Read Online The New Adventures of Ellery Queen by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online Page A

hardening voice; not once did he take his eyes from Dr. Reinach.
    His first suspicion that something was wrong had been germinated by Sylvester Mayhew himself.
    Hearing by post from Alice, Thorne had investigated and located Mayhew. He had explained to the old invalid his daughter’s desire to find her father, if he still lived. Old Mayhew, with a strange excitement, had acquiesced; he was eager to be reunited with his daughter; and he seemed to be living, explained Thorne defiantly, in mortal fear of his relatives in the neighboring house.
    â€œFear, Thorne?” The fat man sat down, raising his brows. “You know he was afraid, not of us, but of poverty. He was a miser.”
    Thorne ignored him. Mayhew had instructed Thorne to write Alice and bid her come to America at once; he meant to leave her his entire estate and wanted her to have it before he died. The repository of the gold he had cunningly refused to divulge, even to Thorne; it was “in the house,” he had said, but he would not reveal its hiding place to anyone but Alice herself. The “others,” he had snarled, had been looking for it ever since their “arrival.”
    â€œBy the way,” drawled Ellery, “how long have you good people been living in this house, Dr. Reinach?”
    â€œA year or so. You certainly don’t put any credence in the paranoiac ravings of a dying man? There’s no mystery about our living here. I looked Sylvester up over a year ago after a long separation and found him still in the old homestead, and this house boarded up and empty. The White House, this house, incidentally, was built by my stepfather—Sylvester’s father—on Sylvester’s marriage to Alice’s mother; Sylvester lived in it until my stepfather died, and then moved back to the Black House. I found Sylvester, a degenerated hulk of what he’d once been, living on crusts, absolutely alone and badly in need of medical attention.”
    â€œAlone—here, in this wilderness?” said Ellery incredulously.
    â€œYes. As a matter of fact, the only way I could get his permission to move back to this house, which belonged to him, was by dangling the bait of free medical treatment before his eyes. I’m sorry, Alice; he was quite unbalanced.… And so Milly and Sarah and I—Sarah had been living with us ever since Olivia’s death—moved in here.”
    â€œDecent of you,” remarked Ellery. “I suppose you had to give up your medical practice to do it, Doctor?”
    Dr. Reinach grimaced. “I didn’t have much of a practice to give up, Mr. Queen.”
    â€œBut it was an almost pure brotherly impulse, eh?”
    â€œOh, I don’t deny that the possibility of falling heir to some of Sylvester’s fortune had crossed our minds. It was rightfully ours, we believed, not knowing anything about Alice. As it’s turned out—” he shrugged his fat shoulders. “I’m a philosopher.”
    â€œAnd don’t deny, either,” shouted Thorne, “that when I came back here at the time Mayhew sank into that fatal coma you people watched me like a—like a band of spies! I was in your way!”
    â€œMr. Thorne,” whispered Alice, paling.
    â€œI’m sorry, Miss Mayhew, but you may as well know the truth. Oh, you didn’t fool me, Reinach! You wanted that gold, Alice or no Alice. I shut myself up in that house just to keep you from getting your hands on it!”
    Dr. Reinach shrugged again; his rubbery lips compressed.
    â€œYou want candor; here it is!” rasped Thorne. “I was in that house, Queen, for six days after Mayhew’s funeral and before Miss Mayhew’s arrival, looking for the gold . I turned that house upside down. And I didn’t find the slightest trace of it. I tell you it isn’t there.” He glared at the fat man. “I tell you it was stolen before Mayhew died!”
    â€œNow, now,”