Ellery Queen - The Lamp of God

“The driveway,” snarled Keith, “or the road to hell. You’re as mixed up as we are. Sure it’s the driveway! Can’t you see the garage? Why shouldn’t it be the driveway?”

“I don’t know.” Ellery got to his feet, frowning. “I don’t know anything. I’m beginning to learn all over again. Maybe — maybe it’s a matter of gravitation. Maybe we’ll all fly into space any minute now.”

Thorne groaned: “My God.”

“All I can be sure of is that something very strange happened last night.”

“I tell you,” growled Keith, “it’s an optical illusion!”

“Something strange.” The fat man stirred. “Yes, decidedly. What an inadequate word! A house has disappeared. Something strange.” He began to chuckle in a choking, mirthless way.

“Oh that,” said Ellery impatiently. “Certainly. Certainly, Doctor. That’s a fact. As for you, Keith, you don’t really believe this mass-hypnosis bilge. The house is gone, right enough... It’s not the fact of its being gone that bothers me. It’s the agency, the means. It smacks of— of—” He shook his head. “I’ve never believed in... this sort of thing, damn it all!”

Dr. Reinach threw back his vast shoulders and glared, red-eyed, at the empty snow-covered space. “It’s a trick,” he bellowed. “A rotten trick, that’s what it is. That house is right there in front of our noses. Or— or— They can’t fool me!”

Ellery looked at him. “Perhaps,” he said, “Keith has it in his pocket?”

Alice clattered out on the porch in high-heeled shoes over bare feet, her hair streaming, a cloth coat flung over her night-clothes. Behind her crept little Mrs. Reinach. The women’s eyes were wild.

“Talk to them,” muttered Ellery to Thorne. “Anything; but keep their minds occupied. We’ll all go balmy if we don’t preserve at least an air of sanity. Keith, get me a broom.”

He shuffled up the driveway, skirting the invisible house very carefully and not once taking his eyes off the empty space. The fat man hesitated; then he lumbered along in Ellery’s tracks. Thorne stumbled back to the porch and Keith strode off, disappearing behind the White House.

There was no sun now. A pale and eerie light filtered down through the cold clouds. The snow continued its soft, thick fall.

They looked like dots, small and helpless, on a sheet of blank paper.

Ellery pulled open the folding doors of the garage and peered. A healthy odor of raw gasoline and rubber assailed his nostrils. Thome’s car stood within, exactly as Ellery had seen it the afternoon before, a black monster with glittering chrome-work. Beside it, apparently parked by Keith after their arrival, stood the battered Buick in which Dr. Reinach had driven them from the city. Both cars were perfectly dry.

He shut the doors and turned back to the driveway. Aside from the catenated links of their footprints in the snow, made a moment before, the white covering on the driveway was virgin.

“Here’s your broom,” said the giant. “What are you going to do — ride it?”

“Hold your tongue, Nick,” growled Dr. Reinach.

Ellery laughed. “Let him alone, Doctor. His angry sanity is infectious. Come along, you two. This may be the Judgment Day, but we may as well go through the motions.”

“What do you want with a broom, Queen?”

“It’s hard to decide whether the snow was an accident or part of the plan,” murmured Ellery. “Anything may be true today. Literally anything.”

“Rubbish,” snorted the fat man. “Abracadabra. Om viani jfadme hum. How could a man have planned a snowfall? You’re talking gibberish.”

“I didn’t say a human plan, Doctor.”

“Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!”

“You may as well save your breath. You’re a badly scared little boy whistling in the dark — for all your bulk, Doctor.”

Ellery gripped the broom tightly and stamped out across the driveway. He felt his own foot shrinking as he tried to make it step upon the white rectangle. His muscles were gathered in, as if in truth he expected to encounter the adamantine bulk of a house which was still there but unaccountably impalpable. When he felt nothing but cold air, he laughed a little self-consciously and began to wield the broom on the snow in a peculiar manner. He used the most delicate of sweeping motions, barely brushing the surface crystals away; so that layer by layer he reduced the depth of the snow. He scanned each layer with anxiety as it was uncovered. And he continued to do this until the ground itself lay revealed; and at no depth did he come across the minutest trace of a human imprint.

“Elves,” he complained. “Nothing less than elves. I confess it’s beyond me.”

“Even the foundation—” began Dr. Reinach heavily.

Ellery poked the tip of the broom at the earth. It was hard as corundum.

The front door slammed as Thorne and the two women crept into the White House. The three men outside stood still, doing nothing.

“Well,” said Ellery at last, “this is either a bad dream or the end of the world.” He made off diagonally across the plot, dragging the broom behind him like a tired charwoman, until he reached the snow-covered drive; and then he trudged down the drive towards the invisible road, disappearing around a bend under the stripped white-dripping trees.

It was a short walk to the road. Ellery remembered it well. It had curved steadily in a long arc all the way from the turn-off at the main highway. There had been no crossroad in all the jolting journey.

He went out into the middle of the road, snow-covered now but plainly distinguishable between the powdered tangles of woods as a gleaming, empty strip. There was the long curve exactly as he remembered it. Mechanically he used the broom again, sweeping a small area clear. And there were the pits and ruts of the old Buick’s journeys.

“What are you looking for,” said Nick Keith quietly, “gold?”

Ellery straightened up by degrees, turning about slowly until he was face to face with the giant. “So you thought it was necessary to follow me?

Or— no, I beg your pardon. Undoubtedly it was Dr. Reinach’s idea.”

The sun-charred features did not change expression. “You’re crazy as a bat. Follow you? I’ve got all I can do to follow myself.”

“Of course,” said Ellery. “But did I understand you to ask me if I was looking for gold, my dear young Prometheus?”

“You’re a queer one,” said Keith as they made their way back toward the house.

“Gold,” repeated Ellery. “Hmm. There was gold in that house, and now the house is gone. In the shock of the discovery that houses fly away like birds, I’d quite forgotten that little item. Thank you, Mr. Keith,” said Ellery grimly, “for reminding me.”

“Mr. Queen,” said Alice. She was crouched in a chair by the fire, white to the lips. “What’s happened to us? What are we to do? Have we... Was yesterday a dream? Didn’t we walk into that house, go through it, touch things?... I’m frightened.”

“If yesterday was a dream,” smiled Ellery, “then we may expect that tomorrow will bring a vision; for that’s what holy Sanskrit says, and we may as well believe in parables as in miracles.” He sat down, rubbing his hands briskly. “How about a fire, Keith? it’s arctic in here.”

“Sorry,” said Keith with surprising amiability, and he went away.

“We could use a vision,” shivered Thorne. “My brain is— sick. It just isn’t possible. It’s horrible.” His hand slapped his side and something jangled in his pocket.

“Keys,” said Ellery, “and no house. It is staggering.”

Keith came back under a mountain of firewood. He grimaced at the litter in the fireplace, dropped the wood, and began sweeping together the fragments of glass, the remains of the brandy decanter he had smashed against the brick wall the night before. Alice glanced from his broad back to the chromo of her mother on the mantel. As for Mrs. Reinach, she was as silent as a scared bird; she stood in a corner like a weazened little gnome, her wrapper drawn about her, her stringy sparrow-colored hair hanging down her back, and her glassy eyes fixed on the face of her husband.