Oh, Murderer Mine, Norbert Davis [best romance ebooks TXT] 📗

not intend to let Humphrey arrest the bird he thought was Sley-Mynick, so he pulled a herring in the shape of some nonexistent scrolls across the track.”

“And you went off with the two of them and left me alone with Big Tub Tremaine—after he just got through trying to cave my head in with a tile! You’re one hell of a bodyguard!”

“You were as safe as if you were in church,” Doan assured him. “He wouldn’t have dared make a move after that close shave. If he had killed you, even Humphrey would have known who did it.”

“That would have been a big consolation,” said Trent.

“Oh, Doan,” said Melissa, “how awful. To think you could have been so heartless as to leave poor Eric alone and unarmed and unprotected in the company of this awful, awful person. I wouldn’t have believed it of you. I’ve a good mind to strike your name off my list of nice people.”

Doan looked at her blankly. “Your attitude,” he said, “towards this guy—Eric. What’s happened to change your attitude?”

“Never mind,” said Melissa. “I want to know about Heloise.”

“Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz went around to see her,” Doan explained. He turned to the Mexican. “Didn’t you do that?”

“Naturally,” said Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz. He was looking very gloomy and very sullen and as though he had lost his last friend in the world somewhere far south of the Rio Grande.

Doan said, “Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz here wanted to know if there had been any previous connection—before Piedras Negras, I mean—between Big Tub and Sley-Mynick. And while he was at Heloise’s, he showed her a picture of the fake Sley-Mynick. So much is my assumption. Now let’s see if I’m not correct.” Again he turned to the Mexican detective. “Isn’t that what happened?”

“Naturally.”

“But Heloise fooled you. She didn’t admit she knew him, did she?”

“No.”

“But she did,” said Doan. “And how she did. She recognized her dear departed husband’s puss instantly. But Heloise never did anything without figuring what effect it would have on the business of Heloise of Hollywood. And this was something to chew on—two murders and a dead husband turning up. But more to the point, a husband she’d feel fine about never seeing again inasmuch as she’d already proclaimed to the world her marriage to Eric and his great love for her despite her age, not to mention the amount of money she’d invested in an advertising campaign emphasizing just those features…”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Trent shouted suddenly and loudly. “I knew there was something if I could just think of what it was, and now I’ve got it.”

“I’ve got it too!” cried Melissa joyously. “Oh, Eric, Eric, isn’t it wonderful, wonderful?”

Carstairs woke up suddenly and stared at them in amazement. They were dancing around like children at a Maypole.

“Well, I’ll be a double-dyed Mexican blanket if I know what’s going on here,” Doan said.

“Naturally,” spoke up Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz, alias Morales, a worried and puzzled look on his dark face.

“Oh, you dopes!” Melissa taunted them. “Oh, you two big stupid lumps who call yourselves detectives! It’s perfectly obvious. Can’t you see it? Why, Eric isn’t married—isn’t even a widower—hasn’t been married at all. With Heloise married to Big Tub, who wasn’t dead like everybody thought, then her marriage to Eric couldn’t be legal. Oh, wonderful! Wonderful!”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Doan. “I get that, but really the excitement—the cause for all this celebration… Well, really, it escapes me unless…” He stopped talking and smiled broadly.

“Not married,” said Trent dazedly. “Think of that. A bachelor. Never married at all.”

“Don’t fret about it, darling,” Melissa told him. “You soon will be… But go on, Doan. I forgive you for everything. I’ll even go so far as to put your name back on my list.”

Doan sighed a deep sigh and started all over again. “So Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz went to see Heloise and got himself played for a sucker. Then Heloise got rid of him and started figuring. She thought she could handle Big Tub. She had twenty servants and a gun, and she was tough. She called him up and told him she’d give him a twenty-four hour start or some kind of a start. She wanted to get rid of him without scandal. Big Tub started, all right—in her direction. She had lots of jewelry, and he needed some fast dough. He came in the back way and gathered up the servants—singly or in batches—and locked them away in the cellar. Then he interviewed her—with his gun. He must have been getting the shakes pretty badly by this time. He was playing in hellish luck. I don’t think he heard you two arrive. About that time he was up in the back bedroom fiddling around in Heloise’s wall safe. The first he knew about you was when the phone rang there’s an extension in the bedroom. He heard you talking and hiked down and cut the wires and switched off the lights and locked the door on you and was waltzing out the front when he met me.”

There was a sudden raging roar in the night, and Humphrey came billowing down the lawn toward them, pumping his legs furiously and waving his fists in the air.

“You!” he shouted. “As soon as I heard over the radio that there was some kind of a riot up here, I said to myself ‘It’s that damned Doan again,’ and sure enough here you are! I’ve had enough of you! I’ve had all I’m going to take! What have you done to poor Professor Sley-Mynick? Look at, him lying there all wet and cold and unconscious, if not dead. Don’t try to lie, Doan. I warn you. You’re under arrest right now!”

“Oh, relax,” Doan advised. “I’ve just caught your murderer for you. He fell off the trellis, there, into the swimming pool and —”

“What?” Humphrey blurted. “Fell in the pool?” He ran to the edge and peered tensely in. “Where? Where?”

There was a sudden streak of fawn-colored shadow. A big body ran through Trent’s legs and brushed past Melissa and made for Humphrey with the speed of a maddened goat, horns lowered, who’s been waiting a long, long time for just the right opportunity.

“Carstairs!” Doan yelled frantically. “Don’t you do it! Don’t you dare…”

Humphrey shrieked and leaped right straight ahead, clutching his rear with both hands. The water swallowed him up with a cold and gleeful gulp.

“Carstairs!” Doan yelled. “You imbecile! You know he’ll blame me for that! Do you want to see me in the gas chamber? Do you want to see me in jail for life?”

Carstairs ignored him. Carstairs was contemplating the frothy, turgid water in the pool with the remotely sadistic indifference of a scientist studying a pinned-down bug.

And Eric and Melissa ignored him too. For the moment they were too occupied with each other to have any interest in external affairs. Melissa’s arms were about Eric’s neck and he was holding her so closely that no biochemist or meteorologist or physicist or psychologist or any other scientist could have presented a logical explanation of how it was that she could breathe.

But she could, even though her lips were pressed close to his lips, and when their kiss was ended she sighed rapturously and long.

“Not married,” Eric told her in a perfectly audible whisper. “Not married and never married to that old crow—God rest her. Now I have a right to ask you…Without any strings tied to it, I can offer you my name. You can be…”

“Stop! Stop!” Melissa cried, hugging him to her. “It’s going to make you mad, maybe, but I can’t help myself. I’ve just got to say it. It’s too funny. If I don’t say it I’ll burst… Now I can be—can be_ Mrs. Handsome Lover Boy!_ There! I’ve done it! Don’t strike me, Eric… Don’t… Oh, oh! You aren’t striking me… Oh, oh!”

“Naturally!” said Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz, alias Morales, watching the young couple go back into their clinch. “Naturally,” he said again, and for the first time that evening smiled his broad Latin smile.

THE END