“Nonsense. That would be an intolerable trick of fate. And besides,” said Ellery, quite gay now, “our fat-faced friend in the Buick came from somewhere, didn’t he? And yes — there are the tracks of tires... Where the deuce are these people’s lights?”
The house was so near it partook of the nature of the darkness about it. A wide gloomy pile which blotted out the stars in an irregular pattern. The Duesenberg’s headlights focused upon a flight of stone steps leading to a wooden porch. The sidelamp under the Inspector’s guidance swept to right and left and disclosed a long terrace running the entire length of the house, occupied only by empty rockers and chairs. Beyond the sides lay the rocky brush-covered terrain; only a few yards separated the house from the woods.
“That’s not polite,” muttered the Inspector, switching the lamps off. “That is, if anyone lives here. I have my doubts. Those French windows off the terrace are all closed and it looks as if they’ve got blinds drawn right to the floor. See any lights in the upper story?”
There were two stories and an attic floor beneath the slate shingles covering the gabled roof. But all the windows were black. Dry bedraggled vines half covered the wooden walls.
“No,” said Ellery, a note of misgiving creeping into his voice, “but then it’s — it’s impossible that the house is untenanted. That would be a blow from which I should never recover; not after our fantastic adventure tonight.”
“Yes,” grunted the Inspector, “but if anybody lives here why the devil hasn’t some one heard us? Lord knows this rattletrap of yours made enough racket coming up here. Lean on that horn.”
Ellery leaned. The klaxon on the Duesenberg possessed a singularly disagreeable voice; a voice, one would have said, capable of rousing the dead. The voice ceased and with pathetic eagerness both men bent forward and strained their ears. There was no response from the lifeless pile before them.
“I think,” said Ellery doubtfully, and stopped. “Didn’t you hear some—”
“I heard a blasted cricket calling to his mate,” growled the old gentleman, “that’s what I heard. Well, what the devil are we going to do now? You’re the brains of this family. Let’s see how good you are getting us out of this mess.”
“Don’t rub it in,” groaned Ellery. “I’ll admit I haven’t displayed precisely genius today. God, I’m so hungry I could eat a whole family of Gryllidae, let alone one!”
“Hey?”
“Salatorial orthopters,” explained Ellery stiffly. “Crickets to you. It’s the only scientific term I remember from my Entomology. Not that it does me any good at the moment. I always said higher education was perfectly useless against the ordinary emergencies of life.”
The Inspector snorted and wrapped his coat more closely about him, shivering. There was an eerie quality about their surroundings which made his usually impervious scalp prickle. He strove to drive away the unaccustomed phantoms of his roused imagination by thoughts of food and sleep. He closed his eyes and sighed.
Ellery rummaged in a car pocket, found an electric torch, and scrunched across the gravel to the house. He mounted the stone steps, tramped across the wooden flooring of the porch, and searched the front door in the light of his torch. It was a very solid and uninviting door. Even the knocker, a chunk of chipped stone fashioned in the shape of an Indian arrowhead, was darkly forbidding. Nevertheless Ellery lifted it and began to pound the oak panels. He pounded with vigor.
“This,” he said grimly between assaults on the door, “is beginning to resemble a nightmare. It is utterly unreasonable that we should go—” rap! rap! “through the ordeal by fire—” rap! rap! “and emerge without the customary rewards of penitence. Besides—” RAP! RAP! “I would welcome even a Dracula after what we’ve gone through. Lord, this does remind me of that vampire’s roost in the mountains of Hungary!”
And he pounded until his arm ached without evoking the faintest response from the house.
“Oh, come on,” groaned the Inspector. “What’s the use of knocking your arm off like a fool? Let’s get out of here.”
Ellery’s arm dropped wearily. He flicked the torch’s beam over the porch. “Bleak House... Get out? And where shall we go?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Back to get our hides scorched, I guess. At least it’s warm down there.”
“Not me,” snapped Ellery. “I’m going to get that lap rug out of the luggage and camp right here. And if you’re sensible, dad, you’ll join me.”
His voice carried far through the mountain air. For an instant only the hind legs of the amorous cricket answered him. Then without warning the door of the house opened and a parallelogram of light leaped out onto the porch.
Black against the light, framed by the rectangle of the door, stood the figure of a man.
Chapter II
The “Thing”
So suddenly had the apparition appeared that Ellery instinctively retreated a step, tightening his grip on the electric torch. From below he could hear the Inspector groaning with a sort of pleasant pain at the miraculous appearance of a Good Samaritan at a time when the last hope had fled. The old man’s heavy step crunched on the gravel.
The man stood in the foreground of a dazzlingly illuminated entrance hall which, from Ellery’s position, disclosed only an overhead lamp, a rug, a large etching, the corner of a refectory table and an open doorway at the right.
“Good evening,” said Ellery, clearing his throat.
“What d’ye want?”
The apparition’s voice was startling — an old man’s voice, querulously crackling in its upper tones and heavily hostile in its undertones. Ellery blinked. With the strong light shining in his eyes all he could see of the man was a silhouette, revealed by a steady glow of golden light pouring on him from behind. The outline, which made the man look like a shape created by the luminous tubes of a neon sign, was that of a shambling, loose-jointed figure, long arms dangling, sparse hair sticking up at the top like singed feathers.
“Evening,” came the Inspector’s voice from behind Ellery. “Sorry to be bothering you at this time of night, but we’ve sort of—” his eyes yearned hungrily at the furniture in the entrance hall — “we’ve sort of got ourselves into a jam, you see, and—”
“Well, well?” snarled the man.
The Queens regarded each other with dismay. Not an auspicious reception!
“Fact of the matter is,” said Ellery, smiling feebly, “that we’ve been forced up here — I suppose this is your road — by circumstances beyond our control. We thought we might get—”
They began to make out details. The man was even older than they had thought. His face was marble-gray parchment, multitudinously wrinkled, and hard as stone. His eyes were small, black, and burning. He was dressed in coarse homespun that hung from his emaciated figure in ugly vertical folds.
“This isn’t a hotel,” he said savagely and, stepping back, began to close the door.
Ellery gritted his teeth; he heard his father begin to snarl. “But good lord, man!” he cried. “You don’t understand. We’re stuck. There’s no place for us to go!”
The rectangle had squeezed together, and at its foot there was a thin wedge of light now; it made Ellery, licking his chops, think of a slab of mince pie.
“You’re only about ten-fifteen miles from Osquewa,” said the man in the doorway in a surly voice. “Can’t go wrong. Only one road down the Arrow. You hit a wider road several miles below, turn right and keep on it until you get to Osquewa. There’s an inn there.”