“My son Crowe said to call you if―” She sounded far away, a little frightened.
“Yes? Yes?”
“It’s probably nothing at all. But you told Crowe―”
“Delia, what’s happened?”
“Roger’s sick, Ellery. Dr. Voluta is here. He says it’s ptomaine poisoning. But―”
“I’ll be right over!”
Dr. Voluta was a floppy man with jowls and a dirty eye, and it was a case of hate at first sight. The doctor was in a bright blue yachting jacket over a yellow silk undershirt and his greasy brown hair stuck up all over his head. He wore carpet slippers. Twice Ellery caught himself about to address him as Captain Bligh and it would not have surprised him if, in his own improvised costume of soiled white ducks and turtleneck sweater, he had inspired Priam’s doctor to address him in turn as Mr. Christian.
“The trouble with you fellows,” Dr. Voluta was saying as he scraped an evil mess from a rumpled bedsheet into a specimen vial, “is that you really enjoy murder. Otherwise you wouldn’t see it in every bellyache.”
“Quite a bellyache,” said Ellery. “The stopper’s right there over the sink, Doctor.”
“Thank you. Priam is a damn pig. He eats too much for even a well man. His alimentary apparatus is a medical problem in itself. I’ve warned him for years to lay off bedtime snacks, especially spicy fish.”