He grinned a little again. He said, “Give Elsie my love, Tom. Tell her I’m sorry I—”
Tom said, “Your wife? She wants you out of the way —dead — as much as I do! We’re going away together with the balance of this money! I thought you knew! Oh, hell, why am I telling you now? Here goes. Good luck!”
What a damn silly thing to say! — that last part. But the first part of what Tom had said was sinking in slowly and Harlow was going rigid with anger, only he couldn’t move.
Now he wanted to kill Tom Pryor, and the gun muzzle yawned in his face, but out of reach. Tom’s hand held the gun, and his pudgy fingers were white at the knuckles.
The trigger hadn’t pulled yet, and there was sweat beaded on Tom’s forehead. Tom said, “Hell, I—” and his free hand reached out for the glass of whiskey on the little table near the Morris chair. Dutch courage.
He tossed it down neat.
Or started to. The whiskey spilled, and Tom made a horrible strangling sound and the gun went off wild — with a roar in the confined space of the room that sounded like the end of the world.
A cannonlike roar that brought Carl Harlow to his feet out of the Morris chair. Watching Tom on the carpet.
Standing there looking down at Tom, and wishing in that awful moment that Tom had killed him.
For Carl Harlow was cold sober now. And going cold, cold, all over — as the hideous pieces fell into place. As he bent over dead Tom Pryor and caught the strong scent of bitter almonds. And then, like a man hypnotized, turned and saw the white sheet of paper in the typewriter, and knew before he read it what it was.
The typewriter that had gone clickety-click while he had slept and had typed out a farewell note from Carl Harlow to the world. The typewriter that had gone clickety-click while he had slept, and while Elsie had really been here and had typed that note and put the prussic acid in the waiting pick-me-up shot of whiskey!
Source material
The stories contained within this eBook were culled from the following sources:
Various pulp magazines from 1940 - 1963
Before She Kills
Daymares & Other Tales
Homicide Sanitarium
Mostly Murder
Space on My Hands
The Shaggy Dog & Other Mysteries
The Best of Fredric Brown