Ellery Queen - The Origin of Evil

“Well... I thought maybe the reason you hadn’t made up your mind to take the case was that there wasn’t enough money in it for you.”

“Did you?”

“Look. Maybe I could put enough more in the pot to make it worth your while.”

“You mean you want to hire me, too, Mac?”

“That’s it.” He seemed relieved that it was out. “I got to thinking... that note, and then whatever it was Roger got in that box the morning old man Hill got the dead dog... I mean, maybe there’s something in it after all, Mr. Queen.”

“Suppose there is.” Ellery studied him with curiosity. “Why are you interested enough to want to put money into an investigation?”

“Roger’s my mother’s husband, isn’t he?”

“Touching, Mac. When did you two fall in love?”

Young Macgowan’s brown skin turned mahogany. “I mean... It’s true Roger and I never got along. He’s always tried to dominate me as well as everybody else. But he means well, and―”

“And that’s why,” smiled Ellery, “you call yourself Crowe Macgowan instead of Crowe Priam.”

Crowe laughed. “Okay, I detest his lazy colon. We’ve always fought like a couple of wild dogs. When Delia married him he wouldn’t adopt me legally; the idea was to keep me dependent on him. I was a kid, and it made me hate him. So I kept my father’s name and I refused to take any money from Roger. I wasn’t altogether a hero ― I had a small income from a trust fund my father left for me. You can imagine how that set with Mr. Priam.” He laughed again. But then he finished lamely, “The last few years I’ve grown up, I guess. I tolerate him for Mother’s sake. That’s it,” he added, brightening, “Mother’s sake. That’s why I’d like to get to the bottom of this. You see, Mr. Queen?”

“Your mother loves Priam?”

“She’s married to him, isn’t she?”

“Come off it, Mac. I intimated to you myself the other day, in your tree, that your mother had already offered to engage my services. Not to mention Laurel. What’s this all about?”

Macgowan got up angrily. “What difference does my reason make? It’s an honest offer. All I want is this damned business cleaned up. Name your fee and get going on it!”

“As they say in the textbooks, Mac,” said Ellery, “I’ll leave you know. It’s the best I can do.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Warning number two. If this business is on the level, Mac, there will be a warning number two, and I can’t do a thing till it comes. With Priam being pigheaded, you and your mother can be most useful by simply keeping your eyes open. I’ll decide then.”

“What do we watch for,” sneered the young man, “another mysterious box?”

“I’ve no idea. But whatever it turns out to be ― and it may not be a thing, Mac, but an event ― whatever happens out of the ordinary, no matter how silly or trivial it may seem to you ― let me know about it right away. You,” and Ellery added, as if in afterthought, “or your mother.”

The phone was ringing. He opened his eyes, conscious that it had been ringing for some time.

He switched on the light, blinking at his wristwatch.

4:35. He hadn’t got to bed until 1130.

“Hello?” he mumbled.

“Mr. Queen―”

Delia Priam.

“Yes?” He had never felt so wakeful.

“My son Crowe said to call you if―” She sounded far away, a little frightened.

“Yes? Yes?”

“It’s probably nothing at all. But you told Crowe―”

“Delia, what’s happened?”

“Roger’s sick, Ellery. Dr. Voluta is here. He says it’s ptomaine poisoning. But―”

“I’ll be right over!”

Dr. Voluta was a floppy man with jowls and a dirty eye, and it was a case of hate at first sight. The doctor was in a bright blue yachting jacket over a yellow silk undershirt and his greasy brown hair stuck up all over his head. He wore carpet slippers. Twice Ellery caught himself about to address him as Captain Bligh and it would not have surprised him if, in his own improvised costume of soiled white ducks and turtleneck sweater, he had inspired Priam’s doctor to address him in turn as Mr. Christian.

“The trouble with you fellows,” Dr. Voluta was saying as he scraped an evil mess from a rumpled bedsheet into a specimen vial, “is that you really enjoy murder. Otherwise you wouldn’t see it in every bellyache.”

“Quite a bellyache,” said Ellery. “The stopper’s right there over the sink, Doctor.”

“Thank you. Priam is a damn pig. He eats too much for even a well man. His alimentary apparatus is a medical problem in itself. I’ve warned him for years to lay off bedtime snacks, especially spicy fish.”

“I’m told he’s fond of spicy fish.”

“I’m fond of spicy blondes, Mr. Queen,” snapped Dr. Voluta, “but I keep my appetite within bounds.”

“I thought you said there’s something wrong with the tuna.”

“Certainly there’s something wrong with it. I tasted it myself. But that’s not the point. The point is that if he’d followed my orders he wouldn’t have eaten any in the first place.”

They were in the butler’s pantry, and Dr. Voluta was looking irritably about for something to cover a plastic dish into which he had dumped the remains of the tuna.

“Then it’s your opinion, Doctor―?”

“I’ve given you my opinion. The can of tuna was spoiled. Didn’t you ever hear of spoiled canned goods, Mr. Queen?” He opened his medical bag, grabbed a surgical glove, and stretched it over the top of the dish.

“I’ve examined the empty tin, Dr. Voluta.” Ellery had fished it out of the tin can container, thankful that in Los Angeles you had to keep cans separate from garbage. “I see no sign of a bulge, do you?”

“You’re just assuming that’s the tin it came from,” the doctor said disagreeably. “How do you know?”

“The cook told me. It’s the only tuna she opened today. She opened it just before she went to bed. And I found the tin at the top of the waste can.”

Dr. Voluta threw up his hands. “Excuse me. I want to wash up.”

Ellery followed him to the door of the downstairs lavatory. “Have to keep my eye on that vial and dish, Doctor,” he said apologetically. “Since you won’t turn them over to me.”

“You don’t mean a thing to me, Mr. Queen. I still think it’s all a lot of nonsense. But if this stuff has to be analyzed, I’m turning it over to the police personally. Would you mind stepping back? I’d like to close this door.”

“The vial,” said Ellery.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Dr. Voluta turned his back and opened the tap with a swoosh.

They were waiting for Lieutenant Keats. It was almost six o’clock and through the windows a pale farina-like world was taking shape. The house was cold. Priam was purged and asleep, his black beard jutting from the blankets on his reclining chair with a moribund majesty, so that all Ellery had been able to think of ― before Alfred Wallace shut the door politely in his face ― was Sennacherib the Assyrian in his tomb; and that was no help. Wallace had locked Priam’s door from the inside. He was spending what was left of the night on the daybed in Priam’s room reserved for his use during emergencies.

Crowe Macgowan had been snappish. “If I hadn’t made that promise, Queen, I’d never have had Delia call you. All this stench about a little upchucking. Leave him to Voluta and go home.” And he had gone back to his oak, yawning.

Old Mr. Collier, Delia Priam’s father, had quietly made himself a cup of tea in the kitchen and trotted back upstairs with it, pausing only long enough to chuckle to Ellery: “A fool and his gluttony are soon parted.”

Delia Priam... He hadn’t seen her at all. Ellery had rather built himself up to their middle-of-the-night meeting, although he was prepared to be perfectly correct. Of course, she couldn’t know that. By the time he arrived she had returned to her room upstairs. He was glad, in a way, that her sense of propriety was so delicately tuned to his state of mind. It was, in fact, astoundingly perceptive of her. At the same time, he felt a little empty.