Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 110110 by AHM

Author:AHM
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2010-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

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Fiction

SHELL GAME

NEIL SCHOFIELD

Art by Tim Foley

I was sitting in the office, with my feet up on the open desk drawer, the large bottom one where the whisky lived and had its being. I had a glass of J&B in front of me on the desk, but what I was doing mostly was musing by the light of the desk lamp, and considering the hard drive I had taken out of the computer. It was around half past midnight. Behind me, the rain was beating hard on the windows, and in front of me, through the glass office door, past the logo of murray investigations, the building was dark. Of course, the logo only said “Murray Investigations” on the outside. From in here, it said something coarse in Martian.

I was musing, and sipping the whisky, but, at the same time, I was whistling “Skylark.” That’s called multitasking. I’m quite proud of being able to whistle “Skylark,” because it has a middle eight with some chord changes which can keep even the most experienced of whistlers—among whom I modestly count myself—awake of nights. I imagine Hoagy Carmichael finishing the tune off and saying to himself, “Okay, whistlers of the world, pick the bones out of that.”

In the middle of all this musing and sipping and whistling, the door opened. Now that was odd because there was no one in the building. The landings were dark; the offices had all been empty as far as I could see when I had come up to the fourth floor. But the door opened anyway.

And in she came. Walking in through the lobby and into the office as cool as you please. Which was pretty cool. I muffled a curse at myself for having left the outer door unlocked. I muffled the curse; I don’t like to offend, especially on first acquaintance.

She didn’t look like someone I’d want to offend. She was around twenty, medium sized and blonde, a figure carved out of all our dreams, with a beautiful face, huge violet eyes, and a straight mouth that, while it was voluptuous enough, told you clearly that she didn’t put up with no nonsense from nobody.

“Good evening,” I said. Civility costs nothing, as my mother used to say. Far too often, in fact.

She stopped halfway to the desk.

“I saw your light on,” she said, “and I thought I’d try the door on the off chance.”

“Well, it’s my night for the off chance,” I said. “What seems to be the problem?” I’d heard people say that, usually doctors, but then what do they know of doctors who only doctors know?

I was assuming she had a problem—what else would she have wandering around the empty floors of the Avalon Commercial Centre at midnight?

“May I sit down?” she said, with a graceful, hesitant gesture at the empty client chair in front of the desk.

I replied with an equally graceful wave that said, as clearly as I could make it: Park it, sister. I would have pushed

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