Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952
- Автор: Грубер Фрэнк, Кемельман Гарри
- Год: 1952
- Язык: английский
- Год: American Mercury
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952». Краткое содержание книги:
Cyril maintained his poise with a strong effort.
“What book?”
“The book you sneaked out of my room.”
“Has someone sneaked a book out of your room?” Cyril struck his forehead. “Great heavens!” he cried.
“Mr. Mulliner,” said Lady Bassett coldly, “more book and less gibbering!”
Cyril raised a hand.
“I know who’s got your book. Lester Mapledurham!”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“He has, I tell you. As I was on my way to your room just now, I saw him coming out, carrying something in a furtive manner. I remember wondering a bit at the time. He’s in the Clock Room. If we pop along there now, we shall just catch him red-handed.”
Lady Bassett reflected.
“It is impossible,” she said at length. “He is incapable of such an act. Lester Mapledurham is a man who once killed a lion with a sardine opener.”
“The very worst sort,” said Cyril. “Ask anyone.”
“And he is engaged to my daughter.” Lady Bassett paused. “Well, he won’t be long, if I find that what you say is true. Come, Mr. Mulliner!”
Together the two passed down the silent passage. At the door of the Clock Room they paused. A light streamed from beneath it. Cyril pointed silently to this sinister evidence of reading in bed, and noted that his companion stiffened and said something to herself in an undertone in what appeared to be some sort of native dialect.
The next moment she had flung the door open and, with a spring like that of a crouching zebu, had leaped to the bed and wrenched the book from Lester Mapledurham’s hands.
“So!” said Lady Bassett.
“So!” said Cyril, feeling that he could not do better than follow the lead of such a woman.
“Hullo!” said Lester Mapledurham. “Something the matter?”
“So it was you who stole my book!”
“Your book?” said Lester Mapledurham. “I borrowed this from Mr. Mulliner there.”
“A likely story!” said Cyril. “Lady Bassett is aware that I left my copy of Strychnine in the Soup in the train.”
“Certainly,” said Lady Bassett. “It’s no use talking, young man, I have caught you with the goods. And let me tell you one thing that may be of interest. If you think that, after a dastardly act like this, you are going to marry Amelia, forget it!”
“Wipe it right out of your mind,” said Cyril.
“But listen—”
“I will not listen. Come, Mr. Mulliner.”
She left the room, followed by Cyril.
“A merciful escape,” said Cyril.
“For whom?”
“For Amelia. My gosh, think of her tied to a man like that. Must be a relief to you to feel that she’s going to marry a respectable interior decorator.”
Lady Bassett halted. They were standing outside the Moat Room now. She looked at Cyril, her eyebrows raised.
“Are you under the impression, Mr. Mulliner,” she said, “that, on the strength of what has happened, I intend to accept you as a son-in-law?”
“Don’t you?”
“Certainly not.”
Something inside Cyril seemed to snap. Recklessness descended upon him. He became for a space a thing of courage and fire, like the African leopard in the mating season.
“Oh!” he said.
And, deftly whisking Strychnine in the Soup from his companion’s hand, he darted into his room, banged the door, and bolted it.
“Mr. Mulliner!”
It was Lady Bassett’s voice, coming pleadingly through the woodwork. It was plain that she was shaken to the core, and Cyril smiled sardonically. He was in a position to dictate terms.
“Give me that book!”
“Certainly not,” said Cyril. “I intend to read it myself. I hear good reports of it on every side. The Peebles Intelligencer says: ‘Vigorous and absorbing.’ ”
A low wail from the other side of the door answered him.
“Of course,” said Cyril, suggestively, “if it were my future mother-in-law who was speaking, her word would naturally be law.”
There was a silence outside.
“Very well,” said Lady Bassett.
“I may marry Amelia?”
“You may.”
Cyril unbolted the door.
“Come — Mother,” he said, in a soft, kindly voice. “We will read it together, down in the library.”
Lady Bassett was still shaken.
“I hope I have acted for the best,” she said.
“You have,” said Cyril.
“You will make Amelia a good husband?”
“Grade A,” Cyril assured her.
“Well, even if you don’t,” said Lady Bassett resignedly, “I can’t go to bed without that book. I had just got to the bit where Inspector Mould is trapped in the underground den of the Faceless Fiend.”
Cyril quivered.
“Is there a Faceless Fiend?” he cried.
“There are two Faceless Fiends,” said Lady Bassett.
“My gosh!” said Cyril. “Let’s hurry.”
The Gold Cup
by Frank Gruber{Copyright, 1940, by Weird Tales}
It was Winston Churchill who once said, about an entirely different matter: “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
At the proper point in the story which follows, your Editors will stop to ask you: “How do you account for the strange happenings in Frank Gruber’s tale of an ancient gold cup?” And perhaps you will pause in your reading and consider the implications of Mr. Gruber’s strange story...
The cup was made of gold, no question about that. It was about four inches tall and weighed close to a pound. I didn’t know of any other metal that would have made the cup weigh as much, even though the thing didn’t look like gold. But I guess that was because it was so old.
It looked as if it had been buried in the ground for a long time, and was pretty battered and dented. It wasn’t a big haul. We’d be lucky to get three hundred for it from Opdyke. He’d make maybe two hundred profit on it, by melting it down and selling it to the government as old gold.
We’d turned in pretty late the night before and it was almost noon before we got up. I dug the cup out from under the bed and was looking it over and thinking what a fool I was for taking such chances for a measly hundred and fifty — my share.
Benny, on the other hand, was pretty chipper. He wasn’t used to big money and all he’d done to earn his share was keep a lookout outside the place, while I did the dirty work.
“Not bad, Jim,” he cackled. “It couldda been more, but this ain’t bad at all.”
I looked around the room I was sharing with Benny. It was about eight feet by ten and contained a bed with springs that sagged almost to the floor, two chairs, a cheap dresser, and a row of nails in the wall that served as a clothes closet. Benny paid four dollars a week for the room. The one I’d had up the river — with bars on the door and window — had been just as cheerful.
I said to Benny: “We’ll get some clothes and some good food and have a couple of parties. We’ll be broke in a week. Then what?”
“Then we’ll crack another safe,” he replied promptly.
That was when the knock came on the door. I never saw a man change color as quickly as Benny did. One minute he’d been cocky as a Jungle Shawl fighting rooster, the next his face looked like sour dough.
I took a couple of quick steps toward Benny. “Thought you said no one knew where you lived?”
Benny’s teeth chattered as he shook his head. “They... they don’t! You s’pose it’s — the cops?”
The knock on the door was repeated, two quick knocks, then three spaced apart.
Benny called out: “Who is it?”