Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

Cannon reacted faster than he had ever reacted in his life. His finger was squeezing the trigger before the knob of the door crashed back against the wall.

The bullet caught the woman squarely in the heart. Her mouth popped open and her right arm jolted from the chair to hang downward, still gripping the gun. She made a gurgling noise in her throat and her head slowly slumped to her chest.

With one stride Cannon was across the room and had jerked her head up by the hair. One look was enough. She had died instantly!

Flicking on his safety, he shoved the gun into his belt and moved to the picture on the north wall. Jerking it from its hook, he flung it aside. Behind it, just as Gilbert had said, was a small wall safe.

Mouthing the numbers aloud, he rapidly spun the dial. Within a matter of seconds the safe was open. His eyes lighted with satisfaction at the thick stack of currency inside. He didn’t bother to count it, ramming it into various pockets as rapidly as he could. It took both coat pockets and both side pockets of his trousers to hold it all.

Within a minute and a half of the time he had entered the room, he strode out again and ran toward the stairs.

He came to an abrupt halt as he rounded the corner and reached the top of the stairs. On the landing below him stood Arthur Gilbert with the shotgun aimed upward. He was smiling quite calmly.

Cannon’s last thought was the indignant realization that Arthur Gilbert had lied to him. The liquor dealer had said he wasn’t a courageous man. In that final moment Cannon could tell by the expression on his face that he was as cold-blooded and emotionless as Cannon himself, no doubt about it.

He made a frantic grab for his belt, got the gun halfway out just as both barrels of the shotgun blasted. He felt a searing flash of pain which seemed to encompass his whole body, then he felt nothing.

Stepping over the dead man, Arthur Gilbert moved to the open door of his wife’s bedroom. Viewing the scene inside with satisfaction, he leaned his shotgun outside the door and went inside.

He had some difficulty prying her stiff fingers away from the gun, nearly as much as he had had earlier when he forced them around it. When it was free, he dropped the gun into the drawer of the bedside stand and closed the drawer.

Then he left the room and went downstairs.

The side door burst open just as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

A tall, lean man of about fifty rushed in, came to an abrupt halt and stared at Gilbert. Moving toward him like a sleepwalker, Gilbert allowed his face to assume an expression of dazed shock.

“For God’s sake, what was all the shooting?” the lean man inquired.

Gilbert said dully, “The Nose Bandit, Don. Miss Prentice must have left the door unlatched when she left. I was in the basement cleaning my new shotgun when I heard the shot. I loaded it and rushed upstairs just in time to meet him coming down. He’s dead. I let him have both barrels.”

“What about Emily?” his brother-in-law asked.

“That was the first shot,” Gilbert said, his face squeezing into an expression of grief. “Her bedroom safe is wide open and she’s dead. He killed her.”

“Oh, no!” the lean man said in a horrified voice. “Poor Emily!”

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , Feb 1965.

I got to Rover about four o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Rover was a good name for the place, because it was really a dog. The only reason I stopped was because it was hot, I felt like a beer and the next town, according to my map, was twenty miles farther on.

I came in on a street called East Central Avenue and drove past block after block of identical square gray houses. Occasionally I spotted a small neighborhood store of some kind, but I saw no tavern signs at all. Nor did I see many people. The place gave the impression of being almost deserted, which was odd, inasmuch as a dilapidated sign at the edge of town had claimed a population of ten thousand.

I discovered the answer when I reached the center of town. There was a town square with a crumbling courthouse in its center, and all the major businesses in town were crammed along the four sides of the square.

It was no wonder the rest of the town had seemed deserted, because it seemed to me the bulk of the population must have been crowded into the square. For the most part the men wore blue coveralls and the women gingham dresses. Friday afternoon must be farmer’s shopping day, I thought.

I drove into the square before I realized what I was getting into. Two lanes of automobiles were circling the square at dirt-track speed, presumably all hunting parking places. More kept surging in from the feeder streets centering each of the square’s four sides. The standard method of gaining entry into the stream of circling traffic from the side streets seemed to be to close your eyes and bear down on the horn.

I made the circle twice with my heart in my throat, then escaped by one of the side streets and found a parking place a block away.

During my circling I had managed to spot a sign at the northeast corner of the square which read: Fat Sam’s Bar and Grill. When I got back to the square on foot, I headed directly for it.

Inside, there was a single large, cool room with a bar running the length of one wall and with a lot of round wooden tables spread around the remaining space. It seemed to be strictly a man’s bar, because there wasn’t a woman in the place. Only about half the tables were filled, but the bar was lined two deep.

As on the street, most of the men wore blue coveralls, though there was a sprinkling of younger men in slacks and jackets. I was the only one there in a coat and tie.

There was no table service. I managed to squeeze in at the end of the bar long enough to get a schooner of beer from the perspiring bartender, backed out and carried it over to one of the empty tables.

A young man of about twenty-one, neatly dressed in tan slacks and a light jacket, and also carrying a schooner of beer, reached the table at the same moment I did. We both stopped and looked at each other.

Then I grinned. “Guess there’s room for both of us. Sit down.”

Returning my grin a trifle abashedly, he pulled out a chair and sat. I took the one across from him. We each took a pull at our beer.

Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he examined my necktie and said, “Visitor?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, examining him in return.

He was a thin, narrow-shouldered lad weighing only about a hundred and thirty pounds with close-set eyes and a rather shifty look. He would have made a lousy heist artist, because he looked too much like one. Which didn’t mean he was, of course. Most successful heisters look honest.

“Why would anyone visit this miserable town?” he inquired.

“Just passing through,” I told him. “Why do you call it miserable? It looks pretty lively to me.”

“Lively? Know what the teen-age kick is here? They turn in false alarms. There are so many false alarms, it’s almost an emergency situation. There’s nothing else for the kids to do.”

I said, “There seems to be a lot of adult activity.”

“Oh, on the square, sure. This joint is always crowded. But there’s no place to go except the town square, and look what you’ve got for companionship. A lot of dull-witted miners, drinking beer.”

“Miners?” I asked, glancing around the room. “I thought they were farmers.”

“Naw. They’re all employees of the Rover City Copper Mining Company, our sole industry. If the mine ever peters out, this town will dry up and blow away.”

When our schooners ran dry, I offered to buy two more if he would go after them. He accepted with such alacrity, I suspected he didn’t have much money.