The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries
- Автор: Пауэлл Тэлмидж
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press LLC
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries». Краткое содержание книги:
“She’s the one, George.” Eddie glanced over his shoulder. The white-coated warder was strolling toward the old geezer at the oak tree, suspecting nothing. “She had a guy bust Spades’s skull with a brickbat. Then she had your boy’s heart cut out.”
George lifted his left hand and beat the palm against his skull just above the ear.
“George?”
“Yeah, pally? Okay... I’m okay... Don’t worry about me. Nobody flattens Battlin’ George. I’ll get to her and put a stop to these noises in my head...”
Eddie flinched as he looked into George’s milky eyes. Eddie gulped. His scalp prickled. He kept a tight control on his voice, and the urge to run. “But you got to be smart, George. You can get out of here easily enough, but you got to be smart to keep them from dragging you back. Here...” He quickly fumbled a fifty dollar bill into George’s hand. “This will help. You’ll know where to buy a gun in some pool hall.” Eddie jumped to his feet. “I got to go now, George. Really I have.”
“You been a real pal, pally. I won’t fergit. Spades... he was my boy... my only kid...”
Eddie kept his report to Aunt Crabby brief, stating only that he had seen Mrs. Dutcher and the poor woman had been quite grateful.
“You were gone a long time, dear,” Aunt Crabby said from the provincial writing desk where she had been penning a note.
“Had the car checked over,” Eddie mumbled. “The engine started missing a little. Nothing serious. It’s all fixed. Everything, in fact, is fixed.”
“Well, tell cook you’re here. She’s been holding your dinner.”
“Right-o,” Eddie said cheerfully. He paused at the doorway, glancing back at her. He returned her sweet smile. Hmmmm, he thought, who’ll I get for pall bearers?
With its mad, conspiratorial smile, Dutcher’s lumpy face was a horror from another realm. He inched his right hand up to show Eddie that he was holding a gun.
“You planned great, pally. It’s a snap. Now where’s the witch what had my boy’s heart cut out?”
“Listen,” Eddie gasped, “it’s all a mistake!”
“And it’s the last one she’ll make,” Dutcher said. “You can take a walk, pally — while I pay off for Spades.”
As Dutcher edged toward the stairway, Eddie wrenched movement from his muscles. He grabbed Dutcher’s arm.
“Please, George, she’s got to live. As long as she lives, I’ve got it made. But the minute she dies a bunch of guys with test tubes and microscopes pass Go and collect two million dollars! George... you’ve got to understand!”
Eddie flung himself between George and the stairway. It was like trying to turn aside a ponderous slab of cement.
“George,” Eddie screamed softly, “you simply can’t kill her! You wouldn’t kill an innocent woman, would you, George?”
George slowed. “Innocent?”
“Sure,” Eddie said. “She wasn’t the one who busted Spades’s skull.”
George’s eyes focused on Eddie. They were wracked with the pain of trying to link up a thought process. Then, as an invisible switch clicked behind them, they escaped. The eyes were almost at peace. George’s voice was almost gentle. “I get it, pally. I been around. I know the score. You was covering — for yourself! That’s the only way you could’ve knowed so much. So here’s a present for Spades!”
“No, George... George, you have to...”
George didn’t have to do anything but press the trigger once, twice, three times, to stop the noises in his head. The bullets punctured a lung, the solar plexus, and a bleeding ulcer.
Just after midnight, a young intern brought Mrs. Violetta Crabtree Harper the news. She rose quietly as he crossed the hospital waiting room.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Harper. Everything possible was done for Eddie. But your nephew has only a few more hours at best. Dr. Picard sent me ahead. He’ll be down as soon as possible.
“No,” Aunt Crabby said after a thoughtful moment, “the need for Dr. Picard is much greater in surgery...” Aunt Crabby took a long breath. “Please advise him to begin immediate preparations for the next heart transplant on his waiting list. It appears we shall have a donor — and I’m sure poor Eddie’s dear, wonderful heart will keep life’s blood pumping for someone else for a long time to come...”
The nervous sweats didn’t hit him until late that evening. In his bed-sitting room suite down the hall from Aunt Crabby’s, he tried to focus on a TV show. He’d expected tension, not knowing precisely when George Dutcher would make his move. He could handle himself — if his ulcer didn’t start bleeding. Every few minutes he went from his sitting room to the medicine cabinet to gulp soda mints, tranquilizing pills.
He fiddled with the TV set while his mind rolled a film of his own. He was talking with quiet grief to a policeman: Yes, sir, I drove up-county to the mental hospital. I saw Dutcher. My aunt asked me to do so. She’d learned that Mrs. Dutcher had a living husband. She told me to stop by Mrs. Dutcher’s first and then visit Mr. Dutcher on some kind of pretext. My aunt wanted to help both of them. She was going to set up a small fund for Mrs. Dutcher. The bankers will tell you that. She wanted to know something about Mr. Dutcher, how he looked, what he was like. Then, I suppose, she planned to take further steps on his behalf... Yes, sir...terrible thing, Mr. Dutcher breaking in and killing her like that... But no doubt at all as to who did it... I’m sorry, sir... Only my aunt could tell you any more, and she’s no longer with us...
Pat story. Stand on it. Stick to it. No one could disprove it. If the police started whistling, it would be in the dark.
The acid fount was loosed for the third time since dinner. Eddie clutched his stomach, came off his sitting room couch, and headed for the medicine cabinet with its woefully inadequate balms.
Halfway across the bedroom, he grimaced as someone knocked on the door. He turned to the door and yanked it open. Dr. Picard was standing in the hallway.
“Well...” Eddie said. “How are you, doctor? I didn’t expect to see you.”
“Routine call on my patient — in a way.” Dr. Picard chuckled. “But it turned into quite a chat. Say, my boy, do you feel up to par? You look very pale.”
“Just tired.”
Dr. Picard laid his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “You’ve been through it, all right. But you can relax now. Take a vacation. Start enjoying yourself.” He glanced down the empty hallway. “She really is a changed woman, Eddie. I think she’s going to open up the purse strings — for as long as she lives. And you do deserve it, you know. You’ve attended her faithfully for a long time now.”
“For as long... as she lives?”
Dr. Picard’s hand gave Eddie’s shoulder a benign squeeze. “No, no, my boy! I didn’t mean it that way! She’s taken no turn for the worse. By the time she passes away you’ll be an old retired businessman yourself.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“She wants to further the kind of research that did so much for her. In fact, during her last days in the hospital she whiled away some of the boredom of convalescent time by discussing it with her lawyer and having him draw up all the necessary papers.” Again Dr. Picard looked in the direction of Aunt Crabby’s closed door. “I think it wonderful of her. Upon her demise, the bulk of the estate will go for heart research.” The hand lifted. “Just thought you’d like the news about those loosened purse strings. If her present mood lasts — and I think it will — you won’t have to worry about settling down for a long time yet. You’ll have a ball, the kind young men dream about. But see a good G.P. and have a check-up so you can really enjoy yourself.”
With a final slap on the shoulder, Dr. Picard was gone.
Eddie came out of his stupor with a spasmodic shudder. He dashed down the stairway, grabbed the phone in the foyer, glaring wildly. Who to call? Who to warn that a madman was probably already loose and had armed himself? Hospital? Police? An anonymous call, that was the ticket.