There Was an Old Woman [= The Quick And the Dead]

1 Who Lived in a Shoe

The pearl-gray planet of the Supreme Court building, which lies in Foley Square, is round in shape; whereby you may know that in New York County, Justice is one with universal laws, following the conscience of Man like the earth the sun. Or so Ellery Queen reflected as he sat on the southern extremity of his spine in Trial Term Part VI, Mr. Justice Greevey not yet presiding, between Sergeant Thomas Velie of Homicide and Inspector Queen, waiting to testify in a case which is another story.

“How long, O Lord?” yawned Ellery.

“If you’re referring to that Gilbert and Sullivan pipsqueak, Greevey,” snapped his father, “Greevey’s probably just scratching his navel and crawling out of his ermine bed. Velie, go see what’s holding up the works.”

Sergeant Velie opened one aggrieved eye, nodded ponderously, and lumbered off in quest of enlightenment. When he lumbered back, the Sergeant looked black. “The Clerk says,” growled Sergeant Velie, “that Mr. Justice Greevey he called up and says he’s got an earache, so he’ll be delayed two hours gettin’ down here while he gets — the Clerk says ‘irritated,’ which I am, but it don’t make sense to me.”

“Irritation,” frowned Mr. Queen, “or to call it by its purer name ‘irrigation’ — irrigation, Sergeant, is the process by which one reclaims a dry, dusty, and dead terrain... a description, I understand, which fits Mr. Justice Greevey like a decalcomania.”

The Sergeant looked puzzled, but Inspector Queen muttered through his ragged mustache: “Two hours! I’d like to irrigate him. Let’s go out in the hall for a smoke.” And the old gentleman marched out of Room 331, followed by Sergeant Velie and — meekly — Ellery Queen; and so barged into the fantastic hull of the Potts case.

For a little way down the corridor, before the door of Room 335, Trial Term Part VII, they came upon Charley Paxton, pacing. Mr. Queen, like the governor of Messina’s niece, had a good eye and could see a church by daylight; so he noted this and that about the tall young man, mechanically, and concluded [a] he was an attorney (brief case); [b] his name was Charles Hunter Paxton (stern gilt lettering on same); [c] Counselor Paxton was waiting for a client and the client was late (frequent glances at wrist watch); [d] he was unhappy (general droop). And the great man, having run over Charles Hunter Paxton with the vacuum cleaner of his glance, made to pass on, satisfied.

But his father halted, twinkling.

INSPECTOR: Again, Charley? What is it this time?

MR. PAXTON: Lèse-majesté, Inspector.

INSPECTOR: Where’d it happen?

MR. PAXTON: Club Bongo.

SERGEANT VELIE (shaking the marble halls with his laughter): Imagine Thurlow in that clip joint!

MR. PAXTON: And he got clipped — make no mistake about that, my friends. Clipped on the buttonola.

INSPECTOR: Assault and battery, huh?

MR. PAXTON (bitterly): Not at all, Inspector. We mustn’t break our record! No, the same old suit for slander. Young Conklin Cliffstatter — of the East Shore Cliffstatters. Jute and shoddy.

SERGEANT: Stinking, I bet.

MR. PAXTON: Well, Sergeant, just potted enough to tell Thurlow a few homely truths about the name of Potts. (Hollow laugh.) There I go myself — “potted,” “Potts.” I swear that’s all Conk Cliffstatter did — make a pun on the name of Potts. Called ’ em “crack-Potts.”

ELLERY QUEEN (his silver eyes gleaming with hunger): Dad?

So Inspector Queen and Charley-Paxton-my-son-Ellery-Queen, and the two young men shook hands, and that was how Ellery became embroiled — it was more than an involvement — in the wonderful case of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.

A court officer plunged his bald head into the cool of the corridor from the swelter of Room 335, Trial Term Part VII.

“Hey, Counselor, Mr. Justice Cornfield says Potts or no Potts he ain’t waitin’ much longer for your cra... your client. What gives, in God’s good name?”

“Can’t he wait another five minutes, for goodness’ sake?” Charley Paxton cried, exasperated. “They must have been held up — Here they are! Officer, tell Cornfield we’ll be right in!” And Counselor Paxton raced toward the elevators, which had just discharged an astonishing cargo.

“There she is,” said the Inspector to his son, as one who points out a clash of planets. “Take a good look, Ellery. The Old Woman doesn’t make many public appearances.”

“With the getup,” chortled Sergeant Velie, “she could snag a job in the movies like that.”

Some women grow old with grace, others with bitterness, and still others simply grow old; but neither the concept of growth nor the devolution of old age seemed relevant to Cornelia Potts. She was a small creature with a plump stomach and tiny fine-boned feet which whisked her about. Her face, like a tangerine, was almost entirely lacking in detail; one was surprised to find embedded in it two eyes, which were as black and hard as coal chips. Those eyes, by some perverse chemistry of her ego, were unwinkingly malevolent. If they were capable of changing expression at all, it was into malicious rage.

If not for the eyes, seeing Cornelia Potts in the black taffeta skirts she affected, the boned black lace choker, the prim black bonnet, one would have thought of her as a “Sweet old character,” a sort of sexless little kobold who vaguely resembled the Jubilee pictures of Queen Victoria. But the eyes quite forbade such sentimentalization; they were dangerous and evil eyes, and they made imaginative people — like Ellery — think of poltergeists, and elementals, and suchlike creatures of the unmentionable worlds.

Mrs. Cornelia Potts did not step sedately, as befitted a dame of seventy years, from the elevator — she darted from it, like a midge from a hot stream, followed by a widening wake of assorted characters, most of whom were delighted ladies and gentlemen of the press, and at least one of whom — palpably not a journalist — was almost as extraordinary as she.

“And who,” demanded the astonished Mr. Queen, “is that?”

“Thurlow,” grinned Inspector Queen. “The little guy Charley Paxton was talking about. Cornelia’s eldest son.”

“Cornelia’s eldest wack,” Sergeant Velie, the purist, said.

“He resents,” winked the Inspector.

“Everything,” said the Sergeant, waving a flipper.

“Always taking — what do you educated birds call it? — umbrage,” said the Inspector.

“Resents? Umbrage?” Ellery frowned.

“Aw, read the right papers,” guffawed the Sergeant. “Ain’t he cute?”

With a thrill of surprise Ellery saw that, if you were so ill-advised as to strip the black taffeta from old Mrs. Potts and reclothe her in weary gray tweeds, you would have Thurlow, her son... No, there was a difference. Thurlow radiated an inferior grade of energy. In a race with his mother, he would always lose. And, in fact, he was losing the present race; for he toddled hurriedly along in the Old Woman’s wake, clutching his derby to his little belly, and trying without success to overtake her. He was panting, perspiring, and in a pet.

A lean glum man in a morning coat, carrying a medical satchel, stumbled after mother and son with a sick smile which seemed to say: “I am not trotting, I am walking. This is not reality, it is a bad dream. Gentlemen of the press, be merciful. One has to make a living.”

“I know him,” growled Ellery. “Dr. Waggoner Innis, the Pasteur of Park Avenue.”

“She treats Innis like some people treat dogs,” said Sergeant Velie, smacking his lips.

“The way he’s trotting after her, he looks like one,” said the Inspector.

“But why a doctor?” protested Ellery. “She looks as healthy as a troll.”

“I always understood it was her heart.”

“What heart?” sneered the Sergeant. “She ain’t got no heart.”

The cortege swept by and through the door of Room 335. Young Paxton, who had tried to intercept Mrs. Potts and received a blasting “Traffic!” for his pains, lingered only long enough to mutter: “If you want to see the show, gentlemen, you’re welcome”; then he dashed after his clients.

So the Queens and Sergeant Velie, blessing Mr. Justice Greevey’s earache, went in to see the show.

Mr. Justice Cornfield, a large jurist with the eyes of an apprehensive doe, took one look from the eminence of his bench at the tardy Old Woman, damp Thurlow Potts, blushing Dr. Waggoner Innis, and their exulting press and immediately exhibited a ferocious vindictiveness. He screamed at the Clerk, and there were whisperings and scurryings, and lo! the calendar was readjusted, and the case of Potts v. Cliffstatter found itself removed one degree in Time, so that Giacomo v. Jive Jottings, Inc., which had been scheduled to follow it, now found itself with priority.

Ellery beckoned Charley Paxton, who was hovering about Mrs. Cornelia Potts; and the lawyer scooted over thankfully.

“Come on outside. This’ll take hours.”

They shouldered their way out into the corridor again.

“Your client,” began Mr. Queen, “fascinates me.”

“The Old Woman?” Charley made a face. “Have a cigaret? It’s Thurlow, not Mrs. Potts, who’s the plaintiff in this action.”

“Oh. From the way he was tumbling after his mother, I gathered—”

“Thurlow’s been tumbling after Mama for forty-seven years.”

“Why the elegant Dr. Waggoner Innis?”

“Cornelia has a bad heart condition.”

“Nonsense. From the way she skitters about—”

“That’s just it. Nobody can tell the old hellion anything. It keeps Dr. Innis in a constant state of jitters. So he always accompanies the Old Woman when she leaves the Shoe.”

“Beg pardon?”

Charley regarded him with suspicion. “Do you mean to say, Queen, you don’t know about the Shoe?”

“I’m a very ignorant man,” said Ellery abjectly. “Should I?”

“But I thought everybody in America knew! Cornelia Potts’ fortune was made in the shoe business. The Potts Shoe.”

Ellery started “Potts Shoes Are America’s Shoes — $3.99 Everywhere?”

“That’s the Potts.”

“No!” Ellery turned to stare at the closed door of Room 335. The Potts Shoe was not an enterprise, or even an institution; it was a whole civilization. There were Potts Shoe Stores in every cranny of the land. Little children wore Potts Shoes; and their mothers, and their fathers, and their sisters and their brothers and their uncles and their aunts; and what was more depressing, their grandparents had worn Potts Shoes before them. To don a Potts Shoe was to display the honor badge of lower-income America; and since this class was the largest class, the Potts fortune was not merely terrestrial — it was galactic.

“But your curious reference,” said the great man eagerly, turning back to the lawyer, “to ‘when she leaves the Shoe.’ Has a cult grown up about the Pottses, with its own esoteric terminology?”

Charley grinned. “It all started when some cartoonist on a pro-Labor paper was told by his editor to squirt some India ink in the general direction of Cornelia. Don’t you remember that strike in the Potts’ plant?” Ellery nodded; it was beginning to come back to him. “Well, this genius of the drawing board drew a big mansion — supposed to represent the Potts Palace on Riverside Drive — only he shaped it like an old-fashioned high-top shoe; and he drew Cornelia Potts like the old harridan in the Mother Goose illustration, with her six children tumbling out of the ‘shoe’, and he captioned it: ‘There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, She Had So Many Children She Couldn’t Pay Her Workers a Living Wage,’ or something like that. Anyway, the name’s stuck; she’s been ‘the Old Woman’ ever since.”

“And you’re this female foot potentate’s attorney?”

“Yes, but most of my activity is devoted to Thurlow, bless his sensitive little heart. You saw Thurlow? That tubby little troglodyte with the narrow shoulders?”

Ellery nodded. “Built incredibly like a baby kangaroo.”

“Well, Thurlow Potts is the world’s most insultable man.”

“And the money to do something about it,” mourned Mr. Queen. “Very sad. Does he ever win one of these suits?”

“Win!” Paxton swabbed his face angrily. “It’s driven me to sobriety. This is the thirty-seventh suit for libel or slander he’s made me bring into court! And every darned one of the first thirty-six has been thrown out.”

“How about this one — the Club Bongo inbroglio?”

“Cornfield’ll throw it out without a hearing. Mark my words.”

“Why does Mrs. Potts put up with this childishness?”

“Because in her own way the Old Woman’s got an even crazier pride in the family name than Thurlow.”

“But if the suits are all silly, why do you permit them to come to court, Charley?”

Charley flushed. “Thurlow insists, and the Old Woman backs him up... I know I’ve been accused of milking them, Queen.” His jaw shot forward. “I’ve earned every damn cent I’ve ever collected being their attorney, and don’t you think I haven’t!”

“I’m sure you have—”

“I’ve had nightmares about them! In my dreams they have long noses and fat little bottoms and they spit at me all night! But if I didn’t do it, they’d find a thousand lawyers who’d break their necks to get the business. And wouldn’t be so blamed scrupulous, either! Beg your pardon. My nerves—”

Sergeant Velie stuck his head out of Room 335. “Charley! The judge settled that hot-trumpet case, and the Old Woman’s bellowin’ for you.”

“May she crack a cylinder,” muttered Counselor Paxton; and he marched back into Trial Term Part VII with the posture of one who looks forward only to the kiss of Madame Guillotine.

“Tell me, Dad,” said Ellery when he had fought his way back with Sergeant Velie to the Inspector’s side. “How did Charley Paxton, who seems otherwise normal, get mixed up with the Pottses?”

“Charley sort of inherited ’em,” chuckled Inspector Queen. “His pappy was Sidney Paxton, the tax and estate lawyer — fine fella, Sid — many a bottle of beer we cracked together.” Sergeant Velie nodded nostalgically. “Sid sent Charley to law school, and Charley got out of Harvard Law with honors. Began to practice criminal law — everybody said he had a flair for it — but his old man died, and Charley had to chuck a brilliant career and step in and take over Sid’s civil practice. By that time the Potts account was so big Sid had had to drop all his other clients. Now Charley spends his life trying to keep out of the nut house.”

Thurlow Potts could scarcely contain himself at the front of the room. He squirmed in his seat like a fat boy at the circus, the two gray tufts behind his ears standing up nervously. He exuded a moist and giggly fierceness, as if he were enjoying to the full his indignation.

“That little man,” thought Ellery, “is fitten fodder for a psychiatrist.” And he watched even more intently.

Ensued a brilliant but confusing battle of bitternesses. It was evident from the opening sortie that Mr. Justice Cornfield meant to see justice done — to Mr. Conklin Cliffstatter, who sat bored among his attorneys and seemed not to care a tittle whether justice were done or not. In fact, Ellery suspected Mr. Cliffstatter suckled only one ambition — to go home and sleep it off.

“But Your Honor—” protested Charley Paxton.

“Don’t Your Honor me, Counselor!” thundered Mr. Justice Cornfield. “I’m not saying it’s your fault — heaven knows lawyers have to live — but you ought to know better than to pull this stunt in my court for — how many times does this make?”

“Your Honor, my client has been grossly slandered—”

“My Honor my eye! Your client is a public nuisance who clutters up the calendars of our courts! I don’t mind his wasting his money — or rather his mother’s — but I do mind his wasting the taxpayers’!”

“Your Honor has heard the testimony of the witness—” said Counselor Paxton desperately.

“And I’m satisfied there was no slander. Case dismissed!” snapped Mr. Justice Cornfield. He grinned evilly at the Old Woman.

To Charley Paxton’s visible horror, Thurlow Potts bounced to his feet. “Your Honor!” Thurlow squeaked imperiously.

“Sit down, Thurlow,” gasped Charley. “Or rather let’s get out of here—”

“Just — one — moment, Counselor,” said Mr. Justice Cornfield softly. “Mr. Potts, you wish to address the Court?”

“I certainly do!”

“Then by all means address it.”

“I came to this court for justice!” cried Thurlow, brandishing his arms as if they were broadswords. “And what do I get? Insults. Where are the rights of Man? What’s happened to our Constitution? Don’t we live in the last refuge of personal liberty? Surely a responsible citizen has the right of protection by law against the slanders of drunken, irresponsible persons?”

“Yes?” said Mr. Justice Cornfield. “You were saying—”

“But what do I find in this court?” screeched Thurlow. “Protection? No! Are my rights defended by this court? No! Is my name cleared of the crude insinuations of this defendant? No! It is a valuable name, Your Honor, an honorable name, and this person’s slander has reduced its value by considerable sums—!”

“I’ll reduce it still more, Mr. Potts,” said the judge with enjoyment, “if you don’t stop this outrageous exhibition.”

“Your Honor,” Charley Paxton jumped forward. “May I apologize for the hasty and ill-considered remarks of my client—”

“Stop!” And the Old Woman arose, terrible in wrath.

Even the judge quailed momentarily.

“Your Dishonor” said Cornelia Potts, “—I can’t address you as Your Honor, because you haven’t any — Your Dishonor, I’ve sat in many courtrooms and I’ve listened to many judges, but never in my long life have I had the misfortune to witness such monkey’s antics, in such a court of Baal, presided over by such a wicked old goat. My son came here to seek the protection of the court in defense of our good name — instead he is insulted and ridiculed and our good name further held up to public scorn...”

“Are you quite finished, Madam?” choked Mr. Justice Cornfield.

“No! How much do I owe you for contempt?”

“Case dismissed! Case dismissed!” bellowed the judge; and he leaped from his leather chair, girding his robe about him like a young girl discovered en déshabille, and fled to chambers.

“This is surely a bad dream,” said Ellery Queen exultantly. “What happens next?”

The Queens and Sergeant Velie joined the departing Potts parade. Bravely it swept into the corridor, Queen Victoria in the van flourishing her bulky bumbershoot like a cudgel at the assorted bondsmen, newspaper folks, divorce litigants, attorneys, attendants, rubbernecks, and tagtails who had joined the courtroom exodus. The Old Woman, and then steaming little Thurlow, and red-faced Dr. Innis, and Charles Hunter Paxton, and Sergeant Velie, and the Queens père et fils. Bravely it swept onto the balcony under the rotunda, and into the elevators, and downstairs to the lobby.

“Uh, uh. Trouble,” said Sergeant Velie alertly.

“How she hates cameramen,” remarked Inspector Queen.

“Wait — no!” shouted Ellery. “Charley! Somebody! Stop her. For goodness’ sake!”

The photographers had lain in ambush. And she was upon them.

The guns of Cornelia Potts’s black eyes sent out streams of tracer bullets. She snarled, grasped her umbrella handle convulsively, and rushed to the attack. The umbrella rose and fell. One camera flew through the air to be caught willy-nilly by a surprised man in a derby. Another fell and tumbled down the steps leaving a trail of lens fragments.

“Break it up, break it up,” said Sergeant Velie.

“That’s just what she’s doing,” panted a cameraman. “Joe, did you get anything?”

“A bust in the nose,” groaned Joe, regarding his encarmined handkerchief with horror. He roared at the old lady: “You old crackpottia, you smashed my camera!”

“Here’s the money to pay for it,” panted Cornelia Potts, hurling two hundred-dollar bills at him; and she darted into her limousine and slammed the door shut behind her, almost decapitating her pride and heir, Thurlow, who was — as ever — just a step too late.

“I won’t have public spectacles!” she cried through her tonneau window. The limousine jerked away, slamming the old lady against her physician, who had craftily sought the protection of the car before her, and leaving Thurlow, puffing and blowing, on the field of glory where, after a momentary panic at this being left exposed alone to the weapons of the enemy, he drew himself up to his full five foot and grimly girded his not inconsiderable loins.

“Happens this way every time,” said Inspector Queen from the top of the courthouse steps.

“If she’s smashed one camera, she’s smashed a hundred,” said Sergeant Velie, shaking his head.

“But why,” wondered Ellery, “do the cameramen keep trying? Or do they make a profit on each transaction? I noticed two rather impressive-looking greenbacks being flung at the victim down there.”

“Profit is right,” grinned his father. “Take a look. That fella who had his camera broken. Does he look in the dumps?”

Ellery frowned.

“Now,” instructed his father, “look up there.”

Ellery sighted along the Inspector’s arm to a window high in the face of the courthouse. There, various powerful camera eyes glittered in the sun, behind them human eyes intent on Thurlow Potts and Charley Paxton on the sidewalk before the courthouse.

“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Velie with respect, “when you’re dealing with the Old Woman you just naturally got to be on your toes.”

“They caught it all from that window,” exclaimed Ellery softly. “I’ll bet that smashed camera was a dummy and Joe a rascally, conniving stooge!”

“My son,” said the Inspector dryly, “you’ve got the makings of a detective. Come on, let’s go back upstairs and see if Mr. Justice Greevey’s over his irrigation.”

“Now listen, boys,” Charley Paxton was shouting on the sidewalk. “It’s been a tough morning. What d’ye say? Mr. Potts hasn’t one word for publication. You better not have,” Charley said through his teeth three feet from Thurlow’s pink ear, “or I walk out, Thurlow — I swear I walk out!”

Someone applauded.

“You let me alone,” cried Thurlow. “I’ve got plenty to say for publication, Charles Paxton! I’m through with you, anyway. I’m through with all lawyers. Yes, and judges and courts, too!”

“Thurlow, I warn you—” Charley began.

“Oh, go fish! There’s no justice left in this world — not a crumb. Not a particle!”

“Yes, little man?” came a voice.

“No Justice, Says Indignant Citizen.”

“Through with all lawyers, judges, and courts, he vows.”

“What a break for all lawyers, judges, and courts.”

“What you gonna do, Pottso — protect your honor with stiletti?”

“You gonna start packing six-shooters, Thurlow-boy?”

“Thurlow Potts, Terror of the Plains, Goes on Warpath, Armed to the Upper Plates.”

“Stop!” screamed Thurlow Potts in an awful voice; and, curiously, they did. He was shaking in a paroxysm of rage, his small feet dancing on the sidewalk, his pudgy face convulsed. Then he choked: “From now on I take justice in my own hands.”

“Huh?”

“Say, the little guy actually means it.”

“Go on, he’s hopped to the eyeballs.”

“Wait a minute. Nuts or no nuts, he can’t be left running around loose. Not with those intentions, brother.”

One of the reporters said, soberly: “Just what do you mean — you’ll take justice in your own hands, Mr. Potts?”

“Thurlow,” muttered Charley Paxton, “haven’t you raved your quota? Let me get you out of here—”

“Charles, take your hand off my arm. What do I mean, gentlemen?” said Thurlow quietly. “I’ll tell you what I mean. I mean that I’m going to buy myself a gun, and the next person who insults me or the honorable name I bear won’t live long enough to hide behind the skirts of your corrupt courts!”

“Hey,” said a reporter. “Somebody better tip off Conk Cliffstatter.”

“This puffball’s just airy enough to do it.”

“Ah, he’s blowing.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, maybe he’ll blow bullets.”

Thurlow launched himself at the crowd like a little ram, butting with his arms. It parted, almost respectfully; and he shot through in triumph. “He’ll get a bullet in his guts, that’s what he’ll get!” howled the Terror of the Plains. And he was gone in a flurry of agitated little arms and legs.

Charley Paxton groaned and hurried back up the steps of the courthouse.

He found Ellery Queen, Inspector Queen, and Sergeant Velie emerging from Room 331. The Inspector was holding forth with considerable bitterness on the subject of Mr. Justice Greevey’s semicircular canals, for it appeared that the justice had decided to remain at home sulking in an atmosphere of oil of wintergreen rather than venture out into the earacheless world; consequently the case which had fetched the Queens to court was put off for another day.

“Well, Charley? What’s happening down there?”

“Thurlow threatened to buy a gun!” panted the lawyer. “He says he’s through with courts — the next man who insults him gets paid back in lead!”

“That nut-ball?” scoffed the Sergeant.

Inspector Queen laughed. “Forget it, Charley. Thurlow Potts hasn’t the sand of a charlotte russe.”

“I don’t know, Dad,” murmured Ellery. “The man’s not balanced properly. One of his gimbals out of socket, or something. He might mean it, at that.”

“Oh, he means it,” said Charley Paxton sourly. “He means it now, at any rate. Ordinarily I wouldn’t pay any attention to his ravings, but he’s been getting worse lately and I’m afraid one of these days he’ll cross the line. This might be the day.”

“Cross what line?” asked Sergeant Velie, puzzled.

“The Mason-Dixon line, featherweight,” sighed the Inspector. “What line do you think? Now listen, Charley, you’re taking Thurlow too seriously—”

“Just the same, don’t you think we ought to take precautions?”

“Sure. Watch him. If he starts chewing his blanket, call Bellevue.”

“To buy a gun,” Ellery pointed out, “he’ll have to get a license from the police department.”

“Yes,” said Charley eagerly. “How about that, Inspector Queen?”

“How about what?” growled the old gentleman in a disgusted tone. “Suppose we refuse him a license — then what? Then he goes out and buys himself a rod without a license. Then you’ve got not only a nut on your hands, but a nut who’s nursing a grudge against the police department, too. Might kill a cop... And don’t tell me he can’t buy a gun without a license, because he can, and I’m the baby who knows it.”

“Dad’s right,” said Ellery. “The practical course is not to try to prevent Thurlow from laying hands on a weapon, but to prevent him from using it. And in his case I rather think guile, not force, is what’s required.”

“In other words,” said the Sergeant succinctly, “yoomer the slug.”

“I don’t know,” said the lawyer with despair. “I’m going bats myself just trying to keep up with these cormorants. Inspector, can’t you do anything?”

“But Charley, what d’ye expect me to do? We can’t follow him around day and night. In fact, until he pulls something our hands are tied—”

“Could we put him away?” asked Velie.

“You mean on grounds of insanity?”

“Whoa,” said Charley Paxton. “There’s plenty wrong with the Pottses, but not to that extent. The old girl has drag, anyway, and she’d fight to her last penny, and win, too.”

“Then why don’t you get somebody to wet-nurse the old nicky-poo?” demanded Inspector Queen.

“Just what I was thinking,” said the young man cunningly. “Uh... Mr. Queen... would you—?”

“But definitely,” replied Mr. Queen with such promptness that his father stared at him. “Dad, you’re going back to Headquarters?”

The Inspector nodded.

“In that case, Charley, you come on up to my apartment,” said Ellery with a grin, “and answer some questions.”

2 She Had So Many Children

Ellery mixed Counselor Paxton a scotch and soda.

“Spare me nothing, Charley. I want to know the Pottses as I have never known anybody or anything before. Don’t proceed to the middle until you’ve arrived at the end of the beginning, and then repeat the process until you reach the beginning of the end. I’ll try to have something constructive to say about it from that point on.”

“Yes, sir,” said Charley, setting down his glass. And, as one who is saturated with his subject, the young lawyer began to pour forth facts about the Pottses, old and young, male and female — squirting them in all directions like an overloaded garden hose relieving itself of intolerable pressure.

Cornelia Potts had not always been the Old Woman. Once she had actually been a child in a small town in Massachusetts. She was a ragged Ann, driven from child-hood by a powerful purpose. It was to be rich and to live upon the Hill. It was to be rich and to live upon this Hill and any hill that was higher than its neighbor. It was to be rich and to multiply.

Cornelia became rich and she multiplied. She became rich almost wholly through her own efforts; to multiply, unhappily, it was necessary to enlist the aid of a husband, God having so ordered the creation. But the least Cornelia could do was improve upon the holy ordinance. This she did by taking, not one, but two husbands; and thus she multiplied mightily, achieving six children — three by her first husband, and three by her second — before that other thing happened which God has also ordained.

(“The second husband,” said Charley Paxton, “is still around, poor sap. I’ll get to him in due courses.”)

Husband the First was trapped by Cornelia in 1892, when she was twenty and possessed the dubious allure of a wild-flower growing dusty by the roadside. His name was Bacchus, Bacchus Potts. Bacchus Potts was that classic paradox, a Prometheus bound — in this case, to a cobbler’s bench, for he was the town shoemaker, a man of whom all the girls in the village were gigglingly afraid, for by night he wandered in the woods and sang rowdy songs under the moon while his feet danced a dance of impotent wanderlust.

It has been said of the Old Woman (said Charley) that if she had married the village veterinary, she would have turned him into a Pasteur; if she had married the illegitimate son of an illegitimate son of an obscure sprig of the royal tree, she would have lived to be queen. As it was, she married a cobbler; and so, in time, she made him the leading shoe manufacturer of the world.

If Bacchus Potts dreamed defeated dreams over his bench, it was surely not of larger benches; but larger benches he found himself possessor of, covering acres and employing thousands. And it happened so quickly that he, the dreamer, could not grasp its dreamlike magic; or perhaps he wished not to. For as Cornelia invested his life’s savings in a small factory; as it fed, and bulged, and by process of fission became two, and the two became four... Bacchus could only sit helplessly by, resenting the miracle and its maker.

Every so often he would vanish. When he returned, without money, dirty, and purged, he crept meekly back to Cornelia with the guilty look of a repentant tomcat.

After some years, no one paid any attention to Bacchus’ goings or comings — not his employees, not his children, certainly not his wife, who was too busy with building a dynasty.

In 1902, ten years after their marriage, when Cornelia was a plump and settling thirty, and the Pottses owned not only factories but retail stores over all the land, Bacchus Potts one day dreamed his greatest dream. He disappeared for good. When months passed and he did not return, and the authorities failed to turn up any trace of him, Cornelia shrugged him off and became truly Queen of Egypt land. After all, there was a great deal of work involved in building a pyramid, and she had three growing children to care for between crackings of the overseer’s whip. If she missed Bacchus, it was not for any reason discernible in daylight.

Then came the seven fat years, at the expiration of which the queen exhorted the lawmakers; and the law, that stern Pharaoh, being satisfied, Bacchus Potts was pronounced no longer a living man but a dead one, and his wife no longer a wife but a widow, able to take to herself without contumely another husband.

That she was ready and willing as well became evident at once.

In 1909, at the age of thirty-seven, Mrs. Potts married another shy man, Stephen Brent, to whom even at the altar she flatly refused to give up her name. Why she should have felt a loyalty to that first fey spouse upon whom she had founded her fortune remained as much a mystery as everything else about her relationship with him; or perhaps there was no loyalty to Bacchus Potts, or sentiment either, but only to his name, which was a different thing altogether, since the name meant the Potts Shoe, $3.99 Everywhere.

Cornelia Potts not only refused to give up her name, she also insisted as a condition of their marriage that Stephen Brent give up his. Brent being the kind of man to whom argument is an evil thing, to be shunned like pestilence, feebly agreed; and so Stephen Brent became Stephen Potts, according to legal process, and the Potts dynasty rolled on.

It should be remembered (Charley Paxton reminded Ellery) that in December of 1902 Cornelia had moved her three fatherless children to New York City and built a house for them — the Potts “Palace,” that fabulous square block of granite and sward on Riverside Drive, facing the gentle Hudson and the smoky greenery of the Jersey shore. So Cornelia had met Steve Brent in New York.

“It’s a wonder to me,” growled the young attorney, “that Steve tore himself away from Major Gotch long enough to be alone with the old girl and ask her to marry him — if he did ask her.”

Stephen Brent had come to New York from the southern seas, or the Malay Peninsula, or some such romantic place, and with him, barnacle-like, had come Gotch — two vagabonds, of the same cloth, united by the secret joy of idleness and tenacious in their union. They were not bad men; they were simply weak men; and men of weakness seemed to be Cornelia’s weakness.

Perhaps this was why, of the two wanderers, she had chosen Steve Brent to be her prince consort, and not Major Gotch; for Major Gotch evinced a certain minor firmness of fiber, not exactly a strength but a lesser weakness, which happily his friend did not possess. It was this trait of his character which enabled him to stand up to Cornelia Potts and demand sanctuary with his Pythias. “Marry Steve — yes, ma’am. But Steve, he’ll die without me, ma’am. He’s just a damn’ lonesome man, ma’am,” Major Gotch had said to Cornelia. “Seeing that you’re so well-fixed, seems to me it won’t ruffle your feathers none if I sort of come along with Steve.”

“Can you garden?” snapped Cornelia.

“Now don’t get me wrong,” said Major Gotch, smiling. “I ain’t asking for a job, ma’am. Work and me don’t mix. I’ll just come and set. I got a bullet in my right leg makes standin’ something fierce.”

For the first time in her life Cornelia gave in to a man. Or perhaps she had a sense of humor. She accepted the condition, and Major Gotch moved right along in and settled down to share his friend’s incredible fortune and make himself, as he liked to say, thoroughly useless.

“Was Cornelia in love with Stephen?” asked Ellery.

“In love?” Charley jeered. “Say, it was just animal magnetism on Cornelia’s part — I’m told Steve had ‘pretty eyes,’ though they’re washed-out now — and a nice business deal for old Steve. And it’s worked out not too badly. Cornelia has a husband who’s given her three additional children, and Steve’s lolled about the rich pasture after a youth of scratching for fodder. Fact is, he and that old scoundrel Major Gotch spend all their time together on the estate, playing endless games of checkers. Nobody pays any attention to them.”

“The three children of the Old Woman’s first marriage — the offspring of Cornelia and the ‘teched’ and vanished Bacchus Potts — are crazy,” Charley continued.

“Did you say ‘crazy’?” Ellery looked startled.

“You heard me.” Charley reached for the decanter.

“But Thurlow—”

“All right, take Thurlow,” argued young Mr. Paxton. “Would you call him sane? A man who spends his life trying to hit back at people for imaginary insults to his name? What’s the difference between that and a mania for swatting imaginary flies from your nose?”

“But his mother—”

“It’s a question of degree, Ellery. Cornelia’s passion for the honor of the Potts name is kept within bounds, and she doesn’t hit out unless she has a vulnerable target. But Thurlow spends his life hitting out, and most of the time nothing’s there but a puzzled look on somebody’s face.”

“Insanity is a word neurologists don’t like, Charley,” complained Ellery Queen. “At best, standards of normality are variable, depending on the age and mores. In the Age of Chivalry, for example, Thurlow’s obsession with his family honor would have been considered a high and virtuous sign of his sanity.”

“You’re quibbling. But if you want proof, take Louella, the second child of the Cornelia-Bacchus union... I’ll waive Thurlow’s hypersensitivity about the name of Potts; I’ll accept his impractical extravagant nature, his childish innocence on the subject of business values or the value of money, as the signs of merely an unhappy, maladjusted, but essentially sane man.

“But Louella! You can’t argue about Louella. She’s forty-four, never married, of course—”

“What’s wrong with Louella?”

“Louella believes herself to be a great inventor.”

Mr. Queen looked pained.

“Nobody pays much attention to Louella, either,” growled Charley. “Nobody except the Old Woman. Louella’s got her own ‘laboratory’ at the house and seems quite happy. There’s an old closet in the Potts zoo where the Old Woman throws Louella’s ‘inventions.’ One day I happened to catch the old lady sitting on the floor outside the closet, crying. I admit,” said Charley, shaking his head, “for a few weak seconds I felt sorry for the old she-pirate.”

“Don’t stop now,” said Ellery. “What about the third child of the first marriage?”

“Horatio?” The lawyer shivered. “Horatio’s forty-one. In many ways Horatio’s the queerest of the trio. I don’t know why, because he’s not at all the horrible object you might think. And yet... I never see him without getting duck bumps.”

“What’s the matter with Horatio?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Charley darkly. “Maybe everything. I just don’t know. You’ll have to see and talk to him in his self-made setting to believe he really exists.”

Ellery smiled broadly. “You’re very clever. You’ve already learned that my type of mind simply can’t resist a mystery.”

Paxton looked sheepish. “Well... I want your help.”

Ellery stared at him hard. “Charley, what is your interest in this extraordinary family?” The lawyer was silent. “It can’t be merely professional integrity. There are some jobs that aren’t worth any amount of compensation, and from what I’ve seen and heard already, being legal adviser to the Pottses is one of them. You’ve got an ax to grind, my friend, and since it doesn’t seem to be made of gold... what is it made of?”

“Red hair and dimples,” said Charley defiantly.

“Ah,” said Mr. Queen.

“Sheila’s the youngest of the three children who resulted from the marriage of Cornelia and Steve. They’re rational human beings, thank God! Robert and Mac are twins — a sweet pair — they’re thirty.” Charley flushed. “I’m going to marry Sheila.”

“Congratulations. How old is the young lady?”

“Twenty-four. Can’t imagine how Sheila and the twins got born into that howling family! The Old Woman still runs the Potts Shoe business, but Bob and Mac really run it, with the help of an old-timer who’s been with Cornelia for I don’t know how many years. Nice old Yank named Underhill. Underhill superintends production at the plants; Robert’s vice-president in charge of sales, Mac’s vice-president in charge of advertising and promotion—”

“What about Thurlow?”

“Oh, Thurlow’s vice-president, too. But I’ve never found out what he’s vice-president of: I don’t think he has, either. Sort of roving nuisance. And, speaking of nuisances, how are we going to prevent Thurlow from doing something silly?”

Ellery lit a cigaret and puffed thoughtfully. “Assuming that Thurlow meant what he said when he threatened to get a revolver, have you any idea where he’d go to buy one?” he asked.

“Cornwall & Ritchey, on Madison Avenue. He has a charge there — keeps lugging home sports equipment he never uses. It’s the logical place.”

Mr. Paxton was handed the telephone. “Call Cornwall & Ritchey and make discreet inquiries.”

Mr. Paxton called that purple house of commerce and made discreet inquiries. When he set the telephone down, he was purple, too. “He meant it!” cried Charley. “Know what the wack’s done? He must have hotfooted it down there right from the Supreme Court Building!”

“He’s bought a gun?”

“A gun? He’s bought fourteen!”

“What!”

“I spoke to the clerk who waited on him. Fourteen assorted pistols, revolvers, automatics,” groaned Paxton. “Said he was starting a collection of ‘modern hand weapons.’ Of course, they know Thurlow well down there. But see how cunning he’s becoming? Knew he had to give an extraordinary excuse for purchasing that number of guns. Collection! What are we going to do?”

“Then he must have had a license,” reflected Ellery.

“Seems he came magnificently prepared. He’s planned this for a month — that’s obvious now. Must have got his wind up in that last libel suit he lost — the one before Cliffstatter. He does have a license, a special license he snagged by pull somewhere. We’ve got to have that license revoked!”

“Yes, we could do that,” agreed Ellery, “but my father was right this morning — If Thurlow’s denied the legal right to own a gun, he’ll get one somewhere illegally.”

“But fourteen! With fourteen guns to play with, he’s a menace to the public safety. A few imaginary insults, and Thurlow’s likely to start a one-man purge!”

Ellery frowned. “I can’t believe yet that it’s a serious threat, Charley. Although obviously he’s got to be watched.”

“Then you’ll take over?”

“Oh, yes.”

“White man!” Charley wrung Ellery’s hand. “What can I do to help?”

“Can you insinuate me into the Potts Palace today without getting everybody’s wind up?”

“Well, I’m expected tonight — I’ve got some legal matters to go over with the Old Woman. I could wangle you for dinner. Would tonight be too late, do you think?”

“Hardly. If Thurlow’s the man you say he is, he’ll be spending the afternoon fondling his fourteen instruments of death and weaving all sorts of darkly satisfactory dreams. Dinner would be splendid.”

“Swell!” Charley jumped up. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

3 She Didn’t Know What to Do

“We’re going to call for somebody,” announced counselor Paxton as he drove Ellery Queen downtown that evening. “I particularly wanted you to meet this person before — well, before.”

“Aha,” said Ellery, deducting like mad, but to himself.

Charley Paxton parked his roadster before an apartment building in the West Seventies. He spoke to the doorman, and the doorman rang someone on the house phone. Charley paced up and down the lobby, smoking a cigaret nervously.

Sheila Potts appeared in a swirl of summery clothes and laughter, a small slim miss with nice red hair. It seemed to Ellery that she was that peculiar product of American society, a girl of inoffensive insolence. She would insist on the rightness of things and cheerfully do wrong to make them right; she would be impatient with men who beat their breasts, and furious with the authors of their misery. (Ellery suspected that Mr. Paxton beat his breast upon occasion for the sheer glum pleasure of calling attention to himself.) And she was delicious and fresh as a mint bed by a woodsy brook. Then what, wondered Ellery as he took Sheila’s gloved hand and heard her explanation of having been visiting — “Don’t dare laugh, Mr. Queen!” — a sick friend, was wrong? Why that secret sadness in her eyes?

He learned the answer as they drove west to the Drive, the three of them crowded into the front seat of the roadster.

“My mother’s against our marriage,” said Sheila simply. “You’d have to know Mother to know just how horrible that can be, Mr. Queen.”

“What’s her reason?”

“She won’t give one,” complained Charley.

“I think I know her reason,” said Sheila so quietly Ellery almost missed the bitterness. “It’s my sister Louella.”

“The inventor?”

“Yes. Mother makes no bones about her sympathies, Mr. Queen. She’s always been kinder to the children of her first marriage than to Bob and Mac and me. Maybe it’s because she never did love my father, and by being cold to us she’s getting back at him, or something. Whatever it is, I do know that Mother loves poor Louella passionately and loathes me.” Sheila sucked in her lower lip, as if to hide it.

“It’s a fact, Ellery,” growled Paxton. “You’d think it was Sheila’s fault that Louella’s a skinny old zombie, swooping around her smelly chem lab with an inhuman light in her eye.”

“It’s very simple, Mr. Queen. Rather than see me married while Louella stays an old maid, Mother’s perfectly willing to sacrifice my happiness. She’s quite a monster about it.”

Ellery Queen, who knew odd things, thought he saw wherein the monster dwelt. The children of the Old Woman’s union with Bacchus Potts were off normal. On these, the weaklings, the misfits, the helpless ones, Cornelia Potts expended the passion of her maternity. To the offspring of her marriage with Stephen Potts, né Brent, therefore, she could give only her acid anger. The twin boys and Sheila were what she had always wanted fussy little Thurlow, spinster-inventor Louella, and the still-unglimpsed Horatio to be. This much was clear. But there was that which was not.

“Why do you two stand for it?” Ellery asked.

Before Charley could answer, Sheila said quickly: “Mother threatens to disinherit me if I marry Charley.”

“I see,” said Ellery, not liking Sheila’s reply at all.

She read the disapproval in his tone. “It’s not of myself I’m thinking! It’s Charley. You don’t know what he’s gone through. I don’t care a double darn whether I get any of Mother’s money or not.”

“Well, I don’t either,” snapped Charley, flushing. “Don’t give Ellery the impression — The hours I’ve spent arguing with you, sweetie-pie!”

“But darling—”

“Ellery, she’s as stubborn as her mother. She gets an idea in her head, you can’t dislodge it with an ax.”

“Peace,” smiled Ellery. “This is all new to me, remember. Is this it? If you two were to marry against your mother’s wishes, Sheila, she’d not only cut you off but she’d fire Charley, too?” Sheila nodded grimly. “And then, Charley, you’d be out of a job. Didn’t I understand that your whole practice consists in taking care of the Potts account?”

“Yes,” said Charley unhappily. “Between Thurlow’s endless lawsuits and the legitimate legal work of an umpteen-million-dollar shoe business, I keep a large staff busy. There’s no doubt Sheila’s mother would take all her legal work elsewhere if we defied her. I’d be left pretty much out on a limb. I’d have to start building a practice from scratch. But I’d do it in a shot to get Sheila. Only — she won’t.”

“No, I won’t,” said Sheila. “I won’t ruin your life, Charley. Or mine for that matter.” Her lips flattened, and Charley looked miserable. “You’ll hate me for this, Mr. Queen. My mother’s an old woman, a sick old woman. Dr. Innis can’t help that awful heart of hers, and she won’t obey him, or take care of herself, and we can’t make her... Mother will die very soon, Mr. Queen. In weeks. Maybe days. Dr. Innis says so. How can I feel anything but relief at the prospect?” And Sheila’s eyes, so blue and young, filled with tears.

Ellery saw again that life is not all caramel candy and rose petals, and that the great and hardy souls of this earth are women, not men.

“Sometimes,” said Sheila, sniffing, “I think men don’t know what love really is.” She smiled at Charley and ruffled his hair. “You’re a jerk,” she said.

The roadster nosed along in traffic, and for some time none of them spoke.

“When Mother dies, Charley and I — and my dad, and the twins — we’ll all be free. We’ve lived in a jail all our lives — a sort of bedlam. You’ll see what I mean tonight... We’ll be free, and we’ll change our names back to Brent, and we’ll become folks again, not animals in a zoo. Thurlow’s furious about the name of Brent — he hates it.”

“Does your mother know all this, Sheila?” frowned Ellery.

“I imagine she suspects.” Sheila seized her young man’s arm. “Charley, stop here and let me out.”

“What for?” demanded Charley suspiciously.

“Let me out, you droogler! There’s no point in making Mother madder than she is already. I’ll cab home from here, while you drive Mr. Queen into the grounds — then Mother can only suspect I’ve been seeing you on the side!”

“What in the name of the seven thousand miracles,” demanded Ellery as he got out of his host’s roadster, “is that?”

The mansion lay far back from the tall Moorish gates and iron-spiked walls which embraced the precious Potts property. The building faced Riverside Drive and the Hudson River beyond; between gates and house lay an impressive circle of grass and trees, girded as by a stone belt with the driveway which arched from the gates to the mansion and back to the gates again. Ellery was pointing an accusing finger at the center of this circle of greenery. For among the prim city trees stood a remarkable object — a piece of bronze statuary as tall as two acrobats and as wide as an elephant. It stood upon a pedestal and twinkled and leered in the setting sun. It was the statue of an Oxford shoe. A shoe with trailing laces in bronze.

Above it traced elegantly in neon tubing were the words —

4 She Gave Them Some Broth without Any Bread

“It’s a little early for dinner,” said Charley, his robust voice echoing in the foyer. “Do you want to absorb the atmosphere first, or what? I’m your man.”

Ellery blinked at the scene. This was surely the most wonderful house in New York. It had no style; or rather, it partook of many styles, borrowing rather heavily from the Moorish, with Gothic subdominant. It was large, large; and its furnishings were heavy, heavy. There was a wealth of alfresco work on the walls, and sullen, unbeautiful hangings. Knights of Byzantium stood beside doorways stiffly on guard against threats as empty as themselves. A gilded staircase spiraled from the foyer into the heaven of this ponderous dream.

“Let me take the atmosphere in bits, please,” said Ellery. He half-expected Afghan hounds to come loping out of hidden lairs, bits of rush clinging to their hides, and Quasimodos in nut-brown sacking and tonsured pates to serve his shuddering pleasure. But the only servant he had seen, an oozy prig of a man in butler’s livery, had been conventional enough. “In fact, Charley, if you could give me a glimpse of the various Pottses before dinner in their native habitat I should be ever so much obliged.”

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to meet them except through necessity, but I suppose that’s what distinguishes you from all other men. This way, Professor. Let’s see which Potts we can scare up first.”

At the top of the staircase stood a landing, most specious and hushed, and long halls leading away. Charley turned a corner, and there yawned the entrance to what looked like a narrow tower. “That’s just what it is,” nodded Charley. “Up wi’ ye!”

They mounted a steep coil of steps. “I didn’t notice this campanile from outside. Why, Charley?”

“It’s a peculiarity of construction. The tower faces an inner court and can’t be seen from the street.”

“And it leads where?”

“To Louella’s lair... Here.”

Charley knocked on a door with a grille in it backed by thick glass. A female face goggled through the glass, eyed Mr. Paxton with suspicion, withdrew. Bolts clanked. Ellery felt a sensible prickling along his spine when the door screeched open.

Louella Potts was not merely thin — a more desiccated figure he had not seen outside the Morgue. And she was utterly uncared-for. Her gray-dappled coarse brown hair was knotted at her scrawny neck and was all wisps and ends over her eyes. The eyes, like the eyes of the mother, fascinated him. But these, while brilliant, were full of pain, and between them the flesh was set in a permanent puzzle of inquiry. Louella Potts wore a laboratory smock which fitted her like a shroud, and shapeless huaraches. No stockings, Ellery noted. He also noted varicose veins, and looked away.

The laboratory was circular — a clutter of tables, retorts, goose-necked flasks, Bunsen burners, messy bottle-filled shelves, taps, benches, electrical apparatus. What it was all for Ellery had no idea; but it looked impressive in a cinematic sort of way.

“Queen?” she shrilled in a voice as tall and thin as herself. “Queen.” The frown deepened until it resembled an old knife wound. “You aren’t connected with the Mulqueen General Laboratories, are you?”

“No, Miss Potts,” said Ellery tensely.

“You see, they’ve been after my invention. Just thieves, of course. I have to be careful — I do hope you’ll understand. Will you excuse me now? I have a tremendously important experiment to conclude before dinner.”

“Reminds you of the Mad Scientist in The Crimson Clue, doesn’t she?” Charley shuddered as they made their way down the tower stairs.

“What’s she inventing?”

“A new plastic to be used in the manufacture of shoes,” replied Charley Paxton dryly. “According to Louella, this material she’s dreaming up will last forever. People will be able to buy one pair of shoes and use them for life.”

“But that would ruin the Potts Shoe Company!”

“Of course. But what else would you expect a Potts to spend her time inventing? Come on — I’ll introduce you to Horatio.”

They were in the foyer again. Charley led the way towards a panel of tall French doors set in a rear wall.

“House is built in a U,” he explained. “Within the U are a patio and an inner court, and more grounds, and Horatio’s dream house and so on. I’ve had architects here who’ve gone screaming into the night... Ooops. There are Steve and the Major.”

“Sheila’s father and the companion of his Polynesian youth?”

They were two crimson-cheeked elderly men, seemingly quite sane. They were seated in a small library directly off the rear of the foyer, a checkerboard between them. The rear wall of the library was a continuation of the French doors, looking out upon a flagged, roofed terrace which apparently ran the width of the house.

As the two young men paused at the foyer doorway, one of the players — a slight, meek-eyed man with a straggly gray mustache — looked up and spied them. “Charley, my boy,” he said with a smile. “Glad to s-see you. Come in, come in. Major, I’ve got you b-beaten anyway, so s-stop pretending you’ll w-wiggle out.”

His companion, a whale of a man with a whale’s stare, snorted and turned his heavy, pocked face towards the doorway. “Go away,” he said testily. “I’ll whip this snapper if it takes all night.”

“And it will,” said Stephen Brent Potts in a rush. Then he looked frightened and said: “Of course we’ll p-play it out, Major.”

Paxton introduced Ellery, the four men chatted for a moment, and then he and Ellery left the two old fellows to resume their game.

“Goes on by day and by night,” laughed Charley. “Friendly enemies. Gotch is a queer one — domineering, swears all over the place, and swipes liquor. Otherwise honest — it pays! Steve lets Gotch walk all over him. And everybody else, for that matter.”

They left through the French doors in the foyer and crossed the wide terrace, stepping out upon a pleasant lawn, geometrically landscaped, with a path that serpentined to a small building lying within the arms of the surrounding garden walls like a candy box.

“Horatio’s cottage,” announced Charley.

“Cottage?” gulped Ellery. “You mean — someone actually lives in it? It’s not a mirage?”

“Positively not a mirage.”

“Then I know who designed it.” Ellery’s step quickened. “Walt Disney!”

It was a fairy-tale house. It had crooked little turrets and a front door like a golden harp and windows that possessed no symmetry at all. Most of it was painted pink, with peppermint-striped shutters. One turret looked like an inverted beet — a turquoise beet. The curl of smoke coming out of the little chimney was green. Without shame Ellery rubbed his eyes. But when he looked again the smoke was still green.

“You’re not seeing things,” sighed Charley. “Horatio puts a chemical from his chem set on the fire to color the smoke.”

“But why?”

“He says green smoke is more fun.”

“The Land of Oz,” said Ellery in a delighted voice. “Let’s go in, for pity’s sake. I must meet that man!”

Charley played on the harp and it swung inward to reveal a very large, very fat man with exuberant red hair which stood up all over his head, as if excited, and enormous eyes behind narrow gold spectacles. He reminded Ellery of somebody; Ellery tried desperately to think of whom. Then he remembered. It was Santa Claus. Horatio Potts looked like Santa Claus without a beard.

“Charley!” roared Horatio. He wrung the lawyer’s hand, almost swinging the young man off his feet. “And this gentleman?”

“Ellery Queen — Horatio Potts.”

Ellery had his hand cracked in a fury of welcome. The man possessed a giant’s strength, which he used without offense, innocently.

“Come in, come in!”

The interior was exuberant, too. Ellery wondered, as he glanced about, what was wrong with it. Then he saw that nothing was wrong with it. It was a perfect playroom for a child, a boy, of ten. It was crowded with large toys and small — with games, and boxes of candy, and construction sets, and unfinished kites, with puppies and kittens and at least one small, stupid-looking rabbit which was nibbling at the leg of a desk on which were piled children’s books and scattered manuscript sheets covered in a large, hearty hand with inky words. A goosequill pen lay near by. It was the jolliest and most imaginatively equipped child’s room Ellery had ever seen. But where was the child?

Charley whispered in Ellery’s ear: “Ask him to explain his philosophy of life to you.”

Ellery did so.

“Glad to,” boomed Horatio. “Now you’re a man, Mr. Queen. You have worries, responsibilities, you lead a heavy, grown-up sort of life. Don’t you?”

“Well... yes,” stammered Ellery.

“But it’s so simple!” beamed Horatio. “Here sit down — throw those marbles on the floor. The happiest part of a man’s life is his boyhood, and I don’t care if he was brought up in Gallipolis, Ohio, or Hester Street, New York.” Ellery wiggled his brows. “All right, now take me. If I had to make shoes in a factory, or tell other men to make ’em, or write advertising, or dig ditches, or do any of the tiresome things men have to do to be men — why, I’d be like you, Mr. Queen, or like Charley Paxton here, who always goes around with a worried look.” Charley grinned feebly. “But I don’t have to. So I fly kites, I run miniature trains, I build twelve-foot bridges and airplane models, I read Superman and Hairbreadth Harry, detective stories, fairy tales, children’s verses... I even write ’em.” Horatio seized a couple of highly colored books from his desk. “The Little Old Dog of Dogwood Street, by Horatio Potts. The Purple Threat, by Horatio Potts. Here are a dozen more boys’ stories, all by me.”

“Horatio,” said Charley reverently, “publishes ’em himself, too.”

“Right now I’m writing my major opus, Mr. Queen,” roared Horatio happily. “A new modern version of Mother Goose. It’s going to be my monument, mark my words.”

“Even has his meals served there,” said Charley as they strolled back to the main house. “Well, Ellery, what do you think of Horatio Potts?”

“He’s either the loonist loon of them all,” growled Mr. Queen, “or he’s the only sane man alive on the planet!”

Dinner was served in a Hollywood motion-picture set by extras — or so it seemed to Ellery, who sat down to the most remarkable meal of his life. The dining-room ceiling was a forest of rafters, and one had to crane to count them. Everything was on the same Brobdingnagian scale — a logical outgrowth, no doubt, of the giant that was Pottsism. Nothing less than a California redwood could have provided the one-piece immensity of the table. The linen and silver were heavier than Ellery had ever hefted, the crockery was grander, and the stemware more intricate. The credenza groaned. If the Old Woman was hen of a batty brood, at least she did not make them scratch for their grub. This was the board of plenty.

The twins, Robert and Maclyn, had not appeared for dinner. They had telephoned their mother that they were held up “at the office.”

Cornelia Potts was a not ungracious hostess. The old lady wanted to know all about “Mr. Queen,” and Mr. Queen found himself talking when he had come to listen. If he was to gauge the temper and the sanity of Thurlow Potts, he could not distract himself with himself. So he was annoyed, deliberately. The Old Woman stared at him with the imperial surprise of a woman who has lived seventy years on her own terms. Finally she rejected him, turning to her children. Ellery grinned with relief.

Sheila ate brightly, too brightly. Her eyes were crystal with humiliation. Ellery knew it was for him, for being witness to her shame. For Cornelia ignored her, as if Sheila were some despised poor relation instead of the daughter of her flesh. Cornelia devoted herself almost wholly to Louella, who bothered not at all to respond to her mother’s blandishments. The skinny old maid looked sullen; she ate wolfishly, in silence.

Had it not been for Stephen Potts and his friend Major Gotch, the dinner would have been intolerable. But the two cronies chattered away, apparently pleased at having a new ear to pour their reminiscences into, and Ellery had some difficulty extricating himself from Papuan paradises, Javanese jungles, and “the good old days” in the South Seas.

Thurlow had come to the table bearing two books. He set them down beside his service plate, and once in a while glanced at them or touched them with a glowering pleasure. From where Charley Paxton sat he could read the titles on their spines; Ellery could not.

“What are those books, Charley?” he mumbled.

Charley squinted. “The History of Dueling—”

“History of dueling!”

“The other is A Manual of Firearms.”

Mr. Queen choked over his melon.

During the soup course — an excellent chicken consommé — Ellery looked about and looked about and finally said in an undertone to Charley: “I notice there’s no bread on the table. Why is that?”

“The Old Woman,” Charley whispered back. “She’s on a strict diet — Innis has forbidden her to eat bread in any form — so she won’t have it in the house. Why are you looking so funny?”

Thurlow was explaining to his mother with passion the code of duello, and Major Gotch interrupted to recall some esoteric Oriental facts on the broader subject; so Mr. Queen had an opportunity to lean over to his friend and chant, softly —

Charley gaped. “What are you talking about?”

“I was struck by certain resemblances,” muttered Ellery. “The Horatio influence, no doubt.” And he finished his broth in a thoughtful way.

Suddenly Louella’s cricket-voice cut across the flow of table talk. “Mother!”

“Yes, Louella?” It was embarrassing to see the eagerness in the old lady’s face as her elder daughter addressed her.

“I need some more money for my plastic experiments.”

“Spend your allowance already?” The corners of the Old Woman’s mouth sank, settled.

Louella looked sullen again. “I can’t help it. It’s not going just right. I’ll get it this time sure. I need a couple of thousand more, Mother.”

“No, Louella. I told you last time—”

To Ellery’s horror the forty-four-year-old spinster began to weep into the puddle in her consommé cup, weep and snuffle and breathe without restraint. “You’re mean! I hate you! Some day I’ll have millions — why can’t you give me some of my own money now? But no — you’re making me wait till you die. And meanwhile I can’t finish my greatest invention!”

“Louella!”

“I don’t care! I’m sick of asking you, asking you—”

“Louella dear,” said Sheila in a strained voice. “We have guests—”

“Be quiet, Sheila,” said the Old Woman softly. Ellery saw Sheila’s fingers tighten about her spoon.

“Are you going to give me my own money or aren’t you?” Louella shrieked at her mother.

“Louella, leave the table.”

“I won’t!”

“Louella, leave the table this instant and go to bed!”

“But I’m hungry, Mother,” Louella whined.

“You’ve been acting like an infant. For that you can’t have your supper. Go this instant, Louella.”

“You’re a horrible old woman!” screamed Louella, stamping her foot; and, bouncing up from the table, she stormed from the dining room, weeping again.

Mr. Queen, who had not known whether to rise for the woman or remain seated for the child, compromised by assuming a half-risen, half-seated posture; from which undignified position he murmured, but to himself: —

After which, finding himself suspended he lowered himself into his chair. “I wonder,” he wondered to himself, “how much of this a sane mind could take.”

As if in answer, Sheila ran from the dining room, choking back sobs; and Charley Paxton, looking grim, excused himself after a moment and followed her. Steve Potts rose; his lips were burbling.

“Stephen, finish your dinner,” said his wife quietly.

Sheila’s father sank back in his chair.

Charley returned with a mumble of apology. The Old Woman threw him a sharp black look. He sat down beside Ellery and said in a strangled undertone: “Sheila sends her apologies. “Ellery, I’ve got to get her out of this lunatic asylum!”

“Whispering Charles?” Cornelia Potts eyed him. The young man flushed. “Where is Sheila?”

“She has a headache,” muttered Charley.

“I see.”

There was silence.

5 There Was a Little Man and He Had a Little Gun

From the moment Robert and Maclyn Potts entered the dining room to be introduced to the guest and seat themselves at table, a breath of sanity blew. They were remarkably identical twins, as alike in feature as two carbon copies. They dressed alike, they combed their curly blond hair alike, they were of a height and a thickness, and their voices had the same pleasant, boyish timbre.

Charley, who introduced them, was obviously at a loss; he made a mistake in their identities at once, which one of them corrected patiently. They tackled their broth and chicken with energy, talking at a great rate. It seemed that both were angry with their eldest brother, Thurlow, for having interfered in the conduct of the business for the hundredth time.

“We wouldn’t mind so much, Mother—” began one, through a mouthful of fried chicken.

“Yes, Robert?” said the Old Woman grimly. She, at least, could distinguish between them.

“If Thurlow’d restrict his meddling to unimportant things,” continued the other. Ergo, he was Mac.

“But he doesn’t!” growled Robert, dropping his fork.

“Robert, eat your dinner.”

“All right, Mother.”

“But Mother, he’s gone and—”

“One moment please,” said Thurlow icily. “And what is it I’m supposed to have done this time, Maclyn?”

“Climb off it, Thurl,” grumbled Mac. “All right, you’re a vice-president of the Potts Shoe Company—”

“You pretend you’re running a God-knows-how-many-million-dollar firm,” exploded Robert, “and that’s okay as long as you pretend—”

“But why in hell don’t you stick to wasting the family’s money on those silly lawsuits of yours—”

“Instead of canceling our newspaper-advertising plans for the Middle West, you feeble-minded nitwit?”

“Robert, don’t speak to your eldest brother that way!” cried their mother.

“How you protect your white-haired boy, Mother,” grinned Robert. “Although there isn’t much of it left... You know Thurlow would ruin the business if—”

“Just — one — moment, if you please,” said Thurlow. His fat nostrils were quivering. “I’ve got as much to say about running the company as you two have — Mother said so! Didn’t you, Mother?”

“I won’t have this disgraceful argument at the dinner table, boys.”

“He said I’d ruin the business!” cried Thurlow.

“Well, wouldn’t you?” asked Bob Potts with disgust.

“Bob, cut it out,” said his twin in a low voice.

“Cut nothing out, Mac!” said Robert. “We always have to sit by and watch old fuddy-pants pull expensive boners, then we’ve got to clean up his mess. Well, I’m damned good and tired of it!”

“Robert, I warn you—!” shouted Thurlow.

“Warn my foot. You’re a nice fat little bag of wind, Brother Thurlow,” said Bob Potts angrily, “a fake, a phony, and a blubbering jerk, and if you don’t keep your idiotic nose out of the business—”

Thurlow grew very pale, but also a look came into his eyes of cunning. He snatched his napkin, jumped up, ran over to where Robert was watching him with a puzzled expression, and then whipped the napkin over his younger brother’s face with an elegance — and a force — that caused Bob’s mouth to open.

“What the devil—”

“You’ve insulted Thurlow Potts for the last time,” choked the chubby little man. “Brother or no brother, I demand satisfaction. Wait here — I’ll give you your choice of weapons!” And, triumphantly Thurlow stalked out of the dining room.

Surely, thought Ellery Queen, this is where I wake up and stretch.

But there was the doorway through which Thurlow Potts had passed, here was the long board with its congress of amazed faces.

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” said Mac, looking blank. “Thurlow’s gone clean off his chump at last! Pop — did you hear that?”

Steve Potts rose indecisively. “Maybe if I g-go speak to Thurlow, Mac—”

Mac laughed. “He’s stark, raving mad!”

Bob was feeling his cheek. “Why don’t you face the facts, Mother? How can you sit by and let Thurlow have anything to do with the business? If Mac and I didn’t countermand every stupid order he gives, he’d run us into bankruptcy in a year.”

“You baited him, Robert. Deliberately!”

“Oh, come, Mother—”

Suddenly the air was windy with recriminations. The only member of the household who seemed to enjoy it was Major Gotch, who sat back puffing a pipe and following the play of words like a spectator at a tennis match.

“That book, Ellery,” exclaimed Charley Paxton under cover of the argument. “Reads The History of Dueling and challenges Robert to a duel!”

“He can’t be serious,” muttered Ellery. “Can’t be.”

Thurlow popped in, his eyes shining. Ellery rose like a released balloon. Thurlow was brandishing two pistols.

“It’s all right, Mr. Queen,” said Thurlow gently. “Sit down, please.”

Mr. Queen sat down. “What interesting-looking little guns,” he said. “May I look at them, Mr. Potts?”

“Some other time,” murmured Thurlow. “From now on, we must do everything according to the code.”

“The code?” Ellery blinked. “Which code is that, Mr. Potts?”

“The code of duello, of course. Honor before everything, Mr. Queen!” And Thurlow advanced upon his brother, who sat transfixed. “Robert, take one of these. The choice is yours.”

Bob’s hand came up in a mechanical motion; it fell grasping a shiny nickel weapon which Ellery recognized as a Smith & Wesson, “S. & W. 38/32,” a .38-caliber revolver. It was not a large weapon, being scarcely more than half a foot long, yet it hung like a submachine gun from Robert’s paralyzed hand. Mac sat by his twin with an identical expression of stupefaction.

Thurlow glanced down at the weapon remaining — a Colt “Pocket Model” automatic pistol of .25-caliber, a flat and miniature gun which looked like a toy beside the small revolver in Robert’s hand, for it was only 4½ inches long. Thurlow with a flourish put the little automatic into his pocket. “Mr. Queen, you’re the only outsider here. I ask you to act as my second.”

“Your—” began Ellery, finding the word stick to his gums.

But Charley Paxton whispered frantically to him: “Ellery, for Pete’s sake! Humor him!”

Mr. Queen nodded wordlessly.

Thurlow bowed, a not inconsiderable feat; but the action had a certain dignity. “Robert, I’ll meet you at dawn in front of the Shoe.”

“The Shoe,” said Bob stupidly.

Ellery caught a clairvoyant glimpse of the two brothers in the coming dawn approaching from opposite directions that ugly bronze on the front lawn, and he almost laughed. But then he glanced at Thurlow again, and refrained.

“Thurlow, for the love of Mike—” began Mac.

“Keep out of this, Maclyn,” said Thurlow sternly, and Mac glanced quickly at his mother. But the Old Woman simply sat, a porcelain. “Robert, each one of these weapons has one bullet in it. You understand?”

Bob could only nod.

“I warn you, I’ll shoot to kill. But if you miss me, or just wound me, I’ll consider my honor satisfied. It says so in the book.”

It says so in the book, Ellery repeated to himself, dazed.

“Dawn at the Shoe, Robert.” A huge contempt came into Thurlow’s penny-whistle voice. “If you don’t show up, I’ll kill you on sight.” And Thurlow left the dining room a second time, prancing, like a ballet dancer.

Sheila came running into a thickly inhabited silence. “I just saw Thurl go up to his bedroom with a little gun in his hand—” She stopped, spying the glittering nickel in Bob’s hand.

The Old Woman simply sat.

Charley got up, sat down, got up again. “It’s nothing, Sheila. A — joke of Thurlow’s. About a duel at dawn at the Shoe on the front lawn, or some such nonsense—”

“A duel!” Sheila stared at her brother.

“I still think it’s some weird gag of Thurl’s,” Bob said with a shaky smile, “although God knows he’s never been famous for a sense of humor—”

“But why are you all sitting here?” cried Sheila. “Call a doctor, a psychiatrist! Call Bellevue!”

“Not while I live,” said the Old Woman.

Her husband’s face waxed and waned, purple and white. “Not while you live!” he spat at her. Then he ran from the room, as if ashamed... as he had been running, Ellery suddenly knew, for over thirty years.

“You’re grown men, aren’t you?” The old lady’s mouth was wry.

“Mother,” said Mac. “You can stop this craziness. You know you can. All you have to do is say a word to Thurlow. He’s scared to death of you...” She was silent. “You won’t?”

The Old Woman banged on the table. “You’re old enough to fight your own battles.”

“If precious li’l Thurl wants a duel, precious li’l Thurl gets it, hey?” Mac laughed angrily.

But his mother was on her way to the door.

Sheila stopped her with a choked cry. “You never interfere except when it suits you — and this time it doesn’t suit you, Mother! You don’t care anything about the twins and me — you never have. Your darling Thurlow — that poor, useless lunatic! You’d let him have his way if he wanted to kill the three of us... the three of us!”

The Old Woman did not even glance at her younger daughter. She eyed Ellery instead. “Good night, Mr. Queen. I don’t know what Charles Paxton’s purpose was in bringing you here tonight, but now that you’ve seen my family, I hope you’ll be discreet enough to hold your tongue. I want no interference from strangers!”

“Of course, Mrs. Potts.”

She nodded and swept out.

“What do you think, Ellery?” Charley’s tone was brittle, ready to crack. “It’s a bluff, isn’t it?”

The twins stared at Ellery, and Paxton, and Sheila... but not Major Gotch, who, Ellery suddenly realized, was no longer among those present. The canny old goat had managed to slip out some time during the farce.

“No, Charley,” said Mr. Queen soberly, “I don’t think this is a bluff. I think Thurlow Potts is in earnest. Of course, he’s touched; but that won’t keep Bob Potts out of the way of a bullet tomorrow morning. Let’s put our heads together, the five of us.”

6 Ellery Betrays the Code of Duello

“The steps we can take,” said Ellery without excitement, “are legion, but they have a common drawback — they involve the use of force. Thurlow can be arrested on some picturesque charge — there may be an old statute on the law books which forbids the practice of dueling, for example. Or he might be charged with threatening homicide. And so on. But he’d be out on bail — if I read your mother correctly — before he was fairly in the clink, and moreover he’d be smarting under a fresh ‘injustice.’ Or we could ship him off to Bellevue for observation. But I doubt if there are sufficient grounds either to keep him there or put him away in a mental hospital... No; can’t be force.”

“Bob could duck out of town,” suggested Mac.

“Are you kidding?” growled his twin.

“Besides, Thurlow would only follow him,” said Sheila.

“How about humoring him?” Charley scowled.

Ellery looked interested. “What do you mean exactly?”

“Why not go through with the duel, but pull its teeth?”

“Charley... that’s it!” cried Sheila.

“Fake it?” frowned Bob.

“But how, Charley?” asked Mac.

“Thurlow said he’d be satisfied if each man fired a single shot, didn’t he? In fact, he said each gun was loaded with just one bullet. All right. Let each man fire one cartridge apiece tomorrow morning, but see that those cartridges are blank.”

“The legal mind,” moaned Ellery. “These simple solutions! Charley, you’re a genius. My hand, sir.”

They shook hands solemnly.

“I knew I’d fallen in love with a Blue Plate special,” laughed Sheila. She kissed Charley and then put her arms about her twin brothers.

“What d’ye think, Bob?” asked Mac anxiously.

The intended victim grinned. “To tell the truth, Mac, I was frightened blue. Yes, if we substitute blank cartridges for the real ones in the two guns, old Nutsy’ll never know the difference.”

Sheila was to decoy Thurlow into the library at the rear of the house, on the ground floor, and keep him there while the men did the dirty work.

“The real dirty work’s my assignment,” said Sheila darkly. And she sallied forth to find Thurlow.

Mac volunteered to stand guard at the outpost. Ellery and Charley, it was agreed, must do the actual deed. Bob was to stay out of everything.

Within ten minutes Mac was back with a report, his blue eyes glittering. He had seen Thurlow and Sheila come down from upstairs, chatting earnestly. They had gone into the library. Sheila had shut the door, winking at the hidden twin that all, so far at any rate, went well.

Ellery stood musing. “Bob — can you shoot a revolver?”

“If you show me the place where the blame thing goes off.”

“Ouch,” said Mr. Queen. “Can Thurlow?”

“He can shoot,” said Mac shortly.

“Oh, my. In that case, this mustn’t fail. Charley, where’s The Purple Avenger’s lair?”

The twins sped upstairs to their room. Charley Paxton and Ellery followed, and Charley led the great man to one of the numerous doors studding the upper hall.

“Thurlow’s?”

Charley nodded, looking around uneasily.

Ellery listened for a moment. Then, boldly, he went in. He stood in a tall and pleasant sitting room, profuse with fresh flowers and easy-chairs and books, and furnished with surprising good taste. Aside from a rather sexless quality, the room was cloistered and fragrant peace for anyone.

“I see what you meant by Thurlow’s potentialities, Charley,” remarked Ellery “Did he fix this up himself?”

“All by his little self, Ellery—”

“The man has dignity. I wonder what he reads.” He ran his eye along the bookshelves. “Mm, yes. A little heavy on Paine, Butler, and Lincoln — ah, of course! Voltaire. No light reading at all, of course...”

“Ellery, for heaven’s sake.” Charley glanced anxiously at the door.

“It gives the man a perspective,” mused Ellery, and he moved on to Thurlow Potts’s bedroom. This was a wee, chaste, almost monastic chamber. A high white bed, a highboy, a chair, a lamp. Ellery could see the little man clambering with agility into his bed, clad — no doubt this was an injustice — in a flannel nightshirt, and clutching a volume of The Rights of Man to his thick little bosom.

“There it is,” said Charley, who had his mind on his work.

The Colt automatic lay on top of the highboy. Ellery picked it up negligently. “Doesn’t look very formidable, does it?”

“Has it got one cartridge in it, as Thurlow said?”

Ellery investigated. “But of course it would. He’s an honest man. Let us away, Charles.” He slipped the Colt into his jacket and they left Thurlow’s apartment, Charley acting furtive and relieved at once.

“Where the devil do we get blank cartridges this time of night?” he asked in the hall. “All the stores are closed by now.”

“Peace, peace,” said Ellery. “Charley, go downstairs to the library and join Sheila in keeping Mr. Thurlow Potts occupied. I don’t want him back in his bedroom till I’m ready for him.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I,” quoth Mr. Queen, “shall journey posthaste to my daddy’s office at Police Headquarters. Don’t stir from the library till I get back.”

When Charley had left him, Ellery ambled to the door through which he had seen Bob and Mac Potts disappear, knocked gently, was admitted, gave his personal reassurances that everything was going off as planned — and requisitioned Robert’s Smith & Wesson.

“But why?” Bob asked.

“Playing it safe,” grinned Ellery, from the hall. “I’ll put a blank in this one, too.”

“But I don’t like it, Ellery,” grumbled Inspector Queen at Headquarters, when his son had told him and Sergeant Velie the story of Thurlow Potts’s great adventure.

“It ain’t decent,” said Sergeant Velie. “Fightin’ a duel in the year of our Lord!”

Ellery agreed it was neither decent nor to be condoned; but what, he asked reasonably, was a sounder solution of the problem?

“I don’t know. I just don’t like it,” said the Inspector irritably, jamming a blank cartridge into the magazine of the Colt. He tossed it aside and slipped a center-fire blank into the top chamber of the Smith & Wesson.

“That den of dopes’ve been in every screwball scrape you can imagine,” complained the Sergeant, “but this one takes the hand-embroidered bearskin. Fightin’ a duel in the year of our Lord!”

“With the sting removed from Thurlow’s stingers,” argued Ellery, “it makes a good story, Sergeant.”

“Only story I want to hear,” grunted his father, handing Ellery the two weapons, “is that this fool business is over and done with.”

“But Dad, there’s no danger of anything going wrong when both guns are loaded with blanks.”

“Guns are guns,” said Sergeant Velie, who was the Sage of Center Street.

“And blanks are blanks, Sergeant.”

“Stop chattering! Velie, you and I are going to watch Thurlow Potts’s duel at dawn tomorrow from behind that big Shoe on the front lawn,” snapped Inspector Queen. “And may God have mercy on all our souls if anything goes haywire!”

Ellery slipped back into the Potts mansion under an impertinent moon; but he made sure only the moon’s eye saw him. Mr. Queen had a way with front doors.

The foyer was empty. He stole towards the rear, listened for voices at the study door, nodded, and made his way in noiseless leaps up the staircase.

Several minutes later he knocked on the twins’ door. It opened immediately.

“Well?” asked the Potts twins in one voice. They were nervous: cigaret butts littered the trays, and a bottle of Scotch had been, if not precisely killed, then at least criminally assaulted.

“The deed is done,” announced Mr. Queen, “the Colt and its blank are back on Thurlow’s highboy, and here’s your Smith & Wesson, Bob.”

“You’re sure the damned thing won’t kill anybody?”

“Quite sure, Bob.”

Robert placed it gingerly on the night table between his bed and Mac’s.

“Then nothing can go wrong tomorrow morning?” growled Mac.

“Oh, come. You’re acting like a couple of children. Of course nothing can go wrong!”

Ellery left the twins and cheerily went downstairs to the library. To his surprise, he found Thurlow in a mood more mellow than melancholy.

“Hi,” said Thurlow, describing a parabola with his left hand. His right was clasped about a frosty glass. “My second, ladies ’n’ gentlemen. Can’t have a duel without a second. Come in, Misser Queen. We were just discussing the possibility of continuing our conversation in more con-congenial surroundings. Know what I mean?” And Thurlow leered cherubically.

“I know exactly what you mean, Mr. Potts,” smiled Ellery. Perhaps Thurlow in his cups might prove a saner man than Thurlow sober. He nodded slightly to Sheila and Paxton, who looked exhausted. “A hot spot, eh, kid?”

“Hot spot ’tis,” beamed Thurlow. “Tha’s my second, ladies ’n’ gentlemen. Won’erful character.” And Thurlow linked his arms in Ellery’s, marching him out of the library to the tune of a rueful psalm which went: “Eat, drink, an’ be merry, for tomorrow I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal youuuuu...”

Thurlow insisted on Club Bongo. All their arguments could not dissuade him. Ellery could only hope fervently that Mr. Conklin Cliffstatter, of the East Shore jute and shoddy Cliffstatters, was getting drunk elsewhere this night. In the cab on their way downtown, Thurlow fell innocently asleep on Ellery’s shoulder.

“This seems kind of silly,” giggled Charley Paxton.

“It is not, Charley!” whispered Sheila. “Maybe we can get him into such a good mood he’ll call the duel off.”

“Hush. Uneasy lies the head.” And indeed at that moment Thurlow awoke with a whoop and took up his dolorous psalm.

Mr. Queen, Miss Potts, her eldest brother, and Mr. Paxton spent the night at Club Bongo, keeping its death watch with the curious characters who seemed to find its prancing maidens and tense comedians the most hilarious of companions.

Fortunately, Mr. Cliffstatter was not among them.

Mr. Queen was his suavest and most persuasive; he inserted little melodies of reasonableness into the chit-chat; he suggested frequent libations at the flowing bowl.

But all his efforts, and Sheila’s, and Charley’s, availed nothing. At a certain point, diabolically, Thurlow stopped imbibing; and to all suggestions that he call off the duel and make a peace with Bob, he would smile sadly, say, “Punctilio is involved, my good frien’s,” and applaud the première danseuse enthusiastically.

7 Pistols at Dawn

They got back to the Potts grounds on the drive at a quarter of six. The dawn was dripping and jellyfish-gray, not cheerful. The thing was beyond reason, but there it was. A duel was to be fought in this clammy dawn, with pistols, on a sward, and with trees as sentinels.

The three were exhausted; but not baggy-pantsed, tweed-coated Thurlow. He egged them on in his high-pitched voice, made higher than ordinary by a sort of ecstasy. Sheila and Charley and Ellery could scarcely keep step with him.

They went directly from the sidewalk before the front gates across the grass to the obscene bronze bulk of the Shoe, above which the neon inscription, THE POTTS SHOE, $3.99 EVERYWHERE, still glowed faintly against the early morning sky.

Thurlow glanced up at the silent windows of his mother’s mansion beyond the Shoe. “Mr. Queen,” he said formally, “you will find my pistol on the highboy in my bedroom.”

Ellery hesitated; then he bowed and hurried off to the house. In every story Ellery had ever read about a duel, the seconds bowed.

As he rounded the Shoe, the Inspector’s voice came to him in a low and wondering snarl. “He’s going through with it, Velie!”

“They’ll never believe this downtown,” whispered the Sergeant with hoarse awe. “Never, Inspector.”

The two men nodded tensely to Ellery as he strode by, and he nodded back. It wasn’t so bad, he thought, as he vaulted up the front steps. In fact, it was rather fun. He realized how gay life had been for those old boys of the romantic age, and felt almost thankful to Providence for having brought Thurlow Potts into the world a century or two late.

He realized, too, that part of his enjoyment derived from a certain giddiness of the brain, which in turn came from having tried to set Thurlow a Scotch example all night. Things were a little hazy as he tiptoed into the house, having used his magic on the lock of the front door.

Where was everybody? Wonderful household! Two brothers are to duel to the death, and of their blood none cares sufficiently to let off snoring and be miserable. Or perhaps the Old Woman was awake, peering through the curtains of her bedroom window at the scene in miniature to be enacted on the grass before her Moloch. What could she be thinking, that extraordinary mother? And where was Steve Brent Potts? Probably drunk in his bed.

Ellery stopped very suddenly halfway up the main staircase leading from the foyer to the bedroom floor. The house was silent, with that eeriest of silences which pervades a house at dawn, the silence of gray light.

Not a sound. Not even a shadow. But — something?

It seemed to be on the bedroom floor, and it seemed to pass the door of Thurlow Potts’s apartment. Was it... someone coming out of those two rooms?

Ellery sped up the remaining steps and stopped catlike on the landing to survey the hall, both ways. No one. And the silence again.

Man? Woman? Imagination? He listened very hard.

But that deep, deep silence.

He went into Thurlow’s apartment, shut the door behind him, and began to search for more palpable clues. He spared neither time, eyesight, nor his clothes. But crawl and peer and pry as he might, he could detect no least sign that anyone had been there since he himself had left the premises the night before on his last visit. The tiny Colt lay exactly where he had placed it with his own hand after his trip to Police Headquarters for the blank cartridges — on Thurlow’s highboy.

Ellery seized Thurlow’s automatic and left the apartment.

Robert and Maclyn Potts appeared promptly at six. They marched from the house shoulder to shoulder, appeared not to notice Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie in the shadows at the base of the Shoe’s pedestal, rounded the Shoe, and stopped.

The two parties stared solemnly at each other.

Then Thurlow bowed to his brothers.

Bob hesitated, glanced at Ellery, then bowed back. Behind Thurlow, Charley grinned and clasped his hands above his head. Bob’s left eyelid drooped ever so little in reply.

But Mac’s expression was serious. “Look here, Thurl,” he said, “hasn’t this fool farce gone far enough? Let’s shake hands all around and—”

Thurlow glared disapprovingly at his adversary’s twin. “You will please inform the gentleman’s second,” he said to Ellery, “that conversation with the principals is not considered good form, Mr. Queen.”

“I so inform him,” replied Mr. Queen frigidly. “Now what do I do, Mr. Potts?”

“I should be obliged if you would act as Master of Ceremonies as well as my second. It’s a little irregular, but then I’m sure we can take a few liberties with the code.”

“Oh, of course,” said Ellery hastily. Improvise, Brother Queen, improvise. Must be some sense in the code of duello somewhere, or was. “Mr. Thurlow Potts, your weapon,” said Ellery in a grave voice. He handed the Colt, walnut stock forward, to his man.

Mr. Thurlow Potts dropped the automatic into the right pocket of his coat. Then he turned and walked off a few paces, to stand there stiffly, a man alone with his Maker. Or so his back said.

“I believe,” continued Ellery, turning to Maclyn Potts, “that as your principal’s second you should be addressed. The Master of Ceremonies should ask somebody if the duelists won’t call the whole thing off. What say?”

Before Mac could reply, Thurlow’s voice came, annoyed. “No, no, Mr. Queen. As the offended party, the option is mine.” It didn’t sound right to Mr. Queen; more like a business conference. “And I insist: Honor satisfied.”

“But isn’t there something in the code,” the Master of Ceremonies asked respectfully, “about the duel being called off if the offender apologizes, Mr. Potts?”

“I’ll apologize. I’ll do any blasted thing,” snapped Bob, “to get off this damp grass.”

“No, no!” screamed. “I won’t have it that way. Honor satisfied, Mr. Queen, honor satisfied!”

“Very well, honor satisfied,” replied Mr. Queen hastily. “I think, then, that the principals should stand back to back. Right here, gentlemen. Mac, is your man ready?”

Mac nodded disgustedly, and Robert took from his pocket the Smith & Wesson Ellery had returned to him the night before. Robert and Thurlow now approached each other, Thurlow producing from his pocket the Colt Ellery had just handed him and gripping it nervously. Thurlow was pale.

“Back to back, gentlemen.”

The brothers executed the volte-face.

“I shall count to ten. With each number of the count,” continued Ellery with stern relish, “you gentlemen will walk one pace forward. At the end of the count you will be twenty paces from each other, facing in opposite directions. Is that clear?”

Thurlow Potts said in a strained voice: “Yes.” Robert Potts yawned.

“At the end of the count, I shall say ‘Turn!’ You will then turn and face each other, raise your weapons, and take aim. I will thereupon count to three, and at three you each fire just one shot. Understand?” Sheila giggled.

“Very well, then. Start pacing off. One. Two. Three...” Ellery counted solemnly. When he said “Ten,” the two men obediently stopped pacing. “Turn!” They turned.

Thurlow’s chubby face gleamed wet in the gray light. But his mouth was set in a stubborn line, and he scowled fiercely at his brother. He raised his Colt shoulder high, aiming it. Robert shrugged and aimed too.

“One,” said Ellery. This is all wrong, he thought testily. I should have read up on it. Maybe when Thurlow finds out how I’ve messed up his duel, he’ll insist on a retake.

“Two.” And what were the Inspector and Velie thinking behind that horrible statue? He’d never hear the end of this. He spied the two men’s heads peeping cautiously from behind the pedestal.

“Three!”

There was one cracking report. Smoke drifted from the muzzle of Thurlow’s little weapon.

Ellery became aware of a leaden silence, and of a curious look on Thurlow Potts’s face. He whirled. Behind him Sheila gurgled, and Charley Paxton said: “What the—” and Maclyn Potts stared at the grass. And Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie were racing around the pedestal, waving their arms frantically.

For Robert Potts lay on the grass, on his face, the undischarged Smith & Wesson still in his hand.

“Bob, Bob, get off the grass,” Mac kept saying. “Stop clowning. Get the hell up off the grass. You’ll catch cold—”

Somebody — it was Charley — took Mac’s arm and steered him, still prattling, off to one side.

“Well?” asked the Inspector in an unreal voice.

Ellery rose, mechanically brushing at grass stains on his trouser knees which would not come off. “The man’s dead.”

Sheila Potts ran blindly for the house. She made a wide, horrified detour around Thurlow, who was still standing there, gun in hand, looking at them all with a bewildered expression.

“Smack in the pump,” breathed Sergeant Velie, pointing. Ellery had turned Bob Potts over: there was a dark spot on his clothing, from which an uneven bloodstain had spread, like the solar corona.

Thurlow threw down his automatic as if it burned his hand. He walked off unsteadily.

“Hey—!” began Sergeant Velie, taking a step toward him. But then the Sergeant stopped and scratched his head.

“But... how?” howled the Inspector, finding his normal voice. “Ellery, I thought you said—”

“You’ll find the blank cartridge you yourself placed in Robert’s Smith & Wesson still in the chamber,” Ellery said in a stiff tone. “He never even fired. There was a corresponding blank in Thurlow’s Colt too — when I deposited it on Thurlow’s highboy last night after my trip to Headquarters. But someone — someone in this house, Dad — substituted a real bullet for the blank you’d put in Thurlow’s gun last night!”

“Murder,” said the Inspector. He was white.

“Yes,” mumbled Ellery. “Murder to which we were all eyewitnesses-yet none of us lifted a finger to stop it... in fact, we aided and abetted it. We saw the man who fired the shot, but we don’t know who the murderer is!”