It sounded loud enough to be in the room with us, though it was actually a couple of doors down the hall. It startled everybody — except the Bishop. He’s never been startled at anything. A kind of electric silence struck the room and everybody stood tense and listening.
The Bishop said to the dice: “Be ten, I got no more time to play.” It was a ten and I scooped up the money.
Then the woman screamed. I have never heard a scream like it — one single yell that sounded as if it would split the vocal chords. A woman yelling in terror, and I mean terror. It came from down the hall where the shot had sounded.
I was the first person into the hall, running hard. The second door on the right was open and I knew that was where the yell must have come from and I went skidding over the sill. I almost banged into the girl who stood just inside the room. She was staring toward the window on the left. Her mouth was still open, though no more sound was coming out. Her eyes bulged a half-inch from their sockets and her face was so bloodless the rouge looked black against it. She didn’t say anything, just kept staring at the window.
I looked. There wasn’t anything but an open window with copper screening and the night dark beyond. Even after I went close to the window I didn’t see anything except the shingled roof of the porch — this was on the second floor — and a big overhanging oak tree.
Other persons were rushing into the room now and I turned back to face them. That was when I saw the corpse. It lay face down near the wall on the other side of the room. There wasn’t any doubting that it was a corpse, because the bullet had hit the man right at the base of the skull.
The man’s face was half turned toward me. He was — or had been — Ralph McDonald, the president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce and one of South City’s richest young men.
There were four or five persons in the room now. One of them was the Bishop. It’s surprising how fast he can move when he wants to. He was closing the door after him, locking it to keep the crowd out, and muttering: “Why the hell couldn’t they have shot him two hours ago? Damn Journal’ll get the break now. Ai God! These dumb murderers.”
The girl said, as if she’d been trying to say it for hours: “The face — there at the window! I saw it!”
The Bishop pegged over and looked out. “Nobody shot him through this window. No hole in the screen. Anyhow, looks like he was shot from behind, from about the hall door.”
“There’s a window down at the end of the hall,” I said, “which lets out onto this same porch roof.”
The Bishop was pushing and heaving and he finally got the screen up. Behind us everybody else in the room was asking the girl what had happened and she was just sobbing and saying now and then: “The face... It was — terrible!”
The Bishop said: “Crawl out there, Eddie, and see what the hell she’s squawking about. And see if the window at the end of the hall is open.”
“I’m not going out there. The guy may still be hanging around. He might pot me, too.”
“Ai God!” the Bishop said. “How’m I going to know what’s out there if you don’t go look? Go on! Crawl out!”
“There’ll be cops up here in a minute. Let them look. They’re paid for it.”
“Do I have to do it myself?”
“Oh all right,” I said.
I don’t know why I let the Bishop bully me into doing all the crazy things he thinks up.
I climbed out the window onto the roof of the porch. The Bishop said, “Look at the window at the end of the hall,” and turned back into the room again.
It was one of these huge, rambling, old-fashioned Southern houses and this side porch stretched almost the full length of the building. The roof slanted sharply so I had to walk with one leg bent at the knee to keep my balance. I keep peering all around, but there wasn’t anybody on the roof except me. I went down to the end, where the hall window was, and both the window and the screen were open.
Whoever shot Ralph McDonald had probably stood in the hallway, I figured. After that one shot they’d run to this window, crawled out, and had either dropped off the edge of the porch or had climbed into the big oak which overhung the roof and got down that way.
I was considering this when I heard a noise in the tree.
If I’d had time to think I would have pretended I didn’t hear anything. I’d have climbed in through that open window and got the hell away from there. But there wasn’t time to think. I heard the sound and I swung around and peered up into the tree.
A tiny speck of light from the window reflected off one of the leaves. I saw the leaf move. And in that tiny speck of light I saw a hand — a hand that was no bigger than a doll’s hand, a thing no more than one or two inches long, but all covered with hair. Then a face appeared. It was about the size of a baseball, matted with hair, and with eyes that gleamed blood red.
The thing made a weird peeping cry and leaped straight out of the tree onto me.
I think I yelled. The Bishop says it was either me or a cat in heat. He says it made the girl’s shriek sound like Talullah Bankhead’s whispering. I went half crazy trying to tear the thing loose from my shoulder and when I got it off my shoulder it got into my hair. It was clawing at me and cheeping. Then my feet skidded from under me and I went sailing off the edge of the roof. I came down with a bang, fortunately in a freshly spaded flower bed.
The thing which had been on my head jumped off. It ran through a rectangle of light from one of the first-floor windows, and I saw it was a monkey.
I sat there and felt a little sick and cursed myself and cursed the Bishop and cursed John Bollo. John Bollo is the man who owns the Red and Black Club, the place where all this was happening. He was nuts about animals. Besides the monkey there was a parrot, two dogs, and a tame ’coon around the place. I knew that, but I had forgotten it.
I was still sitting there cursing when John Bollo came out. He chuckled when I told him what had happened. Even a murder in his gambling house didn’t dampen John Bollo’s good humor. He was plump, with blond hair and a fixed, beaming smile. Even when he was watching somebody make a long run on the roulette wheel or the dice table he’d just stand and beam at them until he looked stupid.
“Will Mr. Atticus” — the Bishop’s real name was Roscoe Atticus — “kid you!” he chuckled. “My! You should have heard the yell you let out!”
“I wish I had killed that lousy monkey of yours,” I said. I was feeling ashamed of myself, and angry, and even if I had fallen in soft ground it had been a hell of a bump.
We went back into the building. The cops who had been stationed outside were there now and one of them had phoned for Lieutenant Browder, who is Science versus Crime in South City. Browder’d said keep everybody out of the room where the murder took place until he arrived.
John Bollo and I talked to the Bishop. “It was nobody but Oscar, my monkey, that Miss Howell saw looking in the window,” Bollo said, grinning that silly grin of his. “It jumped on Eddie’s shoulder and frightened him.”
“Ai God!” the Bishop said. “I thought you were being scalped.”
He swayed back, propping himself on his stick and looking at me. “You didn’t find the gun while you were out there?”
“I didn’t find anything except that damn monkey.”
“The gun wasn’t in the room?” John Bollo asked.
“Nope,” the Bishop said. He turned toward the gambler, pivoting on his peg leg and his stick. His small puckered features were cherubic and his bald head shone pink. “You musta been sorry to see McDonald get it — with him owing you so much money.”