Dr. Voluta threw up his hands. “Excuse me. I want to wash up.”
Ellery followed him to the door of the downstairs lavatory. “Have to keep my eye on that vial and dish, Doctor,” he said apologetically. “Since you won’t turn them over to me.”
“You don’t mean a thing to me, Mr. Queen. I still think it’s all a lot of nonsense. But if this stuff has to be analyzed, I’m turning it over to the police personally. Would you mind stepping back? I’d like to close this door.”
“The vial,” said Ellery.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Dr. Voluta turned his back and opened the tap with a swoosh.
They were waiting for Lieutenant Keats. It was almost six o’clock and through the windows a pale farina-like world was taking shape. The house was cold. Priam was purged and asleep, his black beard jutting from the blankets on his reclining chair with a moribund majesty, so that all Ellery had been able to think of ― before Alfred Wallace shut the door politely in his face ― was Sennacherib the Assyrian in his tomb; and that was no help. Wallace had locked Priam’s door from the inside. He was spending what was left of the night on the daybed in Priam’s room reserved for his use during emergencies.
Crowe Macgowan had been snappish. “If I hadn’t made that promise, Queen, I’d never have had Delia call you. All this stench about a little upchucking. Leave him to Voluta and go home.” And he had gone back to his oak, yawning.
Old Mr. Collier, Delia Priam’s father, had quietly made himself a cup of tea in the kitchen and trotted back upstairs with it, pausing only long enough to chuckle to Ellery: “A fool and his gluttony are soon parted.”
Delia Priam... He hadn’t seen her at all. Ellery had rather built himself up to their middle-of-the-night meeting, although he was prepared to be perfectly correct. Of course, she couldn’t know that. By the time he arrived she had returned to her room upstairs. He was glad, in a way, that her sense of propriety was so delicately tuned to his state of mind. It was, in fact, astoundingly perceptive of her. At the same time, he felt a little empty.
Ellery stared gritty-eyed at Dr. Voluta’s blue back. It was an immense back, with great fat wrinkles running across it.