The Bizarre Murders Read online

  Ellery wrestled powerfully with the wheel. The Duesenberg darted back, screamed, surged forward with a roar. In second gear it bit into a hard-packed dirt road set at an alarming angle to the main highway. The motor whined and keened and sang—and the car clawed its way up. It gathered speed, creeping up. It hurtled on, flashing up. Now the road began to wind; a curve, a swift wind inexpressibly sweet, scented with pine needles, a delicious chill in the air. …

  Incredibly, within twenty seconds, they had left fire, smoke, their fate and their death behind.

  It was utterly black now—the sky, the trees, the road. The air was like liquor; it bathed their tortured lungs and throats with coolness that was half warmth, and they both became silently intoxicated upon it. They gulped it down, sniffing mightily until they felt their lungs must burst. Then they both began to laugh.

  “Oh, God,” gasped Ellery, stopping the car. “It’s all—all too fantastic!”

  The Inspector giggled: “Just like that! Whew.” He took out his handkerchief, trembling, and passed it over his mouth.

  They both removed their hats and exulted in the cold feel of the wind. Once they looked at each other, trying to pierce the darkness. Both fell silent soon, the mood passing; and finally Ellery released his handbrake and set the Duesenberg in motion.

  If the road below had been difficult, this ahead was impossible. It was little more than a cowpath, rocky and overgrown. But neither man could find it in his heart to curse it. It was a boon sent from heaven. It kept winding and climbing, and they wound and climbed with it. Of human beings not a trace. The headlights groped ahead of them like the antennae of an insect. The air grew steadily sharper, and the sweet sharp arboreal smell was like wine. Winged things hummed and dashed themselves against the lights.

  Suddenly Ellery stopped the car again.

  The Inspector, who had been dozing, jerked awake. “What’s the matter now?” he mumbled sleepily.

  Ellery was listening intently. “I thought I heard something ahead.”

  The Inspector cocked his gray head. “People up here, maybe?”

  “It seems unlikely,” said Ellery dryly. There was a faint crashing from somewhere before them, not unlike the sound of a large animal in undergrowth far away.

  “Mountain lion, d’ye think?” growled Inspector Queen, feeling a little nervously for his service revolver.

  “Don’t think so. If it is, I daresay he’s in for more of a scare than we. Are there catamounts in these parts? Might be a—a bear or a deer or something.”

  He urged the car forward again. Both were very wide awake, and both felt distinctly uncomfortable. The crashing grew louder.

  “Lord, it sounds like an elephant!” muttered the old man. He had his revolver out now.

  Suddenly Ellery began to laugh. There was a comparatively long stretch of straight road here, and around the far curve came two fingers of light, as if fumbling in the darkness. In a moment they straightened out and glared into the Duesenberg’s own brilliant eyes.

  “A car,” chuckled Ellery. “Put that cannon away, you old lady. Mountain lion!”

  “Didn’t I hear you say something about a deer?” retorted the Inspector. Nevertheless he did not return the revolver to his hip pocket.

  Ellery stopped the car once more; the headlights of the approaching automobile were very close now. “Good to have company in a place like this,” he said cheerfully, jumping out and stepping before his own lights. “Hi!” he shouted, waving his arms.

  It was a crouching old Buick sedan that had seen better days. It came to rest, its battered nose snuffling the dirt of the road. It seemed occupied by only one passenger: a man’s head and shoulders were dimly visible behind the dusty windshield, illuminated by the mingling lights of the cars.

  The head popped out of the side window. Away from the disfiguring glass, its every feature was sharply limned. A tattered felt hat was jammed over the man’s ears, which stood away from the enormous head like a troglodyte’s. It was a monstrous face: gross, huge, wattled, and damp. Frog’s eyes were embedded in lumps of flesh. The nose was broad and flared. The lips were tight lines. A big unhealthy face, but somehow hard and quieting. The owner of that face, Ellery felt instinctively, was not to be trifled with.

  The eyes, luminous slits, fastened on Ellery’s lanky figure with batrachian steadiness. Then they shifted to the Duesenberg behind, surveyed the indistinct torso of the Inspector, and clicked back.

  “Out of the way, you.” It was a rumbling voice, harshly vibrant in its bass tones. “Get out of the way!”

  Ellery blinked in the strong light. The gargoyle head had retreated behind the translucent shelter of the windshield again. He could see a suggestion of vast humped shoulders. And no neck, he thought irritably. Indecent of the fellow. Ought to have a neck.

  “I say,” he began, pleasantly enough. “That’s not nice—”

  The Buick snorted and began to snuffle forward. Ellery’s eyes flashed.

  “Stop!” he cried. “You can’t go down that way, you—you surly fool! There’s a fire down there!”

  The Buick halted two feet from Ellery and ten feet from the Duesenberg. The head popped out again.

  “What’s that?” said the bass voice heavily.

  “Thought that would get you,” replied Ellery with satisfaction. “For heaven’s sake, isn’t there anything remotely resembling courtesy in this part of the domain? I said there’s a very neat and thorough conflagration raging down below—must be past the road by now, so you’d better turn round and go back.”

  The froggy eyes stared for an instant without expression.

  Then: “Out of the way,” the man said again, and touched his gears.

  Ellery stared incredulously. The fellow was either stupid or insane.

  “Well, if you want to be smoked up like a side of pork,” snapped Ellery, “that’s your affair. Where’s this road lead to?”

  There was no reply. The Buick kept impatiently edging up inch by inch. Ellery shrugged and trudged back to the Duesenberg. He got in, slammed his door, muttered something impolite, and began backing off. The road was much too narrow to permit lateral passage of two machines. He was forced to back into the underbrush, crashing through until he smacked against a tree. There was barely enough room for the Buick to pass. It roared forward, kissing Ellery’s right fender none too gently, and disappeared in the darkness.

  “Funny bird,” said the Inspector thoughtfully, putting away his revolver as Ellery steered the Duesenberg onto the road again. “If his mug was any fatter it would just naturally float away. The hell with him.”

  Ellery uttered a savage chuckle. “He’ll come back soon enough,” he said; “damn his infernal cheek!” and thenceforward devoted his whole attention to the road.

  They climbed, it seemed, for hours—a steady upgrade which taxed the powerful resources of the Duesenberg. Nowhere the faintest sign of a habitation. The forest, if it were possible, grew thicker and wilder than before. The road, instead of improving, grew worse—narrower, rockier, more overgrown. Once the headlights picked out directly in the road ahead the glowing eyes of a coiled copperhead.

  The Inspector, perhaps as a reaction from the emotional disturbances of the past hour, frankly slept. His low snore throbbed in Ellery’s ears. Ellery gritted his teeth and pushed on.

  The branches overhead dipped lower. They kept up an incessant rustle, like the gossip of old foreign women in the distance.

  Not once through the interminable minutes of that remorseless ascent did Ellery catch sight of the stars.

  “We escaped dropping into Hell,” he muttered to himself, “and now, by George, we seem headed straight for Valhalla!” How high was the mountain, anyway?

  He felt his lids droop and shook his head angrily to keep himself awake. It was unwise to doze on this journey; the dirt road twisted and pirouetted like a Siamese dancer. He set his jaw and began concentrating upon the turmoil in his empty belly. A cup of steaming consommé, now, he thought; then a smoking rare cut of thick sirloin, with gravy and browned potatoes; two cups of hot coffee. …

  He peered ahead, alert. It seemed to him that the road was widening. And the trees—they seemed to be receding. Lord, it was time! There was something doing ahead; probably they had reached the crest of this confounded mountain and would soon be slipping down the road on the other side, bound for the next valley, a town, a hot supper, and bed. Then tomorrow a swift trip south, refreshed, and the day following New York and home. He laughed aloud in his relief.

  Then he stopped laughing. The road had widened for excellent reason. The Duesenberg had pushed into a clearing of some sort. The trees receded left and right into the darkness. Overhead there was hot, thick sky speckled with millions of brilliants. A wilder wind fluttered the loose crown of his cap. To the sides of the expanded road lay tumbled rocks, from shards to boulders, out of the crevices and interstices of which sprouted an ugly, dried-up vegetation. And directly ahead …

  He swore softly and got out of the car, wincing at the ache in his cold joints. Fifteen feet in front of the Duesenberg, boldly revealed in the headlights’ glare, stood two tall iron gates. To both sides ran a low fence built out of stones unquestionably indigenous to this forbidding soil. The fence stretched away divergently into the darkness. Beyond the gates for the short distance illuminated by the headlights ran the road. What lay still farther ahead was cloaked in the same palpable blackness that covered everything.

  This was the end of the road!

  He cursed himself for a fool. He might have known. The winding of the road below had not circled the mountain. It had merely seesawed erratically from side to side, following, now that he thought of it, the line of least resistance. This being the case, there must be a reason for the failure of the path to spiral completely about Arrow Mountain in its ascent to the summit. The reason could only be that the other side of the mountain was impassable. Probably a precipice.

  In other words, there was only one way down the mountain—and that was by the road they had just climbed. They had run headlong into a blind alley.

  Angry with the world, the night, the wind, the trees, the fire, himself and all living things, he strode forward to the gates. A bronze plaque was attached to the iron grille of one of them. It said simply: Arrow Head.

  “What’s the matter now?” croaked the Inspector sleepily from the depths of the Duesenberg. “Where are we?”

  Ellery’s voice was gloomy. “At an impasse. We’ve reached the end of our journey, dad. Pleasant prospect, isn’t it?”

  “For cripes’ sake!” exploded the Inspector, crawling down into the road. “Mean to say this God-forsaken road doesn’t lead anywhere?”

  “Apparently not.” Then Ellery slapped his thigh. “Oh, God,” he groaned, “flay me for an idiot! What are we standing here for? Help me with these gates.” He began to tug at the heavy grilles. The Inspector lent a shoulder, and the gates gave balkily, squealing in protest.

  “Damned rusty,” growled the Inspector, examining his palms.

  “Come on,” cried Ellery, running back to the car. The Inspector trotted wearily after. “What’s the matter with me? Gates and a fence mean human beings and a house. Of course! Why this road at all? Someone lives up here. That means food, a bath, shelter—”

  “Maybe,” said the Inspector disagreeably as they began to move and swung in between the gates, “maybe there’s nobody living here.”

  “Nonsense. That would be an intolerable trick of fate. And besides,” said Ellery, quite gay now, “our fat-faced friend in the Buick came from somewhere, didn’t he? And yes—there are the tracks of tires. … Where the deuce are these people’s lights?”

  The house was so near it partook of the nature of the darkness about it. A wide gloomy pile which blotted out the stars in an irregular pattern. The Duesenberg’s headlights focused upon a flight of stone steps leading to a wooden porch. The sidelamp under the Inspector’s guidance swept to right and left and disclosed a long terrace running the entire length of the house, occupied only by empty rockers and chairs. Beyond the sides lay the rocky brush-covered terrain; only a few yards separated the house from the woods.

  “That’s not polite,” muttered the Inspector, switching the lamps off. “That is, if anyone lives here. I have my doubts. Those French windows off the terrace are all closed and it looks as if they’ve got blinds drawn right to the floor. See any lights in the upper story?”

  There were two stories and an attic floor beneath the slate shingles covering the gabled roof. But all the windows were black. Dry bedraggled vines half covered the wooden walls.

  “No,” said Ellery, a note of misgiving creeping into his voice, “but then it’s—it’s impossible that the house is untenanted. That would be a blow from which I should never recover; not after our fantastic adventure tonight.”

  “Yes,” grunted the Inspector, “but if anybody lives here why the devil hasn’t some one heard us? Lord knows this rattletrap of yours made enough racket coming up here. Lean on that horn.”

  Ellery leaned. The klaxon on the Duesenberg possessed a singularly disagreeable voice; a voice, one would have said, capable of rousing the dead. The voice ceased and with pathetic eagerness both men bent forward and strained their ears. There was no response from the lifeless pile before them.

  “I think,” said Ellery doubtfully, and stopped. “Didn’t you hear some—”

  “I heard a blasted cricket calling to his mate,” growled the old gentleman, “that’s what I heard. Well, what the devil are we going to do now? You’re the brains of this family. Let’s see how good you are getting us out of this mess.”

  “Don’t rub it in,” groaned Ellery. “I’ll admit I haven’t displayed precisely genius today. God, I’m so hungry I could eat a whole family of Gryllidae, let alone one!”

  “Hey?”

  “Salatorial orthopters,” explained Ellery stiffly. “Crickets to you. It’s the only scientific term I remember from my Entomology. Not that it does me any good at the moment. I always said higher education was perfectly useless against the ordinary emergencies of life.”

  The Inspector snorted and wrapped his coat more closely about him, shivering. There was an eerie quality about their surroundings which made his usually impervious scalp prickle. He strove to drive away the unaccustomed phantoms of his roused imagination by thoughts of food and sleep. He closed his eyes and sighed.

  Ellery rummaged in a car pocket, found an electric torch, and scrunched across the gravel to the house. He mounted the stone steps, tramped across the wooden flooring of the porch, and searched the front door in the light of his torch. It was a very solid and uninviting door. Even the knocker, a chunk of chipped stone fashioned in the shape of an Indian arrowhead, was darkly forbidding. Nevertheless Ellery lifted it and began to pound the oak panels. He pounded with vigor.

  “This,” he said grimly between assaults on the door, “is beginning to resemble a nightmare. It is utterly unreasonable that we should go—” rap! rap! “through the ordeal by fire—” rap! rap! “and emerge without the customary rewards of penitence. Besides—” RAP! RAP! “I would welcome even a Dracula after what we’ve gone through. Lord, this does remind me of that vampire’s roost in the mountains of Hungary!”

  And he pounded until his arm ached without evoking the faintest response from the house.

  “Oh, come on,” groaned the Inspector. “What’s the use of knocking your arm off like a fool? Let’s get out of here.”

  Ellery’s arm dropped wearily. He flicked the torch’s beam over the porch. “Bleak House. … Get out? And where shall we go?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Back to get our hides scorched, I guess. At least it’s warm down there.”

  “Not me,” snapped Ellery. “I’m going to get that lap rug out of the luggage and camp right here. And if you’re sensible, dad, you’ll join me.”

  His voice carried far through the mountain air. For an instant only the hind legs of the amorous cricket answered him. Then without warning the door of the house opened and a parallelogram of light leaped out onto the porch.

  Black against the light, framed by the rectangle of the door, stood the figure of a man.

  Chapter Two

  THE “THING”

  SO SUDDENLY HAD THE apparition appeared that Ellery instinctively retreated a step, tightening his grip on the electric torch. From below he could hear the Inspector groaning with a sort of pleasant pain at the miraculous appearance of a Good Samaritan at a time when the last hope had fled. The old man’s heavy step crunched on the gravel.

  The man stood in the foreground of a dazzlingly illuminated entrance hall which, from Ellery’s position, disclosed only an overhead lamp, a rug, a large etching, the corner of a refectory table and an open doorway at the right.

  “Good evening,” said Ellery, clearing his throat.

  “What d’ye want?”

  The apparition’s voice was startling—an old man’s voice, querulously crackling in its upper tones and heavily hostile in its undertones. Ellery blinked. With the strong light shining in his eyes all he could see of the man was a silhouette, revealed by a steady glow of golden light pouring on him from behind. The outline, which made the man look like a shape created by the luminous tubes of a neon sign, was that of a shambling, loose-jointed figure, long arms dangling, sparse hair sticking up at the top like singed feathers.

  “Evening,” came the Inspector’s voice from behind Ellery. “Sorry to be bothering you at this time of night, but we’ve sort of—” his eyes yearned hungrily at the furniture in the entrance hall—“we’ve sort of got ourselves into a jam, you see, and—”

  “Well, well?” snarled the man.

  The Queens regarded each other with dismay. Not an auspicious reception!

  “Fact of the matter is,” said Ellery, smiling feebly, “that we’ve been forced up here—I suppose this is your road—by circumstances beyond our control. We thought we might get—”

  They began to make out details. The man was even older than they had thought. His face was marble-gray parchment, multitudinously wrinkled, and hard as stone. His eyes were small, black, and burning. He was dressed in coarse homespun that hung from his emaciated figure in ugly vertical folds.