A Study in Terror

Ellery’s Nemesis Investigates

The apartment bell was a carved rosebud set in ivory leaves. Grant Ames jabbed it, and the result was a girl wearing poisonous-green lounging pajamas.

“Hello, Madge. I happened to be in the neighborhood, so here I am.”

She glowed. That thinly patrician male face reminded her of a very big dollar sign. “And so you thought you’d drop in?” she said, making it sound like Einstein’s first formulation of the Theory; and she threw the door so wide it cracked against the wall.

Grant moved warily forward. “Nice little nest you’ve got here.”

“It’s just an ordinary career gal’s efficiency apartment. I combed the East Side, absolutely combed it. And finally found this. It’s sicken-ingly expensive, but of course one wouldn’t dare live anywhere but Upper East.”

“I didn’t know you’d gone in for a career.”

“Oh, definitely. I’m a consultant. You drink scotch, don’t you?”

It behooved a legman to follow through, Grant thought. He asked brightly, “And with whom do you consult?”

“The public relations people at the factory.”

“The one your father owns, of course.”

“Of course.”

Madge Short was a daughter of Short’s Shapely Shoes, but with three brothers and two sisters to share the eventual loot. She wagged her pert red head as she extended a scotch-and.

“And the factory is located―?”

“In Iowa.”

“You commute?”

“Silly! There’s a Park Avenue office.”

“You surprise me, dear heart. I see you in a different role.”

“As a bride?” Two outstanding young breasts lifted the poisonous green like votive offerings.

“God, no,” Grant said hurriedly. “I visualize you somewhere in the literary field.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

Grant had checked the room. There were no books in sight―no magazines, either―but that wasn’t necessarily conclusive.

“I see you as reading a great deal, chickie. A bit of a bookworm, so to speak.”

“In this day and age? Wherever would one get the time?”

“Oh, one wedges it in here and there.”

“I do read some. Sex and the Single―”

“I’m a detective bug myself. Father Brown. Bishop Cushing.” He watched narrowly for her reaction. It was like watching for a pink piglet to read.

“I like them, too.”

“With a smattering,” Grant went on cunningly, “of the philosophers―Burton, Sherlock Holmes.”

“One of the men at that party, he’s an expert on Zen.” Doubt was beginning to creep in. Grant quickly changed his tactics.

“That blue bikini you wore. Was it ever sharp.”

“I’m so glad you liked it, dahling. How about another scotch?”

“No, thanks,” Grant said, getting up. “Time goes bucketing by, and―well, there you are.” She was hopeless.

He collapsed behind the wheel of the Jag.

How did those fellows do it? Holmes? Even Queen?

While something was pressing against Ellery’s nose, smothering him. He awoke and discovered that it was the journal with which he had gone to bed. He yawned, dropped it on the floor, and sat up groggily, elbows on knees. The journal now lay between his feet, so he doubled up, head between his hands.

And began to read, southward.