There was no sign or sound of Delia. She was going to her room to lock herself in, she had said, and lie down. She had seemed to have no further interest in her husband’s condition. She had looked quite ill.
Ellery turned disconsolately to go, but then ― or perhaps he was looking for an excuse to linger ― he remembered the library, and he went back up the hall to the doorway opposite Priam’s.
Delia’s father sat at the library desk intently examining a postage stamp for its watermark.
“Oh, Mr. Collier.”
The old man looked up. Immediately he rose, smiling. “Come in, come in, Mr. Queen. Everything all right now?”
“Well,” said Ellery, “the frogs are no longer with us.”
Collier shook his head. “Man’s inhumanity to everything. You’d think we’d restrict our murderous impulses to our own kind. But no, somebody had to take his misery out on some harmless little specimens of Hyla regilla, not to mention―”
“Of what?” asked Ellery.
“Hyla regilla. Tree toads, Mr. Queen, or tree frogs. That’s what most of those little fellows were.” He brightened. “Well, let’s not talk about that any more. Although why a grown man like Roger Priam should be afraid of them ― with their necks wrung, too! ― I simply don’t understand.”
“Mr. Collier,” said Ellery quietly, “have you any idea what this is all about?”