And on the Eighth Day (12 page)

“Queen,” Ellery said. “Let’s not wander afield, Otto. You mentioned a piece of furniture and a book. What about them? And when was this?”

The storekeeper referred to his ledger. It had occurred on April 8, 1939—“the year the war broke out in Europe.” The hermit had come in … alone? Yes, Mr. Queen, alone. “Never laid eyes on the younger fellow till last year. Well, the old man left a silver dollar, picked up his supplies, and was getting ready to go. The book was on the counter and he spotted it. Something real strange seemed to happen to him. You’ve noticed his eyes? They’re kind of … on fire all the time. Well, this time they blazed up like Fourth of July. And he went into a trance, like, shook and mumbled, seemed to be having some sort of a fit, and—well,
praying
, like, all at the same time.

“When he calmed down, he asked me how much credit it would take to buy the book, how many silver dollars.”

“What book was it?” Ellery asked, failing to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

“Oh, some book sent to me from Europe; I have relatives on the other side. I’d tried to read it, but it didn’t hold my interest, so I put it away. I’d come across it again and was having another try at it when the hermit came in.”

“But what was the title of the book?”

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Queen, I can’t recall. Anyway, when he said he wanted to buy it, and I said no—”

“You said no? Why, when it didn’t interest you?”

“I don’t know,” said Otto Schmidt. “It just didn’t seem right—I mean, selling a present from a relative. But he kept after me to let him buy it. The more I said no, the more he said yes. Got all hotted up, the old man did—offered me all the silver dollars he had. In the end I said he could have it—as a gift. You know, he blessed me? And then he pointed to an old walnut china closet I used as a showcase for notions and such, and he offered to buy
that
. I charged him five dollars for it.”

“Didn’t he say why he wanted the book?”

“No, just wrapped it up, very careful, loaded his wagon, and left. I guess if you’re not touched in the head to begin with you don’t become a hermit. You know, he couldn’t even read the book? Admitted it when I asked him. But he just had to have it.”

The question of the book was not going to be solved here in the store, obviously. Nor the question of the silver dollars. Their number … why was he so disturbed about their number?

Here is wisdom: let him who hath understanding count the number of the Beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred sixty and six
… Interesting that this verse from the Apocalypse of John should enter his mind just now. But of course 666 was far too large. He had to know what the number was—he simply had to. To do-that he must return and count the coins in the holy arque. Now!

The nearer Ellery got to Crucible Hill, the moodier he felt. It was with an effort that he had restrained himself from trying to beat the donkey into a gallop. A heavy depression had settled on him; a black, bleak melancholy. The wearisome journey on the beast, his mood and malaise, gloomily recalled the state of mind and body that had brought his work in Hollywood to such an abrupt halt; and he asked himself if he had ever really recovered. And he asked himself if he ever would.

He looked up at the sky, observing with surprise that it was rapidly darkening, although it was not yet sunset.

Was a storm brewing? Perhaps a falling barometer was causing his depression.

By the time he had reached the crest of Crucible Hill, the sky was almost black and the Valley was in profound shadow. He could discern nothing clearly. Even his ears seemed affected; he could hear none of the usual sounds of Quenan. Jogging slowly down the inner slope, eyes open but not seeing, he was almost upon the Holy Congregation House before he looked up, and was shocked.

Gathered before the building was a crowd which must have represented almost the entire population of the Valley.

And all were silent.

And it was like night.

The blackened air had a green tinge to it, and through this unnatural light the yellow lampshine from inside the House fell through the open doorway with ghastly effect, like a scene from hell. The stunned folk of Quenan stood rooted as though by some paralyzing force, some terrible horror they groped vainly to apprehend.

Ellery’s heart swelled, then constricted as if squeezed by a giant hand.
The Teacher!
Was it his own death the old man had sensed approaching?

Dismounting hastily, Ellery ran through the crowd and into the House. And there indeed was the Teacher—but not dead, only looking like death; looking for the first time every year of his great age. And at his feet lay a man.

Storicai.

The Storesman was dead. But no assault by nature on heart or brain had stormed his life and taken it. The sun-dark forehead had been crumpled by a barbarous blow: bones had shattered, blood had spurted, so that head and face were thickly redly wet with it, as if a bucket of paint had been flung at him. And head and neck and shoulders lay in a pool of it, still glistening.

Numbly, Ellery sought its cause; and there it was, lying on the floor of the Holy Congregation House a little to one side of the Storesman’s body, an instrument he had—somehow—expected to find: a heavy hammer, spattered with scarlet.

“The “great trouble,” then, had come at last to the Valley of Quenan. There was no longer need to wonder in what form it would make its dread appearance.

It was the kind of trouble for which Ellery had been predestined; and his brain cleared, and he sprang forward.

At the back of the Storesman’s head there was another wound; but Ellery’s practiced fingers told him that it was not, by itself, a mortal blow. The smashing hammer on the forehead had taken Storicai’s life. He parted the curly hair; and among the curls he spied—first one, then another, then still another—tiny particles of what looked like plaster.

Ellery frowned. Nowhere in Quenan had he seen plaster. He examined the speck again, this time with his lens.

They were clay—bits of hardened clay.

Gently he opened the clenched hand of the dead man. The Storesman had died clutching a button, a metal button, its sundered threads still attached; and on the button’s face there was a crude and curious symbol.

Ellery did not pause to examine it. He dropped the button into a glassine envelope from the leather kit he had had a messenger fetch from his luggage.

Strapped to the left wrist of the dead man was Ellery’s watch. He lifted the wrist, the hand dangling. Ellery looked up. “He was so taken with this watch—”

Before Ellery’s eyes, beyond surprises now, the Teacher drew himself up to his full height, shedding his mantle of years swiftly; and his voice, when it came, was rich and strong again. “We must not say”—he gestured toward the watch, glittering gold in the dimly golden light—“we must not say,
Elroï
, ‘It would have been better had he never seen it.’ ”

But this was no time for riddles; and Ellery returned his attention to the watch. The crystal was savagely smashed, the dial deeply dented; no mere fall would, have caused this havoc. No, Storicai had thrown up his left hand in an attempt to ward off one of the hammer blows, and he did, catching the blow on the watch; but he failed to stop the next blow, and staggering, grappling, clutching, grasping the button, he had fallen dead.

The hands had stopped at 4:20.

The time was now (he had it checked) 4:58. Ellery had been here about three minutes.

Systematically he went through the dead man’s clothing. And in an inner pocket he found what he had altogether forgotten—a crude duplicate of the key to the sanquetum.

So the thief in the night had been Storicai. Or … had it been?

Ellery sighed. Even in Eden.

He straightened up, pointing to the hammer. The old man’s face was now remarkably calm, although his eyes—those prophet’s eyes—were sadder than Ellery had yet seen them. But they kindled Ellery’s gesture.

“Thus it was,” the Teacher began. “One of the legs of the Crownsil table on this side had loosened, and I was intending to ask the Successor to mend it after his studies and writing. I deemed it not important enough to call to the attention of the Carpentersmith, but lacked time to do it myself.

“Therefore I placed the hammer from my tool chest in the center of this table as a reminder to me to ask the Successor to repair the table leg.”

Ellery wrapped the hammer carefully in one of his large handkerchiefs. While he was so occupied, the Successor came running in through the still-open door (and still the still crowd stood outside), calling, “I have searched everywhere, Master—”

“He is here,” the Teacher said, indicating Ellery.

The young man gasped for breath, looking at the body on the floor. He shuddered and gave a short cry.

“You may go to your room,” said the old man gently.

“Oh, but please.” Ellery stopped the Successor. “Will you first go to the scriptorium and bring me fifteen pieces of paper?”

Even in Eden the same things had to be done.

Through the doorway a light breeze blew, bringing Ellery the memory of the first hint he had had, then unrecognized, of the existence of Quenan, the smell of burning sagebrush. The same breeze set the room’s single lamp to swinging, as the lamp in the sanquetum had swung only that morning. But now the shadows seemed large with doom.

He said to the Teacher, “Please summon the Crownsil and the Superintendent. There is something I must ask them to do.”

The summons took only the speaking, for those he named were in the throng outside. The members entered and took their accustomed places; even the very old Slave, who had been ill, it appeared, and had to be carried in; then, at Ellery’s gesture, the door was closed. It seemed to him that he could hear another sigh (or was it a moan?); but this might have been imagination.

Once again great waves of stupefying fatigue, so familiar now, began to break against him. He shook them off like a dog.

On the Crownsil table, for the first time since the trial of Belyar the Weaver, were set things appertaining to crime. Then there had been nothing but bolts of cloth and the stolen pieces cut therefrom. Now Ellery laid down his leather kit. It contained the accessories of his other trade—fingerprint outfit, springback measuring tape, compass, flashlight, scissors, tweezers, small jars, rubber gloves, plastic tape, glassine envelopes, notebook, pencil, a marking pen, labels, a .38 Police Positive, a box of shells.

There had been times when he had had to call on all the contents of the kit; but on this occasion Ellery took from it only the fingerprinting equipment and the marking pen.

“What is it, Elroï,” asked the Teacher, not flinching at sight of the strange objects, although most of the kit’s contents were as mysterious to him as to the shrinking Crownsil, “what is it that you wish of us?”

“Teacher,” Ellery replied softly, “I wish to go among you and record on these pieces of paper the imprint of your fingertips—the fingertips of all present. It is a simple thing, and there is no pain attached to it. Each of you will touch no paper but the single paper I set before you—is that clear?”

“The thing is clear, Elroï, its meaning is not,” said the old man. “Nevertheless, it shall be as you say. I observe that you called for fifteen pieces of paper, although—excluding you—there are only fourteen of us. Is it your wish to record the imprint of the fingertips of him who has ceased, also?”

Ellery’s head snapped back in surprise at the old man’s shrewdness. “Storicai’s? Yes, Teacher. I shall record his first.”

And this he did, under their awed eyes, to the accompaniment of their quickened breathing. When he rose to face them with his paraphernalia, their breathing ceased altogether for a moment. But their venerable leader, observing their dread, stepped forward and said in a steady voice, “Among the living, Elroï, I shall be the first,” and he held out his corded, blackened hands.

So Ellery took the fingerprints of the Teacher, and of the Successor, and of the Superintendent, and of the eleven surviving members of the Crownsil of the Twelve; and on each paper, under the fingerprints, he marked the name of the office held by the official whose fingertips had deposited the impressions.

“And now, Quenan?”

“Now we may be alone, Teacher.”

“Do you wish him who has ceased to remain?”

“No, he may now be removed.”

The patriarch nodded. “Crownsil and Superintendent,” he addressed the officials of his people, “do you leave the holy house now, taking him who has ceased with you to be prepared for the place of peace. Tell the people to return to their homes or their tasks; while we live, the duties of life must go on. Successor, you may retire to your chambers. Blessed be the Wor’d, in grief as in joy.” He raised his hand in benediction and dismissal.

And while some were reverently removing the body of the Storesman, and others carried the Slave away, and the rest were trooping out in silence, Ellery thought: And now I’ve committed a crime, too … For in whichever state the Valley existed—he had never thought to ask Otto Schmidt!—there was a law-enforcement agency, at least a county sheriff, whom he should be notifying that a murder had been committed. Yet until this moment, watching the Quenanites carting off the body of the murder victim to be prepared for burial, the thought had not crossed his mind.

Well, he could not. What an enormously greater crime it would be to open the doors of the Valley of Quenan to the world as it was!

When the last of the Crownsil had left, and the door was shut again, Ellery said, “Teacher, when we first met you told me that my coming was foretold, that I was to be your guide through a time of great trouble that was to come upon you.”

The old man bowed deeply in assent, then raised his head so that once more it was partly hidden by his hood.

“Then you must tell me everything that happened this afternoon, and you must tell me the time that everything happened, as exactly as you know.”

The ancient lids slipped down, leaving only slits. Then each eye was wide open, seeing across time.