by Otto Penzler
When Dr. Reinach finally rumbled, “Here we are,” and steered the jolting car leftward off the road into a narrow, wretchedly graveled driveway, Ellery came to with a start of surprise and relief. So their journey was really over, he thought.
He roused himself, stamping his icy feet, looking about. The same desolate tangle of woods to either side of the byroad. He recalled now that they had not once left the main road nor crossed another road since turning off the highway. No chance, he thought grimly, to stray off this path to perdition.
Dr. Reinach said, “Welcome home, Alice.”
Alice murmured something incomprehensible; her face was buried to the eyes in the moth-eaten lap robe Reinach had flung over her. Ellery glanced sharply at the fat man; there had been a note of mockery, of derision, in that heavy rasping voice. But the face was smooth and damp and bland, as before.
Dr. Reinach ran the car up the driveway and brought it to rest a little before, and between, two houses. These structures flanked the drive, standing side by side, separated by only the width of the drive, which led straight ahead to a ramshackle garage. Ellery caught a glimpse of Thorne’s glittering Lincoln within its crumbling walls. The three buildings huddled in a ragged clearing, surrounded by the tangle of woods, like three desert islands in an empty sea.
“That,” said Dr. Reinach heartily, “is the ancestral mansion, Alice. To the left.”
The house to the left was of stone; once gray, but now so tarnished by the elements and perhaps the ravages of fire that it was almost black. Its face was blotched and streaky, as if it had succumbed to an insensate leprosy. Rising three stories, elaborately ornamented with stone flora and gargoyles, it was unmistakably Victorian in its architecture. The façade had a neglected, granular look that only the art of great age could have etched. The whole structure appeared to have thrust its roots immovably into the forsaken landscape.
Ellery saw Alice Mayhew staring at it with a sort of speechless horror; it had nothing of the pleasant hoariness of old English mansions. It was simply old, old with the dreadful age of this seared and blasted countryside. He cursed Thorne beneath his breath for subjecting the girl to such a shocking experience.
“Sylvester called it The Black House,” said Dr. Reinach cheerfully as he turned off the ignition. “Not pretty, I admit, but as solid as the day it was built, seventy-five years ago.”
“Black House,” grunted Thorne. “Rubbish.”
“Do you mean to say,” whispered Alice, “that Father—Mother lived here?”
“Yes, my dear. Quaint name, eh, Thorne? Another illustration of Sylvester’s preoccupation with the morbidly colorful. Built by your grandfather, Alice. The old gentleman built this one, too, later; I believe you’ll find it considerably more habitable. Where the devil is everyone?”
He descended heavily and held the rear door open for his niece. Mr. Ellery Queen slipped down to the driveway on the other side and glanced about with the sharp, uneasy sniff of a wild animal. The old mansion’s companion-house was a much smaller and less pretentious dwelling, two stories high and built of an originally white stone which had turned gray. The front door was shut and the curtains at the lower windows were drawn. But there was a fire burning somewhere inside; he caught the tremulous glimmers. In the next moment they were blotted out by the head of an old woman, who pressed her face to one of the panes for a single instant and then vanished. But the door remained shut.
“You’ll stop with us, of course,” he heard the doctor say genially; and Ellery circled the car. His three companions were standing in the driveway, Alice pressed close to old Thorne as if for protection. “You won’t want to sleep in the Black House, Alice. No one’s there, it’s in rather a mess; and a house of death, y’know.”
“Stop it,” growled Thorne. “Can’t you see the poor child is half-dead from fright as it is? Are you trying to scare her away?”
“Scare me away?” repeated Alice, dazedly.
“Tut, tut,” smiled the fat man. “Melodrama doesn’t become you at all, Thorne. I’m a blunt old codger, Alice, but I mean well. It will really be more comfortable in the White House.” He chuckled suddenly again. “White House. That’s what I named it to preserve a sort of atmospheric balance.”
“There’s something frightfully wrong here,” said Alice in a tight voice. “Mr. Thorne, what is it? There’s been nothing but innuendo and concealed hostility since we met at the pier. And just why did you spend six days in father’s house after the funeral? I think I’ve a right to know.”
Thorne licked his lips. “I shouldn’t—”
“Come, come, my dear,” said the fat man. “Are we to freeze here all day?”
Alice drew her thin coat more closely about her. “You’re all being beastly. Would you mind, Uncle Herbert? I should like to see the inside—where Father and Mother—”
“I don’t think so, Miss Mayhew,” said Thorne hastily.
“Why not?” said Dr. Reinach tenderly, and he glanced once over his shoulder at the building he had called the White House. “She may as well do it now and get it over with. There’s still light enough to see by. Then we’ll go over, wash up, have a hot dinner, and you’ll feel worlds better.” He seized the girl’s arm and marched her toward the dark building, across the dead, twig-strewn ground. “I believe,” he continued blandly, as they mounted the steps of the stone porch, “that Mr. Thorne has the keys.”
The girl stood quietly waiting, her dark eyes studying the faces of the three men. The attorney was pale, but his lips were set in a stubborn line. He did not reply. Taking a bunch of large rusty keys out of a pocket, he fitted one into the lock of the front door. It turned over with a creak. Then Thorne pushed open the door and they stepped into the house.
It was a tomb. It smelled of must and damp. The furniture, ponderous pieces which once no doubt had been regal, was uniformly dilapidated and dusty. The walls were peeling, showing broken, discolored laths beneath. There was dirt and debris everywhere. It was inconceivable that a human being could once have inhabited this grubby den.
The girl stumbled about, her eyes a blank horror, Dr. Reinach steering her calmly. How long the tour of inspection lasted Ellery did not know; even to him, a stranger, the effect was so oppressive as to be almost unendurable. They wandered about, silent, stepping over trash from room to room, impelled by something stronger than themselves. Once Alice said in a strangled voice, “Uncle Herbert, didn’t anyone—take care of Father? Didn’t anyone ever clean up this horrible place?”
The fat man shrugged. “Your father had notions in his old age, my dear. There wasn’t much anyone could do with him. Perhaps we had better not go into that.”
The sour stench filled their nostrils. They blundered on, Thorne in the rear, watchful as an old cobra. His eyes never left Dr. Reinach’s face.
On the middle floor they came upon a bedroom in which, according to the fat man, Sylvester Mayhew had died. The bed was unmade; indeed, the impress of the dead man’s body on the mattress and tumbled sheets could still be discerned. It was a bare and mean room, not as filthy as the others, but infinitely more depressing. Alice began to cough.
She coughed and coughed, hopelessly, standing still in the center of the room and staring at the dirty bed in which she had been born. Then suddenly she stopped coughing and ran over to a lopsided bureau with one foot missing. A large, faded chromo was propped on its top against the yellowed wall. She looked at it for a long time. Then she took it down.
“It’s mother,” she said slowly. “It’s really mother. I’m glad now I came. He did love her, after all. He’s kept it all these years.”
“Yes, Miss Mayhew,” muttered Thorne. “I thought you’d like to have it.”
“I’ve only one portrait of mother, and that’s a poor one. This—why, she was beautiful, wasn’t she?”
She held the chromo up proudly, almost laughing in her hysteria. The time-dulled colors revealed a stately young woman with hair worn high. The features were piquant and
regular. There was little resemblance between Alice and the woman in the picture.
“Your father,” said Dr. Reinach with a sigh, “often spoke of your mother toward the last, and of her beauty.”
“If he had left me nothing but this, it would have been worth the trip from England.” Alice trembled a little. Then she hurried back to them, the chromo pressed to her breast. “Let’s get out of here,” she said in a shriller voice. “I—I don’t like it here. It’s ghastly. I’m—afraid.”
They left the house with half-running steps, as if someone were after them. The old lawyer turned the key in the lock of the front door with great care, glaring at Dr. Reinach’s back as he did so. But the fat man had seized his niece’s arm and was leading her across the driveway to the White House, whose windows were now flickeringly bright with light and whose front door stood wide open.
As they crunched along behind, Ellery said sharply to Thorne, “Thorne. Give me a clue. A hint. Anything. I’m completely in the dark.”
Thorne’s unshaven face was haggard in the setting sun. “Can’t talk now,” he muttered. “Suspect everything, everybody. I’ll see you tonight, in your room. Or wherever they put you, if you’re alone. Queen, for God’s sake, be careful!”
“Careful?” Ellery frowned.
“As if your life depended on it.” Thorne’s lips made a thin, grim line. “For all I know, it does.”
Then they were crossing the threshold of the White House.…
Ellery’s impressions were curiously vague. Perhaps it was the effect of the sudden smothering heat after the hours of cramping cold outdoors; perhaps he thawed out too suddenly, and the heat went to his brain.
He stood about for a while in a state almost of semiconsciousness, basking in the waves of warmth that eddied from a roaring fire in a fireplace black with age. He was only dimly aware of the two people who greeted them, and of the interior of the house. The room was old, like everything else he had seen, and its furniture might have come from an antique shop. They were standing in a large living-room, comfortable enough; strange to his senses only because it was so old-fashioned in its appointments. There were actually antimacassars on the overstuffed chairs! A wide staircase with worn brass treads wound from one corner to the sleeping-quarters above.
One of the two persons awaiting them was Mrs. Reinach, the doctor’s wife. The moment Ellery saw her, even as she embraced Alice, he knew that this was inevitably the sort of woman the fat man would choose for a mate. She was a pale and weazened midge, almost fragile in her delicacy of bone and skin; and she was plainly in a silent convulsion of fear. She wore a hunted look on her dry and bluish face; and over Alice’s shoulder she glanced timidly, with the fascinated obedience of a whipped bitch, at her husband.
“So you’re Aunt Milly,” sighed Alice, pushing away. “You’ll forgive me if I—It’s all so very new to me.”
“You must be exhausted, poor darling,” said Mrs. Reinach in the chirping twitter of a bird; and Alice smiled wanly and looked grateful. “And I quite understand. After all we’re no more than strangers to you. Oh!” she said, and stopped. Her faded eyes were fixed on the chromo in the girl’s hands. “Oh,” she said again. “You’ve been over to the other house already.”
“Of course she has,” said the fat man; and his wife grew even paler at the sound of his bass voice. “Now, Alice, why don’t you let Milly take you upstairs and get you comfortable?”
“I am rather done in,” confessed Alice; and then she looked at her mother’s picture and smiled again. “I suppose you think I’m very silly, dashing in this way with just—” She did not finish; instead, she went to the fireplace. There was a broad flame-darkened mantel above it, crowded with gewgaws of a vanished era. She set the chromo of the handsome Victorian-garbed woman among them. “There! Now I feel much better.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Dr. Reinach. “Please don’t stand on ceremony. Nick! Make yourself useful. Miss Mayhew’s bags are strapped to the car.”
A gigantic young man, who had been leaning against the wall, nodded in a surly way. He was studying Alice Mayhew’s face with a dark absorption. He went out.
“Who,” murmured Alice, flushing, “is that?”
“Nick Keith.” The fat man slipped off his coat and went to the fire to warm his flabby hands. “My morose protégé. You’ll find him pleasant company, my dear, if you can pierce that thick defensive armor he wears. Does odd jobs about the place, as I believe I mentioned, but don’t let that hold you back. This is a democratic country.”
“I’m sure he’s very nice. Would you excuse me? Aunt Milly, if you’d be kind enough to—”
The young man reappeared under a load of baggage, clumped across the living-room, and plodded up the stairs. And suddenly, as if at a signal, Mrs. Reinach broke out into a noisy twittering and took Alice’s arm and led her to the staircase. They disappeared after Keith.
“As a medical man,” chuckled the fat man, taking their wraps and depositing them in a hall-closet, “I prescribe a large dose of—this, gentlemen.” He went to a sideboard and brought out a decanter of brandy. “Very good for chilled bellies.” He tossed off his own glass with an amazing facility, and in the light of the fire the finely etched capillaries in his bulbous nose stood out clearly. “Ah-h! One of life’s major compensations. Warming, eh? And now I suppose you feel the need of a little sprucing up yourselves. Come, I’ll show you to your rooms.”
Ellery shook his head in a dogged way, trying to clear it. “There’s something about your house, Doctor, that’s unusually soporific. Thank you, I think both Thorne and I would appreciate a brisk wash.”
“You’ll find it brisk enough,” said the fat man, shaking with silent laughter. “This is the forest primeval, you know. Not only haven’t we any electric light or gas or telephone, but we’ve no running water, either. Well behind the house keeps us supplied. The simple life, eh? Better for you than the pampering influences of modern civilization. Our ancestors may have died more easily of bacterial infections, but I’ll wager they had a greater body immunity to coryza! … Well, well, enough of this prattle. Up you go.”
The chilly corridor upstairs made them shiver, but the very shiver revived them; Ellery felt better at once. Dr. Reinach, carrying candles and matches, showed Thorne into a room overlooking the front of the house, and Ellery into one on the side. A fire burned crisply in the large fireplace in one corner, and the basin on the old-fashioned washstand was filled with icy-looking water.
“Hope you find it comfortable,” drawled the fat man, lounging in the doorway. “We were expecting only Thorne and my niece, but one more can always be accommodated. Ah—colleague of Thorne’s, I believe he said?”
“Twice,” replied Ellery. “If you don’t mind—”
“Not at all.” Reinach lingered, eyeing Ellery with a smile. Ellery shrugged, stripped off his coat, and made his ablutions. The water was cold; it nipped his fingers like the mouths of little fishes. He scrubbed his face vigorously.
“That’s better,” he said, drying himself. “Much. I wonder why I felt so peaked downstairs.”
“Sudden contrast of heat after cold, no doubt.” Dr. Reinach made no move to go.
Ellery shrugged again. He opened his bag with pointed nonchalance. There, plainly revealed on his haberdashery, lay the .38 police revolver. He tossed it aside.
“Do you always carry a gun?” murmured Dr. Reinach.
“Always.” Ellery picked up the revolver and slipped it into his hip pocket.
“Charming!” The fat man stroked his triple chin. “Charming. Well, Mr. Queen, if you’ll excuse me I’ll see how Thorne is getting on. Stubborn fellow, Thorne. He could have taken pot luck with us this past week, but he insisted on isolating himself in that filthy den next door.”
“I wonder,” murmured Ellery, “why.”
Dr. Reinach eyed him. Then he said, “Come downstairs when you’re ready. Mrs. Reinach has an excellent dinner prepared and if you’re as hungry as I
am, you’ll appreciate it.” Still smiling, the fat man vanished.
Ellery stood still for a moment, listening. He heard the fat man pause at the end of the corridor; a moment later the heavy tread was audible again, this time descending the stairs. Ellery went swiftly to the door on tiptoe. He had noticed that the instant he had come into the room.
There was no lock. Where a lock had been there was a splintery hole, and the splinters had a newish look about them. Frowning, he placed a rickety chair against the doorknob and began to prowl.
He raised the mattress from the heavy wooden bedstead and poked beneath it, searching for he knew not what. He opened closets and drawers; he felt the worn carpet for wires. But after ten minutes, angry with himself, he gave up and went to the window. The prospect was so dismal that he scowled in sheer misery. Just brown stripped woods and the leaden sky; the old mansion picturesquely known as the Black House was on the other side, invisible from this window.
A veiled sun was setting; a bank of storm clouds slipped aside for an instant and the brilliant rim of the sun shone directly into his eyes, making him see colored, dancing balls. Then other clouds, fat with snow, moved up and the sun slipped below the horizon. The room darkened rapidly.
Lock taken out, eh? Someone had worked fast. They could not have known he was coming, of course. Then someone must have seen him through the window as the car stopped in the drive. The old woman who had peered out for a moment? Ellery wondered where she was. At any rate, a few minutes’ work by a skilled hand at the door— He wondered, too, if Thorne’s door had been similarly mutilated. And Alice Mayhew’s.…
Thorne and Dr. Reinach were already seated before the fire when Ellery came down, and the fat man was rumbling, “Just as well. Give the poor girl a chance to return to normal. With the shock she’s had today, it might be the finisher. I’ve told Mrs. Reinach to break it to Sarah gently.… Ah, Queen. Come and join us. We’ll have dinner as soon as Alice comes down.”
