“Oh, yes, Dieds. I was waiting for Wolfert.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I’m sorry, darling. Wolf is going to be late. We won’t wait for him.”

  Sally excused herself quickly and Diedrich turned to Ellery.

  “My brother has the bad habit of all bachelors. He never gives a thought to the feelings of the cook.”

  “Not to mention the family,” remarked Howard.

  “Howard and his uncle don’t get along very well,” chuckled Diedrich. “As I’ve told my son, he doesn’t understand Wolfert. Wolfert is conservative—”

  “Reactionary,” corrected Howard.

  “Careful with money—”

  “Stingy as hell.”

  “Admittedly a hard man to beat in a business deal, but that’s no crime—”

  “It is the way Uncle Wolfert does it, Father.”

  “Son, Wolf’s a perfectionist—”

  “Slave driver!”

  “Will you let me finish?” said Diedrich indulgently. “My brother is the kind of man, Mr. Queen, who expects instant obedience from people, but on the other hand he drives himself harder than anyone under him—”

  “He doesn’t make thirty-two bucks a week,” said Howard. “He has something to drive himself for.”

  “Howard, he’s done a lot for us, running the plants. Let’s not be ungrateful.”

  “Father, you know perfectly well that if you didn’t sit on him he’d institute the speed-up system, hire labor spies, abolish seniority, fire anyone with guts enough to talk back to him—”

  “Why, Howard,” said Ellery. “Social consciousness? You’ve changed since the Rue de la Huchette.”

  Howard snarled something, and they all laughed.

  “My point is that my brother’s essentially an unhappy man, Mr. Queen,” Diedrich went on. “I understand him; I can’t expect this pup to. Wolfert’s a bundle of fears and frustrations. Afraid of living. That’s what I’ve always tried to teach Howard: Look trouble in the eye. Don’t let things fester. Do something about them. Which reminds me—if I’m to keep from wasting away I’d better do something about this dinner situation. Sally!”

  Sally came in with a handsome plastic apron over her gown and her cheeks round with laughter. “It’s Laura, Dieds. She’s gone on strike.”

  “The mushrooms,” exclaimed Howard. “By God, the mushrooms—and Laura’s a fan of yours, Ellery. This is a crisis.”

  “What about the mushrooms?” demanded Diedrich.

  “I thought I had it all straightened out this afternoon, darling, but now she says she won’t serve her steak without mushroom sauce to Mr. Queen, and the mushrooms didn’t come—”

  “Hang the mushrooms, Sally!” roared Diedrich. “I’ll fix that steak myself!”

  “You’ll sit here and pour another cocktail,” said Sally, kissing her husband on the top of his head. “Steak is expensive.”

  “Strikebreaker,” said Howard.

  Sally gave him a look on her way out.

  The dinner got on Ellery’s nerves; and this was baffling, because it was a tasty, nourishing, and excellently served dinner in a dining room whose prodigious fireplace spoke of charcoal fires and spits in the royal manner, with a great china service designed by a gourmet to preactivate the taste buds and handmade silver utensils forged by a Vulcan of the art. Diedrich mixed his own salad in a colossal wooden bowl which could only have been hollowed out of the heart of a sequoia tree; and for dessert there was an unbelievable something which Sally called an “Austrian tart”—surely the great-grandmother of all tarts, Ellery thought innocently, since it was as vast as the centerpiece and every bite an orgy. And the talk was animated.

  Still, there was an undercurrent.

  There shouldn’t have been. The talk was as nourishing as the food. Ellery learned a great deal about the Van Horns’ beginnings. The brothers, Diedrich and Wolfert, had come to Wrightsville as boys, forty-nine years before. Their father had been a hell’s-fire-and-brim-stone evangelist who traveled from town to town calling down eternal damnation upon sinners.

  “He meant it, too,” chuckled Diedrich. “I remember how scared Wolf and I used to be when he really got going. Pa had eyes that I swear turned red when he was bellowing and a long black beard that was always beaded with spit. He used to beat the hell out of us—spare-the-rod business. He got a lot more fun out of the Old Testament than the New; I’ve always thought of him as Jeremiah, or old John Brown, which isn’t fair to either of ’em, I guess. Pa believed in a God you could see and feel—especially feel. It wasn’t till I grew up that I realized my father had created God in his own image.”

  Wrightsville was merely a way station on the evangelist’s road to salvation, but “he’s still here,” said Diedrich. “Buried in Twin Hill Cemetery. He dropped dead of apoplexy during a Low Village prayer meeting.”

  Evangelist Van Horn’s family remained in Wrightsville.

  It took an unusual man, thought Ellery, to rise from Low Village to the crest of North Hill Drive and to go back to Low Village for his wife.

  And why did Howard have so little to say?

  “We were pretty darned near the poorest folks in town. Wolf got a job in Amos Bluefield’s feed store. I couldn’t take Amos or the indoors. I went to work with a road gang.”

  Sally was pouring from the silver coffee pot very carefully. It certainly wasn’t her husband’s autobiography that was troubling her; there was unmistakable evidence of her pride in Diedrich. It was Howard, halfway down the field-long board. Sally was feeling Howard’s half-smile silence as he played tricks with his dessert fork and pretended to listen to his father.

  “One thing led to another. Wolf was ambitious. He studied nights, correspondence courses in bookkeeping, business administration, finance. I was ambitious, too, but in a different way. I had to get out among people. I learned about the other things from books-read every chance I got. Still do. But it’s a funny thing, Mr. Queen: Aside from technical books, I never found a syllable outside of my father’s Bible, Shakespeare, and certain studies of the human mind that I could apply to my own life. What good is learning something if it doesn’t help you live?”

  “It’s a fairly well-debated question,” laughed Ellery. “Apparently, Mr. Van Horn, you agree with Goldsmith that books teach us very little of the world. And with Disraeli, who called books the curse of the human race and the invention of printing the greatest misfortune that ever befell man.”

  “Dieds doesn’t really believe what he’s saying,” said Sally.

  “But I do, dear,” protested her husband.

  “Blah. I wouldn’t be here, sitting at this table, if not for books.”

  “Take that,” murmured Howard.

  Sally said: “Why, How, are you still with us? Let me refill your cup.”

  Ellery wished they would stop.

  “I had my own road-construction company at twenty-four. At twenty-eight I owned a couple of pieces of Lower Main property and I’d bought out old man Lloyd’s—he was Frank Lloyd’s grandfather—lumberyard. Wolfert was plugging away in a Boston brokerage house by then. The World War came along and I spent seventeen months in France. Mostly mud, as I recall it, and cooties. Wolf wasn’t in it—”

  “He wouldn’t be,” said Howard, with the bitterness of a man who hadn’t been, either.

  “Your uncle was exempted because of a weak chest, son.”

  “I notice it hasn’t bothered him since.”

  “Anyway, Mr. Queen, my brother came up from Boston to run things for me during my hitch overseas, and—”

  “Big of him,” commented Howard.

  “Howard,” said his father.

  “Sorry. But you did come back to find that he’d pulled a few miracles by way of lumber contracts for the army.”

  “That’ll be enough, son.” Diedrich said it pleasantly enough, but Howard drew his lips in and said no more. “But Wolf had done pretty well, Mr. Queen, and after that we naturally stuck together. We went bust in the ’29 crash together and we built it all up again together. This time it stuck, and here we are.”

  Ellery gathered that “here” was a rhetorical allusion both to the eagle’s nest on North Hill Drive and what he had come to suspect was Van Horn’s dictatorship among Wrightsville’s plutocracy. And as the big man went on, from casual references Ellery found his suspicion strengthened. Apparently the Van Horns owned lumberyards, sawmills, machine shops, the jute mill, the paper mill in Slocum, and a dozen other plants scattered over the county, besides controlling interests in Wrightsville Power & Light and the Wrightsville National Bank—this last a development of John F.’s death. And Diedrich had recently bought up Frank Lloyd’s Record, modernized it, liberalized it, and it was already a fighting power in state politics. The great upsurge in the Van Horns’ fortunes seemed to have come just before, during, and since World War II.

  It was all factual, unstudied, and inoffensive, and Ellery was just beginning to relax when, suddenly, Wolfert Van Horn came in.

  Wolfert was a one-dimensional projection of his brother.

  He was as tall as Diedrich, and his features were as ugly and as overlarge, but where Diedrich had breadth and thickness Wolfert was a thin crooked line. He seemed all length and no substance. There was no blood in him, no heat, no grandeur. If his brother was a sculpture, Wolfert was a scratch-pen caricature.

  He came into the dining room with a sort of swoop, like a starving bird alighting on carrion. And he fixed Ellery with a frigid, avian glance.

  This man gave off acerbity as Diedrich gave off sweet, warm strength. But even this was given stingily; Ellery had the ridiculous feeling that he had been granted one glimpse into hell, and then the man’s elongated face split in what he intended as a smile and was instead a contortion of foxy lips and horsy dentures. He offered a hand, too, and it was all bones.

  “So this is our Howard’s famous friend,” said Wolfert. His voice had a thin, acid bite. The way he said “our Howard” soured any hope of a rapprochement between them; his “famous” was a sneer, and “friend” an obscenity.

  Unhappy and frustrated—yes, thought Ellery; and dangerous, too. Wolfert resented Diedrich’s son; he resented Diedrich’s wife; one felt he resented Diedrich. But it was interesting to observe how differently he expressed his various resentments. Howard he ignored; Sally he patronized; toward Diedrich he deferred. It was as if he despised his nephew, was jealous of his sister-in-law, and feared and hated his brother.

  Also, he was a boor. He did not apologize to Sally for being late to her dinner; he ate bestially, with his elbows planted challengingly on the table; and he addressed himself exclusively to Diedrich, as if they had been alone.

  “Well, you got yourself into it, Diedrich. Now I suppose you’ll ask me to get you out.”

  “Into what, Wolfert?”

  “That Art Museum business.”

  “Mrs. Mackenzie called?” Diedrich’s eyes began to sparkle.

  “After you left.”

  “They’ve accepted my offer!”

  His brother grunted.

  “Art Museum?” Ellery said. “When did Wrightsville acquire an Art Museum, Mr. Van Horn?”

  “We haven’t, yet.” Diedrich was beaming. Wolfert’s skeletal wrists continued to fly about.

  “It’s been quite a thing,” Howard remarked suddenly. “Going on for months, Ellery. A group of the old biddies—Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Mackenzie, and especially—”

  “Don’t tell me,” grinned Ellery. “And especially Emmeline DuPré.”

  “Say! You know the unphysical culturist of our fair city?”

  “I have had that honor, Howard—numerously.”

  “Then you know what I mean. They’re a Committee, capital C, and they rammed a Resolution, capital R, through the Selectmen, and everything was all set for Wrightsville to become the capital of all the County’s Culture, capital C again, only they forgot art museums take lettuce and lots of it.”

  “They’ve had a horrible time trying to raise funds.” Sally was looking at her husband in an anxious way.

  Diedrich kept beaming, and Wolfert kept stuffing himself.

  “But, Father.” Howard sounded puzzled. “How the devil are you mixed up in it?”

  “I thought,” said Sally, “you’d made your contribution, Dieds.”

  Diedrich merely chuckled.

  “Oh, come on, darling. You’ve done something heroic again!”

  “I’ll tell you what he’s done,” said Wolfert in a chewy voice. “He’s guaranteed to make good the deficit.”

  Howard stared at his father. “Why, they’re hundreds of thousands of dollars short.”

  “Four hundred and eighty-seven thousand,” snapped Wolfert Van Horn. He threw down his fork.

  “They came to me yesterday,” Diedrich said placatively. “Told me the fund-raising campaign was a bust. I offered to make up the deficit on one condition.”

  “Dieds, you didn’t tell me a thing about this,” wailed Sally.

  “I wanted to save it, dear. And besides, I had no particular reason to think they’d accept my terms.”

  “What terms, father?”

  “Remember, Howard, when the Museum was first suggested? You said you thought an appropriate architectural plan would be to run a pediment or frieze or whatever you call it across the entire face of the building in which there’d be life-size statues of the classical gods.”

  “Did I say that? I don’t remember.”

  “Well, I do, son. So…that was my condition. That, and the proviso that the sculptor of those statues must be the artist who signs his stuff ‘H. H. Van Horn.’ ”

  “Oh, Dieds,” breathed Sally.

  Wolfert got up, belched, and left the room.

  Howard was extremely pale.

  “Of course,” drawled his father, “if you don’t want the commission, son…”

  “Want it.” He was whispering.

  “Or if you think you’re not qualified—”

  “Oh, I can do it!” said Howard. “I can do it!”

  “Then I’ll send Mrs. Mackenzie a certified check tomorrow.”

  Howard was shaking. Sally poured a fresh cup of coffee for him.

  “I mean I think I can do it…”

  “Now don’t start that silliness, Howard,” said Sally quickly. “What exactly would you sculpt? What gods would you plan on?”

  “Well…the sky god, Jupiter…” Howard looked around; he was still dazed. “Anybody got a pencil?”

  Two pencils clattered before him.

  He began sketching on the cloth.

  “Juno, queen of heaven—”

  “There’d be Apollo, wouldn’t there?” said Diedrich solemnly. “The sun god?”

  “And Neptune,” cried Sally. “God of the sea.”

  “Not to mention Pluto, god of the Lower Worlds” said Ellery, “Diana of the chase, martial Mars, bucolic Pan—”

  “Venus—Vulcan—Minerva—”

  Howard stopped, looking at his father. Then he got up. Then he sat down. Then he got up again and ran out of the dining room.

  Sally said, “Oh, Dieds, you fool, you’ve got me b-blubbing,” and she ran around the table to kiss her husband.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Queen,” said Diedrich, holding his wife’s hands.

  “I’m thinking,” smiled Ellery, “that you ought to apply for a medical license.”

  “Kind of expensive medicine,” chuckled Van Horn.

  “Yes, but Dieds, I know it’s going to work!” said Sally in a muffled voice. “Did you see Howard’s face?”

  “Did you see Wolfert’s face?” And the big man threw back his head and roared.

  While Sally went upstairs after Howard, Diedrich took Ellery into his study.

  “I want you to see my library, Mr. Queen. Incidentally, whatever you can use in here, I mean in writing your novel—”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Van Horn.”

  Ellery wandered about this kingly study, a cigar in his teeth and a brandy in his hand, looking. From the depths of a huge leather chair his host quizzically watched him.

  “For a man who’s found so little in books,” remarked Ellery, “you’ve certainly done a lot of hunting.”

  The great shelves displayed a magnificent collection of first editions and special bindings. The titles were orthodox.

  “You have some extremely valuable items here,” murmured Ellery.

  “A typical rich man’s library, eh?” said his host dryly.

  “Not at all. There are too few uncut pages.”

  “Sally’s cut most of them.”

  “Oh? And, by the way, Mr. Van Horn, I promised your wife this afternoon that I’d tell you I’m completely in love with her.”

  Diedrich grinned. “Come right in.”

  “I gather it’s a common complaint.”

  “There’s something about Sally,” said Diedrich thoughtfully. “Only sensitive men see it—Here, let me refill your glass.”

  But Ellery was staring at one of the shelves.

  “I told you I was a fan of yours,” said Diedrich Van Horn.

  “Mr. Van Horn, I’m thrown. You have them all.”

  “And these I’ve read.”

  “Well! There’s hardly anything an author won’t do to repay this sort of kindness. Anybody I can murder for you?”

  “I’ll tell you a secret, Mr. Queen,” said his host. “When Howard told me he’d asked you up here—and to work on a novel—I was as excited as a kid. I’ve read every book you ever wrote, I’ve followed your career in the papers, and the greatest regret of my life was that during your two visits to Wrightsville I couldn’t get to meet you. The first time—when you stayed with the Wrights—I was in Washington most of the time hunting war contracts. The second time—when you were here on that Fox business—I was in Washington again, this time by request of—well, it doesn’t matter. But if that’s not patriotism, I don’t know what is.”

  “And if this isn’t flattery—”

  “Not a bit of it. Ask Sally. And incidentally,” smiled Diedrich, “you may have fooled Wrightsville in both those cases, but you didn’t fool me.”