Jack was shaking his head. "I'm no M.E.," he said, "but Roth had been dead more than a few minutes when I found him. I'd say at least half an hour, maybe an hour."
He went to the phone and gave the Headquarters number. I heard his voice droning on, giving them the details of the murder and the attempted murder.
I sat there listening, with my eyes closed, taking in every word of it, but carefully keeping the elation off my face. It had gone perfectly. Everything had worked out. Whether or not they caught Alister Cole--and they would catch him--nothing could go wrong now. It had come off perfectly.
I would never be suspected, and I stood to gain a million dollars--and Jeanette. . . .
She came down the stairs slowly, as one approaching a reluctant errand. I waited for her at the foot of the staircase, my eyes on her beautiful face. There was shock there, but--as I had expected and was glad to see--not too much grief. Roth had been a cold, austere man. Not a man to be grieved for deeply, or long. She stopped on the second step, her eyes level with mine and only inches away. I wanted to kiss her, but this was not the time. A little while and I would, I thought.
But I could look now, and I could dream. I could imagine my hand stroking that soft blonde hair. I could imagine those soft, misty blue eyes closed and my lips kissing the lids of them, kissing that soft white throat, her yielding lips. Then--
My hand was on the newel post and she put hers over it. It almost seemed to burn.
"I wish I could go with you, darling," I said. "I wish there was something I could do to help you."
"I wish you could come with me too, Brian. But--your friend's right. And didn't you take an awful chance coming over here anyway--out in the open, with a madman out to kill you?"
"Jack was with me," I said.
Jack was calling to me from the library. "Coming," I said, and then I told Jeanette, "It's cool out, darling. Put a coat on over that thin dress."
She nodded absently. "I wish you could come with me, Brian. Mother likes you--"
I knew what she meant, what she was thinking. That things were going to be all right between us now. Her mother did like me. It was her stuffy, snobbish father who had stood in the way. Jack called again impatiently.
"Take care of yourself, Brian," Jeanette whispered quickly. "Don't take any chances, please."
She pressed my hand, then ran past me toward the coat closet. I saw that one of the detectives was waiting for her at the door. I went into the library. Jack was still sitting at the telephone table, jotting things into a notebook. He looked very intent and businesslike.
"Captain Murdock--he's head of Homicide--is on his way here," Jack said.
"He'll be in charge of the case. That's why I wanted you to let the girl get out of here first. He might insist on her staying."
"What about you?" I asked him. "Aren't you staying on the case?"
He grinned a little. "I've got my orders. They're to keep you alive until Cole is caught. The Chief told me if anything happens to you, he'll take my badge away and shove it up my ear. From now on, pal, we're Siamese twins."
"Then how about finishing that chess game?" I said. "I think I can set up the men again."
He shook his head. "Life isn't that simple. Not for a while yet, anyway. We'll have to stick here until Cap Murdock gets here, and then I'm to take you into the Chiefs office. Yeah, the Chiefs going down there at this time of night."
It was after one when Jack took me into Chief Randall's office. Randall, a big, slow-moving man, yawned and shook hands with me across his desk.
"Sit down, Carter," he said, and yawned again.
I took the seat across from him. Jack Sebastian sat down in a chair at the end of the desk and started doodling with the little gold knife he wears on the end of a chain.
"This Roth is a big man," Chief Randall said. "The papers are going to give us plenty if we don't settle this quick."
"Right now, Chief," Jack said, "Alister Cole is a bigger man. He's a homicidal maniac on the loose."
The Chief frowned. "We'll get him," he said. "We've got to. We've got him on the air. We've got his description to every rail-road station and airport and bus depot. We're getting out fliers with his picture--as soon as we get one. The state patrolmen are watching for him. We'll have him in hours. We're doing every-thing."
"That's good," I told him. "But I don't think you'll find him on his way out of town. I think he'll stay here until he gets me--or until you get him."
"He'll know that you're under protection, Brian," Jack said. "Mightn't that make a difference? Wouldn't he figure the smartest thing to do would be to blow town and hide out for a few months, then come back for another try?"
I thought it over. "He might," I said, doubtfully. "But I don't think so. You see, he isn't thinking normally. He's under paranoiac compulsion, and the risks he takes aren't going to weight the balance too strongly on the safety side. He was out to kill Dr. Roth and then me. Now I'm no expert in abnormal psychology, but I think that if he'd missed on his first killing he might do as you suggested--go away and come back later when things had blown over. But he made his first kill. He stepped over the line. He's going to be under terrifically strong compulsion to finish the job right away--at any risk!"
Double Bodyguard
Jack said, "One thing I don't get. Cole was probably standing right outside that window. We reacted quickly when that shot came, but not instantaneously. He should have had time for a second shot before we got the light out. Why didn't he take that second shot?"
"I can suggest a possibility," I told them. "I was in Alister's room about a week ago. I've been there several times. He opened a drawer to take out his chess set for our game, and I happened to notice a pistol in the drawer. He slammed the drawer quickly when he saw me glancing that way, but I asked him about the pistol.
"He said it had been his brother's, and that he'd had it since his brother had died three years ago. He said it was a single-shot twenty-two caliber target pistol, the kind really fancy marksmen use in tournaments. I asked him if he went in for target shooting and he said no, he'd never shot it."
"Probably telling the truth about that," Chief Randall said, "since he missed your head a good six inches at--how far would it have been, Jack?"
"About twelve feet, if he'd been standing just outside the win-dow. Farther, of course, if he'd been farther back." Jack turned to me. "Brian, how good a look did you get at the pistol? Was it a single-shot, the kind he described?"
"I think so," I said. "It wasn't either a revolver nor an automatic. It had a big fancy walnut handle, silver trimmings, and a long, slender barrel. Yes, I'd say I'm reasonably sure it was a single-shot marksman's gun. And that would be why he didn't shoot a second time before we got the light and the gas-grate turned out. I think he could have shot by the light of that gas flame even after I pulled out the plug of the floor lamp."
"It would have been maybe ten seconds, not over fifteen," Jack said, "before we got both of them out. A pistol expert, used to that type of gun, could have reloaded and shot again, but an amateur probably couldn't have. Anyway, maybe he didn't even carry extra cartridges, although I wouldn't bet on that."
"Just a second," Randall said. He picked up the phone on his desk and said,
"Laboratory." A few seconds later he said, "That bullet Wheeler gave you, the one out of the wall at Brian Carter's room. Got anything on it?" He listened a minute and then said, "Okay," and hung up.