The Egyptian Cross Mystery
- Автор: Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Серия: Ellery Queen #5
- Год: 1932
- Язык: английский
- Год: Frederick A. Stokes Company
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The Egyptian Cross Mystery». Краткое содержание книги:
“Reckon I do... What’s all th’ shootin’ fer far’s Ol’ Pete’s concerned? Ain’t goin’ t’arrest ’im, now, are ye? Harmless ol’ loonatic... Not,” added the Constable hastily as Isham frowned, “that it’s any o’ my affair... Never been up to Ol’ Pete’s shack — few folks roundabout have. Cave country up there — ol’ fellers, thousan’s o’ years old — an’ folks is jest a mite scary. Ol’ Pete’s shack is some’res in th’ hills in a mighty lonely spot. Y’ couldn’t find it y’rself.”
“Will you guide us, Constable?” asked Ellery.
“Sure thing! Reckon I c’n find ’er.” Luden stood up and, like a fat old mastiff, shook himself. “Y’don’t want word to git round, now, do ye?” he said casually.
“No!” said Isham. “Don’t even tell your wife.”
The Constable grunted. “No fear o’ that. I ain’t got no wife, praise be... C’mon.”
He conducted them not to the front of the building, where the car was parked on Arroyo’s main street, but out through a back door to a side street which was deserted. Luden and Isham waited, and Ellery circled the Municipal Hall quickly and jumped into the Duesenberg. Two minutes later the car was in the side street, and the three men departed in a cloud of choking dust, Luden clinging to the runningboard.
Constable Luden directed them by devious ways to a dirt road which seemed to plunge into the heart of the nearby hills. “Dif’rent road,” he explained. “You park ’er here, an’ well walk on up.”
“Walk?” said Isham doubtfully, eyeing the steep ascent.
“Well,” drawled Luden in a cheerful voice: “I c’d carry ye, Mr. Isham.”
They left the car in a clump of bushes. The District Attorney looked about, then stooped over the side of the Duesenberg and picked something up from the floor. It was a bulky wrapped bundle. Luden looked at it with frank curiosity, but neither man vouchsafed an explanation.
The Constable lowered his big head and, plodding through a thicket, searched — with the air of a man who does not greatly care whether he finds or not — until he pointed out a faint footpath. Ellery and Isham toiled behind in silence. It was a steadily ascending journey through wild, almost virgin, forest; the trees were so massed that the sky was invisible. The air was sultry, and all three men were soaked with perspiration before they had climbed fifty feet. Isham began to grumble.
Fifteen minutes of back-breaking ascent, with the woods growing denser and the path fainter; and the Constable suddenly halted.
“Matt Hollis, he once tol’ me ’bout it,” he whispered, pointing. “Crickets! There she is.”
They crept closer, Luden leading the way cautiously. And there, as the good Constable had said, she was... In a little clearing, under a massive outcrop of mountainside, nestled a rude shack. The forest had been hacked away for thirty feet to the sides and at the front of the hut; it was protected at the rear by the jutting granite. And — Ellery stared — the entire space of thirty feet, at sides and front, was guarded by a high, tangled, rusty, and dangerous-looking barbed-wire fence.
“Will you look at that!” whispered Isham. “Not even a gate!”
There was no opening anywhere in the barbed-wire fence. The shack inside lay cold and grim — almost a fortress. Even the streamer of smoke that drifted away from the chimney hole was forbidding.
“Cripes,” muttered Luden. “Whut’s he gone an’ fortyfied himself this way fer? Daffy, jest like I told ye.”
“A nasty place to stumble on in the dark,” murmured Ellery. “Constable, District Attorney Isham and I have a most irregular request to make of you.”
Constable Luden, perhaps envisioning his last encounter with Ellery’s largess, looked interested at once. “Now, as t’that,” he rumbled, “I’m one feller that minds ’is own bus’ness. Got to, round hyah. Plenty o’ moonshinin’ goin’ on up in th’ hills roundabout, but y’d not see me stickin’ my two cents in. Nossir — whut is it?”
“Forget this entire incident,” snapped Isham. “We never came here, understand? You are not to report it to other authorities of Arroyo or Hancock County. You know nothing about Old Pete.”
Constable Luden’s huge hand closed over something which Ellery had produced from his wallet. “Mr. Isham,” he said earnestly, “I’m deef, dumb, an’ blind... Find yer way down all right?”
“Yes.”
“Then good luck to ye — an’ thanks a lot, Mr. Queen.”
The very model of disinterest, Luden turned and stole away through the woods. He did not once look back.
Isham and Ellery regarded each other briefly; then each threw back his shoulders and stepped out before the barbed-wire fence.
They had no sooner set foot on the ground before the fence — in fact, Isham was in the act of raising the bundle he carried over the top of the highest strand of wire — when a harsh cracked voice from the interior of the shack cried out: “Halt! Git back!”
They halted, very abruptly; the bundle dropped to the ground. For from the single window of the hut, also protected, they noted, by a curtain of barbed wire, the muzzle of a shotgun had appeared and was trained directly upon them. There was no wavering of the ugly weapon; it meant business, and it was ready to speak for itself.
Ellery gulped, and the District Attorney became rooted to his patch of earth. “That’s Old Pete,” whispered Ellery. “Consistent voice-maker, at any rate!” He raised his head and bellowed: “Just a minute! Take your finger off that trigger. We’re friends.”
Silence, while they were scrutinized with slow care by the owner of the shotgun. They stood very still.
Then the harsh voice assailed their ears again: “Don’t believe you! Git out. I’ll shoot if you don’t make tracks in five seconds.”
Isham cried: “We’re the law, you fool! We’ve a letter to you from — Megara. Get a move on! For your sake we don’t want to be seen here.”
The muzzle did not move; but the bushy head of the old hillman appeared dimly behind the curtain of wire, and a pair of bright eyes regarded them with suspicion. They could sense the man’s indecision.
The head disappeared, and so did the shotgun. An instant later the heavy nail-studded door creaked inward and Old Pete himself stood there — gray-bearded, disheveled, clad in rags. The shotgun was lowered, but its muzzle covered them.
“Climb that fence, men. No other way in.” The voice was the same, but a new note had crept in.
They looked at the fence with dismay. Then Ellery sighed and very delicately raised one leg and rested it on the lowest strand of wire. He tried gingerly to find a safe handhold.
“Come on,” said Old Pete impatiently. “And no tricks, either of you.”
Isham fished about the ground for a stick; he found one, propped it between the two lowest strands, and Ellery crawled through, not without ripping the shoulder of his suit, however. The District Attorney followed clumsily; neither said a word, and the shotgun never shifted from their bodies.
Quickly they ran toward the man, and he retreated into his hut. Isham swung the heavy door to when they were inside, and dropped the bolt into place. It was the crudest of habitations, but a careful hand had fitted it out. The floor was stone, well swept, and strewn with mats. There was a full larder in one corner, and to the side of the fireplace a neat pile of firewood. A basin-like arrangement at the rear wall, opposite the single door, was obviously the hillman’s lavatory; above it hung a shelf stocked with medicinal supplies. Above the basin there was a small hand-pump; the well was apparently beneath the house.
“The letter,” said Old Pete hoarsely.
Isham produced a note. The hillman did not lower his weapon; he read the note in snatches, his eyes never off his guests for more than an instant. As he read, however, his demeanor changed. The beard was still there, and the rags, and all the superficial garments of Old Pete; but the man himself was different. He propped the shotgun slowly against the table and sat down, fingering the note.