The Origin of Evil (25 page)

‘So when I saw the outline of a naturalist and accordingly thought of Darwin, the greatest naturalist of all, it was a logical step to think back to Darwin's historic voyage — one of the world's great voyages on perhaps science's most famous ship — the voyage of naturalistic exploration on which Darwin formulated his theory of the origin of species and their perpetuation by natural selection. And thinking back to that produced a really wonderful result.' Ellery gripped the back of a chair, leaning over it. ‘Because the ship on which Charles Darwin set sail from Plymouth, England, in 1831 on that epic voyage was named …
H.M.S. Beagle
.'

‘Beagle.' Laurel goggled.
‘The dead dog!
'

‘There were a number of possibilities,' Ellery nodded. ‘In sending Hill a beagle, the sender might have been providing the master key which was to unlock the door of the warnings to come — beagle, Darwin's ship, Darwin, evolution. But that seemed pretty remote. Neither Hill nor Priam was likely to know the name of the ship on which Darwin sailed more than a hundred years ago, if indeed they knew anything at all about the man who had sailed on it. Or the plotter might have been memorializing in a general way the whole basis of his plot. But this was even unlikelier. Our friend the scientifically-minded enemy hasn't wasted his time with purposeless gestures.

‘There were other possibilities along the same line, but the more I puzzled over the dead beagle the more convinced I became that it was meant to refer to something specific and significant in the background of Hill, Priam, and their enemy. What could the connection have been? What simple, direct tie-up could have existed among a naturalist and two non-scientific men, and the word or concept “beagle,” and something that happened about twenty-five years ago?

‘Immediately a connection suggested itself, a connection that covered the premises in the simplest, most direct way. Suppose twenty-five years or so ago a naturalist, together with Hill and Priam, planned a scientific expedition. Today they would probably use a plane; twenty-five years ago they would have gone by boat. And suppose the naturalist, conscious of his profession's debt to the great naturalist Darwin, in embarking on this expedition had the problem of naming, or the fancy to rename, the vessel on which he, Hill, and Priam were to be carried on their voyage of naturalistic exploration …

‘I suggested to Lieutenant Keats,' said Ellery, ‘that he try to trace a small ship, probably of the coastal type, which was either built, bought, or chartered for purposes of a scientific expedition — a ship named, or re-named,
Beagle
which set sail from probably an American port in 1925 or so.

‘And Lieutenant Keats, with the co-operation of various police agencies of the coastal cities, succeeded in tracing such a vessel. Shall I go on, Mr. Priam?'

Ellery paused to light a fresh cigarette.

Again there was no sound but the hiss of the match and Priam's breathing.

‘Let's take the conventional interpretation of Mr. Priam's silence, Lieutenant,' said Ellery, blowing out the match, ‘and nail this thing down.'

Keats pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and came forward.

‘The name of the man we want,' the detective began, ‘is Charles Lyell Adam. Charles Lyell Adam came from a very wealthy Vermont family. He was an only child and when his parents died he inherited all their money. But Adam wasn't interested in money. Or, as far as we know, in women, liquor, or good times. He was educated abroad, he never married, and he kept pretty much to himself.

‘He was a gentleman, a scholar, and an amateur scientist. His field was naturalism. He devoted all his time to it. He was never attached to a museum, or a university, or any scientific organization that we've been able to dig up. His money made it possible for him to do as he liked, and what he liked to do most was tramp about the world studying the flora and fauna of out-of-the-way places.

‘His exact age,' continued Keats, after referring to his notes, ‘isn't known. The Town Hall where his birth was recorded went up in smoke around 1910, and there was no baptismal record — at least, we haven't located one. Attempts to fix his age by questioning old residents of the Vermont town where he was born have produced conflicting testimony — we couldn't find any kin. We weren't able to find anything on him in the draft records of the first World War — he can't be located either as a draftee or an enlisted man. Probably he got some sort of deferment, although we haven't been able to turn up anything on this, either. About all we can be sure of is that, in the year 1925, when Adam organized an expedition bound for the Guianas, he was anywhere from twenty-seven to thirty-nine years old.

‘For this expedition,' said Keats, ‘Adam had a special boat built, a fifty-footer equipped with an auxiliary engine and scientific apparatus of his own design. Exactly what he was after, or what he was trying to prove scientifically, no one seems to know. But in the summer of '25 Adam's boat,
Beagle
, cleared Boston Harbour and headed down the coast.

‘It stopped over in Cuba for repairs. There was a long delay. When the repairs were finished, the
Beagle
got under way again. And that was the last anybody saw or heard of the
Beagle
, or Charles Lyell Adam, or his crew. The delay ran them into hurricane weather and, after a thorough search turned up no trace of the vessel, the
Beagle
was presumed to have gone down with all hands.

‘The crew,' said Lieutenant Keats, ‘consisted of two men, each about forty years old at the time, each a deep-water sailor of many years' experience, like Adam himself. We've got their names — their real names — but we may as well keep calling them by the names they took in 1927: Leander Hill and Roger Priam.'

Keats shot the name at the bearded man in the wheelchair as if it were a tennis ball; and, like spectators at the match, they turned their heads in unison to Priam. And Priam clutched the arms of his chair, and he bit his lip until a bright drop appeared. This drop he licked; another appeared and it oozed into his beard. But he met their eyes defiantly.

‘All right,' he rumbled. ‘So now you know it. What about it?'

It was as if he were grounded on a reef and gamely mustering his forces of survival against the winds.

‘The rest,' said Ellery, squarely to Priam, ‘is up to you.'

‘You bet it's up to me!'

‘I mean whether you tell us the truth or we try to figure it out, Mr. Priam.'

‘You're doing the figuring, Mister.'

‘You still won't talk?'

‘You're doing the talking,' said Priam.

‘We don't have much to go on, as you know very well,' said Ellery, nodding as if he had expected nothing else, ‘but perhaps what we have is enough. You're here, twenty-five years later; and up to recently Leander Hill was here, too. And according to the author of the note that was left in the beagle's collar, Charles Lyell Adam was left for dead twenty-five years ago, under circumstances which justified him — in his own judgment, at any rate — in using the word “murder,” Mr. Priam … except that he didn't die and
he's
here.

‘Did you and Hill scuttle the
Beagle
, Mr. Priam, when you were Adam's crew and the
Beagle
was somewhere in West Indian waters? Attack Adam, leave him for dead, scuttle the
Beagle
, and escape in a dinghy, Mr. Priam? The Haitians sail six hundred miles in cockleshells as a matter of course, and you and Hill were good enough seamen for Adam to have hired in the first place.

‘But seamen don't attempt murder and scuttle good ships for no reason, Mr. Priam. What was the reason? If it had been a personal matter, or mutiny, or shipwreck as a result of incompetence or negligence, or any of the usual reasons, you and Hill could always have made your way back to the nearest port and reported what you pleased to explain the disappearance of Adam and his vessel. But you and Hill didn't do that, Mr. Priam. You and Hill chose to vanish along with Adam — to vanish in your sailor personalities, that is, leading the world to believe that Adam's crew had died with him. You went to a great deal of trouble to bury yourselves, Mr. Priam. You spent a couple of years doing it, preparing new names and personalities for your resurrection. Why? Because you had something to conceal —
something you couldn't have concealed had you come back as Adam's crew
.

‘That's the most elementary logic, Mr. Priam. Now will you tell us what happened?'

Nothing in Priam stirred, not even the hairs of his beard.

‘Then I'll have to tell you. In 1927, you and Hill appeared in Los Angeles and set up a wholesale jewellery business. What did you know about the jewellery business? We know all about you and Hill now, Mr. Priam, from the time you were born until you signed on the
Beagle
for its one and only voyage. You both went to sea as boys. There was nothing in either of your backgrounds that remotely touched jewels or jewellery. And, like most sailors, you were poor men. Still, two years later, here you both were, starting a fabulous business in precious stones.
Was that what you couldn't have concealed had you come back as Adam's crew?
Because the authorities would have said,
Where did these two poor seamen get all this money — or all these jewels
? And that's one question, Mr. Priam, you didn't want asked — either you or Hill.

‘So it's reasonable to conjecture, Mr. Priam,' said Ellery, smiling, ‘that the
Beagle
didn't go down in a hurricane after all. That the
Beagle
reached its destination, perhaps an uninhabited island, and that in exploring for the fauna and flora that interested him as a naturalist, Adam ran across something far afield from his legitimate interests. Like an old treasure-chest, Mr. Priam, buried by one of the pirate swarms who used to infest those waters. You can find descendants of those pirates, Mr. Priam, living in the Bahamas today … An old treasure-chest, Mr. Priam, filled with precious stones. And you and Hill, poor sailors, attacked Adam, took the
Beagle
into blue water, sank her, and got away in her dinghy.

‘And there you were, with a pirate's fortune in jewels, and how were you to live to enjoy it? The whole thing was fantastic. It was fantastic to find it, it was fantastic to own it, and it was fantastic to think that you couldn't do anything with it. But one of you got a brilliant idea, and about that idea there was nothing fantastic at all. Bury all trace of your old selves, come back as entirely different men —
and go into the jewellery business
.

‘And that's what you and Hill did, Mr. Priam. For two years you studied the jewellers' trade — exactly where, we haven't learned. When you felt you had enough knowledge and experience, you set up shop in Los Angeles … and your stock was the chest of precious stones Adam had found on his island, for undisputed possession of which you'd murdered him. And now you
could
dispose of them. Openly. Legitimately. And get rich on them.'

Priam's beard was askew on his chest. His eyes were shut, as if he were asleep … or gathering his strength.

‘But Adam didn't die,' said Ellery gently. ‘You and Hill bungled. He survived. Only he knows how he nursed himself back to health, what he lived on, how he got back to civilization, and where, and where he's been since. But by his own testimony, in the note, he dedicated the rest of his life to tracking you and Hill down. For over twenty years he kept searching for the two sailors who had left him for dead — for his two murderers, Mr. Priam. Adam didn't want the fortune — he had his own fortune; and, anyway, he was never very interested in money. What he wanted, Mr. Priam, was revenge. As his note says.

‘And then he found you.'

And now Ellery's voice was no longer gentle.

‘Hill was a disappointment to him. The shock of learning that Adam, against all reason, was alive — and all that that implied — was too much for Hill's heart. Hill was rather different from you, I think, Mr. Priam; whatever he'd been in the old days at sea, he had grown into the semblance of a solid citizen. And perhaps he'd never been really vicious. You were always the bully-boy of the team, weren't you? Maybe Hill didn't do anything but acquiesce in your crime, dazzled by the reward you dangled before his eyes. You needed him to get away; I think you needed his superior intelligence. In any event, after that one surrender to you and temptation, Hill built himself up into what a girl like Laurel could learn to love and respect … and for the sake of whose memory she was even willing to kill.

‘Hill was a man of imagination, Mr. Priam, and I think what killed him at the very first blow was as much his dread of the effect on Laurel of the revelation of his old crime as the knowledge that Adam was alive and hot for revenge.

‘But you're made of tougher material, Mr. Priam. You haven't disappointed Adam; on the contrary. It's really a pleasure for Adam to work on you. He's still the scientist — his method is as scientifically pitiless as the dissection of an old cadaver. And he's having himself a whale of a time, Mr. Priam, with you providing the sport. I don't think you understand with what wonderful humour Charles Lyell Adam is chasing you. Or do you?'

But when Priam spoke, he seemed not to have been listening. At least, he did not answer the question. He roused himself and he said, ‘Who is he? What's he calling himself now? Do you know that?'

‘That's what you're interested in, is it?' Ellery smiled. ‘Why, no, Mr. Priam, we don't. All we know about him today is that he's somewhere between fifty-two and sixty-four years of age. I'm sure you wouldn't recognize him; either his appearance has been radically changed by time or he's had it changed for him by, say, plastic surgery. But even if Adam looked today exactly as he looked twenty-five years ago, it wouldn't do you — or us, Mr. Priam — any good. Because he doesn't have to be on the scene in person, you see. He could be working through someone else.' Priam blinked and blinked. ‘You're not precisely a well-loved man, Mr. Priam, and there are people very close to you who might not be at all repelled by the idea of contributing to your unhappiness. So if you have any idea that as long as you protect yourself against a middle-aged male of certain proportions you're all right, you'd better get rid of it as quickly as possible. Adam's unofficial accomplice, working entirely for love of the job, you might say, could be of either sex, of any age … and right here, Mr. Priam, in your own household.'