“Emmy,” thought Ellery, becoming conscious very abruptly. “What’s going on here?” He went to the first doorway and leaned against the jamb.

  An astonishing sight met him. They were all—as far as he could determine—there. It was apparently a library, a large bookish room done in the modern manner. The farther side had been cleared and a home-made curtain, manufactured out of starchy sheets and a pulley, stretched across the room. The curtain was open, and in the cleared space there was a long table covered with a white cloth and with cups and saucers and things on it. In an armchair at the head of the table sat Emmy Willowes, whimsically girlish in a pinafore, her gold-brown hair streaming down her back, her slim legs sheathed in white stockings, and black pumps with low heels on her feet. Beside her sat an apparition, no less: a rabbity creature the size of a man, his huge ears stiffly up, an enormous bow-tie at his furry neck, his mouth clacking open and shut as human sounds came from his throat. Beside the hare there was another apparition: a creature with an amiably rodent little face and slow sleepy movements. And beyond the little one, who looked unaccountably like a dormouse, sat the most remarkable of the quartet—a curious creature with shaggy eyebrows and features reminiscent of George Arliss’s, at his throat a dotted bow-tie, dressed Victorianishly in a quaint waistcoat, on his head an extraordinary tall cloth hat in the band of which was stuck a placard reading: “For This Style 10/6.”

  The audience was composed of two women: an old lady with pure white hair and the stubbornly sweet facial expression which more often than not conceals a chronic acerbity; and a very beautiful young woman with full breasts, red hair, and green eyes. Then Ellery noticed that two domestic heads were stuck in another doorway, gaping and giggling decorously.

  “The mad tea-party,” thought Ellery, grinning. “I might have known, with Emmy in the house. Too good for that merciless brat!”

  “They were learning to draw,” said the little dormouse in a high-pitched voice, yawning and rubbing its eyes, “and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—”

  “Why with an M?” demanded the woman-child.

  “Why not?” snapped the hare, flapping his ears indignantly.

  The dormouse began to doze and was instantly beset by the top-hatted gentleman, who pinched him so roundly that he awoke with a shriek and said: “—that begins with an M, such as mousetraps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are ‘much of a muchness’—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?”

  “Really, now you ask me,” said the girl, quite confused, “I don’t think—”

  “Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter tartly.

  The girl rose in open disgust and began to walk away, her white legs twinkling. The dormouse fell asleep and the hare and the Hatter stood up and grasped the dormouse’s little head and tried very earnestly to push it into the mouth of a monstrous teapot on the table.

  And the little girl cried, stamping her right foot: “At any rate I’ll never go there again. It’s the stupidest tea-party I was ever at in all my life!”

  And she vanished behind the curtain; an instant later it swayed and came together as she operated the rope of the pulley.

  “Superb,” drawled Ellery, clapping his hands. Brava, Alice. And a couple of bravi for the zoological characters, Messrs. Dormouse and March Hare, not to speak of my good friend the Mad Hatter.”

  The Mad Hatter goggled at him, tore off his hat, and came running across the room. His vulturine features under the make-up were both good-humored and crafty; he was a stoutish man in his prime, a faintly cynical and ruthless prime. “Queen! When on earth did you come? Darned if I hadn’t completely forgotten about you. What held you up?”

  “Family matter. Millan did the honors. Owen, that’s your natural costume, I’ll swear. I don’t know what ever possessed you to go into Wall Street. You were born to be the Hatter.”

  “Think so?” chuckled Owen, pleased. “I guess I always did have a yen for the stage; that’s why I backed Emmy Willowes’s Alice show. Here, I want you to meet the gang. Mother,” he said to the white-haired old lady, “may I present Mr. Ellery Queen. Laura’s mother, Queen—Mrs. Mansfield.” The old lady smiled a sweet, sweet smile; but Ellery noticed that her eyes were very sharp. “Mrs. Gardner,” continued Owen, indicating the buxom young woman with the red hair and green eyes. “Believe it or not, she’s the wife of that hairy Hare over there. Ho, ho, ho!”

  There was something a little brutal in Owen’s laughter. Ellery bowed to the beautiful woman and said quickly: “Gardner? You’re not the wife of Paul Gardner, the architect?”

  “Guilty,” said the March Hare in a cavernous voice; and he removed his head and disclosed a lean face with twinkling eyes. “How are you, Queen? I haven’t seen you since I testified for your father in that Schultz murder case in the Village.”

  They shook hands. “Surprise,” said Ellery. “This is nice. Mrs. Gardner, you have a clever husband. He set the defense by their respective ears with his expert testimony in that case.”

  “Oh, I’ve always said Paul is a genius,” smiled the redhaired woman. She had a queer husky voice. “But he won’t believe me. He thinks I’m the only one in the world who doesn’t appreciate him.”

  “Now, Carolyn,” protested Gardner with a laugh; but the twinkle had gone out of his eyes and for some odd reason he glanced at Richard Owen.

  “Of course you remember Laura,” boomed Owen, taking Ellery forcibly by the arm. “That’s the Dormouse. Charming little rat, isn’t she?”

  Mrs. Mansfield lost her sweet expression for a fleeting instant; very fleeting indeed. What the Dormouse thought about being publicly characterized as a rodent, however charming, by her husband was concealed by the furry little head; when she took it off she was smiling. She was a wan little woman with tired eyes and cheeks that had already begun to sag.

  “And this,” continued Owen with the pride of a stock-raiser exhibiting a prize milch-cow, “is the one and only Emmy. Emmy, meet Mr. Queen, that murder-smelling chap I’ve been telling you about. Miss Willowes.”

  “You see us, Mr. Queen,” murmured the actress, “in character. I hope you aren’t here on a professional visit? Because if you are, we’ll get into mufti at once and let you go to work. I know I’ve a vicariously guilty conscience. If I were to be convicted of every mental murder I’ve committed, I’d need the nine lives of the Cheshire Cat. Those damn’ critics—”

  “The costume,” said Ellery, not looking at her legs, “is most fetching. And I think I like you better as Alice.” She made a charming Alice; she was curved in her slimness, half-boy, half-girl. “Whose idea was this, anyway?”

  “I suppose you think we’re fools or nuts,” chuckled Owen. “Here, sit down, Queen. Maud!” he roared. “A cocktail for Mr. Queen. Bring some more fixin’s.” A frightened domestic head vanished. “We’re having a dress-rehearsal for Johnny’s birthday party tomorrow; we’ve invited all the kids of the neighborhood. Emmy’s brilliant idea; she brought the costumes down from the theatre. You know we closed Saturday night.”

  “I hadn’t heard. I thought Alice was playing to S.R.O.”

  “So it was. But our lease at the Odeon ran out and we’ve our engagements on the road to keep. We open in Boston next Wednesday.”

  Slim-legged Maud set a pinkish liquid concoction before Ellery. He sipped slowly, succeeding in not making a face.

  “Sorry to have to break this up,” said Paul Gardner, beginning to take off his costume. “But Carolyn and I have a bad trip before us. And then tomorrow…The road must be an absolute washout.”

  “Pretty bad,” said Ellery politely, setting down his three-quarters’-full glass.

  “I won’t hear of it,” said Laura Owen. Her pudgy little Dormouse’s stomach gave her a peculiar appearance, tiny and fat and sexless. “Driving home in this storm! Carolyn, you and Paul must stay over.”

  “It’s only four miles, Laura,” murmured Mrs. Gardner.

  “Nonsense, Carolyn! More like forty on a night like this,” boomed Owen. His cheeks were curiously pale and damp under the make-up. “That’s settled! We’ve got more room than we know what to do with. Paul saw to that when he designed this development.”

  “That’s the insidious part of knowing architects socially,” said Emmy Willowes with a grimace. She flung herself in a chair and tucked her long legs under her. “You can’t fool ’em about the number of available guest-rooms.”

  “Don’t mind Emmy,” grinned Owen. “She’s the Peck’s Bad Girl of show business: no manners at all. Well, well! This is great. How’s about a drink, Paul?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You’ll have one, won’t you, Carolyn? Only good sport in the crowd.” Ellery realized with a furious embarrassment that his host was, under the red jovial glaze of the exterior, vilely drunk.

  She raised her heavily-lidded green eyes to his. “I’d love it, Dick.” They stared with peculiar hunger at each other. Mrs. Owen suddenly smiled and turned her back, struggling with her cumbersome costume.

  And, just as suddenly, Mrs. Mansfield rose and smiled her unconvincing sweet smile and said in her sugary voice to no one in particular: “Will you all excuse me? It’s been a trying day, and I’m an old woman….Laura, my darling.” She went to her daughter and kissed the lined, averted forehead.

  Everybody murmured something; including Ellery, who had a headache, a slow pinkish fire in his vitals, and a consuming wishfulness to be far, far away.

  Mr. Ellery Queen came to with a start and a groan. He turned over in bed, feeling very poorly. He had dozed in fits since one o’clock, annoyed rather than soothed by the splash of the rain against the bedroom windows. And now he was miserably awake, inexplicably sleepless, attacked by a rather surprising insomnia. He sat up and reached for his wrist-watch, which was ticking thunderously away on the night-table beside his bed. By the radium hands he saw that it was five past two.

  He lay back, crossing his palms behind his head, and stared into the half-darkness. The mattress was deep and downy, as one had a right to expect of the mattress of a plutocrat, but it did not rest his tired bones. The house was cozy, but it did not comfort him. His hostess was thoughtful, but uncomfortably woebegone. His host was

  a disturbing force, like the storm. His fellow-guests; Master Jonathan snuffling away in his junior bed—Ellery was positive that Master Jonathan snuffled….

  At two-fifteen he gave up the battle and, rising, turned on the light and got into his dressing-gown and slippers. That there was no book or magazine on or in the night-table he had ascertained before retiring. Shocking hospitality! Sighing, he went to the door and opened it and peered out. A small night-light glimmered at the landing down the hall. Everything was quiet.

  And suddenly he was attacked by the strangest diffidence. He definitely did not want to leave the bedroom.

  Analyzing the fugitive fear, and arriving nowhere, Ellery sternly reproached himself for an imaginative fool and stepped out into the hall. He was not habitually a creature of nerves, nor was he psychic; he laid the blame to lowered physical resistance due to fatigue, lack of sleep. This was a nice house with nice people in it. It was like a man, he thought, saying: “Nice doggie, nice doggie,” to a particularly fearsome beast with slavering jaws. That woman with the sea-green eyes. Put to sea in a sea-green boat. Or was it pea-green….“No room! No room!”…“There’s plenty of room,” said Alice indignantly….And Mrs. Mansfield’s smile did make you shiver.

  Berating himself bitterly for the ferment his imagination was in, he went down the carpeted stairs to the living room.

  It was pitch-dark and he did not know where the light-switch was. He stumbled over a hassock and stubbed his toe and cursed silently. The library should be across from the stairs, next to the fireplace. He strained his eyes toward the fireplace, but the last embers had died. Stepping warily, he finally reached the fireplace-wall. He groped about in the rain-splattered silence, searching for the library door. His hand met a cold knob, and he turned the knob rather noisily and swung the door open. His eyes were oriented to the darkness now and he had already begun to make out in the mistiest black haze the unrecognizable outlines of still objects.

  The darkness from beyond the door however struck him like a blow. It was darker darkness….He was about to step across the sill when he stopped. It was the wrong room. Not the library at all. How he knew he could not say, but he was sure he had pushed open the door of the wrong room. Must have wandered orbitally to the right. Lost men in the dark forest….He stared intently straight before him into the absolute, unrelieved blackness, sighed, and retreated. The door shut noisily again.

  He groped along the wall to the left. A few feet….There it was! The very next door. He paused to test his psychic faculties. No, all’s well. Grinning, he pushed open the door, entered boldly, fumbled on the nearest wall for the switch, found it, pressed. The light flooded on to reveal, triumphantly, the library.

  The curtain was closed, the room in disorder as he had last seen it before being conducted upstairs by his host.

  He went to the built-in bookcases, scanned several shelves, hesitated between two volumes, finally selected Huckleberry Finn as good reading on a dour night, put out the light, and felt his way back across the living room to the stairway. Book tucked under his arm, he began to climb the stairs. There was a footfall from the landing above. He looked up. A man’s dark form was silhouetted below the tiny landing light.

  “Owen?” whispered a dubious male voice.

  Ellery laughed. “It’s Queen, Gardner. Can’t you sleep, either?”

  He heard the man sigh with relief. “Lord, no! I was just coming downstairs for something to read. Carolyn—my wife’s asleep, I guess, in the room adjoining mine. How she can sleep—! There’s something in the air tonight.”

  “Or else you drank too much,” said Ellery cheerfully, mounting the stairs.

  Gardner was in pajamas and dressing-gown, his hair mussed. “Didn’t drink at all to speak of. Must be this confounded rain. My nerves are all shot.”

  “Something in that. Hardy believed, anyway, in the Greek unities….If you can’t sleep, you might join me for a smoke in my room, Gardner.”

  “You’re sure I won’t be—”

  “Keeping me up? Nonsense. The only reason I fished about downstairs for a book was to occupy my mind with something. Talk’s infinitely better than Huck Finn, though he does help at times. Come on.”

  They went to Ellery’s room and Ellery produced cigarets and they relaxed in chairs and chatted and smoked until the early dawn began struggling to emerge from behind the fine gray wet bars of the rain outside. Then Gardner went yawning back to his room and Ellery fell into a heavy, uneasy slumber.

  He was on the rack in a tall room of the Inquisition and his left arm was being torn out of his shoulder-socket. The pain was almost pleasant. Then he awoke to find Millan’s ruddy face in broad daylight above him, his blond hair tragically dishevelled. He was jerking at Ellery’s arm for all he was worth.

  “Mr. Queen!” he was crying. “Mr. Queen! For God’s sake, wake up!”

  Ellery sat up quickly, startled. “What’s the matter, Millan?”

  “Mr. Owen, sir. He’s—he’s gone!”

  Ellery sprang out of bed. “What d’ye mean, man?”

  “Disappeared, Mr. Queen. We—we can’t find him. Just gone. Mrs. Owen is all—”

  “You go downstairs, Millan,” said Ellery calmly, stripping off his pajama-coat, “and pour yourself a drink. Please tell Mrs. Owen not to do anything until I come down. And nobody’s to leave or telephone. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Millan in a low voice, and blundered off.

  Ellery dressed like a fireman, splashed his face, spat water, adjusted his necktie, and ran downstairs. He found Laura Owen in a crumpled négligé on the sofa, sobbing. Mrs. Mansfield was patting her daughter’s shoulder. Master Jonathan Owen was scowling at his grandmother, Emmy Willowes silently smoked a cigaret, and the Gardners were pale and quiet by the gray-washed windows.

  “Mr. Queen,” said the actress quickly. “It’s a drama, hot off the script. At least Laura Owen thinks so. Won’t you assure her that it’s all probably nothing?”

  “I can’t do that,” smiled Ellery, “until I learn the facts. Owen’s gone? How? When?”

  “Oh, Mr. Queen,” choked Mrs. Owen, raising a tear-stained face. “I know something—something dreadful’s happened. I had a feeling—You remember last night, after Richard showed you to your room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he came back downstairs and said he had some work to do in his den for Monday, and told me to go to bed. Everybody else had gone upstairs. The servants, too. I warned him not to stay up too late and I went up to bed. I—I was exhausted, and I fell right asleep—”

  “You occupy one bedroom, Mrs. Owen?”

  “Yes. Twin beds. I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until a half-hour ago. Then I saw—” She shuddered and began to sob again. Her mother looked helpless and angry. “His bed hadn’t been slept in. His clothes—the ones he’d taken off when he got into the costume—were still where he had left them on the chair by his bed. I was shocked, and ran downstairs; but he was gone….”

  “Ah,” said Ellery queerly. “Then, as far as you know, he’s still in that Mad Hatter’s rig? Have you looked over his wardrobe? Are any of his regular clothes missing?”

  “No, no; they’re all there. Oh, he’s dead. I know he’s dead.”

  “Laura, dear, please,” said Mrs. Mansfield in a tight quavery voice.

  “Oh, mother, it’s too horrible—”

  “Here, here,” said Ellery. “No hysterics. Was he worried about anything? Business, for instance?”

  “No, I’m sure he wasn’t. In fact, he said only yesterday things were picking up beautifully. And he isn’t—isn’t the type to worry, anyway.”

  “Then it probably isn’t amnesia. He hasn’t had a shock of some sort recently?”

  “No, no.”