The White House
And there was the Black House again. Not a wraith. A solid house, a strong dirty time-encrusted house, looking as if it would never dream of taking wing and flying off into space. It stood on the other side of the driveway, where it had always stood.
They saw it even as they turned into the drive from the drift-covered road, its bulk looming black against the brilliant moon, as substantial a house as could be found in the world of sane things.
Thorne and the girl were incapable of speech; they could only gape, dumb witnesses of a miracle even greater than the disappearance of the house in the first place.
As for Ellery, he stopped the car, sprang to the ground, signaled to the car snuffling up behind, and darted across the snowy clearing to the White House, whose windows were bright with lamp-and fire-light. Out of the police car swarmed men, and they ran after Ellery like hounds. Thorne and Alice followed in a daze.
Ellery kicked open the White House door. There was a revolver in his hand and there was no doubt, from the way he gripped it, that its cylinder had been replenished.
“Hello again,” he said, stalking into the living-room. “Not a ghost; Inspector Queen’s little boy in the too, too solid flesh. Nemesis, perhaps. I bid you good evening. What — no welcoming smile, Dr. Reinach?”
The fat man had paused in the act of lifting a glass of Scotch to his lips. It was wonderful how the color seeped out of his pouchy cheeks, leaving them gray. Mrs. Reinach whimpered in a corner, and Mrs. Fell stared stupidly. Only Nick Keith showed no great astonishment. He was standing by a window, muffled to the ears; and on his face there was bitterness and admiration and, strangely, a sort of relief.
“Shut the door.” The detectives behind Ellery spread out silently. Alice stumbled to a chair, her eyes wild, studying Dr. Reinach with a fierce intensity... There was a sighing little sound and one of the detectives lunged toward the window at which Keith had been standing. But Keith was no longer there. He was bounding through the snow toward the woods like a huge deer.
“Don’t let him get away!” cried Ellery. Three men dived through the window after the giant, their guns out. Shots began to sputter. The night outside was streaked with orange lightning.
Ellery went to the fire and warmed his hands. Dr. Reinach slowly, very slowly, sat down in the armchair. Thorne sank into a chair, too, putting his hands to his head.
Ellery turned around and said: “I’ve told you, Captain, enough of what’s happened since our arrival to allow you an intelligent understanding of what I’m about to say.” A stocky man in uniform nodded curtly.
“Thorne, last night for the first time in my career,” continued Ellery whimsically, “I acknowledged the assistance of... Well, I tell you, who are implicated in this extraordinary crime, that had it not been for the good God above you would have succeeded in your plot against Alice Mayhew’s inheritance.”
“I’m disappointed in you,” said the fat man from the depths of the chair.
“A loss I keenly feel.” Ellery looked at him, smiling. “Let me show you, skeptic. When Mr. Thorne, Miss Mayhew and I arrived the other day, it was late afternoon. Upstairs, in the room you so thoughtfully provided, I looked out the window and saw the sun setting. This was nothing and meant nothing, surely: sunset. Mere sunset. A trivial thing, interesting only to poets, meteorologists, and astronomers. But this was one time when the sun was vital to a man seeking truth... a veritable lamp of God shining in the darkness.
“For, see. Miss Mayhew’s bedroom that first day was on the opposite side of the house from mine. If the sun set in my window, then I faced west and she faced east. So far, so good. We talked, we retired. The next morning I awoke at seven — shortly after sunrise in this winter month — and what did I see? I saw the sun streaming into my window.”
A knot hissed in the fire behind him. The stocky man in the blue uniform stirred uneasily.
“Don’t you understand?” cried Ellery. “The sun had set in my window, and now it was rising in my window!”
Dr. Reinach was regarding him with a mild ruefulness. The color had come back to his fat cheeks. He raised the glass he was holding in a gesture curiously like a salute. Then he drank, deeply.
And Ellery said: “The significance of this unearthly reminder did not strike me at once. But much later it came back to me; and I dimly saw that chance, cosmos, God, whatever you may choose to call it, had given me the instrument for understanding the colossal, the mind-staggering phenomenon of a house which vanished overnight from the face of the earth.”
“Good lord,” muttered Thorne.
“But I was not sure; I did not trust my memory. I needed another demonstration from heaven, a bulwark to bolster my own suspicions. And so, as it snowed and snowed and snowed, the snow drawing a blanket across the face of the sun through which it could not shine, I waited. I waited for the snow to stop, and for the sun to shine again.”
He sighed. “When it shone again, there could no longer be any doubt. It appeared first to me in Miss Mayhew’s room, which had faced east the afternoon of our arrival. But what was it I saw in Miss Mayhew’s room late this afternoon? I saw the sun set.”
“Good lord,” said Thorne again; he seemed incapable of saying anything else.
“Then her room faced west today. How could her room face west today when it had faced east the day of our arrival? How could my room face west the day of our arrival and face east today? Had the sun stood still? Had the world gone mad? Or was there another explanation — one so extraordinarily simple that it staggered the imagination?”
Thorne muttered: “Queen, this is the most—”
“Please,” said Ellery, “let me finish. The only logical conclusion, the only conclusion that did not fly in the face of natural law, of science itself, was that while the house we were in today, the rooms we occupied, seemed to be identical with the house and the rooms we had occupied on the day of our arrival, they were not. Unless this solid structure had been turned about on its foundation like a toy on a stick, which was palpably absurd, then it was not the same house. It looked the same inside and out, it had identical furniture, identical carpeting, identical decorations... but it was not the same house. It was another house. It was another house exactly like the first in every detail except one: and that was its terrestrial position in relation to the sun.”
A detective outside shouted a message of failure, a shout carried away by the wind under the bright cold moon.
“See,” said Ellery softly, “how everything fell into place. If this White House we were in was not the same White House in which we had slept that first night, but was a twin house in a different position in relation to the sun, then the Black House, which apparently had vanished, had not vanished at all. It was where it had always been. It was not the Black House which had vanished, but we who had vanished. It was not the Black House which had moved away, but we who had moved away. We had been transferred during that first night to a new location, where the surrounding woods looked similar, where there was a similar driveway with a similar garage at its terminus, where the road outside was similarly old and pitted, where everything was similar except that there was no Black House, only an empty clearing.
“So we must have been moved, body and baggage, to this twin White House during the time we retired the first night and the time we awoke the next morning. We, Miss Mayhew’s chromo on the mantel, the holes in our doors where locks had been, even the fragments of a brandy decanter which had been shattered the night before in a cleverly staged scene against the brick wall of the fireplace at the original house... all, all transferred to the twin house to further the illusion that we were still in the original house the next morning.”
“Drivel,” said Dr. Reinach, smiling. “Such pure drivel that it smacks of fantasmagoria.”
“It was beautiful,” said Ellery. “A beautiful plan. It had symmetry, the polish of great art. And it made a beautiful chain of reasoning, too, once I was set properly at the right link. For what followed? Since we had been transferred without our knowledge during the night, it must have been while we were unconscious. I recalled the two drinks Thorne and I had had, and the fuzzy tongue and head that resulted the next morning. Mildly drugged, then; and the drinks had been mixed the night before by Dr. Reinach’s own hand. Doctor — drugs; very simple.” The fat man shrugged with amusement, glancing sidewise at the stocky man in blue. But the stocky man in blue wore a hard, unchanging mask.
“But Dr. Reinach alone?” murmured Ellery. “Oh, no, impossible. One man could never have accomplished all that was necessary in the scant few hours available... fix Thome’s car, carry us and our clothes and bags from the one White House to its duplicate — by machine — put Thome’s car out of commission again, put us to bed again, arrange our clothing identically, transfer the chromo, the fragments of the cut-glass decanter in the fireplace, perhaps even a few knickknacks and ornaments not duplicated in the second White House, and so on. A prodigious job, even if most of the preparatory work had been done before our arrival. Obviously the work of a whole group. Of accomplices. Who but everyone in the house? With the possible exception of Mrs. Fell, who in her condition could be swayed easily enough, with no clear perception of what was occurring.”
Ellery’s eyes gleamed. “And so I accuse you all — including young Mr. Keith, who has wisely taken himself off — of having aided in the plot whereby you would prevent the rightful heiress of Sylvester Mayhew’s fortune from taking possession of the house in which it was hidden.”
Dr. Reinach coughed politely, flapping his paws together like a great seal. “Terribly interesting, Queen, terribly. I don’t know when I’ve been more captivated by sheer fiction. On the other hand, there are certain personal allusions in your story which, much as I admire their ingenuity, cannot fail to provoke me.” He turned to the stocky man in blue.
“Certainly, Captain,” he chuckled, “you don’t credit this incredible story? I believe Mr. Queen has gone a little mad from sheer shock.”
“Unworthy of you, Doctor,” sighed Ellery. “The proof of what I say lies in the very fact that we are here, at this moment.”
“You’ll have to explain that,” said the police chief, who seemed out of his depth.
“I mean that we are now in the original White House. I led you back here, didn’t I? And I can lead you back to the twin White House, for now I know the basis of the illusion. After our departure this evening, incidentally, all these people returned to this house. The other White House had served its purpose and they no longer needed it.
“As for the geographical trick involved, it struck me that this side-road we’re on makes a steady curve for miles. Both driveways lead off this same road, one some six miles farther up the road; although, because of the curve, which is like a number 9, the road makes a wide sweep and virtually doubles back on itself, so that as the crow flies the two settlements are only a mile or so apart, although by the curving road they are six miles apart.
“When Dr. Reinach drove Thorne and Miss Mayhew and me out here the day the Coronia docked, he deliberately passed the almost imperceptible drive leading to the substitute house and went on until he reached this one, the original. We didn’t notice the first driveway.
“Thome’s car was put out of commission deliberately to prevent his driving. The driver of a car will observe landmarks when his passengers notice little or nothing. Keith even met Thorne on both Thome’s previous visits to Mayhew — ostensibly ‘to lead the way,’ actually to prevent Thorne from familiarizing himself with the road. And it was Dr. Reinach who drove the three of us here that first day. They permitted me to drive away tonight for what they hoped was a one-way trip because we started from the substitute house — of the two, the one on the road nearer to town. We couldn’t possibly, then, pass the tell-tale second drive and become suspicious. And they knew the relatively shorter drive would not impress our consciousness.”
“But even granting all that, Mr. Queen,” said the policeman, “I don’t see what these people expected to accomplish. They couldn’t hope to keep you folks fooled forever.”
“True,” cried Ellery, “but don’t forget that by the time we caught on to the various tricks involved they hoped to have laid hands on Mayhew’s fortune and disappeared with it. Don’t you see that the whole illusion was planned to give them time? Time to dismantle the Black House without interference, raze it to the ground if necessary, to find that hidden hoard of gold? I don’t doubt that if you examine the house next door you’ll find it a shambles and a hollow shell. That’s why Reinach and Keith kept disappearing. They were taking turns at the Black House, picking it apart, stone by stone, in a frantic search for the cache, while we were occupied in the duplicate White House with an apparently supernatural phenomenon. That’s why someone — probably the worthy doctor here — slipped out of the house behind your back, Thorne, and struck me over the head when I rashly attempted to follow Keith’s tracks in the snow. I could not be permitted to reach the original settlement, for if I did the whole preposterous illusion would be revealed.”
“How about that gold?” growled Thorne.
“For all I know,” said Ellery with a shrug, “they’ve found it and salted it away again.”
“Oh, but we didn’t,” whimpered Mrs. Reinach, squirming in her chair. “Herbert, I told you not to—”
“Idiot,” said the fat man. “Stupid swine.” She jerked as if he had struck her.
“If you hadn’t found the loot,” said the police chief to Dr. Reinach brusquely, “why did you let these people go tonight?”
Dr. Reinach compressed his blubbery lips; he raised his glass and drank quickly.
“I think I can answer that,” said Ellery in a gloomy tone. “In many ways it’s the most remarkable element of the whole puzzle. Certainly it’s the grimmest and least excusable. The other illusion was child’s play compared to it. For it involves two apparently irreconcilable elements — Alice Mayhew and a murder.”
“A murder!” exclaimed the policeman, stiffening.
“Me?” said Alice in bewilderment.
Ellery lit a cigarette and flourished it at the policeman. “When Alice Mayhew came here that first afternoon, she went into the Black House with us. In her father’s bedroom she ran across an old chromo — I see it’s not here, so it’s still in the other White House — portraying her long-dead mother as a girl. Alice Mayhew fell on the chromo like a Chinese refugee on a bowl of rice. She had only one picture of her mother, she explained, and that a poor one. She treasured this unexpected discovery so much that she took it with her, then and there, to the White House — this house. And she placed it on the mantel over the fireplace here in a prominent position.”
The stocky man frowned; Alice sat very still; Thorne looked puzzled. And Ellery put the cigarette back to his lips and said: “Yet when Alice Mayhew fled from the White House in our company tonight for what seemed to be the last time, she completely ignored her mother’s chromo, that treasured memento over which she had gone into such raptures the first day! She could not have failed to overlook it in, let us say, the excitement of the moment. She had placed her purse on the mantel, a moment before, next to the chromo. She returned to the mantel for her purse. And yet she passed the chromo up without a glance. Since its sentimental value to her was overwhelming, by her own admission, it’s the one thing in all this property she would not have left. If she had taken it in the beginning, she would have taken it on leaving.”
Thorne cried: “What in the name of heaven are you saying, Queen?” His eyes glared at the girl, who sat glued to her chair, scarcely breathing.
“I am saying,” said Ellery curtly, “that we were blind. I am saying that not only was a house impersonated, but a woman as well. I am saying that this woman is not Alice Mayhew.”
The girl raised her eyes after an infinite interval in which no one, not even the policemen present, so much as stirred a foot.
“I thought of everything,” she said with the queerest sigh, and quite without the husky tone, “but that. And it was going off so beautifully.”
“Oh, you fooled me very neatly,” drawled Ellery. “That pretty little bedroom scene last night... I know now what happened. This precious Dr. Reinach of yours had stolen into your room at midnight to report to you on the progress of the search at the Black House, perhaps to urge you to persuade Thorne and me to leave today — at any cost. I happened to pass along the hall outside your room, stumbled, and fell against the wall with a clatter; not knowing who it might be or what the intruder’s purpose, you both fell instantly into that cunning deception... Actors! Both of you missed a career on the stage.”
The fat man closed his eyes; he seemed asleep. And the girl murmured, with a sort of tired defiance: “Not missed, Mr. Queen. I spent several years in the theatre.”
“You were devils, you two. Psychologically this plot has been the conception of evil genius. You knew that Alice Mayhew was unknown to anyone in this country except by her photographs. Moreover, there was a startling resemblance between the two of you, as Miss Mayhew’s photographs showed. And you knew Miss Mayhew would be in the company of Thorne and me for only a few hours, and then chiefly in the murky light of a sedan.”
“Good lord,” groaned Thorne, staring at the girl in horror.
“Alice Mayhew,” said Ellery grimly, “walked into this house and was whisked upstairs by Mrs. Reinach. And Alice Mayhew, the English girl, never appeared before us again. It was you who came downstairs; you, who had been secreted from Thome’s eyes during the past six days deliberately, so that he would not even suspect your existence; you who probably conceived the entire plot when Thorne brought the photographs of Alice Mayhew here, and her gossipy, informative letters; you, who looked enough like the real Alice Mayhew to get by with an impersonation in the eyes of two men to whom Alice Mayhew was a total stranger. I did think you looked different, somehow, when you appeared for dinner that first night; but I put it down to the fact that I was seeing you for the first time refreshed, brushed up, and without your hat and coat. Naturally, after that, the more I saw of you the less I remembered the details of the real Alice Mayhew’s appearance and so became more and more convinced, unconsciously, that you were Alice Mayhew. As for the husky voice and the excuse of having caught cold on the long automobile ride from the pier, that was a clever ruse to disguise the inevitable difference between your voices. The only danger that existed lay in Mrs. Fell, who gave us the answer to the whole riddle the first time we met her. She thought you were her own daughter Olivia. Of course. Because that’s who you are!”
Dr. Reinach was sipping brandy now with a steady indifference to his surroundings. His little eyes were fixed on a point miles away. Old Mrs. Fell sat gaping stupidly at the girl.
“You even covered that danger by getting Dr. Reinach to tell us beforehand that trumped-up story of Mrs. Fell’s ‘delusion’ and Olivia Fell’s ‘death’ in an automobile accident several years ago. Oh, admirable! Yet even this poor creature, in the frailty of her anile faculties, was fooled by a difference in voice and hair — two of the most easily distinguishable features. I suppose you fixed up your hair at the time Mrs. Reinach brought the real Alice Mayhew upstairs and you had a living model to go by... I could find myself moved to admiration if it were not for one thing.”
“You’re so clever,” said Olivia Fell coolly. “Really a fascinating monster. What do you mean?”
Ellery went to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Alice Mayhew vanished and you took her place. Why did you take her place? For two possible reasons. One — to get Thorne and me away from the danger zone as quickly as possible, and to keep us away by ‘abandoning’ the fortune or dismissing us, which as Alice Mayhew would be your privilege: in proof, your vociferous insistence that we take you away. Two — of infinitely greater importance to the scheme: if your confederates did not find the gold at once, you were still Alice Mayhew in our eyes. You could then dispose of the house when and as you saw fit. Whenever the gold was found, it would be yours and your accomplices’. “But the real Alice Mayhew vanished. For you, her impersonator, to be in a position to go through the long process of taking over Alice Mayhew’s inheritance, it was necessary that Alice Mayhew remain permanently inirisible. For you to get possession of her rightful inheritance and live to enjoy its fruits, it was necessary that Alice Mayhew die. And that, Thorne,” snapped Ellery, gripping the girl’s shoulder hard, “is why I said that there was something besides a disappearing house to cope with tonight. Alice Mayhew was murdered.”
There were three shouts from outside which rang with tones of great excitement. And then they ceased, abruptly.
“Murdered,” went on Ellery, “by the only occupant of the house who was not in the house when this impostor came downstairs that first evening — Nicholas Keith. A hired killer. Although these people are all accessories to that murder.”
A voice said from the window: “Not a hired killer.”
They wheeled sharply, and fell silent. The three detectives who had sprung out of the window were there in the background, quietly watchful. Before them were two people.
“Not a killer,” said one of them, a woman. “That’s what he was supposed to be. Instead, and without their knowledge, he saved my life... dear Nick.”
And now the pall of grayness settled over the faces of Mrs. Fell, and of Olivia Fell, and of Mrs. Reinach, and of the burly doctor. For by Keith’s side stood Alice Mayhew. She was the same woman who sat near the fire only in general similitude of feature. Now that both women could be compared in proximity, there were obvious points of difference. She looked worn and grim, but happy withal; and she was holding to the arm of bitter-mouthed Nick Keith with a grip that was quite possessive.