They left Roger Priam in the same attitude of frozen chaos.
Keats drove slowly, handling the wheel with his forearms and peering ahead as if answers lay there. He was chewing on a cigaret, like a goat.
“Now I’m wrong about Priam,” laughed Ellery. “Perfect score.”
Keats ignored the addendum. “Wrong about Priam how?”
“I predicted he’d blow his top and spill over at warning number four. Instead of which he’s gone underground. Let’s hope it’s only a temporary recession.”
“You’re sure this thing is a warning.”
Ellery nodded absently.
“Me, I’m not,” Keats complained. “I can’t seem to get the feel of this case. It’s like trying to catch guppies with your bare hands. Now the arsenic, that I could hold on to, even though I couldn’t go anywhere with it. But all the rest of it...”
“You can’t deny the existence of all the rest of it, Keats. The dead dog was real enough. The first box Priam got was real, and whatever was in it. There was nothing vapory about those dead frogs and toads, either. Or about the contents of this box. Or, for that matter,” Ellery shrugged, “about the thing that started all this, the note to Hill.”
“Oh, yes,” growled the detective.