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 George, we seem headed straight for Valhalla!” How high was the mountain, anyway?
He felt his lids droop and shook his head angrily to keep himself awake. It was unwise to doze on this journey; the dirt road twisted and pirouetted like a Siamese dancer. He set his jaw and began concentrating upon the turmoil in his empty belly. A cup of steaming consommé, now, he thought; then a smoking rare cut of thick sirloin, with gravy and browned potatoes; two cups of hot coffee...
He peered ahead, alert. It seemed to him that the road was widening. And the trees — they seemed to be receding. Lord, it was time! There was something doing ahead; probably they had reached the crest of this confounded mountain and would soon be slipping down the road on the other side, bound for the next valley, a town, a hot supper, and bed. Then tomorrow a swift trip south, refreshed, and the day following New York and home. He laughed aloud in his relief.
Then he stopped laughing. The road had widened for excellent reason. The Duesenberg had pushed into a clearing of some sort. The trees receded left and right into the darkness. Overhead there was hot, thick sky speckled with millions of brilliants. A wilder wind fluttered the loose crown of his cap. To the sides of the expanded road lay tumbled rocks, from shards to boulders, out of the crevices and interstices of which sprouted an ugly, dried-up vegetation. And directly ahead...
He swore softly and got out of the car, wincing at the ache in his cold joints. Fifteen feet in front of the Duesenberg, boldly revealed in the headlights’ glare, stood two tall iron gates. To both sides ran a low fence built out of stones unquestionably indigenous to this forbidding soil. The fence stretched away divergently into the darkness. Beyond the gates for the short distance illuminated by the headlights ran the road. What lay still farther ahead was cloaked in the same palpable blackness that covered everything.
This was the end of the road!
He cursed himself for a fool. He might have known. The winding of the road below had not circled the mountain. It had merely seesawed erratically from side to side, following, now that he thought of it, the line of least resistance. This being the case, there must be a reason for the failure of the path to spiral completely about Arrow Mountain in its ascent to the summit. The reason could only be that the other side of the mountain was impassable. Probably a precipice.
In other words, there was only one way down the mountain — and that was by the road they had just climbed. They had run headlong into a blind alley.
Angry with the world, the night, the wind, the trees, the fire, himself and all living things, he strode forward to the gates. A bronze plaque was attached to the iron grille of one of them. It said simply: Arrow Head.
“What’s the matter now?” croaked the Inspector sleepily from the depths of the Duesenberg. “Where are we?”
Ellery’s voice was gloomy. “At an impasse. We’ve reached the end of our journey, dad. Pleasant prospect, isn’t it?”
“For cripes’ sake!” exploded the Inspector, crawling down into the road. “Mean to say this God-forsaken road doesn’t lead anywhere?”
“Apparently not.” Then Ellery slapped his thigh. “Oh, God,” he groaned, “flay me for an idiot! What are we standing here for? Help me with these gates.” He began to tug at the heavy grilles. The Inspector lent a shoulder, and the gates gave balkily, squealing in protest.
“Damned rusty,” growled the Inspector, examining his palms.
“Come on,” cried Ellery, running back to the car. The Inspector trotted wearily after. “What’s the matter with me? Gates and a fence mean human beings and a house. Of course! Why this road at all? Someone lives up here. That means food, a bath, shelter—”
“Maybe,” said the Inspector disagreeably as they began to move and swung in between the gates, “maybe there’s nobody living here.”