“Yes. Hinted that I might give each of you something.”
Norliss nodded, turning his cigar to get it burning evenly. Stalker nodded also, and moved on to Andy Bowman, an obvious health addict in his mid-forties, with a handsome face and an assured, slightly sardonic air.
“Something that you want very much.” Stalker’s voice suddenly snapped. “Isn’t that so, Andy?”
“Yes, Eric,” said Bowman evenly.
Stalker had passed around the end of the table to Chuck Hoffe’s place. The plainclothesman was half turned to watch him.
“I have thought each of your situations over very carefully indeed,” said Stalker. “And I have decided that I’m not giving any of you one damned thing.”
He nodded, beaming, and slipped out of the room through the door behind him. Hoffe already was halfway to his feet, his face contorted, exclaiming, “I could kill you for this, Stalker!”
All of them, stunned, were on their feet by this time, crowding through the doorway after Stalker.
“You promised me!”
“I was led to believe—”
“Your own daughter, you couldn’t—”
But Stalker stepped into his study and closed the door behind him. They heard the bolt being shot home. Hoffe strode angrily to the massive front door, face set and eyes murderous.
What was it The Saint used to say Chief Inspector Teal from Scotland Yard was being afflicted with? Detectivitis, I believe. I can see you sharpening your wits for the challenge I am setting you, my friend. Beware of detectivitis — what is needed here is observation. Watch closely now. No detail is too miniscule to be unimportant Don’t let your eyes deceive you.
Stalker paused to grin at himself and fuss with his carnation in the ornate full-length mirror fastened to the back of the door. Then he crossed the thick oriental carpet to a painting beside the French doors behind his desk. He swung the hinged painting back against the wall and worked the combination of the safe it concealed. After opening the safe door against the back of the painting, he left it that way, taking nothing from it.
He sat down in the heavy leather swivel chair behind his desk and surveyed the room with a self-satisfied look on his face. He was quite alone. He took paper and an envelope from the top side drawer and began writing with an old-fashioned inkwell pen. The pen made scratching sounds in the silence of the study.
I told you I wouldn’t deceive you, so we will take a quick peek at the rest of the characters in our little drama as Stalker writes his rather nasty screed in his locked study.
Stepdaughter Merrilee is at the makeup table in her room on the second floor, shredding a handkerchief with her teeth and cursing her stepfather. She abruptly gets to her feet and starts for the door with great resolve.
Stalker’s partner in the law office, courtly looking Jon Norliss, is out in back by the pool, pausing to knock the ash off his cigar. He loses control, shreds it against the retaining wall. Now he is turning determinedly back toward the house.
Stalker’s Beverly Hills physician, the dashing Andy Bowman, is throwing up into the toilet on the second floor. He suffers a spastic stomach in moments of ultimate decision.
The vice-cop, Chuck Hoffe, has been walking in circles on the front lawn, smoking a cigarette down to the filter. He throws it away with sudden resolution and strides rapidly off.
Detectivitis, anyone?
Stalker looked up into the face of the person in the middle of the room. In that frozen moment of realization, he could see himself exactly as that person saw him.
A handsome, distinguished man, old-fashioned pen in his left hand, inkwell open on the upper-left-hand corner of the desk blotter. Behind him, the painting swung back against the wall to the right of the wall safe it usually concealed, with the safe door still open against the back of the painting. To the left of the opened safe were the French doors, drapes closed, door latched.
After a moment, as if there were no one else in the room with him, he turned over the sheet of foolscap to blot it, then folded it into the envelope. As he wrote on the envelope, he looked up into that face again.
“You can’t possibly think you’re going to get away with this, you know,” he said in a voice which strove for lightness.
There was no response. Was that perhaps a flicker of fear in Stalker’s eyes? He licked the envelope and put it in the desk, his hands resting on the edge of the still-open drawer.
“Take some time to reconsider?” he asked almost hopefully.
There was no response.
He shouted, “All right, then, damn you, get it ov—”
There was a single gunshot, shockingly loud in the enclosed room. Stalker was slammed backward against his chair by the blast, his arms flying wide with its force.
A smoking .357 Magnum thudded to the carpet several feet from the desk. Stalker was tipped back as if sleeping, legs splayed out under the desk, arms hanging laxly outside the arms of the chair. Red had blossomed on his shirt-front.
A silhouette loomed up against the French doors. Cupped hands circled a face pressed against the glass as the person outside tried to peer in through the closed curtains. The latch rattled, but held.
From beyond the bolted door of the study came confused sounds, muffled voices. Someone began beating on the door, then a key was turned in the lock. The knob was turned, rattled. The door would not open. The bolt held.
From the French doors came the sound of breaking glass.
In the hallway, Merrilee was still trying her key in the lock when the bolt was drawn from the inside. Bowman was crowding her shoulder as the door swung in to frame Chuck Hoffe and Jon Norliss in the opening.
“Stalker’s dead,” Hoffe said matter-of-factly.
Merrilee and Bowman shoved past him into the room without speaking, to get a glimpse of the body slumped behind the desk.
Ah, yes, my friend, these are the vital moments for the little gray cells, as Hercule Poirot was fond of calling them. Everything is laid bare for the inquiring mind that wants to know. Remember, there are only the study door and the French doors. Remember, also, that everyone is suspect.
“Look — don’t touch,” warned Hoffe. “I have to call forensics. But before I do—”
He stood on the other side of the desk from the dead man, the others ranging naturally behind him. He pointed as he spoke. “Just so we agree on the physical evidence. Stalker is slumped in his chair behind his desk, dead, shot once through the old pump. Powder bums around the wound. The inkwell on the upper-right corner of the desk has been overturned and the ink has spilled out. A .357 Magnum is lying on the floor approximately ten feet from the right edge of the desk. It is probably the murder weapon, probably dropped there by the killer. Okay so far?”
There were several assenting sounds. He went on.
“On the wall behind the desk is a hinged painting, swung open so it is lying against the wall to the left of a wall safe, which is also open. To the right of the safe, the French doors are now open. One pane is broken and glass is shattered inward across the floor. Those doors were locked when I tried them from the outside — I had to bust one of the panes to get in.”
No reactions. Hoffe wrapped a handkerchief around his hand to pick up the phone receiver. He tapped out a number. “Since we’ve agreed on the crime scene, I’ll call it in.”
No one dissented. Bowman, ever the physician, crouched beside the body to check the obviously dead wrist for a pulse. Norliss stared glumly at the body.
Bowman stood up and shrugged. “The Grim Reaper and all that.”
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” intoned Norliss.