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

side but pitch darkness. Carstairs dove heedlessly right into it. There was a rumble and a bump as he hit a lower level and then the skitter of his claws on cement.

“Wait until I find the light, you fool,” Doan ordered.

Carstairs began to bellow in furious frustration.

“All right,” said Doan.

He pushed ahead into the blackness, located steps under his feet, and went stumbling and sliding down them, waving both arm’s wildly over his head. He hit bottom and fell headlong over something that rattled and rolled tinnily.

Carstairs was raising racketing echoes somewhere in front of him.

Doan scrambled to his feet and groped blindly forward until he bumped into Carstairs and then into another closed door. He found the catch and pulled the door back. Fresh, cool air puffed into his face, and Carstairs lurched up a half flight of cement steps and out into the open. Doan ran up after him and came out in the back areaway of the apartment house. It was surrounded by a high, thick hedge.

An opening showed dimly at Doan’s right, and he headed for it. A clothesline brushed his hair neatly and eerily, and then he burst through the opening and stumbled on the rough surface of a narrow alley. Carstairs made a motionless, stilt-legged shadow ten feet away. He snorted at Doan in a disgusted way.

“Lost him, huh?” said Doan. “Well, don’t just stand there with your teeth in your mouth. Get out and beat around in the weeds in that lot. Go on. Hike.”

Carstairs faded silently into the darkness.

Doan began to walk very cautiously down the alley, slipping silently along with his head half-turned so he could watch in both directions, searching each shadow. He had gone about twenty yards when something whispered spitefully past his ear and something else twitched the cuff of his coatsleeve and a third something drew a line across the telephone pole he was touching with his left hand.

Doan was falling by that time, and as he dropped he heard the reports—three of them very close together, but sharp and nastily distinct. He flattened himself on the dirt, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow. He was swearing at himself in a mumbling undertone.

Carstairs came down the alley, running low and very fast and making fierce little grunting sounds. Doan thrust out his arm and caught Carstairs halfway up his front legs. Carstairs did a complete somersault in the air and came down flat on his back with a breathless “Ga-whoomp.”

Doan hitched forward and fell across him. “Be still!” he snarled. “Quiet!”

They lay there in a rigid, motionless tangle. In a couple of moments, a car starter ground somewhere close. The engine caught with a choked roar, and then tires made a long wailing protest as the car whirled around a corner. The sound died away.

“Wow,” said Doan softly, sitting up.

Carstairs sat up, too, and glared at him.

“Oh, relax,” said Doan. “Why do you act so stupid? That boy had a gun, and he certainly knows how to use it. He was just on the other side of that street light ahead. If you had run out under that light, he’d have picked you off like a duck on a rock.”

Carstairs grunted.

“The same to you,” said Doan. “I certainly get a lot of thanks for all the care and attention I lavish—what’s the matter with you now?”

Carstairs rumbled deep in his throat. His head was turned away from Doan, and he was watching an apartment-size trash can on the other side of the alley. The lid of the can was tipped drunkenly to one side.

Doan was on his feet instantly. The hammer of his revolver made a soft, metallic click.

“Come out of that,” he said.

There was no answer—no sound.

Doan approached the can, circling. Close to it, he put his right foot against the upper part and heaved. The lid fell off with a rattling clangor. The can tilted past its balance line and fell suddenly on its side.

Doan’s breath hissed through his teeth. A foot protruded from the open end of the can—a man’s foot clad in a tan sport shoe. The foot was queerly limp.

It didn’t move.

Leaning down suddenly, Doan took hold of the foot and jerked hard. The rest of the man’s body slid loosely and easily out of the can.

“This is nice, too,” said Doan. “Oh, this is just dandy.”

He found a match and snapped it on his thumbnail. The man’s throat had been cut with one deft, neat slash that began under his ear and slanted down and across. His face was smeared thickly with blood, but Doan recognized him at once. He was Frank Ames. He was dead.

Doan dropped the match and nodded solemnly at Carstairs. “The bird we were chasing so merrily carries a knife and a gun, and he operates in a very fancy way with both or either. I don’t think we would care to know him any better, but I’m afraid we’re going to.”

Carstairs began to scratch himself.

*

Doan and Carstairs came into the apartment building through the front door. The lobby was as empty and shabby as it had been before and would be again, and they were heading for the stairs when the first door on the lower hall opened and two faces peered out at them.

That is, Doan saw two faces. Or, rather, he saw one face multiplied by two—one above the other. It was very uncanny. The two faces duplicated each other exactly. They were round, pink-cheeked, feminine, middle-aged faces. They had braided gray hair tied with blue ribbons. They had blue, frightened eyes that peered at Doan through identical pairs of pince-nez spectacles.

The short hairs at the back of Doan’s neck rose and prickled alarmingly. Carstairs made a startled noise through his nose and ducked behind Doan’s legs.

“Hello,” said the faces.

Doan swallowed. “Hello,” he said faintly.

“We are the Misses Aldrich,” said the faces.

“Are—are there two of you?” Doan asked.

“Yes. We’re twins.”

“Oh,” said Doan, breathing again. He looked back and down at Carstairs. “You big coward.”

“We are specialists,” said the Aldriches in fascinating unison, “in the emotional and social conditioning of pre-school-age children. We teach that at the university. To students of education.”

“I see,” said Doan.

“We heard noises. We heard screams and loud, raucous shouting. We were frightened.”

“I’m sorry,” said Doan.

“We think we even heard some shots. Do you think you heard some shots, too?”

“Yes,” said Doan. “I think I did.”

“Do you think there might be some intoxicated persons at large on the premises?”

“I couldn’t say,” Doan told them.

“Do you think we are in danger?”

“I hardly think so,” said Doan.

“Thank you,” said the Aldriches, “for reassuring us. You are very kind.”

“Thank you,” said Doan.

“You have a very large dog.”

“Yes,” Doan admitted. “Unfortunately.”

“We do not have a dog.”

“You’re lucky.”

“But we like dogs very much. Will you be so kind as to allow us to pet your dog at some more appropriate time?”

“I will,” said Doan, “but of course the important question is whether or not he will. He doesn’t like to be petted. He thinks it demeans him. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go up and look into the screaming at a little closer range.”

“Be very careful.”

“Indeed, I will.”

“Good night.”

“Good night,” said Doan.

He nudged Carstairs with his knee, and the two of them went up the stairs and along the hall to Melissa’s apartment. The door was ajar, and Doan pushed it open wider and looked in.

Melissa was lying on the chesterfield, propped up with some wadded pillows. Her hair straggled dankly down over her cheeks, and her mascara had run in futuristic streaks. She looked very repulsive. She was holding an ice bag against the left side of her face, and in the other hand she held a tall glass of murkily powerful looking liquid. She sipped the liquid with little blubbering sounds and glared at Doan. Her eyes weren’t focusing very efficiently.

Beulah Porter Cowys was hovering over Melissa, twitching at the pillows and making little croaking sounds that were meant to be soothing. Eric Trent was standing against the opposite wall, trying to appear at ease and find a place to put his hands.

“Well!” said Beulah Porter Cowys. “The great, late detective! What have you been doing all this time—hiding in a dark closet?”

“No,” said Doan, “but there was a moment there when I wished I had one to hide in.” He nodded at Melissa. “How do you feel now?”

“How do you suppose?”

Beulah Porter Cowys said, “That decorative dimwit dumped a barrel of water in her face.”

“It was a glass of water,” Trent corrected coldly.

“It was too much, anyway.”

“I thought that was the proper remedy in the case of mild shock.”

“Well, stop thinking,” Beulah Porter Cowys advised. “You aren’t equipped for it.”

“Mild shock!” Melissa echoed thickly. “What are you talking about? I didn’t faint. I was knocked out.”

“I’m sorry,” said Trent. “I was trying to help you the best way I knew.”

“Oh, yeah? What are you doing here, anyway? Lurking and throwing water at people? I suppose you think you can put me out of my apartment while I’m too weak to resist.”

“What?” said Trent blankly.

“Oh, stop trying to act innocent. I’m nauseated enough already.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Trent told her.

“It’s not important now, anyway, is it?” Doan said quickly. “I mean, there’s the matter of this prowler to consider.”

Trent looked at him. “I heard some shots. Were you shooting at him?”

“No,” said Doan. “On the contrary.”

“Oh, phooey with an olive,” said Beulah Porter Cowys. “It was probably just a car backfiring.”

“Then this car backfired bullets,” Doan told her, “and that’s not all it did, either. I’m afraid we’re going to have to call the police.”

“I already have,” said Trent. “The first thing.”

“Uh!” Doan grunted. “Which police did you call?”

“The sheriff’s office—the university substation.”

“Oh—oh,” said Doan. “Oh—oh—oh.”

“What’s the matter?” Trent demanded.

“A guy named Humphrey is the deputy-in-charge there. And he doesn’t like me any at all.”

“Why not?” Beulah Porter Cowys demanded. “Aside from the fact that liking you is a pretty difficult thing to do.”

“You’re kind to say so,” Doan said. “Humphrey has a grudge against me because he hates Carstairs. Carstairs spends nine-tenths of his time alienating people and making enemies. He humiliated Humphrey, and that’s a thing that no cop can take. At least, no cop named Humphrey.”

“How did he do it?”

“Well,” said Doan, “it’s like this. Since my youth I have been subject to periodic attacks of vertigo, during which I find it difficult to walk straight. Many callous and uninformed characters—like Carstairs, for instance—think these attacks are due to drinking alcohol in large quantities, but of course that’s nonsense.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Beulah Porter Cowys.

“At the time I’m talking about, by the merest and sheerest coincidence, I was seized by one of my attacks while I was sitting at a bar. So I started home, and I was sort of tacking and veering down the street when Humphrey spotted me. Carstairs, the cad, won’t even walk with me when I’m in the throes of one of my attacks for fear people will connect the two of us. He pretends he doesn’t know me. This time he was tagging along about fifty yards behind me.”

“This is getting good,” said Beulah Porter Cowys. “Go on.”

“Humphrey grabbed me. He was in plainclothes, and he was connected with homicide then, and it was none of his affair whether I was drunk—I mean, sick—or not. That’s what