But Ellery’s thoughts were forced to take an unforeseen turn. In this he was not unique. Suddenly something called the 38th Parallel, half a planet away, had become the chief interest in the lives of a hundred and fifty million Americans.
Los Angeles particularly suffered a bad attack of the jitters.
A few days before, Koreans from the north had invaded South Korea with Soviet tanks and great numbers of Soviet 7.63-millimeter submachine guns. The explosive meaning of this act took some time to erupt the American calm. But when United States occupation troops were rushed to South Korea from Japan and were overwhelmed, and the newspapers began printing reports of American wounded murdered by the invaders, conviction burst. The President made unpleasantly reminiscent announcements, reserves were being called, the United Nations were in an uproar, beef and coffee prices soared, there were immediate rumors about sugar and soap scarcities, hoarding began, and everyone in Los Angeles was saying that World War III had commenced and that Los Angeles would be the first city on the North American continent to feel the incinerating breath of the atom bomb ― and how do we know it won’t be tonight? San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle were not sleeping soundly, either, but that was no consolation to Los Angeles.
It was impossible to remain unaffected by the general nervousness. And, absurd as the thought was, there was always the possibility that it was only too well grounded.
The novel, which had been sputtering along, coughed and went into a nose dive. Ellery hounded the radio, trying to shut out the prophecies of doom which streaked up from his kitchen like flak in f wailing Louisiana accents from eight to five daily. His thoughts kept coming back to Tree Boy. Crowe Macgowan no longer seemed funny.
He had not heard from Lieutenant Keats for days.
There was no word from the Priam establishment. He knew that Delia had returned from Montecito, but he had not seen or heard from her.
Laurel phoned once to seek, not give, information. She was worried about Macgowan.
“He just sits and broods, Ellery. You’d think with what’s happening in Korea he’d be going around saying I told you so. Instead of which I can’t get him to open his big mouth.”
“The world of fantasy is catching up with Crowe, and it’s probably a painful experience. There’s nothing new at the Priams’?”
“It’s quiet. Ellery, what do you suppose this lull means?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m so confused these days!” Laurel’s was something of a wail, too. “Sometimes I think what’s going on in the world makes all this silly and unimportant. And I suppose in one way it is. But then I think, no, it’s not silly and it is important. Aggressive war is murder, too, and you don’t take that lying down. You have to fight it on every front, starting with the picayune personal ones. Or else you go down.”
“Yes,” said Ellery with a sigh, “that makes sense. I only wish this particular front weren’t so... fluid, Laurel. You might say we’ve got a pretty good General Staff, and a bang-up army behind us, but our Intelligence is weak. We have no idea where and when the next attack is coming, in what form and strength ― or the meaning of the enemy’s strategy. All we can do is sit tight and keep on the alert.”
Laurel said quickly, “Bless you,” and she hung up quickly, too.
The Enemy’s next attack came during the night of July 6–7. It was, surprisingly, Crowe Macgowan who notified Ellery. His call came at a little after one in the morning, as Ellery was about to go to bed.
“Queen. Something screwy just happened. I thought you’d want to know.” Macgowan sounded tired, not like himself at all. “What, Mac?”
“The library’s been broken in to. One of the windows. Seems like a case of ordinary housebreaking, but I dunno.”
“The library? Anything taken?”
“Not as far as I can see.”
“Don’t touch anything. I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
Ellery rang up Keats’s home, got a sleepy “What, again?” from the detective, and ran.
He found young Macgowan waiting for him in the Priam driveway. There were lights on upstairs and down, but Roger Priam’s French windows off the terrace were dark.
“Before you go in, maybe I’d better explain the setup...”
“Who’s in there now?”
“Delia and Alfred.”
“Go on. But make it snappy, Mac.”
“Last couple of nights I’ve been sleeping in my old room here at the house―”
“What? No more tree?”
“You wanted it presto, didn’t you?” growled the giant. “I hit the sack early tonight, but I couldn’t seem to sleep. Long, time later I heard sounds from downstairs. Seemed like the library; my room’s right over it. I thought maybe it was Gramp and I felt a yen to talk to him. So I got up and went down the hall and at the top of the stairs I called, ‘Gramp?’ No answer, and it was quiet down there. Something made me go back up the hall and look in the old gent’s room. He wasn’t there; bed hadn’t been slept in. So I went back to the head of the stairs and there was Wallace.”
“Wallace?” repeated Ellery.
“In a robe. He said he’d heard a noise and was just going to go downstairs.” Macgowan sounded odd; his eyes were hard in the moonlight. “But you know something, Queen? I got a queer feeling as I spotted Wallace at the head of those stairs. I couldn’t make up my mind whether he was about to go down... or had just come up.”
He stared at Ellery defiantly.
A car was tearing up the road.
Ellery said, “Life is full of these dangling participles, Mac. Did you find your grandfather?”
“No. Maybe I’d better take a look in the woods.” Crowe sounded casual. “Gramp often takes a walk in the middle of the night. You know how it is when you’re old.”
“Yes.” Ellery watched Delia’s son stride off, pulling a flashlight from his pocket as he went.
Keats’s car slammed to a stop a foot from Ellery’s rear. “Hi.”
“What is it this time?” Keats had a leather jacket on over an undershirt, and he sounded sore.
Ellery told him, and they went in.
Delia Priam was going through the library desk, looking baffled. She was in a brown monkish negligee of some thick-napped material, girdled by a heavy brass chain. Her hair hung down her back and there were purplish shadows, almost welts, under her eyes. Alfred Wallace, in a Paisley dressing gown, was seated comfortably in a club chair, smoking a cigaret.
Delia turned, and Wallace rose, as the two men came into the library, but neither said anything.
Keats went directly to the only open window. He examined the sash about the catch without touching it.
“Jimmied. Have any of you touched this window?”
“I’m afraid,” said Wallace, “we all did.”
Keats mumbled something impolite and went out. A few moments later Ellery heard him outside, below the open window, and saw the beam of his flash.
Ellery looked around. It was the kind of library he liked; this was one room in which the prevailing Priam gloom was mellow. Leather shone, and the black oak paneling was a friendly background for the books. Books from floor to ceiling on all four walls, and a fieldstone fireplace with a used look. It was a spacious room, and the lamps were good.
“Nothing missing, Delia?”
She shook her head. “I can’t understand it.” She turned away, pulling her robe closer about her.
“Crowe and I probably scared him off.” Alfred Wallace sat down again, exhaling smoke.
“Your father’s stamp albums?” Ellery suggested to Delia’s back. He had no idea why he thought of old Collier’s treasures, except that they might be valuable.
“As far as I know, they haven’t been touched.”
Ellery wandered about the room.
“By the way, Crowe tells me Mr. Collier hasn’t been to bed. Have you any idea where he is, Delia?”
“No.” She wheeled on him, eyes flashing. “My father and I don’t check up on each other. And I can’t recall, Mr. Queen, that I ever gave you permission to call me by my first name. Suppose you stop it.”
Ellery looked at her with a smile. After a moment she turned away again. Wallace continued to smoke.
Ellery resumed his ambling.
When Keats returned he said shortly, “There’s nothing out there. Have you got anything?”
“I think so,” said Ellery. He was squatting before the fireplace. “Look here.”
Delia Priam turned at that, and Wallace. i The fireplace grate held the remains of a wood fire. It had burned away to a fine ash. On the ashes lay a heat-crimped and badly charred object of no recognizable shape.
“Feel the ashes to the side, Keats.”
“Stony cold.”
“Now the ashes under that charred thing.”
The detective snatched his hand away. “Still hot!”
Ellery said to Delia, “Was there a wood fire in this grate tonight... Mrs. Priam?”
“No. There was one in the morning, but it burned out by noon.”
“This object was just burned here, Keats. On top of the cold ashes.”
The lieutenant wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and cautiously removed the charred thing. He laid it on the hearth.
“What was it?”
“A book, Keats.”
“Book?” Keats glanced around at the walls. “I wonder if―”
“Can’t tell any more. Pages all burned away and what’s left of the binding shows nothing.”
“It must have been a special binding.” Most of the volumes on the shelves were leatherbound. “Don’t they stamp the titles into these fancy jobs?” Keats prodded the remains of the book, turning it over. “Ought to be some indication left.”
“There would have been, except that whoever burned this indulged in a little vandalism before he set fire to it. Look at these slashes on the spine ― and here. The book was mutilated with a sharp instrument before it was tossed into the grate.”
Keats looked up at Delia and Wallace, who were stooping over them. “Any idea what this book was?”
“Damn you! Are you two here again?”
Roger Priam’s wheelchair blocked the doorway. His hair and beard were threatening. His pajama coat gaped, exposing his simian chest; a button was missing, as if he had torn at himself in a temper. His chair was made up as a bed and the blankets trailed on the floor.
“Ain’t nobody going to open his mouth? Man can’t get any shut-eye in his own house! Alfred, where the hell have you been? Not in your room, because I couldn’t get you on the intercom!” He did not glance at his wife.
“Something’s happened down here, Mr. Priam,” said Wallace soothingly.
“Happened! What now?”
Ellery and Keats were watching Priam closely. The library desk and a big chair stood between the wheelchair and the fireplace; Priam had not seen the burned book.
“Somebody broke into your library here tonight, Mr. Priam,” rasped Keats, “and don’t think I’m happy about it, because I’m as sick of you as you are of me. And if you’re thinking of blasting me out again, forget it. Breaking and entering is against the law, and I’m the cop on the case. Now you’re going to answer questions about this or, by God, I’ll pull you in on a charge of obstructing a police investigation. Why was this book cut up and burned?”
Keats stalked across the room carrying the charred remains. He thrust the thing under Priam’s nose.
“Book... burned?”
All his rage had fled, exposing the putty color beneath. Priam glared down at the twisted cinder in Keat’s hand, pulling away a little.
“Do you recognize this?”
Priam’s head shook.
“Can’t you tell us what it is?”
“No.” The word came out cracked. He seemed fascinated by the binding.
Keats turned in disgust. “I guess he doesn’t know at that. Well―”
“Just a moment, Lieutenant.” Ellery was at the shelves, riffling through books. They were beautiful books, the products of private presses chiefly ― handmade paper, lots of gold leaf, colored inks, elaborate endpaper designs, esoteric illustrations, specially designed type fonts; each was hand-bound and expensively hand-tooled. And the titles were impeccable, all the proper classics. The only thing was, after riffling through two dozen books, Ellery had still to find one in which the pages had been cut.
The books had never been read. It was likely, from their stiff pristine condition, that they had not been opened since leaving the hands of the bookbinder.
“How long have you had these books, Mr. Priam?”
“How long?” Priam licked his lips. “How long is it, Delia?”
“Since shortly after we were married.”
“Library means books,” Priam muttered, nodding. “Called in a fancy dealer and had him measure the running feet of shelf space and told him to go out and get enough books to fill the space. Highbrow stuff, I told him; only the best.” He seemed to gain confidence through talking; a trace of arrogance livened his heavy voice. “When he lugged them around, I threw ‘em back in his face. ‘I said the best!’ I told him. ‘Take this junk back and have it bound up in the most expensive leather and stuff you can find. It’s got to look the money or you don’t get a plugged nickel.’ ”
Keats had dropped his impatience. He edged back.
“And a very good job he did, too,” murmured Ellery. “I see they’re in the original condition, Mr. Priam. Don’t seem to have been opened, any of them.”
“Opened! And crack those bindings? This collection is worth a fortune, Mister. I’ve had it appraised. Won’t let nobody read em.”
“But books are made to be read, Mr. Priam. Haven’t you ever been curious about what’s in these pages?”
“Ain’t read a book since I played hooky from public school,” retorted Priam. “Books are for women and longhairs. Newspapers, that’s different. And picture magazines.” His head jerked up with a belligerent reflex. “What are you getting at?”
“I’d like to spend about an hour here, Mr. Priam, looking over your collection. I give you my word, I’ll handle your books with the greatest care. Would you have any objection to that?”
Cunning pinpointed Priam’s eyes. “You’re a book writer yourself, ain’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Ever write articles like in the Sunday magazine sections?”
“Occasionally.”
“Maybe you got some idea about writing up an article on the Priam Book Collection. Hey?”
“You’re a shrewd man, Mr. Priam,” said Ellery with a smile.
“I don’t mind,” the bearded man said with geniality. There was color in his cheekbones again. “That bookdealer said no millionaire’s library ought to be without its own special catalogue. ‘It’s too good a collection, Mr. Priam,’ he says to me. ‘There ought to be a record of it for the use of bib-bib-’ ”
“Bibliophiles?”
“That’s it. Hell, it was little enough, and besides I figured it might come in handy for personal publicity in my jewelry business. So I told him to go ahead. You’ll find a copy of the catalogue right there on that stand. Cost me a lot of money ― specially designed, y’ know, four-color job on special paper. And there’s a lot of technical stuff in it, in the descriptions of the books. Words I can’t even pronounce,” Priam chuckled, “but, God Almighty, you don’t have to be able to pronounce it if you can pay for it.” He waved a hairy hand. “Don’t mind at all, Mister ― what was the name again?” ii Queen.
“You go right ahead, Queen.’’
“Very kind of you, Mr. Priam. By the way, have you added any books since your catalogue was made up?”
“Added any?” Priam stared. “I got all the good ones. What would I want with more? When d’ye want to do it?”
“No time like the present, I always say, Mr. Priam. The night is killed, anyway.”
“Maybe tomorrow I’ll change my mind, hey?” Priam showed his teeth again in what he meant to be a friendly grin. “That’s all right, Queen. Shows you’re no dope, even if you do write books. Go to it!” The grin faded as he turned his animal eyes on Wallace. “You push me back, Alfred. And better bunk downstairs for the rest of the night.”
“Yes, Mr. Priam,” said Alfred Wallace.
“Delia, what are you standing around for? Go back to bed.”
“Yes, Roger.”
The last they saw of Priam he was waving amiably as Wallace wheeled him across the hall. From his gesture it was apparent that he had talked himself out of his fears, if indeed he had not entirely forgotten their cause.
When the door across the hall had closed, Ellery said: “I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Priam. We’ve got to know which book this was.”
“You think Roger’s a fool, don’t you?”
“Why don’t you go to bed?”
“Don’t ever make that mistake. Crowe!” Her voice softened. “Where’ve you been, darling? I was beginning to worry. Did you find your grandfather?”
Young Macgowan filled the doorway; he was grinning. “You’ll never guess where.” He yanked, and old Collier appeared. There was a smudge of chemical stain along his nose and he was smiling happily. “Down in the cellar.”
“Cellar?”
“Gramp’s fixed himself up a dark room, Mother. Gone into photography.”
“I’ve been using your Contax all day, daughter. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve got a great deal to learn,” said Collier, shaking his head. “My pictures didn’t come out very well. Hello there! Crowe tells me there’s been more trouble.”
“Have you been in the cellar all this time, Mr. Collier?” asked Lieutenant Keats.
“Since after supper.”
“Didn’t you hear anything? Somebody jimmied that window.”
“That’s what my grandson told me. No, I didn’t hear anything, and if I had I’d probably have locked the cellar door and waited till it was all over! Daughter, you look all in. Don’t let this get you down.”
“I’ll survive, Father.”
“You come on up to bed. Good night, gentlemen.” The old man went away.
“Crowe.” Delia’s face set. “Mr. Queen and Lieutenant Keats are going to be working in the library for a while. I think perhaps you’d better stay... too.”
“Sure, sure,” said Mac. He stooped and kissed her. She went out without a glance at either of the older men. Macgowan shut the door after her. “What’s the matter?” he asked Ellery in a plaintive tone. “Don’t you two get along any more? What’s happened?”
“If you must keep an eye on us, Mac,” snapped Ellery, “do it from that chair in the corner, where you’ll be out of the way. Keats, let’s get going.”
The “Priam collection” was a bibliographic monstrosity, but Ellery was in a scientific, not an esthetic, mood and his methodology had nothing to do with art or even morals; he simply had the Hollywood detective read off the titles on Priam’s shelves and he checked them against the gold-crusted catalogue.
It took them the better part of two hours, during which Crowe Macgowan fell asleep in the leather chair.
When at last Keats stopped, Ellery said: “Hold it,” and he began to to thumb back along the pages of the catalogue.
“Well?” said Keats.
“You failed to read just one title.” Ellery set the catalogue down and picked up the charred corpse of the book. “This used to be an octavo volume bound in laminated oak, with handblocked silk endpapers, of The Birds, by Aristophanes.”
“The what, by whom?”
“The Birds. A play by Aristophanes, the great satirical dramatist of the fifth century before Christ.”
“I don’t see the joke.”
Ellery was silent.
“You mean to tell me,” demanded the detective, “that the burning of this book by a playwright dead a couple of dozen centuries is another of these warnings?”
“It must be.”
“How can it be?”
“Mutilated and burned, Keats. At least two of the four previous warnings also involved violence in some form: the food poisoning, the murder of the frogs...” Ellery sat up.
“What’s the matter?”
“Frogs. Another play by Aristophanes has that exact title. The Frogs.” Keats looked pained.
“But that’s almost certainly a coincidence. The other items wouldn’t begin to fit... The Birds. An unknown what’s-it, food poisoning, dead toads and frogs, an expensive wallet, and now a plushy edition of a Greek social satire first performed ― unless I’ve forgotten my Classics II ― in 414 b.c.”
“And I’m out of cigarets,” grunted Keats. Ellery tossed a pack over. “Thanks. You say there’s a connection?”
“ ‘And for each pace forward a warning... a warning of special meaning for you ― and for him,’ ” Ellery quoted. “That’s what the note said. ‘Meanings for pondering and puzzling.’ ”
“How right he was. I still say, Queen, if this stuff means anything at all, each one stands on its own tootsies.”
“ ‘For each pace forward,’ Keats. It’s going somewhere. No, they’re tied. The whole thing’s a progression.” Ellery shook his head. “I’m not even sure any more that Priam knows what they mean. This one tonight really balls things up. Priam is virtually an illiterate. How could he possibly know what’s meant by the destruction of an old Greek play?”
“What’s it about?”
“The play? Well... to the best of my recollection, two Athenians talk the Birds into building an aerial city, in order to separate the Gods from Man.”
“That helps.”
“What did Aristophanes call his city in the air? Cloud... Cloud-land... Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.”
“That’s the first thing I’ve heard in this case that rings the bell.” Keats got up in disgust and went to the window.
A long time passed. Keats stared out at the night, which was beginning to boil and show a froth. But the room was chilly, and he hunched his shoulders under the leather jacket. Young Macgowan snored innocently in the club chair. Ellery said nothing.
Ellery’s silence lasted for so long that after a time Keats, whose brain was empty and wretched, became conscious of its duration. He turned around tiredly and there was a gaunt, unshaven, wild-eyed refugee from a saner world staring back at him with uninvited joy, grudgingly delirious, like a girl contemplating her first kiss.
“What in the hell,” said the Hollywood detective in alarm, “is the matter with you?”
“Keats, they have something in common!”
“Sure. You’ve said that a dozen times.”
“Not one thing, but two.”
Keats came over and took another of Ellery’s cigarets. “What do you say we break this up? Go home, take a shower, and hit the hay.” Then he said, “What?”
“Two things in common, Keats!” Ellery swallowed. His mouth was parched and there was a tuneful fatigue in his head, but he knew he had it, he had it at last.
“You’ve got it?”
“I know what it means, Keats. I know.”
“What? What?”
But Ellery was not listening. He fumbled for a cigaret without looking.
Keats struck a match for him and then, absently, held it to his own cigaret; he went to the window again, inhaling, filling his lungs. The froth on the night had bubbled down, leaving a starchy mass, glimmering like soggy rice. Keats suddenly became aware of what he was doing. He looked startled, then desperate, then defiant. He smoked hungrily, waiting.
“Keats.”
Keats whirled. “Yes?”
Ellery was on his feet. “The man who owned the dog. What were his name and address again?”
“Who?” Keats blinked.
“The owner of the dead dog, the one you have reason to believe was poisoned before it was left on Hill’s doorstep. What was the owner’s name? I’ve forgotten it.”
“Henderson. Clybourn Avenue, in Toluca Lake.”
“I’ll have to see him as soon as I can. You going home?”
“But why―”
“You go on and get a couple of hours’ sleep. Are you going to be at the station later this morning?”
“Yeah. But what―?”
But Ellery was walking out of Roger Priam’s library with stiff short steps, a man in a dream.
Keats stared after him.
When he heard Ellery’s Kaiser drive away, he put Ellery’s pack of cigarets in his pocket and picked up the remains of the burned book.
Crowe Macgowan awoke with a snort.
“You still here? Where’s Queen?” Macgowan yawned. “Did you find out anything?”
Keats held his smoldering butt to a fresh cigaret, puffing recklessly.
“I’ll send you a telegram,” he said bitterly, and he went away.
Sleep was impossible. He tossed for a while, not even hopefully.
At a little after six Ellery was downstairs in his kitchen, brewing coffee.
He drank three cups, staring into the mists over Hollywood. A dirty gray world with the sun struggling through. In a short time the mist would be gone and the sun would shine clear.
The thing was sharply brilliant. All he had to do was get rid of the mist.
What he would see in that white glare Ellery hardly dared anticipate. It was something monstrous, and in its monstrous way beautiful; that, he could make out dimly. But first there was the problem of the mist.
He went back upstairs, shaved, took a shower, changed into fresh clothing, and then he left the cottage and got into his car.