Which eliminated the major figures and rung in the lesser ones. The sneak-act was of recent development. He’d have known long before this if the wire had been tapped last week or last month. Logic said it had happened since he had become interested in Channy — from yesterday morning, at a guess. Or certainly from the moment Channy was killed and he figured into the murder as an insurance investigator.
Who were the lesser figures?
The red-haired woman was a major one, but not from what little he knew of her at the moment. Was there any reason for her to listen in on him? Definitely, yes. She might want to keep in touch with him, to know what he knew. But she wouldn’t be so dumb as to write him a cryptic letter, telling him what she had done!
That left exactly who? Deebie Bridges? Dr. Lainey? As well suspect Judy, the waitress!
Disgustedly he gave it up and swept the letter and crumpled envelope into a desk drawer. There wasn’t the slightest sense in locking the drawer; someone walked into his office and helped himself to the contents of the drawers whenever he pleased, anyway. He put on his coat and hat, stuck the unlit pipe between his teeth and pulled on the light cord.
Cynically he locked the office door behind him.
Before going down the stairs he walked to the office on his left and rattled the doorknob. It was locked. The office hadn’t been rented for some months, not since that girl had closed her public secretarial service and married. His telephone wires vanished into the baseboard when they left his office; they might or might not emerge into the empty office to the left of his. It was more likely they stayed within the walls and swooped directly to the basement to join the trunk line under Wilsey Street.
Tomorrow, he swore, the janitor was going to conduct him over every inch of telephone line between his desk and the trunk line. And the janitor was going to give up any information he may have on the matter, whether he liked it or not!
Tonight, he decided, tonight he was going home early and play double solitaire with Mother Hubbard. Elizabeth would probably be out until late. He moved down the stairs and out onto the street. It was dark. The two missing amber clusters of light left a dark patch in the block. Along that area there were only one or two neon signs, unhurt by the blast, still ablaze.
The crowd of people on the street was thinning, aware that the rattling of thunder in the west promised an early rain. The night wind from that direction carried a pleasant cool smell, brushing away the clinging heat from the pavements.
Horne filled his lungs with the wind and started homeward walking. He was within two blocks of the house when he suddenly recalled the unmailed insurance report in his pocket. Stopping, he mentally searched for a nearby mailbox. Behind him there were footsteps.
Turning at an angle, he crossed the street and walked back to the corner he had just passed. A small mailbox on a thin upright post was planted next to a telephone pole. He inserted the letter, clanked the lid a couple of times to make sure the missive had fallen inside, and retraced his steps, smiling.
The pride of the City Hall’s plainclothes force, sauntering along opposite him, was having a troublesome time attempting to be just walking along without a care in the world. “You’ll never make a shadow,” Horne advised the man under his breath. “You crowd them too close.”
The heavy-footed shadow followed him the remainder of the way home. Just before he reached the door he felt the first few sprinkling drops of rain and grinned. He hoped the shadow wouldn’t get too wet.
The shadow walked right past him without pause.
Seven
He hugged the pillow without moving and watched the black shape moving towards him across the blacker darkness of the bedroom.
The formless thing was moving with extreme caution and apparently all the time in the world to reach its objective. The objective was his bed. Lying there, his eyes straining to follow the moving mass, he tried to estimate the size and outline of the shape but failed completely. It was simply too damned dark to see it clearly. When he didn’t try to stare directly at it he was aware there was something there, something moving across the bedroom that shouldn’t be in the room at all.
It moved effortlessly in a silent, halting glide, and had betrayed itself only by a strange ticking noise, the indescribable sound which had awakened him.
A wrist watch? He listened closely and decided against it. The shape was wearing nothing that gave out an audible ticking.
No, the initial sound had been something else, something that was familiar but which he couldn’t put his finger on. He had heard only a low, faraway gurgle-like ticking of very short duration. But it had been enough to awaken him. There was no further sound, nothing but the shape creeping upon him. He loosened his muscles, knowing that he could move more quickly if he wasn’t packed into a tight, nervous knot.
There came the sudden soft drumming of a summer rain beating on the windows. A small wind somewhere was blowing it in one of the windows, wetting the floor. Mother Hubbard’s lace curtains fluttered in the rain and the wind.
Several long, strained minutes fled by until finally the black and formless something stood beside his bed, near the footboard. Surprisingly, he caught the subtle, tantalizing scent of a heady perfume.
Home groaned silently when the odor reached his nostrils and in the next second realized the groan hadn’t been as silent as he had thought.
A low and husky voice reached out of the blackness.
“Are you awake?” it queried very softly.
“No,” he answered.
The scent moved nearer. He felt a finger creeping across the taut sheet pulled up under his chin, searching for his face. When the finger reached his chin it wasn’t a finger at all but the cold, steel point of a gun.
The business end of the barrel snaked across his face and came to a quivering stop immediately beneath his right eye, the round snout resting with an easy pressure on the ridge of bone guarding the eye socket.
“Do you understand this?” the husky voice asked.
He shuddered. “Only too well. Take it easy!”
“We understand each other. Get up. Close the windows and draw the blinds.”
“Yes mam.” He climbed out of the bed as the gun was withdrawn from his eye, dragging the sheet with him.
“Drop the sheet,” she commanded quickly.
“You’ll be sorry—”
“Drop it!”
The gun was a pricking mosquito in the small of his back. He let the sheet fall to the floor and walked to the nearest window. Far away through the falling rain he saw a corner street light glowing dimly. He closed the window and pulled the blind all the way down. The others followed in as many seconds. He did it with a quiet quickness that surprised him.
“Well,” he asked, turning, “now what...?”
He sensed the formless shape of her moving across the room towards the door and the light switch.
“Don’t turn that light on!”
She flicked the switch and faced him. The overhead bulb caught him standing in the center of the room. Her eyes dropped down his body and a slow flush stole across her cheeks. She fought it away.
Horne shrugged as casually as he could manage and scratched the thick mat of hair on his chest.
“You insisted...” he reminded her.
She nodded curtly.
“I did. Shut up and get dressed. And be quiet about it!” She exhibited the revolver in a well-balanced hand.
Professional interest turned his eyes to the weapon. It was a Smith & Wesson. She handled it with an easy grace as though she were quite used to it; an amateur grips the handle too hard, nervous tension in the hand often leaping to the trigger finger with disastrous results. He noted she held the weapon in a bead on him that was a trifle to her left of center. In firing, the pressure on the trigger would swing the snout to the right, to dead center.