Thorne drew the patchwork comforter about him, his old lips blue. “Well, Queen?”
Ellery lit a cigarette and for a moment stared out Thome’s window at the streamers of crepy snow still dropping from the sky. The snow had fallen without a moment’s let-up the entire previous day. “This is a curious business all round, Thorne. The queerest medley of spirit and matter. I’ve just reconnoitered. You’ll be interested to learn that our young friend the Colossus is gone.”
“Keith gone?”
“His bed hasn’t been slept in at all. I looked.”
“And he was away most of yesterday, too!”
“Precisely. Our surly Crichton, who seems afflicted by a particularly acute case of Weltschmerz, periodically vanishes. Where does he go? I’d give a good deal to know the answer to that question.”
“He won’t get far in those nasty drifts,” mumbled the lawyer.
“It gives one, as the French say, to think. Comrade Reinach is gone, too.” Thorne stiffened. “Oh, yes; his bed’s been slept in, but briefly, I judge. Have they eloped together? Separately? Thorne,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “this becomes an increasingly subtle devilment.”
“It’s beyond me,” said Thorne with another shiver. “I’m just about ready to give up. I don’t see that we’re accomplishing a thing here. And then there’s always that annoying, incredible fact... the house — vanished.”
Ellery sighed and looked at his wristwatch. It was a minute past seven.