The naked man was gone. Ellery thrashed about among the fruit and nut trees feeling like Robinson Crusoe. From the flagged piazza Ichiro gaped at him, and a chunky fellow with a florid face and a chauffeur’s cap, carrying a carton of groceries, was gaping with him.
Ellery found a large footprint at the margin of the orchard, splayed and deeptoed, indicating running or jumping, and it pointed directly to the woods. He darted into the underbrush and in a moment he was nosing past trees and scrub on a twisting but clear trail. There were numerous specimens of the naked print on the trail, both coming and going.
“He’s made a habit of this,” Ellery mumbled. It was hot in the woods and he was soon drenched, uncomfortable, and out of temper.
The trail ended unceremoniously in the middle of a clearing. No other footprints anywhere. The trunk of the nearest tree, an ancient, oakishlooking monster, was yards away. There were no vines.
Ellery looked around, swabbing his neck. Then he looked up. The giant limbs of the tree covered the clearing with a thick fabric of small spiny leaves, but the lowest branch was thirty feet from the ground.
The creature must have flapped his arms and taken off.
Ellery sat down on a corrupting log and wiped his face, reflecting on this latest wonder. Not that anything in Southern California ever really surprised him. But this was a little out of even God’s country’s class. Flying nudes!
“Lost?”
Ellery leaped. A little old man in khaki shorts, woolen socks, and a T-shirt was smiling at him from a bush. He wore a paper topee on his head and he carried a butterfly net; a bright red case of some sort was slung over one skinny shoulder. His skin was a shriveled brown and his hands were like the bark of the big tree, but his eyes were a bright young blue and they seemed keen.
“I’m not lost,” said Ellery irritably. “I’m looking for a man.”
“I don’t like the way you say that,” said the old man, stepping into the clearing. “You’re on the wrong track, young fellow. People mean trouble. Know anything about the Lepidoptera?”
“Not a thing. Have you seen―?”
“You catch ‘em with this dingbat. I just bought the kit yesterday ― passed a toy shop on Hollywood Boulevard and there it was, all new and shiny, in the window. I’ve caught four beauties so far.” The butterfly hunter began to trot down the trail, waving his net menacingly.
“Wait! Have you seen anyone running through these woods?”
“Running? Well, now, depends.”
“Depends? My dear sir, it doesn’t depend on a thing! Either you saw somebody or you didn’t.”
“Not necessarily,” replied the little man earnestly, trotting back. “It depends on whether it’s going to get him ― or you ― in trouble. There’s too much trouble in this world, young man. What’s this runner look like?”
“I can’t give you a description,” snapped Ellery, “inasmuch as I didn’t see enough of him to be able to. Or rather, I saw the wrong parts. ― Hell. He’s naked.”
“Ah,” said the hunter, making an unsuccessful pass at a large, paint-splashed butterfly. “Naked, hm?”
“And there was a lot of him.”
“There was. You wouldn’t start any trouble?”
“No, no, I won’t hurt him. Just tell me which way he went.”
“I’m not worried about your hurting him. He’s much more likely to hurt you. Powerful build, that boy. Once knew a stoker built like him ― could bend a coal shovel. That was in the old Susie Belle, beating up to Alaska―”
“You sound as if you know him.”
“Know him? I darned well ought to. He’s my grandson. There he is!” cried the hunter.
“Where?”
But it was only the fifth butterfly, and the little old man hopped between two bushes and was gone.
Ellery was morosely studying the last footprint in the trail when Laurel poked her head cautiously into the clearing.
“There you are,” she said with relief. “You scared the buttermilk out of me. What happened?”
“Character spying on us from the walnut tree outside the bedroom window. I trailed him here―”
“What did he look like?” frowned Laurel.
“No clothes on.”
“Why, the lying mugwump!” she said angrily. “He promised on his honor he wouldn’t do that any more. It’s got so I have to undress in the dark.”
“So you know him, too,” growled Ellery. “I thought California had a drive on these sex cases.”
“Oh, he’s no sex case. He just throws gravel at my window and tries to get me to talk drool to him. I can’t waste my time on somebody who’s preparing for Armageddon at the age of twenty-three. Ellery, let’s see that note!”
“Whose grandson is he?”
“Grandson? Mr. Collier’s.”
“Mr. Collier wouldn’t be a little skinny old gent with a face like a sun-dried fig?”
“That’s right.”
“And just who is Mr. Collier?”
“Delia Priam’s father. He lives with the Priams.”
“Her father.” You couldn’t keep her out of anything. “But if this Peeping Tom is Delia Priam’s father’s grandson, then he must be―”
“Didn’t Delia tell you,” asked Laurel with a soupçon of malice, “that she has a twenty-three year old son? His name is Crowe Macgowan. Delia’s child by her first husband. Roger’s stepson. But let’s not waste any time on him―”
“How does he disappear into thin air? He pulled that miracle right here.”
“Oh, that.” Laurel looked straight up. So Ellery looked straight up, too. But all he could see was a leafy ceiling where the great oak branched ten yards over his head.
“Mac!” said Laurel sharply. “Show your face.”
To Ellery’s amazement, a large young male face appeared in the middle of the green mass thirty feet from the ground. On the face there was a formidable scowl.
“Laurel, who is this guy?”
“You come down here.”
“Is he a reporter?”
“Heavens, no,” said Laurel disgustedly. “He’s Ellery Queen.”
“Who?”
“Ellery Queen.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I wouldn’t have time.”
“Say. I’ll be right down.”
The face vanished. At once something materialized where it had been and hurtled to the ground, missing Ellery’s nose by inches. It was a rope ladder. A massive male leg broke the green ceiling, then another, then a whole young man, and in a moment the tree man was standing on the ground on the exact spot where the trail of naked footprints ended.
“I’m certainly thrilled to meet you!”
Ellery’s hand was seized and the bones broken before he could cry out. At least, they felt broken. It was a bad day for the Master’s self-respect: he could not decide which had the most powerful hands, Roger Priam, Alfred Wallace, or the awesome brute trying to pulverize him. Delia’s son towered six inches above him, a handsome giant with an impossible spread of shoulder, an unbelievable minimum of waist, the muscular development of Mr. America, the skin of a Hawaiian ― all of which was on view except a negligible area covered by a brown loincloth ― and a grin that made Ellery feel positively aged.
“I thought you were a newshound, Mr. Queen. Can’t stand those guys ― they’ve made my life miserable. But what are we standing here for? Come on up to the house.”
“Some other time, Mac,” said Laurel coldly, taking Ellery’s arm.
“Oh, that murder foolitchness. Why don’t you relax, Laur?”
“I don’t think I’d be exactly welcome at your stepfather’s, Mac,” said Ellery.
“You’ve already had the pleasure? But I meant come up to my house.”
“He really means ‘up,’ Ellery,” sighed Laurel. “All right, let’s get it over with. You wouldn’t believe it secondhand.”
“House? Up?” Feebly Ellery glanced aloft; and to his horror the young giant nodded and sprang up the rope ladder, beckoning them hospitably to follow.
It really was a house, high in the tree. A one-room house, to be sure, and not commodious, but it had four walls and a thatched roof, a sound floor, a beamed ceiling, two windows, and a platform from which the ladder dangled ― this dangerous-looking perch young Macgowan referred to cheerfully as his “porch,” and perfectly safe if you didn’t fall off.
The tree, he explained, was Quercus agrifolia, with a bole circumference of eighteen feet, and “watch those leaves, Mr. Queen, they bite.” Ellery, who was gingerly digging several of the spiny little devils out of his shirt, nodded sourly. But the structure was built on a foundation of foot-thick boughs and seemed solid enough underfoot.
He poked his head indoors at his host’s invitation and gaped like a tourist. Every foot of wall-and floor-space was occupied by ― it was the only phrase Ellery could muster ― aids to tree-living.
“Sorry I can’t entertain you inside,” said the young man, “but three of us would bug it out a bit. We’d better sit on the porch. Anybody like a drink? Bourbon? Scotch?” Without waiting for a reply Macgowan bent double and slithered into his house. Various liquid sounds followed.
“Laurel, why don’t they put the poor kid away?” whispered Ellery.
“You have to have grounds.”
“What do you call this?” cried Ellery. “Sanity?”
“Don’t blame you, Mr. Queen,” said the big fellow amiably, appearing with two chilled glasses. “Appearances are against me. But that’s because you people live in a world of fantasy.” He thrust a long arm into the house and it came out with another glass.
“Fantasy. We.” Ellery gulped a third of the contents of his glass. “You, of course, live in a world of reality?”
“Do we have to?” asked Laurel wearily. “If he gets started on this, Ellery, we’ll be here till sundown. That note―”
“I’m the only realist I know,” said the giant, lying down at the edge of his porch and kicking his powerful legs in space. “Because, look. What are you people doing? Living in the same old houses, reading the same old newspapers, going to the same old movies or looking at the same old television, walking on the same old sidewalks, riding in the same old new cars. That’s a dream world, don’t you realize it? What price business-as-usual? What price, well, sky-writing, Jacques Fath, Double-Crostics, murder? Do you get my point?”
“Can’t say it’s entirely clear, Mac,” said Ellery, swallowing the second third. He realized for the first time that his glass contained bourbon, which he loathed. However.
“We are living,” said young Mr. Macgowan, “in the crisis of the disease commonly called human history. You mess around with your piddling murders while mankind is being set up for the biggest homicide since the Flood. The atom bomb is already fuddy-duddy. Now it’s hydrogen bombs, guaranteed to make the nuclear chain reaction ― or whatever the hell it is ― look like a Fourth of July firecracker. Stuff that can poison all the drinking water on a continent. Nerve gases that paralyze and kill. Germs there’s no protection against. And only God knows what else. They won’t use it? My friend, those words constitute the epitaph of Man. Somebody’ll pull the cork in a place like Yugoslavia or Iran or Korea and, whoosh! that’ll be that.
“It’s all going to go,” said Macgowan, waving his glass at the invisible world below. “Cities uninhabitable. Crop soil poisoned for a hundred years. Domestic animals going wild. Insects multiplying. Balance of nature upset. Ruins and plagues and millions of square miles radioactive and maybe most of the earth’s atmosphere. The roads crack, the lines sag, the machines rust, the libraries mildew, the buzzards fatten, and the forest primeval creeps over Hollywood and Vine, which maybe isn’t such a bad idea. But there you’ll have it. Thirty thousand years of primate development knocked over like a sleeping duck. Civilization atomized and annihilated. Yes, there’ll be some survivors ― I’m going to be one of them. But what are we going to have to do? Why, go back where we came from, brother ― to the trees. That’s logic, isn’t it? So here I am. All ready for it.”
“Now let’s have the note,” said Laurel.
“In a moment.” Ellery polished off the last third, shuddering. “Very logical, Mac, except for one or two items.”
“Such as?” said Crowe Macgowan courteously. “Here, let me give you a refill.”
“No, thanks, not just now. Why, such as these.” Ellery pointed to a network of cables winging from some hidden spot to the roof of Macgowan’s tree house. “For a chap who’s written off thirty thousand years of primate development you don’t seem to mind tapping the main power line for such things as―” he craned, surveying the interior ― “electric lights, a small electric range and refrigerator, and similar primitive devices; not to mention” ― he indicated a maze of pipes ― “running water, a compact little privy connected with ― I assume ― a septic tank buried somewhere below, and so on. These things ― forgive me, Mac ― blow bugs through your logic. The only essential differences between your house and your stepfather’s are that yours is smaller and thirty feet in the air.”
“Just being practical,” shrugged the giant. “It’s my opinion it’ll happen any day now. But I can be wrong ― it may not come till next year. I’m just taking advantage of the civilized comforts while they’re still available. But you’ll notice I have a .22 rifle hanging there, a couple of .45s, and when my ammunition runs out or I can’t rustle any more there’s a bow that’ll bring down any deer that survives the party. I practice daily. And I’m getting pretty good running around these treetops―”
“Which reminds me,” said Laurel. “Use your own trees after this, will you, Mac? I’m no prude, but a girl likes her privacy sometimes. Really, Ellery―”
“Macgowan,” said Ellery, eying their host, “what’s the pitch?”
“Pitch? I’ve just told you.”
“I know what you’ve just told me, and it’s already out the other ear. What character are you playing? And in what script by whom?” Ellery set the glass down and got to his feet. The effect he was trying to achieve was slightly spoiled, as he almost fell off the porch. He jumped to the side of the house, a little green. “I’ve been to Hollywood before.”
“Go ahead and sneer,” said the brown giant without rancor. “I promise to give you a decent burial if I can find the component parts.”
Ellery eyed the wide back for a moment. It was perfectly calm. He shrugged. Every time he came to Hollywood something fantastic happened. This was the screwiest yet. He was well out of it.
But then he remembered that he was still in it.
He put his hand in his pocket.
“Laurel,” he said meaningly, “shall we go?”
“If it’s about that piece of paper I saw you find in Leander’s mattress,” said young Macgowan, “I wouldn’t mind knowing myself what’s in it.”
“It’s all right, Ellery,” said Laurel with an exasperated laugh. “Crowe is a lot more interested in the petty affairs of us dreamers than he lets on. And in a perverted sort of way I trust him. May I please see that note?”
“It isn’t the note you saw your father take from the collar of the dog,” said Ellery, eying Macgowan disapprovingly as he took a sheet of paper from his pocket. “It’s a copy. The original is gone.” The sheet was folded over once. He unfolded it. It was a stiff vellum paper, tinted green-gray, with an embossed green monogram.
“Daddy’s personal stationery.”
“From his night table. Where I also found this bi-colored pencil.” Ellery fished an automatic pencil from his pocket. “The blue lead is snapped. The note starts in blue and ends in red. Evidently the blue ran out halfway through his copying and he finished writing with the red. So the pencil places the copying in his bedroom, too.” Ellery held out the sheet. “Is this your father’s handwriting?”
“Yes.”
“No doubt about it?”
“No.”
In a rather peculiar voice, Ellery said, “All right, Laurel. Read it.”
“But it’s not signed.” Laurel sounded as if she wanted to punch somebody.
“Read it.”
Macgowan knelt behind her, nuzzling her shoulder with his big chin.
Laurel paid no attention to him; she read the note with a set face.
You believed me dead. Killed, murdered. For over a score of years I have looked for you ― for you and for him. And now I have found you. Can you guess my plan? You’ll die. Quickly? No, very slowly. And so pay me back for my long years of searching and dreaming of revenge. Slow dying... unavoidable dying. For you and for him. Slow and sure ― dying in mind and in body. And for each pace forward a warning... a warning of special meaning for you ― and for him. Meanings for pondering and puzzling. Here is warning number one.
Laurel stared at the notepaper.
“That,” said Crowe Macgowan, taking the sheet, “is the unfunniest gag of the century.” He frowned over it.
“Not just that.” Laurel shook her head. “Warning number one. Murder. Revenge. Special meanings... It― it has a long curly mustache on it. Next week Uncle Tom’s Cabin” She looked around with a laugh. “Even in Hollywood.”
“Why’d the old scout take it seriously?” Crowe watched Laurel a little anxiously.
Ellery took the sheet from him and folded it carefully. “Melodrama is a matter of atmosphere and expression. Pick up any Los Angeles newspaper and you’ll find three news stories running serially, any one of which would make this one look like a work by Einstein. But they’re real because they’re couched in everyday terms. What makes this note incredible is not the contents. It’s the wording.”
“The wording?”
“It’s painful. Actually archaic in spots. As if it were composed by someone who wears a ruff, or a tricorn. Someone who speaks a different kind of English. Or writes it. It has a... bouquet, an archive smell. A something that would never have been put into it purely for deception, for instance... like the ransom note writers who deliberately misspell words and mix their tenses to give the impression of illiteracy. And yet ― I don’t know.” Ellery slipped the note into his pocket. “It’s the strangest mixture of genuineness and contrivance. I don’t understand it.”
“Maybe,” suggested the young man, putting his arm carelessly around Laurel’s shoulders, “maybe it’s the work of some psycho foreigner. It reads like somebody translating from another language.”
“Possible.” Ellery sucked his lower lip. Then he shrugged. “Anyway, Laurel, there’s something to go on. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather discuss this―?”
“You mean because it involves Roger?” Laurel laughed again, removing Macgowan’s paw. “Mac isn’t one of Roger’s more ardent admirers, Ellery. It’s all right.”
“What did he do now?” growled Roger Priam’s stepson.
“He said he wasn’t going to be scared by any ‘ghost,’ Mac. Or rather roared it. And here’s a clue to someone from his past and, apparently, Leander Hill’s. ‘For you and for him...’ Laurel, what do you know of your father’s background?”
“Not much. He’d led an adventurous life, I think, but whenever I used to ask him questions about it ― especially when I was little ― he’d laugh, slap me on the bottom, and send me off to Mad’moiselle.”
“What about his family?”
“Family?” said Laurel vaguely.
“Brothers, sisters, uncle, cousins ― family. Where did he come from? Laurel, I’m fishing. We need some facts.”
“I’m no help there. Daddy never talked about himself. I always felt I couldn’t pry. I can’t remember his ever having any contact with relatives. I don’t even know if any exist.”
“When did he and Priam go into business together?”
“It must have been around twenty, twenty-five years ago.”
“Before Delia and he got married,” said Crowe. “Delia ― that’s my mother, Mr. Queen.”
“I know,” said Ellery, a bit stiffly. “Had Priam and Hill known each other well before they started the jewelry business, Macgowan?”
“I don’t know.” The giant put his arm about Laurel’s waist.
“I suppose they did. They must have,” Laurel said in a helpless way, absently removing the arm. “I realize now how little I know about Dad’s past.”
“Or I about Roger’s,” said Crowe, marching two fingers up Laurel’s back. She wriggled and said, “Oh, stop it, Mac.” He got up. “Neither of them ever talked about it.” He went over to the other end of the platform and stretched out again.
“Apparently with reason. Leander Hill and Roger Priam had a common enemy in the old days, someone they thought was dead. He says they tried to put him out of the way, and he’s spent over twenty-years tracking them down.”
Ellery began to walk about, avoiding Crowe Macgowan’s arms.
“Dad tried to murder somebody?” Laurel bit her thumb.
“When you yell bloody murder, Laurel,” said Ellery, “you’ve got to be prepared for a certain echo of nastiness. This kind of murder,” he said, lighting a cigaret and placing it between her lips, “is never nice. It’s usually rooted in pretty mucky soil. Priam means nothing to you, and your father is dead. Do you still want to go through with this? You’re my client, you know, not Mrs. Priam. At her own suggestion.”
“Did Mother come to you?” exclaimed Macgowan.
“Yes, but we’re keeping it confidential.”
“I didn’t know she cared,” muttered the giant.
Ellery lit a cigaret for himself.
Laurel was wrinkling her nose and looking a little sick.
Ellery tossed the match overside. “Whoever composed that note is on a delayed murder spree. He wants revenge badly enough to have nursed it for over twenty years. A quick killing doesn’t suit him at all. He wants the men who injured him to suffer, presumably, as he’s suffered. To accomplish this he starts a private war of nerves. His strategy is all plotted. Working from the dark, he makes his first tactical move... the warning, the first of the ‘special meanings’ he promises. Number one is ― of all things ― a dead pooch, number two whatever was in the box to Roger Priam ― I wonder what it was, by the way! You wouldn’t know, Mac, would you?”
“I wouldn’t know anything about my mother’s husband,” replied Macgowan.
“And he means to send other warnings with other ‘gifts’ which have special meanings. To Priam exclusively now ― Hill foxed him by dying at once. He’s a man with a fixed idea, Laurel, and an obsessive sense of injury. I really think you ought to keep out of his way. Let Priam defy him. It’s his skin, and if he needs help he knows where he can apply for it.”
Laurel threw herself back on the platform, blowing smoke to the appliqued sky.
“Don’t you feel you have to act like the heroine of a magazine serial?” Laurel did not reply.
“Laurel, drop it. Now.”
She rolled her head. “I don’t care what Daddy did. People make mistakes, even commit crimes, who are decent and nice. Sometimes events force you, or other people. I knew him ― as a human being ― better than anyone in creation. If he and Roger Priam got into a mess, it was Roger who thought up the dirty work... The fact that he wasn’t my real father makes it even more important. I owe him everything.” She sat up suddenly. “I’m not going to stay out of this, Ellery. I can t.’
“You’ll find, Queen,”, scowled young Macgowan in the silence that followed, “that this is a very tough number.”
“Tough she may be, my Tarzanian friend,” grumbled Ellery, “but this sort of thing is a business, not an endurance contest. It takes know-how and connections and a technique. And experience. None of which Miss Strongheart has.” Lie crushed his cigaret out on the platform vindictively. “Not to mention the personal danger... Well, I’ll root around a little, Laurel. Do some checking back. It shouldn’t be too much of a job to get a line on those two and find out what they were up to in the Twenties. And who got caught in the meat-grinder... You driving me back to the world of fantasy?”