The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (16 page)

“Heathen,” said Ellery thoughtfully, sliding the Duesenberg into the Pelham highway. “Perhaps that's it, Miss Merrivel. Alien atmospheres generally affect us disagreeably.… By the way, was this doorstop valuable?” The theft of that commonplace object was nibbling away at his brain cells.

“Oh, no. Just a few dollars; I once heard Mr. Kagiwa say so.” And Miss Merrivel brushed the doorstop aside with a healthy swoop of her arm and sailed into the more dramatic portion of her story, glowing with its reflected vitality and investing it with an aura of suspense and horror.

On the previous night she had tucked her aged charge into his bed upstairs at the rear of the house, waited until he fell asleep, and then—her duties for the day over—had gone downstairs to the library, which adjoined the old gentleman's study, for a quiet hour of reading. She recalled how hushed the house had been and how loudly the little Japanese clock had ticked away on the mantel over the fireplace. She had been busy with her patient since after dinner and had no idea where the other members of the household were; she supposed they were sleeping, for it was past eleven o'clock.… Miss Merrivel's calm eyes were no longer calm; they reflected something unpleasant and yet exciting.

“It was so cozy in there,” she said in a low, troubled voice. “And so still. I had the lamp over my left shoulder and was reading
White Woman
—all about a beautiful young nurse who went on a case and fell in love with the secretary of … Well, I was reading it,” she went on quickly, with a faint flush, “and the house began to get creepy. Simply—creepy. It shouldn't have, from the book. It's an awfully nice book, Mr. Queen. And the clock went ticking away, and I could hear the water splashing against the piles down at the rear of the house, and suddenly I began to shiver. I don't know why. I felt cold all over. I looked around, but there was nothing; the door to the study was open but it was pitch dark in there. I—I think I got to feeling a little silly. Me hearing things!”

“Just what do you think you heard?” asked Ellery patiently.

“I really don't know. I can't describe it. A slithery sound, like a—a—” She hesitated, and then burst out: “Oh, I know you'll laugh, Mr. Queen, but it was like a
snake
!”

Ellery did not laugh. Dragons danced on the macadam road. Then he sighed and said, “Or like a dragon, if you can imagine what a dragon would sound like; eh, Miss Merrivel? By the way, have you ever heard sounds like that over the radio? An aspirin dropped into a glass of water becomes a beautiful girl diving into the sea. Powerful thing, imagination … And where did this remarkable sound come from?”

“From Mr. Kagiwa's study. From the dark.” Miss Merrivel's pink skin was paler now, and her eyes were luminous with half-glimpsed terrors, impervious to such sane analogies. “I was annoyed with myself for making up things in my head and I got out of the chair to investigate. And—and the door of the study suddenly swung shut!”

“Oh,” said Ellery in a vastly different tone. “And despite everything you opened the door and investigated?”

“It was silly of me,” breathed Miss Merrivel. “Foolhardy, really. There was danger there. But I've always been a fool and I did open the door, and the moment I opened it and gawped like an idiot into the darkness something hit me on the head. I really saw stars, Mr. Queen.” She laughed, but it was a mirthless, desperate sort of laugh; and her eyes looked sidewise at him, as if for comfort.

“Nevertheless,” murmured Ellery, “that was very brave, Miss Merrivel. And then?” They had swung into the Post Road and were heading north.

“I was unconscious for about an hour. When I came to I was lying on the threshold, half in the library, half in the study. The study was still dark. Nothing had changed.… I put the light on in the study and looked around. It seemed the same, you know. All except the doorstop; that was gone, and I knew then why the door had swung shut so suddenly. Funny, isn't it?… I spent most of the rest of the night bringing the swelling down.”

“Then you haven't told anyone about last night?”

“Well, no.” She screwed up her features and peered through the windshield with a puckered concentration. “I didn't know that I should. If there's anyone in that house who's—who's homicidally inclined, let him think I don't know what it's all about. Matter of fact, I don't.” Ellery said nothing. “They all looked the same to me this morning,” continued Miss Merrivel after a pause. “It's my morning off, you see, and I was able to come to town without exciting comment. Not that anyone would care! It's all very silly, isn't it, Mr. Queen?”

“Precisely why it interests me. We turn here, I believe?”

Two things struck Mr. Ellery Queen as a maid with frightened eyes opened the front door for them and ushered them into a lofty reception hall. One was that this house was not like other houses in his experience, and the other that there was something queerly wrong in it. The first impression arose from the boldly Oriental character of the furnishings—a lush rug on the floor brilliant and soft with the vivid technique of the East, a mother-of-pearl-inlaid teak table, an overhead lamp that was a miniature pagoda, a profusion of exotic chrysanthemums, silk hangings embroidered with colored dragons.… The second troubled him. Perhaps it arose from the scared pallor of the maid, or the penetrating aroma, A sticky-sweet odor, even as Miss Merrivel had described it, hung heavily in the air, cloying his senses and instantly making him wish for the open air.

“Miss Merrivel!” cried a man's voice, and Ellery turned quickly to find a tall young man with thin cheeks and intelligent eyes advancing upon them from a doorway which led, from what he could see beyond it, to the library Miss Merrivel had mentioned. He turned back to the young woman and was astonished to see that her cheeks were a flaming crimson.

“Good morning, Mr. Cooper,” she said with a catch of her breath. “I want you to meet Mr. Ellery Queen, a friend of mine. I happened to run into him—” They had cooked up a story between them to account for Ellery's visit, but it was destined never to be served.

“Yes, yes,” said the young man excitedly, scarcely glancing at Ellery. He pounced upon Miss Merrivel, seizing her hands; and her cheeks burned even more brightly. “Merry, where on earth is old Jito?”

“Mr. Kagiwa? Why, isn't he upstairs in his—”

“No, he isn't. He's gone!”

“Gone?” gasped the nurse, sinking into a chair. “Why, I put him to bed myself last night! When I looked into his room this morning, before I left the house, he was still sleeping.…”

“No, he wasn't. You only thought he was. He'd rigged up a crude dummy of sorts—I suppose it was he—and covered it with the bedclothes.” Cooper paced up and down, worrying his fingernails. “I simply don't understand it.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Ellery mildly. “I have some experience in these matters.” The tall young man stopped short, flinging him a startled glance. “I understand that your Mr. Kagiwa is an old man. He may have crossed the line. It's conceivable that he's playing a senile prank on all of you.”

“Lord, no! He's keen as a whippet. And the Japanese don't indulge in childish tomfoolery. There's something up; no question about it, Mr. Queen.… Queen!” Cooper glared at Ellery with sudden suspicion. “By George, I've heard that name before—”

“Mr. Queen,” said Miss Merrivel in a damp voice, “is a detective.”

“Of course! I remember now. You mean you—” The young man became very still as he looked at Miss Merrivel. Under his steady inspection she grew red again. “Merry, you know something!”

“The merest tittle,” murmured Ellery. “She's told me what she knows, and it's skimpy enough to whet my curiosity. Were you aware, Mr. Cooper, that Mr. Kagiwa's doorstop is missing?”

“Doorstop.… Oh, you mean that monstrosity he keeps in his study. It can't be. I saw it myself only last night—”

“Oh, it is!” wailed Miss Merrivel. “And—and some body hit me over the head, Mr. C-Cooper, and t-took it.…”

The young man paled. “Why, Merry. I mean—that's perfectly barbarous! Are you hurt?”

“Oh, Mr. Cooper …”

“Now, now,” said Ellery sternly, “let's not get maudlin. By the way, Mr. Cooper, just what factor do you represent in this bizarre equation? Miss Merrivel neglected to mention your name in her statement of the problem.”

Miss Merrivel blushed again, positively glowing, and this time Ellery looked at her very sharply indeed. It occurred to him suddenly that Miss Merrivel had been reading a romance in which the beautiful young nurse fell in love with the secretary of her patient.

“I'm old Jito's secretary,” said Cooper abstractedly. “Look here, old man. What has that confounded doorstop to do with Kagiwa's disappearance?”

“That,” said Ellery, “is what I propose to find out.” There was a little silence, and Miss Merrivel sent a liquidly pleading glance at Ellery, as if to beg him to keep her secret. “Is anything else missing?”

“I don't know what business it is of yours, young man,” snapped a female from the library doorway, “but, praise be; the heathen is gone, bag and baggage, and good riddance,
I
say. I always said that slinky yellow devil would come to no good.”

“Miss Letitia Gallant, I believe?” sighed Ellery, and from the stiffening backbones and freezing faces of Miss Merrivel and Mr. Cooper it was evident that truth had prevailed.

“Stow it, Aunt Letty, for heaven's sake,” said a man worriedly from behind her, and she swept her long skirts aside with a sniff that had something Airedale-ish about it. Bill Gallant was a giant with a red face and bloodshot eyes in sacs. He looked as if he had not slept and his clothes were rumpled and droopy. His aunt in the flesh was all that Miss Merrivel had characterized her, and more. Thin to the point of emaciation, she seemed composed of whalebone, tough rubber, and acid—a tall she-devil of fifty, with slightly mad eyes, dressed in the height of pre-War fashion. Ellery fully expected to find that her tongue was forked; but she shut her lips tightly and, with a cunning perversity, persisted in keeping quiet thenceforward and glaring at him with a venomous intensity that made him uncomfortable inside.

“Baggage?” he said, after he had introduced himself and they had repaired to the library.

“Well, his suitcase is gone,” said Gallant hoarsely, “and his clothes are missing—not all, but several suits and plenty of haberdashery. I've questioned all the servants and no one saw him leave the house. We've searched every nook and cranny in the house, and every foot of the grounds. He's just vanished into thin air.… Lord, what a mess! He must have gone crazy.”

“Ducked out during the night?” Cooper passed his hand over his hair. “But he isn't crazy, Mr. Gallant; you know that. If he's gone, there was a thumping good reason for it.”

“Have you looked for a note?” asked Ellery absently, glancing about. The heavy odor had followed them into the library and it bathed the Oriental furnishings with a peculiar fittingness. The door to what he assumed was the missing Japanese's study was closed, and he crossed the room and opened it. There was another door in the study; apparently it led to an extension of the main hall. Miss Merrivel's assailant of the night before, then, had probably entered the study through that door. But why had he stolen the doorstop?

“Of course,” said Gallant; they had followed Ellery into the study and were watching him with puzzled absorption. “But there isn't any. He's left without a word.”

Ellery nodded; he was kneeling on the thick Oriental rug a few feet behind the library door, scrutinizing a rectangular depression in the nap. Something heavy, about six inches wide and a foot long, had rested on that very spot for a long time; the nap was crushed to a uniform flatness as if from great and continuous pressure. The missing doorstop, obviously; and he rose and lit a cigarette and perched himself on the arm of a huge mahogany chair, carved tortuously in a lotus and dragon motif and inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

“Don't you think,” suggested Miss Merrivel timidly, “that we ought to telephone the police?”

“No hurry,” said Ellery with a cheerful wave of his hand. “Let's sit down and talk things over. There's nothing criminal in a man's quitting his own castle without explanation—even, Miss Gallant, a heathen. I'm not even sure anything's wrong. The yellow people are a subtle race with thought-processes worlds removed from ours. This business of the pilfered doorstop, however, is provocative. Will someone please describe it to me?”

Miss Merrivel looked helpful; the others glanced at one another, however, with a sort of inert helplessness.

Then Bill Gallant hunched his thick shoulders and growled: “Now, look here, Queen, you're evading the issue.” He looked worried and haggard, as if a secret maggot were nibbling at his conscience. “This is certainly a matter for old Jito's attorney, if not for the police. I must call—”

“You must follow the dictates of your own conscience, of course,” said Ellery gently, “but if you will take my advice someone will describe the doorstop for my edification.”

“I can tell you exactly,” said young Cooper, brushing his thin hair back again with his white musician's fingers, “because I've handled the thing a number of times and, in fact, signed the express receipt when it was delivered. It's six inches wide, six inches high, and an even foot long. Perfectly regular in shape, you see, except for the decorative bas-reliefs—the dragons. Typical conventionalized Japanese craftsmanship, by the way. Nothing really remarkable.”

“Heathen idolatry,” said Miss Letitia distinctly; her ophidian eyes glared their chronic hate with a fanatical fire. “Devil!”

Ellery glanced at her. Then he said: “Miss Merrivel has told me that the doorstop isn't valuable.” Cooper and Gallant nodded. “What's its composition?”