Crowe Macgowan awoke with a snort.
“You still here? Where’s Queen?” Macgowan yawned. “Did you find out anything?”
Keats held his smoldering butt to a fresh cigaret, puffing recklessly.
“I’ll send you a telegram,” he said bitterly, and he went away.
Sleep was impossible. He tossed for a while, not even hopefully.
At a little after six Ellery was downstairs in his kitchen, brewing coffee.
He drank three cups, staring into the mists over Hollywood. A dirty gray world with the sun struggling through. In a short time the mist would be gone and the sun would shine clear.
The thing was sharply brilliant. All he had to do was get rid of the mist.
What he would see in that white glare Ellery hardly dared anticipate. It was something monstrous, and in its monstrous way beautiful; that, he could make out dimly. But first there was the problem of the mist.
He went back upstairs, shaved, took a shower, changed into fresh clothing, and then he left the cottage and got into his car.