The Origin of Evil

by Ellery Queen

  She strode out.

  The next morning Ellery spread his newspaper behind a late breakfast tray to find Roger Priam, Leander Hill, and Crowe Macgowan glaring back at him. Mac was glaring from a tree.

  Denying that he has received a threat against his life, Roger Priam, wealthy wholesale gem merchant of L.A., barred himself behind the doors of his secluded home above Hollywood Bowl this morning when reporters investigated a tip that he is the intended victim of a murder plot which allegedly took the life of his business partner, Leander Hill, last week...

  Mr. Priam, it appeared, after ousting reporters had issued a brief statement through his secretary, Alfred Wallace, repeating his denial and adding that the cause of Hill's death was "a matter of official record."

  Detectives at the Hollywood Division of the L.A.P.D, admitted this morning that Hill's daughter, Laurel, had charged her father was "frightened to death," but said that they had found no evidence to support the charge, which they termed "fantastic."

  Miss Hill, interviewed at her home adjoining the Priam property, said: "If Roger Priam wants to bury his head in the sand, it's his head." She intimated that she "had reason to believe" both her father and Priam were slated to be murdered "by some enemy out of their past."

  The story concluded with the reminder that "Mr. Priam is the stepfather of twenty-three year old Crowe Macgowan, the Atomic Age Tree Boy, who broke into print in a big way recently by talking off his clothes and bedding down in a tree house on his stepfather's estate in preparation for the end of the world."

  Observing to himself that Los Angeles journalism was continuing to maintain its usual standards, Ellery went to the phone and called the Hill home.

  "Laurel? I didn't expect you'd be answering the phone in person this morning."

  "I've got nothing to hide." Laurel laid the slightest stress on her pronoun. Also, she was cold, very cold.

  "One question. Did you tip off the papers about Priam?"

  "No."

  "Cross your heart and —?"

  "I said no!" There was a definite snick!

  It was puzzling, and Ellery puzzled over it all through breakfast, which Mrs. Williams with obvious disapproval persisted in calling lunch. He was just putting down his second cup of coffee when Keats walked in with a paper in his pocket.

  "I was hoping you'd drop around," said Ellery, as Mrs. Williams set another place. "Thanks, Mrs. W, I'll do the rest . . . Not knowing exactly what is leaking where, Keats, I decided not to risk a phone call. So far I've been kept out of it."

  "Then you didn't feed the kitty?" asked Keats. "Thanks. No cream or sugar."

  "Of course not. I was wondering if it was you."

  "Not me. Must have been the Hill girl."

  "Not she. I've asked her."

  "Funny."

  "Very. How was the tip tipped?"

  "By phone call to the city room. Disguised voice, and they couldn't trace it."

  "Male or female?"

  "They said male, but they admitted it was pitched in a queer way and might have been female. With all the actors floating around this town you never know." Keats automatically struck a match, but then he shook his head and put it out. "You know, Mr. Queen," he said, scowling at his cigaret, "if there's anything to this thing, that tip might have come ... I know it sounds screwy . . ."

  "From the writer of the note? I've been dandling that notion myself, Lieutenant."

  "Pressure, say."

  "In the war on Priam's nerves."

  "If he's got an iron nerve himself." Keats rose. "Well, this isn't getting us anywhere."

  "Anything yet on Hill and Priam?"

  "Not yet." Keats slowly crumpled his cigaret. "It might be a toughie, Mr. Queen. So far I haven't got to first base."

  "What's holding you up?"

  "I don't know yet. Give me another few days."

  "What about Wallace?"

  "I'll let you know."

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON—it was the twenty-first, the day after the Shriners parade—Ellery looked around from his typewriter to see the creamy nose of Delia Priam's convertible in profile against his front window.

  He deliberately forced himself to wait until Mrs. Williams answered the door.

  As he ran his hand over his hair, Mrs. Williams said: "It's a naked man. You in?"

  Macgowan was alone. He was in his Tree Boy costume —one loincloth, flame-colored this time. He shook Ellery's hand limply and accepted a Scotch on the Rocks, settling himself on the sofa with his bare heels on the sill of the picture window.

  "I thought I recognized the car," said Ellery.

  "It's my mother's. Mine was out of gas. Am I inconvenient?" The giant glanced at the typewriter. "How do you knock that stuff out? But I had to see you." He seemed uneasy.

  "What about, Mac?"

  "Well ... I thought maybe the reason you hadn't made up your mind to take the case was that there wasn't enough money in it for you."

  "Did you?"

  "Look. Maybe I could put enough more in the pot to make it worth your while."

  "You mean you want to hire me, too, Mac?"

  'That's it" He seemed relieved that it was out. "I got to thinking . . , that note, and then whatever it was Roger got in that box the morning old man Hill got the dead dog ... I mean, maybe there's something in it after all, Mr. Queen."

  "Suppose there is." Ellery studied him with curiosity. "Why are you interested enough to want to put money into an investigation?"

  "Roger's my mother's husband, isn't he?"

  'Touching, Mac. When did you two fall in love?"

  Young Macgowan's brown skin turned mahogany. "I mean . . . It's true Roger and I never got along. He's always tried to dominate me as well as everybody else. But he means well, and—"

  "And that's why," smiled Ellery, "you call yourself Crowe Macgowan instead of Crowe Priam."

  Crowe laughed. "Okay, I detest his lazy colon. We've always fought like a couple of wild dogs. When Delia married him he wouldn't adopt me legally; the idea was to keep me dependent on him. I was a kid, and it made me hate him. So I kept my father's name and I refused to take any money from Roger. I wasn't altogether a hero—I had a small income from a trust fund my father left for me. You can imagine how that set with Mr. Priam." He laughed again. But then he finished lamely, "The last few years I've grown up, I guess. I tolerate him for Mother's sake. That's it," he added, brightening, "Mother's sake. That's why I'd like to get to the bottom of this. You see, Mr. Queen?"

  "Your mother loves Priam?"

  "She's married to him, isn't she?"

  "Come off it, Mac. I intimated to you myself the other day, in your tree, that your mother had already offered to engage my services. Not to mention Laurel. What's this all about?"

  Macgowan got up angrily. "What difference does my reason make? It's an honest offer. All I want is this damned business cleaned up. Name your fee and get going on it!"

  "As they say in the textbooks, Mac," said Ellery, "I'll leave you know. It's the best I can do."

  "What are you waiting for?"

  "Warning number two. If this business is on the level, Mac, there will be a warning number two, and I can't do a thing till it comes. With Priam being pigheaded, you and your mother can be most useful by simply keeping your eyes open. I'll decide then."

  "What do we watch for," sneered the young man, "another mysterious box?"

  "I've no idea. But whatever it turns out to be—and it may not be a thing, Mac, but an event—whatever happens out of the ordinary, no matter how silly or trivial it may seem to you—let me know about it right away. You," and Ellery added, as if in afterthought, "or your mother."

  THE PHONE WAS ringing. He opened his eyes, conscious that it had been ringing for some time.

  He switched on the light, blinking at his wristwatch.

  4:35. He hadn't got to bed until 1:30.

  "Hello?" he mumbled.

  "Mr. Queen—"

  Delia Priam.

  "Yes?" He had n
ever felt so wakeful.

  "My son Crowe said to call you if—" She sounded far away, a little frightened.

  "Yes? Yes?"

  "It's probably nothing at all. But you told Crowe—"

  "Delia, what's happened?"

  "Roger's sick, Ellery. Dr. Voluta is here. He says it's ptomaine poisoning. But—"

  "I'll be right over!"

  DR. VOLUTA WAS a floppy man with jowls and a dirty eye, and it was a case of hate at first sight. The doctor was in a bright blue yachting jacket over a yellow silk undershirt and his greasy brown hair stuck up all over his head. He wore carpet slippers. Twice Ellery caught himself about to address him as Captain Bligh and it would not have surprised him if, in his own improvised costume of soiled white ducks and turtleneck sweater, he had inspired Priam's doctor to address him in turn as Mr. Christian.

  "The trouble with you fellows," Dr. Voluta was saying as he scraped an evil mess from a rumpled bedsheet into a specimen vial, "is that you really enjoy murder. Otherwise you wouldn't see it in every bellyache."

  "Quite a bellyache," said Ellery. 'The stopper's right there over the sink, Doctor."

  "Thank you. Priam is a damn pig. He eats too much for even a well man. His alimentary apparatus is a medical problem in itself. I've warned him for years to lay off bedtime snacks, especially spicy fish."

  "I'm told he's fond of spicy fish."

  "I'm fond of spicy blondes, Mr. Queen," snapped Dr. Voluta, "but I keep my appetite within bounds."

  "I thought you said there's something wrong with the tuna."

  "Certainly there's something wrong with it. I tasted it myself. But that's not the point. The point is that if he'd followed my orders he wouldn't have eaten any in the first place."

  They were in the butler's pantry, and Dr. Voluta was looking irritably about for something to cover a plastic dish into which he had dumped the remains of the tuna.

  "Then it's your opinion, Doctor—?"

  "I've given you my opinion. The can of tuna was spoiled. Didn't you ever hear of spoiled canned goods, Mr. Queen?" He opened his medical bag, grabbed a surgical glove, and stretched it over the top of the dish.

  "I've examined the empty tin, Dr. Voluta." Ellery had fished it out of the tin can container, thankful that in Los Angeles you had to keep cans separate from garbage. "I see no sign of a bulge, do you?"

  "You're just assuming that's the tin it came from," the doctor said disagreeably. "How do you know?"

  "The cook told me. It's the only tuna she opened today. She opened it just before she went to bed. And I found the tin at the top of the waste can."

  Dr. Voluta threw up his hands. "Excuse me. I want to wash up."

  Ellery followed him to the door of the downstairs lavatory. "Have to keep my eye on that vial and dish, Doctor," he said apologetically. "Since you won't turn them over to me."

  "You don't mean a thing to me, Mr. Queen. I still think it's all a lot of nonsense. But if this stuff has to be analyzed, I'm turning it over to the police personally. Would you mind stepping back? I'd like to close this door."

  "The vial," said Ellery.

  "Oh, for God's sake." Dr. Voluta turned his back and opened the tap with a swoosh.

  They were waiting for Lieutenant Keats. It was almost six o'clock and through the windows a pale farina-like world was taking shape. The house was cold. Priam was purged and asleep, his black beard jutting from the blankets on his reclining chair with a moribund majesty, so that all Ellery had been able to think of—before Alfred Wallace shut the door politely in his face—was Sennacherib the Assyrian in his tomb; and that was no help. Wallace had locked Priam's door from the inside. He was spending what was left of the night on the day-bed in Priam's room reserved for his use during emergencies.

  Crowe Macgowan had been snappish. "If I hadn't made that promise, Queen, I'd never have had Delia call you. All this stench about a little upchucking. Leave him to Voluta and go home." And he had gone back to his oak, yawning.

  Old Mr. Collier, Delia Priam's father, had quietly made himself a cup of tea in the kitchen and trotted back upstairs with it, pausing only long enough to chuckle to Ellery: "A fool and his gluttony are soon parted."

  Delia Priam . . . He hadn't seen her at all. Ellery had rather built himself up to their middle-of-the-night meeting, although he was prepared to be perfectly correct Of course, she couldn't know that. By the time he arrived she had returned to her room upstairs. He was glad, in a way, that her sense of propriety was so delicately tuned to his state of mind. It was, in fact, astoundingly perceptive of her. At the same time, he felt a little empty.

  Ellery stared gritty-eyed at Dr. Voluta's blue back. It was an immense back, with great fat wrinkles running across h.

  He could, of course, get rid of the doctor and go upstairs and knock on her door. There was always a question or two to be asked in a case like this.

  He wondered what she would do.

  And how she looked at six in the morning.

  He played with this thought for some time.

  "Ordinarily," said the doctor, turning and reaching for a towel, "I'd have told you to go to hell. But a doctor with a respectable practice has to be cagey in this town, Mr. Queen, and Laurel started something when she began to talk murder at Leander Hill's death. I know your type. Publicity-happy." He flung the towel at the bowl, picked up the vial and the plastic dish, holding them firmly. "You don't have to watch me, Mr. Queen. I'm not going to switch containers on you. Where the devil is that detective? I haven't had any sleep at all tonight."

  "Did anyone ever tell you, Doctor," said Ellery through his teeth, "that you look like Charles Laughton in The Beachcomber?"

  They glared at each other until a car drew up outside and Keats hurried in.

  AT FOUR O'CLOCK that afternoon Ellery pulled his rented Kaiser up before the Priam house to find Keats's car already there. The maid with the tic, which was in an active state, showed him into the living room. Keats was standing before the fieldstone fireplace, tapping his teeth with the edge of a sheet of paper. Laurel Hill, Crowe Macgowan, and Delia Priam were seated before him in a student attitude. Their heads swiveled as Ellery came in, and it seemed to him that Laurel was coldly expectant, young Macgowan uneasy, and Delia frightened.

  "Sorry, Lieutenant. I had to stop for gas. Is that the lab report?"

  Keats handed him the paper. Their eyes followed. When Ellery handed the paper back, their eyes went with it.

  "Maybe you'd better line it up for these folks, Mr. Queen," said the detective. "I'll take it from there."

  "When I got here about five this morning," nodded Ellery, "Dr. Voluta was sure it was food poisoning. The facts were these: Against Voluta's medical advice, Mr. Priam invariably has something to eat before going to sleep. This habit of his seems to be a matter of common knowledge. Since he doesn't sleep too well, he tends to go to bed at a late hour. The cook, Mrs. Guittierez, is on the other hand accustomed to retiring early. Consequently, Mr. Priam usually tells Mr. Wallace what he expects to feel like having around midnight, and Mr. Wallace usually transmits this information to the cook before she goes to bed. Mrs. Guittierez then prepares the snack as ordered, puts it into the refrigerator, and retires.

  "Last night the order came through for tuna fish, to which Mr. Priam is partial. Mrs. Guittierez got a can of tuna from the pantry—one of the leading brands, by the way—opened it, prepared the contents as Mr. Priam likes it—with minced onion, sweet green pepper, celery, lots of mayonnaise, the juice of half a freshly squeezed lemon, freshly ground pepper and a little salt, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, a half-teaspoon of dried mustard, and a pinch of orégano and powdered thyme—and placed the bowl, covered, in the refrigerator. She then cleaned up and went to bed. Mrs. Guittierez left the kitchen at about twenty minutes of ten, leaving a night light burning.

  "At about ten minutes after midnight," continued Ellery, speaking to the oil painting of the Spanish grandee above the fireplace so that he would not be disturbed by
a certain pair of eyes, "Alfred Wallace was sent by Roger Priam for the snack. Wallace removed the bowl of tuna salad from the refrigerator, placed it on a tray with some caraway-seed rye bread, sweet butter, and a sealed bottle of milk, and carried the tray to Mr. Priam's study. Priam ate heartily, although he did not finish the contents of the tray. Wallace then prepared him for bed, turned out the lights, and took what remained on the tray back to the kitchen. He left the tray there as it was, and himself went upstairs to his room.

  "At about three o'clock this morning Wallace was awakened by the buzzer of the intercom from Mr. Priam's room. It was Priam, in agony. Wallace ran downstairs and found him violently sick. Wallace immediately phoned Dr. Voluta, ran upstairs and awakened Mrs. Priam, and the two of them did what they could until Dr. Voluta's arrival, which was a very few minutes later."

  Macgowan said irritably, "Damned if I can see why you tell us—"

  Delia Priam put her hand on her son's arm and he stopped.

  "Go on, Mr. Queen," she said in a low voice. When she talked, everything in a man tightened up. He wondered if she quite realized the quality and range of her power.

  "On my arrival I found the tray in the kitchen, where Wallace said he had left it. When I had the facts I phoned Lieutenant Keats. While waiting for him I got together everything that had been used in the preparation of the midnight meal—the spices, the empty tuna tin, even the shell of the lemon, as well as the things on the tray. There was a quantity of the salad, some rye bread, some of the butter, some of the milk. Meanwhile Dr. Voluta preserved what he could of the regurgitated matter. When Lieutenant Keats arrived, we turned everything over to him."

  Ellery stopped and lit a cigaret.

  Keats said: "I took it all down to the Crime Laboratory and the report just came through." He glanced at the paper. "I won't bother you with the detailed report. Just give you the highlights.

  "Chemical analysis of the regurgitated matter from Mr. Priam's stomach brought out the presence of arsenic.

  "Everything is given a clean bill—spices, tuna tin, lemon, bread, butter, milk—everything, that is, but the tuna salad itself.

  "Arsenic of the same type was found in the remains of the tuna salad.