to move him, “Have you, then, found the body?”

“No!” snapped the officer. “I presume you, as a scientist, know of several ways a body could be disintegrated and destroyed!”

Buntler puckered his forehead in thought.

“Only two,” he said, then added, as an afterthought, “that would be practical.”

Sylvester shook his head.

“No,” he said. “If you’d done it you’d have been smooth enough to keep from making incriminating statements.”

His knuckles rubbed against each other as he seesawed his clenched hands back and forth. “Look here,” he said, “any of you ever hear of a big diamond that Stanwood had? A stone that might be called the Diamond of Death?”

Phil Buntler nodded, a nod of precise affirmation.

“Now that I think of the matter,” he said, “I am convinced that you are referring to the rather large diamond that came from one of the tombs which I uncovered in the Amazon district.

“These tombs dated back hundreds of years to a lost race that seemed to have vanished from the earth. The tombs were overgrown with jungle growth and were discovered quite by accident. They contained the usual curse to prevent ghouls from disturbing the remains. I gave the diamond to my friend, Harrison. Doubtless it would be referred to by some of the more tragic-minded as the Diamond of Death.”

The Japanese servant bowed.

“Car gone, sir,” he said.

“Whose car?”

“Boss man’s car, sir.”

“A sedan, a big Packard,” said Wetler. “It’s colored a light blue.”

The Japanese nodded.

“Probably taken by the girl,” observed one of the officers.

The Japanese shook his head.