The eyes are no longer on the sides of the head but have approached each other. Tiny slits mark the ears and nostrils, a larger slit marks the mouth. The forehead has grotvn massive. The upper limbs show fingers, wrists, forearms. The internal reproductive organs can now be distinguished as to sex.
Fourth Month APRIL, 1967
During this period the abdomen develops with notable rapidity, reducing the disproportion between the head and the rest of the fetus.
Hair emerges on the head.
The mother begins to feel the stir of her little parasite.
Fifth Month MAY, 1967
The halfway stage of the pregnancy finds the lower portion of the fetus’s abdomen enlarging proportionately, and the legs beginning to catch up.
The mother is note very much aware of what she is bearing. Its arms and legs are in frequent vigorous motion in her body.
Ellery had had his study done over in driftwood paneling, a choice that had seemed inspired at the time. The pitted and irregularly furrowed surface looked as if it had been clawed by the tides of years, and it was artistically stained a salty sea-foam gray. Contemplating it, he could feel the rise and fall of his floor and little imaginary stings on his cheeks. With the air conditioner set to maximum, it was very hard to keep reminding himself that he was not on the deck of a pleasure craft plowing up the Sound.
This proved a serious deterrent to the requirements of reality. The conversion of his workaday walls had altered his environment to the critical point, turning a functional study in an ordinary Manhattan apartment into a playful distraction. Ellery had always held that, for the most efficient use of time and the maintenance of a schedule, a writer required above all things a working atmosphere of familiar discomfort. One should never change so much as the Model T pencil sharpener on the windowsill. The very grime around the ratholes was an encouragement to labor. In the ancient metaphor, the creative flame burned brightest in dark and dusty garrets; and so forth.
Why had he excommunicated the dear old dirty wallpaper that had seen him devotedly through so many completed manuscripts?
He was glaring at the four and a half sentences in his typewriter and making beseeching motions with his hands when his father looked in, said, “Still working?” in a tired voice, and retreated from the sight of that anguished tableau.
Five minutes later, somewhat refreshed and bearing a frosty, green-tinged cocktail, the old man reappeared. Ellery was now smiting himself softly on the temple.
Inspector Queen sank onto Ellery’s sofa, taking a thirsty swallow on the way down. “Why keep beating your brains in?” he demanded. “Knock it off, son. You’ve got less on that page than when I left for downtown this morning.”
“What?” Ellery said, not looking up.
“Call it a day.”
Ellery looked up. “Never. Can’t. Way behind.”
“You’ll make it up.”
He burped a hollow laugh. ‘Dad, I’m trying to work. Mind?”
The Inspector settled himself and held up his cocktail. “How about I make you one of these?”
“What?”
“I said,” the Inspector said patiently, “would you like a Tipperary? It’s a Doc Prouty special.”
“What’s in it?” Ellery asked, making a micrometric adjustment of the sheet in his machine, which was already adjusted to a hundredth of an inch. “I’ve sampled Doc Prouty specials before, and they all taste the way his lab smells. What’s the green stuff?”
“Chartreuse. Mixed with Irish whiskey and sweet vermouth.”
“No creme de menthe? God keep us all from professional Irishmen! If you’re bent on barkeeping, dad, make mine a Johnnie on the rocks.”
His father fetched the Scotch. Ellery surrounded half of it with sedate gratitude, set the glass daintily down beside his typewriter, and flexed his fingers. The old man sat back on the sofa, knees touching like a vicar’s on duty call, sipping his Tipperary and watching. Just as the poised filial fingers were about to descend on the keys, the paterfamilias said, “Yes, sir. Hell of a day.”
The son slowly lowered his hands. He sat back. He reached for his glass. “All right,” he said. “I’m listening.”
“No, no, I just happened to think out loud, son. It’s not important. I mean, sorry I interrupted.”
“So am I, but the fact, as de Gaulle would say in translation, is accomplished. I couldn’t compose a printable line now if I were on my deathbed.”
“I said I was sorry,” the Inspector said in a huff. “I see I’d better get out of here.”
“Oh, sit down. You obviously invaded my domain with malice aforeceps, as a show biz lady of my acquaintance liked to say, in contravention of my rights under the. Fourth Amendment.” The old man sat back, rather be- wilderedly mollified. “By the way, how about not talking on an empty stomach? Dinner simmers on the hod. Mrs. Fabrikant left us one of her famous, or to put it more accurately, notorious Irish stews. Fabby had to leave early today-”
“I’m in no hurry to eat,” the Inspector said hurriedly.
“Done! I’ll run down to Sammy’s later for some hot kosher pastrami and Jewish rye and lots of half-sour pickles and stuff, and we can feed Fabby’s stew to the Delehantys’ setter, he’s Irish-”
“Fine, fine.”
“Therefore how about another round?” Ellery struggled to the vertical, revived a few moribund muscles and tendons, shook himself, and then came round the desk with his glass. He took his father’s empty from the slack fingers. “You still traveling that long way?”
“Long way?”
“To Tipperary. Proportions?”
“Three-quarters of an ounce each of Irish, sweet vermouth, and-”
“I know, green chartreuse.” He shuddered (the Inspector snapped, “Very funny!”) and dodged into the living room. When he returned, instead of reoccupying his desk chair Ellery dropped into the overstuffed chair facing the sofa.
“If it’s ambulatory help you need, dad, I can’t lift my duff. That damn deadline’s so close the back of my neck is recommending Listeriiie. But if you can use an armchair opinion… What’s this one about?”
“About a third of a half billion dollars,” Inspector Queen grunted. “And you don’t have to be so darn merry about it.”
“It’s frustrated-writer’s hysteria, dad. Did I hear you correctly?
“Right. With a huh.”
“For pity land’s sake. Who’s involved?”
“Importuna Industries. Know anything about the outfit?”
“Only that it’s a conglomerate of a whole slew of industries and companies, great and small, foreign and domestic, the entire
“Wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Owned by
