The man who slammed the phone down and spun the steel chair about as if it were a studio production of balsa wood was a creature of immensities. He was all bulge, spread, and thickness. Bull eyes blazed above iron cheekbones; the nose was a massive snout; a tremendous black beard fell to his chest. The hands which gripped the wheels of the chair were enormous; forearms and biceps strained his coat sleeves. And the whole powerful mechanism was in continuous movement, as if even that great frame was unable to contain his energy. Something by Wolf Larsen out of Captain Teach, on a restless quarter-deck. Besides that immense torso Alfred Wallace’s strong figure looked frail. And Ellery felt like an underfed boy.
But below the waist Roger Priam was dead. His bulk sat on a withered base, an underpinning of skeletal flesh and atrophied muscle. He was trousered and shod ― and Ellery tried not to imagine the labor that went into that operation twice daily ― but his ankles were visible, two shriveled bones, and his knees were twisted projections, like girders struck by lightning. The whole shrunken substructure of his body hung useless.
It was all explicable, Ellery thought, on ordinary grounds: the torso overdeveloped by the extraordinary exertions required for the simplest movement; the beard grown to eliminate one of the irksome processes of his daily toilet; the savage manner an expression of his hatred of the fate that had played such a trick on him; and the restlessness a sign of the agony he endured to maintain a sitting position. Those were the reasons; still, they left something unexplained... Ferocity ― fierce strength, fierce emotions, fierce reaction to pain and people ― ferocity seemed his center. Take everything else away, and Ellery suspected it would still be there. He must have been fierce in his mother’s womb, a wild beast by nature. What had happened to him merely brought it into play.
“What d’ye want, Laurel? Who’s this?” His voice was a coarse, threatening bass, rumbling up from his chest like live lava. He was still furious from his telephone conversation with the hapless Foss; his eyes were filled with hate. “What are you looking at? Why don’t you open your mouth?”
“This is Ellery Queen.”
“Who?”
Laurel repeated it.
“Never heard of him. What’s he want?” The feral glance turned on Ellery. “What d’ye want? Hey?”
“Mr. Priam,” said the beautiful voice of Alfred Wallace from the doorway, “Ellery Queen is a famous writer.”
“Writer?”