It sounded as though a major power had declared war. The first shot was followed by a woman’s high shrill scream. A second report cut across that, and then after a short interval three more followed in rapid smashing succession.
I ducked instinctively, not at all sure who was being fired at and feeling very much like a clay pigeon. Merlini, at my side now, leveled his light. There was a small click as he pushed the button.
But no answering beam of light shot forth. The flash was dead.
“Somebody,” I heard him growl, “has thought of every th—”
Somewhere in the darkness ahead a doorknob rattled, a door slammed, and a faint ghostly glimmer of white moved. The crash of the gun came once again, louder this time, streaking the dark with flame.
And then at last we got light. Behind us, from the opposite end of the corridor, footsteps pounded up the back stairs and then rushed toward us behind the round bobbing eye of a pocket flash.
Galt’s voice cried, “What the hell—”
But we had no attention for him. Merlini and I were racing in the direction the ghost had gone toward the white night-robed figure that faced an open bedroom door at the hall’s end.
It was Mrs. Wolff, and the gun in her hand pointed in at the open door and spurted noise and name once again as we plunged toward her.
I grabbed her arm, twisted the gun from her grasp, and faced the doorway.
Galt’s flash sent a hesitant beam of light in through the dark.
Chapter Nine:
Portrait of a Phantom
The white cone of light moved swiftly, its circle slanting across the walls. Distorted shadows sprang up in its path behind bed, dressing-table, and chairs, shifted crazily and were swallowed again by the larger darkness that filled the room.
But we saw no trace of what we hunted.
Then my light moved across the two doors in the wall at my left. I moved in through the thick, acrid smell of cordite, my hand tense on the butt of my gun. I pulled the first door open and found a closetful of dresses on hangers. Behind me someone clicked the wall switch and the room filled with a soft-rose glow from shaded lamps. I stepped into the closet and pushed the dresses aside. There was no one there.
Merlini reached the second door, turned the knob and pulled. The door was locked and the key was in the keyhole on this side. I turned to face the windows. There were two, both closed. One was directly opposite me beyond the bed, the other in the side wall at my left. Three of the latter’s leaded panes had been pierced by neat round holes that were centered in spidery webs of radiating cracks. Two more bullets had bored their way into the cream-colored plaster of the wall a yard or so to the left, and a sixth had smashed through a framed Laurencin water color. Fragments of glass and plaster littered the floor beneath.
The bed was a low modern affair set so close to the floor that nothing more than a ghost, and a thin one at that, could possibly have crawled beneath. But I stepped forward, dropped to my hands and knees and looked just the same. I found nothing. There was no other possible hiding place within the room.
“Dead-end street,” I announced, glancing up at Merlini. “Where do we go from here?”
He looked at Galt. “The alarm guards those windows too?”
Galt nodded. “Yes.”
Merlini indicated the locked door. “And this goes where?”
“Connecting bath through into Wolffs’ room and that opens out into the hall again. All the rooms this side of the main stairs do that. There’s no other exit. You won’t find a damned thing. This is exactly what happened this morning.”
“And we got here within seconds,” Merlini said, making it still worse. “There was no time for anyone to go through into the bathroom and lock the door after them from the wrong side with any key-and-string hocus-pocus. But we’ll play safe and look just the same.” He tossed the useless flash he carried onto the bed, took Galt’s, and went back out into the hall. The sound of voices and running feet came from the stairway.
Merlini turned his light in that direction. “Phillips,” he ordered, “stay there and watch those stairs. Dunning, do something about some light. Wolff—”
But I didn’t hear the rest. I was staring at the dark square of the window that held the bullet holes. In the lowest pane just above the sill a dim shape had materialized in the darkness outside — the white blur of a man’s face.
I had seen it and stopped halfway in the act of rising to my feet. Now my right arm moved upward under some automatic compulsion of its own, the gun it held aiming at the window. My finger began to squeeze the trigger.
The face jerked swiftly down out of sight.
“Got him!” I shouted. “In here. Hurry!”
I threw myself forward across the room.
The window was unlocked. I pulled it open and leaned forward across the sill, gun ready.
Then everything happened at once. The alarm bell burst into life, and a hand shot up, clamped around my wrist and twisted it with a sudden jerk that started me out in a nose dive over the edge.
I dropped quickly, doubling hingelike and grabbing frantically for a hold with my left hand. The impact of the window ledge against my middle left me gasping. I tried to dig holes in the carpet with my toes.
The man who held my wrist was standing on the upper latticework of a rose trellis that ascended the side of the house almost to the window.
His voice, close beside my ear, ordered, “Drop that gun!”
Pain stabbed up along my arm as he twisted it again violently. The gun fell from my fingers and I started slipping forward again. The marines arrived in the nick of time. Someone threw himself against my legs from behind and hung on grimly. A flashlight beam shot down into my opponent’s face.
It was the chauffeur, Leonard.
“Somebody haul him up,” he growled, “before this damned trellis pulls loose and we both—” Then he saw Merlini. “Say, who the hell—”
Galt’s voice cut in. “Leonard! What are you doing outside this window?”
“I was on guard. Wolff’s orders. And when this guy starts shooting the joint up—”
“Just where were you,” Merlini demanded, “when you first heard the shots?”
“Right here at the corner of the house. I—”
“Hey, for the luvva Mike,” I protested weakly. “Can’t we hold the inquisition somewhere else? I’m coming apart in the middle.”
Leonard recognized my voice. “Oh,” he growled, “so you’re the guy who does the ghost imitations — the guy who conked me this morning!”
He sounded as if he wanted to even the score then and there. But Merlini explained quickly. “He didn’t do the shooting you heard. Unhand him so we can haul him up. And you come along, too.”
Merlini and Galt pulled me up. Leonard, still eyeing me doubtfully, threw a leg over the sill and came in.
Merlini said, “Galt, go shut off that bell and reset the alarm. Quickly!” He turned to the chauffeur. “Let’s have it. What happened out there?”
Leonard scowled, looking around at the damage the bullets had caused. An electric torch projected from the side pocket of his uniform coat and there was a long strip of adhesive on his head just behind his right ear. He looked doubtfully at Merlini.
“And just who are you?”
Wolff’s voice came from the hall. “It’s all right, Leonard. Answer him. What happened outside?”
“Nothing, sir. I was just coming around the corner of the house when somebody started to lay down a barrage. I jumped for the trellis and started up. Then the shots began smacking into the window just above my head and I stood pat. After the shooting stopped, a light came on in here and I eased up for a look. I see this guy crouching on the floor by the bed with a gun in his hand. And, when he starts to aim at me, I—”