Dead Ernest by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Publisher: Detective Novels Magazine
Published: 1948-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

Mrs. Mullet shivered as they crossed the threshold into the main corridor.

“Gloomy barn of a place!” she said. “Can’t you put on a light?”

Leonidas found the switch, and snapped on the corridor lights.

“I think,” he said, “that we’ll not bother with Skellings. We’ll go directly to the kitchens and see if a deep freeze is missing—hm. On the other hand, if he emerges from his tub and discovers that the lights are on, I suppose we’ll only have the police on our necks that much sooner. M’yes, perhaps we better inform him of our presence, after all!”

But Skellings’ little apartment was empty.

“Something,” Mrs. Mullet’s voice was dripping with what Haseltine customarily referred to as dire foreboding, “something is amiss on these premises! I don’t care what you think, Mr. Witherall, but in my candied opinion, it’s amiss!”

“To anyone as absent-minded as Skellings, anything is liable to happen.”

Leonidas spoke with a lightness he didn’t entirely feel. On the night before the school’s reopening, Skellings ought to be there! Heaven knew the man had enough to do—and even if he’d managed to do it all, to attend to every last detail, he ought to be there in his apartment, preparing to sleep the sleep of the just and weary!

“Like,” Mrs, Mullet demanded, “what? Like what would happen?”

“Oh,” Leonidas waved his hand in a casual gesture, “oh, he’s missed the last bus, or the last train from the city, or taken the wrong trolley. Er—suppose we just go on to the kitchens, and eliminate him from our thoughts.”

Their footsteps echoed hollowly along the marble floors of the corridors, and somehow Mrs. Mullet’s thudding heels gave Leonidas the impression that there was a small army stalking along, instead of just the two of them. He also found himself wishing a little irritably that she would not crane her neck as they passed by the door of each empty schoolroom, and peer in fearfully, as if she expected something with horns to pop out at her and say “Boo!” in a fiery breath.

“What a funny smell buildings like this always have,” she remarked suddenly. “Wet mops, and people, and disinfectants, and old overshoes—what’s that? What’s all those?”

She stopped and pointed to a pile of packing cases and crates that reached to the ceiling and almost blocked up the west-wing corridor entrance.

“Navy matériel,’ Leonidas said, “which I was assured would be removed last week, without fail, and anyway today. Hm. I must write my good friend Coe-Chester, and ask him to have his old flotsam and jetsam speeded elsewhere!”

“Coe-Chester—he used to be the head of the navy school that was here, didn’t he?” Mrs, Mullet said rapidly. ‘“Wasn’t he that admiral that used to play chess with you so much, and golf, and all?”

“M’yes, the one who looks like a freshly scrubbed bulldog,” Leonidas said. “One night he informed me positively that he would surely and unquestionably continue in charge of the school for another year, and the next day he was ordered out to examine factories, which he knew nothing about.

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