“I suppose you think I’m an awful sissy,” she said, without turning. “But all I can see when I’m in there is his marbly face and blue lips and the crooked way his mouth hung open... not my daddy at all. Nothing, I suppose.”
“Come here, Laurel.”
She jerked about. Then she jumped of! the ledge and ran to him.
Ellery shut the bedroom door.
Laurel’s eyes hunted wildly. But aside from the four-poster bed, which was disarranged, she could see nothing unusual. The spread, sheets, and quilt were peeled back, revealing the side walls of the box spring and mattress.
“What―?”
“The note you saw him remove from the dog’s collar,” Ellery said. “It was on thin paper, didn’t you tell me?”
“Very. A sort of flimsy, or onionskin.”
“White?”
“White.”
Ellery nodded. He went over to the exposed mattress. “He was in this room for a week, Laurel, between his attack and death. During that week did he have many visitors?”
“The Priam household. Some people from the office. A few friends.”
“Some time during that week,” said Ellery, “your father decided that the note he had received was in danger of being stolen or destroyed. So he took out insurance.” His finger traced on the side wall of the mattress one of the perpendicular blue lines of the ticking. “He had no tool but a dull penknife from the night table there. And I suppose he was in a hurry, afraid he might be caught at it. So the job had to be crude.” Half his finger suddenly vanished. “He simply made a slit here, where the blue line meets the undyed ticking. And he slipped the paper into it, where I found it.”
“The note,” breathed Laurel. “You’ve found the note. Let me see!”
Ellery put his hand in his pocket. But just as he was about to withdraw it, he stopped. His eyes were on one of the windows.
Some ten yards away there was an old walnut tree.
“Yes?” Laurel was confused. “What’s the matter?”
“Get off the bed, yawn, smile at me if you can, and then stroll over to the door. Go out on the landing. Leave the door open.”
Her eyes widened.
She got off the bed, yawned, stretched, showed her teeth, and went to the door. Ellery moved a little as she moved, so that he remained between her and the window.
When she had disappeared, he casually followed. Smiling in profile at her, he shut the bedroom door.
And sprang for the staircase.
“Ellery―”
“Stay here!”
He scrambled down the black-tiled stairs, leaving Laurel with her lips parted.
A man had been roosting high in the walnut tree, peering in at them through Leander Hill’s bedroom window from behind a screen of leaves. But the sun had been on the tree, and Ellery could have sworn the fellow was mother-naked.
Chapter Four
The naked man was gone. Ellery thrashed about among the fruit and nut trees feeling like Robinson Crusoe. From the flagged piazza Ichiro gaped at him, and a chunky fellow with a florid face and a chauffeur’s cap, carrying a carton of groceries, was gaping with him.
Ellery found a large footprint at the margin of the orchard, splayed and deeptoed, indicating running or jumping, and it pointed directly to the woods. He darted into the underbrush and in a moment he was nosing past trees and scrub on a twisting but clear trail. There were numerous specimens of the naked print on the trail, both coming and going.
“He’s made a habit of this,” Ellery mumbled. It was hot in the woods and he was soon drenched, uncomfortable, and out of temper.
The trail ended unceremoniously in the middle of a clearing. No other footprints anywhere. The trunk of the nearest tree, an ancient, oakishlooking monster, was yards away. There were no vines.
Ellery looked around, swabbing his neck. Then he looked up. The giant limbs of the tree covered the clearing with a thick fabric of small spiny leaves, but the lowest branch was thirty feet from the ground.
The creature must have flapped his arms and taken off.
Ellery sat down on a corrupting log and wiped his face, reflecting on this latest wonder. Not that anything in Southern California ever really surprised him. But this was a little out of even God’s country’s class. Flying nudes!
“Lost?”
Ellery leaped. A little old man in khaki shorts, woolen socks, and a T-shirt was smiling at him from a bush. He wore a paper topee on his head and he carried a butterfly net; a bright red case of some sort was slung over one skinny shoulder. His skin was a shriveled brown and his hands were like the bark of the big tree, but his eyes were a bright young blue and they seemed keen.
“I’m not lost,” said Ellery irritably. “I’m looking for a man.”
“I don’t like the way you say that,” said the old man, stepping into the clearing. “You’re on the wrong track, young fellow. People mean trouble. Know anything about the Lepidoptera?”
“Not a thing. Have you seen―?”
“You catch ‘em with this dingbat. I just bought the kit yesterday ― passed a toy shop on Hollywood Boulevard and there it was, all new and shiny, in the window. I’ve caught four beauties so far.” The butterfly hunter began to trot down the trail, waving his net menacingly.
“Wait! Have you seen anyone running through these woods?”
“Running? Well, now, depends.”
“Depends? My dear sir, it doesn’t depend on a thing! Either you saw somebody or you didn’t.”
“Not necessarily,” replied the little man earnestly, trotting back. “It depends on whether it’s going to get him ― or you ― in trouble. There’s too much trouble in this world, young man. What’s this runner look like?”
“I can’t give you a description,” snapped Ellery, “inasmuch as I didn’t see enough of him to be able to. Or rather, I saw the wrong parts. ― Hell. He’s naked.”
“Ah,” said the hunter, making an unsuccessful pass at a large, paint-splashed butterfly. “Naked, hm?”
“And there was a lot of him.”
“There was. You wouldn’t start any trouble?”
“No, no, I won’t hurt him. Just tell me which way he went.”
“I’m not worried about your hurting him. He’s much more likely to hurt you. Powerful build, that boy. Once knew a stoker built like him ― could bend a coal shovel. That was in the old Susie Belle, beating up to Alaska―”
“You sound as if you know him.”
“Know him? I darned well ought to. He’s my grandson. There he is!” cried the hunter.
“Where?”
But it was only the fifth butterfly, and the little old man hopped between two bushes and was gone.
Ellery was morosely studying the last footprint in the trail when Laurel poked her head cautiously into the clearing.
“There you are,” she said with relief. “You scared the buttermilk out of me. What happened?”
“Character spying on us from the walnut tree outside the bedroom window. I trailed him here―”
“What did he look like?” frowned Laurel.
“No clothes on.”
“Why, the lying mugwump!” she said angrily. “He promised on his honor he wouldn’t do that any more. It’s got so I have to undress in the dark.”
“So you know him, too,” growled Ellery. “I thought California had a drive on these sex cases.”
“Oh, he’s no sex case. He just throws gravel at my window and tries to get me to talk drool to him. I can’t waste my time on somebody who’s preparing for Armageddon at the age of twenty-three. Ellery, let’s see that note!”
“Whose grandson is he?”
“Grandson? Mr. Collier’s.”
“Mr. Collier wouldn’t be a little skinny old gent with a face like a sun-dried fig?”
“That’s right.”