The Siamese Twin Mystery (29 page)

“Lord,” he croaked again, blinking.

The wracked word was torn out of his mouth by a sudden overwhelming blast of boiling wind. His ears were filled with a stupendous roaring. Smoke belched out of the woods.

Then he saw the fire, the vanguard of the fire. It was sucking greedily away at the trees at the margin of the summit.

It had reached them at last.

They began to run toward the house. Fear revived their glands and sent hot secretions into their blood which electrified their muscles and gave them new strength.

On the terrace they halted by silent consent and stared wildly back.

The whole cut circle of the timber’s edge had burst into flame. The crackling roar, the searing heat, sent them reeling into the house after a moment, away from that terrifying arc of pure fire which the wind was bending slowly inward in a solid sheet fifty feet high. Through the French windows of the front rooms they stared in speechless panic at the hellish world outside. The wind was rising, still rising. The sheet of flame bent lower, tenaciously. Millions of riven sparks drove upon the house. The trench, their pitiful trench … would it hold?

Smith shouted: “All for nothing. All that work. Trench … Hell, it’s
funny
!” and he began to shriek with hysterical laughter. “Trench,” he gasped, “trench,” and the creases of his belly swelled over his belt as he bent double, tears streaming down his dirty cheeks.

“Stop it, you ass,” said Ellery hoarsely. “Stop—” and in the midst of the sentence he broke off with a cry and darted out onto the terrace again.

The Inspector screamed:
“Ellery!”

His lean figure scrambled over the rail and he began to run. Above him, before him, loomed a wall of flame. It seemed as if he meant to throw himself into the fire. His half-naked body twisted and turned as he dodged among the rocks. Then he stooped, wavered, picked something up, and came stumbling back.

His torso was dull red with the heat and his face was black. “Food,” he panted. “Mustn’t forget the sack of food.” His eyes blazed. “Well, what are you idiots waiting for? The trench is a fizzle! And that damned wind—”

They crouched before the wind, moaning with it.

“No time for anything but to get under cover,” croaked Ellery. “The house is burning in a hundred places already and we couldn’t stop it now with a brigade. A few pails of water over the gables …” He laughed himself, a demon dancing against a backdrop of fire. “The cellar—where’s the cellar, for God’s sake? Doesn’t anyone know where the cellar is? Lord, what unmitigated idiots! Talk, will you, somebody?”

“The cellar,” they chanted obediently, fixing glassy eyes on his face. They were a company of half-naked dead, dirty white Zombies in a purgatory of their own. “The cellar.”

“Behind the stairs,” gurgled Mrs. Xavier; her gown was torn away from one shoulder and her hands were bruised and blackened. “Oh, hurry, hurry.”

And then they were tumbling down the hall. Mrs. Xavier made for a thick solid door set beneath the rising stairs which led to the upper floors. They jostled one another in their frantic efforts to get through the doorway.

“Dad,” said Ellery quietly. “Come on.”

The Inspector started, wiped his white lips with a shaking hand, and followed. Ellery stumbled to the kitchen through a hall cloudy with bitter smoke; he dug madly in the closets, tossing things about. He found pans, pots, kettles. “Fill ’em up from the tap,” he directed, between hacking coughs. “Hurry. We’ll need water. Lots of it. No telling how long we’ll be. …”

They struggled down the hall with their slopping burdens. At the cellar door Ellery shouted: “Holmes! Smith! Get this water down!” and without waiting they staggered back to the kitchen for more.

They made six trips, filling all the large containers they could find—tin buckets, an empty butter tub, wash basins, an old boiler and other objects as variegated and nondescript. And then, at last, Ellery stood at the top of the stairs as the Inspector tottered down into the cool cement chamber, as gloomy and dark and vast as a mountain cavern.

“Is the bag of food down there, somebody?” he croaked before he closed the thick door.

“I’ve got it, Queen,” called up Dr. Holmes.

Ellery slammed the door shut. “One of you women give me some cloth—anything.”

Ann Forrest struggled to her feet. Beside Ellery in the darkness she ripped off her dress.

“I don’t suppose I’ll—need it much longer, Mr. Queen,” she said, and her voice trembled even as she laughed.

“Ann!” cried Dr. Holmes. “Don’t! There’s the material of the bag—”

“Too late,” she said, almost gaily; but her lips quivered. “Good girl,” muttered Ellery. He grabbed the dress and began to tear it into strips. The scraps he stuffed at the bottom of the door. When he rose, he put his arm about the girl’s white shoulders and together they descended to the cement floor below.

Dr. Holmes was waiting with a filthy old khaki coat which reeked of dampness. “Dug it up here. One of Bones’s winter coats,” he said hoarsely. “Ann—I’m sorry. …”

The tall girl shivered and draped the coat about her shoulders.

Ellery and Dr. Holmes bent over the sack which had been dropped by the airman and ripped it open. Protected by thick padding were bundles of medicine bottles—antiseptics, quinine, aspirin, salves, morphine; and hypodermics, adhesive tape, absorbent cotton, bandage. There were other bundles, too—sandwiches, a whole ham, loaves of bread, jars of jam, bars of chocolate, thermos bottles of hot coffee …

The two men doled out the food and for some time there was no sound but that of champing jaws and long gulps. The thermos bottles passed around from hand to hand. They ate slowly, savoring each mouthful. In each mind was the same thought: that this might be their last earthly dinner. … Finally they could eat no more, and Ellery gathered the remains of the meal carefully and stowed them in the sack again. Dr. Holmes, his naked torso criss-crossed by welts and scratches, went among them quietly with the antiseptics, cleaning their wounds, taping, bandaging. …

Then there was no more to be done, and he sank upon an old egg crate and buried his face in his hands.

They sat about on old packing-cases, in the coal bin, on the stone floor. A single bulb shed weak yellow light above them. Faintly they could hear the dull roar of the fire outside. It seemed nearer, much nearer.

Once they were startled by a series of booming explosions.

“The gasoline in the garage,” muttered the Inspector. “There go the cars.”

No one replied.

And once Bones rose and disappeared in the darkness. When he returned he rasped: “Cellar windows. I’ve stuffed ’em full of old metal things and flat stones.”

No one replied.

And so they sat, drooping and hopeless, too exhausted to weep or sigh or stir, staring dully at the floor … waiting for the end.

H
OURS PASSED, HOW MANY
they neither knew nor cared. In that vast dim cavern there was no night or day. The puny illumination of the feeble bulb was their sun and moon. They sat like stones and except for their uneven breathing they might have been already dead.

For Ellery it was a queer vertiginous experience. His thoughts veered from death to life, from barely glimpsed vistas of remembered fact to flitting phantoms of his aroused fancy. Pieces of the puzzle returned to annoy him. They persisted in invading his brain cells and storming his consciousness. At the same time he chuckled mirthlessly to himself at the instability and inconsistency of the human mind, which stubbornly wrestled with problems of comparative unimportance while the big things were ignored or at best evaded. What did one murderer more or less matter to a man facing his own extinction? It was illogical, infantile. He should be occupied with making his private peace with his private gods; instead he worried about trivialities.

Finally, too weak to resist, he sighed and gave himself over wholly to thoughts of the case. The others about him receded; he closed his eyes and brooded with a weary return of his old concentrative energy.

When he opened them again after the passage of an eternity, nothing had changed. The twins still crouched at the feet of their mother. Mrs. Xavier still sat upright on a packing case, her head resting against the rough cement wall, eyes closed. Dr. Holmes and Miss Forrest still sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder, unmoving. Smith still squatted on an old box, head bowed and naked arms dangling between his Falstaffian thighs. Mrs. Wheary still lay in a heap on the coal pile, her arm flung over her eyes; and Bones still sat cross-legged beside her, as unblinking as a graven image.

Ellery shivered and stretched his arms. The Inspector, seated on a box beside him, stirred.

“Well?” mumbled the old man.

Ellery shook his head, struggled to his feet, and stumbled up the cellar stairs. They moved then and regarded him dully.

He sat down on the top step and pulled out a little of the stuffing in the crevice below the door. A puff of thick smoke made him blink and cough. He replaced the stuffing hastily and weaved his way downstairs again.

They were listening, listening to the hissing roar of the flames. It came from directly overhead now.

Mrs. Carreau was crying. The twins stirred uneasily and tightened their grip on her hands.

“Isn’t the air—getting worse?” asked Mrs. Xavier thickly.

They sniffed. It was.

Ellery squared his shoulders. “Look here,” he croaked. They looked. “We’re on the verge of a particularly unpleasant death. I don’t know what the human animal is supposed to do, how he’s supposed to act in a crisis like this, when the last hope is gone, but I know this: I for one refuse to sit still like a gagged sacrifice and pass out in silence.” He paused. “We haven’t long, you know.”

“Aw, shut up,” snarled Smith. “We’ve had enough of your damn gab.”

“I’m afraid not. You’re the type, old friend, who loses his head at the last moment and goes about bashing his brains out against the nearest wall. I’ll thank you to remember that you’ve a certain amount of sheer pride to live up to.” Smith blinked and lowered his eyes. “As a matter of fact,” continued Ellery, coughing, “now that you’ve chosen to engage in conversation, there’s a little mystery connected with your obese majesty I very earnestly desire to clear up.”

“Me?” mumbled Smith.

“Yes, yes. We’re in the last confessional, you see, and I should think you wouldn’t want to meet your slightly astigmatic Maker before making a clean breast of things.”

“Confessing what?” snapped the fat man, bridling.

Ellery eyed the others cautiously. They were sitting up now, listening and for the moment interested. “Confessing that you’re a damned blackguard.”

Smith struggled to his feet, clenching his fists. “Why, you—”

Ellery strode over to him and, placing his hand on the man’s fleshy chest, pushed. Smith collapsed with a crash on his box. “Well?” said Ellery, standing over him. “And are we to fight like wild beasts at the last, too, Smith, old chap?”

The fat man licked his lips. Then he jerked his head up and cried defiantly: “Well, and why not? We’ll all be roast meat in a little while anyway. Sure I blackmailed her.” His lips sneered. “Fat lot of good it’ll do you now, you damn meddling noseybody!”

Mrs. Carreau had stopped crying. She sat up straighter and said quietly: “He’s been blackmailing me for sixteen years.”

“Marie—don’t,” begged Miss Forrest.

She waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter now, Ann. I—”

“He knew the secret of your sons, didn’t he?” murmured Ellery.

She gasped. “How did you know?”

“That doesn’t matter now, either,” he said a little bitterly.

“He was one of the physicians in attendance at their—their birth. …”

“You dirty fat hog,” growled the Inspector with a flicker of anger in his eyes. “I’d like to smash your fat face in—”

Smith cursed weakly.

“Discredited, thrown out of his profession since,” said Miss Forrest savagely. “Malpractice. Of course! He came up here, trailed us to Dr. Xavier’s, managed to see Mrs. Carreau alone—”

“Yes, yes,” sighed Ellery. “We know all the rest.” He looked up at the door above their heads. There was only one course, he knew; he must keep them interested, boiling, frightened—anything so long as they did not think of that blazing horror roaring over their heads. “I’d like to tell you a—story,” he said.

“Story?” muttered Dr. Holmes.

“The story of the most remarkable case of stupid deception I have ever encountered.” Ellery sat down on the first step; he coughed a little and his bloodshot eyes flickered. “Before I tell my little tale, isn’t there someone here who, like Smith, has a confession to make?”

There was silence. He searched their faces slowly, one by one.

“Stubborn to the last, I see. Well, then, I’ll dedicate my last—the next few moments to the job.” He massaged his bare neck and looked up at the little bulb, “I say stupid deception. The reason I say it is that the whole thing was as incredible and fantastic a plot as was ever conceived and perpetrated by an unbalanced mind. Under ordinary circumstances it shouldn’t have fooled me for an instant. As it was, it took me some time to realize how utterly far-fetched it was.”

“What was?” said Mrs. Xavier harshly.

“The ‘clues’ left in the dead hands of your husband and your brother-in-law, Mrs. Xavier,” murmured Ellery. “After a while I came to see that they were impossible. They were much too subtle to have emanated from the thoughts of dying men. Too subtle and too complicated. Their very subtlety is what made their use by the murderer stupid. They flew in the face of the normal. As a matter of fact, if not for the fortuitous appearance of myself upon the scene in all probability their intended meaning would never have been penetrated. I say this not in a spirit of egotism, but because in a way my own mind is as warped as the mind of the murderer. I have the tortuous mind. And so, fortunately, has the murderer.” He paused and sighed. “As I say, then, after a while I suspected the validity of the clues, and after another while—here, thinking—I discarded them. And in a flash I saw the whole dismal thing, the whole dismal and clever and stupid and astounding thing.”