Magic or miracle?
“There’s even,” thought Mr. Ellery Queen dully, “ a character named Alice.”
He looked again. The only reason he did not rub his eyes was that it would have made him feel ridiculous; besides, his sight, all his senses, had never been keener.
He simply stood there in the snow and looked and looked and looked at the empty space where a three-story stone house seventy-five years old had stood the night before.
“Why, it isn’t there,” said Alice feebly from the upper window. “It... isn’t... there.”
“Then I’m not insane.” Thorne stumbled toward them. Ellery watched the old man’s feet sloughing through the snow, leaving long tracks. A man’s weight still counted for something in the universe, then. Yes, and there was his own shadow; so material objects still cast shadows. Absurdly, the discovery brought a certain faint relief.
“It is gone!” said Thorne in a cracked voice.
“Apparently.” Ellery found his own voice thick and slow; he watched the words curl out on the air and become nothing. “Apparently, Thorne.” It was all he could find to say.
Dr. Reinach arched his fat neck, his wattles quivering like a gobbler’s. “Incredible. Incredible!”
“Incredible,” said Thorne in a whisper.
“Unscientific. It can’t be. I’m a man of sense. Of senses. My mind is clear. Things like this — damn it, they just don’t happen!”
“As the man said who saw a giraffe for the first time,” sighed Ellery. “And yet... there it was.”
Thorne began wandering helplessly about in a circle. Alice stared, bewitched into stone, from the upper window. And Keith cursed and began to run across the snow-covered driveway toward the invisible house, his hands outstretched before him like a blind man’s.
“Hold on,” said Ellery. “Stop where you are.”
The giant halted, scowling. “What d’ye want?”
Ellery slipped his revolver back into his pocket and sloshed through the snow to pause beside the young man in the driveway. “I don’t know precisely. Something’s wrong. Something’s out of kilter either with us or with the world. It isn’t the world as we know it. It’s almost... almost a matter of transposed dimensions. Do you suppose the solar system has slipped out of its niche in the universe and gone stark crazy in the uncharted depths of space-time? I suppose I’m talking nonsense.”
“You know best,” shouted Keith. “I’m not going to let this screwy business stampede me. There was a solid house on that plot last night, by God, and nobody can convince me it still isn’t there. Not even my own eyes. We’ve — we’ve been hypnotized! The hippo could do it here — he could do anything. Hypnotized. You hypnotized us, Reinach!”
The doctor mumbled: “What?” and kept glaring at the empty lot.
“I tell you it’s there!” cried Keith angrily.
Ellery sighed and dropped to his knees in the snow; he began to brush aside the white, soft blanket with chilled palms. When he had laid the ground bare, he saw wet gravel and a rut. “This is the driveway, isn’t it?” he asked without looking up.
“The driveway,” snarled Keith, “or the road to hell. You’re as mixed up as we are. Sure it’s the driveway! Can’t you see the garage? Why shouldn’t it be the driveway?”
“I don’t know.” Ellery got to his feet, frowning. “I don’t know anything. I’m beginning to learn all over again. Maybe — maybe it’s a matter of gravitation. Maybe we’ll all fly into space any minute now.”
Thorne groaned: “My God.”
“All I can be sure of is that something very strange happened last night.”
“I tell you,” growled Keith, “it’s an optical illusion!”
“Something strange.” The fat man stirred. “Yes, decidedly. What an inadequate word! A house has disappeared. Something strange.” He began to chuckle in a choking, mirthless way.
“Oh that,” said Ellery impatiently. “Certainly. Certainly, Doctor. That’s a fact. As for you, Keith, you don’t really believe this mass-hypnosis bilge. The house is gone, right enough... It’s not the fact of its being gone that bothers me. It’s the agency, the means. It smacks of— of—” He shook his head. “I’ve never believed in... this sort of thing, damn it all!”
Dr. Reinach threw back his vast shoulders and glared, red-eyed, at the empty snow-covered space. “It’s a trick,” he bellowed. “A rotten trick, that’s what it is. That house is right there in front of our noses. Or— or— They can’t fool me!”
Ellery looked at him. “Perhaps,” he said, “Keith has it in his pocket?”
Alice clattered out on the porch in high-heeled shoes over bare feet, her hair streaming, a cloth coat flung over her night-clothes. Behind her crept little Mrs. Reinach. The women’s eyes were wild.
“Talk to them,” muttered Ellery to Thorne. “Anything; but keep their minds occupied. We’ll all go balmy if we don’t preserve at least an air of sanity. Keith, get me a broom.”
He shuffled up the driveway, skirting the invisible house very carefully and not once taking his eyes off the empty space. The fat man hesitated; then he lumbered along in Ellery’s tracks. Thorne stumbled back to the porch and Keith strode off, disappearing behind the White House.
There was no sun now. A pale and eerie light filtered down through the cold clouds. The snow continued its soft, thick fall.
They looked like dots, small and helpless, on a sheet of blank paper.
Ellery pulled open the folding doors of the garage and peered. A healthy odor of raw gasoline and rubber assailed his nostrils. Thome’s car stood within, exactly as Ellery had seen it the afternoon before, a black monster with glittering chrome-work. Beside it, apparently parked by Keith after their arrival, stood the battered Buick in which Dr. Reinach had driven them from the city. Both cars were perfectly dry.
He shut the doors and turned back to the driveway. Aside from the catenated links of their footprints in the snow, made a moment before, the white covering on the driveway was virgin.
“Here’s your broom,” said the giant. “What are you going to do — ride it?”
“Hold your tongue, Nick,” growled Dr. Reinach.
Ellery laughed. “Let him alone, Doctor. His angry sanity is infectious. Come along, you two. This may be the Judgment Day, but we may as well go through the motions.”
“What do you want with a broom, Queen?”
“It’s hard to decide whether the snow was an accident or part of the plan,” murmured Ellery. “Anything may be true today. Literally anything.”
“Rubbish,” snorted the fat man. “Abracadabra. Om viani jfadme hum. How could a man have planned a snowfall? You’re talking gibberish.”
“I didn’t say a human plan, Doctor.”
“Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!”
“You may as well save your breath. You’re a badly scared little boy whistling in the dark — for all your bulk, Doctor.”
Ellery gripped the broom tightly and stamped out across the driveway. He felt his own foot shrinking as he tried to make it step upon the white rectangle. His muscles were gathered in, as if in truth he expected to encounter the adamantine bulk of a house which was still there but unaccountably impalpable. When he felt nothing but cold air, he laughed a little self-consciously and began to wield the broom on the snow in a peculiar manner. He used the most delicate of sweeping motions, barely brushing the surface crystals away; so that layer by layer he reduced the depth of the snow. He scanned each layer with anxiety as it was uncovered. And he continued to do this until the ground itself lay revealed; and at no depth did he come across the minutest trace of a human imprint.
“Elves,” he complained. “Nothing less than elves. I confess it’s beyond me.”
“Even the foundation—” began Dr. Reinach heavily.
Ellery poked the tip of the broom at the earth. It was hard as corundum.
The front door slammed as Thorne and the two women crept into the White House. The three men outside stood still, doing nothing.
“Well,” said Ellery at last, “this is either a bad dream or the end of the world.” He made off diagonally across the plot, dragging the broom behind him like a tired charwoman, until he reached the snow-covered drive; and then he trudged down the drive towards the invisible road, disappearing around a bend under the stripped white-dripping trees.
It was a short walk to the road. Ellery remembered it well. It had curved steadily in a long arc all the way from the turn-off at the main highway. There had been no crossroad in all the jolting journey.
He went out into the middle of the road, snow-covered now but plainly distinguishable between the powdered tangles of woods as a gleaming, empty strip. There was the long curve exactly as he remembered it. Mechanically he used the broom again, sweeping a small area clear. And there were the pits and ruts of the old Buick’s journeys.
“What are you looking for,” said Nick Keith quietly, “gold?”
Ellery straightened up by degrees, turning about slowly until he was face to face with the giant. “So you thought it was necessary to follow me?
Or— no, I beg your pardon. Undoubtedly it was Dr. Reinach’s idea.”
The sun-charred features did not change expression. “You’re crazy as a bat. Follow you? I’ve got all I can do to follow myself.”
“Of course,” said Ellery. “But did I understand you to ask me if I was looking for gold, my dear young Prometheus?”
“You’re a queer one,” said Keith as they made their way back toward the house.
“Gold,” repeated Ellery. “Hmm. There was gold in that house, and now the house is gone. In the shock of the discovery that houses fly away like birds, I’d quite forgotten that little item. Thank you, Mr. Keith,” said Ellery grimly, “for reminding me.”
“Mr. Queen,” said Alice. She was crouched in a chair by the fire, white to the lips. “What’s happened to us? What are we to do? Have we... Was yesterday a dream? Didn’t we walk into that house, go through it, touch things?... I’m frightened.”
“If yesterday was a dream,” smiled Ellery, “then we may expect that tomorrow will bring a vision; for that’s what holy Sanskrit says, and we may as well believe in parables as in miracles.” He sat down, rubbing his hands briskly. “How about a fire, Keith? it’s arctic in here.”
“Sorry,” said Keith with surprising amiability, and he went away.
“We could use a vision,” shivered Thorne. “My brain is— sick. It just isn’t possible. It’s horrible.” His hand slapped his side and something jangled in his pocket.
“Keys,” said Ellery, “and no house. It is staggering.”
Keith came back under a mountain of firewood. He grimaced at the litter in the fireplace, dropped the wood, and began sweeping together the fragments of glass, the remains of the brandy decanter he had smashed against the brick wall the night before. Alice glanced from his broad back to the chromo of her mother on the mantel. As for Mrs. Reinach, she was as silent as a scared bird; she stood in a corner like a weazened little gnome, her wrapper drawn about her, her stringy sparrow-colored hair hanging down her back, and her glassy eyes fixed on the face of her husband.
“Milly,” said the fat man.
“Yes, Herbert, I’m going,” said Mrs. Reinach instantly, and she crept up the stairs and out of sight.
“Well, Mr. Queen, what’s the answer? Or is this riddle too esoteric for your taste?”
“No riddle is esoteric,” muttered Ellery, “unless it’s the riddle of God; and that’s no riddle — it’s a vast blackness. Doctor, is there any way of reaching assistance?”
“Not unless you can fly.”
“No phone,” said Keith without turning, “and you saw the condition of the road for yourself. You’d never get a car through those drifts.”
“If you had a car,” chuckled Dr. Reinach. Then he seemed to remember the disappearing house, and his chuckle died.
“What do you mean?” demanded Ellery. “In the garage are—”
“Two useless products of the machine age. Both cars are out of fuel.”
“And mine,” said old Thorne suddenly, with a resurrection of grim personal interest, “mine has something wrong with it besides. I left my chauffeur in the city, you know, Queen, when I drove down last time. Now I can’t get the engine running on the little gasoline that’s left in the tank.”
Ellery’s fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “Bother! Now we can’t even call on other eyes to test whether we’ve been bewitched or not. By the way, Doctor, how far is the nearest community? I’m afraid I didn’t pay attention on the drive down.”
“Over fifteen miles by road. If you’re thinking of footing it, Mr. Queen, you’re welcome to the thought.”
“You’d never get through the drifts,” muttered Keith. The drifts appeared to trouble him.
“And so we find ourselves snowbound,” said Ellery, “in the middle of the fourth dimension — or perhaps it’s the fifth. A pretty kettle! Ah there, Keith, that feels considerably better.”
“You don’t seem bowled over by what’s happened,” said Dr. Reinach, eying him curiously. “I’ll confess it’s given even me a shock.”
Ellery was silent for a moment. Then he said lightly: “There wouldn’t be any point to losing our heads, would there?”
“I fully expect dragons to come flying over the house,” groaned Thorne. He eyed Ellery a bit bashfully. “Queen... perhaps we had better... try to get out of here.”
“You heard Keith, Thorne.”
Thorne bit his lip. “I’m frozen,” said Alice, drawing nearer the fire.
“That was well done, Mr. Keith. It— it— a fire like this makes me think of home, somehow.” The young man got to his feet and turned around. Their eyes met for an instant.
“It’s nothing,” he said shortly. “Nothing at all.”
“You seem to be the only one who— Oh!”
An enormous old woman with a black shawl over her shoulders was coming downstairs. She might have been years dead, she was so yellow and emaciated and mummified. And yet she gave the impression of being very much alive, with a sort of ancient, ageless life; her black eyes were young and bright and cunning, and her face was extraordinarily mobile. She was sidling down stiffly, feeling her way with one foot and clutching the banister with two dried claws, while her lively eyes remained fixed on Alice’s face. There was a curious hunger in her expression, the flaring of a long-dead hope suddenly, against all reason.
“Who— who—” began Alice, shrinking back.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Dr. Reinach quickly. “It’s unfortunate that she got away from Milly... Sarah!” In a twinkling he was at the foot of the staircase, barring the old woman’s way. “What are you doing up at this hour? You should take better care of yourself, Sarah.”
She ignored him, continuing her snail’s pace down the stairs until she reached his pachyderm bulk. “Olivia,” she mumbled, with a vital eagerness. “It’s Olivia come back to me. Oh, my sweet, sweet darling...”
“No, Sarah,” said the fat man, taking her hand gently. “Don’t excite yourself. This isn’t Olivia, Sarah. It’s Alice — Alice Mayhew, Sylvester’s girl, come from England. You remember Alice, little Alice? Not Olivia, Sarah.”
“Not Olivia?” The old woman peered across the banister, her wrinkled lips moving. “Not Olivia?”
The girl jumped up. “I’m Alice, Aunt Sarah. Alice—”
Sarah Fell darted suddenly past the fat man and scurried across the room to seize the girl’s hand and glare into her face. As she studied those shrinking features her expression changed to one of despair. “Not Olivia. Olivia’s beautiful black hair... Not Olivia’s voice. Alice? Alice?” She dropped into Alice’s vacated chair, her skinny broad shoulders sagging, and began to weep. They could see the yellow skin of her scalp through the sparse gray hair.
Dr. Reinach roared: “Milly!” in an enraged voice. Mrs. Reinach popped into sight like Jack-in-the-box. “Why did you let her leave her room?”
“B-but I thought she was—” began Mrs. Reinach, stammering.
“Take her upstairs at once!”
“Yes, Herbert,” whispered the sparrow, and Mrs. Reinach hurried downstairs in her wrapper and took the old woman’s hand and, unopposed, led her away. Mrs. Fell kept repeating, between sobs: “Why doesn’t Olivia come back? Why did they take her away from her mother?” until she was out of sight.
“Sorry,” panted the fat man, mopping himself. “One of her spells. I knew it was coming on from the curiosity she exhibited the moment she heard you were coming, Alice. There is a resemblance; you can scarcely blame her.”
“She’s— she’s horrible,” said Alice faintly. “Mr. Queen— Mr. Thorne, must we stay here? I’d feel so much easier in the city. And then my cold, these frigid rooms—”
“By heaven,” burst out Thorne, “I feel like chancing it on foot!”
“And leave Sylvester’s gold to our tender mercies?” smiled Dr. Reinach. Then he scowled.
“I don’t want father’s legacy,” said Alice desperately. “At this moment I don’t want anything but to get away. I–I can manage to get along all right. I’ll find work to do— I can do so many things. I want to go away. Mr. Keith, couldn’t you possibly—”
“I’m not a magician,” said Keith rudely; and he buttoned his mackinaw and strode out of the house. They could see his tall figure stalking off behind a veil of snowflakes.
Alice flushed, turning back to the fire.
“Nor are any of us,” said Ellery. “Miss Mayhew, you’ll simply have to be a brave girl and stick it out until we can find a means of getting out of here.”
“Yes,” murmured Alice, shivering; and stared into the flames.
“Meanwhile, Thorne, tell me everything you know about this case, especially as it concerns Sylvester Mayhew’s house. There may be a clue in your father’s history, Miss Mayhew. If the house has vanished, so has the gold in the house; and whether you want it or not, it belongs to you. Consequently we must make an effort to find it.”
“I suggest,” muttered Dr. Reinach, “that you find the house first. House!” he exploded, waving his furred arms. And he made for the sideboard.
Alice nodded listlessly. Thorne mumbled: “Perhaps, Queen, you and I had better talk privately.”
“We made a frank beginning last night; I see no reason why we shouldn’t continue in the same candid vein. You needn’t be reluctant to speak before Dr. Reinach. Our host is obviously a man of parts — unorthodox parts.”
Dr. Reinach did not reply. His globular face was dark as he tossed off a water-goblet full of gin.
Through air metallic with defiance, Thorne talked in a hardening voice; not once did he take his eyes from Dr. Reinach.
His first suspicion that something was wrong had been germinated by Sylvester Mayhew himself.
Hearing by post from Alice, Thorne had investigated and located Mayhew. He had explained to the old invalid his daughter’s desire to find her father, if he still lived. Old Mayhew, with a strange excitement, had acquiesced; he was eager to be reunited with his daughter; and he seemed to be living, explained Thorne defiantly, in mortal fear of his relatives in the neighboring house.
“Fear, Thorne?” The fat man sat down, raising his brows. “You know he was afraid, not of us, but of poverty. He was a miser.”
Thorne ignored him. Mayhew had instructed Thorne to write Alice and bid her come to America at once; he meant to leave her his entire estate and wanted her to have it before he died. The repository of the gold he had cunningly refused to divulge, even to Thorne; it was “in the house,” lie had said, but he would not reveal its hiding-place to anyone but Alice herself. The “others,” he had snarled, had been looking for it ever since their “arrival.”
“By the way,” drawled Ellery, “how long have you good people been living in this house, Dr. Reinach?”
“A year or so. You certainly don’t put any credence in the paranoic ravings of a dying man? There’s no mystery about our living here. I looked Sylvester up over a year ago after a long separation and found him still in the old homestead, and this house boarded up and empty. The White House, this house, incidentally, was built by my stepfather — Sylvester’s father — on Sylvester’s marriage to Alice’s mother; Sylvester lived in it until my stepfather died, and then moved back to the Black House. I found Sylvester, a degenerated hulk of what he’d once been, living on crusts, absolutely alone and badly in need of medical attention.”
“Alone — here, in this wilderness?” said Ellery incredulously.
“Yes. As a matter of fact, the only way I could get his permission to move back to this house, which belonged to him, was by dangling the bait of free medical treatment before his eyes. I’m sorry, Alice; he was quite unbalanced... And so Milly and Sarah and I — Sarah had been living with us ever since Olivia’s death — moved in here.”
“Decent of you,” remarked Ellery. “I suppose you had to give up your medical practice to do it, Doctor?”
Dr. Reinach grimaced. “I didn’t have much of a practice to give up, Mr. Queen.”
“But it was an almost pure brotherly impulse, eh?”
“Oh, I don’t deny that the possibility of falling heir to some of Sylvester’s fortune had crossed our minds. It was rightfully ours, we believed, not knowing anything about Alice. As it’s turned out—” he shrugged his fat shoulders. “I’m a philosopher.”
“And don’t deny, either,” shouted Thorne, “that when I came back here at the time Mayhew sank into that fatal coma you people watched me like a — like a band of spies! I was in your way!”
“Mr. Thorne,” whispered Alice, paling.
“I’m sorry, Miss Mayhew, but you may as well know the truth. Oh, you didn’t fool me, Reinach! You wanted that gold, Alice or no Alice. I shut myself up in that house just to keep you from getting your hands on it!”
Dr. Reinach shrugged again; his rubbery lips compressed.
“You want candor; here it is!” rasped Thorne. “I was in that house, Queen, for six days after Mayhew’s funeral and before Miss Mayhew’s arrival, looking for the gold. I turned that house upside down. And I didn’t find the slightest trace of it. I tell you it isn’t there.” He glared at the fat man. “I tell you it was stolen before Mayhew died!”
“Now, now,” sighed Ellery. “That makes less sense than the other. Why then has somebody intoned an incantation over the house and caused it to disappear?”
“I don’t know,” said the old lawyer fiercely. “1 know only that the most dastardly thing’s happened here, that everything is unnatural, veiled in that — that false creature’s smile! Miss Mayhew, I’m sorry I must speak this way about your own family. But I feel it my duty to warn you that you’ve fallen among human wolves. Wolves!”
“I’m afraid,” said Reinach sourly, “that I shouldn’t come to you, my dear Thorne, for a reference.”
“I wish,” said Alice in a very low tone, “I truly wish I were dead.”
But the lawyer was past control. “That man Keith,” he cried. “Who is he? What’s he doing here? He looks like a gangster. I suspect him, Queen—”
“Apparently,” smiled Ellery, “you suspect everybody.”
“Mr. Keith?” murmured Alice. “Oh, I’m sure not. I–I don’t think he’s that sort at all, Mr. Thorne. He looks as if he’s had a hard life. As if he’s suffered terribly from something.” Thorne threw up his hands, turning to the fire.
“Let us,” said Ellery amiably, “confine ourselves to the problem at hand. We were, I believe, considering the problem of a disappearing house. Do any architect’s plans of the so-called Black House exist?”
“Lord, no,” said Dr. Reinach.
“Who has lived in it since your stepfather’s death besides Sylvester Mayhew and his wife?”
“Wives,” corrected the doctor, pouring himself another glassful of gin. “Sylvester married twice; I suppose you didn’t know that, my dear.” Alice shivered by the fire. “I dislike raking over old ashes, but since we’re at confessional... Sylvester treated Alice’s mother abominably.”
“I— guessed that,” whispered Alice.
“She was a woman of spirit and she rebelled; but when she’d got her final decree and returned to England, the reaction set in and she died very shortly afterward, I understand. Her death was recorded in the New York papers.”
“When I was a baby,” whispered Alice.
“Sylvester, already unbalanced, although not so anchoretic in those days as he became later, then wooed and won a wealthy widow and brought her out here to live. She had a son, a child by her first husband, with her. Father’d died by this time, and Sylvester and his second wife lived in the Black House. It was soon evident that Sylvester had married the widow for her money; he persuaded her to sign it over to him — a considerable fortune for those days — and promptly proceeded to devil the life out of her. Result: the woman vanished one day, taking her child with her.”
“Perhaps,” said Ellery, seeing Alice’s face, “we’d better abandon the subject, Doctor.”
“We never did find out what actually happened — whether Sylvester drove her out or whether, unable to stand his brutal treatment any longer, she left voluntarily. At any rate, I discovered by accident, a few years later, through an obituary notice, that she died in the worst sort of poverty.”
Alice was staring at him with a wrinkle-nosed nausea. “Father... did that?”
“Oh, stop it,” growled Thorne. “You’ll have the poor child gibbering in another moment. What has all this to do with the house?”
“Mr. Queen asked,” said the fat man mildly. Ellery was studying the flames as if they fascinated him.
“The real point,” snapped the lawyer, “is that you’ve watched me from the instant I set foot here, Reinach. Afraid to leave me alone for a moment. Why, you even had Keith meet me in your car on both my visits — to ‘escort’ me here! And I didn’t have five minutes alone with the old gentleman — you saw to that. And then he lapsed into the coma and was unable to speak again before he died. Why? Why all this surveillance? God knows I’m a forbearing man; but you’ve given me every ground for suspecting your motives.”
“Apparently,” chuckled Dr. Reinach, “you don’t agree with Caesar.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“ ‘Would,’ ” quoted the fat man, “ ‘he were fatter.’ Well, good people, the end of the world may come, but that’s no reason why we shouldn’t have breakfast. Milly!” he bellowed.
Thorne awoke sluggishly, like a drowsing old hound dimly aware of danger. His bedroom was cold; a pale morning light was struggling in through the window. He groped under his pillow.
“Stop where you are!” he said harshly.
“So you have a revolver, too?” murmured Ellery. He was dressed and looked as if he had slept badly. “It’s only I, Thorne, stealing in for a conference. It’s not so hard to steal in here, by the way.”
“What do you mean?” grumbled Thorne, sitting up and putting his old-fashioned revolver away.
“I see your lock has gone the way of mine, Alice’s, the Black House, and Sylvester Mayhew’s elusive gold.”
Thorne drew the patchwork comforter about him, his old lips blue. “Well, Queen?”
Ellery lit a cigarette and for a moment stared out Thome’s window at the streamers of crepy snow still dropping from the sky. The snow had fallen without a moment’s let-up the entire previous day. “This is a curious business all round, Thorne. The queerest medley of spirit and matter. I’ve just reconnoitered. You’ll be interested to learn that our young friend the Colossus is gone.”
“Keith gone?”
“His bed hasn’t been slept in at all. I looked.”
“And he was away most of yesterday, too!”
“Precisely. Our surly Crichton, who seems afflicted by a particularly acute case of Weltschmerz, periodically vanishes. Where does he go? I’d give a good deal to know the answer to that question.”
“He won’t get far in those nasty drifts,” mumbled the lawyer.
“It gives one, as the French say, to think. Comrade Reinach is gone, too.” Thorne stiffened. “Oh, yes; his bed’s been slept in, but briefly, I judge. Have they eloped together? Separately? Thorne,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “this becomes an increasingly subtle devilment.”
“It’s beyond me,” said Thorne with another shiver. “I’m just about ready to give up. I don’t see that we’re accomplishing a thing here. And then there’s always that annoying, incredible fact... the house — vanished.”
Ellery sighed and looked at his wristwatch. It was a minute past seven.
Thorne threw back the comforter and groped under the bed for his slippers. “Let’s go downstairs,” he snapped.
“Excellent bacon, Mrs. Reinach,” said Ellery. “I suppose it must be a trial carting supplies up here.”
“We’ve the blood of pioneers,” said Dr. Reinach cheerfully, before his wife could reply. He was engulfing mounds of scrambled eggs and bacon. “Luckily, we’ve enough in the larder to last out a considerable siege. The winters are severe out here — we learned that last year.”
Keith was not at the breakfast table. Old Mrs. Fell was. She ate voraciously, with the unconcealed greed of the very old, to whom nothing is left of the sensual satisfactions of life but the filling of the belly. Nevertheless, although she did not speak, she contrived as she ate to keep her eyes on Alice, who wore a haunted look.
“I didn’t sleep very well,” said Alice, toying with her coffee-cup. Her voice was huskier. “This abominable snow! Can’t we manage somehow to get away today?”
“Not so long as the snow keeps up, I’m afraid,” said Ellery gently. “And you, Doctor? Did you sleep badly, too? Or hasn’t the whisking away of a whole house from under your nose affected your nerves at all?”
The fat man’s eyes were red-rimmed and his lids sagged. Nevertheless, he chuckled and said: “I? I always sleep well. Nothing on my conscience. Why?”
“Oh, no special reason. Where’s friend Keith this morning? He’s a seclusive sort of chap, isn’t he?”
Mrs. Reinach swallowed a muffin whole. Her husband glanced at her and she rose and fled to the kitchen. “Lord knows,” said the fat man. “He’s as unpredictable as the ghost of Banquo. Don’t bother yourself about the boy; he’s harmless.”
Ellery sighed and pushed back from the table. “The passage of twenty-four hours hasn’t softened the wonder of the event. May I be excused? I’m going to have another peep at the house that isn’t there any more.” Thorne started to rise. “No, no, Thorne; I’d rather go alone.”
He put on his warmest clothes and went outdoors. The drifts reached the lower windows now; and the trees had almost disappeared under the snow. A crude path had been hacked by someone from the front door for a few feet; already it was half-refilled with snow.
Ellery stood still in the path, breathing deeply of the raw air and staring off to the right at the empty rectangle where the Black House had once stood. Leading across that expanse to the edge of the woods beyond were barely discernible tracks. He turned up his coat-collar against the cutting wind and plunged into the snow waist-deep.
It was difficult going, but not unpleasant. After a while he began to feel quite warm. The world was white and silent — a new, strange world.
When he had left the open area and struggled into the woods, it was with a sensation that he was leaving even that new world behind. Everything was so still and white and beautiful, with a pure beauty not of the earth; the snow draping the trees gave them a fresh look, making queer patterns out of old forms.
Occasionally a clump of snow fell from a low branch, pelting him.
Here, where there was a roof between ground and sky, the snow had not filtered into the mysterious tracks so quickly. They were purposeful tracks, unwandering, striking straight as a dotted line for some distant goal. Ellery pushed on more rapidly, excited by a presentiment of discovery.
Then the world went black. It was a curious thing. The snow grew gray, and grayer, and finally very dark gray, becoming jet black at the last instant, as if flooded from underneath by ink. And with some surprise he felt the cold wet kiss of the drift on his cheek.
He opened his eyes to find himself flat on his back in the snow and Thorne in the great-coat stooped over him, nose jutting from blued face like a winter thorn.
“Queen!” cried the old man, shaking him. “Are you all right?”
Ellery sat up, licking his lips. “As well as might be expected,” he groaned. “What hit me? It felt like one of God’s angrier thunderbolts.” He caressed the back of his head, and staggered to his feet. “Well, Thorne, we seem to have reached the border of the enchanted land.”
“You’re not delirious?” asked the lawyer anxiously.
Ellery looked about for the tracks which should have been there. But except for the double line at the head of which Thorne stood, there were none. Apparently he had lain unconscious in the snow for a long time.
“Farther than this,” he said with a grimace, “we may not go. Hands off. Nose out. Mind your own business. Beyond this invisible boundary-line lie Sheol and Domdaniel and Abaddon. Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate... Forgive me, Thorne. Did you save my life?”
Thorne jerked about, searching the silent woods. “I don’t know. I think not. At least I found you lying here, alone. Gave me quite a start — thought you were dead.”
“As well,” said Ellery with a shiver, “I might have been.”
“When you left the house Alice went upstairs, Reinach said something about a cat-nap, and I wandered out of the house. I waded through the drifts on the road for a spell, and then I thought of you and made my way back. Your tracks were almost obliterated; but they were visible enough to take me across the clearing to the edge of the woods, and I finally blundered upon you. By now the tracks are gone.”
“I don’t like this at all,” said Ellery, “and yet in another sense I like it very much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Ellery, “a divine agency stooping to such a mean assault.”
“Yes, it’s open war now,” muttered Thorne. “Whoever it is — he’ll stop at nothing.”
“A benevolent war, at any rate. I was quite at his mercy, and he might have killed me as easily as—”
He stopped. A sharp report, like a pine-knot snapping in a fire or an ice-stiffened twig breaking in two, but greatly magnified, had come to his ears. Then the echo came to them, softer but unmistakable.
It was the report of a gun.
“From the house!” yelled Ellery. “Come on!”
Thorne was pale as they scrambled through the drifts. “Gun... I forgot. I left my revolver under the pillow in my bedroom. Do you think—?”
Ellery scrabbled at his own pocket. “Mine’s still here... No, by George, I’ve been scotched!” His cold fingers fumbled with the cylinder. “Bullets taken out. And I’ve no spare ammunition.” He fell silent, his mouth hardening.
They found the women and Reinach running about like startled animals, searching for they knew not what.
“Did you hear it, too?” cried the fat
###
man as they burst into the house.
He seemed extraordinarily excited. “Someone fired a shot!”
“Where?” asked Ellery, his eyes on the rove. “Keith?”
“Don’t know where he is. Milly says it might have come from behind the house. I was napping and couldn’t tell. Revolvers! At least he’s come out in the open.”
“Who has?” asked Ellery.
The fat man shrugged. Ellery went through to the kitchen and opened the back door. The snow outside was smooth, untrodden. When he returned to the living-room Alice was adjusting a scarf about her neck with fingers that shook.
“I don’t know how long you people intend to stay in this ghastly place,” she said in a passionate voice. “But I’ve had quite enough, thank you. Mr. Thorne, I insist you take me away at once. At once! I shan’t stay another instant.”
“Now, now, Miss Mayhew,” said Thorne in a distressed way, taking her hands. “I should like nothing better. But can’t you see” Ellery, on his way upstairs three steps at a time, heard no more. He made for Thome’s room and kicked the door open, sniffing. Then, with rather a grim smile, he went to the tumbled bed and pulled the pillow away. A long-barreled, old-fashioned revolver lay there. He examined the cylinder; it was empty. Then he put the muzzle to his nose.
“Well?” said Thorne from the doorway. The English girl was clinging to him.
“Well,” said Ellery, tossing the gun aside, “we’re facing fact now, not fancy. It’s war, Thorne, as you said. The shot was fired from your revolver. Barrel’s still warm, muzzle still reeks, and you can smell the burnt gunpowder if you sniff this cold air hard enough. And the bullets are gone.”
“But what does it mean?” moaned Alice.
“It means that somebody’s being terribly cute. It was a harmless trick to get Thorne and me back to the house. Probably the shot was a warning as well as a decoy.”
Alice sank onto Thome’s bed. “You mean we—”
“Yes,” said Ellery, “from now on we’re prisoners, Miss Mayhew. Prisoners who may not stray beyond the confines of the jail. I wonder,” he added with a frown, “precisely why.”
* * *
The day passed in a timeless haze. The world of outdoors became more and more choked in the folds of the snow. The air was a solid white sheet. It seemed as if the very heavens had opened to admit all the snow that ever was, or ever would be.
Young Keith appeared suddenly at noon, taciturn and leaden-eyed, gulped down some hot food, and without explanation retired to his bedroom. Dr. Reinach shambled about quietly for some time; then he disappeared, only to show up, wet, grimy, and silent, before dinner. As the day wore on, less and less was said. Thorne in desperation took to a bottle of whisky. Keith came down at eight o’clock, made himself some coffee, drank three cups, and went upstairs again. Dr. Reinach appeared to have lost his good nature; he was morose, almost sullen, opening his mouth only to snarl at his wife.
And the snow continued to fall.
They all retired early, without conversation.
At midnight the strain was more than even Ellery’s iron nerves could bear. He had prowled about his bedroom for hours, poking at the brisk fire in the grate, his mind leaping from improbability to fantasy until his head throbbed with one great ache. Sleep was impossible.
Moved by an impulse which he did not attempt to analyze, he slipped into his coat and went out into the frosty corridor.
Thome’s door was closed; Ellery heard the old man’s bed creaking and groaning. It was pitch-dark in the hall as he groped his way about.
Suddenly Ellery’s toe caught in a rent in the carpet and he staggered to regain his balance, coming up against the wall with a thud, his heels clattering on the bare planking at the bottom of the baseboard.
He had no sooner straightened up than he heard the stifled exclamation of a woman. It came from across the corridor; if he guessed right, from Alice Mayhew’s bedroom. It was such a weak, terrified exclamation that he sprang across the hall, fumbling in his pockets for a match as he did so. He found match and door in the same instant; he struck one and opened the door and stood still, the tiny light flaring up before him.
Alice was sitting up in bed, quilt drawn about her shoulders, her eyes gleaming in the quarter-light. Before an open drawer of a tallboy across the room, one hand arrested in the act of scattering its contents about, loomed Dr. Reinach, fully dressed. His shoes were wet; his expression was blank; and his eyes were slits.
###
“Please stand still, Doctor,” said Ellery softly as the match sputtered out. “My revolver is useless as a percussion weapon, but it still can inflict damage as a blunt instrument.” He moved to a nearby table, where he had seen an oil-lamp before the match went out, struck another match, lighted the lamp, and stepped back again to stand against the door.
“Thank you,” whispered Alice.
“What happened, Miss Mayhew?”
“I... don’t know. I slept badly. I came awake a moment ago when I heard the floor creak. And then you dashed in.” She cried suddenly: “Bless you!”
“You cried out.”
“Did I?” She sighed like a tired child. “I... Uncle Herbert!” she said suddenly, fiercely. “What’s the meaning of this? What are you doing in my room?”
The fat man’s eyes came open, innocent and beaming; his hand with-drew from the drawer and closed it; and he shifted his elephantine bulk until he was standing erect. “Doing, my dear?” he rumbled. “Why, I came in to see if you were all right.” His eyes were fixed on a patch of her white shoulders visible above the quilt. “You were so overwrought today. Purely an avuncular impulse, my child. Forgive me if I startled you.”
“I think,” sighed Ellery, “that I’ve misjudged you, Doctor. That’s not clever of you at all. Downright clumsy, in fact; I can only attribute it to a certain understandable confusion of the moment. Miss Mayhew isn’t normally to be found in the top drawer of a tallboy, no matter how capacious it may be.” He said sharply to Alice: “Did this fellow touch you?”
“Touch me?” Her shoulders twitched with repugnance. “No. If he had, in the dark, I–I think I should have died.”
“What a charming compliment,” said Dr. Reinach ruefully.
“Then what,” demanded Ellery, “were you looking for, Dr. Reinach?”
The fat man turned until his right side was toward the door. “I’m notoriously hard of hearing,” he chuckled, “in my right ear. Good night, Alice; pleasant dreams. May I pass, Sir Launcelot?”
Ellery kept his gaze on the fat man’s bland face until the door closed. For some time after the last echo of Dr. Reinach’s chuckle died away they were silent.
Then Alice slid down in the bed and clutched the edge of the quilt. “Mr. Queen, please! Take me away tomorrow. I mean it. I truly do. I — can’t tell you how frightened I am of... all this. Every time I think of that — that... How can such things be? We’re not in a place of sanity, Mr. Queen. We’ll all go mad if we remain here much longer. Won’t you take me away?”
Ellery sat down on the edge of her bed. “Are you really so upset, Miss Mayhew?” he asked gently.
“I’m simply terrified,” she whispered.
“Then Thorne and I will do what we can tomorrow.” He patted her arm through the quilt. “I’ll have a look at his car and see if something can’t be done with it. He said there’s some gas left in the tank. We’ll go as far as it will take us and walk the rest of the way.”
“But with so little petrol... Oh, I don’t care!” She stared up at him wide-eyed. “Do you think... he’ll let us?”
“He?”
“Whoever it is that...”
Ellery rose with a smile. “We’ll cross that bridge when it gets to us. Meanwhile, get some sleep; you’ll have a strenuous day tomorrow.”
“Do you think I’m— he’ll—”
“Leave the lamp burning and set a chair under the doorknob when I leave.” He took a quick look about. “By the way, Miss Mayhew, is there anything in your possession which Dr. Reinach might want to appropriate?”
“That’s puzzled me, too. I can’t imagine what I’ve got he could possibly want. I’m so poor, Mr. Queen — quite the Cinderella. There’s nothing; just my clothes, the things I came with.”
“No old letters, records, mementoes?”
“Just one very old photograph of mother.”
“Hmm, Dr. Reinach doesn’t strike me as that sentimental. Well, good night. Don’t forget the chair. You’ll be quite safe, I assure you.”
He waited in the frigid darkness of the corridor until he heard her creep out of bed and set a chair against the door. Then he went into his own room.
And there was Thorne in a shabby dressing-gown, looking like an ancient and dishevelled spectre of gloom.
“What ho! The ghost walks. Can’t you sleep, either?”
“Sleep!” The old man shuddered. “How can an honest man sleep in this God-forsaken place? I notice you seem rather cheerful.”
“Not cheerful. Alive.” Ellery sat down and lit a cigarette. “I heard you tossing about your bed a few minutes ago. Anything happen to pull you out into this cold?”
“No. Just nerves.” Thorne jumped up and began to pace the floor. “Where have you been?”
Ellery told him. “Remarkable chap, Reinach,” he concluded. “But we mustn’t allow our admiration to overpower us. We’ll really have to give this thing up, Thorne, at least temporarily. I had been hoping... But there! I’ve promised the poor girl. We’re leaving tomorrow as best we can.”
“And be found frozen stiff next March by a rescue party,” said Thorne miserably. “Pleasant prospect! And yet even death by freezing is prefer-able to this abominable place.” He looked curiously at Ellery. “I must say I’m a trifle disappointed in you, Queen. From what I’d heard about your professional cunning...”
“I never claimed,” shrugged Ellery, “to be a magician. Or even a theo-logian. What’s happened here is either the blackest magic or palpable proof that miracles can happen.”
“It would seem so,” muttered Thorne. “And yet, when you put your mind to it... It goes against reason, by thunder!”
“I see,” said Ellery dryly, “the man of law is recovering from the initial shock. Well, it’s a shame to have to leave here now, in a way. I detest the thought of giving up — especially at the present time.”
“At the present time? What do you mean?”
“I dare say, Thorne, you haven’t emerged far enough from your condition of shock to have properly analyzed this little problem. I gave it a lot of thought today. The goal eludes me — but I’m near it,” he said softly, “very near it.”
“You mean,” gasped the lawyer, “you mean you actually—”
“Remarkable case,” said Ellery. “Oh, extraordinary — there isn’t a word in the English language or any other, for that matter, that properly describes it. If I were religiously inclined...” He puffed away thoughtfully. “It gets down to very simple elements, as all truly great problems do. A fortune in gold exists. It is hidden in a house. The house disappears. To find the gold, then, you must first find the house. I believe...”
“Aside from that mumbo-jumbo with Keith’s broom the other day,” cried Thorne, “I can’t recall that you’ve made a single effort in that direction. Find the house! — why, you’ve done nothing but sit around and wait.”
“Exactly,” murmured Ellery.
“What?”
“Wait. That’s the prescription, my lean and angry friend. That’s the sigil that will exorcise the spirit of the Black House.”
“Sigil?” Thorne stared. “Spirit?”
“Wait. Precisely. Lord, how I’m waiting!”
Thorne looked puzzled and suspicious, as if he suspected Ellery of a contrary midnight humor. But Ellery sat soberly smoking. “Wait! For what, man? You’re more exasperating than that fat monstrosity! What are you waiting for?”
Ellery looked at him. Then he rose and flung his butt into the dying fire and placed his hand on the old man’s arm. “Go to bed, Thorne. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Queen, you must. I’ll go mad if I don’t see daylight on this thing soon!”
Ellery looked shocked, for no reason that Thorne could see. And then, just as inexplicably, he slapped Thome’s shoulder and began to chuckle. “Go to bed,” he said, still chuckling.
“But you must tell me!”
Ellery sighed, losing his smile. “I can’t. You’d laugh.”
“I’m not in a laughing mood!”
“Nor is it a laughing matter. Thorne, I began to say a moment ago that if I, poor sinner that I am, possessed religious susceptibilities, I should have become permanently devout in the past three days. I suppose I’m a hopeless case. But even I see a power not of earth in this.”
“Play-actor,” growled the old lawyer. “Professing to see the hand of God in... Don’t be sacrilegious, man. We’re not all heathen.”
Ellery looked out his window at the moonless night and the glimmering grayness of the snow-swathed world.
“Hand of God?” he murmured. “No, not hand, Thorne. If this case is ever solved, it will be by... a lamp.”
“Lamp?” said Thorne faintly. “Lamp?”
“In a manner of speaking. The lamp of God.”