The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 25 Modern and Classic Mysteries

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The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 25 Modern and Classic Mysteries Page 18

by Joseph J. Millard


  A big pile of bricks and windows stood in the center of this lawn, a square house with a lot of bulk and very little beauty. There were a few windows lighted on the first floor.

  I stayed in the shadows and moved around until I got to the rear of the house. It was in the shadows, because the moon hadn’t climbed high enough to floor the whole scene. That was fine.

  I like shadows, I could see at least a half dozen lighted rooms, though, and I didn’t want to move in while the place might be waiting for me. I found a little bench in a rose garden and sat down to wait a while. The roses smelled so nice that I got drowsy and in a very sentimental mood. I must have dozed off.

  I dreamed about a rose-covered cutie who came along and spent a few dream minutes with me, running her fingers over my smooth cheeks and smooching lipstick on my mouth. It was all very cozy until I made the mistake of opening my eyes.

  Not three inches from my eyes was a very unromantic looking Great Dane.

  I jumped a couple of feet and wondered how big a chunk of my trousers he’d settle for. The pooch growled and moved back. The growl came up from down deep, like thunder on a quiet night. My hair stood on end but I didn’t growl back at him. Finally I decided that I’d better learn to like dogs then and there. I would greet him on the friendliest basis possible.

  “Nice pooch.” I said. “You’re all right, fella’.”

  He seemed to appreciate my good neighbor policy. He came back and licked my cheeks again. Not that I liked it. I just wasn’t in a place where I could afford to be fussy.

  He put his front paws on my shoulders and attempted to sit on my lap. There was too much dog for that kind of stuff. I said:

  “How about getting down?”

  He didn’t get the idea so I had to force myself to my feet. The pooch walked around me a couple of times and sat down to wait. I mopped my forehead.

  “I got errands to run,” I said. “How about scramming?”

  He couldn’t have regarded me more tenderly if I had been ten pounds of horse meat. I glanced toward the house. All the lights were out now. My wrist watch showed midnight. I had been sleeping for some time. I could take a chance of going into the house now, if I didn’t have to take this overgrown pooch along for company. Damned peoples’ watchdogs, anyhow, I thought. They’re always lousing up things.

  “Look, sport,” I told the pooch. “This isn’t for you. You’re a nice guy and all that, and I appreciate your company, but you better go back to your bed. It’s late and…”

  I started to move away from him and he moved with me. I stopped and he stopped. He whined softly.

  Instantly I was wide awake and looking for trouble. The pooch wasn’t so dumb. He sensed trouble a split second before I did. It gave me time to drop flat on my stomach behind a low hedge. A light flashed on up near the house. It made the area for fifty yards brilliant as day. I lay still, the pooch at my side. The light went out again. Someone had been taking a look around the place.

  I got to my knees slowly, then went down again. There was a stairway that led under the house to the basement. Somewhere down there a door opened. There was a brief flash of light, then two figures came up and across the lawn directly toward the hedge where I was hiding. I held my breath and wished the pooch would do the same thing. Away from the house, I could see the men quite clearly. Lester walked ahead of Frank Lion. Lion was carrying a girl, and it was a nice, heartwarming little scene. The girl had a wealth of dark hair that flowed all over her shoulders and Lion’s. Her face was pressed against his chest and her arms were around his neck. It looked as though he had wrapped a blanket around her, and that was about all.

  Once away from the house, and not ten feet from the pooch and me, they paused. I had a pretty good look at Lion. He was clad in a dark silky looking robe and leather slippers. He had some nice clean-cut features and well-combed, silvery blond hair.

  Lester seemed to be taking a last look around, and I tried to dig a hole with my belly and crawl into it. If it hadn’t been for that hedge, I’d have made an awful big bump on that lawn.

  The pooch growled suddenly and my heart did a double handspring and tried to crowd out my tonsils. Lester said:

  “The dog is down there by the hedge. Shall I lock him in?”

  Lion got a firmer grip on his load and started out in a direction that would take him safely by me, if he didn’t look around again.

  “Let him go,” he said. “You better get back to the gate.”

  Lester started back alone, about ten minutes. Far down in the direction Lion and the girl had gone, I heard voices. I heard water splashing. There was a light that bobbed around down there, reflecting on water.

  Fifteen minutes. I didn’t like the idea of having Lion and Lester on both sides of me like this. I didn’t have any choice. I started toward the light down among the trees. There was a little pool, surrounded by pine trees, and looking a lot as though it belonged right there, nestled between small hills.

  I’ve been blowing my breath for a long time, so maybe you won’t believe all of this. I was sober, though, and although this was strictly dream stuff that I was looking at, it wasn’t phony. I swear it wasn’t, because I’m sober when I write this, and it still seems kind of nuts.

  Frank Lion, the man with the silvery hair, was sitting on a little white bench at the edge of this pool. He looked a little drunk, and a little as though he was in a trance. He was staring straight ahead of him, toward the water.

  The pool itself had a lot of big, yellow water lilies blooming on its surface. Long, climbing vines grew around the edge of the water, and snaked upward into the half dozen willows that seemed out of place in the scene. There were a lot of huge, orchid-like blooms springing from those vines. They didn’t fit the scenery either. They looked like something dragged out of a jungle dream and replanted in the wrong stage-set.

  There was a little boat floating on the surface of the pool, and the boat was shaped like a half-moon. Inlaid gems glistened and radiated color from the outer shell of the craft. I remember in a kid’s book, reading about a swan boat, propelled by a lot of ducks with a superiority complex. This was a swan boat, right out of the fairy books. Four snow white birds were towing the shell-like boat slowly across the pool; They were all rigged up in silvery wires that kept them held fast to the thing.

  The whole thing gave me a pleasant if slightly crazy feeling that I was staring at a dream. That dream stuff went to my head like a wine, because the girl who rode the swan boat was something to really weave dreams about. Her hair flowed like black silk about her shoulders and her waist. She was high-priority stuff from any angle, but posed as she was with nothing but the blanket of hair trailing about her milk white body, her fingers making little trails as they dipped into the water, she was enough to make the army start home from the South Pacific on water-wings.

  She was a peaches and cream edition of something to keep young men from leaving home—if it was her home. She had all the usual eye-filling features—only more so. Her lips were brilliantly red and her eyes, when they lifted and sparkled in the moonlight, might have been glistening rain drops on a very black surface.

  I started feeling very warm around the collar and in the mood for a boat ride. Funny how that girl exercised a hypnotic effect on me. I forgot all about the man seated on the bench, and about Lester, the big stoop down at the gate. Then the pooch growled and I snapped back to my normal little world.

  This wasn’t any place for me to settle down permanently. Regardless of all the pretty poses the babe assumed, she was nothing but an un-exploded atom bomb to me. She might blow up any time, right in my face.

  I wasn’t any closer to finding Neva than I had been hours ago. It was time to fold my tent and quietly steal away. I did. I might have made it too, but the pooch, still with me like a shadow, growled and got all excited. He made so much
noise that Lion sprang to his feet, got a look at me and yelled for me to stop. A small flashlight pinned me down with its spot and I decided that speed was a necessary factor. I started to run. Something exploded and I ducked, started to look for a tree to get behind, and another shot tore up the turf close to my feet. The last thing I remember was the warm, unpleasant feeling you have when a slug tears a hunk of flesh off the side of your hip. Man, how I had learned to love that dog.

  * * * *

  I opened my eyes again somewhere on the seventh level of Hell. I could feel the Devil’s first assistant, trying to cook me until tender, over a bed of coals. Before I opened my eyes, I made up my mind that someone had rolled me over, pushed a handful of liquid fire into a wound on my hip, and was stirring it in with a barbed hook. I could hear a lot of voices—and finally they all got together and became one voice.

  “He’s all right. I have the slug out.” It was Frank Lion who spoke.

  His voice was impersonal and professional. I had a vague idea that he was talking about me. I opened my eyes. I closed them again, I was on my stomach, my arms and legs strapped down, staring at a white, brilliantly lighted sheet.

  I kept quiet, trying to figure out how I could get out of there and start moving in any direction that would take me away—’way away. Without trying to struggle, I said:

  “I’m alive, and if I’m going to be allowed to stay that way, how about giving me back my hands?”

  I heard Lester swearing, and Frank Lion cautioned him against any rough stuff.

  “He’s weak,” Lion said. “I went to a lot of trouble to keep him alive. We can’t afford murder now. It’s messy and complicated.”

  I cussed Lion and said:

  “Turn me loose, and I’ll take care of myself.”

  He chuckled, and it was a mirthless sound.

  “For a little punk, you’ve got courage.”

  “Never mind the petty compliments. Wait until my partner starts tearing this place apart looking for me.”

  I wasn’t fooling anyone. Not even myself. I knew the Intellect was home pounding the pillow with every snore in him. They figured I was a lone wolf, and they weren’t far wrong.

  Lion untied me and I sat up. I laid down again, fast. My hip felt raw and hotter than live steam, My head spun around clockwise about fifty times before I cushioned it on the table again. I wasn’t so hot as a hero.

  “Pick him up,” Lion said.

  Lester picked me up with all the tenderness of a mother lion handling her cubs. The procession started to move. We went down a lot of dark halls and Lester dropped me on a bed and went out. They locked the door. I went out too—like a light.

  * * * *

  When I came around again, I felt a lot better, in a lousy sort of way. My mouth was full of dirty cotton and my hip felt as though it had been slept on by an elephant. I was in an eight by twelve room with a bed and a chair. There wasn’t any window. I worked on the door for an hour, and gave up after trying to pound it down with my bare hands. All I got was some fresh cuts on my hands.

  I tried to play smart. I dropped on the bed and played the waiting game. Three—four hours crawled past. Lion came in. He sat on the edge of the bed and offered me a cigarette. Even Lion couldn’t make a cigarette taste bad. I sucked at it until the ash burned my fingers.

  “Who hired you to come here?”

  I grinned in a brotherly manner.

  “I came over the wall to smell of your evergreens,” I said. “I get lonesome for the woods. I’m part Indian.”

  He tossed his own cigarette on the rug-less floor and pushed his heel down on it.

  “I should have killed you last night,” he said.

  “I’d have died without pain,” I said. “I don’t feel very good alive.”

  He had an unpleasant sneer. On him, it looked natural. I’ll bet he spent hours in front of his mirror, curling that nice blond hair. I wanted to smash a few of those even, white teeth out of line.

  “I’m puzzled,” he said.

  “Me too. For instance, I’m wondering where you’ve hidden Neva, after she had the screaming fit yesterday and tried to break out of this joint.”

  I rocked him back on his heels a little with that crack. His face turned white and he did a lot of searching for the right words to use on me next. After he found the words, he faltered a little getting them out.

  “See here,” he said, “you saw my daughter last night, down at the pool. Now make sense, will you. If you tell me who you are and who sent you here, maybe we can make a deal. I don’t like to get bloody about this. You keep your mouth shut and maybe you’ll live awhile.”

  I played coy.

  “I’m the original mystery man,” I said. “If my partner, the other man from nowhere, goes down to the office this morning and finds me missing, he’s going to know where to look for me. He’ll probably bring a flock of cops along to keep him company. Lester is tough, but he ain’t that tough.”

  Lion actually smiled.

  “Lester is quite capable of taking care of himself. Right now, he’s waiting to take care of you, if it becomes necessary.”

  He wasn’t bluffing any more. Personally, I was getting damned sick of his talk.

  “The corpse will be found in the garden wearing blue marks around his neck,” I said. “Frank Lion will spend some pleasant days in jail, prior to his march down the last mile.”

  He sprang to his feet.

  “Damn you,” he snarled, “you won’t talk sense. I’ve got no more time to waste. Are you going to tell me who sent you here, and why, or…?”

  “Sure I’ll talk,” I said. “Tell me where Neva is, and I’ll talk—to her. After that, if she’s okay, I’ll go pleasantly on my way. You can spend the rest of your life looking at that interesting little side-show you like to stage down there on the pool. Nice work you got, if I do say so myself.”

  His fists were clenched but I had him worried. Lion wouldn’t have hesitated to murder me, if he’d dared to. He wasn’t soft. He was smart. He knew that without blood on his hands, he still had a way out. Once he murdered, time and the cops would catch up with him. With me alive, the problem was still his and mine.

  “I don’t know why you want to see Neva,” he said. “You saw her last night. She’s well and happy. I’ll admit the girl has strange habits. It’s—it’s a little quirk in her brain. She isn’t just right. As her father and as her doctor, I humor her and keep her protected here where others can’t trouble her peace of mind. Don’t you understand? Neva isn’t balanced, mentally. What you saw last night was the portrayal of a part she plays. She imagines herself a Princess. I make the little act she puts on as real as possible, to keep her from growing violent. It works. She’s happy and I’m doing what any father would do.”

  It was a nice story. I think he had it all worked out—except that the girl on the lagoon had black hair, and little Neva was a blond.

  “Sorry,” I said. “The babe on the lagoon is a cute customer. She isn’t your daughter.”

  He hesitated, sorry to waste that nice play-up on me, yet knowing that he had lost.

  “My pal will come through that wall like a bulldozer,” I said. “The cops play for keeps. You better let me in on this little game we’re playing.” There was a battle going on in the man’s mind. His fingers got all twisted up in his hair and he worried them down across a drawn face. He looked like a lion tamer with a new cat in the act. One that he wasn’t ready to handle. He stood up and said:

  “I think you’re a madman, and I don’t know why I humor you. However, if after seeing my daughter, you’ll shut up and get out—and keep your mouth shut, maybe we can do business without a gun.”

  I gathered my wits up with as much speed as I could, because I didn’t really think he was going to play my kind of ball at all
. We left that room as friends, each wondering when the axe would fall.

  The house was all right. There was a lot of it, some of which I saw on the trip down three flights of open stairs into a huge lounge. I backed up to a fireplace big enough to roast a stuffed ox, and looked over the layout. Lion left me there and went away on a little trip of his own.

  “I wouldn’t try playing clever,” he told me. “If you stay put and on your good behavior it may pay off. Otherwise, the finish will not be so pleasant.”

  I wasn’t very scared of him now, but after all, I did want to see Neva Lion, and why should I toss the opportunity out the window. I wandered around among the davenports and richly comfortable chairs. Some collection of knick-knacks.

  Five minutes passed, and me without a smoke. My nerves became edgy. Then Lion came back, and at his side, her arm about his waist, was Neva. That photograph wasn’t even a good advertisement for the real thing. Neva Lion smiled at me in a sleepy, disturbed manner. Lion said:

  “This may puzzle you, Neva. I’m going to introduce you to a complete stranger, let him talk to you, and then hope that he’ll go away and stop troubling us. Frankly, it makes very little sense even to me.”

  He had either done a lot of talking to the girl before he brought her in, or she was too damned dumb to care who I was or what I wanted. I felt prickly heat all over my body. This was a situation that troubled me all the way down to the foundation. If this part of Lion’s little act was on the level—I was a damned fool at best. It was actually none of my business how he lived or who he chose for companions. If Neva was okay, I was a sneak thief, a prowler, a fool, and deserved to be shot.

  I said:

 

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