Ellery Queen - The Origin of Evil

Keats nodded, and they went to Roger Priam’s quarters.

Priam was having his dinner. He was wielding a sharp blade and a fork on a thick rare steak. Alfred Wallace was broiling another on a portable barbecue. The steak was smothered with onions and mushrooms and barbecue sauce from several chafing dishes, and a bottle of red wine showed three-quarters empty on the tray. Priam ate in character: brutally, teeth tearing, powerful jaws crunching, eyes bulging with appetite, flecks of sauce on his agitated beard.

His wife, in a chair beside him, watched him silently, as one might watch a zoo animal at feeding time.

The entrance of the three men caught the meat-laden fork in midair. It hung there for a moment, then it completed its journey, but slowly, and Priam’s jaws ground away mechanically. His eyes fixed and remained on the box in Ellery’s hands.

“Sorry to interrupt your dinner, Mr. Priam,” said Keats, “but we may as well have this one out now.”

“The other steak, Alfred.” Priam extended his plate. Wallace refilled it in silence. “What’s this, now?”

“Warning number six, Mr. Priam,” said Ellery.

Priam attacked his second steak.

“I see it’s no use,” he said in almost a friendly tone, “trying to get you two to keep your noses out of my business.”

“I took it,” said Crowe Macgowan abruptly. “It was left on the mailbox and I lifted it.”

“Oh, you did.” Priam inspected his stepson.

“I live here, too, you know. I’m getting pretty fed up with this and I want to see it cleaned out.”

Priam hurled his plate at Crowe Macgowan’s head. It hit the giant a glancing blow above the ear. He staggered, crashed back into the door. His face went yellow.

“Crowe!”

He brushed his mother aside. “Roger, if you ever do that again,” he said in a low voice, “I’ll kill you.”

“Get out!” Priam’s voice was a bellow.

“Not while Delia’s here. If not for that I’d be in a uniform right now. God knows why she stays, but as long as she does, I do too. I don’t owe you a thing, Roger. I pay my way in this dump. And I have a right to know what’s going on... It’s all right, Mother.” Delia was dabbing at his bleeding ear with her handkerchief; her face was pinched and old-looking. “Just remember what I said, Roger. Don’t do that again.”

Wallace got down on his hands and knees and began to clean up the mess.

Priam’s cheekbones were a violent purple. He had gathered himself in, bunched and knotted. His glare at young Macgowan was palpable.

“Mr. Priam,” said Ellery pleasantly, “have you ever seen these stock certificates before?”

Ellery laid the box on the tray of the wheelchair. Priam looked at the mass of certificates for a long time without touching them ― almost, Ellery would have said, without seeing them. But gradually awareness crept over his face and as it advanced it touched the purple like a chemical, leaving pallor behind.

Now he seized a stock certificate, another, another. His great hands began to scramble through the box, scattering its contents. Suddenly his hands fell and he looked at his wife.

“I remember these.” And Priam added, with the most curious emphasis, “Don’t you, Delia?”

The barb penetrated her armor. “I?”

“Look at ‘em, Delia.” His bass was vibrant with malice. “If you haven’t seen them lately, here’s your chance.”

She approached his wheelchair reluctantly, aware of something unpleasant that was giving him a feeling of pleasure. If he felt fear at the nature of the sixth warning, he showed no further trace of it.

“Go ahead, Delia.” He held out an engraved certificate. “It won’t bite you.”

“What are you up to now?” growled Crowe. He strode forward.

“You saw them earlier today, Macgowan,” said Keats. Crowe stopped, uneasy. The detective was watching them all with a brightness of eye he had not displayed for some time... watching them all except Wallace, whom he seemed not to be noticing, and who was fussing with the barbecue as if he were alone in the room.

Delia Priam read stiffly, “Harvey Macgowan.”

“Sure is,” boomed her husband. “That’s the name on the stock, Delia. Harvey Macgowan. Your old man, Crowe.” He chuckled.

Macgowan looked foolish. “Mother, I didn’t notice the name at all.”

Delia Priam made an odd gesture. As if to silence him. “Are they all―?”

“Every one of them, Mrs. Priam,” said Keats. “Do they mean anything to you?”

“They belonged to my first husband. I haven’t seen these for... I don’t know how many years.”

“You inherited these stocks as part of Harvey Macgowan’s estate?”

“Yes. If they’re the same ones.”

“They’re the same ones, Mrs. Priam,” Keats said dryly. “We’ve done a bit of checking with the old probate records. They were turned over to you at the settlement of your first husband’s estate. Where have you kept them all these years?”

“They were in a box. Not this box... It’s so long ago, I don’t remember.”

“But they were part of your effects? When you married Mr. Priam, you brought them along with you? Into this house?”

“I suppose so. I brought everything.” She was having difficulty enunciating clearly. Roger Priam kept watching her lips, his own parted in a grin.

“Can’t you remember exactly where you’ve kept these, Mrs. Priam? It’s important.”

“Probably in the storeroom in the attic. Or maybe among some trunks and boxes in the cellar.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

“Stop badgering her, Keats,” said young Macgowan. Because he was bewildered, his jaw stuck out. “Do you remember where you put your elementary school diploma?”

“Not quite the same thing,” said the detective. “The face value of these stocks amounts to a little over a million dollars.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Delia Priam with a flare of asperity. “These shares are worthless.”

“Right, Mrs. Priam. I wasn’t sure everybody knew. They’re worth far less than the paper they’re printed on. Every company that issued these shares is defunct.”

“What’s known on the stock market,” said Roger Priam with every evidence of enjoyment, “as cats and dogs.”

“My first husband sank almost everything he had in these pieces of paper,” said Delia in a monotone. “He had a genius for investing in what he called ‘good things’ that always turned out the reverse. I didn’t know about it until after Harvey died. I don’t know why I’ve hung on to them.”

“Why, to show ‘em to your loving second husband, Delia,” said Roger Priam, “right after we were married; remember? And remember I advised you to wallpaper little Crowe’s little room with them as a reminder of his father? I gave them back to you and I haven’t seen them again till just now.”

“They’ve been somewhere in the house, I tell you! Where anyone could have found them!”

“And where someone did,” said Ellery. “What do you make of it, Mr. Priam? It’s another of these queer warnings you’ve been getting ― in many ways the queerest. How do you explain it?”

“These cats and dogs?” Priam laughed. “I’ll leave it to you, my friends, to figure it out.”

There was contempt in his voice. He had either convinced himself that the whole fantastic series of events was meaningless, the work of a lunatic, or he had so mastered his fears of what he knew to be a reality that he was able to dissemble like a veteran actor. Priam had the actor’s zest; and, shut up in a room for so many years, he may well have turned it into a stage, with himself the star performer.

“Okay,” said Lieutenant Keats without rancor. “That seems to be that.”