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perfect guest, and considering the generally mysterious air of this household, I’d rather not blunder in on anyth—”
    “God!” whispered the Inspector. He had stopped short in his tracks and gripped Ellery’s arm with convulsive fingers. He was staring with sagging jaw, naked terror in his eyes, gray little face grayer than Ellery had ever seen it, past his son’s shoulder at something down the hall.
    His nerves already frayed by the harrowing experiences of the evening, Ellery whirled about. The skin of his arms was prickling, and the flesh was crawling at the base of his scalp.
    But he saw nothing unusual; the corridor was dim and empty, as before. Then he heard a faint click! as of a door closing.
    “What in God’s name is the matter?” he whispered nervously, searching his father’s horror-struck face.
    The Inspector’s taut body relaxed. He sighed and passed a trembling hand over his mouth. “El, I—I—Did you see what I—”
    They both jumped at a light footstep behind them. Something large and shapeless was stalking them from the rear, where the corridor was blackest. Two burning eyes. … But it was only Dr. Xavier detaching himself from the region of intensest shadows.
    “Quite ready, eh?” he said in his deep charming voice, as if he had noticed nothing amiss, although he must have heard the Queens’ tense whispers and—Ellery saw in a flash—must have seen both the Inspector’s horror and the cause of it. The surgeon’s voice was as pure, as rich, as mildly unruffled as it had been a few moments before. He linked their arms in his. “Then let’s go downstairs; shall we? I daresay you’re both ready to do justice to Mrs. Wheary’s little snack.”
    And he urged them gently but firmly toward the landing.
    As they descended, three abreast on the wide staircase, Ellery stole a glance at his father. Except for a certain slackness about the lips the old man betrayed no sign of his agitation of a moment before. But there was a deep furrow between his gray brows and he was holding himself stiffly erect, as if by a great effort of will.
    Ellery shook his head in the half light. All desire for sleep had fled before the excitement boiling in his brain. What mess of wriggling human relationships had they innocently blundered into?
    He frowned, treading the steps quietly. There were three major problems which required immediate solution if his restless brain was to relax and succumb to sleep: the cause of the Inspector’s unaccountable and unprecedented horror, the reason their host had lurked near their door in the darkness of the upper corridor, and a rational explanation for the extraordinary fact that Dr. Xavier’s big arm where it touched Ellery’s was as rigid and hard as if the man had died and his body were in the grip of rigor mortis.

Chapter Three
THE QUEER PEOPLE
    I N LATER YEARS ELLERY Queen was to remember every brilliant detail of that remarkable night in the Tepee Mountains, with an animate wind whistling about the summit of a peak on which stood a veritable house of mystery. It would not have been so bad, he would point out, had not the palpable blackness of the mountain night provided a dark breeding ground for the phantoms of their imagination. And then, too, the fire miles below worked in and out of their minds, like a plaited thread of phosphorescent wool. Beneath everything they both realized that there was no escaping from the house, that they must eventually confront whatever of evil it concealed—unless they were willing to throw themselves upon the doubtful mercies of the wilderness and the conflagration below.
    To make it worse, neither father nor son was offered the opportunity to discuss their common fears in private. Their host did not leave them alone for even a moment. Engulfing the cold pork sandwiches and blackberry tarts on the trays, and the steaming coffee Mrs. Wheary silently provided when they returned to the living room on the main floor, the Queens would