The Four of Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page B

delirious. I feel the way I felt when I stood on the north rim of the Grand Canyon looking into infinity. No, no, that’s so unfair to you. Miss Paris, if you don’t talk to me I shall go completely mad.’
    She seemed amused then, and yet he felt an infinitesimal withdrawing, like the stir of a small animal in the dark. ‘Talk to you? I thought you wanted to talk to me.’
    â€˜No, no, that’s all so trivial now. I must hear your voice. It bathes me. God knows I need something after what I’ve been through in this bubbling vat of a town. Has anyone ever told you the organ took its tonal inspiration from your voice?’
    Miss Paris averted her head suddenly, and after a moment she sat down. He saw a flush creeping down her throat. ‘ Et tu, Brute ,’ she laughed, and yet her eyes were strange. ‘Sometimes I think men say such kind things to me because –’ She did not finish.
    â€˜On the contrary,’ said Ellery, out of control. ‘You’re a gorgeous, gorgeous creature. Undoubtedly the trouble with you is an acute inferiority –’
    â€˜Mr. Queen.’
    He recognized it then, that eerie something in her eyes. It was fright. Before, it had seemed incredible that this poised, mature, patrician creature should be afraid of anything, let alone the mere grouping of human beings. ‘Crowd phobia,’ Sam Vix had called it, homophobia, a morbid fear of man … Mr. Queen snapped out of it very quickly indeed. That one glimpse into terror had frightened him, too.
    â€˜Sorry. Please forgive me. I did it on a – on a bet. Very stupid of me.’
    â€˜I’m sure you did.’ She kept looking at her quiet hands.
    â€˜It’s the detective in me, I suppose. I mean, this clumsy leap into analysis –’
    â€˜Tell me, Mr. Queen,’ she said abruptly, tamping out her cigarette. ‘How do you like the idea of putting the Royles and the Stuarts into a biographical film?’
    Dangerous ground, then. Of course. He was an ass. ‘How did you know? Oh, I imagine Sam Vix told you.’
    â€˜Not at all. I have deeper channels of information.’ She laughed then, and Ellery drank in the lovely sound. Superb, superb! ‘I know all about you, you see,’ she was murmuring. ‘Your six weeks’ horror at Magna, your futile scampering about the lot there, your orgy the other day with Jacques Butcher, who’s a darling –’
    â€˜I’m beginning to think you’d make a pretty good detective yourself.’
    She shook her head ever so slowly and said: ‘Sam said you wanted information.’ Ellery recognized the barrier. ‘Exactly what?’
    â€˜The Royles and the Stuarts.’ He jumped up and began to walk around; it was not good to look at this woman too long. ‘What they’re like. Their lives, thoughts, secrets –’
    â€˜Heavens, is that all? I’d have to take a month off, and I’m too busy for that.’
    â€˜You do know all about them, though?’
    â€˜As much as any one. Do sit down again, Mr. Queen. Please.’
    Ellery looked at her then. He felt a little series of twitches in his spine. He grinned idiotically and sat down.
    â€˜The interesting question, of course,’ she went on in her gentle way, ‘is why Jack Royle and Blythe Stuart broke their engagement before the War. And nobody knows that.’
    â€˜I understood you to know everything.’
    â€˜Not quite everything, Mr. Queen. I don’t agree, however, with those who think it was another woman, or another man, or anything as serious as that.’
    â€˜Then you do have an opinion.’
    The dimple again. ‘Some ridiculous triviality. A lovers’ spat of the most inconsequential sort.’
    â€˜With such extraordinary consequences?’ asked Ellery dryly.
    â€˜Apparently you don’t know them. They’re reckless, irresponsible, charming lunatics.