by Anthony Rome
But my punch didn’t seem to hurt him, and I could see by his eyes that my words weren’t registering.
I yelled at him again as loud as I could. His other hand, the one that wasn’t busy crushing the bones of my wrist, clamped around my throat and shut off the yell abruptly. With my free hand I got hold of one of the fingers digging into my neck and tried to break it. I couldn’t even bend it.
I kicked his shin hard with the point of my shoe. He grunted and shifted his feet a little, stepping on the little flashlight and crushing out the last shred of light in the room. Then both his hands were at my throat.
Desperately, swinging blindly in the total blackness, I punched him in the face, the belly, then the face again. I felt my knuckles thud against flesh and bone, but I might have been hitting stone for all the effect it had on him. He lifted me clear off the floor, bent me backward over the edge of the bed, began applying more pressure. I felt his thumbs sinking deeper, cutting off my air and blood. There was a roaring in my ears, and my eyes were bulging with the dammed-up pressure behind them. My own groping fingers finally found his eyes and dug in.
He didn’t cry out. But his hands jerked away from my throat and he yanked himself backward into the darkness. I did a fast flip and roll across the expanse of the bed and came up on the floor on the other side of it, ready for him. He didn’t come. He’d vanished.
I held myself perfectly still, gritting my teeth to quiet the sound of my hard breathing, waiting while my head shrank back to normal size. My eyes adjusted to the gloom and began to make out vague shapes by the faint moonlight filtering into the room. It didn’t help. The room was too cluttered with outsize furniture which created darker shadows within shadows and made it difficult to distinguish substance from shadow. I strained my eyes, my ears. But there was no sign of him, not even the whisper of breathing.
Crouching down close to the floor, I waited for him to move, to show himself against one of the windows. After a few minutes my leg muscles began to cramp. With the discomfort came a feeling of foolishness. I’d done enough night fighting with the Rangers during the war to know the sharpness of my senses. No one could be in a room that size with me for that long without my detecting some sign of his presence. He could be anywhere else in that decaying mansion by then, ready to waylay me. But two could play at that.
Easing up off the floor a bit but keeping to a crouch, I drifted toward the doorway. I took it one step at a time, making no sound, and reached the door without seeing or hearing him.
His senses were sharper than mine. His fist exploded off the side of my jaw. The floor went out from under my feet. The wall crashed against my side and then tilted away, and the floor came up and slammed my back.
By the time my brain began to regain control of any part of me, he was kneeling on my chest and those steel fingers of his were sinking deep into my throat again. Weakly, I tried to fight him off me. My efforts were as ineffectual as those of a kitten caught in the jaws of a kill-trained Doberman.
CHAPTER
6
THERE WAS a blinding light shining in my eyes, and the steel fingers were unlocking themselves from my tortured throat. After his weight left my chest, I realized I’d heard a man’s voice saying something just before the hands released their death grip.
There were voices again, but the pounding of blood in my ears kept me from making out anything of what was being said except that two different men were doing the talking. After a while my head began to clear. The glare against my eyes shrank to the round yellowish eye of a normal-sized flashlight shining its beam at me. The guy I’d been tangling with had backed into the darkness beyond the small circle of light. I sat up slowly, laboriously, rubbing my bruised throat and gulping air through my open mouth.
“You’re lucky I heard you yell,” the man behind the flashlight said. “Sam might have killed you.” It was the voice of the man I’d seen outside.
“Might’ve, hell!” I rasped. “He was going to.”
“Of course. You had him worried. He saw you coming in through the gate and followed you here into the house. He couldn’t understand what you were doing here. And then you turned on him and frightened him. So he attacked you.”
“I frightened him?” I’d already been badly shaken. But the realization that he’d been right behind me from the moment I entered the estate without my knowing it shook me some more.
“Light some candles, Sam,” the one behind the flashlight said.
There was the flare of a match. The flame touched the wicks of several candles in a standing candelabra beside the door. By their flickering light I saw the man holding the flashlight. He was also holding a small .25-caliber automatic pointed at me. And he was the same man who’d just been strangling me.
He was the same man—except that he looked older by about fifteen years and a bit heavier and softer and wearier. The same man—but he’d somehow changed to a light spring suit and black shoes. Also he was wearing glasses in front of his eyes and expression behind them.
Yet he was the same man. The same height the same build, the same strong-featured handsome face—despite the difference of age and expression. I turned my head a little and looked at his other image, the one still wearing a sweat shirt, dungarees, tennis sneakers, and a total lack of expression.
The one with the flashlight and gun saw my puzzlement. “Sam is my twin,” he said shortly, snapping off the flashlight and slipping it into his jacket pocket. He kept the tiny gun pointed at me.
I looked from one to the other. Sam looked as if he were only in his late thirties. The one with the gun was in his early fifties.
“All right,” the one with the automatic snapped. “What are you doing here? Who are you?”
I continued to massage my neck with both hands, considering an answer to that.
“Speak up. Or would you rather I called the police?”
“Go ahead,” I growled. “I was attacked for no reason by your brother here. With intent to kill. I’d like to talk to the police.”
The older-looking man frowned, suddenly uncertain of himself. “Sam and I live here. This is our home. You were trespassing.”
“Yeah? How do I know this is your place?”
It kept him off balance and gave me time to think. His frown of uncertainty deepened. “Ask anyone in the neighborhood. I’m Doctor Boyd. Everyone knows that I . . .” Then he realized how I’d switched him to the defensive, and the lines around his mouth hardened. He lifted the little gun a bit to draw my attention back to its threat. “I asked you a question. I want an answer. What happens to you in the next few minutes depends on that answer.”
“I was looking for 59 Manville Road,” I told him. “Friends of mine live there. I’m expected at their house-warming party. I lost my way and came in here to ask directions.” While he was thinking that over, I put a hand against the wall and stood up. Sam started to take a step toward me, then hesitated and glanced at his twin.
But Dr. Boyd was concentrating on me. “I’m afraid,” he said slowly, “that you are lying to me.”
“Why? Haven’t you ever gotten lost and had to stop somewhere to ask directions?”
“Why sneak into this building and go skulking around inside here? It’s obvious no one lives here now.”
I tried to think up an answer to that.
“So you see,” Dr. Boyd said, “your story is most unlikely.”
“All right,” I told him reasonably. “I admit I was lying, about the last part. Not about the rest. I came in through the driveway to ask directions. Then I saw this abandoned mansion and curiosity got the better of me. I just came in for a look around. I couldn’t know it belonged to anybody that’d care.”
“Curiosity,” said Dr. Boyd, “killed the cat.”
“Now there’s an original thought. Would you kindly put that gun away. It might go off.”
“It might,” Dr. Boyd agreed. “I believe you are still lying to me. We’ll find out. If you are, it will be unfortunate f
or you. If you’re not, I’ll apologize for Sam having hurt you. Though you certainly can’t blame him.”
“You ought to keep him on a leash.”
It didn’t bother Sam at all. But it bothered Dr. Boyd. His face went stiff with anger. “Sam would never harm anyone unless he was provoked. As you provoked him. In that case he can be quite formidable as you’ve discovered. Nature’s compensation to him, I suppose.”
He didn’t explain that. He didn’t have to. I looked at Sam’s expressionless statue-like face, and the answer was obvious. It was also obvious that Sam had received another compensation from nature. In his inability to think deeply enough to worry about anything too much, he’d found his own secret elixir of youth.
“Make sure he’s not wearing a gun, Sam,” Dr. Boyd ordered softly.
His twin blinked at him.
“A gun,” Dr. Boyd repeated patiently. “See if he has a gun.”
Sam nodded and drifted over to me. I held myself taut while he patted his hands over me. He shook his head at Dr. Boyd.
“Get his wallet and give it to me,” Dr. Boyd told him.
Sam reached under my lapel for my wallet.
Taking one fast short sidestep that put Sam between me and Dr. Boyd’s gun, I brought the hard heel of my shoe down on the top of Sam’s instep. At exactly the right spot on the instep, there are a number of small, fragile bones. I felt some of them give under the sharp impact.
Even Sam couldn’t take that. He gasped, yanked up his leg, and grabbed for where I’d hurt him. While he was balancing on one foot, I put both hands against his chest and shoved, getting all my weight and strength behind it. He flew backward and slammed into Dr. Boyd, who was trying to shift for a clear shot at me. They sprawled toward the floor together. Two running steps brought me beside them as they hit the floor. I brought my heel down hard on Dr. Boyd’s right wrist, bent and snatched the tiny gun out of his sprung-open hand, and backed off fast.
Sam came up off the floor while Dr. Boyd was still struggling to a sitting position. He came limping after me. I raised the gun. He saw it, but it didn’t seem to mean anything to him. He kept limping toward me.
I backed away from him and yelled at Dr. Boyd, “Make him stop or I’ll empty this into his stomach!”
“Stop it, Sam!” Dr. Boyd ordered sharply. “Come back here.”
Sam halted, looked back at the twin who was so much older than he was.
Dr. Boyd stood up from the floor slowly. “Come back here,” he repeated firmly.
Sam limped back to him.
“Now both of you move over there,” I ordered, motioning with the gun. “Against that wall.”
They obeyed, leaving the doorway clear. Sam leaned against the wall and raised his leg to hold his hurt foot with both hands.
“It will be all right, Sam,” Dr. Boyd told him gently. “I’ll take care of that as soon as this gentleman leaves.”
I started cautiously across the room, moving so that I could keep my eyes and the gun on them the whole way.
“You may be sorry for this one of these days,” Dr. Boyd murmured. “I have some friends . . .”
“That’s hard to believe,” I told him, and backed through the doorway out of that room.
I hurried through the building and got out the way I’d come in. At the foot of the incline below the mansion, I tossed the tiny automatic into the hedges and began running. It was hard to shake the feeling that Sam was running right behind me, soundlessly, about to reach out and get those hands of his around my throat again.
CHAPTER
7
I POURED MYSELF a double brandy. Then I made Kosterman his bourbon on the rocks and carried both drinks away from the little bony bar. We were in the gleaming stateroom of Kosterman’s luxurious schooner yacht moored at the private dock of his estate. Kosterman sat deep in the leather sling of a big modern womblike chair. I handed him his drink, let myself sink into the twin of his chair, and took a healthy swallow of the brandy. I needed it.
“I appreciate this,” Kosterman told me. “You’re not barging right into the house. Diana’d be angry if she knew I’d hired you because of her. And she just now came home.”
“I know. I was following her.” It hadn’t been easy to do. I’d been almost to Mayport, with the accelerator shoved down to die floor of my Olds, before I’d caught up to the silver Mercedes-Benz. I’d begun to think she’d lied about heading home when I finally sighted her car up ahead. After that I’d slowed and drifted back, just keeping her taillights in view till she pulled over the drawbridge onto The Island. I’d called Kosterman from the cop’s guard hut; he’d suggested that we meet on the yacht and told the cop to let me through.
“You mean you actually did manage to locate Diana after I phoned you?” Kosterman asked, impressed.
I nodded, not explaining how easy it had been.
“Well, that’s wonderful. Captain Crown was right to recommend you. Have you found out anything?”
“Do you know a man who calls himself Dr. Boyd?”
Kosterman’s eyes became very unpleasant. “I know him.” His thick, scarred fingers flexed slowly around his glass. “Is he a doctor?”
“He was. Before he got disbarred—or whatever the medical profession calls it when they take away a doctor’s license for unethical practices. Unethical—that’s a business term for slimy.”
“You know him pretty well.”
His heavy shoulders shifted around under the expensive material of his sports jacket. Like many strong men who get too little exercise, he was addicted to small uses of his muscles to relieve tension. The harsh lines in his brooding face deepened. “He’s married to my ex-wife,” he said, pushing the words out slowly.
I had some more of the brandy while it sank in. “That’d be Lorna.”
“Yes. You met Lorna?”
“Not exactly. Then Lorna Boyd is your daughter’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“That explains a good deal.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Fill me in on the Boyds and your daughter.”
He looked at me angrily. “That’s a personal thing. And painful. And no concern of yours.”
“Okay. You want me to find out what’s troubling your daughter. You’re paying me by the day. Put stumbling blocks in my way if you want. That way it’ll take longer. And maybe I won’t get anywhere. But if that’s the way you want it . . .”
I let it hang there. Rudolph Kosterman rubbed a hand slowly back and forth over his knee, thinking it over. Finally he said, “Exactly what do you want to know?”
“I’m not sure. So you’d better tell me all of it.”
He drew in a deep breath, let it out slow. He rolled his glass between his palms and brooded at the flames in the fireplace that made moving golden reflections against the rugged angles of his heavy face.
“I came up the hard way,” he said slowly, talking to the fire. “No influential friends, no background, no money in the family. It’s been a rough climb.”
He stopped talking, lost in his thoughts. I nudged him. “You’ve come a long way, Mr. Kosterman.”
“A long way,” he agreed. “I started as a construction laborer. Unskilled. I never even went to high school. I’ve done a lot of reading in my old age to make up for that. But while I was fighting my way up, I was too busy just learning each job I took on. There wasn’t any time for anything else.”
His lips thinned, showing his teeth between them. “No time,” he said viciously, “to add on that nice leisure-class veneer . . . I was just an uncultured slob when I met Lorna. A rich, successful uncultured slob. Some of the things Lorna was born with rubbed off on me over the years. Manners, grammar, how to hold my fork. The really important things like that,” he added with savage sarcasm. “It wasn’t a very happy marriage. I divorced her ten years ago.” I waited, drinking some more of my brandy, relaxing as it took hold.
“I caught her cheating on me with Boyd,” Kosterman went on fi
nally. “It’d been going on a long time between those two. After the divorce she married him. I didn’t have any trouble gaining full custody of Diana.”
He drank some of his bourbon, and I watched him and waited, knowing none of this was easy for him.
Kosterman lowered his glass and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Remembering had set his face in lines of stolid anger. “Lorna’s and Boyd’s families were part of the same wealthy old-line circle. They’ve known each other since they were kids. I guess they’d have been married before I ever met her if things had stayed normal for them. But both their families lost everything in the crash. Boyd’d gone through medical school, as sort of a hobby I figure. So he could say he was something more’n just a rich nothing. But after the family dough went, he had to really work at it. He was making a decent enough living by most people’s standards. But not by what he and Lorna were used to.”
He started to take another drink, changed his mind, and forced himself to look directly at me. “Lorna was barely getting along on the charity of some distant relatives when I came along,” he said flatly. “I was really impressed by her, by the background she represented. And I had enough dough to give her back the kind of life she’d lost. So she married me. But she never got over being ashamed of me. I guess Boyd was her escape valve. Well, she’s got him for keeps now.”
“When did Boyd lose his license to practice?”
“About five years ago. Seems he was bucking up his income by doing big-money abortions for girls that could afford it. One of the girls started bleeding after she got home. Her parents called in the family doctor, and she squealed on Boyd.”
“What does he do now?”
Kosterman shrugged. “Nothing that I know of. I don’t know how he manages to keep that place that belonged to his family going.”
