The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  Ellery drew a happy breath, telephoned Mrs. Thorne, tried to sound reassuring, yelled for Djuna, hurled some clothes into a bag, loaded his .38 police revolver with a grimace, scribbled a note for Inspector Queen, dashed downstairs and jumped into the cab Djuna had summoned, and landed on Pier 54 with thirty seconds to spare.

  There was something terribly wrong with Thorne, Ellery saw at once, even before he turned his attention to the vast fat man by the lawyer’s side. Thorne was shrunken within his Scotch-plaid greatcoat like a pupa which has died prematurely in its cocoon. He had aged years in the few weeks since Ellery had last seen him. His ordinarily sleek cobalt cheeks were covered with a straggly stubble. Even his clothing looked tired and uncared-for. And there was a glitter of furtive relief in his bloodshot eyes as he pressed Ellery’s hand that was, to one who knew Thorne’s self-sufficiency, almost pathetic.

  But he merely remarked, “Oh, hello, there, Queen. We’ve a longer wait than we anticipated, I’m afraid. Want you to shake hands with Dr. Herbert Reinach. Doctor, this is Ellery Queen.”

  “ ’D’you do,” said Ellery curtly, touching the man’s immense gloved hand. If he was to be omnipotent, he thought, he might as well be rude, too.

  “Surprise, Mr. Thorne?” said Dr. Reinach in the deepest voice Ellery had ever heard; it rumbled up from the caverns of his chest like the echo of thunder. His little purplish eyes were very, very cold.

  “A pleasant one, I hope,” said Thorne.

  Ellery snatched a glance at his friend’s face as he cupped his hands about a cigarette, and he read approval there. If he had struck the right tone, he knew how to act thenceforth. He flipped the match away and turned abruptly to Thorne. Dr. Reinach was studying him in a half-puzzled, half-amused way.

  “Where’s the Coronia?”

  “Held up in quarantine,” said Thorne. “Somebody’s seriously ill aboard with some disease or other and there’s been difficulty in clearing her passengers. It will take hours, I understand. Suppose we settle down in the waiting-room for a bit.”

  They found places in the crowded room, and Ellery set his bag between his feet and disposed himself so that he was in a position to catch every expression on his companions’ faces. There was something in Thorne’s repressed excitement, an even more piquing aura enveloping the fat doctor, that violently whipped his curiosity.

  “Alice,” said Thorne in a casual tone, as if Ellery knew who Alice was, “is probably becoming impatient. But that’s a family trait with the Mayhews, from the little I saw of old Sylvester. Eh, Doctor? It’s trying, though, to come all the way from England only to be held up on the threshold.”

  So they were to meet an Alice Mayhew, thought Ellery, arriving from England on the Coronia. Good old Thorne! He almost chuckled aloud. “Sylvester” was obviously a senior Mayhew, some relative of Alice’s.

  Dr. Reinach fixed his little eyes on Ellery’s bag and rumbled politely, “Are you going away somewhere, Mr. Queen?”

  Then Reinach did not know Ellery was to accompany them—wherever they were bound for.

  Thorne stirred. “Queen’s coming back with me, Dr. Reinach.” There was something brittle and hostile in his voice.

  The fat man blinked, his eyes buried beneath half-moons of damp flesh. “Really?” he said, and by contrast his bass voice was tender.

  “Perhaps I should have explained,” said Thorne abruptly. “Queen is a colleague of mine. This case has interested him.”

  “Case?” said the fat man.

  “Legally speaking. I really hadn’t the heart to deny him the pleasure of helping me—ah—protect Alice Mayhew’s interests. I trust you won’t mind?”

  This was a deadly game, Ellery became certain. Something important was at stake, and Thorne in his stubborn way was determined to defend it by force or guile.

  Reinach’s puffy lids dropped over his eyes as he folded his paws on his stomach. “Naturally, naturally not,” he said in a hearty tone. “Only too happy to have you, Mr. Queen. A little unexpected, perhaps, but delightful surprises are as essential to life as to poetry. Eh?” And he chuckled.

  Samuel Johnson, thought Ellery, recognizing the source of the doctor’s remark. The physical analogy struck him. There was iron beneath those layers of fat and a good brain under that dolichocephalic skull. The man sat there on the waiting-room bench like an octopus, lazy and inert and peculiarly indifferent to his surroundings. Indifference—that was it, thought Ellery! the man was a colossal remoteness, as vague and darkling as a storm cloud on an empty horizon.

  Thorne said in a weary voice, “Suppose we have lunch. I’m famished.…”

  By three in the afternoon Ellery felt old and worn. Several hours of nervous, cautious silence, threading his way smiling among treacherous shoals, had told him just enough to put him on guard. He often felt knotted-up and tight inside when a crisis loomed or danger threatened from an unknown quarter. Something extraordinary was going on.

  As they stood on the pier watching the Coronia’s bulk being nudged alongside, he chewed on the scraps he had managed to glean during the long, heavy, pregnant hours. He knew definitely now that the man called Sylvester Mayhew was dead, that he had been pronounced paranoiac, that his house was buried in an almost inaccessible wilderness on Long Island. Alice Mayhew, somewhere on the decks of the Coronia doubtless straining her eyes pierward, was the dead man’s daughter, parted from her father since childhood.

  And he had placed the remarkable figure of Dr. Reinach in the puzzle. The fat man was Sylvester Mayhew’s half brother. He had also acted as Mayhew’s physician during the old man’s last illness. This illness and death seemed to have been very recent, for there had been some talk of “the funeral” in terms of fresh if detached sorrow. There was also a Mrs. Reinach glimmering unsubstantially in the background, and a queer old lady who was the dead man’s sister. But what the mystery was, or why Thorne was so perturbed, Ellery could not figure out.

  The liner tied up to the pier at last. Officials scampered about, whistles blew, gang-planks appeared, passengers disembarked in droves. Interest crept into Dr. Reinach’s little eyes, and Thorne was shaking.

  “There she is!” croaked the lawyer. “I’d know her anywhere from her photographs. That slender girl in the brown turban!”

  As Thorne hurried away Ellery studied the girl eagerly. She was anxiously scanning the crowd, a tall charming creature with an elasticity of movement more esthetic than athletic and a harmony of delicate feature that approached beauty. She was dressed so simply and inexpensively that he narrowed his eyes.

  Thorne came back with her, patting her gloved hand and speaking quietly to her. Her face was alight and alive, and there was a natural gaiety in it which convinced Ellery that whatever mystery or tragedy lay before her, it was still unknown to her. At the same time there were certain signs about her eyes and mouth—fatigue, strain, worry, he could not put his finger on the exact cause—which puzzled him.

  “I’m so glad,” she murmured in a cultured voice, strongly British in accent. Then her face grew grave and she looked from Ellery to Dr. Reinach.

  “This is your uncle, Miss Mayhew,” said Thorne. “Dr. Reinach. This other gentleman is not, I regret to say, a relative. Mr. Ellery Queen, a colleague of mine.”

  “Oh,” said the girl; and she turned to the fat man and said tremulously, “Uncle Herbert. How terribly odd. I mean—I’ve felt so all alone. You’ve been just a legend to me, Uncle Herbert, you and Aunt Sarah and the rest, and now—” She choked a little as she put her arms about the fat man and kissed his pendulous cheek.

  “My dear,” said Dr. Reinach solemnly; and Ellery could have struck him for the Judas quality of his solemnity.

  “But you must tell me everything! Father—how is Father? It seems so strange to be—to be saying that.”

  “Don’t you think, Miss Mayhew,” said the lawyer quickly, “that we had better see you through the Customs? It’s growing late and we have a long trip before us. Long Island, you know.”
>
  As they made their way toward the Customs, Ellery dropped a little behind and devoted himself to watching Dr. Reinach. But that vast lunar countenance was as inscrutable as a gargoyle.…

  Dr. Reinach drove. It was not Thorne’s car; Thorne had a regal new Lincoln limousine and this was a battered if serviceable old Buick sedan.

  The girl’s luggage was strapped to the back and sides; Ellery was puzzled by the scantness of it—three small suitcases and a tiny steamer-trunk. Did these four pitiful containers hold all of her worldly possessions?

  Sitting beside the fat man, Ellery strained his ears. He paid little attention to the road Reinach was taking.

  The two behind were silent for a long time. Then Thorne cleared his throat with an oddly ominous finality. Ellery saw what was coming; he had often heard that throat-clearing sound emanate from the mouths of judges pronouncing sentence of doom.

  “We have something sad to tell you, Miss Mayhew. You may as well learn it now.”

  “Sad?” murmured the girl after a moment. “Oh, it’s not—”

  “Your father,” said Thorne inaudibly. “He’s dead.”

  She cried, “Oh!” in a small voice; and then she grew quiet.

  “I’m dreadfully sorry to have to greet you with such news,” said Thorne in the silence. “We’d anticipated— And I realize how awkward it must be for you. After all, it’s quite as if you had never known him at all. Love for a parent, I’m afraid, lies in direct ratio to the degree of childhood association. Without any association at all—”

  “It’s a shock, of course,” Alice said in a muffled voice. “And yet, as you say, he was a stranger to me, a mere name. As I wrote you, I was only a toddler when Mother got her divorce and took me off to England. I don’t remember Father at all. And I’ve not seen him since, or heard from him. I might have learned more about Father if Mother hadn’t died when I was six; but she did, and my people—her people—in England—Uncle John died last fall. He was the last one. And then I was left all alone. When your letter came I was—I was so glad, Mr. Thorne. I didn’t feel lonely anymore. I was really happy for the first time in years. And now—” She broke off.

  Dr. Reinach swiveled his massive head and smiled benignly. “But you’re not alone, my dear. There’s my unworthy self, and your Aunt Sarah, and Milly—Milly’s my wife, Alice; naturally you wouldn’t know anything about her—and there’s even a husky young fellow named Keith who works about the place—bright lad who’s come down in the world.” He chuckled. “So you see there won’t be a dearth of companionship for you.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Herbert,” she murmured. “I’m sure you’re all terribly kind. Mr. Thorne, how did Father— When you replied to my letter you wrote me he was ill, but—”

  “He fell into a coma unexpectedly nine days ago. You hadn’t left England yet and I cabled you at your antique-shop address. But somehow it missed you.”

  “I’d sold the shop by that time. When did he—die?”

  “A week ago Thursday. The funeral— Well, we couldn’t wait, you see. I might have caught you by cable or telephone on the Coronia, but I didn’t have the heart to spoil your voyage.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you for all the trouble you’ve taken.” Without looking at her Ellery knew there were tears in her eyes. “It’s good to know that someone—”

  “It’s been hard for all of us,” rumbled Dr. Reinach.

  “Of course, Uncle Herbert. I’m sorry.” She fell silent. When she spoke again, it was as if there were a compulsion expelling the words. “When Uncle John died, I didn’t know where to reach Father. The only American address I had was yours, Mr. Thorne, which some patron or other had given me. It was the only thing I could think of. I was sure a solicitor could find Father for me. That’s why I wrote to you in such detail, with photographs and all.”

  “Naturally we did what we could.” Thorne seemed to be having difficulty with his voice. “When I found your father and went out to see him the first time and showed him your letter and photographs, he—I’m sure this will please you, Miss Mayhew. He wanted you badly. He’d apparently been having a hard time of late years—ah, mentally, emotionally. And so I wrote you at his request. On my second visit, the last time I saw him alive, when the question of the estate came up—”

  Ellery thought that Dr. Reinach’s paws tightened on the wheel. But the man’s face bore the same bland, remote smile.

  “Please,” said Alice wearily. “Do you greatly mind, Mr. Thorne? I—I don’t feel up to discussing such matters now.”

  The car was fleeing along the deserted road as if it were trying to run away from the weather. The sky was gray lead; a frowning, gloomy sky under which the countryside lay cowering. It was growing colder, too, in the dark and drafty tonneau; the cold seeped in through the cracks and their overclothes.

  Ellery stamped his feet a little and twisted about to glance at Alice Mayhew. Her oval face was a glimmer in the murk; she was sitting stiffly, her hands clenched into tight little fists in her lap. Thorne was slumped miserably by her side, staring out the window.

  “By George, it’s going to snow,” announced Dr. Reinach with a cheerful puff of his cheeks. No one answered.

  The drive was interminable. There was a dreary sameness about the landscape that matched the weather’s mood. They had long since left the main highway to turn into a frightful byroad, along which they jolted in an unsteady eastward curve between ranks of leafless woods. The road was pitted and frozen hard; the woods were tangles of dead trees and underbrush densely packed but looking as if they had been repeatedly seared by fire. The whole effect was one of widespread and oppressive desolation.

  “Looks like No Man’s Land,” said Ellery at last from his bouncing seat beside Dr. Reinach. “And feels like it, too.”

  Dr. Reinach’s cetaceous back heaved in a silent mirth. “Matter of fact, that’s exactly what it’s called by the natives. Land-God-forgot, eh? But then Sylvester always swore by the Greek unities.”

  The man seemed to live in a dark and silent cavern, out of which he maliciously emerged at intervals to poison the atmosphere.

  “It isn’t very inviting-looking, is it?” remarked Alice in a low voice. It was clear she was brooding over the strange old man who had lived in this wasteland, and of her mother who had fled from it so many years before.

  “It wasn’t always this way,” said Dr. Reinach, swelling his cheeks like a bullfrog. “Once it was pleasant enough; I remember it as a boy. Then it seemed as if it might become the nucleus of a populous community. But progress has passed it by, and a couple of uncontrollable forest fires did the rest.”

  “It’s horrible,” murmured Alice, “simply horrible.”

  “My dear Alice, it’s your innocence that speaks there. All life is a frantic struggle to paint a rosy veneer over the ugly realties. Why not be honest with yourself? Everything in this world is stinking rotten; worse than that, a bore. Hardly worth living, in any impartial analysis. But if you have to live, you may as well live in surroundings consistent with the rottenness of everything.”

  The old attorney stirred beside Alice, where he was buried in his greatcoat. “You’re quite a philosopher, Doctor,” he snarled.

  “I’m an honest man.”

  “Do you know, Doctor,” murmured Ellery, despite himself, “you’re beginning to annoy me.”

  The fat man glanced at him. Then he said, “And do you agree with this mysterious friend of yours, Thorne?”

  “I believe,” snapped Thorne, “that there is a platitude extant which says that actions speak with considerably more volume than words. I haven’t shaved for six days, and today has been the first time I left Sylvester Mayhew’s house since his funeral.”

  “Mr. Thorne!” cried Alice, turning to him. “Why?”

  The lawyer muttered, “I’m sorry, Miss Mayhew. All in good time, in good time.”

  “You wrong us all,” smiled Dr. Reinach, deftly skirting a deep rut in the road. “And I’m afrai
d you’re giving my niece quite the most erroneous impression of her family. We’re odd, no doubt, and our blood is presumably turning sour after so many generations of cold storage; but then don’t the finest vintages come from the deepest cellars? You’ve only to glance at Alice to see my point. Such vital loveliness could only have been produced by an old family.”

  “My mother,” said Alice, with a faint loathing in her glance, “had something to do with that, Uncle Herbert.”

  “Your mother, my dear,” replied the fat man, “was merely a contributory factor. You have the typical Mayhew features.”

  Alice did not reply. Her uncle, whom until today she had not seen, was an obscene enigma; the others, waiting for them at their destination, she had never seen at all, and she had no great hope that they would prove better. A livid streak ran through her father’s family; he had been a paranoiac with delusions of persecution. The Aunt Sarah in the dark distance, her father’s surviving sister, was apparently something of a character. As for Aunt Milly, Dr. Reinach’s wife, whatever she might have been in the past, one had only to glance at Dr. Reinach to see what she undoubtedly was in the present.

  Ellery felt prickles at the nape of his neck. The farther they penetrated this wilderness the less he liked the whole adventure. It smacked vaguely of a fore-ordained theatricalism, as if some hand of monstrous power were setting the stage for the first act of a colossal tragedy.… He shrugged this sophomoric foolishness off, settling deeper into his coat. It was queer enough, though. Even the lifelines of the most indigent community were missing; there were no telephone poles and, so far as he could detect, no electric cables. That meant candles. He detested candles.

  The sun was behind them, leaving them. It was a feeble sun, but feeble as it was, Ellery wished it would stay.

  They crashed on and on, endlessly, shaken like dolls. The road kept lurching toward the east in a stubborn curve. The sky grew more and more leaden. The cold seeped deeper and deeper into their bones.