She wasn't wearing any clothes, and she still had her bathing cap on. She was just another naked woman. Carstairs wailed and skidded and hiked back around the corner. The screaming redoubled.
Melissa ran, trying frantically to wrap the towel around herself She reached the corner. There were screams to her right and screams to her left and screams in front of her, undulating in weird concatenation. Their intensity seemed to center toward the left. Melissa went that way.
She turned into a long low room where sun lamps coiled like chromium cobras among women who screamed and squirmed and clutched at themselves. She ran through another room where women writhed helplessly in the metallic grip of permanent wave machines. She got out into another hall in time to see Carstairs hurdle gracefully over a pile of whooping casualties.
Melissa fought and clawed her way over cringing, sweaty bodies and made it out into the clear again. Carstairs had hit a dead end and was on his way back, running with desperate, driving effort.
"Stop, you!" Melissa shrieked. She swooped at him, arms spread.
Carstairs dodged and whipped sideways through a curtained doorway, and Melissa went right after him. It was a low-ceilinged, dank room with a white tiled floor and walls that glistened damply. Carstairs was headed for the door at the other end.
Right in front of this door there was an oblong opening in the floor--a little longer and a little wider than a grave. It was filled to the brim with something black and malignantly slick. Carstairs intended to jump over it. His foot slipped.
He yelled--one last, lorn note of utter despair. He fell full length in the mud bath, and the mud bath went off in an explosion that splattered the whole room and everything in it, including Melissa.
Carstairs was incapable of making any more noise, but he wasn't defeated, even now. He scrambled frantically to get out. Melissa wiped the mud out of her eyes and hit him with her fist m the approximate spot she judged his head was.
"Stop, stop!"
Carstairs couldn't stop. He got out of the mud bath, carrying most of its contents on him. He got out through the door, staggering, and bumbled down another hall with Melissa scrambling and grabbing behind him.
The door at the end of the hall was closed. Carstairs lunged and hit it with his remaining strength. The door popped open Carstairs fell into the anteroom. The three fat ladies were long gone. Carstairs was trying feebly to crawl under one of the dusty pink lounges when Melissa landed on him.
"Carstairs!" she shouted furiously. She dug through the mud and found an ear and jerked it hard. "I'm me! I'm here!"
Carstairs blubbered at her in pitiable relief. He tried to sit in her lap.
Melissa punched him. "Behave yourself, you fool!" There were knees digging into her back, and Melissa brushed at them absently. "Get away and give me room to... What?" She turned her head slowly.
Eric Trent was sitting on the lounge. His mouth was open.
There was one of those silences.
Melissa suddenly remembered her towel. She pulled it up higher. That was bad. She pulled it down lower. That was not good, either.
"Turn around, you gaping idiot!" she snarled.
Trent behaved as though he hadn't heard her. There was a look on his face that was half a smile of amusement and half an expression of artistic appreciation. "Gosh, Melissa," he said, "you've got a pretty nice--er--you look pretty wonderful--er--what I mean is..."
"I know what you mean!" Melissa spat. "So this is what those years on an icicle or iceberg or whatever did to you, is it? Ogling helpless unclothed women!" She scraped a handful of mud off her thigh and hurled it at him. "Didn't you hear me? I said turn your head!"
A glob of mud struck Trent on the nose. He turned his head so fast his neck clicked.
Melissa rewound the towel. "All right," she told him.
Trent looked at her and swallowed. "Did you have an accident or--or something?"
"Me?" said Melissa. "Oh, no. I do this sort of thing all day every day."
Trent swallowed again. "I--see."
Melissa took off her bathing cap and slapped at him viciously with it. "Why do you always have to be sneaking around and spying on me?"
Trent blocked the blow with his arm. "I am not sneaking around and I am not spying on you."
"You liar. Doan told you I was coming here, so you had to come snooping."
"Doan didn't either tell me you were coming here. I had no idea you were."
"Pooh-bah! I suppose you came to get a permanent wave? You don't need it. The one you have hasn't grown out yet."
"I came here," said Trent evenly, "because my wife sent for me."
"That was very nice of you, Eric," said a new voice. It was a voice that was hoarsely hollow and smooth at the same time. It sounded a little like a billiard ball rolling down a rain spout.
Melissa turned her head slowly again.
This was Heloise of Hollywood. She was tall and erect and sleekly slim, and she had jade green eyes. There wasn't a line in her face or a wrinkle in her neck, but she was fifty-four years old. No one could possibly have gotten as hard as she was in less than that time. The hardness wasn't a mask--it wasn't even striated. It was smooth and icy from outside in and from inside out. She radiated as much warmth as a diamond.
She studied Melissa for a moment. "Is that your dog?"
"I'm responsible for him."
Heloise nodded. "I wondered if you'd lie--again."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Your name is Melissa Gregory--not Halfinger."
"My name is what I choose to call myself."
Heloise shrugged indifferently. "Quite. I know the dog. It belongs to Doan. It should be shot. It's mad, I think. It started on this rampage just because one of my more stupid customers, who was waiting in here, tried to tie a pink hair ribbon around its neck."
"That would make me mad, too."
Heloise studied her again and then looked at Trent. "I'm afraid your taste is deteriorating, my dear. She's a mess. Even her feet are dirty."
They were.
Trent wiped the mud off his nose with a finger and said: "I wouldn't go too far, if I were you, Heloise."
"Wouldn't you, Eric?" Heloise asked, idly interested.
"No."
They watched each other, and Melissa shivered.
The receptionist came in from the foyer. "Madame, there are two men outside."
"How very interesting," said Heloise.
"Both of them say they are detectives. They are handcuffed together."
"Send them in."
"Yes, Madame." The receptionist had really tried hard, but temptation overcame her. She rolled her eyes in Eric Trent's direction and twitched her hips at him.
In one smooth, deadly motion Heloise picked up a heavy crystal ashtray and threw it. The receptionist shut the door quickly. The ashtray made a dent in it and then clattered dully on the floor.
"Doan must be in trouble again," Heloise said casually.
Humphrey shouldered through the door, dragging Doan along behind him.
"Hi, everybody," Doan said amiably.
"Shut up," Humphrey ordered, jerking on the cuffs that fastened his left arm to Doan's right. "What's going on in this joint, anyway? I heard a lot of screaming."
"A couple of my customers got a little hysterical," Heloise told him.
"It sounded more like--" Humphrey stopped and stared incredulously. "Wheee-hooo! Look at that, will you? Wheee-hooo-hooo-hooo!" He collapsed against the wall, shaking helplessly with laughter.
Heloise said impatiently: "Take the dog inside and clean it And you'd better do a little work on yourself at the same time."
Melissa groped through a crust of mud and located Carstairs' collar. She led him toward the inner door. When they reached it, Carstairs suddenly twitched the collar out of her grasp and turned around. His eyes were bright red.
Humphrey stopped laughing.
Carstairs turned around again and preceded Melissa through the door. Melissa slammed it emphatically
behind her.
"Say," said Humphrey uneasily, "I didn't like the way he looked at me just then."
"You thought about that a little bit too late," Doan said. "Don't ever let him catch you up a dark alley. People who laugh at him often have fatal accidents."
"He caused plenty of accidents here," Heloise said. "He ran wild through this place. He must have damaged a thousand dollars worth of equipment."
"That was naughty of him," said Doan. "I shall speak to him severely."
"Not only that, but he caused a general attack of hysteria among the customers."
"Charge them for it."
Heloise stared at him. "You know, sometimes you act quite bright." She snapped her fingers.
The receptionist opened the door and looked around its edge cautiously. "Yes, Madame?"
"Double all the bills this afternoon."
"Yes, Madame."
In the back room one of the girls started the old screaming routine again.
Heloise's nostrils flared. "If that dog..."
The scream whooped down the corridor in their direction, and then the door of the anteroom burst open.
"Gad," said Humphrey in an awed murmur.
The screamer was pink and enormous and bare as the day she was born.
"Murder!" she squalled at them. "Murr-durr!"
She collapsed, then, in a suety quivering heap.
"Gad," said Humphrey, even more awed.
A white-clad attendant came down the hall carrying a sheet She dropped the sheet over the screamer, and the sheet began to quiver uncannily, too.
"Madame," said the attendant, "there is a corpse in one of the massage rooms."
"What?" said Humphrey, suddenly coming to. "What was that?"
"Is it a customer?" Heloise asked.
"Yes, Madame."
"Hey!" said Humphrey. "Corpse? Did I hear you say--corpse?"
Heloise stepped over the quivering sheet and started down the corridor. "What number?"
"Seven, Madame."
"Here!" said Humphrey. He darted after Heloise, tugging Doan along in his wake.
Eric Trent got up from the lounge and followed them. Heloise went to the right at the first turn and to the right again and then stopped and pushed aside a white curtain.
It was a room similar to the one Melissa had used, except that in this one a long white rubbing table with gleaming tubular legs was fastened to the floor under the drop light in the center. There was a woman lying on the table completely covered with a massage sheet except for her bony, beaked face and her long, crook-toed feet. Her tongue was sticking out in a last sardonic gesture of defiance. She was laid out just as though she were in a morgue, and she was just as dead.
"It's the old scrawny dame!" Humphrey blurted. He jerked on the handcuffs. "What's her name?"
"Beulah Porter Cowys," said Doan.
Heloise stepped forward and pulled the sheet down a little. They could all see the spreading blue-black splotches on the lined throat.
"Strangled," said Eric Trent.
Humphrey shot out a pointed finger. "And you were here at the time! I've had an eye on you all the time, bub! You were afraid the old scrawny dame would squawk to your wife about you and that Melissa number, and so you followed her here and planted Doan outside for a lookout and sicked that damned Carstairs on the customers to create a riot, and then you wrung her neck for her!"
"What's your name?" Heloise asked coldly.
"Huh? Humphrey."
"He's the same one," said Doan.
Heloise walked over to the couch and picked up the telephone. "Get me the sheriffs office. His headquarters."
"That's not going to do you one bit of good," Humphrey informed her, "because this is a very clear-cut case of conspiracy to--"
Heloise spoke into the telephone: "Hello. This is Heloise of Hollywood. I want to speak to your boss. Hello, Mouthy? This is Heloise. I had some of my friends speak to you last night about one of your trained apes. He's here at my place now, annoying me. I'm getting a little tired of this character, Mouthy. I want you to talk to him. This time make things clear." She held out the phone toward Humphrey.
Humphrey took it gingerly. "Hello." The phone buzzed at him like a rattlesnake. "Yes, sir. But--Yes, sir... But I--Yes, sir... No, sir... But there's been another murder right here in--Yes, sir...Yes, sir... Yes, sir... Yes, sir... Yes, sir." The phone popped and quit rattling.
"Well?" said Heloise. "Have you got things straight now?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Humphrey soberly.
Two uniformed deputies from one of the sheriffs radio prowl cars shouldered into the room.
"Oh, hello," said one of them, recognizing Humphrey. "Some dame phoned in and said there was a murder--"
"Shut up," said Humphrey. "Don't even mention the word It's all a mistake. The dame, here, committed suicide."
"Huh?" said the deputy. "Suicide? She's got finger marks on her gullet."
"So she choked herself to death!" Humphrey snarled. "Is it any of your business? Do you want to disturb the customers? Beat it! Go home!"
The deputies backed off reluctantly. One said, "Well, we'll have to make a report..."
"Yeah," said Humphrey. "To the sheriff, and I want to be right there when you do. I want to hear that. I'm coming with you now."
He started down the hall.
Doan jerked him to a halt. "I don't want to walk around with you any more."
"You'll walk or get carried."
"Wait a minute," said Trent. "What did you arrest him for this time?"
"For loitering and suspicion of grand larceny---auto. He was loafing out in front in a car that wasn't his."
"That's my car," sand Trent, "and I told him to wait in it while I was in here."
"Take those handcuffs off him," said Heloise.
"Yes, ma'am," said Humphrey, obeying.
"Get out," said Heloise. "And stay out."
"Yes, ma'am," said Humphrey.
* * *
The shadows were stretching long and thin over the mathematical segments of lawn when Doan and Eric Trent walked diagonally across the Quad. They found Humphrey sitting and brooding on the front steps of Old Chem. He was hunched up, with his chin resting grimly in his hands. He looked like he had been sitting for quite some time and intended to keep on doing it until he got what he wanted.
"Look who's loitering now," Doan said.
"Shut up," said Humphrey. He was watching Trent. "What are you doing here? You've got no classes at this hour of the day."
"I don't think it's any of your business," Trent informed him, "but I don't mind telling you. I came over to take a sundown reading on my instruments."
"What instruments?"
"Various weather recording instruments. You wouldn't know what they were if I told you."
"What are you doing here?" Doan inquired.
Humphrey nodded at him. "You're a very clever lad, Doan."
"This is so sudden," said Doan.
"Yeah. You're clever, and you've got lots of heavy artillery in the shape of influence lined up behind you. But I'm clever, too."
"No kidding?" Doan asked, surprised.
"Yup. And I'm mad."
"Dear me," said Doan.
"And I've got an idea."
"Oh, boy."
"Do you want to hear it?"
"No."
"You're going to, though," said Humphrey. "My idea is this Melissa Gregory."
"Why don't you just relax for a while, Humphrey?"
"Shut up. Melissa Gregory is at the bottom of this pileup, and you're not going to lure me off on any of your false trails."
"I suppose she popped herself on the jaw?"
"No. I don't mean she's the murderer. I mean, she's the motive. Trent is the one who popped her."
"What?" said Trent incredulously. "Are you saying I popped her? Now look here, you. You can't go around making accusations like that about me or about Melissa either. She's a nice girl and I won't stand for anybody talk
ing about her."
"I knew it! I knew it!" Humphrey chortled. "You're talking up for her and that means only one thing--you're crazy for her."
"I am?" said Trent. "For her?"
The Essential Works of Norbert Davis Page 32