Read The Siamese Twin Mystery Online
Authors: Ellery Queen
The Siamese Twin Mystery
Ellery Queen
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Ellery and Inspector Queen—
The father-son team who found themselves “captive” in the Tepee Mountains, they didn’t need smoke signals to realize they were in a hot spot
“Bones”
—Loose-jointed, multitudinously wrinkled oldster, Xavier’s man had been an unfortunate derelict, and hadn’t managed to change most of his ways
Dr. John Xavier
—The tall, handsome “Mayo of New England,” he had been doing mysterious work in secret, until someone did some on him
Mrs. Wheary
—A staid, stout old woman, Xavier’s housekeeper was in charge of the closets, and any skeletons therein
Ann Forrest
—Young, brown-eyed houseguest, she was composed by nature, but her metabolism was undergoing rapid change
Mark Xavier—
John’s broad-shouldered, blond brother, his deep-set eyes were filled to the lids with antagonism for the Queens
Dr. Percival Holmes
—Xavier’s young English assistant, he had chemical-stained fingers, but it looked as if he might have had the cleanest hands
Sarah Xavier
—The doctor’s black-haired, olive-skinned wife, she had a commanding appearance, and her looks didn’t deceive
Marie Carreau
—Gorgeous society woman, she was a guest in the doctor’s house for some evasive reason, and it wasn’t for her health
Francis and Julian
—Bright, good-mannered sixteen-year-olds, they were held together by more than brotherly love
and
The “Thing”!
THE BURNING ARROW
T
HE ROAD LOOKED AS
if it had been baked out of rubbly dough in a giant’s oven, removed in all its snaky length, unwound and laid in coils around the flank of the mountain, and then cheerfully stamped upon. Its crust, broiled by the sun, had risen quite as if one of its ingredients were yeast; it erupted like brown cornbread for fifty yards at a stretch and then, for no sane reason, sucked itself in to form tire-killing ruts for fifty more. To make life exciting for the unfortunate motorist who chanced upon that unhappy highway it had been so molded as to slue and curve and dip and wind and swoop and climb and broaden and narrow in a manner truly wonderful to behold. And it raised swarms of dust, each grain a locust ferociously bent upon biting into such damp crawling human flesh as it happened to alight upon.
Mr. Ellery Queen, totally unrecognizable by virtue of specked sunglasses over his aching eyes, linen cap pulled low, the wrinkles of his linen jacket filled with the grit of three counties, his skin where it showed a great raw wet irritation, humped his shoulders over the wheel of the battered Duesenberg, wrestling with it with a sort of desperate determination. He had cursed every curve in the alleged road from Tuckesas forty miles down the Valley, where it officially began, to the present point; and he had quite run out of words.
“Your own damn fault,” said his father peevishly. “Cripes, you’d think it would be cool in the mountains! I feel as if somebody’s scraped me all over with sandpaper.”
The Inspector, gray little Arab swathed to his eyes against the dust in a gray silk scarf, had been nursing a grudge which, like the road itself, bucked skyward and erupted at every fifty yards. He twisted, groaning, in his seat beside Ellery and peered sourly over the pile of luggage strapped behind at the lumpy stretch of paving in their wake. Then he slumped back.
“Told you to stick to the Valley pike, didn’t I?” He brandished his forefinger at the rush of hot sticky air.
“ ‘El,’ I said, ‘take my word for it—in these blasted mountains you never know what kind of squirty road you run into,’ I said. But no; you had to go and start explorin’ with night coming on, like—like some damn Columbus!” The Inspector paused to grumble at the deepening sky. “Stubborn. Just like your mother—rest her soul!” he added hastily, for he was after all a God-fearing old gentleman. “Well, I hope you’re satisfied.”
Ellery sighed and stole a glance from the zigzag expanse before him to the sky. The whole arc of heaven was purpling very softly and swiftly—a sight to rouse the poet in any man, he thought, except a tired, hot, and hungry one with a querulous sire at his side who not only grumbled but grumbled with unanswerable logic. The road along the foothills bordering the Valley
had
looked inviting; there was something cool—by anticipation only, he thought sadly—in a vista of green trees.
The Duesenberg bucked on in the gathering gloom.
“And not only that,” continued Inspector Queen, cocking an irritated eye upon the road ahead above a fold of the dusty scarf, “but it’s one hell of a way to top off a vacation. Trouble, just trouble! Gets me all hot and—and bothered. Damn it all, El, I
worry
about these things. They spoil my appetite!”
“Not mine,” said Ellery with another sigh. “I could eat a Goodyear-tire steak with French-fried gaskets and gasoline sauce right now, I’m so famished. Where the devil are we anyway?”
“Tepees. Somewhere in the United States. That’s all
I
know.”
“Lovely. Tepees. There’s poetic justice for you! Makes me think of venison broiling over a woodfire. … Whoa, Duesey! That
was
a daisy, wasn’t it?” The Inspector, who at the peak of the bump had almost had his head torn off, glared; it was quite evident that to his way of thinking “daisy” was scarcely the appropriate word. “Now, now, dad. Don’t mind a little thing like that. One of the normal hazards of motoring. What you miss is the Montreal Scotch, you renegade Irishman! … Now look at that, will you?”
They had reached a rise in the road around one of the myriad unexpected bends; and for sheer wonder Ellery stopped the car. Hundreds of feet below and to the left lay Tomahawk Valley, already cloaked in the purple mantle which had dropped so swiftly from the green battlements jutting against the sky. The mantle billowed as if something huge and warm and softly animal stirred beneath it. A faint gray tapeworm of road slithered along far down, already half-smothered by the purple mantle. There were no lights, no signs of human beings or habitations. The whole sky overhead was suffused now, and the last cantaloupe sliver of sun was sinking behind the distant range across the Valley. The edge of the road was ten feet away; there it dipped sharply and cascaded in green sheets toward the Valley floor.
Ellery turned and looked up. Arrow Mountain swelled above them, a dark emerald tapestry closely woven out of pine and scrub oak and matted underbrush. The bristly fabric of foliage towered, it seemed, for miles above their heads.
He started the Duesenberg again. “Almost worth the torture,” he chuckled. “Feel better already. Come out of it, Inspector! This is the real thing—Nature in the raw.”
“Too damn raw to suit me.”
The night suddenly overpowered them and Ellery switched his headlights on. They bounced along in silence. Both stared ahead, Ellery dreamily and the old gentleman with irritation. A peculiar haze had begun to dance in the shafts of light stabbing the road before them; it drifted and curled and eddied like lazy fog.
“Seems to me we ought to be getting there,” growled the Inspector, blinking in the darkness. “Road’s going down now, isn’t it? Or is it my imagination?”
“It’s been dipping for some time,” murmured Ellery. “Getting warmer, isn’t it? How far did that hulking countryman with the lisp—that garageman in Tuckesas—say it was to Osquewa?”
“Fifty miles. Tuckesas! Osquewa! Gripes, this country’s enough to make a man throw up.”
“No romance,” grinned Ellery. “Don’t you recognize the beauty of old Indian etymology? At that, it’s ironic. Our compatriots visiting abroad complain bitterly about the ‘foreign’ names—Lwow, Prague (now why
Pra-ha,
in the name of merciful heaven?), Brescia, Valdepeñaz, and even good old British Harwich and Leicestershire. Yet those are words of one syllable—”
“Hmm,” said the Inspector in an odd tone; he blinked again.
“—compared with our own native Arkansas and Winnebago and Schoharie and Otsego and Sioux City and Susquehanna and goodness knows what else. Talk about heritage! Yes, sir, painted redskins roamed them thar hills across the Valley and this here mounting falling on our heads. Redskins in moccasins and tanned deerskin, braided hair and turkey feathers. The smoke of their signal fires—”
“Hmm,” said the Inspector again, suddenly bolting upright. “Looks damned near as if they were still setting ’em!”
“Eh?”
“Smoke, smoke, you, son! See it?” The Inspector rose, pointing ahead. “There!” he cried. “Right in front of us!”
“Nonsense,” said Ellery in a sharp voice; “What would smoke be doing up here, of all places? That’s probably some manifestation of evening mist. These hills play peculiar pranks sometimes.”
“This one’s acting up,” said Inspector Queen grimly. The dusty scarf fell into his lap, unheeded. His sharp little eyes were no longer dull and bored. He craned backward and stared for a long time. Ellery frowned, snatching a glimpse into his windshield mirror, and then looked quickly ahead again. The road was definitely dipping toward the Valley now, and the peculiar haze thickened with every downward foot.
“What’s the matter, dad?” he said in a small voice. His nostrils quivered. There was an odd and faintly disagreeable pungency in the air.
“I think,” said the Inspector, sinking back, “I think, El, you’d better step on it.”
“Is it—?” began Ellery feebly, and swallowed hard.
“Looks mighty like it.”
“Forest fire?”
“Forest fire. Smell it now?”
Ellery’s right foot squeezed the accelerator. The Duesenberg leaped forward. The Inspector, his grumpiness gone, reached over the edge of the car on his side and switched on a powerful sidelamp which swept the slope of the mountain like a broom of light.
Ellery’s lips tightened; neither spoke.
Despite their altitude and the mountain chill of evening, a queer heat suffused the air. The swirling mist through which the Duesenberg plowed was yellowish now, and thick as cotton. It was smoke, the smoke of desiccated wood and dusty foliage burning. Its acrid molecules suddenly invaded their nostrils, burned their lungs, made them cough, brought smarting tears to their eyes.
To the left, where the Valley lay, there was nothing to be seen but a dark smother, like the sea at night.
The Inspector stirred. “Better stop, son.”
