Эллери Куин - The Door Between

“Queen,” said Eva feebly for the third time. She didn’t like that name at all. It was uncanny how it kept turning up. She remembered vaguely the tallish young man in pince-nez eyeglasses at Karen’s party — he had seemed a decent enough sort, and he had looked at her quite humanly. She had even been rude to him, which was pleasant. But that was then. Now...

She leaned against Dr. Scott’s shoulder, afraid to think. He was looking down at her again with that funny look — so like the look Terry Ring had given her — and already, despite the fact that he was tender with her and she was so grateful for his tenderness, something had sprung up between them that had never existed before.

The day of the chocolate soda seemed inconceivably distant.

Then Dr. Scott saw the reporters swooping down on them, and he pulled her to her feet and they fled.

Eva never recalled much about her reunion with Dr. MacClure, probably because she had a guilty conscience and chose to forget as much of it as she could. For all her resolutions and the stiffening she had given herself for two nights and a day, it was she who broke down and he who was steady. She wept on his breast as she had wept when broken dolls were human, and the fields about the Nantasket house had seemed the spread of the world. She wept because he was so steady.

It was all the more tragic because he was so thin and earthy-colored and aged. His eyes were hot red circles, as if he had done his own crying in private on board ship and had not slept since hearing the news.

The tallish young man in pince-nez had murmured something sympathetic and vanished for a while on the pier, to return not long after from the direction of the telephone booths, looking grim. Probably telephoning his father, thought Eva with a shiver. Then he spoke negligently to a group of loungers with large feet and everything took on acceleration — Customs, formalities, even delays. And the press, who had been irresistible, ceased to molest them. When the doctor’s luggage was on its way to the MacClure apartment young Mr. Queen herded the three of them towards the taxicabs, quite as if he had construed himself their male duenna.

Eva contrived to linger behind with her fiancé . “Dick — would you mind? I’d like to talk to daddy alone.”

“Mind? Of course not.” Dr. Scott kissed her. “I’ll make some excuse and beat it. I understand, dear.”

Oh, Dick, thought Eva, you don’t understand at all! But she smiled wanly at him and let him take her to where Dr. MacClure and Ellery Queen were waiting.

“Sorry, sir,” said Dick to the doctor. “I’ve simply got to get back to the hospital. And now that you’re here—”

Dr. MacClure rubbed his forehead in a tired way. “Go on, Dick. I’ll take care of Eva.”

“See you to-night, darling?” Scott kissed her again, glanced rather defiantly at Ellery, and drove off in a cab.

“All aboard,” called Ellery. “Jump in, Miss MacClure.”

Eva did not jump in. She pressed her pigskin bag to her breast and looked terrified.

“Where are we going?”

“With Mr. Queen,” said Dr. MacClure. “Don’t worry, honey.”

“But, Daddy! I wanted to talk to you.”

“We can talk with Mr. Queen, Eva,” said the doctor oddly. “I’ve sort of engaged him.”

“Not really engaged, Miss MacClure,” said Ellery, smiling. “Let’s say as a matter of friendship. Will you get in?”

“Oh,” said Eva in a choked voice, and got in.

And all the way uptown, while Mr. Queen chattered on about European politics and the quaint ways of the Bretons, Eva wondered with a sinking stomach how kind Mr. Queen would be when he learned the truth.

Djuna, the Queens’ dark-eyed boy-of-all-work, had to be forcibly restrained from prolonging his joyful demonstration at the return from abroad of his idol. Eventually Ellery managed to quiet him and get him busy in the kitchen preparing coffee. And for a while Ellery busied himself about their comforts, with cigarets and cushions and Djuna’s coffee and gossip.

Then the doorbell rang, and Djuna opened the door. Whereupon a tall brown young man with his hands in his pockets sauntered through the foyer without being asked. Eva caught her breath.

“Hi, Queen,” said Terry Ring, scaling his hat on to the mantel. “Remember Mrs Ring’s brat Terence?”

Even here!

If Ellery was displeased at the interruption, he did not show it. He shook hands cordially and introduced Terry to Dr. MacClure.

“My Dad’s told me all about your part in this deplorable business, Terry,” said Ellery. “That is — all he knows, which doesn’t seem to be much.”

Terry smiled, eyed Dr. MacClure, who returned the stare, and sat down.

Eva murmured, sipping her coffee. “So you know Mr. Ring?”

“Who doesn’t? Terry and I are brothers under the skin. We’ve both pestered the department so long they hate the sight of us.”

“Only difference,” said Terry amiably, “is I work at it and you don’t. I always say,” he continued, speaking over Eva’s head, “you can trust a guy who works for his living, but you can’t always trust a... what do you call it? — dilettante.”

So he didn’t want her to tell Ellery Queen. As if she would! She suppressed a shiver.

And then she sat very still. Mr. Ellery Queen was regarding her with fixity. He turned to regard Terry Ring the same way. Then he sat down with a cigaret and regarded both of them together.

“Well, Terry,” he said at last, “and what’s the purpose of this unexpected visit?”

“Friendly, just friendly,” grinned Terry.

“I suppose you know you’re being watched.”

“Huh? Oh, sure,” said Terry with a wave of his hand.

“I’m informed that since the afternoon of Miss Leith’s death you’ve been following Miss MacClure about like a masher.”

The brown man’s eyes contracted. “That’s my business.”

“And mine,” said Dr. MacClure quietly.

“It couldn’t be,” said Ellery, “that you’re afraid Miss MacClure may say something to someone which might be damaging — let’s say, to you?”

Terry opened a fresh packet of cigarets. Ellery got up and politely held a match for him. “What put that idea in your head?”

“Dr. MacClure and I have decided you know rather more than you’ve told my father.”

“That makes you a couple of smart hombres. Been spending the doc’s dough on transatlantic telephone calls?”

Ellery blew some smoke. “I think we’d better start with a fresh slate. All right, Doctor.”

Eva said in a rush: “Daddy, can’t we — I mean, let’s have this talk with Mr. Queen some other time. Let’s go home. I’m sure Mr. Queen and Mr. Ring will excuse us.”

“Eva,” said Dr. MacClure heavily. He placed his hairy hands on her shoulders. “I want you to tell me something.”

Eva was so frightened she gnawed at the forefinger of her glove. She had never seen Dr. MacClure so pale, so stern. The three men just looked at her; she felt trapped.

“Eva.” The doctor tilted her face up. “Did you kill Karen?”

The question burst over her with such a shock she could not reply. She could only stare back into Dr. MacClure’s troubled blue eyes in a daze.

“You’ve got to answer me, honey. I must know.”

“And I,” said Ellery, “I must know, too. As a matter of fact, Miss MacClure, you’re doing your father a great injustice by looking at him with such horror. The question is really mine.”

She dared not move, dared not glance at Terry Ring.

“I’d like to have one thing understood,” said Ellery cheerfully, and Dr. MacClure made a broken gesture and sat down on the divan. “We’re four people in a room, and these walls haven’t even the vestige of ears. And my father is away.”