“What? No more tree?”
“You wanted it presto, didn’t you?” growled the giant. “I hit the sack early tonight, but I couldn’t seem to sleep. Long, time later I heard sounds from downstairs. Seemed like the library; my room’s right over it. I thought maybe it was Gramp and I felt a yen to talk to him. So I got up and went down the hall and at the top of the stairs I called, ‘Gramp?’ No answer, and it was quiet down there. Something made me go back up the hall and look in the old gent’s room. He wasn’t there; bed hadn’t been slept in. So I went back to the head of the stairs and there was Wallace.”
“Wallace?” repeated Ellery.
“In a robe. He said he’d heard a noise and was just going to go downstairs.” Macgowan sounded odd; his eyes were hard in the moonlight. “But you know something, Queen? I got a queer feeling as I spotted Wallace at the head of those stairs. I couldn’t make up my mind whether he was about to go down... or had just come up.”
He stared at Ellery defiantly.
A car was tearing up the road.
Ellery said, “Life is full of these dangling participles, Mac. Did you find your grandfather?”
“No. Maybe I’d better take a look in the woods.” Crowe sounded casual. “Gramp often takes a walk in the middle of the night. You know how it is when you’re old.”
“Yes.” Ellery watched Delia’s son stride off, pulling a flashlight from his pocket as he went.
Keats’s car slammed to a stop a foot from Ellery’s rear. “Hi.”