Эллери Куин - The Door Between

Ritter scrambled to his feet and began futilely to lunge at the stout panels.

“Escape, will they? Run, will they? They’ve hanged themselves!” The old man scuttled for the bedroom door.

“What are you going to do?” asked Dr. MacClure, staring.

“Have a warrant made out,” shouted the Inspector, “charging ’em with murder and accessory murder — that’s what!”

Mr. Ellery Queen rang the bell of his own apartment. And after some time Djuna opened the door, looking frightened.

“It’s all right,” said Ellery, walking briskly into his living-room; but there was no one there. “Djuna, lock the front door. I say,” he called out irritably, “it’s all right, you maniacs!”

Terry Ring stuck his head out of Ellery’s bedroom. “Well, don’t call out the reserves. Come on, kid.”

Eva crept out of the bedroom and dropped into the over-stuffed chair, to crouch in one corner of it with her arms crossed over her chest, as if she were chilly. Terry looked at the revolver in his hand, flushed, and stowed it away.

“Now,” said Ellery, scaling his hat aside, “what in tunket’s name was the brilliant idea, Eva? Have you gone out of your mind?” Eva looked miserable. “Running away! And you, Terry. I thought you had more sense.” He lit a cigaret in disgust.

“So did I,” said Terry bitterly. “At least, I used to have. Give me a fag, will you? I’ve been handing her hell.”

Ellery offered his case. “You pulled a gun on my father!”

“I did not. It just came out of my pocket and that fool Ritter got in my way. Well, what could I do? She’s absolutely the most helpless female I’ve ever seen. She doesn’t know anything . I couldn’t leave her alone. They’d have picked her up on the first street corner.”

“I’ve made a mess of everything,” said Eva hollowly. “How is daddy? I... I didn’t think of him when I ran.”

“I’ve sent him home. How do you think he is?” Ellery scowled at her. “Broken up, of course. He took Kinumé with him. The old lady’s got more spunk than any of us.”

She looked at him. “What shall I do?”

“If I had any more sense than you two I’d say give yourself up,” snapped Ellery. “But I’ve been afflicted with the same mental disease. Of course you realize this can’t go on. Sooner or later you’ll be found.”

“She’s in the safest place in New York,” drawled Terry, flinging himself on the divan and smoking at the ceiling. “Imagine pop’s face when he finds out where she’s been!”

“You have the most perverted sense of humor. Imagine his face when he finds out I’ve connived at it!”

“Terry’s told me,” said Eva limply. “How you gave him your own key at Fung’s. I don’t know why you two men are so kind—”

“Yeah,” said Terry. “What are you yowling about? Using this place as a hideout was your idea.”

“Well, suppose it was! It’s all so damned silly.” Ellery glared at his cigaret. “You’d think this girl was the first to be a suspect in a murder case. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m disgusted with myself.”

“I told you,” said Terry. “She’s got the queerest way of making sane men go screwy. I don’t understand it myself.”

“Sometimes I think—” Eva hid her face. “Sometimes I think I really did kill Karen — in a bad dream, not knowing, not—”

Ellery paced restlessly. “This kind of talk won’t help. We can’t shut out reality any more. We’re face to face with it at last. At the most you have a few hours of freedom, and after that — it’s behind the bars.”

“I’m ready to give myself up now,” whispered Eva. “When he — he said those things something made me run. You always run away from what frightens you. Call him, Mr. Queen.”

“Shut up,” growled Terry from the divan. “You can’t back out now... now you’ve got to stick it out. Maybe something will happen.”

“A miracle?” Eva smiled humorlessly. “I’ve made a mess of everything. Everybody I touch is touched by... Like Mother. Like my Mother.” She paused, and then said suddenly: “It’s like a curse. Does that sound absurd? But I’ve got you into trouble, Terry, and I’ve given daddy only heartache, and made Mr. Queen lie to his father, and—”

“Shut up!” yelled Terry. He got off the divan and began to follow Ellery around the room. Djuna watched them, bewildered, from a crack in the kitchen doorway. The two men circled each other blindly, like men in a fog.

“There’s no use keeping quiet any more,” mumbled Terry. “She’s in your hands, Queen — so am I, as far as that goes. It’s all balled up. I guess I haven’t exactly covered myself with glory. It’s...”

Eva closed her eyes and lay back against the chair.

“Look,” said Terry. “Karen Leith got in touch with me a week ago Thursday. She told me about Eva’s mother — only she didn’t call her that. Just something about a friend staying with her, who was a little sick in the head, and that this friend had taken it on the lam during a ‘spell,’ and she was afraid the poor thing would come to some harm, and wouldn’t I please find her without any publicity and bring her back. It sounded cockeyed, after I got the description — it seems the blonde woman had ducked out during the night without being spotted. I scouted around; I was suspicious. I don’t like funny cases. I even got into that attic without the Leith woman knowing. I saw enough to tell me that something was pretty much off-color. But I took the case — she insisted she didn’t want the police in on it — and got to work.”

Ellery stopped pacing. He sat down and sucked on his cigaret. Eva lay in the big chair watching the brown man’s every move.

“Well, it wasn’t hard.” Terry flung his butt into the dead fireplace. “I got on her trail — traced her via the Penn. R.R. — right into Philadelphia. I tried O”Dell there, at Headquarters, but they didn’t know anything. Anyway, it was detail after that — a taxi driver — you know the technique. I kept reporting to Karen by phone, not telling her how hot I was. Wanted to find out what it was all about. I’d already made it my business to size up the layout — who the Leith woman was, about Doc MacClure, about Eva — but none of it made sense.

“On Monday morning I found her. In that rooming-house. I got into the house, into her room without that old she-weasel of a landlady seeing me. I found her dead of poison.” He glanced at Eva, and away. “I’m sorry, kid.”

Eva felt that she could never experience an emotion again. She was dry and empty inside, like a sun-baked gourd.

“I saw right away she’d poisoned herself, and that she’d been dead a couple of days. I didn’t see the suicide note, because I didn’t touch anything. I began to figure. Should I tell the Leith woman or not? Should I tip off the police? Finally I decided to go back to New York and have it out with Karen — see what she said. The whole thing struck me as funny as hell. So I went back without telling anybody Esther was dead. The landlady must have found her late Monday night by accident. Let’s have another butt.”

Ellery gave him one in silence.

“I got back to New York late Monday afternoon. I already knew Karen had an appointment with a Headquarters detective for five o”clock, because she’d told me so Sunday over the ’phone, when she fired me. So I figured she must be pretty scared about that blonde woman if she was willing to go to the police after saying she didn’t want “em. I ’phoned from the drugstore on University Place, and there was no answer. I figured I knew something nobody else knew, and if there was anything hot on the fire, I wanted my hunk of it.” He muttered apologetically: “You know how it is in my business.”