June twenty-ninth was a Los Angeles special. The weather man reported a reading of ninety-one and the newspapers bragged that the city was having its warmest June twenty-ninth in forty-three years.
But Ellery, trudging down Hollywood Boulevard in a wool jacket, was hardly aware of the roasting desert heat. He was a man in a dream these days, a dream entirely filled with the pieces of the Hill-Priam problem. So far it was a meaningless dream in which he mentally chased cubist things about a crazy landscape. In that dimension temperature did not exist except on the thermometer of frustration.
Keats had phoned to say that he was ready with the results of his investigation into the past of Hill and Priam. Well, it was about time.
Ellery turned south into Wilcox, passing the post office.
You could drift about in your head for just so long recognizing nothing. There came a point at which you had to find a compass and a legible map or go mad.
This ought to be it.
He found Keats tormenting a cigaret, the knot of his tie on his sternum and his sandy hair bristling.
“I thought you’d never get here.”
“I walked down.” Ellery took a chair, settling himself. “Well, let’s have it.”
“Where do you want it,” asked the detective, “between the eyes?”
“What do you mean?” Ellery straightened.
“I mean,” said Keats, plucking shreds of tobacco from his lips―”damn it, they pack cigarets looser all the time! ― I mean we haven’t got a crumb.”
“A crumb of what?”
“Of information.”
“You haven’t found out anything?” Ellery was incredulous.
“Nothing before 1927, which is the year Hill and Priam went into business in Los Angeles. There’s nothing that indicates they lived here before that year; in fact, there’s reason to believe they didn’t, that they came here that year from somewhere else. But from where? No data. We’ve tried everything from tax records to the Central Bureau fingerprint files. I’m pretty well convinced they had no criminal record, but that’s only a guess. They certainly had no record in the State of California.
“They came here in 27,” said Keats bitterly, “started a wholesale jewelry business as partners, and made a fortune before the crash of ‘29. They weren’t committed to the market and they rode out the depression by smart manipulation and original merchandising methods. Today the firm of Hill & Priam is rated one of the big outfits in its line. They’re said to own one of the largest stocks of precious stones in the United States. And that’s a lot of help, isn’t it?”
“But you don’t come into the wholesale jewelry business from outer space,” protested Ellery. “Isn’t there a record somewhere of previous connections in the industry? At least of one of them?”
“The N.J.A. records don’t show anything before 1927.”
“Well, have you tried this? Certainly Hill, at least, had to go abroad once in a while in connection with the firm’s foreign offices ― Laurel told me they have branches in Amsterdam and South Africa. That means a passport, a birth certificate―”
“That was my ace in the hole.” Keats snapped a fresh cigaret to his lips. “But it turns out that Hill & Priam don’t own those branches, although they do own the one in New York. They’re simply working arrangements with established firms abroad. They have large investments in those firms, but all their business dealings have been, and still are, negotiated by and through agents. There’s no evidence that either Hill or Priam stepped off American soil in twenty-three years, or at least during the twenty-three years we have a record of them.”
He shrugged. “They opened the New York branch early in 1929, and for a few years Priam took care of it personally. But it was only to get it going and train a staff. He left it in charge of a man who’s still running it there, and came back here. Then Priam met and married Delia Collier Macgowan, and the next thing that happened to him was the paralysis. Hill did the transcontinental hopping for the firm after that.”
“Priam’s never had occasion to produce a birth certificate?”
“No, and in his condition there’s no likelihood he ever will. He’s never voted, for instance, and while he might be challenged to prove his American citizenship ― to force him to loosen up about his place of birth and so on ― I’m afraid that would take a long, long time. Too long for this merry-go-round.”
“The war―”
“Both Priam and Hill were over the military age limit when World War II conscription began. They never had to register. Search of the records on World War I failed to turn up their names.”
“You’re beginning to irritate me, Lieutenant. Didn’t Leander Hill carry any insurance?”
“None that antedated 1927, and in the photostats connected with what insurance he did take out after that date his place of birth appears as Chicago. I’ve had the Illinois records checked, and there’s none of a Leander Hill; it was a phony. Priam carries no insurance at all. The industrial insurance carried by the firm, of course, is no help.
“In other words, Mr. Queen,” said Lieutenant Keats, “there’s every indication that both men deliberately avoided leaving, or camouflaged, the trail to their lives preceding their appearance in L.A. It all adds up to one thing―”
“That there was no Leander Hill or Roger Priam in existence before 1927,” muttered Ellery. “Hill and Priam weren’t their real names.”
“That’s it.”
Ellery got up and went to the window. Through the glass, darkly, he saw the old landscape again.
“Lieutenant.” He turned suddenly. “Did you check Roger Priam’s paralysis?”
Keats smiled. “Got quite a file on that if you want to read a lot of medical mumbo jumbo. The sources are some of the biggest specialists in the United States. But if you want it in plain American shorthand, his condition is on the level and it’s hopeless. By the way, they were never able to get anything out of Priam about his previous medical history, if that’s what you had in mind.”
“You’re disgustingly thorough, Keats. I wish I could find the heart to congratulate you. Now tell me you couldn’t find anything on Alfred Wallace and I’ll crown you.”
Keats picked up an inkstand and offered it to Ellery. “Start crowning.”
“Nothing on Wallace either?”
“That’s right.” Keats spat little dry sprigs of tobacco. “All I could dig up about Mr. Alfred W. dates from the day Priam hired him, just over a year ago.”
“Why, that can’t be!” exploded Ellery. “Not three in the same case.”
“He’s not an Angeleno, I’m pretty well convinced of that. But I can’t tell you what he is. I’m still working on it.”
“But... it’s such a short time ago, Keats!”
“I know,” said Keats, showing his teeth without dropping the cigaret, “you wish you were back in New York among the boys in the big league. Just the same, there’s something screwy about Wallace, too. And I thought, Mr. Queen, having so little to cheer you up with today, I’d cut out the fancy stuff and try a smash through.the center of the line. I haven’t talked to Wallace. How about doing it now?”
“You’ve got him here?” exclaimed Ellery.
“Waiting in the next room. Just a polite invitation to come down to the station here and have a chat. He didn’t seem to mind ― said it was his day off anyway. I’ve got one of the boys keeping him from getting bored.”
Ellery pulled a chair into a shadowed corner of the office and snapped, “Produce.”
Alfred Wallace came in with a smile, the immaculate man unaffected by the Fahrenheit woes of lesser mortals. His white hair had a foaming wave to it; he carried a debonair slouch hat; there was a small purple aster in his lapel.
“Mr. Queen,” said Wallace pleasantly. “So you’re the reason Lieutenant Keats has kept me waiting over an hour.”
“I’m afraid so.” Ellery did not rise.
But Keats was polite. “Sorry about that, Mr. Wallace. Here, have this chair... But you can’t always time yourself in a murder investigation.”
“You mean what may be a murder investigation, Lieutenant,” said Wallace, seating himself, crossing his legs, and setting his hat precisely on his knee. “Or has something new come up?”
“Something new could come up, Mr. Wallace, if you’ll answer a few questions.”
“Me?” Wallace raised his handsome brows. “Is that why you’ve placed this chair where the sun hits my face?” He seemed amused.
Keats silently pulled the cord of the Venetian blind.
“Thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll be glad to answer any questions you ask. If, of course, I can.”
“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble answering this one, Mr. Wallace: Where do you come from?”
“Ah.” Wallace looked thoughtful. “Now that’s just the kind of question, Lieutenant, I can’t answer.”
“You mean you won’t answer.”
“I mean I can’t answer.”
“You don’t know where you come from, I suppose.”
“Exactly.”
“If that’s going to be Mr. Wallace’s attitude,” said Ellery from his corner, “I think we can terminate the interview.”
“You misunderstand me, Mr. Queen. I’m not being obstructive.” Wallace sounded earnest. “I can’t tell you gentlemen where I come from because I don’t know myself. I’m one of those interesting cases you read about in the papers. An amnesia victim.”
Keats glanced at Ellery. Then he rose. “Okay, Wallace. That’s all.”
“But that’s not all, Lieutenant. This isn’t something I can’t prove. In fact, now that you’ve brought it up, I insist on proving it. You’re making a recording of this, of course? I would like this to go into the record.”
Keats waved his hand. His eyes were intent and a little admiring.
“One day about a year and a half ago ― the exact date was January the sixteenth of last year ― I found myself in Las Vegas, Nevada, on a street corner,” said Alfred Wallace calmly. “I had no idea what my name was, where I came from, how I had got there. I was dressed in filthy clothing which didn’t fit me and I was rather banged up. I looked through my pockets and found nothing ― no wallet, no letters, no identification of any kind. There was no money, not even coins. I went up to a policeman and told him of the fix I was in, and he took me to a police station. They asked me questions and had a doctor in to examine me. The doctor’s name was Dr. James V. Cutbill, and his address was 515 North Fifth Street, Las Vegas. Have you got that, Lieutenant?
“Dr. Cutbill said I was obviously a man of education and good background, about fifty years old or possibly older. He said it looked like amnesia to him. I was in perfect physical condition, and from my speech a North American. Unfortunately, Dr. Cutbill said, there were no identifying marks of any kind on my body and no operation scars, though he did say I’d had my tonsils and adenoids out probably as a child. This, of course, was no clue. There were some fillings in my teeth, of good quality, he thought, but I’d had no major dental work done. The police photographed me and sent my picture and a description to all Missing Persons Bureaus in the United States. There must be one on file in Los Angeles, Lieutenant Keats.”
Keats grew fiery red. “I’ll check that,” he growled. “And lots more.”
“I’m sure you will, Lieutenant,” said Wallace with a smile. “The Las Vegas police fixed me up with some clean clothes and found me a job as a handyman in a motel, where I got my board and a place to sleep, and a few dollars a week. The name of the motel is the 711, on Route 91 just north of town. I worked there for about a month, saving my pay. The Las Vegas police told me no one of my description was listed as missing anywhere in the country. So I gave up the job and hitchhiked into California.
“In April of last year I found myself in Los Angeles. I stayed at the Y, the Downtown Branch on South Hope Street; I’m surprised you didn’t run across my name on their register, Lieutenant, or haven’t you tried to trace me? ― and I got busy looking for employment. I’d found out I could operate a typewriter and knew shorthand, that I was good at figures ― apparently I’d had business training of some sort as well as a rather extensive education ― and when I saw an ad for a secretarial companion-nurse job to an incapacitated businessman, I answered it. I told Mr. Priam the whole story, just as I’ve told it to you. It seems he’d been having trouble keeping people in recent years and, after checking back on my story, he took me on for a month’s trial. And here,” said Wallace with the same smile, “here I am, still on the job.”
“Priam took you on without references?” said Keats, doodling. “How desperate was he?”
“As desperate as he could be, Lieutenant. And then Mr. Priam prides himself on being a judge of character. I was really glad of that, because to this day I’m not entirely sure what my character is.”
Ellery lit a cigaret. Wallace watched the flame of the match critically. When Ellery blew the flame out, Wallace smiled again. But immediately Ellery said, “How did you come to take the name Alfred Wallace if you remembered nothing about your past? Or did you remember that?”
“No, it’s just a name I plucked out of the ether, Mr. Queen. Alfred, Wallace ― they’re very ordinary names and more satisfying than John Doe. Lieutenant Keats, aren’t you going to check my story?”
“It’s going to be checked,” Keats assured him. “And I’m sure we’ll find it happened exactly as you’ve told it, Wallace ― dates, names, and places. The only thing is, it’s all a dodge. That’s something I feel in my bones. As one old bone-feeler to another, Mr. Queen, how about it?”
“Did this doctor in Las Vegas put you under hypnosis?” Ellery asked the smiling man.
“Hypnosis? No, Mr. Queen. He was just a general practitioner.”
“Have you seen any other doctor since? A psychiatrist, for example?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Would you object to being examined by a psychiatrist of ― let’s say ― Lieutenant Keats’s choosing?”
“I’m afraid I would, Mr. Queen,” murmured Wallace. “You see, I’m not sure I want to find out who I really am. I might discover, for example, that I’m-an escaped thief, or that I have a bowlegged wife and five idiot children somewhere. I’m perfectly happy where I am. Of course, Roger Priam isn’t the easiest employer in the world, but the job has its compensations. I’m living in royal quarters. The salary Priam pays me is very large ― he’s a generous employer, one of his few virtues. Old, fat Mrs. Guittierez is an excellent cook, and even though Muggs, the maid, is a straitlaced virgin with halitosis who’s taken an unreasonable dislike to me, she does keep my room clean and polishes my shoes regularly. And the position even solves the problem of my sex life ― oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned that, should I?” Wallace looked distressed; he waved his muscular hand gently. “A slip of the tongue, gentlemen. I do hope you’ll forget I said it.”
Keats was on his feet. Ellery heard himself saying, “Wallace. Just what did you mean by that?”
“A gentleman, Mr. Queen, couldn’t possibly have the bad taste to pursue such a question.”
“A gentleman couldn’t have made the statement in the first place. I ask you again, Wallace: How does your job with Priam take care of your sex life?”
Wallace looked pained. He glanced up at Keats. “Lieutenant, must I answer that question?”
Keats said slowly, “You don’t have to answer anything. You brought this up, Wallace. Personally, I don’t give a damn about your sex life unless it has something to do with this case. If it has, you’d better answer it.”
“It hasn’t, Lieutenant. How could it have?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Answer the question,” said Ellery in a pleasant voice.
“Mr. Queen seems more interested than you, Lieutenant.”
“Answer the question,” said Ellery in a still pleasanter voice.
Wallace shrugged. “All right. But you’ll bear witness, Lieutenant Keats, that I’ve tried my best to shield the lady in the case.” He raised his eyes suddenly to Ellery and Ellery saw the smile in them, a wintry shimmer. “Mr. Queen, I have the great good luck to share my employer’s wife’s bed. As the spirit moves. And the flesh being weak, and Mrs. Priam being the most attractive piece I’ve yet seen in this glorious state, I must admit that the spirit moves several times a week and has been doing so for about a year. Does that answer your question?”
“Just a minute, Wallace,” Ellery heard Keats say.
And Keats was standing before him, between him and Wallace. Keats was saying in a rapid whisper, “Queen, look, let me take it from here on in. Why don’t you get out of here?”
“Why should I?” Ellery said clearly.
Keats did not move. But then he straightened up and stepped aside.
“You’re lying, of course,” Ellery said to Wallace. “You’re counting on the fact that no decent man could ask a decent woman a question like that, and so your lie won’t be exposed. I don’t know what slimy purpose your lie serves, but I’m going to step on it right now. Keats, hand me that phone.”
And all the time he was speaking Ellery knew it was true. He had known it was true the instant the words left Wallace’s mouth. The story of the amnesia was true only so far as the superficial facts went; Wallace had prepared a blind alley for himself, using the Las Vegas police and a mediocre doctor to seal up the dead end. But this was all true. He knew it was all true and he could have throttled the man who sat halfway across the room smiling that iced smile.
“I don’t see that that would accomplish anything,” Keats was saying. “She’d only deny it. It wouldn’t prove a thing.”
“He’s lying, Keats.”
Wallace said with delicate mockery, “I’m happy to hear you take that attitude, Mr. Queen. Of course. I’m lying. May I go, Lieutenant?”
“No, Wallace.” Keats stuck his jaw out. “I’m not letting it get this far without knowing the whole story. You say you’ve been cuckolding Priam for almost a year now. Is Delia Priam in love with you?”
“I don’t think so,” said Wallace. “I think it’s the same thing with Delia that it is with me. A matter of convenience.”
“But it stopped some time ago, didn’t it?” Keats had a wink in his voice; man-to-man stuff. “It’s not still going on.”
“Certainly it’s still going on. Why should it have stopped?”
Keats’s shoulders bunched. “You must feel plenty proud of yourself, Wallace. Eating a man’s food, guzzling his liquor, taking his dough, and sleeping with his wife while he’s helpless in a wheelchair on the floor below. A cripple who couldn’t give you what you rate even if he knew what was going on.”
“Oh, didn’t I make that clear, Lieutenant?” said Alfred Wallace, smiling. “Priam does know what’s going on. In fact, looking back, I can see that he engineered the whole thing.”
“What are you giving me!”
“You gentlemen apparently don’t begin to understand the kind of man Priam is. And I think you ought to know the facts of life about Priam, since it’s his life you’re knocking yourselves out to save.”
Wallace ran his thumb tenderly around the brim of his hat. “I don’t deny that I didn’t figure Priam right myself in the beginning, when Delia and I first got together. I sneaked it, naturally. But Delia laughed and told me not to be a fool, that Priam knew, that he wanted it that way. Although he’d never admit it or let on ― to me, or to her.
“Well,” said Wallace modestly. “Of course I thought she was kidding me. But then I began to notice things. Looks in his eye. The way he kept pushing us together. That sort of thing. So I did a little investigating on the quiet.
“I found out that in picking secretaries Priam had always hired particularly virile-looking men.
“And I remembered the questions he asked me when I applied for the job ― how he kept looking me over, like a horse.” Wallace took a cigar from his pocket and lit it. Puffing with enjoyment, he leaned back. “Frankly, I’ve been too embarrassed to put the question to Delia directly. But unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, Priam’s secretaries have always done double duty. Well, for the last ten years, anyway. It also explains the rapid turnover. Not every man is as virile as he looks,” Wallace said with a laugh, “and then there are always some mushy-kneed lads who’d find a situation like that uncomfortable... But the fact remains. Priam’s hired men to serve not only the master of the house, you might say, but the mistress too.”
“Get him out of here,” Ellery said to Keats. But to his surprise no words came out.
“Roger Priam,” continued Alfred Wallace, waving his cigar, “is an exaggerated case of crudity, raw power, and frustration. The clue to his character ― and, gentlemen, I’ve had ample opportunity to judge it ― is his compulsive need to dominate everything and everyone around him. He tried to dominate old Leander Hill through the farce of pretending he, Roger Priam, was running a million-dollar business from a wheelchair at home. He tried to dominate Crowe Macgowan before Crowe got too big for him, according to Delia. And he’s always dominated Delia, who doesn’t care enough about anything to put up a scrap ― dominated her physically until he became paralyzed, Delia’s told me, with the most incredible vulgarities and brutalities.
“Now imagine,” murmured Wallace, “what paralysis from the waist down did to Priam’s need to dominate his woman. Physically he was no longer a man. And his wife was beautiful; to this day every male who meets her begins strutting like a bull. Priam knew, knowing Delia, that it was only a question of time before one of them made the grade. And then where would he be? He might not even know about it. It would be entirely out of his control. Unthinkable! So Priam worked out the solution in his warped way ― to dominate Delia by proxy.
“By God, imagine that! He deliberately picks a virile man ― the substitute for himself physically and psychologically ― and flings them at each other’s heads, letting nature take its course.”
Wallace flicked an ash into the tray on Keats’s desk. “I used to think he’d taken a leaf out of Faulkner’s Sanctuary, or Krafft-Ebing, except that I’ve come to doubt if he’s read a single book in forty-five years. No, Priam couldn’t explain all this ― to himself least of all. He’s an ignorant man; he wouldn’t even know the words. Like so many ignorant men, he’s a man of pure action. He throws his wife and hand-picked secretary together, thus performing the function of a husband vicariously, and by pretending to be deaf to what goes on with domestic regularity over his head he retains his mastery of the situation. He’s the god of the machine, gentlemen, and there is no other god but Roger Priam. That is, to Roger Priam.” Wallace blew a fat ring of cigar smoke and rose. “And now, unless there’s something else, Lieutenant, I’d like to salvage what’s left of my day off.”
Keats said in a loud voice, “Wallace, you’re a fork-tongued female of a mucking liar. I don’t believe one snicker of this dirty joke. And when I prove you’re a liar, Wallace, I’m going to leave my badge home with my wife and kids, and I’m going to haul you into some dark alley, and I’m going to kick the out of you.”
Wallace’s smile thinned. His face reassembled itself and looked suddenly old. He reached over Keats’s desk and picked up the telephone.
“Here,” he said, holding the phone out to the detective. “Or do you want me to get the number for you?”
“Scram.”
“But you want proof. Delia will admit it if you ask her in the right way, Lieutenant. Delia’s a very civilized woman.”
“Get out.”
Wallace laughed. He replaced the phone gently, adjusted his fashion-able hat on his handsome head, and walked out humming.
Keats insisted on driving Ellery home. The detective drove slowly through the five o’clock traffic.
Neither man said anything.
He had seen them for that moment in the Priam hallway, the day he had come at her summons to investigate the plague of dead frogs. Wallace had been standing close to her, far closer than a man stands to a woman unless he knows he will not be repulsed. And she had not repulsed him.
She had stood there accepting his pressure while Wallace squeezed her hand and whispered in her ear... He remembered one or two of Wallace’s glances at her, the glances of a man with a secret knowledge, glances of amused power... “/ always take the line of least resistance... He remembered the night she had hidden herself in his bedroom at the sound of her son’s and Laurel’s arrival. She had come to him that night for the purpose to which her life in the Priam house had accustomed her. Probably she had a prurient curiosity about “celebrities” or she was tired of Wallace. (And this was Wallace’s revenge?) He would have read the signs of the nymph easily enough if he had not mistaken her flabbiness for reserve―
“We’re here, Mr. Queen,” Keats was saying.
They were at the cottage.
“Oh. Thanks.” Ellery got out automatically. “Good night.”
Keats failed to drive away. Instead he said, “Isn’t that your phone ringing?”
“Yes. Why doesn’t Mrs. Williams answer it?” Ellery said with irritation. Then he laughed. “She isn’t answering it because I gave her the afternoon off. I’d better go in.”
“Wait.” Keats turned his motor off and vaulted to the road. “Maybe it’s my office. I told them I might be here.”
Ellery unlocked the front door and went in. Keats straddled the threshold.
“Hello?”
Keats saw him stiffen.
“Yes, Delia.”
Ellery listened in silence. Keats heard the vibration of the throaty tones, faint and warm and humid.
“Keats is with me now. Hide it till we get there, Delia. We’ll be right over.”
Ellery hung up.
“What does the lady want?” asked Keats.
“She says she’s just found another cardboard box. It was in the Priam mailbox on the road, apparently left there a short time ago. Priam’s name handprinted on it. She hasn’t told Priam about it, asked what she ought to do. You heard what I told her.”
“Another warning!”
Keats ran for his car.