There Was an Old Woman

by Ellery Queen

  "But why are you all fitting here?" cried Sheila. "Call a doctor, a psychiatrist! Call Bellevue!"

  "Not while I live," said the Old Woman.

  Her husband's face waxed and waned, purple and white. "Not while you live!" he spat at her. Then he ran from the room, as if ashamed .., as he had been running, Ellery suddenly knew, for over thirty years.

  "You're grown men, aren't you?" The old lady's mouth was wry.

  "Mother," said Mac. "You can stop this craziness. You know you can. All you have to do is say a word to Thurlow. He's scared to death of you ..." She was silent. "You won't?"

  The Old Woman banged on the table. "You're old enough to fight your own battles."

  "If precious li'l Thurl wants a duel, precious li'l Thud gets it, hey?" Mac laughed angrily.

  But his mother was on her way to the door.

  Sheila stopped her with a choked cry. "You never interfere except when it suits you—and this time it doesn't suit you, Mother! You don't care anything about the twins and me—you never have. Your darling Thurlow—that poor, useless lunatic! You'd let him have his way if he wanted to kill the three of us .., the three of us!"

  The Old Woman did not even glance at her younger daughter. She eyed Ellery instead. "Good night, Mr. Queen. I don't know what Charles Paxton's purpose was in bringing you here tonight, but now that you've seen my family, I hope you'll be discreet enough to hold your tongue. I want no interference from strangers!"

  "Of course, Mrs. Potts."

  She nodded and swept out.

  "What do you think, Ellery?" Charley's tone was brittle, ready to crack. "It's a bluff, isn't it?"

  The twins stared at Ellery, and Paxton, and Sheila .., but not Major Gotch, who, Ellery suddenly realized, was no longer among those present. The canny old goat had managed to slip out some time during the farce.

  "No, Charley," said Mr. Queen soberly, "I don't think this is a bluff. I think Thurlow Potts is in earnest. Of course, he's touched; but that won't keep Bob Potts out of the way of a bullet tomorrow morning. Let's put our heads together, the five of us."

  6 Ellery Betrays the Code of Duello

  The steps we can take," said Ellery without excitement, "are legion, but they have a common drawback—they involve the use of force. Thurlow can be arrested on some picturesque charge—there may be an old statute on the law books which forbids the practice of dueling, for example. Or he might be charged with threatening homicide. And so on. But he'd be out on bail—if I read your mother correctly—before he was fairly in the clink, and moreover he'd be smarting under a fresh 'injustice.' Or we could ship him off to Bellevue for observation. But I doubt if there are sufficient grounds either to keep him there or put him away in a mental hospital.. . No; can't be force."

  "Bob could duck out of town," suggested Mac.

  "Are you kidding?" growled his twin.

  "Besides, Thurlow would only follow him," said Sheila.

  "How about humoring him?" Charley scowled.

  Ellery looked interested. "What do you mean exactly?"

  "Why not go through with the duel, but pull its teeth?"

  "Charley .., that's it!" cried Sheila.

  "Fake it?" frowned Bob.

  "But how, Charley?" asked Mac.

  "Thurlow said he'd be satisfied if each man fired a single shot, didn't he? In fact, he said each gun was loaded with just one bullet. All right. Let each man fire one cartridge apiece tomorrow morning, but see that those cartridges are blank."

  "The legal mind," moaned Ellery. "These simple solutions! Charley, you're a genius. My hand, sir."

  They shook hands solemnly.

  "I knew I'd fallen in love with a Blue Plate special," laughed Sheila. She kissed Charley and then put her arms about her twin brothers.

  "What d'ye think, Bob?" asked Mac anxiously.

  The intended victim grinned. "To tell the truth, Mac, I was frightened blue. Yes, if we substitute blank cartridges for the real ones in the two guns, old Nutsy'll never know the difference."

  Sheila was to decoy Thurlow into the library at the rear of the house, on the ground floor, and keep him there while the men did the dirty work.

  "The real dirty work's my assignment," said Sheila darkly. And she sallied forth to find Thurlow.

  Mac volunteered to stand guard at the outpost. Ellery and Charley, it was agreed, must do the actual deed. Bob was to stay out of everything.

  Within ten minutes Mac was back with a report, his blue eyes glittering. He had seen Thurlow and Sheila come down from upstairs, chatting earnestly. They had gone into the library. Sheila had shut the door, winking at the hidden twin that all, so far at any rate, went well.

  Ellery stood musing. "Bob—can you shoot a revolver?"

  "If you show me the place where the blame thing goes off."

  "Ouch," said Mr. Queen. "Can Thurlow?"

  "He can shoot," said Mac shortly.

  "Oh, my. In that case, this mustn't fail. Charley, where's The Purple Avenger's lair?"

  The twins sped upstairs to their room. Charley Paxton and Ellery followed, and Charley led the great man to one of the numerous doors studding the upper hall.

  "Thurlow's?"

  Charley nodded, looking around uneasily.

  Ellery listened for a moment. Then, boldly, he went in. He stood in a tall and pleasant sitting room, profuse with fresh flowers and easy-chairs and books, and furnished with surprising good taste. Aside from a rather sexless quality, the room was cloistered and fragrant peace for anyone.

  "I see what you meant by Thurlow's potentialities, Charley," remarked Ellery "Did he fix this up himself?"

  "AU by his little self, Ellery—"

  "The man has dignity. I wonder what he reads." He ran his eye along the bookshelves. "Mm, yes. A little heavy on Paine, Butler, and Lincoln—ah, of course! Voltaire. No light reading at all, of course . .."

  "Ellery, for heaven's sake." Charley glanced anxiously at the door.

  "It gives the man a perspective," mused Ellery, and he moved on to Thurlow Potts's bedroom. This was a wee, chaste, almost monastic chamber. A high white bed, a highboy, a chair, a lamp. Ellery could see the little man clambering with agility into his bed, clad—no doubt this was an injustice—in a flannel nightshirt, and clutching a volume of The Rights of Man to his thick little bosom.

  "There it is," said Charley, who had his mind on his work.

  The Colt automatic lay on top of the highboy. Ellery picked it up negligently. "Doesn't look very formidable, does it?"

  "Has it got one cartridge in it, as Thurlow said?"

  Ellery investigated. "But of course it would. He's an honest man. Let us away, Charles." He slipped the Colt into his jacket and they left Thurlow's apartment, Charley acting furtive and relieved at once.

  "Where the devil do we get blank cartridges this time of night?" he asked in the hall. "All the stores are closed by now."

  "Peace, peace," said Ellery. "Charley, go downstairs to the library and join Sheila in keeping Mr. Thurlow Potts occupied. I don't want him back in his bedroom till I'm ready for him."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I," quoth Mr. Queen, "shall journey posthaste to my daddy's office at Police Headquarters. Don't stir from the library till I get back."

  When Charley had left him, Ellery ambled to the door through which he had seen Bob and Mac Potts disappear, knocked gently, was admitted, gave his personal reassurances that everything was going off as planned—and requisitioned Robert's Smith & Wesson.

  "But why?" Bob asked.

  "Playing it safe," grinned Ellery, from the hall. "I'll put a blank in this one, too."

  "But I don't like it, Ellery," grumbled Inspector Queen at Headquarters, when his son had told him and Sergeant Velie the story of Thurlow Potts's great adventure.

  "It ain't decent," said Sergeant Velie. "Fightin' a duel in the year of our Lord!"

  Ellery agreed it was neither decent nor to be condoned; but what, he asked reasonably, was a sounder solu
tion of the problem?

  "I don't know. I just don't like it," said the Inspector irritably, jamming a blank cartridge into the magazine of the Colt. He tossed it aside and slipped a center-fire blank into the top chamber of the Smith & Wesson.

  "That den of dopes've been in every screwball scrape you can imagine," complained the Sergeant, "but this one takes the hand-embroidered bearskin. Fightin' a duel in the year of our Lord!"

  "With the sting removed from Thurlow's stingers," argued Ellery, "it makes a good story, Sergeant."

  "Only story / want to hear," grunted his father, handing Ellery the two weapons, "is that this fool business is over and done with."

  "But Dad, there's no danger of anything going wrong when both guns are loaded with blanks."

  "Guns are guns," said Sergeant Velie, who was the Sage of Center Street.

  "And blanks are blanks, Sergeant." "Stop chattering! Velie, you and I are going to watch Thurlow Potts's duel at dawn tomorrow from behind that big Shoe on the front lawn," snapped Inspector Queen. "And may God have mercy on all our souls if anything goes haywire!"

  Ellery slipped back into the Potts mansion under an impertinent moon; but he made sure only the moon's eye saw him. Mr. Queen had a way with front doors.

  The foyer was empty. He stole towards the rear, listened for voices at the study door, nodded, and made his way in noiseless leaps up the staircase.

  Several minutes later he knocked on the twins' door. It opened immediately.

  "Well?" asked the Potts twins in one voice. They were nervous: cigaret butts littered the trays, and a bottle of Scotch had been, if not precisely killed, then at least criminally assaulted.

  "The deed is done," announced Mr. Queen, "the Colt and its blank are back on Thurlow's highboy, and here's your Smith & Wesson, Bob." "You're sure the damned thing won't kill anybody?" "Quite sure, Bob."

  Robert placed it gingerly on the night table between his bed and Mac's.

  "Then nothing can go wrong tomorrow morning?" growled Mac.

  "Oh, come. You're acting like a couple of children. Of course nothing can go wrong!"

  Ellery left the twins and cheerily went downstairs to the library. To his surprise, he found Thurlow in a mood more mellow than melancholy.

  "Hi," said Thurlow, describing a parabola with his left hand. His right was clasped about a frosty glass. "My second, ladies 'n' gentlemen. Can't have a duel without a second. Come in, Misser Queen. We were just discussing the possibility of continuing our conversation in more con-congenial surroundings. Know what I mean?" And Thurlow leered cherubically.

  "I know exactly what you mean, Mr. Potts," smiled Ellery. Perhaps Thurlow in his cups might prove a saner man than Thurlow sober. He nodded slightly to Sheila and Paxton, who looked exhausted. "A hot spot, eh, kid?"

  "Hot spot 'tis," beamed Thurlow. "Tha's my second, ladies 'n* gentlemen. Won'erful character." And Thurlow linked his arms in Ellery's, marching him out of the library to the tune of a rueful psalm which went: "Eat, drink, an' be merry, for tomorrow I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal youuuuu . . ."

  Thurlow insisted on Club Bongo. All their arguments could not dissuade him. Ellery could only hope fervently that Mr. Conklin Cliffstatter, of the East Shore jute and shoddy Cliffstatters, was getting drunk elsewhere this night In the cab on their way downtown, Thurlow fell innocently asleep on Ellery's shoulder.

  "This seems kind of silly," giggled Charley Paxton.

  "It is not, Charley!" whispered Sheila. "Maybe we can get him into such a good mood he'll call the duel off."

  "Hush. Uneasy lies the head." And indeed at that moment Thurlow awoke with a whoop and took up his dolorous psalm.

  Mr. Queen, Miss Potts, her eldest brother, and Mr. Paxton spent the night at Club Bongo, keeping its death watch with the curious characters who seemed to find its prancing maidens and tense comedians the most hilarious of companions.

  Fortunately, Mr. Cliffstatter was not among them.

  Mr. Queen was his suavest and most persuasive; he inserted little melodies of reasonableness into the chitchat; he suggested frequent libations at the flowing bowl.

  But all his efforts, and Sheila's, and Charley's, availed nothing. At a certain point, diabolically, Thurlow stopped imbibing; and to all suggestions that he call off the duel and make a peace with Bob, he would smile sadly, say, "Punctilio is involved my good frien's," and applaud the première danseuse enthusiastically.

  7 ... Pistola at Dawn

  They got back to the Potts grounds on the drive at a quarter of six. The dawn was dripping and jellyfish-gray, not cheerful. The thing was beyond reason, but there it was. A duel was to be fought in this clammy dawn, with pistols, on a sward, and with trees as sentinels.

  The three were exhausted; but not baggy-pantsed, tweed-coated Thurlow. He egged them on in his high-pitched voice, made higher than ordinary by a sort of ecstasy. Sheila and Charley and Ellery could scarcely keep step with him.

  They went directly from the sidewalk before the front gates across the grass to the obscene bronze bulk of the Shoe, above which the neon inscription, the potts shoe, $3.99 everywhere, still glowed faintly against the early morning sky.

  Thurlow glanced up at the silent windows of his mother's mansion beyond the Shoe. "Mr. Queen," he said formally, "you will find my pistol on the highboy in my bedroom."

  Ellery hesitated; then he bowed and hurried off to the house. In every story Ellery had ever read about a duel, the seconds bowed.

  As he rounded the Shoe, the Inspector's voice came to him in a low and wondering snarl. "He's going through with it, Velie!"

  "They'll never believe this downtown," whispered the Sergeant with hoarse awe. "Never, Inspector."

  The two men nodded tensely to Ellery as he strode by, and he nodded back. It wasn't so bad, he thought, as he vaulted up the front steps. In fact, it was rather fun. He realized how gay life had been for those old boys of the romantic age, and felt almost thankful to Providence for having brought Thurlow Potts into the world a century or two late.

  He realized, too, that part of his enjoyment derived from a certain giddiness of the brain, which in turn came from having tried to set Thurlow a Scotch example all night. Things were a little hazy as he tiptoed into the house, having used his magic on the lock of the front door.

  Where was everybody? Wonderful household! Two brothers are to duel to the death, and of their blood none cares sufficiently to let off snoring and be miserable. Or perhaps the Old Woman was awake, peering through the curtains of her bedroom window at the scene in miniature to be enacted on the grass before her Moloch. What could she be thinking, that extraordinary mother? And where was Steve Brent Potts? Probably drunk in his bed.

  Ellery stopped very suddenly halfway up the main staircase leading from the foyer to the bedroom floor. The house was silent, with that eeriest of silences which pervades a house at dawn, the silence of gray light. Not a sound. Not even a shadow. But—something? It seemed to be on the bedroom floor, and it seemed to pass the door of Thurlow Potts's apartment. Was it .., someone coming out of those two rooms?

  Ellery sped up the remaining steps and stopped catlike on the landing to survey the hall, both ways. No one. And the silence again.

  Man? Woman? Imagination? He listened very hard. But that deep, deep silence.

  He went into Thurlow's apartment, shut the door behind him, and began to search for more palpable clues. He spared neither time, eyesight, nor his clothes. But crawl and peer and pry as he might, he could detect no least sign that anyone had been there since he himself had left the premises the night before on his last visit. The tiny Colt lay exactly where he had placed it with his own hand after his trip to Police Headquarters for the blank cartridges—on Thurlow's highboy.

  Ellery seized Thurlow's automatic and left the apartment.

  Robert and Maclyn Potts appeared promptly at six. They marched from the house shoulder to shoulder, appeared not to notice Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie in the shadows at the ba
se of the Shoe's pedestal, rounded the Shoe, and stopped.

  The two parties stared solemnly at each other. Then Thurlow bowed to his brothers. Bob hesitated, glanced at Ellery, then bowed back. Behind Thurlow, Charley grinned and clasped his hands above his head. Bob's left eyelid drooped ever so little in reply.

  But Mac's expression was serious. "Look here, Thurl," he said, "hasn't this fool farce gone far enough? Let's shake hands all around and—"

  Thurlow glared disapprovingly at his adversary's twin. "You will please inform the gentleman's second," he said to Ellery, "that conversation with the principals is not considered good form, Mr. Queen."

  "I so inform him," replied Mr. Queen frigidly. "Now what do I do, Mr. Potts?"

  "I should be obliged if you would act as Master of Ceremonies as well as my second. It's a little irregular, but then I'm sure we can take a few liberties with the code."

  "Oh, of course," said Ellery hastily. Improvise, Brother Queen, improvise. Must be some sense in the code of duello somewhere, or was. "Mr. Thurlow Potts, your weapon," said Ellery in a grave voice. He handed the Colt, walnut stock forward, to his man.

  Mr. Thurlow Potts dropped the automatic into the right pocket of his coat. Then he turned and walked off a few paces, to stand there stiffly, a man alone with his Maker. Or so his back said.

  "I believe," continued Ellery, turning to Maclyn Potts, "that as your principal's second" you should be addressed. The' Master of Ceremonies should ask somebody if the duelists won't call the whole thing off. What say?"

  Before Mac could reply, Thurlow's voice came, annoyed. "No, no, Mr. Queen. As the offended party, the option is mine." It didn't sound right to Mr. Queen; more like a business conference. "And I insist: Honor satisfied."

  "But isn't there something in the code," the Master of Ceremonies asked respectfully, "about the duel being called off if the offender apologizes, Mr. Potts?"

  "I'll apologize. I'll do any blasted thing," snapped Bob, "to get off this damp grass."

  "No, no!" screamed Thurlow. "I won't have it that way. Honor satisfied, Mr. Queen, honor satisfied!"

  "Very well, honor satisfied," replied Mr. Queen hastily. "I think, then, that the principals should stand back to back. Right here, gentlemen. Mac, is your man ready?"