“Hello, Celeste,” said Ellery.
Her clothes were macerated and although she had evidently brushed them and applied, pins to secret parts, they looked like hardening lava. Her legs were rowdy: she carried her stockings.
“I don’t suppose you’d have an old pair of nylons around, Mr. Queen?”
“No,” said Ellery gravely. “My father, you know.”
“Oh, dear. Well! I’ll fix you men something in a jiffy,” and Celeste went into the kitchen with the sack.
“Superior, hey?” Jimmy stared at the swinging door. “You’ll note, Brother Queen, that the lady made no apology for her appearance. Definitely superior.”
“How’d you two manage to keep together last night?” asked Ellery, closing his eyes.
“Now don’t cork off on us, Ellery.” Jimmy began setting the dropleaf table.
“Why, the fact is we didn’t.”
“Oh?” said Ellery, opening one eye.
“We lost each other right after I got to her. She doesn’t remember how she got out, and neither do I. We kept hunting for each other all night. I found her around 5 A.M. sitting on the steps of Polyclinic Hospital, bawling.”
Ellery closed the eye.
“How do you like your bacon, Mr. Queen?” called Celeste.
Jimmy said, “Are you there?” and Ellery mumbled something. “Curly and wet, he says! — What, Ellery?”
“The last word,” said Ellery, “was ‘bawling.’”
“Her eyes out. I tell you, I was touched. Anyway, we had some coffee at an allnight joint and then we went looking for you. But you’d disappeared. We thought you’d probably got out all right and gone home, so we came up here. Nobody home, so I said to Celeste, ‘He won’t mind,’ and I climbed up the fire escape. For an eye, Ellery, you’re very careless about your windows.”
“Go on,” said Ellery, when Jimmy stopped.
“I don’t know if I can explain it. Why we came, I mean. I don’t think Celeste and I said two dozen words to each other after we clutched this morning. I think we both realized your position for the first time and we wanted to tell you we’ve been a couple of firstclass schlemihls and didn’t quite know how to do it,” Jimmy straightened a spoon. “This thing is awfully gross,” he said to the spoon. “The war all over again. In another form. The individual doesn’t mean a damn. Human dignity gets flushed down the drain. You have to get up to your elbow in muck to hold on to it. I didn’t see that till last night, Ellery.”
“Neither did I.” Celeste was in the kitchen doorway with a piece of toast in one hand and a buttery knife in the other. Ellery thought, Piggott and Johnson lost them last night; they must have. “You were right, Mr. Queen. After what we saw last night you were right.”
“About what, Celeste?”
“About suspecting Jimmy and me. Jimmy and me or anybody.”
“I guess what we wanted to hear you say was ‘Come back, all is forgiven,’” grinned Jimmy. But then he began on the cutlery again.
“So you waited here for me.”
“When we heard the news we knew what was keeping you. I made Celeste set into your bed — she was dead on her feet — and I parked on the sofa in here. Anything to connect the Petrucchi girl with the others?”
“No.”
“What about this cornhusker-poet character? What’s his name?”
“Whithacker?” Ellery shrugged. “Dr. Cazalis seems interested in him and they’re going to examine him carefully.”
“I’m one hell of a newspaperman.” Jimmy banged a spoon down. “All right, I’ll say it. Do you want us back?”
“I don’t have anything for you to do, Jimmy.”
“For me!” cried Celeste.
“Or for you.”
“You don’t want us back.”
“I do. But I have no work for you.” Ellery got up, groping for a cigaret. But his hands dropped. “I don’t know where to turn. That’s the truth. I’m absolutely hung up.”
Jimmy and Celeste looked swiftly at each other. Then Jimmy said, “You’re also absolutely pooped. What you need is to slice a herring with Morpheus. Hey, Celeste! The coffee!”
Ellery awoke to the sound of a loud voice. He switched on the night light.
8:12
The voice was driving. Ellery crawled out of bed, pulled on his robe and slippers, and hurried to the living room.
The voice was the radio’s. His father was lying back in the armchair. Jimmy and Celeste crouched on the sofa in a nest of newspapers.
“You two still here?”
Jimmy grunted. His long chin was nuzzling his chest and Celeste kept rubbing her drawnup bare leg in a reassuring way.
The Inspector was all bones and gray wilt.
“Dad—”
“Listen.”
“—reported tonight,” said the voice. “A third-rail short circuit on the BMT subway at Canal Street caused a panic and forty-six persons were treated for injuries. Trains out of Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station are running from ninety minutes to two hours behind schedule. The parkways out of the City are a solid double line of cars as far north as Greenwich and White Plains. Traffic is clogged for a large area around the Manhattan approaches to the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and the George Washington Bridge. Nassau County authorities report that traffic conditions on the major Long Island parkways are out of control. New Jersey, Connecticut, and upstate New York police report—”
Ellery snapped the radio off.
“What is it?” he asked wildly. “War?” His glance flew to the windows, as if he expected to see a flaming sky.
“New York’s turned Malay,” said Jimmy with a laugh.
“The amok. They’ll have to rewrite the psychology books.” He began to get up, but Celeste pulled him back.
“Fighting? Panic?”
“That Metropol Hall business last night was just the beginning, Ellery.” The Inspector was fighting something, nausea or rage. “It snapped a vital part. Started a sort of chain reaction. Or maybe it was the Petrucchi murder on top of the panic and riot — that was bad timing. Anyway, it’s all over the City. Been spreading all day.”
“They’re running,” said Celeste. “Everybody’s running.”
“Running where?”
“Nobody seems to know. Just running.”
“It’s the Black Death all over again,” said Jimmy McKell. “Didn’t you know? We’re back in the Middle Ages. New York is now the pesthole of the Western Hemisphere, Ellery. In two weeks you’ll be able to shoot hyenas in Macy’s basement.”
“Shut up, McKell.” The old man’s head rolled on the back of his chair. “There’s a lot of disorder, son, a lot. Looting, holdups... It’s been particularly bad on Fifth Avenue, 86th around Lexington, 125th, upper Broadway, and around Maiden Lane downtown. And traffic accidents, hundreds of traffic accidents. I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in New York.”
Ellery went to one of the windows. The street was empty. A fire engine screamed somewhere. The sky glowed to the southwest.
“And they say,” began Celeste.
“Who says?” Jimmy laughed again. “Well, that’s the point, my friends, whereupon today I’m proud to be one of the capillaries in the circulation system of organized opinion. We’ve really swung it this time, comrades.” He kicked a drooping newspaper. “Responsible journalism! And the blessed radio—”
“Jimmy,” said Celeste.
“Well, old Rip’s got to hear the news, hasn’t he? He’s slept through history, Miss Phillips. Did you know, sir, that there’s a citywide quarantine? It’s a fact. Or is it? That all schools will be shut down indefinitely — O happy day? That Father Knickerbocker’s chickens are to be evacuated to camps outside the metropolitan area? That all flights from La Guardia, Newark, and Idlewild have been nixed? That the Cat’s made of extremely green cheese?”