5 Detective Novels Winter 1953 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NewBook
Publisher: Thrilling Publications
Published: 1953-01-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

Lady luck had been riding the killer’s coat-tails like a tail wind tonight, but it seemed to have changed and gone back on him when he reached the other side of the roof. A thicker pocket of fog swirled around him, but the roof was smoothly joined against a brick wall.

A one-story building, even a tall one like this, would not have a fire-escape, no way down but to jump, and maybe break a leg on concrete below. But again Lady Luck smiled. He saw an open window five feet above him, a break in the brick wall that seemed suddenly to have been put there.

He had leaped up, caught the sill, and was scrambling through the window when another one of those muffled little splats sounded behind him. A slap that was a bullet hit the side of the window as he fell inside. By the dim light coming from a transom ahead he saw that he was on the landing of an inside fire-escape.

Ordinarily a man would have gone down it, seeking a way out below. This man was not ordinary, not with the fortune he was carrying—and his life with it. He went up one stairway after another until five floors were below him. Panting, he turned down a long hallway to a window hazily outlined at the rear.

He found an outside fire-escape here, by which he reached the roof. Here he stopped, unable to go on forever, and stood there gasping for breath, lungs pumping, the cold fog a wet cloud around his face.

He swore, hearing police cars wailing in the distance. None of that mob had called the police, and yet they were coming, sirens shrieking and moaning as they converged on the old studio building where he had left a dead man. Others were coming from up and down the waterfront, sirens clearing the way.

Breath back, the killer raced on, leaping from roof to roof to the end of the block. On the last roof he saw a skylight open and a light below it. A quick look showed him a carpeted hallway below. He swung down, hanging for a second on his hands, then dropping as noiselessly as possible on the floor.

Numbers on little white enameled plates on the doors told him that he was in a small third- or fourth-rate hotel. As he slipped cautiously forward he could still hear the police sirens—hell still dumping itself on this particular section of the city where little things like murder were about as common as sight of the Queen Mary steaming majestically up and down the Hudson.

What he needed right now was a washroom. Climbing fire-escapes and running over tarry roofs could be grimy. His face must be smudged, for his hands looked as if they had been clawing in a coal pile.

Tiptoeing down a rear stairway to the third floor, he spotted a door marked, “Gents Room.” Inside he hastily cleaned up and combed his hair, the wail of police ears outside louder now.

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