“Who’s the other one?”
“Get him, too!”
Ellery found himself, absurdly, fighting for his life with a group of blood-maddened savages who were dressed like ordinary people.
As he struck back, he was thinking: This is what comes of meddling. Get out of this town. It’s no good.
Using his elbows, his feet, the heels of his hands, and occasionally a fist, he maneuvered the screeching crowd with him toward the bank building.
“Hit back, Jim!” he shouted. ”Defend yourself!”
But Jim’s hands remained at his sides. One sleeve of his overcoat had disappeared. A rivulet of blood coursed down a cheek. He let himself be pushed, poked, punched, scratched, kicked.
Then a one-woman Panzer division struck the crowd from the direction of the curb. Ellery grinned painfully over a swollen lip. Hatless, white-mittened, fighting mad.
“You cannibals! Let ‘em alone!” Pat screamed.
“Ouch!”
“Serves you right, Hosy Malloy! And you?Mrs. Landsman! Aren’t you ashamed? And you drunken old witch, you?Yes, I mean you, Julie Asturio! Stop it!
“Attaboy, Patsy!” shouted a man from the edge of the crowd. ”Break it up, folks?come on, that’s no way to carry on!”
Pat burst through to the struggling men. At the same moment Buzz Congress, the bank “special,” ran out and hit the crowd with himself. Since Buzz weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds, it was a considerable blow; people squawked and scattered, and between them Ellery and Pat got Jim into the bank.
Old John F. ran by them and breasted the crowd, his gray hair whipping in the wind.
“Go home, you lunatics!” roared John F. ”Or I’ll sail into you myself!”
Someone laughed, someone groaned, and then, with a sort of outgoing-tidal shame, the mob ebbed away. Ellery, helping Pat with Jim, saw through the glass doors, at the curb, the big silent figure of Frank Lloyd.
There was a bitter twist to the newspaper publisher’s mouth. When he saw Ellery watching him, he grinned without mirth, as if to say: “Remember what I told you about this town?” and lumbered off across the Square.
* * *
Pat and Ellery drove Jim back to the little house on the Hill. They found Dr. Willoughby waiting for them?John F. had phoned him from the bank.
“Some nasty scratches,” said Dr. Willoughby, “a few ugly bruises, and that’s a deep scalp wound; but he’ll be all right.”
“How about Mr. Smith, Uncle Milo?” asked Pat anxiously. ”He looks like a fugitive from a meat grinder, too!”
“Now, now, I’m perfectly fine,” protested Ellery.
But Dr. Willoughby fixed up Ellery, too.
When the doctor had gone, Ellery undressed Jim, and Pat helped get him into bed. He immediately turned over on his side, resting his bandaged head on a limp hand, and closed his eyes.
They watched him for a moment and then tiptoed from the room.
“He didn’t say a word,” moaned Pat. ”Not one word. All through the whole thing . . . He’s like that man out of the Bible!”
“Job,” said Ellery soberly. ”The silent, suffering Aramean. Well, your Aramean had better stay away from town from now on!”
After that day, Jim stopped going to the bank.
Chapter 17
America Discovers Wrightsville
The activities of Mr. Ellery Queen during the trying month between January and February were circumambient. For, no matter in how straight a line he started, he invariably finished by finding himself back in the same place . . . and, moreover, with the realization that Chief Dakin and Prosecutor Bradford had been there before him. Quietly, quietly.
Ellery did not tell Pat what a web was being woven in those secret investigations of the law. There was no point in making her feel worse than she felt already.
Then there was the Press.
Apparently one of Frank Lloyd’s vitriolic editorials had splashed heavily enough to deposit a drop in Chicago; for early in January, and shortly after Rosemary Haight’s funeral, a smartly dressed woman with a thirty-eight waistline, silver-sprayed hair, and tired eyes got off the afternoon express and had Ed Hotchkiss drive her directly to 460 Hill Drive.
The next day the readers of two hundred and fifty-nine large newspapers in the United States learned that good old Roberta was in there once again battling for love.
The leading paragraph of
Today in a small American city named Wrightsville there is being enacted a fantastic romantic tragedy, with a Man and a Woman the tragic protagonists and a whole community playing the role of villain.
That was enough for the others. Roberta had her nose in something yum-yummy. Editors began to call for back numbers of the
Frank Lloyd was cooperative, and the first stories that trickled back over the wires put the name of James Haight on the front page of every newspaper in America.
The out-of-town newspapermen and-women swarmed over the town, interviewing and writing and drinking straight bourbon at Vic Carlatti’s
During the day they lolled about the County Courthouse spitting on Janitor Hernaberry’s spotless lobby tiles, trailing Chief Dakin and Prosecutor Bradford for stories and photographs, and generally showing no decent respect for the opinions of mankind (although they wired same faithfully to their editors).
Most of them stayed at the Hollis, commandeering cots when they could find no legitimate accommodations. Manager Brooks complained that they were turning his lobby into a “slophouse.”
Later, during sessions of the trial, they spent their nights either on Route 16 or at the Bijou Theater on Lower Main, where they ganged up on young Louie Cahan, the manager, cracking Indian nuts all over the theater and catcalling whenever the hero made love to the heroine. On Grab Bag Night one of the reporters won a set of dishes (donated by A. A. Gilboon, House Furnishings, Long-Term Payments) and “accidentally on purpose,” as everyone said indignantly, dropped all sixty pieces on the stage while the rest of them whistled, howled, and stamped their feet. Louie was good and sore, but what could he do?
Bitter speeches about “those newspaper tramps” and “self-constituted privileged characters” were delivered to good effect at a special meeting of the Country Club Board by Donald Mackenzie, President of the Wrightsville Personal Finance Corporation (PFC Solves Your Unpaid-Bills Problem!), and Dr. Emil Poffenberger, Dental Surgeon, 132 Upham Block, High Village.
Yet there was something infectious in their cynical high spirits, and Mr. Ellery Queen was saddened to observe how Wrightsville gradually took on an air of County Fair. New and shiny stock began to appear in the shopwindows; prices for food and lodging went up; farmers who had never before come into town on week-nights began to parade the Square and Lower Main with their square-toed, staring families; and it became impossible to find parking space within a radius of six blocks of the Square. Chief Dakin had to swear in five new policemen to help direct traffic and keep the peace.
The unwilling author of all this prosperity barricaded himself at 460 Hill Drive and refused to see anyone but the Wrights, Ellery, and later Roberta Roberts. To the remainder of the press Jim was adamant.
