The Origin of Evil

by Ellery Queen

  "You were very clever, Priam. You avoided the psychological error of making things too obvious. You deliberately told not quite enough in 'Adam's' note. You repeatedly refused on demand to give any information that would help the police or make the investigation easier, although an examination of your 'refusals' show that you actually helped us considerably. But on the surface you made us work for what we got.

  "You made us work hard, because you laid a fantastic trail for us to follow.

  "But if your theory-of-evolution pattern was on the fancy side, your logic was made curiously more convincing because of it. To nurse a desire for revenge for almost a generation a man has to be a little cracked. Such a mind might easily run to the involved and the fanciful. At the same time, 'Adam' would naturally tend to think in terms of his own background and experience. Adam having been a naturalist, you created a trail such as an eccentric naturalist might leave—a trail you were sure we would sooner or later recognize and follow to its conclusion, which was that Naturalist Charles Adam was 'the enemy out of the past.'

  "Your camouflage was brilliantly conceived and stroked on, Priam. You laid it so thickly on this case that, if you had not foolishly used that broken-T typewriter, we should probably have been satisfied to pin the crime on a man who's really been dead for a quarter of a century."

  Priam's big head wavered a little, almost a nod. But it might have been a momentary trembling of the muscles of his neck. Otherwise, he gave no sign that he was even listening.

  "In an odd sort of way, Priam, you were unlucky. You didn't realize quite how bad Hill's heart was, or you miscalculated the impact of your paper bullet. Because Hill died as a result of your very first warning. You had sent yourself a warning on the same morning, intending to divide the other warnings between you and Hill, probably, alternating them. When Hill died so immediately, it was too late to pull yourself out. You were in the position of the general who has planned a complicated battle against the enemy, finds that his very first sortie has accomplished his entire objective, but is powerless to stop his orders and preparation for the succeeding attacks. Had you stopped after sending yourself only one warning the mere stoppage would have been suspect. The warnings to yourself had to continue in order that the illusion of Adam-frightening-Hill-to-death should be completely credible.

  "You sent six warnings, including the masterly one of having your tuna salad poisoned so that you could eat some, fall sick, and so call attention to your 'fish' clue. After six warnings you undoubtedly felt you had thoroughly fooled us as to the real source of the crime. On the other hand, you recognized the danger of stopping even at six with yourself still alive. We might begin to wonder why—in your case—'Adam' had given up. Murderers have been caught on a great deal less.

  "You saw that, for perfect safety, you had to give us a convincing end to the whole business.

  "The ideal, of course, was for us to 'catch' 'Adam.'

  "A lesser man, Priam, wouldn't have wasted ten seconds wrestling with the problem of producing a man dead twenty-five years and handing his living body over to the police. But you didn't abandon the problem merely because it seemed impossible to solve. There's a lot of Napoleon in you.

  "And you solved it

  "Your solution was tied up with another unhappy necessity of the case. To carry out your elaborate plot against Hill and yourself, you needed help. You have the use of your brain unimpaired, and the use of your hands and eyes and ears in a limited area, but these weren't enough. Your plans demanded the use of legs, too, and yours are useless. You couldn't possibly, by yourself, procure a beagle, poison it, deliver it and the note to Hill's doorstep; get cardboard boxes and string from the dime store, a dead lamprey from God knows where, poison, frogs, and so on. It's true that the little silver box must have been left here, or dropped, by Laurel; that the arsenic undoubtedly came from the can of Deth-on-Ratz in your cellar; that the tree frogs were collected in these very foothills; that the green alligator wallet must have been suggested by your wife's possession of a handbag of the same material and from the same shop; that you found the worthless stock from Mrs. Priam's first husband's estate in some box or trunk stored in this house; that to leave the bird clue you chose a book from your own library. Whenever possible you procured what you needed from as close by as you could manage, probably because in this way you felt you could control them better. But even for the things in and from this house, you needed a substitute for your legs.

  "Who found and used these things at your direction?

  "Alfred Wallace could. Secretary, nurse, companion, orderly, handyman. . , with you all day, on call all ' night . . , you could hardly have used anyone else. If for no other reason than that Wallace couldn't possibly have been kept ignorant of what was going on. Using Wallace turned a liability into an asset.

  "Whether Wallace was your accomplice willingly because you paid him well or under duress because you had something on him," said Ellery, looking down at the mound under the blanket, "is a question only you can answer now, Priam. I suppose it doesn't really matter any more. However you managed it, you persuaded Alfred to serve as your legs and as extensions of your eyes and hands. You gave Alfred his orders and he carried them out.

  "Now you no longer needed Alfred. And perhaps—as other murderers have found out—tools like Alfred have a way of turning two-edged. Wallace was the only one who knew you were the god of the machine, Priam. No matter what you had on him—if anything—Wallace alive was a continuous danger to your safety and peace of mind.

  "The more you mulled, the more feasible Wallace's elimination became. His death would remove the only Outside knowledge of your guilt; as your wife's lover he ought to die to satisfy your peculiar psychological ambivalence; and, dead, he became a perfect Charles Adam. Wallace was within Adam's age range had Adam lived; Wallace's background was unknown because of his amnesic history; even his personality fitted with what we might have expected Adam to be.

  "If you could make us flush Alfred Wallace from the mystery as Charles Adam, you'd be killing three birds with one stone.

  "And so you arranged for Wallace's death."

  ROGER PRIAM RAISED his head. Color had come back into his cheekbones, and his heavy voice was almost animated.

  "I'll have to read some of your books," Priam said. "You sure make up a good story."

  "As a reward for that compliment, Priam," said Ellery, smiling, "I'll tell you an even better one.

  "A few months ago you ordered Alfred Wallace to go out and buy a gun. You gave Wallace the money for it, but you wanted the gun's ownership traceable to him.

  "Tonight you buzzed Wallace on the intercom, directly to his bedroom, and you told Wallace you heard someone prowling around outside the house. You told him to take the gun, make sure it was loaded, and come down here to your room, quietly—"

  "That's a lie," said Roger Priam.

  "That's the truth," said Ellery.

  Priam showed his teeth. "You're a bluffer after all. Even if it was true—which it ain't—how could you know it?

  "Because Wallace told me so."

  The skin above Priam's beard changed color again.

  "You see," said Ellery, "I took Wallace into my confidence when I saw the danger he was in. I told him just what to expect at your hands and I told him that if he wanted to save his skin he'd be wise to play ball with Lieutenant Keats and me.

  "Wallace didn't need much convincing, Priam. I imagine you've found him the sort of fellow who can turn on a dime; or, to change the figure, the sort who always spots the butter side of the bread. He came over to me without a struggle. And he promised to keep me informed; and he promised, when the time came, to follow not your instructions, Priam, but mine.

  "When you told him on the intercom tonight to sneak down here with the loaded revolver, Wallace immediately phoned me. I told him to hold up going downstairs for just long enough to allow the lieutenant and me to get here. It didn't take us long, Priam, did it? We'd been waiting nightly for
Wallace's phone call for some time now.

  "I'm pretty sure you expected someone to be outside on guard, Priam, although of course you didn't know it would be Keats and me in person on Wallace's notification. You've put up a good show about not wanting police guards, in Une with your shrewd performance all along, but you've known from the start that we would probably disregard your wishes in a crisis, and that was just what you wanted us to do.

  "When Alfred stole into this room armed with a gun, you knew whoever was on guard—you hoped actually watching from the terrace—would fall for the illusion that Wallace was trying to kill you. If no one was watching, but a guard on the grounds heard the shot, within seconds he'd be in the room, and he'd find Wallace dead —in your room, with you obviously awakened from sleep, and only your story to listen to. With the previous buildup of someone threatening your life, he'd have no reason to doubt your version of what happened. If there were no guards at all, you would phone for help immediately, and between your version of the events and the fact that the gun was bought by Wallace you had every reason to believe the matter would end there. It was a bold, even a Bonapartist plan, Priam, and it almost worked."

  Priam stirred, and with the stir a fluidity came over him, passing like a ripple. Then he said in a perfectly controlled voice, "Whatever Wallace told you was a damn lie. I didn't tell him to buy a gun. I didn't call him down here tonight. And you can't prove I did. You yourself saw him sneak in here a while back with a loaded gun, you saw me fight for my Ufe, you saw him lose, and now he's dead." The bearded man put the lightest stress on the last word, as if to underscore Wallace's uselessness as a witness.

  "I'm afraid you didn't listen very closely to what I said, Priam," said Ellery. "I said it almost worked. You don't think I'd allow Alfred to risk death or serious injury, do you? What he brought downstairs with him tonight, on my instructions, was a gun loaded with blanks. We've put on a show for you, Priam." And Ellery said, "Get up, Wallace."

  Before Priam's bulging eyes the blanket on the floor rose like the magic carpet, and there, under it, stood Alfred Wallace, smiling.

  Roger Priam screamed.

  Sixteen

  WHAT NO ONE foresaw—including Ellery—was how Roger Priam would react to his arrest, indictment, and trial. Yet from the moment he showed his hand ¡t was impossible to conceive that he might have acted otherwise. Alfred Wallace was a probable sole exception, but Wallace was being understandably discreet.

  Priam took the blame for everything. His contempt for Wallace's part in the proceedings touched magnificence. Wallace, Priam said, had been the merest tool, not understanding what he was being directed to do. One would have thought, to hear Pïiam, that Wallace was an idiot. And Wallace acted properly idiotic. No one was fooled, but the law operates under the rules of evidence, and since there were only two witnesses, the accused and his accomplice, each—for different motives—minimizing Wallace and maximizing Priam, Wallace went scot-free.

  As Keats said, in a growl, "Priam's got to be boss, by God, even at his own murder trial."

  It was reported that Priam's attorney, a prominent West Coast trial lawyer, went out on the night of the verdict and got himself thoroughly fried, missing the very best part of the show. Because that same night Roger Priam managed to kill himself by swallowing poison. The usual precautions against suicide had been taken, and those entrusted with the safety of the condemned man until his execution were chagrined and mystified. Roger Priam merely lay there with his bearded mouth open in a grin, looking as fiercely joyful as a pirate cut down on his own quarter-deck. No one could dictate to him, his grin seemed to say, not even the sovereign State of California. If he had to die, he was picking the method and the time.

  He had to be dominant even over death.

  TO EVERYONE'S SURPRISE, Alfred Wallace found a new employer immediately after the trial, an Eastern writer by the name of Queen. Wallace and his suitcase moved into the little cottage on the hill, and Mrs. Williams and her two uniforms moved out, the cause leading naturally to the effect.

  Ellery could not say that it was a poor exchange, for Wallace turned out a far better cook than Mrs. Williams had ever been, an accomplishment in his new employee Ellery had not bargained for, since he had hired Wallace to be his secretary. The neglected novel was still the reason for his presence in Southern California, and now that the Hill-Priam case was closed Ellery returned to it in earnest.

  Keats was flabbergasted. "Aren't you afraid he'll put arsenic in your soup?"

  "Why should he?" Ellery asked reasonably. "I'm paying him to take dictation and type my manuscript. And talking about soup, Wallace makes a mean sopa de almendras, à Mallorquína. From Valldemosa—perfectly delicious. How about sampling it tomorrow night?"

  Keats said thanks a lot but he didn't go for that gourmet stuff himself, his speed was chicken noodle soup, besides his wife was having some friends for television, and he hung up hastily.

  To the press Mr. Queen was lofty. He had never been one to hound a man for past errors. Wallace needed a job, and he needed a secretary, and that was that.

  Wallace merely smiled.

  DELIA PRIAM SOLD the hillside property and disappeared.

  The usual guesses, substantiated by no more than "a friend of the family who asks that her name be withheld" or "Delia Priam is rumored," had her variously in Las Vegas at the dice tables with a notorious underworld character; in Taos, New Mexico, under an assumed name, where she was said to be writing her memoirs for newspaper and magazine syndication; flying to Rome heavily veiled; one report insisted on placing her on a remote shelf in India as the "guest" of some wild mountain rajah well-known for his peculiar tastes in Occidental women.

  That none of these pleasantly exciting stories was true everyone took for granted, but authoritative information was lacking. Delia Priam's father was not available for comment; he had stuffed some things in a duffel bag and gone off to Canada to prospect, he said, for uranium ore. And her son simply refused to talk to reporters.

  To Ellery, privately, Crowe Macgowan confided that his mother had entered a retreat near Santa Maria; he spoke as if he never expected to see her again.

  Young Macgowan was cleaning up his affairs preparatory to enlisting in the Army. "I've got ten days left," he told Ellery, "and a thousand things to do, one of which is to get married. I said it was a hell of a preliminary to a trip to Korea, but Laurel's stuck her chin out, so what can I do?"

  Laurel looked as if she were recuperating from a serious illness. She was pale and thin but at peace. She held on to Macgowan's massive arm with authority. "I won't lose you, Mac."

  "What are you afraid of, the Korean women?" jeered Crowe. "I'm told their favorite perfume is garlic."

  "I'm joining the WACs," said Laurel, "if they'll ship me overseas. I suppose it's not very patriotic to put a condition to it, but if my husband is in Asia I want to be in the same part of the world."

  "You'll probably wind up in West Germany," growled the large young man. "Why don't you just stay home and write me long and loving letters?"

  Laurel patted his arm.

  "Why don't you just stay home," Ellery asked Crowe, "and stick to your tree?"

  "Oh, that." Crowe reddened. "My tree is sold."

  "Find another."

  "Listen, Queen," snarled Delia's son, "you tend to your crocheting and I'll tend to mine. I'm no hero, but there's a war on—beg pardon, a United Nations police action. Besides, they'll get me anyway."

  "I understand that," said Ellery with gravity, "but your attitude seems so different these days, Mac. What's happened to the Atomic Age Tree Boy? Have you decided, now that you've found a mate, that you're not worth preserving for the Post-Atomic Era? That's hardly complimentary to Laurel."

  Mac mumbled, "You let me alone... Laurel, no!"

  "Laurel yes," said Laurel. "After all, Mac, you owe it to Ellery. Ellery, about that Tree Boy foolishness . . ."

  "Yes," said Ellery hopefully. "I've been rather looking forwa
rd to a solution of that mystery."

  "I finally worried it out of him," said Laurel. "Mac, you're fidgeting. Mac was trying to break into the movies. He'd heard that a certain producer was planning a series of Jungle Man pictures to compete with the Tarzan series, and he got the brilliant idea of becoming a jungle man in real life, right here in Hollywood. The Atomic Age silliness was bait for the papers. It worked, too. He got so much publicity that the producer approached him, and he was actually negotiating a secret contract when Daddy Hill died and I began to yell murder. The murder talk, and the newspaper stories involving Mac's stepfather— which I suppose Roger planted himself, or had Alfred plant for him—scared the producer and he called off the negotiations. Crowe was awfully sore at me, weren't you, darling?"

  "Not as sore as I am right now. For Pete's sake, Laur, do you have to expose my moral underwear to the whole world?"

  "I'm only a very small part of it, Mac," grinned Ellery. "So that's why you tried to hire me to solve the case. You thought if I could clear it up pronto, you could still have the deal with the movie producer."

  "I did, too," said young Macgowan forlornly. "He came back at me only last week, asking questions about my draft status. I offered him the services of my grandfather, who'd have loved to be a jungle man, but the ungrateful guy told me to go to hell. And here I am, en route. Confidentially, Queen, does Korea smell as bad as they say it does?"

  Laurel and Crowe were married by a Superior Court judge in Santa Monica, with Ellery and Lieutenant Keats as witnesses, and the wedding supper was ingested and imbibed at a drive-in near Oxnard, the newlyweds thereafter scooting off in Laurel's Austin in the general direction of San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco. Driving back south on the Coast Highway, Ellery and Keats speculated as to their destination.