The Origin of Evil Read online

  "What?"

  "You're not listening."

  "I am, though not with both ears." They were on Mulholland Drive

  now, and Ellery was clutching the side of the Austin to avoid being thrown clear as Laurel zoomed the little car around the hairpin curves. "Tell me, Laurel. Who inherits your father's estate? I mean besides yourself?"

  "Nobody. There isn't anyone else."

  "He didn't leave anything to Priam?"

  "Why should he? Roger and Daddy were equal partners. There are some small cash bequests to people in the firm and to the household help. Everything else goes to me. So you see, Ellery," said Laurel, soaring over a rise, "I'm your big suspect."

  "Yes," said Ellery, "and you're also Roger Priam's new partner. Or are you?"

  "My status isn't clear. The lawyers are working on that now. Of course I don't know anything about the jewelry business and I'm not sure I want to. Roger can't chisel me out of anything, if that's what's in your mind. One of the biggest law firms in Los Angeles is protecting my interests. I must say Roger's been surprisingly decent about that end of it—for Roger, I mean. Maybe Daddy's death hit him harder than he expected—made him realize how important Dad was to the business and how unimportant he is. Actually, he hasn't much to worry about. Dad trained a very good man to run things, a Mr. Foss, in case anything happened to him . . . Anyway, there's one item on my agenda that takes priority over everything else. And if you won't clear it up for me, I'll do it myself."

  "Because you loved Leander Hill very much?"

  "Yes!"

  "And because, of course," remarked Ellery, "you are the big suspect?"

  Laurel's little hands tightened on the wheel. Then they relaxed. "That's the stuff, Ellery," she laughed. "Just keep firing away at the whites of our eyes. I love it.—There's the Priam place."

  THE PRIAM PLACE

  stood on a private road, a house of dark round stones and blackish wood wedged into a fold of the hills and kept in forest gloom by a thick growth of overhanging sycamore, elm, and eucalyptus. Ellery's first thought was that the grounds were neglected, but then he saw evidences of both old and recent pruning on the sides away from the house and he realized that nature had been coaxed into the role she was playing. The hopeless matting of leaves and boughs was deliberate; the secretive gloom was wanted. Priam had dug into the hill and pulled the trees over him. Who was it who had defied the sun?

  It was more like an isolated hunting lodge than a Hollywood house. Most of it was hidden from the view of passers-by on the main road, and by its character it transformed a suburban section of ordinary Southern California canyon into a wild Scottish glen. Laurel told Ellery that the Priam property extended up and along the hill for four or five acres and that it was all like the area about the house.

  "Jungle," said Ellery as Laurel parked the car in the driveway. There was no sign of the cream Cadillac.

  "Well, he's a wild animal. Like the deer you flush occasionally up behind the Bowl."

  "He's paying for the privilege. His electric bills must be enormous."

  "I'm sure they are. There isn't a sunny room in the house. When he wants—you can't say more light—when he wants less gloom, and air that isn't so stale, he wheels himself out on that terrace there." To one side of the house there was a large terrace, half of it screened and roofed, the other open not to the sky but a high arch of blue gum eucalyptus leaves and branches which the sun did not penetrate. "His den—den is the word—is directly off the terrace, past those French and screen doors. We'd better go in the front way; Roger doesn't like people barging in on his sacred preserves. In the Priam house you're announced."

  "Doesn't Delia Priam have anything to say about the way her house is run?"

  "Who said it's her house?" said Laurel.

  A uniformed maid with a tic admitted them. "Oh, Miss Hill," she said nervously. "I don't think Mr. Priam ... He's dictatin' to Mr. Wallace. I better not..."

  "Is Mrs. Priam in, Muggs?"

  "She just got in from shoppin', Miss Hill. She's upstairs in her room. Said she was tired and was not to be disturbed."

  "Poor Delia," said Laurel calmly. "I know Mr. Queen is terribly disappointed. Tell Mr. Priam I want to see him."

  "But, Miss Hill—"

  A muffled roar of rage stopped her instantly. She glanced over her shoulder in a panic.

  "It's all right, Muggsy. I'll take the rap. Vamos, Ellery."

  "I wonder why she—" Ellery began in a mumble as Laurel led him up the hall.

  "Yours not to, where Delia is concerned."

  The house was even grimmer than he had expected. They passed shrouded rooms with dark paneling, heavy and humorless drapes, massive uncomfortable-looking furniture. It was a house for secrets and for violence.

  The roar was a bass snarl now. "I don't give a damn what Mr. Hill wanted to do about the Newman-Arco account, Foss! Mr. HUT s locked in a drawer in Forest Lawn and he ain't in any condition to give us the benefit of his advice . . . No, I won't wait a minute,

  Foss! I'm running this ------ business, and you'll either handle things my way or get the hell out!"

  Laurel's lips thinned. She raised her fist and hammered on the door.

  "Whoever that is, Alfred—! Foss, you still there?"

  A man opened the heavy door and slipped into the hall, pulling the door to and keeping his hand on the knob behind him.

  "You picked a fine time, Laurel. He's on the phone to the office."

  "So I hear," said Laurel. "Mr. Queen, Mr. Wallace. His other name ought to be Job, but it's Alfred. The perfect man, I call him. Super-efficient. Discreet as all get-out. Never slips. One side, Alfred. I've got business with my partner." k

  "Better let me set him up," said Wallace with a smile. As he slipped back into the room, his eyes flicked over Ellery. Then the door was shut again, and Ellery waved his right hand tenderly. It still tingled from Wallace's grip.

  "Surprised?" murmured Laurel.

  Ellery was. He had expected a Milquetoast character. Instead Alfred Wallace was a towering, powerfully assembled man with even, rather sharp, features, thick white hair, a tan, and an air of lean distinction. His voice was strong and thoughtful, with the merest touch of .., superiority? Whatever it was, it was barely enough to impress, not quite enough to annoy. Wallace might have stepped out of a set on the M-G-M lot labeled High Society Drawing Room; and, in fact, "well-preserved actor" had been Ellery's impulsive characterization—Hollywood leading-men types with Athletic Club tans were turning up these days in the most unexpected places, swallowing their pride in order to be able to swallow at all. But a moment later Ellery was not so sure. Wallace's shoulders did not look as if they came off with his coat. His physique, even his elegance, seemed homegrown.

  "I should think you'd be smitten, Laurel," said Ellery as they waited. "That's a virile character. Perfectly disciplined, and dashing as the devil."

  "A little too old," said Laurel. "For me, that is."

  "He can't be much more than fifty-five. And he doesn't look forty-five, white hair notwithstanding."

  "Alfred would be too old for me if he were twenty. —Oh. Well? Do I have to get Mr. Queen to brush you aside, Alfred, or is the Grand Vizier going to play gracious this morning?"

  Alfred Wallace smiled and let them pass.

  THE MAN WHO slammed the phone down and spun the steel chair about as if it were a studio production of balsa wood was a creature of immensities. He was all bulge, spread, and thickness. Bull eyes blazed above iron cheekbones; the nose was a massive snout; a tremendous black beard fell to his chest. The hands which gripped the wheels of the chair were enormous; forearms and biceps strained his coat sleeves. And the whole powerful mechanism was in continuous movement, as if even that great frame was unable to contain his energy. Something by Wolf Larsen out of Captain Teach, on a restless quarterdeck. Besides that immense torso Alfred Wallace's strong figure looked frail. And Ellery felt like an underfed boy.

  But below the waist Roger P
riam was dead. His bulk sat on a withered base, an underpinning of skeletal flesh and atrophied muscle. He was trousered and shod—and Ellery tried not to imagine the labor that went into that operation twice daily—but his ankles were visible, two shriveled bones, and his knees were twisted projections, like girders struck by lightning. The whole shrunken substructure of his body hung useless.

  It was all explicable, Ellery thought, on ordinary grounds: the torso overdeveloped by the extraordinary exertions required for the simplest movement; the beard grown to eliminate one of the irksome processes of his daily toilet; the savage manner an expression of his hatred of the fate that had played such a trick on him; and the restlessness a sign of the agony he endured to maintain a sitting position. Those were the reasons; still, they left something unexplained . . . Ferocity—fierce strength, fierce emotions, fierce reaction to pain and people—ferocity seemed his center. Take everything else away, and Ellery suspected it would still be there. He must have been fierce in his mother's womb, a wild beast by nature. What had happened to him merely brought it into play.

  "What d'ye want, Laurel? Who's this?" His voice was a coarse, threatening bass, rumbling up from his chest like live lava. He was still furious from his telephone conversation with the hapless Foss; his eyes were filled with hate. "What are you looking at? Why don't you open your mouth?"

  "This is Ellery Queen."

  "Who?"

  Laurel repeated it.

  "Never heard of him. What's he want?" The feral glance turned on Ellery. "What d'ye want? Hey?"

  "Mr. Priam," said the beautiful voice of Alfred Wallace from the doorway, "Ellery Queen is a famous writer."

  "Writer?"

  "And detective, Mr. Priam."

  Priam's lips pushed out, dragging his beard forward. The great hands on the wheel became clamps.

  "I told you I wasn't going to let go, Roger," said Laurel evenly. "My father was murdered. There must have been a reason. And whatever it was, you were mixed up in it as well as Daddy. I've asked Ellery Queen to investigate, and he wants to talk to you."

  "He does, does he?" The rumble was distant; the fiery eyes gave out heat. "Go ahead, Mister. Talk away."

  "In the first place, Mr. Priam," said Ellery, "I'd like to know—"

  "The answer is no," said Roger Priam, his teeth showing through his beard. "What's in the second place?"

  "Mr. Priam," Ellery began again, patiently.

  "No good, Mister. I don't like your questions. Now you listen to me, Laurel." His right fist crashed on the arm of the chair. "You're a damn busybody. This ain't your business. It's mine. I'll tend to it. Ill do it my way, and I’ll do it myself. Can you get that through your head?"

  "You're afraid, Roger," said Laurel Hill.

  Priam half-raised his bulk, his eyes boiling. The lava burst with a roar.

  "Me afraid? Afraid of what? A ghost? What d'ye think I am, another Leander Hill? The snivelin' dirt! Shaking in his shoes—looking over his shoulder—creeping on his face! He was born a------yellowbelly, and he

  died the same—"

  Laurel hit him on the cheek with her fist. His left arm came up impatiently and brushed her aside. She staggered backward halfway across the room into Alfred Wallace's arms.

  "Let go of me," she whispered. "Let go!"

  "Laurel," said Ellery.

  She stopped, breathing from her diaphragm. Wallace silently released her.

  Laurel walked out of the room. "Afraid!" A spot swelled on Priam's cheekbone. "You think so?" he bellowed after her. "Well, a certain somebody's gonna find out that my pump don't go to pieces at the first blow! Afraid, am I? I'm ready for the goddam ------! Any hour of the day or night, understand? Any

  time he wants to show his scummy hand! Hell find out I got a pretty good pair myself!" And he opened and closed his murderous hands, and Ellery thought again of Wolf Larsen.

  "Roger. What's the matter?"

  And there she was in the doorway. She had changed to a hostess gown of golden silk which clung as if it loved her. It was slit to the knee. She was glancing coolly from her husband to Ellery.

  Wallace's eyes were on her. They seemed amused.

  "Who is this man?"

  "Nobody. Nothing, Delia. It don't concern you." Priam glared at Ellery. "You. Get out!"

  She had come downstairs just to establish the fact that she didn't know him. As a point in character, it should have interested him. Instead, it annoyed him. Why, he could not quite make out. What was he to Hecuba? Although she was making clear enough what Hecuba was to him. He felt chagrined and challenged, and at the same time he wondered if she affected other men the same way . . . Wallace was enjoying himself discreetly, like a playgoer who has caught a point which escaped the rest of the audience and is too polite to laugh aloud . . . Her attitude toward her husband was calm, without fear or any other visible emotion.

  "What are you waiting for? You ain't wanted, Mister. Get out!"

  "I've been trying to make up my mind, Mr. Priam," said Ellery, "whether you're a bag of wind or a damned fool."

  Priam's bearded lips did a little dance. His range, apparently always in shallow water, was surfacing again. Ellery braced himself for the splash. Priam was afraid. Wallace—silent, amused, attentive Wallace—Wallace saw it. And Delia Priam saw it; she was smiling.

  "Alfred, if this fella shows up again, break his ------

  back!"

  Ellery looked down at his arm. Wallace's hand was on it "I'm afraid, Mr. Queen," murmured Wallace, "that I'm man enough to do it, too."

  The man's grip was paralyzing. Priam was grinning, a yellow hairy grin that jarred him. And the woman—that animate piece of jungle—watching. To his amazement, Ellery felt himself going blind-mad. When he came to, Alfred Wallace was sitting on the floor chafing his wrist and staring up at Ellery. He did not seem angry; just surprised.

  "That's a good trick," Wallace said. 'Til remember it"

  Ellery fumbled for a cigaret, decided against it. "I've made up my mind, Mr. Priam. You're*1 a bag of wind and a damned fool."

  The doorway was empty... t>

  He was furious with himself. Never lose your temper. Rule One in the book; he had learned it on his father's lap. Just the same, she must have seen it. Wallace flying through the air. And the gape on Priam's ugly face. Probably set her up for the week...

  He found himself searching for her out of the corners of his eyes as he strode down the hall. The place was overcrowded with shadows; she was certainly waiting in one of them. With the shades of her eyes pulled down but everything else showing.

  The hall was empty, too...

  Slit to the knee! That one was older than the pyramids. And how old was his stupidity? It probably went back to the primordial slime.

  Then he remembered that Delia Priam was a lady and that he was behaving exactly like a frustrated college boy, and he slammed the front door.

  LAUREL WAS WAITING for him in the Austin. She was still white; smoking with energy. Ellery jumped in beside her and growled, "Well, what are we waiting for?"

  "He's cracking," said Laurel tensely. "He's going to pieces, Ellery. I've seen him yell and push his weight around before, but today was something special. I'm glad I brought you. What do you want to do now?"

  "Go home. Or get me a cab."

  She was bewildered. "Aren’t you taking the case?"

  "I can't waste any time on idiots."

  "Meaning me?"

  "Not meaning you."

  "But we found out something," she said eagerly. "Ha admitted it. You heard him. A 'ghost,* he said. A 'certain somebody*—I heard that on my way out. I wasn't being delirious, Ellery. Roger thinks Daddy was deliberately shocked to death, too. And, what's more, he knows what the dog meant—"

  "Not necessarily," grunted Ellery. "That's the trouble with you amateurs. Always jumping to conclusions. Anyway, it's too impossible. You can't get anywhere without Priam, and Priam isn't budging."

  "It's Delia," said Laurel, "isn't it?"
>
  "Delia? You mean Mrs. Priam? Rubbish."

  "Don't tell me about Delia," said Laurel. "Or about men, either. She's catnip for anything in pants."

  "Oh, I admit her charms," muttered Ellery. "But they're a bit obvious, don't you think?" He was trying not to look up at the second-story windows, where her bedroom undoubtedly was. "Laurel, we can't park here in the driveway like a couple of adenoidal tourists—" He had to see her again. Just to see her.

  Laurel gave him an odd look and drove off. She turned left at the road, driving slowly.

  Ellery sat embracing his knees. He had the emptiest feeling that be was losing something with each spin of the Austin's wheels. And there was Laurel, seeing the road ahead and something else, too. Sturdy little customer. And she must be feeling pretty much alone. Ellery suddenly felt himself weakening.

  "What do you intend to do, Laurel?"

  "Keep poking around."

  "You're determined to go through with this?"

  "Don't feel sorry for me. I'll make out."

  "Laurel, I’ll tell you what I’ll do."

  She looked at him.

  "I'll go as far as that note with you—I mean, give you a head start, anyway. If, of course, it's possible."

  "What are you talking about?" She stopped the car with a bump.

  "The note your father found in that silver box on the dog's collar. You thought he must have destroyed it."

  "I told you I looked for it and it wasn't there."

  "Suppose I do the looking."

  Laurel stared. Then she laughed and the Austin jumped.

  The Hill house spread itself high on one of the canyon walls, cheerfully exposing its red tiles to the sun. It was a two-story Spanish house, beautifully bleached, with black wrought-iron tracery, arched and balconied and patioed and covered with pyracantha. It was set in two acres of flowers, flowering shrubs, and trees—palm and fruit and nut and bird-of-paradise. Around the lower perimeter ran the woods.