“Apparently with reason. Leander Hill and Roger Priam had a common enemy in the old days, someone they thought was dead. He says they tried to put him out of the way, and he’s spent over twenty-years tracking them down.”
Ellery began to walk about, avoiding Crowe Macgowan’s arms.
“Dad tried to murder somebody?” Laurel bit her thumb.
“When you yell bloody murder, Laurel,” said Ellery, “you’ve got to be prepared for a certain echo of nastiness. This kind of murder,” he said, lighting a cigaret and placing it between her lips, “is never nice. It’s usually rooted in pretty mucky soil. Priam means nothing to you, and your father is dead. Do you still want to go through with this? You’re my client, you know, not Mrs. Priam. At her own suggestion.”
“Did Mother come to you?” exclaimed Macgowan.
“Yes, but we’re keeping it confidential.”
“I didn’t know she cared,” muttered the giant.
Ellery lit a cigaret for himself.
Laurel was wrinkling her nose and looking a little sick.
Ellery tossed the match overside. “Whoever composed that note is on a delayed murder spree. He wants revenge badly enough to have nursed it for over twenty years. A quick killing doesn’t suit him at all. He wants the men who injured him to suffer, presumably, as he’s suffered. To accomplish this he starts a private war of nerves. His strategy is all plotted. Working from the dark, he makes his first tactical move... the warning, the first of the ‘special meanings’ he promises. Number one is ― of all things ― a dead pooch, number two whatever was in the box to Roger Priam ― I wonder what it was, by the way! You wouldn’t know, Mac, would you?”
“I wouldn’t know anything about my mother’s husband,” replied Macgowan.
“And he means to send other warnings with other ‘gifts’ which have special meanings. To Priam exclusively now ― Hill foxed him by dying at once. He’s a man with a fixed idea, Laurel, and an obsessive sense of injury. I really think you ought to keep out of his way. Let Priam defy him. It’s his skin, and if he needs help he knows where he can apply for it.”
Laurel threw herself back on the platform, blowing smoke to the appliqued sky.
“Don’t you feel you have to act like the heroine of a magazine serial?” Laurel did not reply.
“Laurel, drop it. Now.”
She rolled her head. “I don’t care what Daddy did. People make mistakes, even commit crimes, who are decent and nice. Sometimes events force you, or other people. I knew him ― as a human being ― better than anyone in creation. If he and Roger Priam got into a mess, it was Roger who thought up the dirty work... The fact that he wasn’t my real father makes it even more important. I owe him everything.” She sat up suddenly. “I’m not going to stay out of this, Ellery. I can t.’
“You’ll find, Queen,”, scowled young Macgowan in the silence that followed, “that this is a very tough number.”
“Tough she may be, my Tarzanian friend,” grumbled Ellery, “but this sort of thing is a business, not an endurance contest. It takes know-how and connections and a technique. And experience. None of which Miss Strongheart has.” Lie crushed his cigaret out on the platform vindictively. “Not to mention the personal danger... Well, I’ll root around a little, Laurel. Do some checking back. It shouldn’t be too much of a job to get a line on those two and find out what they were up to in the Twenties. And who got caught in the meat-grinder... You driving me back to the world of fantasy?”
Chapter Five
The next morning Ellery called the Los Angeles Police Department and asked to speak to the officer in charge of the Public Relations Department.
“Sergeant Lordetti.”
“Sergeant, this is Ellery Queen... Yes, how do you do. Sergeant, I’m in town to write a Hollywood novel ― oh, you’ve seen that... no, I can’t make the newspapers believe it and, frankly, I’ve given up trying. Sergeant Lordetti, I need some expert advice for background on my book. Is there anyone in, say, the Hollywood Division who could give me a couple hours of his time? Some trouble-shooter with lots of experience in murder investigation and enough drag in the Department so I could call on him from time to time?... Expose? So you fell for that, too, haha! Me, the son of a cop? No, no, Sergeant, nothing like that, believe me... Who?... K-e-a-t-s. Thanks a lot... Not at all, Sergeant. If you can make a little item out of it, you’re entirely welcome.”
Ellery called-the Hollywood Division on Wilcox below Sunset and asked to speak to Lieutenant Keats. Informed that Lieutenant Keats was on another phone, Ellery left his telephone number with the request that Lieutenant Keats call back as soon as he was free.
Twenty minutes later a car drew up to his house and a big lean man in a comfortable-looking business suit got out and rang the bell, glancing around at Ellery’s pint-sized garden curiously. Hiding behind a drape, Ellery decided he was not a salesman, for he carried nothing and his interest had something amused in it. Possibly a reporter, although he seemed too carefully dressed for that. He might have been a sports announcer or a veteran airline pilot off duty.
“It’s a policeman, Mr. Queen,” reported Mrs. Williams nervously.
“You done something?”
“I’ll keep you out of it, Mrs. Williams. Lieutenant Keats? The service staggers me. I merely left a message for you to phone back.”
“Sergeant Lordetti phoned and told me about it,” said the Hollywood detective, filling the doorway. “Thought I’d take the shortcut. No, thanks, don’t drink when I’m working.”
“Working―? Oh, Mrs. Williams, close the door, will you?... Working, Lieutenant? But I explained to Lordetti―”
“He told me.” Keats placed his hat neatly on the chartreuse chair. “You want expert advice for a mystery novel. Such as what, Mr. Queen? How a homicide is reported in Los Angeles? That was for the benefit of the Mirror and News. What’s really on your mind?”
Ellery stared. Then they both grinned, shook hands, and sat down like old friends.
Keats was a sandy-haired man of thirty-eight or forty with clear, rather distant gray eyes below reddish brows. His hands were big and well-kept, with a reliable look to them; there was a gold band o*i the fourth finger of the left. His eyes were intelligent and his jaw had been developed by adversity. His manner was slightly standoffish. A smart cop, Ellery decided, and a rugged one.
“Let me light that for you, Lieutenant.”
“The nail?” Keats laughed, taking a shredded cigaret from between his lips. It was unlit. “I’m a dry smoker, Mr. Queen. Given up smoking.” He put the ruin on an ashtray and fingered a fresh cigaret, settling back. “Some case you’re interested in? Something you don’t want to get around?”
“It came my way yesterday morning. Do you know anything about the death of a wholesale jeweler named Leander Hill?”
“So she got to you.” Keats lipped the unlit cigaret. “It passed through our Division. The girl made a pest of herself. Something about a dead dog and a note that scared her father to death. But no note. An awfully fancy yarn. More in your line than ours.”
Ellery handed Keats the sheet of Leander Hill’s stationery.
Keats read it slowly. Then he examined the notepaper, front and back.
“That’s Hill’s handwriting, by the way. Obviously a copy he made. I found it in a slit in his mattress.”
“Where’s the original of this, Mr. Queen?”
“Probably destroyed.”
“Even if this were the McCoy.” Keats put the sheet down. “There’s nothing here that legally connects Hill’s death with a murder plot. Of course, the revenge business...”