Read Online There Was an Old Woman by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online

reads.” He ran his eye along the bookshelves. “Mm, yes. A little heavy on Paine, Butler, and Lincoln—ah, of course! Voltaire. No light reading at all, of course . . .”
    â€œEllery, for heaven’s sake.” Charley glanced anxiously at the door.
    â€œIt gives the man a perspective,” mused Ellery, and he moved on to Thurlow Potts’s bedroom. This was a wee, chaste, almost monastic chamber. A high white bed, a highboy, a chair, a lamp. Ellery could see the little man clambering with agility into his bed, clad—no doubt this was an injustice—in a flannel nightshirt, and clutching a volume of The Rights of Man to his thick little bosom.
    â€œThere it is,” said Charley, who had his mind on his work.
    The Colt automatic lay on top of the highboy. Ellery picked it up negligently. “Doesn’t look very formidable, does it?”
    â€œHas it got one cartridge in it, as Thurlow said?”
    Ellery investigated. “But of course it would. He’s an honest man. Let us away, Charles.” He slipped the Colt into his jacket and they left Thurlow’s apartment, Charley acting furtive and relieved at once.
    â€œWhere the devil do we get blank cartridges this time of night?” he asked in the hall. “All the stores are closed by now.”
    â€œPeace, peace,” said Ellery. “Charley, go downstairs to the library and join Sheila in keeping Mr. Thurlow Potts occupied. I don’t want him back in his bedroom till I’m ready for him.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do?”
    â€œI,” quoth Mr. Queen, “shall journey posthaste to my daddy’s office at Police Headquarters. Don’t stir from the library till I get back.”
    When Charley had left him, Ellery ambled to the door through which he had seen Bob and Mac Potts disappear, knocked gently, was admitted, gave his personal reassurances that everything was going off as planned—and requisitioned Robert’s Smith & Wesson.
    â€œBut why?” Bob asked.
    â€œPlaying it safe,” grinned Ellery, from the hall. “I’ll put a blank in this one, too.”
    â€œBut I don’t like it, Ellery,” grumbled Inspector Queen at Headquarters, when his son had told him and Sergeant Velie the story of Thurlow Potts’s great adventure.
    â€œIt ain’t decent,” said Sergeant Velie. “Fightin’ a duel in the year of our Lord!”
    Ellery agreed it was neither decent nor to be condoned; but what, he asked reasonably, was a sounder solution of the problem?
    â€œI don’t know. I just don’t like it,” said the Inspector irritably, jamming a blank cartridge into the magazine of the Colt. He tossed it aside and slipped a center-fire blank into the top chamber of the Smith & Wesson.
    â€œThat den of dopes’ve been in every screwball scrape you can imagine,” complained the Sergeant, “but this one takes the hand-embroidered bearskin. Fightin’ a duel in the year of our Lord!”
    â€œWith the sting removed from Thurlow’s stingers,” argued Ellery, “it makes a good story, Sergeant.”
    â€œOnly story I want to hear,” grunted his father, handing Ellery the two weapons, “is that this fool business is over and done with.”
    â€œBut Dad, there’s no danger of anything going wrong when both guns are loaded with blanks.”
    â€œGuns are guns,” said Sergeant Velie, who was the Sage of Center Street.
    â€œAnd blanks are blanks, Sergeant.”
    â€œStop chattering! Velie, you and I are going to watch Thurlow Potts’s duel at dawn tomorrow from behind that big Shoe on the front lawn,” snapped Inspector Queen. “And may God have mercy on all our souls if anything goes haywire!”
    Ellery slipped back into the Potts mansion under an impertinent moon; but he made sure only the moon’s eye saw him. Mr. Queen had a way with front doors.
    The foyer was