The Siamese Twin Mystery

“The human element is the only factor that keeps this world from being overrun by untouchable murderers. The complexity of the criminal mind is also its greatest weakness. Show me a so-called *clever’ murderer and I will show you a man already condemned to death.”

— Crime and the Criminal

by LUIGI PERSANO (1928).

Chapter I The Burning Arrow

The road looked as if it had been baked out of rubbly dough in a giant’s oven, removed in all its snaky length, unwound and laid in coils around the flank of the mountain, and then cheerfully stamped upon. Its crust, broiled by the sun, had risen quite as if one of its ingredients were yeast; it erupted like brown cornbread for fifty yards at a stretch and then, for no sane reason, sucked itself in to form tire-killing ruts for fifty more. To make life exciting for the unfortunate motorist who chanced upon that unhappy highway it had been so molded as to slue and curve and dip and wind and swoop and climb and broaden and narrow in a manner truly wonderful to behold. And it raised swarms of dust, each grain a locust ferociously bent upon biting into such damp crawling human flesh as it happened to alight upon.

Mr. Ellery Queen, totally unrecognizable by virtue of specked sunglasses over his aching eyes, linen cap pulled low, the wrinkles of his linen jacket filled with the grit of three counties, his skin where it showed a great raw wet irritation, humped his shoulders over the wheel of the battered Duesenberg, wrestling with it with a sort of desperate determination. He had cursed every curve in the alleged road from Tuckesas forty miles down the Valley, where it officially began, to the present point; and he had quite run out of words.

“Your own damn fault,” said his father peevishly. “Cripes, you’d think it would be cool in the mountains! I feel as if somebody’s scraped me all over with sandpaper.”

The Inspector, gray little Arab swathed to his eyes against the dust in a gray silk scarf, had been nursing a grudge which, like the road itself, bucked skyward and erupted at every fifty yards. He twisted, groaning, in his seat beside Ellery and peered sourly over the pile of luggage strapped behind at the lumpy stretch of paving in their wake. Then he slumped back.

“Told you to stick to the Valley pike, didn’t I?” He brandished his forefinger at the rush of hot sticky air.

“ ‘El,’ I said, ‘take my word for it — in these blasted mountains you never know what kind of squirty road you run into,’ I said. But no; you had to go and start explorin’ with night coming on, like — like some damn Columbus!” The Inspector paused to grumble at the deepening sky. “Stubborn. Just like your mother — rest her soul!” he added hastily, for he was after all a God-fearing old gentleman. “Well, I hope you’re satisfied.”

Ellery sighed and stole a glance from the zigzag expanse before him to the sky. The whole arc of heaven was purpling very softly and swiftly — a sight to rouse the poet in any man, he thought, except a tired, hot, and hungry one with a querulous sire at his side who not only grumbled but grumbled with unanswerable logic. The road along the foothills bordering the Valley had looked inviting; there was something cool — by anticipation only, he thought sadly — in a vista of green trees.

The Duesenberg bucked on in the gathering gloom.

“And not only that,” continued Inspector Queen, cocking an irritated eye upon the road ahead above a fold of the dusty scarf, “but it’s one hell of a way to top off a vacation. Trouble, just trouble! Gets me all hot and — and bothered. Damn it all, El, I worry about these things. They spoil my appetite!”

“Not mine,” said Ellery with another sigh. “I could eat a Goodyear-tire steak with French-fried gaskets and gasoline sauce right now, I’m so famished. Where the devil are we anyway?”

“Tepees. Somewhere in the United States. That’s all I know.”

“Lovely. Tepees. There’s poetic justice for you! Makes me think of venison broiling over a woodfire... Whoa, Duesey! That was a daisy, wasn’t it?” The Inspector, who at the peak of the bump had almost had his head torn off, glared; it was quite evident that to his way of thinking “daisy” was scarcely the appropriate word. “Now, now, dad. Don’t mind a little thing like that. One of the normal hazards of motoring. What you miss is the Montreal Scotch, you renegade Irishman!... Now look at that, will you?”

They had reached a rise in the road around one of the myriad unexpected bends; and for sheer wonder Ellery stopped the car. Hundreds of feet below and to the left lay Tomahawk Valley, already cloaked in the purple mantle which had dropped so swiftly from the green battlements jutting against the sky. The mantle billowed as if something huge and warm and softly animal stirred beneath it. A faint gray tapeworm of road slithered along far down, already half-smothered by the purple mantle. There were no lights, no signs of human beings or habitations. The whole sky overhead was suffused now, and the last cantaloupe sliver of sun was sinking behind the distant range across the Valley. The edge of the road was ten feet away; there it dipped sharply and cascaded in green sheets toward the Valley floor.

Ellery turned and looked up. Arrow Mountain swelled above them, a dark emerald tapestry closely woven out of pine and scrub oak and matted underbrush. The bristly fabric of foliage towered, it seemed, for miles above their heads.

He started the Duesenberg again. “Almost worth the torture,” he chuckled. “Feel better already. Come out of it, Inspector! This is the real thing — Nature in the raw.”

“Too damn raw to suit me.”

The night suddenly overpowered them and Ellery switched his headlights on. They bounced along in silence. Both stared ahead, Ellery dreamily and the old gentleman with irritation. A peculiar haze had begun to dance in the shafts of light stabbing the road before them; it drifted and curled and eddied like lazy fog.

“Seems to me we ought to be getting there,” growled the Inspector, blinking in the darkness. “Road’s going down now, isn’t it? Or is it my imagination?”

“It’s been dipping for some time,” murmured Ellery. “Getting warmer, isn’t it? How far did that hulking countryman with the lisp — that garageman in Tuckesas — say it was to Osquewa?”

“Fifty miles. Tuckesas! Osquewa! Gripes, this country’s enough to make a man throw up.”

“No romance,” grinned Ellery. “Don’t you recognize the beauty of old Indian etymology? At that, it’s ironic. Our compatriots visiting abroad complain bitterly about the ‘foreign’ names — Lwów, Prague (now why Pra-ha, in the name of merciful heaven?), Brescia, Valdepeñaz, and even good old British Harwich and Leicestershire. Yet those are words of one syllable—”

“Hmm,” said the Inspector in an odd tone; he blinked again.

“—compared with our own native Arkansas and Winnebago and Schoharie and Otsego and Sioux City and Susquehanna and goodness knows what else. Talk about heritage! Yes, sir, painted redskins roamed them thar hills across the Valley and this here mounting falling on our heads. Redskins in moccasins and tanned deerskin, braided hair and turkey feathers. The smoke of their signal fires—”

“Hmm,” said the Inspector again, suddenly bolting upright. “Looks damned near as if they were still setting ’em!”

“Eh?”

“Smoke, smoke, you, son! See it?” The Inspector rose, pointing ahead. “There!” he cried. “Right in front of us!”

“Nonsense,” said Ellery in a sharp voice; “What would smoke be doing up here, of all places? That’s probably some manifestation of evening mist. These hills play peculiar pranks sometimes.”

“This one’s acting up,” said Inspector Queen grimly. The dusty scarf fell into his lap, unheeded. His sharp little eyes were no longer dull and bored. He craned backward and stared for a long time. Ellery frowned, snatching a glimpse into his windshield mirror, and then looked quickly ahead again. The road was definitely dipping toward the Valley now, and the peculiar haze thickened with every downward foot.

“What’s the matter, dad?” he said in a small voice. His nostrils quivered. There was an odd and faintly disagreeable pungency in the air.

“I think,” said the Inspector, sinking back, “I think, El, you’d better step on it.”

“Is it—?” began Ellery feebly, and swallowed hard.

“Looks mighty like it.”

“Forest fire?”

“Forest fire. Smell it now?”

Ellery’s right foot squeezed the accelerator. The Duesenberg leaped forward. The Inspector, his grumpiness gone, reached over the edge of the car on his side and switched on a powerful sidelamp which swept the slope of the mountain like a broom of light.

Ellery’s lips tightened; neither spoke.

Despite their altitude and the mountain chill of evening, a queer heat suffused the air. The swirling mist through which the Duesenberg plowed was yellowish now, and thick as cotton. It was smoke, the smoke of desiccated wood and dusty foliage burning. Its acrid molecules suddenly invaded their nostrils, burned their lungs, made them cough, brought smarting tears to their eyes.

To the left, where the Valley lay, there was nothing to be seen but a dark smother, like the sea at night.

The Inspector stirred. “Better stop, son.”

“Yes,” muttered Ellery. “I was just thinking that myself.”

The Duesenberg halted, panting. Ahead of them the smoke was whipping in furious dark waves. And beyond — not far, a hundred feet or so — little orange teeth began to show, biting into the smoke. Down toward the Valley, too, were more little orange teeth, thousands of them; and tongues, long nicking orange tongues.

“It’s directly in our path,” said Ellery in the same queer tone. “We’d better turn round and go back.”

“Can you turn here?” sighed the Inspector.

“I’ll try.”

It was nervous, delicate work in the boiling darkness. The Duesenberg, an old racing relic Ellery had picked up out of perverted sentiment years before and had had reconditioned for private use, had never seemed so long-legged and cantankerous. He sweated and swore beneath his breath as he swung it back, forward, back, forward — inching his way around by imperceptible degrees while the Inspector’s little gray hand clutched the windshield and the ends of his mustache fluttered in the hot wind.

“Better make it snappy, son,” said the Inspector quietly. His eyes darted upward to the silent dark slope of Arrow Mountain. “I think—”

“Yes?” panted Ellery, negotiating the last turn.

“I think the fire’s climbed up to the road — behind us.”

“Lord, no, dad!”

The Duesenberg shuddered as Ellery stared fiercely into the murk. He felt the impulse to laugh. It was all too silly. A firetrap!... The Inspector sat forward, alert and quiet as a mouse. Then Ellery shouted and brought his heel down, hard, upon the accelerator. They surged forward.

The whole mountainside below them was burning. The mantle was ripped in thousands of places and the little orange teeth and the long orange tongues were greedily nibbling and licking away at the slope, hostile and palpable in their own light. An entire landscape, miles long, seen in miniature from their elevation, had suddenly burst into flames. In that numbing moment as they rushed back along the crazy road they both realized what must have happened. It was late July, and the month had been one of the hottest and driest in years. This was almost virgin timberland — a tangled mat of tree and bush long since sapped by the sun of its water. It was crumbly tinder inviting flame. A camper’s carelessly trodden fire, or a forgotten cigarette, even the friction of two dead limbs rubbed against each other by a breeze, might have started it. Then it would slither swiftly along beneath the trees, eating its way along the sole of an entire mountain foot, and suddenly the slope would burst into flame spontaneously as the fire burned through to the dry upper air...

The Duesenberg slowed down, hesitated, lunged forward, stopped with a screeching of brakes.

“We’re hemmed in!” cried Ellery, half rising behind the wheel. “Back and front!” Then, calming suddenly, he sank back and fumbled for a cigarette. His chuckle was ghostly. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Trial by fire! What sins have you committed?”

“Don’t be a fool,” said the Inspector harshly. He stood up and looked quickly from right to left. Below the lip of the road flames were gnawing.

“The odd part of it is,” muttered Ellery, drawing a lungful of smoke and expelling it without sound, “that I got you into this. It’s beginning to look like my last stupidity... No, it’s no use looking, dad. There’s no solution except to dash right through the thick of it. This is a narrow road and the fire’s already nibbling at the timber and brush beyond.” He chuckled again, but his eyes were hot behind his goggles and his face was damp chalk. “We shan’t last a hundred yards. Can’t see — the road twists and spins... The chances are, if the fire doesn’t get us, that we’ll go rocketing off the road.”

The Inspector, nostrils flaring, stared without speaking.

“It’s so damned melodramatic,” said Ellery with an effort, frowning over the Valley. “Not my notion at all of how to pass out. It smacks of... of charlatanry.” He coughed and flung his cigarette away with a grimace. “Well, what’s the decision? Shall we stay here and fry, or take our chances with the road, or try scrambling up the slope overhead? Quickly — our host is impatient.”

The Inspector flung himself down. “Get a grip on yourself. We can always take to the woods up there. Get going!”

“Right, sir,” murmured Ellery, his eyes full of a pain that was not caused by the smoke. The Duesenberg stirred. “It’s really no use looking, you know,” he said, pity suddenly invading his voice. “There’s no way out. This is a straight road — no side roads at all... Dad! Don’t get up again. Wrap your handkerchief around your mouth and nose!”

“I tell you to get going!” shouted the old man with exasperation. His eyes were red and watery; they glared like damped coals.

The Duesenberg staggered drunkenly ahead. The combined brilliance of the three lamps served only to bring out more starkly the yellow-white snakes of smoke wrapping their coils about the car. Ellery drove more by instinct than sense. He was trying desperately, beneath a rigid exterior, to recall the exact vagaries of the insane road ahead. There had been a curve... They were coughing constantly now; Ellery’s eyes, protected by the goggles as they were, nevertheless began to stream. A new odor came to their tortured nostrils, the smell of scorched rubber. The tires...

Cinders speckled their clothes, dropping softly.

From somewhere far below and far away, even above the snapping and crackling about them, came the faint persistent scream of a country fire siren. A warning, thought Ellery grimly, from Osquewa. They had seen the fire and were gathering the clans. Soon there would be hordes of little human ants with buckets and flails and handmade besoms swarming into the burning woods. These people were accustomed to fighting fires. No doubt they would master this one, or it would master itself, or providentially rain would come and smother it. But one thing seemed certain, thought Ellery as he strained into the smoke and coughed in hacking spasms: two gentlemen named Queen were destined to meet their fate on a blazing road along a lonely mountain miles from Centre Street and upper Broadway, and there would be no one to watch their exit from a world which had suddenly become impossibly sweet and precious...

“There!” shrieked the Inspector, jumping up. “There — El! I knew it, I knew it!” and he danced up and down in his seat, pointing to the left, his voice a wild blur of tears relief, and satisfaction. “I thought I remembered one side road. Stop the car!”

With a wildly beating heart Ellery jammed on his brakes. Through a rift in the smoke appeared a black cavernous gap. It was apparently a road leading up through the steep and almost impassable tangle of forest which matted the chest of Arrow Mountain like a giant’s hair.

Ellery wrestled powerfully with the wheel. The Duesenberg darted back, screamed, surged forward with a roar. In second gear it bit into a hard-packed dirt road set at an alarming angle to the main highway. The motor whined and keened and sang — and the car clawed its way up. It gathered speed, creeping up. It hurtled on, flashing up. Now the road began to wind; a curve, a swift wind inexpressibly sweet, scented with pine needles, a delicious chill in the air...

Incredibly, within twenty seconds, they had left fire, smoke, their fate and their death behind.

It was utterly black now — the sky, the trees, the road. The air was like liquor; it bathed their tortured lungs and throats with coolness that was half warmth, and they both became silently intoxicated upon it. They gulped it down, sniffing mightily until they felt their lungs must burst. Then they both began to laugh.

“Oh, God,” gasped Ellery, stopping the car. “It’s all — all too fantastic!”

The Inspector giggled: “Just like that! Whew.” He took out his handkerchief, trembling, and passed it over his mouth.

They both removed their hats and exulted in the cold feel of the wind. Once they looked at each other, trying to pierce the darkness. Both fell silent soon, the mood passing; and finally Ellery released his handbrake and set the Duesenberg in motion.

If the road below had been difficult, this ahead was impossible. It was little more than a cowpath, rocky and overgrown. But neither man could find it in his heart to curse it. It was a boon sent from heaven. It kept winding and climbing, and they wound and climbed with it. Of human beings not a trace. The headlights groped ahead of them like the antennae of an insect. The air grew steadily sharper, and the sweet sharp arboreal smell was like wine. Winged things hummed and dashed themselves against the lights.

Suddenly Ellery stopped the car again.

The Inspector, who had been dozing, jerked awake. “What’s the matter now?” he mumbled sleepily.

Ellery was listening intently. “I thought I heard something ahead.”

The Inspector cocked his gray head. “People up here, maybe?”

“It seems unlikely,” said Ellery dryly. There was a faint crashing from somewhere before them, not unlike the sound of a large animal in undergrowth far away.

“Mountain lion, d’ye think?” growled Inspector Queen, feeling a little nervously for his service revolver.

“Don’t think so. If it is, I daresay he’s in for more of a scare than we. Are there catamounts in these parts? Might be a — a bear or a deer or something.”

He urged the car forward again. Both were very wide awake, and both felt distinctly uncomfortable. The crashing grew louder.

“Lord, it sounds like an elephant!” muttered the old man. He had his revolver out now.

Suddenly Ellery began to laugh. There was a comparatively long stretch of straight road here, and around the far curve came two fingers of light, as if fumbling in the darkness. In a moment they straightened out and glared into the Duesenberg’s own brilliant eyes.

“A car,” chuckled Ellery. “Put that cannon away, you old lady. Mountain lion!”

“Didn’t I hear you say something about a deer?” retorted the Inspector. Nevertheless he did not return the revolver to his hip pocket.

Ellery stopped the car once more; the headlights of the approaching automobile were very close now. “Good to have company in a place like this,” he said cheerfully, jumping out and stepping before his own lights. “Hi!” he shouted, waving his arms.

It was a crouching old Buick sedan that had seen better days. It came to rest, its battered nose snuffling the dirt of the road. It seemed occupied by only one passenger: a man’s head and shoulders were dimly visible behind the dusty windshield, illuminated by the mingling lights of the cars.

The head popped out of the side window. Away from the disfiguring glass, its every feature was sharply limned. A tattered felt hat was jammed over the man’s ears, which stood away from the enormous head like a troglodyte’s. It was a monstrous face: gross, huge, wattled, and damp. Frog’s eyes were embedded in lumps of flesh. The nose was broad and flared. The lips were tight lines. A big unhealthy face, but somehow hard and quieting. The owner of that face, Ellery felt instinctively, was not to be trifled with.

The eyes, luminous slits, fastened on Ellery’s lanky figure with batrachian steadiness. Then they shifted to the Duesenberg behind, surveyed the indistinct torso of the Inspector, and clicked back.

“Out of the way, you.” It was a rumbling voice, harshly vibrant in its bass tones. “Get out of the way!”

Ellery blinked in the strong light. The gargoyle head had retreated behind the translucent shelter of the windshield again. He could see a suggestion of vast humped shoulders. And no neck, he thought irritably. Indecent of the fellow. Ought to have a neck.

“I say,” he began, pleasantly enough. “That’s not nice—”

The Buick snorted and began to snuffle forward. Ellery’s eyes flashed.

“Stop!” he cried. “You can’t go down that way, you... you surly fool! There’s a fire down there!”

The Buick halted two feet from Ellery and ten feet from the Duesenberg. The head popped out again.

“What’s that?” said the bass voice heavily.

“Thought that would get you,” replied Ellery with satisfaction. “For heaven’s sake, isn’t there anything remotely resembling courtesy in this part of the domain? I said there’s a very neat and thorough conflagration raging down below — must be past the road by now, so you’d better turn round and go back.”

The froggy eyes stared for an instant without expression.

Then: “Out of the way,” the man said again, and touched his gears.

Ellery stared incredulously. The fellow was either stupid or insane.

“Well, if you want to be smoked up like a side of pork,” snapped Ellery, “that’s your affair. Where’s this road lead to?”

There was no reply. The Buick kept impatiently edging up inch by inch. Ellery shrugged and trudged back to the Duesenberg. He got in, slammed his door, muttered something impolite, and began backing off. The road was much too narrow to permit lateral passage of two machines. He was forced to back into the underbrush, crashing through until he smacked against a tree. There was barely enough room for the Buick to pass. It roared forward, kissing Ellery’s right fender none too gently, and disappeared in the darkness.

“Funny bird,” said the Inspector thoughtfully, putting away his revolver as Ellery steered the Duesenberg onto the road again. “If his mug was any fatter it would just naturally float away. The hell with him.”

Ellery uttered a savage chuckle. “He’ll come back soon enough,” he said; “damn his infernal cheek!” and thenceforward devoted his whole attention to the road.

They climbed, it seemed, for hours — a steady upgrade which taxed the powerful resources of the Duesenberg. Nowhere the faintest sign of a habitation. The forest, if it were possible, grew thicker and wilder than before. The road, instead of improving, grew worse — narrower, rockier, more overgrown. Once the headlights picked out directly in the road ahead the glowing eyes of a coiled copperhead.

The Inspector, perhaps as a reaction from the emotional disturbances of the past hour, frankly slept. His low snore throbbed in Ellery’s ears. Ellery gritted his teeth and pushed on.

The branches overhead dipped lower. They kept up an incessant rustle, like the gossip of old foreign women in the distance.

Not once through the interminable minutes of that remorseless ascent did Ellery catch sight of the stars.

“We escaped dropping into Hell,” he muttered to himself, “and now, by George, we seem headed straight for Valhalla!” How high was the mountain, anyway?

He felt his lids droop and shook his head angrily to keep himself awake. It was unwise to doze on this journey; the dirt road twisted and pirouetted like a Siamese dancer. He set his jaw and began concentrating upon the turmoil in his empty belly. A cup of steaming consommé, now, he thought; then a smoking rare cut of thick sirloin, with gravy and browned potatoes; two cups of hot coffee...

He peered ahead, alert. It seemed to him that the road was widening. And the trees — they seemed to be receding. Lord, it was time! There was something doing ahead; probably they had reached the crest of this confounded mountain and would soon be slipping down the road on the other side, bound for the next valley, a town, a hot supper, and bed. Then tomorrow a swift trip south, refreshed, and the day following New York and home. He laughed aloud in his relief.

Then he stopped laughing. The road had widened for excellent reason. The Duesenberg had pushed into a clearing of some sort. The trees receded left and right into the darkness. Overhead there was hot, thick sky speckled with millions of brilliants. A wilder wind fluttered the loose crown of his cap. To the sides of the expanded road lay tumbled rocks, from shards to boulders, out of the crevices and interstices of which sprouted an ugly, dried-up vegetation. And directly ahead...

He swore softly and got out of the car, wincing at the ache in his cold joints. Fifteen feet in front of the Duesenberg, boldly revealed in the headlights’ glare, stood two tall iron gates. To both sides ran a low fence built out of stones unquestionably indigenous to this forbidding soil. The fence stretched away divergently into the darkness. Beyond the gates for the short distance illuminated by the headlights ran the road. What lay still farther ahead was cloaked in the same palpable blackness that covered everything.

This was the end of the road!

He cursed himself for a fool. He might have known. The winding of the road below had not circled the mountain. It had merely seesawed erratically from side to side, following, now that he thought of it, the line of least resistance. This being the case, there must be a reason for the failure of the path to spiral completely about Arrow Mountain in its ascent to the summit. The reason could only be that the other side of the mountain was impassable. Probably a precipice.

In other words, there was only one way down the mountain — and that was by the road they had just climbed. They had run headlong into a blind alley.

Angry with the world, the night, the wind, the trees, the fire, himself and all living things, he strode forward to the gates. A bronze plaque was attached to the iron grille of one of them. It said simply: Arrow Head.

“What’s the matter now?” croaked the Inspector sleepily from the depths of the Duesenberg. “Where are we?”

Ellery’s voice was gloomy. “At an impasse. We’ve reached the end of our journey, dad. Pleasant prospect, isn’t it?”

“For cripes’ sake!” exploded the Inspector, crawling down into the road. “Mean to say this God-forsaken road doesn’t lead anywhere?”

“Apparently not.” Then Ellery slapped his thigh. “Oh, God,” he groaned, “flay me for an idiot! What are we standing here for? Help me with these gates.” He began to tug at the heavy grilles. The Inspector lent a shoulder, and the gates gave balkily, squealing in protest.

“Damned rusty,” growled the Inspector, examining his palms.

“Come on,” cried Ellery, running back to the car. The Inspector trotted wearily after. “What’s the matter with me? Gates and a fence mean human beings and a house. Of course! Why this road at all? Someone lives up here. That means food, a bath, shelter—”

“Maybe,” said the Inspector disagreeably as they began to move and swung in between the gates, “maybe there’s nobody living here.”

“Nonsense. That would be an intolerable trick of fate. And besides,” said Ellery, quite gay now, “our fat-faced friend in the Buick came from somewhere, didn’t he? And yes — there are the tracks of tires... Where the deuce are these people’s lights?”

The house was so near it partook of the nature of the darkness about it. A wide gloomy pile which blotted out the stars in an irregular pattern. The Duesenberg’s headlights focused upon a flight of stone steps leading to a wooden porch. The sidelamp under the Inspector’s guidance swept to right and left and disclosed a long terrace running the entire length of the house, occupied only by empty rockers and chairs. Beyond the sides lay the rocky brush-covered terrain; only a few yards separated the house from the woods.

“That’s not polite,” muttered the Inspector, switching the lamps off. “That is, if anyone lives here. I have my doubts. Those French windows off the terrace are all closed and it looks as if they’ve got blinds drawn right to the floor. See any lights in the upper story?”

There were two stories and an attic floor beneath the slate shingles covering the gabled roof. But all the windows were black. Dry bedraggled vines half covered the wooden walls.

“No,” said Ellery, a note of misgiving creeping into his voice, “but then it’s — it’s impossible that the house is untenanted. That would be a blow from which I should never recover; not after our fantastic adventure tonight.”

“Yes,” grunted the Inspector, “but if anybody lives here why the devil hasn’t some one heard us? Lord knows this rattletrap of yours made enough racket coming up here. Lean on that horn.”

Ellery leaned. The klaxon on the Duesenberg possessed a singularly disagreeable voice; a voice, one would have said, capable of rousing the dead. The voice ceased and with pathetic eagerness both men bent forward and strained their ears. There was no response from the lifeless pile before them.

“I think,” said Ellery doubtfully, and stopped. “Didn’t you hear some—”

“I heard a blasted cricket calling to his mate,” growled the old gentleman, “that’s what I heard. Well, what the devil are we going to do now? You’re the brains of this family. Let’s see how good you are getting us out of this mess.”

“Don’t rub it in,” groaned Ellery. “I’ll admit I haven’t displayed precisely genius today. God, I’m so hungry I could eat a whole family of Gryllidae, let alone one!”

“Hey?”

“Salatorial orthopters,” explained Ellery stiffly. “Crickets to you. It’s the only scientific term I remember from my Entomology. Not that it does me any good at the moment. I always said higher education was perfectly useless against the ordinary emergencies of life.”

The Inspector snorted and wrapped his coat more closely about him, shivering. There was an eerie quality about their surroundings which made his usually impervious scalp prickle. He strove to drive away the unaccustomed phantoms of his roused imagination by thoughts of food and sleep. He closed his eyes and sighed.

Ellery rummaged in a car pocket, found an electric torch, and scrunched across the gravel to the house. He mounted the stone steps, tramped across the wooden flooring of the porch, and searched the front door in the light of his torch. It was a very solid and uninviting door. Even the knocker, a chunk of chipped stone fashioned in the shape of an Indian arrowhead, was darkly forbidding. Nevertheless Ellery lifted it and began to pound the oak panels. He pounded with vigor.

“This,” he said grimly between assaults on the door, “is beginning to resemble a nightmare. It is utterly unreasonable that we should go—” rap! rap! “through the ordeal by fire—” rap! rap! “and emerge without the customary rewards of penitence. Besides—” RAP! RAP! “I would welcome even a Dracula after what we’ve gone through. Lord, this does remind me of that vampire’s roost in the mountains of Hungary!”

And he pounded until his arm ached without evoking the faintest response from the house.

“Oh, come on,” groaned the Inspector. “What’s the use of knocking your arm off like a fool? Let’s get out of here.”

Ellery’s arm dropped wearily. He flicked the torch’s beam over the porch. “Bleak House... Get out? And where shall we go?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Back to get our hides scorched, I guess. At least it’s warm down there.”

“Not me,” snapped Ellery. “I’m going to get that lap rug out of the luggage and camp right here. And if you’re sensible, dad, you’ll join me.”

His voice carried far through the mountain air. For an instant only the hind legs of the amorous cricket answered him. Then without warning the door of the house opened and a parallelogram of light leaped out onto the porch.

Black against the light, framed by the rectangle of the door, stood the figure of a man.

Chapter II The “Thing”

So suddenly had the apparition appeared that Ellery instinctively retreated a step, tightening his grip on the electric torch. From below he could hear the Inspector groaning with a sort of pleasant pain at the miraculous appearance of a Good Samaritan at a time when the last hope had fled. The old man’s heavy step crunched on the gravel.

The man stood in the foreground of a dazzlingly illuminated entrance hall which, from Ellery’s position, disclosed only an overhead lamp, a rug, a large etching, the corner of a refectory table and an open doorway at the right.

“Good evening,” said Ellery, clearing his throat.

“What d’ye want?”

The apparition’s voice was startling — an old man’s voice, querulously crackling in its upper tones and heavily hostile in its undertones. Ellery blinked. With the strong light shining in his eyes all he could see of the man was a silhouette, revealed by a steady glow of golden light pouring on him from behind. The outline, which made the man look like a shape created by the luminous tubes of a neon sign, was that of a shambling, loose-jointed figure, long arms dangling, sparse hair sticking up at the top like singed feathers.

“Evening,” came the Inspector’s voice from behind Ellery. “Sorry to be bothering you at this time of night, but we’ve sort of—” his eyes yearned hungrily at the furniture in the entrance hall — “we’ve sort of got ourselves into a jam, you see, and—”

“Well, well?” snarled the man.

The Queens regarded each other with dismay. Not an auspicious reception!

“Fact of the matter is,” said Ellery, smiling feebly, “that we’ve been forced up here — I suppose this is your road — by circumstances beyond our control. We thought we might get—”

They began to make out details. The man was even older than they had thought. His face was marble-gray parchment, multitudinously wrinkled, and hard as stone. His eyes were small, black, and burning. He was dressed in coarse homespun that hung from his emaciated figure in ugly vertical folds.

“This isn’t a hotel,” he said savagely and, stepping back, began to close the door.

Ellery gritted his teeth; he heard his father begin to snarl. “But good lord, man!” he cried. “You don’t understand. We’re stuck. There’s no place for us to go!”

The rectangle had squeezed together, and at its foot there was a thin wedge of light now; it made Ellery, licking his chops, think of a slab of mince pie.

“You’re only about ten-fifteen miles from Osquewa,” said the man in the doorway in a surly voice. “Can’t go wrong. Only one road down the Arrow. You hit a wider road several miles below, turn right and keep on it until you get to Osquewa. There’s an inn there.”

“Thanks,” barked the Inspector. “Come on, El; this is one hell of a country. God, what swine!”

“Now, now,” said Ellery with desperate rapidity. “You still don’t understand, sir. We can’t take that road. It’s on fire!”

There was a little silence; the door opened wider again. “On fire, d’ye say?” said the man suspiciously.

“Miles of it!” cried Ellery, waving his arms. He warmed to his subject. “The whole shooting match! Foothills one mass of flame! A — a monstrous conflagration! The burning of Rome was simply a piddling little campfire compared with it! Why, man, it’s as much as your life is worth just to get within a half mile of it! Burn you crisper than a cinder before you could say antidisestablishmentarianism!” He drew a deep breath, surveying the man anxiously; made a face, swallowed his pride, smiled with childlike faith (thinking of succulent food and already hearing the blessed sound of running water), and said: “Now can we come in?” plaintively.

“Well...” The man scratched his chin. The Queens held their breaths. The issue hung quivering in the balance. Ellery began, as the seconds flew by, to feel that perhaps he had not stated the case strongly enough. He should have spun a veritable saga of tragedy to soften the granite lump occupying this creature’s breast.

Then the man said sullenly: “Wait a minute,” slammed the door in their faces — thus vanishing as miraculously as he had appeared — and left them once more in darkness.

“Why, the gosh-blamed son of a so-and-so!” exploded the Inspector wrathfully. “Did you ever hear of such a thing! All this confounded bunk about the hospitality of—”

“Sssh!” whispered Ellery fiercely. “You’ll break the spell. Try to screw that writhing face of yours into a smile! Look pretty, now! I think I hear our friend returning.”

But when the door swept open it was another man who confronted them — a man, one would have said, from a different world. He was impressively tall and generously shouldered, and his smile was slow and warming. “Come in,” he said in a deep pleasant voice. “I’m afraid I must apologize abjectly for the rotten bad manners of my man Bones. Up here we’re a little cautious about night visitors. Really, I’m sorry. What’s all this about a fire down on the mountain road?... Come in, come in!”

Overwhelmed by this excess of hospitality after the tempestuous reception of the surly man, the Queens blinked and gaped and rather dazedly obeyed. The tall, pleasant man in tweeds closed the door softly behind them, still smiling.

They stood in a foyer, warm and comforting and delightful. Ellery, with his habitual and irrelevant restlessness, noted that the etching on the wall which he had glimpsed from the terrace was remarkably fine, etched after the grisly Rembrandt painting, The Anatomy Lesson. He had time, as their host closed the door, to wonder at the nature of a man who compelled his guests to be greeted with a realistic revelation of a Dutch cadaver’s viscera. For an instant he felt a chill, looked sidewise at the distinguished features and pleasant expression of the tall man, and ascribed the chill to his depressed physical condition. The Queen imagination, he ruminated, was overwrought; if the man were surgically inclined... Surgically inclined! Of course. He suppressed a grin. No doubt this gentleman was of the scalpel-wielding profession. Ellery felt better at once. He glanced at his father, but the subtleties of wall ornamentation had apparently escaped the old gentleman. The Inspector was licking his lips and sniffing furtively. Yes, there was the unmistakable odor of roast pork in the air.

As for the old ogre who had first greeted them, he had disappeared; probably, Ellery thought with a chuckle, to slink back to his lair and sullenly lick the wounds of his fear of night visitors.

As they passed through the foyer, holding their hats expectantly in their hands, they both caught a glimpse through the half-open door at the right of a large room unilluminated by any light save that of the stars coming through the French windows off the terrace. Apparently then someone had raised the blinds of the windows in that room while their host was ushering them into the foyer. The remarkable creature to whom their host inexplicably referred as “Bones”? Probably not; for to their ears from the room on the right came the sibilant sounds of several whispering voices; and among them Ellery detected at least one of unmistakably feminine pitch.

But why were they sitting in darkness? Ellery experienced a recurrence of the chill, and shook it off impatiently. There were several things uncommonly mysterious about this house. Well, it was quite clearly none of his business. Let well enough alone! The important thing was that food lurked in the offing.

The tall man ignored the door on the right. Still smiling, he motioned them to follow him and led them through the foyer a few steps along a corridor which bisected the house, running from front to back to terminate in a closed door vaguely seen at the end of the long passageway. He paused at an open door on the left.

“This way,” he murmured, and motioned them into a large room which, they instantly saw, fronted the entire half of the terrace between the foyer and the left side of the house.

It was a living room, dim with tall hangings over the French windows, sparsely starred with lamps, dotted with armchairs and small scatter rugs and a white bearskin and small round tables bearing books and magazines and humidors and ash trays. A fireplace occupied a good section of the far wall; oil paintings and etchings hung about, all of a faintly dismal character, and elaborate tall candelabra threw swaying shadows which flowed and mingled with the shadows caused by the flames in the fireplace. The whole room for all its warmth and inviting chairs and books and cosy lights struck the Queens as unaccountably depressing. It was — empty.

“Please sit down,” said the big man, “and take off your things. We’ll get you comfortable and then we can chat.” He pulled a bell rope near the door, still smiling; and Ellery began to feel a tiny irritation. Damn it all, there was nothing to smile about!

The Inspector, however, was made of less critical stuff. He sank into an overstuffed chair with a loud sigh of satisfaction, stretched his short legs, and murmured: “Ah, this is good. Makes up for a lot of grief, sir.”

“I daresay, after the chill of your ascent,” smiled the big man. Ellery, standing, was slightly puzzled. In the light of the fire and lamps the man was vaguely familiar looking. He was a powerful fellow of perhaps forty-five, big in every way, and despite his predominating blondness, Ellery thought, a Gallic type. He wore his rough clothes with the unconscious carelessness of a man indifferent to convention; a brute of a chap with distinct charm and physical attractiveness. His eyes were rather remarkable — deep-set and glowing, a student’s eyes. His hands were strangely alive; big, broad and long fingered, and given to authoritative gesture.

“It was warm enough to start with,” said the Inspector with a grin; he looked quite comfortable now. “Barely escaped with our lives.”

The big man frowned. “As bad as that? I’m horribly sorry. Fire, did you say?... Ah, Mrs. Wheary!”

A stout woman in black, white-aproned, appeared in the corridor doorway. She was rather pale, Ellery thought, and distinctly nervous about something.

“D-did you ring, Doctor?” She stammered like a school-girl.

“Yes. Take these gentlemen’s duds, please, and see if you can’t scrape together something in the way of food.” The woman nodded silently, took their hats and the Inspector’s duster, and vanished. “I’ve no doubt you’re famished,” went on the big man. “We’ve already had our dinner or I should invite you to something perhaps a little more elaborate.”

“To tell the truth,” groaned Ellery, sitting down and feeling very good all at once, “we’re both reduced almost to the point of cannibalism.”

The man laughed heartily. “I suppose we should introduce ourselves after the unfortunate manner of our meeting. I’m John Xavier.”

“Ah!” cried Ellery. “I thought you looked familiar. Dr. Xavier. I’ve seen your picture in the papers numberless times. As a matter of fact, I’d rather deduced a medico as the master of this house when I saw that etching after Rembrandt on your foyer wall. No one but a medical man would have displayed such — ah — original taste in decoration.” He grinned. “Remember the doctor’s face, don’t you, dad?” The Inspector nodded with vague enthusiasm; in his mood at the moment he would have remembered anything. “We’re the Queens, father and son, Dr. Xavier.”

Dr. Xavier murmured something gracious. “Mr. Queen,” he said to the Inspector. The Queens exchanged glances. Their host, then, was ignorant of the police connection of the Inspector. Ellery’s eyes warned his father, and the Inspector nodded imperceptibly. It did seem pointless to bring up his official title. People as a rule stiffened up on such creatures as detectives and policemen.

Dr. Xavier sat down in a leather chair and produced cigarettes. “And now, while we’re waiting for my excellent housekeeper’s no doubt frenzied preparations to bear fruit, suppose you tell me something about this... fire.”

His mild and slightly absent expression did not change; but something queer had crept into his voice.

The Inspector went into lurid detail, their host nodding at every sentence and maintaining a perfect air of polite perturbation. Ellery, whose eyes were paining him, took his spectacle case out of his pocket, polished the lenses of his pince-nez wearily, and perched them on the bridge of his nose. He was in a mood to feel hypercritical about everything, he told himself glumly; why shouldn’t Dr. Xavier show polite perturbation? The man’s house was perched on top of a hill whose base was burning. Perhaps, he thought, closing his eyes, Dr. Xavier wasn’t showing enough perturbation...

The Inspector was saying sententiously: “We really ought to be making inquiries, Doctor. Have you a phone?”

“At your elbow, Mr. Queen. There’s a branch line running up the Arrow from the Valley.”

The Inspector took the instrument and put in a call to Osquewa. He had considerable difficulty getting a connection. When he finally succeeded it was to discover that the entire town had been impressed into service for the purpose of fighting the flames, including the Sheriff, the Mayor, and the Town Board. The lone telephone operator supplied the information.

The old man put down the telephone with a grave look. “I guess this is a little more serious than usual. The fire’s ringing the whole base of the mountain, Doctor, and every able-bodied man and woman for miles around is fighting it.”

“Good lord,” muttered Dr. Xavier. Perturbation had increased, but politeness had vanished. He rose and began to stride about.

“So,” said the Inspector comfortably, “I guess we’re stuck here, Doctor, at least for the night.”

“Oh, that.” The big man waved his muscular right hand. “Naturally. Wouldn’t think of letting you push on, even under normal circumstances.” He was frowning deeply and biting his lip. “This thing,” he went on, “begins to look...”

Ellery’s head was spinning. Despite the thickening atmosphere of mystery — his intuition told him that something very odd indeed was taking place in this lonely house perched on the shoulder of a mountain — he yearned most of all for bed and sleep. Even hunger had crept off, and the fire seemed far away. He could not keep his lids up, where conventionally they belonged. Dr. Xavier in his grave voice, now touched with the faintest mixture of excitement and dissimulation, was saying something about “the drought... probably spontaneous combustion...” and then Ellery heard no more.

He awoke with a guilty start. A woman’s unsteady voice was saying in his ear: “If you don’t mind, sir...” and he leaped to his feet to find the stout squat figure of Mrs. Wheary standing by his chair with a tray in her broad hands.

“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed, reddening. “Execrable manners. Please excuse it, Doctor. The fact is — the long drive, the fire—”

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Xavier with an abstracted laugh. “Your father and I were just commenting upon the inadequate capacity of the younger generation for standing up under physical punishment. It’s quite all right, Mr. Queen. Would you care to wash up before—?”

“If we may.” Ellery eyed the tray hungrily. The pangs had returned, catching him unaware, and he could have devoured the cold food before him on the spot, tray and all.

Dr. Xavier conducted them to the corridor, turned left, and led the way to a staircase overlooking another corridor which crossed the one leading out of the foyer. They ascended a flight of carpeted stairs and found themselves on the landing of what was apparently the sleeping-quarters floor. Except for a dim night light above the landing the single hall was dark. All doors were tightly closed. The rooms behind the doors were silent as niches in a tomb.

“Brr!” muttered Ellery in his father’s ear as they followed the stately figure of their host down the hall. “Nice place for a murder. Even the wind is performing in character! Listen to that silly howling, will you? The banshees are out in full force tonight.”

“You listen to it,” growled the Inspector contentedly, “or even them. Not even an army of banshees could ruffle my hair tonight, old son. Why, this place looks like the Marble Palace to me! Murder? You’re off your nut. This is the nicest damned house I’ve ever set foot in.”

“I’ve seen nicer,” said Ellery gloomily. “Besides, you’ve always been primarily a creature of the senses... Ah, Doctor! This is perfectly angelic of you.”

Dr. Xavier had flung open a door. The room was a vast bedroom — all the rooms in this gargantuan establishment were enormous — and neatly grouped on the floor at the foot of the wide double bed were the heterogeneous components of the Queens’ luggage.

“Not another word,” said Dr. Xavier. And yet he said it absently, without the proper heartiness one might expect from an otherwise impeccable host. “Where on earth could you go with the fire burning below? This is the only house for miles around, Mr. Queen... I’ve taken the liberty, while you were — resting downstairs, of having my man Bones carry your luggage up here. Bones — odd name, eh? He’s an unfortunate old derelict I picked up years ago; quite devoted to me, I assure you, despite a certain gruffness of manner, ha-ha! Bones will take care of your car. We’ve a garage here; cars get frightfully damp outdoors at this elevation, you know.”

“Bully for Bones,” murmured Ellery.

“Yes, yes... And now, there’s the lavatory. The general bathroom is behind the landing. I’ll leave you to your ablutions.”

He smiled and left the room, closing the door gently. The Queens, left alone in the center of that colossal bedchamber, stared wordlessly at each other. Then the Inspector shrugged, stripped off his coat, and made for the indicated lavatory door.

Ellery followed, muttering: “Ablutions! That’s the first time I’ve heard that word in twenty years. Remember the fussy old Greek who taught me at the Crosley School? Did a Mrs. Malaprop with the word, misusing it for ‘absolution.’ Ablutions! I tell you, dad, the more I see of this ominous establishment the less I like it.”

“The more fool you,” burbled the Inspector to the accompaniment of snorts and running water. “Good, by God! I needed this. Come on, son; get going. That grub downstairs won’t last forever.”

When they had washed and combed and brushed the dust from their clothes, they went out into the dark corridor.

Ellery shivered. “What do we do now — just hurl ourselves downstairs? Being the perfect guest, and considering the generally mysterious air of this household, I’d rather not blunder in on anyth—”

“God!” whispered the Inspector. He had stopped short in his tracks and gripped Ellery’s arm with convulsive fingers. He was staring with sagging jaw, naked terror in his eyes, gray little face grayer than Ellery had ever seen it, past his son’s shoulder at something down the hall.

His nerves already frayed by the harrowing experiences of the evening, Ellery whirled about. The skin of his arms was prickling, and the flesh was crawling at the base of his scalp.

But he saw nothing unusual; the corridor was dim and empty, as before. Then he heard a faint click! as of a door closing.

“What in God’s name is the matter?” he whispered nervously, searching his father’s horror-struck face.

The Inspector’s taut body relaxed. He sighed and passed a trembling hand over his mouth. “El, I... I— Did you see what I—”

They both jumped at a light footstep behind them. Something large and shapeless was stalking them from the rear, where the corridor was blackest. Two burning eyes... But it was only Dr. Xavier detaching himself from the region of intensest shadows.

“Quite ready, eh?” he said in his deep charming voice, as if he had noticed nothing amiss, although he must have heard the Queens’ tense whispers and — Ellery saw in a flash — must have seen both the Inspector’s horror and the cause of it. The surgeon’s voice was as pure, as rich, as mildly unruffled as it had been a few moments before. He linked their arms in his. “Then let’s go downstairs; shall we? I daresay you’re both ready to do justice to Mrs. Wheary’s little snack.”

And he urged them gently but firmly toward the landing.

As they descended, three abreast on the wide staircase, Ellery stole a glance at his father. Except for a certain slackness about the lips the old man betrayed no sign of his agitation of a moment before. But there was a deep furrow between his gray brows and he was holding himself stiffly erect, as if by a great effort of will.

Ellery shook his head in the half light. All desire for sleep had fled before the excitement boiling in his brain. What mess of wriggling human relationships had they innocently blundered into?

He frowned, treading the steps quietly. There were three major problems which required immediate solution if his restless brain was to relax and succumb to sleep: the cause of the Inspector’s unaccountable and unprecedented horror, the reason their host had lurked near their door in the darkness of the upper corridor, and a rational explanation for the extraordinary fact that Dr. Xavier’s big arm where it touched Ellery’s was as rigid and hard as if the man had died and his body were in the grip of rigor mortis.

Chapter III The Queer People

In later years Ellery Queen was to remember every brilliant detail of that remarkable night in the Tepee Mountains, with an animate wind whistling about the summit of a peak on which stood a veritable house of mystery. It would not have been so bad, he would point out, had not the palpable blackness of the mountain night provided a dark breeding ground for the phantoms of their imagination. And then, too, the fire miles below worked in and out of their minds, like a plaited thread of phosphorescent wool. Beneath everything they both realized that there was no escaping from the house, that they must eventually confront whatever of evil it concealed — unless they were willing to throw themselves upon the doubtful mercies of the wilderness and the conflagration below.

To make it worse, neither father nor son was offered the opportunity to discuss their common fears in private. Their host did not leave them alone for even a moment. Engulfing the cold pork sandwiches and blackberry tarts on the trays, and the steaming coffee Mrs. Wheary silently provided when they returned to the living room on the main floor, the Queens would gladly have dispensed with the presence of Dr. Xavier. But the big man remained with them, ringing for Mrs. Wheary and ordering more sandwiches and coffee, pressing cigars upon them — in every way except the important one acting the perfect host.

Ellery, watching the man as he ate, was puzzled. Dr. Xavier was not a charlatan nor a sinister figure out of blood fiction. There was nothing of the Cagliari nor of the Cagliostro about him. He was a cultured, handsome, genial man approaching comfortable middle age, with an air of expertness in his profession — Ellery recalled that he was sometimes referred to as “the Mayo of New England” — and a quiet charm which was even more captivating on closer acquaintance. The ideal dinner guest, for example; unquestionably, from his physique, a man of athletic tendencies; a scientist and student and gentleman. But there was something else, something he was concealing... Ellery racked his brains as his jaw rose and fell, but he could think of no explanations except the Thing that had raised the Inspector’s hackles upstairs. Good lord, he thought to himself, it can’t be one of these... these scientific monstrosities! That would be too much, he conceded. The man was a famous surgeon, had performed pioneer work in unexplored surgical fields; but to visualize him as a sort of Wellsian Dr. Moreau... Nonsense!

He eyed his father. The Inspector was eating quietly. Terror had gone. But in its place lurked a sharpness, a sleepless vigilance which he strove to mask under the necessary movements of mastication.

And suddenly Ellery realized something else. The light coming in from the corridor was stronger. There were voices, too — almost normal voices — from that direction where there had been only whispering before. It was as if a veil had been lifted, as if by telepathic command the doctor had influenced the owners of those voices, who had whispered before, to make a pretense of normality.

“And now, if you’ve quite finished,” said Dr. Xavier, surveying the ruins in the two trays with a smile, “suppose we join the others?”

“The others?” echoed the Inspector innocently, as if he had not been suspected the existence of others in the household.

“Why, yes. My brother, my wife, my medical assistant — I do some research up here, you know; quite a laboratory at the rear of the house — and a...” Dr. Xavier hesitated “...a guest. I suspect it’s a little too early to retire—?”

He stopped on an ascending note, as if mutely hoping that the Queens might be willing to forgo the pleasure of meeting “the others” for the more immediate delights of sleep.

But Ellery said quickly: “Oh, we’ve quite recovered; haven’t we, dad?” The Inspector, accustomed to accepting cues, nodded. There was even a certain eagerness in his nod. “I don’t feel a bit sleepy now. And then, after all the excitement,” Ellery added, laughing, “it will be good to plunge into congenial human society again.”

“Yes, yes, naturally,” said Dr. Xavier. There was the faintest note of disappointment in his voice. “This way, gentlemen.”

He conducted them out of the living room across the corridor to a door almost directly opposite. “I suppose,” he said hesitantly, his hand on the knob. “I should explain—”

“Not at all,” said the Inspector heartily.

“But I feel... You see I don’t doubt it’s all a little — odd to you, our behavior tonight,” he hesitated again, “but it’s most uncommonly lonely up here, you know, and the ladies were slightly — ah — alarmed at the sounds of your pounding on the front door. We thought it best to send Bones—”

“Not another word,” said Ellery handsomely, and Dr. Xavier hung his head and turned back to the door. It was as if he realized very well how lame the explanations must sound to intelligent ears. Ellery began to feel compassion for the big man. He abruptly dismissed from his mind, for once and all, the possibility of the scientific monstrosity his fertile imagination had conjured up a few moments before. This big chap was as gentle as a girl. Whatever it was that agitated him, it was something that concerned others, not himself. And it was a rational thing not a fantastic horror.

The room they entered was a combined music-and-game room. A concert grand occupied one whole corner, and armchairs and lamps were artfully arranged about the instrument. The greater part of the room, however, was occupied with tables of varied sizes: for bridge, chess, checkers, backgammon, ping-pong and even billiards. The room had three other doors: one on the wall to their left; another door leading from, the foyer on the corridor wall — through which they had heard the whispering people — and a door on the opposite wall apparently opening, from the glimpse Ellery had of the room beyond, into a library. The entire front wall was composed of French windows which looked out upon the terrace.

All this he grasped in the first circumambient glance; and more, for on two of the tables were scattered cards and this, it seemed to Ellery, was the most provocative fact of all; and then following the doctor and his father, he devoted his whole attention to the four people in the room.

Of one thing he was instantly certain: All four, like Dr. Xavier, were laboring under some intense excitement. The men showed it more than the women. Both men had risen, and neither glanced directly at the Queens. One of them, a big blond with broad shoulders, and sharp eyes — unquestionably Dr. Xavier’s brother — covered his nervousness by masking it under action: he crushed his cigarette, barely smoked, in an ash tray on the bridge table before him, quickly, holding his head low. The other for no outward reason flushed: a young man of delicate features but keen blue eyes and squared-off-jaw, with brown hair and chemical-stained fingers. He shuffled his feet twice as the Queens approached, his fair skin reddening more deeply at their every step, and his eyes fluttered from side to side.

“The assistant,” thought Ellery. “Nice-looking youngster. Whatever it is this crowd is holding back, he’s holding it back with them — but he doesn’t like the feeling, that’s evident!”

The women, with the usual feminine capacity for rising to emergencies, scarcely betrayed their nervousness. One was young and the other — ageless. The young woman was big and competent, Ellery felt at once; twenty-five, he judged, and quite capable of taking care of herself; a quiet composed creature with alert brown eyes, pleasant features indefinably charming, and a certain controlled immobility that bespoke a capacity for decisive action should the necessity arise. She sat perfectly still, hands in her lap, even smiling a little. Only her eyes betrayed her: they were swimming with tension, snapping, brilliant.

Her companion was the dominating figure of the tableau. Tall even in her chair, deep-bosomed, with, proud black eyes and jet hair touched with gray, with a clear olive complexion barely cosmetised, she was a woman to dominate any group. She might have been thirty-five or fifty; and there was something strikingly French about her which Ellery could not analyze. A woman of passionate temperament, he felt instinctively; a dangerous woman, dangerous in hate and deadly in love. Her type should be given to quick little gestures, an overflow of movement reflecting the volatile personality. Instead, she sat so still that she might have been mesmerized; the liquid black of her eyes, was fixed in space midway between Ellery and the Inspector... Ellery dropped his eyes, composed himself, and smiled.

The amenities were preserved. It was an awkward meeting. “My dear,” said Dr. Xavier to the extraordinary woman with the black eyes, “these are the gentlemen whom we mistook for marauders,” and he laughed lightly. “Mrs. Xavier, Mr. Queen. Mr. Queen’s son, my dear.” Even then she did not look at them fixedly; one flashing side glance from her remarkable eyes, a polite smile... “Miss Forrest, Mr. Queen; Mr. Queen... Miss Forrest is the guest I spoke of.”

“Charmed,” said the young woman instantly. Did a glance of warning pass from the doctor’s deep-set eyes? She smiled. “You’ll have to forgive our bad manners. It’s a... a ghastly night and we were taken rather by surprise.” She shivered; a genuine shiver.

“Can’t say I blame you, Miss Forrest,” said the Inspector genially. “I guess we didn’t realize what sane people would think at having somebody pound at their front door at night in a place like this. But that’s my son — impulsive scoundrel.”

“There’s an introduction for you,” smiled Ellery.

They all laughed, and then silence again.

“Ah — my brother, Mark Xavier,” said the surgeon hastily, indicating the tall blond man with the sharp eyes. “And my colleague, Dr. Holmes.” The young man smiled in a strained fashion. “There! Now that we’re all met, won’t you sit down?” They found chairs. “Mr. Queen and his son,” Dr. Xavier murmured casually, “were brought here more by circumstances than inclination.”

“Lost your way?” said Mrs. Xavier slowly, looking at Ellery directly for the first time. He felt a physical shock; it was like peering into a furnace. And she had a throbbing husky voice as passionate and baffling as her eyes.

“Not that, my dear,” said Dr. Xavier. “Don’t be alarmed, but the fact is there’s something of a forest fire down below and these gentlemen, returning from a holiday in Canada, were forced into Arrow road in self-protection.”

“Fire!” they all exclaimed; and Ellery saw that their surprise was genuine. This was undoubtedly the first intelligence they had had of the conflagration.

And so the gap was bridged, and for some time the Queens were occupied answering excited questions and repeating the story of their narrow escape from the flames. Dr. Xavier sat quietly by, listening and smiling courteously, as if this were the first time he, too, had heard the story. Then the conversation petered out and Mark Xavier went abruptly to one of the French windows to stare out at the darkness. The ugly Thing that lurked in the recesses reared its head again. Mrs. Xavier was biting her lip and Miss Forrest was studying her rosy fingers.

“Now, now,” said the surgeon suddenly, “don’t let’s pull such long faces.” Then he had seen it, too. “It’s probably not very serious. Communication’s cut off temporarily, that’s all. Osquewa and the neighboring villages are well equipped for fighting forest fires. There’s one almost every year. Remember the blaze last year, Sarah?”

“Indeed I do.” The glance Mrs. Xavier flung at her husband was enigmatic.

“I suggest,” said Ellery, lighting a cigarette, “that we discuss pleasanter things. Dr. Xavier, for example.”

“Now, now,” said the surgeon, flushing.

“That’s an idea!” cried Miss Forrest, jumping from her chair suddenly. “Let’s talk about you, Doctor, and how famous and kind and miraculous you are! I’ve been dying to for days, but I haven’t dared for fear Mrs. Xavier would tear my hair out, or something.”

“Now, Miss Forrest,” said Mrs. Xavier grimly.

“Oh, I am sorry!” cried the young woman, swinging about the room. Her self-control seemed to have deserted her; her eyes were extraordinarily bright. “I guess I’m just all nerves. With two doctors in the house, perhaps a sedative... Oh, come on, Sherlock!” and she pulled at Dr. Holmes’s arm. The young man was startled. “Don’t stand there like a stick. Let’s do something.”

“I say,” he said quickly, almost stammering. “You know—”

“Sherlock?” said the Inspector, smiling. “That’s an odd name, Dr. Holmes... Oh, I see!”

“Of course,” said Miss Forrest, dimpling. She clung to the young physician’s arm to his evident embarrassment. “Sherlock Holmes. That’s what I call him. Real name is Percival, or some such dismal thing... He’s a Sherlock at that; aren’t you, darling? Always messing about with microscopes and nasty liquids and things.”

“Now, Miss Forrest,” began Dr. Holmes, scarlet.

“And he’s English, too,” said Dr. Xavier with a fond glance at the young man, “which makes the name astonishingly appropriate, Miss Forrest. But you’re an impertinent baggage. Percival’s very sensitive, like most Britons, you know; you’re really embarrassing him.”

“No, no,” said Dr. Holmes, whose conversational capacity seemed limited. He said it very quickly, however.

“Oh, lord!” wailed Miss Forrest, throwing her arms about as she flung the young man’s aside. “Nobody loves me,” and she went to join silent Mark Xavier at the window.

“Very pretty,” thought Ellery grimly. “This crowd ought to go on the stage, en masse.” Aloud he said with a smile, “You’d rather not be named after Holmes of Baker Street, Dr. Holmes? In some circles it would be considered rather an accolade.”

“Can’t abide shockers,” said Dr. Holmes briefly, and sat down.

“There,” chuckled Dr. Xavier, “Percival and I part. I’m fatuously fond of them.”

“Trouble is,” said Dr. Holmes unexpectedly, with a furtive glance at the smooth back of Miss Forrest, “their atrocious medical stuff. Sheer bilge, you know. You’d think the blighters would take the trouble to get accurate medical information. And then when they put English characters into their stories — the American ones, I mean, do you see — they make ’em talk like... like...”

“You’re a living paradox Doctor,” said Ellery with a twinkle. “I thought no Englishman breathes who uses the word ‘blighter.’ ”

Even Mrs. Xavier permitted herself to smile at that.

“You’re too captious, my boy,” went on Dr. Xavier. “Read a story once in which murder was committed by injecting the victim with air from an empty hypodermic. Coronary-explosion sort of thing. Well, the fact is, as you know, death won’t occur from that cause once in a hundred times. Didn’t bother me though.”

Dr. Holmes grunted; Miss Forrest was deep in conversation with Mark Xavier.

“Refreshing to meet a tolerant medico,” grinned Ellery, recalling some vitriolic letters he had had from physicians because of alleged errors of fact in his own novels. “You read for entertainment purely? I should deduce, seeing this wealth of games, Doctor, that you’re the puzzle type of fan. Like to figure them out, eh?”

“It’s my one abiding passion much, I fear, to the disgust of Mrs. Xavier, whose own taste runs to French novels. Cigar, Mr. Queen?” Mrs. Xavier half smiled again — a dreadful smile; and Dr. Xavier surveyed his game tables imperturbably. “As a matter of fact, I’ve an abnormally developed game sense, as you’ve noted. All sort of games. I find I need that sort of thing as sheer diversion from the physical strain of surgery... I did find, I mean to say,” he added with an odd change of tone. A shade passed over his pleasant face. “It’s been some time since I have presided in an operating theater. Retired, you know... Now it’s a habit, and it’s excellent relaxation. I’m still fussing about with my laboratory.” He flicked ashes from his cigar, bending forward to do so; and as he bent forward his eyes searched his wife’s face for an instant. Mrs. Xavier was sitting with the same vague smile on her extraordinary face, nodding at every word. But she was frigid and remote as Arcturus. A frigid woman who was volcanic beneath! Ellery studied her without seeming to do so.

“By the way,” said the Inspector suddenly, crossing his legs, “we met a guest of yours on our way up.”

“Guest of ours?” Dr. Xavier seemed puzzled; the fair skin of his forehead wrinkled inquiringly. Mrs. Xavier’s body stirred; the movement reminded Ellery of the squirming of an octopus. Then she became as still as before. The low voices of Mark Xavier and Ann Forrest at the window ceased abruptly. Dr. Holmes alone seemed unaffected; he was staring rebelliously at the cuff of his linen trousers, his thoughts apparently eons away.

“Why, yes,” murmured Ellery, alert. “Bumped into the chap during our flight from that private Hades of ours below. He was driving a rather ancient Buick sedan.”

“But we haven’t—” began Dr. Xavier slowly, and stopped. His sunken eyes narrowed. “That’s rather odd, do you know?”

The Queens looked at each other. What now?

“Odd?” said the Inspector mildly. He refused his host’s mechanical offer of a cigar and, taking a worn brown box from his pocket, sniffed a pinch of its contents. “Snuff,” he said apologetically. “Dirty habit... Odd, Doctor?”

“Quite. What sort of man was he?”

“Very stout, from what I saw of him,” said Ellery quickly. “Froggy eyes. Voice like a bassoon. Tremendous breadth of shoulder. About fifty-five, at a rough guess.”

Mrs. Xavier stirred again.

“But we’ve had no visitor at all, you know,” said the surgeon quietly.

The Queens were astonished. “Then he didn’t come from here?” muttered Ellery. “But I thought no one else lives on this mountain!”

“We’re quite sequestered up here, I assure you. Sarah, my dear, you don’t know of anyone—?”

Mrs. Xavier licked her full lips. A struggle seemed to be raging within her. There was speculation, bafflement, and subtle cruelty in her black eyes. Then she said in a surprised voice: “No.”

“That’s funny,” murmured the Inspector. “He was headed lickety-cut down the mountain, and if there’s only one road and this is at the end of it and nobody else lives here...”

There was a crash from behind. They turned quickly. But it was only Miss Forrest, who had dropped her compact. She straightened up, her cheeks fiery, eyes so strangely bright, and said gaily: “Oh, shoot! The next thing we know we’ll all be babbling of bogies. If you people insist on introducing unpleasant subjects, you know, I’ll be just as unpleasant. What with men prowling about and all, somebody will have to tuck me into bed tonight. You see—”

“What do you mean, Miss Forrest?” said Dr. Xavier slowly. “Is there anything—?”

The Queens crossed glances again. These people were not only concealing a common secret, but they possessed little private secrets as well.

The girl tossed her head. “I wasn’t going to mention it,” she said, shrugging, “because it was really nothing and... and...” It was evident that she already regretted having begun. “Oh, let’s forget all about it and play ducks and drakes, or something.”

Mark Xavier came forward with short, quick steps. There was a brutal gleam in his sharp eyes and his mouth was hard. “Come on, Miss Forrest,” he said gruffly. “Something’s bothering you and we might as well know what. If there’s a man skulking about the place...”

“Of course,” said the girl quietly, “that’s what it is. Very well, if you insist; but I apologize in advance. No doubt that’s the explanation... Last week I... I lost something.”

It seemed to Ellery that Dr. Xavier, more than any of them, was startled. Then Dr. Holmes rose and went to a small round table, groping for a cigarette.

“Lost something?” asked Dr. Xavier in a thick voice.

The room was incredibly quiet; so quiet that Ellery could hear the suddenly labored breathing of their host. “I missed it one morning,” said Miss Forrest in a low voice; “I think it was Friday of last week. I thought I might have mislaid it. I looked and looked all over but I couldn’t find it, you see. Perhaps I did lose it. Yes, I’m sure I lost it.” She stopped in confusion.

No one spoke for a long time. Then Mrs. Xavier said harshly: “Come, come, child. You know that’s nonsense. You mean someone stole it from you, don’t you?”

“Oh, dear!” cried Miss Forrest, flinging her head back. “Now you’ve made me talk about it. I wasn’t going to. I’m sure I either lost it or that — that man Mr. Queen was telling about stole into my room somehow and — and took it. You see, it couldn’t have been anybody h—”

“I suggest,” stammered Dr. Holmes, “that — ah we put off this charming conversation to another time, eh?”

“What was it?” asked Dr. Xavier in a quiet voice. He had himself perfectly under control again.

“Was it valuable?” snapped Mark Xavier.

“No; oh, no,” said the girl eagerly. “Absolutely worthless. You couldn’t get a wooden nickel on it from a pawnbroker or — or anybody. It was just an old heirloom, a silver ring.”

“A silver ring,” said the surgeon. He rose. Ellery noticed for the first time that there was something gaunt about his appearance; drawn and bleak. “Sarah, I’m sure your remark was needlessly unkind. There isn’t anyone here who would stoop to theft, my dear; you know that. Is there?”

Their eyes met briefly; it was his that fell. “You never can tell, mon cher,” she said softly.

The Queens sat still. This talk of thievery was, under the circumstances, acutely embarrassing. Ellery slowly removed his pince-nez and began to scrub them. Unpleasant female, that woman!

“No.” The surgeon gripped himself visibly. “And then Miss Forrest says the ring was valueless. I see no point in suspecting a theft. You probably dropped it somewhere, my dear, or else, as you suggest, this mysterious skulker is in some way responsible for its disappearance.”

“Yes, of course that’s it, Doctor,” said the girl thankfully.

“If you will pardon an unpardonable interruption,” murmured Ellery. They turned to stare, freezing in their attitudes. Even the Inspector frowned. But Ellery replaced his pince-nez with a smile. “You see, if this man we met really is an unknown quantity and unconnected with the household, then you are faced with a peculiar situation.”

“Yes, Mr. Queen?” said Dr. Xavier stiffly.

“Of course,” said Ellery with a wave of his hand, “there are minor considerations. If Miss Forrest lost her ring last Friday, where has this prowler been? Not necessarily an insurmountable point, however; he may have his headquarters in Osquewa, say...”

“Yes, Mr. Queen?” said Dr. Xavier again.

“But, as I said, you are faced with a peculiar situation. Because, since the fat-faced gentleman is neither a phoenix nor a devil out of hell,” continued Ellery, “the fire will stop him tonight as effectually as it stopped my father and me. Consequently he will find himself — has already found himself, no doubt — unable to leave the mountain.” He shrugged. “A nasty situation. With no other house in the vicinity, and the fire possibly a stubborn one...”

“Oh!” gasped Miss Forrest. “He... he’ll be back!”

“I should say that is a mathematical certainty,” said Ellery dryly.

There was silence again. About the house Ellery’s postulated banshees, as if this were a signal, redoubled their howling. Mrs. Xavier shivered suddenly, and even the men glanced uneasily at the black night beyond the French windows.

“If he’s a thief—” muttered Dr. Holmes, crushing out his cigarette, and stopped. His eyes met Dr. Xavier’s and his jaw tightened. “I was about to say,” he went on quietly, “that Miss Forrest’s explanation is undoubtedly correct. Oh, undoubtedly. For you see, I myself missed a signet ring last Wednesday. Worthless old scrap, to be sure; don’t wear it much and it means nothing to me, but — there you are. Gone, you see.”

The silence resumed where it had left off. Ellery, studying those faces, wondered again with weary tenacity what cesspool lay beneath the polite surface of this household.

The silence was shattered by Mark Xavier, whose big body moved so suddenly as to cause Miss Forrest to utter a little scream. “I think, John,” he snapped, addressing Dr. Xavier, “that you’d better see that all the doors and windows are locked tight tonight... Good night, all!”

He stalked out of the room.

Ann Forrest — whose aplomb seemed irremediably shaken for the evening — and Dr. Holmes excused themselves soon after; Ellery heard them whispering to each other as they strode down the corridor toward the staircase. Mrs. Xavier still sat with the Mona Lisa half-smile that was as stiff and inexplicable as the expression on the painted face of Leonardo’s Gioconda.

The Queens rose awkwardly. “I guess,” said the Inspector, “we’ll be trotting off to bed, too. Doctor, if you don’t mind. I can’t tell you how all-fired grateful we are—”

“Please,” said Dr. Xavier roughly. “We’re rather short-staffed here, Mr. Queen — Mrs. Wheary and Bones are our only servants — so I’ll show you to your room myself.”

“Not at all necessary,” Ellery hastened to reply. “We know the way, Doctor. Thank you all the same. Good night, Mrs. Xav—”

“I’m going to bed myself,” announced the doctor’s wife suddenly, rising. She was taller even than Ellery had supposed; she drew herself up to her full height, breathing deeply. “If there’s anything you’d like before retiring...”

“Nothing at all, Mrs. Xavier, thank you,” said the Inspector.

“But, Sarah, I thought—” began Dr. Xavier. He stopped and shrugged, his shoulders set at an oddly hopeless slope.

“Aren’t you coming to bed, John?” she said sharply.

“I think not, my dear,” he replied in a heavy voice, avoiding her eyes. “I believe I’ll do a bit of work in the lab before I turn in. There’s a chemical reaction I’ve been meaning to make on the ‘soup’ I prepared...”

“I see,” she said, and smiled that dreadful smile again. She turned to the Queens. “This way, please,” and swept out of the room.

The Queens muttered subdued “good nights” to their host and followed. The last glimpse they had of the surgeon was as they turned into the corridor. He was standing where they had left him, in an attitude of the most profound dejection, sucking his lower lip and fingering a rather gaudy bar pin securing his necktie to his rough-woven shirt. He looked older than before and mentally exhausted. Then they heard him cross the room in the direction of the library.

The instant the door of their bedroom closed upon them and Ellery had switched on the overhead light, he whirled on his father and whispered fiercely: “Dad! What in the name of God was that awful thing you saw in the corridor outside just before Xavier sneaked up, on us from behind?”

The Inspector sank into a Morris chair very slowly, loosening the knot of his cravat. He avoided Ellery’s eyes. “Well,” he mumbled, “I don’t rightly know. I guess I must “have been a little — well, jumpy.”

“You jumpy?” said Ellery scornfully. “You’ve always had the nerves of a cuttlefish. Come on, out with it I’ve been bursting to ask you all evening. Blast that big chap! He didn’t leave us alone for an instant.”

“Well,” muttered the old gentleman, pulling his cravat off and unbuttoning his collar, “I’ll tell you. It was — weird.”

“Well, well, what was it, dad, for heaven’s sake?”

“To tell the truth, I don’t know.” The Inspector looked sheepish. “If you or anybody else in this world described that — that thing to me I swear I’d call for the nut wagon. Cripes!” he burst out, “it didn’t look like anything human, I’d bet my life!”

Ellery stared at him. This from his own father! The prosaic little Inspector, who had handled more corpses and wallowed in more illicitly spilled human blood than any other man in the New York Police Department!

“It... it looked,” went on the Inspector with a feeble grin that held no mirth whatever, “it looked just like — a crab.”

“A crab!”

Ellery gaped at his father. Then his flat cheeks ballooned out and he put his hand over his mouth, doubled over in a spasm of the heartiest laughter. He rocked to and fro, eyes streaming.

“A crab!” he gasped. “Ho, ho, ho! A crab!” and he went off into another gale.

“Oh, stop it!” said the old gentleman irritably. “You sound like Lawrence Tibbett singing that flea song. Stop it!”

“A crab,” gasped Ellery again, wiping his eyes.

The old man shrugged. “Mind you, I’m not saying it was a... a crab. Might have been a couple of crazy acrobats or wrestlers or something doing a little homework on the hall floor. But it looked like a crab — a giant crab. Big as a man — bigger than a man, El.” He rose nervously and grasped Ellery’s arm. “Come on, be nice. I look all right, don’t I? I haven’t got de — delusions, or something, have I?”

“Blessed if I know what you have,” chuckled Ellery, flinging himself on the bed. “Seeing crabs! If I didn’t know you so well I’d lump the crab with a particularly violent purple elephant and say you’d had a wee drappie too much. Crab!” He shook his head. “Now look here; let’s examine this thing like rational human beings, not kids in a haunted house. I was talking to you, facing you. You were looking straight ahead, down the corridor. Exactly where did you see this — this fantastic beast of yours, Inspector dear?”

The Inspector took snuff with shaking fingers. “Second door down the hall from ours,” he muttered, and sneezed. “Of course, it was just my imagination, El... It was on our side of the hall. It was pretty dark at that spot—”

“Pity,” drawled Ellery. “With a little more light I’m sure you’d have seen at least a tyrannosaurus. Just what was your friend the crab doing when you spotted him and got the shivers?”

“Don’t rub it in,” said the Inspector miserably. “I just got a glimpse of — of the thing. Scuttled—”

“Scuttled!”

“That’s the only word for it,” said the old gentleman in a dogged voice. “Scuttled through the doorway, and then you heard the click yourself. Must have.”

“This,” said Ellery, “calls for investigation.” He jumped from the bed and strode to the door.

“El! For God’s sake be careful!” wailed the Inspector. “You simply can’t go snooping about a man’s house at night—”

“I can go to the bathroom, can’t I?” said Ellery with dignity; and he pulled open the door and vanished.

Inspector Queen sat still, gnawing at his fingers and shaking his head. Then he rose, pulled off his coat and shirt, his suspenders sagging below his seat, and stretching his arms yawned prodigiously. He was very tired. Tired and sleepy and — afraid. Yes, he admitted to himself in the privacy of that doorless chamber of the mind to which no outsider can gain admittance, old Queen of Centre Street was afraid. It was a queer thing. He had felt fear often before; it was silly to set oneself up as a Jack Dalton; but this was a new kind of fear. A fear of the unknown. It did queer things to his skin and made him want to whirl about at purely imaginary sounds behind him.

Consequently he yawned and stretched and busied himself with the score of slow little unimportant things a man does when he is undressing for bed. And all the while, despite the very genuine laughter of Ellery echoing in his brain, fear lurked there and would not be banished. He even began — sneering bitterly to himself in the same instant — to whistle.

He slipped out of his trousers and folded his clothes neatly on the Morris chair. Then he bent over one of the suitcases at the foot of the bed. As he did so something rattled at one of the windows and he looked up, prickling and alert. But it was only a half-drawn window shade.

Moved by an unconquerable impulse he trotted quickly across the room — a gray mouse of a man in his underwear — and pulled the blind. He caught a glimpse of the outdoors as the blind came down: a vast black abyss, it seemed to him; and indeed it was, for he was to find later that the house was perched on the edge of a precipice, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet into the next valley. His small, sharp eyes flicked sidewise. In the same instant he sprang back from the window, releasing the shade so that it flew up with a crash, and darting across the room flicked the light switch, plunging the room in darkness.

Ellery opened the door of their bedroom, stopped short in astonishment, and then slipped into the room like a wraith, shutting the door quickly and softly behind him.

“Dad!” he whispered. “Are you in bed? Why’s the light off?”

“Shut up!” he heard his father say fiercely. “Don’t make any more noise than you have to. There’s something damned fishy going on around here, and I think I know now what it is.”

Ellery was silent for a moment. As his pupils contracted under influence of the dark, he began to make out shadowy details. A faint starlight shone through the rear windows. His father, bare legged and in shorts, was crouched almost on his knees across the room. There was a third window on the right-hand wall; and it was at this window that the Inspector crouched.

Ellery ran to his father’s side and looked out. The side window overlooked a court formed by the recession of the rear wall of the house in the middle. The court was narrow. Propped against the outside of the rear wall in the court at the first-floor level there was a balcony which led, apparently, from the bedroom adjoining the Queens’. Ellery reached the window just in time to see a flowing shadowy figure slip from the balcony through a French door and vanish. A white feminine hand shone in the starlight as it reached out of the room and drew the double door shut.

The Inspector rose with a groan, pulled all the blinds, pattered back to the door, and turned on the light switch. He was perspiring profusely.

“Well?” murmured Ellery, standing still at the foot of the bed.

The Inspector dropped onto the bed, hunched over like a little half-naked kobold, and tugged fretfully at one end of his gray mustache. “I went over there to pull the blind,” he muttered, “and just then I saw a woman through the side window. She was standing on the balcony staring off into space, seemed like. I ran back and turned off the light and then watched her. She didn’t move. Just stared up at the stars. Moony, sort of. I heard her sniffle. Cried like a baby. All by herself. Then you came in and she went back to that room next door.”

“Indeed?” said Ellery. He slipped over to the wall on the right and pressed his ear against it. “Can’t hear a thing through these walls, damn the luck! Well, and what’s fishy about that? Who was it — Mrs. Xavier, or that very frightened young woman, Miss Forrest?”

“That,” said the Inspector grimly, “is what makes it so fishy.”

Ellery stared at his father. “Riddles, eh?” He began to strip off his jacket. “Come on, out with it. Somebody we haven’t seen tonight, I’ll wager. And not the crab.”

“You’ve guessed it,” said the old gentleman glumly. “It wasn’t either of ’em. It was... Marie Carreau!” He uttered the name as if it were an incantation.

Ellery stopped struggling with his shirt. “Marie Carreau? Come again. Who the devil’s she? Never heard of her.”

“Oh, my God,” moaned the Inspector. “Never heard of Marie Carreau, he says! That’s what comes of raising an ignoramus. Don’t you read the papers, you idiot? She’s society, son, society!”

“Hear, hear.”

“Bluest of the blue. Pots of money. Runs official Washington. Her father’s Ambassador to France. Of French stock, dating from the Revolution. Her great-great-what-is-it and Lafayette were just like that.” The old gentleman twined his middle finger about his forefinger. “Whole damn family — uncles and cousins and nephews — all in the diplomatic service. She married her own cousin — same name — about twenty years ago. He’s dead now. No children. Never remarried, though she’s still young. She’s only about thirty-seven.” He paused for sheer lack of breath and glared at his son.

“Bravo,” chuckled Ellery, flexing his arms. “There’s the complete woman for you! That old photographic memory of yours opening again. Well, what of it? To tell the truth, I’m immensely relieved. We’re beginning to dig into some tangible mysteries. This crowd had some reason, obviously, to conceal the fact that your precious Mrs. Carreau is among those present. Ergo, when they heard an automobile roaring up tonight they bundled your precious social ranee into her bedroom. All that stuff about being afraid of visitors this time of night was pure hogwash. What gave mine host and the rest the jitters was trying to keep us from suspecting she’s here. I wonder why.”

“I can tell you that,” said the Inspector quietly. “I saw it in the newspapers before we started out on our trip three weeks ago, and you would have seen it, too, if you paid the least attention to what’s going on in the world! Mrs. Carreau is supposed to be in Europe!”

“Oho,” said Ellery softly. He took a cigarette out of his case and went over to the night table to hunt for a match. “Interesting. But not necessarily inexplicable. We’ve a famous surgeon here — perhaps the little lady has something wrong with her blue blood, or her gold-plated innards, and doesn’t want to have the world know... No, that doesn’t seem to wash. It’s more than that... Very pretty problem. Crying, eh? Perhaps she’s been kidnapped,” he said hopefully. “By our excellent host... Where in hell’s a match?”

The Inspector disdained to reply, tugging at his mustache and scowling at the floor.

Ellery opened the drawer of the night table, found a packet of matches, and whistled. “By George,” he drawled, “what a thoughtful gentleman our precious doctor is. Just look at the junk in this drawer.”

The Inspector snorted.

“There’s a man,” said Ellery admiringly, “with admirable singleness of purpose. Apparently gaming of the innocuous sort is a phobia with him, so that he can’t forbear inflicting his phobia on his guests. Here’s the complete solution to a dull weekend. A crisp new pack of cards, never opened, a book of crossword puzzles — actually virgin, by Vesta! — a checkerboard, one of those questions-and-answers books, and heaven knows what else. Even the pencil is sharpened. Well!” He sighed, closed the drawer, and lit his cigarette.

“Beautiful,” muttered the Inspector.

“Eh?”

The old gentleman started. “I was thinking out loud. The lady on the balcony, I mean. Really a gorgeous creature, El. And crying—” He shook his head. “Well, I suppose it’s all really none of our business. We’re a pair of the world’s nosiest louts.” Then he jerked his head up and some of the old wariness leapt into his gray eyes. “I forgot. Anything doing outside? Find out anything?”

Ellery deliberately lay down on the other side of the bed and crossed his feet on the footboard. He puffed smoke toward the ceiling. “Oh, you mean about the... ah... giant crab?” he said with a twinkle.

“You know damn well what I mean!” snarled the Inspector, blushing to his ears.

“Well,” drawled Ellery, “it’s problematical. Corridor was empty, and all the doors closed. No sounds. I crossed the landing noisily and went into the bathroom. Then I came out — without noise. Didn’t remain there long... By the way, do you happen to know anything about the gastronomical predilections of crustaceans?”

“Well, well?” growled the Inspector. “What’s on your mind now? You always have to say it with trimmings!”

“The point is,” murmured Ellery, “that I heard footsteps on the stairs and had to dodge back into the darkness of the corridor near our door. Couldn’t cross the landing to get into the bathroom again, or whoever it was that was coming up would have spotted me. So I watched that patch of light at the landing. It was our buxom Demeter, our nervous provider of provender, Mrs. Wheary.”

“The housekeeper? What of it? Probably going to bed. I suppose she and that lout of a scoundrel, Bones — cripes, what a name! — sleep on the attic floor upstairs.”

“Oh, no doubt. But Mrs. Wheary was not bound for blessed dreamland, I’ll tell you that. She was carrying a tray.”

“Ah!”

“A tray, I might add, heaped with comestibles.”

“Bound for Mrs. Carreau’s room, I’ll bet,” muttered the Inspector. “After all, even society women have to eat.”

“Not at all,” said Ellery dreamily. “That’s why I asked you if you knew anything about the gustatory tastes of crustaceans. I’ve never heard of a crab drinking a pitcher of cow’s milk and eating meat sandwiches on whole-wheat bread, and gulping fruit... You see, she barged right into the room next to Mrs. Carreau’s with not the faintest sign of fear. The room,” he said slyly, “into which you saw your giant crab — ah—” the Inspector threw up his hands and dug into the suitcase for his pajamas — “scuttle!”

Chapter IV Blood on the Sun

Ellery opened his eyes and saw brilliant sunlight splashing the counterpane of the unfamiliar bed on which he lay. For a moment he did not remember where he was. There was a singed soreness in his throat and his head felt like a pumpkin. He sighed and stirred and heard his father say: “So you’re up,” in a mild voice; and he twisted his head to find the Inspector, fully dressed in clean linen, fastidious little hands clasped behind his back, staring out of the rear windows with quiet abstraction.

Ellery groaned, stretched, and crawled out of bed. He began to peel off his pajamas, yawning.

“Take a look at this,” said the Inspector, without turning.

Ellery shuffled to his father’s side. The wall with two windows between which stood their bed was at the rear of the Xavier house. What had seemed a profound black abyss the night before turned out to be a sheer drop of contorted stone; so deep and disturbing that for a moment Ellery closed his eyes against a surge of vertigo. Then he opened them again. The sun was well over the distant range; it painted microscopic details of valley and cliffside with remarkable clarity. They were so high that the still, deserted world in the cup of the mighty well was the merest miniature; fluffy clouds drifted a little below them, striving to cling to the mountain’s top.

“See it?” murmured the Inspector.

“See what?”

“Way down there, where the cliff begins to slope into the valley. At the sides of the Mountain, El.”

Then Ellery saw. Curling around the edges of Arrow Mountain, far down at the knife-edge sides where the tight green mat of vegetation abruptly ended, were little fluttering pennants of smoke.

“The fire!” exclaimed Ellery. “I’d almost got myself to the point of thinking the whole blessed thing was a nightmare.”

“Drifting around at the back, where the cliff side is,” said the Inspector thoughtfully. “All stone at the back here and the fire can’t get a grip. Nothing to feed on. Not that it does us any good.”

Ellery halted on his way to the lavatory. “And what does that mean, my good sire?”

“Nothing much. Only I was just thinking,” said the old gentleman reflectively, “that if the fire really got bad...”

“Well?”

“We’d be stuck good and proper, my son. A bug could hardly crawl down that cliff.”

For a moment Ellery stared; then he chuckled. “There you go spoiling a perfectly lovely morning. Always the pessimist. Forget it. Be with you in a moment; I want to splash some of that monstrous cold mountain water over me.”

But the Inspector did not forget. He watched the little streamers of smoke without blinking all the while Ellery showered, combed, and dressed.

As the Queens descended the stairs they heard subdued voices below. The lower corridor was deserted, but the front door off the foyer was open and the dark hall of the night before was almost cheerful in the strong morning light. They went out upon the terrace and found Dr. Holmes and Miss Forrest engaged in an earnest conversation which ceased abruptly at the Queens’ appearance.

“Morning,” said Ellery briskly. “Lovely, isn’t it?” He stepped to the edge of the porch and breathed deeply, eying the hot blue sky with appreciation. The Inspector sat down in a rocker and fumbled with his snuffbox.

“Yes, isn’t it?” murmured Miss Forrest in an odd voice. Ellery turned sharply to search her face. She was rather pale. She was dressed in something pastel and clinging and looked very charming. But the charm was half tension...

“Going to turn hot,” said Dr. Holmes nervously, swinging his long legs. “Ah — did you sleep well, Mr. Queen?”

“Like Lazarus,” said Ellery cheerfully. “Must be the mountain air. Curious place Dr. Xavier has built here. More like an eagle’s eyrie than a roost for human beings.”

“Yes, isn’t it,” said Miss Forrest in smothered tones, and there was silence.

Ellery examined the terrain in the bright daylight. The summit of Arrow Mountain was level for only a few hundred feet. With the wide sprawling house backed against the lip of the precipice, very little ground remained to front and flank it, and that had apparently been cleared only with the greatest difficulty. Some effort had been made to level the terrain and remove the tumbled clusters of rock; but the effort had obviously been abandoned in short order, for except for the automobile drive leading from the grilled gates the ground was a petrified morass of jutting stones and rubble sparsely covered with tangled dusty vegetation. The woods began abruptly in a three-quarter circle about the summit, dipping down the mountainside. The whole effect was stark, lovely, and grotesque. “Nobody else up?” inquired the Inspector pleasantly, after a while. “It’s kind of late and I thought we’d be the last.”

Miss Forrest started. “Why — I really don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone but Dr. Holmes and that awful creature Bones. He’s rooting around at the side of the house somewhere, fussing with a pitiful little garden or something he’s trying to develop there. Have you, Dr. Holmes?” No badinage from the young lady this morning, observed Ellery to himself; and a sudden suspicion leaped into his mind. Miss Forrest was a “guest,” eh? The probabilities were, now that he thought of it, that the girl was in some way connected with the mysterious society woman skulking in her bedroom upstairs. This explanation would account for her excessive nervousness of the night before, her pallor and unnatural actions this morning.

“No,” said Dr. Holmes. “Waiting breakfast for the others, as a matter of fact.”

“I see,” murmured the Inspector. He stared out over the rocky ground for a moment and then rose. “Well, son, I think we’d better be using that telephone again. See how our little fire’s getting along, and then we’ll be on our way.”

“Right.”

They moved toward the foyer.

“Oh, but you’ll stay for breakfast, of course,” said Dr. Holmes quickly, flushing. “Couldn’t think of letting you go, you know, without a spot of something—”

“Well, well, we’ll see,” replied the Inspector with a smile. “We’ve troubled you people enough as it is—”

“Good morning,” said Mrs. Xavier from the doorway. They turned all at once. Ellery could have sworn he detected anguished anxiety in the eyes of Miss Forrest. The doctor’s wife was attired in a crimson morning gown; her gray-touched glossy jet hair was piled in Spanish masses on her head and her olive skin was delicately pallid. She stared inscrutably from the Inspector to Ellery.

“Morning,” said the Inspector hastily. “We were just going to call up Osquewa, Mrs. Xavier, and find out if the fire—”

“I have already telephoned Osquewa,” said Mrs. Xavier in a toneless voice. For the first time Ellery detected something faintly foreign in her speech.

Miss Forrest said breathlessly: “And?”

“Those people have made not the slightest progress in fighting the flames.” Mrs. Xavier swept to the edge of the terrace and brooded out upon the dreary vista. “It is burning steadily and — gaining.”

“Gaining, eh?” murmured Ellery. The Inspector was deathly still.

“Yes. It is not yet out of control, however,” said Mrs. Xavier with her maddening Mona Lisa smile, “so you need have no fears for your safety. It is really just a question of time.”

“Then there’s no way down yet?” muttered the Inspector.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh, lord,” said Dr. Holmes, and flung his cigarette away. “Let’s have breakfast; shall we?”

No one replied. Miss Forrest moved suddenly, shrinking back as if she had seen a snake. They bent forward. It was a long, feathery ash drifting out of the sky. As they watched, fascinated, others settled down.

“Cinders,” gasped Miss Forrest.

“Well, what of it?” said Dr. Holmes in a strained high voice, “wind’s changed, Miss Forrest, that’s all.”

“Wind’s changed,” repeated Ellery thoughtfully. He frowned all at once and dipped into his pocket for his cigarette case. Mrs. Xavier had not stirred a muscle of her broad, smooth back.

The silence was broken by the voice of Mark Xavier from the front door. “Good morning,” he growled. “What’s all this about cinders?”

“Oh, Mr. Xavier,” cried Miss Forrest, “the fire’s worse!”

“Worse?” He tramped forward and stood beside his sister-in-law. His sharp eyes were dulled and glassy this morning, and the whites were shot with streaks of blood. He looked as if he had not slept or had been drinking heavily.

“That’s bad,” he muttered, “that’s bad,” over and over again. “It doesn’t seem as if—” Then he stopped and raised his voice; it rang out harshly. “Well, what the devil are we waiting for? The fire’ll keep. How about breakfast? Where’s John? I’m starved!”

The tall, shambling, loose-jointed figure of Bones appeared from the side of the house, carrying a pick and an earth-stained shovel. In the light of the sun he was merely an emaciated old man in dirty overalls, with glaring eyes and a surly mouth. He pounded up the steps, looking neither to right nor to left and disappeared through the front door.

Mrs. Xavier stirred. “John? Yes, where is John?” She turned and her black eyes smoked into the bloodshot eyes of her brother-in-law.

“Don’t you know?” said Mark Xavier with a sneer.

Lord, what people! thought Ellery.

“No,” said the woman slowly. “I don’t. He didn’t come up to sleep last night.” The black eyes flashed and flamed. “At least I didn’t find him in bed this morning, Mark.”

“Nothing strange about that,” said Dr. Holmes hurriedly, with a forced laugh. “Probably tinkered about in the lab half the night. He’s engrossed in an experiment—”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Xavier. “He did say something last night about staying in the laboratory; didn’t he, Mr. Queen?” and she turned her remarkable eyes suddenly upon the Inspector.

The Inspector was grim. He barely concealed his distaste. “He did, Madam.”

“Well, I’ll go fetch him,” said Dr. Holmes eagerly, and plunged through one of the open French windows of the gameroom.

No one spoke. Mrs. Xavier returned her brooding attention to the sky. Mark Xavier sat quietly down upon the rail of the terrace, a cigaret sending curls of smoke into his half-closed eyes. Ann Forrest twisted and untwisted a handkerchief in her lap. There was a step from the foyer and the stout figure of Mrs. Wheary appeared.

“Breakfast is waiting, Mrs. Xavier,” she said nervously. “These gentlemen—” she indicated the Queens — “are they...?”

Mrs. Xavier turned around. “Of course,” she said in a furious voice.

Mrs. Wheary flushed and retreated.

Then suddenly they were staring at the French window through which Dr. Holmes had plunged a few moments before. The tall young Englishman was standing in the window, his white-blotched right hand clenched, his brown hair curiously disheveled and sticking up into the air, his mouth working and his face as gray as his tweed knickerbockers.

He said nothing at all for an eternity, his lips opening and closing and no sounds coming from them.

Then he said in the hoarsest, most blurred voice Ellery had ever heard: “He’s been murdered.”