The Origin of Evil

by Ellery Queen

  And Laurel...

  "The only thing that would throw me," Keats was drawling, "I mean if I was in Mr. Priam's shoes—"

  Laurel had been merely puzzled by the wallet.

  "—is what the devil I'd be expected to do with it. Like a battleship getting a lawnmower."

  Laurel had been merely puzzled by the wallet, but when she had glimpsed Delia's face her own had reflected shock. The shock of recognition. Again. But this was not recognition of the object per se. This was recognition of Delia's recognition. A chain reaction.

  "When you stop and think of it, everything we know about these presents so far shows one thing in common—"

  "In common?" said Ellery. "What would that be, Keats?"

  "Arsenic, dead frogs, a wallet for a man who never leaves his house. They've all been so damned useless."

  Ellery laughed. "There's a theory, Mr. Priam, that's in your power to affirm or deny. Was your first gift useless, too? The one in the first cardboard box?"

  Priam did not lift his head.

  "Mr. Priam. What was in that box?"

  Priam gave no sign that he heard.

  "What do these things mean?"

  Priam did not reply.

  "May we have this wallet for examination?" asked Keats.

  Priam simply sat there.

  "Seems to me I caught the flicker of one eyelash, Mr. Queen." Keats wrapped the wallet carefully in the tissue paper and tucked it back in the box. "I'll drop you off at your place and then take this down to the Lab."

  They left Roger Priam in the same attitude of frozen chaos.

  KEATS DROVE SLOWLY, handling the wheel with his forearms and peering ahead as if answers lay there. He was chewing on a cigaret, like a goat.

  "Now I'm wrong about Priam," laughed Ellery. "Perfect score."

  Keats ignored the addendum. "Wrong about Priam how?"

  "I predicted he'd blow his top and spill over at warning number four. Instead of which he's gone underground. Let's hope it's only a temporary recession."

  "You're sure this thing is a warning."

  Ellery nodded absently.

  "Me, I'm not," Keats complained. "I can't seem to get the feel of this case. It's like trying to catch guppies with your bare hands. Now the arsenic, that I could hold on to, even though I couldn't go anywhere with it. But all the rest of it. .."

  "You can't deny the existence of all the rest of it, Keats. The dead dog was real enough. The first box Priam got was real, and whatever was in it. There was nothing vapory about those dead frogs and toads, either. Or about the contents of this box. Or, for that matter," Ellery shrugged, "about the thing that started all this, the note to Hill."

  "Oh, yes," growled the detective.

  "Oh yes what?"

  "The note. What do we know about it? Not a thing. It's not a note, it's a copy of a note. Or is it even that? That might be only what it seems. Maybe the whole business was dreamed up by Hill."

  "The arsenic, froglets, and wallet weren't dreamed up by Hill," said Ellery dryly, "not in the light of his current condition and location. No, Keats, you're falling for the temptation to be a reasonable man. You're not dealing with a reasonable thing. It's a fantasy, and it calls for faith." He stared ahead. "There's something that links these four 'warnings,' as the composer of the note calls them, links them in a series. They constitute a group."

  "How?" Bits of tobacco flew. "Poisoned food, dead frogs, a seventy-five dollar wallet! And God knows what was in that first box to Priam—judging by what followed, it might have been a size three Hopalong Cassidy suit, or a bock beer calendar of the year 1897. Mr. Queen, you can't connect those things. They're not connectable." Keats waved his arms, and the car swerved. "The most I can see in this is that each one stands on its own feet. The arsenic? That means: Remember how you tried to poison me?—this is a little reminder. The frogs? That means ... Well, you get the idea."

  But Ellery shook his head. "If there's one thing in this case I'm sure of, it's that the warnings have related meanings. And the over-all meaning ties up with Priam's past and Hill's past and their enemy's past. What's more, Priam knows its significance, and it's killing him.

  "What we've got to do, Lieutenant, is crack Priam, or the riddle, before it's too late."

  "I'd like to crack Priam," remarked Keats. "On the nut."

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  KEATS PHONED JUST before midnight.

  "I thought you'd like to know what the Lab found out from examination of the wallet and box."

  "What?"

  "Nothing. The only prints on the box were Mrs. Priam's. There were no prints on the wallet at all. Now I'm going home and see if I'm still married. How do you like California?"

  Eleven

  OUTSIDE HER GARAGE, Laurel looked around. Her look was furtive. He hadn't been in the walnut tree this morning, thank goodness, and there was no sign of him now. Laurel slipped into the garage, blinking as she came out of the sun, and ran to her Austin.

  "Morning, Little Beaver."

  "Mac! Damn you."

  Crowe Macgowan came around the big Packard, grinning. "I had a hunch you had a little something under your armpit last night when you told me how late you were going to sleep this morning. Official business, hm?" He was dressed. Mac looked very well when he was dressed, almost as well as when he wasn't. He even wore a hat, a Swiss yodeler sort of thing with a little feather. "Shove over."

  "I don't want you along today."

  "Why not?"

  "Mac, I just don't."

  "You'll have to give me a better reason than that."

  "You .., don't take this seriously enough."

  "I thought I was plenty serious on the frog safari."

  "Well... Oh! all right. Get in."

  Laurel drove the Austin down to Franklin and turned west, her chin northerly. Macgowan studied her profile in peace.

  "La Brea to Third," he said, "and west on Third to Fairfax. Aye, aye, Skipper?"

  "Mac! You've looked it up."

  "There's only one Leatherland, Inc., of Hollywood, California, and it's in Farmers' Market."

  "I wish you'd let me drop you!"

  "Nothing doing. Suppose you found yourself in an opium den?"

  "There are no opium dens around Fairfax and Third."

  "Then maybe a gangster. All the gangsters are coming west, and you know how tourists flock to Farmers' Market."

  Laurel said no more, but her heart felt soggy. Between her and the traffic hung a green alligator.

  She parked in the area nearest Gilmore Stadium. Early as they were, the paved acres were jammed with cars.

  "How are you going to work this?" asked Crowe, shortening his stride as she hurried along.

  "There's nothing much to it. Their designs are exclusive, they make everything on the premises, and they have no other outlets. I'll simply ask to see some men's wallets, work my way around to alligator, then to green alligator—"

  "And then what?" he asked dryly.

  "Why ... I'll find out who's bought one recently. They certainly can't sell many green alligator wallets with gold trimming. Mac, what's the idea? Let go!'

  They were outside The Button Box. Leatherland, Inc., was nearby, a double-windowed shop with a ranchhouse and corral fence décor, bannered with multicolored hides and served by a bevy of well-developed cowgirls.

  "And how are you going to get one of those babes to open up?" asked Crowe, keeping Laurel's arm twisted behind her back with his forefinger. "In the first place, they don't carry their customers' names around in their heads; they don't have that kind of head. In the second place, they're not going to go through their sales slips —for you, that is. In the third place, what's the matter with me?"

  "I might have known."

  "All I have to do is flash my genuine Red Ryder sheriff's badge, turn on the charm, and we're in. Laurel, I'm typecasting."

  'Take off your clothes," said Laurel bitterly, "and you'll get more parts than you can handle."<
br />
  "Watch me—fully dressed and lounging-like."

  He went into the shop confidently.

  Laurel pretended to be interested in a handtooled, silver-studded saddle in the window.

  Although the shop was crowded, one of the cowgirls spotted Crowe immediately and cantered up to him. Everything bouncing, Laurel observed, hoping one of the falsies would slip down. But it was well-anchored, and she could see him admiring it. So could the cowgirl.

  They engaged in a dimpled conversation for fully two minutes. Then they moved over to the rear of the shop. He pushed his hat back on his head the way they did in the movies and leaned one elbow on the showcase. The rodeo Venus began to show him wallets, bending and sunfishing like a bronc. This went on for some time, the sheriff's man leaning farther and farther over the case until he was practically breathing down her sternum. Suddenly he straightened, looked around, put his hand in his pocket, and withdrew it cupped about something. The range-type siren dilated her eyes ...

  When Crowe strolled out of the shop he passed Laurel with a wink.

  She followed him, furious and relieved. The poor goop still didn't catch on, she thought. But then men never noticed anything but women; men like Mac, that is. She turned a corner and ran into his arms.

  "Come to popsy," he grinned. "I've got all the dope."

  "Are you sure that's all you've got?" Laurel coldly swept past him.

  "And I thought you'd give me a gold star!"

  "It's no make-up off my skin, but as your spiritual adviser—if you're lining up future mothers of the race for the radioactive new world, pick specimens who look as if they can climb a tree. You'd have to send that one up on a breeches buoy."

  "What do you mean, is that all I've got? You saw me through the window. Could anything have been more antiseptic?"

  "I saw you take down her phone number!"

  "Shucks, gal. That was professional data. Here." He picked Laurel up, dropped her into the Austin, and got in beside her. "They made up a line of men's wallets in alligator leather last year, dyed three or four different colors. All the other colors sold but the green—they only unloaded three of those. Two of the three greens were bought before Christmas, almost seven months ago, as gifts. One by a Broadway actor to be sent to hi? agent back in New York, the other by a studio executive for some bigshot French producer—the shop mailed that one to Paris. The third and only other one they've sold is unaccounted for."

  "It would be," said Laurel morosely, "seeing that that's the one we're interested in. How unaccounted for, Mac?"

  "My cowgirl dug out the duplicate sales slip. It was a cash-and-carry and didn't have the purchaser's name on it."

  "What was the date?"

  "This year. But what month this year, or what day of what month this year, sales slip showeth not. The carbon slipped or something and the date was smudged."

  "Well, didn't she remember what the purchaser looked like? That might tell us something."

  "It wasn't my babe's customer, because the initials of the salesgirl on the slip were of someone else."

  "Who? Didn't you find out?"

  "Sure I found out."

  "Then why didn't you speak to her? Or were you too wrapped up in Miss Falsies?"

  "Miss who? Say, I thought those were too good to be true. I couldn't speak to the other gal. The other gal quit last week."

  "Didn't you get her name and address?"

  "I got her name, Lavis La Grange, but my babe says it wasn't Lavis's real name and she doesn't know what Lavis's real name is. Certainly not Lavis or La Grange. Her address is obsolete, because she decided she'd had enough of the glamorous Hollywood life and went back home. But when I asked my babe where Lavis's home is, she couldn't say. For all she knows it could be Labrador. And anyway, even if we could locate Lavis, my babe says she probably wouldn't remember. My babe says Lavis has the brain of a barley seed."

  "So we can't even fix the buyer's sex," said Laurel bitterly. "Some manhunters we are."

  "What do we do now, report to the Master?"

  "You report to the Master, Mac. What's there to report? He'll probably know all this before the day's out, anyway. I'm going home. You want me to drop you?"

  "You've got more sex appeal. I'll stick with you."

  YOUNG MACGOWAN STUCK with Laurel for the remainder of the day; technically, in fact, until the early hours of the next, for it was five minutes past two when she climbed down the rope ladder from the tree house to the floodlit clearing. He leaped after her and encircled her neck with his arm all the way to her front door.

  "Sex fiends," he said cheerfully.

  "You're doing all right," said Laurel, who felt black and blue; but then she put her mouth up to be kissed, and be kissed it, and that was a mistake because it took her another fifteen minutes to get rid of him.

  Laurel waited behind the closed door ten minutes longer to be sure the coast was clear.

  Then she slipped out of her house and down to the road.

  She had her flashlight and the little automatic was in her coat pocket.

  Just before she got to the Priam driveway she turned off into the woods. Here she stopped to put a handkerchief over the lens of her flash. Then, directing the feeble beam to the ground, she made her way toward the Priam house.

  Laurel was not feeling adventurous. She was feeling sick. It was the sickness not of fear but of self-appraisal. How did the heroines of fiction do it? The answer was, she decided, that they were heroines of fiction. In real life when a girl had to let a man make love to her in order to steal a key from him she was nothing but a tramp. Less than a tramp, because a tramp got something out of her trampery—money, or an apartment, a few drinks, or even, although less likely, fun. It was a fairly forthright transaction. But she . . , she had had to pretend, all the while searching desperately for the key. The worst part of it was trying to dislike it. That damned Macgowan was so purely without guile and he made love so cheerfully—and he was such a darling—that the effort to hate him, it, and herself came off poorly. What a bitchy thing to do. Laurel moaned as her fingers tightened about the key in her pocket.

  She stopped behind a French lilac bush. The house was dark. No light anywhere. She moved along the strip of lawn below the terrace.

  Even then it wouldn't have been so nasty if it hadn't concerned his mother. How could Mac have lived with Delia all these years and remained blind to what she was? Why did Delia have to be his mother?

  Laurel tried the front door carefully. It was locked, sure enough. She unlocked it with the key, silently thankful that the Priams kept no dogs. She closed the, door just as carefully behind her. Wielding the handkerchief-covered flashlight for a moment, she oriented herself; then she snapped it off.

  She crept upstairs close to the banisters.

  On the landing she used the flash again. It was almost three o'clock. The four bedroom doors were closed. There was no sound either from this floor or the floor above, where the chauffeur slept. Mrs. Guittierez and Muggs occupied two servants' rooms off the kitchen downstairs.

  Laurel tiptoed across the hall and put her ear against a door. Then, quickly and noiselessly, she opened the door and went into Delia Priam's bedroom. How co-operative of Delia to go up to Santa Barbara, where she was visiting "some old Montecito friends" for the weekend. The doth-of-gold tree of life spread over the bed immaculately. In whose bed was she sleeping tonight?

  LAUREL HOOKED THE FLASH to the belt of her coat and began to open dresser drawers. It was the weirdest thing, rummaging through Delia's things in the dead of night by the light of a sort of dark lantern. It didn't matter that you weren't there to take anything. What chiefly made a sneak thief was the technique. If Delia's father, or the unspeakable Alfred, were to surprise her now . . . Laurel held on to the thought of the leaden, blue-lipped face of Leander Hill.

  It was not in the dresser. She went into Delia's clothes closet.

  The scent Delia used was strong, and it mingled disagreeably with the che
mical odor of mothproofing and the cedar lining of the walls. Delia's perfume had no name. It had been created exclusively for her by a British Colonial manufacturer, a business associate of Roger Priam's, after a two-week visit to the Priam house years before. Each Christmas thereafter Delia received a quart bottle of it from Bermuda. It was made from the essence of the passionflower. Laurel had once suggested sweetly to Delia that she name it Prophetic, but Delia had seemed not to think that very funny.

  It was not in the closet. Laurel came out and shut the door, inhaling.

  Had she been wrong after all? Maybe it was an illusion, built on the substructure of her loathing for Delia and that single, startling look on Delia's face as Ellery had held up the green wallet.

  But suppose it wasn't an illusion. Then the fact that it wasn't where she would ordinarily have kept such a thing might be significant. Because Delia had hurried out of Roger's den immediately. She might have gone directly upstairs to her bedroom, taken it from among the others, and stowed it away where it was unlikely to be found. By Muggs, for instance.

  Where might Delia have hidden it? All Laurel wanted was to see it, to verify its existence . ..

  It was not in the brassbound teak chest at the foot of the bed. Laurel took everything out and then put everything back.

  After conquering three temptations to give it up and go home and crawl into bed and pull the bedclothes of oblivion over her head, Laurel found it. It was in the clothes closet after all. But not, Laurel felt, in an honest place. It was wedged in the dolman sleeve of one of Delia's winter coats, a luxurious white duvetyn, which in turn was encased in a transparent plastic bag. Innocent and clever. Only a detective, Laurel thought, would have found it Or another woman.

  Laurel felt no triumph, just a shooting pain, like the entry of a hypodermic needle; and then a hardening of everything.

  She had been right. She had seen Delia carrying one. Weeks before.

  It was a woman's envelope bag of forest green alligator leather, with gold initials. The maker's name was Leather-land, Inc., of Hollywood, California.

  A sort of Eve to the Adam of the wallet someone had sent to Roger Priam. A mate to the fourth warning.

  "I SUPPOSE I should have told you yesterday," Laurel said to Ellery in the cottage on the hill, "that Mac and I were down to Farmers' Market on the trail of the green wallet. But we didn't find out anything, and anyway I knew you'd know about it."