Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Corpse in the Crystal

“I don’t know anything about those men, Mr. Murder. I came home tonight and there they were. I was waiting for a chance to get them out of the house. I’m sorry you came along.”

“What do you intend doing now?” I asked.

“Whatever I can do,” he said huskily. “Whatever I have to do. The last few days have been extremely trying ones, gentlemen. May I plead with you not to push me further.” He motioned with the gun, took a step toward us. The chief and I moved under the gun’s bidding.

“Through that door,” Hobbs said. We backed out into the hall, down the hallway to another door, and Hobbs added, “In there.”

I fumbled the door open. It was a large linen closet. “Keep moving, please,” Hobbs requested. Murder and I backed into the closet. The old man slammed the door, shutting us in darkness. There was the faint sound of Hobbs’ footsteps retreating down the hall.

I lunged against the door. Murder caught my arm, pulled me back. “Just take it easy, Luke. Give the old boy a few minutes to get away. We won’t force him to start shooting at us, and get him in any more hot water than he is already.”

“So he’s innocent, huh?” I said sourly. “With two dead men in his den, he’s innocent?”

I felt the chief’s shrug. “He’s making too many mistakes to be guilty, Luke. He’s so scared he isn’t thinking straight, all in a muddle. He intends now to get rid of the pair of dead men, thinking vaguely he’ll tie the police up with the lack of a corpus delicti. But he didn’t take our guns, did he? He’s in such a dither he can’t see the loopholes, such as us getting out of here and going straight to the police.”

“So we wait, huh?”

“Might as well. Anyway, a frightened innocent man is a dangerous thing. You poke your head out of that door, you’ll get a noggin full of lead — which would at least put something in the empty apace.”

I was framing a retort to that one when the faint sound of a car motor, racing, somewhere outside drifted to us.

“Hobbs is on his way,” Murder said. “Let’s get a move on.”

We pounded on the door for perhaps thirty seconds; then a key grated, the door swung wide. A goggle-eyed servant took one look at us stranger: in his linen closet and let out a yell. Murder shoved him to one side and we got out of that hallway, slamming the massive front door behind us, like convicts with hungry bloodhounds on our heels.

The hospital corridor was white, bright with light, clean with the odor of anesthetic and germicides. The door to Gregory Sloan’s private room was just ahead of us, down the corridor. He was evidently much improved. His door was standing open.

As we neared, we heard his voice, “I appreciate your coming to visit me, Miss Smith. You are a good secretary, but when I tell you to come in my office at one thirty, you shouldn’t come at one thirty-five, just as you shouldn’t have brought the flowers tonight. They’re lovely, but my hay fever, you know.”

A girl stammered something. As We moved into the doorway she bade her boss, Gregory Sloan, good-by and speedy recovery, saying she would take care of the office while he was in the hospital. He assured her that he was going home in an hour or so, breaking off as he saw us.

His pale brows lifted. The chief said, “I’m Abner Murder, Mr. Sloan. This is Luke Jordan, my assistant. We’re—”

“I know. Detectives of the private variety. I’ve heard of you, Mr. Murder. Sit down.”

The chief took the chair at the side of the bed. I stood at the foot of the white iron bed.

Murder started to say something, but quick footsteps sounded in the corridor, turned in the room. She saw the chief and me too late to turn back. It was a blonde goddess named Lind... Her face became as lifeless as the color of cotton batting when she saw Murder and me. She stood just inside the doorway, frozen.

Gregory Sloan missed her reaction. “Gentlemen,” he said, “my wife.”

Murder had risen. He made a mocking, faint bow to the girl. “We’re happy to know you, Mrs. Sloan. I would almost swear that I’ve met yon some place before.”

I watched the pulse pound is her throat. Gregory Sloan laughed. “I doubt that you’ve met Linda, Mr. Murder. She’s a very quiet, homey little woman.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it,” the chief said. “Very quiet, homey.” His eyes were drilling into her. Her own lovely green orbs were stricken, begging him to keep silent about trailing her from Nostra’s shack and finding her in the house of a rich man who had two very real corpses in his den.

“I... I really don’t get around much, Mr. Murder,” she stammered. “Another girl, perhaps? Someone who looked like me?”

Murder let her hang for an agonizing moment. Then he said, “Naturally. Another girl.”

She almost slumped with relief. She fumbled in her bag, found a cigarette and lighted it. She stood over by the window as Murder took the chair by the bed again, and explained to Gregory Sloan that we were interested in the deaths foretold by Nostra and would appreciate a few answers. Sloan told him to fire away. He and the chief talked.

As far as I could see, Murder got exactly nowhere. We learned nothing we hadn’t known before. Gregory Sloan had received the note from Nostra, had been alone, had touched nothing that might poison him. He was unable to explain the impossible, he said. Neither could he advance a theory as to how Frank Snow had drowned with no water present, or how a man might be killed in an accident with a toy plastic automobile.

So for my money the visit was a flat pan, but when we left the hospital, there was a smile on Murder’s chubby face. “I know how the whole thing was done, Luke,” he said in the darkness outside. “I can explain the things that happened ho Frank Snow, Loren Cole and Gregory SIoan. I can also explain the two dead men in Wendel Hobbs’ den. I think I can even lay my finger on the killer!”

“But how—”

“You can’t see It?” he said in mock surprise. “Gracious, Luke, you’ve seen every angle of the case that I’ve seen. Every fact known to me is Tight under your nose.”

“Okay, crow awhile,” I said sarcastically. “But in the meantime, why don’t we nab this killer?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “the most important element is still missing. We’ve got to find a motive.”

“So what do we do?”

“We go to the key to the puzzle — Wendel Hobbs. We wait. We hope that we don’t have to wait too long. That we don’t have to wait until I freeze to death here in the middle of August!”

Night had deepened. Despite the sweat gathered in the small of my back, the ground was cold, especially if you were lying full length on it. Dew had risen, seeping into my coat, and the night wind had grown.

I was hunkered behind one of the shrubs dotting Wendel Hobbs’ spacious, terraced lawn. Murder was on the other side of tho flagstone walk, hunkered behind a shrub that was a twin to this one. We had a full view of the front and either side of the house.

I kept watching the light burning in the corner of the house, the shadow pacing back and forth across the face of the light, a silhouette against the window. Murder had assured me that the pacing shadow was old Wendel Hobbs, that eventually he would stop his pacing, turn out the light and go somewhere. Personally, I guessed the old geezer would go to bed. That’s where I wanted to be.

I knew the chief would bawl me out if I dared strike a light to smoke. So I crouched there in misery, cursing the day I’d hired myself out to the dumpy little man with the dimples and baby-blue eyes.

Then my thoughts broke off. The light had gone out, just as Murder had said it would. A door slammed. A long minute of silence, during which even the wind paused. Then the sound of footsteps coming down the path, the steps of an old man made sprightly by nervous reserve energy.