“You mean Ty?” murmured Ellery.
“I mean Ty. He’s taking up where his father left off!”
Ellery was silent. He was powerfully tempted to demonstrate to Bonnie how unfounded her suspicions were; he would have given a good deal to dispel that look in her eyes. But he steeled himself. “You’ll have to be careful, Bonnie.”
“Then you do think—”
“Never mind what I think. But remember this. The most dangerous thing you can do is give yourself to Ty Royle.”
Bonnie closed her eyes as she gulped down the dregs of her cocktail. When she opened them they were full of fear. “What shall I do?” she whispered.
Inwardly, Ellery cursed. But he merely said: “Watch your step. Care — care. Take care. Don’t talk to Ty. Don’t have anything to do with him. Avoid him as you would a leper.”
“A leper.” Bonnie shuddered. “That’s what he is.”
“Don’t listen to his love-making,” continued Ellery, not looking at her. “He’s liable to tell you anything. Don’t believe him. Remember, Bonnie.”
“How could I forget?” Tears sprang into her eyes. She shook her head angrily and groped for her handkerchief.
“That car,” muttered Ellery. “The one that’s been following you. Don’t worry about that. The men in it are protecting you. Don’t try to get away from them, Bonnie.”
But Bonnie scarcely heard him. “What good is my life?” she said dully. “I’m left alone in the world with a crazy beast after me, and... and—”
Ellery bit his lip, saying nothing, watching her pinch her nostrils with the handkerchief. He felt very like a beast himself.
After a while he ordered two more drinks, and when they came he urged one upon her. “Now stop it, Bonnie. You’re attracting attention.”
She dabbed at her reddened eyes very quickly then, and blew her little nose, and got busy with her powder-puff; and then she took up the second cocktail and began to sip it.
“I’m a fool,” she sniffled. “It seems all I do is weep, like some silly heroine in a movie.”
“Fine, fine. That’s more like it. By the way, Bonnie, did you know that your mother and Jack Royle paid a visit to your grandfather Tolland Stuart a week ago Wednesday?”
“You mean just before their engagement was announced? Mother didn’t tell me.”
“That’s odd.”
“Isn’t it.” She frowned. “How do you know?”
“Paula Paris told me.”
“That woman! How did she know?”
“Oh, she’s really not so bad,” said Ellery lamely. “It’s just her job, Bonnie. You ought to be able to see that.”
For the first time Bonnie examined him with the naked concentration of a woman seeking beneath the surface the signs of male weakness. “Oh, I see,” she said slowly. “You’re in love with her.”
“I?” protested Ellery. “Absurd!”
Bonnie clothed the nakedness of her glance and murmured: “Sorry. I suppose it’s immaterial where she found out. I do seem to recall now that mother was away all that day. I wonder why on earth she went to see grandfather. And with... that man.”
“What’s so surprising about that? After all, she’d decided to be married, and he was her father.”
Bonnie sighed. “I suppose so, but it seems queer.”
“In what way?”
“Mother hadn’t visited or spoken to grandfather — oh, more than two or three times in the past dozen years. I myself hadn’t been in that awful house in the Chocolate Mountains before last Sunday in at least eight years — I was wearing hair-ribbons and pinafores, so you can imagine how long ago that was. Why, if I’d passed grandfather on the street before Sunday I wouldn’t have recognized him. He never came to see us, you see.”
“I’ve meant to question you about that. Just what was the reason for the coldness between your mother and your grandfather?”
“It wasn’t coldness exactly. It was... well, it’s just that grandfather’s naturally a selfish person, all wrapped up in himself. Mother used to tell me that even as a little girl she never got much affection from him. You see, my grandmother died in childbirth, when mother was born — she was an only child — and grandfather sort of... let go after that. I mean—”
“Cracked up?”
“He had a nervous breakdown, mother said. He was never quite the same after. He took grannie’s death very hard, sort of blamed mother for it. If she hadn’t been born—”
“It’s not an uncommon masculine reaction.”
“I don’t want you to think he was brutal to mother, or anything like that,” said Bonnie quickly. “He always had a sense of obligation towards her financially. He had her brought up very well, with governesses and nurses and heaps of clothes and European trips and finishing schools and all that. But when she grew up and went on the stage and got along very well by herself — why, I suppose he thought his duties as a father ended right there. And he’s never paid the slightest attention to me.”
“Then why did your mother visit him last Wednesday?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” frowned Bonnie, “unless it was to tell him about her and Jack Royle getting married. Although certainly grandfather wouldn’t care what she did; he took no interest in her first marriage, so why should he take any in her second?”
“Could it have been because your mother needed money? You said the other day she was always stony.”
Bonnie’s lip curled. “From him? Mother always said she’d beg before she’d ask him for a cent.”
Ellery sat rubbing his upper lip with the tip of his finger. Bonnie finished her cocktail.
“Bonnie,” said Ellery suddenly, “let’s do something.”
“What?”
“Let’s get ourselves a plane and fly down to the Chocolate Mountains.”
“After the horrible way he acted Sunday?” Bonnie sniffed. “No, indeed. Not even going to his own daughter’s funeral! That’s carrying eccentricity a bit too far, at least for me.”
“I have a feeling,” said Ellery, rising, “that it’s important to find out why your mother and John Royle visited him nine days ago.”
“But—”
Ellery looked down at her. “It may help, Bonnie, to clear away the fog-
Bonnie was silent. Then she tossed her head and got up. “In that case,” she said firmly, “I’m with you.”
Chapter 15
Mr. Queen, Snoop
In the light of blessed day the Law of Dreadful Night reversed itself and Tolland Stuart’s eyrie from the sun-shot air lay revealed in all its sprawling, weatherbeaten grandeur — a more fearsome scab upon the knife-edged mountain landscape than it had ever been invisible under darkness.
“It’s a simply hideous place,” shivered Bonnie, peering down as the hired airplane circled the landing-field.
“It’s not exactly another Shangri-La,” said Ellery dryly, “even though it does resemble the forbidden city at the roof of the world. Has your worthy grandfather ever visited Tibet? It might explain the geographical inspiration.”
The gloomy pile crouched lifeless beneath them. And yet there was an illusion of life in the silent stones and turrets, lying still in the center of a web of power lines and telephone cables descending airily the slopes of the mountain.
“Is it my imagination,” said Bonnie, “or does that thing down there look like a spider?”
“It’s your imagination,” replied Ellery quickly. When they trundled to a stop on the tiny field, he said to the pilot: “Wait for us. We shan’t be long,” and took Bonnie’s arm in a casual but precautionary way. He helped her to the ground and hurried her towards the rift in the woods. As they passed the hangar he noted that its doors stood open and its interior was empty.