“Let me take the atmosphere in bits, please,” said Ellery. He half-expected Afghan hounds to come loping out of hidden lairs, bits of rush clinging to their hides, and Quasimodos in nut-brown sacking and tonsured pates to serve his shuddering pleasure. But the only servant he had seen, an oozy prig of a man in butler’s livery, had been conventional enough. “In fact, Charley, if you could give me a glimpse of the various Pottses before dinner in their native habitat I should be ever so much obliged.”
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to meet them except through necessity, but I suppose that’s what distinguishes you from all other men. This way, Professor. Let’s see which Potts we can scare up first.”
At the top of the staircase stood a landing, most specious and hushed, and long halls leading away. Charley turned a corner, and there yawned the entrance to what looked like a narrow tower. “That’s just what it is,” nodded Charley. “Up wi’ ye!”
They mounted a steep coil of steps. “I didn’t notice this campanile from outside. Why, Charley?”
“It’s a peculiarity of construction. The tower faces an inner court and can’t be seen from the street.”
“And it leads where?”
“To Louella’s lair... Here.”
Charley knocked on a door with a grille in it backed by thick glass. A female face goggled through the glass, eyed Mr. Paxton with suspicion, withdrew. Bolts clanked. Ellery felt a sensible prickling along his spine when the door screeched open.
Louella Potts was not merely thin — a more desiccated figure he had not seen outside the Morgue. And she was utterly uncared-for. Her gray-dappled coarse brown hair was knotted at her scrawny neck and was all wisps and ends over her eyes. The eyes, like the eyes of the mother, fascinated him. But these, while brilliant, were full of pain, and between them the flesh was set in a permanent puzzle of inquiry. Louella Potts wore a laboratory smock which fitted her like a shroud, and shapeless huaraches. No stockings, Ellery noted. He also noted varicose veins, and looked away.
The laboratory was circular — a clutter of tables, retorts, goose-necked flasks, Bunsen burners, messy bottle-filled shelves, taps, benches, electrical apparatus. What it was all for Ellery had no idea; but it looked impressive in a cinematic sort of way.
“Queen?” she shrilled in a voice as tall and thin as herself. “Queen.” The frown deepened until it resembled an old knife wound. “You aren’t connected with the Mulqueen General Laboratories, are you?”
“No, Miss Potts,” said Ellery tensely.
“You see, they’ve been after my invention. Just thieves, of course. I have to be careful — I do hope you’ll understand. Will you excuse me now? I have a tremendously important experiment to conclude before dinner.”
“Reminds you of the Mad Scientist in The Crimson Clue, doesn’t she?” Charley shuddered as they made their way down the tower stairs.
“What’s she inventing?”
“A new plastic to be used in the manufacture of shoes,” replied Charley Paxton dryly. “According to Louella, this material she’s dreaming up will last forever. People will be able to buy one pair of shoes and use them for life.”
“But that would ruin the Potts Shoe Company!”
“Of course. But what else would you expect a Potts to spend her time inventing? Come on — I’ll introduce you to Horatio.”
They were in the foyer again. Charley led the way towards a panel of tall French doors set in a rear wall.
“House is built in a U,” he explained. “Within the U are a patio and an inner court, and more grounds, and Horatio’s dream house and so on. I’ve had architects here who’ve gone screaming into the night... Ooops. There are Steve and the Major.”
“Sheila’s father and the companion of his Polynesian youth?”
They were two crimson-cheeked elderly men, seemingly quite sane. They were seated in a small library directly off the rear of the foyer, a checkerboard between them. The rear wall of the library was a continuation of the French doors, looking out upon a flagged, roofed terrace which apparently ran the width of the house.
As the two young men paused at the foyer doorway, one of the players — a slight, meek-eyed man with a straggly gray mustache — looked up and spied them. “Charley, my boy,” he said with a smile. “Glad to s-see you. Come in, come in. Major, I’ve got you b-beaten anyway, so s-stop pretending you’ll w-wiggle out.”
His companion, a whale of a man with a whale’s stare, snorted and turned his heavy, pocked face towards the doorway. “Go away,” he said testily. “I’ll whip this snapper if it takes all night.”
“And it will,” said Stephen Brent Potts in a rush. Then he looked frightened and said: “Of course we’ll p-play it out, Major.”
Paxton introduced Ellery, the four men chatted for a moment, and then he and Ellery left the two old fellows to resume their game.
“Goes on by day and by night,” laughed Charley. “Friendly enemies. Gotch is a queer one — domineering, swears all over the place, and swipes liquor. Otherwise honest — it pays! Steve lets Gotch walk all over him. And everybody else, for that matter.”
They left through the French doors in the foyer and crossed the wide terrace, stepping out upon a pleasant lawn, geometrically landscaped, with a path that serpentined to a small building lying within the arms of the surrounding garden walls like a candy box.
“Horatio’s cottage,” announced Charley.
“Cottage?” gulped Ellery. “You mean — someone actually lives in it? It’s not a mirage?”
“Positively not a mirage.”
“Then I know who designed it.” Ellery’s step quickened. “Walt Disney!”
It was a fairy-tale house. It had crooked little turrets and a front door like a golden harp and windows that possessed no symmetry at all. Most of it was painted pink, with peppermint-striped shutters. One turret looked like an inverted beet — a turquoise beet. The curl of smoke coming out of the little chimney was green. Without shame Ellery rubbed his eyes. But when he looked again the smoke was still green.
“You’re not seeing things,” sighed Charley. “Horatio puts a chemical from his chem set on the fire to color the smoke.”
“But why?”
“He says green smoke is more fun.”
“The Land of Oz,” said Ellery in a delighted voice. “Let’s go in, for pity’s sake. I must meet that man!”
Charley played on the harp and it swung inward to reveal a very large, very fat man with exuberant red hair which stood up all over his head, as if excited, and enormous eyes behind narrow gold spectacles. He reminded Ellery of somebody; Ellery tried desperately to think of whom. Then he remembered. It was Santa Claus. Horatio Potts looked like Santa Claus without a beard.
“Charley!” roared Horatio. He wrung the lawyer’s hand, almost swinging the young man off his feet. “And this gentleman?”
“Ellery Queen — Horatio Potts.”
Ellery had his hand cracked in a fury of welcome. The man possessed a giant’s strength, which he used without offense, innocently.
“Come in, come in!”
The interior was exuberant, too. Ellery wondered, as he glanced about, what was wrong with it. Then he saw that nothing was wrong with it. It was a perfect playroom for a child, a boy, of ten. It was crowded with large toys and small — with games, and boxes of candy, and construction sets, and unfinished kites, with puppies and kittens and at least one small, stupid-looking rabbit which was nibbling at the leg of a desk on which were piled children’s books and scattered manuscript sheets covered in a large, hearty hand with inky words. A goosequill pen lay near by. It was the jolliest and most imaginatively equipped child’s room Ellery had ever seen. But where was the child?