“Thanks,” barked the Inspector. “Come on, El; this is one hell of a country. God, what swine!”
“Now, now,” said Ellery with desperate rapidity. “You still don’t understand, sir. We can’t take that road. It’s on fire!”
There was a little silence; the door opened wider again. “On fire, d’ye say?” said the man suspiciously.
“Miles of it!” cried Ellery, waving his arms. He warmed to his subject. “The whole shooting match! Foothills one mass of flame! A — a monstrous conflagration! The burning of Rome was simply a piddling little campfire compared with it! Why, man, it’s as much as your life is worth just to get within a half mile of it! Burn you crisper than a cinder before you could say antidisestablishmentarianism!” He drew a deep breath, surveying the man anxiously; made a face, swallowed his pride, smiled with childlike faith (thinking of succulent food and already hearing the blessed sound of running water), and said: “Now can we come in?” plaintively.
“Well...” The man scratched his chin. The Queens held their breaths. The issue hung quivering in the balance. Ellery began, as the seconds flew by, to feel that perhaps he had not stated the case strongly enough. He should have spun a veritable saga of tragedy to soften the granite lump occupying this creature’s breast.
Then the man said sullenly: “Wait a minute,” slammed the door in their faces — thus vanishing as miraculously as he had appeared — and left them once more in darkness.
“Why, the gosh-blamed son of a so-and-so!” exploded the Inspector wrathfully. “Did you ever hear of such a thing! All this confounded bunk about the hospitality of—”
“Sssh!” whispered Ellery fiercely. “You’ll break the spell. Try to screw that writhing face of yours into a smile! Look pretty, now! I think I hear our friend returning.”
But when the door swept open it was another man who confronted them — a man, one would have said, from a different world. He was impressively tall and generously shouldered, and his smile was slow and warming. “Come in,” he said in a deep pleasant voice. “I’m afraid I must apologize abjectly for the rotten bad manners of my man Bones. Up here we’re a little cautious about night visitors. Really, I’m sorry. What’s all this about a fire down on the mountain road?... Come in, come in!”
Overwhelmed by this excess of hospitality after the tempestuous reception of the surly man, the Queens blinked and gaped and rather dazedly obeyed. The tall, pleasant man in tweeds closed the door softly behind them, still smiling.
They stood in a foyer, warm and comforting and delightful. Ellery, with his habitual and irrelevant restlessness, noted that the etching on the wall which he had glimpsed from the terrace was remarkably fine, etched after the grisly Rembrandt painting, The Anatomy Lesson. He had time, as their host closed the door, to wonder at the nature of a man who compelled his guests to be greeted with a realistic revelation of a Dutch cadaver’s viscera. For an instant he felt a chill, looked sidewise at the distinguished features and pleasant expression of the tall man, and ascribed the chill to his depressed physical condition. The Queen imagination, he ruminated, was overwrought; if the man were surgically inclined... Surgically inclined! Of course. He suppressed a grin. No doubt this gentleman was of the scalpel-wielding profession. Ellery felt better at once. He glanced at his father, but the subtleties of wall ornamentation had apparently escaped the old gentleman. The Inspector was licking his lips and sniffing furtively. Yes, there was the unmistakable odor of roast pork in the air.
As for the old ogre who had first greeted them, he had disappeared; probably, Ellery thought with a chuckle, to slink back to his lair and sullenly lick the wounds of his fear of night visitors.
As they passed through the foyer, holding their hats expectantly in their hands, they both caught a glimpse through the half-open door at the right of a large room unilluminated by any light save that of the stars coming through the French windows off the terrace. Apparently then someone had raised the blinds of the windows in that room while their host was ushering them into the foyer. The remarkable creature to whom their host inexplicably referred as “Bones”? Probably not; for to their ears from the room on the right came the sibilant sounds of several whispering voices; and among them Ellery detected at least one of unmistakably feminine pitch.
But why were they sitting in darkness? Ellery experienced a recurrence of the chill, and shook it off impatiently. There were several things uncommonly mysterious about this house. Well, it was quite clearly none of his business. Let well enough alone! The important thing was that food lurked in the offing.
The tall man ignored the door on the right. Still smiling, he motioned them to follow him and led them through the foyer a few steps along a corridor which bisected the house, running from front to back to terminate in a closed door vaguely seen at the end of the long passageway. He paused at an open door on the left.
“This way,” he murmured, and motioned them into a large room which, they instantly saw, fronted the entire half of the terrace between the foyer and the left side of the house.
It was a living room, dim with tall hangings over the French windows, sparsely starred with lamps, dotted with armchairs and small scatter rugs and a white bearskin and small round tables bearing books and magazines and humidors and ash trays. A fireplace occupied a good section of the far wall; oil paintings and etchings hung about, all of a faintly dismal character, and elaborate tall candelabra threw swaying shadows which flowed and mingled with the shadows caused by the flames in the fireplace. The whole room for all its warmth and inviting chairs and books and cosy lights struck the Queens as unaccountably depressing. It was — empty.
“Please sit down,” said the big man, “and take off your things. We’ll get you comfortable and then we can chat.” He pulled a bell rope near the door, still smiling; and Ellery began to feel a tiny irritation. Damn it all, there was nothing to smile about!
The Inspector, however, was made of less critical stuff. He sank into an overstuffed chair with a loud sigh of satisfaction, stretched his short legs, and murmured: “Ah, this is good. Makes up for a lot of grief, sir.”
“I daresay, after the chill of your ascent,” smiled the big man. Ellery, standing, was slightly puzzled. In the light of the fire and lamps the man was vaguely familiar looking. He was a powerful fellow of perhaps forty-five, big in every way, and despite his predominating blondness, Ellery thought, a Gallic type. He wore his rough clothes with the unconscious carelessness of a man indifferent to convention; a brute of a chap with distinct charm and physical attractiveness. His eyes were rather remarkable — deep-set and glowing, a student’s eyes. His hands were strangely alive; big, broad and long fingered, and given to authoritative gesture.
“It was warm enough to start with,” said the Inspector with a grin; he looked quite comfortable now. “Barely escaped with our lives.”
The big man frowned. “As bad as that? I’m horribly sorry. Fire, did you say?... Ah, Mrs. Wheary!”
A stout woman in black, white-aproned, appeared in the corridor doorway. She was rather pale, Ellery thought, and distinctly nervous about something.
“D-did you ring, Doctor?” She stammered like a school-girl.
“Yes. Take these gentlemen’s duds, please, and see if you can’t scrape together something in the way of food.” The woman nodded silently, took their hats and the Inspector’s duster, and vanished. “I’ve no doubt you’re famished,” went on the big man. “We’ve already had our dinner or I should invite you to something perhaps a little more elaborate.”