The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (20 page)

“
Ow
!” shrieked Djuna from somewhere behind him. There was a scraping sound, followed by a thud.

Ellery whirled. “For heaven's sake, Djuna, what's the matter?”

The boy's voice wailed from a point close at hand in the darkness. “I was lookin' for how to get out an'—an' I slipped on somethin' an' fell!”

“Oh.” Ellery sighed with relief. “From the yell you unloosed I thought a banshee had attacked you. Well, pick yourself up. It's not the first fall you've taken in this confounded hole.”

“B-but it's
wet
,” blubbered Djuna.

“Wet?” Ellery groped toward the anguished voice and seized a quivering hand. “Where?”

“On the f-floor. I got some of it on my hand when I slipped. My other hand. It—it's wet an' sticky an'—an' warm.”

“Wet and sticky and wa …” Ellery released the boy's hand and dug about in his clothes until he found his tiny pencil-flashlight. He pressed the button with the most curious feeling of drama. There was something tangibly unreal, and yet, final, in the darkness. Djuna panted by his side.…

It was a moderately sane door with only a suggestion of cubistic outline, a low lintel, and a small knob. The door was shut. Something semiliquid and dark red in color stained the floor, emanating from the other side of the crack.

“Let me see your hand,” said Ellery tonelessly. Djuna, staring, tendered a small, thin fist. Ellery turned it over and gazed at the palm. It was scarlet. He raised it to his nostrils and sniffed. Then he took out his handkerchief almost absently and wiped the scarlet away. “Well! That hasn't the smell of paint, eh, Djuna? And I scarcely think Duval would have so far let enthusiasm run away with better sense as to pour anything else on the floor as atmosphere.” He spoke soothingly, divided between the stained floor and the dawning horror on Djuna's face. “Now, now, son. Let's open this door.”

He shoved. The door stirred a half-inch, stuck. He set his lips and rammed, pushing with all his strength. There was something obstructing the door, something large and heavy. It gave way stubbornly, an inch at a time.…

He blocked Djuna's view deliberately, sweeping the flashlight's thin finger about the room disclosed by the opening of the door. It was perfectly octagonal, devoid of fixtures. Just eight walls, a floor, and a ceiling. There were two other doors besides the one in which he stood. Over one there was a red arrow, over the other a green. Both doors were shut.… Then the light swept sidewise and down to the door he had pushed open, seeking the obstruction.

The finger of light touched something large and dark and shapeless on the floor and quite still. It sat doubled up like a jackknife, rump to the door. The finger fixed itself on four blackish holes in the middle of the back, from which a ragged cascade of blood had gushed, soaking the coat on its way to the floor.

Ellery growled something to Djuna and knelt, raising the head of the figure. It was the massive White Rabbit, and he was dead.

When Mr. Queen rose he was pale and abstracted. He swept the flash slowly about the floor. A trail of red led to the dead man from across the room. Diagonally opposite lay a short-barreled revolver. The smell of powder still lay heavily over the room.

“Is he—is he—?” whispered Djuna.

Ellery grabbed the boy's arm and hustled him back into the room they had just left. His flashlight illuminated the glass door on whose surface he had scratched. He kicked high, and the glass shivered as the light of day rushed in. Hacking out an aperture large enough to permit passage of his body, he wriggled past the broken glass and found himself on one of the fantastic little balconies overlooking the open inner court of The House of Darkness. A crowd was collecting below, attracted by the crash of falling glass. He made out the dapper figure of Monsieur Duval by the ticketbooth, in agitated conversation with the khaki-clad special officer, one of the regular Joyland police.

“Duval!” he shouted. “Who's come out of the House?”

“Eh?” gulped the little Frenchman.

“Since I went in? Quick, man, don't stand there gaping!”

“Who has come out?” Monsieur Duval licked his lips, staring up with scared black eyes. “But no one has come out, Mr. Queen.… What is it that is the matter? Have you—your head—the sun—”

“Good!” yelled Ellery. “Then he's still in this confounded labyrinth. Officer, send in an alarm for the regular county police. See that nobody leaves. Arrest 'em as soon as they try to come out. A man has been murdered up here!”

The note, in a woman's spidery scrawl said: “Darling Anse—I
must
see you. It's important. Meet me at the old place, Joyland, Sunday afternoon, three o'clock, in that House of Darkness. I'll be awfully careful not to be seen. Especially this time.
He suspects
. I don't know what to do. I love you, love you!!!—Madge.”

Captain Ziegler of the county detectives cracked his knuckles and barked: “That's the payoff, Mr. Queen. Fished it out of his pocket. Now who's Madge, and who the hell's the guy that ‘suspects'? Hubby, d'ye suppose?”

The room was slashed with a dozen beams. Police crisscrossed flashlights in a pattern as bizarre as the shape of the chamber, with the shedding lantern held high by a policeman over the dead man as their focal point. Six people were lined up against one of the eight walls; five of them glared, mesmerized, at the still heap in the center of the rays. The sixth—the white-haired old man, still leaning on the arm of the tall young woman—was looking directly before him.

“Hmm,” said Ellery; he scanned the prisoners briefly. “You're sure there's no one else skulking in the House, Captain Ziegler?”

“That's the lot of 'em. Mr. Duval had the machinery shut off. He led us through himself, searched every nook and cranny. And, since nobody left this hellhole, the killer must be one o' these six.” The detective eyed them coldly; they all flinched—except the old man.

“Duval,” murmured Ellery. Monsieur Duval started; he was deadly pale. “There's no ‘secret' method of getting out of here unseen?”

“Ah, no, no, Mr. Queen! Here, I shall at once secure a copy of the plans myself, show you.…”

“Scarcely necessary.”

“The—the assembly chamber is the sole means of emerging,” stammered Duval. “Eh, that this should happen to—”

Ellery said quietly to a dainty woman, somberly gowned, who hugged the wall: “
You're
Madge, aren't you?” He recalled now that she was the only one of the six prisoners he had not seen while listening with Djuna and Monsieur Duval to the oration of the barker outside. She must have preceded them all into the House. The five others were here—the tall young woman and her old father, the bearded man with his artist's tie, and the burly young Negro and his pretty mulatto companion. “Your name, please—your last name?”

“I—I'm not Madge,” she whispered, edging, shrinking away. There were half-moons of violet shadow under her tragic eyes. She was perhaps thirty-five, the wreck of a once beautiful woman. Ellery got the curious feeling that it was not age, but fear, which had ravaged her.

“That's Dr. Hardy,” said the tall young woman suddenly in a choked voice. She gripped her father's arm as if she were already sorry she had spoken.

“Who?” asked Captain Ziegler quickly.

“The … dead man. Dr. Anselm Hardy, the eye specialist. Of New York City.”

“That's right,” said the small, quiet man kneeling by the corpse. He tossed something over to the detective. “Here's one of his cards.”

“Thanks, Doc. What's
your
name, Miss?”

“Nora Reis.” The tall young woman shivered. “This is my father, Matthew Reis. We don't know anything about this—this horrible thing. We've just come out to Joyland today for some fun. If we'd known—”

“Nora, my dear,” said her father gently; but neither his eyes nor his head moved from their fixed position.

“So you know the dead man, hey?” Ziegler's disagreeable face expressed heavy suspicion.

“If I may,” said Matthew Reis. There was a soft musical pitch to his voice. “We knew Dr. Hardy, my daughter and I, only in his professional capacity. That's a matter of record, Captain Ziegler. He treated me for over a year. Then he operated upon my eyes.” A spasm of pain flickered over his waxy features. “Cataracts, he said.…”

“Hmm,” said Ziegler. “Was it—”

“I am totally blind.”

There was a shocked silence. Ellery shook his head with impatience at his own blindness. He should have known. The old man's helplessness, the queer fixed stare, that vague smile, the shuffling walk … “This Dr. Hardy was responsible for your blindness, Mr. Reis?” he demanded abruptly.

“I didn't say that,” murmured the old man. “It was no doubt the hand of God. He did what he could. I have been blind for over two years.”

“Did you know Dr. Hardy was here, in this place, today?”

“No. We haven't seen him for two years.”

“Where were you people when the police found you?”

Matthew Reis shrugged. “Somewhere ahead. Near the exit, I believe.”

“And you?” asked Ellery of the colored couple.

“M'name is—is,” stuttered the Negro, “Juju Jones, suh. Ah'm a prizefighter. Light-heavy, suh. Ah don't know nothin' 'bout this doctuh man. Me an' Jessie we been havin' a high ol' time down yonduh in a room that bounded ‘n' jounced all roun'. We been—”

“Lawd,” moaned the pretty mulatto, hanging on to her escort's arm.

“And how about you?” demanded Ellery of the bearded man.

He raised his shoulders in an almost Gallic gesture. “How about me? This is all Classical Greek to
me
. I've been out on the rocks at the Point most of the day doing a couple of sea pictures and a landscape. I'm an artist—James Oliver Adams, at your service.” There was something antagonistic, almost sneering, in his attitude. “You'll find my paint box and sketches in the checkroom downstairs. Don't know this dead creature, and I wish to God I'd never been tempted by this atrocious gargoyle of a place.”

“Garg—” gasped Monsieur Duval; he became furious. “Do you know of whom you speak?” he cried, advancing upon the bearded man. “I am Dieudonné Du—”

“There, there, Duval,” said Ellery soothingly. “We don't want to become involved in an altercation between clashing artistic temperaments; not now, anyway. Where were you, Mr. Adams, when the machinery stopped?”

“Somewhere ahead.” The man had a harsh cracked voice, as if there was something wrong with his vocal cords. “I was looking for a way out of the hellish place.
I'd
had a bellyful. I—”

“That's right,” snapped Captain Ziegler. “I found this bird myself. He was swearin' to himself like a trooper, stumblin' around in the dark. He says to me: ‘How the hell do you get out of here? The barker said you've got to follow the green lights, but they don't get you anywhere except in another silly hole of a monkeyshine room, or somethin' like that.' Now why'd you want to get out so fast, Mr. Adams? What do you know? Come on, spill it!”

The artist snorted his disgust, disdaining to reply. He shrugged again and set his shoulders against the wall in an attitude of resignation.

“I should think, Captain,” murmured Ellery, studying the faces of the six against the wall, “that you'd be much more concerned with finding the one who ‘suspects' in Madge's note. Well, Madge, are you going to talk? It's perfectly silly to hold out. This is the sort of thing that can't be kept secret. Sooner or later—”

The dainty woman moistened her lips; she looked faint. “I suppose you're right. It's bound to come out,” she said in a low empty voice. “I'll talk. Yes, my name
is
Madge—Madge Clarke. It's true. I wrote that note to—to Dr. Hardy.” Then her voice flamed passionately. “But I didn't write it of my own free will!
He
made me. It was a trap. I knew it. But I couldn't—”

“
Who
made you?” growled Captain Ziegler.

“My husband. Dr. Hardy and I had been friends … well, friends, quietly. My husband didn't know at first. Then he—he did come to know. He must have followed us—many times. We—we've met here before. My husband is very jealous. He made me write the note. He threatened to—to kill me if I didn't write it. Now I don't care. Let him! He's a murdered!” And she buried her face in her hands and began to sob.

Captain Ziegler said gruffly: “Mrs. Clarke.” She looked up and then down at the snub-nosed revolver in his hand. “Is that your husband's gun?”

She shrank from it, shuddering. “No. He has a revolver, but it's got a long barrel. He's a—a good shot.”

“Pawnshop,” muttered Ziegler, putting the gun in his pocket; and he nodded gloomily to Ellery.

“You came here, Mrs. Clarke,” said Ellery gently, “in the face of your husband's threats?”

“Yes. Yes. I—I couldn't stay away. I thought I'd warn—”

“That was very courageous. Your husband—did you see him in Joyland, in the crowd before this place?”

“No. I didn't. But it must have been Tom. He
told
me he'd kill Anse!”

“Did you meet Dr. Hardy in here, before he was dead?”

She shivered. “No. I couldn't find—”

“Did you meet your husband here?”

“No …”

“Then where is he?” asked Ellery dryly. “He couldn't have vanished in a puff of smoke. The age of miracles is past.… Do you think you can trace that revolver, Captain Ziegler?”

“Try.” Ziegler shrugged. “Manufacturer's number has been filed off. It's an old gun, too. And no prints. Bad for the D.A.”

Ellery clucked irritably and stared down at the quiet man by the corpse. Djuna held his breath a little behind him. Suddenly he said: “Duval, isn't there some way of illuminating this room?”