by Otto Penzler
Then he heard it. It was Thorne’s voice. It was Thorne’s voice raised in a thin faint cry, almost a wall, coming from somewhere outside the house.
He was out of bed and at the window in his bare feet in one leap. But Thorne was not visible at this side of the house, upon which the dead woods encroached directly; so he scrambled back to slip shoes on his feet and his gown over his pajamas, darted toward the footrail and snatched his revolver out of the hip pocket of his trousers, and ran out into the corridor, heading for the stairs, the revolver in his hand.
“What’s the matter?” grumbled someone, and he turned to see Dr. Reinach’s vast skull protruding nakedly from the room next to his.
“Don’t know. I heard Thorne cry out,” and Ellery pounded down the stairs and flung open the front door.
He stopped within the doorway, gaping.
Thorne, fully dressed, was standing ten yards in front of the house, facing Ellery obliquely, staring at something outside the range of Ellery’s vision with the most acute expression of terror on his gaunt face Ellery had ever seen on a human countenance. Beside him crouched Nicholas Keith, only half-dressed; the young man’s jaws gaped foolishly and his eyes were enormous glaring disks.
Dr. Reinach shoved Ellery roughly aside and growled, “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” The fat man’s feet were encased in carpet slippers and he had pulled a raccoon coat over his nightshirt; he looked like a particularly obese bear.
Thorne’s Adam’s-apple bobbed nervously. The ground, the trees, the world were blanketed with snow of a peculiarly unreal texture; and the air was saturated with warm woolen flakes, falling softly. Deep drifts curved upward to clamp the boles of trees.
“Don’t move,” croaked Thorne as Ellery and the fat man stirred. “Don’t move, for the love of God. Stay where you are.” Ellery’s grip tightened on the revolver and he tried perversely to get past the doctor; but he might have been trying to budge a stone wall. Thorne stumbled through the snow to the porch, paler than his background, leaving two deep ruts behind him. “Look at me,” he shouted. “Look at me. Do I seem all right? Have I gone mad?”
“Pull yourself together, Thorne,” said Ellery sharply.”What’s the matter with you? I don’t see anything wrong.”
“Nick!” bellowed Dr. Reinach. “Have you gone crazy, too?”
The young man covered his sunburned face suddenly with his hands; then he dropped his hands and looked again.
He said in a strangled voice, “Maybe we all have. This is the most— Take a look yourself.”
Reinach moved then, and Ellery squirmed by him to land in the soft snow beside Thorne, who was trembling violently. Dr. Reinach came lurching after. They ploughed through the snow toward Keith, squinting, straining to see.
They need not have strained. What was to be seen was plain for any seeing eye to see. Ellery felt his scalp crawl as he looked; and at the same instant he was aware of the sharp conviction that this was inevitable, this was the only possible climax to the insane events of the previous day. The world had turned topsy-turvy. Nothing in it meant anything sane.
Dr. Reinach gasped once; and then he stood blinking like a huge owl. A window rattled on the second floor of the White House. None of them looked. It was Alice Mayhew in a wrapper, staring from the window of her bedroom, which was on the side of the house facing the driveway. She screamed once; and then she, too, fell silent.
There was the house from which they had just emerged, the house Dr. Reinach had dubbed the White House, with its front door quietly swinging open and Alice Mayhew at an upper side window. Substantial, solid, an edifice of stone and wood and plaster and glass and the patina of age. It was everything a house should be. That much was real, a thing to be grasped.
But beyond it, beyond the driveway and the garage, where the Black House had stood, the house of the filth and the stench, the house of the equally stone walls, wooden facings, glass windows, chimneys, gargoyles, porch; the house of the blackened look; the old Victorian house built during the Civil War where Sylvester Mayhew had died, where Thorne had barricaded himself with a cutlass for a week; the house which they had all seen, touched, smelled—there, there stood nothing.
No walls. No chimney. No roof. No ruins. No debris. No house. Nothing. Nothing but empty space covered smoothly and warmly with snow.
The house had vanished during the night.
Magic or Miracle?
There’s even, thought Mr. Ellery Queen dully, a character named Alice.
He looked again. The only reason he did not rub his eyes was that it would have made him feel ridiculous; besides, his sight, all his senses, had never been keener.
He simply stood there in the snow and looked and looked and looked at the empty space where a three-story stone house seventy-five years old had stood the night before.
“Why, it isn’t there,” said Alice feebly from the upper window. “It—isn’t—there.”
“Then I’m not insane.” Thorne stumbled toward them. Ellery watched the old man’s feet sloughing through the snow, leaving long tracks. A man’s weight still counted for something in the universe, then. Yes, and there was his own shadow; so material objects still cast shadows. Absurdly, the discovery brought a certain faint relief.
“It is gone!” said Thorne in a cracked voice.
“Apparently.” Ellery found his own voice thick and slow; he watched the words curl out on the air and become nothing. “Apparently, Thorne.” It was all he could find to say.
Dr. Reinach arched his fat neck, his wattles quivering like a gobbler’s. “Incredible. Incredible!”
“Incredible,” said Thorne in a whisper.
“Unscientific. It can’t be. I’m a man of sense. Of senses. My mind is clear. Things like this—damn it, they just don’t happen!”
“As the man said who saw a giraffe for the first time,” sighed Ellery. “And yet—there it was.”
Thorne began wandering helplessly about in a circle. Alice stared, bewitched into stone, from the upper window. And Keith cursed and began to run across the snow-covered driveway toward the invisible house, his hands outstretched before him like a blind man’s.
“Hold on,” said Ellery. “Stop where you are.”
The giant halted, scowling. “What d’ye want?”
Ellery slipped his revolver back into his pocket and sloshed through the snow to pause beside the young man in the driveway. “I don’t know precisely. Something’s wrong. Something’s out of kilter either with us or with the world. It isn’t the world as we know it. It’s almost—almost a matter of transposed dimensions. Do you suppose the solar system has slipped out of its niche in the universe and gone stark crazy in the uncharted depths of space-time? I suppose I’m talking nonsense.”
“You know best,” shouted Keith. “I’m not going to let this screwy business stampede me. There was a solid house on that plot last night, by God, and nobody can convince me it still isn’t there. Not even my own eyes. We’ve—we’ve been hypnotized! The hippo could do it here—he could do anything. Hypnotized. You hypnotized us, Reinach!”
The doctor mumbled, “What?” and kept glaring at the empty lot.
“I tell you it’s there!” cried Keith angrily.
Ellery sighed and dropped to his knees in the snow; he began to brush aside the white, soft blanket with chilled palms. When he had laid the ground bare, he saw wet gravel and a rut. “This is the driveway, isn’t it?” he asked, not looking up.
“The driveway,” snarled Keith, “or the road to hell. You’re as mixed up as we are. Sure it’s the driveway! Can’t you see the garage? Why shouldn’t it be the driveway?”
“I don’t know.” Ellery got to his feet, frowning. “I don’t know anything. I’m beginning to learn all over again. Maybe—maybe it’s a matter of gravitation. Maybe we’ll all fly into space any minute now.”
Thorne groaned, “My God.”
“All I can be sure of is that something very strange happened last night.”
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nbsp; “I tell you,” growled Keith, “it’s an optical illusion!”
“Something strange.” The fat man stirred. “Yes, decidedly. What an inadequate word! A house has disappeared. Something strange.” He chuckled in a choking, mirthless way.
“Oh, that,” said Ellery impatiently. “Certainly. Certainly, Doctor. That’s a fact. As for you, Keith, you don’t really believe this mass-hypnosis bilge. The house is gone, right enough. It’s not the fact of its being gone that bothers me. It’s the agency, the means. It smacks of—of—” He shook his head. “I’ve never believed in—this sort of thing, damn it all!”
Dr. Reinach threw back his vast shoulders and glared, red-eyed, at the empty snow-covered space. “It’s a trick,” he bellowed. “A rotten trick, that’s what it is. That house is right there in front of our noses. Or—or— They can’t fool me!”
Ellery looked at him. “Perhaps Keith has it in his pocket?”
Alice clattered out on the porch in high-heeled shoes over bare feet, her hair streaming, a cloth coat flung over her night-clothes. Behind her crept little Mrs. Reinach. The women’s eyes were wild.
“Talk to them,” muttered Ellery to Thorne. “Anything; but keep their minds occupied. We’ll all go balmy if we don’t preserve at least an air of sanity. Keith, get me a broom.”
He shuffled up the driveway, skirting the invisible house very carefully and not once taking his eyes off the empty space. The fat man hesitated; then he lumbered along in Ellery’s tracks. Thorne stumbled back to the porch and Keith strode off, disappearing behind the White House.
There was no sun now. A pale and eerie light filtered down through the clouds. The snow continued its soft, thick fall.
They looked like dots, small and helpless, on a sheet of blank paper.
Ellery pulled open the folding doors of the garage and peered. A healthy odor of raw gasoline and rubber assailed his nostrils. Thorne’s car stood within, exactly as Ellery had seen it the afternoon before, a black monster with glittering chromework. Beside it, apparently parked by Keith after their arrival, stood the battered Buick in which Dr. Reinach had driven them from the city. Both cars were perfectly dry.
He shut the doors and turned back to the driveway. Aside from the catenated links of their footprints in the snow, made a moment before, the white covering on the driveway was virgin.
“Here’s your broom,” said the giant. “What are you going to do—ride it?”
“Hold your tongue, Nick,” growled Dr. Reinach.
Ellery laughed. “Let him alone, Doctor. His angry sanity is infectious. Come along, you two. This may be the Judgment Day, but we may as well go through the motions.”
“What do you want with a broom, Queen?”
“It’s hard to decide whether the snow was an accident or part of the plan,” murmured Ellery. “Anything may be true today. Literally anything.”
“Rubbish,” snorted the fat man. “Abracadabra. Om mani padme hum. How could a man have planned a snowfall? You’re talking gibberish.”
“I didn’t say a human plan, Doctor.”
“Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!”
“You may as well save your breath. You’re a badly scared little boy whistling in the dark—for all your bulk, Doctor.”
Ellery gripped the broom tightly and stamped out across the driveway. He felt his own foot shrinking as he tried to make it step upon the white rectangle. His muscles were gathered in, as if in truth he expected to encounter the adamantine bulk of a house which was still there but unaccountably impalpable. When he felt nothing but cold air, he laughed a little self-consciously and began to wield the broom on the snow in a peculiar manner. He used the most delicate of sweeping motions, barely brushing the surface crystals away, so that layer by layer he reduced the depth of the snow. He scanned each layer with anxiety as it was uncovered. And he continued to do this until the ground itself lay revealed; and at no depth did he come across the minutest trace of a human imprint.
“Elves. Nothing less than elves. I confess it’s beyond me.”
“Even the foundation—” began Dr. Reinach heavily.
Ellery poked the tip of the broom at the earth. It was hard as corundum.
The front door slammed as Thorne and the two women crept into the White House. The three men outside stood still.
“Well,” said Ellery at last, “this is either a bad dream or the end of the world.” He made off diagonally across the plot, dragging the broom behind him like a tired charwoman, until he reached the snow-covered drive; and then he trudged down the drive toward the invisible road, disappearing around a bend under the stripped white-dripping trees.
It was a short walk to the road. Ellery remembered it well. It had curved steadily in a long arc all the way from the turn-off at the main highway. There had been no crossroad in all the jolting journey.
He went out into the middle of the road, snow-covered now but plainly distinguishable between the powdered tangles of woods as a gleaming, empty strip. There was the long curve exactly as he remembered it. Mechanically he used the broom again, sweeping a small area clear. And there were the pits and ruts of the old Buick’s journeys.
“What are you looking for,” said Nick Keith quietly, “gold?”
Ellery straightened up by degrees, turning about slowly until he was face to face with the giant. “So you thought it was necessary to follow me? Or—no, I beg your pardon. Undoubtedly it was Dr. Reinach’s idea.”
The sun-charred features did not change expression. “You’re crazy. Follow you? I’ve got all I can do to follow myself.”
“Of course,” said Ellery. “But did I understand you to ask me if I was looking for gold, my dear young Prometheus?”
“You’re a queer one,” said Keith as they made their way back toward the house.
“Gold,” repeated Ellery. “Hmm. There was gold in that house, and now the house is gone. In the shock of the discovery that houses fly away like birds, I’d quite forgotten that little item. Thank you, Mr. Keith,” said Ellery grimly, “for reminding me.…”
“Mr. Queen,” said Alice. She was crouched in a chair by the fire, white to the lips. “What’s happened to us? What are we to do? Have we—Was yesterday a dream? Didn’t we walk into that house, go through it, touch things? … I’m frightened.”
“If yesterday was a dream,” smiled Ellery, “then we may expect that tomorrow will bring a vision; for that’s what holy Sanskrit says, and we may as well believe in parables as in miracles.” He sat down, rubbing his hands briskly. “How about a fire, Keith? It’s arctic in here.”
“Sorry,” said Keith with surprising amiability, and he went away.
“We could use a vision,” shivered Thorne. “My brain is—sick. It just isn’t possible. It’s horrible.” His hand slapped his side and something jangled in his pocket.
“Keys,” said Ellery, “and no house. It is staggering.”
Keith came back under a mountain of firewood. He grimaced at the litter in the fireplace, dropped the wood, and began sweeping together the fragments of glass, the remains of the brandy decanter he had smashed against the brick wall the night before. Alice glanced from his broad back to the chromo of her mother on the mantel. As for Mrs. Reinach, she was as silent as a scared bird; she stood in a corner like a weazened little gnome, her wrapper drawn about her, her stringy sparrow-colored hair hanging down her back, and her glassy eyes fixed on the face of her husband.
“Milly,” said the fat man.
“Yes, Herbert, I’m going,” said Mrs. Reinach instantly, and she crept up the stairs and out of sight.
“Well, Mr. Queen, what’s the answer? Or is this riddle too esoteric for your taste?”
“No riddle is esoteric,” muttered Ellery, “unless it’s the riddle of God; and that’s no riddle—it’s a vast blackness. Doctor, is there any way of reaching assistance?”
“Not unless you can fly.”
“No phone,” said Keith, “and you saw the condition of the road. You’d nev
er get a car through those drifts.”
“If you had a car,” chuckled Dr. Reinach. Then he seemed to remember the disappearing house, and his chuckle died.
“What do you mean?” demanded Ellery. “In the garage are—”
“Two useless products of the machine age. Both cars are out of fuel.”
“And mine,” said old Thorne suddenly, with a resurrection of grim personal interest, “mine has something wrong with it besides. I left my chauffeur in the city, you know, Queen, when I drove down last time. Now I can’t get the engine running on the little gasoline that’s left in the tank.”
Ellery’s fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “Bother! Now we can’t even call on other eyes to test whether we’ve been bewitched or not. By the way, Doctor, how far is the nearest community? I didn’t pay attention on the drive down.”
“Over fifteen miles by road. If you’re thinking of footing it, Mr. Queen, you’re welcome to the thought.”
“You’d never get through the drifts,” muttered Keith. The drifts appeared to trouble him.
“And so we find ourselves snowbound,” said Ellery, “in the middle of the fourth dimension—or perhaps it’s the fifth. A pretty kettle! Ah there, Keith, that feels considerably better.”
“You don’t seem bowled over by what’s happened,” said Dr. Reinach, eyeing him curiously. “I’ll confess it’s given even me a shock.”
Ellery was silent for a moment. Then he said lightly, “There wouldn’t be any point to losing our heads, would there?”
“I fully expect dragons to come flying over the house,” groaned Thorne. He eyed Ellery a bit bashfully. “Queen—perhaps we had better—try to get out of here.”