There Was an Old Woman

by Ellery Queen

  "Uh, uh. Trouble," said Sergeant Velie alertly.

  "How she hates cameramen," remarked Inspector Queen.

  "Wait—no!" shouted Ellery. "Charley! Somebody! Stop her. For goodness' sake!"

  The photographers had lain in ambush. And she was upon them.

  The guns of Cornelia Potts's black eyes sent out streams of tracer bullets. She snarled, grasped her umbrella handle convulsively, and rushed to the attack. The umbrella rose and fell. One camera flew through the air to be caught willy-nilly by a surprised man in a derby. Another fell and tumbled down the steps leaving a trail of lens fragments.

  "Break it up, break it up," said Sergeant Velie.

  "That's just what she's doing," panted a cameraman. "Joe, did you get anything?"

  "A bust in the nose," groaned Joe, regarding his encarmined handkerchief with horror. He roared at the old lady: "You old crackpottia, you smashed my camera!"

  "Here's the money to pay for it," panted Cornelia Potts, hurling two hundred-dollar bills at him; and she darted into her limousine and slammed the door shut behind her, almost decapitating her pride and heir, Thurlow, who was—as ever—just a step too late.

  "I won't have public spectacles!" she cried through her tonneau window. The limousine jerked away, slamming the old lady against her physician, who had craftily sought the protection of the car before her, and leaving Thurlow, puffing and blowing, on the field of glory where, after a momentary panic at this being left exposed alone to the weapons of the enemy, he drew himself up to his full five foot and grimly girded his not inconsiderable loins.

  "Happens this way every time," said Inspector Queen from the top of the courthouse steps.

  "If she's smashed one camera, she's smashed a hundred," said Sergeant Velie, shaking his head.

  "But why," wondered Ellery, "do the cameramen keep trying? Or do they make a profit on each transaction? I noticed two rather impressive-looking greenbacks being flung at the victim down there."

  "Profit is right," grinned his father. "Take a look. That fella who had his camera broken. Does he look in the dumps?"

  Ellery frowned.

  "Now," instructed his father, "look up there."

  Ellery sighted along the Inspector's arm to a window high in the face of the courthouse. There, various powerful camera eyes glittered in the sun, behind them human eyes intent on Thurlow Potts and Charley Paxton on the sidewalk before the courthouse.

  "Yes, sir," said Sergeant Velie with respect, "when you're dealing with the Old Woman you just naturally got to be on your toes."

  "They caught it all from that window," exclaimed Ellery softly. "Ill bet that smashed camera was a dummy and Joe a rascally, conniving stooge!"

  "My son," said the Inspector dryly, "you've got the makings of a detective. Come on, let's go back upstairs and see if Mr. Justice Greevey's over his irrigation."

  "Now listen, boys," Charley Paxton was shouting on the sidewalk. "It's been a tough morning. What d'ye say? Mr. Potts hasn't one word for publication—You better not have," Charley said through his teeth three feet from Thurlow's pink ear, "or I walk out, Thurlow—I swear I walk out!"

  Someone applauded.

  "You let me alone," cried Thurlow. "I've got plenty to say for publication, Charles Paxton! I'm through with you, anyway. I'm through with all lawyers. Yes, and judges and courts, too!"

  "Thurlow, I warn you—" Charley began.

  "Oh, go fish! There's no justice left in this world—not a crumb. Not a particle!"

  "Yes, little man?" came a voice.

  "No Justice, Says Indignant Citizen."

  "Through with all lawyers, judges, and courts, he vows."

  "What a break for all lawyers, judges, and courts."

  "What you gonna do, Pottso—protect your honor with stiletti?'

  "You gonna start packing six-shooters, Thurlow-boy?"

  "Thurlow Potts, Terror of the Plains, Goes on Warpath, Armed to the Upper Plates."

  "Stop!" screamed Thurlow Potts in an awful voice; and, curiously, they did. He was shaking in a paroxysm of rage, his small feet dancing on the sidewalk, his pudgy face convulsed. Then he choked: "From now on I take justice in my own hands."

  "Huh?"

  "Say, the little guy actually means it."

  "Go on, he's hopped to the eyeballs."

  "Wait a minute. Nuts or no nuts, he can't be left running around loose. Not with those intentions, brother."

  One of the reporters said, soberly: "Just what do you mean—you'll take justice in your own hands, Mr. Potts?"

  "Thurlow," muttered Charley Paxton, "haven't you raved your quota? Let me get you out of here—"

  "Charles, take your hand off my arm. What do I mean, gentlemen?" said Thurlow quietly. "I'll tell you what I mean. I mean that I'm going to buy myself a gun, and the next person who insults me or the honorable name I bear won't live long enough to hide behind the skirts of your corrupt courts!"

  "Hey," said a reporter. "Somebody better tip off Conk Cliffstatter."

  "This puffball's just airy enough to do it."

  "Ah, he's blowing."

  "Oh, yeah? Well, maybe he'll blow bullets."

  Thurlow launched himself at the crowd like a little ram, butting with his arms. It parted, almost respectfully; and he shot through in triumph. "Hell get a bullet in his guts, that's what he'll get!" howled the Terror of the Plains. And he was gone in a flurry of agitated little arms and legs.

  Charley Paxton groaned and hurried back up the steps of the courthouse.

  He found Ellery Queen, Inspector Queen, and Sergeant Velie emerging from Room 331. The Inspector was holding forth with considerable bitterness on the subject of Mr. Justice Greevey's semicircular canals, for it appeared that the justice had decided to remain at home sulking in an atmosphere of oil of wintergreen rather than venture out into the earacheless world; consequently the case which had fetched the Queens to court was put off for another day.

  "Well, Charley? What's happening down there?" "Thurlow threatened to buy a gun!" panted the lawyer. **He says he's through with courts—the next man who insults him gets paid back in lead!" "That nut-ball?" scoffed the Sergeant. Inspector Queen laughed. "Forget it, Charley. Thurlow Potts hasn't the sand of a charlotte russe."

  "I don't know, Dad," murmured Ellery. "The man's not balanced properly. One of his gimbals out of socket, or something. He might mean it, at that."

  "Oh, he means it," said Charley Paxton sourly. "He means it now, at any rate. Ordinarily I wouldn't pay any attention to his ravings, but he's been getting worse lately and I'm afraid one of these days he'll cross the line. This might be the day."

  "Cross what line?" asked Sergeant Velie, puzzled. "The Mason-Dixon line, featherweight," sighed the Inspector. "What line do you think? Now listen, Charley, you're taking Thurlow too seriously—"

  "Just the same, don't you think we ought to take precautions?"

  "Sure. Watch him. If he starts chewing his blanket, call Bellevue."

  "To buy a gun," Ellery pointed out, "he'll have to get a license from the police department."

  "Yes," said Charley eagerly. "How about that, Inspector Queen?"

  "How about what?" growled the old gentleman in a disgusted tone. "Suppose we refuse him a license—then what? Then he goes out and buys himself a rod without a license. Then you've got not only a nut on your hands, but a nut who's nursing a grudge against the police department, too. Might kill a cop. And don't tell me he can't buy a gun without a license, because he can, and I'm the baby who knows it."

  "Dad's right," said Ellery. "The practical course is not to try to prevent Thurlow from laying hands on a weapon, but to prevent him from using it. And in his case I rather think guile, not force, is what's required."

  "In other words," said the Sergeant succinctly, "yoomer the slug."

  "I don't know," said the lawyer with despair. "I'm going bats myself just trying to keep up with these cormorants. Inspector, can't you do anything?"

  "But Charley, what d'y
e expect me to do? We can't follow him around day and night. In fact, until he pulls something our hands are tied—**

  "Could we put him away?" asked Velie.

  "You mean on grounds of insanity?"

  "Whoa," said Charley Paxton. "There's plenty wrong with the Pottses, but not to that extent. The old girl has drag, anyway, and she'd fight to her last penny, and win, too."

  "Then why dont you get somebody to wet-nurse the old nicky-poo?" demanded Inspector Queen.

  "Just what I was thinking," said the young man cunningly. "Uh—Mr. Queen .., would you—?"

  "But definitely," replied Mr. Queen with such promptness that his father stared at him. "Dad, you're going back to Headquarters?"

  The Inspector nodded.

  "In that case, Charley, you come on up to my apartment," said Ellery with a grin, "and answer some questions."

  2 She Had So Many Children

  Ellery mixed Counselor Paxton a scotch and soda.

  "Spare me nothing, Charley. I want to know the Pottses as I have never known anybody or anything before. Don't proceed to the middle until you've arrived at the end of the beginning, and then repeat the process until you reach the beginning of the end. I'll try to have something constructive to say about it from that point on."

  "Yes, sir," said Charley, setting down his glass. And, as one who is saturated with his subject, the young lawyer began to pour forth facts about the Pottses, old and young, male and female—squirting them in all directions like an overloaded garden hose relieving itself of intolerable pressure.

  Cornelia Potts had not always been the Old Woman. Once she had actually been a child in a small town in Massachusetts. She was a ragged Ann, driven from childhood by a powerful purpose. It was to be rich and to live upon the Hill. It was to be rich and to live upon this Hill and any hill that was higher than its neighbor. It was to be rich and to multiply.

  Cornelia became rich and she multiplied. She became rich almost wholly through her own efforts; to multiply, unhappily, it was necessary to enlist the aid of a husband, God having so ordered the creation. But the least Cornelia could do was improve upon the holy ordinance. This she did by taking, not one, but two husbands; and thus she multiplied mightily, achieving six children—three by her first husband, and three by her second—before that other thing happened which God has also ordained.

  ("The second husband," said Charley Paxton, "is still around, poor sap. Ill get to him in due courses.")

  Husband the First was trapped by Cornelia in 1892, when she was twenty and possessed the dubious allure of a wild-flower growing dusty by the roadside. His name was Bacchus, Bacchus Potts. Bacchus Potts was that classic paradox, a Prometheus bound—in this case, to a cobbler's bench, for he was the town shoemaker, a man of whom all the girls in the village were gigglingly afraid, for by night he wandered in the woods and sang rowdy songs under the moon while his feet danced a dance of impotent wanderlust.

  It has been said of the Old Woman (said Charley) that if she had married the village veterinary, she would have turned him into a Pasteur; if she had married the illegitimate son of an illegitimate son of an obscure sprig of the royal tree, she would have lived to be queen. As it was, she married a cobbler; and so, in time, she made him the leading shoe manufacturer of the world.

  If Bacchus Potts dreamed defeated dreams over his bench, it was surely not of larger benches; but larger benches he found himself possessor of, covering acres and employing thousands. And it happened so quickly that he, the dreamer, could not grasp its dreamlike magic; or perhaps he wished not to. For as Cornelia invested his life's savings in a small factory; as it fed, and bulged, and by process of fission became two, and the two became four ... Bacchus could only sit helplessly by, resenting the miracle and its maker.

  Every so often he would vanish. When he returned, without money, dirty, and purged, he crept meekly back to Cornelia with the guilty look of a repentant tomcat.

  After some years, no one paid any attention to Bacchus* goings or comings—not his employees, not his children, certainly not his wife, who was too busy with building a dynasty.

  In 1902, ten years after their marriage, when Cornelia was a plump and settling thirty, and the Pottses owned not only factories but retail stores over all the land, Bacchus Potts one day dreamed his greatest dream. He disappeared for good. When months passed and he did not return, and the authorities failed to turn up any trace of him, Cornelia shrugged him off and became truly Queen of Egypt land. After all, there was a great deal of work involved in building a pyramid, and she had three growing children to care for between crackings of the overseer's whip. If she missed Bacchus, it was not for any reason discernible in daylight.

  Then came the seven fat years, at the expiration of which the queen exhorted the lawmakers; and the law, that stern Pharaoh, being satisfied, Bacchus Potts was pronounced no longer a living man but a dead one, and his wife no longer a wife but a widow, able to take to herself without contumely another husband.

  That she was ready and willing as well became evident at once.

  In 1909, at the age of thirty-seven, Mrs. Potts married another shy man, Stephen Brent, to whom even at the altar she flatly refused to give up her name. Why she should have felt a loyalty to that first fey spouse upon whom she had founded her fortune remained as much a mystery as everything else about her relationship with him; or perhaps there was no loyalty to Bacchus Potts, or sentiment either, but only to his name, which was a different thing altogether, since the name meant the Potts Shoe, $3.99 Everywhere.

  Cornelia Potts not only refused to give up her name, " she also insisted as a condition of their marriage that Stephen Brent give up his. Brent being the kind of man to whom argument is an evil thing, to be shunned like pestilence, feebly agreed; and so Stephen Brent became Stephen Potts, according to legal process, and the Potts dynasty rolled on.

  It should be remembered (Charley Paxton reminded Ellery) that in December of 1902 Cornelia had moved her three fatherless children to New York City and built a house for them—the Potts "Palace," that fabulous square block of granite and sward on Riverside Drive, facing the gentle Hudson and the smoky greenery of the Jersey shore. So Cornelia had met Steve Brent in New York.

  "It's a wonder to me," growled the young attorney, "that Steve tore himself away from Major Gotch long enough to be alone with the old girl and ask her to marry him—if he did ask her."

  Stephen Brent had come to New York from the southern seas, or the Malay Peninsula, or some such romantic place, and with him, barnacle-like, had come Gotch—two vagabonds, of the same cloth, united by the secret joy of idleness and tenacious in their union. They were not bad men; they were simply weak men; and men of weakness seemed to be Cornelia's weakness.

  Perhaps this was why, of the two wanderers, she had chosen Steve Brent to be her prince consort, and not Major Gotch; for Major Gotch evinced a certain minor firmness of fiber, not exactly a strength but a lesser weakness, which happily his friend did not possess. It was this trait of his character which enabled him to stand up to Cornelia Potts and demand sanctuary with his Pythias. "Marry Steve—yes, ma'am. But Steve, he'll die without me, ma'am. He's just a damn' lonesome man, ma'am," Major Gotch had said to Cornelia. "Seeing that you're so well-fixed, seems to me it won't ruffle your feathers none if I sort of come along with Steve."

  "Can you garden?" snapped Cornelia.

  "Now don't get me wrong," said Major Gotch, smiling. "I ain't asking for a job, ma'am. Work and me don't mix. I'll just come and set. I got a bullet in my right leg makes standin' something fierce."

  For the first time in her life Cornelia gave in to a man. Or perhaps she had a sense of humor. She accepted the condition, and Major Gotch moved right along in and settled down to share his friend's incredible fortune and make himself, as he liked to say, thoroughly useless.

  "Was Cornelia in love with Stephen?" asked Ellery.

  "In love?" Charley jeered. "Say, it was just animal magnetism on Cornelia's part—I'm t
old Steve had 'pretty eyes,' though they're washed-out now—and a nice business deal for old Steve. And it's worked out not too badly. Cornelia has a husband who's given her three additional children, and Steve's lolled about the rich pasture after a youth of scratching for fodder. Fact is, he and that old scoundrel Major Gotch spend all their time together on the estate, playing endless games of checkers. Nobody pays any attention to them."

  "The three children of the Old Woman's first marriage— the offspring of Cornelia and the 'teched' and vanished Bacchus Potts—are crazy," Charley continued.

  "Did you say 'crazy'?" Ellery looked startled.

  "You heard me." Charley reached for the decanter.

  "But Thurlow—"

  "All right, take Thurlow," argued young Mr. Paxton. "Would you call him sane? A man who spends his life trying to hit back at people for imaginary insults to his name? What's the difference between that and a mania for swatting imaginary flies from your nose?"

  "But his mother—"

  "It's a question of degree, Ellery. Cornelia's passion for the honor of the Potts name is kept within bounds, and she doesn't hit out unless she has a vulnerable target. But Thurlow spends his life hitting out, and most of the time nothing's there but a puzzled look on somebody's face."

  "Insanity is a word neurologists don't like, Charley," complained Ellery Queen. "At best, standards of normality are variable, depending on the age and mores. In the Age of Chivalry, for example, Thurlow's obsession with his family honor would have been considered a high and virtuous sign of his sanity."

  "You're quibbling. But if you want proof, take Louella, the second child of the Cornelia-Bacchus union.... I'll waive Thurlow's hypersensitivity about the name of Potts; I'll accept his impractical extravagant nature, his childish innocence on the subject of business values or the value of money—as the signs of merely an unhappy, maladjusted, but essentially sane man.