There Was an Old Woman (4 page)

“Yes, we could do that,” agreed Ellery, “but my father was right this morning—If Thurlow's denied the legal right to own a gun, he'll get one somewhere illegally.”

“But fourteen! With fourteen guns to play with, he's a menace to the public safety. A few imaginary insults, and Thurlow's likely to start a one-man purge!”

Ellery frowned. “I can't believe yet that it's a serious threat, Charley. Although obviously he's got to be watched.”

“Then you'll take over?”

“Oh, yes.”

“White man!” Charley wrung Ellery's hand. “What can I do to help?”

“Can you insinuate me into the Potts Palace today without getting everybody's wind up?”

“Well, I'm expected tonight—I've got some legal matters to go over with the Old Woman. I could wangle you for dinner. Would tonight be too late, do you think?”

“Hardly. If Thurlow's the man you say he is, he'll be spending the afternoon fondling his fourteen instruments of death and weaving all sorts of darkly satisfactory dreams. Dinner would be splendid.”

“Swell!” Charley jumped up. “I'll pick you up at six.”

3 . . . She Didn't Know What to Do

“We're going to call for somebody,” announced counselor Paxton as he drove Ellery Queen downtown that evening. “I particularly wanted you to meet this person before—well, before.”

“Aha,” said Ellery, deducting like mad, but to himself.

Charley Paxton parked his roadster before an apartment building in the West Seventies. He spoke to the doorman, and the doorman rang someone on the house phone. Charley paced up and down the lobby, smoking a cigaret nervously.

Sheila Potts appeared in a swirl of summery clothes and laughter, a small slim miss with nice red hair. It seemed to Ellery that she was that peculiar product of American society, a girl of inoffensive insolence. She would insist on the rightness of things and cheerfully do wrong to make them right; she would be impatient with men who beat their breasts, and furious with the authors of their misery. (Ellery suspected that Mr. Paxton beat his breast upon occasion for the sheer glum pleasure of calling attention to himself.) And she was delicious and fresh as a mint bed by a woodsy brook. Then what, wondered Ellery as he took Sheila's gloved hand and heard her explanation of having been visiting—”Don't dare laugh, Mr. Queen!”—a sick friend, was wrong? Why that secret sadness in her eyes?

He learned the answer as they drove west to the Drive, the three of them crowded into the front seat of the roadster.

“My mother's against our marriage,” said Sheila simply. “You'd have to know Mother to know just how horrible that can be, Mr. Queen.”

“What's her reason?”

“She won't give one,” complained Charley.

“I think I know her reason,” said Sheila so quietly Ellery almost missed the bitterness. “It's my sister Louella.”

“The inventor?”

“Yes. Mother makes no bones about her sympathies, Mr. Queen. She's always been kinder to the children of her first marriage than to Bob and Mac and me. Maybe it's because she never did love my father, and by being cold to us she's getting back at
him,
or something. Whatever it is, I do know that Mother loves poor Louella passionately and
loathes
me.” Sheila sucked in her lower lip, as if to hide it.

“It's a fact, Ellery,” growled Paxton. “You'd think it was Sheila's fault that Louella's a skinny old zombie, swooping around her smelly chem lab with an inhuman light in her eye.”

“It's very simple, Mr. Queen. Rather than see me married while Louella stays an old maid, Mother's perfectly willing to sacrifice my happiness. She's quite a monster about it.”

Ellery Queen, who knew odd things, thought he saw wherein the monster dwelt. The children of the Old Woman's union with Bacchus Potts were off normal. On these, the weaklings, the misfits, the helpless ones, Cornelia Potts expended the passion of her maternity. To the offspring of her marriage with Stephen Potts,
né
Brent, therefore, she could give only her acid anger. The twin boys and Sheila were what she had always wanted fussy little Thurlow, spinster-inventor Louella, and the still-unglimpsed Horatio to be. This much was clear. But there was that which was not.

“Why do you two stand for it?” Ellery asked.

Before Charley could answer, Sheila said quickly: “Mother threatens to disinherit me if I marry Charley.”

“I see,” said Ellery, not liking Sheila's reply at all.

She read the disapproval in his tone. “It's not of myself I'm thinking! It's Charley. You don't know what he's gone through. I don't care a double darn whether I get any of Mother's money or not.”

“Well, I don't either,” snapped Charley, flushing. “Don't give Ellery the impression—The hours I've spent arguing with you, sweetie-pie!”

“But darling—”

“Ellery, she's as stubborn as her mother. She gets an idea in her head, you can't dislodge it with an ax.”

“Peace,” smiled Ellery. “This is all new to me, remember. Is this it? If you two were to marry against your mother's wishes, Sheila, she'd not only cut you off but she'd fire Charley, too?” Sheila nodded grimly. “And then, Charley, you'd be out of a job. Didn't I understand that your whole practice consists in taking care of the Potts account?”

“Yes,” said Charley unhappily. “Between Thurlow's endless lawsuits and the legitimate legal work of an umpteen-million-dollar shoe business, I keep a large staff busy. There's no doubt Sheila's mother would take all her legal work elsewhere if we defied her. I'd be left pretty much out on a limb. I'd have to start building a practice from scratch. But I'd do it in a shot to get Sheila. Only—she won't.”

“No, I won't,” said Sheila. “I won't ruin your life, Charley. Or mine for that matter.” Her lips flattened, and Charley looked miserable. “You'll hate me for this, Mr. Queen. My mother's an old woman, a sick old woman. Dr. Innis can't help that awful heart of hers, and she won't obey him, or take care of herself, and we can't make her. . . . Mother will die very soon, Mr. Queen. In weeks. Maybe days. Dr. Innis says so. How can I feel anything but relief at the prospect?” And Sheila's eyes, so blue and young, filled with tears.

Ellery saw again that life is not all caramel candy and rose petals, and that the great and hardy souls of this earth are women, not men.

“Sometimes,” said Sheila, sniffing, “I think men don't know what love really is.” She smiled at Charley and ruffled his hair. “You're a jerk,” she said.

The roadster nosed along in traffic, and for some time none of them spoke.

“When Mother dies, Charley and I—and my dad, and the twins—we'll all be free. We've lived in a jail all our lives—a sort of bedlam. You'll see what I mean tonight. … We'll be free, and we'll change our names back to Brent, and we'll become folks again, not animals in a zoo. Thurlow's furious about the name of Brent—he hates it.”

“Does your mother know all this, Sheila?” frowned Ellery.

“I imagine she suspects.” Sheila seized her young man's arm. “Charley, stop here and let me out.”

“What for?” demanded Charley suspiciously.

“Let me out, you droogler! There's no point in making Mother madder than she is already. I'll cab home from here, while you drive Mr. Queen into the grounds—then Mother can only
suspect
I've been seeing you on the side!”

“What in the name of the seven thousand miracles,” demanded Ellery as he got out of his host's roadster, “is
that?”

The mansion lay far back from the tall Moorish gates and iron-spiked walls which embraced the precious Potts property. The building faced Riverside Drive and the Hudson River beyond; between gates and house lay an impressive circle of grass and trees, girded as by a stone belt with the driveway which arched from the gates to the mansion and back to the gates again. Ellery was pointing an accusing finger at the center of this circle of greenery. For among the prim city trees stood a remarkable object—a piece of bronze statuary as tall as two acrobats and as wide as an elephant. It stood upon a pedestal and twinkled and leered in the setting sun. It was the statue of an Oxford shoe. A shoe with trailing laces in bronze.

Above it traced elegantly in neon tubing were the words:—

THE POTTS SHOE

$3.99 EVERYWHERE

4 . . . She Gave Them Some Broth without Any Bread

“It's a little early for dinner,” said Charley, his robust voice echoing in the foyer. “Do you want to absorb the atmosphere first, or what? I'm your man.”

Ellery blinked at the scene. This was surely the most wonderful house in New York. It had no style; or rather, it partook of many styles, borrowing rather heavily from the Moorish, with Gothic subdominant. It was large, large; and its furnishings were heavy, heavy. There was a wealth of alfresco work on the walls, and sullen, unbeautiful hangings. Knights of Byzantium stood beside doorways stiffly on guard against threats as empty as themselves. A gilded staircase spiraled from the foyer into the heaven of this ponderous dream.

“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?

Charley whispered in Ellery's ear: “Ask him to explain his philosophy of life to you.”

Ellery did so.

“Glad to,” boomed Horatio. “Now you're a man, Mr. Queen. You have worries, responsibilities, you lead a heavy, grown-up sort of life. Don't you?”

“Well… yes,” stammered Ellery.

“But it's so simple!” beamed Horatio. “Here sit down—throw those marbles on the floor. The happiest part of a man's life is his boyhood, and I don't care if he was brought up in Gallipolis, Ohio, or Hester Street, New York.” Ellery wiggled his brows. “All right, now take
me.
If I had to make shoes in a factory, or tell other men to make 'em, or write advertising, or dig ditches, or do any of the tiresome things men have to do to be men—why, I'd be like you, Mr. Queen, or like Charley Paxton here, who always goes around with a worried look.” Charley grinned feebly. “But I don't have to. So I fly kites, I run miniature trains, I build twelve-foot bridges and airplane models, I read Superman and Hairbreadth Harry, detective stories, fairy tales, children's verses … I even write 'em.” Horatio seized a couple of highly colored books from his desk.
“The Little Old Dog of Dogwood Street,
by Horatio Potts.
The Purple Threat,
by Horatio Potts. Here are a dozen more boys' stories, all by me.”

“Horatio,” said Charley reverently, “publishes 'em himself, too.”

“Right now I'm writing my major opus, Mr. Queen,” roared Horatio happily. “A new modern version of
Mother Goose.
It's going to be my monument, mark my words.”

“Even has his meals served there,” said Charley as they strolled back to the main house. “Well, Ellery, what do you think of Horatio Potts?”

“He's either the loonist loon of them all,” growled Mr. Queen, “or he's the only sane man alive on the planet!”

Dinner was served in a Hollywood motion-picture set by extras—or so it seemed to Ellery, who sat down to the most remarkable meal of his life. The dining-room ceiling was a forest of rafters, and one had to crane to count them. Everything was on the same Brobdingnagian scale—a logical outgrowth, no doubt, of the giant that was Pottsism. Nothing less than a California redwood could have provided the one-piece immensity of the table. The linen and silver were heavier than Ellery had ever hefted, the crockery was grander, and the stemware more intricate. The
credenza
groaned. If the Old Woman was hen of a batty brood, at least she did not make them scratch for their grub. This was the board of plenty.

The twins, Robert and Maclyn, had not appeared for dinner. They had telephoned their mother that they were held up “at the office.”

Cornelia Potts was a not ungracious hostess. The old lady wanted to know all about “Mr. Queen,” and Mr. Queen found himself talking when he had come to listen. If he was to gauge the temper and the sanity of Thurlow Potts, he could not distract himself with himself. So he was annoyed, deliberately. The Old Woman stared at him with the imperial surprise of a woman who has lived seventy years on her own terms. Finally she rejected him, turning to her children. Ellery grinned with relief.

Sheila ate brightly, too brightly. Her eyes were crystal with humiliation. Ellery knew it was for him, for being witness to her shame. For Cornelia ignored her, as if Sheila were some despised poor relation instead of the daughter of her flesh. Cornelia devoted herself almost wholly to Louella, who bothered not at all to respond to her mother's blandishments. The skinny old maid looked sullen; she ate wolfishly, in silence.

Had it not been for Stephen Potts and his friend Major Gotch, the dinner would have been intolerable. But the two cronies chattered away, apparently pleased at having a new ear to pour their reminiscences into, and Ellery had some difficulty extricating himself from Papuan paradises, Javanese jungles, and “the good old days” in the South Seas.

Thurlow had come to the table bearing two books. He set them down beside his service plate, and once in a while glanced at them or touched them with a glowering pleasure. From where Charley Paxton sat he could read the titles on their spines; Ellery could not.

“What are those books, Charley?” he mumbled.

Charley squinted.
“The History of Dueling
—”

“History of dueling!”

“The other is
A Manual of Firearms.”

Mr. Queen choked over his melon.

During the soup course—an excellent chicken consommé—Ellery looked about and looked about and finally said in an undertone to Charley: “I notice there's no bread on the table. Why is that?”

“The Old Woman,” Charley whispered back. “She's on a strict diet—Innis has forbidden her to eat bread in any form—so she won't have it in the house. Why are you looking so funny?”

Thurlow was explaining to his mother with passion the code of duello, and Major Gotch interrupted to recall some esoteric Oriental facts on the broader subject; so Mr. Queen had an opportunity to lean over to his friend and chant, softly:—

“There was an
old woman
who lived in a
shoe,

She had
so many children
she didn't know what to do,

She gave them both
broth without any bread . . .”

Charley gaped. “What are you talking about?”

“I was struck by certain resemblances,” muttered Ellery. “The Horatio influence, no doubt.” And he finished his broth in a thoughtful way.