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

is Carstairs,” Melissa volunteered.

“Gaaah,” said Beulah Porter Cowys. “It would be. I hate dogs.”

“That’s all right,” said Doan. “He hates people.”

“Was he what you were laughing at?” Beulah Porter Cowys asked Melissa.

“No,” said Melissa. “Look, Beulah. See this picture? Handsome Lover Boy? He’s upstairs.”

“What?”

“It’s a fact,” Melissa told her. “Really. He actually exists, and he’s really married to this Heloise. He’s a meteorologist, or so he claims. Isn’t it horrible?”

“Isn’t what horrible?”

“Why, she must be almost twice his age.”

“Just twice,” Doan said. “He’s twenty-six.”

“Ugh!” said Melissa.

“Melissa,” Beulah Porter Cowys said, “did you ever try stopping to think before you started talking?”

“What?”

“It just so happens that I admit to being forty-nine, myself. What’s so repulsive about that?”

“Oh!” said Melissa. “Well—well—well, you don’t keep a gigolo.”

“That’s because I can’t afford one.”

“Oh now, Beulah,” said Melissa. “You’re just saying that. What I meant was that it’s sort of ugly to think about old people having—having—well, having ideas.”

“There are some aged male movie comedians who don’t seem to agree with you.”

“Oh, them,” said Melissa. “They’re just sexual neurotics. It’s a transference of the youth-longing. Shirley Parker explained it all to me. It’s the same sort of urge that makes nasty old men peep into grade-school girls’ playgrounds.”

“That Shirley Parker,” said Beulah Porter Cowys. “She can always give me the creeps in five seconds flat. She makes life sound like an unsupervised pigsty. She and her Freudian theories of motive analysis are enough to turn anyone’s stomach. But what I want to know right now is, why is this alleged detective hanging around here?”

“Beulah,” said Melissa, “that’s simply priceless.”

“Remember what I said about slander,” Doan warned.

“Pooh! Beulah, this old hag—Heloise, I mean—hired him to keep women away from her pretty husband. I mean, actually. Isn’t that a scream?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Beulah Porter Cowys. “Knowing what I know about the morals of the younger generation—and do I know!—I think it’s a good idea.”

“Oh, Beulah! You’re just pretending—”

Something dropped and made a tinny battering clatter inside the second chem lab.

“It’s that damned janitor eavesdropping again!” Beulah Porter Cowys snapped angrily. “Morales! Come here!”

A man eased himself out of the lab and looked at them in an elaborately surprised way. He was short and solid and lackadaisically stoop-shouldered, and he made each move as though it were the last allowed him and he intended to draw the process out as far as possible. He wore a battered black hat and a shirt with strategic holes in it and overalls that bagged improbably in the rear. He was carrying three galvanized pails in one hand and a floor brush over his shoulder.

“Hallo, peoples,” he said in a liquidly lazy way. “You want something of Maximilian Morales, no?”

“No,” Beulah Porter Cowys agreed. “Go away somewhere.”

“Wait a minute,” Melissa intervened. “Morales, can’t you do something about the smell in Number 5?”

“I?” said Morales. “No.”

“Yes, you can. You can calcimine those partitions or something—at least, that’ll give the place a new kind of an odor.”

“Calcimine?” said Morales. “I? I have eight children, senorita.”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Senorita, it is very hard to have eight children. It makes a man tired. I, Maximilian Morales, am tired.”

“Well, stop having children then.”

“Senorita, you are unreasonable.”

“Eight children are enough.”

“No,” said Morales. “You will pardon me, senorita, but eight children are not enough.”

“Why not?”

“Because none of them are any good. That is why it is necessary for me to arrange to have a ninth. Perhaps it will be smart enough to provide a comfortable old age for its honored father and jobs for its stupid brothers and sisters. One can only hope and keep trying.”

“For how long?” Beulah Porter Cowys inquired.

Morales shrugged wearily. “That, of course, becomes a question one often considers at our age.”

“Just be careful, now, Morales,” Beulah Porter Cowys warned.

“I am always careful, senorita. It becomes an established mannerism in one of my breeding. You have, no doubt, heard of my great-great-great grandmother?”

“Too many times.”

Morales nodded politely at Doan. “My great-great-great grandmother was regarded with a certain amount of favor by the great Maximilian, Emperor of all Mexico.”

“Congratulations,” Doan said.

“Thank you, senor. Is that your dog lying on the floor which is my care and responsibility?”

“Yes.”

“Has the dog been trained, senor, to avoid—ah—accidents of an intimate nature?”

“He’s very well educated,” Doan said.

“You relieve my mind, senor. It is easy to see that with a dog of such great stature, an accident might be overwhelming.”

“He never slips.”

“He is to be congratulated. Now, if you will excuse me, I will resume my duties.”

“Here,” said Melissa. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you going to do anything about fixing up Number 5?”

“Naturally not,” said Morales, disappearing into the lab.

“Why all this sudden concern about Number 5?” Beulah Porter Cowys asked.

“Handsome Lover Boy has appropriated my office.”

“Well, didn’t you remonstrate with him?”

“Certainly. He just sat and sneered.”

“Did you kick to Sley-Mynick?”

Melissa shrugged. “Yes, but you know how he is. Handsome Lover Boy evidently sneered at him, too, and that threw him into an outside loop.”

“Is Sley-Mynick the puffy guy who pip-pips at people?” Doan asked. “What goes with him, anyway? He acts like someone had just given him a hotfoot.”

“He’s troubled with international spies,” Beulah Porter Cowys said.

“Beulah,” said Melissa, “it’s not really right to make fun of him. He’s a refugee, Mr. Doan. He’s a very brilliant research biochemist. He was a professor at some university near Budapest with a name I can’t pronounce. I don’t know just what he did, if anything, but when Hungary threw in with Hitler, Sley-Mynick was arrested and put into a concentration camp. They must have treated him terribly there. Apparently it wrecked his nervous system.”

“Did he escape from the place?” Doan asked.

“No. They decided, after they had half-killed him, that he was harmless and let him go. After that, though, he did sneak out of Hungary and get to Mexico some way or other. Then he nearly starved down there waiting for a passport permit to get into the United States. Once he got here, he ate so much he got bloated. He’s had a rough time of it, and he’s so jumpy and jittery yet that he can’t even give lectures. He hates to meet strangers, and if anyone starts staring at him, he tries to crawl inside his clothes. It’s a shame, because I think he must have been a nice man before all this happened to him.”

“He was anyway a damned good biochemist,” Beulah Porter Cowys added.

“What do you teach?” Doan asked.

“Elementary physics. Very dull stuff.”

A man came running up the front steps of the building and bounced through the front door. He sensed that there was someone in front of him, and he stopped so quickly he skidded, peering at them in a myopically eager way. He was all hands and feet and freckles, and his red hair was slicked down painfully flat except for three clumps at the back that stuck out like an un-trimmed hedge. He spotted Melissa and gave another bounce and an embarrassed gulp.

“Oh! Hello, hello! Hello, Melissa! I was just going to drop into your office and—and say hello.”

“You’d better say it here,” Melissa advised. “My office has been liberated.”

“Really?”

“Yes. The enemy is in possession.”

“What enemy?”

“A party known as Handsome Lover Boy, alias Eric Trent.”

“Trent,” said the newcomer. “Oh, yes. He’s the new meteorology man. I met him at the faculty lunch yesterday. He’s very nice.”

“He is not!”

“Isn’t he?” the man asked anxiously.

“No! He’s a boor and—and a cad!”

“Really?” said the man. “Was he rude to you, Melissa? Shall I go up and hit him in the face?”

“Never mind,” Melissa said. “Mr. Doan, this is Frank Ames. He’s an assistant professor of English. Mr. Doan is Handsome Lover Boy’s bodyguard, Frank.”

“How odd,” Ames said absently. “Melissa, you haven’t forgotten, have you? Tonight, I mean? Our date?”

“No, Frank. Just see that you don’t forget…”

“I certainly wouldn’t forget anything that concerned you or—Oh! Your letter!” He commenced to fumble through his pockets. “It was in your slot over at Administration… I put it somewhere I wouldn’t lose…Here!”

Melissa took the letter and opened it. “Well, well. A personal missive from the president’s office, if you please. And signed by T. Ballard Bestwyck in person or a rubber stamp…Oh!_ Ooooooh!“_

“What?” asked Beulah Porter Cowys.

“Gluck-gluck-gluck,” Melissa said in frustrated incoherence. “Cluck! It says I have to exchange apartments in Pericles Pavilion with that—that—that—with Handsome Lover Boy because the one I’m in is a double and his is a single and he needs more room! Just after I’ve gotten mine decorated to suit me! I won’t do it! I—will—not—do—it!”

“Oh, yes, you will,” said Beulah Porter Cowys.

“Why?” Melissa demanded defiantly.

“Because T. Ballard Bestwyck told you to, and T. Ballard Bestwyck sits at God’s right hand.”

“Oh, damn!” said Melissa. “Oh, double damn-damn-damn!”

*

The moon was riding high, red and fat and swollen with its own importance, when Frank Ames’ dusty little coupe puttered up the hill and pulled into the curb opposite the Pericles Pavilion.

Frank Ames turned off the coupe’s motor. He swallowed and took three long, deep breaths and then turned and stared at Melissa in a portentously concentrated manner. Melissa sighed and wiggled a little on the slippery seat. She knew what was coming. It always did.

“Melissa,” said Frank Ames, “I have a very serious matter which I wish to present to you for your consideration. I wish to ask you—to entreat you—”

“Thank you for the dinner and the movie,” Melissa said.

“No,” said Frank Ames. “I mean, it was a pleasure, but that isn’t what I wanted to—”

“I had a very nice time,” Melissa told him.

“What? Oh, that’s nice, but Melissa, I feel that you and I are ideally constituted to embark upon—”

Melissa opened the door on her side. “Don’t bother to come in with me, Frank. It’s late, and I know you’re as tired as I am. The first day of the quarter is always a bore, isn’t it?”

“What? Yes. Yes, indeed. But, Melissa, I haven’t had a chance to tell you how I feel about—”

“Goodnight, Frank,” said Melissa. “I’ve really got to run.”

“But—but—but—”

“See you tomorrow!” said Melissa.

“Oh,” said Frank Ames glumly, “Drat.”

Melissa ran across the street. The Pericles Pavilion, in spite of its classically resounding title, was nothing but a small apartment house, a little ragged and run down at the heels. There was no point in keeping it up to snuff, because it had no competition, and besides no one but a few instructors and assistants lived there. It belonged to the university, and hence it came under the autocratic direction of T. Ballard Bestwyck, who subscribed to the theory that the payment of the most rent possible entitled the payer to the least comfort feasible because it was obvious to him that no one but an idiot would pay rent in the first place.

Melissa pushed through the squeaky double door and went on through the narrow L-shaped lobby and up the scuffed stairs to the second floor. She hadn’t moved out of her apartment as yet. She knew very well that there was no question of whether she would move—just a matter of when. But nonetheless she was determined to fight as stubborn a delaying action as possible.

She was directly in front of the apartment, fumbling for the key in her purse, when she noticed that the door was not quite closed. Melissa drew in her breath