“Here they are.” She pointed to a tier of shelves, stacked with newspapers, separated by layers of cardboard. Together we located the old Globe editions then began peeling off the layers. In ten minutes we both looked like we had been playing in coal. Legs threw me a pout. “I certainly hope that whatever you’re after is worth all this trouble.”
“It is, honey,” I told her, “it is. Keep your eyes open for October 9.”
Another five minutes, then, “This it?”
I would have kissed her if she didn’t have such a dirty face. “That’s the one. Thanks.”
She handed it over. I glanced at the dateline, then at the one in my hand. They matched. We laid the paper out on a reading desk and pulled on the overhead light. I thumbed through the leaves, turning them over as I scanned each column. Legs couldn’t stand it any longer. “Please . . . what are you looking for?”
I said a nasty word and tapped the bottom of the page.
“But . . .”
“I know. It’s gone. Somebody ripped it out.”
She said the same nasty word, then asked, “What was it?”
“Beats me, honey. Got any duplicates around?”
“No, we only keep one copy. There’s rarely any call for them except from an occasional high school history student who is writing a thesis on something or other.”
“Uh-huh.” Tearing that spot out wasn’t going to do any good. There were other libraries. Somebody was trying to stall me for time. Okay, okay, I have all the time in the world. More time than you have, brother.
I helped her stack the papers back on their shelves before going upstairs. We both ducked into washrooms to get years of dust off our skin, only she beat me out. I half expected it anyway.
When we were walking toward the door I dropped a flyer. “Say, do you know Myra Grange?” Her breath caught and held. “Why . . . no. That is, isn’t she the one . . . I mean with Mr. York?”
I nodded. She had made a good job of covering up, but I didn’t miss that violent blush of emotion that surged into her cheeks at the mention of Grange’s name. So this was why the vanishing lady spent so many hours in the library. “The same,” I said. “Did she ever go down there?”
“No.” A pause. “No, I don’t think so. Oh, yes. She did once. She took the boy . . . Mr. York’s son down there, but that was when I first came here. I went with them. They looked over some old manuscripts, but that was all.”
“When was she here last?”
“Who are you?” She looked scared.
My badge was in my hand. She didn’t have to read it. All she needed was the sight of the shield to start shaking. “She was here . . . about a week ago.”
Very carefully, I looked at her. “No good. That was too long ago. Let’s put it this way. When did you see her last?” Legs got the point. She knew I knew about Myra and guessed as much about her. Another blush, only this one faded with the fear behind it.
“A . . . a week ago, I told you.” I thanked her and went out. Legs was lying through her teeth and I couldn’t blame her.
The water was starting to bubble now. It wouldn’t be long before it started to boil. Two things to do before I went to New York, one just for the pleasure of it. I made my first stop at a drugstore. A short, squat pharmacist came out from behind the glass partition and murmured his greetings. I threw the pills I had taken from Henry’s bottle on the counter in front of me.
“These were being taken for aspirin,” I said. “Can you tell me what they are?”
He looked at me and shrugged, picking up one in his fingers. He touched a cautious tongue to the white surface, then smelled it. “Not aspirin,” he told me. “Have you any idea what they might be?”
“I’d say sleeping pills. One of the barbiturates.” The druggist nodded and went back behind his glass. I waited perhaps five minutes before he came back again.
“You were right,” he said. I threw two five-dollar bills on the counter and scooped up the rest of the pills. Very snazzy, killer, you got a lot of tricks up your sleeve. A very thorough guy. It was going to be funny when I had that killer at the end of my rod. I wondered if he was thorough enough to try to get rid of me.
Back and forth, back and forth. Like a swing. From kidnapping to murder to petty conniving and back to the kidnapping again. Run, run, run. Shuttle train stuff. Too many details. They were like a shroud that the killer was trying to draw around the original motive. That, there had to be. Only it was getting lost in the mess. It could have been an accident, this eruption of pointless crimes, or they might have happened anyway, or they could have been foreseen by the killer and used to his own advantage. No, nobody could be that smart. There’s something about crime that’s like a disease. It spreads worse than the flu once it gets started. It already had a good start when Ruston was kidnapped. It seemed like that was months ago, but it wasn’t . . . just a few short days.
I reviewed every detail on my way to Wooster, but the answer always came up the same. Either I was dumb or the killer was pretty cagey. I had to find Mallory, I had to find Grange, I had to find the killer if he wasn’t one of those two. So far all I found was a play behind the curtain.
Halfway there I gave up thinking and concentrated on the road. With every mile I’d gotten madder until I was chain-smoking right through my deck of butts. Wooster was alive this time. People walked along the streets in noisy contentment, limousines blared indignantly at lesser cars in front of them, and a steady stream of traffic went in and out of the shop doors. There was plenty of room in front of Alice’s house. I parked the car and went into the foyer, remembering vividly the crack on my skull.
This time the buzz was a short one. I took the stairs fast, but she was faster. She stood in the door with a smile, ready to be kissed. I said, “Hello, Alice,” but I didn’t kiss her. Her smile broke nervously.
“What’s the matter, Mike?”
“Nothing, kid, nothing at all. Why?”
“You look displeased about something.” That was putting it mildly.
I went inside without lifting my hat. Alice went to reach for the decanter, but I stopped her by throwing the envelope on the coffee table. “You were looking for these, I think.”
“I?” She pulled one of the pictures out of the wrapper, then shoved it back hastily, her face going white. I grinned.
Then I got nasty. “In payment for last night.”
“You can go now.”
“Uh-uh. Not yet.” Her eyes followed mine to the ashtray. There were four butts there, two of them had lipstick on them and the other two weren’t my brand.
Alice tried to scream a warning, but it never got past her lips. The back of my hand caught her across the mouth and she rolled into the sofa, gasping with the sting of the blow. I turned on my heels and went to the bedroom and kicked the door open. William Graham was sitting on the edge of the bed as nice as you please smoking a cigarette. His face was scratched in a dozen places and hunks torn out of his clothes from the briars in the woods.
Every bit of color drained out of his skin. I grabbed him before he could stand up and smashed him right in the nose. Blood spurted all over my coat. His arms flailed out, trying to push me away, but I clipped him again on the nose, and again, until there was nothing but a soggy, pulpy mass of flesh to hit. Then I went to work on the rest of his puss. Slapping, punching, then a nasty cut with the side of my hand. He was limp in my grasp, his head thrown back and his eyes wide open. I let him go and he sagged into a shapeless heap on the floor. It was going to take a thousand dollars worth of surgery to make his face the same.
Alice had seen and heard. When I went into the living room she was crouched in terror behind a chair. That didn’t stop me. I yanked her out; her dress split down the middle. “Lie to me, Alice,” I warned, “and you’ll look just like him. Maybe worse. You put him up to bumping me, didn’t you?”