Ellery Queen - The Lamp of God

Thorne awoke sluggishly, like a drowsing old hound dimly aware of danger. His bedroom was cold; a pale morning light was struggling in through the window. He groped under his pillow.

“Stop where you are!” he said harshly.

“So you have a revolver, too?” murmured Ellery. He was dressed and looked as if he had slept badly. “It’s only I, Thorne, stealing in for a conference. It’s not so hard to steal in here, by the way.”

“What do you mean?” grumbled Thorne, sitting up and putting his old-fashioned revolver away.

“I see your lock has gone the way of mine, Alice’s, the Black House, and Sylvester Mayhew’s elusive gold.”

Thorne drew the patchwork comforter about him, his old lips blue. “Well, Queen?”

Ellery lit a cigarette and for a moment stared out Thome’s window at the streamers of crepy snow still dropping from the sky. The snow had fallen without a moment’s let-up the entire previous day. “This is a curious business all round, Thorne. The queerest medley of spirit and matter. I’ve just reconnoitered. You’ll be interested to learn that our young friend the Colossus is gone.”

“Keith gone?”

“His bed hasn’t been slept in at all. I looked.”

“And he was away most of yesterday, too!”

“Precisely. Our surly Crichton, who seems afflicted by a particularly acute case of Weltschmerz, periodically vanishes. Where does he go? I’d give a good deal to know the answer to that question.”

“He won’t get far in those nasty drifts,” mumbled the lawyer.

“It gives one, as the French say, to think. Comrade Reinach is gone, too.” Thorne stiffened. “Oh, yes; his bed’s been slept in, but briefly, I judge. Have they eloped together? Separately? Thorne,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “this becomes an increasingly subtle devilment.”

“It’s beyond me,” said Thorne with another shiver. “I’m just about ready to give up. I don’t see that we’re accomplishing a thing here. And then there’s always that annoying, incredible fact... the house — vanished.”

Ellery sighed and looked at his wristwatch. It was a minute past seven.

Thorne threw back the comforter and groped under the bed for his slippers. “Let’s go downstairs,” he snapped.

“Excellent bacon, Mrs. Reinach,” said Ellery. “I suppose it must be a trial carting supplies up here.”

“We’ve the blood of pioneers,” said Dr. Reinach cheerfully, before his wife could reply. He was engulfing mounds of scrambled eggs and bacon. “Luckily, we’ve enough in the larder to last out a considerable siege. The winters are severe out here — we learned that last year.”

Keith was not at the breakfast table. Old Mrs. Fell was. She ate voraciously, with the unconcealed greed of the very old, to whom nothing is left of the sensual satisfactions of life but the filling of the belly. Nevertheless, although she did not speak, she contrived as she ate to keep her eyes on Alice, who wore a haunted look.

“I didn’t sleep very well,” said Alice, toying with her coffee-cup. Her voice was huskier. “This abominable snow! Can’t we manage somehow to get away today?”

“Not so long as the snow keeps up, I’m afraid,” said Ellery gently. “And you, Doctor? Did you sleep badly, too? Or hasn’t the whisking away of a whole house from under your nose affected your nerves at all?”

The fat man’s eyes were red-rimmed and his lids sagged. Nevertheless, he chuckled and said: “I? I always sleep well. Nothing on my conscience. Why?”

“Oh, no special reason. Where’s friend Keith this morning? He’s a seclusive sort of chap, isn’t he?”

Mrs. Reinach swallowed a muffin whole. Her husband glanced at her and she rose and fled to the kitchen. “Lord knows,” said the fat man. “He’s as unpredictable as the ghost of Banquo. Don’t bother yourself about the boy; he’s harmless.”

Ellery sighed and pushed back from the table. “The passage of twenty-four hours hasn’t softened the wonder of the event. May I be excused? I’m going to have another peep at the house that isn’t there any more.” Thorne started to rise. “No, no, Thorne; I’d rather go alone.”

He put on his warmest clothes and went outdoors. The drifts reached the lower windows now; and the trees had almost disappeared under the snow. A crude path had been hacked by someone from the front door for a few feet; already it was half-refilled with snow.

Ellery stood still in the path, breathing deeply of the raw air and staring off to the right at the empty rectangle where the Black House had once stood. Leading across that expanse to the edge of the woods beyond were barely discernible tracks. He turned up his coat-collar against the cutting wind and plunged into the snow waist-deep.

It was difficult going, but not unpleasant. After a while he began to feel quite warm. The world was white and silent — a new, strange world.

When he had left the open area and struggled into the woods, it was with a sensation that he was leaving even that new world behind. Everything was so still and white and beautiful, with a pure beauty not of the earth; the snow draping the trees gave them a fresh look, making queer patterns out of old forms.

Occasionally a clump of snow fell from a low branch, pelting him.

Here, where there was a roof between ground and sky, the snow had not filtered into the mysterious tracks so quickly. They were purposeful tracks, unwandering, striking straight as a dotted line for some distant goal. Ellery pushed on more rapidly, excited by a presentiment of discovery.

Then the world went black. It was a curious thing. The snow grew gray, and grayer, and finally very dark gray, becoming jet black at the last instant, as if flooded from underneath by ink. And with some surprise he felt the cold wet kiss of the drift on his cheek.

He opened his eyes to find himself flat on his back in the snow and Thorne in the great-coat stooped over him, nose jutting from blued face like a winter thorn.

“Queen!” cried the old man, shaking him. “Are you all right?”

Ellery sat up, licking his lips. “As well as might be expected,” he groaned. “What hit me? It felt like one of God’s angrier thunderbolts.” He caressed the back of his head, and staggered to his feet. “Well, Thorne, we seem to have reached the border of the enchanted land.”

“You’re not delirious?” asked the lawyer anxiously.

Ellery looked about for the tracks which should have been there. But except for the double line at the head of which Thorne stood, there were none. Apparently he had lain unconscious in the snow for a long time.

“Farther than this,” he said with a grimace, “we may not go. Hands off. Nose out. Mind your own business. Beyond this invisible boundary-line lie Sheol and Domdaniel and Abaddon. Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate... Forgive me, Thorne. Did you save my life?”

Thorne jerked about, searching the silent woods. “I don’t know. I think not. At least I found you lying here, alone. Gave me quite a start — thought you were dead.”

“As well,” said Ellery with a shiver, “I might have been.”

“When you left the house Alice went upstairs, Reinach said something about a cat-nap, and I wandered out of the house. I waded through the drifts on the road for a spell, and then I thought of you and made my way back. Your tracks were almost obliterated; but they were visible enough to take me across the clearing to the edge of the woods, and I finally blundered upon you. By now the tracks are gone.”

“I don’t like this at all,” said Ellery, “and yet in another sense I like it very much.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Ellery, “a divine agency stooping to such a mean assault.”