Halfway House by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page B

was shiny black, like jet damp under an indirect light, and flecked with polka-dot stars; the air felt cool and bracing against his perspiring cheeks. Detectives stood aside to let him pass. He hurried down the muddy side-lane over the loose protecting boards with long strides.
    It was hard, he thought, damned hard. And yet it was bound to come out. If it were in his power alone… As he turned into Lamberton Road a group of dark figures smoking in the shadows of the many cars now parked there fell on him, pressing forward, chattering questions. “I’m sorry, boys. I can’t talk now.”
    He managed finally to shake them off. He fancied that he had seen Ella Amity’s tall figure seated on a man’s lap in one of the parked cars, and that she had calmly smiled at him as he passed. When he reached the little frame house across the road from the Marine Terminal he went inside, said something to the old man there, pressed a bill into his hand, and picked up the telephone. The old man stared at him with curiosity. He called Information, gave her a name in New York City; and while he waited he looked impatiently at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes past eleven.
    It was a quarter of twelve when he returned to the shack in his Duesenberg, which he had parked near the Marine Terminal. Something seemed to have happened inside the tumbledown house, for the newspapermen were storming it, held back with curses by police and detectives. The Amity woman clutched imploringly at his arm as he slipped through the cordon, but he shook her off and quickened his pace.
    Nothing had changed in the shack except the people who had invaded it. The detectives were gone. De Jong was still there, coldly and rather cynically pleased, talking in low tones to a short nondescript man with a brown face. Bill was there… and Lucy Wilson, née Angell.
    Ellery recognized her instantly, after almost eleven years. She did not see him as he watched from the doorway; she was standing by the table, one slim hand on Bill’s shoulder, staring down at the floor with an expression of glazed horror. Her plain black-and-white dress was crawling with wrinkles, as strained as her face. A light coat was hung crazily over the overstuffed armchair. Her shoes were a little muddy…
    She was still the handsome, vigorous creature he had known—almost as tall as her brother, with the same sound chin and black eyes, and a body as strong and pliant as a spring. Her figure had burgeoned with the years; it had grace and sap in it, and sexual beauty. Mr. Ellery Queen was no sentimentalist where women were concerned, but he felt now—as he had always felt in the past when in her presence—the pull of her sheer animal attractiveness. She had always been a woman, he recalled, who drew men to her with an easy unconscious lure that refreshed even as it eluded the grasp. There was nothing small or wantonly delicate about her; her charm was the charm of moist and generous white skin, sweet lips and eyes, and a large and undulant grace of movement. … It was all fixed now, tapered to the horror in her eyes as she looked at the cold body of her husband. The contour of her breast as she leaned on Bill’s shoulder was unsteady, like a round pool shivered by a stone.
    Ellery said in a low troubled voice, “Lucy Angell.”
    Her head came about slowly, and for a moment her black eyes reflected nothing but the dreadful reality of the thing on the floor. Then suddenly they flashed. “Ellery Queen. I’m so glad.” She extended her free hand and he went to her and took it.
    “There’s nothing I can say, of course—”
    “I’m so glad you’re here. It’s so horribly, horribly… unexpected.” A tremor shook her. “My Joe dead—in this awful place. Ellery, how can that be?”
    “It can’t, but it is. You must learn to face that.”
    “Bill told me how you happen to be here. Ellery—stay.” He pressed her hand. She managed the ghost of a smile. Then she turned back to look down