More Cases of a Private Eye: Classic Crime Stories. Ernest Dudley
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was attractive and showing plenty of sheer silk-stocking. Her hair was beautiful. Like a flame, and long and silky.
Craig worked his gaze round to her face and it startled him.
There was a murderous look about the sulky mouth. He switched over to her companion. There was something vaguely familiar about his back. The thick squareness of the neck and shoulders.
Craig frowned over the flame of his lighter. His narrowed eyes went on puzzling about the identity of that back.
Quite suddenly the redhead stood up. It was a swift movement, like a python preparing to strike, and she seemed to be issuing an ultimatum.
The man leaned back and laughed, then he shook his head. The redhead bent over the table, her long hair falling over the curve of her cheek and, from the fierce way she was speaking, Craig gathered the conversation was not exactly dripping with friendship. The man made a short reply and the redhead mashed her cigarette angrily into an ashtray, and without another word stormed across to the door.
As she went the man turned, obviously amused to witness her exit, and in a flash Craig got it.
“What is it?” Simone asked him.
Craig unhitched himself from the bar.
“Hang on a second,” he told her, “and keep your eye on that character in the corner with the neck like a bull. I’ll be back.”
“But—”
But Craig wasn’t there any more. He reached the door only just in time to spot the redhead standing on the kerb outside. She was clearly waiting for someone.
As Craig hesitated in the doorway a thin little figure of a man joined her under the street lamp, they exchanged a few words, and then the girl hailed a cruising cab. Craig was too far away to catch the address. Then, as he didn’t want to lose his old friend in the bar, he made his way back to Simone.
“The man in the corner has just left by the other door,” she told him. She was tapping an impatient foot. Her curiosity got the better of her. “Who was he?”
“He’s an unsavoury customer by the name of Lucas. He’s been mixed up in every kind of racket you can think of, plus a few more. So far he has managed to evade the police. Last I heard he’d been abroad. Wonder what the game is this time.”
“Maybe he’s gone and got straight ideas?” suggested Simone.
“So has a spiral staircase.”
They had another drink. Craig downed it in silence. Out of the blue he announced:
“I’m slipping.”
“Why?”’ asked Simone, not visibly perturbed.
He looked at her.
“Lucas. We might do some checking up.”
“He’s been gone a long time.”
“We’ll take a chance and call on him.”
“I thought he had been abroad?”
Craig was piloting her to the door.
“So he has. But he has a house in Kensington, which he may have returned to. It’s worth a try.”
Simone said nothing. There seemed to be nothing to say. After all, she liked excitement, in or out of office hours.
Five minutes later they turned into Park Lane and grabbed a taxi. A quarter of an hour later they drew up outside a large house surrounded by a beshrubbed garden in an expensive corner of Kensington. There was a light burning in a downstairs room.
“There’s someone in, anyway,” Simone murmured as Craig turned from paying off the driver.
“Question is—who?” Craig smiled at her in the darkness.
He rang twice before the door opened a crack and a sallow-faced individual poked his nose into the air.
“What’s the matter?” Craig asked with concern. “Afraid of getting a cold?”
“What do you want?”
“To see Mr. Lucas.”
“I’m afraid—” began Sallow Face, then he glanced down at Craig’s feet neatly wedged between door and doorpost and licked his lips. “Perhaps you had better come in.”
“That’s what I thought,” Craig said chattily.
Standing under the hall light, the man peered at them nervously and fingered his lapel.
“I’m afraid—” he tried again.
“We gathered you are.” Craig was finding the conversation beginning to sag. “If Mr. Lucas isn’t in, we’ll wait.”
For a second something like a sour smile appeared round Sallow Face’s lips, but it was a fleeting expression. Then he lowered his eyes and said primly:
“He is in.”
“What are we waiting for?”
“He’s dead.”
Sallow Face’s reply was something Craig hadn’t expected. He snapped:
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs.” The other took a flickering look at Craig’s face as he placed his hand on the banisters. “It—it is a terrible tragedy. I think he’s been murdered. You must forgive me if I seem—” He broke off. “I’m rather upset. I have just telephoned the police.”
“That’s something,” Craig said. “Come on. Show me the way.”
Simone made a move to follow him. He admired her determination, but there was no need for her to get mixed up in this more than was necessary. “Keep guard in the hall,” he told her.
She nodded and drifted obediently back to the front door.
Sallow Face was waiting patiently on the bottom stair. “You are a friend of Mr. Lucas?”
“Yes,” Craig said without hesitation. “You?”
The man stared into space.
“I was his partner,” he replied quietly. “My name is Morris. Ken Morris.”
Partner in what, Craig wondered. But he said nothing and padded up the stairs behind the other.
Before a closed door, Morris stopped.
“It’s not so very nice,” he said.
Craig looked at him curiously. The man obviously was upset. He didn’t look as if he had the guts to kill a mouse. Craig decided at this stage to keep an open mind.
“I don’t suppose it is. Let’s go in.”
Without another word Morris opened the door and stepped into the room. Lucas was sprawled untidily across the bed, blood oozing from the dent in his head. A newspaper on a chair flapped dismally in the light breeze that drifted through the open window,
Craig paused for a moment by the bed and then walked over to the window. Morris watched him silently from the door.
“What do you know?” Craig asked over his shoulder.
“Not very much. I was downstairs. Mr. Lucas had come up here to fetch some papers he wanted to show me, when I heard the scream. I came as fast as I could, but when I arrived I found him like this.”
“Was the window open?”
“I was coming to that.”
Morris’s mouth twitched with nerves and emotion. Craig let him talk.
“When I recovered from the first shock, I went over to the window and looked out. There was a man climbing over the wall in the back garden—too dark to see properly. He—he must have descended the ladder that is against the window sill.”
Craig