The Dime Museum Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

member of the staff on the placement of finger
bowls. "It is Mr. Wintour's habit of an evening to spend an hour
or so answering correspondence in his study. He customarily takes a
glass of Irish whiskey at five-thirty, but there was no response when
I knocked at the door this evening." "Did you break down
the door?" Harry asked. "Certainly not." "What
did you do?"
    "I
did nothing. I assumed that Mr. Wintour did not wish to be disturbed.
It was only when he failed to appear for dinner that I grew
concerned. He had arranged a small dinner party for this evening.
When the guests began to assemble at six o'clock, Mr. Wintour had
still not emerged."
    "So
you broke down the door?"
    A
pained expression crossed the old butler's face. "I saw
no need to break down the door. I decided to telephone, in the event
that he might have fallen asleep on the settee. It would not have
been the first time. There is only one telephone in the house and
that is in Mr. Wintour's study. I stepped across to a neighboring
house to telephone."
    Harry
nodded. "But he didn't answer?"
    "No,
sir. By now I had begun to grow alarmed. On the advice of Mrs.
Wintour, I telephoned a nearby locksmith, a Mr.—"
    "Featherstone,"
Harry said. "A reliable, but unimaginative craftsman."
    Lieutenant
Murray's eyebrows went up at this, but he said nothing. Phillips
carried on as if he hadn't heard. "Mr. Featherstone arrived some
moments later and managed to open the door using a skeleton key."
    "Is
that the study over there?" Harry asked, gesturing at the heavy
mahogany doors.
    "It
is."
    "It's
a routine Selkirk dead-bolt with a three-wheel ratchet. My sainted
Mama could open that lock with her darning needle."
    Phillips
dipped his chin and peered at Harry over his half-glasses. "We
had not known that your mother was available, sir," he said.
    "Please
continue, Phillips," said Lieutenant Murray.
    "Once
Mr. Featherstone had opened the door, I found Mr. Wintour at his
desk."
    "Dead?"
Harry asked.
    "I
still believed he was asleep, but I could not rouse him. That was
when I summoned the police."
    "That'll
do, Phillips," Lieutenant Murray said. "Gentlemen, if
you'll follow me." He led us across the foyer to the study
doors. There were a number of uniformed officers milling around, and
to my surprise Harry appeared to know most of them. He nodded at a
stocky young man sitting by the doors, and received a casual salute
in return.
    "Harry,"
I whispered, "how do you know—"
    "Later,"
he answered.
    One
of the doors to the study was partially open, and I could see the
bustle of plain-clothes men as they examined, measured, traced, and
sketched along the edges of the scene. Then Murray pushed open the
door and we saw the rest.
    The
study reeked of culture and old money, though I knew perfectly well
that Wintour had made his loot within the past decade. Shelves of
books with leather spines stretched across the left side of the room,
broken only by a tall marble fireplace. Ancestral portraits and
richly colored tapestries covered the other walls, and there were a
number of marble busts sprouting up on alabaster pedestals throughout
the room, creating a museum effect. A pair of club chairs, a settee,
and a couple of Chesterfields were positioned just so in front of a
flattop, marble-inlay desk, the surface of which could easily have
accommodated six or seven of the performers from Huber's Museum.
    Though
the furnishings imparted a certain baronial splendor to the room, it
was clear that the occupant, who had made his fortune in the
manufacture of children's toys, had never entirely put aside the
playthings of youth. In one corner, the head of an outsize
jack-in-the-box bobbed back and forth. A spectacular collection of
wind-up animals, clockwork figures, and tin soldiers littered the
surface of a library table, and a tall cylindrical zoetrope stood on
a special display stand nearby. Most impressive of all, an enormous
two-tiered model train set
was arrayed on an oblong slab of polished