The Siamese Twin Mystery Read Free Page A

mingling lights of the cars.
    The head popped out of the side window. Away from the disfiguring glass, its every feature was sharply limned. A tattered felt hat was jammed over the man’s ears, which stood away from the enormous head like a troglodyte’s. It was a monstrous face: gross, huge, wattled, and damp. Frog’s eyes were embedded in lumps of flesh. The nose was broad and flared. The lips were tight lines. A big unhealthy face, but somehow hard and quieting. The owner of that face, Ellery felt instinctively, was not to be trifled with.
    The eyes, luminous slits, fastened on Ellery’s lanky figure with batrachian steadiness. Then they shifted to the Duesenberg behind, surveyed the indistinct torso of the Inspector, and clicked back.
    “Out of the way, you.” It was a rumbling voice, harshly vibrant in its bass tones. “Get out of the way!”
    Ellery blinked in the strong light. The gargoyle head had retreated behind the translucent shelter of the windshield again. He could see a suggestion of vast humped shoulders. And no neck, he thought irritably. Indecent of the fellow. Ought to have a neck.
    “I say,” he began, pleasantly enough. “That’s not nice—”
    The Buick snorted and began to snuffle forward. Ellery’s eyes flashed.
    “Stop!” he cried. “You can’t go down that way, you—you surly fool! There’s a fire down there!”
    The Buick halted two feet from Ellery and ten feet from the Duesenberg. The head popped out again.
    “What’s that?” said the bass voice heavily.
    “Thought that would get you,” replied Ellery with satisfaction. “For heaven’s sake, isn’t there anything remotely resembling courtesy in this part of the domain? I said there’s a very neat and thorough conflagration raging down below—must be past the road by now, so you’d better turn round and go back.”
    The froggy eyes stared for an instant without expression.
    Then: “Out of the way,” the man said again, and touched his gears.
    Ellery stared incredulously. The fellow was either stupid or insane.
    “Well, if you want to be smoked up like a side of pork,” snapped Ellery, “that’s your affair. Where’s this road lead to?”
    There was no reply. The Buick kept impatiently edging up inch by inch. Ellery shrugged and trudged back to the Duesenberg. He got in, slammed his door, muttered something impolite, and began backing off. The road was much too narrow to permit lateral passage of two machines. He was forced to back into the underbrush, crashing through until he smacked against a tree. There was barely enough room for the Buick to pass. It roared forward, kissing Ellery’s right fender none too gently, and disappeared in the darkness.
    “Funny bird,” said the Inspector thoughtfully, putting away his revolver as Ellery steered the Duesenberg onto the road again. “If his mug was any fatter it would just naturally float away. The hell with him.”
    Ellery uttered a savage chuckle. “He’ll come back soon enough,” he said; “damn his infernal cheek!” and thenceforward devoted his whole attention to the road.
    They climbed, it seemed, for hours—a steady upgrade which taxed the powerful resources of the Duesenberg. Nowhere the faintest sign of a habitation. The forest, if it were possible, grew thicker and wilder than before. The road, instead of improving, grew worse—narrower, rockier, more overgrown. Once the headlights picked out directly in the road ahead the glowing eyes of a coiled copperhead.
    The Inspector, perhaps as a reaction from the emotional disturbances of the past hour, frankly slept. His low snore throbbed in Ellery’s ears. Ellery gritted his teeth and pushed on.
    The branches overhead dipped lower. They kept up an incessant rustle, like the gossip of old foreign women in the distance.
    Not once through the interminable minutes of that remorseless ascent did Ellery catch sight of the stars.
    “We escaped dropping into Hell,” he muttered to himself, “and now, by