The Siamese Twin Mystery by Ellery Queen

Author:Ellery Queen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2012-01-15T05:25:01+00:00

* * *

Avoiding the game-room, they walked down the main corridor to the cross-hall. Through the open door of the kitchen ahead they caught a glimpse of Mrs. Wheary’s broad back and the motionless figure of Bones, who was standing at one of the two kitchen windows staring out at the Stygian night.

The Queens turned right and stopped before a closed door midway between the crossing of the halls and the door of Dr. Xavier’s study. The Inspector tried the door; it gave. They slipped into the black room.

“Where the devil’s the switch?” grumbled the Inspector. Ellery found it and the laboratory blazed with light. He closed the door and set his back against it, looking around.

Now that he was at leisure to inspect the laboratory, he felt a stronger recurrence of the impression of scientific modernism and mechanical efficiency which had struck him earlier in the day when he had been party to the gruesome business of stowing Dr. Xavier’s body away. The place bristled with awe-inspiring apparatus. To his untrained eye it was the last word in research laboratories. Notoriously unscientific, ignorant of the application of most of this glittery and queerly shaped equipment, he surveyed the array of cathode-ray tubes, electric furnaces, twisted retorts, racks of giant test-tubes, bottles of evil-looking broths, microscopes and chemical jars and odd tables and X-ray machines with vast respect. Had he seen an astronomical telescope he should have not felt surprise. The variety and complexity of the equipment meant little more to him than that Dr. Xavier had been conducting chemical and physical, as well as biological, researches.

Both father and son avoided that corner of the room which housed the refrigerator.

“Well?” growled the Inspector after a time. “I don’t see anything for us here. Most likely the murderer never even set foot in this room last night. What’s bothering you?”

“Animals.”

“Animals?”

“I said,” repeated Ellery firmly, “animals. Dr. Holmes earlier today mentioned something about experiments with diverse creatures and their capacity for noise, in connection with the soundproofing of these rooms.

Now I’m very curious about experimental animals, have an unscientific horror of vivisection.”

“Noise?” frowned the Inspector. “1 don’t hear any.”

“Probably mildly anesthetized. Or sleeping. Let’s see . . . . The parti-tion, of course!”

At the rear of the laboratory there was a boarded-off cubicle which reminded Ellery vaguely of a butcher’s icebox. A heavy door with a chro-mium latchet provided entrance. He tried the door; it was unlocked.

Opening it, he went in, groped for an overhanging bulb, turned on the switch, and blinked about him. The compartment was shelved; on the shelves stood cages of various sizes. And in the cages was the queerest assortment of creatures he had ever seen.

“Lord!” he gasped. “It’s—it’s colossal! Make the fortune of a Coney Island freak-show impresario. Dad! Look at this.” The light roused them. Ellery’s last word was drowned in a torrent of animal voices: squeaks and tiny barks and the raucous screeching of fowl.

The Inspector, faintly alarmed, pushed into the small compartment and his eyes widened even as his nose wrinkled in disgust.

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