Read Online And on the Eighth Day by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online Page A

little drawer opened somewhere in Ellery’s head: the fact that the Book was lost and not is lost was noted and filed away. “Mk’h …” he said. “May I ask how that word is spelled, Teacher?”
    The old man spelled it, having some difficulty with the hesitation sign. “Mk’h,” he said again, stressing the hesitation.
    “Mk’h.” Ellery repeated. “What does it mean, Teacher?”
    The patriarch said simply, “I do not know.”
    “I see.” How could the old man not know? “In what language is it, Teacher?”
    The old man said, “Neither do I know that.”
    This was awkward. And Ellery bent to the task, examining the mystery. Mk’h … Could it be, he thought suddenly, some pristine or even aborted form of Micah? The Book of Micah! Sixth of the books of the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament … Micah, who had prophesied that out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old … And this man shall be the peace …! But … “The Book which was lost”? Had the Book of Micah ever been “lost”? Ellery could not remember. It seemed unlikely, for surely …
    “The Book of Micah,” Ellery said to the Teacher.
    In the night, in the doorway of the holy house, the old man turned to Ellery, and the yellow glow on the far wall turned his eyes to flame. But it was only an effect of the lamp. For the Teacher said in a puzzled way, “Micah? No. Mk’h.”
    Ellery gave it up (for now, he told himself, but only for now). And he said, “This great trouble, Teacher. Is it written what kind of trouble it will be?” He swallowed, feeling childish. “A crime, perhaps?”
    He might have touched the old man with a red-hot iron. Agitation rippled over the ancient face as if a stone had been thrown into a pond. “A crime?” he cried. “A crime in Quenan? There has been no crime among us, Elroï, for half a century!”
    Concerning doctrine or prophecy one might doubt, but Ellery could muster no reason for rejecting the patriarch’s testimony on a matter of yea-or-nay fact involving his own Valley. Yet how was it possible for a community of men, women, and children to exist which had known no crime for almost two generations? Since the days of—who had been President then?—Harrison, was it, the stern and bearded Presbyterian warrior who had been a general in the Civil War? Or walrus-mustached Cleveland, whose Vice-President was a man named Adlai E. Stevenson? No matter; it was another world, an American time and way of life as different as in Byzantium under the Paleologi—while here in Quenan, life must have been exactly as today … and in all that time—no crime?
    “If there has been no crime in Quenan in half a century, Teacher,” Ellery said carefully, “then surely I may infer that half a century ago there was a crime?”
    “Yes.”
    “Would you tell me about it?”
    The old man, tall against his taller staff, stood looking past Ellery at the ghost of a cottonwood tree, but not as if he were seeing it.
    “Belyar was the Weaver then, and he had finished weaving ten bolts of cloth for the Storesman’s shelves. But first Belyar cut from each bolt an arm-long length and concealed the ten lengths in his house, and he made for himself new garments out of them. The Storesman observed this, and examined the bolts, and he saw that they were not of the usual lengths; and he questioned him.
    “Belyar was silent. This the Storesman reported to me, and I—when the Weaver again would not answer—I reported it to the Crownsil. It was a hard time. Much was considered. But at last a search was ordered; and in the presence of witnesses the Superintendent searched the Weaver’s quarters and found scraps of the newly made cloth hidden in the bed, for the foolish man had not been able to part with even the scraps. And Belyar was tried by the Crownsil and he was declared guilty. Belyar’s beard was brown and, as he worked much in the weaving shed out of the