The New Adventures of Ellery Queen Read Free Page A

of late years—ah, mentally, emotionally. And so I wrote you at his request. On my second visit, the last time I saw him alive, when the question of the estate came up—”
    Ellery thought that Dr. Reinach’s paws tightened on the wheel. But the fat man’s face bore the same bland, remote smile.
    â€œPlease,” said Alice wearily. “Do you greatly mind, Mr. Thorne? I—I don’t feel up to discussing such matters now.”
    The car was fleeing along the deserted road as if it were trying to run away from the weather. The sky was gray lead; a frowning, gloomy sky under which the countryside lay cowering. It was growing colder, too, in the dark and drafty tonneau; the cold seeped in through the cracks and their overclothes.
    Ellery stamped his feet a little and twisted about to glance at Alice Mayhew. Her oval face was a glimmer in the murk; she was sitting stiffly, her hands clenched into tight little fists in her lap. Thorne was slumped miserably by her side, staring out the window.
    â€œBy George, it’s going to snow,” announced Dr. Reinach with a cheerful puff of his cheeks.
    No one answered.
    The drive was interminable. There was a dreary sameness about the landscape that matched the weather’s mood. They had long since left the main highway to turn into a frightful byroad; along which they jolted in an unsteady eastward curve between ranks of leafless woods. The road was pitted and frozen hard; the woods were tangles of dead trees and underbrush densely packed but looking as if they had been repeatedly seared by fire. The whole effect was one of widespread and oppressive desolation.
    â€œLooks like No Man’s Land,” said Ellery at last from his bouncing seat beside Dr. Reinach. “And feels like it, too.”
    Dr. Reinach’s cetaceous back heaved in a silent mirth. “Matter of fact, that’s exactly what it’s called by the natives. Land-God-forgot, eh? But then Sylvester always swore by the Greek unities.”
    The man seemed to live in a dark and silent cavern, out of which he maliciously emerged at intervals to poison the atmosphere.
    â€œIt isn’t very inviting-looking, is it?” remarked Alice in a low voice. It was clear she was brooding over the strange old man who had lived in this wasteland, and of her mother who had fled from it so many years before.
    â€œIt wasn’t always this way,” said Dr. Reinach, swelling his cheeks like a bullfrog. “Once it was pleasant enough; I remember it as a boy. Then it seemed as if it might become the nucleus of a populous community. But progress has passed it by, and a couple of uncontrollable forest fires did the rest.”
    â€œIt’s horrible,” murmured Alice, “simply horrible.”
    â€œMy dear Alice, it’s your innocence that speaks there. All life is a frantic struggle to paint a rosy veneer over the ugly realities. Why not be honest with yourself? Everything in this world is stinking rotten; worse than that, a bore. Hardly worth living, in any impartial analysis. But if you have to live, you may as well live in surroundings consistent with the rottenness of everything.”
    The old attorney stirred beside Alice, where he was buried in his greatcoat. “You’re quite a philosopher, Doctor,” he snarled.
    â€œI’m an honest man.”
    â€œDo you know, Doctor,” murmured Ellery, despite himself, “you’re beginning to annoy me.”
    The fat man glanced at him. Then he said: “And do you agree with this mysterious friend of yours, Thorne?”
    â€œI believe,” snapped Thorne, “that there is a platitude extant which says that actions speak with considerably more volume than words. I haven’t shaved for six days, and today has been the first time I left Sylvester Mayhew’s house since his funeral.”
    â€œMr. Thorne!” cried Alice, turning to him. “Why?”
    The lawyer muttered: