“How is Priam?”
“He’ll live. The problem was this doctor, Voluta. It seems we took him away from a party ― a blonde party ― at Malibu. He took the frogs as a personal insult. Treated Priam for shock, put him to sleep, and dove for his car.”
“Have you talked to Priam?”
“I talked to Priam, yes. But he didn’t talk to me.”
“Nothing?”
“He just said he woke up, reached for that push-button-on-a-cord arrangement he’s got for turning on the lights, saw the little beasties, and knew no more.”
“No attempt at explanation?”
“You don’t think he knows the answer to this one!”
“The strong man type represented by our friend Priam, Lieutenant,” said Ellery, “doesn’t pass out at the sight of a few hundred frogs, even when they’re strewn all over his bed. His reaction was too violent. Of course he knows the answer. And it scares the wadding out of him.”
Keats shook his head. “What do we do now?”
“What did you find out?”
“Not a thing.”
“No sign of a point of entry?”
“No. But what sign would there be? You come from the suspicious East, Mr. Queen. This is the great West, where men are men and nobody locks his door but Easterners.” Keats rolled a tattered cigaret to the other side of his mouth. “Not even,” he said bitterly, “taxpayers who are on somebody’s knock-off list.” He jumped up with a frustrated energy. “The trouble is, this Priam won’t face the facts. Poison him, and he looks thoughtful. Toss a couple hundred dead frogs around his bedroom and he shakes his head doubtfully. You know what I think? I think everybody in this house, present company excepted, is squirrel food.”
But Ellery was walking a tight circle, squinting toward some hidden horizon. “All right, he got in without any trouble ― simply by walking in. Presumably in the middle of the night. Priam’s door isn’t locked at night so that Wallace or the others can get at him in an emergency, consequently he enters Priam’s room with equal facility. So there he is, with a bag or a suitcase full of murdered frogs. Priam is asleep ― not dead, mind you, just asleep. But he might just as well have been dead, because his visitor distributed two or three hundred frogs about the premises ― in the dark, mind you ― without disturbing Priam in the least. Any answers, Lieutenant?”
“Yes,” said Keats wearily. “Priam polished off a bottle last night. He was dead ― dead to the world.”
Ellery shrugged and resumed his pacing. “Which takes us back to the frogs. A cardboard box containing... we don’t know what;4 that’s warning number one. Food poisoning... that’s warning number two. Warning number three... a zoo colony of dead frogs. One, unknown; two, poisoned food; three, strangled frogs. It certainly would help to know number one.”
“Suppose it was a fried coconut,” suggested Keats. “Would it help?”
“There’s a connection, Lieutenant. A pattern.”
“I’m listening.”
“You don’t just pick frogs out of your hat. Frogs mean something.”
“Yeah,” said Keats, “warts.” But his laugh was unconvincing. “Okay, so they mean something. So this all means something. I don’t give a damn what it means. I said, what kind of maniac is this Priam? Does he want to shove off? Without putting up a battle?”
“He’s putting up a battle, Lieutenant,” frowned Ellery. “In his peculiar way, a brave one. To ask for help, even to accept help without asking for it, would be defeat for Priam. Don’t you understand that? He has to be top man. He has to control his own destiny. He has to, or his life has no meaning. Remember, Keats, he’s a man who’s living his life away in a chair. You say he’s asleep now?”
“With Wallace guarding him. I offered a cop, and I nearly got beaned with the Examiner. It was all I could do to make Priam promise he’d keep his doors locked from now on. At that, he didn’t promise.”
“How about that background stuff? On the partners?”
The detective crushed the stained butt in his fist and flipped it in the fireplace. “It’s like pulling teeth,” he said slowly. “I don’t get it. I put two more men on it yesterday.” He snapped a fresh cigaret into his mouth. “The way I see it, Mr. Queen, we’re doing this like a couple of country constables. We’ve got to go right to the horse’s mouth. Priam’s got to talk. He knows the whole story, every answer. Who his enemy is. Why the guy’s nursed a grudge for so many years. Why the fancy stuff―”
“And what was in the box,” murmured Ellery.
“Correct. I promised Dr. Voluta I’d lay off Priam today.” Keats clapped his hat on his head. “But tomorrow I think I’m going to get tough.”
When the detective had left, Ellery wandered out into the hall. The house was moody with silence. Crowe Macgowan had gone loping over to the Hill house to tell Laurel all about the amphibian invasion. The door to Priam’s quarters was shut.
There was no sign or sound of Delia. She was going to her room to lock herself in, she had said, and lie down. She had seemed to have no further interest in her husband’s condition. She had looked quite ill.
Ellery turned disconsolately to go, but then ― or perhaps he was looking for an excuse to linger ― he remembered the library, and he went back up the hall to the doorway opposite Priam’s.
Delia’s father sat at the library desk intently examining a postage stamp for its watermark.
“Oh, Mr. Collier.”
The old man looked up. Immediately he rose, smiling. “Come in, come in, Mr. Queen. Everything all right now?”
“Well,” said Ellery, “the frogs are no longer with us.”
Collier shook his head. “Man’s inhumanity to everything. You’d think we’d restrict our murderous impulses to our own kind. But no, somebody had to take his misery out on some harmless little specimens of Hyla regilla, not to mention―”
“Of what?” asked Ellery.
“Hyla regilla. Tree toads, Mr. Queen, or tree frogs. That’s what most of those little fellows were.” He brightened. “Well, let’s not talk about that any more. Although why a grown man like Roger Priam should be afraid of them ― with their necks wrung, too! ― I simply don’t understand.”
“Mr. Collier,” said Ellery quietly, “have you any idea what this is all about?”
“Oh, yes,” said the old man. “I’ll tell you what this is all about, Mr. Queen.” He waved his stamp tongs earnestly. “It’s about corruption and wickedness. It’s about greed and selfishness and guilt and violence and hatred and lack of self-control. It’s about black secrets and black hearts, cruelty, confusion, fear. It’s about not making the best of things, not being satisfied with what you have, and always wanting what you haven’t. It’s about envy and suspicion and malice and lust and nosiness and drunkenness and unholy excitement and a thirst for hot running blood. It’s about man, Mr. Queen.”
“Thank you,” said Ellery humbly, and he went home.
And the next morning Lieutenant Keats of the Hollywood Division put on his tough suit and went at Roger Priam as if the fate of the city of Los Angeles hung on Priam’s answers. And nothing happened except that Keats lost his temper and used some expressions not recommended in the police manual and had to retreat under a counterattack of even harder words, not to mention objects, which flew at him and Ellery like mortar fire. Priam quite stripped his wheelchair of its accessories in his furious search for ammunition.
Overnight the bearded man had bounced back. Perhaps not all the way: his eyes looked shaft-sunken and he had a case of the trembles. But the old fires were in the depths and the shaking affected only his aim, not his strength ― he made a bloodless shambles of his quarters.