by Henry, Kane,
“Sweet thinking, kiddo. And then, like all of them, he got greedy when he got his hunk and wouldn’t share with Sandra. He had this appointment with her today for a talk and when he wouldn’t fork over …”
“She called me, and she knew whom to call, because she was in on it from the beginning, she was the one who suggested me, because I’m such a God-awful trustworthy nothing. She called me …”
“But he had followed her home, and when he heard what she was up to, he finished her off. She was another loose remnant to be cleared away.”
“Correct, my dear Watson … er … Lieutenant. And now if you will kindly place an ink-pad upon the fingers of our comatose Mr. Reed, there’s not a doubt in my mind that they’ll match up with the prints on the gun from Mantell’s apartment …”
“Nice work, kiddo.”
“Precise moment,” I said.
“What the devil is this precise moment pitch you’re on?”
“Got it from a Greek philosopher.”
“Got what?”
“A fragment of time in connection with a fragment of space … creates the precise moment.”
Parker scratched a stubby finger against his temple. “How’s that?” he inquired.
“I came here with a little black book. But I came at that fragment of time that Abner Reed was here, occupying this fragment of space. One in connection with the other … created the precise moment.”
“Meaning?”
“If both wouldn’t have coincided, perfectly, this guy’d be off for a year in Europe, and by then that voice would no longer be fresh in my memory, and your Abner Reed snatch would have gone down in the books as another unsolved crime. Ecstatic and catastrophic.”
“Wha’ …?” he said dazedly. “What’s that last?”
“From my Greek philosopher. Ecstatic for us, catastrophic for him. Bye now. I’ve got a date.”
“Date. Date. Stick around. You’re entitled to some glory.”
“Glory’s waiting for me.”
“That good, huh? Who’s the date with?”
“The Greek philosopher.”
His forehead creased into many wrinkles. “Greek philosopher? Not you. You’re a guy for dames.”
“Bye, Lieutenant.”
As I went to the door and he bent to the stricken Abner Reed, I could hear him mumble: “Oh, that Peter Chambers, go figure the guy, unpredictable Peter …”
THE END
If you liked The Case of the Murdered Madame check out:
Armchair in Hell
Chapter One
THE DEVIL WAS a dentist with a drill.
I was in an armchair in hell.
So I woke up: but the buzzing persisted.
The buzzing crystallized into sound with meaning.
Someone had dug his finger into the hole around my doorbell, and it was endless, like music out of a juke box in the rear end of a gin mill.
I worked my eyes open and I groped for the light switch and I found it. It was five minutes after midnight by my wrist watch, which wasn’t on my wrist or on the night table, but askew amongst other trinkets on top of an untidy hill of miscellaneous clothes by the side of the bed.
I got up and I clucked at my awful reflection in the mirror.
I went to the door.
“Well,” I croaked. “Viggy O’Shea. A pleasure. Go home.”
Dimly I knew that that was no way to talk to Viggy O’Shea, and no way to act. Viggy O’Shea was a natural for a private richard, and a private richard could be a very wealthy individual with only Viggy O’Shea as his entire clientele.
“What’s with you?” I remarked.
“Just as I thought.” He extended five fingers and he pushed, unlovingly, and I folded into a love seat.
He closed the door and he snapped the peg, which gave us bracket lights, and he stuffed his hat and coat into a closet. He took off his jacket, carefully, and he draped it across the back of a fan chair. He took off his tie and he sighed once, but gustily, and then he did an akimbo with his hands on his broad yaller belt and he glared at me.
I tried to glare back. I couldn’t quite make it.
“All right. You’re here. Nice of you to drop in. So curl up on the sofa and drop dead.”
“Plastered,” he said. “Just as I thought. Stiff as a bugle.”
He yanked me out of the chair and he took me out of my pajamas and he walked me to the bathroom and he pushed me into the stall shower.
2
Coffee and more coffee. Black and Bitter.
“We’ve got work,” he said, “chum-boy.”
“Yes, Viggy. I lost a girl,” I said. “I suffer.”
He tinctured a snort with a sniff and a gurgle; then he eased out of the chair and I trailed him to the living room.
“You lost a girl,” he said. “That’s bad.”
“Bad. The love of my life. The gracious Lolita.”
“The love of his life. Get dressed. We’ve wasted a lot of time.”
I went to the bedroom. I picked some underclothes from a drawer. “The love of my life,” I grumbled.
“What?”
“The real damn love of my life. The gracious whatever her name is. Gave me the air.”
“That’s enough. I’ve heard that real damn love lament of yours before. You’re glad to get rid of the lollipop. But it’s another excuse for tying on a jag.”
I sighed, one leg in my trousers and one leg out.
I twitched a little.
He slapped me across the face. I lost my pants.
“Unnecessary,” I said in a surprisingly accurate tone of disdain. Then I wiped my nose and found my pants and clambered into them and went looking for a shirt; but he came after me and he turned me around and he squeezed big hands on my shoulders and he left them there.
“Pull yourself together, for Chrissake. Please.”
“Believe me,” I said. “I’m together.”
He went back to the living room.
I got into my socks and my shoes and I buttoned my shirt and put on my tie and knocked off a Duke of Windsor knot first crack, and then Viggy showed up again.
“How we doing?”
“Not bad.”
“You ready?”
“What cooks?”
“I’ve got a dame at home.”
“Good.”
“In bed.”
“Very good.”
“A brunette.”
“A brunette!” I yapped at him, nose to nose, and I waited
a second and then I went away and started pulling off my tie. “For that I’m taken out of a warm bed and pushed around. Because the guy is a nut on blondes.”
“A dead brunette.”
Viggy put his hat on, neat and slanty over his eye.
3
He spread out and he sprawled in his corner of the cab, silent as the dummy minus Bergen.
Me too. In my corner.
The cab pulled up and we got out and Viggy paid off and we went up the four steps of a four-step stoop. Viggy lived on East Seventy-sixth Street, squash amongst the swanky-panks, in a narrow two-story house set back from the building line, fronted by a tiny grass lawn split in the middle by a sidewalk-path leading to the steps.
He got his keys out and he opened the door quickly and we hung our hats and coats on an old-fashioned coat rack in the foyer. Light streamed through an arched doorway on the right. Farther back to the right, a steep stairway rose, gray-carpeted. Light streamed also, from behind the stairs.
I knew the house: a cellar, a ground floor, a first floor, and a second floor (and what a cellar). The arch-way on the right was the drawing room, and the kitchen was behind the stairs.
I edged over and peeked into the spacious drawing room.
An intricate chandelier spread light over heavy grouped furniture and a thick Chinese rug, and light jumped back in reflected bunches from a massive rectangular thick-wood shining table in the middle of the room, topped with a long strip of white lace doily and three
silver vases with artificial flowers. Ten carved-back chairs with red velvet seats surrounded the table, a chair at either end.
Solidly, a man sat with his back to us in the chair at the foot of the table. Quietly. A man with a high proud plume of wavy iron-gray hair. I couldn’t see his face. He didn’t turn around. It wasn’t that he was impolite: it was more that a knife was in his back, high in a corner, the snub hilt pointing back at me like a stiff tongue pushed out in derision.
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Text Copyright © 1955 by Henry Kane
Cover Art, Design, and Layout Copyright © 2012 by F+W Media, Inc.
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Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4040-3
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4040-0