Ellery lit a cigaret for himself.
Laurel was wrinkling her nose and looking a little sick.
Ellery tossed the match overside. “Whoever composed that note is on a delayed murder spree. He wants revenge badly enough to have nursed it for over twenty years. A quick killing doesn’t suit him at all. He wants the men who injured him to suffer, presumably, as he’s suffered. To accomplish this he starts a private war of nerves. His strategy is all plotted. Working from the dark, he makes his first tactical move... the warning, the first of the ‘special meanings’ he promises. Number one is ― of all things ― a dead pooch, number two whatever was in the box to Roger Priam ― I wonder what it was, by the way! You wouldn’t know, Mac, would you?”
“I wouldn’t know anything about my mother’s husband,” replied Macgowan.
“And he means to send other warnings with other ‘gifts’ which have special meanings. To Priam exclusively now ― Hill foxed him by dying at once. He’s a man with a fixed idea, Laurel, and an obsessive sense of injury. I really think you ought to keep out of his way. Let Priam defy him. It’s his skin, and if he needs help he knows where he can apply for it.”
Laurel threw herself back on the platform, blowing smoke to the appliqued sky.
“Don’t you feel you have to act like the heroine of a magazine serial?” Laurel did not reply.
“Laurel, drop it. Now.”
She rolled her head. “I don’t care what Daddy did. People make mistakes, even commit crimes, who are decent and nice. Sometimes events force you, or other people. I knew him ― as a human being ― better than anyone in creation. If he and Roger Priam got into a mess, it was Roger who thought up the dirty work... The fact that he wasn’t my real father makes it even more important. I owe him everything.” She sat up suddenly. “I’m not going to stay out of this, Ellery. I can t.’
“You’ll find, Queen,”, scowled young Macgowan in the silence that followed, “that this is a very tough number.”