Chinese Orange Mystery Read Free Page B

it’s wonderful of you to take me to see him, Mr. Osborne. I know I’ll have the most thrilling time.”
    “Thank you,” said Osborne glumly. “I meant to ask you … Well, that’s fine, that’s fine, Miss Diversey. It’s about a quarter to six now—”
    “Five-forty-three,” said Miss Diversey mechanically, consulting her wrist-watch with professional swiftness. “Shall we say,” her voice lowered and became intimate, “a quarter to eight?”
    “That’s fine,” breathed Osborne. Their eyes touched, and both quickly looked away. Miss Diversey felt a sudden surge of warmth beneath the starched apron. Her blunt fingers began to search her hair mechanically.
    Mr. Ellery Queen was wont to point out in confidentially retrospective moments that not the least remarkable feature of the affair was the subtle manner in which the dead man’s very lack of existence impinged upon the unexciting little lives of little people. At one moment all was commonplace. Miss Diversey trifled with herself and Mr. Osborne’s heart in Kirk’s hide-away office. Donald Kirk was off somewhere. Jo Temple was dressing in a new black gown in one of the guest-rooms of the Kirk suite. Dr. Kirk’s thorny nose was buried in a Fourteenth Century rabbinical manuscript. Hubbell was in Kirk’s room laying out his master’s evening kit. Glenn Macgowan was striding fast up Broadway. Felix Berne was kissing a foreign-looking woman in his bachelor apartment in the East Sixties. Irene Llewes was regarding her very admirable nude figure in her bedroom mirror in the Chancellor.
    And Mrs. Shane, who a few moments before had played Cupid, was suddenly called upon to play a new role—Prologue in The Tragedy of the Chinese Orange.

Strange Interlude
    A T PRECISELY 5:44 BY MRS. Shane’s watch one of the elevator-doors opposite her station opened and a stoutish little man with a bland middle-aged face stepped out. There was nothing about him that excited the eye with a sensation of interest or pleasure. He was just a middle-aged creature grown to flesh, dressed in undistinguished clothing, wearing a greenish-black felt hat, a shiny black topcoat, and a woolen scarf bundled around his fat neck against the brisk Fall weather. He had pudgy hairless hands and he was carrying ordinary gray capeskin gloves. From the crown of his cheap hat to the soles of his black bull-dog shoes he was—nothing, the Invisible Man, one of the millions of mediocrities who make up the everyday wonderless world.
    “Yes?” said Mrs. Shane rather sharply, measuring him accurately with a glance as she noticed his hesitancy. This was no guest of the Chancellor, with its $10-a-day rooms.
    “Could you direct me to the private office of Mr. Donald Kirk?” asked the stout man timidly. His voice was soft and sugary, not unpleasant.
    “Oh,” said Mrs. Shane. That explained everything. Donald Kirk’s office on the twenty-second floor was the port-of-call of many strange gentlemen. Kirk had instituted this office in the Chancellor to provide a quiet meeting-place for jewelry and philatelic dealers, and to conduct purely confidential publishing business which he did not care to air in the comparatively public surroundings of the Mandarin Press offices. As a result, Mrs. Shane was not unaccustomed to being accosted by queer people. So she snapped: “Room 2210, right there across the corridor,” and went back to her perusal of a nudist magazine cleverly concealed in the half-open top drawer of her desk.
    The stout man said: “Thank you,” in his sweet voice and trudged obliquely across the corridor to the door on which Miss Diversey had rapped a few moments earlier. He made a pudgy fist and knocked on the panel.
    There was an interval of silence from the room; and then Osborne’s voice, curiously choked, said: “Come in.”
    The stout man beamed and opened the door. Osborne was standing by his desk, blinking and pale, while Miss Diversey stood near the door with flaming cheeks. Her