The sedan had disappeared by the time I got the coupe on the street. It had turned west, and I turned that way also. In the distance I heard a siren. Lew would get the call. A dozen cars would get the call. They’d pinpoint my home—and we would get him. But it would all be less than worthless if he harmed Vicky first.
I heard another siren and then another. They were converging on the downtown area. I saw the swarm of cars when I skidded the coupe into Central Avenue. A fire truck rounded an intersection and clanged to a stop just ahead of me. Patrolmen were trying to move the crowds gathering on the sidewalk, and a searchlight threw its yellow tongue up the side of the six-story Parker Building.
I’d stopped the coupe, but I couldn’t let go of the wheel when I saw that light snake its way up the face of the building. I knew then that he had her up there and we might never get her down alive.
Somehow I crawled out of the car and was able to stand. I found Lew standing beside his own car. He was snapping orders. To firemen with a net. To the cops rigging a loudspeaker system.
“For God’s sake, Lew, be careful!”
He showed only brief, surprise at seeing me. “We’re doing that. Doug: If we wanted to take chances, we’d send men up after him.”
I could see them now. Vicky and Shoffner, near the low parapet around the building roof.
Shoffner’s voice rang out thin and high-pitched: “Go away! All of you go away, or I’ll push her over!”
Lew’s shudder almost matched my own. “He’s cracked. He’s gone. Loony as they come. He’s Loren Sigmon’s father, Doug.” I stiffened. I had been the single eyewitness to Sigmon’s crime.
Lew said, “He was probably out to get you from the minute he went to work for you. We found some dirt from your garden in your bedroom near the night table where you kept your gun. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have meant much to us—either you or Vicky could have brought it in—but to Vicky it suggested Shoffner. She remembered that Shoffner had been working in muck that afternoon, bringing it in for the flower beds. She slipped into his rooms, found some pictures of Sigmon in the old man’s things. She went to some of Sigmon’s old haunts last night and tonight with Keith Pryor. She was asking questions and must have got a few answers. She phoned me that she was certain of the old man’s identity. But before I could get to your house, he snatched her, found himself cornered, the street blocked, and dragged her in the building.”
Now she was six stories above the street. This, then, was the ultimate torture…
“You’ll never talk him down, Lew,” I said. “There’s only one way—let him know he isn’t guilty of actual murder. I’ll have to go up, alone—”
A trooper was standing near me. I slid the carbine he was holding from his hand.
Lew made no move to stop me. He knew that Shoffner might kill, me, but he knew too that this was something I had to do. For myself. For Vicky.
The stairs upward were long, silent, manned by patrolmen who sucked in breath when they saw me, a man they’d believed dead. The last flight of stairs was steeper and narrower, leading up to the radio tower on the roof. I saw Shoffner and Vicky the moment I pushed my exhausted body out on the roof. The spotlight limned them, Shoffner behind Vicky, waving a gun, yelling threats.
Shoffner must have been dropping quick glances behind him to make sure no one else was coming on the roof, for he saw me.
“Don’t take another step,” he shouted, and his full intent was in his voice. “I’ll push her!”
“I came to help you,” I said. “I don’t want you getting yourself into any worse trouble.”
My voice brought a little cry from Vicky’s throat, and a startled gasp from Shoffner.
“You can’t be Townsend!” he said in a thick, fearful voice.
“But I am. Move away from her, Shoffner. And I’ll come toward the light. You can see for yourself.”
I took another step. A little of the light caught my face. The old man screamed and started shooting. Vicky crawled aside. I hated to do it, but I squeezed the trigger of the carbine. The bullet hit him high in the chest. He stumbled back against the parapet.
And then he was suddenly gone.
The gun slid from my fingers as Vicky stumbled toward me. The boys who came to the roof found us locked in a tight embrace, Vicky’s face burrowed into my neck, hard sobs racking her. She was trying hard to tell me something about being a fool, about never having let a pipsqueak gigolo turn her head for a moment, but about having been lonely. But until I’d gone she’d never known what loneliness meant. She’d told Pryor that and he had understood; he had been willing to help her in any way he could in bringing her husband’s murderer to bay. Did I believe her?
Her question echoed in my mind. Yes, I believed her. I knew that I would never doubt her again. I led her toward the stairs.
“Darling, it’s time,” I said, “that we were going home.”
DEAR MR. LONELYHEART
Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Nov. 1958.
643 Elm Ave.
Centerville, S. C.
July 9
Dear Mr. Singleton,
I have read your description in the cute little news letter put out by the Orange Blossoms Friendship Society.
I, too, am a lonely person, Mr. Singleton. So please don’t think me forward. I’m just ever so lonely, and that is why I’m writing to a man I’ve never seen before. I’d like to correspond with a mature gentleman, and I am sure it would be like a beautiful light in my
