Oh, Murderer Mine | Page 8

determined to fight as stubborn a delaying action as possible.
She was directly in front of the apartment, fumbling for the key in her purse, when she noticed that the door was not quite closed. Melissa drew in her breath slowly. She thought of a great many lurid words and applied them all to a personality known as Handsome Lover Boy.
Very quietly she pushed the door open wider. The light in her living room was not on, and the furniture looked distorted and unfamiliar. The door of her bedroom was open, and there was a light in there--dim and bluish and indistinct. Melissa knew that this light came from the reading lamp clamped on the head of her bed, and she began to seethe inside at the mere thought.
She tiptoed across the living room and stopped in the bedroom doorway. The light did come from her reading lamp, and it reflected from the brightly patterned spread on her bed and from the brightly painted face of the little Spanish clock on her night table. Melissa saw, without noticing, that the gilt hands of the clock were lined up at midnight exactly.
There was a man standing in front of her dresser with his back to her. Melissa opened her mouth, but she didn't speak. There was something queer about this man.
Melissa swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat. The man's head was black--all black--and it was distorted in back into an ugly knotted lump. His hands were black, too--a different kind of black, smooth and shiny and ridged. He was staring down at a pair of Melissa's nylon stockings that dribbled limply between his black, clumsy fingers.
The Spanish clock whirred very softly to itself and then tinkled out its dusty-sweet little Andalusian peasant tune. The black man made a startled sound deep in his throat. He whirled half-around, and one of his shiny hands reached out for the clock.
"No!" Melissa cried involuntarily.
The black man kept right on turning until he faced her. Melissa knew now what made the blackness of his head. He was wearing a stocking mask, pulled tight and knotted at the back of his neck. There were eyeholes in it, and he was watching her through them. He was wearing black leather gloves on his hands.
He made no sound at all. Melissa backed up a step, and then he moved, coming at her with a deadly, animal-like swiftness.
Melissa screamed--once.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS TWENTY-THREE MINUTES AFTER eleven when Eric Trent closed the textbook he was reading with a sharp, disgusted snap and said, "I've been reading the same page for the last half hour, and it still doesn't make sense. Let's go get a beer."
Doan had been lying on his back on the chesterfield with his hands folded across his chest. He sat up instantly and started hunting around for his shoes.
"Now you're talking," he said enthusiastically.
Carstairs was sprawled all over the floor in front of the door. He sat up, too.
"Trent and I are going to the library and get some books," Doan told him.
Carstairs watched him.
"Don't look so damned skeptical!" Doan shouted. "I can read. And dogs aren't allowed in the library, so just relax and lie down again. You're staying here."
Carstairs stood up and turned his back and put his nose against the door.
"All right, all right," Doan said. "Hurry up, Trent. The bars close up in this cockeyed state at midnight."
He opened the door, and Carstairs preceded them down the long hall. This apartment was on the third floor, and there was no elevator. There were no elevators in any of the university buildings with the exception of those frequented by T. Ballard Bestwyck. He did not believe in pampering the lower classes. Doan and Trent, with Carstairs still ahead of them, went down the stairs past Melissa's floor, and on down the first flight and out through the lobby.
Trent's car--a small and shabby two-door sedan--was parked at the curb fifty yards north of Pericles Pavilion. Doan opened the door on the right side and hitched the seat forward.
"Get in back," he ordered. "Snap it up."
Carstairs climbed in distrustfully.
Doan popped the seat back into place and slid into it. "Hurry up. It's half-past eleven."
Trent started the car, and they drove through the narrow, sharply curved residential streets that bordered the university and then out on the smooth, wide sweep of the boulevard that ran south of the campus.
"There's a place," said Doan. "Kerrigan's Klub Kar. Under the green neon sign ahead."
"All right," said Trent absently. He drove the car into the empty graveled lot beside the building and parked.
"Roll your window up about three-quarters of the way and get out and shut your door," Doan said casually. He was lounging back in the seat with his hands folded back of his neck.
Trent looked at him curiously.