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

sighed Ellery. “That makes less sense than the other. Why then has somebody intoned an incantation over the house and caused it to disappear?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said the old lawyer fiercely. “I know only that the most dastardly thing’s happened here, that everything is unnatural, veiled in that—that false creature’s smile! Miss Mayhew, I’m sorry I must speak this way about your own family. But I feel it my duty to warn you that you’ve fallen among human wolves. Wolves!”
    â€œI’m afraid,” said Reinach sourly, “that I shouldn’t come to you, my dear Thorne, for a reference.”
    â€œI wish,” said Alice in a very low tone, “I truly wish I were dead.”
    But the lawyer was past control. “That man Keith,” he cried. “Who is he? What’s he doing here? He looks like a gangster. I suspect him, Queen—”
    â€œApparently,” smiled Ellery, “you suspect everybody.”
    â€œMr. Keith?” murmured Alice. “Oh, I’m sure not. I—I don’t think he’s that sort at all, Mr. Thorne. He looks as if he’s had a hard life. As if he’s suffered terribly from something.”
    Thorne threw up his hands, turning to the fire.
    â€œLet us,” said Ellery amiably, “confine ourselves to the problem at hand. We were, I believe, considering the problem of a disappearing house. Do any architect’s plans of the so-called Black House exist?”
    â€œLord, no,” said Dr. Reinach.
    â€œWho has lived in it since your stepfather’s death besides Sylvester Mayhew and his wife?”
    â€œWives,” corrected the doctor, pouring himself another glassful of gin. “Sylvester married twice; I suppose you didn’t know that, my dear.” Alice shivered by the fire. “I dislike raking over old ashes, but since we’re at confessional … Sylvester treated Alice’s mother abominably.”
    â€œI—guessed that,” whispered Alice.
    â€œShe was a woman of spirit and she rebelled; but when she’d got her final decree and returned to England, the reaction set in and she died very shortly afterward, I understand. Her death was recorded in the New York papers.”
    â€œWhen I was a baby,” whispered Alice.
    â€œSylvester, already unbalanced, although not so anchoretic in those days as he became later, then wooed and won a wealthy widow and brought her out here to live. She had a son, a child by her first husband, with her. Father’d died by this time, and Sylvester and his second wife lived in the Black House. It was soon evident that Sylvester had married the widow for her money; he persuaded her to sign it over to him—a considerable fortune for those days—and promptly proceeded to devil the life out of her. Result: the woman vanished one day, taking her child with her.”
    â€œPerhaps,” said Ellery, seeing Alice’s face, “we’d better abandon the subject, Doctor.”
    â€œWe never did find out what actually happened—whether Sylvester drove her out or whether, unable to stand his brutal treatment any longer, she left voluntarily. At any rate, I discovered by accident, a few years later, through an obituary notice, that she died in the worst sort of poverty.”
    Alice was staring at him with a wrinklenosed nausea. “Father … did that?”
    â€œOh, stop it,” growled Thorne. “You’ll have the poor child gibbering in another moment. What has all this to do with the house?”
    â€œMr. Queen asked,” said the fat man mildly. Ellery was studying the flames as if they fascinated him.
    â€œThe real point,” snapped the lawyer, “is that you’ve watched me from the instant I set foot here, Reinach. Afraid to leave me alone for a moment. Why, you even had Keith meet me in your car on both my visits—to ‘escort’ me here! And I