“That,” said Dr. Reinach heartily, “is the ancestral mansion, Alice. To the left.”
The house to the left was of stone; once gray, but now so tarnished by the elements and perhaps the ravages of fire that it was almost black. Its face was blotched and streaky, as if it had succumbed to an insensate leprosy. Rising three stories, elaborately ornamented with stone flora and gargoyles, it was unmistakably Victorian in its architecture. The façade had a neglected, granular look that only the art of great age could have etched. The whole structure appeared to have thrust its roots immovably into the forsaken landscape.
Ellery saw Alice Mayhew staring at it with a sort of speechless horror; it had nothing of the pleasant hoariness of old English mansions. It was simply old, old with the dreadful age of this seared and blasted countryside. He cursed Thorne beneath his breath for subjecting the girl to such a shocking experience.
“Sylvester called it The Black House,” said Dr. Reinach cheerfully as he turned off the ignition. “Not pretty, I admit, but as solid as the day it was built, seventy-five years ago.”
“Black House,” grunted Thorne. “Rubbish.”
“Do you mean to say,” whispered Alice, “that father... mother lived here?”
“Yes, my dear. Quaint name, eh, Thorne? Another illustration of Sylvester’s preoccupation with the morbidly colorful. Built by your grandfather, Alice. The old gentleman built this one, too, later; I believe you’ll find it considerably more habitable. “Where the devil is everyone?”
He descended heavily and held the rear door open for his niece. Mr. Ellery Queen slipped down to the driveway on the other side and glanced about with the sharp, uneasy sniff of a wild animal. The old mansion’s companion-house was a much smaller and less pretentious dwelling, two stories high and built of an originally white stone which had turned gray. The front door was shut and the curtains at the lower windows were drawn. But there was a fire burning somewhere inside; he caught the tremulous glimmers. In the next moment they were blotted out by the head of an old woman, who pressed her face to one of the panes for a single instant and then vanished. But the door remained shut.
“You’ll stop with us, of course,” he heard the doctor say genially; and Ellery circled the car. His three companions were standing in the driveway, Alice pressed close to old Thorne as if for protection. “You won’t want to sleep in the Black House, Alice. No one’s there, it’s in rather a mess; and a house of death, y’know...”
“Stop it,” growled Thorne. “Can’t you see the poor child is half-dead from fright as it is? Are you trying to scare her away?”