Oh, Murderer Mine by Norbert Davis (best books to read fiction .txt) 📕

Doan spoke without turning his head. “I think he’s on the trellis outside the window.”

Moving vines made a leafy, ripping sound.

“Yeah!” said Doan, lunging to his feet. “Carstairs! Carstairs! Guard!”

Carstairs roared willingly from outside and below. The vines crackled.

“Now what will I do?” Doan demanded. “If I poke my head out that window, he’ll pop it off for me. If I run outside, he’ll come back in this way.”

“Another bedroom…” Trent suggested.

The vines rattled and slithered more loudly.

“Back!” Doan ordered urgently. “He’s coming back up! Get out of the doorway!”

Something crawled up eerily at the lower corner of the open window. Moonlight glinted on the long, pencil-like barrel of the .22 pistol. It groped around blindly and then suddenly spat. Flame streaked slantwise toward the ceiling.

“Ah,” said Doan.

He was aiming carefully with his revolver, steadying his right wrist with his left hand. He fired. The .22 automatic spun up into the air, glistening sleekly, and then thudded loosely on the floor.

“I did it!” Doan chortled. “I’ve always wanted to, and I did it! I shot a gun out of a guy’s hand! Come in off that vine, screwloose! And don’t try any funny work! I’m as good as Red Ryder!”

Wood suddenly tore loose in a long drawn, ripping screech.

“What—” said Doan.

He raced across the bedroom to the window with Melissa and Trent stumbling along behind him. The moon was ghastly bright now, and in its light, suspended incredibly in space ten feet out from the window, was something large and black, black and crouched and malignant that screeched at them.

The lattice work was propping it up there, unbelievably, like a weirdly extended, clumsy stilt. Then the lattice swayed further and lost its last hold on the wall with a series of popping reports and began to fall, crumpling in on itself, away from the house.

The black figure mouthed incoherent, terrified sounds, twisting in the air. And directly under it, gleaming like quicksilver, was the slickly sullen surface of Heloise’s swimming pool. The lattice hit the edge of the pool, and the water opened up with a resounding boom.

Carstairs raced his shadow across the lawn and skidded on the edge of the pool.

“Carstairs!” Doan shouted. “Stay out of there! Let him drown, and save the state money! Stay out—”

Carstairs dove into the pool.

“Oh, hell’s fire!” Doan exclaimed angrily.

He whirled away from the window and ran out of the bedroom. Trent tore down the stairs after him, jerking Melissa along behind with a viselike grip on her wrist. They drummed along the hall and out the front door and around the side of the house.

Doan pulled out ahead of them going down the slope of the lawn. His heels grated on the tiled edge of the pool. The surface of the water was ripped and torn to froth, and then Carstairs’ head heaved up out of it. He had a black, chunky, limp arm gripped in his jaws, and he was coughing in half-strangled snorts.

“Let go!” Doan yelled. “Let him drown! Who cares? Come here! Here! Here!”

Carstairs kept his grip and plowed away determinedly at the water. He came agonizingly closer. Doan leaned far out and grabbed the arm.

“All right! So you’re a hero! Let go!”

Doan heaved back, and the black, ugly form slithered wetly out on the edge of the pool. Doan kicked it aside.

“Sit on him for a minute,” he ordered no one in particular. “Carstairs! Now, come here, stupid! Here!”

Carstairs floundered against the side wall, and Doan got him by the collar. He hauled. Carstairs’ forelegs flopped out on the tile. His back legs churned powerfully at the water. He came up and out suddenly, snorting and dripping.

Doan fell over backwards. “Now, watch out! Don’t—Ow!”

Carstairs walked right over his prone form. He stepped aside, but not far enough aside, and shook himself.

“Floosh!” Doan sputtered. He sat up, wiping his face. “I’m going to kill you someday. I mean that seriously.”

Carstairs stopped shaking and sat down and began to pant victoriously.

Melissa said in a small, stunned voice: “Mr. Doan, this—this—this is Professor Sley-Mynick.”

“Yup,” said Doan, getting to his feet. “Let’s see if he’s still working.”

He knelt down beside the wet, black form. Professor Sley-Mynick’s thin face was bluish and distorted, and little bubbles burst frothily on his lumpy mustache. Doan probed with exploring fingers.

“Cracked his skull,” he stated. “Must have hit the bottom of the pool. He’ll probably live, though.”

“But—but did he…”

“He did,” said Doan cheerfully. “He’s your little old prowler in person.”

“Oh!” Melissa exclaimed. “Then there was something awful and familiar… But what was he doing in my apartment?”

“It’s just like I told you. He thought he was in Trent’s apartment.”

“What did he want in my apartment?” Trent demanded.

“I think he was going to fix up a nice little booby trap for you. That’s why he had both the knife and the gun with him. He probably had a strip of rubber inner tubes and some nails with him, too. He was going to fasten the knife to the tube and the tube to the nails in such a way that when you opened the drawer, the tube would stretch and then flip the knife in your face. It’s easy to fix up a trap like that if you know how.”

“With a knife?” Trent said doubtfully. “That seems sort of uncertain.”

“He didn’t want to kill you. I mean, he didn’t care whether he did or not. He just wanted to remove you from the campus. It didn’t matter whether you were removed to the hospital or to the morgue.”

“And Frank Ames?” Melissa said.

“There he was turning his car around when Sley-Mynick walked right out into the alley—and into Ames’ headlights—busily engaged in peeling off that stocking mask. Ames recognized him at once. He stopped the car and got out to see what in the devil he was up to. You can see the fix that put Sley-Mynick in. There wasn’t any story he could dream up that would pacify Ames permanently, because when Ames found out that the prowler had socked Melissa one, Ames was going to sound off like a fire siren. Sley-Mynick is not a man who takes long to make up his mind. He hadn’t used his knife yet, and so now he did. He cut Ames’ throat and dumped him in that garbage can, hoping to be able to drive in the alley and pick him up and tote him off somewhere and bury him. But he couldn’t put that last idea over. Carstairs and I came snooping around after him. He shot at us and then he had to scram.”

Melissa said, “And—and Beulah?”

“Remember what I said about how I went into her apartment and listened around? She couldn’t have heard you yip if her door had been shut. I think she had her door open a little. I think she was snooping, just like the Aldriches were. I think she wanted to see whether or not Ames came up to your apartment with you.”

Melissa nodded slowly. “Beulah was a little like that. She was nosey.”

“And this time it was fatal. She saw the prowler. He ran past her door on the way out. I don’t think she recognized him positively, or she would have said so. But she saw enough to make her wonder, because she was already wondering. Remember what she said when we were first talking about Sley-Mynick? She said he_ was_ a good biochemist—meaning he_ had been._ Physics is sort of close to biochemistry, and Beulah Porter Coveys must have spotted something that Sley-Mynick did or said that made her a little leery. I mean, I suppose she was just sort of wondering about it vaguely, and this was something added. In any event, I’m sure she went around and talked to him the next morning, and he must have told her something that pacified her for the moment.”

“What?” Trent demanded.

“I have no idea. He’s a slicker. Anyway, Beulah Porter Cowys made a very bad mistake after that. She went to Heloise’s place. That cooked her goose. I don’t know whether she went there just to get her face fixed or whether she had some other reason. Neither did Sley-Mynick, I suppose. But he couldn’t take a chance on her talking to Heloise about him. Carstairs’ riot gave him his chance, although he would have managed it by some hook or crook anyway. That sort of wiped things up for Sley-Mynick. He’d had bad luck running into Ames and getting spotted by Beulah Porter Cowys, but now they were cleared away, and he went back after you again. He shied that tile at you. That probably wouldn’t have killed you unless it hit you in the head, but it wouldn’t have done you much good, either.”

Trent said, “But_ why—“_

Carstairs growled. Doan whipped around alertly, jerking the revolver from under his coat.

There was a man walking down the slope of the lawn toward them slowly and portentously, his shadow jigging eerily thin ahead of him.

“It’s Morales!” Melissa gasped.

“Not any more,” said Doan. “Now it’s Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz, the great detective.”

“How do you do,” said Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz. “I see that, by sheer luck, you have managed to capture my quarry. You probably have no admissible evidence against him, so it is fortunate that I have arrived.”

“What evidence have you?” Trent demanded.

“An unassailable case. I always make certain I have an unassailable case before I make an arrest. This man is demonstrably and unmistakably guilty of the murder of Herbert ‘Big Tub’ Tremaine in a cottage on the outskirts of Piedras Negras, State of Coahuila, Mexico, seven months and eleven days ago!’

“Who?” Trent said sharply.

“What?” said Melissa. “Big Tub Tremaine!” She stared accusingly at Doan. “You told me he had committed suicide!”

“I thought he had,” said Doan. He looked at Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz. “Your authorities should file a little clearer reports.”

“I suppose they do seem a little complicated to the dull-witted,” Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz answered indifferently.

Doan said to Melissa: “The report said just what I told you—that Tremaine had heaved himself in the drink in front of a lot of witnesses, and that they’d had a lot of trouble fishing him out again. Well, the trouble was that it took them four days to recover his body, and by that time he was all chewed to pieces.”

“But you said—he said—”

“I will explain the matter,” said Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz, “because it involves some very brilliant feats of scientific detection. Big Tub Tremaine wished to flee to Mexico because he had embezzled some money from his wife. He had formerly worked in carnivals. He went down to Skid Row—a region in Los Angeles frequented by many vagrants—and located a character, a man he had known formerly in his carnival days, called Bumbershoot Bennie.”

“Bumbershoot Bennie,” Trent said numbly.

“Yes. Big Tub Tremaine hailed him with great joviality as a dear old pal. Big Tub Tremaine was going on a vacation trip to Mexico, he said, and nothing would do but that his old friend, Bumbershoot Bennie, should accompany him. But first he must buy Bumbershoot Bennie a new outfit of clothes. To show his great generosity and good heart, he would buy Bumbershoot Bennie an outfit as good as he was wearing himself. In fact, he would buy Bumbershoot Bennie an outfit exactly like the one he was wearing. He did.”

“Oh,” said Trent.

“Then,” said Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz, “they started in Big Tub Tremaine’s car for Ensenada. Somewhere along the road—as yet I don’t know just where—Big Tub Tremaine killed Bumbershoot Bennie by beating him over the head