The Siamese Twin Mystery (8 page)

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

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

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

“Well?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right.”

They moved toward the foyer.

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Forrest said breathlessly: “And?”

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

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

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

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

“I’m afraid not.”

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

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

“Cinders,” gasped Miss Forrest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord, what people! thought Ellery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Wheary flushed and retreated.

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

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

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

“Psychology never errs. The chief difficulty is knowing your subject. Psychology is an exact science with infinite ramifications.”

—Minds Human and Inhuman

by
S. STANLEY WHYTE, D.Sc.

A
RIPPLE STARTING FROM
the neckline of Mrs. Xavier’s low-cut gown flowed downward and disappeared in a flutter of crimson skirt. She was leaning against the terrace rail, her hands gripping the rail on each side of her strong body. The olive knuckles grayed, looking like lumps of cartilage. Her black eyes were washed cherries about to pop out. But she made no sound at all, and the expression on her face did not change. Even the horrible smile remained.

Miss Forrest’s eyes rolled until only a shadow arc of pupil showed against the elliptical whites. She made a sick noise and started from her chair, only to fall back with a thud.

Mark Xavier crushed the red tip of his cigaret between his forefinger and thumb and lunged off the rail. He lurched by the motionless figure of Dr. Holmes into the house.

“Murdered?” said the Inspector slowly.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Miss Forrest, biting the back of her right hand and staring at Mrs. Xavier.

Then Ellery sprang after Xavier and they all stumbled after Ellery, across the gameroom through a door into a book-lined library, through another door into …

Dr. Xavier’s study was a small square room with two windows which overlooked the narrow fringe of rocky ground and the margin of trees at the right of the house. There were four doors: the one from the library; a door sharply to the left, as they faced into the room, which led to the cross-hall; a third on the same wall, but giving upon the surgeon’s laboratory; and a fourth directly across the room also leading into the laboratory. This last door was wide open, disclosing a segment of the white-walled, full-shelved laboratory beyond.

The study was modestly, even monastically, furnished. Three towering mahogany bookcases with glass windows, an old armchair, a lamp, a hard black-leather couch, a small cabinet, a silver cup in a glass case, a long poor group picture jammed with dinner-jacketed men—framed, on the wall; and in the center of the room a wide mahogany desk facing the library door.

Behind the desk was a swivel chair, and in the swivel chair was Dr. Xavier.

Except for the fact that his rough tweed coat and red woolen necktie lay carelessly in a heap on the armchair, he was dressed as they had last seen him on the previous night. His head and breast lay limply on the desktop before him, left arm from the elbow down resting beside his head, long fingers rigidly outstretched, palm flat against the mahogany. His right arm below the shoulder was out of sight, hanging below the desk-level. His collar was unfastened and lay away from his gray-blue neck.

His head rested on the left cheek, mouth pursed and contorted, eyes glaring wide open. The upper part of his torso was half twisted away from the surface of the desk; a splatter of thick dark red was visible on the shirt-front at the right breast. In the coagulated welter of crimson were two blackish holes.

The top of the desk was bare of the usual desktop accessories. Instead of a blotting pad and an inkwell and pen tray and paper there were only scattered playing cards, arranged in rather curious order. Most of them, in small piles, were concealed by the surgeon’s body.

At the margin of the green rug which covered the floor, in the corner near the closed door which led into the cross-hall, lay a long black revolver.

Mark Xavier was leaning against the jamb of the library door, glaring into the study at the quiet figure of his brother.

Mrs. Xavier, over Ellery’s shoulder, said “John,” thickly.

Then Ellery said: “I think you had all better go away. Except Dr. Holmes. We’ll need him. Please, now.”

“
We’ll
need him?” echoed Mark Xavier harshly. Lids blinked over his bloodshot eyes. He swayed away from the jamb. “What d’ye, mean—we? Who the devil do you think you are, anyway?”