Chapter 8 cold case department money is merciless

The Chancellor Hotel in the center of New York may never forget the two visits of Mr. Philip Mullin.The first time Mullan had registered as Winston F. Parker, he had been recognized by an alert detective employed by the hotel.Under the personal guidance of Inspector Richard Quinn, the police officers brought Fili, who was struggling in handcuffs, out of Room 913.At trial, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for a paycheck robbery in Manhattan.The second time he came to this hotel was a full ten years later, and he was brought out without struggle or shackles, because he was dead. The real origins of the case had to be traced back to the hills of Berkshire, on the asphalt country road east of Route 7.On the way to escape, Mullan punched the waiter Midge over the left ear and threw him out of the car, so the division of the stolen money changed from three shares to two shares.Mu Lan's mathematics is more than that.Five miles further north, he repeated the trick with the Patiences of Pittsburgh and pocketed all of their $62,000.Midge and Patience were captured by Connecticut State Police.The waiter was too angry to say a word; Patience, on the contrary, was an eloquent lady.Three weeks later, Philip Mullan was evicted from the Chancellor Hotel room where he was hiding, but all the money was lost—in three weeks, the sixty-two thousand dollars disappeared.He didn't squander them, records show, and he arrived at the New York hotel immediately after jettisoning his accomplices.

The question is: Where did Mullan hide the stolen money? Everyone wants to know.Yet for Pittsburgh Patience and waiter Midge, their hunger for this information was doomed: they too got ten years in prison.As for the police, it would make no difference if they were sent to jail with Mullan and his angry associates as far as the progress they were making in finding the lost notes. The police resorted to all means against Mu Lan, including placing roommates in the same cell.But Mu Lan kept his mouth shut, not even talking in his sleep. The closest he came to a successful attempt came in Filey's sixth year in prison.In July of that year, on the playground, Fei Li screamed and fell down as if he had been stabbed.When he woke up in the infirmary, the prison doctor pointed out the sinister murderer for him.The murderer was his heart.

"My heart?" Mullan said suspiciously, "Me?" He looked frightened, and then said in a feeble voice, "I want to see the warden." The warden came at once.He is good-natured and wishes these rough inmates good health.But he had been waiting for this moment for more than five years. "What's the matter, Mullan?" said the warden. "About the sixty-two thousand..." Philip said softly. "I'm listening, Mulan," said the warden. "I've never been a Boy Scout, God knows—" "Yes, he knows," said the warden.

"That's exactly what I mean, Warden. I mean, I don't think I can take the secret to the grave, maybe I can pay off some debts to God. I think I'd better tell you where the stolen money is in the What happened. The doctor said I was going to die—” But the prison doctor is very young, full of illusions about truth and other ideals, he said angrily, "I mean one day, not now, Mulan! Maybe there won't be a second attack for many years." "Oh?" Fili's voice suddenly gained confidence, "Then why am I worried?" He grinned at the warden and turned his face to the wall.

The warden immediately wanted to kick them both to death. So, everyone accepted the fact that they had to continue to wait. Everyone is waiting for Mulan to be released.Both the legal term, Patience, and the waiter had many hours, of which Mullan's was the longest.Seven years after receiving the country's hospitality, Patience and Meggie came out and went their separate ways.Mulan's silence got him locked up to the end. On the day he was released, the warden said to him: "Mulan, you can't escape with that money. Even if you escape, people always get nothing with money that doesn't belong to them." of."

"I think I earned the money, Warden," said Philip Mullan with a twisted smile. "All in all, it's only six thousand two hundred dollars a year!" "Is your heart okay?" "Ah, the doctor was too hasty to draw conclusions." Of course, they sent someone to follow him twenty-four hours a day, and they lost track of him.Agents at two headquarters were demoted as a result.When he was found ten days later, he had been dead for fifteen minutes. With his good memory and a little cleverness, the private detective Brouwert of the Chancellor Hotel made the police discover the body quickly.When Brouwert returned to work after a two-week vacation, the hotel staff were chattering about a guest named Voss who had stayed in for nine days and hadn't stepped out of his room.Since he ate in his room, the only people who saw him were the room service staff, the hotel maid and a few hotel bellmen.They reported that he not only locked the door day and night, but also put a chain on it.The room number was 913, and a receptionist remembered him insisting on this room and nothing else.

"I just got into work this morning, so I haven't had a chance to get a look at him yet," Brouwert said on the phone to police headquarters, "but from what they told me, apart from the hair color and a few things that might have come from the insoles, Inch tall, he fits the description perfectly. Inspector, if this Voss isn't Philip Mullan in hiding, I'm going to get a job in the sanitation department." "Good job, Brouwert. We'll be right over." Inspector Quinn hung up the phone and said admiringly, "Same hotel, same room. You've got to admire him—" Then he stopped.

"Exactly." Ellery, who had been listening on the extension, remembered the case haunting his father. "Not smart enough, unless that's where he hid his money." "But Ellery, we searched that room at the Chancellor Hotel ten years ago when we captured Mullan!" "But you didn't use the super-luxury searches I'd recommend in this case," Ellery said sadly. "Remember how clever Mullan was in convincing you that he buried money in the road? He made You've dug up half the cornfields in Connecticut! Dad, the money's been in that room at the Chancellor Hotel."

So they came to the Chancellor Hotel with Sergeant Willie and several district constables.Brouwert opened door 913 with the universal key.The door was not chained, and the reason for this became clear from the sight of Mullan's body. The district police officers ran away quickly, and Sergeant Willie was busy dialing the phone. Mulan sat in a chair by a desk in the corner of the bedroom, with his face and hands resting on the desk.He was struck in the back of the head by a heavy object, which a quick check showed was not at the scene.Judging from the contusion wound, the Inspector believed it to be a hammer.

"But the depth of the wound doesn't look fatal." Ellery frowned. "Mullan had a heart attack in prison," his father said, "a bad heart, a bang—and that was the end." Ellery looked around.The room has not been cleaned up today, it is quite messy.He started to wander, muttering to himself, "It won't hide in the furniture - the hotel keeps moving furniture around... Walls and ceilings are stained plaster, have to repaint and imitate stains... Too risky..." He dropped to all fours and began to crawl around. The Inspector stood by the table and said, "Blauvelt, help me sit him up."

The body was still warm and the detective held onto it so it wouldn't fall over.The sleeves and neckline of Mullan's pajamas were smeared with blue ink.He was writing a note and knocked over the ink bottle as he fell forward. The detective froze.He looked around for towels, but there were none in the bedroom. "Willie, get some used towels from the bathroom. Maybe we can soak up a little ink and make out what Mullan is writing!" "There are unused towels here," the officer said from the bathroom. "Then take the unused ones, pig brains!" Waley came out with some fresh towels, and the inspector went to deal with the note.He handled it carefully for five minutes.But all he could see was "The money is hidden in..." written in trembling handwriting, and the rest could not be saved. "Why did he write down where the stolen money is?" Brouwert was still holding Mu Lan's body, his tone was surprised. "Because he must have had a premonition of a heart attack when he got up this morning." The inspector said impatiently. "When he had an attack in prison, he almost told the warden. This time he must have been so scared that he sat down straight away. Going to write where the money was stashed. Then he fell forward, probably unconscious, or dying. The murderer came in—maybe thinking he was on his lunch break—and finished him off, and looked at it before the ink soaked in. note-" "Found the stash," Ellery said from under the bed. "The money's gone, Dad." So Brouwert let go of Mulan.They got down together and saw a neat hole in the floor under the rug, complete with an artistic removable wooden cover, where the stolen money had been lying for ten years.The hole is empty. When they stood up again, Ellery was no longer with them.He bent down to examine Mulan's body. "Ellery, what are you doing?" Inspector Quinn exclaimed. Even Sergeant Willie seemed sick.Ellery ran his palm across the dead man's cheek tenderly. "Excellent," he said. "great?!" "He was well shaved this morning. You can still see the talcum powder." Brouwert opened his mouth wide. "Do you want to learn something, Brouwert?" Sergeant Willie startled him by prodding him. "Deduction is coming." "Of course," Ellery laughed. "It revealed who killed Philip Mullan." The officer opened his mouth. "Shut up, Willie," Inspector Quinn said. "What the hell is going on?" "Because if Mullan had shaved this morning," Ellery asked, "where would he have shaved it, Sergeant?" "Okay, I'll take the bait," Willie said. "Where?" "Where men shave, Officer, is in the bathroom. Have you tried shaving in the bathroom without a towel?" "That's an easy question. What do you think I wipe my face with, a bath mat?" "Well, Ellery, so Mullan used the towel," said the Inspector impatiently, "so what?" "Where's the towel? When you told Willy to go to the bathroom to find a used towel to soak up the ink on, Dad, he said there were no used towels in there. And there were no towels in the bedroom. Willy got a What? Unused towels. In other words, after Mulan shaved this morning, someone took the dirty towels and replaced them with clean ones. This is a hotel and Mulan kept the door locked with a chain, but he obviously put Someone came in..." "The cleaning lady!" "It must have been her. As usual, Mullan had the cleaning lady in, and she was working in the bathroom - but she didn't clean the bedroom, why? Must be because Mullan had a heart attack while she was cleaning the bathroom! "It was the cleaning lady who hit Mullan with the hammer she had brought - perhaps the last nine mornings she had been waiting to use. Reading Mullan's message and taking the stolen money from the hole in the floor, And it's the cleaning lady." "But since she came in with a hammer, it must have been premeditated, and she must know who he is!" "That's right, Dad. So I think when you catch her, this murderous cleaner is your old friend, the reinvented Patience of Pittsburgh. Patience has always suspected Mullan of hiding the money Here, after she got out of prison three years ago, she immediately took a job in the housekeeping department of the Chancellor Hotel...waiting for her old accomplice to show up!"