A roar came out that set the crystals in the chandelier jangling.
“Criminal, am I? On what evidence?” He brandished a clublike forefinger at Lieutenant Keats. “I’m not admitting a thing, you can’t prove a thing, and I ain’t asking for your protection or taking it! ― d’ye get me?”
“What are you afraid of?” jeered the detective. “That we will lay our hands on Adam?”
“I’ve always fought my own scraps and, by God, I’ll fight this one!”
“From a wheelchair?”
“From a wheelchair! Now get out of my house, you, and stay out!”
Chapter Fifteen
They stayed out. Anyone from the outside would have said they were finished with Roger Priam and all his works. Daily Lieutenant Keats might have been seen going about his business; daily Ellery might have been seen staring at his — a blank sheet of paper in a still typewriter — or at night dining alone, with an ear cocked, or afterwards hovering above the telephone. He rarely left the cottage during the day; at night, never. His consumption of cigarets, pipe tobacco, coffee, and alcohol gave Mrs. Williams a second subject for her interminable monologues; she alternated between predictions of sudden death for the world and creeping ulcers for Ellery.
At one time or another Laurel, Crowe Macgowan, Alfred Wallace, Collier ― even Delia Priam ― phoned or called in person, either unsolicited or by invitation. But each hung up or went away as worried or perplexed or thoughtful as he had been; and if Ellery unburdened himself to any of them, or vice versa, nothing seemed to come of it.
And Ellery lit another cigaret, or tormented another pipe, or gulped more hot coffee, or punished another highball, and Mrs. Williams’s wails kept assailing the kitchen ceiling.