At a few minutes past nine Alfred Wallace came downstairs. He exchanged greetings with Delia’s father ― the library door stood open ― and went in to his breakfast without approaching Priam’s door.
Mrs. Guittierez served him, and Wallace read the Sunday papers, which were always delivered to the door, as he ate. It was the maid’s and chauffeur’s Sunday off and the house was unusually quiet. In the kitchen the cook was getting things ready for Roger Priam’s breakfast.
Shortly before ten o’clock Alfred Wallace painstakingly restored the Sunday papers to their original state, pushed back his chair, and went out into the hall carrying the papers. Priam liked to have the newspapers within arm’s reach when he awakened Sunday mornings, and he flew into a rage if they were crumpled or disarranged.
Seeing a line of light beneath Priam’s door, Wallace quickened his step.
He went in without knocking.
The first he knew anything out of the ordinary had occurred, said Mr. Collier, he heard Wallace’s cry from Roger Priam’s room: “Mr. Collier! Mr. Collier! Come here!” The old man jumped up from his stamp albums and ran across the hall. Wallace was rattling the telephone, trying to get the operator. Just as he was shouting to Collier, “See about Mr. Priam! See if he’s all right!” the operator responded, and Wallace ― who seemed in a panic ― babbled something about the police and Lieutenant Keats. Collier picked his way across the room to his son-in-law’s wheelchair, which was still made up as a bed. Priam, in his night clothes, was up on one elbow, glaring about with a sort of vitreous horror. His mouth was open and his beard was in motion, but no sound passed them. As far as the old man could see, there was nothing wrong with Priam but stupefying fright. Collier eased the paralyzed man backward until he was supine, trying to soothe him; but Priam lay rigid, as if in a coma, his eyes tightly shut to keep out what he had seen, and the old man could get no response from him.
At this moment, Delia Priam returned from church.
Wallace turned from the phone and Collier from Priam at a choked sound from the doorway. Delia was staring into the room with eyes sick with disbelief. She was paler than her husband and she seemed about to faint.
“All this... all these...”
She began to titter.
Wallace said roughly, “Get her out of here.”
“He’s dead. He’s dead!”
Collier hurried to her. “No, no, daughter. Just scared. Now you go upstairs. We’ll take care of Roger.”
“He’s not dead? Then why―? How do these―?”
“Delia.” The old man stroked her hand.
“Don’t touch anything. Anything!”
“No, no, daughter―”
“Nothing must be touched. It’s got to be left exactly as you found it. Exactly.” And Delia stumbled up the hall to the household telephone and called Ellery.
When Ellery pulled up before the Priam house a radio patrol car was already parked in the driveway. A young officer was in the car, making a report to headquarters by radio, his mouth going like a faucet. His mate was apparently in the house.
“Here, you.” He jumped out of the car. “Where you going?” His face was red.
“I’m a friend of the family, Officer. Mrs. Priam just telephoned me.” Ellery looked rather wild himself. Delia had been hysterical over the phone and the only word he had been able to make out, “fogs,” had conveyed nothing reasonable. “What’s happened?”
“I wouldn’t repeat it,” said the patrolman excitedly. “I wouldn’t lower myself. They think I’m drunk. What do they think I am? Sunday morning! I’ve seen a lot of crosseyed things in this town, but―”
“Here, get hold of yourself, Officer. Has Lieutenant Keats been notified, do you know?”
“They caught him at home. He’s on his way here now.”
Ellery bounded up the steps. As he ran into the hall he saw Delia. She was dressed for town, in black and modest dress, hat, and gloves, and she was leaning against a wall bloodlessly. Alfred Wallace, disheveled and unnerved, was holding one of her gloved hands in both of his, whispering to her. The tableau dissolved in an instant; Delia spied Ellery, said something quickly to Wallace, withdrawing her hand, and she ran forward. Wallace turned, rather startled. He followed her with a hasty shuffle, almost as if he were afraid of being left alone.
“Ellery.”
“Is Mr. Priam all right?”
“He’s had a bad shock.”
“Can’t say I blame him,” Wallace mumbled. The handsome man passed a trembling handkerchief over his cheeks. “The doctor’s on his way over. We can’t seem to snap Mr. Priam out of it.”
“What’s this about ‘fogs,’ Delia?” Ellery hurried up the hall, Delia clinging to his arm. Wallace remained where he was, still wiping his face.
“Fogs? I didn’t say fogs. I said―”
Ellery stopped in the doorway.
The other radio car patrolman was straddling a chair, cap pushed back on his head, looking about helplessly.
Roger Priam lay stiffly on his bed staring at the ceiling.
And all over Priam’s body, on his blanket, on his sheet, in the shelves and compartments of his wheelchair, on his typewriter, strewn about the floor, the furniture, Wallace’s emergency bed, the window sills, the cornices, the fireplace, the mantelpiece ― everywhere ― were frogs.
Frogs and toads.
Hundreds of frogs and toads.
Tiny tree toads.
Yellow-legged frogs.
Bullfrogs.
Each little head was twisted.
The room was littered with their corpses.
Ellery had to confess to himself that he was thrown. There was a nonsense quality to the frogs that crossed over the line of laughter into the darker regions of the mind. Beyond the black bull calf of the Nile with the figure of an eagle on his back and the beetle upon his tongue stood Apis, a god; beyond absurdity loomed fear. Fear was the timeless tyrant. At mid-twentieth century it took the shape of a gigantic mushroom. Why not frogs? With frogs the terrible Wrath of the Hebrews had plagued the Egyptian, with frogs and blood and wild beasts and darkness and the slaying of the first-born... He could hardly blame Roger Priam for lying frozen. Priam knew something of the way of gods; he was by way of being a minor one himself.
While Keats and the patrolmen tramped about the house, Ellery drifted around the Priam living room trying to get a bearing. The whole thing irritated and enchanted him. It made no sense. It related to nothing. There lay its power over the uninitiated; that was its appearance for the mob. But Priam was of the inner temple. He knew something the others did not. He knew the sense this nonsense made. He knew the nature of the mystery to which it related. He knew the nature of this primitive god and he grasped the meaning of the god’s symbolism. Knowledge is not always power; certainty does not always bring peace. This knowledge was paralyzing and this certainty brought terror.
Keats found him nibbling his thumb under the Spanish grandee.
“Well, the doctor’s gone and the frogs are all collected and maybe you and I had better have a conference about this.”
“Sure.”
“This is what you’d call Priam’s third warning, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Keats.”
“Me,” said the detective, seating himself heavily on a heavy chair, “I’d call it broccoli.”
“Don’t make that mistake.”
Keats looked at him in a resentful way. “I don’t go for this stuff, Mr. Queen. I don’t believe it even when I see it. Why does he go to all this trouble?” His tone said he would have appreciated a nice, uncomplicated bullet.