The French Powder Mystery quotes

"Well," grinned Cronin, "he's welcome to read 'em all.

Half those babies can't spell homicide.

"

The spectators outside still presented a tableau—they were stricken into silence, petrified with fright. Then a woman on the sidewalk, her face pressed immovably to the glass, screamed.

Immobility became frenzy, silence a dull unpunctuated roar.

The crowd surged away from the window, pushing madly backward, stampeding in terror. A child fell and was trampled in the crush. A police whistle blew, and a bluecoat ran shouting through the crowd, using his club freely.

"Morning, Inspector. Morning, Mr. Queen! Glad you've come, sir. You'll find things in a rotten mess." He stepped aside and waved a large hand at the room and its assorted occupants. "Pretty, eh, sir?

More like a wake than the scene of a crime!

" It was a long speech for Velie.

"Alors—we'll let it go at that," said Ellery, smiling. "

I am always worried by omissions.

" He dropped back, searching his vest-pocket for a cigaret-case. His father eyed him sharply. Ellery rarely smoked.

It's murder, of course," he continued hastily, before she could reply, "and I know you are naturally chary of answering. Take your time—think carefully over everything that has occurred lately...." He stopped. "Now, Miss French, can you tell me anything I might wish to hear?"

There was naked silence in the room—a raw pulsing quiet that beat invisibly against the atmosphere.

Ellery heard quick breaths drawn, saw bodies tense, eyes sharpen, hands twitch as, to a man, the occupants of the room with the exception of Cyrus French leaned forward, watching Marion French as she stood there, facing them.

"Well!" Ellery sighed. "

We seem to be progressing, and yet nothing takes definite shape....

" Shrugging his shoulders, he turned once more to Lavery.

"Smart guess, Westley," smiled Ellery, his eye fast to the lens. "But I seriously doubt it.... This will require analysis, and immediately.

Something twitters a warning message in my subconscious.

"

"No.

She was singularly free from the profundity of character which so often breeds animosity in others.

" Carmody might have been talking of an utter stranger; his tone, his bearing were wholly impersonal.

They entered a large green-and-ivory bedroom, ornately furnished with period furniture. A huge canopied bed dominated the room. Despite the mirrors and colors and exotic pieces, the room was unaccountably depressing. It looked cold.

The sunbeams that streamed in through the three wide windows, far from lending warmth to the ensemble, in some grotesque way only heightened the general effect of cheerlessness.

Ellery's eyes, as he stepped into the room, were not concerned with its eeriness. They focused immediately on a large, garishly carved table to the side of the bed, on which was an ashtray filled to overflowing with cigaret-stubs.

Silence.

A frightened silence so suddenly fraught with hidden complications of emotion that it seemed almost of physical substance.

It was a tableau created for a single moment's duration: the slight Inspector, alert, controlled, leaning forward; the straight body of Ellery, muscles completely inanimate; the vague bulk of Velie, drawn and powerful;

You, Mr. Queen?... Don't mind if I do myself." He lit the cigar and flicked the burnt match carelessly into the fireplace. A pained spasm passed over the face of Djuna, who was removing the last traces of the breakfast meal from the table.

Djuna was tyrannical when his household was upset.

He cast a venomous glance at Crouther's broad back and stumped away into the kitchenette.

I found a cruising cab-driver who said he picked up a woman of her description on West End Avenue and 72nd. Private cab, it is; and I guess I was just lucky, that's all.

This whole business of trailing is part luck and part perspiration—fact, ain't it, Inspector?

"

The police van, crammed with detectives and officers, rushed through the West Side, headed uptown.

Traffic opened magically before its wailing siren.

Hundreds of eyes followed its reckless course wonderingly.

"That——!" she said in a low passionate voice. But her body was tense with anger.

The mask of politeness fell from her face and revealed an older woman—shrewish, cruel.

The Inspector seemed not to hear. "Mr. Zorn?" he said.

"Oh, dad—the mess and mire of it!" cried Ellery. "La vie c'est confusée!

How beautifully events belie each other....

What do you make of your late interview?"

Djuna served in silence, and in silence cleared the table afterward. The Inspector dipped into the browned interior of his snuff-box and Ellery held communion with first a cigaret, then a pipe, then a cigaret again. In all this time no word was spoken.

It was a silence of sympathy, not infrequent in the Queen household.

Finally Ellery sighed and stared into the fireplace. But it was the Inspector who spoke first.

The Inspector wrinkled his nose in self-disgust. "I take it that what's been a hopeless maze to me has been a clear thoroughfare to you. That rankles, son!

I have raised up a Frankenstein to haunt my old age ...

" Then he chuckled and laid a slightly infirm hand on Ellery's knee.

"Yes, yes ..." Queen dropped back, embarrassed. "You've got a case, an explanation and no proof. What to do.... Bluff, my son.

Bluff as if you'd raised the pot before the draw on a pair of fours and then found real opposition staring at you. Raise again!

"

The silence thickened. Every one grew still as stone....

The silence grew more embarrassing with each passing moment—a silence that swelled, breathed, became alive....

Then Sergeant Velie did a strange thing. His spatulate forefinger, resting on his knee, tapped three distinct times, in rhythm. Not even Crouther caught the signal, and Crouther was at Velie's side.

If the blade is missing there is no incentive to suspicion or memory.

An altered object is a more vigorous mental stimulant than a missing one.

At least, that is what I should have thought if I had been in the murderer's place; and in effect I believe the person who planned this affair did the correct thing in taking away the blade—correct according to his lights.