Chapter One

Ellery was spread over the pony-skin chair before the picture window, huarachos crossed on the typewriter table, a ten-inch frosted glass in his hand, and the corpse at his feet. He was studying the victim between sips and making not too much out of her. However, he was not concerned. It was early in the investigation, she was of unusual proportions, and the ron consoled.

He took another sip.

It was a curious case. The victim still squirmed; from where he sat he could make out signs of life. Back in New York they had warned him that these were an illusion, reflexes following the death rattle. Why, you won’t believe it, they had said, but corruption’s set in already and anyone who can tell a stinkweed from a camellia will testify to it. Ellery had been skeptical. He had known deceased in her heyday ― a tumid wench, every man’s daydream, and the laughing target of curses and longing. It was hard to believe that such vitality could be exterminated.

On the scene of the crime ― or rather above it, for the little house he had taken was high over the city, a bird’s nest perched on the twig tip of an upper branch of the hills ― Ellery still doubted. There she lay under a thin blanket of smog, stirring a little, and they said she was dead.

Fair Hollywood.

Murdered, ran the post-mortem, by Television.

He squinted down at the city, sipping his rum and enjoying his nakedness. It was a blue-white day. The hill ran green and flowered to the twinkled plain, simmering in the sun.

There had been no technical reason for choosing Hollywood as the setting for his new novel. Mystery stories operate under special laws of growth; their beginnings may lie in the look in a faceless woman’s eye glimpsed in a crowd for exactly the duration of one heartbeat, or in the small type on page five of a life insurance policy; generally the writer has the atlas to pick from. Ellery had had only the gauziest idea of where he was going; at that stage of the game it could as well have been Joplin, Missouri, or the kitchens of thin fact, his plot was in such a cloudy state that when he heard about the murder of Hollywood he took it as a sign from the heavens and made immediate arrangements to be present at the autopsy. His trade being violent death, a city with a knife in its back seemed just the place to take his empty sample cases.

Well, there was life in the old girl yet. Of course, theaters with MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN EVER on their marquees had crossbars over their portals saying CLOSED; you could now get a table at the Brown Derby without waiting more than twenty minutes; that eminent haberdasher of the Strip, Mickey Cohen, was out of business; movie stars were cutting their prices for radio; radio actors were auditioning tensely for television as they redesigned their belts or put their houses up for sale; shopkeepers were complaining that how could anybody find money for yard goods or nail files when the family budget was mortgaged to Hoppy labels, the new car, and the television set; teen-age gangs, solemnly christened “wolf packs” by the Los Angeles newspapers, cruised the streets beating up strangers, high school boys were regularly caught selling marijuana, and “Chicken!” was the favorite highway sport of the hot-rodders; and you could throttle a tourist on Hollywood Boulevard between Vine and La Brea any night after 10:30 and feel reasonably secure against interruption.

But out in the San Fernando Valley mobs of little cheap stuccos and redwood fronts were beginning to elbow the pained hills, paint-fresh signal lights at intersections were stopping cars which had previously known only the carefree California conscience, and a great concrete ditch labeled “Flood Control Project” was making its way across the sandy valley like an opening zipper.

On the ocean side of the Santa Monica Mountains, from Beverly Glen to Topanga Canyon, lordlier mansions were going up which called themselves “estates” ― disdaining the outmoded “ranch” or “rancho,” which more and more out-of-state ex-innocents were learning was a four-or-five-and-den on a 50X100 lot containing three callow apricot trees. Beverly Hills might be biting its perfect fingernails, but Glendale and Encino were booming, and Ellery could detect no moans from-he direction of Brentwood, Flintridge, Sunland, or Eagle Rock. v* schools were assembling; more oldsters were chugging in from Iowa and Michigan, flexing their arthritic fingers and practicing old age pension-check-taking; and to drive a car in downtown Los Angeles at noontime the four blocks from 3rd to 7th along Broadway, Spring, Hill, or Main now took thirty minutes instead of fifteen. Ellery heard tell of huge factories moving in; of thousands of migrants swarming into Southern California through Blythe and Indio on 60 and Needles and Barstow on 66 ― latter-day pioneers to whom the movies still represented Life and Love and “television” remained a highfalutin word, like “antibiotic.” The carhops were more beautiful and numerous than ever; more twenty-foot ice cream cones punctuated the skyline; Tchaikovsky under the stars continued to fill Hollywood Bowl with brave-bottomed music lovers; Grand Openings of hardware stores now used two giant searchlights instead of one; the Farmers’ Market on Fairfax and 3rd chittered and heaved like an Egyptian bazaar in the tourist season; Madman Muntz had apparently taken permanent possession of the skies, his name in mile-high letters drifting expensively away daily; and the newspapers offered an even more tempting line of cheesecake than in the old days ― Ellery actually saw one photograph of the routine well-stacked cutie in a Bikini bathing suit perched zippily on a long flower-decked box inscribed Miss National Casket Week. And in three days or so, according to the reports, the Imperial Potentate would lead a six-hour safari of thirteen thousand red-fezzed, capering, elderly Penrods, accompanied by fifty-one bands, assorted camels, clowns, and floats, along Figueroa Street to the Memorial Coliseum to convene the seventy-umpth Imperial Session of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine ― a civic event guaranteed to rouse even the dead.

It became plain in his first few days in Hollywood and environs that what the crape-hangers back East were erroneously bewailing was not the death of the angelic city but its exuberant rebirth in another shape. The old order changeth. The new organism was exciting, but it was a little out of his line; and Ellery almost packed up and flew back East. But then he thought, It’s all hassle and hurly-burly, everybody snarling or making hay; and there’s still the twitching nucleus of the old Hollywood bunch ― stick around, old boy, the atmosphere is murderous and it may well inspire a collector’s item or two for the circulating library shelves.

Also, there had been the press and its agents. Ellery had thought to slip into town by dropping off at the Lockheed field in Burbank rather than the International Airport in Inglewood. But he touched Southern California soil to a bazooka fire of questions and lenses, and the next day his picture was on the front page of all the papers. They had even got his address in the hills straight, although his pal the real estate man later swore by the beard of Nature Boy that he’d had nothing to do with the leak. It had been that way for Ellery ever since the publicity explosion over the Cat case. The newspaper boys were convinced that, having saved Manhattan from a fate equivalent to death, Ellery was in Los Angeles on a mission at least equally large and torrid. When he plaintively explained that he had come to write a book they all laughed, and their printed explanations ascribed his visit to everything from a top-secret appointment by the Mayor as Special Investigator to Clean Up Greater L.A. to the turning of his peculiar talents upon the perennial problem of the Black Dahlia.

How could he run out?

At this point Ellery noticed that his glass was as empty as his typewriter.

He got up from the pony-skin chair and found himself face to face with a pretty girl.

As he jumped nudely for the bedroom doorway Ellery thought, The huarachos must look ridiculous. Then he thought, Why didn’t I put on those ten pounds Barney prescribed? Then he got angry and poked his head around the door to whine, “I told Mrs. Williams I wasn’t seeing anybody today, not even her. How did you get in?”

“Through the garden,” said the girl. “Climbed up from the road below. I tried not to trample your marigolds. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I do mind. Go away.”

“But I’ve got to see you.”

“Everybody’s got to see me. But I don’t have to see everybody. Especially when I look like this.”

“You are sort of pale, aren’t you? And your ribs stick out, Ellery.” She sounded like a debunked sister. Ellery suddenly remembered that in Hollywood dress is a matter of free enterprise. You could don a parka and drive a team of Siberian huskies from Schwab’s Drugstore at the foot of Laurel Canyon to NBC at Sunset and Vine and never turn a head. Fur stoles over slacks are acceptable if not de rigueur, the exposed navel is considered conservative, and at least one man dressed in nothing but Waikiki trunks may be found poking sullenly among the avocados at any vegetable stand. “You ought to put on some weight, Ellery. And get out in the sun.”

“Thank you,” Ellery heard himself saying.

His Garden of Eden costume meant absolutely nothing to her. And she was even prettier than he had thought. Hollywood prettiness, he thought sulkily; they all look alike. Probably Miss Universe of Pasadena. She was dressed in zebra-striped culottes and bolero over a bra-like doodad of bright green suede. Green open-toed sandals on her tiny feet. A matching suede jockey cap on her cinnamon hair. Skin toast-colored where it was showing, and no ribs. A small and slender number, but three-dimensional where it counted. About nineteen years old. For no reason at all she reminded him of Meg in Thorne Smith’s The Night Life of the Gods, and he pulled his head back and banged the door.

When he came out safe and suave in slacks, Shantung shirt, and burgundy corduroy jacket, she was curled up in his pony-skin chair smoking a cigaret.

“I’ve fixed your drink,” she said.

“Kind of you. I suppose that means I must ofter you one.” No point in being too friendly.

“Thanks. I don’t drink before five.” She was thinking of something else.

Ellery leaned against the picture window and looked down at her with hostility. “It’s not that I’m a prude, Miss―”

“Hill. Laurel Hill.”

“―Miss Laurel Hill, but when I receive strange young things au naturel in Hollywood I like to be sure no confederate with a camera and an offer to do business is skulking behind my drapes. Why do you think you have to see me?”

“Because the police are dummies.”

“Ah, the police. They won’t listen to you?”

“They listen, all right. But then they laugh. I don’t think there’s anything funny in a dead dog, do you?”

“In a what?”

“A dead dog.”

Ellery sighed, rolling the frosty glass along his brow. “Your pooch was poisoned, of course?”

“Guess again,” said the set-faced intruder. “He wasn’t my pooch, and I don’t know what caused his death. What’s more, dog-lover though I am, I don’t care a curse... They said it was somebody’s idea of a rib, and I know they’re talking through their big feet. I don’t know what it meant, but it was no rib.”

Ellery had set the glass down. She stared back. Finally he shook his head, smiling. “The tactics are primitive, Laurel. E for Effort. But no dice.”

“No tactics,” she said impatiently. “Let me tell you―”

“Who sent you to me?”

“Not a soul. You were all over the papers. It solved my problem.”

“It doesn’t solve mine, Laurel. My problem is to find the background of peaceful isolation which passeth the understanding of the mere, dear reader. I’m here to do a book, Laurel ― a poor thing in a state of arrested development, but writing is a habit writers get into and my time has come. So, you see, I can’t take any cases.”

“You won’t even listen.” Her mouth was in trouble. She got up and started across the room. He watched the brown flesh below the bolero. Not his type, but nice.

“Dogs die all the time,” Ellery said in a kindly voice.

“It wasn’t the dog, I tell you. It was the way it happened.” She did not turn at the front door.

“The way he died?” Sucker.

“The way we found him.” The girl suddenly leaned against the door, sidewise to him, staring down at her cigaret. “He was on our doorstep. Did you ever have a cat who insisted on leaving tidily dead mice on your mat to go with your breakfast eggs? He was a... gift.” She looked around for an ashtray, went over to the fireplace. “And it killed my father.”

A dead dog killing anybody struck Ellery as worth a tentative glance. And there was something about the girl ― a remote, hardened purpose ― that interested him.

“Sit down again.”

She betrayed herself by the quick way in which she came back to the pony-skin chair, by the way she folded her tense hands and waited.

“How exactly, Laurel, did a dead dog ‘kill’ your father?”

“It murdered him.”

He didn’t like the way she sat there. He said deliberately, “Don’t build it up for me. This isn’t a suspense program. A strange dead hound is left on your doorstep and your father dies. What’s the connection?”

“It frightened him to death!”

“And what did the death certificate say?” He now understood the official hilarity.

“Coronary something. I don’t care what it said. Getting the dog did it.

“Let’s go back.” Ellery offered her one of his cigarets, but she shook her head and took a pack of Dunhills from her green pouch bag. He held a match for her; the cigaret between her lips was shaking. “Your name is Laurel Hill. You had a father. Who was he? Where do you live? What did he do for a living? And so on.” She looked surprised, as if it had not occurred to her that such trivia could be of any interest to him. “I’m not necessarily taking it, Laurel. But I promise not to laugh.”

“Thank you... Leander Hill. Hill & Priam, Wholesale Jewelers.”

“Yes.” He had never heard of the firm. “Los Angeles?”

“The main office is here, though Dad and Roger have ― I mean had...” She laughed. “What tense do I use?... branch offices in New York, Amsterdam, South Africa.”

“Who is Roger?”

“Roger Priam. Dad’s partner. We live off Outpost, not far from here. Twelve acres of lopsided woods. Formal gardens, with mathematical eucalyptus and royal palms, and plenty of bougainvillea, bird-of-paradise, poinsettia ― all the stuff that curls up and dies at a touch of frost, which we get regularly every winter and which everybody says can’t possibly happen again, not in Southern California. But Dad liked it. Made him feel like a Caribbean pirate, he used to say. Three in help in the house, a gardener who comes in every day, and the Priams have the adjoining property.” From the carefully scrubbed way in which she produced the name Priam it might have been Hatfield. “Daddy had a bad heart, and we should have lived on level ground. But he liked hills and wouldn’t hear of moving.”

“Mother alive?” He knew she was not. Laurel had the motherless look. The self-made female. A man’s girl, and there were times when she would insist on being a man’s man. Not Miss Universe of Pasadena or anywhere else, he thought. He began to like her. “She isn’t?” he said, when Laurel was silent.

“I don’t know.” A sore spot. “If I ever knew my mother, I’ve forgotten.”

“Foster mother, then?”

“He never married. I was brought up by a nurse, who died when I was fifteen ― four years ago. I never liked her, and I think she got pneumonia just to make me feel guilty. I’m ― I was his daughter by adoption.” She looked around for an ashtray, and Ellery brought her one. She said steadily as she crushed the cigaret, “But really his daughter. None of that fake pal stuff, you understand, that covers contempt on one side and being unsure on the other. I loved and respected him, and ― as he used to say ― I was the only woman in his life. Dad was a little on the old-school side. Held my chair for me. That sort of thing. He was... solid.” And now, Ellery thought, it’s jelly and you’re hanging on to the stuff with your hard little fingers.

“It happened,” Laurel Hill went on in the same toneless way, “two weeks ago. June third. We were just finishing breakfast. Simeon, our chauffeur, came in to tell Daddy he’d just brought the car around and there was something ‘funny’ at the front door. We all went out, and there it was ― a dead dog lying on the doorstep with an ordinary shipping tag attached to its collar. Dad’s name was printed on it in black crayon: Leander Hill.”

“Any address?”

“Just the name.”

“Did the printing look familiar? Did you recognize it?”

“I didn’t really look at it. I just saw one line of crayon marks as Dad bent over the dog. He said in a surprised way, ‘Why, it’s addressed to me.’

Then he opened the little casket.”

“Casket?”

“There was a tiny silver box ― about the size of a pillbox ― attached to the collar. Dad opened it and found a wad of thin paper inside, folded over enough times so it would fit into the box. He unfolded it and it was covered with writing or printing ― it might have been typewriting; I couldn’t really see because he half turned away as he read it.

“By the time he’d finished reading his face was the color of bread dough, and his lips looked bluish. I started to ask him who’d sent it to him and what was wrong, when he crushed the paper in a sort of spasm and gave a choked cry and fell. I’d seen it happen before. It was a heart attack.”

She stared out the picture window at Hollywood.

“How about a drink, Laurel?”

“No. Thanks. Simeon and―”

“What kind of dog was it?”

“Some sort of hunting dog, I think.”

“Was there a license tag on his collar?”

“I don’t remember seeing any.”

“An anti-rabies tag?”

“I saw no tag except the paper one with Dad’s name on it.”

“Anything special about the dog collar?”

“It couldn’t have cost more than seventy-five cents.”

“Just a collar.” Ellery dragged over a chartreuse latticed blond chair and straddled it. “Go on, Laurel.”

“Simeon and Ichiro, our houseman, carried him up to his bedroom while I ran for the brandy and Mrs. Monk, our housekeeper, phoned the doctor. He lives on Castilian Drive and he was over in a few minutes. Daddy didn’t die ― that time.”

“Oh, I see,” said Ellery. “And what did the paper in the silver box on the dead dog’s collar say, Laurel?”

“That’s what I don’t know.”

“Oh, come.”

“When he fell unconscious the paper was still in his hand, crumpled into a ball. I was too busy to try to open his fist, and by the time Dr. Voluta came, I’d forgotten it. But I remembered it that night, and the first chance I got ― the next morning ― I asked Dad about it. The minute I mentioned it he got pale, mumbled, ‘It was nothing, nothing,’ and I changed the subject fast. But when Dr. Voluta dropped in, I took him aside and asked him if he’d seen the note. He said he had opened Daddy’s hand and put the wad of paper on the night table beside the bed without reading it. I asked Simeon, Ichiro, and the housekeeper if they had taken the paper, but none of them had seen it. Daddy must have spotted it when he came to, and when he was alone he took it back.”

“Have you looked for it since?”

“Yes, but I haven’t found it. I assume he destroyed it.” Ellery did not comment on such assumptions. “Well, then, the dog, the collar, the little box. Have you done anything about them?”

“I was too excited over whether Daddy was going to live or die to think about the dog. I recall telling Itchie or Sim to get it out of the way. I only meant for them to get it off the doorstep, but the next day when I went looking for it, Mrs. Monk told me she had called the Pound Department or some place and it had been picked up and carted away.”

“Up the flue,” said Ellery, tapping his teeth with a fingernail. “Although the collar and box... You’re sure your father didn’t react to the mere sight of the dead dog? He wasn’t afraid of dogs? Or,” he added suddenly, “of dying?”

“He adored dogs. So much so that when Sarah, our Chesapeake bitch, died of old age last year he refused to get another dog. He said it was too hard losing them. As far as dying is concerned, I don’t think the prospect of death as such bothered Daddy very much. Certainly not so much as the suffering. He hated the idea of a lingering illness with a lot of pain, and he always hoped that when his time came he’d pass away in his sleep. But that’s all. Does that answer your question?”

“Yes,” said Ellery, “and no. Was he superstitious?”

“Not especially. Why?”

“You said he was frightened to death. I’m groping.”

Laurel was silent. Then she said, “But he was. I mean frightened to death. It wasn’t the dog ― at first.” She gripped her ankles, staring ahead. “I got the feeling that the dog didn’t mean anything till he read the note. Maybe it didn’t mean anything to him even then. But whatever was in that note terrified him. It came as a tremendous shock to him. I’d never seen him look afraid before. I mean the real thing. And I could have sworn he died on the way down. He looked really dead lying there... That note did something devastating.” She turned to Ellery. Her eyes were greenish, with brown flecks in them; they were a little bulgy. “Something he’d forgotten, maybe. Something so important it made Roger come out of his shell for the first time in fifteen years.”

“What?” said Ellery. “What was that again?”

“I told you ― Roger Priam, Dad’s business partner. His oldest friend.

Roger left his house.”

“For the first time in fifteen years?” exclaimed Ellery.

“Fifteen years ago Roger became partly paralyzed. He’s lived in a wheelchair ever since, and ever since he’s refused to leave the Priam premises. All vanity; he was a large hunk of man in his day, I understand, proud of his build, his physical strength; he can’t stand the thought of having people see him helpless, and it’s turned him into something pretty unpleasant.

“Through it all Roger pretends he’s as good as ever and he brags that running the biggest jewelry business on the West Coast from a wheelchair in the hills proves it. Of course, he doesn’t do any such thing. Daddy ran it all, though to keep peace he played along with Roger and pretended with him ― gave Roger special jobs to do that he could handle over the phone, never took an important step without consulting him, and so on. Why, some of the people at the office and showrooms downtown have been with the firm for years and have never even laid eyes on Roger. The employes hate him. They call him ‘the invisible God,’ ” Laurel said with a smile. Ellery did not care for the smile. “Of course ― being employes ― they’re scared to death of him.”

“A fear which you don’t share?”

“I can’t stand him.” It came out calmly enough, but when Ellery kept looking at her she glanced elsewhere.

“You’re afraid of him, too.”

“I just dislike him.”

“Go on.”

“I’d notified the Priams of Dad’s heart attack the first chance I got, which was the evening of the day it happened. I spoke to Roger myself on the phone. He seemed very curious about the circumstances and kept insisting he had to talk to Daddy. I refused ― Dr. Voluta had forbidden excitement of any kind. The next morning Roger phoned twice, and Dad seemed just as anxious to talk to him. In fact, he was getting so upset I let him phone. There’s a private line between his bedroom and the Priam house. But after I got Roger on the phone Dad asked me to leave the room.”

Laurel jumped up, but immediately she sat down again, fumbling for another Dunhill. Ellery let her strike her own match; she failed to notice.

She puffed rapidly. “Nobody knows what he said to Roger. Whatever it was, it took only a few minutes, and it brought Roger right over. He’d been lifted, wheelchair and all, into the back of the Priams’ station wagon, and Delia ― Roger’s wife ― drove him over herself.” And Laurel’s voice stabbed at the name of Mrs. Priam. So another Hatfield went with this McCoy. “When he was carried up to Dad’s bedroom in his chair, Roger locked the door. They talked for three hours.”

“Discussing the dead dog and the note?”

“There’s no other possibility. It couldn’t have been business ― Roger had never felt the necessity of coming over before on business, and Daddy had had two previous heart attacks. It was about the dog and note, all right. And if I had any doubts, the look on Roger Priam’s face when he wheeled himself out of the bedroom killed them. He was as frightened as Daddy had been the day before, and for the same reason.

“And that was something to see,” said Laurel softly. “If you were to meet Roger Priam, you’d know what I mean. Frightened looks don’t go with his face. If there’s any fright around, he’s usually dishing it out... He even talked to me, something he rarely bothers to do. ‘You take good care of your father,’ he said to me. I pleaded with him to tell me what was wrong, and he pretended not to have heard me. Simeon and Itchie lifted him into the station wagon, and Delia drove off with him.

“A week ago ― during the night of June tenth ― Daddy got his wish. He died in his sleep. Dr. Voluta says that last shock to his heart did it. He was cremated, and his ashes are in a bronze drawer fifteen feet from the floor at Forest Lawn. But that’s what he wanted, and that’s where he is. The sixty-four dollar question, Ellery, is: Who murdered him? And I want it answered.”

Ellery rang for Mrs. Williams. When she did not appear, he excused himself and went downstairs to the miniature lower level to find a note from his housekeeper describing minutely her plan to shop at the supermarket on North Highland. A pot of fresh coffee on the range and a deep dish of whipped avocado and bacon bits surrounded by crackers told him that Mrs. Williams had overheard all, so he took them upstairs.

Laurel said, surprised, “How nice of you,” as if niceness these days were a quality that called for surprise. She refused the crackers just as nicely, but then she changed her mind and ate ten of them without pausing, and she drank three cups of coffee. “I remembered I hadn’t eaten anything today.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She was frowning now, which he regarded as an improvement over the stone face she had been wearing. “I’ve tried to talk to Roger Priam half a dozen times since then, but he won’t even admit he and Dad discussed anything unusual. I told him in words of one syllable where I thought his obligations lay ― certainly his debt to their lifelong friendship and partner-ship ― and I explained my belief that Daddy was murdered by somebody who knew how bad his heart was and deliberately shocked him into a heart attack. And I asked for the letter. He said innocently, ‘What letter?’ and I realized I’d never get a thing out of him. Roger’s either over his scare or he’s being his usual Napoleonic self. There’s a big secret behind all this and he means to keep it.”

“Do you think,” asked Ellery, “that he’s confided in Mrs. Priam?”

“Roger doesn’t confide in anybody,” replied Laurel grimly. “And if he did, the last person in the world he’d tell anything to would be Delia.”

“Oh, the Priams don’t get along?”

“I didn’t say they don’t get along.”

“They do get along?”

“Let’s change the subject, shall we?”

“Why, Laurel?”

“Because Roger’s relationship with Delia has nothing to do with any of this.” Laurel sounded earnest. But she was hiding something just the same. “I’m interested in only one thing ― finding out who wrote that note to my father.”

“Still,” said Ellery, “what was your father’s relationship with Delia Priam?”

“Oh!” Laurel laughed. “Of course you couldn’t know. No, they weren’t having an affair. Not possibly. Besides, I told you Daddy said I was the only woman in his life.”

“Then they were hostile to each other?”

“Why do you keep on the subject of Delia?” she asked, a snap in her voice.

“Why do you keep off it?”

“Dad got along with Delia fine. He got along with everybody.”

“Not everybody, Laurel,” said Ellery.

She looked at him sharply.

“That is, if your theory that someone deliberately scared him to death is sound. You can’t blame the police, Laurel, for being fright-shy. Fright is a dangerous weapon that doesn’t show up under the microscope. It takes no fingerprints and it’s the most unsatisfactory kind of legal evidence. Now the letter... if you had the letter, that would be different. But you don’t have it.”

“You’re laughing at me.” Laurel prepared to rise.

“Not at all. The smooth stories are usually as slick as their surface. I like a good rough story. You can scrape away at the uneven places, and the dust tells you things. Now I know there’s something about Delia and Roger Priam. What is it?”

“Why must you know?”

“Because you’re so reluctant to tell me.”

“I’m not. I just don’t want to waste any time, and to talk about Delia and Roger is wasting time. Their relationship has nothing to do with my father.”

Their eyes locked.

Finally, with a smile, Ellery waved.

“No, I don’t have the letter. And that’s what the police said. Without the letter, or some evidence to go on, they can’t come into it. I’ve asked Roger to tell them what he knows ― knowing that what he knows would be enough for them to go on ― and he laughed and recommended Arrowhead or Palm Springs as a cure for my ‘pipe dream,’ as he called it. The police point to the autopsy report and Dad’s cardiac history and send me politely away. Are you going to do the same?”

Ellery turned to the window. To get into a live murder case was the last thing in the world he had bargained for. But the dead dog fascinated him. Why a dead dog as a messenger of bad news? It smacked of symbolism. And murderers with metaphoric minds he had never been able to resist. If, of course, there was a murder. Hollywood was a playful place. People produced practical jokes on the colossal scale. A dead dog was nothing compared with some of the elaborations of record. One he knew of personally involved a race horse in a bathroom, another the employment for two days of seventy-six extras. Some wit had sent a cardiac jeweler a recently deceased canine and a fake Mafia note, and before common sense could set in the victim of the dogplay had a heart attack. Learning the unexpected snapper of his joke, the joker would not unnaturally turn shy. The victim, ill and shaken, summoned his oldest friend and business partner to a conference. Perhaps the note threatened Sicilian tortures unless the crown jewels were deposited in the oily crypt of the pterodactyl pit in Hancock Park by midnight of the following day. For three hours the partners discussed the note, Hill nervously insisting it might be legitimate, Priam reasonably poohing and boshing the very notion. In the end Priam came away, and what Laurel Hill had taken to be fear was probably annoyance at Hill’s womanish obduracy. Hill was immobilized by his partner’s irritation, and before he could rouse himself his heart gave out altogether. End of mystery. Of course, there were a few dangling ends... But you could sympathize with the police. It was a lot likelier than a wild detective-story theory dreamed up by deceased’s daughter. They had undoubtedly dismissed her as either a neurotic girl tipped over by grief or a publicity hound with a yen for a starlet contract. She was determined enough to be either.

Ellery turned about. She was leaning forward, the forgotten cigaret sending up question marks.

“I suppose,” said Ellery, “your father had a closetful of bony enemies?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

This astonished him. To run true to form she should have come prepared with names, dates, and vital statistics.

“He was an easy, comfortable sort of man. He liked people, and people liked him. Dad’s personality was one of the big assets of Hill & Priam. He’d have his moments like everybody else, but I never knew anyone who could stay mad at him. Not even Roger.”

“Then you haven’t the smoggiest notion who could be behind this... fright murder?”

“Now you are laughing.” Laurel Hill got to her feet and dropped her cigaret definitely into the ashtray. “Sorry I’ve taken up so much of your time.”

“You might try a reliable agency. I’ll be glad to―”

“I’ve decided,” she smiled at him, “to go into the racket personally. Thanks for the avocado―”

“Why, Laurel.” Laurel turned quickly. A tall woman stood in the doorway. “Hello, Delia,” said Laurel.

Chapter Two

Nothing in Laurel Hill’s carefully edited remarks had prepared him for Delia Priam. Through his only available windows — the narrow eyes of Laurel’s youth — he had seen Delia’s husband as a pompous and tyrannical old cock, crippled but rampant, ruling his roost with a beak of iron; and from this it followed that the wife must be a gray-feathered hennypenny, preening herself emptily in corners, one of Bullock’s elderly barnyard trade... a dumpy, nervous, insignificant old biddy.

But the woman in his doorway was no helpless fowl, to be plucked, swallowed, and forgotten. Delia Priam was of a far different species, higher in the ranks of the animal kingdom, and she would linger on the palate.

She was so much younger than his mental sketch of her that only much later was Ellery to recognize this as one of her routine illusions, among the easiest of the magic tricks she performed as professionally as she carried her breasts. At that time he was to discover that she was forty-four, but the knowledge remained as physically meaningless as ― the figure leaped into his mind ― learning the chronological age of Ayesha. The romantic nonsense of this metaphor was to persist. He would even be appalled to find that he was identifying himself in his fantasy with that hero of his adolescence, Allan Quatermain, who had been privileged to witness the immortal strip-tease of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed behind her curtain of living flame. It was the most naked juvenility, and Ellery was duly amused at himself. But there she was, a glowing end in herself; it took only imagination, a commodity with which he was plentifully provided, to supply the veils.

Delia Priam was big game; one glance told him that. His doorway framed the most superbly proportioned woman he had ever seen. She was dressed in a tawny peasant blouse of some sheer material and a California print skirt of bold colors. Her heavy black hair was massed to one side of her head, sleekly, in the Polynesian fashion; she wore plain broad hoops of gold in her ears. Head, shoulders, bust, hips ― he could not decide which pleased him more. She stood there not so much in an attitude as in an atmosphere ― an atmosphere of intense repose, watchful and disquieting.

By Hollywood standards she was not beautiful: her eyes were too deep and light-tinted, her eyebrows too lush; her mouth was too full, her coloring too high, her figure too heroic. But it was this very excessiveness that excited ― a tropical quality, humid, brilliant, still, and overpowering. Seeing her for the first time was like stepping into a jungle. She seized and held the senses; everything was leashed, lovely, and dangerous. He found his ears trying to recapture her voice, the sleepy growl of something heard from a thicket.

Ellery’s first sensible thought was, Roger, old cock, you can have her. His second was, But how do you keep her? He was on his third when he saw the chilly smile on Laurel Hill’s lips.

Ellery pulled himself together. This was evidently an old story to Laurel.

“Then Laurel’s... mentioned me.” A dot-dot-dot talker. It had always annoyed him. But it prolonged the sound of that bitch-in-a-thicket voice.

“I answered Mr. Queen’s questions,” said Laurel in a warm, friendly voice. “Delia, you don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“I left my surprise outside with your car.” Those lazy throat tones were warm and friendly, too. “I could say... the same to you, Laurel.”

“Darling, you never surprise me.”

They smiled at each other.

Laurel turned suddenly and reached for another cigaret.

“Don’t bother, Ellery. Delia always makes a man forget there’s another woman in the room.”

“Now, Laurel.” She was indulgent. Laurel slashed the match across the packet.

“Won’t you come in and sit down, Mrs. Priam?”

“If I’d had any idea Laurel was coming here...”

Laurel said abruptly, “I came to see the man about the dog, Delia. And the note. Did you follow me?”

“What a ridiculous thing to say.”

“Did you?”

“Certainly not, dear. I read about Mr. Queen in the papers and it coincided with something that’s been bothering me.”

“I’m sorry, Delia. I’ve been upset.”

“I’ll come back, Mr. Queen.”

“Mrs. Priam, does it concern Miss Hill’s father’s death?”

“I don’t know. It may.”

“Then Miss Hill won’t mind your sitting in. I repeat my invitation.

She had a trick of moving slowly, as if she were pushing against something. As he brought the chartreuse chair around he watched her obliquely. When she sat down she was close enough so that he could have touched her bare back with a very slight movement of his finger. He almost moved it.

She did not seem to have taken him in at all. And yet she had looked him over; up and down, as if he had been a gown in a dress shop. Perhaps he didn’t interest her. As a gown, that is.

“Drink, Mrs. Priam?”

“Delia doesn’t drink,” said Laurel in the same warm, friendly voice. Two jets spurted from her nostrils.

“Thank you, darling. It goes to my head, Mr. Queen.”

And you wouldn’t let anything go to your head, wherefore it stands to reason, thought Ellery, that one way to get at you is to pour a few extra-dry Martinis down that red gullet... He was surprised at himself. A married woman, obviously a lady, and her husband was a cripple. But that wading walk was something to see.

“Laurel was about to leave. The facts interest me, but I’m in Hollywood to do a book...”

The shirring of her blouse rose and fell. He moved off to the picture window, making her turn her head.

“If, however, you have something to contribute, Mrs. Priam...” He suspected there would be no book for some time.

Delia Priam’s story penetrated imperfectly. Ellery found it hard to concentrate. He tended to lose himself in details. The curves of her blouse. The promise of her skirt, which molded her strongly below the waist. Her large, shapely hands rested precisely in the middle of her lap, like compass points. “ Mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs...” Right out of Browning’s Renaissance. She would have brought joy to the dying Bishop of Saint Praxed’s.

“Mr. Queen?”

Ellery said guiltily, “You mean, Mrs. Priam, the same day Leander Hill received the dead dog?”

“The same morning. It was a sort of gift. I don’t know what else you’d call it.”

Laurel’s cigaret hung in the air. “Delia, you didn’t tell me Roger had got something, too!”

“He told me not to say anything, Laurel. But you’ve forced my hand, dear. Kicking up such a fuss about that poor dog. First the police, now Mr. Queen.”

“Then you did follow me.”

“I didn’t have to.” The woman smiled. “I saw you looking at Mr. Queen’s photo in the paper.”

“Delia, you’re wonderful.”

“Thank you, darling.” She sat peaceful as a lady tiger, smiling over secrets... Here, Brother Q!

“Oh. Oh, yes, Mrs. Priam. Mr. Priam’s been frightened―”

“Ever since the day he got the box. He won’t admit it, but when a man keeps roaring that he won’t be intimidated it’s pretty clear that he is. He’s broken things, too, some of his own things. That’s not like Roger. Usually they’re mine.”

Delightful. What a pity.

“What was in the box, Mrs. Priam?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“A dead dog,” said Laurel. “Another dead dog!” Laurel looked something like a little dog herself, nose up, testing the air. It was remarkable how meaningless she was across from Delia Priam. As sexless as a child.

“It would have to have been an awfully small one, Laurel. The box wasn’t more than a foot square, of cardboard.”

“Unmarked?” asked Ellery.

“Yes. But there was a shipping tag attached to the string that was tied around the box. ‘Roger Priam’ was printed on it in crayon.” The beautiful woman paused. “Mr. Queen, are you listening?”

“In crayon. Yes, certainly, Mrs. Priam. Color?” What the devil difference did the color make?

“Black, I think.”

“No address?”

“No. Nothing but the name.”

“And you don’t know what was in it. No idea.”

“No. But whatever it was, it hit Roger hard. One of the servants found the box at the front door and gave it to Alfred―”

“Alfred.”

“Roger’s... secretary.”

“Wouldn’t you call him more of a... companion, Delia?’ asked Laurel, blowing a smoke ring.

“I suppose so, dear. Companion, nurse, handyman, secretary ― what-have-you. My husband, you know, Mr. Queen, is an invalid.”

“Laurel’s told me. All things to one man, eh, Mrs. Priam? I mean Alfred. We now have the versatile Alfred with the mysterious box. He takes it to Mr. Priam’s room. And then?” Why was Laurel laughing? Not outwardly. But she was. Delia Priam seemed not to notice.

“I happened to be in Roger’s room when Alfred came in. We didn’t know then about... Leander and his gift, of course. Alfred gave Roger the box, and Roger lifted a corner of the lid and looked inside. He looked angry, then puzzled. He slammed the lid down and told me to get out. Alfred went out with me, and I heard Roger lock his door. And that’s the last... I’ve seen of the box or its contents. Roger won’t tell me what was in it or what he’s done with it. Won’t talk about it at all.”

“When did your husband begin to show fear, Mrs. Priam?”

“After he talked to Leander in the Hill house the next day. On the way back home he didn’t say a word, just stared out the window of the station wagon. Shaking. He’s been shaking... ever since. It was especially bad a week later when Leander died...”

Then what was in Roger Priam’s box had little significance for him until he compared gifts with Leander Hill, perhaps until he read the note Hill had found in the collar of the dog. Unless there had been a note in Priam’s box as well. But then...

Ellery fidgeted before the picture window, sending up a smoke screen. It was ridiculous, at his age... pretending to be interested in a case because a respectable married woman had the misfortune to evoke the jungle. Still, he thought, what a waste.

He became conscious of the two women’s eyes and expelled a mouthful of smoke, trying to appear professional. “Leander Hill received a queer gift, and he died. Are you afraid, Mrs. Priam, that your husband’s life is in danger, too?”

Now he was more than a piece of merchandise; he was a piece of merchandise that interested her. Her eyes were so empty of color that in the sunlight coming through the window she looked eyeless; it was like being looked over by a statue. He felt himself reddening and it seemed to him she was amused. He immediately bristled. She could take her precious husband and her fears elsewhere.

“Laurel darling,” Delia Priam was saying with an apologetic glance, “would you mind terribly if I spoke to Mr. Queen... alone?”

Laurel got up. “I’ll wait in the garden,” she said, and she tossed her cigaret into the tray and walked out.

Roger Priam’s wife waited until Laurel’s slim figure appeared beyond the picture window, among the shaggy asters. Laurel’s head was turned away. She was switching her thigh with her cap.

“Laurel’s sweet,” said Delia Priam. “But so young, don’t you think? Right now she’s on a crusade and she’s feeling ever so knightly. She’ll get over it... Why, about your question, Mr. Queen. I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. I haven’t the slightest interest in my husband. I’m not afraid that he may die. If anything, it’s the other way around.”

Ellery stared. For a moment her eyes slanted to the sun and they sparkled in a mineral way. But her features were without guile. The next instant she was eyeless again.

“You’re honest, Mrs. Priam. Brutally so.”

“I’ve had a rather broad education in brutality, Mr. Queen.”

So there was that, too. Ellery sighed.

“I’ll be even franker,” she went on. “I don’t know whether Laurel told you specifically... Did she say what kind of invalid my husband is?”

“She said he’s partly paralyzed.”

“She didn’t say what part?”

“What part?” said Ellery.

“Then she didn’t. Why, Mr. Queen, my husband is paralyzed,” said Delia Priam with a smile, “from the waist down.”

You had to admire the way she said that. The brave smile. The smile that said Don’t pity me.

“I’m very sorry,” he said.

“I’ve had fifteen years of it.”

Ellery was silent. She rested her head against the back of the chair. Her eyes were almost closed and her throat was strong and defenseless.

“You’re wondering why I told you that.”

Ellery nodded.

“I told you because you can’t understand why I’ve come to you unless you understand that first. Weren’t you wondering?”

“All right. Why have you come to me?”

“For appearance’s sake.”

Ellery stared. “You ask me to investigate a possible threat against your husband’s life, Mrs. Priam, for appearance’s sake?”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I do believe you. Nobody would invent such a reason!” Seating himself beside her, he took one of her hands. It was cool and secretive, and it remained perfectly lax in his. “You haven’t had much of a life.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve never done any work with these hands.”

“Is that bad?”

“It could be.” Ellery put her hand back in her lap. “A woman like you has no right to remain tied to a man who’s half-dead. If he were some saintly character, if there were love between you, I’d understand it. But I gather he’s a brute and that you loathe him. Then why haven’t you done something with your life? Why haven’t you divorced him? Is there a religious reason?”

“There might have been when I was young. Now...” She shook her head. “Now it’s the way it would look. You see, I’m stripping myself quite bare.”

Ellery looked pained.

“You’re very gallant to an old woman.” She laughed. “No, I’m serious, Mr. Queen. I come from one of the old California families. Formal upbringing. Convent-trained. Duennas in the old fashion. A pride of caste and tradition. I could never take it as seriously as they did...

“My mother had married a heretic from New England. They ostracized her and it killed her when I was a little girl. I’d have got away from them completely, except that when my mother died they talked my father into giving me into their custody. I was brought up by an aunt who wore a mantilla. I married the first man who came along just to get away from them. He wasn’t their choice ― he was an ‘American,’ like my father. I didn’t love him, but he had money, we were very poor, and I wanted to escape. It cut me off from my family, my church, and my world. I have a ninety-year-old grandmother who lives only three miles from this spot. I haven’t seen her for eighteen years. She considers me dead.”

Her head rolled. “Harvey died when we’d been married three years, leaving me with a child. Then I met Roger Priam. I couldn’t go back to my mother’s family, my father was off on one of his jaunts, and Roger attracted me. I would have followed him to hell.” She laughed again. “And that’s exactly where he led me.

“When I found out what Roger really was, and then when he became crippled and I lost even that, there was nothing left. I’ve filled the vacuum by trying to go back where I came from.

“It hasn’t been easy,” murmured Delia Priam. “They don’t forget such things, and they never forgive. But the younger generation is softer-bottomed and corrupted by modern ways. Their men, of course, have helped... Now it’s the only thing 1 have to hang on to.” Her face showed a passion not to be shared or relished. Ellery was glad when the moment passed. “The life I lead in Roger Priam’s house isn’t even suspected by these people. If they knew the truth, I’d be dropped and there’d be no return. And if I left Roger, they’d say I deserted my husband. Upper caste women of the old California society don’t do that sort of thing, Mr. Queen; it doesn’t matter what the husband is. So... I don’t do it.

“Now something is happening, I don’t know what. If Laurel had kept her mouth shut, I wouldn’t have lifted a finger. But by going about insisting that Leander Hill was murdered, Laurel’s created an atmosphere of suspicion that threatens my position. Sooner or later the papers will get hold of it ― it’s a wonder they haven’t already ― and the fact that Roger is apparently in the same danger might come out. I can’t sit by and wait for that. My people will expect me to be the loyal wife. So that’s what I’m being. Mr. Queen, I ask you to proceed as if I’m terribly concerned about my husband’s safety.” Delia Priam shrugged. “Or is this all too involved for you?”

“It would seem to me far simpler,” said Ellery, “to clear out and start over again somewhere else.”

“This is where I was born.” She looked out at Hollywood. Laurel had moved over to a corner of the garden. “I don’t mean all that popcorn and false front down there. I mean the hills, the orchards, the old missions. But there’s another reason, and it has nothing to do with me, or my people, or Southern California.”

“What’s that, Mrs. Priam?”

“Roger wouldn’t let me go. He’s a man of violence, Mr. Queen. You don’t ― you can’t ― know his furious possessiveness, his pride, his compulsion to dominate, his... depravity. Sometimes I think I’m married to a maniac.”

She closed her eyes. The room was still. From below Ellery heard Mrs. Williams’s Louisiana-bred tones complaining to the gold parakeet she kept in a cage above the kitchen sink about the scandalous price of coffee. An invisible finger was writing in the sky above the Wilshire district: MUNTZ TV. The empty typewriter nudged his elbow.

But there she sat, the jungle in batiste and colored cotton. His slick and characterless Hollywood house would never be the same again. It was exciting just to be able to look at her lying in the silly chair. It was dismaying to imagine the chair empty.

“Mrs. Priam.”

“Yes?”

“Why,” asked Ellery, trying not to think of Roger Priam, “didn’t you want Laurel Hill to hear what you just told me?”

The woman opened her eyes. “I don’t mind undressing before a man,” she said, “but I do draw the line at a woman.”

She said it lightly, but something ran up Ellery’s spine.

He jumped to his feet. “Take me to your husband.”

Chapter Three

When they came out of Ellery’s house Laurel said pleasantly, “Has a contract been drawn up, Ellery? And if so, with which one of us? Or is the question incompetent and none of my business?”

“No contract,” said Ellery testily. “No contract, Laurel. I’m just going to take a look around.”

“Starting at the Priam house, of course.”

“Yes.”

“In that case, since we’re all in this together ― aren’t we, Delia? ― I suppose there’s no objection if I trail along?”

“Of course not, darling,” said Delia. “But do try not to antagonize Roger. He always takes it out on me afterwards.”

“What do you think he’s going to say when he finds out you’ve brought a detective around?”

“Oh, dear,” said Delia. Then she brightened. “Why, darling, you’re bringing Mr. Queen around, don’t you see? Do you mind very much? I know it’s yellow, but I have to live with him. And you did get to Mr. Queen first.”

“All right,” said Laurel with a shrug. “We’ll give you a head start, Delia. You take Franklin and Outpost, and I’ll go around the long way, over Cahuenga and Mulholland. Where have you been, shop-ping?”

Delia Priam laughed. She got into her car, a new cream Cadillac convertible, and drove off down the hill.

“Hardly a substitute,” said Laurel after a moment. Ellery started. Laurel was holding open the door of her car, a tiny green Austin.

“Either car or driver. Can you see Delia in an Austin? Like the Queen of Sheba in a rowboat. Get in.”

“Unusual type,” remarked Ellery absently, as the little car shot off.

“The adjective, yes. But as to the noun,” said Laurel, “there is only one Delia Priam.”

“She seems remarkably frank and honest.”

“Does she?”

“I thought so. Don’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“By which you tell me what you think.”

“No, you don’t! But if you must know... You never get to the bottom of Delia. She doesn’t lie, but she doesn’t tell the truth, either ― I mean the whole truth. She always keeps something in reserve that you dig out much, much later, if you’re lucky to dig it out at all. Now I’m not going to say anything more about Delia, because whatever I say you’ll hold, not against her, but against me. Delia bowls over big shots especially... I suppose it’s no use asking you what she wanted to talk to you alone about?”

“Take ― it ― easy,” said Ellery, holding his hat. “Another bounce like that and my knees will stab me to death.”

“Nice try, Laurel,” said Laurel; and she darted into the Free-way-bound traffic on North Highland with a savage flip of her exhaust.

After a while Ellery remarked to Laurel’s profile: “You said something about Roger Priam’s ‘never’ leaving his wheelchair. You didn’t mean that literally, by any chance?”

“Yes. Not ever. Didn’t Delia tell you about the chair?”

“No.”

“It’s fabulous. After Roger became paralyzed he had an ordinary wheelchair for a time, which meant he had to be lifted into and out of it. Daddy told me about it. It seems Roger the Lion-Hearted couldn’t take that. It made him too dependent on others. So he designed a special chair for himself.”

“What does it do, boost him in and out of bed on mechanical arms?”

“It does away with a bed altogether.”

Ellery stared.

“That’s right. He sleeps in it, eats in it, does his work in it ― everything. A combination office, study, living room, dining room, bedroom and bathroom on wheels. It’s quite a production. From one of the arms of the chair hangs a small shelf which he can swing around to the front and raise; he eats on that, mixes drinks, and so on. Under the shelf are compartments for cutlery, napkins, cocktail things, and liquor. There’s a similar shelf on the other arm of the chair which holds his typewriter, screwed on, of course, so it won’t fall off when it’s swung aside. And under that shelf are places for paper, carbon, pencils and Lord knows what else. The chair is equipped with two phones of the plug-in type ― the regular line and a private wire to our house ― and with an intercom system to Wallace’s room.”

“Who’s Wallace?”

“Alfred Wallace, his secretary-companion. Then ― let’s see.” Laurel frowned. “Oh, he’s got compartments and cubbyholes all around the chair for just about everything imaginable ― magazines, cigars, his reading glasses, his toothbrush; everything he could possibly need. The chair’s built so that it can be lowered and the front raised, making a bed out of it for daytime napping or sleeping at night. Of course, he needs Alfred to help him sponge-bathe and dress and undress and so on, but he’s made himself as self-sufficient as possible ― hates help of any kind, even the most essential. When I was there yesterday his typewriter had just been sent into Hollywood to be repaired and he had to dictate business memoranda to Alfred instead of doing them himself, and he was in such a foul mood because of it that even Alfred got mad. Roger in a foul mood can be awfully foul... I’m sorry, I thought you wanted to know.”

“What?”

“You’re not listening.”

“I am, though not with both ears.” They were on Mulholland Drive now, and Ellery was clutching the side of the Austin to avoid being thrown clear as Laurel zoomed the little car around the hairpin curves. “Tell me, Laurel. Who inherits your father’s estate? I mean besides yourself?”

“Nobody. There isn’t anyone else.”

“He didn’t leave anything to Priam?”

“Why should he? Roger and Daddy were equal partners. There are some small cash bequests to people in the firm and to the household help. Everything else goes to me. So you see, Ellery,” said Laurel, soaring over a rise, “I’m your big suspect.”

“Yes,” said Ellery, “and you’re also Roger Priam’s new partner. Or are you?”

“My status isn’t clear. The lawyers are working on that now. Of course I don’t know anything about the jewelry business and I’m not sure I want to. Roger can’t chisel me out of anything, if that’s what’s in your mind. One of the biggest law firms in Los Angeles is protecting my interests. I must say Roger’s been surprisingly decent about that end of it ― for Roger, I mean. Maybe Daddy’s death hit him harder than he expected ― made him realize how important Dad was to the business and how unimportant he is. Actually, he hasn’t much to worry about. Dad trained a very good man to run things, a Mr. Foss, in case anything happened to him... Anyway, there’s one item on my agenda that takes priority over everything else. And if you won’t clear it up for me, I’ll do it myself.”

“Because you loved Leander Hill very much?”

“Yes!”

“And because, of course,” remarked Ellery, “you are the big suspect?”

Laurel’s little hands tightened on the wheel. Then they relaxed. “That’s the stuff, Ellery,” she laughed. “Just keep firing away at the whites of our eyes. I love it. ― There’s the Priam place.”

The Priam place stood on a private road, a house of dark round stones and blackish wood wedged into a fold of the hills and kept in forest gloom by a thick growth of overhanging sycamore, elm, and eucalyptus. Ellery’s first thought was that the grounds were neglected, but then he saw evidences of both old and recent pruning on the sides away from the house and he realized that nature had been coaxed into the role she was playing. The hopeless matting of leaves and boughs was deliberate; the secretive gloom was wanted. Priam had dug into the hill and pulled the trees over him. Who was it who had defied the sun?

It was more like an isolated hunting lodge than a Hollywood house. Most of it was hidden from the view of passers-by on the main road, and by its character it transformed a suburban section of ordinary Southern California canyon into a wild Scottish glen. Laurel told Ellery that the Priam property extended up and along the hill for four or five acres and that it was all like the area about the house.

“Jungle,” said Ellery as Laurel parked the car in the driveway. There was no sign of the cream Cadillac.

“Well, he’s a wild animal. Like the deer you flush occasionally up behind the Bowl.”

“He’s paying for the privilege. His electric bills must be enormous.”

“I’m sure they are. There isn’t a sunny room in the house. When he wants ― you can’t say more light ― when he wants less gloom, and air that isn’t so stale, he wheels himself out on that terrace there.” To one side of the house there was a large terrace, half of it screened and roofed, the other open not to the sky but a high arch of blue gum eucalyptus leaves and branches which the sun did not penetrate. “His den ― den is the word ― is directly of! the terrace, past those French and screen doors. We’d better go in the front way; Roger doesn’t like people barging in on his sacred preserves. In the Priam house you’re announced.”

“Doesn’t Delia Priam have anything to say about the way her house is run?”

“Who said it’s her house?” said Laurel.

A uniformed maid with a tic admitted them. “Oh, Miss Hill,” she said nervously. “I don’t think Mr. Priam... He’s dictatin’ to Mr. Wallace. I better not...”

“Is Mrs. Priam in, Muggs?”

“She just got in from shoppin’, Miss Hill. She’s upstairs in her room. Said she was tired and was not to be disturbed.”

“Poor Delia,” said Laurel calmly. “I know Mr. Queen is terribly disappointed. Tell Mr. Priam I want to see him.”

“But, Miss Hill―”

A muffled roar of rage stopped her instantly. She glanced over her shoulder in a panic.

“It’s all right, Muggsy. I’ll take the rap. Vatnos, Ellery.”

“I wonder why she―” Ellery began in a mumble as Laurel led him up the hall.

“Yours not to, where Delia is concerned.”

The house was even grimmer than he had expected. They passed shrouded rooms with dark paneling, heavy and humorless drapes, massive uncomfortable-looking furniture. It was a house for secrets and for violence.

The roar was a bass snarl now. “I don’t give a damn what Mr. Hill wanted to do about the Newman-Arco account, Foss! Mr. Hill’s locked in a drawer in Forest Lawn and he ain’t in any condition to give us the benefit of his advice... No, I won’t wait a minute, Foss! I’m running this business, and you’ll either handle things my way or get the hell out!”

Laurel’s lips thinned. She raised her fist and hammered on the door.

“Whoever that is, Alfred―! Foss, you still there?”

A man opened the heavy door and slipped into the hall, pulling the door to and keeping his hand on the knob behind him.

“You picked a fine time, Laurel. He’s on the phone to the office.”

“So I hear,” said Laurel. “Mr. Queen, Mr. Wallace. His other name ought to be Job, but it’s Alfred. The perfect man, I call him. Super-efficient. Discreet as all get-out. Never slips. One side, Alfred. I’ve got business with my partner.”

“Better let me set him up,” said Wallace with a smile. As he slipped back into the room, his eyes flicked over Ellery. Then the door was shut again, and Ellery waved his right hand tenderly. It still tingled from Wallace’s grip.

“Surprised?” murmured Laurel.

Ellery was. He had expected a Milquetoast character. Instead Alfred Wallace was a towering, powerfully assembled man with even, rather sharp, features, thick white hair, a tan, and an air of lean distinction. His voice was strong and thoughtful, with the merest touch of... superiority? Whatever it was, it was barely enough to impress, not quite enough to annoy. Wallace might have stepped out of a set on the M-G-M lot labeled High Society Drawing Room; and, in fact, “well-preserved actor” had been Ellery’s impulsive characterization ― Hollywood leading-men types with Athletic Club tans were turning up these days in the most unexpected places, swallowing their pride in order to be able to swallow at all. But a moment later Ellery was not so sure. Wallace’s shoulders did not look as if they came of! with his coat. His physique, even his elegance, seemed homegrown.

“I should think you’d be smitten, Laurel,” said Ellery as they waited. “That’s a virile character. Perfectly disciplined, and dashing as the devil.”

“A little too old,” said Laurel. “For me, that is.”

“He can’t be much more than fifty-five. And he doesn’t look forty-five, white hair notwithstanding.”

“Alfred would be too old for me if he were twenty.― Oh. Well? Do I have to get Mr. Queen to brush you aside, Alfred, or is the Grand Vizier going to play gracious this morning?”

Alfred Wallace smiled and let them pass.

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?”

“And detective, Mr. Priam.”

Priam’s lips pushed out, dragging his beard forward. The great hands on the wheel became clamps.

“I told you I wasn’t going to let go, Roger,” said Laurel evenly. “My father was murdered. There must have been a reason. And whatever it Was, you were mixed up in it as well as Daddy. I’ve asked Ellery Queen to investigate, and he wants to talk to you.”

“He does, does he?” The rumble was distant; the fiery eyes gave out heat. “Go ahead, Mister. Talk away.”

“In the first place, Mr. Priam,” said Ellery, “I’d like to know―”

“The answer is no,” said Roger Priam, his teeth showing through his beard. “What’s in the second place?”

“Mr. Priam,” Ellery began again, patiently.

“No good, Mister. I don’t like your questions. Now you listen to me, Laurel.” His right fist crashed on the arm of the chair. “You’re a damn busybody. This ain’t your business. It’s mine. I’ll tend to it. I’ll do it my way, and I’ll do it myself. Can you get that through v your head?”

“You’re afraid, Roger,” said Laurel Hill.

Priam half-raised his bulk, his eyes boiling. The lava burst with a roar.

“Me afraid? Afraid of what? A ghost? What d’ye think I am, another Leander Hill? The snivelin’ dirt! Shaking in his shoes ― looking over his shoulder ― creeping on his face! He was born a yellow-belly, and he died the same―”

Laurel hit him on the cheek with her fist. His left arm came up impatiently and brushed her aside. She staggered backward halfway across the room into Alfred Wallace’s arms.

“Let go of me,” she whispered. “Let go!”

“Laurel,” said Ellery.

She stopped, breathing from her diaphragm. Wallace silently released her.

Laurel walked out of the room.

“Afraid!” A spot swelled on Priam’s cheekbone. “You think so?” he bellowed after her. “Well, a certain somebody’s gonna find out that my pump don’t go to pieces at the first blow! Afraid, am I? I’m ready for the goddam! Any hour of the day or night, understand? Any time he wants to show his scummy hand! He’ll find out I got a pretty good pair myself!” And he opened and closed his murderous hands, and Ellery thought again of Wolf Larsen.

“Roger. What’s the matter?”

And there she was in the doorway. She had changed to a hostess gown of golden silk which clung as if it loved her. It was slit to the knee. She was glancing coolly from her husband to Ellery.

Wallace’s eyes were on her. They seemed amused.

“Who is this man?”

“Nobody. Nothing, Delia. It don’t concern you.” Priam glared at Ellery. “You. Get out!”

She had come downstairs just to establish the fact that she didn’t know him. As a point in character, it should have interested him. 1 % stead, it annoyed him. Why, he could not quite make out. What was he to Hecuba? Although she was making clear enough what Hecuba was to him. He felt chagrined and challenged, and at the same time he wondered if she affected other men the same way... Wallace was enjoying himself discreetly, like a playgoer who has caught a point which escaped the rest of the audience and is too polite to laugh aloud... Her attitude toward her husband was calm, without fear or any other visible emotion.

“What are you waiting for? You ain’t wanted, Mister. Get out!”

“I’ve been trying to make up my mind, Mr. Priam,” said Ellery, “whether you’re a bag of wind or a damned fool.” Priam’s bearded lips did a little dance. His rage, apparently always in shallow water, was surfacing again. Ellery braced himself for the splash.

Priam was afraid. Wallace ― silent, amused, attentive Wallace ― Wallace saw it. And Delia Priam saw it; she was smiling.

“Alfred, if this fella shows up again, break his ― back!”

Ellery looked down at his arm. Wallace’s hand was on it.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Queen,” murmured Wallace, “that I’m man enough to do it, too.”

The man’s grip was paralyzing. Priam was grinning, a yellow hairy grin that jarred him. And the woman ― that animate piece of jungle ― watching. To his amazement, Ellery felt himself going blind-mad. When he came to, Alfred Wallace was sitting on the floor chafing his wrist and staring up at Ellery. He did not seem angry; just surprised.

“That’s a good trick,” Wallace said. “I’ll remember it.”

Ellery fumbled for a cigaret, decided against it. “I’ve made up my mind, Mr. Priam. You’re a bag of wind and a damned fool.”

The doorway was empty...

He was furious with himself. Never lose your temper. Rule One in the book; he had learned it on his father’s lap. Just the same, she must have seen it. Wallace flying through the air. And the gape on Priam’s ugly face. Probably set her up for the week...

He found himself searching for her out of the corners of his eyes as he strode down the hall. The place was overcrowded with shadows; she was certainly waiting in one of them. With the shades of her eyes pulled down but everything else showing.

The hall was empty, too...

Slit to the knee! That one was older than the pyramids. And how old was his stupidity? It probably went back to the primordial slime.

Then he remembered that Delia Priam was a lady and that he was behaving exactly like a frustrated college boy, and he slammed the front door.

Laurel was waiting for him in the Austin. She was still white; smoking with energy. Ellery jumped in beside her and growled, “Well, what are we waiting for?”

“He’s cracking,” said Laurel tensely. “He’s going to pieces, Ellery. I’ve seen him yell and push his weight around before, but today was something special. I’m glad I brought you. What do you want to do now?”

“Go home. Or get me a cab.”

She was bewildered. “Aren’t you taking the case?”

“I can’t waste my time on idiots.”

“Meaning me?”

“Not meaning you.”

“But we found out something,” she said eagerly. “He admitted it. You heard him. A ‘ghost,’ he said. A ‘certain somebody’ ― I heard that on my way out. I wasn’t being delirious, Ellery. Roger thinks Daddy was deliberately shocked to death, too. And, what’s more, he knows what the dog meant―”

“Not necessarily,” grunted Ellery. “That’s the trouble with you amateurs. Always jumping to conclusions. Anyway, it’s too impossible. You can’t get anywhere without Priam, and Priam isn’t budging.”

“It’s Delia,” said Laurel, “isn’t it?”

“Delia? You mean Mrs. Priam? Rubbish.”

“Don’t tell me about Delia,” said Laurel. “Or about men, either. She’s catnip for anything in pants.”

“Oh, I admit her charms,” muttered Ellery. “But they’re a bit obvious, don’t you think?” He was trying not to look up at the second-story windows, where her bedroom undoubtedly was. “Laurel, we can’t park here in the driveway like a couple of adenoidal tourists―” He had to see her again. Just to see her.

Laurel gave him an odd look and drove off. She turned left at the road, driving slowly.

Ellery sat embracing his knees. He had the emptiest feeling that he was losing something with each spin of the Austin’s wheels.-And there was Laurel, seeing the road ahead and something else, too. Sturdy little customer. And she must be feeling pretty much alone. Ellery suddenly felt himself weakening.

“What do you intend to do, Laurel?”

“Keep poking around.”

“You’re determined to go through with this?”

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ll make out.”

“Laurel, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”

She looked at him.

“I’ll go as far as that note with you ― I mean, give you a head start, anyway. If, of course, it’s possible.”

“What are you talking about?” She’ stopped the car with a bump.

“The note your father found in that silver box on the dog’s collar. You thought he must have destroyed it.”

“I told you I looked for it and it wasn’t there.”

“Suppose I do the looking.”

Laurel stared. Then she laughed and the Austin jumped.

The Hill house spread itself high on one of the canyon walls, cheerfully exposing its red tiles to the sun. It was a two-story Spanish house, beautifully bleached, with black wrought-iron tracery, arched and balconied and patioed and covered with pyracantha. It was set in two acres of flowers, flowering shrubs, and trees ― palm and fruit and nut and bird-of-paradise. Around the lower perimeter ran the woods.

“Our property line runs down the hill,” Laurel said as they got out of the car, “over towards the Priams’. A little over nine additional acres meeting the Priam woods. Through the woods it’s no distance at all.”

“It’s a very great distance,” mumbled Ellery. “About as far as from an eagle’s nest to an undersea cave. True Spanish, I notice, like the missions, not the modern fakes so common out here. It must be a punishment to Delia Priam ― born to this and condemned to that.”

“Oh, she’s told you about that,” murmured Laurel; then she took him into her house.

It was cool with black Spanish tile underfoot and the touch of iron. There was a sunken living room forty feet long, a great fireplace set with Goya tiles, books and music and paintings and ceramics and huge jars of flowers everywhere. A tall Japanese in a white jacket came in smiling and took Ellery’s hat.

“Ichiro Sotowa,” said Laurel. “Itchie’s been with us for ages. This is Mr. Queen, Itchie. He’s interested in the way Daddy died, too.”

The houseman’s smile faded. “Bad ― bad,” he said, shaking his head. “Heart no good. You like a drink, sir?”

“Not just now, thanks,” said Ellery. “Just how long did you work for Mr. Hill, Ichiro?”

“Sixteen year, sir.”

“Oh, then you don’t go back to the time of... What about that chauffeur ― Simeon, was it?”

“Shimmie shopping with Mis’ Monk.”

“I meant how long Simeon’s been employed here.”

“About ten years,” said Laurel. “Mrs. Monk came around the same time.”

“That’s that, then. All right, Laurel, let’s begin.”

“Where?”

“From the time your father had his last heart attack ― the day the dog came ― until his death, did he leave his bedroom?”

“No. Itchie and I took turns nursing him. Night and day the entire week.”

“Bedroom indicated. Lead the way.”

An hour and a half later, Ellery opened the door of Leander Hill’s room. Laurel was curled up in a window niche on the landing, head resting against the wall.

“I suppose you think I’m an awful sissy,” she said, without turning. “But all I can see when I’m in there is his marbly face and blue lips and the crooked way his mouth hung open... not my daddy at all. Nothing, I suppose.”

“Come here, Laurel.”

She jerked about. Then she jumped of! the ledge and ran to him.

Ellery shut the bedroom door.

Laurel’s eyes hunted wildly. But aside from the four-poster bed, which was disarranged, she could see nothing unusual. The spread, sheets, and quilt were peeled back, revealing the side walls of the box spring and mattress.

“What―?”

“The note you saw him remove from the dog’s collar,” Ellery said. “It was on thin paper, didn’t you tell me?”

“Very. A sort of flimsy, or onionskin.”

“White?”

“White.”

Ellery nodded. He went over to the exposed mattress. “He was in this room for a week, Laurel, between his attack and death. During that week did he have many visitors?”

“The Priam household. Some people from the office. A few friends.”

“Some time during that week,” said Ellery, “your father decided that the note he had received was in danger of being stolen or destroyed. So he took out insurance.” His finger traced on the side wall of the mattress one of the perpendicular blue lines of the ticking. “He had no tool but a dull penknife from the night table there. And I suppose he was in a hurry, afraid he might be caught at it. So the job had to be crude.” Half his finger suddenly vanished. “He simply made a slit here, where the blue line meets the undyed ticking. And he slipped the paper into it, where I found it.”

“The note,” breathed Laurel. “You’ve found the note. Let me see!”

Ellery put his hand in his pocket. But just as he was about to withdraw it, he stopped. His eyes were on one of the windows.

Some ten yards away there was an old walnut tree.

“Yes?” Laurel was confused. “What’s the matter?”

“Get off the bed, yawn, smile at me if you can, and then stroll over to the door. Go out on the landing. Leave the door open.”

Her eyes widened.

She got off the bed, yawned, stretched, showed her teeth, and went to the door. Ellery moved a little as she moved, so that he remained between her and the window.

When she had disappeared, he casually followed. Smiling in profile at her, he shut the bedroom door.

And sprang for the staircase.

“Ellery―”

“Stay here!”

He scrambled down the black-tiled stairs, leaving Laurel with her lips parted.

A man had been roosting high in the walnut tree, peering in at them through Leander Hill’s bedroom window from behind a screen of leaves. But the sun had been on the tree, and Ellery could have sworn the fellow was mother-naked.

Chapter Four

The naked man was gone. Ellery thrashed about among the fruit and nut trees feeling like Robinson Crusoe. From the flagged piazza Ichiro gaped at him, and a chunky fellow with a florid face and a chauffeur’s cap, carrying a carton of groceries, was gaping with him.

Ellery found a large footprint at the margin of the orchard, splayed and deeptoed, indicating running or jumping, and it pointed directly to the woods. He darted into the underbrush and in a moment he was nosing past trees and scrub on a twisting but clear trail. There were numerous specimens of the naked print on the trail, both coming and going.

“He’s made a habit of this,” Ellery mumbled. It was hot in the woods and he was soon drenched, uncomfortable, and out of temper.

The trail ended unceremoniously in the middle of a clearing. No other footprints anywhere. The trunk of the nearest tree, an ancient, oakishlooking monster, was yards away. There were no vines.

Ellery looked around, swabbing his neck. Then he looked up. The giant limbs of the tree covered the clearing with a thick fabric of small spiny leaves, but the lowest branch was thirty feet from the ground.

The creature must have flapped his arms and taken off.

Ellery sat down on a corrupting log and wiped his face, reflecting on this latest wonder. Not that anything in Southern California ever really surprised him. But this was a little out of even God’s country’s class. Flying nudes!

“Lost?”

Ellery leaped. A little old man in khaki shorts, woolen socks, and a T-shirt was smiling at him from a bush. He wore a paper topee on his head and he carried a butterfly net; a bright red case of some sort was slung over one skinny shoulder. His skin was a shriveled brown and his hands were like the bark of the big tree, but his eyes were a bright young blue and they seemed keen.

“I’m not lost,” said Ellery irritably. “I’m looking for a man.”

“I don’t like the way you say that,” said the old man, stepping into the clearing. “You’re on the wrong track, young fellow. People mean trouble. Know anything about the Lepidoptera?”

“Not a thing. Have you seen―?”

“You catch ‘em with this dingbat. I just bought the kit yesterday ― passed a toy shop on Hollywood Boulevard and there it was, all new and shiny, in the window. I’ve caught four beauties so far.” The butterfly hunter began to trot down the trail, waving his net menacingly.

“Wait! Have you seen anyone running through these woods?”

“Running? Well, now, depends.”

“Depends? My dear sir, it doesn’t depend on a thing! Either you saw somebody or you didn’t.”

“Not necessarily,” replied the little man earnestly, trotting back. “It depends on whether it’s going to get him ― or you ― in trouble. There’s too much trouble in this world, young man. What’s this runner look like?”

“I can’t give you a description,” snapped Ellery, “inasmuch as I didn’t see enough of him to be able to. Or rather, I saw the wrong parts. ― Hell. He’s naked.”

“Ah,” said the hunter, making an unsuccessful pass at a large, paint-splashed butterfly. “Naked, hm?”

“And there was a lot of him.”

“There was. You wouldn’t start any trouble?”

“No, no, I won’t hurt him. Just tell me which way he went.”

“I’m not worried about your hurting him. He’s much more likely to hurt you. Powerful build, that boy. Once knew a stoker built like him ― could bend a coal shovel. That was in the old Susie Belle, beating up to Alaska―”

“You sound as if you know him.”

“Know him? I darned well ought to. He’s my grandson. There he is!” cried the hunter.

“Where?”

But it was only the fifth butterfly, and the little old man hopped between two bushes and was gone.

Ellery was morosely studying the last footprint in the trail when Laurel poked her head cautiously into the clearing.

“There you are,” she said with relief. “You scared the buttermilk out of me. What happened?”

“Character spying on us from the walnut tree outside the bedroom window. I trailed him here―”

“What did he look like?” frowned Laurel.

“No clothes on.”

“Why, the lying mugwump!” she said angrily. “He promised on his honor he wouldn’t do that any more. It’s got so I have to undress in the dark.”

“So you know him, too,” growled Ellery. “I thought California had a drive on these sex cases.”

“Oh, he’s no sex case. He just throws gravel at my window and tries to get me to talk drool to him. I can’t waste my time on somebody who’s preparing for Armageddon at the age of twenty-three. Ellery, let’s see that note!”

“Whose grandson is he?”

“Grandson? Mr. Collier’s.”

“Mr. Collier wouldn’t be a little skinny old gent with a face like a sun-dried fig?”

“That’s right.”

“And just who is Mr. Collier?”

“Delia Priam’s father. He lives with the Priams.”

“Her father.” You couldn’t keep her out of anything. “But if this Peeping Tom is Delia Priam’s father’s grandson, then he must be―”

“Didn’t Delia tell you,” asked Laurel with a soupçon of malice, “that she has a twenty-three year old son? His name is Crowe Macgowan. Delia’s child by her first husband. Roger’s stepson. But let’s not waste any time on him―”

“How does he disappear into thin air? He pulled that miracle right here.”

“Oh, that.” Laurel looked straight up. So Ellery looked straight up, too. But all he could see was a leafy ceiling where the great oak branched ten yards over his head.

“Mac!” said Laurel sharply. “Show your face.”

To Ellery’s amazement, a large young male face appeared in the middle of the green mass thirty feet from the ground. On the face there was a formidable scowl.

“Laurel, who is this guy?”

“You come down here.”

“Is he a reporter?”

“Heavens, no,” said Laurel disgustedly. “He’s Ellery Queen.”

“Who?”

“Ellery Queen.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I wouldn’t have time.”

“Say. I’ll be right down.”

The face vanished. At once something materialized where it had been and hurtled to the ground, missing Ellery’s nose by inches. It was a rope ladder. A massive male leg broke the green ceiling, then another, then a whole young man, and in a moment the tree man was standing on the ground on the exact spot where the trail of naked footprints ended.

“I’m certainly thrilled to meet you!”

Ellery’s hand was seized and the bones broken before he could cry out. At least, they felt broken. It was a bad day for the Master’s self-respect: he could not decide which had the most powerful hands, Roger Priam, Alfred Wallace, or the awesome brute trying to pulverize him. Delia’s son towered six inches above him, a handsome giant with an impossible spread of shoulder, an unbelievable minimum of waist, the muscular development of Mr. America, the skin of a Hawaiian ― all of which was on view except a negligible area covered by a brown loincloth ― and a grin that made Ellery feel positively aged.

“I thought you were a newshound, Mr. Queen. Can’t stand those guys ― they’ve made my life miserable. But what are we standing here for? Come on up to the house.”

“Some other time, Mac,” said Laurel coldly, taking Ellery’s arm.

“Oh, that murder foolitchness. Why don’t you relax, Laur?”

“I don’t think I’d be exactly welcome at your stepfather’s, Mac,” said Ellery.

“You’ve already had the pleasure? But I meant come up to my house.”

“He really means ‘up,’ Ellery,” sighed Laurel. “All right, let’s get it over with. You wouldn’t believe it secondhand.”

“House? Up?” Feebly Ellery glanced aloft; and to his horror the young giant nodded and sprang up the rope ladder, beckoning them hospitably to follow.

It really was a house, high in the tree. A one-room house, to be sure, and not commodious, but it had four walls and a thatched roof, a sound floor, a beamed ceiling, two windows, and a platform from which the ladder dangled ― this dangerous-looking perch young Macgowan referred to cheerfully as his “porch,” and perfectly safe if you didn’t fall off.

The tree, he explained, was Quercus agrifolia, with a bole circumference of eighteen feet, and “watch those leaves, Mr. Queen, they bite.” Ellery, who was gingerly digging several of the spiny little devils out of his shirt, nodded sourly. But the structure was built on a foundation of foot-thick boughs and seemed solid enough underfoot.

He poked his head indoors at his host’s invitation and gaped like a tourist. Every foot of wall-and floor-space was occupied by ― it was the only phrase Ellery could muster ― aids to tree-living.

“Sorry I can’t entertain you inside,” said the young man, “but three of us would bug it out a bit. We’d better sit on the porch. Anybody like a drink? Bourbon? Scotch?” Without waiting for a reply Macgowan bent double and slithered into his house. Various liquid sounds followed.

“Laurel, why don’t they put the poor kid away?” whispered Ellery.

“You have to have grounds.”

“What do you call this?” cried Ellery. “Sanity?”

“Don’t blame you, Mr. Queen,” said the big fellow amiably, appearing with two chilled glasses. “Appearances are against me. But that’s because you people live in a world of fantasy.” He thrust a long arm into the house and it came out with another glass.

“Fantasy. We.” Ellery gulped a third of the contents of his glass. “You, of course, live in a world of reality?”

“Do we have to?” asked Laurel wearily. “If he gets started on this, Ellery, we’ll be here till sundown. That note―”

“I’m the only realist I know,” said the giant, lying down at the edge of his porch and kicking his powerful legs in space. “Because, look. What are you people doing? Living in the same old houses, reading the same old newspapers, going to the same old movies or looking at the same old television, walking on the same old sidewalks, riding in the same old new cars. That’s a dream world, don’t you realize it? What price business-as-usual? What price, well, sky-writing, Jacques Fath, Double-Crostics, murder? Do you get my point?”

“Can’t say it’s entirely clear, Mac,” said Ellery, swallowing the second third. He realized for the first time that his glass contained bourbon, which he loathed. However.

“We are living,” said young Mr. Macgowan, “in the crisis of the disease commonly called human history. You mess around with your piddling murders while mankind is being set up for the biggest homicide since the Flood. The atom bomb is already fuddy-duddy. Now it’s hydrogen bombs, guaranteed to make the nuclear chain reaction ― or whatever the hell it is ― look like a Fourth of July firecracker. Stuff that can poison all the drinking water on a continent. Nerve gases that paralyze and kill. Germs there’s no protection against. And only God knows what else. They won’t use it? My friend, those words constitute the epitaph of Man. Somebody’ll pull the cork in a place like Yugoslavia or Iran or Korea and, whoosh! that’ll be that.

“It’s all going to go,” said Macgowan, waving his glass at the invisible world below. “Cities uninhabitable. Crop soil poisoned for a hundred years. Domestic animals going wild. Insects multiplying. Balance of nature upset. Ruins and plagues and millions of square miles radioactive and maybe most of the earth’s atmosphere. The roads crack, the lines sag, the machines rust, the libraries mildew, the buzzards fatten, and the forest primeval creeps over Hollywood and Vine, which maybe isn’t such a bad idea. But there you’ll have it. Thirty thousand years of primate development knocked over like a sleeping duck. Civilization atomized and annihilated. Yes, there’ll be some survivors ― I’m going to be one of them. But what are we going to have to do? Why, go back where we came from, brother ― to the trees. That’s logic, isn’t it? So here I am. All ready for it.”

“Now let’s have the note,” said Laurel.

“In a moment.” Ellery polished off the last third, shuddering. “Very logical, Mac, except for one or two items.”

“Such as?” said Crowe Macgowan courteously. “Here, let me give you a refill.”

“No, thanks, not just now. Why, such as these.” Ellery pointed to a network of cables winging from some hidden spot to the roof of Macgowan’s tree house. “For a chap who’s written off thirty thousand years of primate development you don’t seem to mind tapping the main power line for such things as―” he craned, surveying the interior ― “electric lights, a small electric range and refrigerator, and similar primitive devices; not to mention” ― he indicated a maze of pipes ― “running water, a compact little privy connected with ― I assume ― a septic tank buried somewhere below, and so on. These things ― forgive me, Mac ― blow bugs through your logic. The only essential differences between your house and your stepfather’s are that yours is smaller and thirty feet in the air.”

“Just being practical,” shrugged the giant. “It’s my opinion it’ll happen any day now. But I can be wrong ― it may not come till next year. I’m just taking advantage of the civilized comforts while they’re still available. But you’ll notice I have a .22 rifle hanging there, a couple of .45s, and when my ammunition runs out or I can’t rustle any more there’s a bow that’ll bring down any deer that survives the party. I practice daily. And I’m getting pretty good running around these treetops―”

“Which reminds me,” said Laurel. “Use your own trees after this, will you, Mac? I’m no prude, but a girl likes her privacy sometimes. Really, Ellery―”

“Macgowan,” said Ellery, eying their host, “what’s the pitch?”

“Pitch? I’ve just told you.”

“I know what you’ve just told me, and it’s already out the other ear. What character are you playing? And in what script by whom?” Ellery set the glass down and got to his feet. The effect he was trying to achieve was slightly spoiled, as he almost fell off the porch. He jumped to the side of the house, a little green. “I’ve been to Hollywood before.”

“Go ahead and sneer,” said the brown giant without rancor. “I promise to give you a decent burial if I can find the component parts.”

Ellery eyed the wide back for a moment. It was perfectly calm. He shrugged. Every time he came to Hollywood something fantastic happened. This was the screwiest yet. He was well out of it.

But then he remembered that he was still in it.

He put his hand in his pocket.

“Laurel,” he said meaningly, “shall we go?”

“If it’s about that piece of paper I saw you find in Leander’s mattress,” said young Macgowan, “I wouldn’t mind knowing myself what’s in it.”

“It’s all right, Ellery,” said Laurel with an exasperated laugh. “Crowe is a lot more interested in the petty affairs of us dreamers than he lets on. And in a perverted sort of way I trust him. May I please see that note?”

“It isn’t the note you saw your father take from the collar of the dog,” said Ellery, eying Macgowan disapprovingly as he took a sheet of paper from his pocket. “It’s a copy. The original is gone.” The sheet was folded over once. He unfolded it. It was a stiff vellum paper, tinted green-gray, with an embossed green monogram.

“Daddy’s personal stationery.”

“From his night table. Where I also found this bi-colored pencil.” Ellery fished an automatic pencil from his pocket. “The blue lead is snapped. The note starts in blue and ends in red. Evidently the blue ran out halfway through his copying and he finished writing with the red. So the pencil places the copying in his bedroom, too.” Ellery held out the sheet. “Is this your father’s handwriting?”

“Yes.”

“No doubt about it?”

“No.”

In a rather peculiar voice, Ellery said, “All right, Laurel. Read it.”

“But it’s not signed.” Laurel sounded as if she wanted to punch somebody.

“Read it.”

Macgowan knelt behind her, nuzzling her shoulder with his big chin.

Laurel paid no attention to him; she read the note with a set face.

You believed me dead. Killed, murdered. For over a score of years I have looked for you ― for you and for him. And now I have found you. Can you guess my plan? You’ll die. Quickly? No, very slowly. And so pay me back for my long years of searching and dreaming of revenge. Slow dying... unavoidable dying. For you and for him. Slow and sure ― dying in mind and in body. And for each pace forward a warning... a warning of special meaning for you ― and for him. Meanings for pondering and puzzling. Here is warning number one.

Laurel stared at the notepaper.

“That,” said Crowe Macgowan, taking the sheet, “is the unfunniest gag of the century.” He frowned over it.

“Not just that.” Laurel shook her head. “Warning number one. Murder. Revenge. Special meanings... It― it has a long curly mustache on it. Next week Uncle Tom’s Cabin” She looked around with a laugh. “Even in Hollywood.”

“Why’d the old scout take it seriously?” Crowe watched Laurel a little anxiously.

Ellery took the sheet from him and folded it carefully. “Melodrama is a matter of atmosphere and expression. Pick up any Los Angeles newspaper and you’ll find three news stories running serially, any one of which would make this one look like a work by Einstein. But they’re real because they’re couched in everyday terms. What makes this note incredible is not the contents. It’s the wording.”

“The wording?”

“It’s painful. Actually archaic in spots. As if it were composed by someone who wears a ruff, or a tricorn. Someone who speaks a different kind of English. Or writes it. It has a... bouquet, an archive smell. A something that would never have been put into it purely for deception, for instance... like the ransom note writers who deliberately misspell words and mix their tenses to give the impression of illiteracy. And yet ― I don’t know.” Ellery slipped the note into his pocket. “It’s the strangest mixture of genuineness and contrivance. I don’t understand it.”

“Maybe,” suggested the young man, putting his arm carelessly around Laurel’s shoulders, “maybe it’s the work of some psycho foreigner. It reads like somebody translating from another language.”

“Possible.” Ellery sucked his lower lip. Then he shrugged. “Anyway, Laurel, there’s something to go on. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather discuss this―?”

“You mean because it involves Roger?” Laurel laughed again, removing Macgowan’s paw. “Mac isn’t one of Roger’s more ardent admirers, Ellery. It’s all right.”

“What did he do now?” growled Roger Priam’s stepson.

“He said he wasn’t going to be scared by any ‘ghost,’ Mac. Or rather roared it. And here’s a clue to someone from his past and, apparently, Leander Hill’s. ‘For you and for him...’ Laurel, what do you know of your father’s background?”

“Not much. He’d led an adventurous life, I think, but whenever I used to ask him questions about it ― especially when I was little ― he’d laugh, slap me on the bottom, and send me off to Mad’moiselle.”

“What about his family?”

“Family?” said Laurel vaguely.

“Brothers, sisters, uncle, cousins ― family. Where did he come from? Laurel, I’m fishing. We need some facts.”

“I’m no help there. Daddy never talked about himself. I always felt I couldn’t pry. I can’t remember his ever having any contact with relatives. I don’t even know if any exist.”

“When did he and Priam go into business together?”

“It must have been around twenty, twenty-five years ago.”

“Before Delia and he got married,” said Crowe. “Delia ― that’s my mother, Mr. Queen.”

“I know,” said Ellery, a bit stiffly. “Had Priam and Hill known each other well before they started the jewelry business, Macgowan?”

“I don’t know.” The giant put his arm about Laurel’s waist.

“I suppose they did. They must have,” Laurel said in a helpless way, absently removing the arm. “I realize now how little I know about Dad’s past.”

“Or I about Roger’s,” said Crowe, marching two fingers up Laurel’s back. She wriggled and said, “Oh, stop it, Mac.” He got up. “Neither of them ever talked about it.” He went over to the other end of the platform and stretched out again.

“Apparently with reason. Leander Hill and Roger Priam had a common enemy in the old days, someone they thought was dead. He says they tried to put him out of the way, and he’s spent over twenty-years tracking them down.”

Ellery began to walk about, avoiding Crowe Macgowan’s arms.

“Dad tried to murder somebody?” Laurel bit her thumb.

“When you yell bloody murder, Laurel,” said Ellery, “you’ve got to be prepared for a certain echo of nastiness. This kind of murder,” he said, lighting a cigaret and placing it between her lips, “is never nice. It’s usually rooted in pretty mucky soil. Priam means nothing to you, and your father is dead. Do you still want to go through with this? You’re my client, you know, not Mrs. Priam. At her own suggestion.”

“Did Mother come to you?” exclaimed Macgowan.

“Yes, but we’re keeping it confidential.”

“I didn’t know she cared,” muttered the giant.

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.”

“Tough she may be, my Tarzanian friend,” grumbled Ellery, “but this sort of thing is a business, not an endurance contest. It takes know-how and connections and a technique. And experience. None of which Miss Strongheart has.” Lie crushed his cigaret out on the platform vindictively. “Not to mention the personal danger... Well, I’ll root around a little, Laurel. Do some checking back. It shouldn’t be too much of a job to get a line on those two and find out what they were up to in the Twenties. And who got caught in the meat-grinder... You driving me back to the world of fantasy?”

Chapter Five

The next morning Ellery called the Los Angeles Police Department and asked to speak to the officer in charge of the Public Relations Department.

“Sergeant Lordetti.”

“Sergeant, this is Ellery Queen... Yes, how do you do. Sergeant, I’m in town to write a Hollywood novel ― oh, you’ve seen that... no, I can’t make the newspapers believe it and, frankly, I’ve given up trying. Sergeant Lordetti, I need some expert advice for background on my book. Is there anyone in, say, the Hollywood Division who could give me a couple hours of his time? Some trouble-shooter with lots of experience in murder investigation and enough drag in the Department so I could call on him from time to time?... Expose? So you fell for that, too, haha! Me, the son of a cop? No, no, Sergeant, nothing like that, believe me... Who?... K-e-a-t-s. Thanks a lot... Not at all, Sergeant. If you can make a little item out of it, you’re entirely welcome.”

Ellery called-the Hollywood Division on Wilcox below Sunset and asked to speak to Lieutenant Keats. Informed that Lieutenant Keats was on another phone, Ellery left his telephone number with the request that Lieutenant Keats call back as soon as he was free.

Twenty minutes later a car drew up to his house and a big lean man in a comfortable-looking business suit got out and rang the bell, glancing around at Ellery’s pint-sized garden curiously. Hiding behind a drape, Ellery decided he was not a salesman, for he carried nothing and his interest had something amused in it. Possibly a reporter, although he seemed too carefully dressed for that. He might have been a sports announcer or a veteran airline pilot off duty.

“It’s a policeman, Mr. Queen,” reported Mrs. Williams nervously.

“You done something?”

“I’ll keep you out of it, Mrs. Williams. Lieutenant Keats? The service staggers me. I merely left a message for you to phone back.”

“Sergeant Lordetti phoned and told me about it,” said the Hollywood detective, filling the doorway. “Thought I’d take the shortcut. No, thanks, don’t drink when I’m working.”

“Working―? Oh, Mrs. Williams, close the door, will you?... Working, Lieutenant? But I explained to Lordetti―”

“He told me.” Keats placed his hat neatly on the chartreuse chair. “You want expert advice for a mystery novel. Such as what, Mr. Queen? How a homicide is reported in Los Angeles? That was for the benefit of the Mirror and News. What’s really on your mind?”

Ellery stared. Then they both grinned, shook hands, and sat down like old friends.

Keats was a sandy-haired man of thirty-eight or forty with clear, rather distant gray eyes below reddish brows. His hands were big and well-kept, with a reliable look to them; there was a gold band o*i the fourth finger of the left. His eyes were intelligent and his jaw had been developed by adversity. His manner was slightly standoffish. A smart cop, Ellery decided, and a rugged one.

“Let me light that for you, Lieutenant.”

“The nail?” Keats laughed, taking a shredded cigaret from between his lips. It was unlit. “I’m a dry smoker, Mr. Queen. Given up smoking.” He put the ruin on an ashtray and fingered a fresh cigaret, settling back. “Some case you’re interested in? Something you don’t want to get around?”

“It came my way yesterday morning. Do you know anything about the death of a wholesale jeweler named Leander Hill?”

“So she got to you.” Keats lipped the unlit cigaret. “It passed through our Division. The girl made a pest of herself. Something about a dead dog and a note that scared her father to death. But no note. An awfully fancy yarn. More in your line than ours.”

Ellery handed Keats the sheet of Leander Hill’s stationery.

Keats read it slowly. Then he examined the notepaper, front and back.

“That’s Hill’s handwriting, by the way. Obviously a copy he made. I found it in a slit in his mattress.”

“Where’s the original of this, Mr. Queen?”

“Probably destroyed.”

“Even if this were the McCoy.” Keats put the sheet down. “There’s nothing here that legally connects Hill’s death with a murder plot. Of course, the revenge business...”

“I know, Lieutenant. It’s the kind of case that gives you fellows a hard ache. Every indication of a psycho, and a possible victim who won’t co-operate.”

“Who’s that?”

“The ‘him’ of the note.” Ellery told Keats about Roger Priam’s mysterious box, and of what Priam had let slip during Ellery’s visit. “There’s something more than a gangrenous imagination behind this, Lieutenant. Even though no one’s going to get anywhere with Priam, still... it ought to be looked into, don’t you agree?” The detective pulled at his unlit cigaret.

“I’m not sure I want any part of it myself,” Ellery said, glancing at his typewriter and thinking of Delia Priam. “I’d like a little more to go on before I commit myself. It seemed to me that if we could find something in Hill’s past, and Priam’s, that takes this note out of the ordinary crackpot class...”

“On the q.t.?”

“Yes. Could you swing it?”

For a moment Keats did not reply. He picked up the note and read it over again.

“I’d like to have this.”

“Of course. But I want it back.”

“I’ll have it photostated. Tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Queen.” Lieutenant Keats rose. “I’ll talk to the Chief and if he thinks it’s worth my time, I’ll see what I can dig up.”

“Oh, Keats.”

“Yes, sir?”

“While you’re digging... Do a little spadework on a man who calls himself Alfred Wallace. Roger Priam’s secretary-general.”

Delia Priam phoned that afternoon. “I’m surprised you’re in.”

“Where did you think I’d be, Mrs. Priam?” The moment he heard her throaty purr his blood began stewing. Damn her, she was like the first cocktail after a hard day.

“Out detecting, or whatever it is detectives do.”

“I haven’t taken the case.” He was careful to keep his voice good-humored. “I haven’t made up my mind.”

“You’re angry with me about yesterday.”

“Angry? Mrs. Priam!”

“Sorry. I thought you were.” Oh, were you? “I’m afraid I’m allergic to messes. I usually take the line of least resistance.”

“In everything?”

“Give me an example.” Her laugh was soft.

He wanted to say, I’d be glad to specify if you’d drop in on me, say, this afternoon. Instead, he said innocuously, “Who’s questioning whom?”

“You’re such a careful man, Mr. Queen.”

“Well, I haven’t taken the case ― yet, Mrs. Priam.”

“Do you suppose I could help you make up your mind?” There’s the nibble. Reel ‘er in...

“You know, Mrs. Priam, that might be a perilous offer... Mrs. Priam?... Hello!”

She said in a low voice, quickly, “I must stop,” and the line went dead.

Ellery hung up perspiring. He was so annoyed with himself that he went upstairs and took a shower.

Laurel Hill dropped in on him twice in the next twenty-four hours. The first time she was “just passing by” and thought she would report that nothing was happening, nothing at all. Priam wouldn’t see her and as far as she could tell he was being his old bullying, beastly self. Delia had tried to pump her about Ellery and what he was doing, and as a matter of fact she couldn’t help wondering herself if...

Ellery’s glance kept going to his typewriter and after a few moments Laurel left abruptly.

She was back the next morning, recklessly hostile.

“Are you taking this case, or aren’t you?”

“I don’t know, Laurel.”

“I’ve talked to my lawyers. The estate isn’t settled, but I can get the money together to give you a retainer of five thousand dollars.”

“It isn’t the money, Laurel.”

“If you don’t want to bother, say so and I’ll get someone else.”

“That’s always the alternative, of course.”

“But you’re just sitting here!”

“I’m making a few preliminary inquiries,” he said patiently.

“From this ― this ivory tower?”

“Stucco. What I’ll do, Laurel, depends entirely on what I find out.”

“You’ve sold out to Delia, that’s what you’ve done,” Laurel cried. “She doesn’t really want this investigated at all. She only followed me the other day to see what I was up to ― the rest was malarkey! She wants Roger murdered! And that’s all right with me, you understand ― all I’m interested in is the case of Leander Hill. But if Delia’s standing in the way―”

“You’re being nineteen, Laurel.” He tried not to let his anger show.

“I’ll admit I can’t offer you what she can―”

“Delia Priam hasn’t offered me a thing, Laurel. We haven’t even discussed my fee.”

“And I don’t mean money!” She was close to tears.

“Now you’re hysterical.” His voice came out sharp, not what he had intended at all. “Have a little patience, Laurel. Right now there’s nothing to do but wait.”

She strode out.

The next morning Ellery spread his newspaper behind a late breakfast tray to find Roger Priam, Leander Hill, and Crowe Macgowan glaring back at him. Mac was glaring from a tree.

$$$aire Denies Murder Threat;

Says Partner Not Slain

Denying that he has received a threat against his life, Roger Priam, wealthy wholesale gem merchant of L.A., barred himself behind the doors of his secluded home above Hollywood Bowl this morning when reporters investigated a tip that he is the intended victim of a murder plot which allegedly took the life of his business partner, Leander Hill, last week...

Mr. Priam, it appeared, after ousting reporters had issued a brief statement through his secretary, Alfred Wallace, repeating his denial and adding that the cause of Hill’s death was “a matter of official record.”

Detectives at the Hollywood Division of the L.A.P.D. admitted this morning that Hill’s daughter, Laurel, had charged her father was “frightened to death,” but said that they had found no evidence to support the charge, which they termed “fantastic.” Miss Hill, interviewed at her home adjoining the Priam property, said: “If Roger Priam wants to bury his head in the sand, it’s his head.” She intimated that she “had reason to believe” both her father and Priam were slated to be murdered “by some enemy out of their past.”

The story concluded with the reminder that “Mr. Priam is the stepfather of twenty-three year old Crowe Macgowan, the Atomic Age Tree Boy, who broke into print in a big way recently by taking off his clothes and bedding down in a tree house on his stepfather’s estate in preparation for the end of the world.”

Observing to himself that Los Angeles journalism was continuing to maintain its usual standards, Ellery went to the phone and called the Hill home.

“Laurel? I didn’t expect you’d be answering the phone in person this morning.”

“I’ve got nothing to hide.” Laurel laid the slightest stress on her pronoun. Also, she was cold, very cold.

“One question. Did you tip off the papers about Priam?”

“No.”

“Cross your heart and―?”

“I said no!” There was a definite snic―!

It was puzzling, and Ellery puzzled over it all through breakfast, which Mrs. Williams with obvious disapproval persisted in calling lunch. He was just putting down his second cup of coffee when Keats walked in with a paper in his pocket.

“I was hoping you’d drop around,” said Ellery, as Mrs. Williams set another place. “Thanks, Mrs. W, I’ll do the rest... Not knowing exactly what is leaking where, Keats, I decided not to risk a phone call. So far I’ve been kept out of it.”

“Then you didn’t feed the kitty?” asked Keats. “Thanks. No cream or sugar.”

“Of course not. I was wondering if it was you.”

“Not me. Must have been the Hill girl.”

“Not she. I’ve asked her.”

“Funny.”

“Very. How was the tip tipped?”

“By phone call to the city room. Disguised voice, and they couldn’t trace it.”

“Male or female?”

“They said male, but they admitted it was pitched in a queer way and might have been female. With all the actors floating around this town you never know.” Keats automatically struck a match, but then he shook his head and put it out. “You know, Mr. Queen,” he said, scowling at his cigaret, “if there’s anything to this thing, that tip might have come... I know it sounds screwy...”

“From the writer of the note? I’ve been dandling that notion myself, Lieutenant.”

“Pressure, say.”

“In the war on Priam’s nerves.”

“If he’s got an iron nerve himself.” Keats rose. “Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Anything yet on Hill and Priam?”

“Not yet.” Keats slowly crumpled his cigaret. “It might be a toughie, Mr. Queen. So far I haven’t got to first base.”

“What’s holding you up?”

“I don’t know yet. Give me another few days.”

“What about Wallace?”

“I’ll let you know.”

Late that afternoon ― it was the twenty-first, the day after the Shriners parade ― Ellery looked around from his typewriter to see the creamy nose of Delia Priam’s convertible in profile against his front window.

He deliberately forced himself to wait until Mrs. Williams answered the door.

As he ran his hand over his hair, Mrs. Williams said: “It’s a naked man. You in?”

Macgowan was alone. He was in his Tree Boy costume ― one loin-cloth, flame-colored this time. He shook Ellery’s hand limply and accepted a Scotch on the Rocks, settling himself on the sofa with his bare heels on the sill of the picture window. “I thought I recognized the car,” said Ellery. “It’s my mother’s. Mine was out of gas. Am I inconvenient?” The giant glanced at the typewriter. “How do you knock that stuff out? But I had to see you.” He seemed uneasy. “What about, Mac?”

“Well... I thought maybe the reason you hadn’t made up your mind to take the case was that there wasn’t enough money in it for you.”

“Did you?”

“Look. Maybe I could put enough more in the pot to make it worth your while.”

“You mean you want to hire me, too, Mac?”

“That’s it.” He seemed relieved that it was out. “I got to thinking... that note, and then whatever it was Roger got in that box the morning old man Hill got the dead dog... I mean, maybe there’s something in it after all, Mr. Queen.”

“Suppose there is.” Ellery studied him with curiosity. “Why are you interested enough to want to put money into an investigation?”

“Roger’s my mother’s husband, isn’t he?”

“Touching, Mac. When did you two fall in love?”

Young Macgowan’s brown skin turned mahogany. “I mean... It’s true Roger and I never got along. He’s always tried to dominate me as well as everybody else. But he means well, and―”

“And that’s why,” smiled Ellery, “you call yourself Crowe Macgowan instead of Crowe Priam.”

Crowe laughed. “Okay, I detest his lazy colon. We’ve always fought like a couple of wild dogs. When Delia married him he wouldn’t adopt me legally; the idea was to keep me dependent on him. I was a kid, and it made me hate him. So I kept my father’s name and I refused to take any money from Roger. I wasn’t altogether a hero ― I had a small income from a trust fund my father left for me. You can imagine how that set with Mr. Priam.” He laughed again. But then he finished lamely, “The last few years I’ve grown up, I guess. I tolerate him for Mother’s sake. That’s it,” he added, brightening, “Mother’s sake. That’s why I’d like to get to the bottom of this. You see, Mr. Queen?”

“Your mother loves Priam?”

“She’s married to him, isn’t she?”

“Come off it, Mac. I intimated to you myself the other day, in your tree, that your mother had already offered to engage my services. Not to mention Laurel. What’s this all about?”

Macgowan got up angrily. “What difference does my reason make? It’s an honest offer. All I want is this damned business cleaned up. Name your fee and get going on it!”

“As they say in the textbooks, Mac,” said Ellery, “I’ll leave you know. It’s the best I can do.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Warning number two. If this business is on the level, Mac, there will be a warning number two, and I can’t do a thing till it comes. With Priam being pigheaded, you and your mother can be most useful by simply keeping your eyes open. I’ll decide then.”

“What do we watch for,” sneered the young man, “another mysterious box?”

“I’ve no idea. But whatever it turns out to be ― and it may not be a thing, Mac, but an event ― whatever happens out of the ordinary, no matter how silly or trivial it may seem to you ― let me know about it right away. You,” and Ellery added, as if in afterthought, “or your mother.”

The phone was ringing. He opened his eyes, conscious that it had been ringing for some time.

He switched on the light, blinking at his wristwatch.

4:35. He hadn’t got to bed until 1130.

“Hello?” he mumbled.

“Mr. Queen―”

Delia Priam.

“Yes?” He had never felt so wakeful.

“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.”

“I’m told he’s fond of spicy fish.”

“I’m fond of spicy blondes, Mr. Queen,” snapped Dr. Voluta, “but I keep my appetite within bounds.”

“I thought you said there’s something wrong with the tuna.”

“Certainly there’s something wrong with it. I tasted it myself. But that’s not the point. The point is that if he’d followed my orders he wouldn’t have eaten any in the first place.”

They were in the butler’s pantry, and Dr. Voluta was looking irritably about for something to cover a plastic dish into which he had dumped the remains of the tuna.

“Then it’s your opinion, Doctor―?”

“I’ve given you my opinion. The can of tuna was spoiled. Didn’t you ever hear of spoiled canned goods, Mr. Queen?” He opened his medical bag, grabbed a surgical glove, and stretched it over the top of the dish.

“I’ve examined the empty tin, Dr. Voluta.” Ellery had fished it out of the tin can container, thankful that in Los Angeles you had to keep cans separate from garbage. “I see no sign of a bulge, do you?”

“You’re just assuming that’s the tin it came from,” the doctor said disagreeably. “How do you know?”

“The cook told me. It’s the only tuna she opened today. She opened it just before she went to bed. And I found the tin at the top of the waste can.”

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.

He could, of course, get rid of the doctor and go upstairs and knock on her door. There was always a question or two to be asked in a case like this.

He wondered what she would do.

And how she looked at six in the morning.

He played with this thought for some time.

“Ordinarily,” said the doctor, turning and reaching for a towel, “I’d have told you to go to hell. But a doctor with a respectable practice has to be cagey in this town, Mr. Queen, and Laurel started something when she began to talk about murder at Leander Hill’s death. I know your type. Publicity-happy.” He flung the towel at the bowl, picked up the vial and the plastic dish, holding them firmly. “You don’t have to watch me, Mr. Queen. I’m not going to switch containers on you. Where the devil is that detective? I haven’t had any sleep at all tonight.”

“Did anyone ever tell you, Doctor,” said Ellery through his teeth, “that you look like Charles Laughton in The Beachcomber?”

They glared at each other until a car drew up outside and Keats hurried in.

At four o’clock that afternoon Ellery pulled his rented Kaiser up before the Priam house to find Keats’s car already there. The maid with the tic, which was in an active state, showed him into the living room. Keats was standing before the fieldstone fireplace, tapping his teeth with the edge of a sheet of paper. Laurel Hill, Crowe Macgowan, and Delia Priam were seated before him in a student attitude. Their heads swiveled as Ellery came in, and it seemed to him that Laurel was coldly expectant, young Macgowan uneasy, and Delia frightened.

“Sorry, Lieutenant. I had to stop for gas. Is that the lab report?” Keats handed him the paper. Their eyes followed. When Ellery handed the paper back, their eyes went with it.

“Maybe you’d better line it up for these folks, Mr. Queen,” said the detective. “I’ll take it from there.”

“When I got here about five this morning,” nodded Ellery, “Dr. Voluta was sure it was food poisoning. The facts were these: Against Voluta’s medical advice, Mr. Priam invariably has something to eat before going to sleep. This habit of his seems to be a matter of common knowledge. Since he doesn’t sleep too well, he tends to go to bed at a late hour. The cook, Mrs. Guittierez, is on the other hand accustomed to retiring early. Consequently, Mr. Priam usually tells Mr. Wallace what he expects to feel like having around midnight, and Mr. Wallace usually transmits this information to the cook before she goes to bed. Mrs. Guittierez then prepares the snack as ordered, puts it into the refrigerator, and retires.

“Last night the order came through for tuna fish, to which Mr. Priam is partial. Mrs. Guittierez got a can of tuna from the pantry ― one of the leading brands, by the way ― opened it, prepared the contents as Mr. Priam likes it ― with minced onion, sweet green pepper, celery, lots of mayonnaise, the juice of half a freshly squeezed lemon, freshly ground pepper and a little salt, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, a half-teaspoon of dried mustard, and a pinch of oregano and powdered thyme ― and placed the bowl, covered, in the refrigerator. She then cleaned up and went to bed. Mrs. Guittierez left the kitchen at about twenty minutes of ten, leaving a night light burning.

“At about ten minutes after midnight,” continued Ellery, speaking to the oil painting of the Spanish grandee above the fireplace so that he would not be disturbed by a certain pair of eyes, “Alfred Wallace was sent by Roger Priam for the snack. Wallace removed the bowl of tuna salad from the refrigerator, placed it on a tray with some caraway-seed rye bread, sweet butter, and a sealed bottle of milk, and carried the tray to Mr. Priam’s study. Priam ate heartily, although he did not finish the contents of the tray. Wallace then prepared him for bed, turned out the lights, and took what remained on the tray back to the kitchen. He left the tray there as it was, and himself went upstairs to his room.

“At about three o’clock this morning Wallace was awakened by the buzzer of the intercom from Mr. Priam’s room. It was Priam, in agony. Wallace ran downstairs and found him violently sick. Wallace immediately phoned Dr. Voluta, ran upstairs and awakened Mrs. Priam, and the two of them did what they could until Dr. Voluta’s arrival, which was a very few minutes later.”

Macgowan said irritably, “Damned if I can see why you tell us―”

Delia Priam put her hand on her son’s arm and he stopped.

“Go on, Mr. Queen,” she said in a low voice. When she talked, everything in a man tightened up. He wondered if she quite realized the quality and range of her power.

“On my arrival I found the tray in the kitchen, where Wallace said he had left it. When I had the facts I phoned Lieutenant Keats. While waiting for him I got together everything that had been used in the preparation of the midnight meal ― the spices, the empty tuna tin, even the shell of the lemon, as well as the things on the tray. There was a quantity of the salad, some rye bread, some of the butter, some of the milk. Meanwhile Dr. Voluta preserved what he could of the regurgitated matter. When Lieutenant Keats arrived, we turned everything over to him.”

Ellery stopped and lit a cigaret.

Keats said: “I took it all down to the Crime Laboratory and the report just came through.” He glanced at the paper. “I won’t bother you with the detailed report. Just give you the highlights.

“Chemical analysis of the regurgitated matter from Mr. Priam’s stomach brought out the presence of arsenic.

“Everything is given a clean bill ― spices, tuna tin, lemon, bread, butter, milk ― everything, that is, but the tuna salad itself.

“Arsenic of the same type was found in the remains of the tuna salad.

“Dr. Voluta was wrong,” said Keats. “This is not a case of ptomaine poisoning caused by spoiled fish. It’s a case of arsenical poisoning caused by the introduction of arsenic into the salad. The cook put the salad in the refrigerator about 9:40 last night. Mr. Wallace came and took it to Mr. Priam around ten minutes after midnight. During that period the kitchen was empty, with only a dim light burning. During those two and a half hours someone sneaked into the kitchen and poisoned the salad.”

“There can’t have been any mistake,” added Ellery. “There is a bowl of something for Mr. Priam in the refrigerator every night. It’s a special bowl, used only for his snacks. It’s even more easily identified than that ― it has the name Roger in gilt lettering on it, a gift to Roger Priam from Alfred Wallace last Christmas.”

“The question is,” concluded Keats, “who tried to poison Mr. Priam.”

He looked at the three in a friendly way.

Delia Priam, rising suddenly, murmured, “It’s so incredible,” and put a handkerchief to her nose.

Laurel smiled at the older woman’s back. “That’s the way it’s seemed to me, darling,” she said, “ever since Daddy’s death.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Laur,” snapped Delia’s son, “don’t keep smiling like Lady Macbeth, or Cassandra, or whoever it was. The last thing in the world Mother and I want is a mess.”

“Nobody’s accusing you, Mac,” said Laurel. “My only point is that now maybe you’ll believe I wasn’t talking through clouds of opium.”

“All right!” Delia turned to Keats. Ellery saw Keats look her over uncomfortably, but with that avidity for detail which cannot be disciplined in the case of certain women. She was superb today, all in white, with a large wooden crucifix on a silver chain girdling her waist. No slit in this skirt; long sleeves; and the dress came up high to the neck. But her back was bare to the waist. Some Hollywood designer’s idea of personalized fashion; didn’t she realize how shocking it was? But then women, even the most respectable, have the wickedest innocence in this sort of thing, mused Ellery; it really wasn’t fair to a hardworking police officer who wore a gold band on the fourth finger of his left hand. “Lieutenant, do the police have to come into this?” she asked.

“Ordinarily, Mrs. Priam, I could answer a question like that right off the bat.” Keats’s eyes shifted; he put an unlit cigaret between his lips and rolled it nervously to the corner of his mouth. A note of stubbornness crept into his voice. “But this is something I’ve never run into before. Your husband refuses to co-operate. He won’t even discuss it with me. All he said was that he won’t be caught that way again, that he could take care of himself, and that I was to pick up my hat on the way out.”

Delia went to a window. Studying her back, Ellery thought that she was relieved and pleased. Keats should have kept her on a hook; he’d have to have a little skull session with Keats on the best way to handle Mrs. Priam. But that back was disturbing.

“Tell me, Mrs. Priam, is he nuts?”

“Sometimes, Lieutenant,” murmured Delia without turning, “I wonder.”

“I’d like to add,” said Keats abruptly, “that Joe Dokes and his Ethiopian brother could have dosed that tuna. The kitchen back door wasn’t locked. There’s gravel back there, and woods beyond. It would have been a cinch for anyone who’d cased the household and found out about the midnight snack routine. There seems to be a tie-up with somebody from Mr. Priam’s and Mr. Hill’s past ― somebody who’s had it in for both of them for a long time. I’m not overlooking that. But I’m not overlooking the possibility that that’s a lot of soda pop, too. It could be a cover-up. In fact, I think it is. I don’t go for this revenge-and-slow-death business. I just wanted everybody to know that. Okay, Mr. Queen, I’m through.”

He kept looking at her back.

Brother, thought Ellery with compassion.

And he said, “You may be right, Keats, but I’d like to point out a curious fact that appears in this lab report. The quantity of arsenic apparently used, says the report, was ‘not sufficient to cause death.’ ”

“A mistake,” said the detective. “It happens all the time. Either they use way too much or way too little.”

“Not all the time, Lieutenant. And from what’s happened so far, I don’t see this character ― whoever he is ― as the impulsive, emotional type of killer. If this is all tied up, it has a pretty careful and coldblooded brain behind it. The kind of criminal brain that doesn’t make simple mistakes like underdosing. ‘Not sufficient to cause death’... that was deliberate.”

“But why?” howled young Macgowan.

“ ‘Slow dying,’ Mac!” said Laurel triumphantly. “Remember?”

“Yes, it connects with the note to Hill,” said Ellery in a glum tone. “Nonlethal dose. Enough to make Priam very sick, but not fatally. ‘Slow and sure... For each pace forward a warning.’ The poisoning attack is a warning to Roger Priam to follow up whatever was in the box he received the morning Hill got the dead dog. Priam’s warning number one ― unknown. Warning number two ― poisoned tuna. Lovely problem.”

“I don’t admire your taste in problems,” said Crowe Macgowan. “What’s it mean? All this ― this stuff?”

“It means, Mac, that I’m forced to accept your assignment,” replied Ellery. “And yours, Laurel, and yours, Delia. I shouldn’t take the time, but what else can I do?”

Delia Priam came to him and took his hands and looked into his eyes and said, with simplicity, “Thank you, Ellery. It’s such a... relief knowing it’s going to be handled... by you.”

She squeezed, ever so little. It was all impersonally friendly on her part; he felt that. It had to be, with her own son present. But he wished he could control his sweat glands.

Keats lipped his unlit cigaret.

Macgowan looked down at them, interested.

Laurel said, “Then we’re all nicely set,” in a perfectly flat voice, and she walked out.

Chapter Six

The night was chilly, and Laurel walked briskly along the path, the beam of her flashlight bobbing before her. Her legs were bare under the long suede coat and they felt goose-pimply.

When she came to the great oak she stabbed at the green ceiling with her light.

“Mac. You awake?”

Macgowan’s big face appeared in her beam.

“Laurel?” he said incredulously.

“It’s not Esther Williams.”

“Are you crazy, walking alone in these woods at night?” The rope ladder hurtled to her feet. “What do you want to be, a sex murder in tomorrow’s paper?”

“You’d be the natural suspect.” Laurel began to climb, her light streaking about the clearing.

“Wait, will you! I’ll put on the flood.” Macgowan disappeared. A moment later the glade was bright as a studio set. “That’s why I’m nervous,” he grinned, reappearing. His long arm yanked her to the platform. “Boy, is this cosy. Come on in.”

“Turn off the flood, Mac. I’d like some privacy.”

“Sure!” He was back in a moment, lifting her off her feet. She let him carry her into his tree house and deposit her on the roll away bed, which was made up for the night. “Wait till I turn the radio off.” When he straightened up his head barely missed the ceiling. “ And the light.-

“Leave the light.”

“Okay, okay. Aren’t you cold, baby?”

“That’s the only thing you haven’t provided for, Mac. The California nights.”

“Didn’t you know I carry my own central heating? Shove over.”

“Sit down, Mac.”

“Huh?”

“On the floor. I want to talk to you.”

“Didn’t you ever hear of the language of the eyes and so forth?”

“Tonight it has to come out here.” Laurel leaned back on her arms, smiling at him. He was beginning to glower. But then he folded up at her feet and put his head on her knees. Laurel moved him, drew her coat over her legs, and replaced his head.

“All right, then, let it out!”

“Mac,” said Laurel, “why did you hire Ellery Queen?”

He sat still for a moment. Then he reached over to a shelf, got a cigaret, lit it, and leaned back.

“That’s a hell of a question to ask a red-blooded man in a tree house at twelve o’clock at night.”

“Just the same, answer it.”

“What difference does it make? You hired him, Delia hired him, everybody was doing it, so I did it too. Let’s talk about something else. If we’ve got to talk.”

“Sorry. That’s my subject for tonight.”

He encircled his mammoth legs, scowling through the smoke at his bare feet. “Laurel, how long have we known each other?”

“Since we were kids.” She was surprised.

“Grew up together, didn’t we?”

“We certainly did.”

“Have I ever done anything out of line?”

“No,” Laurel laughed softly, “but it’s not because you haven’t tried.”

“Why, you little squirt, I could break you in two and stuff both halves in my pants pocket. Don’t you know I’ve been in love with you ever since I found out where babies come from?”

“Why, Mac,” murmured Laurel. “You’ve never said that to me before. Used that word, I mean.”

“Well, I’ve used it,” he growled. “Now let me hear your side of it.”

“Say it again, Mac?”

“Love! I love you!”

“In that tone of voice?”

She found herself off the bed and on the floor, in his arms. “Damn you,” he whispered, “I love you.”

She stared up at him. “Mac―”

“I love you...”

“Mac, let go of me!” She wriggled out of his arms and jumped to her feet. “I suppose,” she cried, “that’s the reason you hired him! Because you love me, or― or something like that. Mac, what’s the reason? I’ve got to know!”

“Is that all you have to say to a guy who tells you he loves you?”

“The reason, Mac.”

Young Macgowan rolled over on his back and belched smoke. Out of the reek his voice mumbled something ineffectual. Then it stopped. When the smoke cleared, he was lying there with his eyes shut.

“You won’t tell me.”

“Laur, I can’t. It’s got... nothing to do with anything. Just some cockeyed thing of my own.”

Laurel seated herself on the bed again. He was very long, and broad, and brown and muscular and healthy-looking. She took a Dunhill from her coat pocket and lit it with shaky fingers. But when she spoke, she sounded calm. “There are too many mysteries around here, Chesty. I know there’s one about you, and where you’re concerned...”

His eyes opened.

“No, Mac, stay there. I’m not entirely a fool. There’s something behind this tree house and all this learned bratwurst about the end of civilization, and it’s not the hydrogen bomb. Are you just lazy? Or is it a new thrill for some of your studio girls ― the ones who want life with a little extra something they can’t get in a motel?” He flushed, but his mouth continued sullen. “All right, we’ll let that go. Now about this love business.”

She put her hand in his curly hair, gripping. He looked up at her thoroughly startled. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

“That’s for thanks. You’re such a beautiful man, Mac... you see, a girl has her secrets, too― No! Mac, no. If we ever get together, it’s got to be in a clean house. On the ground. Anyway, I have no time for love now.”

“No time!”

“Darling, something’s happening, and it’s ugly. There’s never been any ugliness in my life before... that I can remember, that is. And he was so wonderful to me. The only way I can pay him back is by finding whoever murdered him and seeing him die. How stupid does that sound? And maybe I’m kind of bloodthirsty myself. But it’s all in the world I’m interested in right now. If the law gets him, fine. But if...”

“For God’s sake!” Crowe scrambled to his feet, his face bilious. A short-nosed little automatic had materialized in Laurel’s hand and it was pointing absently at his navel.

“If they don’t, I’ll find him myself. And when I do, Mac, I’ll shoot him as dead as that dog. If they send me to the gas chamber for it.”

“Laurel, put that blamed thing back in your pocket!”

“No matter who it is.” Her green, brown-flecked eyes were bright.

The gun did not move. “Even if it turned out to be you, Mac. Even if we were married ― had a baby. If I found out it was you, Mac, I’d kill you, too.”

“And I thought Roger was tough.” Macgowan stared at her. “Well, if you find out it was me, it’ll serve me right. But until you do―”

Laurel cried out. The gun was in his hand. He turned it over curiously.

“Nasty little beanshooter. Until you do, Red, don’t let anybody take this away from you,” and he dropped it politely into her pocket, picked her up, and sat down on the bed with her.

A little later Laurel was saying faintly, “Mac, I didn’t come here for this.”

“Surprise.”

“Mac, what do you think of Ellery Queen?”

“I think he’s got a case on Ma,” said the giant. “Do we have to talk?”

“How acute of you. I think he has, too. But that’s not what I meant. I meant professionally.”

“Oh, he’s a nice enough guy...”

“Mac!”

“Okay, okay.” He got u.p sullenly, dumping her. “If he’s half as good as his rep―”

“That’s just it. Is he?”

“Is he what? What are we talking about?” He poured himself a drink.

“Is he even half as good?”

“How should I know? You want one?”

“No. I’ve dropped in on him twice and phoned him I don’t know how many times in the past couple of days, and he’s always there. Sitting in his crow’s nest, smoking and scanning the horizon.”

“Land ho. It’s a way of life, Laurel.” Macgowan tossed it off and made a face. “That’s the way these big-shot dicks work sometimes. It’s all up here.”

“Well, I’d like to see a little activity on the other end.” Laurel jumped up suddenly. “Mac, I can’t stand this doing nothing. How about you and me taking a crack at it? On our own?”

“Taking a crack at what?”

“At what he ought to be doing.”

“Detecting?” The big fellow was incredulous.

“I don’t care what you call it. Hunting for facts, if that sounds less movie-ish. Anything that will get somewhere.”

“Red Hill, Lady Dick, and Her Muscle Man,” said young Macgowan, touching the ceiling with both hands. “You know? It appeals to me.”

Laurel looked up at him coldly. “I’m not gagging, Mac.”

“Who’s gagging? Your brain, my sinews―”

“Never mind. Good night.”

“Hey!” His big hand caught her in the doorway. “Don’t be so half-cocky. I’m really going birdy up here, Laurel. It’s tough squatting in this tree waiting for the big boom. How would you go about it?”

She looked at him for a long time. “Mac, don’t try to pull anything cute on me.”

“My gosh, what would I pull on you!”

“This isn’t a game, like your apeman stunt. We’re not going to have any code words in Turkish or wear disguises or meet in mysterious bistros. It’s going to be a lot of footwork and maybe nothing but blisters to show for it. If you understand that and still want to come in, all right. Anything else, I go it solo.”

“I hope you’ll put a skirt on, or at least long pants,” the giant said morosely. “Where do we start?”

“We should have started on that dead dog. Long ago. Where it came from, who owned it, how it died, and all that. But now that’s as cold as I am... I’d say, Mac,” said Laurel, leaning against the jamb with her hands in her pockets, “the arsenic. That’s fresh, and it’s something to go on. Somebody got into the kitchen over there and mixed arsenic in with Roger’s tuna. Arsenic can’t be too easy to get hold of. It must leave a trail of some sort.”

“I never thought of that. How the dickens would you go about tracing it?”

“I’ve got some ideas. But there’s one thing we ought to do before that. The tuna was poisoned in the house. So that’s the place to start looking.”

“Let’s go.” Macgowan reached for a dark blue sweater.

“Now?” Laurel sounded slightly dismayed.

“Know a better time?”

Mrs. Williams came in and stumbled over a chair. “Mr. Queen? You in here?”

“Present.”

“Then why don’t you put on a light?” She found the switch. Ellery was bunched in a corner of the sofa, feet on the picture window, looking at Hollywood. It looked like a fireworks display, popping lights in all colors. “Your dinner’s cold.”

“Leave it on the kitchen table, Mrs. Williams. You go on home.”

She sniffed. “It’s that Miss Hill and the naked man, only he’s got clothes on this evening.”

“Why didn’t you say so!” Ellery sprang from the sofa. “Laurel, Mac! Come in.”

They were smiling, but Ellery thought they both looked a little peaked. Crowe Macgowan was in a respectable suit; he even wore a tie.

“Well, well, still communing with mysterious thoughts, eh, Queen? We’re not interrupting anything momentous?”

“As far as I can see,” said Laurel, “he hasn’t moved from one spot in sixty hours. Ellery,” she said abruptly, “we have some news for you.”

“News? For me?”

“We’ve found out something.”

“I wondered why Mac was dressed,” said Ellery. “Here, sit down and tell me all about it. You two been on the trail?”

“There’s nothing to this detective racket,” said the giant, stretching his legs. “You twerps have been getting away with mayhem. Tell him, Red.”

“We decided to do a little detecting on our own―”

“That sounds to me,” murmured Ellery, “like the remark of a dissatisfied client.”

“That’s what it is.” Laurel strode around smoking a cigaret. “We’d better have an understanding, Ellery. I hired you to find a killer. I didn’t expect you to produce him in twenty-four hours necessarily, but I did expect something ― some sign of interest, maybe even a twitch or two of activity. But what have you done? You’ve sat here and smoked!”

“Not a bad system, Laurel,” said Ellery, reaching for a pipe. ‘I’ve worked that way for years.”

“Well, I don’t care for it!”

“Am I fired?”

“I didn’t say that―”

“I think all the lady wants to do,” said young Macgowan, “is give you a jab, Queen. She doesn’t think thinking is a substitute for footwork.”

“Each has its place,” Ellery said amiably ― “sit down, Laurel, won’t you? Each has its place, and thinking’s place can be very important. I’m not altogether ignorant of what’s been going on, seated though I’ve remained. Let’s see if I can’t― er― think this out for you...” He closed his eyes. “I would say,” he said after a moment, “that you two have been tracking down the arsenic with which Priam’s tuna was poisoned.” He opened his eyes. “Is that right so far?”

“That’s right,” cried Macgowan.

Laurel glared. “How did you know?”

Ellery tapped his forehead. “Never sell cerebration short. Now! What exactly have you accomplished? I look into my mental ball and I see... you and Mac... discovering a... can of... a can of rat poison in the Priam cellar.” They were open-mouthed. “Yes. Rat poison. And you found that this particular rat poison contains arsenic... arsenic, the poison which was also found in Priam’s salad. How’m I doin’?”

Laurel said feebly, “But I can’t imagine how you...”

Ellery had gone to the blondewood desk near the window and pulled a drawer open. Now he took out a card and glanced over it. “Yes. You traced the purchase of that poison, which bears the brand name of D-e-t-h hyphen o-n hyphen R-a-t-z. You discovered that this revoltingly named substance was purchased on May the thirteenth of this year at... let me see... at Kepler’s Pharmacy at 1723 North Highland.”

Laurel looked at Macgowan. He was grinning. She glared at him and then back at Ellery.

“You questioned either Mr. Kepler himself,” Ellery went on, “or his clerk, Mr. Candy ― unfortunately my crystal ball went blank at this point. But one of them told you that the can of Deth-on-Ratz was bought by a tall, handsome man whom he identified ― probably from a set of snapshots you had with you ― as Alfred Wallace. Correct, Laurel?”

Laurel said tightly, “How did you find out?”

“Why, Red, I leave these matters to those who can attend to them far more quickly and efficiently than I ― or you, Red. Or the Atomic Age Tree Boy over here. Lieutenant Keats had all that information within a few hours and he passed it along to me. Why should I saute myself in the California sun when I can sit here in comfort and think?” Laurel’s lip wiggled and Ellery burst into laughter. He shook up her hair and tilted her chin. “Just the same, that was enterprising of you, Laurel. That was all right.”

“Not so all right.” Laurel sank into a chair, tragic. “I’m sorry, Ellery. You must think I’m an imbecile.”

“Not a bit of it. It’s just that you’re impatient. This business is a matter of legs, brains, and bottoms, and you’ve got to learn to wait on the last-named with philosophy while the other two are pumping away. What else did you find out?”

“Nothing,” said Laurel miserably.

“I thought it was quite a piece,” said Crowe Macgowan. “Finding out that Alfred bought the poison that knocked Roger for a loop... that ought to mean something, Queen.”

“If you jumped to that kind of conclusion,” said Ellery dryly, “I’m afraid you’re in for a bad time. Keats found out something else.”

“What’s that?”

“It was your mother, Mac, who thought she heard mice in the cellar. It was your mother who told Wallace to buy the rat poison.”

The boy gaped, and Laurel looked down at her hands suddenly.

“Don’t be upset, Mac. No action is going to be taken. Even though the mice seem to have been imaginary ― we could find no turds or holes... The fact is, we have nothing positive. There’s no direct evidence that the arsenic in Priam’s tuna salad came from the can of rat poison in the cellar. There’s no direct evidence that either your mother or Wallace did anything but try to get rid of mice who happen not to have been there.”

“Well, of course not.” Macgowan had recovered; he was even looking pugnacious. “Stupid idea to begin with. Just like this detective hunch of yours, Laurel. Everything’s under control. Let’s leave it that way.”

“All right,” said Laurel. She was still studying her hands.

But Ellery said, “No. I don’t see it that way. It’s not a bad notion at all for you two to root around. You’re on the scene―”

“If you think I’m going to rat on my mother,” began Crowe angrily.

“We seem to be in a rodent cycle,” Ellery complained. “Are you worried that your mother may have tried to poison your stepfather, Mac?”

“No! I mean ― you know what I mean! What kind of rat ― skunk do you think I am?”

“I got you into this, Mac,” Laurel said. “I’m sorry. You can back out.”

“I’m not backing out! Seems to me you two are trying to twist every word I say!”

“Would you have any scruples,” asked Ellery with a smile, “where Wallace is concerned?”

“Hell, no. Wallace doesn’t mean anything to me. Delia does.” Her son added, with a sulky shrewdness, “I thought she did to you, too.”