Greek Coffin Mystery Read Free Page A

to Suiza. “I see you don’t like the idea of a personal search. Why?”
    Suiza chuckled. “Am I on trial, Woodruff? Get a hold on yourself, man. You’re acting like a chicken with its head cut off. Perhaps,” he said pointedly, “perhaps you were mistaken when you thought you saw the box in the safe five minutes before the funeral.”
    “Mistaken? You think so? You’ll find I wasn’t mistaken when one of you turns out a thief!”
    “At any rate,” remarked Suiza, showing his white teeth, “I won’t stand for this high-handed procedure. Try—just try—to search me, old man.”
    At this point the inevitable occurred; Woodruff completely lost his temper. He raged, and raved, and shook his heavy fist under Suiza’s sharp cold nose, and spluttered, “By God, I’ll show you! By heaven, I’ll show you what high-handed is!” and concluded by doing what he should have done in the very beginning—he clutched at one of the two telephones on the dead man’s desk, feverishly dialed a number, stuttered at an unseen inquisitor, and replaced the instrument with a bang, saying to Suiza with malevolent finality, “We’ll see whether you’ll be searched or not, my good fellow. Everybody in this house, by order of District Attorney Sampson, is not to stir a foot from the premises until somebody from his office gets here!”

3 … ENIGMA
    A SSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY PEPPER was a personable young man. Matters proceeded very smoothly indeed from the moment he stepped into the Khalkis house a half-hour after Woodruff’s telephone call. He possessed the gift of making people talk, for he knew the value of flattery—a talent that Woodruff, a poor trial-lawyer, had never acquired. To Woodruff’s surprise, even he himself felt better after a short talk with Pepper. Nobody minded in the least the presence of a moon-faced, cigar-smoking individual who had accompanied Pepper—a detective named Cohalan attached to the District Attorney’s office; for Cohalan, on Pepper’s warning, merely stood in the doorway to the study and smoked his black weed in complete, self-effacing silence.
    Woodruff hurried husky Pepper into a corner and the story of the funeral tumbled out. “Now here’s the situation, Pepper. Five minutes before the funeral procession was formed here in the house I went into Khalkis’ bedroom”—he pointed vaguely to another door leading out of the library—“got hold of Khalkis’ key to his steel box, came back in here, opened the safe, opened the steel box, and there it was, staring me in the face. Now then—”
    “There what was?”
    “Didn’t I tell you? I must be excited.” Pepper did not say that this was self-evident, and Woodruff swabbed his perspiring face. “Khalkis’ new will! The new one, mind you! No question about the fact that it was the new will in the steel box; I picked it up and there was my own seal on the thing. I put it back into the box, locked the box, locked the safe, left the room. …”
    “Just a moment, Mr. Woodruff.” From policy Pepper always addressed men from whom he desired information as “Mister.” “Did any one else have a key to the box?”
    “Absolutely not, Pepper, absolutely not! That key is the only one to the box, as Khalkis told me himself not long ago; and I found it in Khalkis’ clothes in his bedroom, and after I locked the box and the safe, I put the key into my own pocket. On my own key-ring, in fact. Still have it.” Woodruff fumbled in his hip-pocket and produced a key-wallet; his fingers were trembling as he selected a small key, detached it, and handed it to Pepper. “I’ll swear that it’s been in my pocket all the time. Why, nobody could have stolen it from me!” Pepper nodded gravely. “There was hardly any time. Right after I left the library, the business of the procession came up, and then we had the funeral. When I got back instinct or something, I guess, made me come in here again, open the safe—and, by God, the box with the