Laurel’s lips thinned. She raised her fist and hammered on the door.
“Whoever that is, Alfred―! Foss, you still there?”
A man opened the heavy door and slipped into the hall, pulling the door to and keeping his hand on the knob behind him.
“You picked a fine time, Laurel. He’s on the phone to the office.”
“So I hear,” said Laurel. “Mr. Queen, Mr. Wallace. His other name ought to be Job, but it’s Alfred. The perfect man, I call him. Super-efficient. Discreet as all get-out. Never slips. One side, Alfred. I’ve got business with my partner.”
“Better let me set him up,” said Wallace with a smile. As he slipped back into the room, his eyes flicked over Ellery. Then the door was shut again, and Ellery waved his right hand tenderly. It still tingled from Wallace’s grip.
“Surprised?” murmured Laurel.
Ellery was. He had expected a Milquetoast character. Instead Alfred Wallace was a towering, powerfully assembled man with even, rather sharp, features, thick white hair, a tan, and an air of lean distinction. His voice was strong and thoughtful, with the merest touch of... superiority? Whatever it was, it was barely enough to impress, not quite enough to annoy. Wallace might have stepped out of a set on the M-G-M lot labeled High Society Drawing Room; and, in fact, “well-preserved actor” had been Ellery’s impulsive characterization ― Hollywood leading-men types with Athletic Club tans were turning up these days in the most unexpected places, swallowing their pride in order to be able to swallow at all. But a moment later Ellery was not so sure. Wallace’s shoulders did not look as if they came of! with his coat. His physique, even his elegance, seemed homegrown.
“I should think you’d be smitten, Laurel,” said Ellery as they waited. “That’s a virile character. Perfectly disciplined, and dashing as the devil.”
“A little too old,” said Laurel. “For me, that is.”
“He can’t be much more than fifty-five. And he doesn’t look forty-five, white hair notwithstanding.”
“Alfred would be too old for me if he were twenty.― Oh. Well? Do I have to get Mr. Queen to brush you aside, Alfred, or is the Grand Vizier going to play gracious this morning?”
Alfred Wallace smiled and let them pass.
The man who slammed the phone down and spun the steel chair about as if it were a studio production of balsa wood was a creature of immensities. He was all bulge, spread, and thickness. Bull eyes blazed above iron cheekbones; the nose was a massive snout; a tremendous black beard fell to his chest. The hands which gripped the wheels of the chair were enormous; forearms and biceps strained his coat sleeves. And the whole powerful mechanism was in continuous movement, as if even that great frame was unable to contain his energy. Something by Wolf Larsen out of Captain Teach, on a restless quarter-deck. Besides that immense torso Alfred Wallace’s strong figure looked frail. And Ellery felt like an underfed boy.
But below the waist Roger Priam was dead. His bulk sat on a withered base, an underpinning of skeletal flesh and atrophied muscle. He was trousered and shod ― and Ellery tried not to imagine the labor that went into that operation twice daily ― but his ankles were visible, two shriveled bones, and his knees were twisted projections, like girders struck by lightning. The whole shrunken substructure of his body hung useless.
It was all explicable, Ellery thought, on ordinary grounds: the torso overdeveloped by the extraordinary exertions required for the simplest movement; the beard grown to eliminate one of the irksome processes of his daily toilet; the savage manner an expression of his hatred of the fate that had played such a trick on him; and the restlessness a sign of the agony he endured to maintain a sitting position. Those were the reasons; still, they left something unexplained... Ferocity ― fierce strength, fierce emotions, fierce reaction to pain and people ― ferocity seemed his center. Take everything else away, and Ellery suspected it would still be there. He must have been fierce in his mother’s womb, a wild beast by nature. What had happened to him merely brought it into play.
“What d’ye want, Laurel? Who’s this?” His voice was a coarse, threatening bass, rumbling up from his chest like live lava. He was still furious from his telephone conversation with the hapless Foss; his eyes were filled with hate. “What are you looking at? Why don’t you open your mouth?”
“This is Ellery Queen.”
“Who?”
Laurel repeated it.
“Never heard of him. What’s he want?” The feral glance turned on Ellery. “What d’ye want? Hey?”
“Mr. Priam,” said the beautiful voice of Alfred Wallace from the doorway, “Ellery Queen is a famous writer.”
“Writer?”
“And detective, Mr. Priam.”
Priam’s lips pushed out, dragging his beard forward. The great hands on the wheel became clamps.
“I told you I wasn’t going to let go, Roger,” said Laurel evenly. “My father was murdered. There must have been a reason. And whatever it Was, you were mixed up in it as well as Daddy. I’ve asked Ellery Queen to investigate, and he wants to talk to you.”
“He does, does he?” The rumble was distant; the fiery eyes gave out heat. “Go ahead, Mister. Talk away.”
“In the first place, Mr. Priam,” said Ellery, “I’d like to know―”
“The answer is no,” said Roger Priam, his teeth showing through his beard. “What’s in the second place?”
“Mr. Priam,” Ellery began again, patiently.
“No good, Mister. I don’t like your questions. Now you listen to me, Laurel.” His right fist crashed on the arm of the chair. “You’re a damn busybody. This ain’t your business. It’s mine. I’ll tend to it. I’ll do it my way, and I’ll do it myself. Can you get that through v your head?”
“You’re afraid, Roger,” said Laurel Hill.
Priam half-raised his bulk, his eyes boiling. The lava burst with a roar.
“Me afraid? Afraid of what? A ghost? What d’ye think I am, another Leander Hill? The snivelin’ dirt! Shaking in his shoes ― looking over his shoulder ― creeping on his face! He was born a yellow-belly, and he died the same―”
Laurel hit him on the cheek with her fist. His left arm came up impatiently and brushed her aside. She staggered backward halfway across the room into Alfred Wallace’s arms.
“Let go of me,” she whispered. “Let go!”
“Laurel,” said Ellery.
She stopped, breathing from her diaphragm. Wallace silently released her.
Laurel walked out of the room.
“Afraid!” A spot swelled on Priam’s cheekbone. “You think so?” he bellowed after her. “Well, a certain somebody’s gonna find out that my pump don’t go to pieces at the first blow! Afraid, am I? I’m ready for the goddam! Any hour of the day or night, understand? Any time he wants to show his scummy hand! He’ll find out I got a pretty good pair myself!” And he opened and closed his murderous hands, and Ellery thought again of Wolf Larsen.
“Roger. What’s the matter?”
And there she was in the doorway. She had changed to a hostess gown of golden silk which clung as if it loved her. It was slit to the knee. She was glancing coolly from her husband to Ellery.
Wallace’s eyes were on her. They seemed amused.
“Who is this man?”
“Nobody. Nothing, Delia. It don’t concern you.” Priam glared at Ellery. “You. Get out!”
She had come downstairs just to establish the fact that she didn’t know him. As a point in character, it should have interested him. 1 % stead, it annoyed him. Why, he could not quite make out. What was he to Hecuba? Although she was making clear enough what Hecuba was to him. He felt chagrined and challenged, and at the same time he wondered if she affected other men the same way... Wallace was enjoying himself discreetly, like a playgoer who has caught a point which escaped the rest of the audience and is too polite to laugh aloud... Her attitude toward her husband was calm, without fear or any other visible emotion.