The «Canary» Murder Case / Смерть Канарейки. Книга для чтения на английском языке - стр. 13
The two rooms had apparently been thoroughly ransacked. Clothes and various articles were strewn about the floor. The doors of both clothes-closets (there was one in each room) were open, and to judge from the chaos in the bedroom closet, it had been hurriedly searched; although the closet off of the living-room, which was given over to the storage of infrequently used items, appeared to have been ignored. The drawers of the dressing-table and chest had been partly emptied on to the floor, and the bedclothes had been snatched away and the mattress turned back. Two chairs and a small occasional table were upset; several vases were broken, as if they had been searched and then thrown down in the wrath of disappointment; and the Marie Antoinette mirror had been broken. The escritoire was open, and its pigeonholes had been emptied in a jumbled pile upon the blotter. The doors of the Boule cabinet swung wide, and inside there was the same confusion of contents that marked the interior of the escritoire. The bronze-and-porcelain lamp on the end of the library-table was lying on its side, its satin shade torn where it had struck the sharp corner of a silver bonbonnière[21].
Two objects in the general disarray particularly attracted my attention—a black metal document-box of the kind purchasable at any stationery store, and a large jewel-case of sheet steel with a circular inset lock. The latter of these objects was destined to play a curious and sinister part in the investigation to follow.
The document-box, which was now empty, had been placed on the library-table, next to the overturned lamp. Its lid was thrown back, and the key was still in the lock. In all the litter and disorganization of the room, this box seemed to be the one outstanding indication of calm and orderly activity on the part of the wrecker.
The jewel-case, on the other hand, had been violently wrenched open. It sat on the dressing-table in the bedroom, dinted and twisted out of shape by the terrific leverage that had been necessary to force it, and beside it lay a brass-handled, cast-iron poker which had evidently been brought from the living-room and used as a makeshift chisel with which to prize open the lock.
Vance had glanced but casually at the different objects in the rooms as we made our rounds, but when he came to the dressing-table, he paused abruptly. Taking out his monocle, he adjusted it carefully, and leaned over the broken jewel-case.
“Most extr’ordin’ry!” he murmured, tapping the edge of the lid with his gold pencil. “What do you make of that, Sergeant?”
Heath had been eyeing Vance with narrowed lids as the latter bent over the dressing-table.
“What’s in your mind, Mr. Vance?” he, in turn, asked.
“Oh, more than you could ever guess,” Vance answered lightly. “But just at the moment I was toying with the idea that this steel case was never torn open by that wholly inadequate iron poker, what?”
Heath nodded his head approvingly. “So you, too, noticed that, did you? … And you’re dead right. That poker might’ve twisted the box a little, but it never snapped that lock.”
He turned to Inspector Moran.
“That’s the puzzler I’ve sent for ‘Prof’ Brenner to clean up—if he can. The jimmying of that jewel-case looks to me like a high-class professional job. No Sunday-school superintendent did it.”