Out Like a Light by Gordon Randall Garrett (snow like ashes TXT) 📕

Fascinated in spite of himself, Malone said: "That's impossible."

"Nothing's impossible," the old man said. "Work for a theater long enough and you find that out. Part bloodhound, I said, and part water spaniel. Should have seen that dog before you start talking about impossibilities. What a strange-looking beast. And then there was the time--"

"About the notebook," Malone said.

"Notebook?" the old man said.

"I lost a notebook," Malone said. "I was hoping that--"

"Description?" the old man said, and poised his pencil again.

Malone heaved a great sigh. "Black plastic," he said. "About so big." He made motions with his hands. "No names or initials on it. But the first page had my name written on it, along with Lieutenant Peter Lynch."

"Who's he?" the old man said.

"He's a cop," Malone said.

"My, my," the old man said. "Valuable notebook, with a cop's name in it and all. You a cop, youngster?"

Malone shook his head.

"Too bad," the old man said obscurely. "I like cops." He stood up. "You said black plastic? Black?"

"That's right," Malone said. "Do you have it here?"

"Got no notebooks at all here, youngster," the old man said. "Empty billfold, three hats, a couple of coats and some pencils. And an umbrella. No dogs tonight, youngster, and no notebooks."

"Oh," Malone said. "Well ... wait a minute."

"What is it, youngster?" the old man said. "I'm busy this time of day. Got to sweep and clean. Got work to do. Not like you tourists."

With difficulty, Malone leashed his temper. "Why did I have to describe the notebook?" he said. "You haven't got any notebooks at all."

"That's right," the old man said cheerfully.

"But you made me describe--"

"That's the rules," the old man said. "And I ain't about to go against the rules. Not for no tourist." He put the pencil down and rose. "Wish you were a cop," he said. "I never met a cop. They don't lose things like people do."

Making a mental note to call up later and talk to the manager, if the notebook hadn't turned up in the meantime, Malone went off to find the bars he had stopped in before the theater.

* * * * *

Saving Topp's for last, he started at the Ad Lib, where a surprised bald man told him they hadn't found a notebook anywhere in the bar for something like six weeks. "Now if you'd been looking for umbrellas," he said, "we could have accommodated you. Got over ten umbrellas downstairs, waiting for their owners. I wonder why people lose so many umbrellas?"

"Maybe they hate rain," Malone said.

"I don't know," the bald man said. "I'm sort of a psychologist--you know, a judge of people. I think it's an unconscious protest against the fetters of a society which is slowly strangling them by--"

Malone said good-by in a hurry and left. His next stop was the Xochitl, the Mexican bar on Forty-sixth Street. He greeted the bartender warmly.

[Illustration]

"Ah," the bartender told him. "You come back. We look for you."

"Look for me?" Malone said. "You mean you found my notebook?"

"Notesbook?" the bartender said.

"A little black plastic book," Malone said, making motions, "about so big. And it----"

"Not find," the bartender said. "You lose him?"

"Sure I lost him," Malone said. "I mean, it. Would I be looking for it if I hadn't lost it?"

"Who knows?" the bartender said, and shrugged.

"But you said you were looking for me," Malone said. "What about?"

"Oh," the bartender said. "I only say that. Make customer feel good, think we miss him. Customers like, so we do. What your name?"

"Pizarro," Malone said disgustedly, and went away.

The last stop was Topp's. Well, he had to find the notebook there. It was the only place the notebook could be. That was logic, and Malone was proud of it. He walked into Topp's trying to remember the bartender's name, and found it just as he walked into the bar.

"Hello, Wally," he said gaily.

The bartender stared at him. "I'm not Wally," he said. "Wally's the other barman. My name's Ray."

"Oh," Malone said, feeling deflated. "Well, I've come about a notebook."

"Yes, sir?" Ray said.

"I lost the notebook here yesterday evening, between six and eight. If you'll just take me to the Lost and Found department--"

"One moment, sir," Ray said, and left him standing at the bar, all alone.

In a few seconds he was back. "I didn't see the notebook myself, sir," he said. "But if Wally picked it up, he'd have turned it over to the maître d'. Perhaps you'd like to check with him."

"Sure," Malone said. The maître d' turned out to be a shortish, heavy-set man with large blue eyes, a silver mane and a thin, pencil-line mustache. He was addressed, for no reason Malone was able to discover, as BeeBee.

Ray introduced them. "This gentleman wants to know about a notebook," he told BeeBee.

"Notebook?" BeeBee said.

Malone explained at length. BeeBee nodded in an understanding fashion for some moments and, when Malone had finished, disappeared in search of the Lost and Found. He came back rather quickly, with the disturbing news that no notebook was anywhere in the place.

"It's got to be here," Malone insisted.

"Well," BeeBee said, "it isn't. Maybe you left it some place else. Maybe it's home now."

"It isn't," Malone said. "And I've tried every place else."

"New York's a big city, Mr. Malone," BeeBee said.

Malone sighed. "I've tried every place I've been. The notebook couldn't be somewhere I haven't been. A rolling stone follows its owner." He thought about that. It didn't seem to mean anything, but maybe it had once. There was no way to tell for sure.

He went back to the bar to think things over and figure out his next move. A bourbon-and-soda while thinking seemed the obvious order, and Ray bustled off to get it.

* * * * *

Had he left the notebook on the street somewhere, just dropping it by accident? Malone couldn't quite see that happening. It was, of course, possible--but the possibility was so remote that he decided to try and think of everything else first. There was Dorothy, for instance.

Was it possible that she might have the book?

It was. But, if so, how had she got it?

Malone enumerated possibilities on his fingers. First, he could have dropped it or something like that, and she could have picked it up. But dropping the notebook was a chance he'd eliminated already. It just didn't sound likely.

Besides, if he were going to work on the dropping hypothesis, he might as well start from anywhere, on the assumption that he had dropped it anywhere on the street.

But if he had dropped it--second finger--and Dorothy had picked it up, wouldn't she have given it back?

She would have, Malone decided, unless she actually intended to steal it.

And if she had intended to steal it, she could just as easily have lifted it out of his pocket in the first place. She didn't need to wait for it to fall out conveniently, all by itself.

Third finger: why would she steal the notebook? What good was it to her? And how did she even know he had it?

None of those questions seemed to have any answers. Of course, if she'd been connected with the Silent Spooks in some way, it would explain a little--but somehow Malone couldn't see Dorothy as a Silent Spook.

Malone stared at his ring finger and pinky. He pressed the ring finger down, thinking that perhaps Dorothy had picked the notebook up and just forgotten to give it back. That was possible, even if not likely.

Only it required that notebook dropping out again.

The pinky went down. She might be some sort of a kleptomaniac, Malone thought.

That didn't look very probable.

No, Malone decided, realizing that he had no more fingers left, it was impossible to shake off the feeling that the girl had deliberately taken the book for some definite purpose of her own.

He decided to give her a call.

He took the drink from Ray and slid off the bar stool. Two steps away he remembered one more little fact.

He didn't have her number, and he didn't know anything about where she lived, except that it could be reached by subway. That, Malone told himself morosely, limited things nicely to the five boroughs of New York.

And she'd said she was living with her aunt. Would she have a phone listing under her own name, or would the listing be under her aunt's name--which he also didn't know?

At any rate, he could check listings under Dorothy Francis, he told himself.

He did so.

There were lots and lots of people named Dorothy Francis, in Manhattan and in all the other boroughs.

Malone frowned thoughtfully. I wish somebody would tell me how to get in touch with her, he thought. She might know more about that book than I do.

The thought bothered him. But, to offset it, there was a nice new feeling growing at the back of his mind.

He felt as if he were going to know the answer soon enough.

He felt as if he were going to be lucky again.

In the meantime, he went back to the bar to think some more. He was on his second bourbon-and-soda, still thinking but without any new ideas, when BeeBee tapped him gently on the shoulder.

"Pardon me," the maître d' said, "but are you English?"

"Am I what?" Malone said, spilling a little of his drink on the bar.

"Are you English?" BeeBee inquired.

"Oh," Malone said. "No. Irish. Very Irish."

"That's nice," BeeBee said.

Malone stared at him. "I think it's fine," he said, "but I'd love to know why you asked me."

"Well," BeeBee said, "I knew you couldn't be American. Not after the phone call. You don't have to hide your nationality here; we're quite accustomed to foreign visitors. And we don't have special prices for tourists."

Malone waited two breaths. "Will you please tell me," he said slowly, "what it is you're talking about?"

"Certainly," BeeBee said with aplomb. "There's a call for you in the upstairs booth. A long-distance call, personal."

"Oh," Malone said. "Who'd know I was--" He stopped, thinking hard. There was no way in the world for anyone to know he was in Topp's. Therefore, nobody could be calling him. "They've got the wrong name," he said decisively.

"Oh, no," BeeBee said. "I heard them quite distinctly. You are Sir Kenneth Malone, aren't you?"

* * * * *

Malone gaped for one long second, and then his mind caught up with the facts. "Oh," he said. "Sure." He raced upstairs to the phone booth, said: "This is Sir Kenneth Malone," into the blank screen, and waited patiently.

After a while an operator said: "Person to person call, Sir Kenneth, from Yucca Flats. Will you take this call?"

"I'll take it," Malone said. A face appeared on the screen, and Malone knew he was right. He knew exactly how he'd been located, and by whom.

Looking at the face in the screen alone, it might have been thought that the woman who appeared there was somebody's grandmother, kindly, red-cheeked and twinkle-eyed. Perhaps that wasn't the only stereotype; she could have been an old-maid schoolteacher, one of the kindly schoolteachers who taught, once upon a time that never was, in the little old red schoolhouses of the dim past. The face positively radiated kindliness, and friendship, and peace.

But if the face was the face of a sentimental dream, the garb was the garb of royalty. Somebody's grandmother was on her way to a costume party. She wore the full court costume of the days of Queen Elizabeth I, complete with brocaded velvet gown, wide ruff collar and bejeweled skullcap.

She was, Malone knew, completely insane.

Like all the other telepaths Malone and the rest of the FBI had found during their work in uncovering a telepathic spy, she had been located in an insane asylum. Months of extensive psychotherapy, including all the newest techniques and some so old that psychiatrists were a little afraid to use them, had done absolutely nothing to shake the firmest conviction in the mind of Miss Rose Thompson.

She was, she insisted, Elizabeth Tudor, rightful Queen of England.

She claimed she was immortal--which was not true. She also claimed to be a