Эллери Куин: The Egyptian Cross Mystery

The signpost had once been white; it was now a filthy gray, and it was streaked with encrusted mud. It stood six feet high — its top was on a level with Ellery’s head — and its arms were stout and long. It looked for all the world, as Ellery paused several feet away, like a gigantic letter T. He understood now why the U.P. man had christened the crime “The T Murder” — first this signpost in the form of a T, then the T-shaped crossroads at the head of which the signpost stood, and finally the fantastic T swabbed in blood on the door of the dead man’s house, which Ellery’s car had passed a few hundred feet from the junction of the roads.

Ellery sighed, and took off his hat. It was not necessarily a gesture of reverence; he was, despite the cold and the wind, perspiring. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and wondered what madman had committed this atrocious, illogical, and completely puzzling crime. Even the body... He recollected vividly one of the newspaper accounts of the discovery of the corpse, a special piece written by a famous Chicago reporter who was practiced enough in the description of violence:

The most pitiful Christmas story of the year was revealed today when the beheaded body of Andrew Van, 46-year-old schoolmaster of the little West Virginia hamlet of Arroyo, was discovered crucified to the signpost on a lonely crossroads near the village early Christmas morning.

Four-inch iron spikes had been driven into the upturned palms of the victim, impaling them to the tips of the signpost’s weatherbeaten arms. Two other spikes transfixed the dead man’s ankles, which were set close together at the foot of the upright. Under the armpits two more spikes had been driven, supporting the weight of the dead man in such a way that, his head having been hacked off, the corpse resembled nothing so much as a great letter T.

The signpost formed a T. The crossroads formed a T. On the door of Van’s house, not far from the crossroads, the murderer had scrawled a T in his victim’s blood. And on the signpost the maniac’s conception of a human T...

Why Christmas? Why had the murderer dragged his victim three hundred feet from the house to the signpost and crucified the dead body there? What is the significance of the T’s?

Local police are baffled. Van was an eccentric but quiet and inoffensive figure. He had no enemies — and no friends. His only intimate was a simple soul named Kling, who acted as his servant. Kling is missing, and it is said that District Attorney Crumit of Hancock County believes from suppressed evidence that Kling, too, may have been a victim of the most bloodthirsty madman in the annals of modern American crime...

There had been much more in the same vein, including details of the unfortunate schoolmaster’s bucolic life in Arroyo, the meager tidbits of information gleaned by police about the last-known movements of Van and Kling, and the pompous declarations of the District Attorney.

Ellery took off his pince-nez eyeglasses, polished them, put them on again, and let his sharp eyes sweep over the gruesome relic.

In both arms, near the tips of the crossbar, were jagged holes in the wood where the police had torn out the spikes. Each hole was surrounded by a ragged stain of a rusty brown color. Little brown tendrils trickled from the holes, where Andrew Van’s blood had dripped from his mutilated hands. Where the arms protruded from the upright were two other holes, unrimmed; the spikes which had been wrenched from these holes had supported the armpits of the corpse. The entire length of the signpost was streaked, smeared, runneled with dried blood, the drippings emanating from the head of the post, where the raw, gaping wound at the base of the victim’s neck had rested. Near the bottom of the centerpost there were two holes not more than four inches apart, also ringed in brown blood; and these holes, where Van’s ankles had been nailed to the wood, had dribbled blood to the earth in which the signpost was staked.

Ellery walked soberly back to the car, where the Inspector waited in a familiar attitude of dejection and irritation, slumped against the leather next to the driver’s seat. The old man was bundled to the neck in an ancient woolen muffler, and his sharp red nose stuck out like a danger signal. “Well,” he snapped, “come on. I’m frozen.”

“Not the least bit curious?” asked Ellery, slipping into the driver’s seat.

“No!”

“You’re another.” Ellery started the engine. He grinned and the car leaped forward like a greyhound, turned on two wheels, plowed and bumped about in a circle, and shot off the way it had come, toward Arroyo.

The Inspector clutched the edge of his seat in mortal terror.

“Quaint idea,” shouted Ellery above the thunder of the motor. “Crucifixion on Christmas Day!”

“Huh,” said the Inspector.

“I think,” shouted Ellery, “I’m going to like this case!”

“Drive, darn you!” screamed the old man suddenly. The car straightened out. “You’ll like nothing,” he added with a scowl. “You’re coming back to New York with me.”

They raced into Arroyo.

“Ye know,” muttered the Inspector as Ellery jerked the Duesenberg to a stop before a small frame building, “it’s a shame the way they do things down here. Leaving that signpost at the scene of the crime!” He shook his head. “Where you going now?” he demanded, his birdlike little gray head cocked on a side.

“I thought you weren’t interested,” said Ellery, jumping to the sidewalk. “Hi, there!” he cried to a muffled countryman in blue denim who was sweeping the sidewalk with a tattered old besom, “is this the Law in Arroyo?” The man gaped stupidly. “Superfluous question. There’s the sign for all the world to see... Come along, you fraud.”

It was a sleepy little settlement, a handful of clustered buildings. The frame structure at which the Duesenberg had stopped looked like one of the false-front mushroom boxes of the old West. Next door there was a general store, with a single decrepit gasoline pump before it and a small garage adjoining. The frame building bore a proudly hand-lettered sign:

They found the gentleman they sought asleep at his desk in the rear of the building, behind a door which announced him as CONSTABLE. He was a fat, red-faced countryman with yellow buck teeth.

The Inspector snorted, and the Constable raised heavy lids. He scratched his head and said in a rusty bass: “Ef ye’re lookin’ fer Matt Hollis, he’s out.”

Ellery smiled. “We’re looking for Constable Luden of Arroyo.”

“Oh! I’m him. What d’ye want?”

“Constable,” said Ellery impressively, “let me introduce you to Inspector Richard Queen, head of the Homicide Squad of the New York Police Department — in the merry flesh.”

“Who?” Constable Luden stared. “N’Yawk?”

“As I live and breathe,” said Ellery, stepping on his father’s toe. “Now, Constable, we want—”

“Set,” said Constable Luden, kicking a chair toward the Inspector, who sniffed and rather delicately sat down. “This Van business, hey? Didn’t know you N’Yawkers was int’rested. What’s eatin’ ye?”

Ellery produced his cigarette case and offered it to the Constable, who grunted and bit a mouthful off a huge plug of tobacco. “Tell us all about it, Constable.”

“Nothin’ to tell. Lots o’ Chicago an’ Pittsburgh men been snoopin’ round town. Sort o’ sick of it, m’self.”

The Inspector sneered. “Can’t say I blame you, Constable.”

Ellery took a wallet from his breast pocket, flipped it open, and stared speculatively at the greenbacks inside. Constable Luden’s drowsy eyes brightened. “Well,” he said hastily, “maybe I ain’t so sick of it. I can’t tell it jest once ag’in.”