Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen

Marcella bit her lip; Donald Kirk became very pale; and Ellery felt his muscles tense.
    “Why talk about it?” muttered Kirk. “It’s spoiled the evening already, Felix. I’m sorry if—”
    Berne’s black eyes flicked around the table. “There’s something more to this than meets the eye. Why did that irritating little Inspector insist on dragging me into that anteroom of yours and uncovering a basket and showing me the beatific face of a dead man?”
    “He did—that?” faltered Marcella.
    Ellery said lightly: “That irritating little Inspector, Mr. Berne, happens to be my father. I shouldn’t condemn him, you know, for doing his duty. He’s trying to identify the body.”
    The black eyes gleamed with interest. “Ah! I beg your pardon, Mr. Queen. I hadn’t caught your father’s name. Identify the body? Then the man’s unknown as yet?”
    “Nobody knows who he is,” growled Dr. Kirk with a grumpy look, squirming in his chair, “and what’s more nobody cares. At least I do not. Come, come, Felix! This is scarcely post- hors d’oeuvres conversation.”
    “I really can’t agree with you, Doctor,” murmured Miss Llewes. “I find it thrilling.”
    “You,” Ellery heard the tiny woman at his left breathe, “would.” But no one else heard.
    “I daresay Miss Llewes and I,” said Berne with a grim smile, “have the Continental attitude toward such things—a lack of squeamishness. Eh, Miss Llewes? Under the circumstances, Mr. Queen, I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to render more assistance. The man was a stranger to me.”
    “Well,” grinned Ellery, “you have company.”
    There was an interval of silence. Hotel waiters removed the soup plates.
    Then Berne said quietly: “I take it you’ve a—professional interest in this case, Mr. Queen?”
    “More or less. I generally dawdle about the fringes, Mr. Berne. I find homicides quite stimulating.”
    “A curious taste,” snapped Dr. Kirk.
    “Nor can I say, Mr. Queen,” murmured Miss Temple, “that I share your tastes in stimulation, either.” She shivered a little. “I still retain an Occidental aversion to death. My friends the Chinese would appreciate your attitude.”
    Ellery regarded her with a slow dawning of interest. “Your friends the Chinese? Ah, yes. Stupid of me. I’d quite forgotten. You’ve lived in China most of your life, haven’t you?”
    “Yes. My father was in the American diplomatic service.”
    “It’s quite true about the Chinese. There’s a strain of fatalism in the Oriental make-up that breeds first resignation to human death and then, as a natural development, contempt for human life.”
    “Nonsense,” said Dr. Kirk in a shrill temper, “supreme nonsense! If you were a philologist, Mr. Queen, you would realize that the ideographic origin of—”
    “Here, here,” murmured Felix Berne, “no lectures, Doctor. We’re digressing. I understand the man asked for you, Donald.” Kirk started. “Odd.”
    “Isn’t it?” said Kirk nervously. “But, Felix, I assure you—”
    “Look here,” said Glenn Macgowan from the other end of the table in a harsh voice, “we’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Mr. Queen, I understand that you’re something of a logician in your attack on crime problems.”
    “Something,” smiled Ellery, “is the mot juste .”
    “Then surely it’s obvious,” snapped Macgowan, “that since this man is unknown to any of us, his murder really can’t concern any of us? The fact that he was killed on the premises was sheer coincidence, even accident.”
    Hubbell, bending over Marcella’s glass with a swathed bottle of sauterne, spilled a few drops of wine on the cloth.
    “Oh, dear,” sighed Marcella. “Even poor Hubbell’s been afflicted.”
    The man turned scarlet and effaced himself.
    “You mean, of course, Mr. Macgowan,” said Miss Temple softly, “that, as you said before, some one followed him here and took advantage of his isolation in a perfectly strange