Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

“I said shut up, all of you-!” The little man moved cautiously from the door and backed a little further away, the revolver nervously shifting from one to the other of the trio on the other side of the room. Johnny thought that the room suddenly seemed very full of silent, hard-breathing people. The revolver settled down on its aimless flight and leveled on the detective. “You. Got a gun?”

Jimmy Rogers nodded, lips compressed.

“Where?”

“Shoulder holster.”

“Don't reach for it. Get over to him, Johnny, but not in line with him.” Johnny pushed himself off the wall against which he had been leaning. “Get his gun. At arm's length, from the side. I want to see all of both of you every second. Get it in your fingertips. If I see it in your palm, I shoot. Prop it as soon as it clears the holster.”

The maneuver was carried out as delicately as a well-rehearsed ballet under the menacing snout of Frederick's revolver, and Johnny could see a muscle jumping in Jimmy Rogers' taut jawline as the police special thudded to the floor.

“Kick it over here.”

The sandyhaired man kicked, and the.38 slid spinning to the feet of Ronald Frederick, who looked immediately at the lieutenant.

“No gun, Frederick. Listen, don't be a-”

“I told you once, Dameron. Shut up!” The manager debated with himself, obviously doubtful. “Face the wall. All of you.”

Johnny stared at the wall after turning, and surreptitiously flexed the fingers of his left hand to test the reaction.

“You. On the left.” Rogers was on the left. “Lie down.

Full length.” From the corner of his eye Johnny could see the detective drop awkwardly to his knees and then sprawl out on his belly. “You, Johnny. On the floor. Move over a little first.” Johnny eased himself down, bracing himself on the good arm. “You, Lieutenant. To the right a little.” Johnny listened to the lieutenant's bulk thump to the floor. He turned his head fractionally and saw Ronald Frederick cautiously move in closer behind them. Johnny's knees tensed, but the little man knelt swiftly beside the police officer and expertly slapped and probed for the suspected weapon. Satisfied there was none, he stood upright again, a measure of self-control returning and lessening the jerk in his movements.

Lieutenant Dameron spoke quickly. “Frederick, you'd better give up on this right-”

“Didn't I tell you to keep quiet?” From his position on the floor Johnny could see the revolver slew around and jerk upward, and with the now familiar pop piaster flew from just above the baseboard midway between Johnny and the lieutenant. Johnny flinched involuntarily and glanced sideways just in time to see Lieutenant Dameron unhunching his neck. Behind them Ronald Frederick giggled, an eerie sound in the stillness of the room, and the lieutenant silently mouthed the word “Crazy!”

“All right, now.” The voice behind them tingled with electricity, and Johnny tensed again. “Down flat, everyone, and hold it flat. Heads down. First head up gets it.”

Johnny turned his left cheek to the floor and his eyes to the right. As he had expected Lieutenant Dameron had reversed the procedure, and they lay stiffly and looked at each other. Johnny strained to hear movement in the room behind them. For a moment he heard nothing, and then he recognized the scrape of metal on metal followed by a metallic click, and he realized with a surge of hope that Ronald Frederick was unlocking the bathroom door. The incredible little man still had not given up.

Strain as he might, Johnny could make out nothing further. Had the door closed again? He could not be sure. He realized suddenly that the lieutenant was trying to attract his attention. The mouthed whisper was an infinitesimal sound. “-he up to now-”

Johnny moistened his lips and replied in kind. “He's in the bathroom. I think.” He lay quietly a moment and suddenly made up his mind. “We got to move, Joe. Before he comes out.” He doubled his legs beneath him and pivoted on his stomach; the flesh around his ears prickled, but the bathroom door was closed and the room behind them was empty.

Johnny scrambled half-erect and nearly pitched forward on his face when he incautiously put his weight on the damaged left arm. Desperately he struggled to maintain his balance and then lifted his head sharply as a guttural, animalistic exclamation emerged from behind the closed door. From the floor Lieutenant Dameron's voice was almost normal as he whirled. “What the hell- 7”

Johnny charged the door in a silent, murderous rush. As always in motion, he felt alive, exultant; everything was going to be all right. No time to check to see whether the door had been relocked from the other side; he hit it with his good shoulder with every ounce of steam he could generate, and metal shrieked and wood cracked. The door burst shiveringly inward as his own momentum carried him in behind it, and in the glaringly white brightness of the bathroom the scene was stamped out for him as on an etching.

Unbelieving, Johnny stared down at the body on the floor, at the snout-nosed revolver neatly balanced on the edge of the tub, and at a dazed Ronald Frederick, standing, wine glass in hand, gaping down at the woman at his feet.

“What is it?” Lieutenant Dameron demanded huskily behind Johnny, struggling to negotiate the splintered door now hanging crazily from a shattered hinge. He pushed in and fell silent.

“Jesus!” Jimmy Rogers breathed throatily behind them as he shoved inside and looked down in turn at Erika Muller's violently contorted figure and the dark blue and gray patches on the bloated features. “Another dead one!”

Wine glass still in hand, Ronald Frederick glared confusedly at them across the length of the bathroom. Whatever his previous frustrations and the final coruscating star-burst of events had done to him, this final crushing demolition of his last hope had shocked him back to sanity. His voice was almost normal when he spoke; he might have been delivering a lecture. “Saccharin. I put saccharin in her glass. The power of suggestion killed her. Or she had a bad heart. She was my last chance. My last chance-”

He stared at his silent audience, and the E string of his nerves tightened up again. His voice rose. “Saccharin, I tell you! Nothing more nor less. It couldn't kill her! It couldn't-!” He glared at them, half lifted the glass to dash it into the sink, then lifted it to his lips in a swift gesture and swallowed twice. “There, you see? Saccharin,” he said and swallowed dryly. Slowly he put the glass down in an unbalanced position on the sink's edge, and it toppled sidewise and crashed with a tinkly burst of glass fragments. Ronald Frederick did not appear to hear it. A hand went to his throat tentatively, almost questioningly, and Johnny realized with a start that he had been holding his own breath without realizing it.

Beside him Lieutenant Dameron stirred as though emerging from a trance. He strode to the sink, bent his head, and sniffed vigorously amidst the glass particles before straightening and turning to Johnny. “Can't smell a damn thing. What in hell did he put in there?”

“You heard him. Saccharin.”

“For God's sake, look at her-!”

Johnny hardly recognized his own voice. “She had her own.”

“She what?”

“She had her own poison. Freddie'd told her he'd poisoned the wine, but she might have thought he'd used a slow one. She knew hers was quick, so she dumped that in, too.”

“But then he just got the whole load-!”

“Sure he did. Drank it like a little man, didn't he?”

The lieutenant stared, then grimaced. “Jimmy-!”

“Right, Lieutenant. I'll have an ambulance here in nothing flat.” The sandyhaired man almost ran out the door, and the lieutenant swept a handful of towels from the rack and knelt beside the body of Erika Muller. He began to unfold towels and spread them lightly over the twisted limbs.