Эллери Куин: French Powder Mystery

French hurriedly took the telephone from Weavers hands. “Marion, this is Father. I’ve just arrived from Great Neck and I’m feeling fine. Everything all right?... What’s the matter? You seem a little tired... All right, dear. I merely wanted to let you know that I’m back safely. You might tell Mother for me — I’ll be too busy to call again this morning. Good-bye, dear.”

He returned to his chair, looked gravely around at the Board, and said, “Now gentlemen, since you’ve had a few moments to become familiar with the figures I thrashed out with Whitney, let’s get to work.” He brandished a forefinger.

At eleven forty-five the telephone bell jangled, interrupting a heated discussion between French and Zorn. Weaver’s hand leaped to the instrument.

“Hello, hello! Mr. French is very busy just now... Is that you, Hortense? What is it?... Just a moment.” He turned to French. “Pardon me, sir — Hortense Underhill is on the wire and she seems disturbed about something. Will you talk to her or call back?”

French glared at Zorn, who was fiercely dabbing away the perspiration on his thick neck, and snatched the telephone from Weaver.

“Well, what is it?”

A quavering feminine voice answered. “Mr. French, something dreadful’s happened. I can’t find Mrs. French or Miss Bernice!”

“Eh? What’s that you say? What’s the matter? Where are they?”

“I don’t know, sir. They hadn’t rung for the maids all morning, and I went up to see if anything was wrong a few minutes ago. You’ll... you’ll never believe it, sir — I can’t understand—”

“Well!”

“Their beds aren’t touched. I don’t think they slept home last night.”

French’s voice rose in anger. “You silly woman — is that why you’re interrupting my Board meeting? It was raining last night and they probably stayed overnight somewhere with friends.”

“But Mr. French — they would have called, or—”

“Please, Hortense! Go back to your housework. I’ll look into this later.” He slammed the receiver on the hook.

“Foolishness...” he muttered. Then he shrugged his shoulders. He turned to Zorn again, palms on the table. “Now what’s that? Do you mean to tell me that you’d stand in the way of this merger just because of a paltry few thousands? Let me tell you something, Zorn...”

French’s occupied a square block in the heart of the mid-town section of New York, on Fifth Avenue. On the borderline between the more fashionable upper avenue and the office-building district farther downtown, it catered to a mixed patronage of wealth and penury. At the noon hour its broad aisles and six floors were crowded with shop girls and stenographers; in mid-afternoon the tone of its clientele improved perceptibly. It boasted at once therefore the lowest prices, the most modern models, the widest assortment of saleable articles, in New York. As a result of this compromise between attractive prices and exclusive merchandise it was the most popular department store in the city. From nine o’clock in the morning until five-thirty in the evening French’s was thronged with shoppers, the sidewalks surrounding the marble structure and its many wings almost impassable.

Cyrus French, pioneer department store owner, assisted by his associate Board, exerted the full financial strength of his powerful organization to make French’s — an institution of two generations of French ownership — the show place of the city. In those days, long before the artistic movement had been communicated in the United States to the more practical articles of use and wear, French’s had already made contact with its European representatives and held public exhibitions of art objects, art furniture, and kindred modernistic ware. These exhibits attracted huge crowds to the store. One of its main windows fronting Fifth Avenue was devoted to exhibits of periodically imported articles. This window became the focal point for the eyes of all New York. Curious throngs constantly besieged its sheathing of plate glass.

On the morning of Tuesday the twenty-fourth of May, at three minutes of the noon hour, the heavy impaneled door to this window opened and a model in black dress, white apron and white cap entered. She sauntered about the window, seemed to appraise its contents, and then stood stiffly at attention, as if awaiting a predetermined moment to begin her mysterious work.

The contents of the window were arranged to illustrate a combination living-room and bedroom, of an ultra-modern design created by Paul Lavery, of Paris, according to a placard in a corner. This card acknowledged Lavery’s authorship of the articles on exhibition, and called attention to “lectures on the fifth floor by M. Lavery.” The rear wall, into which the one door opened by which the model had entered, was unrelieved by ornament and tinted a pastel green. On this wall hung a huge Venetian mirror, unframed, its edges cut in an irregular design. Against the wall stood a long narrow table, exhibiting an unpainted grain highly waxed. On the table stood a squat prismatic lamp, made of a clouded glass procurable at that period only from a unique modern art-objects factory in Austria. Odd pieces — chairs, end-tables, bookcases, a divan, all of unorthodox construction, peculiar and daring in conception — stood about the gleaming floor of the window-room. The side walls served as background for several pieces of miscellaneous utility.

The lighting fixtures in the ceiling and on the side walls were all of the “concealed” variety rapidly gaining vogue on the Continent.

At the stroke of noon the model, who had remained motionless since her entrance into the room, stirred into activity. By this time a viscid mass of people had gathered outside the window on the sidewalk, awaiting the model’s demonstration with hungry eyes and restless shoulders.

Setting down a metal rack on which were hung a number of simply lettered placards, the model picked up a long ivory wand and, pointing to the legend on the first placard, proceeded solemnly to one of the pieces on the east wall and began a pantomimic demonstration of its construction and properties.

The fifth placard — by this time the crowd had doubled in size and overflowed from the sidewalk — bore the words:

This Article of Furniture Is Concealed in the West Wall and Is Operated Electrically by a Push-Button. It is of Special Design, Created by M. Paul Lavery, and Is the Only One of Its Kind in This Country.

Pointing to the words once more, for emphasis, the model sedately walked to the west wall, indicated with a flourish a small ivory button set in a nacreous panel, and touched the button with one long finger.

Before pressing it, she looked out once more on the jostling, expectant crowd before the window. Necks craned eagerly to see the marvel about to be revealed.

What they saw was a marvel indeed — so unexpected, so horrible, so grotesque that at the instant of its occurrence faces froze into masks of stunned incredulity. It was like a moment snatched out of an unbelievable nightmare... For, as the model pushed the ivory button, a section of the wall slid outward and downward with a swift noiseless movement, two small wooden legs unfolded and shot out of the forepart of the bedstead, the bed settled to a horizontal position — and the body of a woman, pale-faced, crumpled, distorted, her clothes bloody in two places, fell from the silken sheet to the floor at the model’s feet.

It was twelve-fifteen exactly.

The model uttered one horrified shriek, so piercing that it was distinctly audible through the heavy glass window, rolled her eyes wildly, and fell fainting at the side of the body.