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

striking his thumb smartly with it. ‘Damn.’ He aimed more carefully at the canvas-wrapped ice cubes. ‘Look. I don’t want to sound mystic or anything, Dad, but sometimes I used to get the feeling I was a kind of natural counterpoise —’
    â€˜A what?’
    â€˜Well, that I existed because a certain kind of criminal existed. That I did what I did because he did what he did. He was’ — Ellery probed finely — ‘he was the player on the other side.’
    â€˜Other side.’ The Inspector wet his lips as he watched Ellery’s hands at the bar.
    â€˜Yes. Well, that’s it. I haven’t been able to write any more because the player on the other side doesn’t exist any more.’ He squinted at the small print on the bitters bottle. ‘The times have outdated him — swept him away, and me with him. I mean the old me. See what I mean?’
    â€˜Come on ,’ the Inspector said.
    â€˜Right away, Dad. Because, you see, you constituted authorities have come up with just too much wizardry — a speck of dust, and you know the murderer’s height, weight, prep school and breeding habits. Police science today specializes in making the unusual usual — instant communications, electronic bugs, consulting head-doctors, non-criminal fingerprint files …’ He brought his father the long-awaited drink, which the knurled fingers seized greedily and conveyed mouthward with a snort of almost passion. ‘Why, even the TV writers, for all the hoke and hooey they shovel out, deal in dosimeters and polygraphs and other miracles of the lab, and sometimes they even use ’em right.’ Ellery fell back on the sofa, waved his glass. ‘So what chance does little-old-the-likes-of-me have, with my old-fashioned wonders? There’s no wonderment left in the real world any longer. Or rather, everything is so wonderful the wonder’s gone out of it. I can’t out-think a solid-state binary computer; I can’t outplay an electronic chess opponent — it’ll beat me every time. Skoal.’
    He drank, and the old man drank again, keeping his eyes anxiously on his son’s face while he did so.
    Ellery banged his glass down on the coffee table. ‘So! Now that I know why I dried up, I know what to do about it.’
    â€˜You do?’
    â€˜I do.’
    â€˜And what’s that?’
    â€˜I’m taking no more cases — mine, yours, anybody’s. I’m through investigating crimes. What I write from now on is going to come out of here’ — he tapped his temple — ‘entirely. Something new, something different. I don’t know what yet, but it’ll come.’
    â€˜No more cases,’ his father said after a contemplative time.
    â€˜No more cases.’
    â€˜Too bad.’
    Ellery pursued a fugitive thought.
    After a while he looked up. His father was staring at him in the most peculiar way. In spite of himself, Ellery began to feel his way back along the past quarter-hour, like a man crossing a muddy stream on invisible stepping stones.
    â€˜Too bad?’ Ellery said. ‘Dad, did you say “too bad”?’
    â€˜That’s what I said.’
    â€˜Yes, and before that all you said was “He did?” … “You were?” … “You do?” … “What?” —’
    â€˜I did?’ the Inspector said sheepishly.
    Ellery chewed on his lower lip for a moment. ‘Dad.’
    â€˜Hmm?’
    â€˜What is it?’
    â€˜What is what?’
    Ellery exploded. ‘ Balls of fire! The other night you chewed me out for waiting for a case to happen so I could start writing again. You know why you dumped your ill-temper on me? Because you were feeling guilty over not having a case to bring home to me! Tonight, when I announce I’m giving up case work as a basis for my novels, you start acting bashful and coy. Remember me, Dad?