Part 3 (2/2)

I closed the door and walked back through the kitchen. The drapes were drawn in the dining room. The table and sideboards were old, ma.s.sive, and very dark. One of the sideboards was covered with an ornate old silver service that had probably cost somebody's ancestor a young fortune.

I walked on into the living room and inspected it in the beam of light. No wonder Mrs. Butler's a lush, I thought. Living in a mausoleum like this would make anybody take to the juice. It was an enormous room, furnished the same way the dining room was. The woodwork was all mahogany and walnut, and dark with age. The drapes, which were drawn, looked like wine-colored velvet, and the sofas and chairs were upholstered in maroon plush-the ones that weren't black leather. One whole wall was covered with books.

I stopped the light suddenly, staring at the rows of books. I backed it up a little. Then I brought it ahead, very slowly, watching. It was odd. The volumes of the encyclopedia were all jumbled, in no order at all, and there were other books sandwiched in between them.

I began to have an odd hunch then. I threw the light around over the rest of the room again. Everything else seemed to be in order and in its place. I got down on my hands and knees beside one of the sofas and looked at the dents in the rug where the feet rested. It had been moved recently, all right. But that didn't mean anything. The maid had probably done it, cleaning.

Picking up one end of the sofa, I swung it away from the wall and looked at the back of it. I saw it then. It was a long slash in the cloth, made by a sharp knife or razor blade. I began s.n.a.t.c.hing up the cus.h.i.+ons. They were all slashed on the undersides. So were the ones in the chairs.

For an instant I wanted to throw the flashlight through the window. Then I settled down a little, and squatted on my heels to light a cigarette. Who was it? No, the question was: Had he found what he was looking for? There was a chance he hadn't.

But, if not, why wasn't he still here, looking for it? That was the one you couldn't get around.

Was there a chance it was just the search the police had given the place, two months ago? No. They wouldn't have cut things up that way. And Mrs. Butler or the maid would have put the books back in some sort of order by this time. This had been done recently.

But there was one thing about it. The fact that somebody else had been searching the place proved we were right. Apparently we weren't the only ones who had reason to believe Mrs. Butler had killed her husband before he could get away.

And I was here, wasn't I? And I was going to be here until Friday morning. What did I want to do-quit before I'd even got started? What the h.e.l.l. Go ahead and search the place. That was what I'd come for. Maybe the other people hadn't found it. I located an ashtray and crushed out the cigarette. The thought of the money was making me itchy again.

I went out through an archway at the end of the living room. There was a short hall here, or entry, with the front door at one end and the stairs at the other. I started up the stairs.

The steps were carpeted, but halfway up one of them creaked under my weight. I stopped, cursing silently; then I shook off the jumpiness. What was I worried about? I had the whole place to myself, didn't I? The maid was gone.

I reached the top. I started to turn, sweeping the flashlight beam ahead of me. Then I froze dead and snapped it off, staring down the hallway. A door was open on one side of it, and I could see a very faint glow of light spilling out into the hall. I put my other foot down silently and eased the awkward position I was in. I wanted to turn and run, but something about the light fascinated me. I remained motionless, hardly breathing.

It was too dim to be an electric light of any kind, and it seemed to flicker. Was it a match? Maybe whoever it was was setting fire to the place. But no, it didn't seem to grow, as a fire would. I waited. It remained the same. Then I knew what it was. It was a candle.

That didn't make any sense. Who'd be wandering around with a candle, with flashlights selling for forty-nine cents? But before I could even start to think about it, I became conscious of something new. It was a sound. It was a faint hissing noise, coming from the room.

Then, at almost the same time I guessed what it was, the music started. It had been the needle riding in the groove, of a phonograph record. The music was turned down very low, and it was something long-hair I didn't recognize.

I knew I should run, but I didn't. I couldn't. I had to look in there. It was only three or four steps down the hall. There was a carpet to m.u.f.fle the sound of my steps.

I stopped just short of the door. This was the dangerous part of it. Whoever was in there would be able to see me when I looked in if he happened to be facing the door. The music went on very softly, but there was no other sound. I put my face against the doorframe and peered around it.

It was a strange sight. At first there was an odd feeling about it, as if I had wandered into some kind of religious ceremony. Then I began to get it sorted out. It was a bedroom. The candle was burning on the floor in a little silver dish, and beside it was the record player. Phonograph records were scattered around on the rug, and in the middle of them, alongside a low couch, a girl in a long blue robe sat on the floor and swayed gently back and forth as she listened to the music.

I saw her in profile with the candlelight softly touching her face and the cloud of dark hair that swirled about it. She was almost unbelievably beautiful, and she was drunk as a lord.

I remained very still outside the door, thinking coldly of Diana James. Mrs. Butler was like h.e.l.l in Sanport.

Four

Had she thrown that curve deliberately, or had it just been a mix-up? She'd lied right at the beginning, because she didn't want to tell me any more about the thing than she had to. Maybe she'd lied again.

But maybe it had just been an accident. Mrs. Butler must have come back from Sanport unexpectedly, without her hearing about it. It made sense that way. We wanted the money. To find it, we had to search the house. So there was nothing she stood to gain by getting me to come up here to try to shake it down with Mrs. Butler in it.

Was there?

I couldn't see anything. But the next time I took anybody's word... I was still burning.

Well, we could kiss off any chance of finding it now. The thing I had to do was get out of there as fast as I could, before daylight. If I waited too long, somebody might spot me leaving. Once I got off the grounds I'd be all right. I could walk into town and hang around until there was a bus leaving for Sanport. And when I got back there I'd break the news to Diana James as to what I thought of her and her information.

I remained standing there, sick with rage at the idea of having to give up. Somehow it seemed I had already come to consider the money as mine, as already found and safe in my pocket, and now that it was s.n.a.t.c.hed away I was wild with a sense of loss, as if somebody had robbed me. Why didn't I lock her in a closet and go on with the search as soon as it was light?

No. That would be too dangerous. Discovery was almost certain. The maid would come back. She might have visitors. I'd be caught. I discarded the idea, but I did not leave.

There was no danger. Not from her. She was too plastered to notice anything, or to do anything about it if she did see me. If I walked in and started talking to her, she'd probably just think I was another form of the jim-jams. I could see the half-empty bottle, and the gla.s.s that had fallen over on its side. She wasn't a noisy drunk, or a sloppy one. It was just the opposite. The thing that tipped you off was the exaggerated dignity, and the slow, deliberate way she moved, as if she were made of eggsh.e.l.ls.

The record ran out to the end and ground to a stop as the machine shut itself off. It was deadly silent with the music gone. She made no attempt to put on another record. She was still swaying a little, and I could see her lips moving as if she were singing to herself or praying, but no sound came out. Then, very slowly, she turned the upper part of her body a little and collapsed against the low divan beside her. Her face was pressed into the covering, the dark hair aswirl, and one arm stretched out across it.

I started to turn away. It was time to get out of there. Then I stopped suddenly and swung my head around, listening. What I'd heard wasn't repeated. It didn't have to be; I knew what it was. It was that step, the same one that had creaked under me. Somebody was coming up the stairs.

There was another room opening off the hall, but the door was closed. He'd hear me open it. I didn't have all night to make up my mind. I slid inside, leaned over Mrs. Butler, and blew out the candle. I'd already seen the closet door partly open beyond her.

When the blackness closed in I kept the picture of the room in my mind long enough to turn ninety degrees to the right, slip past the end of the divan, and grope for the door of the closet. I touched it, eased it open, and stepped inside. Clothes brushed against my back. They smelled faintly of perfume in the hot, dead air.

There was no sound. But the hallway was carpeted. Whoever it was could be anywhere out there. I waited, keeping an eye to the crack in the door. A beam of light appeared in the doorway of the room and swung around the walls. It hit a mirror and splashed, then swept on. It dipped, catching the pile of phonograph records and the whisky bottle, and came to rest at last on the sprawled figure of the girl. It remained fixed, like a big eye, while whoever was holding the flashlight walked on into the room. It was so still I tried to quiet the sound of my breathing.

He was squatting down now, and seemed to be changing hands with the light. Then I saw why. Just for a second the gun pa.s.sed through the beam, steadying up against her temple. The cold-blooded brutality of it made me come out of the closet without even stopping to think.

I was driving, the way they teach you to get up a head of steam in the first three strides. But I forgot the end of the divan. My legs. .h.i.t it, and I went the rest of the way in by air. He was under me and trying to turn when I sifted down on him, and from then on it was confused, and rough. When nothing crunched, I knew he was no flyweight himself, and as we rolled across and demolished the record player I could feel the tremendous surge of power in the arm about my neck. The light had gone out when it hit the floor, so we were in absolute darkness, and I didn't know what had become of the gun.

The arm was pulling my head off. I broke it up by getting a knee into his belly and starting to move it down to where he didn't like it. He scuttled away from it and landed a big fist on the side of my face. It rocked me. I could feel it going all the way down to my toes and back up again like a shock wave. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and swung blindly in the dark. I missed. I heard him scrambling away. He was on his feet. He crashed into the doorframe, and then he was gone down the hall.

I sat up dizzily and dug my own flashlight out of my pocket. He might or might not leave the house, and it made a lot of difference now who had the gun. I held the light out from my side and snapped it on, shooting it around the floor. The gun was lying in a hash of broken phonograph records, and his light was on the floor the other side of what was left of the player. I picked up the gun, checked the safety, and put it in my pocket, conscious of the heavy way I was breathing. It had been short, but it had been rugged.

I squatted on the floor to get my breath. Whoever he was, he was probably gone by now. I had the gun, so it wasn't likely he'd tackle me again. I could leave, provided, of course, I didn't run into half a dozen more on the way out.

I thought of Diana James. She was cute. She just needed somebody to search this old vacant house. There was nothing to it. And if the first sucker she sent got killed, she could always find more. Well, she was going to get a sucker's full report when I got back to Sanport.

I stood up. I'd better get started. Flicking on the light again, I looked down at the girl. Her shoulders had fallen off the divan and she was lying on the floor beside it with her head on an outstretched arm. She was going to have an awful headache in the morning, I thought, when she tried to figure out how she could have wrecked the room this way. It would be a rough way to wake up.

I got it then. If I left, she wasn't going to wake up.

That guy had come here to kill her. He'd wait around until he saw me shove off, then he'd finish the job I had interrupted. He didn't need the gun. She was asleep; he could kill her with anything. He was good when they were asleep. You could see that.

Well, what was I supposed to do? So I didn't have the stomach to sit there and see her butchered in cold blood; so now I was the protector of the poor? The h.e.l.l with it. If I hung around here until she sobered up, she'd probably have me arrested for burglary. And I could just tell the cops how it happened, couldn't I? They didn't get many laughs in their work. Housebreaker saves woman's life. Hey, Joe, come listen to this one.

Then a very chilling thought caught up with me. Suppose they found her in here murdered, tomorrow or the next day? Maybe n.o.body on earth knew that other guy was here. But there was one person who knew d.a.m.n well I'd been here, because she'd brought me here. And if she ever leaked, I'd be in the worst jam I'd ever heard of.

I had to do something. Time was running out. I squatted there in the dark, thinking swiftly. I began to see it then. It was the answer to everything.

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