“Then you didn’t feed the kitty?” asked Keats. “Thanks. No cream or sugar.”
“Of course not. I was wondering if it was you.”
“Not me. Must have been the Hill girl.”
“Not she. I’ve asked her.”
“Funny.”
“Very. How was the tip tipped?”
“By phone call to the city room. Disguised voice, and they couldn’t trace it.”
“Male or female?”
“They said male, but they admitted it was pitched in a queer way and might have been female. With all the actors floating around this town you never know.” Keats automatically struck a match, but then he shook his head and put it out. “You know, Mr. Queen,” he said, scowling at his cigaret, “if there’s anything to this thing, that tip might have come... I know it sounds screwy...”
“From the writer of the note? I’ve been dandling that notion myself, Lieutenant.”
“Pressure, say.”
“In the war on Priam’s nerves.”
“If he’s got an iron nerve himself.” Keats rose. “Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Anything yet on Hill and Priam?”
“Not yet.” Keats slowly crumpled his cigaret. “It might be a toughie, Mr. Queen. So far I haven’t got to first base.”
“What’s holding you up?”
“I don’t know yet. Give me another few days.”
“What about Wallace?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Late that afternoon ― it was the twenty-first, the day after the Shriners parade ― Ellery looked around from his typewriter to see the creamy nose of Delia Priam’s convertible in profile against his front window.
He deliberately forced himself to wait until Mrs. Williams answered the door.
As he ran his hand over his hair, Mrs. Williams said: “It’s a naked man. You in?”
Macgowan was alone. He was in his Tree Boy costume ― one loin-cloth, flame-colored this time. He shook Ellery’s hand limply and accepted a Scotch on the Rocks, settling himself on the sofa with his bare heels on the sill of the picture window. “I thought I recognized the car,” said Ellery. “It’s my mother’s. Mine was out of gas. Am I inconvenient?” The giant glanced at the typewriter. “How do you knock that stuff out? But I had to see you.” He seemed uneasy. “What about, Mac?”
“Well... I thought maybe the reason you hadn’t made up your mind to take the case was that there wasn’t enough money in it for you.”
“Did you?”
“Look. Maybe I could put enough more in the pot to make it worth your while.”
“You mean you want to hire me, too, Mac?”
“That’s it.” He seemed relieved that it was out. “I got to thinking... that note, and then whatever it was Roger got in that box the morning old man Hill got the dead dog... I mean, maybe there’s something in it after all, Mr. Queen.”
“Suppose there is.” Ellery studied him with curiosity. “Why are you interested enough to want to put money into an investigation?”
“Roger’s my mother’s husband, isn’t he?”
“Touching, Mac. When did you two fall in love?”
Young Macgowan’s brown skin turned mahogany. “I mean... It’s true Roger and I never got along. He’s always tried to dominate me as well as everybody else. But he means well, and―”
“And that’s why,” smiled Ellery, “you call yourself Crowe Macgowan instead of Crowe Priam.”
Crowe laughed. “Okay, I detest his lazy colon. We’ve always fought like a couple of wild dogs. When Delia married him he wouldn’t adopt me legally; the idea was to keep me dependent on him. I was a kid, and it made me hate him. So I kept my father’s name and I refused to take any money from Roger. I wasn’t altogether a hero ― I had a small income from a trust fund my father left for me. You can imagine how that set with Mr. Priam.” He laughed again. But then he finished lamely, “The last few years I’ve grown up, I guess. I tolerate him for Mother’s sake. That’s it,” he added, brightening, “Mother’s sake. That’s why I’d like to get to the bottom of this. You see, Mr. Queen?”
“Your mother loves Priam?”
“She’s married to him, isn’t she?”
“Come off it, Mac. I intimated to you myself the other day, in your tree, that your mother had already offered to engage my services. Not to mention Laurel. What’s this all about?”
Macgowan got up angrily. “What difference does my reason make? It’s an honest offer. All I want is this damned business cleaned up. Name your fee and get going on it!”
“As they say in the textbooks, Mac,” said Ellery, “I’ll leave you know. It’s the best I can do.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“Warning number two. If this business is on the level, Mac, there will be a warning number two, and I can’t do a thing till it comes. With Priam being pigheaded, you and your mother can be most useful by simply keeping your eyes open. I’ll decide then.”
“What do we watch for,” sneered the young man, “another mysterious box?”
“I’ve no idea. But whatever it turns out to be ― and it may not be a thing, Mac, but an event ― whatever happens out of the ordinary, no matter how silly or trivial it may seem to you ― let me know about it right away. You,” and Ellery added, as if in afterthought, “or your mother.”
The phone was ringing. He opened his eyes, conscious that it had been ringing for some time.
He switched on the light, blinking at his wristwatch.
4:35. He hadn’t got to bed until 1130.
“Hello?” he mumbled.
“Mr. Queen―”
Delia Priam.
“Yes?” He had never felt so wakeful.
“My son Crowe said to call you if―” She sounded far away, a little frightened.
“Yes? Yes?”
“It’s probably nothing at all. But you told Crowe―”
“Delia, what’s happened?”
“Roger’s sick, Ellery. Dr. Voluta is here. He says it’s ptomaine poisoning. But―”
“I’ll be right over!”
Dr. Voluta was a floppy man with jowls and a dirty eye, and it was a case of hate at first sight. The doctor was in a bright blue yachting jacket over a yellow silk undershirt and his greasy brown hair stuck up all over his head. He wore carpet slippers. Twice Ellery caught himself about to address him as Captain Bligh and it would not have surprised him if, in his own improvised costume of soiled white ducks and turtleneck sweater, he had inspired Priam’s doctor to address him in turn as Mr. Christian.
“The trouble with you fellows,” Dr. Voluta was saying as he scraped an evil mess from a rumpled bedsheet into a specimen vial, “is that you really enjoy murder. Otherwise you wouldn’t see it in every bellyache.”
“Quite a bellyache,” said Ellery. “The stopper’s right there over the sink, Doctor.”
“Thank you. Priam is a damn pig. He eats too much for even a well man. His alimentary apparatus is a medical problem in itself. I’ve warned him for years to lay off bedtime snacks, especially spicy fish.”
“I’m told he’s fond of spicy fish.”
“I’m fond of spicy blondes, Mr. Queen,” snapped Dr. Voluta, “but I keep my appetite within bounds.”
“I thought you said there’s something wrong with the tuna.”
“Certainly there’s something wrong with it. I tasted it myself. But that’s not the point. The point is that if he’d followed my orders he wouldn’t have eaten any in the first place.”
They were in the butler’s pantry, and Dr. Voluta was looking irritably about for something to cover a plastic dish into which he had dumped the remains of the tuna.
“Then it’s your opinion, Doctor―?”