There Was an Old Woman Read online

  "But Louella! You can't argue about Louella. She's forty-four, never married, of course—"

  "What's wrong with Louella?"

  "Louella believes herself to be a great inventor."

  Mr. Queen looked pained.

  "Nobody pays much attention to Louella, either," growled Charley. "Nobody except the Old Woman. Louella's got her own 'laboratory' at the house and seems quite happy. There's an old closet in the Potts zoo where the Old Woman throws Louella's 'inventions.' One day I happened to catch the old lady sitting on the floor outside the closet, crying. I admit," said Charley, shaking his head, "for a few weak seconds I felt sorry for the old she-pirate."

  "Don't stop now," said Ellery. "What about the third child of the first marriage?"

  "Horatio?" The lawyer shivered. "Horatio's forty-one. In many ways Horatio's the queerest of the trio. I don't know why, because he's not at all the horrible object you might think. And yet ... I never see him without getting duck bumps."

  "What's the matter with Horatio?"

  "Maybe nothing," said Charley darkly. "Maybe everything. I just don't know. You'll have to see and talk to him in his self-made setting to believe he really exists."

  Ellery smiled broadly. "You're very clever. You've already learned that my type of mind simply can't resist a mystery."

  Paxton looked sheepish. "Well... I want your help."

  Ellery stared at him hard. "Charley, what is your interest in this extraordinary family?" The lawyer was silent. "It can't be merely professional integrity. There are some jobs that aren't worth any amount of compensation, and from what I've seen and heard already, being legal adviser to the Pottses is one of them. You've got an ax to grind, my friend, and since it doesn't seem to be made of gold .., what is it made of?"

  "Red hair and dimples," said Charley defiantly.

  "Ah," said Mr. Queen.

  "Sheila's the youngest of the three children who resulted from the marriage of Cornelia and Steve. They're rational human beings, thank God! Robert and Mac are twins—a sweet pair—they're thirty." Charley flushed. "I'm going to marry Sheila."

  "Congratulations. How old is the young lady?"

  "Twenty-four. Can't imagine how Sheila and the twins got born into that howling family! The Old Woman still runs the Potts Shoe business, but Bob and Mac really run it, with the help of an old-timer who's been with Cornelia for I don't know how many years. Nice old Yank named Underhill. Underhill superintends production at the plants; Robert's vice-president in charge of sales, Mac's vice-president in charge of advertising and promotion—"

  "What about Thurlow?"

  "Oh, Thurlow's vice-president, too. But I've never found out what he's vice-president of: I don't think he has, either. Sort of roving nuisance. And, speaking of nuisances, how are we going to prevent Thurlow from doing something silly?"

  Ellery lit a cigaret and puffed thoughtfully. "Assuming that Thurlow meant what he said when he threatened to get a revolver, have you any idea where he'd go to buy one?" he asked.

  "Cornwall & Ritchey, on Madison Avenue. He has a charge there—keeps lugging home sports equipment he never uses. It's the logical place."

  Mr. Paxton was handed the telephone. "Call Cornwall & Ritchey and make discreet inquiries."

  Mr. Paxton called that purple house of commerce and made discreet inquiries. When he set the telephone down, he was purple, too. "He meant it!" cried Charley. "Know what the wack's done? He must have hotfooted it down there right from the Supreme Court Building!"

  "He's bought a gun?"

  "A gun? He's bought fourteen?'

  "What!"

  "I spoke to the clerk who waited on him. Fourteen assorted pistols, revolvers, automatics," groaned Paxton. "Said he was starting a collection of 'modern hand weapons.' Of course, they know Thurlow well down there. But see how cunning he's becoming? Knew he had to give an extraordinary excuse for purchasing that number of guns. Collection! What are we going to do?"

  "Then he must have had a license," reflected Ellery.

  "Seems he came magnificently prepared. He's planned this for a month—that's obvious now. Must have got his wind up in that last libel suit he lost—the one before Cliffstatter. He does have a license, a special license he snagged by pull somewhere. We've got to have that license revoked!"

  "Yes, we could do that," agreed Ellery, "but my father was right this morning—if Thurlow's denied the legal right to own a gun, hell get one somewhere illegally."

  "But fourteen! With fourteen guns to play with, he's a menace to the public safety. A few imaginary insults, and Thurlow's likely to start a one-man purge!"

  Ellery frowned. "I can't believe yet that it's a serious threat, Charley. Although obviously he's got to be watched."

  "Then you'll take over?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "White man!" Charley wrung Ellery's hand. "What can I do to help?"

  "Can you insinuate me into the Potts Palace today without getting everybody's wind up?"

  "Well, I'm expected tonight—I've got some legal matters to go over with the Old Woman. I could wangle you for dinner. Would tonight be too late, do you think?"

  "Hardly. If Thurlow's the man you say he is, he'll be spending the afternoon fondling his fourteen instruments of death and weaving all sorts of darkly satisfactory dreams. Dinner would be splendid."

  "Swell!" Charley jumped up. "I'll pick you up at six."

  3 ... She Didn’t Know What to Do

  "We're going to call for somebody," announced counselor Paxton as he drove Ellery Queen downtown that evening. "I particularly wanted you to meet this person before—well, before."

  "Aha," said Ellery, deducting like mad, but to himself.

  Charley Paxton parked his roadster before an apartment building in the West Seventies. He spoke to the doorman, and the doorman rang someone on the house phone. Charley paced up and down the lobby, smoking a cigaret nervously.

  Sheila Potts appeared in a swirl of summery clothes and laughter, a small slim miss with nice red hair. It seemed to Ellery that she was that peculiar product of American society, a girl of inoffensive insolence. She would insist on the Tightness of things and cheerfully do wrong to make them right; she would be impatient with men who beat their breasts, and furious with the authors of their misery. (Ellery suspected that Mr. Paxton beat his breast upon occasion for the sheer glum pleasure of calling attention to himself.) And she was delicious and fresh as a mint bed by a woodsy brook. Then what, wondered Ellery as he took Sheila's gloved hand and heard her explanation of having been visiting—"Don't dare laugh, Mr. Queen!"— a sick friend, was wrong? Why that secret sadness in her eyes?

  He learned the answer as they drove west to the Drive, the three of them crowded into the front seat of the roadster.

  "My mother's against our marriage," said Sheila simply. "You'd have to know Mother to know just how horrible that can be, Mr. Queen."

  "What's her reason?"

  "She won't give one," complained Charley.

  "I think I know her reason," said Sheila so quietly Ellery almost missed the bitterness. "It's my sister Louella."

  'The inventor?"

  "Yes. Mother makes no bones about her sympathies, Mr. Queen. She's always been kinder to the children of her first marriage than to Bob and Mac and me. Maybe it's because she never did love my father, and by being cold to us she's getting back at him, or something. Whatever it is, I do know that Mother loves poor Louella passionately and loathes me." Sheila sucked in her lower lip, as if to hide it.

  "Ifs a fact, Ellery," growled Paxton. "You'd think it was Sheila's fault that Louella's a skinny old zombie, swooping around her smelly chem lab with an inhuman light in her eye."

  "It's very simple, Mr. Queen. Rather than see me married while Louella stays an old maid, Mother's perfectly willing to sacrifice my happiness. She's quite a monster about it."

  Ellery Queen, who knew odd things, thought he saw wherein the monster dwelt. The children of the Old Woman's union with Bacchus Pott
s were off normal. On these, the weaklings, the misfits, the helpless ones, Cornelia Potts expended the passion of her maternity. To the offspring of her marriage with Stephen Potts, né Brent, therefore, she could give only her acid anger. The twin boys and Sheila were what she had always wanted fussy little Thurlow, spinster-inventor Louella, and the still-unglimpsed Horatio to be. This much was clear. But there was that which was not.

  "Why do you two stand for it?" Ellery asked.

  Before Charley could answer, Sheila said quickly: "Mother threatens to disinherit me if I marry Charley."

  "I see," said Ellery, not liking Sheila's reply at all.

  She read the disapproval in his tone. "It's not of myself I'm thinking! It's Charley. You don't know what he's gone through. I don't care a double darn whether I get any of Mother's money or not."

  "Well, I don't either," snapped Charley, flushing. "Don't give Ellery the impression—The hours I've spent arguing with you, sweetie-pie!"

  "But darling—"

  "Ellery, she's as stubborn as her mother. She gets an idea in her head, you can't dislodge it with an ax."

  "Peace," smiled Ellery. "This is all new to me, remember. Is this it7 If you two were to marry against your mother's wishes, Sheila, she'd not only cut you off but she'd fire Charley, too?" Sheila nodded grimly. "And then, Charley, you'd be out of a job. Didn't 1 understand that your whole practice consists in taking care of the Potts account?"

  "Yes," said Charley unhappily. "Between Thurlow's endless lawsuits and the legitimate legal work of an umpteen-million-dollar shoe business, I keep a large staff busy. There's no doubt Sheila's mother would take all her legal work elsewhere if we defied her. I'd be left pretty much out on a limb. I'd have to start building a practice from scratch. But I'd do it in a shot to get Sheila. Only—she won't."

  "No, I won't," said Sheila. "I won't ruin your life, Charley. Or mine for that matter." Her lips flattened, and Charley looked miserable. "You'll hate me for this, Mr. Queen. My mother's an old woman, a sick old woman. Dr. Innis can't help that awful heart of hers, and she won't obey him, or take care of herself, and we can't make her. . . . Mother will die very soon. Mr. Queen. In weeks. Maybe days. Dr. Innis says so. How can I feel anything but relief at the prospect?" And Sheila's eyes, so blue and young, filled with tears.

  Ellery saw again that life is not all caramel candy and rose petals, and that the great and hardy souls of this earth are women, not men.

  "Sometimes," said Sheila, sniffing, "I think men don't know what love really is." She smiled at Charley and ruffled his hair. "You're a jerk," she said.

  The roadster nosed along in traffic, and for some time none of them spoke.

  "When Mother dies, Charley and I—and my dad, and the twins—we'll all be free. We've lived in a jail all our lives—a sort of bedlam. You'll see what I mean tonight.... We'll be free, and we'll change our names back to Brent, and we'll become folks again, not animals in a zoo. Thurlow's furious about the name of Brent—he hates it."

  "Does your mother know all this, Sheila?" frowned Ellery.

  "I imagine she suspects." Sheila seized her young man's arm. "Charley, stop here and let me out."

  "What for?" demanded Charley suspiciously.

  "Let me out, you droogler! There's no point in making Mother madder than she is already. I'll cab home from here, while you drive Mr. Queen into the grounds—then Mother can only suspect I've been seeing you on the side!"

  "What in the name of the seven thousand miracles," demanded Ellery as he got out of his host's roadster, "is that?"

  The mansion lay far back from the tall Moorish gates and iron-spiked walls which embraced the precious Potts property. The building faced Riverside Drive and the Hudson River beyond; between gates and house lay an impressive circle of grass and trees, girded as by a stone belt with the driveway which arched from the gates to the mansion and back to the gates again. Ellery was pointing an accusing finger at the center of this circle of greenery. For among the prim city trees stood a remarkable object— a piece of bronze statuary as tall as two acrobats and as wide as an elephant. It stood upon a pedestal and twinkled and leered in the setting sun. It was the statue of an Oxford shoe. A shoe with trailing laces in bronze.

  Above it traced elegantly in neon tubing were the words:—

  4 ... She Gave Them Some Broth without Any Bread

  "It's a little early for dinner," said Charley, his robust voice echoing in the foyer. "Do you want to absorb the atmosphere first, or what? I'm your man." Ellery blinked at the scene. This was surely the most wonderful house in New York. It had no style; or rather, it partook of many styles, borrowing rather heavily from the Moorish, with Gothic subdominant. It was large, large; and its furnishings were heavy, heavy. There was a wealth of alfresco work on the walls, and sullen, unbeautiful hangings. Knights of Byzantium stood beside doorways stiffly on guard against threats as empty as themselves. A gilded staircase spiraled from the foyer into the heaven of this ponderous dream.

  "Let me take the atmosphere in bits, please," said Ellery. He half-expected Afghan hounds to come loping out of hidden lairs, bits of rush clinging to their hides, and Quasimodos in nut-brown sacking and tonsured pates to serve his shuddering pleasure. But the only servant he had seen, an oozy prig of a man in butler's livery, had been conventional enough. "In fact, Charley, if you could give me a glimpse of the various Pottses before dinner in their native habitat I should be ever so much obliged."

  "I can't imagine anyone wanting to meet them except through necessity, but I suppose that's what distinguishes you from all other men. This way, Professor. Let's see which Potts we can scare up first."

  At the top of the staircase stood a landing, most specious and hushed, and long halls leading away. Charley turned a corner, and there yawned the entrance to what looked like a narrow tower. "That's just what it is," nodded Charley. "Up wi' ye!"

  They mounted a steep coil of steps. "I didn't notice this campanile from outside. Why, Charley?"

  "It's a peculiarity of construction. The tower faces an inner court and can't be seen from the street."

  "And it leads where?"

  "To Louella's lair ... Here."

  Charley knocked on a door with a grille in it backed by thick glass. A female face goggled through the glass, eyed Mr. Paxton with suspicion, withdrew. Bolts clanked. Ellery felt a sensible prickling along his spine when the door screeched open.

  Louella Potts was not merely thin—a more desiccated figure he had not seen outside the Morgue. And she was utterly uncared-for. Her gray-dappled coarse brown hair was knotted at her scrawny neck and was all wisps and ends over her eyes. The eyes, like the eyes of the mother, fascinated him. But these, while brilliant, were full of pain, and between them the flesh was set in a permanent puzzle of inquiry. Louella Potts wore a laboratory smock which fitted her like a shroud, and shapeless huaraches. No stockings, Ellery noted. He also noted varicose veins, and looked away.

  The laboratory was circular—a clutter of tables, retorts, goose-necked flasks, Bunsen burners, messy bottle-filled shelves, taps, benches, electrical apparatus. What it was all for Ellery had no idea; but it looked impressive in a cinematic sort of way.

  "Queen?" she shrilled in a voice as tall and thin as herself. "Queen." The frown deepened until it resembled an old knife wound. "You aren't connected with the Mulqueen General Laboratories, are you?"

  "No, Miss Potts," said Ellery tensely.

  "You see, they've been after my invention. Just thieves, of course. I have to be careful—I do hope you'll understand. Will you excuse me now? I have a tremendously important experiment to conclude before dinner."

  "Reminds you of the Mad Scientist in The Crimson Clue, doesn't she?" Charley shuddered as they made their way down the tower stairs.

  "What's she inventing?"

  "A new plastic to be used in the manufacture of shoes," replied Charley Paxton dryly. "According to Louella, this material she's dreaming up will last forever. People will be able to buy
one pair of shoes and use them for life."

  "But that would ruin the Potts Shoe Company!"

  "Of course. But what else would you expect a Potts to spend her time inventing? Come on—I'll introduce you to Horatio."

  They were in the foyer again. Charley led the way towards a panel of tall French doors set in a rear wall.

  "House is built in a U," he explained. "Within the U are a patio and an inner court, and more grounds, and Horatio's dream house and so on. I've had architects here who've gone screaming into the night ... Ooops. There are Steve and the Major."

  "Sheila's father and the companion of his Polynesian youth?"

  They were two crimson-cheeked elderly men, seemingly quite sane. They were seated in a small library directly off the rear of the foyer, a checkerboard between them. The rear wall of the library was a continuation of the French doors, looking out upon a flagged, roofed terrace which apparently ran the width of the house.

  As the two young men paused at the foyer doorway, one of the players—a slight, meek-eyed man with a straggly gray mustache—looked up and spied them. "Charley, my boy," he said with a smile. "Glad to s-see you. Come in, come in. Major, I've got you b-beaten anyway, so s-stop pretending you'll w-wiggle out."

  His companion, a whale of a man with a whale's stare, snorted and turned his heavy, pocked face towards the doorway. "Go away," he said testily. "I'll whip this snapper if it takes all night."

  "And it will," said Stephen Brent Potts in a rush. Then he looked frightened and said: "Of course we'll p-play it out, Major."

  Paxton introduced Ellery, the four men chatted for a moment, and then he and Ellery left the two old fellows to resume their game.

  "Goes on by day and by night," laughed Charley. "Friendly enemies. Gotch is a queer one—domineering, swears all over the place, and swipes liquor. Otherwise honest—it pays! Steve lets Gotch walk all over him. And everybody else, for that matter."

  They left through the French doors in the foyer and crossed the wide terrace, stepping out upon a pleasant lawn, geometrically landscaped, with a path that serpentined to a small building lying within the arms of the surrounding garden walls like a candy box. "Horatio's cottage," announced Charley. "Cottage?" gulped Ellery. "You mean—someone actually lives in it? It's not a mirage?" "Positively not a mirage."