The Origin of Evil (22 page)

‘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 cigarettes. ‘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 cigarette without looking.

Keats struck a match for him and then, absently, held it to his own cigarette; 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 door-step. 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 cigarettes 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 smouldering butt to a fresh cigarette, 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 grey 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.

13

It was almost eight o'clock when Ellery pulled up before a small stucco house tinted cobalt blue on Clybourn Avenue off Riverside Drive.

A hand-coloured wooden cut-out resembling Dopey, the Walt Disney dwarf, was stuck into the lawn on a stake, and on it a flowery artist had lettered the name Henderson.

The uniformly closed Venetian blinds did not look promising.

As Ellery went up the walk a woman's voice said, ‘If you're lookin' for Henderson, he's not home.'

A stout woman in an orange wrapper was leaning far over the railing of her red cement stoop next door, groping with ringed fingers for something hidden in a violet patch.

‘Do you know where I can reach him?'

Something swooshed, and six sprinklers sent up watery bouquets over the woman's lawn. She straightened, red-faced and triumphant.

‘You can't,' she said, panting. ‘Henderson's a picture actor. He's being a pirate mascot on location around Catalina or somewhere. He expected a few weeks' work. You a press agent?'

‘Heaven forbid,' muttered Ellery. ‘Did you know Mr. Henderson's dog?'

‘His dog? Sure I knew him. Frank, his name was. Always tearin' up my lawn and chasin' moths through my pansy-beds — though don't go thinkin',' the fat woman added hastily, ‘that I had anything to do with poisonin' Frank, because I just can't abide people who do things like that to animals, even the destroyin' kind. Henderson was all broke up about it.'

‘What kind of dog was Frank?' Ellery asked.

‘Kind?'

‘Breed.'

‘Well … he wasn't very big. Nor so little, neither, when you stop to think of it —'

‘You don't know his breed?'

‘I think some kind of a hunting dog. Are you from the Humane Society or the Anti-Vivisection League? I'm against experimentin' with animals myself, like the
Examiner
's, always sayin.' If the good Lord —'

‘You can't tell me, Madam, what kind of hunting dog Frank was?'

‘Well …'

‘English setter? Irish? Gordon? Llewellyn? Chesapeake? Weimaraner?'

‘I just guess,' said the woman cheerfully, ‘I don't know.'

‘What colour was he?'

‘Well, now, sort of brown and white. No, black. Come to think of it, not really white, neither. More creamy, like.'

‘More creamy, like. Thank you,' said Ellery. And he got into his car and moved fifty feet, just far enough to be out of his informant's range.

After thinking for a few minutes, he drove off again.

He cut through Pass and Olive, past the Warner Brothers' studio, into Barham Boulevard to the Freeway. Emerging through the North Highland exit into Hollywood, he found a parking space on McCadden Place and hurried around the corner to the Plover Bookshop.

It was still closed.

He could not help feeling that this was inconsiderate of the Plover Bookshop. Wandering up Hollywood Boulevard disconsolately, he found himself opposite Coffee Dan's. This reminded him vaguely of his stomach, and he crossed over and went in for breakfast. Someone had left a newspaper on the counter, and as he ate he read it conscientiously. When he paid his check, the cashier said, ‘What's the news from Korea this morning?' and he had to answer stupidly, ‘Just about the same,' because he could not remember a word he had read.

Plover was open!

He ran in and seized the arm of a clerk. ‘Quick,' he said fiercely. ‘A book on dogs.'

‘Book on dogs,' said the clerk. ‘Any particular kind of book on dogs, Mr. Queen?'

‘Hunting dogs! With illustrations! In colour!'

Plover did not fail him. He emerged carrying a fat book and a charge slip for seven and a half dollars, plus tax.

He drove up into the hills rashly and caught Laurel Hill a moment after she stepped into her stall shower.

‘Go away,' Laurel said, her voice sounding muffled. ‘I'm naked.'

‘Turn that water off and come out here!'

‘Why, Ellery.'

‘Oh …! I'm not the least bit interested in your nakedness —'

‘Thanks. Did you ever say that to Delia Priam?'

‘Cover your precious hide with this! I'll be in the bedroom.' Ellery tossed a bath-towel over the shower door and hurried out. Laurel kept him waiting five minutes. When she came out of the bathroom she was swaddled in a red, white, and blue robe of terry cloth.

‘I didn't know you cared. But next time would you mind at least knocking? Gads, look at my hair —'

‘Yes, yes,' said Ellery. ‘Now, Laurel, I want you to project yourself back to the morning when you and your father stood outside your front door and looked at the body of the dead dog. Do you remember that morning?'

‘I think so,' said Laurel steadily.

‘Can you see that dog right now?'

‘Every hair of him.'

‘Hold on to him!' Ellery yanked her by the arm and she squealed, grabbing at the front of her robe. She found herself staring down at her bed. Upon it, open to an illustration in colour of a springer spaniel, lay a large book. ‘Was he a dog like this?'

‘N-no …'

‘Go through the book page by page. When you come to Henderson's pooch, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, indicate same in an unmistakable manner.'

Laurel looked at him suspiciously. It was too early in the morning for him to have killed a bottle, and he was shaved and pressed, so it wasn't the tag end of a large night. Unless …

‘Ellery!' she screamed. ‘You've found out something!'

‘Start looking,' hissed Ellery viciously; at least it sounded vicious to his ears, but Laurel only looked overjoyed and began to turn pages like mad.

‘Easy,' he cried. ‘You may skip it.'

‘I'll find your old hound.' Pages flew like locust petals in a May wind. ‘Here he is —'

‘Ah.'

Ellery took the book.

The illustration showed a small, almost dumpy, dog with short legs, pendulous ears, and a wiry upcurving tail. The coat was smooth. Hindlegs and forequarters were an off-white, as was the muzzle; the little dog had a black saddle and black ears with secondary pigmentation of yellowish brown extending into his tail.

The caption under the illustration said:
BEAGLE
.

‘Beagle.' Ellery glared. ‘Beagle … Of course. Of
course
. No other possibility. None whatever. If I'd had the brain of a woodlouse … Beagle, Laurel, beagle!' And he swept her off her feet and planted five kisses on the top of her wet head. Then he tossed her on her unmade bed and before her horrified eyes went into a fast tap — an accomplishment which was one of his most sacred secrets, unknown even to his father. And Ellery chanted,
‘Merci
, my pretty one, my she-detective. You have follow ze clue of ze ar-sen-ique, of ze little frog, of ze wallette, of ze everysing, but ze sing you know all ze time — zat is to say, ze beagle. Oh, ze beagle!' And he changed to a soft-shoe.

‘But what's the breed of dog got to do with anything, Ellery?' moaned Laurel. ‘The only connection I can see with the word beagle is its slang meaning. Isn't a “beagle” a detective?'

‘Ironic, isn't it?' chortled Ellery; and he exited doing a Shuffle-Off-to-Buffalo, blowing farewell kisses and almost breaking the prominent nose of Mrs. Monk, Laurel's housekeeper, who had it pressed in absolute terror to the bedroom door.

Twenty minutes later Ellery was closeted with Lieutenant Keats at the Hollywood Division. Those who passed the closed door heard the murmur of the Queen voice, punctuated by a weird series of sounds bearing no resemblance to Keats's usual tones.

The conference lasted well over an hour.

When the door opened, a suffering man appeared. Keats looked as if he had just picked himself up from the floor after a kick in the groin. He kept shaking his head and muttering to himself. Ellery followed him briskly. They vanished in the office of Keats's chief.

An hour and a half later they emerged. Keats now looked convalescent, even robust.

‘I still don't believe it,' he said, ‘but what the hell, we're living in a funny world.'

‘How long do you think it will take, Keats?'

‘Now that we know what to look for, not more than a few days. What are you going to do in the meantime?'

‘Sleep and wait for the next one.'

‘By that time,' grinned the detective, ‘maybe we'll have a pretty good line on this inmate.'

They shook hands solemnly and parted, Ellery to go home to bed and Keats to set the machinery of the Los Angeles police department going on a twenty-four-hour-a-day inquiry into a situation over twenty years old … this time with every prospect of success.

In three days not all the mouldy threads were gathered in, but those they had been able to pick up by teletype and long-distance phone tied snugly around what they already knew. Ellery and Keats were sitting about at the Hollywood Division trying to guess the lengths and textures of the missing ends when Keats's phone rang. He answered it to hear a tense voice.

‘Lieutenant Keats, is Ellery Queen there?'

‘It's Laurel Hill for you.'

Ellery took the phone. ‘I've been neglecting you, Laurel. What's up?'

Laurel said with a rather hysterical giggle, ‘I've committed a crime.'

‘Serious?'

‘What's the rap for lifting what doesn't belong to you?'

Ellery said sharply, ‘Something for Priam again?'

He heard a scuffle, then Crowe Macgowan's voice saying hastily, ‘Queen, she didn't swipe it. I did.'

‘He did not!' yelled Laurel. ‘I don't care, Mac! I'm sick and tired of hanging around not knowing —'

‘Is it for Roger Priam?
'

‘It is,' said Macgowan. ‘A pretty big package this time. It was left on top of the mailbox. Queen, I'm not giving Roger a hold over Laurel. I took it and that's that.'