The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!
- Автор: Флора Флетчер
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 978-1479436668
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!». Краткое содержание книги:
Turning, he stood leaning against the lavatory and looking at the old-fashioned water heater at the foot of the bathtub. He let his eyes drift up and along a string clothesline that someone had stretched back and forth between the walls above the tub. After a minute, he knelt beside the heater and turned the tap on the gas ring, which emitted a soft hissing and an acrid odor.
He closed the tap and went back into the bedroom. Stripping the bed of a dirty sheet, he carried the sheet into the bathroom and began tearing it into strips. Some of the strips he stuffed into the cracks around the frame of the small window above the tub.
Removing the string, he tied one end to the end of the chain hanging from the old socket above the lavatory. And then he turned on the gas full force under the heater and went out, quickly threading the string through the keyhole of the door and closing the door behind him. The remainder of the strips he stuffed in the crack around the door.
Sitting on the bed, he waited fifteen minutes, checking the time by the watch on his wrist. When the time had passed, he was beginning to smell, in spite of the stuffing, the faint odor of gas. Getting up, he took the mattress from the bed and dropped it against the living room wall. He returned, taking the loose end of the string, and went over to the wall. He lay down between the wall and the mattress, then, saying something like a prayer, he pulled the string.
There was a great, cushioned puff, as if the air itself had flown apart into its elements, and the bathroom door was suddenly hanging by one hinge. The concussion rolled against Terry like a hard wave, plastering him to the wall, and he fought to gather and retain his senses in a siege of silence which seemed, after the explosion, vast and eternal. Actually, it lasted a few seconds only, and then the flabby but feline Sulla was coming through the door in a crouch, gun ready.
Pushing out from the wall, using the hard edge of his hand like a hatchet, Terry hacked down viciously into the fatty base of Sulla’s neck. The gun clattered to the floor, and the fat hood sagged to his knees. Crowding the advantage, Terry got a handful of oily hair and jerked back until the round, olive face was parallel to the ceiling at the end of spinal tension.
Then, using the heel of his hand, he smashed down and skullward upon Sulla’s nose. He felt the bones splinter, forced back and upward toward the brain, and he let Sulla twist slowly off his knees and flop. If the hood was not dead, death would be soon, and Terry, without checking, retrieved the gun from the floor and went out.
Below, on a dark, narrow street illuminated inadequately in spots by old lamps, he turned toward the heart of the city and began to walk. Time seemed to move faster, flowing past him with a rush, so after a few minutes he began to trot to keep up. Ten minutes later, on a broader, brighter thoroughfare, he found a cruising cab and crawled in. It was then twenty minutes to twelve.
“Municipal Air Terminal,” he said. “You win a bonus if we’re there by midnight.”
By flouting a couple of red lights, the cabbie won the bonus. Terry made it a fin, and when he went through the wide glass doors of the main terminal entrance into the high, light waiting room, it was just thirty seconds before the hour. An amplified voice was announcing the arrival of the flight that carried the courier. Passengers would enter through gate six, the voice said.
Terry found the gate and saw, beyond it, leaning indolently against the wall, the thin man in the loose cord suit. His eyes moved over Terry indifferently. Lazily, he shook a cigarette from a pack and struck fire from a gopher.
Turning away, Terry moved to a magazine stand and bought a newspaper. He stood leaning against the counter with the paper unfolded before him. Now and then he looked up at the thin, indolent figure beyond the gate.
Passengers were emerging from the gate. A fat woman wearing silver fox, walking stiffly. A long-legged looker with red hair, eyes lighting like lamps as a young guy broke forward to meet her. A heavy man with jowls looking important in imported tweeds. And then the one. A man of medium height, carrying a brown cowhide bag. He had a thin black mustache, and he walked with a slight limp in his left leg. He turned right toward a wall of public lockers. Behind him, the thin man in cords dropped his cigarette on the floor and moved in lazy pursuit. Another man, nondescript, separated from the group outside the gate and moved in time with the thin man, parallel and a little to the rear.
The man with the limp stopped in front of the lockers, setting the cowhide bag on the floor at his feet and digging into a pocket for a coin. Behind him, the thin man and the nondescript man moved in, converging. From his place at the magazine stand, Terry could see the three of them standing suddenly immobile, frozen in a strange and lifeless tableau.
Folding his newspaper, he laid it on the counter and walked swiftly toward them. As he moved, the thin man stooped and picked up the cowhide bag. Passing them, without slowing or speaking, Terry took the bag from the thin man’s hand and went on out a side entrance into a drive that served the parking lot.
A black Oldsmobile was purring at the exit. A man was sitting under the wheel of the Olds. When Terry came out, the man opened the door, stepped out into the drive, and Terry moved into his place, depositing the bag on the seat beside him.
“Luck, Terry,” the man said, and Terry lifted a hand from the wheel in brief acknowledgment, setting the automatic transmission in action with the pressure of his foot on the accelerator.
And now the hard part was supposed to be over. Supposedly all that remained was for the fair-haired boy in the house of Sebastian to carry a cowhide bag full of heroin into a place where he was welcome. The trouble was, the boy’s hair was no longer fair. Terence Pope was no longer welcome in the home of his benefactor...
Behind the wheel, driving steadily within the established speed limits, Terry laughed softly and without humor. For a moment he wondered what had happened to Liza, but it was a thought he didn’t want to face, and he put it away.
In front of the stone, steel and glass brick stack that housed Sebastian’s apartment, he got out, carrying the bag, and went through the entrance quickly into the lush lobby. Sitting on their necks in club chairs, blending with the background, two well-dressed men followed him with their eyes to the bank of elevators. No particular interest was apparent in their attitudes.
The elevator boy, resplendent in scarlet cloth and gold braid, said, “Good evening, Mr. Pope,” and Terry moved to the back of the elevator. He stood with his shoulders touching the steel back of the box, breathing deeply and regularly, fighting for control of his pulse. In his temples, there was a sharp, rhythmic hammering.
On Sebastian’s floor, he went down to the door that opened into the hall of the huge apartment and set the bag on the floor at his feet. For a minute, he stood there listening to the soft whine of the elevator descending in its shaft, and then he took Sulla’s gun from the inside pocket of his coat. Holding the gun in position for a quick chop, he put a thumb on the button beside the door and leaned his weight against it.
When the stony-faced servant opened the door, Terry shifted sideways as Sulla’s gun chopped down. The snout of the gun struck the servant a blow on the forehead, and he spun away, folding up quietly on the asphalt tile. Stooping, Terry picked up the bag and moved past him down the hall to the door of Sebastian’s office.