He saw the irregular splotch at which she was pointing. “Could this be…?”
Chapter Nine
The dye was faded from the green carpet where an unsuccessful attempt had been made to scrub the dark stain free. Miller put his body to the massive desk and budged it, another stain was revealed, another stain against which no scrubbing attempt had been made. Miller straightened, he visualized the scene double chinned Paul Allen behind the desk…Someone standing facing him across the desk…a gunshot.
“No, that could not have been it, unless the bullet had ricocheted, how would it have penetrated the nature of peace?” Miller said, “on the other hand the assailant might have had to come around the desk. There could have been grappling, and stray bullets smashing into the book shelves. “Let’s look at some more of these books, Sally.”
“But, John…” Sally was examining something along the dark paneling. Miller looked over her shoulder, the wood had been splintered by a long gouge, and he moved her gently aside. “A bullet?” Her voice was soft her negligee almost made her look tall.
“If there is a bullet, it’s imbedded.”
“Strange.”
“It sure is, if there was shooting here, why didn’t anyone hear it?” Miller spoke to the vastness of the room. “And if Allen was shot, why did Benny Godley and the coroner Watson pass it off as a death from natural causes?”
“Allen couldn’t have been shot.” Sally said. “Jimmy Marks sleeps right on this floor; he’d surely have heard it.”
“Maybe he did.” Miller paced back to the carpet at the foot of the desk, “and there’s this point, if Allen was shot and these stains are blood, whoever did the shooting wasn’t in a great hurry to get away. He stayed around long enough to get water and soap and a brush, and work on these stains.” Sally’s large green eyes suddenly grew wider.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“I thought someone called.” The scream came from far in the upper stories of the house. It came haltingly, faintly through many walls. Sally’s breath broke sharply. The next scream came louder, unmistakably. “Wait here! Wait here, Sally?”
But she followed him; she was at his back as he ran up the curving marble flight to the second floor, then through the dim corridor and up the narrower stairs to the third floor. Lights were going on, doors were opening feet scuffing voices were calling excited questions. A figure hurried into Miller as he reached the third floor, the quivering sobbing body of a woman. “Miss Parker!” Sally gasped.
Other footsteps beat up the stairs; Paul Davis was in rumpled pajamas. Jose Mendez was wildly tying a robe about his round waist.
“In my room it-it struck my face.”
“Dad!” Sally Daniels cried in sudden realization as she looked around, “Dad’s not here!” As if her father’s absence could only mean something awful had happened to him.”
She turned, pushed her way past Mendez and Davis, and fled down the stairs. Miller left Angelia Parker behind, Paul Davis was with him as he reached the open door that he knew must lead to the woman’s room. The excitement of action cut off all thoughts except those of the immediate moment. “Be careful, fella,” Paul Davis’s clutching fingers caught his arm. The thread of terror was looping through his body, convulsing those fingers. Miller threw the door wide, he was acting a part. He was a brave man, was this why Albert had called him to Millersburg? To meet danger and conquer it; to meet Younger and somehow he purged of that past part of his life, the door swung open on darkness, “who’s in there?”
“It’s quiet,” Davis panted.
Miller’s hand groped along the wall; searching for the light switch, don’t forget the role, he told himself you’re brave, brave… “Be careful, Miller you’d better,” Miller caught his breath, held it the wind rattled dry leaves in the crowns of threes, swept through the open window into the room, a tiny whispering sound came rasping eerie, was that the wind?
The beat of tiny feet raced across the ceiling, where was the switch!
Miller found the switch, the sound vanished with the upsweep of light, like spectral figures dissolved by dawn. He looked about the empty room, the dresser, the chair with Angelia Parker’s clothes on it. “By god,” Paul Davis voice was still tense.
Jose Mendez laughed, “Caramba! Look!” A dark rusty haired creature clung to an upper corner of the room. Its wings spanned two feet, a second of the winged animals fluttered up from the floor. Miller looked at the open window, the small moon faced Mendez laughed again. “No wonder she was scared, they’re flying foxes.”
“There bats.” Miller said. Mendez answered with delight, “not ordinary bats, they’re South American vampire bats; the herdsmen say they suck blood, only of sheep and animals, of course.”
“Cut it out,” Davis’s face flushed with anger, “It’s not funny.” Mendez walked over the rumpled bed and pulled off the top blanket. He gathered the blanket under one arm, his eyes fixed on the bat clinging to the ceiling corner. At that moment the second of the bats fluttered back down to the floor.
“Blinded by the light,” Mendez said and took the blanket between his hands to throw over the fallen animal. You did this, Mendez!” Davis said. “This is your trick!” And Mendez, half Davis’s size laughed at him.
His stare unwavering, Paul fumbled a cigarette from his pocket, and he struck a match which broke. He struck five times before he got a match flaming. He steadied the jaundiced yellow hand, holding the match with his other hand as he raised it to his cigarette. Then irritably he turned and left the room.
The plump faced South American gave Miller a brief glance, “the shakes,” he snorted, “he needs a drink, and his bravery comes out of a bottle.”
Mendez poised above the fallen bat and dropped the blanket in quick movement. Enmeshing the fluttering creature, Mendez tied the four ends of the blanket together; he looked up at the second bat, then at Miller. “You know,” he said, “It was like this with that Paul Davis fellow down in South America. When we’d come again any trouble, he’d run people don’t change.” He shook his head sadly.
He picked a brush off the dresser, tossed it with a gentle, underhand motion at the bat near the ceiling. His second try brought it down; He imprisoned it in a second blanket and then looked around. “Where is the young fellow?” he asked, “the southern boy with glasses, the caretaker!”
“I’ll see where he is;” Said Miller.
There were voices in the hall and he stepped outside, he didn’t like being with Mendez. He didn’t like the way Mendez had laughed at Davis. Cruelty and sadism were too important a part of this man.
Sally had returned and was soothing Angelia Parker. Joseph Daniels was swinging unassisted up the stairs on his crutches. “There was no intruder in your room, Miss Parker,” Miller told her. Her hysteria was now only an occasional sob. “A couple of bats apparently escaped their zoo cages; they’re what scared you they flew in through your window.”
Daniels took the last step and waited for his breath, “bats, it sounded like murder from where I was I called the police!” Miller’s eyes caught his, “you were very quick about it.”
Broken nosed Sammy and his troopers would be barging in, as they had come trammeling in when Albert was dead. Davis milky eyes flickered, “I’ve been ready for some emergency like this. I insisted on a room with a telephone.”
Miller descended to the second floor and continued on down the marble flight to the kitchen, at the door just off the room he stopped and listened. When there was no answer to his knock, he turned the knob and shoved, he switched a lamp on in the darkness. The light revealed a cubicle and a man lying asleep in a cot bed, the covers pulled over his head. In one corner of the room was an ancient Oliver typewriter, paper in its carriage. Books were on the window ledge, on the back of the dresser and piled on the floor. Tacked unframed pictures covered the walls. Miller stepped to the bed. He put his hand on the sleeping man’s shoulder; Jimmy Marks roused slowly, and then came awa
ke with sudden surprise.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Miller told him. “You’re a pretty sound sleeper, I knocked on the door hard.” Miller waited plainly for an explanation.
Marks rubbed his face, “I don’t get it what’s going on”
“A couple of bats flew their coop in the zoo.” He said. “They got up in Miss Parker’s room on the third floor and nearly scared her to death. Mendez caught them; he’s waiting up there for you to help take them back down.”
Jimmy Marks threw off his blankets and did a tumbling roll to his feet; in topless pajamas his body looked as hard and smooth as hand rubbed wood. He put on his eyeglasses; “you caught them, you say” He told his feet into slippers and tied on a bathrobe.
Marks was a strange one, miller reflected as he left the little room. He was playing the part of a servant but he was definitely not a servant. At the top of the first floor steps, Angelia Parker was coming down on Sally’s arm. The haunted woman’s eyes were still fogged from her recent shock.
“Where have you been?” She asked Miller, “is everything all right/”
“I was just getting Jimmy Marks.” That was the action involved, but he told nothing of his thoughts, his feelings. “He’ll see those bats get safely locked up before.”
There was much venom in her for so small a woman, Miller thought perhaps venom was the compensation for smallness, for advancing robbing years.
Miller didn’t care to carry on the argument, “where are you going now, Miss Parker” He asked.
Angelia Parker’s nostrils pinched together, “you certainly don’t think I’ll go back to my room?” Miller dropped his eyes; spoke softly “you’re not one to get frightened by a little thing like bats, are you?”
A flicker of new emotion skimmed Angelia parker’s face tentative fear. “You might meet worse than bats; you know leaving your room and wandering around in a sleeping house at four in the morning.” Miller replied.
She stared at Miller as if he were insane. “Just what were you doing outside your room?” he persisted.
“For goodness sake, what are you talking about? I didn’t set foot outside my room.”
“When a woman is frightened, “Miller said, “She customarily doesn’t spend time looking for her slippers and house coat before running screaming from her room.”
Angelia Parkers smile was of tired patience. “You don’t understand.” She said. “Dear boy, I didn’t know anything was wrong at first, I was awakened I didn’t know by what. I got up to investigate, naturally I slipped into something.”
Just then an automobile with siren blowing braked to a stop in front of the house, and Miller turned back down the stairs. Angelia parker stopped to speak with Captain Daniels who came swinging down from the second floor. Jimmy Marks a scarf about his neck above his robe, passed Miller on the stairs, continued up, the gold rims on his glasses glinting Sally, behind Miller touched his sleeve as they reached the entrance hall.
Her green eyes were wide, her dark blonde brows bunched, “what did you mean?”
“By what I said to her?”
“Yes.”
Miller said “She was out of her room, that’s all or somebody was.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You said you had a thread stretched across the hall near your door. I didn’t break that thread. You said it was broken, I didn’t go near your door.”
Sergeant Sammy barged into the entrance hall, his big hand clapped to his gun holster, his broken nose thrust forward. “It’s all right, sergeant.” Miller said. “Everything’s under control, there was a little excitement. Some bats got up into one of the ladies rooms.”
“Bats!” the state policeman looked up and saw Jose Mendez and jimmy marks coming down the stairs, each holding what looked like bulky bundles of wash. His eyes turned back to Miller at a sudden thought. “Say you! What are you doing here?
Miller was saved the necessity of answering by the approach of Mendez and marks.
“The excitement is all over.” Said Mendez his flat moon face beaming. “These ungrateful animals rebelled against their imprisonment, but now we have recaptured them and will treat them to further detainment.” His eyes caught Miller’s and he jerked a cynical laugh.
Miller started to speak; “I know,” the ex-revolutionary general interrupted, “those animals are better fed here and survive longer than they ever would in their natural habitats, but who wouldn’t prefer a short, free life even if in ended in some other animal’s gullet.”
Sergeant Sammy was busy staring at the blanket bundles. “I can’t see how they could have gotten out.” Jimmy Marks was disturbed. “Their cages were locked and even if the locks were left open, there are latches.”
Miller started to follow the men. “John.” Sally’s voice stopped him; she drew him from the mansion’s front door, “don’t go.”
She glanced up at the balcony at the head of the marble staircase, where the conversational voices of her father and Angelia parker were audible. Then she looked toward the rear of the house. “I know it’s silly, but I imagine I hear things moving, someone moving back there.”
Miller started in the direction she pointed, she was with him as far as the hall there she stopped and said, “I’m going upstairs to father and stay with him.”
Miller stopped briefly in the library and switched on the light. For a moment before he switched it off again, he looked at the portrait of Paul Allen, the desk with its intricate carvings, at the sage green deep pile carpet, at the bookshelves where he’d found a bullet imbedded in the nature of peace.
Then standing in the darkness, he listened to the sounds of the house; footsteps walked now crunching, creaking treads. Miller turned said “Sally? Someone else?” but Sally had gone back upstairs to her father. He could still catch her voice every time it struck a high cadence. Were those footsteps only in his mind?
He walked across the dark library and looked out the window across the vista broken by trees and shrubs. A shadow moved from one of the shrubs as he watched it waved settled then dissolved into the general darkness.
Chapter Ten
Miller ran into the hall, back through the kitchen and out the rear door. The voices of the men going toward the zoo compound were on his right. He ran toward the left, stopping near the shrub where he had seen the shadow move. As silent as motionless as the tree trunks about him, he waited; he was sure he had seen someone moving there.
Those bats upstairs… Paul Allen’s death… Even Younger’s being here in Millersburg, Albert Smith lying in sticky blood all were separate things. They made no pattern.
Just as none of it tied up in any way to the rest of his life. He had to remember Albert to know why he was here. He was here because Albert had fought for him once. A hundred times, always.
But was he doing it for Sally, but he was hardly doing it for Albert. He was more likely doing it merely to be acting, instead of thinking action, therapeutic action, a pill for his mind. Albert must have called him here for that. Albert must have seen the shape of murder that was coming.
Miller looked at the ground if someone had been here, there might be footprints. He brushed the late season ragged grass with his toe. He stopped a vague fear rushing through him; there was no mistaking it now. Someone was running across the grounds toward the front of the house toward the front gate.
He ran aware that by running he was betraying his presence, and that he might blunder into a trap. He came to the corner of the house. The figure confronted him so suddenly he couldn’t stop. Huge arms grabbed him, a thick voice cursed. “What in-“It was Sergeant Sammy’s voice.
“Was that you on the lawn? Was that you-?”
“What in the hell are you talking about? I just went to my car to get a flashlight; there are no good lights in that damn zoo!”
“I saw somebody through the window.” Miller pointed. “And then just now, someone was running toward the gate.”
“Let’s go then.” They started
toward the gate with Sammy wheezing after Miller. Every stone pillar in the high iron fence he saw as a possible pocket of concealment.
Miller followed the line of the fence, the knowledge certain in him that the intruder had been headed for the gate when the chase had been interrupted, and that he must now definitely be beyond the gate.
Miller stopped, the state trooper came abreast of him, his broken nose was like a badge testifying to his fierceness. “Look! What are you leading me into? I asked you a question before, what are you doing here?”
“Investigating the murder of Paul Allen.” Miller said simply. “I have evidence that Allen’s death is connected with the murder of my friend, Doctor Smith.”
“What in hell are you talking about?” Sammy asked.
Miller took from his pocket the slug he’d removed from the book in Allen’s library, never had he felt so sure of himself.
“I’m going to ask for an inquest into the cause of Allen’s death,” he said. “I want a post mortem to decide whether or not he was shot. I think this slug will match other slugs we’ll find in Allen’s body.”
“You mean coroner Watson?”
“I’m not satisfied with anything Watson will say.” He was talking the way Julie might talk, imposing his own wish. “This will have to be done from the outside!”
“I think you’re a damn fool,” the trooper growled, but he was curbed by Miller’s forcefulness.
“Like I told you back at the station, you go around butting in things you don’t know anything about, and you’ll find your rear end in a sling. We don’t like anybody telling us our business, see?” He looked down at Miller’s hand, “all right, what do you have there?”
Miller gave him the slug, “I dug this out of the wall in Allen’s library. I’ve got a good idea it will match the slugs in Allen’s body.” The Sergeant rolled the lead pellet between his thumb and forefinger, like a hardware merchant trying to determine the size of the screw. He let it fall back into Miller’s palm, with a well-it’s-your-own-funeral grimace, he turned away walking toward the zoo compound. “You better not do anything without seeing Benny Godley, that’s all.” He called back.
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