There Was an Old Woman (5 page)

Suddenly Louella's cricket-voice cut across the flow of table talk. “Mother!”

“Yes, Louella?” It was embarrassing to see the eagerness in the old lady's face as her elder daughter addressed her.

“I need some more money for my plastic experiments.”

“Spend your allowance already?” The corners of the Old Woman's mouth sank, settled.

Louella looked sullen again. “I can't help it. It's not going just right. I'll get it this time sure. I need a couple of thousand more, Mother.”

“No, Louella. I told you last time—”

To Ellery's horror the forty-four-year-old spinster began to weep into the puddle in her consommé cup, weep and snuffle and breathe without restraint. “You're mean! I hate you! Some day I'll have millions—why can't you give me some of my own money now? But no—you're making me wait till you die. And meanwhile I can't finish my greatest invention!”

“Louella!”

“I don't care! I'm sick of asking you, asking you—”

“Louella dear,” said Sheila in a strained voice. “We have guests—”

“Be quiet, Sheila,” said the Old Woman softly. Ellery saw Sheila's fingers tighten about her spoon.

“Are you going to give me my own money or aren't you?” Louella shrieked at her mother.

“Louella, leave the table.”

“I won't!”

“Louella, leave the table this instant and go to bed!”

“But I'm hungry, Mother,” Louella whined.

“You've been acting like an infant. For that you can't have your supper. Go this instant, Louella.”

“You're a horrible old woman!” screamed Louella, stamping her foot; and, bouncing up from the table, she stormed from the dining room, weeping again.

Mr. Queen, who had not known whether to rise for the woman or remain seated for the child, compromised by assuming a half-risen, half-seated posture; from which undignified position he murmured, but to himself: —

“And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”

After which, finding himself suspended he lowered himself into his chair. “I wonder,” he wondered to himself, “how much of this a sane mind could take.”

As if in answer, Sheila ran from the dining room, choking back sobs; and Charley Paxton, looking grim, excused himself after a moment and followed her. Steve Potts rose; his lips were burbling.

“Stephen, finish your dinner,” said his wife quietly.

Sheila's father sank back in his chair.

Charley returned with a mumble of apology. The Old Woman threw him a sharp black look. He sat down beside Ellery and said in a strangled undertone: “Sheila sends her apologies. “Ellery, I've got to get her out of this lunatic asylum!”

“Whispering Charles?” Cornelia Potts eyed him. The young man flushed. “Where is Sheila?”

“She has a headache,” muttered Charley.

“I see.”

There was silence.

5 . . . There Was a Little Man and He Had a Little Gun

From the moment Robert and Maclyn Potts entered the dining room to be introduced to the guest and seat themselves at table, a breath of sanity blew. They were remarkably identical twins, as alike in feature as two carbon copies. They dressed alike, they combed their curly blond hair alike, they were of a height and a thickness, and their voices had the same pleasant, boyish timbre.

Charley, who introduced them, was obviously at a loss; he made a mistake in their identities at once, which one of them corrected patiently. They tackled their broth and chicken with energy, talking at a great rate. It seemed that both were angry with their eldest brother, Thurlow, for having interfered in the conduct of the business for the hundredth time.

“We wouldn't mind so much, Mother—” began one, through a mouthful of fried chicken.

“Yes, Robert?” said the Old Woman grimly. She, at least, could distinguish between them.

“If Thurlow'd restrict his meddling to unimportant things,” continued the other.
Ergo,
he was Mac.

“But he doesn't!” growled Robert, dropping his fork.

“Robert, eat your dinner.”

“All
right,
Mother.”

“But Mother, he's gone and—”

“One moment
please,”
said Thurlow icily. “And what is it I'm supposed to have done this time, Maclyn?”

“Climb off it, Thurl,” grumbled Mac. “All right, you're a vice-president of the Potts Shoe Company—”

“You pretend you're running a God-knows-how-many-million-dollar firm,” exploded Robert, “and that's okay as long as you pretend—”

“But why in hell don't you stick to wasting the family's money on those silly lawsuits of yours—”

“Instead of canceling our newspaper-advertising plans for the Middle West, you feeble-minded nitwit?”

“Robert, don't speak to your eldest brother that way!” cried their mother.

“How you protect your white-haired boy, Mother,” grinned Robert. “Although there isn't much of it left … You know Thurlow would ruin the business if—”

“Just—one—moment,
if
you please,” said Thurlow. His fat nostrils were quivering. “I've got as much to say about running the company as you two have—Mother said so! Didn't you, Mother?”

“I won't have this disgraceful argument at the dinner table, boys.”

“He said I'd ruin the business!” cried Thurlow.

“Well, wouldn't you?” asked Bob Potts with disgust.

“Bob, cut it out,” said his twin in a low voice.

“Cut nothing out, Mac!” said Robert. “We always have to sit by and watch old fuddy-pants pull expensive boners, then we've got to clean up his mess. Well, I'm damned good and tired of it!”

“Robert, I warn you—!” shouted Thurlow.

“Warn my foot. You're a nice fat little bag of wind, Brother Thurlow,” said Bob Potts angrily, “a fake, a phony, and a blubbering jerk, and if you don't keep your idiotic nose out of the business—”

Thurlow grew very pale, but also a look came into his eyes of cunning. He snatched his napkin, jumped up, ran over to where Robert was watching him with a puzzled expression, and then whipped the napkin over his younger brother's face with an elegance—and a force—that caused Bob's mouth to open.

“What the devil—”

“You've insulted Thurlow Potts for the last time,” choked the chubby little man. “Brother or no brother, I demand satisfaction. Wait here—I'll give you your choice of weapons!” And, triumphantly Thurlow stalked out of the dining room.

Surely, thought Ellery Queen, this is where I wake up and stretch.

But there was the doorway through which Thurlow Potts had passed, here was the long board with its congress of amazed faces.

“Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle,” said Mac, looking blank. “Thurlow's gone clean off his chump at last! Pop—did you hear that?”

Steve Potts rose indecisively. “Maybe if I g-go speak to Thurlow, Mac—”

Mac laughed. “He's stark, raving mad!”

Bob was feeling his cheek. “Why don't you face the facts, Mother? How can you sit by and let Thurlow have anything to do with the business? If Mac and I didn't countermand every stupid order he gives, he'd run us into bankruptcy in a year.”

“You baited him, Robert. Deliberately!”

“Oh, come, Mother—”

Suddenly the air was windy with recriminations. The only member of the household who seemed to enjoy it was Major Gotch, who sat back puffing a pipe and following the play of words like a spectator at a tennis match.

“That book, Ellery,” exclaimed Charley Paxton under cover of the argument. “Reads
The History of Dueling
and challenges Robert to a duel!”

“He can't be serious,” muttered Ellery. “Can't be.”

Thurlow popped in, his eyes shining. Ellery rose like a released balloon. Thurlow was brandishing two pistols.

“It's all right, Mr. Queen,” said Thurlow gently. “Sit down, please.”

Mr. Queen sat down. “What interesting-looking little guns,” he said. “May I look at them, Mr. Potts?”

“Some other time,” murmured Thurlow. “From now on, we must do everything according to the code.”

“The code?” Ellery blinked. “Which code is that, Mr. Potts?”

“The code of duello, of course. Honor before everything, Mr. Queen!” And Thurlow advanced upon his brother, who sat transfixed. “Robert, take one of these. The choice is yours.”

Bob's hand came up in a mechanical motion; it fell grasping a shiny nickel weapon which Ellery recognized as a Smith & Wesson, “S. & W. .38/32,” a .38-caliber revolver. It was not a large weapon, being scarcely more than half a foot long, yet it hung like a submachine gun from Robert's paralyzed hand. Mac sat by his twin with an identical expression of stupefaction.

Thurlow glanced down at the weapon remaining—a Colt “Pocket Model” automatic pistol of .25-caliber, a flat and miniature gun which looked like a toy beside the small revolver in Robert's hand, for it was only 4½ inches long. Thurlow with a flourish put the little automatic into his pocket. “Mr. Queen, you're the only outsider here. I ask you to act as my second.”

“Your—” began Ellery, finding the word stick to his gums.

But Charley Paxton whispered frantically to him: “Ellery, for Pete's sake! Humor him!”

Mr. Queen nodded wordlessly.

Thurlow bowed, a not inconsiderable feat; but the action had a certain dignity. “Robert, I'll meet you at dawn in front of the Shoe.”

“The Shoe,” said Bob stupidly.

Ellery caught a clairvoyant glimpse of the two brothers in the coming dawn approaching from opposite directions that ugly bronze on the front lawn, and he almost laughed. But then he glanced at Thurlow again, and refrained.

“Thurlow, for the love of Mike—” began Mac.

“Keep out of this, Maclyn,” said Thurlow sternly, and Mac glanced quickly at his mother. But the Old Woman simply sat, a porcelain. “Robert, each one of these weapons has one bullet in it. You understand?”

Bob could only nod.

“I warn you, I'll shoot to kill. But if you miss me, or just wound me, I'll consider my honor satisfied. It says so in the book.”

It says so in the book, Ellery repeated to himself, dazed.

“Dawn at the Shoe, Robert.” A huge contempt came into Thurlow's penny-whistle voice. “If you don't show up, I'll kill you on sight.” And Thurlow left the dining room a second time, prancing, like a ballet dancer.

Sheila came running into a thickly inhabited silence. “I just saw Thurl go up to his bedroom with a little gun in his hand—” She stopped, spying the glittering nickel in Bob's hand.

The Old Woman simply sat.

Charley got up, sat down, got up again. “It's nothing, Sheila. A—joke of Thurlow's. About a duel at dawn at the Shoe on the front lawn, or some such nonsense—”

“A duel!” Sheila stared at her brother.

“I still think it's some weird gag of Thurl's,” Bob said with a shaky smile, “although God knows he's never been famous for a sense of humor—”

“But why are you all
sitting
here?” cried Sheila. “Call a doctor, a psychiatrist! Call Bellevue!”

“Not while I live,”
said the Old Woman.

Her husband's face waxed and waned, purple and white. “Not while you live!” he spat at her. Then he ran from the room, as if ashamed … as he had been running, Ellery suddenly knew, for over thirty years.

“You're grown men, aren't you?” The old lady's mouth was wry.

“Mother,” said Mac. “You can stop this craziness. You know you can. All you have to do is say a word to Thurlow. He's scared to death of you …” She was silent. “You
won't?”

The Old Woman banged on the table. “You're old enough to fight your own battles.”

“If precious li'l Thurl wants a duel, precious li'l Thurl gets it, hey?” Mac laughed angrily.

But his mother was on her way to the door.

Sheila stopped her with a choked cry. “You never interfere except when it suits you—and this time it doesn't suit you, Mother! You don't care anything about the twins and me—you never have. Your darling Thurlow—that poor, useless lunatic! You'd let him have his way if he wanted to kill the three of us … the three of us!”

The Old Woman did not even glance at her younger daughter. She eyed Ellery instead. “Good night, Mr. Queen. I don't know what Charles Paxton's purpose was in bringing you here tonight, but now that you've seen my family, I hope you'll be discreet enough to hold your tongue. I want no interference from strangers!”

“Of course, Mrs. Potts.”

She nodded and swept out.

“What do you think, Ellery?” Charley's tone was brittle, ready to crack. “It's a bluff, isn't it?”

The twins stared at Ellery, and Paxton, and Sheila … but not Major Gotch, who, Ellery suddenly realized, was no longer among those present. The canny old goat had managed to slip out some time during the farce.

“No, Charley,” said Mr. Queen soberly, “I don't think this is a bluff. I think Thurlow Potts is in earnest. Of course, he's touched; but that won't keep Bob Potts out of the way of a bullet tomorrow morning. Let's put our heads together, the five of us.”

6 . . . Ellery Betrays the Code of Duello

“The steps we can take,” said Ellery without excitement, “are legion, but they have a common drawback—they involve the use of force. Thurlow can be arrested on some picturesque charge—there may be an old statute on the law books which forbids the practice of dueling, for example. Or he might be charged with threatening homicide. And so on. But he'd be out on bail—if I read your mother correctly—before he was fairly in the clink, and moreover he'd be smarting under a fresh ‘injustice.' Or we could ship him off to Bellevue for observation. But I doubt if there are sufficient grounds either to keep him there or put him away in a mental hospital… No; can't be force.”

“Bob could duck out of town,” suggested Mac.

“Are you kidding?” growled his twin.

“Besides, Thurlow would only follow him,” said Sheila.

“How about humoring him?” Charley scowled.

Ellery looked interested. “What do you mean exactly?”

“Why not go through with the duel, but pull its teeth?”

“Charley . . . that's it!” cried Sheila.

“Fake it?” frowned Bob.

“But how, Charley?” asked Mac.

“Thurlow said he'd be satisfied if each man fired a single shot, didn't he? In fact, he said each gun was loaded with just one bullet. All right.
Let
each man fire one cartridge apiece tomorrow morning, but see that those cartridges are
blank.”

“The legal mind,” moaned Ellery. “These simple solutions! Charley, you're a genius. My hand, sir.”

They shook hands solemnly.

“I knew I'd fallen in love with a Blue Plate special,” laughed Sheila. She kissed Charley and then put her arms about her twin brothers.

“What d'ye think, Bob?” asked Mac anxiously.

The intended victim grinned. “To tell the truth, Mac, I was frightened blue. Yes, if we substitute blank cartridges for the real ones in the two guns, old Nutsy'll never know the difference.”

Sheila was to decoy Thurlow into the library at the rear of the house, on the ground floor, and keep him there while the men did the dirty work.

“The real dirty work's
my
assignment,” said Sheila darkly. And she sallied forth to find Thurlow.

Mac volunteered to stand guard at the outpost. Ellery and Charley, it was agreed, must do the actual deed. Bob was to stay out of everything.

Within ten minutes Mac was back with a report, his blue eyes glittering. He had seen Thurlow and Sheila come down from upstairs, chatting earnestly. They had gone into the library. Sheila had shut the door, winking at the hidden twin that all, so far at any rate, went well.

Ellery stood musing. “Bob—can you shoot a revolver?”

“If you show me the place where the blame thing goes off.”

“Ouch,” said Mr. Queen. “Can Thurlow?”

“He can shoot,” said Mac shortly.

“Oh, my. In that case, this mustn't fail. Charley, where's The Purple Avenger's lair?”

The twins sped upstairs to their room. Charley Paxton and Ellery followed, and Charley led the great man to one of the numerous doors studding the upper hall.

“Thurlow's?”

Charley nodded, looking around uneasily.

Ellery listened for a moment. Then, boldly, he went in. He stood in a tall and pleasant sitting room, profuse with fresh flowers and easy-chairs and books, and furnished with surprising good taste. Aside from a rather sexless quality, the room was cloistered and fragrant peace for anyone.

“I see what you meant by Thurlow's potentialities, Charley,” remarked Ellery “Did he fix this up himself?”

“All by his little self, Ellery—”

“The man has dignity. I wonder what he reads.” He ran his eye along the bookshelves. “Mm, yes. A little heavy on Paine, Butler, and Lincoln—ah, of course! Voltaire. No light reading at all, of course . . .”

“Ellery, for heaven's sake.” Charley glanced anxiously at the door.

“It gives the man a perspective,” mused Ellery, and he moved on to Thurlow Potts's bedroom. This was a wee, chaste, almost monastic chamber. A high white bed, a highboy, a chair, a lamp. Ellery could see the little man clambering with agility into his bed, clad—no doubt this was an injustice—in a flannel nightshirt, and clutching a volume of
The Rights of Man
to his thick little bosom.

“There it is,” said Charley, who had his mind on his work.

The Colt automatic lay on top of the highboy. Ellery picked it up negligently. “Doesn't look very formidable, does it?”

“Has it got one cartridge in it, as Thurlow said?”

Ellery investigated. “But of course it would. He's an honest man. Let us away, Charles.” He slipped the Colt into his jacket and they left Thurlow's apartment, Charley acting furtive and relieved at once.

“Where the devil do we get blank cartridges this time of night?” he asked in the hall. “All the stores are closed by now.”

“Peace, peace,” said Ellery. “Charley, go downstairs to the library and join Sheila in keeping Mr. Thurlow Potts occupied. I don't want him back in his bedroom till I'm ready for him.”

“What are
you
going to do?”

“I,” quoth Mr. Queen, “shall journey posthaste to my daddy's office at Police Headquarters. Don't stir from the library till I get back.”

When Charley had left him, Ellery ambled to the door through which he had seen Bob and Mac Potts disappear, knocked gently, was admitted, gave his personal reassurances that everything was going off as planned—and requisitioned Robert's Smith & Wesson.

“But why?” Bob asked.

“Playing it safe,” grinned Ellery, from the hall. “I'll put a blank in this one, too.”

“But I don't like it, Ellery,” grumbled Inspector Queen at Headquarters, when his son had told him and Sergeant Velie the story of Thurlow Potts's great adventure.

“It ain't decent,” said Sergeant Velie. “Fightin' a duel in the year of our Lord!”

Ellery agreed it was neither decent nor to be condoned; but what, he asked reasonably, was a sounder solution of the problem?

“I don't know. I just don't like it,” said the Inspector irritably, jamming a blank cartridge into the magazine of the Colt. He tossed it aside and slipped a center-fire blank into the top chamber of the Smith & Wesson.

“That den of dopes've been in every screwball scrape you can imagine,” complained the Sergeant, “but this one takes the hand-embroidered bearskin. Fightin' a duel in the year of our Lord!”

“With the sting removed from Thurlow's stingers,” argued Ellery, “it makes a good story, Sergeant.”

“Only story
I
want to hear,” grunted his father, handing Ellery the two weapons, “is that this fool business is over and done with.”

“But Dad, there's no danger of anything going wrong when both guns are loaded with blanks.”

“Guns are guns,” said Sergeant Velie, who was the Sage of Center Street.

“And blanks are blanks, Sergeant.”

“Stop chattering! Velie, you and I are going to watch Thurlow Potts's duel at dawn tomorrow from behind that big Shoe on the front lawn,” snapped Inspector Queen. “And may God have mercy on all our souls if anything goes haywire!”

Ellery slipped back into the Potts mansion under an impertinent moon; but he made sure only the moon's eye saw him. Mr. Queen had a way with front doors.

The foyer was empty. He stole towards the rear, listened for voices at the study door, nodded, and made his way in noiseless leaps up the staircase.

Several minutes later he knocked on the twins' door. It opened immediately.

“Well?” asked the Potts twins in one voice. They were nervous: cigaret butts littered the trays, and a bottle of Scotch had been, if not precisely killed, then at least criminally assaulted.

“The deed is done,” announced Mr. Queen, “the Colt and its blank are back on Thurlow's highboy, and here's your Smith & Wesson, Bob.”

“You're sure the damned thing won't kill anybody?”

“Quite sure, Bob.”

Robert placed it gingerly on the night table between his bed and Mac's.

“Then nothing can go wrong tomorrow morning?” growled Mac.

“Oh, come. You're acting like a couple of children. Of course nothing can go wrong!”

Ellery left the twins and cheerily went downstairs to the library. To his surprise, he found Thurlow in a mood more mellow than melancholy.

“Hi,” said Thurlow, describing a parabola with his left hand. His right was clasped about a frosty glass. “My second, ladies 'n' gentlemen. Can't have a duel without a second. Come in, Misser Queen. We were just discussing the possibility of continuing our conversation in more con-congenial surroundings. Know what I mean?” And Thurlow leered cherubically.

“I know exactly what you mean, Mr. Potts,” smiled Ellery. Perhaps Thurlow in his cups might prove a saner man than Thurlow sober. He nodded slightly to Sheila and Paxton, who looked exhausted. “A hot spot, eh, kid?”

“Hot spot 'tis,” beamed Thurlow. “Tha's my second, ladies 'n' gentlemen. Won'erful character.” And Thurlow linked his arms in Ellery's, marching him out of the library to the tune of a rueful psalm which went: “Eat, drink, an' be merry, for tomorrow I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal youuuuu . . .”

Thurlow insisted on Club Bongo. All their arguments could not dissuade him. Ellery could only hope fervently that Mr. Conklin Cliffstatter, of the East Shore jute and shoddy Cliffstatters, was getting drunk elsewhere this night. In the cab on their way downtown, Thurlow fell innocently asleep on Ellery's shoulder.

“This seems kind of silly,” giggled Charley Paxton.

“It is not, Charley!” whispered Sheila. “Maybe we can get him into such a good mood he'll call the duel off.”

“Hush. Uneasy lies the head.” And indeed at that moment Thurlow awoke with a whoop and took up his dolorous psalm.

Mr. Queen, Miss Potts, her eldest brother, and Mr. Paxton spent the night at Club Bongo, keeping its death watch with the curious characters who seemed to find its prancing maidens and tense comedians the most hilarious of companions.

Fortunately, Mr. Cliffstatter was not among them.

Mr. Queen was his suavest and most persuasive; he inserted little melodies of reasonableness into the chit-chat; he suggested frequent libations at the flowing bowl.

But all his efforts, and Sheila's, and Charley's, availed nothing. At a certain point, diabolically, Thurlow stopped imbibing; and to all suggestions that he call off the duel and make a peace with Bob, he would smile sadly, say, “Punctilio is involved, my good frien's,” and applaud the
première danseuse
enthusiastically.