Read Online The Four Johns by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online Page B

Mervyn. “Haven’t you heard? Mary’s eloped, or has been abducted. By John Viviano.”
    â€œThat is not the case,” said Viviano quickly. “It was an opportunity not extended to me.”
    Harriet Brill made a contemptuous noise. “You men are all so glandular. You assume that Mary went off on some cheap adventure—”
    â€œA trained psychologist should be surprised at nothing,” said Viviano.
    â€œI’m not surprised. I merely understand the difference between romance and vulgarity.”
    â€œWho can escape destiny?” The photographer raised his glass and drained it. “Everything that has been, and is, and that is to be, is ordained. If vulgarity be my fate, I embrace it!”
    â€œThe secret of a contented life,” said little Callahan in his big voice.
    Harriet snorted. “I can’t accept that, Viviano. Scientists don’t believe in predestination. There’s a very important principle opposed to it—something about uncertainty.”
    â€œAh,” said Viviano. “But one moment. Boce, be a good fellow and replenish this glass with some of your splendid whiskey. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, uncertainty. Utter drivel. Provide me a sufficiently complex computer sufficiently programmed, and I guarantee to predict the future!”
    â€œYou know I don’t have access to any such computer,” Harriet whined. “And anyway, I don’t think it’s possible.” She turned to the man sitting beside Susie. “Mike, you’re a physicist. Which of us is right?”
    Mike looked embarrassed. “In essence the universe itself is just such a computer. By the interaction of its parts it solves the equations of its own future. But a man-made computer …” He shook his head. “As for uncertainty, it’s a figure of speech, although I admit there are transcendentalists in the profession who claim that uncertainty is a built-in factor of reality. I personally feel that the easiest way to learn the future is to watch it happen.”
    Everyone digested this wisdom, uncertainly.
    â€œWhat of precognition?” asked Harriet. “I know a marvelous woman, a Negro with orange hair. She can look at some object you own and tell you the most amazing things about your past—what you’re thinking, what’s going to happen to you.”
    â€œHeh, heh!” snickered Viviano. “Now who believes in predestination!” He strode into the kitchen, from which he could be heard accusing John Boce of niggardly bartending.
    â€œWhat a volatile man,” sighed Harriet.
    Calm descended on the room. Mervyn sat limply, staring into his highball glass. The conversation receded; a sense of fantasy overcame him.
    Something tugged at his mind. The urgent unpleasantness that had brought him back to Berkeley. Recollection came as a shock. He glanced toward the kitchen, where Boce was still occupied. So he rose, mumbled an all-inclusive farewell and left in a hurry.
    At his own apartment he found, as Boce had claimed, that the door was unlocked. This was not unusual; he frequently neglected to lock his door. Still, it made him uneasy. He locked it now, switched on the light, pulled the drapes. Standing in the middle of the living room, he looked around carefully. The room seemed normal, but to Mervyn’s abraded senses it felt wrong.
    Moving stealthily, as if something dangerous were asleep nearby, he looked under the couch. Nothing. He went to the bookcase, felt behind his books. Nothing. He walked into his bedroom, braced himself, and switched on the lights. The room, which Mervyn maintained in monastic neatness, looked undisturbed.
    Nevertheless, he peered under the bed. Nothing. He turned to his chest of drawers, but the sliding doors of the wardrobe caught his eye. There was a dark gap at the right-hand side. Had he left it that way? He hesitated. It was as if there were another personality in the room,