Laurel was over in ten minutes, looking intensely curious. Padding after her into the cavelike gloom of the house came the man of the future. Young Macgowan had returned to the Post-Atomic Age.
“What’s the matter now?” he inquired plaintively.
No one replied.
By a sort of instinct, he put a long arm about his mother and kissed her. Delia smiled up at him anxiously, and when he straightened she kept her grasp on his big hand. Macgowan seemed puzzled by the atmosphere. He fixed on Keats as the cause, and he glared murderously from the detective to the unopened box.
“Loosen up, boy,” said Keats. “Tree life is getting you. Okay, Mr. Queen?”
“Yes.”
Young Macgowan didn’t know. Laurel knew ― Laurel had known for a long time ― but Delia’s son was wrapped in the lamb’s wool of mother-adoration. I’d hate to be the first one, Ellery thought, to tell him.
As for Laurel, she had glanced once at Delia and once at Ellery, and she had become mousy.
Ellery, waited on the threshold to the hall as Keats explained about the box.
“It’s the same kind of tag, same kind of crayon lettering, as on the dead dog,” Laurel said. She eyed the box grimly. “What’s inside?”