“If I could do that, I could do anything,” he mumbled excitedly. “God knows what I’ve done those other times. I’ve got no right running around loose!”

  “Howard.” Ellery dropped into the armchair by the bed. “You harmed nobody.”

  “But why? Why did I desecrate their graves?”

  “The shock of learning who you are, after a lifetime of dreading the moment of discovery, sent you off again. In the amnesic state you expressed the deep resentment and fear and hatred you’ve apparently always felt toward the parents who rejected you…I’m speaking psychologically, of course.”

  “I’m not aware of any hatred!”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m not aware of ever having felt any!”

  “Not consciously.”

  Howard had paused in the doorway to the adjoining studio. Now he stared into the gloomy room for several seconds. Then he strode through and into the studio and Ellery heard him moving about. The sounds stopped and the lights came on.

  “Ellery, come in here.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to get something on your feet?” Ellery struggled out of the armchair.

  “The hell with my feet! Come in here!”

  Howard was standing beside a modeling stand. A plasticine figure of a little bearded Jupiter occupied the stand.

  Ellery said curiously: “What’s up?”

  “I told you I pottered around in here last night after I came up from the study. This is one of the things I did.”

  “The Jupiter?”

  “No, no. I mean this.” Howard pointed to the base of the model. In the plasticine a sharp tool had scratched:

  H. H. WAYE

  “You remember doing that?”

  “Certainly! I even remember why.” Howard laughed stridently. “I wanted to see what my real name looked liked. I’ve always signed my work H. H. Van Horn. I had to use the H. H.—they didn’t give me a first or middle name. But Waye was mine. And do you know?”

  “What, Howard?”

  “I liked it.”

  “You liked it?”

  “I liked it. I still do. Downstairs, when father first told me, it didn’t mean anything. But later, when I came up…it sort of grew on me. Look.” Howard ran over to the wall, indicated a series of sketches pinned on a board. “I liked it so much I signed H. H. Waye to every sketch I’ve made for the Museum project so far. I’d damned near made up my mind to make it my professional signature. Ellery, would I have liked it so much if I hated them?”

  “Consciously? It’s quite possible. To conceal your hatred from yourself, Howard.”

  “I fall in love with my parents’ name and then I black out and drive ten miles in a rainstorm to spit on their graves?” Howard dropped into a chair, looking gray. “Then it gets down to this,” he said slowly. “When I’m in a normal state, I’m one thing. But when I black out I become another. Consciously I’m a pretty good guy. In amnesia I’m some sort of maniac, or devil. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!”

  “You’re dramatizing again.”

  “Am I? To hack your parents’ gravestone to pieces is hardly a ‘reasonable’ act! It’s vile. You know perfectly well that no matter how much cultures may differ, they meet on the common ground of respect for parents. Whether it’s called ancestor worship or honoring your father and your mother!”

  “Howard, you’d better go to bed.”

  “If I’d defile my parents’ graves, why wouldn’t I commit murder? Rape? Arson?”

  “Howard, you’re running off at the mouth. Go to bed.”

  But Howard had Ellery’s hand in a convulsive grip. “Help me. Watch me. Don’t leave me.”

  His eyes were terrified.

  He’s transferred his attachment from Diedrich to me. I’m his father now.

  Somehow, Ellery got Howard to bed. He remained by the bedside until Howard fell into an exhausted sleep.

  Then he trudged downstairs and out of the house and spent a ghastly hour in the garage removing the mud from the convertible and the roadster.

  Sunday morning was peering through the cottage windows as Ellery fell into bed.

  The Seventh Day

  AND HE RESTED ON the seventh day from all the work he had not made, specifically his novel; and he tried not to think of a certain publisher, and of how same would brandish a contract, displeased. But labor he had in the cause of letters, if not precisely the letters demanded by his bondage; and he basked in the surcease thereof, delinquently.

  There was Church.

  Of how pertinent this was to become Ellery had no inkling; sufficient unto the day was Reverend Chichering of St. Paul’s-in-the-Dingle, whose voice rolled as the prophet’s—a modified thunder, to be sure, since this was High Church; but the spirit was Jeremiah’s judging and exhorting and complaining: “My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me;” which was audible to the last pew; “I cannot hold my peace, O my soul…The whole land shall be desolate…Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers,” at which Howard all but disappeared and Wolfert grinned and Sally shut her eyes while Diedrich sat quietly grim. At the peroration of his sermon, however, Reverend Chichering without warning abandoned Jeremiah to enter Luke—VI, 38—for a new text: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again,” for it shortly appeared that a certain vestryman had donated a new sanctuary for the chancel, the rector having used the present sanctuary hardly; and it further appeared that this outgiven servant of the Lord bore a well-known name—“I say well-known,” Father Chichering thundered musically, “not in the temporal sense, although it is that also, but in the eyes of Our Father, for this Godfearing Christian soul has performed his good works not by laying up for himself treasures upon earth…or rather, he has laid up for himself treasures upon earth, but how else could he have done what he has done, which is to lay up for himself treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount? And I think the good Lord will forgive me if I sound a trumpet and tell you that our beneficent brother in Christ is Diedrich Van Horn!”—at which the congregation hummed, craning and beaming at the servant of the Lord as he shrank deeper into the Van Horn pew and glared at his rector with no humility whatsoever. However, this incident served to disperse the gloom cast by the rector’s preceding jeremiad; the closing hymn was roared; and the service ended with everyone feeling mightily spiritual.

  Even Ellery left St. Paul’s-in-the-Dingle exalted.

  The rest of the day was given over to good works also, such as roast turkey with chestnut-and-giblet stuffing à la Laura, candied yams, lemon sherbet soufflé, and so forth; postprandially, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, which left Sally solemn and Diedrich excited. Howard had bought a new recording of it weeks before and Ellery thought it clever of him to have saved its first performance for today when each, for his secret reason, had need of soul-searching. And then a social evening in the finest Wrightsville tradition—laughing ladies and gracious gentlemen who had mastered the cliché and occasionally even said something interesting, and none of whom Ellery had ever met before, for which he was—obscurely—grateful.

  The day even ended agreeably. Sunday evenings are early evenings in Wrightsville. Everyone was gone by eleven-thirty, and Ellery was in bed by midnight.

  He lay in the dark thinking how beautiful everyone had behaved all day, even Howard, even Wolfert; how much duplicity there is in humankind, and how necessary for tolerable existence so much of it is; and finally he prayed the Lord his soul not to take until he had finished the damned novel, which he now sternly commanded himself to sail into with unswervable purpose the very first thing in the morning; and then he was diving into Quetonokis Lake in an old bathrobe trying to reach four furry letters gleaming on the loamy bottom at the foot of a pale nude sculpture of Sally, who, reasonably enough, had Diedrich’s face.

  The typewriter was spitting out hot good words at a furious clip at 10:51 Monday morning when the cottage door burst open and Ellery, jumping a foot, whirled to see Sally and Howard huddled in the doorway.

  “He called again.”

  At once Sunday was as if it had never been and this was Saturday again, at the Hollis Hotel.

  Nevertheless, he asked: “Who called again, Sally?”

  “The blackmailer.”

  “The damned porker,” said Howard thickly. “The swilling greedy swine.”

  “The call came just now?”

  Sally was shaking. “Yes. I couldn’t believe my ears. I thought it was all over.”

  “The same whispery, sexless voice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what he said.”

  “Laura answered the phone. He asked for Mrs. Van Horn. I got on and he said, ‘Thanks for the money. Now there’s the second installment due.’ I didn’t understand at first. I said, ‘Didn’t you get all of it?’ and he answered, ‘I got twenty-five thousand. Now I want more.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? I got back what you sold me—’ (I didn’t want to say letters’ because Laura or Eileen might have been listening) ‘—they’re gone,’ I said. ‘Destroyed.’ He said, ‘I have copies.’ ”

  “Copies,” Howard snarled. “What can he do with copies? I’d have told him where to go, Sal!”

  “Ever hear of photostatic copies, Howard?” asked Ellery.

  Howard looked stunned.

  “ ‘I have copies,’ he said,” Sally continued in a breathless voice, “ ‘and they’re just as good as the originals. Now I’m putting the copies up for sale.’ ”

  “Yes?”

  “I said I had no more money. I said a lot of things. Or tried to. But he wouldn’t listen.”

  “How much does he ask for this time, Sally?” Ellery wished people would avoid having to look frightened afterward simply by taking good advice beforehand.

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars. Again!”

  “Another twenty-five!” roared Howard. “Where the devil are we going to get another twenty-five? Does he think we’re made of money?”

  “Shut up, Howard. Sally, let’s have the rest of it.”

  “He said to leave twenty-five thousand dollars in the Wrightsville railroad station waiting room, in one of those self-service parcel lockers they just installed.”

  “Which locker?”

  “Number 10. He said the key would be in the first mail this morning, and it was. I just ran down to the road for it.”

  “Addressed to you, Sally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you handled the key?”

  “Why, I took it out of the envelope, looked it over. Howard did, too. Shouldn’t we have?”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter. This bird’s too cagey to leave his fingerprints around. Did you save the envelope?”

  “I did!” Howard looked around furtively before he took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Ellery.

  It was a cheap slick envelope, perfectly plain—standard stock of the stationery counters of every five-and-dime in America. The address was typewritten. There was nothing on the flap. Ellery tucked the envelope away without comment.

  “And, and here’s the key,” said Sally.

  Ellery looked at her.

  She flushed.

  “He said it’s to be put on top of the tier of lockers, above 10. To push it back out of sight, against the wall.” She still offered the key.

  Ellery did not take it.

  After a moment, timidly, she placed it on the desk before him.

  “Did he put any time limit on this second payment?” asked Ellery, as if nothing had happened.

  She was looking blindly out at Wrightsville through the picture window. “The money must be in the locker at the station by five o’clock this afternoon or he said he’d send the evidence to Diedrich tonight. To Diedrich’s office, he said. Where I couldn’t intercept it.”

  “Five o’clock. That means he intends to pick it up during the rush hour, when the station’s jammed,” ruminated Ellery. “The Slocum, Bannock, and Connhaven traffic…He rather rushes things, doesn’t he?”

  “You’d think he’d give a person a chance,” said Sally.

  “What did you expect from a blackmailer—sportsmanship?”

  “I know. You warned us.” Sally was still not looking at him.

  “I’m not rubbing it in, Sally. I simply want to indicate the probabilities for the future.”

  “Future!” Howard loomed. Ellery tipped back in the chair and looked up at him curiously. “What future? What are you talking about?”

  Now Sally was looking at him.

  “You don’t think he’s through, do you?”

  “But—!”

  “Sally, he didn’t say anything about giving you the photostats, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Even if he had. He could have made ten photostatic sets of the four letters. Or a hundred. Or a thousand.”

  The woman and the man looked at each other, dumbly.

  It was not pretty and Ellery swiveled to the sky. He felt sorry suddenly for both of them. So sorry he forgave them their stupidities and foibles and contemplated a few of his own. As it turned out, he would have been better advised to remain objective, unforgiving, and cynical; but Ellery is a hopeless sentimentalist when his emotions are involved, and they were young and in a mess.

  He swiveled back. Sally was curled up in the big chair in a fetal position, her hands hiding her face; Howard was pouring himself a drink with an expression of sheer concentration.

  “This is just the beginning,” Ellery told them gently. “He’ll demand more. And more. And, again, more. He’ll take what you have, he’ll take what you can steal, and in the end he’ll sell the evidence to Diedrich. Don’t pay. Go to Diedrich this morning, together. And tell him. Everything.

  “Could you do that, both of you? Or one of you?”

  Sally burrowed deeper into her hands. Howard stared into the glass of Scotch.

  Ellery sighed.

  “I know, it’s like contemplating a firing squad. But it’s much worse than the actuality. One blast—”

  “You think I’m afraid.” Sally had dropped her hands; she had been crying; but she was angry now, angry as she had been angry Saturday night, although this morning for a different reason. “I tell you it’s Dieds I’m thinking of. He’d die.” She sprang from the chair. “I don’t care about myself any more,” she said in a passionate undertone. “All I want is to forget all this. Start over again. Make it up to him. I can, too. If it became necessary, I’d see that Howard went away. I’d be ruthless, Ellery—you don’t know how ruthless I could be. But I’ve got to have that chance.” She turned away. “Maybe,” she said in a muffled voice, “he’ll let a long time go by till the next time. If there is a next time…”

  “This envelope, Sally,” Ellery tapped his pocket, “went through the Wrightsville post office stamping machine at 5:30 P.M. Saturday. Only a couple of hours after I’d paid him the first twenty-five thousand. That means he must have mailed it immediately after picking up the envelope in Upham House. Does that look as if hell let ‘a long time go by’ before he makes his third demand?”

  “Maybe he’ll stop altogether,” Sally flared. “Maybe when he realizes there isn’t any more, he’ll stop. Maybe he’ll…maybe he’ll die in the meantime!”

  Ellery said: “And you, Howard?”

  “He mustn’t find out.” Howard tossed off the Scotch.

  “Then you’ll pay.”

  “Yes!”

  Sally said: “We must.”

  Ellery laced his fingers across his stomach and asked: “With what?”

  Howard threw the whisky glass into the fireplace with all his strength. It broke against the firebrick in a splash, like a spray of diamonds.

  “Like diamonds,” muttered Howard. “I wish they were.”

  “Sally.” Ellery sat forward, alarmed. “What is it?”

  Sally said, in the queerest way: “I’ll be right back.”

  In the gardens, she began to run. They watched her run around the pool and across the terrace and into the house.

  Howard shook his head. “Nothing seems to connect this morning,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry about the glass, Ellery. Boyish, aren’t I?” He took another glass and poured another drink. “Here’s to crime.”

  Ellery watched him toss it off.

  Howard turned blindly away.

  Three minutes later Sally appeared on the terrace. Her hand was rammed into the right pocket of her suit jacket. She crossed the terrace and the gardens sedately. But on the cottage porch she hurried, and when she came in she slammed the door.

  Howard gawped at her.

  She held out her right hand to him.

  Dangling from it was a diamond necklace.

  “I took it out of the safe.”

  “Your necklace, Sally?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “But you can’t give up your necklace!”

  “I’m sure twenty-five thousand can be raised on this. It must have cost Dieds a hundred.” She turned to Ellery. “Would you like to see it?”

  “It’s magnificent, Sally.” Ellery made no move to take it.

  “Yes, so beautiful.” Her voice was steady. “Dieds gave it to me on our last anniversary.”

  “No,” said Howard. “No, it’s too risky.”

  “Howard.”

  “It’s bound to be missed, Sal. How would you explain to Father?”

  “You took a risk to raise the first twenty-five thousand.”

  “Why, no, I…”

  “Wherever you got it, there’s some record of it. A note, or something. Of course you took a risk. Now it’s my turn. Howard—take it.”

  Howard flushed.

  But he took it.

  The sun streaming in through the picture window caught its facets and tossed them about. His hand seemed on fire.

  “But…it’s got to be turned into cash,” Howard muttered. “I…wouldn’t know how to go about it.”

  Howard the ineffectual. Howard the dependent.

  “You know,” remarked Ellery from the swivel chair, “this is sheer imbecility.”