“Now I’m wrong about Priam,” laughed Ellery. “Perfect score.”
Keats ignored the addendum. “Wrong about Priam how?”
“I predicted he’d blow his top and spill over at warning number four. Instead of which he’s gone underground. Let’s hope it’s only a temporary recession.”
“You’re sure this thing is a warning.”
Ellery nodded absently.
“Me, I’m not,” Keats complained. “I can’t seem to get the feel of this case. It’s like trying to catch guppies with your bare hands. Now the arsenic, that I could hold on to, even though I couldn’t go anywhere with it. But all the rest of it...”
“You can’t deny the existence of all the rest of it, Keats. The dead dog was real enough. The first box Priam got was real, and whatever was in it. There was nothing vapory about those dead frogs and toads, either. Or about the contents of this box. Or, for that matter,” Ellery shrugged, “about the thing that started all this, the note to Hill.”
“Oh, yes,” growled the detective.
“Oh yes what?”
“The note. What do we know about it? Not a thing. It’s not a note, it’s a copy of a note. Or is it even that? That might be only what it seems. Maybe the whole business was dreamed up by Hill.”
“The arsenic, froglets, and wallet weren’t dreamed up by Hill,” said Ellery dryly, “not in the light of his current condition and location.
No, Keats, you’re falling for the temptation to be a reasonable man. You’re not dealing with a reasonable thing. It’s a fantasy, and it calls for faith.” He stared ahead. “There’s something that links these four ‘warnings,’ as the composer of the note calls them, links them in a series. They constitute a group.”
“How?” Bits of tobacco flew. “Poisoned food, dead frogs, a seventy-five dollar wallet! And God knows what was in that first box to Priam ― judging by what followed, it might have been a size three Hopalong Cassidy suit, or a bock beer calendar of the year 1897. Mr. Queen, you can’t connect those things. They’re not connectable.” Keats waved his arms, and the car swerved. “The most I can see in this is that each one stands on its own feet. The arsenic? That means: Remember how you tried to poison me? ― this is a little reminder. The frogs? That means... Well, you get the idea.”
But Ellery shook his head. “If there’s one thing in this case I’m sure of, it’s that the warnings have related meanings. And the over-all meaning ties up with Priam’s past and Hill’s past and their enemy’s past. What’s more, Priam knows its significance, and it’s killing him.
“What we’ve got to do, Lieutenant, is crack Priam, or the riddle, before it’s too late.”
“I’d like to crack Priam,” remarked Keats. “On the nut.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence.
Keats phoned just before midnight.
“I thought you’d like to know what the Lab found out from examination of the wallet and box.”
“What?”
“Nothing. The only prints on the box were Mrs. Priam’s. There were no prints on the wallet at all. Now I’m going home and see if I’m still married. How do you like California?”
Chapter Eleven
Outside her garage, Laurel looked around. Her look was furtive. He hadn’t been in the walnut tree this morning, thank goodness, and there was no sign of him now. Laurel slipped into the garage, blinking as she came out of the sun, and ran to her Austin.
“Morning, Little Beaver.”
“Mac! Damn you.”
Crowe Macgowan came around the big Packard, grinning. “I had a hunch you had a little something under your armpit last night when you told me how late you were going to sleep this morning. Official business, hm?” He was dressed. Mac looked very well when he was dressed, almost as well as when he wasn’t. He even wore a hat, a Swiss yodeler sort of thing with a little feather. “Shove over.”
“I don’t want you along today.”
“Why not?”
“Mac, I just don’t.”
“You’ll have to give me a better reason than that.”
“You... don’t take this seriously enough.”
“I thought I was plenty serious on the frog safari.”
“Well... Oh! all right. Get in.”
Laurel drove the Austin down to Franklin and turned west, her chin northerly. Macgowan studied her profile in peace.
“La Brea to Third,” he said, “and west on Third to Fairfax. Aye, aye, Skipper?”
“Mac! You’ve looked it up.”
“There’s only one Leatherland, Inc., of Hollywood, California, and it’s in Farmers’ Market.”
“I wish you’d let me drop you!”
“Nothing doing. Suppose you found yourself in an opium den?”
“There are no opium dens around Fairfax and Third.”
“Then maybe a gangster. All the gangsters are coming west, and you know how tourists flock to Farmers’ Market.”
Laurel said no more, but her heart felt soggy. Between her and the traffic hung a green alligator.
She parked in the area nearest Gilmore Stadium. Early as they were, the paved acres were jammed with cars.
“Flow are you going to work this?” asked Crowe, shortening his stride as she hurried along.
“There’s nothing much to it. Their designs are exclusive, they make everything on the premises, and they have no other outlets. I’ll simply ask to see some men’s wallets, work my way around to alligator, then to green alligator―”
“And then what?” he asked dryly.
“Why... I’ll find out who’s bought one recently. They certainly can’t sell many green alligator wallets with gold trimming. Mac, what’s the idea? Let go!”
They were outside The Button Box. Leatherland, Inc., was nearby, a double-windowed shop with a ranchhouse and corral fence décor, bannered with multicolored hides and served by a bevy of well-developed cowgirls.
“And how are you going to get one of those babes to open up?” asked Crowe, keeping Laurel’s arm twisted behind her back with his forefinger. “In the first place, they don’t carry their customers’ names around in their heads; they don’t have that kind of head. In the second place, they’re not going to go through their sales slips ― for you, that is. In the third place, what’s the matter with me?”
“I might have known.”
“All I have to do is flash my genuine Red Ryder sheriff’s badge, turn on the charm, and we’re in. Laurel, I’m type-casting.”
“Take off your clothes,” said Laurel bitterly, “and you’ll get more parts than you can handle.”
“Watch me ― fully dressed and lounging-like.”
He went into the shop confidently.
Laurel pretended to be interested in a handtooled, silver-studded saddle in the window.
Although the shop was crowded, one of the cowgirls spotted Crowe immediately and cantered up to him. Everything bouncing, Laurel observed, hoping one of the falsies would slip down. But it was well-anchored, and she could see him admiring it. So could the cowgirl.
They engaged in a dimpled conversation for fully two minutes. Then they moved over to the rear of the shop. He pushed his hat back on his head the way they did in the movies and leaned one elbow on the show-case. The rodeo Venus began to show him wallets, bending and sunfishing like a bronc. This went on for some time, the sheriffs man leaning farther and farther over the case until he was practically breathing down her sternum. Suddenly he straightened, looked around, put his hand in his pocket, and withdrew it cupped about something. The range-type siren dilated her eyes...
When Crowe strolled out of the shop he passed Laurel with a wink.