Read Online The Player on the Other Side by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online Page A

standing in the doorway to his son’s study, peering through the old blue fog at Ellery’s recumbent length and bristling cheeks, chest at low tide, barely rising and falling. He seemed to be asleep.
    The Inspector sighed. For him another working day had passed; for Ellery … ‘Still slaving away, son?’ the old man said. There was even a sort of laughter in it.
    But from this point everything was different.
    Ellery’s eyelids flew open, he sprang from his chair, he darted around the desk, he cried, ‘Dad, I’ve got it!’
    The old man stepped back a pace, as if what his son had got might be contagious, ‘You have?’
    Ellery followed him up, poking at him with a long, torn forefinger. ‘You were right the other night, Dad, but you were wrong, too. And I was wrong on all counts. I thought I had to wait for something to happen before I could write. Occupational blindness. All I had to do was figure out why I couldn’t write. And I figured it out today!’
    â€˜You did?’ the Inspector said cautiously.
    â€˜My trouble,’ Ellery chortled, snatching his father’s hat off, grabbing his topcoat, tossing them both over his shoulder, forcing the old man down into the overstuffed chair near the fireplace, ‘my trouble is that I have a contemporary mind. That’s all, Dad. That’s absolutely all that’s been wrong!’
    â€˜It is?’
    â€˜Certainly! I’ve always had a contemporary mind. I mean I’ve always written about the case I was working on at the time, or the one that was bothering you downtown — something real , in the here and now. But the times change, my old one,’ Ellery went on, striding up and down, rubbing his palms together like a Boy Scout making fire, kicking the rug, flinging himself onto the sofa, springing up again and darting to the study to pick up the Inspector’s coat and hat, ‘and the more the times change the faster they change. Did you know that? Hah? Ellery’s law? Hell, they change so fast between one book and the next — what am I saying? between one day and the next? — that you don’t even see it happen. Get my point, Dad? Do I convey anything to you?’
    â€˜No,’ said his father.
    â€˜Well, look?’ cried Ellery. ‘What’s happening to elevator operators?’
    â€˜What?’ said his father. ‘Who?’
    â€˜Elevator operators. I’ll tell you what’s happening to them. They’re disappearing , that’s what — automated out of existence. Take the theater. Can you recognize a play any more? Ten-second scenes. Speeches consisting entirely of nouns and adjectives — no verbs. Actors moving scenery, and stagehands acting. Some of the cast in the audience. No curtain. No footlights. No anything of yesterday’s theater. Everything’s different, unexpected, purposely mystifying — not mystifying like a puzzle to be solved, but mystifying long after you’re home in bed wondering what it was all about — and meant to be that way. My God, take this coat.’ Ellery whisked and twirled the Inspector’s topcoat about, looking for the label. ‘Here! Dacron and orlon mixture with a nylon lining. This is coal, water and air you’re wearing, Dad — I’ll bet you thought it came from a sheep!’ Ellery laugh-roared with the wonder of it, hurling the topcoat and hat across the living room into the foyer. ‘No, no, stay where you are, Dad — I’ll mix ’em!’
    â€˜What?’ croaked the Inspector.
    â€˜The drinks.’ Ellery scudded into the kitchen. The Inspector leaned back warily, keeping one eye open. He came upright to the alert when Ellery rushed back past him to the bar in the corner. ‘Yes, sir, that’s what’s been wrong with me, the contemporary mind,’ said Ellery briskly, snatching the stainless-steel ice mallet from its niche and