“And just who is Mr. Collier?”
“Delia Priam’s father. He lives with the Priams.”
“Her father.” You couldn’t keep her out of anything. “But if this Peeping Tom is Delia Priam’s father’s grandson, then he must be―”
“Didn’t Delia tell you,” asked Laurel with a soupçon of malice, “that she has a twenty-three year old son? His name is Crowe Macgowan. Delia’s child by her first husband. Roger’s stepson. But let’s not waste any time on him―”
“How does he disappear into thin air? He pulled that miracle right here.”
“Oh, that.” Laurel looked straight up. So Ellery looked straight up, too. But all he could see was a leafy ceiling where the great oak branched ten yards over his head.
“Mac!” said Laurel sharply. “Show your face.”
To Ellery’s amazement, a large young male face appeared in the middle of the green mass thirty feet from the ground. On the face there was a formidable scowl.
“Laurel, who is this guy?”
“You come down here.”
“Is he a reporter?”
“Heavens, no,” said Laurel disgustedly. “He’s Ellery Queen.”
“Who?”
“Ellery Queen.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I wouldn’t have time.”
“Say. I’ll be right down.”
The face vanished. At once something materialized where it had been and hurtled to the ground, missing Ellery’s nose by inches. It was a rope ladder. A massive male leg broke the green ceiling, then another, then a whole young man, and in a moment the tree man was standing on the ground on the exact spot where the trail of naked footprints ended.
“I’m certainly thrilled to meet you!”
Ellery’s hand was seized and the bones broken before he could cry out. At least, they felt broken. It was a bad day for the Master’s self-respect: he could not decide which had the most powerful hands, Roger Priam, Alfred Wallace, or the awesome brute trying to pulverize him. Delia’s son towered six inches above him, a handsome giant with an impossible spread of shoulder, an unbelievable minimum of waist, the muscular development of Mr. America, the skin of a Hawaiian ― all of which was on view except a negligible area covered by a brown loincloth ― and a grin that made Ellery feel positively aged.
“I thought you were a newshound, Mr. Queen. Can’t stand those guys ― they’ve made my life miserable. But what are we standing here for? Come on up to the house.”
“Some other time, Mac,” said Laurel coldly, taking Ellery’s arm.
“Oh, that murder foolitchness. Why don’t you relax, Laur?”
“I don’t think I’d be exactly welcome at your stepfather’s, Mac,” said Ellery.
“You’ve already had the pleasure? But I meant come up to my house.”
“He really means ‘up,’ Ellery,” sighed Laurel. “All right, let’s get it over with. You wouldn’t believe it secondhand.”
“House? Up?” Feebly Ellery glanced aloft; and to his horror the young giant nodded and sprang up the rope ladder, beckoning them hospitably to follow.
It really was a house, high in the tree. A one-room house, to be sure, and not commodious, but it had four walls and a thatched roof, a sound floor, a beamed ceiling, two windows, and a platform from which the ladder dangled ― this dangerous-looking perch young Macgowan referred to cheerfully as his “porch,” and perfectly safe if you didn’t fall off.
The tree, he explained, was Quercus agrifolia, with a bole circumference of eighteen feet, and “watch those leaves, Mr. Queen, they bite.” Ellery, who was gingerly digging several of the spiny little devils out of his shirt, nodded sourly. But the structure was built on a foundation of foot-thick boughs and seemed solid enough underfoot.
He poked his head indoors at his host’s invitation and gaped like a tourist. Every foot of wall-and floor-space was occupied by ― it was the only phrase Ellery could muster ― aids to tree-living.
“Sorry I can’t entertain you inside,” said the young man, “but three of us would bug it out a bit. We’d better sit on the porch. Anybody like a drink? Bourbon? Scotch?” Without waiting for a reply Macgowan bent double and slithered into his house. Various liquid sounds followed.
“Laurel, why don’t they put the poor kid away?” whispered Ellery.
“You have to have grounds.”
“What do you call this?” cried Ellery. “Sanity?”
“Don’t blame you, Mr. Queen,” said the big fellow amiably, appearing with two chilled glasses. “Appearances are against me. But that’s because you people live in a world of fantasy.” He thrust a long arm into the house and it came out with another glass.
“Fantasy. We.” Ellery gulped a third of the contents of his glass. “You, of course, live in a world of reality?”
“Do we have to?” asked Laurel wearily. “If he gets started on this, Ellery, we’ll be here till sundown. That note―”
“I’m the only realist I know,” said the giant, lying down at the edge of his porch and kicking his powerful legs in space. “Because, look. What are you people doing? Living in the same old houses, reading the same old newspapers, going to the same old movies or looking at the same old television, walking on the same old sidewalks, riding in the same old new cars. That’s a dream world, don’t you realize it? What price business-as-usual? What price, well, sky-writing, Jacques Fath, Double-Crostics, murder? Do you get my point?”
“Can’t say it’s entirely clear, Mac,” said Ellery, swallowing the second third. He realized for the first time that his glass contained bourbon, which he loathed. However.
“We are living,” said young Mr. Macgowan, “in the crisis of the disease commonly called human history. You mess around with your piddling murders while mankind is being set up for the biggest homicide since the Flood. The atom bomb is already fuddy-duddy. Now it’s hydrogen bombs, guaranteed to make the nuclear chain reaction ― or whatever the hell it is ― look like a Fourth of July firecracker. Stuff that can poison all the drinking water on a continent. Nerve gases that paralyze and kill. Germs there’s no protection against. And only God knows what else. They won’t use it? My friend, those words constitute the epitaph of Man. Somebody’ll pull the cork in a place like Yugoslavia or Iran or Korea and, whoosh! that’ll be that.
“It’s all going to go,” said Macgowan, waving his glass at the invisible world below. “Cities uninhabitable. Crop soil poisoned for a hundred years. Domestic animals going wild. Insects multiplying. Balance of nature upset. Ruins and plagues and millions of square miles radioactive and maybe most of the earth’s atmosphere. The roads crack, the lines sag, the machines rust, the libraries mildew, the buzzards fatten, and the forest primeval creeps over Hollywood and Vine, which maybe isn’t such a bad idea. But there you’ll have it. Thirty thousand years of primate development knocked over like a sleeping duck. Civilization atomized and annihilated. Yes, there’ll be some survivors ― I’m going to be one of them. But what are we going to have to do? Why, go back where we came from, brother ― to the trees. That’s logic, isn’t it? So here I am. All ready for it.”
“Now let’s have the note,” said Laurel.
“In a moment.” Ellery polished off the last third, shuddering. “Very logical, Mac, except for one or two items.”
“Such as?” said Crowe Macgowan courteously. “Here, let me give you a refill.”
“No, thanks, not just now. Why, such as these.” Ellery pointed to a network of cables winging from some hidden spot to the roof of Macgowan’s tree house. “For a chap who’s written off thirty thousand years of primate development you don’t seem to mind tapping the main power line for such things as―” he craned, surveying the interior ― “electric lights, a small electric range and refrigerator, and similar primitive devices; not to mention” ― he indicated a maze of pipes ― “running water, a compact little privy connected with ― I assume ― a septic tank buried somewhere below, and so on. These things ― forgive me, Mac ― blow bugs through your logic. The only essential differences between your house and your stepfather’s are that yours is smaller and thirty feet in the air.”