The Case of the Missing Corpse Read online

  “By which we infer Mr. Ford has exercised his power-of-attorney rather freely.”

  “I imply nothing,” Mr. Stone said hotly.

  A knock at the door prevented our rejoinder. The omnipotent office boy opened the door, ever so slightly, and thrust his head in.

  “Beg pardon, sir. Your nephew, Mr. Charles, is outside.”

  “Tell him to wait.”

  The door closed. Alcott rose abruptly, giving me a signal to do likewise. There was of necessity a few moments’ delay, while I attempted to restore the box to something of the order in which we had found it. And it was then that I noticed for the first time that the small gold medallion with the monogram “C. S.” had disappeared.

  “Mr. Stone,” I started hotly, but Alcott shot me a restraining glance and I modulated my voice. “We’ve taken enough of your time, sir, but there’s one thing I’d like to say before we leave. If you’ve been altogether frank with us, you have nothing to fear from your confidence. If you haven’t—well, we’re connected with what we—er—playfully call—the press! Good evening.”

  Mr. Stone drew himself up stiffly.

  “Good evening.”

  A few moments later, I brushed past a heavy-set, moon-faced chap lounging by the door of the waiting room. His myopic eyes encountered mine in bewilderment.

  “Mr. Charles Elihu Stone,” I said to Alcott as we shot down in the elevator. “And whatever you want to do, old man, I don’t expect to budge from this building until little old Charlie does, too.”

  “Had a hunch you’d feel that way.” Alcott smiled. “But take a tip from me, old punk! Don’t forget about that missing gold medallion!”

  Chapter V A CURIOUS WITNESS

  PETE left me at the main entrance of the building.

  “If I weren’t up to my neck at the office I’d stick with you.” He caught sight of the clock outside the Bank across the way. “Great guns, forty minutes late now and two interviews promised! S’long.”

  “Thanks. You’ve seen me out of the rough, anyhow!”

  As I said this, Alcott, hurried though he was, pulled up sharply, and stared at me. For a brief moment there flickered into his eyes a look of uncertainty, incredulity, and unbelief. Then he slapped me on the shoulder.

  “Good God! My frank advice to you would be to get this whole Wyndham business off the front page, and turn your talents loose on something else. You’ve picked a tough nut and a damned queer one. That’s my private hunch, Ellis!”

  “Sez you!” I laughed.

  I hated like the devil parting company with him just then. He’d brought my first lucky break in days. Thoughtfully, I watched his long, lank figure cut through the traffic and dive into a cab.

  Left to my own devices, I got in touch with the office, smoked two cigarettes, and never once took my eyes from the main doorway.

  Darkness settled down in genuine earnest. Offices emptied themselves of their workers. Thousands—well, maybe it was only hundreds, but it seemed like thousands—strode and pushed, bustled and dragged through the door that I was watching. I scanned each face. No Charles Elihu Stone.

  “Is there another exit to this building?” I asked the elevator starter, after about an hour.

  “Shure now and there is!”

  But I never learned where it was. At precisely that moment, Mr. Stone and his nephew stepped off the elevator. Their faces were set and serious. Looking at the younger man this second time, I was struck again by his expression of moon-faced insouciance and wondered at it, since it contradicted so oddly the obvious intelligence of his eyes. I had an impression it came from his too-rounded chin. I wasn’t certain.

  On the blustery street corner, Charles took a hasty leave of his uncle and began threading his way through the crowd.

  I was close upon his heels. We swung down the subway stairs at Chambers Street and, in due time, were pushed and pummelled into a Van Cortlandt express. Sandwiched together in the surging rush-hour crowd, I could feel young Charles breathing against me and could study, at close range, that amazing combination of weakness and strength in his face. But I bided my time. At 96th Street, the human cargo loosened up a bit and I found a seat. Charles Stone could have done likewise, but, instead, he stood staring absently through his thick, double-lens glasses at the posts that rushed by in the darkness outside.

  At 116th Street the doors had nearly closed when, with a sudden start, he recollected himself and sprang forward. Had I not been sitting just by the exit, I could never have followed in time. However, out after him I swung, and, keeping a comfortable four feet in the rear, trailed him up to the street.

  “Just a minute, Mr. Stone!”

  Unheeding, he hurried on. Up the broad sweep of steps by the old Columbia University Library, three steps at a time! Across the bleak wintry campus, our hurrying footsteps resounding through the quiet evening. Abruptly he turned off into one of the buildings on the side!

  “Mr. Stone!” This time he wheeled around and inspected me curiously through his thick, double-lens glasses.

  “I rather thought you were following me,” he said, in a quiet, almost purring tone.

  “What the devil did you think I was doing?” I asked pleasantly. “Walking for my health? No, it’s really important that we talk.”

  “Important? And to whom?” As Stone spoke, his mouth expanded out and out, accordion-like, into an incredibly broad smile.

  “Perhaps to us both.” I introduced myself and explained the seriousness of my mission. All the while he was fumbling for his watch.

  “Sorry, but a professor I know is giving a lecture just now. It’s one that I specially want to hear. Of course, if you care to, stick around—”

  I stuck. I stuck what I think was the most abstruse lecture ever given on Chinese Philosophy and Comparative Religions. I stuck for another half hour after class while young Charles and a keen-eyed professor argued obscure Chinese imagery. I stuck until a faint but certain suspicion began to dawn that young Mr. Stone was trying to wear me out. Outside on Amsterdam Avenue busses rumbled by, machines honked, a city surged. Oblivious to the world, Charles talked away, in soft sibilant tones.

  “I’ve always felt there are a couple of definite stages in all criticism, whether of these ancient Chinese religions or anything else. If you try to see them as the serious inductive systems of mature minds, they outrage your reason. If you treat them sympathetically, as poetry, you begin to like them. After all, religion’s not much more anyhow than human experience interpreted by human imagination.”

  The keen-eyed professor studied Stone’s face in surprise.

  “And how can you correlate this viewpoint with your choice of vocation?”

  I tried to reckon how long this could possibly keep up.

  “Oh! Consistency is the bugbear of petty minds,” Charles was quoting grandly. “If you drive me to it I’ll explain it by saying that to me the Christian myth seems the most poetic and beautiful of them all.”

  Puzzled, the keen-eyed professor persisted.

  “With that viewpoint, my young friend, I can’t quite picture you as a missionary to China.”

  As though electrified, I sat up and took notice. At the mention of his future vocation, young Stone had dropped his eyes uncomfortably.

  “I’ve loved Canton ever since I was a boy,” he answered slowly. “Anyhow, I’ve been uncertain lately whether or not I’d stick to being a missionary.” Suddenly his voice sank lower. “Though, at that, I guess I won’t roam very far from the Mission.”

  The professor answered, I never knew what.

  In my mind a sinister sequence of ideas had taken form, linking themselves together, fairly bowling me over with their impact. The elder Stone had mentioned some large donation of Miss Wyndham’s to a Chinese mission. Of course! And now that I thought of it, this fact lent a curious significance both to young Stone’s statement and to the old lawyer’s effort to keep his nephew’s name from the case.

  Abruptly I stood up. Making as much
noise as possible, I started as though for the door. It was wasted effort. In a high, rather excited voice, young Stone was arguing away, his myopic eyes bright with enthusiasm.

  But regardless, I broke in.

  “Beg pardon, Mr. Stone!”

  A trifle irritably Charles spun toward me; then suddenly he expanded into that broad vacuous smile. “Oh, of course! I’d almost forgotten! I’ll be right there!” He turned and bade the professor “Good night.” Then crossed to me and again looked at his watch.

  I anticipated him. “Yep, I’m starving, too. Can we get food anywhere around here?”

  “Sorry, I’m meeting a friend for dinner.”

  “Oh, I see. Then we might as well jump to the point!”

  “Of course.” He smiled, and at that smile of his, I grew grave.

  “I happen to know you were in the crowd at Stephen P. Wyndham’s rooms in Havana—on the night of his—what shall I call it?—murder, disappearance, what?”

  “Murder, I’d say!” Charles spoke quietly but I noticed that his smile flickered out. “How did you know I was there?”

  “That’s my business. Er—why haven’t you come forward and told your story to the police?”

  “I returned exactly three days ago from Pekin!”

  “I see. Still, if you were informed of any events ... ?”

  “There were others much better informed. I had been with Stephen Wyndham only fifteen minutes when the major events of that strange night transpired....”

  “Were you and Wyndham friends?”

  “In a way. I’ve known him off and on ever since I was a kid. He was older, of course, but the families were acquainted. And Steve Wyndham was an awfully likable sort.”

  “On the surface it seems so!” I said cynically.

  “What do you mean?” Charles eyed me with curiosity.

  I shrugged.

  “At just what time this evening do you expect to finish up?”

  “Oh, at about twelve or shortly after.”

  “I’ll come by your place.”

  Charles looked me over dubiously, then broke again into that broad wholesale smile. “Better not. I might be late, and my mother—er—really she wouldn’t know what to make of anyone calling at that hour!”

  “Say. Are you trying to dodge me?” The fellow seemed the strangest admixture of masculine intelligence and feminine perversity that I’d ever encountered.

  “Of course not! Where shall I meet you?”

  On sudden inspiration, I gave him Pete Alcott’s number on West 44th Street.

  “Thanks! At twelve I’ll see you.”

  That settled, Stone turned abruptly aside, and heedless of the waiting elevator, bolted down the broad stairs and out into the night.

  Chapter VI A NOTE OF WARNING

  AFTER I’d let Charles Stone go, I cursed myself roundly for being a fool. Disconsolately I grabbed a bite of supper and dropped by at Alcott’s place to spill my troubles.

  “That Stone guy will never show up,” I said mournfully to Alcott as I finished telling him of the encounter. “It’s good hard jack to stale boloney on that.” For consolation I poured myself a drink.

  “Want to bet?”

  But I didn’t want to bet. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t even want to drink. Disgruntled, I flung myself down on Alcott’s red plush sofa, the Wyndham case still churning in my head, and stared moodily across at the opposite wall where hung a peculiarly horrible reproduction of “Venice by Moonlight.” I think it was oil paint on black velvet. Anyhow, it was awful.

  “God, what a lousy place this is!” I said irritably. “How can you go it?” I looked around at the imitation mahogany secretary, at the shoddy torn portieres, at the dismal court outside, and thought absently of all the decent small-town fellows who are sucked up yearly into the great metropolis and into holes like this.

  “Oh, it’s a cheap sublet and it answers.” Pete yawned.

  “Well, every man to his taste.” I poured another drink and made a wry face at that velvety “Venice by Moonlight.”

  “Say, don’t think for a minute that’s the touch of my fine Italian hand.” Alcott laughed self-consciously.

  But of that particular atrocity he was exonerated before he had spoken. Obviously, none of the tawdry pictures or hangings, knick-knacks or books bore Pete’s personal stamp—whatever that might have been, and the Lord alone knew that! All I held him responsible for was occupying such premises.

  And that was enough.

  “Well, it’s lousy anyhow!” I took another drink. “You ought to move over with us boys!”

  “Oh, this suits me O.K.”

  “There you win. No one will ever enter either you or the joint in a beauty contest.” I must have been getting an edge on. I could have kicked myself after I’d spoken. It’s one thing to imply to a fellow that he looks like a chimpanzee when he’s just plain ugly. But with Alcott, well—he went in for homeliness on a fancy scale. And although, in all the time I’d known him, I’d never heard him make one single comment on the subject, nevertheless, any half-wit could have told he was sensitive, if by nothing else than the way he’d trained his mustache in an effort to cover the scar above his mouth.

  “Oh, this Wyndham case is eating into me, I guess!” I said apologetically while I poured another drink.

  “Don’t let it. I’m turning in!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s getting late and every now and then I have to work for my living.” He laughed and stretched to his feet.

  “Stop your kidding!”

  “I’m serious. Furthermore, you’ll only freeze your missionary up if we make a camp meeting of his visit.”

  “Oh, he’s not going to show up.” I looked gloomily at my watch, certain in the knowledge that if it rested with me I would have fired any reporter on the paper who would have bungled a lead the way I had this one.

  “Oh, I rather think he will, and promptly.” Alcott was nonchalant as always. He commenced unbuttoning his shirt to the tune of “The Ladies” which I suddenly started whistling and about three notes off key.

  “I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it;

  I’ve rogued an’ I’ve ranged in my time.”

  Alcott looked over at me in amusement. “Not so down in the mouth as you were, eh?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Nothing much. Only I’ve noticed you always trot out that tune whenever you think things are going your way.”

  I left off abruptly. “Well, this once you’re wrong!” But at that, he really wasn’t. At his optimism, I’d felt a resurge of my own. However, Alcott gave me no chance to continue my refrain.

  “See how you feel after this!” He had dug from his coat pocket a letter which he now tossed over to me. “That sweet little note was waiting for me when I got back to the office.”

  The handwriting looked curiously familiar. In another moment I realized why.

  Mr. Peter Alcott

  New York Globe

  New York City.

  Dear Sir:

  Despite your pledge to respect my privacy, I feel it a duty to advise you. Bad fortune pursues those who meddle needlessly in Wyndham matters. It is a kind of family curse. Heed it or not. I have warned you.

  Isabella Wyndham.

  “The crumby old hag!” I said with a grin. “She wants to make sure we don’t rattle the old family skeletons.”

  Alcott looked at me narrowly. “Sure you don’t feel as though you want to give up?”

  “You crazy punk,” I burst out in high amusement. “Look here! We’ll keep her letter for a good luck charm.”

  I stuck the letter in my pocket. Yet ridiculous though it seems, I felt no further impulse to whistle that evening. I lit a cigarette instead.

  It was a bit later when Alcott paused at his bedroom door before turning in and said gravely, “By the way, did you ever learn the Morse Code?”

  “Sure! Why?”

  “Oh, nothing in particular.
Only if you should happen to hear any peculiar sounds tonight, don’t by any chance think it’s rats!”

  I was to remember Alcott’s words just a half hour later when I was sitting opposite that keen overly soft face of Charles Stone and listening to what I think was the strangest narrative I ever heard. Of course, Stone was smiling as usual. For that matter, he was smiling when he came in.

  Chapter VII THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 13TH

  IT must be recorded, to Charles Stone’s credit and to my everlasting surprise, he arrived promptly, and because our appointment was not exactly early, we proceeded without much ado to the matter at hand.

  In fact Stone edged toward the subject before he even removed his ulster. “Punctuality’s supposed to be the thief of time, I know,” he began self-consciously, “but I wouldn’t have been late tonight even at the risk of a worse charge than that. D’you know, all evening I’ve been trying to figure out just why you feel the special need of talking to me.”

  “Er—maybe you’d rather talk the matter out with the police?” I said succinctly. He shrugged and laid his hat and coat aside. I liked his cool indifference.

  “Oh! That’s entirely up to you. However, since I’m here, we may as well get it over with.”

  He sat down on the far side of the room by the radiator, explaining that it had turned bitter cold outside. I offered him a drink. He poured himself a stiff one, and drank it down without a chaser.

  I explained to him, by way of a start, how necessary a link his story was. Stone sat forward and began to talk in a caressing sing-song voice. “I really wish I could tell you more about the whole ghastly mix-up than I’m able to. I think I mentioned before that I was very late in arriving at Wyndham’s hotel on the night of the thirteenth. I remember it was raining cats and dogs and by the time I got to Wyndham’s rooms it was already half past eleven. I remember the time distinctly because I’d noticed the clock in the hotel lobby when I stopped to enquire for the number of his suite.”