Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
“Listen,” Robideau said, “I don’t dare waste any time. I’m going to take a run over to Bulwer’s. Do you think you can hang around here for a while in case Oddlot shows up?”
“Well, now, just a minute, we still haven’t...”
“Thanks, Pete.”
Robideau rushed off. Pete heard the front door to the street bang shut. He sighed. He went back along the ramp to a sort of switchback, meant to keep stray light in the lobby from filtering down into the auditorium. He moved the beam of the lantern over the walls and found what he was looking for. An almost invisible door. This had to be the way up to the projection booth. He lifted the small black latch.
His feet made no sound on the carpet as he slowly mounted the stairs. At the top was a door. He opened it. Before him was the projection both, dominated by two large movie projectors and two smaller ones. There was a slide projector. There were a couple of plastic chairs, a metal stool, and a light table next to some splicing equipment.
And something else. Something weird. The room was practically spotless. No dust, no clutter. “Someone uses the place,” he muttered, puzzled. “Someone sweeps up here and takes good care of things.”
Then a voice so close behind him that he could feel the breath on his neck said, “Go right in, Pete.”
Oddlot Jenkins squeezed past, holding a large cardboard box in his arms, containing reels of film. He flipped a switch with his elbow, and the room was suddenly bathed in light. He set the box down on a small bench. “I keep these in the fridge,” he confided.
“Oddie,” Pete said evenly, “What’re you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? I’ve got a key.”
“What do you know about that girl? The one everybody’s lookin’ for?”
Oddlot stared at him, blinked, then turned away and started tinkering.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve got her backpack. How come?”
He grinned, as if he at last understood. “You mean that one in the van? I found it.”
“Found it!”
“That’s right.”
“You found it, but you didn’t go through it, find some identification, and make a call to Butts?”
“It was empty.”
“Really.”
“Yes, really.”
“All right, then where did you find it?”
Oddlot kept working, threading the film through the camera mechanism.
“You’re not gonna tell me?” Pete said. “It’s a secret?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“No. You can answer to Butts and Robideau. She was here, wasn’t she? In this theater?”
“Somebody was here. I don’t know who exactly.” He fed the end of the film into the take-up reel. “You know, people used to come here a lot in the old days. I even gave tours of this room back then.” He glanced around, looking a little dejected. “The insurers ended that. They don’t let you do it now.”
“You’re sayin’ the girl might’ve been here? That she wandered in accidentally?”
“I’m saying somebody did, that’s all. I only left the back door open a second — I was bringing the car around to move a few items in for Bulwer. It might have been her. People do that, you know. Sneak into movie theaters.”
Pete sighed. This guy was living in the past. He tried a different tack. “Does Bullet know you’re here? Does he know you’re screwin’ with his cameras?”
“They’re not cameras, they’re projectors. And, yes, he knows all about it. He likes this movie too. He’s seen it seventy-one times, and I’ve seen it fifty-four times. In fact—” He extended his arm and looked at his wristwatch. “—he should be here by now. We always start right on time.”
“What’re you telling me? You guys get together an’ watch movies in this dump?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes Bulwer comes here and watches the film all by himself.”
Pete shook his head. Weirder and weirder. But he didn’t really care about that.
“Are you gonna tell me where you found the backpack?”
“Stick around, Pete,” Oddlot said. “The movie’s coming right up, and it’s special. We’re showing the 35mm print tonight. We usually show one of the 16s.”
“Oh, you do, huh? So what’s the occasion?”
Oddlot finished loading the second projector, closed it up, then turned and looked at him. “Bulwer thinks this might be the last chance we get. He figures they’re going to shut him down any day now — for good.”
He struck the arc in projector number one, touched a switch, and the booth went dim. The only illumination now was the glow of the lacing bulb, the light in the arc housing, and the glow shining up through the clear plastic top of the splicing bench.
Frustrated, getting nowhere with the guy, Pete stepped to the door.
“Where are you going?” Oddlot glanced up.
“Downstairs.”
“I think you should stay up here. Bulwer wouldn’t like—”
“I don’t care what Bulwer likes or doesn’t like.”
Leaving Oddlot to his movie machinery, Pete headed back down to the auditorium. Robideau could deal with Oddlot Jenkins, drive splinters under his nails or beat him with a hose. And while he waited for the old cop’s return, Pete would make good and sure he hadn’t missed anything. He walked slowly down the sloping aisle, beaming the lantern around. The most unnerving thing was the manikins, rescued, like the shirts, from Onager’s Department Store, dragged in here and crammed into the seats. They looked like rump-naked androgynous movie fans that had wandered in to catch the final show.
And it seemed they were going to get their wish.
The curtain was rattling open. The movie was starting. Evidently Oddlot wasn’t waiting for Bullet. Up on the screen a starry background resolved into a rotating globe with the word UNIVERSAL stretching across it. The logo faded and the music started: a jarring attack of nerve-racking violins. Pete didn’t like violins. Fiddles sure, but not violins.
He clumped on down the aisle.
Black bars stabbed across the screen. Then crisp white block letters: ALFRED HITCHCOCK...
White bars now, the violins screaming.
“Seventy-one times?” Pete grimaced in disbelief. He scowled up at the projection booth but could make out only the shifting and dancing beam of light from the porthole.
Turning back, he caught the tail end of the credits blinking onto the screen. VERA MILES, JANET LEIGH... Black bars, white bars shooting in all directions. Names splitting in half. Jeez! And then finally, thankfully, the opening scene: a cityscape, the camera lens settling birdlike down, down, down over the buildings, and drifting in through a partly raised window.
Reaching the flat area at the front of the theater, he turned and moved slowly along the front row of seats. He could see a heck of a lot better this time with the help of the reflected light from the screen. Here was a seat piled with burlap sacks, probably from the family’s market garden. Then two manikins with concavities for eyes, one with an arm outthrust as if making a warning sign. He turned in spite of himself; nothing there.
Here some old plumbing fixtures. A box of curtain rings. And here—
Pete froze.
In the flickering light from the screen behind him, a dead woman sat staring rigidly back at him. She stared with a look of astonishment and dismay on her face. He knew who it was. The young woman in the poster. And there was more. In the seat beside her was another body. Some big guy Pete had never seen before.
“Oddie!” he hollered, getting his breath back. “Oddie, you get your skinny butt down here!”
This time Robideau approached the house from the rear, following the gully and angling up through the trees. He knew he was going to have to sneak into the house, that there was no way Bulwer would let him in voluntarily. Sheet lightning rippled in the sky, backlighting whole sections of swift, driving cloud. Low, rumbling booms of thunder muttered far out over the marsh.