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

>A new voice said, “Hi, Melissa.”

“Hello, Shirley,” Melissa said.

This girl was small and slim and dark, dainty as a new doll. She had very large, mildly vague brown eyes and black hair gathered into two thick braids that dangled forward over her shoulders and down over an attractively prominent chest. She was wearing a sloppy-joe sweater with the sleeves pushed up and moccasins and a pair of blue denim jeans with three fountain pens in the right hip pocket.

“You look, terrible,” she said to Melissa. “I heard about your prowler from Beulah Porter Cowys. That must have been a very interesting experience.”

“Oh, it was.”

“How did it make you feel? Now don’t just tell me you were scared. I want to know specifically. Did you feel a tingling sensation in—”

“Shirley! Now, stop it! I didn’t feel any tinglings, and I’m not going to talk about it any more.”

“Well, why not?”

“Just because,” said Melissa flatly and finally. “Shirley, this is Eric Trent—meteorology. This is Shirley Parker. She’s a special—doing graduate work for a master’s in psychology.”

“How do you do,” said Trent.

“You’re Handsome Lover Boy,” said Shirley.

“And what if I am?”

Shirley shrugged. “Now there’s no point in reacting toward me in a hostile manner. The name is simply a word association picture with me. I don’t feel any contempt toward you on account of it.”

“Well, thanks very much,” said Trent.

“Your attitude shows an obvious repression there. You ought to work it out. How do you feel when you approach your wife?”

“What?”

“You heard what I said. Wasn’t the question clear?”

“It’s clear that it’s none of your business!”

“Oh, yes, it is. I’m writing a monograph on the subject—to get my master’s. It’s going to be published by the university press.”

“I don’t care to be in it.”

“I wouldn’t use your real name,” Shirley assured him. “You’d just be an anonymous case history.”

“No, thanks,” said Trent.

“You’re not showing the scientific attitude.”

“You’re right,” Trent agreed.

“People make things very difficult for me,” Shirley complained. “I mean, they’re all so stupidly touchy on the subject of sex.”

“Hi, everybody,” said Doan. He was wearing a brown tweed sport coat now and brown tweed slacks and a dark green sport shirt.

“Hello, Mr. Doan,” said Melissa.

“How do you feel this morning?” Trent asked.

“Not too bad,” Doan told him. “I mean, I’m breathing—I think.”

“Two of our third floor neighbors complained this morning about the noise last night.”

“Humphrey always talks loud when he’s drunk.”

“You were doing all right in that line yourself.”

“Self-defense,” said Doan. “You have to talk loud to Humphrey, or else he won’t pay any attention.”

“He didn’t, anyway.”

Doan nodded. “Humphrey is very stupid, I fear. Who’s this, here?”

Melissa said: “Shirley, this is Mr. Doan. He’s a detective. This is Shirley Parker, Mr. Doan.”

“You’re cuter than a bug’s ear,” said Doan.

“I know it,” said Shirley.

“She’s writing a monograph,” Eric Trent warned. “On sex.”

“No,” Shirley corrected. “Sex comes into it just incidentally. It’s on psychotherapy. Psychosomatic therapy.”

“That’s nice,” said Doan. “I bet.”

“Do you have a sex life?” Shirley asked.

“Sure,” said Doan. “But it’s private.”

“That’s the way everyone acts,” Shirley said. She stared at Carstairs in a speculative way. “What about him?”

“He does very well,” said Doan. “He’s different from most males. He gets paid for his services, and they’re very much in demand. The owners of lady Great Danes have to write months ahead to get an appointment with him.”

“Would you mind changing the subject?” Trent asked.

“Why?” Doan asked. “Sex is very interesting, and personally I think it’s here to stay.”

*

“Hallo, peoples,” said Morales, coming out of the front door of Old Chem and shaking the dust from a mop gently over them all. “Nice day, no? Yes?”

“Did you paint my office?” Melissa demanded.

“Senorita, I have eight—”

“Yes, I know. Just forget it.”

“Senorita, if you had eight children, you would know that forgetting them is difficult—not to say, impossible. Ah! And how do you do, Senorita Shirley?”

“Hello,” said Shirley.

Senorita Shirley, last night I had a very surprising experience.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Senorita, this is a matter of immense scientific interest.”

“How do you know?”

“Senorita, when a man has eight children, he acquires a certain flair in this field which gives him superior judgment.”

“I’m not interested,” Shirley told him.

“Senorita, in my opinion you are discriminating against me. I would bear it in silence, except for the fact that my experiences are of enormous scientific value. Just regard the matter objectively, Senorita. Incorporated in your book, my unparalleled performances would make your reputation.”

“No doubt,” said Shirley. “But they’re not going to be—incorporated in my monograph, I mean. You’re too disgustingly normal.”

“Senorita, I resent that.”

“Go ahead and resent.”

Morales glowered darkly. “There is very little justice in this world, in my opinion.” He hitched the mop up over his shoulder and marched back inside the building.

Shirley looked at Doan. “Did you ever kill anyone? I mean, either indirectly—by getting them hung, or directly—by doing your own dirty work?”

“Both ways,” Doan answered.

“Do you rationalize your sadism when you do? I mean, in the manner judges do—by claiming they are ridding society of a menace and all that stuff?”

“No,” said Doan. “I do it because I get paid for it. It’s nice work.”

“I’m afraid you’re normal, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Doan told her.

“Do you know many murderers?”

“Hundreds.”

“Are they paranoid or cycloid? It’s my opinion that all of them are paranoid to some degree.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re paranoiacs,” Shirley explained. “It means they live in a subjective world of their own. They rationalize their destructive impulses by a cockeyed logic that has no relation to reality. Hitler was a marvelous one.”

“I’ve never met a murderer who went in for it on such a big scale as he did,” Doan said. “Although I did run across a nice old female party who knocked off twenty people with nicotine distilled from bug spray.”

“Were her victims all of one sex?”

“Nope. Men, women, and children. She wasn’t a bit choosy.”

Shirley nodded indifferently. “Generalized transference of a subconscious repressed aggression. It’s very common. Well, I’m going in and try to get something out of Professor Sley-Mynick.”

“Oh, Shirley,” said Melissa. “Leave him alone. You know you terrify the poor man with your questions so much you make him ill.”

“It’s good for him,” said Shirley. “He’s got to work out those experiences—get them up and out in the open. He’ll never get well if he keeps them seething in his subconscious the way they are.”

A fat shadow waddled out from the doorway and on emerging into the sunlight turned out to be Professor Sley-Mynick himself. He blinked behind his heavy glasses and then, settling his gaze on the group standing and sitting on the steps, twisted around suddenly and looked as though he was going to scurry back from where he’d come.

“Just a minute, Professor,” Shirley Parker called to him. “You’re the very man I want to see. We were talking about abnormal psychology—about murderers and…”

The professor threw up his hands. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Did you say murderers? Who’s a murderer? I’m not a murderer, am I? I don’t know any murderer. Or do I?”

Shirley tripped up the steps and patted Sley-Mynick on the shoulder. “Now don’t be alarmed,” she told him, “Our discussion was purely objective, no personalities involved. We were talking about murderers and sex. As you know, I’m writing a monograph and in order to do it I have to interview people and get material on their sex experiences. I wanted to ask you…”

If the professor had seemed startled before, now he looked positively horrified. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Sex. Do I have any sex? What sex am I? Male, of course. And you’re a female. Oh, dear!”

The poor man retreated back into the building. Shirley had a grip on his elbow now and she dragged along after him until they were both out of sight in the lobby.

“She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Melissa asked.

“And how,” Doan agreed. “Is she married?”

“Shirley? No. She doesn’t believe in marriage.”

“Is she a communist?” Trent asked warily.

Melissa laughed. “Of course not. Shirley wouldn’t go in for anything as old hat as that. She’s a philosophical anarchist.”

“Oh,” said Trent. “Well, excuse me. I have a ten o’clock class.” He looked to make sure Shirley was not in sight in the hall and then went in and up the stairs.

“You know,” Melissa said to Doan, “he’s not so bad, after all. I mean, I thought he’d be an awfully icky sort of a wolf until I got his side of the story. He’s sort of cute and innocent, isn’t he?”

“Well,” said Doan, “I suppose that all depends on your point of view. Don’t let his face fool you. He gets mad quick, and when he does it’s not a good idea to be standing around within arm’s reach of him. He’s a judo expert among other things, and he’s hard as nails. Since I’ve been following him around, he has put away about twenty characters who made cracks of one sort or another to him about those Heloise ads, and so far he hasn’t even gotten his hair mussed. I talk soft and smile loud with him. I don’t want him mad at me. Even Carstairs detours around him.”

“That reminds me,” said Melissa. “Thank you just oodles for letting Carstairs stay with me.”

“What did he do?” Doan inquired.

“It would take two hours to tell you, but right now you can have him back.”

“Look,” said Doan seriously, “I know he’s a pest, but I think you’d better keep him with you. He does have sense enough to guard you.”

Carstairs stood up. He looked levelly and coldly at Melissa and then at Doan. After he had done that, he went down the steps and along the walk about twenty paces—just out of earshot—and lay down on the grass.

“It irritates him to have people discuss him,” Doan explained, “because he can’t talk back—thank God. You’d better let him follow you around.”

“Well, why?”

“Look,” said Doan. “There was a prowler in your apartment last night. Remember?”

“That was just an accident. I mean, that he was in my apartment.”

“Do you think Frank Ames cut his own throat by accident?”

Melissa shivered.

“That’s more like it,” said Doan. “That bird was no hallucination, and he’s no joke. He carries both a knife and a gun, and last night wasn’t the first time he’s used them.”

“Who do you think he was?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“No!”

“Think back,” Doan requested. “Think of the way he looked—the way he moved. Have you got a mental picture?”

“Y-yes.”

“Could it have been a woman?”

“What?” said Melissa, staring.

“Humphrey had a hunch in that direction, and sometimes—by sheer accident—he gets a grip on an idea that makes sense. Do you think this prowler could have been a woman dressed up as a man?”

Melissa felt her jaw. “No.”

“That blow doesn’t mean anything either way. Some women can hit mighty hard. It’s just a matter of knowing how, not of strength. Keep thinking. Was there anything off-center or unusual about this party?”

“Well,” said Melissa, trying. “Well…”

“Go ahead.”

“Nothing I can put my finger on. But something about the way he moved… Something queer and strange and yet horribly familiar… Something sort of out-of-focus…”

“How well do you know Beulah Porter Cowys?”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m not,” said Doan. “I’m worried. I tell you, this is a very bad boy we’re dealing with. He’s got lots of confidence. He uses a .22,