Ellery Queen - The Origin of Evil

“Did you and Hill scuttle the Beagle, Mr. Priam, when you were Adam’s crew and the Beagle was somewhere in West Indian waters?

Attack Adam, leave him for dead, scuttle the Beagle, and escape in a dinghy, Mr. Priam? The Haitians sail six hundred miles in cockleshells as a matter of course, and you and Hill were good enough seamen for Adam to have hired in the first place.

“But seamen don’t attempt murder and scuttle good ships for no reason, Mr. Priam. What was the reason? If it had been a personal matter, or mutiny, or shipwreck as a result of incompetence or negligence, or any of the usual reasons, you and Hill could always have made your way back to the nearest port and reported what you pleased to explain the disappearance of Adam and his vessel. But you and Hill didn’t do that, Mr. Priam. You and Hill chose to vanish along with Adam ― to vanish in your sailor personalities, that is, leading the world to believe that Adam’s crew had died with him. You went to a great deal of trouble to bury yourselves, Mr. Priam. You spent a couple of years doing it, preparing new names and personalities for your resurrection. Why? Because you had something to conceal ― something you couldn’t have concealed had you come back as Adam’s crew.

“That’s the most elementary logic, Mr. Priam. Now will you tell us what happened?”

Nothing in Priam stirred, not even the hairs of his beard.

“Then I’ll have to tell you. In 1927, you and Hill appeared in Los Angeles and set up a wholesale jewelry business. What did you know about the jewelry business? We know all about you and Hill now, Mr. Priam, from the time you were born until you signed on the Beagle for its one and only voyage. You both went to sea as boys. There was nothing in either of your backgrounds that remotely touched jewels or jewelry. And, like most sailors, you were poor men. Still, two years later, here you both were, starting a fabulous business in precious stones. Was that what you couldn’t have concealed had you come back as Adam’s crew? Because the authorities would have said, Where did these two poor seamen get all this money ― or all these jewels? And that’s one question, Mr. Priam, you didn’t want asked ― either you or Hill.

“So it’s reasonable to conjecture, Mr. Priam,” said Ellery, smiling, “that the Beagle didn’t go down in a hurricane after all. That the Beagle reached its destination, perhaps an uninhabited island, and that in exploring for the fauna and flora that interested him as a naturalist, Adam ran across something far afield from his legitimate interests. Like an old treasure chest, Mr. Priam, buried by one of the pirate swarms who used to infest those waters. You can find descendants of those pirates, Mr. Priam, living in the Bahamas today... An old treasure chest, Mr. Priam, filled with precious stones. And you and Hill, poor sailors, attacked Adam, took the Beagle into blue water, sank her, and got away in her dinghy.

“And there you were, with a pirate’s fortune in jewels, and how were you to live to enjoy it? The whole thing was fantastic. It was fantastic to find it, it was fantastic to own it, and it was fantastic to think that you couldn’t do anything with it. But one of you got a brilliant idea, and about that idea there was nothing fantastic at all.

Bury all trace of your old selves, come back as entirely different men ― and go into the jewelry business.

“And that’s what you and Hill did, Mr. Priam. For two years you studied the jewelers’ trade ― exactly where, we haven’t learned. When you felt you had enough knowledge and experience, you set up shop in Los Angeles... and your stock was the chest of precious stones Adam had found on his island, for undisputed possession of which you’d murdered him. And now you could dispose of them. Openly. Legitimately. And get rich on them.”

Priam’s beard was askew on his chest. His eyes were shut, as if he were asleep... or gathering his strength.

“But Adam didn’t die,” said Ellery gently. “You and Hill bungled. He survived. Only he knows how he nursed himself back to health, what he lived on, how he got back to civilization, and where, and where he’s been since. But by his own testimony, in the note, he dedicated the rest of his life to tracking you and Hill down. For over twenty years he kept searching for the two sailors who had left him for dead ― for his two murderers, Mr. Priam. Adam didn’t want the fortune ― he had his own fortune; and, anyway, he was never very interested in money. What he wanted, Mr. Priam, was revenge. As his note says.

“And then he found you.”

And now Ellery’s voice was no longer gentle.

“Hill was a disappointment to him. The shock of learning that Adam, against all reason, was alive ― and all that that implied ― was too much for Hill’s heart. Hill was rather different from you, I think, Mr. Priam; whatever he’d been in the old days at sea, he had grown into the semblance of a solid citizen. And perhaps he’d never been really vicious. You were always the bully-boy of the team, weren’t you? Maybe Hill didn’t do anything but acquiesce in your crime, dazzled by the reward you dangled before his eyes. You needed him to get away; I think you needed his superior intelligence. In any event, after that one surrender to you and temptation, Hill built himself up into what a girl like Laurel could learn to love and respect... and for the sake of whose memory she was even willing to kill.

“Hill was a man of imagination, Mr. Priam, and I think what killed him at the very first blow was as much his dread of the effect on Laurel of the revelation of his old crime as the knowledge that Adam was alive and hot for revenge.

“But you’re made of tougher material, Mr. Priam. You haven’t disappointed Adam; on the contrary. It’s really a pleasure for Adam to work on you. He’s still the scientist ― his method is as scientifically pitiless as the dissection of an old cadaver. And he’s having himself a whale of a time, Mr. Priam, with you providing the sport. I don’t think you understand with what wonderful humor Charles Lyell Adam is chasing you. Or do you?”

But when Priam spoke, he seemed not to have been listening. At least, he did not answer the question. He roused himself and he said, “Who is he? What’s he calling himself now? Do you know that?”

“That’s what you’re interested in, is it?” Ellery smiled. “Why, no, Mr. Priam, we don’t. All we know about him today is that he’s somewhere between fifty-two and sixty-four years of age. I’m sure you wouldn’t recognize him; either his appearance has been radically changed by time or he’s had it changed for him by, say, plastic surgery. But even if Adam looked today exactly as he looked twenty-five years ago, it wouldn’t do you ― or us, Mr. Priam ― any good. Because he doesn’t have to be on the scene in person, you see. He could be working through someone else.” Priam blinked and blinked. “You’re not precisely a well-loved man, Mr. Priam, and there are people very close to you who might not be at all repelled by the idea of contributing to your unhappiness. So if you have any idea that as long as you protect yourself against a middle-aged male of certain proportions you’re all right, you’d better get rid of it as quickly as possible. Adam’s unofficial accomplice, working entirely for love of the job, you might say, could be of either sex, of any age... and right here, Mr. Priam, in your own household.”

Priam sat still. Not wholly in fear ― with a reserve of desperate caution, it seemed, even defiance, like a treed cat.

“What a stinking thing to say―!”

“Shut up, Mac.” And this was Keats, in a low voice, but there was a note in it that made Delia’s son bring his lips together and keep them that way.