The Origin of Evil (29 page)

Priam stirred, and with the stir a fluidity came over him, passing like a ripple. Then he said in a perfectly controlled voice, ‘Whatever Wallace told you was a damn lie. I didn't tell him to buy a gun. I didn't call him down here tonight. And you can't prove I did. You yourself saw him sneak in here a while back with a loaded gun, you saw me fight for my life, you saw him lose, and now he's
dead
.' The bearded man put the lightest stress on the last word, as if to underscore Wallace's uselessness as a witness.

‘I'm afraid you didn't listen very closely to what I said, Priam,' said Ellery. ‘I said it
almost
worked. You don't think I'd allow Alfred to risk death or serious injury, do you? What he brought downstairs with him tonight, on my instructions, was a gun loaded with blanks. We've put on a show for you, Priam.' And Ellery said,
‘Get up, Wallace
.'

Before Priam's bulging eyes the blanket on the floor rose like the magic carpet, and there, under it, stood Alfred Wallace, smiling.

Roger Priam screamed.

16

What no one foresaw — including Ellery — was how Roger Priam would react to his arrest, indictment, and trial. Yet from the moment he showed his hand it was impossible to conceive that he might have acted otherwise. Alfred Wallace was a probable sole exception, but Wallace was being understandably discreet.

Priam took the blame for everything. His contempt for Wallace's part in the proceedings touched magnificence. Wallace, Priam said, had been the merest tool, not understanding what he was being directed to do. One would have thought, to hear Priam, that Wallace was an idiot. And Wallace acted properly idiotic. No one was fooled, but the law operates under rules of evidence, and since there were only two witnesses, the accused and his accomplice, each — for different motives — minimizing Wallace and maximizing Priam, Wallace went scot-free.

As Keats said, in a growl, ‘Priam's got to be boss, by God, even at his own murder trial.'

It was reported that Priam's attorney, a prominent West Coast trial lawyer, went out on the night of the verdict and got himself thoroughly fried, missing the very best part of the show. Because that same night Roger Priam managed to kill himself by swallowing poison. The usual precautions against suicide had been taken, and those entrusted with the safety of the condemned man until his execution were chagrined and mystified. Roger Priam merely lay there with his bearded mouth open in a grin, looking as fiercely joyful as a pirate cut down on his own quarterdeck. No one could dictate to
him
, his grin seemed to say, not even the sovereign State of California. If he had to die, he was picking the method and the time.

He had to be dominant even over death.

To everyone's surprise, Alfred Wallace found a new employer immediately after the trial, an Eastern writer by the name of Queen. Wallace and his suitcase moved into the little cottage on the hill, and Mrs. Williams and her two uniforms moved out, the cause leading naturally to the effect.

Ellery could not say that it was a poor exchange, for Wallace turned out a far better cook than Mrs. Williams had ever been, an accomplishment in his new employee Ellery had not bargained for, since he had hired Wallace to be his secretary. The neglected novel was still the reason for his presence in Southern California, and now that the Hill-Priam case was closed Ellery returned to it in earnest.

Keats was flabbergasted. ‘Aren't you afraid he'll put arsenic in your soup?'

‘Why should he?' Ellery asked reasonably. ‘I'm paying him to take dictation and type my manuscript. And talking about soup, Wallace makes a mean
sopa de almendras, à Mallorquina
. From Valldemosa — perfectly delicious. How about sampling it tomorrow night?'

Keats said thanks a lot, but he didn't go for that gourmet stuff himself, his speed was chicken noodle soup, besides his wife was having some friends in for television, and he hung up hastily.

To the press Mr. Queen was lofty. He had never been one to hound a man for past errors. Wallace needed a job, and he needed a secretary, and that was that.

Wallace merely smiled.

Delia Priam sold the hillside property and disappeared.

The usual guesses, substantiated by no more than ‘a friend of the family who asks that her name be withheld' or ‘Delia Priam is rumoured,' had her variously in Las Vegas at the dice tables with a notorious underworld character; in Taos, New Mexico, under an assumed name, where she was said to be writing her memoirs for newspaper and magazine syndication; flying to Rome heavily veiled; one report insisted on placing her on a remote shelf in India as the ‘guest' of some wild mountain rajah well-known for his peculiar tastes in Occidental women.

That none of these pleasantly exciting stories was true everyone took for granted, but authoritative information was lacking. Delia Priam's father was not available for comment; he had stuffed some things in a duffel bag and gone off to Canada to prospect, he said, for uranium ore. And her son simply refused to talk to reporters.

To Ellery, privately, Crowe Macgowan confided that his mother had entered a retreat near Santa Maria; he spoke as if he never expected to see her again.

Young Macgowan was cleaning up his affairs preparatory to enlisting in the Army. ‘I've got ten days left,' he told Ellery, ‘and a thousand things to do, one of which is to get married. I said it was a hell of a preliminary to a trip to Korea, but Laurel's stuck her chin out, so what can I do?'

Laurel looked as if she were recuperating from a serious illness. She was pale and thin but at peace. She held on to Macgowan's massive arm with authority. ‘I won't lose you, Mac.'

‘What are you afraid of, the Korean women?' jeered Crowe. ‘I'm told their favourite perfume is garlic.'

‘I'm joining the WACs,' said Laurel, ‘if they'll ship one overseas. I suppose it's not very patriotic to put a condition to it, but if my husband is in Asia I want to be in the same part of the world.'

‘You'll probably wind up in West Germany,' growled the large young man. ‘Why don't you just stay home and write me long and loving letters?'

Laurel patted his arm.

‘Why don't
you
just stay home,' Ellery asked Crowe, ‘and stick to your tree?'

‘Oh, that.' Crowe reddened. ‘My tree is sold.'

‘Find another.'

‘Listen, Queen,' snarled Delia's son, ‘you tend to your crocheting and I'll tend to mine. I'm no hero, but there's a war on — beg pardon, a United Nations police action. Besides, they'll get me anyway.'

‘I understand that,' said Ellery with gravity, ‘but your attitude seems so different these days, Mac. What's happened to the Atomic Age Tree Boy? Have you decided, now that you've found a mate, that you're not worth preserving for the Post-Atomic Era? That's hardly complimentary to Laurel.'

Mac mumbled, ‘You let me alone … Laurel, no!'

‘Laurel, yes,' said Laurel. ‘After all, Mac, you owe it to Ellery. Ellery, about that Tree Boy foolishness …'

‘Yes,' said Ellery hopefully. ‘I've been rather looking forward to a solution of that mystery.'

‘I finally worried it out of him,' said Laurel. ‘Mac, you're fidgeting. Mac was trying to break into the movies. He'd heard that a certain producer was planning a series of Jungle Man pictures to compete with the Tarzan series, and he got the brilliant idea of becoming a jungle man in real life, right here in Hollywood. The Atomic Age silliness was bait for the papers. It worked, too. He got so much publicity that the producer approached him, and he was actually negotiating a secret contract when Daddy Hill died and I began to yell murder. The murder talk, and the newspaper stories involving Mac's stepfather — which I suppose Roger planted himself, or had Alfred plant for him — scared the producer and he called off the negotiations. Crowe was awfully sore at me, weren't you, darling?'

‘Not as sore as I am right now. For pete's sake, Laur, do you have to expose my moral underwear to the whole world?'

‘I'm only a very small part of it, Mac,' grinned Ellery. ‘So that's why you tried to hire me to solve the case. You thought if I could clear it up pronto, you could still save the deal with the movie producer.'

‘I did, too,' said young Macgowan forlornly. ‘He came back at me only last week, asking questions about my draft status. I offered him the services of my grandfather, who'd have loved to be a jungle man, but the ungrateful guy told me to go to hell. And here I am, en route. Confidentially, Queen, does Korea smell as bad as they say it does?'

Laurel and Crowe were married by a Superior Court judge in Santa Monica, with Ellery and Lieutenant Keats as witnesses, and the wedding supper was ingested and imbibed at a drive-in near Oxnard, the newlyweds thereafter scouting off in Laurel's Austin in the general direction of San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco. Driving back south on the Coast Highway, Ellery and Keats speculated as to their destination.

‘I'd say Monterey,' said Keats emotionally. ‘That's where I spent my honeymoon.'

‘I'd say, knowing Mac,' said Ellery, ‘San Juan Capistrano or La Jolla, seeing that they lie in the opposite direction.'

They were both misty-eyed on the New York State champagne which Ellery had traitorously provided for the California nuptials, and they wound up on a deserted beach at Malibu with their arms around each other, harmonizing
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
to the silver-teared Pacific.

After dinner one night in late September, just as Alfred Wallace was touching off the fire he had laid in the living-room, Keats dropped in. He apologized for not having phoned before coming, saying that only five minutes before he had had no idea of visiting Ellery; he was passing by on his way home and he had stopped on impulse.

‘For heaven's sake, don't apologize for an act of Christian mercy,' exclaimed Ellery. ‘I haven't seen any face but Wallace's now for more than a week. The lieutenant takes water in his Scotch, Wallace.'

‘Go easy on it,' Keats said to Wallace. ‘I mean the water. May I use your phone to call my wife?'

‘Wonderful. You're going to stay.' Ellery studied Keats. The detective looked harassed.

‘Well, for a while.' Keats went to the phone.

When he came back, a glass was waiting for him on the coffee table before the fire, and Ellery and Wallace were stretching their legs in two of the three armchairs around it. Keats dropped between them and took a long sip. Ellery offered him a cigarette and Wallace held a match to it, and for a few moments Keats frowned into the fire.

‘Something wrong, Keats?' Ellery asked finally.

‘I don't know.' Keats picked up his glass. ‘I'm an old lady, I guess. I've wanted to chin with you for a long time now. I kept resisting the temptation, feeling stupid. Tonight …' He raised his glass and gulped.

‘What's bothering you?'

‘Well … the Priam case. Of course, it's all over —'

‘What about the Priam case?'

Keats made a face. Then he set the glass down with a bang. ‘Queen, I've been over that spiel of yours — to me at the Hollywood Division, to Priam that night in his room — it must be a hundred times. I don't know, I can't explain it …'

‘You mean my solution to the case?'

‘It never seems to come out as pat when I go over it as it did when you …' Keats stopped and rather deliberately turned to look at Alfred Wallace. Wallace looked back politely.

‘It's not necessary for Wallace to leave, Keats,' said Ellery with a grin. ‘When I said that night at Priam's that I'd taken Wallace into my confidence, I meant just that. I took him into my confidence completely. He knows everything I know, including the answers to the questions that I take it have been giving you a bad time.'

The detective shook his head and finished what was left in his glass. When Wallace rose to refill it, Keats said, ‘No more now,' and Wallace sat down again.

‘It's not the kind of thing I can put my mitt on,' said the detective uncomfortably. ‘No
mistakes
. I mean mistakes that you can …' He drew on his cigarette for support, started over. ‘For instance, Queen, a lot of the hoopla you attributed to Priam just doesn't
fit
.'

‘Doesn't fit what?' asked Ellery mildly.

‘Doesn't fit Priam. I mean, what Priam was. Take that letter he typed on the broken machine and put in the collar of the dead beagle for delivery to Hill …'

‘Something wrong with it?'

‘Everything wrong with it! Priam was an uneducated man. If he ever used a fancy word, I wasn't around to hear it. His talk was crude. But when he wrote that letter … How could a man like Priam have made such a letter up? To avoid using the letter T, to invent roundabout ways of saying things — that takes … a
feel
for words, doesn't it? A certain amount of practice in — in composition? And punctuation — the note was dotted and dashed and commaed and everything perfectly.'

‘What's your conclusion?' asked Ellery.

Keats squirmed.

‘Or haven't you arrived at one?'

‘Well … I have.'

‘You don't believe Priam typed that note?'

‘He typed it, all right. Nothing wrong with your reasoning on that … Look.' Keats flipped his cigarette into the fire. ‘Call me a halfwit. But the more I think about it, the less I buy the payoff. Priam typed that letter, but somebody else
dictated
it. Word for word. Comma for comma.' Keats jumped out of the chair as if he felt the need of being better prepared for the attack that was sure to come. But when Ellery said nothing, merely looked thoughtful and puffed on his pipe, Keats sat down again. ‘You're a kind-hearted character. Now tell me what's wrong with
me
.'