Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

“So what?” Cougar asked roughly.

“So she never even suspected I was a cop then,” Mac shot at him. “She didn’t suspect it until you told her today. Last night she thought I was just a newly hired gun, and she gave me an assignment.” His next words he spaced slowly and distinctly. “She said you were getting too big for your boots, Cougar. And she told me to kill you. That’s the third funeral. She’ll get you before you get out of this room.”

The uncertainty in the gunman’s eyes had turned to fear and suspicion. Like a trapped animal he swung his eyes from Mac to Claire and back again. Claire’s expression was merely one of indulgent amusement. Apparently she did not realize the profound impression Mac was making on Cougar.

“Nice try anyway, Mac,” she said, and her .45 centered on his stomach.

Cougar’s’ eyes were still on Mac, as Mac shouted; “Look out, Cougar!”

The muzzle of the Strangler’s revolver jerked toward Claire and suddenly spat flame. At the same moment Mac hurled his empty automatic straight at Cougar’s narrow face. It caught the man square in the left eye, Cougar staggered backward.

Mac hit him in a headlong tackle, and the revolver skittered along the floor to a far corner. As they grappled, Cougar’s elbow caught Mac under the chin.

At the moment a regular fusillade of shots came from the next room, but Mac was too busy to concern himself with anything but the Strangler, who had managed to twist on top of him and get his powerful hands on his throat.

Desperately Mac tried to claw the hands loose, but they held with the grip of a vise. The pale, mummy-like face was inches from his, and the man’s teeth were bared in a sadistic smile. With his lungs bursting and waves of darkness pressing against him. Mac’s struggles became weaker and weaker.

His distended eyes were nearly popping from his head when the Strangler’s cruel smile suddenly faded into a vacuous grin. His grip relaxed and he collapsed.

For a moment Mac could do nothing but suck great gobs of air into his lungs. Then, as his sight cleared, he was conscious of Nan peering down at him anxiously, Cougar’s revolver held in her hand like a club.

“Drop it, lady,” said a flat voice.

Nan’s gun clattered to the floor and her hands slowly rose at sight of the gun muzzle threatening her from the doorway. Mac pushed Cougar off and sat up.

“I thought that was probably you, giving them fits out there,” he said to George Doud. “Never mind Nan. She’s on our side.” He looked at her wryly. “What are you anyway, Nan? A detective for Argus Mutual?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t warn you today because Thomas and Claire were with me when I phoned. They never let me out of their sight for a minute.”

Mac climbed to his feet and glanced over at what had been Claire D’Arcy. Cougar’s bullet had caught her in the forehead, and she had died instantly.

“How about out there?” Mac asked George, nodding toward the other room.

“Both dead,” George said shortly. “Neither one had their guns out when both decided to take a chance, but only the freckled-faced guy managed to clear his holster. But he didn’t get in a shot.”

“That finishes Homicide, Incorporated, then,” Nan said. “You’re FBI, aren’t you?”

Mac nodded.

“I began to suspect it when all your references were so conveniently unavailable. That’s why I took the last phone call myself. After Dude’s description, I was almost sure, and was trying to work up to telling you who I was when Claire walked in and caught us—ah—talking.”

“Was it Claire who killed Bart Sprague?” Mac asked.

“Who?”

“The FBI man who was shot a month ago. He was my kid brother.”

“Oh,” Nan said. “I’m sorry. I was too late to stop that. I didn’t even realize he was an FBI man until it was all over. Yes, Claire handled that personally, just as she intended to handle you.”

Mac glanced over at the dead woman once more and smiled a dead smile lacking the bitter satisfaction he had expected to find with revenge. Then he looked down at Nan’s white face.

“You’ve got a lot of guts for a woman,” he said. “With all those bullets and all this blood, most women would faint.”

“You have to be tough to work for Argus Mutual,” Nan said.

Then she fainted.

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine , August 1952.

“The oddest thing happened this morning,” Chalmers said. “I can’t make up my mind whether to take it to the police or forget about it. I’d really have nothing but suspicion to report in any event, and probably would only get a horse laugh for my pains.”

I was a little surprised at his obviously upset manner, for even under stress Lloyd Chalmers ordinarily exhibits the ponderous kind of aplomb you might expect of a man who has practiced criminal law for two decades.

“I did go so far as phoning a ballistics expert I know over at Columbia University, though,” Chalmers said. “He told me it would be quite possible to fire a rifle like an artillery piece with considerable accuracy up to a range of several miles, providing you used a fixed mount, were good at mathematics, and had an observer to adjust your fire.”

Rising to mix fresh drinks. I said, “If you’ll pardon the comment, you’re dithering. I haven’t the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.”

“About the death of Thomas Mathewson III a few weeks back,” Chalmers said testily. “You must have seen it in the papers. He was struck by a spent rifle bullet while seated in a duck blind in the center of a small lake up in the Catskills. The coroner called it accidental death from a stray bullet fired by some unknown hunter, but it occurred to me that the lake would have made artillery observation easy. The blind was a sunken barrel camouflaged by weeds, you see, and was surrounded by water for a hundred yards in all directions. An observer could have adjusted fire by the splashes.”

Handing him a new drink. I reseated myself by the fire and leaned back in my chair.

“Thomas Mathewson III,” I repeated thoughtfully. “The multi-wived playboy who spent so much of his time in jams, wasn’t he? I vaguely recall reading something about his death. Was he a client of yours?”

“One of my better ones from the standpoint of fees,” Chalmers said glumly, “but absolutely the worst from the standpoint of my ulcers.”

“You think he may have been murdered?”

“See what you think after I tell you what came in the mail this morning.” He paused to eye his drink thoughtfully. “But it wouldn’t make sense to you without knowing the background. Let me organize my thoughts a moment and I’ll tell you the whole story…”

Thomas Mathewson III (Chalmers said) was the most horrible example I have ever encountered of what too much inherited money can do to an individual. It was not just that he lived a life of idleness and squandered too much, for compared to the average so-called playboy he was rather niggardly with his money…no, niggardly isn’t the right word either, for on occasion he made gestures which by popular standards could only be regarded as generous. But always with what to him was a logical motive. He possessed a sort of calculated shrewdness which, from his own perverted standpoint, got him what he considered value received.

His eight wives, for example, cost him in excess of a million before he was through with the last of them. A normal person might regard this as an expensive proposition, but Tom Mathewson considered it a good buy. At the time of the last settlement he told me quite candidly each of his wives had cost him about what he had estimated in advance of proposing marriage—the implication being, of course, that he had bought the women like so many cattle and was well satisfied with his bargains.