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

class="calibre1">“There’s one thing I’m missing,” Melissa observed, “and it bothers me. I wonder where Boris Karloff is?”

The road circled and widened at the front of the house. There was no veranda or porch. There were six wide stone steps leading up to an immense arched doorway sunk deep in the smooth stone. There were lights behind the thick-walled porthole windows on either side.

Trent stopped the car, and he and Melissa got out. The wind was soft and cool in their faces, and the moon seemed very far away. Their heels clicked lightly on the macadam and scraped a little on the stone steps.

“What do we do now?” Melissa asked.” Yell ‘Ahoy, the castle’ or blow ourselves a fanfare?”

“This seems to be a bell,” said Trent.

Chimes played a lingering, low melody somewhere inside. The house brooded and waited in utter silence.

“Well,” said Trent, after a while, helplessly.

“Well, hell,” said Melissa. She raised her fist and smacked the door one.

It swung back noiselessly.

“Glug,” said Melissa. “Aren’t we just having more darned fun, though?”

They were looking the length of a hall. It was a story and a half high, and the walls and ceiling were painted a dead white. The floor was black polished oak and there were white rugs spread along it like grotesque giant footprints.

“Homey,” Melissa commented. “Let’s go in.”

They started along the hall, and their footsteps started following behind them in tapping echoes. Melissa took hold of Trent’s arm.

There was a door to their right, and a door to their left. Both were closed. Trent and Melissa went reluctantly past them, and then Melissa said, “Wait. There’s a light behind that one.”

She rapped on it. The silence seemed to stir itself slightly, but there was no real sound. Melissa tried the long, wrought-iron latch on the door. It clicked, and the door moved back, softly reluctant.

The room was a library. The walls from ceiling to floor were lined with shelves of books. The books looked like they had been taken out often—and dusted and put right back again. Facing the door, at the end of the room, there was a desk that was a solid block of black wood as big as a dining room table.

Heloise of Hollywood was sitting behind the desk. She was wearing a blue tailored dress, and her hair was meticulously unswept. Her head was tilted a little to one side, and she was staring at them with an air of polite, dead interest.

“Oh,” Melissa murmured. “Oh.”

Trent whispered to himself.

Very slowly they advanced, holding hands like reluctant children. One of Heloise’s hands—the nails were a polished, appropriate purple—was lying on the desk top with the lax fingers just touching a fat, ugly automatic with a snub nose. Trent and Melissa were closer now, and they could see the very small, neatly dark hole in her left breast. Blood had darkened the cloth of her dress below it, but it was hardly noticeable.

“She shot herself,” said Melissa. Her voice croaked ridiculously on the words, and she swallowed hard.

“No, she didn’t,” said Trent. “There’s no powder burn on her dress. And that’s an 8 millimeter Mauser on the desk. It would make a much bigger hole.”

“Would—would a .22 make a hole like—like…”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my,” said Melissa. “Doan said my prowler had a .22.”

“Well, there’s one thing,” said Trent slowly, “Humphrey can’t claim Doan did this. He’s not here.”

“But you are,” said Melissa. “And, what’s more, so am I.”

The telephone rang. It was on a circular stand at Heloise’s left hand. Trent and Melissa waited with a sort of dread fascination for her to answer it. She didn’t.

It rang again.

Melissa walked gingerly around the desk and picked it up. “Hello.”

A voice like thick plush said: “Good evening This is T. Ballard Bestwyck. May I speak to Heloise?”

“Well,” said Melissa, “no.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You can’t speak to her. I mean, she can’t speak to you, which amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think you understood me, young woman. I am T. Ballard Bestwyck. I’m the president of—”

“I know. I work for you.”

“What was that?”

“I teach at the university.”

“What’s your name?”—!

“Melissa Gregory.”

“Well, it’s about time?”

“What?” said Melissa blankly.

“I was just calling Heloise to apologize for your brazen behavior. Now that you’re up there, you can do it yourself. And you’d better be very humble about it, young woman. There’s a moral turpitude clause in your contract, and if you don’t let other women’s husbands alone you’re going to find yourself involved in a serious situation.”

The line suddenly crackled. T. Ballard Bestwyck hadn’t hung up. There was no dial tone. The line was dead.

Melissa turned her head slowly to look at Trent.

“What’s the matter?” Trent demanded.

“Somebody—cut the line.”

The lights went out.

“Eric!” Melissa cried. “Oh, Eric—”

She grabbed him and clung to him desperately, both arms about his neck.

“I’m so sc-scared,” she whimpered, “and you shouldn’t mind. J-just a few minutes ago you s-said you liked to be close to m-me and have your arms about m-me…”

“My arms aren’t about you,” Trent said, obviously trying to remain calm. “Yours are about me, but it’s all right, Melissa. Heloise won’t mind now—not any more.”

The half door boomed shut and the lock clicked coldly and Melissa gasped.

“All right,” Trent said. “Start screaming. That’s just what we need at this point.”

“I’ve never screamed in my life!” Melissa retorted, and immediately afterward began screaming her head off. “Eeeh! Oow! Eeeh! Eep!”

Trent slapped at her. He missed her face in the darkness and hit her on the back of the head. Melissa stopped screaming.

Something scraped very gently in the hall, and then without warning there were three shots—very close together, sharp and bitingly distinct. Instantly there was another shot. This was a heavier, louder thud.

After that there was silence. It was not a pleasant or comforting silence. Melissa breathed against Trent’s coat collar with her mouth open.

Something tapped lightly on the hall door.

Doan’s voice murmured, “Trent. Melissa.”

“In here,” said Trent. “The door is locked.”

The lock clicked again and the shadows moved vaguely.

“Are you two all right?” Doan asked.

“I guess so,” said Trent.

“Come closer to the door here. I want to watch the hall. I chased the guy back inside. He’s holed up in the house somewhere now.”

Trent and Melissa shuffled forward cautiously. They could see a vague, bent outline that was Doan. The barrel of his revolver gleamed a little in the dimness. He had the hall door almost shut and was watching through the narrow opening.

“He’ll run out the back,” Trent said.

“He’ll maybe try. Carstairs is out there.”

They waited tensely.

“Heloise is dead,” Trent said in an undertone. “Over at her desk. She was shot.”

“Yeah,” said Doan. “I thought I’d better come up and warn her even if she didn’t want me to. She thought she could handle the guy. She could just as well wrap up a tiger in a paper napkin.”

“She had a gun.”

“Sure. She had twenty servants, too.”

“Where did they go?”

“They’re locked up downstairs somewhere—probably in the wine cellar. I’ve got no time to go fishing around for them now. I’ve got a hunch I’m going to get myself killed as it is. This guy is hell on wheels with that pistol of his. He mistook a tree for me a minute ago, or I’d be past worrying at this point.”

Carstairs let go with a bellowing halloo. The .22 cracked twice precisely. Carstairs bellowed angrily right back at it.

“He’s under cover,” Doan breathed, “If he only has brains enough to stay that way.”

The pistol cracked futilely again. Carstairs let his bellow out another notch, and the whole night began to throb with it.

“Stay in here,” Doan ordered, “I’m going a-hunting, and I’m going to shoot at anything that even looks like it might move. I’m scared green of this guy.” He opened the door wider. “Stay right here. I mean it. Oh, why do I get myself into situations like this? I must be crazy.”

He faded noiselessly into the darkness.