More Cases of a Private Eye: Classic Crime Stories. Ernest Dudley
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“Not much more we can do until the police arrive.”
He followed Morris down into the hall.
Simone was waiting by the front door wearing a martyred look. Craig grinned at her.
“We’ll wait in there,” he said to Morris, indicating a door on the right. By his reckoning it must be the room where they had seen a light earlier.
“You are going to wait?”
There was a surprised lift to the man’s dreary tones.
Craig’s eyebrows lifted.
“Naturally. The police will want to see us, astonishing as it may seem to you.”
Morris permitted himself to smile.
“Very well.”
He opened the door into the lounge. It was a long room, running the width of the house with windows back and front. Craig wandered thoughtfully over to the window that led into the back garden.
“Check up on that phone call,” he told Simone.
Morris sat himself quietly down in an unobtrusive corner while she picked up the receiver and dialled. When she had hung up she went over to Craig.
“They’re on their way,” she told him as he lit a cigarette. “Incidentally, I thought I heard someone moving about in here while I was waiting in the hall.”
Craig threw a glance over in Morris’s direction. He did not appear to have heard them.
“It wouldn’t altogether surprise me,” Craig murmured. He stepped through the French windows that led on to the gravel path running round the house.
His eyes flicked over the loose earth at the base of the thirty-foot ladder that stood about two feet away from the foundations of the house. The ladder reached up to the window of Lucas’s bedroom. He smiled grimly as he stooped down to inspect more closely the prints of a man’s shoes in the soft ground.
When he was through, he went back into the lounge and said to Morris:
“Is there any other way out of the back garden except through this room?”
“No. There is no connecting path through to the front garden, and, as you can see, a wall surrounds the back.”
There was a hush in the room as Craig tapped the ash off his cigarette into the grate in a leisurely fashion.
“That’s what I thought.”
He said it so softly that the hidden meaning in his words temporarily escaped Morris.
“The man I saw escaping over the wall must have had a grudge against poor Lucas,” Morris said expressionlessly. “I—I don’t like to say it, but Lucas had a funny way with him. Of course, he and I always got on extremely well,” he added hastily. “But there is no denying it, Lucas had got enemies.”
A crafty glint had appeared in Morris’s eyes. He moved in a sliding movement and stood at Craig’s shoulder looking up at him.
“By the way,” he inquired softly, “who are you?”
“Craig,” said Craig. He didn’t see why, at this juncture, he should enlighten him any further.
Morris puzzled over the name.
“Sounds familiar. Why so officious, checking up on my phone calls?”
“I’m a friend of Lucas.” There was no mistaking the mockery in Craig’s tone. “As good a friend as you were.”
“Maybe I heard Lucas say something about you.” Then another angle occurred to him. “What do you mean, as good a friend as I was?”’
Craig looked innocent.
“Weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was. I told you that.” The crafty look had returned to his eyes. “Maybe we have a lot in common.”
Craig shook his head.
“I don’t really care for redheads,” he said chattily. “I go for brunettes.”
“What do you mean?”
“You should know what I mean by redheads. By the way, where is she?”
“Where is who?”
Craig sighed.
“What a lot of question and answer we do have before we get anywhere. The girl friend. Your girl friend. Strawberry-blonde, I believe is another name for ’em—and this one has a temper. You’ll have to be careful!”
“Careful?”
“Here we go again. Yes, careful. You might go the same way as Lucas. Anyway, I’m crazy to meet her, and she was here a few minutes ago.”
He looked round with interest.
Simone’s eyes widened as the other backed against a small table.
“I don’t know what your game is, Mr. Craig, or who you are, but I do know you know too much.” He leapt for Craig’s throat, but he never reached it: he was much too busy sprawling backwards against the table after he had collided head-on with a punch like a kangaroo’s kick. As he staggered to his feet:
“Good night, Mr. Morris.” That was the last he heard before something like a block of steel hit him somewhere on the point of the chin and he slid into a deep and peaceful sleep.
Craig turned to Simone.
“It’s so easy—” he began, but she wasn’t there.
Over by the open window the redhead was raising herself slowly and painfully from a position she had been occupying flat on her face on the carpet. Over her stood a breathless but triumphant Simone, clutching a poker in one hand. She looked at Craig.
“You were saying?” she asked.
He grinned at her. He said:
“Just that it’s easy when you know how. And apparently you know how. What happened?”
“Just as that horrible man jumped at you I saw the curtain by the window move. You were busy so I thought I would do a little work myself. So, when she came out with a poker in her hand I kicked her hard on the shin and tripped her up.”
Craig started to laugh. He cast a dispassionate eye on the redhead.
“Get up,” he told her. “You look much more alluring on your feet.”
She paid no attention, but continued to sit on the floor, her head in her hands with her red hair falling about her face.
“Get up.”
She looked at him, her green eyes dazed, but there was all fury there too.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“I might,” said Craig politely, “ask you the same.”
“Mind your own business.”
Craig shrugged.
“Have it your way. Only the police will be here in a minute and they will probably want to know. If they don’t already.”
“They don’t. I’m Babs Wilson.” Her lip curled. “If that’s any use to you.”
He smiled blandly.
She scrambled to her feet, glowering at him. Craig said chattily: “I’ve got all the information we’ll need, but I’d like to know why you did it?”
“Did—what?”
“Murdered Lucas.”
He lit a cigarette and eyed her over the top of his lighter. She had gone deathly white and her hand pushing her hair back was shaking.
“I didn’t,” she