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

ecstasy. Sheila and Charley and Ellery could scarcely keep step with him.
    They went directly from the sidewalk before the front gates across the grass to the obscene bronze bulk of the Shoe, above which the neon inscription, THE POTTS SHOE , $3.99 EVERYWHERE , still glowed faintly against the early morning sky.
    Thurlow glanced up at the silent windows of his mother’s mansion beyond the Shoe. “Mr. Queen,” he said formally, “you will find my pistol on the highboy in my bedroom.”
    Ellery hesitated; then he bowed and hurried off to the house. In every story Ellery had ever read about a duel, the seconds bowed.
    As he rounded the Shoe, the Inspector’s voice came to him in a low and wondering snarl. “He’s going through with it, Velie!”
    â€œThey’ll never believe this downtown,” whispered the Sergeant with hoarse awe. “Never, Inspector.”
    The two men nodded tensely to Ellery as he strode by, and he nodded back. It wasn’t so bad, he thought, as he vaulted up the front steps. In fact, it was rather fun. He realized how gay life had been for those old boys of the romantic age, and felt almost thankful to Providence for having brought Thurlow Potts into the world a century or two late.
    He realized, too, that part of his enjoyment derived from a certain giddiness of the brain, which in turn came from having tried to set Thurlow a Scotch example all night. Things were a little hazy as he tiptoed into the house, having used his magic on the lock of the front door.
    Where was everybody? Wonderful household! Two brothers are to duel to the death, and of their blood none cares sufficiently to let off snoring and be miserable. Or perhaps the Old Woman was awake, peering through the curtains of her bedroom window at the scene in miniature to be enacted on the grass before her Moloch. What could she be thinking, that extraordinary mother? And where was Steve Brent Potts? Probably drunk in his bed.
    Ellery stopped very suddenly halfway up the main staircase leading from the foyer to the bedroom floor. The house was silent, with that eeriest of silences which pervades a house at dawn, the silence of gray light.
    Not a sound. Not even a shadow. But—something?
    It seemed to be on the bedroom floor, and it seemed to pass the door of Thurlow Potts’s apartment. Was it … someone coming out of those two rooms?
    Ellery sped up the remaining steps and stopped catlike on the landing to survey the hall, both ways. No one. And the silence again.
    Man? Woman? Imagination? He listened very hard.
    But that deep, deep silence.
    He went into Thurlow’s apartment, shut the door behind him, and began to search for more palpable clues. He spared neither time, eyesight, nor his clothes. But crawl and peer and pry as he might, he could detect no least sign that anyone had been there since he himself had left the premises the night before on his last visit. The tiny Colt lay exactly where he had placed it with his own hand after his trip to Police Headquarters for the blank cartridges—on Thurlow’s highboy.
    Ellery seized Thurlow’s automatic and left the apartment.
    Robert and Maclyn Potts appeared promptly at six. They marched from the house shoulder to shoulder, appeared not to notice Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie in the shadows at the base of the Shoe’s pedestal, rounded the Shoe, and stopped.
    The two parties stared solemnly at each other.
    Then Thurlow bowed to his brothers.
    Bob hesitated, glanced at Ellery, then bowed back. Behind Thurlow, Charley grinned and clasped his hands above his head. Bob’s left eyelid drooped ever so little in reply.
    But Mac’s expression was serious. “Look here, Thurl,” he said, “hasn’t this fool farce gone far enough? Let’s shake hands all around and—”
    Thurlow glared disapprovingly at his adversary’s twin. “You will please inform the gentleman’s second,”