The New Adventures of Ellery Queen by Ellery Queen

you don’t really believe this mass-hypnosis bilge. The house is gone, right enough.… It’s not the fact of its being gone that bothers me. It’s the agency, the means . It smacks of—of—” He shook his head. “I’ve never believed in … this sort of thing, damn it all!”
    Dr. Reinach threw back his vast shoulders and glared, red-eyed, at the empty snow-covered space. “It’s a trick,” he bellowed. “A rotten trick, that’s what it is. That house is right there in front of our noses. Or—or—They can’t fool me !”
    Ellery looked at him. “Perhaps,” he said, “Keith has it in his pocket?”
    Alice clattered out on the porch in high-heeled shoes over bare feet, her hair streaming, a cloth coat flung over her night clothes. Behind her crept little Mrs. Reinach. The women’s eyes were wild.
    â€œTalk to them,” muttered Ellery to Thorne. “Anything; but keep their minds occupied. We’ll all go balmy if we don’t preserve at least an air of sanity. Keith, get me a broom.”
    He shuffled up the driveway, skirting the invisible house very carefully and not once taking his eyes off the empty space. The fat man hesitated; then he lumbered along in Ellery’s tracks. Thorne stumbled back to the porch and Keith strode off, disappearing behind the White House.
    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. Thorne’s car stood within, exactly as Ellery had seen it the afternoon before, 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.
    â€œHere’s your broom,” said the giant. “What are you going to do—ride it?”
    â€œHold 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.”
    â€œWhat do you want with a broom, Queen?”
    â€œIt’s hard to decide whether the snow was an accident or part of the plan,” murmured Ellery. “Anything may be true today. Literally anything.”
    â€œRubbish,” snorted the fat man. “Abracadabra. Om mani padme hum . How could a man have planned a snowfall? You’re talking gibberish.”
    â€œI didn’t say a human plan, Doctor.”
    â€œRubbish, rubbish, rubbish!”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œElves,” he complained. “Nothing less than