hands, his eyes were fixed on the wall in a blank stare, his mouth open. He never saw me. I shook him, he was stiff as a board, every muscle in his body as rigid as a piece of steel. He jerked convulsively once or twice, never taking his eyes from the wall. It took a lot of force to pull his arms up and straighten him out.
“Harvey, did you call that doctor?”
Billy sang out, “He’s doing it now, Mike.”
“Damn it, tell him to hurry. The kid’s having a fit or something.”
He hollered down the stairs to Harvey; I could hear the excited stuttering over the telephone, but it would be awhile before a medic would reach the house. Ruston began to tremble, his eyes rolled back in his head. Leaning over I slapped him sharply across the cheek.
“Ruston, snap out of it.” I slapped him again. “Ruston.”
This time his eyelids flickered, he came back to normal with a sob. His mouth twitched and he covered his face with his hands. Suddenly he sat up in bed and shouted, “Mike!”
“I’m right here, kid,” I said, “take it easy.” His face found mine and he reached for my hand. He was trembling from head to foot, his body bathed in cold sweat.
“Miss Malcom . . . ?”
“Is all right,” I answered. “She just got a good scare, that’s all.” I didn’t want to frighten him any more than he was. “Did someone come in here?”
He squeezed my hand. “No . . . there was a noise, and Miss Malcom screamed. Mike, I’m not very brave at all. I’m scared.”
The kid had a right to be. “It was nothing. Cover up and be still. I’ll be in the next room. Want me to leave the door open?”
“Please, Mike.”
I left the light on and put a rubber wedge under the door to keep it open. Billy was standing by the bed holding a handkerchief to Roxy’s shoulder. I took it away and looked at it. Not much of a wound, the bullet was of small caliber and had gone in and come out clean. Billy poked me and pointed to the window. The pane had spiderwebbed into a thousand cracks with a neat hole at the bottom a few inches above the sill. Tiny glass fragments winked up from the floor. The shot had come in from below, traveling upward. Behind me in the wall was the bullet hole, a small puncture head high. I dug out the slug from the plaster and rolled it over in my hand. A neat piece of lead whose shape had hardly been deformed by the wall, caliber .32. York’s gun had found its way home.
I tucked it in my watch pocket. “Stay here, Billy, I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” He didn’t like me to leave.
“I got a friend downstairs.”
Junior was struggling to his feet when I reached him. I helped him with a fist in his collar. This little twerp had a lot of explaining to do. He was a sorry-looking sight. Pieces of gravel were imbedded in the flesh of his face and blood matted the hair of his scalp. One lens of his specs was smashed. I watched him while he detached his lower lip from his teeth, swearing incoherently. The belting he took had left him half dazed, and he didn’t try to resist at all when I walked him toward the house.
When I sat him in a chair he shook his head, touching the cut on his temple. He kept repeating a four-letter word over and over until realization of what had happened hit him. His head came up and I thought he was going to spit at me.
“You got it!” he said accusingly on the verge of tears now.
“Got what?” I leaned forward to get every word. His eyes narrowed.
Junior said sullenly, “Nothing.”
Very deliberately I took his tie in my hand and pulled it. He tried to draw back, but I held him close. “Little chum,” I said, “you are in a bad spot, very bad. You’ve been caught breaking and entering. You stole something from York’s private hideaway and Miss Malcom has been shot. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll talk.”
“Shot . . . killed?”
There was no sense letting him know the truth. “She’s not dead yet. If she dies you’re liable to face a murder charge.”
“No. No. I didn’t do it. I admit I was in the laboratory, but I didn’t shoot her. I . . . I didn’t get a chance to. Those men jumped on me. I fought for my life.”
“Did you? Were you really unconscious? Maybe. I went after them until I heard Miss Malcom scream. Did she scream because you shot her, then faked being knocked out all the while?”
He turned white. A little vein in his forehead throbbed, his hands tightened until his nails drew blood from the palms. “You can’t pin it on me,” he said. “I didn’t do it, I swear.”
“No? What did you take from the room back there?”
A pause, then, “Nothing.”
I reached for his pockets, daring him to move. Each one I turned inside out, dumping their contents around the bottom of the chair. A wallet, theater stubs, two old letters, some keys and fifty-five cents in change. That was all.
“So somebody else wanted what you found, didn’t they?” He didn’t answer. “They got it, too.”
“I didn’t have anything,” he repeated.
He was lying through his teeth. “Then why did they wait for you and beat your brains out? Answer that one.” He was quiet. I took the will out and waved it at him. “It went with this. It was more important than this, though. But what would be more important to you than a will? You’re stupid, Junior. You aren’t in this at all, are you? If you had sense enough to burn it you might have come into big dough when the estate was split up, especially with the kid under age. But no, you didn’t care whether the will was found and probated or not, because the other thing was more important. It meant more money. How, Junior, how?”
For my little speech I had a sneer thrown at me. “All right,” I told him, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Right now you look like hell, but you’re beautiful compared to what you’ll look like in ten minutes. I’m going to slap the crap out of you until you talk. Yell all you want to, it won’t do any good.”
I pulled back my hand. Junior didn’t wait, he started speaking. “Don’t. It was nothing. I . . . I stole some money from my uncle once. He caught me and made me sign a statement. I didn’t want it to be found or I’d never get a cent. That was it.”
“Yes? What made it so important that someone else would want it?”
“I don’t know. There was something else attached to the statement that I didn’t look at. Maybe they wanted that.”
It could have been a lie, but I wasn’t sure. What he said made sense. “Did you shoot Miss Malcom?”
“That’s silly.” I tightened up on the tie again. “Please, you’re choking me. I didn’t shoot anyone. I never saw her. You can tell, the police have a test haven’t they?”
“Yes, a paraffin test. Would you submit to it?”
Relief flooded his face and he nodded. I let him go. If he had pulled the trigger he wouldn’t be so damn anxious. Besides, I knew for sure that he hadn’t been wearing gloves.
A car pulled up outside and Harvey admitted a short, stout man carrying the bag of his profession. They disappeared upstairs. I turned to Junior. “Get out of here, but stay where you can be reached. If you take a powder I’ll squeeze your skinny neck until you turn blue. Remember one thing, if Miss Malcom dies you’re it, see, so you better start praying.”
He shot out of the chair and half ran for the door. I heard his feet pounding down the drive. I went upstairs.
“How is she?” The doctor applied the last of the tape over the compress and turned.
“Nothing serious. Fainted from shock.” He put his instruments back in his bag and took out a notebook. Roxy stirred and woke up.
“Of course you know I’ll have to report this. The police must have a record of all gunshot wounds. Her name, please.”
