The Siamese Twin Mystery Read Online Free PDF

we should introduce ourselves after the unfortunate manner of our meeting. I’m John Xavier.”
    “Ah!” cried Ellery. “I thought you looked familiar. Dr. Xavier. I’ve seen your picture in the papers numberless times. As a matter of fact, I’d rather deduced a medico as the master of this house when I saw that etching after Rembrandt on your foyer wall. No one but a medical man would have displayed such—ah—original taste in decoration.” He grinned. “Remember the doctor’s face, don’t you, dad?” The Inspector nodded with vague enthusiasm; in his mood at the moment he would have remembered anything. “We’re the Queens, father and son, Dr. Xavier.”
    Dr. Xavier murmured something gracious. “Mr. Queen,” he said to the Inspector. The Queens exchanged glances. Their host, then, was ignorant of the police connection of the Inspector. Ellery’s eyes warned his father, and the Inspector nodded imperceptibly. It did seem pointless to bring up his official title. People as a rule stiffened up on such creatures as detectives and policemen.
    Dr. Xavier sat down in a leather chair and produced cigarets. “And now, while we’re waiting for my excellent housekeeper’s no doubt frenzied preparations to bear fruit, suppose you tell me something about this … fire.”
    His mild and slightly absent expression did not change; but something queer had crept into his voice.
    The Inspector went into lurid detail, their host nodding at every sentence and maintaining a perfect air of polite perturbation. Ellery, whose eyes were paining him, took his spectacle case out of his pocket, polished the lenses of his pince-nez wearily, and perched them on the bridge of his nose. He was in a mood to feel hypercritical about everything, he told himself glumly; why shouldn’t Dr. Xavier show polite perturbation? The man’s house was perched on top of a hill whose base was burning. Perhaps, he thought, closing his eyes, Dr. Xavier wasn’t showing enough perturbation. …
    The Inspector was saying sententiously: “We really ought to be making inquiries, Doctor. Have you a phone?”
    “At your elbow, Mr. Queen. There’s a branch line running up the Arrow from the Valley.”
    The Inspector took the instrument and put in a call to Osquewa. He had considerable difficulty getting a connection. When he finally succeeded it was to discover that the entire town had been impressed into service for the purpose of fighting the flames, including the Sheriff, the Mayor, and the Town Board. The lone telephone operator supplied the information.
    The old man put down the telephone with a grave look. “I guess this is a little more serious than usual. The fire’s ringing the whole base of the mountain, Doctor, and every able-bodied man and woman for miles around is fighting it.”
    “Good lord,” muttered Dr. Xavier. Perturbation had increased, but politeness had vanished. He rose and began to stride about.
    “So,” said the Inspector comfortably, “I guess we’re stuck here, Doctor, at least for the night.”
    “Oh, that.” The big man waved his muscular right hand. “Naturally. Wouldn’t think of letting you push on, even under normal circumstances.” He was frowning deeply and biting his lip. “This thing,” he went on, “begins to look …”
    Ellery’s head was spinning. Despite the thickening atmosphere of mystery—his intuition told him that something very odd indeed was taking place in this lonely house perched on the shoulder of a mountain—he yearned most of all for bed and sleep. Even hunger had crept off, and the fire seemed far away. He could not keep his lids up, where conventionally they belonged. Dr. Xavier in his grave voice, now touched with the faintest mixture of excitement and dissimulation, was saying something about “the drought … probably spontaneous combustion …” and then Ellery heard no more.
    He awoke with a guilty start. A woman’s unsteady voice was saying in his ear: “If you don’t