Greek Coffin Mystery Read Free

with Sloane; precisely what he could not make out. As for Alan, the boy was scowling as usual, and when he moved nearer to Woodruff the lawyer caught the pungent odor of whisky on his breath. Woodruff spared no language in his peroration. He chopped at them savagely, pointed to the open safe, eyed each of them with heavy suspicion. Sloane shook his leonine head; he was a powerful man in the prime of life, elegantly attired in the height of foppish fashion. Alan said nothing—shrugged his spare shoulders indifferently.
    “All right,” said Woodruff. “It’s all right with me. But I’m going to get to the bottom of this, gentlemen. Right now.”
    Woodruff appears to have been in his glory. He had every one in the house peremptorily summoned to the study. Amazing as it may seem, it is true that within four minutes of the time the funeral party returned to the Khalkis house, Woodruff had them all on the carpet— all, including even Undertaker Sturgess and his assistants!—and had the dubious satisfaction of hearing them, to the last man and woman, deny having taken anything out of the safe, or even having gone to the safe that day at all.
    It was at this dramatic and slightly ludicrous moment that Joan Brett and Alan Cheney were struck by the same thought. Both plunged for the doorway, colliding, boiling out of the room into the hall, flying down the hall to the foyer. Woodruff, with a hoarse shout, lunged after them, suspecting he knew not what. Alan and Joan assisted each other in unlocking the foyer door, scrambled through the vestibule to the unlocked street-door, flung it open and faced a mildly astonished throng in the street, Woodruff hurrying after them. Joan called out in her clear contralto, “Has any one come into this house in the past half-hour?” Alan shouted, “Anybody?” and Woodruff found himself echoing the word. A hardy young man, one of a group of reporters draped over the latched gate on the sidewalk, distinctly said, “No!”, another reporter drawled, “What’s up, Doc? Why the hell don’t you let us inside?—we won’t touch nothin’,” and there was a little scattering of applause from the onlookers in the street. Joan blushed, as was natural, and her hand strayed to her auburn hair, patting it for no apparent reason into place. Alan cried, “Did anybody come out?” and there was a thunderous chorus of “No!” Woodruff coughed, his self-assurance shaken by this public spectacle, irritably herded the young couple back into the house, and carefully locked the doors behind him—both of them, this time.
    But Woodruff was not the type of man whose self-assurance can be permanently shaken. He recaptured it immediately upon reentering the library, where the others sat and stood about looking faintly expectant. He rapped questions at them, pouncing on one after the other, and almost snarled with disappointment when he discovered that most of the household knew the combination of the safe.
    “All right,” he said. “All right. Somebody here is trying to pull a fast one. Somebody’s lying. But we’ll find out soon enough, soon enough, I’ll promise you that.” He prowled back and forth before them. “I can be as smart as the rest of you. It’s my duty—my duty, you understand,” and everybody nodded, like a battery of dolls, “to search every soul in this house. Right now. At once,” and everybody stopped nodding. “Oh, I know some one here doesn’t like the idea. Do you think I like it? But I’m going to do it anyway. It was stolen right under my nose. My nose.” At this point, despite the seriousness of the situation, Joan Brett giggled; Woodruff’s nose did cover a generous strip of territory.
    Nacio Suiza, the immaculate, smiled slightly. “Oh, come now, Woodruff. Isn’t this a bit melodramatic? There’s probably a very simple explanation for the whole thing. You’re dramatizing it.”
    “You think so, Suiza, you think so?” Woodruff transferred his glare from Joan