Oh, Murderer Mine | Page 6

now is, why is this alleged detective hanging around here?"
"Beulah," said Melissa, "that's simply priceless."
"Remember what I said about slander," Doan warned.
"Pooh! Beulah, this old hag--Heloise, I mean--hired him to keep women away from her pretty husband. I mean, actually. Isn't that a scream?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Beulah Porter Cowys. "Knowing what I know about the morals of the younger generation--and do I know!--I think it's a good idea."
"Oh, Beulah! You're just pretending--"
Something dropped and made a tinny battering clatter inside the second chem lab.
"It's that damned janitor eavesdropping again!" Beulah Porter Cowys snapped angrily. "Morales! Come here!"
A man eased himself out of the lab and looked at them in an elaborately surprised way. He was short and solid and lackadaisically stoop-shouldered, and he made each move as though it were the last allowed him and he intended to draw the process out as far as possible. He wore a battered black hat and a shirt with strategic holes in it and overalls that bagged improbably in the rear. He was carrying three galvanized pails in one hand and a floor brush over his shoulder.
"Hallo, peoples," he said in a liquidly lazy way. "You want something of Maximilian Morales, no?"
"No," Beulah Porter Cowys agreed. "Go away somewhere."
"Wait a minute," Melissa intervened. "Morales, can't you do something about the smell in Number 5?"
"I?" said Morales. "No."
"Yes, you can. You can calcimine those partitions or something--at least, that'll give the place a new kind of an odor."
"Calcimine?" said Morales. "I? I have eight children, senorita."
"What has that got to do with it?"
"Senorita, it is very hard to have eight children. It makes a man tired. I, Maximilian Morales, am tired."
"Well, stop having children then."
"Senorita, you are unreasonable."
"Eight children are enough."
"No," said Morales. "You will pardon me, senorita, but eight children are not enough."
"Why not?"
"Because none of them are any good. That is why it is necessary for me to arrange to have a ninth. Perhaps it will be smart enough to provide a comfortable old age for its honored father and jobs for its stupid brothers and sisters. One can only hope and keep trying."
"For how long?" Beulah Porter Cowys inquired.
Morales shrugged wearily. "That, of course, becomes a question one often considers at our age."
"Just be careful, now, Morales," Beulah Porter Cowys warned.
"I am always careful, senorita. It becomes an established mannerism in one of my breeding. You have, no doubt, heard of my great-great-great grandmother?"
"Too many times."
Morales nodded politely at Doan. "My great-great-great grandmother was regarded with a certain amount of favor by the great Maximilian, Emperor of all Mexico."
"Congratulations," Doan said.
"Thank you, senor. Is that your dog lying on the floor which is my care and responsibility?"
"Yes."
"Has the dog been trained, senor, to avoid--ah--accidents of an intimate nature?"
"He's very well educated," Doan said.
"You relieve my mind, senor. It is easy to see that with a dog of such great stature, an accident might be overwhelming."
"He never slips."
"He is to be congratulated. Now, if you will excuse me, I will resume my duties."
"Here," said Melissa. "Wait a minute. Aren't you going to do anything about fixing up Number 5?"
"Naturally not," said Morales, disappearing into the lab.
"Why all this sudden concern about Number 5?" Beulah Porter Cowys asked.
"Handsome Lover Boy has appropriated my office."
"Well, didn't you remonstrate with him?"
"Certainly. He just sat and sneered."
"Did you kick to Sley-Mynick?"
Melissa shrugged. "Yes, but you know how he is. Handsome Lover Boy evidently sneered at him, too, and that threw him into an outside loop."
"Is Sley-Mynick the puffy guy who pip-pips at people?" Doan asked. "What goes with him, anyway? He acts like someone had just given him a hotfoot."
"He's troubled with international spies," Beulah Porter Cowys said.
"Beulah," said Melissa, "it's not really right to make fun of him. He's a refugee, Mr. Doan. He's a very brilliant research biochemist. He was a professor at some university near Budapest with a name I can't pronounce. I don't know just what he did, if anything, but when Hungary threw in with Hitler, Sley-Mynick was arrested and put into a concentration camp. They must have treated him terribly there. Apparently it wrecked his nervous system."
"Did he escape from the place?" Doan asked.
"No. They decided, after they had half-killed him, that he was harmless and let him go. After that, though, he did sneak out of Hungary and get to Mexico some way or other. Then he nearly starved down there waiting for a passport permit to get into the United States. Once he got here, he ate so much he got bloated. He's had a rough time of it, and he's so jumpy and jittery yet that he can't even give lectures. He hates to meet strangers, and if anyone starts staring at him, he tries to crawl inside his clothes. It's a shame, because I