Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

Taylor’s club showed, in the areaway of 969. The lieutenant walked along, briskly.

“Third floor rear,” the policeman whispered hoarsely. “Room J.”

Teccard didn’t turn his head, or answer. He marched up the steps to 971. The front door was unlatched. There was a row of battered, black-tin mailboxes. He paused just long enough to make sure one of them bore a piece of paper with the penciled scrawl: Harold M. Willard. Then he went in.

The hallway smelled of cooking grease and antiseptic, the carpeting on the stairs was ragged. Somebody was playing a radio. A baby squalled. There was a sound of running water from a bathroom somewhere on the second floor.

Over the sill of room J was a thread of yellow light. Someone was moving about in the room, but Teccard, with his ear to the panel, heard nothing else. He transferred his gun from his left armpit to the right pocket of his coat, kept his grip on the butt.

He knocked and, without waiting, raised his voice.

“Telegram for Mister Willard.”

The movement behind the door ceased. There was a pause, then: “Slide it under the door.”

Teccard kept his voice high. “You got to sign a receipt, mister.”

“Shove your receipt book under, too. I’ll sign it.” The answer came from halfway down the door — the man inside was evidently trying to look through the keyhole.

“The book won’t go under. You want the telegram, or not?”

Another pause.

“Wait a second. I’m not dressed.”

“O.K.” Teccard tried to make it sound weary.

“Where’s the wire from?” The man had moved away from the door, but the tone was strangely muffled.

“We ain’t allowed to read telegrams, mister. If you don’t want to accept it—”

The door opened.

The man was in his underclothes. He stood sideways, so Teccard couldn’t get a good look at him. Has black hair was rumpled, he held a towel up over his mouth and the side of his face, as if he’d just finished shaving.

“Is there anything due—” He reached out with his other hand.

The lieutenant stepped in, fast.

“Yair. You’re due, mister. Put down—”

There was a faint “Hnnh!” from behind the door, the uncontrollable exhalation of breath when a person exerts himself suddenly.

Teccard whirled.

The blow that caught him across the top of the head knocked him senseless before his knees started to buckle!

Talor poured a tumbler of water over Teccard’s head. “Take it easy, now. Amby’ll be here any second.”

The lieutenant rolled over on his side. “Quit slopping that on my head.” The floor kept tilting away from him, dizzily. “Lemme have it to drink.”

The cop filled the glass from a broken-lipped pitcher. “You been bleeding like a stuck pig.”

Teccard paused with the tumbler at his lips. Was that a pair of shoes lying on the floor behind the patrolman? He shook his head, to clear away the blurriness. “Who in the hell is that?” he cried.

Taylor’s jaw went slack. “That’s the lad you was battling with. You fixed his wagon, all right!”

“I wasn’t fighting with anybody! Someone slugged me from behind that door, before I could even get my gun out.” The lieutenant got his elbows under him, propped himself up. The man on his back was T. Chauncey Helbourne — and his skin was a leaden blue.

The officer nodded sympathetically. “A crack on the conk will do that, sometimes. Make you forget what’s been goin’ on, when you snap out of it.”

Teccard felt of the back of his neck. Has fingers came away wet and sticky, the ache at the top of his skull was nauseating. “I didn’t kill him, you dope!”

“Geeze! You had a right to drop him, didn’t you! He was resistin’ arrest, wasn’t he?”

Teccard crawled on hands and knees to the dead man’s side. There was an irregular dark blot on Helbourne’s vest, just inside the left lapel; in the center of the blot something gleamed yellow-red, under the naked bulb overhead. The lieutenant touched the fat man’s face. It was still close to normal body temperature.

“You got him first clip out of the box.” Taylor pointed to the gun on the floor, by the side of the iron cot.

Teccard stood up shakily, sat down again, suddenly, on the sagging edge of the cot. Taylor, the corpse on the floor, the barren furnishings of the room — all seemed oddly far away. He bent over to let the blood get to his head again. “Where’s the other gent who was in here? The one in shorts?”

The uniformed man squinted as if the light hurt his eyes. “The only lug I saw is this stiff, Lieutenant.”

Teccard closed his eyes to stop the bed from shimmying. “He let me in here. How’d he get downstairs, past you?”

Taylor put up a hand to cover his mouth, his eyes opened wide. “Now I swear to God there wasn’t a soul on them stairs when I come up. If there’d been a guy with his pants off—”

“How’d you happen to come up, anyway?”

“Why, geeze, Lieutenant. When this dame comes scuttling down to the front door, yelling for ‘Police’ naturally I hotfoot over from next door.”

“A woman? What kind of a woman?” Teccard demanded.

“Why, just an ordinary mouse like you’d expect to find in one of these joints. Kind of blond and plump — I don’t know.”

“What’d she say?”

“She says, ‘Officer, come upstairs quick. There’s a couple of men fighting and making a terrible racket right over my room.’ She says, ‘Hurry!’ So I figure it’s you subduing this Willard and maybe needing a hand. I come up on the jump.”

Teccard started to shake his head, thought better of it. “Where is she now? Bring her here.”

The policeman pounded out in the hall, downstairs. He left the door open. There was an excited hum of voices from the corridor.

Teccard took a pencil out of his pocket, stuck it in the barrel of the pistol, lifted it off the floor. He wrapped his handkerchief carefully about the butt, broke his weapon. Only one chamber had been fired from the .38. The bullet hole in Helbourne’s chest would be about right for that caliber.

Taylor came clumping upstairs. “She put one over on me. That room underneath ain’t even occupied. And she’s scrammed, anyway.”

“So has the jerk who was half undressed.” The lieutenant put down the revolver, poured himself another drink of water. “That’s over the dam, don’t get gidgety about it. You were right, according to the way you figured it.”

The cop wiped sweat off his forehead. “It’s all balled up in my mind. Was this Willard the one who shot the fat boy, here?”

“Might have been. The gun was still in my pocket when I went down. Somebody took it out and used it on T. Chauncey Helbourne. Somebody else. Not me.” Teccard gazed grimly around the room. “The worse of it is, I couldn’t absolutely identify Willard, even now. He was covering his smush with a towel and he sort of kept his back to me, anyhow.”

He didn’t bring up the point that bothered him most — it was a cinch Willard hadn’t been the one who crowned Teccard from behind that door. Maybe his unseen assailant had been Helbourne. In any case, what was the proprietor of the Herald of Happiness doing up here, when he had claimed complete ignorance of Willard!

A siren wailed, out in the street.

“Holler down to the doc, Taylor. Tell him all he needs to bring up is a few stitches for my scalp.”

“You’d ought to go to the hospital, Lieutenant. Have an X-ray, to be sure there ain’t any fracture.”

Teccard went over to the closet door, opened it. “There’s nothing more the matter with my head than’s been wrong with it for thirty-seven years. Did you buzz the station, too, Taylor?” he said.