Ellery Queen - The Origin of Evil

“Keats.”

Keats whirled. “Yes?”

Ellery was on his feet. “The man who owned the dog. What were his name and address again?”

“Who?” Keats blinked.

“The owner of the dead dog, the one you have reason to believe was poisoned before it was left on Hill’s doorstep. What was the owner’s name? I’ve forgotten it.”

“Henderson. Clybourn Avenue, in Toluca Lake.”

“I’ll have to see him as soon as I can. You going home?”

“But why―”

“You go on and get a couple of hours’ sleep. Are you going to be at the station later this morning?”

“Yeah. But what―?”

But Ellery was walking out of Roger Priam’s library with stiff short steps, a man in a dream.

Keats stared after him.

When he heard Ellery’s Kaiser drive away, he put Ellery’s pack of cigarets in his pocket and picked up the remains of the burned book.

Crowe Macgowan awoke with a snort.

“You still here? Where’s Queen?” Macgowan yawned. “Did you find out anything?”

Keats held his smoldering butt to a fresh cigaret, puffing recklessly.

“I’ll send you a telegram,” he said bitterly, and he went away.

Sleep was impossible. He tossed for a while, not even hopefully.

At a little after six Ellery was downstairs in his kitchen, brewing coffee.

He drank three cups, staring into the mists over Hollywood. A dirty gray world with the sun struggling through. In a short time the mist would be gone and the sun would shine clear.

The thing was sharply brilliant. All he had to do was get rid of the mist.

What he would see in that white glare Ellery hardly dared anticipate. It was something monstrous, and in its monstrous way beautiful; that, he could make out dimly. But first there was the problem of the mist.

He went back upstairs, shaved, took a shower, changed into fresh clothing, and then he left the cottage and got into his car.

It was almost eight o’clock when Ellery pulled up before a small stucco house tinted cobalt blue on Clybourn Avenue off Riverside Drive.

A handcolored wooden cutout resembling Dopey, the Walt Disney dwarf, was stuck into the lawn on a stake, and on it a flowery artist had lettered the name Henderson.

The uniformly closed Venetian blinds did not look promising.

As Ellery went up the walk a woman’s voice said, “If you’re lookin’ for Henderson, he’s not home.”

A stout woman in an orange wrapper was leaning far over the railing of her red cement stoop next door, groping with ringed fingers for something hidden in a violet patch.

“Do you know where I can reach him?”

Something swooshed, and six sprinklers sent up watery bouquets over the woman’s lawn. She straightened, red-faced and triumphant.

“You can’t,” she said, panting. “Henderson’s a picture actor. He’s being a pirate mascot on location around Catalina or somewhere. He expected a few weeks’ work. You a press agent?”

“Heaven forbid,” muttered Ellery. “Did you know Mr. Henderson’s dog?”

“His dog? Sure I knew him. Frank, his name was. Always tearin’ up my lawn and chasin’ moths through my pansy beds ― though don’t go thinkin’,” the fat woman added hastily, “that I had anything to do with poisonin’ Frank, because I just can’t abide people who do things like that to animals, even the destroyin’ kind. Henderson was all broke up about it.”

“What kind of dog was Frank?” Ellery asked.

“Kind?”

“Breed.”

“Well... he wasn’t very big. Nor so little, neither, when you stop to think of it―”

“You don’t know his breed?”

“I think some kind of a hunting dog. Are you from the Humane Society or the Anti-Vivisection League? I’m against experimentin’ with animals myself, like the Examiner’s always sayin’. If the good Lord―”

“You can’t tell me, Madam, what kind of hunting dog Frank was?”

“Well...”

“English setter? Irish? Gordon? Llewellyn? Chesapeake? Weimaraner?”

“I just guess,” said the woman cheerfully, “I don’t know.”

“What color was he?”

“Well, now, sort of brown and white. No, black. Come to think of it, not really white, neither. More creamy, like.”

“More creamy, like. Thank you,” said Ellery. And he got into his car and moved fifty feet, just far enough to be out of his informant’s range.

After thinking for a few minutes, he drove off again.

He cut through Pass and Olive, past the Warner Brothers studio, into Barham Boulevard to the Freeway. Emerging through the North Highland exit into Hollywood, he found a parking space on McCadden Place and hurried around the corner to the Plover Bookshop.

It was still closed.

He could not help feeling that this was inconsiderate of the Plover Bookshop. Wandering up Hollywood Boulevard disconsolately, he found himself opposite Coffee Dan’s. This reminded him vaguely of his stomach, and he crossed over and went in for breakfast. Someone had left a newspaper on the counter and as he ate he read it conscientiously. When he paid his check, the cashier said, “What’s the news from Korea this morning?” and he had to answer stupidly, “Just about the same,” because he could not remember a word he had read.

Plover was open!

He ran in and seized the arm of a clerk. “Quick,” he said fiercely. “A book on dogs.”

“Book on dogs,” said the clerk. “Any particular kind of book on dogs, Mr. Queen?”

“Hunting dogs! With illustrations! In color!”

Plover did not fail him. He emerged carrying a fat book and a charge slip for seven and a half dollars, plus tax.

He drove up into the hills rashly and caught Laurel Hill a moment after she stepped into her stall shower.

“Go away,” Laurel said, her voice sounding muffled. “I’m naked.”

“Turn that water off and come out here!”

“Why, Ellery.”

“Oh...! I’m not the least bit interested in your nakedness―”

“Thanks. Did you ever say that to Delia Priam?”

“Cover your precious hide with this! I’ll be in the bedroom.” Ellery tossed a bath towel over the shower door and hurried out. Laurel kept him waiting five minutes. When she came out of the bathroom she was swaddled in a red, white, and blue robe of terry cloth.

“I didn’t know you cared. But next time would you mind at least knocking? Gads, look at my hair―”

“Yes, yes,” said Ellery. “Now Laurel, I want you to project yourself back to the morning when you and your father stood outside your front door and looked at the body of the dead dog. Do you remember that morning?”

“I think so,” said Laurel steadily.

“Can you see that dog right now?”

“Every hair of him.”

“Hold on to him!” Ellery yanked her by the arm and she squealed, grabbing at the front of her robe. She found herself staring down at her bed. Upon it, open to an illustration in color of a springer spaniel, lay a large book. “Was he a dog like this?”

“N-no...”

“Go through the book page by page. When you come to Henderson’s pooch, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, indicate same in an unmistakable manner.”

Laurel looked at him suspiciously. It was too early in the morning for him to have killed a bottle, and he was shaved and pressed, so it wasn’t the tag end of a large night. Unless...

“Ellery!” she screamed. “You’ve found out something!”

“Start looking,” hissed Ellery viciously; at least it sounded vicious to his ears, but Laurel only looked overjoyed and began to turn pages like mad.

“Easy, easy,” he cried. “You may skip it.”

“I’ll find your old hound.” Pages flew like locust petals in a May wind.