Oh, Murderer Mine - Norbert Davis (best love novels of all time .TXT) 📗

am?” said Trent. “For_ her?“_

“Yup. This business about your wife hiring Doan to watch you is a gag. Your wife is completely in your power. She does exactly what you tell her and nothing else. She wouldn’t dare hire a detective to watch you.”

“This one is going to be really something extra,” Doan observed. “Keep on, Humphrey.”

“Your wife may be paying Doan,” Humphrey said to Trent, “but it’s you who tells him what to do, and what you told him to do this time was to watch Melissa Gregory.”

“Why?” Trent asked blankly.

“I told you. You’re crazy for her, and you suspected she was falling for this Frank Ames. There wasn’t any masked prowler last night. You have a key to her apartment, and you were waiting for her when she came home. You popped her one for going out with Ames.”

“I did this?” Trent asked, stunned.

“Yes, you. She squawked before you popped her, and this Beulah Porter Cowys came blundering in and saw and heard enough to know what really happened. You called the cops in an attempt to cover things up with that nut-wagon story about a guy with his head in a silk stocking. You didn’t fool Beulah Porter Cowys any. She went over to Hollywood this afternoon to shake your wife down by telling your wife about you and Melissa Gregory. She wouldn’t have gotten any change out of your wife, like I said, but you had to knock her off anyway because Doan had knocked off Ames, and Beulah Porter Cowys might have sounded off about that.”

“I wondered when I was going to appear in this,” Doan observed.

“You’d been following Ames and Melissa,” Humphrey told him. “You were out in front of the building, lurking around like you usually are. Ames saw or heard something, and he got out of his car, intending to go on up and take this Trent all apart for batting Melissa Gregory around. That damned dog of yours took out after Ames and ran him into the alley and cornered him, and you cut Ames’ throat.”

“Who shot at me?”

“Nobody. You had two guns. You fired one off in the air and then gave it to that damned Carstairs, and he buried it in one of those vacant lots around there.”

“I congratulate you, Humphrey,” said Doan.

“This is incredible!” Trent choked. “This is the most absolutely fantastic tissue of criminal nonsense that I’ve ever listened to!”

“That’s all right, bub,” said Humphrey, nodding at him meaningfully. “I just wanted you to know I’m on to you. And I always get my man.”

“Crime doesn’t pay,” Doan added.

Something slid through the air between Trent and Doan with an ugly, slicing hiss. It hit the sidewalk right at Trent’s feet and shattered into shrapnel-like splinters. It was a heavy, grooved roof tile.

“Gug?” said Humphrey, staring up.

“Just remember,” said Doan, also looking up. “That Trent didn’t throw that tile, and neither did I.”

“Ah,” said Humphrey. “Nobody threw—”

Somebody yelled, though. It sounded thin and high and far away. Glass tinkled faintly.

“My instruments!” Trent gasped. He lunged up the steps.

“Wait a minute, you!” Humphrey shouted. He tore into the hall and up the stairs after Trent, flipping up his coattails and fumbling for the revolver in his hip pocket.

Doan spun on his heel and ran back along the side of the building. He had his revolver out. The turf was soft and spongy and silent under his heels He shoved heedlessly through a hedge and faced the narrow, shadowed rear door of the building.

He waited, puffing a little. Nothing happened. Nothing came out. And then a snarling, half-muffled uproar drifted down to him. Humphrey’s yapping voice rode on the crest of it.

Doan darted inside the building. He found the narrowly twisting back stairs and went up them four at a time. He whirled around a corner at the top and out into the main upper corridor and ran down it toward Melissa’s old office. He stopped short in the doorway.

The office was well on its way to being torn to pieces. Morales and Professor Sley-Mynick occupied the vortex of a sort of a whirlpool in the middle of it, caroming first one way and then the other and screeching like men possessed. Professor Sley-Mynick had a constrictor-like grip around Morales’ waist. Morales was pounding him on the top of the head with both fists and trying to kick him at the same time. Trent and Humphrey ran around and around the two of them, trying to get a grip somewhere.

Doan fired his revolver at the ceiling, and for the space of a heartbeat the furious action froze dead still.

Then Humphrey got Morales by the neck. “What do you think you’re doing? What goes on—” He shook Morales like a rag.

Trent was trying to disengage Professor Sley-Mynick. The blubbery man’s glasses were gone—trampled underfoot—and his fat face was twisted hideously, lumpy mustache twitching and writhing like a live thing.

“What is it?” Trent demanded. “What happened?”

Professor Sley-Mynick collapsed into a half-sitting position._ “Geheim Staatspolizei!” he cried, pointing a wavering finger at Morales. “Geheim Staatspolizei! Yah, Yah!“_

“Christian pig!” Morales spat at him.

Humphrey shook him again. “Shut up! What’s the old guy saying?”

_”Geheim Staatspolizei_ is German,” Trent said, puzzled. “It means German State Security Police, I think.”

“Sure,” said Doan. “The Gestapo.”

“Gestapo?” Humphrey repeated. “Them guys is all in jail or hung or something.”

“Nein!”

Professor Sley-Mynick screamed. “No! He is! Him! That one!”

“Offspring of a she dog,” said Morales.

Humphrey gave him another shake. “Keep your trap shut, or you’re going to be missing some teeth. Trent, ask the fat guy what’s going on.”

Professor Sley-Mynick swallowed, groping furiously for words. “Always they do it! Yes!_ Geheim Staatspolizei!_ They break things—smash them! Scientific things! They did mine in Hungary! Now he does it! This one! He smashes them on the roof! Yes, yes! Believe me! I saw him! On the roof!”

“My instruments!” Trent blurted.

The stepladder was still propped up in the corner under the square trap door in the ceiling. Trent swarmed up it and squirmed through and out of sight. Instantly his face reappeared, red and congested, peering down at them.

“My barometer and my anemometer are smashed, and there is something in my precipitation calibrator that certainly isn’t dew!”

“Yes, yes!” said Professor Sley-Mynick, “I told you! Always they do it—_Geheim Staatspolizei!_ Always they smash and break scientific instruments!”

Trent slid down the ladder. He advanced on Morales with his eyes narrowed dangerously and his upper lip lifted at one corner.

Humphrey jerked Morales back. “Get away from him,” he warned Trent, “or I’ll slap you one with this pistol. I’m running this bazaar. This crum bum doesn’t look like any Gestapo to me. Did you smash those instruments and shy a tile at Trent, dope?”

“Yes,” said Morales.

Humphrey stared at him, taken aback. “You did? Well, what the hell for?”

“He is a blasphemer.”

“Huh?” said Humphrey.

“What?” said Trent. “What am I?”

“A pig,” said Morales. “A blasphemous, illegitimate Christian pig.”

“Well, why?” said Trent. “What did I do?”

“Your existence and your pretensions are an impious mockery. By your very presence you deny the existence of Quezatepequez.”

“Who?” said Humphrey groggily. “What?”

“Quezatepequez,” said Trent. “That sounds like an Aztec word.”

“Mayan, illiterate fool!” Morales snapped. “Quezatepequez is the great and only lord of Tegucigalpa—lord of the dark sky and the thunder bird. And you—you!—attempt to read his mind and predict his moods! I can do that—only I—a hereditary priest of the clan of Tegucigalpa!”

“Where does Maximilian come into this?” Doan inquired.

“Faugh! I spit on his name! I use it only to mock Christian pigs!”

“This guy is a nut,” Humphrey stated. “I can see that without going any further. He should be locked up, and that’s just what’s going to happen to him. Come on now, screwloose, or you’ll think the thunder bird laid an egg right on your noggin.”

“I’m coming along, too,” said Doan. “Take care of Sley-Mynick, Trent. I’ll holler up some help for you below-decks.”

“What was all that the old guy was yipping about the Gestapo?” Humphrey asked.

“They pinched him once,” Doan explained. “They evidently wrecked his laboratory as well as him when they did it. When he saw Morales working out on Trent’s instruments, he made a connection.”

“There are too many nuts around here,” Humphrey said darkly, “and them that ain’t are worse. What do you want to come along with me for?”

“You’re going to succeed in arresting me sooner or later. I want to see what kind of service I can expect. Besides, this guy strikes me as sort of violent. Maybe you’ll need some help.”

“And I suppose you’d give me some if I did?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t,” said Humphrey.