The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mysteries!

Lew said, “He was probably out to get you from the minute he went to work for you. We found some dirt from your garden in your bedroom near the night table where you kept your gun. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have meant much to us — either you or Vicky could have brought it in — but to Vicky it suggested Shoffner. She remembered that Shoffner had been working in muck that afternoon, bringing it in for the flower beds. She slipped into his rooms, found some pictures of Sigmon in the old man’s things. She went to some of Sigmon’s old haunts last night and tonight with Keith Pryor. She was asking questions and must have got a few answers. She phoned me that she was certain of the old man’s identity. But before I could get to your house, he snatched her, found himself cornered, the street blocked, and dragged her in the building.”

Now she was six stories above the street. This, then, was the ultimate torture...

“You’ll never talk him down, Lew,” I said. “There’s only one way — let him know he isn’t guilty of actual murder. I’ll have to go up, alone—”

A trooper was standing near me. I slid the carbine he was holding from his hand.

Lew made no move to stop me. He knew that Shoffner might kill, me, but he knew too that this was something I had to do. For myself. For Vicky.

The stairs upward were long, silent, manned by patrolmen who sucked in breath when they saw me, a man they’d believed dead. The last flight of stairs was steeper and narrower, leading up to the radio tower on the roof. I saw Shoffner and Vicky the moment I pushed my exhausted body out on the roof. The spotlight limned them, Shoffner behind Vicky, waving a gun, yelling threats.

Shoffner must have been dropping quick glances behind him to make sure no one else was coming on the roof, for he saw me.

“Don’t take another step,” he shouted, and his full intent was in his voice. “I’ll push her!”

“I came to help you,” I said. “I don’t want you getting yourself into any worse trouble.”

My voice brought a little cry from Vicky’s throat, and a startled gasp from Shoffner.

“You can’t be Townsend!” he said in a thick, fearful voice.

“But I am. Move away from her, Shoffner. And I’ll come toward the light. You can see for yourself.”

I took another step. A little of the light caught my face. The old man screamed and started shooting. Vicky crawled aside. I hated to do it, but I squeezed the trigger of the carbine. The bullet hit him high in the chest. He stumbled back against the parapet.

And then he was suddenly gone.

The gun slid from my fingers as Vicky stumbled toward me. The boys who came to the roof found us locked in a tight embrace, Vicky’s face burrowed into my neck, hard sobs racking her. She was trying hard to tell me something about being a fool, about never having let a pipsqueak gigolo turn her head for a moment, but about having been lonely. But until I’d gone she’d never known what loneliness meant. She’d told Pryor that and he had understood; he had been willing to help her in any way he could in bringing her husband’s murderer to bay. Did I believe her?