He wondered as he grinned at her which nerve he had touched. She was thoroughly upset; he thought for a silly moment that she was going to burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Van Horn,” said Ellery, touching her hand. “I’m really sorry. Forgive me.”

  “Don’t you dare,” said Sally in an angry voice. “It’s just me. I’ve got an inferiority complex a mile long. And you’re very clever”—Sally hesitated, then she laughed—“Ellery.”

  So he laughed, too.

  “You were digging.”

  “Shamelessly. Can’t help it, Sally. Second nature. I have the soul of Peeping Tom.”

  “You suspect something about me.”

  “No, no. Just jabbing in the dark.”

  “And?”

  Ellery said cheerfully: “I’ll let you tell me, Sally.”

  That odd smile again. But then it faded out. “Maybe I will.” And after another moment: “I have the queerest feeling I could tell you things that…” She broke off abruptly. He said nothing. Finally, in an altogether different tone, Sally said: “What I began to say was…I wanted to talk to you about Howard before we reach home.”

  “About Howard?”

  “I suppose he’s told you—”

  “About his attacks of amnesia?” said Ellery pleasantly. “Yes, he did mention them.”

  “I wondered whether he had.” She stared straight ahead as the station wagon began to climb. “Naturally, Howard’s father and I don’t talk about it much. To Howard, I mean…Ellery, we’re scared to death.”

  “Amnesia is commoner than people realize.”

  “You must have had gobs of experience with odd things like that. Ellery, do you think it’s anything to—well, worry about? I mean…really?”

  “Of course, amnesia isn’t normal and the cause should be ascertained—”

  “We’ve tried and tried.” Her distress was quick and she made no attempt to hide it. “But the doctors all say he’s an antagonistic subject—”

  “So I gathered. He’ll snap out of it, Sally. Many amnesia cases do. Well, for heaven’s sake, there’s the Wright place!”

  “What? Oh. Does it bring back memories?”

  “In droves. Sally, how are the Wrights?”

  “We don’t see much of them—they’re the Hill crowd. You know, I suppose, that old Mr. Wright is dead?”

  “John F.? Yes. I was awfully fond of him. Simply have to look up Hermione Wright while I’m here…”

  Somehow, the subject of Howard’s amnesia failed to come up again.

  Ellery had expected opulence, but in the Wrightsville manner, which is homely and rooted in the past. So he was completely unprepared for what he found.

  The station wagon turned off North Hill Drive between two monoliths of Vermont marble to glide over a tailored private drive lined with spaced Italian cypresses, the most beautiful English yews Ellery had ever seen, and a parade of multicolored shrubs which even to his unhorticultural eye looked like the rarer products of a rich man’s nursery than the random efforts of Nature. The drive took a spiral rising course, past rock gardens and terraces, and it came to an end under the porte-cochere of a great modern house at the very top of the hill.

  To the south lay the town, hugging the floor of the valley from which they had just come, a cluster of toy buildings dribbling squiffs of smoke. To the north crouched the Mahoganies. Westward, and beyond the town to the south, stretched the broad farmlands which give Wrightsville its rural complexion.

  Sally switched off the ignition. “How splendid it all is.”

  “What?” asked Ellery. She was full of surprises.

  “That’s what you were just thinking. How tremendously splendid.”

  “Well, it is,” grinned Ellery.

  “Too much so.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I’m saying it.” Again she was smiling that odd smile. “And we’re both right. It is. Too much so, I mean. Oh, not that it’s vulgar. It’s like Dieds himself. Everything in perfect taste—but gigantic. Dieds never does things normal size.”

  “It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen,” Ellery said truthfully.

  “He built it for me, Ellery.”

  He looked at her. “Then it’s not one bit too tremendously splendid.”

  “You’re a love,” she said, laughing. “Actually, it shrinks as you live in it.”

  “Or you expand.”

  “Maybe. I never told Dieds how scared I was, how lost I felt in it at first. You see, I came originally from Low Village.”

  Van Horn had built this magnificence for her and she came from Low Village…

  Low Village was where the factories were. There were a few blocks of misshapen brick houses in Low Village; but most of the dwellings were rotted frame, pinched and mean, with broken porches. Occasionally one saw a house with a clean face and dainty underpinning; but only occasionally. Through Low Village ran Willow River, a narrow saffron-charged ditch fed by the refuse of the factories. The “foreigners” lived in Low Village: the Poles, the French Canadians, the Italians, the six Jewish families, the nine Negro families. Here were the whore houses and the 60-watt store-front gin mills; and on Saturday nights Wrightsville’s radio cars patrolled its cobbled crooked streets restlessly.

  “I was born on Polly Street,” Sally said with that funny smile.

  “Lucky Polly Street.” Polly Street!

  “You’re such a dear. Oh, here’s Howard.”

  Howard came bounding up to crush Ellery’s hand and seize his suitcase. “Thought you’d never get here. What did you do, Sally, kidnap him?”

  “It was the other way around,” said Ellery. “Howard, I’m just mad about her.”

  “And I about him, How.”

  “Say, is this a thing already? Sal, Laura’s in a tizzy about the dinner. It seems the mushrooms didn’t come with the order—”

  “Oh, dear, that’s a catastrophe. Ellery, excuse me. How’ll take you over to the guest house. I saw to everything myself, but if you want something you can’t find there’s an intercom in the sitting room there; it connects with the kitchen in the main house. Oh, I’ve got to run!”

  Ellery was disturbed by Howard’s appearance. He had last seen Howard on Tuesday. This was only Thursday, and Howard looked years older. There was a muddy trench under his undamaged eye, his mouth was crimped with tension, and in the bright afternoon his skin looked yellow-gray.

  “Did Sally explain why I didn’t meet the train?”

  “Don’t apologize, Howard. You were inspired.”

  “You really like Sal.”

  “Crazy about her.”

  “It’s right here, Ellery.”

  The guest house was a field-stone gem in a setting of purple beeches, separated from the terrace of the main house by a circular swimming pool with a broad marble apron on which stood deck chairs and umbrella tables and a portable bar.

  “You can set your typewriter up on the edge of the pool and jump in between adjectives,” said Howard, “or if you want real privacy…Come take a look.”

  It was a two-room-and-bath house, done in rustic lodge style, with big fireplaces, massive hickory furniture, white goat rugs, and monk’s-cloth hangings. In the sitting room stood the handsomest desk Ellery had ever laid eyes on, an emperor’s affair of hickory and cowhide, with a deep-bottomed swivel chair to match.

  “My desk,” said Howard. “I had it hauled down from my rooms at the other house.”

  “Howard, you overwhelm me.”

  “Hell, I never use it.” Howard went to the far wall. “But this is what I wanted to show you.” He drew the hanging which covered the wall. And there was no wall. It was one great window.

  Far below, with a green shag rug between, lay Wrightsville.

  “I see what you mean,” murmured Ellery, sinking into the swivel chair.

  “Think you can write here?”

  “It’ll be tough.” Howard laughed, and Ellery went on casually, “Everything’s all right, Howard?”

  “All right? Sure.”

  “Don’t get coy with me. No recurrence?”

  Howard straightened a stag head which needed no straightening. “Why do you ask? I told you I never—”

  “I thought you were looking a little brown around the edges.”

  “Probably a reaction from that beating.” Howard turned busily. “Now the bedroom’s in there. Stall shower in the bathroom. Here’s a standard typewriter, portable’s in the corner there, and you’ll find paper, pencils, carbons, Scotch…”

  “You’ll spoil me permanently for the Spartan life of Eighty-seventh Street. Howard, this is magnificent. Really it is.”

  “Father designed this shack himself.”

  “A great man, sight unseen.”

  “The best,” said Howard nervously. “You’ll meet him at dinner.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “You don’t know how he wants to meet you. Well…”

  “Don’t walk out on me, you ape.”

  “Oh, you’ll be wanting to sluice down, maybe rest up a bit. Come on back to the house when you feel like it and I’ll show you around.”

  And Howard was gone.

  For some time Ellery teetered gently in the swivel chair.

  Something had gone wrong between Tuesday and today. Very wrong indeed. And Howard didn’t want him to know.

  Ellery wondered if Sally Van Horn knew.

  He decided that she did.

  He was not surprised when he found, not Howard, but Sally waiting for him in the living room of the main house.

  Sally had already changed. She was wearing a Vogueish black dinner dress with a swirl of black chiffon over an extreme décolletage—contradiction again, he thought, in its most attractive form.

  “Oh, I know,” she said, coloring. “It’s indecent, isn’t it?”

  “I’m torn between admiration and contrition,” Ellery exclaimed; “Was I to dress for dinner? Howard didn’t mention it. As a matter of fact, I didn’t bring dinner clothes with me.”

  “Dieds will fall on your neck. He hates dinner clothes. And Howard never dresses if he can help it. I only put this on because it’s new and I wanted to impress you.”

  “I’m impressed. Believe me!” Sally laughed. “But what does your husband think?”

  “Dieds? Heavens, he had it made for me.”

  “A great man,” said Ellery reverently, and Sally laughed again, enabling him to go on without seeming to make a point of the question, “Where’s Howard?”

  “Up in his studio.” Sally made a face. “How’s in one of his moods, and when he gets that way I send him upstairs to his own quarters like the spoiled brat he is. He has the whole top floor and he can grouse there to his heart’s content.” She added lightly, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to overlook a great deal in Howard’s behavior.”

  “Nonsense. My own isn’t recommended by Emily Post, especially when I’m working. You’ll probably ask me to leave in three days. Anyway, I’m grateful. It gives me the opportunity to monopolize you.”

  He said it deliberately, looking her over with his admiration showing.

  He had felt from the moment of their meeting at the station that Sally was an important factor in Howard’s problem. Howard was emotionally involved with his father. The sudden intrusion of this desirable woman between them, monopolizing the father’s interest and affections, had reacted traumatically on the son. It seemed significant that Howard’s first attack of amnesia, according to his own story, had occurred on his father’s wedding night. Ellery had watched very closely for signs of tension between Howard and Sally in the few moments of their meeting under the porte-cochere, and he had seen them. Howard’s exaggerated spirits, his ultracasual manner of speaking to Sally before Ellery—and his avoidance of ocular contact—were clearly defensive expressions of an inner conflict. Sally, being a woman, had been more circumspect, but Ellery had no doubt that she was aware of Howard’s feelings about her. Against her. It suggested to Ellery that if she were a woman of a certain sort she might seek relief in a completely uninvolved male object. Was she that sort?

  So he looked her over obviously.

  But Sally said: “Monopolize me? Oh, dear, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be for long,” and smiled.

  “Afraid?” murmured Ellery, smiling back.

  She said levelly: “Dieds just got home. He’s upstairs brushing up, excited as he can be. Would you like a cocktail now, Ellery?”

  It was an invitation to refuse. So Ellery said: “Thanks, but I’ll wait for Mr. Van Horn. What a wonderful room!”

  “Do you really like it? Suppose I show you around until my husband comes down.”

  “Love it.”

  Ellery liked Sally very much indeed.

  The room was wonderful. They all were. Great rooms designed for lordly living and furnished in heroic taste by someone who loved the richness of natural woods and had a dramatic feeling for the sweep of a wall, the breadth of a fireplace, the juxtaposition of simple colors, the affinity of a window for what grew beyond…rooms for giants. But what Ellery found even more wonderful was their mistress. The Low Village girl moved through this splendor splendidly. As if she had been born to it.

  Ellery knew Polly Street. Patricia Bradford had given him a sampling of its sour poverty during his first visit to Wrightsville, when she was still Patty Wright the sweater girl, his sociological guide to her town. Polly Street was the meanest slum in Low Village, a butchered alley of grim cold-water flats and work-stupefied factory hands. Its men were silent and beaten, its women defeminized, its adolescents hard-eyed, its babies dirty and undernourished.

  And Sally came from Polly Street! Either Diedrich Van Horn was a sculptor himself, molding flesh and spirit as his son molded clay; or this girl was a chameleon, taking on the color of her surroundings by some mysterious natural process. Ellery had seen Hermione Wright walk into a room and diminish it by her grandeur; but Hermione was a lout’s wench compared with Sally for sheer functional association.

  And then Diedrich Van Horn came quickly down the staircase with outstretched hand and a “Hello!” that caromed off the hand-hewn beams.

  His son followed him, shuffling.

  In an instant the son, the wife, the house grouped themselves around Van Horn, reshaped, reproportioned, integrated.

  He was an extraordinary man in every way. Everything about him was oversize—his body, his speech, his gestures. The great room was no longer too great; he filled it, it had been built to his measure.

  Van Horn was a tall man, but not so tall as he seemed. His shoulders were actually no broader than Howard’s or Ellery’s, but because of their enormous thickness he made the younger men look like boys. His hands were vast: muscular, wide-heeled, two heavy tools; and Ellery suddenly remembered a remark of Howard’s on the terrasse of the Café St. Michel about his father’s beginnings as a day laborer. But it was the elder Van Horn’s head which fascinated Ellery. It was large and bony, of angular contour and powerful brow. The face beneath was at once the ugliest and the most attractive male face Ellery had ever seen; it struck him that Sally’s remark about it had been, not a conversational whimsy, but the exact truth. What made it seem so ugly was not so much the homeliness of its individual features as their composite prominence. Nose, jaw, mouth, ears, cheekbones—all were too large. His skin was coarse and dark. In this disproportioned, unlovely composition were set two remarkable eyes, of such size, depth, brilliance, and beauty they illuminated the darkness in which they lay and transformed the whole into something singularly harmonious and pleasing.

  Van Horn’s voice was as big as his body, deep and sexual. And he spoke with his body as well as with his voice, not disconnectedly but in unconscious rhythm, so that one was drawn and held; it was impossible to escape him.

  Shaking hands with Ellery, putting a long arm quickly around his wife, pouring cocktails, telling Howard to touch off the fire, sitting down in the biggest chair and hooking his leg over one arm—whatever Diedrich Van Horn did, whatever he said, were important and unavoidable. Simply, the master was in his house; he made no point of it—he was the point.

  Seeing him in the flesh, in relation to his son and his wife, what they were became inevitable. Anything Van Horn turned his vitality upon would eventually be absorbed by it. His son would worship and emulate and, unable to resolve his worship or rival his object, would become…Howard. As for his wife, Van Horn would create her love out of his, and he would preserve it by engulfing it. Those he loved attached themselves to him, helplessly. They moved when he moved; they were part of his will. He reminded Ellery of the demigods of mythology, and Ellery uttered a voiceless apology to Howard for having been merely amused in Howard’s pension studio ten years before. Howard had not been romanticizing when he had chiseled Zeus in his father’s image; unconsciously, he had been sculpturing a portrait. Ellery wondered if Diedrich had the gods’ vices as well as their virtues. Whatever his vices might be, they would be anything but trivial; this man was quite above pettiness. He would be just, logical, and immovable.

  And Sally had been right; you didn’t think of him in terms of years. Van Horn must be over sixty, Ellery thought, but he was like an Indian—you felt that his coarse black hair would neither thin nor gray, that he would never stoop or falter; you could think of him only as a force, prime and unchanging. And he would die only through some other force, like lightning.

  The talk was all about Ellery’s novel, which was flattering but advanced nothing.

  So at the first opportunity Ellery said: “Oh, by the way. Howard told me the other day about these amnesia attacks and how they’ve absolutely baffled him. Personally, I don’t think they’re alarming, but I was wondering, Mr. Van Horn, if you had any idea what causes them.”

  “I wish I had.” Diedrich put his big hand briefly on his son’s knee. “But this boy is a hard customer, Mr. Queen.”

  “You mean I’m like you,” said Howard.

  Diedrich laughed.

  “I’ve told Ellery how unco-operative he’s been with the doctors,” said Sally to her husband.

  “If he were a little younger, I’d whale the tar out of him,” growled Van Horn. “Dearest, I should think Mr. Queen is starved. I know I am. Isn’t dinner ready?”