“Who is it?” The bull voice sounded slurry.
Ellery said, “Delia, you answer him.”
She nodded mechanically. “Roger, open the door, won’t you?” She sounded passive, almost bored.
“Delia? What d’ye want?” They heard the trundling of his chair and some glassy sounds. “Damn this rug! I’ve told Alfred a dozen times to tack it down―” The door opened and he stared up at them. The shelf before him supported a decanter of whisky, a siphon, and a half empty glass. His eyes were bloodshot. “What’s this?” he snarled at Ellery. “I thought I told you two to clear out of my house and stay out.” His fierce eyes lighted on the box in Ellery’s hand. They contracted, and he looked up and around. His glance passed over his wife and stepson as if they had not been there. It remained on Laurel’s face for a moment with a hatred so concentrated that Crowe Macgowan made an unconscious growling sound. Laurel’s lips tightened.
He put out one of his furry paws. “Give me the box.”
“No, Mr. Priam.”
“That tag’s got my name on it. Give it to me!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Priam.”
He raised the purplish ensign of his rage, his eyes flaming. “You can’t keep another man’s property!”
“I have no intention of keeping it, Mr. Priam. I merely want to see what’s inside. Won’t you please back into the room so that we can come in and do this like civilized people?”
Ellery kept looking at him impassively. Priam glared back, but his hands went to the wheels of his chair. Grudgingly, they pushed backwards.
Keats shut the door very neatly. Then he put his back against it. He remained there, watching Priam.
Ellery began to untie the box.
He seemed in no hurry.
Priam’s hands were still at the sides of his chair. He was sitting forward, giving his whole attention to the untying process. His beard rose and fell with his chest. The purple flag had come down, leaving a sort of gray emptiness, like a foggy sky.
Laurel was intent.
Young Macgowan kept shifting from foot to naked foot, uneasily.
Delia Priam stood perfectly still.
“Lieutenant,” said Ellery suddenly, as he worked over the last knot, “what do you suppose we’ll find in here?”
Keats said, “After those dead frogs I wouldn’t stick my chin out.” He kept looking at Priam.
“Do you have to take out the knots?” cried Crowe. “Open it!”
“Would anyone care to guess?”
“Pleased Laurel, begging.
“Mr. Priam?”
Priam never stirred. Only his lips moved, and the beard around them. But nothing came out.
Ellery whipped the lid off.
Roger Priam threw himself back, almost upsetting the chair. Then, conscious of their shock, he fumbled for the glass of whisky. He tilted his head, drinking, not taking his glance from the box.
All that had been exposed was a layer of white tissue.
“From the way you jumped, Mr. Priam,” said Ellery conversationally, “anyone would think you expected a hungry rattler to pop out at you, or something equally live and disagreeable. What is it you’re afraid of?”
Priam set the glass down with a bang. His knuckles were livid. “I ain’t afraid,” he spluttered. “Of anything!” His chest spread. “Stop needling me, you! Or I swear―”
He brought his arm up blindly. It struck the decanter and the decanter toppled from the shelf, smashing on the floor.
Ellery was holding the object high, stripped of its tissue wrapping. He held it by its edges, between his palms.
His own eyes were amazed, and Keats’s.
Because there was nothing in what he was displaying to make a man cringe.
It was simply a wallet, a man’s wallet of breast pocket size made of alligator leather, beautifully grained and dyed forest green. There were no hideous stains on it; it had no history; it was plainly brand-new. And high-priced; it was edged in gold. Ellery flipped it open. Its pockets were empty. There had been no note or card in the box.
“Let me see that,” said Keats.
Nothing to make a man cower, or a woman grow pale.
“No initials,” said Keats. “Nothing but the maker’s name.” He scratched his cheek, glancing at Priam again.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” asked Laurel.
“What is what, Miss Hill?”
“The maker’s name.”
“Leatherland, Inc., Hollywood, California.”
Priam’s beard had sunk to his chest.
Paler than Priam. For Delia Priam’s eyes had flashed to their widest at sight of the wallet, all the color running out of her face. Then the lids had come down as if to shut out a ghost.
Shock. But the shock of what? Fear? Yes, there was fear, but fear followed the shock; it did not precede.
Suddenly Ellery knew what it was.
Recognition.
He mulled over this, baffled. It was a new wallet. She couldn’t possibly have seen it before. Unless... For that matter, neither could Priam. Did it mean the same thing to both of them? Vaguely, he doubted this. Their reactions had thrown of? different qualities. Lightning had struck both of them, but it was as if Priam were a meteorologist who understood the nature of the disaster, his wife an ignorant bystander who knew only that she had been stunned. I’m reading too much into this, Ellery thought. You can’t judge the truth of anything from a look... It’s useless to attempt to talk to her now... In an indefinable way he was glad. It was remarkable how easily passion was killed by a dirty fact. He felt nothing when he looked at her now, not even revulsion. The sickness in the pit of his stomach was for himself and his gullibility.
“Delia, where you going?”
She was walking out.
“Mother.”
So Crowe had seen it, too. He ran after her, caught her at the door.
“What’s the matter?”
She made an effort. “It’s all too silly, darling. It’s getting to be too much for me. A wallet! And such a handsome one, too. Probably a gift from someone who thinks it’s Roger’s birthday. Let me go, Crowe. I’ve got to see Mrs. Guittierez about dinner.”
“Oh. Sure.” Mac was relieved.
And Laurel...
“The only thing that would throw me,” Keats was drawling, “I mean if I was in Mr. Priam’s shoes―”
Laurel had been merely puzzled by the wallet.
“―is what the devil I’d be expected to do with it. Like a battleship getting a lawnmower.”
Laurel had been merely puzzled by the wallet, but when she had glimpsed Delia’s face her own had reflected shock. The shock of recognition. Again. But this was not recognition of the object per se. This was recognition of Delia’s recognition. A chain reaction.
“When you stop and think of it, everything we know about these presents so far shows one thing in common―”
“In common?” said Ellery. “What would that be, Keats?”
“Arsenic, dead frogs, a wallet for a man who never leaves his house.
They’ve all been so damned useless.”
Ellery laughed. “There’s a theory, Mr. Priam, that’s in your power to affirm or deny. Was your first gift useless, too? The one in the first cardboard box?”
Priam did not lift his head.
“Mr. Priam. What was in that box?”
Priam gave no sign that he heard.
“What do these things mean?”
Priam did not reply.
“May we have this wallet for examination?” asked Keats.
Priam simply sat there.
“Seems to me I caught the flicker of one eyelash, Mr. Queen.” Keats wrapped the wallet carefully in the tissue paper and tucked it back in the box. “I’ll drop you off at your place and then take this down to the Lab.”
They left Roger Priam in the same attitude of frozen chaos.
Keats drove slowly, handling the wheel with his forearms and peering ahead as if answers lay there. He was chewing on a cigaret, like a goat.