Case File by Bill Pronzini

Author:Bill Pronzini [Pronzini, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2011-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

IV.

The minute hand dragged itself around the clock on the office wall. In the pulp—the December 1936 issue of Detective Tales—I read "Satan Covers the Waterfront" by Tom Roan and "The Case of the Whispering Terror" by George Bruce. Outside, the velocity of the wind increased; I could hear it rattling a loose drain gutter on the roof as I read "Malachi Gunn and the Vanishing Heiress" by Franklin H. Martin.

Eight-forty.

I poured another cup of coffee. None of the other stories in the issue of Detective Tales looked interesting; I put it down and picked up the May 1935 Dime Mystery. And read "House of the Restless Dead" by Hugh B. Cave and "Mistress of Terror" by Wyatt Blassingame. The wind slackened again, and the only background noises I had to listen to then were creaking joints and the distant moan of foghorns on the bay.

Ten-oh-five.

I read "The Man Who Was Dead" by John Dixon Carr, which was a nice little ghost story set in England. The "Dixon" was no doubt a misspelling and the author was John Dickson Carr, the master of the locked-room mystery; I'd read somewhere that Carr had published a few stories in mid- 1930s pulps, one other of which I'd read in the third or fourth issue of Detective Tales.

My eyes were beginning to feel heavy-lidded and sore from all the reading; I rubbed at them with my knuckles, closed the magazine, yawned noisily, and looked at the thermos and the three salami-and-cheese sandwiches and two apples inside the sack. But I wasn't hungry just yet, and the coffee had to last me the rest of the night. I got to my feet, stretching; glanced at the clock again in spite of myself.

Ten thirty-three.

And something made a noise out in the warehouse—a dull thud like a heavy weight falling against another object.

The hair poked up on my neck; I stood frozen, listening, for three or four seconds. The silence seemed suddenly eerie. Sounds in the night seldom bothered me, but this was different. This was a building in which I was alone and sealed up, and yet I was sure the thudding noise had come from inside the warehouse.

I grabbed my flashlight off the desk, switched it on and ran into the anteroom. Just as I reached the open warehouse door, I had an almost subliminal glimpse of a streak of light winking out beyond the night-lit shipping counter. Somebody else with a flash? I threw my own beam down the corridor, went through the doorway after it.

In the clotted darkness ahead, there was a faint thumping sound.

Without slowing I veered past the shipping counter and over to the bank of light switches. The flash beam illuminated the near third of the main aisle-way, but its diffused glare showed me nothing except inanimate objects.

Another thump. And then a kind of clicking or popping.

Both noises seemed to come from somewhere diagonally to my left.

I threw all the switches at once, slapping upward with the palm of my free hand.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.