Collection of Stories
- Автор: Стерлинг Стюарт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Collection of Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“Check Wayner shot Harris?”
“No. You did that.”
The manager didn’t deny it. He appeared to be too dazed by the accusation to attempt an answer.
Pedley felt of the bump on the top of his skull. “Wayner wasn’t the person who crowned me. He isn’t tall enough to swing a gun down on the crease of my hat. Harris wasn’t, either. But you are. And you sneaked out of the lobby right after I left for the hospital.”
“For coffee,” Broodman admitted. “I had to have some coffee. I was dead on my feet.”
“Harris was, anyway. You doped it out just the way Wayner had. Only your bell-captain wanted the money he guessed Harris had stolen; you wanted to get even with Harris for ruining you. If you hadn’t been afraid the whole business about your entanglement with Mrs. Munson would come out, if Harris had been forced to defend himself in court — you might have had him arrested and tried for arson. But you didn’t want your own dirty linen hung up for everyone to see — so you took his punishment into your own hands...
“You followed Wayner to the boardinghouse, waited in the hall until the bell-captain had slugged Harris and taken over the dough. When he came out, you went in. You were still in there when I arrived. Wayner was down in the hall somewhere — anyhow, he left the rooming house before you did. My man trailed him, didn’t see you!” The Marshal walked around the desk.
“I’m not booking you for murder,” the Marshal said harshly. “I’m taking you in for criminal negligence in connection with the deaths in this fire. You’ll have the better part of the next ten years to wish you’d spent the dough to make those changes the Commissioner ordered. At that,” he gripped the manager’s arm roughly, “it won’t be as long as a lot of other people will have, to regret what happened tonight. Come on...”
Fit to Kill
Popular Detective, March 1949
Don Rixey peeled cellophane from a Choc-a-Bloc Nibble, gnawed the confection moodily. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I don’t like it one bit.”
Annalou Kenyon leaned dimpled elbows on the lunch counter, her pert face tilted up provocatively. “Whyn’t you try a Baby Ruth, then? Ask me. I know what you like!”
“Yeah,” He admired her taffy-bright hair, her smoky-gray eyes. “You know what I mean, too.” He jabbed an accusing finger at the newspaper lying beside the salt and pepper rack.
She read the headline aloud: “Icy Eyes Strikes Again! Third Gas Station Stickup in Week Spurs Citywide Manhunt.” Annalou pouted prettily. “If it’s me you’re worrying about — don’t!”
“What else?” Don licked chocolate off his thumb. “You! Out here in this dump, all alone, at this time of night!”
“It’s not either a dump. It’s a modern snack bar. And I’m not all alone.”
“Most the time you are.” His amiable square face was unhappy.
“Bill’s here. Or anyway, he’s right near.” She glanced across the drive-in at the row of red-enamel gas pumps.
“Bill’s a nice old gook,” Don said. “Very fatherly. About as much protection as one of those woolly poodles they sell in toy stores. If this gent the papers call Icy Eyes showed up around here—”
“It wouldn’t bother me!” Annalou asserted flatly. “I know better’n to argue with an automatic. I’d just say, ‘Mister, help yourself.’ It’s not my cash register. He can take the works, for all of me. Don’t you fret!”
“No-o-o!” Don scowled. “I’ll never give it a second thought. You. Way out here on the lone prairee, practically, fixin’ to swap wise cracks with a gunman who’s scared three gas-station attendants so bad they can’t even remember what he looked like!”
“If you don’t like my working out here nights,” Annalou drifted down the counter, began to balance lemon-lime bottles on top of a Pepsi-Cola pyramid, “whyn’t you drag me before a parson, then set me up in a snug little apartment in town?”
He reached across the counter, caught her, squealing. “Right this minute! Now! Tonight!”
Annalou disentangled herself, demurely, pulling down her uniform apron over her trimly rounded figure. “Let’s not go over that again! The future Mrs. Rixey does not intend to start housekeeping on any shoestring.”
“I’ve got nearly four hundred stashed away.”
She scoffed. “You haven’t been pricing refrigerators or stoves or dishes lately. With what we could buy for four hundred,” she waved disparagingly at the meager equipment of the Outside Inn, “we might as well live here.”
“After what’s happened around gas stations the last week,” Don growled, “I don’t want you within a block of one. But we don’t need all that stuff they advertise in the magazines, just to get married. Look at gypsies. They get along with very little and everybody claims they’re the happiest people in the world.”
Annalou punched the cash register violently, and directed his attention to the No Sale card which popped up. She came around the counter with tightly compressed lips. “It just so happens, Mister Rixey, that I don’t care to sleep like any gypsy on a mangy blanket with some smelly old straw for a pillow. I want a nice box spring mattress and a thick, fluffy comforter.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “But the way things are going with Regal Radio Repairs, it’s going to take another year before I can hold out enough from the payback on that GI loan to feather our cozy little nest. Meantime, the idea of your bein’ all alone way out here, nights, with that holdup artist runnin’ wild, is enough to drive me to drink.”
She appeared to deliberate. “Given my choice I believe I’d rather spend my nights with you than with any stickup man. So the sooner you roll your half-ton hoop back to the shop and start operating on the insides of a superhet, the sooner I’ll be able to. ’By now, darling. Don’t run through any red lights...”
A few minutes later a short, stocky man shuffled out of the attendant’s shack which was the Outside Inn’s only neighbor. He was moon-faced and nearly bald, and he wore a yellow polo shirt and faded khaki pants.
“Wasn’t that the demon set-wrecker, Annalou?”
“You’re speaking of the man I love, Bill. Yep.”
“Doesn’t he ever buy any gas for that truck of his?”
“Not at gas stations,” Annalou grinned. “Don has a hate on gas stations. They attract too many holdup men.” She pointed to the stickup story.
Bill read it gravely. “Icy Eyes, my foot! That’s the trouble with these creeps. They pull a gun on some guy with bad nerves, get away with a few bucks, and the papers start buildin’ ’em up like they was Jesse James the Second.” He snorted disgustedly, flipped the page. “So pretty soon they think they’ve got to live up to their rep and then they kill somebody.”
“Hey!” Annalou peered over his shoulder. “You any good at noses?”
Bill stared owlishly at her. “I got the normal amount of same. Maybe a little less’n average. What you mean, Annalou?”
“There!” Annalou indicated a half-page advertisement of a furniture store, a contest puzzle picture in which a pair of brooding masculine eyes surmounted an incongruously thin and lugubrious nose placed above an even more ridiculous button of chubby dimpled chin. The advertisement proclaimed: