Read Online Halfway House by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online

mother, the tall man, De Jong, had not missed her. They fell silent, and then De Jong led the way into the house. Lucy Wilson was sitting where they had left her. It might have been the instant before, she was so still and pale and changeless. Bill was in a corner, gazing at the floor. Something kept him from looking at the girl in the ermine wrap. Every fiber inside him demanded refreshment in this full, bold light. She must be pretty, he thought. No, beautiful. What had he done?
    “Where is—” began the sabled woman, hesitating near the doorway. Her old eyes, older than they should have been, went from one face to another, uncertainly, and then settled with a slow horror on the stiff legs behind the table.
    Andrea Gimball murmured, “Mother. Please. Please don’t.”
    Then Bill looked at her. In the light of the lamp he saw grace and youth and beauty—and something else which made the unrelaxed pressure against his lips burn a little with remembrance. This was so futile, he thought, and so ill-timed. This girl represented everything he had always held in contempt. A young débutante. Society. Wealth. The snobbishness of blood. Idleness. The antithesis of what he and Lucy were and stood for. His duty was clear. There was more than duty to the law; there was something else. He glanced at his sister, so deathly still in her chair. She was beautiful, too—but in a different way. And she was his sister. How could he be thinking such thoughts at such a time… And now two things burned: his lips and fingers in his pocket closed about the diamond he had picked up from the rug.
    “Mrs. Gimball,” came Ellery’s cool, remote voice, “will you please identify the body?”
    The blood was sucked out of Lucy Wilson’s face. The sight of her increasing pallor brought Bill Angell sharply to himself.
    “I still don’t see,” said Chief De Jong in a puzzled tone, “what the devil you’re driving at, Mr. Queen.”
    But the woman in the sable coat was floating across the fawn rug like a somnambulist. Her thin figure, erect and regal and dehydrated, was steel. The girl remained where she was, and the silk-hatted man put out a hand and steadied her. De Jong’s nostrils were oscillating; he darted behind the table and snatched the newspaper from Joseph Wilson’s face.
    “That is—” began the woman, and she stopped. “He is—” She groped with one heavily jeweled hand for the table behind her.
    “You’re sure? There’s no possibility of error?” asked Ellery calmly from the door.
    “None… whatever. He was hurt in an automobile accident fifteen years ago. You can still see the permanent scar over his left eyebrow.”
    Lucy Wilson uttered an inchoate scream and leaped to her feet. Her control was gone; under the plain dress her breasts heaved wildly. She sprang forward as if she meant to tear the other woman to pieces. “What do you mean?” she cried. “What do you mean? What do you mean coming here like this? Who are you?”
    The tall woman turned her head slowly. Their eyes touched—hot young black eyes and the brittle blue of age.
    Mrs. Gimball drew her sable coat more closely about her in a gesture almost insulting. “And who are you?”
    “I? I?” Luck shrieked. “I’m Lucy Wilson. That’s Joe Wilson, of Philadelphia. That’s my husband!”
    For an instant the woman in evening clothes looked bewildered. Then her eyes sought Ellery’s at the door and she said coldly, “What nonsense. I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Queen. What sort of game is this?”
    “Mother,” said Andrea Gimball in an anguished voice. “Please, Mother.”
    “Tell Mrs. Wilson,” said Ellery without moving, “precisely who the man on the floor is, Mrs. Gimball.”
    The cold woman said, “This is Joseph Kent Gimball of Park Avenue, New York. My husband. My husband.”
    Ella Amity screamed “Oh, my God!” and sprang like a cat for the door.

II
THE TRAIL
    “…the trail of the serpent is over them all.”

    “I F