No one spoke for a long time. Then Mrs. Xavier said harshly: “Come, come, child. You know that’s nonsense. You mean someone stole it from you, don’t you?”
“Oh, dear!” cried Miss Forrest, flinging her head back. “Now you’ve made me talk about it. I wasn’t going to. I’m sure I either lost it or that — that man Mr. Queen was telling about stole into my room somehow and — and took it. You see, it couldn’t have been anybody h—”
“I suggest,” stammered Dr. Holmes, “that — ah we put off this charming conversation to another time, eh?”
“What was it?” asked Dr. Xavier in a quiet voice. He had himself perfectly under control again.
“Was it valuable?” snapped Mark Xavier.
“No; oh, no,” said the girl eagerly. “Absolutely worthless. You couldn’t get a wooden nickel on it from a pawnbroker or — or anybody. It was just an old heirloom, a silver ring.”
“A silver ring,” said the surgeon. He rose. Ellery noticed for the first time that there was something gaunt about his appearance; drawn and bleak. “Sarah, I’m sure your remark was needlessly unkind. There isn’t anyone here who would stoop to theft, my dear; you know that. Is there?”
Their eyes met briefly; it was his that fell. “You never can tell, mon cher,” she said softly.
The Queens sat still. This talk of thievery was, under the circumstances, acutely embarrassing. Ellery slowly removed his pince-nez and began to scrub them. Unpleasant female, that woman!
“No.” The surgeon gripped himself visibly. “And then Miss Forrest says the ring was valueless. I see no point in suspecting a theft. You probably dropped it somewhere, my dear, or else, as you suggest, this mysterious skulker is in some way responsible for its disappearance.”
“Yes, of course that’s it, Doctor,” said the girl thankfully.
“If you will pardon an unpardonable interruption,” murmured Ellery. They turned to stare, freezing in their attitudes. Even the Inspector frowned. But Ellery replaced his pince-nez with a smile. “You see, if this man we met really is an unknown quantity and unconnected with the household, then you are faced with a peculiar situation.”
“Yes, Mr. Queen?” said Dr. Xavier stiffly.
“Of course,” said Ellery with a wave of his hand, “there are minor considerations. If Miss Forrest lost her ring last Friday, where has this prowler been? Not necessarily an insurmountable point, however; he may have his headquarters in Osquewa, say...”
“Yes, Mr. Queen?” said Dr. Xavier again.
“But, as I said, you are faced with a peculiar situation. Because, since the fat-faced gentleman is neither a phoenix nor a devil out of hell,” continued Ellery, “the fire will stop him tonight as effectually as it stopped my father and me. Consequently he will find himself — has already found himself, no doubt — unable to leave the mountain.” He shrugged. “A nasty situation. With no other house in the vicinity, and the fire possibly a stubborn one...”
“Oh!” gasped Miss Forrest. “He... he’ll be back!”
“I should say that is a mathematical certainty,” said Ellery dryly.
There was silence again. About the house Ellery’s postulated banshees, as if this were a signal, redoubled their howling. Mrs. Xavier shivered suddenly, and even the men glanced uneasily at the black night beyond the French windows.
“If he’s a thief—” muttered Dr. Holmes, crushing out his cigarette, and stopped. His eyes met Dr. Xavier’s and his jaw tightened. “I was about to say,” he went on quietly, “that Miss Forrest’s explanation is undoubtedly correct. Oh, undoubtedly. For you see, I myself missed a signet ring last Wednesday. Worthless old scrap, to be sure; don’t wear it much and it means nothing to me, but — there you are. Gone, you see.”
The silence resumed where it had left off. Ellery, studying those faces, wondered again with weary tenacity what cesspool lay beneath the polite surface of this household.
The silence was shattered by Mark Xavier, whose big body moved so suddenly as to cause Miss Forrest to utter a little scream. “I think, John,” he snapped, addressing Dr. Xavier, “that you’d better see that all the doors and windows are locked tight tonight... Good night, all!”
He stalked out of the room.
Ann Forrest — whose aplomb seemed irremediably shaken for the evening — and Dr. Holmes excused themselves soon after; Ellery heard them whispering to each other as they strode down the corridor toward the staircase. Mrs. Xavier still sat with the Mona Lisa half-smile that was as stiff and inexplicable as the expression on the painted face of Leonardo’s Gioconda.
The Queens rose awkwardly. “I guess,” said the Inspector, “we’ll be trotting off to bed, too. Doctor, if you don’t mind. I can’t tell you how all-fired grateful we are—”
“Please,” said Dr. Xavier roughly. “We’re rather short-staffed here, Mr. Queen — Mrs. Wheary and Bones are our only servants — so I’ll show you to your room myself.”
“Not at all necessary,” Ellery hastened to reply. “We know the way, Doctor. Thank you all the same. Good night, Mrs. Xav—”
“I’m going to bed myself,” announced the doctor’s wife suddenly, rising. She was taller even than Ellery had supposed; she drew herself up to her full height, breathing deeply. “If there’s anything you’d like before retiring...”
“Nothing at all, Mrs. Xavier, thank you,” said the Inspector.
“But, Sarah, I thought—” began Dr. Xavier. He stopped and shrugged, his shoulders set at an oddly hopeless slope.
“Aren’t you coming to bed, John?” she said sharply.
“I think not, my dear,” he replied in a heavy voice, avoiding her eyes. “I believe I’ll do a bit of work in the lab before I turn in. There’s a chemical reaction I’ve been meaning to make on the ‘soup’ I prepared...”
“I see,” she said, and smiled that dreadful smile again. She turned to the Queens. “This way, please,” and swept out of the room.
The Queens muttered subdued “good nights” to their host and followed. The last glimpse they had of the surgeon was as they turned into the corridor. He was standing where they had left him, in an attitude of the most profound dejection, sucking his lower lip and fingering a rather gaudy bar pin securing his necktie to his rough-woven shirt. He looked older than before and mentally exhausted. Then they heard him cross the room in the direction of the library.
The instant the door of their bedroom closed upon them and Ellery had switched on the overhead light, he whirled on his father and whispered fiercely: “Dad! What in the name of God was that awful thing you saw in the corridor outside just before Xavier sneaked up, on us from behind?”
The Inspector sank into a Morris chair very slowly, loosening the knot of his cravat. He avoided Ellery’s eyes. “Well,” he mumbled, “I don’t rightly know. I guess I must “have been a little — well, jumpy.”
“You jumpy?” said Ellery scornfully. “You’ve always had the nerves of a cuttlefish. Come on, out with it I’ve been bursting to ask you all evening. Blast that big chap! He didn’t leave us alone for an instant.”
“Well,” muttered the old gentleman, pulling his cravat off and unbuttoning his collar, “I’ll tell you. It was — weird.”
“Well, well, what was it, dad, for heaven’s sake?”
“To tell the truth, I don’t know.” The Inspector looked sheepish. “If you or anybody else in this world described that — that thing to me I swear I’d call for the nut wagon. Cripes!” he burst out, “it didn’t look like anything human, I’d bet my life!”