Michael Arlen - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #097v018 (1951-12)
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- Название:Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #097v018 (1951-12)
- Автор:
- Издательство:American Mercury
- Жанр:
- Год:1951
- Город:New York
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:3 / 5. Голосов: 1
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Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #097v018 (1951-12): краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
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Dr. Cawfield turned to Roger. “Hadn’t we better take along your aunt and uncle?”
Roger considered for a moment; then shook his head. He is Uncle Carey was a fire-eater; he’d want to sue the Seattle police. Aunt Harriet was just the opposite. She was a gullible sentimentalist. Show her an underdog, like Eva Lang, and she’d want to start petting it right away. “No, Doctor. Just the three of us. I’ll charter a plane. We’ll meet at the airport in the morning.”
By the time the plane was flying westward Roger Marsh had made a concession. Although the Marsh in him erected an iron wall against any part of Eva Lang’s claim, the lawyer in him couldn’t deny certain glaring bits of evidence. Evelyn Blythe, alias Eva Lang, was not his wife but she was his sister-in-law. His unspeakably criminal sister-in-law. And she had spent two months visiting his wife.
Yes, he thought, reviewing Eva Lang’s story once more as he looked out the window of the plane, that much he would concede, but no more. Then he remembered something and beckoned to Inspector Whipple.
“I’ve just thought of something,” Roger said when the inspector sat down beside him. “Caroline kept a diary. She made entries every night — all sorts of personal details.”
“Well, what about it?”
“After the funeral four years ago, I happened to think of the diary. It was something too intimate to be left lying around loose in the house. But I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere — it was gone. So I concluded that Caroline had destroyed it herself.”
Whipple nodded. ‘I see. And now you’re afraid Evelyn took it?”
“It’s possible,” Roger brooded.
“If Eva Lang took it,” Whipple admitted, “she’s had four years to memorize everything in it. She can answer questions like a fox.”
“You said four men were at the farm with her. Three were killed in the raid and one escaped. Which one?”
“Duke Smedley. Smoothest confidence man in the business. The police are after him, coast to coast, on a dozen counts.”
“He was Eva Lang’s sweetheart?”
“So our prisoner says. But when he knew she wasn’t Eva he gave her a break because she was Eva’s sister. It’s more logical to assume she was and is Duke Smedley’s girl, and that she went back of her own free will to join him at the farm.”
Roger stoked a pipe nervously. “The point is, Inspector, he’s alive. He may be picked up. And he knows the truth about Eva Lang.”
“He’ll be picked up, all right. He has a police record. Here’s his picture.”
Whipple opened his suitcase and brought out a photograph. It showed a man of exceptional good looks, well dressed and with an air of sophistication.
“He’s the tops in his racket,” Whipple said. “One time he — but what’s the matter, Mr. Marsh?” Roger was staring with a strange intensity at the photograph.
“I’ve a feeling,” Roger murmured, “that I’ve seen this man before. I can’t remember when or where. But I’m sure I’ve seen him.”
“Then maybe this goes deeper than we think, Mr. Marsh. Maybe he’s back of the whole thing.”
“It’s hardly possible,” Roger said. “I’ve a feeling it was years ago when I saw him. Perhaps while I was in the army. He couldn’t have schemed this far ahead.”
“Well, keep the picture,” Whipple insisted. “We have other copies. Look at it every once in a while. Maybe you’ll remember where you saw him.”
A morning later Inspector Whipple led Effie Foster, Dr. Cawfield and Roger Marsh into a reception room at the Seattle jail. Roger stood stiffly, preparing himself for the ordeal of disowning this woman.
A police matron came in. Quietly she reported, “I’ve just brought her to the inspection room. Arc these the identifiers?”
Whipple nodded. Then he saw the dread on Roger’s face and suggested, “Would you rather see her first without her seeing you, Mr. Marsh? You may if you like. Later, of course, you’ll have to talk with her for a voice test.”
“We’d like to see her first,” Roger said.
“Then step this way.” Whipple led him to a far wall of the room and stood him in front of a closed panel. When he opened the panel a circular glass pane was exposed. It was about the size of a porthole in a ship’s cabin. Through it Roger could see clearly into the room beyond.
Seated in the center of that room, under a bright light, was the prisoner Eva Lang. She was in half profile to Roger. Instantly he felt a surge of relief. For the seated woman didn’t look nearly so much like Caroline as he had expected. She seemed much older. There were streaks of gray in her hair. Roger remembered the velvety smoothness of Caroline’s skin. The face of this woman was bard. Nothing of Caroline’s sweet gentle character was etched there. Instead of Caroline’s calm complacent gaze, Roger saw a tense bitter defiance. The eyes were brown, like Caroline’s, and the hair was center-parted and fluffed at the sides, like Caroline’s. Evidently a hairdresser had worked on Eva Lang in her cell, doing everything possible to make her resemble Caroline. The contours of her face were indeed quite like Caroline’s and Roger could understand instantly why a photograph would be more convincing than the woman herself. The photograph didn’t show color; it showed only shape and lines.
Roger stared long and intently through the glass. Then he closed the panel and stepped back to Inspector Whipple. “Before God,” he said, “I never saw that woman before.”
“Your turn, Dr. Cawfield.”
The doctor went to the panel, opened, peered through it. In a moment he turned back with a snort. “Just as I thought! A masquerade!”
“Your turn, Mrs. Foster.”
Effie Foster took more time than had either of the men. When she closed the panel her face had a clouded disturbed look. “She’s not Caroline, of course. But she does look like her in a sort of jaded way.”
The police matron surprised them by speaking up. “Wouldn’t you look rather jaded yourself, Mrs. Foster, if you’d been slave and prisoner for four years to a gang of crooks?”
Effie flushed. Inspector Whipple cut in quickly, “Well, we’ll talk to her, Mrs. Kelly. Right now. That will be more conclusive.”
Whipple led them through a door into the presence of the woman known as Eva Lang.
Roger Marsh breathed deeply in an attempt to slow his pounding heart. This was the moment he’d been dreading.
She stood up as they entered, stared for a moment at Roger, her lips parted and her face lighting up. Then she came toward him, eager, confident, her hands outstretched. “Roger! I thought you’d never come!”
The uncompromising granite of Roger’s face stopped her. “You’re not at all convincing, Miss Lang,” he said stiffly.
The shock on her face was as though he’d struck her. “You don’t know me, Roger?”
“No,” he said. “I do not. You’d know me, of course, if you were Caroline’s guest for two months, because there were pictures of me all over the house.”
Her dazed eyes stared at him a moment longer, then turned to Effie Foster. Then to Dr. Cawfield.
Effie didn’t speak. Dr. Cawfield’s stony face was answer enough.
Her eyes went back to Roger. “You mean you’re disowning me, Roger?”
“Hasn’t this gone far enough, Miss Lang?” he parried.
For a moment he thought she’d burst into tears. Instead the hardness and defiance came back to her face. “What a fool I’ve been!” she said bitterly. “To think you’d come and take me home! I might have known you wouldn’t! You and your stiff Maryland pride!” She laughed hysterically. “It’s so much easier to say you never knew me. Will you take me back to my cell, Inspector? They’ve seen the rogues’ gallery. They’ve said, yes, she’s the rogue, not the wife.”
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