There was no sun now. A pale and eerie light filtered down through the cold clouds. The snow continued its soft, thick fall.

  They looked like dots, small and helpless, on a sheet of blank paper.

  Ellery pulled open the folding doors of the garage and peered. A healthy odor of raw gasoline and rubber assailed his nostrils. Thome’s car stood within, exactly as Ellery had seen it the afternoon before, a black monster with glittering chrome-work. Beside it, apparently parked by Keith after their arrival, stood the battered Buick in which Dr. Reinach had driven them from the city. Both cars were perfectly dry.

  He shut the doors and turned back to the driveway. Aside from the catenated links of their footprints in the snow, made a moment before, the white covering on the driveway was virgin.

  “Here’s your broom,” said the giant. “What are you going to do—ride it?”“Hold your tongue, Nick,” growled Dr. Reinach.

  Ellery laughed. “Let him alone, Doctor. His angry sanity is infectious.

  Come along, you two. This may be the Judgment Day, but we may as well go through the motions.”

  “What do you want with a broom, Queen?”

  “It’s hard to decide whether the snow was an accident or part of the plan,” murmured Ellery. “Anything may be true today. Literally anything.”

  “Rubbish,” snorted the fat man. “Abracadabra. Om viani jfadme hum.

  How could a man have planned a snowfall? You’re talking gibberish.”

  “I didn’t say a human plan, Doctor.”

  “Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!”

  “You may as well save your breath. You’re a badly scared little boy whistling in the dark—for all your bulk, Doctor.”

  .Ellery gripped the broom tightly and stamped out across the driveway. He felt his own foot shrinking as he tried to make it step upon the white rectangle. His muscles were gathered in, as if in truth he expected to encounter the adamantine bulk of a house which was still there but unaccountably impalpable. When he felt nothing but cold air, he laughed a little self-consciously and began to wield the broom on the snow in a peculiar manner. He used the most delicate of sweeping motions, barely brushing the surface crystals away; so that layer by layer he reduced the depth of the snow. He scanned each layer with anxiety as it was uncovered. And he continued to do this until the ground itself lay revealed; and at no depth did he come across the minutest trace of a human imprint.

  “Elves,” he complained. “Nothing less than elves. I confess it’s beyond me.”“Even the foundation—” began Dr. Reinach heavily.

  Ellery poked the tip of the broom at the earth. It was hard as corundum.

  The front door slammed as Thorne and the two women crept into the White House. The three men outside stood still, doing nothing.

  “Well,” said Ellery at last, “this is either a bad dream or the end of the world.” He made off diagonally across the plot, dragging the broom behind him like a tired charwoman, until he reached the snow-covered drive; and then he trudged down the drive towards the invisible road, disappearing around a bend under the stripped white-dripping trees.

  It was a short walk to the road. Ellery remembered it well. It had curved steadily in a long arc all the way from the turn-off at the main highway. There had been no crossroad in all the jolting journey.

  He went out into the middle of the road, snow-covered now but plainly distinguishable between the powdered tangles of woods as a gleaming, empty strip. There was the long curve exactly as he remembered it. Mechanically he used the broom again, sweeping a small area clear. And there were the pits and ruts of the old Buick’s journeys.

  “What are you looking for,” said Nick Keith quietly, “gold?” Ellery straightened up by degrees, turning about slowly until he was face to face with the giant. “So you thought it was necessary to follow me?

  Or—no, I beg your pardon. Undoubtedly it was Dr. Reinach’s idea.” The sun-charred features did not change expression. “You’re crazy as a bat. Follow you? I’ve got all I can do to follow myself.”

  “Of course,” said Ellery. “But did I understand you to ask me if I was looking for gold, my dear young Prometheus?”

  “You’re a queer one,” said Keith as they made their way back toward the house.

  “Gold,” repeated Ellery. “Hmm. There was gold in that house, and now the house is gone. In the shock of the discovery that houses fly away like birds, I’d quite forgotten that little item. Thank you, Mr. Keith,” said Ellery grimly, “for reminding me.”

  * * *

  “Mr. Queen,” said Alice. She was crouched in a chair by the fire, white to the lips. “What’s happened to us? What are we to do? Have we . . .

  Was yesterday a dream? Didn’t we walk into that house, go through it, touch things? . . . I’m frightened.”

  “If yesterday was a dream,” smiled Ellery, “then we may expect that tomorrow will bring a vision; for that’s what holy Sanskrit says, and we may as well believe in parables as in miracles.” He sat down, rubbing his hands briskly. “How about a fire, Keith? it’s arctic in here.”

  “Sorry,” said Keith with surprising amiability, and he went away.

  “We could use a vision,” shivered Thorne. “My brain is—sick. It just isn’t possible. It’s horrible.” His hand slapped his side and something jangled in his pocket.

  “Keys,” said Ellery, “and no house. It is staggering.” Keith came back under a mountain of firewood. He grimaced at the litter in the fireplace, dropped the wood, and began sweeping together the fragments of glass, the remains of the brandy decanter he had smashed against the brick wall the night before. Alice glanced from his broad back to the chromo of her mother on the mantel. As for Mrs. Reinach, she was as silent as a scared bird; she stood in a corner like a weazened little gnome, her wrapper drawn about her, her stringy sparrow-colored hair hanging down her back, and her glassy eyes fixed on the face of her husband.

  “Milly,” said the fat man.

  “Yes, Herbert, I’m going,” said Mrs. Reinach instantly, and she crept up the stairs and out of sight.

  “Well, Mr. Queen, what’s the answer? Or is this riddle too esoteric for your taste?”

  “No riddle is esoteric,” muttered Ellery, “unless it’s the riddle of God; and that’s no riddle—it’s a vast blackness. Doctor, is there any way of reaching assistance?”

  “Not unless you can fly.”

  “No phone,” said Keith without turning, “and you saw the condition of the road for yourself. You’d never get a car through those drifts.”

  “If you had a car,” chuckled Dr. Reinach. Then he seemed to remember the disappearing house, and his chuckle died.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Ellery. “In the garage are—”

  “Two useless products of the machine age. Both cars are out of fuel.”

  “And mine,” said old Thorne suddenly, with a resurrection of grim personal interest, “mine has something wrong with it besides. I left my chauffeur in the city, you know, Queen, when I drove down last time.

  Now I can’t get the engine running on the little gasoline that’s left in the tank.”

  Ellery’s fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “Bother! Now we can’t even call on other eyes to test whether we’ve been bewitched or not.

  By the way, Doctor, how far is the nearest community? I’m afraid I didn’t pay attention on the drive down.”

  “Over fifteen miles by road. If you’re thinking of footing it, Mr.

  Queen, you’re welcome to the thought.”

  “You’d never get through the drifts,” muttered Keith. The drifts appeared to trouble him.

  “And so we find ourselves snowbound,” said Ellery, “in the middle of the fourth dimension—or perhaps it’s the fifth. A pretty kettle! Ah there, Keith, that feels considerably better.”

  “You don’t seem bowled over by what’s happened,” said Dr. Reinach, eying him curiously. “I’ll confess it’s given even me a shock.” Ellery was silent for a moment. Then he said lightly: “There wouldn’t be any point to losing our heads, would there?”

  “I fully expect dragons to come flying over the house,” groaned Thorne. He eyed Ellery a bit bashfully. “Queen . . . perhaps we had better . . . try to get out of here.”

  “You heard Keith, Thorne.”

  Thorne bit his lip. “I’m frozen,” said Alice, drawing nearer the fire.

  “That was well done, Mr. Keith. It—it—a fire like this makes me think of home, somehow.” The young man got to his feet and turned around.

  Their eyes met for an instant.

  “It’s nothing,” he said shortly. “Nothing at all.”

  “You seem to be the only one who— Oh”

  An enormous old woman with a black shawl over her shoulders was coming downstairs. She might have been years dead, she was so yellow and emaciated and mummified. And yet she gave the impression of being very much alive, with a sort of ancient, ageless life; her black eyes were young and bright and cunning, and her face was extraordinarily mobile.

  She was sidling down stiffly, feeling her way with one foot and clutching the banister with two dried claws, while her lively eyes remained fixed on Alice’s face. There was a curious hunger in her expression, the flaring of a long-dead hope suddenly, against all reason.

  “Who—who—” began Alice, shrinking back.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said Dr. Reinach quickly. “It’s unfortunate that she got away from Milly . . . . Sarah!” In a twinkling he was at the foot of the staircase, barring the old woman’s way. “What are you doing up at this hour? You should take better care of yourself, Sarah.” She ignored him, continuing her snail’s pace down the stairs until she reached his pachyderm bulk. “Olivia,” she mumbled, with a vital eager-ness. “It’s Olivia come back to me. Oh, my sweet, sweet darling . . . .”

  “Now, Sarah,” said the fat man, taking her hand gently. “Don’t excite yourself. This isn’t Olivia, Sarah. It’s Alice—Alice Mayhew, Sylvester’s girl, come from England. You remember Alice, little Alice? Not Olivia, Sarah.”

  “Not Olivia?” The old woman peered across the banister, her wrinkled lips moving. “Not Olivia?”

  The girl jumped up. “I’m Alice, Aunt Sarah. Alice—” Sarah Fell darted suddenly past the fat man and scurried across the room to seize the girl’s hand and glare into her face. As she studied those shrinking features her expression changed to one of despair. “Not Olivia.

  Olivia’s beautiful black hair . . . . Not Olivia’s voice. Alice? Alice?” She dropped into Alice’s vacated chair, her skinny broad shoulders sagging, and began to weep. They could see the yellow skin of her scalp through the sparse gray hair.

  Dr. Reinach roared: “Milly!” in an enraged voice. Mrs. Reinach popped into sight like Jack-in-the-box. “Why did you let her leave her room?”

  “B-but I thought she was—” began Mrs. Reinach, stammering.

  “Take her upstairs at once!”

  “Yes, Herbert,” whispered the sparrow, and Mrs. Reinach hurried downstairs in her wrapper and took the old woman’s hand and, unop-posed, led her away. Mrs. Fell kept repeating, between sobs: “Why doesn’t Olivia come back? Why did they take her away from her mother?” until she was out of sight.

  “Sorry,” panted the fat man, mopping himself. “One of her spells. I knew it was coming on from the curiosity she exhibited the moment she heard you were coming, Alice. There is a resemblance; you can scarcely blame her.”

  “She’s—she’s horrible,” said Alice faintly. “Mr. Queen—Mr. Thorne, must we stay here? I’d feel so much easier in the city. And then my cold, these frigid rooms”

  “By heaven,” burst out Thorne, “I feel like chancing it on foot!”

  “And leave Sylvester’s gold to our tender mercies?” smiled Dr.

  Reinach. Then he scowled.

  “I don’t want father’s legacy,” said Alice desperately. “At this moment I don’t want anything but to get away. I—I can manage to get along all right. I’ll find work to do—I can do so many things. I want to go away.

  Mr. Keith, couldn’t you possibly”

  “I’m not a magician,” said Keith rudely; and he buttoned his mackinaw and strode out of the house. They could see his tall figure stalking off behind a veil of snowflakes.

  Alice flushed, turning back to the fire.

  “Nor are any of us,” said Ellery. “Miss Mayhew, you’ll simply have to be a brave girl and stick it out until we can find a means of getting out of here.”

  “Yes,” murmured Alice, shivering; and stared into the flames.

  “Meanwhile, Thorne, tell me everything you know about this case, especially as it concerns Sylvester Mayhew’s house. There may be a clue in your father’s history, Miss Mayhew. If the house has vanished, so has the gold in the house; and whether you want it or not, it belongs to you.

  Consequently we must make an effort to find it.”

  “I suggest,” muttered Dr. Reinach, “that you find the house first.

  House!” he exploded, waving his furred arms. And he made for the sideboard.

  Alice nodded listlessly. Thorne mumbled: “Perhaps, Queen, you and I had better talk privately.”

  “We made a frank beginning last night; I see no reason why we shouldn’t continue in the same candid vein. You needn’t be reluctant to speak before Dr. Reinach. Our host is obviously a man of parts—

  unorthodox parts.”

  Dr. Reinach did not reply. His globular face was dark as he tossed off a water-goblet full of gin.

  * * *

  Through air metallic with defiance, Thorne talked in a hardening voice; not once did he take his eyes from Dr. Reinach.

  His first suspicion that something was wrong had been germinated by Sylvester Mayhew himself.

  Hearing by post from Alice, Thorne had investigated and located Mayhew. He had explained to the old invalid his daughter’s desire to find her father, if he still lived. Old Mayhew, with a strange excitement, had acquiesced; he was eager to be reunited with his daughter; and he seemed to be living, explained Thorne defiantly, in mortal fear of his relatives in the neighboring house.

  “Fear, Thorne?” The fat man sat down, raising his brows. “You know he was afraid, not of us, but of poverty. He was a miser.” Thorne ignored him. Mayhew had instructed Thorne to write Alice and bid her come to America at once; he meant to leave her his entire estate and wanted her to have it before he died. The repository of the gold he had cunningly refused to divulge, even to Thorne; it was “in the house,” lie had said, but he would not reveal its hiding-place to anyone but Alice herself. The “others,” he had snarled, had been looking for it ever since their “arrival.”

  “By the way,” drawled Ellery, “how long have you good people been living in this house, Dr. Reinach?”

  “A year or so. You certainly don’t put any credence in the paranoic ravings of a dying man? There’s no mystery about our living here. I looked Sylvester up over a year ago after a long separation and found him still in the old homestead, and this house boarded up and empty. The White House, this house, incidentally, was built by my stepfather—

  Sylvester’s father—on Sylvester’s marriage to Alice’s mother; Sylvester lived in it until my stepfather died, and then moved back to the Black House. I found Sylvester, a degenerated hulk of what he’d once been, living on crusts, absolutely alone and badly in need of medical attention.”

  “Alone—here, in this wilderness?” said Ellery incredulously.

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, the only way I could get his permission to move back to this house, which belonged to him, was by dangling the bait of free medical treatment before his eyes. I’m sorry, Alice; he was quite unbalanced . . . . And so Milly and Sarah and I—Sarah had been living with us ever since Olivia’s death—moved in here.”

  “Decent of you,” remarked Ellery. “I suppose you had to give up your medical practice to do it, Doctor?”

  Dr. Reinach grimaced. “I didn’t have much of a practice to give up, Mr. Queen.”

  “But it was an almost pure brotherly impulse, eh?”

  “Oh, I don’t deny that the possibility of falling heir to some of Sylvester’s fortune had crossed our minds. It was rightfully ours, we believed, not knowing anything about Alice. As it’s turned out—” he shrugged his fat shoulders. “I’m a philosopher.”

  “And don’t deny, either,” shouted Thorne, “that when I came back here at the time Mayhew sank into that fatal coma you people watched me like a—like a band of spies! I was in your way!”

  “Mr. Thorne,” whispered Alice, paling.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Mayhew, but you may as well know the truth. Oh, you didn’t fool me, Reinach! You wanted that gold, Alice or no Alice. I shut myself up in that house just to keep you from getting your hands on it!” Dr. Reinach shrugged again; his rubbery lips compressed.

  “You want candor; here it is!” rasped Thorne. “I was in that house, Queen, for six days after Mayhew’s funeral and before Miss Mayhew’s arrival, looking for the gold. I turned that house upside down. And I didn’t find the slightest trace of it. I tell you it isn’t there.” He glared at the fat man. “I tell you it was stolen before Mayhew died!”

  “Now, now,” sighed Ellery. “That makes less sense than the other.

  Why then has somebody intoned an incantation over the house and caused it to disappear?”

  “I don’t know,” said the old lawyer fiercely. “1 know only that the most dastardly thing’s happened here, that everything is unnatural, veiled in that—that false creature’s smile! Miss Mayhew, I’m sorry I must speak this way about your own family. But I feel it my duty to warn you that you’ve fallen among human wolves. Wolves!”

  “I’m afraid,” said Reinach sourly, “that I shouldn’t come to you, my dear Thorne, for a reference.”

  “I wish,” said Alice in a very low tone, “I truly wish I were dead.” But the lawyer was past control. “That man Keith,” he cried. “Who is he? What’s he doing here? He looks like a gangster. I suspect him, Queen”

 

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