Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 31, No. 1 — January, 1948)
- Автор: Cluff Curtis, Constiner Merle
- Год: 1948
- Язык: английский
- Год: Fictioneers / Popular Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 31, No. 1 — January, 1948)». Краткое содержание книги:
“Certainly. So there’s Ernest Doane without an heir and filthy with dough and — not in very good health. Nobody told me so but he’s too flushed. I’ve an idea his blood pressure was bad and right now it’s awful.”
Sedley wagged his head. “For a theory it’s not bad. The murderer now stands to get Doane’s money. Very well, but — who the hell is the murderer?”
“Don’t you know who?” I asked him.
“Rick, there isn’t anybody to inherit. Not a soul. I knew Ernest well enough to guess he won’t turn any of his fortune over to Anna or her daughter June. Manning, as confidential secretary, might have been expected to get a nice slice but he’s dead. The only member of the family left is Aunt Kate. She’s got money of her own and doesn’t want any more.”
I was slowly getting a bad case of the heebies because Sedley could be right and me all wrong. If that was true, I’d just pushed myself thirty miles further from the solution of the case.
The ambulance doctor and an orderly came in with a stretcher and just in time. I no longer had an opportunity to tell myself how wrong I might be.
The doc said: “How many people pushed him around?”
Sedley answered because I had my eyes closed and I was breathing hard, like a guy who might not breathe much longer.
He said: “Just one man with a badge. Look him over good, Doc, because the cop that did this is going on the carpet.”
The doc applied a stethoscope and scared hell out of me. “He certainly does deserve to be broken. This man is in serious condition. O. K., Pete, help me slide him onto the stretcher.”
I was limper than a soaked Christmas herring. And it wasn’t all pretense. While the ambulance sirened its way to the hospital, I began thinking of Westover in the chair. It made a very pleasant picture. I was wondering how I could arrange to shave that spot on his head for the electrodes when the ambulance arrived at the hospital.
Chapter Eight
Money and The Power
When I opened my eyes again, I was tucked in bed and Anna Doane stood there looking down at me. She seemed worried.
I said: “How are you going to do it, Anna? With a hypo of poison, an overdose of morphine or maybe — just a knife?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told me. “I’m here on routine work. This happens to be my floor and I’ve got to care for you. Don’t expect too much.”
“I’d prefer no care at all — from you,” I told her flatly. “You were interested enough in me to have your daughter June check up with Paul Manning. Then you had her freeze me to a park bench while somebody tried framing Freddie.”
She put a hand against my forehead. “You’re irrational. I’ll have to order a sedative.”
“Oh, no.” I tried to sit up and didn’t quite make it. The pillow felt too good. “From you I wouldn’t take Scotch and I’ve never been known to refuse that before in any way, shape or form. Anna — what do you expect to get out of it?”
“I’ll get myself a headache if Miss Kate ever sees you acting like this.”
“Anna,” I went on, “you signed away all right and title to Doane’s estate when he divorced you. Neither you nor June can get a penny unless Doane changes his will. Do you think he can be persuaded to do that?”
“Keep quiet,” she snapped.
“Think it over, Anna,” I advised. “You’ve got brains. You know the score and when there’s murder, you won’t be batting up to par. Because there’s been three murders, Anna.”
That one shook her. “Three?”
“That private eye, Gus Cooney. He found out too much, intending to cash in, so he was knocked off. Hazy was just a poor sap who got himself bumped because he happened to be a handy stooge. But Paul Manning wasn’t a stooge, was he, Anna?”
She walked away from the bedside and I stopped her with a few words. “I’m going to sing, Anna. I’m going to tell the cops. How do you think I got shellacked this way? They were trying to make me talk, but I wouldn’t. Not then. They’ll come here here and try again. Next time I won’t be able to evade their questions.”
She gave an audible snort. “You’re trying to pump me. You don’t know anything and you think I do.”
“I’m sure of it, Anna. And I know a lot. Like the fact that Paul Manning is dead and Lila is going to be blamed for it. That will bust her father’s heart and close his purse strings to her. So maybe all his money will be left to June. But that isn’t the way it’s going to work out. Because Lila didn’t shoot Paul.”
“Shoot — Paul?”
“Sure. Paul was another stooge. A guy who was determined to take life easy in his old age. Only he didn’t have any old age. He played up to Lila. Maybe he got somewhere before Freddie was sprung. Maybe not. Then he tried your daughter June. But it was Lila he went for. June just happened to be a prospect for Doane’s money.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said very softly.
“I do.” I had her now, good and proper. “You helped with all of this because of the chance Doane would make June his heir. He won’t and somebody else knows this too. Somebody else knows exactly what Doane will do with his estate because lie’s talked about it. You haven’t a chance, but all along you’ve been told you had.”
I’d have broken her in another five minutes, but it wasn’t my lucky night. A nurse popped into the room and told Anna she’d better get to some other patient or Kate would raise hell.
This other nurse came over and took my temperature and pulse. When she got the thermometer out of my mouth, I said: “Who sent you down here? The old battle axe?”
“You know her too?” She laughed.
“Who doesn’t? I thought Kate was on surgical duty tonight.”
She shook down the thermometer. “Kate was — for better than four hours, but she came down a few minutes ago.”
“Just what is Kate’s position?”
“Superintendent of nurses. We have another name for her, but it isn’t spoken in the presence of the male sex.”
“She must be pretty good to get that high.” I kept on with it.
“She may be a good nurse, but she’s one heck of a boss to work for, Mister. And she didn’t get to her position by showing exceptional talent. Look, I’m talking too much and I don’t even know who you are. Be good and sleep.”
“Uh-uh, not me,” I chuckled. “If I ever do, it’ll be my last sleep, baby. How about smuggling me in a shot of rye?”
“I’ll smuggle you in a sleeping pill,” she said. “Golly, the things that would happen to me if I ever gave you a drink. Or even took one myself for that matter. Will you go to sleep?”
I shook my head. I’d had enough sleep. The way I looked at it, I’d snoozed all through this case. With my eyes wide open I should have known all the answers. There’d been only one all the time, but I’m not used to running down greedy killers who murder without thought of money.
Five minutes later Aunt Kate came in.
“Mr. Sedley told me what happened to you,” she said sympathetically. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Trent. Sorry, too, that I treated you the way I did. At the house, I mean.”
Whatever Westover had done to my head didn’t interfere with my hearing at all. I heard the faint metallic rasp as the knob of the door to the adjoining room turned very slowly. The latch was going to click any minute. I started coughing. I had a regular spell of it, but I shook off Aunt Kate’s attempts to pour water down my throat.
“Not that,” I told her. “It’s unhealthy stuff. I want something that bites.”
“Perhaps, a bit later when the floor is quiet, I can bring you something. It’s against the rules, but what’s the sense being boss if you can’t break rules.”