Read There Was an Old Woman for Free Online Page B

French doors, looking out upon a flagged, roofed terrace which apparently ran the width of the house.
    As the two young men paused at the foyer doorway, one of the players—a slight, meek-eyed man with a straggly gray mustache—looked up and spied them. “Charley, my boy,” he said with a smile. “Glad to s-see you. Come in, come in. Major, I’ve got you b-beaten anyway, so s-stop pretending you’ll w-wiggle out.”
    His companion, a whale of a man with a whale’s stare, snorted and turned his heavy, pocked face towards the doorway. “Go away,” he said testily. “I’ll whip this snapper if it takes all night.”
    â€œAnd it will,” said Stephen Brent Potts in a rush. Then he looked frightened and said: “Of course we’ll p-play it out, Major.”
    Paxton introduced Ellery, the four men chatted for a moment, and then he and Ellery left the two old fellows to resume their game.
    â€œGoes on by day and by night,” laughed Charley. “Friendly enemies. Gotch is a queer one—domineering, swears all over the place, and swipes liquor. Otherwise honest—it pays! Steve lets Gotch walk all over him. And everybody else, for that matter.”
    They left through the French doors in the foyer and crossed the wide terrace, stepping out upon a pleasant lawn, geometrically landscaped, with a path that serpentined to a small building lying within the arms of the surrounding garden walls like a candy box.
    â€œHoratio’s cottage,” announced Charley.
    â€œCottage?” gulped Ellery. “You mean—someone actually lives in it? It’s not a mirage?”
    â€œPositively not a mirage.”
    â€œThen I know who designed it.” Ellery’s step quickened. “Walt Disney!”
    It was a fairy-tale house. It had crooked little turrets and a front door like a golden harp and windows that possessed no symmetry at all. Most of it was painted pink, with peppermint-striped shutters. One turret looked like an inverted beet—a turquoise beet. The curl of smoke coming out of the little chimney was green. Without shame Ellery rubbed his eyes. But when he looked again the smoke was still green.
    â€œYou’re not seeing things,” sighed Charley. “Horatio puts a chemical from his chem set on the fire to color the smoke.”
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œHe says green smoke is more fun.”
    â€œThe Land of Oz,” said Ellery in a delighted voice. “Let’s go in, for pity’s sake. I must meet that man!”
    Charley played on the harp and it swung inward to reveal a very large, very fat man with exuberant red hair which stood up all over his head, as if excited, and enormous eyes behind narrow gold spectacles. He reminded Ellery of somebody; Ellery tried desperately to think of whom. Then he remembered. It was Santa Claus. Horatio Potts looked like Santa Claus without a beard.
    â€œCharley!” roared Horatio. He wrung the lawyer’s hand, almost swinging the young man off his feet. “And this gentleman?”
    â€œEllery Queen—Horatio Potts.”
    Ellery had his hand cracked in a fury of welcome. The man possessed a giant’s strength, which he used without offense, innocently.
    â€œCome in, come in!”
    The interior was exuberant, too. Ellery wondered, as he glanced about, what was wrong with it. Then he saw that nothing was wrong with it. It was a perfect playroom for a child, a boy, of ten. It was crowded with large toys and small—with games, and boxes of candy, and construction sets, and unfinished kites, with puppies and kittens and at least one small, stupid-looking rabbit which was nibbling at the leg of a desk on which were piled children’s books and scattered manuscript sheets covered in a large, hearty hand with inky words. A goosequill pen lay near by. It was the jolliest and most imaginatively equipped child’s room Ellery had ever seen. But where