The Origin of Evil (18 page)

She took out of the chest a white cardboard box about five inches by nine and an inch deep, bound with ordinary white string, and handed it to Keats.

‘Have you opened this, Mrs. Priam?'

‘No.'

‘Then you don't know what's in it?'

‘No.'

‘You found it exactly where and how, again?'

‘In our mailbox near the road. I'd gone down to pick some flowers for the dinner-table and I noticed it was open. I looked in and saw this. I took it upstairs, locked it in my chest, and phoned.'

The box was of cheap quality. It bore no imprint. To the string was attached a plain manila shipping tag. The name ‘Roger Priam' was lettered on the tag in black crayon, in carefully characterless capitals.

‘Dime store stock,' said Keats, tapping the box with a fingernail. He examined the tag. ‘And so is this.'

‘Delia.' At the sound of his voice she turned, but when she saw his expression she looked away. ‘You saw the box your husband received the morning Hill got the dead dog. Was it like this? In quality, kind of string, tag?'

‘Yes. The box was bigger, that's all.' There was a torn edge to the furry voice.

‘No dealer's imprint?'

‘No.'

‘Does the lettering on this tag look anything like the lettering on the other tag?'

‘It looks just like it.' She put her hand on his arm suddenly, but she was looking at Keats. ‘Lieutenant, I'd like to speak to Mr. Queen privately for a minute.'

‘I don't have any secrets from Keats.' Ellery was glancing down at his arm.

‘Please?'

Keats walked over to one of the windows with the box. He lifted the blind, squinting along the slick surface of the box.

‘Ellery, is it what happened the other night?' Her voice was at its throatiest, very low.

‘Nothing happened the other night.'

‘Maybe that's the trouble.' She laughed.

‘But a great deal has happened since.'

She stopped laughing. ‘What do you mean?'

He shrugged.

‘Ellery. Who's been telling you lies about me?'

Ellery glanced again at her hand. ‘It's my experience, Delia, that to label something a lie before you've heard it expressed is to admit it's all too true.'

He took her hand between his thumb and forefinger as if it were something sticky, and he dropped it.

Then he turned his back on her.

Keats had the box to his ear and he was shaking it with absorption. Something inside rustled slightly. He hefted the box.

‘Nothing loose. Sounds like a solid object wrapped in tissue paper. And not much weight.' He glanced at the woman. ‘I don't have any right to open this, Mrs. Priam. But there's nothing in the statutes to stop
you …
here and now.'

‘I wouldn't untie that string, Lieutenant Keats,' said Delia Priam in a trembling voice, ‘for all the filth in your mind.'

‘What did I do?' Keats raised his reddish brows as he handed the box to Ellery. ‘That puts it up to you, Mr. Queen. What do you want to do?'

‘You can both get out of my bedroom!'

Ellery said, ‘I'll open it, Keats, but not here. And not now. I think this ought to be opened before Roger Priam, with Mrs. Priam there, and Laurel Hill, too.'

‘You can get along without me,' she whispered. ‘Get out.'

‘It's important for you to be there,' Ellery said to her.

‘You can't tell me what to do.'

‘In that case I'll have to ask the assistance of someone who can.'

‘No one can.'

‘Not Wallace?' smiled Ellery. ‘Or one of his numerous predecessors?'

Delia Priam sank to the chest, staring.

‘Come on, Keats. We've wasted enough time in this stud pasture.'

Laurel was over in ten minutes, looking intensely curious. Padding after her into the cave-like gloom of the house came the man of the future. Young Macgowan had returned to the Post-Atomic Age.

‘What's the matter now?' he inquired plaintively.

No one replied.

By a sort of instinct, he put a long arm about his mother and kissed her. Delia smiled up at him anxiously, and when he straightened she kept her grasp on his big hand. Macgowan seemed puzzled by the atmosphere. He fixed on Keats as the cause, and he glared murderously from the detective to the unopened box.

‘Loosen up, boy,' said Keats. ‘Tree life is getting you. Okay, Mr. Queen?'

‘Yes.'

Young Macgowan didn't know. Laurel knew — Laurel had known for a long time — but Delia's son was wrapped in the lamb's wool of mother-adoration. I'd hate to be the first one, Ellery thought, to tell him.

As for Laurel, she had glanced once at Delia and once at Ellery, and she had become mousy.

Ellery waited on the threshold to the hall as Keats explained about the box.

‘It's the same kind of tag, same kind of crayon lettering, as on the dead dog,' Laurel said. She eyed the box grimly. ‘What's inside?'

‘We're going to find that out right now.' Ellery took the box from Keats and they all followed him up the hall to Priam's door.

‘Furl your mains'l,' said a voice. It was old Mr. Collier, in the doorway across the hall.

‘Mr. Collier. Would you care to join us? There's something new.'

‘I'll sit up in the rigging,' said Delia's father. ‘Hasn't there been enough trouble?'

‘We're trying to prevent trouble,' said Keats mildly.

‘So you go looking for it. Doesn't make sense to me,' said the old man, shaking his head. ‘Live and let live. Or die and let die. If it's right one way, it's right the other.' He stepped back and shut the library door emphatically.

Ellery tried Priam's door. It was locked. He rapped loudly.

‘Who is it?' The bull voice sounded slurry.

Ellery said, ‘Delia, you answer him.'

She nodded mechanically. ‘Roger, open the door, won't you?' She sounded passive, almost bored.

‘Delia? What d'ye want?' They heard the trundling of his chair and some glassy sounds. ‘Damn this rug! I've told Alfred a dozen times to tack it down —' The door opened and he stared up at them. The shelf before him supported a decanter of whisky, a siphon, and a half-empty glass. His eyes were bloodshot. ‘What's this?' he snarled at Ellery. ‘I thought I told you two to clear out of my house and stay out.' His fierce eyes lighted on the box in Ellery's hand. They contracted, and he looked up and around. His glance passed over his wife and stepson as if they had not been there. It remained on Laurel's face for a moment with a hatred so concentrated that Crowe Macgowan made an unconscious growling sound. Laurel's lips tightened.

He put out one of his furry paws. ‘Give me the box.'

‘No, Mr. Priam.'

‘That tag's got my name on it. Give it to me!'

‘I'm sorry, Mr. Priam.'

He raised the purplish ensign of his rage, his eyes flaming. ‘You can't keep another man's property!'

‘I have no intention of keeping it, Mr. Priam. I merely want to see what's inside. Won't you please back into the room so that we can come in and do this like civilized people?'

Ellery kept looking at him impassively. Priam glared in return, but his hands went to the wheels of his chair. Grudgingly, they pushed backwards.

Keats shut the door very neatly. Then he put his back against it. He remained there, watching Priam.

Ellery began to untie the box.

He seemed in no hurry.

Priam's hands were still at the sides of his chair. He was sitting forward, giving his whole attention to the untying process. His beard rose and fell with his chest. The purple flag had come down, leaving a sort of grey emptiness, like a foggy sky.

Laurel was intent.

Young Macgowan kept shifting from foot to naked foot, uneasily.

Delia Priam stood perfectly still.

‘Lieutenant,' said Ellery suddenly, as he worked over the last knot, ‘what do you suppose we'll find in here?'

Keats said, ‘After those dead frogs I wouldn't stick my chin out.' He kept looking at Priam.

‘Do you have to take out the knots?' cried Crowe, ‘Open it!'

‘Would anyone care to guess?'

‘Please
.' Laurel, begging.

‘Mr. Priam?'

Priam never stirred. Only his lips moved, and the beard around them. But nothing came out.

Ellery whipped the lid off.

Roger Priam threw himself back, almost upsetting the chair. Then, conscious of their shock, he fumbled for the glass of whisky. He tilted his head, drinking, not taking his glance from the box.

All that had been exposed was a layer of white tissue.

‘From the way you jumped, Mr. Priam,' said Ellery conversationally, ‘anyone would think you expected a hungry rattler to pop out at you, or something equally live and disagreeable. What is it you're afraid of?'

Priam set the glass down with a bang. His knuckles were livid. ‘I ain't afraid,' he spluttered. ‘Of anything!' His chest spread. ‘Stop needling me, you —! Or I swear —'

He brought his arm up blindly. It struck the decanter and the decanter toppled from the shelf, smashing on the floor.

Ellery was holding the object high, stripped of its tissue wrappings. He held it by its edges, between his palms.

His own eyes were amazed, and Keats's.

Because there was nothing in what he was displaying to make a man cringe.

It was simply a wallet, a man's wallet of breast-pocket size made of alligator leather, beautifully grained and dyed forest green. There were no hideous stains on it; it had no history; it was plainly brand-new. And high-priced; it was edged in gold. Ellery flipped it open. Its pockets were empty. There had been no note or card in the box.

‘Let me see that,' said Keats.

Nothing to make a man cower, or a woman grow pale.

‘No initials,' said Keats. ‘Nothing but the maker's name.' He scratched his cheek, glancing at Priam again.

‘What is it, Lieutenant?' asked Laurel.

‘What is what Miss Hill?'

‘The maker's name.'

‘Leatherland, Inc., Hollywood, California.'

Priam's beard had sunk to his chest.

Paler than Priam. For Delia Priam's eyes had flashed to their widest at sight of the wallet, all the colour running out of her face. Then the lids had come down as if to shut out a ghost.

Shock. But the shock of what? Fear? Yes, there was fear, but fear followed the shock; it did not precede.

Suddenly Ellery knew what it was.

Recognition.

He mulled over this, baffled. It was a new wallet. She couldn't possibly have seen it before. Unless … For that matter, neither could Priam. Did it mean the same thing to both of them? Vaguely, he doubted this. Their reactions had thrown off different qualities. Lightning had struck both of them, but it was as if Priam were a meteorologist who understood the nature of the disaster, his wife an ignorant bystander who knew only that she had been stunned. I'm reading too much into this, Ellery thought. You can't judge the truth of anything from a look … It's useless to attempt to talk to her now … In an indefinable way he was glad. It was remarkable how easily passion was killed by a dirty fact. He felt nothing when he looked at her now, not even revulsion. The sickness in the pit of his stomach was for himself and his gullibility.

‘Delia, where you going?'

She was walking out.

‘Mother.'

So Crowe had seen it, too. He ran after her, caught her at the door.

‘What's the matter?'

She made an effort. ‘It's all too silly, darling. It's getting to be too much for me. A wallet! And such a handsome one, too. Probably a gift from someone who thinks it's Roger's birthday. Let me go, Crowe. I've got to see Mrs. Guittierez about dinner.'

‘Oh. Sure.' Mac was relieved.

And Laurel …

‘The only thing that would throw me,' Keats was drawling, ‘I mean if I was in Mr. Priam's shoes —'

Laurel had been merely puzzled by the wallet.

‘— is what the devil I'd be expected to do with it. Like a battleship getting a lawn-mower.'

Laurel had been merely puzzled by the wallet, but when she had glimpsed Delia's face her own had reflected shock. The shock of recognition. Again. But this was not recognition of the object
per se
. This was recognition of Delia's recognition. A chain reaction.

‘When you stop to think of it, everything we know about these presents so far shows one thing in common —'

‘In common?' said Ellery. ‘What would that be, Keats?'

‘Arsenic, dead frogs, a wallet for a man who never leaves his house. They've all been so damned
useless
.'

Ellery laughed. ‘There's a theory, Mr. Priam, that's in your power to affirm or deny. Was your first gift useless, too? The one in the first cardboard box?'

Priam did not lift his head.

‘Mr. Priam. What was in that box?'

Priam gave no sign that he heard.

‘What do these things mean?'

Priam did not reply.

‘May we have this wallet for examination?' asked Keats.

Priam simply sat there.

‘Seems to me I caught the flicker of one eyelash, Mr. Queen.' Keats wrapped the wallet carefully in the tissue paper and tucked it back in the box. ‘I'll drop you off at your place and then take this down to the Lab.'

They left Roger Priam in the same attitude of frozen chaos.

Keats drove slowly, handling the wheel with his forearms and peering ahead as if answers lay there. He was chewing on a cigarette, like a goat.

‘Now I'm wrong about Priam,' laughed Ellery. ‘Perfect score.'

Keats ignored the addendum. ‘Wrong about Priam how?'

‘I predicted he'd blow his top and spill over at warning number four. Instead of which he's gone underground. Let's hope it's only a temporary recession.'