The sharp eye was blunted and grown-over; he glanced at Ellery, a peery sort of glance, and said, “I’ll be with you in a few minutes, sir,” and nodded to the other lady.

  The other lady rose, clutching a small something done up in a brown sack, and she went into the examining room and Dr. Willoughby shut the door.

  When she emerged, without the sack, Dr. Willoughby motioned to the farmer.

  When the farmer came out, Ellery stepped into the examining room.

  “You don’t remember me, Dr. Willoughby.”

  The old physician pushed his glasses up on his nose, peering.

  “Why, it’s Mr. Queen!”

  His hand was soft, and moist, and it shook.

  “I’d heard you were in town last year,” said Dr. Willoughby, pulling over a chair excitedly, “even before the newspapers broke that dreadful story. Why didn’t you look us up? Hermy Wright’s furious with you. I was insulted myself!”

  “I was in town only nine days, Doctor, and they were sort of busy days,” said Ellery with a feeble smile. “How’s Judge Eh? And Clarice?”

  “Getting old. We’re all getting old. But what are you doing here now? Oh, it doesn’t matter. Here, let me phone Hermione—”

  “Er, please, no,” said Ellery. “Thanks, Doctor, but I’m in town only for the day.”

  “Case?” The old man squinted at him.

  “Well, yes. Matter of fact,” Ellery laughed, “I’d probably have been ungracious enough not to call on you even today, Doctor, if I didn’t need some information.”

  “And probably lost your last chance to see me alive,” chuckled the doctor.

  “Why, what do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Old joke of mine.”

  “Have you been ill?”

  “Every time somebody asks me that,” said Dr. Willoughby, “I think of one of the aphorisms of Hippocrates. ‘Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them.’ It’s nothing important. Not enough work, that’s it! I’ve had to stop operating…” The sallow skin, stretched and mordant; the squeezed-looking tissues, shrunken, sapless; cancer? “What information, Mr. Queen?”

  “About a man who died in an accident in the summer of 1917. Man named Southbridge. Do you remember him?”

  “Southbridge,” frowned the doctor.

  “You’ve probably known more Wrightsvillians, living and dead, than anyone else in town, Doctor. Southbridge.”

  “There was a family named Sowbridge used to live in Slocum, ran a livery stable there around 1906—”

  “No, this man was named Southbridge, and he was a doctor.”

  “Medical doctor?” Dr. Willoughby looked surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “In general practice?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Dr. Southbridge…He couldn’t have practiced in Wrightsville, Mr. Queen. Or anywhere in the county, for that matter, or I’d have heard of him.”

  “My information is that he practiced in Wrightsville. Confinements and things.”

  “Somebody’s making a mistake.” The old man shook his head.

  Ellery said slowly, “Somebody’s made a mistake, Dr. Willoughby. May I use your telephone?”

  “Certainly.”

  Ellery called Police Headquarters.

  “Chief Dakin….Dakin? Ellery Queen…That’s right, back again…No, just for the day. How are you?”

  “Just dandy,” said Chief Dakin’s delighted voice. “Come right on over!”

  “Dakin, I can’t. Simply haven’t the time. Tell me, what do you know about a fellow named Burmer up in Connhaven?”

  “Burmer? Runs the detective agency?”

  “Yes. What’s his reputation, Dakin? Is he straight? Reliable?”

  “Well, now, I’ll tell you…”

  “Yes?”

  “Burmer’s the only private detective in the state I’d trust without a second thought. Known him for fourteen years, Mr. Queen. If you’re thinking of working on something with him, he’s absolutely A-one. His word’s his bond.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ellery hung up.

  “George Burmer’s a patient of mine,” said Dr. Willoughby. “Comes all the way from Connhaven for treatment. Hemorrhoids.”

  “Do you consider him trustworthy?”

  “I’d trust George with anything I have.”

  “I think,” said Ellery, rising, “I’ll be running along, Doctor.”

  “I’ll never forgive you for this short visit.”

  “I’ll never forgive myself. Doctor, take care of yourself.”

  “I’m being treated by the greatest Healer of all,” smiled Dr. Willoughby, shaking hands.

  Ellery walked very slowly up Washington Street toward the Square.

  Diedrich Van Horn had Med.

  Last September Diedrich Van Horn had told a long and involved story, and it had all been a lie.

  Incredible. But there it was.

  Why? Why invent nonexistent parents for a foster son he had reared in love from infancy?

  Wait.

  Perhaps Mattie and Aaron Waye were…Perhaps there was another explanation.

  Ellery climbed quickly into a taxi parked before the Hollis and cried: “Fidelity Cemetery.”

  3

  HE HAD THE DRIVER WAIT.

  He scaled the stone wall and made his way among the weed-choked graves swiftly. The sun was low.

  He found the adjacent graves after a little search; the low double headstone was almost hidden by the undergrowth.

  Ellery knelt, parting the weeds.

  AARON AND MATTIE WAYE

  There it was, cut into the soft, crumbly stone.

  AARON AND MATTIE WAYE

  He studied the names.

  Somehow, they looked different. But then the whole cemetery looked different. A year ago he had been here during and after a storm, at night. He had examined the headstone by the flame of a cigaret lighter which had flickered, and the legend had wavered and danced.

  He leaned forward.

  There was something wrong with one of the letters.

  That was the difference. It was not an illusion of poor light or a trick of memory at all.

  The final letter.

  The E of WAYE was cut differently from the other letters.

  It was not so deeply incised. It was less professionally hammered out. On close examination it revealed a clumsiness, an irregularity, not characteristic of the other lettering. The more he studied the final E, the more plainly its difference stood out. Even its outlines were sharper. In fact, they were considerably sharper.

  Because he was a perfectionist he plucked a long darnel from the grave and, stripping its awns, he used it as a rule to measure the distance from the left edge of the headstone to the A of AARON. Then, with his thumbnail marking the exact length on the weed, he applied his green rule to the right edge of the headstone.

  The distance from the E of WAYE to the right edge was less than the distance from the left edge to the A of AARON.

  Still unsatisfied, he set his thumb on the right edge of the headstone to determine where the other end of the darnel fell.

  It fell exactly on the Y of WAYE.

  Ellery struggled to avoid the conclusion. But the conclusion was unavoidable.

  The monument maker’s stonecutter had originally chiseled:

  AARON AND MATTIE WAY

  Another hand, much later, had added an E. This was the fact.

  Ellery dropped the weed and glanced about. He saw a cracked stone bench, with weeds growing up through it, nearby. He walked over to it and sat down and began chewing weeds.

  “Say Mister.”

  Ellery came to with a start. The cemetery was gone and he was sitting in a smother of darkness. Before him the darkness showed a yellow rent, conical and puzzling.

  He shivered, contracting himself under his coat.

  “Who is it?” he said. “I can’t see.”

  “I thought you forgot all about me,” said the man’s voice. “But you’re ponying up, Mister, you’re payin’. That clock’s been workin’ all this time. You told me to wait.”

  It was night, and he was still in Fidelity Cemetery, on the broken stone bench. And this was the taxi driver, with a flashlight.

  “Oh. Yes,” said Ellery. He got to his feet and stretched. His joints were stiff and they ached, but there was another ache inside him against which stretching was no remedy. “Yes, certainly. I’ll pay the clock.”

  “I thought you forgot me, Mister,” said the taxi driver again, with different emphasis and in a mollified tone. “Watch your step! Here, let me use my flash. I’ll walk behind you.”

  Ellery made his way across the dilapidated graves to the stone wall.

  As he went over the wall it occurred to him, wryly, that he never had found the entrance to the cemetery.

  This had been the route of…

  “Where to now, Mister?” asked the taxi driver.

  “What?”

  “I said where to.”

  “Oh.” Ellery leaned back in the cab. “Hill Drive.”

  To get to Hill Drive from Fidelity it was necessary to take North Hill Drive, and Ellery waited.

  As the familiar marble monoliths moved by, he leaned forward.

  “What’s this estate we’re passing, driver?”

  “Huh? Oh. That’s the Van Horn place.”

  “Van Horn. Oh, yes. I remember now. Is the house open? Occupied?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Van Horn brothers still living there, eh? Both of them?”

  “Yep. And their old lady, too.” The driver twisted in his seat. “Place is run down somethin’ fierce. Real beat. Ever since Diedrich Van Horn’s wife was bumped off. That was last year.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yep. Old Diedrich took it plenty hard. I hear he’s lookin’ older than his mother, and his mother’s older than God. I guess losin’ that son of his didn’t help. Name of Howard. He was a sculpture.” The man twisted again, lowering his voice. “You know, Howard done it.”

  “Yes, so I read. In the papers.”

  The driver turned back to his wheel. “Nobody ever sees Diedrich Van Horn any more and hell, he used to run this town. Now his brother runs everything. Wolfert, his name is. Diedrich just stays home.” I see.

  “Damn nasty business. Well, here’s where North Hill Drive becomes Hill Drive. Whereabouts on Hill Drive are you goin’, Mister?”

  “I think it’s that house right there, driver.”

  “The Wheeler place? Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t bother to drive in. I’ll get out at the curb.”

  “Yes, sir.” The taxi stopped and Ellery got out. “Say, this clock looks like the Chinese war debt.”

  “My own fault. Here you are.”

  “Say. Thanks!”

  “Thank you. For waiting.”

  The man shifted into gear. “It’s all right, Mister. Folks go to cemeteries sort of lose track of time. Say, that’s pretty good, ain’t it?”

  He laughed and the cab ground off down the hill. Ellery waited until its taillight blinked out around a curve. Then he began walking up the hill, back toward North Hill Drive.

  4

  THE MOON WAS UP as Ellery turned in between the two pylons and began walking up the private driveway.

  There used to be lights here, he thought.

  There were no lights now.

  But the moon was bright, and that was lucky, because the drive was treacherous to feet. The lovely smoothness he remembered had degenerated into ruts, pits, and rubble. As he made his way past the cypresses and yews, beginning the spiral ascent to the hilltop, he noticed that the rare shrubs which had lined both sides of the road, between the spaced trees, had all but vanished under a crazy tangle of uncontrolled vegetation.

  Run down is right, he thought.

  Ruined. It’s a ruin, the whole place.

  The front of the main house was dark. So was the side facing north—the north terrace, the formal gardens, the guest house.

  Ellery walked around the terrace to the gardens and the pool. The pool was dry; rotting leaves half filled it.

  He glanced over at the guest house.

  The windows were boarded up; the door was padlocked.

  The gardens were unrecognizable—weed-grown, disheveled, un-tended.

  He stood there for a few moments.

  Then he went cautiously around to the rear.

  Wedges of light drew him. He went over on the tips of his toes and looked into the kitchen.

  Christina Van Horn was bent over the sink, washing dishes; that curved and ancient back was unmistakable. But when she turned for a moment with dripping hands he saw that she was not Christina at all, but Laura.

  The night was stifling, but Ellery put his hands into his pockets. He felt his pigskin gloves.

  He pulled them out and put them on, slowly.

  Then he made his way along the rear wall, under the kitchen windows, keeping close to the wall.

  He rounded the far corner and paused. A sliver of light stuck out into the darkness on this side, touched the wrought-iron railing of the south terrace.

  The light came from the study.

  Ellery crept along the wall and up the terrace steps.

  He stopped just outside the light’s shaft and carefully looked into the room.

  The hangings were not quite drawn together.

  A segment of the study was visible, long and thin and meaningless. Part of it, at about the height of a seated man, was a fragment of face.

  It was a fragment of the face of a very old man, a man with gray loose skin.

  Ellery did not recognize the fragment of face as belonging to any face of his acquaintance.

  But then the face moved a little, and an eye fixed itself in the crevice of the darkness. And Ellery recognized it. It was a large, deep, brilliant, beautiful eye; and from this he knew that he was looking at Diedrich Van Horn.

  He put his gloved knuckles to the nearest pane of the French door and rapped, sharply.

  The eye swiveled out of view. The other eye appeared. It was looking directly at him, or so it seemed.

  Ellery rapped again.

  He stepped aside as he heard a squeaky sound from inside the room, as of little-used wheels.

  “Who is that?”

  The voice was as strange as the fragment of face, and in exactly the same way: it was an old gray voice.

  Ellery put his mouth close to the French door.

  “Queen. Ellery Queen.”

  He grasped the handle, turning and pushing.

  The door was locked.

  He shook it. “Mr. Van Horn! Open this door.”

  He heard a key stumble into the lock and he stepped back.

  The door opened.

  Diedrich sat beyond it in a wheel chair, a yellow blanket about his shoulders, his hands taut on the wheels; he was staring at Ellery, squinting, straining, as if to see better.

  Ellery stepped inside, shut the French door, turned the key, drew the hangings together.

  “Why have you come back?”

  Yes, as old as his mother. Older. The strength was lost. Even the shell had crumbled. The hair was dirty white, sparse; what was there hung lifelessly.

  “Because I had to,” said Ellery.

  The study was much as he remembered it. The desk, the lamp, the books, the armchair. Only now the room seemed bigger. But that was because Diedrich was smaller.

  When he shrinks up and dies, Ellery thought, the room will stretch so in every direction that it will plop out of existence, leaving nothing behind, like an overblown soap bubble.

  He heard the squeaks and looked around to see Diedrich retreating in his moving chair, retreating to the center of the study, out of range of the light from the desk lamp. Only his legs were illuminated; the rest was shadow.

  “Because you had to?” said Diedrich from the shadow. He sounded puzzled.

  Ellery sat down in the swivel chair and slumped on his spine, his coat tumbled about him, his hat still on his head, his gloved hands resting on the chair’s arms.

  “I had to, Mr. Van Horn,” he said, “because this morning I found a page of Howard’s diary in a pocket of my smoking jacket and for the first time I read what Howard had written on the other side.”

  “I want you to go away, Mr. Queen,” said the ghost of Diedrich’s voice.

  But Ellery said: “I discovered, Mr. Van Horn, that you’re an anagrammatist. I hadn’t known about ‘Lia Mason’ and ‘Salomina.’ I hadn’t known that your mind worked that way.”

  The wheel chair was still. But the voice was stronger; it held a note of warmth. “I’d kind of forgotten all that. Poor Sally.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that ‘discovery’ brought you all the way back here, Mr. Queen, to see me? That was kind of you.”

  “No. That discovery, Mr. Van Horn, made me telephone the Connhaven Detective Agency.”

  The wheel chair squeaked.

  But the voice said: “Oh, yes?”

  “And after that call I flew up here. Mr. Van Horn,” said Ellery, slumping still lower in the swivel chair, “I’ve been over to Fidelity Cemetery. I’ve taken a good look at the headstone of Aaron and Mattie Way.”

  “Their headstone. Is it still standing? We die, stones live. It doesn’t seem fair, now, does it, Mr. Queen?”

  “Mr. Van Horn, you never engaged the Connhaven Detective Agency to trace Howard’s parents. Undoubtedly you made an attempt through the man Fyfield you mentioned, when Howard was an infant, to trace his parents then; but when he turned up nothing, that was the end. The rest you manufactured.

  “It was not Burmer of Connhaven who found the graves of Aaron and Mattie Way; it was you, Mr. Van Horn. It was not Burmer who told you the story of Howard’s birth; you invented it. God knows who Howard’s parents were, but they weren’t the Ways. There was never a Dr. Southbridge. You concocted the entire fantasy after you chiseled an extra E on the Ways’ headstone, making their name read W-A-Y-E. You gave Howard false parents, Mr. Van Horn. You gave Howard a false name.”

  The man in the wheel chair was silent.

  “And why did you give Howard a false name, Mr. Van Horn?

  “Because, Mr. Van Horn,” said Ellery, “that false name—Waye with an e it never had—combined with the H. H. of Howard’s signature, Howard Hendrick, made possible a ‘new’ signature, H. H. Waye, with an e, which, as I so brilliantly showed in my by now world-famous analysis of last year, Mr. Van Horn, is an anagram of Yahweh. And this proved that Howard had broken the Commandment which says: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”