“No, it’s just a name I plucked out of the ether, Mr. Queen. Alfred, Wallace ― they’re very ordinary names and more satisfying than John Doe. Lieutenant Keats, aren’t you going to check my story?”
“It’s going to be checked,” Keats assured him. “And I’m sure we’ll find it happened exactly as you’ve told it, Wallace ― dates, names, and places. The only thing is, it’s all a dodge. That’s something I feel in my bones. As one old bone-feeler to another, Mr. Queen, how about it?”
“Did this doctor in Las Vegas put you under hypnosis?” Ellery asked the smiling man.
“Hypnosis? No, Mr. Queen. He was just a general practitioner.”
“Have you seen any other doctor since? A psychiatrist, for example?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Would you object to being examined by a psychiatrist of ― let’s say ― Lieutenant Keats’s choosing?”
“I’m afraid I would, Mr. Queen,” murmured Wallace. “You see, I’m not sure I want to find out who I really am. I might discover, for example, that I’m-an escaped thief, or that I have a bowlegged wife and five idiot children somewhere. I’m perfectly happy where I am. Of course, Roger Priam isn’t the easiest employer in the world, but the job has its compensations. I’m living in royal quarters. The salary Priam pays me is very large ― he’s a generous employer, one of his few virtues. Old, fat Mrs. Guittierez is an excellent cook, and even though Muggs, the maid, is a straitlaced virgin with halitosis who’s taken an unreasonable dislike to me, she does keep my room clean and polishes my shoes regularly. And the position even solves the problem of my sex life ― oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned that, should I?” Wallace looked distressed; he waved his muscular hand gently. “A slip of the tongue, gentlemen. I do hope you’ll forget I said it.”
Keats was on his feet. Ellery heard himself saying, “Wallace. Just what did you mean by that?”
“A gentleman, Mr. Queen, couldn’t possibly have the bad taste to pursue such a question.”
“A gentleman couldn’t have made the statement in the first place. I ask you again, Wallace: How does your job with Priam take care of your sex life?”
Wallace looked pained. He glanced up at Keats. “Lieutenant, must I answer that question?”
Keats said slowly, “You don’t have to answer anything. You brought this up, Wallace. Personally, I don’t give a damn about your sex life unless it has something to do with this case. If it has, you’d better answer it.”
“It hasn’t, Lieutenant. How could it have?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Answer the question,” said Ellery in a pleasant voice.
“Mr. Queen seems more interested than you, Lieutenant.”
“Answer the question,” said Ellery in a still pleasanter voice.
Wallace shrugged. “All right. But you’ll bear witness, Lieutenant Keats, that I’ve tried my best to shield the lady in the case.” He raised his eyes suddenly to Ellery and Ellery saw the smile in them, a wintry shimmer. “Mr. Queen, I have the great good luck to share my employer’s wife’s bed. As the spirit moves. And the flesh being weak, and Mrs. Priam being the most attractive piece I’ve yet seen in this glorious state, I must admit that the spirit moves several times a week and has been doing so for about a year. Does that answer your question?”
“Just a minute, Wallace,” Ellery heard Keats say.
And Keats was standing before him, between him and Wallace. Keats was saying in a rapid whisper, “Queen, look, let me take it from here on in. Why don’t you get out of here?”
“Why should I?” Ellery said clearly.
Keats did not move. But then he straightened up and stepped aside.
“You’re lying, of course,” Ellery said to Wallace. “You’re counting on the fact that no decent man could ask a decent woman a question like that, and so your lie won’t be exposed. I don’t know what slimy purpose your lie serves, but I’m going to step on it right now. Keats, hand me that phone.”
And all the time he was speaking Ellery knew it was true. He had known it was true the instant the words left Wallace’s mouth. The story of the amnesia was true only so far as the superficial facts went; Wallace had prepared a blind alley for himself, using the Las Vegas police and a mediocre doctor to seal up the dead end. But this was all true. He knew it was all true and he could have throttled the man who sat halfway across the room smiling that iced smile.
“I don’t see that that would accomplish anything,” Keats was saying. “She’d only deny it. It wouldn’t prove a thing.”
“He’s lying, Keats.”
Wallace said with delicate mockery, “I’m happy to hear you take that attitude, Mr. Queen. Of course. I’m lying. May I go, Lieutenant?”
“No, Wallace.” Keats stuck his jaw out. “I’m not letting it get this far without knowing the whole story. You say you’ve been cuckolding Priam for almost a year now. Is Delia Priam in love with you?”
“I don’t think so,” said Wallace. “I think it’s the same thing with Delia that it is with me. A matter of convenience.”
“But it stopped some time ago, didn’t it?” Keats had a wink in his voice; man-to-man stuff. “It’s not still going on.”
“Certainly it’s still going on. Why should it have stopped?”
Keats’s shoulders bunched. “You must feel plenty proud of yourself, Wallace. Eating a man’s food, guzzling his liquor, taking his dough, and sleeping with his wife while he’s helpless in a wheelchair on the floor below. A cripple who couldn’t give you what you rate even if he knew what was going on.”
“Oh, didn’t I make that clear, Lieutenant?” said Alfred Wallace, smiling. “Priam does know what’s going on. In fact, looking back, I can see that he engineered the whole thing.”
“What are you giving me!”
“You gentlemen apparently don’t begin to understand the kind of man Priam is. And I think you ought to know the facts of life about Priam, since it’s his life you’re knocking yourselves out to save.”
Wallace ran his thumb tenderly around the brim of his hat. “I don’t deny that I didn’t figure Priam right myself in the beginning, when Delia and I first got together. I sneaked it, naturally. But Delia laughed and told me not to be a fool, that Priam knew, that he wanted it that way. Although he’d never admit it or let on ― to me, or to her.
“Well,” said Wallace modestly. “Of course I thought she was kidding me. But then I began to notice things. Looks in his eye. The way he kept pushing us together. That sort of thing. So I did a little investigating on the quiet.
“I found out that in picking secretaries Priam had always hired particularly virile-looking men.
“And I remembered the questions he asked me when I applied for the job ― how he kept looking me over, like a horse.” Wallace took a cigar from his pocket and lit it. Puffing with enjoyment, he leaned back. “Frankly, I’ve been too embarrassed to put the question to Delia directly. But unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, Priam’s secretaries have always done double duty. Well, for the last ten years, anyway. It also explains the rapid turnover. Not every man is as virile as he looks,” Wallace said with a laugh, “and then there are always some mushy-kneed lads who’d find a situation like that uncomfortable... But the fact remains. Priam’s hired men to serve not only the master of the house, you might say, but the mistress too.”
“Get him out of here,” Ellery said to Keats. But to his surprise no words came out.
“Roger Priam,” continued Alfred Wallace, waving his cigar, “is an exaggerated case of crudity, raw power, and frustration. The clue to his character ― and, gentlemen, I’ve had ample opportunity to judge it ― is his compulsive need to dominate everything and everyone around him. He tried to dominate old Leander Hill through the farce of pretending he, Roger Priam, was running a million-dollar business from a wheelchair at home. He tried to dominate Crowe Macgowan before Crowe got too big for him, according to Delia. And he’s always dominated Delia, who doesn’t care enough about anything to put up a scrap ― dominated her physically until he became paralyzed, Delia’s told me, with the most incredible vulgarities and brutalities.