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 without touching it. 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.” Thome’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?” frowned Ellery.
“As if your life depended on it.” Thome’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 semi-consciousness, 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. “I see 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 ever so 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 along, and 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.”