There Was an Old Woman [= The Quick And the Dead]

THURLOW: Well? That detective said — (He stops. Ellery has suddenly left his position at the French window and, without speaking, comes downstage and around the table to turn and pause so that he faces Thurlow, forcing him to follow him with his eyes.)

ELLERY (sternly): Thurlow Potts!

THURLOW: Yes, Mr. Queen? Yes, sir?

ELLERY: You know what’s happened?

THURLOW: You mean my mother?

ELLERY: I mean your mother’s confession!

THURLOW: No. I mean yes. I mean I can’t understand it. Well, that’s not quite true. I don’t know quite how to say it, Mr. Queen—

ELLERY: Stop pirouetting, Mr. Potts! Do you or don’t you?

THURLOW (sullenly): I know that man — your father — told us Mother’s confession was forged. That the case is opened again. It’s very confusing. In the first place, I shot Robert to death in the duel—

ELLERY: Come, come, Mr. Potts, we’ve been all through your Dunasian career and you know perfectly well we substituted a blank cartridge for your lethal one to keep you from doing a very silly thing, and that someone managed to slip into your bedroom the night before the duel and put a live cartridge back into the automatic so that when you fired, Bob would die — as he did, Mr. Potts, as he did.

THURLOW: (touching his forehead): It’s all very confusing.

ELLERY (grimly): Is it, Mr. Potts?

THURLOW: Your tone, sir!

ELLERY: Why do you avoid looking at this table, Mr. Potts?

THURLOW: I beg your pardon?

ELLERY: This table, Mr. Potts — t-a-b-l-e. This handsome little piece just beyond the end of your nose, Mr. Potts. Why haven’t you looked at it?

THURLOW: I don’t know what you mean, and what’s more, Mr. Queen, I won’t stand here and be insulted—

ELLERY (suddenly): Sit down, Mr. Potts.

THURLOW: Uh?

ELLERY (in a soft tone): Sit down. (Thurlow hesitates, then slowly seats himself in the uncomfortable chair beside the table, knees together and pudgy hands in his lap. He blinks in the strong light of the lamp, wriggling. He still has not glanced at the weapon or the bird’s nest.) Mr. Potts!

THURLOW (sullenly): Well? Well?

ELLERY: Look at the gun, please. (Thurlow licks his lips. Slowly he turns to stare at the table. He starts perceptibly.) You recognize it?

THURLOW: No! I mean it looks just like the gun I used in my duel with Robert...

ELLERY: It is just like the gun you used in your duel with Robert, Mr. Potts. But it isn’t the same gun. It’s a duplicate, the duplicate you bought from Cornwall & Ritchey, Remember?

THURLOW (nervously): Yes. Yes, I seem to recall there were two Colt .25’s among the fourteen I purchased—

ELLERY: Indeed. (He steps forward suddenly, and Thurlow makes an instinctive backward movement. Ellery picks up the automatic from its nest, removes the magazine, bending over to let the light catch the cartridge inside. Thurlow follows his movements, fascinated. Suddenly Ellery rams the magazine back into place and tosses the automatic into the nest.) Do you know where we found this missing loaded gun of yours today, Mr. Potts?

THURLOW: In... in the sycamore tree? Yes, I’ve heard about that, Mr. Queen.

ELLERY: Why did you put it there?

THURLOW (gasping): I never did! I haven’t seen this weapon since the day I bought it with the other thirteen!

ELLERY (with a cynical smile): Really, Mr. Potts? (Then sharply.) That’s all! You may go.

(Thurlow blinks, hesitates, rises, openly surprised and upset by this peremptory dismissal. Then, without a backward glance, he hurries from the scene.)

ELLERY: Flint! Louella Potts.

And now it became evident that Mr. Queen’s scene with Thurlow Potts was a deliberate design for the scenes that followed. For when Louella Potts swept in, a violently self-assured Louella, quite altered from that sullen and sour spinster who had been under her mother’s thumb, Ellery’s script adapted itself to the unpredictable dialogue of this second character smoothly and with scarcely an emendation.

Again Ellery put the preliminary questions, again they led to the gun on the table, again he picked it up, fiddled with its magazine, displayed its cartridge, replaced the magazine, tossed the automatic back on the table, and asked the last question. “Why did you hide this loaded gun of Thurlow’s in the starling’s nest, Miss Potts?”

Louella sprang from the straight-backed chair, her saffron features convulsed. “Is it for this childish nonsense I’ve been dragged away from my important experiments? I never saw this weapon before, I didn’t put it in the nest, I know nothing about it, and I’ll ask you, Mr. Queen, to stop interfering with the progress of science!” And Louella strode out, all bones and indignation.