Ellery Queen - The Origin of Evil

“I thought you were a newshound, Mr. Queen. Can’t stand those guys ― they’ve made my life miserable. But what are we standing here for? Come on up to the house.”

“Some other time, Mac,” said Laurel coldly, taking Ellery’s arm.

“Oh, that murder foolitchness. Why don’t you relax, Laur?”

“I don’t think I’d be exactly welcome at your stepfather’s, Mac,” said Ellery.

“You’ve already had the pleasure? But I meant come up to my house.”

“He really means ‘up,’ Ellery,” sighed Laurel. “All right, let’s get it over with. You wouldn’t believe it secondhand.”

“House? Up?” Feebly Ellery glanced aloft; and to his horror the young giant nodded and sprang up the rope ladder, beckoning them hospitably to follow.

It really was a house, high in the tree. A one-room house, to be sure, and not commodious, but it had four walls and a thatched roof, a sound floor, a beamed ceiling, two windows, and a platform from which the ladder dangled ― this dangerous-looking perch young Macgowan referred to cheerfully as his “porch,” and perfectly safe if you didn’t fall off.

The tree, he explained, was Quercus agrifolia, with a bole circumference of eighteen feet, and “watch those leaves, Mr. Queen, they bite.” Ellery, who was gingerly digging several of the spiny little devils out of his shirt, nodded sourly. But the structure was built on a foundation of foot-thick boughs and seemed solid enough underfoot.

He poked his head indoors at his host’s invitation and gaped like a tourist. Every foot of wall-and floor-space was occupied by ― it was the only phrase Ellery could muster ― aids to tree-living.

“Sorry I can’t entertain you inside,” said the young man, “but three of us would bug it out a bit. We’d better sit on the porch. Anybody like a drink? Bourbon? Scotch?” Without waiting for a reply Macgowan bent double and slithered into his house. Various liquid sounds followed.

“Laurel, why don’t they put the poor kid away?” whispered Ellery.

“You have to have grounds.”

“What do you call this?” cried Ellery. “Sanity?”

“Don’t blame you, Mr. Queen,” said the big fellow amiably, appearing with two chilled glasses. “Appearances are against me. But that’s because you people live in a world of fantasy.” He thrust a long arm into the house and it came out with another glass.

“Fantasy. We.” Ellery gulped a third of the contents of his glass. “You, of course, live in a world of reality?”

“Do we have to?” asked Laurel wearily. “If he gets started on this, Ellery, we’ll be here till sundown. That note―”

“I’m the only realist I know,” said the giant, lying down at the edge of his porch and kicking his powerful legs in space. “Because, look. What are you people doing? Living in the same old houses, reading the same old newspapers, going to the same old movies or looking at the same old television, walking on the same old sidewalks, riding in the same old new cars. That’s a dream world, don’t you realize it? What price business-as-usual? What price, well, sky-writing, Jacques Fath, Double-Crostics, murder? Do you get my point?”

“Can’t say it’s entirely clear, Mac,” said Ellery, swallowing the second third. He realized for the first time that his glass contained bourbon, which he loathed. However.

“We are living,” said young Mr. Macgowan, “in the crisis of the disease commonly called human history. You mess around with your piddling murders while mankind is being set up for the biggest homicide since the Flood. The atom bomb is already fuddy-duddy. Now it’s hydrogen bombs, guaranteed to make the nuclear chain reaction ― or whatever the hell it is ― look like a Fourth of July firecracker. Stuff that can poison all the drinking water on a continent. Nerve gases that paralyze and kill. Germs there’s no protection against. And only God knows what else. They won’t use it? My friend, those words constitute the epitaph of Man. Somebody’ll pull the cork in a place like Yugoslavia or Iran or Korea and, whoosh! that’ll be that.

“It’s all going to go,” said Macgowan, waving his glass at the invisible world below. “Cities uninhabitable. Crop soil poisoned for a hundred years. Domestic animals going wild. Insects multiplying. Balance of nature upset. Ruins and plagues and millions of square miles radioactive and maybe most of the earth’s atmosphere. The roads crack, the lines sag, the machines rust, the libraries mildew, the buzzards fatten, and the forest primeval creeps over Hollywood and Vine, which maybe isn’t such a bad idea. But there you’ll have it. Thirty thousand years of primate development knocked over like a sleeping duck. Civilization atomized and annihilated. Yes, there’ll be some survivors ― I’m going to be one of them. But what are we going to have to do? Why, go back where we came from, brother ― to the trees. That’s logic, isn’t it? So here I am. All ready for it.”

“Now let’s have the note,” said Laurel.

“In a moment.” Ellery polished off the last third, shuddering. “Very logical, Mac, except for one or two items.”

“Such as?” said Crowe Macgowan courteously. “Here, let me give you a refill.”

“No, thanks, not just now. Why, such as these.” Ellery pointed to a network of cables winging from some hidden spot to the roof of Macgowan’s tree house. “For a chap who’s written off thirty thousand years of primate development you don’t seem to mind tapping the main power line for such things as―” he craned, surveying the interior ― “electric lights, a small electric range and refrigerator, and similar primitive devices; not to mention” ― he indicated a maze of pipes ― “running water, a compact little privy connected with ― I assume ― a septic tank buried somewhere below, and so on. These things ― forgive me, Mac ― blow bugs through your logic. The only essential differences between your house and your stepfather’s are that yours is smaller and thirty feet in the air.”

“Just being practical,” shrugged the giant. “It’s my opinion it’ll happen any day now. But I can be wrong ― it may not come till next year. I’m just taking advantage of the civilized comforts while they’re still available. But you’ll notice I have a .22 rifle hanging there, a couple of .45s, and when my ammunition runs out or I can’t rustle any more there’s a bow that’ll bring down any deer that survives the party. I practice daily. And I’m getting pretty good running around these treetops―”

“Which reminds me,” said Laurel. “Use your own trees after this, will you, Mac? I’m no prude, but a girl likes her privacy sometimes. Really, Ellery―”

“Macgowan,” said Ellery, eying their host, “what’s the pitch?”

“Pitch? I’ve just told you.”

“I know what you’ve just told me, and it’s already out the other ear. What character are you playing? And in what script by whom?” Ellery set the glass down and got to his feet. The effect he was trying to achieve was slightly spoiled, as he almost fell off the porch. He jumped to the side of the house, a little green. “I’ve been to Hollywood before.”

“Go ahead and sneer,” said the brown giant without rancor. “I promise to give you a decent burial if I can find the component parts.”

Ellery eyed the wide back for a moment. It was perfectly calm. He shrugged. Every time he came to Hollywood something fantastic happened. This was the screwiest yet. He was well out of it.

But then he remembered that he was still in it.

He put his hand in his pocket.

“Laurel,” he said meaningly, “shall we go?”

“If it’s about that piece of paper I saw you find in Leander’s mattress,” said young Macgowan, “I wouldn’t mind knowing myself what’s in it.”