“I found out that in picking secretaries Priam had always hired particularly virile-looking men.
“And I remembered the questions he asked me when I applied for the job ― how he kept looking me over, like a horse.” Wallace took a cigar from his pocket and lit it. Puffing with enjoyment, he leaned back. “Frankly, I’ve been too embarrassed to put the question to Delia directly. But unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, Priam’s secretaries have always done double duty. Well, for the last ten years, anyway. It also explains the rapid turnover. Not every man is as virile as he looks,” Wallace said with a laugh, “and then there are always some mushy-kneed lads who’d find a situation like that uncomfortable... But the fact remains. Priam’s hired men to serve not only the master of the house, you might say, but the mistress too.”
“Get him out of here,” Ellery said to Keats. But to his surprise no words came out.
“Roger Priam,” continued Alfred Wallace, waving his cigar, “is an exaggerated case of crudity, raw power, and frustration. The clue to his character ― and, gentlemen, I’ve had ample opportunity to judge it ― is his compulsive need to dominate everything and everyone around him. He tried to dominate old Leander Hill through the farce of pretending he, Roger Priam, was running a million-dollar business from a wheelchair at home. He tried to dominate Crowe Macgowan before Crowe got too big for him, according to Delia. And he’s always dominated Delia, who doesn’t care enough about anything to put up a scrap ― dominated her physically until he became paralyzed, Delia’s told me, with the most incredible vulgarities and brutalities.
“Now imagine,” murmured Wallace, “what paralysis from the waist down did to Priam’s need to dominate his woman. Physically he was no longer a man. And his wife was beautiful; to this day every male who meets her begins strutting like a bull. Priam knew, knowing Delia, that it was only a question of time before one of them made the grade. And then where would he be? He might not even know about it. It would be entirely out of his control. Unthinkable! So Priam worked out the solution in his warped way ― to dominate Delia by proxy.
“By God, imagine that! He deliberately picks a virile man ― the substitute for himself physically and psychologically ― and flings them at each other’s heads, letting nature take its course.”
Wallace flicked an ash into the tray on Keats’s desk. “I used to think he’d taken a leaf out of Faulkner’s Sanctuary, or Krafft-Ebing, except that I’ve come to doubt if he’s read a single book in forty-five years. No, Priam couldn’t explain all this ― to himself least of all. He’s an ignorant man; he wouldn’t even know the words. Like so many ignorant men, he’s a man of pure action. He throws his wife and hand-picked secretary together, thus performing the function of a husband vicariously, and by pretending to be deaf to what goes on with domestic regularity over his head he retains his mastery of the situation. He’s the god of the machine, gentlemen, and there is no other god but Roger Priam. That is, to Roger Priam.” Wallace blew a fat ring of cigar smoke and rose. “And now, unless there’s something else, Lieutenant, I’d like to salvage what’s left of my day off.”
Keats said in a loud voice, “Wallace, you’re a fork-tongued female of a mucking liar. I don’t believe one snicker of this dirty joke. And when I prove you’re a liar, Wallace, I’m going to leave my badge home with my wife and kids, and I’m going to haul you into some dark alley, and I’m going to kick the out of you.”
Wallace’s smile thinned. His face reassembled itself and looked suddenly old. He reached over Keats’s desk and picked up the telephone.
“Here,” he said, holding the phone out to the detective. “Or do you want me to get the number for you?”